Friday, November 20, 2009

Review: Caliban & the Witch

Further to my September post Books: Women & History in which I brought to your attention the book "Caliban & the Witch:Women, The Body and Primitive Accumulation" by Silvia Federici, comes this in depth review.

Alex Knight @ Toward Freedom wrote:
Silvia Federici’s brilliant Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body, and Primitive Accumulation, tells the dark saga of the Witch Hunt that consumed Europe for more than 200 years. In uncovering this forgotten history, Federici exposes the origins of capitalism in the heightened oppression of workers, represented by Shakespeare’s character Caliban, and in the brutal subjugation of women. She also brings to light the enormous and colorful European peasant movements that fought against the injustices of their time, connecting their defeat to the imposition of a new patriarchal order that divided male from female workers. Today, as more and more people question the usefulness of a capitalist system that has thrown the world into crisis, Caliban and the Witch stands out as essential reading for unmasking the shocking violence and inequality that capitalism has relied upon from its very creation.
If this book is of interest, please read the article in its entirety. I did warn you - this book is heavy duty reading!

No comments: