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Content

With Caliban and the Witch, Silvia Federici has presented a foundational text of materialist feminism: in it, she convincingly and extensively explains why the spread of capitalism in Europe during the 16th and 17th centuries went hand in hand with the persecution of witches. In Witch Hunts, she provides an accessible summary of these findings and applies them to contemporary violence specifically directed against women, particularly in African and Latin American countries. This makes it possible to understand this violence, in parallel with the persecution of witches, as a phenomenon connected to capitalist enclosures in the course of globalization.

This also raises a fundamental question for social movements today: how can the exploitation of women under capitalism, as well as brutal forms of violence such as forced sterilization, rape, and murder, be overcome? Federici thus presents a collection of historical feminist essays that does not lose sight of the relevance of this analysis for contemporary social struggles.