Saunders, 1995 - The Crisis of Presence in Italian Pentecostal Conversion

the crisis of presence in Italian Pentecostal
conversion
GEORGE R. SAUNDERS-Lawrence University
In effect, I was committing suicide. In the sense that I rejected the world, I rejected people, and-I don't
know-that they didn't have anything to say to me, they didn't have anything to give me.... I said, if the
world is like this, and if I am like this, then I'm not interested in living.... And then I had reached the point
where I couldn't sleep any more, and I continued to drink from nine in the evening until five or six ... an
isolated atmosphere... a little like a motherly womb, an amniotic situation. I isolated myself, and lived in
this space anesthetized, without pain. .... Perhaps this helped me a lot, that I didn't have any faith in myself
at that point. That is to say, I really didn't even exist.
While doing field research in two Pentecostal Protestant churches in Italy in 1991-92, I
occasionally heard accounts, like the one above, of preconversion crises that seemed to involve
a disturbed sense of self. Sometimes the distress was expressed bodily, as illness, sometimes
emotionally, and at times as something I would call "alienation." These were moral and spiritual
crises, at least as presented retrospectively, and clearly had existential dimensions. In many of
the accounts, the subsequent conversion seemed to allow the person to fashion not only a new
self and identity but also a new relationship to time and history, and particularly a newly affirmed
feeling of efficacy as an actor in the historical moment.
The major goal of this article is to interpret some of these crises and the subsequent conversion
experiences. A subsidiary goal, however, is of only slightly less salience. The kind of crisis I
focus on here was a central concern of Italian anthropologist, folklorist, and historian of religions
Ernesto De Martino (1908-1965), and I want to bring his insights to the attention of a wider
scholarly community. Though little known outside Italy (and essentially untranslated), De
Martino is recognized there as a scholar of extraordinary significance, a brilliant and eclectic
theoretician, and a sensitive ethnographer of the popular culture of his own society.
In several seminal works, De Martino discussed a dilemma that he referred to as "the crisis
of presence" (la crisi della presenza), which he defined as "the existential drama of being
exposed to the risk of not being here" (1973[1948]:141). Though at times De Martino seems
simply to mean anxiety about the possibility of one's own death, he usually intends "the crisis
of presence" to mean a deeper and subtler problem: a breakdown in the sense of self,
eventuating in passivity and ineffectual engagement with the world outside. "The risk of not
being here" is a fundamental existential dilemma, with moral, psychological, and cultural
Italian anthropologist Ernest De Martino (1908-1965) devoted much of his writing

to the analysis of "the crisis of presence," an existential dilemma evidenced in a
disturbed sense of self and often expressed as illness, emotional distress, or
"alienation." This article describes De Martino's conceptualization of the crisis of
presence as a problem of consciousness with moral and emotional dimensions and
applies it in interpreting the conversion narratives of three Italian Pentecostal
Christians. The resolution of the crisis, for these Christians, entails the construction
of a new sense of self, and particularly a new relationship to time and history. [De
Martino, Pentecostalism, religion, existential crisis, Italy]
American Ethnologist 22(2):324-340. Copyright ? 1995, American Anthropological Association.
324 american ethnologist
This content downloaded from 129.82.28.144 on Fri, 15 Jul 2016 05:34:11 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
dimensions. Though by no means evident in all, or even most, of the conversion narratives I
recorded in Italy, "the crisis of presence" seems a thoroughly apt analytic construct for the cases
I will present here.
Protestant Pentecostalism in Italy
Pentecostalism is a small but dynamic movement in contemporary Italy, with perhaps

350,000 adherents throughout the country. In origin an Anglo-American form of Christianity,
contemporary Pentecostalism derives from the Holiness Movement and the "camp meetings"
of 18th- and 19th-century American Methodism (Lawless 1988; Martin 1990; Synan 1971;
Womack and Toppi 1989). In recent years, American missionaries have carried Pentecostal
ideas through the entire world, and today Pentecostalism is an extraordinarily significant current
in international Christianity. Its history in Italy is unique, however: Pentecostalism was brought
to Italy, not by American missionaries, but by Italian emigrants returning from the United States,
where many had been converted in the great revivals of 1906 to 1908. Italian Pentecostalism
has remained distinctly Italian, despite its connections to the international Pentecostal networks.
Italian converts were drawn to this religious experience for a multitude of reasons, but
certainly in part because of Pentecostalism's antihierarchical, organizationally democratic,
individualizing message and because of its emotional, often mystical, forms of expression
(Castiglione 1977; Maselli 1990; Olivieri n.d.). During the 1920s and early 1930s, the number
of Pentecostal converts grew substantially in the small villages of rural southern Italy, though
many were persecuted during the fascist years, particularly after 1935, and some were forced
into exile or underground (Leone 1972; Rochat 1990; Spini 1968).
Following World War II, Pentecostalism again emerged as a potent alternative to Catholicism,
and the movement has continued to grow into the present period. Though Pentecostal Christians
comprise less than 1 percent of the Italian population, the movement has a disproportionate
significance in this culturally Catholic country (Garelli 1991). It inspires strong reactions from
the Catholic hierarchy and receives considerable attention in the press. In this context, Italian
Pentecostals have tended to define themselves largely in opposition to Catholicism (ratherthan,
for example, "secular humanism" or some similar counter-ideology). In part, this self-definition
also reflects the fact that most of them were Catholics before their conversion and regard their
new identity as altogether distinct from the old.
My research on Pentecostalism began in the summer of 1989 with a "grand tour" of churches
from Torino in the North to Palermo in Sicily. Then, in 1991-92, I settled for a year in Tuscany
in central Italy.' There I worked primarily in two Pentecostal communities. One, in a working
class suburb of Florence, is a large, well-established church associated with the Assemblee di
Dio in Italia, which in turn is loosely affiliated with the Assemblies of God in the United States.
The second is a small, independent church in a back alley in Prato, a manufacturing town some
ten kilometers north of Florence.
The two churches differ in many ways. The first has been in the same site for 30 years, owns
its own church buildings, has a full-time paid pastor, and participates in a national network of
affiliated churches offering such services as a summer camp in the mountains, a weekly
television program, a radio network, and a Bible Institute for training pastors. The Sunday service
attracts some 200 people (with smaller numbers at the three midweek services). The church
also has four small branches in outlying areas. The service is, by Pentecostal standards, fairly
routinized, though not lacking in spirit. Men and women sit on opposite sides of the church,
and women wear white veils during the service. The service is dominated by men, although
women do participate actively with prayers and testimonies.
The second church is about eight years old but has been in its present location-a rented
ex-factory building-for only about two years. Its two co-pastors are untrained and unpaid, one
the crisis of presence 325
working by day as a truck driver and the other in an administrative position for a textile firm.
Between 25 and 40 people ordinarily attend its Sunday service, and midweek services are
generally held in the homes of members. The services are relatively spontaneous in style, and
a visitor might have difficulty picking the pastor out from among the other members. Women
and men mix in the congregation, and women are as active in prayer, testimony, and
organizational activities as the men, although I never heard a woman preach the sermon.
Despite organizational differences, which matter a great deal in some respects, the theology
and the religious experience of the two communities are quite similar. They believe that
salvation can be obtained only through faith, although those who are saved demonstrate their
Christianity through right comportment. They emphasize the significance of a personal experi-
ence with Jesus Christ. They emphatically reject the Catholic doctrine that church or ecclesi-
astical hierarchy can be effective mediators between the individual and God, and they
particularly reject the popular Catholic "idolatry" at shrines to miraculous images. They do,
however, firmly believe in miracles themselves. They are "fundamentalist" in that they take the
Bible to be the literal word of God and the only appropriate guide for life. They are "evangelical"
in that they believe that it is their responsibility to preach the Gospel to the non-converted.2
And they are "Pentecostal" in that they particularly emphasize the "gifts of the Holy Spirit,"
especially the gift of tongues conferred on the 120 disciples on the day of the Pentecost, after
Christ's death on the cross.3 For most, speaking in tongues (glossolalia) is the fundamental
indicator of "baptism in the Holy Spirit," an especially important rite of passage.
Most members of both churches converted from Catholicism as young adults, though many
of those in their teens and twenties are the children of Pentecostal parents and a few are
grandchildren. Most (but not all) describe themselves as having been lax or inconstant Catholics
before their conversion. Many (but not all) converted during a difficult period in their lives, and
this is likely to be especially true of those who were the first members of their families to convert.
Both churches include strong networks of extended kin (though virtually all members have some
relatives who have not converted). Indeed, kin ties are significant enough that one of the
founding members of the larger church has more than 50 relatives, by blood or marriage, in the
church, including a son who is currently one of the four members of the church council and a
son-in-law who was on the council for 20 years. Similarly, the smaller church has a core group
of at least 22 adults who are intricately linked by kinship and marriage.
Each individual, however, has a unique account of his or her conversion.4 These accounts
of their "encounters with Christ" and the transformation of their lives constitute major oral texts
for Italian Pentecostals. They are told during church services, especially at "evangelizations,"
and also at prayer meetings, as well as in private homes, at dinners, parties, or wherever others
indicate a desire to hear these sacral memoirs. Though there is some stylization of these
accounts, there is also considerable room for personalization, and it is a genre in which some
people excel and through which others stumble. Some of the stories are more dramatic than
others, and Pentecostals themselves maintain that some are better than others as accounts of
God's mercy or power. Many of the stories, of course, would in no sense describe a "crisis of
presence." In fact, a fair number of converts seem to have experienced no serious crisis at all
and describe their lives before conversion as having been essentially fine, though without the
joy that comes from knowing Christ. Many others, however, seem to have found themselves in
life situations for which "the crisis of presence" is an especially apt description.
There is a problem, of course, in assessing the status of these stories as "myth" or "history."
I follow the lead of others in seeing them as personal constructions, creations, or "fictions"
(Lawless 1991:58), not in the sense of "lies," but rather as "makings." As Ginsburg notes, such
stories present an "organization of ideas in which the self is the axis" (1989:133). Thus, they
are told as stories about the past with meanings for the present, and there is unquestionably a
mythmaking aspect to the conversion testimonial. Indeed, they are in some respect "myth-mod-
els," as Obeyesekere (1981:99-102) puts it, that break down the distinctions between personal
and cultural aspects of the experience. That the crisis of presence is constructed retrospectively,
then, does not diminish its significance. Indeed, part of De Martino's point was that such crisis
is a constant potential of life in our times, and its retrospective construction is surely a statement
about its continuing cultural salience, about the tenuousness of its resolution, as well as about
the construction of a new self that knows how to confront it.
Here I will present portions of three narratives. They differ from each other in fundamental
respects, and yet each illustrates, I think, a distinct crisis of presence. I will begin with an
extended version of the testimony cited in the introduction.
Lidia Benevento Lidia Benevento is (at the time of this interview in 1991) a 39-year-old
optician who works in an optical store owned by her mother. She has never been married. The
following are excerpts from a taped interview.
Anyway... as a girl, I was an intelligent person, others said "really" intelligent, but also very difficult,
because I was overbearing, because I was so nervous, sometimes even hysterical, because I was afraid
of everything, of the dark, when I was little. The dark was always a terrifying thing .... But all of this was
nothing more than the resu t of the conflict between my own personality, which was very strong, and that
of my father, which was even stronger .... Now I wouldn't want to blame my father, because he also has
his justifications.... The other part would be my mother, who was closed up in herself, and therefore
couldn't in any way counterbalance the figure of my father. She was practically subject to my father, and
she had a personality exactly the opposite of mine .... All this created big problems for me, though today
I realize that, no matter who my parents were, I simply couldn't have had what itwas that I was instinctively
looking for. Because it was something more than human. That is, it went beyond the capacity of the
human spirit. Because I was instinctively-I only realize it now-searching for perfection, health, true
love . . . that is, love, but not what other people call love. It was ... a search that I felt in myself, but I
didn't understand what it was I was sought.
And since I was very extroverted, after having searched for it in my family, I went to search for it among
my friends. And in those days I had 30,000 friends, I was the leader of the pack.... Then as I grew up
things got more complicated, because at a certain point I began to have "the problem" of men. Totally.
I was one who had terrible crushes, which always ended in disaster. Each time. Because I took it too
seriously, you know? Because I gave them an exaggerated value. Beyond the possibilities for human life.
And it got worse and worse, until at a certain point my . . . suffering had become so great that I had
to-how to say it?-calm it, confine it, deaden it somehow. I felt too bad. That's why I began . . . I began
to drink....
It remained an occasional thing, until the last downfall, emotional breakdown. I'm talking about
emotional [romantic] breakdowns. This happened at the age of 27 ... in 1979. And it was such a bad
crash that at that point, I began to drink seriously ... I drank from ... 1979 to 1986. But so much.
At the same time, since I realized that I was too sick to make it alone, I decided to enter analysis. So
from January of '80 I began psychoanalysis, that lasted eight years ....
And in those years, I got worse and worse. Because I kept drinking, I continued to take psychophar-
maceuticals-tranquilizers I had always taken, because my mother gave them to me even when I was a
little girl . .. precisely because I was nervous, hysterical, I made big scenes, I fought with everybody.
... The analysis surely didn't help me; indeed, it made me worse. Because in analysis one goes digging,
one begins to see things.... And the more I realized things, the more desperate I became, because ... I
don't know how to say it ... I couldn't find what I was looking for. It wasn't in the others, and it wasn't
in me .... And in digging inside myself, I didn't find a solution, but I was finding instead only desperation.
Because, precisely, all these things were coming out.... I don't know how to define them well-all these
hopeless weaknesses. And all the analysts said that the solution was in accepting myself. The solution, in
theory, ought to be in accepting yourself. That is, once you have understood what is inside you, you are
accepted for what you are....
Since I didn't even have the courage to finish it off, I said, I'll try to make the pain as [minimal] as possible
[through alcohol and drugs]. That was the path that was left to me, that or I'm out of here. Because to live
in this way costs me too much. However, you can see that instead, underneath it all, inside of me, I had
not entirely surrendered. I am very tenacious [laughs]. Something inside me wouldn't give up.... I
couldn't do it any more, I couldn't work much, but there was this something that wouldn't soften, that
continued to go ahead, that continued to look for the exit....
I think that God preserved me, because really I was drinking two liters a day, of alcohol ... and I couldn't
do anything any more. I couldn't work, nothing ... because in the evenings the anxiety came over me.
It was in the evening that I was nervous. And then I had reached the point where I couldn't sleep any
more, and I continued to drink from nine in the evening until five or six ... an isolated atmosphere...
a little like a motherly womb, an amniotic situation. I isolated myself, and I lived in this space anesthetized,
without pain.
Lidia lived this way for some time, although, as she herself indicates, she never gave up
entirely. Indeed, in addition to eight years of psychoanalysis, she went into a clinic and was
treated (without success) for alcoholism, then tried "Oriental religions," especially a group
called Mai Kali that, according to Lidia, originated in Japan in the 1960s and attempts to
synthesize the insights of a number of religions. And then one day Lidia met a former roommate
on the street. She and the roommate had parted earlier because of the roommate's problems:
she had been seriously anorexic, and her eating disorder had created difficulties with the other
women in the apartment. When Lidia met her old roommate on the street, she was therefore
surprised because the woman looked so healthy. She told Lidia that she was doing fine, and
that she had found Jesus. After a number of discussions of their respective problems, this young
woman invited Lidia to go to a prayer meeting with her. Lidia was very skeptical but felt that at
that point she should try anything. At the meeting she told her story and let the group pray for
her, but nothing else happened.
But then, little by little I began to convince myself, until one evening, helped by Luisa, this girl, I really
made an act of faith. I declared ardently that Jesus Christ was my savior. But something else should be
said. At that point, I was so convinced that there was noth ing good in me that nobody needed to convince
me that I was a sinner, and that there was-how to say it?-so much evil... in me, because I was already
thoroughly convinced.5 On this point, we were totally in agreement [laughing]. Perhaps this helped me
a lot, that I didn't have any faith in myself at that point. That is to say, I really didn't even exist. [Cioe non
esistevo appunto.]
Following her conversion she continued to go to the prayer meetings, and within a year or so
had been "liberated"6 from alcohol and drugs as well as from Mai Kali and psychoanalysis.
Alessandro Parducci Alessandro Parducci is a retired farmer and construction worker who
converted 63 years ago, on a day when he intended to kill his brother and his mother. At 90,
he now lives with his son, daughter-in-law, and their children in a clean and comfortable
modern apartment in a small town some ten miles outside Florence. He has some difficulty
walking, but otherwise is in decent health, and he speaks with strength and conviction.
Alessandro was born and spent his youth in a small mountain village not far from Naples. At
the age of 26 he had a violent disagreement with his father. Alessandro's wife was seriously ill,
and his father, with whom they lived, refused to pay for the doctor or medicine, telling
Alessandro, "If this one dies, you can always find another." Alessandro and his wife moved out
of the house, and his father-perhaps at the urging of his mother-disinherited him, leaving
everything to his brother. A little later, Alessandro hired some workmen to help him build a
house on a piece of his own land in the country. As he was returning to the work site one day,
he saw his brother trespassing in one of his fields.
Well, then, when we reached this point, we became as I said mortal enemies.... We had adjoining land
... in the countryside, and he passed over into my land.... We were enemies and he threw himself in
there, coming into my land for his own convenience, when there was enmity between us. And I had gone
to get the stuff to feed the workers who were making my house in the countryside. And I passed the river,
loaded with wine-I was carrying a hundred kilos of wine on the back of the donkey. And I went up to
the field to see who was there, and I saw that it was my brother, who had come into there.... And we
started arguing. We were going to kill each other that day. We reached the point-I was carrying a heavy
iron wrench, and he had an axe... this big with a handle. He came at me with the axe and I had this
tool on me. I said, "Well then, I'll give him one in the head and then one in the middle."
Oh ... how much I regret certain things, I get emotional [voice breaking, almost crying]. God has been
the one who has kept me out of so many messes. So many, so many, since I have been in the faith as well
as before.
Well then, brother, look, I was about to hit him with this tool ... while he held back, because I was the
one with the poisoned blood, I who remained in the middle of the street. Then I raised the wrench to hit
him, this tool. And I felt myself suspended.
Fortunately, at this moment some other relatives arrived on the scene and broke the fight up.
Alessandro headed for home, but intended to get his rifle and go back to kill not only his brother,
but also his mother, whom he considered responsible for the protracted disagreement. As it
happened, when he arrived at his house, there were two Italian-American evangelists sitting at
the table in his yard. They had a Bible and a hymnal, and he sat down with them to talk. By
Alessandro's account, they said only a few things. The man said to him, "Son, the sinful man
blasphemes for the least little thing, and he sins against God. And he is condemned by God.
And when the man is calm, he sings profane songs, which also displeases God. While the
children of God who are saved ... when they are angered, go and pray to God and God saves
them from their anger." And then, according to Alessandro, the man and woman sang a hymn,
which he recited to me: "Onward I go, onward I go, to enter into the glory of the Lord. This is
the way that leads to the creator." (When it is sung in church, Alessandro says, this song still
brings tears to his eyes.) The man then said, "Come this evening; the Lord wants to save you."
By the time the conversation was over, Alessandro had decided to go that night to a prayer
meeting, which turned out to be in a hay barn. About eight people attended, together with
Alessandro, his wife, and about five others whom he brought along. Alessandro now laughingly
recalls that the leader later told him that he was a terrifying figure that night, "the Devil in
person": rifle in hand, cartridge belt, handlebar moustache, and a fierce look in his eyes. The
leader of the group preached from the Gospel of John, chapter 3, which includes the injunction,
"Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of God." After
the service, Alessandro was deeply impressed, saying to himself, "The man spoke well." Months
later, on the day of his baptism, Alessandro went to the house of his mother and brother and,
in the street, in full view of neighbors, asked for their pardon.
In the interview, as well as in other conversations, and in one testimony in the church itself,
Alessandro made it clear that on the day of his conversion, and for some time before it, he had
felt himself so thoroughly enraged that he was unable to contain himself. He had lost control
of his own emotions and thus risked either losing his own life or killing those people who ought
to have been most dear to him.
Marcellina Vellana Marcellina Vellana is a 19-year-old woman who works part-time for a
dry cleaner, but she has also spent parts of the last few years as a visiting student at a Bible
college in England. Her conversion accompanied a physical healing when she was 15 years
old. When Marcellina was still a small child, her mother had noticed a problematic curvature
of her spine, which got worse as Marcellina grew. By the time she was about 12, she was
seriously handicapped. She says that she was in constant pain and walked bent backwards. In
her conception of it, her spine was growing forward into her stomach. At first the doctors tried
to treat it with physical therapy, but this, according to her, had no effect. They then put her in
a plastic cast.
And since I wore this cast, I wore it day and night, because my spine was going inwards, but it kept getting
worse, despite the fact that I had been wearing it for two years. And talking with the doctor, he said that
I needed an operation, but that there was really little possibility that this operation would turn out well.
Thus, if it went badly I would be in a wheelchair for the rest of my life, but if it went well, I would have
an iron rod in my spine, and wouldn't be able to run or exert myself or have children. In effect, I was
walking on a razor's edge.
But then a family came to my house . .. and they told us their testimony about how Jesus had entered
into their family and had really done miracles. Actually, we had already noticed the changes in this family,
in their son, and also in the husband and wife, who had been separated. The Lord had reunited them.
At that time, my mother-she was not a believer. My father went often to fortune-tellers.7 He believed
more in the things of evil than those of good. At any rate, they told us their testimony and then asked if
we would accept their prayers, and out of respect my mother said, "OK, you can pray for us."... So
during the prayer, I said, "Surely Jesus exists." So then I said that if Jesus exists he can heal me. I said,
"Certainly he can heal me, but I'm going to Jesus above all for salvation, for my soul. Then, given that he
is a living God, I want him also to heal me." And in that very moment, when I said, "Jesus, enter into my
life and heal me," in that moment I really felt a fire, that ran down my back. And at the same moment I
was baptized in the Holy Spirit, that is, I began also to speak in other languages. That was the beginning
of my Christian life.
And I should also say that for a while after I converted, I went along for a year with one foot in the
church and one in the [world]. On the one hand, I wanted to serve the Lord, but on the other hand, I still
wanted to go out with my friends and do the things that they did....
Until one day, while I was working-and in fact God had already been telling me for a while that "I
want you just for myself"-I was at work ... and I heard something like a whistle in my ear.... And the
Lord began to talk to me, and he told me, "Go and write down everything that I have told you." In effect
it was that I had made a first step, but I had really to abandon my friends entirely. For me it was difficult
to say no. And that once I had made the first step, the Lord would help me up all at once without any
effort. And then so many other things God revealed to me: that I should stay firm with him, because the
Lord wanted me only for himself. He wanted to do works in my life.... In fact, it happened like that. I
took the first step, I gave up going out with these friends of the world one day. That was difficult for me,
really a sacrifice. But I can say, thanks to God, that God has remained faithful to what he promised
me....
I can say, it's not that I make sacrifices, it's not that God forces me, but I know that God lives in me,
and thus I am contented. It's a choice to follow the Lord.
At this point, Marcellina considers herself cured of her back problems, and she appears to
be physically normal and healthy. Her story is regarded by other members of the church as a
particularly significant demonstration of God's power. She herself regards her cure and
conversion as having given her a new sense of purpose and direction in life.
De Martino's analysis of the crisis of presence
Before discussing these narratives as expressions of a crisis of presence, I want to describe

the intellectual context of Ernesto De Martino's development of this construct. De Martino was
born in Naples in 1908 and came of age during a dramatic period in European history.8 He was
educated in classical studies at the University of Naples, and his training in philosophy and
history is evident in all of his work. While Mussolini was remaking Italy into a fascist state, De
Martino joined the intellectual circle of Benedetto Croce, the idealist historian and philosopher
who, perhaps along with Antonio Gramsci, remains the most significant intellectual figure of
20th-century Italy. De Martino's early work is distinctly Crocean in theoretical approach,
although he also showed his independence by applying Crocean historiography to those whom
Croce regarded as genuinely "without history" (Croce 1949:247), particularly the "primitive"
societies of the colonial world.9 From the start, then, De Martino was an anthropologist as well
as a historian.
Like his mentor Croce, De Martino took an antifascist position early on, helping to organize
an intellectual resistance as early as 1941. He later joined the Socialist party and eventually the
Communist party. At the end of the war, he spent a period in the south of Italy as a political
organizer for the Communist party, and during this time his ethnographic interest began to shift
from the colonial Third World to the poor of his own society. He remained a voracious reader
of ethnographies of "primitive" societies, and his writings make use of ethnographic material
from all over the world, but his own ethnography from this point on dealt with rural southern
Italy.
De Martino's first book, Naturalismo e storicismo nell'etnologia (Naturalism and Historicism
in Ethnology) (1941), begins rather surprisingly with a discussion of the crisis in Western
civilization. Though intending to focus on primitive societies, De Martino argues that a major
goal of all ethnological analysis should be "expansion of our own self-consciousness in order
to clarify our actions" (1941:12). This is an early statement of an approach later referred to as
"critical ethnocentrism" (cf. Gallini 1979; Saunders 1993), in which De Martino argues that our
study of the Other necessarily entails critical reflection on our own analytic categories.'0 In the
same opening paragraph, De Martino introduces his enduring ethical and intellectual concern:
"Modern civilization needs all of its energies to overcome the crisis" of its own historical
moment.
De Martino's preoccupation with cultural crisis has led historian Carlo Ginzburg to place
him among the writers of "the books of the year zero" (1979:239), those European intellectuals
who saw nazism, fascism, and World War II as portents of the demise of European civilization.
The crisis that concerns De Martino, however, is much greater than fascism and the war-it is
endemic in modern society. Though he does not yet name the precipice, this first book worries
about life on the edge and about the potential "end of the world" (the title of his final book,
posthumously published in 1977). Indeed, De Martino's work shows an almost morbid concern
with degeneration and demise in all its guises: the death of the individual, the crumbling of
civilization, and the extinction of humanity. This forms the backdrop to his more particular
attention to the "crisis of presence," the existential worry that one might cease to be. Like
Heidegger, Sartre, and others who influenced him, however, De Martino has a particular
understanding of what it means "to be."
This understanding is developed in several major publications. In 1948 De Martino published
a book he had begun during the war, II mondo magico (The Magical World) (1973 [1948]). This
book introduces the issue of "the crisis of presence" during a discussion of latah and related
dissociative phenomena. Latah is the Malaysian name for a dissociative state in which a person
becomes highly susceptible to external influences, imitating the movements of others, echoing
voices, and generally seeming to lose the integrity of the individual's own personality. De
Martino analyzes this state as a "loss of presence" (1973[1948]:93), suggesting that the person's
consciousness, as a sense of self, is fragile and labile, and in the face of an emotional shock is
unable to maintain its active posture. In this situation, individuals lose "the content" of their
own consciousness and perseverate on some particular alternative content. As De Martino puts
it, "the distinction between presence [as consciousness] and the world that makes itself present
crumbles" (1973[1948]:93). In more psychological terms, De Martino is describing the loss of
ego boundaries; the loss of presence is the dis-integration of the personality. De Martino,
however, thinks ofthis crisis in existential rather than psychoanalytic terms. He repeatedly refers
to "the risk of not being in the world" (1975[1958]:3) or simply of "not being-here" (il rischio
di non esserci) (1975[1958]:3) and talks at length about the dialectic of being and the world in
which one is.
De Martino draws from both Hegel and Heidegger here in ways that are not always easy to
differentiate.11 De Martino himself relates his use of the term "presence" to Hegel's "sense of
self," and he cites this passage from Hegel's discussion of ontology:
The sensitive totality is, in its capacity of individual, essentially the tendency to distinguish itself in itself,
and to wake up to the judgment in itself, in virtue of which it has particular feelings and stands as a subject
in respect of these aspects of itself. The subject as such gives these feelings a place as its own in itself.
[cited in De Martino 1975[1958]:21; I have here used the translation of Hegel by Wallace (Hegel
1894:1 88); emphasis in the original]
This sense of self, for Hegel, is an aspect of the nature of being and a quality of human
consciousness. Other passages from Hegel describe the consciousness that De Martino prefers
to call "presence":
In life, consciousness contemplates a process which develops its own essential distinctions as modifica-
tions of its own concrete identity. ... I have thus in one and the same consciousness myself and my world;
I find myself in my world and I find my world in myself; world-itself-that which is-gives me my
objectivity and finds in me its subjectivity.... Self-consciousness-I am relating myself to myself-not
only overcomes object-consciousness; it also preserves it as a necessary level or aspect of its concrete
unity with itself and with its world.... The core of self-consciousness is its practical intentionality (Trieb)
to actualize its potentiality, to find itself in producing itself. [1959[1817]:212-213]
"Intentionality," then, is at the heart of "presence." It is also significant that in Hegel's dialectical
approach the negation of anything, including "being" and "presence," is integral to the thing
itself. The negation of presence, which might be seen as the "passivizing" of the individual, is
particularly important in De Martino's analysis of ritual, which in turn can be a means of
regaining presence.
Several other Hegelian ideas seem to be reflected in De Martino's consideration of the crisis
of presence. Like Hegel, De Martino understands individual and world as a unified whole, and
that relationship is intrinsic to "being." As Oilman (1971) and others have suggested, this
relationship is best understood as internal to the individual rather than something thatsomehow
connects two separate entities. To put it another way, the individual's relationship to the world
is simultaneously a relationship to the self. For De Martino, when individuals lose the kind of
self-consciousness that includes "practical intentionality," when they find themselves unable
to "produce" themselves, then one can speak of a crisis of presence.
Heidegger also argues that we "exist" because we have a particular relationship to ourselves.
Heidegger's term, Dasein, differentiates simple "being" from "existing," and only humans
"exist" in this sense of having a relationship tothemselves, a relationship to "being" itself (Biemel
1976:34). This relationship can be problematic, however:
When Dasein is absorbed in the world of its concern-that is, at the same time, in its Being-with towards
Others-it is not itself. ... This distantiality which belongs to Being-with, is such that Dasein, as everyday
Being-with-one-another, stands in subjection [Botmassigkeit] to Others. It itself is not; its Being has been
taken away by the Others. Dasein's everyday possibilities of Being are for the Others to dispose of as they
please. [1962(1927):1 63-164]12
Such passages must have influenced De Martino, who sees the crisis of presence as a situation
in which people are "absorbed in the world" and thus lose control of their own existence,
becoming subject to an indefinite other (Cherchi and Cherchi 1987:61-90). Note that it is not
situations per se that create a crisis of presence; it is rather a question of consciousness. The
crucial point is that sometimes absorption in the world renders people absolutely passive in the
face of situationsthatthreaten to undo them, but it is a passivity of consciousness, not necessarily
of behavior. The crisis of presence, furthermore, entails the possible loss of a place in history,
since history is the work of thinking, acting, feeling, and, perhaps above all, "distinguishing"
human beings. The ability to distinguish the categories and content of one's own consciousness
is the foundation of a dynamic interaction with the world, and the dialectic of "presence in the
world" and "the world which presents itself" always reflects (and determines) the individual's
posture with respect to an unfolding story.
This theme reemerges in a 1956 article in the intellectual review AutAut, in which De Martino
particularly explores the relationship between the crisis or presence and certain forms of mental
illness. The mentally ill, according to De Martino, are unable to engage in "dialectic" with the
world. They employ defense mechanisms, but these are inadequate, in the unique sense that
they do not "reestablish the spiritual dialectic"(De Martino 1956:20); that is, the mentally ill do
not "retake possession of the alienated psychic realities, putting them once again into the
cultural circuit, redisclosing to them their values" (De Martino 1956:20). Though focusing on
psychopathological dissociation, De Martino sees it more generally as the loss of subjectivity,
that is, the loss of the sense of self that allows people to make appropriate distinctions and thus
to control their own place as actors in history. This formulation is related to the Marxian notion
of alienation, in which individuals are alienated in the first place through loss of control of the
products of their own labor, but De Martino, like Gramsci and other Marxists in the Italian
tradition, is less concerned with economics than with consciousness. In some vague sense, for
De Martino, the crisis of presence is often connected to economic marginalization and political
powerlessness, but alienation can occur without the person's recognition of it, and thus create
no crisis. The essence of the crisis of presence, on the other hand, is the anxiety that "underlines
the threat of losing the distinction between subject and object, between thought and action,
between representation and judgment, between vitality and morality: it is the cry of one who
is wobbling on the edge of the abyss" (De Martino 1956:25).
De Martino also argues that "presence" is in part a relationship between nature and culture:
Civilization and human history are always born, today as in the most remote and archaic past ... through
the power of distinction according to determined forms or values, and cultural presence, that is the
being-here in history, is defined precisely by this distinguishing energy.... And since the relationship
which constitutes presence is the same relationship that renders culture possible, the threat of not
being-here in human history is configured as the risk of losing culture and of receding without
compensation into nature. [1956:19]
The "recession into nature" is often manifest as a bodily experience-illness, dissociation,

anesthesia, and so forth. When the body is experienced as alien, nature has somehow gotten
the best of culture.
Finally, this crisis is specifically, for De Martino, an emotional dilemma, "the manifestation
of an emotional reality in the face of which presence cannot be maintained, threatening to
become, in the passivity of ecopsychic behavior, the object of the emotions" (1973 [1948]:140).
By contrast, emotion used in the service of culture-that is, in overcoming the crisis of
presence-has an active and directed dimension rather than simply consisting of "feelings."
Furthermore, De Martino argues:
At the root of the radical crisis of presence is the inability to maintain the dialectic of the vital with the
ethos and with the logos, where the vital ... ceases to be living and vital passion, the powerful stimulus
of civilization and of history, to configure itself as mere "suffering," as impulse, as parasitic representation,
as unredeemable guilt, and so forth. [1956:21]
Citing Janet, De Martino describes such affective passivity as "moral weakness" (1956:21) at
a critical moment in which the individual faces the problem of "deciding to go beyond the
situations of his own history" (1956:19). Moral failure, like mental illness, derives from the
inability to synthesize appropriately, or from a kind of perseveration on one dimension of a
problem. Thus De Martino is particularly critical of Freud's treatment of libido as "sexual
vitality," preferring instead to treat it as "synthethic energy" that takes one beyond the given
circumstances and enables one to act. Such energy is the fount of real passion, and the loss of
presence is the inability to direct one's emotion. While passion with presence makes one the
author of one's emotions, the loss of presence makes one their passive instrument.
De Martino devotes the last part of the 1956 article to the role of religion in the resolution of
the crisis of presence. His analysis presents a wonderful paradox. The crisis of presence centers
around the potential loss of one's place as an actor in history, and yet "the fundamental act of
religious re-integration is the technique of institutional de-historification" (1956:31). Aliena-
tion-in whatever form-makes one into an object, and objects do not make history; when
religion helps people to overcome this alienation, De Martino calls the process "the cultural
redemption" (il riscatto culturale) (1956:31). Rituals move one back into history, however,
precisely by "de-historicizing" an otherwise unique encounter of consciousness and the world.
De Martino deals at length, for example, with the crisis of mourning (la crisi del cordoglio).
Death not only removes a person from the historical moment, it threatens to remove as well
those whose fate is tied to the deceased, those who depend on or love the dead one. The
survivors may fall into "melancholy inaction" or may even be inclined to follow the dead person
into the grave. Mortuary rituals serve to bring the living back into their particular history by
assimilating the existential crisis to a metahistorical pattern: "Such passages are dehistoricized,
that is resolved-masked and protected-in the iteration of the identical, and in the last instance
[are treated] as if they were not new (or historical), but rather repeated an archetypical situation,
one that has already taken place in metahistory" (1956:31 ). Through ritual, then, the individual
may overcome the crisis of presence and regain his or her particular consciousness and the
ability to act in the world.
discussion
Each of the three narratives cited above, in its own way, describes a crisis of presence that is
resolved in the conversion to Pentecostal Christianity. Before conversion, each person feels in
some way "on the razor's edge" (Marcellina's phrase) or on the "edge of the abyss" (De
Martino's). The abyss is their own passivity (though for Alessandro the sense of "passivity" needs
to be explained), the possibility that they may cease to "be here" in some very real sense.
Lidia Benevento's crisis is in some ways the most "modern," though its psychological roots
are perhaps timeless: as a child, her own strong personality confronted an even stronger one,
that of her father, while her potential ally and model, her mother, seemed ineffectual. 3 She was
nervous, "even hysterical," and was given to romantic episodes in which she totally lost herself.
By her own account, she was unrealistic in her expectations of these relationships and was
destined to fail to find the love she desperately wanted. Her initial attempts at resolution-psy-
choanalysis, mood-altering drugs, and "Oriental religions"-were also disappointments. Psy-
choanalysis failed her in perhaps typical ways: she achieved some insight, but the insight did
not help her find a path away from the abyss.14 Mood-altering drugs and alcohol, like Mai Kali,
further passivized her without pacifying her.
In the end, she found herselftotally unable to act, although she continued to resist "absorption
in the world." Her narrative reflects the dialectical relationship De Martino describes: presence
in the world ineffectually confronts the world which presents itself. She was unable to commit
suicide, but she was also unable to leave her house or to work. She was depressed and anxious,
afraid of the dark, afraid of being alone, and yet she isolated herself. Her statement that she "no
longer existed" is a dramatic, spontaneous expression of her "loss of presence." She had no
self-esteem, no will to act, no sense of herself as other than anesthesized anxiety.
Finally, Lidia had an experience with Jesus that, in her view, "liberated" her and returned her
to a sense of self. "Liberation" through conversion may seem a contradiction to those inclined
to see integralist religious commitments as a form of voluntary slavery, but most Pentecostals
see their conversion as a liberating experience. Their commitment to Jesus gives them some
distance from a world that otherwise seems to hold them so strongly that they are overwhelmed
by it, a world in which they have lost control of their own lives. It gives them a sense of a definite,
personalized "other" with whom they can have a deep relationship, but from whom they are
clearly separate. This "other" thus affirms their existence. Later in her testimony, Lidia com-
mented that the first thing she noticed when she converted was that she no longer felt alone;
she felt that she had a friend who loved her and looked after her. She draws strength from this
friendship and is now able to confront a world that remains problematic and essentially
unfriendly, but no longer threatens to undo her. She is able to return to work. She can leave her
house. She buys an apartment and begins to socialize with friends from the church. And she
can stand being alone when she has to be.
Alessandro Parducci's crisis seems at first glance anything but passive, revolving as it does
around his own threat to act too precipitously. He also needs "liberation," however. Before his
conversion, his own emotions were too strong for him to control. He had "poisoned blood,"
surely an image of possession, of loss of control of the substance that for him defined the very
essence of a person. At the moment when he raised the wrench to strike, he felt himself
"suspended." He was about to kill his brother, someone who ought to be among those whom
he most loved and protected. In another conversation, he told me that this act would probably
have ended with his being either dead or in prison for the rest of his life.
Alessandro's conversion has given him a way to take charge of his own emotional life again.
He is, even at 90, a man who demonstrates strong emotions, but also a gentle, affectionate
character. He cries easily, and his occasional testimonies and commentaries in church are
passionate and moving. A few years back he stood up in front of the church and apologized to
his children for having been so stern with them when they were younger, but he also told me,
with evident pride, that one of his sons stood up immediately and thanked him publicly for the
discipline that kept them all on the right path in life.
The control of his emotions was probably not an easy, once-and-for-al accomplishment, and
it may have taken Alessandro some years to find a balance between restraint and expression.
Though he converted right away, for example, it was only 14 years later that he finally
experienced "baptism in the Holy Spirit," the cathartic, mystical experience of speaking in
tongues. Many new converts experience this within the first months of their conversion. It may
be that Alessandro's conversion brought his emotions under a tenuous control, and that for a
long time letting them go again was too threatening a prospect.
Marcellina Vellana faces a different kind of crisis. Her back problem does not appear to have
been life-threatening, but it certainly threatened to take away her control over her life. Indeed,
her narrative indicates a sense that, before her conversion, "the doctors" had taken charge of
her, that she had no real options and no possibility of influencing the outcome on her own. She
depicts herself as an object instead of a subject; she feels that her body and her spirit had been
separated from each other, and her body was alien to her. Like Lidia and Alessandro, she had
become one-dimensional; she had "become" her disability and had thus lost contact with and
control over the rest of her self.15
It would not be unreasonable to refer to this as a kind of "identity crisis," especially if we
recognize the importance of a healthy, well-formed body to the sense of self. As Robert Murphy
so poignantly wrote:
[T]he disabled ... enter the social arena with a skewed perspective. Not only are their bodies altered,
but their ways of thinking about themselves and about the persons and objects of the external world have
become profoundly transformed. They have experienced a revolution of consciousness. They have
undergone a metamorphosis. [1990:87]
Indeed, the sense of self is almost always "intimately connected to bodily experience both
ontogenetically and through 'here and now' awareness" (Johnson 1985:130). In addition, as
Pandolfi has argued, identity is often expressed more physically than psychologically, and "the
body narrated" becomes a kind of personal history of self (1991:161; see also 1990). Thus the
distortions of her body are for Marcellina an index of her loss of self, her crisis of presence, and
her lack of control of her own destiny. One could argue similarly about Alessandro's "poisoned
blood" and Lidia's alcoholism. All these individuals have lost their ability to marshal an
appropriate physical presence in the world; their bodies are the locus of crisis.
The resolution of the crisis of presence, for Marcellina as for Lidia and Alessandro, entails the
restoration of a sense of wholeness, as well as the recovery of her "other" dimensions and of
her subjectivity. In her narrative, the conjunction of cure,'6 conversion, and baptism in the Holy
Spirit is particularly striking. She takes the active step of "going to Jesus for my salvation, for my
soul," and considers this essentially a spiritual act. In addition, however, she wants him to heal
her, a request that clearly subverts the control of the doctors. She reunites body and soul and
regains control over her own fate by putting herself in the hands of God. For her, there are no
contradictions in this process.
As noted earlier, De Martino's analysis of the crisis of presence also pays special attention to
the role of "de-historicization" in its resolution. It may be worth citing here an extended section
of De Martino's discussion. In critical moments of existence, he says:
[H]istoricity sticks out, the rhythm of the future is manifest with particular evidence, the human task of
"being-here" is directly and irrevocably called into question, something decisive happens, or is about to
happen.... The critical character of such moments lies in the fact that in them the risk of not being-here
is more intense, and therefore cultural redemption is more urgent.... The future creates anxiety, above
all in the critical moments of existence; the religious institution of dehistoricization takes these moments
out of the camp of human initiative and resolves them in the iteration of the identical, where the
cancellation or the masking of the anxiety-producing history is accomplished. With such dehistoricization
above all there is established a relationship with the alienated (or naturalized or dehistoricized) self.
[1953-54:19]
In the last sentence, "naturalized" means "decultured," and "dehistoricized" means "having
lost its place as an actor in history." Thus, paradoxically, the resolution of the crisis of presence
consists in reestablishing a relationship with oneself such that one is able to use cu ture (religious
ritual and symbolic structures) to regain culture (a shared sense of meaning in the human world),
and to use metahistorical ritual (ritual which timelessly assimilates this event to thousands of
like events) to regain an active place in a particular historical moment. De Martino thus also
distinguishes between "institutional dehistorification," by which the alienated individual is
"redeemed" to culture, and "irrelative dehistorification," which occurs in radical alienation and
the loss of presence, from which there is no redemption (Massenzio 1986:24).
Such "de-historification" is clearly indicated in these conversion stories. Indeed, one of the
crucial factors in Pentecostal experience is its manipulation of ordinary culturally defined
horizons of time (Cucchiari 1990a; see also Lancaster 1988:208 and Taussig 1980:5). All three
of the narratives presented here attend particularly to "critical moments," points in time at which
being-in-the-world is at risk in dramatic ways. All three confront and survive these moments in
part by changing the horizons of time in their world, by subsuming their experience into a great
metahistorical plan in which future, present, and past come together, and in which personal
history is melded to the history of an essentially timeless cosmos. Herzfeld calls this the "longue
duree of textual evolution, in which the grand events ... are scarcely more than generic markers
for repetitive experience" (1993:244). In retrospect, then, Alessandro understands that God has
saved him from "messes" even before his conversion, even before he "knew" God, and implies
that all of these events were somehow prescripted in a timeless past. Marcellina sees her
conversion as "the beginning of my Christian life," a rebirth founded in her relationship with a
timeless God. And Lidia very consciously unravels her own personal history, and yet she
simultaneously implies that the "real history" was elsewhere. When she says, for example,
"Today I realize that, no matter who my parents were, I simply couldn't have had what it was
that I was instinctively looking for," she is suggesting that her conversion has opened up to her
a different history. When she uses the word "instinctively," she implies the timelessness and
ahistoricity of her search for God.
The "eternalness" of Pentecostal time horizons is evident in many other ways. At an emotional
Sunday evening service, for example, a woman with a life-threatening illness was anointed with
oil, and immediately afterward the pastor broke out spontaneously in a hymn that began,
"Yesterday, today, and in eternity, Jesus is the same.... He never changes." In such eternal
sameness, Pentecostal ritual helps resolve the crisis of presence and reestablishes for converts
their place in a specific historical moment. Recall that De Martino linked the crisis of presence
to anxiety about "the end of the world." Though Pentecostals eagerly anticipate the end of this
world, they are confident of the eternity of a more important world. Perhaps paradoxically, the
dehistorification also allows them to live in the present moment, as "inner-worldly" activists.
The time horizon is also reflected in another common feature of these narratives: the sense
that, on the one hand, each person has been personally selected by God for special treatment,
and yet, on the other hand, each must make the choice to accept that selection. This is most
evident in Marcellina's testimony. In a common pattern, her initial conversion starts her on the
path, but she has trouble accepting all the implications. She remains with "one foot in the church
and one in the world." Then, while she is at work, God speaks to her and lets her know that he
"wanted me only for himself." She has a sense of a special "call" from the Lord, and of works
that she is to accomplish. But it is up to her to take the final step, to refuse to go out with her
friends "in the world." As she says directly, "It's a choice to follow the Lord."
This choice, then, seems to give Marcellina, Lidia, and Alessandro alike a new sense of will
and intentionality in their lives, so that they make decisions rather than being passively
manipulated by others. They have acquired a protector, a community, and a set of responsibili-
ties all at the same time. They are liberated from their passivity. They have recreated their own
histories and, in the process, have regained a presence in history itself.
notes
Acknowledgments. Vincenzo Padiglione has given useful advice, companionship, and hospitality at every
stage of this project. Tony Gait and F. G. Bailey both gave especially helpful readings of an earlier version
of this article, as did three anonymous reviewers for American Ethnologist. I also thank, for support and
advice of various kinds, Salvatore Cucchiari, Carlo Ginzburg, Mariella Pandolfi, Domenico Maselli, Paolo
Pirillo, Isabelle Chabod, Laura De Angelis, Mark Anderson, Rachel Herzing, Jay Roberts, Anne Jacobson
Schutte, Janet Smith, Ronald J. Mason, Carol Mason, Mose Polverino, Salvatore and Maria Zaccariello, and
Franco and Marisa Franci. Special thanks go to the members of the two Pentecostal communities described
in the article. I also gratefully recognize the ongoing support of Lawrence University, as fine a professional
home as any scholar could want.
1. The research in 1 989 was funded by an NEH Summer Stipend, and the longer period in 1991-92 was
funded by the National Science Foundation, grant BNS-9005857. The latter project was developed in
collaboration with Salvatore Cucchiari, who conducted fieldwork in Palermo in 1990-91.
2. It is worth noting, however, that Italian Evangelical Christians seem reluctant to proselytize in public
areas unless specifically invited. As far as I know, they do no door-to-door canvassing of the type done by
Jehovah's Witnesses or Mormons (in Italy as elsewhere); though most are eager to discuss their experience
and the Gospel with people who show an interest, they are rarely aggressive about it. This is in keeping with
other aspects of their belief system, particularly that conversion is an individual matter and that no one,
neither God nor human, can convert someone whose heart is closed. It may also have to do with the history
of harassment of Pentecostals in Italy, such that they prefer to maintain a low profile.
3. "When the day of Pentecost came it found them gathered in one place. Suddenly from up in the sky
there came a noise like a strong, driving wind which was heard all through the house where they were
seated. Tongues as of fire appeared, which parted and came to rest on each of them. All were filled with
the Holy Spirit. They began to express themselves in foreign tongues and make bold proclamation as the
Spirit prompted them." [Acts of the Apostles 2:1-6]
4. Even those who have been "born into the faith" must "convert" and have their own personal experience
with Jesus. Pentecostals reject infant baptism, and although they consider it an advantage to have parents
who instruct and guide children, the experience of becoming a Christian is ultimately an individual matter
of choice and will. A fair number of second-generation Pentecostals in fact spend a period of their youth
"in the world," and some never convert and become serious Christians.
5. See Lawless 1988 for a discussion of the "conviction of a sinful nature" among Pentecostal women
preachers in the United States.
6. "Liberation" (liberazione) is the term used to describe being freed of possessing demons, and it is
extended to refer to throwing off any vice or bad habit (many of which, such as these, are thought of as
"diabolical" in the literal sense).
7. Italy has a strong tradition of local magicians, fortune-tellers, and healers, and they remain active in
contemporary Italy. The maghi, card-readers, astrologers, and others have even adapted well to contempo-
rary media. In the late evening, many advertise extensively on television, some with regular "shows" that
last as long as an hour.
8. An essential bibliography of De Martino's work has been published by Gandini (1972, 1986).
Significant reviews and commentaries on his anthropology include Angelini 1977, 1991; Carpitella 1986;
Cases 1973; Cherchi and Cherchi 1987; Di Donato 1 989; Galasso 1978[1 969]; Gallini 1979, 1982, 1986;
C. Ginzburg 1988; Lanternari 1977, 1979, 1986; Lombardi Satriani 1979; Massenzio 1986; Padiglione
1978; Pasquinelli 1977, 1984, 1986; Saunders 1984, 1993; Signorelli 1986; and Solinas 1985. For
discussion particularly of the crisis of presence, the Cherchi and Cherchi book is especially recommended.
Pandolfi (1991) has insightful comments about emotions and the crisis of presence.
9. De Martino's precocious concern with historicizing the lives and situations of those ordinarily treated
as "without history" thus anticipates one of the most important developments of contemporary American
anthropology (Geertz 1980; O'Brien and Roseberry 1991; Sahlins 1985; Wolf 1982).
10. De Martino's view of critical ethnocentrism is actually considerably more profound than simple
"reflexivity." For more discussion of this issue, see Saunders 1 993.
11. Part of the difficulty in tracing the origin of De Martino's theoretical ideas is that although he is
meticulous in citing sources of ethnographic data he rarely cites those authors who have clearly influenced
his conceptual approaches. The reluctance to cite Heidegger may also reflect De Martino's rejection of
Heidegger's political positions.
12. I am grateful to an anonymous American Ethnologist reviewer for reminding me of the complexity
of Heidegger's position here and for pointing out that the brief excerpt oversimplifies matters. In fact, the
thrust of Heidegger's phenomenology is to overcome the simple polarities of subject/object, active/passive,
and so forth, and, to the extent that my characterization of Heidegger suggests the contrary, I may mislead
the reader. I excuse myself with the argument that I am reading Heidegger through De Martino, and I think
that De Martino saw the dialectic of consciousness and world in this fashion.
13. As Cucchiari notes in discussing the transformation of patriarchy in Sicilian Pentecostalism, these
stories are also frequently about "the negatively experienced control of domestic authority" (1 990b:698) in
difficult parent-child or husband-wife relations.
14. The failure of psychoanalysis is Lidia's own judgment, and it is out of my competence to assess the
therapy itself. I should note, however, that although I have chosen "the crisis of presence" as an analytic
tool in these three cases, I think that it would also be appropriate to describe this conversion (and some
others) as effective use of a "culturally constituted defense mechanism" (Spiro 1965).
15. See Spiro 1993 for an excellent discussion of anthropological ways of thinking about the self and the
confusions therein. Though I lack both the space and the courage to enter into the discussion on the
universality or "peculiarity" of Western conceptions of the self, it might be appropriate to note that I here
use the term loosely in the fourth sense mentioned by Spiro as "the person's construal of such an entity as
the center or locus of his or her initiative, sensations, perceptions, emotions, and the like" (1993:11 4).
16. The "reality" of the cure is not a question of concern to me here. Certainly Marcellina, like Lidia,
appears to be healthy in every sense at this point.
references cited
Angelini, Pietro, ed.

1977 Dibattito sulla cultura delle classi subalterne (1949-50). (Debate on the Culture of the Subaltern
Classes [1949-50].) Rome: Savelli.
1991 Cesare Pavese, Ernesto De Martino. La collana viola. Lettere 1945-1950. (Cesare Pavese, Ernesto
De Martino: The Violet Series. Letters 1945-1950.) 1945-1950. Turin, Italy: Boringhieri.
Biemel, Walter
1976 Martin Heidegger: An Illustrated Study. J. L. Mehta, trans. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovitch.
Carpitella, Diego
1986 De Martino e le nuove discipline. (De Martino and the New Disciplines.) La ricerca folklorica
(Folklore Research) 13:69-70.
Cases, Cesare
1973 Introduzione. In II mondo magico (The Magical World), by Ernesto De Martino. Pp. vii-xlviii.
Turin, Italy: Boringhieri.
Castiglione, Miriam
1977 Protestantesimo e religiosita delle classi subalterne. (Protestantism and Religiosity of the Subaltern
Classes.) In Religione popolare in un'ottica protestante. Gramsci, cultura subalterna e lotte contadina.
(Popular Religion from a Protestant Viewpoint: Gramsci, Subaltern Culture and Peasant Struggles.)
Henry Mottu and Miriam Castiglione, eds. Pp. 53-102. Turin, Italy: Claudiana.
Cherchi, Placido, and Maria Cherchi
1987 Ernesto De Martino. Dalla crisi della presenza alla comunita umana. (Ernesto De Martino: From
the Crisis of Presence to the Human Community.) Naples: Liguori.
Croce, Benedetto
1949 Filosofia e storiografia. (Philosophy and Historiography.) Bari, Italy: Laterza.
Cucchiari, Salvatore
1990a The Lords of the Culto: Transcending Time through Place in Sicilian Pentecostal Ritual. Journal
of Ritual Studies 4(1 ):1-14.
1990b Between Shame and Sanctification: Patriarchy and Its Transformation in Sicilian Pentecostalism.
American Ethnologist 17:687-707.
De Martino, Ernesto
1941 Naturalismo e storicismo nell'etnologia. (Naturalism and Historicism in Ethnology.) Bari, Italy:
Laterza.
1953-54 Fenomenologia religiosa e storicismo assoluto. (Religious Phenomenology and Absolute
Historicism.) Studi e materiali di storia delle religion i (Studies and Materials of the History of Religions)
24-25:1-25.
1956 Crisi della presenza e reintegrazione religiosa. (Crisis of Presence and Religious Reintegration.)
Aut Aut 31:17-38.
1973 [1948] II mondo magico. Prolegomeni a una storia del magismo. (The Magical World: Prolegom-
ena to a History of Magic.) Turin, Italy: Boringhieri.
1975[1958] Morte e pianto rituale. Dal lamento funebre antico al pianto di Maria. (Death and Ritual
Mourning: From the Ancient Funeral Lament to the Weeping of Maria.) Turin, Italy: Einaudi.
1977 La fine del mondo. Contributo all'analisi delle apocalissi culturali (1960-1965). (The End of the
World: A Contribution to the Analysis of Cultural Apocalypses [1 960-1965].) Clara Gallini, ed. Turin,
Italy: Einaudi.
Di Donato, Riccardo
1989 Preistoria di Ernesto De Martino. (The Prehistory of Ernesto de Martino.) Studi Storici (Historical
Studies) 30:225-246.
Galasso, Giuseppe
1978[1969] Croce, Gramsci ealtri storici. (Croce, Gramsci, and Other Historians.) Milano: II Saggiatore.
Gallini, Clara
1979 Note su De Martino e I'etnocentrismo critico. (Notes on De Martino and Critical Ethnocentricism.)
Problemi del socialismo (Socialist Problems) 15:211-222.
1982 Le scienze umane nella rivista "Societa." (The Human Sciences in the Journal "Society.") Uomo
e cultura (Man and Culture) 1 5-16:95-107.
1986 Metodo comparativo e studio delle dinamiche culturali. (The Comparative Method and the Study
of Cultural Dynamics.) La ricerca folklorica (Folklore Research) 1 3:31-38.
Gandini, Mario
1972 Ernesto De Martino: Nota bio-bibliografica. (Ernesto De Martino: A Bio-Bibliographic Note.)
Uomo e cultura (Man and Culture) 5:223-268.
1986 La ripresa e lo sviluppo degli studi demartiniani (1 974-1985). (The Renewal and the Development
of De Martino Studies [1974-1985].) La ricerca folklorica (Folklore Research) 13:101-104.
Garelli, Franco
1991 Religione e chiesa in Italia. (Religion and Church in Italy.) Bologna, Italy: II Mulino.
Geertz, Clifford
1980 Negara: The Theatre State in Nineteenth-Century Bali. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Ginsburg, Faye D.
1989 Contested Lives: The Abortion Debate in an American Community. Berkeley: University of
California.
Ginzburg, Carlo
1979 "La fine del mondo" di Ernesto De Martino. ("The End of the World" by Ernesto De Martino.) Studi
storici (Historical Studies) 40:238-242.
1988 Momigliano e De Martino. (Momigliano and De Martino.) Rivista storica italiana (Italian Historical
Review) 100:400-413.
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich
1894 Hegel's Philosophy of Mind. William Wallace, ed. and trans. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
1959[1817] Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Emil Mueller, trans. New York: Philosophical Library.
Heidegger, Martin
1962 [1927] Being and Time. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson, trans. London: SCM Press.
Herzfeld, Michael
1993 In Defiance of Destiny: The Management of Time and Gender at a Cretan Funeral. American
Ethnologist 20:241-255.
Johnson, Frank
1985 The Western Concept of Self. In Culture and Self: Asian and Western Perspectives. Anthony J.
Marsella, George DeVos, and Francis L. K. Hsu, eds. Pp. 91-138. New York: Tavistock.
Lancaster, Roger N.
1988 Thanks to God and the Revolution: Popular Religion and Class Consciousness in the New
Nicaragua. New York: Columbia.
Lanternari, Vittorio
1977 Ernesto De Martino etnologo meridionalista: Vent'anni dopo. (Ernesto de Martino, Southern
Ethnologist: Twenty Years Later.) L'uomo (Man) 1:29-56.
1979 Le scienze religiose in Italia e la prospettiva storico-antropologica. (The Sciences of Religion in
Italy and the Historical-Anthropological Perspective.) Problemi del socialismo (Socialist Problems)
16:123-144.
1986 Ernesto de Martino? Meglio un americano. (Ernesto De Martino? An American Would Be Better.)
La ricerca folklorica (Folklore Research) 13:15-22.
Lawless, ElaineJ.
1988 Handmaidens of the Lord: Pentecostal Women Preachers and Traditional Religion. Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press.
1991 Rescripting Their Lives and Narratives: Spiritual Life Stories of Pentecostal Women Preachers.
Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 7:53-71.
Leone, A. R.
1972 Villa San Sebastiano: Una comunita evangelica nel periodo fascista. (Villa San Sebastiano: An
Evangelical Community in the Fascist Period.) Bollettino della Societa di Studi Valdesi (Bulletin of the
Waldensian Studies Society) 132:95-114.
Lombardi Satriani, Luigi M.
1979 "La fine del mondo" di Ernesto De Martino. ("The End of the World" by Ernesto De Martino). Studi
storici (Historical Studies) 40:244-248.
Martin, David
1990 Tongues of Fire: The Explosion of Protestantism in Latin America. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Maselli, Domenico
1990 Gli evangelici nel Mezzogiorno. (Evangelicals in the South.) In Movimenti evangelici in Italia
dall'Unita ad oggi. (Evangelical Movements in Italy from Unity to Today.) Franco Chiarini, ed. Pp.
101-112. Turin, Italy: Claudiana.
Massenzio, Marcello
1986 II problema della destorificazione. (The Problem of Dehistorification.) La ricerca folklorica
(Folklore Research) 1 3:23-30.
Murphy, Robert F.
1990 The Body Silent. New York: W. W. Norton.
Obeyesekere, Gananath
1981 Medusa's Hair: An Essay on Personal Symbols and Religious Experience. Chicago: University of
Chicago.
O'Brien, Jay, and William Roseberry, eds.
1991 Golden Ages, Dark Ages: Imagining the Past in Anthropology and History. Berkeley: University
of California.
Olivieri, Alessandra
n.d. II mondo non e piu per me. (The World is No Longer for Me.) Castrovillari, Italy: Teda Edizioni.
Oilman, Bertell
1971 Alienation: Marx's Conception of Man in Capitalist Society. Cambridge: Cambridge University.
Padiglione, Vincenzo
1978 In margine al dibattito sul folklore. (In the Margins of the Debate on Folklore.) In Antropologia
storicismo e marxismo. (Anthropology, Historicism, and Marxism.) Franco Ferrarotti, ed. Pp. 132-148.
Milano: Franco Angeli.
Pandolfi, Mariella
1990 Boundaries inside the Body: Women's Sufferings in Southern Peasant Italy. Culture, Medicine and
Psychiatry 1 4:255-273.
1991 Itinerari delle emozioni. Corpo e identita femminile nel Sannio campano. (Itineraries of the
Emotions: Body and Women's Identity in Rural Sannio.) Milano: Francoangeli.
Pasquinelli, Carla, ed.
1977 Antropologia culturale questione meridionale. (Cultural Anthropology and the Southern Ques-
tion.) Firenze, Italy: La Nuova Italia.
1984 Trascendenza ed ethos del lavoro. Note su "La fine del mondo" di Ernesto De Martino.
(Transcendence and the Ethos of Work: Notes on "The End of the World" by Ernesto De Martino.) La
ricerca folklorica (Folklore Research) 9:29-36.
1986 Quel nomade di de Martino. (That Nomad De Martino.) La ricerca folklorica (Folklore Research)
13:57-60.
Rochat, Giorgio
1990 Regime fascista e chiese evangeliche. (The Fascist Regime and the Evangelical Churches.) Turin,
Italy: Claudiana.
Sahlins, Marshall
1985 Islands of History. Chicago: University of Chicago.
Saunders, George R.
1984 Contemporary Italian Cultural Anthropology. Annual Review of Anthropology 1 3:447-66.
1993 "Critical Ethnocentrism" and the Ethnology of Ernesto De Martino. American Anthropologist
95:875-893.
Signorelli, Amalia
1986 Lo storico etnografo. (The Ethnographer Historian.) La ricerca folklorica (Folklore Research)
13:5-14.
Solinas, Pier Giorgio
1985 Idealismo, marxismo, strutturalismo. (Idealism, Marxism, Structuralism.) In L'antropologia italiana.
Un secolo di storia. (Italian Anthropology: A Century of History.) Pietro Clemente, Alba Rosa Leone,
Sandra Puccini, Carlo Rossetti, and Pier Giorgio Solinas, eds. Pp. 205-264. Bari, Italy: Laterza.
Spini, Giorgio
1968 Movimenti evangelici nell'ltalia contemporanea. (Evangelical Movements in Contemporary Italy.)
Rivista storica italiana 80(3):463-498.
Spiro, Melford E.
1965 Religious Systems as Culturally Constituted Defense Mechanisms. In Context and Meaning in
Cultural Anthropology. M. E. Spiro, ed. Pp. 100-112. Glencoe, IL: Free Press.
1993 Is the Western Conception of the Self "Peculiar" within the Context of the World Cultures? Ethos
21:107-153.
Synan, Vinson
1971 The Holiness-Pentecostal Movement in the United States. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans
Publishing.
Taussig, Michael T.
1980 The Devil and Commodity Fetishism in South America. Chapel Hill: Universityof North Carolina.
Wolf, Eric R.
1982 Europe and the People without History. Berkeley: University of California.
Womack, David A., and Francesco Toppi
1989 Le radici del movimento pentecostale. (The Roots of the Pentecostal Movement.) Rome: Assem-
blee di Dio in Italia.
submitted August 5, 1993

accepted November 1, 1993

Saunders, 1995 - The Crisis of Presence in Italian Pentecostal Conversion

Caricato da

Informazioni sul documento

Copyright

Formati disponibili

Condividi questo documento

Condividi o incorpora il documento

Opzioni di condivisione

Hai trovato utile questo documento?

Questo contenuto è inappropriato?

Copyright:

Formati disponibili

Saunders, 1995 - The Crisis of Presence in Italian Pentecostal Conversion

Caricato da

Copyright:

Formati disponibili

the crisis of presence in Italian Pentecostal

GEORGE R. SAUNDERS-Lawrence University

Italian anthropologist Ernest De Martino (1908-1965) devoted much of his writing

American Ethnologist 22(2):324-340. Copyright ? 1995, American Anthropological Association.

324 american ethnologist

Protestant Pentecostalism in Italy

Pentecostalism is a small but dynamic movement in contemporary Italy, with perhaps

the crisis of presence 325

326 american ethnologist

the crisis of presence 327

328 american ethnologist

the crisis of presence 329

De Martino's analysis of the crisis of presence

Before discussing these narratives as expressions of a crisis of presence, I want to describe

330 american ethnologist

the crisis of presence 331

332 american ethnologist

The "recession into nature" is often manifest as a bodily experience-illness, dissociation,

the crisis of presence 333

334 american ethnologist

the crisis of presence 335

336 american ethnologist

the crisis of presence 337

Angelini, Pietro, ed.

338 american ethnologist

the crisis of presence 339

submitted August 5, 1993

340 american ethnologist

Potrebbero piacerti anche