Silvia Federici: Caliban and the Witch – Witch Hunts in the Present Day

Commoning the City
WWTF International Summer School 2014. The Summer School is organized by “Spaces of Commoning”, an interdisciplinary research collective based at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna and funded by the WWTF (Vienna Science and Technology Fund).

The Summer School departs from the so-called crisis of public space and explores the concept of the commons as a third element that complements the state and the market. Thus it aims at reframing and invigorating the debate on public space based on an aggressive repudiation of neoliberal politics as much as a radical re-imagination of alternative cities beyond capitalism.

Monday, June 23rd

18:30h Opening of Summer School with Eva Blimlinger (Academy of Fine Arts Vienna)

18:30h Lecture

Silvia Federici: Caliban and the Witch – Witch Hunts in the Present Day

Like at the dawn of capitalist development, today as well the global expansion of capitalist relations is driven by a broad attack on our reproduction and the escalation of violence against women including new forms of witch-hunting. In her presentation Federici examines the factors motivating these new persecutions, while revisiting the main themes of Caliban and the Witch, stressing in particular the relation between witch-hunting, capitalist development and the capitalist restructuring of gender relations.

Respondent: Suzana Milevska

The lecture is part of the summer school “Commoning the City”. It was organized in collaboration with the Institute for Art Theory and Cultural Studies at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna.