Ruxandra Grrr ’s Reviews > Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation > Status Update

This chapter on the body and how it started to be seen as a machine, the heart a pump, the fist a hammer and so on, turning humans I to abstractions, is fascinating.

Women accused of being scolds were muzzled and paraded in the streets, like dogs.

In the 16th century, France and Germany were making midwives spy for the state, they had to report all pregnancies and even lactation, and women who had abortions risked execution. Literally to keep the labor force going.

Interesting that human sexuality (including women's bodies and queerness) were not heavily politicized until the 12th century.

Also interesting that there were women surgeons working and employed by cities around the 14th century.

Love listening to how peasants resisted their abusive, brutal lords. Remembering my history textbook and these incredibly graphic descriptions of how the leaders of peasant uprisings were tortured to death by the lords (in what today is Romania). I now think that was a warning, not information. What you get when you try to resist.

Starting from an analysis of ‘body-politics,’ feminists have not only revolutionized the contemporary philosophical and political discourse, but they have also begun to revalorize the body. This has been a necessary step both to counter the negativity attached to the identification of femininity with corporeality, and to create a more holistic vision of what it means to be a human being.