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

Silvia Federici’s 2004 monograph, Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation, is a synthesis of the history of Europe’s transition to capitalism from a global and applied perspective. The author, a philosopher, places the origins of modern patriarchy within this transition using Marxist-feminist theory as her primary mode of analysis.

This study guide uses the edition of the text published in 2014 by Autonomedia.

Content Warning: This book contains references to violence, especially sexual violence.

Summary

Federici opens with feudalism’s disintegration at the end of the medieval period. It is out of feudalism that capitalism developed, according to Marxist theory. However, extant research largely ignores women’s and witch-hunting’s place in this shift. Federici fills this gap by placing at the center of her analysis the emergent concept of the body machine and reproductive work’s devaluation. Both are linked to misogynistic ideas about rebellious women who subverted these new, early modern norms.

Resistance to capitalist and colonialist exploitation and oppression is a consistent theme throughout the work. This resistance took the form of peasant revolts against elite efforts to rein in the peasantry’s demands for better living and working conditions during the late Middle Ages and early modern periods in Europe.