Magic and the Regulation of Desire

Scholars have often portrayed magic as a product of disordered desire, whether reactionary or anti-social, and as a threat to productive social order. This construction legitimates two separate channels for human needs: a spiritualized religious realm for identity and internal tensions, and a rationalized scientific realm for material manipulation. Magic serves as a stigmatized mediator between them, reinforcing the secular separation and granting capitalism and Western science instrumental control over the material world. Even recent efforts to rehabilitate magic retain key elements of the traditional distinctions among religion, magic, and science, aligning rationalized religion and science with capitalist social relations.

Study at a glance

Abstract

AbstractThe chapter begins by exploring various psychological theories in which magic is seen as a product of inchoate or inordinate desire. Whether asserting that magic is socially reactionary and authoritarian or fundamentally anti-social and anarchical, theorists have regularly seen magic as a threat to a productive social order. The dominant scholarly construction of magic has legitimated two distinct channels through which human needs are to be constructed and resolved: a spiritualized religious realm (to shape certain aspects of human identity and assuage internal tensions) and a rationalized scientific realm (to govern appropriate manipulation of the material world). With magic deployed as the stigmatized mediator between religion and science, the secularizing separation between these two channels is reinforced, and capitalism and Western science are relegated broad instrumental control of the material world. Even recent scholarly efforts to reverse the negative valence of magic maintain important elements of the traditional distinctions among religion, magic, and science and reinforce the paradigm in which rationalized religion and science are aligned with capitalist social relations.