Federici’s Book: Caliban and the Witch
A resource shared for educational and research purposes.
Book review by Alex Knight:
Silvia Federici’s brilliant Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body, and Primitive Accumulation, (2004) tells – in 288 pages – 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.
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.
