Doubt and the Dislocation of Magic: France, 1790-1940

How much of what historians call ‘belief’ would be better understood as ‘doubt’? Doubts are wavering, inconsistent, emotional, and even unconscious attitudes that play complex roles in motivation. This article outlines the characteristics of doubt through the example of witchcraft in France from 1790-1940, drawing on news reports and archive sources from more than a thousand police investigations and trials involving magic. Rethinking witchcraft as doubt has very significant historiographical consequences. Historians have long been dissatisfied with what Keith Thomas called the ‘decline of magic’ and Max Weber called the ‘disenchantment of the world’. Shifting focus from beliefs to doubts suggests new ways to understand these long-term historical processes, because doubts move in different ways to belief. They are not consciously learned and transmitted, but parasitic and contagious, learned and experienced in spite of conscious attitudes and authoritative examples. Rather than the overall decline of belief, historians can instead trace the continuing ‘dislocations’ of doubt, as ideas of magic reappear as problems of social reputation, mental capacity, or emotional decorum. Might doubt also help historians come to terms with other puzzles of attitude and agency, such as attitudes to vaccination, climate change, or race?