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

You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.

643 reviews for:

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

Silvia Federici

4.52 AVERAGE

approachingbotulism's review against another edition

5.0

challenging dark informative inspiring mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

sonya_e's review against another edition

4.0

informative reflective

read this for my ~practical magic: femme vengeance, healing & revolution in the americas~ class (i luv stpec)— i’ve read parts of it before in other stpec classes so it was a partial reread. i’m a big fan of silvia federici and i think this is a really important book that is crucial to understanding primitive accumulation in europe and the process of “othering” groups of people to maintain hegemonic control. and also very importantly the, as federici puts it, genocide of women during the european witch trials and how they shape our view of femininity and women in western societies now.
reading it for this class was really interesting because i was focusing on the aspects of what was stigmatized & criminalized about women and their lives, how those aspects were seen as a threat to men in power, and the witch trials were used as a form of repression & terror. a LOT of parallels to how modern “witch trials” have been conducted (mccarthyism, targeting of pro-palestine & anti-cop activists, etc.)
i do think this is a very dense book, it is written in a clear & approachable way w/o overusing academic jargon, but does feel hard to get through at times because of the amount of information.
okay this is so long lol