Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation

Introduction

“Caliban and the Witch” appeared in 2004 in New York and continued work that Federici had published with Leopoldina Fortunati in “Il grande Calibano” (1984). It reinterprets the transition from feudalism to capitalism from the standpoint of women and of the body. Taking up Marx’s chapter on primitive accumulation, Federici argues that the expropriation of land was accompanied by a new sexual division of labour, by the devaluation of women’s work and by state control of reproduction; the European witch hunts and the persecutions in the American colonies were part of this process. Against Michel Foucault, the book holds that a history of the disciplined body must include the witch hunt. It has become a reference in feminist and social reproduction theory, while historians of witchcraft have questioned parts of its evidence and its overall thesis.

Connections

Criticizes

• Capital1867 · Karl Marx
• The Will to Knowledge (The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1)1976 · Michel Foucault

More works by Silvia Federici

• 1975Wages against Housework