"The Devil made me do it"? Puh-leaze - let's hear it for history's actors:
By focusing on the performative aspect of possession Levack, in his methodical, scholarly way, cuts against the two most common modern explanations of possession: illness and fakery. Scholars a hundred years ago retrospectively diagnosed demoniacs with epilepsy, melancholy and hysteria. Today scholars seeking a medical explanation point to Tourette’s syndrome, dissociative identity disorder and religious anxiety. But Levack is at pains to show that any one medical explanation cannot fully account for the range of demoniac behaviour. Nor is intentional William Perry-style fakery a sufficient explanation for the full range and extent of the phenomena described in the early modern period.
Levack’s way of looking at possession allows one to view demoniacs in a new way. His argument hands agency back to those involved in cases of possession—they didn’t just suffer an illness, or deceive a community, says Levack; they actively played a part in a social ritual. Demonic possession was “a theatrical performance that reflected the religious cultures of the demoniac, the community, and the exorcist.”
Levack’s argument adds a much-needed historical lens through which to view possession, but he goes too far when he rejects any attempt by contemporary medicine to understand the demoniacs. The specificity of social context for all human behaviour is important, but that doesn’t preclude illness or self-interest interacting with performance.
Pathetic attention-seeking assholes, that's what they are. Here, if it'll make 'em happy:
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