De Martino's contribution to a counter-hegemonic interpretation of ritual efficacy

Abstract

The decolonial revisitation of the question of symbolic efficacy necessarily entails the simultaneous re-examination of certain anthropological and psychological theories constructed around the nature and functioning of the human psyche. The rationalist and materialist tradition, which has shaped hegemonic Western philosophy since the Scientific Revolution of the seventeenth century, has taken the physicalist model as its principal referent. While occupying a distinctly ‘subaltern’ position in relation to this dominant model, alternative conceptions of psychic life have nevertheless persisted from the Renaissance to the present. After resurfacing within Romantic philosophies of nature, these conceptions now surface in alternative psychotherapies as well as in theoretical debates addressing the nature of consciousness. Certain contemporary representatives of cognitive science have indeed granted increasing importance to the sensible and conceptualize consciousness as a primarily affective rather than reflexive faculty. Nevertheless, the most heuristically productive insights into certain dimensions of the human psyche - particularly its capacities for self-repair and self-repositioning in critical situations - continue to emerge from scientific counter-culture. This approach integrates the symbolic and cultural dimension into its theoretical frameworks and conceives consciousness not as a mere epiphenomenon of cerebral functional activity, but as a fundamental property of the universe.  In this domain, the anthropologist Ernesto De Martino stands as a pioneering figure. His insights into dissociated psychic states mobilized within mythico-ritual contexts, and into the symbolic vectors of ritual efficacy, laid the groundwork for the contemporary counter-culture which today explores the therapeutic virtues of psychedelics.