arilaurel 's review for:

Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation by Silvia Federici

5.0

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This was really an incredible read. I went in not knowing very much about 15th and 16th century European history, so learning about peasant revolts led by women of the time, and how the role of the woman in the community became maligned and persecuted as "witch" was new and exciting information. Even more, Federici connects her analysis to the spread of Protestantism, conquest, and settler colonialism, enough for the reader to draw a number or parallels to present day. The book also made me think a lot about the body as mechanism, the body as resource, the emergence of science as a conduit for those ideas, which simultaneously pushed women out of essential community roles and imposed control over their lives and bodies.