Release Date: May 15
Title: Caliban and the Witch in a Time of Covid-19
Caliban and the Witch is a classic and much beloved text in feminist history by Italian feminist Sylvia Federici.
Representing 3+ decades of meticulous feminist research, Federici investigates why hundreds of thousands of women targeted were killed as "witches" in the development of capitalism.
Why specifically were women targeted?
Why did mystics, "heretics", midwives, herbalists, and single women so threaten the economic and religious order that widescale violence was used to suppress their voices and communities?
What did these women know about the world that threatened the rise of a capitalist and patriarchal economy?
Federici brilliantly connects this history of 3 centuries of witch hunts to western colonialism and slavery; to the continued enclosure of land; to modern day witch hunts; and to the everyday exploitation of women's labor in the home.
Launching from her book's key insights, we will also ask:
How could the ideas in Caliban and the Witch now help us re-envision a feminist economy as we rebuild our world amidst the challenges of Covid-19?
