Witches, Witch-Hunting and Women (Part 1 - Revisiting Capital Accumulation and the European Witch Hunt) - Silvia Federici

‘Every town has its witch, and every parish its trolls. We will
keep them from life with the fire of joy.’


In the first of a two-part episode on 'Witches,
Witch-Hunting and Women' by Silvia
Federici, we discover how historical distortions of the
witch-hunts lead to dangerous misunderstandings of women and
their history in modern times and how women are not now gaining
their rights for the first time, but regaining them after
centuries of disenfranchisement and oppression.


Part one of the book ‘Revisiting Capital Accumulation and
the European Witch Hunt’ consists of one song and four
essays: ‘Midsommervisen - Vi Elsker Vort Land’,
‘Why Speak of the Witch Hunts Again?’,
‘Witch Hunts, Enclosures, and the Demise of Communal
Property Relations’, ‘Witch-Hunting and the Fear
of the Power of Women’ and ‘On the Meaning of
‘Gossip’’. In these insightful and thought-provoking
pieces we discuss the Danish annual tradition of burning the
effigy of a witch on ‘Sankt Hans Aften’ and how this practice
makes light of one of the most violent time-periods that women
have ever encountered; how the witch-hunts are finally being
re-evaluated and recognised as the historical subjugation of
women and as a means of accumulating profit off the labour of
women; how restudying the witch hunts destroys the belief that
capitalism was once a carrier of social progress; the destruction
of the magical conception of the body and how female sexuality
was exorcised of its subversive potential through the witch
hunts;  the links between witch hunts, McCarthyism and the
war on terror; how a science of pain and torture was developed
upon the bodies of women; and we study the example of the word
‘gossip’ to show how even our language has been changed in order
sew discord in the place of women’s solidarity and to accommodate
their oppression as well as asking ‘Do women really have it
better now than ever?’





This episode is part of our series on Marxist-feminists. As Mao
and Thomas Sankara have said, “Women hold up the other half of
the sky.” Red Book Club recognizes that including the voices of
nonmen in our studies is not a niche activity, but is in fact an
essential step in gaining the most comprehensive view of the
material conditions of the past and present that we possibly
can; therefore we’ve planned this series to amplify the ideas
that nonmen have been bringing to the conversation
for centuries. From Federici’s analysis of women as a
means of primitive accumulation to Luxemburg’s essay of the
benefits of revolution vs the impossibility of reform, each of
these works confronts history and the movement for social change
through the lens of the experiences of nonmen in society. Follow
us on Twitter at @RBCpod and feel free to
message us if you need links to companion resources or have any
questions. You can also find us on our new site at
www.rbcpod.wordpress.com  where you can
find ebook copies of the works that we're covering and more.


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Thanks to @NunezKeenan for the intro theme; you can find more of
their  work here:  http://tiny.cc/keenan


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Intro Music: Vi Elsker Vort Land (Midsommervisen) - Danmarks
Radios Pigekor


Outro music: Gossiper Scandal Monger - Julie Coker