Deadly Words: Witchcraft in the Bocage

by Jeanne Favret-Saada, Catherine Cullen (Translator)

This 1980 book examines witchcraft beliefs and experiences in the Bocage, a rural area of western France. It also introduced a powerful theoretical attitude towards the progress of the ethnographer's enquiries, suggesting that a full knowledge of witchcraft involves being 'caught up' in it oneself. In the Bocage, being bewitched is to be 'caught' in a sequence of misfortunes. According to those who are bewitched, the culprit is someone in the neighbourhood: the witch, who can cast a spell with a word, a touch or a look, and whose 'power' comes from a book of spells inherited from an ancestor. Only a professional magician, an 'unwitcher', has any chance of breaking the succession of misfortunes which befall those who have been bewitched. He undertakes a battle of magic with the suspected witch, a battle which is eventually fatal.

Genres: Anthropology, Nonfiction, History, France, Witchcraft, Read For School, Religion

284 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1979

Reviews

[M- · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cette enquête ethnographique montre que la sorcellerie fait partie intégrante du tissu social de la paysannerie normande où la mort (celle des bêtes, des cultures, des gens) est omniprésente. Toutes les interactions sont basées sur un échange de "force", déséquilibré dans le cas d'une interaction avec sorcier/désorceleur. Il n'y a aucun moyen d'y échapper dès lors qu'on interagit avec les autres et partage avec eux le même espace social. Toute tentative de résistance critique est vaine car elle vous marque comme un non-initié en même temps qu'elle vous exclut, les différents médecins et curés rencontrés dans ce livre en sont la preuve. Pour espérer comprendre la persistance de la sorcellerie, il faut y céder ! Et pour cela, savoir employer les mots qui signaleront à votre interlocuteur que vous partagez sa croyance. La chercheuse montre donc également l'importance jouée par le langage quand les sorciers et leurs sorts sont toujours désignés de manière oblique ou en mobilisant des euphémismes ("on est pris", "quelqu'un nous est tombé dessus"). Mais savoir poser des mots sur des maux doit s'apprendre, parfois dans le cadre d'une psychothérapie à laquelle s'apparente par bien des aspects le désorcèlement.
Lecture passionnante si on ne s'est pas laissé décourager par les cent premières pages.

[Chatasiareads · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had to read this book for my History of Anthropological Thought class and it’s actually pretty interesting when looking at the relationships and beliefs of a community that does not talk about the main subject of this ethnography and the struggles of dealing with that in a field that is mainly composed of learning information through speaking with others

[Lucile · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incroyable enquête de l'ethnographe qui doit repenser sa place en tant que sujet.

[Élo ♡ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lecture pour mon cours d’anthropologie.
Si le départ est un peu difficile c’est normal vu qu’elle pose les bases et explique les difficultés matérielles de son travail d’ethnographie, les attentes et mise en pratique (en gros sa rencontre avec le Bocage Poitevin). Mais la suite est vraiment intéressante j’ai trouvé ça bien écrit, on se plonge avec plaisir dans les scénarios d’agressions.
Effectivement on prend bien conscience que pour comprendre la magie comme phénomène social il est difficile de ne pas « être pris ».

[Gilles Russeil · Rating 4 out of 5]

L'ethnographie comme un sport de combat : la plongée d'1 jeune chercheuse dans le bocage normand à la rencontre des ensorcelés. Après des mois d'impasse, elle comprend que la sorcellerie cela se vit. Passionnant

[Miriam Blair · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pas du tout à quoi je m'attendais (je l'ai commencé en croyant me plonger dans un roman de fantaisie), mais assez intéressant pour que j'en poursuive la lecture.

[PULRULCZYK · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lu pour mes cours de MTU Anthropologie premier semestre, super bonne approche de la matière. Cela peut se lire comme un récit.

[Max · Rating 4 out of 5]

brillant et cassant

[Sophie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Plongée très intéressante dans le monde de la sorcellerie, fascinant de voir Jeanne Favret-Saada décoder les mécanismes du langage. Recommandé par le GDS

[Tim Neale · Rating 4 out of 5]

In Deadly Words, Favret-Saada gives us some sense of how witchcraft survives as a supplement to other sources of explanation. Unlike the Zande (whose understanding of witchcraft was famously examined by E. Evans-Pritchard), for most people in the Bocage witchcraft is not the primary source of why unfortunate or unexpected things happen. Witchcraft “gives a pattern to misfortunes which are repeated and range over the persons and belongings” (1977: 6) but generally only after people have sought out other explanations from other sources (e.g., doctors, priests). People want both an interpretation and a cure for their misfortunes and these conventional and official sources cannot always provide it to a satisfactory level. Science might explain what is happening in one domain (e.g., why my cows are producing sour milk) but not the coincidence with misfortunes in another domain (e.g., why my child is also physically sick). Similarly, a priest might explain the coincidence of misfortunes across domains (e.g., an example of divine love, or the work of the devil) but not provide a compelling or convincing cure (e.g., prayer). The unwitcher (désorceler), as Favret-Saada argues, becomes most useful “at the end of convention.” This is not to say that witchcraft is peripheral, not at all, but that it has a particular role in the web of rationalities people use.

There are many other interesting elements of witchcraft described by Favret-Saada. For example, it is relatively “poor” in formal rituals. It operates primarily through performative situated speech or words said to someone in a time and place. These words are spoken but they are not spells in the sense that the content of those words is not very important but rather the intent, which can be completely hidden from the observer. As Favret-Saada writes, “nothing so resembles the characteristic weapons of the magician (words, look and touch) as an innocent ‘how are you?’ followed by a handshake.” Another interesting aspect is witchcraft’s material dimensions (again, to recall Zande witchcraft, that is a psychic-material act), based in the physical presence of magic in the witch’s body. In the Bocage, mystical power operates from particular powerful objects but what those objects are is very uncertain and can change (and Favret-Saada is not particularly interested in them). But, while it is produced through spoken words, it attacks the “body” of the person. What body exactly though? The body of the patriarch or “head” of an estate, which as Favret-Saada describes includes “his own body and those of his family, his land and all his possessions.” Collectively these different things “make up a single surface full of holes” through which the evil of witchcraft might penetrate at any time and attack the patriarch.

Compared to a lot of more recent ethnographies, Deadly Words is written in a more narrative style, though one that avoids giving us much of clear plot or structure to cling to. Much of the book feels like a prelude to further work (and reading Anti-Witch afterwards is quite helpful), explaining why one should both taking contemporary witchcraft seriously or ask different questions than whether or not it is "real." It is clearly real in the lives of those who experience it.

For Favret-Saada, the ways in which anthropologists have examined witchcraft have tended to place too much focus on using it as a diagnostic for “structural tensions” within a society. Natives to a context have some sense of those tensions (e.g., about neighbours, local competition) and the dynamics of witchcraft can be understood to “resolve” those tensions. But this correlation does not fit her experience of the Bocage, where it is the family that is the primary source of tensions but they are not the focus of witchcraft dynamics. Instead, it is neighbours who are the source of witchcraft and its resolution, even though it is problems of the family (e.g., inheritance, sexual discrimination) that are the source of social violence, hatred and ill-will. As Favret-Saada writes, one key role of witchcraft in the Bocage is “to mediate a step [farmers] have failed to take” such as settling family dramas of inheritance and resource-sharing.

[Ophelie B · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Les mots, la mort, les sorts" se présente comme une enquête ethnologique sur la sorcellerie dans le Bocage. De nombreux témoignages viennent étayer l'étude structurée et détaillée de J. Favret-Saada.
Cette étude a demandé un investissement personnel de l’ethnologue qui s'est laissé "prendre" par la sorcellerie.

[Mills College Library]

133.43 F277 2010

[Dr. Barrett Dylan Brown, Phd · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another decent witchcraft Anthropoligist; how come I never heard of these people in school?