ABSTRACT
This chapter researches the concept of ‘the evil eye’ in the context of the anthropological concept of ‘the image of limited good’. These combined concepts form an epistemological base from which I examine the psychological, socio-economic, and political power relations that contribute to the curse position, with particular regard to envy and hostility. Folkloric beliefs in the evil eye, witchcraft, and occult cursing practices have, since ancient times, become sources of revenge and agency by the oppressed as a means of addressing subjugation by the oppressor. These social disparities are illustrated through anthropological and historical research concerning the Ethiopian buda, the Tanzanian Azande, and Thomas Hardy’s short story The Withered Arm. Jessica Benjamin’s concept of ‘rational violence’ offers a complementary feminist and psychoanalytic perspective to Emma Wilby’s historical research into witchcraft, with particular regard to the Western Enlightenment’s rejection of subjective, magical consciousness in favour of rationalist positivism. The chapter contains a case illustration concerning the envious evil eye and its related vicissitudes of transference and countertransference phenomena.
