Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation
About: This article is published in Science & Society.The article was published on 2006-10-01. It has received 398 citations till now. The article focuses on the topics: Witch.
Citations
More filters
Book•
24 Jul 2017
TL;DR: In this article, the authors discuss the instability of the nature/culture relation and the recourse to the natural world in the context of climate change, focusing on the difficulty of distinguishing between humans and nonhumans.
Abstract: Contents Introduction First Lecture: On the Instability of the (Notion of) Nature A mutation of the relation to the world [yen] Four ways to be driven crazy by ecology [yen] The instability of the nature/culture relation [yen] The invocation of human nature [yen] The recourse to the natural world [yen] On a great service rendered by the pseudo-controversy over the climate [yen] Go tell your masters that the scientists are on the warpath! [yen] In which we seek to pass from nature to the world [yen] How to face up Second Lecture: How Not to (De-)Animate Nature Disturbing truths [yen] Describing in order to warn [yen] In which we concentrate on agency [yen] On the difficulty of distinguishing between humans and nonhumans [yen] And yet it moves! [yen] A new version of natural law [yen] On an unfortunate tendency to confuse cause and creation [yen] Toward a nature that would no longer be a religion? Third Lecture: Gaia, a (Finally Secular) Figure for Nature Galileo, Lovelock: Two symmetrical discoveries [yen] Gaia, an exceedingly treacherous mythical name for a scientific theory [yen] A parallel with Pasteur's microbes [yen] Lovelock too makes micro-actors proliferate [yen] How to avoid the idea of a system? [yen] Organisms make their own environment, they do not adapt to it [yen] On a slight complication of Darwinism [yen] Space, an offspring of history Fourth Lecture: The Anthropocene and the Destruction of (the Image of) the Globe The Anthropocene: an innovation [yen] Mente et Malleo [yen] A debatable term for an uncertain epoch [yen] An ideal opportunity to disaggregate the figures of Man and Nature [yen] Sloterdijk or the theological origin of the image of the Sphere [yen] Confusion between Science and the Globe [yen] Tyrrell against Lovelock [yen] Feedback loops do not draw a Globe [yen] Finally, a different principle of composition [yen] Melancholia, or the end of the Globe Fifth Lecture: How to Convene the Various Peoples (of Nature)? Two Leviathans, two cosmologies [yen] How to avoid war between the gods? [yen] A perilous diplomatic project [yen] The impossible convocation of a people of nature [yen] How to give negotiation a chance? [yen] On the conflict between science and religion [yen] Uncertainty about the meaning of the word end [yen] Comparing collectives in combat [yen] Doing without any natural religion Sixth Lecture: How (Not) to Put an End to the End of Times? The fateful date of 1610 [yen] Stephen Toulmin and the scientific counter-revolution [yen] In search of the religious origin of disinhibition [yen] The strange project of achieving Paradise on Earth [yen] Eric Voegelin and the avatars of Gnosticism [yen] On an apocalyptic origin of climate skepticism [yen] From the religious to the terrestrial by way of the secular [yen] A people of Gaia ? [yen] How to respond when accused of producing apocalyptic discourse Seventh Lecture: The States (of Nature) between War and Peace The Great Enclosure of Caspar David Friedrich [yen] The end of the State of Nature [yen] On the proper dosage of Carl Schmitt [yen] We seek to understand the normative order of the earth [yen] on the difference between war and police work [yen] How to turn around and face Gaia? [yen] Human versus Earthbound [yen] Learning to identify the struggling territories Eighth Lecture: How to Govern Struggling (Natural) Territories? In the Theater of Negotiations, Les Amandiers, May 2015 [yen] Learning to meet without a higher arbiter [yen] Extension of the Conference of the Parties to Nonhumans [yen] Multiplication of the parties involved [yen] Mapping the critical zones [yen] Rediscovering the meaning of the State [yen] Laudato Si' [yen] Finally, facing Gaia [yen] Earth, earth! Works Cited
390 citations
Journal Article•
TL;DR: Grosfoguel et al. as discussed by the authors pointed out that the knowledge produced by men of these five countries has the magical effect of universal capacity, that is, their theories are supposed to be sufficient to explain the social/historical realities of the rest of the world.
Abstract: I. INTRODUCTION The work of Enrique Dussel, liberation theologian and liberation philosopher, is fundamental for anybody interested in the decolonization of knowledge and power. He has published more than 65 books. His titanic effort has been dedicated to demolish the philosophical foundations and world-historical narratives of Eurocentrism. He has not only deconstructed dominant knowledge structures but also constructed a body of work in Ethics, Political Philosophy and Political Economy that has been internationally very influential. His work embraces many fields of scholarship such as Political-Economy, World-History, and Philosophy, among others. This article has been inspired by Dussel's critique of Cartesian philosophy and by his world-historical work on the conquest of the Americas in the long 16th century. (1) Inspired by Dussel's insights, the article adds another dimension to his many contributions by looking at the conquest of the Americas in relation to three other world-historical processes such as the Conquest of Al-Andalus, the enslavement of Africans in the Americas and the killing of millions of women burned alive in Europe accused of being witches in relation to knowledge structures. (2) As Dussel focused on the genocidal logic of the conquest, this article draws the implications of the four genocides of the 16th century to what Boaventura de Sousa Santos (2010) calls "epistemicide," that is, the extermination of knowledge and ways of knowing. The focus of this article is fundamentally on the emergence of modern/ colonial structures of knowledge as the foundational epistemology of Westernized universities and its implications for the decolonization of knowledge. The main questions addressed are the following: How is it possible that the canon of thought in all the disciplines of the Social Sciences and Humanities in the Westernized university (Grosfoguel 2012) is based on the knowledge produced by a few men from five countries in Western Europe (Italy, France, England, Germany and the USA)? How is it possible that men from these five countries achieved such an epistemic privilege to the point that their knowledge today is considered superior over the knowledge of the rest of the world? How did they come to monopolize the authority of knowledge in the world? Why is it that what we know today as social, historical, philosophical, or Critical Theory is based on the socio-historical experience and world views of men from these five countries? When one enters any department in the Social Sciences or the Humanities, the canon of thought to be learned is fundamentally founded on theory produced by men of the five Western European countries outlined before (de Sousa Santos 2010). However, if theory emerges from the conceptualization based on the social/historical experiences and sensibilities as well as world views of particular spaces and bodies, then social scientific theories or any theory limited to the experience and world view of only five countries in the world are, to say the least, provincial. But this provincialism is disguised under a discourse about "universality." The pretension is that the knowledge produced by men of these five countries has the magical effect of universal capacity, that is, their theories are supposed to be sufficient to explain the social/historical realities of the rest of the world. As a result, our job in the Westernized university is basically reduced to that of learning these theories born from the experience and problems of a particular region of the world (five countries in Western Europe) with its own particular time/space dimensions and "applying" them to other geographical locations even if the experience and time/space of the former are quite different from the latter. These social theories based on the social-historical experience of men of five countries constitute the foundation of the Social Sciences and the Humanities in the Westernized universities today. …
334 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, a review essay outlines and compares several recent contributions in feminist political economy with particular emphasis on the renaissance of the concept of social reproduction, including the work of this paper.
Abstract: This review essay outlines and compares several recent contributions in feminist political economy with particular emphasis on the renaissance of the concept of social reproduction.1 Most definitio...
300 citations
Cites background from "Caliban and the Witch: Women, the B..."
...Federici, however, examines primitive accumulation ‘from the viewpoint of the changes it introduced in the social position of women and the production of labourpower’.(10) She argues that the transition to capitalism provides a test case for feminist theorising as it illustrates the redefinition of productive and reproductive tasks and the constructed character of sexual roles and divisions of labour in capitalist society....
[...]
TL;DR: Policy directions that might help to promote maintenance and restoration of living TEK systems as sources of social-ecological resilience are discussed.
Abstract: This paper introduces the special feature of Ecology and Society entitled "Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Global Environmental Change. The special feature addresses two main research themes. The first theme concerns the resilience of Traditional Ecological Knowledge (hereafter TEK) and the conditions that might explain its loss or persistence in the face of global change. The second theme relates to new findings regarding the way in which TEK strengthens community resilience to respond to the multiple stressors of global environmental change. Those themes are analyzed using case studies from Africa, Asia, America and Europe. Theoretical insights and empirical findings from the studies suggest that despite the generalized worldwide trend of TEK erosion, substantial pockets of TEK persist in both developing and developed countries. A common trend on the studies presented here is hybridization, where traditional knowledge, practices, and beliefs are merged with novel forms of knowledge and technologies to create new knowledge systems. The findings also reinforce previous hypotheses pointing at the importance of TEK systems as reservoirs of experiential knowledge that can provide important insights for the design of adaptation and mitigation strategies to cope with global environmental change. Based on the results from papers in this feature, we discuss policy directions that might help to promote maintenance and restoration of living TEK systems as sources of social-ecological resilience.
269 citations
Cites background from "Caliban and the Witch: Women, the B..."
...…trends, in some academic and civil society circles there is a mounting questioning of the technoscientific rationality and economic growth ideology of industrial Western civilizations (Feyerabend 1987, Hobart 1993, Noorgard 1994, Holling and Meffe 1996, Federici 2004, Latouche 2010, Toledo 2012)....
[...]
...Since the advent of modernity, and most notably since the launch of the industrial revolution in Europe – expanded to other areas through the globalization process–, TEK has eroded in many parts of the world (Federici 2004, Maffi 2005, Toledo 2012)....
[...]
...Key Words: Adaptation, biocultural diversity, indigenous knowledge, resilience, small-scale societies...
[...]
TL;DR: In this article, the authors show that the violent acts of enclosure and dispossession related to the creation of protected areas may lead to private benefit, and expand the conditions under which capitalist production can expand and continue.
Abstract: Protected areas appear to be examples of Marx's primitive accumulation, complete with acts of enclosure, dispossession, dissolution of the commons and accumulation. There are limits to these parallels, however. Though primitive accumulation generally involves the enclosure of a commons in favor of private property, protected areas generally create public, not private property. Protected areas that limit extraction are not being commodified, but are being taken out of the market. This paper shows that arguments against the parallels between primitive accumulation and the creation of protected areas may be confounded bythe realities of conservation practice. The violent acts of enclosure and dispossession related to the creation of protected areas may lead to private benefit, and expand the conditions under which capitalist production can expand and continue. I show the mechanisms by which enclosure and dispossession take place, the consequences of these actions, as well as the acts of resistance against them.
243 citations
Cites background from "Caliban and the Witch: Women, the B..."
...Sylvia Federici (2004), in Caliban and the Witch: Women, the body and primitive accumulation, shows in sometimes graphic detail how violence was used in acts of primitive accumulation, including the enclosure of women’s bodies....
[...]
References
More filters
Book•
24 Jul 2017
TL;DR: In this article, the authors discuss the instability of the nature/culture relation and the recourse to the natural world in the context of climate change, focusing on the difficulty of distinguishing between humans and nonhumans.
Abstract: Contents Introduction First Lecture: On the Instability of the (Notion of) Nature A mutation of the relation to the world [yen] Four ways to be driven crazy by ecology [yen] The instability of the nature/culture relation [yen] The invocation of human nature [yen] The recourse to the natural world [yen] On a great service rendered by the pseudo-controversy over the climate [yen] Go tell your masters that the scientists are on the warpath! [yen] In which we seek to pass from nature to the world [yen] How to face up Second Lecture: How Not to (De-)Animate Nature Disturbing truths [yen] Describing in order to warn [yen] In which we concentrate on agency [yen] On the difficulty of distinguishing between humans and nonhumans [yen] And yet it moves! [yen] A new version of natural law [yen] On an unfortunate tendency to confuse cause and creation [yen] Toward a nature that would no longer be a religion? Third Lecture: Gaia, a (Finally Secular) Figure for Nature Galileo, Lovelock: Two symmetrical discoveries [yen] Gaia, an exceedingly treacherous mythical name for a scientific theory [yen] A parallel with Pasteur's microbes [yen] Lovelock too makes micro-actors proliferate [yen] How to avoid the idea of a system? [yen] Organisms make their own environment, they do not adapt to it [yen] On a slight complication of Darwinism [yen] Space, an offspring of history Fourth Lecture: The Anthropocene and the Destruction of (the Image of) the Globe The Anthropocene: an innovation [yen] Mente et Malleo [yen] A debatable term for an uncertain epoch [yen] An ideal opportunity to disaggregate the figures of Man and Nature [yen] Sloterdijk or the theological origin of the image of the Sphere [yen] Confusion between Science and the Globe [yen] Tyrrell against Lovelock [yen] Feedback loops do not draw a Globe [yen] Finally, a different principle of composition [yen] Melancholia, or the end of the Globe Fifth Lecture: How to Convene the Various Peoples (of Nature)? Two Leviathans, two cosmologies [yen] How to avoid war between the gods? [yen] A perilous diplomatic project [yen] The impossible convocation of a people of nature [yen] How to give negotiation a chance? [yen] On the conflict between science and religion [yen] Uncertainty about the meaning of the word end [yen] Comparing collectives in combat [yen] Doing without any natural religion Sixth Lecture: How (Not) to Put an End to the End of Times? The fateful date of 1610 [yen] Stephen Toulmin and the scientific counter-revolution [yen] In search of the religious origin of disinhibition [yen] The strange project of achieving Paradise on Earth [yen] Eric Voegelin and the avatars of Gnosticism [yen] On an apocalyptic origin of climate skepticism [yen] From the religious to the terrestrial by way of the secular [yen] A people of Gaia ? [yen] How to respond when accused of producing apocalyptic discourse Seventh Lecture: The States (of Nature) between War and Peace The Great Enclosure of Caspar David Friedrich [yen] The end of the State of Nature [yen] On the proper dosage of Carl Schmitt [yen] We seek to understand the normative order of the earth [yen] on the difference between war and police work [yen] How to turn around and face Gaia? [yen] Human versus Earthbound [yen] Learning to identify the struggling territories Eighth Lecture: How to Govern Struggling (Natural) Territories? In the Theater of Negotiations, Les Amandiers, May 2015 [yen] Learning to meet without a higher arbiter [yen] Extension of the Conference of the Parties to Nonhumans [yen] Multiplication of the parties involved [yen] Mapping the critical zones [yen] Rediscovering the meaning of the State [yen] Laudato Si' [yen] Finally, facing Gaia [yen] Earth, earth! Works Cited
390 citations
Journal Article•
TL;DR: Grosfoguel et al. as discussed by the authors pointed out that the knowledge produced by men of these five countries has the magical effect of universal capacity, that is, their theories are supposed to be sufficient to explain the social/historical realities of the rest of the world.
Abstract: I. INTRODUCTION The work of Enrique Dussel, liberation theologian and liberation philosopher, is fundamental for anybody interested in the decolonization of knowledge and power. He has published more than 65 books. His titanic effort has been dedicated to demolish the philosophical foundations and world-historical narratives of Eurocentrism. He has not only deconstructed dominant knowledge structures but also constructed a body of work in Ethics, Political Philosophy and Political Economy that has been internationally very influential. His work embraces many fields of scholarship such as Political-Economy, World-History, and Philosophy, among others. This article has been inspired by Dussel's critique of Cartesian philosophy and by his world-historical work on the conquest of the Americas in the long 16th century. (1) Inspired by Dussel's insights, the article adds another dimension to his many contributions by looking at the conquest of the Americas in relation to three other world-historical processes such as the Conquest of Al-Andalus, the enslavement of Africans in the Americas and the killing of millions of women burned alive in Europe accused of being witches in relation to knowledge structures. (2) As Dussel focused on the genocidal logic of the conquest, this article draws the implications of the four genocides of the 16th century to what Boaventura de Sousa Santos (2010) calls "epistemicide," that is, the extermination of knowledge and ways of knowing. The focus of this article is fundamentally on the emergence of modern/ colonial structures of knowledge as the foundational epistemology of Westernized universities and its implications for the decolonization of knowledge. The main questions addressed are the following: How is it possible that the canon of thought in all the disciplines of the Social Sciences and Humanities in the Westernized university (Grosfoguel 2012) is based on the knowledge produced by a few men from five countries in Western Europe (Italy, France, England, Germany and the USA)? How is it possible that men from these five countries achieved such an epistemic privilege to the point that their knowledge today is considered superior over the knowledge of the rest of the world? How did they come to monopolize the authority of knowledge in the world? Why is it that what we know today as social, historical, philosophical, or Critical Theory is based on the socio-historical experience and world views of men from these five countries? When one enters any department in the Social Sciences or the Humanities, the canon of thought to be learned is fundamentally founded on theory produced by men of the five Western European countries outlined before (de Sousa Santos 2010). However, if theory emerges from the conceptualization based on the social/historical experiences and sensibilities as well as world views of particular spaces and bodies, then social scientific theories or any theory limited to the experience and world view of only five countries in the world are, to say the least, provincial. But this provincialism is disguised under a discourse about "universality." The pretension is that the knowledge produced by men of these five countries has the magical effect of universal capacity, that is, their theories are supposed to be sufficient to explain the social/historical realities of the rest of the world. As a result, our job in the Westernized university is basically reduced to that of learning these theories born from the experience and problems of a particular region of the world (five countries in Western Europe) with its own particular time/space dimensions and "applying" them to other geographical locations even if the experience and time/space of the former are quite different from the latter. These social theories based on the social-historical experience of men of five countries constitute the foundation of the Social Sciences and the Humanities in the Westernized universities today. …
334 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, a review essay outlines and compares several recent contributions in feminist political economy with particular emphasis on the renaissance of the concept of social reproduction, including the work of this paper.
Abstract: This review essay outlines and compares several recent contributions in feminist political economy with particular emphasis on the renaissance of the concept of social reproduction.1 Most definitio...
300 citations
TL;DR: Policy directions that might help to promote maintenance and restoration of living TEK systems as sources of social-ecological resilience are discussed.
Abstract: This paper introduces the special feature of Ecology and Society entitled "Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Global Environmental Change. The special feature addresses two main research themes. The first theme concerns the resilience of Traditional Ecological Knowledge (hereafter TEK) and the conditions that might explain its loss or persistence in the face of global change. The second theme relates to new findings regarding the way in which TEK strengthens community resilience to respond to the multiple stressors of global environmental change. Those themes are analyzed using case studies from Africa, Asia, America and Europe. Theoretical insights and empirical findings from the studies suggest that despite the generalized worldwide trend of TEK erosion, substantial pockets of TEK persist in both developing and developed countries. A common trend on the studies presented here is hybridization, where traditional knowledge, practices, and beliefs are merged with novel forms of knowledge and technologies to create new knowledge systems. The findings also reinforce previous hypotheses pointing at the importance of TEK systems as reservoirs of experiential knowledge that can provide important insights for the design of adaptation and mitigation strategies to cope with global environmental change. Based on the results from papers in this feature, we discuss policy directions that might help to promote maintenance and restoration of living TEK systems as sources of social-ecological resilience.
269 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors show that the violent acts of enclosure and dispossession related to the creation of protected areas may lead to private benefit, and expand the conditions under which capitalist production can expand and continue.
Abstract: Protected areas appear to be examples of Marx's primitive accumulation, complete with acts of enclosure, dispossession, dissolution of the commons and accumulation. There are limits to these parallels, however. Though primitive accumulation generally involves the enclosure of a commons in favor of private property, protected areas generally create public, not private property. Protected areas that limit extraction are not being commodified, but are being taken out of the market. This paper shows that arguments against the parallels between primitive accumulation and the creation of protected areas may be confounded bythe realities of conservation practice. The violent acts of enclosure and dispossession related to the creation of protected areas may lead to private benefit, and expand the conditions under which capitalist production can expand and continue. I show the mechanisms by which enclosure and dispossession take place, the consequences of these actions, as well as the acts of resistance against them.
243 citations