Demontologies
On projections of sexualized deviance in a man-made technoscientific world.
When most people think of a witch, they immediately reference the cultural trope of the wayward woman, young or old, whose intentions are categorically impure. This imagery, which stems back to the 17th century demonological treatises,¹ characterizes women as insatiable and/or unruly—their immitigable hunger is for the fat of unbaptized children, the icy prick of Satan, or any orgiastic revelry. They are sexual deviants in their wyrd existences, shunning the patriarchal imperatives of social reproduction (child-bearing) and gendered propriety. They are autonomous bodies. Queer. Liminal. Boundary-hopping. Side-stepping. Unpredictable. Messy. Leaky.
Sunrise in Perth, Western Australia is heralded by an intricate cacophony of bird sounds: twirling magpie vocalizations overlay the insistent whine (wahhh, wahhhh) of crows, punctuated by the high-pitched squawks of rainbow lorikeets, the ardent trill of honeyeaters, and more. It is among this dominant backdrop that one sits mute and contemplative in the early hours of the day. Most of my mornings are like this, but recently I was invited to issue my own chatter during an early Zoom call with a lovely human named Clarissa M. Chevalier.1 Clarissa is a current PhD candidate at University of California, San Diego, and as an art historian with a focus on art/ feminism/ science studies, she’s been researching my work as part of her thesis. I am inspired to recollect and expand upon some of what she drew out through our chat, which will follow below.
I frequently receive informal requests for interviews and consultations from emerging artists, scholars, researchers, etc.—I value this opportunity to engage in relaxed and friendly dialogue about what I do and the complex ethos behind it: witchcraft, biotechnology, art, and disruption to the status quo in research and creation. These conversations most often prove to be generative experiences; in articulating my work in these informal contexts, I get to unravel ideas along different labyrinthine channels each time. It allows me to not only better map out a vision of things, but reinspires me to continue contributing to radical, shared beliefs within a niche but ever-expanding community. This intelletual refreshment is critical to fuel motivation, to keep going for the long haul of the PhD trajectory and beyond.
A number of the topics that Clarissa and I discussed around our mutual interests included practical challenges one may face in working overtly as a ‘witch’ or fringe figure in a conventional biology laboratory—in my case, within numerous labs at various tightly controlled institutions, around the world. With my work, being a witch in a lab coat manifests through utilizing taboo/ sexed body materials for biotech resources, including my own menstrual fluid and menstrual-derived (stem) cells. This is something that institutional bureaucrats, tasked with maintaining the reputation and funding of their institutions, recoil from in a most predictable manner.
When most people think of a witch, they immediately reference the cultural trope of the wayward woman, young or old, whose intentions are categorically impure. This imagery, which stems back to the 17th century demonological treatises,2 characterizes women as insatiable and/or unruly—their immitigable hunger is for the fat of unbaptized children, the icy prick of Satan, or any orgiastic revelry. They are sexual deviants in their wyrd existences, shunning the patriarchal imperatives of social reproduction (child-bearing) and gendered propriety. They are autonomous bodies. Queer. Liminal. Boundary-hopping. Side-stepping. Unpredictable. Messy. Leaky.
It is this exact transgression of neat boundaries, the side-stepping of rules, liminality-seeking and unpredictable messiness that I embody intentionally in my work. Why? I do this with the goal of dismantling toxic hierarchies, that are based on false objectivity and arbitrary controls, and which permeate institutional and technoindustrial sciences alike. In other words, to find the ludicrousness within the institutional ‘rules’ or industry norms, and break them down where they serve nothing but misogyny or other forms of alienation and othering. I’m mainly interested in where the hierarchies and controls present barriers to research that is considered outside of allowable ‘risk’ management parameters—those parameters are sometimes determined subjectively, tainted by decontextualized taboos and sociocultural prejudices. I will provide some examples from my own experiences thus far.
I’ve previously written about how the institutional practice of obscured subjectivity (obscured by hierarchies) perpetuates an abstraction, or depersonalization, of knowledge, bodies and agency.3 What I mean specifically by this is similar to the adage of ‘passing the buck’ where decision-making is deferred up the chain of command or sideways across departments, so that no one person can ever be pinned accountable for discriminatory opinions and actions that may affect research outcomes. In the case of my research, this type of institutional abstraction stems directly from the professionalization of biomedicine, which happened over time through the cooptation and subjugation of women’s lived and embodied experiences—the development of so-called ‘hard’ (-on) sciences. This patriarchal (d)evolution is something that has been written about extensively by feminist scholars such as Barbara Ehrenreich and Dierdre English,4 as well as social scientist, Silvia Federici5 and historian, Melissa Meyer.6 It has also been challenged by feminist bioartists and transhackfeminists before me, the best known being GynePunk.7 A new article I’ve written (following from my previous articles) continues to expand upon on this dialogue within the context of my bio-artistic practice. This article is currently under review—stay tuned for that forthcoming publication.
To provide an example of what I call bureaucratic harassment (connected to sexual harassment), Clarissa and I discussed the subtle ‘witch-hunt’ aspect of institutional gate-keeping, evident in some of the restrictive processes I have gone through to conduct research using my own body materials. On the Human Research Ethics Committee (HREC) at my institution, various community members with no academic qualifications are invited to assess an academic research project for its possible ethical issues, such as exploiting other humans or violating human dignity, confidentiality, etc. These community members include clergy members from Christian sects, but no members of spiritual backgrounds such as would represent my own beliefs centred in feminist witchcraft. Christian values are included as a benchmark for ethical determination on the committee, despite Christianity’s long history of misogyny and persecution of liminal figures (such as witches, queers, sex workers, etc).
My project is to handle my own menstrual blood in a lab for research purposes. Menstrual blood analysis isn’t unprecedented in laboratory research (though it is very rare). What is unprecedented is a transdiciplinary researcher handling their own, for ambiguous purposes such as art with scientific applications. I, like most menstruators, handle my own menstrual blood on an ongoing monthly basis as a matter of being. In academic speak, this innate ‘being-ness’ is labelled ‘ontology.’ Within the subjective judgements of the HREC, my research proposal became akin to a demontology: not only did I challenge disciplinary norms (boundaries) but also triggered taboo and made committee members feel ‘uncomfortable.’ This was due to the typically hidden nature of the materials (menstrual blood and cells) that I would be working with, publishing about, and otherwise making visible as a matter of both being and producing. My work plan seemed to violate their feelings of personal and community safety that are rooted in the cultural compartmentalization and repression of women’s reproductive bodies, including in science. The results were that my first application was rejected, I was asked to change its title to not sound so sciencey (though it is technically science-based), and the entire process was unneccessarily delayed so that I couldn’t begin my research for eight months (of a three- to four-year PhD). I was eventually granted ethics approval once a higher governing body approved the project in principle, since by then, the buck had been passed. The witch was finally set free, to commence her conspicuous mucking about.
A more recent example is even more egregious, because the power dynamics were more obscured. I was not even included in the conversation, specifically about my work and its place in a research facility where I’d been invited to collaborate with scientists. As the artist who had acquired very generous funding that I was bringing to the collaboration (through Canada Council for the Arts, and the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Quebec), I am accountable for its timely use, according to my approved budget and proposal. The collaboration was scheduled for a three-month period, around which I had other pressing professional obligations, including another international residency. The first three weeks of my collaboration were hijacked by the research facility’s legal team, who I was forced to negotiate with over a contract that of course served the interests of the facility whilst diminishing mine. The main stipulation of the contract, other than my approvals and liability insurance requirements (no big deal) was that I never name the facility I was working in, nor the esteemed collaborators who had invited me. I was given a gag order. This was, obviously, to avoid the public relations ‘nightmare’ of having a witch/artist/woman on the loose with uterine blood in the hallowed halls of the privately sponsored science research institution.
My examples don’t end there, and the negative repercussions on my research and personal wellbeing are not articulated in full, but the above examples serve to make the point about obscured power hierarchies rooted in misogyny, that lead to arbitrary restrictions on research in science, particularly around women’s bodies. The irony in the case of my last example, is that the research facility was housed within a hospital specializing in women and children. Being muted by the masked hostility of formal litigating bodies that represent male dominance is a stark contrast to the witchy way—that is, rather, sitting quietly contemplative and appreciative of the ‘art’ of bodily ephemera—such as during my Perth mornings, assessing the instinctual eroticism of syringeal sounds as chaotic melody, knowing this is integral to ‘being’ whole.
Follow Clarissa on Instagram: @clarissamaria_ and check out her website: www.clarissachevalier.comÂ
I had the privilege of leafing through many of these primary texts in-person (in 2022), in the rare books collection at the Museum of Witchcraft and Magic in Bostcastle, UK.
You can access most of my previous publications on Academia.edu: https://uwa.academia.edu/WhiteFeatherHunter
Start your GynePunk discovery here: https://hackteria.org/wiki/GynePUNK
Great read, leaves me wanting more!