CONGRESS CANCELED To Better Conjure the Dead: Toward a Historical Anthropology of Islamic Magic (A Roundtable)
Description
Historians of Islamic Magic, ironically, have often made poor mediums for their medieval occultist dead: the strict, natal divide in Islamic studies between philology and anthropology has allowed orientalists to simply ignore the ontologies of their sources in reflexive scientistic fashion, or even to openly scorn them. But such methodological and ethical follies are now forbidden the anthropologist, who must bracket out not the cosmology (occult or otherwise) of her interlocutors but her own. If they are to finally escape the 19th century and its brutal reality wars, Islamicist historians of Magic will need to better emulate their anthropologist colleagues.
This roundtable brings together historians and anthropologists to explore the ways in which a historical anthropology of Islamic Magic—and Western Magic more broadly—might be possible. Is it legitimate to look to modern practices to understand medieval ones? To what extent is firsthand knowledge of occult-scientific praxis a prerequisite for understanding occult-philosophical theory? Who can better channel the magical dead, the crusty philologist or the living mage? Matthew Melvin-Koushki
CONGRESS CANCELED To Better Conjure the Dead: Toward a Historical Anthropology of Islamic Magic (A Roundtable)
Sangren 1710
Historians of Islamic Magic, ironically, have often made poor mediums for their medieval occultist dead: the strict, natal divide in Islamic studies between philology and anthropology has allowed orientalists to simply ignore the ontologies of their sources in reflexive scientistic fashion, or even to openly scorn them. But such methodological and ethical follies are now forbidden the anthropologist, who must bracket out not the cosmology (occult or otherwise) of her interlocutors but her own. If they are to finally escape the 19th century and its brutal reality wars, Islamicist historians of Magic will need to better emulate their anthropologist colleagues.
This roundtable brings together historians and anthropologists to explore the ways in which a historical anthropology of Islamic Magic—and Western Magic more broadly—might be possible. Is it legitimate to look to modern practices to understand medieval ones? To what extent is firsthand knowledge of occult-scientific praxis a prerequisite for understanding occult-philosophical theory? Who can better channel the magical dead, the crusty philologist or the living mage? Matthew Melvin-Koushki