[-empyre-] empyre Digest, Vol 68, Issue 9

[James Leach]

Kriss: I dont know if this has anything to do with cinema, but as you asked...
One of the things Anthropologists might say about magic is that it is (usually a derogatory) term western people use for the (practically oriented) actions of others that we dont understand (the mechanism for achieving effect). I think Malinowski said something along these lines...
If used positively in relation to our own practices, don't we we mean something like enchantment (or re-enchantment)?

We think airplanes and mobile phones must seem like magic to people who have never seen them and only imagined being able to fly. But my experience is that these things are actually 'magic' for us - we can't explain them or make them ourselves. They have marvellous effects for us: do things we consider amazing because they fit with a certain worldview in which the domination of nature, time, space etc. are core to the definition of the human we operate. 
People in Reite were pretty unimpressed by laptop computers for eg. - what is the effect of these things in doing things they value - feeding kin, growing bodies of others, having the kinds of effects that human beings should, as far as they are concerned? (Of course, with time, one could demonstrate such effects are possible to them, but that is not my point). 
But money seems like magic to people in Reite - it has no origin, and seems to have almost infinite potential effect on people. It is mysterious, and the source of its power opaque to say the least.
We think their rituals are evidence of 'belief' or 'magic', but to them they are just the practical and everyday way of ensuring the correct results from one's efforts. To make a ritual planting, ensuring the presence of the 'mother of taro' at the centre of one's garden of staple subsistence food looks like superstition to us - but in (their) reality, the taro grown in that garden is already destined for certain people, to grow particular bodies, and these things are indicated and anticipated by the form of the central planting, where those plants come from, which members of the family can tend the crops, how that crop will and can be valued as partaking of the mythic power to replace human bodies, or regenerate them  etc. etc. are all very practical elements of making that central planting (not to mention the botanical benefits of grouping certain plants together).
The effects the taro will have are therefore already established, the way people respond or react, the way kinship is taken forward, all set in motion by the act of 'magic' at the outset. 
I think technology is our brand of magic. It is specialised, has specialist practitioners, is taken for granted by most. You probably mean something rather different in relation to film... 


On 13 Jul 2010, at 17:07, Kriss Ravetto wrote:

> It would be interesting to see what
> James has to say about the interest in magic from the part of
> anthropology since much of the contemporary work on magic comes from
> that field or early modern history.