Ritual

In E Østrem, MB Bruun, NH Petersen & J Fleischer (eds), Genre and Ritual: The Cultural Heritage of Medieval Rituals. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, pp. 49-64., 2005

Theorizing Rituals: Vol I: Issues, Topics, Approaches, Concepts, edited by Jens Kreinath, Jan Snoek and Michael Stausberg, xiii–xxv. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2006

It is unclear when rituals first originated. Some assume that ritual, like dance, music, symbolism, and language, arose in the course of the evolution of primates into man, 1 or even prior to it. 2 Thus rituals may also have facilitated, or even stimulated, processes of adaptation. Be that as it may, biologists and behavioral scientists argue that there are rituals among animals, and this has important implications for our understanding of rituals. 3 Unlike animal rituals, however, sometime in the course of the evolution of (human) ritual, and in specific cultural settings, rituals have partly become the business of experts (priests). These ritual specialists, it can safely be assumed, often not only developed a ritual competence in the sense of performative skills but also began to study the rituals of their own tradition. Hence, one may assume that within this process of specialization, social differentiation, and professionalization, 4 indigenous forms of the study of rituals evolved. In contrast to the modern, mainly Western academic study of rituals, these indigenous forms of ritual studies can be referred to as 'ritualistics'. 5 * A first draft of this introduction was written by Michael Stausberg. It was then jointly revised and elaborated upon by the editors of this volume. We wish to thank Ingvild S. Gilhus (Bergen) and Donald Wiebe (Toronto) for helpful comments on a previous draft. 1 See also Bellah 2003. (Here, as throughout the volume, works listed in the annotated bibliography are referred to by author and year only. Those items not listed in the bibliography will be provided with full references in the notes.) 2 Staal 1989, 111 states: "Ritual, after all, is much older than language." See also Burkert 1972. 3 See Baudy in this volume. 4 See Gladigow 2004. 5 See Stausberg 2003. Although a small group of us began using the term at American Academy of Religion meetings, today it has wide currency in a large number of disciplines" (p. 1). See also Grimes 1982 and his bibliography, Research in Ritual Studies (Grimes 1985). In terms of the establishment of a new field of research, see also his article on ritual studies in the Encyclopedia of Religion from 1987. 8 See, e.g., Grimes 1990; Bell 1997. 9 Over the last five years, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (German Research Council) funded two large-scale research programs on rituals: Kulturen des Performativen (Sonderforschungsbereich 447 [http://www.sfb-performativ.de] since 1999) and Ritualdynamik (Sonderforschungsbereich 619 [http://www.ritualdynamik.uni-hd.de] since 2002). Some contributors to the current volume are members of the former (Christoph Wulf) or the latter (Dietrich Harth, Axel Michaels, William S. Sax, and Jan A.M. Snoek). 10 The editors themselves were members of a junior research group, Ritualistik

2008

Can a theory be extrapolated based solely on a single ethnographic study? Can the examination of a single form of ritual suffice to create a blanket research method which is applicable to all forms of ritual? Is meaning merely a construct which participants lull themselves into believing that ritual possesses? And does intentionality have an effect on the consideration of meaning within ritual? I will attempt to elucidate several aspects of the responses to these questions within the context of James Laidlaw and Caroline Humphrey’s work, The Archetypal Actions of Ritual. I will also comment upon and demonstrate the difficulties inherent in the creation of the authors’ model of ritual theory.

New Approaches to the Study of Religion, 2004

Analysis and critique of theories of ritual by Victor Turner, Richard Schechner, Clifford Geertz, Erving Goffman, Catherine Bell From New Approaches to the Study of Religion, vol. 2: 109-138. Ed. Peter Antes, Armin W. Geertz, and Randi Warne. Religion and Reason Series. Berlin, New York: Walter de Gruyter.

2003

Ritual, obsessional neurosis and bureaucracy have in common the characteristic of being a reply to a situation of mistrust towards the Other. By mistrust the author means the opposite of religious faith, but not this alone: it's not the certainty that the other is lying, but the doubt and diffidence towards the other, with the consequence that one doesn't know if he's lying or not. Bureaucracy becomes exasperating when it's based on a prejudiced mistrust towards the citizen and expresses a reluctance to concede any gift. Obsessional neurosis puts a fundamental mistrust towards the loved other (but to what extent is s/he loved?) into play, which leads the subject into perplexity regarding the debt which s/he should or should not pay to the other. Ritual, in the final analysis, at one and the same time expresses and tries to resolve the mistrust towards the Other, since one doesn't know if the Other wishes to concede the fundamental gift of her/his friendship and benevolence. Even in this brief exchange one can find the essence of the theoretical problem of ritual. Ritual is always connected to a suspicion: when certain types of repeated acts ought to be efficacious, but there are serious doubts whether they really are, then we are dealing with "just rituals". The trade-union protest was being proposed as pragmatic action. But was this really the case? A possible difference arises here between rite and ritual, which I will not deal with here. In the present common + linguistic use of these two terms, we define a rite as something which is above all an act-usually religious, but not always-which is believed to explain and display an action, while the ritual is simply the external form of the rite 2. >From this derives the negative connotation that often, in our daily language, is associated with the term "ritual": as the pure and simple exteriority of the rite. We will therefore seek here to define a theory not of rites, but of that which is ritual in every rite. Indeed, those who believe in a rite usually imagine that it is an efficacious act. The Catholic Mass comes to mind. For the believer it certainly is a ritual, but one that always becomes a miraculous act: the wine is transformed into the blood and the bread transformed into the body of Christ. But is it really transformed? Or is it, in the interviewer's words, only a ritual? The believer would say that the rite of Mass makes a transcendental event possible; the non-believer instead would say that the event is the rite itself 3. Here we again find the same doubt and suspicion that we referred to in the tradeunion protest. The rite designates a passage The human being, according to Wittgenstein (1967), is "a ceremonial animal". Thus every attempt to explain ritual as a form of ceremonial life cannot ignore the fact that ritual, as the form of a rite, is always connected in a problematic way with an act-magical, miraculous, political, spiritual, or other-which is presumed to be efficacious. A ritual is an act which has its meaning in another act of which it is supposed to be the condition, the frame or the external expression. Every ritual is an ante-act or a pre-act or cum-act. It is

uni-heidelberg.de

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Yearbook for Liturgical and Ritual Studies/Jaarboek voor Liturgie-Onderzoek, 2011

The authors inquire into the special quality which has the ability to transform non-ritual action into ritual action – ritualization. Borrowing concepts and terminology from the complex theory of James Laidlaw and Caroline Humphrey, the article demonstrates that non-ritual action – once transformed by ritualization – becomes ‘deliberately non-intentional’. At the same time, it also shows that even though Humphrey and Laidlaw’s theory provides a firm terminological frame, it is mistaken in the conclusion that ritualization is limited solely to the context of established rituals and that rituals themselves are phenomena primarily static, subject to little or no change. In the subsequent argumentation it builds on the method of Ronald L. Grimes and within the frame of his discourse strives to show that ritualization, as the dynamic quality of both emerging and established rituals, is sustained by the ritualists’ corporeality and that it is only by bodily comprehending the physical value of ritual action that we can study the foundations of rituals themselves. It tries to demonstrate that it is possible to develop a certain ‘sensitivity’ to ritualization in its many forms through physical training of a special type and explain in what way this training applies to the concept of ‘deliberate non-intentionality’ characteristic of ritualization. This will be done through an ac- count of a teaching technique called dialogical performance, which was founded in the year 1968 by professor Ivan Vyskoil and which is practiced today at the Theatre Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (the Czech Republic). The authors argue that developing such sensitivity to bodily expressions should form an integral part of training for those scholars who wish to investigate rituals in the field.

2001

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