On September 20, 1587, Walpurga Hausmännin of Dillingen in southern Germany was burned at the stake as a witch. Although she had confessed to committing a long list of maleficia (deeds of harmful magic), including killing forty—one infants and two mothers in labor, her evil career allegedly began with just one heinous act—sex with a demon. Fornication with demons was a major theme of her trial record, which detailed an almost continuous orgy of sexual excess with her diabolical paramour Federlin "in many divers places, . . . even in the street by night."

As Walter Stephens demonstrates in Demon Lovers, it was not Hausmännin or other so-called witches who were obsessive about sex with demons—instead, a number of devout Christians, including trained theologians, displayed an uncanny preoccupation with the topic during the centuries of the "witch craze." Why? To find out, Stephens conducts a detailed investigation of the first and most influential treatises on witchcraft (written between 1430 and 1530), including the infamous Malleus Maleficarum (Hammer of Witches).

Far from being credulous fools or mindless misogynists, early writers on witchcraft emerge in Stephens's account as rational but reluctant skeptics, trying desperately to resolve contradictions in Christian thought on God, spirits, and sacraments that had bedeviled theologians for centuries. Proof of the physical existence of demons—for instance, through evidence of their intercourse with mortal witches—would provide strong evidence for the reality of the supernatural, the truth of the Bible, and the existence of God. Early modern witchcraft theory reflected a crisis of belief—a crisis that continues to be expressed today in popular debates over angels, Satanic ritual child abuse, and alien abduction.

Naming the Witch explores the recent series of witchcraft accusations and killings in East Java, which spread as the Suharto regime slipped into crisis and then fell. After many years of ethnographic work focusing on the origins and nature of violence in Indonesia, Siegel came to the conclusion that previous anthropological explanations of witchcraft and magic, mostly based on sociological conceptions but also including the work of E.E. Evans-Pritchard and Claude Lévi-Strauss, were simply inadequate to the task of providing a full understanding of the phenomena associated with sorcery, and particularly with the ideas of power connected with it.

Previous explanations have tended to see witchcraft in simple opposition to modernism and modernity (enchantment vs. disenchantment). The author sees witchcraft as an effect of culture, when the latter is incapable of dealing with accident, death, and the fear of the disintegration of social and political relations. He shows how and why modernization and witchcraft can often be companions, as people strive to name what has hitherto been unnameable.

The renowned postmodernist philosopher’s tour-de-force contemplation of sex, technology, politics and disease in Western culture after the revolutionary ‘orgy’ of the 1960s.

◎“文本之外别无他物”
◎拆解“解构之父” 重估德里达思想遗产
◎十堂课读懂大师思想 让哲学不再令人生畏
◎英国格兰塔出版社王牌书系
【编辑推荐】
※德里达是20世纪下半叶最重要的哲学家之一，其思想在掀起巨大波澜和争议的同时也对后世诸多学科领域产生了重要的影响。可以说，在谈论20世纪哲学史和后现代思潮时，德里达是无法绕开的名字。
※英国知名出版社格兰塔王牌书系之一，广受读者欢迎和好评。
※本书系由当代著名哲学家西蒙•克里奇利主编，每本书均由各个领域的权威教授和专家撰写，内容深入浅出，是阅读这些大师级思想家的绝佳入门。
※装帧精美，小开本便于携带。
【内容简介】
作为20世纪后半期最重要的法国哲学家，雅克·德里达以其创造的解构主义思想深刻影响了包括性别、法律、文学、政治在内的诸多学科领域，他的思想在掀起巨大波澜和争议的同时，也成了后现代思潮最重要的理论来源之一。而与此同时，由其创造的“解构”一词，也出现在诸多电影、音乐和艺术作品之中，成为一种流行风尚。自存在主义之后，鲜有哲学思想能产生这种程度的跨学科吸引力和流行魅力。
在《如何阅读德里达》中，佩内洛普· 多伊彻从德里达的著作中选取十段关键文本，逐一进行解读和分析，提炼和拆解德里达思想的关键概念，以向普通读者展示德里达的魅力与重要性。
【名人推荐】
“‘如何阅读’系列通过对作品的文本细读，让我们可以和这些大师级思想家面对面相遇。”
——特里·伊格尔顿
“这套看上去薄薄的小册子是一堂真正教你‘如何阅读’的课程，而非‘如何假装阅读’。”
——约翰·班维尔

American society has changed dramatically since A Culture of Conspiracy was first published in 2001. In this revised and expanded edition, Michael Barkun delves deeper into America's conspiracy sub-culture, exploring the rise of 9/11 conspiracy theories, the "birther" controversy surrounding Barack Obama's American citizenship, and how the conspiracy landscape has changed with the rise of the Internet and other new media. What do UFO believers, Christian millennialists, and right-wing conspiracy theorists have in common? According to Michael Barkun in this fascinating yet disturbing book, quite a lot. It is well known that some Americans are obsessed with conspiracies. The Kennedy assassination, the Oklahoma City bombing, and the 2001 terrorist attacks have all generated elaborate stories of hidden plots. What is far less known is the extent to which conspiracist worldviews have recently become linked in strange and unpredictable ways with other "fringe" notions such as a belief in UFOs, Nostradamus, and the Illuminati. Unraveling the extraordinary genealogies and permutations of these increasingly widespread ideas, Barkun shows how this web of urban legends has spread among subcultures on the Internet and through mass media, how a new style of conspiracy thinking has recently arisen, and how this phenomenon relates to larger changes in American culture. This book, written by a leading expert on the subject, is the most comprehensive and authoritative examination of contemporary American conspiracism to date. Barkun discusses a range of material-involving inner-earth caves, government black helicopters, alien abductions, secret New World Order cabals, and much more-that few realize exists in our culture. Looking closely at the manifestations of these ideas in a wide range of literature and source material from religious and political literature, to New Age and UFO publications, to popular culture phenomena such as The X-Files, and to websites, radio programs, and more, Barkun finds that America is in the throes of an unrivaled period of millenarian activity. His book underscores the importance of understanding why this phenomenon is now spreading into more mainstream segments of American culture.