Da jongleurs a sciamani. Appunti sull’assimilazione dell’alterità religiosa nel pensiero illuminista

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».