Silvia Mancini

Comparativism in the history of religions: Some models and key issues

Abstract The purpose of this article is to defend a specific epistemological position, which the author places in the context of twomodes of comparativismfrequently practised in the comparative studies of some culturalproductions commonly subsumed under the adjective ‘religious’. These are, on the one hand, an anthropological/analogical comparison bent upon ‘generalizing’; on the other hand, a comparison of a historical type, which looks for ‘singularities’. Both are based on the distinction between the ‘universal’ and the ‘particular’. The author distances herself fromboth positions andmakes a plea for another one, called ‘differential comparativism’,which is based on the distinction between the ‘general’ and the ‘differential’. She submits that this third approach proves to be historically and empiricallymore firmly grounded, therefore epistemologicallymore fruitful.For the historianof religions, it has notably the advantage of serving as an efficient antidote against various risks. These risks are, namely, the essentialism which is implicit in any religiously, anti-historically oriented phenomenology; an also often implicit agnosticism; an empiricismlimited to themere, a-problematic description of the so-called religious phenomena; and, last but not least, an absolute cultural relativism. This form of comparativism, called ‘differential’, has already brought about remarkable results in the History of Religions, mainly thanks to the works of the scholars of the School of Rome founded by Raffaele Pettazzoni. The latter was, indeed, the first who successfully tried to reconcile the necessity of a truly historical knowledge of civilizations with the holistic and systemic procedures of cultural and social anthropology.

Couturières de Santos. Personnification mythique et manipulation rituelle des images sacrées à Mexico D.F. : le cas du Niño Dios et de la Santa Muerte

Dans certaines rues du Centro Historico de Mexico, la densite de magasins et marches de tissus et de parures, de merceries et d’accessoires destines a embellir les habits d’apparat et de fete n’est pas destine aux seuls humains. Dans ces memes rues debordant de marchandises se servent aussi les couturieres de Santos, images sacrees qui font l’objet d’une devotion fervente dans le Distrito Federal. A partir d’histoires de vie de quelques-unes de ces couturieres, la presente contribution se propose d’illustrer un savoir-faire feminin qui ne se limite pas aux competences techniques de tailleuses et d’habilleuses inventives. Ces couturieres sont elles-memes des devotes de l’image qu’elles revetent d’habits precieux, et entretiennent avec elles une relation singuliere. Deux types d’enjeux, a la fois economiques et symboliques, se degagent de cette pratique qui consiste a vestir los Santos – et plus precisement le Nino Dios et la Santa Muerte. Tout d’abord, au niveau economique, l’activite liee a la confection d’habits rituels mobilise des petits capitaux, et comporte une economie parallele d’une envergure surprenante. Ensuite, au niveau symbolique, l’observation de terrain a mis en lumiere les implications ‘psychotechniques’ qui sont a l’œuvre dans le traitement ritualise des images habillees.

Imaginaries of Cultural Diversity and the Permanence of the Religious

The author starts by noting a discourse that is widespread but more or less diffuse in the media and certain contemporary political and intellectual quarters, and which has to do with ‘the permanence of the religious’: according to an idea now current, the religious might be resistant to the process of secularization of civil society, because of its psychological and existential implications, or if seen as a universal, irreducible component of human culture. The author analyses the different aspects of this discourse, puts them into perspective in order to draw out their intellectual and political elements and attempts to reconstruct their historical and cultural origins and show how the refusal to historicize ‘religion’ is expressed today through various types of scientific argument coming out of the human and social sciences (arguments which appeal, for example, to the Latin concept of ‘civilization’, or the Germanic one of (‘Kultur’).

Animal Magnetism and Psychic Sciences, 1784-1935: The Rediscovery of a Lost Continent

In the spring of 1784 the Marquis of Puys6gur, a great landowner and colonel in an artillery regiment, was called to the bedside of Victor, the son of his steward, who was suffering from pneumonia. Puysegur was a follower of the new holistic medicine taught in an atmosphere of intense enthusiasm and scandal by Franz-Anton Mesmer, an Austrian doctor who had been living in Paris for several years. As a disciple of Mesmer, he intended

Civilizations as 'Aesthetic Absolute'. A Morphological Approach to Mittel-Europa

This project unites in the twentieth-century the authors, ideas and theoretical models discussed here. They form the strand of thought labelled ’historical morphology’ (or ’cultural morphology’), one of the aspects of religious ethnology, and the history of religions that is particularly the concern of the Germanic states (Germany, Austria, Hungary, the Baltic countries). Owing to its integrative character, this strand extends into various fields such as the history of ideas, art history and literary history. Marked by a strong reaction against scientism and positivism, cultural morphology offers, as an alternative to these traditions, a ’morphological’ or ’physiognomical’ approach to civilizations. The mode of apprehension it advocates is opposed to the cognitive methods of modern science on three fundamental points: a) it claims to be an art rather than a method; b) its knowledge is based on the perceptible intuition the object of study awakens in the mind of the researcher, an intuition that by its very nature is related to aesthetics; c) it makes use of analogy as a method of validating its discoveries, postulating an isomor-