Caliban and the Witch Book Party and Discussion

New York, March 29, 2005

Tuesday, March 29

7:30 pm, Brecht Forum

212.242.4201

451 West St. Between Bank & Bethune

1,9,2,3 to 14th st. walk west on 12th st, south on 8th ave, then west on
Bethune st.

Caliban and the Witch:

Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation

Silvia Federici

Caliban and the Witch is a history of the body in the transition to
capitalism. Moving from the peasant revolts of the late Middle Ages to the
witch-hunts and the rise of mechanical philosophy, Silvia Federici shows that
the birth of the proletariat required a war against women, inaugurating a new
sexual pact and a new patriarchal era: the patriarchy of the wage. Firmly
rooted in the history of the persecution of the witches and the disciplining
of the body, her arguments explain why the subjugation of women was as crucial
for the formation of the world proletariat as the enclosures of the land, the
conquest and colonization of the ‘New World,’ and the slave trade.

Suggested donation: $6/$10/$15