194. The role of ritual

Life is full of ritual: in churches, at weddings, funerals, coronations, reception of foreign dignitaries, military parades, etc., but also in quotidian activity such as birthdays, business lunches, receptions, meetings, introductions, talk of the weather, inquiries after health, shaking hands, etc.

Why do we spend so much time on them?

In his book on collaboration[i], Richard Sennett took a positive view of ritual as a source of social cohesion, and a means to hold competition at bay for the sake of collaboration.

I think that the scope of ritual is wider, not only social, and includes personal rituals of, say, dressing or shaving. More widely, then, ritual offers comfort of routine, stability, familiarity, closure, avoiding doubt.

Part of social ritual, Sennett claims, is sprezzatura: lightness of presentation, seemingly effortless, even in the performance of a capability that in fact required tremendous effort, discipline and talent. It is the opposite of self-importance, self-manifestation, pomposity, and heavy-handedness.

The downside of ritual, Sennett grants, may be excessive irony, and lack of spontaneity and openness, in empty gesture.

I see the positive side of ritual. I would say that there is even more there than keeping rivalry at bay. Meetings, at conferences, receptions, cafes, company outings, and parties serve as founts of informal knowledge, gossip, exploration of knowledge and competence, learning from the experience of others, reconnaissance of commitments, loyalties, and of potential for later more formal and structured meetings for cooperation.

More fundamentally, it may serve as an opportunity to reconnoitre opposition, as a source of correcting one’s errors and prejudice, as I have argued in this blog. As such, they not only serve cooperation but, more widely, the flourishing of life.

However, unfortunately, that positive side is darkened, perhaps overshadowed, by a negative side, where ritual is used to hammer home the status quo, preserving the position of powers that be.

Sennett recognized this, but attributed it to a deterioration of ritual from two-sided, open interaction, as an instrument for cohesion, into closed, one-sided display of power, theatre, as an instrument for disciplining the followers.

An example he used is that of the eucharist, in the catholic church, which originated as an informal shared meal of believers, with simple, normal food, in commemoration of the last supper of Christ, but developed into a one-sided ministration by a priest, doling out a wafer  as the body of Christ.

I think this somewhat underestimates the problem. I am thinking here more along the lines of Foucault, where coercive power is consolidated in institutions where the subordinated or coerced are brought to the point of accepting their lot as the normal order of things, voluntarily. For that, ritual, with a dose of mystification, and indeed theatre, show, is a tool for the powerful, in beguiling the subordinate into willing, even awed compliance.

Non-conformance is alienating, as when in Western societies Muslim women do not shake hands with male strangers, or mask their faces. Here, ritual becomes an instrument of exclusion.

 
In terms of the notion of scripts, used in preceding items in this blog: instead of facilitating nodes to explore and develop connections, in search of novel scripts, ritual may impose a script to regiment

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[i] Richard Sennett, Together; The rituals, pleasures and politics of cooperation, Penguin, 2013