“We Witches.” Knowledge Wars, Experience and Spirituality in the Women’s Movement During the 1970s

Datos Bibliográficos

ID21392501
AutoresAnne Kwaschik (0009-0009-9110-5468, University of Konstanz, autor de correspondencia)
Año2023
Volumen31
Número2
Páginas171-199
Fecha de publicación2023-06-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaNTM Zeitschrift für Geschichte der Wissenschaften Technik und Medizin (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0036-6978 • E-ISSN: 1420-9144
EditorialSpringer Science and Business Media LLC (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1007/s00048-023-00359-w
PMID37222765
OpenAlexW4377941007
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas2
Referencias citadas21

During the 1970s, feminist activists reappropriated the figure of the witch in various ways as a symbol of alterity, political radicalism, feminist revolt or victimhood, or the presentation of subversive (healing or bodily) knowledge. The article investigates these witch constructions with a focus on its experiential foundations drawing on appropriations in Western Germany within a larger transatlantic history. First, it provides a brief overview of witch discourses in the 1970s, highlighting radical feminist, health-political and artistic milieus, based on representative Western European journals and movement literature. The article emphasizes the variety of witch images and its epistemic foci, showing that however different these approaches may appear, they all created women’s alterity. Second, the article examines alternative practices of knowledge production, focusing on health guides and advice literature, as well as on approaches to experience in consciousness-raising groups. This section demonstrates how witch discourses both enabled the movement’s knowledge empowerment, but were also part of complex boundary work within the milieus, such as in the debates about the relationship between experiential knowledge and theory. The last section shows how closely and in what ways spiritualist approaches were linked to this boundary work. The article argues that feminist milieus constituted themselves within the framework of feminist epistemologies against and within established knowledge cultures, thereby drawing further boundaries within the movement. In analyzing the “evidence of experience” (Scott) produced by witch discourses its overarching aim is to demonstrate that their historical relevance initially laid in its standpoint-creating character

Aesthetics · Alterity · Epistemology · Experiential knowledge · Experiential learning · Pedagogy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Witch · Communism, Protests, Social Movements · Gender Studies · Historical Gender and Feminism Studies · Historical Studies on Reproduction, Gender, Health, and Societal Changes · Law · Philosophy