Ciência e ideologia: análise do “discurso polêmico antimágico” na teoria intelectualista da magia de Edward Tylor e James Frazer

Abstract

Since the introduction of the notion of magic in the West in the 6th century BC, it has been used as a tool for social exclusion and control, in which dominant ethnic, religious, political groups have used it to marginalize and stigmatize ideas, beliefs, practices or behaviors of other adversarial groups or considered deviant. This phenomenon is called antimagical polemic discourse (APD). This phenomenon was present at the formation of socioanthropology in the nineteenth century and on the building of its theories of the magic. The presence of the APD in these theories puts under suspicion the socio-anthropological knowledge about magic, because, in this way, scientific production is confused with ideological reproduction. Thus, this research aims to analyze how and to what extent the antimagical polemic discourse is present in the one that was the first great theoretical initiative on magic in socioanthropology, the British Edward Tylor and James Fazer’s intellectualist theory on magic. The theoretical-methodological basis of the research is an analysis of the discourse and polemical discourses of Norman Fairclough and Wouter Hanegraaff, respectively. This research argues that the APD is structurally embedded in the theories of magic of Tylor and Frazer, marking their sources, definitions, and choice of research objects. The target of polemical discourse in the intellectualist theory – and that has its ideas, beliefs, practices, and behaviors stigmatized – is predominantly the figure of the savage. DPA in intellectualist theory fulfills, in particular, the political-ideological functions of, first, in contrast to the stigmatized identity of the primitive, to construct the identity of the modern, western, and civilized individual; and second, to legitimize the process of colonization / European imperialism.