In a volume edited to commemorate the thirtieth anniversary of Ernesto de Martino's death, Clara Gallini comments on the need to reread his work and to explore how, in an epoch prone to secularization, discourses on religion inevitably impact on society (Gallini 1997: 5). Ten years after, the debate is livelier than ever, but we are now enmeshed in even more worrying tendencies; that is, the hegemonic rise of illiberal and absolutist theological discourses. Both positions encapsulate disturbing analyses of cultural patterns (local, regional, national and global) with respect to contemporary social issues (from politics to education, mass media, the arts, ethics, science, technology, etc.) and both impact heavily on the way we think of religion. But what is ‘religion’? In 1958, de Martino begins his analysis with a troubled question: ‘What are we expected to do with the dead?’ Such a query summarizes the philosophical speculations of a lifetime, and although it may suggest a personal anxiety, at a more subtle level it does reinvigorate a number of contemporary discourses on religion in cultural history and cultural stories.

In this book I will present and discuss the works of Ernesto de Martino from an analogous concern. In particular, I will try to contextualize the thought of de Martino in his world – a world dramatically scarred by fascism, Nazism, World War II, colonialism, the division of the world in two hegemonic blocks, disenchantment and secularization – and our world – a world marked by the collapse of the Iron Curtain and related ideologies, re-enchantment, globalization, post-capitalism, neo-colonialism and (allegedly) ‘holy’ wars.