Caliban and the Witch

[lovefindsaway]

This is an academic text that links with the history of witch hunts to the rise of capitalism. Relations between the young and the old were seen as a threat to the productivity of capitalism. Relations between the children of the bourgeoisie and their servants was seen as a threat to class hierarchies.
Excerpt from page 194

“ The witch-hunt condemned female sexuality as the source of every evil, but it was also the main vehicle for a broad restructuring of sexual life that, conforming with the new capitalist work-discipline, criminalized any sexual activity that threatened procreation, the transmission of property within the family, or took time and energies away from work
The witch trials provide an instructive list of the forms of sexuality that were banned as "non-productive": homosexuality, sex between young and old, 34 sex between people of different classes, anal coitus, coitus from behind (reputedly leading to sterile relations), nudity, and dances. Also proscribed was the public, collective sexuality that had prevailed in the Middle Ages, as in the Spring festivals of pagan origins that, in the 16th. century, were still celebrated all over Europe. Compare, in this context, the way in which
P. Stubbes, in Anatomy of Abuse (1583), described the celebration of May Day in England. with the standard accounts of the Sabbat which charged that the witches always danced at these gatherings. jumping up and down at the sound of pipes and lutes, and indulged in much collective sex and merrymaking.“

Here is a summary: https://atropa-belladonna.espivblogs.ne ... -witch.pdf

Here is the book: https://files.libcom.org/files/Caliban% ... 0Witch.pdf