Resisting Rhetorics of Violence: Women, Witches and Wicca

This article examines the early modern idea of‘the witch as a violent space —both as a perpetrator of violent maleficia and as a victim of violence. It then goes on to look at the extent to which the location of violence in the witch figure has been taken up and used by feminist witches and Wiccans,...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Feminist theology
Main Author: Pearson, Jo (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Sage 2010
In: Feminist theology
Further subjects:B Witchcraft
B Wicca
B Victims
B maleficia
B Exclusion
B Torture
Online Access: Volltext (lizenzpflichtig)
Parallel Edition:Electronic
Description
Summary:This article examines the early modern idea of‘the witch as a violent space —both as a perpetrator of violent maleficia and as a victim of violence. It then goes on to look at the extent to which the location of violence in the witch figure has been taken up and used by feminist witches and Wiccans, asking what happens when a polyvalent symbol of violence is used as a central identificatory trope. The fact that the violence of the witch is now largely resisted by Wiccans leads me to question how much this resistance is based on a desire to accommodate greater knowledge of witchcraft historiography and an unwillingness to engage in a false rhetoric centred on the violence of abstraction and exclusion. Through an exploration of the rhetorics of violence surrounding representations of ‘the Witch’, I aim to extend analysis of the witch and witchcraft into the contexts of contemporary Feminist Witchcraft and Wicca.
ISSN:1745-5189
Contains:Enthalten in: Feminist theology
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1177/0966735009348669