Naming the Witch: Magic, Ideology, and Stereotype in the Ancient World (Gender, Theory, and Religion) by Kimberly B. Stratton

Naming the Witch: Magic, Ideology, and Stereotype in the Ancient World (Gender, Theory, and Religion) by Kimberly B. Stratton

Author:Kimberly B. Stratton
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2010-03-27T13:56:00+00:00


I suggest that Christianity's marginal status in the first and second centuries contributed to shaping its use of magic discourse. Drawing on the work of Virginia Burrus and Daniel Boyarin, I suggest that Christian depictions of female victims and male magicians reflect an ego identification on the part of these male writers with vulnerable but chaste female bodies over and against the invasive violence of Roman masculinity."' In these narratives the magician /heretic threatens the carnal integrity of Christian women. Depending on the ideological location of the writer, the virgin either succeeds or fails to defend herself through askesis. The victimized women serve as a trope for early Christian writers to locate themselves and the church in opposition to Rome's power and violence, imagined in terms of the sexualized masculinity and aggression of the "magician." Competing forms of Christianity-so-called heresies-are likewise demonized through identification with the violent danger of the male Other. Through these rhetorically crafted representations, competing forms of Christianity are collapsed into the same ideological opposition that Rome is: aggressive, threatening masculinity against the vulnerable body of the virgin church. In this imagined opposition, chaste female bodies represent the purity of the true Church, while violated female bodies signify the corruption and deviance of heretical churches." ' According to this line of thinking, early Christianity's marginal status is what determined its application of magic discourse and its choice of stereotypes in the contest for authority that defined its early history.



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