Ritual Dynamics and the Science of Ritual: IV: Reflexivity, Media and Visuality

Ritual Dynamics and the Science of Ritual General Editor Axel Michaels Editorial Board Michael Bergunder, Jörg Gengnagel, Alexandra Heidle, Bernd Schneidmüller, and Udo Simon

IV

2011

Harrassowitz Verlag · Wiesbaden

Reflexivity, Media, and Visuality Including an E-Book-Version in PDF-Format on CD-ROM Section I Reflexivity and Discourse on Ritual Edited by Udo Simon Section II Ritual and Media Edited by Christiane Brosius and Karin Polit Section III Ritual and Visuality Edited by Petra H. Rösch and Corinna Wessels-Mevissen Section IV Ritual Design Edited by Gregor Ahn

2011

Harrassowitz Verlag · Wiesbaden

Publication of this volume has been made possible by the generous funding of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. Cover (Detail): Berlin, 2006 Photo: Friedemann von Stockhausen

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For further information about our publishing program consult our website http://www.harrassowitz-verlag.de © Otto Harrassowitz GmbH & Co. KG, Wiesbaden 2011 This work, including all of its parts, is protected by copyright. Any use beyond the limits of copyright law without the permission of the publisher is forbidden and subject to penalty. This applies particularly to reproductions, translations, microfilms and storage and processing in electronic systems. Printed on permanent/durable paper. Printing and binding: Memminger MedienCentrum AG Printed in Germany ISBN 978-3-447-06204-6

Table of Contents Section I: Reflexivity and Discourse on Ritual Edited by Udo Simon Udo Simon Reflexivity and Discourse on Ritual – Introductory Reflexions

3

Harvey Whitehouse Religious Reflexivity and Transmissive Frequency

25

Joachim Gentz in collaboration with Christian Meyer Ritual and Rigidity in Commentaries and Court Debates: Patterns of Reflexivity in Pre-Modern Chinese Discourses on Ritual

41

Rüdiger Schmitt Magic, Ritual Healing, and the Discourse on Ritual Authority in the Old Testament

61

Günther Schörner Sacrifice East and West: Experiencing Ritual Difference in the Roman Empire

81

Dominik Fugger What About the Bean King? Reflections on a Specific Ritual between 1500 and 1900 and Their Implications for the Methodology of Ritual-Analysis

101

Hans-Ulrich Sanner “A Message about Life”: Performance and Reflexivity in Hopi Indian Ritual Clowning

113

Hege Irene Markussen Ritual Criticism and the Alevi Cem Ritual

147

Massimo Rosati Ritual and Reflectivity in the Sociological Discourse on Modernity

163

Mario Bührmann Culture and Rites in Motion: The Conception of Culture and Ritualistic Actions in the Works of Edward Burnett Tylor

175

Table of Contents

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Johannes Quack Reflexive Remarks on Science, Ritual, and Neutrality in the Social Sciences

201

Michael Bergunder Global History, Religion, and Discourse on Ritual

219

David Chidester Imperial Reflections, Colonial Situations: James Frazer, Henri-Alexandre Junod, and Indigenous Ritual in Southern Africa

237

Section II: Ritual and Media Edited by Christiane Brosius and Karin Polit Christiane Brosius and Karin Polit Introducing Media Rituals and Ritual Media

267

Felicia Hughes-Freeland Divine Cyborgs? Ritual Spirit Presence and the Limits of Media

277

Bernhard Leistle Difficult Heritage: Time and the Other in Moroccan Rituals of Possession

309

Florence Pasche Guignard Religious Rituals on Video-Sharing Websites

339

Joost Fontein The Politics of the Dead: Living Heritage, Bones, and Commemoration in Zimbabwe

357

Ulrike Stohrer Ritual Performance, Cultural Policy, and the Construction of a “National Heritage” in Yemen

397

Karen Vedel Clothing the Suomussalmi Silent People: From Site-Specific Dance Performance to Ritually Informed Community Event

417

Madeleine Hurd Reporting on Civic Rituals: Texts, Performers, and Audience

441

Reflexivity, Media, and Visuality Elke Mader Stars in Your Eyes: Ritual Encounters with Shah Rukh Khan in Europe

VII

463

Section III: Ritual and Visuality Edited by Petra H. Rösch and Corinna Wessels-Mevissen Petra H. Rösch and Corinna Wessels-Mevissen Ritual and Visuality – Introductory Remarks

487

Carsten Knigge Salis Hieroglyphs of Praise: The Dynamic Praise of Gods as Represented and Prescribed by Ancient Egyptian Ritual Texts

491

Thomas M. Hunter Icons, Indexes, and Interpretants of a Balinese Ritual Artefact: The Pengajeg

505

Petra H. Rösch Pillars of Faith: Visuality and Ritual Space in Chinese Buddhism

537

Corinna Wessels-Mevissen Festival Vehicles and Motif Lamps: Reflections on Visual Elements in South Indian Temple Ritual

567

Section IV: Ritual Design Edited by Gregor Ahn Gregor Ahn Ritual Design – an Introduction

601

Gregor Ahn The Re-Embodiment of Mr. Spock and the Re-Incarnation of Voldemort: Two Examples of Ritual Design in Contemporary Fiction

607

Erik de Maaker, Eric Venbrux, and Thomas Quartier Reinventing “All Souls’ Day”: Spirituality, Contemporary Art, and the Remembrance of the Dead

617

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Thomas Quartier Funeral Design in the Netherlands: Structures and Meanings of Non-Ecclesiastic Funerals

635

Matthias Frenz The Common Practice of Ritual Design in Southern India: Observations at the Marian Sanctuary of Velankanni

651

Anne-Christine Hornborg Designing Rites to Re-Enchant Secularised Society: Cases from Contemporary Sweden

671

Jan A.M. Snoek Researcher and Researched Rituals

693

Michael Houseman Trying to Make a Difference with “Ritual Design”

699

Abstracts

707

Section I: Reflexivity and Discourse on Ritual Edited by Udo Simon

Udo Simon

Reflexivity and Discourse on Ritual – Introductory Reflexions A history of the concept behind the term “reflexivity” would have to list quite a spectrum of uses. Within a science of culture understood in the broader sense of the term, “reflexivity”, in its least specific usage, would mean just “reflexion” or “interpretation”. At the other end of the spectrum, one finds reflexivity in the sense of “self-referentiality of a closed system”. Because the concept oscillates between the semantic poles of self-reference and (self-)reflexion, there is some doubt as to whether it actually disposes of more obscurity than it creates.1 However, the fact that the term is nevertheless used could indicate not only a lack of terminilogical precision, but also a more or less – probably the latter – clearly perceived relation among the various usages. Despite its vagueness, the term can be of heuristic value in a more general, non-axiomatic sense. The criterion here is the question of whether it opens up a fertile perspective of the matter at hand, not whether it is unnecessary. If one only paraphrases with sufficient precision, most concepts become dispensable. One can approach the phenomenon from different disciplines, depending on the question(s) being asked, using, for instance, the methods of religious science, ethnology, sociology, cognitive science, and the various integrative theoretical approaches, such as discourse analysis. As usual, a specialised approach, oriented towards the discipline, enables not only a deeper understanding of important aspects, but also limits the view again, through the analytical segmentation. Understood quite basically, reflexivity is another expression for feedback and reproduction.2 Applied to an action, this means that every sequence of the action constitutes a part of the framework for its own continuance. The constant sequence of action and adjustment is reflected in social life as a sequence of acts and interpretation; the action itself provides us with indicators showing how it should be integrated into a culturally given system of categories. In the context of system theory, Luhmann uses the term with different nuances of meaning. In his view, the decisive performance of social systems lies in their 1 See Stausberg 2006: 646. 2 After the sociologist Hartmut Esser 201: 184.

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simplification of complexity. The filtering of communication and the control of attributions of sense constitute the self-referentiality of social sub-systems. The reflexive structure of such autopoietic systems, however, shows itself equally as much in the constantly reproducing self-regulation through the application of processes to processes of an identical kind (e.g. teaching teaching; normalising normalisation).3 Related to rituals, this means the ritualisation of ritual, i.e. increasingly prescriptive framings, restrictions with regard to agency, limitations imposed on the participants, etc., so that rituals may prevent participants from reflecting on the ritual character of the rituals; or at any rate from reflecting on them in any way other than in a standardised sense. Yet such reflexion does occur. To the extent that rituals alter insoluble questions into solvable questions of procedure, in other words, eliminate complexity, reflexivity, in the sense of a mental activity, implies a renewed complication. A characteristic claimed for modernity is that the relation between, on the one hand, the given and the predefined and, on the other, the negotiable and self-constructed is changing to the benefit of the latter, so that self-delineations can be more freely chosen than was previously the case. While, for Giddens, the entry of the modern into a reflexive phase is of central significance primarily owing to the circulation of constantly available knowledge content, Beck emphasises the knowledge deficits of reflexive modernisation, which must, in the first place, deal with the problems caused by its own products. What Beck has in mind is, above all, “unconscious, unintended reflexivity in the sense of self-application, self-dissolution and self-endangerment of industrial modernization.” With an eye to the different interpretations of the relationship between modernity and reflexivity on the part of Giddens, Lash, and himself, Beck confirms that, with all their differences, primarily found “on the axis of consciousness/non-consciousness (or the autodynamism) of ‘reflexive’ modernization”, in all three approaches a role is played by both kinds of reflexivity.4 Indeed, the question of consciousness or unconsciousness of self-reference is a pivotal one in the debate. The relation of these two kinds of self-referentiality is fundamental to the dynamics of social change. Precisely because the subsystems (such as administrative organisations, and the like) tend to reproduce themselves,

3 See Luhmann 1967; Luhmann 1984. The idiosyncratic logic of subsystems in a global context is also underscored by Appadurai’s “scapes”, i.e. dimensions of global flows, cf. Appadurai 1996: 33ff. One example of this would be the self-reference of the financial networks that act worldwide, the so-called “financescape”, which just recently led to a serious financial crisis. 4 Beck et al. 1994: 176–177. Quite a number of researchers use "reflexivity" on both levels of meaning, depending on context; this is true of Luhmann and Bourdieu, for instance.

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change must be induced either by outside intervention, or by subjective impulses, contradiction by individuals or the protests of, at times small groups. According to an oft-quoted definition by Barbara Babcock, reflexivity designates the capacity of thought processes and symbol systems “to turn or bend back upon itself, to become an object to itself, and to refer to itself”.5 Social embedment is more strongly emphasised in Margret Archer’s designation of reflexivity in the sense of a mental activity whose essential criterion consists of the fact that people “consider themselves in relation to their (social) contexts and vice versa”.6 For Archer, reflexive thought is synonymous with internal conversation, which “not only mediates the impact of social forms upon us but also determines our responses to them”.7 Reflexive processes such as self-observation, self-criticism, self-commitment, and so forth, are, in this view, instances of the exchange between the inner and the outer worlds. Looking at oneself from different angles is a fundamental ability of human beings, although it can be developed to varying degrees. It is needed for a realistic appraisal of circumstances, but goes beyond this at the same time, for it conveys an idea that things might be different from what they are perceived as. This ability also enables the simulated dissociation of oneself, a temporary release from the unity of the subject, in a chain of disintegration and reintegration, which, in the end, represents a condition of the subject being able to perceive itself as such. Conscious reflexivity is only possible with the ability to change perspective. In order to fulfill social expectations, one must at least be able to interpret these within one’s own situation, i.e. to temporarily take the perspective of those whose perception and evaluation is of significance in the relevant situations. This leads to a readjustment of one’s position in relation to a social setting. Such externally-driven self-inspection is a frequent social fact. The construction of identity, too, requires a view of oneself as a part of, or in contrast to, a group, or the view of the group as a part of oneself, respectively. How any particular group, for example “the Muslims”, is perceived is part of the self-perception of the members of that group; individual and group identity are closely interwoven, in any case. Reflexivity is always additionally concerned with integration into what already exists, or at least with the relationship to that which already exists, and, in this way, is a determination of position. The fact that looking upon oneself from a different 5 Babcock 1980: 2. Compared to simple reflexion, reflexivity takes place as a reflexion of reflexion on a metacommunicative level, according to this understanding. For further literature on this, see Stausberg 2006: 553. 6 Archer 2007: 3. Elsewhere, Archer writes: “Quintessentially, reflexivity involves a subject considering an object in relation to itself, bending that object back upon itself in a process which includes the self being able to consider itself as its own object.” See Archer 2007: 72. 7 Archer 2007: 5.

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perspective often does not result in change, but rather in the affirmation of what already exists, shows that this step to one side, in the end, has the aim of making certain of oneself. In a deeper sense, every examination of something else is an examination of oneself. Finally, reflexivity is used in a more restricted sense of the self-reflexion of the researcher, using his or her epistemological basis of theorising or doing fieldwork, which, at the same time, is a critical discussion of the scholarly traditions of the discipline involved.8 Bourdieu, for instance, understands reflexivity as a systematic reflexion on the unconscious presuppositions of our knowledge; Foucault undertakes an archaeology, then genealogy of our conceptual world; the debate on orientalism, which was initiated to a great extent by Edward W. Said, highlights, in an exemplary way, the essentialist constructions of the “other”, so often guided by particular interests; Clifford Geertz and James Clifford look at the researcher as author; these are just some of the contributions here. In the course of this self-reflexive phase, with its critical view of representations, researchers have come to realise, not least in view of the role of ethnography in the colonial context, that they cannot totally liberate themselves from their culturally-determined system of categories. The very questions asked of the matter being investigated are determined by the researcher’s cultural background. Unconscious bias, the unwanted influencing of the research situation on the part of the researcher, distort the objectivity of research. Reflexivity, then, is located in a continuum stretching from unavoidable, unconscious retroactivity in the sense of self-regulation to voluntary and conscious, thoughtful consideration. Equally significant as distinguishing between conscious and unconscious reflexivity is the extent to which a (simulated) external perspective may be incorporated. Moreover, a certain degree of vagueness is unavoidable, even with the limited meaning of reflexivity as a specialised form of reflexion, unless one wishes to suppress the transitional zones between the dimensions of emotion and cognition, description and interpretation, the individual and the collective, and so on. However, the notion of reflexivity in the sense of self-reference on the part of the one reflecting – also, and more exactly, in view of the relationship of the individual to others – requires additional specification outside the concept, some limitation with regard to the main subject of reflexion, or else it would become so general as to be well-nigh useless. In our case, this is the relation to ritual. Reflexivity, 8 Cf. the articles by Bührmann, Quack, Schmitt, and Chidester on the long-lasting influence of Western concepts of religion, magic, and ritual, etc., that have led to misinterpretations or disregard of emic reflexion.

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in our context, means the view of the self as a part of a larger social structure in relation to ritual. This encompasses any attempt to deal with the form and sense of a ritual act. One could come up with the idea that reflexivity in a ritual context is more a modern phenomenon, connected with the worry about the self, or, in a sense, an expression of the episteme of modernity. It can be easily shown, however, that this has existed as long as the rituals themselves. Reflexivity not only occurs during phases of upheaval, strengthening them, but also directly in the formative phases of the ritual traditions.

Modes, Motivations, Communications While it does not make much sense to attempt a comprehensive typology of reflexivity with ritual reference, it may be useful to name some analytical starting points which can support a structured examination and can be refined in detail, according to research interest. Here, without any claim to exhaustivity, one could name: – – – –

The characteristics of rituals that give rise to reflexivity The bearers of reflexivity and their agency The way in which reflexivity is connected with performance The mental processes that occur during the planning, carrying out, later processing, memorising, and interpretation of rituals, and the inner attitudes that accompany this – The way reflexivity is transformed into communication.

For someone involved in a ritual, as long as the ritual action takes place according to a specified script, the first question must be “Am I doing this right?”. Indeed, ritual theory does begin with the negotiation of ritual practice, and not with speculative, theoretical discussions. Rules for concrete situations, the sequence of acts, religious objects, the framing, clothing regulations, and so forth are the first order of the day. An interpretation of the ritual rules is by no means a necessity. One can talk about the rules of rituals in the same way that one would talk about the established rules for a game. The relation to transcendence can recede completely into the background. The subject of reflexivity on this level is prescription, which itself is frozen reflexivity. Challenging the prescription is a return to the roots, in a way, although it is generally linked with a search for meaning. If ideas of the “true meaning”, the core or the “essence” of a ritual, are formed during the process of negotiating, then the essentialisation can, in certain circumstances, develop an existence of its own, which can lead, on the one hand, to the ritualisation of further

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areas of life, and, on the other, to a reduction of the performative components in complex rituals.9 Between an elaborated system of ritual rules and the contingency and complexity of the social world there is always a tension which must be dealt with using thought and adaptation. Even in a casuistically-oriented system the question must be answered: “What is the important thing?”. In many traditions, but particularly in those where religous law has formed, the more or less formalised process of comparison and weighing, taking special factors into consideration, etc. is already anchored in the system itself, for that reason.10 Law occupies a median position between dogma and individual reflexion. The believer can, as a rule, ascribe his personal, strict or flexible attitude towards the requirements of ritual practice to points of reference in the body of rules and regulations itself .11 A good example of this is Islamic religious law, which, on the one hand, formulates drastic requirements, and, on the other, provides an entire corpus of exceptions and attenuations. In this way stability and adaptation to circumstances is assured. The merit of the law consists in determining the relationship between individual case and general rule. The starting point of religious law is usually the divinely-inspired good example, whose essence must be abstracted and applied to other cases, which leads to a chain of de-contextualisation and re-contextualisation.12 This is given its corresponding communicative costume in the genre of commentaries, supercommentaries, and glosses. If one of the most important motivations for ritual reflexion consists in questioning the congruence of ritual acts with an imputed original form or intention, and thus referring the concrete performance to a type, then the corresponding argument can either support what exists, or it can – sometimes in a radical way – require the return to things believed lost. Normally, this debate on tradition and heritage does not end in the complete reconstitution of the past, but rather in a kind of re-design. In the process of ritual (re-)design, or even invention of new rituals, 9 See Gentz in this volume for the process of increasing abstraction of ritual principles. The Chinese example shows how the discourse on ritual comes into being in the context of negotiations of social and political hierarchies, after a ritualisation of all areas of life had spread and the ethical aspects finally was emphasised in the Confucian idealised system of patterns of order on an individual, social, and cosmic level. 10 Cf. the methodology of religious law in Islam, or the principle of weighing up according to circumstances (quan) in Chinese ritual theory. 11 See also Gentz in this volume who argues that both a rigid and a flexible position represent necessary and integral elements of ritual theory. 12 Gentz, in this volume, points out a similar mechanism in Chinese ritual tradition. After a set of closed rules and principles for ritual practice were summarized, at a later stage this set was de-contextualized and made available as an abstract set of principles for areas of life and knowledge. Eventually the principles in the individual areas of application were re-contextualized, i.e. broken down to the particular situation of application.

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reflexivity gains a special quality. It can hardly be avoided in the creative process, appearing at the latest when one imagines oneself in a role in a ritual, or puts oneself in someone else’s position, in order to draw one’s own conclusion. Already in the course of the transmission of collective memory and knowledge of the past, not only are present practices legitimated, but often they are measured against ideals that can make these practices appear unauthorised and not authentic.13 Ritual criticism ranges from criticism of a concrete performance, through that of a ritual as a type, to complete denial of ritual. The criticism of the model usually contains indicators of what a positively evaluated model ought to be. Where the lifestyle of a group is extensively determined by rituals, where the explanation of the ritual also is an explanation of the world, criticism of ritual must become criticism of society, or leads to disimbedding from the social context. In such circumstances, rituals can be given up, and in their place the call for unconditional morality may be heard. In religious groups that essentially interpret their holy texts and the regulations contained in these as metaphors, the position towards ritual duties is also relativised. Some of the topoi mentioned in argument remain conspicuously uniform throughout time and cultures. One may mention the topos of the ritual as an external representation of an inner happening, which serves merely to enable the masses, who lack broad and deep insight, to participate in religious life. A ritual is seen here as something that can be separated from the actual essence of the religious. A topos of complete denial is the view that rituals are customs thought out by people, which have no further effect than to provide the individual with relief and to strengthen his or her religious or other bonds. A stronger variant emphasises the criticism that rituals are not only based on irrational assumptions, but in addition represent a medium for pacifying the subject masses, a medium embedded in larger schemes of injustice and exploitation.14 The question of the bearers of reflexivity is closely connected with that of who has the agency for reflexion. Who allows it for whom, and denies it to whom? As soon as reflexivity is extended past the internal reflexion of the believer, it is drawn into a field of power relationships, where religious authorities, appointed priests, independent doctors of religious law, ritual experts of various kinds, or laymen, undertake to attribute sense. The initiative for radical reinterpretation can mature among individual members of the elite, but more frequently yet among marginalised milieus. Whoever has the power can do without reflexivity; he sets the rules.15 Even when the claim to power is disputed and the position of the ruler is precarious, a strategy of justification based on argument will not necessarily be used; rather, 13 See Markussen in this volume. 14 For this last, see Quack in this volume. A whole series of reasons and contexts for criticism of ritual is discussed by Grimes 1990. 15 See Schörner’s article in this volume.

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reflexion is then frequently avoided in favour of ritual actions that support the claim to power. Whenever ritual authority tries to control reflexivity, criticism of ritual is linked to discourse on ritual authority.16 The manner of reflexion and its communicative outfit is taken from the cultural repertoire available, and is determined by the competence of the speaker and the interpretation of the situation. Even within a more or less delimited cultural tradition, the way people “reflect” outer stimuli varies largely with milieu, socio-economic situation, and their repertoire of problem solutions. The act of naming as such already contains a determination of the relationship between the one naming and that named, as well as the one addressed. Karl Bühler speaks of the triple function of the language sign, which not only stands for a concept, but also tells us something about the speaker (the “function of symptom”), and is intended to trigger a reaction from the one addressed (the “function of signalling”).17 In the combination of language units to sentences and texts, a frame of reference is also created that is referred to by new matter being added, and at the same time continuously enriches it. Seen in this light, “talking about things” really does mean “creating worlds”. This is all the more true when unusual associations and combinations of thought increase the singularity of the frame of reference to the point of fantastic aetiology. The transition from description to reflexion, and finally reflexivity, in which a reference to the self is created, is not clear-cut. If this is true in general, then it is all the more so for a creative metaphorical appellation. Similes, analogies, metaphors, and other tropes are basic means of explaining rites, not only in popularised representations intended for exemplification, but even in sophisticated exegesis. Traditional societies, in particular, make much use of proverbs, sayings, metaphors, and other rhetorical devices in order to clarify contexts.18 Marcel Mauss, who draws upon Leenhardt’s documents on customs in New Caledonia, cites a metaphor with which the natives describe the significance of their festivals: “Our feasts are the movement of the needle which sews together the parts of our reed roofs, making of them a single roof, one single word.”19 Reflexivity can hardly be better put into words than in this qualification of the community-endowing performance of the ritual. Lakoff and Johnson point out that one can understand an experience from the perspective of a different kind of experience with the aid of metaphor, and that metaphors thus have an integrative effect. Metaphors are fundamentally conceptual, 16 17 18 19

See Schmitt’s article in this volume. Bühler 1982. See for the cross-cultural study of rhetorical traditions Kennedy 1998. Mauss 1974: 19.

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and metaphorical thought is unavoidable, while metaphorical language is but an after-effect of this.20 Metaphors contribute to the coherence of our perception of the world and of ourselves.21 One might wish to object at this point that metaphors not only make something comprehensible with the aid of something else, but that they evoke images and work more by impression than explication. Indeed, they are created more for effect, for they are themselves the result of a strong impression, which they are intended to immediately reflect, although in the form of an indirect, linguistic representation based on evoking images.

Making Sense of Ritual: Subjective and Collective Reflexivity Apart from deliberation aimed at action, specifically the question of “How do I correctly carry out this ritual?”, reflexivity also occurs as deliberation aimed at the sense, specifically the question of “Why am I carrying out this ritual?”. Both questions are, of course, interwoven. As mentioned, the comparison with a preconceived ideal or normal form already entails reflexive processes. If the practitioner is aware of the deviations from the normal form, he must classify and reflexively process such deviations. This touches upon the question of the identity or authenticity of a ritual. Does it depend upon the external form and obligatory components of the performance, or is it founded in the constancy of the function and the ascription of sense?22 At the same time, to what extent a ritual symbolically stands for something else is a quite decisive question.23 To be the expression of something else implies being a substitute, not the real thing. When the solid connection between form and sense, which are as two sides of a coin to each other, is no longer there as a basic, a more or less standardised interpretation is initiated to restore unity. Certain methods of interpretation, such as analogy, which pushes the question of authenticity and the representative into the background, can take the edge off reflexivity. Analogy is a kind of interpretation that leaves the mystery standing. There are situative, social and political circumstances, religious traditions and ritual practices, that further reflexion, and such that do not favour it, or even prevent it. An important factor is the structure of the group, which can be strictly hie20 See Lakoff and Johnson 2003: 272 about the correlation of abstract concepts and metaphors. 21 For the authors, culturally-formed metaphors and ideas of the world connected to these are spread and conserved by ritual acts. For this reason, a culture without ritual is allegedly impossible. On the other hand, religious rituals per se are evaluated already as metaphorical activities. See Lakoff and Johnson 2003: 230, 234. 22 On this point, see Fugger in this volume. 23 Cf., for instance, the problem of consubstantiation or transsubstantiation, respectively, in Christianity.

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rarchical or more symmetrically formed. A hierarchical organisation which limits the power of interpretation corresponds to an orientation of dogma which forces one to pack anything new in a sophisticated and unassailable exegesis, while a symmetrical distribution of power favours subjectivistic interpretations. However, the frequency of performance and the kind of ritual instruction appear, in themselves, to influence reflexivity. Whitehouse surmises that highly repetitive religious transmission can effectively inhibit reflexivity on the part of religious adherents.24 This is possibly true of strongly structured rituals with little variance over long periods of time, too. One may also assume a lack of any reflexive stance in routinized rituals which have experienced an official exegesis. Does the embodiment of standard rituals, then, lead to a relative lack of attributions of sense to these rituals? Our own questioning of Muslims in Germany reveal indeed that there is no strong tendency towards interpretation. Reflexion on ritual frequently goes no further than to make observations about the external form of ritual, or the repetition of standardised analogies. But this may find its explanation in the central role played by the idea of obedience. True faith is shown precisely by unquestioned obedience of the divine commandments. The dimension of individual experience need not necessarily be less pronounced. The experience of prayer, with its positive effects, is frequently described, for instance. In addition, there is a kind of reflexivity which can only unfold over a longer period of time, as was the case with the Muslim who told me that it had taken his whole lifetime to finally comprehend the sense of the number of prayers being five. While rituals offer a way to cope with ambiguity and uncertainty, they nonetheless contain within themselves a momentum of indeterminacy, and, at least in principle, they show a high degree of interpretability.25 A near-classic example of a ritual whose sense must be given to it by the practitioner through his own reflexivity is the often daily practised puja of the Jains. Humphrey and Laidlaw actually attest to a “superabundance of meaning” for this “empty ritual”.26 However, pointing out the unconnectedness of procedural and exegetical knowledge in relation to highly repetitive rituals, it has been remarked that the practitioners’ repertoire, when the question of interpretations is posed, turns out to be rather limited.27 In this sense we are dealing with second-hand reflexivity, a type of frozen reflexivity. One can use a given set of prefabricated building blocks, in which certain positions are already determined. The culturally defined, conventionalised, and accepted stock of ideas is often alike, down to the details of formulation. Such a social topos exists not least on the basis of the experiences made by the particular social group involved, 24 25 26 27

See Whitehouse in this volume. See Rosati in this volume. Humphrey and Laidlaw 1994: 36. See Whitehouse in this volume.

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and is, for this reason, more or less bound to the corresponding milieu.28 Precisely the fact that attributions of sense are not very individual, but rather of a collective nature, is the reason for their social relevance. It is not always possible to clearly grasp the transition between conscious, individual reflexion and the mere reproduction of stereotypes. The adoption of a standard explanation, too, can have individual features, be a conscious decision, and be experienced profoundly. In addition, attributions of sense often take on the form of assurances and confirmations. This may correspond to a general attitude in which agreement with the collective and with authority has a high value. The question of the relationship between standard reflexivity and individualistic, creative reflexivity refers to the sociality of knowledge and the creative possibilities of the individual. A central question for sociology is how the individual, the social system, and the environment mutually affect each other; in this question, the individual represents the potentially subversive part of the system.29 Our reflexivity is guided involuntarily by socially shared knowledge and representation on various levels, which govern the integration of new experiences and form the basis of judgement. Representation, in this sense, is not conjoined to language; it thus remains partly in the region of the unnamed, and is connected with emotion from the very start. Despite the inventory of culturally determined orientations, codes, sensibilities, and ideas of the world, the potential of human subjectivity is, nonetheless, preserved in principle, although it cannot always find a suitable field to unfold in. Reflexivity is the mediating instance where the collective and the subjective equilibrate. While self-reflexion, in that area of established patterns of thought and behaviour that Bourdieu calls doxa, can only take on the form of considerations oriented towards action, ascriptions of sense are favoured by competing alternatives and the formation of a field of opinion30 The dependency of individual reflexion from patterns of thought that change throughout different epochs and from long-term tendencies of development is, however, hardly something of which the individual is conscious, even on this level. Margaret Archer sees certain modes of reflexivity as being favoured by corresponding macroscopic structural and cultural factors. Contextual continuity, for instance, corresponds to communicative reflexivity. Against this, contextual discontinuity favours autonomous reflexivity. Contextual incongruity, on the other hand, creates a greater degree of meta-reflexivity. These modes of reflexivity co-exist, in principle, at all times; but they are more or less pronounced, 28 See Knoblauch 2005: 323. 29 Archer 2007: 5 summarises this as follows: “The subjective powers of reflexivity mediate the role that objective structural or cultural powers play in influencing social action and are thus indispensable to explain social outcomes.” The approaches of rational choice theory, of Bourdieu und Foucault, appear altogether reductionalistic from this point of view. 30 Cf. Bourdieu 2003: 169ff.

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depending upon the various historical contexts in which they occur.31 Communicative reflexivity has worked for stability and stable social reproduction in the past, and is characterised by normative conventionalism. Autonomous reflexivity achieves its quality through self-confident individualism and self-defined projects, and has increased in the course of ongoing globalisation. Meta-reflexivity entails reflecting on one’s own acts of reflexivity and is characterised by self-evaluation and social awareness.32 This mode of meta-reflexivity, in Archer’s view, is in the course of losing its status as a minority practice. Ever more people avail themselves of a fund of visible value commitments which they adopt as their personal concerns.33 Even in cases in which clear ascriptions of meaning to rituals are difficult to ascertain, the practitioner can, as a rule, name the function or the effect on himself. The description can vary to quite a degree, depending on circumstances, without the informant carrying out any pretence. Not least, this all depends on the mental resources he can mobilise, or which are momentarily available to him, and how reflexivity is externally triggered, for example by expectations. Differing systems of reference in reflexivity, too, systems that differ depending on the area of life involved, and that also display their own topoi, vocabularies, and styles of communication, may be found one beside the other, more or less unconnectedly. A good example is that of scientists who have no inclination to explain their religious practices rationally; they simply keep the two areas of life apart.34

Performance and Reflexivity Maybe one reason for ritual being attractive is that one can perform many of them as a concrete activity without thinking about the matter any further. A beneficial effect of rituals is often perceived precisely in the avoidance of reflexivity. But not thinking is by no means a simple exercise; it frequently requires much practice and much work on oneself, leading to a kind of controlled loss of control, not dissimilar to trance. However, reflexive processes occur already in the run-up to the performance. To prepare oneself, to order oneself for the ritual, observe oneself and establish an agreement with the ritual requirements, all implies a self-examination.

31 32 33 34

Archer 2007: 314. Archer 2007: 95. Archer 2007: 324. Cf. Quack in this volume, on a contemporary example, and Gentz on a historical one.

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As soon as ritual activity takes on the form of a public performance, a group forms that is, not least, concerned with itself, in that people become an audience to themselves. The presence of others at the performance already creates a kind of reflective effect. This implies a shift of focus from solving problems to self-reference of the group, a step away from guidance through causes external to the group, to the internal guidance of experience and emotion within the group. In a recent essay, Michael Houseman designates ritual as a “particular way of paying attention to what one is doing (with others)”. In ritual activity, “the participants attend to how their accomplishment of certain actions may impact upon their personal feelings, attitudes and belief“. 35 A ritual is not exclusively a communicative act directed towards the outside; rather, it is a focussing. The actors place themselves, in a formalised way, in relation to themselves and to a culturally significant idea. Don Handelman has identified three kinds of public events: 1. Events that model and change the ordering of lived-in worlds, that is, directly effect social realities by making change happen within them. This form contrasts most sharply with: 2. Events that present “axiomatic versions of versions of such realities”, with the intention of displaying how things are. Handelman applies the mirror metaphor to these groups of constative and declarative events. 3. Events that represent lived-in worlds by offering propositions and counter-propositions within themselves about the nature of these realities.36 In all three variants, different aspects of reflexivity have an effect; this is most clear in events of the third category, events of the kind performed, for example, by ritual clowns.37 By presenting options and alternatives, they introduce new elements to the social realities; naturally, this is done with a view to integrating the contradictions, so as to restore a lost balance. Events to which the mirror metaphor is applicable display a progression, at whose beginning there is an instant of perception of distance. If one sees oneself in a mirror, in a picture or a film, the process of recognition and categorisation in35 See Houseman, forthcoming. Houseman speaks of a “measure of structural indeterminacy or complexity that endows lived-through performance with a degree of self-reference that makes it difficult for the participants to make sense of what they are doing in other than ritual terms, that is, as exceptional enactments, meaningful in and of themselves, whose presumed significance is wholly accessible solely by means of their performance.” 36 Handelman 1998: 40, 49. 37 That the mirror metaphor also suits the third category is made clear by Sanner’s article in this volume, in which an adoption of the mirror metaphor to contemporary media, such as literature and video, by younger Hopi intellectuals and artists is described. Visual images of the Hopi koyaala clown have become emblematic, denoting criticism and commentary.

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voluntarily transmutes into one of calibration and comparison, a kind of automatic reflexivity which entails a new adjustment, or re-adjustment. The mirror produces a sort of objectivication that cannot be objectively perceived, for the appraisals of the recipients are, in the end, significantly influenced by previous attitudes and schemes of evaluation. Thus, perception of the self transmutes into a process of self-portrayal, i.e. of enactment. Rituals, especially religiously motivated ones, are frequently enacted in the consciousness of higher instances – gods, ancestors, etc. – following the proceedings. In order to fulfill the assumed requirements of the performance, processes of reflexion on the basis of an external perspective are needed.38 Phases of conscious reflexivity can be a part of the ritual complex itself, when, for example, a ritual expert interprets holy texts, or when he or she explains to participants what he or she will be doing in the course of the service or what they are doing. The place for deliberating reflexion within the ritual is usually clearly set apart from the parts of the ritual, which, in the view of the participants, have a greater degree of immediate efficacy. This is the place for expressions of confirmation, pleas, promises, and other speech acts in a stylised form, while exegetic reasoning does not take place so much here, but rather before or thereafter. Besides this, there are, of course, all sorts of more or less subjectively motivated processes of reflexion taking place among the participants, e.g. when participants reflect on their positions in a ritual setting. Spontaneous ad-hoc reflexivity of the kind that occurs in jokes or ad-hoc interpretations forms the lively contrast to the frozen reflectivity of official exegesis. Inasmuch as ritual is considered a medium of transformation, reflexivity often assumes the form of reflecting on the conditions after the ritual, occasionally to the point of rational reformulation of visionarily derived knowledge. In very traditional societies, those that have become rarer today, the religious foundations, and with them, the rituals connected to them, remain basically unquestioned. Questions of procedure, discussions of error, pragmatic decisions of adaptation, and so on, all exist here too, but the practice of ritual per se is not questioned. Yet here, too, discursive processes are often anchored in the ritual itself, and antagonisms are dealt with within the ritual framework. Reflexion has its delimited area here. The mirror is held up precisely within this limited period of time. Afterward it is put down again, in the knowledge that it will be available at the next opportunity again.

38 An interesting special case can be found in tales of divinities worshipping themselves. For divinely performed ritual as a self-reflexive action which signals that the origin of ritual is not in the human realm, see Patton 2009.

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Experience, Emotion, Cognition The dimensions of experience in ritual activity encompasses much more than reflexivity. The separation of thought and emotional processes only represents the analytical segmentation of a whole. Social comprehension always has an emotional side, and is accompanied by an emotional classification of the input. Reflexivity can thus be connected with images of a negative or a positive nature and the corresponding emotions. Frequently, emotions of the second order are transformed into emotions of the first order in rituals. One adopts the emotions associated with the ritual, and makes them one’s own.39 Collectively felt emotions are a strong bonding element; they create a potential of homogenisation which can invest the collective reflexivity with a common orientation towards action. But the contrary sequence is also possible, a heightened emotionality as the result of homologous reflexivity. Reflexivity is tangible in consciously perceived, i.e. self-perceiving, thought processes. Yet, the frontier between consciousness and unconsciousness does, upon occasion, become blurred; the borderline between a conscious reflexivity and more unconscious ways to make sense out of what we are doing is not clear cut. There is the area of pre-consciousness, of that which is not yet conscious, yet easily accessible, out of which thoughts and mental images may emerge as a reaction to external or internal impulses, and into which they may again sink away. The brain’s capacity to process information far exceeds any conscious measure. Reception, processing, and transmission of information may occur without conscious representation of this information. Beside the conscious search for meaning, previous ascriptions of priorities and meanings, which are being filtered preconsciously in a given situation, determine access to consciousness. Entry to consciousness can be both stimulus determined and subject determined, both involuntary and voluntary, whereby a competition between inner and outer demands takes place.40 In this, reflexivity is not exclusively dependent on language, but supplemented by mental images of various kinds. That thought processes are not completely reliant on language categories can be elucidated from the fact that one occasionally struggles to find words to express a thought which is quite definitely present. Furthermore, the personal vocabulary often contains highly subjective meanings. But conveying something to others is carried out, in the end, to a great extent by means of language, in contrast to the communication of emotions.

39 Rituals are seen as a medium for regulating human emotions already in older ritual theories. See Gentz in this volume. 40 Dixon 1981: 1–5.

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The question of the sense of a ritual action, in contrast to the question of “how to do it?”, cannot be answered any more by referring to procedural knowledge or by carrying out the action; rather, it requries an explicit explanation. Rituals in highly routinised religions do not automatically create a reflexive stance towards ritual, which, to a degree, makes them “empty procedures”.41 The typically corresponding form of explicit religious knowledge of this consists in the repetition of official dogma and standard explanations. By contrast, rare, climactic rituals would force participants into processes of reflexivity, which does not mean that these are always available for verbal reporting. The explicit native exegesis tends, in such cases, to reflect peoples’ feelings about, and knowledge of, their rituals in a way quite different from the sort found in routinised religions.42 In the analysis of reflexivity, cognitive psychology has attained particular significance. Research on basal mental processes of categorisation and handling suggests that the social side of things results from these common foundations.43 The privilege given cognition in contrast to the social dynamic thus promises terra firma. The cognitive approach as such, however, lacks the aspect of transmission to the social level. What social processes take place in a group when rituals are cognitively processed and memorised in a particular way? The embedding of knowledge, evaluation, feeling, etc. in a more comprehensive understanding of man in his social relationships cannot do without the perspective of social psychology. A much-discussed subject, in autochthonous theories of ritual too, touches on cognitive points of view and the mental orientation of the practitioner..44 In the question of intentionality, one is dealing with mental processes that make an action into a ritual, or, vice versa, destroy the ritual character of an action. Intention is a difficult concept. This all the more, as it is associated with will, power of creation, and feasability in the Western understanding, while other nuances of meaning emphasise more focus and concentration. Is ritual commitment and the adoption of a ritual stance an act of reflexivity? Self-examination at least implies this. In

41 See Whitehouse in this volume. There, a system of religious knowledge is unfolded, along the lines of the following opposites which are combined for category building: off-line/online; procedural/exegetical; internally generated/externally derived; verbally transmitted, or not. 42 Thus Whitehouse in this volume. 43 Laidlaw 2007: 242 critically notes that “however complete and precise its description of those processes might become, cognitive science will never be more than ancillary to and will always be methotodologically quite distinct from what anthropological and/or historical students of religion have to do.” 44 This is, for example, true of the Islamic tradition, and most especially for the Mosaic (Jewish) faith, where laws of purity and impurity most strikingly exemplify the notion of intentionality. See e.g. Gruenwald 2003.

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addition, in many a ritual tradition, the pronouncement – out loud, or silently – of the intention can be a necessary prerequisite for the ritual action.

Reflexivity and Discourse Reflexivity displays a discursive momentum on the individual level already, for instance, inner dialogue. In discourse proper it gains its social relevance. Discourse comes into being as a reaction to the reaction of others. It thus represents a chain of reflexions and simultaneously its performance. Subjective reflexivity is fed by, and enters into, the more general discourse. However much certain thoughts may be shared by many, these thoughts must enter discourse to be perceived as supra-individual. In a discursive field, homologous contributions are concentrated that are integrated according to the restrictions of the discourse and find pronounced contours. In transferring from one discourse level to another (e.g. from the local to the national), the various positions and topics are further channeled and filtered, owing to various limitations of access. When it comes to discourses in a globalised world, the typical ideal differentiation of emic and etic views of ritual increasingly loses its meaning, and the interplay of bothgains in importance. 45 This is true particularly where ritual transfer takes place, for example, in the context of colonialism or of migratory movements. This by no means excludes the requirement of independence of the native tradition of discourse, and the suspicious view of any connection with another, or indeed the outright refusal of such. But such phenomena are, in the end, a part of the dialectic of contact and marking differences in times of cultural hybridisation. While rituals can play a role even in coping with historical upheavals and altered conditions of life, dealing with change is reflected in any case in the cogitation on rituals.46 At the end of the nineteenth century, the rise of a comparative history of religion challenged not only Christianity, but also other religious

45 Sanner, in this volume, reports that Hopi clan elders supported his ethnographic work because they saw a need to remind young Hopi of the deeper meaning of ritual clowns in times where many see in them just funny characters. 46 Karl Jettmar 1973: 84, who, based on Frobenius, assumes historical phases with increased reflexive activity in which the existing situation is questioned, sees the effect of such phases primarily in an innovative factor, which is incorporated into the cultural system, remaining even for those who had less participation.

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traditions.47 The consciousness of being subject to historical change, of being part of a set of other religions, and the need to affirm the tradition by argument in modernity, informed as it is by science, was not without influence on ritual reflexion. For this reason, we find the same patterns of religious reflexivity in different religions at the same time. It can be shown that religious reform movements reinterpreted their own traditions against a global concept of religion in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, which was based on belief and religious experience, whereas ritual practices recede more to the background. The appropriation of Western notions went hand in hand with the re-interpretation of the autochthonous traditions.48 This shows how problematic a delimitation between in-system reflexivity and beyond-system reflexivity can be. Common to all these movements was the rejection of superstition and obscurantism, and the attempt to return to an original purity of religion, unsullied by the overgrowth of ritualism. Religion is thus considered primarily to be an inner mindset. The validity of the religious act depends on the purity of intention, which should not be influenced by worldly considerations. In modernity especially, but not only there, attempts on a global scale can be observed in many ritual traditions to work out rational foundations for the ritual practice. Unavoidably this creates counter-movements that regard such efforts as being on the path to profanisation and deplore the renunciation of firm certainty in belief and the loss of mystery. The emphasis on universal principles of reason has a homogenising effect, and tends to stand in contrast to the marking of differences. However much the inclusive character of societies that are more secular and guided by rational points of view may be furthered, this can nevertheless be felt as a challenge to group identities. A strategy of dealing with this consists of selectively engaging both positions, depending on circumstances. Alternatively, a hierarchisation of rationales may come into being. In Islamic discourse on religious services, for example, the above-mentioned principle of obedience to God is generally regarded as having priority over rational arguments. Fasting in Ramadan might be good for your health, but that is not the decisive motivation for keeping it. Usually, rationalisations are added by way of a supplement, but they are, on occasion, explicitly

47 See Bergunder in this volume. For Tylor’s views of a comparative reconstruction of the history of foreign religious practices see Bührmann in this volume. For the production of knowledge about religion within imperial comparative religion, especially Frazer’s basic theoretical distinction between magic and religion, and his ideas about an evolutionary development from magic, through religion, to science, see Chidester. 48 See Bergunder in this volume.

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rejected.49 The believer has three forms of standardised reflexivity available to him for subjective adoption, which do not mutually exclude each other: the mechanistic idea of obedience; a traditional rationale (e.g. the reason for the ritual purification of the feet before prayer is that they have carried one to the place of some reprehensible action); and, finally, a rationalising justification (ritual washings are a kind of hygiene commanded by God). The evolutionary hypothesis, namely that, with the progress of science and reason in our view of the world, rituals, or even religion altogether, will become obsolete, apparently does not apply. Self-examination and an increased reflexivity, particularly in modern times, with reference to ritual have an equally small chance of leading to its dissolution.

49 This is in line with an old position within Islamic theology, which maintains that the very act of carrying out ritual acts by the believer without the least rational ground is proof of the greatest obedience to God. The details of the rituals are ultimately arbitrary, or cannot be comprehended by human beings. Others, however, hold arbitrariness for unthinkable, and argue for the meaningfulness of each and every component of ritual acts prescribed by God.

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References Appadurai, Arjun 1996. Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis, London: University of Minnesota Press. Archer, Margaret 2007. Making Our Way Through The World: Human Reflexivity and Social Mobility. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Babcock, Barbara 1980. “Reflexivity: Definitions and Discriminations”. In: Semiotica 30,1/2: 1–14. Beck, Ulrich, Anthony Giddens and Scott Lash 1994. Reflexive Modernization: Politics, Tradition and Aesthetics in the Modern Social Order. Cambridge: Polity Press. Bourdieu, Pierre 2003. Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bühler, Karl 1982. Sprachtheorie. Stuttgart, New York: Fischer. Dixon, Norman F. 1981. Precounscious Processing. Chichester, New York, Brisbane, Toronto: John Wiley & Sons. Esser, Hartmut 2001. Sinn und Kultur. Frankfurt, New York: Campus. Grimes, Ronald 1990. Ritual Criticism: Case Studies in its Practice, Essays on itsTheory. Columbia, S.C.: University of South Carolina Press. Gruenwald, Ithamar 2003. Rituals and Ritual Theory in Ancient Israel. Leiden, Boston: Brill. Handelman, Don 1998. Models and Mirrors: Towards an Anthropology of Public Events. New York, Oxford: Berghahn. Houseman, Michael (2011). “Refracting Ritual: An Upside-Down Perspective on Ritual, Media, and Conflict”. In: Grimes, Ron & Ute Hüsken & Udo Simon & Eric Venbrux (eds.): Ritual, Media, and Conflict. New York: Oxford University Press: 255–285. Humphrey, Caroline, and James Laidlaw 1994. The Archetypal Actions of Ritual: A Theory of Ritual Illustrated by the Jain Rite of Worship. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Jettmar, Karl 1973. „Die anthropologische Aussage der Ethnologie“. In: Gadamer, Hans-Georg and Paul Vogler (eds). Kulturanthropologie. Stuttgart: DTV Thieme: 63–87. Kennedy, George 1998. Comparative Rhetoric: An Historical and Cross-Cultural Introduction. New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Knoblauch, Hubert 2005. Wissenssoziologie. Konstanz: UVK. Laidlaw, James 2007. “A Well-Disposed Social Anthropologist’s Problems with the ‘Cognitive Science of Religion’”. In: Whitehouse, Harvey & James Laidlaw (eds). Religion, Anthropology, and Cognitive Science: 211–246. Lakoff, George and Mark Johnson 2003. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago, London: University of Chicago Press. Luhmann, Niklas 1967. „Soziologie als Theorie sozialer Systeme“. In: Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie 19: 615–644. Mauss, Marcel 1974. The Gift. Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

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Patton, Kimberley 2009. Religion of the Gods: Ritual, Paradox, and Reflexivity. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Stausberg, Michael 2006. “Reflexivity.” In: Jens Kreinath, Jan Snoek and Michael Stausberg (eds). Theorizing Rituals: Topics, Approaches, Concepts. Leiden, Boston: Brill: 627–646.

Harvey Whitehouse

Religious Reflexivity and Transmissive Frequency1 This chapter argues that the incidence and nature of religious reflexivity, including experiences of doubt and disbelief, are closely linked to the frequency of religious transmission. Highly repetitive religious transmission can effectively inhibit reflexivity on the part of religious adherents. By contrast, rare or unique experiences of traumatic ritual episodes make a reflexive stance among participants more or less inevitable. The evidence presented in support of these arguments comes from both cognitive science and ethnography.

Reflexivity and Repetitive Religious Transmission Reflexivity is a conscious mental activity. Whatever we are reflecting on may be knowledge that was initially implicit, or it may be knowledge that has always been entertained explicitly, but perhaps not previously questioned or interpreted. Research in experimental psychology has produced several distinct (but potentially complementary) theories of the relationship between implicit and explicit knowledge. For instance, Anderson has argued that the learning of skills involves the transformation of declarative/explicit knowledge into procedural/implicit knowledge, which is fine-tuned through repeated practical applications.2 Anderson’s model, known as ACT* (pronounced “act-star”), predicts a steady increase in proficiency on the part of learners, as declarative knowledge is applied procedurally, and each successful procedural application is carried out more efficiently than the last (until the learning process is complete). Karmiloff-Smith has argued that learning may also proceed in the opposite direction – that declarative knowledge may be constructed out of repeated applications of procedural knowledge.3 In this view, learning begins with fine-tuning of procedural skills resulting in proficiency at a given task, or what Karmiloff-Smith terms “behavioural mastery”. The knowledge undergirding such skills is implicit and inaccessible to other domains, but, over time, it becomes consciously accessible and stateable. 1 This is an abridged version of an article first published in Social Anthropology (2002), Vol. 10, No. 1, pp. 91–103, reproduced here by kind permission of Cambridge University Press. 2 Anderson 1983. 3 Karmiloff-Smith 1992.

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Karmiloff-Smith describes the transformations leading from procedural to declarative knowledge as a process of Representational Redescription (RR). The RR model is supported by evidence, in relation to a wide range of domains, that at least some (but not all) forms of learning follow a U-shaped curve, and are not simply a matter of steadily improving proficiency. A striking example is the apparent deterioration of object-manipulation skills between ages four and six. Four-year-olds, confronted with the task of balancing a set of bricks, approach the problem like little empiricists. Regardless of whether the bricks are asymmetrical or have visibly or invisibly unequal weight distribution, four-year-olds use them to construct viable towers. This task is performed using implicit procedural knowledge, encoded in the child’s input systems, which considers not whether the observable properties of a given block should make it balance in a particular position, but only whether it does balance. With practice, the sensorimotor and perceptual skills of four-yearolds become sufficiently refined that they may be described as having achieved “behavioural mastery” of the task of constructing towers out of building blocks. At around age six, however, theoretical principles of weight distribution override empirical considerations.4 Symmetrical blocks that have been invisibly and unevenly weighted so as to violate six-year-olds’ geometric-centre theory, are simply rejected by these children as “unbalanceable”, even though four-year-olds (unconstrained by the geometric-centre theory) can incorporate the blocks successfully. There is, in other words, a deterioration of behavioural mastery, attributable to the executive control of quasi-theoretical assumptions about weight distribution and gravity. At around age eight, the task of balancing blocks, including those with invisible uneven weight distribution, becomes possible again, even though the geometric-centre theory can still be shown to be operative. Theory and empirical evidence are reconciled in the block-building performances of these older children. Karmiloff-Smith provides similarly persuasive evidence for the RR model in relation to the construction of knowledge in several other domains (including language, number, theory of mind, and notation). Of course, learning in a given domain does not have to proceed unilineally. As predicted by Anderson’s ACT* model, explicit/declarative knowledge may provide a starting point for the development of skills in a particular domain or sub-domain, these rules being subsequently reinforced by experience. Theories of the relationship between implicit and explicit knowledge have so far largely focused on forms of learning that result gradually from behavioural repetition and habituation. Not only is this the means to procedural proficiency, but, at least according to the RR model, further repetition is what drives the redescription of this knowledge as a set of quasi-theoretical principles. Whereas “behavioural mastery” is the incorporation of procedural habits, its redescription appears to con4 Ibid.: 82–87.

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sist of the development of “schemas” (initially implicit), based on recurrent confirmatory experiences. As such, both ACT* and RR models ought to be applicable to the learning and conceptualisation of ritual procedures that are subject to frequent repetition. Karmiloff-Smith’s account of implicit knowledge (encoded in procedural form, specifying behavioural sequences that are bracketed off from other representations) reads almost like an attempt at defining routinised ritual.5 Her notion of “bracketing” is especially interesting. What she is referring to is the informational encapsulation of implicit knowledge, disallowing both intra- and inter-domain representational links. Consider the procedural knowledge entailed in weekly Christian church services. These may involve various alterations of posture, coordinated among worshippers in the congregation as sequences of standing, sitting, and kneeling. Although engaging the same sensorimotor and perceptual apparatus as more or less identical alterations of posture in secular contexts, the ritual setting provides invariable linkages between varied postures and particular context-dependent activities that are specified in advance. Thus, standing in the middle of a service may be invariably linked with the activity of singing, kneeling with praying, and sitting with listening, even though there is no obvious instrumental connection between these specific activities and the bodily postures they require (clearly people could sing, pray, and listen in any of the three requisite postures). Infants and toddlers brought to church every week therefore have to learn the stipulated character of ritual bodily practices as something fundamentally different from more natural uses of the body in everyday life (where bodily postures may be an instrument of communication or of modifying the material environment or the conditions of bodily experience itself). In this sense, any given unit of ritual behaviour is bracketed off both from non-ritual behaviour and from other units of ritual behaviour; it is informationally encapsulated, in so far as behavioural mastery operates independently from other, more explicit considerations; it is automatic and mandatory, in that one stands, sits, and kneels without any need for conscious reflection and in swift (automatic) response to cues from the environment. Although people who attend church regularly do not need to have quasi-theoretical knowledge of the links between standing and singing, kneeling and praying, and sitting and listening, such knowledge is liable to emerge over time. A developmental story might run like this. Pre-schoolers regularly attending church rapidly learn to sit, stand, and kneel in response to some of the same cues that trigger automaticity in the behavioural repertoires of church-going adults (e.g. movement in the rest of the congregation). Around age six, this behaviour may undergo representational redescription, such that the child’s behaviour reflects quasi-theoretical links between particular activities and ritual bodily postures (e.g. standing up re5 Karmiloff-Smith 1992.

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quires singing and vice-versa, whereas sitting down requires shutting up!). This might lead to a deterioration of behavioural mastery, as in experiments designed to test object-manipulation skills (mentioned above). It would be particularly interesting to test this intuition, for instance by putting regular church-going children of various ages through an unorthodox service, wherein some singing occurs in a kneeling posture. Would six-year-old children describe the singing as “praying”, but four- and eight-year-olds not? By age eight, one might anticipate reconciliation of empirically-driven and quasi-theoretical knowledge of Christian services, such that singing-while-kneeling was simply an unorthodox way of singing. The RR model suggests that “routinised” forms of ritual transmission, establishing behavioural mastery at the performative/procedural level, will gradually generate quasi-theoretical procedural knowledge. All this may well constitute learning only at an implicit level, however. It is possible in principle, and probably quite common in practice, for Christians to participate in liturgical rites on autopilot, without actually reflecting on how they know what to do at any given stage. Nevertheless, quasi-theoretical principles (such as the rule: “genuflect while praying”) are always potentially accessible to verbal report. It is the same with geometric-centre theory, which adults normally apply when balancing blocks without necessarily being conscious of doing so. But when asked why they do not try to balance a block on its edge, few people would have difficulty explaining that most of the weight of the higher block must be distributed across the surface of the lower one. At the same time, however, not all quasi-theoretical knowledge of this kind is an outcome of implicit, empirically-driven procedural knowledge. There is considerable evidence that at least some intuitive ontological knowledge is underdetermined by experience, and therefore partly attributable to innate predispositions to represent the world in certain ways.6 Thus, although geometric-centre theory may develop through repetitive experiences (i.e. implicit procedural learning), other principles of naive physics, upon which the geometric-centre theory depends, may be innately prespecified. For instance, the gravitational principle that unsupported objects fall downwards, or the principle of solidity (e.g. that solid objects cannot pass through each other), appear to develop in infancy long before such principles could have been confirmed by experience. The same may be said of certain (normally implicit) quasi-theoretical knowledge undergirding religious ritual. For instance, as well as activating experientially-derived, implicit rules about the links between bodily postures and the distinct activities of singing, listening, and praying, liturgical rites also activate intuitive ontological principles, such as the notion that humans are animated by intentions that cannot be directly perceived. Such principles may be applied at an implicit level, even in the face of explicit, doctrinal 6 Whitehouse 2001.

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rules that attribute to God the ability to “see into” people’s minds. This point is of great importance theoretically, as we shall presently see. Procedural knowledge of ritual, whether empirically-based or governed by quasi-theoretical principles, is only concerned with “how to do” a ritual. It is not concerned with “why to do it”. The why-type question has to be answered at an explicit level – it is a request for declarative knowledge or exegesis. Repetitive rituals are commonly accorded extensive exegesis. In attempting to explain this in cognitive terms, it is tempting to hypothesise that explicit, why-type knowledge of rituals is reflexively derived from implicit how-type knowledge, for instance through an advanced process of representational redescription. This is extremely unlikely, however. Firstly, spontaneous, internally-generated reflexivity is not automatic. Experienced worshippers often cannot say why they perform a particular habituated ritual action, even though they may suspect that it has some authoritative theological justification. Secondly, when worshippers are pressured to reflect on questions of symbolic motivation, in the absence of externally-derived exegesis, they seem to do so, not with reference to implicit procedural knowledge, but with reference to thematically connected schemas entertained at an explicit level. For instance, a Catholic asked to explain why she crosses herself with holy water upon entering the church for mass, may have no idea at all. But, when pressed, she may associate it with the practice of removing one’s shoes upon entering a mosque, on the grounds that both represent an act of respect or a process of “cleansing”. This sort of backwards justification can be examined most easily in relation to highly repetitive rituals for which official exegesis is systematically unavailable. Although comparatively rare, such cases do exist – indeed, they are particularly prominent in logocentric traditions that, on doctrinal grounds, entertain ambivalent attitudes towards ritualism. Such attitudes are readily apparent in early Protestantism, particularly in its more puritanical manifestations.7 Similarly, the Judaic notion of a “natural law” has led some Jewish theologians to doubt the explicability, if not the efficacy, of sacrifice.8 In some cases, such ambivalence gives rise to ritual forms that lack a strong official justification and exegesis. A particularly clear example of this is the puja ritual, as recently described among Jains of Jaipur.9 Humphrey and Laidlaw explain that ritualism in general, and the puja in particular, occupy a dubious position in Jainism. Although a highly repetitive (often daily) ritual for practising Jains, the puja is not accorded official exegesis. Indeed, it is widely regarded as an “empty ritual” which it is the responsibility of individual

7 Collinson 1997. 8 See Herrenschmidt 1982: 33. 9 Humphrey & Laidlaw 1994.

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worshippers to “endow” with meaning, through highly personalised and largely private acts of reflexivity. The puja ritual is performed in temples elaborately decorated with representations of ascetic renouncers, saints, and protector deities. The most important of these are marble, stone, or metal statues of ascetic renouncers, invariably assuming postures of meditation. The puja consists of a wide range of acts in which these idols are bathed, presented with offerings, anointed, and addressed in song, prayer, chants, and acts of meditation. At a procedural level, the puja consists of numerous units of action, conceptualised sequentially and taxonomically. For instance, the pushpa puja is a unit of action in which flowers are placed on an idol; it is construed in sequential terms as the third stage in the performance of a complete puja ritual, but it is also envisaged taxonomically as a special type of anga (limbs) puja which, in turn, is a special type of dravya (material) puja. Humphrey and Laidlaw show that procedural knowledge of the puja consists of both implicit, experientially-driven performative competence and quasi-theoretical principles relating to ritual sequence and taxonomy. Considerably less convergence is apparent, however, in relation to people’s reflexive representations of why the ritual actions entailed in the puja take the form that they do. For instance, interviews with worshippers produced a startlingly wide variety of spontaneous reflexive commentaries on the pushpa (flower) puja. To one Jain, this action meant that her knowledge should blossom like a flower; to another, it meant that his feelings should be soft and gentle like a flower; to another, it meant that the scent of flowers should increase the pleasure of worship; to another, flowers encapsulated a notion of purity; and so on. Moreover, some interviewees seemed to lack reflexive knowledge in relation to the pushpa puja, and appeared to be operating only at the procedural/implicit level. As one informant observed: “I do not know the reason why I put flowers, I just do it”.10 In their discussion of reflexive commentaries on the Jain puja, Humphrey and Laidlaw observed: “the problem appears to be a superabundance of meanings – meaning untamed”.11 Their solution to this problem hinged on a notion of ritual as a special type of action which lacks intrinsic intentional meaning. Non-ritual actions, such as placing a lid on a pot of water suspended over a fire, have an intrinsic intentional meaning. As long as we can reasonably attribute to the cook certain basic understandings about the physics of heating liquids, he or she is clearly intending to trap heat in the pot and hasten the process of boiling. In contrast, we cannot make such inferences about the intentions of ritual actors, because their actions are stipulated in advance and lack intuitive relations between means and ends. Since intentional meaning is not contained in ritual actions themselves, the 10 Ibid. 35. 11 Ibid. 36.

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attribution of almost any meaning seems to be possible. In other words, ritual meaning appears to be up for grabs, and so, in cases like the Jain puja where tight control over the range of exegesis is not exercised by religious authorities, we find an apparently limitless range of meanings being bandied about. Humphrey and Laidlaw’s data are highly instructive, and their theoretical arguments fundamentally persuasive. Nevertheless, if we are slightly more precise about the cognitive principles undergirding the puja, the forms of knowledge it sustains seem to be less mutable than Humphrey and Laidlaw suggest. Procedural knowledge with regard to the puja is quite tightly constrained, in that the varieties of habituated ritual action that count as pujas, as well as the rules governing their sequential recurrence, are quite widely shared and finite. For most people, that is probably all you need to know in order to participate fully and competently in the puja. On the whole, Jains probably do not speculate to any great extent on why they perform the puja, or why it takes the various specific forms that it does. But, in so far as people do engage in this sort of reflexivity, for instance as a result of direct questioning by ethnographers, they come up with conceptually simple exegetical commentaries. For instance, those who say that flowers are placed on the idol because they have a pleasant aroma appear to be offering a technical motivation for this type of puja. Exegesis of this sort is often derived from closely-related cultural schemas and idioms, for instance, those that might conceive of inner states (such as serenity) as capable of “blossoming”. In principle, the potential repertoire of such interpretations is quite wide, but, from the viewpoint of the individual worshipper, this repertoire is constrained by the limitations of semantic memory and the cognitive resources invested in exegetical speculation. Presumably, most Jains do not try to memorise lists of possible meanings of the puja, and, in practice, are only able to remember a few exegetical possibilities at any given time, if they are entertained at all. The only conceptually complex exegetical commentaries cited by Humphrey and Laidlaw appeared to derive from written sources or the verbally-transmitted teachings of ascetics. But in order for such repesentations to have a significant impact on lay religious sensibilities, they would need to be both widely and frequently transmitted. Since they are neither, the exegetical meanings of the puja for most Jains are, far from being fecund and “untamed”, somewhat limited. The puja ritual, although it is not unique, is something of an odd case. Its theoretical importance, as far as the present argument is concerned, is that it demonstrates the unconnectedness of procedural and exegetical knowledge in relation to highly repetitive rituals. This is most clearly seen where official exegetical discourses are lacking, and cannot therefore be causally connected to the reproduction of implicit ritual knowledge. But routinised religion is seldom this short of official exegesis with respect to its rituals. In most cases, children are told, from an early age, various explicit meanings of the liturgical rituals in which they participate. For

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instance, most Catholic children who regularly attend mass would probably have little difficulty providing quite elaborate and convergent commentaries on the significance of Holy Communion. Now, this kind of official exegetical knowledge tends to be much more conceptually complex and difficult-to-remember than the sorts of reflexive, internally-generated interpretations proferred by Jains in relation to the puja. Returning to the example of Holy Communion, this involves hard-tograsp notions of omniscient agency, transubstantiation, redemption, and so on. Such representations are clearly not the outcome of spontaneous reflexivity, and they require considerable time and energy to transmit and reproduce. Only in conditions of quite regular reiteration or review could such representations exercise an ongoing and stable influence over the religious imagination.12 Where such concepts are found, they are not only unconnected to varieties of procedural knowledge, but may even conflict with them. This is suggested by recent experimental research by Justin Barrett and others. In his early experiments, Barrett demonstrated a tendency for official representations of god as omniscient and omnipresent (“theologically correct” or TC concepts) to be represented on-line in more down-to-earth, anthropomorphic ways. For instance, people may know that god is everywhere at all times (because this information has been explicitly transmitted in religious discourse), but, whenever such processing of god-concepts has to be fast and efficient, people actually represent god as having to deal with people’s problems one at a time.13 On-line god-concepts are not transmitted as explicit rules, in the way that TC concepts of an omnipresent deity clearly are. Anthropomorphic representations of god are derived from implicit, quasi-theoretical knowledge, both experientially driven and derived from intuitive ontological knowledge. Thus, violations of explicitly transmitted TC concepts, when the cognitive system is under pressure, are not at all random. They result from the application of rules that are richly encoded, because derived from extensive experience, and probably also from innate cognitive biases. Barrett has subsequently turned his attention to representations of religious ritual, seeking to establish whether the intentional states of ritual participants are judged to be more important to the success of rituals in cases where supernatural agents are attributed the power to read people’s minds (“smartgods”) than in rituals where such agents lack this power (“dumbgods”). Perhaps dumbgod concepts are activated on-line in ritual performances, while smartgod concepts prevail only in TC discourse. If so, this further supports a distinction between explicit off-line representations of routinised ritual, transmitted verbally (for instance as official exegesis), and on-line procedural knowledge.

12 Whitehouse 1992. 13 Barrett & Keil 1996.

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Additional evidence comes from ethnographic research on a religious movement called the Pomio Kivung, in Papua New Guinea.14 The Pomio Kivung imports from Catholic and Methodist missions a Judeo-Christian “smartgod” with mind-reading capabilities. Pomio Kivung rituals are deemed efficacious only if the correct internal states are observed by participants, and these are closely scrutinised by God. Among the many routinised rituals of the Pomio Kivung is a version of confession, in which followers seek absolution for their own sins and those of their ancestors. This ritual is explicitly regarded as ineffective if the correct internal states are not observed by participants. That is the official, “TC” view among Pomio Kivung adherents, according to which God is able to observe directly what participants in the ritual feel and think. As with most communal activities in the Pomio Kivung, absolution rituals have to be performed at the same time as carrying or nursing infants. When the entire village is engaged in a ritual, there is nowhere for parents to leave dependent infants, and no particular desire or need to establish such facilities. That being so, some parents are inclined to guide their infants through the absolution rituals, as if they were actors in their own right. Nobody ever objects to this, but neither is it considered necessary or desirable. At the same time, everybody agrees that babies are incapable of observing the correct internal states necessary to merit absolution. If this knowledge were deeply encoded and on-line, then we should not expect participation in absolution rituals to be extended to babes-in-arms. Such behaviour is probably guided by internally-generated, quasi-theoretical principles operating on the basis of a “dumbgod” model. In other words, standard agentive characteristics are attributed to God in the absence of conscious reflection on the matter. This suggests that reflexive stances are not automatically generated in relation to highly repetitive rituals. Thus, there appear to be five levels of knowledge in relation to frequently-repeated rituals: 1. Implicit, empirically-driven procedural knowledge, or what Karmiloff-Smith calls “behavioural mastery”. It is such knowledge that allows worshippers, at least in principle, to perform repetitive rituals without conscious reflection, in automatic response to environmental cues. 2. On-line, quasi-theoretical knowledge concerning ritual procedures. Such knowledge may redescribe “type 1” knowledge according to the RR model, but it may also incorporate intuitive, perhaps innately specified default assumptions from a number of domains. Unintended innovation in relation to repetitive rituals is likely to be heavily shaped by knowledge of this type. Although mostly implicit, such knowledge may also be available to verbal report, if for instance people are encouraged to reflect on the matter. 14 Whitehouse 1995.

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3. Verbally-transmitted procedural rules – e.g. “kneel when praying” or “stand when singing” (encoded in semantic memory). Such knowledge is most likely to be stated when instructing children or novices how to conduct worship – it may itself have been acquired verbally or be internally derived from implicit rules. In the ACT* model, such knowledge drives learning of type 1, but (since it may also derive from type-2 knowledge) it is not essential to the development of knowledge of types 1 or 2. 4. Internally-generated, speculative exegesis concerning why rituals take the specific form that they do, and why they must be performed. This type of knowledge is off-line and explicit. It is not, however, automatically generated and is not caused by knowledge of types 1, 2, and 3. If official exegesis is also available, people may refrain from producing speculative interpretations of their own, or at least be fearful or embarrassed about communicating them. Of course, people simply may not be bothered to reflect on their rituals in this way, unless encouraged to do so. At any rate, such reflexivity is likely to generate relatively simple exegetical observations. 5. Externally-derived exegesis, often regarded as authoritative, which is obviously also explicit and off-line. This type of knowledge is unconnected to knowledge of types 1, 2, and 3, and may conflict with it, without people noticing. Knowledge of type 5 is often highly elaborate and hard to learn, requiring frequent and extensive transmission, and probably also systems of writing in order to be sustained in a stable form.

Reflexivity and Rare, Climactic Rituals Both ACT* and RR models were designed, like virtually all theories of learning in cognitive science, to describe and account for the acquisition of semantic and procedural knowledge. But where, in all of this, do we locate enduring memory for distinctive, rare (or one-off) events? Episodic or autobiographical memory seems to be left out of such models, even though its role in various forms of learning is manifestly important. Rare, climactic rituals often produce episodic memories for ritual performances through a combination of sensory stimulation and cognitive shocks. This type of religious experience might in some cases be described as “ecstatic”, but often it is more traumatic than euphoric. In many systems of Melanesian initiation, for instance, novices are tortured so brutally as part of the ritual process that I have described such practices as “rites of terror”.15 The extreme affectivity and sensual arousal occasioned by such rituals, coupled with the surprising, unexpected nature 15 Whitehouse 1996a.

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of the objects, actions, and general environments encountered, trigger vivid episodic memories, encoding many details relating to actions, actors’ identities, and a variety of seemingly extraneous details.16 In contrast with the knowledge people have of how to perform routinized rituals, which is largely implicit and procedural, episodic memory for rare, climactic rituals is explicit and largely non-sequential. For instance, having participated in a series of traumatic initiation rites, I may be able to recall many distinct ritual episodes with great clarity and in considerable detail, without necessarily remembering the order in which they occurred. In so far as that order can be reconstructed from memory, it is likely to be on the basis of deductive reasoning, rather than direct episodic recall. Thus, in attempting to work out whether a ritual episode involving incision of the forearms occurred before or after an episode of whipping with nettles, I may know that it came after only because I can recall the pain of nettle stings while waiting for the operation on my forearms to take place. Procedural knowledge concerning such practices is therefore constructed very differently from procedural knowledge of routinised rituals. In societies where “rites of terror” are staged periodically, and an emphasis placed on faithful reproduction of past performances, those responsible for coordinating the rites often have to confirm in detail, not the meaning or content of ritual episodes, but the correct sequence.17 The first point, then, is that procedural knowledge for such rituals is processed at an explicit level, whereas, in routinised rituals, much of this is implicit. Exegetical knowledge for rare, climactic rituals is not always available to verbal report. Participants may profess complete ignorance of such knowledge and, unlike the Jains interviewed by Humphrey and Laidlaw, appear unable to construct offthe-cuff symbolic motivations. Even in such cases, however, there is often indirect evidence that concrete properties of ritual choreography and paraphernalia are felt to “stand for” more abstract properties, such as plant growth, spiritual transformation, mammalian gestation, and so on. One such body of evidence might relate to the clustering of particular images in a ritual sequence, for instance images of substances that naturally increase in volume and thus appear to symbolise or instantiate mystical processes of natural fertility and growth (especially where people say that the ritual is “good for the crops” even if they cannot tell you how or why). Another body of evidence might focus on the sequential occurrence of imagery as, for instance, ritual choreography evoking images of physical death or decay followed by images of gestation and birth, may appear to express a notion of spiritual rebirth and regeneration. Sometimes, such interpretations are supported by esoteric mythology or explicit exegetical commentaries supplied by senior ritual experts. In other cases, no such corpus of secret, but explicit, verbal information appears to be 16 Whitehouse 1995; 1996a; 1996b; 2000. 17 Barth 1987: 26.

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available. Either way, the majority of ritual participants (e.g. novices, observers, and junior initiators) seem to be unable to supply verbal explications of the meanings of ritual imagery. Whereas procedural knowledge for rare, climactic rituals is explicit, exegetical knowledge seems to be implicit, at least in the early stages of its development. At any rate, ethnographic studies of rare, climactic rituals provide some support for the view that intuitions about the well-formedness of such rituals, and other forms of reflexive knowledge, develop through long-term experience.18 The challenge is to account for this in a precise cognitive model. The first thing we must recognise is that, due to the infrequency of climactic rites, the discernment of recurrent patterns, with regard to ritual actions and the materials they utilise, cannot proceed rapidly. It may take many years of repeated involvement in such activities to become aware of the fact that the sacred substances used and actions performed have particular properties and not others. Among the Baktaman of inner New Guinea, for instance, the ritual uses of hair, fur, fat, and dew are subject to similar taboos,19 but this inference could only be drawn after repeated encounters with the relevant ritual actions, which, in practice, takes a very long time. The classification of ritual acts on the basis of such analogues is inhibited by the particularity of the episodic memories in which these acts are encoded. Although, in the Baktaman case, the ritual treatment of pork fat and hair is subject to similar taboos, these sacred substances are associated with discrete and incomparable ritual episodes. If fat and hair are felt to be alike, there is no reason to suppose that the analogue must be consciously entertained. Such knowledge could certainly develop at an implicit level, through the same inductive processes that lead to quasi-theoretical knowledge in the block-balancing task, discussed earlier. The crucial question here, however, is why implicit inductive theorizing in relation to rare, climactic rituals focuses on ritual meanings, whereas in the case of routinised rites, it seems to focus only on ritual procedures. The answer to this may lie in different processes of reflexivity involving thematic association. Since procedural knowledge of repetitive ritual actions is “bracketed off” from other types of knowledge (i.e. fast, automatic, obligatory, and informationally encapsulated), thematic association between procedural schemas can only occur at an explicit level. In other words, if crossing oneself with holy water creates a link with other schemas, such as the schema for how to behave upon entering a mosque, then this link must be entertained consciously. Thematic associations of this sort are not, in principle, restricted to the ritual (or even the religious) arena. There is no reason why, for instance, the act of crossing oneself with holy water might not be themati18 Barth 1975. 19 Ibid.

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cally linked with the practice of removing one’s hat before entering a domestic home, or even washing one’s hands before dinner. Indeed, it is perfectly possible that such analogues have been pursued in sermons stressing the ideal seamlessness of conduct in church and everyday life. By contrast, procedural knowledge concerning rare, climactic rites is constructed around unique episodes, and it is precisely the distinctiveness of episodic schemas that obstructs the production of thematic associations with domains of semantic knowledge. One’s memory of receiving incisions to the forearms, for instance, is not reminiscent of any everyday experience – if it is thematically linked to anything, it is to other traumatic ritual episodes. But such links may initially be implicitly formed, on the basis of sensory as well as conceptual connotations. In this way, the domain of exegetical theorising is demarcated and set apart from other domains of knowledge. As implicit, inductive theorising becomes increasingly explicit and off-line, as a result of long-term experience, cross-domain links may be entertained, but these can never assume the richness of sensory and affective associations established between the ritual episodes themselves. Where analogic links between ritual acts, objects, and sequences are explicitly entertained, they may, of course, be reformulated in an oral format, for instance in a corpus of mythology or official exegesis. This does not necessarily happen, however, with regard to rare, climactic rituals, and where it does occur, the exegetical tradition tends to be very different from the sort found in routinised religions. Firstly, if oral transmission of this type occurs at all, it generally does so quite rarely and in a piecemeal fashion.20 In the absence of systems of writing and regular review, verballytransmitted exegetical knowledge is likely to be organised around mnemonic devices, such as grand mythological narratives or song lyrics, rather than around coherent and logically integrated theological principles. It is also likely to become a domain of expertise, monopolised by specialists and philosophers who have independently arrived at certain exegetical inferences, and organise their renditions of mythology around that knowledge. Such discourse often takes the form of a highly mutable and poorly shared esoteric tradition. These suggestions would need to be substantiated systematically by both ethnographic and experimental evidence. Nevertheless, data presently available suggest that rare, climactic rituals sustain four main types of religious knowledge, as follows. 1. Off-line, explicit, procedural knowledge in which the content of ritual actions is specified in episodic memory, and the chronological sequence largely deduced from this content, rather than remembered directly. 2. On-line exegetical knowledge, based on tentative and largely implicit associations between ritual acts or objects, on the grounds, for instance, that they elicit 20 Juillerat 1980.

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Harvey Whitehouse similar sensory or affective states, or occur in the same structural positions within a sequence. Where such associations are implicit, evidence of their existence may be provided by convergent intuitive judgements concerning the wellformedness of rituals. Through long-term experience of periodic rites, knowledge of this sort is likely to become increasingly explicit, as associational links between ritual elements are strengthened through repetition.

3. Off-line, internally-generated exegetical knowledge, based on explicit classification of ritual actions and objects according to analogic principles. This sort of knowledge is likely to be available only to ritual experts and elders, whose extensive experience of periodic rites facilitates confident recognition of recurrent patterns, and the formation of exegetical schemas. 4. Off-line, verbally-transmitted exegetical knowledge. Not all climactic, periodic rituals are associated with knowledge of this sort, and, if they are, it may be highly restricted (for instance, available only to experienced persons who have already acquired knowledge of type 3). In principle, knowledge of type 4 could have the same general character in both doctrinal and imagistic traditions, but, in practice, this is seldom the case, due to the effects of variable transmissive frequency on representational complexity and stability.

Epilogue In highly routinised religions, rituals are in some sense “empty procedures”, in relation to which a reflexive stance is not automatic. In such traditions, explicit religious knowledge typically takes the form of official dogma and exegesis, the reproduction of which does not necessarily entail processes of reflexivity. Less commonly, as in the case of the Jain puja, such official exegesis is lacking, and repetitive rituals can, in principle, be understood as empty procedures and nothing more. It follows that both Christians and Jains are capable of being profoundly unreflexive participants in their religions. As such, there may be little occasion for doubt. Contradictions between implicit and explicit forms of religious knowledge, as well as between disparate domains of explicit dogma, may never be subjected to conscious scrutiny, or trigger processes of critical evaluation. Paradoxically, it is the official purveyors of routinised religious (the gurus and the priests), dealing as heavily as they do in explicit forms of religious knowledge, who are most prone to reflexivity in general, and doubts or crises of faith more particularly. The more practice-based forms of lay participation may generate considerably fewer opportunities for reflexivity and scepticism. Rare, climactic rituals produce a very different story. Such practices are never empty procedures, because participants are forced into processes of reflexivity through which all valued religious knowledge is generated. Even if such know-

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ledge is verbally stateable, it is often only fully intelligible to those who have generated exegetical interpretations of their own, through personal experiences of participation in rituals. In view of this, native exegesis, where it exists, only ever scratches the surface of what people know about their rituals. A Barasana shaman once remarked to the anthropologist Stephen Hugh-Jones that ritual knowledge is not something that can be learned in the same way as Western knowledge taught in schools: “For that reason,” he added dismissively, “you can go on writing down what I tell you for as long as you like but you will never make the grade”.21 Such forms of religious transmission, premised as they are on processes of reflexivity, are liable to generate doubts. Indeed, in religious traditions operating in this way, such as the initiatory ordeals of certain Melanesian fertility cults, the deliberate construction of veils of deceit, and the transmission of partial truths are integral to the discovery of seemingly deeper insights, occult powers, and mysteries. In such contexts, we might legitimately say that doubt and disbelief are as intrinsic to the construction of religious experience as faith or conviction.

21 Hugh-Jones 1994.

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References Anderson, John R. 1983. The Architecture of Cognition. Boston: Harvard University Press. Barrett, Justin L. & Frank C. Keil 1996. “Anthropomorphism and God Concepts: Conceptualizing a Non-natural Entity”. Cognitive Psychology 3: 219–247. Barth, Fredrik. 1975. Ritual and Knowledge among the Baktaman of New Guinea. New Haven: Yale University Press. — 1987. Cosmologies in the Making: a Generative Approach to Cultural Variation in inner New Guinea. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Collinson, Patrick 1997. “From Iconoclasm to Iconophobia: the Cultural Impact of the second English Reformation”. In: Peter Marshall (ed.) The Impact of the English Reformation 1500–1640. London: Arnold. Herrenschmidt, Olivier 1982. “Sacrifice: Symbolic or Effective?” In: Michel Izard & Pierre Smith (eds.) Between Belief and Transgression: Structuralist Essays in Religion, History, and Myth. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Hugh-Jones, Stephen 1994. “Shamans, Prophets, and Priests”. In: Nicholas Thomas & Charles Humphrey (eds.) Shamanism, History, and the State. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press: 32–75. Humphrey, Caroline & James Laidlaw 1994. The Archetypal Actions of Ritual: a Theory of Ritual Illustrated by the Jain Rite of Worship. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Juillerat, Bernard 1980. “Order or Disorder in Melanesian Religion”. In: Man (N.S.) 15/4: 732–734. Karmiloff-Smith, Annette 1992. Beyond Modularity: a Developmental Perspective on Cognitive Science. Cambridge: MIT Press. Whitehouse, Harvey 1992. “Memorable Religions: Transmission, Codification, and Change in Divergent Melanesian Contexts”. In: Man (NS) 27/4: 777–797. — 1995. Inside the Cult: Religious Innovation and Transmission in Papua New Guinea. Oxford: Oxford University Press. — 1996a. “Rites of Terror: Emotion, Metaphor, and Memory in Melanesian Intiation Cults”. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.), 4: 703–715. — 1996b. “Jungles and Computers: Neuronal Group Selection and the Epidemiology of Representations”. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.), 1: 99– 116. — 2000. Arguments and Icons: Divergent Modes of Religiosity. Oxford: Oxford University Press. — (ed.) 2001. The Debated Mind: Evolutionary Psychology versus Ethnography. Oxford: Berg.

Joachim Gentz

in collaboration with Christian Meyer1

Ritual and Rigidity in Commentaries and Court Debates: Patterns of Reflexivity in Pre-Modern Chinese Discourses on Ritual Introduction One of the most persistent stereotypes held of East Asian cultures is the one about their “ritual character”. Visitors to Asia, tourists, businessmen, and students are carefully instructed, and anxiously ask, about the importance of correct formal behaviour, which is regarded as a crucial key for any success of interactions with Asian people. This conception about a ritualistic Asia does not appear in the early travelogues from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and it may have emerged only after the European understanding of rites, especially of Chinese rites, had been fundamentally changed and shaped by the controversy on the religiosity of Chinese rites that was carried on between Chinese missionaries and Rome in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. 2 From then on, it seems, Asia has been judged mainly in terms of either ritual refinement or of ritualistic torpidity. Yet, the view that China is mainly defined through its ritual culture is not a European invention. In his commentary to the Gongyang zhuan, He Xiu 何休 (129– 182) writes the famous phrase: “Zhongguo zhe, liyi zhe guo ye 中國者， 禮義之國 也”,3 which later (mostly in the variation: “Zhongguo zhe, liyi zhe bang ye 中國 者， 禮義之邦也”) came to be understood as: “China is the country of ritual and righteousness.” Even if the phrase in the original, exegetical context means something slightly different,4 the main point here is that the concept of li 禮, which is 1 This article is a synopsis of two papers presented in the panel “Reflexivity and Discourse on Ritual”, organised by Udo Simon at the International Conference “Ritual Dynamics and the Science of Ritual”, on 1 October 2008 in Heidelberg; detailed versions of both articles are published in volume I: Grammars and Morphologies of Ritual Practices in Asia, section 2: Ritual discourse, Ritual performance in China and Japan, ed. by Gil Raz, Katja Triplett, Lucia Dolce. 2 Cf. Minamiki 1985; Mungello 1994. 3 Cf. commentary to Duke Yin, seventh year (winter), in Ruan Yuan 阮元 19874 [1980]: 2209.1. 4 “The central states are those who employ rules of ritual and righteousness.”

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one of the main Chinese equivalent terms for our notion of “ritual”,5 is taken as a major feature in a Chinese definition of China’s own cultural identity already in the second century, and from then on is continuously repeated by later Chinese scholars.6 If we look at the Gongyang zhuan which He Xiu comments upon, we find that the advanced culture ascribed to the central states in this text is indeed defined on the basis of ritual terms. If a historical action accords to the “ideal” system of ancient rituals (li ye 禮也), it is praised. If not (fei li ye 非禮也), it is blamed and classified as “barbarian” (Yi Di 夷狄). 7 Thus, ritual in this earlier text (written probably in the third or early second century B.C.) is already a central focus of right and wrong, and the basic criterion for belonging to the central states which even outweighs the geographical position of these states. 8 Historical reality is mainly conceived of as ritual reality and is judged accordingly.9 5 “The best known generic term in Chinese denoting a similar field of religious performances as the term “ritual” is the Chinese term “li 禮”, which is mainly used in the Confucian tradition. It is not used in the Daoist tradition, perhaps because of the negative connotation which is associated with it in Laozi (Daode jing 38) and Zhuangzi. In the Buddhist tradition, it is used in connection with worship. The most important Chinese term for rites used in all traditions is “yi 儀”, which denotes the formal, model aspect of individual rites. The Confucian tradition has reflected on the concept of ritual “li 禮” in the most theoretical and abstract way in ritual chapters and books such as Xunzi “Li lun”, Liji, Da Dai Liji etc. The Daoist term for ritual is a binome composed of the words “ke 科” and “yi 儀”. Other Daoist terms referring to religious performances are “zhaijiao 齋醮” and “baibai 拜拜”. In the Buddhist tradition we find mainly the term “yi (shi) 儀(式)”, but also the terms “libai 禮拜”, “gong 供”, and “fashi 法事” or “foshi 佛事”. “Li 禮” might be defined as a Confucian idealised system of patterns of normative behaviour (on a religious, socio-political, moral, and cosmic level), “ke 科”, “bai 拜”, “gong 供”, and “shi 事” can be defined as Daoist/Buddhist performative acts, and “yi 儀” is the notion of the outer appearance of rites, the model ceremonial form. Confucian “li 禮” is a generic term which denotes all sorts of human activities which establish an order conceived to accord to the proper order of an ideal system of rules. It comprehends official etiquette as well as sacrificial, birth, capping, wedding and mourning rites, religious services, clothing, correctness, rules of behaviour, officials’ equipment, and also inner attitudes. Its meaning is thus much broader than the meaning of “ritual”. In traditional Chinese encyclopaedias, we find highly differentiated subdivisions of ritual, which follow a basic fivefold division into rites concerning “auspicious affairs” (sacrificial rites) (ji li 吉禮), imperial affairs (jia li 嘉禮), guest affairs (bin li 賓禮), military affairs (jun li 軍禮), and “inauspicious affairs” (mourning and burial rites) (xiong li 凶禮). Ritual is distinctly opposed to codified positive law statutes. Cf. Gentz 2006; Meyer 2008: 62–63. 6 Huang Kan 皇侃 (488–545) is famous for his dictum that the classics differ in their teachings but all have rituality as their basis (cf. Lo 1999), and Pi Xirui 皮錫瑞 (1850–1908) 1400 years later still claims the same (cf. Kato 1963: 79). 7 The term Yi Di refers to two groups of people who live outside the area of the central states, and in early Chinese literature are always taken as examples of the uncivilised Other. 8 Cf. Gentz 2001: 114–115, 272, 290–291. This topic is one of the main topics discussed, also throughout the later Gongyang tradition up to the present day. Cf. ibid.: 454–455, 247–248. 9 Ibid.: 137–139.

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This early association of ritual and Chinese identity presupposes a high degree of reflexivity about the meaning and function of ritual in Chinese religious, social, and political practice. 10 Indeed, archaeological evidence suggests that a “Ritual Revolution” occurred in the period between 899 to 858 B.C.,11 which probably marks a shift from private and communal rituals to rituals conducted by specialists and viewed by an audience from a distance, which is also reflected in the textual record.12 We do not have any reflections on this change in ritual from textual sources, but the archaeological and textual evidence of this overall ritualisation indicates such profound social changes resulting from that revolution for the differentiation of social rank, regulation of intra-lineage succession, and cultural unity, that the ritual system by the end of the ninth century B.C. already appears as a powerful tool of social and political stabilisation and control of a whole range of daily activities at court, as well as for aristocrats.13 In view of such a central position in the Zhou order, Pines sums up that the ritual system became “the major topic of Chunqiu discourse, and that ritual criteria were used to judge almost every possible social and political undertaking”.14 An early source like the Zuo zhuan reflects the different notions, views, and meanings of li and mirrors an early (probably fifth century B.C.) reflexive discourse on ritual in the context of negotiations of social and political hierarchies. It is in this context that Chinese reflexivity of ritual, as representative of hierarchical order, becomes visible for us for the first time in Chinese history. The transmitted discourses in the Zuo zhuan show how the notion of li expands into the realms of politics and administration, inter-state etiquette, proper handling of international relations, personnel policy, proper handling of rewards and punishments, ensuring smooth functioning of the administration, and an overall pattern of governing. Li then develops into a philosophical notion, it becomes connected to Heaven and Earth, and Confucius for the first time concentrates on the ethical aspects of li at the expense of its political functions. In the Zhanguo Period (475–221), li as a signifier of the social order, comprised two distinct meanings: on the one hand, it referred to hierarchic order in general; on the other hand, li was intrinsically linked to the above-mentioned Western Zhou set of ritual regulations, with their overt hereditary connotations. With time, it was developed as a moral principle, as a norm of interpersonal intercourse, it became an internal virtue, part of the innate good nature of human beings. Finally, at the end 10 For a rather comprehensive overview on Western publications on Chinese ritual cf. Philip Clart’s online bibliographies at: http://www.uni-leipzig.de/~clartp/Ritual.html (22.06.2010) and http://www.uni-leipzig.de/~clartp/Death_%26_Ancestral_Cult.html (22.06.2010). 11 This term was coined by Jessica Rawson, see Rawson 1999a and “The Ritual Revolution” in Rawson 1999b: 352–449, 433–440. See also Falkenhausen n.d. 12 Cf. Shaughnessy 1999: 332–337. 13 Cf. Pines 2002: 90. 14 Ibid.: p. 91.

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of the Zhanguo Period, li becomes a multi-faceted term which refers to the political, social, economic, military, ethical, religious, and educational spheres, to mention only a few. Yet this richness of functions should not obscure the nature of li as primarily a socio-political term, a regulator of society and the state. It further achieves a cosmic dimension in the third century B.C. Interpreting Xunzi, Yuri Pines writes that it became the terminological counterpart of the True Way – Dao as a supreme truth; the unique force applicable at the cosmic, social, and individual level, the One that Pervades All.15 At its highest level, li is treated as an unchanging, unifying force of the universe. In later times, li always comprises these different layers of meaning: Zhou religious ritual, socio-political order, moral principle, and cosmic law.16 These expansions of the semantic realm of li are results of numerous reflections on, and disputes and fights over, the right meaning of this powerful notion, which basically continued to carry the meaning of socio-political order and, at the same time, was used to legitimise different visions of such an order. The earliest reasoning about ritual can be found in historiographical narratives and commentaries from the fifth through the second centuries B.C., such as the Guoyu, the Zuo zhuan, the Gongyang zhuan, in the so-called philosophical texts of the Pre-Qin (before 221 B.C.) masters, especially in the Mohist canon and the Xunzi, and the ritual books Yili, Zhouli, and Liji. Among the ritual books, the Liji (“Record of Rites”), a collection of 49 essays on rites written between the third and first centuries B.C., contains the most elaborate and complex arguments about the origin, nature, function, and meaning of ritual.17 Four basic realms of reflexivity on ritual can be distinguished in this collection of reflections upon ritual, as different methodological approaches in which the nature and significance of ritual is explained in different terms.18 First, what might be called the religious realm. Until the Western Zhou (1040– 771 B.C.), li mostly denotes sacrificial rites and ritual decorum. This meaning is still present in some of the Liji discourses, in which li is associated with the respect for ghosts and ancestors, and the blessings resulting from this.19 Second, the realm of socio-political order, which becomes important in Western Zhou times, as reflected in sources such as the Zuo zhuan, Lunyu, Mengzi, etc.

15 See Pines 2000. 16 Pines 2002: 90–104. 17 There is one translation of the Liji into English by James Legge (1885), repr. in the re-publication of the series edited by Max Müller 19764. Sacred Books of China, The Texts of Confucianism. Now also available online at several URLs in the www. 18 Cf. Gentz 2001: 297–307. See also Gentz 2004: 307–310. See for a similar analysis Meyer 2008: 65–70. 19 See the “Li yun” chapter, for example.

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This notion of li is present throughout the Liji and forms one of the most common explanations for ritual as a means of creating a well-ordered community. Third, the realm of cosmology. In these arguments, ritual is grounded in, reflects, and expresses the cosmological patterns of Heaven and Earth, the Four Seasons, Yin and Yang, and the Five Phases (wuxing). In the Liji, analogies of particular rites with natural phenomena, animal behaviour, and cosmological forces are drawn to explain the principles of ritual. Fourth, the realm of human emotions (qing). Similar to the cosmological reasoning, and probably developed at the same time (third century B.C.), mainly by the Confucian thinker Xunzi, the function of ritual is explained as regulating human emotions, balancing and harmonising them. This affective reading is especially strong in the chapters on mourning rites. These four reflexive models of the explanation of rites are not necessarily separated in the Liji. We find them often side by side in the same chapters, such as the “Li yun”, the “Zhongni yan ju”, and others, as different modes of argumentation, making use of different terminologies that are inconsistent with each other, yet are presented as equally valid. Sometimes we find them combined, as in the “Li yun”, “Fang ji”, or “Ji tong” chapters, and sometimes one approach is rejected in the light of another, as in the “Li qi”, the “Sannian wen”, “Tan gong xia”, or “Ji tong” chapters.20 Throughout the Liji, the socio-political and the affective reading of ritual are clearly dominant. The formulation of a ritual theory, however, is nowhere an ultimate ambition in early Chinese ritual literature. We therefore do not find any theoretical discussion about ritual theory. Theory serves rather as a means of arguing for the right practice, with the ultimate aim of achieving the desired effect – of the right emotional, socio-political, and religious-cosmological order. Ritual theories are mostly formulated within processes of negotiation of ritual practice. They are transmitted to us through literary documents, mainly in two different kinds of discourses: 1. discourses about the correct interpretation of canonical ritual texts and 2. open court debates about the application of ritual texts to concrete political cases. In the following part of the article we will present examples for each of these kinds from different times of Chinese history, to illustrate in two representative cases contents and methodologies of ritual debates and theories in pre-modern China:

20 See for more details Gentz 2001: 304–307. For an interpretation of ritual theory in the Liji which connects these different aspects in a modern reading, according to which early Chinese ritual worked especially well because it refined and extended human dispositions, transformed relationships, and centred emotions towards harmony, see Puett 2008: 697–700.

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1. An analysis of six exegetical layers to one of the most important ritual topics of the ritual books: the mourning garments, written between the fourth and the first centuries B.C. 2. An analysis of a court debate from 1064–1067 “about granting a title to the prince of Pu”.

1. The Early Chinese Discourse on Mourning Garments The “Sangfu” chapter of the Yili is the earliest transmitted text that gives us details about mourning garments in early China. The text refers to an established ritual practice of mourning, and has to be read, not as a text describing or prescribing actual mourning practice, but as the first attempt to interpret and explain it through definitions and general principles. It thereby creates a “discourse”, the growth of which can be further detected in different stages of textual production through a related literature on mourning garments, especially in six later texts on mourning garments which follow the Sangfu chapter of the Yili in a commentarial mode: the appended ji-note to the Sangfu (“Sangfu ji 喪服記”), and the interlinear commentary “Sangfu zhuan” (喪服傳), which are both direct commentaries to the Sangfu text; the “Sangfu xiaoji” (喪服小記), the “Da zhuan” (大傳), the “Fu wen” (服問), and the “Sangfu sizhi” (喪服四制), which are transmitted as chapters 13, 14, 33, and 46 of the Liji. Building upon such an extensive literature on mourning garments transmitted in the Liji, it is possible to reconstruct a “thick” context of rules, and arguments concerning rules, for mourning garments in these Sangfu commentarial texts. On the basis of such contextual analysis, this part of the paper will demonstrate how commentaries devoted to the sangfu topic start to formulate theoretical approaches with regard to mourning ritual. We will reconstruct a process of increasing abstraction of ritual principles as a reflection of a growing extension of the discourse on mourning ritual into political and cosmological realms. The “Sangfu” chapter of the Yili is the most well-known early attempt to establish an all-enclosing system of mourning garments. To achieve that goal, the text first defines three distinct social systems: the family system, the political system, and the system of family succession, and differentiates eleven sets of mourning garments related to hierarchical ranks. This structuring of mourning garments expresses an underlying basic theory of mourning ritual as a formal reflection and representation of the hierarchical social order. In a second step, it then displays clear signals that there are cases where some of the garments do not correspond to the proper ranks as defined by the regular social systems. It further offers hints as to how to solve these deviations of social rank and mourning rank, with formulations such as: this garment is worn in order to “match [the garment of a higher

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ranking guest with whom one is visiting the funeral]” (bao 報), or: when there is “no one [else] to lead the sacrifices” (wu zhu zhe 無主者), or when someone has been “living together” (tong ju 同居) with the deceased. The text thus shows that it proposes not a perfect construction of an ideal system of social rank and sangfu correspondences, but rather that it reflects a correct ritual practice which yet has to take into account, and be further explained by, principles that lie beyond the frame of the social ranking system, such as pragmatic reasons, cohabitation, age, family name, etc. By informing the reader that part of the text’s message, namely the ritual order conveyed through it, may be based on principles that lie outside the social ranking systems, the text takes a second step into ritual theory, towards basic principles that inform ritual practice. The first commentarial layer, a passage at the end of the Sangfu text introduced by the term “ji 記” (note), does not introduce new basic exegetical principles. Yet, it expands two of the basic systems of the Sangfu. First, it adds a new social system, namely the system of friends, which is not dealt with in the Sangfu text. Second, it introduces a new class of clothes, the clothes for a gongzi (公子), a prince. In so doing, it enlarges the basic structure of the mourning ritual and defines it in a broader social framework. The second important commentarial genre to the Sangfu text is an interlinear commentary called zhuan (“Sangfu zhuan 喪服傳”). It establishes the Sangfu text as a system that does not solely convey an order of social rank, but which also transmits basic ritual principles that have to be discovered and displayed by the commentary in order to explain the proper order of the text. Apart from the three principles of, first, matching accompanying persons, second, acting as a manager of sacrifice for persons who do not have anyone else to act, and, third, cohabitating, established by the Sangfu text in the first place, the commentary further introduces a whole series of new ritual principles. These principles enable the commentary to insert two new layers of meaning into the text. First, it defines passages of deviations between social and ritual rank. The Sangfu zhuan thereby redefines the system of social rank through its claim of correspondence or deviation with the ritual rank. Second, it introduces a whole set of ritual principles and thereby inserts its own ritual theory into the old text. The principles are marked through their repetitious formulations, alleging through their repetitive occurrence that they are not causal interpretative devices, but clearly defined and basic exegetical notions. Some of the main principles to which the commentary refers time and again are the following: – The principle of honour or respect or authority (zun 尊). The most respectful mourning garments are worn for the most respectful persons of the different relevant social systems. The authority of the family leader is based on a further principle, the principle that the family may not be allowed to lapse (bu ke yi jue 不可以絕).

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– The principle of following the mourning garments of an authority or the order of an authority, for example Y does not dare to diminish what an authority X does not diminish (X 之所不降．Y 亦不敢降也). – Somehow connected, the principle of belonging to the same family-body as an authority one is with (yu zun zhe [wei] yiti 與尊者［為］一體). – Taking social roles, not kinship relations as criteria (不敢殊也). – The principle of being intimate, close (qin 親). – The same family name (yi ming fu 以名服). – The three-following-principle for wives (furen you sancong zhi yi 婦人有三從 之義): before marriage she obeys her father, after marriage her husband, and when he is dead, her son. – The principle of downgrading, by one rank, a guest who is not directly related to the deceased, but only accompanying another guest (congfu 從服). – The principle of keeping with the people (yu min tong ye 與民同也). – Moreover, there is the basic principle of analogy of ranks of different relationships: the father is like the ruler, the father is like Heaven, to the child as to his wife, the concubine serves her husband like a wife serves her parents-in-law (妾 之事女君．與婦之事舅姑等) etc. As basic principles, we can thus differentiate the relationships of kinship, social rank, and personal intimacy, of age, gender, dwelling place, name, living context, pragmatic context, political needs, systematic analogies, etc. Looking at the four realms of ritological approaches above, we find that these principles are mainly taken from the socio-political and affective realm. By adding these new principles, the Sangfu zhuan aims at giving intellectual reasons for the correctness of the rites as a further, and deeper, foundation and involvement of the isolated single rites of the Sangfu text. It thereby introduces its own ritual principles into the reading of the text, but does not reflect on its own principles in an abstract way. The Sangfu xiaoji chapter, as the third commentarial layer, is probably the first text to formulate such principles in a more general way, within the context of mourning garments attaining further stages of ritual theory. These more analytical commentarial parts can be differentiated into three different basic exegetical modes. First, explanations of mourning regulations in the way the Sangfu zhuan provides them, too, giving exegetic principles as basis of the rules. Second, and here the Sangfu xiaoji goes one step beyond the exegetical horizon of the Sangfu zhuan, it reflects on the principles of the ritual order. We find in the Sangfu xiaoji a first systematisation of principles which we do not find in the Sangfu zhuan. The Sangfu xiaoji defines a set of four basic principles, according to which ranks of mourning garments are differentiated: intimacy 親親, authority 尊尊, age 長長,

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and gender 男女之別. Although the Sangfu zhuan made use of these basic principles in its interpretation, it had not defined them explicitly as a set as the Sangfu xiaoji does. We find them, however, either in exact parallels or in further elaborated forms in the Da zhuan chapter of the Liji. The Da zhuan chapter takes another step of exegetical abstraction and further de-contextualises these principles, using the same categories as abstract principles in a political context, as something upon which no changes could be enjoined by a ruler. With regard to the art of garments (fushu 服 術), it then uses a further elaborated set of six expressions: intimacy 親親; authority 尊尊; family name 名; living in the same house or having moved elsewhere 出 入; age 長幼; the system of downgrading according to gender, age, or kinship relation 從服. The next important step which the Da zhuan takes within the commentarial development is that it formulates all these ordering principles, not only for the context of mourning garments, where they originally probably were developed, as the Sangfu xiaoji suggests, but expands them as abstract principles to the whole realm of ritual rules, and thereby attempts to formulate valid principles for a general ritual theory. An interesting point about this abstraction process of the Da zhuan chapter is that the whole first part of the following Fu wen chapter (asking about garments) is an attempt at re-contextualising the abstract principles of the Da zhuan by explicitely citing the Da zhuan as “zhuan yue 傳曰”, and then giving concrete examples from the context of mourning garments for some of the principles formulated in an abstract way by the Da zhuan. The Fu wen can thus be taken as a re-contextualising commentary to a de-contextualising commentary (such as the Da zhuan), which again is a further step of exegetical complexity. Moreover, it also further differentiates and specifies the principles formulated by the Da zhuan and, hence, further develops them. Here, it seems, a ritual theory which had been developed in the context of mourning ritual and had, from that point, then been developed into a general theory of ritual, is re-applied to the mourning context, and thereby imparts an elevated, more objective, and authoritative tinge to the interpretation of mourning garments. The Sangfu zhuan had already drawn an analogy between father and Heaven. Using this analogy, it argues that a wife has to observe the three-following-principle (sancong 三從). Now the Sangfu xiaoji further develops this analogy in the realm of Heavenly seasons by connecting the mourning periods with the natural periods of the cosmological cycle. This is a further way to explain rites through analogical reference to another system, and constitutes a further exegetical strategy of this complex chapter. The Sangfu sizhi correlates the changing of mourning garments not only to the cosmological principle of the changes of the four seasons (sishi 四時), but also to the four emotional principles of kindness (en 恩), ordering patterns (li 理), regulations (jie 節), and acting according to circumstances (quan

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權), which are then further correlated to the four basic Confucian ethical values of humanity (ren 仁), righteousness (yi 義), rituality (li 禮), and wisdom (zhi 知). Referring to the principle, which also had been formulated in the Sangfu xiaoji and the Da zhuan, of honouring the honoured (zun zun 尊尊), it then applies this principle to equate father and ruler as an example for the realisation of righteousness (yi). The Sangfu sizhi thus correlates, and thereby combines, several different systems of reference, interlocks elements of these different systems with one another, and then inserts ritual rules from the Sangfu tradition in this multilayered, combined system. It creates new connotations of the Sangfu regulations through basing and interweaving it into the web of the most basic Confucian value systems of ancient China. If we accept that a development of ritual theory can be assumed throughout the texts, we will now finally propose six stages for the commentarial texts, which, at least in its distinctions, might appear plausible to some readers. 1. Ritual is defined as reflection and representation of different social systems and related hierarchical ranks. 2. Additional basic and comprehensive principles are formulated, which inform ritual practice. 3. These basic principles are summarised in a set of closed principles. 4. The set of principles is de-contextualised and generalised and defined as an abstract set of principles which is widely applicable to other realms. 5. The set of principles is re-contextualised, whereby the context gains a greater validity. 6. Basic principles are interwoven into cosmological, ethical, philosophical, political, or other systems through analogy, and are thereby integrated into a complex worldview. There seems, within the dynamics of the exegetical development of the Sangfu commentaries, to be a movement which, more and more, focuses on principles not explicitly expressed in the text, but rather inserted into the text in a first step, systematised in a second, and then connected to other ruling value systems, whereby the original text in its single exegetical partitions can be applied to present usage in different contexts. In this special case, we can see commentarial and sub-commentarial attempts to establish new and more differentiated modes of interpretation on mourning garments through the invention of new principles, and setting up a ritual theory as a means to increasingly disregard the kinship system as the sole guiding principle of social relations. Instead, they introduce new value principles into the realm of human relationships. They thereby reflect an alternative approach towards an all too rigid system of human relationships, as based on the kinship system, and promote new perspectives on defining relationships on the basis of other systems,

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in their turn based on new ritual principles which emerged during the late Zhou period, and slowly, through the intellectual work of many generations, had found their way into the reading of the old texts. These new theoretical perspectives appear also in other spheres of intellectual activity, such as the political field, the field of law, and others. In an analysis of the exegetical layers of the Chunqiu tradition, we have demonstrated a similar exegetical development, starting from the Gongyang zhuan through the different early chapters of the Chunqiu fanlu to the subcommentary of He Xiu.21 This gives us some further confidence that the model of development of ritual theory applied to these undatable texts is plausible, and might provide a basis for further explorations into the complex realm of early Chinese ritual theory.

2. The Court Debate from 1064–1067 “about Granting a Title to the Prince of Pu” Although the earlier stages of Chinese ritual theory are more basic and formative, one explicit advantage of this later example is that we are able to reconstruct concrete discourses with people whose biographies and circumstances we know in much more detail. There are different ways of interpreting ritual debates. In an earlier article, we have already explained how the ritual discourses in the eleventh century can be understood as closely connected to political debates, identity issues, and power struggles.22 This gives a partial answer to the question of why ritual issues were repeatedly discussed. In this perspective, reflexivity23 of ritual matters would be understood as aiming at, for example, power. This is no surprise, as much of the concept of Chinese ritual(ity) (li 禮) was explicitly dealing with power, especially as rituals were conceptualised mainly hierarchically, and main parts were closely connected to the emperor, and so to politics. Another notion of reflexivity could, however, focus on how ritual itself was reflected: either in arguments within debates about concrete cases, or in more abstract philosophical thinking. Our interest, in this paper, relates to this latter approach, i.e. how Confucians in the eleventh century argued about, and thereby reflected on, ritual(ity) (li). Referring to one historical example, we will demonstrate how two different types of ritual reflection, one more rigid and the other more flexible in attitude, were built up on this same base. We will then pose the question as to whether these two are somehow

21 Cf. Gentz 2001. Cf. also Gentz 2008. 22 Cf. Meyer (forthcoming). 23 For a differentiated reflection on the term of reflexivity, also related to ritual, see Stausberg 2006.

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“necessary” types of interpretation in ritual discourse, which complement and balance each other in the process of adapting ritual to actual situations. Our example to illustrate these two positions is the case of emperor Yingzong 英宗 (reigned from 1063–1067), who was adopted from a minor branch of the imperial family, as there was no biological son, and so no direct heir to his predecessor. After the death of the previous emperor, Yingzong succeeded him and also properly fulfilled the role of a pious son towards his adoptive father as if he were a biological son – a proper example of the correct fulfillment of the canonical prescribed mourning rites. However, since he had been brought up by his natural parents, he also nourished feelings towards his deceased biological father. So he expressed the wish to venerate his biological father in a more particular way. 2.1 Ouyang Xiu’s 歐陽修 (1007–1072) Position: A Flexible Interpretation of li For Ouyang Xiu, who was a vice-chancellor at that time, the young emperor’s wish was the expression of a natural human feeling (renqing), which should be expressed in an appropriate ritual form. Although he should certainly not venerate his biological father in the same way as he did his adoptive father, the former emperor, it was still not right that he deal with the former as if he were a more distant relative. As this was all a question of the most appropriate behaviour, the matter was transmitted to the bureaucracy to be worked out. Ouyang belonged to a group of intellectuals for whom a lively and close-to-life expression of correct human relationships performed in ritual seemed to be the most appropriate ritual form. Exemplary models of ritual behaviour could be found in the classics, but they did not have to be applied as rigid norms in every detail. Renqing, the hermeneutical keyword of this group, means “natural human feelings” or “common sense opinion” of the people. Rituals should, in their view, follow these natural feelings, it should express and thereby strengthen them. Corresponding to different times and situations, rituals could be re-designed according to “the original intention of the Sages” (shengren zhi [ben]yi 聖人之[本]意), an important general hermeneutic rule of interpreting the classics in general.24 2.2 Cheng Yi’s 程頤 (1033–1107) Position: A Systematic and “Ritualistic” Interpretation of li (Ritual) For the other group, the more ritualistic, nowadays called “Neo-Confucians”, ritual was an important matter, which also played a role as the educative embodiment of Confucian values in contrast to Buddhist, Daoist, and popular religious (e.g. 24 See for example Ouyang Xiu 1975: 4.113, 34.872; cf. Bol 1992: 195–196. Cheng Yi’s writings offer similar quotations, as he may have been influenced by discourses of his time, which were at least partly dominated by Ouyang, as a major opinion leader of his time.

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geomantic) practices.25 The famous Neo-Confucian Cheng Yi, a representative of this second group, did not categorically reject adaptations to the time and its changed customs in minor aspects, however, ritual, as it was created and designed in detail by the Sages of the past, as recorded in the ritual books, meant, for him, basically the ultimate form to express and intensively exercise Confucian values and attitudes. A strict adherence to the classics and ancient rites (guli 古禮) could help “learners of the way” to attain sagehood. 26 It would be exercised in each situation in an attitude of attentiveness (jing 敬). In the state of perfection (as a sage [shengren]) one would act, in accordance to the norms, naturally and spontaneously. Beyond this personal use, correct ritual norms had to be adhered to also in the higher (and more “public”)27 imperial arena, as embodied visibility and visible embodiment of li enacted by the emperor as a “father”, who could serve as a “role model” for the whole empire.28 When it came to the case of the adopted emperor and his wish to venerate his biological father, this case was taken as a serious and critical matter by many of the “conservative” Confucians like Cheng Yi. Instead of taking it as a private case of the emperor and his personal human feelings (renqing), as suggested by the official question from the government, the “conservative” group in the bureaucracy saw a deep potential interference with the proper hierarchical order of the imperial clan system, relevant not only to the order of succession of the throne and the more “religious sphere” of the ancestral shrine, but also to the legitimacy of the dynasty as a whole. 2.3 Diverging Suggestions in the Ritual Case of Yingzong and the “Debate about Granting a Title to the Prince of Pu” The two positions of government and “conservative bureaucrats” resulted in two radically opposed suggestions: The former group finally suggested the title of “parent” (qin 親), as a biological father was still identified with the term father (fu 父) in the “Mourning garments”(Sangfu 喪服) chapter of the Yili 儀禮, and also treated as a special case in its casuistic system.29 The second group saw this use of 25 These had become common even in the families of those who were educated in the “Confucian” Classics (the so-called shidafu 士大夫), cf. Ebrey 1984. 26 This is found programmatically in Cheng Yi’s early “Treatise on What Yen Tzu Loved to Learn”, translated by Chan (1963: 547–550). For Cheng Yi’s ritualism in general see also Meyer 2007. 27 Public here in the sense of representativity. 28 For the role of the emperor as father (and the empress as mother) of, and role model for, the people, see, for example, the struggle about the deposing of the Empress Guo, see Chen Bangzhan 陳邦瞻 1981: chapter 25, p. 194: “The Emperor is the father of all under Heaven, the Empress is the mother of all under Heaven 皇上天下之父，皇后天下之母.” 29 Cf. Steele 1966 [1917]: vol. 2, p. 18 (t).

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“father” in the classics as a rather technical term, which, however, could not be used as a title in a ritual context. Their main argument against its usage was that as “there is only one sun at the sky” and “only one emperor on earth,” there could “only be one father in a family.” Respect and loyalty, according to this widely quoted phrase,30 could be rendered to one person only. Their counter-suggestion was to address the deceased biological father in the ritual context as Imperial Uncle (huangbo 皇伯). Only this would suit the relation of a son of the former emperor – either natural or adoptive – to his biological father, who, in this case, was a cousin of the former emperor. If adoption was radically thought of as a complete change of the position of the adopted one in the family or clan system, then, according to his new position, the adopted son had now to be regarded as a nephew to his biological father. This approach was, in its way, in accordance with a perfect system, but indeed very rigid. The idea, however, that a biological father would suddenly be called an “uncle” seemed to the first group not only absurd, but even against “natural human feelings” (renqing). Against the opposition of most members of the imperial bureaucracy, but in agreement with the emperor, they finally enforced their solution.31 Although this case also had strong political implications, and indeed caused a fierce power struggle which undermined the government’s acceptance and support amongst the generation of younger officials, 32 it cannot simply be reduced to a matter of power politics: The two distinguishable interpretations, in fact, entirely corresponded to the two oppositional conceptions of ritual, as outlined above. Other writings of these two groups equally confirm this clear consistency of their respective thinking.33 We would like to summarise this situation in the following way. The two positions reflect two modes of ritual hermeneutics, both based in the classics and founded on principles which were not necessarily exclusive. However, these two modes clearly clashed in this case of adoption, and provoked a conflict between the idea of a hierarchical, consistent ritual system and a much more complex and dynamic social reality. In the case of adoption, human feelings had no appropriate

30 Cf. Liji, chap. Fangji 天無二日， 土無二王，家無二主，尊無二上; and, as quotation of Confucius, in Liji, chap. “Zengzi wen”. Cf. also Liji chap. “Sangfu sizhi”, Da Dai Liji chap. “Ben ming”, Mengzi, chap. “Wanzhang shang” 5A4, Gongyang zhuan Wen 9.1, Kongzi jiayu 50.15. 31 In an attempt at reaching a compromise, an earlier suggestion of applying the attribute “huang” (Imperial) to the biological father, in combination with addressing him as “parent”, was abolished. 32 For an account of the political implications and the related power struggle in the bureaucracy, see Meyer 2008, for a shorter English version see Meyer (forthcoming). 33 For another clash between these two interpretations see also Cheng’s struggle with Su Shi in 1086 about the mourning rites for the late chancellor Sima Guang (Meyer 2008: 289–297).

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place in the system of mourning grades.34 Ritual rules – in the version of Cheng Yi and Sima Guang – were viewed as normative and, if necessary, feelings had to be regulated according to a desired norm. On the level of principles, there was therefore a conflict between a theory of ritual as a system of a strict social hierarchy, demanding feelings of loyalty on the one hand, and a theory of ritual as an expression of natural human feelings on the other. If we relate this further to the question of reflexivity in general, we find in eleventh-century China a culture of explicit reflection on ritual and of “applied ritual hermeneutics”. However, these hermeneutical approaches and general conceptions consisted of rather diverse pieces of advice which were never fully systematised; rather, we find them applied and disputed case by case. Confucian ritual tradition left – more pragmatically than systematically – room for different interpretations, which collided in many cases. The two opposing concepts of ritual outlined represent positions within a broad range of possible interpretations between the two extremes of rigidity and flexibility. The differences may not only have existed because of individual concepts and world-views or character, and thus of personal “taste”, but might perhaps be taken as a very general, intrinsic pattern with regard to ritual. Both positions might then represent necessary and integral elements of ritual theory: while one position is arguing for stability and authenticity of a tradition which is seen as a base of legitimacy, and which cannot easily be abolished, the other argues for the necessity of flexibility and adaptations, as in life circumstances and contexts change. The long-term struggle between the two positions was finally settled. In the following dynasties, the more rigid “ritualistic” version of so-called Neo-Confucianism, which, with clear rules, probably allowed easier orientation and was thus able to promise stability, prevailed over the more flexible, open one, which relied on case-by-case decisions and vague “common sense” or “people’s feeling” (renqing). The first group became orthodox from the thirteenth century onward. At the same time, it may be noted that, although this rigorousness in practice was not always followed so strictly (at least not in Cheng Yi’s version), it contributed to the image of Confucian inhumanity, after it had been rigorously emphasised in China’s last dynasty35, when revolution took place in modern times in 1911 and Confucia-

34 As mentioned above, the Sangfu chapter in the classics already had reached a compromise and provided rules for the case of adoption, but it concentrated only on the categories of mourning periods and left out the case of formal addressing, thereby still leaving space for later interpretation. 35 See Chow 1994.

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nism was finally completely abolished – to pave the way for later systems of rigorous rituals in China.36

Conclusion: Weighing Up a Formal System and the Human Condition The Chinese situation seems to be special (and yet similar to a very small number of other strongly literary cultures), in that, from very early times onward in the Confucian tradition, a canon of ritual books has provided the main basis and reference point for all further ritual discourses. Ritual theory in China is, therefore, always presented in a hermeneutical mode, and has no space outside this system of canonical reference. This Confucian model has also shaped other religious traditions in China, which have all set up ritual codices, and have produced a mass of ritual literature on which religious practice has been based to a great extent up to the present day.37 Ritual theory in the Chinese context thus always has the function of a hermeneutical major premise, from which a particular reading of the ritual text is inferred that is relevant to actual practice. The first case study has demonstrated how sets of abstract principles were developed in a process of exegetical work on a specific ritual topic. These principles allowed the insertion of new concepts into the text, which, in turn, allowed a more flexible adaption of historically prescribed ritual practices based on an all too narrow kinship system, to new contexts with new value criteria of social order, including further systems of social relationships, practical considerations, personal emotions, and cosmological correspondences. Thus, of the four basic modes of early Chinese ritological approaches presented above, three were used in the creation of new principles for mourning garments. These four approaches continue to provide the basis for all later ritual theories and, as time proceeds, the dominance of the socio-political and affective paradigms seems to have become even stronger. In the case of the emperor Yingzong in the eleventh century, the two opposing positions not only reflect methodological (hermeneutical) rigidity vs. flexibility, but, at the same time, interpretations following socio-political criteria vs. an affective reading of the ritual texts. The main arguments of the high government officials against the bureaucrats are still based on the concept of, and making use of the term, human emotions (renqing), that had been invented in the third century B.C., and, since then, had been so successfully employed in innumerable ritual discourses, especially in relation to mourning matters. This choice of the affective model as a means of opposing a rigid socio-political approach is no coincidence. 36 A major charge against Confucianism by the New Culture movement in the decade after the revolution of 1911 was expressed in the slogan of “Killing the people through ritual” (yi li sharen 以禮殺人). 37 Cf. Lagerwey 1987.

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The tension between an ideal, formalised system of ritual rules (li) and the complex reality of human emotions is one of the most fundamental issues in early Chinese reflections of ritual, and has been conceptualised in terms of standard pattern (fa 法, yi 儀 or yi 義) and deviation (yi 異), and correspondingly of regular (jing 經 or zheng 正) and irregular (bian 變 or qu 曲) rites.38 Theoretical propositions for a solution to that tension have caused the invention of a whole set of technical terms associated with ritual theory, such as (sense of) appropriateness (yi 宜), timeliness (shi 時), accordance (he 合), suitability (shi 適), middle-ness (zhong 中), patterned-ness (li 理), etc. As a means to achieve these ideal states, the concept of an ability to weigh up according to circumstances (quan 權) was introduced to ritual theory in the third century B.C. The acquisition of this ability, however, is envisioned in different ways by different thinkers. In the ritualistic branch of the historiographical tradition (the Gongyang tradition), the concept of quan is employed at the interface between a formalised ritual system (fadu 法度) and the empirical historical reality, between ritual rules (li) and historical narratives of moral actions. The judgement of Confucius inserted in this interface serves as the model of how a sage weighs things up in an ideal way.39 In the Mengzi (4A17), weighing up is based on the inborn human qualities of humanity (ren), righteousness (yi), rituality (li), and wisdom (zhi). Here, li is no longer regarded as an outer system, but as part of, and identical with, innate human nature, which must be discovered and cultivated by men. The major impulse for these thinkers of the third century B.C. to theoretically open ritual to the realm of human consideration, based on feelings and senses of humanity, righteousness, and appropriateness, is a political and intellectual opposition against the rigidity of the inflexible systems of legalism, technological warfare, and mechanical divination and cosmology, and their appropriation of the ritual system. Xunzi invents the theory of human emotions as part of his ritual theory in the third century B.C. just because he accepts, with the Legalists and Daoists, and against his Confucian predecessor Mengzi, that ritual rules are not innate, but invented by men. His theory, that rites serve to balance and harmonise human emotions, aims at linking them from his basic assumption (that they are man-made, and thus something outside of human nature) back to human (emotional) nature, thus preventing the ritual system from possibly becoming alien to humans, becoming an outer, rigid, formal frame of inhuman instructions. This formation of ritual theory in the Confucian tradition, opposed to a rigid 38 Cf. Gongyang zhuan Huan 11.4, Su Yu 蘇輿 1992: 59–60, 74–76, 79–80. This ritual theory is further developed in Qing times. In his Explanations of Ritual (Li shuo 禮說), Ling Shu 凌 曙 (1775–1829) differentiates between correct rules (zheng li 正例), deviant rules (bian li 變 例), correct rules within deviant rules (bian li zhong zhi zheng li 變例中之正例), deviant rules within correct rules (zheng li zhong zhi bian li 正例中之變例), and deviant rules within deviant rules (bian li zhong zhi bian li 變例中之變例). Cf. Ling Shu 1961: 14741. 39 Cf. Gentz 2001: 279–281, 340–342.

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ritual practice, which we have detected in both case studies above, probably has its origin in Confucius’ teaching of ritual as reflected in the Analects (Lunyu), and thus seems to be grounded in the very beginning of the Confucian re-definition and appropriation of the notion of li in the fifth century B.C. And it might indeed be, outside China too, one of the driving forces of ritual theory to keep ritual practice alive in the tension between transmitted standards and actual aspirations.

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References Bol, Peter 1992. This Culture of Ours: Intellectual Transitions in T’ang and Sung China. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Chan, Wing-tsit 1963. A Sourcebook in Chinese Philosophy. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Chen Bangzhan 陳邦瞻 1981. Songshi jishi benmo 宋史紀事本末. Taibei: Liren shuju 里仁書局. Chow, Kai-wing 周啟榮 1994. The Rise of Confucian Ritualism in Late Imperial China: Ethics, Classics, and Lineage Discourse. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Ebrey, Patricia Buckley 1984. “Conceptions of the Family in the Sung Dynasty”. Journal of Asian Studies 43/2: 219–245. Falkenhausen, Lothar von n.d. “The Western Zhou Ritual Reform and Its Reflections in Bronze Art”. Larence (unpubl. paper presented at the University of Kansas). Gentz, Joachim 2001. Das ‘Gongyang zhuan’: Auslegung und Kanonisierung der Frühlings- und Herbstannalen (Chunqiu). Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. — 2004. „Ritus als Physiognomie. Frühe chinesische Ritentheorien zwischen Kosmologie und Kunst“. in: Dietrich Harth & Gerrit Schenk (eds.). Ritualdynamik: Kulturübergreifende Studien zur Theorie und Geschichte rituellen Handelns. Heidelberg: Synchron: 307–337. — 2006. “‘Ritual’: Related Emic Concepts: China”. In: Jens Kreinath & Jan Snoek & Michael Stausberg (eds.). Theorizing Rituals: Vol. I: Issues, Topics, Approaches, Concepts. Leiden: Brill: 63–67. — 2008. “Language of Heaven, Exegetical Skepticism and the Reinsertion of Religious Concepts in the Gongyang Tradition”. In: John Lagerwey & Marc Kalinowski (eds.). Early Chinese Religion: Part One: Shang Through Han (1250 BC–220 AD). Leiden: Brill: 813–838. Kato, Joken 1963. “The Meaning of Li”. Philosophical Studies of Japan 4: 79–95. Lagerwey, John 1987. Taoist Ritual in Chinese Society and History. New York: MacMillan. Legge, James 1885. The Li Ki. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Repr. in: Max Müller (ed.) 19764. Sacred Books of China, The Texts of Confucianism. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass (The Sacred Books of the East 27). Ling Shu 凌曙 1961 [1829]. Li shuo 禮說 (Explanations of Ritual). In: Ruan Yuan 阮 元 (ed.). Huang Qing Jingjie 皇清經解, vol 20. Taipei: Fuxing shuju 復興書局: 14741. Lo, Yuet Keung 1999. “The Formulation of Early Medieval Confucian Metaphysics: Huang K’an’s (488–545) Accommodation of Neo-Taoism and Buddhism”. In: Kaiwing Chow & On-cho Ng & John B. Henderson (eds.). Imagining Boundaries: Changing Confucian Doctrines, Texts, and Hermeneutics. Albany: State University of New York Press: 57–83. Meyer, Christian 2007. “Cheng Yi as a Ritualist”. Oriens Extremus 46: 211–230.

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— 2008. Ritendiskussionen am Hof der nördlichen Song-Dynastie (1034–1093): Zwischen Ritengelehrsamkeit, Machtkampf und intellektuellen Bewegungen. Sankt Augustin: Monumenta Serica. — forthcoming. “Negotiating Rites in Imperial China: The Case of Northern Song Court Ritual Debates from 1032 to 1093”. In: Ute Hüsken & Frank Neubert (eds.). Negotiating Rites. Oxford et al.: Oxford University Press (Oxford Ritual Studies Series 1). Minamiki, George 1985. The Chinese Rites Controversy from its Beginning to Modern Times. Chicago: Loyola University Press. Mungello, David E. (ed.) 1994. The Chinese Rites Controversy. Its History and Meaning. Nettetal: Steyler. Ouyang Xiu 歐陽修 1975. Xin Tangshu 新唐書. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju 中華書局. Pines, Yuri 2000. “Disputers of the Li: Breakthroughs in the Concept of Ritual in Preimperial China”. Asia Major 13/1: 1–41. — 2002. Foundations of Confucian Thought: Intellectual Life in the Chunqiu Period 722–453 B.C.E. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. Puett, Michael 2008. “Combining the Ghosts and Spirits, Centering the Realm: Mortuary Ritual and Political Organization in the Ritual Compendia of Early China”. In: John Lagerwey & Marc Kalinowski (eds.). Early Chinese Religion: Part One: Shang Through Han (1250 BC–220 AD). Leiden: Brill: 695–720. Rawson, Jessica 1999a. “Ancient Chinese Ritual as Seen in the Material Record”. In: Joseph P. McDermott (ed.). State and Court Ritual in China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 20–49. — 1999b. “Western Zhou Archaeology”. In: Michael Loewe & Edward L. Shaughnessy (eds.). The Cambridge History of Ancient China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 352–449. Ruan Yuan 阮元 (ed.) 19874 [1980]. Shisan jing zhushu 十三經注疏. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju 中華書局. Ruan Yuan 阮元 (ed.) 1961 [1829]. Huang Qing Jingjie 皇清經解. Taipei: Fuxing shuju 復興書局. Shaughnessy, Edward 1999. “Western Zhou History”. In: Michael Loewe & Edward L. Shaughnessy (eds.). The Cambridge History of Ancient China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 292–351. Stausberg, Michael 2006. “Reflexivity”. In: Jens Kreinath & Jan Snoek & Michael Stausberg (eds.). Theorizing Rituals. Vol. 1: Issues, Topics, Approaches, Concepts, Leiden: Brill: 627–646. Steele, John Clendinning 1966 [1917]. The I-li or Book of Etiquette and Ceremonial, Translated from the Chinese, 2 vols. Taibei: Chengwen Pub. Co. (Probsthain’s Oriental Series 8–9). Su Yu 蘇輿 1992. Chunqiu fanlu yizheng 春秋繁露義證. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju 中 華書局.

Rüdiger Schmitt

Magic, Ritual Healing, and the Discourse on Ritual Authority in the Old Testament 1. Introduction Traditionally, the term magic denotes ritual practices mobilising supernatural forces or utilising hidden causes (Ratschow: unio magica)1 to achieve a certain outcome. Many Old Testament scholars – still to the present day – share the opinion that magic in the Old Testament is something that the Biblical writers have consigned to the past. Milgrom states it thus: “The basic premises of pagan religion are (1) that its deities are themselves dependent on and influenced by a metadivine realm, (2) that this realm spawns a multitude of malevolent and benevolent entities, and (3) that if humans can tap into this realm they can acquire the magical power to coerce the gods to do their will. […] The Priestly theology negates these premises. It posits the existence of one supreme God who contends neither with a higher realm nor with competing peers.”2 Old Testament scholarship has not denied that the Hebrew Bible contains elements which can be defined as magic, but these are considered to be either survivals of Canaanite religion or late – mostly Assyrian or Babylonian – intrusions into the originally pure religion of ancient Israel. The underlying concepts of magic are based on concepts of religion and magic from the late nineteenth century, represented by the works of Edward Burnett Tylor, William Robertson Smith, James George Frazer, Émile Durkheim, and Henri Hubert & Marcel Mauss. The evolutionist concepts of nineteenth-century scholarship, as well as the phenomenological school and the German “Religionsgeschichtliche Schule” in the first half of the twentieth century, have assumed a path of human progress from savagery through barbarism to civilisation.3 In the evolutionist paradigm, magic belongs to the first, the most primitive form of human religion, which believes in the hidden powers of nature (manaism, dynamism) or spirits (animism), which primitive mankind tries to 1 Ratschow 1947. 2 Milgrom 1991: 142–143. 3 Morgan 1877.

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use or abuse for its own benefits. In the view of most exegetes and scholars of religious studies, monotheistic religion then ruled out the mechanistic magic thought in favour of concepts of the absolute dependence of man on the one and only God, which cannot be forced by magic manipulations. For von Rad, Israel’s conception of Yahwe is therefore simply incompatible with magic.4 Moreover, religion was defined as a collective phenomenon, in which rituals and prayers serve the wealth of the collective, while magic is thought to be an individual practice for personal benefit. According to Durkheim, a magician has clients, but not a church.5 The Old Testament as a document of monotheistic religion was then read as opposing any form of magical thought and practice. The last decade saw – following the cultural turn in anthropology6 – a change in the perception of magical practices in Old Testament studies, as well as in Ancient Near Eastern studies and Egyptology, towards a different perception of magic and divination as performative acts, and as an integral part of religion and the cultural symbol system of Ancient Israel.7 Thus, the focus has changed from a theologically biased point of view towards the reconstruction of the emic perception of magic and ritual. Magic in the Old Testament sources is – as in its Ancient Near Eastern environment – not perceived as a manipulation of matter and beings by utilisation of dynamistic or animistic powers, but results in the belief in the absolute power of the divine, which is the last or only authority to intervene through supernatural force in the human realm. Although the term “magic” – as it has been defined by late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century scholarship – has become problematic and prejudicial, there is at present no consensus about an adequate term to replace it. Therefore, the term “magic” is used by the present author as a descriptive term for performative symbolic ritual acts which are performed to achieve a certain result by divine intervention.8 It should be noted that the definition given here is not meant to be a universal definition of magic. Derived from the evidence of Ancient Israel and its Ancient Near Eastern environment, this definition may only work for this cultural realm, while different cultural contexts may require a different one.9 This short survey of the scholarly discourse on magic in the field of Old Testament Studies reveals two fields of reflexivity: first, the scholarly discourse which has widely adopted the concerns against “magic” in the Biblical scriptures, in particular the view of the Deuteronomic/Deuteronomistic and Priestly source texts, and has thereby blurred and inadequately narrowed the emic perceptions of ritual 4 5 6 7 8 9

von Rad 1957: 47–48. Durkheim 1981 [1899]: 72. Cf. Tambiah 1990. Cf. Cryer 1991; 1994; Jeffers 1996; Schmitt 1998; 2004; 2007; 2008a; 2008b. Cf. Schmitt 2004: 92–93. For instance, Late Antique magical literature, and modern esoteric and neo-pagan “magic”; cf. Lademann-Priemer & Schmitt & Wolf 2007.

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activities, and second, the Biblical discourse about “magic”, which is a reflection on the controversies about legitimate and illegitimate ritual practices and ritual authority in the exilic and post-exilic Hebrew literature. It is the aim of the present paper to analyse the ancient Hebrew discourse on ritual authority with an examination of two accounts on ritual healing by men of god or prophets, 1 Kings 17:17–24 and 2 Kings 20:1–11, which are considered legitimate healing practices, and Ezekiel 13:17–21 as an example of practices that are considered illegitimate by the Biblical writers, as well as two rituals for ritual cleansing (Leviticus 14:33–57 and Deuteronomy 21:1–9), to analyse the distinctions between legitimate and illegitimate ritual practices and the reflexivity of the ritual texts.

2. The Concept of Magic and Witchcraft in the Old Testament The Hebrew root which is usually translated with “to perform magic/witchcraft” is kāšap.10 Like its Mesopotamian and Ugaritic cognates, Hebrew kāšap denotes only ritual practices that were prohibited by biblical law,11 or is used to stigmatise certain persons like the evil queen Jezebel, a “witch”, in 2 Kings 9:22, or to brand alien religions and their practice as “witchcraft”.12 The closely related term ‘aššāp, pl. ‘aššāpīm, only occurs in the Book of Daniel.13 ‘aššāp is a loan word from Akkadian āšipu (“exorcist”) and denotes exclusively Mesopotamian ritual specialists. Besides kāšap, there are several more, mostly pejorative, terms to denote “magic” in Biblical Hebrew, like lḥš (onomatopoeic for “whispering”, “hissing”) and nḥš (most likely derived from nḥš “snake”), meaning “to charm”, “to conjure”.14 ḥōber ḥāber and ḥeber, derived from the root ḥbr II “to bind”, means “to tie (magical) knots”.15 The term ba‛al lāšōn “lord of the tongue” only appears in Ecclesiastes 10:11 in the context of a snake charm. ‛îš lāšôn in Psalm 140:12 most likely denotes someone who performs black magic. ḥăkam ḥărāšīm in Isaiah 3:3 is, on the model of Ugaritic ḥrš, Syriac ḥarrāšā, and Ethiopic ḥaras, to be understood as “skilled in the art of magic”. ḥartom is an Egyptian loanword, hrj-tp “lecturer priest”, and is only used for Egyptians.16 Their activity is described in Exodus 8:3.14–15. as lehāṭīm (from lāṭ “secrecy”), thus denoting “secret arts”. The ‘ōrerê10 Exodus 7:11; 22:17; Deuteronomy 18:10; 2 Kings 9:22; 2 Chronicles 33:6; 47:9; 47:12; Jeremiah 27:9; Micah 5:11; Nahum 3:4 [twice]; Malachi 3:5; Daniel 2:2. 11 Exodus 22:17; Deuteronomy 18:10. 12 Isaiah 47:9.12; Nahum 3:4. 13 Daniel 1:20; 2:2; 2:10; 2:27; 4:4. 14 Genesis 30:27; Leviticus 19:26; Numbers 23:23; Deuteronomy 18:10; 2 Kings 17:17; 21:6; Jeremiah 8:17, Psalms 58:5f.; Ecclesiastes 10:11. 15 Deuteronomy 18:11; Psalms 58:6; Isaiah 47:9; 47:12; Sirach 12:13. 16 Genesis 41:8; 41:24; Exodus 7:11; 7:22; 8:3; 8:14–15; 9:11.

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yôm “those who curse the day” in Job 3:8 denotes black magicians who are skilled in summoning the chaos-monster Leviathan. Thus, as in Mesopotamia, kāšap and its synonyms and cognates denote ritual practices that are considered black magic. In the Hebrew Bible we find a sharp distinction between legitimate, mostly therapeutic magic rituals, performed by legitimate ritual specialists like the “men of God”, Elijah and Elisha,17 as well as by the prophet Isaiah18, which were considered magia licita, and practices considered illegitimate, like those of the female prophets attacked in Ezekiel 13:18–21.19 Nevertheless, Biblical and post-Biblical Hebrew has no term for legitimate ritual actions like Akkadian ašiputu.

3. Healing Rituals by Men of God and Prophets Before examining some of the evidence for ritual healing from the Hebrew Bible, we have to consider first the value of the sources. In contrast to Asia Minor, Ugarit, and especially Mesopotamia with its rich ritual literature, we have no primary ritual texts for healing procedures from the Hebrew Bible. What we do have are ritual prescriptions for ritual cleansing after skin disease in the book of Leviticus, which serve for the ritual re-integration after the actual healing took place, and we also have miracle stories, in particular the stories from the Elijah and Elisha tradition, and about Isaiah healing King Hezekiah, as well as the novelistic material in the book of Tobit. But miracle stories are not first-hand accounts by ritual specialists or by eye-witnesses, but form a literary genre with its own specific forms and with a different Sitz im Leben than the actual ritual. They were told to glorify the miracle-worker and his god, perhaps also as propaganda for later prophetical schools. Moreover, the miracle stories about Elijah and Elisha are, in their present form, largely post-Deuteronomistic additions to the Deuteronomistic History Work20 and were formed through a longer history of tradition, which escapes reconstruction by means of literary criticism. However, it seems plausible that the traditions behind the miracle stories are rooted in traditions about the men of god from the Omride Period (ninth century B.C.E.). The miracle stories are, nevertheless, an important source for investigating the emic perception of healing procedures in Ancient Israel, as the structure of the miracle stories seems to reflect elements of actual healing rituals, which can be shown using the example of 1 Kings 17:17–24, the resurrection of the boy in Sarepta:

17 18 19 20

1 Kings 17–18; 2 Kings 2:19–22; 2:23–24; 4:1–7; 4:8–37; 4:38–41; 4:42–44; 5:1–27; 6:1–7. 2 Kings 20:1–11 = Isaiah 38:1–8.21. Cf. Exodus 22:17; Deuteronomy 18:9–22. Otto 2001.

Magic, Ritual Healing, and the Discourse on Ritual Authority Introduction Appearance of client Exposition Characterisation of the Problem Crititicism

Central Motifs Instruction Isolation Prayer

Performative act Prayer Realisation Final Motifs Demonstration, re-integration Acclamation

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17. After this the son of the woman, the mistress of the house, became ill; and his illness was so severe that there was no breath left in him. 18. She then said to Elijah, “What have you against me, God? You have come to me to bring my sin to remembrance, and to cause the death of my Son!” But he said to her, “Give me your son.” He took him from her bosom, carried him up into the upper chamber where he was lodging, and laid him on his own bed. 20. He cried out to Yahwe: “Yahwe my God, have you brought calamity even upon the widow with whom I am staying, by killing her son?” 21. Then he stretched himself upon the child three times, and cried out to Yahwe, “Yahwe, my God, let this child’s life come into him again.” 22. And Yahwe listened to the voice of Elijah, the life of the child came into him again, and he revived. 23. Elijah took the child, brought him down from the upper chamber into the house, and gave him to his mother; then Elijah said, “See, your son is alive.” 24. So the woman said to Elijah, “Now I know that you are a man of God, and that the word of Yahwe in your mouth is truth.”

The typical structure of the miracle story (after Theissen)21 also reflects the typical tripartite structure of a healing ritual: first, the isolation of the client, marking his liminal status; second, the ritual itself with introductory prayer, performative 21 Theissen 1974.

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actions of the healer, accompanying prayer; and finally, the re-integration which ends the liminal status. Thus, there is a correspondence in structure between healing ritual and miracle story. We may therefore characterise the miracle story as a literary transformation of ritual practice, which, however, emphasises what is typical, or is a reflexive genre of literature. Quite a lot farther from the ritual practice behind the miracle stories are the accounts of therapeutic magic in the book of Tobit in novelistic form, which are much more miraculous and full of fairy-tale motifs than the actual miracle stories. But this is a literary genre of its own which follows its own rules. The second example of prophetical healing I want to discuss here is the account of Isaiah’s cure of Hezekiah’s skin disease in 2 Kings 20:1–11 ( = Isaiah 38:1– 8.21). The text can be structured in a similar way to 1 Kings 17: Exposition Characterisation of the Problem Coming of the miracle worker Difficulties Cry for help

Central Motifs Announcement of Oracle Oracle

1. In those days Hezekiah became sick and was at the point of death. The prophet Isaiah son of Amoz came to him, and said to him, “Thus says Yahwe: Set your house in order, for you shall die; you shall not recover.” 2. Then Hezekiah turned his face to the wall and prayed to Yahwe: 3. “Remember now, O Yahwe, I implore you, how I have walked before you in faithfulness with a whole heart, and have done what is good in your sight.” And Hezekiah wept bitterly. 4. Before Isaiah had gone out of the middle court, the word of Yahwe came to him: 5. “Turn back, and say to Hezekiah prince of my people, Thus says Yahwe, the God of our ancestor David: I have heard your prayer, I have seen your tears; indeed, I will heal you; on the third day you shall go up to the house of Yahwe. 6. I will add fifteen years to your life. [I will deliver you and this city out of the hand of the king of Assyria; I will defend this city for my own sake and for my servant David’s sake.”]

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7. Then Isaiah said, “Bring a lump of figs!” They took it, applied it to the boil, and he recovered [8–11.21: secondary demonstration miracle]

The miracle story of Isaiah’s miraculous therapy has a comparable literary structure to the miracle stories with Elijah and Elisha as protagonists, nevertheless, the Isaiah story features different motifs, and also the role of the King is more pronounced, while the miracle worker is less in the limelight. However, this story also seems to reflect the tripartite structure of a healing ritual: a prophet is called for help, he first gives a negative oracle in v. 1, which causes an ongoing separation of the client in the liminal “betwixt and between” phase, a prayer of repentance by the client follows (v. 2–3), then a second, positive oracle is given (v. 4–6) and a cure is applied, using a lump of figs as ritual medium, and Hezekiah finally becomes fully sound, able to participate in the cult again (v. 7 and secondary demonstration miracle). As the sequence oracle, prayer, second oracle, and ritual therapy shows, everything in this miracle story depends on Yahwe: death and life are in his hands, and it is not the skills of the prophet that are important, who only provides the order for the therapy. Moreover, there is no literary-critical hint in the story pointing to a secondary theologisation of a previously non-Yahwistic cure by the miraculous powers of the prophet, as proposed (among others) by Würthwein.22 Thus, the story places, on the one hand, more emphasis on the role of the deity, and, on the other, on the role of the prophet as a mediator of God’s word, as the Elijah-Elisha miracle-stories did, which placed a stronger emphasis on the miracle-worker. Douglas has made a sharp distinction between miracles and magic concerning the prophetical healing stories and related texts in the Old Testament:23 “When the Lord allows Elijah or Moses to perform miracles the miracles are not magic. In the Bible, magic is the secret lore of magicians, essentially working through spells and ritual formulae performed upon images.”24 A second problematic assertion made by several scholars is the theory that the miracle stories underwent a transformation from an original concept of self-efficient, non-theistic magic, rooted in the numinous powers of the men of god themselves, to a theistic concept of healing caused by Yahwe, during their redactional process.25 I feel that both distinctions are artificial and not appropriate to Ancient Near Eastern religions. An unbiased look at the symbolic and therapeutic acts of legitimate prophets shows that their ritual behaviour is magic in its essence, but not 22 23 24 25

Würthwein 1977–1984: Vol. 2, 432–435. See also Douglas 1999; 2004; for critique see Schmitt 2008a. Douglas 1993: 33. Schmitt 1972; Würthwein 1977–1984: Vol. 2; Beck 1999.

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considered kāšap. This can be illustrated with some examples: prophetical therapies, like those performed by Elijah, Elisha, and Isaiah in the books of Kings, operate with symbolic acts accompanied by invocations to Yahwe, as in the abovementioned example in 1 Kings 17:17–24. The ritual action performed by Elisha consists in verse 20 of the prayer to Yahwe, followed by the anticipatory performative act accompanied by the prayer. The prompt reaction of Yahwe is mentioned in verse 22. Similar performances are known from Neo-Assyrian exorcistic rituals performed by the ašipu, the professional, authorised exorcist in Mesopotamia. As Schwemer has convincingly shown in his study on Mesopotamian anti-witchcraftliterature, ritual healing in Mesopotamia is clearly not perceived as self-efficacious, but is embedded in a theistic concept.26 Ritual healing in the emic perspective is, therefore, at least caused by the gods. Accordingly, therapeutic rituals of the man of god show that therapeutic magic operates with a prayer accompanied by a symbolic act, which anticipates the expected intervention of god. Most of the prophetical performances include a prayer to Yahwe, but also in those cases that do not mention a prayer, such as 2 Kings 4:38–41 and 2 Kings 6:1–7, it is quite evident that the man of god – as the term ´îš hā´ĕlōhîm “man of god” indicates – has a close relation to Yahwe and that Yahwe has committed himself to the man of god, ensuring the efficacy of his ritual actions. The type of charismatic magician (´îš hā´ĕlōhîm) represented by Elijah and Elisha is functionally the equivalent of the Mesopotamian (non-charismatic – but scholarly trained) ašipu. The difference between the religious phenotypes ´îš hā´ĕlōhîm and ašipu lies in the different societal distinction: the ´îš hā´ĕlōhîm from a largely rural, mostly still segmentary society, has no formal scribal training and acquired his legitimacy through his special man-god relationship, while the ašipu, with his years-long specialist education, was part of a tradition that was centuries old. What they are actually doing, praying, performing ritual acts, etc., is basically the same: they anticipate a divine intervention. Both the Israelite and the Mesopotamian “magician” cannot do anything using his own power, using the power of spells, or even trying to control a god. In the end, the efficacy of the rituals depends on God or the gods, with no difference in mono- and polytheistic symbol-systems. With regard to the idea of a redactional transformation of non-Yahwistic “magical” rituals into “Yahwistic” healings, it is most obvious that these theories utilise an animistic/dynamistic perception of magic (with its theological prejudices) as an argument for literary and redactional criticism – a typical example of circular reasoning that has blurred the distinction between emic and etic perspectives. As a perception of magic as selfefficacious does not exist in the Ancient Near East, there is no need to assume a redaction which has transformed pre-Yahwistic magical rituals in to Yahwistic healings or “miracles”. 26 Schwemer 2007.

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4. The Priestly Rites of Elimination Two points are of special interest here: first the question of the modus operandi – the “mechanics” of priestly ritual magic, as perceived in the emic perspective of the ancient sources, and the question of ritual authority and legitimacy, as answered in the priestly literature. The following considerations will focus on the ritual against the ṣāra‘at-disease or house fungus in Leviticus 14:33–57: Diagnosis 33 And Yahwe said to Moses and Aaron, 34 When you come into the land of Canaan, which I give you for a possession, and I put ṣāra‘at-disease in a house in the land of your possession, 35 then he who owns the house shall come and tell the priest, There seems to me to be some sort of disease in my house. 36 Then the priest shall command that they empty the house before the priest goes to examine the disease, lest all that is in the house be declared unclean; and afterward the priest shall go in to see the house. 37 And he shall examine the disease; and if the disease is in the walls of the house with greenish or reddish spots, and if it appears to be deeper than the surface, 38 then the priest shall go out of the house to the door of the house, and shut up the house seven days. 39 And the priest shall come again on the seventh day, and look; and if the disease has spread in the walls of the house, 40 then the priest shall command that they take out the stones in which is the disease and throw them into an unclean place outside the city; 41 and he shall cause the inside of the house to be scraped round about, and the plaster that they scrape off they shall pour into an unclean place outside the city; 42 then they shall take other stones and put them in the place of those stones, and he shall take other plaster and plaster the house. 43 If the disease breaks out again in the house, after he has taken out the stones and scraped the house and plastered it, 44 then the priest shall go and look; and if the disease has spread in the house, it is a malignant ṣāra‘at in the house; it is unclean. 45 And he shall break down the house, its stones and timber and all the plaster of the house; and he shall carry them forth out of the city to an unclean place. 46 Moreover he who enters the house while it is shut up shall be unclean until the evening; 47 and he who lies down in the house shall wash his clothes; and he who eats in the house shall wash his clothes. 48 But if the priest comes and makes an examination, and the disease has not spread in the house after the house was plastered, then the priest shall pronounce the house clean, for the disease is healed.

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Ritual Sequence A 49 And for the cleansing of the house he shall take two small birds, with cedar wood and scarlet [paint?] and hyssop, B 50 and shall kill one of the birds in an earthen vessel over running water, C 51 and shall take the cedar wood and the hyssop and the scarlet [paint?], along with the living bird, and dip them in the blood of the bird that was killed and in the running water, X and sprinkle the house seven times. C> 52 Thus he shall cleanse the house with the blood of the bird, and with the running water, and with the living bird, and with the cedar wood and hyssop and scarlet [paint?]; B> 53 and he shall let the living bird go out of the city into the open field; A> so he shall make atonement (wekipper) for the house; and it shall be clean. Subscript 54 This is the law for ṣāra‘at-disease. For an itch, 55 for ṣãra‘at in a garment or in a house, 56 and for a swelling or an eruption or a spot, 57 to teach about unclean and clean. This is the law for ṣāra‘at. Verse 14:34 makes it quite evident that the ṣāra‘at-disease is caused by Yahwe himself. But why? If we take a look at other Biblical stories mentioning the ṣāra‘at-disease, it is quite obvious that it is caused by the wrath of God, as is the case in 2 Samuel 3:28f.; in 2 Kings 15:5; 2 Chronicles 26:16ff. (Asariah/Uzziah); 2 Kings 5:27 (Gehazi); Numbers 12:10 (Miriam). In the case of the house-ṣāra‘at it is most likely that Yahwe put the disease on the house because someone in the house had sinned. We know a similar case from the Hittite ritual “Evocation of the underwordly gods”:27 “Why is this house coughing? Why does it look to heaven? Either someone has sworn wrongly or done a deed of blood and has thrown his coat on it or someone has done <cutting of> or spoken a curse

27 Otten 1961: lines 10–17.

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or someone afflicted with a deed of blood has come in or someone who has sworn wrongly or someone has practised black magic and went in or in the house itself a deed of blood was done.” In a similar way, Mesopotamian Namburbi-rituals against the so-called katarruhouse fungus show that omens like fungus on the walls point to guilt on the part of the owner, other inhabitants, or visitors, that had to be cleansed ritually.28 The same seems to be the case in Leviticus 14:33–53: the ṣāra‘at-disease Yahwe has put on the house points to the guilt of someone. Yet not only persons are afflicted, but the house itself. Then a ritual atonement is necessary to cleanse the house from guilt. A dissociation of defilement and sin as proposed by Milgrom, Wright, and also by Mary Douglas (1999), is therefore quite uncertain.29 The underlying conception of impurity (Hebrew ṭāmē’) and guilt is mostly interpreted in a miasmatic or dynamistic manner, as a kind of invisible fluidum afflicting man and objects, so that they become impure. Here, an unbiased look at concepts of impurity shows a quite different character of the concepts of pure and impure: the semantics of ṭāmē’ and its synonyms (“crime” – pæša‘ _“perversity” – ’āwōn; “sin” and “impurity” – ḥaṭṭā’) point to a concrete-materialistic – or realistic – perception of “sin-dirt”: the association of ḥaṭṭā( and naśā( (to carry) is significant, especially in Leviticus 20:20 (ḥeṭṭ’am yiśśā’û – “They shall carry their sins”) and Leviticus 19:17 (welō’-tiśśā’ ‘ālāyw ḥeṭe’ – “You shall not bring guilt upon yourself!”). In the ritual with the scapegoat (Leviticus 16:21), Aaron puts (wenātan) the piš‘êhem and ḥaṭṭō’tām on the head of the goat like a load; in 16:22 the goat carries (wenāśā’) the sins (’ăwōnōtām) away into the desert. Outside the priestly writings, we find the same perception of uncleanliness in Job 11:14 (’im’āwen beyādekā harḥîqēhû – “If evil is on your hand, put it far away!”). The cultic meaning of ṭāhōr and its antonym ṭāmē’ derives from the physical meaning of “clean” and “dirty”, which is widened in the direction of “sin-dirt” and thus transferred to a relational category, describing an undisturbed or disturbed relation to God. A miasmatic or dynamistic interpretation of ṭāhōr and ṭāmē’ or even a kind of accumulation of negative miasma in the temple – as considered by Milgrom and Wright30 – therefore has no evidence to support it. ṭāhōr and ṭāmē’ are concrete qualities affecting the individual, which can be concretely established or transferred. In the ritual sequence, the priest – in Leviticus 14:11 he is called hakkõhēn hamměṭahēr the “cleansing priest” – uses two birds. The first one is killed over water (v. 50). Most likely, the rite with the bird is a kind of ḥaṭṭā’t (“sin offering”), 28 For the Namburbi rituals against house fungus see Maul 1994: 354–366. 29 Milgrom 1991; Wright 1987, Douglas 1999. 30 Milgrom 1991; Wright 1987.

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because v. 14:49 uses leḥaṭṭē( and the result is the cleansing and atonement (Hebrew kippēr ) of the house (14:53: wekipper, weṭaḥēr). In a similar way, birds are used as offerings in Hittite rites of atonement: “And they shall burn a bird for the atonement of the wrath of the male gods of the cedars and one bird for the atonement of sin.”31 Also, in Leviticus 14 it is the bird-offering which leads to the atonement (14:53: wekipper) of the house. After the ritual liquid has been prepared, the priest sprinkles the house with the liquid, and then the second bird, after dipping it into the liquid, is released. Obviously the bird carries the sin or the “sin-dirt” materia, respectively, away from the house. Thus, in the emic perspective, the logic behind the priestly rites of elimination is not dynamistic, but concretely materialistic in the transference of sin-dirt. Most scholars have argued that the priestly rituals cannot be considered magic, because ultimately it is the Lord Yahwe effecting the atonement. Of course, it is true that the atonement is caused by God. But, if we take a look at rituals of atonement and ritual cleansing in Israel’s Near Eastern environment, the emic logic of effecting something by rituals acts is quite the same. In Mesopotamia, too, rituals do not operate ex opere operato, rather, the god or gods addressed effect the result; the ritual anticipates. As in Israel, the ritual itself, or the ritual materia, is granted by the gods. The divine gift is, in Ancient Near Eastern rituals, mostly spoken of in mythological passages, which reconnect the actual ritual with the gods. In this way, the ritual re-realises deeds of the gods in mythical times. In a comparable way, the rituals of the Second Temple are reconnected to a mythohistorical past, when God spoke to Moses and Aaron, the latter being the role model for the priest acting in the ritual. Both the Ancient Near Eastern and the priestly rituals are theistic – or in the words of the Egyptologist Jan Assmann, cosmo-theistic.32 The effectiveness of the kippēr-ritual depends on the convention that the ritual itself was granted by Yahwe for atonement. Thus, definitions of magic as dynamistic or working ex opere operato do not work to distinguish Biblical rituals from Mesopotamian ritual magic, because the underlying theistic principles are the same. The role of the priest, both for diagnosis and therapy, is of central importance in the priestly rituals of elimination. Leviticus 14:11 refers to the ritual specialist as hakkōhēn hamměṭahēr – “the cleansing priest”. Although this is the only occurrence of this kind of priest, we can assume that such rituals were performed by a specialised priest like the Mesopotamian āšipu. The collection of rituals in Leviti31 KUB XV 34 IV 50’–51’: Haas & Wilhelm 1974: 54. 32 Assman 1996: 232–235.

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cus 12–15 perhaps represents a kind of manual for the cleansing priest dealing with ṣāra‘at and related forms of defilement.33 The priest alone proclaims the separation and re-integration of the ritual client, and he alone is allowed to perform the rites. In all single steps of the ritual, he is the one and only performer, while the ritual client is completely passive and has to obey the orders of the priests. Also, in matters of grammar, the priest is always the subject of kippēr: “Then the priest shall make atonement etc. […]” Although the priest is the subject of kippēr, he is only a mediator: he only performs the ritual actions of atonement – granted by God in the speech to Moses and Aaron – while forgiveness still depends on God and is not achieved automatically by performing the ritual. Priestly kippēr and divine forgiveness are not only closely related, but are inseparable (thus in Leviticus 4:20: wekipper ‘ălēhem hakkōhēn wenislaḥ lāhem; Leviticus 4:26.31.35; 5:10.13.16.18.2 6; 19:22; Numbers 15:25.28). The Yahwe-speech to Moses and Aaron is a mythohistorical aetiology for the authority of the priest and the legitimacy of the ritual. Focusing all ritual actions on the priest, the priestly ritual literature monopolises the diagnostics and the ritual therapies on behalf of the priest – in these cases most likely the hakkōhēn hamměṭahēr and, of course, to the temple. The priest being the only legitimate performer of the ritual, all non-institutional or freelance ritual specialists, as well as family patriarchs or the elders of a community, are denied legitimacy in performing rituals. The ritual prescriptions in the book of Leviticus are not only part of the discourse about ritual authority, but as “literary rituals” they show many more aspects of reflexivity, as – for instance – the purpose of the ritual is explained in v. 57 as “To teach when it is unclean and when it is clean.” Thus, the ritual prescriptions of Leviticus serve also a didactic purpose to teach the rules of cleanness and uncleanness.34

5. Deuteronomy 21:1–9 Elimination Ritual Against Blood-guilt Deuteronomy 21:1–9 is a ritual in which the elders, as representatives of their communities, were allowed to perform atonement rituals, even including a sacrifice that – in some kind – resembles the ḥattat, but without using blood as ritual matter, just breaking the cow’s neck. I would like to take a short look at that ritual.35 1. If, in the land that Yahwe, your God, is giving you to possess, a corpse is found lying in the open land, and it is not known who killed the person,

33 Schmitt 2004: 320. 34 Schmitt 2004: 332–333. 35 The Deuteronomic base layer is shown in bold, the Deuteronomistic additions in brackets and ordinary type.

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Rüdiger Schmitt 2. then your elders [and your judges] shall come out to measure the distances between the towns that are in the vicinity of the corpse. 3. The elders of the town, which is nearest to the corpse shall take a heifer that has never been worked, one that has not pulled in the yoke. 4. The elders of that town shall bring the heifer down to a wadi with running water, which is neither ploughed nor sown, and they shall break the heifer’s neck in the wadi. [5. Then the priests, the sons of Levi, shall come, because Yahwe, your God, has chosen them to serve him and to pronounce blessings in the name Yahwe, and after their decision all law-cases and assaults shall be settled.] 6. All the elders from the town, which is nearest the corpse shall wash their hands over the heifer whose neck was broken in the wadi, 7. and they shall declare: Our hands did not shed this blood, and our eyes have not seen anything. 8. Absolve, Yahwe, your people Israel, whom you redeemed and do not let the guilt of innocent blood remain in the midst of your people Israel. Then they will be absolved of blood-guilt. 9. So you shall purge the guilt of innocent blood from your midst, because you must do what is right in the sight of Yahwe.

The text is – from the viewpoint of literary criticism – obviously not consistent: as well as the judges in v. 2, the priests in v. 5 are secondary in the context, because they have no function at all in the ritual. So a later redactor has re-worked this ritual, adding the levites supervising the elders. As the judges in v. 2 make no sense here at all, in fact, I would also ascribe them to a later redaction. Thus, in this case, a ritual performed by laymen has been subjected to the control of central religious authorities by a later – most likely Deuteronomistic – redaction, because, according to Deuteronomy 17:9, it is the duty of the levites and the judges to serve in judging cases, as in Deuteronomy 21. The priestly atonement rituals, as well as the alterations to the ritual in Deuteronomy 21:1–9, can be seen in a broader context of post-exilic discourse about the legitimacy of ritual actions. The priestly ritual literature claims a ritualistic monopoly and spiritual control – which also means social control. On the other hand, the integration and publishing of the rituals in the Pentateuch is not only to be understood as the priestly claim for legitimacy and authority, it also commits the priests themselves to regulations and prevents wild proliferations of ritualism.

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6. Illegitimate Magic As already noted, the term kāšap and its synonyms were never applied to persons considered to be legitimate prophets of Yahwe, and were reserved for “abominable” practices. But what actually makes the difference between kāšap and legitimate practices? A closer look at the polemics against witchcraft, such as Ezekiel 13:17–21, shows that the magic of the illegitimate prophets, too, is perceived in the emic perspective as being caused by the deity, and that the polemics against witchcraft also take part in the discourse on ritual authority. Ezekiel 13:17–21 17. And you, son of man, set your face against the daughters of your people, who prophesy out of their heart and prophesy against them. 18. And say: Thus speaks [the lord] Yahwe: Woe to the women who are tying knots on all wrists, and make veils for the heads of persons of every height, to hunt down human lives. Will you hunt down lives among my people, and maintain your own lives? 19. You have profaned me among my people for handfuls of barley and for pieces of bread, for putting to death persons who should not die and keeping alive persons who should not live, by your lies to my people, who listen to lies. 20. Therefore: Thus says [the lord] Yahwe: I am against your knots with which you hunt down lives like birds and I will tear them from your arms, and let the lives go free, that you captured like birds. 21. And I will tear down your veils, and I shall save my people from your hands, so that they shall no longer be prey in your hands. And you shall know that I am Yahwe. Obviously the “daughters of Israel” – freelance female healers and ritual specialists – have misused the name of Yahwe by performing black magic through tying knots and other ritual manipulations. The profanation of the name of Yahwe (in verse 19) has to be understood in the way that these magic deeds were performed in the name of Yahwe, to mobilise him against a ritual enemy with the goal of killing him or doing him serious harm.36 Also, the text condemns healing rituals in the cases where it is not the will of Yahwe to let someone live. Notably, the text also does not deny that the kinds of magic which are considered illegitimate are working against a theistic, Yahwistic background. Likewise, the polemics against ritual magic in the book of covenant Exodus 22:17, in Deuteronomy 18:9– 22, and in Ezekiel 13:17–21, turn towards these forms of rituals as described in Ezekiel 13. This is also supported, again, by the Mesopotamian evidence studied 36 Schmitt 2004: 283–287.

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by Schwemer. The concept of witchcraft, which is reflected by the Mesopotamian anti-witchcraft rituals, is also embedded in a theistic concept; witchcraft can be approved by the gods – for different theological reasons, which are not always consistent – but often as a penalty for sins. However, what is considered magia licita or not is up to the societal groups dominating the religious field, and which succeeded in claiming ritual authority for themselves. Thus, the question of black or white magic is a question of ritual authority.

7. Conclusions The Biblical texts examined in the present paper have revealed different aspects of reflexivity, in particular, what the discourse about legitimate and illegitimate healing and the discourse on ritual authority between laypersons and priesthood concerns. Ritual healing in Old Testament literature is, as in Mesopotamia, embedded in a theistic concept of divine intervention as a reaction to prayer and ritual activity. Men of god and prophets act as ritual agents for Yahwe, because of their special relation to Yahwe. Notably, as Ezekiel 13 indicates, the concept of witchcraft, Hebrew kāšap, is also embedded in this theistic perception of magic. Nevertheless, the Old Testament does not contain ritual texts directly reflecting the performance of healing rituals by ritual practitioners, and the miracle stories can be conceived of as literary transformations of ritual activities of this kind. To sum up, magical healing is an integral part of religion in Old Testament times, and an important practice of religion. The texts discussed here are witnesses to a vivid discourse about the legitimacy of ritual actions and ritual specialists: men of god, prophets, and priests were considered legitimate ritual practitioners, while freelance female healers were denied any ritual authority, and were accused of performing witchcraft. In Deuteronomy 21:1–9, the legitimacy of practising certain atonement rituals by laymen is promoted, but a later redaction has then subjected this practice to priestly control. In the end, it is up to the ruling religious elites to determine what is considered legitimate or illegitimate ritual practice. In the post-Biblical Jewish literature and rabbinic writings, too, magic – in the meaning defined above – is a regular practice of religion37. In Jubilees 10:10, the art of magical therapy is taught to Noah by the angels, and Josephus (Antiquitates VIII 45) reported that Yahwe himself taught Solomon exorcism and therapeutic magic: “God also enabled him to learn that skill which expels demons, which is a science useful and wholesome to men. He composed such incantations also by which distempers are alleviated. And he left behind him the manner of 37 Schmitt 2008b.

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using exorcisms, by which they drive away demons, so that they never return.”38 The theological problem that black magic, too, is theistically embedded, is solved in Hellenistic times by the idea that black magic is worked by the forces of evil. Thus, Enoch 7 gives an aetiology of black magic: “And they (the fallen angels) took wives for themselves, and everyone has chosen one, and they began to have intercourse with them and they taught them the methods of witchcraft and spells and they taught them how to cut roots and plants.” Rabbinic magic can refer to the healings of Elijah and Elisha, and is therefore magia licita. Talmud Yerushalmi says that everything that leads to the healing of a person is not subject to the verdict against the ways of the Amorites (yShab 6, 9). The same perception of magic is found in the early Christian writings, where the apostles perform magia licita, while the magic of Bar-jesus/Elymas and the sons of Sceva is rendered magia illicita (cf. Acts 13:4ff.; Acts 19:11ff.). Especially in the Christian writings, as the acts of Peter and John show, we have again a vivid discourse on ritual authority, which explains the ritual healing of the apostles as the work of God, and the actions of pagan or Jewish magicians as satanic deception. That magic was also an accepted practice and integral part of late Antique Judaism and Christianity is shown by the great number of magical texts – both practical and theoretical – from the Cairo Geniza and comparable Christian magical texts from Egypt.39 Thus, ritual magic and healing in Antique Judaism and Christianity stands in a long tradition of magia licita performed by authorised ritual specialists. The reconstruction of the discourse on “magic” in Biblical and post-Biblical literature reveals the layers of reflexivity in ancient ritual literature, in particular the struggle for ritual authority and the social roles associated with this authority. Moreover, an examination of the scholarly discourse about “magic” in Biblical literature reveals how scholarly reconstructions of what is or is not “magic” reflect the researchers’ positions, both with regard to the authority of the Biblical texts and to their dogmatic prejudices.

38 Flavius Josephus 1990: VIII 45. 39 Naveh & Shaked 1985; 1993; Schiffman & Swartz 1992; Meyer 1999; see also Schmitt 2008b.

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References Assmann, Jan 1996. Ägypten: Eine Sinngeschichte. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft. Beck, Martin 1999. Elia und die Monolatrie: Ein Beitrag zur religionsgeschichtlichen Rückfrage nach dem vorschriftprophetischen Jahwe-Glauben. Berlin, New York: W. de Gruyter (Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentarische Wissenschaft 281). Cryer, Frederick H. 1991. „Der Prophet und der Magier: Bemerkungen anhand einer überholten Diskussion“. In: Rüdiger Liwak & Stefan Wagner (eds.). Prophetie und geschichtliche Wirklichkeit im alten Israel: Festschrift für Siegfried Herrmann zum 65. Geburtstag. Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer : 79–88. — 1994. Divination in Ancient Israel and its Near Eastern Environment: A SocioHistorical Investigation. Sheffield: JSOT Press (Journal for the Study of the Old Testament, Supplement Series 142). Douglas, Mary 1993. In the Wilderness: The Doctrine of Defilement in the Book of Numbers. Sheffield: JSOT Press ((Journal for the Study of the Old Testament, Supplement Series 158). — 1999. Leviticus as Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press. — 2004. Jacob’s Tears. The Priestly Work of Reconciliation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Durkheim, Émile 1981 [1899]. Die elementaren Formen des religiösen Lebens. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Flavius Josephus 1990. Jüdische Altertümer. Wiesbaden: Fourier (9th ed.). Gerstenberger, Erhard S. 1993. Das 3. Buch Mose. Leviticus. Das Alte Testament Deutsch. Vol. 6 Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Haas, Volkert & Gernot Wilhelm 1974. Hurritische und luwische Riten aus Kizzuwatna. Kevelaer: Verlag Butzon & Bercker, Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag (Hurritologische Studien 1, Alter Orient und Altes Testament: Sonderreihe 3). Jeffers, Ann 1996. Magic and Divination in Ancient Palestine and Syria. Leiden et al.: Brill (Studies in the History and Culture of the Ancient Near East 8). Lademann-Priemer, Gabriele & Rüdiger Schmitt & Bernhard Wolf (eds.) 2007. Alles fauler Zauber? Beiträge zur heutigen Attraktivität von Magie. Vorträge der Studienforschung der Konferenz der Landeskirchlichen Beauftragten für Sekten- und Weltanschauungsfragen in der EKD in Verbindung mit dem Forschungs- und Informationszentrum Neue Religiosität, FIZ, Bayreuth, Würzburg, 5.–7. November 2006. Münster: Ugarit-Verlag (Forschungen zur Anthropologie und Religionsgeschichte 41). Maul, Stefan M. 1994. Zukunftsbewältigung: Eine Untersuchung altorientalischen Denkens anhand der babylonisch-assyrischen Löserituale (Namburbi). Mainz: Verlag Philipp von Zabern (Baghdader Forschungen 18). Meyer, Marvin 1999. Ancient Christian Magic: Coptic Texts of Ritual Power. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Milgrom, Jacob 1991. Leviticus 1–16: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary. New York, London: Doubleday (Anchor Bible 3).

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Morgan, Lewis Henry 1877. Ancient Society: Researches in the Lines of Human Progress from Savagery, through Barbarism to Civilisation. New York: Holt & Co. Naveh, Joseph & Saul Shaked 1985. Amulets and Magic Bowls. Jerusalem, Leiden: Magness. — 1993. Magic Spells and Formulae. Jerusalem: Magness. Otten, Heinrich 1961. „Eine Beschwörung der Unterirdischen aus Boǧazköy“. Zeitschrift für Assyriologie und vorderasiatische Archäologie 20/54: 114–157. Otto, Susanne 2001. Jehu, Elia und Elisa: Die Erzählung von der Jehu-Revolution und die Komposition der Elia-Elisa-Erzählungen. Stuttgart, Berlin, Köln: Kohlhammer (Beiträge zur Wissenschaft vom Alten und Neuen Testament 152). von Rad, Gerhard 1957. Theologie des Alten Testaments. 2 vols. 4th ed. Munich: Kaiser. Ratschow, Carl Heinz 1947. Magie und Religion. Gütersloh: C. Bertelsmann Verlag. Schiffman, Lawrence H. & Michael D. Swartz 1992. Hebrew and Aramaic Incantation Texts from the Cairo Genizah: Selected Texts from Taylor-Schechter Box K1. Sheffield: JSOT Press (Semitic Texts and Studies 1). Schmitt, Hans-Christoph 1972. Elisa: Traditionsgeschichtliche Untersuchungen zur vorklassischen nordisraelitischen Prophetie. Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus Gerd Mohn. Schmitt, Rüdiger 1998. „Magietheorien und die Religionen des antiken Vorderen Orients“. In: Manfried L.G. Dietrich & Gregor Ahn (eds.). Zeit in der Religionsgeschichte. Münster: Ugarit-Verlag: 309–332 (Mitteilungen für Anthropologie und Religionsgeschichte 13). — 2004. Magie im Alten Testament. Münster: Ugarit-Verlag (Alter Orient und Altes Testament 313). — 2007. „Magie in den biblischen Schriften: Ein Überblick“. In: Gabriele Lademann & Rüdiger Schmitt & Bernhard Wolff (eds.) 2007. Alles fauler Zauber? Beiträge zur heutigen Attraktivität von Magie. Vorträge der Studienforschung der Konferenz der Landeskirchlichen Beauftragten für Sekten- und Weltanschauungsfragen in der EKD in Verbindung mit dem Forschungs- und Informationszentrum Neue Religiosität, FIZ, Bayreuth, Würzburg, 5.–7. November 2006. Münster: Ugarit-Verlag: 11–36 (Forschungen zur Anthropologie und Religionsgeschichte 41). — 2008a. „The Problem of Magic and Monotheism in the Book of Leviticus”. Journal of Hebrew Scriptures 8/11. http://www.arts.ualberta.ca/JHS/Articles/article_88.pdf (23/06/2010). — 2008b. „Funktionen magischer Sprache im spätantiken Judentum“. In: Manfried L.G. Dietrich et al. (eds.). Religiosität und Sprache. Vol. 2: Religiolekte und Metasprachen Münster: Ugarit-Verlag: 149–160 (Mitteilungen für Anthropologie und Religionsgeschichte 19). Schwemer, Daniel 2007. Abwehrzauber und Behexung: Studien zum Schadenzauberglauben im alten Mesopotamien. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. Tambiah, Stanley J. 1990. Magic, Science, Religion, and the Scope of Rationality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (The Lewis Henry Morgan Lectures 1984).

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Theissen, Gerd 1974. Urchristliche Wundergeschichten: Ein Beitrag zur formgeschichtlichen Erforschung der synoptischen Evangelien. Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus (Studien zum Neuen Testament 8). Tylor, Edward Burnett 1871. Primitive Culture. London: John Murray. Wright, David P. 1987. The Disposal of Impurity: Elimination Rites in the Bible and in Hittite and Mesopotamian Literature. Atlanta: Scholars Press (Society of Biblical Literature Dissertation Series 101). Würthwein, Ernst 1977–1984. Die Bücher der Könige. 2 vols. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht (Das Alte Testament Deutsch 11.1–2).

Günther Schörner

Sacrifice East and West: Experiencing Ritual Difference in the Roman Empire 1. Introduction The Roman Empire as a political entity, containing a wide range of different peoples and cultures with different forms of cultic practices, is a perfect subject for comparative religious studies based on material procured by disciplines such as Classics or Archaeology. Almost everyone in the Roman Empire worshipped gods, and the most important and significant act of this worship was sacrifice, especially animal sacrifice.1 Consequently, there is a rich modern literature treating different topics of its literal and pictorial representation. One would imagine that this modern approach to religious practices in the Roman Empire would have an ancient prequel. Furthermore, if what U. Simon wrote in the abstract of the Reflexivity Panel of the Heidelberg congress is true, that “increases in cultural contacts often bring about a need for self-affirmation and justification not only within a ritual community, but also in response to outside demands”, the Imperium Romanum should be a perfect example of these requirements in the cultural sphere.2 One would suppose that reflection on diverse forms of performing rituals might well be attested to in the rich literal and iconographical legacy of Rome, showing that comparisons between different rituals, or different performances of one ritual, were matters of interest in Roman times. One consequence of these inter-cultural or inter-religious comparisons should be that differences between distinct forms of rituals would be detectable, and that the participants of the rituals would become aware of these discrepancies, but this does not, or does not fully, apply to either the pictorial tradition of the Roman Empire or to the discussion of ritual affairs in Greek and Latin literature.

1 Wissowa 1912: 409–432; Latte 1967: 375–392; Beard & North & Price 1998: 36f.; Rüpke 2001: 136–153; Scheid 2005; 2007. 2 Simon 2008. For reflexivity as the main theme of current research in religious studies, see Højbjerg 2002; Stausberg 2006.

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When the Romans became aware of the performance of a given ritual specific to a particular culture, this ritual could provide a resource for building a cultural and religious identity. Pictures and texts reflecting sacrifice could be used for negotiating social and religious community or distance between the centre and the provincial periphery, especially the Greek East.3 The methods to emphasise either of them are clear-cut: stressing the common ground or highlighting the differences. In contrast to this straightforward Roman instrumentalisation of ritual, reflexivity is more related to the power-politically inferior Greek cultural sphere under Roman rule. However, because of the imbalance in power relations between the capital, Rome, and its Greek provinces, the topic of reflexivity is embedded in (and overlaid by) other discourses more virulent in both the written and iconographical interpretation of sacrificial rituals in the Imperium Romanum, which can be subsumed into power structures and proportions between centre and periphery. The discourse of power becomes eminently virulent; thus M. Stausberg states that “reflexivity is not an instance of mastery, but instead points to a loss of control”.4 This central theme will be particularly obvious in the following case studies, which consider the dichotomy between the different ways Greeks and Romans dealt with foreign rituals. The significance of animal sacrifice in Roman religion could be characterised as a “gestural credo” or “pragmatic credo”, in contrast to the Christian “spoken credo”.5 Consequently, the meaning of the sacrifice consists in performing the ritual in the proper way. No (emic) explication of the ‘sense’ of the sacrifice is needed, which consists, from an etic point of view, in positioning mortals and immortals, men and gods, in their proper relationship. So the sacrifice works as a “chaîne opératoire” with a pre-defined sequence of actions, with the praefatio being more fixed than the actual killing.

2. Methods Applied An adequate way to treat this problem is to look for reciprocal representations of sacrifices in animal sacrifice in Roman religion, especially animal sacrifice performed by a Roman official such as a pontifex, as any complex ritual performance was composed of a long catena of actions. The most essential are the praefatio and 3 The concept of centre and periphery is often applied in archaeology; in general see: Rowlands & Kristiansen 1987; Champion 1989; for Roman imperial contexts: Schörner 2005: 95–99; Roman religion: Bendlin: 1997; theoretical foundations: Kümmel 2001. 4 Stausberg 2006: 644. 5 Scheid 1998; Rüpke 2001: 137–153; Scheid 2005; 2007. The modern literature on Greek sacrifice in Classical times is still more abundant; to quote only the most fundamental works: Durand 1986; Girard 1987; Burkert 1997; Graf 2002; comprehensive bibliography: Petropoulou 2008.

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the immolatio. In the praefatio (from prae-facere) the sacrificing magistrate offers wine and incense on a portable tripod, the foculus. Here, he enacts the powerful figure he actually is, and therefore the praefatio is an indispensable part of pictorial representations. The second part of the ritual, the immolatio as the killing of the animal victim, was carried out by religious specialists such as the victimarii, the slayers of the animal, or the haruspex, the priest who investigated the liver and viscera. If a Greek from Asia Minor described this Roman-type sacrifice without noticing any differences from the way he was used to offering an animal to a god, then it can be presumed that the variations were not important to him and were not used for further reflections on ritual performances. The same works vice versa, say, if a Roman observed a Greek sacrifice at Ephesos, Pergamon, or anywhere else in Asia Minor. Based on these considerations, I choose two main sets of evidence, literary and iconographical. Because of the fact that only a few of these descriptions exist – both literary and pictorial, from East and West –, a more nuanced approach is precluded, e.g. for differentiating various social groups of spectators.6

3. The Textual Evidence: Dionysius of Halikarnassos One of the most detailed descriptions of a sacrifice at Rome was written by a Greek from Asia Minor, Dionysius of Halicarnassus.7 His report thus fits perfectly into the methodological approach chosen for this case study. Dionysius came to Rome in the early years of the emperor Augustus, according to his own statement, in 30 B.C. In the following years he wrote his “Roman Antiquities”, which was published in 7 B.C. The main topic of this work is the story of Rome from the beginnings until the First Punic war. In Book 7, he describes the vota made by the dictator Aulus Postumius after his victorious battle against the Latins and the Etruscan Tarquinii in the early days of the Roman Republic at the end of the sixth century. The ritual of the vota was composed of a procession, games, and the sacrifice of a bull, a Bouthysia:8 “(15) After the procession was ended the consuls and the priests whose function it was presently sacrificed oxen; and the manner of performing the sacrifices was the same as with us. For after washing their hands they purified the victims with clear water and sprinkled corn on their heads, after which they prayed and then gave orders to their assistants to sacrifice them. Some of these assistants, while the victim was still standing, struck it on the 6 Stausberg 2006: 634. 7 For the account of Dionysius of Halicarnassus: Thuillier 1975; Gabba 1991; Prescendi 2007: 60–70. 8 Dion. Hal. Ant. VII 72, 15–18.

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Günther Schörner temple with a club, and others received it upon the sacrificial knives as it fell. After this they flayed it and cut it up, taking off a piece from each of the innards and also from every limb as a first-offering, which they sprinkled with grits of spelt and carried in baskets to the officiating priests. These placed them on the altars, and making a fire under them, poured wine over them while they were burning. (16) It is easy to see from Homer’s poems that every one of these ceremonies was performed according to the customs established by the Greeks with reference to sacrifices. For he introduces the heroes washing their hands and using barley grits, where he said: Then washed their hands and took up barley-grains.9 And also cutting off the hair from the head of the victim and placing it on the fire, writing thus: And he, the rite beginning, cast some hairs, Plucked from the victim’s head, upon the fire.10 He also represents them as striking the foreheads of the victims with clubs and stabbing them when they had fallen, as at the sacrifice of Eumaeus: Beginning then the rite, with limb of oak – One he had left when cleaving wood – he smote The boar, which straightway yielded up his life; And next his throat they cut and singed his hide.11 (17) And also at taking the first offerings from the innards and from the limbs as well and sprinkling them with barley-meal and burning them upon the altars, as at that same sacrifice: Then made the swineherd slices of raw meat, Beginning with a cut from every limb, And wrapping them in rich fat, cast them all Upon the fire, first sprinkling barley-meal.12

9 10 11 12

Hom. Il. I 449. Hom. Od. XIV 422. Ibid. 425. Ibid. 427–429.

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(18) These rites I am acquainted with from having seen the Romans perform them at their sacrifices even in my time; and contented with this single proof, I have become convinced that the founders of Rome were not barbarians, but Greeks who had come together out of many places. It is possible, indeed, that some barbarians also may observe a few customs relating to sacrifices and festivals in the same manner as the Greeks, but that they should do everything in the same way is hard to believe.” Although Dionysius seems to give a detailed and impartial description of a sacrifice, the result of this ‘report’ appears to be clear cut: καί ὁ τῶν θυηπολιῶν τρόπος ὁ αὐτὸς ἦν τῶι παρ’ ἡμῖν (“and the manner of performing the sacrifices was the same as with us”). The performance of the sacrifice is resolved into single actions as parts of the entire ritual, from the washing of the hands and the killing by the Hyperetai, to the burning of the sacrificial goods and the sprinkling with wine. Each of these procedures is equated with Greek sacrificial customs: every one of these ceremonies was performed according to the customs established by the Greeks with reference to sacrifices. Dionysius proves this by citing the works of Homer as the supreme authority in religious affairs. The point that Dionysius describes a sacrifice of the remote past and not a current one, which could have been altered since then, is invalidated: “These rites I am acquainted with from having seen the Romans perform them at their sacrifices even in my time”.13 But the case is not as clear-cut as Dionysius writes: we have to contextualise this description.14 The aim of Dionysius’ argument is to prove that Rome was founded not by barbarian tribes, but by Greeks coming together from various cities. The main goal of this line of reasoning is that the Romans themselves are not barbarians, but Greeks, or at least descendants of Greeks. Thinking about ritual, he arrives at the conclusion that Roman and Greek ritual do not differ. Explicitly, Dionysius wants to show that the Greeks were ruled not by barbarians, but by themselves, by Greeks in a Roman disguise. But, implicitly, he makes still another point: because of the anteriority of the Homeric sacrifice as archetype of the Roman ritual, Greek religion is superior to the Roman emulation. Thus, the factual power relations between Romans and Greek provincials are not mirrored in ritual, but reversed.15 He searched for reasons for these assumptions in the field of the customs and practices of the peoples. Among these, religious rituals as the local ways of venerating gods and heroes (πατριοὶ σεβασμοὶ περὶ θεῶν καὶ δαιμόνων) are espe13 Dion. Hal. Ant. VII 18. 14 Poma 1994; Cancik 1999; Prescendi 2007: 61–65. 15 On the discourse of Greek cultural superiority vs. political dependence: Woolf 1993–1994; Gleason 2007; Rizakis 2007 (with literature).

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cially valid, because they were changed by neither Greeks nor barbarians out of fear of divine anger: no interval of time had thus far induced any barbarian nation – Dionysius lists the Egyptians, the Libyans, the Gauls, the Scythians, and the Indians – to forget or transgress anything relating to the rites of their gods, unless some of them had been subdued by a foreign power and compelled to exchange their own institutions for those of their conquerors. Dionysius is biased, as his result is a given. We must not expect that he would emphasise the discrepancies between Greek and Roman sacrifice, because rituals are fundamental for his argument. His description of the Roman sacrifice follows Homer as closely as possible, because only those elements of the sacrifice are specified which could be documented by citing either the Iliad or the Odyssey. Discrepancies between Roman historical and Greek mythical sacrifices were therefore neglected.

4. Differences in Ritual Iconography Representations of animal sacrifice are very common, both in Rome and the provinces.16 Clear differences are to be recognised in the iconography of this most prominent and important ritual in Rome, on the one hand, and Asia Minor or the Greek East, on the other.17 The most prominent distinct features are: – The clothing of the sacrificer and the way he wears it: with covered head, capite velato, at Rome, with uncovered head in Asia Minor – The victims: European cattle (Bos bos) as the largest animal slaughtered in the Latin West, the zebu (Bos indicus) as its counterpart in Asia Minor – The clothing of the attendants, especially those who kill the animal: victimarii wear a limus at Rome, attendants wear the exomis or chiton in Asia Minor – Knocking out the animal at Rome, tying up the animal with a rope in Asia Minor – The use of a small box for carrying incense at Rome, the use of plates or dishes for the same purpose in Asia Minor – Killing the animal using an axe and knife at Rome, using a knife in Asia Minor; reflected in differing iconography. The differences are related both to distinct forms of equipment or clothing and to diverse sequences of the performance of sacrifices.

16 Ryberg 1955; Ronke 1987; ThesCRA I 2004. 17 For micro-Asiatic sacrificial iconography: Schörner 2006.

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However, it remains to be asked whether these differences in sacrifice were noticed in antiquity, and if so, could this perception have been the first step towards ritual reflexivity?.

5. The Archaeological-Iconographical Evidence I: the East Views the West The basic principle, that the conscious perception of differences is the first step towards reflexivity and that this perception is best verified in depictions of sacrifices by “others”, is valid for archaeological, i.e. iconographical, evidence, too. Representations of historical events in Roman art – representations of sacrifices should be considered as such – are strongly localised. It has been stated that most images depicting affairs of the Roman Empire were comprehensible only from a strict metropolitan (“stadtrömisch”) point of view.18 Thus, it is self-evident that events such as great sacrificial processions, triumphs, or religious ceremonies like the ludi saeculares, performed in the city of Rome, could not be transferred to a provincial setting, and could not be understood by a provincial audience.19 Metropolitan subjects did not work in an Empire-wide perspective.20 In the Western provinces, a more direct and plain mode of visual communication was applied, whereas in the Eastern part of the Empire indigenous forms of visual narratives were adopted to represent Roman affairs and power.21 Thus, sacrifices at Rome were mainly depicted on monuments at Rome. There is one single exception in Asia Minor, the so-called “Parthermonument” at Ephesos, now in the Ephesos Museum in Vienna.22 This “Parthermonument” (“Parthian monument”) or “Partheraltar” (“Parthian altar”) contains slabs slightly over 2 metres long, forming a monument of considerable size. It is by far the largest state monument of the second century A.D. in Asia Minor. The architectural form of the monument is quite uncertain, for no fitting foundation was found. According to the content, the panels may be divided into five groups: battles with barbarians, local personifications, an apotheosis, an assembly of gods, and the frieze with sacrifice and sacrificial parade to mark the adoption of the royal princes.

18 19 20 21

Boschung 2003. Fundamental for Imperial “Bildersprache”: Zanker 1987. For a global perspective of Roman culture: Hingley 2005. The best examples are the two great early imperial monuments at Aphrodisias: the ZoilosFrieze (Smith 1993) and the Porticus (Smith 1987). 22 Ryberg 1955: 134; Eichler 1971; Oberleitner 1978: 66–94; Liverani 1995: 234–239; 1996– 1997; Landskron 2006.

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Image 1: Parthian monument: Adoption slab (Vienna, Ephesos Museum)

Photo: Courtesy of the Ephesos Museum, Vienna

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Image 2: Parthian monument: Sacrifice slab (Vienna, Ephesos Museum)

Photo: Courtesy of the Ephesos Museum, Vienna

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The slab picturing the emperor and his successors is well preserved (Image 1), so the main actors can be identified as the emperor in office, Hadrian, on the right, and, on his left, his successor, Antoninus Pius.23 Both are wearing typical Roman shoes, calcei, and the toga over their heads, capite velato. The emperors held a sacrificial bowl in their hands, now lost. This and the velatio capitis indicate that both men are offering a libation, to perform a sacrifice. Between Hadrian and Antoninus Pius, Lucius Verus is depicted, and, on the left, the young Marcus Aurelius as grandson of Hadrian. The slab with the killing of an ox (Image 2) has to be connected with the emperor relief.24 This panel is in excellent condition too, and shows five attendants and the animal victim. On the left, a long-haired male youth is walking to the left. He carries a jug in his left hand. In the centre, another youth plays the double-flute, the diaulos; on the right, an adult bearded man sounds the tuba, a kind of trumpet. In the front, two attendants, clad in the Greek exomis, not in the Roman limus, are about to slaughter the animal victim, not the usual ox, but a humped zebu ox, common in Asia Minor. The reconstruction of this act as the preparation of the victim, however, must be wrong, as may be detected by a close examination of the slab in Vienna:25 the attendant on the right has put a rope on the ox. Guiding the victim tied up with a rope is a typical trait of sacrificial depictions in Asia Minor, as on a frieze found at Hierapolis in Phrygia.26 The attendant on the right is damaged, but we are able to reconstruct his arm movement because of a tiny remnant on his chest. He angled his arm and held a small object, a knife, as many corresponding depictions in Asia Minor make obvious, for instance on a base or altar of the first century B.C. at Termessos.27 It should, then, be taken for granted that this panel represents the killing of the ox, not any preparatory stage of the sacrifice as hitherto presumed. The frieze depicts the solemn sacrifice to mark the multiple adoption of 25 February 138 A.D. at Rome or nearby.28 This fact shows that we are really dealing with the portrayal of a sacrificial ritual, which happened in the Latin West, but was pictured in the Greek East. As we have seen, we must distinguish the slab with the emperors from the slab with the killing of the animal. The way the animal is killed, the clothing of the attendants, and the humped zebu – all typical features of sacrifices in Asia Minor – were transferred to Rome (where they are misplaced) without any alterations. The emperors, however, offer their libation vested with togas and with their heads covered, capite velato, that is, in the proper Roman way. It should 23 24 25 26 27 28

Liverani 1996–1997. Oberleitner 1999. Ibid.: 122–124 (with wrong reconstruction). D’Andria & Ritti 1985: 151–155, pl. 40–41. Petersen 1892: 48–56. Fundamental: Liverani 1996–1997: 155–161.

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be clear that the appearance of the emperor has been designed according to the modalities used in the capital, and maybe as observed during sacrifices by Roman magistrates in the provinces. The greater part of the setting, however, is represented as an indigenous sacrifice, without reflecting that, elsewhere, sacrifices may be performed following differing religious prescriptions. No detail on the oxslaying panel suggests any taking into consideration of differing ritual performances. Peoples’ own sacrificial procedure was taken for granted, universally. The result of the iconography-based approach seems to be negative at first sight, but it does not mean that there was no interest in reflexivity in Greek discourses on sacrifice. The meanings of sacrifice were profoundly discussed in a literal-philosophical sphere by both cultic insiders, like Plutarch, and satirical critics, like Lucian.29 Even more extreme positions were advanced to the point of radically refusing animal sacrifice.30 In most criticisms on rituals an intracultural, not intercultural, position was chosen. The “Parthermonument”, as one of the most prominent monuments of imperial art in Asia Minor, however, is an explicit example of how political structures could be expressed by ritual iconography: looking at the emperors sacrificing, the local pictorial convention was neglected and the depiction of the metropolitan way of performing the ritual was chosen. This adoption of – at least for most Greeks – foreign iconography could be interpreted only in one way, that the emperor, as the ruler, acts not in the Greek or universal way, but in a specifically Roman way. Reflexivity of ritual as a precondition for the concrete sacrificial depiction on the Ephesian monument results in a confirmation of the distribution of power in the Imperium Romanum.

6. The Archaeological-Iconographical Evidence II: the West Views the East Looking for sacrifices performed in the Greek East, but depicted on monuments created at Rome, is an equally difficult task. The ethnological interest of the Romans in the religious rituals of the peoples of their Empire seems to have been slight, by all accounts; representations of foreign, non-Roman sacrifices in a nonmythological context have not survived, but one could assess them by way of two other kinds of ritual depictions: sacrifices by the Roman emperor abroad and sacrifices performed at Rome, but characterised by the Romans as Greek, the so-called ritus Graecus.

29 For discussion of sacrifice in the Greek East during Roman rule: Hotz 2006: 119–150. 30 Ibid.: 133–144.

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Image 3: Medallion of Gordianus III (238–244): Sacrifice in front of temple Source: Turcan 1988

A bronze medallion, minted during the reign of the emperor Gordianus III at Rome (Image 3), shows the emperor making an offering in front of a domed building with a tetrastyle porch.31 In the pediment NEIKH OΠΛLOΦOROΣ (the weapon-bearing victory) is inscribed. Because of the use of Greek, the sacrifice has to be localised in the Eastern part of the Empire.32 In front of this building, the ritual takes place: the emperor with veiled head, capite velato, makes an offering on a small altar, holding in his right hand a patera, the sacrificial bowl, in his left a scroll. He is accompanied by two persons with long batons, presumably two Roman officials called lictores. The killing of the animal happens on the left side of the medallion. The ox with no hump is struck down by an attendant using an axe. The performance and the implements used do not vary in any detail from sacrificial representations depicting rituals at Rome. Although the die-cutter surely knew that the location of the sacrifice was not the capital of the Empire and had to be pinpointed in the Greek East, at least because of the inscription, he disregarded this. As the medallion makes evident, sacrifices taking place outside Rome became a topic, or were of interest at Rome, only if the emperor himself performed the ri31 Banti 1987: 315–317, nos. 114–117; Turcan 1988: 32f., no. 72 pl. 38. 32 Most commentators prefer Antioch on the Orontes, but other locations could be possible.

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tual.33 In this case, the ritual is pictured with all the details of a sacrificial performance, so the emperor abroad is a piece of Rome abroad.34 Reflections on different regulations and features of the ritual or the nature of sacrifice had no influence on how sacrifices were imagined. As Richard Gordon pointed out a few years ago, the picture of the sacrificing emperor was used as a symbol of pietas and therefore of the stability of the Imperium.35 In another way, the representations of sacrifice communicate the standardisation of ritual. This should be seen against the background of the idea of humanitas and the responsibility of the Roman Empire – of course a self-imposed responsibility – to disperse culture, in Latin terms humanitas, all over the world.36 If the medallion of Gordianus depicts a sacrifice performed in the Greek East in a typical Roman design and with Roman details, the image only follows the ideologically prescribed contents.

7. The Roman Way to Classify Rituals A different situation is formed by the so-called ritus Graecus, Greek rituals performed at Rome by Romans.37 In these, specific gods, such as Saturn or Apollo, or specific cults, such as that of Hercules at the ara maxima, or specific complex rituals, such as the ludi saeculares, were followed according to the ritus Graecus. As is shown on a coin minted in honour of Domitian celebrating the ludi saeculares, the sacrifice is, in fact, adapted to Greek ritual specifications in such a way that the sacrificing emperor is depicted capite aperto, with uncovered head.38 The attitude of the Romans to foreign cults can best be detected by this ritus Graecus: it shows that the Romans did not distinguish between a true or false religion. In the religious field, the difference did not lie in the gods that were venerated and honoured by a wide range of rituals, but in the appropriate way of performing these rituals. Realising that the sacrifice was a means to express the relationship between men and gods, two extreme deviations must be avoided, that of giving the gods a wrong position by neglecting them, and that of giving men a wrong position by humiliating them, i.e. through unbelief and superstition. Therefore, it is not that surprising that the differences between the ritual systems, called religions, of the Empire and beyond, made up only of small details, choices, and postures, did not play a major role in discerning true or false veneration of the gods. 33 34 35 36

Sacrifices made during journeys of the emperor: Halfmann 1986: 115f. Beard & North & Price 1998: 320–339; Roman religion outside Rome: Ando 2007. Gordon 1990. For the concept of humanitas in a narrow sense: Bauman 2000: esp. 20–28; for Roman cultural imperialism: Scott & Webster 2003; Hingley 2005. 37 Scheid 1995. 38 Hannestad 1986: 141, fig. 91.

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As John Scheid wrote, this so-called ritus Graecus was part of Roman culture. The ritus Graecus was a specific way of celebrating ceremonies. The designation as ritus Graecus suggests that the ritus refers to a foreign people. Apart from the sacra Graeca, and, of course, the sacra Romana, there existed the sacra peregrina. These were performed eorum more, a quibus sunt accepta, following the rules of the country from which they were brought to Rome. Sacra Graeca and sacra peregrina had in common the fact that they were supposed to be, in various ways, different from sacra Romana. But, upon closer perusal, this classification at Rome as sacra Romana, sacra Graeca, and sacra peregrina surely does not stimulate reflexivity on rituals; on the contrary, it is very pragmatic and anti-theoretical. The Roman priests were enabled to see any ritual as part of the Roman religious system and to incorporate any religious practice within the Empire. Thus Roman sacrificial law was to foster the Roman tradition of Rome as an open city, a self-image since the days of Romulus.39 The sacra Graeco ritu are a product of a process called Hellenisation, but the concept is more a label than a designation of origin.40. One of the most important features of the ritus Graecus was the sacrifice capite aperto, with the head uncovered. In view of this feature, the cult of Saturnus was seen as Greek, because Saturnus was venerated by priests with their heads unveiled, although the god was of Latin origin. Thus, there was no reflection on the nature of the god or the cult, but a classification according to pragmatic details. The categorisation of rituals as sacra Romana, sacra Graeca, and sacra peregrina is an open, but imperialist way to see religious cults, because it is not designed for reflexivity by confronting the Romans’ own rituals with foreign ones at eye level.41

8. Conclusion In a Greek context, the positioning of Greek religion (and Greek culture in general) in an Empire-wide framework is open to question. Reflexivity of ritual has to be considered as a consequence of being subjected to Roman rule. The prevalent strategy of ritual reflexivity is to foster Greek antiqueness. Much more strongly than in the case of its Roman counterparts, the Homeric tradition of ancient religion per se could be emphasised; by doing this, the common origins of Greek and Roman rituals are stressed and point to the anteriority of the Greek sacrifice. This treatment of sacrificial ritual is set in the much wider discourse of Greek cultural supremacy. In fostering the discrepancies between Greek and Roman ways of performing sacri39 Scheid 1995: 29; for the whole complex also Beard & North & Price 1998: 61–65. 40 Scheid 1995: 22–26. 41 Imperialism and Roman religion in a wider context: Beard & North & Price 1998: 156–171.

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fices, as done by depicting the Roman emperors capite velato, the actual power structures are demonstrated, because ritual details and pictorial solutions of the centre were considered. The imbalance in power relations finds its expression in the lack of interest in depicting foreign rituals. Only the emperor offering abroad is worth visualising, but as the very centre of Roman power, he acts typically Roman. The best way to comprehend the Roman attitude towards foreign cults is in the ritus Graecus. The Roman ritual classification, as an open system, allows the incorporation of religions from all over the Empire, so it is the perfect articulation of an imperialist attitude towards religion.42

42 Post-colonial approaches to Roman imperialism: Webster & Cooper 1996; Mattingly 1997; Schörner 2005b; Revell 2008.

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References Ancient Source Dionysius of Halicarnassus 1987 [1914]. The Roman Antiquities of Dionysius of Halicarnassus. In 7 Volumes. Translated by Earnest Cary. Cambridge et al.: Harvard University Press (The Loeb Classical Library).

Modern Literature Ando, Clifford 2007. “Exporting Roman Religion”. In: Jörg Rüpke (ed.). A Companion to Roman Religion. Malden & Oxford: Blackwell: 429–445. Banti, Alberto 1987. I grandi bronzi imperiali. Selezione di sesterzi e medaglioni classificati secondo il sistema Cohen. 3 vols. Florence: Banti. Bauman, Richard A. 2000. Human Rights in Ancient Rome. London & New York: Routledge. Beard, Mary & John North & Simon Price (eds.) 1998. Religions of Rome 1: A History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bendlin, Andreas 1997. “Peripheral Centres – Central Peripheries: Religious Communication in the Roman Empire”. In: Hubert Cancik & Jörg Rüpke (eds.). Römische Reichsreligion und Provinzialreligion. Tübingen: Mohr Siebert: 35–68. Boschung, Dieter 2003. “Die stadtrömischen Monumente des Augustus und ihre Rezeption im Reich”. In: Peter Noelke (ed.). Romanisation und Resistenz in Plastik, Architektur und Inschriften der Provinzen des Imperium Romanum. Neue Funde und Forschungen. Akten des 7. Internationalen Kolloquiums über Probleme des provinzialrömischen Kunstschaffens. Cologne, 2–6 May 2001. Mainz: Zabern: 1– 12. Burkert, Walter 19972. Homo necans: Interpretationen altgriechischer Opferriten und Mythen. Berlin: De Gruyter (Religionsgeschichtliche Versuche und Vorarbeiten 32). Cancik, Hubert 1999. “The Reception of Greek Cults in Rome”. Archiv für Religionsgeschichte 1: 161–173. Champion, Tim (ed.) 1989. Centre and Periphery. Comparative Studies in Archaeology. London: Unwin Hyman. D’Andria, Francesco & Tullia Ritti 1985. Hierapolis II: le sculture del teatro. I rilievi con i cicli di Apollo e Artemide. Rome: Giorgio Bretschneider. Durand, Jean-Louis 1986. Sacrifice et labour en grèce ancienne. Essai d’anthropologie religieuse. Paris & Rome: La Découverte (Images à l’appui 1). Eichler, Fritz 1971. “Zum Partherdenkmal von Ephesos”. Jahreshefte des Österreichischen Archäologischen Instituts 2/49: 102–136. Gabba, Emilio 1991. Dionysius and “The History of Archaic Rome”. Berkeley & Los Angeles & Oxford: University of California Press.

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Ganschow, Thomas 1986. “Überlegungen zum Partherdenkmal von Ephesos”. Archäologischer Anzeiger 1986: 209–221. Girard, René 1987. Das Heilige und die Gewalt. Zürich: Benzinger. Gleason, Maud W. 2007. “Greek Cities under Roman Rule”. In: David S. Potter (ed.). A Companion to the Roman Empire. Malden & Oxford: Blackwell: 228–249. Gordon, Richard 1990. “The Veil of Power: Emperors, Sacrificers and Benefactors”. In: Mary Beard & John North (eds.). Pagan Priests: Religion and Power in the Ancient World. London: Duckworth: 199–231. Graf, Fritz 2002. “What Is New about Greek Sacrifice?”. In: Hans Horstmanshoff et al. (eds.). Kykeon: Studies in Honour of H.S. Versnel. Leiden et al.: Brill: 113–126 (Religions in the Graeco-Roman World 142). Halfmann, Harald 1986. Itinera principum: Geschichte und Typologie der Kaiserreisen im Römischen Reich. Stuttgart: Steiner. Hannestad, Niels 1986. Roman Art and Imperial Policy. Aarhus: Aarhus University Press. (Jutland Archaeological Society publications 19) Hingley, Richard 2005. Globalizing Roman Culture. Unity, Diversity and Empire. London & New York: Routledge. Hotz, Stephan 2006. Rituale im öffentlichen Diskurs griechischer Poleis der Kaiserzeit. Heidelberg: Internet-Publication (http://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/volltextserver/ volltexte/2006/6851/pdf/DissHotzEndeI.pdf). Højbjerg, Christian Kordt 2002. “Religious Reflexivity. Essays on Attitudes to Religious Ideas and Practice”. Social Anthropology: The Journal of the European Society of Social Anthropologists 10: 1–10. Kümmel, Christoph 2001. Frühe Weltsysteme: Zentrum und Peripherie-Modelle in der Archäologie. Rahden: Leidorf. Landskron, Alice 2006. “Das ‘Partherdenkmal’ von Ephesos. Ein Monument für die Antoninen”. Jahreshefte des Österreichischen Archäologischen Instituts 75: 143– 184. Latte, Kurt 19672. Römische Religionsgeschichte. Munich: Beck. Liverani, Paolo 1995. “‘Nationes’ e ‘civitates’ nella propaganda imperiale”. Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts, Römische Abteilung 102: 219–249. — 1996–1997. “Il monumento antonino di Efeso”. Rivista dell’Istituto Nazionale di Archeologia e Storia dell’Arte 19/20: 155–161. Mattingly, David (ed.) 1997. Dialogues in Roman Imperialism. Power, Discourse and Discrepant Experience in the Roman Empire. Portsmouth: Journal of Roman Archaeology (Journal of Roman Archaeology: Supplementary Series 23). Oberleitner, Wolfgang 1978. Funde aus Ephesos und Samothrake: Katalog der Antikensammlung II. Vienna: Ueberreuter. — 1999. “Zum Partherdenkmal von Ephesos: Rekonstruktion des Stieropfers”. In: Peter Scherrer & Hans Taeuber & Hilke Thuer (eds.). Steine und Wege. Festschrift für Dieter Knibbe zum 65. Geburtstag. Vienna: Österreichisches Archäologisches Institut: 113–124.

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Petersen, Eugen 1892. “Pisidien”. In: Karl Lanckoroński (ed.). Städte Pamphyliens und Pisidiens. Vol. 2. Vienna: Temspky. Petropoulou, Maria-Zoe 2008. Animal Sacrifice in Ancient Greek Religion, Judaism, and Christianity, 100 B.C.–A.D. 200. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Poma, Gabriella 1994. “Dionigi e la religione romana arcaica”. In: Yann Le Bohec (ed.). L’Afrique, la Gaule, la religion à l’époque romaine. Mélanges á la memoire de Marcel Le Glay. Brussels: Latomus: 542–550. Prescendi, Francesca 2007. Décrire et comprendre le sacrifice: Les réflexions des Romains sur leur propre religion à partir de la littérature antiquaire. Stuttgart: Steiner. Revell, Louise 2008. Roman Imperialism and Local Identities. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rizakis, Anthony 2007. “Urban Elites in the Roman East: Enhancing Regional Positions and Social Superiority”. In: Jörg Rüpke (ed.). A Companion to Roman Religion, Malden & Oxford: Blackwell: 317–330. Ronke, Jutta 1987. Magistratische Repräsentation im römischen Relief: Studien zu standes- und statusbezeichnenden Szenen. Oxford: British Archaeological Reports. Rowlands, Michael & Kristian Kristiansen (eds.) 1987. Centre and Periphery in the Ancient World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rüpke, Jörg 2001. Die Religion der Römer. Munich: Beck. Ryberg, Inez Scott 1955. Rites of the State Religion in Roman Art. Rome: American Academy (Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome 22). Scheid, John 1995. “Graeco ritu: a Typically Roman Way of Honouring the Gods”. Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 97: 15–31. — 1998. “L’animal mis à mort. Une interpretation romaine du sacrifice”. Études rurales 147/148: 15–26. — 2005. Quand faire c’est croire: les rites sacrificiels des Romains. Paris: Aubier. — 2007. “Sacrifices for Gods and Ancestors”. In: Jörg Rüpke (ed.). A Companion to Roman Religion. Malden & Oxford: Blackwell: 263–270. Schörner, Günther 2005a. “Das Zentrum – Peripherie – Modell in der Romanisierungsforschung”. In: Günther Schörner (ed.). Romanisierung – Romanisation: Theoretische Modelle und praktische Fallbeispiele. Oxford: Archaeopress: 95–99. — 2005b. “Imperialismus, Kolonialismus und Postkolonialismus in der Romanisierungsforschung”. In: Günther Schörner (ed.). Romanisierung – Romanisation: Theoretische Modelle und praktische Fallbeispiele. Oxford: Archaeopress: 25–34. — 2006 “Sacrifices and Their Representation in Roman Asia Minor: Reconsidering the Core-Periphery Concept”. In: Carol Mattusch & Allison Donohue & Amy Brauer (eds.). Common ground. Archaeology, art, science, and humanities. Proceedings of the 16th International Congress of Classical Archaeology. Boston, 23–26 August 2003. Oxford: Oxbow: 71–74. Scott, Sarah & Jane Webster (eds.) 2003. Roman Imperialism and Provincial Art. London & New York: Routledge.

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Simon, Udo 2008. “Reflexivity and Discourse on Ritual”. In: Ritual Dynamics and the Science of Ritual. International Congress at the University of Heidelberg, 29 September – 2 October 2008. http://www.rituals-2008.com/p_2.php. Smith, Robert R.R. 1987. “The Imperial Reliefs from the Sebasteion at Aphrodisias”. Journal of Roman Studies 77: 88–138. — 1993. The Monument of C. Iulius Zoilos. Mainz: Zabern. Stausberg, Michael 2006. “Reflexivity”. In: Jens Kreinath & Jan Snoek & Michael Stausberg (eds.). Theorizing Rituals: Issues, Topics, Approaches, Concepts. Vol. 1. Leiden et al.: Brill: 627–646 (Numen Book Series: Studies in the History of Religions 114/1). ThesCRA I 2004 = Thesaurus Cultus et Rituum Antiquorum 2004. Vol. 1: Processions, Sacrifices, Libations, Fumigations, Dedications. Los Angeles: Getty Museum Publications. Thuillier, Jean-Paul 1975. “Denys d’Halicarnasse et les jeux romaines (Antiquités romaines VII 72–73)”. Mélanges d’Ecole française de Rome: Antiquité 87: 563– 581. Turcan, Robert 1988. Religion romaine. Vol. 2: Les cultes. Leiden: Brill (Iconography of Religions 17/1). Webster, Jane & Nicholas Cooper (eds.) 1996. Roman Imperialism: Post-Colonial Perspectives. Leicester: University of Leicester Press. Wissowa, Georg 19122. Religion und Kultus der Römer. Munich: Beck. Woolf, Greg 1993–1994. “Becoming Roman, Staying Greek: Culture, Identity and the Civilizing Process in the Roman East”. Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society 40: 116–143. Zanker, Paul 1987. Augustus und die Macht der Bilder. Munich: Beck.

Dominik Fugger

What About the Bean King? Reflections on a Specific Ritual between 1500 and 1900 and Their Implications for the Methodology of Ritual-Analysis What theoretical insights into the (postulated) mode of human action which we call “ritual” can we glean from studying historical evidence concerned with specific ritual actions? The following text is intended as a contribution to this question, but is limited in various ways. The first limitation is that my investigations will concentrate on a single ritual, the kingdom of the so-called Bean King. The second is a temporal limitation, as I will only take into account the period between 1500 and 1900. Finally, I am concerned only with material from Central and Western Europe. The point of emphasising the limitations of my empirical base is not simply a nod to accuracy, but also addresses a basic problem of ritual theory: one often finds very general assumptions and deductions being made on the basis of very little evidence. This is true for many aspects of rituals, for example the significance of rules for ritual action, for its performance, and also for the aspect I will be addressing in the following, namely its meaning. The question concerning the meaning of rituals is one of the most widely discussed topics of scholarly discourse.1 Of course the question cannot be whether rituals themselves have meaning − nothing has an inherent meaning. Meaning is always assigned, and this basic principle also applies to rituals. The real questions have to be a) whether the performers of rituals assign meaning to them, and b) whether this is a purely individual act driven by the desire to understand the world, or whether this assignment of meaning is supra-individual or conventional. The latter would mean that the members of the community that practises a given ritual share this understanding of its meaning and communicate it among each other. The second alternative can be considered as proven, if the performers assume a pre-existent meaning for a ritual and do not feel that this meaning is purely individual and subject to their decision. This assumption becomes crucial if it concerns not only the concrete meaning of a specific ritual – in which case one could easily dismiss it as being simply affirmative, but is rather expressed in the form of a gen1 An overview of this discourse is provided by Kreinath 2005: 429–470.

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eral and undefined assumption of meaning. This means that the contemporaries have a system of categories which allows them to perceive a certain action as communicative, even though they do not know its concrete meaning. Systematically speaking, this situation is just like someone who overhears a conversation in a language unknown to him, but still realises that there is communication going on. If one managed to prove the existence of such awareness in the case of ritual communication, this would mean that there is an analogous perception for ritual action, or at least for certain forms of it. The next question would be how the underlying contemporary category is defined, how it is related to modern definitions of “ritual”, and whether there are other defining aspects besides the communicative one. Let us begin with some relevant historical material that will allow an analysis of this matter. In the year 1606, Baron Joachim von Wedel witnessed one of these “kingdoms of the Bean King” at the court of his master, Bogislaus XIII, Duke of Pomerania. Wedel himself did not know the ritual and recorded an account of it in his “Hausbuch”, detailing the costumes, processions, etc. However, all this is not to my purpose here. I am interested in the short note that introduces his account, where he explicitly states that he knew neither the origin, the purpose, nor the meaning of the “Kingdom”.2 Wedel here expresses three expectations: the ritual “Kingdom” has a definable origin (and is not “eternal” or immemorial), a purpose which is or can be fulfilled by the action, and finally a “meaning”. We should note at this point that the category to which Wedel assigns the “kingdom” does not only, or even primarily, contain the subcategory of meaning. As a consequence, we should not reduce ritual action to this aspect. Nevertheless, I will focus on the problems that result from the relationship between ritual action and its meaning. If rituals have meaning, we are confronted with the question of identity and whether contemporaries could identify the communicative signs despite the large amount of variation in its concrete realisation evident in our empirical material. One could attempt to reduce the ritual in question here to its apparent elements and describe it as the symbolic establishment of a temporary Kingdom ruled by a randomly appointed or elected king, which usually took place around the sixth of January. It appears in credible sources from the fourteenth century onwards, and seems to have quickly become a widespread institution in Central and Western Europe. But such an abstraction cannot resolve the question of coherence of the empirical evidence.3 How can we show that a phenomenon that keeps changing in the course of some 500 years, and at any given time displays a large number of variations, can be treated as the same ritual at all? Who decides that the merry-making at 2 Von Bohlen Bohlendorf 1882: 511, entry of the year 1606: “weiß nicht, woher es sein ankunft oder was vor großen gewinn und bedeutung es haben solle.” 3 The following examples are taken from Fugger 2007: 21–70. For the problem, see also Fugger 2010 (forthcoming).

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a late medieval Flemish pub, some schoolboys from Trier resorting to beggary, the liturgical action in a French convent, a baroque feast at the court of Vienna, and finally the memorial celebrations of the Society of the Friends of Kant in the twentieth century, can really be treated as expressions of the same ritual sign – after all, the only thing these events have in common is the appearance of a “king”. With what justification do we treat all the carnival-princes, Piper-kings, winners of archery tournaments, Whitsun- and wine-queens, or the medieval phenomenon of the boy bishop as different rituals, although they are all far more similar to particular forms of the Bean King ritual than the examples listed in the previous sentence? And finally, how do we justify reducing the wide variety of single ritual elements connected with the Bean King to some kind of “core”, which also includes the date on which it takes place, namely on the religious festival of Epiphany? In my view it is impossible to establish such a constitutive core, even if we investigate the phenomena in question very closely. If our interest in rituals relates to their function as meaning-bearing social entities, then this question of identity cannot focus on their outer forms, but is essentially a question of semantics. Let us imagine that rituals are linguistic signs, words, for example. In that case, their classification as lexemes would be based on whether their range of meaning can be clearly defined or not. If that is the case, the word receives a single entry in the dictionary, even if there are many other realisations of the sign in dialect or certain situations. On the other hand, apparently identical linguistic signs (or words) can have several entries if their meanings cannot be described as a clearly limited complex, but rather disintegrate into multiple fields of meaning. This leads to the following conclusion: if rituals carry meaning, then this meaning defines the ritual. In this case “define” should be understood in the original sense: the meaning establishes a borderline. But “meaning” is an inner reality inside the heads of the participants in the communication, and we need to realise that it is completely independent of the sign’s morphology, which is by definition external. Let me illustrate this complex matter by means of an example. Someone who does not know a system of signs, say an unknown language, will hardly be able to understand it by analysing the external form of its words, i.e. their graphic or phonetic realisation. He or she has to rely on translation, meaning that someone with knowledge of the signs and their meanings is capable of transposing them into another system of signs, his or her native language, for instance. The idea of translation suggests the following formulation: in the case of rituals, reflection is simply the transfer of ritually encoded meaning into linguistically encoded meaning, which we can still access even at a considerable temporal and spatial distance from the actual ritual. Of course, this makes such evidence containing contemporary reflection on meaning crucial for the identification and analysis of rituals, as it supplies information that cannot be gleaned from an analysis of the external realisation of a ri-

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tual. I emphasise this because the study of rituals habitually tends to deduce meaning from phenomenology. It is quite obvious that this kind of procedure is bound to lead to misunderstandings, as the example above has shown. We have no reason to assume that ritual communication differs from other sign-systems in this respect, as it cannot even be clearly differentiated from other forms of communication. The “Kingdom” of the Bean King provides a useful example for this matter. The reason for this is not some specific feature of the ritual, but rather the sheer range of source material for it, and especially the number of sources that say something about meanings. Since only individuals who understand the meaning can translate, my selection of material is limited to those who were personally familiar with the ritual. This is, of course, a rather significant limitation, as many accounts of rituals were clearly composed because the writer was not familiar with them, yet none the less confronted with an incomprehensible, but evidently meaningful, event. In such situations, this assumption of meaning can lead to a certain amount of speculation about the meaning of the puzzling ritual. Such purely speculative interpretations by outsiders are not uninteresting, but are of no help for our issue of ritual semantics. Another limitation is of a more physical nature. The semantics of signs can vary in different regions, which basically means that any statements about them can only apply to the area they were made in, and cannot simply be transferred. The area in question here is central and western continental Europe. The reflective sources go back as far as the fifteenth century, and provide us with a continuous flow of information; they come from many backgrounds and in many forms, including the writing of diary-entries and account-books, sermons and tracts, occasional poetry 4 and meditation, and – changing the medium – even pictorial representations. Another thing to bear in mind is that, as with all meaning-bearing signs, the meaning of rituals can change over time. The content and incidence of such changes are unpredictable, they can affect the meaning of the ritual as a whole, or be limited to parts of it; the latter leads to differentiation and fragmentation of meaning.

4 For the iconographic tradition cf. Fugger 2007: 159–179 and catalogue 215–228.

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Image 1: On this copper engraving, the ritual act is about to start. A cake is presented on the table, and a housemaid is preparing a knife to cut it with. The cake contains a bean, and whoever finds it in his slice will be the “bean king”. On the left side of the picture, a young woman can be seen explaining the meaning of the ritual to a small child by means of a print showing the adoration of the Magi.

Copper engraving by Jacques-Claude Danzel, after the painting “Le Gateau des Rois” by Gillis van Tilborgh (1625–1678), H II 56,fol.66, Albertina/Wien

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In the case of our “Kingdom”, we can divide the responses into rough “eras of meaning”. The first “era” ranges from the earliest late medieval sources to the eighteenth century, and seems to have been a phase of stable and largely undifferentiated meaning. Since I have illustrated the source material in detail elsewhere,5 I will only summarise the relevant points here. For the first phase these are: 1. In the minds of the contemporaries, the ritual was always the same, regardless of their social standing. The King of France and the patients in the sick houses of Baden would associate the same meaning with the ritual, in spite of the massive phenomenological differences in its realisation. Insofar as secondary meanings developed due to the local social situation (we have in fact little evidence for this happening), they are always subordinate to the ritual’s semantic core. Contemporaries express this by assigning identical meaning to socially differentiated realisations, but also by explicitly defining the social span of the ritual sign “Kingdom at Epiphany”. 2. The ritual’s meaning lies in commemorating the festival of Epiphany. This principle is unaffected by the fact that contemporaries were actually rather flexible as far as the ritual’s date was concerned. The ritual’s reference to the religious festival is maintained regardless of its actual date. 3. Given this basic purpose of commemorating Epiphany, the focus may differ depending on place, time, and social environment. The most common variant is to understand the King as a figuration of Jesus Christ, whose majestic entry into the world is celebrated by the liturgy of the festival. The Kingdom is an image for the eschatological kingdom at the end of the world. 4. There is no sharp distinction in the minds of the contemporaries between ritual action (which includes ritual declamation) and reflective discussion of it. Their intention is rather to find ways of reassuring themselves of the ritual’s meaning, by integrating semantic elements that directly or indirectly relate to the ritual itself in its function as a meaning-bearing action. The simplest case is a connected set of thoughts integrated into the description of the ritual procedures. But many texts were more subtle and take effect by repetition, through being customarily associated with the rest of the ritual action. A typical example of this case are songs. The level of reference is finally confirmed by a specific form of iconography, for example, the shape and colour of the festive crowns. In order to determine the differences between an empirical analysis of meaning on the basis of contemporary reflection and an interpretation based on phenomenology, we first need to establish what contemporaries did not think about while 5 Fugger 2007: 71–106.

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performing the ritual. At least until 1680, the monarchy as a pre-modern state form was not one of the ritual’s contemporary references, even though many scholars have argued on the basis of the phenomenology that it was. They usually describe the “Kingdom” as a parody of the monarchy, and – generally speaking – claim that the ritual’s meaning is to interpret and invert the current social order.6 But a parody requires a point of reference, given that it is only an altered copy which has to refer back to an original, and is only effective because of the difference between the two. As a consequence, we should only speak of parody if the copy reliably evokes the original in the minds of the majority of participants in this act of communication. The fact that contemporaries are basically aware of their political situation, that they know that there are real kings in power, is irrelevant in this context. We could only treat this ritual as a parody if contemporaries were reminded of the monarchy during the performance of the ritual, and had established a mental connection between the two. But this is precisely what they did not do. The medieval or early modern monarchy is a reality external to the meaning of the ritual “Kingdom at Epiphany”, it is usually not mentioned or implied in contemporary reflection on the ritual action. The one central point of reference for the ritual semantics is the theological view of the kingdom of Christ. Sources of contemporary reflection thus prove our modern interpretation of the ritual as an inversion of the social order to be wrong. Deducing the meaning of ritual signs from their outward appearance is doomed to fail. Allow me to take a leap in time at this point, and move to the nineteenth century to investigate how reflections about the ritual have changed. Let us quickly assure ourselves of the unchanged phenomenology: externally, the ritual practice appears unchanged. In towns and at court, some specific forms have vanished, but in general there is nothing new. What has significantly changed is its degree of propagation. Instead of the large, homogenous areas in which this ritual was practised in the early modern period, we now find a high number of geographically and socially isolated enclaves in the German-speaking area, where the ritual was still practised. This pattern of “islands” was formed by local adherence to a tradition that was slowly dying out in neighbouring areas, but also by new participants. Sources show that these changes led to the breakdown of a consistent idea of the ritual “Kingdom”, which was then replaced by a whole variety of understandings, which were often only valid inside the small group of practitioners itself. An example for this phenomenon is the Bean King festival of the “Society of the Friends of Kant”. This was a philosophical society that developed out of the circle of the philosopher’s immediate friends, and understood itself to be the continuation of this circle, for, after Kant’s death in 1804, his remaining comrades decided to meet every year and hold a commemorative meal in his honour. In the following years, gaps in their 6 Cf. the literature given in Fugger 2010 (forthcoming): n. 4.

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number were filled by appointment. At one of these gatherings, the participants decided to introduce the procedure of the “Bean-feast” at their commemorative meetings, which is the name often given to the Bean King ritual in the nineteenth century. A silver bean in a cake was used to pick a “king” every year, who had to perform various duties during the celebration and run the society with the aid of some “officials”. The ritual maintains the same phenomenological appearance, but its meaning has changed completely. Its purpose is now to “keep the memory of Kant alive in this circle of friends and to cherish it”, as the Bean King of the year 1867 said in his reflective dinner-speech.7 The only change concerns the date: even today, this bean-feast still takes place on Kant’s birthday, the 22 April. The complete abstractness of the communicative sign is interesting if we recall what I said above. Neither the figure of the King nor any other external feature is in any way associated with the meaning the participants give the ritual; the participants do not even attempt to create such ties between form and meaning. There is no traditional reason for introducing the ritual to fulfil the purpose of commemorating Kant: it is only introduced after Kant’s death, and we have no evidence that Kant ever participated in such a ritual himself. The connection between sign and meaning is thus as arbitrary and unpredictable as always. In this case it is also highly group-specific. At the same time as this ritual was being reinvented in Königsberg, Duke Carl of Mecklenburg had the following to say about the annual bean-feast at the Berlin court:8 “The celebration of Epiphany is widespread and generally common. At our court, it only took place in the family circle and was excellently celebrated by the royal youths. At first there were only adolescent plays, but later [...] also grown-up people were drawn into these plays, which nevertheless always remained youthful comedies in character and were always treated as merry antics in a burlesque style.” As the ritual no longer has a fixed meaning, the festival is given a new theme every year, ranging from “King of all genuine and allied Germanic beans” in 1816, “Saturn” and “Grand Maître of the Cabinet of Antiquities” in 1819, to “Merlin the Sorcerer” in 1820, “Moonlight” in 1822, etc.9 Thus, the traditional ritual was transformed into one-off dramatic performances, which were explicitly not intended for repetition. At the same time, the ritual, which was still commonly practised in his home town, reminded Karl Franz Meyer the Younger, city archivist in Aachen, of the fact that Pope Leo III consecrated the cathedral in Aachen on Epiphany of the year 805 “in honour of the King of Kings and his most worthy mother, the Virgin Mary, the

7 Published as: Hensche 1867: 246. 8 Von Mecklenburg-Strelitz (around 1830): 14f. 9 Cf. Nehls & Zabel 2004: 59f.

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Queen of Heaven and Earth”10 – which conforms to the traditional semantics, apart from a little additional local flavour. In Mainz, the priest Wilhelm Molitor called the church painter Schraudolph the “king of two kingdoms” in one of his poems, after he had become the Bean King in 1847, while he was painting the cathedral at Speyer, saying that one of the kingdoms was “Beanland” and the other the realm of art.11 These examples (of which there are many more) should suffice in order to show that the ritual lost its semantic coherence in the course of the eighteenth century. In some areas and social environments it appears as a sign that can be filled with meaning individually. Some of these meanings develop a tradition, others do not. This process is preceded by the disappearance of the early-modern semantics, an absence which makes such subjective interpretative acts possible. But none of the new meanings is as obligatory and compelling as the one lost. The ranges of the new rituals and their messages differ from case to case, but none of them will ever become generally accepted. If we take seriously the principle which I stated above, namely that meaning defines the communicative sign, then we are confronted with the question of whether we can still speak of the ritual of the “Bean King” or “Bean-feast” in the nineteenth century, or whether we are really dealing with a multitude of communicative signs. Of course these signs are similar and can be traced back to a common origin, but have long since developed into independent carriers of meaning – a fact which is obscured by the name they all share. At least we can assume that one hotly-debated question is now settled: scholars’ interest in rituals as carriers of meaning has spawned a controversy about whether rituals should be understood as signs or as symbols. The sign in Saussure’s sense is defined by the lack of connection between external form and the meaning it carries; it is completely arbitrary. In the case of symbols, however, we assume some kind of similarity between form and message.12 Presupposing a symbolic nature of rituals in general would mean that there is an associative and logical relationship between external form and meaning in every ritual, and, thus, there would be a theoretical possibility of deducing meaning from the ritual’s form. But the history of the meaning of the “Kingdom” shows that rituals can have completely arbitrary meanings, even for contemporaries. This does not exclude the possibility that the same contemporaries may try to attribute a “symbolic” character to individual signs by changing their external form. However, this is a special case which cannot form the methodological basis of interpretation. The idea that ritual communication could be understood symbolically may seem very useful strategically, because it allows all kinds of deductions from the phenomenology, but an empirical analysis shows that it must not be done. 10 Unpublished manuscript in the city archive of Aachen, HS 283, section “2. Von dem König ziehen”. 11 Molitor 1884: 199–203. 12 Kreinath 2005: 38–39.

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The argument of this short article is that contemporary reflection can unlock the language of rituals for us. Only reflection in written form preserves the meaning of a ritual at a specific point in time and space. If the ritual is a lemma in an imaginary ritual dictionary, then the meaning is given by contemporary reflection. Of course it does not cover all the possible aspects that contemporary reflection about a ritual could touch on. Obviously, such reflection does not always concern the meaning of ritual communication, and we have to clearly differentiate between the various moments of reflection. It often deals with the history of the ritual, without making any statements about its meaning, or its ethical evaluation (which does not necessarily include any information about the meaning). We can also find reflections about the emotional quality of the ritual’s performance, on behaviour in the ritual action and on the wide range of evocations the human mind is capable of. These various forms of reflection also shift in importance: moral evaluation goes out of fashion in the nineteenth century, whereas historical analysis has been going strong since the sixteenth. If we want to understand the ritual as a mode of human action, reflective sources have an inexhaustible amount to tell us.

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References Bohlen Bohlendorf, Julius Freiherr von (ed.) 1882. Hausbuch des Herrn Joachim von Wedel. Tübingen: Literarischer Verein. Fugger, Dominik 2007. Das Königreich am Dreikönigstag: Eine historisch-empirische Ritualstudie. Paderborn: Schöningh. — 2010 (forthcoming). “Die Botschaft des Bohnenkönigs”. In: Torsten Hiltmann (ed.). Les ‘autres’ rois: Études sur la royauté comme notion hiérarchique dans la société au bas Moyen Âge et au début de l'époque moderne. Munich: Oldenbourg. Hensche, August 1867. “Rede an Kant’s Geburtstag, den 22. April 1867, in der KantGesellschaft zu Königsberg gehalten”. Altpreußische Monatsschrift 4: 238–248. Kreinath, Jens 2005. Semiose des Rituals. (Ph.Dissertation Heidelberg). — 2006. “Semiotics”. In: Jens Kreinath & Jan Snoek & Michael Stausberg (eds.). Theorizing Rituals. Vol. 1: Issues, Topics, Approaches, Concepts. Leiden & Boston: Brill: 429–470 (Studies in the History of Religions 114/1). Mecklenburg-Strelitz, Carl von (around 1830). Erinnerungen an Berlin: Festspiele. [Private Print] Molitor, Wilhelm 1884. Gedichte. Mainz: Kirchheim. Nehls, Harry & Marco Zabel 2004. “Der ‘Festspielherzog’ Carl von MecklenburgStrelitz (1785–1837)”. Karbe-Wagner-Archiv 2: 7–118.

Hans-Ulrich Sanner

“A Message about Life”: Performance and Reflexivity in Hopi Indian Ritual Clowning Theorising Ritual Clowns How to make sense of those peculiar figures, often ragged or in motley garb, sometimes half-naked and smeared with mud or soot, who excel in doing and saying things that are in outrageous contrast to what is considered normal, decent, and appropriate by the cultural standards of their audience, an audience that nevertheless reacts with smiles, giggles, and sometimes a collective outburst of laughter? How to make sense of their elementary role in the sacred rituals and theatrical performances of indigenous societies around the globe? A brief review of relevant theoretical approaches shall introduce the notion that ritual clowning is an important socio-cultural means of reflexivity, allowing performers and audiences to critically reflect upon their society and to cope, through laughter, with human imperfection as against cosmic order. After that, an ethnographic sketch of the contemporary Hopi Indian clown-drama shall examine reflexive properties of ritual clowning in some detail, paying special attention to indigenous meta-commentaries on performative practices and meanings. From the 1920s on, anthropologists and other scholars have offered various theories to explain the meaning and function of “sacred clowns”, “ceremonial buffoons”, “ritual clowns”, or simply “clowns”.1 Many of these theories rely considerably on ethnographic data collected in the American Southwest, particularly among the Pueblo Indians (including the Hopi), where ritual clowning is highly developed, and formal clown societies play an important role in the socioreligious structure of their communities. In his 1929 doctoral dissertation, Julian H. Steward divided the humour of Native American clowns into universal comic themes based on the high degree of “psychic unity” of man in regard to things which may be laughed at, on the one hand, and themes that reflect particular 1 For a useful discussion of classic explanations of ritual clowning, see Crumrine (1969: 10ff.) and Apte (1985: 169ff.). While most anthropological studies equate ritual with sacred clowning, Mitchell (1992) makes a point of addressing forms of both sacral and secular ritual clowning.

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cultural values on the other.2 Burlesque of the sacred, the humour of sex, misfortune, and the burlesque of strangers were identified as universal themes of great emotional appeal, while, for instance, the Pueblo clowns’ predilection for sex, obscenity, and scatology was (also) seen as an expression of the all-important concept of fertility in that culture area. Steward’s notion that the clown provides “comic relief” from such themes of human emotional interest was elaborated in several functionalist approaches that appeared between the 1930s and the 1960s. Psychological explanations argued, in a nutshell, that ritual clowning provides a socially acceptable means for the release from tension. Tension and frustration were either psycho-analytically traced back to repressed sexual, aggressive, and infantile impulses,3 or understood as emotional reactions to the intensity and aweinspiring atmosphere of religious ritual.4 Ethnographers of the Native American Southwest have long noted the exclusive “anomalous” double role of ritual clowns, namely their licence to break any rule, while at the same time rigorously enforcing tradition, most notably through public ridicule of individual transgressors. The power to do so is legitimised by the clown’s sacredness. The notion of “social control” has informed a number of sociological explanations of clowning and ritual reversals.5 Max Gluckman’s classic study Rituals of Rebellion in South-East Africa,6 while not dealing explicitly with ritual humour, has nevertheless influenced sociological explanations of ritual clowning, especially the inversion of cultural norms, including gender and status roles. It was claimed that such ritual channelling of existing social conflicts facilitates a “catharsis” that serves to reconfirm the established social order. As we shall see below, ritual clowning is a complex, multilayered cultural performance that cannot be reduced to a functional “safety-valve” serving a society’s need for catharsis and control, as psychological and sociological explanations have proposed. This is not to deny that such aspects must be taken into account in any broad examination of ritual clowns and their audience. The complexity of the phenomenon was gradually realised in anthropological studies that appeared around 1970 and afterwards. In contrast to the earlier behaviouristic explanations, that had relied on the predominantly observational (and sometimes heavily biased) field data published by early ethnographers, these studies were based on original fieldwork and paid considerable attention to the specific cultural context of clowning. Their theoretical frameworks all drew, in one way or another, upon Victor Turner’s emerging work on the ritual process, particularly his concept

2 3 4 5 6

See Steward 1977. See, e.g. Levine 1969. See, e.g. Honigmann 1942. See, e.g. Parsons & Beals 1934: 499; Norbeck 1961: 204ff. Gluckman 1954.

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of “liminality”.7 Turner argued that the use of grotesque or monstrous masks and effigies in the liminal stage of initiation rituals serves to dissociate socio-cultural common sense into cultural components that are then playfully recombined in novel, even improbable, ways. In this way, ritual participants are alternately forced and encouraged to reflect upon their society, their cosmos, and the powers that generate and sustain them.8 N. Ross Crumrine combined Turner’s hypothesis with findings from experimental psychology to explain the anomalous role of ritual clowns, i.e. their power to both mock and reaffirm tradition.9 Studying Čapakoba, the masked Easter ceremonial impersonators of the Mayo Indians in northwestern Mexico, Crumrine argued that their blurred portrayal of social and cultural structures creates cognitive dissonance that challenges performers and onlookers to resolve the perceptual conflict. He claimed that this process of ritual learning allows Mayos to more deeply understand and identify with their culture and society.10 Like most earlier explanations of ritual clowning, Crumrine’s “culturalcognitive” model disregarded humour and laughter as by-products that provide comic relief at best. That humour is indeed the distinctive feature of the ritual clown as religious specialist is a major thesis of Louis Hieb’s ethnographic study of the Hopi clown.11 Employing the structural method of symbolic opposition, Mary Douglas’ theory of the joke as “an attack on control”,12 and Victor Turner’s concept of “anti-structure”,13 Hieb defined Hopi clowning as both a strategy for dealing with problematic situations and a symbol that is contrasted in various meaningful ways with the serious, orderly side of culture and society. Laughter, then, is a judgement, a refusal of the “subversive pattern” proposed by the clown and an affirmation of the established pattern. As I shall demonstrate below, the Hopi clown is indeed masterfully dealing with problematic situations, but his strategies for generating laughter are less mechanical and more diversified than Hieb’s structuralist humour model allows. Nevertheless, his careful delineation of the complex dramatic structure of tsukulalwa (clowning) and its mythological foundation has paved the way to a recognition of the performative and reflexive aspects of clowning. Hieb was sceptical about a universally valid category “ritual clown”, arguing that its particular meaning depends on specific cultural contexts.14 Don Handelman, 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

Turner 1967; 1969. Turner 1967: 105. See Crumrine 1969. Ibid.: 21 See Hieb 1986 [1972]; 1979. Douglas 1968. Turner 1969. Hieb 1979: 184f.

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however, based his definition of the ritual clown as “symbolic-type” on a small cross-cultural survey.15 He criticised most previous studies for treating clown behaviour only in its consequences for the conduct of mundane life, e.g. by providing comic relief, and proposed that the ritual clown, with his affinity to symbolic boundaries, also contributes much to the organisation and execution of ritual itself, here defined as an ordered sequence of liminal phases. The clown’s reflexivity, his capacity to comment upon ritual in process, is a function of his continuous internal oscillating between various pairs of contradictory attributes he embraces, such as sacred/profane, wisdom/folly, serious/comic, and the like. Another thesis proposed by Handelman with reference to Turner’s “anti-structure” is particularly useful for my ensuing discussion of reflexivity in the ritual drama of Hopi clowns and katsina spirits: “[D]eity types … are often the cornerstones of anti-structure in numerous rites. Where they appear together, I would expect to find ritual-clown and deity-types opposed to one another, particularly within the context of calendrical rites. But I would also expect them to be reconciled, and to be reunited, with messages of fertile union, fusion, and regeneration, before such rites close.”16 Rituals are temporally and spatially marked off from everyday life by symbolic boundaries. Like play, rituals are “framed activity”.17 But more than simply marking the transition from one phase of mundane social order to another, they are the transformational process which leads to the re-establishment of order within a new form, as Turner, Handelman, Kapferer, and other ritual and performance theorists have shown.18 The liminal, “betwixt and between” phase of rituals is an ideal medium for the symbolic communication of sacred truths about the composition of society and cosmos. The anthropology of performance that Victor Turner pursued in his latter years, in close co-operation with performance theorist Richard Schechner, linked the models of social drama and ritual process with intercultural studies of ritual and theatrical performances.19 Turner concluded “that every major socioeconomic formation has its dominant form of cultural-aesthetic ‘mirror’ in which it achieves a certain degree of self-reflexivity.”20 The calendrical rituals of non-industrial (agrarian) societies “develop a ‘metalanguage,’ nonverbal 15 16 17 18 19

Handelman 1981. Ibid.: 353. For a fresh approach to the theory of ritual framing, see Handelman 2004. See Kapferer 1984 [1979]. See, for instance, Turner 1985; Schechner 1985; 1993; Schechner & Appel 1990. For the more recent adoption of performative approaches to the study of ritual in German ethnology, see Schmidt & Münzel 1998; Rao & Köpping 2000; Köpping & Leistle & Rudolph 2006. 20 Turner 1985: 291.

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as well as verbal, which enables participants and spectators to realize just how far they have fallen short of or transgressed their own ideal standards”.21 Monstrous images and symbolic inversions, dramatic action and sacred instruction, maskers and clowns are some of the means of meta-communication employed. Barbara A. Babcock, who has made important contributions to the study of reflexivity in the humanities,22 pointed out the twofold strategy of ritual communication: “In ritual, society takes cognizance of itself and communicates its major classifications and categories both through ordering them and through disordering them – by overdetermining and by rendering indeterminate customary processes of signification.”23 In a number of essays, Babcock explored the phenomenon of (Pueblo) ritual clowning in its aesthetic, metaphysical and pragmatic aspects, defining it as a sophisticated form of socio-cultural self-commentary that facilitates both cultural reproduction and regeneration.24 Engaging an interdisciplinary perspective, Babcock called to mind the mystic and philosophical tradition of regarding “laughter as a higher form of consciousness, a way of confronting the higher realities on which the whole of existence rests”.25 Her playful bricolage on ritual clowning as critique is emblematic of the paradigmatic shift from the established functionalist and structuralist explanations postulating an equilibrium of sociocultural systems, to interpretative approaches that emphasise deconstruction, subversion, and criticism.26 William Mitchell carefully discussed the possible consequences and chances of this “postmodern turn” for the anthropological study of humour in his introductory essay to a volume on ritual clowning in the South Pacific.27 Introducing the notion of “hegemonic humor”, Mitchell restated the old epistemological theme of the clown’s ambiguity of supporting and subverting cultural order.28 His definition of clowning as a critical, essentially performative practice points to its predominantly political character. Hegemonic clowning is 21 22 23 24

25 26 27 28

Turner & Turner 1982: 203. See Stausberg 2006: 630ff. Babcock 1978: 296. See Babcock 1982; 1984; 1986. Note that, in the 1970s, Babcock had to cancel her fieldwork project about ritual clowning among the Rio Grande Pueblos for reasons of religious secrecy, turning to the study of Pueblo ceramic caricatures instead. My own fieldwork about Hopi clowning was affected by the Hopi Tribe’s recent policy to restrict outside research and protect Hopi cultural property rights (Sanner 1992: xi ff.; cf. Whiteley 1998; Spencer 2001). Babcock 1984: 116. A common reference point for these approaches is Mikhail Bakhtin’s Rabelais and His World (1984), a literary study originally written in the 1940s that brought to the fore the subversive character of medieval and Renaissance carnival and comic folk culture. Mitchell 1992. Ibid.: 22ff.

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conservative when it ridicules whatever is considered culturally unacceptable, and subversive when it mocks established values and authorities. The ethnographic evidence that ritual clowning in Oceania (just like in the American Southwest) largely reinforces the received cultural order supports functionalist explanations of ritual sub-/inversion, but Mitchell also points out that functionalism’s emphasis on systemic analysis has overlooked “the importance of person and memory”.29 In that (Bakhtinian) sense, subversive clowning “that lampoons established values may persist in the memory as images of difference” and eventually act “as a political accessory to temporal social transformation”.30 Mitchell’s claim that conservative and subversive meanings and effects of ritual clowning must be examined in terms of specific cases has been elaborated by Vilsoni Hereniko and Robert Brightman.31 Hereniko’s monograph on female clowning in Rotuma (South Pacific) – the first full study of ritual clowning by a native anthropologist – concluded that, particularly against the backdrop of Oceanic modernisation, “clowning may be a catalyst for change as well as an agent for hegemony.”32 Brightman’s ethnohistorical reconstruction of a California Indian clown performance expanded on the thesis that ritual clowns accomplish rather complicated fusions of conservative and subversive meanings, suggesting that they “exhibit the Janus-faced capacity to point both towards and away from received convention, at once legitimizing the cultural order as naturally given and destabilizing it as artificially contrived”.33 Relating historical Maidu clown performances to the pronounced politico-economic hierarchy of this stateless society, Brightman made a good case for the polysemy of the clown’s symbolic transgressions relative to disparate social location and biography in his audience. While from the perspective of Maidu elite and commoners the humorous, inversionary display of egoistic dispositions like laziness or gluttony reaffirmed the “Calvinist” values and ideals of their culture, it may have simultaneously confirmed members of the Maidu subculture of itinerant “bums” in the rightness, if not superiority, of their nonconformist life-style. That polysemic symbols play a pivotal role in the construction of multiple structures of meaning during ritual performance is a salient point of Emiko OhnukiTierney’s work on the monkey metaphor and monkey performances in Japanese culture and history.34 Reflecting the changes in Japanese history, the monkey as metaphor/mirror has gone through historical transformations, serving Japanese 29 30 31 32 33 34

Ibid.: 25. Ibid. Hereniko 1995; Brightman 1999. Hereniko 1995: 166. Brightman 1999: 272. Ohnuki-Tierney 1987; 1990.

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culture as mediator (between deities and humans), scapegoat, and – recently – as clown. Ohnuki-Tierney defined the clown as a positively reflexive figure who philosophically comments upon basic assumptions of the people.35 Her distinctly diachronic approach to the study of ritual symbolism implied that the monkey is an ambiguous polysemic symbol, the dominant meaning of which (as mediator, scapegoat, and clown) is negotiated in the historical process. In a synchronic performative context, the polysemy implies that the ritual participants, be they performers or (various categories of) spectators, draw from a “pool of meaning”, which at times makes for heterogeneous, or even inverse, reading of the polysemic symbol. Contemporary Hopi ritual clowning (tsukulalwa), as performed within the framework of masked katsina dances, is, in my interpretation, “a mirror of changing Hopi society”.36 While only the broad outlines of this complex two-day ritual drama and its preparatory phase can be given here, particular ritual episodes and constellations will be examined for their performative and reflexive attributes in order to elucidate the meaning of ritual clowning for modern Hopi identity. My perspective on tsukulalwa has been shaped by the personal observation of numerous clown ceremonies during fieldwork (since 1988), by the evaluation of ethnographic records and theoretical approaches, and not least by the various and varied Hopi voices collected by means of participant observation, informal and formal interviews, and the recording of Hopi language texts. One merit of the methodological debate on the “crisis of ethnographic representation” initiated by Clifford & Marcus and Marcus & Fischer is that it has challenged the classic method of dissolving native voices into a generalised “third person” in the making of the ethnographic text.37 I choose to preserve and present – if selectively – Hopi voices as individual perspectives, some of which constitute a type of metacommentary or “native philosophy” that informs ethnographic interpretation and theorising. The spectrum of Hopi consultants who provide insights into the practice and meaning of tsukulalwa comprises both performers and onlookers. It ranges from “the common Hopi” with an eclectic understanding of the clown’s doings to members of the Eagle clan on Hopi Third Mesa,38 who may be regarded as the 35 36 37 38

Ohnuki-Tierney 1987: 36f.; 1990: 140. Sanner 1992. Clifford & Marcus 1986; Marcus & Fischer 1986. The Hopi today number about 12,000 people, the majority of whom live in twelve villages along the southern fringe of the Black Mesa massif in northeastern Arizona, USA. The settlements are located on and below three mesa extensions termed First, Second, and Third Mesa. Unless otherwise indicated, consultants quoted in this paper are from the Third Mesa villages of Hotvela, Paaqavi, and Kiqötsmovi, that arose from the split of the former central town Orayvi (see Whiteley 1988; 2008).

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leading “performance theorists”, because the Eagle clan ritually owns the special knowledge of the clown tradition and has the clown as wu’ya (clan ancestor/totem). The variety of Hopi interpretations of tsukulalwa in general, and of particular ritual episodes, shows that the Hopi clown is an ambiguous polysemic symbol in the sense of Ohnuki-Tierney. Furthermore, a survey of the ethnographic record allows us to put the contemporary clown drama in diachronic perspective. Over a timespan of at least 130 years,39 changes in the meaning of the polysemic clown can be tentatively detected, reflecting historical changes in Hopi culture.

The Hopi Clown-drama (tsukulalwa) The ritual that shall be sketched and discussed in the following pages is simply referred to as tsukulalwa (“they are acting as clowns”; accent on the second syllable) in the Hopi vernacular. As I consider tsukulalwa to be a socio-cultural “mirror”, I forgo a lengthy introduction to Hopi history and culture here, hoping that some of its major features will emerge from the following description and discussion of clown performances. Put briefly, the Hopi are a small, but highly persistent and adaptable people40 of desert agriculturalists, who have made it into the American twenty-first century without cutting their ties with the life-style and civilisation established by their ancestors more than a millennium ago. “Despite manifold changes over the past century, the Hopi still preserve more pre-European culture than perhaps any other Native North American society, and are thus one of the most written-about peoples in anthropological and popular literature”.41 An extraordinary feature of Hopi culture is the annual cycle of elaborate religious rituals, owned by various matrilineal clans and organised by a number of secret societies with initiated membership. The ritual calendar accompanies and makes manifest the growth-cycle of corn (maize) and other staples of Hopi agriculture. While some of the high-order secret societies and their rituals have been put to rest in all but one village in response to Hopi modernisation, katsina (kachina) ritual thrives in current Hopi society.42

39 It is safe to say that Pueblo clowning precedes European contact. Spanish colonial sources from the seventeenth century testify to the historical practice (Freese 1994 [1992]), but the earliest detailed descriptions of Hopi clowning were provided by Anglo-American ethnographers of the 1880s. 40 In the sense of Edward Spicer’s “Persistent Cultural Systems” (Spicer 1971). 41 Whiteley 2008: vol. 1, 1. 42 For an overview and introduction to (classic) Hopi ethnography, see Ortiz & Sturtevant 1979. A good German-language synopsis has been provided by Hartmann (1978). Hopi language has been excellently documented by the Hopi Dictionary Project (1998). Other more current Hopi studies will be referred to in the text.

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Katsinam are spirits of the ancestors and spirits of many kinds of plants, animals, and phenomena of the natural world. They reside in the other world, from where they come to visit the Hopi villages in the period roughly between the winter and summer solstices.43 As mediators, they carry human prayers to the gods and return as rain for the corn that sustains Hopi life. In the spring and early summer, various types of katsinam materialise in the kiisonvi, the central plaza of Hopi villages, to entertain the people and to bring them gifts of food. A Hopi priest acting as “father” to the katsinam leads them around, “feeds” them with sacred cornmeal, and prays to them on behalf of the community. Ordinary katsina dances are ritually sponsored by a person who “has a religious intention”, expressing, for instance, thankfulness for a birth or a recovery from sickness. The sponsor not only selects the type(s) of katsinam to perform, but also makes a decision as to whether clowns shall appear along with them or not.

Ritual Preliminaries With the demise of Hopi clown societies with initiated members around 1900, clowning became a temporary ritual office, that nevertheless is accompanied by a four-day preparatory period of ritual activities in a kiva (a semi-subterranean ceremonial chamber). Provided the sponsor of a katsina dance wants a group of clowns (tsutskut, sing. tsuku) to appear, either he or the katsinam will carefully consider a number of candidates, and then select a man as tsukumongwi (“clown chief”) and five or six others as (ordinary) clowns. Herschel Talashoema, an elder with only common knowledge of tsukulalwa, commenced his account by stating: “The clowns, they are very much like the katsinam: they pray for rain and for the good life, that’s what they desire. For that reason they are selected as clowns in addition (to the katsinam). They do not appoint themselves, they are chosen”44 The clown performers I talked to emphasised that it is an honour to be appointed, because clowning is hard work and ritual responsibility for the well-being of all. In his autobiography, Don Talayesva from Orayvi related how he felt about his first appointment as clown chief, around 1910: “They looked into my heart and decided that I was a good-natured man before they chose me for the clown work. Now I have no right to botch it. If I prove unsatisfactory they will not choose me again.”45

43 See e.g. Secakuku 1995. 44 Sanner 1992: 92, 290. 45 Simmons 1942: 186.

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Quite a number of Hopi men are afraid of the clown-duty and try to evade it, because it demands “acting without shame” in front of a large audience of relatives, villagers, and strangers. Now, while these men fear the prospect of having to act outrageously and aggressively in public, hence in stark contrast with Hopi personality types, there are others who seek and enjoy the licence and sacred immunity of the clown role. Psychological explanations of ritual clowning have emphasised “the sense of release in vicarious participations in the forbidden”46 on the part of spectators, but I would like to point out here that the playful ritual acting-out of socially unacceptable behaviour can bring relief to the performer in the first place. In discussions with two younger clown-performers, I noticed that they were well aware of the suspense between the spiritual obligation that the clown role requires and the individual freedom it grants. One of them, a member of the Eagle clan, emphasised that, in the plaza, the clowns “are not themselves”, but the ritual representations of the mythical/ancestral brother-sister pair. Don Talayesva’s attitude suggests that personal gratification may have always been a motivation for clowning: “The clown work afforded a good opportunity to play jokes on people, chastise them for misbehavior, and even to take out spite on them. A clown could do or say almost anything and get away with it because his duty was sacred. … I had more fun in clown work than anything else … .”47 Performance theorist Richard Schechner has argued that a performer does not stop being himself as he becomes something else, that he does not cease to exist in a certain way when he becomes possessed by a god or plays the role of Ophelia.48 The incomplete transformation of consciousness that allows the performer to oscillate between ritual impersonation and self is an important aspect of the Hopi clown’s reflexivity, as I shall further illustrate below. The ritual transformation of the clown-performers during the non-public phase of preparation has both spiritual and socio-psychological aspects. In line with basic principles of Hopi ceremonialism, the participants engage in acts of ritual planning and concentration, such as prayer, smoking, making ritual offerings, and observing certain taboos. Smoking a sacred cigarette that the katsinam have prepared obliges the candidates to perform as clowns. Metaphorically, “they get trapped” (kwisya), as Dan49 explained in his recollection of his first clowning. The smoking ritual, I believe,

46 47 48 49

Bunzel 1932: 521. Simmons 1942: 280. Schechner & Winnacker 1990: 10ff. Names in italics are pseudonyms for informants who shall remain anonymous.

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further establishes the “communal spirit” and solidarity of the clown-group, an important prerequisite for the success of the ceremony. The nightly meetings in the kiva help the performers to loosen up and get used to the clown-play50 and are devoted to planning the performance. Any ritual that is based on some sort of script or prototype implies reflexivity, because every performance inter-ritually reflects other performances.51 The “script” of contemporary tsukulalwa is appropriated by individual performers in various ways, most notably by observing clowning during katsina dances year in, year out, and through the guidance of a veteran clown who is usually a close relative. “Learning by doing” is another way, as the following example from the account of Howard, another elder with clown experience, demonstrates. The text excerpt refers to the moment when the clowns climb up the ladder out of their kiva before they make their first entrance into the plaza: “When we climbed out, Percy (Eagle clan keeper of the clown tradition) was ahead of me. ‘May a pretty girl somewhere be delighted with me,’ he spoke. Thereupon, I asked him if we all should say that. ‘Why yes, just say anything and then go out’, he replied. So I myself said something in like fashion and climbed out after him.”52 The particular challenge for any clown-group in preparation is to come up with a small number of skits reflecting current conflicts or scandals that preoccupy the Hopi community. It could be anything from village gossip to national politics, from an individual case of adultery or the bizarre demeanour of a prominent tribal bureaucrat to the negative effects of culture change and the problematic relationship with dominant Anglo society or the neighbouring Navajo Indians. Concerning the typical decision-making process in the kiva, Eagle clan elder and former Tribal Chairman Abbott Sekaquaptewa said: “The clowns sit around and talk about it, they think about different situations that they have seen or observed, or what’s been going on. And they will talk about a point to be made, you know. And then they plan how they are going to make that point, what things to do to embellish it and make it funny. And they just do this sitting around in the kiva.”53 Customarily, other men come down to the kiva to support and encourage the clowns-to-be. They ritually smoke with them, trade jokes and banter, and then one or another will humbly introduce an idea for a skit he has thought about. In every Hopi village there are a few individuals whose skills are especially sought after. 50 51 52 53

Cf. Simmons 1942: 186. Stausberg 2006: 636. Sanner 1992: 118, 285. Sanner 1992: 110.

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They often have a reputation as great clown-performers, they are usually keen observers of human folly and village gossip, and they must have the skill to sketch a dramatic plot and make a point that will produce mirth and laughter. The skit involving a sick Hopi man and a white doctor that I will present below had been drawn up and performed by such a respected village humorist in his early years. About him, Herschel Talashoema remarked: “See, Evrett has clowned a lot of times, but still they look up to him: ‘Do you have anything planned?’ Because a person like him, when he sees something happening somewhere, he might think: ‘Hey, that’s a good one for the clowns!’ That kind of idea just goes into his head, and that’s what he would take to the kiva.”54 When a number of morality plays has been agreed upon, additional men are recruited as piptuqam (sing. piptuqa), masked actors who come to the plaza to stage a given skit together with the clowns. Appropriate costumes and accessories must be manufactured or acquired, and the course of the skit is discussed, but never rehearsed. The peak of ritual preparations is reached in the night and early morning before the dance, when katsinam and clowns hold vigil in their respective kivas and meet once to smoke and pray for rain and a good life. In the tradition of the Eagle clan of Third Mesa, the spiritual transformation of the clown-performers is effected through ritual association with the ancestral brother-sister pair, tsukutiyo and tsukumana. In addition, the suggestive power of a short speech or traditional song performed by an elder will help the men, especially the nervous newcomers, to internalise that they are truly clowns now. Externally, the transformation is supported by the painting of face and body with pigments. As Herschel Talashoema put it in Hopi, the human clowns (symbolically) “hide their identities” by the use of body paint.55

Katsinam and tsutskut: the Clash of Principles A katsina dance is in itself a reflexive performance, because the words of the songs and the symbolism of the dance movements, colourful costumes and masks represent the harmony and beauty of the spirit world, and are intended to remind the Hopi that life (qatsi) depends on adhering to ethical principles that ensure reciprocity between humans and gods. Whenever clowns are chosen to perform, the “ideality” of the katsinam is meaningfully contrasted with Hopi philosophical assumptions about humanity and its destiny. In Eagle clan terminology, the clowns, representing the ancestral brother-sister pair, “go along calling out their 54 Sanner 1992: 110. 55 Sanner 1992: 120.

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wrongdoing”.56 Howard, a member of the Pìikyas clan who was somewhat influenced by Eagle clan tradition, stated: “(The clowns) really know about life, hence they show us how we should not be. Whenever something is happening somewhere, they display it to us: ‘That’s how you are. You shouldn’t be like that!’ For that reason the clown is said to be qahopi (not mannered, misbehaving, bad), he can do just anything. They are telling us about what we are like and what kind of life we are living.”57 The clash of principles embodied by katsinam and clowns is graphically dramatised during the initial episodes of tsukulalwa. When the katsinam, who have been dancing since early morning, have returned from their noon break, distributed gifts of food to the people, and reassumed their solemn performance, the clowns suddenly appear on one of the flat rooftops surrounding the plaza. They create quite an uproar as they jump up with a shout, “Yaaahay!”, and then hide again behind a bunch of spectators. They do this four times, and then present themselves to the amused crowd. Full of childlike excitement, they look down on the plaza and comment on the beautiful land “bright with flowers” (sìitala) they have discovered, wondering how they might get down there, because “it is so precipitous”. In Eagle clan tradition, this statement refers to humanity’s future prospect of a “flowery land” or “paradise”, a place that will, however, be difficult to reach by the people because of their corrupt ways.58 To illustrate this, the clowns choose some spectacular and artistic means to get down, using a rope, a beam, umbrellas, or similar devices. To be sure, an onlooker need not be familiar with the deeper meaning behind this feat to join the gales of laughter that a good clown-team will evoke. When they have all reached the ground, the clowns start to explore the plaza in their innocence. The initial episodes of tsukulalwa testify to its polysemic nature. That the clowns appearing on the roof-top represent clouds rising from the four directions,59 or imitate thunder and lightning, as Herschel Talashoema believed, reflects the central and ancient concern of Hopi ceremonialism to procure precipitation. The popular contemporary notion that the clown-drama depicts the human life-cycle is interpreted as relating both to the individual and the Hopi as a cultural entity. Whilst for the renowned Hopi painter Fred Kabotie from Second Mesa “[t]he clown truly depicts the child’s development from birth”,60 Eagle clan intellectuals point to Hopi eschatology, namely the emergence from a former world 56 57 58 59 60

Sanner 1992: 44. Sanner 1992: 27, 288. Hieb 1986 [1972]: 170. Simmons 1942: 187. Kabotie & Belknap 1977: 124.

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that had become corrupted, and the repetition of this process in the current “fourth world”. Concerning the arrival of the clowns, Emory Sekaquaptewa wrote: “This announces as foretold at emergence the arrival at the end of the lifeway journey. And then they make their way into the plaza with all sorts of antics and buffoonery representing the Hopi life-quest. … Once in the plaza they act just as people did when they emerged in this world. They presume that they are in a new world, clean and pure. They are where they can finally have eternal life like the katsinas; indeed, this is the day all Hopi look forward to. But as they are remarking on the beauty of this place filled with plants and good things they hear the katsina songs. They grope around the plaza looking for someone. They pretend they cannot see them because they are spirits.”61 At this point, the clown-group applies what Schechner has called “choreographed ineptitude”62 in order to dramatise the difference between spirits and humans. Upon hearing the beautiful katsina song, they decide to sing a song as well which results in a cacophony. Sonny, a younger clown-performer, explained: “Then, when the katsinam atkyaqwya, that means they are at the ‘bottom’ of the song, ‘chorus’ part, that’s when we start singing to them, trying to mix them up.”63 Human pretension is further emphasised when the clowns finally see the katsinam and immediately start to claim them for themselves, grabbing them and even fighting over them amongst each other. When the dancers have stoically finished their song and their “father” announces that he will take them to their resting-place for a while, the clowns protest. They go searching for the leader of the katsinam and when they have found him, they take turns addressing him in ritual speech (Image 1). The tsukumongwi first will ask, “Are you the chief?”, and when the leader shakes his rattle in agreement, he will assert: “I am a chief, too!” Boastfully claiming to be a chief is clearly qahopi behaviour, but in their speeches the clowns also promise that from now on they will take care of the katsinam until the end of the day. They shower them with sacred cornmeal from their pouches and ask them to return with all kinds of food so that the people and the children will eat and be happy. They adopt the priest role of the “father of the katsinam”, but in a clowning way.

61 Sekaquaptewa 1980: 15. 62 Schechner 1993: 230. 63 Sanner 1992: 135. For the structure of katsina songs, see Hopi Dictionary Project 1998: 135, “katsíntawi”.

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Image 1: Ritual clowns at the Heheya katsina dance, Orayvi, spring 1898. Three clowns are approaching the line of katsinam partly visible on the right. The man with long trousers (left of centre) is the “father of the katsinam”. The young clown casts a self-confident glance at the camera, diverting the attention of the viewer away from the object of ethnographic curiosity and “reflexively” turning it back on the photographer. Photo by Karl von den Steinen, courtesy Ethnologisches Museum, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Preußischer Kulturbesitz.

This is an episode of the clown drama that is reflexively referred to in everyday Hopi discourse, for example when denigrating a self-important tribal politician: “He behaves like a tsukumongwi, you know: ‘I’m a chief, I’m a chief!’ ” In the rhetoric of Hopi prophecy, Percy Lomaquahu interpreted the ritual act as signalling the “last day”. “We have gradually come to act like in the underworld. We have begun to appropriate leadership positions. (Self-proclaimed) leaders will abound,

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Messages About Life: the Functions of Clown-humour Nevertheless, the clowns are full of good intentions while they depict the people as they were when they began life in this world. When the katsinam have gone to their resting-place, the tsutskut begin to structure the plaza into a clown-model of the Hopi world, highlighting fundamental socio-cultural institutions and principles. The clown chief sends the others to the four directions to gather building materials, an act that symbolically asserts traditional Hopi land-rights. The clowns come back with handfuls of ashes which they use to outline a symbolic “house”, the focus of Hopi social and economic life. Then kinship relations come into play. The clown chief places a little doll in the house, the tsukumana (“clown-maiden”) that represents the younger sister of the clowns and head of the maternal clan’s household. The clowns remind her of traditional maiden virtues: to be diligent, hospitable, wary of the boys, caring, and patient, i.e. not to get angry. Like other episodes of the traditional “script”, this speech is an occasion for humorous updates and commentaries that reflect current reality. The relatively recent phenomenon of alcoholism has become an important clown-theme nowadays. A performance that I witnessed in a Second Mesa village in 1990 featured the grave problem of substance abuse as a leitmotif in various comments, puns, and skits. All of the clowns were men with a drinking problem, and were thus challenged to make fun of themselves. Nelson, one of the performers, told me how they injected their instruction of the clown girl with a dose of self-irony: “We told her to be good and not to mess around. ‘Don’t mess around with all these winos living around here,’ we told her (he laughs out loud). Even though we are the main ones!”65 As soon as the clowns have made themselves comfortable in their “house”, women and girls flock in from all directions, bringing them all kinds of freshlycooked dishes and groceries to feast on. They are the “aunties” (father’s sisters) of the clown-performers, and their appearance emphasises the important relationship between Hopi individual and paternal clan. Ramson Lomatewama, an Eagle clan member and clown chief, wrote: “The food is not given at random. Each clown accepts food from his aunts on his father’s and godfather’s sides of the family. The aunt and nephew relationship is a special one. Neither has qualms about expressing their 64 Sanner 1992: 46, 282. 65 Sanner 1992: 145.

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fondness for one another, even in words that border on lust but are taken with open minds on all sides. This is the Hopi Way. It is a teasing relationship understood by all.”66 In terms of ritual timing, it is appropriate for the clowns to receive food while many villagers plus their visiting relatives and friends have left the audience to enjoy a feast of traditional dishes in the houses. The gluttony of Hopi clowns, their habit of eating enormous quantities of food throughout the day, has often been interpreted as a symbolic reversal or display of qahopi behaviour, but their feasting also mirrors – if in a distorting mirror – the central concern of this people of dryfarmers in a precarious desert environment: to always have good food to eat. In that sense, the meal is ritual expression and the result of both social cooperation and a successful communion with the spirit world. This aspect is further emphasised whenever the clowns select members of the audience to “come and eat”. As Dan explained, they hope that these guests in return will make an effort to support the ritual intentions of the clowns.67 This includes (white) tourists who, apart from getting fed, often serve as the butt of the clowns’ satirical remarks.68 When the katsinam return to the plaza for the next dance-round, the clowns immediately take up their serious priestly role of caring for them (with cornmeal prayer) and assisting them in practical ways. Simultaneously, they continue to dramatise the predetermined path of human life. To illustrate with one concrete example how the clowns “make fun of life and thereby cause people to look at themselves”69, I have chosen a narrative perspective that has largely been neglected up until now: the description of clown-skits and their humour by Hopi in their own language. My consultant, Herschel Talashoema, saw this morality play about a “white doctor” healing a “sick Hopi man” around 1950, and enjoyed it so much that he still remembered some of it forty years later. His account reveals the whole gamut of an elaborate clown-skit, but for lack of space I will quote here only the central portion that relates the main theme of the performance.70 First, I need to briefly summarise how the performance began. After the dancing katsinam had left the plaza to take a rest, the clowns noticed a new arrival sitting on the edge of the plaza. It was a piptuqa portraying a Hopi man. The clowns found out that he was suffering from a terrible stomach-ache, so they laid him down on a table right in the plaza and went looking for a “medicine man”. Right then, a real car entered the ceremonial ground, causing quite a commotion. When the driver got out, it happened to be another piptuqa in the guise 66 67 68 69 70

Lomatewama 1988: 10. Sanner 1992: 149. Cf. Sanner 2004. Sekaquaptewa 1980: 15. The complete text plus analysis will be reserved for a future publication on Hopi clowning.

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of an Anglo-American doctor. The clowns told him about the sick man and he consented to examine him. “… And yes, that piptuqa was really dressed like a doctor,71 in white. And as you will recall, a doctor has a stethoscope around his neck, so he was wearing that also. And because a country doctor carries a bag with him, remember, he was carrying that as well. So from there the clowns escorted him over to the sick man. He looked at the man, and then he said: ‘Apparently he is really uncomfortable, he must be really sick. I guess I’ll do a check-up.’ And so he examined him with that (stethoscope), and then he told the clowns: ‘He is in a very serious condition. I will have to open his stomach.’ ‘All right, you’ll have to do that’, the clowns responded, each one in his own way. ‘You will do this so he can get well’. Right after they had consented, the doctor took out a pair of scissors, a really large pair, and with them he made an incision. Now, of course that piptuqa had a false stomach there, and along it the doctor made a cut. He cut away that big belly that was sticking out, put away the scissors and reached inside. He reached inside and pulled out a book, actually it was a Sears & Roebuck (order catalogue), remember. There were pictures of pretty girls in there. He looked at them, then he said: ‘Ah, he is thinking of girls.’ Truly, there were girls pictured in there. He looked at them, then he threw the catalogue aside.72 Then he reached into that belly again and brought out a (toy) pistol. ‘Aha, he wants to become a cowboy’, he exclaimed. He looked at the pistol and then threw it aside, also. Having done that, he commented: ‘He is evidently thinking of many things, and that fills him up. He is filled and burdened with various things.’ Then he reached inside again, this time pulling out a pair of underpants, a woman’s underpants. ‘And it looks like he is thinking of women, also,’ he said, carefully unfolding the panties. Then he threw them aside, also. After he had done that, he said: ‘I think it is drawing to a close.’ Then he reached inside the belly once more, feeling for something in there. ‘Here it is,’ he said, pulling out something. It was a handful of dollars. ‘Money!’ he exclaimed, ‘that’s what he is also thinking about, it seems.’ He stood there, looking at the money in his hands. Now, that he did not throw aside but stuffed it into his pocket instead. Boy, did the people laugh at that! And the clowns also laughed at it.

71 Note that English words used by Herschel in the original text are in italics. 72 Nowadays, the clowns would use a Playboy or Penthouse magazine for this.

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Then the doctor said that it was done. ‘I have taken out everything’, he told the clowns, ‘now he will surely get well. Let me just sew it up again.’ Now, I guess that he did not really sew it up, but simply closed (the opening) and buttoned the shirt over it. When this was finished, the doctor spoke to that piptuqa: ‘Now surely you will get better, surely you will recover. So now you can go home happily. But from now on: don’t be worrying about all those things any more. If you quit doing that, you won’t get filled up with things again.’ After he had said this, they immediately let that piptuqa go and he went back home. …”73 Sickness, the theme of this performance, belongs among the universal humour themes identified by Julian Steward,74 but at the same time it mirrors an important Hopi cultural theme. Excessive worrying, “having things on your mind”, is thought to have severe psychosomatic effects. In a discussion about the skit, Herschel stated that “worry is something that will really make you sick like that. … A Hopi says that if you don’t want to be sick, don’t worry too much, you can’t do anything. Worry will kill you.”75 According to an anonymous informant interviewed about Hopi expectations and beliefs about illness, “[p]eople often get sick from worrying. They say this kills more people than anything else. So people tell you never to worry. It causes yellow stuff in your stomach.”76 Laughter about a poor fellow who gets a load taken off his mind and belly by a smart white doctor certainly has cathartic value, but what exactly were the people laughing about? The sick man was characterised as being qahopi because of his excessive, unhealthy thinking/worrying (wuuwanta) about things like sex and money. But in this case, as in many others that I have observed, the inversion of a cultural norm or proposal of a “subversive pattern”, respectively, was not perceived as being funny per se. Rather, humour resulted from a joke that the performer had cleverly woven into his allegoric dramatisation of a significant conflict and its solution. Extracting various “incongruous” things from the patient’s stomach did certainly produce smiles and laughter, especially as performed by a gifted humorist and spiced with spontaneous commentary by the attending clowns. But more importantly, he built up a joke-routine by throwing away each item after taking it out and analysing it. The punchline that caused the audience to rock with laughter was finally not to throw away the dollar bills. To claim that this laughter signified judgement on a subversive pattern (“the white man’s avarice”, or modern-day Hopi 73 74 75 76

Sanner, unpublished field material. Steward 1977. Sanner, unpublished field material. Brandt 1954: 31; cf. Simmons 1942: 411. Little wonder that Bobby McFerrin’s pop-song “Don’t worry, be happy” became a hit on the Hopi reservation in 1988/89. A local punstress spontaneously changed the title into “Don’t worry be Hopi” which became the slogan on a now famous Hopi T-shirt (see Pearlstone 2006).

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dependence on cash) would be too narrow an explanation, even though it might have applied to particularly conservative members of this 1950s Hopi audience. The creative dramatic combination of themes from Hopi tradition (worry as cause of sickness) and modernisation (Western medicine, cash economy) in this example of clown humour points to a fusion of conservative and subversive meanings,77 symbolically denoting Hopi adjustment to culture change. While much of Hopi clown humour still relates to the specific cultural context and can therefore be appreciated spontaneously by cultural insiders only, the nicely crafted punchline about “money” would probably bring down the house anywhere on this planet. On this cognitive level, the joyous Hopi laughter expressed a spontaneous, selfreflexive insight into shared human weakness. It is important to note here that not everything clowns do to entertain the people is fraught with meaning. A lot of it is “just” playful action, like promoting barrel races or guessing games that include Hopi youngsters or women from the audience. In Hopi thought, laughter is a social and spiritual value in itself, hence the means to induce it are secondary to the end of creating a positive atmosphere that facilitates ritual success and the coming of the rainclouds. In the words of Herschel Talashoema: “That’s all the intention that the clowns always have, to make the people laugh. And when they are successful, boy, you can just hear those people … The plaza would just go ‘boooomm’ when they start laughing, the whole thing. It’s just as if one big thunderclap would hit that plaza.”78 The ability of a clown team to provide entertainment paired with meaning does not only depend on the finesse and relevance of the skits that negotiate actual concerns of the Hopi community. I have indicated above that clowning also thrives on the individual performer’s creativity in freshening up or adding new meaning to the traditional script or “routine”. Sometimes the tsutskut even employ a type of ritual meta-communication that reflects on the nature of masked ritual itself, using humorous wordplay as a subtle strategy to encode metamessages about katsina impersonation for the ears of uninitiated children watching the dance.79 Or they find some funny way to challenge the self-evident truth of ritual practice, as in the case of a renowned Hopi clown, who, in the middle of a hilarious performance, playfully “quit” his clown-duty, feigning indignation and shame about the fact that the people were continuously laughing at him.80

77 78 79 80

Cf. Brightman 1999. Sanner 1992: 260. See Sanner 1995. Sanner, unpublished field material.

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Image 2: Ritual clowns at the Heheya katsina dance, Orayvi, spring 1898. A fine example of clown reflexivity: while Karl von den Steinen is busy photographing the dance, a piptuqa appears, dressed as a white man and equipped with a mock camera to “photograph” the four clowns. In this photo (from a series of five), he shakes hands with the clown chief. It is important to note here that, ever since the late 1920s, the Hopi have banned outside photography of all religious ceremonies. Photo by Karl von den Steinen, courtesy Ethnologisches Museum, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Preußischer Kulturbesitz.

As liminal characters, ritual clowns are predestined to guard, manipulate, and make visible both the external and internal boundaries of the Hopi polity, defining what is acceptable and what is not. Accordingly, their “hegemonic humor”81 has inside and outside aspects that tend to merge in times of rapid culture change. Burlesque of strangers, in particular “the white man” and the institutions he has 81 Mitchell 1992.

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imposed on native culture, has been a speciality of Pueblo clowns ever since the arrival of the Spanish conquerors and friars, and continues to play an important role in negotiating Hopi ethnic and political identity (Image 2).82 As regards internal affairs, ritual clowning is – aside from the (possibly extinct) practice of grievance chants83 – the only traditional institution of Hopi society that allows the public negotiation of social tension and conflict. But the public exposure of the transgressions of individual community members is quite touchy in this kin- and clan-based society, that traditionally abhors open criticism and aggressive argument and relegates conflict to gossip and witchcraft accusations, “hidden” forms of discourse that are psycho-socially burdening and disruptive. The following consideration by Abbott Sekaquaptewa supports my view that humour serves here as a “social lubricant” that makes the exposure of individual misconduct acceptable to the community and allows a cathartic experience. “This may be just one man’s opinion, but: if it was done merely to discipline someone morally and to remind him of the teachings, and there was no laughter or anything like that involved, it would be very dull. They would just sit there and look. It would be uncomfortable for a lot of people, certainly would be unpleasant for the people who are the objects of it. So what (the clowns) then do is, they introduce things into it that are amusing, that are funny. In that way they make it entertaining as well as a form of discipline to the people who are being exposed.”84 There is no doubt about the overall intention of Hopi clowns to induce critical reflection about behaviour considered wrong or unethical (qahopi), no matter if the clown commentary aims at individual transgressions or behavioural patterns adopted by larger portions of the Hopi polity due to acculturative change, such as alcoholism, obesity, commercialism, or a neglect of the native language and traditional values. As for the efficacy of this type of social control, namely to enforce rules, most Hopi I talked to remained sceptical.85 An anonymous informant of ethnolinguist Ekkehart Malotki mused: “The clown shows the people in the plaza their faults. And we, not aware of what is wrong with us, laugh at the clown. Without thinking of ourselves we join the others in the laughter.”86

82 83 84 85

Cf. Freese 1994 [1992]; Sanner 2004. Black 1967. Sanner 1992: 261. Victoria Bricker (1973; 1980) came to similar conclusions in her study of ritual humour in Highland Chiapas. 86 Malotki 1985: 20.

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In the following section, I shall pursue the argument that the qahopi-symbolism of clowning does not unfold its pedagogic efficacy predominantly at the microlevel of ritual humour (“from skit to skit”, as it were), but at the macro-level of the overall ritual process that enacts Hopi katsina ideology. By means of performance, contemporary tsukulalwa reflects the eschatological Hopi conception of history and makes the ultimate consequences of collectively abandoning the Hopi way come alive.

The katsina Principle: Supernatural Sanction and Fertile Fusion Throughout the afternoon, the performative intensity of tsukulalwa notably increases. A good troupe of clowns will make an effort to dramatise the moral corruption that, according to Hopi teachings (navoti), led to the cataclysmic end of the former world, and has started to gain a hold over people’s lives again. Their words and deeds become more outrageous, risqué, and obscene. Sometimes they play rude jokes on victims pulled from the audience, or become impudent towards their skit-partners, the piptuqam. The farce about curing, described above, ended with the clowns robbing the white doctor of his money, tying him up, and letting him hang upside down from a house beam. In their attitude towards the dancing katsinam, the tsutskut oscillate between seriousness and irreverence. They keep sprinkling them with cornmeal, but they also mimic them or try to get them out of step. Hopi audiences typically respond to such clown-play with a blend of delight and slight indignation. As the symbolic gap between the dancing katsinam, who represent unchanging cosmic order, and the tsutskut, who depict human decadence, widens, a new force arrives on the scene. Various types of kipokkatsinam (“raider katsinam”), fearsome whip-wielders, and warriors gradually appear to warn clowns and spectators of impending doom. Owl katsina (Mongwu), their dignified leader, appears first, circling around the plaza and uttering sinister hoots. As in many cultures and somewhat unfairly, the owl is for the Hopi a harbinger of disaster and death. The clowns do not notice him, but then Owl inconspicuously summons their leader to one side of the plaza, where they squat down for a secret conversation. Mongwu returns three more times to negotiate with the tsukumongwi about the destiny of the clowns.87 Emory Sekaquaptewa aptly described the menacing atmosphere conjured up by the well-orchestrated visits of various types of kipokkatsinam: “With each of Owl’s visits more and more katsinas accompany him. They do not come as one big group, but in groups of two or three. Throughout the 87 For the sake of conciseness, I pass over the fact here that nowadays katsina dances and tsukulalwa are two-day rituals, which implies that the “punishment” of the clowns by the warrior katsinam is enacted only towards the end of the second day.

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Hans-Ulrich Sanner afternoon the tension builds with the threatening presence of the whipcarrying katsinas. All of the spectators begin to identify with the plight of the clowns. You feel like you are the one who is now being judged for all these things.”88

Suddenly appearing right behind people on a housetop, clanging their cowbells and angrily raising their yucca whips, the kipokkatsinam effectively lift the spatial separation between audience and clowns and heighten the spectators’ identification with the latter. This ritual dynamic culminates when the warrior katsinam join forces for their final raid (kiipo). Led by Owl and Crow katsina, they invade the plaza and round up the unsuspecting clowns. They throw them to the ground, tie them together and strip them, then douse them with buckets full of water and whip them with branches of willow or yucca. Other warriors furiously destroy the clowns’ “house” and go around splashing water on the spectators, too. The whole place is in uproar, a most impressive spectacle. After the kipokkatsinam have withdrawn, the clowns, soaking wet and shattered, start to recover. The plaza smells of damp soil, as after a summer shower. While they get dressed, they comment on what has happened, promise to make amends, or express gratitude for the “good rain” that poured down on them, “may it rain again”. Quite significantly, the common clowns also take revenge on their leader, who had hoped, in vain, to be spared from the ordeal, and whom they now hold responsible for their fate. Nelson gave me an example from his clowning on Second Mesa: “Did you see how we jumped that tsukumongwi and threw him in the muddy water? [Yes.] …and started filling all that mud in his pants. Because he’s the one who was telling that Mongwu to come and whip us. Because I saw him talking to that Mongwu, and I was listening to him. That’s why I told the others, ‘Let’s get him’ (laughs). So we all jumped him.”89 The conspiracy of the leaders of the warrior katsinam and clowns, and the resulting raid on the clowns is a pivotal episode of contemporary tsukulalwa. A full discussion of this polysemic symbol and its possible transformation in the historical process is beyond the scope of this paper,90 but a few aspects of reflexivity shall be noted. Hopi first-hand accounts and ethnographic interpretations vary as to the dynamics, symbolism and vocabulary of the four meetings.91 There is consensus that the clown chief represents the traditional kikmongwi (“village chief”), who has realised that his “children” (i.e. the people) have turned bad (qahopi), and therefore 88 89 90 91

Sekaquaptewa 1980: 16. Sanner 1992: 175. Cf. Ohnuki-Tierney 1987; 1990. See Sanner 1992: 167ff..

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is entitled to call upon superhuman powers to cure and purify them. Metaphorically, the episode points to Hopi “politics and collusion”92, more specifically to the politico-religious praxis of decision-making.93 Interestingly enough, there is no mention of the conspiracy in the few ethnographic sources on tsukulalwa as performed before the year 1900. Instead, they correspond in reporting that an owl katsina (a) came to the plaza to admonish the clowns, (b) was mocked and mistreated by them in return, and (c) came back with other kipokkatsinam to raid the clowns.94 Presumably, this ritual episode and the role of the owl katsina have been deliberately transformed in the twentieth century in response to the historical “Orayvi split” of 1906, an upheaval of Third Mesa social and religious order that still reverberates in Hopi society today.95 Correspondingly, the final attack on the clowns has taken on additional meaning in line with contemporary Hopi strategies of coping with acculturative pressure. Don Talayesva, born in Orayvi in 1890, knew that the clowns were whipped “in order to purify their hearts and bring rain”.96 The notion that the clowns undergo purification and curing (powatiwya, naavòotsiwnaya) is still prevalent in current Hopi interpretations, but with an additional connotation that refers to the popular discourse on Hopi prophecy. Eagle clan leader Percy Lomaquahu stated that “the clowns are telling us about our life in turmoil”.97 In Hopi eschatology, koyaanisqatsi is the stage of corruption in the life-cycle that precedes and necessitates apocalyptic destruction and the purification of life on “the Last Day” (nùutungk talöngvaniqa).98 Against the backdrop of Hopi modernisation and its negative side-effects, many people now consider tsukulalwa, and particularly its dramatic culmination, as enacting Hopi prophecy. Dan’s exegesis of the raid on the clowns is another example: “This is done there for the purpose of purifying the clowns. Up to this point (the clown ritual) conveys a message about life. Look, we have gotten out of hand here. And if we carry on like this we will eventually reach a point where we will fare like those clowns, and there we will be purified. In fact, it is a message about life.”99

92 93 94 95 96 97 98

Lomatewama 1988: 12 Whiteley 1998: 98ff.. Titiev 1971: 329; Stephen & Parsons 1936: 479f.; Voth n.d. See Whiteley 1988; 2008. Simmons 1942: 137, 279. Hopi Health Department & Dagnal & Jenkins 1985: 45, my translation. The complex and much-politicised topic of Hopi prophecies has been most competently studied by historian of religion Armin W. Geertz (see, e.g. 1994). 99 Sanner 1992: 176, 301.

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In his account of clowning, Dan also elaborated on the other aspect of the whipping-ritual that Don Talayesva mentioned: it is to procure rain, an aspect that is gradually falling into oblivion among contemporary Hopi. As he explained, the clown chief is (symbolically) paying the kipokkatsinam to come and whip the clowns. Hopi thinking by analogy implies that katsinam are obliged to send rain as a compensation for whipping humans.100 The concluding episodes of tsukulalwa manifest the reconciliation between the worlds of humans and spirit beings “with messages of fertile union, fusion, and regeneration”.101 The dancing katsinam, who have finished their last song amidst the confusion of the raid on the clowns, are presented with prayer feathers and cornmeal and addressed in solemn farewell-speeches. First their “father”, and then the clowns, one by one, tell the katsinam to return to their home, and soon come back and visit with plenty of rain. When the “father” has led the dancers from the plaza, the warrior katsinam reappear, to the clowns’ great horror. But this time they don’t carry whips, but gifts of food, and they are determined to make friends with their former antagonists. However, before each clown receives his gifts, he must perform a public act of confession. The water poured over the tsutskut during the raid has washed away their face- and body-paint, symbolically re-transforming them into ordinary Hopi. As such, they must now confess a failing of their own or that of a close relative. This is done in the form of clown-songs made up for the occasion, little stories that always involve a pun in order to provoke laughter once again.102 I see “cultural wisdom” in the fact that, after the lapse of the clown society and some of the high-order priesthood societies, the Hopi re-modelled clowning into a temporary sacral office that continuously exposes a certain portion of the male population to an intense ritual experience facilitating self-reflection, catharsis, and purification. Modern Hopi artist Michael Kabotie, who considers the clowns to be “spiritual mentors” of his life and art, has summed it up nicely: “At the beginning of the ceremony (the clown) divided the world. Now he puts that into perspective and tells the kachinas, ‘Now it’s your world and I’m going to work with you.’ It’s the whole universe. This is basically a life situation that I have found in the clown adventures. Every once in a while I, too, need to cleanse out inside. This is tsuku.”103

100 101 102 103

Crow-wing & Parsons 1925: 94; Stephen & Parsons 1936: 454. Handelman 1981: 353. See Sanner 1993. Abbott 1994: 112.

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Conclusion Recent ethnological studies assert that ritual clowning, a wide-spread phenomenon in non-Western societies, constitutes a type of meta-communication, a discourse on culture and society by means of performance. The case study of Hopi clowning presented here lends support to fresh approaches in ritual theory that point to the dynamic and reflexive properties of rituals and their potential for change,104 and helps to refute the long-held notion of (religious) ritual as an empty conformity and repressive instrument that virtually excludes communicative action and selfreflection, a notion proposed by such eminent thinkers as Jürgen Habermas and Niklas Luhmann.105 Because of their capacity to embrace, in their motley appearance, contradictory attributes such as “serious” and “comic”, “sacred” and “profane”, and to vitally oscillate between them,106 ritual clowns are important agents of reflexivity, and theirs is a particularly interesting kind of reflexivity, because it employs various, often hilarious, types of humour and entertainment. Given the traditional fixation in ethnology on “serious” aspects of culture and society and the deplorable omission of humour and laughter as fundamental expressions of the conditio humana in most anthropological textbooks and glossaries,107 ritual clowning, at least, has been theoretically addressed in a number of ethnologically, sociologically, and psychologically oriented studies since the early twentieth century. Most of these studies have treated humour as a by-product and reduced the clown to a functional safety-valve in the service of social conservativism. In the wake of approaches to an anthropology of performance, more recent studies of ritual clowning have emancipated the role of humour and discovered the heuristic significance of the clown who “unerringly directs the ethnographer’s attention to contested views of social life and cultural belief.”108 My use of the mirror metaphor in interpreting the Hopi clown-drama (tsukulalwa) rests on the Western metaphysical tradition of folly and its Narrenspiegel that reflects mundane social reality in both distorted and sharply illuminated fashion,109 and blesses humanity with “redeeming laughter”, as the sociologist of religion Peter Berger called it.110 Moreover, the metaphor has been found appropriate to capture the meaning and effects of ritual clowning by non-Hopi scholars and Hopi performance theorists alike. Tsukulalwa belongs among the universal genres of ritual and theatrical performances that serve as a cultural-aesthetic mirror, 104 105 106 107 108 109 110

Kreinath & Hartung & Deschner 2004; Kreinath & Snoek & Stausberg 2006. Habermas 1981: vol. 2, 282ff.; Luhmann 1984: 613. Handelman 1981. Cf. Apte 1985: 23; Mitchell 1992: 6f. Ibid.: 35. Zijderveld 1982. See Berger 1998.

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facilitating communal self-reflection and cultural regeneration.111 As Hopi thinkers of the older generation put it, tsukulalwa “conveys a message about life” and “depicts our way of life”. Younger Hopi intellectuals and artists, such as Ramson Lomatewama, Victor Masayesva Jr., Rosanda Suetopka, and Michael Kabotie have adopted the Western mirror metaphor and transmitted (Eagle clan) clowning tradition to contemporary (self-)reflexive media like literature, video, and fine art.112 In a way, they oscillate between an intellectual, somewhat secularised view of their own tradition, and the humble sacred duty to act the clown in a dusty plaza, eventually getting whipped and drenched by katsina-warriors. Simultaneously, visual images of the black-and-white striped koyaala clown have been employed by local media, such as reservation newspapers or the Hopi radio station KUYIFM, unmistakably denoting communication, criticism, and commentary. While Abbott Sekaquaptewa and other “progressive” Eagle clan elders facilitated such a use, they were also deeply concerned that the sacred meaning of the clown might fall into oblivion among younger Hopi, who tend to view him as just a funny character. In his comprehensive sociological study of “traditional folly”, Anton Zijderveld113 regretfully asserted the lapse of ceremonial clowning in Native North America as a result of modernisation. The Hopi case study suggests that, as a general proposition, Zijderveld’s thesis was too pessimistic,114 and that modern culture change can even supply the ancient tradition of sacred laughter with new social relevance. Tsukulalwa continues to dramatically juxtapose the imperfection of human nature and the ideal morality of the spirit world with the ritual intention to effect reconciliation and fusion so that life will be renewed. As a polysemic symbol,115 clowning reflects historic change, both in its overall script and its up-tothe-minute humorous commentary, making it meaningful and digestible to its audience. Significant changes in the meaning of ritual polysemes over time become visible when early ethnographic reports on Hopi clowning are carefully compared with current performative practice. Broadly speaking, these modifications reflect a historic shift of emphasis in Hopi thought, from an essential need to procure precipitation and fertility in a precarious natural environment, to an essential need to preserve ethnic and cultural identity in a socio-political environment dominated by Anglo-American institutions. To give an example, the frequent comic imitations of sexual intercourse and the playful use of urine in (late) nineteenth-century clowning reflected the age-old importance of the fertility concept, and were, along with gluttonous, aggressive, irresponsible, and egoistic demeanour, an aspect of the 111 112 113 114 115

Turner & Turner 1985. See Lomatewama 1988; Masayesva 1988. Zijderveld 1982. Cf. Berger 1998: 77ff. Ohnuki-Tierney 1987.

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clowns’ qahopi portrayal of humanity in a pre-moral, trickster-like state, a vital chaos that had to be ritually tamed and harnessed by the whipping katsinam. After a history of suppression by white missionaries, teachers, and bureaucrats, sexually explicit clown behaviour has re-emerged with different connotations. Against the backdrop of contemporary Hopi political factionalism, the blatant obscenity sometimes displayed nowadays by clowns in traditionalist strongholds like Hotvela or Old Orayvi denotes symbolic defiance of acculturative pressures and the Tribal Council. The manifold issues and effects of Hopi culture change are negotiated in the topical satires of clowns and piptuqam, but history has also affected the traditional form or script of tsukulalwa. This is quite obvious in the political symbolism of the “conspiracy” between Owl katsina and clown chief and the ensuing raid on the clowns. The rain-making connotation of lashing the clowns has evidently receded in response to the general decline in Hopi agriculture, while the aspect of “purification” has taken on new meaning in response to the changes of Hopi society in the twentieth century, directing attention to the eschatological consequences of collectively abandoning the “Hopi way”. Consequently, for many Hopi of the present, tsukulalwa is a dramatic illustration of Hopi prophecy. Questions about the diverse modalities for the emergence of change in ritual clowning practice, e.g. through deliberate decision-making, constitute a field for further study.116 At any rate, Hopi clowns of the early twenty-first century continue to adapt the ancient mythical model to the current needs and concerns of their communities, providing original entertainment, moral guidance, and redeeming laughter.

116 Cf. Kreinath & Hartung & Deschner 2004.

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References Abbott, Lawrence (ed.) 1994. I Stand in the Center of the Good: Interviews with Contemporary Native American Artists. Lincoln, London: University of Nebraska Press. Apte, Mahadev L. 1985. Humor and Laughter: An Anthropological Approach. Ithaca, London: Cornell University Press. Babcock, Barbara A. 1978. “Too Many, too Few: Ritual Modes of Signification”. Semiotica 23: 291–302. — 1982. “Ritual Undress and the Comedy of Self and Other: Bandelier’s The Delight Makers”. In: Jay Ruby (ed.). A Crack in the Mirror: Reflexive Perspectives in Anthropology. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press: 187–203. — 1984. “Arrange Me into Disorder: Fragments and Reflections on Ritual Clowning”. In: John J. MacAloon (ed.). Rite, Drama, Festival, Spectacle. Rehearsals toward a Theory of Cultural Performance. Philadelphia: Institute for the Study of Human Issues: 102–128. — 1986. “Pueblo Clowning and Pueblo Clay: From Icon to Caricature in Cochití Figurative Ceramics, 1875–1900”. Visible Religion. Annual for Religious Iconography 4–5: 280–300. Bakhtin, Mikhail 1984. Rabelais and His World. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Berger, Peter L. 1998. Erlösendes Lachen: Das Komische in der menschlichen Erfahrung. Berlin, New York: de Gruyter. Black, Robert A. 1967. “Hopi Grievance Chants: A Mechanism of Social Control”. In: Dell H. Hymes & William Elmer Bittle & Harry Hoijer (eds.). Studies in Southwestern Ethnolinguistics. Meaning and History in the Languages of the American Southwest. The Hague, Paris: Mouton & Co: 54–67. Brandt, Richard B. 1954. Hopi Ethics. A Theoretical Analysis: Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Bricker, Victoria Reifler 1973. Ritual Humor in Highland Chiapas. Austin, London: University of Texas Press. — 1980. “The Function of Humor in Zinacantan”. Journal of Anthropological Research 36/4: 411–418. Brightman, Robert 1999. “Traditions of Subversion and the Subversion of Tradition: Cultural Criticism in Maidu Clown Performances”. American Anthropologist 101/2: 272–287. Bunzel, Ruth L. 1932. “Introduction to Zuni Ceremonialism”. In: Matthew Williams Stirling & Smithsonian Institution, Bureau of American Ethnology (ed.). Fortyseventh Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1929–1930. Washington: U.S. G.P.O.: 467–544. Clifford, James & George E. Marcus (eds.) 1986. Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography (A School of American Research Advanced Seminar). Berkeley: University of California Press.

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Crow-wing & Elsie Worthington Clews Parsons (ed.) 1925. A Pueblo Indian Journal 1920–1921. Introduction and Notes By Elsie Clews Parsons. Menasha: American Anthropological Association (Memoirs of the American Anthropological Association 32). Crumrine, N. Ross 1969. “Čapakoba, the Mayo Easter Ceremonial Impersonator: Explanations of Ritual Clowning”. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 8: 1– 22. Douglas, Mary 1968. “The Social Control of Cognition: Some Factors in Joke Perception”. Man (N.S.) 3/3: 361–376. Freese, Alison 1994 [1992]. Send in the Clowns: An Ethnohistorical Analysis of the Sacred Clowns’ Role in Cultural Boundary Maintenance Among the Pueblo Indians. [PhD dissertation, University of New Mexico]. Ann Arbor: University Microfilms. Geertz, Armin W. 1994. The Invention of Prophecy: Continuity and Meaning in Hopi Indian Religion. Berkeley: University of California Press. Gluckman, Max 1954. Rituals of Rebellion in South-East Africa. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Habermas, Jürgen 1981. Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns (2 vols.). Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Handelman, Don 1981. “The Ritual-Clown: Attributes and Affinities”. Anthropos 76: 321–370. — 2004. “Re-Framing Ritual”. In: Jens Kreinath & Constance Hartung & Annette Deschner (eds.). The Dynamics of Changing Rituals: The Transformation of Religious Rituals within Their Social and Cultural Context. New York: Peter Lang, 9– 20 (Toronto Studies in Religion 29). Hartmann, Horst 1978. Kachina-Figuren der Hopi-Indianer. Berlin: Museum für Völkerkunde (Veröffentlichungen des Museums für Völkerkunde Berlin, Neue Folge 36). Hereniko, Vilsoni 1995. Woven Gods. Female Clowns and Power in Rotuma. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press (Pacific Islands Monograph Series 12). Hieb, Louis A. 1986 [1972]. The Hopi Ritual Clown: Life As It Should Not Be. [PhD dissertation, Princeton University]. Ann Arbor: University Microfilms. — 1979. “The Ritual Clown: Humor and Ethics”. In: Edward Norbeck & Claire R. Farrer (eds.). Forms of Play of Native North Americans. St. Paul: West Publishing, 171–188. Honigmann, John J. 1942. “An Interpretation of the Social-Psychological Functions of the Ritual Clown”. Character and Personality. An International Psychological Quarterly 10: 220–226. Hopi Dictionary Project 1998. Hopi Dictionary. Hopìikwa Lavàytutuveni. A HopiEnglish Dictionary of the Third Mesa Dialect, with an English-Hopi Finder List and a Sketch of Hopi Grammar. Compiled by The Hopi Dictionary Project, Bureau of Applied Research in Anthropology, University of Arizona. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.

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Hopi Health Department & Cynthia Dagnal & Leigh Jenkins (eds.). 1985. Report of the 1984 Fourth Annual Hopi Mental Health Conference: Katsi. Happiness, Health and Peace. Kykotsmovi: Hopi Health Department, The Hopi Tribe. Kabotie, Fred & Bill Belknap 1977. Fred Kabotie: Hopi Indian Artist. An Autobiography Told With Bill Belknap. Flagstaff: Museum of Northern Arizona with Northland Press. Kapferer, Bruce (ed.) 1984 [1979]. The Power of Ritual: Transition, Transformation and Transcendence in Ritual Practice. Adelaide: Department of Anthropology, the University of Adelaide (Social Analysis: Special Issue Series 1). Köpping, Klaus-Peter & Bernhard Leistle & Michael Rudolph (eds.) 2006. Ritual and Identity: Performative Practices as Effective Transformations of Social Reality? Hamburg: LIT Verlag. Kreinath, Jens & Constance Hartung & Annette Deschner (eds.) 2004. The Dynamics of Changing Rituals: The Transformation of Religious Rituals within Their Social and Cultural Context. New York: Peter Lang (Toronto Studies in Religion 29). Kreinath, Jens & Jan Snoek & Michael Stausberg (eds.) 2006. Theorizing Rituals: Topics, Approaches, Concepts. Leiden, Boston: J. Brill. Levine, Jacob 1969. “Regression in Primitive Clowning”. In: Jacob Levine (ed.). Motivation in Humor. New York: Atherton: 167–178. Lomatewama, Ramson 1988. “A Hopi Mirror”. Native Peoples. The Journal of the Heard Museum (Summer 1988): 8–13. Luhmann, Niklas 1984. Soziale Systeme. Grundriss einer allgemeinen Theorie. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Malotki, Ekkehart 1985. Gullible Coyote – Una’ihu: A Bilingual Collection of Hopi Coyote Stories. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. Marcus, George E. & Michael M.J. Fischer 1986. Anthropology as Cultural Critique: An Experimental Moment in the Human Sciences. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Masayesva, Victor 1988. Ritual Clowns. [Video film]. Hotevilla: Is Productions. Mitchell, William E. 1992. “Introduction: Mother Folly in the Islands”. In: William E. Mitchell (ed.). Clowning as Critical Practice: Performance Humor in the South Pacific. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press: 3–57 (ASAO Monograph No. 13). Norbeck, Edward 1961. Religion in Primitive Society. New York: Harper. Ohnuki-Tierney, Emiko 1987. The Monkey as Mirror: Symbolic Transformations in Japanese History and Ritual. Princeton: Princeton University Press. — 1990. “The Monkey as Self in Japanese Culture”. In: Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney (ed.). Culture Through Time. Anthropological Approaches. Stanford: Stanford University Press: 128–153. Ortiz, Alfonso (ed.) & William C. Sturtevant (general ed.) 1979. Handbook of North American Indians, Volume 9: Southwest (part 1). Washington: Smithsonian Institution.

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Parsons, Elsie Worthington Clews & Ralph L. Beals 1934. “The Sacred Clowns of the Pueblo and Mayo-Yaqui Indians”. American Anthropologist 36/4: 491–514. Pearlstone, Zena 2006. “Tsakurshovi: The Little Shop that Did”. American Indian Art Magazine 32/1: 58–65, 92–93. Rao, Ursula & Klaus-Peter Köpping 2000. „Einleitung. Die ‘performative Wende’: Leben-Ritual-Theater“. In: Klaus-Peter Köpping & Ursula Rao (eds.). Im Rausch des Rituals. Gestaltung und Transformation der Wirklichkeit in körperlicher Performanz. Hamburg: LIT Verlag. Sanner, Hans-Ulrich 1992. Tsukulalwa: Die Clownzeremonie der Hopi als Spiegel ihrer Kultur im Wandel. Frankfurt am Main: Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität [PhD dissertation on microfiche]. — 1993. “‘Another Home Run for the Black Sox’: Humor and Creativity in Hopi Ritual Clown Songs”. In: Arnold Krupat (ed.). New Voices in Native American Literary Criticism. Washington, London: Smithsonian Institution Press: 149–173. — 1995. “‘Kachina Coding’: Ritual Humor as Ritual Metacommunication”. European Review of Native American Studies 9/1: 9–14. — 2004. „‘Are you Hitler’s son?’ Bilder der Fremden im Spiegel der HopiRitualclowns“. In: Iris Därmann & Steffi Hobuß & Ulrich Lölke (eds.). Konversionen. Fremderfahrungen in ethnologischer und interkultureller Perspektive. Amsterdam, New York: Rodopi: 35–78 (Studien zur interkulturellen Philosophie 13). Schechner, Richard 1985. Between Theatre and Anthropology. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. — & Susanne Winnacker (transl.) 1990. Theater-Anthropologie: Spiel und Ritual im Kulturvergleich. Reinbek: Rowohlt. — & Willa Appel (eds.) 1990. By Means of Performance: Intercultural Studies of Theatre and Ritual. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. — 1993. The Future of Ritual: Writings on Culture and Performance. London, New York: Routledge. Schmidt, Bettina & Mark Münzel (eds.) 1998. Ethnologie und Inszenierung: Ansätze zur Theaterethnologie. Marburg: Curupira (Reihe Curupira 5). Secakuku, Alph H. 1995. Hopi Kachina Tradition: Following the Sun and Moon. Flagstaff: Northland Publishing, in cooperation with The Heard Museum. Sekaquaptewa, Emory 1980. “One More Smile for a Hopi Clown”. In: Larry Evers (ed.). The South Corner of Time. Hopi Navajo Papago Yaqui Tribal Literature. Tucson: University of Arizona Press: 14–17. Simmons, Leo W. (ed.) 1942. Sun Chief. The Autobiography of a Hopi Indian: New Haven: Yale University Press. Spencer, Victoria 2001. “Intellectual and Cultural Property Rights and Appropriation of Hopi Culture”. In: Zena Pearlstone (ed.). Katsina. Commodified and Appropriated Images of Hopi Supernaturals. Los Angeles: UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History: 170–177. Spicer, Edward H. 1971. “Persistent Cultural Systems: A Comparative Study of Identity Systems”. Science 174/4011: 795–800.

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Stausberg, Michael 2006. “Reflexivity”. In: Jens Kreinath & Jan Snoek & Michael Stausberg (eds.). Theorizing Rituals: Topics, Approaches, Concepts. Leiden, Boston: J. Brill: 627–646. Stephen, Alexander M. & Elsie Worthington Clews Parsons (ed.) 1936. Hopi Journal of Alexander M. Stephen (two vols.). New York: Columbia University Press (Columbia University Contributions to Anthropology 23). Steward, Julian H. 1977. “The Ceremonial Buffoon of the American Indian”. In: Julian H. Steward & Jane C. Steward & Robert F. Murphy (eds.). Evolution and Ecology. Essays on Social Transformation by Julian H. Steward. Urbana, London: University of Illinois Press 347–365. Titiev, Mischa 1971. “Some Aspects of Clowning Among the Hopi Indians”. In: Mario D. Zamora & J. Michael Mahar & Henry Orenstein (eds.). Themes in Culture: Essays in Honor of Morris E. Opler. Quezon City: Kayumangei: 326–336. Turner, Victor Witter 1967. “Betwixt and Between: The Liminal Period in Rites de Passage”. In: Victor W. Turner. The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual. Ithaca: Cornell University Press: 93–111. — 1969. The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure. Chicago: Aldine. — & Edith L.B. Turner 1982. “Religious Celebrations”. In: Victor Witter Turner (ed.). Celebration: Studies in Festivity and Ritual. Washington, London: Smithsonian Institution Press: 201–219. — & Edith L.B. Turner (ed.) 1985. On the Edge of the Bush: Anthropology as Experience. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. Voth, Heinrich R. n.d. “Hopi Photos in the H.R. Voth Collection, nos. 750 & 751” [H.R. Voth Collection, Mennonite Library and Archives]. North Newton. Whiteley, Peter M. 1988. Deliberate Acts: Changing Hopi Culture Through the Oraibi Split. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. — 1998. Rethinking Hopi Ethnography. Washington, London: Smithsonian Institution Press. — 2008. The Orayvi Split: A Hopi Transformation (Part 1: Structure and History, Part 2: The Documentary Record). New York: American Museum of Natural History (Anthropological Papers of the American Museum of Natural History 87). Zijderveld, Anton 1982. Reality in a Looking-Glass: Rationality Through an Analysis of Traditional Folly. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Hege Irene Markussen

Ritual Criticism and the Alevi Cem Ritual In present-day Turkey, Alevi communities often define themselves in relation to cultural centres, either in newly constructed buildings or in renovated dervish compounds. These cultural centres are part of transnational associational networks working for minority rights and the promotion of the social and political visibility of Alevis, both in Turkey and in Europe.1 Locally, each centre offers religious and cultural activities aimed at educating coming generations of Alevis in their traditional beliefs and practices.2 The people attending seminars, courses, rituals, and other activities organised by these centres are often Alevis who themselves, or whose parents or grandparents, have migrated from rural areas in eastern or central Anatolia. Since the 1950s, the Anatolian countryside has lost the majority of its inhabitants through processes of urbanisation and international work-migration. For Alevis, migration to urban centres like Istanbul has often meant a disruption of traditional religious and cultural practices. Since the 1990s, the establishment of Alevi organisations and cultural centres has increased the visibility of Alevis in Turkish society. One important aspect of this revival is the importance given to educating the younger generations of Alevis in traditional Alevilik.3 Needless to say, historiography plays a significant role in this education, and changes related to rural-urban migration are especially important. Between 2002 and 2004, I conducted fieldwork in such a community in Istanbul, attending courses and seminars and becoming a frequent participant in the weekly cem ritual. The Alevi cem ritual was, for this group, a weekly occasion on which traditional religious leaders (dedes), and teachers of courses and writers of pseudo-scientific literature on Alevi matters, came together with Alevi visitors in worship. It was also an occasion on which the leaders criticised current ritual practices in contemporary urban Alevi communities, and celebrated the authenticity of 1 The existence of Alevi centres in Turkey is, in many ways, a natural outcome of the social infrastructure created by international migration. Owing to the great number of Turkish migrants arriving in Germany as guest-workers in the 1960s, Germany is the country in which Alevi associational networks are most developed. For the transnational nature of these Alevi centres and the general Alevi mobilisation of which they are a part, see Şahin 2001. 2 Traditional Alevi beliefs and practices include Sufi mysticism and Shia Islamic reverence for Ali ibn Abi Talib and the Twelve Imams, as well as practices from Turkish rural heritage. 3 Alevilik can be translated as Alevism or Aleviness.

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“the good old days”. By means of an account of one such occasion during my fieldwork, in this article I aim to present how the criticism of current ritual practices rests on ideas of the rural and the past as better and more authentic than current urban practices. Using the concept of ritual criticism (borrowed from Ronald Grimes4), I also aim to show how this criticism was not only a part of the cem ritual, but also a practice which religious leaders, cem participants, and non-participants had in common. Ritual criticism may be normative, but it can also be embedded in descriptions of ritual change. In this article, I also refer to the concept of “transfer of ritual”, introduced by Langer and his colleagues at Heidelberg University, for my analysis of Alevi ritual criticism. This concept is, in many respects, similar to the criticisms presented by the dedes, and will thus represent scholarly contributions to ritual criticism in this article.5

A Performance of the Alevi Cem Towards the end of spring 2004, a special happening was organised for the visitors in the centre. Dertli Divani, who was a dede and devoted poet and singer, was invited to conduct a cem ritual. Dertli Divani was highly respected among the Alevis for several reasons. His poems had been published in newspapers and magazines, his albums were widely distributed, and his musical performances attracted a lot of people. The visitors were thrilled about the opportunity to meet this famous singer and come together in worship with this pious and knowledgeable man. Cem rituals are not uniform, and, although they are liturgical and consist of more or less the same elements, there is no common liturgy for the choice of prayers and hymns, or for the order in which the various elements are to be performed. Consequently, the weekly cems in this specific centre differed in details from the weekly cems conducted in other Alevi communities, and none of these were identical with the ideal cem after which they were all modelled. Since the cem conducted by Dertli Divani was a special happening, it also differed from the cem rituals the congregation usually attended. Although Dertli Divani made an effort to follow the local sequential order of the various performances, his choices of prayers and hymns and his mere presence made a considerable impact on the ritual. Throughout the cem he explained the ritual actions and their symbolic meanings – and he frequently referred to differences and similarities with an ideally-conducted cem. This fact made his performance an ideal source of illustrations of the cem ritual and the various ways of performing (in) it.

4 Grimes 1980. 5 Langer et al. 2006.

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Establishing Consent in the Ritual Community After some friendly small-talk at the beginning of the ritual, Dertli Divani plugged in his electric saz,6 adjusted the microphone, and announced that he would like to perform one of his own songs, if the congregation would allow it. Judging from the anticipation in the air, many of the participants had been hoping for such a miniconcert within the fixed boundaries of the ritual. After a moving performance involving humming, tears, and praises to Allah, he gave a speech focusing on the social aspect of the cem ritual: “In our belief, there is no meaning in gathering in worship without uniting our hearts and establishing peace in the community. First of all, the people gathering for the cem must trust each other, that is, they have to be at ease and in agreement with each other. That is, by our hand, belly, and tongue. We can achieve conciliation (rızalık) only after securing consent and contentment between us, and then we may start the cem. Everyone should embrace the persons to the right and left of them. This is the peace symbol of our community and it is our duty to make sure that this unity exists.”7 As we all embraced the people within our reach, we enacted the vows of agreement and confirmed our state of harmonic coexistence. Rıza is a central term within Alevilik. Literally defined as “consent, assent, approval” and “the fact of being pleased or contented”, it also connotes the acceptance of the will of God, and the reciprocal contentment of the human soul and God.8 In Alevi terminology, this reciprocity is expressed in the addition of the constructed term rızalık, which means the state of consent and contentment, and is something the believer may receive after earning God’s approval and consent by accepting the divine will unconditionally. As a heart-searching act, the person comes to terms with him- or herself in the context of the cem ritual. However, self-examination is not only related to personal dedication to God, but has an important social aspect as well. As an Alevi one should uphold certain moral standards of conduct, encapsulated in the much cherished creed “Be master of your hand, belly, and tongue!” (Eline, beline, diline sahip ol!). With his or her hands, the Alevi should avoid actions like stealing and physically hurting others, but should also promote peace and the creation of beauty. The belly symbolises the importance of integrity and virtue, and the significance of production within the boundaries of the family, and the tongue is a reminder of always telling the truth. If a person fails to behave in a proper way, and if he or she has fallen into conflict with anyone in the community, he or she has to approach the dede and ask for 6 A long-necked lute. A traditional instrument in Anatolia. 7 Cem ritual May 2004. 8 Lewis Encyclopaedia of Islam 2nd Edition: riḍā.

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his help in solving the conflict, and re-establishing agreement and consent. The place to do this is in the cem ritual called görgü cemi,9 where the dede has the authority to perform as both the mediator and the judge in all kinds of disputes between the members of the community. Before the performance of the various duties within the ritual, the dede will ask the congregation if there are any disagreements or conflicts among the participants, and he will urge them to come forward and explain their problems in front of the congregation in order to solve the problems. To further explain the importance of admitting and solving both existing and potential conflicts with fellow worshippers, Dertli Divani referred to the idea of internal ritual ablution, and reminded the congregation that being morally clean is as important as the physical ablution they had performed by the fountain before entering the room: “In order to conduct this cem, there should be no disagreements or conflicts among the participants. I therefore ask you, if there is anyone here that is angry with, offended by, or in conflict with someone; you should step forward and let us know, so that we can solve the problems together. I tell you that if you don’t come forward with your heart, the dirt will remain inside of you. You may fill the bottle with the dirt inside, cork it, and throw it away. You may leave it in the Sea of Marmara for seven years, and you may take it out and clean it with forty cauldrons of soap. It will still not be clean.”10 Unexpectedly a middle-aged man caught the dede’s attention and declared: “Without knowing it, I think I have broken the heart of my friend Ibrahim”. The sudden confession aroused confusion among the participants; some were looking at each other with anxiety, others started whispering among themselves. The dede called both parties to the centre of the ritual space, and they both bowed in front of him. As the one confessing tried to explain the situation and ask for forgiveness, the man called Ibrahim became angry and raised his voice, causing the whole situation to become rather unclear. Soon both men were speaking at the same time, cutting across the words of Dertli Divani, who had also joined in the debate. The congregation became extremely anxious and the whispering increased. The one confessing was asking for forgiveness, but Ibrahim could not see the point of discussing the matter in front of the whole congregation, and expressed himself as feeling that he appeared a figure of contempt. He downplayed the conflict and pointed to the fact that both men had been regularly participating in the cem ritual 9 Görgü literally means good manners, experiencing, or witnessing. Shankland translates it alternatively as “to be seen” or “appear” (Shankland 2004 :41). In the context of the Alevi cem, it denotes the ritual questioning of participants in conflict in order to achieve consent and harmony in the community. 10 Cem ritual May 2004.

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for the twenty years the conflict had lasted. The two men went on talking at cross purposes, until Dertli Divani raised his voice and demanded that the men solve their dispute. The one confessing threw a 20–million-lira bill11 in front of the dede as a token of his quest for forgiveness and rızalık, and Ibrahim forgave him verbally, but refused to come up with any money. Even so, this was enough for Dertli Divani to reconcile the two men, and he closed the peacemaking with a short prayer. Again, everyone was ordered to embrace those sitting close to them, while the dede made some reflections on the peacemaking event: “Everyone, look how wonderful this is! Two of our older uncles came forward and shared their sentiments with us. First they opened up their inner feelings and then they made peace. That’s the beauty of our path. If we follow this road there will soon be no more problems to solve. No more problems to solve. Well, in reality, mistakes are made in the performance of the cem rituals, but you should all forgive! I ask all of you for forgiveness! The quality of these cem rituals only counts for self-education and doesn’t offer anything beyond that. This is, of course, not real görgü cems; if it was, people would interrogate each other. You would know each other’s good and bad qualities, people would talk, and it would become a subject of gossip. In such a community everyone would control each other. Our people come to the cem in the same way as others go to their places of worship, and that’s the only place where you see your fellow participants. I mean, they listen to the saz and the chanted hymns, and they listen to the prayers and the speeches of the dedes. And then they just leave.”12 Having participated in close to fifty cem rituals, I was thinking that the words of Dertli Divani were absolutely true. The dede would always mention the importance of rızalık in his speeches, but I had never before experienced an actual peacemaking event, and, judging from the reaction of the rest of the participants, it was not a scene they were used to, either.13 Compared to the image of the traditional görgü cems, the ritual has lost its significance as an annual ritual of social renewal, with its moral and spiritual accounting of the villagers’ actions, peacemaking between people in conflict, and vows for the year to come. In the centre, the cem is performed on a weekly basis for approximately one or two hours. It has its regular prayers, hymns, and rites, and the only segment that is open to adjustment is the speech of the dede. Traditional elements that might produce unplanned events, such as peacemaking, are generally left out. Indeed, the weekly cem has, in many 11 At that time approximately 10 Euros. 12 Cem ritual May 2004. 13 Some months later, in a cem ritual in Ankara, the same confusion arose among the participants when a girl called her parents to come forward to the dede and solve their marital problems.

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respects, adopted a symbolic character, and, as Dertli Divani further elaborated, both the annual accounting of the year and the peacemaking events are today revered as special authentic traits of Anatolian Alevilik: “Look what an exemplary cem this has become! You got up and came forward with your problems, and, as you all witnessed, peace was achieved. In the old days, in the remote corners of Anatolia, when the dede went to a village, whatever disputes about land, fields, or material possessions had been aroused in the course of that year would be brought to the görgü cemi and with the help of the dede, it would all be solved there and then. After that, the dede would perform the ritual duties and leave for the next village. The dede would travel between villages and stay for three days, five days, a week, maybe as long as ten days. Unfortunately, if I say that there are no more gifted people left in our villages, I would be right because a lot of people have migrated and consequently, the dedelik institution has degenerated. In the past, it was always knowledgeable people performing these duties, then, after most people got caught up in the struggle to earn a living, the dedes could not educate themselves and they ended up not sufficiently qualified. Now we have entered an era where we can pull ourselves together, and, if our hopes are solidly based and complete, we can come to the point where we are able to once again conduct such görgü cems. We hope that, with God’s permission, we will get back to where we were.”14 Rural and Urban Cem Rituals While we were in the cem evi listening to Dertli Divani’s complaints, some of our friends were dozing in the garden. One of them was Burak, an unemployed man in his thirties who used to help out in the centre. Although he had only once in his childhood experienced parts of a village cem, and had never participated in any of the weekly cems in the centre, he had strong opinions on what he called the degeneration of the cem ritual. During my visits, he shared his thoughts and feelings on this topic through hours of interviews and conversations. It became a standing joke between us as every Sunday I would ask him to join the cem with me, and he would raise his eyebrows and reply with a smile: “You know me… I never have and I never will”. During our conversations, Burak claimed that his fellow community members were participating in the cem rituals without being aware of the authentic, religious depth of their actions. He therefore characterised the weekly cem in the centre as nothing more than a celebration of Alevi folklore. He claimed that the village cems had once been genuine, because the rituals had been intense, emotional experiences for the participants. He had a double reason for not joining the 14 Cem ritual May 2004.

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cem rituals: first of all, he did not want to contribute to a process of further degeneration of Alevi worship, and secondly, he did not consider himself religious enough to be a worthy participant in an authentically performed cem ritual. Burak often compared village cems with contemporary urban performances of the cem ritual. His descriptions of the village cems always rested on the assumption that they had a level of authenticity that the contemporary urban cems could do nothing but model. For him, the authentic cem rituals were places for both individual and collective religious experiences. Dertli Divani shared the same view on the concepts of village-city performances of the cem, but his notion of authenticity was based on the responsibility of the dedes to achieve consent and harmony within the Alevi community. He blamed the lack of educated dedes for the degeneration of this social aspect of Alevi worship. Burak and Dertli Divani shared their perceptions of village cems with the rest of the community. The prevalent understanding of rural and urban cems was that the village cems were synonymous with the way cems were conducted in the villages in the past. More specifically, “the past” was mostly an unspecified reference to the time before migration, and could therefore vary according to each person’s migration history. Rural authenticity and urban reality were thus divided along the lines of past and present, before and after migration. As such, current cem performances were looked upon as contemporary copies of village cems, and explained and legitimised by changes related to migration and experienced as inevitable. Ritual life in rural areas in Turkey today, or among Alevis in urban areas before the massive migration waves, were not integrated in the critical discussions of ritual change.15

Ritual Criticism My approach to the cem ritual is, to a large extent, in line with the understanding of “ritual” put forward by Ronald Grimes in his book Ritual Criticism.16 For him, a ritual is more than a collection or sequence of ritual building-blocks called rites, because it refers to “the general idea of which a rite is a specific instance. As such, ritual does not ‘exist’, even though it is what we must try to define; ritual is an idea scholars formulate”.17 I propose that the existence of the cem as a ritual performed every week in the centre does not undermine the construction of a “cem ritual” as a general idea, of which the actual performance is a part. The cem is not constructed and formulated by scholars alone. The ideas of how the cem should be conducted, 15 There seems to be a silent agreement that there were no Alevis in the larger cities before the migration waves of the 1960s. The urban history and character of the Bektaşi Sufi order, however, is commonly referred to. For more information on the Bektaşi order, see among others Birge 1937, Popovic & Veinstein 1995 and Soileau 2001; 2005. 16 Grimes 1980. 17 Grimes 1980 :9.

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how it was conducted in the villages in the past, and how it is conducted in the contemporary urban areas, are all presented as criticism of the current cem performances by community members themselves. As a specific way of communicating ritual knowledge, such criticism may be passably understood within Grimes’ concept of ritual criticism. In his words, “ritual criticism is the interpretation of a rite or ritual system with a view to implicating its practice”.18 Below I quote his further elaboration on crucial aspects of this particular kind of criticism: “… Part of the work of ritual criticism is reflecting on the ways participants and observers decide that one way of doing a rite is more effective or appropriate than some other way. Ritual criticism may include evaluative judgments, but only insofar as it takes into account the circumstances and contexts in which ritual knowledge … is produced.”19 One important characteristic of ritual criticism is thus that it implies reflection on how people decide in favour of a particular ritual model, and not just evaluation of the ritual itself. In my opinion, the speculations of Dertli Divani and Burak on the reasons for what they consider the degeneration of the cem ritual are both excellent examples of such reflection. For Dertli Divani, the dedes are the ones to decide how the cem ritual is to be performed, and, because of ignorance and lack of education, they choose to become ritual specialists without sufficient knowledge and competence to lead communities or guide their followers in moral and social matters. Burak, on the other hand, blames the people attending the cem for participating without immersion, and thus ending up joining a common celebration of Alevi culture, instead of engaging in serious Alevi worship. The other aspect highlighted by Grimes is the importance of the context of production of ritual knowledge, that has to be taken into account in evaluative judgements of a ritual. Although Dertli Divani and Burak present different reasons for the deterioration of the cem ritual, they both contextualise the authentic performances of the cem and the attempts to model this ideal within the dual concepts of rural-urban and past-present. Commemoration of Rural Authenticity Ritual criticism is a shared practice among ritual participants and others not directly involved in the ritual. The criticism presented by the dedes during the cem, however, has a special role in the community, as it is an integral part of the cem ritual. It is very common for the dedes to address the degeneration of the cem in their speeches, not only during the small-talk before they start the various ritual services, but here and there throughout the whole ritual. The ritual criticism they 18 Ibid: 16. 19 Ibid: 16–17.

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present is therefore not to be understood as a rite in a sequence of ritual buildingblocks, but rather a collection of judgements, which could be assembled under the heading “the dede’s comments”. Whether the incorporation of ritual criticism as a part of the cem ritual itself is an innovation, or whether there has always been room for such criticism, is hard to tell. We might think that it is unique to the urban context, since the migration from the villages to the cities seems to mark the distinction between the village cems and contemporary cems, at least in Alevi historiography. On the other hand, there might always have been room for the evaluation and improvement of ritual practices in accordance with an idea of what the ideal cem should look like.20 As a ritual action, ritual criticism is not only a part, but a constituent element of the cem ritual. It is also the crucial link between the teachings within the ritual context and the transmission of ritual knowledge in the physical and social environment of which the ritual is a part. Hence, ritual criticism defines the relationship between the critical teaching of ritual knowledge within and outside of the ritual context. The reason why ritual criticism links critique presented as a part of the cem ritual, like Dertli Divani’s criticism, and the critical thoughts of Burak and other non-participants, lies in the commemorative character of ritual criticism. This does not necessarily mean that the cem ritual as a whole is a commemorative ceremony, but rather, that one of the constituent elements of the cem is based on commemoration. The foundation of such constituent commemoration is the transmission of social or collective memory, where images and recollected knowledge of the past legitimate both present practices and the critique of the very same practices. In Paul Connerton’s words, this is how “practices […] are transmitted, in and as tradition”.21 The criticism presented in the cem ritual is a performative act which explicitly claims continuity with the past and although it does so indirectly and imperfectly, re-enacts the prototypical cem. Ritual criticism is thus a commemorative practice because it is the repetitive “acts of transfer that make remembrance in common possible”.22 As commemoration transmits social memory, criticism of current cem performances becomes the main means through which the collective memory of the village cems is sustained and communicated. In the end, this is not only commemoration of rural ritual practices, but of rural authenticity as such. 20 There is a serious lack of research on ritual plurality in Alevi villages, both past and present. Sources are mostly oral, and have been documented within ethnographical projects often not focusing exclusively on ritual practices. References to a variety of Alevi ritual practices and to changes in cem performances in the rural areas can be found here and there in a limited number of research publications (see for example Shankland 1993; 1999; 2003; 2004; 2006; and Bal 1997) As such, ritual criticism has a further function in Alevi communities. Constant evaluation of current performances gives the illusion that the scarce collection of sources available is vast and substantial. 21 Connerton 1989: 4. My italics. 22 Ibid: 39.

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Alevi village life and the nature of Alevi villagers are also subjected to ideals of authenticity in comparison to Alevis living in urban areas.23 Scholarly Contributions to Ritual Criticism Connerton stresses the habitual nature of collective memory when he explains that “there can be a habit of remembering a unique event; when we have once described the event, the words we have used to do so can easily become habitual”.24 I will suggest here that the collective remembrance of the village cems rests not only in normative judgements and explicit critique of current performances, but also in descriptions of how the migration of Alevis from villages to cities has resulted in changes in the ritual. Such description can also be categorised as ritual criticism. In his elaboration on various forms of ritual criticism Grimes explains that “The rhetoric of criticism need not be restricted to that of the moral imperative: this ought to be changed, that is bad, stop doing things that way. Often critique is embedded in the telling description that calls attention to vested interests, political implications, inherent contradictions, unconscious motives, or dissonant values.”25 Thus, the rhetoric of ritual criticism does not have to be expressed in moral imperatives, as is the case with both Dertli Divani and Burak’s ways of expressing their concerns. Ritual criticism may also include descriptions of a particular performance, or various performances, of the ritual. This means that, within the semantic context of the ritual differences between the “village cem” and contemporary performances of it, it is not only moral judgements of how it was better “in the old days” that count as ritual criticism, but also descriptions of changes related to migration, as far as, I will add, they are based on the notion of the “village cem” as the authentic model for cem performances in general. The ritual criticism of the Alevi cem ritual is thus defining and commemorating the prototypical cem by the means of habitual narratives. Consequently, ritual criticism may not only legitimate, but also trigger ritual change. According to Grimes, ritual criticism has the power to re-contextualise rites: “Criticism re-contextualises. One can re-contextualize rites in any number of ways. Bringing moral or esthetic standards to bear on them are only two such ways. Another is to wrap a rite in a theory that smothers or extols it.”26 23 In an earlier publication I have pointed out that contemporary understandings of central Alevi institutions rest on symbolic representations of Alevi villagers as pure, authentic, and with a high level of morality (Markussen 2005: 73–75). 24 Connerton 1989: 23. 25 Grimes 1980: 17. 26 Ibid.

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The most obvious way to re-contextualise cem is thus to define the prototypical cem as the moral standard for all other performances of the cem. This is what both Dertli Divani and Burak were doing when I was visiting the centre, and the most direct appeal for ritual change was presented by Dertli Divani when he called for the communities to pull themselves together in order to “with God’s permission get back to where we were”. If I use Grimes’ terminology, Dertli Divani and Burak exercised “intra-cultural” or “intra-religious” ritual criticism in their judgements of contemporary cem performances.27 Not all kinds of ritual criticism needs, however, to be of such “inhouse variety”.28 As it is a practice of reflection on the contexts in which people decide on a particular performance of the ritual, as well as an exercise in simultaneous involvement and distancing, Grimes argues that the practice of ritual criticism is not at all an activity foreign to ethnographic inquiry.29 In the context of the Alevi cem ritual, intra-religious ritual criticism is not that different from researchers’ descriptions and analyses of changes in the cem ritual. Analyses of the context of rural-urban migration and its various effects on the education level of the dedes, the level of interest and knowledge among the Alevis in general, and ultimately the performance of the cem ritual seem to be common reference points between Alevis like Dertli Divani and Burak, and researchers aiming at understanding contemporary cem performances. In the following, I will present one such scholarly attempt at understanding the cem ritual.

Ritual Criticism and the “Transfer of Ritual” Within the research programme Ritual Dynamics, Langer and his colleagues at Heidelberg University have developed a fruitful structure for the study of ritual change with the concept of “transfer of ritual”. As an aspect of the inherent dynamics of rituals as such, “transfer of ritual” refers to a specific kind of ritual change brought about by a transformation from one context into another, or – more generally – a change of the context surrounding the ritual”.30 Transfer of ritual is mostly a result of changes in the context of the ritual. Contextual aspects, however, are defined rather broadly, and the list of the various aspects includes media, geography, space, ecology, culture, religion, politics, economy, society, gender, the group carrying the tradition, and the historical connection between these aspects.31

27 28 29 30 31

Ibid: 20. Ibid. Ibid. Langer et al. 2006: 1. Ibid: 2.

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Contextual Changes Triggering Ritual Change For Langer and his colleagues, the complex processes of rural-urban and international migration are the main explanations for changes in cem performances. Theoretically, they elaborate on different kinds of ritual transfer and describe how various forms may take place as consequences of a range of contextual changes related to migration. If a part of a group changes its geographical location so that the ritual is practised simultaneously by two groups, the transfer has been synchronic. Diachronic transfer takes place if there is a continuity of location but changes in the historical context; but also with re-invention or re-adoption of a ritual after a break in the performance, or with “other reception processes of (elements of) (real or assumed) ‘historical’ rituals”. According to Langer and his colleagues, the changes in the Alevi cem ritual are an example of recursive transfer since double migration – from the villages to the cities and then from there to Europe – has caused reciprocal transfer processes, where dedes living in Europe transfer practices developed in the diaspora back to Turkey when they conduct cem rituals there. As an example of the reciprocal transfer processes of the cem, the use of chairs in some cem rituals both in Germany and Turkey is emphasised and characterised as a form of European culture influencing the performances of the cem. Accordingly, the use of chairs began when cem rituals were performed in university lecture rooms and churches which lacked proper cem evis where the congregation generally sits on the floor. Later it was transferred back to Turkey with the dedes travelling to conduct cem rituals in their home country. Other changes in the ritual performances of the Alevi cem portrayed by Langer and his colleagues are based on the idea of the annual görgü cemi as the prototypical cem. Changes in frequency from once a year in the villages to performances on a weekly basis in the urban Alevi associations, also resulting in a shortened form of the night-long village cems to a couple of hours in the cities, are emphasised. The lack of questioning of participants in conflict, görgu, and adjustments from performances in secret to more or less “representational” rituals are mentioned as further indications of ritual change resulting from a transfer of the cem ritual from rural villages to an associational environment in the big cities.32 The concept of recursive transfer successfully highlights the transnational aspect of Alevi communities and their mobilisation today.33 The focus is on changes in the cem as results of conscious mobilisation of Alevi identity, and puts the role of travelling and other means of transnational communication at the centre of attention. Langer and his colleagues argue that the fluidity and complexity of Alevi networks today have resulted from a shift in the “internal dimensions of functionality … from confirmation of group cohesion to a means of identity politics 32 Ibid: 4–5. 33 Langer & Motika & Ursinus 2005.

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(against the Sunni Turks) and representation of the modern “Aleviness” (alevilik)”.34 Such changed conditions for the cem performances are to be found in Europe and the urban centres of Turkey, where Alevi migrants from a range of different geographical locations and Alevi traditions co-operate in creating Alevi communities and claiming their space in society. A certain degree of formalisation of beliefs and practices is a common outcome of such joint efforts. The concept of the ideal cem located in the villages works as a template for common ritual practices among people from different geographical and traditional backgrounds, and ritual criticism becomes a local, as well as a translocal, means to strive for the unity of each specific community. Internal Dynamics Triggering Ritual Change The theory of transfer of ritual assumes that it is, first and foremost, changes in contextual aspects which cause changes in one or more of the internal dimensions of the ritual. However, the changes of these internal dimensions, such as script, performance, performativity, aesthetics, structure, transmission of ritual contents, intentionality, self-reflection, interaction, communication, psycho-social functionality, mediality, symbolism, and ascribed meanings, may also be caused by internal dynamics.35 It is not clear where the limits are to be established for what they consider a ritual’s internal dynamics, but it seems a logical outcome of their arguments that it could also include the dynamics between the various internal dimensions of a ritual. If this is the case, ritual criticism presented by the dedes, and within the community at large, could be an important aspect of the internal dynamics of the Alevi cem ritual. Here, I identify ritual criticism both as a reception process of contemporary practices of the cem ritual, as well as a part of the internal dynamics of the ritual. I do this to demonstrate how well the idea of ritual criticism as a constituent ritual element based on commemoration fits the theory of “transfer of ritual” as a structure for the study of ritual change. Approaching the cem ritual conceptually, I have argued that narratives based on an ideal cem performance are commemorative acts integral to all cem performances. The crucial link between the narratives (or the reception process considered as a contextual aspect by Langer and his colleagues) and the ritual act itself (as a part of the internal dynamics of the ritual) must be the people creating and telling the cem narratives and acting out the commemoration of village authenticity. Langer and his colleagues also recognise the importance of such people when they state that participants constitute the link between contextual aspects and the internal dimensions of the ritual according to their various roles as ritual actors: 34 Langer et al. 2006: 5. 35 Ibid: 2.

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Langer and his colleagues include all categories of people who might influence the cem ritual in their definition of “ritual actors”. This means that dedes, participants, and scholars alike may constitute the link between changes in contextual aspects of the cem ritual and changes of its internal dimensions. The theory of “transfer of ritual” can thus be understood as an analysis of collective memory sustained through commemoration of contexts.

Concluding Remarks In this article, the words of the visiting dede and poet Dertli Divani, and those of Burak, who had only experienced parts of a cem ritual in his early childhood, have come to represent the kinds of ritual criticism presented in the Alevi community. It has been argued that when Burak, Dertli Divani, or others within the community talked about village cems, they were not talking about the village practices today, nor were they referring specifically to historical facts. The logic behind their reasoning was embedded in the notion of rural authenticity connected to “the past”, specifically referring to the time before migration from the villages to the urban centres. The “village cem”, as they spoke about it, was thus conceptualised as referring both to the villages in the past, and to an ideal cem serving as a standard by which the current practices could be evaluated and judged. The common appreciation of the village cem as genuine and “real” rested on this kind of double legitimisation of authenticity. Further, I have presented ritual criticism as covering both normative judgements in the Alevi community, as well as descriptions of changes in performances of the cem ritual resting on the notion of “the village cem” as the authentic model for cem performances in general. Langer and his colleagues in Heidelberg have come to represent scholarly contributions to ritual criticism and its conditions. The processes of defining past and present realities are, as Grimes pointed out, integral to ethnographic research on contemporary ritual performances in general. The historian Eric Hobsbawm has also noted that similar processes are integral to historical research in general: “all historians, whatever else their objectives, are engaged 36 Ibid: 3.

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in [the processes of mythologising history] inasmuch as they contribute, consciously or not, to the creation, dismantling and restructuring of images of the past”.37 In the narrow field of the Alevi cem, an ideal and prototypical definition of the görgu cemi has become the model from which both normative and descriptive ritual criticism is constructed.

37 Hobsbawn 1983: 13.

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References Bal, Hüseyin 1997. Sosyolojik Açidan Alevi-Sunni Farkılması ve Bütünleşmesi. Istanbul: Ant Yayınları. Birge, John Kingsley 1937. The Bektashi Order of Dervishes. London: Luzac. Connerton, Paul 1989. How Societies Remember. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Grimes, Ronald 1980. Ritual Criticism: Case Studies in its Practice, Essays on its Theory. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press. Hobsbawm; Eric 1983. “Introduction”. In: Eric J. Hobsbawm & Terence O. Ranger (eds.). The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 1–13. Langer, Robert et al. 2006. “Transfer of Ritual” Journal of Ritual Studies 20/1: 1–10. Langer, Robert & Raoul Motika & Michael Ursinus (eds.). 2005. Migration und Ritualtransfer: Religiöse Praxis der Aleviten, Jesiden und Nusairier zwischen Vorderem Orient und Westeuropa. Frankfurt et al.: Peter Lang. Lewis, Bernard & Charles Pellet & Joseph Schacht (eds.) 19652. The Encyclopedia of Islam. 2nd edition. Leiden: Brill, London: Luzac. Markussen, Hege Irene 2005. “Alevi Theology. From Shamanism to Humanism”. In: Hege Irene Markussen (ed.) Alevis and Alevism: Transformed Identities. Istanbul: The Isis Press: 65–90. Popovic, Alexandre & Gilles Veinstein (eds.) 1995. Bektachiyya: Études sur l’ordre mystique des Bektachis et les groupes relevant de Hadji Bektach. Istanbul: The Isis Press. Şahin, Şehriban 2001. The Alevi Movement: Transformation from Secret Oral to Public Written Culture in National and Transnational Social Spaces. New York: New School for Social Research (unpublished PhD thesis). Shankland, David 1993. Alevi and Sunni in Rural Turkey: Diverse paths of Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University (PhD thesis). — 1999. Islam and Society in Turkey. Huntingdon: Eothen Press. — 2003. The Alevis in Turkey: The Emergence of a Secular Islamic Tradition. London and New York: Routledge Curzon. — 2004. “Modes of Religiosity and the Legacy of Ernest Gellner”. In: Harvey Whitehouse & James Laidlaw (eds.). Ritual and Memory: Toward a Comparative Anthropology of Religion. Walnut Creek et al: Altamira Press: 31–48. — 2006. Structure and Function in Turkish Society: Essays on Religion, Politics and Social Change. Istanbul: The Isis Press. Soileau, Mark 2001. “Dem Görelim Canlar: Ingestion and Digestion in the Bektashi Ritual Meal.” [Paper presented at the Middle East History and Theory Conference, University of Chicago]. — 2005. “Lokma Almak, Dem Görmek: Bektaşi Sofrasında Sindirim.” [Paper presented at the 1st International Symposium on Bektashism and Alevism, Süleyman Demirel University, Isparta, Turkey].

Massimo Rosati

Ritual and Reflectivity in the Sociological Discourse on Modernity A superficial glance at the sociological discourse on modernity might suggest that rituals are a missing chapter in the sociological tradition. However, if Mary Douglas’ judgement that “ritual has become a bad word signifying empty conformism”1 is basically right in describing mainstream modern understanding of ritual, a closer examination would reveal a whole tradition within the sociological field focusing on the social relevance of different kinds of rituals. From Émile Durkheim’s The Elementary Forms of Religious Life to contemporary social theorists, such as Randall Collins, Robert Bellah, Jeffrey C. Alexander, Adam B. Seligman, by way of Victor Turner and Erving Goffman – to name a few – the Durkheimian tradition throws light both on the grammar of rituals, and on their social role. This paper aims at discussing specifically this sociological tradition, bracketing mainstream sociological bias against rituals. I will address two points: a) The difference between two lines of neo-Durkheimian interpretations of rituals, that I will call postmodern mystical social practices, on the one hand, and liturgical rituals, on the other; b) The different kinds of reflectivity involved in these two classes of social performances. I use the term “reflectivity” instead of “reflexivity” because it stresses the non-involuntary dimension of thoughtful human beings. My hope is that the following discussion will show the necessity of a new marriage between cultural sociology and ritual studies, in order to offer both an empirical and a normative meaningful interpretation of contemporary societies at large.

1 Douglas 1997: 112.

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1. Forms of Social Performances: Postmodern/Mystical Practices and Liturgical Ritualism The relevance of ritual and the sacred for our social life is a typically Durkheimian topic.2 In contemporary social theory and sociology, Jeffrey C. Alexander is perhaps one of the most dedicated in his attempt to rediscover Durkheim’s theories. Alexander, theoretically and by means of a plethora of empirical studies, defends the Durkheimian intuition according to which ritual and the sacred are the “infrastructure of social life”,3 and maintains that “love for the sacred, the fear of pollution, and the need for purification have continued to mark modern as much as traditional life”.4 In the light of this approach, modern linguistic practices, too, can be considered as being embedded with “religious” meanings, and their performative nature still depends, important differences notwithstanding, on ritual interaction. According to Alexander’s sociological theory of performance, individual or collective social performance, or both, can be analysed on the basis of the theatre model.5 Social life, material practices included, can be read as a web of social practices. Every social practice needs a set of elements: (a) a system of collective representations, namely a background of symbols and foreground scripts, (b) actors, individual or collective, (c) an audience, (d) standardised expressive equipment (Goffman), namely what Alexander calls “means of symbolic production”, (e) a mise-en-scène, and, finally, (f) social power, the distribution of which affects social performance. Alexander’s central thesis is that what distinguishes early and modern societies is not the in itself performative nature of social life, the universal key role of social performance, but the dynamics of the relationship between the elements of social performance within early and modern societies. In less differentiated and less complex social organisations these elements are fused together, and ritual is – according to Alexander – the kind of performance that fuses the components of performance further. Performance in less differentiated societies frequently becomes ritual, essentially because this kind of fusion is still possible. On the other hand, “fused performance creating ritual-like effects remains important in more complex societies”, too.6 This is true, according to Alexander, in a twofold sense. First of all, ritual-like performance is still possible in relatively simple and homogeneous contexts, such as primary groups, i.e. families, inter-generation stable ethnic groups, enclaves of lifestyle; secondly, fusion remains the goal of performance even in more complex environments, but here it is a much more diffi2 3 4 5 6

Sections 1 and 2 are taken from Rosati 2009: Chapter 3. See Scubla 2003a: 92; Scubla 2003b: 198. Alexander 2006: 9. See ibid.: 29–90. Ibid.: 42.

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cult goal to achieve. Proper to complex organisations, in fact, is the de-fusion of the elements of performance, and particularly “1) the separation of written foreground texts from background collective representations; 2) the estrangement of the means of symbolic production from the mass of social actors; 3) the separation of the elites who carried out central symbolic actions from their audiences”.7 Social segmentation, the fragmentation of citizenry, is the main barrier to re-fusing social drama and audience.8 However, even if our contemporary social milieus seem to be particularly unfavourable, re-fusion continues to be the aim of social practice. The possibility of making sense of our lives, individually and as societies, depends on our capacity to re-fuse performance.9 Given the above, in complex societies, the success (or failure) of performance seems to be related to the audience’s perception of the actors’ authenticity. Re-fusion is reached when a performance appears authentic, sincere. For example: the non-authentic nature of social performances is the key to understanding disaffection with politics in democratic societies. If complete authenticity is not possible, the actor, a good actor, should be able to “adopt an ‘as if’ attitude, pretending that the scripted situation is the actor’s own in real life”.10 Accordingly, our societies’ pathologies can be read as the consequence of defective social performances. Re-fusion is a crucial ingredient of social life, rational bias notwithstanding. The main barrier to re-fusing social drama and performance seems today, in Alexander’s view, to be the non-authentic nature of current performance. In my view, the whole story, with a single, but crucial “exception”, is extremely characteristic of Durkheim. The “exception” has to do with the requirement of sincerity/authenticity. From Alexander’s analysis, it is not completely clear if actors must be sincere/authentic or, as Goffman would have put it, must appear sincere/authentic to their audience, in order to make the social performance successful. But more than this, the point seems to me that Alexander envisages ritual within a horizon shaped by Christian categories. From the Christian point of view, ritual is acceptable only in so far as it is the expression of inner subjective feelings. In other words, just as it is for a large part of anthropological tradition too, ritual is the external shape of inner feelings. In this context, a discrepancy between inner feelings and external behaviour can be understood as “hypocritical” or something similar. For Alexander, it is not primarily a normative (“ought”), but a sociological (“is”) matter. Ritual, or ritual-like social performance, does not work in the absence of sincerity. However, another analysis of the structure of ritual11 shows how, con7 8 9 10 11

Ibid.: 45. Ibid.: 75. Ibid.: 55. Ibid.: 71. See Rappaport 1999: 119–138.

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trary to modernist beliefs, moral obligation does not necessarily demand sincerity and belief in moral norms, exactly as it was for Durkheim in The Elementary Forms. Moral obligations are the outcome of external actions, publicly performed independently from the depth of subjective adherence. Ritual can be performed without belief and full knowledge, exactly because ritual creates an “as if” state. Meaning is the by-product of ritual performance. In my view, this is a crucial theoretical junction. The relation between ritual, (sincere) belief, and acceptance is sociologically crucial, because it has a deep impact on the reading of modernity and the role of ritual in modern Western societies, namely in a culture factually and normatively imbued with the values of sincerity and authenticity.12 My view is that Alexander’s analysis of ritual is biased by a hyper-modernist interpretation. The relation between ritual, beliefs, inner feelings, individual, and collective identity is not the same, I suspect, for – let’s say – a Liberal Protestant, a Catholic, a Jew, a Muslim, an Orthodox Christian, an Evangelist, a New Age Spiritualist, or a Communist militant. Alexander’s model of ritual and of successful social performance seems to be tailored on mystical forms of social practices, proper to the so-called new religious movements, whose nature is basically hypermodernist. Crucial ideal-typical elements of mystical social practices (such as those proper to a therapeutic culture13) are (a) the invented and chosen nature of the community; (b) the showy, expressive but at the same time weak kind of ritualism; and, above all (c) the narcissistic aim of ritual itself, more a technique of the Self than a self-transcending experience. Fusion with the divinity, rediscovery of the “Holon”, is a way towards introspective conscience.14 Mystical social practices are in search of fusion, con-fusion of margins and identities, because they cannot coexist with ambiguity and the unknown; they have to make social and individual experience as visible as possible. On the other hand, the movements of liturgical ritualism are more inclined towards exteriority than interiority, even if this is not insignificant for individual experience and intimacy. Mystical performance is in search of fusion, and so cannot conceive of performance, except as the external expression of inner feelings; one must perform even “ritual-like behaviour” using one’s own voice. On the other hand, in liturgical ritualism, ritual is not encoded by the performer, and it must not be encoded by the performer if it has to connect the performer to canonical orders. The aim of liturgical ritualism is not individual, but collective authenticity, the sense of belonging to a tradition, of being part of something broader (and deeper) than one’s own introspective conscience. The performer of liturgical ritualism cannot be the hyper-modern authentic Self, nor the fully modern, independent Self, but a Self who recognises a heteronomous legisla12 See Seligman et al. 2008: 103–130. 13 See Furedi 2004: Chapters 1–3. 14 See Stendahl 1976: 21–45.

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tion, who is ready to “lose” him or herself in the ritual performance, to willingly subjugate him or herself to heteronomous authority. On the contrary, the case of mystical postmodern social practice is much closer to the rehearsals of an avantgarde actor described by Richard Schechner. In these kinds of social performances, the performer is not respecting a canonical script, not encoded by him or herself, but is trying to invent a script in his or her own voice.15 Let me try to clarify this point a little more. In conformity with Schechner, I consider performance to be an inclusive term,16 and liturgical ritualism, on the one hand, and mystical postmodern social practices, on the other, to be opposite idealtype social performances, that must be kept separate. In between, there is, of course, a wide range of social performances, sometimes closer to the liturgical polarity, such as etiquette, various religious rituals (based on different traditions), and sometimes closer to the mystical postmodern one, such as play, theatre, sport events. Consequently, considering ritualism and social performances to be always closer to mystical practices than to liturgical action, is an error originating from our hyper-modernist observation standpoint. It is an error, in my opinion, for two reasons. Firstly, because, from a factual point of view, not every form of performance in contemporary Western societies is mystical (postmodern). Secondly, I consider this merging to be an error, because mystic ritualism runs in the same direction as hyper-modernity, and only liturgical ritualism runs against that flow, thus only the latter is a source opposing the pathologies of a modernity centred on the idea of introspective conscience.

2. Ritual Reflectivity and Autonomy Liturgical ritualism, as stated before, is proper to canonical traditions. In turn, traditions, and the practices embedded in them, are necessary to keep identities balanced. That is why a subject can pay willing respect to heteronomous authorities. That is why some traditions meticulously regulate almost every aspect of individual and collective life: “A fiddler on the roof, sounds crazy … You might say everyone of us is a fiddler on the roof trying to pluck out a simple, pleasant tune without breaking his neck. It isn’t easy … you may ask why do we stay up there if it is so dangerous, oh we stay because Anatevka is our home. And how do we keep our balance? Well I will tell you in a simple word, tradition! Because of our traditions, we have kept balance for many many years; … here in Anatevka 15 Schechner 2005: 54. 16 Ibid.: xviii.

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Here I take Anatevka as a metaphor. It is not just the name of a small Jewish village destroyed by the Tsar, as in the famous musical of the Sixties; it is not the nostalgic idea of a small, ancient world. It is, on the contrary, a metaphor for the human condition, lived within groups with borders, relationships mainly in conflict inside and outside groups. It is a metaphor of a complex, rather than simple, life; complex, rather than simple, society; it is a metaphor for a tragic, rather than irenic or pacified vision of life; it is a metaphor for a non-“pretty” world. Even though theories generally depict rituals in terms of harmony, the emphasis on rituals makes sense only in the context of a tragic vision of life and world, seen as “fragmented and fractured”.18 Ritual is the way to pattern and order a fragmented world. It is also the way to deal with ambiguity and uncertainty. In this sense, it is the way first to pattern courses of actions (traditions are, according to Shils,19 guiding patterns), and then to learn to act without patterns, autonomously, “without ritual precedent”.20 The point I want to stress, in other words, is that judgement, the capability of responding appropriately to specific situations, stems from a ritualistic training. As Seligman and colleagues write: “A contemporary example will help to make the point. When a child asks for butter at the dining table, one tells the child to say ‘please’. When one then gives the butter, one tells the child to say ‘thank you’. For the first few years of this, it is just by rote: one simply tries to get the child to repeat the words. And, if it stops at just this, then one has, to a minimal degree, created a subjective world of politeness. But the hope is clearly that it will not stop there: the hope is that the child, as she grows, will be able to express equivalent forms of making requests and expressing gratitude in situations where a simple ‘please’ or ‘thank you’ would be appropriate.”21 This is possible because of the symbolic function of ritual, that constructs a web of meaning over, and well beyond, the specific situational meanings.22 Returning to our previous discussion of the relationship between ritual and sincerity, 17 18 19 20 21 22

Stein et al. 1964: 3. See Seligman et al. 2008: 30–34. Shils 1981. Ibid.: 34–40. Ibid.: 35. Bernstein et al. 1966: 429.

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“The crucial point is that this is not necessarily a sincerity mode … Instead, it is best understood as simply the way that one acts ritually when there is no ritual to tell one what to do: if one spends one’s life doing rituals properly, then one gains a sense of how the subjective world constructed out of those rituals could be constructed in situations without a ritual precedent, or in situations where ritual obligations conflict.”23 One learns, in other words, the faculty of judgement, and the virtue of autonomy. However, here autonomy is not understood either in the context of early liberalism, or in the Kantian sense, two meanings compromised by the history of introspective conscience, but in a ritual sense. Judgement, in this scenario, is an “internal faculty generated by traditional formation”.24 Seen in a Durkheimian perspective, the process of self-cultivation implies (as in Confucianism, in Judaism, and so on) curbing negative impulses, being transformed in order to “become human”.25 If “the task of focusing attention on the responses of one’s innate moral sprouts and the effort of extending these feelings by discovering them in other appropriate situations is the ongoing work of moral Self cultivation”26, rituals – namely practices not entirely encoded by the performers, but by traditions – are the way of nurturing and conducting this ongoing, difficult, and frequently painful process (as children know very well). The Western idea of the free-choosing autonomous individual, expressed in such writings as those of John Locke, the Virginia Declaration of Rights, the American Declaration of Independence, the French Declaration of the Rights of Man, and, again, the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights, is strictly interspersed with the idea of the Self as rights-bearer. Within this frame, ritual is considered mainly as a “restricted code” necessarily related to hierarchical societies, where individuals have no rights to protect their autonomy. However, as sometimes it is (rightly) observed, modern ethical, social, and political philosophies, so dependent on the idea of rights, are shared by no more than 25% of the human consortium.27 The other 75%, Western virtues ethics included, share the idea of the human being as a role-bearing person, sometimes as ritual-bearing, as in Confucianism. They understand neither the idea of a disembodied mind, nor that of an autonomous individual (as rights-bearing). Consequently, we have to think of autonomy in a different perspective from the Kantian tradition. Ritual is not the opposite of reflectivity. Ritual does not require automata and robots. Simply put, we may think in

23 24 25 26 27

Seligman et al. 2008: 35. Schofer 2005: 88. See Cladis 2008: 81. Ivanhoe 1990: 90. See Rosemont 1991: 75.

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terms of different kinds of reflectivity.28 Here I distinguish between three idealtype models of reflectivity, two of them performative, one cognitive. The cognitive model is associated with the introspective conscience. It is, so to speak, a why-type of reflectivity, in which justification (of courses of action, linguistic acts, and so on) must be preventive and fully intentional. In this case, the actor judges reflectively, justifying a course of action or a linguistic act, or both, only if, beforehand, they are judged to be consistent with beliefs strongly (sincerely) felt, deeply scrutinised, and recognised as universalising or authentic. Consequently, the main characteristics of a why-type reflectivity are (a) its cognitive character, (b) its intentional and preventive justification, and (c) sincere adhesion to specific reasons and values or beliefs, or both the latter. At the other extreme of an ideal-typical continuum, we have a very different model of reflectivity, a how-type model of reflectivity, more proper to those particular social performances that are liturgical rituals: what I call liturgical reflectivity. This is a performative and procedural model of justification, focusing on how to justify the specific form of an action, rather than on why it is performed. The full justification of the reasons why it is performed depends on regressive justification, which sometimes – as in the case of doctrinal modes of religiosity29 – takes the form of internally systematic and highly rationalised theories, theologies, and so on. Here the performer is not an automaton at all. His reflectivity has four main characteristics: firstly, he reflects on how to perform certain actions (even when highly frequent repetitions make such actions almost “spontaneous”); secondly he reflects, even if regressively, on why to perform those actions in that way, within an ongoing hermeneutical debate on the indexical and canonical meaning those ritualised actions have (a debate that takes a stronger theological form, e.g. as in the case of Catholicism, and a weaker doctrinal form, e.g. as in Judaism); thirdly, here reflectivity is related to the subjunctive dimension of liturgical rituals, that subjective as if that allows us to look at the world around us as a conjunctural, namely not necessary, matter of fact, as an is criticisable in the light of a subjunctive might be; liturgical reflectivity, in other words, allows us to nurture a sort of inner-worldly asceticism that aims to bring the divine order (hopefully in an asymptotical way) within the world (as is proper to frequent but brief liturgical rituals30), thus avoiding a fatalistic and unreflective acceptance of the actual world. Finally, reflectivity here is related to doubtfulness, scepticism. The performer of liturgical rituals, above all when the sacred has a totally transcendent dimension, accepts canonical meanings in the absence of full belief. Liturgical rituals might imply obedience and conformism in the realm of action (as, according to Durk28 See Stausberg 2008: 627–646. 29 See Whitehouse 2004: Chapter 5. 30 See Rappaport 1999: 202; Soloveitchik 1944: 28.

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heim, sociologically speaking, society necessarily requires31), and freedom in the domain of thought. Inner freedom is related to the unknowable character of the sacred (i.e. of revelation), so that no one can be judged (other than by the Lord of the Universe) because of their thoughts and beliefs, but only because of their actions. In this case, precisely the heteronomous nature of the sacred allows me to protect my sacrosanct inner sanctuary and, at the same time, to distance myself from my actions, considering them as a part of a play, as something to be almost ironically seen from a perspective of epistemic humility. The third model of reflectivity shares parts both of the why-type and of the liturgical models. It is the kind of reflectivity proper to those social performances I have called postmodern, or mystical, social practices. Here, as in the case of liturgical reflectivity, reflectivity is embedded within actions, it is performative. However, since postmodern social practices do not have fixed and rigid scripts, here the search for meanings encoded by certain practices is not regressive/backward and doctrinal, but spontaneous, closer to the intentional and sincere model of the introspective (non-performative) kind of reflectivity than to the liturgical. At the same time, postmodern reflectivity – as I would call the third type of reflectivity – shares with the liturgical the subjunctive dimension, as found, with reference to Turner’s idea of the subjunctive, in the case of liminoid social practices.32 Empirically, postmodern reflectivity seems to be in accordance with the so-called imagistic modes of religiosity.33 The point I am trying to make is, in other words, that one may think of reflectivity and autonomy as coherent with the idea of the human being as role-/ritualbearing, in a way coherent with the ritualistic self-cultivation. Within this frame, moral education is not necessarily (logically speaking) a conservative, anti-modern, and reactionary means for transmitting traditional values and norms; it may be, of course, but this is an empirical issue. Moral education is an integral part of a process of self-cultivation, perhaps even more necessary at the present time, when globalisation, understood as runaway world, promotes individualistic uniformity.34 In order to not end in a trivial technique of the Self, self-cultivation presupposes full awareness, on the part of the person involved, of being one link in a chain of memory, of being a person embedded in a web of ritual interactions; it presupposes, most of all, the sometimes bitter feeling of dependence on heteronomous sources.

31 32 33 34

See Durkheim 1995: 16–17. See Turner 1982; 1987. Whitehouse 2004: Chapter 6. See Helgesen 2003: 161.

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References Alexander, Jeffrey C. 2006. “Cultural Pragmatics: Social Performance and Strategy”. In: Jeffrey C. Alexander & Bernhard Giesen & Jason L. Mast (eds.). Social Performance. Symbolic Action, Cultural Pragmatics, and Ritual. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 29–90. Bernstein, Basil et al. 1966. “Ritual in Education”. Journal of Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London Series B/251: 428–436. Cladis, Mark S. 2008. “Suffering to Become Human: A Durkheimian Perspective”. In: William S.F. Pickering & Massimo Rosati (eds.). Suffering and Evil. The Durkheimian Legacy. New York, Oxford: Berghahn Books: 81–100. Douglas, Mary 1997. Purity and Danger. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. Durkheim, Émile & Karen E. Fields (transl., ed.) 1995. The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. New York: Free Press. Furedi, Frank 2004 Therapeutic Culture. London: Routledge. Helgesen, Geir 2003. “The Case for Moral Education”. In: Daniel A. Bell & Hahm Chaibong (eds.). Confucianism for the Modern World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 161–177. Ivanhoe, Philip J. 1990. Ethics in the Confucian Tradition: The Thought of Mengzi and Wang Yangming. Indianapolis, Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company. Rappaport, Roy 1999. Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rosati, Massimo 2009. Ritual and the Sacred: A Neo-Durkheimian Analysis of Politics, Religion and the Self. Farnham: Ashgate. Rosemont, Henry J. 1991 “Rights-Bearing Individuals and Role Bearing Persons”. In: Mery I. Boekover (ed.). Rules, Rituals, and Responsibility. La Salle: Open Court: 46–57. Schechner, Richard 2005. Performance Theory. London, New York: Routledge. Schofer, Jonathan W. 2005. The Making of a Sage: A Study in Rabbinic Ethics. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press. Scubla, Lucien 2003a. “Les homme peuvent-ils se passer le religions?”. Revue du Mauss semestrielle 22: 90–117. — 2003b. “Roi, sacré, victime sacrificielle et victime émissaire”. Revue du Mauss semestrielle 22: 197–221. Seligman, Adam B. & Robert Weller & Michael Puett & Bennett Simon 2008. Ritual and its Consequences. An Essay on the Limits of Sincerity. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Shils, Edward 1981. Tradition. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Soloveitchik, Joseph B. 1944. Halakhic Man. Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society. Stausberg, Michael 2008. “Reflexivity”. In: Jens Kreinatz & Jan Snoek & Michael Stausberg (eds.). Theorizing Rituals: Issues, Topics, Approaches, Concepts. Leiden: Brill: 627–646.

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Stein, Joseph & Jerry Bock & Sheldon Harnick 1964. Fiddler on the Roof. New York: Pocket Books, Inc. Stendahl, Krister 1976. Paul Among Jews and Gentiles and Other Essays. London: Fortress Press. Turner, Victor 1982. From Ritual to Theatre. New York: PAJ Publications. — 1987. The Anthropology of Performance. New York: PAJ Publications. Whitehouse, Harvey 2004. Modes of Religiosity: A Cognitive Theory of Religious Transmission. Walnut Creek: Altamira Press.

Mario Bührmann

Culture and Rites in Motion: The Conception of Culture and Ritualistic Actions in the Works of Edward Burnett Tylor When scientists from different disciplines within the Humanities take the “Ritual Dynamics and Science of Ritual” conference1 as an occasion to present and discuss the – systematically as well as historio-geographically – wide spectrum of their research material, it is to be expected that they not only focus their attention on the detailed analysis of specific ritual practices, but also turn to how these practices are reflected in scientific theory and autochthonous notions, former and present. With respect to scientific theories of ritual, the interest in their historical connections and developments is not simply based on antiquated curiosity, but rather is fuelled by the conviction that studying the intellectual prerequisites and methods of previous generations of scientists is essential for gaining a fundamental understanding of the explicit, as well as the implicit, theoretical bases for today’s scientific discussions as they relate to rituals. Such a historical perspective shows both the opportunities and the difficulties of the variety of terminologies and methodologies that has been characteristic of the intensified academic analysis of the research object conceptualised as “ritual” – first in Europe, then in the USA – since the second half of the nineteenth century. An instructive example of these efforts to find a common denominator for the understanding of “rituals” is to be seen, for instance, in the debates led by anthropologically oriented Classics scholars, who have tried, amongst other things, to draw on available ethnographic records of the so-called “primitive races” to gain a more precise understanding of the religious perceptions and practices of the Greco-

1 This conference, organised by the Collaborative Research Centre 619 “Ritual Dynamics”, took place from 29 September to 2 October 2008 at the University of Heidelberg. I am grateful to the editor of this volume, Udo Simon, for thoughtful remarks and suggestions. I wish to thank Renate Schlesier and my colleagues of the research project “Ritual and risk: The performativity of play between cultural anthropology, religion, and art” (part of the Collaborative Research Center “Performing Cultures” at the Freie Universität Berlin) for helpful comments on a previous draft.

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Roman or Judaeo-Christian traditions.2 According to Ronald L. Grimes’ assessment, nearly a century later, the variety of possible research processes for rituals (let alone an agreement about what we understand as a “ritual”) still causes headaches for those scientists who endeavour to establish an independent “ritual studies” discipline, in as much as they are forced to leave the known territory of their traditional areas of research. Grimes still noted in the second edition of his book Beginnings in Ritual Studies in 1995: “We remain plagued by the absence of a common vocabulary, and we continue to lack theoretical knowledge and methodological skills in disciplines beyond our own.”3 Of course, the plurality of terminologies and methods (which will not be discussed here) also poses a well-known challenge in other branches of the natural and cultural sciences (not least where scientists try to face the complexity of their objects with inter- or transdisciplinary approaches),4 and, therefore, is in no way limited to contexts in the study of rituals. Against this backdrop, the studies collected in the volume Theorizing Rituals5 a few years ago can be seen as ambitious attempts to deal with these deficits (certainly not only formulated by Grimes6) in ritual studies and thereby to discuss fundamental questions about status, possibilities, and the limits of already-existing and yet-to-be-developed methods and terms in ritual studies. While some contributions pursue this goal based on primarily systematic aspects and, in doing so, analyse the broad spectrum of the characteristics that are deemed to be constitutive for rituals (and the characteristics’ relationship to each other) – e.g. the aesthetic dimension that is determined by its active or symbolic character or the often complex figure of the ritual performer as the intersection between reflection and emotion – other studies carefully, and on a random basis, examine those scientists and their methods and concepts who are deemed to have a decisive role in the creation and development of the scientific research of rituals. 2 In this area, the classical scientific studies of the “Cambridge Ritualists” performed real pioneering work, cf. Ackerman 1991 (37ff.: regarding Tylor); as well as Schlesier 1994. Regarding the historical use of the term “Ritual” cf. Boudewijnse 1995; 1998; Bremmer 1998; Stausberg 2004; Dücker 2007 (esp. chapters 2 and 6). 3 Grimes 1995: XIII. 4 Examples of institutionally anchored interdisciplinary research networks in Germany that consistently or partially deal with questions of ritual studies are SFB 619 “Ritualdynamik“ (Heidelberg); SFB 496 “Symbolische Kommunikation und gesellschaftliche Wertesysteme vom Mittelalter bis zur Französischen Revolution” (Münster); SFB 447 “Kulturen des Performativen” (Berlin) as well as the research seminar “Dynamiken der Religionsgeschichte zwischen Asien und Europa” (Bochum). For a better network (also on an international level), see the forum “Ritual Studies” (http://ritualstudies.com) recently set up online by Ronald L. Grimes und Barry Stephenson. 5 Kreinath & Snoek & Stausberg 2006. 6 Thus, more than three decades ago, Jack Goody had already lamented the excessive use of the term “ritual”, which makes it increasingly unusable (Goody 1977).

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The following shall, in connection with the last-named perspective, examine by examples those conceptual settings of the course that were characteristic for the early academic debate of rituals – namely with an eye towards the British scholar Edward Burnett Tylor (1832–1917), who played a decisive role in the institutionalisation of anthropology as an academic discipline (it had always been a source of significant impulses for the research of rituals) in the nineteenth century,7 but whose writings have barely been examined from the perspective of ritual studies so far.8 The significance of Tylor as a pioneer of the theoretical development of anthropologically based cultural and religious concepts, as he developed them in smaller essays, as well as in the treatise Researches into the Early History of Mankind (1865), and in the two-volume study Primitive Culture (1871), is still undisputed today9 – even if his evolutionary perspective, which is linked to a holistic cultural understanding in his works, is not connected to current historico-cultural concepts any more.10 Objections to this perspective, which Tylor shared with other scientists such as John Lubbock (1834–1913), Lewis Henry Morgan (1818–1881), and James George Frazer (1854–1941), had certainly already existed:11 Franz Boas (1858– 1942) and Bronislaw Malinowski (1884–1942), two exponents of a formative generation of anthropologists following Tylor, also criticised in their writings – with an eye on Tylor and other scholars of the nineteenth century – not only the lack of dedication on the part of these scholars with regard to their own field research7 About Tylor’s significance for the development of British anthropology, cf. Stocking 1987; 1995; Kuper 1988: 78ff.); as well as Barth 2005. Herbert S. Lewis formulates an active critique of the ignorance of the anthropological tradition resulting from false pride and connects it with the demand for a “creative rediscovery [...] of our ancestors and of their approaches to these old and persistent problems.” (Lewis 1998: 718). 8 This lack in attention for Tylor is usually justified, as the example from Catherine Bell shows, with the remark that “[...] Tylor [...] stressed the primacy of religious ideas [...]. Ritual, as exemplary religious behaviour, was the necessary but secondary expression of these mental orientations.” (Bell 1992: 14). With remarks like these, Tylor’s works are declared to be irrelevant for the study of rituals and brushed aside. 9 Cf. de Waal Malefijt 1968: 49ff.; B. Turner 1971; Saler 1993: 88ff.; Kippenberg 1997: 80ff.; Manganaro 2002; also Burkard 2005. 10 Cultural evolutionary models of explanation still found significant supporters from the 40s to the 70s of the last century, cf. for example White 1949; Childe 1951; Steward 1955; Bellah 1964; Service 1975. The culture-semiotic writings of Clifford Geertz led to a lasting reorientation of the culture theoretical debates that declared Tylor’s explanatory model bankrupt (here esp. Geertz 2000). For Tylor’s holistic cultural understanding and the cultural concepts linked to it, or conflicting cultural concepts in the twentieth century, cf. Reckwitz 2006: 74f. A list of current debates on the evolutionary theorem in various scientific disciplines was recently attempted from 16–17 July 2009 as part of the conference “Evolution. Karrieren eines wissenschaftlichen Paradigmas” at the “Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies” (FRIAS) of the University of Freiburg. 11 Cf. Murphree 1961; Schott 1961; Koloß 1986; Carneiro 2003; Gondermann 2007.

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work, but also warned about the methodological pitfalls of the evolutionary paradigm.12 At first sight, one could come to the conclusion that it is not worthwhile to look for connections with current cultural and ritual scientific debates in Tylor’s work. Nevertheless, I would like to re-read some text-passage examples about the evolutionary history of linguistic, technical, artistic, and religious ways of thinking and acting in the following, with an eye on his assessment and evaluation of the dynamics and reflexivity of ritual practices. In the process, I will examine to what extent his interpretations are based on a (not necessarily explicit) understanding of cultural and ritual dynamics13 and which contours can be identified. Indeed, it is remarkable that Tylor does not in fact use the term “dynamics” or “dynamic” anywhere in his works, but his studies are centred around the (often conflictual) processuality that constitutes the development of culture postulated by him – which, from his point of view, in no way needs to unfold linearly. Particularly the vocabulary used by Tylor illustrates that he is less concerned with static inventory or snapshots in time of various cultural stages, or the attribution of various peoples to these stages (which he calls “savagery”, “barbarism”, and “civilization”, using the three-stage scheme already established during the Age of Enlightenment) in his writings, though he uses the historical perspective to depict the “nature of culture” simply in its fluidity and dynamic.14 For this reason, the reader comes across terms like “development”, “evolution”, “modification”, “encouragement”, “opposition”, “change”, “progress”, “relapse”, “degradation”, “diffusion”, “revival”, “transition”, “transformation”, “transmission”, and “expansion” again and again. Tylor primarily views the human capability for reflection, fostered by scientific knowledge and thus constantly growing, as an indispensable basis for cultural progress. For this reason, I would like to pose the question of whether and to what extent, in his perception, not only the analyses of religious practices declared to be

12 Primarily the (in their view) superficial cultural comparison was perceived to be a pitfall, cf. Boas 1940 (with regard to the comparison of rituals esp. 263); also Malinowski 1944: 18. Regarding aspects of ritual studies in Boas and Malinowski, cf. recently Bührmann 2009a; also Bührmann 2009b. 13 The wide spectrum of meanings of the term “Dynamic” that reaches from “dynamis” to “virulentia”, “vis”, “energeia” and “kinesis” to “potestas”, had already been pointed out by Schenk 2004: 17. Also cf. Kreinath & Hartung & Deschner 2004; as well as Kapferer: 2006. In these studies trying to understand ritual dynamics, Tylor’s reflections do not play any role. 14 “[Tylor] sought to provide an identification of the dynamics – the causative agent or agents – which moved culture from Savagery to Civilization.” (Opler 1964: 132). To the best of my knowledge, Opler’s study is the only one so far to deal with Tylor’s perception of “dynamics”. For him, Tylor’s interest in the processes to optimise intellectual capabilities is brought to the fore, whereas the issue of his analyses of religious practices is not specifically broached by Opler.

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“scientific” contribute to the expansion of this capability, but also if Tylor understands ritual actions themselves as (performative) processes of reflection.15 Above all, Tylor counts ritual practices and the beliefs linked to them amongst the historically and regionally highly variable inventory of human thoughts and actions that is subject to the dynamics designated by the aforementioned terms, and reflects these in a particularly descriptive manner. In the course of my deliberations, another question to be examined will be to what extent Tylor accepts that the characteristics of the dynamics that apply to culture in general also apply in the realm of religious rituals, or, in other words, whether Tylor proceeds on the assumption of an interdependence or tension between the realms of “cultural performance” in general and “ritual performance” in particular, and if so, how he evaluates it. Is it further possible to determine whether Tylor’s cultural and ritual dynamics can be rated not only as progress-enhancing, but also as dangerous and risky? Which role does reflexivity (ritual or scientific) play in this context? How does Tylor conceive of the relationship between the dynamic and the persisting elements of culture? Does he assume that this dynamic is controllable and steerable by the individual or by groups, or is it characterised exactly by its unavailability? In the following, I would like to concentrate on a more in-depth review of such passages from Tylor’s study Primitive Culture that seem to me to be particularly suited to illustrate his position on cultural and ritual dynamics and their relation to ritual reflexivity. While Primitive Culture, as previously mentioned, is not the first or only text in which he attempts to deliver a reason for his evolutionary cultural perspective by using ethnographic data, its particular significance becomes especially clear in the face of the following indicators: on the one hand, Tylor regarded Primitive Culture as the updated sum of his previous insights (“being treated at large and with a fuller array of facts”16), on the other hand (and this fact is the decisive one for me here), it contains an 80-page chapter specifically dedicated to the range of topics of “Rites and Ceremonies” that was not included in Researches into the Early History of Mankind published six years earlier. Additionally, Tylor never again achieved such a concentrated analysis of ritual actions in later writings – not even in his (analytically unambitious) overview Anthropology. An Introduction to the Study of Man and Civilization, published in 1881. This is why, in the following three sections of my contribution, I would now like to outline the key points of the cultural concept in Primitive Culture in rough outline, with the focus being on Tylor’s assessment of the dynamic indicators of culture. Subsequently – particularly by using chapter 18 (“Rites and Ceremonies”) – I will take a look at Tylor’s understanding of rituals and discuss to what extent he understands and topicalises dynamic as a constitutive quality of rituals as well, and how he explicitly and implic15 In cultural anthropology, Victor W. Turner’s studies, in particular, have sharpened the eye for the reflective potential of rituals, also cf. Stausberg 2006. 16 Tylor 1920: vol. 1, V.

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itly evaluates the reflective potential of rituals at issue here as well. The last section is reserved for an attempt to recapitulate the insights gained up to this point with respect to the (not unproblematic) implications of his cultural and ritualistic understanding in order to – in a randomised fashion – get to the bottom of the question of what relevance Tylor’s studies might hold for present-day debates of ritual studies.

1. Unity in Variety: E.B. Tylor’s Concept of “Culture” With the publication of his two-volume study Primitive Culture. Researches into the Development of Mythology, Philosophy, Religion, Language, Art, and Custom on 28 April 1871, Tylor presented a synthesis of his research results up to that date.17 Its popularity is not only documented by the publication of German and French translations shortly after, but also by the fact that it was printed in a 6th edition as early as 1920. For the autodidact Tylor, this success came as a surprise. He was born the fifth child of a Quaker family (the father owned a brass foundry) in Camberwell on 2 October 1832.18 Since he was unable to study at a university because of his religious affiliation, he worked in his father’s business after finishing school until an illness in 1856 led him to take a recreational trip to the Caribbean. During this trip he met the British archaeologist and ethnologist Henry Christy (1810–1865) in Havana, whom he followed to Mexico to study Toltec culture. Under Christy’s tutelage, Tylor acquired his first archaeological and ethnographic knowledge19 during this 6-month-long expedition, that was eventually recorded in the work Anahuac, or Mexico and the Mexicans, Ancient and Modern, published in 1861. In 1865, Tylor was able to publish his first extensive cultural comparison study, Researches into the Early History of Mankind and the Development of Civilization; and together with Primitive Culture, these and other contri17 Concerning the history of the creation and impact of Primitive Culture, cf. Leopold 1980; Benzing 2001. 18 Remarks about Tylor’s curriculum vitae from Kohl 1997; as well as Boskovic 2004. About Tylor’s studies and scientific work at Oxford, cf. Gosden & Larson & Petch 2007. Concerning the social and institutional circumstances in which the academic discipline of “anthropology” developed in Great Britain, cf. Kuklick 1991. 19 This is why it is important not to misunderstand the often uttered label of Tylor as an “armchair anthropologist”, in the sense that he lacked ethnographic work experience of any kind. Nevertheless, John Wyon Burrow states that Tylor was barely able to detach himself from his antiquated perspective in Anahuac; the result had been a “relative lack of interest in [...] contemporary Mexico as a living society” (Burrow 1970: 244). The transition from the method favoured by Tylor and Frazer for evaluating the ethnographic questionnaires filled in by missionaries, traders, and other travellers, to the professional field research-work (especially by Boas and Malinowski) is outlined by Stocking 1992. Prehistoric archaeology becomes one of the most important allies for Tylor in the conceptualisation of his developmental models (cf. Leopold 1980: 27ff.). For the discipline’s background, also cf. Bowler 1976.

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butions advanced his growing reputation, which is why he was given, at first, a position as a reader in 1884, and finally the first-ever professorship for ethnology at the university of Oxford in 1896, which he held until 1909. In the 19 chapters of Primitive Culture, Tylor attempts to lay the theoretical foundation of a science of culture (which he only uses in the singular form). He describes the object of this science in the beginning of Primitive Culture with the famous phrase: “Culture or Civilization, taken in its wide ethnographic sense, is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society.”20 This holistic understanding of “culture”, as used by Tylor at this point, is, of course, barely suitable for any analyses that intend to envisage the specifics of various cultures. Instead, the terms “culture” and the synonymously used “civilization” function as so-called “umbrella terms” in Tylor’s definition, with which he wants to capture in one term the entirety of what the human race has brought forth (be it intellectually or materially), regardless of its historical and geographical affiliations.21 However, in contrast to those passages in Primitive Culture in which Tylor refers to a highly developed cognitive-moralistic level of the human (in the sense of “civilised”)22 with such terms as “culture” and “civilization”, the aforementioned holistic initial definition excludes exactly such a judgemental or prioritising use. In the face of this tension, characteristic for Primitive Culture, between the general and the specific understanding of “culture”, it is not surprising that it 20 Tylor 1920: vol. 1, 1. 21 Brian Morris points out this aspect: “This is an important departure, for it becomes possible to speak of cultures or the ‘civilization’ of peoples who had been commonly thought to possess neither.” (Morris 1987: 98ff.) Morris overlooks here that Tylor in no way speaks about “cultures” and his introductory remarks regarding the subject of “culture” are not at all to be understood as a valorisation of “simple” societies, since Tylor denies them the decisive ability to be “civilized” in what follows. Cf. also George W. Stocking’s suggestion: “Both in terms of his theory and of his usage, Tylor might better have defined culture as ‘the progress of that complex whole’.” (Stocking 1982: 74). Martin D. Stringer’s interpretation that Tylor views “each society [...] as being a distinct whole with a culture of its own”, does not take Tylor’s decisive course-setting seriously, that of understanding “culture” specifically not as the loose collection of independent, singular cultures, but as “that complex whole” whose unity and tight interconnectedness is a vital prerequisite for Tylor’s analytical access (Tylor 1999: 542). Tylor received various stimulating ideas for his cultural concept primarily from the writings of the cultural historian Gustav Klemm (1802–1867), (cf. Leopold 1980: 121ff). Concerning specific lingual gestures of holistic cultural analyses, not enlarged on here (also by Tylor, amongst others), cf. Thornton 1988. 22 Also compare e.g. his investigations of belief in the power of magic (chapter 4), where he compares the “modern cultured nations” (in which admittedly such rudimentary forms of “superstition” – as “survivals” – were still to be found) to the “less civilized” (Tylor 1920: vol. 1, 122ff.), where belief in magical powers is an inherent part of the spiritual physiognomy of “the primitive”.

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has provoked fierce controversies. Another important indicator of Tylor’s cultural perception becomes clear in his initial definition: his understanding of “culture” is primarily the acquisition of intellectual views, abilities, and knowledge, with the development of specific practices ranking in second place. In order to secure for cultural science its recognition as a respectable scientific discipline, Tylor bases his methodological orientation on the natural sciences. He sees their primary task in the revelation of laws the knowledge of which is indispensable for making practical use of natural forces. Processes in culture, Tylor is convinced, are also based on the effects of these laws and are by no means products of chance. Moreover, these laws that govern culture, just like the principles of nature, are not subject to any historical change. “If any one holds that human thought and action were worked out in primæval times according to laws essentially other than those of the modern world, it is for him to prove by valid evidence this anomalous state of things, otherwise the doctrine of permanent principle will hold good, as in astronomy or geology. That the tendency of culture has been similar throughout the existence of human society, and that we may fairly judge from its known historic course what its prehistoric course may have been, is a theory clearly entitled to precedence as a fundamental principle of ethnographic research.”23 Thus, Tylor attributes fundamental significance to contemplating human culture from a historical perspective. It alone is capable of shedding light on the question of which aspects of human thinking and actions must be considered stable and general, and which are variable and thus the result of an evolutionary process. “On the one hand, the uniformity which so largely pervades civilization may be ascribed, in great measure, to the uniform action of uniform causes: while on the other hand its various grades may be regarded as stages of development or evolution, each the outcome of previous history, and about to do its proper part in shaping the history of the future.”24 Tylor sees an important indicator of culture in the tense relationship between its persisting elements and its already advanced elements, and the phenomenon of “survival” to him is clear evidence of such asynchronous developments. By “survivals” Tylor understands “[...] processes, customs, opinions, and so forth, which have been carried on by force of habit into a new state of society different from

23 Tylor 1920: vol. 1, 33. 24 Ibid.: 1.

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that in which they had their original home, and they thus remain as proofs and examples of an older condition of culture out of which a newer has been evolved.”25 This concept of “survivals”, as well as that of its counterpart “progress”, indicate that Tylor does not hold a quasi impersonal-supraindividual power, which directs the social processes over the heads of the people, to be responsible as a cause for the variability of culture (and thus its dynamic), but that he traces them back to anthropological principles whose power-play, according to his conviction, resembles the “facts of mechanics”.26 The forces acting within culture, Tylor continues, become apparent to everyone who registers, on the one hand, the tense relationship between the development of mental skills or the resulting socio-technical facts, respectively, and, on the other, the rigid adherence to custom as a feature of human nature: “As men’s minds change in progressing culture, old customs and opinions fade gradually in a new and uncongenial atmosphere, or pass into states more congruous with the new life around them.”27 Nevertheless, Tylor does not assume that the need to cling to traditions (which often can solidify into a routine) is equally distinctive in all phases of culture. He expects the process of civilisation understood as the “general improvement of mankind by higher organization of the individual and of society [...] in modern educated life”28 to break the spell of obsolete opinions and practices which most people hardly perceive any more, but which still captivates particularly the less cultivated societies (thus again demonstrating his progressive demeanour): “It is quite wonderful [...] to see how large a share stupidity and unpractical conservatism and dogged superstition have had in preserving for us traces of the history of our race, which practical utilitarianism would have remorselessly swept away. The savage is firmly, obstinately conservative. No man appeals with more unhesitating confidence to the great precedent-makers of the past; the wisdom of his ancestors can control against the most obvious evidence his own opinions and actions.”29 It is precisely at this point of identification of those persisting elements which inhibit the progress of culture that ethnographic research is faced with its significant educational task:

25 Ibid.: 16. Regarding the “survival” concept and its problematic implications (not pursued here any further), cf. Hodgen 1936; Kippenberg 1998; Segal 2004. 26 Regarding this perception (“cultural dynamics” as a sub-discipline of mechanics) that obviously aligns with the position of Joseph Louis Lagrange (1736–1813), cf. Janich 1980. 27 Tylor 1920: vol. 1, 136. 28 Ibid.: 27. 29 Ibid.: 156.

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As has been stressed previously, “progress” and “survival” are only two terms among others that Tylor uses to describe the effects of the multiple, often even antagonistic, entwinements by which the ideal and material elements he sees as part of culture are interconnected. “Progress, degradation, survival, revival, modification, are all modes of the connexion that binds together the complex network of civilization.”32 Since, as mentioned before, Tylor uses the terms “culture” and “civilization” only in the singular, and is thus unable to describe the dynamic effects of friction and stimulation resulting from the contact of different ways of life as a result of the confrontation of different “cultures” (in the plural), he has to rely on other terms to allow him to further differentiate within the monolithic term of “culture” and distinguish between the groups that are characterised by their national, religious or political specifics: “As the evidence stands at present, it appears that when in any race some branches much excel the rest in culture, this more often happens by elevation than by subsidence. But this elevation is much more apt to be produced by foreign than by native action. Civilization is a plant oftener propagated than developed.”33 These words make it evident that, according to Tylor, the processes of cultural change do not so much emanate from a will for change directed toward one’s own group, “inwardly focused” so to speak, but are, in most cases, the result of external influence – in particular when there is an intellectual divide between the two

30 Ibid.: vol. 2, 453. 31 Ibid.: 443. According to Herbert S. Lewis, this passage was deliberately misunderstood by critics of Tylor’s anthropology (such as e.g. Fabian 1983): “Given the point of Fabian’s book, someone not familiar with the passage might suppose that Tylor meant that anthropology could be used to dominate Others. In fact, he meant that such knowledge could be used as a basis for the reform of British society.” (Lewis 1998: 727). However, the following sketches concerning Tylor’s appraisal of the Europeans’ responsibility for education show that in the hierarchic relationships between the “savage” and the “civilized” defended by Tylor, dominance does play a role (albeit not as an end in itself). 32 Tylor 1920: vol. 1, 17. 33 Ibid.: 53.

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neighbouring groups.34 To illustrate this thesis, Tylor, referring to the peoples of Polynesia, South America, and South Africa, brings to mind the “European intercourse with savage tribes during the last three or four centuries”35, which was followed by an assimilation of these peoples to the European standard necessary from his point of view. Since Tylor does not in the least doubt the idea that the civilised nations of Europe have the responsibility, based on their sophisticated position, to support the peoples still living in “savage” or “barbaric” conditions in following Europe on this quasi-unavoidable way of advancement (“[T]he main tendency of human society during its long term of existence has been to pass from a savage to a civilized state.”36); it is a futile effort to look for any criticism in his assessment of these assimilation processes, which were often enforced with violence.37 Tylor’s unshakable conviction that this approach of the Europeans is justified is not affected in any way by his concession that “[w]hether in high ranges or in low of human life, it may be seen that advance of culture seldom results at once in unmixed good.”38 In his view, cultural progress must not simply be equated with the gain of something new, but is rather characterised by saying goodbye to the old. It would, therefore, be amiss to reduce his understanding of the civilisation process to a mere accumulation of events. Unfortunately, Tylor says, the adaptation to the advanced level does not always flow smoothly. “[T]he savage who adopts something of foreign civilization too often loses his ruder virtues without gaining an equivalent.”39 Such regrettable isolated cases were probably due to the circumstance that the “savage” encountered a bad role model (“[T]he white invader or colonist [...] often represents his standard very ill.”40); but this fact did not challenge the general necessity nor the justification of the civilised people’s responsibility for education (“aiding progress and [...] removing hindrance”41). The bottom line is that Tylor considers the processes envisaged here (in terms of cultural dynamic) – contrary to “dynam34 This and the following statements by Tylor show that Joan Leopold’s judgement (“The evolution of social relationships was hardly given consideration in P[rimitive] C[ulture] [...].”) requires further specifying (Leopold 1980: 36). The question to what extent – and with what implications for them – the forces released (e.g. by colonisation efforts) need to be taken into account in cultural contacts by ethnology, is discussed in the relevant reflections by Bronislaw Malinowski, the major part of which was only published posthumously (Malinowski 1961). 35 Tylor 1920: vol. 1, 52. 36 Ibid.: 32. 37 Nowhere in the research literature on Tylor is this silence problematised. Nevertheless, Morris E. Opler notes: “Tylor found the key to cultural evolution in what I would call ‘cultural Darwinism’, a process of competition and selection [...].” (Opler 1964: 132). 38 Tylor 1920: vol. 1, 29. 39 Ibid. 40 Ibid. 41 Ibid.: vol. 2, 453.

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ics” commonly having a positive connotation – by no means as processes that are free of losses, and in which the agreement of those involved can be taken for granted.

2. The Dynamic of Rituals from Tylor’s Perspective If you take a closer look at the weighting of topics in the 19 chapters of Primitive Culture, you will note that one chapter is dedicated to technical development, two chapters deal with magic42 and ethnological findings, three chapters relate to language43 and various types of counting, and all of eleven chapters elaborate on the origin and cultural significance of mythology, religion and rituals.44 Here, too, in the analysis of religious convictions and practices, Tylor remains faithful to his historical-comparative method, elucidated in the first chapters of Primitive Culture, just as he adheres to his repeatedly uttered opinion of the equality and consistency of human nature. Taking these methodical conditions into account, Tylor is convinced it could be possible to successfully disclose the rationality of religious ways of thinking and acting not only in the high religions, but also in those of the “lower peoples”, and thus make them accessible to scientific research processes. Religious doctrines and practices, in his opinion, are not so much the products of an ill or deranged mind, but rather indicate the ignorance of the believers with respect to natural causal relationships: “Far from its beliefs and practices being a rubbish-heap of miscellaneous folly, they are consistent and logical in so high a degree as to begin, as soon as even roughly classified, to display the principles of their formation and development; and these principles prove to be essentially rational, though working in a mental condition of intense and inveterate ignorance.”45 Having this opinion, namely that the lack of knowledge of the correlations between cause and effect promotes the formation of religious views (because, for instance, an event is ascribed to the intervention of God rather than being considered an effect of the laws of nature), Tylor adopts a hypothesis that was widespread particularly among the philosophers of the Age of Enlightenment and which can

42 Regarding Tylor’s concept of magic, cf. Stanley J. Tambiah 1990; Hanegraaff 1998. 43 Regarding Tylor’s discussion of the various concepts of language (in particular that of Friedrich Max Müller [1823–1900]), cf. Leopold 1989; 1999. 44 Tylor’s changing terminology (“rite[s]”, “ceremonies”, “ritual”) in Primitive Culture is pointed out by Platvoet 2006: 170. 45 Tylor 1920: vol. 1, 22.

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also be found in David Hume (1711–1776).46 With this Scottish scholar, Tylor shares the basic assumption that the examination of religious opinions and practices falls under the competence of anthropology (and not of theology), since the only reasonable way of gaining insight into the development and the mechanisms of religious thinking and acting is by analysing human nature and culture. With an eye to his research objective – and here, too, he is at one with Hume – Tylor deems it superfluous to address in greater detail any questions relating to the justification of certain rites, or to the truth of the fact asserted in the religious doctrines, which is why he avoids these aspects in his examinations. “The rites of sacrifice and purification may be studied in their stages of development without entering into questions of their authority and value, nor does an examination of the successive phases of the world’s belief in a future life demand a discussion of the arguments adduced for or against the doctrine itself.”47 Tylor’s standpoint is unambiguous here (an example demonstrating the opposite will be presented later): A comparative reconstruction of the history of foreign religious practices and views can definitely do without the tedious work of collecting explanations, justifications, reflections and appraisals of those involved in these actions; the anthropologist working at his home desk is allowed to limit his studies to evaluating the descriptions, which should be as complete and accurate as possible, of the processes of actions and movements that he may take, for instance, from the records of missionaries, colonial civil servants or other travellers. Unlike the researchers of later generations who – reflecting on an appropriate ethnological procedure – took the view that the emic perspective should be elicited, or even retraced emphatically,48 Tylor, at this point of his argument, does not pay any heed 46 Relevant here are Hume’s writings The Natural History of Religion (1757), as well as the posthumously published Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (1779). Concerning Hume’s specifically anthropological perspective on human religiousness, cf. Bührmann 2008: 244ff. (regarding Tylor’s reference to Hume’s Natural History of Religion, cf. ibid.: 276). A detailed analysis of the connections between Hume’s and Tylor’s convictions is still wanting, but first steps are included in Preus 1987: 133. Another line of development that places Tylor rather in the tradition of the French Enlightenment (here, the stage model of Anne Robert Turgot [1727–1781] is of primary importance) is traced by Lawrence 1987: 25ff.). 47 Tylor 1920: vol. 1, 23. 48 The significance of “Einfühlung” (empathy) as an ethnological method was stressed in the twentieth century, especially by representatives of the culture-morphological school, such as e.g. Leo Frobenius and Adolf Ellegard Jensen. Jensen emphasised that a “professional” understanding, on the part of the ethnologists, of religion cannot do without Einfühlung, e.g. whenever, as in the case of myths, “wir in uns selber jene festliche Situation der Naturvölker anklingen lassen können, die ihnen die mythischen Antworten als vernünftige Aussagen erscheinen lässt.” (Jensen 1991: 74).

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to this reflection potential, just as he does not consider field research-work and data acquisition to be his actual and proper task. What is more, Tylor considers it appropriate to warn against overly intimate contact, for instance, with the religious view(s) of the subjects of his research, in favour of the scientific procedure demanded by him. Not only does he deem an overly detailed examination of these views unnecessary, but also Tylor is evidently aware of the risk that, in the process, the anthropologist may let himself be drawn unnecessarily into pedantic debates, and thus lose the distance to his research object that is required for his analyses. It was Clifford Geertz who argued that such a strict “either-or” dichotomy in general (either etic or emic perspective), as well as the neglect of either of the branches of the dichotomy, fails to grasp the phenomena in question and hinders deeper understanding.49 The cultural scientist, Tylor warns repeatedly, must, while carrying out his historical-comparative analyses of religious ways of thinking and acting, always be prepared for confrontation with the theologians, who (wrongfully) consider this subject to be their exclusive domain.50 But it is precisely the comparatively greater impartiality of the cultural scientist that offers the chance, for instance in the course of the analysis of mythological systems, to gain more differentiated insights (as they are not assessed on the basis of a constricted theological perspective): “It is an indispensable qualification of the true historian that he shall be able to look dispassionately on myth as a natural and regular product of the human mind, acting on appropriate facts in a manner suited to the intellectual state of the people producing it.”51 Although Tylor, through his anthropological access to religion, embraces the tradition, e.g. of Hume, he does not adopt the latter’s paradigm completely. In fact, contrary to Hume, Tylor comprehends religion primarily as an intellectual phenomenon, and thus disregards the aspect of religious emotions in his argumentation. Of course, he by no means denies the emotional component of religiousness, but for analytical reasons he prefers to keep it out of his studies. “Even in the life of the rudest savage, religious belief is associated with intense emotion, with awful reverence, with agonizing terror, with rapt ecstasy when sense and thought utterly transcend the common level of daily life. [...] Scientific progress is at times more furthered by working along a distinct intellectual line, without being tempted to diverge from the main object to what lies beyond, in however intimate connexion.”52 49 Geertz 1983. 50 Concerning the tense relationship between theological and scientific claims of interpretation in the late nineteenth century, cf. F. Turner 1974 (who regards Tylor as one of the “most insidious enemies of religious culture”, cf. ibid.: 31ff.). 51 Tylor 1920: vol. 2, 447. 52 Ibid.: 359.

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Tylor’s focus on the intellectual component of religiousness (“belief”), however, also entails that the religious practice, and thus also the ritual, disappears from his vision, as can be demonstrated by his attempt to define “religion”: “The first requisite in a systematic study of the religions of the lower races, is to lay down a rudimentary definition of religion. By requiring in this definition the belief in a supreme deity or of judgement after death, the adoration of idols or the practice of sacrifice, or other partially-diffused doctrines or rites, no doubt many tribes may be excluded from the category of religious. [...] It seems best to fall back at once on this essential source, and simply to claim, as a minimum definition of Religion, the belief in Spiritual Beings.”53 Animism, Tylor says, is the decisive core of all religious conviction.54 It is the basis of the religious views of “savages” and the elaborate belief systems of Asia, as well as those of Christianity. A profound understanding of these different forms of religiousness which are both historically and geographically separated, therefore, requires the attempt, as Tylor demonstrates in Primitive Culture, to retrace the changes and transformations of animistic convictions: “More than half of the present work is occupied with a mass of evidence from all regions of the world, displaying the nature and meaning of this element of the Philosophy of Religion, and tracing its transmission, expansion, restriction, modification, along the course of history into the midst of our own modern thought. Nor are the questions of small practical moment which have to be raised in a similar attempt to trace the development of certain prominent Rites and Ceremonies – customs so full of instruction as to the inmost powers of religion, whose outward expression and practical result they are.”55 From the comparative analysis of the manifold forms of doctrines within the various religious directions, Tylor deduces the conclusion that they must have undergone a development on the basis of which, with increasing degrees of civilisation, an enhanced ethical demand to the believers has unfolded within them. “Throughout the present study of animistic religion, it constantly comes in view that doctrines which in the lower culture are philosophical, tend in the higher to become ethical; that what among savages is a science of nature, passes among civilized nations into a moral engine.”56 While conceding only an explanatory char53 Ibid.: vol. 1, 424. 54 With the concept of animism, Tylor does not claim to have specified the historic origin of religion (this, in his opinion, is not to be tracked down with any science), but, at best, to have identified a characteristic linking all religions. Cf. Stringer 1999: 544). 55 Tylor 1920: vol. 1, 23. 56 Ibid.: vol. 2, 104.

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acter to the religious doctrines of the uncultivated nations, Tylor perceives those of the advanced societies to have the function of controlling their social behaviour. He does not pursue this observation any further, thus, at this point, leaving his readers in the dark as to which component he awards priority to here. Does it take the general process of civilisation to refine the religious ideas and turn them into a “moral engine”, or does he consider these ideas to be a “moral avant-garde” that quasiethically “impregnates” the non-religious ideas? Thus, although Tylor, in his reflections on religion, places its intellectual aspects in the foreground (and therefore also calls it “philosophy”), the following, longer passage is a clear indication of the fact that he, in spite of his comparatively lesser degree of detail with regard to religious practices,57 is still well aware of the analytical difficulties, the knowledge of which induces him to warn against analytically naïve dealing with rituals. “Religious rites fall theoretically into two divisions, though these blend in practice. In part, they are expressive and symbolic performances, the dramatic utterance of religious thought, the gesture-language of theology. In part, they are means of intercourse with and influence on spiritual beings, and as such, their intention is as directly practical as any chemical or mechanical process, for doctrine and worship correlate as theory and practice. In the science of religion, the study of ceremony has its strong and weak sides. On the one hand, it is generally easier to obtain accurate accounts of ceremonies by eyewitnesses, than anything like trustworthy and intelligible statements of doctrine; so that very much of our knowledge of the religion of the savage and barbaric world consists in acquaintance with its ceremonies. It is also true that some religious ceremonies are marvels of permanence, holding substantially the same form and meaning through age after age, and far beyond the range of historic record. On the other hand, the signification of ceremonies is not to be rashly decided on by mere inspection. In the long and varied course in which religion has adapted itself to new intellectual and moral conditions, one of the most marked processes has affected timehonoured religious customs, whose form has been faithfully and even servilely kept up, while their nature has often undergone transformation. In the religions of the great nations, the natural difficulty of following these changes has been added to by the sacerdotal tendency to ignore and obliterate traces of the inevitable change of religion from age to age, and to convert

57 This may be the reason superficial readers of Primitive Culture have mostly ignored Tylor’s statement about rituals, and then (as in the case of James A. Boon) have overemphasised the contrast between this study, (supposedly) only dealing with doctrines, and Frazer’s Golden Bough (Boon 1982: 11).

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into mysteries ancient rites whose real barbaric meaning is too far out of harmony with the spirit of a later time.”58 A closer look reveals that, in his statements on the appearance and scientific classification of rites and ceremonies, Tylor consistently orientates himself to a segmentation with which he differentiates the “observing scientists” from the “ritual practitioners”. Corresponding to this segmentation is a separation between “outside” and “inside” perspective. The outside perspective, to which the anthropologist has access – so Tylor’s formulations could be interpreted here – allows an ability to understand and analyse these practices as expressive and symbolic actions in which religious convictions obtain enactment59, without the scientist himself having to believe the myths and narratives these actions are based on. However, an entirely different perspective, namely the emic one, is necessary to come to the conviction that these rituals are not only enactments, but also, and above all, effective instruments for enabling contact with, and influence on, spiritual beings (Tylor himself refers to such convictions elsewhere as “superstition”). His differentiation between (religious) theory and (religious) practice is based on the opinion that the reflective theory (“thought”, “theology”, “doctrine”) is to be given preference over mere executive, non-reflective actions (“performance”, “utterance”, “gesture-language”), not only in terms of time, but also in substantial terms. The comparison of “complex religious outlook”, on the one hand, and “simple ritual”, on the other, that was always implied but not specifically expressed by Tylor, is in accordance with this ranking. It is also the implied assumption of his conviction that it is far easier to obtain precise observation data on ritual practices than to gain reliable and reasonable statements about religious doctrines. For Tylor to arrive at this view, however, not only the structures (supposed but in no way verified by him) of varying complexity inherent in religious views and practices play a role, but also the difference between “outside” and “inside” perspective: Tylor is per se inclined to attribute a higher degree of distance, and thus of reliability, to the anthropological perspective, than the views of those whose religious outlooks and rituals are the subject of the study. But precisely at this point (and this is a striking contrast to his statements in Primitive Culture I, 23, as shown previously), Tylor has to concede that for the accurate investigation of ceremonies and rituals, it is by no means sufficient to limit oneself to the observation data acquired by the anthropologist. The trust in the methodological merits, on the basis of which Tylor, up to this point in his argumentation, has asserted the preference of the scientific approach over indigenous 58 Tylor 1920: vol. 2, 362. 59 By emphasising the aspect of enactment, Tylor, moreover, alludes to the affinity between rituals and theatrical performance, which future theorists such as Victor W. Turner and Richard Schechner would later examine more closely. Cf. V. Turner 1982, also Schechner 1985.

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understanding, could, in his assessment, turn out to be unfavourable if the historical development of rituals is not taken into account at the same time: only a historical perspective underlines that, in their investigation, one has to take a closer look not only at their form, but always at their significance as well. Experience shows, however, that these two components do not necessarily develop in parallel, so that caution is always advised when comparing rituals: although they may be concordant on the outside, a quasi-identical meaning need not be the necessary consequence. Rituals (and with this assessment, Tylor definitely anticipates current research positions) are not to be regarded as invariable forms of symbolic acting, neither with respect to their outward appearance nor in their purport. But with this admission, one could now object to Tylor, the implicit opinion expressed just before of a principal difference between “complex religious outlook” and “simple ritual” also becomes untenable: neither in the one nor the other case does the anthropologist have to deal with simple objects of investigation that are accessible in passing; in both cases one cannot dispense with the consideration of the indigenous reflections. Tylor, in regarding rituals as dramatic statements of religious thoughts and ideas, acknowledges that conflicts of opinions leave their traces in them as well. “The history of an invention, an opinion, a ceremony, is a history of suggestion and modification, encouragement and opposition, personal gain and party prejudice, and the individuals concerned act each according to his own motives, as determined by his character and circumstances.”60 Rituals are hybrid cultural constructs. Only if viewed from a historical perspective does the partial, perhaps even complete, origin of rituals from former ceremonial practices become accessible, so that it is barely possible to determine the “hour of birth” of a ritual at all: “[A] vast proportion of doctrines and rites known among mankind are not to be judged as direct products of the particular religious systems which give them sanction, for they are in fact more or less modified results adopted from previous systems. [...] Should the doctrine or rite in question appear to have been transmitted from an earlier to a later stage of religious thought, then it should be tested, like any other point of culture, as to its place in development.”61 The historical perspective, however, not only helps Tylor review alleged new beginnings of ritual forms, but also supports him in the identification of “revivals”, thus the return of practices and views regarded as overcome. “Our own time has revived a group of beliefs and practices which have their roots deep in the very stratum of early philosophy where witchcraft makes its first appearance. This group of beliefs and practices constitutes what is now commonly known as Spiritu60 Tylor 1920: vol. 1, 12. 61 Ibid.: vol. 2, 451.

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alism.”62 Tylor regards Spiritualism as a form of animism which is surprisingly returning to the modern age, but should long have been overcome in the face of the level of civilisation in Europe. At the same time, Tylor also registers a countermovement caused by the “intellectual changes”;63 the previous attempts to cure diseases such as hysteria or epilepsy by means of ritual exorcism have been replaced with medical procedures in the modern age. Intellectual progress, Tylor says in another passage, has luckily led to discrediting the formerly virulent belief in the efficacy of magical rituals (“blind belief in processes wholly irrelevant to their supposed results”64). But his experience in Spiritualism is a reason for him always to have preserved his scepticism with respect to human nature: “The history of religion displays but too plainly the proneness of mankind to relapse, in spite of reformation, into the lower and darker condition of the past.”65 Against the background of the various ritual forms treated by Tylor (“rites of Prayer, Sacrifice, Fasting and other methods of Artificial Ecstasy, Orientation, Lustration.”66), let us now have a quick look at his statements concerning prayer rituals, in order to illustrate his opinion of the contradicting effects of these rituals. Tylor considers these prayers to increase the dynamism especially of the emotional backgrounds connected with religious opinions, but does not regard them as a means of reflection. He is convinced that the origins of ritual prayers and sacrifices are to be found in venerations that have been taken out of any worldly context and raised into the sacred sphere.67 Whereas petitions and gifts were addressed to secular rulers at first, they later were also used in dealing with spiritual or divine leaders. With an eye to the effect, Tylor understands prayers to be rituals that can, above all, ensure the emotional stability of the person praying.

62 Ibid: vol. 1, 141. Cf. Stocking 1971. Stocking is convinced that, for both Tylor’s contouring of the concept of “animism” and that of “survival”, above all, his preoccupation with spiritualism was crucial. The importance of differentiating between “survival” and “revival” is illustrated by Patrick Wolfe’s accusation: Tylor has considered spiritualism (or astrology as well) as “survival”, and now finds himself confronted with the contradiction that, although he assumes a loss of importance of “survivals”, he has to concede, at the same time, that there have not been any losses of importance with a view to spiritual practices (Wolfe 1999: 139). However, this alleged contradiction disappears if spiritualism is not regarded as a “survival”, but as a “revival”. 63 Tylor 1920: vol. 2, 180. 64 Ibid.: vol. 1, 133. 65 Ibid.: 467. 66 Ibid.: vol. 2, 363. 67 A problematic statement, that will not be discussed in detail here, is that the contrast of sacred and profane is a general characteristic of religion per se (an opinion that Tylor only implies here, before Émile Durkheim, nearly 40 years later, would formulate it as a leitmotiv in his Les formes élémentaires de la vie religieuse [1912]).

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But, at the same time, Tylor recognises the tension resulting from the fact that the emotionally strengthening effect of the prayer, in sharp contrast to the positive impact so matter-of-factly assumed here, can, nevertheless, also be accompanied by destructive intentions: “Moralists admit that prayer can be made an instrument of evil, that it may give comfort and hope to the superstitious robber, that it may strengthen the heart of the soldier to slay his foes in an unrighteous war, that it may uphold the tyrant and the bigot in their persecution of freedom in life and thought.”69 These considerations show that Tylor (with a view to instrumentalisation and social consequences) is well aware of the incalculable effects of (prayer) rituals. Contrary to the doctrines of a religion which (as Tylor had stated) in a civilised nation could obviously change into a “moral engine” without further control,70 rituals did not, and do not, have this independent force. Yet this assessment of the risky potential of rituals71 also shows that to Tylor, religion or religious practices, respectively, do not per se need to be ethically indisputable.

3. An End of the Dynamics of Ritual? On the basis of selected passages, I have tried to show in my contribution to what extent Edward Burnett Tylor assumes a specific understanding of “dynamics” in his major work Primitive Culture that influences both his doctrine of “culture” and his reflections on rituals, as well as his occupation with emic reflections in rituals. “Cultural dynamics”, according to Tylor, should not be perceived as a series of unrelated events or human actions based on the principle of chance, but, ultimately, as events of cultural change that – despite their complexity – still adhere to laws. A glance at the history of culture teaches us, thus Tylor’s convictions could be summarised, that such a change is mostly stimulated by challenges of a practical and intellectual nature, and by the respective answers, hence by an increase of knowledge. Rituals, on the other hand, could not be adequate answers to those challenges, according to Tylor, because they are based upon religious convictions 68 69 70 71

Tylor 1920: vol. 2, 374. Ibid. Ibid.: 104. For defining the relationship between ritual and risk, cf. fundamentally Schlesier & Zellmann 2009.

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whose existence is founded precisely on a deficit of knowledge. What strikes Tylor’s eye particularly here are magical practices. But, at the same time, his analyses show his awareness of the need, in the investigation of rituals, to take seriously not only the findings of the scientists, but also the reflections and information provided by the ritual practitioners, without whose knowledge he does not think an extensive understanding (even one aspired to, but not attained) of ritual practices possible. But, as I have shown in part 2 of this paper, Tylor’s position on this point is not consistent at all, according to selected passages of Primitive Culture: a previous doubt of emic interpretation is opposed to the conviction of the need of indigenous explanations. Tylor is convinced that both religion (understood here as the entirety of doctrines) and rituals (as their dramatic implementation) do not remain unaffected by cultural change, and are forced to alter and adapt. The religious doctrines modified by an increase of knowledge also entail a change of ritual practice. Thus, a tense relationship between “cultural” and “ritual” performance, as indicated by Tylor, can indeed be confirmed. Yet, if the cultural change conceived of by Tylor as events of progress has, thus far, not been able to completely do away with the “survivals” and “revivals” (thus also: ritual practices) even in this enlightened modern world, Tylor, in his understanding of progress, adheres to the conviction that this condition can (and must) be achieved one day. That would then be the end of the dynamics of ritual as well. It seems that, under these conditions, ritual reflexivity will have no chance to survive, either. Reflexivity in Tylor’s view can, and will, just live on as an essential part of science.

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Murphree, Idus L. 1961. “The Evolutionary Anthropologists: The Progress of Mankind. The Concepts of Progress in the Thought of John Lubbock, Edward B. Tylor, and Lewis H. Morgan”. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 105: 265–300. Opler, Morris E. 1964. “Cause, Process and Dynamics in the Evolutionism of E.B. Tylor”. Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 20: 123–144. Platvoet, Jan G. 2006. “Ritual: Religious and Secular”. In: Jens Kreinath & Jan Snoek & Michael Stausberg (eds.). Theorizing Rituals: Issues, Topics, Approaches, Concepts. Leiden et al.: Brill: 161–205 (Numen Book Series: Studies in the History of Religions 114/1). Preus, James S. 1987. “Evolutionary Anthropology: Edward Burnett Tylor”. In: James S. Preus. Explaining Religion: Criticism and Theory from Bodin to Freud. New Haven et al.: Yale University Press: 131–153. Reckwitz, Andreas 2006. Die Transformation der Kulturtheorien: Zur Entwicklung eines Theorieprogramms. Weilerswist: Velbrück Wissenschaft. [New Revised Edition] Saler, Benson 1993. Conceptualizing Religion: Immanent Anthropologists, Transcendent Natives, and Unbounded Categories. Leiden et al.: Brill (Studies in the History of Religions 56). Schechner, Richard 1985. Between Theatre and Anthropology. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Schenk, Gerrit J. 2004. “Einleitung: Tradition und Wiederkehr des Rituellen”. In: Dietrich Harth & Gerrit J. Schenk (eds.). Ritualdynamik: Kulturübergreifende Studien zur Theorie und Geschichte rituellen Handelns, Heidelberg: Synchron: 11–26. Schlesier, Renate 1994. Kulte, Mythen und Gelehrte: Anthropologie der Antike seit 1800. Frankfurt a.M.: Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag — & Ulrike Zellmann (eds.) 2009. Ritual als provoziertes Risiko. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann. Schott, Rüdiger 1961. “Der Entwicklungsgedanke in der modernen Ethnologie”. Saeculum 12: 62–122. Segal, Robert A. 2004. “Tylor: a Test Case of Kippenberg’s Thesis”. In: Brigitte Luchesi & Kocku von Stuckrad (eds.). Religion im kulturellen Diskurs. Festschrift for H.G. Kippenberg. Berlin et al.: de Gruyter: 17–31. Service, Elman R. 1975. Origins of the State and Civilization: The Process of Cultural Evolution. New York: Norton. Stausberg, Michael 2004. “Ritualtheorien und Religionstheorien”. In: Dietrich Harth & Gerrit J. Schenk (eds.). Ritualdynamik: Kulturübergreifende Studien zur Theorie und Geschichte rituellen Handelns. Heidelberg: Synchron: 29–48. — 2006. “Reflexivity”. In: Jens Kreinath & Jan Snoek & Michael Stausberg (eds.). Theorizing Rituals: Issues, Topics, Approaches, Concepts. Leiden et al.: Brill: 627–646 (Numen Book Series: Studies in the History of Religions 114/1). Steward, Julian H. 1955. Theory of Culture Change. The Methodology of Multilinear Evolution. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Stocking, George W. 1982 [1968]. “Matthew Arnold, E.B. Tylor, and the Use of Invention [1963]”. In: George W. Stocking. Race, Culture, and Evolution: Essays in the History

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of Anthropology. Chicago et al. [New York]: Univiversity of Chicago Press: 69–90, 325–328. — 1971. “Animism in Theory and Practice: E.B. Tylor’s Unpublished ‘Notes on Spiritualism’”. Man 6: 88–104. — 1992. “The Ethnographer’s Magic. Fieldwork in British Anthropology from Tylor to Malinowski [1983]”. In: George W. Stocking. The Ethnographer’s Magic and other Essays in the History of Anthropology. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press: 12–59. — 1987. Victorian Anthropology. New York et al.: Free Press et al. — 1995. After Tylor. British Social Anthropology 1888–1951. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Stringer, Martin D. 1999. “Rethinking Animism: Thoughts from the Infancy of Our Discipline”. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 5: 541–555. Tambiah, Stanley J. 1990. “Sir Edward Tylor versus Bronislaw Malinowski: is Magic False Science or Meaningful Performance?”. In: Stanley J. Tambiah. Magic, Science, Religion and the Scope of Rationality. Cambridge et al.: Cambridge University Press: 42–64. Thornton, Robert J. 1988. “The Rhetoric of Ethnographic Holism”. Cultural Anthropology 3/3: 285–303. Turner, Bryan S. 1971. “The Re-Appraisal of Tylor’s Concept of Religion: The Interactionist Analogy”. In: Günter Dux & Thomas Luckmann & Joachim Matthes (eds.). Religion und Sozialer Wandel und andere Arbeiten: Religion and Social Change, and other Essays. Vol. 7. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag: 139–149 (Internationales Jahrbuch für Religionssoziologie 7). Turner, Frank Miller 1974. Between Science and Religion: The Reaction to Scientific Naturalism in Late Victorian England. New Haven & London: Yale University Press. Turner, Victor W. 1982. From Ritual to Theatre: The Human Seriousness of Play. New York: PAJ Publications. Tylor, Edward B. 1861. Anahuac or Mexico and the Mexicans, Ancient and Modern. London: Green, Longman, and Roberts. — 1865. Researches into the Early History of Mankind and the Development of Civilization. London: Murray. — 1881. Anthropology: An Introduction to the Study of Man and Civilization. London: MacMillan. — 19206 [1871]. Primitive Culture: Researches into the Development of Mythology, Philosophy, Religion, Language, Art, and Custom. In two Volumes. London: Murray. Waal Malefijt, Annemarie de 1968. Religion and Culture: An Introduction to Anthropology of Religion. New York: MacMillan. White, Leslie A. 1949. The Science of Culture: A Study of Man and Civilization. New York Grove Press. Wolfe, Patrick 1999. Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology: The Politics and Poetics of an Ethnographic Event. London et al.: Cassell.

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Reflexive Remarks on Science, Ritual, and Neutrality in the Social Sciences Introduction “Usha Mehta, a veteran of India’s struggle for independence, recalled being told more than 50 years ago of an incident involving Sir C.V. Raman, an Indian physicist who won a Nobel Prize in 1930 for breakthroughs in the study of light. Recounting the story in a weekend interview at her Bombay home, Ms. Mehta said the physicist had rushed home from his Calcutta laboratory to take a ritual bath ahead of a solar eclipse. ‘The Nobel Prize? That was science’, the physicist explained. ‘A solar eclipse is personal’.”1 This anecdote is taken from an article in the New York Times and introduces nicely the focus of this paper. An even better example for the topic to be addressed is provided by a second anecdote of the mathematician, astrologer, and astronomer Ramanujan (not related to the famous mathematician Srinivas Ramanujan). His son, A.K. Ramanujan,2 wrote the article “Is There an Indian Way of Thinking?”, within which he recalls that the problem of whether there is an “Indian way of thinking” was posed for him personally at the age of 20 in the image of his father, the senior Ramanujan: “My father’s clothes represented his inner life very well. He was a south Indian brahmin gentleman. He wore neat white turbans, a Sri Vaishnava caste mark (in his earlier pictures, a diamond earring), yet wore Tootal ties, Kromentz buttons and collar studs, and donned English serge jackets over his muslim dhotis which he wore draped in traditional brahmin style. He was a mathematician, an astronomer. But he was also a Sanskrit scholar, an expert astrologer. He had two kinds of visitors: American and English mathematicians who called on him when they were on a visit to India, and local astro1 Burns 1995: 4. 2 A.K. Ramanujan was born in Mysore, India in 1929, but worked for most of his life as a poet, translator, linguist, and folklorist in the U.S. A.K. Ramanujan dedicated his poem “Astronomer” to his father, which is an attempt to make sense of his seemingly contradictory stance (see Ramanujan 1986).

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What is the point of these two stories of Raman and the senior Ramanujan? It is not only that two seemingly opposed perspectives on the world can be held by one and the same person. It is that leading scientists perform religious rituals. The point is that science and ritual for many people do not go together. While I consider this opposition problematic in many ways, my aim in this paper is to trace the history of this opposition in an exemplary fashion, and to advance the argument that its pervasiveness is not to be underestimated. In order to do so, I will first engage with the alleged antagonism between ritual and science within ritual theory, and the different positions characteristic of the socalled “rationality debate”. The specific focus is on the positions advanced by the anthropologists Robin Horton, John Beattie, and Peter Winch. Secondly, I will draw on my own ethnographic work in India to show that positions similar to those taken by anthropologists are to be found in public discourse. As a concrete example I will focus on the position taken by the rationalist organisation “Maharashtra Andhashraddha Nirmulan Samiti” (“Organisation for the Eradication of Superstition”, abbreviated as ANiS). The declared aim of ANiS is to spread “scientific temper” within Indian society, and to eradicate “superstitions”, some of which are, in their view, at the core of religious rituals. Engaging with the theme of “reflexivity”, I will finally trace communalities and interdependences between public and scientific discourses on the opposition between science and ritual. This leads me to a discussion of the larger question: in what way does a position within scientific debates on “ritual” necessarily place a researcher with regard to the chosen object of inquiry, in this case the Indian rationalists, and its relevance for the ideals of “methodological agnosticism” and “neutrality” in the social sciences? In conclusion, the scope of this problem will be exemplified by a discussion of the position taken by the post-colonial historian Dipesh Chakrabarty on “science” and “ritual”, as 3 Ramanujan 1990: 42–43.

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well as on the two stories of Raman and the senior Ramanujan with which I started this article.

The Scientific Discourse on “Ritual” and “Science” If one were to group approaches towards “ritual” very roughly, it could be argued that there are two ways in which the notion “ritual” has been conceptualised within ritual theory. One perspective is characterised by a description and analysis of stereotypic, repetitive, formal, patterned sequences of words and acts. In this group I would locate the structural analyses of scholars such as Arnold van Gennep (1909) and aspects of the approach of Victor Turner (1967; 1969). The clearest specification in this respect remains Skorupski’s Symbol and Theory (1976), within which he criticises, at the same time, most of the classical approaches to ritual that come under the heading of the second perspective. This second perspective was aptly described by Gilbert Lewis, who suggested that the term “ritual” is often used as an adjective, by way of a compromise, to replace the ungainly “magico-religious”.4 A similar observation had already been made by Jack Goody, with regard to those colleagues who generally use “ritual” as referring to “a category of standardized behaviour (custom) in which the relationship between the means and the end is not intrinsic; i.e. is either irrational or non rational”5 and one could add “ineffective”.6 While this quote of Goody already indicates that there are also theories that engage with both perspectives – apart from Victor Turner, I would mention Stanley Tambiah (1981) – it is this second line of argumentation that is under scrutiny here, although, given the limited scope of this article, and the fact that more thorough histories have been provided (for example, by Tambiah in his Magic, Science, Religion, and the Scope of Rationality [2006, first published in 1990], which can be read against the above-mentioned Symbol and Theory [1976]), exemplary positions will only be highlighted. In order to trace the roots of this second perspective on “ritual”, one has to go back at least to Victorian England. Basically, all the leading social scientists at the end of the nineteenth century wrote on the relationship between “ritual” (understood as “magico-religious” practices) and “science”. Sir James Frazer, for example, saw magic, religion, and science as three systems succeeding and superseding each other. In this evolutionary scheme, science overtakes the old, logically and factually defective systems of thought. Other influential scholars theorising in related ways were the cultural evolutionists Sir Edward Burnett Tylor and Herbert Spencer. The legacy of this perspective later became an explicit subject of discus4 Lewis 1980: 10. 5 Goody 1961: 159. 6 See Sax 2010.

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sion, probably most famously in the “rationality debate” of the 1960s and 1970s7, but implicitly this is the case also in most contemporary writing on these issues.8 In order to cut a swathe through the jungle of related arguments, I will outline briefly how Robin Horton – as a main recent representative of an “intellectualist”9 tradition – has argued that magico-religious practices of traditional religions should be compared with Western science, and not with Western religion. His and related positions have been opposed, for the most part, from two different directions. On the one hand, there are the so-called “symbolists” in the tradition of a certain reading of Émile Durkheim (arguing that religion is primarily to be seen as symbolic language that makes statements about issues like social order). This group of scholars, prominently represented by John Beattie, argued that ritual and science are not comparable, since the first is “expressive” while the second is “instrumental”. On the other hand, the intellectualists’ take on ritual has been opposed by scholars who see themselves in the tradition of the Ludwig Wittgenstein. Such a position was most famously taken by Peter Winch, who argued that rituals are embedded in a magico-religious world view and constitute a different language game than the language game of science. According to Skorupski this latter groups as well as symbolists get “to a similar endpoint by a very different route”.10 The anthropologist Robin Horton can be seen as following in the footsteps of the early intellectualists such as Frazer and Taylor (or “British empiricists”, as Durkheim called them), if one focuses on his tripartite argument that “traditional thought” (a term that he introduces in his article “African Traditional Thought and Western Science” of 1974) is quite different from religion as practiced in the contemporary West, and has much more similarity with “Western science”. In this view, modern Christianity has become more and more “anthropocentric”, i.e. it focuses on moral and salvational aspects, and the nature of the relationship between humans and God. Western science and traditional magico-religious rituals are, in opposition to this; they are “cosmocentric”, i.e. they look for an explanatory framework to establish unity, order, and regularity in the diversity and disorder of the external world, and try to establish effective interventions on that basis. Horton anwered his critics by arguing that, if one takes the reasons provided by those who 7 The rationality debate is summarised in Horton & Finnegan 1973; Wilson 1974; Lukes & Hollis 1985. In Germany, the debate was revisited in Kippenberg & Luchesi 1995 and Dürr 1981. 8 See Quack & Töbelmann 2010. 9 The term “intellectualists” was given to scholars in the tradition of Tylor who see religion as an attempt to provide “intellectual” answers to a set of questions centrally involving specific intellectual operations, such as observation, explanation, etc. These intellectual operations, grounded in our basic cognitive capacities, were further asserted to be universal, part of the common heritage of human beings. 10 Skorupski 1976: 13.

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perform rituals in a “magico-religious” framework at face value (rather than merely emphasising their further relevance for social structure or politics), one realises that they aim, as do scientists, at explaining or controlling (or both) the world immediately, or at least on a mediate level. The philosophers I.C. Jarvie and Joseph Agassi noted, with regard to Horton’s position: “Once we compare the magical rite not with Western religious rites, but with Western scientific rites, such as decontaminating water by using chlorine rather than holy water […] we see the similarity”.11 In his contribution to the volume Rationality, edited by Byron Wilson, Beattie summarises his position retrospectively: “I developed the theme that the ideas and procedures which we generally call ‘ritual’ differ from those which we call ‘practical’ and scientific (or ‘proto-scientific’) in that they contain, or may contain, an expressive, symbolic quality, which is not found in technical thought or activity as such. […] I argued that understanding religious and magical rites is in these respects more like understanding art than it is like understanding modern science. I went on to suggest that the belief in the efficacy of ritual (where, as it is usually the case, it is believed to produce results) is not, like the belief in ‘science’, however prototypical, based on experience and hypothesis-testing, but is rather founded in the imputation of a special power to symbolic or dramatic expression itself.”12 This position has been criticised not only by people such as Horton, but also by Jarvie & Agassi (1974), and most thoroughly by Skorupski (1976). Less influential, but, at the same time, also less criticised is a second line of argument objecting to the position of the intellectualists, as represented here by Robin Horton. To see ritual and science as competitors in explaining and controlling the world is, for the philosopher of the social sciences Peter Winch, a “category mistake”. In the rationality debate, Winch elaborated on the ideas propounded in his book The Idea of a Social Science (1965, first published 1958); the most debated point, in this respect, was his article “Understanding a Primitive Society”, in which he argued, by referring to the ethnographic example given by Evans-Pritchard on the Azande, that “the context of our scientific culture, is not on the same level as the context in which the beliefs about witchcraft operate. Zande notions of witchcraft do not constitute a theoretical system in terms of which Azande try to gain a 11 Jarvie & Agassi 1974: 176. 12 Beattie 1974: 240.

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Johannes Quack quasi-scientific understanding of the world. […] who is guilty of misunderstanding, not the Zande. The European is in fact committing a categorymistake.”13

Winch’s position is based on the insights of Wittgenstein, who wrote explicitly on the relationship of ritual, magic, religion, and science in his Remarks on Frazer’s Golden Bough14 and his “Lectures on Religious Belief” (to which I henceforth refer as Lectures).15 In his Lectures, Wittgenstein argues for the sui-generis status of religious beliefs, and that magico-religious actions cannot be compared with scientific actions. His point is that “religion” or “ritual”, if compared to science, is “on an entirely different plane”16 and needs an “entirely different kind of reasoning”17, because both are part of a different language game.18 Parts of his argument read like the criticism stated by the symbolists, quoted above. Beattie holds that, unlike the belief in “science”, the belief in the efficacy of ritual is not “based on experience and hypothesis-testing”.19 Wittgenstein holds with respect to the same topic: “We don’t talk about hypothesis, or about high probability. Nor about knowing”.20 For Wittgenstein, the rationality underlying the logic of ritual practices in traditional societies (one could add at this point the debates on the status of the sacraments with the Catholic Church) is essentially different from the rationality underlying Western science. And this difference is not only one of degree or quantity, but of kind or quality. In fact, Wittgenstein finds it “ludicrous” if people fail to see the difference between “religious uses of language” and “uses of religious language”.21 And it is this accusation that he would probably have made against the position on “ritual” held by a group of people to be introduced now, the Indian rationalists. 13 Winch 1974: 93. 14 Cf. on this Quack 2010. 15 The “Lectures on Religious Belief” are reprinted in Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics, Psychology and Religious Belief as compiled from notes taken by the students of Wittgenstein, Yorick Smythies, Rush Rhees, and James Taylor, and edited by Cyril Barrett (1978). They were not approved by Wittgenstein for publication. Concerning his Remarks on Frazer’s Golden Bough, it can be added that Wittgenstein had at least two encounters with different editions of Frazer’s Golden Bough, and there are several versions of his Remarks, none of which he released for publication. Here, I refer to the most comprehensive edition of Wittgenstein’s writings on Frazer (edited by Klagge & Nordmann in 1993). 16 Wittgenstein 1978: 53. 17 Ibid.: 58. 18 Wittgenstein’s notion of “language game” is not purely semantic, since “what is said in a language-game has the meaning it has in that context”, so translation is actually “grasping their use in its context” (see Skorupski 1976: 15). 19 Beattie 1974: 241. 20 Wittgenstein 1978: 57. 21 Ibid.: 53.

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The Indian Rationalists on “Science” and “Ritual” There might be all kinds of people in India who call themselves “rationalists” in one or the other context. But there are also specific rationalist organisations which gave themselves this name, because, for them, “rationalism” stands for a whole world-view that has relevance for, and repercussions on, all aspects of life and which should be spread all over the world.22 These rationalist organisations are generally part of the larger atheist, humanist, rationalist, and free-thinking movement within modern India. While many of them were founded in the middle of the twentieth century, their direct forerunners can be traced to the social reform and anti-caste movements in nineteenth- and twentieth-century India.23 Yet, they also stress their intellectual roots in, and communality with, European enlightenment and specific anti-religious movements in Europe and the US, from the eighteenth century until today.24 By far the most influential in this respect were the anti-religious groups and organisations at the end of the nineteenth century in Great Britain. In this paper, I focus on the perspective taken by representatives of the contemporary rationalist organisations in India on “ritual”, and how it is embedded in their general world-view. The ideology of rationalism that has emerged from these different roots is presented by the Indian rationalists themselves as based on a universal and ahistorical human faculty to reason, that is, based on naturalism, empiricism, and materialism. The rationalists separate the natural (and empirical) from the super-natural, while the latter includes virtually all beliefs and practices roughly labelled as “religious”, ranging from the cosmologies of brahmanical Hinduism through possession experiences and witchcraft accusations, to the adjustment of daily life, and to astrological prognosis, even though these beliefs and practices might be seen as quite “natural” to those who entertain them.25 In short, the terms “rationalists” and “rational22 The ethnographic fieldwork on which this article is based was conducted mainly during

three discrete blocks; two months at the end of 2006 and two further blocks of five months each in 2007 and one further visit of a few weeks in 2008 (see Quack 2009).

23 The representatives of the contemporary rationalists locate their roots in the materialistic and nāstika (“non-Vedic”, “heterodox”, or “materialist”) streams of Indian philosophy (especially Lokāyats or Chārvāka), a range of Hindu Saints, and some aspects of the bhaktimovement in India. Bhakti is an umbrella term for forms of “devotional religiosity”, dating back to the seventh century C.E., that at times questioned the role of religious specialists and priests, “idol-worship”, animal sacrifice, and other practices, which are also criticised by the Indian rationalists today. 24 Part of this legacy is the position of Robert Green Ingersoll, mentioned aobve in the quote of A.K. Ramanujan. See on this especially the work of Klimkeit (1971: 123). 25 One of the main intellectuals of the Indian rationalist movement, emeritus professor D.D. Bandiste, wrote in his Understanding Rationalism that “Rationalism is that philosophy of life which is based upon reasoning faculty of man” (1999: 11) and “man has received his rationality not from ‘above’ but from ‘below’, i.e., from his biological ancestors” (1999: 13).

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ism” refer in the following only to the people, organisations, and positions that share (among other things) this rejection of the supernatural. While there are all kinds of different rationalist organisations in contemporary India – most of which are represented by the umbrella organisation “Federation of Indian Rationalist Associations” (FIRA) – the following observations will be based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork on the aims and activities of one specific rationalist organisation, called Andhashraddha Nirmulan Samiti (ANiS), in Maharashtra. ANiS is currently one of the most active rationalist organisations in India. They have local branches in most of the districts of Maharashtra (they claim to have 180 branches) and publish two monthly magazines, one in English and one in Marathi. All of the members work as volunteers for the movement. ANiS describes its aims as follows: – Opposing all superstitions that lead to exploitation of ignorant and gullible people. – Inculcating and spreading scientific attitudes and humanism among people. – Adopting a critical attitude towards religion and spreading secularism among people. – Planning and executing effective and useful programmes, keeping in view the importance and urgent need of extensive social reforms.26 Much more could be said about this organisation, but, as I have done this elsewhere27, and given the spatial limitations of this article, I will focus in the following particularly on the way in which the Indian rationalists differentiate between the notions “science” and “scientific temper” on the one hand, and “ritual” (as part of the semantic field of “religion”, “superstition”, and “pseudo-science”) on the other. I will start with a brief analysis of the first two terms, “science” and “scientific temper”. Underlying most of the aims and activities of the Indian rationalists is their conviction that “science” holds the solution for the major problems India faces, that in principle all human problems and questions can be solved and answered by “science”. For that reason, they happily quote on their homepage the first prime minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru: “It is Science alone that can solve the problems of hunger and poverty, insanitation and illiteracy, of superstition and deadening customs and tradition, of vast resources running waste, of a rich country inhabited by starving people. Who indeed could afford to ignore Science today? At every turn we

26 ANiS (n.d.) [2009]. 27 Quack 2009.

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have to seek its aid. The future belongs to Science and to those who make Friends with Science.”28 As indicated by this quote to some degree, their conception of “science” is part of a larger epistemic-moral conceptualisation of an ongoing evolutionary progress, which includes developments in the realm of technology and productivity, just as in the realm of justice and equality.29 Science provides for the rationalists in general the most effective means-ends relationship available for dealing with the problems that humans are confronted with in their lives. It is essential for ensuring human survival and progress. Therefore the spread of science is also a moral duty for the rationalists; even more so since they conceptualise science as universal. This includes not only observations such as that the laws of gravity work everywhere the same way, but the whole undertaking of science is seen as transcending divisions between countries, languages, caste, class, gender, and creed. On this sweeping and abstract level, the rationalists further oppose “science” to “religion”, “superstition”, and “ritual”. The underlying logic of such a world-view is crucially informed by the evolutionary theories of nineteenth-century Britain – including people like Frazer (who was himself close to the rationalist movement in England),30 Tylor, and especially Spencer.31 The underlying conviction is that the world is, in principle, explainable by science, and that science thereby replaces 28 ANiS (n.d.) [2009]. 29 The decisive point for most of the Indian rationalists that I spoke to is that, for modern science, there is no difference between castes and creeds, its universal truths are to be applied trans-historically and trans-culturally, and therefore unify humanity. “Science unites and religion divides.” For many this is also what rationalism is all about: “all humans are equal”. In short: for the Indian rationalists “religion” also means caste system and exploitation, while “science” means equality and empowerment. 30 Jarvie and Agassi hold in their article “The Problem of the Rationality of Magic” that “Frazer was anti-religious”, and with respect to his opus magnum they write: “His Golden Bough is obviously a conscious attempt to discredit religion – especially Christianity – by tracing its line of descent to primitive superstition […] His dislike of religion was characteristic of the scientific humanism of the nineteenth century” (1974: 177). Further connections between social scientists and the rationalist movement in different countries can be traced up to the present day. The honorary members list of the leading rationalist, humanist, and atheist organisations in the world feature many representatives of academia. To give but one example, the anthropologist Edmund Leach (1970–1972) and the philosopher A.J. Ayer (1965–1970) were presidents of the “British Humanist Association”, which was founded in 1896 as the “Union of Ethical Societies”, and used to have close ties with the “Rationalist Press Association”, which, since 2002, has been called the “Rationalist Association” and publishes the bimonthly “New Humanist”. 31 See, for an analysis of scholars like Tylor and especially Spencer of the emerging rationalist movement in Maharashtra, for example Ganachari 2005, McDonald 1966, Naik 1979; 1993, and the discussion in Cooke about the decline of the influence of Spencer within the rationalist movement of Great Britain (2003).

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religion. In this position, it is also often pointed out that, during the eras of the Renaissance and Enlightenment, the West developed rationalistic thinking faster than the rest of the world, and, accordingly, the rationalists in India are stressing the need of similar developments in India “to catch up with the West”. But the picture is slightly more complex. The Indian rationalists differentiate between “science” and “scientific temper”, because they have to deal with the problem introduced through the two anecdotes above. They have to face the fact that there are many scientists who perform religious rituals, rather than joining the rationalist movement. As a senior activist of ANiS from Pune told me with notable disgust: “Though we had a spread in higher education, the problem is that as soon as these people are out of the lab they go back into their traditional labs. I mean that Satyanaraina pujas are performed by the best scholars of Tata Industries.” Another rationalist added that things are even worse; there are scientists who perform rituals in the lab. From the rationalists’ perspective such positions, just as the position of Raman and the senior Ramanujan outlined above, are “schizophrenic”, and they represent a central problem within the ideology of the rationalists: How is one to deal with someone who has obviously mastered the sciences, but is still “steeped in superstitious practices” such as religious rituals? This question is only a personalised version of the larger problem that lies behind their evolutionary hypothesis of “secularisation”, “rationalization”, and “disenchantment”, i.e. that the findings of science will, sooner or later, replace religious positions and ritual practices, and that the scientific age will replace the age of religion. Most people, including many of the rationalists, agree today that this process did not take place the way in which many people at the end of the nineteenth century had expected it. There are several ways to deal with this observation. While most contemporary social scientists hold that it was wrong in the first place to oppose “science” to “religion” and “ritual” in such a way, the rationalists reformulated their basic assumptions by differentiating between “science” and “scientific temper”. The replacement of rituals and religion does not come about by the proliferation of science alone, it has to be accelerated and supported by spreading the “scientific temper”. On the importance and role of the latter, the head of ANiS, Dr. Narendra Dabholkar, made the following statements in a radio interview on 15 November 2007 in Vijayavada, Andhra Pradesh: “Scientific temper – why is it so important? It tells that the universe is selfexisting, that it is bound by a cause and effect relationship. And cause and effect relationships can be tested in any event. That means that we should be sure that anything that is happening around us is not controlled by any external agency, good or evil. It therefore follows that we need not to worship any supernatural agency that is capable to do good nor do we have to appease any evil agency in order not to cause us harm. Nothing that is not in the realm of the natural laws can happen in this universe. And I hope that the

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denial of any outside controlling agency makes the live much less odious. That is the spirit of scientific temper that we would like to implement amongst the masses.” This position is representative for the general perspective taken by the Indian rationalists on “science”: it is primarily used as a name for that part of social life within which rationality is most developed and is found in its clearest form. “Scientific temper” is an attitude towards the world that lies at the basis of science, and is often used as a synonym for rationality. But, although the scientific temper is constitutive for science, the rationalists realised that the spread of science, scientific findings, and technology is not enough to replace religions, ritual, and superstition with rationalism. This is because people apply different “ways of thinking”, different “modes of thought” within different parts of life. The aim of ANiS and fellow rationalist organisations is therefore to spread the way of thinking that is constitutive for the scientific enterprise over all areas of social life. A scientific outlook should neither be seen as only one option among many other legitimate ways of approaching the world, nor should it be limited to one aspect of social life. Rather, it ought to become a “temper” or a “disposition” necessarily applied to each and every thing. Or, in the words of a senior rationalist, “you have to try to apply reason in every aspect of your life possible.” Spreading “rationalism” or “scientific temper” to every aspect of life means, among other things, that the rationalists reject religious rituals in general, and lifecycle rituals in particular, as unjust and irrational. On the one hand, rituals are seen first and foremost to be a central element in the reproduction and the upholding of the hierarchical logic of purity-impurity that underlies the Indian caste system. So there is a moral concern inherent in the rejection of all kinds of religious rituals. Rituals are, on the other hand, for the rationalists quintessentially irrational practices, because the relationship between the means employed and the end to be attained is seen as irrational. The ritualists fail in their attempts to explain and control the world, and accordingly they generally are seen to be ineffective and their actions a waste of resources. Although the issues of injustice and irrationality are intimately linked for the rationalists, I want to focus here on the point of “irrationality”, since this links so closely to many of the things that have been said above. “Irrational”, for the rationalists, is the idea that ritualised practices can somehow transcend everyday forms of “causality” and bring about desired ends that have no “rational” or “natural” connection to the means employed. In this respect, their understanding of ritual is similar to that of the anthropologists addressed by Lewis and Goody in the quotes cited above. Classical cases are rituals that supposedly enable someone to foretell the future, and rituals that supposedly prevent misfortune, or aim at changing someone’s destiny otherwise. Even more often challenged are “healing rituals”, that, in general, aim at removing “natural” symptoms by “supernatural” means or, to give a concrete example in this case too, aim at changing

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the sex of a foetus from female into male. Claiming to be able to bring about such effects by rituals should be made illegal, according to the rationalists; hence the many ritual practices listed in their Anti-Superstition Bill”32. Within the programmes conducted by the rationalists in villages, schools, and colleges to “spread scientific temper and eradicate superstition”, the activists of ANiS target many further rituals that are commonly performed by the people in India. These include, besides the specific attack on healing rituals, for example common practices like vatpaurnima (a ritual during which a married woman circles a Banyan tree to secure the lives of her husbands and keep the same groom for several births to come). Here is a quote from one of these programmes, as carried out in a small town close to Nashik on October, 1st 2007: “All regions in the world have superstitions, even a country like America. Superstitions exist everywhere, but in different forms. Our forms are very māgā (backward). We are lagging a century behind Europe. Their blind faith allows them to buy plots on the moon while ours worships the moon. Science has progressed so much that Sunita Williams, a woman with Indian origin rotated the earth in space for six months.33 At the same time our society is so backward that our highly educated women, including doctors and engineers rotate (circumambulate) a Banyan tree. Nobody knows whether this really works or not as nobody ever tried to verify it. We just never raise doubts or think about the issue. Our society continues to follow these traditions. The child does what his father does and his child follows him in turn. Nobody reflects on why we do what we do. From childhood onwards, as in nursery school, our teacher teaches us to keep quiet (hātacī ghaḍī toṇḍavar boṭ – hands folded and finger on the lips), in other words, stop talking, and do not ask any questions. If someone asks questions, they get a spanking. ‘Keep quiet, no questions, let things happen the way they used to and always have’. Science insists on asking questions and encourages us to never believe anything blindly. Science asks you to check and andhaśraddhā (superstition or blind belief) asks you to believe without doing the necessary check. We have to adopt a scientific temper because we and our parents get 32 The Anti-Superstition Bill is the popular name of a bill initiated by the rationalists under the official title Maharashtra Eradication of Black Magic, Evil and Aghori Practices Bill, 2005. This bill aims at criminalising primarily low-caste and “tribal” healing practices (such as the phenomenon of “possession”) that are considered to be “backward” and “superstitious”, and was passed by the Vidhan Sabha (Legislative Assembly) in 2005, while implementation though the Vidhan Parishad (Legislative Council) has not yet taken place. 33 Sunita Williams is an astronaut of Indian origin, but American citizenship, who holds the record for the longest spaceflight (195 days) for female space travellers, and who apparently had – to the disappointment of the rationalists – the Bhagavad-Gita and a statue of Lord Ganesh with her on her space trip.

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cheated. Our parents take us to such people. Our parents, grandparents and great-grand parents never went to school. That is why they do not have a scientific perspective. But we are science students; we should be more progressive these days. Long ago, human beings lived in the jungle. They had no clothes, and no shelter. Even though humanity has progressed gradually, it seems that we can not develop further. Superstition has hampered our growth.”

Reflexive Conclusions So far, the history of the opposition of (Western) science and (magico-religious) ritual has been traced within ritual theory by addressing, in an exemplary fashion, the intellectualist position of Horton, the symbolist position of Beattie, and the Wittgensteinian position of Winch. Very roughly, it may be said that, while the latter two argued that the opposition of (Western) “science” and (magico-religious) “ritual” is a disparate comparison (“category mistake”), Horton was defending just such a perspective. In a second step, I outlined how the Indian rationalists belong, to some degree, to the same tradition as Horton does. Also, the rationalists understand the ritual practices of their fellow Indians primarily as attempts to explain and control the external world. Yet, according to them, rituals are not only based on wrong and irrational assumptions, they are also embedded in larger schemes of injustice and exploitation. Having said this, it has to be added that there are of course important differences between the postiions of the Indian rationalists and Horton. Although Horton argues that ritual practices cannot be defended, with regard to their seeming irrationality, by claiming that they should be understood as being primarily symbolic or metaphoric actions (the position of Beattie), or by establishing different kinds of rationality within different “language games” (the position of Winch), he would not label them per se as irrational and harmful, as the Indian rationalists do. After all, Horton admits that one of the reasons why he is living “by choice in a still – heavily – traditional Africa, rather than in the scientifically oriented Western subculture that I was brought up in” is the aim to discover “things lost at home” that were driven out of Western life by things like the “faith in progress”, characteristic of the Indian rationalists.34 The Indian rationalists are, in that respect, closer to Frazer’s over-all criticism of such practices, than to the more nuanced position of Horton. To what degree the intellectualists’ position is comparable to that of the Indian rationalists is a question which leads to another, reflexive question addressing the relationship between the researcher and the chosen objects of enquiry. By drawing 34 Horton cited after Ulin 2001: 73.

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on the material presented above, we can ask in what way any position on ritual within the social sciences implicitly, but necessarily, leads a researcher working on the Indian rationalists to engage on an argumentative level with the rationalists’ position on ritual. Generally, the ideal-typical position of research, with respect to the beliefs and practices of any people being studied, is one of “methodological agnosticism” and “neutrality”. Researching organised rationalism, for example, usually would not include an evaluation of whether the beliefs and practices of the rationalists are right or wrong, good or bad. With respect to the rationalists’ criticism of (magico-religious) rituals, such a form of “neutrality” cannot, however, be upheld if one subscribes, for example, to the symbolists’ position with regard to the relationship of “rituals” and “science”. Willy-nilly they contest the rationalists’ argumentational basis in their position, just as is the case for the Wittgensteinians. For different reasons, they would have to argue against their object of inquiry that the rationalists commit a kind of category mistake. While such implicit interconnections between a researcher and the object of enquiry chosen exist in many instances, the example of the Indian rationalists is quite intriguing in this respect. This is already indicated by the fact that we are dealing here with “rationalists” on the one hand, and a debate between social scientists and philosophers, that became famous as “rationality debate”, on the other. Yet things are more complicated than the observation of matching labels might suggest. Although the notion “ritual” was at the centre of these debates, this was only a rung for the discussion of “The Idea of a Social Science” (as both the contributions of Peter Winch and Alasdair MacIntyer to the volume Rationality are entitled). Moreover, the perspective of the philosophy of science was enriched in the subsequent volume of the rationality debate, edited by Lukes & Hollis as Rationality and Relativism, by scholars from the field of science studies on the one hand (Barry Barnes and David Bloor), and philosophers such as Ian Hacking and Charles Taylor on the other. On this basis, the focus on “reflexivity” can be expanded from the awareness of the ways in which one’s own position can overlap or contradict the position of one’s chosen object of enquiry, to an awareness and analysis of one’s implicit positioning in the debates on the philosophy of science. To show how all this can come together with respect to the position the Indian rationalists take towards ritual and science, I want to introduce a more recent voice in the social sciences. In his Provincializing Europe (2000), the post-colonial historian Dipesh Chakrabarty attempts to rethink a conceptual gift of nineteenth-century Europe which he calls “historicism”, and which he describes as the “idea that to understand anything it has to be seen both as a unity and in its historical development”.35 According to Chakrabarty, such a view of historical development is intimately linked to the conviction that differences in historical developments can 35 Chakrabarty 2000: 6.

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serve as a measure of cultural distance, especially between the West and the nonWest.36 This is because such a historicism places all the seemingly “non-modern” people in an imaginary “waiting room of history” by identifying certain elements in their present as “anachronistic.” Anachronistic for the modernism of Western science is, according to Chakrabarty, not only the Indian “peasant” who lives in a “peasant-but-modern political sphere” that “was not bereft of the agency of gods, spirits, and other supernatural beings”;37 anachronistic is also, and precisely, the Nobel laureate in physics who takes a ritual bath. The detection of such anachronisms is, according to Chakrabarty, embedded in the “a priori valorization of ‘reason’ by social scientist”, a position that he sees as “built into their knowledge protocols and institutional procedures.”38 Accordingly, Chakrabarty raises the following questions: “In what do we ground the ‘reason’ that unavoidably marks the social sciences, if not in a historicist understanding of history? […] Can we give to reason the same historical mission all over the world? Does the coming of reason necessarily give us the same universal way of being human – liberal and rational?”39 These two questions show the direct link between the problems discussed by Chakrabarty and the rationality debate, in which Steven Lukes stated that the “problem comes down to whether or not there are alternative standards of rationality”.40 Just as most of the contributors to the rationality debate, Chakrabarty discusses the scope and limits of the social sciences by drawing on the example of history writing. Moreover, to assemble the points made above into a whole, Chakrabarty is not only continuing the rationality debate on a post-colonial key, he is also directly, albeit implicitly, addressing and challenging the position of the Indian rationalists. The two anecdotes with which this article started play a central role in the concluding section of Chakrabarty’s Provincializing Europe. The way in which he comments on the position of Raman and the senior Ramanujan sounds, however, as if he were addressing the Indian rationalists directly. He writes: “Interestingly, practicing Indian scientists – and I suppose scientists elsewhere as well – often have not felt any intellectual or social obligation to find one single overarching framework within which to contain the diversity of their own life practices (as distinct from their practices as scientists). In other words, the practice of ‘science’ does not necessarily call on the re36 37 38 39 40

See ibid.: 7. Ibid.: 12–13. Ibid.: 236. Ibid. Lukes 1974: 194.

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And he adds that the stories of Raman and Ramanujan – whether true or not – help “to imagine an alternative location for ‘reason’ as we think about the subject of ‘Indian history’” where there is no “need to totalize through the outlook of science all the different life-practices within which they found themselves”.41 Obviously, this is precisely what the Indian rationalists aim to do, i. e. to spread scientific temper to all aspects of life. Reflexivity helps any researcher to rethink implicit relationships with any chosen object of enquiry. With respect to ritual theory and the Indian rationalists, I have outlined how the latter’s position is to some degree akin to the intellectualists’ tradition that originates with Frazer, Tylor, and Spencer. On this basis, I argued that the symbolist and Wittgensteinian criticism of the intellectualists’ position necessarily rejects the argumentative basis of the aims and activities of the Indian rationalists in that respect, too. Finally, I introduced the voice of Charkrabarty to show not only the contemporary relevance of the rationality debate, but also its deeper roots in the philosophy of (the social) science(s). This shows that reflexivity also helps to specify the limits of common scholarly claims to methodological agnosticism and neutrality.

41 Chakrabarty 2000: 254.

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References Andhashraddha Nirmulan Samiti [= ANiS] (n.d.) [2009]. Scientific Attitude. Maharashtra Andhashraddha Nirmulan Samiti [cited 26 July 2009]. [Available from http://www.antisuperstition.org/page.php?menu=scientific_attitude] Bandiste, D.D. 1999. Understanding Rationalism. Indore: Rationalist Publications. Beattie, John H.M. 1974. “On Understanding Ritual”. In: Bryan R. Wilson (ed.). Rationality. Oxford: Basil Blackwell: 240–268. Burns, John F. 1995. “Science Can’t Eclipse a Magic Moment for Millions”. New York Times, 25 October: 4. Chakrabarty, Dipesh 2000. Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Cooke, Bill 2003. The Blasphemy Depot: A Hundered Years of the Rationalist Press Association. Hollinwood: Rationalist Press Association. Dürr, Hans P. 1981. Der Wissenschaftler und das Irrationale. 2 Vols. Frankfurt a.M.: Syndikat. Ganachari, Aravind 2005. Gopal Ganesh Agarkar: The Secular Rationalist Reformer. Mumbai: Popular Prakashan. Gennep, Arnold van 1909. Les rites de passage, étude systématique des rites de la porte et du seuil, de l’hospitalité, de l’adoption, de la grossesse et de l’accouchement, de la naissance, de l’enfance, de la puberté, de l’initiation, de l’ordination, du couronnement, des fiançailles et du mariage. Paris: Nourry. Goody, Jack 1961. “Religion and Ritual: The Definitional Problem”. The British Journal of Sociology 12/2:142–164. Horton, Robin 1974. “African Traditional Thought and Western Science”. In: Bryan R. Wilson (ed.). Rationality. Oxford: Basil Blackwell: 112–130. Horton, Robin & Ruth Finnegan (eds.) 1973. Modes of Thought: Essays on Thinking in Western and Non-Western Societies. London: Faber & Faber. Jarvie, I.C. & Joseph Agassi 1974. “The Problem of the Rationality of Magic”. In: Bryan R. Wilson (ed.). Rationality. Oxford: Basil Blackwell: 172–193. Kippenberg, Hans G. & Brigitte Luchesi (eds.) 1995. Magie: die sozialwissenschaftliche Kontroverse über das Verstehen fremden Denkens. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp. Klimkeit, Hans-Joachim 1971. Anti-religiöse Bewegungen im modernen Südindien. Bonn: Ludwig Röhrscheid Verlag. Lewis, Gilbert 1980. Day of Shining Red. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lukes, Steven 1974. “Some Problems about Rationality”. In: Bryan R. Wilson (ed.). Rationality. Oxford: Basil Blackwell: 194–213. — & Martin Hollis (eds.) 1985. Rationality and Relativism. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Marriott, McKim (ed.) 1990. India through Hindu Categories. New Delhi: Sage (Contributions to Indian Sociology 5). McDonald, Ellen E. 1966. “English Education and Social Reform in Late Nineteenth Century Bombay: A Case Study in the Transmission of a Cultural Ideal”. The Journal of Asian Studies 25/3:453–470.

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Naik, J.V. 1979. “Social Reform Movements in the Ninetieth and Twentieth Centuries in Maharashtra: A Critical Survey”. In: Siba Pada Sen (ed.). Social and Religious Reform Movements in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. Calcutta: Institute of Historical Studies: 282–295. — 1993. “‘Religion, Science and Philosophy’: The Relevance of a 19th Century Debate Today”. Freedom First 417: 29–31. Quack, Johannes 2009 [unpublished]. Disenchanting India: An Ethnography of the Rationalist Organisation Maharashtra Andhashraddha Nirmulan Samiti (Organisation for the Eradication of Superstition) and their Mode of Unbelief. (Doctoral Thesis. Department of Anthropology, University of Heidelberg). — 2010. “Bell, Bourdieu and Wittgenstein on Ritual Sense”. In: William S. Sax & Johannes Quack & Jan Weinhold (eds.). The Problem of Ritual Efficacy. New York: Oxford University Press: 169–188. — & Paul Töbelman 2010. “Questioning Ritual Efficacy”. Journal of Ritual Studies 24/1:13–28. Ramanujan, A.K. 1986. Second Sight. New York: Oxford University Press. — 1990. “Is there an Indian Way of Thinking?”. In: McKim Marriott (ed.). India through Hindu Categories. New Delhi: Sage: 41–58. Sax, William S. 2010. “Ritual and the Problem of Efficacy”. In: William S. Sax & Johannes Quack & Jan Weinhold (eds.). The Problem of Ritual Efficacy. New York: Oxford University Press: 3–16. Skorupski, John 1976. Symbol and Theory: A Philosophical Study of Theories of Religion in Social Anthropology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tambiah, Stanley J. 1981. “A Performative Approach to Ritual”. Proceedings of the British Academy 65: 113–169. — 2006 [1990]. Magic, Science, Religion, and the Scope of Rationality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Turner, Victor W. 1967. The Forest of Symbols. Aspects of Ndembu Ritual. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. — 1969. The Ritual Process. Structure and Anti-Structure. Chicago: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Ulin, Robert C. 2001. Understanding Cultures: Perspectives in Anthropology and Social Theory. Malden: Blackwell. Wilson, Bryan R. (ed.) 1974. Rationality. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Winch, Peter 1965 [1958]. The Idea of a Social Science and its Relation to Philosophy. London: Routledge & Paul. — 1974. “Understanding a Primitive Society”. In: Bryan R. Wilson (ed.). Rationality. Oxford: Basil Blackwell: 78–111. Wittgenstein, Ludwig 1978. Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics, Psychology and Religious Belief. Edited by Cyril Barrett. Oxford: Blackwell. — 1993. “Remarks on Frazer’s Golden Bough (1931–1948)”. In: James C. Klagge & Alfred Nordmann (eds.). Philosophical Occasions, 1912–1951. Indianapolis: Hackett.

Michael Bergunder

Global History, Religion, and Discourse on Ritual In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, numerous religious reform movements around the globe were engaged in a specific discourse on the importance of ritual practices. They considered religion to consist first and foremost of beliefs and religious experience, and treated rituals as of secondary importance. Traditional popular religious practices were heavily criticised, and the legitimacy of rituals depended on whether they were considered meaningful expressions of the belief systems propagated by the respective reform movements. As a consequence, rationalisation and reform of traditional ritual practices was often suggested. These similarities among the religious reform movements raise the question of whether the discourse on ritual within these reform movements is historically related, or a mere coincidence of parallel developments. The following analysis will look for meaningful approaches to answer this question. It will start by way of example with a historical sketch of important reform movements and their positions on rituals. The selection represents a choice of four geographically distinct regions (Germany, Egypt, India, and Japan) and four different religious traditions (Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism). It should be noted that no overview on this topic is available, and the following examples have had to be directly drawn from study of the sources and literature about the movements, so that the findings must remain preliminary and provisional at this stage of research. The presentation of the case studies is followed by a theoretical interpretation within the framework of a global history approach.

Liberal German Protestantism Liberal Protestantism was one of the major Christian movements in Germany in the second half of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Its central concern was to make Christianity compatible with the challenges of sciences, history, and modernity.1 One of the central, seminal texts of this movement was published by Adolf Harnack under the programmatic title What is Christianity?, a publication that was based on a series of lectures held by Hamack in the winter term of 1899/1900 at the

1 Nowak 1995.

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Humboldt University in Berlin, where he was professor of church history.2 Harnack considered religion to be essentially a form of religious experience, rather than mere ritual: “Religion gives us only a single experience, but one which presents the world in a new light: the Eternal appears; time becomes means to an end; man is seen to be on the side of the Eternal.”3 Accordingly, Christianity is a “spiritual religion”4 and brings “every individual into an immediate and living connexion with God”.5 Harnack saw at the very origins of Christianity “an actual experience” and “the consciousness of a living union with God”.6 In accordance with the overall approach in Liberal Protestant theology, Harnack often used the term “religion” in his lectures. Although he refrained from placing too much emphasis on “religion” as a “generic conception”, 7 he agreed that religion is “something which is common to us all, and which in the course of history has struggled up out of torpor and discord into unity and light”,8 and, as a consequence, he usually spoke of Christianity as “Christian religion”. Based on his individual-centred, experiential, and inward understanding of the Christian religion, Harnack considered all external forms of religion secondary, and even a deviation from its true essence. It is in this context that he developed a strong and, at times, harsh criticism of rituals within Christianity. Harnack declared categorically that the Liberal Protestantism he stood for was “a religion without priests, without sacrifices, without ‘fragments’ of grace, without ceremonies”.9 The salient feature of Protestantism is that “it protested against all the traditional arrangements for public worship, all ritualism, and every sort of ‘holy work’”:10 “[Luther] protested, because his aim was to restore the Christian religion in its purity, without priests and sacrifices, without external authorities and ordinances, without solemn ceremonies, without all the chains with which the Beyond was to be bound to the Here.”11

2 See Hübner 1994; Rieske-Braun 2000; Kinzig 2001. For Harnack in general, see Nowak & Oexle et al. 2003. 3 Harnack 1902: 75. 4 Ibid.: 287. 5 Ibid.: 178. 6 Ibid.: 165. 7 See Ibid.: 9–10. 8 Ibid.: 10. 9 Ibid.: 287. 10 Ibid.: 298. 11 Ibid.: 303.

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To illustrate his argument further, Harnack contrasted Protestantism with “Catholicism”. Under this term “Catholicism” he subsumed the Roman Catholic Church as well as all the Orthodox Churches, and the main distinguishing criteria between Protestantism, which, for Harnack, corresponded with the Christianity of the Apostolic age, and Catholicism were the respective roles of rituals in the two confessions. Harnack’s criticism of Catholicism was mainly a criticism of its ritual practices: “There is no sadder spectacle than this transformation of the Christian religion [in Catholicism] from a worship of God in spirit and in truth into a worship of God in signs, formulas, and idols.”12 For Harnack, this was a fundamental deviation from the original Christian message: “Where however, can we find in Jesus’ message even a trace of any injunction that a man is to submit to solemn ceremonies as though they were mysterious ministrations, to be punctilious in observing a ritual, to put up pictures, and to mumble maxims and formulas in a prescribed fashion. It was to destroy this sort of religion that Jesus Christ suffered himself to be nailed to the cross, and now we find it re-established under his name and authority.”13 The worst forms of Catholicism were the Orthodox Churches, where “ceremony dominates everything”14 and where the religion had completely lost its centre and had become a cult: “This is what marks the relapse into the ancient form of the lowest class of religion. Over the vast area of Greek and Oriental Christendom religion has been almost stifled by ritualism. […] it has descended to the level where religion may be described as a cult and nothing but a cult.”15 Harnack saw his understanding of Protestantism in danger because he observed “the Catholicising of the Protestant Churches” as “such a burning a question” of his time, which, in his view, meant that the Protestant churches “are becoming Churches of ordinance, doctrine, and ceremony”. 16 In this way, his criticism of Catholicism has to be understood as part of an inner Protestant conflict, too. Only on one occasion does Harnack mention in passing that, in Protestantism, certain rituals from Catholicism could be “retained in the way of form for aesthetic

12 13 14 15 16

Ibid.: 255. Ibid., italics quoted from original text. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid.: 316.

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or educational reasons”,17 but he did not elaborate that line of argument any further. On the contrary, he explicitly warned in another context that new interpretations of old rituals were practically impossible: “How often and often [sic!] in the history of religion has there been a tendency to do away with some traditional form of doctrine or ritual which has ceased to satisfy inwardly, but to do away with it by giving it a new interpretation. The endeavour seems to be succeeding; the temper and the knowledge prevailing at the moment are favourable to it – when, lo and behold! the old meaning suddenly comes back again. The actual words of the ritual, of the liturgy, of the official doctrine, prove stronger than anything else.”18 This suggests that Harnack did not see much room for a meaningful ritual practice within Protestantism. His characterisation of the Christian religion as centred around an inward experience was firmly rooted in the tradition of European philosophy and theology as it had existed since the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. 19 However, it must not be overlooked that the reference of Liberal Protestantism to the comparative term “religion” was a direct reaction to a new global perspective. Ernst Troeltsch, another important representative of Liberal Protestantism, had written in 1897 that the Christian faith was shaken by “the rise of a comparative history of religion […] more deeply than anything else”,20 because it had lost its exclusive supernatural foundation. “It was now only one of the great world religions, along with Islam and Buddhism”,21 and “the history of Christianity was irrevocably incorporated into the general history of religion”.22 The use of the term “religion” in Liberal Protestantism was meant as a way to face this challenge of comparative religion, and it should be noted that Harnack also argued from that perspective, being apparently well aware of the scholarly discussions in this field. He often made his points by not only contrasting Protestantism with Catholicism, but also Christianity with Judaism, Islam, and Buddhism, 23 and he was convinced that Christianity was the “highest and ultimate religion”. 24 This makes it clear that Harnack was not only arguing within the European tradition, but that he also reacted to a global challenge of religious plurality.

17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24

Ibid.: 298, italics quoted from original text. Ibid.: 188. See Bergunder 2009. Troeltsch 1913: 333. Ibid.: 336. Ibid. See, for instance, Harnack 1902: 2, 90, 192. Ibid.: 178.

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Egyptian Salafiyya In the nineteenth-century Arab world, the so-called Salafiyya was arguably one of the most important Islamic reform movements, with a deep and lasting impact still felt today.25 This movement was initiated by Jamal al-Din al-Afghani (1839–1897), but it was Muhammad Abduh (1849–1905) who became its theological architect.26 Abduh had a traditional education as Islamic scholar, and in 1899 he became Mufti of Egypt, which made him the most senior representative of the Ulama in Britishcontrolled Egypt. Abduh propagated an understanding of Islam that was highly critical of the traditional law schools and their theological principles. His stance regarding rituals was also shaped by this reformist agenda. In his Koran commentary, published in book form in 1904, he stated that no religious practice has any effect in itself, but is only a secondary means to elevate the level of faith which is the first priority: “[…] the important matter in connexion with the performance of all religious duties is to retain in the mind the thought of God, who corrects the soul and enlightens the spirit, so that they turn towards the good and keep on guard against evil and disobedience; and thus the one who performs these duties becomes one of the God-fearing.”27 Religious practices without proper spiritual intention are without use, Abduh explained in the same commentary: “When the intention (in any religious duty) becomes in any way tainted with a portion of the world, the action ceases to be a sincere religious act, and God will not accept anything that is not free from worldly taint.”28 Abduh explained his position with regard to the meaning of prayer in Islam. Prayer has to be a “turning towards God, and the presence of the heart before Him, and entire immersion in the consciousness of His awe-inspiring greatness and His majesty and omnipotence.” 29 The prescribed forms and practices for prayer are only of secondary importance, because they are “all of which any lad [sic!] able to grasp them can become accustomed to, and which we see practised by people who are accustomed to them, while at the same time they commit evil deeds and forbidden acts.”30 The true prayer does not depend on ritual practice: 25 See, for instance, Schulze 1990; Abu-Rabi 1996. 26 For Abduh, see Adams 1933; Kerr 1966; Wielandt 1971; Hourani 1983 [1962]. 27 Quoted in Adams 1933: 169–170. For the publication history of Abduh’s Quran commentary see ibid.: 76–77, n. 3. 28 Quoted after Adams 1933: 171. 29 Quoted after ibid.: 170. 30 Quoted after ibid.

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Abduh combines this inward-oriented perspective of Islam with a very critical position towards popular religion. In the Arabic journal Al-Manār, one of the Salafiyya mouthpieces, Abduh wrote several articles that demanded the abandonment of religious practices that were not an expression of the true worship of God, or were even harmful to it.32 When Abduh wrote on religious practices and duties, he used the Arabic word ‘ibāda (pl. ‘ibādāt) as a technical term. In his famous book Islam and Christianity from 1902, Abduh declares that the essential message of the universal “religion of God” would be: “[…] faith in God alone, and sincerity in the performance of the prescribed religious duties (‘ibāda); and the mutual aid of all men, one to another, in the doing of good and the prevention of evil in so far as they are able.”33 From this, it becomes clear that Abduh had a comprehensive concept of ‘ibāda as the distinctively religious rituals that are concerned with duties to God, categorically different from the duties to other human beings which are called mu‘āmala (pl. mu‘āmalāt). In the scholarly tradition of Islam, the distinction between ‘ibāda and mu‘āmala is often elusive,34 but Abduh could refer to Ibn Taymiyya (1263– 1328) and many others who had proposed a similar differentiation.35 With regard to the emphasis on true Islam as something inward, and outward forms as secondary and contributory, he was obviously influenced by Al-Ghazali (1059–1111).36 This makes it clear that Abduh’s concept of religious rituals was based on the Islamic tradition that could sufficiently explain the emergence of this concept in his thinking. On the other hand, it is one of the particular features of Abduh’s writings that one of his main purposes was also “to reply to certain questions posed by the religious debates of the Europe of his time”.37 And indeed, the above-mentioned book Islam and Christianity, where he explained his concepts of religious rituals within his understanding of Islam, is foremost a refutation of Christianity by adopting the

31 Quoted after ibid. The date of the text is complicated but it was probably first published in bookform in 1904. 32 See ibid.: 50, 161–164. 33 Quoted after ibid.: 168; Hasselblatt 1968: 50. For the bibliographical details of the article, see Adams 1933: 272. 34 See Bosquet 1971. 35 Hourani 1983 [1962]: 148. 36 See Adams 1933: 202–203; Hourani 1983 [1962]: 141–142; Powers 2004: 451. 37 Hourani 1983 [1962]: 143.

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parameters of the Western Orientalist discourse. 38 In this process, he identified “certain traditional concepts of Islamic thought with the dominant ideas of Europe”.39 Abduh’s main intention in Islam and Christianity was to prove that Islam is a rational religion. His concept of rituals as being secondary and outward harmonised with the Western idea of rational religion that developed in the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century, and which was widely shared in nineteenth-century Europe and North America, as we have seen in the case of Harnack.

Neo-Hinduism In India, the most important Hindu Reform movement in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was probably the Ramakrishna Mission.40 It was founded by Vivekananda (1863–1902), who also gave it its philosophical foundation. 41 Vivekananda hailed from the Bengal Northeast of India and belonged to the Indian educated elite which had received an English education. In 1886, he gave up his college studies and established a Hindu order, later to be known as the Ramakrishna Mission.42 From 1893–1897 he stayed in the USA, and after his return to India he was hailed as the most important representative of Hinduism of the time. Vivekananda understood Hinduism as a single religion centred around the school of Advaita Vedanta, but he was also highly critical of many of its traditional forms. Vivekananda’s view on rituals was embedded in a comprehensive concept of Hinduism as a religion, as he explained in a lecture of 1896 with the programmatic title “The Ideal of Universal Religion”: “We see that in every religion there are three parts– I mean in every great and recognised religion. First, there is the philosophy which presents the whole scope of that religion, setting forth its basic principles, the goal and the means of reaching it. The second part is mythology, which is philosophy made concrete. It consists of legends relating to the lives of men, or of supernatural beings, and so forth. It is the abstractions of philosophy concretised in the more or less imaginary lives of men and supernatural beings. The third part is the ritual. This is still more concrete and is made up of forms and ceremonies, various physical attitudes, flowers and incense, and many other things, that appeal to the senses. In these consists the ritual. You will find that all recognised religions have these three elements.”43 38 39 40 41 42 43

See Hasselblatt 1968. Hourani 1983 [1962]: 144. See also Nagel 1978; Said 1994. See Jackson 1994; Beckerlegge 2000. See Radice 1998; Chattopadhyaya 1999; Basu 2002. See Gambhirananda 19833 [1957]. Vivekananda 1959-1997: vol. 2, 377.

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Vivekananda put his three components of religion, philosophy, mythology, and ritual, in a hierarchical order. True religion is essentially philosophy; it claims “supreme knowledge”,44 and is based on experience (“Religion is experience”).45 In an undated class note on Raja Yoga, he wrote: “There is no knowledge without experience […] Religion, like other sciences, requires you to gather facts, to see for yourself, and this is possible when you go beyond the knowledge which lies in the region of the five senses.”46 Because, for Vivekananda, the essence of religion was its philosophical foundation, all other phenomena attributed to religion are perceived as derived and secondary. In his lectures on Karma Yoga of 1896, he made this explicitly clear with regard to rituals: “Philosophy […] is the essence of every religion; […] ritual gives to that philosophy a still more concrete form, so that every one [sic!] may grasp it — ritual is in fact concretised philosophy.”47 He criticised the Hindu religion harshly for its over-emphasis on rituals and saw therein a development in which Hinduism deviated from proper religion, as stated in a transcript of his lecture on “Vedic religious ideals”, given in London in 1896: “The old superstitions […] developed into a tremendous mass of rituals, which grew and grew till it almost killed the Hindu life. And it is still there, it has got hold of and permeated every portion of our life and made us born slaves. Yet, at the same time, we find a fight against this advance of ritual from the very earliest days. The one objection raised there is this, that love for ceremonials, dressing at certain times, eating in a certain way, and shows and mummeries of religion like these are only external religion, because you are satisfied with the senses and do not want to go beyond them. […] Devotion to ceremonials, satisfaction in the senses, and forming various theories, have drawn a veil between ourselves and truth.”48 It is remarkable that Vivekananda combined his critical stance on ritual with a comprehensive concept of ritual reform that turned rituals into pedagogical means of religious instructions. In a letter from 1895, he stated that “the world in general must have some form”, declaring it “absolutely necessary to form some ritual and

44 45 46 47 48

Ibid.: vol. 1, 366. Ibid.: vol. 8, 230. Ibid.: vol. 6, 133. Ibid.: vol. 1, 72. Ibid.: vol. 1, 354–355.

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have a Church”.49 Accordingly, when he was interviewed by a correspondent for the Indian newspaper The Hindu in 1897, he made the following statement: “[Question:] ‘What relation, Swamiji, does ritual bear to religion?’ [Vivekananda:] ‘Rituals are the kindergarten of religion. They are absolutely necessary for the world as it is now; only we shall have to give people newer and fresher rituals. A party of thinkers must undertake to do this. Old rituals must be rejected and new ones substituted.’ [Question:] ‘Then you advocate the abolition of rituals, don’t you?’ [Vivekananda:] ‘No, my watchword is construction, not destruction. Out of the existing rituals, new ones will have to be evolved.’”50 As a consequence, certain rationalised forms of worship, especially a “cult of Ramakrishna”, the guru of Vivekananda, was slowly introduced into the Ramakrishna Mission.51 In his critical view on rituals, Vivekananda referred to the traditions of Advaita Vedanta, an established Indian school of philosophy. Indeed, most of the traditional forms of worship among Hindus are seen as an inferior religious practice in traditional Advaita Vedanta, within the theory of a lower and a higher level of truth (Sanskrit vyāvahārika/pāramārthika).52 From this perspective, Vivekananda’s ritual criticism could be seen as being the mere outcome of a new interpretation of the Indian philosophical tradition. However, Vivekananda is one of the major examples of how Indian intellectuals have adopted the Western discourse on religion and Orientalist notions of India as the “mystic East”.53 And, as we have seen, Vivekananda developed his concept of rituals not only with regard to Hinduism, but with regard to the general concept of religion, since Hinduism was, for him, the universal religion of the future.54 That already makes it obvious that, in reinterpreting the Advaita Vedanta tradition, Vivekananda also explicitly relates to contemporary global discourses on religion.

Buddhist Renewal in Meiji Japan Japan experienced an enormous social and political transformation during the socalled Meiji period (1868–1912). It was also a time when Japanese Buddhism was shaped by influential renewal movements. 55 One of the major figures of Meiji 49 50 51 52

Ibid.: vol. 8, 356. Ibid.: vol. 5, 216–217. See Jackson 1994: 82–83. von Glasenapp 1948: 63–68. See also Potter 1981 for the traditional teachings of Advaita Vedanta. 53 See Rambachan 1994; King 1999; Hatcher 1999; Michelis 2004. 54 See, for instance, Vivekananda 1959-1997: vol. 3, 103, 250–251, 279. 55 See Thelle 1987; Ketelaar 1990; Snodgrass 2003.

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Buddhist reform was Inoue Enryo (1858–1919), who had a Western-oriented education and was an ordained priest of a Pure Land Buddhist order until 1885, when he became a layman and a scholar involved in many Buddhist reform activities.56 Similarly to Vivekananda, Inoue Enryo also based his ideas for Buddhist renewal on the concept of religion. In his seminal work On the Renewal of Buddhism from 1887, he declared “that the truth that forms the basis of religion is unchanging and immutable at all times and in all places”,57 and this line of argument is pursued right up to his last important work, Superstition and Religion of 1916, where he stated that “religion teaches the way for our relative essence to enter into the absolute world”. 58 More specifically, he saw Buddhism as a religion that was essentially philosophical, as he wrote in On the Renewal of Buddhism: “[…] Buddhism is clearly and unquestionably a religion based on philosophy. That is, it is a philosophical religion.”59 In this understanding of Buddhism as a philosophical religion, the role of rituals had to be secondary. This position was fully elaborated in his book Superstition and Religion, from which the following quotations are taken, including the following fundamental statement: “The religious use of ceremonies and ornaments are not dissimilar to superstition. However, they are a means for awakening right faith and as a result they are not harmful but also more or less beneficial. As such, they should not be arbitrarily destroyed.”60 On the one hand, he argued that prayers and mantras are not able to stimulate the intervention of the Buddhas and other supernatural beings, and do not bring about the desired rebirth in the Pure Land. In themselves they have no effect, but, on the other hand, Inoue Enryo could accept them as a kind of tool to help the individual believer to develop a personal relationship with the absolute.61 However, it seems that he remained suspicious about this pedagogical use of rituals, because he even suggested changing the core mantra of Pure Land Buddhism, the so-called Nenbutsu. This mantra consists of the phrase “Homage to Amida Buddha” and constitutes the primary religious practice in Pure Land Buddhism. If properly recited, it is usually even thought to effect the rebirth in the Pure Land, from which final salvation is readily attainable. Though Inoue Enryo could acknowledge the value of chanting the Nenbutsu in his pedagogical interpretation, he also felt that 56 57 58 59 60 61

See Staggs 1979; Staggs 1983; Josephson 2006 Quoted after Inoue Enryo 1979: 360. Quoted after Josephson 2006: 159. Quoted after Inoue Enryo 1979: 426. Quoted after Josephson 2006: 161. See ibid.: 161.

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the traditional Nenbutsu was not clear enough for this purpose, so he invented and introduced a new Nenbutsu which did not mention the name “Amida Buddha”, but instead the words “absolute infinite lord”, 62 apparently in order to exclude any magical misunderstanding. However, Inoue Enryo differentiated sharply between religious practices, which he could accept under certain conditions, and superstitious practices which he condemned outright. Only “as the superstition’s cloud of delusion disperses, the true moon of religion can be seen”. 63 He gave a list of behaviour he understood as superstition, which included the wide variety of rituals and religious practices in popular Buddhism. Among others, he gave the following concrete examples: “[…] Do not believe in dubious ritual prayers […] Do not trust in the efficacy of magic or holy water […] Do not put your trust in divination, whether by written oracles, physiognomy, geomancy, astrology, or ink stamp. […] It is wrong to be concerned with omens and auspicious or inauspicious days.”64 Inoue Enryo’s critical stand on rituals is not entirely new within the Japanese tradition. Especially his dismissal of superstitious practices has many parallels in the Confucian tradition, but also in the national Shinto school of Hirata Atsutane (1776–1843).65 However, Inoue Enryo put Buddhism within a comparative concept of religion: “Among the innumerable religions of the world, the ones with the greatest strength in society are Buddhism, Christianity and Islam. Of these three, Buddhism and Christianity are destined to compete in the world today.”66 He could even say: “In the face of the enemies of religion, Buddhism and Christianity stand together as brothers and companions, just as two quarrelling brothers in a family unite against hostile neighbours.”67 This already shows that Inoue Enryo’s position on Buddhism as a religion is, to a large extent, also a reaction to a global religious plurality. Moreover, Inoue Enryo had studied philosophy at the Imperial University in Tokyo from 1878 till 1885, where he was introduced to the discourse on religion in Western philosophy and theology, and his writings on Buddhism often referred directly to this. When he

62 63 64 65 66 67

Quoted after ibid.: 162. Quoted after ibid.: 152, n. 14. Quoted after ibid. See ibid.: 156, n. 21. Quoted after Inoue Enryo 1979: 360. From “The guiding principle of truth” (1886–1887), quoted after Staggs 1983: 267.

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applied the concept of religion to his writings, he was well aware of its usage in the West.68

Global History, Religion, and the Discourse on Ritual The case studies show a striking similarity with respect to the conceptualisation of rituals. This might seem surprising because the four reform movements, taken as examples, belonged to entirely different geographical regions, as well as to different cultural and religious traditions. Theoretically, a mere historical coincidence would be thinkable, as all the concepts sought to legitimise their arguments from their respective traditions. It might also be tempting to see the similarities in the case studies as a result of internal ritual dynamics that can happen at all times and in all places, but this would easily lead to an essentialist understanding of rituals, for instance, based on the acceptance of certain anthropological or psychological dispositions.69 However, in ritual studies, and even more in religious studies, these kinds of approaches have been widely discarded for good reasons, so we will not follow this line of interpretation here.70 The strong commonalities of the concepts demand a more comprehensive approach. It should be noted that all the movements share historical contemporaneity. All of them discuss the role of rituals within a broader notion of religion or religious plurality, and the Islamic, Hindu, and Buddhist representatives reacted directly to Western discourses on religion. On the other hand, a direct historical connection between the different movements is unlikely, though some of their representatives might have heard or read of the others. For instance, Harnack’s What is Christianity? was immediately translated into Japanese and Harnack’s theology was referred to by Japanese theologians of the time. 71 However, it is not known that Inoue Enryo had read Harnack. Vivekananda had direct contacts with Japanese reform Buddhists, but certainly not with Inoue Enryo.72 In any case, the question of direct influence misses the point. What is needed is a broader perspective. In the following, it will be argued that these conceptualisations of rituals are to be seen as part of a historically related discourse on religion in the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In his much debated book The Birth of the Modern World, the British historian Christopher A. Bayly has brought the question of global history back on to the agenda.73 In relation to this, the nineteenth century has received special attention as 68 69 70 71

See also Mckenzie 2003; Isomae 2005. See Belliger & Krieger 1998: 7–33; Stausberg 2004: 41–42. See McCutcheon 1997; Fitzgerald 2000. Harnack wrote about a Japanese translation in his preface to the fourth edition in April 1903. For the reception of Harnack in early Japanese Christian theology see Dohi et al. 1991: 61. 72 See Baumfieldt 1991: 140–141. 73 See Bayly 2004, see also Osterhammel 2009.

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the decisive starting point of modernity and as a first age of globalisation. Bayly argued “that all local, national, or regional histories, must, in important ways […] be global histories.”74 From this perspective, Bayly observed a “rise of global uniformities”75 in the nineteenth century, and, as a result, “the consolidation of a concept of religion”:76 “This ensured that the theory and practice of religiosity across the world were slowly converging on common norms, especially among the more privileged.”77 That meant that all “manifestations of the religious had to contend more regularly with, and stake out their position in relation to”78 this concept. Part of this process was the “formalizing of doctrines and rites”. 79 These arguments agree with the important insight gained from post-colonial theory that, in the nineteenth century, non-Western cultures and societies were forced to adjust their own traditions to Western forms of representation, and that this colonial encounter also changed the West.80 Tomoko Masuzawa has analysed the salient features of this Western representation of religion in her book The Invention of World Religions.81 She looked at the Western forms of representation that were produced in the different fields of the study of religion in the nineteenth century, such as the history of religion, Christian theology, Orientalism, anthropology, and so on. Masuzawa found at the core of the Western concept an essentialist position that considered religion to be based on an inward experience that was thought to be the expression of an underlying truth that shaped all religions of the world, as we have seen in Harnack’s position. However, Masuzawa did not say anything about the role of rituals in this Western concept. Moreover, as Masuzawa herself noted, what is missing are studies on how the Western concept was appropriated in the non-Western world: “What remains yet to be studied concertedly is the very process of mutually interactive development, on the one hand, of European representations of non-Christian religions and, on the other hand, the native appropriation, reaction, or resistance to such representations.”82 Reconstructing a global discourse on ritual as part of a global discourse on religion, as was attempted here, could be understood as a step in the direction pointed at by Masuzawa. 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82

Bayly 2004: 2. Ibid.: 1. Ibid.: 479. Ibid. Ibid.: 480. Ibid.: 340. See Young 2001. Masuzawa 2005. Ibid.: 282.

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Conclusion The case studies suggest that, if analysed within a global history approach, there was a global discourse on the role and importance of rituals in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Religious reform movements which reinterpreted their own traditions against a global concept of religion took a critical stance on rituals. These were considered secondary and partly superstitious. Ritual reform, if desired at all, would mean a strict rationalisation of ritual practices according to the teachings of a religion. What has also become clear from the case studies is that the appropriation of Western notions was achieved by reinterpreting local traditions, which means it is not possible to differentiate, within this discourse, between a traditional (maybe even “indigenous”) and a non-traditional Western-influenced view, as both had merged together into one joint hybrid fabric. To achieve a better understanding of these ritual dynamics, more research on the role of rituals in the global discourse of religion will be necessary. At the same time, future comparative research on rituals in general should acknowledge the possibility of historically related global conceptualisations of rituals, at least since the nineteenth century.

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Hourani, Albert 1983 [1962]. Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age, 1798–1939. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (reprint of the original edition: London: Oxford University Press)). Hübner, Thomas 1994. Adolf von Harnacks Vorlesungen über das Wesen des Christentums unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Methodenfragen als sachgemäßer Zugang zu ihrer Christologie und Wirkungsgeschichte. Frankfurt: Peter Lang. Inoue Enryo 1979. “Bukkyo katsuron joron or The Revitalization of Buddhism. Introduction”. In: Kathleen M. Staggs. In Defense of Japanese Buddhism: Essays from the Meiji Period by Inoue Enryo and Murakami Sensho. PhD Dissertation, Princeton University: 349–476. Isomae, Jun’ichi 2005. “Deconstructing ‘Japanese Religion’. A Historical Survey”. Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 32: 235–248. Jackson, Carl T. 1994. Vedanta and the West: The Ramakrishna Movement in the United States. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Josephson, Jason Ananda 2006. “When Buddhism Became a ‘Religion’. Religion and Superstition in the Writing of Inoue Enryo.” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 33: 143–168. Kerr, Malcolm 1966. Islamic Reform: The Political and Legal Theories of Muhammad Abduh and Rashid Rida. Berkeley: University of California Press. Ketelaar, James Edward 1990. Of Heretics and Martyrs in Meiji Japan: Buddhism and its Persecution. Princeton: Princeton University Press. King, Richard 1999. Orientalism and Religion. Postcolonial Theory, India and “The Mystic East”. London: Routledge. Kinzig, Wolfram 2001. „Harnack heute. Neuere Forschungen zu seiner Biographie und dem ‘Wesen des Christentums’“.Theologische Literaturzeitung 126: 474–500. Masuzawa, Tomoko 2005. The Invention of World Religions, Or, How European Universalism Was Preserved in the Language of Pluralism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. McCutcheon, Russell T. 1997. Manufacturing Religion: The Discourse on Sui Generis Religion and the Politics of Nostalgia. New York: Oxford University Press. McKenzie, Timothy S. 2003. Spiritual Restoration and Religious Reinvention in Late Meiji Japan: The Three Religions Conference and Religious Nationalism. PhD Dissertation, The Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago. Michelis, Elizabeth de 2004. A History of Modern Yoga: Patanjali and Western Esotericism. London: Continuum. Nagel, Tilman 1978. „Gedanken über die europäische Islamforschung und ihr Echo im Orient“. Zeitschrift für Missionswissenschaft und Religionswissenschaft 62: 21–39. Nowak, Kurt 1995. Geschichte des Christentums in Deutschland. Religion, Politik und Gesellschaft vom Ende der Aufklärung bis zur Mitte des 20. Jahrhunderts. Munich: C.H. Beck. — & Otto Gerhard Oexle & Trutz Rendtorff (eds.) 2003. Adolf von Harnack. Christentum, Wissenschaft und Gesellschaft: Wissenschaftliches Symposium aus Anlaß des 150. Ge-burtstages. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.

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Osterhammel, Jürgen 2009. Die Verwandlung der Welt: Eine Geschichte des 19. Jahrhunderts. Munich: Beck. Potter, Karl H. (ed.) 1981. Advaita Vedanta up to Samkara und His Pupils. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass (Encyclopedia of Indian Philosophies 3). Powers, Paul R. 2004. “Interiors, Intentions, and the ‘Spirituality’ of Islamic Ritual Practice”. Journal of the American Academy of Religion 72: 425–459. Radice, William (ed.) 1998. Swami Vivekananda and the Modernisation of Hinduism. Delhi: Oxford University Press. Rambachan, Anantanand 1994. The Limits of Scripture: Vivekananda’s Reinterpretation of the Vedas. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. Rieske-Braun, Uwe 2000. „Vom ‘Wesen des Christentums’ und seiner Geschichte. Eine Erinnerung an Adolf Harnacks Vorlesung (1899/1900)“. Theologische Literaturzeitung 125: 471–488. Said, Edward W. 1994 [1978]. Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books. Schulze, Reinhard 1990. Islamischer Internationalismus im 20. Jahrhundert: Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der Islamischen Weltliga. Leiden: Brill (Social, Economic and Political Studies of the Middle East 41). Snodgrass, Judith 2003. Presenting Japanese Buddhism to the West. Orientalism, Occidentalism, and the Columbian Exposition. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Staggs, Kathleen M. (ed.) 1979. In Defense of Japanese Buddhism: Essays from the Meiji Period by Inoue Enryo and Murakami Sensho. PhD Dissertation, Princeton University. — 1983. “‘Defend the Nation and Love the Truth’. Inoue Enryo and the Revival of Meiji Buddhism”. Monumenta Nipponica 38: 251–281. Stausberg, Michael 2004. „Ritualtheorien und Religionstheorien“. In: Dietrich Harth & Gerrit Jasper Schenk (eds.). Ritualdynamik: Kulturübergreifende Studien zur Theorie und Geschichte rituellen Handelns. Heidelberg: Synchron: 29–48. Thelle, Notto R. 1987. Buddhism and Christianity in Japan: From Conflict to Dialogue, 1854–1899. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. Troeltsch, Ernst 1913 [1897]. “Christentum und Religionsgeschichte”. In: Ernst Troeltsch. Gesammelte Schriften. Vol. 2: Zur religiösen Lage, Religionsphilosophie und Ethik. Tübingen: Mohr: 328–363. Vivekananda, Swami & Swami Ananyananda (ed.). 1959–1997. The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda: Mayavati Memorial Edition. 9 vols. Calcutta: Advaita Ashrama. Wielandt, Rotraud 1971. Offenbarung und Geschichte im Denken moderner Muslime. Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner. Young, Robert J.C. 2001. Postcolonialism: An Historical Introduction. London: Blackwell.

David Chidester

Imperial Reflections, Colonial Situations: James Frazer, Henri-Alexandre Junod, and Indigenous Ritual in Southern Africa In January 1915, a European missionary and an African evangelist, both working among the rural Thonga, witnessed a ceremony at the urban residential hostels, or compounds, reserved for African mineworkers in Johannesburg. At one of the compounds, men were dancing in celebration, but also in anticipation, awaiting the arrival of a procession, which, as the European missionary observed, included many women. Knowing that very few women lived around the mines, the European missionary asked his African colleague why so many women were participating in this ceremonial procession. The African evangelist explained: “They are not women! They are tinkhontshana, boys who have placed on their chests the breasts of women carved in wood, and who are going to the dance in order to play the part of women”.1 What kind of ceremony was this? Was this ceremony expressive in saying something about life at the mines, or functional in compensating for living on the mines? As an expressive ritual, the ceremony might have been enacting the importance of gendered relations in African religious life, in which structured relations between males and females were inscribed and sanctified in life-cycle rites, marriage contracts, family gatherings, healing practices, and sacrificial offerings for ancestral spirits. Alienated from these traditional structures, mineworkers might have performed this ceremony as a functional equivalent, or functional substitute, for the familiar gendered relations of their rural homes. As a functional ritual, this ceremony might have been performed to maintain a sense of traditional order under modern conditions. The African evangelist, however, offered a much more pragmatic analysis of this ceremony. The procession, the dance, and the entire ritual was effective in marking and making human relations – juniors and seniors, males and females, wives and husbands – in the life of the mining compound. “To-night”, he explained, referring to the young men who were dressed up as women for the cere1 Junod 1927: vol. 1, 492.

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mony, “when they return to their dormitories, their ‘husbands’ will have to give them 10 [shillings], and only on that condition will the tinkhontshana remove their breasts and comply with the desire of their husbands”.2 As a term referring to boys “used by another man to satisfy his lust”, the tinkhontshana could be any young men who were courted by policemen, supervisors, and other elders in the mining compounds by formal proposals and even by the marriage rituals of lobola, which required a payment to the family of the “bride”. The marriage ritual might even be sanctified by the sacrificial offering of a goat to the ancestral spirits. The boy became wife (nsati), the man became husband (numa), in the formation of these ritualised but also intimate relations. The ceremony, therefore, whatever its expressive registers or functional compensations, was an integral part of ritually, actually making men and boys, males and females, and husbands and wives, in the mining compounds of Johannesburg. The missionary, linguist, and ethnographer Henri-Alexandre Junod, who described this ritual in the context of reporting on “unnatural vice in the Johannesburg compounds”,3 had for many years provided meticulously detailed and theoretically informed accounts of African material, social, and cultural life, with specially attention to African religion and magic. Junod’s interest in this ritual reflected a concern with sexual morality, a concern that had been the subject of a government commission of inquiry in 1907 into sexual practices in the mining compounds and prisons.4 But Junod was also interested in rites of passage, not only life-cycle rituals that made men and women in traditional society, but also in the rites of passage between “primitive” society and civilisation. Henri-Alexandre Junod (1863–1934) had studied English and Medicine at Edinburgh before taking up his work as missionary for the Mission Suisse Romande. He spent most of the years between 1893 and 1920 in southern Africa, while he lived his last fourteen years in Switzerland lecturing and writing on “primitive” magic and ritual. Originally intent on studying entomology in southern Africa, Junod claimed that he was converted to ethnography by the historian, politician, and friend of James Frazer, James Bryce.5 At their meeting in Lorenço Marcques in 1895, Bryce urged Junod to document the customs of the natives. This research would be essential for their efficient colonial management, but Bryce thought that it would also benefit the natives themselves in the future by providing reliable knowledge about their primitive past. He compared the situation of nineteenth-century Europeans in Africa to the opportunities of ancient Romans among the barbaric tribes of Europe. “How thankful should we be”, Bryce exclaimed, “if a Roman had taken the trouble fully to investigate the habits of our Celtic forefa2 3 4 5

Ibid. Ibid.: vol. 1, 492–495. Epprecht 2001; Forman 2002. Harries 1981: 37; Bryce 1897; 1902.

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thers!” Following this analogy, Junod imagined that Africans of the future would be grateful for scientific efforts to preserve accounts of their savage life. Turning from entomology to ethnography, Junod found that “Man is infinitely more interesting than the insect!”6 Although Junod might have exaggerated the role of James Bryce in the origin of his ethnographic research, Bryce did put him in touch with the metropolitan theorist, James Frazer. As a result of that link, Junod employed Frazer’s questionnaire in his ethnographic fieldwork;7 Frazer quoted Junod’s research findings in his publications. Junod’s earliest ethnographic monograph, Les Ba-Ronga (1898), received Frazer’s frequent citation, particularly where it provided ample evidence of the practices of primitive magic.8 Occasionally, Frazer also deferred to Junod’s analysis, observing at one point, for example, that the “Swiss missionary who reports this strange superstition has also suggested what appears to be its true explanation”.9 More than merely providing raw materials, therefore, Junod represented a co-worker in the field. “My documents are not books”, Junod declared in his major work, The Life of a South African Tribe. “They are living witnesses”.10 Junod’s principal informants can be identified. In his research, Junod relied upon recent Christian converts, such as Elias “Spoon” Libombo, Mboza, Tobane, Viguet, and others, who, in providing accounts of traditional religion, advanced their own Christian critiques of a pagan, heathen past. Not only expressing their religious interests, these informants, coming from Lourenço Marques, also displayed political loyalties that affected their accounts of local African beliefs and customs. Elias Libombo, in particular, was highlighted as a diviner, a “fortune-teller”, who revealed to Junod the indigenous, “ingenious system of divination”.11 Depicted in photographs as a “bone thrower” in 1894 and a “church elder” in 1907, Elias “Spoon” Libombo mediated between ancestral traditions and Christian conversions in Junod’s accounts of the life of a South African tribe. In addition to these Christian converts, Junod relied upon information from a ritual specialist, Mankhelu, a diviner and counsellor to kings, whom Junod described as “a Bantu so steeped in the obscure conceptions of the Bantu mind that he could never get rid of them”.12 In conversing with Junod, Mankhelu also had to mediate between ancestral and Christian religion. But Mankhelu found himself in a different kind of mediation around 1888, when he was convicted and sentenced to death by a colonial court for presiding over a traditional 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

Junod 1927: vol. 1, 1. Frazer 1888; Junod 1927: vol. 1, 6. E.g. Frazer 1911: vol. 1, 152, 153, 268, 286; vol. 2, 205. Ibid.: vol. 1, 268. Junod 1927: vol. 1, 3. Ibid. 1905b: 255. Ibid. 1927: vol. 1, 4–5

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trial for identifying a person as guilty of performing witchcraft.13 Although he was reprieved from execution, Mankhelu underwent a different kind of conversion, not by becoming a Christian, but by passing through the ultimate power over life and death that was wielded by new colonial forces. In his imperial reflections on ritual, James Frazer (1854–1941) distinguished between magical and religious rites, contrasting magical coercion with religious submission in ritual practices. However, as Edmund Leach observed, although Frazer focused on ritual, he was really interested in psychology. “The customs Frazer records with such painstaking elaboration are all examples of ritual action”, Leach noted. “Yet his ultimate interest was not in the ritual as such, but in the underlying beliefs”.14 Nevertheless, Frazer argued that beliefs had practical implications, informing dispositions towards the world. Magical beliefs, underwritten by principles of imitation and contagion, were essentially coercive, while religious beliefs, deferring to supernatural beings, led to a submissive disposition towards higher powers. In his reading of this distinction between magic and religion, R.R. Marett found that Frazer was arguing “in effect that humility is the differentia of religion”.15 Beliefs, attitudes, and dispositions, therefore, were the essential ingredients in Frazer’s trajectory from magic, through religion, to modern science. Guided by Frazer, Henri-Alexandre Junod nevertheless charted his own course in coming to terms with these keywords – magic, religion, and science. Certain rituals, Junod found, were “inspired by the magic principles”,16 the “axioms of primitive mentality”,17 in which practitioners of magic assumed that “like acts on like and produces like”, that a “portion of a complexus acts on the whole”, or that “words in which a wish is emphatically expressed produce the desired result”.18 These magical axioms, according to Junod, were deployed in “all the rites, practices, and conceptions which aim at dealing with hostile, neutral, or favourable influences”.19 Essentially pragmatic, magic was engaged in the contested arena of forces, from beneficial to hostile, which might be harnessed or averted. Religion, by contrast, he defined as “all the rites, practices, conceptions or feelings which presuppose the belief in personal or semi-personal spirits endowed with the attributes of Deity.” Religion, like magic, was a matter of rites and practices, underwritten by conceptions, but amplified by feelings absent in magic. Those feelings, Junod argued, were relational, since religion was marked by efforts “to enter into relation” with divine spirits, but not necessarily in a spirit of submission 13 14 15 16 17 18 19

Ibid.: vol. 1, 444. Leach 1961: 381. Marett 1909: 176. Junod 1927: vol. 2, 451. Ibid.: 368. Junod 1927: vol. 2, 369–370. Ibid.: 451.

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or humility, since religious actions could be performed “either to win their assistance or to avert their anger”, but always through what he consistently identified as characteristically religious acts, which were performed “essentially by means of offerings and prayers”.20 Completing his definition of the three keywords of an imperial study of religion, Junod proposed that science should be understood as “all the rites, practices, and conceptions which are inspired by a true observation of facts”.21 From this perspective of scientific truth, magic was “absolutely false”, Junod insisted, because “we cannot assign any scientific value to any of these axioms of primitive mentality”.22 These definitions of magic, religion, and science, which Junod adapted from Frazer, were modified by his missionary goals and his colonial context. Like Frazer, Junod placed magic in competition with religion, as contrasting dispositions, one coercing and the other deferring to supernatural powers, and he also placed magic in competition with science in the realm of facts. Departing from Frazer, however, Junod argued for the scientific value of religion, which was displayed in rites of offerings and prayers, and the religious value of science, as “rites, practices, and conceptions” that underwrote his project of Christianising and civilising the natives. Although he was clearly conversant with the most recent developments in European theory, Junod was also recasting those theoretical resources in mediating between metropolitan centres of theory production and his colonial situation in southern Africa. Here we find what I have called the triple mediation in the production of knowledge about religion within imperial comparative religion.23 James Frazer, mediating between a hypothetical primitive humanity and modern civilisation, was in correspondence with Henri-Alexandre Junod’s mediation between European theory and colonial projects of converting and civilising, containing and controlling, the indigenous people of southern Africa. The third mediation, worked out by indigenous Africans, was crucial. Whether mediating between ancestral traditions and Christian conversion, as in the case of Elias “Spoon” Libombo, or mediating between indigenous and colonial legal systems, as in the case of the diviner Mankhelu, Africans were struggling to move in and move through new religious and political terrains. Although they were Junod’s informants, feeding into Frazer’s global network of reports from “men on the spot”, they were on the frontlines of mediating between ancestral traditions and new realities. Religion, in these mediations, was situated not in a primordial past, but in the ordeals of military conquest, colonial subjugation, coercive taxation, migrant labour, and life in the cities, mining compounds, and prisons of South Africa. 20 21 22 23

Ibid. Ibid. Ibid.: 370. See Chidester 2004.

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Imperial Reflections on Ritual Although imperial comparative religion was primarily focused on beliefs, concentrating on distilling a primitive psychology, mentality, or “belief in spiritual beings”, theorists also had to pay attention to religious practice. William Robertson Smith (1846–1894) was at the forefront of directing attention to ritual in the study of religion. Ritual came before myth, in Smith’s analysis. In the social cohesion of ritual, people act together in concert and in community, especially when sharing the communal meal of a sacrifice. In The Religion of the Semites, originally published in 1889, William Robertson Smith advanced a theory of sacrificial ritual that placed the religion of ancient Israel, and the Hebrew Bible, firmly within the global context of imperial comparative religion.24 Robertson Smith restricted his comparisons to the ancient Near East until roughly midway through his book, when he invoked the authority of E. B. Tylor to make the point that the belief that blood provides nourishment for the gods can be regarded as universal, because the “same belief appears among early nations in all parts of the globe”.25 Suddenly shifting to a global scope, Robertson Smith cited evidence from the Indians of North America, the Tartars, and three African examples, including a report from South Africa: “Among the Hottentots the pure blood of beasts is forbidden to women but not to men”.26 “In the last case”, Robertson Smith observed, “we see that the blood is sacred food”.27 In primitive sacrifice, therefore, the sacred appeared not as a gift to a spiritual being, as E.B. Tylor had argued, but as a marker of social cohesion and gendered divisions in the formation of society. As the development of his argument shifted to the global perspective of imperial comparative religion, how did Robertson Smith propose to control the evidence that could be derived from “nations” all over the world? In the theoretical centrepiece of the Religion of the Semites, its chapter on sacrifice, Robertson Smith advanced a socioeconomic principle of comparison, isolating the material basis, for example, that made pastoral societies comparable, whether they were in the ancient Near East and or in contemporary Africa. “Similar institutions are found among all the purely pastoral African peoples”, he observed “and have persisted with more or less modification down to our own time”.28 To make his comparative case, Robertson Smith selected evidence from a region that, at first glance, must have appeared most distant and different from the ancient Near East. “Out of a multitude of proofs I cite these”, he explained, juxtaposing the ancient Near East and colonial South 24 Smith 1886; 1892; 1902; 1914. On William Robertson Smith, see Beidelman 1974; Black & Chrystal 1912a; Johnstone 1995; Jones 1984; Segal 2008; Warburg 1989; Wheeler-Barclay 1993. 25 Smith 1914: 234; Tylor 1871: vol. 2, 346. 26 Kolb 1719: 205. 27 Smith 1914: 234, n. 2. 28 Ibid.: 297.

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Africa, “as being drawn from the parts of the continent most remote from one another”.29 In South Africa, Robertson Smith found pastoral people, living on a common diet of milk or game, who seldom killed their cattle, except on special ritual occasions – circumcisions, weddings, or ceremonial preparations for war. “So among the Caffres”, he concluded; and so among the pastoralists of the ancient Near East.30 Drawing upon South African evidence, Robertson Smith found, “These examples may suffice to show the wide diffusion among rude pastoral peoples of a way of regarding sacred animals with which the Semitic facts and the inferences I have drawn from them exactly correspond”.31 Objections to Robertson Smith’s comparative inferences came from many quarters. In addition to theological scandal, Robertson Smith was subjected to the complaints from philologists that he had compared incompatible families of language. As A.H. Sayce voiced this objection, “I must enter a protest against the assumption that what holds good of Kaffirs or Australians held good also for the primitive Semite. The students of language have at last learnt that what is applicable to one family of speech is not necessarily applicable to another, and it would be well if the anthropologist would learn the same lesson”.32 His friend James Frazer, however, recognised that Robertson Smith had established a new principle for comparison. He had developed new terms and conditions for using evidence and drawing conclusions that were based, not on the classification of languages, the collection of mythic motifs, or the catalog of customs, but upon the comparability of similar socioeconomic systems. As Frazer observed in 1894, Robertson Smith’s major contribution was his demonstration of the comparability of Semitic pastoral life, and its religion that revolved around animal sacrifice, with “pastoral life as observed among rude pastoral tribes in various parts of the world, especially in Africa”.33 Especially in South Africa, the pastoral religion and society of indigenous Africans could provide a template for rewriting the religion of the ancient Semites. In his own work, James Frazer ignored this principle of sociological method, building his vast literary edifice upon the promiscuous collection and collation of data without any regard for socioeconomic context.34 Frazer marked the apogee of imperial comparative religion by developing a truly global network of informants and information, which was assembled not only through his prodigious command of the literature, but also through his cultivation of direct contact with local experts 29 30 31 32 33 34

Ibid.: 297, n. 2. Ibid.: 297, n. 3. Ibid.: 300. Sayce 1889. Frazer 1894: 207. On James Frazer, see Ackerman 1973; 1987; 1991; Fraser 1990; Jones 1984; Leach 1961; J.Z. Smith 1978.

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all over the world, “men on the spot”, such as Baldwin Spencer and F.J. Gillen in Australia, R.H. Codrington in Melanesia, and John Roscoe in Uganda, who mediated between colonised peripheries and the metropolitan centre.35 As his biographer Robert Ackerman has shown, Frazer’s basic theoretical distinction between magic and religion, and his hypothetical evolutionary sequence from magic, through religion, to science, were developed, not by reading Comte, but in conversation and collaboration with the Australian aboriginal researches of former zoologist Baldwin Spencer and colonial administrator F.J. Gillen. Their work in Australia led Frazer to conclude that “if we define religion as the propitiation of natural and supernatural powers, and magic as the coercion of them, magic has everywhere preceded religion”.36 However, as a manipulation of matter, which was effected by applying “one or other of two great fundamental laws of thought, namely, the association of ideas by similarity and the association of ideas by continuity in space and time”,37 magic was more practical, realistic, and even scientific than religion. Where religious ritual submitted before mysterious power, magic sought to control it. In either case, whether religious or magical, “primitive” thought and practice were about materiality. In this respect, perhaps, Frazer developed, in his own way, Robertson Smith’s concluding observation in The Religion of the Semites that a “ritual system must always remain materialistic, even if its materialism is disguised under the cloak of mysticism”.38 Arguably, while focusing on underlying beliefs, Frazer’s imperial comparative religion documented the global distribution of an allpervading mysticism of materiality. Frazer’s method was evident in 1885 in one of his earliest anthropological essays, an analysis of the sacred fire maintained by the vestal virgins in ancient Rome. This perpetual fire, tended by young women, was the central symbol of Roman religion and politics. If the fire went out, it was regarded not only as a religious disaster, but also as a threat to the political stability of the empire. Special sacrifices were required to deal with this crisis. The fire had to be reignited by the most ancient method of rubbing two sticks together. Frazer posed the question: Why was maintaining this sacred fire so important in Ancient Rome? Once the practice had started, Frazer casually observed, it inevitably became sacralised, or canonised, to ensure its continuation. But why did it start in the first place? Here, the prescribed method of re-lighting the sacred fire suggested for Frazer the key to explaining the primitive origin of this ritual institution. “That its history goes back to the embryo state of human civilisation seems proved by the fact that when the fire chanced to go out it was formally re35 36 37 38

See Ackerman 1987: 153–157, 244–245, 269–270. Ackerman 1987: 157. Frazer 1922: 49. Smith 1914: 440.

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kindled by the most primitive of all modes of lighting a fire, that of rubbing two sticks against each other. It is probable therefore that some light may be thrown on the Roman custom by comparing it with the customs of peoples in earlier stages of civilisation.”39 This focus on the most primitive technique of fire-lighting led Frazer to inquire into the primitive customs of savages as they were reported by European travellers, missionaries, and colonial agents. “Turning to South Africa”, Frazer observed, “we are told by a distinguished traveller that amongst the Damaras the chief’s daughter ‘is to the Damaras what the Vestal was amongst the ancient Romans; for, besides attending to the sacrifices, it is her duty to keep up the ‘holy fire’’.”40 This traveller’s report about the savage Damara solved Frazer’s comparative problem. This distinguished traveller was the Swedish explorer, hunter, and trader in South West Africa, now Namibia, Charles John Andersson. Having travelled to Cape Town with Francis Galton in 1850, Andersson published his book, Lake Ngami, on the natural and cultural features of South West Africa, in 1856. As an amateur ethnographer, Andersson paid considerable attention to religion, noting that useful “knowledge of the mental tendencies of the natives” could be gained “by attending to what many might call absurd superstitions”.41 Focusing on the Damara [Bergdama], who were allegedly the most primitive people in the region, he found hints of religious sentiment in their sense of something beyond the visible world and their reluctance to speak about such matters. According to Andersson, whenever any questions about religion arose, his African guide would exclaim, “Hush!”42 The nature of their religion, therefore, could only be discerned in observable ritual, such as the practices associated with preserving the sacred fire. Here Anderrsson highlighted the correlation between contemporary Damara and ancient Romans. In its colonial context, this account of the primitive religion of the Damara held a significance that Frazer would not have noticed. During the second half of the nineteenth century, reports by European travellers, traders, and missionaries depicted the Damara as the most primitive people in South West Africa. By contrast to the Herero and mixed-race Afrikaner groups who were competing with Europeans for dominance in the region, the Damara had no centralised political organisation. The depiction of the Damara as “occupying extreme levels of primitivity”, as historian Marion Wallace has observed, justified capturing them in large numbers and taking them into forced labour in the Cape Colony. At the same time, European obsevers were interested in distinguishing these primitive people as a sepa39 40 41 42

Frazer 1931: 64. Ibid.: 64–65; citing Andersson 1856: 223. Andersson 1856: iv. Ibid.: 201.

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rate “tribe”, even though, as Wallace has noted, the “Damara cannot be said to have formed a ‘tribe’ until the colonial authorities invented it”.43 The Roman model of social cohesion, revolving around the sacred fire, provided a convenient formula for representing this tribal solidarity. As an interested party in struggles for power in South West Africa, during the 1860s Charles John Andersson organised an army of European traders, with African allies, to defeat all the other “tribes” and establish European domination.44 In this colonial history, maintaining the sacred fire, a practice held in common by the Damara and the Herero, continued to hold political significance. Johannes Hangero, who had been taken prisoner during the genocidal war against the Herero beginning in 1904, recounted how the Germans had targeted the sacred fire in their campaign of destruction. “When the Germans took over South West Africa people were punished for having holy fires”, he recalled. “Even the holy fires were extinguished”.45 Knowledge about African religion, therefore, marked out a site for colonial intervention and even for a military campaign of extermination. James Frazer, however, used evidence from South West Africa to answer his question about the origin of the sacred fire in ancient Rome. Observing a “complete correspondence between Damaraland and ancient Italy”, he highlighted the similar female roles, sacrificial rituals, and methods of re-kindling the fire by rubbing sticks together. This correspondence enabled him to formulate an explanation for the origin of the ancient Roman ritual. “When we have thus tracked the custom of maintaining a perpetual fire to a savage tribe in Africa”, Frazer declared, “a simple explanation of its origin is not far to seek”.46 Indeed, Frazer’s explanation was extremely simple: savages make fire by rubbing two sticks together; this process of making fire is difficult, especially in wet weather; therefore, it is convenient to keep a fire constantly burning. According to Frazer, the origin of the sacred fire, with all its attendant rituals, could thereby be reduced to practical necessity, a solution to a purely technical problem, which was only later “elevated into a religious obligation”.47 Here was James Frazer’s method in embryo, which he would develop in his long-term, multi-volume research project into the meaning of the Priest of Nemi. He set a problem in the study of classical religion; correlated that problem with evidence about savages from all over the world; and then identified a simple practical solution that had been obscured by magic and religion in the process of human evolution. Frazer’s theoretical mediation between savage religion and primitive origins was surprisingly popular. Celebrating Frazer’s influence, R.R. Marett: “If our im43 44 45 46 47

Wallace 2003: 370. Lau 1986. Wallace 2003: 362. Frazer 1931: 66. Ibid.: 67.

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perial race is beginning to know something about those people of rudimentary culture whose fate is in its hands, [it] is in no small part due to the wide circulation achieved by The Golden Bough.48 While The Golden Bough grew from one volume, to three volumes, to eleven volumes, it was clear that Frazer relied upon several key sources in the region, especially the historian George McCall Theal, the author Dudley Kidd, and the Swiss missionary-ethnographer Henri-Alexandre Junod. Although he was familiar with the earlier ethnographic work of Wilhelm Bleek, Henry Callaway, and Theophilus Hahn, and had mastered the nineteenthcentury reports of travellers and missionaries, Frazer preferred to engage these local experts directly as correspondents and collaborators in a common global project. Frazer made personal references to these scholars when he cited them in his published work. In providing a general explanation of Bantu totemism, for example, Frazer deferred to “Dr. Theal, the eminent historian of South Africa”.49 Praising Dudley Kidd as a “well-informed writer”, a “writer who knows [the Bantu] well”, Frazer made frequent reference to Kidd’s popular works, The Essential Kafir (1904) and Savage Childhood (1906).50 And he singled out for special mention the missionary-ethnographer Henri-Alexandre Junod, noting that Baronga “customs and beliefs have been recorded with praiseworthy diligence by the Swiss missionary Mr. H.A. Junod”,51 citing Junod’s “masterly account of his dusky flock”.52 From his various African informants, Junod distilled a single, coherent religious system. As historian Patrick Harries has demonstrated, Junod was instrumental in manufacturing a “Baronga” or “Thonga” linguistic, political, and tribal identity that never actually existed.53 The term “Thonga” was not used by the people themselves; they had no traditions of common origin. Junod constructed a common tribal language, culture, and religious tradition for the Thonga. Junod’s attention to religion, ritual, and magic, which he covered extensively in The Life of a South African Tribe and other publications, underwrote that presumed homogeneity of a tribal unit. In the hands of James Frazer, the internal, systematic coherence that Junod had constructed was easily dissolved, as he deployed Junod’s Baronga or Thonga, like other “savages”, as free-floating evidence of a magical mentality. Back in South Africa, however, Frazerian categories assumed strange local forms in the colonial situation. For example, the sympathetic, homeopathic, or imitative magic that supposedly pervaded “Bantu” mentality took on a distinctive political cast in Junod’s reading of the challenges of reconstruction after the South 48 49 50 51 52 53

Marett 1920: 173–174. Frazer 1910: vol. 2, 388–392; see ibid. 1901. Ibid. 1911: vol. 1, 350; vol. 2, 224; see ibid. 1906. Ibid. 1910: vol. 2, 386. Ibid. 1933: 51. Harries 1981: 45–50; see ibid. 2007.

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African War (1899–1902). Lacking any grasp of scientific causality, the “Bantu” held a magical conception of nature that was based, in Frazer’s terms, on the principle of imitative magic. In political relations, Junod argued, this magical mentality drove blacks to imitate their white masters, as they followed “the imitative instinct” that was “natural to them as to all primitive natures”, displaying an endemic “tendency to servile imitation”.54 By demanding political independence or civil rights, therefore, black southern Africans, according to Junod, were merely engaging in Frazerian imitative magic. On the basis of science, rather than magic, Junod rejected the “principle of similarity” between blacks and whites in southern Africa. Insisting instead on a non-negotiable principle of difference, Junod advised that “if we want to avoid the dangers which threaten us, let us encourage the Natives to remain as much as possible faithful to their own nature, to their traditions, to their mentality, and in view of all that, to their language”.55 Rather than trying, by imitative magic, to be imitations of white people, Africans should maintain their “natural” place, “remaining Bantu tribes, keeping all they can of their old feudal system under the supervision of their white masters”.56 If this course were adopted in southern Africa, Junod promised, then Africans “would be truly men, and not caricatures of white people, and they would not be so accessible to that spirit of dissatisfaction of which we see the traces growing amongst them”.57 The Frazerian interest in fertility, like his theory of magic, also assumed strange local forms in southern Africa. In reviewing theoretical work on religion in nineteenth-century British social anthropology, Edmund Leach proposed that Frazer’s attention to fertility ritual and magic should be read as an interest in sexuality, euphemistically disguised, however, under the designation, “fertility”, in deference to late-Victorian sensibilities.58 By contrast, in the context of southern Africa, Junod was less reticent about “primitive” sex, even though he observed that the “sexual life of the Bantus especially shocks our moral feelings”.59 He wrote freely, and directly, about sex in Thonga religion, culture, and social relations. A direct discourse about sexuality was necessary, because keeping Africans “under the supervision of their white masters” depended upon authoritative scientific knowledge about the most intimate details of African personal and social life.

54 55 56 57 58 59

Junod 1905a: 6. Ibid.: 9. Ibid. Ibid. Leach 1985: 218–219. Junod 1927: vol. 1, 7.

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Colonial Struggles with Ritual In an essay on the Thonga published in 1905, Henri-Alexandre Junod recapitulated basic themes of imperial comparative religion, beginning with animism as the savage philosophy underlying Thonga religion; considering savage supreme beings by speculating that the Thonga term for heaven, Tilo, bore traces of a forgotten monotheism; and asserting a fundamental distinction between religion and magic, with religion found in offerings and prayers, magic found in divination and rainmaking.60 Clearly, Junod’s research on religion was informed by imperial theory – E.B. Tylor’s animism, Andrew Lang’s primitive monotheism, and James Frazer’s distinctions among magic, religion, and science. By his own account, Junod carried Frazer’s questions into the field,61 trying to provide local answers to these general questions about marriage62 or government.63 Often, Junod’s answers to Frazer’s questions were negative: no, they do not practice primitive promiscuity; no, they do not periodically kill their kings. Nevertheless, Frazer’s imperial anthropology of religion, with its scientific intent, was invoked by Junod in underwriting and legitimating his own scientific enterprise. However, while he deferred to Frazer’s broad framework for defining magic, religion, and science, Junod turned to the work of Arnold van Gennep (1873– 1957), whose landmark study of rites of passage was published in 1909, to advance the analysis of ritual process.64 Consistently and repeatedly, Junod turned to Van Gennep’s modeling of the three ritualised stages of social separation, marginality, and re-aggregation in analysing Thonga rituals of initiation into adulthood,65 of dealing with death,66 of moving a village,67 or of engaging in warfare.68 In all of these cases, from life cycle rituals to national rituals, Junod followed Van Gennep in analysing the social dynamics of change in ritual processes. Junod might very well have felt a linguistic affinity with the author of Les rites de passage, since he was quite clear in his introduction to The Life of a South African Tribe that he would have preferred writing in French, but only wrote in English to reach a wider scientific audience. However, the distinction between scientific and practical spheres was crucial to Junod’s work, as he self-consciously separated these concerns, reserving his “practical” recommendations for a series of appendices. Significantly, almost all of his practical advice had to do with intervening in 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68

Junod 1905b. Ibid. 1927: vol. 1, 6. Ibid.: 125. Ibid.: 447–448. Van Gennep 1909; 1960. Junod 1927: vol. 1, 74. Ibid.: 167–168. Ibid.: 327–328. Ibid.: 483.

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African rites of passage – rites of infancy, male circumcision, polygamous marriage, and lobola – and civilising them by breaking the hold of “communalism” and converting Africans to the “individualism” of civilisation. Having applied science to the analysis of ritual, drawing on Frazer for defining terms and Van Gennep for analysing process, Junod gave practical advice that was almost entirely focused on intervening in African rituals. Sacrifice, the most “clearly established and typical ritual” of the Thonga, constituted “the most definite and settled element of the religious life of the tribe”.69 Junod distinguished between family sacrifices, which were performed to mark lifecycle transitions, to establish or leave a homestead, and to maintain ongoing relations with ancestors, and national sacrifices of chiefly authority in celebrating the first fruits of a harvest, making rain, or preparing for war. In all these cases, sacrifices combined ritual speech and action, the uttering of prayers and a sound, which Junod at one point called the “sacramental tsu”, and the offering of a sanctified object, a mhamba. In his 1913 edition of The Life of a South African Tribe, Junod explained that material offerings were necessary, but it was “the famous tsu which makes them a hahla, a real sacrifice”.70 Revising this discussion in his 1927 edition, Junod repeated the importance of these two elements, the verbal and the material, but he deleted the phrase, “a real sacrifice”.71 This revision, we will find, was consistent with Junod’s eventual recasting of Thonga “mental life” as more magical than religious. Repeatedly, Junod redefined practices that he had previously regarded as religious as magic. Junod’s definitions of magic, religion, and science, which were broadly derived from Frazer’s basic categories, remained constant in the two editions.72 Definitions were not revised. But their applications to Thonga practices underwent a subtle transformation. For example, after describing ancestral sacrifice, Junod in 1913 observed that these “propitiatory rites very rarely bear a magical character: they are religious acts, viz., acts performed with the intention of influencing living, conscious and superior beings, and consist in most cases in gifts”.73 In the 1927 edition, in place of this assertion that sacrifices were essentially religious acts, with little trace of magic, Junod observed: “We shall often see such magic acts performed in the ancestor worship of the Thongas. This is in keeping with their general conception of Nature […] and with the magic principles or axioms of primitive mentality”.74 His summation of the “general characteristics of ancestrolatry” in the two editions was almost identical. Ancestral observances were spiritualistic; ani69 70 71 72 73 74

Ibid.: vol. 2, 395. Junod 1913: vol. 2, 362. Ibid. 1927: vol. 2, 388. Junod 1913: vol. 2, 412; 1927: vol. 2, 451. Ibid. 1913: vol. 2, 361. Ibid. 1927: vol. 2, 387.

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mistic; particularistic; social; unsacerdotal; non-moral; unphilosophical; and directed towards gaining specific material benefits in this life.75 In the 1927 edition, however, Junod interpolated a sentence to amplify the magical character of ancestral sacrifice: “Though consisting essentially of offerings and prayers, which are distinctly religious acts, it is mingled with magic to a considerable extent”.76 This “mingling” of religion and magic was a concern for Junod in both editions. But where he had previously seen essentially religious acts tainted by magic, by 1927 he was convinced that religious features had only been added on to basically magical acts. Where he had worried in 1913 that in Thonga ritual “Religion is greatly disfigured by magic”,77 in 1927 he revised this sentence to assert more decisively that “Religion is largely adulterated by magic”.78 In principle, Junod was able to separate religion and magic, especially in sacrificial ritual, by distinguishing between objects that were given religiously and objects that were employed magically. He invoked Thonga terms, mhamba for sacrificial offerings, miri for magical charms, in reinforcing this distinction between religion and magic. In the 1913 edition, this distinction was simple and straightforward: “When the national priest ‘sacrifices’ with the great mhamba, he prays to the ancestor-gods of the country: this is Religion; but he also brandishes the sacred object containing their nails and hair, to influence them: this is Magic”.79 This passage, with its clear distinction between religion and magic, was deleted from the 1927 edition. Thonga religious practices were redefined as magical practices. Even his old friend, the diviner Mankhelu, suffered from this redefinition. Described by Junod as “the most distinguished medicine-man I ever met”,80 Mankhelu was a diviner and herbalist, a rain-maker and counsellor to chiefs, and a general of the army. During the Sikororo war, Mankhelu entered a battle in November 1901 by first fashioning a mhamba, a sacred bundle of grass to invoke ancestral protection. Recounting this event in 1913 Junod characterised the mhamba as “a prayer in action”;81 in 1927 he rendered it as “verbal magic”.82 What happened? What happened between 1913 and 1927 to change Junod’s analysis of the religious or magical character of Thonga ritual practices? Certainly, his anthropological mentor, James Frazer, had changed his terms of reference, modifying the subtitle of his master work, The Golden Bough, from a “Study of Comparative Religion” in his first edition of 1890, to a “Study of Magic and Reli75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82

Ibid. 1913: vol. 2, 388–389; 1927: vol. 2, 427–428. Ibid. 1927: vol. 2, 427. Ibid. 1913: vol. 2, 412. Ibid. 1927: vol. 2, 451. Ibid. 1913: vol. 2, 412. Ibid. 1927: vol. 2, 454. Ibid. 1913: vol. 2, 382. Ibid. 1927: vol. 2, 419.

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gion” in the second edition of 1900, and all subsequent editions. For Frazer, this emphasis on magic allowed him to highlight “fundamental laws of thought” that distinguished magic from science. In Junod’s case, however, we might consider several possible explanations. First, according to Junod, during the intervening years he had acquired new information that enabled him to provide a more accurate account of the meaning of sacrificial offerings, the mhamba, in Thonga “mental life”. Certainly, almost all of the substantial revisions of his book between 1913 and 1927 related to the meaning of material objects used in ritual. Perhaps new conversations with informants or further fieldwork provided Junod with more information to discriminate between religious and magical practices. If so, he must have gathered this new information between 1913 and 1920, when he left South Africa for Switzerland. But the changes in his text seem less like new information than like simple editorial revisions, recasting the same ritual objects, for example, as “gifts offered to the gods”83 into “the magical objects used in worship”.84 The 1927 edition did not provide new data; it reclassified old data. Second, if Junod had adopted a new theoretical framing, it is not clear from his texts. As noted, his definitions of key terms – magic, religion, and science – remained constant in the two editions. Perhaps he had been influenced by Lucien Lévy-Bruhl, since he used the phrase, “primitive mentality”,85 but he was critical of Lévy-Bruhl, and his theoretical mentors remained Frazer and Van Gennep. Certainly, he was testing their theories. In the case of Frazer, for example, Junod accepted his evolutionary scheme, but adapted it to his Protestant missionary interests. Accordingly, Frazer’s evolutionary progression from magic, through religion, to science was modified by Junod to anticipate an African evolution from magical manipulation, through symbolic representations, to a “perfectly spiritualized” religion “without any external and intermediary means”.86 Certainly, that was not what Frazer had in mind. But Junod still thought he was being faithful to both science and religion in charting this evolution from matter to spirit. Although this is purely speculation, Junod might have emphasised the magical character of African religious life after so many years as a missionary in Africa because he was frustrated that Africans had not participated in this evolutionary trajectory. Putting the issue of change differently, if religious ritual, following Van Gennep, was all about change, about rites of passage, then Junod might have been frustrated that Africans were not changing in the ways that he would have prescribed. Finally, given this resistance to the civilising process, Junod’s use of the term, “religion”, which could be a translatable, convertible, term, was supplanted by 83 84 85 86

Ibid. 1913: vol. 2, 382. Ibid. 1927: vol. 2, 418. Lévy-Bruhl 1910; 1922. Junod 1927: vol. 2, 419–420, n. 1.

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“magic”, a term of opposition, signifying an obstacle. Africans, with this magical mentality, stood in opposition to civilisation. Nevertheless, Junod also documented the ambivalence of civilisation. It brought benefits, such as education, but it also introduced “unnatural vice”. Obstacles were everywhere, even at the heart of civilisation. As Junod recognised, Africans were undergoing changes, requiring new rituals for mediating changing relations of colonial conquest, migrant labour, and urban life in the mining compounds of Johannesburg. In what Junod called the “national” rituals of the Thonga, sacrifices were offered for harvest, rainmaking and war. All of these collective rituals were reinforced by the “great mhamba”, a ritual object associated with the authority and even incorporating the hair and fingernails of great chiefs of the past. These former chiefs, now powerful ancestral spirits, were all understood to reside in sacred forests. Junod recounted several stories demonstrating how “it is evident that, for the Thonga, the ancestor-gods dwell in the sacred woods”.87 These sacred groves, which must have recalled for Junod the sacred grove of Nemi that was the centrepiece of Frazer’s Golden Bough, only needed the regular, periodic killing of a magician-king to conform to Frazer’s archetypal model. “In many sacred woods”, Junod maintained, without any supporting evidence, “a living human victim is offered to the gods”,88 but chiefs usually died natural deaths and were buried in the sacred woods. According to Junod, these sacred woods were sites of national significance. Following the war with the Portuguese between 1894 and 1895, any “national” sovereignty was subsumed under the establishment of a colonial administration. As Junod recounted, this administration also intervened directly, even if unconsciously, in traditional Thonga sacred space. Building a camp and then a town near one of the sacred woods, the Portuguese Authorities undertook the construction of a 20 kilometre road to the port city of Lourenço Marques, widening an existing trail by cutting down the trees of this forest. One of Junod’s informants, an elder by the name of Nkolele, described how he was horrified by witnessing this desecration of a chiefly ancestral site. In response, Nkolele performed a new kind of sacrificial ritual, presenting an offering to the ancestral chiefs of the sacred woods to ask their forgiveness for this colonial violation. Clearly, Junod was moved by this account, rising to Frazerian rhetoric in his florid evocation of the significance of this ritual encounter between the primitive and civilisation: “Is there not something significant and touching about this tale? Civilization penetrates irresistibly, crushing everything in its way, and cutting remorselessly, perhaps unwittingly, through the edge of the sacred wood! And there, under the mahogany tree, the aged priest, the guardian of its traditions, 87 Junod 1913: vol. 2, 358; see ibid.: 351ff. 88 Ibid.: 373; 1927: vol. 2, 405.

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David Chidester swoons away and asks forgiveness for having been an involuntary witness of the sacrilege!”89

Civilisation, in the lexicon of imperial comparative religion, only held positive valence, either as a term in structural opposition to savagery, or as the destination of evolutionary progression from savagery. Here, although Junod adopted Frazer’s florid rhetorical style, he countered these assumptions by depicting civilisation as “penetrating”, perhaps raping, but certainly desecrating, a sacred space that was associated with African political sovereignty. Another violation of African sovereignty can be seen in new colonial interventions in the regulation of native labour. As in other colonial regimes of labour extraction, the Portuguese coerced men into wage labour by imposing new forms of taxation, while justifying this coercion with rhetoric about the idleness of African males under the traditional gendered division of labour, and the civilising (and even Christianising) influence of a “gospel of work”, in which African labourers would be placed under colonial tutelage. In an early essay on the Thonga, Junod relied on the colonial wisdom of a “Johannesburg labour agent, who had thousands of labourers under his daily notice”, to identify the “intellectual traits” of Africans in this new labour market. According to this expert, while the Sotho were good for farm work and the Zulu for housework, the Thonga or Shangaan “can be put into a post requiring more intelligence; for example, he can be trusted with engines, as he seems to have some natural bent for mechanics.” Junod cited the authority of an “old resident in the low country” to establish that in “mining operations the Thonga is better”.90 These migrant workers accounted for the majority – at least 70 percent – of the labour force at the mines.91 As Junod observed in The Life of a South African Tribe, the Thonga no longer lived in the primitive isolation of rural villages or sacred woods, because “now practically every grown-up Thonga has been to Johannesburg”.92 New rites of passage were necessary to mediate the movement between the home and the city. Junod documented the sacrifice performed for a young man leaving home for Johannesburg. Preparing protective medicines, the diviner took a little of the concoction in his mouth to spit at the young man while uttering “the sacramental tsu”. Then the diviner prayed: “Death does not come to him for whom prayer is made; death only comes to him who trusts in his own strength! Let misfortune part [to far off places]. Let him travel safely; let him trample on his enemies; let thorns sleep, let

89 90 91 92

Junod 1913: vol. 2, 356; 1927: vol. 2, 381–382. Junod 1905b: 246–247. Newitt 1995: 492–493; van der Horst 1942: 216–217. Junod 1927: vol. 2, 311.

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lions sleep; let him drink water wherever he goes, and let that water make him happy, by the strength of this leaf (viz., of my medicinal herbs).” Invoking the ancestral spirits, asking the diviner’s ancestors to meet the traveller’s ancestors, the diviner concluded the ritual of departure by washing the young man’s body in the medicinal liquid.93 In this rite of separation, the traditional payment of the diviner was suspended, as Junod noted, because the young man “will pay the fee on his return home”.94 This deferral, certainly, was part of the ritual trust in ancestral protection during the journey. It anticipated the corresponding rite of reincorporation, “the sacrifice on behalf of the son who has just returned from Johannesburg”.95 In these new rites of separation and aggregation, migrant labour and reintegration in the homestead,96 the liminal space of working at the mines held the greatest danger. However, as we have seen, life at the mines and in the mining compounds also held the potential for creating new rituals, perhaps marginal rituals, perhaps even counter-rituals, for mediating the in-between space of life in an alien, alienating environment. As Junod had reported, ritual processions, marriage payments, and sacrificial offerings made “brides” and “husbands” in the mining compounds. Junod struggled to propose practical methods for stopping this “unnatural vice.” The mining compounds should prohibit curtains, prevent beds touching each other, introduce guards, install electric lights, he suggested, although he was not confident that any of these measures would provide a “remedy for this terrible evil.” The corruption, as Junod saw it, resulted from contact with civilisation, because “white civilisation is responsible for the introduction and the frightful development of this vice amongst the Natives.” Although ancient Greek heathenism, the font of European civilisation, had celebrated this “refinement of immorality”, Junod insisted that “Bantu heathenism, whatever may be its corruption, never dreamed of it.” Sex between males, Junod insisted, was an alien intervention in Africa, coming with European civilisation. As Junod declared, “Unnatural vice was taught to the South African Bantus by men of a foreign race; it first invaded the prisons; now it is raging in these big Native miners’ settlements, where it is deflouring [sic] the Bantu youth.” Same-sex relations between African men in the prisons and mining compounds of Johannesburg, Junod concluded, represented “an iniquity which threatens the very life of the South African Tribe.97 Junod’s concern reflected a certain ambivalence about the beneficial effects of European civilisation. While his anthropological mentor, James Frazer, was tracing “the gradual evolution of thought 93 94 95 96 97

Ibid. 1913: vol. 2, 365–366; 1927: vol. 2, 393–394. Ibid. 1913: vol. 2, 366; 1927: vol. 2, 394. Ibid. 1913: vol. 2, 369ff.; 1927: vol. 2, 397ff. See McAllister 1980; 2006. Junod 1927: vol. 1, 494–495.

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from savagery to civilization”,98 Henri-Alexandre Junod was entangled in the colonial contradictions of civilisation. For African mineworkers, who were mediating between urban and rural realities, the rituals of gender and sexuality, which marked males and females, making husbands and wives in the mining compounds, might have been antithetical to conventional practices of the rural homestead, even if they retained traditional forms of ritual exchange and sacrifice. Nevertheless, as historians of migrant labour have found, the rural homestead was increasingly dependent upon such contradictions, requiring the income from urban wage labour to sustain traditional relations of social reproduction. Certainly, in the mining compounds, marriages between men were sexual relations,99 but they were also ritual relations that reflected back on relations of gender, families, and ancestors that built up a home. For example, young men who became “wives” in the mining compounds could accumulate resources to return home and become husbands of their own households.100 Accordingly, as Junod found, rituals in the homestead paid special attention to the rites of passage for young men leaving and returning from working in Johannesburg.

Mines, Compounds, Prisons For migrant labourers, working in Johannesburg required entering a liminal space. Following van Gennep’s formula for rites of passage, rituals of separation and rituals of incorporation could mediate the process of leaving and returning home. But what rituals were being developed for dealing with the potential and danger of the in-between space of liminality? Carrying on his father’s ethnographic work, Junod’s son, Henri-Philippe Junod, became an expert on African life in the mines, compounds, and prisons. As an anthropological consultant for the Transvaal Chamber of Mines, during 1936 and 1937 the younger Junod gave lectures to mining officials and compound managers on the “Bantu Heritage”. In 1938, these lectures were published as a book, complete with a preface by mining-industry spokesman, William Gemmill, who recommended the volume because it explained “the races whose work makes European life in South Africa, as we know it, possible.” [ref] Reviewing Henri-Philippe Junod’s Bantu Heritage, the American anthropologist William R. Bascom, observed that it offered a “sketchy outline of Bantu life used as a basis for demonstrating that Africans are human beings and that some of their customs are worth preserving”.101 Displaying confused ideas about race, language, and psychology, 98 99 100 101

Frazer 1911–1915: vol. 10, vi. Achmat 1993. See Harries 1990; 1994: 200–208; Moodie 1988; 1994; Niehaus 2002. Bascom 1941: 107.

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Henri-Philippe Junod explored and explained “Bantu” mentality by “discussing baskets, xylophones, bark cloth, totemism, magic, possession, ancestor worship, and the supreme deity entitled ‘The Bantu Mind’”.102 Although Henri-Philippe Junod described the “Bantu” mentality, particularly as it was manifested through ritual and magic, it was probably what he had to say about the sex-life of the “Bantu” that was most relevant to the interests of the mining industry. Unlike other human beings, he claimed, a black migrant worker on the mines was perfectly suited to have sexual relations with his wife once a year when he returned home to his family in the reserves, because his “sexual life is more seasonal, more natural, than other people.” In other words, according to Henri-Philippe Junod, the “Bantu” had a sexuality more animal than human, which was entirely fit for migrant labour, the single-sex hostel, and the closed compound of the mines. In this respect, black southern Africans were supposedly unique: “One only needs to remember the 330,000 Bantu men working on the mines, most of them segregated in compounds, to visualise what the conditions would be from a sexual point of view if they belonged to other races.” Other people might present a problem, Henri-Philippe Junod concluded, but black workers – more seasonal, more natural, and, by implication, more animal than human – were supposedly suited to the subhuman working and living conditions on the mines.103 Well into the mid-twentieth century, these arguments about magical mentality and seasonal cycles of “primitive” sexuality, continued to be used by the mining industry to justify the exploitation of African labour.104 As Henri-Alexandre Junod recognised, new rituals were being enacted in the mining compounds of Johannesburg. These rituals might have echoed ancestral exchanges by sacrificing a goat or inter-family relations by the paying of lobola, but they effectively remade males and females, husbands and wives, within the liminal space of life on the mines. An African innovator in ritual, Mzuzephi Mathebula, who came to be known as Nongoloza, left Zululand in 1888 to look for work in Johannesburg. He found employment with a group of white criminals, highwaymen, which opened up new possibilities. As Nongoloza later recounted, “I decided to start a band of robbers on my own”.105 Inspired by the biblical account of the people of ancient Nineveh, who had rebelled against the Lord,106 Nongoloza determined that his band of robbers would be the Ninevites fighting against government and industry that had set itself up as lords over Africans. Within ten years, Nongoloza’s army of criminals, the Ninevite army, had grown to over a thousand. Through the concerted efforts of the 102 103 104 105 106

Ibid. Junod 1938: 92. James 1982: 144; Jeeves 1985: 115. Steinberg 2004a: 47. Zephaniah 3:1–5.

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South African army and police during the 1910s, the Ninevites were eventually defeated and Nongoloza imprisoned.107 Although the historical Nongoloza, Mzuzephi Mathebula, became a prison warder, the mythical Nongoloza, as journalist Johnny Steinberg has recently documented, became “the God of South African prisoners”.108 This deification of Nongoloza developed against the background of a mythic horizon, a sacred narrative familiar to every prisoner, in which an old wise man, variously known as Nkulukut or Po, initiated Nongoloza into the sacred secret of the gold-mining industry. “I have been to the mines”, the wise man revealed. “The gold of the white man is good. You must take it, but not from the ground. You must rob it from the white man himself”.109 In this myth, historical details were modified temporally by placing the foundational event in 1812, seventy-four years before gold was discovered on the Witwatersrand, and they were modified spatially by placing the gold mines in Portuguese controlled East Africa, at Delagoa Bay, in Lourenço Marques, rather than in Johannesburg. Nevertheless, this narrative provided a mythic warrant for criminal activity. Myth also underwrote ritual. Stealing a bull from a white farmer, Nongoloza and his colleagues performed a ritual sacrifice, killing and consuming the victim, but preserving the hide of the sacrificial animal as a parchment for transcribing all of the sacred “laws” of their criminal confederation. Dissension broke out, however, over the lawfulness of sex between men. Invoking the authority of the sacred laws inscribed on the hide of their original sacrificial victim, Nongoloza insisted that women were poison, so soldiers in his criminal army must choose wives from among the young men. Others disagreed. The ancient wise man intervened in this dispute by saying, “go to the mines”. But he died before this dispute could be resolved. In the myth, this question of sex between men was not resolved, because the criminals drew different conclusions from what they observed in the residential compounds of the mining industry. Seeing men engaging in sexual relations, some felt vindicated, others opposed what they regarded as an alien practice that had been introduced by foreigners,110 echoing, in this respect, Junod’s insistence that “unnatural vice” was alien to Africans. In this dispute, however, what was at stake was the process of making and remaking human relations, under dehumanising conditions, in which ritual marked elders and juniors, males and females, in new rites of passage within the “civilised” institutions of the mining industry, residential compounds, and prisons. As Johnny Steinberg has shown, these rituals of making soldiers and subordinates, adults and children, and men and women, have been central to prison life in 107 108 109 110

Van Onselen 1984; 2001: 368–397. Steinberg 2004a: 18. Ibid.: 54–55. Ibid.: 58–59.

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South Africa.111 Nongoloza, “the God of South African prisoners”,112 lives on through the men, the ndota, who can divine the sacred law and enforce the sacred rituals of violence. In their studies of ritual, Frazer and Junod attended to these intersections of divinity, divination, and politics. According to Frazer, there were two types of “human gods”, the religious and the magical, one receiving offerings, the other asserting control.113 In Junod’s research, ancestral spirits and diviners represented the two types of “human gods” in this calculus of religion and magic. Since Frazer objected to any deification of human beings, he was uncomfortable with Junod’s practice of referring to Thonga ancestral spirits, shikwemba, as “ancestral gods” or sometime simply as “gods”.114 He was also uncomfortable with any suggestion that diviners might know what they were doing. Diviners, according to Frazer, were magicians, setting themselves up as “human gods” in asserting control over nature. “Among the objects of public utility which magic may be employed to secure”, Frazer asserted, “the most essential is an adequate supply of food”.115 Claiming magical authority over public access to food, whether in hunting, fishing, or farming, diviners, Frazer argued, performed magical rites to control what was beyond their control. Among his illustrations, Frazer cited Junod’s account of diviners engaged in “the magical control of rain”.116 Such diviners, Frazer concluded, were clever frauds, “men of the keenest intelligence and the most unscrupulous character”.117 Echoing Frazer, Junod observed, “One of the greatest curses of native life, perhaps the greatest obstacle to the enlightenment and true progress of the Thonga, is the little basket of divinatory bones”, but he also echoed Frazer’s paradox by observing that “these bones are the most clever thing they possess”.118 Acknowledging this “keenest intelligence” in divination, Junod sought to learn its system. But he also saw diviners as crucial mediators between ancestral religion and Christianity, as in the case of Elias Libombo, or between ancestral tradition and civilisation, as in the case of Mankhelu, on the front lines of new rites of passage into modernity. Frazer, however, only imagined an evolutionary trajectory in which magicians became kings. In Frazer’s politics of magic, the public magician rose to political power by inspiring fear and accumulating wealth.119 Then, as Frazer maintained, 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119

See Steinberg 2004b. Steinberg 2004a: 18. Frazer 1922: 60. Frazer 1933: 51; citing Junod 1927: vol. 2, 372. Frazer 1922: 61. Ibid.: 62ff.; citing Junod 1898: 66–67. Frazer 1922: 46. Junod 1905b: 255. Frazer 1922: 86.

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magic eventually gave way to religion as “the king, starting as a magician, tends gradually to exchange the practice of magic for the priestly functions of prayer and sacrifice”.120 In this argument, circling back to his analysis of “human gods” as either magical or religious, Frazer concluded, “No class of the community has benefitted so much as kings by this belief in the possible incarnation of a god in human form”.121 Junod’s magicians, however, were neither gods nor kings. They were converts or criminals, as the diviner Elias Libombo became a church elder and the diviner Mankhelu became a reprieved convict. Although he tried to apply the basic principles of Frazer’s imperial theory, which defined magic in opposition to religion and posed magic as a prelude to religion, Junod also struggled to make sense out of the role of ritual in colonial situations. Here ritual was being redefined, not only through changes in the primordial practices of ancestral homesteads or sacred woods, but also in the modern mediations of labour, industry, and disciplinary institutions. Within the mining compounds and prisons, new gods and kings were emerging, with new rituals of sacrifice and new rites of passage. Their rituals, which appropriated the military discipline and insignias of rank associated with the magic of the state,122 became deeply embedded in the culture of South African prisons and urban criminal gangs. James Frazer, from the imperial centre, could not comprehend, and Henri-Alexandre Junod, in the colonial context, could not control, these new ritual transactions.

120 Ibid.: 91. 121 Ibid. 122 Taussig 1997.

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— 1894. “William Robertson Smith”. In: James G. Frazer. Sir Roger de Coverley and Other Literary Pieces. London: MacMillan: 194–208. — 19002. The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion. 3 Vols. London: Macmillan. — 1901. “South African Totemism”. Man 1: 135–136. — 1906. “Savage Childhood: The Infant Kaffir”. Daily Mail, Books Supplement [24 November 1906]. — 1910. Totemism and Exogamy: A Treatise on Certain Early Forms of Superstition and Society. 2 Vols. London: Macmillan. — 1911. The Magic Art and the Evolution of Kings. 2 Vols. London: Macmillan. — 1911–19153. The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion. 12 Vols. London: Macmillan. — 1922. The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion. [Abridged Edition]. London: Macmillan. — 1931 [1885]. “The Prytaneum, the Temple of Vesta, the Vestals, Perpetual Fires”. In: James G. Frazer. Garnered Sheaves: Essays and Addresses. London: Macmillan: 51–75. — 1933. The Fear of the Dead in Primitive Religion. London: Macmillan. Gennep, Arnold van 1960 [1909]. The Rites of Passage. Translated by Monika B. Vizedom & Gabrielle L. Caffee. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Harries, Patrick 1981. “The Anthropologist as Historian and Liberal: H.-A. Junod and the Thonga”. Journal of South African Studies 8/1: 37–50. — 1990. “Symbols and Sexuality: Culture and Identity on the Early Witwatersrand Gold Mines”. Gender and History 2/3: 318–336. — 1994. Work, Culture, and Identity: Migrant Labourers in Mozambique and South Africa, c. 1860–1910. London: James Currey. — 2007. Butterflies and Barbarians: Swiss Missionaries and Systems of Knowledge in South-East Africa. London & Athens: James Currey & Ohio University Press. Horst, Sheila T. van der 1942. Native Labour in South Africa. Oxford: Oxford University Press. James, Wilmot G. 1982. From Segregation to Apartheid: Miners and Peasants in the Making of a Racial Order, South Africa, 1930–1952. (Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Wisconsin-Madison). Jeeves, Alan H. 1985. Migrant Labour in South Africa’s Mining Economy: the Struggle for the Gold Mines’ Labour Supply, 1890–1920. Kingston: McGill-Queens University Press. Johnstone, William (ed.) 1995. William Robertson Smith: Essays in Reassessment. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press. Jones, Robert A. 1984. “Robertson Smith and James Frazer on Religion: Two Traditions in British Social Anthropology”. In: George W. Stocking Jr. (ed.). Functionalism Historicized: Essays on British Social Anthropology. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press: 31–58.

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Junod, Henri-Alexandre 1898. Les Ba Ronga: étude ethnographique sur les indigènes de la baie de Delagoa: moeurs, droit coutumier, vie nationale, industrie, traditions, superstitions et religion. Neuchatel: Attinger. — 1905a. “The Native Language and Native Education”. Journal of the African Society 5/17: 1–14. — 1905b. “The Ba-Thonga of the Transvaal”. South African Journal of Science 3: 222–262. — 1912. The Life of a South African Tribe. Vol. 1. London: MacMillan. — 1913. The Life of a South African Tribe. Vol. 2. London: MacMillan. — 19272. The Life of a South African Tribe. 2 Vols. London: MacMillan. — 1938. Bantu Heritage. Johannesburg: Hortors for the Transvaal Chamber of Mines. Kidd, Dudley 1904. The Essential Kafir. London: Macmillan. — 1906. Savage Childhood. London: Macmillan. Kolb, Peter 1719. Caput Bonae Spei hodiernum. Nürnberg: Peter Conrad Monath. Lau, Brigitte 1986. “Conflict and Power in Nineteenth-Century Namibia”. Journal of African History 27/1: 29–39. Leach, Edmund 1961. “Golden Bough or Gilded Twig?” Daedalus 90: 371–399. — 1985. “Anthropology and Religion: British and French Schools”. In: Ninian Smart et al. (eds.). Nineteenth-Century Religious Thoughts in the West. Vol. 3. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 215–262. Lévy-Bruhl, Lucien 1910. Les fonctions mentales dans les sociétés inférieures. Paris: Félix Alcan. [1926. How Natives Think. Translated by Lilian A. Clare. London: Allen & Unwin] — 1922. La mentalité primitive. Paris: Félix Alcan. [1923. Primitive Mentality. Translated by Lilian A. Clare. London: Allen & Unwin] Marett, Robert R. 1909. The Threshold of Religion. London: Methuen. — 1920. Psychology and Folklore. London: Methuen. McAllister, Patrick A. 1980. “Work, Homestead, and the Shades: The Ritual Interpretation of Labour Migration among the Gcaleka”. In: Philip Mayer (ed.). Black Villagers in an Industrial Society. Cape Town: Oxford University Press: 205–253. — 2006. Xhosa Beer Drinking Rituals: Power, Practice, and Performance in the South African Rural Periphery. Durham: Carolina Academic Press. Moodie, T. Dunbar & Vivienne Ndatse & British Sibuyi 1988. “Migrancy and Male Sexuality on the South African Gold Mines”. Journal of Southern African Studies 14/2: 228–256. Moodie, T. Dunbar & Vivienne Ndatse 1994. Going for Gold: Men, Mines, and Migration. Johannesburg & Berkeley: Witwatersrand University Press & University of California Press. Newitt, Malyn 1995. A History of Mozambique. London: Hurst & Co. Niehaus, Isak 2002. “Renegotiating Masculinity in the South African Lowveld: Narratives of Male-Male Sex in Labour Compounds and in Prisons”. African Studies 61/1: 77–97.

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Onselen, Charles van 1984. The Small Matter of a Horse: The Life of “Nongoloza” Mathebula, 1867–1948. Johannesburg: Ravan. — 2001. New Babylon and New Nineveh: Everyday Life on the Witwatersrand, 1886– 1914. Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball. Sayce, Archibald H. 1889. “Review: William Robertson-Smith. Religion of the Semites”. Academy 36: 357–358. Segal, Robert A. 2008. “William Robertson Smith: Sociologist or Theologian?”. Religion 38: 9–24. Smith, Jonathan Z. 1978. “When the Bough Breaks”. In: Jonathan Z. Smith. Map is Not Territory: Studies in the History of Religions. Leiden: Brill: 208–239. Smith, William R. 18869. “Sacrifice. Encyclopedia Britannica 21: 132–138. — 1892 [1881]. The Old Testament in the Jewish Church. A Course of Lectures on Biblical Criticism. London: Adam and Charles Black. — 1902 [1882]. The Prophets of Israel and their Place in History to the Close of the Eighth Century B.C. London: Adam and Charles Black. — 1914 [1889]. Lectures on the Religion of the Semites. First Series: The Fundamental Institutions. London: Adam and Charles Black. Steinberg, Johnny 2004a. The Number: One Man’s Search for Identity in the Cape Underworld and Prison Gangs. Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball. — 2004b. Nongoloza’s Children: Western Cape Prison Gangs during and after Apartheid. Johannesburg: Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation [www.csvr.org.za/docs/correctional/nongolozaschildren.pdf, last accessed 22 June 200]. Taussig, Michael T. 1997. The Magic of the State. London: Routledge. Tylor, Edward B. 1871. Primitive Culture. 2 Vols. London: John Murray. Wallace, Marion 2003. “‘Making Tradition’: Healing, History and Ethnic Identity among Otjiherero-Speakers in Namibia, c. 1850–1950”. Journal of Southern African Studies 29/2: 355–372. Warburg, Margit 1989. “William Robertson Smith and the Study of Religion”. Religion 19: 41–61. Wheeler-Barclay, Marjorie 1993. “Victorian Evangelicalism and the Sociology of Religion: The Career of William Robertson Smith”. Journal of the History of Ideas 54/1: 59–78.

Section II: Ritual and Media Edited by Christiane Brosius and Karin Polit

Christiane Brosius and Karin Polit

Introducing Media Rituals and Ritual Media To tackle the relationship between ritual and media is a complicated and maybe even impossible undertaking. This becomes evident in the context of the key terms “ritual media” and “media rituals”, where, in the first one, we must acknowledge the importance of particular media and media qualities that emerge in the context of ritual performances, such as tools, screens, choreography (e.g. the staging of leisure or protest events by “smart mobs”, that is, temporary associations of people by means of mobile phone technology). These have to be examined in the context of diachronic and synchronic developments of media technologies that impact on a ritual performance. Media, accordingly, enhance processes of ritualisation, thus impacting ritual dynamics. The latter category, “media rituals”, underlines that a specific category of ritual emerges because of a ritual performance’s genuine and exclusive media presence (such as Michael Jackson’s media funeral). According to Couldry,1 they emphasise “media’s social centrality” in ritualised social space, reaching out to, and even constituting new audiences, partly drawing upon traditional ritual genres but non-effective without the media they emerge through. The idea of media rituals, argues Couldry, as he discusses liminality, political power, ritual space, the notion of reality and self, “rethinks our accepted concepts of ritual behavior for a media-saturated age”.2 To be sure, the map on which we try to locate media and rituals is made up of domains that concern sensory embodied, and aesthetic dimensions of both media and rituals, addressing issues such as social networks and processes, participation and interaction, the interwoven fabric of “reality” and “virtuality”, and the quality of space and places as they are connected to, and constituting, different publics to religious or secular discourses or both. One of the key technological advancements during the last decade of the twentieth century was the rise and spread of new mass media and the availability of media technologies to global audiences. Nowadays, people all over the world – provided they have the economic, social, and political means – engage in a variety of exchanges, ranging from facts and information to cultural or religious performances and attempts to constitute new communities – including film, video, photography 1 Couldry 2003: 2. 2 Couldry 2003: 8.

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and the like, through digital media technologies such as mobile phones, twitter, and the internet – often without rendering older media technologies impotent! For many people of the so-called West and the middle classes of the developing countries, media have become an integral part of their lives, changing their way of thinking, experiencing, and – as many argue – life, further blurring the borders between private and public, secular and religious, local and global.3 At the same time, ritual remains a crucial element of world-making, and it is interesting to explore the ways in which new media technologies, such as digital media – but also more “classical” media, like theatre, or newspaper – contribute to our better understanding of the place of ritual in modern lives, and in the construction of modern subjectivities/selfhoods. People make and share videos, pictures, music about and by themselves, their rituals, their religion, for different purposes, as we shall also see in the course of this volume, e.g., when we read about “ritual handbooks” posted to video-sharing websites,4 and about political propaganda and the manipulation of memory and “culture” in the process of nation-state building,5 or in the context of heritage and tourism politics and performances.6 From our engagement with ritual theory, we, as members of the Collaborative Research Centre Ritual Dynamics at Heidelberg University, understand rituals as being inherently connected to media, to the extent that both enforce each other.7 Like media, rituals have an agency of their own. Rituals and media can be at the same time empowering and disempowering to a range of agents participating in the space that emerges from the ritual/media bind.8 Further, rituals, the transfer of rituals, as well as the transformation of rituals, often play crucial roles at times of conflict, insecurity, or dramatic change in communities and societies, to the extent that even new communities and public or private spheres emerge. The same, we argue, holds true for media. Media are altering the terms of cultural articulation and practice of which rituals make up such an important force field. To us, both ritual and media are special forms of human practice, enabling people in varying historical and socio-cultural contexts to reinvent, distinguish, and differentiate themselves from others. In fact, rituals can themselves be read as a form of media, and vice versa. But the growing engagement of people with new media and the increased mediatisation of rituals has made the relationship of ritual to media and vice versa more complicated. One of the direct results of people’s engagement with new media is the quality of participation and interaction. However, the argument that, for instance, digital media use diminishes sensory and other experiences does not hold 3 4 5 6 7 8

See e.g. Helland 2005, Lanier 2010, Miczek 2007. See Pasche-Guignard; in this volume. See Fontein, Stohrer; in this volume. See Leistle, Vedel; in this volume. See also Grimes et al. 2010. See also Brosius & Polit 2010 (forthcoming).

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true any longer: from our own fieldwork contexts, we know of cases of possession through new media technologies, we can witness mass mourning at televised funerals such as that of Lady Diana or Michael Jackson, and we must recognise the role of mass media in the creation of moral panics. An influential stream of ritual theory, following Catherine Bell9 or Judith Butler,10 places the human and the social body at the centre-stage of analysis. Ritual works, so it is assumed, as an embodied practice, that speaks to us as holistic beings, neither purely intellectual, nor simply biological; ritual is the practice proving that a sense of belonging can become a social fact through practising ritualised actions. How, then, are we to interpret rituals that are no longer practised by human bodies, but through and by virtual avatars, how are we to interpret ritualised actions that are shared, practised, and even taught via video-sharing websites? The technological advances mentioned above have made the study of rituals an engagement with media technology as well. Most people involved in ritual studies either use media technology as a fieldwork method, or are engaged in analysing media representations of rituals, mediatised rituals, or media rituals.11 In this volume we are interested in looking at media representations of rituals, media in rituals, media rituals, and the ways both influence each other. How are we to read media representations of people’s rituals produced by themselves, by a nation state, or by an anthropologist? Has ritual become a medium for self-representation that produces a cultural heritage? For many years the field of ritual studies has been nurtured by the idea that rituals are media – in some way or another, a part of human communication. Yet the attention given to the aspect of mediatisation and the “nature” of particular media in relation to ritual practice has been largely marginalised. However, one could even argue that ritual media and media rituals enable a special intimacy between beholder and media that must be further theorised and explored. This volume proposes that understanding and analysing media plays an important role in the study of ritual dynamics, especially with regard to events of magical efficacy such as the experience of possession or the creation of a ritual heritage. The book assembles essays that cover a wide range of topics within ritual studies, from general reflection about issues of media, spirituality and their interacions over visual and multimedia representations to the creation of a national, or even transnational heritage and community.

9 Catherine Bell 1992. 10 Judith Butler 1990. 11 See Meyer & Moors 2006.

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New Media Technologies Media technologies, especially digital media, have emerged as an important tool not only for the study and analysis of rituals, but also for the actual performance and varied presentations of rituals, as well as ways of engaging with them. For example, as new media technologies become more and more accessible all over the world, different media are used within rituals, to enhance ritual performance, to make a ritual performance accessible to a wider public, and so on. A range of social agents employs new media technologies to record rituals and circulate them in new contexts and domains, thus creating new identities, audiences, and ways of knowing. The global circulation of new media technologies plays a role in this, too. Presented as cultural heritage, traditional rituals have now been cleared of the stubborn and sticky stigma of “backwardness” that rendered them unfit for secular, urbanised, and capitalist societies. Instead, as “cultural heritage”, such rituals work as common denominators for larger groups, such as the middle classes, to relate and imbue meaning to them.12 On the other hand, ritual studies make increasing use of new media technologies for the study of rituals and ritual performances. The researcher goes into the field with a still or video camera, and most often collects audio material, newspaper articles, and other material about the event. In other words, media have become part and parcel of our research methods. Furthermore, this kind of participatory observation has also become a force that affects the ritual performers and performances themselves.13 As we reflect on the impact of our presence in the ritual event, we should also acknowledge that the media we use to archive may very well influence the way we look at the ritual/ised event, and may change the way people relate to us, and their own practice. It may even influence the way we remember certain events as rituals. Consider how much you actually saw of that last festival that you recorded with your video camera! Several questions emerge from our engagement with media as a fieldwork method. How can we reflect on our own work, when we use video to record the rituals we study? Does the camera alter our view on the ritual? Does it alter the owner’s view on their ritual? What about those rituals that are not recorded or filmed? Are they then muted and rendered invisible? Anthropologist Erik de Maaker, for example, argues that we need to consider the importance of “traditionality” to ritual, in the sense that people usually attribute it to a ritual as a value, but it is by no means historically given.14 As scholars who study ritual, we need to perceive ritual, and the media representations of ritual as well, as changing, adapted and interpreted. The tendency to understand audio-visual recordings15 of a ritual event as ultimate 12 13 14 15

See Brosius & Polit 2010 (forthcoming). See Grimes et al. 2010. Erik de Maaker 2007. The same would count for other media technologies too; see Hurd in this volume.

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truths is thus dangerous and may lead to misinterpretations. Marcus Banks clarifies that filming rituals always produces this problem: while audio-visuals create the illusion of representing the truth, rituals usually contain and produce many unseen things.16 As such, it is an artistic enterprise to represent things and places that cannot be represented through naturalistic ways of filming; examples of these things and places are feelings, thoughts, divine presence (non-human agency), or a shamanic trip to the netherworld. Seen in this light, as Howard Morphy argues, ethnographic films are used to make an argument.17 They are not representations but statements. Editing a film is, to Morphy, similar to writing a scientific text, or, in the case of non-scientific film-making, making a political statement. And certainly, editing is ritualising the ritual by embedding it in yet another choreography and layer of meaning. It points towards the question of power of representation, that is, the agency and intentions involved in, and access to, the media production of “Others”.

Mediatisation of Rituals During the past decades most of the literature dealing with mediatisation of ritual traditions has been following a line of argument that fits the Adornian school of thought. From this point of view, recent changes in ritual traditions and the involvement of new media technologies have led to the commodification, and consequently, the alleged “dilution” of both “authentic” involvement and production visa-vis these “traditional” practices, for instance for tourists but also for other purposes and agents. Commodification in this context often has an almost negative connotation, and has been connected to the destruction of traditions, to a loss of critical competence, and to passivity, instead of creativity and agency. Only recently have we begun to understand that the owners of the ritual traditions we study do not agree with this view. Instead, many of them fear that their traditions will disappear if they are not modernised, mediatised, or both. They also see that new media technologies and media production could well lead to diversification and dissemination, rather than homogenisation and paralysis or extinction. Some ritual practices have become signifiers for their practitioners’ purported “backwardness”, others are simply lost, misread, misinterpreted, or have become obsolete. Therefore, some agents are working on “modernising” their ritual traditions. Howard Morphy, for example, argues that performing ritual traditions at art exhibitions or the opening of the Sydney Olympics was not a problem for Yolgnu (Australian Aboriginal) performers, performing at important national events gave them, in their eyes, the important role and a visibility they deserve in the context of the Austral16 Marcus Banks 2001. 17 Howard Morphy 2006.

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ian nation.18 Often, media are a crucial part in such processes. The creative agency involved in making ritual traditions visual are part of local discourses on global and traditional evils and advantages, on people’s hopes and fears, generating alternative modernities that render their community distinct from what is considered bad in the world, but part of what is advantageous in being modern.

Media, Cultural Heritage, Political Intentions, and National Identity Several papers in this book examine how, by claiming the power of definition over rituals as cultural heritage, national and state governments try to legitimise their existence as “custodians”. Yet, they are not alone in doing so: other non-governmental groups increasingly intend to become custodian communities.19 Often, such vernacular or subaltern activities surface in times of social, economic, and political change, as we can see in the chapter by Ulrike Stohrer on Yemen. In his paper on commemoration in Zimbabwe, Joost Fontein is concerned with the ways in which non-statist groups and governments identify cultural property as “real” and geophysical property. Karen Vedel studies how the performance of an artist on a battlefield of the Second World War in Finland has led to a revitalisation of the forgotten lieu de memoire20 by means of annual ritualisation. Rituals as cultural heritage affect the quality of belonging and place. Transnational migration and new media technologies play a vital role in this context, for they reshape people’s perceptions of cultural identity and the relevance of locality and home. In many instances, according to some authors, a person can become tied to multiple places in the course of participating in rituals of cultural heritage, e.g. in the context of remigration, where the myth of the homeland, remembrance of past events, and attempts to shape a transnationally connected community through media production and consumption must be considered. As a consequence, the fabric of media spaces constituting social space and geophysical space through rituals challenges our concepts of “virtuality” and “reality”, space and place. A remarkable amount of papers in this volume address the issue of Media and Heritage as means of dealing with memories of war and collective trauma, underlining the relevance of taking media (e.g. newspaper or world wide web) as sources and catalysts of a social group’s agency. Media and heritage can be sources of “evidence” for a particular group to claim legitimacy over the politics of remembrance. They can also be moments of emotional condensation and participation, bringing an event from the past close to particular agents who interact, or act out, in a performative field of contestation.

18 Howard Morphy 2005. 19 See Brosius & Polit 2010 (forthcoming). 20 Site of remembrance, see Nora 1984–1992.

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About the Chapters Felicia Hughes-Freelands starts off this volume with a critical paper about the use of video technology in anthropological fieldwork. She explores the relationship of ritual to media technology and rationality. By describing her fieldwork experience of a possession trance in Java and the failure of her technological equipment, the anthropologist “raises questions about human and inhuman nature, experience and embodiment, real and unreal experience, and the life of the imagination in the analysis of social action”.21 Using the cyborg as a metaphor to understand certain aspects of performative possession, this paper takes us deep into questions of performance, embodiment, and superhuman others. In her reading, ritual “itself is a technological enactment of a search for natural groundings, but it may resist replication by means of media. In our excessively over-mediated world, as cyborgs we need to negotiate a position for ritual situations, without losing their experiential quality of resistance through metaphors which reduce ritual to banality and purposelessness.” Anthropologist Bernhard Leistle also takes a critical look at possession dances and trance sessions. Taking us through the world of Moroccan Sufi saints, he underlines how little use certain kinds of possession are to present nations or groups. Media is the underlying technology and the vehicle that carries certain aesthetics that are globally accepted by a certain kind of people, and are, for example, used to attract tourists. However, media representation of Sufism is not the same as the meaningful social practice. To him, these discourses of cultural heritage have “a strong functional relationship to constructions of national identity; ritual, however, shows an intimate connection with the ‘Other’ in its various manifestations, personal, cultural and transcendental.” Florence Pasche-Guinard is also concerned with how people construct the cultural “Other”, and therefore themselves as a group, by looking at peoole who produce and upload videos of the “proper conduct” of religious rituals and make them openly available via the internet, e.g. on YouTube. She raises questions about the motivation of people producing and sharing their videos with an unknown number of anonymous people. Her paper clearly challenges our understanding of ritual performance when she argues that the videos do not only show rituals, but also that the practice of sharing the videos in the internet is itself a ritualised practice. She shows how people are presenting themselves through their rituals to themselves and to an endless number of anonymous people, thus constructing a field of discourse of what rituals should be like. In the case of Jost Fontein’s paper on commemoration, bones, and graves, we find a strong concern with the making and unmaking of ritual sites through legal regulations and indigenous memories, as the graves move between tribal myths, memories, and land reforms. But Fontein also maintains that different concepts of 21 See Hughes-Freeland in this volume.

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heritage must be considered with respect to the relationship between different social agents and territory, history, and memory, as well as ritual and kinship. Ulrike Stohrer presents the ritual dancing in Yemen as a vehicle which carries political messages of authenticity and national identity. She looks at the production of a national heritage from an ethnographic perspective, and emphasises that selection and demission are at the centre of this practice. “Examining how the Yemenite ministry of culture selects what is (and what is not) to be integrated into the set of cultural practices that form the corpus of national heritage reveals strategies of essentialisation and standardisation, by which the ministry reinterprets rituals and redefines traditional genres in order to create a homogenous national identity.” In Karen Vedel’s case, the performance that turns into an annual ritual enables the attachment of new groups of people, for instance, unemployed youth, to a site that had no meaning for them previous to the advent of this specific ritual. By coming to the former battlefield, they develop a notion of belonging, both to the physical place but also to the group with which they engage in the ritual, and the memories of a distant past that impact on them. The aspect of ritual space as multimedia performances has great relevance in this interpretation. People emotionally and corpothetically relate to the past and to a particular site by means of ritual in many of the book’s chapters. Historian Madeleine Hurd’s chapter shows that stories about rituals may be as powerful to achieve just that as the actual participation in a ritual. She presents to us the media coverage of military marches, political festivals, and rituals of parliamentary politics during the 1920s in Germany. She critically looks at her archival sources and wonders about the function of the newspaper articles, memoirs, and histories available to a historian interested in ritual studies. As such she explores, like other texts of this volume, the power of rituals to produce communities, but just as important to her is the media coverage of certain events. A newspaper article, she maintains, “is claimed to be that of an entire community, whose common agreement is evidenced in a strongly shared mood.” Thus, the journalists are among the most important audiences of the ritual, important to ensure that the public ritual is recognised as such and can therefore unfold its power to create a sense of unity. Media and gender anthropologist Elke Mader is concerned with a similar effect of media coverage in enabling communities to come into being. In today’s globalised world, media enable people to become part of a community of fans. “This ritual productivity of fandom takes place in various forms and is interconnected with a wide range of media.” Stars such as Shah Rukh Khan, the Indian Bollywood hero, and his international fan community are produced in this way. To Mader, all this is part of the production of modern myth and ritual. Media here are at the centre of this production process.

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References Babb, Lawrence A. & Susan S. Wadley (eds.) 1995. Media and the Transformation of Religion in South Asia. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Banks, Marcus 2001. How to Produce and Use Visual Data in Qualitative Research. London: Sage. Brosius, Christiane & Karin Polit (eds.) 2010 (forthcoming). Ritual, Heritage and Identity. The Politics of Culture and Performance in a Globalised World. Routledge: New Delhi. Butler, Judith 1990. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge. Couldry, Nick 2003. Media Rituals. A Critical Approach. London: Routledge. — 2005 “Media Rituals. Beyond Functionalism”. In: Eric Rothenbuhler & Coman Mihai (eds.). Media Anthropology. Thousand Oaks [CA]: 59–69. Grimes, Ron & Ute Hüsken & Udo Simon & Eric Venbrux (eds.) 2010 (forthcoming). Ritual, Media and Conflict. New York: Oxford University Press. Helland, Christopher 2005. “Online Religion as Lived Religion: Methodological Issues in the Study of Religious Participation on the Internet”. Online-Heidelberg Journal of Religions on the Internet 1/1. http://www. ub.uni-heidelberg.de/archiv/5823. Last access: 21.07.2010. Lanier, Jaron 2010. You are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto. London: Allen Lane. Lardellier, Pascal 2005. “Ritual Media. Historical Perspectives and Social Functions”. In: Eric Rothenbuhler & Coman Mihai (eds.). Media Anthropology. Thousand Oaks [CA]:70–78. Liebes, Tamar & James Curran (eds.) 1998. Media, Ritual and Identity. London and New York: Routledge. De Maaker, Erik 2007. Negotiating Life: Garo Death Rituals and the Transformation of Society. CNWS Publications: Leiden. Meyer, Birgit & Annelies Moors (eds.) 2006. Religion, Media, and the Public Sphere. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Miczek, Nadja 2007. “Rituals Online: Dynamic Processes Reflecting Individual Perspectives”. Masaryk University Journal of Law and Technology 2: 197–204. Morphy, Howard 2006. “The Aesthetics of Communication and the Communication of Cultural Aesthetics: A Perspective on Ian Dunlop’s Films of Aboriginal Australia”. Visual Anthropology Review 21 (1 and 2): 63–79. — 2005 “Yolngu art and the creativity of the inside”. In: M. Charlesworth & F. Dussart & H. Morphy (eds). Australian Aboriginal Religions. Ashgate: Aldershot, 159–170. Nora, Pierre 1984–1992: Les Lieux de mémoire (Gallimard), abridged translation, Realms of Memory. New York: Columbia University Press.

Felicia Hughes-Freeland

Divine Cyborgs? Ritual Spirit Presence and the Limits of Media In a mountain village in Java, members of a troupe of horse dancers prepare to go into a possession trance. The anthropologist has been invited to film the event, and has charged all her spare batteries, and has also equipped herself with a stills camera and tape recorder. The moment the trance begins, all the visual technology breaks down. The ritually present divine cyborgs resist “modernity’s mimetic machinery”1. This chapter is a critical examination of the relationship of ritual to media technology and rationality, but it also raises questions about about human and inhuman nature, experience and embodiment, real and unreal experience, and the life of the imagination in the analysis of social action.2 Anthropologists often experience problems when they try to reproduce the visual appearance of powerful events such as ritual performance. I conceptualise the possessed dancers as “divine cyborgs”, with reference to the title of Maya Deren’s documentary about possession in Haiti3 and the concept of the cyborg as discussed by feminist anthropologist Donna Ha1 Taussig 1993: 242. 2 This chapter has developed over a number of years. It started in the paper “Technology and Performance: Production, Reproduction and Reception” to introduce a panel of the same title which I convened at the Association of Social Anthropologists of the UK and Commonwealth’s Decennial Conference Anthropology and Science at Manchester University, 14–18 July 2003. The discussion of corporeality originated in the paper, “Dance: More than a Moving Image?” presented to the panel “Performativity and Visuality”, at the conference of the Association of Southeast Asian Studies in United Kingdom, St Antony’s College, Oxford, 15–17 September 2006, and to the the workshop “Corporeal Vision”, European Association of Social Anthropologists Biennial Conference, Bristol, 18–21 September 2006. It was then redrafted as “The Ghost in the Machine? On not Being Able to Film a Trance-Possession Performance” for the conference, Beyond Text, at Manchester University, 30 June to 2 July 2007. The final version was rehearsed at the Arts and Humanities Research Council funded seminar Re-Opening Ritual and Ceremony, at Lancaster University, 9 June 2008, and was presented to the “Ritual and Media” panel at the Ritual Dynamics and the Science of Ritual conference, Heidelberg University, 29 September to 2 October 2008. 3 Deren & Ito & Ito 1984.

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raway.4 The resonance between the dancer and the cyborg derives from the fact that human dance in Java may involve becoming a puppet as a means to embody a heroic self,5 and material technologies became part of the dancer’s transformation in performance. The analogy between the idiom of possession and the concept of the cyborg will be used to examine the relationship between embodied human nature and ritual instrumentality, in the age of science, technology, and media. I also draw on Michael Taussig’s work on the mimetic power of spirits as within the modern but magical state. I ask how we can characterise the embodying presence of this “other”, and what this sense of “embodying” might tell us about the relationship between performance and religion, and the positioning of the human between animals on the one hand and the machine on the other. Local Javanese discourses show that the “other” is a literal version of reality, not just a symbolic displacement. Neurological research into the power of sound and its intimate connection with emotion also challenges the primacy of sight in the hierarchy the human responses to sense data. This suggests that discourses and experiences of possession mark a limit to which ritual experience can be recuperated into rational explanations and reproduced for circulation by media technologies. I begin with some comments about ritual, then I present the ethnographic account, and examine the questions it raises in relation to three approaches to spirit possession.

Ritual, Performance, Media Revisited My discussion draws on a longstanding interest in ritual, not as a set of symbols which generate meaning, but as a form of embodied practice which generates reality. I have been interested in how ritual helps us to understand human nature through performance and its mediation. In two edited books we rejected definitional strategies, and used “ritual” heuristically and contingently to refer to situations in human experience and perception which are complicated by the imagination, and which make reality more complex and unnatural than more mundane instrumental spheres of human experience assumes.6 In this, we followed Johannes Fabian’s warnings against “the dangers of misplaced concreteness that always loom when scientific discourse makes use of concepts that come along carrying a heavy load of cultural connotations”.7 Instead, he advocated a theoretical focus on situated social acts, taking account of “the contingencies of the actual, social, and

4 5 6 7

Haraway 1991. Hughes-Freeland 1997. Hughes-Freeland 1998, Hughes-Freeland and Crain 1998. Fabian 1990: 13–14.

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political contexts”8. In these terms, ritual should be analysed as part of distinct situations. So “ritual” becomes an odd-job word, a semi-descriptive term which is subordinate to the larger category of “situated social practices […] constituted and framed in relation to their own historical trajectories as well as to other traditions of social practice”.9 In order to critique textual models of ritual and performance, we built on Mauss’ “techniques of the body”10 and concentrated on techniques and technologies of the self/selves to renounce the performance-as-text model in both ritual and theatre.11 Examples including Papuan healing séances and western theatre were shown to rest on the emergent nature of creative significance which was not determined by preexistent scripts or texts. Although these two cases might seem like polar opposites for understanding performance, Hastrup’s account of acting in western theatre as a bringing into being out of nothing, as a magical act which is made efficacious by the interaction with the audience, where creativity is in the space between the actors and the audience.12 A ritual is not a text with a preestablished structure of meanings, but something which emerges as participants bring together bits and pieces of knowledge in the performance: it creates reality and selves experientially. What validates the performance is that it is made real by the audience. Performance, then, whether in the context of ritual or theatre, despite all framing and formality, in these analyses remains fundamentally risky and interactive. The momentum of analysing ritual and social experience “beyond text”, the focus of a larger research programme funded by Britain’s Arts and Humanities Research Council, has increased in the last decade. My research since 1998 has indicated that text and performance are less mutually exclusive than I had argued before, although it is still important to recognise variations in the relationship between script and instantiation. My thoughts on media as ritual have also developed. Turner’s ritual process model has been applied to media technology contexts, and the second stage of the ritual process, liminality, which describes a special kind of space out of everyday time, has been applied to to ceremonial events covered extensively by the print and broadcast media; British examples are the Royal Wedding of Prince Charles and Princess Diana, or Princess Diana’s funeral. Re-examining the application of ritual theory to media events such as these, I have revised some of my views about the extent to which ritual form can be stretched across time and space.13 For some, technological mediation replaces ritual with spectacle. For others, television broadcasts extend the ritual into the secular do8 9 10 11 12 13

Ibid.: 14. Gore 1998. Mauss 1973. Schieffelin 1998. Hastrup 1998. Hughes-Freeland 2006.

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main. We should be careful not to stretch the category too far. There is only so much technology that ritual performance can take, and there is only so much metaphorisation as ritual that social action can take, too. In asking what the conditions are which constitute a situated practice as a ritual, liveness of performance, even if amplified and enhanced by electronic sound systems and digital lighting technologies, becomes an important issue. Related to this is the question of extent: liveness might suggest that there is simultaneity of reception, but is this reception homogenous? If not, how is it distributed, and with what results? As well as thinking about these questions, something happened during research which made me rethink the relationship of ritual and media, in which ritual comes to refer to a situation which not only defies comprehension and rational analysis, but also resists technological reproduction for media representation: “maybe there is something within ritual that cannot be recontextualized as media, a general ritual quality […] Ritual is really real, not symbolic.”14 I now explain what caused me to make this statement.

Filming Jathilan In 1989, I returned to the highland hamlet of Muntuk in Java to present the community with a video film of tayuban dancing at a communal thanksgiving ritual (bersih desa, rasulan) I had shot there five years earlier.15 My arrival coincided with the annual thanksgiving. After screening the video and attending the tayuban, I was invited to film a jathilan performance due to take place the following day as part of celebrations for Indonesian Independence. Jathilan (kuda kepang, kuda lumping, jaranan) is a trance possession dance performed by men (only, until recently), who dance straddling woven bamboo hobby horses.16 It is mostly performed by semi-professional troupes in their home communities, local districts, or regional and provincial capitals, to different kinds of audiences, from friends and family to domestic and overseas tourists. Like other “folk” genres, it was marginalised in President Suharto’s New Order Indonesia until the 1990s, but is now the most popular of the domesticated or heritagised “folk” genres, as “salon” or “stadium” jathilan, such as an event in 1994 when an official from the Ministry of Tourism, Post and Communications booked 100 jathilan dancers to dance at a military parachuting event in order to attract tourists. There are, however, less secure and sanitised performances which are more than just dramatic entertainments and include ritual instrumentality, as was the case with the performance at Muntuk in 1999. 14 Hughes-Freeland 2006: 613–614. 15 Hughes-Freeland 1996. 16 See also Burridge 1961; Kartomi 1973; Clara van Groenendael 2008.

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Although this performance was sponsored as part of a secular occasion performed as a local expression of state ritual to celebrate independence, it occurred within a religious ritualised context. This was made clear when the troupe leader prayed and burned incense by the hobby horses and dance masks (Image 1). On this occasion the visiting jathilan troupe also wanted to ask the dhanyang, the local spirit, who acts as an invisible patron-host, for its protection and blessing. Possession by this spirit is very dangerous and it is risky to dance at his shrine by the spring. So the troupe invited Muntuk’s keeper of the shrine, a man also respected as a healer and a seer, to officiate and attend the public performance. He burned incense and prayed to invite the dhanyang into the social space, and asked for his permission, his blessing, and his protection (perlindungan). Some musicians and the singer went into the spring enclosure to wash and drink (Image 2), while the medium’s “apprentices” gave drinks of spring water to the dancers, maskers, spirit master (pawang), and troupe leader, and sprinkled water on their heads (Image 3). The troupe reciprocated with a performance for the dhanyang (Image 4), which ended with a gesture of respect to the medium (Image 5). This ritual would reestablish the troupe’s relationship with the local spirit and guarantee their popularity and profitability.

Image 1: Incense burning by masks and hobby horses Photo by the author

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Image 2: The singer washes his face at the spring. Photo by the author

Image 3: An apprentice gives spring water to the performers. Photo by the author

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Image 4: The dance watched by the medium and an apprentice. Photo by the author

Image 5: Performers bow to the medium. Photo by the author

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These serious spiritual events bridge visible and invisible (ghaib) worlds, inviting powerful and dangerous forces into the human domain. It is also crucial to understand that the cults exist alongside Islamic practices. In the film I shot earlier about tayuban, the local religious expert had explained that offerings to the local spirit are done to secure well-being in the present life; “for our salvation after death, we look to Allah”. Ethnographically, the mix of local animism and global religion, which has been well-documented in Java, is sustained by the indeterminacy which characterises what people say about the dhanyang and the spirits, as we will see. The jathilan entertainment started after lunch at 1.30 pm after Independence Day speeches and songs. A dance area had been created with plastic sheeting supported by bamboo poles, and a large audience of three or four hundred men, women, and very many children had gathered around it. The jathilan started as a choreographed dance performed by the six horsemen, aged between 16 and 20. This dance was very controlled, but the mood was tense, in the anticipation of something less controlled happening. The tension was managed by the spirit master (pawang), who managed the six horse dancers. He was helped by two masked dancers who also had spiritual powers. This lasted for about thirty minutes. After several false starts, the music changed from triplets to a relentless 2/4 beat, one dancer threw aside his horse and started to circle another, approaching in a crouching, menacing way, making martial arts passes with his arms. The dancers then came over to the pawang who gave him a drink of water and a pair of sunglasses – a sign that the spirit is present? He then joined the other dancers, who proceeded to dance in a circle. I had 15 minutes of power left, according to the battery level indicator, when this entranced circle dance started, but the indicator suddenly plummeted to empty, and the camera shut down. I decided to turn to my trusty Nikon FM camera to take some still photos to use for a montage, with the wild sound which for some reason continued to record. But when I tried to rewind the finished film in the camera, it jammed. After this happened, I had to resort to making sketchy notes of the appearance of the spirit trance possession dance: “One dancer threw the whip out of the ring – another’s biting or sucking on another’s neck. Now they’re dancing without their horses, disco style, upright. When Pak Manto sings (from the book now), the dancers stop. They dance at different speeds, with different rhythms – one with dark glasses is moving faster and rhythmically in time to the music, another without glasses is dancing more slowly, in a kind of counterpoint. It’s 2.00 pm – the tall dancer in dark glasses with spiky hair is leaning over the female singer, Bu Ngadinem, in a fairly sexual way. The pawang and two helpers are seeing to a dancer, touching him w/ whip, moving his arms

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in dance-like gestures. The movements are very like those of the man at the end of the 1994 tayuban sequence – also a jathilan dancer, who was watching today: he has a strange look, not quite with it, a half-smile, didn’t respond to my greeting. A friend from Yogya says the music is from Campur Sari.17 The dancer without glasses I filmed wants to drum, and joins in the song, eyes wide open. It’s quite common for a dancer to drum. Less commonly, it’s been known for a dancer to sing or to try to go to the spring. The other dancers are bumping into each other, one’s eating leaves, another (without glasses) has his eyes shut. As Bu Ngadinem sings “Langen Jawa”, the tempo increases, the dancing grows wilder, then subsides to a slower rhythm as Pak Manto takes over the singing. No one seems to be afflicted in the audience. The tempo slows. A glass is brought in (with water?) and a dancer carries it around in his teeth. I don’t see what he does, but a man carries out large pieces of broken glass flecked with red: is this blood? Or lipstick? The whip is being used by the pawang to control the dancer without glasses, now with eyes shut – the pawang in the white shirt’s now more involved. Mas K. [head of the Muntuk jathilan troupe] is keeping a watchful eye. This is liminal space, not for communitas but for danger, and fear. An uneasy meeting of the visible & invisible worlds – and roles are highly differentiated. Pak Y., a local elder, continues to assert his importance by bossing the children sitting by the entrance so I can see, although it’s other people making it hard to see, not the kids! Now a dancer is being attended to, leaning over the drum. The music grows fiercer. The dancer’s headscarf is taken off, and he’s carried out and taken into the house behind the musicians where the girls are busy changing. The tall jerky dancer in dark glasses has walked out of the dance arena to go to the well, but he’s been gently steered back, without signs of resistance. Now 4 people are helping with one of the four remaining dancers – he’s lying down, his legs shaking convulsively, face horribly contorted, wrinkled brow, carried off by the pawangs – “it’s too hard to get the spirit out, so they’ll finish off inside”, says Mas K. Now 3 people are dancing with horses, two without glasses, one with. The glass eater’s “already recovered” says Mas K. I ask him which spirits are the 17 Campur Sari (C.S.), a sophisticated and modern “new creation” combining Javanese and western tunings, had been developed in this region in the 1990s. The addition of two singers is also part of C.S. They sang songs (syair), in some cases from standard Javanese song book Kumpulan Cakepan Gerong (produced in the district (n.d., Kaimpan dening Saribut Lana, Semin, G. Kidul), and others from the folk tale “Panji in love” (Panji Asmara Bangung).

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What is significant here is that during possession, the hobby-horses are technology for the performance. The horsemen behave “like horses”. The possessed dancers perform actions which are deemed “horse-like”: they eat grass, run around very fast, and become very strong. But they also eat glass – which is not at all horse-like. So the dancer’s mimesis is conventional but not naturalistic. Despite the association with the hobby-horses, the possessing spirits are not believed to be spirits of the horse. When Javanese people watch the horse dance, they see a literal transformation of the human into a non-human. The nature of the possessing spirits themselves is, perhaps not surprisingly, subject to indeterminacy at the local level and also varies according to region, as will become clear. I now discuss four ways of understanding spirit possession: local explanations; the mimetic expression of the circulation of power; possession by sound in a visual world; and spirit possession analysed in terms of the cyborg.

Local Explanations The possession trance resisted visual entextualisation of a powerful and dangerous moment as the gateways between the meeting of visible and invisible worlds were opened. To perform this dance is to risk madness, even death. Risk management in jathilan performances is the responsibility of the pawang (spirit master). He manages the dancers and the possessing spirits who are capable of putting particular dancers in danger. At Muntuk, the spirit master was a muscular man dressed in black. He was helped by two masked dancers with spiritual powers who represented the paired folk characters known as Bancak or Penthul (long nose) and Dhoyok or Temben (short nose). The presence of the spirit master is crucial. He is attributed with special expertise in the invisible world of spirits. He guarantees the 18 Fieldnotes, August 1999.

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immediate safety of the performers and the audience. He facilitates the occurrence of possession, and physically encourages the dancers to work themselves into a trance state. He also brings the possession to an end. Trancers are at risk of death if the possession is not managed properly by the local medium and pawangs who are responsible for ensuring that the possession is ended properly. Mas K. explained that the pawang pulls on different parts of the dancer’s body to find where the spirit is so he can pull it out, and he also blows to control the spirit-dancer.19 Without such intervention, a performer may never return to a normal and complete everyday human state. Spirit possession which is not successfully concluded can leave a person in a permanently altered state, a kind of daze (linglung). As well as motivating the dramatic suspense of the performance, the pawang and other spiritually powerful participants embody special expertise which protects the whole community. The reason is that possession is considered contagious. Although I have never witnessed a spectator becoming possessed, the experience of watching jathilan is usually one of nervous suspense, because of the risk of becoming possessed, or simply being physically attacked by the possessed dancers. The possession performance takes the performers and spectators to the edge of predictability. At Muntuk, the performance space had been enclosed, separating the performers from the audience: apparently because of the bigger orchestra being used with the “new creation” (kreasi). As a result, there wasn’t the thrill of the dancers running into the audience, and the possibility of being touched by a possessed dancer and becoming possessed too. In the Muntuk performance, the ultimate power and knowledge is entrusted to Pak T., the local healer and spirit medium (pepundhen). Only he (and some followers) can see spirits. And only he has powers to pull out the strongest spirit from the dancer’s body. Local people respect him because of he is able to bring dancers safely out of trance. This testifies to his special connection with the dhanyang and his knowledge of the natural world, demonstrated in his other healing powers. Local people entrust this esoteric knowledge to him, and he passes it on to his followers. They are referred to as Pak T.’s “adopted children” (anak angkat), and they regard him as teacher (guru). The relationship between Pak T. and his followers is a spiritual relationship, expressed in a kinship idiom. The relationship resembles that of godchild-godparent in its original spiritual sense. It is structured in the same way as healer recruitment, when illness results in initiation to the cult. When a person falls ill and is cured, the healer may “adopt” the former patient. When the guru dies, another person replaces him or her. The risk associated with possession also accounts for why the troupe asked the dhanyang for protection and blessing. Jathilan dancers often take some kind of 19 It would be interesting to compare these techniques to those techniques used in Temiar spirit healing (Roseman 1991).

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ritual precaution, though the specific practices vary.20 For instance, in a community to the north of Yogya horse dancers have to fast for a day and a night, and sleep in the graveyard to protect themselves against the spirits that could harm them. Explanations offered as to the identity of the dhanyang also vary. In Muntuk, the dhanyang is a spirit, not an ancestral ghost, though in principle it is possible for a very powerful person to become a guardian spirit (mbaureksa, another name for dhanyang) after he dies. The Muntuk dhanyang was described by the medium as being a husband and wife named Kyai and Nyai Singadongsa. They manifest as people, or as tigers (macan lerek).21 The dhanyang in Muntuk is not the same as the spirit of the village founder (cikal bakal).22 In contrast to other possession cults, such as the Seblang of the Eastern Salient,23 possession by the dhanyang in Muntuk is very dangerous owing to its strength. Pak P., another medium who had died when I returned in 1999, claimed that he had protected Muntuk’s local spirit cults when the government attempted to repress them. He described the relationship between humans and the dhanyang as helping each other (saling momong, mong kinemong), or a feeling of kinship (kesaduluran). These discourses of the dhanyang reinforce the fact that the invisible world, like the visible world, has a social structure, and also that there are fine distinctions which produce different versions, and which gain different kinds of legitimacy in the community. All the discourses articulate a relationship with Banyu Urip, through affinity or shared territory. Pak T. said that they often come to Muntuk. Pak P. described the Muntuk dhanyang as inlaws (besan) to the dhanyang at Banyu Urip. Banyu Urip has had a reputation which had led to it being recognised as an official shrine (diresmikan) through a ritual attended by the ninth sultan of Yogyakarta, and now has three court officials who act as keepers of the shrine (abdidalem jurukunci). Muntuk, by contrast, has no official recognition, only spiritual beliefs and practices (“di sini hanya kepercayaan”), according to Mas K. In view of the risk of jathilan due to the power of the dhanyang and the possessing spirits, it is not surprising that local people did not consider the technological failure of my video and stills cameras as an adequate explanation for why it happened when it did. “That’s what happens when you meddle with magic”, said one of my research assistants. The general consensus was that my technical mishaps had been caused by my ritual deficiencies, despite my best efforts to cover myself against all contingencies. I had made offering at the spring on other days, 20 Clara van Groenendael 2008. 21 The Tiger imagery is common in rural Central and East Java (Hatley 1984; Beatty 1999). A powerful tiger mask used to become possessed by a spirit in a folk performance called reyog (Kartomi 1976; Fauzanafi 2005). 22 In other places it can be identical. This confusion of dhanyangs and founding spirits has been noticed elsewhere in Java (Wessing 1999: 646). 23 Ibid.: 649, 667.

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but my cameras had failed because I drank the spring water, but didn’t make an offering to the dhanyang on the actual day of the filming. There had also to be a “second spear”24 to explain the event in terms of cause rather than coincidence. In this case, invisible supranatural forces were given cultural explanatory force.

Mimesis, Possession, and the State I now turn to two accounts of spirit possession as a political expression of irrational instrumentality. Taussig has argued for the economic instrumentality of the mimetic power of spirits as the circulation of images within the modern but magical state.25 Pemberton has implicated spirits, security, and money in Java during the regime of President Suharto (1966–1998) in a unified political system which nullifies any putative resistance in spirit presence.26 Writing about Jean Rouch’s most celebrated film, Les Maîtres Fous, which famously documents a hauka possession cult, Taussig observed that “[…] in this colonial world where the camera meets those possessed by gods, we can truly point to the Western rebirth of the mimetic faculty by means of modernity’s mimetic machinery […] the mimetic power of the film piggy-backs on the mimetic power of African possession ritual”.27 This occurs notably when Rouch cuts from a shot of an egg being broken on a hauka’s head to a shot of the Governor General wearing a hat topped by a feather. The resemblance between the flowing egg and feather in this montage has led to the possession being analysed as a parodic performance of colonial powers.28 In The Magic of the State, spirit possession represents the “magical harnessing of the dead for stately purposes”.29 Taussig’s book is “a performative narration of the magic mountain and the city state” where “the performance of the healer locks horns with the performance of stately being”,30 and it asks “Could it be with disembodiment, presence expands?”31 This question concerns both spirits and the written text, which is also disembodied, albeit visible. Spirits are accessed through shrines which are gateways to powerful worlds, represented by four courts (the Celestial, the Medical, African, and Indian (with a fifth, the Liberator)). The shrines contain statues referred to as the “Three Potencies”: the Queen (who may resemble 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31

Evans-Pritchard 1937. Taussig 1997. Pemberton 1994. Taussig 1993: 242. Taussig 1993, among others. Taussig 1997: 3. Ibid.: 124. Ibid.: 3.

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the Virgin Mary but is not her); either El Negro Felipe (also called Negro Primeiro) or the Doctor Jose Gergorio Hernandez; and the Indian, Geronimo or Indio Guaicaipuro.32 These iconic representations of spirit power and other characters articulate a mimetic circulation occurring simultaneously through the human body and the body of the state: “Like money, the state is thick with soulstuff […] the circulation of the spirits of the dead through live human bodies is a movement parallel to the circulation of the ghostly magic of the Nation-State through the “body” of society”.33 As visual icons, the Three Potencies become hooks for reining in alterity as well as motivational narrative devices. However, despite Taussig’s theoretical attempt to go beyond text, appearances, and reason, his spirits, even when residing in the magic mountain, are real only through metaphors of circulation, theorised through modernity. Whereas the textual in Taussig is made visible through the iconography of the Three Potencies, for Pemberton “Java” itself is textual. Pemberton describes a process whereby colonial order produced entextualisation.34 The very “subject” of Java has been constituted through a modern engagement with the colonial (and post-colonial) state, and Dutch colonial principles of order are the foundation of what Indonesians refer to as “kebudayaan Java”, Javanese culture. This order is sustained by security and spirits which circulate in the modern idiom of electrical energy in the Indonesian state. What is not recuperated by the state as text remains disordered, dangerous, and beyond text. The electrical enlightenment may go up the mountain, as do highland community members who have moved into the modern labour market in the metropolis when they return for village rituals, but we should be cautious of reducing all the energies that circulate to technological metaphors of modernity. Where Taussig has creolised Catholic shrines, in Indonesia we find the staunchly disembodied invisibility of local spirits in a nation state which is home to the largest Islamic population in the world. Despite this religious orientation, Indonesian heads of state have notoriously had recourse to magicians and been attributed with supernatural potencies. The former President Suharto, an ethnic Javanese, famously fenced off a cave in the Dieng plateau in the central Java highlands, so that only he could meditate there and gain access to the power of the wisdom of the auchthonous Javanese high god, Semar. He also famously sought protection from supernatural attack by means of an army of psychics and healers (dukun). Behaviour like this is evidence for claims that, within the Southeast Asian states, bureaucracies are not rational mod32 Ibid.: 1997: 30. 33 Ibid.1997: 137, 139. 34 Pemberton 1994.

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ern forms of organisation, but ritualised and organised along kinship lines.35 More radically, universalising visualist metaphors of state efficacy have been subverted in an account of Southeast Asian political dynamics. Here, geography results in the eye of the state being unable to “read” the territory, and prevents it from becoming homogenously unified as a polity which can be called a state.36 Where, for Pemberton, the lack of recuperability is evidence of an incomplete state project, for Scott, resistance is what produces the regional political dynamic. Even if a coloniallyinspired obsession with peace and order is manifest in the military hierarchies and family alliances of spirit-people, in highland villages such as Muntuk there is resistance to the state’s power of recuperation.37 Here, the political dynamics of the region are defined by the highlands being beyond the eye of the state, which becomes defined by the limits of its panoptical powers: the mountain’s magic resists appropriation. Just as it cannot contain female powers in certain mountain performances,38 official Indonesian culture cannot guarantee security. Taussig and Pemberton seek rationalist models which counter the reality of the invisible world, or multiple logics which would validate such worlds. They use the visual evidence to substantiate their own versions, but they exclude the sensory experience of the performers and audiences – particularly Pemberton. The risk here is that they revert to occidentalist accounts, despite their claim that knowledge is polyvalent, not simply rational or irrational. Yet I am not convinced by evidence of the pervasive force of the state in these kinds of analysis, nor do I think that the state is the be-all and end-all of magical modernity. Indeed, a recent revision of the interpretation of the controversial sequence in Rouch’s film has proposed that the egg-breaking is not an act of parody but of “exaggerated respect”.39 The egg, a beneficial symbol of fertility, is offered to the hauka spirit governor. In this way, the hauka take control over natural reproductive power and gain control of forces that govern their lives.40 Similarly, in contrast to Taussig’s mimetic account, the Javanese living in highland Muntuk, almost out of the eye of the state, become possessed in spite of, not because of, the potencies of presidents and militias. Their performance has a power independent of that of the state. The embodied experiences of the jathilan participants cannot be contained by theories which account for these activities simply as a collectivising circulatory model, be it of money or of power.

35 36 37 38 39 40

Day 2002. Scott 1998. Pemberton 1994: 298, 304–5, 318. Hughes-Freeland 2008a. Henley 2006: 753. Ibid.: 756.

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To recap, the apparently secular jathilan event I attended could not be recuperated and reproduced by “modernity’s mimetic machinery”.41 In this instance modern technology was trumped by alterity. This raises questions about the limits of the powers of technology, as well as the limitations of explanation and meaning. I’ll be suggesting that even when spirit possession occurs in the context of playful performance for entertainment, it might not be simply a case of responding to modernity by parodic mimesis. Instead, it is a way of being which has its own technology, but one which counters the technologies of modernity, in a manner which is reflected in the concept of the cyborg. Before developing this idea, I consider an analysis of spirit possession which builds on local cultural explanations of spirit possession being real, not metaphorical.

Possession by Sound in a Visual World An alternative second account of possession would recognise Javanese discourses about the “other” represented by the spirit world as a literal version of reality, not just a symbolic displacement. Analytically, possession is an impossible reality in the same way that photography is “an impossible science of being”.42 Anthropologists have found it difficult to treat performances which produce the visible signs of altered states of spirit possession as “versions of reality”,43 even though the empirical visual appearances of the world are only part of what reality might be, and rarely self-evident. Experts in ritual analysis such as Schieffelin and Kapferer44 take the view that realities are multiple, and that in possession ritual, as in everyday life, the visual and the real are not the same thing: “performance does not construct a symbolic reality in the manner of presenting an argument, description or commentary, Rather, it does so by socially constructing a situation in which participants experience symbolic meanings as part of the process of what they are actually doing”.45 Schieffelin has argued that performances (such as séance possessions in the Papua Highlands) should be understood to be real, not illusory.46 Kapferer has retaliated with the claim that ritual is virtual reality which can accommodate performance and mimesis, but is not defined by them.47 Neurological research into the power of sound and its intimate connection with emotion also challenges the primacy of sight in the hierarchy of the human responses to sense data, and the limits of the visual in explanations, which also sup41 42 43 44 45 46 47

Taussig 1993: 242. Pinney 1995. Goodman 1984. Schieffelin 2006; Kapferer 2006. Schieffelin 1985: 709. Schieffelin 1998; 2006. Kapferer 2006.

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ports ideas of a more complex reality. The explanation of altered states being caused by a real external agency gains support in new evidence from neuroscientists, with the possessing external force which acts on the self being music or sound. Medical and neurological experts recognise the complexity of cognition and the power of sound. In the 2006 Reith lectures on BBC Radio 4, the classical pianist and conductor Daniel Barenboim stated that “[…] sound penetrates our body. There is no penetration, if you want, physical penetration, with the eye, but there is with the ear.”48 This refers to the work of the leading neuroscientist Antonio Damasio, who was present at the lecture. In the discussion that followed he said: “[…] there’s a very important closeness of the auditory system, especially that the point that it enters the central nervous system, what we generally call our brain, and the parts of the brain that are related to emotion, […] related to motivations and to our very deep sense of pain and pleasure for example. So that closeness is certainly not there for the visual system. It enters also the fact that this connection between vibration and the sense of the body, you know we, you, do have, errr, the vibration that ends up being sound, and its process from the inner ear into the brain is in itself very very close to other senses of the body, like for example touch, and even our sense of vibration in general outside of vibration that ends up forming musical sound. So there are many ways in which music goes very deep because of its closeness to sound, and sound goes very deep because of its closeness to emotion.”49 Music provides a temporal structure within which the participants are able to imagine the unimaginable, and engage with the invisible world. This literal physical corpo-real alteration is evidence for an alternative account of possession as a metaphor of state power. The importance of the sonic in possession events suggests that spirits need not be explained as metaphors for outside forces, but as real outside forces which engage with our versatile bodily perceptions in a variety of cultural styles, ranging from the normal to the pathological. Rationalising and metaphorising theories which entextualise possession-trance are pulled up short by the corpo-reality of events as they occur and are explained. What you see isn’t necessarily what you get in possession trance.The corpo-reality of this kind of play cannot be explained visually, through semiotic qualities. It is necessary to be supported by attention to the sonic qualities of possession performance. The somatic reality of the possessed person is more than the visible corporeal appearance and is realised by means of sound. It is important to recognise the role of sound in such cults, to balance an emphasis on visual representations of the invisible world, while being careful not to bring in a universalising neurological model by incorporating ethno48 Barenboim 2006a. 49 Damasio, cited in Barenboim 2006a.

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theories of the body and its sensorium. If we attend to the penetrative and instrumental power of sound to alter emotions and states, events and other circumstances, we will be able to develop a more holistic and embodied account of trance possession events, and a more plural sense of rationalities and cognitive patterns. The ethnomusicologist Jacques Rouget has explored the relationship of music to trance, but argues for a cultural account of spirit possession.50 He is highly critical of the neurological universalisation. For example, Rouget questions the correlation of percussion and transition in Needham’s well-known paper.51 All kinds of instruments are associated with possession trance, and given the centrality of percussion to music, and transition to human experience, what kind of musical sound would be excluded from the transition theory?52 Rouget invokes examples, mostly from Brazil, the Arab regions, and Africa, notably Rouch’s non-physiological analysis of the Songhay zima priests,53 to support his argument that music may be the precondition for the circulation of the spirits into the world of the living. Music does not trigger trance, not even drumming. If it did, he wryly observes, “half of Africa would be in trance from the beginning of the year to the end”.54 Rouget distinguishes the relationship of music to possession according to whether trance is induced or conducted. In possession trance, participants are “musicated”, acted on by the music, which inducts the possessing divinity or spirit to be present in the body of the participants. This contrasts with the absence of shamanic possession, when the shaman, as “musicant”, leaves his body in a conducted trance to visit other worlds. Here music creates the conditions favourable for the onset of trance and absence.55 Music affects the senses through the mediation of cultural expectations and culturally conditioned affects, to which music itself contributes. Music initiates the trance-possession,56 but “[t]he source of trance is not the sound of music acting on the senses, but a conjunction of emotion and imagination which music socializes.”57 Music then sustains the experience of both dancers and audience of the encounter of the visible and invisible worlds, which enacts the permeable physical and visible boundaries of the self. Rouget demonstrates his general theory of the mediation of culture in music’s relationship to possession trance by exploring instances of a formal “initiatory”, choreographed dance. The musical and choreographic structure of the jathilan per50 Rouget & Biebuyck 1985. 51 Needham 1967. 52 Barenboim makes a similar point: “Transition, let us not forget, is the basis of human existence” (2006b). 53 Rouget & Biebuyck 1985: 181–182 54 Ibid.: 175. 55 Ibid.: 319–320. 56 Ibid.: 46. 57 Ibid.: 326.

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formance at Muntuk supports this account. Possession did not occur until after a 30-minute-long “initiatory” dance. However, there is evidence in Java that the performance context may not be an essential prerequisite for a cultural mediation of the impact of music on behaviour. It has been known for jathilan tunes to trigger possession outside jathilan performance contexts. As Mas K. explained in 1994 in a conversation about tayuban social dancing that takes place at the spring: “There’s normally no possession by the dhanyang, but when jathilan tunes are asked for by the male dancers (ngibing) there can be possession – by the dhanyang, or another dhemit (local spirit).” He also told me that, in 1989, someone had asked for a jathilan tune to dance to with a female dancer (ledhek), and had gone into trance for 15 minutes: “It was very dangerous, you can die”. The person had been brought round by Pak P., who told me that he had released some local jathilan dancers from a possession at the spring after the tayuban that year. One case in Muntuk of possession occurring outside jathilan involved a young man with a history of mysterious illnesses and antisocial behaviour. If he went into trance, local beliefs about its contagiousness could account for others following suit. This evidence, then, does not necessarily undermine Rouget’s argument, but it does raise some questions. There are other problems of applying Rouget’s analysis to explain possession in jathilan. Although Rouget’s emphasis is on music, the presence or absence of visual criteria determine his two main classes of trance possession. The first class, inducted possession, is a highly visual “theatrilised” event, similar to Taussig’s “magic of mimesis [which] is bringing the spirits into the physical world”58. Thus in west African hauka, Brazilian candomble, and Haitian voudoun, divinities have their own “mottos”. The second class, conducted shamanic possession, is marked by absence and a lack of visual differentiation. In the first class, spirits visit the human domain; in the second, the shaman journeys to the spirit world. In contrast to Rouget’s inducted dramatic trance possession performances by orisha or hauka spirits, jathilan spirits are rarely personalised or “theatrilised”. The jathilan music at Muntuk had no signal tunes or mottos. Neither spirit-specific nor “sacred”, it was generalised, and included a range of melodies and songs, some of which are associated with jathilan.59 Visually, jathilan has a minimal semiotic code to denote the presence of particular spirits, which is inferred by sporadic changes in the visible behaviour of the dancers. The spirits who possessed the horse dancers 58 Taussig 1993: 104. 59 This has also been noted by Clara van Groenendael in her study of horse dances in East Java (2008: 19, n. 17), with one exception: in the dramatic jathilan performed by the Samboyo Putra group, which involves a play with masked figures, the Singabarong character has “his very own signal tune” (ibid.: 155). She follows Rouget’s model of possession trance, but does not include his neurophysiological aspects (ibid.: 134).

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were not visibly differentiated personalities,60 nor were they described as horse spirits. The horse dancers are however invariably described as representing the soldiers of two warring rivals in medieval Javanese legend, Arya Penangsan of Jipang-Demak, and Hadiwijaya of Pajang. In jathilan, the horse iconography is misleading, because the rider is neither a shaman, nor possessed by the spirit of a horse. A jathilan dancer, Pak N, from the north of Yogya told me that there are differentiations among spirits. There are different offerings for different spirits and when the pawang summons spirits, he knows which spirits are helpful, and which ones are destructive and dangerous. The spirits are imagined as having a military hierarchy. One spirit leader commands many “soldiers”, and the pawang asks the leader of the particular group for permission to invite the spirits. Spirit identity is ambiguous, because of the importance given to local variations in spirit presence. “Which spirits come depends on where we’re performing”, said Pak N., addding that the spirits were “ancestors” (nenek leluhur). In Muntuk, possession is either by demonic spirits (setan), the most dangerous spirits that can be summoned spirits, and the least knowable, or by spirits of the dead (arwah leluhur), the least dangerous. There is one visual indication of which spirit has possessed a dancer. In general spirits do not like the light, but it is usually the possessing demons who ask the dancers to put on sunglasses, and not the spirits of the dead. Despite his cultural approach, Rouget has been criticised for not accounting for “religious belief and concept of an outside force or supernatural entity which takes over and controls the individual.”61 Writing about Balinese personhood, possession, and pathology, Suryani and Jensen stress that “[t]he Balinese view possession as an aspect of their individual world of self.”62 In Java, by contrast, the person is a duality, with a visible and an invisible aspect. This idea is expressed in the aesthetic and epistemological theory of rasa – embodied sense, sensibility, consciousness – which unifies cognitive and sensory processes in a phenomenological manner and does not privilege vision over the other senses. Javanese people often express strong reservations about losing awareness, and say that local avoidance of alcohol or hallucinogens is to avoid loss of control. An empty head or an absent mind attracts spirit possessions normally considered undesirable. The Javanese self of official culture may be more bounded than the Balinese one, but outside the official cultural sphere, people play with their embodied rasa and the visible and invisible aspects of their personhood, courting danger and the risk of the loss of self-control, and self. People who had “seen spirits” said it happened when they 60 In the north of Yogya, a dancer did make an association between the spirit and behaviour, such as whether they eat glass, fire, etc. but he was referring to classes of spirit, not a named individual performing as character. 61 Suryani & Jensen 1993: 195–196. 62 Ibid.: 220.

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were “not aware” – awake, conscious, but in “a sort of daze where everything is excluded except for one thing”. Loss of self-control is one of the reasons possession has been excluded from the aesthetic of court-inspired classical Javanese dance.63 This is also connected to the influence of Islam in the Java. Despite the animist appearance of jathilan, its lack of theatrical differentiation of spirits or shamanic journeys brings it closer to Rouget’s third category of “communial” possession, which he characterises by Sufi group trances.64 This interpretation is supported by the fact that jathilan is among many activities performed by members of Islamic cults in Muntuk and elsewhere.This helps to explain why young men would want to risk possession in jathilan. The reasons lie in the religious contradictions embodied in jathilan performances, local inter-generational conflict, and issues of power and status in the community. There is a syncretic relationship between these possession cults and Islam, as already noted. Young men in Muntuk have long felt excluded from local decision-making. Since my first visit to Muntuk in 1989, Mas K. has played an important part in mediating between the youth and elders. In 1995, he had set up a local branch of the Wahyu Sejati Ranggawarsita organisation, where young men learnt pencak silat and spiritual techniques (kebatinan), acquired powers to see the invisible, and some performed in Muntuk’s own jathilan troupe. Thus, to run the risk of irreversible damage to one’s person is also to aquire status in the community. This may remind us of rites of passage, with their requirement of an entry into an alterior world of danger and ambiguity. However, unlike a rite of passage, jathilan performances are repeated regularly, and should not be confused with one-off transformatory status-changing events. The relationship between jathilan and a spiritual association is revealing of the relationship between Islam and spirit cults. Jathilan is part of folk mysticism, which is a curiosity to urban folk, but embodied resistance to religious orthodoxy, especially reformist Islam, which views such practices as polytheism and heresy (syirik). In Indonesia, reformist Islam, particularly Wahhabism, has increased, following decentralising legislation introduced in 1999, and decision-making was devolved to District heads. Since 2001, a growing number of these have been introducing elements of shar’ia law. As already mentioned, the ninth sultan of Yogyakarta had given recognition to a nearby spirit shrine at Banyu Urip. In 2006, his son, the tenth sultan, was making speeches on television about the longstanding relationship between the Yogya court and Saudi Wahhabism. This association with a more orthodox form of Islam makes it unlikely that the tenth sultan will be giving recognition to Muntuk’s shrine. Instead jathilan will probably, like tayuban before

63 Hughes-Freeland 2008c. 64 Rouget & Biebuyck 1985: 289ff.

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it, become a means to struggle against the authorities to maintain local “tradition” which does not fit the current aspiring dominant ideology. The data I have presented suggests that what you see in possession trance is not necessarily what you get. I have shown how rationalising and metaphorising theories which entextualise possession-trance are challenged and pulled up short by the corpo-reality of events as they occur and are explained. It is important to recognise the role of sound in such cults, in order to balance an emphasis on visual representations of the invisible world. At the same time it is important not to reintroduce a universalising neurological model by incorporating ethnotheories of the body and its sensorium. Rouget’s critique of an embodied theory of music’s relation to trance possession is contextual and cultural, and stresses expectations and values while universalising a particular idea of the person, and coming to rest on an opposition of physiology and psychology, both of which have an underlying “intellectual datum”65. By overreacting to the physiological neurological one, Rouget ends up overstating the psychological and intellectual context, and gives a mind-versusbody-centred account of the role of sound in possession. There are now more sensorially-based analyses of possession available. For instance, Stoller prioritises the sonic aspects of possession, writing of his field experience in Songhay that it “taught me that I could no longer separate thought from feeling or sensation from action”, and possession.66 Furthermore, progress in neurological research, and cultural critiques of Rouget’s model with reference to nonuniversal taxonomies of where normality ends and pathology begins, necessitate a reconsideration of the finer points of his theory. Rouget nonetheless remains helpful for avoiding the dualism which continues to characterise accounts of possession.67 His arguments are helpful for supporting claims for the importance of the sonic in possession events, and the case that spirits need not be explained as metaphors for outside forces, but as real extra-human forces which engage with our versatile bodily perceptions, in a variety of cultural styles. His emphasis on the physically embodied presence of the “conjunction of emotion and imagination” could even be understood as the defining criterion for what makes a situation a ritual or not.

65 Rouget & Biebuyck 1985: 320–321. 66 Stoller 1996: 168. 67 E.g. Cohen 2008.

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Cyborgs and Spirit Possession The “divine” in my title refers to Divine Horsemen, the title given to Maya Deren’s posthumously edited film footage (1947–1954) about the loa spirits of Haiti, who “mount” their human subjects and ride them like horses in possession rites.68 Deren herself was a voudoun initiate and she gained access to these rites where possessed initiates become the “Divine Horsemen”. The third approach to understanding spirit possession in jathilan is that sound, together with the hobby horses, is a technology which is represented as the insertion of the unnatural and inhuman into the human body. This approach, instead of personalising possession as an enactment of external agency, extends Mauss’s idea of “techniques of the body” to possession in terms of a technical aspect. The possession encounter of the human and inhuman in the human body manifests the divine cyborgs. In Haraway’s essay, a cyborg is “a cybernetic organism, a hybrid of machine and organism, a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction […] creatures simultaneously animal and machine, who populate worlds ambiguously natural and crafted.”69 Why cyborgs? The connection between cyborgs and performance originated in what people in Java told me about human dancers becoming puppets to embody a heroic self. Different kinds of puppet theatre are widespread in Southeast Asia, and are often acts of communication with the spirit world, and human dance forms are often modelled on them. In the sultan’s court in Yogyakarta, shadow puppets provide templates for characteristics which the dancer-actor should embody.70 This connection and the material technology of performance -costume, make up (and in some cases masks) – brought to mind a connection between cyborgs and dancers: the dancing body and the cyborg are both versions of the “unatural body”. The cyborg – “text, machine, body, metaphor – all theorized and engaged in practice in terms of communication”71 exemplifies a shift in theories about the relationship between nature and culture. It calls into question the naturalness of the body,72 and replaces the concept of social control with that of technical hybridity: “By the late twentieth century, our time, a mythic time, we are all chimeras, theorized and fabricated hybrids of machines and organism. In short, we are cyborgs.”73 Anthropologist Edmund Leach had already posed the question in 1967, “why do you feel humiliated by the idea that you might be a machine?”74, arguing that so68 69 70 71 72 73 74

Deren & Ito & Ito 1984 Haraway 1991: 149–150. Hughes-Freeland 2008b; 2008c: chapter 6. Haraway 1991: 212. Shepherd 2004. Haraway 1991: 150. Leach 1968: 18.

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ciety moves from organic to mechanical metaphors. Like Leach, Bruno Latour’s work on Science, Technology and Society (STS) and Actor-Network-Theory presents us as familiars of technology, not as resistant to it. Latour argues that the concept of nature should include craft and technology, making any contrast between body and technique invalid: “all techniques are, in Marcel Mauss’s terms, techniques of the body”.75 Where myths once explored the boundaries between human and animal, they now explore the new boundary: human and machine. The cyborg is an image of the socially controlled, but immanently subversive body. The machine in our present mythic time is serving a parallel function to animals in previous and ongoing mythic time, which were “other” to human nature and the stuff of terror about human boundaries, just as machines and technology are today. The existential foundation of human consciousness has been marked by an attempt to distinguish the human from the animal, as Lévi-Strauss’s structural approach to mythologies demonstrated. Anthropologists now recognise that we are animals, but that we also differentiate ourselves from them. This contradiction is evident in the modern mythologies of the cinema. Here we can see (literally) the animal/human boundary being problematised, especially in horror films, where vampires and werewolves are instances of hybrid animal-human, where the classificatory boundary has broken down. Fangs in a human mouth are a sign of the fundamental question at the heart of human experience: am I a human, or an animal? The mythic power of cinema is evident in a second breach of the classical boundary conditions of human nature, by technology. Marina Warner has suggested that Jurassic Park (1993), a film about the revival of dinosaurs by human experimentation with DNA, which results in the creation of a “monster”, the dinosaur, is a modern version of a misogynist myth which starts from Medea murdering her children.76 But rather than expressing anxieties about female animality (the child murderess), the modern version of this myth is about anxieties about unnatural reproduction: will the technologies of IVF and genetic cloning produce human beings, or will we unleash monsters on the world? This preoccupation with monsters-as-humans-as-machines is another version of the monster-as-human-as-animal. Where the boundary conditions for humanity were defined in contrast with animals, a contemporary 75 Latour 2002: 253. Technology and techniques do not necessarily mean the same thing. In his 1954 lecture on technology, Heidegger associated techniques with instrumentality, “while technology brings forth the very essence of our Being” (Heidegger 1977; Jackson 2002: 334). Latour would argue that neither is to do with instrumentality: technical mediation is a kind of detour, a sideways move which engages us with difference. These ideas are suggestive for how we might think about technology and performance, and we might wish to explore whether or not we would take the body as the ground of all productive technology, or whether we need a more particular theorisation of mediation and intervention. 76 Warner 1994.

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concern is to draw the line with technology. Although we tend to make a hard contrast between nature and technology as a binary opposition, the human being functions as the third element, which mediates between the opposing pairs and produces a transformation. By using a structural approach, it is possible to make a connection between natural and technological forces. As well as being a post-modern post-humanist image, the cyborg can also be applied to a way of imagining reality in which the natural human body can be penetrated and animated by instrumental, anthropomorphised forces. In this sense, the body ceases to be natural, and becomes cultural: so cyborg in its broadest sense can take on that meaning as well. When this happens, the possessing spirit takes over the subject’s personal control and agency, and uses the human body like a machine for its own purposes. The theoretical adjacency between spirit possession and the cyborg puts in parenthesis the motivation of gender in Haraway’s account of cyborgs as a fragmented postmodern self that “feminism must code”.77 I have to recontextualise Haraway’s thesis in respect of her historical positioning of the cyborg as postmodern and feminist, and her opposition of cyborgs to supernature.78 I also have to sidestep her opposition of cyborgs and supernature: “Though both are bound in the spiral dance, I would rather be a cyborg than a goddess”.79 It is no longer possible to think of performance and technology as being opposed, or that technology is an intervention in a natural human essence. Instead we have to assert the inherently embodied nature of human performance, while at the same time recognizing a non-human, technological element, which gives us the cyborg. Haraway’s modernist gendered challenge to assumptions of the naturalness of the body, I propose, can also be used to challenge universalising assumptions about the body, and by extension, personhood. Although there is a disjuncture between importing this concept and an emphasis on using local concepts, the importation is partly a heuristic device to raise questions and to develop a meta-language about spirit possession as one instance of the relationship between ritual and media. But my argument is more than simply a formal play, for two reasons. The first reason is indeterminacy. The presence of indeterminate spirits can be related to the indeterminacy of the cyborg-as-replicant. You cannot really tell who the replicant is, just as in possession performances such as jathilan you cannot really know who is there. Both are characterised by the presence of an Other, a presence that remains inscrutable, and unknowable. This is the reason it can carry multiple and contradictory messages: possession, after all, is a metaphor in which the body is the container. But the cyborg image challenges this container metaphor of 77 Haraway 1991: 163. 78 Ibid.: 181. 79 Ibid.: 181.

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being, and presents us with a thick account of human nature which is neither a container, nor all of one substance. By connecting the cyborg to spirit possession, I propose that possession be thought of as an anti-rational, contemporary technique of the denatured body which is culturally and situationally specific. The concept of the cyborg calls into question the naturalness of the body, moving to that of technical hybridity: “The cyborg is our ontology; it gives us our politics. The cyborg is a condensed image of both imagination and material reality, the two joined centres structuring any possibility of historical transformation.”80 For Haraway, this cyborg politics is “the struggle for language and the struggle against perfect communication. Against the one code that translates all meaning perfectly”;81 In these terms, ritual is cyborg politics incarnate, and in the domain of the real, not the simulacra or the virtual, as Kapferer argues.82 It is an instance in which ritual can enact the imponderable, and draw a limit on human control as understood in rational political orders of meaning. Secondly, there is a congruence between external forces as either natural or technological which is illustrated in the relationship of nature and technology in Indonesia. This comparison of the forces of technology to those of animism might seem incongruous, but I would argue that it is relevant to my case. It is only relatively recently that technology has had a driving force in Javanese-Indonesian society. In Indonesia, transactions and reciprocities appear increasingly to be formalised within the capitalist market economy for profit, where commoditisation and aestheticisation according to state policies are at issue, Technology would appear to support this, but research findings show that modernity is entangled with pre-modern practices: as Latour argues theoretically, no modernities are as modern as their accessorisation by technologies suggests. This can be illustrated by scaling up the analysis, and extending the musical metaphor to the largest corporeal vibration there is. Since May 2006, people in Muntuk have been preoccupied with rebuilding their community after the devastation caused by an earthquake. Nature in Indonesia is a dangerously unstable, unpredictable, and indiscriminate ecology. An Indonesian intellectual proposed that whereas the west is driven by technology, the source of social and moral questions about humanity and moral action in societies like Indonesia is the natural world (alam).83 Indonesia, despite its modernity, has natural determinism: the idiom for the breakdown of human control has been nature. We can make a connection between natural and technological forces. In a geologically volatile environment, music in ritually inflected performance is where the individual meets the social which meets the geological body. Technologies, including those of surveillance 80 81 82 83

Ibid.: 150, my emphasis. Ibid.: 176. Kapferer 2006. Rendra 1983.

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and security forces, cannot contain the natural forces of tectonic shifts. The cyborg bodies of possessed horsemen can be understood as part of natural ecological indeterminacy, which trumps technological constraints and orders, just as on a larger scale, tectonic shifts trump technologies. Given the turbulent geophysical character of Indonesia, it remains open to question whether the technological will replace the natural as the delimiter of human nature, or whether the animistic activities I have outlined will persist, absorbing the technical, but keeping the cyborgs divine.

Conclusions By emphasising presence, rather than rationalising discourses and experiences of possession, it is possible to mark the limits beyond which ritual experience cannot be recuperated into rational explanations, or be reproduced for circulation by media technologies. Physical mimesis can be understood as a means of embodying the “other”. My story recodes the cyborg to challenge the universality of the post-modern model Haraway uses it to represent. Although possession could be rationalised by explaining the cyborg bodies of possessed horsemen as part of natural ecological indeterminacy, which trumps technological constraints and orders, just as on a larger scale, tectonic shifts trump technologies of surveillance and security, I have argued a case against imposing any kind of rationalization. This remodelling of the relationship between ritual and media brings together technology, modernity, and embodiment and has implications for the nature-culture debate, and where human beings situate themselves. The notion of a human being possessed by non-human forces, be they animal, technological, or something else, remains a source of terror. This terror was the foundation of performance in Aristotle’s eyes: tragedy produces pity and fear, and catharsis, a purging of emotion and a renewed confidence to pursue one’s day-to-day life. In classical Greece, tragedy maximised the permeability and porosity of the person, and an ultimate lack of control over one’s destiny. Today’s porosity adds machines to gods and monsters as threats to our human limits and identity. An anti-rational argument which takes spirits literally returns us to porosity in a technical idiom: the cyborg. In his challenging book Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals (2002), John Gray writes that humans will never control technology because “Technology is not something that humankind can control. It is an event that has befallen the world.”84 This is no reason to despair. Gray presents a complex argument which can be summed up by saying that, as humans, we fear technology because we forget we are animals. As I have suggested above, this requires us to think of ourselves as both animal and machine. For Gray this means giving up on

84 Gray 2002: 14.

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having a purpose to life, and to aim to live to see.85 But I would question Gray’s renunciation of purpose beyond looking. Ecological changes challenge the technologisation of nature across societies at all levels of development. Ritual itself is a technological enactment of a search for natural groundings, but it may resist replication by means of media. In our excessively over-mediated world, as cyborgs we need to negotiate a position for ritual situations, without losing their experiential quality of resistance through metaphors which reduce ritual to banality and purposelessness. This exploration of one ritual’s resistance to media leaves us with other questions: what will become of human nature? Tragedy maximises the permeability and porosity of the person, and an ultimate lack of control over one’s destiny. Rationality maximises the bounded egocentric self, and the responsibility for one’s actions. The post-rational view now faces the renewal of porosity, but in a technical style, as the cyborg. Will this latest incarnation of porosity make us defeatist and subservient, and return us to the attitudes about abnegation and lack of control? Will the sceptres of technological others become co-opted by ultra-human others amongst us? And in this dystopian scenario, will media swallow up the unpredictability of the cyborg, and while claiming to be ritual, make ritual redundant?

85 Ibid.: 199.

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Hastrup, Kirsten 1998. “Theatre as a site of passage: some reflections on the magic of acting”. In: Felicia Hughes-Freeland (ed.). Ritual, Performance, Media. London: Routledge: 29–45 (A. S. A. Monographs 35). Heidegger, Martin 1977. “The Question Concerning Technology”. In: Martin Heidegger & David Farrell Krell (ed.). Martin Heidegger: Basic Writings. New York: Harper & Row: 307–342. Henley, Paul 2006. “Spirit Possession, Power, and the Absent Presence of Islam: ReViewing Les maîtres fous”. The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 12/4: 731–761. Hughes-Freeland, Felicia 1996. Tayuban: Dancing the Spirit in Java. [Hi-8/DVD, 30 mins] © F. Hughes-Freeland and University of Wales Swansea. Distributed by the Royal Anthropological Insititute. 1997. “Consciousness in Performance: A Javanese Theory”. Social Anthropology 5/1: 55–68. 1998 (ed.). Ritual, Performance, Media. London: Routledge (A. S. A. Monographs 35). — 2006. “Media”. In: Jens Kreinath & Jan Snoek & Michael Stausberg (eds.). Theorizing Rituals. Vol. I: Issues, Topics, Approaches, Concepts. Leiden: Brill: 595–614 (Studies in the History of Religions 114). — 2008a. “Gender, Representation, Experience: The Case of Village Performers in Java”. Dance Research 26/2: 140–167. — 2008b. Embodied Communities: Dance Traditions and Change in Java. Oxford, New York: Berghahn Books. — 2008c. “‘Becoming a Puppet’: Javanese Dance as Spiritual Art”. Journal of Religion and Theatre Studies 7/1: 35–54. Hughes-Freeland, Felicia & Mary M. Crain 1998. Recasting Ritual. London: Routledge. Jackson, Michael 2002. “Familiar and Foreign Bodies: A Phenomenological Exploration of the Human-Technology Interface”. The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 8/2: 333–346. Kapferer, Bruce 2006. “Virtuality”. In: Jens Kreinath & Jan Snoek & Michael Stausberg (eds.). Theorizing Rituals. Vol. I: Issues, Topics, Approaches, Concepts. Leiden: Brill: 671–684 (Studies in the History of Religions 114). Kartomi, Margaret J. 1973. “Music and Trance in Central Java”. Ethnomusicology 17: 163–200. — 1976. “Performance, Music and Meaning of Reyog Ponorogo”. Indonesia 22: 85– 130. Latour, Bruno 1991. “Materials of Power: Technology is Society Made Durable”. In: John Law (ed.): A Sociology of Monsters: Essays on Power, Technology and Domination. London, New York: Routledge. — 2002. “Morality and Technology. The End of the Means”. Theory, Culture and Society 19/5,6: 247–260. Leach, Edmund 1968. A Runaway World? The Reith Lectures 1967. London: Oxford University Press.

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Mauss, Marcel. 1973 [1935]. “Techniques of the Body”, Economy and Society 2(1): 70–88. Needham, Rodney 1967. “Percussion and Transition”. Man (N.S.) 2/4: 606–614. Pemberton, John 1994. On the Subject of “Java”. Ithaca, London: Cornell University Press. Pinney, Christopher et al. 1995. The Impossible Science of Being: Dialogues between Anthropology and Photography. London: The Photographer’s Gallery. Rendra, W.S. & Eneste Pamusuk (ed.) 1983. Mempertimbankan Tradisi: Kumpulan Karangan. Jakarta: PT Gramedia. Roseman, Marina 1991. Healing Sounds from the Malaysian Rainforest. Temiar Music and Medicine. Berkeley: University of California Press. Rouget, Gilbert & Brunhilde Biebuyck (transl.) 1985. Music and Trance: A Theory of the Relations between Music and Possession. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press. Shepherd, Simon 2004. “Lolo’s Breasts, Cyborgism, and a Wooden Christ”. In: Helen Thomas & Jamila Ahmed (eds.). Cultural Bodies: Ethnography and Theory. Oxford: Blackwell: 170–189. Schieffelin, Edward L. 1985. “Performance and the Cultural Construction of Reality”. American Ethnologist 12/4: 707-724. — 1998. “Problematizing Performance”. In: Felicia Hughes-Freeland (ed.). Ritual, Performance, Media. London, New York: Routledge: 194–207 (A. S. A. Monographs 35). — 2006. “Participation”. In: Jens Kreinath & Jan Snoek & Michael Stausberg (eds.). Theorizing Rituals. Vol. I: Issues, Topics, Approaches, Concepts. Leiden: Brill: 615–625 (Studies in the History of Religions 114). Scott, James 1998. Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition have Failed. New Haven, London: Yale University Press. Stoller, Paul 1996. “Sounds and Things: Pulsations of Power in Songhay”. In: Carol Laderman & Marina Roseman (eds.). The Performance of Healing. London, New York: Routledge. Suryani, Luh Ketut & Gordon Jensen 1993. Trance and Possession in Bali. Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press. Taussig, Michael 1993. Mimesis and Alterity: A Particular History of the Senses. New York, London: Routledge. — 1997. The Magic of the State. New York, London: Routledge. Warner, Marina 1994. Managing Monsters: Six Myths of our Time. London: Vintage. Wessing, Robert 1999. “A Dance of Life: The Seblang of Banyuwangi, Indonesia”. Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde 155/4: 644–682.

Bernhard Leistle

Difficult Heritage: Time and the Other in Moroccan Rituals of Possession Trance and Possession in Contemporary Morocco During my fieldwork on Moroccan rituals of trance and possession, I was confronted with the issue of cultural heritage mostly on an informal, semi-private level. I was doing research on a particular type of festive ritual, called lila. The term literally means “night” and suits the ritual well, as most of these events take place during the night and last the better part of it. A lila consists of a long and very complex sequence of rather heterogeneous elements, drawn partly from the conventional, generally accepted repertoire of Islamic worship (e.g. prayers, short recitations of passages from the Qur’an, liturgical texts and praise formulas for God and the prophets), and partly from the domain of popular religious belief and practice. I was especially interested in the aspect of popular religious belief, with my main attention focused on the observation of trance states and behaviours. Moroccan performance groups of the type I was studying have long had a reputation for their extreme ritual trances. Most of the groups regard themselves as belonging to a larger socio-religious organisation, a Sufi brotherhood.1 The term refers to the social aspects of Sufism, Islamic Mysticism. In the first centuries of Islam an individual quest involving a personal search for spiritual enlightenment and mystical knowledge, Sufism, from the twelfth Christian century on, became an organised social movement. Believers rallied behind some Sufis, whom they regarded to be endowed with baraka, a particular kind of religious charisma with which God bestowed those whom he held in high favour. The followers of these saints believed that they could achieve a similarly intimate relationship with God if they pursued the ways of their masters. This “path”, or spiritual method, typically con1 Under contemporary circumstances, however, these associations tend to be rather loose, and most of the performance ensembles will work independently of the administration of the brotherhood they nominally belong to. The reason for this loosening of ties is, to a large degree, economic: performance groups are expected to pay a certain amount of their income to the brotherhood’s headquarters, consisting of the descendants of the brotherhood’s holy founder.

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sisted of mystical techniques (such as meditations, breathing techniques), and certain secret, sacred holy texts (e.g. specific prayers associated with the brotherhood, liturgical formulas to be repeated numerous times, etc.), which are disclosed to the individual member of the brotherhood in accordance with his progress on the path. The notion of a method to reach higher religious awareness, which is revealed gradually and only to the sincere, still leaves room for personal development and individual spiritual growth. Many of the popular Sufi brotherhoods, however, place emphasis almost exclusively on collective ritual. In their dhikr-rituals, 2 the religious community meets regularly to rhythmically recite the name of God in unison. In many groups, the repetitiveness of the action and the peculiar breathing techniques employed lead to manifestations of trance states. A type of Sufi brotherhood distinguished by the use of music and dance with the explicit purpose of achieving “altered” states of consciousness (i.e. differing from normal waking consciousness) exists all over the Islamic world, and especially in Morocco. And, in a restricted number of cases, the trances observable during the gatherings of the brotherhood are not even considered mystical states, and accordingly interpreted as divine favours. Instead, they are explained as signs of spirit possession. A whole pantheon of spirits, jnun, exists in Moroccan popular religion. The spirits are held responsible for all sorts of abnormal behaviours, from phenomena classified in our own medical tradition as mental illnesses to what we would be more inclined to consider as streaks of bad luck. If supernatural influence by jnun is suspected, the afflicted will usually turn to a diviner, typically a woman (shuwafa), sometimes an effeminate man (shuwaf). The diviner will then determine the identity of the jinn and explore his or her wishes. These will usually include the organisation, and financing, of a lila with one of the Sufi groups under consideration. The lila is stipulated to take place at regular intervals, most often once a year, and it is intended to pacify the jinn by giving him a ritually-controlled opportunity to take possession of the host. Typically, such a lila is held by the family of the afflicted and is performed in a private house. Depending on the nature of the possession case, with newly, or violently possessed persons insisting on greater privacy, members of the extended family, neighbours, acquaintances, or other possessed individuals are invited to join the ritual. And if the knowledge of the imminent event is allowed to spread, there will be other guests dropping in, so that the location of the lila is often packed with people. To satisfy the jinn, it is indispensable for the afflicted person to go into trance and dance to the tune of the spirit. Every jinn has his song (rih), which is played to evoke his presence.3 Other attributes associated with the identity of the jinn and his 2 The term dhikr is derived from the Arabic root dh-k-r, “commemorate”, “remember”. Dhikr therefore literally means the commemoration of God by spelling his name. 3 See Crapanzano 1973; Leistle 2006; Welte 1990; Westermarck 1926.

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ritual performance are colours to be displayed in the clothing or incense (bukhur) to be burnt when the spirit’s rih is played. Having seized their human victims, the jnun prove their presence by letting the bodies perform all kinds of “extra-ordinary” exercises. Most jnun are satisfied with making the possessed dance, throwing the upper body and head around in the rhythm of the music at an amazing speed, finally leaving the exhausted person unconscious when the music stops. Others, however, force the possessed person to perform dramatic gestures of ritual selfinjury, such as, for example, the jinn Mulay Brahim, who demands of his victims that they turn a knife against themselves. Another member of this category of “tough” spirits is a female jinniya called Lalla ‘Aisha. Lalla ‘Aisha is said to be the most popular figure in the Moroccan spirit-pantheon, her popularity often being explained with the comment that “she likes people”. As indicated by this statement, one cannot brand Lalla ‘Aisha simply evil. “Seductive”, “irascible”, “moody”, and other adjectives pointing to unpredictability of character are more fitting to describe her. Nevertheless, she may order those strongly possessed by her to hit themselves against the head, either with numerous blows of a knife, or with a single clout of a clay drum or vessel.4 A number of Moroccan Sufi groups qualify as specialists in the performance of spirit possession rituals. Generally, the Gnawa are regarded as the experts par excellence in this domain. In contrast to other brotherhoods, they do not identify themselves with a saint, but with Bilal, the slave freed by the prophet Muhammad, who became Islam’s first prayer-caller (mu’adhin). The Gnawa are generally described as having dark skin, owing to their alleged origins in Sub-Saharan Africa. Their music and dances are widely regarded as representing an “African” element in Moroccan culture.5 Other groups with a certain reputation for trance and possession are the ‘Isawa and the Hamadsha, amongst whom I conducted my research. Before I talk of these groups in greater detail, however, with the topic of cultural heritage in mind, a few sentences on the contemporary state of lila-performances are in order. For today, lilas with popular Sufi groups are not only staged in cases of spirit possession, but also for purposes of entertainment. Nowadays, most lilas take place in connection with events in the life-cycle of the individual, because a family celebrates a wedding, a circumcision, a name-giving ceremony, etc. At occasions like this, hosts tend to urge the performance groups to either leave the parts with the spirit tunes out altogether, or to perform shortened versions. As one of my informants put it: “People don’t want to have blood spilled over their expensive carpets”. On the other hand, there is a marked tendency of hosts of “trance-free” lilas to treat the event as a celebration of what might be called cultural heritage. For many Moroccans, lilas performed by Sufi, groups belong to their 4 For a fascinating description of a public taflaq, see Crapanzano 1973: XI–XV. 5 See Welte 1990.

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stock of cherished childhood memories; they seem to epitomise a way of life which has come under pressure through developments of Westernisation and globalisation. An index for this emotional attachment is that a significant number of lilas I attended was hosted by Moroccans who lived in Europe for the rest of the year, and who had come back to their native land to celebrate a family occasion in the “traditional way”. To stage a lila during the summer holidays gives one the feeling of immersing oneself in Moroccan culture, of resuming that cultural identity which is threatened during the remainder of the year by totally different social surroundings. The heritage character of such lilas and the groups which perform them is expressed clearly by the following statement of a Moroccan Medical Doctor. The specialist in radiology and a very wealthy man, who had lived in the Netherlands for a long time and who married a Dutch woman, remarked upon hearing the topic of my research: “Oh, the Isawa, it is hard to put in words. They are so much part of our world that we hardly notice them.” Most of the people I worked with belonged to the lower strata of society, were craftspeople or street vendors. Only a couple of them managed to run their own groups and made a living out of music. To me, nothing seemed more distant from the doctor’s splendid traditional villa with its courtyard full of fruit-trees, than the “world” of the ‘Isawa or Hamadsha as I came to know it. To me, the doctor’s professed attachment to popular religious practice clearly points to an important aspect of discourses on heritage, that, contrary to what it claims to be on the surface, the notion of heritage is inspired by socio-cultural selfdefinitions cast into doubt. It is precisely because people feel insecure about their cultural identity, are unsure whether their cultural outlook towards the world is still valid, that they turn to their culture reflectively and try to identify those elements in it which are of lasting value. However, to think of certain cultural phenomena as heritage in this sense is equivalent to declaring them as “passed”, as not meaningful in the present situation by virtue of their own, peculiar qualities. What is socially effective is not the heritage itself, but the reflective turn on culture, which declares something to be a “heritage-object”. The efficacy resides in society’s ability to turn to its history of achievements, exploits, traditions, and to select from this repertoire those elements deemed most suitable to solve the practical, often political issues that this society is facing now, in the present. From this point of view, it is of no importance whether or not the doctor “believes” in the ‘Isawa, or is knowledgeable about them. What is important is that he and other agents of Moroccan society use the ‘Isawa to remedy a sense of alienation from their native culture. In contemporary lilas, trance and possession are caught in a force field in which the ritual embodiment of cultural meaning, the reflective stance of heritage, and sheer entertainment interact with each other. Sometimes potential conflicts between these forces surface to the level of explicit action. At one ‘Isawa-lila, which I at-

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tended at a rather early stage in my fieldwork, different agendas of different participants almost led to a break-off of the event. The lila had been occasioned by a family celebration, a name-giving ceremony (sbu‘), and took place in the Ville nouvelle, the “new city” of Fes. The location was a representative, French-style villa, which had been rented by the family for the night. As was to be expected given the circumstances, the whole atmosphere of the lila was informal and jovial. The younger audience wanted to dance to popular songs, the older people generally enjoyed hearing the religious ballads (qasidas), for which the ‘Isawa are renowned. When the lila reached the stage of the spirit tunes, however, a man stepped up to the group leader (muqaddim), put a charcoal bowl at some distance before his drum (tabla), and started to dance in the typical fashion of the Moroccan Sufi trancedance: clasping his hands behind his back, swinging his upper-body backward and forward, exhaling his breath forcefully and with hissing noises. He was clad in a Western style, long trousers, white shirt. When he started to dance, a woman, presumably his wife, gave the muqaddim a couple of banknotes (I later heard the amount was roughly 20 Euro). To support the man’s efforts, she threw incense into the brazier, but to no avail. However hard the dancer tried, he was unable to reach the trance state. At least three times, when he felt himself on the verge of an altered state of consciousness, he moved towards the muqaddim, who answered the movement with a solo drumming, but all attempts failed. When he gave up, after having dominated the whole event for about 20 minutes, arguments ensued between himself, his wife, and the muqaddim about the responsibility for the failed performance. These disagreements lingered on, with other people moving in to support one or the other side, while the programme of the lila progressed. Finally, the muqaddim, a famous name in the folklore-scene of Fez, lost patience and declared he would end his performance right now. It took a lot of persuasion and flattering to change his mind, and to finish the lila in an appropriate fashion.

The Concept of Cultural Heritage As indicated in the preceding section, I generally understand the concept of cultural heritage as being based on a reflective attitude towards culture. Heritage objects in this sense have to be declared as heritage; they have to be officially acknowledged as relicts of a social collective’s past, as tokens of its enduring identity. This function presupposes thought, discussion, and negotiation, in one word: discourse. In a recent book on the phenomenon of heritage, Laurajane Smith (2006) has described and analysed thoroughly what she calls the “Authoritative Heritage Discourse”, a term for which she uses the acronym AHD. By this she means the way in which modern Western societies for the most part conceive of what they have preserved from the past and transported into the present. The phrase “for the most part” refers to the fact that this understanding of heritage is theoretically only one

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among several. It has to be regarded as the dominant understanding, however, because it is backed up by a well-established expert culture. In Western societies, it is generally historians and archaeologists who are entrusted with the decision to determine what belongs to the category of heritage. Another important feature of AHD, according to Smith, is its preference for the monumental: Architectural structures which impress onlookers by their magnificence and splendour have been, and probably still are, the prime candidates for becoming heritage objects.6 Whenever I refer to heritage in the remainder of this paper, I do so in the sense of Smith’s authoritative heritage discourse. The aforementioned bias towards the “grand traditions” of society is no coincidence. If we look at the historical beginnings of the contemporary concept of heritage, we find confirmed what was said previously: that the idea of reflecting on cultural traditions is inspired by challenges which a given society is facing in the here and now. Smith dates the origins of her authoritative heritage discourse to the end of the nineteenth century, when, under the pressure of rapid social, economic, and political change, Western culture experienced a profound identity crisis. In search of a remedy, social and political agents and decision-makers turned back to history to find inspiration for a sense of continuity, changelessness, and everlasting truth. In many cases, however, they did not find what they were looking for; the past proved to be much more resilient to appropriation than expected; in response, people made use of their creativity. Beginning in the 1870s, and lasting roughly to the 1930s, was the heyday of what historians have called “the invention of tradition”. 7 Many rituals and ceremonials assumed to be old were, in fact, created, sometimes even carefully designed, during this time span. The historian David Cannadine, for example, describes how the British monarchy managed to present itself as an expert in the preservation of royal ceremonial, while, before the 1870s, the British had been notorious for their careless performances in this field.8 The British Monarchy, as we know it today and almost intuitively regard as a cultural heritage of British society, is, in fact, a rather recent innovation, at least as far as its public appearance is concerned. According to the basic tenets of performative anthropology, such an invention of ritual necessarily affects the reality of the institution itself. In this case, a change in the performance of the monarchy is synonymous with a transformation of its meaning and function in society. The British example also illustrates another characteristic of the conventional understanding of heritage in cultural politics: the intimate relation between the concept of cultural heritage and the idea of the nation. For it is not the small-scale groups, subcultures, and minorities within society which could lay claim to herit6 Smith 2006: 19. 7 Hobsbawm & Ranger 1983. 8 Cannadine 1983.

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age on a monumental scale. The thought alone shows that the idea is absurd. It is the state, “the nation”, which aims to express and manifest its greatness and longevity in monuments which are adequately imposing and timeless. Smaller social entities are generally left to articulate their identities around the national monuments, by means of performative acts in acceptance or in rejection of the dominant expressions of identity. Finally, the connection of the origins of our dominant understanding of cultural heritage with the historical epoch, in which invented traditions flourished to an unprecedented degree, points to an intimate link between heritage objects, i.e. architectural sites and monuments and the acts performed around these objects. It is not only its architectural layout which made London the symbolic centre of the British imperial tradition, but also the royal ceremonies, ritual performances, in which the monarch was actually transformed into the key symbol and the embodiment of this tradition. An emphasis on performance and experience is also crucial to Smith’s understanding of heritage, which aims to dissolve the ties between the concept of heritage and material objects. “Heritage”, she argues, is not a quality residing in a particular kind of thing, like a building or other monument: “While these things are often important, they are not in themselves heritage. Rather, heritage is what goes on at these sites, and while this does not mean that a sense of physical place is not important for these activities or plays some role in them, the physical place or site is not the full story of what heritage may be. Heritage, I want to suggest, is a cultural process that engages with acts of remembering that work to create ways to understand and engage with the present, and the sites themselves are cultural tools that can facilitate, but are not vital for, this process.”9 Heritage is at least as much what goes on in people’s minds and what they do with their bodies, as it is a material thing or place coming from the past. Transferred into people’s thoughts and actions, heritage becomes as much an immaterial, spiritual, as a material, physical phenomenon. As a consequence of this re-conceptualisation, the notion of heritage becomes amenable to phenomenological analysis. If heritage is a human experience in the present, then it can be described in terms of intentional acts of consciousness. More precisely, as heritage is about a collective’s relationship to its past, the investigation must focus specifically on the temporality of experience. A phenomenology of time-consciousness is called for, which will also allow a glimpse of the basis of the memory faculty, so crucially important for an understanding of heritage. But before we can proceed to this point, some more discussion of the Moroccan situation is in order. 9 Smith 2006: 44.

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Trance and Intangible Cultural Heritage in Morocco Once the importance of performance and experience for the constitution of cultural heritage is acknowledged, there is no reason why the concept of heritage should be restricted to material relics. Social memory is not only hewn in stone, but also embodied in habitual practices, skills, and performances. Paul Connerton (1989) has eloquently argued that societies remember primarily by what he refers to as incorporation practices, bodily performances in which the past is preserved as a way of doing things. Moreover, the rethinking of the heritage idea has not been confined to the boundaries of academic discourse. In the sphere of international cultural politics, it has led to the formulation of the UNESCO Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage of 2003. Responding to critique from ethnic minority groups and aboriginal peoples directed at the monumental understanding of heritage, with this resolution the UNESCO theoretically recognised the important role of embodied knowledge and practice for the identity of social collectives.10 In Morocco, until now, two public events have been declared Intangible Cultural Heritage by the UNESCO: the famous street life on the place jama‘ l-fana’ in Marrakesh, where evening after evening musicians, storytellers, snake-charmers, acrobats, healers, and other performers offer their services to a mixed crowd of locals and foreigners; and the musem of Tan-Tan, a gathering of Saharan tribes in the South-West of Morocco. With a musem being declared part of Morocco’s intangible cultural heritage, an important ritual expression of Moroccan folk-religious culture undergoes a potential re-evaluation. Musems are religious festivals devoted to Muslim saints. As a rule, they are held once a year and take place at the saint’s tomb (the darih, or qubba). Flocks of pilgrims visit the shrine and perform a variety of rituals (which typically involve the circumambulation of the saint’s grave). In most cases, activities will be motivated by the intention to assure the saint’s assistance for the believers’ projects, often the wish of a woman to conceive a (male) child. Pilgrimage, however, is not restricted to the period of the musem, but continues throughout the whole year, even if with less intensity. Saints’ shrines abound in cities, as well as in the countryside, and the Moroccan cultural landscape is dotted with thousands of memorials, ranging in size from huge architectural monuments with space for thousands of people to small hut-like structures, attracting only half a dozen worshippers. Accordingly, the reputation of saints ranges from national or even international fame to almost complete oblivion. In Moroccan history, the shrines and their legendary inhabitants have served important functions as centres of cultural and economic exchange. In his classic Saints of the Atlas, Ernest Gellner (1969) has demonstrated how saintly settlements 10 For a detailed account of UNESCO heritage politics and an assessment of the convention on intangible heritage, see Smith 2006: chapter 3, esp. 106ff.

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in the High Atlas Mountains were founded on the boundaries between tribal groups who were in potential competition for grazing grounds. By being thus positioned, the holy lineages, consisting of the descendants of a saintly forefather, were able to function as mediators in intertribal land rights disputes.11 Other studies in the history of sainthood in Morocco have shown that saints not only played the role of intermediary between different tribal societies, but also served as cultural brokers between the cities and the countryside.12 Erudite men, widely travelled, yet at the same time locally grounded, the saints were often able to bridge the gulf between the worlds of urban “scriptural” and rural “traditional” Islam in Morocco. I use the terms “scriptural” and “traditional” Islam in the sense of Geertz, who introduced them in his Islam Observed (1968) to denote different varieties of Moroccan religious practice and doctrine. “Scripturalism” refers to an Islam based on literacy, a knowledge of texts, and emphasises piety and puritanism. According to Geertz, this variety of Islam achieved dominance only rarely in Morocco, as it did in the second half of the nineteenth Christian century, when a wave of reformist movements swept over the Islamic world13. Most of the time, however, scripturalism was reduced to secondary importance by the “traditional style” of Moroccan Islam, described by Geertz as containing the following elements: “[...] extraordinary physical courage, absolute personal loyality, ecstatic moral intensity, and the almost physical transmission of sanctity from one man to another.”14 According to Geertz, Islamic culture in Morocco is personified in the figure of the saint. The individual saint (wali, pl. awliya’) is a cultural ideal, a condensation of social norms and moral virtues. More immediately, he provides the ordinary believer with a connection to the divine, by acting as an intermediary to God. Nowhere does this dimension of sainthood receive a clearer articulation than in the Moroccan notion of baraka, which can roughly be translated as “blessing”, but also denotes the power to bestow blessing. Anthropologists have generally stressed the contagious quality of baraka, which can be transferred from one person to another through physical contact, sometimes even with an object serving as a container. Crapanzano, for example, in his study on the Hamadsha, discusses a number of legends dealing with the founding saint’s rise to saintly status. According to several of these legends, the holy man Sidi ‘Ali ben Hamdush virtually stole the baraka of another saint by drinking his vomit, when the other was sick.15

11 Gellner 1969. 12 Cornell 1998. 13 It is tempting to see more than a purely temporal coincidence with the European attempts at cultural re-invention. What can be stated definitely is that intensified contact between Western and Muslim societies was a decisive force in these reformist efforts. 14 Geertz 1968: 33. 15 Crapanzano 1973: 35–36.

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Amongst other things, “to have baraka” means being equipped with great spiritual and bodily energy, showing determination in one’s actions, being capable of influencing other peoples’ lives, usually for the better. These characteristics account for an association of baraka with political leadership: baraka was often attributed to Moroccan rulers, who conversely sought to legitimise their rule by using icons and symbols originating within the culture of sainthood. So well-established is the metaphorical equation between political personnel and religious images that several analysts have proposed to account for the continuing endurance of the Moroccan monarchy in cultural terms. The Moroccan sultans and kings were able to rule the country, despite their lack of administrative and military power, precisely because of this capacity to identify their office with images and figures central to Islam.16 Saintly status, or rather, the capacity to transmit baraka, can express itself in trance. Many Moroccan saints are reputed to have been entranced, at least periodically. Sidi ‘Ali ben Hamdush is reported to have spent years in the great mosque of Fes in continuous meditation on the name of God. Sainthood in Morocco is clearly entwined with Sufism. But, while in “classical” Sufism the mystic uses his trance states to gain direct experience of the divine, in popular saint culture trance is more often an uncontrolled and involuntary phenomenon. Many saints are reported to have lived through sudden and uncontrollable fits of agitation, even rage. In one phase of his life, Sidi Ali is said to have had the habit of randomly attacking onlookers and passers-by.17 Although nowadays explained in terms of possession by Lalla ‘Aisha, the Hamadsha trace the origin of their practice of hitting their heads with sharp or heavy objects (taflaq) back to their patron saint.18 The relationship between the life and practices of a saint and the ceremonial of his followers is not always this straightforward. In theory, the rituals are portrayed as attempts to commemorate the master’s “way” to God, his method of attaining mystical enlightenment. But in reality, the practices of a given brotherhood are often at odds with what is known about its founder, especially when it comes to 16 Elaine Combs-Schilling in her book Sacred Performances has even argued that this cultural foundation of political power is laid in the performance of rituals, both public, official, and private, intimate (Combs-Schilling 1989, see also Hammoudi 1997). Although the thesis of the Moroccan king as a kind of “meta-saint” has been attacked from the direction of Islamic studies (for a critique based on the analysis of written sources, rather than on performances see Munson 1993; Cornell 1998), the fact remains that sainthood provides political and social actors with familiar, and therefore powerful behavioural models and interpretive schemes. 17 Crapanzano 1973: 23. 18 Strictly speaking, in the case of the Hamadsha we are talking about two brotherhoods in one, because the fraternity is divided into two branches; one following the founder himself, and another following his disciple Sidi Ahmed. At least in one legend, Sidi Ahmed is held accountable for introducing the practice of head-slashing (taflaq) into the brotherhood by hurting himself upon the discovery of his master’s death (Crapanzano 1973: 35)

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attitudes towards trance and ecstasy. A case in point is the fraternity of the ‘Isawa, which derives its name from Muhammed ben ‘Isa, an important religious figure in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. From the sparse information we have about Sidi ben Isa, it can be inferred that he was an erudite and accomplished Sufi, given to silent and discrete forms of worship. His brotherhood, however, is different. In the time of ben Isa’s musem his followers used to display a variety of extreme trance behaviours. In addition to the ecstatic dances they performed during their dhikr-ceremonies throughout the year, the ‘Isawa also showed a special abhorrence of the colour black. Every person wearing black clothing was in serious danger of being attacked by entranced ‘Isawa who were parading in the streets of Meknes.19 Other public trance performances were more of a “fakirist” type, when ‘Isawa chewed thorny cactus leaves, swallowed boiling water, or mutilated themselves with spikes. In his still-authoritative ethnography, René Brunel (1926) devoted special attention to the practice of some ‘Isawa of impersonating animals when in trance. He reports that certain individuals were routinely associated with particular animals, almost in a totemic fashion. Most impressive were the performances of the carnivores. During the musem, the “lions” and “panthers” of the ‘Isawa conducted a ritual called frissa.20 In deep trance, they killed a sacrificial animal, usually a goat, with their bare hands and devoured the raw flesh. The gruesome and transgressive21 practice is thought by the ‘Isawa to demonstrate the superhuman strength they acquire in their trances. Brunel and others have interpreted these behaviours as manifestations of possession trance. 22 The ‘Isawa, however, emphasised the identification with their patron saint, who is said to have had the power to command the wild beasts and to have been immune against the venom of snakes23. In my own analysis of the relationship between saint-worship and spirit-possession in Morocco, I have stressed the essential ambiguity of these phenomena. While conceptually distinguished as different kinds of supernatural beings, saints and spirits share a variety of symbolic and performative attributes. In actual practice, both can become sources of baraka. The Hamadsha have a very intimate relationship with Lalla ‘Aisha.24 It is Lalla ‘Aisha, they say, who commands those who are possessed by her to hit their heads 19 Situated app. 60 km from Fez, Meknes is one of the imperial cities of Morocco, featuring extensive ruins of the vast palaces of the famous Sultan Mulay Ismail (ruled from 1672 to 1727). Ben Isa`s tomb and mausoleum are located just outside the walls of the old city, the medina of Meknes. 20 From the Arabic root f-r-s, “tearing apart” with special reference to feline carnivores. 21 The consumption of raw blood is forbidden in Islam. 22 Rouget 1985; Leistle 2007. 23 The “snake-charmers” mentioned in connection with the jama l-fana’ are likely to belong to a branch of ‘Isawa. 24 For ethnographic details on Lalla Aisha and on other figures of the Moroccan spirit pantheon see Crapanzano 1973; Leistle 2007; Westermarck 1926.

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until they bleed. The exuding blood is regarded as being extremely saturated with baraka, and to touch it or to get hold of a piece of cloth smeared with it is considered a blessing. Lalla ‘Aisha resides in a cave in the same village where Sidi ‘Ali, the patron of the Hamadsha, has his mausoleum. When performing the pilgrimage at the time of the musem, the believers will usually visit both sites, the saint’s tomb and the jinniya’s grotto. For them, both locations constitute elements within one and the same performative event. The list with traits shared by saints and spirits in Morocco could be extended considerably. But my prime intention here is to show that trance of diverse kinds is an important feature of Moroccan culture, not only on the level of “folk-”, or popular religious belief, but also serving as a foundation for discourses on power and leadership on a national level. In other words, trance practices in Morocco qualify as “intangible cultural heritage” in some important respects. To be sure, they do not qualify in others. An un-Islamic practice, such as the drinking of animal blood, is reason enough for trance of this type not to be considered fit to be defined as heritage. The same is true for the generally involuntary character of possession trance. Gilbert Rouget’s (1985) study on the relations of music and trance among the Arabs shows that musical expression and trance phenomena have always been objects of heated debate. On the one hand, trance is too widespread in Arab-Muslim culture to be condemned altogether. On the other hand, it goes against central assumptions concerning piety and man’s relation to God. Rouget quotes the great Sufi-scholar al-Ghazzali, who tried to mediate between supporters and critics of music and trance in Islamic worship by introducing the qualification that voluntary, consciously intended, and controlled trance states can be a way of connecting with the divine, while uncontrolled fits and rages cannot.25 But given the flexibility of relating to the past in constructing a cultural heritage, the Moroccan situation still begs the question of why trance and possession rituals are not regarded as valuable elements of national traditions. I propose here that part of the answer to this question can be found by analysing the temporal structure of human experience, and by taking a closer look at the modifications this structure undergoes in rituals in general, and in possession ritual specifically.

Temporal Experience and Heritage Phenomenology rests on the premise that experience and consciousness are inextricably interrelated with each other. On the one hand, phenomenology argues that every experiential content must be related to a corresponding activity of the human mind On the other hand, consciousness shows itself to be dependent on the phenomena it brings to appearance. Consciousness is necessarily directed at an object; it 25 Rouget 1985: 260.

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is “consciousness of something”, and therefore never “empty”, or “pure”, as Cartesian philosophy had proposed. This intentionality of consciousness, which is generally regarded as one of the most important phenomenological concepts, is often misunderstood, as if phenomenology argued for a totally autonomous mind, which conjures reality all by itself. Far from that, intentionality emphasises that, in every form of experience, from sensory perception to mathematical logic, a correlative form of active consciousness is implied. Experience is never a passive reception of perceptual data, but an incessant process of communication between the human mind and an indeterminate world. As an example for the constitutive role of consciousness in experience, we might consider visual perception. When we perceive an object, e.g. a house, we only do so from one perspective. We see the front of the house, while its rear remains out of view. At the same time, our visual experience enables us to neglect this incompleteness of what we see and assures us that there is a rear to the house, and that this unseen part will correspond to certain typical features of the rear walls of houses in general, as well as to more specific characteristics suggested by the particular front we are looking at. Our consciousness “intends” the rear of the house; it adds meaningful projections and abstractions to our actual perception, which are essential components of our experience. The same intentionality of consciousness is also operative in our experience of time. Living in the present, we still have an intuitive grasp of the past and the future. Without having to reflect on the matter, we know that the present moment is the result of past moments. I may not know the ways in which these have led to the current moment, but I do not doubt the fact that previous events and experiences have put me into my present situation and have made me experience this situation in particular ways. In the same way, I know that a future, which is being shaped in some unclear way by the present I am currently engaged in, lies ahead of me. In unison with the interconnectedness of temporal dimensions, my experience of time also communicates their autonomy from each other: I cannot change my past by reliving it; what is gone is gone forever; and likewise I cannot foresee or predetermine my future. The conventional understanding of heritage flies in the face of these experiential truths. By declaring a material object or a social practice a relic of the past, unchanged by the passage of time and unaffected by the present, heritage freezes time by disentangling the succession of present, past, and future. This peculiar take on time can be illustrated by a statement by one of the earliest theoreticians of heritage, the Englishman John Ruskin. In the middle of the nineteenth century Ruskin wrote: “It is again no question of expediency or feeling whether we shall preserve the buildings of past time or not. We have no right whatever to touch them.

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Bernhard Leistle They are not ours. They belong partly to those who built them, and partly to all generations of mankind who are to follow us.”26

What is inherited from previous generations does not belong to the living. It has to be preserved and passed on to subsequent generations in unaltered form. This implies that the present, i.e. whatever people presently experience in connection with the inherited object, in no way influences its meaning as cultural heritage. The heritage object is conceived as a relic of the past which remains unaffected by the changes of time. By simply passing its heritage on to future heirs, society claims the continuation of its identity over time. However, such a notion of heritage is a cultural construct through and through. It is based on an objectification of time for which there is no justification in the structures of temporal experience. Defined as a relic of earlier times, the heritage object establishes symbolic control over the past, precisely because it has been preserved in unchanged form. At the same time, this conception of heritage proclaims control over the future by promising that the preserved object will keep its identity in the future. Despite its explicit modesty, Ruskin’s statement implicitly formulates claims to eternal identity and to a total control over time. And, contrary to what the text asserts concerning the role of the present, it is precisely from the perspective of the present that this control is exerted. But in natural, i.e. spontaneously lived experience, the heritage object does not have an inherent quality of “past-ness” to it; this feature is only attributed to it in a second step. The subject of this reflection must be characterised by a form of atemporal consciousness; situated outside time, the heritage-subject can take a detached look at its objects, and reflect on their relationship to the past. Unimpressed by any contextual circumstances, this consciousness is able to transcend the layers of time separating it from the concrete past, which is embodied in the heritage-object. By means of reflection and analysis, it is then able to determine the meaning of this past, and declare the phenomenon under discussion a physical thing or a set of practices, a “heritage” of that past. A consciousness endowed with such faculties must be designated as absolute, as it is not bound to any temporal or spatial perspective. It flies away over time and space. From a phenomenological perspective, present, past, and future cannot be conceptualised as autonomous domains. Husserl was the first to describe the experiential interrelations between the temporal dimensions. In his Phenomenology of Internal Time-Consciousness, he uses the example of hearing a musical melody to illustrate his understanding of temporality.27 How is it possible, he asks, that we experience a musically meaningful succession of tones, when we can only hear one tone, or one chord, at a time? The problem behind this question can be formulated 26 Ruskin 1849, cit. in Smith 2006: 20. 27 Husserl 1964.

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as follows: How is it possible that we have a genuine consciousness of the past, when consciousness has to be conceived of as an experiential present? “That several successive tones yield a melody is possible only in this way, that the succession of psychical processes are united ‘forthwith’ in a common structure. They are in consciousness one after the other, but they fall within one and the same common act. We do not have the sounds all at once, as it were, and we do not hear the melody by virtue of the circumstance that the earlier tones endure with the last. Rather, the tones build up a successive unity with a common effect, the form of apprehension. Naturally, this form is perfected only with the last tone. Accordingly, there is a perception of temporally successive units just as of coexisting ones, and, in this case, also a direct apprehension of identity, similarity, and difference.”28 Hearing music, we know with experiential certainty that tones succeed one another in meaningful ways. Our consciousness intuitively holds on to those parts of the melody which have already passed, and understands the presently heard sound as following the previous ones. The tonal sequence further suggests, with every moment of its unfolding, a certain form of its continuation. With the first tones and chords of a piece of music, a mood is set, which prompts us to expect some tonal combinations, while others surprise us (either pleasantly or disagreeably); again, these expectations are wholly intuitive and spontaneous. To describe these intentional structures more precisely, Husserl introduced the terms retention and protention. “Retention” refers to consciousness’s ability to keep a past experience while being engaged in the present. In our lived experience, the past moment is retained as “just past”; our being-now includes an intuitive consciousness of the immediate past. And as this moment, which has, just past, retained the moment before it, when it was a present itself, the structural principle of retention extends to the experiential process as a whole. Retention means that the past as a whole is held onto in every current moment. It guarantees that the temporal flow of an individual’s experience constitutes an entity, that consciousness is unified and identical with the individual self. But retention of the past does not mean that the past moment is preserved exactly as it had been, when it was experienced as a present. A retained past in the sense of Husserl is an original consciousness of the past, but of the past as past, not in the sense of a temporal coexistence of past and present (which would destroy time as a phenomenon of succession): “The just-past tone doesn’t remain present in consciousness, like some reverberation; rather it is presented to consciousness as just-past. The retention does not retain real contents (the just-past tone is in no sense physically 28 Ibid.: 41.

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Bernhard Leistle present); rather, consciousness retains it as an intentional content. It retains the sense of what has just consciously passed. Thus, retention must be appreciated as a peculiar form of intentionality. Unlike the primal impression, the retention intends the past. Unlike episodic memory, the retention presents the past; it does not merely re-present it. In short, it provides us with a direct intuitive grasp of the just-past, and is not a special apprehension of something present.”29

As the present experience is connected to the past by way of retention, in the same way it is connected to the future by protention. A protention of the future means that the consciousness of the present necessarily includes a sense of things to come. And, as was the case with retention, protention does not mean some kind of real foreknowledge of the future, but an intentional connection. Protention is consciousness of the future as future, it refers to a necessary directedness of the present experience towards the future. And just as every moment of the retentional chain holds on to the moment before, so every protended moment is connected with the one following after it. By means of protention, the temporal horizon of futurity as a whole is opened, and the present becomes the point at which time condenses and transcends. Only in the present moment can experience reach out and go beyond its temporal boundaries to encompass the past and the future of a human life in its entirety. Several points in this account of the structure of temporal experience are of crucial importance for our understanding of heritage in general, and of rituals as heritage in particular. For, although the past is retained in the present, it necessarily undergoes a transformation in the process of temporal succession. The retained past is not the past as it was when it was a present, but the past as understood from the vantage point of the now-present superseding it. When a moment A is pushed into the past by the emerging present moment B, it is not preserved as A, but as A’, as “A shaded off by B”.30 The presence of B inevitably influences the experience of A, just as a moment C following B transforms B into B’, and A’ into A’’, and so forth. This means that there can never be anything like an unadulterated past, as is implicitly suggested in conventional theories and practices of heritage. The present perspective is inevitably introduced into our view of the past, as is confirmed by so many personal experiences and scientific analyses. The way I remember phases of my life is clearly embedded in the context of my present situation. Even my inclination of turning to my past in the first place is affected by my present mind-set. On the other hand, as my present has been shaped by my past, my ability to remember is a function of the past that I have lived through. In a very immediate sense, I am nothing else than a particular succession of presents that have sunk into 29 Gallagher & Zahavi 2008: 77, italics in original. 30 Husserl 1964: 48ff.

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the past. Personal individuality can be defined phenomenologically as the singular sequence of past experiences that every human being is at a given moment of his or her life. In the last paragraph, I have rather incautiously used the word “remember” to refer to an experiential relationship to the past. This is a little misleading, because remembrance, or memory as the faculty to remember, is distinct, although not completely different from, retention. It is certainly correct to point to the heterogeneity of the phenomena commonly labelled by the term “memory”. From a phenomenological perspective, however, every way of relating to past experiences can be regarded as grounded in the ability of the human mind to retain the moment that has just passed. As I have already pointed out, “mind” and “consciousness” in the phenomenological sense must not be confuted with explicit awareness and deliberate mental acts. Rather, retention and protention are meaningful relations already built into sensory perception; they are integral structural elements of how we see, hear, and feel the world. Retention of perceptual meaning is our first sense of the past, and the basis of all recollections of past incidents. The difference between retention and recollection is crucial for our understanding of the concept of heritage and its relation to human memory: “If we compare retention with recollection, retention is an intuition, but an intuition of something absent, of something which has just been, whereas recollection is representation of a completed past event. When I recollect, the past event is reproduced in my present experience, but the recollected event is not presented as occurring at this time. It is exactly given as past – over and done with in relation to the present. If it is to be experienced as past, it must be given as past together with and in contrast to that which is now present. The experience of this distance or difference is essential for recollection. If it is missing, if the past event is relived as if it were present, we would not be recollecting but hallucinating.”31 Heritage, as it is conceived of in conventional discourse, must clearly be regarded as a form of social recollection. It is not a pre-reflective, intuitive way of relating to the cultural past, but rather a highly deliberate and strategic construction of an image of this past, directed by the primary intention of building socio-political identities. The past is put into the service of the present; heritage, as it is generally used, is an instrumentalisation of the cultural past; this is why traditions invented only recently are so easily believed to have been practiced “since time immemorial”.

31 Gallagher & Zahavi 2008: 79.

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The Phenomenology of Ritual Experience If we apply the phenomenological analysis of time consciousness to features of ritualisation32, an interesting perspective emerges. Ritual has been defined by a variety of elements such as formalism,33 reproduction of archetypal acts,34 conventionality and redundancy,35 to name but a few. The list of criteria could be extended considerably, and the individual catalogue of each author overlaps with those of others. Differences arise with respect to the emphasis put on one or the other feature and depend on the theoretical framework employed. For present purposes, it is sufficient to approach ritual from a common-sense point of view. In broad terms, ritual can be described as an activity inspired by the intention to reproduce and produce meaning by repetitively performing culturally significant gestures. Typically, every instance of a ritual performance is regarded by the participants as a reproduction of a cultural prototype.36 The intention to copy this proto- or archetype can be interpreted as an intention to commemorate the original act. In terms of temporal experience, however, the current performance is not only a reproduction of the hypothetical proto-performance, but also a repetition of the last performance. The current performance, therefore, is experienced as connected to the primordial ritual event by a chain of reproductions.37

32 I use the term ritualisation here to express the conviction, held by myself and other scholars in the field of ritual studies that ritual as a domain can only be defined in relation to other genres of social practice with which it shares common characteristics. Bell 1997, for example, gives the following the list of features of ritualisation: formality, traditionalism, ruleguidance, invariance, sacred symbolism, performance. 33 Bloch 1989. 34 Humphrey & Laidlaw 1994. 35 Tambiah 1979. 36 Humphrey & Laidlaw 1994. 37 To be clear: I am not talking about factual, historical connections and events. What is commemorated in ritual often belongs to the realm of cultural metaphor and myth. I am referring to experiential relations, to the structures that ritual induces in participants’ experiences to communicate a certain type of message. And in this sense, we are permitted to say that a participant in a ritual feels (or has the opportunity to feel) connected to the reproduced protoevent, regardless of whether this original has taken place in factual reality or not, or whether an actual connection exists in the participant’s experience, or not. The complete reproductive chain normally does not lie within an individual’s experience, as this would mean that he or she has actually experienced the proto-event. The connection is intentional: in the experience of the ritual, the prototype is intended, but it does not become a “present” in the full sense of the term. What is indeed being reproduced is the intention to reproduce. Thus, what we find in the concrete experience of an individual is a chain of performances guided by one and the same intentionality: to reproduce an event of the cultural past. The connection between present ritual and its prototype is ideal, but it is transformed into an experiential reality by means of the series of performances an individual participates in.

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While rituals differ considerably with regard to the prominence assigned to the features of accuracy and precision in reproduction, a certain preoccupation with an identity of action transcending the individual performative situation has to be present for us to speak of ritual. Structural continuity can be and must be invoked in a way complementary to performative flexibility to define ritual.38 This is even more obvious when we talk about ritual as an object of cultural heritage, a perspective which is doubtless based on characteristics like stability and constancy. The crucial point is that ritual can be characterised in intentional terms as featuring a retentional temporal structure. When every ritual in the present is experienced as a repetition of previous performances, then the memory of these performances is retained, rather than recollected. The experiential relation to the past established in ritual is intuitive, not reflective. Because its intentionality is directed towards reproduction, ritual is able to bridge the time which has passed between past and current performances. What would have to be considered as recollection, because the experience of the ritual doubtlessly has ceased to be present in consciousness, becomes retention by virtue of copying the past “as it was”. At this point, the performativity of ritual has to be taken into account. The ideology of ritual has it that every performance is supposedly a copy of a structural prototype. But at the same time, performers intuitively know, and mostly are explicitly aware, that it is impossible to stage the exact same event twice, let alone more often. From a phenomenological perspective, it can be argued that, even if the second performance were to involve the same people, take place at the same location, feature the exact same sequence of actions and gestures, and is in every imaginable aspect a perfect copy of the first, it could still not transcend the fact that there had been a first performance which has already been experienced by the ritual’s participants. Therefore, it can be said that ritual experience always involves a consciousness of the difference between performative instances, even while a concrete performance takes place and is experienced as present. The past performances are retained in the present experience, not in simultaneity, but in a manner structurally analogous to the retention of the past tones of a melody. In his phenomenology of time-consciousness, Husserl talks about retentional consciousness as creating indubitable experiential certainty. Hearing one note in a melody, I am absolutely sure that I have heard the note before it; my consciousness automatically holds on to it. But how, Husserl asks, can I extend this certainty to encompass a longer duration; in other words, how can I be sure that what I remember is accurate and true? “This is possible only by means of a coincidence of the reproductive flow with a retentional one. If I have a succession of two notes, C, D, I can, while the memory is still fresh, repeat this succession, in fact, in certain respects, 38 Tambiah 1979: 119.

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Bernhard Leistle repeat it adequately. I repeat C, D inwardly, being conscious that first C and then D has occurred. And while this consciousness is “still vivid”, I can do the same thing again, etc. Undoubtedly, I can in this way go beyond the primordial sphere of certainty. At the same time we see here the way in which recollection takes place. When I repeat C, D, this reproductive representation of the succession finds its realization in the still vivid earlier succession.”39

Recollection is grounded in retention, and certainty of memory is a function of repetition. Keeping Husserl’s argument in mind, we can specify the function of ritual for the constitution of social memories by pointing to ritual’s retentional character. Ritual is not about reflecting on the past as a sequence of objective facts, but about re-enacting. Ritual does not re-present the past; it presents the past in the present, thereby creating the experience of a past “just as it was”. This is an important hypothesis concerning the structure of ritual experience, and it could provide insights into ritual’s repetitive character. For, as Husserl pointed out in the previous quote, the way to recollect vividly is to repeat what has been primordially retained. The French phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty has further developed Husserl’s insights in directions that prove to be highly relevant for our understanding of ritual experience. While in Husserl’s analysis consciousness, although stretching out towards the past and the future by means of retentions and protentions, still seems to be located outside the flow of time, Merleau-Ponty gives a more radical account of temporal experience. For him the present, by holding on to the past and pointing towards the future, ceases to be an autonomous unit in the process of experience. It is not a measurable point in objective time, but has to be thought of as a moment in a movement of transcendence. This movement consists in the plain phenomenological fact that time is experienced as passing. From the perspective of lived experience, “now” is nothing else than a sinking into the past of the present moment, its fading away and being superseded by a coming moment “then”. The present is pushed into the past by a future which is in the process of realising itself, i.e. of becoming present. This way, the essence of the present itself is to give way to a future and to become a past in this very process. The present not only retains the past as something exterior to it; rather, it incorporates the past right into its very being. Experiencing the continuing presence of my body, I am always “here” and “now” in the full sense of the term. But by being unable to see myself as others see me, i.e. to transform my body into an object, I am never present to myself in the absolute sense of the term. Being here and now, I am also gone and have not yet arrived. For Merleau-Ponty, this ambiguity of the present is constitutive for the experience of time:

39 Husserl 1964: 73.

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“Time exists for me only because I am situated in it, that is, because I become aware of myself as already committed to it, because the whole of being is not given to me incarnate, and finally because one sector of being is so close to me that it does not even make up a picture for me – I cannot see it, just as I cannot see my face. Time exists for me because I have a present.”40 Merleau-Ponty discovers analogous relationships of ambivalence and indeterminacy in every domain of experience, spatial, perceptual and cognitive. In more general terms, it can be said that selfhood in all its manifestations, everything that a subject experiences as belonging to itself, is pervaded by otherness. In every moment of his life, man necessarily finds himself in a situation which is not completely transparent to him and he makes use of faculties over which he has no ultimate control. The interdependency of “self” and “other” not only applies to the individual but also to social collectives. The identity of groups can only articulate itself in relation to an “Other”; this can be another group, with whom one has come into contact, and whose practices highlight the peculiar character of one’s own group; it can be a realm of the wild, the uncivilised and chaotic, which serves to delimit the cultural realm, in which the human order rules; or it can be a supernatural sphere peopled by gods and spirits, whose motivations and actions are similar, yet at the same time different from those of humans. In social reality, the “other” will be all of this and more, as with every phenomenon appearing in consciousness, a complementary “other” is inevitably generated. The Other is what is excluded from the order; it is the alternative, which has not been lived, but continues to exist as a potential.41 The Other literally resides in the back of the oriented body; and it looms in the horizons of the cultural lifeworld as those experiential possibilities which have not been realised. Previously, I have argued that ritual in general may be understood as a cultural tool to deal with otherness and to reflect on the contingency of human existence.42 This argument can now be extended to encompass the dimension of time. In the context of temporality, otherness appears as the ways in which past and future pervade the experiential present. In social action and interaction, human beings constantly make use of tools and skills which have originated in the past. One of the most obvious, and arguably the most important example is language, a system of signs generated in the course of history and handed down to the individual by others. While the speaking subject has to make use of a particular language to communicate, it is very unlikely that his or her concrete speech acts will have any effect on the system. The same situation applies to culture as a whole: everywhere 40 Merleau-Ponty 1962: 423–424. 41 Waldenfels 1997: 19–20. 42 Leistle 2006; 2007.

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actors have to rely on knowledge, skills, and traditions not of their own making, passed on to them by others, who preceded them. Ritual performance is a particularly interesting instance of relating to the past through cultural action. By being retentional rather than recollective, it provides a condensed experience of time. On the one hand, ritual blurs the distinctions between the temporal dimensions to achieve a kind of atemporality. Many of the formal features of ritualisation contribute to dissolving the structures of natural temporal experience. The cultural past seems to be present when the prototypical acts are reproduced in concrete performances. As the present is not clearly differentiated from the past, time’s movement towards the future likewise comes to a standstill. But on the other hand, it can be argued that ritual pushes the opposition between past and present to the extreme by emphasising both performance and structure, singularity and repetition. In ritual, temporal experience is freed from its everyday conditions and simultaneously accentuated. The result of this reduction is a heightened sense of ambivalence from which a reflexive, yet embodied stance towards time may emerge. Ritual acknowledges the past as a dynamic force shaping the present. Its actions are guided by an intention to control this force, to channel and direct its energies so that they may become useful to overcome the challenges society is facing in the present. To this end, ritual takes the risk of re-enacting the past in performance. Using the body and the senses as a primary medium of expression, the past is conjured “as it was”, including its undesired and potentially hazardous aspects. The art of performance can be said to reside in the ability to ban the negative potential of ritually embodied memories and to select those aspects of the past which carry potential for coping with the present. Heritage, by contrast, establishes a very different relationship to the past. While also inspired by an intention to control time, in the case of heritage the aim is total appropriation. The heritage discourse denies to its objects all autonomy they might possess as embodiments of the past. But eventually this attempt at establishing absolute control over time is bound to fail, precisely because it neglects the temporality of experience. Even the most impressive and best defined heritage monuments carry with them a historicity which defies complete appropriation. They embody a past which can never merge completely with the present: Seeing the structure of the church, mosque, temple, touching the material out of which they were built, we contemporaries intuitively know that their present definition does not exhaust their meaning; they also belong to another, incomprehensible world which has nevertheless shaped our current situation. Both dimensions of ritual, its function in social memory and its relationship to the cultural and/or transcendental other, are highlighted in practices of spirit possession. We can even say that in possession rituals it is the encounter with alterity

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itself which is being memorised. In his study The Red Fez,43 Fritz Kramer has argued that the gods and spirits of African possession and mask cults frequently originate in actual contacts with cultural “others”. The superhuman figures depicted in statues, masks, or embodied in trance can be identified as members of other ethnic groups, conquering or being conquered by the worshipping society. In other cases, a feeling of being overwhelmed by foreign influences has led to the representation of the “other” as an anonymous horde of spirits, who must be exorcised. Finally, a matrilineal divination cult in a predominantly patrilineal society like the Tallensi may be interpreted as expressing an “other” within society itself, or in more functional terms, as a way of coping with possibilities of human experience which are negated by the cultural order. Kramer summarises his findings as follows: “The ‘acephalous’ masquerades and cults of spirit possession, in which Africans portrayed the ‘other’ to their own respective cultures, did not fulfill a homogenous task; they served to heal and divert, to criticize divergencies and to legitimate them, to fuse to a festive openness and to differentiate the individual from his corporate group [...] Their unity lies not in some function, but rather in their representational character and their concept of reality. It is not possible to explain them from the perspective of some institution in our own society based on division of labour, for they are always both more and less than therapy, art, entertainment, social criticism, profession, fashion or ethnography. One aspect, namely the encounter with the ‘other’ to one’s culture, appeared, however, in all of these perspectives; the spirit hosts always felt the need to represent an ‘other’, and with that their own otherness, and acknowledge it in ritual.”44

Why Possession Rituals Make Bad Heritage As long as their performance involves trance and possession practices, Moroccan lilas are not well suited as parts of national cultural heritage. Indeed, the idea of a taflaq staged as a heritage event seems unlikely. Who would want to watch a performer who slashes frenetically at his head, “until his long curls were matted down with blood and his back and face were streaked with it”?45 What kind of a modern nation-state would want to instrumentalise a performance like this to serve as an embodied emblem of its identity? Obvious as the reasons for the incompatibility of national identities and possession practices may be, the Moroccan material still 43 Kramer 1993. 44 Ibid.: 240. 45 Crapanzano 1973: XIII.

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indicates that things are not as clear-cut as they seem. Under certain circumstances, trance and possession may well serve to express claims to religious and political power. Moreover, trance, via its link to organised Sufism, is deeply embedded in Moroccan political culture, as it is in Arabic-Islamic culture in general. Explanations for the abstinence of heritage-builders from certain rituals, I want to suggest, have to be sought not only on the levels of content and context, but also on the level of experiential structures, especially in the temporal structures of experience. By preserving the past “as it was”, and through a defining relationship to the cultural and transcendent “other”, the intentionality of possession rituals is opposed to the intention of creating a “cultural heritage”. In the sense that the term is commonly understood, heritage revolves around the ideology of an autonomous identity, without taking into account the necessary dialectics of Self and Other implied in all processes of identity formation. As possession rituals focus precisely on this dialectical aspect and aim to create a socio-cultural and personal identity by means of embodying the “other”, we may indeed regard this type of ritual as opposed to the idea of heritage. Practices and beliefs in Morocco support this assessment. In their symbolism, as well as on the level of performance, Moroccan rituals of trance and possession show a connection with otherness and embodied memories. Lalla ‘Aisha, the most prominent of all the Moroccan jnun, is described as “black”, the term not only referring to the clothes those associated with her have to wear, but also to her skin colour. In legends about her origin, she is said to have come from Sudan (as-sudaniyya, “she from the Sudan”, is one of her epithets). “Sudan” in this case does not refer to the modern state of this name, but “land of the blacks” (from aswad, “black”). According to some legends of the Hamadsha46, the she-demon had been stolen by Sidi Ahmed47 from the king of Sudan, who had been in possession of her. Without going into detail about the interesting convergence between taking possession and being possessed, we see Lalla ‘Aisha described as an Other, whose primordial alterity is expressed by her origins in a distant and strange place. The Other of Moroccan culture also comes to the foreground in the performance of possession. When in trance, possessed persons display a variety of behaviours contradicting everyday expectations and morals. The aspect of transgression and deviation is obvious enough in the more extreme manifestations of trance, i.e. selfmutilation and blood sacrifice, but it can also be discovered in less spectacular instances, even in the structures of performance itself. Although ‘Aisha also takes possession of men, the majority of possessed people consists of women. Embodying a spirit in the context of ritual gives women the opportunity to act in ways from which they are precluded in everyday culture. Some women may smoke during 46 Crapanzano 1973: 34. 47 See fn. 18.

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lilas, a behaviour strongly associated with manhood in Moroccan culture. Possessed by a male spirit, female performers may switch to the male role in their whole demeanour. I have attended a lila in which a shuwafa, a female diviner, gave an excellent show of male posture and gesture; she squatted with the performing ‘Isawa, distributed cigarettes to all the members of the group, and behaved in general as is expected of a Moroccan “big man”. Her gender, however, and the slight exaggeration she introduced into her conduct, gave a touch of parody to her portrayal of male identity, something which would have been outrageous had it occurred in a different social setting. The “average” trance performance already generates a ritual space different from the everyday lifeworld. Being seized by a spirit, the possessed will stand up and start to dance. He or she will move from the place where he or she had been seated to the space reserved for the dancers.48 This dance floor lies between the musicians and dancers of the group, who occupy different sides of the room in certain stages of the ritual. Once having arrived at the space, the dancer usually tries to create a space for him- or herself. I have witnessed quite a number of instances in which the possessed violently fended off all attempts of friends or relatives to calm him or her down through physical contact. The possessed person expressed the wish to be alone, stand boldly and independently in a public space, to be truly “seen” as an individual. In my opinion, this embodied intention can hardly be misinterpreted. In Moroccan culture, to stand upright in an assembly, surrounded, yet apart from others, is a bodily claim to authority and power. This form of self-assertion is generally denied to women in Moroccan everyday life, but is permitted in the context of trance and possession. How much performative force public appearances by women may unfold is made palpable in an article by Elaine Combs-Schilling, in which she describes the performances of a woman reading from the Qur’an in the context of the “great holiday”, the annual Islamic ritual of sacrifice.49 Having a woman take the stage in a symbolically charged setting (the Hassan II mosque in Casablanca, with the Moroccan king present) meant a performative re-evaluation of the role of women in society, an acknowledgement of their presence in the public, male-dominated domain. From the perspective of heritage building in a patriarchal society, caution is indeed called for when dealing with rituals in which women are given positive, active and powerful roles. Handled carelessly, the Other – in this case a repressed female perspective – might make a sudden and uncontrollable resurgence. Likewise uncontrollable are the memories evoked by possession rituals. The past is dramatically embodied in the movements and gestures of those entranced. 48 For a detailed description of the spatial arrangement in Moroccan lilas, see Crapanzano 1973: chapter 10, Leistle 2007: chapter 2. 49 Combs-Schilling 1999.

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Memories retained in possession rituals are not likely to be pleasant. They deal with experiences of existential anxiety and crisis, of being overwhelmed by something outside of one’s control, and they are regularly associated with issues of illness and healing. But practices of trance and possession can also be a means of cultural and political resistance. In his book on the Hauka of Ghana and Niger,50 Paul Stoller has described how members of the cult used the subversive potential of the mimetic faculty to gain control over the traumatising influences powerful others exerted over their lives. In the founding period, these others were French and English colonialists, soldiers and administrators, who changed the reality of the people in profound, yet incomprehensible ways. As a consequence, these officials and their strange behaviours appeared in the rituals of the cult as gods, taking possession of ordinary humans and transforming them into horrible and powerful beings, the Hauka. Stoller was able to show how, in the postcolonial period, those gods were not given up, but transferred to a different situation of alienation and estrangement. At the same time, however, the reference to the colonial trauma remained vivid in the Hauka performances, was retained as an embodied memory. Motifs of empowerment and resistance are also prominent in Moroccan possession rituals, as well as in popular Sufism in general. As they lend their bodies to a powerful supernatural being in ritual, performers transform the powerlessness of their everyday existence. Embodying the spirit in trance, they become a source of baraka, of blessing and welfare in the spiritual, as well as in the material sense of the term. The performance of trance and possession articulates a fundamental theme of Moroccan culture, the transformation of inferiority into superiority by means of acts of subordination. Ideally, the weak person who aspires to reach a higher spiritual or social position associates himself with the holder of a position of strength. By subordinating himself completely to every order of his superior, the inferior will gain his trust and finally acquire the coveted position. By giving this cultural archetype a convincing dramatic expression, possession performances highlight the ambivalence of all relationships of authority and power. In possession, the weak become the strong by submitting their bodies and souls to the will of a spirit. If it is true that the constructors of national heritage are to be found among the circles of academic experts and political decision-makers, is it surprising that they would intuitively avoid practices which stress the empowerment of the weak against the strong? A rebellious element is indeed present in a whole category of legends revolving around conflicts between Moroccan rulers and saints. One such legend, which was told to me with Sidi ben ‘Isa as the main protagonist, narrates how the saint was banned from the city of Meknes because his influence had been growing too strong for the taste of the Sultan Mulay Ismail. On his way into exile, the legend goes, ben ‘Isa started to blow air into the leather bag 50 Stoller 1995.

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he used for a water container. Breath by breath the bag became inflated – and so did the Sultan’s body in the palace. After some time the ruler realized that his inflation was a consequence of the saint’s deportation and he revoked his decision. When Sidi ben ‘Isa was informed of the change of mind, he turned around and on his way back let the air out of his bag and out of the Sultan.

Conclusion At first sight, ritual and heritage seem to be a perfect match for each other. Ritual is often regarded as static and unchanging, a repetitive performance of a pre-existing structure. Its traditionalism and formalism seem to predispose ritual for the function of storing the cultural past and preserving it for the present. Thus, once the notion of cultural heritage is freed from its exclusive connection with architectural monuments, ritual becomes an obvious candidate for the status of intangible heritage. However, a phenomenological investigation of the relationship between ritual and heritage shows that the two are opposed, even incompatible, in important ways. Even though both aim at formulating a relation between a collective’s past, present, and future, they do so in fundamentally different ways and with different intentions. While ritual practices re-enact and retain the past in full and “as it was”, heritage discourses are essentially recollecting; they represent and construct their objects as relics of earlier times, consciously selecting from the past those aspects regarded as most suitable to serve society’s present needs. Ritual functions as a cultural tool to control time by allowing for a reflective, yet bodily mode of temporal experience; heritage claims to rule over time by its power to select from the past whatever it deems appropriate, and to neglect whatever it does not. The dominant heritage discourse has a strong functional relationship to constructions of national identity; ritual, however, shows an intimate connection with the Other in its various manifestations, personal, cultural, and transcendental. Considering the fact that national ideologies tend to exclude otherness as completely as possible, ritual seems to be especially opposed to heritage in this respect. The selective aspect of heritage discourses begs the question about the criteria of selection. Why are specific rituals considered cultural heritage, and not others? While the socio-political context certainly has to be regarded as a decisive factor, I have argued in this paper that the structure of ritual experience also plays an important role in the choice of heritage objects. Trance and possession practices in Morocco, for example, articulate otherness in a variety of forms. I have suggested that they are excluded from national Moroccan heritage for this very reason, contextual factors contributing to the exclusion. Moreover, I am convinced that similar arguments can be made for rituals and heritage in other geographical and historical settings.

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During the last two decades, the West has had to realise that its understandings of heritage and tradition are not undisputed. It is safe to predict that critical voices coming from representatives of groups lacking monumental national traditions will not become mute in the future. In the coming years, we can therefore expect a growing number of rituals to be promoted to the status of cultural heritage. Based on the issues raised in this paper, I believe that the construction of a ritual heritage will not be a smooth and easy process. The structural opposition between the two phenomena seems to leave two basic alternatives: either heritage succeeds in subjecting ritual to the discipline of constructing self-conscious national identities, in which case, ritual performance would deteriorate to a mere reflection of contextual, mostly political factors; or ritual, even though regarded as part of cultural heritage, is given the freedom to adapt to the present situation on its own terms. On the one hand, this alternative would ensure that ritual traditions stay vital and dynamic. On the other hand, however, it would mean giving up control of the meanings ritual performances may generate, and risking the emergence of unanticipated, potentially subversive themes.

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References Bell, Catherine M. 1997. Ritual. Perspectives and Dimensions. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bloch, Maurice 1989. “Symbols, Song, Dance and Features of Articulation: Is Religion an Extreme Form of Traditional Authority?”. In: Maurice Bloch. Ritual, History and Power. Selected Papers in Anthropology. London: Athlone Press: 19–45. Brunel, René 1926. Essai sur la Confrérie Religieuse des Aissaoua au Maroc. Paris: Paul Geuthner. Cannadine, David 1983. “The Context, Performance and Meaning of Ritual: The British Monarchy and the ‘Invention of Tradition’, c. 1820–1977”. In: Eric Hobsbawm & Terence Ranger (eds.). The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 101–164. Combs-Schilling, M. Elaine 1989. Sacred Performances. Islam, Sexuality, and Sacrifice. New York: Columbia University Press. — 1999. “Performing Monarchy – Staging Nation”. In: Rahma Bourqia & Susan Gilson Miller (eds.). In the Shadow of the Sultan: Culture, Power and Politics in Marocco. Cambridge: Harvard University Press: 176–214. Connerton, Paul 1989. How Societies Remember. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cornell, Vincent J. 1998. Realm of the Saint. Power and Authority in Moroccan Sufism. Austin: University of Texas Press. Crapanzano, Vincent 1973. The Hamadsha. A Study in Moroccan Ethnopsychiatry. Berkeley: University of California Press. Gallagher, Shaun & Dan Zahavi 2008. The Phenomenological Mind. London: Routledge. Geertz, Clifford 1968. Islam Observed. Religious Development in Morocco and Indonesia. New Haven: Yale University Press. Gellner, Ernest 1969. Saints of the Atlas. London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson. Hammoudi, Abdellah 1997. Master and Disciple. The Cultural Foundations of Moroccan Authoritarianism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Hobsbawm, Eric & Terence Ranger 1983. The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Humphrey, Caroline & James Laidlaw 1994. The Archetypal Actions of Ritual. A Theory of Ritual Illustrated by Jain Rite of Worship. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Husserl, Edmund 1964. The Phenomenology of Internal Time-Consciousness. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Kramer, Fritz 1993 [1987]. The Red Fez. Art and Spirit Possession in Africa. London: Verso. Leistle, Bernhard 2006. “Ritual as Sensory Communication. A Theoretical and Analytical Perspective”. In: Klaus-Peter Köpping & Bernhard Leistle & Michael Rudolph (eds.). Ritual and Identity. Performative Practices as Effective Transformations of Social Reality. Berlin: LIT: 33–73.

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— 2007. Sinneswelten: eine phaenomenologisch-anthropologische Untersuchung marokkanischer Trancerituale. Diss. Electronic Resource: Library University of Heidelberg [http://www.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/archiv/7384]. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice 1962. Phenomenology of Perception. London: Routledge. Munson, Henry 1993. Religion and Power in Morocco. New Haven: Yale University Press. Rouget, Gilbert 1985. Music and Trance. A Theory of the Relations between Music and Possession. Chicago & London: The University of Chicago Press. Smith, Laurajane 2006. Uses of Heritage. London: Routledge. Stoller, Paul 1995. Embodying Colonial Memories. Spirit Possession, Power and the Hauka in West Africa. London: Routledge. Tambiah, Stanley J. 1979. A Performative Approach to Ritual. Proceedings of the British Academy. London: Oxford University Press. Waldenfels, Bernhard 1997. Topographie des Fremden. Studien zur Phänomenologie des Fremden 1. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp. Welte, Frank M. 1990. Der Gnawa-Kult. Trancesspiele, Geisterbeschwörung und Besessenheit in Marokko. Frankfurt, New York, Paris: Lang (Europäische Hochschulschriften 19). Westermarck, Edward 1926. Ritual and Belief in Morocco. London: Mac Millan.

Florence Pasche Guignard

Religious Rituals on Video-Sharing Websites Introduction Religious rituals on video-sharing websites (VSW) are a new material for the study of religions and the Internet. How and why do VSW users post videos of various rituals and enter with others into dialogues and comments about them? Making a video is one thing, but sharing it with millions of unknown people is another. A different type of information is available to researchers, depending on whether they watch a ritual on a video posted online, or watch the ritual itself, online or in the physical world. Real human beings – as opposed to machines or multiple avatars, as in the context of online gaming or fantasy worlds1 – practise rituals and then film, post, share, watch, and comment on them. Since VSWs provide a variety of communication tools, posting videos of the ritual aspects of their own lives is greatly significant to VSW users, and thus deserves to be studied. The rituals researched here were enacted in the physical world, sometimes in order to provide instructions on how to perform them (tutorial videos). Even though filmed rituals are not performed online, the practice of posting videos of rituals is an online practice, which observes many ritualised aspects. Interesting new perspectives of research arise from a careful analysis of videos of so many different rituals, especially religious ones, posted in cyberspace. Numerous videos of rituals raise a series of traditional scholarly issues about rituals. In the perspective of the study of religions, the main focus of this paper will be on the ways rituals are recorded by participants, the transmission of ritual knowledge and ritual education, issues of authority on the ritual, and, subsequently, on ritual orthopraxy, and finally humour and ritual mistakes. The span of this investigation is limited to rituals deemed religious by those who practised, filmed, or commented

1 Please note that this investigation of videos of rituals posted online is different from studying purely online rituals, such as virtual rituals practiced on Second Life or other massive multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs). Boundaries between “online religions” and “religions online” are no longer very clear. This distinction, first proposed and then nuanced by Helland (2000; 2005), is discussed further below.

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on them.2 The posting of videos is considered, on a general level,3 to be a social phenomenon. The following part of this article describes the selected material, defines the main questions, and acknowledges methodological difficulties and limitations. Examples of filmed baptisms, and a few other public or private rituals, support general observations about the sharing of religious rituals through the medium of VSW. Mock rituals, and rituals “going wrong”4, are also covered here. The next section investigates the making and posting of “tutorial videos”. The theoretical and methodological challenges of studying and defining ritual in this context are addressed afterwards. The example of the evolution of the Christian VSW GodTube into a larger network named Tangle, which emphasises the community dimension, shows that sharing videos of rituals is a much broader subject than it first appears to be.

Problems and Methodological Limitations Posting Rites As stated by Grimes in his chapter “Shooting Rites” of Rite Out of Place:5 “Lots of people shoot rites […] There are many motives for shooting rites.” It depends on whether one is a tourist, a family member, an ethnographer, a documentary maker, a feature filmmaker, a journalist, a religious broadcaster, a worship leader, or a liturgy professor. All the categories of individuals shooting rites listed by Grimes are found on the VSW; however, some are more common than others, namely tourists and family members. This research is based almost exclusively on this type of homemade video, or on those made by explicitly religious organisations. Videos made by film professionals, TV crews, or scholars researching ritual are excluded 2 The large and increasing number of videos about rituals does not allow a complete survey. The debate on the definition of “religion” will not be discussed here. The heuristic definition of religion referred to in this article includes, but is not limited to, the ritual aspects. Other rituals (politic, academic, sportive) could be studied as well, but this research will be limited to the field of the study of religions. 3 Since this area of research is quite new, I chose to stay at a general level and did not focus on specific actors or religious groups, even though individual cases will serve as examples. An actor-centred approach did not seem suitable for this type of exploratory investigation, but could well be used in a second phase of research on a particular ritual on the VSW. The etic point of view of a silent invisible observer, not interfering with the actors (but for one case), has been preferred for this analysis. Questions are answered on the basis of the observation of the videos, and – even more relevant than the content itself – of the textual information accompanying the video (data and comments by the viewers and by the poster of the video). 4 This expression is borrowed from Hüsken 2007: When Rituals Go Wrong. 5 Grimes 2006: 28.

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from this survey. The “many motives for shooting rites” are not directly at stake here. Grimes’ statement can be rephrased: “Lots of people post rites. There are many motives for posting rites.” The question is not: why do people practise and film rituals, but: why and how do VSW users share rituals with millions of strangers? Reminder of the Principal Features of Video-Sharing Websites (VSW) and Methodological Limitations Since this particular field within the study of religions and the Internet is recent, not many studies have dealt with it yet. Therefore, it is necessary to review the characteristics of this material, and to explain the methodology used for this research. VSW allow users to watch and share video clips. The videos consist of filmed sequences, or are a simple montage of pictures and photos, posted with or without sound. A PowerPoint slide show can be made into a video. Songs, such as religious hymns, can also be found, whether only audio recorded, or with only one fixed image displaying the title of the song. Video-editing technical processes will be left out of this analysis. Anyone can post on a VSW, usually for free, provided that the user has registered by giving any identity and name. The use of pseudonyms is the norm for such registration. In the user-generated VSW studied here, individuals or communities share their videos with other individuals. Many sites place restrictions on the file size, the format, the duration, and, more interestingly, the subject of the videos (forbidding mainly pornography or racial hatred). Most homemade videos use techniques accessible to almost any camera (photo or video) and computer owners. Some cameras also have an integrated “YouTube video capture mode”, allowing users to post clips directly in the right format on VSW. The making and posting of videos is relatively easy for persons familiar with computers. The maintenance of the VSW as an administrator is a different aspect, which will not be dealt with here. Religious and Non-Religious VSW The posting of videos featuring religious rituals is only one among many aspects of religion on this type of website. Researchers face the same methodological and theoretical challenges6 found in studies about other aspects of religions on the VSW, and about religions and the Internet in general. Instability and fluctuating

6 For a study on other aspects of religions on the VSW, and methodological difficulties in studying them, refer to Pasche 2008.

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accessibility7 of the material are the greatest difficulties encountered by researchers. Religions are such an important topic on VSW that several religious groups have felt the need to set up their own websites in order to post videos with an explicit religious content. This way, they try to formalise or control their image and the information given about them, especially when it comes to ritual practice. Recently, the Vatican also opened its own channel on YouTube.8 Religious VSW, such as KrishnaTube or YouTubeIslam, provide a space of expression where hateful or critical comments against religious beliefs and practices can be censored, or at least toned down. In the scope of this research, the axis of study focuses on both regular VSW (YouTube, DailyMotion) and those maintained by explicit religious groups (GodTube, Tangle, KrishnaTube, YouTubeIslam, JewTube, FaithTube). These very diverse “religious groups” are heterogeneous, even if they may carry the same general label such as “Hindu”, “Muslim” or “Catholic” for the sake of generalisation. A few specific examples are provided, but readers are encouraged to directly have a look at the various VSWs and rituals mentioned. Privacy and Anonymity of Examples Out of consideration for the privacy of individuals whose videos were watched, and whose personal comments were read, in the course of this research, no specific case of any filmed and posted baptism is given here as an example. Thousands of videos featuring this ritual can easily be retrieved. The cases studied in this analysis will thus remain anonymous. On the other hand, in the analysis of funny videos of “ritual mistakes” and “mock rituals”, specific references and the URL of the videos referred to are given, because their content does not allow the viewer to identify the persons filmed, and because they are already eminently popular on VSW. Similarly, in the case of “tutorial videos” of ritual instructions, detailed references and URL are given, since the makers of the videos have uploaded them on their own, and, once online on a VSW, their content is in the public domain, therefore accessible9 to anyone.

7 For example, the KrishnaTube website was up and running in 2007, then was closed for a few months in 2008 (the address was redirected to an ISKCON online store), and it was accessible again in early 2009 with a brand-new design, new features, and more videos. 8 See http://www.youtube.com/vatican. 9 However, it cannot be guaranteed that the videos will be available at all times, because of the fluctuant accessibility of data (see p. 341–342, this volume, and note 6 for an example). A keyword search will yield a variety of results supporting our general observations.

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Rituals Filmed, Posted, and Commented On Christian Baptism as a Public Ritual Thousands of videos feature the Christian ritual of baptism, on both regular VSWs and on religious ones, especially on Tangle. Baptism can take different forms as a ritual, and these are reflected in the videos. The same general label covers very different realities. By typing in the French keyword “baptême”, most results are about the baptism of babies, whereas using the English keyword “baptism” leads to videos of the baptism of adults. Baptisms filmed and posted on VSWs took place in a great variety of congregations. Most of them can be labelled “Evangelical Protestant” for brevity’s sake. A vast majority of them are American, as the descriptions of the videos confirm this geographical location. The ritual itself varies depending on the area where it is performed, as sociological studies or detailed church statistics could confirm. The actual performance of the ritual is of little importance for the purpose of studying the very use of the video of the ritual. Practical theology issues also are irrelevant here. This example of baptism illustrates recurring features in the filming and posting of rituals. In most filmed rituals, the persons on whom or for whom the ritual is performed, as well as the performers themselves, cannot be filming and acting at one and the same time. The community watching the ritual has an important role in recording images, sound, and filmed sequences of it, as a digital keepsake of the ritual. In several traditional rituals, especially initiation rituals, a reminder of the ritual is often given to participants as a token. Does the recorded sequence work in the same way as a personal souvenir of the ritual? The person being plunged under water could not possibly hold the camera. Videos of baptism viewed from the very eyes of the baptized person cannot be found. Most of the time, family members or members of the church stand by their side to take pictures or to film. Who then does upload the video online? Obviously, in the case of baptism of babies, the same people (parents, close friends, and family members) film, post, and comment. In the baptism of adults, the baptized person can post the video online him- or herself. He or she also often responds to the comments left by other users, hence keeping track of the responses and comments provoked by his or her video. In other cases, several baptisms taking place in the same church compose one single video, sometimes including very personal details about the baptized persons. It is not possible to say whether these all knew that their baptism was going to be available online, and whether they have consented to this. Their ritual practice is now on public display, far beyond the confines of their community or religion. Nevertheless, baptism is a typically public ritual, taking place in the rather open space of a church, or, as seen in some of the videos, in public places such as swimming pools, ponds, rivers, oceans, etc. Because of this public nature of Christian rituals such as baptism, wedding, or regular Sunday service or mass, finding

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such rituals online is not really surprising. Moreover, information about these rituals is given within the video (titles or subtitles), or as its description, by providing keywords or tags. The date and place of the ritual, and even the names of the people taking part in it, are usually displayed. Private Rituals More private, intimate, secretive, or esoteric rituals are also found online, such as footages labelled as “Masonic ritual”. There is no guarantee for the VSW user that the label truly reflects the content of the video. Users are free to tag their videos as they like. In videos featuring “secret” rituals (labelled as such, initiations for example), it is impossible to ascertain whether the camera was hidden or not. Again, this raises the question of the participants being filmed willingly or unbeknown to them. Are they aware of being filmed, and if so, does this affect their behaviour? Moreover, are the participants aware that the video will be posted online? Motives for Posting Users of VSW have many motives for posting a video featuring a ritual. What do they want to show, to whom, and why? Videos of baptisms are meant as a testimony of faith, as many baptized persons clearly state within the video or in the information provided with it. Surely, they share it with friends and family first, but also with other YouTube or Tangle users whom they may not know personally outside the cyberspace of the VSW. Furthermore, they regularly come to check their posts and to comment on their own videos or respond to the comments left by other users. These comments are congratulations, questions, criticisms, or even hateful remarks left by those who do not share a similar religious viewpoint. Videos of several baptisms in the same church bear witness to the activities and spiritual mood of the church. The goal could be to convert viewers and recruit new members. These compiled videos are usually technically more elaborate (music, transitions, subtitles) than those featuring the baptism of one single person. The latter focuses on the person and his/her beliefs and testimony, rather than on the institution (church) providing the ritual and its performers (pastors). They want to give a positive image of their community. However, it should not be inferred that if something does not correspond to the “nice” official image they want to give, it would be cut out of the final edited video. Indeed, rituals filmed and then posted online are not necessarily perfectly performed, hence the many videos of rituals “going wrong” found on VSW.

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Rituals “going wrong” Mistakes or blunders in rituals are also filmed and posted, such as a priest stumbling or dropping the host in the bride’s plunging neckline during a wedding mass celebration, people getting bored and yawning during the ritual, a girl being baptized who gets her head bumped into the edge of the inflatable pool while being plunged into the water, etc. After such minor incidents, the ritual proceeds as usual after a correction and a good deal of laughter. An example of a not-so-common ritual breach is the case of a boy about to be baptized who jumps into the baptistery, splashing water all around, including on the pastor.10 The purpose of posting this video is not to portray a perfect ritual performance. Not only will it be watched by members of the family or of the church, but by people who know what the ritual is supposed to look like, and have enough sense of humour to laugh at what happened. Someone unfamiliar with this ritual will not laugh because he or she will not understand what is so funny about a boy jumping into the water. The humorous aspect of this video is attested. It was even used on a TV show and probably put on YouTube afterwards. It has been labelled “Funny baptism”. The comments left by users prove that they did not talk to the boy, nor to someone who knows why he jumped into the baptistery.11 Montages of the “funniest” ritual mistakes can be made into compilations, which have great success (i.e. many views), and are posted in the category or tagged as “humo(u)r”. Most of these “funny videos” are about Christian baptisms and weddings. To my knowledge, no compilation of the funniest moments of a Hindu puja ritual failure has been posted so far, but it is logical to suppose that there are ritual failures in all traditions.12 Mocking Rituals Other videos plainly make fun of the performance or meaning of rituals. Religions are among the topics the most laughed at on the VSW, but this takes another dimension when practitioners of a faith deride some aspects of their own ritual practices. On Tangle, for instance, a video shows a man performing a “self-baptism” in his bathtub following the cartoon instructions of a “self-baptism kit”.13 By mocking some aspects and incongruities of this ritual, the maker of this video points at the 10 See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g66CI3vS-7c. 11 Some think that his gesture is disrespectful, whereas others write that God has a sense of humour, that “you may have fun in church”, or that the boy was so impatient he could not wait… or simply misunderstood what was expected of him. 12 The choice of languages is arbitrary and limited to those understood by myself. I also watched videos in other languages, but I was not able to detect ritual failures in videos in Chinese, for example. 13 See http://www.tangle.com/view_video.php?viewkey=53269bb8882b81b54430.

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real sense of baptism and at its specific gestures. He also mocks ritual instructions (see Section 4). This video means to demonstrate that baptism is to be performed within a community and not alone. Some gestures become evident only after having watched the ritual in videos which ridicule them. For example, the pastor insists that the baptized person pinches his or her nose just before being plunged into the water, but not too soon, either. This particular gesture would probably remain unnoticed if watched in reality, whereas it takes on great significance in the “mock” ritual of the “self-baptism”.

Videos Featuring Instructions on How to Perform a Ritual General Observations about Tutorial Videos In this research, the term “tutorial video” refers to filmed instructions on how to perform a ritual. Tutorial videos exist for rituals in many traditions: how to pray Muslim namaz, how to wash for ablutions before it, how to do puja to various entities, how to say specific Jewish prayers, how to perform a Wiccan dedication ritual, etc. After observing comments and video responses left with regard to some tutorial videos, it can be assumed that some VSW users really try the ritual and value it for its efficiency.14 In spite of the tremendous diversity in the rituals featured in tutorial videos, some general observations will be valid in most cases. Most tutorial videos on rituals are about “simple” rituals in terms of material needed, expert gestures, formulas to be memorised or recited, and time needed. They concern individual or small group practice and are not intended for large groups. The rituals explained are practised in small and private places (usually at home) and not in large public places, such as open natural spaces or church buildings. From the technical point of view, videos have various quality levels (from homemade low quality video and sound to very professionally realised ones). Most ritual instructions are given in less than five minutes. The real time of the ritual is compressed into the time of the video so that it does not exceed the allowed format (approximately ten minutes on YouTube). Therefore, it is unlikely to ever find a video featuring instructions on how to perform a five-day festival with animal sacrifice and elaborate community dancing. This trend to teach “simple” rituals could be summed up as “home videos for home rituals”.

14 It is beyond the scope of this research to investigate whether they performed it paying scrupulous attention to the instructions. Further research could be done with a greater integration of the emic point of view of VSW users. This could be achieved only through systematic interviews.

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“Cartoonish” instructions are also used to demonstrate how to perform a ritual. Several examples of cartoons feature videos teaching Muslim children how to pray. Cartoon videos can also be used for adults, especially in cases where the image requires additional diagrams or schematic figures. Other tutorial videos are simply based on a PowerPoint slide show to which a soundtrack has been added. Films, edited with or without commentaries, cartoons, and PowerPoint slide shows are the principal means used to convey ritual instructions. In general, the comments show that there is a great deal of interaction and reactivity among users who do not necessarily practise the ritual regularly and who do not hold any official position as religious experts. Authority and Orthopraxy A tutorial video can be part of a series of ritual instructions made by the same teacher. These “lessons” are taught by women or men not necessarily claiming to hold a religious official role. This raises the issue of religious authority: who has a right to teach what and to whom? Would such tutorial videos be approved of or even supported by a normative official hierarchy (if applicable)? The question of orthopraxy of the ritual is also at stake here. What is considered a correct ritual? According to whom? It is generally admitted that a cooking recipe can have many variations. Comments on a video explaining how to cook a special dish can be suggestions (“you should not put so much sugar in this cake”), variations (“I personally use almonds instead of peanuts”), criticisms (“fifty minutes in the oven make the cake too dry”), compliments (“your recipe is delicious, thanks for posting it”), etc. Usually, there will not be comments in terms of a “right” or a “wrong” way to cook food. On the other hand, ritual instructions are prone to be commented on in terms of “right practice” (orthopraxy), because, from the emic perspective, there are indeed “right” ways to perform a ritual. From the perspective of scientific research on ritual, VSWs allow new variations, transfer, and creativity of rituals to be visible and recorded, and thus available for a study considering rituals as dynamic processes. Similarity with Other Instructional Videos Many ritual instruction videos present similarities with the many “how to” videos of VSWs. Some of them are produced by specialised “how to” channels, which have their own websites outside YouTube. Such videos promise to teach practically everything.15 Many of these videos follow the same pattern of step-by-step instruc15 See http://www.youtube.com/howcast. As examples: how to wear a tie, how to make balloon sculptures, how to cook chicken curry, how to floss your teeth, how to get through airport security, and so on.

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tions. First, a short introduction describes the action or the ritual and its benefits. This is followed by a list of the ingredients or the material needed. Precautions and possible dangers are also indicated. Then, step-by-step explanations are detailed until the task is achieved. Finally, the result is shown and commented on. How to Pray the Rosary The channel “Howcast” has posted over 870 tutorial videos on YouTube, such as “How to make vodka and tonic” cocktail and “How to pray the rosary”. The rosary is not a personal prayer with spontaneous words but a directed prayer with a strong ritual aspect, and hence is a typical example of a ritual tutorial video. The video “How to pray the rosary” addresses an audience not familiar with this type of prayer, or not familiar at all with prayer or any religious practice. At the beginning, the video even explains how to make the sign of the cross (with illustrated numbered movements). Viewers may not be Catholics or may be Catholics who know little or nothing about the rosary. The diversity of the religious or nonreligious background of the viewers is reflected in the comments giving information about the motivation to watch such tutorial videos, and then how to put the ritual instructions in practice. The “How to pray the rosary” video refers to the “Our Father” and “Hail Mary” prayers. A user asks what these basic Christian (Catholic) prayers are. The video also alludes to the “mysteries” of Christian faith, a term with a complex theological significance. Some users would like to know more about this, but the video does not provide any firm details. By admitting that he or she is not Catholic, a user invites questions on why he or she watches the tutorial, if Catholicism is not his or her tradition. The answer is: “just curiosity”. After discussion with other users through posting comments, he or she understands that the “Our Father” is the prayer known also as “The Lord’s Prayer”. In other comments to the same “How to pray the rosary” video, another person strongly approves of the “how to” videos whereas others blame the inefficiency of the rosary prayer and post many negative remarks on Catholicism, Christianity, and religions in general. As is often the case with any video pertaining to religion, a theological debate rises. Even though VSW users are not religious specialists, they feel free to comment on ritual practices and their authenticity, orthopraxy, and efficiency. A user writes:16 “I am so confused. I never knew praying could have so many steps.” Another user answers that he (or she) does not have to pray like this, but can “pray wherever you are and whatever you feel”. Another one further adds that “the rosary is a meditation, not steps for praying, and is not the sole form of 16 The grammar and spelling of the comments of the users have been adapted to standard English, because many abbreviations and peculiar expressions are used in the VSW. It is a specific language which anthropologists have to learn, as is the case in any fieldwork.

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prayer for Catholics”. Very often, the gestures shown in the tutorial are either approved of or criticised. For example, after watching the video, one user questions and then justifies his (her) own practice of this ritual (counting the beads counterclockwise). Several users thank YouTube for providing what they consider a “great resource”. The “How to pray the rosary” is a type of ritual tutorial video in which instructions are given by an off-screen voice while gestures are illustrated or demonstrated. Here, the source or authority of instructions is not precisely given. It is not referring to a specific priest or to a saint, but simply to “Catholic tradition”. “HowTo Rabbi” and “How to Perform Ganesh Puja” Other videos feature religious experts, identified as such, who interact with other users by making and posting tutorial videos – sometimes on request for a specific ritual – in which they are filmed (no off-screen voice) and give details about their personal and religious identity. For example, the “HowToRabbi”17 channel on YouTube was created by an American rabbi. He gives additional information about him and a link to his community website. Most videos feature instructions on how to perform daily rituals. The video “How To Wash For Bread”18 is filmed in a kitchen, thus emphasising the domestic character of the ritual. The formulas recited in Hebrew appear in subtitles. The Rabbi first explains why and when to perform the ritual and indicates the material needed (water, jars, towels). A girl then follows the rabbi’s instructions in order to demonstrate the gestures. All videos made by “HowToRabbi” are very pedagogical and probably address an audience not familiar with the rituals. It is difficult to know who watches them and whom they benefit, since there are not many comments on them. Someone from Sydney states: “Thank you so much as this video is very important, especially in areas where there is not much of a Jewish Community”. A video titled “How to perform Ganesh Puja”19 was filmed and uploaded by a user named “BenCollins”. His video is not as pedagogical as the ones explaining the rosary prayer or the Jewish rituals just mentioned. Nevertheless, its clear intention of instructing the viewers makes it different from a simply filmed and posted ritual. The ritual is not commented by an off-screen voice, but the transliterated Sanskrit text has been added to the image, as well as a close-up of the hands of the man performing the puja. This puja ritual was filmed in a temple in India, as BenCollins (who could be contacted via email20) confirmed. He made his video to post 17 There are five videos titled: How To Kiddush, How to Havdalah, How To Wash For Bread, How To Aliyah, and How To Tefillin. Posted in: http://www.youtube.com/howtorabbi 18 See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45bSQg0S81s. 19 See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ta8ylRCSbVQ. 20 The interviews were conducted in September 2008.

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it on his own puja.net website and on YouTube. YouTube reaches a more general audience, which can then be redirected to his website. When asked why he made the video, he answered that “proper puja instruction is very hard to find”. When asked for whom he makes them, he wrote: “I make the videos and put them out there. If anyone is interested and wants to take it further, then that is great!” Such individually-based interviews should definitely be conducted in the case of a study focusing on one particular ritual only.

Methodological and Theoretical Challenges Posting as a Ritual or Religious Practice? This last section is intended as a theoretical challenge to the definition of ritual and religiosity. Following some definitions of ritual, such as Snoek’s polythetic definition of “ritual behavior”,21 it is worth asking in a provocative way if the practice of posting videos on VSW is a ritual. While it is true that users themselves do not label their filmed practice as “ritual”, but will use emic terms (specific names such as “puja” or “baptism”), this practice of filming and posting has many ritual aspects, which will be listed hereafter. Using VSW and interacting with other users can also be analysed in terms analogous to those of religious practice. Different degrees of engagement and interaction with the system and with other users are involved, as shown in the table: Table 1:

21 Snoek 2006: 13.

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The first action is watching videos without logging in. At this stage, a user can be looking for more information about religions or about particular rituals and communities practicing them. Looking for ritual videos can be done in the framework of a religious quest. At this first level, the user can also gain access to information about the video, channel, comments, the number of views, and about the person who posted the video. At a second level, the user becomes personally involved with the system (VSW) by creating an account and logging in. In religious categories, this could be thought of in terms of membership, belonging, and attendance. The user will then exploit the possibilities given by his or her registration: save videos in his or her “favourites”, flag videos as inappropriate, rate videos and comments, and report violations (such as racial hatred, which can also pertain to religious matters). Up to that point, the VSW user can remain silent and anonymous to other users. Only the system knows the personal data provided at registration. Still, the user can start to interact with other users by commenting on the videos or by responding to others’ comments. Following the analogy of religious participation, this would be like actively taking part in religious discussions and expressing beliefs. The user starts becoming more active than a very occasional (passive) user without an account. At the next stage, the user starts making, editing, and posting his or her own videos. In the case of religious users, such posting of videos can be viewed as making public and visible a radical step or decision taken in one community, such as a baptism or a wedding. It is a visible sign and reminder of a new status the person is proud of (baptized, married, initiated). Posting a video and controlling the information about it and its accessibility would be the testimonial part, the “going public” of the ritual, once it is shared online. Users can also constitute a network of “friends” and subscribe to channels in order to be informed when a new video is posted. They can also share videos with their relatives and friends, and post them on other social networks such as Facebook. At the next level, users respond to videos by making their own videos. In our religious analogy, this could be equivalent to entering the debate among religions or about a specific practice within one religion. This is a theological debate and its content does not interest us here. The practice, significance, and utility of rituals are much debated on VSW. Reading other users’ comments on one’s own video and responding to them would be an assertion of one’s own religious identity within the space of the VSW. Comments are directed towards people of the same religious affiliation, sharing more or less similar beliefs and ritual practices, or towards more skeptical, inquisitive, or even offensive users who are, in this case, outsiders to the community. The actions mentioned above involve interaction with the system and with other users. The example of videos of the baptism of adults shows that there is a definite degree of commitment by the people who post the video and by those who post congratulations or respond to the comments with great regularity.

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Ritual Aspects of Making and Posting Videos The ritual aspects may be even more obvious in the case of users who post their own videos. They may follow specific patterns in terms of: (1) place, if the video is always filmed in the same specially arranged setting (which can be a neutral background or a specially arranged place, like a home shrine); (2) clothing, if the person filmed is dressed in a specific manner, either wearing ritual clothing or, for instance, a T-shirt with a logo; (3) time, but the frequency depends on the user. Some regularity may be noticed, like a post every Sunday, for example; (4) sound, where equivalent to ritual formulas can be used. When producing a series of videos, users will have a recognisable jingle used as an opening or closing formula. The latter includes music, a title, gestures, and sometimes a motto. This is very similar to podcasts. Of course, all these elements are not enough to classify the making and posting of videos as rituals, but ritualists may discern recurrent patterns in the VSW that might be significant of a new kind of online practice. This phenomenon can be studied as ritual behaviour as defined by Snoek. Blurred Boundaries: Religion on Cyberspace and Religion in Cyberspace / Online Religion and Religion Online Studying the ritual aspect of religions on the VSW presents many technical difficulties, which are for the most part similar to those encountered by scholars studying religions on the Internet in general. It is especially hard to keep “pace with […] rapid developments and changes”.22 The theoretical distinction first proposed by Helland in 2000 between “online religion” and “religion online” has already been nuanced.23 Nevertheless, the heuristic framework he proposes is still partially applicable. Anastasia Karaflogka’s distinction between “religion in cyberspace” and “religions on cyberspace”24 can also help to classify phenomena, as long as these categories are understood not as mutually exclusive, but as two ideal-typical poles of a continuum. Indeed, VSWs have both aspects. Explicitly religious VSWs as well as regular ones are used by religious groups and individuals as a tool to promote their beliefs and (ritual) practices, strengthen the faiths of adherents, show a more or less con22 Helland 2005: 1. 23 Helland 2005. 24 Karaflogka’s definition is: “What I called ‘religion on cyberspace’ referred to the information uploaded by any religion (institutionalised or not), church, individual or organisation which also exists and can be reached in the offline world. In this sense the Internet is used as a tool. ‘Religion in cyberspace’, on the other hand, denoted a religious, spiritual or metaphysical expression, which is created and exists exclusively in cyberspace. The Internet in this case is used as an environment” (Karaflogka 2006: 14).

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trolled and official image. VSWs are also used as an environment in which communication is made within the community or with outsiders. This communication, when meant to display and transmit ritual knowledge (tutorial videos), is viewed as a service to people with an educational purpose, which can take place under this shape in cyberspace exclusively. GodTube Turned Into Tangle: More Than Just Videos The diversity of new services offered by the former GodTube website is an illustration of the blurred boundaries between online religion and religion online. In 2009, GodTube became part of a larger social network called “Tangle”, in which the video-sharing function remains an important feature. Videos have simply been transferred to Tangle. Since it was launched in January 2007, GodTube gradually increased in popularity, even though it could never compete with the leading YouTube in terms of number of users and videos. Before it changed to Tangle, GodTube offered new services to its users, all of which have been maintained in the new website. In an interactive Bible, users can post, find, watch and share videos corresponding to a selected biblical verse or chapter. Another interactive service is a prayer wall in which registered users post prayers, comment on prayers, and light candles. Even though the posted prayers primarily reflect individual interests,25 users are aware that many will come and read their prayer, maybe pray for them, or with them, if in the form of posting a comment to the prayer. Most prayers are requests for specific needs or thanksgiving for answered prayers.26 In this environment, it is very unlikely to find “formula prayers”, such as the rosary prayer. They are not individual prayer formulations which believers want to share with others, but personal requests. The Tangle prayer wall works as a book of “prayer requests” or, as found in some churches, as a prayer message board or wall, on which people leave their requests. The “Prayer Wall” is not an invention of online rituality, but an adaptation in a new interactive form of a long-lasting offline practice. In Tangle, even though the prayers are eminently individual, there is a sense of community, just as on other VSWs. People do not post videos or prayers for themselves only (as in a personal archive), but in order to show and share something of themselves to a larger human community. With this type of new features, the Tangle website qualifies for both the “online religion” and “religion online” categories. GodTube has diversified its offer to attract new users and has attained huge success. Its transformation into Tangle as a 25 For a study of prayers as typical “individual rituality”, see Miczek 2007: 203–204. 26 The “comment” on a prayer very often is also a prayer. Categories of prayers provided by Tangle are, in this order in a drop-down menu: love, healing, strength, financial, friends, family, relationship, loss, confusion, loneliness, suffering, faith, natural disaster, lust, greed, jealousy, news story, miracle, spiritual, other.

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“Family-Friendly Christian Social Network” must not be regarded as failure or success, but rather as a strategy to win new users and expand. In contrast, other VSWs have disappeared, and it is hard to know exactly why. Of course, not all religious groups can afford maintenance of their own VSW. This requires either specific technical skills or enough money to pay for them. Moreover, VSWs claiming to filter all content in order to be “family friendly”27 probably have to pay people to check the content of posted videos.

Perspectives for Further Study Videos on the VSW are the key element and the reason for the existence of these websites, but there is much more at stake. Indeed, together with the videos are textual information, comments, and factual data (dates and numbers, location of users, and other personal data), the veracity of which is impossible to confirm due to the use of pseudonyms. These websites should be studied as platforms for individual and community28 expression, which is part of a larger network. Human beings practise rituals, film them, and post the recorded events in order to share them with other human beings, whether they are close and known to them (friends, family, religious community) or not. In the expression “video sharing websites”, the “sharing” is most important. Websites are the new technological support and videos are the form. It is a new material for the study of rituals, giving rise to new questions but also bringing researchers to reconsider older material. Religious rituals in the VSWs should be studied, bearing in mind that they are not only about videos and technology, but also about human processes of communication and the sharing of the ritual aspects of human life.

27 “Family friendly” means that any pornography, nude or “inappropriate content” (as defined in USA) is totally banned. 28 Some are not individual users but “channels” made by multiple users forming a community of value and practice. These groups of users often label their group as “community” and they provide a link to their main website from the videos posted on YouTube. For example: http://www.youtube.com/user/BeliefnetCommunity.

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References Grimes, Ronald L. 2006. Rite out of Place. Ritual, Media, and the Arts. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press. Helland, Christopher 2000. “Online Religion/Religion Online and Virtual Communitas”. In: Jeffrey K. Hadden & Douglas E. Cowan (eds.). Religion on the Internet: Research Prospects and Promises. New York: JAI Press. — 2005. “Online Religion as Lived Religion: Methodological Issues in the Study of Religious Participation on the Internet”. Online-Heidelberg Journal of Religions on the Internet 1/1. Hüsken, Ute (ed.) 2007. When Rituals Go Wrong. Mistakes, Failure, and the Dynamics of Ritual. Leiden: Brill. Karaflogka, Anastasia 2006. E-Religion. A Critical Appraisal of Religious Discourse on the World Wide Web. London: Equinox. Miczek, Nadja 2007. “Rituals Online: Dynamic Processes Reflecting Individual Perspectives”. Masaryk University Journal of Law and Technology 2: 197–204. Pasche, Florence 2008. “Some Methodological Reflections about the Study of Religions on the Video Sharing Websites”. Marburg Journal of Religion 13/1. Snoek, Jan A.M. 2006. “Defining ‘Rituals’”. In: Jan Kreinath & Jan A.M. Snoek & Michael Stausberg (eds.). Theorizing Rituals. Vol. 1: Issues, Approaches, Concepts. Leiden & Boston: Brill: 3–14.

Websites Referred To All websites, channels, and URL of examples last retrieved on 15 March 2009. www.youtube.com www.dailymotion.com www.godtube.com = www.tangle.com www.krishnatube.com www.faithtube.com www.jewtube.com www.youtubeislam.com www.puja.net www.videojug.com www.facebook.com

Joost Fontein

The Politics of the Dead: Living Heritage, Bones, and Commemoration in Zimbabwe1 In early March of 2007, whilst the attention of the international media was focusing on the brutal beating by police of Zimbabwe’s opposition MDC (Movement for Democratic Change) leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, the dramatic events that surrounded the funeral of Gift Tandare – a little known MDC activist who was shot by police on the same day –was being reported in the local independent media. The events unfolded as follows.2 Soon after the fatal shooting during a peaceful prayer rally in the Highfields suburb of Harare on Sunday, 10 March, mourners began to congregate in large numbers at the deceased’s residence in the high-density suburb of Glen View.3 Apparently fearing any further disturbances or protests, armed police and soldiers were sent in to disperse the mourners, resulting in more injuries and people being shot. Then, a few days later, it emerged that Chief Kandeya, the “traditional authority” in charge of Mashanga village in Mt Darwin, where the Tandare family’s Kumusha (rural home) lies, and where his family had sought to bury him, was refusing to allow the funeral to take place, on the grounds that Gift Tandare was an MDC activist and “burial in his area is reserved for ZANU PF [Zimbabwe African National Union Patriotic Front] supporters only”.4 Later, when the chief demanded payment of four cows for the burial to go ahead, Tandare’s family, being unwilling 1 Another version of this article was published in August 2009 in ASAonline No01/2 and is available at http://www.theasa.org/publications/asaonline/asaonline_articles.htm. 2 There have been slight differences in the details of some of the reports – this account is based on the following news reports: MDC News Brief, “MDC National hero Gift Tandare – How ZANU PF murdered and buried him in a mafia type ceremony” 19/3/07, www.zimbab wesituation.com/mar20b_2007.html#Z4; SW Radio Africa Zimbabwe News, “MDC discover name of policeman who shot and killed Tandare” 16/3/07; SW Radio Africa Zimbabwe News, “Chief refuses permission to bury Gift Tandare” 16/3/07; SW Radio Africa Zimbabwe News, “Tandare burial set for Monday in Harare” 17/3/07; Zimbabwe Standard “CIO agents seize Tandare’s corpse” 18/3/07; Cape Argus (SA) “Zim police defy order to return Gift’s body” 19/3/07. 3 MDC News Brief, 19/3/07. 4 MDC News Brief, 19/3/07.

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or unable to pay this, decided Gift would instead be buried in Harare at Granville cemetery.5 This decision, as Gift’s elder brother was quoted as saying, “has been welcomed with joy as everyone wanted to attend his burial”.6 But this was not to be. On the Saturday night (18/3/07) before the funeral, a heavily armed police convoy turned up at the Tandare house to take only close relatives for a hastily prepared private burial. While mourners fled, the family was told that “the chief had been talked to”,7 and that the police wanted Gift’s wife to sign another burial order granting them permission to bury Gift as originally planned in Mt Darwin. The following morning, reports from the funeral parlour explained that “men in suits” (i.e. Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO) agents) had come in the early hours and “forcibly removed the body […] for burial”, coercing “Gift’s sister in the presence of her fearful uncle to sign the burial order”.8 While this was going on, Gift’s wife had gone to get a court order against the police barring them from interfering with the funeral arrangements, an order that was granted but also promptly ignored by officials,9 who proceeded to bury the body in “the absence of his wife and children” in a “mafia style ceremony”.10 According to The Standard (18/3/07), orders to remove the body and carry out the burial, “as quickly as possible”, had come from the President’s office, because authorities were worried that “the activist’s burial could be turned into a platform for an anti-Mugabe tirade by opposition supporters, already angered after the brutal attack on MDC President Morgan Tsvangirai”. These recent events illustrate how intense the politics of the dead, and what to do with their remains, can be in the context of Zimbabwe’s ongoing political turmoil. It is well documented that the funerals of people killed in political violence can often become sites of protest and further violence,11 hence it is no surprise that the ZANU PF government and the police were concerned to avoid a high profile,

5 6 7 8 9 10 11

SW Radio Africa, 17/3/07. Ibid. MDC News Brief, 19/3/07. Ibid. Cape Argus (SA), 19/3/07. MDC News Brief, 19/3/07. Cf. Allen 2006; Feldman 1991 & 2003.

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public funeral in Harare.12 But the controversies surrounding the burial of Gift Tandare also point to a deeper complexity of meanings and contests that can be involved in “the politics of the dead”. Efforts to “dignify death” can often provoke a complex politics of burial, which, in the case of colonial Bulawayo, discussed by Ranger, revealed “the existence of multiple and contesting agencies” that crosscut existing tensions not just between “colonial” and “African” efforts to control city space, or between “traditional African” and “modern Christian”, or “rural” and “urban” mortuary practices, but also between the dictates of rival churches (whether African independent or missionary), burial societies, and the entangled demands of class, wealth, labour, kin and gender loyalties, or even those of divergent imaginings of cultural and ethnic nationalism.13 Chief Kandeya’s initial refusal, and later hefty financial charge, for permission to bury Gift in Mashanga village is perhaps less remarkable for the “political” motivations that apparently lay behind it, and more so for the simple fact that chiefs have the authority to decide who will be buried within their territories. This relates both to a past colonial ordering of land and authority, in which commercial/European and communal/African areas of land were administered under separate regimes of rule,14 but also to a new streak of “traditionalism” that has emerged in Zimbabwe recently, which has seen the functions and powers of chiefs and traditional leaders revived and expanded out of communal areas to resettlement schemes, farms, rural district councils, and land committees;15 a trend that has been 12 There have been other cases of government interference in the funerals of MDC supporters and activists. In August 2007, police and CIO barred MDC supporters from attending the funeral of Isaac Matongo in Gutu (“Police bar memorial service” The Standard, 12/8/07), and the following month armed anti-riot police “stormed a solidarity funeral service organised by the Combined Harare Residents Association” for a victim of Operation Murambatsvina in 2005 (“ZANU PF forcibly buries murambatsvina victim as police disrupt solidarity service” The Zimbabwean, 18/9/07). More recently (and since this chapter was written), as political violence intensified sharply in the period between the elections of 29 March 2008 and the flawed presidential “run-off” of 27 June 2008, the “politics of the dead” has followed suite with a proliferation of reports of discoveries of mutilated and tortured corpses across Zimbabwe, disrupted MDC funerals, and CIO interference with graves appearing in the independent press and on Zimbabwean news websites (see, for example, “State agents want to dig up Tonderai Ndira’s body” SW Radio Africa 29/5/2008; “Zanu PF thugs disrupt MDC funeral in Harare” SW Radio Africa 22/5/2008; “Mutilated body found” The Herald, 11/6/08; “MDC activist’s decomposed body found” www.newzimbabwe.com, 20/6/08; “Another Zimbabwean opposition activist found dead after abduction” VOA New 21/5/2008; “Two dead bodies by the roadside” http://www.thezimbabwetimes.com, 20/6/08; “Decomposing body of MDC polling agent found” 11/7/2008; “CIO hide MDC activist’s corpse” http://zimbabwemetro.com 23/7/08). 13 Ranger 2004a. 14 Cf. Alexander 2006; Mamdani 1996. 15 Fontein 2006b & 2007; Mubvimba 2005.

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mirrored by developments across the southern African region.16 The different burial orders that were being handled and signed, and the subsequent court order, granted but ignored, barring police interference in the funeral arrangements, all indicate how complex struggles over sovereignty and regimes of rule can emerge in disputes over how to handle the remains of the dead. Although often manipulated by chiefs and ruling clans for their own local (and indeed financial) interests, the jurisdiction of so-called “traditional authorities” in rural areas across Zimbabwe, over the burial of the dead in the landscape, relates closely, in cultural terms, to their function as living guardians of the soil, as descendants of the ancestral, often autochthonous, owners of the land, who must be appeased to ensure rain, soil fertility, and prosperity.17 Hence, it is no surprise that both the existence of past graves, and the burial of the recently dead, have become central to the complex restructuring of authority over land in Zimbabwe that has emerged since the adoption of the Fast Track land reform in 2000.18 In my own ongoing research into land reform around Lake Mutirikwi in southern Zimbabwe, knowledge of sacred places – especially ancestral graves – in the landscape, and the practices and taboos associated with them, has become a vital means of claiming, debating, and negotiating autochthony, authority, and legitimacy.19 Reports about the controversy over the burial of Gift Tandare also suggested the existence of tensions among Gift’s close relatives and kin, as indeed can often emerge at funerals in Zimbabwe, particularly between paternal and affinal relatives, over funeral arrangements, the inheritance of property, and responsibility for the care of dependents. Some reports stated that it was Gift’s paternal sister and uncle who left with the police and later signed, under duress, the burial order that “allowed” the secret “mafia style” burial, while his wife and her mother, both affines, hid. And it was the wife who later applied for, and was granted, the ineffectual court order.20 Without drawing too much out of scant information, these references do suggest the presence of a subtle subtext of family tensions intermeshing with the political manoeuvres of the ruling and opposition parties. At the very least, belief in the dangerous liminality of the deceased’s spirit during the immediate period after death and before burial, which anthropologists have noted is common among Shona peoples21, particularly after violent and traumatic death, must have made the political circumstances surrounding the funeral arrangements even more troubling for Gift’s family.

16 17 18 19 20 21

Buur & Kyed 2006; Kyed & Buur 2006; Maloka 1996. Lan 1985; Bourdillon 1987. Cf. Marongwe 2003; Chaumba & Scoones & Wolmer 2003a; 2003b; Mubvimba 2005. Fontein 2006b; 2006c; 2006d; 2007. MDC News Brief, 19/3/07. Bourdillon 1987: 119–208; Ranger 1987: 174; Lan 1985.

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While the authorities may have been concerned about the potential threat to public order that a high profile funeral in Harare’s volatile suburbs could provoke, the “secret” burial of Gift may also have functioned as a means of circumventing the creation of a memorial landscape to work against ZANU PF’s own highly politicised commemorative project, as exemplified by its monopoly of the North Korean-built National Heroes Acre in Harare. The MDC, for their part, firmly inscribed Gift Tandare on their counter–register of “National heroes” amongst all the other “innocent Zimbabweans who have been murdered for merely asking for a better life in a free and democratic Zimbabwe”.22 While “state” interference in the death and burial of Gift Tandare and others23 seems to highlight the current insecurity of the ruling regime in Harare, a longer view of commemoration in Zimbabwe since independence in 198024 indicates that attempts to manipulate the representation of the recent past, and memories of violence, has been part of the ruling party’s strategic historical project since independence, far predating its recent turn to “patriotic history”.25 As Werbner (1998) and Kriger (1995) have described, the controversies engendered by the efforts of the 1980s and 1990s to appropriate the dead for political purposes often provoked tensions not only between the ruling party and any opposition parties (then ZAPU, now the MDC), but also between political elites and commoners, the “chefs” and the “povo”, and between state and kin, and even within the fractious ruling party itself. The thwarted attempts in Matabeleland, described by Alexander & McGregor & Ranger,26 to commemorate both the unacknowledged dead of ZIPRA’s military campaigns during the liberation struggle, and the victims of the Matabeleland massacres of the gukurahundi period in the 1980s27, illustrate the extent of the ruling party’s “heavy-handed obstruction”28 of alternative forms of commemoration in the 1980s and 1990s. The purpose of this paper is to consider this history of the politics of memory and commemoration in Zimbabwe in relation to both a more recent “commemorative” project which has focused on the identification, reburial, ritual cleansing, and memorialisation of the human remains of the liberation war dead within Zimbabwe and across its borders (Mozambique, Zambia, Botswana, Angola, and Tanzania), and that other “nationalist” project of the historical imagination that has centred on “heritage”.29 Indeed, the recent project of reburials in Zimbabwe and across its

22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29

MDC News Brief, 19/3/07. See also SW Radio Africa, “Abducted Zimbabwean journalist found dead”, 6/4/07. Kriger 1995; Werbner 1998; Brickhill 1995, Alexander & McGregor & Ranger 2000. Ranger 2004b. Alexander & McGregor & Ranger 2000: 259–264. See CCJP 2007. Alexander & McGregor & Ranger 2000: 264. See Fontein 2006a.

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borders, although clearly related to the rhetoric of “patriotic history”,30 seems to sit awkwardly in the middle of the tension between these two related, but somehow distinct, nationalist projects of the past. It is, after all, National Museums and Monuments of Zimbabwe (NMMZ), the parastatal organisation responsible for cultural heritage, which has been primarily charged with carrying out the exhumations and reburials involved in this larger, UNESCO-sponsored, SADC (Southern Africa Development Community)-wide project, focusing on so-called “Freedom War heritage”.31 I will suggest that, for them, involvement in this project is not merely paying lip service to the political demands of the ruling party’s rhetoric of “patriotic history”, or the opportunities for research funding that this has offered, but also relates to recent developments in concepts of, and approaches to, “intangible heritage”, which have increasingly emphasised its living, ritual, and spiritual aspects. Like the contested burial of Gift Tandare, the exhumations and reburials of liberation war dead engage with sometimes competing, more often intermeshing, attachements to the dead; by close kin, clans, ethnic and regional communities, or work and war comrades, and political affiliates, as well as political parties and the “state”. Exploring the tensions that both commemorative and heritage processes can provoke between the “objectifying” effects of professional practices (e.g. archaeology, forensic science, and heritage management), the reworkings of contested “national” histories, and the often angry demands of marginalised communities, kin, and the dead themselves (for the restoration of sacred sites or for the return of human remains), the conclusion that this paper works towards is that the politics of the dead is not exhausted by essentially contested accounts or represen30 Ranger 2004b. 31 Although this UNESCO supported project was officially launched in March 2007 (see “Zimbabwe begins implementing the African Liberation heritage Project” in Cluster Newsletter, UNESCO Harare Cluster Office edition 3/2007, 8/3/07 and “Zimbabwe launches the African Liberation Heritage project” in Cluster Newsletter,UNESCO Harare Cluster Office edition 4/2007, 5/4/07), it can be traced back to an SADC initiative which was discussed at the UNESCO Windhoek office in August 2004 (see “Preservation of Africa’s liberation heritage” http://portal.unesco.org/en/ev.php URL_ID=22631&URL_DO=DO_ TOPIC&URL_ SECTION=201.html, see also “Independence in Africa: the African Liberation Heritage” October 2006, http://portal.unesco.org/culture/en/ev.php-URL_ID= 32088&URL_DO=DO_ TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html). In July 2004, Nick Katanekwa of the Zambia National heritage Commission delivered a paper “SADC Freedom War Heritage in Zambia” at a JSAS-sponsored conference entitled “Heritage in Southern Africa: Imagining and Marketing Public Culture and History” in Livingston, Zambia (McGregor & Schumaker 2006: 656), and it was clear that by then National Museums and Monuments of Zimbabwe had already been co-operating with its counter parts in Zambia and Mozambique in the re-habilitation and memorialisation of mass graves at former guerrilla and refugee camps at Chimoio in Mozambique and at Freedom Camp in Zambia (see “Shrines are of great historical importance” Bulawayo Chronicle 17/9/05).

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tations of past fatal events, but must also recognise the emotive materiality or affective presence of human bones in themselves. I will finish by suggesting that it is in the ambivalent agency of bones, both as extensions of the consciousness of the dead, as spirit “subjects” or persons who make demands on the living, but also as unconscious “objects” or “things” that retort to, and provoke responses from the living, that the tensions and contradictions of commemoration, heritage, and the politics of the dead are revealed.

Heritage and Commemoration In many ways, heritage and commemoration are very similar. Both involve processes of selective remembering and forgetting – or representing and silencing – the past, which are fundamentally political, contestable, and often very controversial. Both have been central to nationalist projects, and both have often involved the marginalisation, not only of different representations of the past, but also of other ways of remembering, managing, or dealing with it and its physical remains. Both reify particular ways of remembering or recounting the past, but also of dealing with its material remains, in the form of objects, landscapes, and bones. But apart from the similarities, there are also important differences or divergences. In very general terms, if heritage represents an inheritance from the past, then commemoration involves a response to the demands of the dead. Commemoration often relates to more recent, and sometimes very traumatic, events, involving the death and sacrifice32 of an individual or a group for, or on behalf of, a “nation” or another large “identity group”, while “heritage” – at least in its more old-fashioned, “monumentalist” manifestations – may appeal to achievements, constructions, or practices in the “deeper” past for the purposes of the (often nationalist) present. Indeed, this focus on different time periods in the past is, or was, often enshrined in law. For example, in Zimbabwe, as Ndoro and Pwiti have pointed out,33 now out-of-date national monument legislation prescribed that for a site to be declared a national monument, and therefore afforded legal protection, it must have existed before 1890. This, therefore, excluded recent liberation war sites. In South Africa, even places like Robben Island are “protected not because of the famous or infamous prison, but in part because of the colonial history represented on the island dating back to the occupation of the Cape by the Dutch East India Company”.34

32 Rowlands 1999. 33 Ndoro & Pwiti 2001: 24. 34 Ibid.

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Both “heritage” and “commemoration” inevitably involve selective forgetting35 or silencing in order to legitimise a cause in the present through references to the past, but while commemoration often urges the living not to forget a debt to the dead (even as war memorials may seek to foster a simultaneous forgetting of the grim actualities of death),36 heritage more often seeks to narrate and represent the practices and achievements of the past in order to inform or entertain the living. In more material terms, while state commemoration often involves the massive construction of monuments to encourage or cajole the living into particular forms of remembrance, heritage processes commonly involve selectively preserving, conserving, representing, and managing existent remains of the past, for the purpose of informing, educating, and entertaining the present. Commemorative sites and events are often more serious affairs, akin to a funeral, with an emphasis on the loss and sacrifice of the dead, the ongoing debt of the living and their requirement to “feed”37 or “finish the work of the dead”,38 whilst heritage sites can be more frivolous, less emotive of sacrifice and loss, and much more amenable to commodification. If heritage is a celebration of – or declaration of faith in – the past39 that seeks to inform the present, selectively, about it, commemoration often carries not only demands for an atonement or acknowledgement of the debt of the living to the sacrifices of the dead, but also functions of reconciliation, healing and the resolution of suffering, even if it is not always “obvious how they do this”.40 This “healing” aspect of commemoration is perhaps most clearly demonstrated by examples from Rwanda,41 South Africa42, and of course Northern Ireland, where “Healing through remembering” is the evocative name of a community project that has sought to apply the lessons of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission to its complex legacies of sectarian violence.43 Of course, these distinctions between heritage and commemoration can be very murky indeed. This is perhaps best exemplified by the examples of Auschwitz Concentration Camp in Poland, Robben Island in South Africa, and the Old Bridge of Mostar in Bosnia, all of which are world heritage sites.44 Heritage can take on the commemorative functions of post-conflict reconciliation, although at times, as in the case of the first two just mentioned, they almost appear like “anti-heritage”, 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43

Forty & Küchler 1999. Rowlands 1999: 137. Ibid.: 144. Küchler 1999: 55. Lowenthal 1998: 121. Rowlands 1999: 142. Caplan 2007; Eltringham 2004; Pottier 2002. Coombes 2004. See Purbick 2007; Ensor & Salvadó 2006; HTR Report 2002 & 2000. All these reports, and more, are available on http://www.healingthroughremembering.org/d_pubs/publications.asp. 44 See http://whc.unesco.org/en/list.

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in the sense that such monuments demonstrate not an historical precedence for the present, as a symbol of past achievement, but stand rather as examples of something not to be repeated. Such “anti-heritage” can be deftly reconfigured in different ways, as, in the example of Auschwitz, a “symbol of humanity’s cruelty to its fellow human beings in the twentieth century”45, or at Robben Island, to “symbolize the triumph of the human spirit, of freedom, and of democracy over oppression”.46 While these examples illustrate how foggy the distinction between heritage and commemoration can be, it should be remembered that these are only three out of 830 world heritage sites. The definitions of heritage espoused by UNESCO’s “world heritage system”47 do seem largely to exclude the commemorative sites and processes which form that other, highly conspicuous, backbone of national imaginative investments in the past everywhere, alongside heritage, indicating that an exploration of convergences and divergences of heritage and commemorative processes is worth pursuing. One possible line of enquiry may be to explore how the passage of time facilitates the transformation of sites of memory and commemoration into places of heritage. If, as Rowlands has suggested, “memorials become monuments as a result of the successful completion of the mourning process”,48 then maybe, by extension, it is as objects of commemoration fade into a deeper past that space is opened up for technologies of heritage to activate. Paola Filippucci’s work on landscapes and memory on the Western Front in Argonne, France, does suggest that it is the fading of immediate memory with time which has provoked increased interest in experiencing, through re-enactments and by sensual exposure to the battle-scarred landscapes, what life in the trenches might have been like.49 So World War One landscapes, which have for long been dominated by the monumentalism of state commemoration, become increasingly suffused with heritage paraphernalia, such as re-enactments, trench tours, and tourist centres. Perhaps we could suggest a similar temporal dimension to commemorative and heritage processes in Zimbabwe. If the 1980s and 1990s were marked by growing emphasis upon “healing the wounds” of Zimbabwe’s liberation struggle, as reflected in a proliferation of literature on spiritual healing and the resolution of suffering by churches, “traditional” n’anga healers, sangoma possession cults, and the Mwari cult of the Matopos Hills,50 then perhaps it was the resolution offered by these processes which provided the enabling conditions for the emergence of 45 46 47 48 49 50

See http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/31. See http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/916. Cf. Fontein 2000. Rowlands 1999: 131. Filippucci 2004: 44–45. Ranger 1992; Reynolds 1990; Schmidt 1997; Werbner 1991.

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NMMZ’s, and indeed SADC’s, Freedom Heritage Project in 2004. But, of course, this does not quite work. Not only is it far from clear that the scars of Zimbabwe’s liberation struggle have been satisfactorily healed or resolved (and in fact much evidence points to the opposite), far more disturbing are the terrible legacies of the gukurahundi massacres in Matabeleland during the 1980s, which continue to haunt Zimbabwe’s troubled postcolonial milieu. While the bones of un-identified dead from both these violent periods of Zimbabwe’s recent past continue to resurface from the earth of unmarked shallow graves and mass burial sites across the country51 – most recently when villagers in Mt Darwin “began discovering skeletons as we tilled our lands” after heavy rains52 – relatives of deceased gukurahundi victims in Bulawayo and Matabeleland have continued to demand “to know where our loved ones are buried”.53 NMMZ’s liberation heritage project – at least the reburials that have been involved – must, in part, be understood as a response to the still unresolved legacies of both pre- and post-independence violence, even as it fits both with UNESCO’s turn towards intangible, ritual, and spiritual heritage, and ZANU PF’s revitalised, but narrowed, nationalist historiography. If the murkiness of distinctions between heritage and commemoration defies the usefulness of making definitions or assertions in such general terms, it may be more profitable to think in terms of very specific examples of where commemorative and heritage practices have coincided, overlapped, confronted, or excluded each other. In order to do this, I turn briefly to the Great Zimbabwe national monument in southern Zimbabwe, which was the subject of a recently published monograph.54

Heritage and Commemoration in Zimbabwe In his account of what he calls the “heritage crusade”, Lowenthal discusses the difficulty of defining “heritage”.55 Indeed, Lowenthal does not attempt to draw a distinction between commemoration and heritage at all, preferring rather to focus on the disjuncture between “heritage” and “history”. As he puts it: “Heritage diverges from history not in being biased but in its attitude toward bias. Neither enterprise is value-free. But while historians aim to reduce bias,

51 See for example “Mass graves from Gukurahundi era located in Matabeleland” SW Radio Africa, Zimbabwe News, 19 October 2005; “Evidence of ‘dirty war’ lies far below” Zimbabwe Independent 29/9/00; “We want to know where our loved ones are buried” Letter from Z. Omphile, Bulawayo, Daily News 3/9/01. 52 “Mt Darwin’s killing fields” Sunday Mail 13/1/2008. 53 Letter from Z. Omphile, Bulawayo, Daily News 3/9/01. 54 Fontein 2006. 55 Lowenthal 1998: 94.

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heritage sanctions and strengthens it. Bias is a vice that history struggles to excise; for heritage, bias is a nurturing virtue.”56 In my research into the politics of heritage at Great Zimbabwe,57 I have found this distinction between “history” and “heritage” hard to maintain. In relation to what I have called the professionalisation of the representation and management of the past at Great Zimbabwe, one of the key problematic aspects of heritage processes is precisely their reliance on, and reification of, “modern” academic, “objectifying” approaches to dealing with the past, such as history, and particularly archaeology, but also museum practices of conservation and preservation. Following Kevin Walsh,58 I argued that archaeology is a distancing, disembedding mechanism, which has appropriated the authority to represent and manage the past from those individuals and groups who have other ways of understanding and relating to it – other perspectives on the past, its relationship to place and landscape, and its demands on the present. At Great Zimbabwe, I argued,59 it was the dominance of archaeological narratives of the past that followed the infamous Zimbabwe Controversy of the early twentieth century,60 and later the gradual professionalisation of the management and conservation of its remains, which has in effect appropriated and alienated the site away from disputing local clans which each have their own attachments to the site, their own historical narratives or history-scapes, and their own needs and means of responding to the demands of the past, in the form of tributes and rituals for the ancestral spirits, and the Voice, associated with it. Increasing after independence in 1980, the growing professionalism of NMMZ – reinforced by what I called the anti-politics of world heritage –61 meant that local communities were unable to carry out ancestral rituals to ensure rain, fertility, wealth, and the welfare of the living. It was not only the competing interests and practices of local clans which were increasingly marginalised as heritage management was “professionalised”. After 1980, Great Zimbabwe became subject to a whole host of attempts by spirit mediums and “traditionalists” from across the country to hold ceremonies and rituals there to thank the “national ancestors”, such as Nehanda, Kaguvi, and Chaminuka, for the successful liberation of the country from colonial rule, and to appease the spirits of dead guerrillas killed during the war. These high profile “national” rituals to appease the ancestors, settle the spirits of the war dead, and cleanse the perpetrators of violence, were also prevented by

56 57 58 59 60 61

Ibid.: 122. Fontein 2006a. Walsh 1992. Fontein 2006a. Kuklick 1991. Fontein 2000; 2006a: 185–212.

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NMMZ as they increased their “professionalising” control over Great Zimbabwe during the 1980s and 1990s. According to local clans, their alienation and physical exclusion from the site, and its increasing “closure” and appropriation by heritage professionals, caused its desecration. Great Zimbabwe was no longer sacred, because it was not treated as such. The sacred Chisikana spring dried up, the mysterious sounds and visions disappeared, and the Voice that used to speak from the rocks on the hill became silent. Just as the contested history-scapes of local disputing clans was silenced and effaced from official representations of the site’s past, so the voices of the past themselves were also silenced as fences, entrance fees, and security guards closed a place of communication between the dead and the living, the ancestors and their descendants. To paraphrase Bender’s words, the landscape of Great Zimbabwe was “frozen” to become a “palimpsest of past activity”;62 conserved, preserved, and mummified into a “normative landscape, as though there was only one way of telling and experiencing” it. In terms of the tension between commemoration and heritage that I have scantily proposed above, in a sense, this professionalisation of the past meant, at least for those whose rituals and ceremonies were being excluded, that the site was not commemorative enough. Heritage processes objectified and distanced the past to the exclusion of other perspectives, which are less concerned with archaeological narratives about the achievements of Great Zimbabwe’s “original” builders between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries (the primary concern of NMMZ archaeologists), and more with the need to respond to the ancestral spirits and the Voice that used to dwell thereabouts or were associated with the monument. If commemorative processes involve rituals, memorials, and monuments that are understood as a response by the living to the demands of the dead - however the dead are (re) imagined, however the response is structured, and regardless of whether at the level of the “nation”, clan, or kin – then any kind of commemoration, or “feeding [of] the dead”,63 at Great Zimbabwe was increasingly frowned upon throughout the twentieth century. The distancing effects of heritage processes against commemoration at Great Zimbabwe has a long history. Alongside Rhodesian efforts to claim the Zimbabwe sites as their own “heritage” to justify colonial conquest, based on ridiculous beliefs about its ancient, non-African origins, there were also early attempts to make it the centre of Rhodesia’s commemoration of its pioneer heroes. Most spectacular was the burial of the bones of the Alan Wilson Patrol in the late 1890s in a monumentalised grave at Great Zimbabwe, on the order of Cecil Rhodes, “to await his

62 Bender 1998: 26. 63 Rowlands 1999: 144.

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own death and burial”.64 But these remains were later removed, by order of Cecil Rhodes’s will, to accompany his own subsequent and heavily monumentalised burial in, and posthumous appropriation of, the Matopos Hills.65 Perhaps it was, in part, due to the problematic nature of appropriating Great Zimbabwe as the ancient and exotic heritage of Rhodesia that led to the Matopos Hills being turned into “the monumental centre of the white Rhodesian ‘nation’”,66 and the site of many subsequent Rhodesian commemorative efforts. However, given the well-known significance of the Matopos hills to local African peoples, as the site of hugely important Mwari cult shrines,67 the grave of the great Ndebele leader Mzilikazi at Entumbane, as well as those of earlier, pre-Ndebele rulers,68 Rhodesian commemoration in the Matopos must be understood as an appropriation of an already sacred landscape, which was deliberately “impressed upon the minds of local Africans”.69 Ndebele indunas were pledged to guard Rhodes’s grave, and remember their “surrender” to Rhodes in 1896, even as memories of past Ndebele successes in battle or revolt against colonial rule were supposed to be forgotten. As Ranger has discussed (2007), if Great Zimbabwe has suffered a lack of ritual and an “abundance of archaeology”, then the opposite could not be more true of the Matopos, where cultural heritage and archaeology have been minimal in contrast to an “abundance of ritual”, in the form of the Mwari shrines, Rhodesian commemoration at the grave of Cecil Rhodes, and African rituals at the graves of both Mzilikazi and those of earlier, pre-Ndebele Banyubi rulers. But if Great Zimbabwe did not become the centre of Rhodesian commemoration as it might have done, commemorative efforts did on several occasions continue to surface uneasily at the site. One extraordinary example was the “psychic” séances of H. Clarkson Fletcher (1941) held in the Great Enclosure at Great Zimbabwe in the 1930s, when contact was made with the spirits of several dead Rhodesian heroes, including Alan Wilson and Richard Hall, alongside more “ancient”, fictional characters such as “Abbukuk” the “high priest”, “Utali”, the “last of the Queens of Great Zimbabwe”, and of course her lover “Ra-set”. But more lasting than these white settler attempts to communicate with the spirits of Rhodesian heroes was the naming of parts of the ruins after early Rhodesian explorers. Soon after independence, as part of official efforts to rub away any last traces of the colonial, commemorative appropriation of Great Zimbabwe, these names were replaced. The Director of Great Zimbabwe at that time, Cran Cooke, was anguished about this, suggesting cynically that “at some future time Karanga names will be 64 65 66 67 68 69

Ranger 1999: 30; Kuklick 1991. Ranger 1999: 30–32, 39–42. Ibid.: 40. Daneel 1970; Nyathi 2003; Ranger 1999; Werbner 1989. Ranger 1999: 19. Ibid.: 31; 1987.

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invented or perhaps some areas named after important visitors since independence”.70 But Cran Cooke misunderstood the continued professionalisation of heritage management that was to follow. Shona terms were allocated alongside neutral English terms for parts of the ruins (like Great Enclosure, Imba Huru, Valley ruins, Eastern ruins, Hill complex), but no parts of the ruins have taken on the names of recent high profile visitors, or even the names of famous local or national ancestors. After a Rhodesian pioneer memorial in the nearby town of Fort Victoria (now Masvingo) was defaced shortly after independence, a plaque that marked the site of the removed Alan Wilson memorial grave at Great Zimbabwe also became a subject of controversy, and it was subsequently removed.71 It was not only the traces of Rhodesian commemorative efforts that were banished from Great Zimbabwe after independence. Expectations that Great Zimbabwe would be elevated to a national sacred site – which emerged from the discourses and spiritual practices of spirit mediums, war veterans, chiefs, and others during the liberation struggle, in tandem with nationalist use of the name “Zimbabwe” as a “useful rally point” for the imagination of a new nation – were also undermined and ultimately thwarted by NMMZ.72 The predominance of a “heritage” perspective continued to exclude commemoration of any kind. Immediately after independence, a local medium called Sophia Muchini, who claimed to be possessed by the legendary Ambuya Nehanda, attempted to lay claim to the ruins, squatting on site, and carrying out rituals and sacrifices amongst its towering stone walls. Her calls for a national ceremony at Great Zimbabwe, to thank the ancestors for independence, to settle the spirits of dead guerrillas killed and to cleanse the perpetrators of violence, were ignored, and eventually she was imprisoned after being implicated in several high profile murders of white settler farmers in the district.73 She was not alone in her efforts to campaign for a national cleansing ceremony at the site, to thank the ancestors for their support during the struggle. In the early 1980s, another very high profile event was organised, involving chiefs from across the country, as well as prominent spirit mediums and members of ZANU PF, during which hundreds of cattle were to be slaughtered in honour of the ancestral spirits.74 This event was eventually called off, some allege on the orders of Prime Minister Robert Mugabe himself, and thereafter NMMZ thwarted any further attempt to hold national commemorative or cleansing ceremonies at Great Zimbabwe. In 1985, just as Great Zimbabwe was being considered for the world heritage list, calls for the local district Heroes Acre to be erected with the Great Zimbabwe estate were rejected by NMMZ on the grounds that this was not an ap70 71 72 73 74

Letter from Regional Director Cran Cooke to T. Huffman, 11 June 1981, NMMZ File H2. Fontein 2006a: 170–171. Ibid.: 117–166. Ibid.: 156–162. Ibid.: 40.

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propriate use of a world heritage site.75 Even the smaller, localised ceremonies of neighbouring clans, whose historical relationship with Great Zimbabwe was acknowledged, if scarcely celebrated or represented, were forbidden by NMMZ after fights nearly broke out between rival claimants from the competing clans of Nemanwa and Mugabe during an early event in the 1980s.76 By the mid 1990s, Great Zimbabwe had indeed become a heritage palimpsest of past activities, and rituals of any sort, commemorative or not, were banned. But if commemoration of any sort was not permitted at Great Zimbabwe, that does not mean the newly independent state did not invest heavily in national commemoration. Indeed, just as the last vestiges of Rhodesian memorabilia were removed or sidelined at Great Zimbabwe, so across the whole country the commemorative landscape of Rhodesia was sidelined, and in many cases physically removed, to be replaced by the commemorative symbols and rituals of the newly independent state. Zimbabwe’s postcolonial commemorative project has been hugely controversial in many ways. Kriger (1995) has described in some detail the controversies that surrounded the high profile removal of Rhodesian monuments in Harare, Bulawayo, and elsewhere that followed independence. Many streets in Harare were renamed, not just after the dead heroes of Zimbabwe’s liberation struggles, dating back to the rebellions of 1896, and up to the struggle of the 1960s and 1970s, but also after still-living politicians. Debates even raged about World War Two memorials, which local politicians sometimes considered to be emblematic of colonial rule, and felt should be removed, whilst central government argued these war memorials signified, primarily, the fight against fascism and should therefore remain in their prominent public places.77 In the event, World War Two memorials in central Harare were not removed, and they remain where they are today. If such debates about the removal of Rhodesian monuments stirred tensions between urban councils and the central state, they also revealed deep fissures between the commemorative priorities of the white community and Zimbabwe’s new ZANU PF government. It is therefore of no surprise that the presence of Cecil Rhodes’s grave, only a few hundred yards from the sacred graves of Banyubi ancestors, was also controversial, and it has recently become the source of new debates, derision, and contestation, amongst calls for his remains to be exhumed and returned to Britain, although the recent listing of the Matopos as a world heritage site means that Rhodes’s grave is unlikely to be disturbed.78 But perhaps most controversial of all the Zimbabwean government’s commemorative work has been the National Heroes Acre built in Harare, and the accompanying, hierarchical structure of provincial and district Heroes Acres across 75 76 77 78

Minutes of 24th meeting of local trustees, 4/8/85. NMMZ file C1a “Trustee correspondence”. Matenga 2000. Kriger 1995: 143. See Ranger 2004b; Ndlovu 2003.

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the country that later followed it. Apart from the way in which this memorial landscape has reinforced a particularly Zimbabwean, indeed ZANU PF, kind of elitism – with its grading of district, provincial, and national heroes, and in its hard distinctions between the chefs and the povo, the elite and the people, thereby profoundly reworking the emphasis on the common soldier, which exemplifies “modern” commemoration in western Europe79 – this memorial project has also involved a highly politicised nomination process which has been dominated by ZANU PF and its determination to present the kind of national past that suits its political interests. During much of the 1980s, before the unity agreement of 1987, this meant the marginalisation of the role played during the liberation struggle by the other nationalist movement, ZAPU (Zimbabwe African People’s Union) and its armed wing ZIPRA (Zimbabwe People’s Revolutionary Army). As a result, very few ZAPU/ZIPRA heroes have been buried at Heroes Acre, and right up to the unity accord of 1987, ZAPU leaders continued to protest against the ZANU PF-dominated process of selecting national heroes, by boycotting national heroes celebrations.80 Most famously, Lookout Masuku, the commander of ZIPRA, who had been detained by the government during the “arms cache” crisis of 1982 that later precipitated the ravaging gukurahundi period, was denied national hero status after his death in 1986, despite his well-known and huge contribution to the liberation struggle.81 Instead, he was buried in Lady Stanley Cemetery in Bulawayo, where many royal Ndebele clans and leaders are buried.82 An estimated 20,000 people attended Lookout Masuku’s funeral, when a furious Joshua Nkomo, leader of ZAPU, demanded “if Lookout Masuku is not a hero, who then is a hero in this country?”83 If ZAPU boycotts of National Heroes celebrations during the 1980s challenged the legitimacy of the ZANU PF government’s national commemorative project, then during the same period, the government’s actions also severely hindered ZAPU’s own attempts to commemorate its war dead. As well as the detention of ZAPU leaders such as Lookout Masuku and Dumiso Dabengwa, the confiscation of ZAPU war records meant it was not able to publish lists of its war dead as ZANU PF did on Heroes Days in 1982 and 1983, making the party vulnerable to criticism in the public press.84 But much more significant were the military activities against civilians, ZAPU ex-combatants, and so called “dissidents” that took place in rural areas across Matabeleland during the gukurahundi period, which made any efforts by ZAPU to locate and commemorate its war dead absolutely 79 80 81 82 83 84

Werbner 1998: 73. Werbner 1998; Kriger 1995; Brickhill 1995. Brickhill 1995: 164–165. Nyathi 2007. Kriger 1995: 153. Ibid.: 151.

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impossible before the Unity agreement of 1987. The urgency of the issue of uncommemorated ZAPU war dead was certainly recognised, and even as the negotiations between ZAPU and ZANU were still in progress, the ZAPU central committee appointed the ZIPRA War Shrines Committee to “resume its programme of identifying the ZIPRA war dead”.85 In the 1990s, its successor, the Mafela Trust began a process of identifying and commemorating ZIPRA’s dead combatants from the liberation struggle, a programme that continues today. Since the unity accord of the late 1980s ZAPU’s war legacy has been increasingly acknowledged in state commemoration, and when Joshua Nkomo himself died in 1999 he was buried at the National Heroes Acre in Harare with a record 100,000 people swarming to pay their respects.86 But the estimated 20,000 gukurahundi deaths87 in Matabeleland have never been officially commemorated, and President Mugabe’s apology for the “moment of madness” continues to be controversial and for many inadequate, as Vice President Msika himself implied in a statement in 2006, made whilst attending a Mafela-organised event at Jotsholo to commemorate the 1979 killing of 11 ZIPRA cadres by Rhodesian forces.88 Despite the incorporation of ZAPU history into the state’s formal postcolonial narrative, local Ndebele commemorative efforts, both of the liberation struggle and the gukurahundi, continued to be strictly controlled after the Unity agreement between ZANU and ZAPU in 1987. As Alexander & McGregor & Ranger have described (2000) at some length, two different efforts in Northern Matabeleland in the 1990s to commemorate both ZAPU’s liberation war effort, and the gukurahundi massacres were thwarted after organisers were put under considerable political pressure, and threats from the CIO.89 Both a high-profile initiative to commemorate ZAPU war dead at Pupu shrine in Lupane – famously the site of not only liberation-era violence, but also of Lobengula’s last successful stand against the doomed Alan Wilson patrol in 1893 – and a more localised event to commemorate victims of the gukurahundi at Daluka, were subject to “heavy-handed obstruction” which illustrated how “the rigid, top-down control of the nation’s ‘heroes’ could not be easily relinquished” because “they symbolized the ruling elite’s legitimacy”.90 Linking either an Ndebele past of resistance to colonial rule in the 1890s at Pupu, or a postindependence past of violence suffered at the hands of the ZANU PF-controlled state forces at Daluka, to formal state commemoration of the liberation struggle was unacceptable to the ruling elite, even if that now included former ZAPU leaders. 85 86 87 88 89 90

Brickhill 1995: 166. GoZ 2000. CCJP 2007: xi. “Msika speaks out on Gukurahundi” Zimbabwe Standard, 15/10/2006. Alexander & McGregor & Ranger 2000: 259–264. Ibid.: 264.

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Official commemoration at National Heroes Acre has also continued to be beset with problems, despite the government’s incorporation of ZIPRA’s war history in its recent “patriotic history”.91 Many founding nationalists have been left out of Heroes Acre (and the financial benefits that burial there offers for the relatives of the deceased) as part and parcel of ZANU PF’s determination to control Zimbabwe’s state historiography. The exclusion of Rev. Ndabaningi Sithole, a cofounder of ZANU in 1963, from Heroes Acre in 2000 was particularly remarked upon, causing opposition MPs to question the role of ZANU PF’s politburo in the selection of National Heroes, arguing that “hero’s acre did not resemble a national shrine but a ZANU PF shrine”.92 The venom of such critiques has been further fuelled by the burial of many ZANU PF politicians and war veterans of dubious national hero credentials in recent years, such as the late minister for youth, Border Gezi, who set up Zimbabwe’s notorious youth militia in 2001; the war veterans Chenjerai Hunzi and Cain Nkala in 2001; and Solomon Tavengwa, a former corrupt mayor of Harare in 2004; to name but a few.93 Even former ZANU PF heavyweight Eddison Zvobgo declared in 2001 that “the heroes acre we have come to know has lost its glory”,94 before his own wife’s death, and burial at Heroes Acre preceded his own subsequent death and burial as a National Hero in August 2004.95 Both Zvobgo and Cain Nkala’s burial at Heroes Acre (and some would include Joshua Nkomo in this list too) illustrates how ZANU PF’s tightly controlled programme of commemoration does sometimes celebrate in death those whom it denigrated in life. Zvobgo increasingly became a thorn in ZANU PF’s side in the later years of his life, and many believe Cain Nkala’s murder was committed by state agents.96 More recently the burial at National Heroes Acre of three Army generals who died in quick succession from “natural causes” and an “unlucky” train accident in August 2007, amidst rumours of a military plot against President Mugabe, has fed fuel to the national shrine’s reputation as “the final resting place of senior ZANU PF cadres who dare to challenge Mr Mugabe’s rule”.97 Apart from the controversies engendered by ZANU PF’s highly politicized control of state historiography and the representation of the past, official commemoration in Zimbabwe has also been beset by problems to do with practices of reburial associated with the structured hierarchy of national, provincial, and district heroes acres across the country. Sometimes these had specific cultural dimensions. 91 92 93 94 95 96

Ranger 2004b. “MPS attack selection of national heroes” Daily News 2/3/01. For instance, “Heroes?” 21/11/04, www.sokwanele.com. “Heroes acre has lost its glory, says Zvobgo” The Standard, 19–25/8/01. “Obituary” The Independent, 30/8/04. See, for example, “Comment – Come clean, comrades”, “Nkala’s family breaks silence” & “Trouble as Nkala body arrives” in Zimbabwe Standard, 19/11/01. 97 “Robert Mugabe’s final resting place” The Telegraph, 6/8/07.

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In the 1980s, as well as protesting against its partisan commemorative project, ZAPU leaders also rejected the government’s 1982 decree that the remains of dead guerrilla fighters “that had surfaced from shallow graves dug during the war”,98 should be exhumed and reburied at local heroes acres. Joshua Nkomo argued that Ndebele traditions did not permit the exhumation of the dead, rather they had to be commemorated in their original graves.99 As a result, the ZIPRA War Shrine Committee and its successor the Mafela Trust have tended to emphasise the construction of shrines and memorials in situ, rather than exhumations and reburials, “except in exceptional cases”.100 It is interesting to note that, whilst obviously much more politically salient in other ways, the exhumation and reburial of gukurahundi victims (as far as this has been possible at all) that another organisation, the Amani Trust, has been involved in101 seem to have caused much less controversy, suggesting perhaps that this taboo is not as rigid as Joshua Nkomo argued. Although, in Shona areas, the reburial of dead guerrillas in district heroes acres did sometimes offer meaningful resolution to troubled war legacies – as best epitomised by the 1989 Gutu reburial ceremony described in Daneel’s (1995) thinly fictionalised Guerrilla Snuff – in many cases the hierarchism and elitism of the state’s commemorative project meant that “grassroots disinterest in the official commemoration of heroes acres has manifest itself in low party interest in organising reburials, in reluctance to contribute to reburial projects, and in low turnouts at official functions”.102 Rural disinterest in district heroes acres also often derived from anxieties about offending local ancestral spirits by burying non-local guerrillas, of different or unknown totem and clan identity, in the areas where they fought and were killed during the war rather than in their own rural areas. While some rural communities have felt ill at ease with the burial of such “foreign” guerrillas in their ancestral territories, living relatives and guerrilla comrades haunted by the spirits of their unsettled dead relatives and friends have themselves continued to demand the exhumation and return of human remains from shallow and sometimes mass graves in other parts of the country and across national borders in Mozambique and Zambia, to be interred in the soil of their own ancestors and become ancestors themselves.103 A key part of both Ndebele and Shona mortuary rituals is some sort of “bringing home” ceremony, (umbuyiso in Ndebele, or kugadzira or kurova guva in Shona) which involves returning the spirit of the deceased back to the family home a year or more after death, to become a protecting ancestor. Failure to perform 98 99 100 101 102 103

Kriger 1995: 144. Ibid.: 150. Brickhill 1995: 166. Eppel 2004: 57. Kriger 1995: 148. Fontein 2006c: 185–188; Cox 2005; Shoko 2006.

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these specific rituals to return the spirits of the dead, whether involving the reburial of actual remains, or merely the symbolic return of soil from graves elsewhere, is understood to anger and trouble the spirits, and in turn precipitate great personal or family misfortune. So it is no surprise that, even as official heroes acres have not received the popular support that had been envisaged, demands (which first emerged soon after independence)104 for the repatriation of human remains or symbolic soil from neighbouring countries have continued and have often intersected, in the context of drought and growing political and economic strife, with the demands of spirit mediums, chiefs, and others, for a national cleansing ceremony at Great Zimbabwe (or elsewhere) to thank the ancestors for independence, and to cleanse those who fought during the struggle, which I discussed above. These issues gained more national saliency as war veterans became increasingly disaffected during the early 1990s, and subsequently, as their courtship by the ruling party was renewed from 1997 onwards, and particularly in the period since 2000, when Zimbabwe’s political crisis deepened and ZANU PF’s nationalism became increasingly authoritarian.105 Clearly then, Zimbabwe’s official commemorative efforts have been as controversial as its heritage processes. For most of the independence era, or at least until the mid-1990s, the state continued to maintain a sharp distinction between heritage and commemoration, yet both have involved normalising processes in which particular narratives of the past and particular ways of dealing with its remains have been promoted, while the perspectives and demands of others about the past, and what to do with its remains, human or otherwise, have been marginalised, silenced, and excluded. As a result, both official commemoration and heritage have remained problematic and subject to intense contestation.

Liberation Heritage The recent focus on so-called liberation or freedom heritage seems to reverse or challenge this separation between commemoration and heritage. Or perhaps in other words, it seems to exist precisely in the middle of the tension between these two. Originally, state memorials and commemoration at heroes acres in Harare and across the country were under the control of the Zimbabwe National Army. Since 1994, NMMZ have been officially involved, after it was recognised that the army needed the “professional input” that NMMZ could offer.106 After a lively parliamentary debate in 1995 about the poor state of many heroes acres across the country, NMMZ became increasingly focused on answering the “deafening call” for 104 See Kriger 1995: 149. 105 Raftopoulos 2003. 106 Interview with C. Chauke 5/4/06.

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“decent burials of our heroes” and “decent heroes acres”.107 But it is only since 1997/1998, when former bases at Chomoio (Mozambique) and Freedom Camp (Zambia) were surveyed by NMMZ and formally “commissioned” by the President, that this involvement in state commemorative efforts has been extended to become what is now known as “liberation heritage”, involving not only the exhumation and reburial of war dead found in shallow graves within Zimbabwe, but also excavations of former guerrilla and refugee camps in Mozambique, Zambia, Botswana, Angola, and Tanzania, and the rehabilitation of mass graves and memorial shrines at these sites.108 For NMMZ, as one official put it, “the whole issue of liberation heritage has quite a lot of potential importance […] as a new direction for us to take”,109 offering new opportunities in government funding for research and excavations, and reflecting and cultivating a resurgence of renewed public and political interest in NMMZ’s work. With this growing involvement by NMMZ, it seems that the liberation war and its material remains are no longer just the subject of state commemoration, but also of formal heritage processes. This is clear from the four phases of the project that were identified by NMMZ’s curator of militaria, Retired Lieutenant-Colonel Edgar Nkiwane, in 2004, which included “the identification of the liberation war sites, traditional acknowledgment of the souls of fallen freedom fighters, physical rehabilitation of the burials, erecting memorial shrines and site museums or interpreting centres, as well as conservation and promotion of Zimbabwe’s Liberation Heritage”.110 NMMZ is now in the process of building a new museum at the national heroes acre to contain objects retrieved from its excavations, and to represent an authoritative account of the liberation struggle. At its museum in Gweru, NMMZ already has a display containing objects and photographs from these excavations.111 Furthermore, NMMZ is also involved alongside the National Archives and the University of Zimbabwe, in a project called “Capturing a fading national memory” to collect oral histories of the struggle. The Zimbabwe National Army has a parallel project collecting such oral testimonies, which it has evocatively called “Operation mapfupa achamhuka” in reference to the famous prophecy of the national ancestor Ambuya Nehanda that “her bones would rise again”, made when she was hanged by Rhodesians after the rebellions against colonial rule in 1896. As one 107 NMMZ Monthly Report, November 1995, NMMZ file O/1 “Monthly Reports”. 108 NMMZ Monthly Report, November/December 1997, NMMZ file O/1 “monthly reports”; “RE: The freedom camp and Chimoio commissioning” Memo from Executive Director Dawson Munjeri to all Board members, 3/8/98, NMMZ file C1a “Trustee Correspondence”. See also “Shrines are of great historical importance” Bulawayo Chronicle, 17/9/05; Shoko 2006. 109 Interview with C. Chauke 5/4/06. 110 The Herald 18/03/04, cited in Shoko 2006: 8–9. 111 Field notes, 26/10/05.

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historian at the University of Zimbabwe recently put it, this new drive for the collection of oral histories of the liberation struggle, as well as archaeological excavations of war sites, derives from a recognition of “the requirement for there to be a narrative to go along with commemoration”.112 Of course, this need for a narrative to go alongside commemoration undoubtedly has serious political dimensions. Indeed, this project clearly fits perfectly with the ruling party’s effort to re-imagine Zimbabwe’s past – what Ranger has called “patriotic history”113 – as a means of re-asserting its own legitimacy, whilst also undermining the “liberation credentials” of the opposition party, the MDC. This has also manifested itself in other forms, most conspicuously in a series of controversial and populist “cultural galas” that have been held at sites across the country to commemorate the lives of nationalist leaders such as Simon Muzenda and Joshua Nkomo,114 the unity pact of 1987, and other significant Zimbabwean events. Two very problematic such galas were held at Great Zimbabwe, until pressure from angry local elders assisted NMMZ in their efforts to prevent any further galas at the site,115 and in 2004 one was held at Chimoio in Mozambique, the site of one of the Rhodesian army’s worst atrocities against refugees and ZANLA guerrillas during the liberation struggle.116 But the liberation heritage project can also be seen as a response to a variety of different interests in Zimbabwe and beyond. For many people, the new focus on oral histories of the struggle can offer the opportunity to recount their own experiences, wrestling control of the representation of the past away from both the elite accounts of nationalist leaders, but also those of academic historians who have dominated the study of the war since independence. These oral histories can sometimes offer profound challenges to the dominant narratives of ZANU PF, as for example when rural people describe atrocities and violence they suffered at the hands of both Rhodesian forces and “freedom fighters” during the struggle.117 In other cases, war veterans have formed groups such as Taurai Zvehondo [lit. “talk about the war”], which, according to its leader, the prominent war veteran Cde Rutanhire, “should be a platform where all living fighters and heroes talk about their experiences. We want the unknown ex-combatants whose voices have never been heard, whose stories are still missing, to come forward and participate in this very important event of recording our national history. This is very 112 113 114 115 116

G. Mazarire personal communication, June 2007. Ranger 2004b. See Shoko 2006: 4. Fontein 2006a: 217–218. See “Minister blows $1.5 billion on musical galas” ZIM Online 2/11/04; “we’re not broke, say Zim propagandists” in Mail & Guardian 24/10/04. 117 Interview with C.Chauke 5/4/06.

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important because it is the only way future generations will know what really happened.”118 The liberation heritage project also obviously engages with the continuing demands of spirit mediums, war veterans, and relatives, for the repatriation and return of the war dead, and the settling of their spirits. The high profile presence of spirit mediums, chiefs, and other “traditional” leaders at reburial events in Zimbabwe and abroad119 illustrates the extent to which this project not only merges existing commemorative and heritage structures and processes, but also responds to ritual demands previously marginalised or excluded by both these state-dominated processes at Great Zimbabwe, heroes acres, and elsewhere.120 In this respect, the project can also be seen as part of a wider response to continuing demands for national ritual events to thank the ancestors for independence, and to cleanse the nation’s troubling legacies of violence, which have become more urgent and insistent in recent years in relation to drought, food shortages, and economic and political crisis.121 Indeed, in 2005 and 2006, the government sponsored nationwide biras in every chiefdom, which, according to some, were meant to, finally, thank the ancestors for independence, to settle the spirits of the war dead, and to ask for rain.122 Immersed in ongoing and highly complex localised contests, and with Zimbabwe’s macroeconomic and political situation continuing to deteriorate, it is doubtful whether these events could have forestalled the continuing calls for national ceremonies at Great Zimbabwe or elsewhere; nevertheless they do indicate how NMMZ’s liberation heritage project engages with “traditionalist” concerns across Zimbabwe. It is equally important to note that the liberation heritage project has not been entirely monopolised by spirit mediums and other adherents to so-called “traditional” religion; representatives of churches, and in particular prophets from African independent churches, have also been involved, as exemplified by the role played by a prophet called Jimmy Motsi in the location of war graves in Mt Darwin.123 118 Cde Runtanhire quoted in “Mt Darwin’s killing fields” Sunday Mail 13 January 2008. 119 See, for example, “56 war vets reburied” Daily News, 25/10/01; “Independence war mass graves unearthed in Zimbabwe” New Zimbabwe 8/7/04; “remains of liberation war fighter exhumed” Herald 10/7/04; “State to probe discovery of mass graves” Herald 16/7/04; “Efforts to locate 2nd Chimurenga mass graves continue” ZBC NEWS 12/1/08; “Mt Darwin’s killing fields” Sunday Mail, 13/1/08. See also accounts described by Cox 2005 and Shoko 2006. 120 Fontein 2006c. 121 See, for example, “Mysterious deaths rock Kanyemba” Sunday Mail 3/6/08 & “56 war vets reburied” Daily News 25/10/01. 122 See, for example, “Celebratory biras reach climax” Sunday Mail, 25/9/05; Fontein 2006c: 185–188; Shoko 2006. 123 “Mt Darwin’s killing fields” Sunday Mail, 13/1/08.

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For NMMZ, this new liberation portfolio also came precisely at a moment when it began to take seriously and implement a new interest in the intangible, living, and spiritual aspects of heritage. This has manifested itself in the easing of restrictions against local ceremonies at Great Zimbabwe, and even an NMMZ-sponsored event to reopen a sacred spring in 2000; a growing concern to involve local communities in the management of all of its heritage sites; and the successful world heritage nomination in 2004 of the Matopos hills as a cultural landscape, thereby recognising the huge spiritual significance of the Mwari shrines of Njelele and Matonjeni, and the grave of Mzilikazi, founder of the Ndebele nation. Whether these important changes to NMMZ’s approach to cultural heritage derive from UNESCO’s determination to overturn the monumentalist and Eurocentric biases of its world heritage concept as originally encapsulated by the World Heritage Convention of 1972,124 or if the reverse is true (that changes to the world heritage system were provoked by the experiences and demands of practitioners in African states and elsewhere), is hard to say, and perhaps beside the point. What is clear is that the broader, international climate of changing definitions of world heritage, an increased recognition of “intangible”, “ritual”, and “living” forms of heritage, and a mounting desire for notions and practices of world heritage to be responsive to both African contexts and particular “local” forms of management, provides the context within which Zimbabwe’s liberation heritage project gains traction across the southern African region. Although it undoubtedly fits well with ZANU PF’s own “patriotic history”, the saliency of “liberation heritage”, both across the region and for UNESCO, should not be understated. This is evidenced by the substantial co-operation between the national heritage organisations of individual states in the region (particularly between Zambia’s National Heritage Conservation Commission and Zimbabwe’s NMMZ), between SADC countries as a whole, and by the role of UNESCO’s Windhoek office in this programme.125 The significance of the international dimension of the NMMZ’s liberation heritage project is also revealed by the existence of other, related regional programmes, such as ALUKA’s “Strug-

124 See Fontein 2000. 125 On Zambian and Zimbabwean co-operation, see, for example, “Museums team rehabilitating graves in Zambia” The Herald 12/7/06, also Katanekwa 2004 & McGregor & Schumaker 2006:656). For information about UNESCO’s role in this, see, for example, “Zimbabwe begins implementing the African Liberation heritage Project” in Cluster Newsletter, UNESCO Harare Cluster Office edition 3/2007, 8/3/07; “Zimbabwe launches the African Liberation Heritage project” in Cluster Newsletter,UNESCO Harare Cluster Office edition 4/2007, 5/4/07); “Preservation of Africa’s liberation heritage” http://portal. unesco.org/en/ev.php URL_ID=22631&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html; “Independence in Africa: the African Liberation Heritage” October 2006, http://portal.unesco.org/ culture/ en/ev.php-URL_ID=32088&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html).

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gles for Freedom in Southern Africa” project, which is creating a digital library of oral and archival sources on anti-colonial movements in the region.126 There is also a sense in which this new liberation heritage project is a response to events already happening on the ground. Apart from collaborating with the ongoing work of two prominent NGOS in Matabeleland – the Mafela Trust, and the Amani trust, NMMZ is also working with the War Veterans Association, which has an obvious interest in the project. Cox (2005) and Shoko (2006) both describe events that followed the discovery in 2004 of mass graves containing the remains of people killed by Rhodesian forces in the Mt Darwin area of north-eastern Zimbabwe. Here, war veterans along with relatives, spirit mediums, and in some cases members of the CIO, led efforts to locate, identify, exhume, and rebury individual human remains from mass graves. In some reported cases, the spirits of the dead themselves were involved, as they possessed spirit mediums or war veteran comrades, and were then able to identify their own specific bones from the remains of the estimated 5000 people buried in the 19 graves and abandoned mines in the area.127 In January 2008, Taurai Zvehondo and another war veteran-led organisation, the Fallen Heroes Exhumers, which have both been involved in identifying mass graves in Mt Darwin, were reported to be “awaiting assistance from the Government which should lead the exhumation process”.128 Similarly, in 2006 Crispin Chauke, then acting deputy executive director of NMMZ, described how local people had reported the existence of a site called Chomungai on a re-settled farm in Gutu, where more than 100 people had died during the war, and requested “some sort of museum or memorial to be built there, and NMMZ are involved in that”.129 NMMZ have also been involved in singular burial sites where the identity of the individual concerned is known to local communities. In Chivi, people reported a site to NMMZ where the bones of a guerrilla fighter buried during the war “are now visible, and there will have to be museums intervention at that site”.130 As well as working closely with war veteran organisations and local communities, NMMZ also works with the families of the unsettled dead themselves, who sometimes approach them asking for help in identification, exhumation, and reburial of their dead relatives. Crispin Chauke described a reburial that took place at the request of a close relative of a man killed by a landmine in Gaerezi in eastern Zimbabwe. In that case, the dead person’s identity and the details of his death were known to witnesses, but in many cases local knowledge about the identity of dead guerrillas is limited to the noms de guerre that guerrillas adopted during the strug126 See www.aluka.org/. 127 See Shoko 2006; Cox 2005. 128 “Mt Darwin’s killing fields” Sunday Mail January 13/1/2008; “Efforts to locate 2nd Chimurenga mass graves continuing” ZBC News, 12/1/08. 129 Interview with C.Chauke, 5/4/06. 130 Ibid.

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gle to ensure the safety of their kin. Such problems are frequently compounded in cases where people were buried far away from their own home areas, such as in camps in Zambia and Mozambique, or in distant operational zones within Zimbabwe. It is perhaps exactly in such cases that the role of prophets, n’angas, and possessed spirit mediums come into their own, complementing both the collection of oral histories and the forensic archaeological approaches that NMMZ and organisations like Mafela and Amani are involved in. In some of the cases described by Shoko (2006) and Cox (2006), it was the living relatives themselves (in one case a 14 year old girl) who, possessed by the restless spirits of their dead brothers and children, have located, named, and identified the particular bones of their relatives to be returned and buried in the soil of their own ancestors’ rural homes. Although there are some obvious continuities with previous state commemorations and reburials,131 it does seem, then, that this new “heritage” project has much more potential to deal with the complex, overlapping demands of the dead, and those of living relatives, war veterans, and others haunted by them, than what the highly problematic commemorative efforts of the 1980s and early 1990s ever afforded. This does not mean that the new project has not been contentious. Some spirit mediums I spoke to in Masvingo District in 2006 derided both the national bira ceremonies held in September 2005, and the reburials carried out at former camps in Mozambique, for being politically motivated, or for not following correct procedures or involving the proper ancestral representatives.132 Of course, like nearly all such “traditional” events in Zimbabwe, these reburials are subject to the different interpretations, political and clan loyalties, and religious beliefs of people involved. It is also unclear exactly to what extent NMMZ (and the other national and international bodies involved, not to mention the ruling party) will be able to continue to allow the rather ad-hoc involvement of war veterans, spirit mediums, n’anga’s, prophets, and relatives in these reburials, without stamping some of its own more conventional, bureaucratic imprint upon the processes. Nor is it clear to what extent NMMZ is able to successfully deal with the intensely troubling legacies of Zimbabwe’s gukurahundi.133 Nevertheless, it does seem as if NMMZ’s new liberation heritage project is qualitatively different, both from past state commemoration, and from the professionalised heritage processes that have been so problematic at Great Zimbabwe and elsewhere, regardless of the fact that this does not mean it is any less politicised or controversial. NMMZ’s liberation heritage project does seem to be located exactly in the middle of the tension between commemoration and heritage, because the reburials of the war dead have involved both the distancing, “objectifying”, and 131 For instance, Daneel 1995. 132 For instance, Fontein 2006c: 186–187. 133 Cf. Eppel 2004.

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“professionalising” processes of heritage and archaeology, and efforts to respond to the demands of war veterans, traditionalists, and kin, and even of the dead themselves, to be commemorated, memorialised, and ritually “returned” to Zimbabwe, and to the soil of their ancestors. In short, the reburials have involved both efforts to narrate and objectify the past, and efforts to respond to the demands that the dead make on the living. In Chauke’s words: “We try to combine both forensic methods and traditional methods. At Nyadonzya (Mozambique) for example we had traditional people come there because it was felt that the spirits of the people killed were still there and needed to be returned to their home country. So the chiefs were sent there […] So they went to all the different burial sites at Nyadonzia and did rituals there and collected soils to be brought back to Zimbabwe so that the spirits could return home. Some of these soils are now in the tomb of the unknown soldier, to represent or take the spirits of the dead child back to his home country.”134 Above all else, then, it is its effort to respond to the demands of the dead which marks this project out as different from both the distancing effects of previous heritage processes and the earlier, problematic state commemorations of the 1980s and early 1990s. Pushing this analysis further in the last section of the paper, I want to reflect briefly on how, apart from, or rather in conjunction with, the spirits of the dead, it is the bones and physical remains of the dead, in their very presence and materiality, surfacing from the soil of shallow graves across the country and over its borders, that have subverted the otherwise normalising aspects of commemoration and heritage in Zimbabwe.

Unsettling Bones If both heritage and commemoration in Zimbabwe have involved the marginalisation of alternative pasts and alternative ways of dealing with its material remains, then bones have often confronted and subverted these normalising processes. Building on the work of Howard Williams (2004) and others,135 I suggest that it is through their ambivalent agency as both “persons” and “objects” that bones can do this. The most obvious way in which bones can confront both commemorative and heritage processes is through the presence of the “wrong” bones (or indeed the absence of the “right” bones), which point to the alternative versions of the past, otherwise silenced or forgotten. At Great Zimbabwe, the presence of local African graves of the recently dead of the Mugabe clan, who occupied the site when Cecil 134 Interview with C.Chauke 5/4/06. 135 See, for instance, Hallam & Hockey 2001; Tarlow 2002; Hertz 1960.

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Rhodes’s pioneer column entered the country in 1890, proved to be a profound challenge to the antiquarian fantasies of colonial apologists, but provided no more comfort for the “professional” archaeologists aligned on the other side of the Zimbabwe Controversy either. The recent date of the graves made them irrelevant for archaeological interests, that were mainly concerned with identifying the twelfth to fifteenth century occupiers of the site. The continued failure to find graves, tombs and human remains dating to that period continues to confound archaeologists, much as the absence of any sign of “ancient” “exotic” remains frustrated the antiquarians before them. More recently, the presence of these local graves has begun to unsettle the otherwise comfortable predominance of archaeologically informed heritage managers. For members of the Mugabe clan, the presence of the graves of key ancestors at Great Zimbabwe has been the basis of their claims to the custodianship of the site, and their efforts to gain access in order to carry out rituals there.136 As NMMZ has increasingly adopted vogue notions of intangible, living, and spiritual heritage, the presence of these graves, and the other local claims to the sacred importance of Great Zimbabwe, has meant that NMMZ has had to reconsider the archaeological pre-occupation with the particular “black-boxed”137 dates of Great Zimbabwe’s medieval construction and occupation. In a sense, then, these graves – the material presence of these “wrong” bones – have confounded and provoked profound challenges to the distanced, professionalised view of Great Zimbabwe as a national heritage site, the only relevant past of which lay in the twelfth to fifteenth centuries, forcing its heritage managers to engage with the hitherto silenced historyscapes of local clans. Whilst the presence of the graves has also featured prominently in widespread efforts to claim ancestral ties to land occupied and resettled in the context of recent land reform,138 bones have also confounded, at different moments, the highly politicised commemorative efforts of the Zimbabwean state, which I discussed above. As Kriger described, one of the issues that affected earlier state-directed efforts to rebury the remains of the war dead at the district and provincial heroes acres, was determining which bones were which.139 In many cases, dead guerrillas, Rhodesian soldiers, and auxiliary government forces, were buried together in anonymous graves. This caused problems for rural people tasked by government to rebury the remains of war dead that were resurfacing from shallow graves. Even President Mugabe realised this problem when he made a statement to the Zimbabwean Par-

136 137 138 139

Fontein 2006a: 30–34. Hodder 1995: 8. Fontein 2006d; 2007; also Shoko 2006. Kriger 1995: 144, 149.

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liament in 1986 asking “how do we distinguish good bones from bad bones, the heroic ones from the fascist ones and so on”.140 But in terms of the “wrong” bones, much more problematic for the government has been the resurfacing of the bones of victims of the gukurahundi massacres in Matabeleland in the 1980s.141 These other “wrong” bones could easily amount to a profound challenge to the ruling party’s efforts to present a particular, and narrow version of the violent struggles that followed independence in 1980. Although the two efforts described by Alexander & McGregor & Ranger in Matabeleland in the 1990s to promote the commemoration of other, silenced histories, were thwarted,142 the bones of the gukurahundi victims, like those of the liberation war dead, keep on re-surfacing from shallow individual and mass graves and abandoned mines in Matabeleland and across the country – confronting and challenging the efforts of the state to control representations of the past, and straining the precarious unity of former ZAPU and ZANU factions in ZANU PF.143 In 2005, before his more recent intimacy with the hardline inner core of Mugabe’s regime, Jabulani Sibanda, the leader of the war veterans association, acknowledged that “he too would like to see the perpetrators of the massacres tried in international courts”, as reports emerged of plans being prepared for reburials and cleansing ceremonies to take place “once Mugabe leaves office”.144 Yet to a limited extent, the location and identification of gukurahundi remains have already been taking place. One contact at NMMZ acknowledged that many, if not most, of the exhumations and reburials that they have been involved with in Matabeleland have been gukurahundi victims. But, as I was told, “this is very sensitive. VERY SENSITIVE. The gukurahundi stuff is never talked about” because “people are afraid to open up old wounds […] especially […] because at one point nearly the whole of Matabeleland was MDC”.145 The horrific memories of the gukurahundi massacres are too recent, too emotive, and too political, challenging the precarious unity of ZANU PF in Matabeleland. More recently, the emergence and re-surfacing of the human remains of victims of the ruling party’s violent excesses against opposition supporters since 2000 – 140 Ibid.: 144. 141 See “Evidence of dirty war lies far below” Zimbabwe Independent, 29/9/00; “Mass graves from Gukurahundi era located in Matabeleland” SW Radio Africa Zimbabwe News, 19/10/05; “Film reveals horror details of the Ndebele massacre” Nation (Kenya), 11/11/07, posted on ZWNEWS.com 12/11/07. 142 Alexander & McGregor & Ranger 2000: 259–264. 143 See, for example, “Gukurahundi fears split ZANU” The Standard, 29/4/07 “Moyo says Gukurahundi Bill ready by September” Zim Online, 16/5/07; “Msika speaks out on Gukurahundi” Zimbabwe Standard, 15/10/2006. 144 See “Mass graves from the Gukurahundi era located in Matabeleland” SW Radio Africa Zimbabwe News, 19/10/05; also Eppel 2004: 57. 145 Interview notes, 2006.

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such as the death of Gift Tandare with which I began the paper, or the three bodies found at Kariba Dam by engineers in April 2007,146 or the stench of the 20 decomposing, still unburied, and unidentified corpses of MDC supporters dumped in a Nyaki morgue in 2002147 – confront ZANU PF’s current claims about where responsibility for recent political violence lies. It is likely in the future that the unsettled dead of Zimbabwe’s most recent violence will return in their demands for reburial, cleansing, and commemoration, just as the spirits of ZANLA’s and ZIPRA’s dead guerrillas and the victims of the gukurahundi continue to demand commemoration. If these examples illustrate how bones and bodies can confront heritage and commemorative processes by reflecting silenced or marginalised pasts back to the present, contesting or undermining the dominant narratives of political elites or heritage managers, bones and bodies can also problematise heritage and commemoration in other ways that have less to do with representations of the past, and more to do with what I call, tentatively, their emotive materiality as human substance, and their affective presence as dead persons or spirits or subjects that continue to make demands on society. It is pertinent to note, in this respect, that it was the stench which drew attention to the 20 decomposing corpses in the Nyaki morgue, and the “out of place” presence of bodies which did so at Kariba dam or in the mines of Matabeleland, the Midlands, and Mt Darwin, and similarly the resurfacing of bones in the villages of Dembezeko and Nyamanja in Mt Darwin as farmers tilled their fields after rains in January 2008. Although there has, in recent years, been a growing interest in the agency of objects,148 bones and human remains often continue to be “understood only as a set of materials without agency or the ability to affect the actions and perceptions of the living”.149 This approach fails “to appreciate the close entanglement of the living with the dead in many societies [… and] in turn it underestimates the complex engagements between people (both living and dead) and material culture in the production and transformation of social practices and structures”.150 As I suggested above, at Great Zimbabwe there has been a sense that professionalising “heritage practices” have not been “commemorative enough”, in that they have not allowed local clans, or indeed “traditionalists” and spirit mediums from elsewhere across 146 “Zimbabwe: ZESA Engineers recover three bodies from Kariba Dam” www.zimdaily. com, 12/4/07. 147 “The revenge of the dead” Zimbabwe Today, 13/3/08. The same applies to the 129 known (some 5000 others were still unaccounted for by 9/7/08) MDC supporters killed in the intensified political violence unleashed by the ruling party against the MDC between May and July in 2008, after this paper was written (see “Over 1500 MDC Officials Still Detained” SW Radio Africa, 9/7/2008). 148 Cf. Miller 2005: 11–15. 149 Williams 2004: 264. 150 Ibid.

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the country, to carry out the rituals and rites they consider necessary in order to appease the dead, and to ensure the welfare of the living, in terms of rain, prosperity, wealth, and so on, be it at the level of the nation, or that of local clans and kin groups. Similarly, although it sounds odd to say it, state commemorative processes have also, for some people, not been “commemorative enough”, in that they have not taken account of the “entanglement of the living with the dead”, and the specific cultural and historical needs to respond to the dead in particular ways, in order to ensure the welfare of the living. The need to perform specific mortuary rituals that bring home the spirit of the dead to become ancestors, and look after living descendants, are pervasive across cultural, ethnic, and religious divides in Zimbabwe. Such rituals cannot be held when the location or identity of the remains of the dead are not known. This ritual process therefore requires the return of the remains of the dead, whether physically or symbolically through soil. If these rituals are not carried out, that can constitute a bad death,151 as in cases of people murdered and their bodies dumped in the bush, or those who are killed in war and buried in unmarked graves, whose spirits remain troubled, unhappy, and even angry, haunting their own relatives in dreams, demanding to be returned home, and tormenting the families of those who are responsible for their deaths, as dangerous and terrifying, avenging ngozi spirits. The presence of these frightening, unsettled spirits haunts Zimbabwe’s post-colonial milieu, and the country’s continuing political and economic strife are often understood, as spirit mediums told Andrew Ndlovu, secretary of the war veterans’ association in 2001, to be “the result of rituals not being carried out for the liberation fighters and civilians who died in the war throughout the country”.152 President Mugabe himself is often rumoured to be haunted by the ghost of Josiah Tongogara, a hugely popular ZANLA commander, who died under mysterious circumstances on the eve of independence in 1980.153 In terms of the renewed interest in materiality and the agency of objects in social anthropology, this relationship between the bones and remains of dead people and the benevolent ancestral spirits that they become if correctly “commemorated” – that is, returned and reburied in the “right” landscape by the “right” living relatives – seems to exemplify Alfred Gell’s theory of “object agency”, as developed 151 Cf. Hertz 1960. 152 “56 war vets reburied” Daily News, 25/10/01. 153 See “Mugabe eats supper with spirit of dead rival” Sunday Times (UK), 12/8/01. This rumour has re-appeared in various controversial theatre productions (e.g. Breakfast with Mugabe produced by Fraser Grace in 2006, see “Review” in The Guardian 15/4/06) and its political saliency seems confirmed by the regime’s response to it. In 2001, Mark Chavunduka, the editor of the Zimbabwe Standard, was arrested and tortured for writing that Mugabe was haunted by Tongogara’s ghost (“Mugabe Still Fears Chitepo’s Legacy” Trevor Grundy, Africa Reports: Zimbabwe Elections No 16, Institute for War and Peace Reporting, 17/3/05, see www.zimbabwesituation.com/mar18a_2005.html).

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in his influential book Art & Agency (1998). As Miller has pointed out, Gell’s is a “theory of abduction” and “inferred intentionality […] behind the world of artefacts”, in which objects, in his case art, function as the “distributed minds” of their creators, affecting or influencing the minds and actions of others.154 In the example that I have been developing here, the agency of bones to affect the living derives, ultimately, from the consciousness of the spirits of those whose bones they were when they were alive. This is illustrated powerfully by common accounts of living war veterans, relatives, and even the president himself, haunted by the unsettled spirits of the dead demanding exhumation and reburial, that I have suggested are part of the complexity of issues that have fed into Zimbabwe’s recent liberation heritage project. But the affective presence and emotive materiality of bones does not necessarily depend upon belief in spirits, ghosts, or the need to carry out specific rituals to transform the spirit of a dead person into a benevolent ancestor. Indeed, there is also a sense in which bones can have an agency that is not necessarily related to the deferred or disembodied conscious of the dead themselves. As Williams (2004) has said, the phenomenological qualities of the dead body, the corpse – particularly as it rots and disintegrates – can also affect the living, suggesting a kind of non-conscious agency of bones, closer to that suggested by Latour (e.g. 1999) who, unlike Gell, looks for “the nonhumans below the level of human agency”.155 In other words, bones can have an agency (in the sense that they provoke a response from people) that is separate from the consciousness of the dead people of whom they once were a part. And, although this is a kind of non-human agency, it does, nevertheless, relate to the uneasy fact that bones are at once both objects or things, and subjects or persons. This “nonhuman” or “non-conscious” agency of bones depends on the recognition by the living of the bones as dead human subjects, rather than simply as objects, yet exists regardless of any personal knowledge, memory, or relationship between the living person affected and the dead individual. If the excavations and looting of local graves at Great Zimbabwe by early Rhodesian antiquarians in the 1890s and early 1900s profoundly disturbed locals employed in the work, who were probably relatives of those buried there,156 then even these explorers themselves sometimes admitted to being “horrified” at what they 154 Miller 2005: 12–13. 155 Ibid.: 13. 156 Bent describes how a “man came to complain”, after he opened the grave of a man who had died that same year. Despite being “horrified”, Bent nevertheless took scientific research as his motto, and ignored “the old Chief Ikomo”, who made efforts to prevent further graves being excavated (1986:79). 12 years later, Hall did get Chief Mugabe’s consent to open and move several graves, provided the remains “were properly reinterred” and the local labourers were “allowed to go to their kraals to purify themselves” afterwards Hall 1905:43).

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had done.157 Similarly, recent anthropological studies of archaeological excavations being carried out at battlefield sites along the western front in Belgium158 suggest that even people involved in the otherwise “distancing” and “objectifying” processes of archaeology are often deeply affected by the discovery and excavation of human remains. This suggests that archaeological processes do not necessarily “distance” the past; where human bones are involved, the archaeological process can actually bring the past much closer to the present. Here, archaeology becomes an emotive practice that provokes an experiential sense of the past, through its engagement with the materiality of bones. But more than this, those involved in excavations on the western front that Filippucci describes, “see their work as a scientific enterprise that […] also fulfils an obligation to the fallen”. Archaeology becomes a “form of tribute to the dead and so also […] a form of commemoration”.159 Crispin Chauke described exactly the same thing when I asked him whether digging up human remains at war sites was different to other archaeological excavations. I quote him at length because his words capture exactly the overlapping agencies of archaeologists, families, politicians, spirits, and bones that I have been trying to describe. “Yes its different. I have participated in a lot of archaeological excavations, but digging up human remains is very different. There are different reasons for this. First of all people’s beliefs, that for example the dead should just rest and not be disturbed. Secondly, apart from the academic interest, and satisfaction from such an excavation, there is another kind of satisfaction too. If it were simply the bones of an animal then perhaps there would be an academic interest […] to find out what sex of the animal was, and the bones would be taken to a lab and tests done, and there would be an academic interest in the results […] But that would not be of much interest to the commoner, and such an excavation is not really relevant to most common people. But if you take something like the Chimoio projects. That is very relevant to common people. In a way you feel like you are contributing your part to make sure all the people who have died in those camps are buried properly. Often it is the first time that those bones have been treated in such a way. So it can be very emotional, and this is especially so where relatives and the family members have requested the exhumations take place. Often it is the family members who are experiencing problems, their family things are not going very well and so it is they who request that the bodies of relatives killed during the war are reburied. They may say for example that the spirit 157 See Bent 1896: 79; also Hall 1905: 43, 94. 158 Filippucci (forthcoming); Brown 2007. 159 Filippucci (forthcoming): 12.

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Joost Fontein of their killed relative is complaining that he is still in the bush, he has not been brought home yet. And doing these exhumations does feel like opening up old wounds, the whole atmosphere is like that of a funeral. This is a funeral. Even touching the bones creates a personal bond. Sometimes I have found that when people start the exhumations they are using gloves, when I started I was wearing gloves, but with time you find yourself asking why am I wearing gloves? Would I be wearing gloves if I was greeting these people? How is this different? So after time I stopped wearing gloves and you find yourself just using your hands. Even other people like assistants who I have seen come to help, many start off using gloves but after maybe a week or two the gloves come off. I had a particularly emotional moment at Nyadzonia where we exhumed the skeleton of a woman who still had her baby strapped to her back. That was a very emotional experience for me. So yes excavating human bones is very different from animal bones. When you are excavating human bones you want to know straight away whether it was a man or a woman. That is something you can’t run away from, as soon as you see the skeleton. Also questions like was it an old person or a young person. These are questions that you begin to think about straight away, and urgently not like with animal bones where you might take them to a lab to find out and then you have information for an academic paper. No, with human bones you want to know these things the same day, before you sleep. After digging up human remains you can’t just leave it there overnight to finish the next day, you want to finish everything there, unlike an excavation of animal bones which you easily leave there to finish tomorrow. The difference is like, with human bones you are dealing with a living individual.”160

This illustrates perfectly how the ambivalent agency of bones as both “persons” and “objects” can confront normalising ways of dealing with the past, in complex ways that go beyond merely challenging dominant representations of the past. For my purposes here, the claim that archaeological excavations of dead people killed during the war are “like a funeral” illustrates not only how commemorative and heritage processes have come together in Zimbabwe’s recent liberation heritage project, but also how, apart from undermining dominant narratives of the past by pointing to other, silenced histories, it is in the ambivalent agency of bones, both as extensions of the consciousness of the dead, as restless and demanding spirit “subjects” or persons, but also as unconscious “objects” or “things” that retort to and 160 Interview with Chauke, 5/4/06.

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provoke responses from the living, that the tensions, and contradictions of commemoration, heritage, and the politics of the dead are revealed. After all, at sites like Great Zimbabwe bones can promote recognition of the “living” and ritual values of heritage, and it is during excavations of war graves that normally distancing archaeology becomes “like a funeral”, and human bones become like a “living individual”. I started this paper with an account of the controversies that surrounded the burial of Gift Tandare, after his violent death at the hands of the Zimbabwean police. Set in the broader context of the politics of the dead in Zimbabwe that I have discussed in the rest of this paper, it seems likely that this will not be the last we hear of Gift Tandare or the other victims of ZANU PF’s return to political violence since 2000, many of whom lie in unmarked graves around the country. Like the bones and haunting spirits of people killed during Zimbabwe’s liberation struggle, and the dreadful gukurahundi legacy, perhaps one day their bones and troubled spirits, too, will resurface and demand to be “brought home”, commemorated, or turned into heritage for a new political regime in Harare.

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Schmidt, Heike 1997. “Healing the Wounds of War: Memories of Violence and the Making of History in Zimbabwe’s Most Recent Past”. Journal of Southern African Studies 23/2: 301–310. Shoko, T. 2006. “My Bones Shall Rise again”: War Veterans, Spirits and Land Reform in Zimbabwe. Leiden: African Studies Centre (ASC Working Paper 68). [available also at http://www.ascleiden.nl/Pdf/workingpaper68.pdf] Tarlow, Sarah 2002. “The Aesthetic Corpse in Nineteenth-Century Britain”. In: Yannis Hamilakis & Mark Pluciennik & Sarah Tarlow (eds.). Thinking through the Body. Archaeologies of Corporeality. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum: 85–97. Walsh, Kevin 1992. The Representation of the Past: Museums and Heritage in the PostModern World. London et al.: Routledge. Werbner, Richard P. 1989. “Regional Cult of God Above. Achieving and Defending the Macrocosm”. In: Richard P. Werbner (ed.). Ritual Passage, Sacred Journey. The Process and Organization of Religious Movement. Washington: Smithsonian: 245–298 (Smithsonian Series in Ethnographic Inquiry). — 1991. Tears of the Dead. The Social Biography of an African Family. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. — 1998. “Smoke from the Barrel of a Gun. Postwars of the Dead, Memory and Reinscription in Zimbabwe”. In: Richard P. Werbner (ed.). Memory and the Postcolony. African Anthropology and the Critique of Power. London & New York: Zed Books: 71–102. Williams, Howard 2004. “Death Warmed up. The Agency of Bodies and Bones in Early Anglo-Saxon Cremation Rites”. Journal of Material Culture 9: 263–298.

Ulrike Stohrer

Ritual Performance, Cultural Policy, and the Construction of a “National Heritage” in Yemen Performative expressions such as music and dance are often regarded as a pre-reflexive, spontaneous expression of peoples’ feelings and as a common “language of humanity”. For this reason, they are often used to transport political messages in contexts of identity building. State folk-dance ensembles claim to represent the authentic expression of the people, although, in fact, they often may make significant changes to traditional genres.1 Analysing folkloristic performances by asking which ritual practice is defined as “heritage”, and the tradition of which group in society is in which ways represented, makes strategies of cultural policy discernible that would otherwise not be openly articulated. In this chapter I will examine the transformation of ritual practices into folkloristic presentations in Yemen. Examining how the Yemenite Ministry of Culture selects what is to be integrated into the set of cultural practices that form the corpus of national heritage (and what not) reveals strategies of essentialisation and standardisation, by which the ministry reinterprets rituals and redefines traditional genres in order to create a homogenous national identity. First, I will give a short introduction to cultural diversity and regional identities in Yemen, as well as an outline of the recent history of the country and the roots of the National Folkdance Ensemble. After these preliminaries, I will examine the traditional reception ritual in the northern highlands of Yemen and its transformation into stage performance by the National Folkdance Ensemble. Two examples of folkloristic performances elucidate how newly created genres are defined as “heritage”, and which concepts of cultural policy lead this process. Finally, peoples’ comments and reactions to these presentations show that the ministry’s strategies were only partly successful and opened a debate about cultural values within Yemenite society.

Cultural Diversity in Yemen Yemen is characterised by a cultural heterogeneity. It is divided into at least five regions, differing from each other geographically, socially, and culturally. Yemen, though part of the world of Islamic culture, has local traditions with independent 1 Shay 2002.

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roots that widely differ from those of northern Arabia. Influences are from Asia and Africa, rather than from the Mediterranean. The mountainous highlands, the centre of Yemen, form an area with a unique culture that combines common Islamic customs with a great variety of ritual practices dating back to antiquity. The west coast to the Red Sea (Tihama) has strong connections to Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Djibouti. Wadi Hadhramawt and the coast of the Indian Ocean are oriented toward the Gulf of Arabia, India (especially Haiderabad and Mumbay), Southeast Asia (Malaysia, Java), and East Africa (Somalia, Zanzibar, Kenya), where Yemenites have been traders for at least five centuries. Conversely, many of the inhabitants of the coastal areas of Yemen are of African and Asian origin. There were also several attempts by Ottomans and Europeans to occupy parts of Yemen. All these connections have influenced the cultural expressions of Yemenites, such as dialects, clothing, or architecture, and also ritual practices and performative genres. Owing to this diversity, Yemen has a rich and dynamic ritual heritage. Within common rituals such as receptions, weddings, the Islamic feasts, pilgrimages to holy shrines, etc., we find a great variety of local and regional performative genres, such as recited or sung poetry (qasīdah, zāmil, razfah, bālah, hādiy), profane song (ghinā), religious chant (nashīd), dance (raqs), and formalised movement (barca). Traditional performance practice in Yemen is further characterised by the simultaneity of several genres and local versions in the same ritual, and much space for spontaneity and improvisation. There is also a considerable difference between urban and rural performative cultures. The diversity of ritual practices is now challenged by state attempts to homogenise and standardise cultural expressions, and to create a set of genres defined as a “national heritage”. This process is more readily comprehensible after first examining the recent history of Yemen and investigating the roots of the Ministry of Culture.

Recent History of Yemen, Cultural Policy, and the National Folkdance Ensemble In the twentieth century, two states and two different societies have been established on Yemenite soil. In the northern part, after the fall of the Ottoman Empire in 1918, the Zaidite (Shiite) Imamate isolated Yemen from the outside world. In 1962, the Imam was overthrown by a revolution. The Yemen Arab Republic was established, which opened the country to the Western world, while remaining a society with strong ties to tradition. The South, having been part of the British Empire since the nineteenth century, attained independence in 1967 and established the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen as a socialist vassal state of the USSR. These two Yemenite states were antagonists throughout the Cold War. Nevertheless, their populations felt a strong sense of belonging together, and sev-

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eral attempts were made to unite the country. Finally, on 22 May, 1990, the unification of North and South Yemen took place. This is the first time in Yemen’s history that one single state has embraced the entire territory. Therefore national integration is an important goal of governmental domestic policy. The Ministry of Culture and Tourism is highly involved in this process. It aims at establishing a homogenous national culture, in order to create one single national identity that is intended to replace former, separate regional and tribal identities by the one loyalty of all citizens to the state. The creation of a national culture not only concerns present and future, by establishing new social values, it is also directed towards the past, by creating the image of a unified history2 and by selecting performative genres and ritual practices to be defined as national heritage. These efforts have been intensified since the Yemenite civil war of 1994, which was a serious threat to the coherence of the state and showed that integration had not yet been successfully realised. Thus, the ministry has taken measures to raise the national consciousness of the population and to demonstrate the stability and strength of Yemenite unity to the outside world. It promotes modernisation, democratisation, and integration. Nevertheless, the “preservation of the tradition” (hifth al-turāth) as one of the constituents of the new identity is also an important focus of its activities. The National Folkdance Ensemble is one important instrument for achieving this task. The National Folkdance Ensemble regularly performs at official ceremonies of the government on national holidays, such as the anniversary of the revolution (26 September 1962 in North Yemen, 14 October 1967 in South Yemen) or the Day of Unification (22 May 1990). On these occasions, it presents stage plays in the “cultural centre” (markaz al-thaqāfah) in Sanaa in the presence of the president, members of the government, and foreign diplomats. These plays allegorically glorify the particular occasion and praise the government’s efforts to democratise and modernise the country.3 Folkloristic presentations of songs and dances from different regions of the country are part of these plays, which are also regularly broadcast on television. These activities, however, are not new. Even before unification, national folk-dance ensembles existed in both parts of Yemen. Interestingly, and important to note for understanding current cultural policy, both the former National Folkdance Ensemble of North Yemen and that of South Yemen were established in cooperation with Soviet advisors and modelled on Soviet groups. The present National Folkdance Ensemble was formed by the fusion of these two ensembles. Many of its members and its director were trained as dancers, musicians, and choreographers in the former Soviet Union or in the former German Democratic Republic. Owing to this history, socialist ideology underlies its activities until today, though the Yemenite government as a whole is not socialist. 2 See Schuyler 1993; Stohrer 2007. 3 For examples of such plays, see Schuyler 1993; Stohrer 2009: 180–182.

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The Tribal Reception Ritual in the Highlands of Yemen The focus of my analysis will be on one essential element of almost all rituals in Yemen: the participants’ procession to the place of the event, and the reception of guests. This procession is called sīrah in the northern regions and ciddah in the south. I will now describe the traditional ritual as it is performed in the central highlands of Yemen. The rural population of the mountains mainly consists of sedentary farmers, organised in a tribal social structure. Tribesmen participating in formal social events (such as tribal meetings or weekly markets) or feasts (such as weddings or Islamic or national holidays) walk to the place of the event in a procession called sīrah (walk). The hosts, for their part, walk in the same manner to the village entrance or to the border of their territory to welcome the guests. Two musicians playing the ceremonial drums marfac and tāsah lead each group. While the group is walking, the tāsah plays the “procession rhythm” (daqqah al-sīrah). At the same time, the participants chant a chorus, in unison, of the poetic genre zāmil. Zāmil is widely practiced in Yemen as a rhetorical means of communication between tribal groups.4 One member of the walking group spontaneously creates the verses on the road, then all participants take over the words and chant. Subject and character of zāmil change according to the occasion and the participants’ mood, while always being concerned with the set of social values of the tribal society (qabyalah), such as hospitality, cooperation, and solidarity, as well as the tribesmen’s willingness to defend their territory if necessary, as the following example shows: “Yā ashābanā, yā nsābanā Yalli hamaytum haddakum

yā ahl ash-sheruc al-wāfiyah min sharr wallā cāfiyah.

O friends, o allies, o people loyal to the tribal law (whose feelings of honour are perfect) You protect your frontiers against any damage and all aggression.”5 Several times the men interrupt their walking and zāmil chanting, and instead perform barca on the road. Barca is a nonverbal bodily activity, which in European terms is classified as “dance”, but in Yemenite definition forms a separate genre, clearly distinguished from activities subsumed under the generic Arabic term for dance (raqs). Barca has four parts, accompanied by the two drums only. The performance starts as a group activity with slow, formalised movements, alternately forming a line and a circle. Significantly, barca performers have no bodily contact with each other. Less skilled members leave the group when they are no longer

4 For more details and further examples, see Yammine 1995: 117–135 and Caton 1991. 5 Yammine 1995: 130.

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Image 1: The sīrah procession

Photo by the author, 1997

able to keep the pace, as tempo accelerates and movements become more complex. Only the two most skilled men perform the last part in playful virtuosity. In some regions, this part may be a dramatic duel of two antagonists competing in agility and endurance. In others, it is harmonious and calm, the two partners performing side by side in unison.6 An important requisite of barca is a dagger with curved blade (janbiyah), worn by men in the highlands of Yemen as an accessory and status symbol also in everyday life. The dagger is actively used only in the barca performance. During the walk it remains in its sheath. During the barca performance, the right hand holding the dagger remains mostly at waist level. Only when making turns do performers elevate it to the forehead with a light gesture of waving. They hold the hilt of the dagger by the tip of two or three fingers only, not with the whole fist. Thus, in barca, the dagger is handled in a very artificial and aesthetic manner, not as a weapon. Participants do not consider movements and gestures of barca to be aggressive or hostile. On the contrary, they understand barca rather as a means to restrain oneself, and, at the same time, to ease tensions

6 For details of the choreography and several regional versions of barca, see Stohrer 2009: 47– 65.

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by channeling them in a concentrated collective action. Even in the most dramatic versions of barca, motions and emotions are always controlled. After having done one or several barca rounds, the men resume the zāmil chanting, and continue their walk. At the border of the hosts’ territory, the two processions meet. The tāsah drums play the “reception rhythm” (daqqah alistiqbāl), while the two groups exchange formal greetings and some further zāmil chants of welcoming. After the verbal greetings are finished, barca is performed again. If hosts and guests have the same barca version, they may perform together. If they have different versions they perform simultaneously or one group after the other. Finally, both guests and hosts jointly move as a sīrah procession to the host’s house, where the reception concludes with a banquet. Later, a public social gathering in the evening (samrah) follows, at which several other poetic, musical, and dance genres are performed. As we have seen, the sīrah-procession includes different genres – tāsah rhythm, zāmil chorus, and barca – performed simultaneously, or alternating while being kept formally independent of each other. The sīrah is no march. Each participant walks at his own individual pace. Steps are not formalised and not synchronised with the rhythm of the zāmil chorus. The rhythm of the zāmil chorus is independent of the sīrah rhythm simultaneously played by the tāsah drum. Finally, barca has its own rhythm. The sīrah procession is a ritual that enables tribesmen to keep stability in an unsafe, “liminal” situation of transition. It concentrates their motions and emotions in a collective action without denying their individuality. The sīrah aims at easing tensions by self-control. Though it also has competitive and ludic aspects, it avoids exuberance. The reception ritual transforms strangers into temporary members of the hosts’ group. But significantly different local groups do not merge in the performance to demonstrate this process of integration. Rather, the barca group (with each performer keeping his individuality in the collective action), the sīrah procession (with different genres performed simultaneously without being formally connected), and the reception ritual (with different social groups remaining distinct in a process of integration) follow a structure that keeps in balance autonomy and cooperation between individuals, as well as between groups. This ritual practice demonstrates “unity in diversity” and illustrates the concept of the tribal, “segmentary” society, in which different social groups act autonomously, while being connected with each other in a complex network of cooperation and alliance. Different local and regional versions of zāmil or barca performed within the ritual express divergent viewpoints of this social concept by emphasising or neglecting different elements. They are permanently influencing, shaping, and reshaping each other. Thus, ritual performance practice and “tradition”, as well as group identities in Yemen, are dynamic and flexible, not static. Let us now look at the modifications the Ministry of Culture makes to this practice.

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Image 2: A barca performance

Photo by the author, 1999

Image 3: A barca performance

Photo by the author, 1999

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Image 4: The last part of barca

Photo by the author, 1999

Processions as Elements of State-Sponsored Performances On national holidays, the Ministry of Culture presents performances of the National Folkdance Ensemble, as well as folklore festivals with amateur folklore groups from all over the country. Some of these presentations include processions through the streets, that may be regarded as representations of the sīrah procession. Yet, when analysing the folkloristic performances in detail, significant changes of the traditional sīrah procession become obvious. In the following, I will analyse two examples – the “First Festival of Yemenite Weddings” in July 1996, and the celebration of the tenth anniversary of Yemenite Unity on 22 May 2000 – that illustrate strategies of cultural policy and explain the concept of “tradition” and “heritage” the Ministry of Culture intends to establish. The “First Festival of Yemenite Weddings” This festival was held in July 1996 to commemorate the settlement of a military conflict between North and South Yemen two years before. For ten days, folklore groups from all over the country presented stage versions of wedding rituals in the soccer stadium of Sanaa as an “announcement and demonstration of Yemenite cus-

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toms and traditions”.7 The festival started with the folklore groups’ procession through the streets of the capital performing dances of the raqs genre, accompanying them by singing, handclapping, and jumping. Zāmil and barca, however, were not performed. Rather than calming and restraining emotions, as the traditional sīrah intends, this procession demonstrated emotional exuberance. The festival program calls this procession “carnival” (musīrah karnifāliyah), introducing a European term and a ritual concept that is alien to Yemenite culture. Moreover, it uses the specific socialist conceptualisation of carnival, which claims that role reversal has a revolutionary potential by freeing the individual from social norms. This procession illustrates, in the ministry’s view, the “joy and happiness of the Yemenite people”.8 The transformation of elements of the wedding ritual into an Eastern European inspired genre continued in the course of the festival, where the rituals were presented as short pantomime-dance-versions. The different rites which compose the whole of a wedding, such as concluding the marriage contract by the two fathers, the application of henna to the bridegroom’s and the bride’s hands and feet, or the zaffah procession, which brings bride and bridegroom together, and so on, have been taken to pieces, their elements have been shortened, simplified, and formalised, and then finally recomposed to a new form. The aesthetic model of this new presentation follows the pantomimic “character dance”, an element of the classical European ballet suite. For example, the rite of shaving the bridegroom’s hair and applying henna to his hands and feet is choreographed as a dance of the barber with the henna utensils. In the second step, the ministry’s publications define not only the newly created dance, but the whole rite as “hennadance” (raqsat al-henna). In the third step, the whole wedding ritual is classified as art, called “wedding art” (fann al-acrās) or “folk-art” (fann shacabiy). Despite these far reaching changes and redefinitions of traditional customs, the Ministry of Culture declares its presentation to be an “original (asliy) Yemenite wedding”9 and sees the whole Festival as “an appeal to preserve the heritage of the Yemenite people (…), and its consolidation and use, for the renewal and development of its folk arts (funnūn shacabiyah) and the strengthening of their connection with their roots (…) in the service of a developed artistic and cultural movement, that is nourished by the authenticity of its very roots and from its unique and rich heritage.”10 In this concept “preservation” and “development” are antithetic. The ministry clearly emphasises the “development” aspect, since the transformed festival versions of the rites serve as the basis for the documentation of rituals in the national 7 8 9 10

Ministry of Culture and Tourism of the Republic of Yemen 1996a: 11. Ibid.: 5. Ibid. al-Mahiub 1996: 4.

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archives. Folklore festivals are held in order to “keep traditions living and to document them for preservation and for future development on an intact and true basis”.11 The functionaries of the Ministry of Culture declare these newly created versions to be of original and authentic (asliy) form. They are taught at public schools, and members of the National Folkdance Ensemble are sent to the villages to implant their style in popular practice. Several times during my fieldwork, they asked me to teach them the notation system for choreology (Labanotation) to document their choreographies. In this way, the ministry intends to fix the shape of tradition and to determine its transmission to coming generations. Even in personal communication with me, functionaries always insisted that their versions are the “original” ones (asliy) and that they had changed nothing when bringing the people’s practice to the stage, thus even denying their own artistic creative work as professional choreographers, composers, directors, and musicians. In my opinion, this is a rhetorical strategy to establish an invented tradition. This concept has its roots in socialist cultural policy. Yet, because socialism is no longer the leading ideology of the Yemenite government, in their publications, as well as in personal communication with me, the functionaries do not clearly explain what exactly “authentic” means, in their view. The shape of the folkloristic presentations, however, follows the common socialist practice of “creative appropriation” of tradition, which selects only those elements of the tradition as worth preserving that fit in with socialist ideology, and are defined as a “progressive heritage”, as the following quote elucidates: “Our position is: folklore belongs to socialist culture and art as an indispensable element and historical source. In it are expressed the social and class interests, opinions, feelings, and dreams of the people, which we nowadays shape in reality (…) Our claim to the heritage (Erbeanspruch) is not, in the first place, based on the continuity of the artistic creative power, or the connections of folklore to a specific region (Landschaftsgebundenheit) (…) Our claim to the heritage results from the correspondence with the ideas and artistic messages of the people of those times that we are implementing in our real socialism.”12 Similarly, the current director of the National Folkdance Ensemble of Yemen, and former director of the National Folkdance Ensemble of South Yemen, Ahmad al-Koshab, wrote about the cultural policy of South Yemen: “In the country a cultural revolution of popular democratic character has developed, realised in the interest of the masses and by the masses themselves.

11 al-Iriani 1992: 481–482. 12 Wagner 1974, cited in Heising & Römer & Klotzsche 1994: 97.

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Its aim was the creation of a national democratic culture on the basis of the progressive heritage of national, Arab, and world culture.”13 My second example illustrates, in another way, the same strategy of the Yemenite Ministry of Culture to create a unified national heritage based on professionally choreographed folkloristic performances. The Celebration of the Tenth Anniversary of the Unification of North and South Yemen At the celebration of the tenth anniversary of the unification of North and South Yemen on 22 May 2000, the National Folkdance Ensemble and a thousand students of the military academy performed dances of different regions of the country at two squares in Sanaa, which are national symbols of Yemen. The first part of the performance took place at the famous gate of the old city, Bāb al-Yaman. The performers divided into five groups, each representing one region of the country. They took turns at performing a dance representing their respective region. All the dances, though of different tempos and dynamics, had the same basic step. When all five groups had finished their dances, the performers marched together to another national symbol, the monument to the Unknown Soldier, at which the second part took place. At first glance, this procession seems nearer to tradition than the first example, but at second glance its transformations become obvious. This procession was a real march. The performers were walking alongside the walls of the old city in a parade-like march, choreographed in the basic steps of the dances presented before. While marching, they were steadily waving their daggers above their heads and chanting a patriotic chorus, accompanied by the sounds of a symphony orchestra that underpinned the procession, as well as the whole celebration. Chorus, steps, and drums had the same rhythm and were synchronised with each other. Even barca was performed to this rhythm, instead of to the barca rhythm. Melodic instruments, such as the double reed clarinet mizmār – traditionally belonging exclusively to the raqs genre – and European instruments, such as trumpets and violins, were added to the drums marfac and tāsah. The whole presentation had a uniform choreography and orchestration. There was no individual movement and no improvisation. Barca was reduced to only one part, performed collectively, and all genres were unified and merged into one coherent form. Thus, the march may be seen as a representation of the “unity of our country with which together we continue the march of unification (musīrah al-tawahhud)”.14 Additionally, the gesture of permanently waving the daggers above the performers’ heads while marching contradicts the traditional sīrah procession, where, as we have seen above, the dag13 al-Koshab 1988: 12. 14 Ministry of Culture and Tourism of the Republic of Yemen 1996a: 7.

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ger remains in its sheath during the walk, and is carefully used only at specific moments during the barca performance. This modification is significant, because it gives the whole performance a more “martial” and exaggerated character and constructs a specific image of the tribal population of Yemen that will be analysed later on. As a whole, this performance perfectly illustrates the ministry’s concept of an essentialised cultural heritage that serves to establish a centralised national identity: “Our artistic heritage – though numerous in its forms from region to region and from town to town – merges and unites within the frame of the only Yemenite identity. It expresses the unity of the Yemenite people and the Yemenite land.”15 In general, all performances of the National Folkdance Ensemble contain metaphorical meanings and political messages not only recognisable in the presentation itself, but constructed in additional publications, such as programs or journals. These publications, together with video tapes and audio recordings of the ministry’s performances, are archived in national documentation centres and distributed to foreign researchers, in order to install an invented tradition as national heritage. The strategy of unifying genres and redefining them in European terms is evident in the ministry’s publications, as we already have seen at the wedding festival. Let us now look deeper at the conceptual and choreographic consequences of the use of this specific terminology exemplified by the term “dance”. While the European term “dance” focuses on formal criteria, the Arab language distinguishes in a very subtle way between genres categorized by their specific ritual and social context. Therefore in Yemen barca is traditionally not defined as “dance” (raqs) because it is embedded in the reception ritual, while dances of the raqs-genre are exclusively performed at the evening sociability (samrah) of a wedding, where they serve the efficacy of the ritual as a rite of aggregation and a magic means of enhancing the fertility of the bridal couple. Some (urban) groups of the Yemenite society conceive of raqs as being indecent, and moral debates on raqs arise when it abandons its defined ritual context.16 Barca, by contrast, is not subject to any moral debate in tradition and practised by all social groups. The ministry of culture, however, calls barca a “dance” (raqsah al-barca, sic!), thus changing it twice: First it transfers barca into the category raqs, second it re-defines the raqs genre by adopting the

15 Ministry of Culture and Tourism of the Republic of Yemen 1996b: 1. 16 For the complex moral discussion about music and raqs see Braune 1994 and Stohrer 2009: 142–177.

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Image 5: First part of the performance in front of Bab al Yaman.

Photo by the author, from theYemenite armed forces calendar of the year 2001

Image 6: The march of the performers.

Photo by the author, from theYemenite armed forces calendar of the year 2001

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European concept of the term “dance” or “folkdance” (raqs shacabiy). As a further consequence, both barca and raqs are also robbed of their choreographic refinement: barca loses its agility and virtuosity, and raqs its delicateness and frivolous ambiguity. This is not only a leveling of style, but a new formalisation according to (East) European concepts that bear connotations of naivety and primitivism. Raqs becomes a demonstration of childlike naivety, exuberance, and “inebriation of joy” (nashwah al-surūr), as we have seen in the procession of the wedding festival. Barca becomes a “war-dance”, with a more “martial” character, as shown in the second example and as explicitly expressed in a recent article in the Englishlanguage newspaper Yemen Times, which declares “Yemeni folk dancing: A celebration of weddings and war” and explains that “Baraa is a war-related dance expressing war preparations in a regular tone. It consists of four different rhythms, ending with a fast rhythm signifying fighting capability and the fighters’ utmost readiness to carry their weapons and go to battle.”17 Thus both genres are redefined in a way that clearly contradicts traditional Yemenite social concepts and peoples’ practice. Rather, this definition follows common European clichés about tribal societies, conceiving of them as archaic, primitive, emotional, violent, and belligerent, and thus seeing them as a threat to the modern state.18 This concept, which is rooted in nineteenth-century evolutionism, sees the state and tribes as antagonistic to each other and tribes as anachronistic relics of an early stage of human society, despite the fact that, in the Middle East, tribes and states have for centuries symbiotically coexisted in cooperation, rather than in conflict.19 By depicting the tribal population of Yemen in this way, the folkloristic performances reflect the ministry’s resentment of the tribes, which is also caused by socialist concepts. Socialists want to erase tribes, seeing their model of society as an expression of “backwardness”, “feudalism”, and “medieval particularism”. The tribes’ locally and regionally rooted identities, and their demand of a certain autonomy within the state, contradict the socialist goal of establishing centralised rule and identity. Therefore, tribal culture and identity must be fought against, as Ahmad alKoshab unequivocally wrote about the aims of the cultural policy of South Yemen: “Important was the overcoming of tribal customs and feudal relics in life and culture of the populace and the call for women to engage in the reshaping of the social and cultural life.”20 Socialists not only fight the tribes, but also Islamic faith and the Yemenite urban elite (sādah), which claims descent from the prophet Mohammad, and formed the ruling class of the northern parts of pre-revolutionary Yemen. The ministry’s 17 al-Ghabri 2008. 18 An overview of common clichés about Yemen and its tribal population in German newspapers, journals, and travel guides is given by Stohrer 2000. 19 Kraus 2004. 20 al-Koshab 1988: 15.

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rhetoric associates them likewise with “feudalism” and “bourgeoisie”. Thus, a genre such as the traditional profane Sanaani song with lute accompaniment (ghinā’ sancāniy), one of the oldest and most sophisticated genres in all of Arab culture, and a very high developed art performed by famous artists, highly esteemed by the majority of Yemenites,21 is not represented in most of the state folklore presentations. My second example, the celebration of unity, though carried out at a central square in Sanaa and using the silhouette of the city for the visual framework of the performance, presented only rural dances and did not represent urban culture. The ministry paradoxically elevates some ritual customs to “art”, while at the same time excluding truly highly developed artistic expressions of one group of society from its presentations. It is thanks to the great commitment of the French ethnomusicologist Jean Lambert that ghinā’ sancāniy, as the only Yemenite performative genre, now has a place on the UNESCO list of intangible cultural heritage.22 An important aspect of the performances of the National Folkdance Ensemble is their intention to simultaneously have an effect on their own Yemenite society and to impress the outside world. Mediatisation of the performances by broadcasting them aims at not only reaching a wide audience in Yemen, but also at gaining attention abroad, as the programme of the wedding festival explicitly states: “The activities of this demonstration (i.e. the festival U. St.), which are broadcast by the Yemenite satellite channel, will again confirm to the outside world that our people of Yemen does possess an immense cultural heritage, which is in permanent renewal and does not disappear.”23 The celebration of the tenth anniversary of the unity had the same intention, but much more strongly expressed. A looped video of the celebration was shown at the Yemenite pavilion at the World Exhibition “Expo 2000” in Hannover, Germany. The Yemenite armed forces edited a calendar of the year 2001 with pictures of the performance (The illustrations of this chapter are photographs of this calendar), and one of these pictures is used by the national airline Yemenia as an advertising poster. Thus, the folkloristic performances of the National Folkdance Ensemble are very strong tools of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism for shaping the image of Yemen abroad. This demonstration to the outside world is also a common socialist practice, in which folklore groups served during the Cold War as an instrument in the ideological struggle against the West: “The consolidation of the consciousness of our tradition as a process of creative appropriation of the heritage is also a political necessity in the context of the ideological struggle with the imperialism of the FRG”.24 In the socialist era, South Yemenite folkdance ensembles regularly participated at international folkdance 21 22 23 24

See Lambert 1993; 1997. See http://www.unesco.org/culture/ich/index.php?cp=YE (05.05.2010). al-Mahiub 1996: 4. Oeser 1975, cited from Heising & Römer & Klotzsche 1994: 97.

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competitions.25 These competitions were invented and dominated by socialist functionaries, who set international standards concerning the content and form of folk dance performances.26 The Yemenite Ministry of Culture uses these standards as models for the creation of a representative and “developed” heritage, that gives Yemen the prestige of being a cultural nation and having a voice in “the concert of the nations of the world”. My investigation has revealed that socialist concepts, though not explicitly named, underlie Yemenite state folkdance performances in manifold ways. Yemen shares this practice with many formerly socialist countries that use the old socialist tools to find their own national identity.27 However, the aim of simultaneously expressing a unique heritage, art, and the authentic expression of “the people” unites antagonistic concepts such as development and authenticity in one performance. Additionally, the Ministry’s resentment against some parts of Yemenite society introduces further gaps and inconsistencies in its presentations and results in an image that inherently contradicts itself. This image of the Yemenite people provokes sharp criticism by the populace and opened a debate about cultural values in Yemenite society.

Conclusion Ritual practice in tribal society in Yemen keeps performative genres and regional versions separated, even within an integrating ritual frame. Similarly, different social groups remain independent while cooperating with each other, illustrating a concept of society that focuses on “unity in diversity”. The nation state, on the contrary, focuses on centralisation and thus promotes a fusion of genres and stronger group cohesion, in order to homogenise the cultural diversity of the country and to create one single national identity. Further, some elements and concepts of European culture, such as orchestration and ballet dance steps, have been introduced in the performances in order to “develop” the Yemenite tradition according to East European standards. Yet, an inconsistency is inherent in this policy: The more “Europeanised” the performance becomes, the more it departs from Yemenite tradition and the more it is no longer comprehended locally, as people’s reactions show. The Ministry has been partly successful. But some unintended effects have turned its efforts into the opposite of what is intended, as two incidents among the urban population of the capital during my fieldwork revealed. A student at the University of Sanaa told me that he thinks that barca originated from the Black Sea area, because he had seen a video of folkloristic “cossack” dances, which seemed 25 al-Koshab 1988: 20–21. 26 Shay 2002. 27 Ibid.

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to him to be very similar to barca. This statement illustrates the “sovietisation” or “russification” of Yemenite genres by the Ministry of Culture, and simultaneously indicates that the speaker’s self-definition is orientated towards Europe, instead of being centred or “rooted” in his own culture. In another case, some Islamists in Sanaa tried to forbid the traditional performance of barca and zāmil at the sīrah procession when taking place at a wedding or at the Islamic feasts. They intended to replace them by the call “allahu akbar” (takbīr). By defining barca as “dance” (raqs) and saying the performance is immoral, they did not use the subtle, traditional Arab/Islamic classification of genres developed in their own culture, but followed the European one. By doing so, they brought about a moral debate that is completely absent from the traditional ritual practice of the sīrah procession. The population has strongly rejected this demand, saying that it is “crazy” (majnūn) and “not Islam, but politics” (mish islām, siyāsah). Finally, the sīrah took place in the traditional form. Most Yemenites in rural areas strongly criticise the ministry’s activities. They object to the theatricality and uniformity of the performances, saying this is not “real Yemenite behaviour”. The performances seem to many people “senseless plays (mathal / licab bidūn macanā)”, not serious presentations of their tradition, because essential elements of it are eliminated or replaced by foreign ones. People very often point to the deconstruction and redefinition of indigenous categories when concluding that the Ministry of Culture “destroys the cultural heritage by turning barca into raqs (yuhāribū al-turāth wa yughaiyirū barca ilā raqs)”. Several of my interviewees said: “The functionaries of the ministry do not know Yemenite tradition. They are Russians and how can Russians know what real Yemenite culture is? They do anything that enters their heads, just to earn money and keep their jobs. But this has nothing to do with us.” Interestingly, in this statement the functionaries are seen as Russians, although they are Yemenites and have only been trained in the USSR. Their “non-Yemenite” behaviour makes them lose their Yemenite nationality in the eyes of the population. During my fieldwork, I often noticed a quasi-genetic conception of cultural practices and concepts, when people said that Europeans a priori are not able to learn and understand Yemenite music28 or dances. Yemenites, by contrast, are conceived of as having this ability a priori. When I was learning Yemenite dances and people realised that I quickly grasped rhythm and the right style of movements, I was asked several times whether I had a Yemenite father. Though I answered in the negative, this question was intensively discussed among the audience, and always concluded by the statement that there must be some kind of genealogic connection, because Europeans can’t learn Yemenite dances. In the case of the Ministry of Culture, the same concept works in 28 Similar observations have been made by Ph. Schuyler (1990) concerning an indigenous Yemenite music theory.

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reverse. The functionaries so obviously violate Yemenite practices and concepts that they are no longer regarded as Yemenites but as Russians. Yet, the ministry of culture is not the whole government. People criticising the cultural policy do not reject the government or the whole nation state. Even loyal supporters of the president criticise the ministry. They only reject the centralistic shape of the state in favour of a federal model. Contrary to the ministry’s intention, local, regional, and tribal identities continue to coexist with national, Arab, or Islamic identities as complementary aspects of a complex identity. Therefore, traditional ritual practice, with a variety of versions, remains intact, and serves as the frame of continuity for a common cultural identity among Yemenites with diverse regional traditions and practices. Yemenites are very creative in experimenting with regional versions inside Yemen, as well as with foreign elements. In 2006, I saw two young men at a wedding performing the last part of barca combining in virtuoso the original rhythm and choreography with movements of Hip Hop. Innovations introduced to other genres, like raqs, take further inspiration from Rap, MTV clips, Egyptian TV shows, and Bollywood films. Yet, all these changes do not violate the traditional distinction between separate categories of genres, each appropriate to a specific ritual and social context. Though there are changes within each genre, genres are not merged. Though temporarily crossed and partly modified, their boundaries remain intact. Some foreign elements are adapted to the tradition in a process of “yemenisation”, by which people carefully select what in their eyes might “fit” (munāsib) in their own culture and tradition. They reject the state’s attempts to redefine and fix shape and meaning of rituals according to foreign concepts, in favour of a performance practice that has always been, and until now has always remained, open for regional variety and multiple meanings. This practice allows negotiating social and cultural values in a permanent process, in which difference and integration, preservation and alteration interact complementarily, not antagonistically. This dynamic process should be preserved and protected. In this way, the rich, intangible cultural heritage of Yemen, with all its facets, may really “develop”, while remaining connected with its roots.

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References Braune, Gabriele 1994. „Die Stellung des Islams zur Musik“. Jahrbuch für musikalische Volks- und Völkerkunde 15: 153–179. — 1997. Küstenmusik in Südarabien. Die Lieder und Tänze an den jemenitischen Küsten des Arabischen Meeres. Frankfurt: Lang. Caton, Steven Charles 1991. “Peaks of Yemen I summon”. Poetry as Cultural Practice in a North Yemen Tribe. Berkeley: University of California Press. al-Ghabri, Ismail 2008. “Yemeni Folk dancing: A Celebration of Wedding and War”. Yemen Times 18/1150, April 28–30. http://www.yementimes.com/defaultdet.aspx?SUB_ID=25155 (04/05/2010). Heising, Elvira & Sigrid Römer & Volker Klotzsche 1994. Der Tanz im „künstlerischen Volksschaffen“ der DDR. Amateurbühnentanz: Volkstanz zum Mitmachen. Remscheid: Deutscher Bundesverband Tanz e.V. (Volkshistorische Studien 8; Informationen zum Tanz, Heft 21). al-Iriani, Mutaher 1992. “raqs”. In: Ministry of Culture and Tourism of the Republic of Yemen. al-mawsuca al-yamaniyah (The Encyclopedia of Yemen), vol. 2. Beirut: Dar Fikr al-Mucasir: 481–482. al-Koshab, Ahmad Said Abdullah 1988. [The Development of Art in the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen after Independence 1967–1985. Based on Materials of Music, Theatre and Choreography]. [unpublished Autoreferat of PhD-thesis]. Kiev. Kraus, Wolfgang 2004. Islamische Stammesgesellschaften. Tribale Identitäten im Vorderen Orient in sozialanthropologischer Perspektive. Vienna: Böhlau. Lambert, Jean 1993. “Musiques Régionales et Identité Nationale”. Révue d’Études du Monde Musulman et Méditerranéen 67/1 (Le Yémen, passé et présent de l’unité): 171–186. —1997. La médecine de l’âme. Le chant de Sanaa dans la société yémenite. Nanterre: Société d’Ethnologie (Hommes et musiques 2). al-Mahiub, Abd al-Rahman 1996. “muqaddimah” (Preface). In: Ministry of Culture and Tourism of the Republic of Yemen. cirs al-acrās. Al-mahrajān al-awwal lilacrās al-yamaniyah. (Program of the First Festival of Yemenite Weddings), 7–17 July 1996. Sana’a: Ministry of Culture and Tourism of the Republic of Yemen. Ministry of Culture and Tourism of the Republic of Yemen (ed.) 1996a. cirs al-acrās. al-mahrajān al-awwal lil-acrās al-yamaniyah (The Wedding of the Weddings). [Program of the First Festival of Yemenite Weddings 7–17 July 1996, Sana’a]. Sana’a: Ministry of Culture and Tourism of the Republic of Yemen. Ministry of Culture and Tourism of the Republic of Yemen (ed.) 1996b. acrās yamaniyah (Yemenite Weddings). [Daily Journal of the First Festival of Yemenite Weddings, 8 July 1996]. Sana’a: Ministry of Culture and Tourism of the Republic of Yemen. Oeser, Horst 1975. „Erbe – Auftrag und Verpflichtung, ein Beitrag zur Beantwortung theoretischer und praktischer Fragen der Folkloreaneignung“. [Referat, gehalten auf

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dem I. Kolloquium des Staatlichen Folklore-Ensembles der DDR und des Zentralhauses für Kulturarbeit der DDR, September 1974 in Neubrandenburg]. In: Wissenschaftliche Beiträge Heft 4. Leipzig: Zentralhaus für Kulturarbeit. Schuyler, Philip D. 1993. “The Sheba River Dam: The Reconstruction of Architecture, History and Music in a Yemeni Operetta”. Revista de Musicologia 16/3: 45–51. — 1990. “Hearts and Minds: Three Attitudes Toward Performance Practice and Music Theory in the Yemen Arab Republic”. Ethnomusicology 34/1: 1–18. Shay, Anthony 2002. Choreographic Politics. State Folk Dance Companies, Representation and Power. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press. Stohrer, Ulrike 2000. „Der wilde Stammeskrieger verdrängt die Königin von Saba. Zur Darstellung des Jemen in der deutschen Reiseliteratur“. Jemen Report 31/2: 11–18. — 2007. “Mapping the Nation through Performance in Yemen: Sanaa as ‘the Capital of the Present, the History and the Unity’”. In: Claire Norton (ed.) Nationalism, Historiography and the (Re)Construction of the Past. Washington: New Academia Publishing: 115–125. — 2009. Barca. Rituelle Performance, Identität und Kulturpolitik im Jemen. (Studies on Modern Yemen vol. 8). Berlin: Klaus Schwarz. Wagner, Siegfried 1974. „Entscheidend für unsere Erbeauffassung ist die Klassenfrage“ [Referat auf der III. Volkskunstkonferenz der DDR]. der tanz 4:5. Yammine, Habib 1995. Les Hommes des tribus et leur musique: (Hauts plateaux yéménites, vallée d’al-Ahjur) [PhD thesis]. Nanterre: Université de Paris X.

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Clothing the Suomussalmi Silent People: From Site-Specific Dance Performance to Ritually Informed Community Event Introduction The relationship between rituals, processes of ritualisation, and theatre or performing arts has long been established in the overlapping discourse between the disciplines of performance studies and ritual theory.1 Empirical examples focus predominantly on the study of classical traditions such as Sanskrit drama, mask traditions from the ceremonial life of West African tribal communities, and practices of worship among Native American Indians. Innovations tend to be theorised as transferences of performative elements from cultural or religious traditions of pre-modern societies to more contemporary genres of performance (i.e. rituals performed on stage).2 The relationship is, however, neither determined by criteria of longevity nor by the canonical status of the tradition in question. It is also not given that transference between rituals and performance must pass from the realm of the non-theatrical to the theatrical. Recently, an illuminating discussion of the merging of theatre and ritual in performance was granted by the German theatre scholar Erika Fischer-Lichte in her analysis of the transgression of the boundary between the actor’s semiotic and phenomenal body as an act of self-sacrifice.3 If, however, we turn our attention away from the stage, it is also possible that performance art works may give rise to ritualised activity outside a conventional theatrical context. This argument, which will structure my discussion, follows a trajectory drawn from the Finnish choreographer and performance artist Reijo Kela’s dance work Ilmarin Kynnös (“Ilmari’s

1 Schechner 2002; 2003 [2008]; Turner 1977; 1979; 1984; Bell 1992; 1997. 2 Holm & Nielsen & Vedel 2008. 3 Fischer-Lichte 2005: 5.

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Ploughing Fields”) in 1988 to the recurring event of clothing the installation titled The Silent People twenty years later.4

The Event In the morning of 6 June 2007, around 25 people arrived at the field of Hiljainen Kansa (The Silent People) some thirty kilometres north of the small town of Ämmänsaari in Kainuu district in North-Eastern Finland. Situated alongside Highway 5, the field of close to 1000 effigies lies in the thinly populated area of predominantly swamps, woods, and a few of Finland’s well over 1000 lakes. While some of the women started up a fire in front of the barn-like building that serves as a handicraft shop, another group, consisting mainly of sulky young males between the ages of 17 and 25, received their instructions before carrying a range of items from the vans in the parking lot into the field: man-high wooden crosses, black plastic bags filled with clothes, and two large pieces of tarpaulin. In the field they began by dismantling the effigies’ peat heads. All was done in a very practical manner; in a matter-of-fact way, and without a lot of words. Ahead of the youngsters worked an elderly couple, neighbours of the field, who had their own very deliberate manner of going about the task: Making sure not to undress the effigies all at once, they first removed their overcoats, allowing a little time for the warmth of the sun to soak in, before removing also the pullover, the shirt, and the undergarment. As the grey wooden structures underneath the clothes were bared, the field revealed itself as a field of crosses. But not for long: While repairs were being made to the wooden structures, and the young men were digging out fresh peat heads from the ground below the effigies, the women, retrieving colourful dresses and fresh shirts from the plastic bags, had already begun clothing The Silent People at the upper end of the field. In the course of the morning, a few people from the village stopped by, bringing their own clothes for The Silent People, adding an extra pullover, a jacket, or a scarf to an outfit, or dressing up an effigy from scratch. Tourists, too, pulled off the highway to satisfy their curiosity and perhaps enjoy a pancake and a cup of coffee made over the open fire in front of the café by the side of the field. In the early afternoon the job was completed, the old clothes wrapped and waiting to be taken to the municipal dump to be burned. The previously saggy and somewhat sadlooking Silent People had been transformed into a fresh and brightly coloured, westward-bound armada – and the work gang into a slightly less sulky group of young men. 4 Reijo Kela (born 1952 in Suomussalmi, Finland) is an internationally acknowledged performance artist and choreographer, whose training took place in Helsinki and New York in the 1970s. His works are often site-specific.

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Image 1: The dismantling

Photo by the author

In late September, there was again a gathering of members of the youth workshop, volunteers, and the odd tourist in the field. This time layers of clothes were added in order to protect The Silent People from the cold of the Kainuu Winter. The same procedure has been repeated twice a year since 1994.

The Sites Reijo Kela’s site-specific work in Suomussalmi in north eastern Finland, where the artist was born, was introduced to me at a dance research conference in 1990.5 The artist’s presentation was eye-opening, not least the filmed images from the performance of Ilmarin Kynnös6, which had been commissioned by the cultural office in 5 The second international dance research conference of NOFOD (Nordic Forum for Dance Research) at Copenhagen (1990). 6 Ilmarin Kynnös (1988) was the first of a series of site-specific works by Reijo Kela in Suomussalmi. The title refers to one of the main characters of the Finnish national epic Kalevala, which relies largely on folk tales from Eastern Finland. The title also is associated with the

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a remote and – to me – unfamiliar part of northern Finland on the occasion of their dance week.7 The performance, which had drawn local audiences of more than 2000 people to a grass field outside the church village of Suomussalmi, had been remounted on the same site two years later for the production of a documentary by Yleisradio, the Finnish National Broadcasting company.8 The filmed document showed the facial expressions and the vocal reactions of the audience to the restaged performance, which left little doubt of their enthusiasm for the event. As one onlooker exclaimed “Hell, it’s all about us!”9 Almost two decades later, when I learned that the closing image of Ilmarin Kynnös, an installation of man-sized wooden effigies entitled The Silent People, remained accessible to the general public, my curiosity was kindled once again. Under the custodianship of the municipality of Suomussalmi, The Silent People was now featured as an attraction, a semi-permanent art installation at a different site beside Highway 5. The new location was even listed (and still is) as a link on the municipality’s official website next to the rock paintings, the crafts shop, the museums, and the memorials dedicated to the Winter War.10 How might one explain the transition from the performance in 1988 to the present-day phenomenon? Had an element of Ilmarin Kynnös been taken hostage in a desperate need to arrest the attention of the stray tourist travelling to this sparsely populated corner of Finland? Or was there, as initially suspected, a deeper level of resonance between the work and the myths and memories of the generations that make up the population of Suomussalmi today?

7 8 9 10

cherished Finnish writer Ilmari Kianto (1874–1970), who spent a large part of his life in Suomussalmi and whose fiction writings were often based on life in the area. (see e.g. Kianto & Enckell 1946 [1909]) The title of Kela’s Ilmarin Kynnös has been translated in many ways, among others: Ilmari’s Field, Ilmari Sowing, and Ilmari’s Ploughing Fields. For this reason I have decided to keep the Finnish title. (K.V.) Suomussalmen tanssiviikko 02/08–07/08/1988. Karakorpi 1991 (N.B.: the filming took place in 1990, the production in 1991). Quoted in Siltavuori 1990: 10. See the Suomussalmi Tourist Office’s webpage: http://www.suomussalmi.fi/Resource. phx/ sivut/sivut-suomussalmi/matkailu/english/index.htx (05/05/2010).

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Image 2: A field of crosses

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The Argument My attempt at an answer is materially anchored in corporeality and weighted towards an interest in action and embodied practice, alongside interpretation.11 The theoretical framework adapts the overlapping discourse of performance theory and ritual studies, in addition to key concepts relating to the cultural practice of memory. Contextualising Reijo Kela’s work in the geopolitical history of the region in the twentieth century, the article examines the nature of local commitment more closely. In addition to field notes from participation in the practical procedures through which the municipality maintains the art installation, the material on which I base the article includes interviews, newspaper articles, statistics, photos, film, and video.12 Against this background, I propose to view the biannual event of clothing The Silent People as a ritually-informed event – a ritual in statu nascendi at a site of memory. The argument has several interconnected parts. First, I examine the interplay between site-specific artworks and locational identity. Referring to the genealogy of site specificity proposed by art historian Miwon Kwon, I trace the nature and development of the activities on the sites, from the original performance of Reijo Kela’s Ilmarin Kynnös to the present-day installation of The Silent People.13 Next, I look at ways in which artworks activate memory on both an individual and a social level.14 Approaching the biannually repeated event of clothing The Silent People from this angle is useful, as it leads to a reflection of how the practice of memory is corporeally played out in the act of maintaining the installation, and to what effect. Finally, in the concluding paragraphs, I relate the ritual aspects of the event to the previous discussion of site specificity, locational identity, and cultural memory.

Site Specificity and Locational Identity Recent years have seen a foregrounding of site specificity as a “new” genre in contemporary art that blurs the distinctions between visual and performance arts.15 In her genealogy of site specificity, Miwon Kwon identifies three paradigmatic changes, or three phases, since the early beginnings of the genre, which she as11 The study forms part of a larger research project on the interrelationship of space, locale, and body undertaken during my fellowship at the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies 2006–2008. 12 The field work in Suomussalmi is ongoing. Between June 2007 and July 2008 I visited the site four times, each time spending 2–4 days in the area. 13 Kwon 2004 [2002]. 14 Nora 1989; Connerton 1989. 15 Dean & Millar 2005; Irwin 2007; Lacy 1995; Lippard 1997; McAuley 2006; Pearson & Shanks 2001; Suderburg 2000.

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cribes to New York in the 1960s.16 The temporal span of choreographer and performance artist Reijo Kela’s site-specific works in Suomussalmi is not quite as long. Still, Kwon’s framework provides a template for analysing the nature of site specificity in his oeuvre. Not only does the Finnish artist combine performance and installation artwork in a manner that situates it in the overlapping zone between visual and performing arts; narrowed down to the trajectory drawn by the pieces, on which I focus here, there is also an overlap with the different phases introduced by Kwon. In this manner, the questions of locational identity and the nature of site specificity in The Silent People add a critical perspective to the current discourse. In the first of Kwon’s three consecutive phases, site specificity is seen to rely on a phenomenological or experiential understanding of the site, which is perceived as a geographical location and an agglomeration of primarily physical attributes.17 The grass field outside the church village of Suomussalmi, which constitutes the original site, is known as “Lassila’s field”. To the outsider’s eye nothing distinguishes this field from its surroundings. The wooden barn, the high grass, and the patches of swampy ground are all typical for the area. In the performance, which travels a distance of about 450 meters, the physical features do, however, form a very concrete basis for the experience of both the dancer and his audience. They also provide the journey with dramaturgical structure. It was, however, according to the artist, his reaction to the saturation of the site by myths and memories, rather than the physical attributes of the locality itself, that shaped his approach. He had thought up the theme of the performance after hearing that a great number of soldiers had died in that field in defense of the country in December 1939: “I thought that on the same fields and in the same barns where people had waged war and died, others had sown and made love. These were the elements that I used in the performance… .”18 Asked about the meaning of Ilmarin Kynnös, the answers provided by the interviewees, whether or not they had actually seen the original performance, were unanimous: Reijo Kela’s Ilmari was a farmer in Suomussalmi in the 1900s. It gave an account of his life from youth, through adulthood, to old age. As shown in the documentary, the performance progressed from dancing on the roof of a barn, through ploughing the field with a plough drawn by mythical reindeer, to the drama of a slash and burn scenario. The acts of war were referenced with explosions in the field that sent the performer flying into the air. The drastic change of life in Finland after the Second World War was captured in the performance behind glassless TVmonitors placed in the window holes of a wooden shelter. In the closing scene, the 16 It should be noted here that Miwon Kwon’s genealogy leaves out the history of site specificity in the European avantgarde of the early 1900s. 17 Kwon 2004 [2002]: 11. 18 Reijo Kela, interviewed by Eeva Siltavuori (Siltavuori 1990: 10).

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performer joined the solemnly standing Silent People, to which I shall shortly return. The ultra-brief historical facts of the battles of the Winter War in Suomussalmi referred to by the performance are as follows. The Red Army crossed the Finnish border on 30 November 1939. As the Soviet soldiers advanced towards the parish village of Suomussalmi from the east and the north, a large number of civilians left their homes, moving towards the west. In the wake of their evacuation, approximately 270 homes were set on fire in order to prevent the insurgents from finding shelter from the cold. The subsequent battles, especially those along the Raate Road leading to the Sovjet border, are well described in the Winter War Exhibition at Raatteen Portti. It took a little more than a month before the hugely outnumbered and poorly equipped contingent of Finnish soldiers in Suomussalmi had fought off the Soviet troops.19 The successful defence relied on the strategic use of the Finnish soldiers’ familiarity with the terrain, their skills with skis, and on their use of the motti tactics of encircling the enemy, thereby cutting them off from their supplies. The death statistics show a loss of around 23 000 lives of Soviet soldiers against 800 Finnish ones in the battles of Suomussalmi.20 In one encounter outside the church village of Suomussalmi, about 200 Finnish soldiers died. This incident took place in “Lassila’s field”, or “the blood field of Lassila” as it came to be known.21 It was on this field that Reijo Kela created and performed Ilmarin Kynnös. One of the defining characteristics of the second phase of Kwon’s genealogy is the critique of art institutions and their role in defining art.22 In his insistence on site specificity, Reijo Kela’s approach to creating performance works in Suomussalmi is, even if only in an indirect manner, a critique of art institutions and their role in the hegemonic power structures of Finnish society. His voice is, in more than one respect, a voice from the periphery. Not only does he, as a contemporary performance artist and a choreographer, speak from the margins of the art establishment, in his continued commitment to Suomussalmi he also speaks from the socio-economic and cultural margins of Finland. It is, therefore, not coincidental 19 As the Soviet soldiers advanced towards the parish village of Suomussalmi from the east and the north, the civilians, who were able to leave their land, fled their homes, moving towards the west. In the wake of their evacuation, approx. 270 homes in the area were set on fire in order to prevent the enemy soldiers from finding shelter from the cold. The subsequent battles, especially those along the Raate Road to the east of the church village, are well described. In the Suomussalmi battles, approx. 23,000 Soviet soldiers were killed, and their tanks, artillery, motor transport, and horses seized. Those who had fled towards the west of Finland, thinking they would never come back, could now return. However, there was not much to start from, as the village, as well as the smallcroppers’ homes, had to be rebuilt from scratch. 20 Raatteen Tien-Projetiryhmä 1988: 13. 21 Jalo Heikkinen interviewed by Karen Vedel on 07/06/2007. 22 Kwon 2004 [2002]: 14.

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that his work has been read as a “commentary on the structural change in Finnish society, a result of the urbanisation and industrialisation that began in the 1950s”.23 On the map of Finland, Kainuu is geographically situated in the north-east, where the overlap of two gray zones forms a black zone, which can be read both in terms of business activity and in terms of the standard of living. On the whole, there has been considerable socio-economic development in Finland in the first two decades of the post-Soviet era, which coincide with the time that has elapsed since the performance of Ilmarin Kynnös. Statistics show, however, that Kainuu, and, to an even greater extent, the municipality of Suomussalmi have been “left behind”, if not entirely “left out” of this development. While the population of Finland as such has increased by 12% over the past 25 years, the population of Suomussalmi has decreased by 25%. In terms of income per capita, the population of Kainuu ranked lowest in the country in 1988, lower than even Lapland. This is still the case. Unemployment figures for 1990 show numbers almost twice as high in Kainuu as in Finland as a whole. This difference has not diminished, but rather increased in the following two decades. In the summer of 2007, the estimated rate of unemployment in Suomussalmi was as high as 25%, compared to an average of 5.9% on a national level. Most discouraging are the suicide statistics, which once more show that, while the curve has been falling over the last twenty years on a national basis, it has remained extraordinarily high in Kainuu (even by Finnish standards).24 At the time of my first field trip in June 2007, the municipality of Suomussalmi had already suffered 10 deaths by suicide in that same year. The latest incident, which involved a young man who shot his girlfriend before killing himself, had taken place the day before I arrived. Although only two interviewees actually referred to the tragedy, it marked the event of clothing The Silent People with an underlying tone of sadness and grief.25 In the second phase of site specificity outlined by Kwon, the role of the artist comes to be seen as that of a cultural service provider, the site as a network of social relations, and the artwork as an extension of “the community”.26 The extent to which this was the case with Ilmarin Kynnös and with the later development of The Silent People may be illustrated by a brief account of how the two works came into being. In his creation of the original performance onsite in 1988, Reijo Kela had wished to hire the two to three hundred unemployed youth of Suomussalmi to perform with him in the closing scene as The Silent People.27 When no-one responded 23 Sutinen 1997: 20. 24 According to nation-based WHO data, Finland ranks ninth in the world in terms of suicide in 2007. http://tilastokeskus.fi/meta/til/ksyyt_en.html 25 The incident made media headlines and drew (short-span) attention to Suomussalmi on a national level. 26 Kwon 2004 [2002]: 53. 27 Jalo Heikkinen, interviewed by Karen Vedel on 07/06/2007.

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to the advertisement he had posted in the local newspaper, the job of producing a stock of 240 man-sized “stick-figures”, in the cross-shape used for drying hay, was commissioned with the municipality. The portfolio was given to the youth workshop that trains unemployed local youngsters and dropouts for a working life. They built the first contingent of “stick-figures”, the number of which corresponded to the number of unemployed youth. Since that day, the obligation to maintain the effigies, which today amount to approximately 1000, has remained with the youth workshop.28 According to Miwon Kwon, the third phase of site specificity is defined by a radical opening of the notion of “site”. Released from its ties to a specific physical location, the “discursive site” can be a wide variety of arenas, from a political debate to a social cause. Based on the manner in which Reijo Kela’s social, historical, and environmental awareness is played out in his works, his approach to site specificity may be seen as discursive, even if it is in an oblique and indirect manner. One example is the use of “offspring” from The Silent People, who in varying numbers have been featured in others of the artist’s works. One case was the performance titled Jalonhaarassa rantojen raukat. Ämmän koskessa Kauniit ja Rohkeat (“The Bold and the Beautiful. Wretched of the Shores”) which was sited on the banks of the Jalonuoma, close to the centre of Ämmansaari, in 1994. In this site-specific work, around 350 effigies of Silent People were cast in the role of the Wretched on the Shores, depicted as passive spectators, watching from a distance the ways of the Bold and the Beautiful. Later that same year, when the Kainuu district put on an exhibition in Senate Square in front of the Cathedral in central Helsinki, all 1000 Silent People were transported from Suomussalmi to the capital. In the dark of the night they were erected on the stairs of the Cathedral, peat heads and all, creating a puzzling sight, before they returned from their Helsinki-outing to Suomussalmi. Most recently, “cousins” of The Silent People appeared in the UK in the summer of 2007, where Reijo Kela’s Hei People were built overnight on secret and shifting locations across country Kent.29 In the above-mentioned examples, the inter-textual references to Ilmarin Kynnös and the installation by Highway 5 in Suomussalmi are implicit, and the effigies carry traces of both without even mentioning their names. The itinerant effigies remain connected to Suomussalmi when making their appearances away from “home”. In a subtle way The Silent People become themselves the site, the political cause, and the issue, addressed in various media, from the original performance through the TV documentary to the conference presentation, the derived performances, and the mention of the installation on the Internet. 28 Lea Matéro-Seppänen interviewed by Karen Vedel on 06/06/2007. 29 http://www.nklaap.com/heiPeople.html (05/05/2010) See also www.youtube.com under “Hei People”.

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Image 3: Dressing

Photo by the author

The claim may be expanded, taking into account the latest development in Kwon’s genealogy, “new genre public art”, which has the integration of art and everyday life as the ultimate goal.30 In this phase, the community’s sense of identification with the work is secured through an investment of labour by people otherwise distant from the artistic process.31 Community involvement in the installation near Highway 5 takes places on several levels, from the biannual charity,where quite substantial amounts of clothing are donated, to the very practical commitment of the shifting membership of the youth workshop, from the approximately 80 school kids, who arrived to assist in clothing the effigies for the winter, to the municipal decision-makers, who recently renewed the contractual agreement with the artist for a ten year-period. Asked about the attitude towards the job, the leader of the youth workshop explained: 30 Kwon 2004 [2002]: 82, 104ff. 31 Ibid.: 96.

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Karen Vedel “The basic idea of the workshop is that whatever you do, you do it properly, you do it carefully. [I]n the beginning – before they come here, the boys are so that they say, it’s nothing important, why should we do a thing like that. But then when they start working, they do it ok, and then afterwards they become proud: We did it, it’s kind of ours.”32

The municipal interest in the installation may be ascribed to the production of difference, which Kwon calls the “hidden attractor” of site-oriented practices.33 Paraphrasing Henri Lefebvre on the dialectics between the increasing abstraction of space under globalisation and the production of local specificity, Kwon emphasises the powerful dynamics which underlie the pitching of the identity of a specific locality as a meaningful place to visit.34 It took determination to make a more permanent installation out of The Silent People. The now retired leader of the cultural division of the municipality, Jalo Heikkinen, revealed how – after the performance beside Jalonuoma in 1994 – he had convinced the artist that the field in Käpylä on the side of Highway 5 between Suomussalmi and Kuusamo, where the forest had been cut down, would be a good choice as a “resting place” for The Silent People.35 But when the first 100 figures had been erected, it already became clear that the installation, breaking the monotonous landscape with an unexpected display of humanoid structures, colours, and motion, attracted attention from passers-by, who would stop their cars to ponder the sight. In order to cater to the visitors, a café was established at the side of the field, where coffee and pancakes are made over an open fire. There is also a stand with information about other memorial sites and attractions (Finnish muistomerkki) in the area. During the summer, members of the local community are among the visitors to the site. Especially popular are occasions when musical concerts or dance performances are arranged in the field. The majority of the visitors are, however, tourists, both Finns and foreigners. The installation of The Silent People in Käpylä provides jobs for 3 employees, who work (one on halft-time) in the café and the shop for the duration of the season, which lasts from June to September.

32 33 34 35

Lea Matéro-Seppälä, interviewed by Karen Vedel on 06/06/2007. Kwon 2004 [2002]: 159. Lefebvre 2005 [1991] in Kwon 2004 [2002]: 54. Jalo Heikkinen, interviewed by Karen Vedel on 07/06/2007.

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Image 4: Dressed for summer Photo by the author

A central objective of “new genre public art” is the creation of works in which members of a community will see and recognise themselves, where they will be affirmatively pictured or validated.36 The point of identification cited earlier by the leader of the youth workshop is confirmed in several of the interviews, for example, in that of a young woman who had brought some of her own clothes to the field “I see this artwork as it is like us, our people here. I can find myself … . Because now there’s my clothes.”37 A somewhat older woman added a historical explanation to the same interpretation: “To me, these effigies are the people of Kainuu. Life here has been so tough, they have been fighting to earn their living and their daily bread, really. So they are not people who make revolutions. They are humble, but they still,

36 Kwon 2004 [2002]: 115. 37 Anonymous F, interviewed by Karen Vedel on 06/06/2007.

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Karen Vedel somehow they’re proud in their humility. They are not people who you can crush under your shoe.”38

Balancing the examples of positive identification with the installation, it was brought to my attention that there were those who were very critical of The Silent People. But even in their desire to distance themselves from the locational identity suggested, the point of recognition seems to be confirmed: “[L]ocally, some people don’t even like this. They think that this is something very negative for this region, for Suomussalmi, these (rääsylainen). They think it’s like these old people from a long time ago, when we … were very poor, we don’t have enough food, we don’t have any proper clothes. [W]e have this Kainuu song … Nälkämaan laulu, how can I say it, … Land of Hunger?”39 My conclusion on the sense of local ownership is that, although expressions of positive identification with the installation dominated the interviews, there were also ambiguous feelings and accounts of adverse opinions. The marketing of the art installation through brochures, which have been printed by the Suomussalmi Tourist Office in three languages, integrates the ambiguity and the tension in the sense that the text dissociates the work from an identification with Suomussalmi. The title on the brochures says: The Silent People. The Oddity of Highway 5. The fact that the installation is today situated at a distance from both the church village of Suomussalmi and the “new” village of Ämmansaari may also be seen to underline the desire to avoid an explicit identification between the installation and the local community. By way of concluding the correlation with the phases in the conceptual frame provided by Miwon Kwon, it should be emphasised that the shifts through which Reijo Kela’s works foreground different kinds of site specificity are subtle. The experience of the site as a geographical location retains importance alongside the notion of the work of art as a voice from the margins of Finnish society. And, with regard to the notions of the “discursive site”, it continues to exist as new momentum is added to the site, the latest example being the derivative performance-installations in the UK. The community involvement since the performance of Ilmarin Kynnös may be characterised by its continuity. The strength of the interest in holding on to the performance installation was recently demonstrated in the renewed contract between the municipality and the artist.

38 Anonymous F, interviewed by Karen Vedel on 06/06/2007. 39 Ritva Mäkeläinen, interviewed by Karen Vedel on 05/06/2007. The title she refers to is that of a poem/song (Nälkämaan laulu) written by Ilmari Kianto, with music composed by Oskar Merikanto.

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Sites of Performance – Sites of Memory In human geography, identity has been posed as a quality assigned to place through human activity, rather than a quality which is inherent to place.40 Among the forms of human activity that impart meaning and identity to place are rituals, commemorations, and preservation. Adding site-specific performance and installation art to this list raises questions about the relationship between memory practices and place, which have been pursued by performance theorists. Important insights into the understanding of how site specificity may contribute to the production of locational identity have been provided by Kathleen Irwin, who recently introduced the notion of “the spatial performative” as a useful concept to account for “how site makes meaning”.41 In a similar vein, and in reference to the work of the British performance group Brith Gof, Mike Pearson notes that “site specific performances re-contextualise site; they are the latest occupation of a location where (previous) occupations are still apparent and cognitively active…”.42 And he continues: “Such performances are a complex overlay of narrative, historical and contemporary, a kind of saturated space…”. The suggestion made here is that the inscription of new meaning in site-specific performance involves a re-actualisation and re-organisation of meaning previously assigned to the locality itself. I wish to look more closely at the practice of memory as one of the activities through which meaning may be generated and performed in site specificity. In introducing the notion of sites of memory or lieux de mémoire, the French historian Pierre Nora points out that, unlike history, which attaches itself to events, memory attaches itself to sites.43 A phenomenon of present times, he poses sites of memory as a new memory practice, which holds the “remains of a memorial consciousness, that has barely survived in a historical age that calls out for memory because it has abandoned it”.44 His sites of memory appear where living memory has collapsed (or is collapsing) as a result of the movement toward mass culture on a global scale. Finnish society, with its massive structural changes over a relatively short time, is a textbook case of the kind of society in which Nora would expect to find sites of memory. The history of this barely century-old nation is further marked by the scissures, the fissures, created by its history of wars.45 Most important in this sense are the traumas of the 1918 Civil War, which currently preoccupy Finnish

40 41 42 43 44 45

See e.g. Osborne 2001; Massey 1994. Irwin 2007: 69 ff. Mike Pearson, quoted in Kaye 1996: 214. Nora 1989: 22. Ibid.: 12. Apart from the Civil War in 1918 and the Winter War of 1939–1940, these include the Continuation war of 1941–1944 (against the Soviet Union) and the Lapland War of 1944– 1945 (against Germany) (Kirby 2006).

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historians. All the while, the nation is as deeply absorbed in its own transformation and renewal as any other modern and post modern society of the world today. In order for a lieu de mémoire to appear, there must be a will to remember. As underlined by Nora, the transition into a site of memory is voluntary, intentional, and conscious. Voluntary memory is defined as distinct from “true memory”, which in Nora’s terms refers to gestures, inherent body knowledge, unstudied reflexes, habits, and skills that have been passed down in unspoken tradition.46 The creation of a work of art is, in every respect, a conscious and intended, rather than a habitual, activity. As demonstrated in the discussion of the relationship between the Ilmarin Kynnös and the site, Reijo Kela’s creation of the piece involved a “re-actualisation” and “re-organisation” of the meaning already assigned to the site. The format within which this process was undertaken was artistic and aimed at the creation of a performance artwork, which might be of relevance to members of the local community. It implied a transformation of the field into a performative space. In the performance itself, the identification of the field with one of the tragic battles of the Winter War was placed within the larger temporal frame of the structural changes in society at large, as well as in the lifespan of a farmer in the course of the 1900s. In this sense, the site became, at least temporarily, overwritten with a new layer of meaning.47 In the detachment of The Silent People from the performance and the site of Ilmarin Kynnös in “Lassila’s field”, and the subsequent relocation of the installation to the field in Käpylä, new layers were added to the work. It was the interest the installation generated in passers-by on Highway 5 that gave rise to the idea to make it possible for visitors to stop by The Silent People for a cup of coffee. Gradually the services were extended: the first of the now three wooden barns was built, and negotiations initiated with the regional road authorities, which in 2000 resulted in the posting of the M53 signs, which allocate the status of an “attraction”. At the same time, a car park and toilet facilities were constructed. While the sale of coffee and pancakes today finances the salaries of two people (one of whom works halftime), the salary of the third is paid by the municipal tourist office, under the condition that information is offered about other “attractions” in the region. The “café” 46 Nora 1989: 13. Although he uses a similar terminology, there is a difference between Pierre Nora’s and Henri Bergson’s distinction between two forms of memory (Bergson & Paul & Palmer 2007 [1912]). Bergson uses the term mémoire involuntaire, alternately “true” or “pure” memory, to speak of memory that holds the oldest surviving memories. Memories of this nature reside in the unconscious. They are regressive, uncontrollable, and surface spontaneously, for example, in dreams. The opposite is his notion of “habit memory”, which is created through willed repetition, seated in sensory-motor mechanisms of the body, progressive, and future-oriented. Nora’s use of the notion of “true memory” is thus closer to the Bergsonian concept of “habit memory”, than to what the French philosopher meant by “true memory”. 47 Kaye 2000: 215.

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functions as a “gateway” to the installation itself. With its rustic seating arrangement around an open fire, it creates a space for the sharing of stories. In Nora’s discussion, a lieu de mémoire is defined as a “site where (cultural) memory crystallises and secretes itself”.48 Materiality is, however, just one of three co-existing aspects which characterise sites of memory, the other two being functional and symbolic.49 Not only is The Silent People one of the few stops outside the towns on Highway 5 where tourists and travelers can pull off the road for a rest and a coffee, but the installation, as we have heard, also serves the local community in various ways. On a symbolic level, the installation has value as a place of cultural activity, of rest and contemplation. There are annual art events in the field, for example, musical concerts or dance performances, which, I am told, draw large local audiences. But it is also being used as “a sanctuary of spontaneous devotion and silent pilgrimage”.50 Several interviewees confessed that they would visit the field every now and then on their own. There is, I was told, also an old musician, who is known to visit the field to play his accordion. One woman, whose mother passed away five years ago, was now slowly beginning to bring her clothes to the field. Reflecting on this, she said: “It’s difficult, because it’s kind of, do I bring my mother here, as a dead person?” Referring to a relative who had brought the clothes of her mother-in-law to the field, she added: “… but maybe it’s easier, your mother-in-law, than your own mother?” Her incentive to visit the field outside the season was to check up on the clothes, for example, after a storm or rain.51 An obvious transformation that has taken place over the twenty years that have passed since the installation was part of the performance in Lassila’s field is the style of clothes. Images from the documentary of Ilmarin Kynnös (1990) show The Silent People as a group of men, dressed in black suits. These were the clothes that the people of Suomussalmi had stored away in their cupboards then, and which therefore made their way into the field. The black uniform of masculinity added an austere feeling to the installation. This impression is confirmed in the interviews. Recalling her perception of the installation in 1988, one woman said: “[T]hen they had these black coats. It was very frightening, very, they didn’t laugh at all. Now they are laughing, they are quite cheerful, actually.”52 Today, the gender representation in the field has changed to the extent that the majority of the effigies are

48 49 50 51 52

Nora 1989: 9. Ibid.: 19. Ibid.: 23. Anonymous F:50, interviewed by Karen Vedel on 06/06/2007. Transcript from an interview with Ritva Mäkeläinen F:42 (1681/23) (1:09:04) on 05/06/ 2007.

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dressed as women. Incidentally, this also corresponds with the fact that the majority of those who leave Suomussalmi are women.53 Asking about the meaning of The Silent People, the answer I got was mostly evasive: “It is for everyone to decide for himself … .” The consistency of the answer underlines the ambience of ambiguity and enigma which surrounds the work. It also recounts what is a generally accepted definition of abstract modern art. The open interpretation is supported by the artist, who has refused to assign any one “meaning” to the work. It complies with yet another defining condition of lieux de mémoire, “their capacity for metamorphosis, an endless recycling of meaning and an unpredictable proliferation of their ramifications”.54 While, on a general level, the answer was inconclusive, I was offered a variety of personal interpretations. Some gave several, others provided overlapping answers. Here is a selection: The Silent People are: – the Finnish people. As a result of having been wedged between strong political and military powers for so long, they have become silent. – the Finnish people. We don’t protest much; we just take what we are given. – the people of Suomussalmi: strong, humble and upright – all those who fled from Suomussalmi when the Red Army arrived – all those who have emigrated from Suomussalmi in recent times – the unemployed youth, who exhibit a lack of trust in the world, a lack of courage – friends and relatives who have passed away. By dressing them up in a deceased person’s clothes, they are commemorated. People place personal notes to the deceased in the pockets of the clothes. – the Finnish soldiers who were killed in the Winter War – the children and grandchildren of the Finnish soldiers who fought in the Winter War – the poor who have been forgotten. They can’t defend themselves. They receive these clothes as a gift we (the rich people in Finland) give poor people. The quotes demonstrate that The Silent People embrace multiple and sometimes conflicting meanings. As a site of memory the installation complies with Nora’s 53 As a result of this demographic tendency, which leaves a “surplus” of bachelors in Suomussalmi, there has been an influx of Russian women in the municipality. Of the total population of about 9 000 people, there are around 300 Russian women, all married to Finnish men. 54 Nora 1989: 19.

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definition in that it is “… hybrid, mutable, and intimately bound with life and death, with time and eternity; enveloped in a Möbius strip of the collective and the individual”.55 It constitutes a radically open monument and a space for the experience and exploration of a range of individual responses. It also acknowledges what has been called the “inherently instable, ephemeral and episodic nature of the processes of memory”.56

Memory as Corporeal Practice An often-cited contributor to the discussion of memory practices and how they work with respect to the interplay between the individual and the social is sociologist and social theorist Paul Connerton. In How Societies Remember (1989), he makes a distinction between two areas of social activity, which make common remembering possible: commemorative ceremonies and bodily practices.57 Connerton’s emphasis is on the second of the two, the bodily or corporeal practice of memory, which he explores in a discussion of habit memory. The idea that past performance(s) become laid down in the body as habit memory has already been mentioned in reference to Nora’s concepts, which depend on Henri Bergson’s writings on memory and matter.58 The claim pursued by Connerton follows Bergson in that he sees habit memory as a) non-cognitive, and b) different from recollection. Arguing that habitual memory is inherently performative, he proposes a “rhetoric of re-enactment”, which functions on the level of calendrical, verbal, and gestural repetition.59 While ceremonial re-enactments of the past, as for example the invented rite of carrying the Olympic torch, have been the object of interpretive activity, this is less often the case with non-inscribed social practices of less overtly spectacular and/or political nature. As an example of the kind of incorporating practices he has in mind, Connerton points to the memorisation of culturally specific postures, which includes the ability to differentiate between postures appropriate for ceremonial occasion and for everyday activities.60 Returning to The Silent People, one such posture, which belongs to the incorporated repertory of culturally shared bodily gestures in Finland is the erect standing, which characterises the effigies of The Silent People. The same solemn and composed standing may be recognised in other culturally specific postural performances, such as commemorative events for the annual celebration of 55 56 57 58 59 60

Ibid.: 19. Bordo 2003: 174. Connerton 1989: 39. Bergson & Paul & Palmer 2007 [1912]. Connerton 1989: 65. Ibid.: 75.

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Finnish independence, or at other events of a ceremonial nature.61 Yet another example from the repertory of shared bodily gestures seen in the material from Suomussalmi is the “victorious pose” of Reijo Kela in the closing image of the documentary from the performance of Ilmarin Kynnös, where he stands in the field of The Silent People. The pose was tested spontaneously by one of the young men from the youth workshop upon entering the field in Käpylä. And what about the silence itself? May it not be viewed as a culturally specific and incorporated performative gesture? Participation in the atrocities of war is potentially a traumatising event, which – if it is not addressed as such – risks internalisation as pain on the level of both the individual and the social body.62 Regardless of the Winter War being commemorated as a heroic war, the successful defence of Finland’s independence was for decades overshadowed by the fact that the Soviet Union came out as the winner. The peace agreement, whereby parts of Karelia were ceded to the victorious neighbour in the East, also left Finland within the Soviet “sphere of influence”, and, furthermore, prescribed cooperation with the Soviet Union. As phrased by an interviewee in Suomussalmi: “It would not be cooperative to talk about it (the defeat of the Soviet army).” Instead the silence became incorporated. This was confirmed by several of the persons interviewed, whose fathers, even within the four walls of the home, would not speak of the war. “Those who had seen the most terrible things, they didn’t speak.”63

A Rite of Spring Having asked why it was made, how it is done, and what it means, the question which remains to be asked of the installation of The Silent People and the event of clothing them is: What does it do? Bearing in mind ritual theorist Catherine Bell’s notion of “misrecognition”, which she uses, following Bourdieu, in reference to the intrinsic blindness of practice, this is the one question for which the researcher should not expect satisfactory answers from those involved.64 Instead, we may find answers in the analytical concepts of performance and action theory. According to Richard Schechner, “Rituals are a way people remember. Rituals are memories in action, encoded into actions.”65 In pointing to this level of action, his claim agrees well with Nora’s assertion that the memory sites 61 I witnessed such “ceremonial standing” on the occasion of the disclosure in Kajaani in September 2007 of a monument for the multiple Olympic medalist Heikki Savolainen. 62 See e.g. Kleinman & Kleinman 1996; Young 1996. 63 Anonymous F:50, interviewed by Karen Vedel on 06/06/2007. 64 Bell 1992: 81ff. 65 Schechner 2002: 45.

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“… mark the ritual of a society without ritual; integral particularities in a society that levels particularity; and signs of distinction and of group membership in a society that tends to recognise individuals only as identical and equal.”66 As a level of ritualisation in a deritualised society, I suggest that the event of clothing The Silent People is ritually informed. I am looking at a “rite of spring”. This is confirmed in its calendrical re-occurrence, which follows the change of seasons, marks the passing of time, the overturn of the old, and the possibility of fresh beginnings.67 The activity itself, and the manner in which it is carried out, goes back to the creation of the performance of Ilmarin Kynnös in the troubled field of Lassila. It also goes back to a time, not so long ago, when the small-scale farmers of Suomussalmi would erect wooden cross-like poles and load them with freshly cut grass left to dry. Over and beyond the re-enactment of (by now) almost extinct cultural practices and the symbolic importance of the calendrical recurrance, the event is rich with ritual aspects. For example, the distribution of work tasks (differentiated by gender as well as age), and the use of experts, who return every year with specific jobs, is, according to Bell, another defining characteristic of rituals or ritualised behaviour.68 The repair of the crosses is in the hands of the same person every year, and I have referred above to the elderly volunteers, whose deliberate manner of changing the clothes of the Silent People follows an implicit logic. More heavily weighted in symbolic terms is the de-capitation of the effigies, and the constant updating of their style of clothing.69 The return of the heads to complete their decomposition in the ground and the gathering and ultimate burning of the clothes, further ties the event to cyclical patterns of life and death. The shifting styles of clothes, too, remind us of the change of time. Framed in the manner of ritual or ritual-like activity70, the café gains a meaning as a gateway, and a place to ponder, that is beyond a purely functional one. As far as the serving of pancakes is concerned, these, made from white flour in an area where bread was scarce, become, within a symbolic reading, a sacrificial meal. The ritual aspects mentioned here have not been “invented” with the intention of creating a ritual in the manner of, for example, commemorative rites as invented and fixed in Soviet times.71 Rather, the ritualisation which is at stake here is a potentially infinitely ongoing process, and part of the “central dynamic in human affairs”.72 Viewed next to the other muistomerkki (memorial sites) in the area, The 66 67 68 69 70 71 72

Nora 1989: 12. Bell 1997: 92ff. Ibid.: 82. Connerton 1989: 10. Bell 1997: 158. Fischer-Lichte 2005: 97ff. Bell 1997: 264.

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Silent People in Käpylä is unusual, in the sense that the Silent People are self-referential, tied to nothing in particular, and yet potentially to everything, through the process of memory itself.73 Next to the Winter Monument’s memorial site of 20 000 rocks, and the crosses in the cemetery in front of the parish church, the installation of The Silent People is characterised by instability, fragility, even decomposability. It is a radically open monument, which performs a complex layer of roles in the society. The desire is not to fix the past, but rather to keep memory alive, by accepting the flow of time.

73 War memorials in Suomussalmi are numerous, and they are especially abundant along the Raate Road running between the church village and the Russian border. Among the more prominent monuments are Alvar Aalto’s Eternal Flame and the Winter War Monument. The latter was created in a joint effort between Finland and Russia in 2003, with the explicit aim of developing tourism related to the military history of the area; it stands near the Raateen Portti Museum of 1998.

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References Bell, Catherine 1992. Ritual Theory. Ritual Practice. New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press. — 1997. Ritual. Perspectives and Dimensions. New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bergson, Henri & Nancy Margaret Paul & William Scott Palmer (eds.) 2007 [1912]. Matter and Memory. New York: Cosimo Classics. Bordo, Jonathan 2003. “The Keeping Place. Arising from an Incident on the Land”. In: Robert S. Nelson & Margaret Rose Olin (eds.). Monuments and Memory, Made and Unmade. Chicago, London: University of Chicago Press. Connerton, Paul 1989. How Societies Remember. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dean, Tacita & Jeremy Millar 2005. Place. London: Thames and Hudson. Fischer-Lichte, Erika 2005. Theatre, Sacrifice, Ritual. Exploring Forms of Political Theatre. London, New York: Routledge. Holm, Bent & Bent Flemming Nielsen & Karen Vedel 2008. Religion, Ritual, Theatre. Hamburg: Peter Lang. Irwin, Kathleen 2007. The Ambit of Performativity. How Site Makes Meaning in SiteSpecific Performance. Helsinki: University of Art and Design. Karakorpi, Titta 1991. Ilmarin Kynnös. [TV production]. Producer: Yleisradio / TV1 / Teatteritoimitus. Kaye, Nick 1996. Art into Theatre: Performance Interviews and Documentations. Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers. — 2000. Site Specific Art. Performance, Place and Documentation. London, New York: Routledge. Kianto, Ilmari & Olof Enckell (transl.) 1946 [1909]. Det Röda Strecket. Stockholm: Söderströms. Kirby, David G. 2006. A Concise History of Finland. New York: Cambridge University Press. Kleinman, Arthur & Joan Kleinman 1996. “The Appeal of Experience; The Dismay of Images: Cultural Appropriations of Suffering in Our Times”. Daedalus 125/1 (Social Suffering): 1–23. Kwon, Miwon 2004 [2002]. One Place After Another. Site-Specific Art and Locational Identity. Cambridge, London: The MIT Press. Lacy, Suzanne (ed.) 1995. Mapping the Terrain: New Genre Public Art. Seattle Washington: Bay Press. Lefebvre, Henri & Donald Nicholson Smith 2005 [1991]. The Production of Space. Malden et al.: Blackwell Publishing. Lippard, Lucy R. 1997. The Lure of the Local: Senses of Place in a Multicentered Society. New York: The New Press. Massey, Doreen B. 1994. Space, Place, and Gender. Oxford: Polity Press.

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McAuley, Gay 2006. “‘Remembering and Forgetting’. Place and Performance in the Memory Process”: In: Gay McAuley (ed.). Unstable Ground. Performance and the Politics of Place. Brussels: Peter Lang: 149 - 177 Nora, Pierre 1989. “Between Memory and History. Les Lieux de Mémoire”, Representations 26 (Special Issue: Memory and Counter-Memory): 7–24. Osborne, Brian S. 2001. “Landscapes, Memory, Monuments, and Commemoration: Putting Identity in its Place”. Canadian Ethnic Studies Journal 33/3: 39 -79 Pearson, Mike & Michael Shanks 2001. Theatre / Archaeology. New York: Routledge Raatteen Tien-Projektiryhmä 1988. Somussalmi Raate. Stirderna om Suomussalmi och Raateväg under vinterkriget 1939–1940. Suomussalmi: Suomussalmen kunta. Schechner, Richard 2002. Performance Studies. An Introduction. London, New York: Routledge. — 2003 [1988]. Performance Theory. London: Routledge. Siltavuori, Eeva 1990. “Reijo Kela. The Man Who Danced the News”. Form. Function. Finland 4: 6 - 12 Suderburg, Erika (ed.) 2000. Space, Site, Intervention. Situating Installation Art. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Sutinen, Virve 1997. “Reijo Kela & A Way of Being in the World”. Tanssi 3: 19–21. Turner, Victor 1977. “Frame, Flow, and Reflection: Ritual and Drama as Public Liminality”. In: Michel Benamou & Charles Caramello (eds.). Performance in Postmodern Culture. Madison: Coda Press Inc.: 33–55. — 1979. “Dramatic Ritual / Ritual Drama: Performance and Reflexive Anthropology”. Kenyon Review 1: 80–93. — 1984. “Liminality and the Performative Genres”. In: John J. MacAloon (ed.). Rite, Drama, Festival, Spectacle: Rehearsals Toward a Theory of Cultural Performance. Philadelphia: Institute for the Study of Human Issues: 19–41. Vedel, Karen 2007. [Interview transcripts from 6 June 2007 (Jalo Heikkinen, Ritva Mäkelainen, Lea Matéro Seppänen, Anonymous F:35 and Anonymous F:50)] Young, Allan 1996. “Suffering and the Origins of Traumatic Memory”. Daedalus 125/1 (Social Suffering): 245–260. WHO Suicide statistics 2007. http://tilastokeskus.fi/meta/til/ksyyt_en.html

Madeleine Hurd

Reporting on Civic Rituals: Texts, Performers, and Audience This article discusses stories about rituals. The stories in question are presented as texts, describing soldierly marches, festivals that celebrate regime changes, and rituals of parliamentary politics that took place in inter-war Germany. Very few are alive, today, who actually participated in such rituals; the bulk of the information concerning them must come from newspaper articles, memoirs, histories, and other archival sources. As a historian, I am interested in what such archives can tell us about the rituals themselves. But I am also interested in the texts that describe the rituals. I would like to speculate on how such texts function, discursively, as a reflection and reminder of the civic rituals performed – perhaps, even, as sources that have the power to confirm, augment, or cast doubt on the rituals’ significance. The morphology of mass-media coverage of modern civic rituals has, indeed, long been a source of fascination for media and discourse scholars.1 With the advent of radio and television, events such as American party conventions or the Olympics could be simulcast – that is, people far distant could listen to or watch these events as they unfolded. This, media scholars postulate, allows the audience to feel included and engaged in the events’ rituals. Here, as John MacAloon (1984) has pointed out, one is well-served by a distinction between “ritual”, “festival”, and “spectacle”. A ritual states that “all contents represent the most serious matters and are completely true”. A festival says the same thing, but the statement is claimed to be that of an entire community, whose common agreement is evidenced in a strongly shared mood. A ritual spectacle, finally, resembles a festival, but cannot function without spectators. The crowd has a part to play: the part of consecration. An audience may, perhaps, participate in a ritual or festival, but only on the ritual’s own terms; it is otherwise incidental. In a spectacle, the audience acts as judge. Its judgment as to the “truth” of the ritual, the sincerity of the communal “mood”, may, moreover, be expressed creatively, in performances that (so to speak) constitute side-shows of consecration.

1 See, for example, Dayan & Katz 1985; Chaney 1986.

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What, then, is the relation between a re-told, medialised ritual, and its audience – a text describing a ritual, and its readers? Television and radio audiences are, arguably, invited to participate in the “spectacles” of Olympics, or Royal Weddings, on surprisingly equal terms. Indeed, Daniel Dayan and Elihus Katz (1985), in their classic study of television coverage of the British Royal Wedding, find that such “electronic ceremonies” do invite vicarious audience participation. They join others in analysing how journalist and cameraman work to intensify the audience’s ceremonial experience by inserting personal voices, describing bodily sensations, providing gossip, and by using in- and over-crowd points-of-view as well as closeups of audience members. The re-telling of rituals, festivals, and spectacles, of course, pre-dates electronic media. Earlier forms of mass media, of which published printed texts were most important, could, equally obviously, not invite the same type of audience participation. They were unable to tell the story as it unfolded; their stories were of ceremonies finished and over with. They had, moreover, limited space and, often, no images. Nonetheless, nineteenth- and early twentieth-century books and newspapers include many descriptions of spectacles. Stories of public rituals were, it seemed, important, even in retrospect; editors and authors turned to such narratives, for instance, to establish political legitimacy. As early as 1848, when a discontented urban bourgeoisie was out, openly demonstrating against the privileged secrecy of elite politics, German newspapers had found what was to become a formulaic textual form: “All along King’s Street there were flags as well as crowds holding banners, the masses of people like a black sea, the train of marchers throughout like an especially still stream. An indescribable Trauerspiel, in its still, well-ordered, exemplary calm, completely free of police or military, the most lofty, first event in a new world order.”2 Such texts are deeply interesting to historians. They are usually approached, understandably, for what they can tell us about the demonstrations themselves, the actual rituals involved, as well as their political and propagandistic use (both fascinating studies, as Bernd Warneken and others have demonstrated3). This article, by contrast, is concerned with the texts describing rituals as texts. The texts themselves, I will argue, have a good deal to tell us about civic ritual life. One can start by seeing them as constituting a particular civic-ritual genre. By 1919, when my analysis begins, a reader of, say, an account of a First of May or military demonstration, knew what to expect. One often encountered – as one does in the 1848 quote, above – a bird’s-eye view of a mass of people, bearing symbols 2 Der Leuchtthurm 1848, quoted in Warneken 1991: 86. 3 See, for example, Griffin 1996; Alkemeyer 1988; Epstein 1989.

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and surrounded by symbols, marching with shared mood and coordinated movement through a specific space. These things were routinely included. Other things were routinely omitted. We know, for instance, of hats thrown into the air and obstructing baby-carriages only from photographs; the presence of hecklers and drunkards only through the accounts of political enemies. Other elements were inserted. The narrative voice, the omniscient eye, is, of course, alien to the actual spectacle. This story-teller’s voice is, in fact, a significant element in these ritual-describing texts. It can take on a number of stances – journalists, in particular, often combine the roles of eager participant, on-the-spot consecrating audience, the eye of God and posterity, and critical post-game evaluator. Can we learn anything from such inclusions and exclusions, the narrator’s tone and role? Dayan and Katz speculate on how voice-overs and camera-angles might affect a viewer’s experience of an “electronic ceremony”. I would like to do a similar analysis of printed texts’ narrations of festivals and spectacles. It is my premise that the forms taken by public texts on civic rituals – e.g., the emphasis on space, time, bodies, and audience, as well as the authoritative, story-telling voice – could evoke those elements of ritual experience that confirmed collective identity. The texts, thus, joined the ritual itself as a linked statement of social memory and collective belonging. My analysis opens with two types of texts: official histories and memoirs of Free Corps and Storm Troopers, which are coupled to newspapers’ accounts of towns’ “liberation” from their ethnic oppressors. These texts were meant to be read, not least, by an in-group of participants and sympathisers. I will argue that such descriptions of what were often local, recent festivals and spectacles functioned to anchor (or invent) a specific collective memory. Here, I will focus on the texts’ evocation of space, bodies, time, and audience. I then go on to a third type of text: newspaper coverage of national-level political spectacles. My specific example is coverage of Germany’s 1919 National Assembly. This type of text functioned differently. Such texts were meant to be read by a much larger and more diffuse – national – collective, and sought to establish (or contest) claims to political authority. Here, I will concentrate on the role of the narrator’s voice in legitimising, or casting doubt on, the spectacle’s legitimacy. We begin with a description of a march found in an “official” Free Corps battalion memoir.4 By 1919, the literary sub-genre of “military march” festival/spectacle was thoroughly established: military marches had been standard newspaper and novelistic fare both before and during World War One. In 1919, Lieutenant Stepan, an officer of a West Prussian Free Corps battalion, published, at his own expense, 4 Free Corps (Freikorps in German) denotes voluntary, paramilitary organisations, usually composed of veterans of World War One, employed more or less officially to combat Communist and Polish uprisings.

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what is evidently a semi-official battalion memoir, meant, one assumes, for his own and other Free Corps veterans and admirers. The book covers about a year’s worth of battles with Poles and Communists. In the middle, there is a five-page description of a triumphant march (longer than that of any one battle).5 How does the author handle the story of this march; what purposes does the text seem to serve? The march was held, writes Stepan, because one “wanted to show the German population of Bromberg” that months of fighting had not deprived the volunteers of “the old discipline, with which we had defied a world of enemies for four years.” The march was to remind Germans, it seems, of a glorious military past. It was thus, arguably, an instance of what Paul Connerton terms “ritual re-enactment” – an action which is explicitly represented as a re-enactment of prior, prototypical actions.6 Such rituals are, Connerton argues, “of cardinal importance in the shaping of communal memory”. The account begins with a description of a ceremonial field-service. The marchers then set out: a “splendid thing to behold”, everyone in uniform, led by the “old Imperial black-white-red flag”, wreaths on trucks and horses. “The volunteers were dominated by an exalted mood.” The battalion, writes Stepan, marched to the town and entered it “to the music of military marches”. The “people of Bromberg, who had had to get by without a military performance of this kind for a long time, showed their sympathy by accompanying the battalion in large numbers”.

Image 1: Freikorps Hülsen, January 1919 Source: Bundesarchiv, Bild 183–R27092

5 The book was without illustrations. The image shows Freikorps Hülsen being visited by Gustav Noske in Berlin in 1919, a somewhat different affair, but with some of the same pageantry. 6 Connerton 1989: 61.

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“In the old, traditional strictness and order”, the marchers, Stepan continues, crossed Bromberg’s Friedrichplatz, “to the tune of Frederikus Rex, Our King and Master”. “Expectant silence lay on the masses”, Stepan writes, as Danzig Street “boomed under the parade-step of the company” marching past its commander. “Now the population could no longer contain itself. Cheers rang out, which never wanted to end, handkerchiefs were waved and the volunteers showered us with flowers and affectionate gifts.” A final set of speeches in front of the Bromberg barracks, where local military and civilian notables emphasised the respect the volunteers had won from the local population, and praised their good discipline, ends the story.7 This demonstration (insofar as one can trust Stepan’s account) showed aspects common to many civic “spectacles”: collective action, a shared mood, deliberate and highly stylised movements, music to create a unifying, coordinating tempo, progress through symbolically-laden spaces, and strong public acclamation.8 For the purposes of my analysis, the text is itself interesting, as well. Indeed, one can see the two as intimately related: a tandem ritualistic act of performance plus text. It is reasonable to believe that the description would have been read by many Free Corps veterans, as well as many who wished they had been in the Corps or who admired this type of soldier. For them, not only the experience or historic fact of the march, but the report itself – its very standardised, formulaic form – could reinforce emotional attachment to a patriotic, soldierly collective. How might this work? The text provides a – stylised, partial, edited – account of a collective ritual. Rituals, Durkheimian scholars postulate, intensify shared emotion and bind together those who have had their emotions augmented in a feeling of solidarity, thus strengthening social cohesion and mobilisation.9 According to Maurice Halbwachs (1992), rituals also shape communal memory, which in turn helps make social reality intelligible. When performed, rituals constitute a form of collective remembering which supports a moral self-definition; this, in turn, allows people to reinforce both their personal and social identities. Rituals thus simultaneously give value and meaning to the life of those who perform them, and significance to the whole life of the community. The text might be part of this. Its vividly emotional narrative evokes, edits, and standardises the memory of the march, and thus serves to reinforce communal memory. It provides a means of rehearsing the initial process of remembering, and thus constitutes an additional part of the process of social remembering, of giving social meaning. 7 Stepan 1919: 119–124. 8 See Manning 2000. 9 See, for example, Manning 2000; Páez & Basabe & González 1997; Berstain & Páez & González 2000.

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Thus, the text would remind participants of what may have been a moving collective ritual – rehearsing, as it does, many of the ritualistic way-stations. Non-participants would be able to imagine what it had been like to be there. But the text not only evoked the previous day’s or year’s collective ritual experience. The ritual was re-told, in a form that granted it significance and import. The story was now standardised – and could thus concentrate on the important details (e.g., orderly bodies) while editing out that which was irrelevant (e.g., left-socialist hecklers). It could thus edit collective memory, so to speak: provide a standard, generally shared version, on which members could agree. This would further help cement the collective. This edited version of the march could then go down in official collective memory (if one may term it so). It could be reproduced, in this official history and in other public accounts of the “The Patriotic Movement” and the like. It could, further, be used as a take-off point for further and future reports of demonstrations. Here, it would function as a linked element in a larger collective of texts, meant to produce a formalised, abstract picture of the collective. The text could also be used to spread the message. Young men who felt they had “missed” the war were invited to imagine what it would have been like to participate; other Free Corps and paramilitary marchers could take the text as a sort of liturgy when planning their own marches (and their own texts on those marches). Finally, of course, the text functioned as a public notice of existence and intent; neutral and hostile groups were invited to read about the march as a significant political event. To understand the ways in which such a text might lend itself to these manifold uses, one can single out the standard elements that tend to go into the specific subgenre. We often find, for instance – as we did both in Stepan’s account, and the 1848 description quoted above – our gaze fixed on orderly, massed bodies moving through a given space. These bodies are of interest, for they are the participants with whom the reader is invited to identify. Here, I would like to introduce a paradox, having to do with a verbal description of the silent knowledge of bodies. One notes, in the text, a focus on clothing, bodies, and space. The text mentions that all participants were wearing the same clothing, the uniform which helps mould the soldier’s bodily configuration and movement. The experience of bodies is further evoked by the emphasis on “the old, strict order”; we picture, and remember, the erect body and coordinated step of the military marcher. And to remember what is done with the body is to be reminded of some of the soldiers’ most vividly incorporated performances. Social memory – the memory that knits together a collective – inheres, to a large extent, in the body. Paul Connerton has termed this type of memory “habitmemory”.10 Our bodies, not our conceptual, verbal, or visual memories, remember 10 Connerton 1989: 37–44.

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our table-manners, how to sit properly, how to walk down a street, greet another person, wear our hats and scarves – all of the minute “rituals” of taste and decorum that mark our membership in a given community. Connerton’s definition is reminiscent of what Pierre Bourdieu (1984) would call the habitus of social belonging and communication. Remembering how to act in civic rituals is likewise an element of “incorporated” knowledge. People have been taught to recognise ritual situations since birth; that knowledge is also internalised, tacitly, in the body. The fact that our knowledge of ritual practice is embedded so silently within our bodies, argues Manning (2000), is one reason why rituals are experienced as fated and magical. Connerton takes the argument further.11 The use of the body in rituals is particularly effective. Rituals are strong because they communicate through the “sparse bodily repertoire” of set postures, gestures, and movements; the “limited resources of ritual posture, gesture and movement” strip communication of puzzling ambiguities, of reflexivity and critical doubt. The message – of collective meaning and belonging – is embodied, and so both silent and unambiguous. This gives it special power. This powerful, “silent” message is hinted at, I believe, in the text’s description of the participants’ actions and movements. The evocation of the marchers’ mood, calm, and order, their proud uniforms, their booming step, all reminded the reader of how it was to participate in this type of march. There was, after all, a good deal of habitus displayed by the marchers: knowing how to wear the uniform, how to march down the city street like a soldier, how to accept the audience’s gifts. The textual genre of ritual demonstration, which consistently focuses on bodies moving through urban space, would – I postulate – remind readers of their unarticulated experiences. Images painted by words, according to this theory, could evoke nonverbal knowledge. This implicit evocation of some of the most powerful elements both of ritual, and of collective belonging and memory, might allow the texts to borrow something of the rituals’ magic, and thus embed the texts in the ritual experience. The ritual-describing text, in short, allows an imaginative experience of a silent, embodied, and unambiguous confirmation of meaning; its formulaic, almost incantory voice might give the community of readers (Stepan’s troops) a single, coherent, self-reinforcing collective memory. What had actually happened on the march was now linked, for those who read the text, to its ritualised standardisation in a narrative – a narrative which could use the experience of bodies to revise the scattered and disparate memories of individual participants into a uniform, strong communal memory. Finally, there is the matter of space. Historically, as Vincent Robert and Bernd Warneken (1991) have shown, civic demonstrations developed as statements about 11 Ibid.: 50–61.

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the political use and control of public space, formed within the compass of symbolically-laden nodes of urban geography. Their routes were always important, for the demonstrations gained significance and meaning according to which meaningful spaces they marched past, controlled, challenged, or destroyed. The soldiers, in Stepan’s text, are very much described as moving through significant space. Singing or silent, with booming step, their symbolically-laden way-stations are carefully listed: the entry into the town, the Friedrich Square, and the barracks. Here, also, I would like to bring in memory and the body. The movement of the body through space, as cultural geographers and students of metaphor remind us, is an essential component of our conceptual world: “progress” is forward, both “better” and “hotter” are upwards, the “past” is behind us.12 Connerton, in his Halbwachsinspired analysis of incorporated social memory, speaks likewise of memory always happening in a “socially specific spatial framework” – by which he means not only within the network of social relations, but also material space. Images of such space “are relatively stable”, and so give the “illusion of not changing and of rediscovering the past in the present”.13 Insofar as descriptions of bodily movements – strict marching order, booming step – might evoke the sensations, and thus strengthen the memory of the ritual, so might also descriptions of movement through material space. Space, and descriptions of space, then, may become part of both collective memory, and collective belonging.

Image 2: The Horst Wessel Storm Troop, 1929 Source: Bundesarchiv, Bild 183–1988–0T27–507

This depiction of a Free Corps demonstration partook in, and itself reinforced, standardised narratives of what a military march should be like. It reflected, and 12 Tuan 2008; Lakoff & Johnson 1980. 13 Connerton 1989: 36–37.

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could further function as, an expression of a genre – in this case, indeed, as a sort of liturgy. Reading such stories was supposed to give the reader a solemn, exalted feeling; and they could provide a formula for those wishing to perform similar rituals. In 1933, Heinz Lohmann published a memoir of his time with the Nazi Storm Troopers.14 His was one of many, for after the Nazi take-over such memoirs had become a popular literary sub-genre. Most of Lohmann’s prose is, predictably enough, given over to descriptions of the SA’s various marches, battles and meetings. After all, the soldierly march was a central element of the Nazis’ street theatre – just as the myth of the “SA warrior” was an important part of the Nazis’ official history. Lohmann, the patriotic hooligan from the small town of Schwelm, details how he and his fellows were trained for these public displays. He writes about the bodily experience of spending Sunday after Sunday learning how to do military marches – “as one’s bones learnt to stand upright, so did the soul!” Here, Lohmann, like Stepan, cites bodily experiences and attitudes; here, again, the body is advanced as a site of remembrance of collective adherence to a given meaning. Lohmann then describes his group’s first proper march, performed together with visiting Berlin “brown-shirts”. A dozen Schwelm SA members had “marched, in closed ranks; the song of good comrades rang out. The small troop assembled before the church-yard. The square was black with people. SA stand forward! Right turn – March! We twenty Schwelmer Nazis joined the group column. Kommando! Sing! That was already too much for the Reichsbanner and the Kommune. A roar of fury! The first stone! The SA went over to the attack, us Schwelmers of course joining in.” At this point the memoirs digress, as usual, into an equally formulaic account of the SA’s fight with its enemies, the social-democrats and Communists. A discussion supposedly followed the fight. “‘This fury against us! […] it was because of our brown shirts. They have the effect, it seems, of dynamite.’”15 Here, again, we find songs, discipline, shared movement. Here, also, the text provides elements that might reinforce collective memory – images of bodies, wearing similar (and highly significant) clothing, moving through space, performing in disciplined, routinised (“incorporated”) patterns. Here, finally, we find a new version of the “liturgy” of the soldiers’ march. By 1933, I would argue, the key elements in this liturgy – that is, the formulaic accounts of soldiers’ marches – had become so standardised, so naturalised and implicit, that Lohmann could content himself with hinting at them. He needed only reproduce the sharp, manly com14 The image is of an equally youthful, but later and more urban SA group: Horst Wessel and his “Sturm”, 1929. No images appeared in Lohmann’s memoires. 15 Lohmann 1933: 50–52.

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mands that directed the marchers – the only things heard, aside from equally disciplined singing, from this orderly mass of “soldiers”. These two texts, finally, fit a similar narrative genre. Both (I argue) reinforce ritual experiences – in these cases, rituals performed as parts of masculine epics. The rituals are appropriate to heroic men protecting Germany from its enemies. They temporarily interrupt a fast-moving story, in order to demonstrate the eternal necessity and truth of that for which the men are fighting, as well as their particular right to fight for it. The streets and spaces described were, so to speak, to be conquered by a courageous brotherhood, one that strongly resembled the stoically enduring, silent, ever-loyal “trench soldier” of WWI. To this is added the fantasy of a Männerbund, leaving its home behind in order to pursue a holy, chaste quest. Images and memories of masculine bodies were important in evoking this fantasy. So were the emotions that the bodies implicitly expressed. Actual references to emotions were, understandably, discreet; the very ultra-masculine rituals which augmented the soldiers’ shared emotions also forbade their open expression. However, the texts’ emphasis on the men’s almost-total silence evoked still more strongly their strongly-felt determination, faith, and loyalty. Their passions were what Anne Kane (2001) has termed “adverbial”: expressed through the text’s own hypermanly voice, in descriptions of orders, bodies, discipline, and clothes. These men truly represented Germany – as was demonstrated not only by their march, but the account of the audience’s reactions to it. The audience is a key factor in these texts; these are ritual “spectacles” of group belonging, consecrated by audience reaction. The fighting men are not free to give disorderly emotional displays: but it seems incumbent on the audience to do so. In Stepan’s case, the crowd “cannot contain itself”, and erupts in endless cheering. In Lohmann’s, the audience is moved to violent fury by the mere sight of the “brown shirts”. Both demonstrations, in short, craved an audience, able to confirm the truth of their experience and message. Dramatically, indeed, it makes sense for epic-struggle texts to include stories of ritual spectacles. Stories detailing public rituals meant to demonstrate the right of a minority of violent men to fight for all of Germany are, it seems, aided by the image of a deeply-impressed audience – a new sort of Greek chorus. I would like to contrast these epic-ritual texts, full of grim, determined bodies, to a very different set – those reporting on the rituals of ethnic joy. This is to move from texts detailing oppositional rituals, to those describing rituals of liberation. In both cases, the texts functioned – I argue – in very much the same way: as a tandem affirmation of collective belonging. Here, however, we find altogether different types of bodies and spaces, as well as a contrast between spectacle, and festival. After Germany’s defeat in World War One, the Allies advocated the redistribution of those German borderlands whose inhabitants were primarily non-German speakers. These included Posen, whose population was two-thirds Polish, and North Schleswig, to which Denmark now re-asserted its claim. Local Poles and

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Danes sought to force the issue, not least by staging mass demonstrations. These were meant to rally local sympathisers, intimidate local Germans, and impress the Allies and international public opinion. This was achieved not only through the rallies themselves, but by the massive distribution of texts in which they were described. Local newspapers, for instance, wrote up lengthy, eye-witness reports, which were then submitted to, and reproduced by, the national and international press. These reports are the focus of the following analyses. Let us start with descriptions of the December 1918 demonstration of Poles in the city Fortress Posen (a German city dominated by Polish-speakers). The local Polish “People’s Council” had taken advantage of the assembly of delegates to a (straw) “Polish parliament” to recreate the city as Polish. Posen’s Polish-language newspapers provided a standard account, the central elements of which were reproduced in other, non-Polish newspapers. These texts are openly emotional. Here is no silence, broken only by the booming of soldiers’ feet. The delegates’ arrival is, rather, described as “Festival in the City!” Polish flags (write the newspapers) waved from roofs and balconies, streets were decorated with Polish eagles and green garlands. “The old medieval stronghold has put on its bridal attire […] Children are running with national flags – in a word, a ceremonious mood, noble as it should be on the great national holiday.”16 The delegates were expected at the train-station, and so, the story continues, a semi-spontaneous street demonstration set out to meet them. The crowd, “literally drowning in a flood of red- and white-colored banners and wreaths”, proceeded through specific streets and squares (the newspaper, not adverse to heavy-handed hints, gives the Polish, not the official German, street-names) in order to greet the delegates with songs, music, and speeches. The paper supplies a vignette: “two greybeards, bent by life [...] hugged each other, weeping, and showed each other their white eagles – they are crying with joy that they have been given the chance to live long enough to see Poznan wearing its ceremonial [Polish] apparel.” And “people smiled and wept with joy, mothers raised their small children, the elderly had the fire of youth in their eyes – one could feel it was a historical day, a great, indeed a great moment! [...] There was something completely sincere, and joyful, in this manifestation of feelings [...] the [parliamentary] proceedings began, but people in the streets were still staring as at a wonder, as if listening to a historical clock, which was chiming the hour of dawn for Poland. They returned home, slowly, bearing a holy treasure in their hearts: the security and first light of happiness.”17

16 Dziennik Poznanski 4/12/18. 17 Kurier Poznanski 4/12/18.

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This text certainly served a liturgical function, for elements found therein recur in subsequent, similar newspaper stories. In the Danish-dominated town of Sønderborg, two years later, the departure of the German administrators and the arrival of French troops was a matter of public celebration – along very similar lines indeed, if one is to believe the articles in the local Danish-language newspaper. There is, perhaps, an added element, as these texts blend the two literary genres of ethnic festival and soldiers’ march; but ethnic joy predominates. The French troops’ arrival was, we are told, a historic happening – “all Danes, who experienced it, will keep the memory thereof as one of the most beautiful and proudest things in their life.” The story begins at the railway station, which was crowded with people, faces “alight with smiles […] the future seemed like a beautiful morning hour”. Danish flags were prominent, and looked “glorious”. When the troops arrived, there were cheers, songs, and speeches. The crowd, still singing Danish songs, accompanied the troops into town. “Never went a more happy and proud people over the Frederik the Seventh bridge”. We are again presented with vignettes of weeping old men and mothers holding their small sons aloft. “The march went through the streets of the town”, flower- and flag-decorated, and ended with a presentation of arms, cheers, and songs at the soldiers’ barracks. And still – the newspaper concludes – people lingered in the streets, to share their joy with each other.18 Like the texts describing the marches, above, these stories of liberation are part of a well-developed literary sub-genre. They might well function as a liturgy, not only for how liberationist rituals are to be described and remembered, but also for how they are to be performed and experienced – directions for meeting up at the train station, the songs, speeches, flags, emotions, etc. There are other similarities. Like the texts on soldiers’ marches, these also emphasise singing bodies moving through (symbolically laden) spaces. These next-day reports could, accordingly, also help reinforce, standardise, and cement collective memory – in this case, that of a local ethnic collective. There are obvious differences, as well. The “soldiers” were portrayed as embroiled in a heroic epic, struggling with their responsibility of representing, and defending, Germany. Their ritual spectacles were meant to justify their continued fight. The texts of liberation, by contrast, narrate definitive, transformative performances, meant to celebrate the fulfillment of time (so to speak) – the repossession of a territorial home. The stories of the ritual festivals of Poles and Danes transferred their towns’ past, present, and future. The weeping old men, the mothers holding up their sons, relocated them in a new time. German time, past and future, had been forced to give way to a Polish and a Danish past and future. The towns were now (the story goes) part of the ethnic collective’s embodied time, its gray18 Flensborg Avis 23/1/1920.

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beards’ memories and its boy-children’s future – as a historic clock chimes the new dawn. The experience is, thus, described as liminal. The stories detail an unforgettable communal transition, imprinted in every heart, from one state to another – and afterwards, as people linger on the streets, unable to resume their daily tasks. The Polish and Danish stories are, further, accounts of openly emotional, disorderly rituals. They detail a free, mixed-gender and mixed-generation abandon – children running, old men weeping – that has no place in the ritual spectacles of heroic epics. The strong narrative voice invites the reader to participate in the open, child-like emotions appropriate to a family regaining its ancestral home. The apparent disorder, full of spontaneous – yet strictly scripted – expressions of joy, cement the message of irrevocable possession.19 Female-like expressions of emotion, the inclusion of women, children, and old men, are no problem here, for the fight is over, the territory won. The stories of joyous re-possession, finally, do not mention an audience. They are presented as festivals rather than spectacles. This is, I would argue, because these are stories of secure, rather than contested, possession. If the take-over is to be presented as incontestable – that is, if the story is to present the “truth” manifested by the ritual described as final, incontestable, irrevocable – then everyone is included. Except – of course – the professional describing the event. He is very much present, not only as a member of the much-moved audience (whose account would then help confirm the validity of the occasion), but as an all-knowing commentator and analyst, openly and omnisciently telling the reader what the ceremony was all about, what the people were feeling and why. This is a different narrative voice than that found in Stepan’s and Lohmann’s accounts. Their narrator’s presence is minimal; readers are themselves to judge the portentousness of the ceremony (with the help, of course, of the description of the crowd’s reaction). The Polish and Danish journalists are, by contrast, quite interventionist. This brings me to the final part of my analysis of stories about rituals. What effect does the narrative voice have on a text’s evocation of a ritual of collective belonging? What kinds of implicit power might, for instance, the journalist’s narrative presence give him; if the text tells of a ritual spectacle, for instance, can he become the final and definitive audience? I am not talking, here, of openly hostile journalists. Hostile journalists could make several types of hash out of civic rituals. Indeed, hostile coverage of the “enemies’” rituals provide us with various genres of ritual-derision, ranging from describing marchers as a mob of drunk hooligans, to stories of rival ethnic groups’ apathetic, insincere theatre-performances, meant only to deceive foreign politicians. When reporting on festivals or spectacles seen as harmful or ludicrous, it 19 For an analysis of the feelings attached to one’s own “place”, see Cresswell 2004.

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seemed that journalists could create texts in which they became the audience – an openly unconvinced and skeptical audience, to boot. It was enough, often, to indicate that they had been unmoved and unconvinced; this was, implicitly but obviously, due to the ludicrous, unconvincing, disorderly, selfish, and temporal nature of the would-be “manifestation”.20 Reports of this kind could – and were meant to - do great damage. Derisive coverage of an ethnic minority’s civic festival, or a political opponent’s demonstration, could be picked up by other newspapers, who could spread the news of the ludicrous pretensions and deceptive posturing of the ethnic or political group far afield. (This is what happened, for instance, to Germany’s left-wing socialists.) Whether or not journalists professed themselves convinced by the efficacy of one’s ritual performance could, thus, become a key to getting one’s bid for civic or political power recognized as meaningful – in reports that were spread both nationally and internationally. This was particularly obvious when journalists were bent on destruction. But what might be the more subtle implications of a journalist writing himself in, of his simply making his presence known, so to speak, in a story of a civic ritual? Might not the mere acknowledgement of the existence of a detached, evaluating observer imply scepticism as to the “truth” of the ritual’s message? In order to explore these points, I would like to turn to a dramatic instance of a ritual bid for political power: the pageantry surrounding the opening of Germany’s first republican National Assembly, held in Weimar in February 1919. The rituals at Weimar were part of a conscious attempt to re-found the nation on new grounds. It was the business of social-democratic, liberal, and democratic newspapers to report on this as a ritually momentous occasion, an expression of historic truth. The role of conservative newspapers was more complex. Few dared to deride the Assembly outright, for it was generally held to be the best antidote to the vastly unpopular Revolution. But more subtle means of attack could be found. The well-established left-liberal Danziger Zeitung showed what could be done to affirm the “truth” of the ritual spectacle provided. Here, we recognize elements that appeared in the liberationist liturgy, in descriptions of a people finding a new beginning. A few days before the Assembly, articles were published that re-located the city of Weimar, and thereby the Assembly, in time and space – that is, in a new version of German history, a new era, and as a magical place. The Assembly was presented as the culmination of a tradition dating back, not to Bismarck, but to the Frankfurt Assembly of 1848. The current year was, further, likened to that of 1806, when Germany re-created itself after a historic defeat. The place – the town of Weimar, the home of Goethe and Schiller - was also lauded. “New ideas, which rise far above the dust of the every-day – these are what we need for our German 20 See Hurd 2004; 2006.

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National Assembly”; and there could be “no purer spring of German idealism than the old Weimar”, home of noble poets. “Great thoughts and a great-hearted love for the German people” are Weimar ideals. The journalist continues, speaking – it seems – for the German nation as a whole: “So we greet the men and women of Weimar, who in the heart of Germany wish to restore to the sorely-tested German people a state, securely founded on order and morality. […] Build, in Weimar, a new, great future for the German people – from the days of world war and revolution, into the day of world peace and the peace of their own people!”21 This historic re-founding ritual would be properly framed, as the newspaper assured readers in a series of texts which both located readers bodily in the city and introduced an additional, approving and important audience. The “festive” day would begin with church services. Then, as the Assembly opened, the “bells of the all the churches in the town will ring out.” All houses were to be decorated with flags, while a specially-chartered train would bring foreign diplomats from Berlin to Weimar.22 The next day, in an article entitled “The Great Act in Weimar”, the reader is actually placed in the street, experiencing something that at least approaches the “new dawn” of Posen and Sønderborg. The town’s high gables looked on in wonder, the journalist writes, at the unusual to-and-froing in the narrow streets. Where visitors had used to wander, slowly dreaming, between the houses of Schiller and Goethe, today people hurried, full of important business, engrossed in lively discussions, “as if to lose a second were to lose an hour, as if they sought to master time. And this time is not the great past of Weimar, with its spiritual culture”, remote from all politics – it is the “present time of a people”, seeking to rise out of defeat and revolution to become, again, a people with “trustful hope for the future”, a fully united nation.23 As in Flensburg and Posen, the journalist continues to speak for the entire collective – in this case, the nation. And so the Assembly opened. “In the tightly packed festive meeting, which – now – resembles that of a Constitution-establishing Parliament, everyone is gripped by the solemnity of the historic moment. The confusion of voices is silenced, the first Session has begun.”

21 DZ 5/2/1919 (1st Edition). 22 DZ 6/2/1919 (2nd Edition). 23 DZ 7/2/1919 (2nd Edition).

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Image 3: Cheers for Friedrich Ebert in Weimar

Source: Bundesarchiv, Bild 146–1978–042– 11

It was now up to the representatives of the German people – the key ritual performers – to show what could be done. Friedrich Ebert, interim prime minister, opened with a speech, which is reproduced verbatim. The responses of the audience (“Bravo!” as well as calls of “pfui!”) are mixed. The next day, things are more colourful: a military band, playing “splendid military marches”, has been stationed outside the Assembly Hall. After a number of congratulatory telegrams and addresses were read aloud, an Elder President (Alterspräsident) was elected – the oldest member of the Assembly, born 1841, whose speech (which emphasises his age, and thus – like the vignettes of the old men of Posen – confirms the event’s embodiment in an alternative past) the audience, the newspaper tells us, very much appreciated.24 The next great event was the election of the German President. “Today’s Session of the National Assembly brought the great event, which had been so tensely expected. The German Republic has received its Oberhaupt [leader].” The newspaper admitted that the result had been predictable – but still, “the historical event had been anticipated with great excitement”. The “Chairman Dr. David swung the

24 DZ 7/2/1919 (2nd Edition). The picture shown – the “Vereidigung Feichspräsident Ebert, 21.8.1919” - did not appear in the newsappers cited here.

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bell and in the midst of tense silence proclaimed, that Fritz Ebert was chosen as German President.25 […] Stormy hand-clapping and calls of Bravo!”, in which the members of the tribune joined, “dissolved the tension. In answer to the question posed by the Chairman, Ebert declared, openly moved, that he gratefully accepted the election to German President.” After a few short speeches, the “first President of the German Republic” – accompanied by “thunderous applause” – left the Assembly. A “thousand-strong crowd had assembled in front of the National Theater”, patiently awaiting his arrival. “To the sound of ringing bells, and the shouts of support from the happily excited crowd, Ebert walked, surrounded by his faithful supporters, slowly over the square.” Meanwhile, a member of the Ministry – stationed in front of the double statue of Schiller and Goethe – proclaimed “that the people had chosen themselves a new Oberhaupt, and called for a three-fold cheer for the new President, in which the crowd joined enthusiastically. The young German Republic has its President!”26 This is, it will be admitted, fairly thin fare. The journalist, it seems, did not have much to work with. Sympathetic newspaper editors, such as the liberal Berlin editor Theodor Wolff, were, in fact, quite worried. The Assembly’s opening session was, he wrote in his diary, a disappointment. The locale – the refurbished Weimar National Theater – was “small, not altogether without a certain charm”, the “stage brightly decorated with flowers, as for a wedding – but petty-bourgeois and, as it went on, without Schwung [momentum].” Prime Minister Ebert appeared as a “good, decent artisan-master”, which meant that the phrases “pasted on” to his speech (taken from Goethe) “had a somewhat unnatural effect. The entire session”, Wolff concludes, “lacked Stimmung [atmosphere] and grandeur.” Things, he admitted, did improve. There were, to be sure, the embarrassing attempts to “stage [street] ovations for Ebert” – complete with military band and school-children. But Ebert’s acceptance speech was “very warm and schön [lovely], the impression in the House very strong. For the first time one can detect some ‘Schwung’ in the National Assembly”; and the declaration of the election results, by a man “especially suited to the task through his blonde giant Gestalt and voice”, went well.27 This critique does not allow any sense of solemn ritual, enshrining truth. Indeed, Wolff sounds like a dissatisfied theatre critic. This he has every right to do: he has, by his own account, witnessed a good deal of unconvincing political ritual performance. His diary, however, is private. His own liberal Berlin newspapers (as well as Wolff’s Telegraph Bureau, which produced material similar to that featured in the Danziger Zeitung) did their best. We find, indeed, a valiant attempt to combine 25 “Fritz” in the original. 26 DZ 12/2/1919 (2nd Edition). 27 Sösemann 1984: 681, 687.

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the legitimating accounts of standard parliamentary ritual with the emotions, timeshift, and sense of movement through significant space that had gone into the “liturgy” of liminal refounding established, and performed, at Posen and Sønderborg. But there were other ways of reporting on the Assembly. Take the coverage given by the conservative Danziger Neueste Nachrichten. The reader is, again, placed bodily in Weimar. But this is an everyday and unhistoric Weimar, its time and places prosaic. The liturgy of bodies, time, and space is almost parodied. The reader is, for instance, started out (as so often) with greetings at the train station – but in this case, the whole thing is only depressing. In “From the Town of Goethe”, our correspondent reports how he and other political delegates and press representatives arrived in the midst of a snow-storm – an arrival which “was, if one may be allowed the expression, the official opening of the parliamentary session.” A company of soldiers had briefly cheered them. But there it ended; “no welcome of any sort” was prepared at the station. One Herr Paulsen, who had been a Berlin M.P., shook hands with those he had known in Berlin, and then took off with four of them. The rest waited around for a while, in the snow, as the light grew ever-dimmer, before beginning to convey themselves, by foot or otherwise, into the Town of the Muses. There is no leap to a new time here, no significant place. Nothing is beginning anew – indeed, nothing is finished. “Goethe’s town” had been delivered over to politics; the enchantment that once rested on the city had been replaced by a “strange unrest”. “Everywhere, people are still working hard. But the preparations are still very inadequate”. The National Theater, whose door was firmly locked, was full of hammering and thumping. Dikes were being dug; with yells and noise the old theater was being made into a “mass quarters [….] How things will develop in the coming days, is impossible to say at the moment”; and the correspondent speculates on the political factions involved.28 The reports on the Assembly itself are fairly respectful. “The great event, for which Germany and the entire political world has waited, tensely, for months, and which has been threatened by serious dangers, has taken place in complete order and in impressive forms.” Cheering crowds, podiums decorated with flowers are mentioned; the first thing one noticed, “naturally, if involuntarily”, upon entering the Hall, was “those female delegates who were present”. After a “shrill ringing signal”, Ebert, who had been greeted with breathless silence, commenced to speak, “with a firm voice”, “slowly and clearly”, adhering, for the most part, to his manuscript. Soon, his “extremely sharp attacks” on the former government produced “loud” protests from the rows of the German-National Party as well as “each time, ever-stronger counter-proclamations from the left”. Indeed, at one stage, contemptuous laughter had gone up from the right and 28 DNN 5/2/1919.

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left simultaneously. The Elder President’s speech was admired – it included a “personal tone”, and “one was very willing to believe, that the dream of his long life has been fulfilled with the realisation of the people’s sovereignty.” His last words, “You, my ladies and gentlemen, are the representatives of Germany’s future”, were described as well-chosen.29 The journalist continues his careful evaluation of each performance. A few days later, under “Friedrich Ebert as German President”, he describes the moment when the Chairman had counted the votes, and asked Ebert if he accepted the post – and Ebert had answered, in a voice trembling with inner emotion – as having made a “deep impression, which no-one present could deny”. Chairman David’s final speech had been compelling, full of inner warmth, although a certain female delegate had interrupted “again and again” with yells “about Noske’s militarism, Noske’s days of blood, and similar stuff.” Ebert’s final speech had been vibrant with honest conviction. The crowd waiting outside had cheered – but the “cheers sounded fairly thin and cautious. The Weimar population is obviously not attuned to such manifestations. Ebert went – surrounded and accompanied by the crowd – on foot to the castle, where he lives.” Add to this a picture insert of Ebert, standing at a podium holding a piece of paper, and a description of him as resembling a French petit-bourgeois – as possessing undeniable talents, and able to speak sensibly and to adjust himself to the demands of the moment, although lacking his predecessor Bebel’s brilliant speaking skills – and one has the bulk of the tone of the report.30 This is a story told by an unimpressed theatre critic. The focus on the town, the momentous renewal of time – a focus which could be seen as a celebration of a people coming to its (symbolic) home – has disappeared, gone together with the voice of the collective. The meaningful ritual has become a theatre performance; the journalist speaks openly, in his own person, and is not impressed. His distance encourages distance in the reader. There had, to be sure, been manly warmth and sincerity; but all those women, all those interruptions, had surely lowered the tone somewhat? Certainly nothing magical has happened. Rather, we have seen a fairly competent performance of “being a Parliament”, with a few fairly good actors. All we can do is hope that it, like Ebert, is able to speak sensibly and adjust itself to the demands of the moment. The re-founding of the nation will have to wait.

29 DNN 7/2/1919. 30 DNN 12/2/1919.

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References Newspapers Danziger Neueste Nachrichtnen (= DNN) 1919 Danziger Zeitung (= DZ) 1919, Morgenausgabe / 1st Edition, Abendausgabe / 2nd Edition Dziennik Poznanski 1918 Flensborg Avis 1920 Kurier Poznanski 1918

Books Alkemeyer, Thomas 1988. “Gewalt und Opfer im Ritual der Olympischen Spiele 1936”. In: Günter Gebauer (ed.). Körper- und Einbildungskraft: Inszenierungen des Helden im Sport. Berlin: Reimer: 60–77. Berstain, Carlos & Darío Páez & José Luis González 2000. “Rituals, Social Sharing, Silence, Emotions and Collective Memory Claims”. Psicothema 12: 117–130. Bourdieu, Pierre 1987 [1979]. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Chaney, David 1986. “A Symbolic Mirror of Ourselves: Civil Ritual in Mass Society”. In: Richard Collins et al. (eds.). Media, Culture and Society: A Critical Reader. London: Sage: 247–263. Connerton, Paul 1989. How Societies Remember. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cresswell, Tim 2004. Place: A Short Introduction. Oxford & Carlton & Malden: Blackwell Publishing. Dayan, Daniel & Elihus Katz 1985. “Electronic Ceremonies: Television Performs a Royal Wedding”. In: Marshall Blonsky (ed). On Signs. A Semiotics Reader. Oxford: Blackwell: 16–32. Griffin, Roger 1996. “Staging the Nation’s Rebirth: The Politics and Aesthetics of Performance in the Context of Fascist Studies”. In: Günter Berghaus (ed.). Fascism and Theater. Comparative Studies on the Aesthetics and Politics of Performance in Europe, 1925–1945. Providence: Berghahn: 11–29. Düding, Dieter & Peter Friedemann (eds.) 1988. Öffentliche Festkultur und Politische Fest in Deutschland von der Aufklärung bis zum Ersten Weltkrieg. Reinbek: Rowohlt. Epstein, James 1989. “Understanding the Cap of Liberty: Symbolic Practice and Social Conflict in Early Nineteenth Century England”. Past and Present 122: 75–118. Halbwachs, Maurice 1992 [1952]. On Collective Memory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Hurd, Madeleine 2004. “Placing Good and Evil: Parliaments, Streets, Revolutions and Bolshies in Inter-War European Newspapers”. In: Kristina Riegert (ed.). News of

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the Others? Tracing Identity in Journalistic Constructions of the Eastern Baltic Region. Stockholm: Nordicom: 379–420. — 2006. “Waiting to be Free: Danzig, Identity and Media 1918–19”. In: Madeleine Hurd (ed.). Borderland Identities: Territory and Belonging in North, Central and East Europe. Eslöv: Gondolin. Kane, Anne 2001. “Finding Emotions in Social Movement Processes: Irish Land Movement Metaphors and Narratives”. In: Jeff Goodwin & James Jasper & Francesca Polletta (eds.). Passionate Politics: Emotions and Social Movements. Chicago: University of Chicago Press: 251–266. Lakoff, George & Mark Johnson 1980. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lohmann, Heinz 1933. SA räumt auf! Aus der Kampfzeit der Bewegung. Hamburg: Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt. Manning, Kathleen 2000. Rituals, Ceremonies, and Cultural Meaning in Higher Education. Westport et al.: Bergin & Garvey. MacAloon, John J. 1984. “Olympic Games and the Theory of Spectacle in Modern Societies”. In: John J. MacAloon (ed.). Rite, Drama, Festival, Spectacle. Rehearsals Toward a Theory of Cultural Performance. Philadelphia: Institute for the Study of Human Issues: 241–280. Páez, Darío & Nekane Basabe & José Luis González 1997. “Social Processes and Collective Memory: A Cross-Cultural Approach to Remembering Political Events”. In: James W. Pennebaker & Darío Páez & Bernard Rimé (eds.). Collective Memory of Political Events. Mahwah: Lawrence Ehrlbaum: 147–174. Sösemann, Bernd (ed.) 1984. Theodor Wolff. Tagebücher 1914–1919: Der Erste Weltkrieg und die Entstehung der Weimarer Republik in Tagebüchern, Leitartiklen und Briefen des Chefredakteurs am “Berliner Tageblatt” und Mitbegründers der “Deutschen Demokratischen Partei”. 2 Vols. Boppard: Harald Boldt (Deutsche Geschichtsquellen des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts 54). Stepan, Karl 19192. Der Todeskampf der Ostmark 1918/19. Schneidemühl [published by the author himself]. Robert, Vincent 1991. “Metamorphosen der Demonstration: Lyon 1848, 1890, 1912”. In: Bernd Warneken (ed.). Massenmedium Straße: Zur Kulturgeschichte der Demonstration. Frankfurt a.M.: Campus Verlag: 49–67. Tuan, Yi-Fu 2008 [1977]. Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press. Warneken, Bernd J. (ed.) 1991. Massenmedium Straße: Zur Kulturgeschichte der Demonstration. Frankfurt a.M.: Campus Verlag. Widholm, Christian 2009. Iscensättningen av solskensolympiaden 1912. Stockholm: Text & Kultur.

Elke Mader

Stars in Your Eyes: Ritual Encounters with Shah Rukh Khan in Europe On a chilly and windy winter morning in 2008, about four hours before the gates are opened, a group of 50 people has gathered in front on the entrance of the London Olympia. They have been queuing for some hours already to make sure that they are the first of several thousand visitors to enter the hall for the Zee Carnival that day. Their enthusiasm is directed solely towards one among the many attractions of the “three day extravaganza” organised by the Indian Media Group Zee in cooperation with a large number of other companies: the “meet & greet” sessions with Shah Rukh Khan, Bollywoods “King Khan”, who also acts as brand ambassador for several companies present at the fair. He will make an appearance twice a day, and will spend about one minute exclusively with about 100 fans each day on the autograph stage – the ones who managed to be in line first. The early morning crowd at the Olympia displays great diversity: Young men, teenaged girls, and large families with a South Asian and Middle Eastern background (mostly British residents) mingle with women from Germany, France, Poland, Switzerland, and Austria, who have travelled to England for the occasion. A number of people are acquaintances and friends, they have known each other from interacting in fan forums on the internet for some time, or have met before at similar events. Several ladies from the continent visited Berlin a week before to cheer Shah Rukh Khan at the German premiere of his movie Om Shanti Om (India 2007, Farah Khan) in the course of the Berlinale Film Festival. They belong to a group of fans who have taken part in several media rituals with Shah Rukh Khan during the past two or three years; others are newcomers anxious to meet and greet the star off-screen for the first time. Popular Hindi cinema (recently often referred to and marketed as “Bollywood”) today is a cosmopolitan popular culture of global reach.1 It constitutes a complex field of meanings and practices, embracing a wide range of interconnected media, diverse actors, and types of agency, as well as various forms of rites. Recent stu1 See, for instance, Kaur & Sinha 2005; Kavoori & Punathambekar 2008; Virdi & Creekmur 2006.

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dies have approached the ritual dimension of Bollywood from two directions: the representation and reframing of rites in movies on the one hand, and ritual performances by audiences on the other hand. The ritual dimension of filmgoing in Northern India has been studied by Steve Derné. Filmgoing provides a liminal escape for young people, who can leave the constraints of the joint family and the hierarchies of the working place. Thus, he argues, going to the movies can be understood as a ritual process in the sense of Victor Turner: It releases people from the usual structures of their daily lives, but reintegrates them again after a liminal period of escape and its often ecstatic pleasures.2 Other studies are concerned with rites in films. Dwyer, Krüger, and Kammer, for example, discuss the blockbuster Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham (“Sometimes Happy, Sometimes Sad”, India 2003, Karan Johar) with regard to the function of rites for the construction of meaning and agency in and around the movie.3 They approach rites as part of Indian cinematic culture and its reception by various audiences, and analyse the representations of ritual within the broader framework of religion and society in India and its diasporas. These studies of ritual in Indian feature film concern “rites out of place” as reframed performances transposed from one genre to another in the sense of Ronald Grimes: film concurrently refers to rites and instigates actual ritual practices.4 The latter constitutes a direct interaction between the representation of a rite in film and its performance off-screen. In his study of Fiddler on the Roof (USA 1971, Norman Jewison), Grimes demonstrates, among other things, how the cinematic representation of a wedding has a direct ritual impact on audience behaviour. Wedding celebrations in the USA frequently include music from the Fiddler. Thus, the actual ritual “footnotes the movie, enacting a bond with not only the wedding party but also the movie going audience”.5 A similar development can be observed for several dimensions of the “Bollywood Wedding”, such as music, dance, food, or fashion. On the Internet, wedding planners and related services offer all aspects of a Big Bollywood Wedding to affluent Indian clients in diverse parts of the world, and even Non-South Asian Bollywood fans, e.g. a Russian/Austrian couple living in Vienna, sometimes include Bollywood features in their wedding ceremonies. In this article, my interest is directed towards a different, but related, conglomerate of practices at the boundary between rites and movies: rites of interaction between fans and stars. On the one hand, they form part of the cultural economy of fandom in the sense of John Fiske6, and can be regarded as a specific type of fan productivity that shapes popular culture out of the products of the cultural indus2 3 4 5 6

Derné 2000: 61–66. Dwyer 2006; Krüger 2004, Kammer 2008. Grimes 2006: 39–58. Ibid.: 53. Fiske 1992.

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tries. This “ritual productivity of fandom” takes place in various forms and is interconnected with a wide range of media.7 On the other hand, stars are, in many ways, of great significance for cinematic culture: According to Richard Dyer, stars articulate what it is to be a human being in contemporary society, and can be studied from a semiotic and from a sociological perspective.8 I want to suggest that furthermore, stars (just as fans) should be analysed from the point of view of ritual studies, and (as I have argued elsewhere) within the larger framework of the study of myth (cf. Mader 2008: 234ff).

Image 1: Shah Rukh Khan giving autographs at a “meet & greet” session organised by the Indian Media Group Zee in London. Photo by the author

Several scholars of Indian Cinema have discussed the semiotic dimension of stardom. Stars can be read as a parallel text and integrate several layers of signification: they are utopian beings and icons of beauty and desire,9 as well as culture brokers in a gobalised world.10 Rachel Dwyer also draws attention to ritual prac7 8 9 10

Mader & Budka 2009. Dyer 1998; 2004. Dwyer 2000: 119. Dudrah 2006; cf. also Mishra 2002.

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tices that are based on the interplay of religion and cinema. She refers to darshan, the spiritual power and agency of the gaze, which is inherent in special people and images in religious and secular contexts, e.g. in film stars.11 Thus, to get close to a star and to remain for a moment within the realm of his or her gaze is regarded as beneficial. Furthermore, actors and actresses who embodied divine roles in the mythological and devotional genre of Indian film (Nirupa Roy, for example) sometimes become subjects of ritual adoration: “Roy became regarded as a semi-divine figure. And she reports that when she goes out in public, people sing her bhajans and touch her feet.”12 However, the connection between divinity and stardom is not limited to actors and actresses who embody divine roles; it is also extended to other superstars. The fan association for Amitabh Bachchan, one of the most famous Asian actors of the twentieth century, is in charge of a temple to the star in South Kolkata. Newspapers report time and again about ceremonies at the temple, e.g. when the actor had health problems in 2008 and his fans performed a yajna (holy fire ritual).13 Whereas some of these rites are definitely out of place with regard to various layers of reframing and transformation, they are basically embedded in common religious concepts and practices in India, and take place within the broader cultural framework of the movies and their stars. But the ritualisation of cinema in general, and of the fan/star relationship in particular, displays more dimensions of displacement and place-making. Bollywood fans in Peru, for example, celebrate Indian ceremonies (Holi, Diwali) known to them only from the movies, and dress up in Indian costumes to go and perform Bollywood dances that imitate and re-enact the big stars at local fiestas.14 Yet another scenario of rites takes place in Europe. These rituals take place around the person of a star; they are linked to a set of international media events (premieres, award shows, film festivals), are interconnected with the star system of the Indian film industry, with the content of Bollywood movies, and with local cultural and social processes. In the following, I will take a look at a conglomerate of rites concerning a megastar of popular Hindi Cinema, Shah Rukh Khan, and his non-South Asian fans in Europe, mainly in the German-speaking countries. Although these rites may appear simple and undeserving of research at first sight – you go to see a show and a star, try to take his picture, get an autograph and maybe even a hug, and then you go home again – they turn out to be complex cultural processes of ritualising media and mediating rites. They negotiate the boundaries between moving pictures, imaginary worlds, mediated pictures, and “real people” and their live worlds. 11 Dwyer 2000: 118. 12 Dwyer 2006: 41. 13 http://www.thaindian.com/newsportal/entertainment/kolkata-fans-worry-about-god-amitabhbachchans-health_100106734.html (30/04/2010). 14 Hirzer 2009.

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Image 2: Shah Rukh Khan giving autographs to fans in Berlin, Germany. Photo by the author

Shah Rukh Khan, Fans and Media Rites in Europe Hindi Cinema has been popular in many parts of the world since at least the 1950s, but it has only recently attracted larger non-South Asian audiences in Western Europe.15 This new “Bollywood wave” is part of the extended global circulation of Indian movies since the 1990s. It goes hand-in-hand with “overseas friendly films”, marked by big-star casts, extravagant songs, and romantic plots that represent old and new myths of true love, which overcomes all obstacles and transcends all boundaries. This period in Indian film-making is linked with the rise of a new generation of stars, in particular with Shah Rukh Khan. His work and career is built to a large extent on his roles as a romantic lover and a protagonist of a new Indian middle class. Today, he is not only an icon in India, but a global superstar and “a global commodity”. He has the reputation of attracting the largest audience in the 15 In Eastern Europe (in particular in the ex-Soviet Union) as well as in ex-Yugoslavia and Greece there have been large audiences for Hindi Cinema and its music since the 1950s (cf. also Roudot 2008).

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contemporary world of cinema, comprising fans from diverse places and cultural backgrounds.16 In 2002, Indian producers and distributors, in cooperation with the German TV channel RTL2, started a campaign to promote popular Hindi movies more widely in the German-speaking area. SRK played the leading part in this endeavour, embodying the hero in most of the movies that came onto the German market at the time. TV broadcasts and DVDs dubbed in German have been reaching a wide range of people during the past few years.17 On the one hand, the intensified circulation has fostered the presence of popular Hindi cinema in a variety of festivals and cultural events. This process culminated in the incorporation of Bollywood movies into the programme of the Berlinale (Germany’s most prestigious film festival) in 2007 and 2008. On the other hand, the increasing visibility of Hindi Cinema has been the basis for the emergence of fandom. Some people started to build social affiliations around this media content, which, in the meantime, has acquired the status of cult media for a niche audience in several European countries. The films form the basis of a cineaste popular culture, including a variety of cultural practices connected to Indian fashion, food, music, and dance.18 In contrast to other parts of the world (India, Africa, or South America), Western European Shah Rukh Khan fans are largely women. In the German-speaking countries they come from a wide variety of professional and social milieus, urban as well as rural regions, and also comprise people with a migratory background from Eastern Europe, Turkey, the Middle East, and South Asia. In age they range from children and teenagers to senior citizens; the majority of people active on internet fan sites are in their twenties and thirties. The Shah Rukh Khan section in the Swiss-based Bollywood forum molodezhnaja.ch (by far the largest of about 50 online fan sites in German) features about 150 active threads that contain discourse and digital visual material about every aspect of the life and work of the star. The thread dedicated to the collection of pictures of the star shows an average of 100 posts and 14 110 hits per month during the past two years. “Shah Rukhs Lounge”, a thread for casual conversation about the star, featured an average of 25 posts and 920 hits every day during the spring of 2009. The most extensive discourse on a single film in the entire Bollywood forum up to the present day is on Rab ne Bana di Jodi (India 2008, Aditya Chopra), a Shah Rukh Khan blockbuster, and consists of 3242 posts and 177 692 hits.19 In this contribution, I will concentrate on Shah Rukh Khan fans, who engage in a wide range of cultural practices online and offline.20 They form part of the rapidly growing digitally empowered audiences (in digitally empowered parts of the 16 17 18 19 20

Cf. Dudrah 2006: 86–87; Ciecko 2001; Deshpande 2005; Dwyer 2000. Cf. Pestal 2007. Fuchs 2007, Roudot 2008. All numbers 1 June 2009, http://www.bollywoodforum.ch/forum/index.php. Cf. also Fuchs 2007, Mader & Budka 2009.

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world) that have become active and visible on the Internet, and constitute an example for an interactive “convergence culture” that merges old and new media.21 Among their activities are watching movies in the cinema, on DVD, or both, and talking about them in person, on the phone, and on the Internet; online film chatting (simultaneously watching a film and chatting about it with a group of people online); social networking online and offline; collecting, sharing, and discussing information about all activities of the star on the Internet, as well as talking in person about Shah Rukh Khan; collecting diverse objects of material culture (DVDs, CDs, posters, magazines, autographs, etc.); collecting, sharing, and talking about pictures and videos of Shah Rukh Khan on the Internet; creating, sharing, viewing, and commenting on diverse genres of visual fan art (digital artwork and video clips, mostly derived from mediated visual material), as well as writing and sharing fan fiction (stories related to the content of movies and to imaginary fan/star encounters and relationships) – all on the Internet; travelling to see Shah Rukh Khan live at events in Europe and beyond, and preparing and mediating these events on the net. Whereas many of these activities involve several ritual dimensions, I will concentrate on the more explicit ritual processes and experiences that revolve around public appearances of the star in Europe. Between 2007 and 2009, Shah Rukh Khan visited Europe quite frequently: Two of his movies – Chak De! India (India 2007, Shimit Amin), and his own production Om Shanti Om – had a London premiere; furthermore, he held a press conference in London at the release of Billu (India 2009, Priyadarshan). He visited Berlin and the Berlinale Film festival for the German premiere of Om Shanti Om, and a plenary session on love and cinematic culture. He was present at the inauguration of his wax statue at Madame Tussaud’s in London (2007) and at the Musée Grévin in Paris (2008). He took part in formal autograph sessions at fairs at the London Olympia every year (Asian Lifestyle or Zee Carnival), participated in the Zee Cine Awards (London 2008), danced at the Temptation Reloaded Show in Rotterdam (2008), as well as at a smaller event in Cardiff (2007), and interacted with fans and the press on some more private trips – on a visit to Warwick Castle with his family in 2007, or during his stay in Vienna for the soccer EURO finals in 2008. Furthermore, three Temptation Reloaded

21 Cf. Jenkins 2006. Internet fansites reflect the linguistic and cultural diversity of the European landscape of SRK fandom, although the majority of local language sites (and the most comprehensive ones) are in German. Furthermore, European fans from diverse countries and languages participate in international fansites that link members from various corners of the globe and use mostly English for communication. In addition, the Web.2 (myvideo.de, you tube, facebook etc.) is used increasingly for individual representation of fan activities and for interaction among groups of friends, and connects fans with the larger public of the www (cf. Fuchs 2007, Mader (forthcoming)).

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Shows were scheduled for Germany in 2008, but were cancelled at very short notice. The travels of Shah Rukh Khan in Europe provide a transformative and fluctuating landscape for media rituals based on the interaction of star and fans. On the one hand, they are of great significance for local or (trans)national fan communities, or both, as well as for the establishment of Bollywood in specific countries and among diverse audiences. On the other hand, they provide a ritual space for individuals who go on this form of pilgrimage either once in their “fan time”, or as often as they can. These events can be studied as diversified fields, in the sense of Pierre Bourdieu, that comprise several forms of rites and spaces for ritual interaction, as well as multiple actors and types of agency and discourse.22 Usually there is a formal presentation, such as a premiere, a show, or a staged autograph session in the centre of this field. Furthermore, several more or less informal ritual activities are scattered around it, and are connected with the movements of the star during his stay at the location. The latter include (on the more formal side) cheering at a red carpet, and (on the more informal side) trying to meet Shah Rukh Khan at the airport upon his arrival or departure, waiting near his hotel, at the back door of a theatre, etc. During the formal rites, space and agency are basically structured and controlled by the organisation of the event, and to a certain extent by the star, but also provide plenty of room for specific types of ritual design and performances by fans. The “wild” ritual zones, however, are created, to a large extent, by the agency of small groups of particularly enthusiastic fans. This may include finding out the whereabouts of the star, and sometimes taking the chance of waiting for hours, without much clue as to whether or when he will pass by or not. Nevertheless, the “wild side” is preferred by some fans, because it occasionally allows for a closer and more “private” encounter. The star, of course, plays the lead in all scenes of these ritual performances. But here again, some parts are more formalised and structured by the type of event, whereas his interactions with fans in the “wild” depend largely on his personal decisions and good will. For the fans, the ritual process comprises preparation, travelling, the liminal phase at the event in general and during a close encounter with the star in particular, going home, communicating about their experiences offline and online, and reintegration into everyday life. This process is, on the one hand, a personal experience; on the other, it becomes public and visible on the internet. Although many fans do not make any comment on the net, others do so extensively. For a scholar, this represents an overwhelming amount of data on every aspect of the ritual process. When about 500 people communicate about a rite off and on for half a year on the internet, they generate an immense number of pages of discourse and 22 Compare also Athique 2008 for the use of the concept of the field in his study of Bollywood audiences in Australia.

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visual material. This happened in connection with the most spectacular Bollywood media ritual in the German-speaking area, Shah Rukh Khan’s attendance at the Berlinale Film Festival in February of 2008. Approximately 2500 fans came to see the star and his movie, mostly from Germany, but also from Austria, Switzerland, Poland, France, the Netherlands, or Scandinavia, including fans with a Turkish background, as well as a small number of people of South Asian origin. I will approach the case study on this media ritual on the following pages from the point of view of the fan on the net: Although I have done “real-time” fieldwork and carried out participant observation in Berlin as well, I will focus on discourses and narrations online. The representation of the ritual processes can, of course, only touch upon some basic elements here, and will be described in more detail elsewhere.23

“We are Going to Berlin”: Ritual Design and Organisation24 In August 2007, rumours spread on the Internet that Shah Rukh Khan might be invited to the Berlinale film festival. Immediately a group of fans initiated an online petition supporting this idea. It was signed by approximately 1000 people and caused amusement among the directors of the Berlinale. Several months went by. In the meantime, fans were hoping and praying for Shah Rukh Khan to come to Berlin, and they were exchanging their aspirations and doubts on the Internet. Their prayers were answered. Towards the end of the year, the management confirmed that the film and the star were to participate in the festival. Thus, the formal core and the basic structure of the event were established, and any agency for the further design of the ritual rested in the hands of the fans. This task was taken very seriously. As soon as a fan posted that he or she cannot attend the festival, others argued that neither expenses nor any other difficulties, including jobs, school, or obstinate parents, should keep anybody from going. The fact that Shah Rukh Khan was coming to “us”, meaning to Europe, to Germany, or to Berlin, had to be celebrated accordingly. Beyond expressing the desire to meet him, fan discourse placed emphasis on the symbolic significance of actively participating in the event, on the one hand, to demonstrate love for and admiration of the star, on the other hand, to impress the public and the media, who time and again had ridiculed popular Hindi Cinema as “kitsch”. Scattered throughout Germany and the neighbouring countries, many people used the larger forums for designing and organising various forms of ritual enactment and performance. Among the numerous ideas of how to greet Shah Rukh Khan were various modes of performance involving material signs to communicate 23 See Mader & Budka 2009; Mader (forthcoming). 24 “Wir fahren nach Berlin” is a slogan that Shah Rukh Khan fans derived from soccer fans going to the finals of the German Federal League.

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love and respect to the star. One line of thought centred around roses, the classic symbol of love: The idea of showering him with rose pedals was discussed but rejected as being too tasteless,“kitsch”; the idea of giving him roses was carried out by some fans, however, for example, by 20 members of a forum, who managed to welcome the star at the airport. Other groups settled for Indian flags or balloons in the Indian national colours in order to make him feel at home, or decided to sing a song from his film in Hindi. Furthermore, banners and gifts were designed and prepared; sometimes they represented specific groups, such as friends, online communities, or national groupings (e.g. the French). Long discussions took place in various forums, and a variety of individual and collective enactments were the outcome of this phase of ritual design.

Image 3: Fans welcoming Shah Rukh Khan at the Berlinale film festival. Photo by the author

Another important issue of online discourse concerned appropriate behaviour when actually meeting the Shah Rukh Khan: Many people argued that a good fan should refrain from screaming out loud when the star is present: noisy behaviour is

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unpleasant and irritating for the star, as well as for other fans; calm behaviour, however, is a sign of respect and appreciation. This normative statement – obviously derived from other contexts of (ritual) behaviour in Europe – generally remained uncontested in the forum; only a few fans pointed out that, during this special moment, they probably will not be able to exercise much control over their actions. Others were discussing what to say, should they have the opportunity to speak to him. Would it be inappropriate to tell him how much they loved him? Will it be possible to get an autograph and to take pictures? And is it acceptable to touch him? Would this upset him? The preparation phase ended with the effort to get tickets (at the Berlinale tickets are for sale only during the two days before the festival). This turned into a disaster for many fans, as only a minority of them were able to obtain tickets for the formal events, but it is an important element of ritual enactment. Tickets for all shows involving Shah Rukh Khan were sold out within 10 minutes; the online ticket service broke down, as too many people logged in at the same time. Such a thing had never happened before; it represents an all-time record. The organisers of the Berlinale were impressed. By the time the star arrived in Berlin, he had attained a mythical aura, and he and his fans were all over the media.

Mediation, Liminality, and Online Communitas Online discourse during these weeks also conveyed various signs of liminality: overexcitement, sleeplessness, anxieties about the journey and the opportunities of actually seeing or meeting the star, but most prominently, the intense joy at the fact that “Shah Rukh is coming” and that “We are going to Berlin”. It was expressed and circulated on the internet, verbally as well as visually. Furthermore, communitas among fans was emerging, and was expressed in intense communication, empathy, and cooperation in emotional, as well as organisational, matters. Towards the end of the preparation phase, forum members were clearly divided into two groups: “Berlinalians” and “non-Berlinalians” (to use a fan expression). Both groups participated in the ritual, some by travelling to Berlin, and others by joining them in a “symbolic pilgrimage”, in the sense of Roger Aden (1999), on the Internet. During the three days of Shah Rukh Khan’s presence in Berlin, the forums were not empty: It was the time of the “non-Berlinalians”, and several new voices joined the discourse at this point. Depending on the intensity of their affection for SRK and on their personal circumstances, they spent up to 20 hours per day online. Simultaneously, they often watched reports on TV, informed each other about live transmissions, and commented on them. As the first pictures from a photo shoot and the press conference started circulating on the net, some skilled fans immediately produced fan art from this visual material.

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Some “non-Berlinalians” were in a special liminal state of mind that was brought about by the intense and painful longing to be at the Berlinale, and to meet SRK, but not being able to go. Betwixt and between in a very unpleasant way, they shared their feelings with others on the net, and developed a specific form of communitas. A vivid example of this was a fluctuating group of about ten forum members, one of them a highly expressive 15-year-old girl from a small German town. She was not able to obtain a ticket, and thus her parents did not allow her to travel to Berlin. Now she was participating online, but she was not happy about it, especially as pictures and reports of SRK’s interaction with the fans on the Red Carpet were coming in. The atmosphere in the forum was loaded with excitement and joy about SRK, but also with sadness and desperation: “Oh my God “ – wrote the girl – “… I am dying…I am crying again … Please help me …” Next morning, after only a few hours of sleep, our young friend was online again, and still feeling very sad. Being very skilled at digital artwork, she produced and posted several wallpapers and signatures of Shah Rukh Khan that use his image to express her feelings, while waiting for more news, more pictures, and videos. By that time, a large number of verbal and visual documents from the Berlinale, produced to a certain extent by fans, were circulating in diverse forums, as well as on Youtube and other Web 2.0. applications. They facilitated a broad and intensely mediated participation in the ritual. Late that night, our young friend was still online, looking at every bit of information she could find, talking about it with other members, but again feeling very desperate. At one point she wrote: “Sometimes I wish I would not love Shah Rukh so much…” Not all “non-Berlinalians” experienced the mediated ritual in the same way. Although most of them articulated “I wish I was there” in one way or the other, lots of them conveyed joy at being able to share some of the experiences of the “Berlinalians”. This applies most explicitly to narratives called “Berlinale reports”, that started flowing into the forums shortly after the event.

In The Afterglow: The Berlinale Reports One or two days after Shah Rukh Khan left Berlin, everybody was back home, offline and online. “Berlinalians” and “non-Berlinalians” joined together in the forums, although the members that participated live in the ritual dominated the discourse. During this phase, which lasted up to three weeks, ritual post-production formed the centre of fan activities, and offered an extended informal mediation of the ritual that extended far beyond formal medial content. The discourse revolved around the Berlinale reports. In these narratives, fans told the stories of their personal ritual experiences. Approximately 150 narratives, ranging from a few paragraphs to 25 pages, with an average of 2 pages each, were posted in German (70%) and English (30%); in addition, approximately 10 Berlinale stories were posted in

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the French forums, I have not yet explored the Polish, and the Dutch forums. Sometimes photos are integrated into the narration, more frequently pictures and videos are posted separately. One dimension of the reports is the description of the ritual space. This was mainly determined by the organisation of the event, including the security measures in each case. Times and places, when and where Shah Rukh Khan stepped into a public space, mostly “non-places” dedicated to coming and going in the sense of Marg Augé25, provided diverse zones of performativity for star and fans. The reports describe his and their movements in Berlin, and the town acted as a physical medium offering various spaces for the enactment of rituals.26 Fans described the process of time and again discovering new spaces, the back door of the premiere cinema, for example. They recounted the long, hard hours of waiting in the cold, and their feelings during that time; they talked about their encounters with other fans, and their tales reflected communitas, as well as conflicts. But most of all, they talked about Shah Rukh Khan and their personal close encounter with him: The core of the ritual experience always begins at the moment when the star enters the sphere of sensual perception of the fan. This ranges from feeling his presence from afar, to feeling his body in an embrace. His actions, his gestures, his aura, his words, his voice, his clothes, his hair, his smile, his eyes, his gaze, his perfume, and his skin become elements of a symbolic landscape of love that is constructed in a hundred different ways, and yet forms the substance of one and the same tale: the tale of going on a quest and reaching, after a long and difficult journey, a promised land, and experiencing a state of bliss and euphoria. The tales usually end on a note of profound gratitude to SRK for taking the time and making the effort to meet as many people as possible, for jeopardising Berlinale schedules, for causing a traffic jam on Stresemann Street by stopping his car in the middle of the road and spending an hour with his fans, thereby definitely going out of his way to reach them – even behind cars and busses; and last, but not least, for being happy about it. His expressions of joy about the fans, his manner of saying “thank you” to people when giving them an autograph, and his way of reaching out for them when they were longing to be touched are constant topoi in the tales. Happiness and gratitude are also expressed in public letters to SRK on the Internet, as well as in a specific installation within a Swiss fan site: it shows 420 individual thank-you notes digitally wrapped into little stars: “Thank you for the colours you bring into my life”, “Thank you for coming! You have changed my life! God bless you!”, “Thank you for enriching my life with your smile and your love”, “Thanx for coming so close and spreading happiness everywhere”. 25 Augé 1992. 26 Compare Coleman & Elsner (1998) on the uses of ritual space in Walsingham.

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Image 4: Fan at the Berlinale film festival. Photo by the author

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Berlinale reports circulated on the internet, as well as a large variety of visual representations of the event. They represent a thousand little details of individual experiences, as well as a mega-narrative, a mythical metatext. They are exchanged among “Berlinalians”, and eagerly received by “non-Berlinalians” who are determined to be there next time, no matter what. Fans who had to stay at home often express their gratitude for the accounts which give them the opportunity to share the Berlinale experience, to feel SRK through the tales, almost like having been there themselves.

To London and Beyond The Berlinale can be regarded, on the on hand, as a single ritual event and a complex field of rites and actors, as well as of media and mediations. On the other hand, it can be understood as one in a series of media pilgrimages27 undertaken by individual fans. A group of approximately 50–100 people from the Germanspeaking regions (as well as others from diverse European countries) have the money, time, knowledge, and the dedication to repeat the ritual experience of interacting with Shah Rukh Khan various times a year. Like other aficionados, they dedicate a lot of energy and resources to their passion, but the time and costs involved do not exceed the “hobbies” of other people, such as mountain climbing, paragliding, or going to the opera. Some of these fans, fond of travelling and media rituals, have participated in most of the events listed above, e.g. the Zee Carnival in London. Furthermore, during the past year, a few of them have travelled to Dubai for a dance show, gone to India to be in the audience of some of Shah Rukh Khan’s TV shows and to see his house (and him) in Mumbai, or even ventured to South Africa, when he and his team were involved in the Indian Premiere League of cricket. This group of followers in the strict sense of the term is joined time and again by newcomers who have not met the star before. But to be part of this inner ritual circle, one has to attend events with Shah Rukh Khan frequently. Always in the first row at a red carpet and on VIP tickets at formal events, and often also active as pioneers in the “wild zones”, they engage more intensely in this ritual practice than the majority of fans. The repeated encounter with Shah Rukh Khan intensifies their feeling of proximity to him, and also aims at a process of transformation from the anonymity of a fan in a crowd to a person that is recognised individually by the star. On the Internet, they often open a thread for discussion and coordination of a journey to rites abroad, and help inexperienced fans to come along. But sometimes expert knowledge is guarded carefully and only shared among special groups. Upon returning, they post pictures and reports that are highly appreciated by many, 27 Couldry 2003.

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and inspire other people to go to these events. Thus, the participation of fans from the German-speaking countries in the Zee Carnival in London increased significantly from 2008 to 2009. In their hometowns, other fans try to meet the travellers as soon as possible after their return, in order to hear a fresh story that is still loaded with the emotions of the liminal experience. At fan meetings, they proudly tell the tales of their adventures and encounters; they are admired and envied, but some of them are also criticised severely, time and again, for what is regarded by others as improper or neurotic behaviour. Among themselves, during queuing and waiting, at dinner after a long and exhilarating day at a ritual event, or at home in a small circle of friends who have been on these journeys together, they exchange their assessments of the diverse ritual settings, ritual designs, structure, and organisation, of personal actions and experiences, and of Shah Rukh Khan’s performance and behaviour at these occasions. They are ritual experts of a kind, a special group of practitioners that definitely deserve more study and another article.

Star, Fans, and Rites out of Place Ritual encounters between Shah Rukh Khan and his fans in Europe represent a particular dimension of the interface of rites and films on the one hand, and of rites and the Internet, on the other hand. These fan/star interactions are “rites out of place” in several ways, and, to be out of place is a central element of the rites: Firstly, and most significantly, the star is out place: He leaves the screen, the (digital) image, the movies and stories, and the imaginary of his fans; thus, he leaves his usual location from the perspective of the life worlds of audiences, and makes a life appearance. The displacement of the actor from media content to media ritual marks the ritual space around him and is the base of the enactments and experiences of fans. These have to be understood as part of the larger framework of fan practices and ritual productivity that often aim at the construction of proximity to the star. Fans feel emotional and mental closeness to Shah Rukh Khan in everyday life: they love and admire him, many of them are continuously busied with his work and life, and he and the figures he embodies play an important part in their imagination. Evidently, this goes hand in hand with the physical absence of the star. During the moment of the ritual encounter, this dilemma is resolved. Thus, sensual experiences of intimacy (touch, smell, and gaze), direct communication (verbal as well as eye contact), and material and discursive manifestations of physical proximity (autographs, photos, videos, and narrations) constitute vital elements in the ritual encounter. This essential part of the ritual process requires a star who engages actively in this type of performance, who goes out of his way to gives people the possibility to see, to touch, and to smell him, to get a hug or even

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a kiss, to exchange a smile, a glance, or a few words, to give him a present, get an autograph, take a picture, and to live a profound ritual experience. Secondly, fans are out of place: They leave their worlds of daily life to enter a zone of ritual encounter that is either experienced live, by themselves, or mediated by others. Being out of place not only refers to the journey to the event or to the temporary displacement from a life as secretaries, teachers, workers, managers, housewives, students, bank employees, nurses, doctors, or controllers to the world Hindi Cinema, fandom, and its ritual enactment. Fans who are face to face with the star enter a special “contact zone”28 with the embodiment of a certain type of media content. In this process, they often re-enact notions of love and modes of action of the lover/hero in Hindi Cinema played by Shah Rukh Khan in most of his films.29 The ritual includes an intertextual performance30 of fragments of a discourse of love31 closely connected with a body of films. It allows the fan to transcend the boundary between the imaginary life of the movie and “real life”, and to feel and experience in a special way the emotional world of romance of the films. Furthermore, they sometimes use words and concepts from movies in their discourse on the Internet to describe their own feelings for Shah Rukh Khan. This applies in a most particular way to the interface between Om Shanti Om and the interactions with Shah Rukh Khan at the Berlinale film festival. The plot of the film revolves around stars and fans, everlasting love, reincarnation, and revenge. It features Shah Rukh Khan in a triple role: as a fan in his first life, as a star in the next, and as “himself” throughout the movie – as the film contains an ample intertext referring to his life and work. In the role of a fan named Om, he is in love with a star called Shanti, and waits in the crowd to see her on the Red Carpet at a premiere. When Shanti walks by, her scarf gets entangled in Om’s wristband; this incident brings about the close encounter Om has been longing for in his dreams. This scene and its song (Ajab Si) are frequently quoted in the Berlinale reports as a reference to the fan experiences. Thus, the ritual scenario at the Berlinale negotiates the boundaries between rites and movies involving various frames and levels of reframing. Fans participate in a media ritual (a film premiere) that is reframed in the movie that some of them (the lucky ones who got tickets) see on screen that very night. In addition, the movie tells a story about a romance between a fan and a star that has a lot in common with their own feelings for Shah Rukh Khan. While, in the part of the film that features the premiere scene, the star plays the role of the fan, the roles are exchanged again in the fan/star interactions at the festival. Yet, the boundaries between movie and rite, as well as between star and 28 Brosius 2005. 29 These semiotic and narrative elements are in turn interconnected with a wide range of mythical tales (cf. Dwyer 2000; 2006; Illouz 2003; Kakar 1992). 30 Peterson 2005. 31 Barthes 1977.

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fans, remain blurred, and enactments at the premiere in Berlin are, in a way, footnoting the film that reframes the ritual and the desires of the fans. Thirdly, Bollywood is out of place. Its media rites thrive and float in a global mediascape32, at the same time they constitute part of the process of “place-making”33 of Indian Cinema in various regional settings, and promote the construction of local fan communities. Again, a major part in this context is played by the star out of place: For the heterogeneous, fluctuating, and delocalised conglomerates of fans in Europe in general, and in the German-speaking countries in particular, Shah Rukh Khan’s visit to Germany transformed an everyday geographical remoteness into ritual proximity. The presence of the star integrated the dispersed groups of his fans offline and online, and intensified their attachment to him, as well as to the media content he embodies. This special transcultural connection was later represented on the DVD Shah Rukh khan – In Love with Germany (Germany 2008, Rapid Eye Movies). The construction of a special relationship between Bollywood, Shah Rukh Khan, and Germany was challenged when his shows in October 2008 were cancelled. Most fans reacted with great emotional disappointment, and later on with great anger, as tickets that cost between € 30 and € 500 were not refunded by the organisers. Among the many elements of the vast discourse about the issue on the Internet (in the Bollywood forum molodezhnaja.ch, mentioned above, one thread on the topic featured 5000 posts and 247 733 hits in three weeks) was a wide range of feelings connected to an experience of loss. It took many fans several weeks to recover from the shock, and even caused some of them to “quit Shah Rukh Khan” and Bollywood. On the one hand, these reactions are connected directly with the high expectations raised by the euphoria of the ritual experiences around the Berlinale, and, maybe most essentially, by its mediation on the Internet. On the other hand, at the time the shows were cancelled, about 5 000 people were involved in a ritual process offline and online, just as described above for the Berlinale. Their strong emotional, discursive, and visual reactions (in fan art and video clips, for example) are the result of the disruption of the ritual process that affected everybody involved, and caused major emotional problems for some people. Besides being deprived of the joy (and the ritual experience) of seeing Shah Rukh Khan, a lot of fans were disappointed because the star did not keep his promise to “come back to Germany soon”. The possibility of coming back with shows and shooting was first mentioned during a Q&A session at the screening of Om Shanti Om in the course of the Berlinale. SRK ventured to say a few words in German and declared that “deep down at heart” he felt German. Asked what time it was in India at the moment, he joked: “I am telling you I am German, I don’t know 32 Appadurai 1996. 33 Gupta & Ferguson 1997.

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anything about India” (thus positioning himself in proximity with John F. Kennedy’s “Ich bin ein Berliner”). These remarks have been quoted in textual and visual fan products over and over again.34 And, last, but not least, the rites are out of place. On the one hand, ritual space and ritual processes involving Shah Rukh Khan and his European fans are on the move, as they are attached to the flows and “place–making” in the global cultural economy. They function as special contact zones for diverse audiences, and construct and enact connectivity between the Indian film industry, media content, individual fans, and larger (national) fan communities. On the other hand, media technologies, in particular the internet and digital photography, form an important aspect for the actual performance and varied presentations of rituals, as well as for ways of engaging with them.

34 Cf. “Shah Rukh Khan @ Berlinale 2008 – SRK in my hometown Berlin”, Video uploaded on Youtube in 2008 by user ANSCHE http://de.youtube.com/watch?v=f2QOYz0Qoks (30/04/2010).

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References Aden, Roger 1999. Popular Stories and Promised Lands. Fan Cultures and Symbolic Pilgrimages. Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press. Appadurai, Arjun 1996. Modernity at Large. Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Athique, Adrian 2008. “The ‘Crossover’ Audience: Mediated Multiculturalism and the Indian Film”. Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies 22/3: 299–311. Augé, Marc 1992. Non-lieux. Introduction à une anthropologie de la surmodernité. Paris: Éditions du Seuil. Barthes, Roland 1977. Fragments d'un discours amoureux. Paris: Éditions du Seuil. Brosius, Christiane 2005. “The Scattered Homeland of the Migrant”. In: Raminder Kaur & Ajay J. Sinha (eds.). Bollyworld. Popular Indian Cinema through a Transnational Lens. London et al.: Sage Publications: 207–238. Chopra, Anupama 2007. King of Bollywood: Shah Rukh Khan and the Seductive World of Indian Cinema. Washington: Warner Books. Ciecko, Anne T. 2001. “Superhit Hunk Heroes for Sale: Globalization and Bollywood’s Gender Politics”. Asian Journal of Communication 11/2: 121–143. Coleman, Simone & John Elsner 1998. “Performing Pilgrimage. Walsingham and the Ritual Construction of Irony”. In: Felicia Hughes-Freeland (ed.). Ritual, Performance, Media. London, New York: Routledge: 46–65 (A. S. A. Monographs 35). Couldry, Nick 2003. Media Rituals: A Critical Approach. London, New York: Routledge. Derné, Steve 2000. Movies, Masculinity, and Modernity: An Ethnography of Men’s Filmgoing in India. Westport, Greenwood Press. Deshpande, Sudhanva 2005. “The Consumable Hero of Globalised India”. In: Raminder Kaur & Ajay J. Sinha (eds.). Bollyworld. Popular Indian Cinema through a Transnational Lens. London et al.: Sage Publications: 186–203. Dudrah, Rajinder Kumar 2006. Bollywood: Sociology Goes to the Movies. New Delhi et al.: Sage Publications. Dwyer, Rachel 2000. All You Want is Money, All You Need Is Love. Sexuality and Romance in Modern India. London: Cassell. — 2006. Filming the Gods: Religion and Indian Cinema. London, New York, Routledge. Dyer, Richard 1998. Stars. London: British Film Institute. — 2004. Heavenly Bodies. Film Stars and Society. London, New York: Routledge. Fiske, John 1992. “The Cultural Economy of Fandom”. In: Lisa Lewis (ed.). The Adoring Audience. Fan Culture and Popular Media. London, New York: Routledge: 30–49. Fuchs, Bernhard 2007. “Bollywood-Fans meeting online and offline. Filmkultur im Internet, bei Stammtischen und auf Clubbings”. ZfK-Zeitschrift für Kulturwissenschaften 2: 69–84.

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Grimes, Ronald 2006. Rite out of Place. Ritual, Media, and the Arts. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gupta, Akhil & James Ferguson (ed.) 1997. Culture, Power, Place. Explorations in Critical Anthropology. Durham, London: Duke University Press. Hirzer, Petra 2009. Hybridkultur auf Umwegen? Transkulturelle Prozesse anhand der Rezeption indischer Populärkultur in Arequipa/Peru. Vienna: Universität Wien. Illouz, Eva 2003. Der Konsum der Romantik: Liebe und die kulturellen Widersprüche des Kapitalismus. Frankfurt, New York: Campus-Verlag. Jenkins, Henry 2006. Fans, Bloggers, and Gamers. Exploring Participatory Culture. New York: New York University Press. Kakar, Sudhir 1992. Intimate Relations. Exploring Indian Sexuality. New Delhi: Penguin Books. Kaur, Raminder & Ajit J. Sinha (ed.). 2005. Bollyworld. Popular Indian Cinema through a Transactional Lens. London et al.: Sage Publications. Kavoori, Anandam P. & Aswin Punathambekar (eds.) 2008. Global Bollywood. New York, London: New York University Press. Kammer, Manfred 2008. “Rituale im Bollywoodfilm”. In: Kathrin Fahlenbrach & Ingrid Brück & Anne Bartsch (eds.). Medienrituale. Rituelle Performanz in Film, Fernsehen und Neuen Medien. Wiesbaden: VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften: 158–171. Krüger, Oliver. 2004. “‘It’s all about loving your parents.’ The Reflection of Tradition, Modernity, and Rituals in Popular Indian Movies”. Marburg Journal of Religion 9/1: 1–22. http://www.uni-marburg.de/fb03/ivk/mjr/pdfs/2004/articles/krueger2004. pdf (last accessed 30. 04. 2010). Mader, Elke 2008. Anthropologie der Mythen. Wien: Facultas/wuv. — & Philipp Budka. 2009. „Shah Rukh Khan @ Berlinale. Bollywood Fans im Kontext medienanthropologischer Forschung“. In: Claus Tieber (ed.). Fokus Bollywood. Indisches Kino in wissenschaftlichen Diskursen. Münster: Lit Verlag. Mader, Elke (forthcoming). All about Shah Rukh Khan. Popular Hindi Cinema, Fandom and New Media in Transcultural Settings. Wien, Facultas/wuv. Mishra, Vijay 2002. Bollywood cinema. Temples of desire. London, New York: Routledge. Pestal, Birgit 2007. Faszination Bollywood. Zahlen, Fakten und Hintergründe zum „Trend“ im deutschsprachigen Raum. Marburg: Tectum. Peterson, Mark Allen 2003. Anthropology & Mass Communication. Media and Myth in the New Millenium. New York, Oxford: Berghahn Books. — 2005. “Performing Media. Towards an Ethnography of Intertextuality”. In: Eric W. Rothenbuhler & Mihai Coman (eds.). Media Anthropology. London et al.: Sage Publications: 129–138. Roudot, Segolene 2008. “Watching Bollywood: The French Audience for Hindi Movies”. Oxford: University of Oxford (unpublished BA thesis).

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Virdi, Jyotika & Corey K. Creekmur 2006. “India: Bollywood’s Global Coming of Age”. In: Anne T. Ciecko (ed.). Contemporary Asian Cinema. Popular Culture in a Global Frame. Oxford, New York: Berg: 133–143.

Section III: Ritual and Visuality Edited by Petra H. Rösch and Corinna Wessels-Mevissen

Petra H. Rösch and Corinna Wessels-Mevissen

Ritual and Visuality – Introductory Remarks The ritual and visual spheres are closely interrelated and they share a long, common history. The image as a centre of the ritual and the sacred structure as its spatial context have recently been treated in art historical studies, e.g. relating to medieval Christianity.1 Images in general can be interpreted as dominant symbols,2 triggering or shaping ritual actions. However, do we really understand how images or visual signs work and how they differ from textual or verbal signs? How are they to be interpreted in the complex ritual actions informed through a social-historical background? What does the ritual agent or observer himself contribute to the decoding and interpreting of the ritual context? The above questions are not restricted to the ritual sphere alone, but can be applied to any visual culture. In shifting the focus to “visuality”, they have come up and have been debated in visual studies, particularly since the mid 1990ies. Since then, the surplus of visual expression in cultures or communications in contrast or in addition to expression of the other senses has come into focus. According to W.J.T. Mitchell, the reasons for this new interest in the visual stem from: “[T]he realization that spectatorship (the look, the gaze, the glance, practices of observation, surveillance, and visual pleasure) may be as deep a problem as various forms of reading (decipherment, decoding, interpretation, etc.) and that visual experience or ‘visual literacy’ might not be fully explicable on the model of textuality.”3 The rise of new media and through this the often described “flood of images” and their necessary interpretations have triggered this shift. To study ritual and visuality in a religious context, David Morgan formulated similar statements, which raise the right questions in interpreting religious rituals in a trans-disciplinary, cross-cultural perspective. Morgan stresses not only the importance of analysing images or visual objects in religious contexts, thus widening the perspective from the main icons to any visual signs included in ritual contexts, but he also argues for stressing the visual practices themselves: 1 E.g. Belting 1990. 2 Turner 1967. 3 Mitchell 1995: 16.

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Petra H. Rösch and Corinna Wessels-Mevissen “Visual culture is what images, acts of seeing, and attendant intellectual, emotional, and perceptual sensibilities do to build, maintain, or transform the worlds in which people live in”. He further states that “The study of visual culture is the analysis and interpretation of images and the ways of seeing (or gazes) that configure the agents, practices, conceptualities, and institutions that put images to work”.4

Though an applicable theory clearly explicating how practice-centred visual interpretations might work, especially with regard to the multimodality of perceptions or the “visual overload in everyday life”5 is still missing, Morgan points us in the right direction. The following four papers, drawing on the diverse cultural backgrounds of Egypt, Bali, South India and China, will exemplify approaches to visual cultures of rituals, showing the large variety of possible interpretational accesses we are dealing with in visual and ritual studies. In his paper “Hieroglyphs of Praise: The Dynamic Praise of Gods as Represented and Prescribed by Ancient Egyptian Ritual Texts” Carsten Knigge Salis stresses the high iconicity of the Egyptian writing system. Its iconic characters were especially applied for writing sacred ritual texts in order to communicate with the deities. Besides those graphs referring to the sound, the phonographs, others referred to the meaning, the semographs. As Knigge Salis could show, obviously the semographs were kept especially flexible, adding a surplus visual meaning to the hieroglyph. Obviously it remained in the hand of the writer to choose an appropriate semograph, as fixed rules of combination seem not to have existed. Thus the viewing of the written hieroglyphs or the interpretation of their visual representation supplied a more detailed or precise information than the verbal reading or uttering of the sacred text. This important implication for the ritual sphere so far has not been fully understood. In the paper of Thomas M. Hunter, titled “Icons, Indexes and Interpretants of a Balinese Ritual Artefact: The Pengajeg”, another visual aspect of rituals is tackled, which has been perceived as lingering between language and iconic sign. Thomas Hunter questions the semiotic meanings of the ritual artefacts called pengajeg, which are quintessential in Balinese religion. In highly codified acts, these nonpermanent ritual artefacts are prepared and installed in Balinese altars. They seem to be multivalent, as they have to be analysed as offerings and as the seats for deities or other supernatural beings, but they function as a sort of visual language as well. In giving a detailed description of the preparation and installation of the

4 Morgan 2005: 33. 5 Mirzoeff 1999: 8.

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pengajeg, Hunter pursues the question how such visual communication signs have to be understood and interpreted. The third paper of this panel by Petra H. Rösch, called “Pillars of Faith: Visuality and Ritual Space in Chinese Buddhism”, turns towards the visual context of spatial settings and how space was shaped by ritual actions. The tall, free-standing Chinese Buddhist columns called dhāraṇī or sūtra pillars, inscribed with ritual texts of purification, were installed in Buddhist temples and in public places. These vertical-shaped donations by pious Buddhists were specifically erected to be seen by Buddhist believers and to be circumambulated by them. Through these active gazes and peripatetic actions, the beholder was purified and gained multiple merits. In a diachronic perspective, the pillars grew in height and adornment, serving the purpose of attracting visual attention in an optimized manner. The paper shows how these pillars served as visual markers of ritual spaces and at the same time were shaped through the agents’ ritual perception. Corinna Wessels-Mevissen in “Festival Vehicles and Motif Lamps: Reflections on Visual Elements in South Indian Temple Ritual” deals with figural festival vehicles and motif lamps, both paraphernalia being applied in South Indian temple processions and related rituals. She investigates the visually dominating effects of these two categories of highly evocative objects. Both create a complex appearance of divinity and enhance the worshippers’ experience. Festival vehicles and motif lamps not only signify symbolic meaning through their visual representation, but, through movement and sequential presentation, they are also markers of ritual time and space. The visual elements employed in this process are representatives of the world as it is perceived by humans, and, like the latter, they can be regarded as endowed with ritual agency.

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References Belting, Hans 1990. Bild und Kult. Eine Geschichte des Bildes vor dem Zeitalter der Kunst. München: Verlag C.H. Beck. Mirzoeff, Nicholas 1999. An Introduction to Visual Culture. London, New York: Routledge. Mitchell, W. J. Thomas 1995. Picture Theory: Essays on Verbal and Visual Representation. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press (paperback of the 1994 edition). Morgan, David 2005. The Sacred Gaze: Religious Visual Culture in Theory and Practice. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press. Turner, Victor 1967. The Forest of Symbols. Aspects of Ndembu Ritual. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Carsten Knigge Salis

Hieroglyphs of Praise: The Dynamic Praise of Gods as Represented and Prescribed by Ancient Egyptian Ritual Texts Introduction The high degree of iconicity is one of the basic features of the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic writing system. Almost any hieroglyphic character can be identified as a more or less abstract copy of a living creature or object of daily-life. The hieroglyphic writing-signs, in terms of their functions, can be divided into two main categories. One of them is the group of sound-signs, called phonographs and referring to phonetic values. The other is the group of meaning-signs, called semographs and having semantic values, while not referring to sounds.1 Both groups are divided into several subdivisions. In any case, with respect to the way they function, the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs are far from being pictographs, where each grapheme refers to a single word or even a phrase. The iconic attitude of the ancient Egyptian script had a deep impact on the production of texts. Written recording of language did not simply mean its reproduction by means of a certain inventory of writing-signs, the phonographs, matching each spoken sound. Such a practice seems familiar and reasonable in alphabetbased writing systems. However, the ancient Egyptians could make use of several hundred writing-signs in order to arrange their texts not only for linguistic purposes, but also to achieve graphical, or: visual, needs. They managed to create a graphical difference,2 a semantic surplus, by employing the whole iconic potential of the writing-signs. Depending on the intention, and according to local and functional conditions, the choice of writing-signs could be varied. Thus, on a meta-linguistic level, connotations and associations were constituted which would have been left unexpressed using a purely phonetic representation. Modern Egyptological philology and linguistics are still far from comprehending, even from detecting the various, rather subtle instances of this visual or graphic poetry.3 Since the suc1 Schenkel 2003. 2 Loprieno 2007: 9–12. 3 Knigge Salis 2008; Morenz 2008.

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cessful decipherment of Egyptian, research has been focused upon the linguistic information, while graphical concerns have tended to be neglected or marginalised. The observations outlined above are especially true of the large groups of literary and sacral text sources; administrative texts, letters, and other secular records that were written following mere pragmatic aspects, using more ligature characters, less iconic. For the purpose of this volume, only cultic text sources, from a sacral background, are considered. The most important issue of ancient Egyptian cults was the liturgical communication between men and gods, and between the living and the dead. Any Egyptian divine or funerary cult was considered a permanent institution, a performance to be repeated perpetually. Therefore, the ordinary, successful cult was not achieved through a ritual performed uniquely, but it was founded upon its durable fixation by means of image and script. Only the unobstructed cult guaranteed the existence and maintenance of cosmos, since the regeneration of creation had to be repeated and accompanied by means of rituals.4 Hence, there are the countless repeated rows of depictions and texts upon the walls of ancient Egyptian funerary monuments and temples. In this context, the liturgical, sacral texts played their important role, in order to introduce or accompany the various ritual acts. The recitation of a sacral text could even constitute the centre of the ritual. The fear of destruction, and the volatility, of essential ritual texts and images makes clear why recording them on papyri alone could not be sufficient.

Hymns Praising the Gods Hymns and prayers addressed to the gods, which are mainly dealt with here, played an important role among the ancient Egyptian sacral texts, since their recitation enabled the ritualist – either the king or a deputy priest, female ritualists being rather uncommon – to enter the divine sphere and to start communication.5 The hymns, varying in form, content, and length, related to the manifold aspects and forms of the deities addressed, and recalled the different places of veneration, as well as the divinity’s role, played at the point of world creation. The texts also contain many mythological associations. Quite frequently, the effects of the divine power for the creation of the world and human individuals were described, as well as the resulting behaviour of the creatures. These reactions – praise, thankfulness, adoration, veneration – were often reflected by the ideal or actual cultic rituals, and were recorded in the liturgical hymns and prayers. Three aspects of ritual dynamics and its reflexes shall be considered in what follows, although not to an equal extent: (1) textual evidence, (2) graphical evi4 E.g., Wilkinson 1994: 173–179; Knigge 2006: 38–41. 5 Assmann 1991: 67–90.

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dence, and (3) iconic evidence. It will be seen, that the second and third instances had quite strong and obvious interferences. (1) Textual Evidence Sometimes, the hymnal text sources provide explicit instructions about how to act ritually. In one example, the hymn is twice interrupted by the ritual instruction6 “Add incense to the flame”. There is no other way to analyse these words within the co-text, although one would expect an inserted ritual comment written with red ink. Unfortunately, there are not many similar expressions recorded, so that a reliable interpretation cannot be offered. Further information about liturgical dynamics can possibly be deduced from the contents of the hymn texts, calling on the performer for praise, dance, libation, etc. Two passages from a hymn manuscript read as follows:7 “Mankind proclaims praise unto Thee and adores Thy manifestation; the gods venerate Thy majesty and exalt Thy noble grace. The ladies beat time for Thy Ka’s favour and proclaim nice things unto you.” “They stretch out their arms towards Thee, adoring; the people venerate Thee; they acclaim Thy rising at heaven’s horizon; they kiss the earth in front of Thy image; [...] the city of Thebes is jubilating, the temple of Karnak is full of joy”. Another type of reference is given by short formulae, introducing hymns, spoken by the deceased person:8 “The person N.N. speaks in veneration (the following prayer/text) [...]” (2) Graphical Evidence The examination of the terminology used for ritual communication with the gods and the departed, and of the hieroglyphic spellings, possibly permits deep insights into cultic practices. Hypothetically, the hymnal lexicon and its graphical realisation and fixation, taken seriously, might allow the analysis of the actual role the ritual texts played within the cultic process. A corpus of hymns dedicated to several deities, coming from different temples and funerary monuments, and dating from about 1500–500 BC, can serve as an area of investigation. Of course, depending on the time, function, and context, not only the diction, but even the choice of writing6 Hymn to the god Sobek from papyrus Ramesseum VI (Gardiner 1957: 47, n. 12). 7 Hymns to the god Amun-Ra from papyrus Berlin 3049 (Gülden 2001: 41−42, 68−69). 8 Mostly on wooden stelae, e.g. London BM EA 8467 (Bierbrier 1987: 39).

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signs could have been varied throughout these 1000 years. These diachronic changes cannot be dealt with in detail in this study. About 50 different notions can be associated with the ritual praise of gods in a broader or narrower sense. This group of notions is quite varied in terms of semantic fields and comprises some unexpected words. The most frequent and most general words are jau and dua.9 They express humble devotion to one or more deities by human individuals, with pleas, praise, and adoration being expressed in the context to an equal extent.10 The phonetic value of the words could be expressed by different combinations of written sound-signs (phonographs), e.g. j-3-w = jau j-3-w2 = jau j-3

= ja(u)

d-w3-3 = dua “praise, adoration”

d-dw3-3 = dua dw3-3

= dua

“(to) praise, adore, adoration”

These spellings were, necessarily, supplemented by meaning-signs (semographs), called determinatives (or: classifiers, signifiers) in Egyptology. They do not have a sound-value, but contain purely semantic information. It is said that, primarily, they helped the ancient Egyptian reader to group the words in semantic categories and to distinguish homonymous words with different meanings from each other.11 But, of course, in most cases, the context enabled a clear decision.

jau – “praise, adoration”

dua – “(to) praise, adore, adoration”

The graphical spellings for the words jau and dua could change their determinatives, which makes the matter more interesting. Basically, one recognises two different writing signs used, one depicting a sitting or kneeling12 male with raised 9 For the purpose of aiding the non-Egyptologist reader, the correct transcription of the ancient Egyptian words is slightly changed to achieve better legibility. 10 Although Assmann (1999: 10) has made much effort to find a semantic distinction between the two words, the textual evidence does not support his results. 11 E.g., in the case of jau, there is another word jau, meaning “old age” or “to be old”; in the case of dua there is a similar sounding word for “morning”, duayt. 12 Indeed, ancient Egyptian iconography distinguishes between sitting and kneeling (usually on one knee) postures, and the writing-signs do so, too (Wilkinson 1992: 15, 17). In the case of the writing-sign [KNEELING ADORING MAN], one might consider the variant with the sitting

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arms and hands , , one depicting a standing male with the same posture .13 Occasionally, they are followed by a second semograph, serving as a determinative, and representing a tied and sealed papyrus roll, either upright or across. Second, there is quite a large group of words – verbs and nouns –, which seem to belong together in terms of their semantics. All of them expressed the attitude of praise, veneration, and acclamation, but apparently without implying any particular action:14 ihy – “joy”, “jubilation”

khaa – “joy, to enjoy”

nehem – “to rejoice, to exult”

khekenu – “(to) praise, hymn”

hy – “exultation”

sewash – “to venerate, (to) praise”

henu – “jubilation, to rejoice”

seuhy – “to praise, to proclaim”

Now, the examination of the written supplementary determinatives, at first sight no very heterogenous group, reveals a certain differentiation. Even in these few examples, one can distinguish five types of determinatives, in addition to the two already known, showing human beings with different gestures and actions:

attitude slightly incorrect, since, in Egyptian iconography, adoring persons never sit, but always kneel. 13 Wilkinson 1992: 29; Luiselli 2008. 14 Only a few examples of all the possible spelling variants are given. All translations are to be considered approximations, and, for the present purpose, do not claim philological correctness and completeness.

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Again, the posture of the human figures is either sitting, kneeling, or standing. The positions of the arms of the males differ, in one case touching the mouth with one hand. This writing-sign places emphasis upon a speech act to be performed.15 The manuscripts written in rather cursive hieroglyphs – the hieratic script – in particular, exaggerate the human figures’ gestures in order to make a clear distinction among them, as they symbolise distinct performative acts. The grapheme , serving as a determinative in the word jau – “praise”. The grapheme The grapheme

, serving as a logographic sign henu – “jubilation”. , serving as a determinative in the word khaa – “joy”.

Another feature to be mentioned in this context is the oversize-scale of some of the signs associated with the gods’ praise. In the following example (Fig. 1), the hieroglyphic sign [STANDING ADORING MAN] in the first right-hand column, encoding the word jau logographically, and forming part of the formulaic redyt jau n N.N. “Giving praise unto N.N.”, is larger than any other sign in the surrounding text. Indeed, the sign itself is written more carefully, less cursively than the rest of the text.

Fig. 1: The grapheme , serving as a logograph in the redyt jau formula; from papyrus London BM EA 10541 (britishmuseum.org/research).

Female figures do not occur as frequently as male ones, but they must have had a specific significance and, thus, should be given attention when they occur. In the instance given, the word nehem “to rejoice” is clearly specified by the sign itself: . the jubilation is performed by female adorers, playing drums It becomes quite clear that there was not any orthographic rule in ancient Egypt stating that notion A must always be followed by determinative X, while notion B must always be accompanied by determinative Y. The choice of writing-signs seems arbitrary.16 But what is important in these cases is that the ancient Egyptian graphic artists could equip a rather non-specific word with a specific ritual connotation by choosing a certain writing-sign. If one takes the various hieroglyphic spellings seriously, a colourful image of what happened during Egyptian cult rituals emerges in our minds. 15 Luiselli 2008. 16 Loprieno 2003.

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This impression is strengthened by a third group of notions, which are associated with the ritual praise of gods and are somewhat more distinct in meaning: iba – “to dance”, “ibadance”

khesy – “to sing”, “to praise”

iheb – “to dance”

senta – “to kiss the earth”

khenef – “to wave at”, “to render homage”

senyny – “to perform the nyny-gesture”, “to greet”

Besides the determinatives already presented, one recognises, in these randomly chosen examples, five further signs, again reflecting persons performing different actions:

Remarkable here is the aspect of movement, represented by the leg being adducted, and symbolizing the act of dancing, or at least jumping. In the hieratic written manuscripts of liturgical texts, again, we find the respective writing-signs in larger form and exaggerating the person’s gesture, in order to avoid being mistaken for similar looking, but different signs. dance”.

The grapheme

, serving as a determinative in the word jheb – “to

Interestingly enough, even in monumental texts, written in ordinary hieroglyphic script, which was subject to strict formal rules and scales, some of the writing-signs determining the words associated with the gods’ praise are exceptional in scale, as in the example given below (Fig. 2), part of a sun-hymn recorded in a tomb. Here the depiction of the female person in the fourth column from left, performing the nyny-gesture, serves as a determinative writing-sign, and it is larger in scale than any other surrounding hieroglyph.

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Carsten Knigge Salis

The grapheme , serving as determinative in the word nyny – “nynygesture”; from Tanis, tomb of prince Ankhefenmut (Montet 1951: pl. 38).

While the notions discussed above are attested primarily in ritual text sources, a fourth category of words is better known from non-sacral, profane contexts. They could have been, however, adapted to cultic use. Their meaning is quite explicit, but their use may have had a rather more metaphorical sense. However, they recall the text passages quoted above, mentioning all the details of ritual praise: nehep – “to jump”, “to bounce”

keskes – “to dance”, “to bounce”

hetet – “to shriek (with joy)”

dekhen – “to make music”, “to beat time”

kesu – “to bend down”, “bowings”

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These examples provide six additional determinative writing-signs, making a total of 18, specifying men’s and women’s postures, gestures, and actions during a cultic divine ritual:

Some of these notions may seem odd and their sign-spelling rather awkward, such as the baboon. Here, one has to consider the mythological setting of the sunrise, when the sun is welcomed by shrieking baboons, again in a gesture of adoration (cf. Fig. 3). A passage from a hymn says:17 “The baboons (hetet) […] keep praising Thee, while shrieking (hetet) unto Thee and Thy sun-disk.”

Fig. 3: Baboons adoring the rising sun, represented by a falcon wearing a sun-disk upon his head; vignette from papyrus London BM EA 9901 (britishmuseum.org/research).

17 Hymn to Amun-Ra from the temple of Hibis in El-Khargeh Oasis (Klotz 2006: 86).

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(3) Iconic Evidence For the ancient Egyptians, in many instances the high-level iconicity of their writing system made a clear distinction between it and artistic iconography quite impossible, and unnecessary. Writing-signs and iconographic elements were composed as being related to each other, complementing one another, etc.18 Especially within the monumental discourse,19 on temple walls and royal and non-royal religious monuments, one finds numerous examples of this more or less subtle relationship. Such documents, among those explicitly associated with a cultic background, are focussed on here. Frequently, the figure of the adoring person as depicted in the hieroglyphic spellings is mirrored by the paralleled images – or is it the other way round? The tomb or monument owner, or the dedicating person,, is shown adoring a deity and reciting the hymnal text written near the image. Thus, in the London papyrus example depicted below (Fig. 4), one finds a hymnal text dedicated to the god Osiris. The adoring persons – a royal couple – are depicted standing in the typical gesture, facing the deity (cut here). The very first text column on the right – the text is to be read from right to left – starts with the formula redyt jau n N.N. – “Giving praise unto N.N.”, which has been dealt with above. The scribe has chosen the grapheme [STANDING ADORING MAN] to express the word jau logographically, thus paralleling the vignette depiction.

Fig. 4: Royal couple adoring and reciting hymn; vignette from papyrus London BM EA 10541 (britishmuseum.org/research).

18 Wilkinson 1992: 9−11; 1994: 151–154. 19 Assmann 1988.

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In a second example (Fig. 5), there is a relief, carved on a stone stela, of a kneeling20 man adoring an enthroned goddess. The goddess is identified as Meretseger by the inscription. The words of prayer, spoken by the pious person in this scene, are given immediately above it. A sort of headline starts on the upper left – the text runs left to right, the signs face the goddess – with the words “jau en kat Meretseger” – “Veneration unto the image of Meretseger”. Again, the word jau – “veneration” is realised logographically, now with the writing-sign [KNEELING 21 ADORING MAN]. And again, it fits perfectly the kneeling human depicted.

Fig. 5:

Non-royal individual kneeling in front of goddess; stela London BM EA 374 (britishmuseum.org/research).

A third example (Fig. 6) shows that three-dimensional representations also correspond to the graphical evidence. The very common stelophorous statue type combines a kneeling male (no female attested) with hands raised in adoration and a stela, which gives the text spoken by the adoring person. The text starts at the top 20 Kneeling on both knees, as seen here, is a fairly rare posture in ancient Egyptian iconography. 21 Cf. the discussion above concerning the incompatibility of sitting and kneeling, n. 7. [This would appear to be Footnote 12]

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right with the headline dua Ra-Horakhty – “Praising Ra-Horakhty”, supplementing the word dua by the [KNEELING ADORING MAN] grapheme, serving as a non-phonetic determinative here.

Fig. 6: Non-royal individual holding stela; statue London BM EA 21980 (Stewart 1967: pl. 3,1).

However, many contrary examples prevent us from establishing a rule. The Egyptian scribes – or let us call them, no less appropriately, graphic artists and designers, to use the modern terms – could choose to evoke the associations and relations obtaining between signs, but they could also decide against doing so. We can only speculate about the reasons for their decisions at this point. Having observed the dynamics of the ritual praise of gods in ancient Egypt, as expressed in ancient Egyptian writing, we can expand our thoughts relating to dua and jau in a more comprehensive manner. Although certain formal obligations may have enforced the use of these rather non-specific notions, the Egyptian graphic artists were able to give them a more specific meaning by supplementing certain writing-signs, as far as this was mandatory or preferable. Thus, the graphical realisation of the notions jau and dua in the one way or the other, by means of logographical or semographical use of either the - or the -sign, might have had consequences for the interpretation of the actual text passage, even without an accompanying image. Investigation of this image- and text-related phenomenon is far from being complete as yet, but even a few observations lead to fascinating insights into the world of ancient Egyptian ritual language and ritual script.

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References Assmann, Jan 1988. “Stein und Zeit. Das monumentale Gedächtnis der altägyptischen Kultur”. In: Jan Assmann & Tonio Hölscher (eds.). Kultur und Gedächtnis. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp: 87–114. — 19912. Ägypten. Theologie und Frömmigkeit einer frühen Hochkultur. Stuttgart et al.: Kohlhammer. — 19992. Ägyptische Hymnen und Gebete. Freiburg, Göttingen: Academic Press Fribourg, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht (Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis, Special Issue). Bierbrier, Morris L. 1987. Hieroglyphic Texts from Egyptian stelae […] in the British Museum. Vol. 11. London: British Museum Press. Gardiner, Alan H. 1957. “Hymns to Sobk in a Ramesseum Papyrus”. Révue d’Égyptologie 11: 43–56. Gülden, Svenja A. 2001. Die hieratischen Texte des P. Berlin 3049. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz (Kleine ägyptische Texte 13). Klotz, David 2006. Adoration of the Ram. Five Hymns to Amun-Re from Hibis Temple. New Haven: Yale University Press (Yale Egyptological Studies 6). Knigge, Carsten 2006. Das Lob der Schöpfung. Die Entwicklung ägyptischer Sonnenund Schöpfungshymnen nach dem Neuen Reich. Fribourg, Göttingen: Academic Press Freibourg, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht (Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis 219). Knigge Salis, Carsten 2008. “Die Nacht als Zeit der Kultlosigkeit. Zu einer Stelle im so genannten ‚Großen Aton-Hymnus’ von Tell el-Amarna”. In: Michaela Bauks & Kathrin Liess & Peter Riede (eds.). ‘Was ist der Mensch, dass Du seiner gedenkst?’ (Ps 8,5). Aspekte einer theologischen Anthropologie. Festschrift Bernd Janowski zum 65. Geburtstag, Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlagsgesellschaft: 241– 250. Loprieno, Antonio 2003. “Is the Egyptian Hieroglyphic determinative Chosen or Prescribed?”. In: Lucia Morra & Carla Bazzanella (eds). Philosophers and Hieroglyphs. Turin: Rosenberg & Sellier: 237–250. — 2007. Vom Schriftbild. Rektoratsrede gehalten an der Jahresfeier der Universität Basel am 30. November 2007. Basel: Schwabe (Basler Universitätsreden 105). Luiselli, M. Michela 2008. “Das Bild des Betens. Versuch einer bildtheoretischen Analyse der altägyptischen Anbetungsgestik”. Imago Aegypti 2: 87–96. Morenz, Ludwig D. 2008. Sinn und Spiel der Zeichen. Visuelle Poesie im Alten Ägypten. Cologne etc.: Böhlau (Pictura et Poesis 21). Munro, Irmtraut 1996. Der Totenbuch-Papyrus des Hohenpriesters Pa-nedjem II. (pLondon BM 10793 / pCampbell). Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz (Handschriften des Altägyptischen Totenbuches 3). Schenkel, Wolfgang 2003. Die hieroglyphische Schriftlehre und die Realität der hieroglyphischen Graphien. Stuttgart & Leipzig: Verlag der Sächsischen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Leipzig (Sitzungsberichte der Sächsischen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Leipzig, Philologisch-Historische Klasse 138/5).

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Stewart, H.M. 1967. “Stelophorous Statuettes in the British Museum”. Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 53: 34–38. Wilkinson, Richard H. 1992. Reading Egyptian Art. A Hieroglyphic Guide to Ancient Egyptian Painting and Sculpture. London: Thames & Hudson. — 1994. Symbol & Magic in Egyptian Art. London: Thames & Hudson.

Thomas M. Hunter

Icons, Indexes, and Interpretants of a Balinese Ritual Artefact: The Pengajeg 1. Introduction This paper is a result of a long-term effort to come to terms with the “meaning” of Balinese offerings, understood here to entail both relational meanings that grow out of their use in particular social contexts, and more conventional meanings that, in the Balinese case, are deeply rooted in symbolic expressions of a continuous negotiation of collective and personal life in terms of “visible” (sakala)1 and “invisible” (niskala) forces. As I will attempt to demonstrate in this paper the question of the meaning of offerings is by no means a simple one, and may require more than one adjustment of perspective in order to proceed without falling too easily into conceptual error. At the outset it is important to bear in mind that the Balinese system of “Hinduism” is unique, in that there are no permanent images in Balinese temples, and that the temples themselves lie dormant, except during periods of ritual activity timed according to lunar cycles or the 210-day sacred year of the pawukon calendar. Non-permanent ritual artefacts like the one studied in this paper are thus of utmost importance in the Balinese ritual system, in that they make visible the negotiation of the realm of human, social life with the parallel life of the invisible deities and ancestors, who are invited to be present during temple anniversaries (odalan) and similar ritual occasions, and are treated on such occasions as honoured guests of the community.2 My thinking about Balinese offerings began with the intuition that they are a complex semiotic system, and that they are thus about communication of some 1 All non-English terms given in this paper in italic font are Balinese, unless indicated otherwise. 2 In a section titled “The Nature of Niskala Beings as Shown in Their Rituals”, Hildred Geertz describes the interaction of human society with the “invisible beings” who are invited into the Pura Desa of the village of Batuan during a “temple anniversary” (odalan): “In Batuan’s Odalan, its five major niskala beings (betara-betara) and hosts of lesser gods and demons (buta-buta) are invited to emerge and are then engaged in an interchange with their human devotees of worship and blessing. The assembled niskala beings feast on proffered food and bless pure water, and transform that food and water into potent protective substances. When the transactions are finished the niskala beings disappear again.” (Geertz 2004: 44).

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sort. But what kind of communication? It seemed to me that the constant activity of plaiting palm-leaf containers, filling them with flowers and foodstuffs, and putting them to use in particular ritual settings must have a meaning, and a very deep one at that, to consume so much of the free time of Balinese women, who – like their male counterparts, who are responsible for ritual slaughter and the construction of temporary buildings and shrines for larger rituals – seem to contribute more than an abundant share of time and energy with nary a word of complaint. Observing the massive numbers of offerings of various types that are gathered together in particular arrangements (soroh, sorohan) for larger rituals, and the roles these offerings play in the various stages of “inviting” the deities to take their place in their shrines and temples, it seemed to me that we might speak of Balinese offerings and related ritual artefacts as one important way that the presence of the “invisible world” of Balinese belief is communicated, as if the offerings are a language “about” the interface between visible/sensuous and invisible/metaphysical realms of existence. This may be so, but a hypothesis of this sort needs to be tested against the details of ethnography – and it must also be tested in terms of its internal consistency. By this, I mean that when we use the term language – or semiosis – to speak of a system grounded in a visual medium, we must be certain that we are not forcing linguistic models upon a subject that might be better studied by making use of analytical tools designed to deal with a visual medium, rather than the syntactic or paradigmatic patterning of a linguistic system. In formulating this paper, my work has thus gone in two directions. One has been a meditation on the question of whether a non-structuralist system of semiotics like that exemplified in the work of Charles Sanders Peirce might prove to be a useful tool in understanding the complexity of the Balinese system of offerings.3 This direction originally grew out of my reading of an article by Edwin Gerow (1984) on the comparative study of the major school of Indian hermeneutics (Mīmāṃsā) and the tradition focussed on rhetorical analysis of figures (Sanskrit alaṃkāra-śāstra) in terms of Peirce’s three “stages” or “aspects” of the sign. To oversimplify a complex argument, Gerow claims that the subtleties developed in the Indian tradition led to impressive results, but failed to develop the category Peirce refers to as “thirdness”, due to a characteristic focus on language as its own telos, and a concomitant neglect of the social contexts of language. My experience had shown me that it is precisely the linkages to social contexts that have given the Balinese ritual system its remarkable resilience; I wondered therefore whether comparisons of Gerow’s reading of the Indian tradition of hermeneutics with an

3 The collected papers of Charles Sanders Peirce were published by Harvard University Press between 1934 and 1948. For a representative sample see the selection published by Indiana University Press (Peirce 1982–1983).

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analysis of the “visual semiotics” of the Balinese system of offerings might lead to fruitful results. The second direction my work for this paper has taken is ethnographic. In this case, partly out of a long-term interest in ritual artefacts that are designed to serve as the “seats” (linggih, pelinggihan) of deities when they are invited into their shrines, and partly in the interests of limiting the scope of this study to a manageable size, I decided to focus on the construction and use of a single type of ritual artefact called pengajӗg (hereafter: pengajeg) in the “common” register of the Balinese language.4 Ajӗg means “to stand up” or “set up”, while peng- is an agentive/instrumental prefix, so the name of this artefact already implies agency, in this case with the specific purpose of providing a place for the localisation of a deity or deities. We may thus speak of the pengajeg as “standing places”, or, in more general terms, as “seats” for the deities. At this point, I believe that it is important to problematise the use of the word “offerings” as a cover term for the many ready-made implements that are put into use in Balinese ritual settings. Since the main purpose of pengajeg is to provide a “standing place” for the “descent” of the deities/ancestors into their shrines, one might argue that the pengajeg differ fundamentally from similar constructions of palm-leaf, floral elements, and food-stuffs that are “offered” to the deities during the course of a ritual. At the same time, we should note that informants consulted during the course of this study insisted that pengajeg are every bit as much “offerings” as any other “physical adjunct” (upakara) used in a ritual setting (upacara), in that everything physical used in a ritual is in the most general sense “offered” to the deities, and hence can be classed under the general term bantӗn. The way forward may be to understand the terms bantӗn and upakara as corresponding to a more general category we might term “ritual artefacts”, and, where appropriate, to

4 The contrast of this term with the form pengadӗg that is used in the higher status “refined” variant of the Balinese language calls to mind the question of “speech registers” in the Balinese language, and the links these establish to questions of social hierarchy and status. This is an important issue, but one that we will not deal with in this paper. This is, first of all, to limit the scope of discussion to a manageable size, and, secondly, due to the fact that the construction and use of the pengajeg studied here took place wholly within the context of “commoner” status houseyards in rituals attended only by “commoners” (anak jaba). Hence, in this case questions of relative status did not arise in household and ritual contexts related to the use of the pengajeg. See Errington (1998) for a recent work on the fluidity of “speech registers” in contemporary Javanese that is also useful as a model for the study of these sociolinguistically marked aspects of language use.

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make finer distinctions between artefacts that are indeed destined to be used in prestations to the deities, and those that play different roles in ritual processes.5

2. The Question of Semiotics: Three Approaches In this more theoretical section of the present article, I propose to further develop a study of Gerow’s (1984) article, then to draw contrasts and comparisons, first with the work of Michael Silverstein and his school (1976; 1998) on the role of “indexicality” in sociolinguistic studies, then with Alfred Gell’s (1998) seminal work on art and agency that develops a powerful set of analytical tools by invoking Peirce’s “secondness” in the study of artworks as indexes of social agency. I begin with comments on Gerow (1984). Gerow’s analysis of the semantics developed by the Mīmāṃsā philosophers takes up the question of the relationship of denotation (Sanskrit abhidhā) and “indirect expression” (Sanskrit lakṣaṇā) as it was understood and pursued in the history of Indian semantics, and leads into the question of the role played by the “inherent power” (Sanskrit śakti) of words in a view of language that accorded ontological priority and “naturalness” to the language of the Veda. Calling attention to the Mīmāṃsā distinction between two “expressive powers of words” that are described under the Sanskrit terms gauṇī and lakṣaṇā, Gerow notes that they can be likened to Peirce’s “icon” and “index”.6 The terms icon and index grow out of Peirce’s analysis of the relationship of cognition and consciousness, and in this sense they can be understood as representing two stages in a semiotic process. As Gerow puts it: “out of the complex of perception, the mind isolates first an elementary ‘redness’, then the fact of its ‘response’ to that redness”.7 The first stage of the cognitive process corresponds to the similitude, or “likeness”, that is the mark of iconic signs, the second to “a relation of contact or resistance between two things such that one testifies to the other”,8 that is to signs that are indexical in nature, the most common illustration being a

5 Brinkgreve (1997) uses the term “offerings” consistently in her article on ritual artefacts dedicated to the goddesses Durga and Pretiwi, but she clearly intends that term as a translation of the indigenous category bantĕn. Her description of the general characteristics of bantĕn gives us a succint and useful description of the object of study: “There are hundreds of kinds of offerings, the names, forms, sizes, and contents of which vary greatly. Furthermore, there is considerable variation from region to region, and even from village to village. Nevertheless, the basic structure of the offerings is similar: rice, side dishes (meat, vegetables), fruits, and cakes are arranged on palm-leaf bases of various shapes and crowned with a palm-leaf decoration, called a sampian, which also serves as a container for flowers and betel chewing ingredients.” (Brinkgreve 1997: 229). 6 Gerow 1984: 246. 7 Ibid.: 245. 8 Ibid.: 245–246.

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weather-vane, which testifies to the existence and direction of the wind, but bears no likeness to it. The problematic of the Indian system – and what Gerow terms its “peculiar flavour”9 – arises when we seek within the Indian system for something corresponding to Peirce’s “thirdness”, the cognitive stage at which a true “symbol” emerges through association with an “interpreter” or “interpretant”, that is the “symbol user”. Read another way, thirdness – which is constituted in what Peirce terms the “symbol” – can come into existence only in relation to a system of social laws or constraints that enable interpretation and provide the all-important social context for the fully developed symbol. Gerow contends that the analytical approach of the Indian “school of suggestion” (Sanskrit dhvani) represents an attempt within the Indian system to locate a third term corresponding to Peirce’s “symbol”, but that it was not able to provide a way to move beyond the limitations imposed by an insistence on the “inherent power” (Sanskrit śakti) of words in a view of language that accorded ontological priority and “naturalness” to the language of the Veda. Gerow’s summation is worth citing in full: “The Indian ‘third’ [...] is not an independent ‘legislator’ (of the convention whereby the word means), but an aspect of the word’s śakti: power (of communicating). It is brought into play only where the inherent śakti of the word [...] fails. But then, is this ‘śakti’ our ‘third’? We may answer ‘yes’ with the important reservation: the Indian notion of the ‘śakti’ arose in just those contexts where it became impossible to appeal to a notion of ‘intention’ (tātparya) as a mode linking word and sense – in, that is to say, discussions of Vedic sentences – which can have no speaker and which are what they are in and of themselves and are factually real and necessary. That means, of course, in the Mīmāṃsā, the study of Vedic sentences as injunctions to act in certain ways (dharma). The impersonality of the Veda [...] as a fundamental presumption of Vedic semiotics, here makes reference to an ‘interpretant’ (in Peirce’s sense) impossible and thus renders problematic the very notion of the ‘symbol’.”10 In a further development of his analysis that is important for this study, Gerow has critiqued Jakobson’s development of the opposition in language of “paradigm” and “syntagm” as representing a failure that is similar to the Indian case to develop the social context of language, and so arrive at a reflex of Peirce’s “thirdness”.11 As Gerow puts it: 9 Ibid.: 250. 10 Ibid.: 250–251, italics in the original text. 11 For Jakobsons’ development of an alignment of paradigmatic and syntagmatic aspects of language with the figural dimensions of metaphor and metonomy see, inter alia, Jakobson & Halle (1956) and Jakobson (1960).

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The social character of language that Gerow stresses in his critique of Jakobson leads into the way that the Peircean notion of indexicality has been developed by the school of sociolinguistic thought first developed by Michael Silverstein (1976) and represented more recently in studies of linguistic ideology, like those represented in Schieffelin & Woolard & Kroskrity (1998). In his contribution to the latter work, Silverstein heaps scorn on what he terms the “semantico-referential” approach of the line of thought followed by the structuralist tradition of de Saussure-Bloomfield-Chomsky, characterising it as a discipline whose view is limited to referential aspects of language, and fails utterly to take into account the ways that linguistic tokens reflect social patterning, hierarchies, and linguistic ideologies.13 The importance of this line of thinking for a study of Balinese offerings is that it brings into sharp relief an aspect of linguistic coding that is not about “meaning” or “structure”, but rather about the ways that languages index social patterns, relationships, and events. Silverstein’s language is difficult – perhaps intentionally so – but useful in the light it sheds on the use of the term indexicality in a major school of contemporary sociolinguistics: “We now recognize that the ‘realities’ of meaningful social practices emerge from people’s situated experience of indexical semiotic processes that constitute them. We ought, perhaps, to resign ourselves to enjoying the fact that it’s indexicality all the way down, that in any sociocultural phenomenon nothing is manifest beyond this indexicality except semanticoreferential language and its further developments [...] So, for social actors as well as for us analysts, in a cultural situation in which at least one cultural ‘text’ is gener12 Gerow 1984: 257, italics in the original text. Gerow (1984: 257) here uses “Jacobson” as a variant on the more usual “Jakobson”. 13 Silverstein 1998.

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ated, meaningfulness is a dialectical property of social semiotics. And the rub is, the only way analytically to enter into understanding such dialectical systems is with the inherently ironic concept of ideology. Ideology, in other words, is defined only within a discourse of interpretation or construal of inherently dialectic indexical processes, as for example the processes of making or achieving text (entextualization) by using language and other sign modalities, whether at the denotational plane or the more encompassing plane of interactional textuality [...].”14 The development of Peirce’s “secondness” in the indexicality that informs the sociolinguistics of the school of Silverstein leads naturally into the use put to this term by Alfred Gell (1998) in his provocative study of the anthropology of art, and perhaps in a direction more conducive to the study of artworks than is possible in an analytical system grounded in a linguistic semiotics. Gell eschews both aesthetic and linguistic approaches to the study of artworks in favour of identifying all objects of artistic creativity as indexes, from which the social agency of the work of art and its place in a network of social relationships can be “abducted” or inferred. Gell is explicit in his rejection of linguistic formulations of the meaning of art, and his insistence on shifting the discourse on art to the domain of social action: “[L]et me simply warn the reader that I have avoided the use of the notion of ‘symbolic meaning’ throughout this work. This refusal to discuss art in terms of symbols and meanings may occasion some surprise, since the domain of ‘art’ and the symbolic are held by many to be more or less coextensive. In place of symbolic communication, I place all the emphasis on agency, intention, causation, result, and transformation. I view art as a system of action, intended to change the world rather than encode symbolic propositions about it. The ‘action’-centered approach to art is inherently more anthropological than the alternative semiotic approach because it is pre-occupied with the practical mediatory role of art objects in the social process, rather than with the interpretation of objects ‘as if’ they were texts.”15 To close this discussion of uses of Peirce’s “secondness” as an important aspect of the study of social action in both contemporary sociolinguistics and Gell’s “action-centred approach to art”, I would like to briefly outline how I intend to use Peirce’s terms in this study. First, I will use the terms “icon” and “index” to refer to elements in the construction of a pengajeg that can be read as expressing either “firstness” (icons, resemblances or similarities based on first-order cognitions of the raw data of perception) or “secondness” (indexes, second-order links of cognitions with the cognitive maps an individual gains through learning the interpretive 14 Silverstein 1998: 128, italics in the original text. 15 Gell 1998: 6, italics in the original text.

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routines of a particular society and epoch). In this discussion, I intend also to make use of Gell’s understanding of artworks as indexes of social agency, but to capitalise his term as Index, in order to make clear that his notion of the artwork as index represents a modification of Peirce’s terminology. In fact, I intend, with the special treatment of Gell’s term, a mild critique of his approach to the Peircean categories. This is not meant to suggest that I am proposing a better alternative to Gell’s action-centred approach to the anthropology of art, but simply to say that it seems to me that Gell’s use of the term “index” in fact subsumes both Peircean “secondness” (second-order linkages to the social domain) and his “thirdness”, the point at which the fully developed “symbol” emerges from the background of perception through third-order linkage of cognitions and cognitive mapping with the social and interpretive frameworks that Peirce variously described under the terms “interpretant”, “interpreter”, and “symbol user”. As Gerow (see above) has noted in his critique of Jakobson, there is an inherent danger in reducing Peirce’s analysis to a set of two terms, and the same can be said of an analysis that focuses solely on the index. In the latter case we can be misled into thinking that Peirce’s “thirdness” refers to mere convention (hence entailing the arbitrariness of de Saussure and the American Structuralist tradition), rather than to the way that signs of diverse types take their meaning within the interpretive frameworks of particular societies at particular points in their history. In this sense, I believe that we can understand one aspect of Gell’s “agency” as in fact parallel to Peirce’s “thirdness”, and thus come to understand his notion of the artwork as Index as, in fact, encompassing both indexes and interpretants in the system of Peirce.

3. The Construction of a pengajeg16 In mid-August 2008 we learned that my mother-in-law, Men Pasek, had heard of my interest in the construction and use of the ritual artefacts called pengajeg, and had invited me to observe her prepare three pengajeg. Thus, on Tuesday, 26 August 2008, I was able to make a photographic record of the construction of a pengajeg in the house-yard of Men Pasek, and on the following day observe its use in the “temple anniversary celebration” (odalan) of the household shrine of her youngest son, Komang Gede Arya Sumerta.

16 There is a great deal of local variation in the way that offerings are constructed and named, the ways that they are used in particular arrangements (sorohan), and the ways that they are keyed to various stages of ritual action. This study focuses only on the way that pengajeg are used in a particular area of Tabanan regency. Readers of works like Eiseman (2005) and Brinkgreve & Stuart-Fox (1992) will note that the names and contents of offerings described in this study differ from those of areas like Jimbaran (in southern Badung regency) and Gianyar regency.

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As we move through the steps of construction and use of three pengajeg designed for use in the house-yard shrine of Komang Gede, it should become clear that, as these constructions are fashioned into ritual artefacts, they take on a considerable degree of social agency, as framed within the Balinese interpretive system, thus becoming important vehicles for registering and mediating the meeting of human and niskala beings and promoting the material well-being of the human creators and users of the pengajeg. It may be helpful at this point to introduce two basic terms which Balinese use to describe offerings and other ritual artefacts, and the work involved in producing them. In nominal form we find jejaitan, “containers, covers, or ritual instruments made from strips of palm leaf and related materials” and tetandingan, “the various ingredients for offerings, including foodstuffs, floral elements, and symbolic betel quid”. The related verb phrases refer respectively to “plaiting” containers, covers, or ritual instruments from palm leaf (ma-jejaitan) and “filling” offerings by adding appropriate ingredients (ma-tanding). A more complete study of the system of Balinese offerings and related ritual artefacts might best be carried out by concentrating first on the many subtle variations in form and function involved in ma-jejaitan, then on the vocabulary and arrangement of elements that “complete” offerings in the process of ma-tanding. Finally, one would turn to the arrangement of offerings in groups (soroh) appropriate for various rituals, or the steps of those rituals. From the point of view of the category of jejaitan, there is a partial overlap between pengajeg and the offerings called daksina and pulagembal, in that each is based on a conical basket made of coconut leaves that acts as a container for various ingredients that are no longer visible (or only partly visible), once the stages of mejejahitan and metanding are complete. There is also a partial overlap in the category of tetandingan between daksina and pengajeg, since each contains an egg, uncooked white rice, and some form of symbolic betel quid. Beyond that, daksina contain more foodstuffs than pengajeg, and must contain a coconut.17 Daksina are required in a great many ritual arrangements of offerings (soroh), and may be used individually, for example, when they are placed next to the palm-leaf manuscripts of a traditional “reading session” (pesantian, pepaosan), along with incense and a simple floral offering (canang). Daksina offerings are often described as serving as the “witness” (Indonesian saksi) for ritual events. From a diachronic point of view this “meaning” of the daksina seems to have developed from the Sanskrit term sākṣin, “witness”, of the Saṃkhyā school of Indian philosophy, which has had a long and continuous influence on Javano-Balinese modes of metaphysical under-

17 Typically the husk of the coconut used in a daksina offering is removed, except for a hairlike “tuft” at the top that is often visible above the rim of the basket, but this is not obligatory.

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standing, and at some point appears to have been hypostasised within the system of bantĕn.18 The relationship of pengajeg and daksina with the pulagembal is perhaps not as close as that between pengajeg and daksina, in that the basket for a pulagembal does not contain foodstuffs, but rather a set of iconic images made from moulded and painted rice-paste. However, there is a clear relationship between pulagembal and pengajeg, in that the conical baskets that form the basis of both conceal their contents, thus either presenting themselves in a womb-like form that contains icons representing the “contents of the world” (pulagembal), or a combination of iconic and indexical elements that provide the “life and strength” of the construction, which, when completed, takes on human-like qualities that Gell speaks of in terms of “idols” and “idolatry” (pengajeg).19 Here the distinctive qualities of the pengajeg come out strongly, in that pengajeg alone are treated like human participants in ritual: each pengajeg must be “dressed” in ritual clothing, provided with a “face”, and finally given appropriate ornamentation, which can be likened to the make-up and jewellery of the human participants in ritual. 3.1 The First Stage of Construction: Initial “Dressing” of the Image and Addition of Contents The first step in the construction of the pengajeg is to lay out the materials on a clean surface. In the typical case of an odalan in a household shrine, a male-female pair of pengajeg will be created for use in the shrine called the sanggah kamulan. In this case, however, Men Pasek will make three pengajeg, since one will be needed for use in the pegayungan shrine that her son Komang Gede uses in connection with his work as a traditional healer (balian). This pengajeg will be female, since it is meant to serve as the “seat” of the goddess Ratu Ayu, who is often taken as a “personal deity” (ista-dewata) by traditional healers.

18 Another diachronic development may be visible in the reflection of the ancient meaning of daksina (from Sanskrit dakṣiṇā) as the symbolic payment of a fee or present called dakṣiṇā that is given to an officiating priest upon the completion of a religious ritual. In Balinese rituals, this meaning of the term is reflected in the setting aside of the daksina offerings at the close of a ritual as gifts to the attending temple priests (pemangku), who are expected to take home the daksina, where they are dismantled to recover the rice and coconut elements that are still useful as basic foodstuffs. 19 Gell 1998: 123–125.

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Image 1: Men Pasek has laid out the materials for a pengajeg on a clean space of the “eastern pavilion” (bale dangin) of her house-yard that she has covered with a simple, light yellow sheet of oilcloth. These materials include three baskets made of young coconut leaves (srembeng), folded sheets of banana leaf, a roll of white cotton fabric, leaves of the dapdap plant (Erythrina subumbrans), Chinese coins, and other items that she will use in the construction of the pengajeg. Photo by the author

Image 2: The palm-leaf “supporting bases” called tapak liman have now been placed in the bottoms of the baskets, and the “clothing” of the baskets with their white and yellow garments has been completed. It is now time to add grains of uncooked white rice (baas putih) and a sprinkling of yellow rice, before the addition of iconic elements like the batu gulitan, eggs, kepeng coins, and betel leaf, each in its sepa-rate triangular container (kojong) of folded coconut leaf. Photo by the author

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The first stage of construction consists of beginning the “clothing” of the pengajeg by wrapping the baskets with white cloth that represents the “underskirt” (kamben) of the images, then tying on strips of golden-yellow cloth near the rim of the baskets. These represent the “waist-cloth” (selendang) of the images, which are now “dressed” in the proper traditional clothing (pakaian adat) that is worn by human beings on ritual occasions. Further stages of “dressing” will follow the process of filling the baskets with their appropriate contents. Immediately after the first stage of dressing the pengajeg, Men Pasek inserts palm-leaf “bases” called tapak liman in the bottom of the baskets. Tapak liman means “palm-of-the-hand” and thus suggests the idea of a support for the other contents of the baskets. We suspect that there is a relationship here with the idea of using the hands to steady items of high spiritual status that are carried on the head in ritual occasions. Except at points when the pengajeg are temporarily placed on offering tables in a shrine area, they must be carried on the head, usually in silver (or silver-coloured) trays called bokor. The shape of the tapak liman, consisting of overlapping cutouts of palm leaf in square and circular form, is said to represent the sacred directions and centre of the Balinese cosmological system, that are ever and again represented in the bases and other structural components of Balinese bantĕn.20 Now Men Pasek begins to add the contents of the basket. First, she covers the tapak liman with a layer of clean, uncooked white rice (baas putih). Next, she adds a number of items that are each wrapped in a small, triangular piece of palm leaf called a kojong. Each of the three baskets receives the following: – one egg (taluh) – one set of 25 kepeng coins tied with a small length of white string – one batu gulitan – a small grey-coloured river-stone with a smooth surface and oblong shape – one base tagĕl – a leaf of the piper betel plant, affixed to the kojong with a small skewer of – bamboo (sekat).

20 As Brinkgreve (1997: 229) points out, the great majority of offerings consist of three sections – a base, a middle section, and a cover. The range of variation of these components is very large, especially in the case of the covers, or sampyan.

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Image 3: The initial contents of the srembeng baskets include eggs, stones called batu gulitan, small bundles of kepeng coins and pieces of piper betel leaf, each placed inside (or attached to) a triangular fold of banana coconut leaf called a kojong.

Photo by the author

The wrapping of the batu gulitan, eggs, kepeng coins, and betel leaves in separate kojong suggests that they are intentionally framed, as if to draw attention to their role as icons of life, strength, and economic well-being, basic to the construction and meaning of many offerings.21 But it may be that we should not assume too quickly that these elements are “iconic” in the Peircean sense. Our first inclination has been to do exactly that, and this possibility is supported by the comments of an informant, who suggested the following interpretations for these basic elements in the construction of the pengajeg: – batu gulitan: physical strength and firmness – kepeng coins: payment to the invisible world for any ritual shortcomings – and the “life” – (urip) of the pengajeg – eggs (taluh): fertility and plenty 21 Batu gulitan have a special status within the pengajeg that is related to their role in the storage of rice. Following the ceremonies that mark the completion of the rice harvest, the unhusked rice (padi, gabah) is stored in the household rice granary (lumbung). Once a portion has been milled and is ready for cooking, it is stored in a number of clay containers (gebeh) in a special room called the meten or bale suci (“pure pavilion”). The “best portion” of milled rice (baas) is then placed in a smaller clay container called a pulu, and is “completed” with a batu gulitan that is placed atop the rice of the pulu to serve itself as the pengajeg (“place of standing, being present”) of the deity Rambut Sedana. Rambut Sedana, who bestows wealth and prosperity on the household, is always paired with Dewi Seri, who represents the all-important element of rice as the primary source of household prosperity. I am indebted to Dra. Ni Wayan Aryati for this information (personal communication, 18 May 2009).

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– base tagĕl: the triad of deities (Brahma, Wisnu and Siwa), represented by the three colours of the betel quid. However, we may be dealing here with what to the analysts might appear to be “fuzzy boundaries”, or to reflect multiple semiotic processes that overlap in particular signs. Some of the elements framed with kojong do indeed appear to represent first-order signs. The batu gulitan stones, for example, can be said to directly represent strength and firmness, qualities that can be directly inferred from perception. However, other elements suggest second-order cognitions, the point at which signs begin to be associated with cognitive maps, or with social contexts. The most obvious example of an indexing to social contexts can be seen in the bundles of kepeng coins, which, at the most obvious level, can perhaps be linked to the cycles of material exchange that bring prosperity to the household. However, our informants did not initially propose this “meaning” for the kepeng coins, but instead spoke of them as representing a “payment” to the invisible (niskala) world for any shortcomings of the ritual, and as an element that provides “life” (urip) to the offering or ritual artefact like a pengajeg.22 We are thus still dealing with an index to networks of exchange. One of these is the cycles of economic exchange that provide the material basis for the welfare of human participants in ritual, while another is the all-important exchanges between the visible world of human society and the invisible world of divine and demonic forces that are mediated in Balinese ritual life. The framing of piper betel leaves within kojong is another sign that can easily be read as indexical, in this case to the cycles of hospitality that in the pre-modern archipelago were almost invariably marked by the offering of betel quid to guests. That a vast number of daily offerings in Bali must contain a miniature betel quid, called porosan, tells us that the marking of cycles of hospitality with the offering of the ingredients of betel chewing has been extended in Balinese ritual from the human realm to that of the interaction of human and invisible realms of being. After the eggs, kepeng coins, batu gulitan, and base tagĕl have been added to the srembeng baskets, they are covered with another layer of white rice, in this case with the addition of a few scattered silver-coloured coins in small denominations (50 or 100 Indonesian rupiah). The next stage is to place two types of canang offering on the bedding of rice, one each in square and round format. Canang are the most basic offerings, containing flowers and basic food-stuffs in the Balinese sys22 I will pass over a discussion of the notion of urip here, referring the reader to Hunter (2007), where I discuss urip in terms of increments added to measurements in the arts of construction, the calculation of certain calendrical cycles, and the metaphysical connotations of the vowel signs of the Balinese syllabary. In each case, as in the case of the kepeng coins of the pengajeg offering, the urip is intended as an increment that “gives life” to the inert aspects of a system. My claim here is that urip is one of the features of meaning that is “bundled” by the use of kepeng coins in the pengajeg.

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tem. Small trays of young coconut leaf are fashioned in square or round format and filled with flowers, shredded pandanus leaf (kembang rampe), small slices of fruit, like banana or sugar cane, and symbolic betel quid in small format (porosan).23 As in so many other cases, the foodstuffs and symbolic betel quid of the canang are involved in the indexing of the cycles of hospitality to guests that are situated at both human and metaphysical levels of activity. Next, sets of doubled dapdap leaves are placed directly atop the floral canang offerings. These are sprinkled with white and yellow kernels of uncooked rice. The yellow kernels have been dyed to achieve their golden, yellow colour. The percentage of yellow rice added at this stage is much lower than that of the white rice. Dapdap (Erythrina subumbrans) is famous for its life-giving and medicinal qualities. This is partly due to its use in traditional medicines, partly due to the fact that a cut branch of dapdap planted in the ground will produce new growth in a short span of time.24 3.2 The Second Stage of Construction: Adding the “Face” and Completing Dressing and “Make-Up” of the Image Once the baskets of the pengajeg have been filled, Men Pasek turns to a second stage of “dressing” the pengajeg. First, a white ritual headband (udeng, destar) is affixed around the rim of the male member of the male-female set of pengajeg. Next, the “faces” (prarai) of the pengajeg are added to the srembang baskets, that have now been filled to within a few centimetres of their rims with their contents. These “faces” take the form of sampyan bungkulan, a type of cover that, in this case, is affixed vertically to the srembang baskets. Each of the sampyan bungkulan is in the form of a sunburst-like design of young coconut leaves, which in terms of motif takes the form of a selisir, an ornamental “head-dress” that is well-known otherwise from the cili motifs that represent Dewi Seri, the goddess of rice, in representations in the form of plaited palm-leaf “runners” (lamak) or figurines made of young coconut leaves (janur).

23 While the distinction is not always maintained in practice, a number of our informants hold that canang must not contain food-stuffs other than small slices of fruit and symbolic betel quid, and in this sense are distinct from bantӗn proper, which typically contain cooked rice and meat or other side dishes. 24 The importance of dapdap in Balinese ritual comes out most strongly in the fact that the tripartite family shrines of households of the “Bali Aga” type are fashioned from leaving saplings of dapdap that continue to grow and bear leaves throughout the life of the shrine.

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Image 4: The “faces” (prarai) of the pengajeg based on decorative elements called selisir have now been added to two of the pengajeg. An ornamental black band termed the alis-alis, or “eyebrow” motif has been worked into the selisir, which also features protruding ornamental spines called bok-bokan, representing the “hair” (bok) of the selisir motif. Photo by the author

Image 5: There is a strong resemblance of the selisir to cili images representing the rice goddess, like those worked into ornamental “runners” of plaited palm-leaf or cloth called lamak.

Photo by the author

As can be seen in Images 4 and 5, the “face-like” elements of the selisir include an ornamental black band stretching across the lower third of the construction, that

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is called the alis-alis, or “eyebrow motif”, and the ornamental vertical extensions of the selisir that are referred to as its bok-bokan, or “hair-motif”. In Image 4, we can also see the twining tulang lindung (“bones of the eel”) motifs that are affixed at the base of either side of the selisir, which are said to represent its “ears”.25 At the stage of the addition of the face-like prarai to the srembeng baskets, the process of transforming the inert ingredients of the pengajeg into a form that fits easily into Gell’s (1998) discussion of artworks as social agents is well under way. But there are several more elements still to be added, that bring out even more strongly the indexing of the pengajeg to cycles of socially situated ritual activity. The first step in this further transformation of the pengajeg into the form of an Index is the addition of karawista and kalpika. Karawista are headbands fashioned from a strand of alang-alang grass, that feature a small floral element made of hibiscus and frangipani blossoms, which is centred at the midpoint of the forehead, once the knot of the karawista has been tied at the back of the head. Karawista are typically worn by high priests completing an important ritual, or are tied to the head of persons who have completed a ritual of initiation, typically the mawintӗn ritual that entitles laypersons to take part in some spiritual activity, for example the reading of sacred texts written on palm-leaf manuscripts (lontar). It is perhaps being too obvious to note that the affixing of the karawista to the pengajeg signifies their fitness for full participation in ritual activity. The kalpika have similar connotations. Often worn in the topknot of a high priest, their general significance lies in their name, which is closely related to Sanskrit kalpa, which refers to acts of “fashioning”, including those of the imagination, and hence can be identified with the Balinese term idӗp, “power of conceptualising”, which has a long history in the Javano-Balinese tradition of metaphysics and spiritual praxis.26 25 We cannot expand on this further in this paper, but it is certainly worthy of note that the prarai (facial-motifs) of the pengajeg do not feature “eyes”, and that it is only by comparison with cili images that the “eyes” of the prarai can be understood as present. 26 The term kalpika is one that ties the quotidian world of Balinese commoner households to an ancient and venerable religious tradition. The word kalpika itself is unattested in Sanskrit (except in the meaning “fitting”), but clearly derives from the root klp, and stands for the “power of imagination and conceptualisation” that is also known as citta (Sanskrit) or idӗp (Balinese). These terms figure prominently in the doctrine of “the three bodies” that are to be purified through ascetic or ritual praxis (vāk-kāya-citta in Sanskrit, śabda-bayu-idӗp in Old Javanese and Balinese). Both karawista and kalpika are attested in works of the Old Javanese (or: Kawi) tradition of literature. For kalpika see Zoetmulder & Robson (1982: 779) “a combination of flower-petals used in worship”, which is attested as early as the Āśrāmawāsaparwa, produced circa tenth Century CE. For karawista see Zoetmulder & Robson (1982: 806) “a band round the head, worn on ceremonial occasions”. Karawista is attested largely in works of the kidung genre, such as the Malat Panji Rasmi cycle that is believed to have been produced in Gelgel, Bali during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries CE.

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Image 6: Men Pasek holds the karawista headband (left) and kalpika (right) that will now be affixed to the upper rims of the srembeng baskets. In the case of the male member of the male-female set, the floral element of the karawista and the kalpika will be centred at the knot of the ritual white headband (udeng, destar) that has been tied round the rim of the basket, which now can be undestood as the “forehead” of the pengajeg.

Photo by the author

After the affixing of the karawista and kalpika to the srembeng baskets, Men Pasek moves on to the final stages of preparing the pengajeg. First she inserts a kwangen offering to the front of each of the sampyan bungkulan, and a canang gantal offering to the back. These elements act to stabilise the sampyan bungkulan. At the same time, they have further indexical implications for the pengajeg. Canang gantal offerings consist of small, square-shaped trays made from coconut leaf that are filled with slices of banana, a sprinkling each of cooking oil (lengis), and of perfume or perfumed water (miik-miikan), flowers, and the symbolic betel quid called porosan. Since this form of canang is most commonly used when holy water from local temples associated with irrigation is added (with appropriate offerings) to the head of one’s rice fields at the initiation of a cycle of planting rice, the canang gantal may be described as indexing the agricultural cycles that are still crucial to the material well-being of a great many Balinese villages. Kwangen are made from a conical fold of banana leaf and contain several kepeng coins, flowers, symbolic betel quid (porosan), and a fan-shaped object made of young coconut leaf. The kwangen can be said to index the pengajeg to the ritual cycle of the odalan itself, since they are used during the culminating act of ritual prayer (muspa) as a more elaborate substitute for the third “offering of flowers with the gesture of sembah”. The kwangen thus represent another item that “prepares” the pengajeg for its role in the ritual to come on the following day.

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Once the pengajeg have been provided with kwangen and canang gantal, Men Pasek moves on to the final stage of completing the pengajeg. This is the stage of mapayas, the addition of “make-up” and “jewellery” to the pengajeg. This is another aspect of constructing the pengajeg that is strongly indexical. In order to explicate the indexicality of this stage of the construction of the pengajeg, we can call attention first to the covered pavilions called piasan that are featured in the great majority of Balinese temples and shrine areas, where they are placed to the west of the rows of altars of stone or wood that typically are aligned inside the northern and eastern walls of a shrine area, in a sense “emanating” from the stone padmasana that is considered the “seat” of the Supreme Being, often understood as encompassing the god Siwa as the solar deity (Siwaditya) and the sacred ancestors of Bali, whose “place of residence” is considered to be Gunung Agung, the tallest mountain of Bali. The term piasan derives from ma-payas, “to adorn, to put on make-up and jewellery”. In the visible world, this shrine is used to place offerings to the major altars that it faces, some of which will be left in place, some placed on the surfaces, or within the box-like interiors, of the various altars. In the invisible world, this shrine is considered to be the place where the deities/ancestors (Ida Betara-Betari) “stop to rest and put on their make-up” prior to taking their places in the altars dedicated to their use. This brings out an important iconic aspect of Balinese ritual in and of itself: the rituals that “invite” the deities and ancestors into their shrines are essentially a reflection, or perhaps hypostatising, of the rituals of hospitality that, in traditional Bali, were especially marked on the occasion of visits from persons or families of higher ritual status, whether in terms of secular power or priestly prestige. The stage of mapayas is physically completed by means of the addition of colourful floral elements to the srembang baskets. The choice of floral elements can be quite free, as long as the flowers chosen are of good quality and bright in colour. They are added in sufficient quantity to the rims of the srembeng baskets that they appear to “overflow” to a layer of flowers that is added at the base of the baskets, placed atop the folds of the long extensions of the white and golden, yellow “lower skirts” and “sashes” of the pengajeg, which at this point have now been snugly fitted into a large, silver-coloured offering tray (bokor). Once the stage of mapayas is complete, the three pengajeg are fully prepared for use in the rituals to be completed the following day. In Gell’s (1998) terms they are now Indexes, artworks whose role as social agents will – in the Balinese case – be realised within a realm of ritual praxis, that in itself indexes human cycles of exchange and hospitality with a long history in the life of the archipelago. The three pengajeg will now be wrapped in several layers of palm leaf, which are secured with a cord of thick white cotton to which a heavy loop of 111 kepeng coins has been attached. As if to mark the “participatory” aspect of the use of the pengajeg on the following day, a “change of clothing” consisting of extra lengths

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of white and golden, yellow cotton fabric is placed at the back of each of the pengajeg in its place on the offering tray.

4. The pengajeg in the Context of Ritual Action On Wednesday 27 August, the three pengajeg that Men Pasek had carefully prepared on the previous day were carried to the home of Komang Gede in Kerobokan in an open-back truck, also used to transport the family members, close neighbours, and temple priests who would participate in the odalan marking the 210-day anniversary of the household shrine area of Komang Gede and his family. The malefemale set of pengajeg were designed to be “installed” in the “shrine of origin” (sanggah kamulan) of Komang Gede’s house-temple, while a third pengajeg was destined for use in the pegayungan shrine that houses icons and implements related to Komang Gede’s work as a traditional healer (balian). Since the shrine area of Komang Gede’s house is small and includes only the most important of the altars normally expected in a household shrine, the odalan ritual is shorter and less complex than is ordinarily the case. Yet, even in this abbreviated form, there is no dearth of complexity in the steps of the odalan and the various “offering sets” (soroh) that are required to mark the major steps of the odalan. Here, we focus only on the central role played by the pengajeg in the progress of the odalan. During the first step of purifying the space and offerings of the odalan (makelimigi), the three pengajeg are still in place on a table just outside the shrine area. The protective covering of banana leaf has been removed, and a mask of the demonic, but protective, “witch-figure” Rangda, normally stored in the pegayungan shrine, has been placed on the table next to the offering-tray (bokor) containing the three pengajeg. Following this, in preparation for the procession round the shrine area (mamendak), three lengths of dapdap sapling are affixed to a partially husked coconut with homespun white cotton cord and placed in the back of the offering tray holding the three pengajeg. This construction, called the muncuk dapdap, is used to anchor a length of white cotton cloth that extends for several metres behind the offering tray holding the pengajeg. As the procession proceeds through the shrine area, this cloth is grasped by close family members of Komang Gede, while the offering tray containing the pengajeg and muncuk dapdap is carried on the head of one of the women of the family group.

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Image 7: The three pengajeg have now been fitted with their karawista and kalpika and placed in a silver-plated offering tray called a bokor, set into a base of rice kernels, with the ends of their white and yellow garments folded into the tray. At this stage, Men Pasek has also completed the process of applying improvised floral elements that constitute the “make-up” and “jewellery” of the three pengajeg.

Photo by the author

Following the procession, there is an initial “installation” or “seating” (ngělinggihan) of the Ida Betara-Betari (deities/ancestors) that takes the visible form of the placement of the pengajeg on the platform of the piasan shrine, accompanied by appropriate food offerings to the deities (rayunan) and – on the ground – to the bhuta-kala, the potentially malevolent “demonic” forces of the earth (sӗgӗhan). This is followed by the stages of “awakening” (nanginin) and “bathing” (masiram) the deities. If the odalan falls on a full moon or new moon day, or if it is the odalan of one of the major village temples, the pengajeg and related implements of the ritual are taken to a sacred water source called a Beji. For a smaller odalan, a small pot-shaped container called a kombo is used to ritually bathe the pengajeg through a sprinkling of holy water. An important aspect of the “bathing” of the pengajeg

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comes out in the use at this point of a tray of ritual implements called the pengiasias. The tray contains several branches of dapdap along with pekramasan, a set of “traditional toiletry items”, including sisig (burnt rice cake used for cleaning the teeth), ambu (ground dapdap leaf mixed with coconut milk, used as a shampoo), and two traditional styles of comb, a hard “first comb” (pӗtat) and a soft second comb (sua). These are provided to enable the now-resident deities/ancestors to bathe before going further in the sequence of the ritual. At the next stage of the odalan, if there has been a procession to the sacred water source, the returning pengajeg are “welcomed” with dancing in the pendet style, a pouring out of rice wine on the ground in front of the procession, and the reinstallation of the pengajeg in the piasan, in this case accompanied by two important arrangements of offerings, called bantӗn pengulapan and bayuhan dapӗtan.27 Now the deities are “awakened” a second time, and a food offering (rayunan) is presented to the pengajeg, matched, as is so often the case, by a sӗgӗhan offering to the bhuta-kala placed on the ground. This stage of the odalan is followed by another “installation” or “seating” of the deities (ngӗlinggihan), that in this case takes the form of the placement of the male-female set of pengajeg in the sanggah kamulan. If the household shrine has a padmasana, a male-female pair of pengajeg should be placed there, too. In the particular case of the odalan in the house-yard of Komang Gede, the third (female) pengajeg is placed in a shrine box of the pegayungan shrine at this time. Now that the deities/ancestors have “taken their places” in their shrines, they are offered a major food offering, called rayunan gede, while the worshippers (pemedek, penyungsung) take a break to eat food that has been prepared for the ritual, sitting back-to-back on the ground, not talking. The offering of a second “feast” to the deities follows in the stage of the ritual called ngaturan pengodalan. This is the culmination of the ritual. The deities are assumed now to be fully “present” in their shrines. The “essence” (sari) of the offerings can now be “wafted” towards the deities in their shrines with the waving gestures called ngatab, and then towards the worshippers with similar gestures that “pull” the essence of the sanctified offerings towards the worshippers themselves.28 It is at this stage that participants in the ritual, assisted by the temple priests and priestesses (usually the wives of the priests), 27 The “meaning” of the bantěn pengulapan can perhaps best be inferred from its use in rituals conducted at the site of an accident, where it is used to “call back” (ulap, ngulap) the “soul” of a person who has suffered the shock of an accident, and thus become detached from their “soul”. The bayuhan dapӗtan is a food offering that is said to give strength to the bhuta-kala. 28 A special offering called rayunan buik is featured in this stage of the odalan. Buik means a mixture of yellow, white, and black, and here refers to the colours of cooked chicken used in the offering. This type of food offering to the deities and ancestors (rayunan) is also called rayunan pasupati, perhaps because its three colors refer to Ludra, or Rudra, who is also known as Pasupati.

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direct their prayers to the deities, following the pattern known as muspa, “worshipping with flowers” that is ubiquitous in this phase of all rituals. This is followed by the distribution of holy water (tirta), which is sipped thrice by each participant and used to “cleanse” the face (meraup) a fourth time, and the simultaneous distribution of grains of moistened white rice that are typically pressed to the temples and neck to sign the completion of the act of prayer. The stage of ngaturan pengodalan marks the culmination of the ritual, and is followed by a stage of informing the deities that the ritual is complete, and inviting them to go on their way (ngӗluaran). The useful food ingredients of the “higher” offerings are put together with canang daksina tipat, plus a portion of sesari (money used to represent the “essence” of the offerings), and given to the temple priests (mangku, pemangku) and their wives (sutri) to take home. These items will then be offered in the taksu shrines of the temple priests. At the same time, either the sutri or pemangku will place sӗgӗhan offerings in front of the entryway to their house-yard to announce to the bhuta-kala that a ritual has been completed, and to apologise for any shortcoming or mistake, asking that the bhuta-kala not cause any harm to the household as a way of “taking revenge” for any ritual shortcoming.29 In a recent study of the art of the Pura Desa of the village of Batuan, Hildred Geertz (2004) has made use of Gell’s model of the index and the work of art theorists, such as Gombrich (1960), on the “beholder’s share” in the interpretation of works of art, to build a finely nuanced picture of what the sculptures and architectural features of the Pura Desa mean for the villagers of Batuan. The understanding she develops of the way that the “seen” and “unseen” worlds of Balinese belief and action are mediated by means of artworks is crucial to this work, in that the use of the pengajeg in the odalan of the household shrine of Komang Gede involves exactly the kind of social agency that is reflected in the temple art of the Pura Desa of Batuan: “I have stressed that the overriding intentional frame for the building, rebuilding, and decorating [of] a Balinese temple is to provide a royal palace for the temporary visit of niskala beings, one in which human and niskala beings can meet socially, with the long-term goal of providing the human ‘owners’ with material well-being. Efficacy in gaining that goal therefore becomes the major evaluative measure, but since that goal is diffuse (com-

29 Food that has been offered at the taksu shrine is considerd lungsuran (positively marked “left-overs”) and can be consumed by the household, but foodstuffs from segehan or other “lower” offerings cannot be consumed. The process of dismantling the offerings (marid) is completed by dividing any remaining useful ingredients of the offerings to be taken home by participants in the ritual.

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Thomas M. Hunter prising the pleasure and goodwill of the niskala beings), it does not contradict other goals such as entertainment, sensory delight, or even education.”30

The construction of the pengajeg and their important role in the ritual sequence of the odalan bring out an “intentional frame” that is parallel to that of the artwork of the Pura Desa of Batuan. The pengajeg are similarly placed in the mediation of the realms of human society and the beings of the niskala world, providing a visual focal point for social exchange and interchange between the “visible” and “invisible” realms, that for Balinese is crucial to the achievement of the well-being of human society.

5. “Trance Possession” (katědunan): The Question of Interpretants We turn now to the phenomenon of trance possession, and the ways that it is perceived by Balinese as a confirmation that the ritual has been effective in attracting and engaging the unseen beings of the niskala world and as a statement of submission to their power and presence. Once again, we turn to Gell, in this case for an elucidation of the parallelism between temple images that “receive” the presence of the divine, and persons who are similarly “entered” by a divine presence, that clearly is relevant to the case of Bali: “[I]n fact anything whatsoever could, conceivably, be an art object from the anthropological point of view, including living persons, because the anthropological theory of art (which we can roughly define as the ‘social relations in the vicinity of objects mediating social agency’) merges seamlessly with the social anthropology of persons and their bodies. Thus, from the point of view of the anthropology of art, an idol in a temple believed to be the body of the divinity, and a spirit-medium, who likewise provides the divinity with a temporary body, are treated as theoretically on a par, despite the fact that the former is an artefact and the latter is a human being.”31

30 Geertz 2004: 167. 31 Gell 1998: 7.

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Image 8: Komang Gede is shown here placing the male member of the three pengajeg in the central section of the tripartite wooden shrine called the sanggah kamulan. This shrine represents the source, or point of origin (kamulan), of the family line, and hence the chain of ancestors that connects the living members of the family to a distant place and time of emergence and ensures the continued health, vigour, and prosperity of the family. This stage of the odalan ritual is known as ngělinggihan, “placing the deities and ancestors (Ida Betara-Betari) in their sacred seats (linggih)”. Photo by the author

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Image 9: A set of “male” and “female” pengajeg have now been placed in the sanggah kamulan. For this household, a second “female” pengajeg will be placed in the shrine-box of the pegayungan shrine used in connection with Komang Gede’s work as a traditional healer (balian).

Photo by the author

Now it is quite common, perhaps overwhelmingly common, for the installation of pengajeg to stimulate the states commonly known in the literature as “trance possession” among participants in the ritual. For purposes of this study I prefer to use the term katědunan, which can be roughly translated as “to be the site of the descent (of a deity, ancestor, or other spirit)”. This term sets up a parallel in the human dimension with terms like pelinggihan that refer to the entry of the deities into images provided for them as “places of seating” (pelinggihan), or “places of standing” (pengajeg). In theoretical terms, my claim here is that the parallelism of the “seating” of deities and their “entry” into participants in ritual corresponds in Peircean terms with the cognitive stage of “thirdness”, the point at which the embedding of social agency in interpretive frameworks is most clearly revealed. In this view, what we call “trance possession” is, in essence, no different from less spectacular forms of Balinese religious expression, sharing with them a grounding in the same interpretive frameworks and networks of meaning. However, it might rightly be said that katědunan is “interpretation writ large”, a manifestation of underlying principles of belief and practice, whose power is drawn from a complex interaction of psychological and affective aspects of individual temperament with

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external cues that take the form of visual, musical, sonorous, olfactory, and other sensory stimuli. Here, we will briefly describe the behaviour of two villagers of Gadungan Sari in ritual sequences featuring the installation of pengajeg. The placement of pengajeg in the sanggah kamulan and pegayungan shrines of the home of Komang Gede on 27 August 2008 triggered a trance state in one of the participants in the ritual. In order to stay within the limits of space for this article, we will forgo presenting illustrations of that trance sequence, but will give a brief description. In this case, the person in trance was a middle-aged mother of two children, who is a close relative of the family of Men Pasek and Komang Gede. She began to go into trance during the stage of “appearing for audience” (tangkil) at the pegayungan shrine, as she carried an offering tray containing the three pengajeg on her head. Her trance state began with a look of intense concentration, that soon led to a full-fledged trance. As she entered this state, she took up a kwangen offering and made a gesture of supplication at the pegayungan shrine. She is said to have been “asking to take leave” of the deity who had “entered” her, since the “hot” sensations that sometimes occur in the trance state can be experienced as threatening and unpleasant. Her moods during the 10–15 minutes of the trance state varied rapidly and dramatically. As her trance state deepened, she danced in both the outer and inner areas of the household shrine. At times her expression was serene, at others deceptively ordinary. At times she projected an intense self-confidence as she touched elements of the ritual with what seems to be an attitude of ownership and familiarity, but at other moments her mood seemed to border on a state of anguish that led to relief when she emerged from the trance state. In order to fill out this discussion of trance possession in the presence of a pengajeg, we will describe here an instance of possession that took place at the odalan of the Pura Tengah in Gadungan Sari some months before the odalan of Komang Gede in August 2008.32 In this case, an elderly woman known as Kumpi (“greatgrandmother”) Rawan had been baby-sitting her great-granddaughter and was in the road outside the small temple complex of the Pura Tengah. As she described events later, she hadn’t meant to enter the temple at all, not being appropriately dressed for a temple ceremony, but something drew her inside, where she approached a shrine in the form of a stone table (baturan) upon which a pengajeg had been placed. Upon entering the shrine area, Kumpi approached an offering table that had been prepared with the various sacred masks of the village and an appropriate set of offerings. This table stood in front of baturan, an altar consisting of a brick pe32 One of the three major temples of Gadungan Sari, the Pura Tengah, is considered sacred to Brahma and is said by analysts like Lansing (1991) to embody the village activities of the village as a social and religious unity.

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destal supporting a sacred stone, the pedestal wrapped in the black-white chequered cloth called poleng that is used to wrap objects or statues of particularly sacred status. At first appearing drawn and tense, Kumpi’s mood brightened as she approached the gathering of masks on the table before her and gazed up at the pengajeg in its place on the baturan. In Image 10 we see Kumpi being assisted by the temple priest (mangku) of the Pura Prajapati and a grandson of Kumpi Rawan, as she entered a deep and intense phase of trance that followed upon a series of rapid mood changes that can only be described as reflecting several stages of an ecstatic and happy response to the “presence of the Ida Betara-Betari”. After a liberal dowsing with holy water, she emerged from the trance state, and in a moment of levity shared by her grandson and the priest of the Pura Prajapati she explained that she had not even meant to enter the temple, let alone become involved in the ritual.

Image 10: The temple priest (mangku) of the Pura Prajapati and a grandson of Kumpi Rawan come to her assistance as she enters a deep state of trance.

Photo: courtesy of Dr. Ni Wayan Aryati

I would like to focus here for a moment on the intimacy among participants in ritual that can often be observed in cases where a worshipper is katědunan. In contrast to what one might expect, based on the current “advertising” on Balinese cultural life, katědunan is not a spectacle. When someone is “entered” by a deity, fellow worshippers will, for the most part, go about their business and pay little attention, or – if persons in a katědunan appear to be so strongly affected that they may lose control of their movements – their fellow worshippers will gently come to their aid, at times restraining them or supporting them physically, and in due course

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sprinkling holy water and/or “bathing” the face of the affected person with the smoke of incense, in order to facilitate their recovery of normal consciousness. The subject of “trance possession” is too complex to allow further explication in this study. I will, however, note that, while there are times when a person who easily falls into “trance” states can be identified as someone who is currently experiencing an extraordinary degree of personal, family, or social stress, there are other cases where no such factor at all appears to be involved. In the case of the katědunan of Kumpi Rawan, I would say this is the case, and furthermore would counter the claim of one critic of the power-point presentation of this paper who suggested that Kumpi Rawan’s experience was instrumental, that is that she had “something to gain” (socially) from entering into the state of katědunan. In my view, this kind of critique conflates the notion of the social agency of artworks developed by Gell (1998) with a crudely instrumental interpretation of “agency”, that has more to do with social competition in free market societies than with the complex behavioural factors that are aligned with the calendrical and ritual cycles of Balinese life. There is a growing body of knowledge on social identity theory that elucidates many of the difficulties that arise when an analysis of behaviour in a “collectivist” society is carried out using the presuppositions of an “individualist” society like those of many Western countries. 33 My claim, once again, is that katědunan is not about crudely social agency, but about “interpretation writ large”, a point at which there is a maximum convergence of the production of social agency through artworks deeply implicated in ritual sequences (indexicality) and the interpretive frameworks that give meaning to ritual action (Peirce’s “interpretants”).

6. Conclusion Given the extreme complexity of the Balinese ritual system, no single work can be expected to make more than a contribution to our understanding of its “meanings”, in either social or epistemic terms. I hope here to have made one small contribution by focusing on a single exemplar of that system, and attempting to show how it is “brought to social agency” and “given meaning” in terms of the particular interpretive systems of Bali. Here I have followed upon the work of Gell (1998) and Hildred Geertz (2004), without thereby claiming that I have applied their critical approaches accurately or without fault. I have also suggested that we can, in fact, apply the tripartite Peircean analysis of the sign to the study of an artwork like the pengajeg, as long as we remain aware of the basis of his system in an analysis of 33 For works on social identity theory, and the study of collectivist vs. individualist modes of behaviour and interpretation, see inter alia Moghaddam & Taylor (1994), Samovar & Porter & McDaniel (2007), Schirato & Yell (2000) and Triandis (1988).

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cognitive processes, and how these are linked to socially embedded networks of meaning. While attending to the human factor is basic to the Social Sciences, it may not be without value to stress that Peirce’s notion of thirdness, of human beings as the quintessential users of symbols, calls on us to bear in mind that each interpretant plays a role in the processes of interpretation that we study in the form of the “patterns” or “structures” of social life. This means paying attention to the fact that the chains of signification that are generated in any semiotic process are open to change, and because the locus of these changes is the individuals who give meaning to an interpretive system, that change is likely to be incremental. One might say that the application of Peirce’s categories presents a “quantum” approach to semiotics that can balance the “wave” approach that focuses on long-term socio-cultural patterns. For the student of semiotic systems, this means attending to the linkages between perceptions, interpretive schemata internalised in the processes of socialisation, and the larger symbolic patterns we study as “cultural systems”. In this type of study there will always be a hermeneutic circling between what we can learn about the particulars of an artefact like the pengajeg, and the larger schemata that organise perception and experience in terms of indexical and symbolic processes. To close this study, I would like to cite a personal communication (e-mail of 18 May 2009) from anthropologist Hildred Geertz that responds to some of the claims of this paper: “All of these cognitive processes have a two-way oscillation, between the particular perception and various larger referential structures, between the smallest act of making, looking or using and the ‘cultural’ stores of categories and associations [...] That engagement of meaning-making acts in interpersonal social acts is the key to it all. That hermeneutic circling process is fundamental to any semiotic system – the more you know about general Balinese ritual acts and ideas, the more you can learn about the particulars of the pengajeg and vice-versa. It’s a spiral kind of learning.” As we ponder the nature of ritual dynamics – whether we should understand ritual action in terms of a “grammar” or “semiotic system” of some sort – we should not lose sight of the fact that ritual is social action, thus, perforce, to be understood in terms of multiple forms of patterning, some of them linked to linguistic modes of expression, but others to visual and performative modes like those studied to such great effect by Gell.

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References Brinkgreve, Francine & David J. Stuart-Fox 1992. Offerings, the Ritual Art of Bali. Sanur: Image Network Indonesia. Brinkgreve, Francine 1997. “Offerings to Durga and Pretiwi in Bali”. Asian Folklore Studies 56/2: 227–251. Eco, Umberto 1997. Kant and the Platypus, Essays on Language and Cognition. Translated by Alastair McEwen. San Diego, New York, London: Harcourt Inc. Eiseman, Fred B. Jr. 2005. Offerings and Their Role in the Daily Lives and Thoughts of the People of Jimbaran, Bali. Jimbaran. [self-published] Errington, James J. 1998. Shifting Languages. Interaction and Identity in Javanese Indonesia. Cambridge, New York, Melbourne: Cambridge University Press. Geertz, Hildred 2004. The Life of a Balinese Temple: Artistry, Imagination, and History in a Peasant Village. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. Gell, Alfred 1998. Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Gerow, Edwin 1984. “Language and Symbol in Indian Semiotics”. Philosophy East and West 34/3: 245–260. Gombrich, Ernst H. 1960. Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation. Washington: National Gallery of Art. Hunter, Thomas M. 2007. “The Poetics of Grammar in the Javano-Balinese Tradition”. In: Sergio La Porta & David Shulman (eds.). The Poetics of Grammar and the Metaphysics of Sound and Sign. Leiden: E.J. Brill: 271–303 (Jerusalem Studies in Religion and Culture). Jakobson, Roman & Morris Halle 1956. Fundamentals of Language. The Hague: Mouton. Jakobson, Roman 1960. “Closing Statement: Linguistics and Poetics”. In: Thomas A. Sebeok (ed.). Style in Language. Cambridge: MIT Press: 350–377. Lansing, J. Stephen 1991. Priests and Programmers: Technologies of Power in the Engineered Landscapes of Bali. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Moghaddam, Fathali M. & Donald M. Taylor (eds.) 1994. Theories of Intergroup Relations: International Social Psychological Perspectives. Westport: Greenwood Publishing Group. Peirce, Charles Sanders 1982–1983. Writings of Charles S. Peirce. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press. Samovar, Larry A. & Richard E. Porter & Edwin R. McDaniel (eds.) 2007. Communication between Cultures. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing (Wadsworth Series in Communication Studies). Schieffelin, Bambi B. & Kathryn A. Woolard & Paul V. Kroskrity (eds.) 1998. Language Ideologies, Practice and Theory. New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press (Oxford Studies in Anthropological Linguistics 16). Schirato, Tony & Susan Yell (eds.) 2000. Communication and Culture: An Introduction. London & Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications.

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Silverstein, Michael 1976. “Shifters, Linguistic Categories, and Cultural Description”. In: Keith H. Basso & Henry A. Selby (eds.). Meaning in Anthropology. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press: 11–56. — 1998. “The Uses and Utility of Ideology: a Commentary”. In: Bambi B. Schieffelin & Kathryn A. Woolard & Paul V. Kroskrity (eds.) 1998. Language Ideologies, Practice and Theory. New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press: 123–145 (Oxford Studies in Anthropological Linguistics 16). Triandis, Harry C. 1988. “Collectivism vs. Individualism: A Reconceptualization of a Basic Concept in Cross-Cultural Psychology”. In: Gajendra K. Verma & Christopher Bagley (eds.). Cross-Cultural Studies of Personality, Attitudes and Cognition. Houndmills: Macmillan: 60–95. Zoetmulder, Petrus J. (with the Collaboration of S.O. Robson) 1982. Old JavaneseEnglish Dictionary. 2 Vols. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

Petra H. Rösch

Pillars of Faith: Visuality and Ritual Space in Chinese Buddhism This paper investigates the spatial incorporation and visual perception of dhāraṇī or sūtra pillars (jingzhuang 經幢) in Buddhist temples from the late seventh century onwards. In critically applying the trans-disciplinary and multi-perspective approach suggested by David Morgan1 to this particular religious context, the paper will first diachronically analyse the dhāraṇī pillars in their architectural and iconological contexts, and then, on this basis, endeavour to answer the following questions: how do these vertical architectural monuments direct and influence the religious gaze of the Chinese Buddhist believer, and in what way do the height and elaborateness of the pillars influence practices of seeing and ritual efficacy? In what ways do they define and structure Chinese Buddhist spaces, and how do they mark and shape the religious spaces and the peripatetic reception of the believers within the Buddhist temples? Furthermore, what do these incorporations and receptions tell us about Chinese Buddhist historic communities, their religious as well as visual concepts, and their embodied ritual practices?

1. Visual Analysis of dhāraṇī or sūtra Pillars (jingzhuang 經幢) This paper was inspired by the book The Sacred Gaze by David Morgan, who argues the necessity of analysing images within their visual practices. Through his analysis, Morgan hopes to obtain more holistic insights into religious beliefs. He maintains that “Visual culture is what images, acts of seeing, and attendant intellectual, emotional, and perceptual sensibilities do to build, maintain, or transform the worlds in which people live.” Furthermore, “The study of visual culture is the analysis and interpretation of images and the ways of seeing (or gazes) that configure the agents, practices, conceptualities, and institutions that put images to work.”2 Through this approach, he wishes to sharpen the eyes of those working with images, especially scholars of religious sciences, but also art historians, who – 1 Morgan 2005. 2 Ibid.: 33.

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from his point of view – still look too much only at the media of images and their inherent messages, and neglect the social, political, or sensual contexts in which images influence their viewers, and in which they are created and perceived. He argues, therefore, that the analysis of visual culture has to shift “… from an object and artist centered to a practice centered discourse.”3 Before pursuing the question of the visual and peripatetic analysis of visual culture, the visual structures themselves, that is, the origins and the iconographic and iconological development of dhāraṇī pillars, need to be examined (1.1). The practice-centred aspects of the visual and peripatetic perceptions within the Buddhist ritual contexts of dhāraṇī pillars are discussed in the remaining sections of this chapter. 1.1 Visual Analysis This paper therefore begins with the close description, analysis, and comparison of the object in question: the so-called dhāraṇī or sūtra pillars (jingzhuang 經幢). The pillars have this name because of the sūtra text containing magic spells or dhāraṇīs engraved on their shafts. Beginning in the late seventh century, dhāraṇī pillars were dedicated by pious lay Buddhists and erected in temple yards or public places. The pillars vary in height from 2 to about 15 metres; often the most sumptuous ones are also the tallest. They also vary in shape, but in general they consist of three parts: a base, a central, octagonal main body, and a top section. All three parts of the pillars can consist of several pieces assembled together, each carved from an individual piece of rock.4 In most cases, the base has the form of a rectangular plinth, with a second slab on top. The second part, and the central element of the dhāraṇī pillar, the main shaft, rests on this base. The height and diameter of this main section can vary. During the seventh century, the shafts were rather stout and consisted usually of only one piece of stone. During the later period of the Tang Dynasty, other examples show a more elongated and slimmer shaft, to which a second, often iconic tier might be added, divided from the main shaft by a disc-like platform with garland decoration.5 On the main octagonal shaft, the key text, the sūtra which originally supplied the name for these vertical structures, is engraved. In 90% of known pillars6, this text is the Sūtra of the Honoured, Victorious dhāraṇī of the Buddha’s Uṣṇīṣa (Buddha uṣṇīṣa vijaya dhāraṇī sūtra; Foding zunsheng tuoluoni jing 佛頂 3 Ibid.: 32. 4 As the single parts are not fixed together, but only placed on top of each other, many pillars do not have their complete or original appearance, having sometimes been wrongly reassembled. 5 Murata 1973: figs. 3, 4. 6 According to Kuo Liying 2006: 39.

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尊勝陀羅尼經, T 19.967.349–52).7 This is an esoteric Buddhist text which was first translated into Chinese in 683 A.D., in the early Tang Dynasty, by the Kashmiri monk Buddhapāli, who had arrived in China in 676. Today this sūtra exists in several translations, but the one by Buddhapāli has remained the most popular in China. In esoteric Buddhism, magic spells and formulas are uttered, or written, painted, or borne on the body by the initiated in the hope of receiving karmic benefits or of working miracles and wonders. During the early Tang Dynasty, the primary devotional practice related to the Sūtra of the Honoured, Victorious dhāraṇī of the Buddha’s Uṣṇīṣa was the chanting and copying of the text. However, during the eighth and ninth centuries, inscribing the text on dhāraṇī pillars became more and more popular.8 The third part of the pillar is the top. It can have several shapes, and consist of multiple tiers diminishing in size. One shape – especially observable in early pillars – is the single, tile roof in the Chinese style, topped by a pinnacle in the shape of a round jewel, sometimes placed on a lotus seat. One of the earliest examples of pillars still existing today is a pillar in the Temple of the Original Arising (Yuanqisi 原起寺) in Shanxi province (Image 1), dated to 747 A.D., during the Tang Dynasty. This pillar, reaching a total height of about 2m, shows the simple, clear construction of the earliest forms. The base of the Yuanqisi pillar consists of two parts, with the slab on top of a hexagonal shape. Both plinth and slab are decorated iconographically with animals and Buddhist deities. On top of this base rises the main octagonal shaft. It is of rather stout proportions and is inscribed with the sūtra. The top of the pillar is a rather simple roof-like structure, topped by a pinnacle in the shape of a cintāmani jewel on a lotus base. From the tenth to eleventh centuries, in particular, during the Song Dynasty (960–1279), the main body of the pillars could be extended, while further octagonal or wheel-like sections, bearing either texts or iconic decorations, could be added to augment the height and the diameter of the dhāraṇī pillar.9

7 See also Howard 1997: 34 n. 3, and for the legend of the translation Kuo Liying 2006. 40, 41. 8 Liu Shufen 2008: 175, 176. 9 Ibid.: 54–60 gives a table with measurements of the heights of the pillars. Though not true of many during the tenth to eleventh centuries, the height of the pillar can sometimes reach 12 to 18m.

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Image 1: Dhāranī pillar in the “Temple of the Original Arising”, Tang Dynasty (618–907), dated to 747, height about 2m, Shanxi province.

Photo courtesy Zhao Kejia/ Art-Here.net (http:// art-here. net/html/pv/4103.html).

1.2 Genesis and Iconographic Development The shape of dhāraṇī pillars has several sources.10 All of the pillars that still exist today are made of stone. However, the Chinese word zhuang 幢, in the common designation of the dhāraṇī pillar (jingzhuang 經幢), has a cloth-radical jin 巾 (towel, kerchief) in its character, and thus zhuang 幢, the translation of the original Sanskrit word, was understood to refer to a flag, pennant, or pendant streamers of silk That is, the term zhuang 幢 originally described an object of cloth, and not of stone. Angela Howard and Murata Jirô therefore see the source of the dhāraṇī pillars in the Indian dhvaja, ketu, or patākā, cloth banners which could be decorated with images of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas.11 In the Sūtra of the Honoured, Victorious dhāraṇī of the Buddha’s Uṣṇīṣa itself we find the advice: “when this dhāraṇī has been written down, it should be put on the tip of a banner pole, it should be put on the top of a high mountain or a high house or in a stūpa.”12 Hence, one can assume that the dhāraṇī was first written on cloth and then put on high poles or pillars. With time, it might have been thought easier or at least more permanent to write or carve the text on the pillars themselves. The Aśoka pillars, erected by King Aśoka (reigned 272–231 B.C.), who ruled during the Mauryan empire (321–185 B.C.), can be seen as forerunners of the dhāraṇī pillars in several points. Because of his military achievements and his later embrace of Buddhism, giving his country forty years of prosperity and peace, King Aśoka is the most well-known and celebrated king in Indian history. The edicts, which he published on the so-called Aśoka pillars, recorded his policies and his accomplishments. Ten of the pillars with inscriptions have survived down to the 10 Ibid.: 113–121 names just two, however, I believe that there could have been several sources. 11 Howard 1997: 34 and Murata 1973: 16. 12 Kuo Liying 2006: 42, citing the unpublished translation by Gregory Schopen from a Tibetan manuscript of the text.

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present day, but Aśoka pillars must once have been found all over India, erected in public places. The monolithic pillars, about 14m in height have a tall, round shaft, bearing a lion-capital on top (Image 2). The lower part of the lion-capital consists of a round disc iconographically decorated with four wheels, the symbol of Buddhist teaching, and four animals, the elephant, horse, bull, and lion, symbols of the four directions. This band is crowned by a lion, or four lions standing back to back. The wheel on the capital is today the national symbol of India. The main shaft of the pillar carries the engraved edicts of Aśoka, reporting his conversion to Buddhism, his efforts to spread Buddhism in his kingdom, and his social and moral concepts and programmes.13 Thus, King Aśoka deliberately chose public places, where the pillars would be seen, a fact which is comparable to the placement of dhāraṇī pillars, as will be discussed in chapter 3. The Aśoka pillars and the dhāraṇī pillars, then, have three points in common. First, both are high pillars with textual and iconic decorations. Second, they bear Buddhist texts which served to propagate the Buddhist faith. Third, they were erected in public places frequented by large numbers of people (and thus also served to propagate the Buddhist faith in this manner). Nevertheless, when we look more closely at their forms, differences between the two types of pillars can be seen. The Aśoka pillars, with their elaborate capitals and their round and undecorated shafts, are, in comparison, closer to Roman or Greek columns. In general, they have a sober and clear structure. The dhāraṇī pillars, on the other hand, have a body divided into multiple compartments which diminish in size the higher they are on the column. Their shafts are octagonal and end with architectural or rooflike constructions. Therefore it would seem that rather than recalling the exact visual shape of the Aśoka pillars, it was more the idea of a vertical architectural element as propaganda for Buddhism which was the inspiration for creating dhāraṇī pillars. The Aśoka pillars were so famous in the Buddhist world that they became known in Tang Dynasty China, when the famous pilgrim Xuanzang returned from India and described these amazing monuments.

13 Falk 2006.

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Image 2: Aśoka Pillar at Vaishali, Bihar, India.

Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ commons/e/e2/Asokanpillar2.jpg (09/06/2010).

The earliest objects that are both visually and ritually close to the dhāraṇī pillars are the miniature stūpas, or scripture stūpas (jingta 經塔) of the Northern Liang Dynasty (398–439). These scripture stūpas have only been preserved in Gansu and Xinjiang provinces, and are likely to have been built only there; no examples from central Northern China are known. Moreover, they seem only to have been produced until the mid-fifth century.14 Today, about fourteen of these pillars have survived, such as the one preserved in the Gansu Provincial Museum in Lanzhou (Image 3).15 The scripture stūpa in the Lanzhou Museum has a tripartite structure, consisting of a top, a main body, and, as I would assume, a base (in most cases, the base is no longer extant; however, the lowest part of the main body displays grooves which were probably for fastenings for an additional piece of stone, at exactly the places where a base would have been added). 14 Juliano & Lerner 2001: 152–155. 15 Ibid.: 153ff.

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Image 3: Scripture stūpa, Lanzhou, Gan-su Provincial Museum. Nor-thern Liang Dynasty (398–439), dated to 428.

Source: Zhongguo siguan diaosu quanji (Vol. 1) 2002, Fig.12.

As is the case in the scripture stūpa of the Lanzhou Museum, the main body and top are, in most cases, carved together from a single stone. The main body of the scripture stūpa can, in turn, be divided into three parts. It displays in its octagonal lowest section an incised iconic drawing of sages, combined with lines from the Yijing16. Above this octagonal section, a round shaft continues, inscribed with an excerpt from the Book of Gradual Sayings (Ekottarāgama sūtra) (Zengyi ahan jing 增一阿含經) T2.125.549-830, a collection of 451 sūtras translated by Sanghadeva during the Eastern Jin Dynasty (317–420). The inscribed passage preaches the transcendence of the eternal circle of life and can be found on all preserved scrip16 Wang 1999: 70–91.

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ture stūpas.17 The upper, and third, section of the main body of the scripture stūpa is dome-shaped, bearing a row of low-relief niches with Buddha icons and doublelined lotus leaves. This three-part main body is crowned by a carved cone-shaped top.18 An example of an Indian stūpa can be seen in a Gandharan relief from the second century, preserved today in the Museum of Asian Art, formerly the Museum of Indian Art, in Berlin (Image 4). Two-thirds of the relief are dominated by a large round stūpa with a prominent chattravali, i.e. a pinnacle formed by a mast supporting multiple tapering umbrellas, as its top part. The stūpa on this relief is framed by four Aśoka columns and surmounted by a triple lion-capital (probably referring to the quadruple form). From the right, a group of worshippers with hands clasped in front of their chests approaches the stūpa. Originally, in India, the stūpa was a burial mound containing the bodily remains (śarīra) of the Buddha after his entering nirvana and the consequent cremation of his body. Thus, in India and central Asia the stūpa was the centre of the monastery, as it guaranteed the Buddha’s bodily presence and, with that, the legitimation of the monastery. As is suggested in the relief, and as known from extant stūpas as well as recent practice, such burial mounds were venerated by means of circumambulation. The shapes of this stūpa in the relief immediately recall the Chinese scripture stūpas with their dome-shaped upper tier of the main body and conical top. In the scripture stūpas, the top is composed of seven horizontal raised bands and divided by undercut recesses. The top therefore resembles the multiple tapering umbrellas of the Indian stūpa. These two points in the structure of the scripture stūpas, the dome-shaped central part and the top, distinctly recall the shape of Indian stūpas with which they already share the name. Thus, the name of the scripture stūpas was probably chosen because of their close resemblance or relationship to actual Indian stūpas. Coming back to comparing the dhāraṇī pillars and the scripture stūpas, several visual similarities can be observed. First, both have a tripartite structure, and second, they both bear an inscription of a Buddhist text on the main body. Thus, the scripture stūpa may have been a forebear of the dhāraṇī pillars, while still closely revealing its own origin, the Indian stūpas. However, the problem remains that there is a gap in time and space between the two Chinese pillar-forms of the Liang scripture stūpas and the Northern Chinese dhāraṇī pillars, which makes any

17 Yin Guangming 2000: 216–220. 18 Juliano & Lerner 2001: 154.

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Image 4: Veneration of the stūpa. Gandhara, 2nd c. AD, Berlin, Museum of Asian Art.

Courtesy of the National Museums of Berlin, Prussian Cultural Foundation, Asian Art Museum, Art Collection of South, Southeast and Central Asian Art. Photo: Jürgen Liepe

direct influence of the former on the latter, or development from one shape to the other, rather unlikely, in which case we are confronted with finding a missing link between the two forms. Nevertheless, the stūpa, the scripture stūpa, and the dhāraṇī pillars have, in fact, other points in common concerning the ritual practices of donation, veneration, and numinous efficacy.

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However, there is one feature which does not recall Indian antecedents in either shape: the part of the main body with the Buddhist inscription is octagonally structured, an architectural form observed neither in Indian stūpas nor in the Aśoka pillars. Instead, it turns out that the octagonal shaft can be traced to fifth-century Northern China.19 Inside or in front of Buddhist cave-temples, octagonal pillars are known as supporting or decorative parts. In the early examples, these octagonal pillars bear either floral or iconographic decorations.20 During the sixth century, the earliest examples of these columns or pillars with an aniconic, i.e. textual engraving, appear. In front of the South Cave (Nan dong 南洞) or Sūtra Cave of the Northern Mountain of Echo Halls (Bei Xiangtangshan 北響堂山), dated to before 568 during the Northern Qi Dynasty (555-577), the octagonal pillars bear excerpts from Buddhist texts and the names of Buddhas (Image 5). Both of these refer to, or are quotes from, texts of purification. The Buddha-names were addressed and venerated during rituals of confession and repentance (chanhui yishi 懺悔儀式), while the inscribed excerpts from sūtras were recited. The aim of these rituals was the purification from transgressions, and, through this, to gain a beneficial rebirth and to avoid rebirth in hell.21 The inscribed columns in front of the South Cave form a porticus leading to the cave-temple’s entrance. Further sūtra inscriptions are found in the antechamber at the entrance, and also in the main room of the cave-temple. Every worshipper at the South Cave would necessarily have had to pass between the columns (Fig. 1). In terms of ritual, it is therefore logical that texts referring to rituals of purification would be placed in such a passageway, before the sacred precinct was actually entered, for just by reading and possibly uttering the inscribed phrases and Buddhanames, the believers would already have invoked the Buddhas and obtained purifying benefits, without having to undergo the lengthy ritual purification practices prescribed in the ritual texts.22 One might speculate further whether the mere

19 Murata 1973: 17. 20 See the porticus columns of Yungang, cave 6 in Shanxi province, or the northern and middle caves at Northern Xiangtangshan in Hebei province. 21 Rösch 2009; (in press). 22 Rösch (in press): Especially the Sūtra spoken by the Buddha on the Contemplation of the Two Bodhisattvas, King of Healing and Supreme Healer (Foshuo Guan Yaowang Yaoshang jing 佛說觀藥王藥上菩薩經) which refers to the merits to be gained through the chanting, reading and hearing of the Buddha-names.

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Image 5: Octagonal pillars in front of South cave in Northern Xiangtangshan, Hebei province. Photo by the author

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Fig. 1.: Groundplan of South cave with the bases of the four pillars of the porticus. Drawing by Li Yuqun. Li Yiqun 1997, Fig.1, 444.

presence of the inscriptions and physically passing by them might already have generated benefits as well. Hence, the porticus-columns and the dhāraṇī pillars would be comparable not only visually, but also in terms of ritual, as both were inscribed with purifying texts, which would guarantee the spectators and passersby a beneficial rebirth. The second visual detail that is not of Indian origin is the architecturally-shaped intersections of the dhāraṇī pillars. Already the earliest example, the pillar dating to 747 A.D. (see Fig. 1 above), displays a tiled, tent-like roof with jewels on top like those covering Chinese pavilions. This influence of Chinese architecture becomes even more obvious in later pillars from the tenth and eleventh centuries and afterwards. Later pillars demonstrate an increase in height and ornamental splendour, such as the dhāraṇī pillar described in detail by Angela Howard. This pillar was erected between 1200 and 1220 in Kunming by a family from Yunnan province (Image 6). Here one can observe how the tripartite system of base, shaft, and top, which is rather simple in the early Tang Dynasty pillar mentioned above, has become more complex and elaborate. The Kunming pillar, for example, displays seven tiers of mock wood architecture with wooden railings and console constructions under tiled roofs. These multiple tiers of the dhāraṇī pillars probably have their visual forbears in the tapered wooden storeys and tiled roofs of Han-period watchtowers (Image 7) and consequently in Chinese Buddhist pagodas. As Chinese wooden architecture of the earlier periods has not been preserved, the miniature clay models for burials are the only evidence for the appearance of early wooden architecture. The architectural system of Chinese Buddhist pagodas displays the same diminishing size of wooden storeys and tiled roofs. In the pagoda, the Chi-

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nese watchtower has been transferred to the Buddhist context, displaying similar structures of diminishing tiers as well as wooden console brackets supporting tiled roofs. The Liao Dynasty Wooden Pagoda of Ying district (Yingxian muta 應縣木 塔) clearly displays these tapering multiple storeys of wooden architecture and tiled roofs. The tapering tiers were very likely taken up again in the architecture of the dhāraṇī pillars. In the case of later dhāraṇī pillars such as the one from Yunnan, the tapering architectural tiers were interspersed throughout the main body and top, just as in the case of the watchtowers or pagodas. Besides the obvious visual inspiration, the pagoda is the Chinese adaptation of an Indian stūpa and serves the same function. Thus, interestingly, the shape of the dhāraṇī pillars was again inspired by an object containing the bodily remains of Buddha. The dhāraṇī pillars, then, bear the visual inspiration of architectural structures imported from India such as the Aśoka pillars, stūpa, or banner poles. However, their final architectural shape was clearly inspired by the indigenous forms of the octagonal columns in front of cave-temples and the multiple storeys of Chinese wooden pagodas. Through the addition of multiple tiers to the dhāraṇī pillars considerable heights could be reached. The following section addresses the reasons and consequences for the augmented height of the pillars.

2. Height and Elaboration of the Dhāraṇī Pillars in Relation to Visual Practices The visual qualities of Chinese material objects, together with visual practices evolving around them, began to become a focus of research during the 1990s.23 There is no doubt that Buddhism especially, as a religion foreign to China in which indigenous and alien influences merged, offers a wide field for the study of such visual practices.24 Following the suggestion of David Morgan to interpret material objects in the context of their visual practices, this chapter addresses the perception of height and elaboration of pillars and their meaning in the visual practices postulated in the Sūtra of the Honoured, Victorious dhāraṇī of the Buddha’s Uṣṇīṣa engraved on the main shaft of the pillars. The sūtra is well worth examining in detail. It was translated eight times into Chinese, but the translation by Buddhapāli (Fotuoboli 佛陀波利) (637–735), which also relates the legendary meeting of Buddhapāli with Bodhisattva Mañjuśrī on Mount Wutai (Wutaishan 五台山) in Shanxi province, has remained the most popular. The saying goes that, on his first visit to China in 676, Buddhapāli met an old man on Wutaishan who asked him about the Sūtra of the Honoured, Victorious 23 Ebrey 1999; Wu & Tsiang 2005. 24 Kieschnik 1999: 9–32.

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dhāraṇī of the Buddha’s Uṣṇīṣa. When he admitted that he had not brought the text with him from India, he was ordered by the old man to go back and fetch it, as the text would help all Chinese to receive retribution for all their sins and save them from rebirth in the lower destinies or hell. Buddhapāli did as he was told, and on returning with the text to Chang’an, where he translated it and brought it to Wutaishan, he discovered that the old man was none other than the Bodhisattva Mañjuśrī himself.25 Wutaishan is known and famous as the Chinese heavenly abode of the Bodhisattva Mañjuśrī. According to the sūtra, it was taught by Buddha Śākyamuni to prevent the “Heavenly Son”, the Devaputra Supratiṣṭhita (Shanzhu Tianzi 善住天子), from suffering in hell or being assigned one of the seven worst destinies. In the sūtra the correct worship of the dhāraṇī is related: one must recite it and copy it. This is a normal form of textual veneration to gain merits and to receive the benefits of the magic spell. However, a further form of ritual veneration or invocation of the dhāraṇī is also related, which as far as I know is unique to this sūtra: the text has to be placed in conspicuous spots, such as on the top of a high banner or on the top of a high pavilion, or by depositing it in a stūpa at a public cross-roads for as many people to see as possible.26 The sūtra itself pays extraordinary attention to visual practices. The importance of the text being seen, of its being visible to the believer, is stressed. Furthermore, the height is vital: “if some monk or nun or lay brother or sister, or some other son or daughter of good family, were to see the tip of that banner pole or remain near it, or even if they were touched by its shadow or touched by its dust when it is blown by the wind, for them no evil and no fear of going to an unfortunate state of rebirth will arise …”27 This clearly explains why the text was attached to poles, later to develop into the dhāraṇī pillars which were, and still are, present all over China. Height is, after all, an important factor in being visible! The higher the pillars became, the better they could be seen by believers. This, of course, meant that the better the pillar could be seen, the more believers would benefit from the auspicious writing attached to it, and, in turn, the higher the merits would be for the donors who had erected the pillar, following the Bodhisattva’s path of helping others to attain enlightenment. And by building a high pillar one would gain even more merits than by building a low pillar, as more believers would be redeemed through the pious donation. 25 Kuo Liying 2006: 40–41. 26 T 9.967.351b.9–18. 27 Kuo Liying 2006: 42, citing Gregory Schopen’s unpublished translation.

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Height and size are therefore crucial aspects in the visual practices: the higher and larger a pillar is, the more impressive it is, and the better it may be seen. Hence, it was the ritual practices mentioned in the sūtra itself that demanded, and brought about, the increase in height of one of the most ubiquitous Buddhist constructions in China. Research into the material evidence on pillars has shown that, in fact, from the late seventh and early eighth centuries in the Tang Dynasty, and up to the eleventh and twelfth centuries in the Song Dynasty, the height and degree of elaboration of the pillars increased. The height reached its maximum during the Song Dynasty, when pillars could be more than 15 metres high. One example is the hitherto almost unpublished dhāraṇī pillar of Zhao district (Zhaoxian 趙縣) in Zhaozhou 趙州, which today stands in the middle of a roundabout in the city centre. According to a historic inscription on the pillar (Image 8), it was donated in 1038 by a group of locals under the leadership of Wang Decheng ( 王德成) to the former Temple of the Cypress Forest (Bolinsi 柏林寺).28 With this pillar, height is achieved by several additions to the tripartite system. The pillar not only stands on a high, lavishly elaborated, rectangular base, to which a Mount Sumeru seat has been added, but through the insertion of three further tiers the main body has also been stretched. Each of these tiers consists of a base, an octagonal shaft with sūtra inscriptions and a baldachin-like top with garlands, tassels, and small, round basins reaching out from each corner of the octagon. All of the three shafts have the title of the inscribed sūtra written in large characters on one side, while the rest of the text is inscribed in small characters.29 The first shaft, sitting on the three to four metre-high base of the pillar, is inscribed wih the Sūtra of the Honoured, Victorious dhāraṇī of the Buddha’s Uṣṇīṣa. That its title is written in large seal-script characters, possibly reflecting the literacy and high level of education of the donor, is exceptional: Table 1: 尊 勝 陀 羅 尼 幢

蒼 生 敬 造 佛 頂 (variation of [鼎頁])

奉 為 大 墬 (variation of 地) 水 陸 (destroyed)

28 Lu Zengxiang & Liu Chenggan 1986: chapter 82, 5336. Also Murata 1973: 30; Gao Yingmin 1982: 39. 29 As I did not have any equipment with me besides my camera, I was not able to conduct a thorough investigation of the pillar and its inscriptions.

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Image 6: Dhāraṇī pillar in Kunming,1200 to 1220, Dali Kingdom, Sichuan province. Source: Howard 1997, Plate 1.

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Image 7: Pottery Model of Tower, h. 147 cm, Henan Province, Huaiyang district, Henan Provincial Museum. Source: Shi Ya Zhu 1990, Fig. p. 55

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The inscription, to be read from the upper right,30 clearly states that the dhāraṇī pillar with the textual inscription was erected on the occasion of a Water-Land Ritual, a context not previously reported for the donation of pillars. “A vast Water-Land (ritual) being offered, the pillar of the Honoured, Victorious dhāraṇī of the Buddha’s Uṣṇīṣa was decorated and worshipfully erected.” Particularly since the late Tang and Song Dynasties, this large and encompassing ritual was staged for the salvation of all living creatures on water and land. The ritual aim was to create merits for the donor and his deceased kin. Thus, the combination of these two rituals, the donation of a dhāraṇī pillar and of a Water-Land Ritual, is not surprising for later Chinese Buddhism, a period in which caring for deceased ancestors was of paramount importance. While the diameter of the topmost shaft is less than that of the one below, their texts are both written in standard script, with the title in larger characters. The second shaft bears the following long title inscription: Table 2:

金

王

怛

佛

輪

陀

多

說

三

羅

大

大

昧

尼

神

佛

咒

經

力

頂

品

大

都

如

上

威

攝

來

上

德

一

放

最

切

光

勝

咒

悉

30 I owe many thanks to Ho Waiming, Gao Yumin and He Liqun of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences, who all pondered with me over the transcription of the seal script characters.

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The text, with minor deviations, can still be found in the present Taisho version of the canon. The inscription gives the title of the inscribed text: “Dhāraṇī of Śitātapatrā, Great Corona of All Tathāgatas, Radiating Light, heard by all holy beings; the best chapter of the Mantra of the Samadhi of the Sūtra of the Dhāraṇī King, the Great powerful and virtuous Victorious Golden Wheel.” (T 19.947.180–188.) The text contains a version of the Surangama Mantra (Lengyan zhou 愣嚴咒), a powerful and well-known mantra originating in the Surangama Sūtra.31 According to Holmes Welch, it was still chanted in the early twentieth century during morning services in monasteries. Following tradition, the mantra was first preached to protect Buddha’s disciple Ananda from the wiles of a prostitute.32 Thus, the mantra is supposed to protect from sexual temptations. The third and highest inserted tier contains the Dhāraṇī Incantation of the Protectress Who Grants Great Freedom (Foshuo suiqiu ji de da zizai tuoluoni shenzhou 佛說隨求即得大自在陁羅尼神呪) (T 20.1154.637–644). This single fascicle is a translation by Maṇicintana 寳思惟, a Buddhist monk of the late seventh and early eighth centuries who translated several esoteric sūtras, focusing on mantras.33 Thus the three texts were engraved on the pillar of the Temple of the Cypress Forest. For all three texts, the lay-out of the inscription was similar. The title, stating which text was inscribed, was in larger characters, while the text itself was only written in tiny characters, readable probably only at a very close distance and therefore unreadable to worshippers on the ground. The lowest and probably most important inscription, that of the Sūtra of the Honoured, Victorious dhāraṇī of the Buddha’s Uṣṇīṣa, was inscribed in the especially decorative and hard-to-read seal script. Concerning the appearance of the over 15-metre-high pillar of the Temple of the Cypress Forest and the visual practices it implies, several points can be observed. With the increase in height of the pillars, the physical reading of the inscribed texts became impossible. In the early pillars, as in those of the eighth-century Temple of the Original Arising, reading the text while circumambulating the pillar would have been theoretically possible, as it was inscribed at eye-level. Title and text were not very different in size. Although we do not know whether the inscribed texts were meant to be read at all, or how many worshippers were actually able to read, there is no doubt that the lofty position of the inscriptions and the layout in which the texts were inscribed has become more iconic. The presence of the textual body on the pillars was important, not the practice of ritual reading. This 31 http://wapedia.mobi/en/Shurangama_Mantra (28/05/2010). 32 Welch 1967: 56–58. 33 The text was also copied on paper and worn on the body of the believer.

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Image 8: Dhāraṇī pillar in the Temple of the Cypress Forest (Bolinsi), Song Dynasty (960–1270), dated to 1038, Hebei province. Photo by author

iconic aspect of the texts becomes even clearer when we recall the ritual context and the visual similarities stated in the previous chapter. The pillars were conceived of and seen as relic containers, comparable to stūpas. As already stated by

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Shen Xueman, in later pagodas texts were conceived of as bodily relics, and often replaced or were added to the real bodily relics of the Buddha.34 Texts of the Buddha functioned as efficacious bodily testimonies of the Buddha. Thus, not necessarily the content, but the mere existence of the text was of relevance and guaranteed the efficacy of the dhāraṇī pillars. The importance of the Sūtra of the Honoured, Victorious dhāraṇī of the Buddha’s Uṣṇīṣa did decrease over time. While in the Tang Dynasty the only text inscribed was the Sūtra of the Honoured, Victorious dhāraṇī of the Buddha’s Uṣṇīṣa, on the later pillars of the later Song Dynasty often several texts or mantras were inscribed. Thus, the later the pillars, the greater the number of texts assembled on the shafts, testifying not only to the popularity, but also to the importance of the esoteric belief.

Image 9: Detail of the base of the pillar shown in Image 8. Photo by the author

34 Shen Hsueh-man 2001.

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A second, visually important aspect of the dhāraṇī pillars was their elaboration and sumptuous appearance. In the Song Dynasty pillar in Zhaozhou, mentioned above, the base, which is most clearly visible to passers-by as it is at eye-level, is decorated most sumptuously, with guardian deities flanking the well-known profane motif of Women closing doors (funü yanmen 婦女揜門) (Image 9). The next iconographic register displays Bodhisattvas on lotus thrones, while the third shows stories of Buddha’s life. Hence, the lowest parts of the pillar, which are most clearly visible to the viewer, are interestingly also the most sumptuous ones, suggesting that this iconographic splendour was deliberately put at eye-level in order to impress and hopefully attract passers-by. Although the base shows the most distinctive iconographic decoration, the upper tiers of the main shaft are also meticulously decorated with animals and iconic niches, and, of course, contain the three shafts with inscriptions. Besides the sumptuous decoration, the pillars were painted with colour, as well as gilded.35 This colourful coating must have added greatly to the impressive appearance of the high towers and attracted the attention of viewers for miles around. Colour and gold decoration was ubiquitous on sculptures and steles, but must have been very costly in so high a building. The sumptuous decoration of this dhāraṇī pillar can, of course, be interpreted as being intended to attract viewers to the pillar for religious reasons alone: the results of pious acts had to be embellished splendidly. However, one can also assume the more profane purpose of impressing social peers and building up the social capital of the donor through investing so much money to altruistic ends. Thus the elaborateness and height of the pillars announced and underlined not only the iconic efficacy of the inscribed texts; the wealth and the importance of the donors were, of course, displayed at the same time. The viewer would certainly have understood the meaning of the sumptuous decoration and the magnificence of the edifice, thus commemorating and announcing a person’s piety, and at the same time adding greatly to his or her social prestige.

3. The Placement of the Pillars and Their Spatial Contexts Like the height and degree of elaboration of the dhāraṇī pillars, their placement was also extremely important, and can be explained, too, through the visual practices and habits that contemporary Buddhist believers found in the Sūtra of the Honoured, Victorious dhāraṇī of the Buddha’s Uṣṇīṣa. Dhāraṇī pillars were erected in public places and near cross-roads. They are found in the spatial contexts of graveyards and burial mounds. However, as has been established by Liu Shufen

35 Liu Shufen 1997: 655, 656.

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and others, most pillars were erected in temple yards or within the spatial context of temples.36 In the temple yard in front of the former Hall of the Buddhas of the Present (Bozhou dian 般舟殿) on the site of the Lingyan temple, in Changqing district (Changqing, Lingyansi 長清靈岩寺) in Shandong province, more than six dhāraṇī pillars, as well as the remains of several others, have been preserved (Image 10). The photograph taken from the platform of the former hall shows the left part of the yard, with four complete pillars. Stylistic analysis suggests a probable date for the pillars of around the eighth and ninth centuries. The hall itself does not exist any more, but its size alone indicates the importance of the temple. It was founded in 520 under the Northern Wei Dynasty, but flourished during the Tang and Song Dynasties. In the yard in front of the hall, one can get an idea of the numerous pillars which once must have populated the temple yards, as mentioned in the descriptions of temples in the reports by the Japanese monk Ennin, travelling through China in the ninth century.37 The number of these pillars must once have been quite astonishing, as the pillars we see now are only those which survived the great Tang Dynasty Buddhist persecution of 845.38 Thus, our present-day perception of the spatial situation in the former temple yards is inadequate. We can only imagine how it must have been for the visitors and monks of the temple. The yards must have been so crowded by dhāraṇī pillars that it would have been difficult to avoid them, and the visitors would have been forced to find a way between and around them in order to reach the halls of the temple beyond. As in the case of numerous donations of steles and sculptures, one can assume that the monks had a guiding role in the placement of the pillars, and so possibly now and then removed a number of pillars to make way for new ones. Hence, in the ninth- and tenth-century temples, crossing a temple yard inevitably meant passing several dhāraṇī pillars, and visitors to the temple had to adjust their movements to these architectural monuments “littering” the temple yards. According to the Sūtra of the Honoured, Victorious dhāraṇī of the Buddha’s Uṣṇīṣa, however, merely through this endeavour, the walking individuals were sure to gain ample merits through purification, something which surely would have been welcomed. It would therefore be interesting to follow Michel de Certeau’s idea of “strategy” and “tactics” and to investigate, through archaeological and textual evidence, how the placement of the individual pillars was negotiated and what it meant for the visitors’ peripatetic veneration in the temple yards.39

36 37 38 39

Liu Shufen 2008: 86–94. Lin Yun-jo 2008: 176. Kuo Liying 2006: 37. de Certeau 1988: 179–208.

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Image 10: Four Dhāraṇī pillars in the temple-yard in front of the former Hall of the Buddhas of the Present (Bozhou dian 般舟殿), Lingyan temple, Changqing district, Shandong province. Photo by the author

A famous temple site which is closely linked to the history and development of the dhāraṇī pillars is Five Terrace Mountain (Wutaishan 五臺山) in Shanxi province.40 As already described above, the legend of the monk Buddhapāli meeting the Bodhisattva Mañjuśrī on Five Terrace Mountain explained how the Sūtra of the Honoured, Victorious dhāraṇī of the Buddha’s Uṣṇīṣa came to China. It is interesting to note, however, that it was only in the ninth century that this legend was added to the inscriptions of this sūtra on the dhāraṇī pillars. From the ninth century onwards, the sūtra and its purifying and salvational promises flourished, as did, consequently, the erection of dhāraṇī pillars all over China. A further legend that emerged during the tenth century, relating that Buddhapāli stayed with Mañjuśrī and other Bodhisattvas in the Vajra grotto (Jingang ku 金剛窟) on Five Terrace Mountain, may have given further strength to the veneration of practices described in the sūtra and on the dhāraṇī pillars,41 and at the same time shows how popular the stories connected to Five Terrace Mountain and the Sūtra of the Honoured, 40 Liu Shufen 1996: 163–167. 41 Kuo Liying 2006: 41.

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Victorious dhāraṇī of the Buddha’s Uṣṇīṣa were among Chinese believers. Furthermore, as Robert Gimello has shown, Five Terrace Mountain was supported by Chinese emperors not only during the Tang, but also during the Northern Song period.42 Through this imperial support and the popularity of the place itself, the legend of Buddhapāli and the Sūtra of the Honoured, Victorious dhāraṇī of the Buddha’s Uṣṇīṣa greatly increased in popularity during the Song Dynasty. As has been shown by Liu Shufen, this increase in the popularity of Wutaishan and the legend of Buddhapāli coincided with the increase in the numbers of dhāraṇī pillars.43 As was shown in the chapter above, the growing importance of the pillars is also observable and expressed in the increasing height and elaborateness of the pillars. According to Liu’s studies, dhāraṇī pillars were also frequently erected in the context of mortuary places and burial mounds.44 The sūtra promised salvation from hell and to lead to a beneficial rebirth through the cleansing of transgressions. Caring for the dead is of great importance in Chinese culture. Hence, the more esoteric Buddhism spread into the lower strata of Chinese society, the more it became connected to the practices of caring for the dead.45 The inscription on the Kunming pillar states that it is beneficial to erect a dhāraṇī pillar in mortuary places, and classifies these places accordingly: “… The wise way of mourning consists of building an Uṣṇīṣa Vijaya dhāraṇī Precious Pillar. When one erects it and fills in the boundaries, the iron-encircling mountains become the land of bliss. [When one builds the pillar] in a burial ground, hell is transformed into a lotus, one reaches the sacred field of Enlightenment and quickly assembles in the luminous land of eternal stillness.”46 This spatial transfer from one place to another adds another aspect to the visual context of the dhāraṇī pillars. As cited in the text above, the place where the pillar is erected becomes transformed into a sacred space by the dhāraṇī’s power. The viewer and the passers-by were thus transported into a holy and pure Buddha field. The pious Buddhist, like the Catholic in the Christian context, would strive to walk or stay near such pillars, as, by doing so, not only were their sins purged, but they themselves were also transferred into a holy territory. Thus, as in the case of the pillars in mortuary places, not only the visual practices of the people were guided by the pillars, but also their peripatetic habits.

42 43 44 45 46

Gimello 1992. Liu Shufen 1997: 658. Liu Shufen 1996: 186. Liu Shufen 2008: 178. Howard 1997: 71.

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Another category of places where pillars were erected was that of public, highly frequented places, such as cross-roads or bridges or wells. In such places, one could be sure that the pillars would be seen by, and would attract, a large number of people.47 The public nature of the place was therefore important, just as the height of the pillars themselves, both of these factors contributing to the redemption of as many viewers and passers-by as possible. Although Liu Shufen could show that a public place was not only mandatory for pillars, but for steles and sculptures as well,48 as could be shown above, the tradition of choosing a place of high public relevance in the Buddhist context goes back to the pious Buddhist king Aśoka. Thus, already King Aśoka deliberately chose public places, where the pillars would be seen, and the suggestion that the dhāraṇī pillars and the Sūtra of the Honoured, Victorious dhāraṇī of the Buddha’s Uṣṇīṣa stand in this lineage is hard to ignore. Besides their height and elaborateness, then, their placement in space was an equally important characteristic and guarantee of the efficacy of the dhāraṇī pillars and their peripatetic reception.

4. Summary The origins of the pillars’ architectural structure have been discussed in chapter 1 above. The documentation cited here clearly shows that the design of the dhāraṇī pillars was an amalgamation of Chinese and Indian sources. Interestingly, the forms that were closest in shape to the dhāraṇī pillar stressed the Buddhist ability of salvation in their inscribed texts, offering purification and the hope of escaping the eternal circle of rebirth and the sufferings of hell. In monuments like the Aśoka pillars, the stūpas, the cave-temple columns, and the miniature stūpas, seeing and walking around or near them was of vital importance. The Chinese examples of the cave-temple columns, being closest in their elongated shape to the dhāraṇī pillars, reflected this ability especially clearly through the engraved texts of rituals of purification. Thus, the seeing and peripatetic perception of these monuments was important for achieving purification, gaining merits, and, through this, finally being able to reach enlightenment. As has been shown in chapter 2 above, the dhāraṇī pillars grew to extraordinary heights during the Song Dynasty. Their growth in height and sumptuous display can be related directly to the claim of the Sūtra of the Honoured, Victorious dhāraṇī of the Buddha’s Uṣṇīṣa that the seeing or perception of the pillars was enough to achieve salvation. Thus, the higher the pillars, the more people would be saved, and the more merits the donors themselves would thereby gain. Hence, visual practices influenced the shape and structure of the pillars. 47 Liu Shufen 1996: 186. 48 Ibid.

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In chapter 3, the question of the peripatetic veneration of these pillars and their installation in ritual spaces was examined. It was observed that dhāraṇī pillars must have been almost ubiquitous, as they were installed in many public places, most often in temple yards, where they could always be seen and circumambulated. The great number of the pillars not only seems to be connected to an increase in the veneration at Mount Wutai, closely connected with the legendary origin of the text, but also to the close connection of the pillars with salvation from hell and the care of the dead. Hence, in stressing an analysis of material objects like the dhāraṇī pillars, the perspective of acts of seeing and walking, the object and its meaning in ritual practices can be perceived in a more holistic manner. Following this line of inquiry, propounded in David Morgan’s work on visual studies, offers, without doubt, new and promising viewpoints from which material objects can be analysed in future.

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References Bhandarkar, Devadatta Ramkrishna 2005. Aśoka. New Delhi: Asian Educational Services (reprint of the 1925 original (Calcutta: Calcutta University Press)). Certeau, Michel de 1988. Kunst des Handelns. Berlin: Merve Verlag (French original 1980. L’invention du quotidien. Vol. 1: Arts de faire). Ebrey, Patricia 1999. “Introduction to a Symposium on the Visual Dimensions of Chinese Culture”. Asia Major 12/1: 1–7. Falk, Harry 2006. Aśokan Sites and Artefacts: A Source-book with Bibliography. Mainz: Philipp von Zabern. Gao Yingmin 高英民 1982. “Zhaoxian tuoluoni jing zhuang 趙縣陀羅尼經” [The Dharani pillar of Zhao district]. Wenwu Tiandi 文物天地 6: 39. Gimello, Robert M. 1992. “Chang Shang-ying on Wu-t’ai Shan”. In: Susan Naquin & Chün-fang Yü (eds.). Pilgrims and Sacred Sites in China. Berkeley: University of California Press: 89–149. Howard, Angela 1997. “The Dhāraṇī Pillar of Kunming, Yunnan. A Legacy of Esoteric Buddhism and Burial Rites of the Bai People in the Kingdom of Dali (937–1253)”. Artibus Asiae 57/1,2: 33–72. Juliano, Annette L. & Judith A. Lerner 2001. Monks and Merchants: Silk Road Treasures from Northwest China. Gansu and Ningxia, 4th to 7th Century. Catalogue of an Exhibition at the Asia Society, Oct. 13 2001 – Feb. 6 2002. New York: Harry N. Abrams. Kieschnick, John 1999. “The Symbolism of the Monk’s Robe in China”. Asia Major 12/1: 9–32. Klimburg-Salter, Deborah E. 1995. Buddha in Indien – Die frühindische Skulptur von König Asoka bis zur Guptazeit. Exhibition Catalogue of the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna 2 April–16 July 1995. Milan: Skira. Kuo, Liying 2006. “Inscriptions on Stone Banners (shichuang 石幢): Text and Context”. Chinese Epigraphical Documents: Projects and Perspectives (Kyoto Workshop): 37–52 (http://coe21.zinbun.kyoto-u.ac.jp/sekkoku2006.pdf 12/09/2009). Li Yuqun 李裕群 1997. “Yecheng diqu shiku yu kejing 鄴城地區石窟與刻經”. [The Cave-Temples of the Yecheng Area and Stone-Inscriptions]. Kaogu xuebao 考 古學報 4: 443–479. Lin Yun-jo 林韻柔 2008. “Tangdai Foding zunsheng tuoluoni jing’ de yizhuan yu xinyang 唐代佛頂尊生陀羅尼經的譯傳與信仰” [The Translation and Popularization of Buddhoṣṇīṣavijayadhāraṇī Sūtra in T’ang Dynasty]. Fagu foxue xuebao 法 鼓佛學學報 [Dharma Drum Journal of Buddhist Studies] 3: 145–193. Liu Shufen 劉淑芬 1996. “Foding zunsheng tuoluoni jing yu Tangdai zunsheng jingzhuang de jianli-jingzhuang yanjiu zhiyi 佛頂尊生陀羅尼經與唐代尊生經幢 的建立 經幢研究之一” [Sūtra of the Honoured, Victorious Dhāraṇī of the Buddha’s Uṣṇīṣa and the erecting of dhāraṇī pillars during the Tang Dynasty 1, part of “Research in dhāraṇī pillars”]. Zhongyang yanjiuyuan lishi yuyan yanjiusuo jikan 中央研究院歷史語言研究所集刊 3: 145–193.

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— 1997: “Jingzhuang de xingzhi, xingzhi he laiyuan-jingzhuang yanjiu zhier 經幢的形 制，性質和來源 經幢研究之二”. [Origin, material and structure of dhāraṇī pillars 2, part of “Research in dhāraṇī pillars”]. Zhongyang yanjiuyuan lishi yuyan yanjiusuo jikan 中央研究院歷史語言研究所集刊 9: 643–786. — 2008. Miezui yu duwang: Foding zunsheng tuoluoni jing zhi yanjiu 滅罪與度亡: 佛 頂尊生陀羅尼經幢之研究 [Purify from Sins and Save the Lost from Hell: Research in the Sūtra of the Honoured, Victorious dhāraṇī of the Buddha’s uṣṇīṣa]. Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe 上海古籍出版社. Lu Zengxiang 陸增祥 & Liu Chenggan 劉承幹 (eds.). 1986. “Baqiong shi jinshi buzheng 八瓊室金石補正” [Corrections to the “Chamber of Eight Fine Jades” of metal and stone], 卷 juan [Vol.] 82: 31–33. In: Yang Dianxun 楊殿珣 (ed.). Shike shiliao xinbian san (er shi liu) 石刻史料新編三 (二十六) [New Edition of Historical Materials carved on Stone] Series 3 Vol. 26. Taibei: Xinwenfeng chubanshe 臺 北新文豐出版社: 5336–5337. Morgan, David 2005. The Sacred Gaze: Religious Visual Culture in Theory and Practice. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press. Murata, Jirō 村田治郎 1973. “Chogoku seki … . 中國石幢小史 – A Brief History on Chinese Stone Pagoda”. Ars Buddhica 佛教藝術 93: 16–36. Rösch, Petra H. 2009. „Vergehen reinigen und Verdienste erwerben: Die Familie Chen stiftet eine Buddhistische Stele“. In: Claus Ambos et al.: Bild und Ritual: Rituale in Visuellen Kulturen. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft: 29–42. — (in press). “The Fifty-three Buddhas of Confesssion”. In: Haus der Japanischen Kultur (EKŌ) in Düsseldorf (ed.). Hōrin 15: Vergleichende Studien zur Japanischen Kultur. Munich: Judicium. Shen, Hsueh-man 2001. “Realizing the Buddha’s Dharma Body during the Mofa Period: A Study of Liao Buddhist Relic Deposits”. Artibus Asiae 61/2: 263–303. Wang, Eugene Y. 1999. “What Do Trigrams Have to Do with Buddhas? The Northern Liang Stupas as a Hybrid Spatial Model”. Res: Anthropology and Aesthetics 35: 70–91. Wang Huimin 王惠民 1991. “Dunhuang Foding zunsheng duoluoni jingbian kaoshi 敦 煌佛頂尊勝陀羅尼經編考試” [Thoughts on the Editions of the Buddha Uṣṇīṣa Vijaya Dhāraṇī Sūtra]. Dunhuang yanjiu 敦煌研究 1: 7–18. Welch, Holmes 1967. The Practice of Chinese Buddhism 1900–1950. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Wong, Grace (ed.) 1990. Treasures from the Han. Exhibition Catalogue (May 1990– May 1991). Singapore: Historical & Cultural Exhibition Pte. Ltd. Wu, Hung & Katherine R. Tsiang (eds.) 2005. Body and Face in Chinese Visual Culture. Cambridge, London: Harvard University Press. Yin Guangming 殷光明 2000. Beijing shita yanjiu 北京石塔研究 [The Stone stūpas of the Northern Liang Dynasty]. Beijing: Chueh Feng Buddhist Art and Culture Foundation 覺風佛教藝術文化基金會.

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Zhongguo Siguan Diaosu Quanji 中國寺觀雕塑全集 [Chinese Monastery Sculpture Series] 2003. Vol. 1: Zaoqi Siguan Zaoxiang 早期寺觀造像 [Early Monastery Statues]. Harbin: Heilongjiang Meishu chubanshe 黑龍江美術出版社. [Text in Chinese].

Corinna Wessels-Mevissen

Festival Vehicles and Motif Lamps: Reflections on Visual Elements in South Indian Temple Ritual Introduction Figural festival vehicles and motif lamps may be subsumed under the generic term of temple paraphernalia. This rather large category comprises a wide range of functional objects, all of which should be scrutinised for their role as “visual elements”. 1 While the figural vehicles and motif lamps will be at the focus of the present study, non-motif vehicles and non-motif lamps have been referred to as well, in order to point out the linkage that exists between figural and non-motif members of the same functional group. Vehicles used during “perennial” or “large” festivals (respectively, nityotsava and mahotsava)2 are wooden supports for the images of deities, which characteristically assume the shapes of animals, birds, and hybrids, mostly taken from the group of individual mythological carriers of the gods (vāhana). 3 However, the overall spectrum clearly transgresses this group and also includes inanimate objects as well as non-motif carriers, which have not been sufficiently studied as yet. These conveyances are generally carried by devotees with the help of poles or, at least temporarily, moved along by means of wheels. The second category comprises a peculiar series of mobile lamps, some of which are characterised by small images, also with a wide range of possible motifs. As far as the first category is

1 L’Hernault & Reiniche (1999: e.g. 55, 85) illustrate a number of these. Nandagopal (1995) has devoted a monograph to “Ritual Utensils” from Karnataka. Festival vehicles and other conveyances are treated under the heading “Temple Ensembles” (1995: 153–178), while “Deepa – The Lamp” is treated separately (1995: 113–150). 2 Because of limited space, I shall not strictly refer to both Sanskrit and Tamil (hereafter Tam.) terms, which have been reported. Sanskrit words remain without language specification. 3 Literary references to the gods’ individual vāhanas can be found in various literary genres. So far, no comprehensive study has been devoted to them. The best-known ones are bull (often referred to as Nandin) for Śiva, Garuḍa for Viṣṇu, lion for the Goddess, peacock for Skanda Kārttikeya/Subrahmaṇya, and shrew (mūṣika) for Gaṇeśa.

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concerned, a few authors have so far dealt with festival vāhanas,4 which are typically known from the Hindu temples of a larger size and a more complex organisation in Tamilnadu. Lamps, particularly the series, which are employed in Tamil temples, have been studied to a significantly lesser extent.5

The Role of Visual Elements in South Indian Temple Ritual In the larger Hindu temples of South India, the worship centres around the temple’s main deity, which is generally embodied in a figural stone image or a “sign” (liṅga, for the god Śiva).6 Starting from there, a more complex, multilayered visual representation is achieved by manipulating the divine images. Such an enhanced visual complexity is apparently created during the consecutive daily pūjās, but also during festivals, which are organised so frequently that they form a ritual year cycle. The evaluated evidence is based mainly on contemporary records, but the tradition can be traced back several centuries, perhaps even more than a millennium.7 The deities are clad in colourful garments, decorated with precious ornaments, arches or backplates, and flower garlands, and supplied with royal insignia, which are kept close to them, held by priestly attendants. This is extensively practised during processions, when the divine presence of the main icon is transferred into metal images, which leave the temple and are carried through the streets, sometimes for long distances. In the devotional context of pūjā and festival, the costume, decoration, and adornment of the images of deities is called alaṃkāra – “decoration”.8 Anthony Good has aptly observed: “Etymologically, alaṅkāram [alternative spelling] conveys ideas of adequacy, completeness, and making ready; it is not mere decoration, but a means of imbuing the image with form and strength. Finery is thus an integral part of the deity, not an optional extra.”9 He also observes that “festival images often have extra limbs attached during decoration”. 10 This “completeness” and

4 Smith 1981; Waghorne 1991. Both authors give a general overview, including some interesting observations. 5 Catalogues on lamps in India are: Kelkar 1961; Raja Dinkar Kelkar Museum 1988; Anderson 2006. 6 As far as the material is concerned, the bronze image of Śiva Naṭarāja in the sanctum sanctorum of the Naṭarāja temple at Chidambaram is a notable exception. 7 Orr 2004: 437–440. 8 As one of the compulsory steps of a pūjā, “alaṃkāra” has been laid down in the Viṣṇusmṛti (Bühnemann 1988: 36). Good (2004: 26) mentions it as one of the four minimum components of a pūjā as performed in the Kalugumalai temple, the others being unction, food offering, and lamp showing. 9 Good 2001: 503. 10 Ibidem.

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“making ready” obviously refers to a transformatory process, which renders the product a receptacle qualified for holding divine power.11

Image 1: Madurai, Mīnākṣī-Sundareśvara temple, Vīravasantarāya maṇḍapa, goddess Mīnākṣī on bull vehicle being worshipped with a 7-flame camphor light at the outset of a procession. Photo: Richard H. Davis

In festival processions, the most conspicuous visual elements are the vāhanas (not explicitly subsumed under alaṃkāra), which are considerably larger than the processional images themselves (Images 1–2) and thus have a visually dominating effect. During festivals lasting several days, they are used alternately with non-motif palanquins and the huge car or chariot (ratha, Tam. tēr) pulled by the devotees, so that the main deities are riding a sequence of different vāhanas in the course of every elaborate festival. Besides the animate ones, shaped as animals, birds, or mythical beings, inanimate objects also serve as conveyances.

11 Berti (2004: 106–108) has assembled important evidence from Himachal Pradesh and other comparative material, which points to the overriding ritual meaning of ornamental detail for the efficacy of divine embodiment. Interestingly, Hunter (2010) introduces an interesting parallel from Bali, where “mapayas” serves exactly the same ends.

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Image 2: Tribhuvanam, Kampahāreśvara temple, elephant vehicle (4-tusked), second half of twentieth century. Behind stands the peacock vehicle. Photo: Corinna Wessels-Mevissen

Significantly, the motifs found on mobile lamps appear to be taken from the same spectrum as those, which serve as festival vehicles. As will be demonstrated below, the range of figural agents is quite similar. However, it is difficult to assess the full spectrum, as the variants seem to be virtually limitless in both categories.12 More field studies concentrating on particular temples would be useful to further our knowledge in this respect. At least in part, the presence of such visual elements 12 The fieldwork on lamps was carried out in the Kamadchi Ampal (Kāmākṣī) temple, HammUentrop, in the Religionskundliche Sammlung, Philipps-Universität Marburg, and at Madurai, Mīnākṣī-Sundareśvara temple and the surrounding shops for devotional objects. The Marburg collection, which was assembled in 1992, contains e.g. the “Western” book motif, which was identified as a recent creation. In December 2008, I saw a few series of motif lamps in the above-metioned shops, which differed from those collected in 1992 (taken from the same locality). As concerns the figural festival vehicles, it is the wide range, which makes me assume that a proliferation has taken place.

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during ritual can be explained by the objective of creating an exceedingly complex appearance of the divinity and, accordingly, enhance the worshipper’s experience. Some of the temple paraphernalia also recall royal accoutrements, although it is often difficult to assess the possibility of an overlap of the divine and royal spheres.13 The case of the mobile lamps is slightly different. The lamp motif (Images 3–7) does not touch the object of veneration, but its frontal orientation points to the intended close interaction with the deity to which the respective series of lamps is shown. Apart from perceiving a kind of additive effect, it is the “interaction” of a relatively static icon, the deity,14 with a moving image, which deserves particular attention. With regard to both types of temple paraphernalia, it may thus be noted at the outset that an image of a deity at a limited period of time, i.e. during a procession and during an elaborate lamp ritual, is both augmented and surrounded by specific visual elements, with some of the latter comprising particular sequences of rather wide-ranging figural objects.

Festival Vehicles In this short study, it is impossible to explore all existing carriers of the deities employed during the major festivals (called mahotsava or brahmotsava). The diversity of motifs encountered at present is intriguing, while the historic development, particularly of the visual aspects, cannot be fully reconstructed as yet. Orr has devoted an in-depth study to the major issues pertaining to South Indian temple processions, which has already shed much light on this very specific tradition, for which the earliest records date from the sixth century.15 An even greater antiquity of procession ritual in India is, for example, documented by a terracotta tablet of approximately the first century B.C. from Chandraketugarh.16 Detailed scenes of processions are extremely rarely expressed in art. Only a few relatively late depictions of temple cars17 and festival vāhanas18 are known. Static stone sculptures of individual vāhanas, animals, or hybrids, which are closely linked to their divine “master”, have existed from the early mediaeval pe13 In a paradigmatic article Stein (1983) describes the extraordinarily close interlinkage of the spheres of the king and his tutelary deity during the mahānavamī festival in the Vijayanāgara period. 14 Both the temple’s static icons, the mūlamūrtis, as well as the processional images, the utsavamūrtis, can be the object of worship by means of motif lamps and associated lamps. 15 Orr 2004. 16 Ahuja 2005: 351, fig. 15. 17 E.g. Branfoot 2007: 168, fig. 6.4. 18 E.g. Davis 2002: fig. 7.

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riod onwards.19 It cannot be exactly determined when the custom of keeping their images in the main deity’s line of sight originated. In South India, this architectural situation has been reported from the sixth century onwards. 20 The line of sight closely connects the god and his or her personal carrier positioned at a certain distance, depending on the size of the temple.21 As far as festival vāhanas are concerned, the most important feature is that the main deity is assigned a variety of vehicles during the successive processions, among which its “proper” vāhana generally occurs. The changing vehicles have been perceived as highlighting the deity in his or her different aspects.22 The most common vehicles in the Śaiva context, including the Goddess, are bull (Image 1), elephant (Image 2), horse, lion, serpent, parrot, goose, peacock, rat, ram, goat, stag, and makara (a mythical aquatic animal). A number of these recur in the Vaiṣṇava context, but additionally, Garuḍa, Viṣṇu’s main vehicle, is represented, as well as Hanuman and the serpent Anantaśeṣa, who are likewise popular characters in Vaiṣṇava mythology. All these vāhanas are known from their close relationships with particular deities.23 It is interesting to note a variant of Śiva’s bull vehicle known as “Adhikāra Nandi” – a hybrid form of the bull (animal head with a human body), which in fact corresponds to one of Śiva’s attendants.24 Another group is formed by mythical and composite beings, which do not normally serve as vehicles or associated animals, namely yāḷi (hybrid animal with leonine features), gandharva (divine musician), bhūta (male demon), the wish-fulfilling hybrid cow Kāmadhenu, and a peculiar half-lion, half-human character

19 Gonda (1965), in his contribution on vāhanas in Hinduism and their possible predecessors, has aptly pointed out that some links and affinities between certain deities and particular animals can already be inferred from the Vedic texts. It is important to note that this relationship differs from the rather fixed one which we find in the later, Purāṇic, situation. In a few exceptional cases, a deity can be associated with various vāhanas. 20 Tartakov 2005. 21 This is illustrated by the notice in the Kamadchi (Kāmākṣī) Ampal temple at Hamm-Uentrop, Germany, asking visitors not to come between the goddess and her lion vehicle. A thrilling example for the worshippers’ perception of this line of sight during a daily rite has been given by Anthony Good (2001: 499; 2004: 34): “A single lamp is offered […] to the peacock and flagstaff. As this is being shown, worshippers glance hastily from Peacock to Murtti, as if watching something (a glance? darshan?) pass from one to the other”. 22 “[The Mahotsavavidhi] recommends that Śiva ride a variety of vehicles in his twice-daily processions, which point to different aspects of Śiva’s lordly nature” (Davis 2010: 56). Some texts prescribe that, for every procession, a different aspect of Śiva is taken out (cf. BarazerBilloret 1999: 140, n. 57). However, the characteristic brevity of the Āgamas renders this a difficult field of inquiry. 23 The stag (Tam. māṉ) serves as a festival vehicle for the goddess Kāmākṣī at Kanchipuram. 24 Cf. Goodall et al. 2005: 169 and fig. 17.

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called Puruṣamṛga. 25 Inanimate vehicles comprise sunlight (suryaprabhā) and moonlight (candraprabhā), the “tree of plenty” (kalpataru), and Mount Kailāsa, Śiva’s residence, generally with a prominent figure of his demon devotee Rāvaṇa in the front. Previous authors have mentioned other variants, such as “fish” and “boar” (Waghorne 1991: 23), “8-footed ‘Sarabha’” (Śarabha, a lion-bird hybrid form of Śiva) and “Vanara” (vānara) – monkey,26 and “rooster-vehicle [...] ‘Kukkuta’” (kukkuṭa).27 In order to illustrate the ritual structure, two examples from present-day practice will be given here. These examples reveal a certain parallelism. The first one is from the Aruṇācaleśvara temple, Tiruvannamalai.28 Here, the deity Candraśekhara (the moon-crested Śiva) is taken around on the second through sixth and on the eighth and ninth days of the Kārttikai brahmotsava festival, on the following conveyances: (day 2) sunlight (sūryaprabhā), (day 3) demon (bhūta), (day 4) serpent, (day 5) small bull, (day 6) elephant, (day 8) horse, (day 9) mirror palanquin (Tam. kaṇṇāḍi palakku). The second example is from Chidambaram,29 where Naṭarāja, the famous dancing form of Śiva, is taken out in procession on the second through ninth days and on the eleventh festival day: (day 2) moonlight (candraprabhā), (day 3) sunlight (sūryaprabhā), (day 4) demon (bhūta), (day 5) bull, (day 6) elephant, (day 7) Mount Kailāsa, (day 8) horse, (day 9) large chariot (ratha), (day 11) palanquin decorated with pearls (Tam. muttu-p-pallakku). Although we are concerned with two different temple towns and two distinct forms of Śiva, the sequences are comparable to some extent, starting with the major luminaries, sun and moon (Tiruvannamalai: only sun) and ending with an individually decorated palanquin. The overall picture presented by an elaborate festival, however, is much more intricate, as several deities are taken out in procession twice a day, in the morning and in the evening (there are exceptions to this, see below). These are generally the five main deities of a temple (pañcamūrti), besides other deities or saints, who are taken out less frequently and are less liable to change their vehicles.30 Prescriptions for certain vāhanas and other conveyances are extant in the “Festival Rules” laid down in most of the mediaeval Śaiva Āgamas and associated 25 The overall popularity of the Puruṣamṛga, which may be classified as a yāḷi, clearly rose during and after the twelfth century. He seems to be a particularly “integrative”, multi-functional figure, and most probably was adopted from a local background. Puruṣamṛga has become a mythological figure, described as an ardent worshipper of Śiva (Wessels-Mevissen 2006: 247–248; 2009: 206–208). Significantly, he also appears on motif lamps. 26 Smith 1981: 20. 27 Ibid.: 23, note. 28 L’Hernault & Reiniche 1999: 94. 29 Natarajan 1994: 352–353. 30 Cf. L’Hernault & Reiniche 1999: 94.

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texts. However, the injunctions found in these Sanskrit scriptural corpora remain short and often cryptic, the texts tending to be corrupt, so that the actual ritual practices cannot be fully reconstructed from these passages. Temple priests refer to specific texts as the canonic basis for the excecution of the rituals, but, as Fuller has observed in his report on the Minākṣī-Sundareśvara temple: “For specific ritual details in festivals, the same applies as for the daily worship; they are stored not in texts but in officiants’ memories.”31 Nevertheless, as far as the festival vehicles are concerned, a rather high degree of corroboration between text and actual practice has been reported from Kanchipuram.32 A relevant text is the Mahotsavavidhi, which is treated by Davis as a part of the Kriyākramadyotikā ascribed to Aghoraśiva, a twelfth century author of religious manuals.33 This attribution is doubtful, however,34 and it can be surmised that the text is younger. Although the Mahotsavavidhi has alternatively been regarded as a compilation, the facts that it is unsually detailed, and that it is treated as authoritative by a number of temples, 35 make it a valuable source of inquiry. Here it is clearly prescribed that Śiva, the main deity, should be taken out in procession twice a day during the ten days of the Great Festival. On the morning of the first day – (day 1) it is literally a “stage” (raṅga, translated as “cart”36) and a lion at night; continuing this twice-daily schedule, on the second day – (day 2) sun and moon; (day 3) bhūta and goose (haṃsa); (day 4) serpent and bull; (day 5) swing and Rāvaṇa (Śiva’s ten-headed demon devotee), upholding the god’s mountain Kailāsa; (day 6) palanquin or a shield-like platform and elephant; (day 7) chariot and wishing tree; (day 8) swing and horse; (day 9) swing vehicle with anthropomorphic features and shield-like platform; (day 10) lion-throne, a palanquin, or some other conveyance; no second procession.37 31 Fuller 1984: 143. He goes as far as the following statement: “We must therefore conclude that when priests, or anyone else, insist that the Minaksi Temple’s ritual tradition is, in all its particulars, laid down in Āgamic texts, they are in error and their misapprehension once more derives, in part, from the belief that those texts provide a set of precise and straightforward liturgical directions” (cf. ibid.: 144–146, 166). 32 Ute Hüsken (e-mail of 8 September 2008) has observed that in the Varadarājaperumal temple at Kanchipuram, a perfect corroboration exists between the festival conveyances mentioned in the Āgamic texts cited by the priests and the ritual practice. 33 Davis 2010: 6–9. For the Sanskrit text in Devanagari see ibid.: 148–171, cf. the transcribed text of Davis 2008 (from now on referred to as Mahotsavavidhi). The Mahotsavavidhi reproduced by Davis (2008 and 2010) is based on Swaminatha Sivacarya 1974 and one earlier edition. 34 Goodall 1998: xiii, n. 24. 35 Fuller 1984: 136. 36 Davis 2010: 108, table 6A. This is plausible, as both a (temporary) stage and a festival car share the basic features of a pavilion. 37 Davis 2010: 108, table 6A.

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It may be noted that there seems to be an underlying sequence, not only in the Śaiva, but also extending to the Vaiṣṇava context, as a partially corresponding sequence has been reported from the Varadarājasvāmi temple at Kanchipuram.38 This basic sequence may be tentatively outlined as: lion – individual vāhana (bull for Śiva, etc.) – elephant – horse. It is also quite common that the very first conveyance is a non-motif one, and that sunlight, and sometimes also moonlight, feature during the early days of the festival. Among the vehicles identified here, only the horse seems to be embedded in a specific ritual context, which is the rite of a hunting expedition (sometimes referred to as mṛgayātrā), which makes the choice of this conveyance somewhat plausible. It is generally enacted during the latter part of the festival.39 Some textual hints at interpretational concepts are contained, not within the corpus of Śaiva Āgamas and associated texts, where practically no space has been devoted to explanation and interpretation, but in the Vaiṣṇava Vaikhānasa textual corpus. According to Colas,40 the Khilādhikāra conceives of the temple festival as a “body” and does this in a twofold way. In the first concept, the days of the festival form a body in such a manner that each day is a member and the junctures of the three divisions of the day (saṃdhyā) are the secondary members. The second concept regards the god Viṣṇu himself as the body, the attributes he is holding as the totality of members, the offerings of “tribute” (bali) regularly made to minor deities during the festival, most probably, as the secondary members and, quite significantly, the visual elements, paraphernalia like the chariot, the flag, the parasol, the flywhisk, etc., as its ornaments (bhūṣaṇa). Thus, there are concepts viewing the festival as an entity in its own right, which is constituted by various elements, on the temporal level in the first case and on the morphological level in the second. The all-encompassing character of a temple festival has been described by Davis as follows: “[The] divine profusion is even more apparent during the mahotsava. Over the course of the festival, Śiva appears not only in the Śiva-liṅga and the mobile festival icons, but also in the flagpole, in a sacrificial fire, in the Trident, 38 Raman (2003: 103) gives the daily sequence during the brahmotsava festival as follows: (day 1) golden canopy (latter word: Tam. capparam) and lion; (day 2) goose and sun-vehicle; (day 3) Garuḍa and Hanuman; (day 4) serpent Śeṣa and moon-vehicle; (day 5) Mohinī in a golden palanquin and yāḷi; (day 6) canopy and elephant; (day 7) car and – no procession –; (day 8) – no procession – and horse; (day 9) swinging palanquin and puṇyakoṭi vimāna (“ten million merits aerial vehicle”); (day 10) – no procession – and veṭṭivēr capparam (Tam., rectified version), a palanquin decorated with moistened vetiver. 39 The Mahotsvavidhi mentions that on this occasion the temple women called rudragaṇikās (equivalent to devadāsīs) also ride horses and carry various weapons (Davis 2010: 110, cf. 46). 40 Colas 1996: 323.

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Corinna Wessels-Mevissen in a consecrated pot of water, in the festival bherī-drum, within the chariot Śiva will also ride, and in rice mixed with ghee and yogurt and molded into the shape of a liṅga [during the bali procession]. Priests even invoke Śiva into a bowl of moist paste that is smeared on the liṅga, the icons, and the devotees just before the great chariot procession on the seventh day. Some Āgamas describe the priest himself as a form of Śiva, a ‘mobile liṅga’ (calaliṅga). It is as if the festival were designed to offer a practical demonstration of Śiva’s ubiquity.”41

Motif Lamps and Associated Lamps Lamps fuelled by vegetable oil or ghee made from cow’s milk are employed for a wide range of rituals in India. They are regarded as highly auspicious. While lamps are not reported from Vedic rituals, they seem to have gained increasing importance in worship ceremonies during the development of Brahmanism/Hinduism proper, which may be roughly assigned to a few centuries before and after the beginning of the Christian era. The regional development shows differences as to the predilection and elaborateness of the use of lamps in temple and in private worship. As another fuel for which a slightly different device is needed, camphor is sometimes preferred to the oil or ghee lamp, as it burns without residue and with a “cooling” flame, the purifying nature of which is particularly appreciated. Nowadays, the last light offered to a deity is always a lamp with one or more camphor flames.42 Lamps occur in a fascinating range of shapes. In order not to exceed the given spatial limitations, I shall restrict myself to a few textual records, as well as Good’s reports from Kalugumalai and my own observations of the “bedchamber worship with lamps”, paḷḷiyaṟai dīpārādhanai (Tam.), at the Mīnākṣī-Sundareśvara temple in Madurai. It is interesting to note that some of the lamps in question are at times referred to as alaṃkāra dīpa and thus associated with the phenomenon of ritual “decoration” and the “completion of worship” as outlined by Good.43 The liturgical function of camphor lamps is outstanding, as only in their case do the worshippers have an opportunity to pass their hands over the lamp flame and thus receive a blessing or experience of communion with the divine. This is called “taking camphor”.44 41 Davis 2010: 38. 42 Nandagopal (1995: 146), while referring to ritual practices in Karnataka, mentions this also for the beginning: “It is a normal practice among the Hindu temples to light a few pieces of camphor and offer it to the deity at the beginning and at the end of each ritual with a belief that this will ward off any evil eye cast on the bejewelled and richly decorated deity”. 43 Good 2001: 498, 499, 503. 44 E.g. ibid.: 499.

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The worship by means of a lamp, dīpa, forms one step during the second half of the common sixteen-step (ṣoḍaśopacāra) smārta-pūjā, and it is generally carried out between the offering of incense (dhūpa) and the offering of food (naivedya).45 However, another more significant lamp-showing generally occurs towards the conclusion of the pūjā, which is, in the Maharashtrian context, referred to as the step of the “mahānīrājanadīpa (great lamp for waving)” (ibid.), the most intrinsic feature of which is the waving process, i.e. the movement of the lamp in circles or in the shape of the sacred syllable “om”.46 The waving of lamps is most commonly referred to as dīpārādhanā (Tam.: -ai). The nīrājana (also: nīrāñjana), on the other hand, has a long history, and it does not always involve lamps, but can be carried out with a liquid agent or cooked rice as well. The sixth-century Bṛhatsaṃhitā (Chapter 44) applies this term to a “lustration of arms and horses” by means of twigs dipped in sanctified water. Accordingly, the purificatory and transformatory aspects of a nīrājana have always been particularly emphasized. 47 When studying lamp ritual, one meets with several difficulties. One of these is the high degree of variability, which makes it a rather difficult topic to be explored. Lamp ritual is an essential part of worship and therefore absolutely ubiquitous in India. In temple ritual, it seems that the sequence of lamps is particularly liable to variation. For instance, a reason for a somewhat incomplete lamp ritual was reported to me at Madurai, where certain lamps were said to be broken and awaiting replacement. 48 Moreover, the normative texts remain generally silent about the various types of lamps. Thus, I have been able to find only two systematic lists of sixteen lamps, one of which is contained in the Parārthanityapūjāvidhi, attributed to the twelfth-century author Aghoraśiva, but also almost certainly of a later date.49 The enumeration obviously occurs in a kind of addendum to this text, given in connection with the evening worship sāyaṃrakṣā (“evening protection”, not reckoned among the daily pūjās): 45 Bühnemann 1988: 103. 46 Cf. Tachikawa & Hino & Deodhar 2001: 54–57 (recorded in the Catuḥśṛṇgī temple, Pune). The dīpa step (12) is followed by the offering of food (13), which is succeeded by “Circling the Deity Clockwise (Pradakṣiṇā) and Waving the Lamp (Ārātrika)” (14). The lamp waving is described as follows: “The ārātrika lamp held in the right hand of the priest kept moving in circles. At first it moved a circle counterclockwise, then clockwise. The motion lasted for about five minutes. […] Although the waving of the lamp is not counted as a step of the Ṣoḍaśa-upacāra-pūjā, it has become the climax of this ritual” (ibid.: 57). The final steps are salutation (namaskāra) and offering flowers with the recitation of a mantra (mantrapuṣpa). For the custom of tracing the pattern of the syllable “om” see an Āgamic reference cited by Bhatt (2008: 418, n. 405). 47 The Bṛhatsaṃhitā (44:21) mentions the performance of an abhicāra (“black magic”) rite in this context, which serves to counteract enemies (cf. Ramakrishna Bhat 1981–1982). 48 Mīnākṣī-Sundareśvara temple, Madurai, 12 December 2008. For further details see below. 49 Brunner 1999: 267.

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(1) flower lamp (puṣpadīpa), (2) man lamp (puruṣadīpa), (3) serpent lamp (nāgadīpa), (4) elephant lamp (gajadīpa), (5) tiger lamp (vyāghradīpa), (6) goose lamp (haṃsadīpa), (7) horse lamp (vājidīpa), (8) lion lamp (siṃhadīpa), (9) trident lamp ([tri]śūladīpa), (10) Ketu lamp (ketudīpa), (11) bull lamp (vṛṣabhadīpa), (12) bee lamp (bhramaradīpa), (13) rooster lamp (kukkuṭadīpa), (14) tortoise lamp (kūrmadīpa), (15) sacrificial ladle lamp (srukdīpa), (16) energy lamp (śaktidīpa) (Brunner: 322). The Śambhupuṣpāñjali of Saundaranātha provides the second reference to sixteen lamps, again clearly referring to particular motifs. It is of an uncertain date, with a terminus post quem of the twelfth century.50 The list runs as follows: (1) flower lamp (puṣpadīpa), (2) serpent lamp (nāgadīpa), (3) bull lamp (vṛṣadīpa), (4) Puruṣamṛga lamp (puruṣāmṛgadīpa, the Sandhi-“ā” often occurs in Grantha contexts), (5) lion lamp (siṃhadīpa), (6) elephant lamp (hastidīpa), (7) tortoise lamp (kūrmadīpa), (8) demon lamp (bhūtadīpa), (9) lotus lamp (padmadīpa), (10) parasol lamp (chatradīpa), (11) wish-fulfilling tree lamp (kalpavṛkṣadīpa), (12) creeper lamp (latādīpa), (13) makara lamp (makaradīpa), (14) trident lamp (triśūladīpa), (15) moon mansion lamp (nakṣatradīpa), (16) aerial vehicle or temple-shaped lamp (vimānadīpa). The one-to-one corresponding motifs of both lists are: flower (1/1), serpent (3/2), bull (11/3), lion (8/5), elephant (4/6), and tortoise (14/7). Most probably, [tri]śūla and triśūla (9/14), as well as perhaps puruṣa and puruṣāmṛga (2/4), can be regarded as equivalent pairs, too, with one of the members in each case being blurred by a corrupted textual passage. This seems to be quite clear in the former case, while the latter case cannot be clarified, as both puruṣāmṛga and puruṣa (see below) are known at present.51 While it seems to be self-explanatory that every motif occurs in its figural version, it has been reported from contemporary fieldwork at Kalugumalai that “puṣpadīpa” (“flower lamp”, in its Tamil version puṣpatīpam) is one of the two possible designations of a multi-tier lamp (Image 8), the other being “alaṃkāradīpa” – “decoration lamp”. 52 The somewhat intricate and, almost certainly, variable continuum “form – name – symbolic meaning” of a mobile pūjā lamp can be inferred from what contemporary Indian authors have explained in a tabular form. The numbers up to ten, missing out four and six, refer to lamps classi-

50 Goodall et al. (2005: 51) observe: “The date of the work is unknown, but the author mentions at the outset that he follows the sequence of events given in Aghoraśiva’s paddhati” (twelfth century). My thanks go to Dominic Goodall for pointing out this textual passage, that of the Uttarakāraṇāgama (see below), as well as some others, and allowing me to study the collection of ritual objects of the École française d’Extrême-Orient, Pondichéry. 51 I suspect that puruṣa in this context is a corrupted form of puruṣamṛga/puruṣāmṛga. 52 Good 2001: 506.

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fied on the basis of the number (eka, dvi, etc.) of their wicks. Subsequently, some motif lamps are stated to “symbolise” particular deities: One flame – Maheśa; Two – Umā and Maheśa; Three – Brahmā, Viṣṇu and Śiva; Five – the five elements (bhūta); Seven – the seven sages; Eight – the eight Vidyeśas; Nine – the nine “planets” (Navagraha); Ten – the ten directional guardians (for the related group of eight directional guardian see below); serpent lamp (nāgadīpa) – Vāsuki (mythical king of serpents); chariot lamp (rathadīpa) – Sadāśiva (five-headed Śiva); Mount Meru lamp (merudīpa) – Brahmā; bull lamp (vṛṣabhadīpa) – bull; “man” or “Supreme Being” lamp (puruṣadīpa) – Śarabheśa (hybrid form of Śiva); Five-Brahmā lamp (pañcabrahmadīpa) – the five aspects of Śiva, which again refers to Sadāśiva.53 I am inclined to regard these explanations as secondary, as representing an effort to explain an already existing practice in the context of temple Hinduism.54 The notion of a “symbolic” meaning, however, I would basically share. Of early textual references, Bhatt cites a passage from the Pūrvakāraṇāgama which gives an instruction that the serpent lamp should be the first one and the pot lamp (ghaṭadīpa, also called kumbhadīpa) the last one in the sequence.55 This is actually reflected in present-day practice (see below). Further, it is interesting to find a reference to several motif lamps in the Uttarakāraṇagama 24: 663–665a. Although the text remains somewhat enigmatic and the number of lamps stays well below sixteen, it is extremely revealing for pointing out the difference between lamps with and without a fuel reservoir. Thus, an elephant lamp, lion lamp, and tiger lamp are referred to as “anāsaka” – noseless (probably, cf. Images 3–7), while other lamps are characterized by a “gaḍḍuka” – vessel (which I would interpret as a fuel reservoir with an extension for the wick, cf. Image 10). If the expression “noseless” really points to the lamps without fuel reservoir, then we have here a reference dating to approx. the twelfth century (or, perhaps, somewhat earlier) for the existence of such a type of lamp, which is, moreover, qualified by an animal name, whatever this may have meant to the ritual specialists of that period. The lamps with a fuel reservoir, on the other hand, are distinguished by numbers, like those in the above list.56 53 Ramachandra Rao 1992: 133; Nandagopal 1995: 139. 54 Depictions from in the Buddhist art of Eastern India reveal that mobile lamps (or incense burners, which seem to have been similar throughout history) in shapes corresponding to the present-day ones, including the typical knot motif on the handle, as in Image 10, were known in the mediaeval period (Bautze-Picron 1995: particularly 69, fig. 9, second object from the right). 55 Bhatt 2008: 418, n. 404. 56 Uttarakāraṇāgama 24:663b–24:665a: “gajadīpaṃ siṃhadīpaṃ vyāghradīpamanāsakam | śapharaṃ dīpamevoktaṃ vṛddhastrīdīpadhārakam | daśagrīvaṃ mahādīpaṃ pañcavaktrākṛtantu vā || ṣaḍvaktraṃ trayamekaṃ vā gaḍḍukān dīpabhedakān” (cf. Civajñānacelvakurukkaḷ 2002).

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Image 3: Madurai, Mīnākṣī-Sundareśvara temple, serpent lamp, second half of twentieth century. Photo: Corinna Wessels-Mevissen

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Image 4: Madurai, Mīnākṣī-Sundareśvara temple, Puruṣamṛga lamp, second half of twentieth century. Photo: Corinna Wessels-Mevissen

Similar series of lamps are actually used nowadays, generally in temples of the South Indian Tamil tradition. Motif lamps are an unusual type, of which very few examples have been illustrated so far. In a recent publication, one such object has not been correctly identified as a lamp, as the small tubes (sometimes only holes) can be mistaken for a gadget for the insertion of incense sticks.57 A typical feature is an arch, under, or in front of which, a little figure is placed on a small platform (Images 3–7). The tubes attached to the back side of the arch – or holes pierced in a

57 Anderson 2006: 56, fig. 29.

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Image 5: Madurai, Mīnākṣī-Sundareśvara temple, detail of Image 4, second half of twentieth century. Photo: Corinna Wessels-Mevissen

ridge – are meant to hold thick cotton wicks (pṛthuvarti according to Bühnemann58) soaked in fuel, which are lit by an assistant just before usage in the respective ceremony, and extinguished immediately afterwards. I have observed that, at present, the serpent type has a variant without an arch, where the tubes are fixed on the snake hood, which thus functions like the arch. All these motif lamps do not have any fuel reservoir. However, the handle corresponds to that of other lamps, which are waved in front of deities (cf. Image 10). Further to the North, in the Deccan, an identical arched type of motif lamp is known as a “kākaḍā” lamp,59 which seems to be functionally restricted to the kākaḍāratī rite, performed in the early

58 Bühnemann 1988: 62, n. 202. 59 Ibid.: 62–63; Kelkar 1961: figs. 32, 35.

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Image 6: Madurai, Mīnākṣī-Sundareśvara temple, elephant lamp, second half of twentieth century. Photo: Corinna Wessels-Mevissen

morning along with a devotional song in the local vernacular. With regard to further links between lamps and arches, it is interesting to note that the “flaming arch” is a recurrent motif in South Indian temple art, at least during the Nāyaka period (sixteenth–eighteenth centuries). Nagaswamy employs the term “makara-tōraṇaviḷakku” (Tam. “makara gateway lamp”)60 for a huge metal arch laterally ending in makara heads and supplied with small oil reservoirs, which is found in various parts of the temple, and lit on particular festival days. Other types of lamps that are not meant to be waved can be provided with arches, too.61

60 Nagaswamy 2006: 257. 61 See e.g., Raja Dinkar Kelkar Museum 1988: Lakṣmī lamp in the section “Light Legends”.

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Image 7: Madurai, Mīnākṣī-Sundareśvara temple, horse lamp, second half of twentieth century. Photo: Corinna Wessels-Mevissen

The matter becomes increasingly intricate when taking into consideration the associated lamps. Good is the only scholar who has so far explored this tricky field to some extent. With his field of inquiry being the present-day practice at the Kalukācalamūrti temple at Kalugumalai, he has referred to lamp worship in several instances. The most elaborate version he reports from the seventh night of the Tai Pucam festival. A series of twenty-four lamps is offered during a ceremony involving the deity Sanmukam/Ṣaṇmukha (Skanda Kārttikeya) on his silver palanquin, who has just returned from a procession, as well as a cow. The place is the temple’s southern hall, which the palanquin had just entered. Sanmukam was freshly dressed in red, wearing a silver crown. The further description runs thus: “A cow was led into the south hall, and placed with its back to the south door [...] A food offering was placed on the palanquin, and another on the floor behind the cow [...] The

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crowd parted to allow a corridor between cow and palanquin, and the festival priest, resplendent in new vesti, red turban, and shell necklace, threw vilvam leaves over the cow, marked its tail and hindquarters with sandalpaste and kumkum, and performed puja to the cow’s rear [...] As he offered the final light the cloth screen was opened to allow Sanmukam to take darshan of the cow [...] Very elaborate worship was offered to Sanmukam; many lamps were shown to the front of the image [...], and a single light to the back. There were long mantras and three hymns”.62 Taken from the author’s previous publication, I trust that the following sequence is just what was offered on this occasion, when Sanmukam was conceived in the form of another deity, namely Rudra (see below): (1) 3-, 5-, or 7-tier lamp (for 5- and 7-tier lamps cf. Image 8), (2) serpent lamp, (3) Puruṣamṛga lamp (cf. Images 4–5), (4) elephant lamp (cf. Image 6), (5) lion lamp, (6) tiger lamp, (7) goose lamp, (8) horse lamp (cf. Image 7), (9) “10-sided lamp? (pattaraka tīpam)”, (10) trident lamp, (11) pot lamp, (12) bull lamp, (13) peacock lamp, (14) rooster lamp, (15) turtle lamp, (16) thrush lamp; after this follow the “energy lamps”, śakti dīpa: (17) 9-wick lamp, (18) 5-wick lamp, (19) 6-tier mountain lamp, (20) “quadrilateral” lamp, (21) 3-wick lamp (cf. Image 10), (22) 1wick plate (cf. Image 9, extreme right), (23) full pot lamp, (24) camphor light (1, 5, or 7 flames).63 On this seventh night of the Tai Pucam festival, Sanmukam is perceived to have assumed several distinct forms successively, a concept, which is narrated by two informants: “According to the festival priest, Sanmukam takes three different forms (amsam) during this seventh nigth. He first represents Rudra, the angry form of Siva, hence the red colour [... then] he represents Brahma (white), and this aspect of the deity [...] attended the devadasi dance [...] finally, he represents Visnu (green). The local Brahman doctor added that Arumukam (Sanmukam) incorporates all deities [...] The cow puja with 18 [?] lamps, more than at most temples he claimed, ‘would drive all evils away’”.64

62 Good 2004: 275. 63 Good 2001: 506. 64 Good 2004: 278.

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Image 8: Madurai, Mīnākṣī-Sundareśvara temple, 7-tier (left) and 5-tier (right) lamps, second half of twentieth century. Photo: Corinna Wessels-Mevissen

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Image 9: Madurai, Mīnākṣī-Sundareśvara temple, plate lamps (from the left: 7-, 5-, 3-, 2- and 1-wick lamps), second half of twentieth century. Photo: Corinna Wessels-Mevissen

Image 10: Puducherry (Pondichéry), collection of the École française d’ExtrêmeOrient, 3-wick lamp, acc.no. W-66 (formerly Wolff Collection), second half of twentieth century or slightly earlier. Photo: Corinna Wessels-Mevissen

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With regard to the associated lamps, a pot lamp (here, nos. 11 and 23) is generally indispensable, typically shown towards the end of a lamp series. 65 Female energy (śakti) lamps are another recurring feature. As will be seen from the series observed at Madurai, there is a tendency to “count down” on the number of wicks, until the last waving takes place with a multiple camphor light. “Plate” (Tam. taṭṭu) lamps are also common (Image 9), actually representing another type of non-reservoir lamp, as well as multi-flamed non-motif lamps with handles (Image 10). On the whole, it is quite significant that, after the introductory non-motif lamps, a series of up to sixteen motif lamps follows, to be succeeded by another series of mostly non-motif lamps, which in this case is nearly as long as the series of motif lamps. The attribute “non-motif” may have to be qualified in those cases when a multi-tier lamp is called ratha (chariot) or meru lamp (Mount Meru, no. 19 of the previous list). But even in these cases, it is clearly not a figural representation of a temple car. That we are concerned with a visual allusion to the huge festival cars, which are also, in their pyramidal form, likened to Meru, the centre of the universe, is another fascinating aspect in this connection. Apart from sun lamp and moon lamp, another astral reference is made by nakṣatra (lunar mansion) lamps, which bear the appropriate number of twenty-seven wicks and are known in different shapes. These are the details of the “bedchamber worship” (Tam. “paḷḷiyaṟai pūjai”, according to Fuller66) in the Mīnākṣī-Sundareśvara temple at Madurai, as observed on 12 December 2008:67 (1) single-wick lamp, (2) 5-tier lamp (cf. Image 8, right), (3) serpent lamp without arch (cf. Image 3, which has an arch), (4) bull lamp, (5) elephant lamp (cf. Image 6), (6) Puruṣamṛga lamp (cf. Image 4–5), (7) trident lamp, (8) 5-wick plate lamp, (9) 4-wick plate lamp, (10) 3-wick plate lamp, (11) 2-wick plate lamp, (12), 1-wick plate lamp (cf. Image 9, extreme right), (13) pot lamp, (14) camphor light with 7 flames (candelabra type, cf. Image 1). The priests explained to me the number of sixteen lamps as equivalent to the sixteen steps of a ṣoḍaśa-upacārapūjā, but to the best of my observation the number sixteen remained incomplete. Two lamps seemed to have been omitted. Anyhow, this number would have included both motif and non-motif lamps, which may not exactly have reflected the 65 “Pot lamps” are used both in “village” and in temple rituals, see Kersenboom (1998 [1987]: e.g., 112–113); Nandagopal (1995: 144–145). Reportedly, it was a typical task of a devadāsī (woman attached to a temple, literally “God’s female slave”), who enjoyed the exclusive right to wave pot lamps (e.g. Good 2001: 499), until the devadāsī system was prohibited by law in the twentieth century. 66 Fuller 1984: 11–12. 67 The lamps in the photographs are a different set. Therefore, “cf.” has been inserted in the figure references. The lamps used in ritual could not be photographed. They basically resemble the documented ones.

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concept of sixteen lamps as laid down in the texts cited above. Only five out of fourteen lamps were motif lamps. The bedchamber worship, as performed in front of the public, only consisted in these lamp offerings with prayer recitation and the ringing of bells. On this rite, Fuller observes: “in the daily worship’s most spectacular ritual, the Cŏkkar [Sundareśvara represented by a pair of feet] image is ceremonially carried in a palanquin [...] into Minaksi’s temple and the Cŏkkar image is placed inside the bedchamber by a priest. The divine couple are offered food and lamps are waved in front of them [...] and songs and music are performed while the swing [...] on which the images rest is gently rocked. [...] The key aspect in paḷḷiyaṟai pūjai is its joining together of the god and goddess, explicitly seen as lovers. Only at night are Minaksi and Sundaresvara united in this way [...]”.68 This comment stresses the importance of the occasion on which the elaborate lamp ritual occurs.

Reference to the Vehicles of the Directional Guardians? The question of reference to the vehicles of the guardians of the eight directions, the aṣṭadikpālas, which has been touched on by Good,69 shall be briefly explored. The guardians of the directions are extremely frequently invoked in all kinds of Indian religious rituals, so that it may appear logical to try to retrieve their vehicles, which are often prominently displayed in art,70 in the recurring series of animals. The Brahmin priests at Madurai also mentioned this explanation for the animal series to me, with regard to the lamp motifs. The directional guardians’ vāhanas would have to start with Indra’s elephant and continue with a goat for Agni, a buffalo for Yama, an anthropomorphic being for Nairṛta, a makara for Varuṇa, a deer for Vāyu, a horse for Kubera, and a bull for Īśāna, who is himself a form of Śiva71. However, after a large number of lamps has been studied, it can be asserted that Yama’s vehicle, the buffalo, never occurs among these. The reason behind this may be its inauspiciousness. Thus, a “proper” and complete reference to the directional guardians can be excluded a priori, and the other members of the group are 68 Fuller 1984: 11–12. 69 Good 2001: 505; 2004: 45. 70 Wessels-Mevissen 2001: figs. 267–274. In this series from Dharmapuri, circa ninth century, the dikpāla’s vehicles are not yet oversized as in some later examples, but they appear quite dominant because of their plasticity and attitude of motion. 71 This is the group of eight guardians of the cardinal and intermediate directions (WesselsMevissen 2001: 1, 95–107), which is often supplemented by Brahmā on a goose (Zenith) and Viṣṇu on a tortoise (Nadir), with both the latter being less frequently depicted in art.

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also not in their place. Acknowledging this fact, one should consider that the explanations by informants are attempts to incorporate the spectrum of motifs into the predominant belief system of temple Hinduism. The guardians of the directions play an important role during the Cittirai festival in Madurai, where the digvijaya, the conquest of the universe, by the goddess Mīnākṣī is enacted on the ninth day.72 As this is literally the conquest of the (eight) directions, a close interaction of a processional deity with the dikpālas occurs in this context. Harman recounts: “Indra, on the goddess’s third advance, made a permanent retreat and Mīnākṣī was then worshipped with lighted lamps as the victor. So it continued with Agni, Yama, Nirṛti, Varuṇa, Vāyu, Kubera, and finally Īśāna and Nandin, both Śiva’s underlings.”73 According to Orr, this festival at Madurai, which was, in its present form, not introduced before the seventeenth century, seems to be the only point of contact between the directional guardians and a temple’s main deity.74 It is a fact that the “correct” vehicles of the aṣṭadikpālas, which were firmly established in South India by the latter part of the twelfth century at the latest,75 are neither systematically reflected by the lamp motifs nor by the festival vehicles. The interpretation offered by the priests is obviously an attempt to explain the animal series on the basis of the religious texts and thus bring home the existing spectrum of motifs to the referential system of the religion practised by them.

Concluding Observations Summing up, altogether four categories of motifs shared by festival vehicles and ritual lamps may be discerned: 1. Representations of birds and animals and certain hybrids, taken from the pool of individual vāhanas of the gods; 2. Representations of “divine beings”, including hybrids (yāḷi, gandharva, bhūta, Kāmadhenu, Puruṣamṛga); 3. Representations of inanimate objects of a cosmic dimension, e.g. sunlight and moonlight, divine mountain Kailāsa; 4. Representations of non-motif elements (found with non-motif vehicles and lamps, the latter representing numbers). 72 73 74 75

Orr 2004: 440–441; Harman 1989: 75. Ibidem. Orr 2004: 447, n. 12. Although the Rājarājeśvara temple at Tanjavur of the early eleventh century has a full set of aṣṭadikpālas (Wessels-Mevissen 2001: 80), a more frequent depiction of the motif can be observed for the twelfth century (for several occurrences in one particular temple see WesselsMevissen 2009: 208–210).

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I would like to hypothesise that the four categories point to a transcending notion of the objects involved, which – because of their complexity – necessarily implies a symbolic meaning. Before trying to come to a preliminary interpretation, the two shared qualities of vehicle and lamp operations shall be summarized: It is quite apparent that “movement” is an important tertium comparationis of the festival vehicles and the lamps in question, although the expression of movement differs. In the first case, the deity itself follows the same movement, as it is tied to the vehicle, while in the case of the lamps, it remains static and the lamps are waved. A spiritually highly-charged moment occurs at the intersection of both agents: the moving image, while returning to the temple, receives the worship by means of an elaborate sequence of lamps. The second shared quality could be termed “sequentiality”. The sequences basically differ from temple to temple, and perhaps with regard to the respective rites performed, particularly in respect of the lamps. It should be possible to trace more regional patterns in these sequences than has been done by Good so far, and, perhaps, find indications of an underlying matrix.76 The interpretation of the members of the four categories which I propose here is that of active “symbols”, a term which was somewhat abundantly used in earlier research, 77 then rejected by Gell in his work on art and agency, 78 and recently treated profoundly by Gladigow and others.79 In the present context, I would propose, unfortunately largely arguing ex silencio, that the unifying dimension of the motifs in question is a separate referential system which lies beyond “temple Hinduism”. It may have been incorporated into the latter through the adoption of local practices, or perhaps, through a “(re)construction” of an ancient ritual, which was probably still co-existing at the time of its adaptation for temple Hinduism.80 The “integrating” character of the temple festival has been described, which may well 76 Good 2001: 506. 77 See, e.g., references in Gladigow 2004: 159–161. 78 Gell 1998. His rejection of the “symbol”, which is pinpointed by his statement “I have avoided the notion of ‘symbolic meaning’ throughout this work […] I view art as a system of action” (1998: 6), is somewhat unexpected, as e.g. Turner (1967: 19) had already perceived them as dynamic and phenomenologically varied: “The symbols I observed in the field were, empirically, objects, activities, relationships, events, gestures, and spatial units in a ritual situation”. 79 Gladigow 2004. 80 Gladigow (2004: 165–166) refers to such an incorporating faculty of symbols: “In dem Maße, in den [sic] komplexe Rituale ‘anschlussfähig’ sind, sind Symbole in der Lage, ‘Symbolsysteme’ zu bilden. Die besondere Leistung erfolgreich durchgeführter Rituale scheint darin zu liegen, dass sie, vor allem auf einer Symbolebene, in einer Art ‘anachronistischer Rekonstruktion’ kulturelle Bereiche überbrücken, die sich bereits weitgehend voneinander entfernt haben und deren Probleme bereits über eigene Semantiken verhandelt werden können”.

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have been derived from its progenitor’s function of strengthening social bonds. It is revealing, in this connection, to cite evidence from a contemporary village festival, where freshly baked clay horses, which have been imbibed with divine power through the eye-opening ritual (an important detail!), are taken in procession around the village and to the temple, their final destination.81 The actively “symbolic” character of the moving visual elements actually struck me when I realized that the Mahotsavavidhi prescribes more than 30 processions, to be performed clockwise around the village during an elaborate temple festival, often with aṣṭamaṅgala being carried along.82 That this set of eight ancient Indian symbols of good luck is moved in clockwise processions as if exercising a physical effect on the town or village and thereby its inhabitants, should be regarded as an important piece of information. This effect of binding together and “hallowing” a place I would also ascribe to the festival vehicles, and, with a somewhat different sphere of activity, to the lamp motifs, too. In this connection, it is worth noting that the various processional vehicles are alternatively called yantra – “instrument”, 83 a term, which is best known from “mystic” diagrams serving a specific ritual purpose. Processions are an ancient religious practice which has been reported from various cultural contexts. They have even been known to transgress the boundaries between cultures and “migrate”.84 I would hypothesise that, in the religious practice of festival vehicles and also motif lamps, reference is made to a pre-existing cultic practice, probably more local in this case, celebrating all aspects of nature and the cosmos. To what extent there may have been an actual continuation from earlier periods cannot be determined, owing to the absence of any reliable data. The seemingly boundless and still, today, changing ingredients of the largely codified version of this cult speak perhaps less of a “cultural memory” and a continued vitality, than of a certain arbitrariness and inflation of motifs. I would hypothesise that at least parts of the ancient referential system survived down to the present, e.g. the sun and moon, and, perhaps, some of the animals, which may be identical with the 81 Niklas 2002: 230. 82 The composition of this group is somewhat variable in the Āgamic texts. Mahotsavavidhi, p. 16, enumerates the aṣṭamaṅgala as: mirror (darpaṇa), vase of plenty (pūrṇakumbha), bull (vṛṣabha), pair of yak tail flywhisks (yugmacāmara), śrīvatsa (in present ritual depicted as a lying triangle), svastika, conch (śaṅkha), lamp (dīpa). These symbols are drawn on the flag, which is hoisted at the beginning of a major temple festival. Aṣṭamaṅgala are of rather great antiquity, although this has not been systematically studied. They are better known from their occurrence in Tibetan Buddhism. In this context, Kelényi (2003) has traced what he describes as a “Cult of Good Luck”. Although the Tibetan version does not include an animal among the aṣṭamaṅgala, “animals protecting the four directions” are known from the context of this cult (ibid.: 66), which is again an ancient concept spread over large parts of Asia. 83 E.g., Uttarakāraṇāgama 24:449a, 24:450ab, 106:62a (Civajñānacelvakurukkaḷ 2002). 84 Alvar & Gordon 2008.

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so-called “directional animals”. A temple festival perceived thus can be truly regarded as symbolising “cosmic integration”, with all its socio-religious and, perhaps, historical implications. The visual elements employed in this process are representatives of the world as it is perceived by humans, enacted and controlled by them.85 However, what is provisionally called a “symbol” here is strangely floating and detached from any commentaries. With their background and meaning actually remaining unclear to priests and worshippers, we may be dealing with a borderline case of a “symbol”, which has developed a life of its own and has a tendency to proliferate. With regard to their ritual function, the series of objects discussed here could be viewed as “satellites” of the deities, because they accompany and surround them. In a certain way, they may also be perceived to “adorn” them, with their presence enhancing the effect of a temporally confined epiphany. In an article, which has appeared very recently, Parker (2010) postulates that it is intrinsic to South Indian temple ritual to generate and produce new things. He elaborates a line of argument, which is based on his interpretation of temple ritual as a “svayambhū” (self-ermerging; self-organising) kind of action, on the fertility power of its remnant, and on the creative process of improvisation that can be observed throughout the performance of a ritual. Applying his interpretation to the material under discussion, the stunning proliferation of motifs, which I have just noted, can be explained. Moreover, Parker speaks of a ritual agency that is possessed by both humans and material objects (ibid.: 50–53), which comes quite close to what I thought to have perceived myself, while attempting to analyse this fascinating ritual complex. Thus, the marked visuality of most of these objects may be seen in the context of their supposed agency.

85 This is what Gladigow (2004: 164–166) has aptly termed “Symbolkontrolle” – “control over symbols”, which he describes as a typical feature of a developed religion.

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References Ahuja, Naman P. 2005. “Changing Gods, Enduring Rituals: Observations on Early Indian Religion as Seen through Terracotta Imagery, c. 200 BC–AD 100”. In: Catherine Jarrige & Vincent Lefèvre (eds.). South Asian Archaeology 2001. Proceedings of the Sixteenth International Conference of the European Association of South Asian Archaeologists, Held in Collège de France, Paris, 2–6 July 2001. Vol. II Historical Archaeology and Art History. Paris: Éditions Recherche sur les Civilisations: 345–354. Alvar, Jaime & Richard Gordon (ed., transl.) 2008. Romanising Oriental Gods. Myth, Salvation and Ethics in the Cults of Cybele, Isis and Mithras. Leiden: Brill. Anderson, Sean 2006. Flames of Devotion. Oil Lamps from South and Southeast Asia and the Himalayas. Los Angeles: UCLA Fowler Museum. Barazer-Billoret, Marie-Luce 1999. La grande fête du temple (Mahotsava) d'après les āgama śivaïtes. Paris (unpublished PhD thesis). Bautze-Picron, Claudine 1995. “Between Men and Gods. Small Motifs in the Buddhist Art of Eastern India, an Interpretation”. In: Karel R. van Kooij & Henny van der Veere (eds.). Function and Meaning in Buddhist Art. Proceedings of a Seminar Held at Leiden University 21–24 October 1991. Groningen: Egbert Forsten: 59–79. Berti, Daniela 2004. “Of Metal and Cloths: The Location of Distinctive Features in Divine Iconography (Indian Himalayas)”. In: Phyllis Granoff & Koichi Shinohara (eds.). Images in Asian religions. Texts and Contexts. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press: 85–114. Bhatt, Niddodi Ramachandra 2008. Shaivism in the Light of Epics, Purāṇas and Āgamas. Varanasi: Indica Books. Branfoot, Crispin 2007. Gods on the Move: Architecture and Ritual in the South Indian Temple. London: The Society for South Asian Sudies/The British Academy. Brunner, Hélène (transl.) 1999. “Le Parārthanityapūjāvidhi. Règle pour le culte quotidien dans un temple”. In: Françoise L’Hernault & Marie-Louise Reiniche. Tiruvannamalai: Un lieu saint sivaïte du Sud de l’Inde. Vol. 3. Rites et fêtes. Paris: École française d’Extrême-Orient: 261–340. Bühnemann, Gudrun 1988. Pūjā. A Study in Smārta Ritual. Vienna: Institut für Indologie der Universität Wien. Civajñānacelvakurukkaḷ, Śivaśrī L. K. (ed.) 2002. Uttarakāraṇāgama. Cuddalore: Śrī Arcanā Priṇṭars. Colas, Gérard 1996. Viṣṇu, ses images et ses feux. Les métamorphoses du dieu chez les vaikhānasa. Paris: Presses de École française d’Extrême-Orient. Davis, Richard H. 2002. “Chola Bronzes in Procession”. In: Vidya Dehejia et al. (eds.) The Sensuous and the Sacred: Chola Bronzes from South India. New York: American Federation of Arts, Ahmedabad: Mapin Publishing: 46–63. — 2008. Mahotsavavidhikrama by Aghoraśivācārya, transcribed and corrected, 23 September 2008. www.muktabodhalib.org (12/05/2010).

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— 2010. A Priest’s Guide for the Great Festival Aghorasiva’s Mahotsavavidhi. Oxford, New York, etc.: Oxford University Press. Fuller, Christopher J. 1984. Servants of the Goddess. The Priests of a South Indian Temple. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gell, Alfred 1998. Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Gladigow, Burkhard 2004. “Symbole und Symbolkontrolle als Ergebnis einer Professionalisierung von Religion“. In: Rudolf Schlögl, Bernhard Giesen & Jürgen Osterhammel (eds.). Die Wirklichkeit der Symbole, Grundlagen der Kommunikation in historischen und gegenwärtigen Gesellschaften. Konstanz: UVK Verlagsgesellschaft mbH: 159–172. Gonda, Jan 1965. “The Absence of Vāhanas in the Veda and their Occurrence in Hindu Art and Literature”. In: Jan Gonda. Change and Continuity in Indian Religion. Londonet al.: Mouton & Co.: 71–114. Good, Anthony 2001. “The Structure and Meaning of Daily Worship in a South Indian Temple”. Anthropos 96: 491–507. — 2004. Worship and the Ceremonial Economy of a Royal South Indian Temple. Lewiston et al.: Edwin Mellen Press (Mellen Studies in Anthropology 14). Goodall, Dominic (ed., transl.) 1998. Bhaṭṭa Rāmakaṇṭha’s Commentary on the Kiraṇatantra: Critical Edition and Annotated Translation. Pondichéry: Institut français de Pondichéry/École française d’Extrême-Orient. — et al. 2005. Pañcāvaraṇastavaḥ. The Pañcāvaraṇastava of Aghoraśivācārya: A Twelfth-Century South Indian Prescription for the Visualisation of Sadāśiva and his Retinue. Annotated Critical Edition. Pondichéry: Institut français de Pondichéry/École française d’Extrême-Orient. Harman, William 1989. The Sacred Marriage of a Hindu Goddess. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Kelényi, Béla 2003. “The Cult of Good Luck”. In: Béla Keléni (ed.). Demons and Protectors. Folk Religion in Tibetan and Mongolian Buddhism. Budapest: Ferenc Hopp Museum of Eastern Asiatic Art: 47–78. Kelkar, Dinkar Gangadhar 1961. Lamps of India. Delhi: Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. Kersenboom, Saskia C. 1998 [1987]. Nityasumaṅgalī. Devadasi Tradition in South India. Reprint. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass. L’Hernault, Françoise & Marie-Louise Reiniche 1999. Tiruvannamalai: Un lieu saint sivaïte du Sud de l’Inde. Vol. 3. Rites et fêtes. Paris: École française d’ExtrêmeOrient. Hunter, Thomas M. 2010. “Icons, Indexes and Interpretants of a Balinese Ritual Artefact: the Pengajeg”. In this volume: Axel Michaels et al. (eds.). Ritual Dynamics and the Science of Ritual, Vol. IV. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz: 505–536. Mishra, Deviprasad (ed.) (in preparation). Śambhupuṣpāñjali of Saundaranātha. Nagaswamy, Ramachandran 2006. Timeless Delight. South Indian bronzes in the collection of the Sarabhai Foundation. Ahmedabad: Sarabhai Foundation.

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Nandagopal, Choodamani 1995. Temple Treasures. Vol. I. Ritual Utensils. Bangalore: Crafts Council of Karnataka. Natarajan, B. & B. Venkataraman & B. Ramachandran 1994. Tillai and Nataraja. Madras: Mudgala Trust. Niklas, Ulrike 2002. “Not Meant to Last: The works of the Velar”. In: R. Nagaswamy (ed.). Foundations of Indian Art, Proceedings of the Chidambaram Seminar on Art and Religion, Feb. 2001. Chennai: Tamil Arts Academy: 222–236. Orr, Leslie C. 2004. “Processions in the Medieval South Indian Temple: Sociology, Sovereignity and Soteriology”. In: Jean-Luc Chevillard & Eva Wilden (eds.). South-Indian Horizons, Felicitation Volume for François Gros on the occasion of his 70th birthday. With the collaboration of Appasamy Murugaiyan. Pondicherry: Institut français de Pondichéry/ École française d’Extrême-Orient: 437–470. Parker, Samuel K. 2010. “Ritual as a Mode of Production: Ethnoarchaeology and Creative Practice in Hindu Temple Arts”. South Asian Studies 26, 1: 31–57. Raja Dinkar Kelkar Museum 1988. Sunbeams in the dark. Pune: Raja Dinkar Kelkar Museum. Ramachandra Rao, Saligrama Krishna 1992. Āgama-Kosha (Āgama Encyclopaedia). Vol. VII: Preparations for Pūjā. Bangalore: Kalpatharu Research Academy. Ramakrishna Bhat, Mena (ed., transl.) 1981–1982. Bṛhatsamhitā. Varāhamihira’s Bṛhatsamhitā. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass. Raman, Kunnapakkam Vinjamur 2003. Srī Varadarājaswāmi Temple, Kāñchi: A Study of Its History, Art and Architecture. New Delhi: Abhinav Publications. Smith, H. Daniel 1981. “Vahanas in the Cultic Art of South Indian Temples”. In: Koil Kandadai Apen Venkatachari (ed.). Proceedings of the Seminar on Temple Art and Architecture Held in March 1980. Bombay: Ananthacharya Indological Research Institute: 12–29 (Ananthacharya Indological Research Institute Series 10). Stein, Burton 1983. “Mahānavamī: Medieval and Modern Kingly Ritual in South India”. In: Bardwell L. Smith (ed.). Essays on Gupta Culture. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass. Swaminatha Sivacarya, C. (ed.) 1974. Mahotsavavidhi. Chennai: South Indian Archakar Association). Tachikawa, Musashi & Shoun Hino & Lalita Deodhar 2001. Pūjā and Saṃskāra. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass. Tartakov, Gary Michael 2005. “Vṛṣabha Nandi in the Art of the Early Calukya”. In: Catherine Jarrige & Vincent Lefèvre (eds.). South Asian Archaeology 2001. Vol. 2: Historical Archaeology and Art History. Paris: Éditions Recherche sur les Civilisations: 687–695. Turner, Victor 1967. The Forest of Symbols. Aspects of Ndembu Ritual. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Waghorne, Joanne Punzo 1991. “Vahanas: Conveyers of the Gods”. Marg 43/2: 15–28. Wessels-Mevissen, Corinna 2001. The Gods of the Directions in Ancient India. Origin and Early Development in Art and Literature (until c. 1000 A.D.). Berlin: Dietrich

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Section IV: Ritual Design Edited by Gregor Ahn

Gregor Ahn

Ritual Design – an Introduction Some twenty years ago, a term like “ritual design” would most probably not have been conceivable as a relevant topic in ritual theory. The reason for this change is, in fact, that a fundamental shift in ritual theory has taken place during the last few decades – a shift that has changed the view on rituals generally, from a more static to a more dynamic perspective. While classical approaches to ritual theory described rituals as invariant, iterative, performative acts with highly symbolic values, more recent approaches have focused on phenomena like liturgical reforms, the abandonment of ritual traditions, or even the invention of new rituals which cannot be explained by a concept of more or less static rituals, which is unable to incorporate processes of changing rituals. Since breathtaking changes in ritual theory have occurred that have led, among other things, to the new paradigm of “ritual dynamics” and to new key concepts like “ritual transfer”, “ritual failure”, “online rituals”, or lately – and still experimentally – “ritual design”, it is worth pinpointing the fact that in many cases it was the emic perspective of the participants in a ritual action that made rituals seem to be unchanging acts in a perpetual repetition. In fact, it is obvious that every single performance as such differs from the previous one, at least in details. So, from the perspective and viewpoint of an external observer, we conclude today that changing rituals are the rule, not the exception, as the earlier theory had implied. Nevertheless, in this context, it may be worth noting that the dynamic of rituals should not be understood as an endless process of change without any form of continuity; the dynamic of rituals should rather be considered as consisting of interdependent processes of change and continuity, of constructing new ritual identities in relation to older traditions and recent contexts. Our conclusion, that the dynamic of rituals is the rule and not the exception, is the foundation of the new theoretical assumption. One of the core concepts of the new paradigm of the “dynamics of rituals” is ritual transfer. This describes specific forms of changing rituals which are characterised by the shift of a complete ritual, or some of its elements, into a new cultural, religious, political, social or economic context. Following our hypothesis, every shift of context, caused either by migration, intercultural contact, or even the transfer into a new medium (like for example the internet) causes challenges at least to some of the constitutional dimensions of the ritual. The Zoroastrians in India and

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Iran, for instance, traditionally exposed their dead in so-called “Towers of Silence”, where the corpses served to nourish vultures. Of course this burial practice could not be maintained in the course of the diaspora to Western countries (to London, Vancouver, Chicago and many more cities around the world). In the end, under the conditions of ritual transfer the traditional Zoroastrian ritual had to be changed dramatically. But can we look upon this particular process of ritual transfer as an example of ritual design? The transfer of Zoroastrian rituals into the new medium of the internet also resulted in some unexpected effects. One of the most spectacular ritual transfers to the net is the rebuilding of ritualistic scenarios (temples) in virtual surroundings. Since it is possible to include pictures on websites, the churches and temples of many religious traditions today are represented through photographs on the web. It took some time, however, before the means for copying and simulating the real places for rituals could be achieved in virtuality. The homepages of various Hindu temples, and also of the Church of St. Boniface in the virtual scenario of Fun-City in FUNAMA, are good examples of this strategy. But the potential of these new possibilities soon brought about new conceptions. If there is no longer the need to stick to real places, why should one not create fantasy places of high symbolic value? As far as I can see, Zoroastrian reformers in the USA by the end of the last century were the first to combine ritual practice, religious symbolic tradition, and the invention of virtual places for ritual. Still today they do not perform online rituals, but the invention of virtual places is a very important step on the way to online rituals. At the entrance to the virtual Zoroastrian temple on the internet, you will find the following invitation to accurate (from a Zoroastrian’s perspective) ritualistic behaviour: “Before entering the Cyber-Temple, please get into the proper state of mind and body.”1 Certainly, this invention of a virtual ritualistic place is still not an example of ritual design. But what about the changes in Zoroastrian burial practice? The newly-invented Cyber-Temple and the transferred Zoroastrian ritual practice under the conditions of migration and technological developments have been merged into a new ritualistic unit, that could not have been anticipated until a few years ago. Is this process of transferring and modifying an Indian Zoroastrian ritual into a Western context a better example of ritual design? What has been happening here? Was it just a minor transformation within the scope of the Western Zoroastrian’s assimilation process? Or should we suggest those changes in the Zoroastrian’s ritual practice are more dramatic, even as intentional answers to an unsolved ritua1 http://www.zarathushtra.com/z/temple/ (29/09/2010).

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listic problem in the new diaspora setting? And if so, is it what in this context clearly should be called “ritual design”? How, for instance, is the selective difference from “ritual invention” to be seen? Or should we better argue that if the dead bodies of the Zoroastrians in Western countries cannot be exposed to vultures any more, as in India and Iran, and the “Towers of Silence” cannot be used as ritual places any longer, does that mean that the traditional Zoroastrian burial practice has come to an end, and that we should correctly characterise the new forms of Zoroastrian burial practice rather as a “ritual invention” than as “ritual design”? In order to introduce “ritual design” as a suitable parameter, in any case, it also implies how to handle the arbitrariness and vagueness of abstract terms in the academic and public discourse. But in order to attain a threshold for further discussions I prefer to conceptualise “ritual design”. I would like to introduce “ritual design” as processes of adapting, transforming and re-organising or composing already existing elements out of different religious or secular traditions into the frame of an already known type of ritual. Starting from this approximative working definition it may sound good to begin with; but what are the differences from other related terms and concepts like “ritual transformation” and “ritual invention”? The more general concept “ritual transformation” describes the changes of elements or contexts of a ritual, which often out of the participants’ emic perspective will either be classified as not really relevant or even won’t be observed at all. Therefore in earlier “traditional” ritual theory these phenomena of ritual transformation have been almost marginalised, and the new perspective on the dynamics of rituals was the first to shed some light on them as much more common and usual than had been expected before. To this extent “ritual design” can be differentiated from “ritual transformation” by a quite clear-cut distinction: “ritual design” needs a decision, it is often consciously done and always an intentional act, whereas “ritual transformation” is also characterised by unconscious changes, for example, small differences in the course of repeated ritual performances. I therefore suggest that we understand “ritual design” as a special case, a subset of “ritual transformation” which is characterised by its intentionality. Another criterion can be identified by comparing “ritual design” and “ritual invention”: for good reasons “ritual invention” can be addressed as the construction of a completely new ritual – for instance as a result of the abandonment of a specific ritual, or as an effect of a newly emerged need for a new ritual (such as for example the recently arisen specific rituals concerning retirement). So whereas “ritual invention” alludes to the building of new rituals, “ritual design” means the new construction of an already known and used, or even common ritual. Both, “ritual design” and “ritual invention”, resort to often well-known elements, ritualistic components, which also might stem from different traditions. The difference be-

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tween “ritual design” and “ritual invention” is not the recourse to common ritualistic “bricks”, but the point that “ritual design” deals with the construction of wellestablished rituals (for example, wedding ceremonies), whereas “ritual invention” means the composing of new types of rituals. As a working hypothesis I therefore tend to define “ritual design” heuristically as an intentionally conducted act of constructing new forms of well-established rituals by using more or less common ritualistic components which might also stem from different traditions. In so far as the afore-mentioned dramatic changes in Zoroastrian burial practice are much more than just a ritual transformation, but less than the invention of a completely new type of ritual, in my opinion, the case of ritual transfer in Zoroastrian burial practice seems to be a good example for “ritual design” – in this particular case caused by the change of the cultural context during a migration process. Of course, this working hypothesis has not passed unchallenged. Several articles in the ritual-design section of this volume experimentally modify or sharpen the current views on such processes of “ritual design” by proving the concept in specific case studies. Different perspectives on the one hand, as well as structural analogies on the other, unsurprisingly are the result of this first approach in conceptualising “ritual design”. But what happened is much more than just a sequence of more or less accidental case studies for a given topic; as a matter of fact, the different viewpoints cast a light on the authors’ search for an appropriate way of theorising and conceptualising the divergent processes of designing rituals. Regardless of the striking discord in tracing relevant criteria for “ritual design” there still remains the common insight in the usefulness of this term for ritual theory. In a way the academic discourse here is following the public, where “ritual design” is steadily gaining popularity. A variety of circumstances prevented the proceedings of the ritual-design panel from being fully represented in this volume. For different reasons the following four papers, which originally were part of the panel and as such are also referred to in Michael Houseman’s concluding remarks, could not be incorporated into this publication: – Simon Jenkins: “Holy Pixels – Creating Sacred Space and Religious Community Online”. – Inken Prohl: “Phantasies of the Milky Way – Ritual Design in the Japanese Modern Religious Organisation World Mate”. – René Gründer: “‘In Blót we trust!’ – Forms of Staging the ‘Germanic’ in Rituals of Contemporary Neo-pagan Communities” – Roland Hauri-Bill: “The Enactment of Intergenerational Relations in Family Rituals. A Study on Christmas Celebrations in Ordinary Families”.

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Finally I wish to thank all those who participated, in whatever form, in the whole undertaking – first of all the authors, who were willing to undergo the risk of working on an as yet unestablished topic, and especially the organisational and editorial team – most notably Dr. Alexandra Heidle – who had a large share in giving this section a definite shape.

Gregor Ahn

The Re-Embodiment of Mr. Spock and the Re-Incarnation of Voldemort: Two Examples of Ritual Design in Contemporary Fiction 1. Science Fiction and Fantasy – Some New Subjects for Ritual Theory In his groundbreaking article “Ritual and the Media”, the renowned Canadian scholar Ronald Grimes for the first time stated a complex relationship between rituals and media instead of the oversimplified views that either tend to equate those fields (“media are ritual”) or segregate them as “labels for separate cultural domains”.1 On his way to a more differentiated description, Grimes distinguishes eleven different kinds of constellation ranging from the “media presentation of a rite” to “[m]edia as model for … ritual activity”.2 As far as rituals in literature and film are concerned, category 10 is quite promising: “Mediated ritual fantasy”. At the end of his article, Grimes proposes to use performance-oriented theories which seem to him to “offer the most provocative approaches to the interface of ritual and media”.3 The following considerations are placed slightly to one side of this quite convincing and reasonable mainstream policy. The argument will be that rituals in film and literature are generally fictitious, even if they turn out to be more or less direct simulations of ritualistic constellations in the real world. On the one hand, the construction of rituals in the media of film and literature always draws on elements of “real” rituals, whilst within the plot there are also imagined acts of ritualistic performance by the characters represented; but on the other hand, those “performances” turn out to be part of the narrative itself, and are not events that take place in our physically empirical world. Fictitious rituals and imagined performances have as yet not been part of scholarly debate, because of the almost untouched precondition in classical ritual theory that rituals are bound to have “real” perfor1 Grimes 2002: 219. 2 Ibid.: 220. 3 Ibid.: 229f.

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mances. But if we grant that fictitious rituals, in many cases, rely on creative transformations and innovations to a sometimes high degree, a more intense look at some examples outside this field would seem to be very encouraging for stimulating discussion on the scope of ritual design. In the following chapters I will therefore introduce two of the most prominent examples from the Science Fiction and Fantasy genre neither of which – as far as I can see – have yet been the subject of any research in ritual theory.

2. Back to the Future – Ritual Design in the Star Trek Series At first glance the Star Trek universe would seen not to hold any interest as regards ritualistic observations. 1967’s episode 31 (the second episode in the second season of Star Trek: The Original Series – which is entitled “Who Mourns for Adonais?” – tells the story of the ancient Greek god Apollo, who had left planet Earth more than 2,000 years ago, but, unlike the other Olympian gods, had been waiting for the descendants of his former worshippers. Apollo then catches the starship Enterprise in the orbit of an Earth-like planet called “Pollux IV” by using a giant hand of energy. He further forces a landing party down on to his planet, where they find him enthroned in a stereotypical white Greek temple. Apollo demands that the crew of the Enterprise worship him, but they refuse and finally move to destroy Apollo’s forces by using their “phaser” cannons. In the end, Apollo’s might and dominance are demolished, and he sorrowfully appeals to the other Olympian gods to accept him again, whereupon he disappears without any new followers, realising that “the time has passed. There is no room for gods”.4 This episode is quite representative of the highly critical attitude towards religion and ritual in Star Trek: The Original Series. In the specific context of the growing scientific faith of the 1960s and 1970s, religion and religious practice are seen to represent a lower level of cultural evolution. In the world of Mr. Spock and Captain Kirk – akin to that of Gene Roddenberry and the producers of the Star Trek series – there seems to be no more room for worshipping gods, for rituals and religion. Only seventeen years later, things had changed considerably. Even two years before that, in 1982, the second feature film, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, covers the story of Mr. Spock’s tragic death after sacrificing himself to save the Enterprise from being destroyed. The crew then holds a solemn space funeral in honour of Spock, which clearly reminds us of American military burial customs and also contains elements of American civil religion.5 In addition, the casket containing Spock’s dead body is shot into the orbit of a planet which, by a so-called “Genesis 4 Daniels 2004: 46:09–46:14. 5 Meyer 2006: 1:38:51–1:40:31.

The Re-Embodiment of Mr. Spock and the Re-Incarnation of Voldemort 609 Project” initiated shortly before, has been made subject to testing a new technology in order to create hospitable worlds for future colonisation. In the final scene, the coffin is seen to have soft-landed in the planet’s prospering vegetation.6 Two years later, in 1984, the third feature film Star Trek III: The Search for Spock was released with a new and astonishing attitude towards the afterlife and ritual. In a nutshell, the important facts of the plot are the following: the “Genesis Project” seems to have been completed successfully; a so-called “terraforming”process has made the primarily desert planet into a wonderful world, and, in addition, surprisingly transformed Spock’s dead body into the living body of a young and growing child – but obviously lacking the outstanding intellectual and mental abilities of the former Spock. However, the promising “Genesis Project” had only been partly successful – it had worked too quickly in fact, and the planet had become “unstable”, threatening the Enterprise with imminent collapse in a huge explosion. But also the Spock-kindred child had grown rapidly, so much so that the crew of the Enterprise were able to fetch the new Spock-body at exactly the same age as the former Spock had died some years before. On its own, this certainly would not have provided the basis for a successful film project, and so the producers added a completely new concept of afterlife, which, in the plot, they represented as a well-established custom on the planet “Vulcan”, but still unknown to the people of Earth. This newly-introduced ability of “Vulcans” like Spock depends on a soul-like concept, called a “katra”, meaning the “very essence”, the “living spirit”, “everything that was not of the body”. Kirk has to learn about this from Spock’s father Sarek, a Vulcan ambassador, who reproaches the completely amazed Captain for having dealt irresponsibly with his son’s existence and having “denied him his future”.7 Leonard Nimoy, the director of Star Trek III: The Search for Spock and who also played the character of Spock, explained in an interview the invention of this “katra” as the key concept for restoring the figure of Spock. Spock’s incorporeal essence, “his living spirit” – according to the plot’s narrative – had been transferred by a mind-melding process to the ship’s doctor, Leonard McCoy.8 The idea was that by transferring it “back” to the newborn body of Spock, the figure of Spock with all his personality, his intelligence, and his memories could be retrieved again. In a retrospective interview given in 2002 to Paramount Pictures on the occasion of Mark Rance’s production of Captain’s Log, Leonard Nimoy recalls the problem behind this invention of a new concept of the afterlife, the “remember thing”: “The remember thing had to be brought in the play, what do we do with that remember thing? So, we came up with this idea that Spock had sort of one 6 Ibid.: 1:45:25–1:45:39. 7 Nimoy 2006: 0:23:04–0:23:40. 8 Ibid.: 0:27:00–0:28:00.

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Gregor Ahn computer feeding another, downloaded everything out of his brain into McCoy’s brain. And we called it Spock’s ‘katra’. … We described it as everything that was not of the body. He gave him everything but his body. He gave him his spirit, his intelligence, his information, just poured it all into McCoy. As though it could be retrieved out of that brain, McCoy’s brain/computer later.”9

Interestingly, Dr. McCoy on his own isn’t able to replace Spock’s “katra”. What is needed is an age-old, mysterious, very unusual, and dangerous ritual named “faltor-pan”, which is performed by a high priestess in the exotic and somewhat inhospitable surroundings of the planet Vulcan.10 Begun with the recurrent strokes of a gong, the “fal-tor-pan” ritual starts with a solemn procession towards the ceremonial place. There follows a formal inquiry of Spock’s father Sarek and of Dr. McCoy by the ritual specialist, who also warns the human participant against the danger of the ritual. She then puts her hands on the faces of Dr. McCoy and the new-grown Spock-body, building a visualised symbolic bridge between the two. Without further action, the priestess – in the logic of the plot – by serving as a kind of catalyst, achieves the transfer of the former Spock’s “katra” from the ship’s doctor to the new Spock-body. Meanwhile, this central sequence of the ritual is accompanied by bolts of lightning and a dramatic increase in the background music. Finally, one last striking of the gong marks the end of the ritual. The high priestess and her companions leave the ceremonial place; the crew of the Enterprise take the opportunity to welcome their lost and now regained member. Led by friendship and solidarity with their former crew member, the space voyagers of the Enterprise, who, with a critical attitude towards religion and ritual some years before had destroyed the temple of the alleged god Apollo, now willingly participate in a strange ritual. With regard to ritual theory, it is interesting to note that this ritual is explicitly ascribed to a culture on a very high evolutionary level, and that its efficacy in the plot, surprisingly, is not called into question. Here, for one of the first times in the Star Trek universe, a ritual is arranged as both necessary and efficacious in the sense of the postulated impact inherent in the “faltor-pan” ritual.11 At the same time, this astonishing turn corresponds to the invention of a concept of “postmortality” that clearly harks back to religious beliefs in an immaterial and immortal essence of the person in the afterlife.12 The happy ending of the story, the reintegration of Mr. Spock’s mind and body, has certainly been satisfying to most of the movie’s spectators. But from an academic perspective it might be more interesting to ask how the effect of the ritual 9 10 11 12

Rance 2006: 0:05:22–0:06:06. Nimoy 2006: 1:25:37–1:31:05. Podemann Sørensen 2006: 528–531. Ahn 2001: 23–28.

The Re-Embodiment of Mr. Spock and the Re-Incarnation of Voldemort 611 can be characterised: Has Spock been “reborn”? Is this process of transferring a worldly, postmortal “katra”-existence into its own, re-emerged body to be understood as a kind of “reincarnation”? If we treat the plot seriously, only Spock’s body has died, while the un-bodily part of his person still survives in fusion with the ship’s doctor. Spock’s spontaneous transfer of his “katra” by mind-melding with the doctor, as well as the ritualistic transfer described above of the same “katra” to the new-grown Spock-body, is reminiscent of a kind of “re-embodiment” in a literal sense, rather than a “re-incarnation”. I therefore propose to consider “embodiment” as the key concept for interpreting this ritualistic re-unification of Spock’s mind and body. In her outstanding article “Embodiment” – for the huge “Theorizing Rituals” project – Catherine Bell describes the broad range of different meanings for “embodiment”: “In ritual studies embodiment may mean many things. While it consistently signals extra theoretical attention to physical human presence, the passive form of this term can imply a submissive imprinting or molding of this physical identity, even the anachronous image of caging consciousness in brute physicality.”13 In contrast to the recent anthropological view, which – as Catherine Bell rightly points out – strictly avoids the mind-body-dualism in favour of “asking how ritual shapes the body”,14 I take the anachronous “embodiment”-metaphor in order to describe the mind-transmitting ritual in Star Trek’s Search for Spock. As a result of that understanding of “embodiment”, which exactly fits into the plot-level’s construction of a ritualistic mind-body-reunification, I refer to Spock’s re-vitalisation as a ritualistic “re-embodiment”, because, following the story’s logic and also visually and to all appearances, he gets back into his own, newly-risen body. Finally, there still remains one question: is this kind of re-embodiment also an example of ritual design? On the one hand, from an outsider’s perspective, the implementation of Spock’s “katra” and the reunification ceremony on the planet Vulcan is simply a narrative trick, the “fal-tor-pan” ritual is an invention. But, on the other hand – holding to the plot’s narrative – an age-old legendary Vulcan ritual is being re-established and newly designed, because the bearer of the “katra” is a human being from Earth, a fact which by itself already makes a serious change to the ceremony. So, from inside the plot, a scientific spectator – for instance a crew member of the Enterprise – would not perceive the “fal-tor-pan” ritual as an invention, but as a spontaneous alignment according to the new and unexpected situation. From that perspective, the “fal-tor-pan” ritual’s renewal under varied condi13 Bell 2006: 533. 14 Ibid. 538.

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tions could easily be understood as an example of ritual design, which in this very special case is predominantly shaped by elements of “ritual transfer”.15 The problem of varying insider-outsider perspectives shown with this case study is already well known in ritual theory. But, in contrast to the “emic” perspective of participants in “real” rituals, the plot-insider view of all fictitious rituals described in literature and depicted in films is more static and attains more latitude only by the differing interpretations of its readers or audience. I will now turn to another example of ritual design in literature and film, which deals with a kind of near-death situation for the protagonist and his ritualistic revitalisation. This example is from J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter heptalogy, and concerns the magical ritual of the re-incarnation of Harry’s evil counterpart Voldemort, whose surviving life-force is embedded by this ritual into a completely newbuilt body. Here, too, fuzzy borders between “ritual design” and “ritual invention” are significant, but, while the Star Trek example is based on a new concept of postmortality, the case of Voldemort reflects rather a kind of pre-mortality.

3. The Return of Voldemort – Ritual Design in the Harry Potter Story One of the most unexpected observations I made when reading the Harry Potter books was the general lack of reference to religious interpretations of the portrayed world of wizards and witches. Sorcery and magic are conceptualised as learnable and teachable techniques, which can and must be practised in schools (like Hogwarts) by people who have the talent for it. Magic, in this context, is not based on a religious world-view, but works with the inevitability of natural chains of cause and effect. J.K. Rowling has clearly taken this all-but-scientific construction of magic from a quite popular tradition in English-speaking countries which can be traced back to James George Frazer’s critical approach to religion in his famous Golden Bough.16 Consequently, pupils and teachers at Hogwarts act in a secular manner; they use magical spells as techniques, and they need neither religion nor rituals – except for secular rituals like the solemn opening and closing of the school year.17 But there is one instance which works differently. In the fourth book, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Harry has mysteriously been selected as one of four champions in the “Triwizard Tournament”, a magic contest in which the representatives of three rival schools of witchcraft and wizardry have to compete in three dangerous tasks.18 At the end of the competition, Harry and another Hogwarts 15 16 17 18

Langer et al. 2006: 23. Frazer 1911–1915; Kippenberg 1997: 141f. Rowling 2000: 128–141. Rowling 2001: 280–298.

The Re-Embodiment of Mr. Spock and the Re-Incarnation of Voldemort 613 champion, Cedric Diggory, arrive at the goal – the “Goblet of Fire” – in the middle of a huge maze consisting of magical hedges which attempt to attack the champions. Harry and Cedric decide to touch this Triwizard Cup at the same time, but it turns out to be a “Portkey”, a magical item transporting people to a certain place when touching it at the right time.19 Far from the secure surroundings of Hogwarts School, the two young wizards find themselves teleported to a dark and threatening graveyard. A man called “Wormtail”, alias Peter Pettigrew, appears bearing a childlike figure, who turns out to be Harry’s evil counterpart Voldemort, the “dark Lord”.20 13 years previously, Voldemort had lost his natural body when trying to kill Harry with the deadly “Avada Kedavra” curse which had turned back from Harry upon himself and then almost killed him.21 The following scene shows Wormtail arranging a cruel ritual in order to prepare Voldemort’s re-incorporation into a completely new-built body. Upon Voldemort’s cold-blooded command, “Kill the spare!” Pettigrew murders Cedric Diggory, ties Harry to a headstone and starts the bloody ritual leading to restoration of his master’s bodily appearance.22 First, Wormtail starts a fire underneath a cauldron of enormous dimensions which is “full of what seemed to be water”,23 puts the baby-like but repugnant figure into the cauldron’s boiling liquid, and then starts the bloody threefold sacrifice by putting into the stock: – a bone from the grave of Voldemort’s father, – his own right hand after having cut it off with a dagger and – blood from Harry’s right arm. Meanwhile, he recites a magic spell, which runs as follows: “Bone of the father, unknowingly given, you will renew your son! … Flesh – of the servant – w-willingly given – you will – revive – your master. … B-blood of the enemy … forcibly taken … you will ... resurrect your foe.”24 In the film adaptation, this central text has been shortened considerably and the last line has been substituted by a completely new phrasing, in order to introduce the figure rising up more clearly: 19 20 21 22 23 24

Rowling 2001: 688f. Rowling 2001: 690, 697. Rowling 2000: 18f., 65–67. Rowling 2001: 691f.. Rowling 2001: 693. Rowling 2001: 694f.

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As a result of this vile ritual, the childlike figure of Voldemort becomes incorporated into a new “tall and skeletally thin”26 snake-like body, but, despite these horrible looks, he has regained his former powers, as is shown in the last sentence of the chapter: “Lord Voldemort had risen again.”27

4. “Ritual Design” – a New Key Concept for Ritual Theory? But back to ritual theory again: as with Spock’s mind-body-reunification, the reincorporation of Voldemort takes place during the performance of a complex ritual compounded out of different elements. From an outsider’s perspective, this fictitious ritual is to be labelled as an invented ritual. But in contrast to this view, from the perspective of each plot’s narrative both rituals draw on older traditions and can be interpreted as transformed resumptions of exceptional, but already known rituals. In exactly this sense I would call these two rituals examples of “ritual design”. In the case of Voldemort’s ritualistic re-incorporation, some elements of the ritual, for instance the cauldron and the sacrifice of blood as substitute for the life to be regained, are obviously taken from religious patterns or stereotypes. Thus, in contradistinction to J.K. Rowling’s predominant construction of magic as technique, this very important scene has been explicitly styled by the author as a ritual. The difference between Spock’s and Voldemort’s re-incorporation rituals lies in the distinct concepts of post- or pre-mortality: whereas Spock’s “living spirit”, his “katra”, is implanted into something like his own body – a sort of physical clone without mental abilities – Voldemort cannot get back into his own body, but has to incorporate into a completely new body. Spock’s re-incorporation can therefore be characterised as a kind of “re-embodiment” in the literal sense, and Voldemort’s re-incorporation as a kind of “re-incarnation”, but without any post-mortal interlude. Both cases deal with fictitious rituals, rituals without a real physical performance in literature and film. The invention of these two re-incorporation rituals and concepts of near-mortality by the authors is accompanied by the transfer of elements of existing rituals and religions into the media of literature and film. Thus, the observed processes of ritual transfer into media have generated new facets which are also of concern for ritual theory. The labels “ritual design” or “ritual invention” are in this context dependent on the observer’s perspective: in both 25 Newell 2005: 1:55:47–1:56:32. 26 Rowling 2001: 696. 27 Rowling 2001: 697.

The Re-Embodiment of Mr. Spock and the Re-Incarnation of Voldemort 615 cases, the outsider’s view leads to “ritual invention” and the plot-insider perspective to “ritual design”. Such renewals and transformations of known rituals are not only significant for fictitious rituals in literature and film. They also shape the ritual practices of a lot of people, and even of commercial, self-proclaimed “ritual designers” – for instance, the Californian “Event Producer” and specialist for “Sacred Events”, Yehudit Steinberg, who, on her own and her company’s homepage, explicitly claims to conduct “ritual design” as planning and directing “… ceremonies and celebrations that incorporate ancient teachings and practices fused with contemporary elements”28 and gives an extensive explanation of what her clients might expect concerning “Our Ritual Design Practice”: “We use ritual design as a means to inspire and to create new traditions based on ancient teachings and practices. We are not interested in a dogmatic approach, but come from a historical and collaborative point of view. These rituals represent a continuum of cycles that are universal to humanity, which cross the boundaries of individual tribes, cultures and societies. How we choose to honor, acknowledge and pause for reflection at these key moments in time, is as diverse as the number of individual celebrations themselves. Ritual design is the creative process by which we design and direct these transitions. Through an in-depth collaborative process of discovering those elements that are important to you and your family.”29 During the last few decades, “ritual design”, in the eyes of some ritual specialists and of many participants in rituals, has grown into a new category for the understanding and interpretation of rituals. Despite inevitably fuzzy borders with regard to familiar terms like “ritual invention”, for instance, and despite the close connection in terms of content with “ritual transfer”, “ritual design” turns out to be a concept that, from the participant’s and the ritualist’s perspective on rituals, has been extended to become a useful category in the scientific description of rituals.

28 http://www.linkedin.com/pub/yehudit-steinberg/6/200/12a (18/06/2010). 29 http://asacredevent.com/page.php?id=22 (18/06/2010).

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References Ahn, Gregor 2001. “Unsterblichkeit – Auferstehung – Reinkarnation. Postmortalitätsmodelle in der europäischen Religionsgeschichte”. In: Michael Stausberg (ed.). Kontinuitäten und Brüche in der Religionsgeschichte. Festschrift für Anders Hultgård zu seinem 65. Geburtstag am 23.12.2001. Berlin et al.: de Gruyter: 12–43 (Ergänzungsbände zum Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde 31). Bell, Catherine 2006. “Embodiment”. In: Jens Kreinath & Jan Snoek & Michael Stausberg (eds.). Theorizing Rituals: Issues, Topics, Approaches, Concepts. Leiden, Boston: Brill: 533–543 (Studies in the History of Religions 114). Daniels, Mark (dir.) 2004 [1976]. “Who Mourns for Adonais?”. In: Gene Roddenberry (prod.) Star Trek – The Original Series. Season Two. Episode 31 [= production 33]. Frazer, James George 1911–1915. The Golden Bough. A Study in Comparative Religion. 12 vols. s.l.: Macmillan. Grimes, Ronald L. 2002. “Ritual and the Media”. In: Stewart M. Hoover & Lynn Schofield Clark (eds.). Practising Religion in the Age of the Media. Explorations in Media, Religion, and Culture. New York: Columbia University Press 219–233. Kippenberg, Hans G. 1997. Die Entdeckung der Religionsgeschichte. Religionswissenschaft und Moderne. Munich: Beck. Langer, Robert et al. 2006.“Transfer of Ritual”. Journal of Ritual Studies 20/1: 1–10. Meyer, Nicholas (dir.) 2006 [1982]. “Star Trek II: Der Zorn des Khan – Special Edition” [The Wrath of Khan]. In: Star Trek Celebrating 40 Years. Special Collection Star Trek 1–10. Motion Picture 2. s.l.: Paramount Pictures. Newell, Mike (dir.) 2005. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. s.l.: Warner Bros. Pictures. Nimoy, Leonard (dir.) 2006 [1984]. “Star Trek III: Auf der Suche nach Mr. Spock – Special Edition” [The Search for Spock]. In: Star Trek Celebrating 40 Years. Special Collection Star Trek 1–10. Motion Picture 3. s.l.: Paramount Pictures. Podemann Sørensen, Jørgen 2006. “Efficacy”. In: Jens Kreinath & Jan Snoek & Michael Stausberg (eds.). Theorizing Rituals: Issues, Topics, Approaches, Concepts. Leiden, Boston: Brill. 523–531 (Studies in the History of Religions 114/1). Rance, Mark (prod.) 2006 [2002]. “Captain’s Log”. In: Star Trek Celebrating 40 Years. Special Collection Star Trek 1–10. Motion Picture 3: Auf der Suche nach Mr. Spock – Bonus Features. s.l.: Paramount Pictures. Rowling, Joanne K. 2000 [1997]. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. London: Bloomsbury. — 2001 [2000]. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. London: Bloomsbury.

Erik de Maaker, Eric Venbrux, and Thomas Quartier

Reinventing “All Souls’ Day”: Spirituality, Contemporary Art, and the Remembrance of the Dead Over the past couple of years, in The Netherlands, various alternative communal commemorations of the dead have taken place. None of these was tied to a specific church community. Rather, they were non-denominational, “spiritual” events. In 2006 and 2007, in early October, the municipal cemetery of the town of Almere celebrated the “Night of the Soul” (“Nacht van de ziel”), and in 2007, in the town of Heilloo, a “Consolation Day” (“Troostdag”) was held. However, by far the most comprehensive of these commemorative events have been organized in Amsterdam and surroundings. In 2005, “All Souls’ Day, Obviously” (“Allerzielen Allicht”) was held at the upmarket Amsterdam burial ground “De Nieuwe Ooster”. This was followed in 2007 by the much more comprehensive “All Souls’ Day All Around” (“Allerzielen Alom”), which involved a broad range of art works exhibited during nightly celebrations at four burial grounds and a crematorium, located throughout the province of Noord Holland. Traditionally, in the Netherlands, All Souls’ Day is a Catholic festival. It is celebrated annually in the autumn, on 2 November. According to the classical Catholic readings, many deceased are not immediately admitted to heaven upon death, but have to spend time in Purgatory first. Purgatory is a place where the souls of those who are not yet ready to enter heaven have to suffer in order to be cleansed of their sins. On All Souls’ Day, Catholic churches hold a dedicated evening mass, which involves prayer for the dead who are in Purgatory, or more generally, those people who have recently died. Afterwards, the people who have attended the mass jointly visit the burial ground. There, they light candles and place white chrysanthemums on the graves of “their” deceased. All Souls’ Day has a religious meaning, but it also provides an annual occasion for relatives and friends of those who have died to come together. Protestants had a commemoration of the dead, to some extent comparable, in the annual “Remembrance Feast” (“Gedachtenisfeest”). In recent decades, in the Netherlands, the number of people who

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identify with a particular religious denomination has sharply declined, and festivals such as these have lost much of their earlier prominence.1 “All Souls’ Day, Obviously” and “All Souls’ Day All Around” organiser Ida van der Lee maintains that many people who do not, or no longer, identify with a religious denomination, lack the ritual “means” to deal with death. She bases this on her first-hand experience as a nurse at hospital department of Internal Medicine. The department had many patients who were terminally ill with cancer, and these patients, as well as their relatives and friends, had a very hard time coming to terms with the inevitability of death and bereavement. Church-related ideas and ritual forms of coping with death had little or no significance for them, resulting in an inability (Dutch: “onthandheid”) to deal with the sorrow and grief they encountered. This argument seems to be in line with the idea that the loss of religious affiliation results in people becoming “homeless in the cosmos”.2 Inspired by the effusive celebrations of All Souls’ Day in countries such as Mexico and Poland, Ida van der Lee recreated All Souls’ Day as a celebration in which artistic imagination plays a central role. The motto of these celebrations was “Rather than staying silent about the dead, to celebrate who they were and what they can still convey” (Dutch: “De doden niet verzwijgen maar vieren voor wie ze waren en wat ze te vertellen hebben”). Ida van der Lee believes that artists can provide new “forms” and “images” which inspire people to deal with death in a balanced manner. What kind of work did artists produce for these celebrations? How was this art appreciated by the people attending the celebrations, and in what ways did it key in to their ideas about the dead? Research on charging mortuary rituals in the Western world has suggested that secularisation or the loss of identification with a particular religious denomination results in reduction of the importance attributed to the soul of the deceased.3 In the days when religious doctrines featured more prominently, people would have been much more concerned with the fate of the deceased person. After all, such doctrines stressed the importance of the deceased reaching heaven to find eternal peace. Nowadays, heaven is not on many people’s minds, and mortuary rituals primarily cater to the grief of the survivors, to accommodate their mourning.4 So, what importance do the dead still have? 1 In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the vast majority of the Dutch identified with one or another Christian denomination. In the decades after the Second World War, and particularly in the last quarter of the twentieth century, the size of this share of the population has dramatically decreased. According to large-scale research into religious self-perception of people in the Netherlands, in 2004 64% of the population categorised themselves as not affiliated with a specific religious denomination (Becker & de Hart 2006: 38). 2 Heinz 1999: 10. 3 Davies 1997; Garces-Foley 2002–2003. 4 Hockey 2001; Walter 1999.

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1. “All Souls’ Day All Around” “All Souls’ Day All Around” was funded by societies sponsoring modern art, as well as by corporate sponsors from the funerary industry. For the former, these kinds of celebrations are cutting edge “community art”, that is, creating modern art that does not remain confined to a gallery or museum, but serves to advance and channel societal processes. For the funeral industry, the celebrations were worth sponsoring, as they fit in with a trend in which funeral societies, cemeteries, and crematoriums want to extend the services that they offer to the bereaved. This is deemed to be particularly interesting for people who are not – or no longer – interested in denominationally bound religious services. “All Souls’ Day All Around” encompassed celebrations at four cemeteries and a crematorium, each at a different location. “Zorgvliet”, owned by the municipality of Amstelveen, is an upmarket cemetery, which has the graves of many of the rich and famous of the Netherlands (celebration on 14/10/2007). In the small town of Purmerend, “All Souls’ Day All Around” took place at a Roman Catholic cemetery which had been closed to burials for the last thirty years, and was being restored as a historical site by a neighbourhood committee (celebration on 21/10/2007). In the posh village of Blaricum, the celebration took place at the municipal cemetery, located in a forest-like setting (celebration on 28/10/2007). In the much more down-to-earth village of Castricum, “All Souls’ Day all Around” was also celebrated at the municipal cemetery (celebration on 31/10/2007). The last of the celebrations took place in the village of Schagen, at the site of a crematorium run by the large funerary society Yarden (celebration on 03/11/2007). Contrary to the four cemeteries, this last location almost entirely lacked permanent memorials for the dead (such as gravestones). Rather, it consisted of vast, open fields, which were used for the dispersal of the ashes of the persons cremated. Preceding the celebrations, the organisers tried to involve people who were related to someone who was buried or had been cremated at one of the sites at which “All Souls’ Day All Around” would be celebrated. They approached people who might like to attend through local newspapers and TV stations, as well as by way of a website dedicated to the project.5 Furthermore, preparatory meetings were held at each of the locations to inform people about what the evenings might look like, and invite them to participate. The organisers had hoped that many people would attend, but at none of the meetings did more than a couple of dozen people show up. The organisers had also hoped that a substantial number of the people attending the meetings would want to come to one of several specialised preparatory workshops. These workshops were to be held at a central location, where they could be attended by people involved with any of the five sites. Each workshop would be dedicated to a topic such as 5 http://www.allerzielenalom.nl, in Dutch.

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music, poetry, cooking, or drawing. In the end, only a very few people volunteered. The only workshop held focused on the printing of pictures of deceased persons on “candle shades”. Such a candle was then burned on the grave of the deceased person to whom it was dedicated during the celebration of “All Souls’ Day All Around”. Although very few people attended a workshop, it became apparent at each of the celebrations that dozens of people had taken to the suggestions of the organisers to engage in some sort of activity in relation to “their” deceased. This ranged from people uniting with relatives and friends of the deceased to have drinks, food, or play music,, to other people creating more elaborate displays on or around a grave with the use of pictures and other memorial objects. The five celebrations of “All Souls’ Day All Around” attracted about 4,000 visitors altogether. For the organisers, this was well beyond the number of people that they had expected. Nearly 400 of these visitors completed a questionnaire that was drafted by researchers affiliated to the “Reinventing Death Rites” programme of Nijmegen Radboud University (one of whom is the author).6 From the results of the questionnaire, it appears that two-thirds of the visitors were not religiously affiliated. About a quarter of the people indicated that they were Roman Catholics, implying that Protestant Christians, as well as members of the Muslim minority, were under-represented. Perhaps they felt less attracted to what in their eyes – due to the use of the term All Souls’ Day – might be a post-Catholic, rather than a postreligious celebration.

2. A Sense of Place Cemeteries and the grounds of crematoriums are places dedicated to the disposal of the mortal remains of deceased people. That is, at a cemetery corpses are buried in order to decay. The bones remain in the earth under a gravestone, as long as the bereaved are willing to pay for the “grave rights”.7 Even after a grave has been cleared, the skeletal remains stay on the premises, since they are reburied in a

6 This article is based on the results of that questionnaire, as well as on fieldwork done by Stijn Westrik M.A. and the author. I would like to gratefully acknowledge the Mondriaan Foundation (Amsterdam) for their financial support. 7 It is extremely rare for cemeteries or memorial sites in the Netherlands to grant eternal grave rights. Instead, the relatives of the deceased to whom the memorials are dedicated have to continue to pay “grave rights” in order for a grave to be kept. At most cemeteries, once the “grave rights” are no longer paid, the grave will be cleared. The remnants of the deceased are then placed in a common grave, usually located at the back of the cemetery.

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common grave. Crematoriums have fields or gardens which serve as a place for the dispersal of cremation ashes.8 At cemeteries and ash dispersal fields, the remnants of the bodies of the deceased are normally not visible; the bones are in the earth and the ashes dispersed. Only those dead have a visible material presence for whom a memorial exists, such as a gravestone, or a small plaque at a columbarium. Such a memorial is usually spatially linked to the mortal remains. A gravestone tends to be located on top of the place where the corpse has been buried, and a memorial at a columbarium often has the ashes of the person mentioned on the plaque. The dead whose remains are present at a cemetery or crematorium are normally only remembered by their own relatives and friends. At “All Souls’ Day All Around”, their location at a single site resulted in them being jointly celebrated. Cemeteries and crematoria are normally closed at night, when they are places of silence and darkness. When “All Souls’ Day All Around” was celebrated at such a site, it stayed open, and – at particular places – lit up. Moreover, at all these sites the organisers extended the area in which the celebration was held, so that it came to encompass areas that were normally off limits to the public, or an adjacent park or woodland area. This contributed to the creation of a dedicated ritual “space” that did not exist in everyday life. The organisers of “All Souls’ Day All Around” demarcated this ritual space with light and sound. Apart from powerful spotlights, there were tiny batteryoperated lamps, paraffin lamps, candles, and woodfires. Sound at times emerged as music produced on the spot, such as someone playing on copper vases that are otherwise used to display flowers on graves. At other times, sound consisted of electronically reproduced esoteric music. More than anything else, what made the sites at which “All Souls’ Day All Around” special were the dedicated works of art. This art was multidisciplinary, ranging from sculptures and video art to performances. The works of art had been produced by about forty artists from the Netherlands. Some art was only displayed at one of the celebrations of “All Souls’ Day All Around”, other installations were shown in several of these places. The following paragraph discusses some of the works of art, focusing on the ways in which the people who visited “All Souls’ Day All Around” appreciated these.

8 In the Netherlands, the bereaved can collect the cremation ashes and take these home if they like. However, I am under the impression that a majority of the bereaved disperses the ashes at a dedicated field on the premises of the crematorium itself.

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3. Imagination Beyond Art One of the works of art that was displayed at each of the five celebrations, near the entrance, was a long clothesline. The line, held up high by bamboo stakes, held white clothes (Image 1). Each of these pieces of clothing had a term for a human relationship printed on it in black. This included terms such as: “sister” (“zuster”), “friend” (“vriend”), or “husband” (“man”) (Image 2).

Image 1: The clothesline (Amstelveen) Photo by Erik de Maaker

Image 2: Detail of a shirt with the word “man” (husband) (Amstelveen). Photo by Erik de Maaker

The washing line triggered a variety of reactions. Some people simply thought that it was “very special”. A visitor remarked that it made him realise the large number of relationships which people maintain. Another person noted that he or she had experienced the washing on the line as meaningful, since “it involved

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clothes, that which had been worn on the body, which brought it very close to the deceased.” The clothes were more often identified with the dead. A woman wrote that the clothesline made her remember “the time that we received the bag from the hospital.” That is, in my reading, the time that she received the bag with the clothes of her husband, who had died in hospital, from the hospital staff. Someone else noted, most likely for similar reasons, that to her the washing on the line was “slightly scary”. Other people wrote, even more strongly, that the displayed clothes “put them off”, or were “plainly repulsive”. The association of the clothes with the dead was most probably reinforced by the use of the colour white. In Christian contexts, the colour white emerges sometimes as a symbol of “eternal life”.9 It contrasts with the colours that characterise earthly life. The generic relational terms that had been stamped on the clothes made people aware that people belonging to their own social network fitted broader relational categories. Consequently, the shirt which had “father” printed on it did not just refer to one person’s father, but to anyone’s father. This stressed the commonality between all “fathers”, “mothers”, and “friends”. It reduced the importance of the individual characteristics of these dead, promoting them in their more anonymous, collective aspects. Another work of art consisted of a group of man-sized sculptures made of candle wax. Some of these sculptures were as tall as a person, others the size of a child. The sculptures had been cast rather roughly, but did resemble humans quite closely. During the nightly celebrations a candle would burn in a hollow in the wax figures, lighting them up from inside (Image 3). Some of the figures also had tapers on the head, or elsewhere on the body.

Image 3: The group of candle-wax sculptures at a cemetery (Castricum). Photo by Erik de Maaker

9 Metcalf & Huntington 1991: 63.

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One artist (not the one who made the sculptures) described the sculptures as being of an “overwhelming fragility”, and an “extraterrestrial beauty”. Another person wrote full of praise: “conceptually very strong”. Someone else experienced the sculptures as “very beautiful” and “moving”. She wrote: “The lit up candle-wax effigy of a child amongst the autumn leaves helped me to reconcile myself with the finiteness / temporality of human life: at a certain moment, we have all been burned up.” Another person mentioned that the sculptures emphasised the “transience of life”. And again someone else wrote that: “If souls exist, they might look this still, white and translucent.” Against all these laudatory remarks, there were also people who experienced the sculptures as threatening. Someone wrote: “We and a couple of others did not like the sculptures that were placed near the children’s graves. [Some cemeteries in the Netherlands have dedicated sections for the burial of children – EM] The sculptures were as big as children, and the light that was burning inside them did not give me a good feeling at all.” The wax sculptures aroused a particularly strong reaction at the first site where they were displayed, at the Amstelveen cemetery “Zorgvliet”. There, some of the sculptures were lying flat (Image 4). Many people experienced this as shocking. One of the organisers explained to me that this was since “Death is something horizontal, after all.” The lying sculptures identified in her opinion strongly with dead bodies, and the decay that these are subject to.

Image 4: Two prostrate candle-wax sculptures (Amstelveen). Photo by Erik de Maaker

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The identification of the waxen sculptures with corpses emerged from their stillness, as well as – similar to the clothesline discussed above – the colour white. It was also conveyed by the burning tapers, the slow consumption of the sculptures by fire. Many people associated this with the putrefaction that corpses are subject to. In addition, the burning up of a candle is a common metaphor for the end of a human life. Interestingly, some people saw the white waxen sculptures as embodiments of souls. Souls are usually perceived as non-material, but here the sculptures came to be perceived as decaying embodiments of the dead. “Transience” is a concept that is generally associated with the end of life, or perhaps better, the passage from life to death. Here, it also seems to apply to a decay of the dead. This is perhaps less strange than it seems to be. If a person’s body is an important constituent of his or her individuality, its decay contributes to the deceased individual being forgotten. Likewise, the slow consumption of the candle-wax bodies by fire will then symbolise a process which slowly renders the traits of the dead less recognisable.

4. Imagination Beyond Art In the previous paragraph, examples have been discussed of art that was primarily meant to be looked at by visitors. But a lot of the artwork that was created for “All Souls’ Day All Around” required the participation of the visitors. This implied the provision of names and objects relating to the deceased people being mourned. This allowed the dead to be connected to these works of art. Most people were eager to participate in these, which was, for the organisers of “All Souls’ Day All Around”, an important measure of the extent to which the art created catered to the visitors’ needs. One of the works of art that invited the visitor’s participation was the “Chambers of the Afterworld” (“Kamers van het Hiernamaals”) (or in short: the “Afterworld”). Using materials such as wooden crates, sticks, and sheets of corrugated iron, chambers in various shapes had been outlined on a field. From inside some boxes soft, spacious music emerged. The various chambers had small wooden boards with titles such as the “Chamber of Health in Which the Dew Drips” (“Kamer van de gezondheid waar de dauw druppelt”), “Chamber for Those Who Can Imitate the Singing of Birds” (“Kamer voor hen die het imiteren van vogelzang beheersen”), the “Chamber for Those Who Take Everything With a Pinch of Salt” (“Kamer voor hen die alles met een korrel zout nemen”) and the “Chamber of Purpose and Dedication” (“Kamer van nut en toewijding”) (Image 5).

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Image 5: A chamber of the “Afterworld” (Blaricum). Photo by Erik de Maaker

The visitors were invited to buy a lighted candle, for one euro, and place it in a chamber which they deemed appropriate for the deceased person they were commemorating. At the beginning of an evening, the “Chambers of the Afterworld” were empty. As the night proceeded, they filled up with burning candles. People who visited the “Afterworld” commented that they considered it “beautiful”, “stunning”, a “mystical place”, “serene rest”, or creating a “spiritual moment”. A woman wrote: “The ‘Afterworld’ was a place where the souls come together before the fog has lifted, one might say a twilight zone.” The “Afterworld” allowed people to allocate a place to the dead. Someone wrote about his or her deceased father: “A remarkable moment, to be able to say something to him or her without the use of words, to be able to provide him with a place which I could not give to him six years ago [presumably the father had died six years ago – EM].” Another person commented that wandering around in the “Afterworld” “allowed her deceased son to be with her.” The afterworld exists in the imagination of the living. Religious doctrines traditionally differentiate between blissful dwelling places (such as heaven) and places dominated by fear, anguish, and pain (such as hell). Although no one directly compared the “Afterworld” that was created during “All Souls’ Day All

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Around” to “heaven”, key words used, such as “serene”, “beautiful”, and “harmonious”, certainly come close to the notions associated with heaven. Nevertheless, there were also people who referred to the more negative associations with the afterworld. One person remarked “What are we afraid of, if the afterworld looks like this?” And someone else wrote about the “Afterworld”: “As if it removed the last fears for the dead … the light, the music […], to ‘meet’ so closely with the dead was moving.” However, one person noted that due to the darkness surrounding the “Afterworld”, one could experience the field filled with lights and soft music as “a gate leading towards hell.” Fear of the dead, and the places where the dead may dwell, are not at the forefront, but – interestingly – they are also not absent. Death, and the destiny of those who die, continue to be important themes, even for people who are religiously non-affiliated. The “Afterworld” was a realm of the dead that had become accessible to the living. It seems to have enabled the living to associate the deceased person (whom they were commemorating) with a symbolic object (a candle). With the candle, they could go around in the “Afterworld” until they had found a chamber with appropriate characteristics. Putting a candle in one of the chambers, and leaving it there, allowed the living to position the deceased in the afterworld. Another work of art which invited people to expose their memories was “Objects of Remembrance” (“Herinnerdingen”). This installation consisted of wooden wine boxes from which the lids had been removed. The artist involved wanted people to make these boxes into memorials, filling them with mnemonic objects dedicated to a particular deceased person. People had been invited to create such boxes during the preparatory meetings. However, only a very few people volunteered, which forced the artist to change her strategy. Since she could not depend on objects which people brought from home, she collected a large number of small objects from an Amsterdam flea market. At the celebrations the artist invited visitors to use the objects that she had collected to compose a memorial box, to be displayed for the evening (Image 6). This involved objects such as a toy car, a comb, welding goggles, a cup and saucer, a key, a lamp hood, a bead necklace, a small mirror, and many other every day objects. On one of the evenings, the artist explained her idea: “Many people keep objects at home with which they keep their memories of the deceased alive. […] These are important, since they relate to something that you have experienced together, or since such an object is of great importance to that person. […] I have brought a number of objects, which will hopefully arouse good memories. You can place such an object in one of the boxes, together with a card that has a personal message. This way, I am tonight collecting memories of people who are passing by.”

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Image 6: The displayed “Remembrance Objects” (Castricum). Photo by Erik de Maaker

“Objects of Remembrance” appealed to many people. A child chose a deck of cards, and wrote: “For my dear father who always used to play games with me” (“Voor mijn lieve papa die altijd spelletjes met me deet”) (Image 7). A woman later commented: “Among the common objects was a small piece of embroidery, placed in an oval wooden frame. Throughout her life, my mother of blessed memory did a lot of embroidery. […] I thought, gosh, this is my mum! I jotted down a couple of words on a piece of paper and placed it together with the embroidery in one of the boxes. This way the ‘thing’, a piece of framed embroidery, transformed through my memories, and my story, into a symbol of my mother […]. My mother is buried elsewhere, but this connected me very closely to her.” The boxes with their objects and messages were exhibited for everyone to see. “Objects of Remembrance” invited the visitors to project their memories of the deceased onto objects that were displayed in front of them. The emphasis was on objects that could symbolise certain likes or character traits of the deceased. Such an object became transformed from something unimportant into something special by placing it in a wooden box, accompanied by a personal message. Once exhibited, the object came to represent a personal, intimate memory. Apparently,

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Image 7: A message from a child for his deceased father, with a deck of cards to the right (Castricum). Photo by Erik de Maaker

memories with the other people present at the particular celebration. This sharing of personal memories with a group of unknown others created a sense of community. Mourning the dead, then, came to include a much larger group of people, all of whom were involved with someone who was buried, cremated, or otherwise memorialised at that specific place. Everyone who created one of the boxes for “Objects of Remembrance” was aware that these would only exist for that particular evening. After all, at the end of the evening the artist would empty out all the boxes, and offer them again for display to the visitors at the next celebration of “All Souls’ Day All Around”. The objects that had been used would then be used by other people to commemorate the dead. Apparently, this temporariness did not prevent people in any way from formulating personal messages. The memorial boxes that they created were not objects to be cherished and kept forever, but – on the contrary – objects to be exhibited and abandoned. One of the most striking works of art that invited the participation of people participating in “All Souls’ Day All Around” was only displayed on the grounds surrounding the crematorium of the village of Schagen. There, one of the par-

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ticipating artists suggested that the organisers arrange wooden sheds, since the place reminded him of suburban allotments. The organisers bought these sheds, of a very common and inexpensive kind, from a well known DIY chain. They then tried to find people who were willing to transform such a wooden garden shed into a commemorative space. After some initial hesitation, some people agreed to participate, and with great enthusiasm personalised their shed. The evening that “All Souls’ Day All Around” was celebrated in Schagen, the wooden sheds proved to be too small. Most people had extended their exhibitions to the cloth awning with which the organisers had provided them, as well. One of the memorials had pictures of a deceased husband and father. He was present in pictures (Image 8), as well as objects. The man had died of cancer, seventy-one days after he had first been diagnosed. Throughout these two and a half months of illness, his wife kept their friends and relatives informed by e-mail. For “All Souls’ Day All Around”, she printed out the group mails that she had written about her husband’s illness and death. The messages told of hope, suffering, and desperation. Each of the messages had been put in a plastic pouch, and was displayed along the inside of the awning, inviting visitors to read them (Image 9). The widow was present throughout the evening, and answered questions about her husband’s disease, treatment, and eventual death.

Image 8: Detail of a memorial made for a deceased man (Schagen). Photo by Erik de Maaker

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The other small wooden houses had similar displays of personal memories, sorrow, and grief. In one of the houses, the pictures and life story of a man who, in his late twenties, committed suicide were displayed. In another one, a girl of about twenty and her mother showed the pictures of their son and brother, who died at the age of eighteen in a car crash, and the girl’s best friend, who died after she had been knocked from her moped by a car. Here, there was even a piece of wood on display, from the railing of the bridge against which the young man had crashed. At each of the wooden sheds, the people who had created the displays were present, and told the stories of death and what it had done to them over and over again, to whoever wanted to listen. The mother whose son had died told us that displaying all these memories was very difficult, but that she was very happy that she had decided to do it. Like others, she seemed, in a way, proud that she had mustered up the courage to disclose her sorrow, to share it with whoever was interested.

Image 9: A visitor reading e-mail messages narrating the sorrow, hope, and desperation of a woman whose husband had been diagnosed with cancer (Schagen). Photo by Erik de Maaker

The people who adopted a wooden shed used these to display their most personal memories. They turned the sheds into shrines filled with coveted memorial objects relating to their dead. This caused them to put very personal feelings on

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display for the other visitors to the celebration. Displaying and explaining these memories which had caused them so much pain and anguish helped them to gain control of the emotions involved. And perhaps, in having their sorrow acknowledged by others, it became less of a burden to them.

5. Creating Communities of the Living and the Dead “All Souls’ Day All Around” united people related to deceased people who had been buried or cremated at a single cemetery or crematorium. In addition, it included people who were mourning dead who had been disposed of elsewhere. A funeral service, and the (possible) subsequent visits to the grave or other memorial site are normally a matter for those related to specific deceased persons. One of the intentions of the organisers of “All Souls’ Day All Around” was to reunite these people related to a particular deceased person. The celebrations stressed that all the visitors had lost loved ones due to death. The remembrance of the dead was the common denominator among the people attending. Mourning was transformed from an individual or family-oriented event into something collective, which created a bond among the people attending. This way, the celebrations created a “community of mourners”. This community emerged with reference to the display of personal details relating to each of the particular deceased: the exposure of names of the dead, messages and photographs, as well as the display of cherished objects. Furthermore, it extended to some of the bereaved displaying the sorrow they had experienced, such as in the printed out e-mail messages displayed in the wooden sheds at Schagen. This display of personal sorrow, for those who revealed it, came close to disclosing too much of their vulnerability. For those who watched, and read, and asked, it bordered on voyeurism. However, probably precisely because this exchange was so sensitive, it could transform strangers into people who are involved with one another. “All Souls’ Day All Around” not only united the living in their joint remembrance, it also resulted in the dead being jointly remembered. This communion of the dead, if it can be called this, attained shape in the permanent memorials that had been made for them, such as gravestones and plaques. It also emerged, for instance, in the candles associated with specific dead people that were placed in a chamber at the “Afterworld”, and in the “Remembrance Objects” that were dedicated to them. The communion of the dead was not just latent, but manifested itself visibly and tangibly. I have noted that most of the visitors to “All Souls’ Day All Around” stressed its beauty, harmony, and spirituality. The dead were mostly remembered for their positive qualities, the warmth and care which they had provided during their lifetimes, and the strength and inspiration which they had continued to give after

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they died. Obviously, these were rather positively skewed memories, which did not leave room for the complexities of the real-life social beings which these dead had once been. “All Souls’ Day All Around” stimulated such a portrayal of the dead as a cherished source of inspiration. The dead were not just remembered, the celebration transformed them as well. In abandoning their bad temper and bad habits, the individual traits of the dead became less articulate. This blurring was also reinforced by the anonymised portrayal of the dead in the works of art, either as generic white wax sculptures, or as white pieces of cloth hanging from a washing line. “All Souls’ Day All Around” invited people to remember their dead, but at the same time it stimulated them to transform their memories. The dead that were remembered here were no longer social beings, as they had been during their lifetimes. The transformation of the dead was also stressed in the art works which depended on people’s contributions, such as “Remembrance Objects” and the “Afterworld”. Here, visitors were invited to associate their dead with an object. This object, which, in certain respects, had come to symbolise the dead, was then given a place, and left there. From the comments made by people who visited one or more of the celebrations of “All Souls’ Day All Around”, it is clear that the dead continue to be important for the living. People who are not tied to a particular religious denomination do not locate the dead in heaven or hell, but nevertheless they do attribute some sort of a presence to them. That is, the dead exist in memories, and can be symbolised in objects. Notably, objects and places that relate in one way or another to the mortal remains of the deceased are being attributed a strong symbolic value. This holds for two-dimensional representations of the body, such as pictures, as well. But it can even involve apparently randomly chosen objects, such as the ones that the artist who created “Remembrance Objects” had collected from an Amsterdam flea market.

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References Becker, Jos & Joep de Hart 2006. Godsdienstige veranderingen in Nederland: Verschuivingen in de binding met de kerken en de christelijke traditie. Den Haag: Sociaal en Cultureel Planbureau. Davies, Douglas J. 1997. Death, Ritual, and Belief: The Rhetoric of Funerary Rites. London: Cassell. Garces-Foley, Kathleen 2002–2003. “Funerals of the Unaffiliated”. Omega: Journal of Death and Dying 46/4: 287–302. Hockey, Jennifer L. 2001. “Changing Death Rituals.” In: Jennifer L. Hockey & Jeanne Katz & Neil Small (eds.). Grief, Mourning and Death Ritual. Buckingham et al.: Open University Press: 185–212 (Facing Death). Heinz, Donald 1999. The Last Passage: Recovering a Death of Our Own. New York et al.: Oxford University Press. Lee, Ida van der 2008. Allerzielen alom: Kunst tot herdenken. Zoetermeer: Meinema. Metcalf, Peter & Richard Huntington 1991. Celebrations of Death: The Anthropology of Mortuary Ritual. Cambridge et al.: Cambridge University Press. Walter, Tony 1999. On Bereavement: The Culture of Grief. Buckingham et al.: Open University Press.

Thomas Quartier

Funeral Design in the Netherlands: Structures and Meanings of Non-Ecclesiastic Funerals In modern Dutch society, the question of how funeral rites can be given shape is strongly debated, both in churches, and in the funeral industry and care organisations. The constellation of who offers particular funeral rites to people who are going to die, or who have lost a “significant other”, has changed drastically. There is no monopoly on rites any more when a funeral has to be designed for a deceased person. Ecclesiastic funerals are only one possibility, among others. Although there are still many ecclesiastic funerals taking place in the Netherlands, their number is declining and in 2005 only 38% of all funerals were ecclesial.1 What do all the people do who do not opt for an ecclesiastic funeral? There is a wide range of possibilities from which people can make their own choices. Major funeral companies and advice organisations publish books on how one can create one’s own funeral or that of a beloved one.2 These developments have strong implications for churches, and also for funeral companies. What do they offer? How can they assist bereaved people optimally in contemporary Dutch society? One of the most important changes is the practical responsibility in guiding people through saying farewell to their beloved one. In the past, a chaplain guided people through the different stages of saying farewell. This guidance started in the process of dying, continued with the preparation and celebration of the funeral, and finally the mourning rituals.3 Today, this situation is different: the first to be called when somebody has died is not a chaplain any more, but a funeral director. When it comes to ritual, the funeral director is, in the Netherlands, usually not the one who designs the funeral ritual. Rather, he or she will place the bereaved person in touch with somebody, generally a professional, with whom they can design the funeral for their deceased. This might be a chaplain, but can also be a so-called “ritual guide” (ritueelbegeleider) – a new area in which people have been specialising in the Netherlands during the last ten to fifteen years. 1 Bernts 2007. 2 Keesom 1991. 3 Quartier 2009a.

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In this article, I am particularly interested in non-ecclesiastic funerals in the Netherlands. The reasons for this are, firstly, their growing number; secondly, it is important to know that, following the rapid secularisation that has taken place since the 60s, there came into being what has been called a “ritual vacuum”: people found ritual to be something artificial and unnecessary. Only in the 90s did a new consciousness begin to develop, which put ritual back on the agenda.4 Non-ecclesiastic funerals, which were rather cold and poor before that time, became a new field of “ritual creativity”.5 Ritual guides played an important role in this process. Yet, to this day we do not know too much about how ritual guides work and what kinds of funerals they design. The main question I want to ask in this article is: how are non-ecclesiastic funerals designed in the Netherlands? In a first step, I will briefly present the current debate on funeral design and the role of ritual guides, and relate it to basic characteristics of ritual: structure and meaning (1). In the second part, I will deal with the structure of individually designed funerals, relying on data gathered among funeral-goers in the Netherlands (2). In the third part, I will concentrate on the meaning of individually designed funerals and describe natural symbols as an example of a repertoire used in these rituals (3). After that, I will distinguish different steps of how funeral design might take place in the Netherlands as an interaction between the bereaved and a ritual guide (4). In the last paragraph, I will reflect on funeral design from a rituological point of view (5).

1. Debates around the Dead: Structure and Meaning of Funerals Debates about funerals often take place within an institutional religious setting. If there is an authority involved which prescribes certain ritual forms, ritual creativity is not highly appreciated. This became clear in the Netherlands when some Roman Catholic bishops prohibited the use of CDs in churches when a funeral service was celebrated.6 Perhaps these debates, which have strong implications for the practice of Roman Catholic funerals, are one of the reasons why bereaved people often do not opt for a Roman Catholic funeral, but create their own funeral, or choose a ritual guide who is not bound to a particular ritual authority. However, the question remains of how the funeral is actually designed in these cases, and whether there is no single given structure or meaning included in the rituals performed, as is the case in ecclesiastic funerals. Several authors depart from the supposition that the only authorities in funeral design are the deceased and the bereaved. Rituals which are conducted according 4 Lukken 2005. 5 Venbrux & Heessels & Bolt 2008. 6 Quartier 2007a: 61.

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to a fixed order, repeatedly, are not what they have in mind. One example is Berkvens, who is a protestant pastor, and, at a certain moment, became one of the first ritual guides in the Netherlands: “It is said that rituals only work when being repeated. This might be true in a period of strong church participation. Today in Western Europe this is no longer the case. The small circle of friends and family form the relevant group”.7 Some questions can be asked of the standpoint articulated here. Firstly, one can ask whether the assumption is right that small-scale rituals which are designed for “the small group of family and friends” are necessarily not repeated. Secondly, the question can be asked of how those unrepeated rituals are designed. Do the “significant others” of the deceased really design the ritual themselves? Or are they assisted by a ritual guide, and how does this person work then? We can distinguish two ways in which ritual guides, in small scale rituals, can work. The first is that they facilitate what is provided by the family and friends of the deceased. The second is that they rely on resources of a cultural nature, e.g. spirituality, art, etc. This has, of course, strong implications for the repeatability of the rituals designed. If the ritual guide exclusively relies on what family and friends provide, the ritual can never be repeated and is fully individual. If they rely on cultural resources, it can have patterns which are broader than just the individual occasion. The first approach has been most prominently implemented by Embsen and Overtoom.8 They run an educational programme for ritual guides in the Netherlands, and belong, just as Berkvens, to the first representatives of this new area. For them, the “personal symbol” used in an individual funeral is the most important element. It is a material manifestation of memory: “The personal symbol forms in the first place the remembrance of the deceased. Most important is to look back to what has been and finding words that express the feelings evoked by the loss of the deceased”.9 At the same time, this memory is meaningful, in the sense of looking forward to the future: “Remembrance of the deceased is translated in a meaning that continues through death – it becomes a message”.10 The choice of personal symbols belongs, according to Embsen and Overtoom, exclusively to the bereaved. The ritual guide does nothing else than help them to find one. The symbol as such can be very different things. It can be the bag which the deceased always carried with him or her, but also a particular watch, or the like. Most important is that the personal symbol really expresses the core of what that particular person was. The funeral is then a memorial service, which is symbolically enacted in a particular object. Around this 7 8 9 10

Berkvens 2007: 9. Embsen & Overtoom 2007. Ibid.: 80. Ibid.: 106.

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object the rest of the funeral, perhaps consisting of texts, music, and the like, is designed. Ritual guides are trained by Embsen and Overtoom to assist the bereaved in the choice of their symbols. Critical questions can be asked of this point of view. Menken-Bekius, a Dutch pastoral theologian, is afraid that the personal symbol might be overestimated: “The symbol needs to unite all ritual elements and at the same time it needs to combine the remembrance of the deceased with a message for the future”.11 For Menken-Bekius, the concentration on one particular symbol is problematic. When somebody has died, there is not much time until the funeral takes place, and the symbol needs to be quickly chosen by the bereaved, who might not be trained in choosing symbols. The conclusion Menken-Bekius derives from this is that it might not be wise to focus on one particular symbol, which often does not belong to a larger frame of reference than the life of the deceased.12 Another critical remark, which is in line with the questions posed by MenkenBekius, refers to the event character of individually designed funerals. Uden states this problem clearly: “Today, specialists offer event funerals which are organized professionally. Pop-music, balloons and colourful coffins appear as provocation against death, mourning and finitude. Is the unusual the provocative element here? Is it wrong piety when these forms are perceived as problematic for feelings of mourning and tears?”13 These standpoints all have to do with the question of whether the individually designed funeral can guide the bereaved through their process of saying farewell to their beloved one. They represent the second way in which a ritual guide might work: larger frames of reference and given repertoires need to be used, to be able to help people enact this major transition in their life. In both cases, the question remains of how this ritual is actually given shape. For this question, it is necessary to investigate what, exactly, a ritual is. In ritual, structure and meaning can be distinguished as its major characteristics.14 “Structure of the ritual” means that ritual actions have a structure. It is a major quality of ritual that participants can rely on a structure which gives them safety in participating in ritual. Secondly, it implies that ritual creates a structure. Through ritual, a temporal and social order is established, which helps people to cope with the flow of time and which creates social bonds. In the case of an individually designed funeral, questions can be asked about the structure of theses rituals. A first question is whether those rituals have a structure and where this structure comes from. According to Embsen and Overtoom, it is exclusively derived from the use of a personal symbol. Menken-Bekius wonders 11 12 13 14

Menken-Bekius 2009: 31. Ibid.: 33. Uden 2006: 31. Quartier 2007b.

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whether this is sufficient to give participants something to rely on. The second question to be asked about structure is what structure can be created in a funeral. According to Berkvens, the small circle of family and friends is bound together in an individually created ritual. Here, Uden asks whether the event character of the ritual might make real feelings of connectedness impossible. Next, the question is whether the temporal structure can really be established in a personal symbol as suggested by Embsen and Overtoom. With regard to the meaning of the ritual, one can distinguish a meaning the ritual has in the sense of being recognisable for the participants. The second aspect of meaning is what meaning the ritual refers to. Here, religious or spiritual meaning often comes into play. As far as funerals are concerned, one can ask whether participants in individually designed funerals can recognise a personal symbol which has been suggested by Embsen and Overtoom. The inner circle that Berkvens refers to might, but others might not, because the symbol might be very private. With regard to the meaning to which the ritual refers, the remark of Menken-Bekius is important: does the ritual refer to a meaning depending solely on the participants? Or is there a meaning attached to the ritual which cannot simply be changed, and which offers participants a given frame of reference which transcends their concrete situation? It ought to be clear that these standpoints, as well as the ways ritual guides work, do not exclude each other. As in every debate, many polemical discussions lead to oppositions which may turn out not to be so clear if one explores the actual practice of ritual. In the next two paragraphs, I will describe empirical material about the two major characteristics of ritual distinguished here: structure and meaning.

2. Structure: A Ritual Canon? When talking about the structure of individually designed funerals, one needs to take a close look at how the funerals are structured, and which structure they might establish. It is an interesting question whether the individually designed funeral follows a particular ritual pattern, like a “liturgical order”15 in earlier times, when everybody chose a church funeral. Secondly, it is interesting whether a community is created which takes on the role of the liturgical community of believers. This information is relevant to understanding how funeral design works in the Netherlands, and what the role of ritual guides might be in this context. In research carried out at the Centre for Thanatology, we first observed funerals which were designed and conducted by ritual guides. After that, we constructed a

15 Rappaport 1999.

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questionnaire which was filled in by 119 participants at funerals.16 In our observations, we tried to find out whether there is what one might call a canon of ritual elements which determines more or less how the funerals are given shape. In the questionnaire, we first asked the participants whether they actively took part in the preparation of these elements. The reason for asking this question of the participants was that individually designed funerals seem to have a high degree of active involvement of funeral-goers. Secondly, we asked the participants whether they experienced these elements intensely or not. With these steps we hope to be able to answer the question of whether the individually designed funeral has any structure (if there is a canon of ritual elements), and whether it establishes a structure (if it involves people actively and gives them strong common experiences). From the observations, we concluded there is indeed what might be called a canon of ritual elements. The following elements were to be found in all the funerals observed: opening words, music, texts and poems, an “In memoriam”, the burning of candles, use of personal symbols, a moment of silence, and a “last farewell” with a ritual gesture. In the observations, we concentrated on what went on in the funeral service. We did not include the actual burial or cremation. The reason for this is that usually the ritual guide designs the parts of the funeral which take place in the hall of the cemetery or the crematorium, whereas the other parts are organised by the funeral director. These parts are very interesting, but beyond the scope of the research presented here. It seems that there is indeed a structure which non-ecclesiastic funeral services have, although this is surely different from what one could call a “liturgical order”.17 It is a vast and elastic scheme, in which the sequence may vary, and especially the concrete shape of elements can be very different. But how did the participants at the funerals take part in this ritual canon and how did they experience its elements? The following table shows how many of the 119 respondents who have filled in the questionnaire have been involved in the preparation of that particular ritual element (second column). At the same time, it shows how intensely the element was experienced by the participants (third column).

16 The observations have been processed by Remco Graat (Graat 2008). He also distributed the questionnaires with measuring instruments of the Centre for Thanatology at Radboud University (http://www.ru.nl/ct/english/). The statistical analyses have been carried out by Joanna Wojtkowiak. 17 Rappaport 1999.

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Table 1: Ritual elements – preparation and experience Ritual element Opening words Music Texts & poems In memoriam Candles Personal symbols Silence Last farewell

Took part in Experienced preparation (%) intensely (%) 41.8 62.3 50.0 81.1 48.8 86.9 45.9 84.4 50.0 45.9 34.4 55.7 28.5 59.8 46.7 86.1

In this table, we see that the percentage of people actually taking part in the preparation of several elements of the funeral is high. Note that not all of the participants filled in the questionnaire, and there might be an overrepresentation of close family members in the sample. But still, among the people we have asked, the percentage is high. Many of the elements were prepared by nearly half of the respondents. The respondents take part actively in giving shape to the ritual canon, and we know from conversations with families that such activities, in particular, have a strong communicative effect. This can also be seen in the experiences of the participants in the third column: nearly all of the elements are experienced intensely by more than half of the respondents. Furthermore, some elements are experienced intensely by more participants than took part in the preparation. This applies especially to personal symbols, the “last farewell”, the opening words, and the moment of silence. These might be elements in which the ritual guide plays a more active role. Although we cannot conclude this from this table directly, it might be the case that those elements are more of a given nature and brought in by the ritual guide, together with a smaller group of participants, maybe the family or close friends of the deceased. Take the personal symbol; it is chosen by a small group of participants, but experienced intensely by more. The same holds true of the “last farewell” and the silence. The opening words, which set the tone for the funeral, is the last element experienced intensely by more people than those who prepared it. In my view, those are typically ritual elements which give structure to the funeral. It might be the case that people need guidance for their experience, especially when it comes to ritual cornerstones such as the opening words, the symbol, or the last farewell. These elements can be constructed very individually, but Menken-Bekius might be right in saying that not all people are trained in symbolising, inventing gestures for the last farewell, and so on. A small group of participants designs the element. It can be experienced intensely by many more. Then it be-

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comes a given element for them, which might also imply a higher degree of repeatability. The pattern and the given nature of some elements might bring more universal dimensions into the funeral than a purely individual focus might imply. Structure is established by the combination of fixed and individual elements. In this regard, it is interesting that ritual guides usually create a small book, in which the different speeches and pieces of music are mentioned. Mention also made of what happens to the natural symbol, e.g. a ritual gesture at the end of the service. One might think now that this is comparable with the actual practice as it is going on today in Dutch ecclesiastic funerals, which are also individualising.18 Those funerals taking place in a religious setting also consist of fixed elements and individually designed elements, which are appreciated highly by funeral goers.19 There is, however, a big difference: the ritual experts in ecclesiastic funerals plan and conduct the funeral. In individually designed funerals, people design things themselves, as our results show, and at the same time many of them take an active role in conducting the funeral, as we know from our observations: people reading texts, lighting candles, or performing ritual gestures. The second important difference is the bigger choice people have, which also touches on the meaning of the ritual which I am going to investigate in the next paragraph.

3. Meaning: A Symbolic Repertoire? The second ritual characteristic which is important when investigating individually designed funerals is meaning. Is the meaning of these funerals really exclusively derived from the life of the deceased, as was suggested in the debate described in the first paragraph? Or is there a symbolic repertoire which offers a given frame of reference in which meaning can be found? In this paragraph I want to focus on personal symbols which are prominently present in Dutch individually designed funerals, as observations have shown: natural symbols. I do not give an overview of possible repertoires, but rather discuss this concrete example. The reason for the popularity of natural symbols in funerals might be the relation between the human body and nature. Davies states for the British context: “As the twenty-first century begins, Britain is marked by the innovation of woodland or green-burial as the twentieth century was by that of cremation”.20 What happens to the human body after death seems to have received a new impulse from a new ecological consciousness, which can also have spiritual implications.21 It could be that the new developments Davies mentions here also have an influence on funeral 18 19 20 21

Van Tongeren 2004. Quartier 2007c: 129. Davies 2008: 119. Trigger & Mulcock 2005.

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services, which form the topic of this article, next to the concrete form of burial chosen. They might imply a frame of reference in which ritual guides design these funeral services. Is there a use of natural symbols, and how does this relate to the personal symbols mentioned earlier, as being the core of individually designed funerals, according to Embsen & Overtoom? An important kind of natural symbol is represented by plants. In the Netherlands, the old custom of carrying flowers to the funeral and throwing them onto the coffin has expanded to a symbolic field, which carries not only the meaning of honouring the deceased, but also remembering him or her individually and giving hope for the future. In this sense, the favourite flowers of the deceased are sometimes chosen as the personal symbol in the funeral. These flowers are interpreted as being characteristic for the deceased. A good example for this is the sunflower, which, Graat found in his fieldwork, is sometimes used.22 The characteristics of the sunflower as being warm and friendly can apply to a deceased person. The same holds true for trees. The tree can apply to the strength of the deceased, or to his or her calm character. The choice of a natural symbol to play a central role in the funeral is often the result of conversations between the bereaved and the ritual guide. He or she tries to get to know who the deceased was, and at a certain moment he or she might discover some connection with nature which is characteristic for the deceased. Of course, this does not apply to all people who have died, but it is one possibility of offering a repertoire of symbols, among others. One ritual guide said: “Today natural symbols work pretty well. Usually they offer a perspective of hope, without excluding particular groups of funeral-goers. Religious people can share this message with non-believers”. Nature is, in this sense, a frame of reference in which the life of the deceased is placed.23 The natural symbols are included in ritual gestures, often proposed by the ritual guide. Let us come back to the example of the sunflower. Graat found that, during the funeral service, the participants were all invited to plant a sunflower seed in pots that were standing in front of the hall of the crematorium.24 Later, the participants at this particular funeral were asked to donate to a charity organisation called The Sunflower. The sunflower is clearly a personal symbol in this example: sunflowers were the favourite flowers of the deceased. At the same time, the symbol is broader than the individual occasion. It belongs to a broader frame of reference, which can be called natural.25 Sunflowers represent human characteristics and at the same time represent the circle of life: the beauty of life continues after the 22 23 24 25

Graat 2008: 20–27. Quartier 2008a: 67. Graat 2008: 20. Quartier 2009b.

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flower has faded away in the new life that comes from it. Might natural symbols offer a way to construct meaning in individually designed funerals? In each case, the symbols are included in the structure of the ritual, with which I have dealt above in the last section. They are woven into ritual gestures that participants at funerals are familiar with. The carrying of flowers is just one example for this. At the same time, there is a breaking-up of the common structure, as soon as natural symbols are detached from their usual use in funerals. Think about the planting of the seeds. Secondly, they also contribute to the structure which occurs in the ritual. Natural symbols create common feelings among the participants. The feeling of warmth and happiness is connected to the example of the sunflower. Strength and safety can be connected with trees. These feelings and associations are established at the funeral and create a social structure. At the same time, this feeling might give them the certainty that the gap in time caused by the death of the deceased can be bridged, and thus create a temporal structure.26 But what about the meaning, the question which is addressed in this section of the article? The meaning of the ritual implies that the things said and done are recognisable for all the participants. Natural symbols might offer a chance, on the one hand, to be very personal – think of the children and grandchildren, as their mother and grandmother had always loved sunflowers. On the other hand, at the same time, they are recognisable for all the participants as universal symbols. From this recognition, natural symbols can also refer to a meaning of death which is connected to the idea of the circle of life. This implies a message of hope, as humans who have died do not simply disappear into nothing. One can speak of a kind of “natural immortality” here27, which can imply a spiritual meaning for some participants. A ritual guide said about this: “This can imply a transcendent hope, but it can also be an immanent perspective on new life”. Natural symbols, such as the sunflower, are, in my view, a good example to show that many of the oppositions dominating the debate about individually designed funerals are too simplistic. This might have to do with the fact that the “natural funeral” is, on the one hand, individually designed, but, on the other hand, it relies on given meanings shared more generally than just in the individual life of the deceased. They form a symbolic repertoire, of which there can be many different ones in individually designed funerals. This is, at the same time, the difference to an ecclesiastic funeral: there the symbolic repertoire is more or less restricted to one worldview or tradition.

26 Ibid. 2007c: 31. 27 Lifton 1979: 20.

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4. Steps in Ritual Guidance After having explored the structure of individually designed funerals, in the sense of a canon of ritual elements, and their meaning, in the sense of a possible repertoire of symbols, it may have become clear that there is a canon and that there might be symbolic fields, such as nature, which imply a meaning shared by many participants at the funeral. At the same time, this structure and meaning differ from ecclesiastic funerals. The question we have not explored yet is how ritual guides actually interact with the family and design the concrete funeral. In a ritual sense, this question is important to ask, as the role of the professionals who conduct the funeral, such as the chaplain, has significantly changed. The classical role of liturgical presider, which was fulfilled by a chaplain in ecclesiastic funerals, is not the same as the role of a ritual guide in individually designed funerals: the canon and repertoire of the presider are more fixed, as I have already said, and he or she is the one who acts during the funeral service. The ritual guide has no fixed ritual canon and symbolic repertoire. Sometimes these can be provided by the people who act in the funeral, but not necessarily.28 We have seen in the last two sections that the practice may be more complex than the discussions in the first paragraph would suggest. There seems to be a kind of ritual canon which is filled by the ritual guide together with the bereaved; and nature might offer one symbolic repertoire, among others. To differentiate the actual work of the ritual guide, four steps can be distinguished: 1) the exploration of the frame of reference of the participants; 2) the choice of ritual elements; 3) the choice of ritual roles; 4) the performance of the ritual.29 In all of these steps, the ritual guide tries to help the participants at a funeral to fully “enact” the farewell they have to say.30 In the first step, the ritual guide tries to discover which canon of structure and which repertoire of meaning are familiar and suitable for the participants at the funeral. The starting point for this is usually the life of the deceased. At the same time, the frame of reference of the family and friends who prepare the funeral together with the ritual guide is important. Note that there are more participants than only this small group. Ritual guides see it as one of their tasks to help the family and friends to take a broader view. Further, it is important to check which given frames of reference might be recognisable. This can be particular worldviews, but also broad fields of meaning, for example, natural symbols, as we have seen above in the third section. In the second step, the ritual guide helps participants to make a choice of ritual elements for the funeral. Here we have seen that there is no given liturgical order 28 Quartier 2008b. 29 Cf. ibid.: 22. 30 Grimes 2000: 5.

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simply to be filled in by ritual guides and the bereaved. Still, there are a number of elements which occur in all the funerals we observed. Next, there are repertoires from which symbols can be taken. The work of ritual guides, on the one hand, facilitates what the family and friends want. On the other hand, it also points out possibilities. This relates to the third step, the choice of ritual roles. In the work of ritual guides, the role they themselves take can vary greatly. This means that sometimes the ritual guide does take the role of presider in some elements of the funeral, in other elements he or she does not. For all the ritual guides we met, the most important starting point is supporting the family or friends in their ritual actions. At the same time, all of them do act themselves. The family and friends are mainly active in choosing, and often in performing, the music, the texts, and the poems. In the opening words, the symbol chosen, the moment of silence, and the “last farewell”, it is often the ritual guide who is active, as we know from interviews with ritual guides. Lastly, as a fourth step, the actual performance belongs to the work of the ritual guide. Again, his or her role can be very different. This depends on the choices made in the last two steps. The role is not fixed. It is an interesting question as to whether there is a new kind of tradition concerning structure and meaning that is being created within this new area of activity. This is important with respect to the question of what kinds of rituals are actually designed, and how they might be changing in present-day practice. In the last section, I would like to address this question from a rituological perspective.

5. Theoretical Reflections: Ritual Creativity? What we have seen in the last few sections gives a nuanced impression of what funeral design done by ritual guides in the Netherlands might imply. Firstly, we can say that funerals which have a personal character can also have a recognisable structure (section 2). Secondly, we can say that individually designed funerals stimulate the preparation by participants, but there can be symbolic repertoires in the funeral which yield a meaning greater in sum than the life of an individual person (section 3). In the concrete work of ritual guides, this implies a kind of mediator role, which we have seen above in the last section (4): a mediator between the wishes of the bereaved and, sometimes, the deceased, and ritual elements, frames of reference, etc. In this section, I shall take a rituological perspective and reflect on these findings. If we remember the debate which I briefly described in the first section of this article, it was mainly concerned with the question of whether it is possible to indi-

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vidually design a funeral. This question has to do with what can be called “ritual creativity”.31 Do we find ritual creativity in individually designed funerals, and what does this imply for the ritual character of these funerals? According to Grimes, in all rituals creativity is needed: “Rites are not givens; they are hand-me-downs, quilts we continue to patch. […] They are also flowing processes, not just rigid structures or momentary events”. At the same time, Grimes recognises different roles in ritual: for the design of a ritual, a “diviner” can be needed – somebody who is able to invent a new impulse which is surprising and fresh. But a “plumber” can be necessary, too – somebody who takes care of the practical circumstances of the ritual, the commons which are conducted in every ritual.32 In my view, the role of ritual guides conducting funerals implies both models: they invent on a very individual basis and creatively search for elements from the concrete situation (“diviner”). At the same time, they are the ones who take care of the framework of the funeral (“plumber”). They guarantee that the funeral remains recognisable and ordered, and advise the family in this matter. Both roles are taken on together with the family and friends of the deceased. Indeed, as Grimes states, individually designed funerals are not simply “givens”. But, at the same time, they do not fall out of the blue. They are individual, but in a common frame. The question of how individual rituals can be does not play a role in concrete discussions about funeral design alone. It is a well-known discussion in rituology. Whitehouse points, for example, to the emotional character of ritual. According to him, routinised rituals are less surprising. Because of their having become familiar, they tend to be less “emotionally stimulating”.33 This might be true for funerals. The emotional moments of intense experience are all individually designed in the funerals we investigated. But, at the same time, the question is whether there can be rituals which are not routinised at all. According to Wils, this is not the case. In his view, rituals can never be understood to be “purely individual actions”.34 The dilemma we see here is comparable with the discussion in the first section of this article. The concrete funeral design of ritual guides in the Netherlands, in my view, offers a possibility of dealing with this dilemma: individually designed funerals are not too routinised, which Whitehouse finds important for their emotional character. At the same time, they are not completely individualised and occasional, as Wils emphasizes. The ritual “diviner” and “plumber” seem to go hand in hand in individually designed funerals. This conclusion is interesting for rituology because of the often one-sided construction of theory about ritual practices. Axel Michaels has pointed to this very 31 32 33 34

Venbrux & Heessels & Bolt 2008. Grimes 2000: 12–13. Whitehouse 2006: 665. Wils 2008: 131.

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clearly: “In rites of passage we are dealing with human beings, not with classificatory representatives or ritual beings of a special species. […] It is dangerous to see ritual reality as an uncompleted realization of an ideal designed in texts. […] Such rituals only exist in the heads of the people who make ritual rules: priest-theologians and scholars. Standardized rituals are also an expression of thought and felt customs, which are learned in a particular culture”.35 Michaels departs in this quotation from the side of orchestrated rituals, as, for example, ecclesiastic funerals are. But the same is true the other way around: non-orchestrated rituals, such as individually designed funerals, also rely on customs which come from a particular culture. Rituals are, at one and the same time, traditional and innovative, individual and collective. Individually designed funerals do not have one given structure and meaning, but they do have structures and meanings, as the title of this article indicates. Differences are there, but they are to be sought on a continuum. This also applies to individually designed funerals and makes the design of these rites an interesting enterprise, in which structures and meanings are given and can be found.

35 Michaels 2007: 254.

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References Berkvens, Christiane 2007. Vrije rituelen. Vorm geven aan het leven. Zoetermeer: Meinema. Bernts, Ton 2007. Kerkbalans 2007. www.kerkbalans.nl. Davies, Douglas 2008. The Theology of Death. London: T&T Clark. Embsen, Hermien & Ton Overtoom 2007. Hoe zou jij het willen? Persoonlijk afscheid nemen van je dierbare. Baarn: Ten Have. Graat, Remco 2008. “Nee, de familie wil geen kruis”. Empirisch onderzoek onder bezoekers van niet-kerkelijke uitvaarten. Nijmegen: Faculty of Religious Studies. Grimes, Ronald L. 2000. Deeply into the Bone. Re-Inventing Rites of Passage. Berkeley: University of California Press. Keesom, Jolanda G.M. 1991. Gids voor de uitvaart. De laatste eer in eigen hand. Diemen: AVVL. Lifton, Robert 1979. The Broken Connection. On Death and the Continuity of Life. New York: Simon & Schuster. Lukken, Gerard 2005. Rituals in Abundance. Critical Reflections on the Place, Form and Identity of Christian Ritual in Our Culture. Leuven: Peeters (Liturgia Condenda 17). Menken-Bekius, Corja 2009. “Men neme een symbool”. Handelingen 1: 29–33. Michaels, Axel 2007. “Geburt – Hochzeit – Tod: Übergangsrituale und die Inszenierung von Unsterblichkeit”. In: A. Michaels (ed.): Die neue Kraft der Rituale. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter: 237–260. Quartier, Thomas 2007a. “Liturgisches Gedächtnis im Angesicht des Todes. Dimensionen römisch-katholischer Bestattungsliturgie anhand empirischer Forschung”. Liturgisches Jahrbuch 57: 61–86. — 2007b. “Ritual Studies. Een antropologische bezinning op de liturgie”. Tijdschrift voor liturgie 91: 218–229. — 2007c. Bridging the Gaps. An Empirical Study of Catholic Funeral Rites. Münster: Lit Verlag (Empirische Theologie 17). — 2008a: “Voorbij de dood? Rituele Stervensbegeleiding in het ziekenhuis”. In: Eric Venbrux & Meike Heessels & Sophie Bolt (eds.). Rituele Creativiteit. Actuele veranderingen in de uitvaart- en rouwcultuur in Nederland. Zoetermeer: Meinema: 59–74. — 2008b. “Voorganger of begeleider? Rituelen rond sterven en dood in de moderne geestelijke verzorging”. Tijdschrift voor Geestelijke Verzorging 11/47: 15–25. — 2009a. “Rituelle Pendelbewegungen. Neue Trauerrituale im Niederländischen Kontext“. Jaarboek voor liturgie-onderzoek / Yearbook for Liturgy-research 25: 185-205. — 2009b. “Personal Symbols in Roman-Catholic Funerals in the Netherlands”. Mortality 14/2: 133–146. Rappaport, Roy A. 1999. Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Tongeren, Louis van 2004. “Individualizing Ritual. The Personal Dimension in Funerary Liturgy”. Worship 78/2: 117–138. Trigger, David & Jane Mulcock 2005. “Forests as spiritually Significant Places: Nature, Culture and ‘Belonging’ in Australia”. The Australian Journal of Anthropology 16/3: 306–320. Uden, Ronald 2006. Wohin mit den Toten? Totenwürde zwischen Entsorgung und Ewigkeit. Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus. Venbrux, Eric & Meike Heessels & Sophie Bolt (eds.) 2008. Rituele Creativiteit. Actuele veranderingen in de uitvaart- en rouwcultuur in Nederland. Zoetermeer: Meinema. Whitehouse, Harvey 2006. “Transmission”. In: Jens Kreinath & Jan Snoek & Michael Stauberg (eds.). Theorizing Rituals. Issues, Topics, Approaches, Concepts. Leiden: Brill: 657–670. Wils, Jean-Pierre 2008. “Uitvaartrituelen op drift. Een korte fundamentele reflectie”. In: Eric Venbrux & Meike Heessels & Sophie Bolt (eds.). Rituele Creativiteit. Actuele veranderingen in de uitvaart- en rouwcultuur in Nederland. Zoetermeer: Meinema: 121–134.

Matthias Frenz

The Common Practice of Ritual Design in Southern India: Observations at the Marian Sanctuary of Velankanni In recent years, the emerging academic discipline of ritual studies has permitted significant insights into the nature and functioning of rituals. Of particular importance is the consensus reached among scholars from various backgrounds that rituals have their own dynamics. Notwithstanding claims of an invariant and static nature of ceremonies, often expressed from an insider’s perspective, research on rituals has shown a wide range of dynamic processes rituals undergo when they are transferred to new contexts, imperceptibly adjusted to current needs, or deliberately designed. From a scientific point of view, it may even be said that dynamism is constitutive for rituals. Since ritual is always related to society, social dynamics have repercussions on rituals and vice versa. It is the paradoxical nature of ritual action that it is at one and the same time clearly marked as extra-ordinary action, but that it remains linked to ordinary social life. Bruce Kapferer thus characterises ritual as “action that is simultaneously set apart from ongoing life yet continuous with it and, most important, intimate with its reproduction or generation. Such ritual events tend to be strongly ontological (i.e. establish the ground of being in existence) in their constitutive force and are recognised by participants as such”.1 In this paper I shall present a case study from southern India, and analyse the dynamics of ritual activities at the Catholic shrine dedicated to the Virgin Mary at Velankanni. I explore how devotees of different religious backgrounds deal with the ritual setting at this place of pilgrimage, why and how they engage in the transformation or design of ritual formations. I investigate the agency of the rituals and ask about the consequences with respect to the agency of the devotees. The phenomena explored at Velankanni show a wide range of approaches employed by the devotees to gain access to, adjust, or even create ritual space, and thus participate

1 Kapferer 2006: 515.

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in the ritual activity of the shrine. I give a structured overview about different modes of action which trigger dynamics in the ritual domain. In the second part of the paper, I make use of Michel Foucault’s theoretical reflections about discourse to conceptualise the dynamic formation of rituals. My argument is that, by applying the concept of the historical a priori to the domain of rituals, the conditions and possibilities for ritual dynamism become accessible to investigation. With regard to the concrete level of ritual action where the dynamics occur, I suggest an analysis of the framing processes that create ritual space. With this approach, the conditions for the agency of the actors involved become tangible. Rather than engaging in the definition of ritual frames, I propose to focus on the spatial aspect of rituals.

1. The Shrine of Our Lady of Health at Velankanni and Its Social Fabric Situated on the eastern coast of the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, Velankanni is widely acclaimed as hosting the most famous Christian shrine in India. Since the early seventeenth century, the image of the Virgin Mary venerated there as Our Lady of Health (Tamil: Arokkiyamata) has attracted large crowds of pilgrims, regardless of their religious affiliation.2 Because of the great popularity of the shrine and the miraculous power ascribed to the cult statue, the participation in rituals conducted there is considered rewarding and highly prestigious. As in other places of religious significance, there is a wide range of ritual activity at Velankanni. Accessible patterns (e.g. public processions3) exist side by side with more restricted (e.g. the flag hoisting) or even closed forms (e.g. decoration of the Marian statue). Pilgrims, who flock to the shrine in thousands throughout the year, compete with the local population and the clergy for an active share in the rituals. At Velankanni the pilgrims meet a resident Catholic community of the main parish and its substations in surrounding villages who are proud of their close connections with the shrine. A third party is formed by the Catholic clergy – priests, brothers, and nuns, of whom many take pride in their posting at the famous sanctuary of Our Lady of Health. Neither of the aforementioned parties form homogeneous groups. Pilgrims have different origins, adhere to different religions; local residents belong to different castes; the clergy is divided along lines of affiliation to congregations, dioceses, and their manner of involvement in the shrine’s activities. The heterogeneity of the devotees with regard to their backgrounds, perspectives, and interests is the basis for a productive tension that may result in dynamic processes in the domain of rituals. 2 See Frenz 2004: 82–122 for a detailed history of the shrine at Velankanni. 3 See Frenz 2008a.

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As a popular place of pilgrimage, Velankanni exhibits a peculiar social fabric. The social structure is highly precarious because of the different forms of social organisation coexisting at any point in time. Residents of Velankanni are part of a relatively stable social system. According to their caste, family, religion, and individual merits, they are assigned a certain position in local society. This system is their point of reference when they are involved in rituals at the shrine of Our Lady of Health. In contrast, pilgrims who come to the sanctuary in small groups or as individuals are detached from their ordinary social context. On the spot, they have to relate to other pilgrims with whom they share accommodation, the canteen, and love for Mary. The relations that emerge within the fragmented and continuously changing pilgrim population are mostly volatile. Although pilgrims develop social formations for the time of their stay in Velankanni, they hardly become part of an encompassing social system. Their involvement in rituals has to be negotiated anew every time, because they cannot refer to any existing status. Traders and regular visitors to the sanctuary are positioned between the inhabitants of Velankanni and the occasional pilgrims, since they maintain more permanent connections with the locally-rooted population, even though they do not become an integrated part of the local society. The clergy form another category in the social fabric. Their loyalty to the ecclesiastical bodies to which they belong – diocese, congregation, movement – cuts across affiliations with family, caste, and region, without, however, negating these bonds.

2. Benefits for Devotees: Reciprocity, Redistribution, and the Demand for Ritual Space Despite different frames of reference and asymmetric power relations, the devotees who gather at Velankanni share a common orientation towards their object of veneration, Our Lady of Health. One major goal of the devotees is to establish a personal relationship with Mary, whom they perceive as their heavenly mother and almighty sovereign. Individual vows aim at a reciprocal relationship with the Virgin: they express the wish for a direct return of favours on the basis of a direct “investment”. Most of the ritual activity at the shrine also works on a second level, being part of a larger redistributive framework. The redistribution follows principles similar to those outlined by Appadurai and Breckenridge4 for Hindu temples in South India: “popular” ritual activity at the Marian sanctuary focuses on the sovereign Virgin, who stands at the centre of a set of material and immaterial transactions which constitute a redistributive process. Individuals and groups enter and sustain this process with their gifts to Mary in the form of money donations, labour, goods, land endowments, etc. Through their contributions, they acquire 4

Appadurai & Breckenridge 1976.

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shares in the benefits of the pooled resources. The redistributed commodities, considered transvalued by association with the Virgin, are referred to as “honours” (Tamil: mariyatai).5 These honours come in different forms, and are of material or immaterial nature. A piece of a sari previously worn by the cult statue is one form the honours may take, another is the right to hoist the Marian flag during the annual feast of the shrine. Since they are mostly conferred on the recipients in public, these honours serve as markers of social status – besides their quality as a token of religious merit, of blessings and favours. Although the structural distinction between redistributive and reciprocal phenomena is helpful on an analytical level, the devotees engage themselves in both ways at the same time. The reciprocal mother-child relation with the Virgin, promising an individual and direct reward, seems calculable for concrete concerns. An active role in the redistributive system offers integration into the social network connected to the shrine and the recognition of a publicly visible relation to Mary. Owing to the volatile social structure at the pilgrimage centre, there is no encompassing social setting that offers a well-determined range of relatively stable positions in ritual. The heterogeneous field at Velankanni allows for a greater dynamic than in shrines where the ritual activity is confined to a local parish, for instance. However loose and temporary the social integration may be, it is facilitated and displayed by publicly conferred honours, which are only available in the redistributive process. Devotees attribute a strong agency to the public rituals connected with the Virgin. Social order is displayed and negotiated in these rituals, the roles devotees take indicate their status. Local residents, pilgrims, and clergy alike endeavour to obtain a share in the rituals and obtain ritual honours. In their effort to gain access to ritual space, many of them actively contribute to a process in which rituals are reshaped – in other words: a process of ritual design.

3. Reshaping Rituals during the Annual Feast of Our Lady of Health The tension that emerges from the competition for ritual space among the devotees is a productive force that triggers the creative processes of ritual dynamics. The spectrum of approaches and actions taken, with the goal of occupying some of the space, ranges from an unchallenged appropriation of space to physical confrontations. In order to increase their opportunities for an active and rewarding participation in the redistributive system of the Marian shrine, the devotees engage in a process of ritual design. 5 “In the context of south Indian temples, the term mariyatai … denotes a whole series of objects, actions and transactions, linking the deity with its servants, worshippers and protectors, whose substance, order and context provides a public code for the demarcation of status.” Appadurai & Breckenridge 1976: 197, n. 6.

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To exemplify the dynamic that evolves in the contest for ritual space at Velankanni, I will turn to the main feast of the shrine: the Nativity of the Virgin Mary (“Nativitas S. Mariae”), celebrated annually in the first half of September. On the occasion of the feast, several hundred thousand pilgrims flock to the sanctuary from all over India, some even from abroad. While most devotees travel to Velankanni by bus or train, others, who come from adjacent regions in southern India, reach the shrine on foot. On their way, these groups intend to prepare themselves in ascetic spirit for the encounter with the Virgin Mary. The feast of the Nativity of the Virgin Mary lasts for ten days and has its peak on 8 September, which is the official feast day according to the liturgical calendar of the Roman Catholic Church. The first act of the annual feast is the ritual changing of the cult statue’s vestments in the shrine. This takes place late at night on 28 August, among a small circle of personally invited guests, while the shrine is closed to the public. The feast is officially opened with a public procession on 29 August, during which a large flag depicting Our Lady of Health is carried along a circular path around the living quarters of the dominant Christian community at Velankanni. Music and firecrackers accompany the procession. Subsequently, the flag is hoisted on a flagstaff erected on the northern side of the shrine. During the night the flag is taken down. On the following day at noon, another flag is ritually hoisted, without a prior procession. In the evening, a palanquin with a decorated representation of Our Lady of Health is carried in a procession around the Christian quarters, along with smaller palanquins featuring saints and angels. Music and firecrackers are again part of the event. Throughout the day, priests celebrate mass in various Indian languages, but only the first mass of the day is held in the shrine itself. This sequence of holy masses, flag-hoisting, and procession is repeated every day during the so-called novena that precedes the main feast day. In the evening of 8 September the feast is ritually concluded when the flag is finally lowered in a special ceremony. During the feast of the Nativity, the devotees who gather at Velankanni engage in reshaping the rituals in order to expand ritual space and increase opportunities for a rewarding participation. I identify five ways in which ritual frames are altered, redesigned, or newly created. 3.1 The Extension of Rituals to Space Previously Void of Such Activity Unoccupied space is appropriated by groups and individuals, who establish rituals according to the models provided at the sanctuary of Velankanni. Many pilgrim groups who travel to Velankanni on foot bring with them selfmade mobile shrines of Our Lady of Health. These little altars of Arokkiyamata form the centre of a self-organised Marian cult practised during the journey to the sanctuary. The ritual activities surrounding the mobile shrine depend on the religious background of the group, ranging from collective prayers to a puja-like vene-

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ration of the Virgin. A common practice is the establishment of a small-scale redistribution in imitation of the larger system at the sanctuary: at the mobile shrine donations in the form of money, flowers, and salt or sugar are accepted and returned to passers-by. In contrast to the peripheral regions, where devotees find plenty of space for their rituals, the unoccupied space at the pilgrimage centre is very limited and controlled.6 During calm hours in the night, however, the pilgrim groups who enter the township with their mobile altars sometimes find a way to stage dances or conduct their own processions modelled after the church processions. The beach of Velankanni is a place that is still free of any organised ritual activity. People are thus free to perform ablutions in the sea before entering the shrine of Arokkiyamata. Others come to the beach to make sacrificial offerings to the waters. 3.2 Organisation of Ritual Activity that has Previously been Barely Regulated Ritual space which is hardly structured, where rules for access and for conduct are only vaguely prescribed, is taken over by a group or individuals. They give the activities a definite frame and organise the space according to ritual patterns common at the shrine. Although perceived as an undoubtedly important ritual service to Our Lady, the carrying of the Virgin’s procession chariot was not regulated for a long time. Unlike, for instance, the decoration of the statue before the procession, which is done by a particular caste group of the local parish, the chariot could be borne by anyone. About twenty years ago, young men from Bombay discovered this task for themselves and subsequently occupied this space. During the last two decades, these men in their twenties and thirties have completely taken over the carrying of the chariot and have organised the field. Although they mostly come as individual pilgrims to Velankanni, and the group formation takes place only at the “feet of the Virgin” once a year, they have developed a common code of conduct (e.g. the banning of alcohol), and a ritual order prescribing collective prayers and contemplation in preparation for their labour service offered to Our Lady of Health. 3.3 Split of a Previously Integrated Ritual into Several Discrete Parts A ritual, originally conceived of as a single entity, is divided up into distinct sections. The reorganisation produces discernible ritual entities in their own right. Thus, the opportunities for participation in the ritual activity are multiplied, as more people gain access to prestigious ritual space. Every feast day of a saint at a Catholic church in India is inaugurated with the hoisting of the standard of the local patron saint. The flying flag symbolises not 6 See Frenz 2008b.

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only the festive mood of the congregation, but also the presence of the saintly spirit. Therefore, the saint’s banner is revered almost as much as the saint him- or herself. Usually the standard remains at the top of the flagpole throughout the whole feast, and is taken down to mark the end of the festive period. At the shrine of Velankanni, the hoisting and lowering of the flag has been included in the ritual repertoire of the redistributive system of endowments and honours. The acts are perceived as a highly prestigious, and thus contested, service to Our Lady of Health. To my knowledge, Velankanni is the only place where the tension between the numerous aspirants has been resolved by a split of the overarching ritual frame. As a result, the flag is hoisted and taken down every day during the novena. Instead of only two ritual acts (hoisting the flag at the beginning, lowering it at the end of the feast), this fragmentation creates eleven discrete ritual entities. Each day of the novena, another group of people exercises the same prestigious service to Mary. Thus, besides the local caste group that dominates Catholic life in the parish, also lower-ranking caste groups and families, who in the past have given considerable endowments to the shrine, get a share in this ritual space. In order to stress their position of prime importance, the notables of the locally dominant caste group have reserved for themselves the most prestigious days: it is their privilege to open and close the feast. Moreover, they have taken the fragmentation of the ritual further to mark their position. When it is their turn to put up the banner towards the climax of the feast, they hoist the flag not once, but three times. 3.4 Augmentation of Existing Rituals Space that is used for a particular ritual activity is enlarged, the frame is extended in order to include more participants in the redistributive process. During the time of the annual feast, ritual activity is extended to and intensified at spots in the church compound which are only of peripheral significance at ordinary times of the year. The flagpole, where the standard of Mary flies, and the place where Arokkiyamata is said to have appeared for the first time (the matakulam), are turned into ritual space for devotees’ worship. Pilgrims prostrate themselves before the flagpole as they do in front of the altar in the sanctuary. Sacristans receive and redistribute the common gifts under the flag and near the kulam, as in the shrine. The celebrations of the glory of Arokkiyamata are at their height on 8 September, the feast of the Nativity of Mary. In the early evening, the Marian flag that signals the festive activities is solemnly lowered, marking the end of the feast. After this event, most pilgrims leave the place, and the Catholic clergy return to their daily routine. Despite the clearly marked end of the feast, the ritual activities at the shrine partly continue. On three subsequent evenings, Marian processions are conducted. The processions by which ritual space is extended beyond the official end of the Church feast are organised and financed by the shopkeeper’s association and electricians of Velankanni and by a devoted family from the far west of the

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state of Tamil Nadu. Although no priests or other representatives of the Church are involved, the organisers do their best to follow the model of the “official” processions. They use the same prayers, chariots are lavishly decorated, a band plays music, and a statue of the Virgin is carried through the township and venerated, as during the preceding evenings. 3.5 Creation of New Ritual Frames In accordance with the ritual models common in this context, the agents develop and introduce new ritual forms, carving out new space and configuring it. Once a year, on the evening before the festive season begins, the cult statue of Our Lady of Health is taken out of her niche above the main altar of the shrine and her vestments are changed. This had long been a rather technical task, carried out by church personnel. But about a decade ago, the rector of the sanctuary turned the act into a solemn and exclusive ceremony. In the presence of a few priests, nuns, and hand-picked lay people, the rector of the sanctuary takes the statue of Arokkiyamata down. After he has removed all ornaments, the statue is ritually venerated by those who are present. A senior nun changes the statue’s vestments, affixes new jewels handed over by the donors who are admitted to the ritual, and the statue of Our Lady of Health is reinstalled above the altar. A publicly more visible creation is the so-called “blessing of the sick” at the end of the first daily church service during the novena. In this act, a little statue of Arokkiyamata is used like a monstrance. After venerating the image with incense, the priest uses it to make the sign of the cross and blesses the congregation with the statue of Our Lady of Health.

4. Foucault’s Discourse Theory At first glance, the empirical evidence at Velankanni seems to suggest that devotees freely adjust existing rituals or design new forms according to their needs. It appears that there are hardly any limits in the dynamic field of rituals that would restrict disciples of the Virgin Mary in their contest for ritual space. However, the observation that ritual can be highly dynamic does not mean that it may take any form. A ritual is not an arbitrary series of actions, not everybody is entitled to alter existing rituals or establish new ones. The dynamics of rituals are limited in many respects. Their scope is restricted to a certain space which is set and governed by subtle rules negotiated within society. Consequently research in the ritual domain has to ask about the rules and conditions that regulate the formation and modification of rituals. I will therefore discuss crucial questions about the formation of rituals on a theoretical level, before coming back to the concrete example of Velankanni: what are the models for accepted and legitimate rituals, and where do they

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emerge from? How is it possible to alter, design, or invent rituals, and how is the space defined where such dynamics occur? Under which circumstances does action become ritual action and obtain significance beyond itself? In his book The Archaeology of Knowledge, Michel Foucault raises the question of how to deal with continuity and discontinuity in historical research. He approaches the issue by dismantling the narratives of continuity and reducing them to the smallest entities of the discourse that are accessible in historical sources: the recorded statements. Foucault describes the achievement of his deconstruction thus: “Once these immediate forms of continuity are suspended, an entire field is set free. A vast field, but one that can be defined nonetheless: this field is made up of the totality of all effective statements (whether spoken or written), in their dispersion as events and in the occurrence that is proper to them. Before approaching, with any degree of certainty, a science, or novels, or political speeches, or the œuvre of an author, or even a single book, the material with which one is dealing is, in its raw, neutral state, a population of events in the space of discourse in general. One is led therefore to the project of a pure description of discursive events as the horizon for the search for the unities that form within it”.7 With this passage Foucault reaches the basis on which he eventually builds his theory of discourse formation. In short, Foucault subsequently works his way back to discourses in a stricter sense. He characterises particular discourses as dynamic formations consisting of various statements that are related to each other. He stresses the importance of the discursive practice in the formation process: “… when one speaks of a system of formation, one does not only mean the juxtaposition, coexistence, or interaction of heterogeneous elements … but also the relation that is established between them – and in a well determined form – by discursive practice.”8 Besides marking discourse as a dynamic phenomenon in constant flux and emphasising the significance of social practice, Foucault points out that the formation of a discourse is by no means an autonomous or arbitrary process. An emerging discourse is, on the contrary, highly limited by formations preceding it: “Not all the positions of the subject, all the types of coexistence between statements, all the discursive strategies, are equally possible, but only those authorized by anterior levels.”9 The outer limits that restrict the dynamics of a discourse are set by the above-mentioned field containing all discursive events. The totality of all effective 7 Foucault 2002: 29–30. Italics original. 8 Ibid.: 80–81. 9 Ibid.: 81.

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statements of such a discursive field in their raw and neutral state – Foucault speaks of the “positivity of the discourse” – defines a limited space of communication.10 Hence, the boundaries of this field restrict the possibilities of statements that are generally accepted. The positivity of an already existing discourse thus has a decisive influence on its dynamic and on the development of other formations. Foucault takes up a term used by Edmund Husserl when he suggests that “positivity plays the role of what might be called a historical a priori.”11 With this expression Foucault denotes “a condition of reality for statements”, which is transformable over time.12 The dynamic a priori defines the conditions for statements that are generally recognised as real. The a priori does not determine the development of a discourse, however, nor does it rule out the occurrence of deviant utterances. Statements that do not correspond to the existing field of positivities are possible, although their value will not be accepted as real. At first glance, it seems paradoxical to speak of an a priori – which by definition precedes any experience – that is subject to historical change. This is, however, exactly Foucault’s intention. The dynamic quality of the a priori and its impact on an evolving discourse is crucial for Foucault’s concept, as Petra Gehring explains in her study on the philosophy of Foucault: “A historical a priori is nothing static, it is not the base on which words are built or an experience of tacit authenticity. … The historical a priori is the way in which something like experience appears in the order of speech, takes shape and manifests itself through this order.13 The historical a priori is constitutive for a discursive space which limits, and at the same time opens up, a sphere for potential statements. The existing, which is subject to historical change, sets the frame for the potential – and allows room for dynamics. Foucault gives a few examples for the different ways in which the dynamic may manifest itself: “This form of positivity … defines a field in which formal identities, thematic continuities, translations of concepts, and polemical interchanges may be developed.”14

10 11 12 13 14

Ibid.: 142. Ibid.: 143. Ibid.: 143–144. Gehring 2004: 40. Translation M.F. Foucault 2002: 143.

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5. The Historical a priori and Ritual Dynamics Discourse does not equal ritual, but discourse theory provides useful ideas for an investigation into the ritual domain. Although Foucault does not explicitly deal with rituals in his Archaeology, his approach may be applied in order to conceptualise the field and conditions for the dynamic formation of rituals. If ritual action is understood as an expression or statement of the actors involved, we can address ritual as a kind of discourse and thus employ Foucault’s theoretical framework. Along with Foucault, who defines a particular discourse as a formation of written or spoken statements, I look at a particular ritual as a formation of actions and events. In their raw and neutral form, these actions are not necessarily marked as “ritual” actions. Only when they are related to each other through social practice do they form a ritual in the strict sense of the word. In analogy to Foucault’s perspective on discourses, it may be said that rituals are established, passed on, guarded, challenged, designed by the respective agents in society. Pursuing Foucault’s argument further leads to a better understanding of continuity and discontinuity in the ritual domain. It allows a closer look at the limits and potentialities of ritual dynamics in general, and ritual design in particular. The formation and change of rituals is not an accidental process; ritual dynamism is neither arbitrary, nor is it a result of autonomous negotiation in society. The dynamics in the ritual domain take place in, and are limited to, the field that contains all effective action employed in rituals. Applying Foucault’s terminology, I call this realm the “positivity of ritual”. What has been stated above with respect to discourse is also valid for ritual: the limits of this field define a space of communication which delimits what action will be generally accepted as ritual action. The dynamics of rituals are always dependent on – but not determined by – the formations that are already in existence. Thus, the positivity of the ritual field plays the role of a historical a priori. It defines the conditions for the reality of ritual action, its validity and efficacy in a particular ritual. Nevertheless, the governing field of ritual action, the a priori, is subject to historical change.15 In addition to the issues discussed so far, there is one more point in Foucault’s Archaeology that should receive attention in the debate of how to analyse ritual dynamics. As part of his effort to explain his method of investigation, Foucault

15 Although the following quotation taken from Gehring’s study of Foucault’s philosophy aims at discourse formations, it is equally applicable to the formation of rituals: “In their inner logic they [the formations] refer to the world. Behind them, however, they have a second, a preceding pattern: already the manner in which things are considered to be the world and how – for this purpose – they exist in a structured way in experience, responds to a “logic”. It is an implicit logic. And even this logic is historically changeable.” Gehring: 2004: 39. Translation M.F.

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makes a clear distinction between an approach taken from linguistics and his own ideas: “This description [of discursive events] is easily distinguishable from an analysis of the language. … a language … is … a system for possible statements, a finite body of rules that authorizes an infinite number of performances. The field of discursive events, on the other hand, is a grouping that is always finite and limited at any moment to the linguistic sequences that have been formulated; … The question posed by language analysis of some discursive fact or other is always: according to what rules has a particular statement been made, and consequently according to what rules could other similar statements be made? The description of the events of discourse poses a quite different question: how is it that one particular statement appeared rather than another?”16 Foucault emphasises that discourse analysis is fundamentally different from the method used by linguists. Whereas the latter search for general rules that allow statements to be generated always in the same way, Foucault aims at the specific character of statements. He analyses the conditions under which a particular statement appears and how it is related to other statements, in order to find the “specific existence that emerges from what is said and nowhere else.”17 My approach to ritual dynamism draws from Foucault’s ideas. Rather than trying to extract general rules for a grammar of ritual, I investigate the ritual phenomena as specific formations that have occurred in a particular field. I am interested in those conditions under which they have come into being, why their significance is accepted in society, how they correspond to preceding rituals, and what kind of agency and social practice they involve. Whatever shape ritual dynamics take, whoever is involved, whatever degree of intentionality is observable – if the ritual that emerges in the formation process is to be perceived as real, valid, and functioning, it is tied to the framework of the historical a priori. Ritual design is no exception in this respect. The deliberate fabrication of a particular ritual, the piecing together of “ritual clippings”, is only productive in the context of the historical a priori of the respective domain. In principle, it is possible to assemble a series of actions at random and call the result a “ritual”. However, the condition for its acceptance as a real and effective ritual is set by the positivity of the field in which the ritual is placed. If this is completely disjunct, the frame of reference of the designed ritual is missing and the condition for reality is not fulfilled.

16 Foucault 2002: 30. 17 Ibid.: 31.

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6. The Formation of Rituals The perspective on ritual dynamics opened up by discourse theory is rather abstract. While asking for the conditions of the occurrence of a certain discourse formation, Foucault’s approach operates on a formal level. It says little about the course formation processes take: how does unspecific action become significant ritual action, in what way does the historical a priori govern the dynamic, what role does social practice play? With Foucault’s theoretical background in mind, we still need an analytic model that allows us to access the concrete processes that occur in the formation of rituals. For this purpose I consider the concept of “framing” useful. The illustrative term provides a model for the formation of ritual. “Framing”, in my use of the term, denotes the process of tying action together into a particular ritual, marking action as ritual action.18 The term serves as an analytic concept to describe the formation process of rituals. Framing conceptualises the process whereby a ritual – understood as a formation of discourse-like statements – emerges and changes. By binding action together, the frame constitutes the significance of the formation as a ritual, as Bruce Kapferer explains in his essay on “framing”: “The key dynamic of ritual is its framing. This makes the activity that occurs within the frame significant as ritual action. That is, all action that is included within the frame is bound together by it (created as a significant formation) and becomes subject to processes (of meaning and interaction) relative to the themes and projects of the rite. The ritual frame effectively establishes the events of action occurring within it as a self-referencing system that has its own relatively independent legitimacy and meaning.”19 As stated above, the formation of a particular ritual takes place against the backdrop of preceding formations, which play the role of a historical a priori. Thus, the rituals are always linked to preceding formations, and new formations become models again for potential future developments. Although Kapferer does not consider the historical a priori in his essay, the following quotation may be read as a reference to it: 18 I do not intend to enter into an elaborate debate about the term “frame” and “framing”. A few words seem to be called for, however. I agree with Handelman when he criticises the notion of what he calls “lineal framing” as a problematic concept that entails the categorical separation between ritual and non-ritual, and projects a hierarchical relation between frame and its contents (Handelman 2006: 571–582). My perspective is different: I am not interested in the ontological value of the frame and its relation to the entities it includes and excludes. I do not understand the ritual frame as an a priori that exists before the ritual and determines it. By taking up the term “framing”, I am concerned with its processual quality. I aim at the process in which a certain ritual comes into being, is changed or renewed. 19 Kapferer 2006: 515. Italics original.

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Matthias Frenz “The ritual framing … creates a context in which elements of experience can be acted upon and potentially changed or transformed. Moreover, the action of the rite not only is made self-determining but also placed in a potentially determining relation to surrounding contexts … .”20

The a priori-function of the discursive positivities is not only restrictive, but provides a sphere for the dynamic development of discourse formations; similarly the framing process in the ritual domain is not only limiting. More importantly, by relating actions and tying them into a ritual, the framing process opens an arena that in this constellation has not existed previously. This arena, which I call “ritual space”, is at the centre of my analysis. Rather than looking at frames as a restricting factor for ritual, I focus on their function of unfolding, extending, or altering ritual space. In this context, I use the term “space” in a general sense: a limited entity with fuzzy borders which are discernible at a specific point of time, but which are subject to historical change. With the term “ritual space”, I denote a roughly demarcated arena constituted by a ritual formation. Such space is a variable entity that provides room for particular activities.

7. Ritual Design as a Common Practice at Velankanni By way of conclusion I come back to the case study of Velankanni and discuss what the theoretical perspective laid out in the preceding paragraphs means for the investigation of concrete phenomena at this place of pilgrimage, and how these reflections are helpful for a conceptualisation of ritual dynamics. Making use of expressions common in literary theory concerned with intertextuality, the question may be put thus: in what respect can we speak of prefiguration, configuration, and refiguration of ritual formations in a particular ritual space? At the outset, it should be stressed that the processes through which rituals are actively changed and adjusted are neither exceptional, nor is the agency restricted to particular groups. Ritual design is a common practice among all devotees; religious specialists and ordinary lay people are equally involved, adherents of different religious traditions are equally active. The agency that is ascribed to rituals connected to the Virgin Mary, the religious benefits and social prestige these rituals promise, triggers agency within the whole community of devotees, who engage in the reshaping and designing of ritual frames. The prefigurative dimension of ritual formations is the domain of experiences, traditions, practices, and convictions of the devotees who meet in Velankanni. What the devotees are used to doing and thinking in the diverse contexts they come from, in short, the common frame of reference of each visitor to the sanctuary, 20 Ibid.: 516.

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represents the Foucaultian historical a priori. The cultural and religious backgrounds of the heterogeneous public at Velankanni, which have their own dynamic, form the basis of the dynamic ritual activity around the sanctuary. With regard to the above-mentioned mobile altars some pilgrim groups carry with them on their way to Velankanni, this means that the design of the little shrines and the ritual veneration extended to them differs according to the context the groups come from. All groups have in common that they place Our Lady of Health at the centre of their activities. Catholics, however, tend to stress collective prayers like the Rosary, and restrict offerings to “Mata” to flowers and money, whereas Hindus are more likely to include more elaborate offerings and operate a small-scale redistribution. Like external contexts, practices and traditions already firmly established at Velankanni have prefigurative quality. The previously described multiplication of the existing flag-hoisting ceremony and the repetition of evening processions after the official end of the novena show that ritual formations that have recently emerged may be modelled on existing forms to which strong agency is ascribed. Observation of ritual activities within other groups can also have prefigurative value. The solemn “blessing of the sick”, in which Catholic priests use a statue of Arokkiyamata like a monstrance, does not comply with the official theology. It rather takes up the desire of the vast majority of devotees to receive benefits directly from Mary. Although the clergy generally stress the importance of Christ and the Eucharist, and try to “educate” people who perceive Mary as a god-like figure, this particular ritual practice reflects the interdependence between the official Catholic cult and the activities of ordinary pilgrims. All phenomena that have a prefigurative function with regard to the ritual formations at Velankanni are dynamic themselves. In the sense of the Foucaultian historical a priori, the prefiguration is not a simple relation between an image and its reflection. Phenomena modelled on a particular pre-existing formation may also become examples for other formations, as the case of Velankanni shows. Seen in a larger time-frame, the sanctuary was first modelled on Portuguese shrines; today it has become a model for numerous Marian shrines in India, sometimes even perceived as the most authentic representation of Marian devotion in India. The configurative dimension of ritual formations has been characterised above as a process of framing. Practices and convictions of the people involved are bound together into an “appropriate” sequence of action, to which agency is ascribed. Only rarely are such formation processes free of conflict; more often than not, they entail active negotiation between the actors involved, in which the sometimes diverse prefigurations and interests have to be reconciled with each other. In order to describe the configuration of rituals at Velankanni more precisely, I will first discuss in which arena dynamism is most likely to occur, before I look into the framing process itself.

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As shown in the first part of the essay, the formation of rituals takes place particularly at the periphery, or in scarcely structured realms of the Marian cult. Here the scope for creative “ritual design” is relatively wide. The first two of the pilgrims’ approaches identified above – i.e. the occupation of hitherto unoccupied space, and the organisation of hitherto unorganised space – fall into this category. The marginal space, in which dynamic activity is comparatively high, is twofold: there is a physical and a symbolic level. With regard to physical space, it is striking that ritual innovations quite often emerge at the pilgrims’ homes, on their way to the sanctuary, at Velankanni beach, or the former pond of Mary, the matakulam. In terms of symbolic marginality, it is obvious that ritual dynamism is strongest in the unofficial Marian cult, whether private or collective. Nearer to the centre of the sanctuary and its established practices, the room for manœuvre is more restricted. This is partly because of the control exerted by the Catholic clergy, who try to regulate the ritual activity. They are especially keen on banning allegedly non-Christian practices within the shrine and during the celebration of Holy Mass. Secondly, the “prefigurative weight” of existing practices is more strongly perceived near the centre. That is why the already existing ritual practices play a more dominant role in new configurations. Of the above-mentioned approaches the Marian devotees take to engage in ritual activities, the fragmentation of space and the augmentation of space belong to this group. Even at the very heart of Velankanni, within the official Church liturgy celebrated at the shrine of Our Lady of Health, ritual dynamism is common. Because of its supremacy and power over the core cult, the Catholic clergy were free to create new ritual space within the shrine itself, as described above. The exploration of the arena in which rituals are configured at Velankanni immediately leads to the question of how the formation process actually works. In the empirical first part of this paper, I have elaborated on the motivation of the devotees who visit the Marian sanctuary to engage in a process of ritual design in the general sense of the word. Despite efforts to regulate and restrict access to rituals, or the tendency to safeguard existing rights, devotees are creative, in order to increase their opportunities for participation by various means. In the arena of devotion to Mary, not only the private reciprocal relationship, but also the publicly displayed relationship with the Virgin is crucial for the devotees. The latter relation is achieved through an active involvement in the redistributive system of a shrine, and it is publicly acknowledged by certain honours (mariyatai). These honours translate into personal benefits, as well as into social prestige. Roles and functions in the rituals conducted at, or in the vicinity of, the sanctuary are therefore sought after and contested, regardless of the religious affiliation of the devotees. Rituals are constituted and established by devotees against the backdrop of their motivation, as well as the above-mentioned prefigurative dimension and the considerations about periphery and centre. My research has shown that ritual forma-

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tions at Velankanni mostly include practices which first may be tied into a consistent whole, despite their possible heterogeneous origin. The formations, secondly, avoid too much deviation from the local context in order to find acceptance by authorities and the general public, and they thirdly (and most importantly) promise ritual agency. Thus, the men who carry the palanquin of Mary in the daily procession during the novena have created a whole ritual sequence to prepare themselves for their task. For the whole week most of them will fast in some way, some will not consume alcohol, others will only eat vegetarian food, still others will abstain from sexual intercourse. The ascetic spirit is often underlined by orange clothing, while several men will appear with bald heads, having offered their hair to Our Lady of Health. From morning, when the devotees assemble under the empty palanquin, till evening, when the procession starts, the men keep up a prayerful atmosphere in the crowded garage. Collectively and individually, they repeatedly say the Rosary and strive to surrender fully to Mary in preparation for their service to her. Like other devotees, who simply bring their offerings to the shrine of Arokkiyamata, they firmly believe that their service will not be in vain, that Mary will hear their prayers and reward them with health, wealth, children, social prestige, or whatever they have asked for. In other words, they are convinced of the agency of the ritual which they have built up together. Beside the aspects of prefiguration and configuration of rituals, a third aspect, which I call the “refiguration”, is equally important. By refiguration, I denote the repeated performance of a ritual formation, a recall of a particular formation. The repetition may contain variations and have its own dynamic. The crucial point, however, is that the recall stabilises the formation in question. The refigurative process transforms a singular ritual “event” into a real and valid and eventually generally recognised ritual. At Velankanni, practices like the offering of one’s hair or ablutions in the sea are perceived by many pilgrims as an integral part of their duties, although the Church does not encourage them. Most of the men who carry the Marian palanquin meet every year for their collective service. Through repeated performance, the ritual they have designed together has become an important part in their pilgrimage to Velankanni. While investigating ritual dynamics at the Marian pilgrimage centre at Velankanni, I have focused on the process in which ritual is configured and reshaped. I have examined the issue of agency, and discussed the limits and potential of ritual dynamism. My perspective on ritual design was less concerned with assessing degrees of innovation and intentionality in the moulding of rituals. Rather, I have explored the conditions for the emergence of particular ritual formations, the necessary foundation of any formation, if it is to be commonly understood as a “real” and valid ritual. The inclusion of aspects of Foucault’s discourse theory brings in a peculiar prefigurative dimension of ritual formations. The specific contribution of Foucault’s perspective is the concept of a historical a priori. The historical a priori

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prefigures the dynamic formations of discourse (or ritual in the context of this essay), while being subject to historical change itself. On the basis of the historical a priori, rituals are configured, designed, and amended, actions are framed into rituals and form distinct entities of ritual space. As shown, this is not a singular event, but an ongoing process. Ritual formations are constantly re(con)figured.

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References Appadurai, Arjun & Carol Breckenridge 1976. “The South Indian Temple: Authority, Honour and Redistribution”. Contributions to Indian Sociology 10/2: 187–211. Foucault, Michel 2002. The Archaeology of Knowledge. London: Routledge. Frenz, Matthias 2004. Gottes-Mutter-Göttin. Marienverehrung im Spannungsfeld religiöser Traditionen in Südindien. Würzburg: Ergon. — 2008a. “The Virgin and Her ‘Relations’. Reflections on Processions at a Catholic Shrine in Southern Indian”. In: Knut Jacobsen (ed.). South Asian Religions on Display. Religious Processions in South Asia and in the Diaspora. London, New York: Routledge: 92–103. — 2008b. “Salus Infirmorum. The ‘Culture of Healing’ at a Marian Pilgrimage Centre in Tamil Nadu”. In: Caterina Guenzi & Ines G. Županov (eds.). Divins remèdes, médecine et religion en Asie du Sud. Paris: École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales: 331–354. Gehring, Petra 2004. Foucault, die Philosophie im Archiv. Frankfurt, New York: Campus. Handelman, Don 2006. “Framing”. In: Jens Kreinath & Jan Snoek & Michael Stausberg (eds.). Theorizing Rituals. Issues, Topics, Approaches, Concepts. Leiden: Brill: 571–582. Kapferer, Bruce 2006. “Dynamics”. In: Jens Kreinath & Jan Snoek & Michael Stausberg (eds.). , in: Theorizing Rituals. Issues, Topics, Approaches, Concepts. Leiden: Brill: 507–522.

Anne-Christine Hornborg

Designing Rites to Re-Enchant Secularised Society: Cases from Contemporary Sweden1 I originally wrote my thesis about the Canadian Mi’kmaq Indians, their traditions, the phenomenology of place and environmental engagements. The Mi’kmaq often employed rituals in their political protests and referred to inviolable values such as tradition and sacred places. The strong community feeling on the reservations, but also the poverty and the effects of being colonised, was obvious in traditions, the building up of personhood, and how to perform healing rituals.2 The Mi’kmaq revitalisation of traditions and rituals made me reflect upon what rites or ritualised practices are promoted and generate meaning in contemporary Sweden, far from life on the reservations, in a country with one of the highest standards of living in the world. How are rites designed that are employed in the service of society for healing and building up personhood, or to develop leadership and improve working capacity, including stress reduction? The aim of this text is primarily to outline some of the characteristics in the modern, invented practices, mainly by examining two different, but structurally similar enterprises in contemporary Sweden, one sold as therapy and one as a course aimed at providing pedagogical tools to improve teaching skills.3

Setting the Stage Sweden is said to be one of the most secularised countries in the world, at least with regard to active participation in church activities. Paul Heelas goes so far as to say: “In Sweden, regular attendance of traditional religion is on the point of total collapse.”4 But, instead, new practices are rapidly becoming established, which, according to Heelas, spiritualise life itself (“Spirituality of Life”). One of these has 1 This chapter was originally published online 25th of May 2010 in Journal of Religion and Health, DOI 10.10007/s 10943–010–9356–5. 2 See, for example, Hornborg 2001; 2003; 2005; 2008. 3 Acknowledgement: I would like to thank Magnus Bergvall’s fund for its generous con-

tribution to my stay in Heidelberg.

4 Heelas 2002: 360.

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commonly been recognised as a New Age movement, but if asked, most Swedes would probably consider the “traditional” New Age practices to be peculiar, or “mumbo-jumbo”, and many would be a bit hesitant to attend these courses. Probably there would also be a lot of protests if, for example, crystal healing or tarot cards were offered as a method of healing to individuals suffering from “burn-out”, or as a method to improve output at work. But more general ideas of a new spirituality, with roots in Western, globalised, often liberal thoughts, are more attractive. One of the characteristics of this spirituality is the development of the notion of an “inner” self in every human, a latent potential for everyone to find and fully develop in order to live his or her life to its maximum capacity. The concept of the “inner potential” has become a key phrase, found in almost all spiritual therapy and coaching practices, and a rapidly increasing number of practices have, as a result, been built up in contemporary Sweden, to enlarge the possibility of enabling the individual to transfer into new states of being, mainly by providing the means to find this “inner potential”. Although the inner-potential concept refers to immanent forces in humans, these forces presuppose a concealed transcendent realm, larger than the daily and ordinary life of the individual. Often this transcendental realm is described as a higher self, and a further transformation is offered when the individual connects the inner potential with his or her “higher self”, or the transpersonal self. Spiritualised therapy or personal coaching is one way the individual can join practices in order to experience the authentic self, and thereby undergo personal transformations; another is attending courses at work which are meant to increase working skill and capacity within the organisation. These rapidly spreading practices in Sweden often refer to the inner-potential concept, commonly expressed as “find your inner self” or “develop your inner potential.” Four common denominators seem to be the characteristics of these newly-constructed practices and their design: rites centred on the individual, realisation of one’s self, self-made leaders (mainly women), and intense emotions with experiences of a radical transformation. We might also add a fifth aspect: commercialisation. Rites centred on individuals have become a profitable commodity in a market economy-based society, and are sold as therapeutical practices for stressed and exhausted individuals, or for people in pursuit of self-realisation. The practitioners most often prefer to use the word “therapy”, rather than “healing”, since the latter often has a religious connotation, and these new practices clearly distinguish between spirituality as a force in every individual, and religion as the form spirituality might take. I will, in this article, mainly use two practices as examples of these rites, both of them aiming to transform the participant by addressing the inner self: Brandon

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Bays’ The Journey,5 which will represent the spiritualised therapy, and Human Dynamics, which sells courses for the development of human potential to teachers in Swedish compulsory schools, among others. At first glance they look different, but a closer examination reveals structural similarities and characteristic features for these forms of new spirituality with individual-centred practices and self-certified leadership. One reason for choosing these two enterprises is their ambition to offer their services to the public sphere, and they bring added spiritual messages to the more scientific agenda which up to now has been the hallmark of the secularised state. It is also interesting to notice how new spirituality seems to be more accepted by contemporary Swedish society, while other religious traditions or movements are referred to the private sphere, and are, as such, kept apart from the public sector. Sects (like Scientology) or traditional religions, such as Islam and Christianity, are classified as religion and thus private matters, and are prevented from being brought into the service of societal institutions like schools or the public health sector. Contrary to the Abrahamic religions, rituals emanating from Asian religions have been reduced to a “technique” by the new practitioners, and are displayed as being detached from religious messages.6 “Mindfulness”, for example, with roots in the South Asian Vipassana tradition, has recently become very popular and is marketed as a “pure” technique in Sweden, as well as being promoted by some psychiatrists or psychologists in clinical therapy.7 But not every religious practice is depicted as being reducible to only a technique: if a Christian priest were to suggest giving intercession in school, claiming that this ritual would only use the technique, nearly any Swede would say that this practice is impossible to detach from religion, and, as such, should only be employed for private use, and not be practised in secular institutions.

5 The Journey is the “therapy manual” written by Brandon Bays, but also the name of the practices, sold as therapy. 6 But Scientology has, until recently, been selling drug treatment at Swedish private health centres sponsored by societie’s health care system (my comments: paid by tax money), under the business name Narco-non, although when this became known publicly through an investigation by journalists, shown in a television programme (Uppdrag granskning 01 October 2008), the social funding for the treatment was severely criticised; it will most likely be cancelled. Although the Scientology “church” responded to the criticism, they said they only sold “the technique”, not including the religious message, but when this was claimed (as in the case of Asian traditions), it was not accepted by the social institutions which had bought the treatment. 7 See, for example, Åsa Nilsonne, psychiatrist and professor in medical psychology at the Karolinska institutet, Stockholm, and her book (2007) on practising mindfulness, or Ola Schenström, a medical doctor, Mindfulness i vardagen: vägar till medveten närvaro (2007).

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1. Rites Centred on Individuals In order to define and recognise the new, spiritualised practices, we have to start with a discussion of the concept of rite. There have been several attempts to construct a general theory of ritual. In Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity, Roy Rappaport searched for an all-embracing theory (1999) and defined ritual as “the performance of more or less invariant sequences of formal acts and utterances not entirely encoded by the performers”.8 Other ritual theorists, Caroline Humphrey and James Laidlow, tried, in The Archetypal Actions of Ritual (1994), to grasp the essence of a puja, performed by Jains, and describe the ritual acts as “‘non-intentional’, ‘stipulated’, ‘elemental’ or ‘archetypal’, and ‘apprehensible’”.9 In both ritual theories, the ritual acts are symbolically and traditionally encoded beforehand, and thus become separated from the intention of the individual. Although there are important differences between the theories of Rappaport and those of Humphrey and Laidlaw concerning whether messages are transmitted or not in the ritual enactment,10 altogether their ritual theories have less in common with new practices in contemporary Sweden and their ritual definitions better reflect liturgies in canonical traditions. The emphasis in the new practices is not the repetition of traditionally, encoded ritual acts. Instead, they are primarily a means of transition or transformation of the individual. The rites thus become intentional for the participants, a move from the liturgical act to the individually performed act, and to experience the right effects and intense feelings of transformation. The cultural varieties of ritual caused Catherine Bell to choose another path in her definition of rituals. According to Bell, rituals are context-bound and impossible to disembed into one grand definition. Thus, they cannot be reduced to “a uniform, archetypal, or universal set of acts, attitudes, structures or function. The definition, incidence, and significance of so-called ritual practices are matters of particular social situations and organizations of cultural knowledge”.11 We might expect that the new practices in contemporary market economy-based society, with its focus on the individual and self-realisation, would promote other practices than the collective, predefined liturgical rituals. The results from Heelas’ and Woodhead’s research in “The Kendel project” point out that there has been a change from “life-as” spirituality to “subjective-life” spirituality, which corresponds to modern society: “holistic ‘New Age’ spirituality of life (and productivity) are 8 Rappaport 1999: 24. 9 Humphrey & Laidlaw 1994: 88. 10 Rappaport speaks about the rites as “the basic social acts”, a reliable way of communicating social messages, while Humphrey & Laidlaw speak of “archetypal action”, separated from the intention of the performer, and as such there are better ways than ritual to transmit messages. 11 Bell 1997: xi.

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clearly a growing force in ‘softer’, (personal-centered) forms of capitalism”.12 This transformation also applies to the contemporary invented rites in the Swedish contexts, a change from the liturgical, symbolic acts in ritual, to the performance of more indexical, individual-centred rites. This change is even discernible within contemporary Swedish church liturgies, for example, in the choice of music: today popular songs related to the life of the deceased are competing with traditional Christian hymns at funerals, and laymen can read poems relating to specific memories of their beloved ones. The change of the ritual practices in Sweden is a clear response to the increasing focus of the individual and self-realisation in recent modernity, both in private life and at work. In other words, as one Swedish journalist said in her article: “Now we shall also have a perfect inside […] When shopping or psychical training do not help, life coaching will show the way to happiness”.13 This focus on the inner self and the formation of a new selfhood in latter-day modernity requires new ritual creativity, responding to the individual longing for intense experiences of transformations and the authentic self. The new practices, emerging to attract modern people in contemporary society, have made Catherine Bell proclaim the birth of a new paradigm of ritual: “In this newer model, ritual is a medium of expression, a special language suited to what it is there to express, namely, internal spiritualemotional resources tied to our true identities but frequently unknown and developed […] The new paradigm is directed more inward than outward, apt to define community and society in terms of the self rather than the self in terms of the community.”14 Thus, the new rites do not put the liturgical order in the centre, not even the ordinary I. Instead, they address the concealed Self. The concept of a concealed Self has caused many of the new practices in Sweden to turn their attention to Asian rituals and traditions. In these new, Western contexts, brahman, atman, chi or other traditional concepts are transformed into a unified, spiritual force, “the inner potential”. The performance of these rites has been disembedded from localities, globalised, and re-embedded into new contexts to serve the health industry or the “subjective well-being culture”15, and, as such, they are marketed as an efficient means to fulfil the life of modern man. In her discussion of ritual density and ritual typologies, Catherine Bell characterises these East-West hybrids (and the New Age rites) as a special style of ritual typology which focuses on “personal spirituality or the individual’s spiritual potential […] Doctrines and ethical teaching are downplayed in favour of language that stresses highly personal processes of transformation, realization, and commitment”.16 12 13 14 15 16

Heelas & Woodhead 2005: 71; see also Salamon 2001; 2002 and Carrette & King 2004. Ahlström 2008: 12–13: my translation. Bell 1997: 241. The concept is borrowed from Heelas & Woodhead 2005. Bell 1997: 189–190.

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The quest for transformation of the individual and the contemporary pursuit of self-development lead in two directions. One is to make use of the new concept of human potential development in the public sector, as in coaching, workshops, or in-service training at work, and building up practices which further this personal potential for inner growth in the service of the organisation. The other is to offer practices to the individual who experiences feelings of not being good enough, or, the worst case, to someone who has been defined as a loser, going from being an “ordinary, dull person” to being exhausted, stressed, and incapable of functioning at work. To find the “quick-fix” solution is to trigger all the possibilities for personal growth, and a lot of new entrepreneurs in the Swedish “feel-good market” are appearing and selling courses in how to practise self-realisation, both in the public sector and for private use.

2. Realisation of the Inner Potential Brandon Bays’ bestseller The Journey is marketed as a book on therapy, and under her guidance a network of people in Sweden (and worldwide) who have been initiated are at work. In Sweden about 60 people, mainly women, market themselves as being specially qualified to perform this practice, qualifying themselves as accredited or authorised therapists. The Journey tells modern stories of miracles. In Bays’ own account, she said she suffered from cancer, a tumour the size of a basketball, but after making an inner Journey, it disappeared and she was healed. This is now what she offers to others, to awaken the healing forces in the inner potential of the individual. Or in Bays’ words: “Deep inside a huge potential beckons, waiting to open us to the infinite wisdom, freedom and love within. This presence is calling you home right now, longing to set you free.”17 The Journey also offers a variety of practices for children, such as Journey for the Kids, where children make Journeys with Journey therapists, meditate, sing, and dance. This is what is offered: “The Junior Journey – a magical fun-filled day of transformation for children aged 7–12 [...] Empowering confidence and self-esteem building exercises, Creative and healing visualizations […] Guided and inspiring kids’ meditations […] Individual one-on-one Kids’ Journeys with experienced trainers […] Uplifting singing, dancing and play-acting with dynamic instruction.”18

17 http://www.thejourney.com/products.htm. 18 http://www.thejourney.com/ourprograms/juniorjourney.html.

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According to one Swedish Journey therapist, the method has been used in schools to prevent harassment, bullying, and aggressive behaviour, and the courses are now being offered to elementary schools.19 Human Dynamics, founded by Sandra Seagal (1997) and originating from California, sells courses to teachers in elementary schools in southern Sweden.20 One of these courses took place in 2007 at a conference centre, and within six days participants were supposed to learn how to become better teachers by finding their inner potential (in this course, marked as their “personal pattern”). “We have investigated the function of three universal principles – the mental, the emotional (or relational), and the physical (or practical) – and how these combine in specific patterns of dynamic interplay to form distinct ways of systemic functioning.”21 By using the course manual’s prefabricated sets of mental patterns, the teachers were supposed to recognise and develop their own basic, inherent psychological patterns, as, for example, emotion-centred (typical of the “Western world”), in contrast to the physical pattern typical in the Far East (“typical in general of Asian people”). Human Dynamics also envisions a higher spiritual principle (a transpersonal Self), which not only can develop individual capacity, but also make the world a better place to live in. Or in the words of the Swedish manual of Human Dynamics: “Both the personal and transpersonal aspects must develop and be integrated in order for the individual to realize his or her total human potential.”22 By developing “the transpersonal”, participants would experience a more “fair and harmonious world”, an unconditional love which “embraces everything and everyone”, and act with the purpose of “serving others.” Although this could be recognised as the vision in the former “old” New Age idea of the Age of Aquarius, the idea of transformation is put into words that correspond to contemporary visions of a better world.

3. Ritual Leaders 3.1 Self-Made Leaders – the Therapist Leadership in the new rites is not grounded in canonical tradition or academic qualifications, but embedded in personal qualification. Sometimes leaders have just 19 http://www.resanterapi.com/resanterapi.htm. 20 One of these courses involved 250 teachers, but according to Human Dynamics, they have educated 25,000 [23 June 2010,] Swedish teachers, a figure that could be disputed, since it might also be used as a way to market the courses (http://www.humandynamics.se/Support/index.shtml). 21 http://www.newhorizons.org/strategies/styles/horne.htm. 22 Seagal & Horne 2004 [1997]: 290, my translation.

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self-certified themselves, and at other times they have attended courses at a centre for certifying leaders.23 These courses can vary from attending a workshop at weekends to visiting more regular meetings. The education programmes often seem to be a mixture of references to one or two scholars or New Age gurus like Deepak Chopra, to a course manual or “canonical”24 literature, personal experiences and new spirituality rhetoric. In the case of The Journey, Brandon Bays’ charismatic leadership and self-healing is of great importance for strengthening her message to practitioners. The mission of the leaders is also not primarily to embed the participant in a community or congregation, but in the “inner potential”. If so, the message is that integration with the community follows. In Sweden, legitimised psychotherapists are established within clinical therapy and their title is protected by society for a specific profession. But new titles have been created by the new leaders, such as accredited, authorised, diplomaed, licensed, or certified therapist, although without the academic qualifications. While mirroring the formal qualified title, they look like the professional title in order to catch public attention. Thus, The Journey therapists market themselves as accredited or authorised therapists. But the new forms of leadership are not only a way of reflecting and negotiating with the academic qualification system of clinical treatments, they also become a way of creating new hierarchies. As one Journey therapist emphasises on her homepage: there are many Journey practitioners, but be sure you visit an accredited one! 3.2 Self-Made Leaders – the Coach or Consultant Coaching activities, and becoming a certified coach, are also rapidly increasing in Sweden. Originally borrowed from sports as a “win-win” concept, coaching has been transferred into new contexts as a concept of successfulness, and is used by the new enterprises for both individual healing (for example, life coaching) and for group dynamics. Human Dynamics prefers not to use “coach” as a title, but instead uses the designation “licenced consultants” or “facilitators” for its certified leaders, although their practices offer coaching. According to the homepage, courses are offered and sold as: – – – – – –

team functioning building community learning and teaching personal/leadership development valuing and leveraging diversity maintaining health

23 See also Hornborg 2007 and 2009. 24 The selection of genres for this “canonical” literature varies, from New Age-inspired books to scientific journals, especially scholars who have studied the mind-body connection.

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– change management – performance coaching25 The good leadership of the coach, as it is presented on homepages, usually refers more to the personality and charisma of the practitioners than to any formal qualifications. Descriptions such as “I’m harmonious,” “easy-going,” “live as I teach,” “creative,” “provocative”, or “curious” are common. In the presentation of the leaders, there are even references in the new practices to the leader’s kin group, such as: “I live together with my husband Krister and our three adorable sons”26 Sometimes leadership collapses into sheer narcissism, as in “My knowledge […] I have […] primarily in the encounter with myself” or “In the past leadership was about guiding others, today it is about leading yourself and decide the direction of life.”27 Also, personal experience is added to good leadership: some of the leaders have been depressed, exhausted, or severely ill, and, since they have said they have been healed by the treatment, this bears witness to the efficacy of the practices. This personal experience and references to private life in the new leadership reflects the idea of the “inner potential” capacity: to know yourself is what is needed to know the “Rest”. All wisdom lies within the person, not in structural, external relationships. As in The Journey, the leaders of Human Dynamics have protected their titles of therapists/consultants, and the homepage of Human Dynamics stresses: “Be sure you have chosen a licensed facilitator”.28

4. Efficacy and Intense Emotions Efficacy and intense emotions for the individual are further characteristics of the modern rites. That is why the new leaders emphasise the personally constructed rite, designed for the needs of the participant. The Journey uses personal coaching, and practitioners stress the method’s therapeutic function, saying it speaks to “the heart” and promises a more rapid effect and healing than either traditional religion or clinical therapy can offer. The homepages mirror the market economy society and are designed like commercials, here selling instant relief: “The Journey Process developed by Brandon Bays is a deceptively simple technique that facilitates emotional and physical self-healing in the shortest possible time. It can be learned and applied by anyone almost immediately, yet is able to catalyze profound healing results even after other modalities

25 26 27 28

http://www.humandynamics.com/pages/overview.html. http://www.lifeandflow.se/?pid=30. http://www.coflow.se/. http://www.humandynamics.se/.

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Many of the participants who have attended the programme of The Journey or Human Dynamics say that the courses changed their perspective on life.30 The focus on the individual in Human Dynamics, and the search for the personal pattern, apparently evoked strong emotions, since the educational programme not only concerned the participants’ role as professional teachers, but was also a way to better come to know their “inner self”. Since Human Dynamics, The Journey, and similar practices also mirror other societal practices, such as therapy, and respond to the “language of individualistic enterprise culture”,31 they are thus felt to be a natural way of acting and being. When the individual’s familiarity with the discourse of self-realisation and contemporary societal practices in modern society is combined with the enchantment of ritualising, it triggers feelings, and the intense effects of conversion among the participants are typical of these courses.32 The emotions involved with being “new-born” also cause the participants to be devoted “missionaries”, and this is one of the important ways of making the healing courses wellknown and getting them to be marketed to friends or colleagues at work. 4.1 Science as the Dogma of Ritual Although we can clearly discern new spirituality rhetoric and New Age cosmologies in the new practices, references to science and scholars are very important. Science has become a powerful discourse in secularised society, and if past rituals were based in traditional, religious dogmas, many of the new spirituality practices emically explain their successful healing or self-development by references to new explorations in modern science. Probably it is also not a coincidence that the names of the enterprises recall those of academic institutions, in order to further stress the similarity to scientific and academic qualifications. Thus “The Academy of Health”, “The Swedish Institute for Grief Treatment”, or the “Academy for NLP &

29 Quoted by Ian Watson, Co-Founder of The Lakeland College for Homeopathy, author of “A Guide to the Methodologies of Homeopathy” (http://www.thejourney.com/intensive.htm). 30 For example The Journey: http://www.resanterapi.com/jag.htm, or http://www.humandy namics.se/Referenser/Referensuppdrag/Exempellista/Intervju%20KS.pdf and http://www.hu mandynamics.se/Referenser/Referensuppdrag/Exempellista/Osby.pdf. But it is important to note that these witnesses are used by The Journey in marketing their practices, i.e. to sell more courses, and there are no accounts from participants who fail to achieve a successful healing. 31 Heelas 1993: 107. 32 See also the study of est [Erhard Seminars Training] by Finkelstein & Wenegrat & Yalom 1982.

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Leadership” are private companies, all of them run by two or three entrepreneurs, who have also self-certified themselves as leaders.33 By referring to “new findings in science”, The Journey and Human Dynamics claim they have found the better means to connect the inner potential with healing forces, or to enhance working capacity. However, their methods and the use of science are slightly differently presented. The basic theory of Bays’ Journey is that people have cellular memories which have been wrongly programmed, mostly in childhood. The technique for healing is to reprogram the cells to think in a more productive way, to change their memories. By using the inner potential, reprogramming begins and the mind heals the sick body. Or in Bays’ words: “In The Journey processes you are guided to uncover specific cell memories, resolve them completely and clear them out. Your body and being then go about the process of healing quite naturally, automatically and you are left soaring in a boundless joy, peace and wholeness that is your own essence.”34 Human Dynamics embeds its concept of personal patterns in “a breakthrough in science”, referring to brain research and genetics. The mental, emotional, and physical principles are, according to its teachings, located in different parts of the brain, and “the personality dynamic distinctions are reflected in distinctions in the interactions of these three brain components.”35 Human Dynamics also states that the personality is rooted in genetics. “We have observed the personality dynamic distinctions at the beginning of life; we have seen that they occur regardless of age; race; culture; or gender; and are so foundational to an individual’s functioning that they characterize him or her throughout the life-time.”36 To know your true inner self, genetically embedded in the body, becomes the means to fully develop as a person and thus, also, in the profession of teacher. Thus, the classification of the pupil’s inner mental pattern becomes an important tool for learning processes in the classroom: “[…] that we sometimes separate the pupils in different groups of basic personal patterns to have them work according to their personal style of learning gives good results.”37

33 My translation of: Hälsoakademin, http://www.haeu.se/, Svenska Institutet för Sorgbearbetning http://www.sorg.se, and Akademin för NLP och Ledarskap http://www.lifeandflow.se/?pid=46. 34 http://www.thejourney.com/intensive.htm. 35 http://www.newhorizons.org/strategies/styles/horne.htm. 36 Ibid. 37 http://www.humandynamics.se/Support/projekt/index.shtml, my translation.

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5. Ritualising It is important for the leaders to promote the image that their practice is based on science, because references to science correspond to what society demands of clinical treatments. In these alternative treatments, ritualising becomes an efficient means to evoke intense feelings. The ritual process adds more to the practices than ordinary lectures or clinical therapy do, since knowledge or healing in the new practices not only concerns scientific insights about health, and the curing of a disease, but also includes a spiritual process of a new orientation in life. The Journey is a hybrid between popular interpretation of Freudian psychoanalysis and Eastern philosophy – or Bays’ specific and personal interpretation of psychodynamic therapy and Asian thought. By visualising injustices from childhood, the participant can start the healing process. The technique of visualisation is one example of ritual acts, borrowed from other traditions and used in these practices. The adult or child sits on a chair with closed eyes and the therapist coaches this person into visualizing an inner journey (now visualising him- or herself to be travelling in the body in a UFO with a personally chosen mentor as guide) in order to find within him or her the little child who once was injured. Together they will visit a campfire, and with help from the mentor/therapists forgive the perpetrator, often a parent, brother, or a sister. There are clear stages and preparations in The Journey, as in many transmission rituals, aimed to help the participant to transform and heal. This is the experience of one practitioner, who facilitated a Journey: “I was asked to facilitate a journey by a friend who had read the book. So I read the book and made notes on how to do the journey. I think it is useful to be an experienced ritualist to facilitate a journey, because it bears a close resemblance to visualisations in some spiritual traditions (e.g. Wicca), but you don’t need to be a therapist to do it, in my opinion. Before we started, we chatted a bit to relax ourselves, and I put some music on, playing quietly in the background (Returning by Jennifer Berezan), which happened to be in the room and seemed quite appropriate. I asked my friend to close her eyes and started to read the opening bits of the campfire journey. I also improvised quite a bit, in response to what my friend said. I also made notes of what happened at each stage of the process because it is important for later on. The first stage of the process is that you ask the person how they are feeling, then get them to fully experience that feeling and describe the colours or sounds associated with that feeling, and any people that are associated with it, and then note them down. Then you ask them to drop down through that layer of feeling to whatever is underneath it. Then you repeat the questions

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for that feeling, and they keep dropping down through the layers until they get to the inner core of their being, described in the book as the Source, like a white light or warm glow, which unconditionally loves. The ontological status of this source is unclear (probably deliberately so) – it is not stated whether it is linked to anything else. You then ask them to return up through the layers until they get to the level that is associated with the people. (This is where you need the notes you made, to describe the layers accurately.) They then have a dialogue with the people, including their inner child, and the mentor (if one appears – I think I omitted the mentor in our journey) and forgive the other people the wrongs done to the journeyer in the past (both the inner child and the present adult forgive them, if they feel able to do so). You then return up through the other layers, using the notes made earlier to recall the feelings associated with each layer. It was a very moving experience; I found it difficult not to behave how I normally would if someone was crying (normally I would give them a hug but I had to not do this because it would disrupt the process). You also need a box of tissues handy. I also found it weird having to take notes (left-brain activity) and visualise at the same time (right-brain activity). Also the whole thing is very spatial, which is good – you go down through the layers of feeling to the source, and then gather round the inner campfire. We didn’t experience it as “science” – it felt more like therapy or ritual […] At the end she came out of the uppermost layer, opened her eyes, and then I gave her a hug and went to get her a glass of water, and we discussed how it went.”38 In what way is this “journey” an example of the new, ritualised practices? Firstly, The Journey follows Bell’s definition of the new rituals – directed to “our true identities” – and it uses the ritual process to find the “huge potential waiting to set you free”.39 In a society that puts the Self in the centre as the life-project of the individual, and not transcendental forces in an “afterlife”, therapeutic treatment and transformation in the new practices, similar to The Journey, become the main purpose of the ritual, not the by-product.40 Secondly, we find the basic structure of the ritual, using framing to mark the beginning and the end41 (listen to music, close the eyes – open the eyes, get a hug and a glass of water). Thirdly, there are many ritual acts in the performance, here expressed as different stages, which are important for 38 Personal communication 7 October 2008. 39 http://www.thejourney.com/welcome.htm. 40 For this discussion, I am indebted to the discussion I had with Yvonne Aburrow at the Ritual Conference in Heidelberg 2008. 41 For discussion of the concept of “framing”, see Bateson 1955.

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building up transformations, like fully experiencing the feelings, dropping the feelings, starting a dialogue, and so on. The process of experiencing different stages and layers opens up the recipient for intense emotions, and the mission of the ritual leader is to guide the soul travel of the individual in order to heal by enlightenment. There is no need for a congregation or other participants, since this is solely a ritual of transforming the inner Self, to connect with the “inner core of being” or the “Source”. The Journey book constitutes the basic ritual manual, but it offers a full range of improvisations. The gap between the manual and the performance creates a reflexivity space for the ritual leader (“I also found it weird having to take notes…”). The session also ends with reflexive parts for the participant, who discusses with the “therapist” “how it [the ritual] went”. This discussion opens up the ordinary framing of an end in ritual, and the outcome thus becomes a negotiable experience in the dialogue between the practitioner and the client. The individual experience of emotions and effects of the rite in this concluding exercise becomes embedded in a meaningful biography, that is constructed into a grand narrative concerning the individual story of the Self. Human Dynamics also ritualises parts of the education programme. Music and “inaugurations” are used, and according to one of the participants, they had to “[…] sit down in pairs and in silence paint together with only one paintbrush. This was one way of developing the emotional principle […] The next day started with a walk in order to train the participants’ senses. We were to walk, each one by him- or herself,, not talk to anyone, and look, listen, smell, taste and feel. We were still not to talk to each other. Then we were to bring some natural object with us to the conference centre and put it on a table as a kind of installation. Meanwhile, music was playing that reminded me of a funeral ceremony. We were not allowed to talk to each other at all.”42 Many of the new practices, similar to Human Dynamics and The Journey, take place at conference centres or at special events. This is one way of generating effects, of creating new social communities, leaving everyday life, to eat, relax, and experience one’s self with others. The temporary separation from family or the work-place creates new spaces – a communitas – in order to make this transit journey with the goal of transforming and enlightening the participants.

6. Profit – Rites as Commodities The new rites are products of contemporary society, and, as such, they have become commodities, following the rules of the market, and can thus be bought like 42 Interview with one of the teachers who participated in the education programme.

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any other objects for sale.43 The construction of contemporary society as a therapy culture, and of a new selfhood which not only places responsibility on the individual to find the means for healing and insight, but also the moral duty to find the authentic Self and be true to oneself, have created a profitable sphere for creative and imaginative entrepreneurs in a market economy society to find niches to sell the suitable means for solutions.44 Human Dynamics and The Journey therapy are two examples of the many new enterprises that are steadily growing and offering practices in contemporary Sweden, from self-help courses (e.g. A Driver’s Licence for Life on the internet45) to larger enterprises offering courses for employees, similar to the programme of Human Dynamics. The educational programme of Human Dynamics was offered to 250 teachers at a cost of 200,000 Euros for six days. A healing Journey-session takes two hours and costs 200–400 Euros. Training to become an accredited or authorised therapist follows the step-by-step model and costs about 10,000 euros. The Journey book was originally developed as a manual, as “hardcore therapy”, like Michael Harner’s “hard-core shamanism” in The Way of the Shaman. Both Harner’s and Bays’ books could be used as self-help manuals, but the basic ideas of the authors to write a guide for self-help practices have been transformed into making practices into commodities, sold on the market by “professional” entrepreneurs. One Journey practitioner commented on the commodification of the therapy as follows: “I think it is very interesting how the original book of The Journey says you can do it at home with a friend and doesn’t mention anything about the need for a trained therapist (as far as I can recall). Then obviously someone realised they could make a lot more money out of it by insisting on the need for a trained therapist.”46 The Journey has become a huge industry, now ranging from offering the manual Journey to a variety of courses and products such as books, CDs, and Journey cards.47 Human Dynamics and The Journey follow a similar structure of education models: there are some basic courses, which develop into more advanced studies, often at weekends. “Follow-up” courses are common, and are aimed at updating the certifications and at giving feed-back to the practitioners: “Once you have completed 43 See Hornborg 2009. 44 For further reading on the construction of a “therapy culture”, see Furedi 2004, and for the concept of “the authentic self”, Taylor 1991. 45 http://www.utbildning-co.se/sv/livskorkortet/ at a cost of 335 Euros, and offered by a licenced facilitator. 46 Private communication 13 October 2008. 47 http://www.thejourney.com/products.htm.

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the Journey Intensive, you become a Journey Grad which opens you to a broad range of benefits and support and qualifies you to attend the advanced Journey programs.”48 In this case, there are similarities to pyramid games, but these new enterprises do not offer goods, but personal growth. The higher up in the hierarchy, the more money is earned.

Some Reflections In his discussion of the consequences of the market’s influence on rites, Roy Rappaport was worried about the repercussions and explicitly stated: “Indeed, if the business of America is business, business, profit, private enterprise and consumption are tacitly declared basic, or ultimate values and as such enjoy a degree of sanctity equal to that of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, with which they may well be conflated.”49 Rappaport’s critique of the rituals of the market opens up to a broader discussion of modern practices. If the new rites proclaim the ability to give healing, intense emotions, or methods to organise work better, they should be desirable features in society. But are there reasons to critically discuss these new practices, and is it futile, especially in a postmodern society where “anything goes”? Here, I will outline some questions concerning the new practices: Firstly, structural problems, caused by society, tend to be individualised. If people are put under pressure at work, being, for example, exhausted (“burnout” syndrome), this is not depicted as a consequence of structural pressure at work, but as a lack of connection with the inner self. The motto “it is you who are the problem” puts the responsibility on the individual and creates a profitable space for selling courses in healing. The new ritualised practices clearly reflect contemporary society, and thus the ideology of a liberal market economy delivers the necessary material for building up both models of society that seem “natural” to the participant, and models for society that give the participant space for creating powerful means to bend reality into dreams and hopes for better conditions. If the concept of the market is success, these practices promise (instant) success, both in life and at work. But introducing and adding a reflexive ritual criticism to the practices creates new problems. What happens if the individual-centred rite and the search for the inner potential fail? The risk of this could be a total failure for the individual, even as a human being, since the essence of a person is depicted as a forceful, inner potential. Secondly, the clear-cut boundary between scientific, clinical practices that the secularised state promotes, and the new spirituality practices, that previously were seen as a private matter, has collapsed, if these spheres ever were clearly separated. 48 http://www.thejourney.com/intensive.htm. 49 Rappaport 1999: 442.

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The attempts by the practitioners to add spirituality to science might be a strategy to gain access to the public arena, but it also makes it difficult for laymen to discern the difference between the legitimised psychotherapist and the newly created self-certified titles of authorised, diplomaed, certified, licenced, or accredited therapists. To mirror the titles from the clinical medical sector might be a way of offering alternative treatment and alternative education programmes, but more likely it is a way of expressing that these titles are not the alternatives, they are to be treated as equal to the qualifications society has approved. The new, created titles are thus negotiating with the formal qualifications in order to be accepted by society. The classification of personal patterns in the Human Dynamics courses is also presented as a scientific method, in this case to diagnose and educate children, including a basic development programme for teachers. When I asked the representative for Human Dynamics in Sweden about the scientific qualification for the courses, and the relation to new spirituality, she interpreted spirituality as a religion and commented on my question thus. “It is important to stress that HD in itself has no connection with religion. To depict HD as a kind of new spirituality movement would thus be absurd, and no one who has participated in a HD’s education would recognise themselves in such a description.”50 Thirdly, problems might arise when the new practices, not promoted by science, become compulsory in work-places. This is the paradox of the new rites – when used in the public sphere – that they use concepts that yield connotations and refer to new spirituality, but speak about this as secular science, a paradox which became problematic for some of the participants. Some teachers fiercely demanded scientific education and rejected the course as unprofessional. The participants who attended the programme of Human Dynamics were encouraged to find their personal, basic pattern, but one female teacher, who questioned the scientific value of the programme, felt strong pressure from the leaders to place herself in one of the categories for personal patterns, and finally said: “I’m not selling my soul.” In an interview, she said she thought she would be attending a day to increase her competence as a teacher, but instead she felt herself trapped in a manipulation of her personality. Nevertheless, she was forced to continue the programme – refusing to attend would have been the same as refusing to go to work. In a multicultural society, the secularised state can offer a neutral arena at work for employees, despite different religious affiliations. Practices rooted in new spirituality and introduced at work, can cause splits, both between groups, and within individuals who embrace other core values. Since the course of Human Dynamics 50 E-mail communication with Chalotta Dybeck, Human Dynamics, Sweden 12 August 2007.

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was arranged by the school, every teacher had to participate in the six-day education programme and some of them said they did not agree at all that the basic assumption in the manuals was scientific. “No better than a course in astrology,” was one of the comments. This implies that if you are a believer of the new spirituality, you will be a successful co-worker, but if you do not accept the ideology and submit to the ritualised events, you become an opponent to improving the organisation.51 Put differently, reading between the lines: if you don’t find your hidden potential, you have no way to fully develop your personality and skill as a teacher. The pressure of development was further stressed for the “non-converted” when some of their colleagues became believers and tried to persuade the others of the benefit of the course.

Summary It seems as if secularisation in Swedish society has mainly been a question of separating traditional religion from the public domain, but now new spirituality practices are instead becoming accepted in the public domain of Swedish society. Practices for unveiling the human inner potential have, in an increasing market of new enterprises, become equivalent to practising spiritual development. The new enterprises’ ways of using science and building up educational centres that reflect academic qualifications are used as strategies of negotiating with formal qualification and education about legitimacy. As practices reflecting latter-day modernity and a market economy, they offer both models for and of society, and as such they fit the life of modern man. As models of society, they look similar to other practices in late-modern market economy-based society, and as models for society they offer a method for participants to fulfil the dream of a perfect life, which may be realised here and now. Marketed as “education” or “therapy”, they present new spirituality or religious systems in different ways from sects, traditional religions, or the “Old” New Age. As spirituality practices, moving into the public sphere in late-modern Sweden, they highlight the discussion of what is private and what is public, and by designing a new form and language in the ritual process, they introduce new ways of re-enchanting the secularised society.

51 For a further discussion of this phenomenon, see Joel Haviv 2007.

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— 2009. “Selling Nature, Selling Health. The Commodification of Ritual Healing in Late Modern Sweden”. In: Sigurd Bergmann &Yong-Bock Kim (eds.). Religion, Ecology & Gender: East-West Perspectives. Münster et al.: LIT Verlag (Studies in Religion and the Environment 1): 109–130. Humphrey, Caroline & James Laidlaw 1994. The Archetypal Actions of Ritual. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Nilsonne, Åsa 2007. Vem är det som bestämmer i ditt liv? Om medveten närvaro. Stockholm: Natur och Kultur. Rappaport, Roy 1999. Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Salamon, Karen 2002. “Prophets of a Cultural Capitalism: an Ethnography of Romantic Spiritualization in Business Management”. Folk: Journal of the Danish Ethnographic Society 44: 89–115. — 2001. “Going Global from the Inside Out: Spiritual Globalism in the Workplace”. In: Mikael Rothstein (ed.). New Age Religion and Globalisation. Aarhus: Aarhus University Press: 150–172. Schenström, Ola 2007. Mindfulness i vardagen: vägar till medveten närvaro. Stockholm: Viva förlag. Seagal, Sandra & David Horne 1997. Human Dynamics: a New Framework for Understanding People and Realizing the Potential in Our Organizations. Pegasus Communications: Cambridge. — 2004 [1997]. Boken om Human Dynamics. Translated into Swedish by Kristina Turner. Malmö: Runa förlag. Taylor, Charles 1991. The Ethics of Authenticity. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Internet Pages Human Dynamics http://www.humandynamics.se/ (accessed 13 October 2008). http://www.humandynamics.com/pages/overview.html (accessed 13 October 2008). http://www.humandynamics.se/Support/index.shtml (accessed 13 October 2008). http://www.humandynamics.se/Support/projekt/index.shtml (accessed 13 October 2008). http://www.humandynamics.se/Referenser/Referensuppdrag/Exempellista/Intervju%20 KS.pdf (accessed 14 October 2008). http://www.humandynamics.se/Referenser/Referensuppdrag/Exempellista/Osby.pdf (accessed 14 October 2008). http://www.newhorizons.org/strategies/styles/horne.htm (accessed 25 June 2008). The Journey http://www.thejourney.com/intensive.htm (accessed 28 April 2008). http://www.thejourney.com/welcome.htm (accessed 21 October 2008). http://www.thejourney.com/ourprograms/juniorjourney.html (accessed 08 May 2008).

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http://www.resanterapi.com/jag.htm (accessed 14 October 2008). http://www.resanterapi.com/resanterapi.htm (accessed 21 October 2008). http://www.thejourney.com/products.htm (accessed 21 October 2008). Other Internet Sources http://www.coflow.se/ (accessed 02 December 2006). http://www.haeu.se/ (accessed 18 October 2008). http://www.lifeandflow.se/?pid=46 (accessed 18 October 2008). http://www.lifeandflow.se/?pid=30 (accessed 13 October 2008). http://www.sorg.se (accessed 18 October 2008). http://www.utbildning-co.se/sv/livskorkortet/ (accessed 13 October 2008).

Television Programme Scientologirörelsens nya ansikten, i “Uppdrag Granskning”, svt.se, 01 October 2008.

Jan A.M. Snoek

Researcher and Researched Rituals The attitude of researchers towards the persons researched has changed considerably in the course of time. In my view, it is possible to distinguish three basically different attitudes, which I shall call the colonial, the romantic, and the realistic one. The colonial attitude is that which we usually find with missionaries and conquerors in the nineteenth century. These researchers saw ethnology as an applied science, useful for a better understanding of the “primitives”, in order to convert and rule them more effectively. Positive intentions towards the persons concerned need by no means be absent among these researchers: many missionaries intended to save the souls of the natives and to free them from their (supposed) fear for their heathen gods. Also, there were most certainly good scholars among them, such as Father Wilhelm Schmidt S.V.D. (1864–1954). However, today we regard their attitude as very ethnocentric, even “Christocentric” (i.e. measuring the whole world from the perspective of their Christian church). In the late nineteenth century, researchers developed a new, romantic, attitude. They now wanted to study the culture of the good native (“le bon sauvage”, Rousseau), but not to interfere with it.1 The task of ethnology was seen as contributing to understanding and preserving other cultures. These scholars, too, had positive intentions, such as to make other cultures known to the West and to learn from them. Good scholars working from this perspective include E.A. Westermarck (1862– 1939) and F. Boas (1858–1942). Their attitude is characterised by Cultural Relativism: the assumption that there cannot exist objective, i.e. culture-independent, criteria to decide about which culture is better than another. Probably since Fredrik Barth’s “Introduction” in his Ethnic Groups and Boundaries of 1969, a third, in my view more realistic, attitude developed, out of the insight that all cultures always change, especially when they encounter other cultures.2 Since most researchers who study cultural phenomena come from a different culture than that which they study, their presence in this other culture unavoidably influences it. Furthermore, scholarly ethics today requires that scholars inform the 1 In the world of Mr. Spock (from Star Trek, see the contribution by G. Ahn in this volume) this non-intervention rule is called the “prime directive”. However, every episode of Star Trek shows that this rule cannot be maintained, and deals with the moral/ethical considerations around the question when and to what extent it can be broken. 2 Barth 1969.

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people they research about their results, and publish them preferably in a language, which they can read. The attitude required, thus, is one of mutual respect and equality. However, this has consequences. One of the earliest cases, which made this clear, was the dissertation of Charles Johan Wooding on Winti in Suriname, defended at the University of Amsterdam in 1972.3 A reprint was necessary already the next year, and another one in 1979. The reason for the unusually large demand for this dissertation turned out to be that the practitioners of Winti from Suriname had started to use this first description ever of their tradition as a handbook, guiding them in their constant problems of how to properly perform their rituals. In fact, this had a standardising effect on their practices, which had before been very diverse, and which diversity the author had been able to describe only partially. Of course, this had not been the intention of the author, but it happened never the less. Based on my own experience, I am convinced that such effects of the activity of researchers on the practices they research are the rule, rather than the exception. Researchers, however, generally seem to feel embarrassed about this and thus do not report it in their scholarly publications. However, if we want to study ritual dynamics, then we should include the study of changes induced by our own research practice as well. In order to make a start, I will therefore here report two cases from my own projects.

The Oath in the IUOM My first example is from my research about the transfer of rituals from Freemasonry and other sources to the Independent United Order of Mechanics (IUOM) and their development within that Order, related to its history.4 Although most members of this Order whom I met were in favour of my project, most of them were yet not willing to provide me with the text of their rituals. Only in the course of my research did it become clear to me what the real problem was. As it turned out, the text of their rituals is only given to the Master of a lodge, after he has taken an oath not to copy them, or to disclose them to anyone beneath his rank, and to hand all of them to his successor at the end of his term. This oath was felt to be binding, even though their rituals for the first six degrees have been made available on the Internet by a moderately anti-masonic organization. Many members turned out to be of the opinion, that under these circumstances, this oath is outdated. Nevertheless, they also felt that only an official decision by their Order could free them from their obligation. The only institution, which could do so, is the triennial World Conference of the IUOM. At these conferences, virtually always some pro3 Wooding 1972. 4 Snoek 2009 [2008].

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posals for changes in their rituals are dealt with. Therefore, some of the leading members proposed to try to abandon this oath at the triennial conference of 2007, in order to make my research possible. At that conference, however, it was, in the end, not discussed, because time was limited and other problems were given higher priority. Yet, some of them hope that the proposal may be decided upon at the conference of 2010. What is remarkable about this case is that a change of a particular ritual (the abandoning of the oath concerned from the ritual of installation of a new Master of a lodge) was proposed in order to make my research possible. I don’t know if this change will ever be accepted officially by the IUOM, but if it is, it will indeed be a change of a ritual, unintentionally induced by my research activity.

Eve in the Adoption Rite My second example I take from my research concerning the rituals of the Adoption Rite, a masonic system of rituals which was used, especially in France, from the middle of the eighteenth century onwards to initiate women.5 Today, there is only one lodge left, which works with a form of these rituals: lodge “Cosmos” of the Grande Loge Feminine de France (GLFF) in Paris. As in the usual male forms of Freemasonry, so also in the Adoption Rite, the basic system consists of three degrees: Apprentice, Companion, and Mistress. In the second degree, the story of Eve and the apple is re-enacted with the candidate in the role of Eve. This, one might think, could well be regarded as offensive by the women initiated. However, it turns out that in this ritual, the usual interpretation is inverted. In order to reach “felicity” (bliss) in this life, one has to live virtuously. But in order to do so, one has to know the difference between good and evil, and then to choose to do good. To do good without knowing the alternative would just be naive, not virtuous. So, Eve sacrificed herself by eating from the apple which gave knowledge of good and evil, in order to open up the possibility of living virtuously, and thus to attain felicity in this life. Eve is thus comparable to Christ, who opened the way to heavenly bliss after this life.6 This way, Eve becomes the role model to be emulated, the first initiated woman. What we have here is a typical esoteric interpretation, characteristic for a secular elite, deviant from, yet dependent on, the interpretation currant in the dominant culture. In fact, it is even feminist avant la lettre.

5 Snoek (forthcoming). 6 Within the Roman Catholic Church a similar interpretation, known as felix culpa, is wellknown too. It is based on the logic that Christ could not have saved mankind if Eve had not eaten from the apple in the first place.

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Significant is that this inverted interpretation of the story of Eve is restricted to the rituals from the early period of this Rite, approx. 1744 to 1815. During this period, the Adoption lodges were dominated by the highest aristocracy, many of whom were very well educated. After the fall of Napoleon, the lodges became more and more populated with members from the middle-class, who apparently discovered that, in these rituals, the story of Eve was presented wrongly. They thus corrected it, with the result that the women did not like it anymore, and the Adoption lodges became virtually extinct from about 1870 onward. Around 1901, new Adoption lodges were founded, this time populated with explicitly feminist women. These did not like the nineteenth-century rituals, of course, and thus, in 1902, Eve was thrown out of them.7 But in February 2008, I gave a presentation in lodge “Cosmos” about the results of my research concerning Eve in the Adoption Rite. I had expected very critical responses, but in fact the reactions were all extremely positive. The next day I was told that a significant number of those who had been present had discussed what I had told them until the early morning, and that the general feeling was that it would be great to have Eve in some form back again, though in the eighteenth-century feminist interpretation. Again, I don’t know if this will ever be realised, but should it be, then this will clearly be another example of a change of a ritual, as a result of my research, even though I had no intention at all to induce such a change.

Conclusions Changes of rituals as a result of such interactions as those described in this article, between a researcher and the group of people he investigates, may be neither intended, nor even anticipated by the researcher concerned. Yet, they are often unavoidable and in fact a normal effect of the process of such research. The presence of a researcher is a change of the context of rituals, which thus, according to the theory of transfer of ritual, may cause changes.8 Such changes should not be shamefacedly ignored by the researcher concerned, but, on the contrary, be published by him, and reflected upon and regarded as a subject of research in themselves, both by him and others. From such research we may learn much about the processes involved in the transformations leading to the seemingly static forms of rituals we usually observe.

7 With the exception that the word “Eve” is still to be found on the collar of the Master of the lodge. 8 Cf. Langer et al. 2006.

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References Barth, Fredrik (ed.) 1969. Ethnic Groups and Boundaries. The Social Organization of Culture Difference [Results of a Symposium held at the University of Bergen, 23rd to 26th February 1967]. Bergen: Universitetsforlaget; London: Allen & Unwin (Scandinavian University Books). Langer Robert et al. 2006. “Transfer of Ritual”. Journal of Ritual Studies 20/1: 1–10. Snoek, Joannes A.M. 2009 [2008]. “Ritual Dynamics in the Independent United Order of Mechanics”. Forum Ritualdynamik 16. http://archiv.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/ volltextserver/volltexte/2009/8973/ (21/07/2010). — (forthcoming). The Adoption Rite. Wooding, Charles Johan 1972. Winti, een Afroamerikaanse godsdienst in Suriname. Een cultureel-historische analyse van de religieuze verschijnselen in de Para (PhD thesis). Meppel: Krips.

Michael Houseman

Trying to Make a Difference with “Ritual Design” The papers presented at the Ritual Design panel were largely oriented towards pushing the “ritual dynamics” envelope: granted that ritual innovation is the norm rather than the exception, just how innovative can a ritualist afford to be? What myriad forms can ritual creativity take? This accounts in part for the diverse and somewhat outlandish character of some of the topics: ritual activities at a Marian shrine in India, Christmas celebrations among “ordinary” Swiss families, Masonic rites in France, but also newly crafted funerary ceremonies, as well as various Neopagan, New Age, on-line, fictional, and artistic ritualisations involving such unlikely non-human entities as digital parishioners (and their ghosts), reprogrammable cellular memories, Vulcan Starfleet officers, and Cinderella look-alike goddesses. The whole shebang was both intellectually challenging and great fun, and there is no way that I am going to be able to stuff all that exuberant toothpaste back into the rigorous analytical tube from whence it came. From the onset, the notion of “ritual design” was used to subsume a wide range of innovative processes: incremental transformation, deliberate revival, speculative re-creation, intentional invention, and so forth. One happy result of this was that the various case-studies discussed were tacitly posited as theoretically equivalent, the implication being that it was analytically expedient to consider them all as instances of ritual practice.1 However, while this was self-evident for some cases, for others, such as “human potential”-based teacher training, artistic initiatives on All Souls’ Day, or the use of on-line ceremonial prescripts, it was much less so, although the ways in which these latter activities diverged from more canonical sorts of ritual events remained unclear. The problems raised by such possible divergences, barely addressed during the panel sessions, continue to badger me: might attending to ritual design point to essential differences between distinct modes of ritualisation, or even to the limits of ritualisation itself? This question lies at the heart of the envelope-pushing issue: how far can ritual dynamics press on in the “dynamic” direction before “ritual” gets left behind? 1 Similarly, other concepts recently introduced within the ritual dynamics paradigm, such as “ritual transfer” (Langer et al. 2006), or “patchwork ritual” (Radde-Antweiler 2006), have been mobilised chiefly to legitimise heretofore marginalised or discredited ceremonial phenomena; their use thus tends to emphasise continuities rather than discontinuities.

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In other words, are there important conceptual distinctions worth making within the field of ritual design: should some kinds of innovation be deemed more radically innovative than others? In a nutshell, the question is Gregory Bateson’s: what difference makes a difference?2 Is there some empirical novelty pertaining to ritual design that implies a significant discrimination on the level of ritual theory? One possible candidate is simply the presence of change. However, as a discriminating criterion, this is a total non-starter. As has often been stressed, all ritual performances are continually evolving over time, existing patterns of ceremonial action being progressively reshaped as a function of ongoing transformations in the larger social field. Jan Snoek’s account of changing Masonic rites, and especially Matthias Frenz’s analysis of contested space at the Marian sanctuary of Velankanni, provided examples of this type of ongoing ritual reconfiguration. Moreover, on another, less historical level, no two ritual performances are ever strictly alike, if for no other reason than because from one performance to the next, the participants are either different people or the same people who, for any number of reasons (such as their participation in prior ritual performances), don’t act in exactly the same way. I cannot but wield the sacrificial knife differently, both from the way you do and from the way I used to when I was younger – to say nothing of the fact that the goat to be immolated is different every time. Because rituals are not undertaken theoretically, but by particular persons in particular times and places, they always incorporate a measure of creativity and improvisation. In this light, practitioners’ claims of ritual invariance are worthy of attention. In many cases, as in both the above-mentioned examples, ritual participants maintain that the modifications their rituals may have undergone are but contingent aspects of ceremonial events whose essential nature has remained unchanged. The ability to make such assertions is upheld by considerable cultural work, pertaining, among other things, to the organisation of the ritual performances themselves. This is not the place to elaborate further on this idea. Let it suffice to remark that such statements amount to saying that, while innovation may be present (indeed, it is often readily admitted to), it is in no way constitutive of the ritual’s efficacy as such: it is held to contribute only very marginally to what makes the ritual in question the extra-ordinary enactment that it is deemed to be. What about deliberate innovation? Intuitively, this seems a more likely possibility: taking a conscious decision to modify one’s ritual behaviour surely betokens a watershed of sorts. Well, not really. To begin with, as Simone Heidbrink had occasion to remark during a discussion, basing a conceptual distinction on speculations regarding participants’ states of mind is a hazardous undertaking at best: how does one go about evaluating the extent of their premeditated intention to introduce 2 Bateson 1972: 453.

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change? But, above all, the fact is that most, if not all ritual innovations, such as those already alluded to, involve a fair amount of conscious deliberation on the part of those concerned. Indeed, rituals are social practices and, as such, their evolution typically entails such mindful activities as confrontation, factionalism, wilful intimidation, soliciting support, negotiation, and compromise. I am tempted to suggest that, as a rule, people are at least as thoughtful about their rituals as they are, say, about their cooking. Ceremonial changes, like culinary experiments, may be prompted by boredom, elicited by others’ desires, or dictated by happenstance (having no rice, I use pasta; in the absence of a cow, I sacrifice a cucumber); they never “just happen”. To use a more contemporary vocabulary, ritual innovation, as suggested, for example, by Roland Hauri-Bill’s survey of family Christmas rituals in Switzerland, is an inherently reflexive, context-dependant process. A third imaginable criterion for a radical distinction within the framework of ritual design is purposeful invention. It seems reasonable to expect a newly created ritual to be of a markedly different nature than one hallowed by enduring practice. Although I initially imagined this to be the case, the introductory talks by the panel’s co-organisers, Gregor Ahn and Kerstin Radde-Antweiler, as well as the discussion that followed, convinced me of just how difficult it is to draw a line between innovation and invention in so far as ritual design is concerned. First of all, as Gregor Ahn made clear, this distinction depends a great deal on one’s point of view, for what may appear to be a freshly forged ceremony for an outside party may be conceived by its practitioners as a reworking of an already existing rite. In addition, the very process of ritual crafting, because it invariably incorporates some sort of ritual transfer, makes such a discrimination highly problematic. Typically, “invented” rituals are composed by relating bits and pieces, gathered from a variety of sources, to a more or less familiar ritual schemata or frame. This also came out clearly, for example, in Thomas Quartier’s account of contemporary funeral design in the Netherlands. Moreover, as Kerstin Radde-Antweiler showed for newly minted rituals posted on personal web-sites, pre-existing ritual schemata and their attendant, often exotic religious traditions can be convoked in the absence of any substantive knowledge by even the slightest, most superficial of references. As a consequence, no newly conceived ritual can be said to be totally original; it always refers, either explicitly or implicitly, directly or obliquely, to some pre-existing ceremonial performance.3 The same applies to made-up rituals in fictional accounts (e.g. the cinematographic re-embodiment rites analysed by Gregor Ahn), to novel on-line ceremonies (e.g. vendor-machine worshipping in Simon Jenkins’ Church of Fools), and to ritual enactments drawing simultaneously on several different cultural traditions (e.g. the Milky Way Phantasy described by Inken Prohl and “Ger3 Such self-referential circuits cannot but contribute to validating the newly “invented” practices in question as instances of “ritual”.

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manic” Neopagan rites outlined by Rene Gründer). In short, as several panel members insisted, rituals are never concocted from scratch. So wherein lies the difference that makes a difference? It is not novelty itself (all rituals change), nor is it deliberate innovation (all ritual change is intentional), nor even outright invention (all rituals are to some extent derivative). Another possibility, if creativity is indeed a constant feature of ritual, is that this difference pertains to the positive or negative role that innovation is expected to play in ritual performance. As previously mentioned in connection with Masonic ceremonies and Marian devotions at Velankanni, many rituals disregard, impugn, or challenge the changes they nevertheless undergo. Both participants’ accounts and ritual organisation itself bear witness to the fact that innovation is held to be largely contingent; it is not presumed to be constitutive of the performance’s distinctive effectiveness as ritual. This makes sense, given that this efficacy is alleged to proceed above all from the accomplishment of certain fairly mysterious acts (by the standards of everyday behaviour) – carrying the Virgin’s chariot, prostrating oneself before Mary’s standard, wearing emblematic aprons, etc. – handed down by more authoritative Others (ancestors, divinities, cult founders, church leaders, etc.) and having operative value in and of themselves. Other rituals, on the contrary, explicitly endorse and encourage innovation. They proceed from the notion that creativity is a necessary, pivotal feature of ritual practice, essential to its effectiveness as such. This applies, for example, to the New Age “spiritualised practices” described by Anne-Christine Hornborg, to the Milky Way Phantasy pilgrimages presented by Inken Prohl, and to the Neopagan ceremonies discussed by Kerstin Radde-Antweiler and René Gründer. In all these cases, ritual potency is deemed to rely less on the faithful repetition of certain conventional items of behaviour than on the participants’ experiencing certain equally conventional, albeit somewhat enigmatic, feelings and motivations – unconditional love, the vibration of universal prayer, an intimate connection with nature, spiritual community, etc. – ascribed, here also, to more authoritative Others (one’s “inner” Self, extra-terrestrial fantasy-castle princesses, Celtic druids, ancestral Norsemen, etc.). Although, in fact, practitioners make use of a limited number of recurrent images, formulae, spatial setups, and scenarios, they are expected to exercise considerable imagination and creativity in accommodating their ceremonial practices to their personal sensibilities and circumstances. This is because participants do not envisage their ritual activities as ends in themselves (archetypal actions), but as the means whereby certain exemplary emotional and intentional dispositions may become their own. In this perspective, established religious traditions, the participants’ own or others, are seen as providing not models to follow, but resources to be inventively explored. Hence the byword of ritual traditions of this type, the

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symmetrical inverse of assertions to the effect that rituals never change: “Do whatever works best for you”. My suggestion, then, is that ritual design is structured around two poles representing two rather different modes of ritualisation: change-eschewing on the one hand, and change-embracing on the other, the former organised around the repetition of complex actions, the latter around the re-actualisation of complex dispositions.4 There were some interestingly ambiguous cases among the materials presented. For example, it is very difficult to position the rituals composed by contemporary funeral designers in the Netherlands (Thomas Quartier’s talk), mostly because descriptions of the ceremonies themselves were lacking, as was also the case for Roland Hauri-Bill’s Swiss Christmas celebrations. A particularly intriguing case, presented by Erik de Maaker, was that of Dutch artists who created various installations on All Souls’ Day in order to elicit people’s feelings and to provide them “with the ritual means to commemorate the dead”. As the testimonies show, at least some participants were deeply moved. Human-like statues of white wax, for example, lit from within by burning candles that caused them to slowly melt, evoked both bodily deterioration and the presence of souls. However, this is precisely what art is supposed to do: induce complex emotional and intentional states in others. For an artistic installation to also make sense as ritual, the exemplary feelings occasioned by the artists’ works would have to provide the participants with the grounds for undertaking exceptional enactments of their own whose performance is presumed to be able to affect them in extra-ordinary ways. In the annual Milky Way Phantasy described by Inken Prohl, for example, artistic performances are pursued to create an “aesthetic sensation” among the participants that sustains their ceremonial building of a fairy-tale castle, in whose construction the participants are able to “feel the Gods”. In this perspective, the All Souls’ installations made use of what we might call the idiom of ritual, but fell short of full-fledged ritualisation. Some works, however, came closer than others. In “Objects of Remembrance”, for instance, the artist provided bereaved individuals with a collection of disparate objects from which one was chosen and placed, along with a written message to or about the deceased, in a memorial box destined, for the space of an evening, to be displayed and shared with others. One would need to know more about exactly how objects were selected and messages were written, as well as the ways in which 4 For a fuller account of the distinction between these two ritual modes, see Houseman 2007. It is perhaps worth noting the extent to which Simon Jenkins’ online Church of Fools abounds in stipulated, often equivocal gestures: kneeling, the “hallelujah” pantomime, injunctions to “please use ‘tear hair out’ gesture as we think of them”, shaking hands with co-participants who are invisible to all except themselves, etc. As ritual (and not as a spectacle or a play for example), I would situate it firmly in the action-centred, change-disregarding ceremonial camp.

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participants (and others) talked about what was being done, to be able to judge to what degree installations such as this allowed people to forge not only a renewed connection with their departed intimates, but also a renewed ritual relationship with them. The half-baked, two-pole model of ritual design proposed above is, of course, not the final answer to anything. I have introduced it mainly as a way of underlining certain of the theoretical issues raised by the notion of “ritual design”: What are its limits? What conceptual distinctions does it imply? Specifically, how should we discriminate among “designed” ceremonial practices that range from Marian pilgrimages to spiritual therapies for developing one’s inner potential to yet other instances of contrived expressive behaviour? I would like to conclude by encouraging those who would tackle such questions, especially the last of them, to avoid a number of easy answers. I can think of at least three. One is to say that it’s all ritual, loosely defined as symbolic practice. Using “ritual” in such a casual way, “as a metaphor for all kinds of experience” (as Felicia Hughes-Freeland rightly remarked in another panel session), may be fine for practitioners, but a real cop-out for those who make a living conceptualising about this sort of thing. The fact is that for “ritual” and its related terms to have any analytical (as opposed to evocative) value they must be closely defined. There are risks involved, but hey, they’re only academic.5 A second type of evasive manoeuvre consists in being satisfied with labels: let’s call some things “ritual” and other things, say, “ceremony”, or some things “ritual” and other things “ritualised”. All this is well and good if we know (and say) exactly what we mean by such categories; if not, their introduction amounts to a pragmatic stop-gap solution (I study ritual, you work on ceremonies) to theoretical quandaries that remain intact. A third easy way out is to take an insufficiently thought-out relativist position: if “they” call it ritual, then it should be considered ritual. The problem, of course, is that as a rule, “they” don’t call anything “ritual”. “They” make use of any number of local terms, often pertaining to quite different realms of experience, to refer to what we researchers, for either ethnocentric or theoretical reasons (it’s either one or the other), lump together as “ritual”. It should be noted in passing that taking this into account has a troubling implication when applied to contemporary Western societies: that fact that we Westerners do or don’t call certain practices “ritual” is not particularly relevant in determining that which should be legitimately studied as such. 5 I personally find the “polythetic” or “fuzzy set” approach to the definition of ritual (for example Snoek 2006) to be uncomfortably close to this loose “it’s all ritual” strategy. Specifically, it tends to turn a useful methodological precept that allows people to talk together without being hampered by arduous definitional issues, into a dull conceptual tool.

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One alternative to these overly simplistic approaches, I would suggest, is to begin, somewhat artificially, by positing certain manifestly heterogeneous phenomena, such as change-dismissing and change-promoting ceremonial practices, as “ritual” in the strictest, fullest sense of the word. This shifts the analytical burden squarely onto the shoulders of the researcher, where it belongs. The question then becomes a potentially constructive one: what conceptualisation of “ritual” do we need in order to be able to account for both their similarities and their divergences as the interdependent features of a single model? I have tried to show that the concept of “ritual design” raises pressing questions about the very nature of ritual practice. In precluding the easiest of (false) solutions to these questions, all the while having no conclusive answers to offer, I have tried my best to paint us all not so much into an analytical corner, as to the edge of a conceptual cliff. So please let me end on a positive note by borrowing from a legendary blooper: the time has come for ritual studies to take a big step forward!

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Michael Houseman

References Bateson, Gregory 1972. Steps to an Ecology of Mind. Collected Essays in Anthropology, Psychiatry, Evolution and Epistemology. San Francisco et al.: Chandler. Houseman, Michael 2007. “Menstrual Slaps and First Blood Celebrations. Inference, Simulation and the Learning of Ritual”. In: David Berliner & Ramon Sarró (eds.). Learning Religion. Anthropological Approaches. New York et al.: Berghahn Books: 31–48 (Methodology and History in Anthropology 17). Langer, Robert et al. 2006. “Ritual Transfer”. Journal of Ritual Studies 20/1: 1–10. Radde-Antweiler, Kerstin 2006. “Rituals-Online. Transfering and Designing Rituals”. Online-Heidelberg Journal for Religions on the Internet 1/2: 54–72. Snoek, Jan A.M. 2006. “Defining ‘Rituals’”. In: Jens Kreinath & Jan A.M. Snoek & Michael Stausberg (eds.). Theorizing Rituals. Issues, Topic, Approaches, Concepts. Vol. 1. Leiden et al.: Brill: 3–14 (Numen Book Series: Studies in the History of Religions 114/1).

Abstracts Section I: Reflexivity and Discourse on Ritual Udo Simon Postdoctoral Researcher, Cluster of Excellence “Asia and Europe in a Global Context” and Collaborative Research Center “Ritual Dynamics”, Heidelberg University Reflexivity and Discourse on Ritual – Introductory Reflexions The term “reflexivity” is used in a variety of disciplines and meanings, ranging from unconscious self-referentiality to conscious reflexion. This introduction discusses reflexivity as the view of the self, as a part of a larger social structure, in relation to ritual. By pointing out some analytical aspects which can support a structured examination, it focuses on the transitional zones between the dimensions of emotion and cognition, description and interpretation, the individual and the collective. Harvey Whitehouse Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Oxford and Fellow of Magdalen College Religious Reflexivity and Transmissive Frequency This paper argues that the incidence and nature of religious reflexivity, including experiences of doubt and disbelief, are closely linked to the frequency of religious transmission. Highly repetitive religious transmission can effectively inhibit reflexivity on the part of religious adherents. By contrast, rare or unique experiences of traumatic ritual episodes make a reflexive stance among participants more or less inevitable. The evidence presented in support of these arguments comes from both cognitive science and ethnography. Joachim Gentz in collaboration with Christian Meyer Joachim Gentz, Reader in Chinese Studies at the Asian Studies Dpt., University of Edinburgh Christian Meyer, Assistant Professor at the East Asian Dpt., University of Leipzig, and Honorary Research Associate in Cultural and Religious Studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong Ritual and Rigidity in Commentaries and Court Debates: Patterns of Reflexivity in Pre-Modern Chinese Discourses on Ritual The formulation of a ritual theory is nowhere an ultimate ambition in early Chinese ritual literature. Theory serves rather as a means of arguing for the right practice, with the ultimate aim of achieving the desired effect – of the right emotional, socio-political, and

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religious-cosmological order. Therefore ritual theories are textually transmitted to us mainly in two different kinds of discourses: 1. discourses about the correct interpretation of canonical ritual texts and 2. open court debates about the application of ritual texts to concrete political cases. The article presents examples for each of these kinds from different times of Chinese history, to illustrate in two representative cases contents and methodologies of ritual debates and theories in pre-modern China: 1. An analysis of six exegetical layers (written between the fourth and the first centuries B.C.) to one of the most important ritual topics of the early ritual books: mourning garments, 2. an analysis of a court debate from 1064–1067 “about granting a title to the prince of Pu”. In both cases the formation of ritual theory in the Confucian tradition is directed against a rigid ritual practice. The tension between an ideal, formalised system of ritual rules (li) and the complex reality of human emotions social conditions seems to be one of the most fundamental issues in early Chinese reflections of ritual. Rüdiger Schmitt Research Group Leader Antiquity, Cluster of Excellence “Religion and Politics”, Muenster University Magic, Ritual Healing, and the Discourse on Ritual Authority in the Old Testament The paper will examine the problem of ritual healing and magic both from the textual evidence and with regard to the history of scholarly perception of “magic” in the Old Testament. In the Hebrew Bible we find a sharp distinction between legitimate – mostly therapeutic magic rituals – performed by legitimate ritual specialists like Elija (1 Kgs 17– 18), Elisha (2 Kgs 2:19–22; 2:23–24; 4:1–7; 4:8–37; 4:38–41; 4:42–44; 5:1–27; 6:1–7) and Isaiah (2 Kgs 20:1–11 = Isa 38:1–8.21) which were considered magia licita and practices considered illegitimate like those mentioned in the prophetical law Deuteronomy 18: 9–22 and the practices of the female prophets attacked in Ez 13:18. The scholarly perception of magic in the OT has followed in many respects the deuteronomistic and priestly verdicts against magic (Hebrew kašap) and the biblical discourse about ritual authority. The aim of the paper is a) to evaluate the scholarly approaches to magic in the OT, and b) to show that “magic” healing as ritual practice in the OT is an integral part of religion and an important expression of the cultural system. Günther Schörner Professor of Classical Archaeology, Institute of Classical Archaeology, Erlangen University Sacrifice East and West: Experiencing Ritual Difference in the Roman Empire The most prominent religious action in the religions of the Roman Empire was animal sacrifice. Though the main focus of the ritual – killing an animal in honour of the gods – remains the same throughout the Imperium there were significant differences in the execution of sacrifices best documented in Rome and Italy on the one side and Greece and Asia Minor on the other. The main focus of the paper, however, is not listing these variations, but the question how these discrepancies in ritual action were experienced and reflected by

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different groups of participants. One point to make is that there were distinct ways to look on at the sacrifice in Rome or the eastern part of the Empire paying attention to different stages of the sacrifice. By this means culture specific modes of “gazes” to and reflections on ritual can be detected. In a following step it is to ask if further sensual stimuli like playing music during different moments or the different use of incense will emphasize these diversities in experiencing religion. In a second part of the paper it will be discussed if these differences were either played down to stress the unity of religion between Rome and Greece in Imperial times or shown off to create a specific religious or cultural identity. Dominik Fugger Junior Research Group Leader „Religiöse Rituale in historischer Perspektive“, Max-WeberKolleg, University of Erfurt What About the Bean King? Reflections on a Specific Ritual between 1500 and 1900 and Their Implications for the Methodology of Ritual-Analysis Since the forteenth century ephemeral kingdoms can be documented in middle- and western Europe as a common way to celebrate Epiphany. The custom designates an extensive penetration of pre-modern society; it is an ubiquitous occurrence within its geographical extension. At the end of the 15th century appear the first testimonials of contemporary ritual reflections that will attend the custom through its changeful history up to the present. This contribution centers on typical perspectives within which the ritual was reflected upon at the respective time; the change of the perception of the ritual on a historical basis and the embedment of this perception into the further context of the discourse. Finally, it will focus on the forms into which reflections on the ritual, or rather their results, are themelves integrated into the ritual. Based on this, a theoretical approach to the ritual as carrier of meaning will be put up for discussion, making the contemporary reflection the central point of interest as regards cognition. Hans-Ulrich Sanner Independent Ethnologist, Berlin “A Message about Life”: Performance and Reflexivity in Hopi Indian Ritual Clowning Ritual clowns have been identified as cultural agents of reflexivity and transformation in recent anthropological studies of ritual and performance. The sacred clown-drama of the Hopi Indians in Arizona “conveys a message about life”, as Hopi thinkers put it. Clowning (tsukulalwa) periodically encourages the Hopi to reflect upon their human failings as against the ideality of the spirit world, facing them – by means of performance - with the eschatological consequences of collectively abandoning the Hopi way. On the backdrop of culture change and the effects of Anglo-American and global institutions, the Hopi clown is a polysemic symbol that links the mythical model to current problems and needs, providing original entertainment, moral guidance, and cathartic laughter. An important aspect of reflexivity addressed in this paper concerns indigenous meta-commentaries on the practises,

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meanings, and effects of tsukulalwa in terms of modern Hopi identity. The range of perspectives recorded in fieldwork covers the knowledge of ritual specialists and performers as well as the eclectic interpretations of “the common Hopi”. Hege Irene Markussen Centre for Theology and Religious Studies at Lund University Ritual Critiscm and the Alevi Cem Ritual Ritual knowledge of the Alevi cem ritual is transmitted not only through ritual performance, but also through various kinds of evaluations on the current performances of the ritual, both in and outside of the ritual context itself. In their speeches, the dedes complain about degeneration of the ritual practices, wishing for the help of God to lead their communities back on the right track, participants and non-participants alike grumble about how the cem once was genuine and real, and researchers retell habitual narratives of how current ritual practices are altered counterparts of “the traditional cem”. In this paper, I will explore the Alevi cem ritual as a concept, and as such, define the contours of a theoretical approach to transmission of ritual knowledge of the Alevi cem. I will claim that this kind of ritual criticism is characteristic of both “inner” and “outer” perspectives on the cem ritual, as Alevis and researchers share habitual narratives based on the notion of the authenticity of the cem ritual as performed in the villages in the past. Ritual criticism is thus here understood as a means to transmission of ritual knowledge, as based on habitual narratives, and as a constituent element of the cem ritual. Massimo Rosati Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Rome Tor Vergata and Director of the Centre for the Study and Documentation of Religions and Political Institutions in Postsecular Society Ritual and Reflectivity in the Sociological Discourse on Modernity A superficial gaze at the sociological discourse on modernity could suggest that rituals are a missing chapter in the sociological tradition. However, a closer examination reveals a tradition within the sociological field focusing on the social relevance of different kinds of rituals. From Durkheim to contemporary social theorists such as Collins, Bellah, Alexander, Adam B. Seligman, through Turner and Goffman, the Durkheimian tradition throws light both on the grammar of rituals and on their social role. After an assessment of the importance of this tradition within an interdisciplinary science of rituals, the paper will explore the particular forms of reflexivity involved in two classes of rituals and performances: liturgical and mystical ones. The complex relation between performers, the acceptance of and/or sincere adhesion to practices and beliefs (Rappaport), is not the same in liturgical rituals and mystical performances, and must be investigated. On the other hand, a particular kind of reflexivity is involved in every type of ritual/performance, and conversely rituals are essential also to nurture reflective judgment.

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Mario Bührmann Research Associate, Study of Religion, Collaborative Research Center “Performing Cultures”, Freie Universität Berlin Culture and Rites in Motion: The Conception of Culture and Ritualistic Actions in the Works of Edward Burnett Tylor The aim of this paper is to examine prolific connections between current cultural and ritual scientific debates and the work of Edward B. Tylor (1832–1917). With an eye to Primitive Culture (1871) especially, it will demonstrate how his research on the evolutionary history of linguistic, technical, artistic, and religious ways of thinking and acting contributes to his assessment and evaluation of the dynamics and reflexivity of ritual practices. Though Tylor does not use the term “dynamics” or “dynamic”, his studies are centred around the (often conflictual) processuality that constitutes the development of culture. This paper will analyze how Tylor justifies the assumption of an interdependence or tension between the realms of “cultural performance” in general and “ritual performance” in particular. It will show that Tylor’s view of cultural and ritual dynamics was both progressiv and dangerous at the same time. Finally it will be discussed which role reflexivity in ritual and in science play in this context. Johannes Quack Postdoctoral Fellow, Cluster of Excellence “Asia and Europe in a Global Context”, Heidelberg University Reflexive Remarks on Science, Ritual, and Neutrality in the Social Sciences The terms “ritual” and “science” are notoriously indeterminate and vague. Despite this they also share a history of comparison and confrontation, in public, as well as in scientific discourse. This paper’s point of departure is the opposition between ritual and science as made by representatives of a major Indian rationalist organisation Andhashraddha Nirmulan Samiti (ANiS – “Organisation for the Eradication of Superstition”). The paper explores the ways in which arguments central to the so-called “rationality debate” in the social-sciences resemble and challenge the position of ANiS. Next, it is argued that the issues at stake in the rationality debate re-emerge in post-colonial positions, as exemplified by the work of Dipesh Chakrabarty. Following on from this, it is outlined how reflexivity helps to specify the limits of common scholarly claims to methodological agnosticism and neutrality. Michael Bergunder Professor of History of Religions and Mission Studies, Wissenschaftlich-Theologisches Seminar, Heidelberg University Global History, Religion, and Discourse on Ritual In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, numerous religious reform movements around the globe were engaged in a specific discourse on the importance of ritual practices. They considered religion to consist first and foremost of beliefs and religious experience,

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and treated rituals as of secondary importance. Traditional popular religious practices were heavily criticised, and the legitimacy of rituals depended on whether they were considered meaningful expressions of the belief systems propagated by the respective reform movements. As a consequence, rationalisation and reform of traditional ritual practices was often suggested. These similarities among the religious reform movements raise the question of whether the discourse on ritual within these reform movements is historically related, or a mere coincidence of parallel developments. The paper looks for meaningful approaches to answer this question. David Chidester Professor of Religious Studies and Director of the Institute for Comparative Religion in Southern Africa (ICRSA) at the University of Cape Town Imperial Reflections, Colonial Situations: James Frazer, Henri-Alexandre Junod, and Indigenous Ritual in Southern Africa Victorian scholars of religion, such as F. Max Müller, E. B. Tylor, Andrew Lang, and James Frazer, collected and assimilated an extraordinary array of reports about “savage” beliefs and practices from all over the world. Looking to Southern Africa, they relied heavily on local European experts – the linguist W. H. I. Bleek, the missionary Henry Callaway, and even the novelist H. Rider Haggard – in building an imperial archive of data about religion. For their part, the local experts relied on African collaborators who played crucial, formative roles in this research. Against the background of this triple mediation – imperial, colonial, and indigenous – this paper focuses on the reflexive production of knowledge about ritual in exchanges between James Frazer and the missionary, linguist, and ethnographer, H. A. Junod. While providing data for Frazer’s research on ritual and magic, this exchange had surprising consequences in colonial administration, the mining industry, and the prisons of South Africa.

Section II: Ritual and Media Felicia Hughes-Freeland Senior Lecturer in Social Anthropology, Swansea University Divine Cyborgs? Ritual Spirit Presence and the Limits of Media In a mountain village in Java, members of a troupe of horse dancers prepare to go into a possession trance. The anthropologist has been invited to film the event, and has charged all her spare batteries, and has also equipped herself with a stills camera and tape recorder. The moment the trance begins, all the visual technology breaks down. The divine cyborgs resist entextualization mediated by “modernity’s mimetic machinery”. Anthropologists often experience problems when they try to reproduce the visual appearance of powerful events such as ritual performance. I conceptualize the possessed dancers as “divine horsemen” but also as cyborgs, as discussed by feminist anthropologist Donna Haraway. The analogy between the idiom of possession and the concept of the

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cyborg is used to examine the relationship between embodied human nature, ritual instrumentality, in the age of science, technology, and media. I also draw on Michael Taussig’s work on the mimetic power of spirits as within the modern but magical state to ask how we can characterize the embodying presence of this “other”, and what this sense of “embodying” might tell us about the relationship between performance and religion, and the positioning of the human between animals on the one hand and the machine on the other. Bernhard Leistle Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Carleton University, Ottawa Difficult Heritage: Time and the Other in Moroccan Rituals of Possession In my article I explore the tension between the conventional concept of heritage as a discursive form of social recollection and ritual’s performative potential to preserve the past in the form of bodily memory. As long as the definition of heritage objects was limited to material remnants, this tension could be ignored. But the recent inclusion of practices and performances in what qualifies as heritage, and the formation of the category of intangible cultural heritage has brought the issue to the fore. Based on a phenomenological conception of temporality, I argue that while heritage discourses aim at putting the object declared as heritage to the service of needs and interests connected with the present, ritual establishes a genuine, primordial relation with the past by literally re-presenting it. Ritual performances are dynamic and total events and carry with them embodied memories of past cultural experience. Their indeterminate and pre-objective nature puts rituals at odds with the selective and reflective character of heritage discourses conducted within expert cultures. This becomes particularly obvious in the case of Moroccan rituals of trance and possession. While intimately connected with important themes of Moroccan culture and therefore theoretically eligible as cultural heritage, these rituals are largely ignored by the dominant discourse. Such negligence, I argue, can be explained by the experiential structure of ritual in general, and of possession ritual in particular. Both phenomenological analysis and ethnographic descriptions confirm a specific affinity between possession ritual and otherness. If heritage discourses do indeed fulfill a function for collective self-definition in the present, then the embodied memory of the other experienced in ritual possession could not be more opposed to it. Florence Pasche Guignard Graduate Student, Département interfacultaire d’histoire et de sciences des religions, University of Lausanne Religious Rituals on Video-Sharing Websites On many religious and non-religious Video Sharing Websites (VSW), such as You-Tube, users who are not necessarily believers display, discuss and criticize various aspects of religions. Examples from several traditions and types of VSW will show that the ritual

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component of “religion” takes several forms on the VSW. (1) Rituals taking place outside the cyberspace are filmed and then posted on the VSW (e.g. weddings, baptisms). Why and by whom? What about “secret” rituals? What is shown or hidden? How do people who did not participate in the ritual comment on it? Very often, rituals that “go wrong” are posted in a humorous purpose. (2) Can we consider people filming themselves and posting on the VSW as engaged in a ritual? Some videos that pertain to a religious content (but not necessarily) have features that are typical of classical definitions of “ritual” (e.g. videos posted at a specific time, filmed in a special place while wearing distinctive clothing, beginning and ending with a special formula, using pseudonyms as sacred names). Just as ritual activity, posting on video sharing websites often aims at establishing communication. (3) Other videos openly give instructions and explanations on how to perform rituals alone at home. Joost Fontein Lecturer, Social Anthropology, School of Social and Political Science, University of Edinburgh African studies The Politics of the Dead: Living Heritage, Bones, and Commemoration in Zimbabwe Although it is increasingly recognized that the representation, management and ownership of the past and its material remains is an arena fraught with politics and contestation, this paper starts with the premise that bones and human remains raise particularly sensitive issues which challenge conventional notions of what heritage is and what should be done with it. Commemoration and war memorials, whilst a central tenet of the construction of national pasts and identities along side heritage, have remained conspicuously absent of the construction from notions of heritage advocated by international institutions such as UNESCO’s World Heritage Convention and its accompanying NGOs (ICOMOS & IUCN). Yet graves and human remains are often a feature of heritage sites of all sorts, ranging from monumental churches and tombs to the more recently recognized categories of cultural landscapes and intangible heritage. In particular, bones and human remains reverberate powerfully with currently in vogue notions of spiritual, ritual and living heritage, because bones and human remains make demands on society (at many levels) in the present, which usually lie beyond the reach of “conventional” heritage experts such as archeologists, forensic anthropologists, curators and conservationists. Whilst notions of living heritage therefore challenge structures of power that have seen the past appropriated by such heritage “experts”, they also bring to the fore contestations of legitimacy and authority over the past that circulate around other questions, for example, ritual performance, identity, kinship and autochthony. In Zimbabwe, graves and bones re-appear in myriad of different situations and at different levels. While land claimants often point to the material existence of graves in the landscape as a means of legitimizing their occupations of recently resettled farms, at established heritage sites such as Great Zimbabwe (Fontein 2006) and the Matopos Hills (Ranger 1999), the existence of graves have brought forward profound challenges to the authority of state institutions charged with their protection. Elsewhere war veterans, spirit

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mediums and chiefs, often haunted by visions of their dead comrades or troubled by endless droughts, make angry demands about the need to repatriate the remains of guerilla fighters buried in unmarked graves around the country and across the borders with Zambia and Mozambique, in order to rebury them in specific ancestral landscapes to ‘settle‘ become ancestors. These demands reverberate with the ruling party’s own recent and dramatic rewriting of liberation war history (Ranger 2004), illustrating how the emotive materiality of bones and human remains provoke responses that range from the individual and family concerns about welfare, land and personhood, to questions of identity at local, regional, national and even international levels. National Museums and Monuments have been tasked with identifying, reburying, ritually ‘cleansing‘ and memorializing such remains, and is now involved in an international project with its counterparts in Zambia, Mozambique, Angola, Botswana and Tanzania to repatriate and memorialize what it calls liberation war heritage. But while NMMZ employees are keen on the renewed funding and research opportunities this provides, they are also wary of the politicization involved, particular around the sensitive remains of victims of the Matabeleland massacres of the 1980‘s, which are inevitably re-emerging in the process, but are much less favored by Zimbabwe’s ruling elite. This paper uses these examples from Zimbabwe consider the complex dynamics of ritual, heritage and commemoration which bones can provoke. Ulrike Stohrer Frankfurt University and Centre for Near and Middle East Studies (CNMS), Marburg Ritual Performance, Cultural Policy, and the Construction of a “National Heritage” in Yemen Traditional ritual practice in Yemen is generally characterized by keeping the autonomy of several social and regional groups while cooperating in a joint performative action. Accordingly, the Arab language differentiates in a very subtle way between performative genres and categories each defined by its appropriateness to a specific ritual and social context. Current cultural policy in Yemen by contrast puts them together in order to create a unified national identity that aims at replacing regional and tribal identities. Pursuing this task, the Ministry of Culture and its National Folklore Ensemble is organizing festivals and performances to “show the Yemenite people its rich heritage and to improve its connection to its roots”. But in fact these performances significantly alter traditional performative genres and practices and distract them from their ritual context. Instead they are reshaped corresponding to socialist concepts, using elements of Russian folklore and rename Yemenite genres according to European terms and categories. Videotapes, films and audio recording of these performances are to be archived in national institutions and distributed to foreign researchers in order to install an invented tradition as national Heritage. The Yemenite populace is heavily criticizing this policy and brought on a debate about cultural values and the way cultural alteration should take. The paper focuses on the example of one performative genre, barca, which has special significance for the Yemenite society.

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Karen Vedel PhD, Research Fellow, Department of Music Anthropology, University of Tampere Clothing the Suomussalmi Silent People: From Site-Specific Dance Performance to Ritually Informed Community Event Ritualization has been theorized by among others Catherine Bell (1992, 1997) as a way of privileging certain embodied activities or practices by suggesting a link between ancient or even external times and the present, which sets them aside from the everyday. In this paper I wish to examine the “invention” of a ritualized activity of recent times, which functions on a meta-level in the sense that it both transcends and comments on the idea of ritual practice, while it itself serves as such. The case material, which forms the basis of my discussion, is the annual clothing of what has become known as The Silent People of Suomussalmi in Eastern Finland. The Silent People were introduced by the Finnish dance artist Reijo Kela as a part of closing scene of his solo performance called Ilmari’s Ploughing Fields. Created in the remotely situated and scarcely populated area of Suomussalmi, where Reijo Kela grew up, the site specific work drew on images of both past and present, which include the history of the Winter War between the Soviet and the Finnish Army in 1939–1940. In the early 1990s Reijo Kela returned with group of dancers and musicians to explore the theme of rituals and ritualization in the context of Suomussalmi. A part of the group continued to create performances in Suomussalmi over the next decade. As the latest development of this sequence of site specific performance events, a group of young people meet annually to dress The Silent People, by now counting close to 1000 figures in the same field, in fresh clothes. The Silent People have in the meantime come to be considered a aprt of cultural heritage of Suomussalmi, an attraction that draws tourists to the remote region, providing business for the local community, while drawing attention to a chapter of the nation’s history that has otherwise been neglected. By mapping the ritualized a.w.a. ritualizing activities around The Silent People in terms of the techniques of the body (Mauss (1934) 1979), which are employed and their relationship to place (Casey 1998), I hope to be able to say something about the ability of contemporary performance to create a space that may be adapted to serve multiple purpose, i.e. memories of a personal (lamenting the loss of a family member) as well as of a more collective nature commemorating the recent history of the region / nation). Besides drawing on tools from ritual and practice theory (Bell 1992 and 1997, Nielsen 2006, de Certeau (1984) 1988 a.o.) I shall look to the field or performance ethnography for my theoretical framework (Denzin 2003, Madison 2005 a.o.). The presentation, which is contextualized in my current research on space, place and body in contemporary performance, requires the aid of either power point or video or overhead projection.

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Madeleine Hurd Senior lecturer, Södertörn University College, Sweden Reporting on Civic Rituals: Texts, Performers, and Audience My paper discusses newspaper coverage of mass rituals meant to bolster ethnic identity. In 1919–21, the Allies discussed severing Danzig, Posen, and Flensburg from Germany. Each city hosted mass demonstrations meant to rally locals, intimidate opponents, and influence the Allies. The meetings borrowed rituals from pre-existing social and religious movements, and invented new ones of their own. Certain symbols, songs, moods and gestures were necessary for the meeting to be convincing – that is, evidence that a certain ethnic group truly felt a right to retain a given territory. Equally important was how newspapers retold these meetings. A specific, ritual-attentive newspaper genre was used to deepen and communicate the “sacred” aspect of the meeting to both participants and the Allies. Opponents’ meetings were correspondently desacralized, by ridiculing the meetings’ improper or ineffectual rituals. This study shows how newspapers helped to frame ritualized expressions of identity; how this framing varied according to ethnicity and locale; and how the textual coverage of ritual compares to that of modern media, particularly television. Elke Mader Professor for Social and Cultural Anthropogy, University of Vienna Stars in Your Eyes: Ritual Encounters with Shah Rukh Khan in Europe Interconnections between media content (particularly film and digital culture), events and ritual dynamics will be explored in regard to ritual processes evolving during encounters between the Indian film star Shah Rukh Khan and his fans in Europe. Around such events “pilgrimage” has been established involving hundreds of European fans (mostly from German speaking countries, Poland, and France). The encounters involve visual, auditory and physical contact, and show parallels to ritual dynamics in diverse cultural contexts. They also reflect an interconnectivity of myth and ritual. The fans experience a liminal ritual time/space, marked by a merging of media content, the charisma of the star, individual emotions and life stories, and a form of “communitas” with other participants. All activities, from preparing the journey to extensive narrative and visual reports of the event and respective personal experiences, are embedded in the use of New Media. I will focus on how media content and technologies do evoke and facilitate ritual practice, what the forms and elements of this rituals are, how are they related to digital culture, and do make use of images and visual spaces. What are the mythical, spiritual and/or magical aspects of these secular rituals, and how do they relate to the emotional and social worlds of the participants?

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Section III: Ritual and Visuality Carsten Knigge Salis Research Coordinator, University of Bern Hieroglyphs of Praise: The Dynamic Praise of Gods as Represented and Prescribed by Ancient Egyptian Ritual Texts From pharaonic Egypt, several texts with cultic background are preserved. Liturgical communication between men and gods and between living and dead has been the most important issue of Ancient Egyptian cults. The communication was realised by means of recitation of hymns and prayers. Eventually, the recorded sources provide instructions about how to act ritually. Further information about liturgical dynamics possibly are to be concluded from the contents of the texts themselves, when asking for praise, dance, libation, etc. Finally, the high degree of iconicity of the Egyptian script bears a probable potential of metatextual, semantic connotation. The examination of terminology, which has been used for the ritual communication with gods and departed, and of the representation in writing permits deep insights into cultic practices. Depending on time, function and context, not only the diction, but even the choice of signs could have been varied. This method underlines the durative performance of Egyptian cults – not only a single recitation, but a nontransient fixation was responsible for the successful ritual act. Thomas M. Hunter Visiting Lecturer in Linguistics, Faculty of Letters, Universitas Udayana, Denpasar, Bali, Indonesia Icons, Indexes, and Interpretants of a Balinese Ritual Artefact: The Pengajeg There is nothing new about the idea that Balinese offerings, based on plaited palm leaves and other natural items, may constitute a visual semiotics. In this article I argue against using linguistic approaches to the study of a visual semiotics, also proposing that the term “ritual artefacts” is more appropriate to the Balinese system than “offerings”. I then propose that a more fruitful approach to the study of Balinese ritual artefacts will take into account the Peircean notions of “index” and “interpretants”, that is to the ways that cognitions – and their symbolic expressions – are related to interpretive frameworks gained through sociallysituated contexts of learning and development. I then argue in favor of Gell’s (1998) insistence on the way that ritual artefacts gain social agency during the processes of their constuction and use. In order to reveal how these theoretical approaches play out in an ethnographic analysis I focus on the Balinese ritual artefacts called pengajeg, which are created to provide temporary “seats” for the deities, who are said to “descend” into these offerings during the progression of a ritual.

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Petra H. Rösch Deputy Director and Curator, Museum of East Asian Art, Cologne Pillars of Faith: Visuality and Ritual Space in Chinese Buddhism Originating in Indian and Central Asian temple and stupa architecture, columns and pillars received a new visual decoration of icons and texts, related to ritual practices of purification. This augmented their importance as spatial and visual markers in the contexts of the Chinese Buddhist temples. Presenting two case studies – one exploring the development of decorated columns of the portico-architecture of Northern Chinese cave-temples in connection wirh rituals of confession, the other questioning the spatial incorporation of dhâraņî or sûtra pillars (jingzhuang) in the precincts and spatial contexts of Buddhist wooden temples (late seventh century onward) displaying purifying and protecting spells – the paper argues, that the visual transformation and spatial installation of columns and pillars reflects an augmenting textualization and thus a sinization of Buddhist ritual spaces. Critically applying David Morgan’s multi-perspective approach (2005) the paper seeks to find out in which ways inscribed architectural elements do transform and structure the Chinese Buddhist spaces, how they mark and shape the peripatetic veneration of the believers and viewers within the temples (Certeau 1988), and what they tell us about religious and visual concepts or embodied ritual practices of Chinese Buddhist historic communities. Corinna Wessels-Mevissen Research Fellow, University of Cologne Festival Vehicles and Motif Lamps: Reflections on Visual Elements in South Indian Temple Ritual The temple rituals of Tamilnadu (South India) utilize several series of ritual objects, which have specific, fixed functions to fulfill. To date, relatively little fieldwork has been carried out in order to record these items. Festival vehicles have been among those temple paraphernalia that were more often discussed, but it has not been properly recognized so far that the range of their motifs transgresses the range of what is otherwise known as vehicles or vāhanas of the gods. Another category, which has remained virtually unreported, is that of the moveable metal lamps, particularly certain series comprising motif and non-motif lamps. Only a few stray references on motif lamps are found in relevant texts, which is pointed out here for the first time. Significantly, certain figurative contents are shared by the festival vehicles and the motif lamps. Whilst it remains difficult to exactly determine the functional-artistic background of the large range of figural imagery, there seem to be indications for an underlying role of such visual elements as agents in ritual.

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Section IV: Ritual Design Gregor Ahn Professor for Religious Studies, Heidelberg University The Re-Embodiment of Mr. Spock and the Re-Incarnation of Voldemort: Two Examples of Ritual Design in Contemporary Fiction Ritual Design is one of the new key terms in ritual theory describing processes of reception, transformation and re-organizing or composing elements out of different religious or secular traditions into the frame of an already known type of ritual. While in the earlier “traditional” ritual theory those phenomena of ritual design have been almost marginalized, the new perspective on the dynamics of rituals shed some light on ritual design as a much more common and usual ritual practice than had been expected before. In this article I will draw attention on two examples of ritual design in contemporary literature and film. Although both examples rest upon fictitious rituals and fictitious performances (constructed rituals in literature and film) they still are designed on the base of partially wellknown ritual elements in an alienated, exotic scenario – dealing both with a near-to-death-situation of the protagonist and his ritualistic revitalisation. The first example is taken from the Star Trek universe and tells the story of the re-integration of the surviving unphysical personality of Mr. Spock into his own re-emerged body by an mind-transmitting ritual on the planet Vulcan. The second example derives from the Harry-Potter-heptalogy facing the magic ritual of the re-incarnation of the evil counterpart Voldemort whose surviving life-forces are embedded by this ritual into a completely new-built body. In both cases the construction of postmortality and revitalisation diverges in a sense from the main topics of Western postmortality-concepts which in the plot is significantly explained by just designing a ritual. Erik de Maaker, Eric Venbrux, and Thomas Quartier Erik de Maaker, Anthropologist and ethnographic filmmaker, Universities of Leiden and Nijmegen (NL); Eric Venbrux, Head of the Centre for Thanatology at the Radboud University, Nijmegen (NL); Thomas Quartier, Assistant Professor for Ritual and Liturgical Studies at the Radboud University, Nijmegen (NL) Reinventing “All Souls’ Day”: Spirituality, Contemporary Art, and the Remembrance of the Dead This paper considers the efforts made by a group of Dutch artists to reformulate the Catholic All Souls celebration as a spiritual, non-denominationally bound commemoration of the dead. One of their sources of inspiration is the exuberant annual celebration of the Day of the Dead in Mexico. The alternative All Souls celebrations are organised at graveyards and other sites in remembrance of the dead in the weeks preceding the “official” All Souls. During these nights works of art transform these otherwise dark and silent locations in bright and in many ways lively places. The initiative has been met with enthusiasm among (some of) the bereaved, funeral professionals, as well as municipalities and provincial authorities. In this article has been explored in what ways these attempts at “ritual engineer-

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ing” link up to religious transformation and changing conceptualizations of the dead. The research is being conducted within the framework of the “Refiguring Death Rites” project of Nijmegen Radboud University. Thomas Quartier Assistant Professor for Ritual and Liturgical Studies, Radboud University, Nijmegen (NL) Funeral Design in the Netherlands: Structures and Meanings of Non-Ecclesiastic Funerals Funerals are strongly personalized in the Netherlands, especially outside religious institutions. Interestingly, a new type of professionals occurred in recent years: “ritual guides”. Those professionals help the bereaved to design their own funeral without necessarily relying on a particular ritual tradition. The personal repertoire of the deceased is used as a source for symbols that dominate the funeral. At the same time, research shows that new traditions occur within the funeral design guided by these new professionals. What is the relation between personal and universal elements in funerals, and what are they like when ecclesial frames lose their plausibility? In this article qualitative and quantitative data are presented that can shed a light on the question how funeral design actually takes place in the tension between universal form and personal creativity. The results may be interesting for debate about non ecclesiastic funerals in particular and also for rituals design in general. Matthias Frenz Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes, Bonn The Common Practice of Ritual Design in Southern India: Observations at the Marian Sanctuary of Velankanni Public rituals are domains where social order is negotiated and displayed. Particular roles and positions in the “ritual drama” indicate the social status of the individuals and groups involved. Prestigious positions are rare and often highly contested. However, the quest for such limited ritual status markers does not necessarily result in a direct confrontation. Instead of contesting the hierarchy within the given ritual order, aspirants may also alter the ritual frame to achieve their goal. The tension between the “actors” should therefore be seen as a productive force that triggers creative processes of ritual dynamics. This article explores the variety of strategies applied in a religious context to access prestigious ritual positions. The ritual activity at the shrine of Velankanni serves as a case study. Situated on the eastern coast of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, Velankanni is the most popular Christian shrine in India. The image of the Virgin Mary venerated there draws large crowds of pilgrims, regardless of their religious affiliation. Due to the miraculous power ascribed to the cult statue and the immense popularity of the shrine, the participation in public rituals is considered highly prestigious. Pilgrims compete with the local population and the clergy for exclusive rights to occupy particular positions in the rituals. In this complex situation several strategies can be identified by which agents have increased opportunities for the participation in ritual action. The strategies range from modification, extension and adaptation of existing rituals to the design of new ritual frames. By inves-

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tigating different techniques for broadening the scope of prestigious ritual action I will shed light on the creative dynamics in which rituals are shaped and configured. Anne-Christine Hornborg Professor, Study of Religions, Södertörn University, Sweden Designing Rites to Re-Enchant Secularised Society: Cases from Contemporary Sweden Detraditionalization in late modernity has both affected traditional religion and the domain of clinical therapy. New varieties of spiritualized therapy are rapidly increasing in contemporary Sweden, typical of which is to have added healing rhetoric to their agenda, such as “find your inner self” or “develop your inner potential.” Four common denominators seem to guide these practices: self-made leaders, individual-centered rites, realization of one’s Self, and intense emotions. We might also add a fifth aspect: profit. Rites have become a commodity and are sold as liberating practices for burnt-out souls or for people in pursuit of self-realization. Sweden, which is said to be one of the most secularized societies in the world, instead has allowed the public domain to be colonized by new, spiritualized practices. Sold as therapy, the services of new spiritual leaders offer anti-stress techniques to prevent burnout, or leaders are trained to develop their leadership in coaching activities. The new rites, which in the 1970s would have been classified as New Age and restricted to the private domain, are thus becoming integrated into the public domain of Swedish society. Jan A.M. Snoek Freelance Researcher in Religious Studies, Heidelberg University Researcher and Researched Rituals Rituals do change, that we know. They change among others under the influence of changes in their context. A researcher, who comes to research a ritual, by definition is such a change of context. And yes, rituals do change under influence of such context changes. The researcher may try to avoid to interfere as good as he can. But on the other hand he has the moral duty to inform those concerned about the results of his research. This article wants to illustrate these processes with two examples, both from the speaker’s own experience. The first example concerns his research of the Independent United Order of Mechanics, the members of which wanted to co-operate with his research, but felt that they had to change their rituals before they could. The second example is taken from his research of the masonic “Adoption lodges”. When he presented part of his research results to the last lodge practising this tradition, the members were so enthusiastic about what he has found about their older tradition, that they expressed at once the desire to include at least part of that in their current practices. The thesis of this article is, that such interactions are unavoidable and thus normal, and should be reported by the researchers concerned in their publications.

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Michael Houseman Director of Studies at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Paris Trying to Make a Difference with “Ritual Design” Originally meant as a response given to all papers held on ritual design during the conference, this contribution focuses on the question of the validity of the “new” ritual design concept for ritual theory. While ritual design on the one hand was used to subsume a wide range of innovative processes concerning rituals, the criteria for distinctions within the framework of ritual design on the other hand are intricate to select. Nevertheless, ritual design raises important questions about theorizing ritual practice.