Of Spiders and Snakes

In concert with the recent revival of De Martino’s work, both in Italy and abroad, this article returns to his study of Lucanian magic rituals and his views about cultural apocalypses in order to highlight the relevance of his socio-anthropological reflections for the “wicked” problems posed in the twenty-first century by climate change. To this purpose, I will analyze two recent environmental novels, Amitav Ghosh’s Gun Island (2019) and Claudia Durastanti’s Missitalia (2024), that directly or indirectly reference De Martino’s theories. My intention is to perform a translational gesture that retroactively intervenes in and enhances De Martino’s original texts.