UBC: Salem Possessed
Jan. 29th, 2008 10:44 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
truepennyBoyer, Paul, and Stephen Nissenbaum. Salem Possessed: The Social Origins of Witchcraft. 1974. New York: MJF Books, n.d.
This actually isn't an unread book, since I read it when I was in eleventh grade. But that was over fifteen years ago, and all I remembered about it was getting badly confused by the economic and geographic analysis of the pro- and anti- Parris factions. A reaction which was, btw, confirmed by this reading. Boyer and Nissenbaum have an excellent point, but they could have used another pass for clarity.
In essence, the argument of Salem Possessed is that witchcraft isn't about witchcraft. They say it themselves:
I don't agree entirely with this stance, but let me get back to that in a moment. What Boyer and Nissenbaum do exceptionally well is demonstrate and elucidate (even if they are at times confusing) the social and economic conflicts which lay behind the witchcraft accusations. They offer compelling, if sometimes over-simplified, reasons why the people who were accused of witchcraft were accused: why those people, and not others.
Where they fall down is why that accusation, and not another. They treat the accusers (insofar as they talk about them at all, which since the accusers were mostly teenage girls and not a full part of the social and economic webs in which Boyer and Nissenbaum are interested, they don't; they give more attention to the senior Ann Putnam, with her adult load of resentments and failures, than they do to any of the girls) as if their accusations of witchcraft could be read as transparent vehicles for economic and social concerns. Transparent to us, that is, since they do at least pay lip service to the idea that both accused and accusers were sincere in their beliefs.
And I think that there's a problem in assuming transparency like that. I don't argue that the reasons Boyer and Nissenbaum give are there, because I think they are. But I think that isn't the whole story and can't be the whole story.
I've just started Frances Hill's A Delusion of Satan. (Although I recommend strongly that you skip the introduction by Karen Armstrong, which includes such unexamined sentences as: "What Frances Hill's book shows so clearly is that bad religion can be as destructive as the most virulent atheism.") Since she's started with trying to present the experiences of Abigail Williams and Elizabeth Parris, I know that at least her intentions are to address the gap in Boyer and Nissenbaum's argument. We'll see how well she does.
This actually isn't an unread book, since I read it when I was in eleventh grade. But that was over fifteen years ago, and all I remembered about it was getting badly confused by the economic and geographic analysis of the pro- and anti- Parris factions. A reaction which was, btw, confirmed by this reading. Boyer and Nissenbaum have an excellent point, but they could have used another pass for clarity.
In essence, the argument of Salem Possessed is that witchcraft isn't about witchcraft. They say it themselves:
The feeling that Mather articulated in [his] 1689 sermon was one shared by many people in Salem Village three years later: the social order was being profoundly shaken by a superhuman force which had lured all too many into active complicity with it. We have chosen to construe this force as emergent mercantile capitalism. Mather, and Salem Village, called it witchcraft.
(209)
I don't agree entirely with this stance, but let me get back to that in a moment. What Boyer and Nissenbaum do exceptionally well is demonstrate and elucidate (even if they are at times confusing) the social and economic conflicts which lay behind the witchcraft accusations. They offer compelling, if sometimes over-simplified, reasons why the people who were accused of witchcraft were accused: why those people, and not others.
Where they fall down is why that accusation, and not another. They treat the accusers (insofar as they talk about them at all, which since the accusers were mostly teenage girls and not a full part of the social and economic webs in which Boyer and Nissenbaum are interested, they don't; they give more attention to the senior Ann Putnam, with her adult load of resentments and failures, than they do to any of the girls) as if their accusations of witchcraft could be read as transparent vehicles for economic and social concerns. Transparent to us, that is, since they do at least pay lip service to the idea that both accused and accusers were sincere in their beliefs.
And I think that there's a problem in assuming transparency like that. I don't argue that the reasons Boyer and Nissenbaum give are there, because I think they are. But I think that isn't the whole story and can't be the whole story.
I've just started Frances Hill's A Delusion of Satan. (Although I recommend strongly that you skip the introduction by Karen Armstrong, which includes such unexamined sentences as: "What Frances Hill's book shows so clearly is that bad religion can be as destructive as the most virulent atheism.") Since she's started with trying to present the experiences of Abigail Williams and Elizabeth Parris, I know that at least her intentions are to address the gap in Boyer and Nissenbaum's argument. We'll see how well she does.
