Caliban and the Witch

A tour de force! This is an amazing book that takes a historical view to explain the story of women’s exclusion from public life and the physical and epistemic violence they experienced through the witch trials in Europe.

I would never have put these two elements together–bringing witch trials into view to help us understand the exclusion of women from the political economy of everyday life. This, Federici argues, led to the restructuring of household relations and the role of women in them, which in turn reflected the changing needs of society with the rise of capitalism.

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If The Many-Headed Hydra revealed a hidden history of the revolutionary Atlantic, Caliban and the Witch totally upended my understanding of witches, gender, and the rise of capitalism. A landmark text that sent shockwaves across the history field, Silvia Federici’s writing on the role of unwaged and reproductive labour in the making of the modern world is unrivaled. In a testament to its power and reach, Penguin released a new edition in 2021. A book to give to every socialist dude-bro or those who doubt the importance of gender to profit and power. 

Federici’s seminal book tells the story of the enclosure of the commons, starting in England in the 16th century, which laid the ground for the commodification of nature and the formation of capitalism, and links it to the demonization of women in the witch-hunts of the same period. It is a story of domination, colonialism, and resistance that helps us to understand and exit a destructive historical system.