“I humiliates be mistaken for agent fees or for an impresario came in Lucania to buy up musicians and singers. Humiliates me that men have to lower me contemporary, or rather the citizens of my country to the scientific research objects “. The false tax agent or contractor is Ernesto De Martino, the man who told the world the magic of the South, the splendors and miseries of a South that “goes beyond geography to become a region of the soul” .
Fifty years after his death, back to Donzelli (290 pages, 34euro) in a special edition of his most famous book, his first treasure that collects research on popular culture in Lucania. That is, “South and magic”, bravely first published by Feltrinelli, in 1959. And ‘available, for old and new players, the extraordinary story of ethnological expedition of ’52, between the ceremonial magic practices, sorcerers, the possessed and tarantolate country: an “ethnological expedition” that “shows the reasons for the persistence of magic category in Southern culture” at the dawn of the technological revolution that, for good or ill, make it disappear in the majority. Birth, love, struggle, death-existence- the critical moments are largely tax that remote rural world of magic and superstition, without denying the religious values. In the first part of the essay we analyze the phenomena related to “fascination”, in other words malignant influence of an ‘external entity on the mind of man, the evil eye, the possession, the nocturnal ligaments, the mass of the dead.
the analysis is enriched by testimonials, anecdotes and stories with the transposition of the dialect apotropaic formulas and the description of the rites can dispel the adverse powers. The second part is devoted to the study of a peculiar phenomenon, and one of a kind: the evil eye.
A restless and difficult man De Martino, a Neapolitan who could not find peace in any convenient niche, and methodological philosophical. He kept a portrait of the Cross in the study, but he thought that the way in which the philosopher meant the story was “lazy” and “rhetoric”, such as not being able to understand the reality of magic. So she bent to study phenomena and stories of minor and distant humanity. The objects of his research, mourning trance possession, the evil eye, were all outside the perimeter of rationality, but he approached, and still teaches at accostarcisi them, using primarily the tools of rationality. The research on the funeral lament, the magical practices and then on tarantolismo born live political activity, De Martino was first secretary of the Socialists and then the Communists in Bari.
A meridionalistico path, his, on the basis of Gramsci, Levi and Scotellaro, marked by concrete historical analysis and ethnographic and political participation to change, to stand at the closest point to the experience of the people in the flesh: “I would go into the homes of peasants as … a companion, as a seeker of men and forget human stories, which wants to become a participant, together with the men met, the foundation of a world. ” Field research, blessing for all human sciences that disorderly on the horizon at that time, is for him a continuous involvement and continues the company’s intellectual role definition. Photos of Franco Pinna (retrieved along with those of colleagues Girardi and Martin in this new edition that adds as a valuable addition, other texts and documents ethnological site from which it took the body of “South text and Magic”), sometimes show the same De Martino and scrutinizes a ritual or takes part. L ‘identification is a bit’ evidence that, to know deep in these phenomena as “magical”, you have to go inside and take a look not only the grids of rationality. De Martino also shows that, to study certain phenomena like magic, you need to weave different patterns and knowledge (history, philosophy, psychiatry) Penalty “shrink to expose mere lists of facts or pure speculation.” Explains Antonio Fanelli, curator with Fabio Of the volume, “he subtracts the purely popular culture as archaic, to preserve and conserve, capturing the traits of self-awareness, social awareness, protest abilities thus placing the subordinate social classes still at Eboli” in history.
He took the form (writes another ethnologist Antonio Pizza) what is now called “a theory from the south”: “a theory from the South,” as the subtitle of the American translation of ‘ South and magic ‘, a critical knowledge, that releases from popular life conducted at the margins in the state. The great technological, social and cultural factors that have radically changed the face of the country (and the South) have lost to “South and spell” the “topical” which, more than half a century ago, was “a splinter in the Middle Ages He caused a scandal “, because forced to take note that the deep Italy did not correspond to the image that the country had of himself.” But that “critical knowledge” can be enriched by other cornerstones of the reflection of De Martino, those on the theme of “crisis”, the “redemption” of “presence,” that is of being in the world of the popular classes, and “the close connection between cultural and “political subordination. If it is true, says Fanelli, that “de Martino poor southern and forgotten is nothing but the paradigm of any” presence crisis, many are today our ‘meridioni’: the decline of cultural homelands in the global world, the conflict between modernity and religion, the patient relationship, in consumer society like that of tarantolate, between body, health, and culture. “
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