Deadly Words Witchcraft in the Bocage [Paperback]

This book examines witchcraft beliefs and experiences in the Bocage in western France.This book examines witchcraft in the Bocage, a rural area of western France. The ethnographer delves into what it means to be a witch and to be bewitched, or caught in a series of misfortunes. Only a professional magician, an unwitcher, has any chance of breaking the witchs spell and the struggle is eventually fatal.This book examines witchcraft in the Bocage, a rural area of western France. The ethnographer delves into what it means to be a witch and to be bewitched, or caught in a series of misfortunes. Only a professional magician, an unwitcher, has any chance of breaking the witchs spell and the struggle is eventually fatal.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.Part I. There Must Be a Subject; Section 1. The Way Things Are Said: 1. The mirror-image of an academic; 2. Words spoken with insistence; 3. When words wage war; Section 2. Between 'Caught' and Catching: 1. Those who haven't been caught can't talk about it; 2. A name added to a position; 3. Taking one's distances from whom (or what)?; Section 3. When the Text Has its Own Foreword; Part II. The Realm of Secrecy; Section 4. Sol&