The Myth of Disenchantment by Jason Ananda Josephson Storm

The Myth of Disenchantment by Jason Ananda Josephson Storm

A great many theorists have argued that the defining feature of modernity is that people no longer believe in spirits, myths, or magic. Jason A. Josephson-Storm argues that as broad cultural history goes, this narrative is wrong, as attempts to suppress magic have failed more often than they have succeeded. Even the human sciences have been more enchanted than is commonly supposed. But that raises the question: How did a magical, spiritualist, mesmerized Europe ever convince itself that it was disenchanted? Josephson-Storm traces the history of the myth of disenchantment in the births of philosophy, anthropology, sociology, folklore, psychoanalysis, and religious studies. Ironically, the myth of mythless modernity formed at the very time that Britain, France, and Germany were in the midst of occult and spiritualist revivals. Indeed, Josephson-Storm argues, these disciplines' founding figures were not only aware of, but profoundly enmeshed in, the occult milieu; and it was specifically in response to this burgeoning culture of spirits and magic that they produced notions of a disenchanted world. By providing a novel history of the human sciences and their connection to esotericism, The Myth of Disenchantment dispatches with most widely held accounts of modernity and its break from the premodern past.

Jason A. Josephson-Storm is associate professor in and chair of the Department of Religion at Williams College. He is the author of The Invention of Religion in Japan, also published by the University of Chicago Press.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780226403366
ISBN 10	022640336X
Title	The Myth of Disenchantment
Author	Jason Ananda Josephson Storm
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	The University of Chicago Press
Year published	2017-05-16
Number of pages	400
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.