"Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation" Author: [Italy] Silvia Federici Publisher: Shanghai Sanlian Bookstore

Introduction
Editor's Recommendations
◎A History of Women's Bodies during the Transition to Capitalism
◎A masterpiece that dialogues with Marxism from a female perspective, exploring gender and reproduction in the context of primitive accumulation of capital
◎A classic work of Marxist feminism, it complements the missing female perspective in Capital. Sincerely recommended by scholars including Xia Ying and Yan Fei from Tsinghua University, Lan Jiang and Yang Qiaoyu from Nanjing University, and Ni Zhange from Virginia Tech!
Scholars recommend
Well worth reading… enables us to better understand the close relationship between modern patriarchy, the rise of the nation-state, and the transition from feudalism to capitalism.
——The Guardian
A groundbreaking work… Federici has become a key figure in… a new generation of feminists.
--Rachel Kushner, author of The Mars Club
In describing the abomination of state terror against women, Federici has written a book truly of our time. Neither compromising nor overbearing, Caliban and the Witch conveys the consistent impartiality and dignity of a global scholar. It is both a passionate work of recovered memory and a hammer blow to history.
--Peter Linebaugh, Professor at the University of Toronto
This book places witch hunting in the historical process of the growth of capitalist society, and presents the disenchanted growth process of modern capitalism. The perspective is unique and infectious. The theory has gained its incarnation here, not only with a unique gender perspective, but also makes the criticism of modernity full of a kind of personal pain. The birth and development of capitalism is precisely in the midst of all this personal pain to complete the advancement of its own rationalization.
——Xia Ying, Professor of Philosophy at Tsinghua University
By tracing the issue of witches, Caliban and the Witch fills in a missing link in the history of women in the transition to capitalism that has long been ignored by Marxism and other theories. Federici makes us understand that in the development of modernity, the oppression of women constitutes the bloody foundation of primitive accumulation of capitalism. Only by revealing this mystery can feminism truly find a crack for resistance.
——Lan Jiang, Professor of Philosophy at Nanjing University
The church's suppression of witchcraft complemented the rise of the capital market and the construction of the nation-state, and was the cornerstone of the rise of modern society. The witch-hunting movement targeted the social organization power and folk knowledge dominated by women, aiming to discipline women's bodies, exclude them from paid labor, and trap them in the newly built family space to engage in unpaid social reproduction labor. Witch hunting, slavery, and the exploitation of nature together constitute the truth of primitive accumulation of capital that has been ignored by traditional Marxism. "Caliban and the Witch" not only shows us the complex interweaving of many categories such as gender, race, ecology, and religion in the history of global capitalism, but also reminds us to analyze and reconstruct the power relations that permeate every aspect of daily life.
——Zange Ni, Associate Professor of Religion and Culture at Virginia Tech
In the cultural power relationship between the mother country and the colony, Caliban symbolizes resistance to the colonizer and the change of destiny. From the 15th to the 18th century, when more than 100,000 civilian women were executed for being accused of being witches, more women stood up and tried to destroy the social discipline required by the capitalist system through the women's movement to regain control of sex, body, and labor. Federici shows us that every independent and brave woman, in the process of breaking the witch hunt, used her body to promote historical change.
——Yan Fei, Associate Professor of Sociology, Tsinghua University
Introduction
This book revolves around a core question: How to explain the execution of hundreds of thousands of "witches" in early modern Europe? Why did the rise of capitalism and the war against women coincide with each other? The book is divided into five parts: the daily struggles of peasants and workers before the 15th century; the impact of land privatization and expansionary population policies; the rise of the mechanical view of the body; large-scale witch hunts on the European continent; and the re-enactment of witch-hunting strategies in the Americas and the fightback of local women.
By reviewing this 300-year history, Federici shows that the witch-hunting movement is a manifestation of the rationalization of social reproduction by capitalism, which provides necessary support for the two core principles of modern social organization, namely labor capacity and self-ownership. In other words, the control of women's fertility and body (represented by attacking witches) is a key step in the realization of primitive accumulation by capitalism.
Federici's dialogue with Marx's theory of primitive accumulation and Foucault's body theory from a female perspective poses a powerful challenge to traditional historical narratives and theoretical paradigms.