The book investigates the witch as a key rhetorical symbol in twentieth- and twenty-first century feminist memory, politics, activism, and popular culture. The witch demonstrates the inheritance of paradoxical pasts, traversing numerous ideological memoryscapes. This book is an examination of the ways that the witch has been deployed by feminist activists and writers in their political efforts in the twentieth century, and how this has indelibly affected cultural memories of the witch and the witch trials, and how this plays out in popular culture representations of the symbol through the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Consequently, this book considers the relationship between popular culture and media, activist politics, and cultural memory. Using hauntological theories of memory and temporality, and literary, screen, and cultural studies methodologies, this book considers how popular culture remembers, misremembers, and forgets usable pasts, and the uses (and misuses) of these memories for feminist politics. Given the ubiquity of the witch in popular culture, politics and activism since 2016, this book is a timely examination of the range of meanings inherent to the figure, and is an important study of how cultural symbols like the witch inherit paradoxical memories, histories, and politics. The book will be valuable for scholars across disciplines, including witchcraft studies, feminist philosophy and history, memory studies, and popular culture studies.
Author(s): Brydie Kosmina
Series: Palgrave Studies in (Re)Presenting Gender
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Year: 2023
Language: English
Pages: 274
City: Cham
Preface: Witches in 2022
Acknowledgements
Contents
About the Author
1 Witch: A Feminist Memory
Why Witches? Why Now?
Witches and the Divine Feminine
Witch Manifestos
Witches on the Streets (and the ‘Net)
Black Witches
Capitalist and Anti-capitalist Witches
Queer Witches and Trans-Exclusionary Witches
The Beginnings of the Witches
Notes
Bibliography
2 Witches and the Past
(The Problem with) Understanding the Early Modern European Witch Trials Through Statistics
The Church, the State, and the Witch Hunters: Witchcraft Histories of the Powerful
Popular Beliefs, Everyday Life, and the Witch Trials: Witchcraft Histories of the Ordinary
Feminist Histories of the Witch Trials
From Europe to America
Race, Colonialism, and the Frontier in Salem
Feminist Histories of Salem
Nationalism, Paranoia, and the Literary Salem
The Inaccuracies of Witchcraft Pasts
Re-remembering the European and American Witch Trials
Notes
Bibliography
3 Witches and the Present
Memory and the Past
Memory and the Present
Memory and Feminism
Memory and Activism
Memory and Prosthetic Pasts
The Inaccuracies of Feminist Memories of the Witch
Memory and Narrative
Memory, Temporality, Spectres
Reading (and Re-reading) as Ghostly Memory Practices
Re-remembering the Witch
Notes
Bibliography
4 Witches as Monsters
Witches and the Monstrous-Feminine Body
Witches and Queer Monstrosity
Witches as Monstrous Utopians
Monstrosity and the Future
Notes
Bibliography
5 Witches as Lovers
Witches Within Regimes of Normality
Witches and Covens
Witches, Soulmates, and Chosen Families
The Witch’s Sexual Futures
Notes
Bibliography
6 Witches as Mothers
All About Our Mothers
Witches as Anti-Mothers
Witches as Mother-Goddesses
Witches as Deathly Mothers
Birthing the Future
Notes
Bibliography
7 Witches as Girls
The Child and the Girl
Girlhood, Feminism, Postfeminism
Girl Witches and Reproductive Futurity
Girl Witches and Girl Power
Girl Witches and Cool Feminism
Girls and the Future
Notes
Bibliography
8 Witches and the Future
Remembering Hope
Where to From Here?
The Witches Are Coming
Notes
Bibliography
Index
