ABSTRACT
The perception that knowledge, codified in a discourse, is power is one that has been principally used to analyse dominant discourses such as medicine, psychiatry, law and schooling, and the institutions and practices in which they are located. Such discourses, though, take the form they do only because they emerge out of struggle with others, which are also shaped by this shifting conflict. This article is an examination of one of these others, what one might call a discourse of the dominated: magic. It is based on my own fieldwork, carried out in southern Italy, beginning in 1969 in the region of Apulia, and will focus on three phenomena within this discourse: the evil eye, love magic and tarantismo. In the article I shall argue that magic in this area is one available language, or narrative, in which to think about and act upon a crisis. That those who do so use it are predominantly women from the classes of peasants, artisans and casual labourers needs explanation, and this will be explored through an examination of three of the dominant discourses, and the strategies they recommend. These, I shall argue, both set up the terms in which personal crisis is understood and offer strategies to resolve it, one of which largely excludes women. Magic, in contrast, though it is on the one hand a discourse about victimization, is on the other also about empowerment. It is itself, therefore, an ambiguous-and hence dangerous-discourse. Before looking at this local situation, however, something needs to be said more generally about magic and its study in contemporary Europe.
