The Colonialism of Disenchantment

I was recently presenting about enchantment and disenchantment and one of the points I made, a point I've made ever since the publication of Reviving Old Scratch and more recently with Hunting Magic Eels, is the colonial aspect of doubt and disenchantment. I wrote about this here in 2019.

There are two aspects related to the colonialism of disenchantment.

The first aspect is the observation that disenchantment is largely a Western problem. The Christianity of the global East and South is very much enchanted. In Africa, South America, and the East Christians don't need convincing that the devil exists and that malevolent spiritual forces are at work in the world. Educated white people in America and Europe doubt this, but the rest of the world doesn't.

A different way to make this point is to observe that disenchantment is WEIRD. WEIRD stands for Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic. Over the last few decades in psychology a conversation has started about how the vast majority of participants in psychological research has come from Western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic nations. These studies produce psychological findings we too quickly assume hold for the rest of the world. But do they? How weird are WEIRD participants? The answer, it turns out, is pretty damn weird. Numerous studies have shown that WEIRD participants behave very differently from the rest of the world. Here, then, is another way to describe the colonialism of disenchantment. Most of the world is enchanted. Disenchantment, by contrast, is both WEIRD and weird.

A second aspect concerning the colonialism of disenchantment is harder to admit about ourselves but it has had a historical impact upon colonialism.

Specifically, the disenchanted Christianity of progressive Christians in the West is considered to be more "educated," "complex," and "scientifically literate" than more enchanted forms of Christian belief. This is largely due to the fact that many progressive Christians, especially ex-evangelicals, have been on a journey away from the enchanted Christianity of their childhood. This journey is typically narrated as a developmental process, moving from childhood naiveté into something more ambiguous, yes, but something more adult and mature, more willing and courageous to "face doubts" and "live with the questions." Sometimes this developmental process is described as an "evolution," from a simpler to a more complex faith.

The unspoken assumption here is that enchanted forms of faith are childish, naive, and simplistic. We grow out of certainty to embrace doubt. A Christianity that doubts and questions the enchanted aspects of faith is felt to be mature, sophisticated, and complex. Combine these things and you have the the colonialism of disenchantment. The skeptical, questioning, doubting faith of progressive Christianity in the West is the more evolved faith. By contrast, the enchanted faith of the global East and South is more primitive, naive, and superstitious. The West, by rejecting enchantment, became "enlightened." Disenchantment is adult and grown-up, whereas enchantment is childish, trafficking in make-believe and fairy tales.

This, I have argued, is one of the great paradoxes of progressive, ex-evangelical Christianity, how it claims to be a champion of a post-colonial Christianity in the world, yet enacts and embodies a WEIRD and colonial attitude when it comes to enchantment.

This isn't idle speculation. Disenchantment had a significant role in the colonial project. As Graham Jones has argued in his book Magic's Reason: An Anthropology of Analogy disenchantment aided colonialism in two different ways.

First, the rise of entertainment magic in the West was linked to Enlightenment values. The modern stage magician was no longer viewed as an agent of the occult but was, rather, a skilled illusionist. Magic became "scientific" and "technical." The audience knew what they were witnessing was a "trick." What happened on the stage looked like "magic," but the audience knew better, and that was a part of the delight and fascination. This E/enlightened approach to magic facilitated disenchantment among the masses.

As Jones writes, "modern magical showmen were expected to present tricks as tricks to audiences eager to be deceived, but not so credulous as to mistake illusions for reality. These performers agentively carved out associations with science." Thus, "Western illusionism converged with modern materialist cosmology and empiricist epistemology...[B]y the beginning of the nineteenth century, the illusionist had emerged as 'a powerful symbol of progress' in the West, as a scientific popularizer and debunker of superstitions...The close association of entertainment magic with Enlightenment values of rationality, skepticism, and materialism made it a powerful resource for signifying secular modernity..."

Jones' second observation is that, once the stage magician became an agent of disenchantment, he could be used to expose and create a contrast with "primitive" peoples who still "believed in magic." In contrast to the Western stage magician, the sorcerers, witches, and shamans of ingenious peoples were viewed as cons taking advantage of uneducated savages. The modern stage magician demonstrated how indigenous magic was just "tricks," and that anyone who "believed in" these tricks was primitive, childish, and backward. Thus, in "exposing" indigenous magic for what it was, while noting the incredulous nature of the "savages," modern magic fueled the narrative of "progress" that gave birth to the colonial project. Indigenous people who believed in "magic" were "childish" and "primitive" and in need of parenting, education, and supervision.

As Jones writes,

The era of colonialism invigorated Enlightenment discourses of progress by dramatizing the dominion of Western European powers over less technologically advanced peoples of the global south. It also provided magicians with a new foil: "primitive"--or, in Weber's parlance, "savage"--magicians reputed to hold sway among colonial populations. More than Europe's fairground quacks and village soothsayers, ritual experts in non-Western traditions came to figure in the literature and lore of entertainment magic as conceptual embodiments of premodern, non-modern, or antimodern approaches to magic. Magic authors drew on a variety of ethnographic representations and erudite commentaries in constructing these discourses, equating the benighted outlook of present-day colonial subjects with the superstitious beliefs of Europe's historical past.

In short, a disenchanted approach to "magic" supported the colonial project.

Jones goes on in Magic's Reason to show how modern magicians were used by colonial powers to discredit indigenous shamans and sorcerers. Jones recounts the case of Robert-Houdin, the Father of Modern of Magic, who was used by the French colonialists to "debunk" and "expose" the "trickery" of the marabouts, popular religious figures in colonial Algeria.

Here in the case of Robert-Houdin we see disenchantment--a refusal to believe in magic--used as an agent of colonial oppression. A disenchanted approach toward "magic" was associated with progress, advancement, and reason, the attitude that justified the paternalistic posture behind the colonial project to educate backward, childish, savage, and primitive colonial populations. If you believed in magic that, quite literally, justified your oppression.

All this, then, is what I call "the colonialism of disenchantment."