Subversive Sorcery and Reparative Witchcraft

Though sanitised in popular gothic television across the late-twentieth century, the figure of the witch has since the early modern period been connected to gendered forms of capitalist violence, functioning as a tool for (literally) domesticating women both in Europe and the colonies at moments when existing organisations of labour are restructured. At the same time, witchcraft (a contested term) has also been a cultural site of gendered and epistemic resistance, where anti-patriarchal practices intersect with the reclamation of non-Eurocentric cosmologies. This chapter examines these different dimensions of the witch, incorporating a range of regional and cultural perspectives.