Külalisloengud maagiast religiooniuuringutes ja uusaja mõtteloos
Koostöös Kultuuriteaduste ja kunstide doktorikooliga peab Tartus kolm loengut Bernd-Christian Otto, kes on üks tänapäeva tuntumaid maagia-uurijaid, pöörates eriti tähelepanu maagiale usundiloos ning Lääne mõtteloos. Bernd-Christian Otto töötab hetkel Bochumi ülikoolis, Käte Hamburger Kollegis uurijana (fellow) ning Erfurti ülikooli Max Weber Centre for Advanced Cultural and Social Studies külalisuurijana (associated fellow). Tema külalisloengud toimuvad 20.-22. märts, 2019. Kõik huvilised on teretulnud!
Ajad ja kohad:
20.03.2019 kell 16:15-17:45 – Ülikooli 18-228: ‘Western learned magic’ in a nutshell: the Leipzig collection of codices magici (Cod. Mag.)
21.03.2019 kell 16:15-17:45 – Ülikooli 18-228: Mapping Modern Magic(k)
22.03.2019 kell 12:00-13:30 – Ülikooli 18-228: Building blocks of a new cultural theory of magic
Loengute pikemad sisukirjeldused on leitavad allpool.
‘Western learned magic’ in a nutshell: the Leipzig collection of codices magici (Cod. Mag.)
20.03.2019 kell 16:15-17:45 – Ülikooli 18-228
The university library of Leipzig hosts one of the most extensive and complete early modern collections of hand-written manuscripts of ‘Western learned magic’. The collection was sold in 1710 for an extraordinary price, and both the selling catalogue entitled ‘catalogus rariorum manuscriptorum’ as well as 134 (of 140) manuscripts have survived. The collection is unique in several ways: with numerous texts going back to late antiquity and the Middle Ages, as well as early modern adaptations and innovations, the collection attests both the longue-durée nature of the textual-ritual tradition of ‘Western learned magic’ as well as its striking adaptability and changeability. With over hundred texts translated into German, it attests processes of vernacularising texts and techniques of ‘learned magic’ in German-speaking Europe that happened significantly earlier than assumed thus far. With over 65 % of the texts devoted to the Solomonic art of conjuring spirits, the collection provides a unique window into ritual knowledge that was highly contested and illegal at the time, and at the same time demonstrates that this knowledge was much more elaborate and versatile in the 17th and 18th centuries than assumed thus far. After an introduction into the concept and tradition of ‘Western learned magic’, the lecture provides an overview over the history and contents of the Leipzig Cod. Mag. collection.
Mapping Modern Magic(k)
21.03.2019 kell 16:15-17:45 – Ülikooli 18-228
At this very moment, a global discourse of contemporaneous self-proclaimed ‘magicians’ is flourishing more or less below the radar of the scholarly community and media awareness. These self-proclaimed ‘magicians’ (which may today amount to roughly one million) practice a ritual art usually denoted as ‘magick’ and bear witness to their experiences by means of a large variety of publication activities. The lecture will present findings from a cooperative research project entitled ‘Mapping Modern Magic(k)’ (with Prof. Egil Asprem, Stockholm, and Prof. Marco Pasi, Amsterdam, as co-researchers) that strives to systematically map and analyse the internal structures and networks, the formation of groups and schools, the self-perceptions and experience reports, and the conceptual and ritual dynamics of this discourse. The project is ambitious and challenging insofar as the said discourse is inherently global and transcultural as well as extremely heterogenous. One of the main goals of the project is to develop an analytical matrix that helps to map and organise the manifold material; this matrix will be presented and discussed during the lecture. Finally, a range of explanations will be provided regarding the (unexpected?) persistence, innovativity and popularity of ‘magick’ in the (post-)modern West.
Building blocks of a new cultural theory of magic
22.03.2019 kell 12:00-13:30 – Ülikooli 18-228
Whereas ‘Western learned magic’ as well as ‘magick’ could be considered signifiers that refer to a specific (Western) type of religious data on the object level, the third lecture will adopt a more theoretical perspective and ponder whether ‘magic’ could be re-established as an analytical term of cross-cultural and diachronic scope. Of course, we do not want to relapse into out-dated essentialist or Eurocentric definitions, join in the chatter about so-called ‘heuristic’ (but ultimately meaningless) categories, or rely on the vagueness and arbitrariness of everyday language. Against the backdrop of these obstacles, the lecture suggests a methodological pathway that allows for conceptualising ‘magic’ as a comparative category that can be applied to any religious data, independent of its timely, geographical, or cultural contexts. Taking ‘magic’s’ Western history as an analytical starting point (which is the only plausible way to do it), the magic word is ‘conceptual reverse-engineering’: thereby, ‘magic’ is chopped into smaller bits and pieces that may be allocated to three basic domains – the (A) conceptual-intellectual, the (B) discursive, and the (C) ritual domain. The items that we find in these domains – for instance: (A1) ‘ritual’, (A2) ‘power’, (A3) ‘miracle’, and (A4) ‘wish-fulfilment’ in the domain of concepts and ideas – can then be used as tertia comparationis in a comparative framework. Exemplary findings show that this procedure may lead to more nuanced analyses of various ‘same same but different’ phenomena on the object level, but it also raises the question whether – and how – apparent similarities across different times and spaces can be explained. As this is ultimately a theoretical question, the lecture concludes with tentative suggestions of how the suggested methodological procedure may provide building blocks of a new cultural theory of ‘magic’.
Bernd-Christian Ottol on PhD (2009, Heidelberg) ja habilitatsioonikraad (2017, Erfurt) religiooniuuringutes. Hetkel töötab hetkel ta Bochumi ülikoolis, Käte Hamburger Kollegis uurijana ning Erfurti ülikoolis, Max Weber Centre for Advanced Cultural and Social Studies keskuses külalisuurijana. Tema uurimistöö keskendub maagia ajaloole, kombineerindes erinevaid metodoloogiaid, näiteks mõisteajaloolist uurimist, diskursuseanalüüsi, sotsiaalteooriat ja rituaaliuuringuid. Tema poolt avaldatud raamatute hulka kuuluvad Magie. Rezeptions- und diskursgeschichtliche Analysen von der Antike bis zur Neuzeit (de Gruyter 2011), Defining Magic: A Reader (toimetatud koos Michael Stausbergiga, Routledge 2013), Magical Manuscripts in Early Modern Europe: The Clandestine Trade in Illegal Book Collections (kaasautoriks Daniel Bellingradt, Palgrave MacMillan 2017) ning Religious Individualisation: Historical Dimensions and Comparative Perspectives (toimetatud koos Jörg Rüpke ja teistega, de Gruyter 2019). Ta on huvitub samuti religiooni historiseerimise meetoditest ja teooriatest, religioosse kogemuse problemaatikast ning religiooniuuringute ajaloost. Ta on European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism juhatuse liige.
Koduleht: https://www.uni-erfurt.de/de/max-weber-kolleg/personen/bernd-otto/
Ürituste toimumist toetab Tartu Ülikooli ASTRA projekt PER ASPERA, finantseerib Euroopa Liidu Regionaalarengu Fond.