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dreamtokens 's review for:
Caliban și vrăjitoarea
by Silvia Federici
Caliban and the Witch is this wonderfully complex interpretation of history, focusing on the way bodies, and especially women's bodies, were instrumentalized in the making of capitalism. It reads so easily, yet it is so mind-blowing. It's the first time I can really see her argument, although I've been reading about the history of capitalism for about three years: that is, how capitalism bases itself on complex forms of domination and, more importantly, ideological divisions between different "kinds" of human beings, some, more deserving than others (by gender, by race, by class).
Federici does an overview of historical events from about the 1400 onward to the end of the 1600, when most of the witch hunts cease, having already achieved the desired result (the one Federici believes in): the power of the state settled, classes divided deep within themselves, women having become submissive to men in ways impossible in feudal times. The author follows the threads of epidemics such as the Black Death, of religion and its forces, of agrarian upheavals and of discourses on body and sexuality, bringing up an dimension of history that Foucault and Marx impressively missed: gender.
Foucault wrote about the body being disciplined and sexuality being tamed without looking at the most remarkable instance of it: the witch hunts. They were instances of torture, scare tactics and killing in which states systematically engaged, breaking trust between neighbors and spouses, subjecting women to incredible violence in a very disciplinary, Foucauldian manner, ending up shaping the "womanly", pure, aseptic, vassal to her man.
Marx wrote about primitive accumulation in early capitalism as if it had affected men and women equally - Federici argues strongly that it hadn't. In fact, she shows that, by strongly regulating births (not only with accusations of witchcraft, but having infanticide as one of the worst crimes, and with distrusting and surveilling midwifes), women's body itself has been turned into a source of workforce, of production. Not only she is reproducing the work force of her husband by taking care of house duties, but she is effectively made into a reproduction machine by procreating.
Federici argues that capitalism has not led to a kind of worker freedom from serfdom, but rather, it has inscribed upon bodies themselves divisions of labor that are still present today.
"The first machine created by capitalism wasn't the steam engine, nor the clock; it was the human body" (aprox. translation from the Romanian edition pg. 236). One can follow this concept in Descartes' mind/body dualism, in which the body is pushed outside of the self, it is made into a separate, controllable machine - it is dehumanized. Federici goes on to show how witch hunts in Europe are tied to colonialism and witch hunts in the Americas, informing on each other's tactics, and being used for confinement - of the body, of relationships, or of the land, seizing up common territories.
While not all arguments are as well rounded as the main idea, I think it is a great book, worth reading, and an "alternative" history worth exploring. Questions still remain - what is tied up to what, exactly? We have religion, illness, power and state control, intellectual discourse and military action, property and economics, food and hunger, sexuality and body, gender and race, all influencing each other in multiple ways. However, I think she manages to write a wonderful book and put forward the very complex, compelling idea, of capitalism using gendered bodies to built its system from the very beginning.
Federici does an overview of historical events from about the 1400 onward to the end of the 1600, when most of the witch hunts cease, having already achieved the desired result (the one Federici believes in): the power of the state settled, classes divided deep within themselves, women having become submissive to men in ways impossible in feudal times. The author follows the threads of epidemics such as the Black Death, of religion and its forces, of agrarian upheavals and of discourses on body and sexuality, bringing up an dimension of history that Foucault and Marx impressively missed: gender.
Foucault wrote about the body being disciplined and sexuality being tamed without looking at the most remarkable instance of it: the witch hunts. They were instances of torture, scare tactics and killing in which states systematically engaged, breaking trust between neighbors and spouses, subjecting women to incredible violence in a very disciplinary, Foucauldian manner, ending up shaping the "womanly", pure, aseptic, vassal to her man.
Marx wrote about primitive accumulation in early capitalism as if it had affected men and women equally - Federici argues strongly that it hadn't. In fact, she shows that, by strongly regulating births (not only with accusations of witchcraft, but having infanticide as one of the worst crimes, and with distrusting and surveilling midwifes), women's body itself has been turned into a source of workforce, of production. Not only she is reproducing the work force of her husband by taking care of house duties, but she is effectively made into a reproduction machine by procreating.
Federici argues that capitalism has not led to a kind of worker freedom from serfdom, but rather, it has inscribed upon bodies themselves divisions of labor that are still present today.
"The first machine created by capitalism wasn't the steam engine, nor the clock; it was the human body" (aprox. translation from the Romanian edition pg. 236). One can follow this concept in Descartes' mind/body dualism, in which the body is pushed outside of the self, it is made into a separate, controllable machine - it is dehumanized. Federici goes on to show how witch hunts in Europe are tied to colonialism and witch hunts in the Americas, informing on each other's tactics, and being used for confinement - of the body, of relationships, or of the land, seizing up common territories.
While not all arguments are as well rounded as the main idea, I think it is a great book, worth reading, and an "alternative" history worth exploring. Questions still remain - what is tied up to what, exactly? We have religion, illness, power and state control, intellectual discourse and military action, property and economics, food and hunger, sexuality and body, gender and race, all influencing each other in multiple ways. However, I think she manages to write a wonderful book and put forward the very complex, compelling idea, of capitalism using gendered bodies to built its system from the very beginning.