Entry 3 - Reflections on Ritual

For the third Sunday in a row, I find myself just in from work, at my computer preparing to respond to the reading for my Method and Theory class. This repetitive weekly process – at the same time, in accordance to the same procedure, directed to the same audience, resulting in the same response process, etc. – can be described as possessing an air of ritual. In honour of the content of this week’s entry, I wonder if its form – i.e., blogging ‘religiously’ each Sunday – may be accurately described as ‘ritual’. In order to formulate an accurate response to this question, we must commence with a definition of ritual. Robert Sharf, in his article of the same name (“Ritual”) confesses an inability to define the term at the very outset, and yet he is able to sustain a fascinating and intelligent discourse about this elusive term for at least 20 pages. Sharf seems no nearer to defining ‘ritual’ by the conclusion of his article than at the onset, nor am I anywhere near a definition upon completion of reading it. Similarly, this blog entry reflects upon the evasive phenomenon of ritual, a phenomenon which this standard weekly blog entry might in fact actually exemplify.

Although Sharf remains unable to adequately define the term ‘ritual’, he is able to offer some defining features, one of which – one with which I agree, I might add – is that ritual involves a “sense of being set apart from the affairs of mundane”, thus invoking the “sacred” or “holy” (247). Of course, in approaching ritual thus, we corner it by an even more problematic term: what, precisely, constitutes “the holy”? Whatever it is, I agree, that the mundane-ness of my blogging, much like with Sharf’s dinner party example, bars it from admittance to the realm of “ritual” proper. It is indeed far simpler to state what ritual isn’t. We don’t know what it is, but we know it isn’t blogging, but how can we know this is we don’t know what it is? Is it something to which we may all refer, but simply cannot describe in words? Clearly, whatever else ritual may be, it is more than the sum of its parts in that it is marked by a degree of participation and/or expression which transcend the gestures, utterances, and instruments involved.

I was fortunate enough to attend two on-campus events this week which both contributed to my reflections on this article. The Centre held a talk on Buddhist Naga rituals where the speaker began by denouncing the common “western misconception” that Buddhism provides a philosophical system unblemished by ritual. Any such misconceptions were shattered by the ample evidence he provided, pertaining to several Budhist rituals involving invoking Nagas (supernatural snake beings), particularly for the sake of appeasement, or for altering weather patterns. One wonders if it is in fact the case that “ritual action is not intended to alter the natural world”, but rather to “alter [one’s] cognitive and affective relationship to [the] world” (249). So, then, to apply his example, would the Naga invocation dedicated to rain not in fact be meant to bring rain, but, rather to, “channel collective distress while reaffirming entrenched social hierarchies and corporate norms”? Thankfully, as Sharf explains, the focus has shifted away from such scholarly attempts to dissect and interpret the “actual significance” of ritual actions, towards a more fluid (and in my view more applicable) approach of treating ritual form and ritual content as fundamentally inseparable, thereby rendering ritual action akin to performance. I found the comparison of ritual and music to be a powerfully compelling one. This brings my to the second fortuitous campus event which I attended.

There was a beautiful North Indian music and dance performance at the Faculty of music on Friday. The free performance featured classical singing, drumming, and dancing. In my opinion, recorded music cannot begin to compare to the live variety, and I suspect the same can be said of ritual. The inexplicable enhancement of beholding artistic performances live is quite likely mirrored in the occurrence of live ritual. Further both ritual audiences, musical audiences can come in two essential varieties, those who come to enjoy and those who come to assess. Clearly these categories are not mutually exclusive (e.g., an adjudicator may be moved to enjoyment, and a fan may formulate a critique), however, the two modes seem fundamentally different. With the talk on Naga cults, I came with note pad and paper in hand, but this was not the case with the performance. I sought enjoyment as opposed to edification (while, or course, edification may prove enjoyable and enjoyment may prove edifying). I was not aiming to filter the perfomance through my intellect. I would suspect that this distinction holds true for participatory ritual audiences and for those looking to study rituals: the mode of scholarship appears to some extent inherently barred from the mode of experience. The performative, non-respresentational approach to ritual proposed indeed provides a much-needed “respite from hermeneutic anxiety” (252). Just sit back and savour the Host!

I found the discussion of the significance of “play” (as the realm where labels first become disassociated with their referents) to be absolutely FASCINATING, and hope to address it in class. I cannot do so here due to space constraints in this entry. I will, however, inflict one last reflection upon you before closing this entry. Something struck me during the musical performance which I’m not sure I can adequately convey, but I will attempt. The “khatak” dancing was marked by an incredible interplay between the drummer and the dancer. The jingling of her anklet (forgive me for not knowing the proper name) directly paralleled the sequence of the drumming: her (the dancer’s) feet and his (the drummer’s) hands were locked in synchronous rhythmic dance of their own. She would approach the microphone, announce (sing?) a rhythmic sequence (I believe that the sounds she made correspond to specific dance moves), and then both of them would artfully execute the sequence simultaneously. I mused about the fact that fundamental difference between the two was that the drummer relied upon a musical instrument independent of his body, while the dancer manifested the music with her own gestures. Her instrument was he body, thus she, herself, was an instrument of the music. She ‘experiences’ in dance what he ‘produces’ by drumming. They are both performances, but in the case of the dancer, the form and content or much more fused together. The phenomena of ritual pertains, in my music, more to dance than to drumming. In drumming there is the drummer, the drum, and the drumming, but, to borrow from WB Yeats, ‘how can we know the dancer from the dance’? Is form and content here not fundamentally inseparable? Ritual, too, may be considered akin to dance where gestures (form) and significations (content) unite.