In the Study of the Witch: Women, Shadows, and the Academic Study of Religions

Abstract

This article examines historically competing categories of magic and religion and their gendered traces in the history of religious studies. On one hand, we have a genealogy that traces the term, "magic", back to an early modern European Christianity trying to understand itself through contrast with an imagined heresy that comes to be personified with a woman's face. On the other, we have contemporary political and religious communities that use the identification as Witches to reverse this version of dichotomous Christian gaze and legitimize religious difference, which also comes to be symbolized by a female body. Between these historical moments we have the beginning of the academic study of religion, the theoretical turn in which Christian-dominant scholarship comes to see itself on a continuum with, rather than opposed to, different religions, as first characterized by cultural evolution theories about the origins of religion. Especially given the field's theological roots, examining the constructed relationships between religion and magic, both of which represent crucial foci for early theorists, through the analytical lens of gender, which does not, provides opportunities to surface implicit assumptions of the current field about what is and is not worth studying.

BIBLICAL PORN: AFFECT, LABOR, and PASTOR MARK DRISCOLL'S EVANGELICAL EMPIRE. By JessicaJohnson. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2018. Pp. 248. Paper, $25.95.

“…Confessions serve not as individual catharsis, but as a continuous source of titillation and oppositional excitement, indirect mimesis (Frankfurter 2005, following Tausig 1993. Driscoll is, in essence, participating in a sexualized political economy not unlike morality-tale, witch-sabbat rumors in early modern Europe, supposedly shocking sexual violence entertainment such as Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (1999-present) and Game of Thrones (2011Thrones ( -2019, and conspiracy theories such as Satanic Panics and "pizza gate" (Frankfurter 2005;Zwissler 2016Zwissler , 2018a. Decrying the dangers of porn, Driscoll uses the fear he invokes to extract sexual confessions, which he then appropriates and distributes.…”

Adaptation and Representation of Narcissistic Desires of Calon Arang's Text in Bali

“…Performers of magical activities are usually women. It happens due to the dichotomous view that faith is male (Zwissler, 2018). Calon Arang is one of the texts that shows this tendency in the history of the Javanese archipelago in the 15th century.…”