Books › Witches, Witch-Hunting, and Women
Witches, Witch-Hunting, and Women
120 pages
A sobering, fiercely analytical exploration of how capitalist expansion has historically and continually relied on the systemic persecution of women.
What it feels like
Reading this book feels like stepping into a fiercely urgent, intellectually rigorous seminar on the hidden costs of global economic systems. The pace is steady and deliberate, guiding the reader through a sobering landscape of historical and contemporary persecution. The mood is undeniably grim yet deeply thought-provoking, steeped in the heavy reality of institutional violence and land dispossession. The prose is analytical and sharp, stripping away the surface of modern society to reveal the structural exploitation of women's reproductive labor beneath. It is a text that demands attention, offering a critical lens rather than a comforting narrative. This book will deeply satisfy readers who crave uncompromising, historically grounded sociological critiques that connect the violence of the past to the capitalist structures of the present.
- Mood
- sobering
- serious
- thought-provoking
- grim
- Tone
- analytical
- urgent
- critical
- scholarly
- Pace
- steady
- Themes
- structural violence · capitalist exploitation · historical parallels · persecution of women · reproductive labor
- The writing
- Clear, analytical, and historically grounded, delivering complex sociological arguments with urgent clarity.
- The arc
- Moves from a sobering confrontation with historical and modern violence to a critical understanding of the systemic forces driving it.
- Who it's for
- Readers seeking a rigorous, historically rooted critique of capitalism and its inherent violence against women.
Content notes
- violence against women
- institutional violence
- persecution
- witch hunts
About the book
The world is witnessing a new surge of interpersonal and institutional violence against women, including new witch hunts. This surge of violence has occurred alongside an expansion of capitalist social relation. In this new work, Silvia Federici examines the root causes of these developments and outlines the consequences for the women affected and their communities.
She argues, that this new war on women, a mirror of witch hunts in 16th- and 17th-century Europe and the “New World,” is a structural element of the new forms of capitalist accumulation. These processes are founded on the destruction of people’s most basic means of reproduction. Like at the dawn of capitalism, the factors behind today’s violence against women are processes of enclosure, land dispossession, and the remolding of women’s reproductive activities and subjectivity.
Description from Open Library.
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