Hi Jacqueline,

My ritual/ magic-as-art metaphor worked best in my study of US Neopaganism and revival Witchcraft, where practitioners who for the most part did not start out with an enchanted worldview reclaimed religious practices in which magic is integral.  Like Caroline in earlier posts, I was fascinated by ritual as an aesthetic experience, and tried applying the metaphor to magic, since for Neopagans magic and ritual are closely intertwined.

I think the metaphor works less well in traditional contexts, such as what you describe; I agree that the attribution of evil to witchcraft or another supernatural source is more like what we categorize as religion than art.  Still, among the healers I studied in Campania and the Apennine last summer and fall, there is an art to curing, to counter-magic.  There is certainly a performance aspect to the healings; some healers are much more showy than others.  But even the most low-key ones are conscious of a kind of aesthetic in their work: things need to be done in a particular order, at a given time, in a specific place.  In cases in which music and dance are part of the cure, the magic quite literally *is* art.

In response to the second part of your post, I would never say that only an insider can understand and write about a particular religion or practice.  The whole idea is anathema not only to my anthropological/ folkloristic intellectual formation, but to humanism as a whole.  But then, you know what I think about categories such as "insider" and "outsider" -- I'm not keen on them at all, because they essentialize the very categories they claim to be elucidating.  This kind of essentialization goes against everything we know about identity as construct, and as such shifting, negotiated and contextual.  

Like Luhrmann, I too did fieldwork among Witches, Pagans and other magical practitioners.  Ultimately I became one, and have continued to practice after the end of my field project and publication of my works.  To people who want to know whether I write as an insider or an outsider, my answer is that my identity depends very much on where I am at any given moment, and on who my audience is.  For me, the essence of ethnography is that ability to shift easily and at will between frames of reference, worldviews and points of view, and to be able to make those views clear to all audiences.  In some of my written work, I've experimented with using different fonts when I write experientially and when I write analytically as a scholar, representing on the page the process of shifting consciousness that characterizes ethnographic work.   Ultimately, I believe writing ethnography is itself a magical act, as Stephen Tyler suggests in his essay "Postmodern Ethnography" (in Clifford & M!
ar!
!
cus, _Writing Culture_).

But then, as someone who grew up between two cultures, speaking several languages almost from birth, this back-and-forth shifting of consciousness, as well as the obviously relative nature of all identity, seems as natural to me as breathing.  From someone else's perspective, it may all very well sound like crazy postmodern psychobabble.

BB,
Sabina




---- Original message ----
>Date: Tue, 14 Feb 2006 23:42:43 +0000
>From: jacqueline simpson <[log in to unmask]>  
>Subject: Re: [ACADEMIC-STUDY-MAGIC] Methodology: WAS Persuasions of the Witch's Craft  
>To: [log in to unmask]
>
>Sabina --
>
>Your art-centred approach is interesting. I hadn't
>thought along those lines. To me, the analogy of the
>kinds of magic I've come across (only once in real
>life)is more with religion in its explanatory
>function. 'Why is my child sick, and why are my cows
>dying? It can't be chance, and I don't believe it's
>God's will. So, what evil supernatural force is at
>work? What counterforce can i summon to protect my
>household?'
>
>And the problems (re Tanya L etc) that have been aired
>on this list in the last few days are similar to those
>arising when academics study a religion without being
>committed to belief in it, an attempt which
>immediately rouses anger among the believers. But are
>we to say that only those who actually believe in Om
>should write books about the Omnian religion (names
>taken from Terry Pratchett's 'Discworld' fantasies)?
>If so, we're going down the road which leads to
>religious segregation, factionalism and feuding -- we
>can supply real-life examples pretty easily, can't we?
>
>Jacqueline
>
>
>
>
>
>--- Sabina Magliocco <[log in to unmask]>
>wrote:
>
>> Grant wrote: 
>> 
>> "I think the discussion of Luhrmann brings one key
>> question, one that >Glucklich clearly identifies in
>> his disappointingly sparse _End of >Magic_. 
>> Theories of magic, from their getgo, have relied on
>> a model: >Magic clearly doesn't work, but magic
>> seems to have a functional 
>> >orientation, so we need to have a theoretical
>> account of why people do >that....." 
>> 
>> I think one of the reasons anthropological theories
>> of magic have failed to grapple with its nature to
>> anyone's satisfaction is that they inevitably regard
>> magic as faulty technology.  In trying to avoid the
>> problematic categorization of "magic" that Grant
>> elucidates so well later on in his post, I have in
>> my own work ventured a different approach: I treat
>> magic (and ritual) as an art form, the same way I
>> would treat dance, music or craft, from a
>> folkloristic point of view.  Art, too, involves
>> technology, but its efficaciousness is evaluated
>> differently from that of a scientific technology. 
>> It works mostly on human emotions, although it can
>> certainly bring about social and cultural change; it
>> affects reality. 
>> 
>> Approaching magic as art allowed me to make two
>> kinds of analyses that were central to my argument: 
>> 1) to analyze magic and ritual *as performances*,
>> noting the performers, the intended audience
>> (including other performers), the context (both the
>> micro-context within the group and the larger
>> social-political context), the design of the ritual
>> itself, and the interplay of all these factors; and 
>> 2) to argue that one of the aims of magic/ ritual is
>> the achievement of an affective state, a change of
>> consciousness, in some cases, and to examine how
>> each component of the performance was designed to
>> contribute to that state. 
>> 
>> Magical practitioners themselves argue about how
>> magic works, and whether a particular working has
>> been effective or not.  These kinds of discussions
>> remind me of similar ones that have taken place in
>> bands I have played in regarding whether an
>> evening's gig was good or not, whether we were "in
>> the zone," and how we affected our audience.   
>> 
>> Ultimately I think one of the ways in which magic
>> works is by bringing about strong affective states
>> in participants, inlcuding in some cases alternate
>> states of consciousness.  I don't know whether this
>> gets us completely out of the bind of Western
>> post-Enlightenment ethnocentrism about magic, but it
>> was a useful development in my own thought
>> processes, and so I share it here as food for
>> thought. 
>> 
>> Sabina 
>> 
>> Sabina Magliocco
>> Associate Professor
>> Department of Anthropology
>> California State University
>> 18111 Nordhoff St.
>> Northridge, CA  91330-8244
>> 
>
>
>
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>___________________________________________________________ 
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Sabina Magliocco
Associate Professor
Department of Anthropology
California State University
18111 Nordhoff St.
Northridge, CA  91330-8244