2023.05.22
Relay Column: Witches, Spiders, & Cyborgs (Madoka Shitone)
PROFILE
Madoka Shitone
Chimera of practitioner of witchcraft, Mako and the stray Dana, a researcher of Donna Haraway, and an example of spiral dance.
Both are bound within the spiral dance, but I would rather be a cyborg than a goddess.[1]
What images or stories come to mind when we think of the word "witch" today? Witch hunts, maleficium[2], folk healers, beautiful witches? Or perhaps a fearsome bird-like creature with wings? Or even the image of an independent and wise woman living in the forest? Witches have served as a screen upon which people's desires and fears are projected.
It is particularly known that contempt and fear towards religious heretics, lepers, and Jews in the early modern period triggered mass killings referred to as "witch hunts." Many of the victims were women. The aspect of women being mass murdered, often called "femicide," cannot be overlooked when discussing the image of witches.
Moreover, the contemporary image of witches is also influenced by the romanticism that flourished during the Industrial Revolution. Under the influence of romanticism, which values elements deemed privileged to women such as subjectivity, emotion, rebellion, and nature, which fall outside the male domains of science, rationality, and reason, a romanticized image of the witch as a "femme fatale" who seduces men to their doom was created in the 19th century and has been carried over to the present.
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