“Magic Discourse in the Ancient World”

Kimberly B. Stratton is an American scholar of religions of antiquity. Her book Naming the Witch: Magic, Ideology, and Stereotype in the Ancient World (2007) reviews and advances the status quo of the study of “magic” in Athens, Rome, early Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism. The book navigates a third way between the denial of the category of “magic” and its uncritical reception; her analysis points to the contextual contingency of “magic” (its polyvalence and shiftiness in its various appearances in different places and periods) and its discursive continuity throughout the Mediterranean. Her book pays attention to emic terminology but also proposes an etic approach to “magic” as a form of social discourse (cast in Foucaultian terms). In her contribution to this volume, Stratton shows how the concept of “magic”, once it was established in antiquity, became a powerful operator as a mode of social control and, at the same time, enabled people to engage in acts labelled as “magic”. Stereotypical conceptions of magic can take different shapes in different groups and do not necessarily mirror the actions of actual people; but Stratton also finds a remarkable consistency of ritual practices referred to as “magic” across the Mediterranean world in Graeco-Roman times.

MAGIC DISCOURSE IN THE ANCIENT WORLD

Magic as a category of human activity and scholarly enquiry has been subject to trenchant criticism during the past three decades.