Witchcraft,Statecraft, Mancraft: On the Demonological Foundations of Sovereignty

ABSTRACT

Questions of sovereignty remain central to political theology, yet the role played by demonology in sovereignty’s construction has yet to be closely examined. This article addresses this omission by exploring the relation between the phantasmatic figures of the “sovereign” and the “witch” in the work of Jean Bodin (1530–96). Early modern concepts of “witchcraft” and its prosecution have a constitutive relation to (theo)political sovereignty, modern gender relations, and the birth of the nation-state. Reading Bodin’s work on witchcraft alongside those on sovereignty, tolerance, and the household, I argue that the demonological witch forms a self-consolidating other at the foundation of modern constructions of sovereignty, tolerance, and the (cishetero)normative family – an excess or absence that reinforces and destabilizes gendered, sexual, political, juridical, and religious hierarchies that continue to influence the present. In doing so, I demonstrate that sovereignty rests on a demonological foundation.     

Fairies and the Devil in early modern England

This article considers the fate of fairies in late-Elizabethan and seventeenth-century England. Specifically, it asks whether these “doubtful spirits” were demonised in the period. Drawing on a wide selection of devotional, literary, and demonological texts, the article argues that English Protestants associated fairies with Satan, but this did not necessarily imply that fairies were reclassified as demons. Rather, they were embedded in a complex of beliefs that connected them with falsehood, Catholicism, and the invisible wiles of the Devil. The operation of these beliefs is examined in the context of cases of witchcraft, as well as the representation of fairies in cheap print.     

Voice: sonic geographies of childhood

This article uses the sonic geographies of childhood as an entry point into long-standing and important debates in the sub-discipline on ‘voice’. The article uniquely explores children’s voices from the past through considering a different type of research material – archival audio recordings. It argues that literally listening to past children’s voices (and noises, sounds and silences) can offer fresh insights into the concept of voice that tends to be associated with contemporary contexts. Drawing on archival encounters with ‘second hand’ field recordings of children across different schools and playgrounds in London in the 1960s, this article engages and extends wider theoretical debates about childhood, voice and memory. The article calls for more attention to the unique characteristics of sound and wider soundscapes of childhood. The article critically reflects on the possibilities and tensions associated with such work.     

‘Arsenic of the size of a pea’

It is one of criminology’s (few) established truths that women commit far fewer violent crimes than men do. This has been especially evident when it comes to deadly violence. Besides witchcraft and infanticide there is, however, another serious crime that has been associated with women: poisoning. This article studies female poisoners in 19th-century Sweden. The investigation shows that poisonings were fairly common during this period, albeit far from being an exclusively female affair. The empirical findings reveal that these crimes were directed at several different categories of victims: spouses, children and elderly household members, as well as other women. It is also shown that a considerable number of the women accused of poisoning was acquitted, in many cases thanks to the strict process rules associated with the statutory theory of legal proof. Theoretically, the article hypothesizes an understanding of these poisonings where agency is placed at the centre. They are thus seen as acts where (female) subjectivity was created during this period.     

Francis Harding’s “In Artem Volandi” (1679) and the early modern art of flying

The article examines a neglected Anglo-Latin poem on flying, entitled “In Artem Volandi” (1679) and penned by Francis Harding, an Oxford student. So far, the poem has neither received any critical attention nor has it ever been translated into English. The article contributes to the Anglophone understanding of the dynamic relationship between Restoration Science and satire by analysing the poem’s complex handling of a range of contemporary concerns. The prospect of human flight and the ideas about future interstellar travel in late seventeenth-century England enabled Harding to explore a host of cultural issues, including witchcraft, atomism, adultery, and colonialism. The article examines the poem’s intertext by relying on three main types of texts: works in English, works in Neo-Latin never before translated into English, and works in Latin for which translations were available. The first-time translation of the poem into English is provided at the end of the article.     

Sorcery at court and manor: Margery Jourdemayne, the witch of Eye next Westminster

Margery Jourdemayne, the ‘witch of Eye next Westminster’, Eleanor, duchess of Gloucester, and three scholars of the ducal household were foremost amongst those accused of treasonable witchcraft in 1441. The paper explores Margery's part in this episode, and then examines her background: her husband William came from a prosperous Middlesex yeoman family living at Acton, and he himself was a manorial official on Westminster Abbey's Ebury (Eye) estate.     

‘Hidden from view’?: an analysis of the integration of women’s history and women’s voices into Australia’s social history exhibitions

ABSTRACT

‘Women have mostly been left out of history’, boldly asserted Elizabeth Willis in her exhibition text for The Story of Victoria in 1985. Taking Willis’ statement as a starting point, this article aims to trace firstly how women have been rewritten into Australia’s social history exhibitions focusing on the use of voice as a strategy to do so, and secondly how these voices have changed historical master narratives – by allowing a shift from a big picture history to intimate and deeply personal stories that recast our understanding of the past in ways that are inclusive of gendered experiences. We investigate the use of the curatorial voice as reflected in Willis’ work, aligning it with the notion of curatorial activism, before exploring the changing curatorial practices that expanded the potential for an interpretive approach that incorporated the voice of the subjects themselves as a central component in the telling of history. We then analyse the impact of these strategies on traditional understandings of the past through three exhibitions developed by Melbourne Museum over 30 years: The Story of Victoria, a successor exhibition The Melbourne Story, and their Great War centenary exhibition, WWI: Love & Sorrow.     

Authorial Voices and the Sense of an Ending in Persian Diaries: Notes on Eʿtemād al-Saltaneh and ʿAlam

This essay examines certain common themes as well as conflicting voices in two extensive sets of Persian diaries, written almost a century apart, by Mohammad-Hasan Khān E?temād al-Saltaneh (1843?96), a long-time courtier and confidant of Nāser al-Din Shah Qajar (r. 1848?86) and Asadollāh ?Alam (1919?78) a close associate and court minister of Mohammad-Reza Shah Pahlavi (r. 1941?79). On the whole these diaries provide significant amounts of information about the inner workings of the court and the overall institutional setup of the Iranian state in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Although in writing their diaries these authors did not set out to produce a literary work, and nor did they intend to chronicle a general history, each in his own way captured his respective epoch and, within their limitations of time, scope, and insight, each reflected a broad range of private and social relationships. Also each in his own way echoed older ministerial voices, reminiscent of the voice that often resonates in the “mirror for princes” genre, of part player part intimate observer, and with a certain sense of admonition and resignation, lamenting the loss of an era which they felt was slipping away as they wrote.     

“The family farm”: A review of a central concept in western European agricultural politics

This article explores the differences between Danish lay and Roman inquisitorial witchcraft prosecution, by investigating the understanding of witchcraft and how it inflicted on the course of the trials. For the first half of the 17th century, the understanding of witchcraft among Danish lay judges corresponded to popular beliefs. Focus remained on malevolent magic, and the diabolical pact was rarely introduced until after the verdict, when torture was initiated. To the Roman Inquisition, the pact with the devil, namely the implicit pact, was crucial when sentencing the illiterate villagers, since it made it possible to incorporate the offender into a learned theological system of ideas.     

Rights,participatory spaces and the daily fabric of children and young people’s voices in Switzerland

ABSTRACT

The past two decades have witnessed an unprecedented rise in public policies aimed at hearing children and young people’s voices, which typically entail creating supportive participatory spaces. While this political project is usually presented as a radical move towards a more inclusive society, it raises critical questions about whose voices are being represented, how, why, by whom and for whom. Drawing upon recent ethnographic research on childhood and youth policies in Switzerland, this article explores how children and young people’s voices are produced in concrete situations. It studies how the institutional and material characteristics of participatory spaces and situated interactions shape which voices will actually be heard. The research highlights that, despite their inclusive ambitions, participatory spaces paradoxically exclude young persons who fail to articulate, orally or in written, linguistically, morally or politically legitimate voices.     

Sounding Gender(ed): Vocal performances in English university teaching spaces

Voices may tell many stories about the bodies that produce them, but their role in the authoring and reading of gendered and sexualised identities has been neglected. Work within linguistics on voices and gender has focused primarily on voice production and the role of anatomy, using quantitative measurements of vocal features and evaluations of 'disembodied', recorded voices in laboratory settings. Some commentators have argued that, within the constraints of vocal anatomy, voices are performed, in that speakers stylise their voices to some extent in order to cohere with gendered norms. Drawing on the work of linguists and other commentators, this article discusses voices as combinations of the physiological and the discursive. Using teaching spaces at universities in England as an example, it is argued that voices have a geography, being produced and interpreted in particular ways within these interactional spaces. Comments about staff and student voices in teaching spaces, derived from interviews with undergraduates at universities in the north of England, illustrate the importance of audiences. They demonstrate how voices are evaluated in conjunction with other elements of self-presentation, and how vocal performances of gender are read in close conjunction with the performance of instructor and student roles in these spaces. Interviewees also draw attention to problems that the vocal performance of heterosexual masculinity creates in these spaces, highlighting links between gendered and sexualised readings of voices. Drawing on the work of Judith Butler, the author concludes that voices should be regarded as a form of 'drag'.     

Jean Lemaire de Belges's Rhetorical Masks in L’Amant Vert and “Les Regretz de la Dame Infortunée”

A prominent feature of the poetry of Franco-Burgundian poet and rhetorician Jean Lemaire de Belges (1473–1524) is his use of a rhetorical mask—a persona—through which to proffer his utterances and assert his identity. Because the early sixteenth-century court poet's financially and politically subservient position vis-à-vis powerful aristocratic patrons demands an encomiastic rhetoric that leaves little room for the poet's self-assertion within the body of the poetic text, Lemaire must employ the indirect means of a narrative mask to assert his own existence and concerns. This article examines first the narrative mask of the parrot-lover in the 1505 Epîtres de l’Amant Vert, through which Lemaire is able to voice concerns about his precarious position as a writer almost entirely at the mercy of his patron's good health and good will. A discussion of “Les Regretz de la Dame Infortunée” (1506) follows, in which Lemaire takes an intriguing narratological stance that unites his voice to that of his patroness, Margaret of Austria (1480–1530), ultimately forging an authorial je that speaks for both poet and patron. This nearly mystical union of narrative voices allows Lemaire to express his own concerns about the volatility of the patronage system while concomitantly giving voice to Margaret's mourning at the death of her brother, Philip the Handsome (1478–1506).     

‘My Freind who Writes for Me’: Scribes and Scribal Relationships in the Letters of Seamen, 1793–1815

This article examines the use of scribes in letters of one group of men during a specific period: British Royal Navy servicemen below the rank of commissioned officer during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, 1793–1815. The letters of one such seaman in particular, Richard Greenhalgh, are unusual in that he himself could write, but preferred to have someone to write for him, as is shown by many references to ‘his freind who writes for me’. Contrasts between the scribe’s style of writing and that of Greenhalgh are noticeable, especially after Greenhalgh and his scribe were parted by being sent to serve on different ships. The letters also reveal the relationship between writer and scribe, and the writer’s family and his scribe. The letters contain messages to be passed between a network of family and friends on board ship and on shore, strengthening ties between them, vital in wartime to the morale of the seamen and for the reassurance of those at home. References found in other surviving letters demonstrate the use of scribes by different seamen, also seamen acting as scribes for shipmates, adding to knowledge of scribal culture among this social group.     

How Far Could Free Religious Thinking Go? The Case of Johann Rudolf Werdmüller,Zurich 1658

In 1658, Johann(es) Rudolf Werdmüller, a renowned Zurich general and diplomat, was accused of blasphemy. As it referred to essential religious matters, the accusation had a considerable public impact. The court files of the case provide evidence of wider battles over the desirability and nature of religious tolerance. Instead of narrating a case story this analysis suggests a different approach to the history of religion. The sources are not taken as documents expressing a discursive system of philosophical points of view and their appearance in religious polemics. Rather, the court files stand for specific speech acts, i.e. verbal performances in the linguistic sense. Thus, Werdmüller's example is taken to demonstrate that those considered to be blasphemers in the era of confessionalisation did not simply express religious scepticism in the form of “discourses,” nor did they rebel against authority figures or resort to forms of magic. Rather, they provoked their society, discussed religious matters, entertained their audience and competed wittingly with those interested in religious issues. In conclusion, it is proposed that the history of religion should not be confined to a history of ideas and religious doctrines but should integrate linguistic approaches.     

4. “KEEP THAT WOMAN OUT!” NOTIONS OF SPACE IN TWENTIETH‐CENTURY FLEMISH WITCHCRAFT DISCOURSE

This article considers the importance of a spatial dimension for witchcraft research, which has so far been largely neglected. In twentieth‐century Europe people in certain regions still considered their world in terms of witchcraft; they attributed misfortune to bewitchments and usually blamed their neighbors. Here a part of Flemish‐speaking Belgium is investigated with the help of legend texts collected in the 1960s. The witchcraft discourse that informed these texts did not just contain formulations of space; sometimes it also determined how people negotiated space. In this part of Flanders, witchcraft was embedded in Roman Catholicism; monasteries were the favored destinations of all those who considered themselves or their family members bewitched. In order to find cures for bewitchments people undertook hazardous journeys of considerable distance and found their efforts hindered by the witch they sought to counteract. The measures against evil influences that they were given were meant to consolidate the boundaries between their own (private) space and the (outside) space where witches roamed. Bewitchments were generally blamed on women. In the contemporary patriarchal social order, both public and domestic spaces were nearly always under men's control. This is why bewitchment was caused less by transgressions of male‐defined boundaries than by infringements of bodily spaces such as by eying or touching somebody else's children. This suggests a different approach to female space based on notions of proximity.     

Hearing girls’ silences: thoughts on the politics and practices of a feminist method of group discussion

Many contemporary feminist research methods employed in the interest of realizing social justice advocate ‘listening’ to subordinated others, groups variously categorized and marginalized by gender, sexuality, race, age, and so on, in order to examine the sources and workings of knowledge construction and social power. Increasingly, feminist scholars are using group discussion or focus groups, in an effort to give subordinated others ‘a voice.’ Group discussions are seen as potentially empowering in exploring and enabling group members’ social agency and knowledge production while at the same time diminishing the unequal power relations between the researched and researcher. In this article, I argue that the attention given to ‘voices’ in group discussions (dis)misses meaning‐ful silences thereby limiting its political potential. There exists an ‘epistemological messiness’ inherent in a feminist group discussion method that makes it difficult to hear meaning‐ful silences. Through reflection on my own research into the spaces of adolescent Latina gender identities, this article offers some insights into this messiness and recommends that a feminist group discussion method be guided by a politics of voice which includes ‘silence within voice.’     

La Quintrala's Confessions: The Contesting of Female Agency and Indigeneity in Two Popular Chilean Visual Narratives

Doña Catalina de los Ríos y Lisperguer, known as ‘La Quintrala,’ a seventeenth-century aristocratic woman of mixed ancestry accused of torture, witchcraft, and murder, has persisted as a recurring figure in the Chilean imaginary. While literary representations of this figure have been well explored, this article contributes an examination of two visual narratives, paying particular attention to the manner in which genre and context influence the repurposing of this violent woman: the 1986 teleserie La Quintrala, produced by Chile's state-owned television station (TVN), and the Chilean newspaper Las últimas noticias's 2008 comic ‘La Quintrala y el Cristo de Mayo.’ The teleserie, a product of the Pinochet era, positions her as an antithesis to the ideal Chilean woman, simultaneously denying her agency and condemning her. The comic echoes the rhetoric of the Concertación governments as it prominently links La Quintrala's downfall and redemption to the genesis of modern Chile at the cost of her distinctive racial and gendered characteristics. Ultimately, each work employs the structure of confession to recall her crimes while rejecting the female agency and racially mixed heritage La Quintrala represents.     

Globalization and the Power of Indeterminate Meaning: Witchcraft and Spirit Cults in Africa and East Asia

The obsession with witchcraft in many parts of present-day Africa is not to be viewed as some sort of traditional residue. On the contrary, it is especially present in the more modern spheres of society. In a comparative, global perspective, this linking of modernity and witchcraft is not particular to Africa: in other parts of our globalized world, modern developments coincide with a proliferation of what the Comaroffs (forthcoming) call ‘the economies of the occult’. In this article, representations in South and West Cameroon about ekong, supposedly a novel form of witchcraft explicitly associated with modern forms of wealth, are compared to Weller's study of the upsurge of spirit cults in Taiwan, during the recent economic boom of this ‘Asian tiger’. The power of such discourses on occult forces is that they relate people's fascination with the open-endedness of global flows to the search for fixed orientation points and identities. Both witchcraft and spirit cults exhibit a surprising capacity for combining the local and the global. Both also have specific implications for the ways in which people try to deal with modernity's challenge.