MONA CHOLLET, IN DEFENSE OF WITCHES

Tempo di lettura: 2 minuti

Like every woman who finds inspiration in Gloria Steinem’s life and words, a few months ago I watched the live broadcast where she attended the presentation of Mona Chollet’s book In defence of witches. Indeed, we cannot talk about oppression towards women without knowing its history, its roots, its analogies. We cannot fail to consider that every time has its ‘witch hunt’, or we would end up considering violence as an emergency issue and not a historical fact, falling into the manipulative trap that denies the need to act on a cultural and social level.
Mona Chollet is a Swiss journalist and author. She is chief editor at Le Monde diplomatique since 2016. In Defense of Witches has sold 370,000 copies in France.Born in Geneva in 1973, she is known as a feminist figure in France.

Centuries after the infamous witch hunts that swept through Europe and America, witches continue to hold a unique fascination for many: as fairy tale villains, practitioners of pagan religion, as well as feminist icons. Witches are both the ultimate victim and the stubborn, elusive rebel. But who were the women who were accused and often killed for witchcraft? What types of women have centuries of terror censored, eliminated, and repressed?

Mona Chollet explores three types of women who were accused of witchcraft and persecuted: the independent woman, since widows and celibates were particularly targeted; the childless woman, since the time of the hunts marked the end of tolerance for those who claimed to control their fertility; and the elderly woman, who has always been an object of at best, pity, and at worst, horror. Examining modern society, Chollet concludes that these women continue to be harrassed and oppressed. Rather than being a brief moment in history, the persecution of witches is an example of society’s seemingly eternal misogyny, while women today are direct heirs to those who were hunted down and killed for their thoughts and actions.

“Chollet celebrates not only the witches of the past, but also the so-called “witches” of today: independent women who have chosen not to have children, aren’t always coupled, often defy traditional beauty norms (letting their hair go gray), and thus operate outside the established social order. That’s especially true in France, which may celebrate the femme libre, but which, from its tax laws to its robust public day care, is built to promote the family and motherhood. It is also, not incidentally, a country where a certain vision of femininity supports the economy through the biggest beauty industry in the world” – NY Times

The word “witch” has had a magnetic hold on the feminist writer. “Something about it fizzes with energy. The word speaks of a knowledge that lies close to the ground, a vital power, an accumulated force of experience that official sources disdain or repress.”