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Paper short abstract:

In this presentation we propose to show how the concept of poison in the Apulian cult of tarantism is increasingly reconceptualized with reference to environmental depletion. How are religious narratives inscribed in the understanding of poisoned landscapes?

Paper long abstract:

In 1961, Italian anthropologist Ernesto De Martino published "La terra del rimorso", a study of Southern Italian tarantism. The title has been translated as “Land of Remorse”, although the Latin-derived term terra more accurately denotes earth or soil. "Rimorso" has a double meaning and indicates both, “remorse” and “re-bite” (from the Italian morso = bite), referring to the bite or sting of venomous animals such as spiders, scorpions, or snakes. The bite of these critters has long been interpreted as a symbolic manifestation of toxic gender and familial relations. The (real or imagined) poison entering the body of a bitten person had to be ejected through ecstatic trance dancing and vomiting in a religious cult attributed to St. Paul, the patron saint against venomous bites. Of recent, the poison is increasingly reinterpreted with reference to environmental issues and thus again more closely connected to the actual meaning of terra.

In the course of our multimodal research we encountered a number of commentaries that link today’s contamination of the environment (through fertilizers and chemical industries) to the presumed contaminating spider bite.

Very soon after we started our fieldwork, another non-human agent - besides the critters, saints and landscapes - entered our fieldwork: Xylella fastidiosa.

Xylella fastidiosa, a phytopathogenic quarantine bacterium, expands exponentially in olive groves; so far it has infected 21 million olive trees. We investigate how the destruction of the environmental landscape affects the religious landscape and, vice versa, how religious narratives are inscribed in the understanding of poisoned landscapes.