Thanks for the references. As far as I know, Stengers doesn't refer to
Taussig. She is coming from a different current - Deleuze and Guattari's
ideas about sorcery in A Thousand Plateaus (and you need more than a glass
of rum to read that, by the way). Recently, she seems to have become
completely Deleuzian, and is now intent upon defending all the most
outrageous suggestions in A Thousand Plateaus, to very interesting effect.
At the moment, it's not really clear to me in what sense she wants to defend
the idea of sorcery. It depends on how seriously she is taking Deleuze and
Guattari's idea of it. Deleuze has a background in occult philosophy
(Malfatti, Wronski and Bergson) and one of his first interests was in the
esoteric notion of mathesis. In A Thousand Plateaus with Guattari, however,
the discussion of sorcery is concentrated on animal transformations. I'm not
sure how deep Stengers' references to 'empowerment' in sorcery run... She
refers to Starhawk fairly frequently.
It is an extremely interesting event in the theoretical world in any case.
Christian
On Sun, 19 Mar 2006 09:06:20 -0800, Stephen Wemeyer <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:
>Greetings,
>
>The Taussig work to which Justin refers, for the record, is "The Devil and
>Commodity Fetishism." Taussig revisits similar themes, in a somewhat more
>creative, po-mo style in his later work "Magic of the State" which treats
>the complex relationships between market imperialism and Venezuelan
sorcery.
>
>
>Strongly recommended, although I generally find a glass of rum or something
>similarly bracing is a necessary companion when negotiating Taussig's
prose.
>
>Stephen C. Wehmeyer
>Liberal Studies
>CSUN & Otis College of Art & Design
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Society for The Academic Study of Magic
>[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Justin Woodman
>Sent: Sunday, March 19, 2006 6:01 AM
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: [ACADEMIC-STUDY-MAGIC] La Sorcellerie capitaliste
>
>There appears to be a similar trend evident in anthropology in the work of
>Peter Geschiere (1997, 'The Modernity of Witchcraft') and Jean & John
>Comaroff's edited collection ('Modernity and its Malcontents') amongst
>others. Also of interested is the more recent collection edited by Brigit
>Meyer and Peter Pels, 'Magic and Modernity: Interfaces of Revelation and
>Concealment' (2003). The impetus of much of this work refers back to
>Michael Taussig's classic study of the 'magical' beliefs of the Bolivian
>peasantry as a form of resistance to the 'unnatural' and 'sorcerous'
>aspects of capitalism, and ultimately back to Marx's notion of commodity
>fetishism.
>
>Justin
>
>> Has anybody here read Isabelle Stengers recent book (with P. Pignarre)
>> 'La
>> Sorcellerie capitaliste', published last year? It's not translated yet.
>>
>>
>> Isabelle Stengers is a highly respected philosopher of science (she
>> co-wrote 'Order out of Chaos' with Ilya Prigogine). In her recent
writings
>> and in this new book, she has been claiming that capitalism makes use of
>> practices of sorcery, and that those who wish to resist capitalism can
>> learn from 'neo-pagan' sources about means of 'de-bewitchment'
>> (desenvoutement). She
>> has said that she now wants to take on the name 'witch', which she of
>> course realises will cause a frisson of anxiety among her current
>> readership! Recently, she also translated one of Starhawk's books into
>> French.
>>
>>
>> Would anyone like to discuss this work here or off-list?
>>
>>
>
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