Witches vs experts

 
Preciado 149: "The feminist activist and pagan witch Starhawk argues that the persecution of witches in Europe (and eventually in the American colonies) from 1430 to 1740 was part of a larger process of eradicating knowledge and lower-class power while simultaneously working to reinforce the hegemonic knowledge of the expert, something indispensable to the gradual insertion of capitalism on a global scale."
 
152: "the persecution of witches can be interpreted as a war between expert knowledge and the non-professional knowledge of the multitude, a war between white patriarchal power and narcosexual knowledge as it was traditionally practiced by women, colonized peoples, and non-authorized sorcerors. It became a matter of exterminating or confiscating a certain ecology of body and soul, hallucinogenic treatments, and forms of pleasure or excitation."

> from Paul Preciado's Testo Junkie: Sex, Drugs, and Biopolitics in the Pharmacopornographic Era (2008, translated 2013)

> tagged with #power, #capitalism, #knowledge, #magic, #pleasure

> created April 12, 2024 at 3:42:50 PM


> part of unfinished everything


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unfinished everything is an original work / ongoing project (1997-present) by jeremy p. bushnell

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