°Demography + the times
The demography of time and the times
In writing of the history of Caliban and the Witch, Silvia Federici remarks: “my stay in Nigeria did not allow me to forget this work”—which is to say, the work that she and Leopoldina Fortunati had done for a previous book, Il Grande Calibano (1984). “I had buried my papers in the cellar, not expecting that I should need them for some time” (2004:9). Yet in the midst of Structural Adjustment Programmes and the officially designated ‘War Against Indiscipline’ that were devastating the poor in much of the world, she felt that her work on Il Calibano “took on a new meaning”. Further along, Federici writes: “Today, these aspects of the transition to capitalism may seem (for Europe at least) things of the past—or as Marx put it in the Grundrisse—’historical preconditions’ of capitalist development, to be overcome by more mature forms of capitalism. But the essential similarity between these phenomena and the phase of globalisation that we are witnessing tells us otherwise” (2004:82). […]
[You can read the rest of the review in the next edition of Ephemera. Thanks for the comments both here and via email.]
Thanks for letting me read that. I should go and read the book myself. In the meantime, I think it might be helpful if you explained exactly how witch-hunts fit with so-called primitive accumulation. You mention “the mechanisation of the body, the repression of women and the patriarchy of the wage,” and while the second of these three points is obvious, the first and the third are less so.
Meanwhile, on the ongoing nature of primitive accumulation, have you seen Arrighi’s pieces on “Hegemony Unravelling” in the New Left Review? I wrote a little something about the first one here.
Jon [August 10, 2005 @ 4:53 am]
Thanks for the suggestions Jon. I would hope that people do read the book, which is why I begged off too much of a synopsis and opted instead for a response. Though, you’re probably right (someone else said this also) that I leaned too far away from the former.
And thanks also for the pointers to your discussion on this and the Arrighi piece.
s0metim3s [August 10, 2005 @ 1:24 pm]
A, this is a beautiful article; thanks for sharing it.
Very generally, the inter-disciplinary stakes, the question of what separates the “terrain” of literature from philosophy (or economics) strikes me as increasingly in need of patient articulation. I can imagine many potential objections to the leaps you seem comfortable making here, but that hardly means they–your drawing on Benjamin, Marx, Agamben and Nancy in the service of a literary exposition–are invalid of course. Only that the deck is stacked against you from the beginning, and increasingly so, I fear. But that’s not saying anything you don’t already know. I’m sorry this isn’t more helpful. Please do let me know if/when it appears in print so I can cite it, if you don’t mind.
Matt [August 17, 2005 @ 4:06 am]