Caliban and the Witch: An Interview with Silvia Federici

Revolutionary Left Radio

Breht O'Shea

Communism, Politics, Liberalism, Society & Culture, Philosophy, News, History, Leftwing, Socialism, Marxism

4.8 • 3.4K Ratings

🗓️ 21 December 2017

⏱️ 55 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Silvia Federici is one of the most important political theorists alive today. Her landmark book Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body, and Primitive Accumulation demonstrated the inextricable link between anti-capitalism and radical feminist politics by digging deep into the actual history of capital’s centuries-long attack on women and the body.

She is an Italian-American scholar, teacher, and activist from the radical autonomist feminist Marxist tradition. She is a professor emerita and Teaching Fellow at Hofstra University, where she was a social science professor. She worked as a teacher in Nigeria for many years and is also the co-founder of the Committee for Academic Freedom in Africa.

Silvia joins Brett to discuss the main ideas of her very important and well known book, Caliban and the Witch.

Topics include: Marxism, Primitive Accumulation, Feminism, Witch Hunts, Patriarchy of the Wage, the transition from feudalism to capitalism, Wiccans, contemporary witch culture, and much more!

Intro and Outro music by church fire, off the album "Pussy Blood". You can listen to, and support, their music here: https://churchfire.bandcamp.com

Support Rev Left Radio on Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/RevLeftRadio/posts

This podcast is officially affiliated with The Nebraska Left Coalition and the Omaha GDC.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Please support my daddy's show by donating a couple bucks to patreon.com
0:05.7	forward slash rev left radio please follow us on Twitter at rev left radio and
0:11.0	don't forget to rate and review the revolutionary left radio on iTunes to increase our reach
0:17.1	workers of the world you night
0:39.1	Welcome to revolutionary left radio. I'm your host Anne Comrade Bredoche. Today we have on the
0:44.8	wonderful Sylvia Federici author of the monumental work Caliban in the witch to have a discussion
0:50.5	about that book but before we get into the interview I wanted to give a really quick shout
0:54.0	out to Rachel Angelie from the feminist kill joys phd podcast and my good friend Brendan
0:59.4	Leahy both of whom helped me edit and prepare the outline for this interview and I also want
1:05.1	to give a shout out to church fire a band out of Denver who provided the intro and outro
1:10.4	music for this program so thanks to all of them now let's get to the interview. I'm a little
1:15.7	nervous to talk to you I'm a big fan of your work and so it's it's kind of nerve-wracking but
1:19.4	I'm super excited so we have a very millennial oriented audience and so I'm extremely excited for some
1:29.3	for some people in our audience it'll be the first time they ever hear about you or get to engage
1:33.4	with this work this wonderful book so we actually live in
1:40.2	Omaha, Nebraska in the middle of nowhere. Nebraska. Yeah, I've never been there. Yeah, there's not much here
1:47.5	but not very beautiful. It actually is you know I think we live in on the great plains on the banks
1:54.1	of the Missouri River so there's a lot of beauty here. Yes. All right well I'm ready to jump into
1:58.2	the interview if you are. Okay, yes I am. All right so let's just go ahead and dive in so to begin
2:04.8	I like to start with some basic some basic ideas for people that might not know so can you please
2:09.4	summarize Carl Marx's his basic ideas about primitive accumulation like what it is and what
2:14.9	role it plays in orthodox Marxist theory? Well as you know, Kariban in the way in its
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