Description
Book SynopsisThe first English translation of a classic work of twentieth-century anthropology and philosophy. A philosopher, historian of religions, and anthropologist, Ernesto de Martino (19081965) produced a body of work that prefigured many ideas and concerns that would later come to animate anthropology. In his writing, we can see the roots of ethnopsychiatry and medical anthropology, discussions of reflexivity and the role of the ethnographer, considerations of social inequality and hegemony from a Gramscian perspective, and an anticipation of the discipline's existential turn. We also find an attentiveness to hope and possibility, despite the gloomy title of his posthumously published book La fine del mondo, or The End of the World. Examining apocalypse as an individual as well as a cultural phenomenon, treating subjects both classic and contemporary and both European and non-Western, ranging across ethnography, history, literature, psychiatry, and philosophy, de Martino probes how we re
Trade Review“De Martino was well ahead of his time. Since his death we have witnessed the rise of medical anthropology, reflexivity, ethnographic film, ethnomusicology, and phenomenology. The time is now ripe for this translation of
La fine del mondo to appear.” * Charles Stewart, University College London *
Table of Contents Translator’s Preface
Introduction
Overture 1: Will There Be a World Tomorrow?
1: Mundus
2: Psychopathological Apocalypses
3: The Drama of Christian Apocalypse
4: Apocalypse and Decolonization
5: The Apocalypse of the West
6: Anthropology and Marxism
7: Anthropology and Philosophy
Glossary
Notes
References
Index
