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Weber’s famous 1918 lecture, “Science as a Vocation,” describes mo-
dernity’s rationalized approach to reality, in which “there are no mys-
terious or incalculable forces that come into play.... [O]ne can, in
principle, master all things by calculation. This means the world is dis-
enchanted” (Weber 1946 , 139 ). Walter Benjamin, too, writes of the
ontological effects of the emerging technologies of image and other
forms of mechanical reproduction. These technologies altered “the
limits of space and time to such a degree that they erase[d] the unique-
ness and distance that alone might preserve the ‘aura’ or sacrality of
things” (Carlson 2003 , 208 ). What Weber and Benjamin are describ-
ing is a world in which “the modern human subject... through its
rational and technological self-assertion, emptie[d] the world of mys-
tical presence—precisely by taking over the very production or fram-
ing of that world” (Carlson 2003 , 208 ).
But this disenchantment is perhaps the symptom of a larger pro-
cess, namely the rise of a particular secular form of subjectivity and
individualism, the capacity to know and define oneself independently
of any explanation whatsoever provided by religion (Oberoi 1995 ).
In this condition of modernity, the figure of the Other (a divine Other
that cannot be confined to the finite or to specific categories of mean-
ing) “is gradually replaced by the figure of the self who defines, con-
trols, possesses and masters—that is, the modern subject” (Schwartz
2003 , 138 ). In this context, our bodies, our selves, our actions, the
images we have of ourselves, the image we imagine we are to others,
are nothing more, nothing less, than objects in a universe of objects
of measurable form and substance.
Inuit Spirituality in the Age of Skepticism
7. Prophecy, Sorcery, and Reincarnation
edmund searles
