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Palgrave Macmillan

Feminist Afterlives of the Witch

Popular Culture, Memory, Activism

  • Book
  • © 2023

Overview

Authors:
  1. Brydie Kosmina

    1. Department of English, Creative Writing, and Film, University of Adelaide, Adelaide, Australia

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  • Analyses feminist rhetoric alongside popular culture texts to consider cultural meanings of the witch as mnemonic symbol
  • Draws on memory studies frameworks to analyse cultural symbols and historical narratives of the witch trials
  • Uses hauntological temporalities to consider the relationship between feminist memory and popular culture and media

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in (Re)Presenting Gender (PSRG)

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Table of contents (8 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xv
    Download chapter PDF

  2. Witch: A Feminist Memory

    • Brydie Kosmina
    Pages 1-34

  3. Witches and the Past

    • Brydie Kosmina
    Pages 35-74

  4. Witches and the Present

    • Brydie Kosmina
    Pages 75-104

  5. Witches as Monsters

    • Brydie Kosmina
    Pages 105-142

  6. Witches as Lovers

    • Brydie Kosmina
    Pages 143-181

  7. Witches as Mothers

    • Brydie Kosmina
    Pages 183-212

  8. Witches as Girls

    • Brydie Kosmina
    Pages 213-241

  9. Witches and the Future

    • Brydie Kosmina
    Pages 243-258

  10. Back Matter

    Pages 259-262
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Keywords

About this book

The book investigates the witch as a key rhetorical symbol in twentieth- and twenty-first century feminist memory, politics, activism, and popular culture. The witch demonstrates the inheritance of paradoxical pasts, traversing numerous ideological memoryscapes. This book is an examination of the ways that the witch has been deployed by feminist activists and writers in their political efforts in the twentieth century, and how this has indelibly affected cultural memories of the witch and the witch trials, and how this plays out in popular culture representations of the symbol through the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Consequently, this book considers the relationship between popular culture and media, activist politics, and cultural memory. Using hauntological theories of memory and temporality, and literary, screen, and cultural studies methodologies, this book considers how popular culture remembers, misremembers, and forgets usable pasts, and the uses (and misuses) of thesememories for feminist politics. Given the ubiquity of the witch in popular culture, politics and activism since 2016, this book is a timely examination of the range of meanings inherent to the figure, and is an important study of how cultural symbols like the witch inherit paradoxical memories, histories, and politics. The book will be valuable for scholars across disciplines, including witchcraft studies, feminist philosophy and history, memory studies, and popular culture studies.

Reviews

"Brydie Kosmina’s book is a smart, topical study of the figure of the witch in contemporary culture, sensitive and thought-provoking in its approach and written with flair and passion."  (--Professor Marion Gibson, University of Exeter, Devon UK.)

Authors and Affiliations

  • Department of English, Creative Writing, and Film, University of Adelaide, Adelaide, Australia

    Brydie Kosmina

About the author

Brydie Kosmina is a Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Adelaide, Australia, in Tarndanya/Adelaide. Her research covers feminist memory, politics and popular culture, and the environmental humanities, particularly nuclear studies. She teaches and lectures in literary, screen and cultural studies. Brydie is a Postgraduate and Early Career Researcher Representative to the Cultural Studies Association of Australasia, and works as an editor, writer and reviewer for indie arts and culture website Collage Adelaide.

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