CONTEXTUAL ANCHOR — 'Why Witches'

'Why Witches' by Xaviere Gauthier

In this opening statement to the late 70s feminist literary review Sorcieres (Witches), Gauthier writes about the radical and revolutionary power of the witch, and why she is a powerful symbol in this context of second-wave feminism, and the women's movement more broadly. Gauthier herself is a French feminist writer, journalist and academic, and the editor of this journal, published from 1975 to 1982. She has been prominent in feminist activism and writing, and is still active today. 

She answers 'Why Witches?', the question posed throughout the essay, with 'because witches dance... because witches sing... are alive... are rapturous'. Gauthier is drawing connections between the body as understood in women's liberation movements of the late 20th century and the political/historical/mythical/fictional configuring of female bodies and their defiance through the figure of the witch. The politics of the body is undeniably gender specific, and she explores how it is our instrument to enact and embody our own agency. 

In Western society politically and historically, witches were knowledge-holders of the body; healers, caretakers, and significantly, knowledgable in both midwifery and contraceptives. Gauthier holds this history this alongside the fight for reproductive rights and abortion that is a key concern of second-wave feminism. 

Sexual power and freedom is another aspect of the witch, and feminist ideology. This self-knowledge is viewed as threatening to male power and patriarchal order, and so female sexuality is repressed. Not for the witch however — she remains a symbol of resistance, of the "threat" of female agency and sexuality. 

Gauthier also looks to the fictive and mythic construction of the witch, in the stories that we hear and tell. She identifies the binary archetypes that are used to restrain and define women — good/wicked, young/old, beautiful/ugly, idealised/scorned, sanctified/satanised, worshipped/martyred, and argues against this "trap" of binary identities. "Why let ourselves be locked in a choice of opposites that are two sides of the same coin, which is the exclusion of women...?" (pp. 202)

With these historical, political and symbolic parallels, Gauthier puts forth the witch as a unifying figure of defiance against patriarchal oppression, and reminds us that we hold power in threatening, radical self-possession. She answers herself with a felt conviction, in her belief in self defined identity and experience, and proposes the witch as a fluid conduit-body through which we might nurture all our truths. 

I've been working off and drawing from this text since week three, this is a rather delayed analysis but it's been central to my thinking and experimentation. I've tried to understand and use the (witch)body, or configurations of it, as framed in this essay to realise and materialise a sense of power and identity that is deviant and defiant. 

Gauthier, X. (1980), Pourquoi Sorcières?,  in de Courtivron, I., & Marks, E. (Eds.)Newt French Feminisms: An Anthology, New York: Schoken Books.