MAPACA

Mid-Atlantic Popular &
American Culture Association

Linguists, philosophers, and anthropologists have advanced numerous theoretical accounts of, and explanatory approaches to, two vexing questions of human culture. Broadly: where does meaning lie in relation to signs, and how are such expressions of meaning understood to effect change in empirical reality? Some formulation of the latter problem lies at the heart of questions about the epistemology of magical practices, and of ritual activity generally. Perhaps the most essential form of this problem presents itself in the use of words - spoken or written - not to convey explicit semantic content, but rather to magically effect change by virtue of an autonomous power in the signification itself. Words are “magical” in such instances not because they necessarily comprise a distinct vocabulary of arcana, but because the very act of their deployment possesses a force of its own. One example of this phenomenon can be seen in a unique manifestation of popular religious culture: the construction and use of magical talismans.

In this paper, I propose to demonstrate that the production of signifiers, as a ritual act, has instrumental force deriving from an implicit recognition of its metaphoric relation to natural language acts conceived of as means of realizing practical effects. With a heuristic basis in linguistic and anthropological theories of signification, meaning, and the logics of magic and ritual, I will draw upon illustrative cross-cultural evidence, with particular attention to the place of text in the popular traditions of talismanic magic across a broad range of geographic and historical contexts, as well as within diverse magico-religious ritual systems. The talismanic use of text and the analysis of writing as a ritual act are two interrelated topics which remain relatively undertheorized, a deficiency this paper seeks to redress.