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The Contemporary Witch, the Historical Witch and the Witch Myth: The Witch, Subject of the Appropriation of Nature and Object of the Domination of Nature

1978; Duke University Press; Issue: 15 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2307/487908

1558-1462

Silvia Bovenschen, Jeannine Blackwell, Johanna Moore, Beth Weckmueller,

Historical and Archaeological Studies

The topic of has become fashionable, has indeed already acquired a fatal glamour. It has even achieved scholarly legitimacy. The fact that researchers are once again concerned with the historical phenomenon of witch persecution is by no means the origin of the vital interest in the subject today: that would be the vain assumption of ivory tower scholars, researchers who, imagining their scholarship to be autonomous, have failed to notice that they are merely the rearguard of a movement. In a demonstration against the Italian abortion laws in Rome, 100,000 women shouted, La Gioia, la gioia, la si inventa, donne si nasce, le streghe si diventa!(*) and Tremate. tremate, le streghe son tornate!(**) Is the image of the witch a wish projection resulting from unrealized female potential? Are witches for feminism what Spartacus, the rebellious peasants, the French revolutionaries and the Bolsheviks are for the socialists? During the protest against a trial in Itzehoe, Germany, which was sensationally blown up by the press because the accused women were having a lesbian relationship and the sentence was an unusually severe one women called the proceedings a witch hunt. In many feminist demonstrations the participants dress up as witches. Women's bars have names such as Blocksberg, (***) books have titles such as Hexengefliister (Witches' Whispering), a women's rock band proclaims the return of the witch ... the rumor spreads and an image crystallizes. But apparently without the explicit intention of constructing, a posteriori, the revolutionary, historical continuity of feminism. The assimilation of the witch into feminist visual and linguistic parlance happened spontaneously, not as the result of a plan. The revival of the word, the image, the motif doubtless has something to do with