Part of my response paper:

I found this book fascinating, as until the last chapter it covered what was largely new ground to me. The resistance of the serfs to feudalism and early capitalism was inspiring and the thesis that the witch-hunt was a mechanism to regiment and subordinate women to the requirements of capitalism, in particular primitive accumulation, was compelling.

At the same time, something felt off to me about the book. Perhaps it was because this paradigm-shifting argument fit together so neatly (Marxists do love their teleology), but often without primary sources or the use of single examples extrapolated to apply to a broad setting.

Or perhaps it’s because I’ve understood patriarchy as a pre-capitalist phenomenon, which Federici doesn’t deny, but the weight she gives to capital in the creation of patriarchal oppression of proletarian women is obvious. Whereas capitalism constructed racism, it seems to have modified patriarchy. And as capitalism requires racism and patriarchy, it makes sense we need to destroy capitalism. We can do this already equipped with an ontological understanding of racism. Is there an ontological understanding of patriarchy? Does resistance to capitalism require it? Is Federici’s proposal enough?

Finally, in the introduction, Federici touches briefly on “’women’ as a category,” arguing that “’women’s history’ is ‘class history’” and “’women’ is a legitimate category of analysis” (14). I don’t disagree, but am hesitant about embracing a sharp “biological” (undefined) definition of “women.” I think there are important postmodernist contributions, in particular Butler’s critique of the gender/sex distinction and normative gender performativity, that can add to our understanding of patriarchy and offer ways to subvert it. I wonder how Federici’s account would be different if it at times included some postmodern reflections on gender. Overall I think it would have been beneficial.