How could it be that in Europe from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century, thousands of women were accused of witchcraft, horribly tortured, and murdered? This question led Silvia Federici to take a new look at the development of capitalism, as well as at the extent of destruction of societal and gender relations, upon which this development was based. Besides the threat of female sexuality, women’s skills as healers, herbalists, midwives, and brewers of love potions were also considered a menace during a time when the magical understanding of the human body was substituted by a “rational” one that reshaped it into an exploitable workforce. In order to obliterate these threats, the witch hunt became a “regime of terror” over all women, out of which emerged a new model of femininity: sexless, subordinate, confined to a sphere of reproductive activities.

 

Silvia Federici (*1942) is Professor Emeritus at Hofstra University in New York.