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

Abstract

The work Caliban and the witch is the result of a more than thirty years research project developed by the historian Silvia Federici. Its central aim is to rethink the development of capitalism from a feminist point of view with the care not to delimit and segregate the history of women in the working-class male sector. It retakes Marxist concepts, feminist critical theories and an analysis on the body and its politicization in the light of the Foucaultian theory. For Federici there are aspects that are hidden in the said theories in what concerns the discussions on domination and exploration. It also highlights how many analysis on the witch-hunting period has been neglected over the years and what this period essentially has to contribute to the analysis of the consolidation of capitalism.The concept of primitive accumulation developed by Karl Marx in his work Capital is fundamental for the unfolding and understanding of this historical process marked by violence, domination and exploitation and that redefined structures of the sexual division of labor. Federici is concerned about the contemporary context in which intensification of violence against women and the resumption of witch-hunt - albeit in a “new outfit” - in some countries, with a major emphasis on countries that have suffered colonization.