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4.52 AVERAGE
4.52 AVERAGE
informative
medium-paced
emotional
informative
medium-paced
challenging
informative
reflective
medium-paced
genius fucking book. silvia federici is a legend. makes me wanna never read a piece of marxist literature that doesn’t take a strong feminist stance ever again. federici’s in-depth study of the integral role that women’s oppression played in the birth of capitalism via sowing class division along gendered lines clarifies that women’s liberation is a necessary condition for bringing about our collective liberation. 10/10 piece of writing. will refer back to this book for the rest of my life
challenging
dark
informative
reflective
medium-paced
Caliban and the witch (pub. 2004) shows us the transition from Feudalism to Capitalism through a feminist lense, including also the infamous witch hunts and the gendered division of labour which is starting to be spoken about again in the world currently. It introduced me to primitive accumulation, something I've never heard of before since I haven't read Marx yet, which is the theory of how class distinctions began, in Marxist economic theory. It claims that the capital-owning class came to be when they gave the proletariat no choice but to earn a wage by working on the privatised land that they first conquered & enclosed.
Before finishing the book I read some reviews claiming that Federici has left out important historical information about the witch hunts by watering the details down, so do keep that in mind when reading.
Before finishing the book I read some reviews claiming that Federici has left out important historical information about the witch hunts by watering the details down, so do keep that in mind when reading.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexual violence
I wanted to like this more than I did, though there were parts I enjoyed. On the whole there are some important ideas and ways of re-examining history in it that I'm glad to have been exposed to.
I wasn't as into the swamp of intellectual jargon (it reads like a academic thesis.. was it one?), the flimsy arguments and hand-waving conclusions, the selective omission of relevant contradictory evidence (such as: blaming hunger/etc during the ~1500's - ~1700's only on early capitalism and enclosure of the commons without ever mentioning the substantial impact on food production caused by the Little Ice Age during the same time period).
As a result, the book comes across as a deep yet narrowly researched dive on the topics it covers.
I wasn't as into the swamp of intellectual jargon (it reads like a academic thesis.. was it one?), the flimsy arguments and hand-waving conclusions, the selective omission of relevant contradictory evidence (such as: blaming hunger/etc during the ~1500's - ~1700's only on early capitalism and enclosure of the commons without ever mentioning the substantial impact on food production caused by the Little Ice Age during the same time period).
As a result, the book comes across as a deep yet narrowly researched dive on the topics it covers.
dark
informative
reflective
sad
fast-paced
