“WORLD LOST IN FIRE”: ESSAYS ON THE GRAMMAR OF WOMANHOOD was my 2023 academic research project which concluded ten years of studies in the fields of feminist, political and social theory. Grasping “womanhood” as a perspective through which the concept of a sovereign human soul can be accessed, it strings together feminist, postcolonial and ecopolitical works to craft a loveletter to woman and her plurality. Let’s take the discussion to Instagram: find me on @ferrarsfieldsmag and @snkllr.

“WORLD LOST IN FIRE”: ESSAYS ON THE GRAMMAR OF WOMANHOOD was my 2023 academic research project which concluded ten years of studies in the fields of feminist, political and social theory. Grasping “womanhood” as a perspective through which the concept of a sovereign human soul can be accessed, it strings together feminist, postcolonial and ecopolitical works to craft a loveletter to woman and her plurality. Let’s take the discussion to Instagram: find me on @ferrarsfieldsmag and @snkllr.

Europe’s writ­ten his­to­ry unfolds against the tri­adic themes of body, iden­ti­ty, and polit­i­cal inter­est. The body assumes a cen­tral role as the stage upon which ide­olo­gies and social trans­for­ma­tions play out, set­ting the back­drop for the witch hunts, the har­row­ing era of burn­ing, and the last­ing trau­ma that con­tin­ues to res­onate in our present time. Dur­ing the socio-eco­nom­ic tran­si­tion into cap­i­tal­ism, the body under­goes a dis­qui­et­ing meta­mor­pho­sis, stripped of its auton­o­my and reduced to a mere object, exem­pli­fied by the arche­types of the Fou­cauldian sol­dier or the Marx­i­an fac­to­ry work­er. It becomes a ves­sel upon which coer­cion and vio­lence are imposed, which dic­tate its mean­ing and sig­ni­fy the polit­i­cal ide­olo­gies that encom­pass it.

Marx­ist-fem­i­nist polit­i­cal philoso­pher Sil­via Fed­eri­ci finds par­tic­u­lar inter­est in the inter­sec­tion of body and pow­er. Federici’s 2004 study, apt­ly titled Cal­iban and the Witch: Women, the Body, and Prim­i­tive Accu­mu­la­tion, exam­ines the Euro­pean witch hunts which took place dur­ing the Mid­dle Ages, rec­og­niz­ing them as a cru­cial phase in the devel­op­ment of a mod­ern pro­le­tari­at with­in the con­text of cap­i­tal­ist pro­gres­sion. 
The extreme cru­el­ty of the Euro­pean witch hunts remains a phal­lo­crat­ic crime of unpar­al­leled mag­ni­tude. Yet, lit­tle remains of this dark his­to­ry, aside from the witch’ por­tray­al in pop­u­lar cul­ture and a hand­ful of Doc­tor Who episodes. Look­ing into the study of the witch hunts and their under­ly­ing ide­olo­gies not only enables us to under­stand today’s misog­y­ny in its prop­er con­text but also pro­vides a blue­print for chal­leng­ing a sys­tem that we reject but are nev­er­the­less entan­gled in. A direct ances­tral line of trau­ma and causal­i­ty con­nects the women of the past who were burned in the mid­day fires of Man’s fear to the women of today. How­ev­er, cap­i­tal­ism has skill­ful­ly buried this link beneath the illu­sions of the dreamer’s dream. Under­stand­ing the oppres­sor unveils a mul­ti­tude of new avenues for protest. How­ev­er, to embark on any form of protest, be it armed with pitch­forks or books, one must first reclaim the obscured pieces of their own history—those frag­ments that were inten­tion­al­ly omit­ted from the his­tor­i­cal nar­ra­tives of main­stream education.

Prelude of The Witching Hour

In ear­ly medi­ae­val Europe, a series of events unfold, set­ting in motion the ground­work for the sub­se­quent per­se­cu­tion of witch­es. As rur­al life grad­u­al­ly under­goes com­mer­cial­iza­tion, Sil­via Fed­eri­ci high­lights a sig­nif­i­cant shift tak­ing place in the 13th cen­tu­ry: a migra­tion from feu­dal vil­lages to bur­geon­ing cities and towns (29–31). Among the migrants, women con­sti­tute the most promi­nent social group, break­ing free from the con­fines of com­mer­cialised agri­cul­ture. They dis­cov­er new­found free­dom with­in the urban set­tings, where they can live inde­pen­dent­ly and pur­sue occu­pa­tions such as “maids, spin­sters, […] and pros­ti­tutes,” (30) grad­u­al­ly ascend­ing to pro­fes­sions such as “butch­ers, […] hat-mak­ers, ale-brew­ers, […] and retail­ers,” (31) and even tak­ing up posi­tions as “school­teach­ers, doc­tors, and sur­geons.” (31)
Approx­i­mate­ly a cen­tu­ry ear­li­er, the Catholic Church estab­lish­es its author­i­ty over per­son­al mat­ters (38). It also ini­ti­ates the per­se­cu­tion of heretics, indi­vid­u­als whose belief sys­tems devi­ate from Catholic doc­trine, even if those beliefs still fall under the umbrel­la of Chris­tian­i­ty (33). Notably, women emerged as lead­ers of hereti­cal move­ments in France and Italy (39), assum­ing promi­nent posi­tions with­in these sects. Dur­ing the 15th cen­tu­ry, women become close­ly asso­ci­at­ed with heresy, mak­ing them prime tar­gets for the Church’s accu­sa­tions of witch­craft (40). This per­se­cu­tion oper­ates with­in a broad­er nar­ra­tive that deems fem­i­nin­i­ty impure and unholy. 
Towards the century’s end, the bur­geon­ing polit­i­cal author­i­ty of the state shock­ing­ly decrim­i­nal­izes rape (48), with impov­er­ished women—often work­ing as maids for wealth­i­er classes—bearing the brunt of these atro­cious acts (47). Per­pe­trat­ed by pro­le­tar­i­an men, these bru­tal rapes are viewed as acts of revenge against the rich (48). State-fund­ed broth­els emerge in Italy and France (49). Women who fall vic­tim to street assaults are stripped of their social sta­tus and sub­se­quent­ly ban­ished from the cities (48). Women’s bod­i­ly auton­o­my van­ish­es, leav­ing men with unre­strict­ed access to sex­u­al grat­i­fi­ca­tion, which trans­forms “class antag­o­nism into an antag­o­nism against pro­le­tar­i­an women.” (47) As women’s auton­o­my dimin­ish­es, a cul­ture desen­si­tized to sex­u­al vio­lence takes root, cre­at­ing an envi­ron­ment that nur­tures the wide­spread accep­tance of the witch­craft nar­ra­tive (48–49).

Federici’s choice of title reflects the com­plex inter­play of patri­ar­chal con­structs, the pro­le­tar­i­an body, and Marx’ notion of prim­i­tive accu­mu­la­tion. While Marx empha­sised the accu­mu­la­tion of property/means of pro­duc­tion and labour pow­er as pre­req­ui­sites for the tran­si­tion to cap­i­tal­ism, Fed­eri­ci chal­lenges this dichoto­my. She argues that the divi­sion between pro­duc­tion and repro­duc­tion work­ers was piv­otal in the rise of cap­i­tal­ism, a per­spec­tive over­looked in Marx’ dis­course (Fed­eri­ci 12, 16). Fur­ther­more, Fed­eri­ci high­lights the omis­sion of women’s expe­ri­ences in Marx’ analy­sis, assert­ing that cap­i­tal­ism affect­ed women dif­fer­ent­ly, even with­in the same social class (12).
While the exploita­tion of Native Amer­i­cans and Africans in min­ing and plan­ta­tions serves as a foun­da­tion for cap­i­tal accu­mu­la­tion (63), Fed­eri­ci con­tends that the rise of a patri­archy stands as anoth­er cru­cial pil­lar sup­port­ing the new eco­nom­ic and social sys­tem. The worker’s body was utilised and exploit­ed across var­i­ous domains such as com­mod­i­ty pro­duc­tion, repro­duc­tive labour, and edu­ca­tion­al pur­suits, all oper­at­ing with­in a frame­work shaped by gen­der-based divi­sions (63).
In the 15th cen­tu­ry, there is a grad­ual shift towards state con­trol over pro­cre­ation. Reg­u­la­to­ry mea­sures first tar­get prac­tices of bod­i­ly auton­o­my, with severe pun­ish­ments imposed for acts like con­tra­cep­tion, abor­tion, and infan­ti­cide (88–89). The state’s mis­trust towards women involved in the birthing process inten­si­fies, lead­ing to the repres­sion of mid­wives who are rel­e­gat­ed to pas­sive roles dur­ing child­birth (89). Even­tu­al­ly, they are replaced by male doc­tors (89). This dis­place­ment has a con­se­quen­tial effect described by Bar­bara Ehren­re­ich and Dei­dre Eng­lish as an “aura of con­t­a­m­i­na­tion” in their work Witch­es, Mid­wives, and Nurs­es: A His­to­ry of Woman Heal­ers (Ehren­re­ich and Eng­lish 15, 22). Women’s wombs become exploit­ed in ser­vice of cap­i­tal­ist accu­mu­la­tion (Fed­eri­ci 89) and women become estranged from their own bod­ies in the process. 
Once again, woman finds her­self cast in a new role. As the repro­duc­ers of labour pow­er for the cap­i­tal­ist sys­tem, women are con­fined to the domes­tic sphere. With­in the work­ing class, a sex­u­al­ized divi­sion emerges through the “patri­archy of wage,” (Fed­eri­ci 97) lead­ing to the solid­i­fi­ca­tion of gen­der roles. This divi­sion of labour reach­es its height with the clas­si­fi­ca­tion of repro­duc­tive labour as “non-labour,” effec­tive­ly com­plet­ing the process of women’s defama­tion (92). As a con­se­quence, women lose their sta­tus as legal per­sons, leav­ing them unable to rep­re­sent them­selves in court (100). Their sur­vival becomes depen­dent on their husband’s finan­cial sup­port, their bod­ies are regard­ed as state prop­er­ty, and accord­ing to pre­vail­ing nar­ra­tives, woman now finds com­fort in the home.

Lilith in the War: Of Evil Women, Devils and Beasts

In 1439, the­olo­gian Hein­rich Insti­toris pro­mul­gates the Malleus Malefi­carum, a man­u­al detail­ing the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of witch­es among women, appen­dixed by guide­lines for their per­se­cu­tion. 
In uni­son, the Church for­mu­lates the “doc­trine of witch­craft,” clas­si­fy­ing sor­cery as a heresy and the gravest crime “against God, Nature and the State.” (Fed­eri­ci 165) In 1532, the Catholic Church declares witch­craft a cap­i­tal offence—a crimen excep­tum—, pun­ish­able by death (Fed­eri­ci 166, Pearl 33). 

The witch craze wages a war against Lilith,
who, born from Adam’s clay, refused to obey the Man. 
The burn­ings of her kin­dred become great pub­lic spec­ta­cles. 
Lilith leaves her life to the flames, 
sac­ri­ficed upon the altar of a fab­ri­cat­ed God.

But her truth will be known in the smoke, 
and the ash­es, 
and in the earth.

Lilith enters the nar­ra­tive as an enig­mat­ic and deeply fas­ci­nat­ing fig­ure who finds her ori­gins in Mesopotami­an folk­lore. In Semit­ic mythol­o­gy, she emerges as a coun­ter­part to Adam, both sculpt­ed from the same clay, embody­ing a state of absolute par­i­ty. In an act of defi­ance against Adam’s com­mand, Lilith departs from the par­a­disi­a­cal Eden in pur­suit of her auton­o­my. In fac­ing Lilith’s resis­tance, Adam’s anx­i­ety par­al­lels the fear expe­ri­enced by men in a patri­ar­chal soci­ety when con­front­ed with women who assert their auton­o­my and chal­lenge estab­lished pow­er struc­tures. Lilith’s defi­ance threat­ens the phal­lo­crat­ic ideals that pri­ori­tise male dom­i­nance and exert con­trol over women.
Sad­ly, her defi­ance leads to a dis­tort­ed depic­tion of Lilith as a wicked sor­cer­ess, accused of abduct­ing chil­dren and inflict­ing harm on preg­nant women (Less­es). Women accused as witch­es, both old and young, usu­al­ly defied soci­etal rules. They pos­sessed wis­dom gained from a life­time of expe­ri­ences and embraced their sex­u­al­i­ty with­out inhi­bi­tion. In the nar­ra­tive sur­round­ing them, echoes of Lilith emerge. They were accused of ren­der­ing men impo­tent, of mak­ing their repro­duc­tive organs dis­ap­pear, at times it was even claimed the witch was hid­ing and accu­mu­lat­ing them in bird nests (Fed­eri­ci 189). Men expe­ri­enced what Sig­mund Freud would lat­er title cas­tra­tion anx­i­ety. Women were accused of encum­ber­ing inno­cent men with their dev­il­ish “car­nal lust, which is in women insa­tiable.” (Sprenger and Insti­toris 74, my trans­la­tion)
Just as Lilith chal­lenges soci­etal norms in her par­a­dig­mat­ic break, these women chal­lenge the ris­ing male med­ical pro­fes­sion, threat­en­ing the estab­lished order close­ly aligned with the Church and State. In an age in which the dev­il was very much believed to exist as the evil oppos­ing the divine good, it was also believed that God act­ed through the cler­gy where­as the dev­il took action through the heal­ing women of the pro­le­tari­at (Ehren­re­ich, Eng­lish 21). Heal­ing was declared sor­cery, and mag­ic, to the Church, pre­sent­ed the realm of the super­nat­ur­al, a pow­er beyond con­trol, and thus a crime against God. The heal­ing woman derived her knowl­edge from the empir­i­cal rather than faith, she not only trust­ed her sens­es but seemed to receive her cures through Gaia, the earth, rather than God. The sto­ry craft­ed about the doc­tor, in con­trast, bespeaks his divine employ­ment; his author­i­ty was estab­lished not by his heal­ing pow­ers but by the belief that God act­ed through him and he must there­fore remain uncon­test­ed (21). Fair­ly ungod­ly was any engage­ment in non-recre­ation­al sex­u­al activ­i­ties, which could label any­one as a witch. The fear of women’s resis­tance to the Man, rem­i­nis­cent of the ter­ror Adam expe­ri­enced at Lilith’s defi­ance, drove soci­ety to seek solace in their pub­lic deaths, includ­ing the grue­some act of burn­ing them at the stake (Fed­eri­ci 189–191).

The con­struc­tion of the witch is infused with cul­tur­al sig­ni­fiers of Lilith’s eman­ci­pa­tion while dis­tort­ing her lega­cy into folk­lore. With­in this nar­ra­tive, the witch hence became a sym­bol asso­ci­at­ed with prac­tices of eman­ci­pa­tion.
Man, once more in fear that women might abort or kill their chil­dren, pro­ject­ed his anx­i­ety onto the witch, man­i­fest­ing as tales of her con­sum­ing and burn­ing chil­dren (177), an accu­sa­tion all too famil­iar in Lilith’s leg­end. The image of the witch fly­ing on a broom, often depict­ed in porno­graph­ic paint­ings, can be seen as a reflec­tion of fears sur­round­ing female plea­sure. It can be read as the exten­sion of a penis to which the woman has access as she choos­es, upend­ing the pre­vail­ing gen­dered vio­lence and reaf­firm­ing that her body is hers. Like­wise, it could sig­ni­fy a medi­ae­val form of the dil­do, affirm­ing  women’s self-plea­sure (192). It might also sig­ni­fy herbal potions the heal­ing women brewed, in which it is believed there were psy­choac­tive sub­stances, alle­goris­ing the aspect of ‘fly­ing’ with a psy­choac­tive altered state of mind (Sol­lée 87- 90). 
The asso­ci­a­tion of witch­es with famil­iar ani­mals, inti­mate com­pan­ions with whom they shared a bond, res­onates with Lilith’s fre­quent depic­tions with ser­pents and oth­er crea­tures. The witch­es’ sab­baths, a “sex­u­al trans­gres­sion,” (177) were “por­trayed both as a mon­strous sex­u­al orgy and as a sub­ver­sive polit­i­cal gath­er­ing, cul­mi­nat­ing […] with the dev­il instruct­ing the witch­es to rebel against their mas­ters.” (177) The ini­ti­a­tion of witch­es through a sex­u­al encounter with the dev­il draws upon Lilith’s mythos as a fig­ure entan­gled in for­bid­den unions and her per­ceived con­nec­tion to dark and demon­ic forces, of whom she was said to have borne demon­ic chil­dren. (Less­es) 
The depic­tion of witch­es in com­mis­sioned paint­ings and dis­plays by the Church, often of a porno­graph­ic nature, reflects an inten­tion­al per­ver­sion and dis­tor­tion of female sex­u­al­i­ty, sim­i­lar to how Lilith’s lega­cy was rein­ter­pret­ed and vil­i­fied. Woman was being under­stood as a slave to the dev­il, for­ev­er sub­servient to him in exchange for the mag­i­cal pow­er he invest­ed her with (Fed­eri­ci 187). Their rela­tion was thus con­struct­ed as a mas­ter-slave rela­tion: “[H]e stamped her with his mark [and] had sex­u­al inter­course with her,” writes Fed­eri­ci (187). 

“[E]ven when in revolt against human and divine law,
women had to be portrayed as subservient to a man
and the culmination of their rebellion
—the famous pact with the devil—
had to be represented as a perverted marriage contract.”

SILVIA FEDERICI, CALIBAN AND THE WITCH (2004), 187

The witch hunts in Europe facil­i­tat­ed the rise of cap­i­tal­ism. They sub­dued women’s influ­ence in heal­ing and social life, frac­tur­ing com­mu­nal bonds (165, 168, 170). Catholic and Protes­tant regions were unit­ed in a col­lec­tive hys­te­ria (168, 169). Pro­cre­ative crimes were the focus of witch­craft accu­sa­tions, as they relat­ed to pop­u­la­tion growth reg­u­la­tions (180).
Despite burn­ing her in the mid­day fire of Man’s fear, Lilith’s pow­er rever­ber­ates through the ages as a bea­con of hope and a source of solace. Through her and those who burned we are remind­ed that resis­tance is our birthright. Such resis­tance can take on many forms, some of which will be imag­ined in forth­com­ing chapters. 

Oth­er chap­ters in this series:

Imag­in­ing Dark Con­ti­nents

Birth of the Dream: Friedrich Engels’ “The Ori­gin of the Fam­i­ly, Pri­vate Prop­er­ty and the State” (1884)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Dar­roch, Fiona, and Ali­son Jasper. “The Ghosts of Lilith: Haunt­ing Nar­ra­tives of
Wit­ness and the Post­colo­nial Poet­ry of Shiv­a­nee Ram­lochan.” Lit­er­a­ture and
The­ol­o­gy, vol. 35, no. 4, Dec. 2021, pp. 433–48,
doi.org/10.1093/litthe/frab029

Ehren­re­ich, Bar­bara, and Deirdre Eng­lish. Witch­es, Mid­wives and Nurs­es: A His­to­ry of
Women Heal­ers. 2nd ed., The Fem­i­nist Press, 2010.

Fed­eri­ci, Sil­via. Cal­iban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Prim­i­tive Accu­mu­la­tion. 2nd
edi­tion, Autono­me­dia, 2014. Orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished in 2004.

Jane­ga, Eleanor. “On Dil­dos and Penance.” Going Medieval, 30 July 2020, going
medieval.com/2019/01/09/on-dildos-and-penance.

Lans­bury, Coral. “LILITH WAS THE OTHER WOMAN.” The New York Times, 28 Aug.
1988, http://www.nytimes.com/1988/08/28/books/lilith-was-the-other
woman.html.

Less­es, Rebec­ca. “Lilith.” Jew­ish Women’s Archive,
jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/lilith.

Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. The Com­mu­nist Man­i­festo, Pen­guin Clas­sics, 2015.

Pearl, Jonathan L. The Crime of Crimes: Demonolo­gy and Pol­i­tics in France, 1560–1620.
Wil­frid Lau­ri­er Uni­ver­si­ty Press, 2016.

Sol­lée, Kris­ten J. Witch­es, Sluts, Fem­i­nists: Con­jur­ing the Sex Pos­i­tive, ThreeL Media,
2017.

Sprenger, Jakob, and Hein­rich Insti­toris. Der Hex­en­ham­mer: Malleus Malefi­carum,
trans­lat­ed by J.W.R. Schmidt, Her­mann Bars­dorf Ver­lag, 1923,
http://www.koeblergerhard.de/Fontes/HexenhammerSprenger1923pl_Wolfgang_
Stanglmeier_20171112.pdf. Orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished in 1439.

Zuck­off, Avi­va Can­tor. “The Lilith Ques­tion.” Lilith Mag­a­zine, 2 Sept. 1976,
lilith.org/articles/fall-1976–29.

Mer­cy Fer­rars is a philoso­pher and writer based in Berlin.
http://www.mercyferrars.de