Magic, Witchcraft and the 'Mystic Other': The Cultural Criticism of Witchcraft

This project examines historical and contemporary ideas of witchcraft as, on the one hand, counter-cultural and subversive and, on the other hand, as commodified and retailed in popular culture. It explores the function of the idea as the self-othering of Christianity in early modern Europe, culminating in the Great Witch Hunt and the use if this as a commodified motif in 21st Century forms of witchcraft in the west. The research thus provides an historically embedded idea of the contemporary phenomena of witchcraft, comparing its cultural packaging and its potential for social protest.