Ricerc@Sapienza

The aim of this article is to observe the construction of shamanism in the
Encyclopédie by Diderot and d’Alembert. In this perspective, the article examines the
connection between the image of the shamans produced during the Age of Enlightenment
and the terms ‘jongleurs’ (French) and ‘jugglers’ (English), which were repeatedly used
to negatively judge native beliefs and practices connected to medicine men during modern
history. What emerges is a complex discursive production that does not promote
ethnographic knowledge of those worlds, but instead conveys a negative interpretation
of religion in general whose most scandalous representations were «indigenous religions».