In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Imagining the Strega FOLKLORE RECLAMATION AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF ITALIAN-AMERICAN WITCHCRAFT Sabina Magliocco The expansion of Neo-Paganism and revival Witchcraft1 in North America is among the most interesting outgrowths of the contemporary ‘‘New Age’’ movement.2 Italian folk magic is among those which have received considerable attention, spawning a proliferation of books, Web sites, and small groups of practitioners. Still, these reclaimed magical practices bear only a slight resemblance to the folk magic that existed (and, in some cases, continues to exist) in Italian-American ethnic communities. In this chapter, I trace the development of Stregheria, or Italian-American revival Witchcraft, showing how it has been constructed by combining traditional Italian folk beliefs and practices with historical and ethnographic materials, New Age concepts, and frameworks for religious ecstasy to create a completely new religion that serves the needs of contemporary Italian-American spiritual seekers. I will argue that it codifies and revalues traditional Italian folk beliefs and magical practices, placing them in a form that is friendly to the values of second-, third- and fourth-generation Italian Americans, but is significantly different from folk magic as practiced in rural Italy and brought to North America by Italian immigrants. I am particularly interested in the ways how the creators of Italian-American Witchcraft have made use of scholarly literature on Italian history and ethnography in ways that are quite different from what the producers of knowledge may have intended. I will also examine the implications of the emergence of Italian-American revival Witchcraft at this particular historical juncture in terms of what it can tell us about the nature of ethnic identity in the United States at the beginning of the twenty-first century. I base my analysis on the literature that emerged from the postmodern historical critiques of cultural categories previously understood as natural or essential.3 According to this theoretical strain, categories such as gender, race, nationality, and ethnicity— which, at first glance, appear inherent—can be regarded as inventions, in the sense of ‘‘widely shared, though intensely debated, collective fictions that are continually reinvented .’’4 By adopting this stance, I am neither denying the existence of real cultural differences between groups nor asserting that expressions of ethnic identity are not genuine for tradition-bearers. Instead, I posit that ethnic groups as we conceive of them today—rather than being natural, static, stable entities that possess an essential set of traits that exist relatively unchanged through time—are actually of fairly recent origin, 197 198 Sabina Magliocco tied to the emergence of the modern nation-state.5 Our assumptions about ethnic groups carry the legacy of European romanticism and its emphasis on the concept of authenticity.6 However, as Michael Fischer suggests, ‘‘ethnicity is something reinvented and reinterpreted in each generation [and] by each individual,’’ often in ways that remain fairly obscure and impenetrable even to the artists and re-creators themselves.7 Italian-American Witchcraft is one among many reinterpretations of Italian-American ethnicity emerging in the late twentieth century. Although based in traditional folkmagical practices brought to North America by Italian immigrants, it is essentially a case of ‘‘folklore reclamation,’’ a term that describes a particular kind of folklore revival that attempts to reclaim, albeit in a new cultural context, aspects of folk tradition stigmatized by a dominant discourse. Like other forms of revival and ‘‘invented tradition,’’ folklore reclamation generally signals a break with tradition and the deep-seated need to erase that break from collective memory, or at least make it more palatable. What distinguishes folklore reclamation from similar forms of cultural revival is its focus on forms, elements, and even words formerly marginalized, silenced, and discredited by the dominant culture. Through the process of reclamation, these previously repudiated elements are reappropriated, reinterpreted, and given a new and illustrious context in which they function as important symbols of identity and pride. This identity is consciously oppositional to the one portrayed in the dominant culture’s representations. Folklore reclamation is not unique to Italian Americans; in fact, the process seems to emerge as part of identity politics in the larger context of globalization. In the case of Stregheria, folklore reclamation is taking place as the status of Italian Americans in North America is changing. Once reviled as the newest wave of unacculturated immigrants , many have now become part of the middle classes and find themselves targets of hostility from immigrant groups who see them as white oppressors, blaming them (through Christopher Columbus) for...

Share