The witch as a lazybones whomst doesn't read

 I know you're not supposed to judge a book by its cover, but how could I possibly resist that little black-and-purple, tattoo-art number, contrasting so beautifully with the neutrals of the Hauswitch shop floor? And especially emblazoned with those enticing words: Witches, Witch-Hunting and Women, by Silvia Federici.

 

Alas, my love for slim purple volumes has again landed me in a world of disappointment. Unlike the pirate book, however, this book isn't actually bad, and the problem is hardly that the subject matter barely exists. In fact, the only real issue I had with this book is one that I walked squarely into by picking up this book instead of Caliban and the Witch, like a lazy dumbass. Namely: This book is very short, barely 100 pages; it's meant to build on and update the arguments in Caliban and the Witch; and is largely (to the extent that there is a "largely" in a book this small) transcripts of talks that Federici has given rather than being stuff that was developed to be read as serious academic theory. The result is bite-sized; vague; a bit sweeping; and frequently lacking in dates, statistics, specific locations, explanations of how precisely increases and decreases in violence are being measured, methodology, and other such stuff I expect to find in serious scholarly works -- probably because it isn't one. I should have sucked it up and suggested we read Caliban and the Witch instead, as now I have to go read Caliban and the Witch on my own, with no book club, and only some weird lefty podcasts and YouTube videos to share it with, which is not the same at all as actually having in-person book clubs where I can participate in the discussion instead of merely consuming it.

 

The biggest issues with the very condensed format ended up being a) feudalism seemed to get sort of glossed over or even squished out of history sometimes, like we went straight from pagan Dark Ages stuff and then Christianification and the birth of capitalism were talked about at the same time, sort of like they were the same thing, even though I think there was several centuries of Christian feudalism in between there, and b) claims of violence against women "increasing," rather than changing form, with little discussion of how we were measuring violence or what constitutes violence or how we knew there was less of it beforehand, which is the sort of thing that pings a little "alarmist rhetoric alert" bell in my head. I am sure that violence increases and decreases, societies go through periods of stability and instability, but I expect a little more backing before I'm willing to just take it as fact that a disruptive or unstable period necessarily means that violence, overall, is increasing rather than becoming more visible. A lot of very stable societies have a lot of institutionalized violence as part of their everyday operation, even if they don't have people being cut down in the streets the way a war zone does. 

 

The rhetoric here gets a bit more solid as the scale shrinks to discussions of specific forms of economic and social violence in the "new witch hunts" in India and Africa, where she does discuss particular economic policies and institutions in particular countries. And with some actual content to illustrate it with, the theory gets a lot more interesting! The influence of American fundamentalist sects on Africa and the other colonized nations where they do "mission work" is something that ought to be of as much concern as the actions of the big institutions of international governance, but it's also worth noting that "witch hunting," while popularly portrayed as some backward medieval mystical shit -- after all, who believes in witches? -- is essentially a playbook for capital accumulation. 

 

Anyway, I'm weighing the likelihood of my being able to squeeze in a read of Caliban and the Witch before Memorial Day weekend, and the forecast doesn't look good.