The Witch Trials and the Rise of Modernity and Capitalism - Sylvia Federici - Caliban and the Witch

In this episode of Esoterica we explore Sylvia Federici's thesis that the witch trials, rather than being a peripheral event in European history, were pivotal in the transition to capitalism and modernity. She argues that the social instability of the middle ages was tipped into social chaos with the advent of the Black Death. In the aftermath, ruling powers sought to suppress workers' uprisings, women's autonomy, and peasant rebellions. The witch hunts served this task and beta-tested, so to speak, the social and legal procedures which would later be unleashed upon the indigenous people of the new world and African slaves.

Recommended Readings:

Federici - Caliban and the Witch - 978-1570270598
Federici - Witches, Witch-Hunting, and Women - 978-1629635682
Levack - The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe - 978-1138808102
Levack, ed. - The Witchcraft Sourcebook - 978-1138774971
Levack, ed. - The Oxford Handbook of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe and Colonial America - 978-0198723639
Peters and Kors, ed. - Witchcraft in Europe, 400-1700 - 978-0812217513

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