Is the tricky truth out there? Has seminal knowledge been suppressed? Might cosmic secrets lurk under tall, pointy hats? If so, we may want to consult history's guardians of organic gospel: witches.
At least, that's a potential takeaway from the anti-capitalist work of two prestigious professors.
Meet Jane Ward, Ph.D. -- department chair of Feminist Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. From her official school bio:
[Jane] teaches...about gender and sexual cultures, and (she) has (been) published on topics including...how early lesbian feminist ideas shaped contemporary gender politics, the meaning of sex between straight-identified men, queer childhood and parenting, the evolution of straight culture, the corporatization of gay pride festivals, the race politics of same-sex marriage, the social construction of whiteness, feminist pornography, trans relationships, and more.
It's quite the modern mouthful. Jane has teamed with Michigan State University associate professor Soma Chaudhuri, whose online curriculum vitae informs us as follows:
[Dr. Soma's] research lies at the intersection of gender, development, social movements and violence. She studies how violence at the community and household level is used to legitimize structural- and institutional-level gender inequalities that specifically disadvantage women.
Amid Soma's current exploration: "A queer decolonial feminist perspective on the study of witches, witchcraft and witch hunts." Relatedly, she and Jane have cooked up a 520-page book, "The Witch Studies Reader." The enchanting anthology boasts a cauldron of contributors, including the professorial pair; Soma and Jane are its exclusive editors. Their efforts have wrought something universal and unique, as explained by century-old academic publisher Duke University Press:
Stories about witches are...stories about the most basic and profound of human experiences -- healing, sex, violence, tragedies, aging, death, and encountering the mystery and magic of the unknown. It is no surprise, then, that witches loom large in our cultural imaginations. In academia, studies of witches rarely emerge from scholars who are themselves witches and/or embedded in communities of witchcraft practitioners.
Like a newt's eye, white people are plucked:
"The Witch Studies Reader" brings together a diverse group of scholars, practitioners, and scholar-practitioners who examine witchcraft from a critical decolonial feminist perspective that decenters Europe and departs from exoticizing...witchcraft in the global South.
As additionally illustrated above (see "imaginations"), educational icon Duke University Press is hip to the hot trend of perplexing pluralization. A hallmark of woke analysis is liberties with wordses:
The authors show how witches are keepers of suppressed knowledges, builders of new futures, exemplars of praxis, and theorists in their own right. Throughout, they account for the vastly different national, political-economic, and cultural contexts in which “the witch” is currently being claimed and repudiated.
KKK comrades, your trans-less nationalism is toast:
Offering a pathbreaking transnational feminist examination of witches and witchcraft that upends white supremacist, colonial, patriarchal knowledge regimes, this volume brings into being the interdisciplinary field of feminist witch studies.
The book brims with higher learning's penchant for punching the man -- which Jane makes clear in an interview with the Santa Barbara Independent. There is no hallowed weenie; only Halloween:
"[It is] critical to understand witchcraft through a feminist lens — not just because women are typically its practitioners, but because of what makes it threatening to established power structures."
As for the identity of said sinister structures, here's a quick dip into definitions: Capitalism is a system wherein one may own his or her own business. Opposite to that is socialism, in which government owns all products and means of production -- the epitome of "state control." In the trick-or-treat world, socialism would presumably grant politicians jurisdiction over jinxes; ostensibly, they'd be bequeathed all brews and brooms.
RELATED: Capitalism: Not the Best Conceivable Economic System, Just the Best Possible One
Jane appears to have inverted the two ideas:
“Witchcraft is often about existing just outside state control and capitalism."
Whiteness, maleness, free-market economics... On a slew of societal subjects, academia seems to have cemented its stance:
University Has White Students Confess Their Privileges, Such as Not Being Vilified Due to Their Race
College Course Probes the 'Violence' of 'Toxic Masculinity,' Uses an Ex-President as the Example
Give Racism the Shaft: Expert Says Banning Biological Males From Women's Showers Is White Supremacy
Back to Jane, she notes that the word "witch" has become a "patriarchal slur." Some hocus-pocus practitioners want to reclaim it "for resistance." In the case of other abracadabra adherents, it's more about sorcery in the sack or in some slacks:
"['Witch' is] an identity tied to essential feminine magic, or a deeply queer figure who exists in defiance of rigid gender norms.”
Whatever the reasons for their witchery, ferocious power is at play. When facing malodorous masculinity, Samantha Stephens-types can summon the supernatural...
“We’ve seen people using the concept of the curse, the hex and the spell as ways to push back against gendered violence and oppression,” Ward [says], noting how the witch has been adopted as an image of defiance against patriarchal structures.
With all that in mind, will feminist college graduates shortly sling hexes at heteronormativity? Will upcoming girl-bosses cast spells to ensure their entrepreneurial success? They can't, because they don't believe in capitalism; or maybe some will, because they won't know what it is.
Either way, America's future just got a little witchier. Coming soon: enchanted alums, conjuring queer decolonization while neck-deep in knowledges.
-ALEX
See more content from me:
New York College Schools Students on the 'Ethical' Art of Non-Monogamous Sex
Nearly the N-Word? Democrats Dunk Mental Health-Harming 'Midgets'
Find all my RedState work here.
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