Witchcraft is a Theory of Bad Agency (1790-1940)

The ‘new’ social history embraced the ‘master trope’ of agency, the idea that human actors made choices that had historical consequences, even in situations of extreme oppression (Johnson 2003). More recently, historians have asked, if all historical subjects have agency, does the concept have any meaning at all (Krylova 2023)? This paper listens to historical actors – workers, servants, and labourers – debating their own agency in unusual examples: criminal trials and investigations about harmful magic.  Witchcraft is a theory of bad agency, but perhaps not such a bad theory of agency. In magic, power is always ambivalent, doubtful (Pooley 2024). Witchcraft was rarely simply hierarchical, but horizontal, confusing, and often characterised by powerlessness. In magic, agents are more than human: animals, spirits, demons, but also electricity, rays, or radiation. If witchcraft is a paradoxical language of agency ‘from below’, those paradoxes may be its greatest strength for historians.