User:Ssstephen/Reading/Caliban and the Witch

Introduction

Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises
Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears; and sometime voices
That, if I then had waked after long sleep,
Will make me sleep again; and then in dreaming,
The clouds me thought would open, and show riches
Ready to drop upon me, that when I waked
I cried to dream again.

(Caliban in The Tempest, William Shakespeare)

Obeah: an ancestral, inherited tradition of Akan witches of Ghana, Ivory Coast, and Togo and their descendants in the African diaspora of the Caribbean. (from Wikipedia)

Further reading from this chapter: Women, History, and Theory: The Essays of Joan Kelly The Death of Nature Carolyn Merchant LArcano della Riproduzione Leopoldina Fortunati The moon, the sun and the witches Irene Silverblatt Natural Rebels Hilary Beckles Patriarchy and Accumulation on a world scale Maria Mies

Michel Foucault and the body

To revalorise the body [taking the form of] the quest for non dualistic forms of knowledge

Capitalism, as a social-economic system, is necessarily committed to racism and sexism

If capitalism has been able to reproduce itself it is only because of the web of inequalities that it has built into the body of the world proletariat, and because of its capacity to globalize exploitation.

All the World Needs a Jolt p.13

The manifold, invisible forms of resistance, for which subjugated peasants have been famous in all times and places: 'foot dragging, dissimulation, false compliance, feigned ignorance, desertion, pilfering, smuggling, poaching...'

everyday forms of resistance

‡ This reminds me of the stories of French resistance during WWII, which involved sabotage, strike, and general nuisancery. These form of anti-productive resistance are obviously great tools against economically driven capitalism but in these two instances show they can be used against any power structure controlling (or even benefiting from) production.

The difficulty of enforcing the medieval 'social contract,' and the the variety of battlefields available to a combative tenant or village