Has anyone here read Sylvia Federici's

[Squinch]

Caliban and the Witch?

I just finished it. It's a treasure. It examines the European witch trials and their coincidence with, and necessity to, the foundational stages of the development of capitalist systems.

A few things that stand out in my head: there were somewhere between 200,000 and 5 million people killed in the witch trials, the vast majority of whom were women, in the 15th and 16th and 17th centuries. This is clearly a social movement, but where have you ever seen it treated as a serious, significant historic event?

Federici's thesis is that the witch trials were very useful in the retraining of the population, when the population needed to go from fairly self sufficient agrarian people with access to the common lands, to clock ruled labor components of an industrial world.

The witch hunts first silenced the most vocal opponents of enclosures and food price increases who, Federici demonstrates, tended to be women, specifically the women who were thrown into poverty by the changes.

Secondly, they divided the groups who were displaced and impoverished: the men from the lower classes were separated from their solidarity with women, with whom they had previously been more equal, and together with whom they had previously fought against impoverishing social changes. The men were taught to fear the "castrating witch" and at the same time were given a population to feel sovereign over as they were losing their own self sufficiency.

Finally, because it tended to target midwives and healers, it took the control of reproduction out of the realm of women, and took away women's control over their bodies, and made them more dependable as producers of new little laborers.

It's a great book. There is so much that she described that happened to social structures in the Middle Ages that has direct correlations to today, and so much of what is happening today has direct roots in what she is describing.

[BainsBane]

1. I have not read that work

but I have read several other, older studies on witch trials, the inquisition, and popular culture. The argument about the rise of capitalism is a common thread in a good portion of the literature. There is an older book by John Demos on the Salem Witch Hunt that makes a similar argument, though it doesn't deal with gender. Other studies, however, do.

Federici's looks like a fascinating book.

[Squinch]

2. This is new to me, and fascinating. I will look for the Demos book.

Federici also brings in the colonizations of the Americas and the attendant genocides, and how they mesh with the witch trials.

[Squinch]

3. The Demos book is in the local library. Thanks for the reference!

[BainsBane]

4. One to read along with Demos is Karlsen, The Devil in the Shape of a Woman

Mind you these are old works and won't be as conceptually innovative as the Federici book appears. I read a bunch of books on witchcraft when I was in graduate school as part of a class where I was expected to explore the influences behind a book on the Brazilian Inquisition, the Portuguese-language version of Laura de Mello e Souza's The Devil in the Land of the Holy Cross (Brazil) ,http://www.amazon.com/The-Devil-Land-Holy-Cross/dp/0292702361, which has since been translated into English. I found the literature fascinating. Witch hunts essentially act as Protestant versions of the Inquisition, though they were distinguished in that they more heavily targeted women. Inquisitions also targeted witches, but in the Protestant world, witch hunts became the key method of enforcing cultural hegemony.

Looking at Federici's footnotes, bibliography, and references in the text itself is another way to find interesting books in the field.

Oh, at the time I also read some of the documents from the visitations of the Holy Office to Brazil. Inquisition documents are surprisingly entertaining.

[Squinch]

5. Oh, lord! Entertaining how?

That sounds like a great way to spend a graduate school class.

[BainsBane]

7. Well, they were obsessed with sex

as you might imagine. I learned for example that the Inquisition and Bill Clinton maintained the same views on what constitutes sex: penetration. As a result, only gay men were punished, not gay women. Though women would be called in for having sex with the devil. That was a popular one you probably read about in the other book. Then they were obsessed with trying to rid religious practice of African influences. Many Catholic priests would blend West African religious practices with Christianity, sometimes in an effort to better reach African converts or because they themselves were sons or grandsons of Africans and learned that religion at home. Despite it's brutality, the Inquisition was a complete failure in imposing orthodox religiosity in Brazil. To this day, African religious practices are incorporated into the the Catholic calendar in areas of Brazil were slavery once prospered.

[Squinch]

10. I found it pretty chilling how the form of the "examinations" were pretty

unmistakeably full-on sexual sadism.

[truedelphi]

6. Thanks for the heads up about this book.

Will try and order it later tonight.

Two things are necessary for evil things on the grand scale of the "witch" trials - either total immersion in a fanatical belief system that is so accepted that no one is allowed to question it (Except of course, those who were willing to be labelled as "witch." Or in this day and age, members of the "fringe.)"

The witch trial mindset rather parallels the current day preoccupation with the "you are either with us or against us" terrorist threat that is becoming more and more prevalent in our society.

And currently our society lacks the basic freedom to allow real scientists to examine many of the current day "scientific advances" - only our government and Big Corporations have the funds to deal with the studies to examine various drugs, GM crops, etc. The GM crops were "ruled to be" as save as conventional ones, by Mike Taylor of the Clinton Administration, who simply decreed that they were. (Much as how the Holy Roman Church decided on scientific dogmas back int he days of the witch trials and hunts.)

The other effective way to make sure that terribly evil things can oocur is to make sure that the society as a whole cannot even mention the existence of the program.

[Squinch]

12. That was it: "you are either with us or against us."

It makes it very attractive to protect your own safety by choosing a scapegoat and banding together to persecute them, in order to prove that you are on the "right" side. And very dangerous not to join in on the scapegoating.

[ismnotwasm]

8. I think the 5 million is an extreme estimate that has been throughly debunked

But in any case I don't recall reading this work sounds fascinating

[Squinch]

11. She's saying she thinks officially it's at the lower end, but she makes a very good case for the

fact that the lower end doesn't include many, many cases, so there's really no way to know, and all we really know is that is probably many more than the lower end estimates.

[truedelphi]

14. then there is also the huge ramifications of the fact that

Often it was the women serving as the community's midwives that were targeted.

The midwives were a direct threat to the rise of the "medical establishment."

So the millenia (or more) of traditional herbal knowledge that was used for contraception and for soothing labor pains, and for stopping hemorrhaging if the delivery caused such, all that knowledge and usefulness was tossed aside. Women died as a result of the lack of that knowledge.

It was not until the late Eighteen Hundreds that physicians realized that sanitary conditions were necessary for child bearing. Samelweiss, a physician of the mid 1800's, attempted to share that realization with his colleagues, but they made fun of him.

But cultures that had a matriarchal "edge" to them also had the menstruation hut, where women could be with their sisters, and be pampered by other women in the community. Birthing in matriarchal cultures often involved herbs that are antiseptic in nature, including various "strewing herbs" to be used as bedding.

[redqueen]

9. Thanks for posting this thread!

Very interesting subject, and the comments were good too.

[Squinch]

13. As I was reading the book, I kept saying out loud, "Oh, my god! That's where that comes

from!" It was a very logical explanation for the beginnings of the conditions that we are still fighting against today.