Reclaiming the witch: Processes and heroic outcomes of consumer mythopoesis
研究消费者如何利用模糊的女巫神话进行身份工作，通过化身神话、向他人出柜和实践神话相关手艺等过程，将压力转化为自我英雄主义，最终获得新的英雄式能动性和身份价值。
Although previous research has investigated consumer mythopoesis (consumers’ identity work using marketplace myths), little is known about its enactment involving ambiguous myths. Here, we investigate the myth of the witch (predominantly depicted by dominant mythmakers as a villain but recently repositioned more positively) and describe how consumers reclaim the empowering and heroic aspects of the ambiguous witch myth. Based on a qualitative study using archival data and in-depth interviews with self-proclaimed witches, we argue that the witch’s ambiguity originates in different mythopoetic cycles. Then, we describe the following processes through which consumers reclaim positive cycles: incarnating the myth, coming out to selected others and practising myth-related craft. Finally, we show that reclaiming results in new forms of heroic agency that amplify the myth’s ambiguity and identity value. Our results reveal that consumers cope with market-wide paradoxical injunctions, stressful situations and marginalisation by transforming these pressures into acts of self-heroism.