Silvia Federici's Caliban and the Witch [5-week Reading Group, $150 suggested]
Instructor: Andrews | Tuesdays March 15-April 12 | 7:00-8:30 PM ET
Witch hunts, which targeted women, intensified across Europe at the same time as the origin of capitalism. Why? The same strategy of the witch hunt was used to dispossess colonized people of their lands and justify chattel slavery. What does gender have to do with capitalism and how does it intersect with colonialism and enslavement? Over the course of five weeks, we’ll read Silvia Federici’s major intervention in anti-capitalist thinking: Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body, and Primitive Accumulation. We’ll read to learn about how the degradation of women has been central to the expansion of capitalism across the globe, and how the “feminization of labor” has exacerbated inequality. From AK Press: “Caliban and the Witch is a history of the body in the transition to capitalism. Moving from the peasant revolts of the late Middle Ages to the witch-hunts and the rise of mechanical philosophy, Federici investigates the capitalist rationalization of social reproduction. She shows how the battle against the rebel body and mind are essential conditions for the development of labor power and self-ownership, two central principles of modern social organization.”
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