Federica Giardini
Università di Roma-Tre (federica.giardini@uniroma3.it; Orcid: 0000-0002-6804- 0960)
Abstract: The article provides a comparative analysis of Silvia Federici’s Il grande Calibano and Caliban and the Witch, tracing their theoretical-political development. Its central theme is the political deployment of history to foreground invisibilized subjectivities: the rebellious social body and the witch. Utilizing the category of social reproduction, Federici critiques orthodox Marxist historiography and reasserts a genealogical approach to primitive accumulation, reconceptualized as a recursive global process. This theoretical development is interwoven with cycles of feminist, workers’, and anti-structural adjustment movements, articulating an intersectional analysis of exploitation across class, race, and gender. The transformation of political subjects is coupled with a critique of historical materialism’s linear temporality and an expansion of historiographical categories. The witch, once a repressed figure of the past, emerges as a figuration of contemporary resistance against new accumulation by dispossession, underscoring the connections between historical genealogy and present-day struggles.
Keywords: Silvia Federici; Social Reproduction; Primitive Accumulation; Feminist History; Witchcraft.