Article ID: CBB275559030

Attualità del Mondo magico (2023)

unapi

The catastrophic changes of a globalised planet have transformed the relationships between human beings, nature and technology. The interconnectedness of environmental, economic and identity crises exposes us to the perception of an ungovernable, precarious and out-of-control world. Within this framework, reading Ernesto De Martino’s The Magical World (1948) can be an invigorating experience: by proposing a prehistory of subjectivity in three acts (anguish, crisis and redemption), the historical drama of the magic world presents us with a phenomenology of the crisis that affects human communities when the horizons of signification narrow and the domesticity of the world are lost. The impasse is overcome through recourse to the mythical-ritual device and the continuous process of humanisation and stabilisation of the real, which, infusing ‘domesticity’ into reality, at the same time transforms ritual actors from passive succubi of uncontrollable forces and phenomena into active subjects, builders of meaning at the centre of a world that makes sense. An authentic book of the year zero, despite or perhaps because of the contradictions that animate it, the Magical World can still profoundly speak to us.

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Authors & Contributors
Agar, Jon E.
Beattie, James
Cutcliffe, Stephen H.
Douglas, Kirsty
Garden, Don
Gioielli, Robert
Journals
Mefisto: Rivista di medicina, filosofia, storia
History and Technology
Public Understanding of Science
Publishers
Routledge
Temple University Press
UCL Press
University of Chicago Press
University of North Carolina Press
University of Pennsylvania Press
Concepts
Environment
Technology and environment, relationship
Climate change
Geography
Colonialism
Urban history
People
De Martino, Ernesto
Time Periods
20th century
19th century
21st century
18th century
Medieval
Renaissance
Places
Australia
Asia
New Zealand
United States
Great Britain
Chicago (Illinois, U.S.)
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