Magic, religion, and the South: notes on Ernesto De Martino

Abstract

This article deals with the work of the Italian anthropologist, ethnographer, and historian of religions Ernesto De Martino (1908–1965) and, more specifically, with his ‘ethnographic expeditions’ in Southern Italy in the 1950s. Here, in some of the poorest regions of Italy, De Martino carefully examined the intermingling of popular religion, magic rituals, and official Catholicism. Beyond the specific context of post-World War II Southern Italy, De Martino’s work offers a sophisticated framework to study humanity’s relationship with the sacred, which can be helpful to historians, anthropologists, and sociologists examining religious practices, beliefs, and experiences across time, space and place. More specifically, De Martino’s framework can encourage scholars to better foreground the influence of historical contexts on cultural forms and psychic constellations, the stratification and intersection of popular and official forms of religion, and the cultural and symbolic role of magic and religion.

Keywords:

• Ernesto De Martino
• ritual magic
• popular religion
• Catholicism
• Southern Italy
• crisis of presence

Notes

1. Tarantismo continued to be practiced until the 1960s, when it slowly declined. It is now being reclaimed by New Age aficionado and interpreted a kind of shamanism or doorway to personal ecstasy; see Del Giudice (2005).

2. For De Martino, the ‘oppositional character’ of folklore could become a progressive force only in so far it expressed ‘the people’s conscious alternative against its own subaltern situation, or everything that comments on and expresses in cultural terms its fight for emancipation’ (1951a; see also 1951b). In other words, popular culture could become progressive only if and when it would convey new conscious autonomous expressive forms that articulated protest against domination, and at the same time intended to break with the tradition of high and bourgeois culture. Thus, for De Martino the function of (progressive) intellectuals should have been not simply education but rather the mediation of a complex process of cultural transformation—which was what he attempted with his own work. De Martino’s theses raised an intense debate and were attacked by the ‘official’ intellectuals of the Italian Communist Party.