155 Art Recitation Notes
Basic Genres of Ritual Action:
Emile Durkheim: Divided all rituals into positive or negative actions o Negative: attempt to separate the human realm from the realm of the sacred o Positive: attempt to bring the two realms into contact or communion Another classification: Distinguishes instrumental rituals (accomplish something) from expressive rituals (which voice feelings or communicate ideas) o "magical rites" are a purer form of disinterested worship Victor Turner: Divided into life-crisis rituals and rituals of affliction
1. Rites of Passage ("life-crisis" or "life-cycle" rites)a. Ceremonies that accompany and dramatize major life events i. Birth, coming-of-age initiations, marriage, and death b. Depict a socio-cultural order that overlays the natural biological order--not necessarily coincide with identical time i. Biological order as less determinative than social ii. I.e. physical birth is one thing, being identified as a member of the social group is another c. Arnold van Gennep's 3-stage process i. Person leaves behind one social group/its identity ii. Passes through a stage of no identity or affiliation iii. Admitted into another social group that confers a new id These create symbolic stages/passages that redefine social and personal identity d. Birth rituals are a basic model/metaphor i. Often giving more emphasis or elaborateness when a son is born, rather than a daughter ii. The full month ritual brings about a change in the mother's domestic and social status--indispensable contribution to prosperity
2. Calendrical Ritesa. Give socially meaningful definitions to the passage of time i. Occur periodically and predictably ii. Accompany seasonal changes in light, weather, agricultural work, and other social activities b. Some according to solar calendar, ensuring a correspondence between the ritual occasion and a particular time of year i. Associating the seasons of nature and the rhythm of social life c. Distinguished in terms of seasonal and commemorative celebrations i. Rooted in activities of planting and harvesting; grazing and moving the herd ii. Style of ritual varies with type of cultivation iii. Rites of sowing-raising and harvesting-slaughtering seem similar Sowing of seed: offerings to ancestors/deities Harvest: first fruits given back to gods or ancestors d. Impose cultural schemes on the order of nature (like rites of passage) i. Attempt to influence/control nature
Art 155 Recitation Notes
Attempt to harmonized the activities/attitudes of human community with seasonal rhythms e. Commemorative include activities to recall important historical events--whether or not the dates are accurate i. Many religious traditions define the whole calendar through a series of rites that express the most basic beliefs in the community ii.
3. Rites of Exchange and Communiona. People make offerings to a god/gods expecting something in return i. May be given to praise, please, and placate divine power ii. Can involve an explicit exchange where humans provide sustenance to divine powers in return for the divine to contribute to human wellbeing b. Attempting to organize these in a logical way i. Distinguishing gifts, offerings and sacrifice ii. Ranging from bribes to gifts of devotion c. No act as purely manipulative or purely disinterested i. Offering, exchange, and communion invoke complex relations of mutual interdependence between the human and the divine ii. Likely to be important to social and cultural processes as well d. Sacrifice is a nearly universal "institution" i. In sacrifice, offerings are consecrated ii. Usually implies blood offerings
4. Rites of Afflictiona. Seek to mitigate the influence of spirits thought to be afflicting human beings with misfortune i. Can be broadened include to other understandings of affliction Sin, karma, pollution of menstruation, childbearing, and death b. Attempt to rectify a state of affairs that have been disturbed or disordered i. Heal, exercise, protect and purify ii. Depends on the way a culture interprets the problematic state of affairs iii. Redress the development of anomalies or imbalances Purging the body and mind of all impurities c. Healing rituals express understandings of the nature of physical/mental infirmity i. Coexist alongside of modern scientific medicine
5. Feasting, Fasting, and Festivalsa. Major communal fasts/feasts, ritual logic differs i. Great emphasis on religiocultural sentiments ii. Concerned with public display--to themselves, each other, and outsiders Showing commitment and adherence to basic religious values b. Shared participation defines and reaffirms the extent of the human and cosmic community i. Whether hierarchical or egalitarian ii. Either share food to all, or dictate boundaries according to community4 Communal fasting seems to extol fundamental distinctions Fasting acknowledges subordination and sinfulness
6. Political Ritesa. Ceremonial practices that construct, display and promote the power of political institutions (king, state, village elders) or political interest i. Rituals actually construct the power, rather than give it
Art 155 Recitation Notes
ii. Arguments about the nature of power b. Define power in a 2D way i. Symbols and symbolic action to depict shared goals and values ii. Show legitimacy of values/goals by establishing their iconicity Interests are in the natural, real or fruitful order of things c. Display is most prominent form i. Of wealth, material resources, mass approval, record-high productivity
Masking:
-Widely found ritual gesture -By encompassing any way to stylize the face headdress masks, veils, miniature masks, face paint and make-up "second face" is made
i.
Concretion
a. Human exterior is interpreted as the bodying forth/fixing of external power (consistent feature is rigidity) b. Death masks (19th c. Europe) i. "Boundary mark" Divides life and death ii. Personhood is fixed by death iii. Appropriates power of the deceased c. Half-masks (Italian commedia dell'arte) i. Fixation of the dead leads to the typification Represent stereotypical characters d. Reduction to one dimensionality
ii.
Concealment
a. To don otherness and doff selfhood i. Incomplete act--disjunction of interior and exterior When becomes manipulation, wearer threatens viewers b. Two types of fear associated with masking i. Exterior powers will take over and run wild ii. Mask will only partially take hold of the wearer Masker can use roles instead of playing them or become subject to them c. Master of dualism i. Instruments of law enforcement and law-breaking ii. Symbolically suspend role and personality
iii.
Embodiment
a. Interior and exterior, inside and outside are in harmony i. "Masking" is denied and is clamed to be natural ii. Treated as an unmasking almost Distinction between wearer and the thing worn isn't made Gesture and posture, or the way the body is carried b. Dance: an abstraction of imagined feelings c. Illusion is important i. A virtual, formal power appears to be a transcendent one
Art 155 Recitation Notes
ii. Form appears to be formless, stylized facial gestures d. Interpreter of ritual has no direct access to interiority; only imaginative
iv.
Expression
a. The making transparent of power i. Affirm the presence of masks, appreciate their value ii. In drama and celebration b. Rather than creating an illusion, it is the illusion i. One thing does not displace, or become a front for, another Taking responsibility for our masks, wearing them so all is seen through them rather than being identified with them