8 - Exécution

(Performance)

Ritual and belief are two sides of the same, semi-permeable, coin.  One influences the other, and the other in turn influences the one.  However, neither is the other’s sole affector.

I tend to agree with Ronald Grimes in his statement that Catherine Bell is highly single-minded when blaming ritual theorist for constituting the object of their study.  I tend to hold that all theorist do this, in varying ways and to varying degrees, with their own respective fields of interest.  Like Grimes states, “All primary terms in all theories in all languages carry their own linguistic and cultural baggage” (Grimes, 128).  This is why his earlier posed question of discovering a unit rather than importing one is of utmost importance (Grimes, 110).  I wonder however, if Milton Singer – as Grimes touts him to have done – is truly successful in this discovering-over-importing process when it comes to ritual-theory, or if he simply imported a previously unimported, albeit already existent, notion when examining the role of performance in the context at hand, namely Indian cultural/religious society.

Similarly, nowhere in his article does Grimes challenge Clifford Geertz’s attribution of power to ritual, when it comes to generating an aura of factuality to religion (Grimes, 111).  Geertz built on Singer, and Grimes – like any good theorist – built on Geertz.  Like Grimes, Catherine Bell takes a pre-supposed stance to Geertz’s notion that ritual influences belief.  Neither does she break down this assumption, nor does she challenge it.  Grimes, while discussing Erving Goffman, states that “Social performance is ceremonial” (Grimes, 112).  I am forced to question though, if this necessarily means that all ceremony is performative?  Grimes answers this through a Goffmanian perspective when he states that all social interaction is performance because it is not only done, but also done to be seen (Grimes 112). 

How, I wonder, does this engagement in a visually perceivable, socially engaging action impinge upon religious belief?  In a discussion that I was having with a classmate a few weeks ago, she asked me if going to church every Sunday morning, making the ‘sign of the cross’, and consuming the Body and Blood of Christ, necessarily made one a Catholic? Her querying left me to wonder why rituals such as baking hot-cross buns on Easter aren’t considered endemic to the practice of Catholicism?  Or why certain cultures thought it part of their Catholic faith to trot baked hams and roasted poultry to the parish church for the priest to bless on Christmas morning, while other cultures didn’t!  When I posed this last question to the group of classmates at large, one responded that European Catholics were inculturated to exist in sharp contrast to the European Jews.  The blessing of ham on Easter and Christmas was a symbolic ritual against the coinciding Jewish holidays of Passover and Hanukah.  In cultures with no history of anti-Semitic sentiment, this symbolic ritual could not be found within the practice of belief.

The notion of enculturation begs the question: how much of ritual is belief-based and how much of it is culturally based?  Furthermore, if a culturally based ritual becomes part of the opus of belief, then is it truly, as Geertz states, generative of the religion’s aura of factuality?  Catherine Bell, in her argument against the circular nature of ritual theory, challenges this claim that ritual provides a privileged window on cultural meaning (Grimes, 124). Bell proposes to view what is generally thought of as ‘ritual,’ as mere social activity instead.  This is easier said than done because at the ground level, practitioners of the faith inform theorists that a particular ritual – taking ham to church, for instance – is an intrinsic aspect of belonging to a particular faith tradition.

On the same question of ritual informing belief, I am forced to question if the absense of ritual negates the presence of faith? For instance, could one be considered Catholic proper, without the visible insinuations of belief such as going to Sunday Mass, consuming the Body and Blood of Christ, and making the ‘sign of the cross’?  Alternatively, if ritual is the most indicative aspect of belief, what if one were to partake of all the aforementioned rituals, but believed in the use of contraception, believed in a woman’s right to choose abortion upon become unexpectedly pregnant, believed that clergy should be made up of members of all sexes, or believed any number of beliefs in direct contradiction to the set of ‘beliefs’ supposed to be held by all Catholics?  Would partaking of the ritualistic aspects of the tradition, while simultaneous holding beliefs in direct opposition to the tradition, keep one within the boundaries of ‘practicing’ the faith?

Of Bell, Grimes asserts that she is most persuasive in showing that theory-making is inevitably a strategic activity (Grimes, 128).  That is to say, the once revolutionary discovering-versus-importing activity has become just as structuralist as the traditional school of structuralism that ritual-theorists were resisting.  In this case then, I agree with Bell’s position, as stated by Grimes, that “theory-making amounts to an act of domination insofar as it is an attempt to exercise power in the arena of cultural knowledge” (Grimes, 128).