Ritual Theory and Performance
2004 New York, New York
2005 | 2004 | 2003 | 2002
Convener 2004
Tom Splain, S.J. (professor of cultural anthropology at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome)
Seminar Participants 2004
Seminar members: Mary F. Fleischaker, Cliff Guthrie, David Hogue, Richard McCall, Troy Messenger, Gerard Pottebaum, Tom Splain
Visitors: Claudio Carvalhaes, Tom Driver
Seminar Report 2004
On the first day of our seminar meetings our discussion evolved out of Claudio Carvalhaes’ paper, “Religion/Ritual/Belief.” The paper is an exploration of the place of ritual in a post-structural world. The problem centers on creating “the other” and goes back to the Cartesian dichotomy and the binaries set up by Enlightenment thought. It continues through Eliade and his emphasis on the ordinary over against the sacred. For Eliade, and many, ritual is a vehicle to express myth. Religion is “about” something. Belief is “in” something. This poses a problem for a post-modern person. Here, ritual isn’t “about” anything. It is essentially play. We have made distinctions between ortho-doxy and ortho-praxis. We think of ortho-praxis in terms of ethical living, but we need to take this concept further.
Going to the modern theater, witnessing a play by Bertolt Brecht, or experiencing a performance of “The Blue Men” is not about content. In modern theater and ritual we enter with our bodies and feel a connection to each other. One member expressed having just that experience during ritual improvisational workshops with Anna Halprin. In our discussion we recalled the old story of the blind men, each touching a different part of the elephant and drawing different conclusions. We developed this analogy further by saying that we can not touch the same elephant twice. The elephant is always changing and that can be scary! Our rituals are shaped by Disney and Hallmark. This may be contemporary but it is not post-modern. Real ritual is empowering. It will take us places we are afraid to go. We wonder if we will ever come back! Thus, we won’t let ourselves go into the dark night of the soul. Real ritual takes us outside our comfort zone.
On the afternoon of our first day we worked on unpacking and deconstructing the words “faith,” “belief,” and “mystery.” On the second day we focused on Tom Driver’s book, Liberating Rites: Understanding the Transformative Power of Ritual. Dr. Driver is professor emeritus at Union Theological. All of us were familiar with the book and Dr. Driver came downtown to join us in the discussion. For Driver ritual is work done playfully. As such, it makes paths through uncharted territory. Unfortunately, much of ritual today is vacuous. Modern warfare is a testimony to our loss of ritual pathways. Ritual precedes religion. Its poles can be seen by juxtaposing a Catholic ordination rite in a cathedral in Haiti on a Sunday morning and a voodoo rite a few evenings later. We have here the two poles of priest and shaman. Christian worship is often too formulaic. Rituals gifts are order, community, and transformation.
There is a danger of nihilism in “The Blue Men.” Our lives take place within intentionality. Reality is an action. All actions are interactions. The image we need is a boat on the sea, and not “rock of ages.” Belief is an assent to propositional statements. In ritual and in theater we need to trust more than believe. We know by the way the movie Mystic River unfolds that we can trust Clint Eastwood. Theology is a secondary activity. It stands as does literary criticism to literature. We build what Victor Turner calls “communitas” in our rites of passage. “Ceremony” is a more superficial affirmation of a more static society. There is good ritual in the annual demonstrations against The School of the Americas. Here, ritual becomes transformative and ethical.