Evil Eye as Surveillance, Witch as Professor
Written by christy roberts berkowitz
In 2022, when Roe v. Wade was overturned by the Supreme Court, I felt an imperative to connect the ideological paradigms that evolved into the context for this and many other historic tragedies. This moment seemed to be where my areas of research converged.
When I say I am a witch, I say it with radical refusal and regeneration born out of my own experiences of violence and powerlessness. Before I knew what the unconscious was, I was desperately seeking my own inner world as a place to retreat and find safety and empowerment. This has always felt deeply political and feminist to me. Confirmation has come from theory and community. Like Sylvia Federici’s Caliban the Witch (1) I see the witch as a figure that stands at the intersection of semiotics, power, identity, and systemic violence. In 2016, I became increasingly concerned with how a US government, aspiring towards fascism, could use technology and society’s adaptation toward social media data mining (through the Society of the Spectacle (2) style propaganda that the administration and so many corporations had already used so successfully) as a terrifyingly sharp wedge into any attempts at meaningful resistance organizing. This brought me to another area of research: surveillance culture (3) and surveillance capitalism (4).
In the summer of 2020, I taught an online course on art relating to plagues. I learned A LOT. Something of particular interest was the way people were surveilled during the plagues, namely in the 16th and 17th centuries in Britain. Communities that once saw themselves as a group of people with shared interests (namely, that of serfs fighting for access to once public lands and militarizing against landlords with predatory taxation and privatization policies) were suddenly suspicious of each other, surveilling each other for physical and behavioral oddities. According to Foucault, Federici, and Deleuze, prior to the introduction of surveillance culture, the concept of normation was somewhat nonexistent. There wasn’t a system to pathologize and categorize people in the way there is today. People (with the exception of segregated/othered populations such as Jews, Romani, etc.) were able to exhibit a myriad of ways of being without being ostracized or, most germanely, incarcerated or subject to carceral punishment.
Not only did surveillance culture change this, it began categorizing and examining, not just our behaviors, but our bodies. You see it in the plagues, and you see it in the witch hunts. People were non-consensually stripped naked, shaved, and examined. To see someone as property, as a tool, is to see their body as merely parts of the tool. This behavior is, perhaps, most violent in how it has been applied to colonized and enslaved people. The idea of surveillance almost disappears ideologically, because is one not just examining that which is amongst them in the world; that which they own? In Thomas Gainsborough’s painting, “Mr. and Mrs. Andrews”, Mr. Andrews is showing all that he owns, all that he is surrounded by, all that he has dominion over, all that he has a right to examine, and all that he will kill for (including the other human in the painting, Mrs. Andrews; seated so as not to be perceived on her husband’s level). This system was exported to the colonized world. The humans, plants, animals, minerals, waters, mountains, air, all for the examination and taxonomy of the rational, anthropological European aristocratic man. To be the looker and not the looked at is not just reinforced in surveillance culture, its legacy is in (either in alignment with or in resistance to) every piece of visual media that exists. As an artist, how could I not be as invested in the watcher and watched as I am in the gaze and the subject? As a witch, I know how dangerous it is to allow violent systems to define your archetypes and paradigms. How could I not be invested in the meanings our unconsciousness creates and destroys through ritual and belief?
In this case, the emergency is for people residing in the United States and abroad who have wombs. The emergency is for is queer people, the emergency is for gender non-conforming people, and the emergency is for people of the global majority. The meanings stratified in our contemporary relationships to witchcraft and ritual are rich and layered, but they all equate, in some way, to love and/or survival. This is the place I began to write a class for the University of La Verne, in Southern California, on “Witches and Witch Hunts.”
Works Cited
1. Federici, Sylvia. Caliban the Witch. Autonomedia, Brooklyn, NY, 2004.
URL: https://files.libcom.org/files/Caliban%20and%20the%20Witch.pdf
2. Debord, Guy. The Society of the Spectacle. Editions Buchet-Chastel, Paris, France, 1967.
"Annotated Version" by Ken Knabb. Bureau of Public Secrets, 2014.
URL:https://files.libcom.org/files/The%20Society%20of%20the%20Spectacle%20Annotated%20Edition.pdf
3. Foucault, Michel. Discipline & Punish. Random House, NY, NY, 1977.
4. Zuboff, Shoshana. The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power. New York: Public Affairs, 2019.
Required Texts:
Federici, Silvia,
Caliban and the Witch,
Autonomedia, 2004,
978-0-241-53253-9
Kramer, Heinrich and Sprenger, James,
Malleus Maleficarum, 1486
Course Description
This course examines the history and current roles of witches and witch hunts in relation to cultural and economic movements and theories within the long and ongoing project of “neo-colonial white supremacist capitalist patriarchy” (hooks, 2004). Beginning with looking at the history of the rights of non-men, this course will establish a strong historical context before looking specifically at witches and witch hunts through the cultural products that document them. Lastly, we will look at how artistic production impacts and is impacted by contemporary cultural intersections and how witches and witch hunting plays a role in our lives today. The course spotlights cultural contributions from people underrepresented in the traditional canon and encourages interrogation of the frameworks by which canons are built in order to more fully comprehend the legacy of colonialism and the project of “neo-colonial white supremacist capitalist patriarchy” (hooks, 2004).
For the purpose of this class, we will define “witch” as people whose lived experiences are directly or indirectly impacted by identifying as or being treated as an “outsider” or included community member with “magical”, gnostic, intellectual, or healing skills that threaten proto-fascist forms of power to the degree that it affects the “witch’s” safety and/or livelihood.
Course Learning Outcomes
Our community will strive towards achieving the following goals by the end of the term:
The learning community will be able to see the connections in critical theory between Marxist class analysis, surveillance theories, feminist theories, etc, through the theme of Witches and Witch Hunts.
The learning community will be able to map the general trajectory and impact of patriarchy, capitalism, colonization, white supremacy, and other forms of structural violence in relation to witches working in and with community resource skills.
The learning community will develop a robust understanding of the historical trajectory of witch hunts and how they have impacted the course of history and continue to impact our contemporary lives.
The learning community will be able to identify coded language meant to intimidate and oppress people who have been persecuted as witches.
The learning community will be able to analyze cultural products and documents through both formal and feminist lenses.
The learning community will develop an awareness of the impact intersectionality has had on movements to credit underrepresented voices.
The learning community will be adept at exhibiting the aforementioned intellectual development through scholarly research, empathetic/creative research (engaging in the creation process to better understand it), verbal dialogue, writing, and creative projects.
Instruction Methods
I am a witch. My holistic, spiritual, intellectual, and creative process is a result of a direct reflection of my understanding of my life as a witch. What that means for me will surprise you over the course of this class because I will give few, if any, examples of the kinds of behaviors you have been taught to associate with witches. However, everything that I am, stand for and believe is in line with the historic perspective and persecution of witches. What I hope will develop for you over the course of the class is an understanding of how rigid the rules really are and how easy it is to step out of line when the rules are set up for you to fail at them. In other words… maybe you’re a witch, too.
I also tell you I am a witch because I don’t believe a class like this, given the history of violence against witches, should be taught by anyone who is not a witch. While there is subjectivity in my investment, I see issues in narratives constructed completely outside lived experience, and every class is, in fact, a narrative.
Close reading of the text with associated intellectual and creative reinforcement
Presentation of lectures and discussions on specific content topics in order to identify primary concerns, key principles, or goals for identified classroom activity or project.
Creative experimentation will allow students to understand the creative/magical process through physical empathy.
Images, videos, films, audio tapes, distributing handouts, and/or using electronic or computer-based media to foster understanding of concepts and historical content related to a specific author, artist, idea, intent, or artwork.
Written assignments in order to expand student’s awareness and to formulate the application of information to a meaningful task or specific end.
Guest witches, soothsayers, wizards, cunning folk, and wise folk
Consultation with the instructor and conversation with other students in order to clarify meaning, assess more objectively, and identify intent
If we need to move to remote learning, we will adapt… as we have been doing.
We read a lot here. Read your assignments a few times and take notes if you need to. Don’t try to do them all at once or at the last minute. If you can, try listening to them with an app. But don’t neglect intellectual work. It makes all the difference to really get what you’re talking about.
We learn by reading, watching, talking, but most importantly talking/writing/making/processing and if we’re lucky, failing.
Class Schedule
Week 1
Screening: The Sorceress
Read: Introduction, pages 11-19
Screening: The Cathars
Read: All the World Needs a Jolt, pages 20-59
Week 2
Read: The Accumulation of Labor and the Degradation of Women, pages 61-85
Assignment Due: Corn Dolly
Read: The Accumulation of Labor and the Degradation of Women, pages 85-103
Screening: Exterminate All the Brutes, Part 2
Read: The Accumulation of Labor and the Degradation of Women, pages 103-131
Screening: All of Them Witches
Assignment Due: Protest art
Read: The Great Caliban, pages 132-161 Somatic Amputation, Reason to Romanticism, Panopticon and Normation
Week 3
Read: The Great Witch-Hunt in Europe, pages 162-186
Screening: Witches in Jacobean Britain
Assignment Due: Plant magic
Read: The Great Witch-Hunt in Europe, pages 187-217
Screening: Lucy Worsley Investigates the Witch Hunts
Read: Colonization and Christianization, pages 219-242
Screening: Witches and Witch Hunts Panel at MOCA, October 2022
Week 4
Read: Malleus Maleficarum (First Part, Questions, especially VI, IX, XI, Second part, Question XIII, and the Third part, Questions XIII-XVI, and XXXIV)
Screening: The Witches of Hollywood
Review Guest: Amanda Yates Garcia, witch, oracle, and author of Initiated, Memoir of a Witch
Review Guest: Lila Higgins, witch, head of Community Science at the Los Angeles Natural History Museum, author of Wild LA
Meeting: at the "Outback" at Pitzer College
Thursday, 01/26
Final Projects Due: Spells for the Worker
Author bio
Artist, musician, writer, educator, agitator, and emotional laborer, christy roberts berkowitz (she/they) composes experiences, images, and objects that explore personal and collective constructions of power and agency. A third-generation Southern Californian and University of La Verne faculty member since 2015 (in the Art, Art History, Photography, and Honors Departments), roberts berkowitz holds Bachelor's degrees in philosophy and religion, a BFA in studio art from the University of La Verne, and an MFA from Claremont Graduate University.
She/they is one of LA Weekly’s 2012 “Best of LA People”, roberts berkowitz is currently the 23’/24’ Creative Strategist in Residence for Los Angeles County, she is a 2023 Creative Corps grant recipient, is President/C.E.O. of KCHUNG Radio (a 2016 Creative Capital Award recipient and 2022-2023 artist in residence at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles) and a founding member of The California Poppy Collective, Problematic Radio, Human Resources for Art Workers, and the Los Angeles Art Union. Her exhibitions and happenings have been hosted and/or commissioned by the Los Angeles Dept. of Cultural Affairs (including CURRENT LA Public Art Triennial), MOCA Los Angeles, The Getty Museum (VR News Panel Curator), The Telfair Museum (residency and permanent collection project), The Chrysler Museum (residency and solo performance), REDCAT (performance), The Hammer Museum (including Made in LA), The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Orange County Museum of Art, The Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, American Jewish University (commissioned solo exhibition), among many others.
roberts berkowitz’s various residencies include the IMMENSIVA AI/XR Residency for Espronceda Institute of Art & Culture (21’), Feminist Field School at the Centre Pompadour Neofeminist Institute in France (19’), and a Glass Residency at the Chrysler Museum (18’) and she has received generous funding from the Inland Empire Community Foundation, Los Angeles County Arts Commission, Asylum Arts, The Institute for Jewish Creativity, Creative Capital, Foundation for Art Resources, and The Righteous Persons Fund.
Her essays, reviews, and poetry have been commissioned and published by Lambda LitFest, Art21 Magazine, Citizens of Culture, Undo Magazine, the Hebrew Union College Skirball Center, Freewaves (upcoming), and the Los Angeles Press. Her experimental electronic music project, Glitzer, has one critically recognized full-length project (“Score”), and in 2022 she released her debut album ”WOLVES,” co-produced by four-time Grammy Winner Jahi Sundance, under the name “christy” on Alpha Pup Records.
https://linktr.ee/christyrobertsberkowitzhttp://christyrobertsberkowitz.com/index.html