David Frankfurter, Evil Incarnate: Rumors of Demonic Conspiracy and
Ritual Abuse in History.  Princeton:  Princeton University Press, 2006.
Pp. 312; 10 halftones.  ISBN 0-691-11350-5.  $29.95.

Reviewed by Heidi Marx-Wolf, University of California at Santa Barbara
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Word count:  2381 words
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Table of Contents
(http://www.loc.gov/catdir/enhancements/fy0654/2005044499-t.html)

At the end of Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum, the narrator, who has
recently witnessed the death of one of his friends at the hands of a
group of power hungry, gnosis-seeking occultists, realizes that soon
these same occultists will come after him, because they believe he is
in possession of a Map. But there is no Map. The narrator made up the
Map in the course of a game he and his editor colleagues devised, a
game that drew them into the world of the fanatical occultists. As he
is writing his final thoughts on his situation, he reflects on his
recent revelation that the true gnosis is that there is no ultimate
gnosis, that there is no knowledge or technique that will bring its
possessor power, immortality, cosmic insight. In other words, there is
no Map. He also knows that the crazed occultists who pursue him will
never understand this. They are blind to this revelation. "They of
little faith." And yet they are willing to perform all manner of evil
in pursuit of this illusion.

Eco's ending bears a striking resemblance to the most salient
conclusions of David Frankfurter's most recent book, Evil Incarnate:
Rumors of Demonic Conspiracy and Ritual Abuse in History. In this work,
Frankfurter explores the social phenomenon of belief in evil conspiracy
throughout Western history from the second century C.E. to the very
recent past (1990s). By looking for similarities between accusations of
cannibalism, incest and child sacrifice leveled against early
Christians, the witch hunts of the late medieval and early modern
periods, panics about Jewish ritual murders from the same centuries,
the Satanic Ritual Abuse (SRA) movement in North America and the United
Kingdom in the 1980s and 1990s, and modern day witch hunts in Africa,
Frankfurter argues that in each case an actual evil conspiracy never
existed. Instead, in each case a myth about the demonic or Satanic was
both constructed and performed. The tragic outcome of this performance
is often the torture, punishment, imprisonment or even murder of the
supposed participants in the conspiracy, and this outcome is the
genuine evil that arises from such mythic constructions. "The real
atrocities of history seem to take place not in the perverse ceremonies
of some evil cult but rather in the course of purging such cults from
the world" (12).

What drew Frankfurter's attention to this topic is the consistency with
which a number of components of this myth occur, signaling a pattern
across time. These components include abducted, abused, sacrificed
children, people whose inclinations and habits mark them as not quite
people, and the authoritative ways in which these stories are
performed. His aim is not, however, to present some timeless archetype,
some universal social or psychological essence, but rather to uncover
recurring patterns of thinking about Otherness and inversion.

Although he gives a great deal of detail about the specific case
studies he uses to make his argument, Frankfurter's goal is not to
investigate each case within its particular social, political and
intellectual context or to produce a history of myths of demonic
conspiracy. Rather, his aim is to explore the construction of these
myths as a social phenomenon. In other words, theoretical
considerations take precedence over historical ones. Frankfurter is
known for his elegant and innovative use of interdisciplinary
theoretical models for investigating topics that pertain to late
antique religion, in particular the religious landscape of late Roman
Egypt. He has drawn on recent work in anthropology and sociology for
many of his publications. His approach is derived from the field of
religious studies, and his methodology and the kinds of questions he
investigates serve as a model for scholars who work on similar topics.
In this new study, he takes his theoretical bent even further, drawing
on psychoanalytic insights to account for what he describes as "primary
process thinking" involved in the production of the more fantastical
and perverse elements of these myths of demonic conspiracy.

In his Introduction and second chapter, Frankfurter presents one of his
most compelling ideas, namely that myths of evil conspiracy emerge in
contexts where local religious worlds encounter larger universal
systems that produce totalizing discourses about evil. Within these
local religious worlds, misfortune and danger are accounted for in
terms of malicious or capricious spirits or specific marginal
individuals on the fringe of communities. But with the introduction of
a totalizing discourse, often by self-proclaimed experts who come into
the local context from outside, these spirits are fitted into a
universal structure that lends them an added significance and makes
them dangerous in an ultimate sense. This totalizing discourse takes
the form of a demonology, a discourse about the entire range of
potentially malign spirits. In some sense then, demonology is "the
collection, classification and integration of demons out of their
immediate social context, as a function of religious centralization"
(15). One example Frankfurter uses to demonstrate this encounter is the
way Zoroastrianism recast older local spirits within a more universal
framework and gave them a moral valence. These ancient spirits were no
longer merely ad hoc, hostile or ambiguous beings. They became evil.

The production of demonologies is usually done by self-defined experts
acting under the auspices of centralizing institutions. In Chapter
Three, Frankfurter discusses the range of these experts who claim to
have the ability to reveal the global system behind inchoate
misfortune. These include prophets, missionaries, inquisitors,
witch-finders, social workers, police, psychologists and even the
possessed or formerly possessed themselves. Frankfurter claims that
these experts do not merely explain the experience of everyday
misfortune, they fundamentally change it. Furthermore, through their
activities of representing and projecting the conspiracy onto the local
for others, experts gain charisma for themselves.

Chapters Four and Five explicate the common features of the stories
that these experts convey to their audiences, the actual content of
many of these myths of evil conspiracy. Frankfurter's argument is that
the commonality of many of these features is neither accidental nor the
reflection of some essential or universal psychological trait of human
nature. Rather, their consistency derives from reflection about
inversions of "prevailing notions of proper liturgy, sacrifice,
sacrament, or ceremonial behavior" as well as a "deeper element of
speculation about humanness and savagery, about local maleficence and a
greater evil, and about ritual itself as an ambivalent aspect of
society and tradition" (75). In other words, inversion is the mode
through which human beings think about the Other in their midst. This
is why child sacrifice, cannibalism and the use of impure substances
figure so universally in many of these constructions. Frankfurter's
treatment of early modern fantasies of the witches' Sabbat ritual
reveals the way these fantasies brought together various notions of
danger and may have even drawn on Protestant suspicion of ritual in
general.

Chapter Five takes this argument about inversion and otherness one step
further. Here Frankfurter draws on psychoanalytic insights to account
for the content of the "tableaus of perversion" produced in the course
of the construction of myths of Satanic conspiracy. His argument is
that these tableaus are not merely the result of groups attempting to
clarify differences between themselves and the Other in their midst
through modes of inversion. Rather, they are as much the outcome of
voyeuristic participation. In other words, their construction allows
for the imaginative participation in perversions and atrocities, a
transgressive enjoyment. Frankfurter points to what he calls the "sheer
pornographic inventiveness" of many of these tableaus, the graphic
details of which cause many to ask: "who could think up such bizarre
and horrifying things -- they must be true." On this point, he invokes
Georges Bataille, the quintessential philosopher on transgression.
Frankfurter writes, "imaginative inversion offers the experience of
transgression from the vantage point of taboo, the projection of
desires within a framework of censure" (154). One extreme example of
this projection that the book explores is that of inquisitors in early
modern witch trials. These clerics were able to observe, probe and
subject naked female bodies to torture in the course of their
investigations. These actions required a proximity and intimacy with
women that would never be allowed these men in their usual roles, but
were permitted in the context of censure during the witch trial.

The question remains, however, of why large groups of people come to
believe in these tableaus and myths if they are only imaginative
constructions, and particularly perverse ones at that? According to
Frankfurter, it is because these myths are performed. In other words,
they gain reality through social acts and social experience. Chapter
Six classifies various kinds of mimetic performances and their
performers. Some of these performers act directly, others indirectly,
some performances are coerced, others voluntary. In the case of the SRA
myth, performers include "survivors", television show hosts, their
audiences, therapists, exorcists, and so forth. Furthermore, those who
parody the myth in their roles as self-identifying Satanists, as a form
of social deviance, also make a contribution to the performance by
confirming stereotypical behaviors and appearances.

In his final chapter, Frankfurter returns to one of his most salient
and, in this reviewer's opinion, most timely points, namely that the
true evil that arises from myths of demonic conspiracy is that which is
wrought when groups seek to purge supposed participants and culprits
from their midst, be they Christians in the late Roman world, Jews or
witches in any number of time periods. He saves his most dramatic
demonstration of this point for the final paragraph of the book in
which he documents recent cases of actual ritual abuse. A chilling
footnote records at least nine cases, all children, who were either
abused or killed in the course of mainstream Christian exorcisms over
the past ten years.

Evil Incarnate quite successfully does what it claims to do, namely
explore a social phenomenon, the way in which a certain kind of myth
has functioned in different historical circumstances to produce social
cohesion and to provide a medium for thinking about danger, inversion
and otherness. One of the strengths of the project is Frankfurter's
consistent resolve not to engage in the prurient curiosity of many
scholars about whether or not there is any grain of truth in any of the
accusations brought against, for instance, early Christians or medieval
witches. This resolve in turn allows Frankfurter to provide fresh
insight into issues that his study only peripherally touches on. For
instance, in a fascinating aside on theories of sacrifice in the social
sciences, he challenges the view of Freud, Girard, Burkert, Durkheim,
Turner and Eliade, all of whom suppose in some way or other that
sacrifice revolves around ecstatic killing, a killing in which some
intrinsic life force or power is released. Frankfurter's claim is that
these modern theories rely on classical literary fantasies to "assemble
a theory of ritual power to explain rituals that have no forensic
evidence" (124). The book in general is very rich in tantalizing and
controversial asides of this sort.

One question that readers might ask is what a book that is essentially
a religious studies project, and one that only cursorily touches upon
issues or events pertaining to the ancient world, might have to offer
scholars in classics or ancient history. I would like to suggest that
the aforementioned way that David Frankfurter works with theoretical
models and insights from other disciplines can serve as an example to
scholars of earlier time periods. Many historians of the ancient world
affirm the importance of interdisciplinary approaches to their topics,
but it is difficult to find studies where this intention is realized as
more than a veneer. Evil Incarnate also provides scholars with a wide
range of interesting avenues for further study. Given the book's broad
historical scope, many of the questions and topics it raises for
scholars working in late antiquity deserve further investigation. For
instance, although many historians have challenged the view of E.R.
Dodds and others that the late Roman period was one in which people
were more anxious, spiritually curious and credulous, and hence more
prone to thinking about misfortune and fate in terms of the
intervention of a broader range of spiritual intermediaries, very few
writers have suggested satisfactory alternatives. Frankfurter's study
of demonic conspiracy provides fresh impetus for exploring questions
about late antique demonology in its Christian, Jewish and
pagan/Neo-Platonic forms. Frankfurter also suggests avenues for
comparative research between time period, something which few
historians are willing to attempt but which can be very fruitful. Few
scholars, for example, have explored the very interesting parallels
between the religious world of the late Roman period and the early
modern one where we see similar religious tensions at play.

I do not have any substantial critiques of the book. Readers should be
aware that because of his stated purpose and nature of the project,
Frankfurter mainly engages with secondary sources throughout much of
the book. His sections on Satanic Ritual Abuse tend to make more use of
primary materials than others. And although his sources are
well-documented, it is not always clear how he is making use of them in
the context of his own theoretical considerations. For instance, if the
reader wants to gain a sense of how Frankfurter's use of the work of
particular writers in the psychoanalytic tradition fits in with that
tradition and its debates more generally, she will have to do a
substantial amount of reading beyond the book itself. Frankfurter could
also be clearer about why he feels the need to depart from sociological
and anthropological models at the junctures where he draws on
psychoanalytic theory. The move is an interesting and effective one,
but given the somewhat checkered relations between history and
psychoanalytic modes of thinking in earlier scholarly epochs, more
explanation for this choice would be helpful to the reader.

Finally, because the book is not strictly a historical study, it may
leave the reader with a good number of new and unanswered questions of
a historical sort. But as I mentioned before, the stated aim of the
book is not to explore the phenomenon of myths of evil conspiracy in
detailed historical contexts. Hence it is up Frankfurter's readers to
follow up on the many promising avenues of inquiry he suggests and to
find the many devils, so to speak, in the details.


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