Celestina’s Scandal: Magic and Primitive Accumulation in Holocaust Spain (1486-1507)

Abstract

This article examines the state of the question on magic and witchcraft in La Celestina. It does so by focusing on a very symptomatic silence: the silence around Silvia Federici’s seminal intervention on the matter in her already classic Caliban and the Witch, which in my view is nothing short of a scandal. I argue that Fernando de Rojas’ masterpiece cannot be properly assessed without paying full and thorough attention to the complex historical processes underlying the dynamics of witch-hunting in late-medieval Europe. Witch-hunting is not a religious or even a political phenomenon, or (to be more precise) it is a religious and a political phenomenon only insofar as it partakes in the broader economic landscape of primitive accumulation during the transition from the feudal to the capitalist mode of production. By obsessively putting all the blame on the Catholic Church and its repressive apparatuses (i.e., the Inquisition), liberal criticism is underscoring this very sim­ple fact. In my critique to this critical trend, originally espoused by José Antonio Maravall in the 60s and arguably hegemonic today, I show how La Celestina cannot but be under­stood as a nostalgic testimony for the not-so-distant economy of the medieval commons.

Keywords

• celestina
• brujería
• inquisición
• federici
• privatización
• acumulación pri¬mitiva
• procomún