“Witches Hit Back” comes from a very specific reading about the relationship between what we know as the Witch Hunt and capitalism: Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation by Silvia Federici.
Italian-american scholar and activist, Federici discusses the changing strategies capitalism has used to transform our bodily powers into labor-power, and the many forms which resistance to this process has taken. In particular, she discusses capitalism’s historic attempt to turn women’s bodies into instruments for the reproduction of the work-force, as well as its present drive to make procreation independent of women. She argues that the female body and women’s struggle to control our reproductive powers constitute the last frontier of capitalist accumulation and one of the main challenges to it.
With our brand name we honor the women that were tortured and burned alive (among other horrible death sentences) in the XVI and XVII centuries genocides for being independent and sexually liberated.
Their communalism represented a threat. A form of social life that could have turned into a revolutionary resistance of feudalism and all its implications.
Why does not history cause enough fuss over this genocide? Because history is written by those in power. Guess why the witches were portrayed as antagonists in all children’s books and movies?
We are the granddaughters of the witches that they weren’t able to burn… and we are hitting back!
Picture Credit: @psychara
© 2019, Witches Hit Back Feminist Shirts