The ritual which is here examined is performed over a long stretch of time, starting in January and ending on Easter Monday with the great pilgrimage to the sanctuary of Madonna dell’Arco (located in Sant’Anastasia, a small municipality in the Metropolitan City of Naples). The faithful come from all over Campania, after the carrying out of several ritual steps which are tiring and spectacular at the same time. As soon as they pass the threshold of the sanctuary, devotees collapse to the ground. This is not to be considered an epileptic fit. It’s a crisis, a loss of presence, an abandonment. Our case study is compared to others that are very different from each other, in all of which the ritual practice is performed by the lower strata of a marginal population: from rites taking place in central Australia to the most famous Haitian vodù or Brazilian candomblè. This comparison shows that also in our case we have physical alterations comparable to those happening in what we generically call trance, followed by possession or ecstasy. All this leads us to identify the “base line” of trance as a particular body technique. A consideration that might help us to better define the concept of trance, a notion that is troublesome as well as cumbersome and maybe generic.

DE MATTEIS, S. (2019). La trance messa alla prova. Aspetti interculturali all’incrocio di saperi. DADA, 1(1), 193-214.

La trance messa alla prova. Aspetti interculturali all’incrocio di saperi

stefano de matteis
2019-01-01

Abstract

The ritual which is here examined is performed over a long stretch of time, starting in January and ending on Easter Monday with the great pilgrimage to the sanctuary of Madonna dell’Arco (located in Sant’Anastasia, a small municipality in the Metropolitan City of Naples). The faithful come from all over Campania, after the carrying out of several ritual steps which are tiring and spectacular at the same time. As soon as they pass the threshold of the sanctuary, devotees collapse to the ground. This is not to be considered an epileptic fit. It’s a crisis, a loss of presence, an abandonment. Our case study is compared to others that are very different from each other, in all of which the ritual practice is performed by the lower strata of a marginal population: from rites taking place in central Australia to the most famous Haitian vodù or Brazilian candomblè. This comparison shows that also in our case we have physical alterations comparable to those happening in what we generically call trance, followed by possession or ecstasy. All this leads us to identify the “base line” of trance as a particular body technique. A consideration that might help us to better define the concept of trance, a notion that is troublesome as well as cumbersome and maybe generic.
2019
DE MATTEIS, S. (2019). La trance messa alla prova. Aspetti interculturali all’incrocio di saperi. DADA, 1(1), 193-214.
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11590/352783
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