Roxburgh, S. (2018). Through the Scrying Glass: Defining Witchcraft in Academic Study. Cahiers d’Études Africaines, 58(231/232 (3-4)), 1029–1046.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/26614441
To start us off, I do want to mention that this article discusses African witchcraft specifically. Some aspects may be triggering.
I also want to note that I am a white individual, and readers should turn to the Black community for better information on the topic of African and African-descending forms of witchcraft and religion.
Shelagh Roxburgh is a white woman and professor at University of Ottawa whom has written multiple articles on the need for African Studies and its political relations to be deconstructed from its colonialist roots. Links to additional work by Roxburgh are located at the end of this post.
At the beginning of “Through the Scrying Glass” I was immediately expecting the whole of the article to be deeply prejudiced against the concept of witchcraft (and for the most part, it is). In the second paragraph, Roxburgh details that to fully understand witchcraft, one must be a witch, and to be a witch is to be inherently evil and deceptive. While it’s true that Roxburgh cannot begin to understand African witchcraft because she is a white woman living in Canada, that doesn’t mean she can’t partake and learn more about witchcraft as it presents in other communities. Doing so may help broaden her understanding of African witchcraft as well, but I digress.
Roxburgh continues that the obstacles of developing a truer understanding of African witchcraft become more challenging for researchers entering into the discussion with a colonialist perspective which distorts their ability to be objective.
From then on, the first portion of the article describes a collection of different perspectives from other researchers that have attempted to define African witchcraft, many of which describe deeply racist and ethnocentric ideologies. For many of these researchers, witchcraft is a social problem to be solved, something that must be destroyed. They use terms like “uncontrollable”, “violent”, and call it a “deliberate, malicious, illegitimate use of power”. They used the term “witchcraft” as a way to attempt to prove that the African people were simple-minded in comparison to their European counterparts (because why wouldn’t the “Enlightened” colonialists assume that they are more knowledgable in all things? Anything they don’t understand must be a result of the failings of the other and not themselves!)
As a quick side note, one researcher Roxburgh quotes noted that in historical, colonial Africa, the colonialists were rumored to be vampires. Considering what we know about vampire folklore, primarily that they’re pale skinned and are able to assert their will forcibly over others through compulsion, I found this little tidbit interesting. And valid.
In the next section of her article, Roxburgh shares her preferred concept of defining witchcraft: witchcraft as power. The concept of witchcraft as a form of power opens up the discussion to the impact of power imbalance from colonialist rule, where fear of witchcraft stems from the fear of losing power over the oppressed group.
Not discussed in Roxburgh’s article is the forms of magic which can serve as tool for safety and rebellion for communities that are subject to imbalances of power. Aspects of domination magic, justice magic, glamour magic – these can all aid in protecting those that are oppressed. Many witches uphold a code of ethics that discourage utilizing magic to influence others, particularly for personal gain, but that doesn’t mean such uses don’t exist. Some examples could be casting a spell to gain the favor of an individual with the purpose of trying to stay safe, or using an invisibility glamour to help stay under the radar.
Witchcraft thereby serves as a liberating and empowering force that aids in reforming power balance.
Roxburgh wraps up her article by summarizing that witchcraft cannot be fully understood without first considering the impacts of colonialism and the ideologies therein. She also notes that academia, particularly on the topic of African witchcraft, needs more diverse voices and mindful researchers aware of the wrought history of the subject and the racism underlying.
My final thoughts are that witchcraft never has been and never will be merely a lifestyle, practice, or identity. It is rooted in political rebellion, in righting power imbalances. If your craft does not include uplifting and supporting those that are being harmed by hierarchical, oppressive systems, is it really witchcraft? I also find it ironic that they call witchcraft an “illegitimate use of power” when colonialists used their whiteness in that very way.
Additional work from Roxburgh can be found here:
- http://conflictfieldresearch.colgate.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/Read-Black-and-White-Decolonizing-African-studies.pdf
- https://www.jstor.org/stable/26368590
- https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1468794118788004
- https://2626.ca/our_news/uottawa-students-denounce-pattern-of-harassment/
Additional resources on the topic of African-descending witchcraft:
