Land of Remorse: A Study of Southern Italian Tarantism, The

Western Folklore, Summer 2007 by Savastano, Peter

The Land of Remorse: A Study of Southern Italian Tarantism. By Ernesto De Martino. Translated and annotated by Dorothy Louise Zinn. Foreword by Vincent Crapanzano. (London: Free Association Books, 2005. Pp. xxiii 322, foreword, translator's note, preface, introduction, photographs, illustrations, tables, musical notation, appendices, notes, bibliography, indices. $34.50 paper).

Several years ago I learned of the late Italian ethnographer Ernesto De Martino (1908-1965) through citations in Paolo Apolito's Apparitions of the Madonna at Oliveto Citra (1998) and in Michael P. Carroll's Madonnas That Maim (1992) and Veiled Threats (1996). The De Martino titles-Il mondo magico (1997 [1948]), Sud e magia (1959), and La terra del rimorso (1961)-were immensely attractive to me. The last of these, a thorough account of the phenomenon of Southern Italian tarantism-an ecstaticpossession cult of the spider, snake, or tarantula, sometimes identified with St. Paul, with a family resemblance ("African parallels" [177]) to Haitian Vodou, Cuban Santeria and Brazilian Candomblé-is now beautifully translated and meticulously annotated by Dorothy Louise Zinn as The Land of Remorse.

One cannot hope to cover the breadth of this work in a short review, for Ernesto De Martino takes a complex interdisciplinary approach to the study of religion that engages the ideas of (among others) Hegel, Heidegger, Croce, and Gramsci. As for the ideas inspired in De Martino by these philosophers, the central one, with which ethnographic researchers must grapple today, is his notion of the "crisis of presence," which, as Vincent Crapanzano explains in the book's foreword, "refers to a sense of not being there (esserci, Dasein, in Heidegger's sense), yes, of death, but also of loss, loss of subjectivity, vulnerability, alienation, dissociation, being out of control-overwhelmed, if you will, to the point of extinction" (ix). De Martino sees tarantism as the crux of the crisis of presence, a problem that prevented his informants from "reintegrating the crisis-struck presence into history" as full participants in the modern world (129 note c). (The translator provides valuable contextualization for the concept of crisis of presence [3, note d].)

But considered in light of recent developments in anthropology, particularly the anthropology of consciousness, might the crisis of presence be viewed as a positive value rather than a negative one? The negative value, as DeMartino constructs it (Appendix 5, "Problems of Intervention") might be made positive as an alternative to the hegemony of the post-Enlightenment worldview, in which reason, science and objectivity prevail over non-ordinary states of embodied awareness. Positive approaches to tarantism can in fact be found in several recent treatments of the phenomenon-an excellent anthology edited by Luisa Del Giudice and Nancy van Deusen, Performing Ecstasies (2005); Giovanni Pizza's essay "Tarantism and the Politics of Tradition in Contemporary Salento" (2004); and Morton Klass's Mind Over Mind (2003). Klass addresses what is negatively referred to by many social scientists as "dissociative states, " suggesting that the real crisis of presence is to be found not in a sense of not being there, but rather of being there too much, trapped in a scientific worldview similar to Max Weber's "iron cage" of rationality and offering a culturally relative context for understanding the ecstatic states associated with Southern Italian tarantism (Klass 57-92, 117). A similar discussion is provided in The Land of Remorse (Appendix 2, "Problems in Psychology in the Study of Tarantism," by Letizia Jervis-Comba).

Ernesto De Martino played an important role in the development of anthropological practice in Italy. Although not delineated in the body of the book itself, the methodology and ethnographic practice of De Martino and the other members of his team are clearly explained in the appendices. A reader who studies this material in conjunction with George Saunders' helpful survey article "Contemporary Italian Cultural Anthropology" (1984:449) will gain an understanding of just how significant the work and methodology of Ernesto De Martino continue to be in the practice of anthropology in Italy today. De Martino's ethnological approach (chapter 14) is thorough, complex, and nuanced. His work anticipates the movement back and forth between the general and the particular that is largely characteristic of postmodern anthropological approaches to ethnographic research. So does his "critical ethnocentrism" or cognitive relativism (Saunders 1993), though it is doubtful whether De Martino would agree with much of postmodernism. As we learn from Zinn's annotations, De Martino "might accept some form of cognitive relativism, but he cannot accept ... an ethical relativism" (quoting Dei and Simonica, De Martino 319).

The Land of Remorse makes an important contribution to the understanding of lived religion as practiced in Southern Italy. Because of its breadth, the book will appeal to scholars of religious studies, history of religion, ritual studies, folklore, anthropology, sociology, psychology, performance studies, cultural studies, Italian studies, Catholic studies and sexuality. It should, in addition, appeal to Italian-Americans whose ancestors hail from Southern Italy. The excellent English translation with which we are now honored is a tribute to the work of Ernesto De Martino. Let us hope that Dorothy Louise Zinn may eventually translate and annotate the rest of his works.