Feminist Afterlives of the Witch: Popular Culture, Memory, Activism

Description

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. 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