Instructor: Alirio Karina

Enormous breadths of practice are captured in the word ‘witchcraft’; widely ranging social roles in the word ‘witch’. This rude assemblage is, to some degree, an artefact of translation, seeming to connote no more than a malicious and sinful exterior world to that of Abrahamic religious law. Proposing to find what else might link these forms, this course surveys a range of ‘witchcrafts’, across the world and across history, considering how magical, occult, esoteric, and secret knowledges, their practice, and their practitioners shape and interrupt the order of political life.