| Summary: | The mode of action of witchcraft, so well described by the ethnologist Jeanne Favret-Saada, is based upon the power of enunciation and its performative efficiency. The rule-governed performativity proper to the witchcraft order and the system of places that constitutes it tries to confine and resocialize the unlimited and unpredictable performativity of the act of bewitchment. The system of witchcraft indeed operates as a system of communicating vessels: through a long process of turning forces, it takes the magical force and the power of acting from the witch to give them back to his alleged victim. By playing and replaying relentlessly the “inter-dit” of universal social relationships, that of the imbalance of forces and the struggles of power, witchcraft contributes to a more general reflection on performativity and on its felicity conditions.
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