Magic and Modernity: Interfaces of Revelation and Concealment PDF
Preview Magic and Modernity: Interfaces of Revelation and Concealment
MAGIC AND MODERNITY Magic and Modernity Inteifaces ofR evelation and Concealment Edited by B I R G I T M E Y E R and P E T E R P E L S STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS STANFORD, CALIFORNIA 2003 Stanford University Press Stanford, California © 2003 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University All rights reserved Publication of this book was made possible in part by a grant from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO). Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Magic and modernity : interfaces of revelation and concealment I edited by Birgit Meyer and Peter Pels. p. em. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN o-8047-4463-7 - ISBN 0-8047-4464-5 1. Magic. 2. Divination. 3. Witchcraft. 4. Spiritualism. I. Meyer, Birgit. II. Pels, Peter. GN475·3 .M34 2003 306.4-dcZl 2oo20I475I Original Printing 2003 Last figure below indicates year of this printing: I2 II IO 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 Typeset by Classic Typography in 10II4 Janson CONTENTS Acknowledgments Vll Introduction: Magic and Modernity I Peter Pels I. Between Science and Superstition: Religion and the Modern Subject of the Nation in Colonial India 39 Gyan Prakash 2. Undying Past: Spirit Possession and the Memory of War in Southern Mozambique 6o Alcinda Honwana 3· Robert Kaplan and ''Juju Journalism" in Sierra Leone's Rebel War: The Primitivizing of an African Conflict 81 Rosalind Shaw 4· The Citizen's Trance: The Haitian Revolution and the Motor of History 103 Laurent Dubois 5· Hidden Forces: Colonialism and the Politics of Magic in the Netherlands Indies 129 Margaret]. Wiener 6. On Witch Doctors and Spin Doctors: The Role of "Experts" in African and American Politics 159 Peter Geschiere 7· The Magical Power of the (Printed) Word 183 Martha Knplan vi Contents 8. Ghanaian Popular Cinema and the Magic in and of Film 200 Birgit Meyer 9· Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: Modern Medicine Between Magic and Science 223 Jojada Verrips 10. Spirits of Modernity: Alfred Wallace, Edward Tylor, and the Visual Politics of Fact 241 Peter Pels II. Viscerality, Faith, and Skepticism: Another Theory of Magic 272 Michael Taussig Notes 3°7 References 343 Contributors 375 Index 379 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This book is the result of the conference Magic and Modernity that we orga nized in June 1997 at the University of Amsterdam. Apart from a small sub sidy from the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences (KNAW), the conference was largely funded by the Research Centre Religion and Society, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University of Amsterdam. We thank our col leagues at Religion and Society at the time-Gerd Baumann, Peter van Rooden, Patricia Spyer, and Peter van der Veer-for their characteristically generous intellectual and material support of our initiative. With two excep tions (Pels's introduction and his contribution to this book), all chapters in this volume are based on the presentations given during the conference by the authors. However, the conference would not have been such a suc cess, nor would the book have been composed in the same way, without the contributions-as paper presenters or as discussants-of Misty Bastian, Wim van Binsbergen, Filip de Boeck, Penelope Gouk, Edwina Hagen, Wouter Hanegraaff, Ute Luig, Tanya Luhrmann, Gananath Obeyesekere, Stephan Palmie, Peter van Rooden, Lyn Schumaker, Patricia Spyer, and Peter van der Veer. The production of a formally coherent manuscript would not have been possible without the support of Ingrid van de Broek and Nienke Muurling. We thank Brad Weiss, Vincent Crapanzano, and an anonymous reader for Stanford University Press for their enthusiastic and perceptive comments on the manuscript. At the Press, Nathan MacBrien expedited the review process, even when faced with a manuscript that was far too long yet (ac cording to both readers and editors) could not be reduced to a smaller size we thank Nathan for being so efficient and flexible. That problem was solved with a subsidy from the Internationalization Fund of theNe therlands Acknowledg;ments VIU Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO), for which we are very grateful. From the time of the manuscript's acceptance by the Press, Helen Tartar and Norris Pope took over from Nathan to expertly guide it into print. Last, we thank the University of Minnesota Press for the permission to reprint Michael Taussig's "Viscerality, Faith, and Skepticism: Another Theory of Magic" from Nicholas B. Dirks, ed., In Near Ruins: Cultural Theory at the End oft he Century (Minneapolis and London, 1998) in modified form. MAGIC AND MODERNITY
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