Abstrakt
Jone Salomonsen, Michael Houseman, Sarah M. Pike and Graham Hervey (eds.) (2021), Reassembling Democracy: Ritual as a Cultural Resource (London: Bloomsbury Academic), 249pp., Open Access, DOI 10.5040/9781350123045, Paperback: pounds28.99 Freely accessible in a handy open edition format, this edited volume is one of the outcomes of the eponymous research project led by Jone Salomonsen at the University of Oslo between 2013 and 2017.
Prompted by the responses Norwegians gave to the terrorist attack perpetrated by Anders Behring Breivik on 22 July 2011 in Oslo and Utoya, it tackles the question of how a cultural resource such as ritual may politically and/or personally empower social actors in a context (democracy) characterised by constant change and crisis. Featuring authors from different fields (anthropology, philosophy, political science and specialists of religion and ritual) working on various case studies, the book offers original and thought-provoking insights on the complex and often elusive relationship of new forms of rituality and the political.
The two key concepts of ritual and democracy are discussed in the two theoretical chapters of the first part, signed by Ronald Grimes and Agnes Czajka. Emphasising their 'dynamic, polyvalent, relational and contestable' (p. 4) use, both authors subscribe to a fluid vision of what ritual should be like and what it should do in democratic settings.
Showing that improvisation is an essential component of any ritual activity, R. Grimes suggests that it also should be part of the ritual dynamic of any democratic system, along with self-critical reflexivity.
Basing her reflection on Jacques Derrida's conceptions about European identity in its relationship to hospitality, A. Czajka coins 'hospitable democracy' as a resource for working with the potentially self-subverting dynamic that oscillates between the ideal of openness (unconditional hospitality) and the necessary imbalance between host and guest (conditional hospitality).
As she points out, ritual may be one possible way of implementing hospitable democracy in social action, allowing to cope with the perpetual crisis European societies experience in their constant encounters with Others. Most of the subsequent chapters illustrate precisely this proposition providing examples of the creativity and negotiations that ritualisation implies in democratic contexts.
The second part of the book provides a varied set of ethnographically grounded accounts of ritually mediated community-making ranging from Mongolian shamanism (Gregory Delaplace), through Indigenous festivals (Graham Harvey), dances of self-development in France (Michael Houseman), Marian pilgrimage in Portugal (Anna Fedele) to the interreligious Choir of Civilizations in Turkey (Jens Kreinath). This seemingly eclectic collection is unified not only by the concepts of ritual and democracy, but also a shared analytical stance inspired by actor-network theory and a relational approach of ritual.
The broad perspective adopted by authors allows to show how new forms of rituality shape the social fabric inscribing practitioners in dynamic networks of agents composed not only by other individuals, but also by non-human beings, spirits and figures of the past, their own inner selves and that of others, ritual objects, institutions and so on. Chapters focus respectively on ritual form, notions of personhood, performative mechanisms that bring forth a particular kind of sociability founded on distanced intimacy, networks of solidarity between pilgrims, soundscapes and musical performances representing a peaceful cohabitation of different religions.
Providing thorough analyses of the particularities of each case, authors explore forms of relationality that may serve as resources for social change and a more inclusive society and, more generally, the potentiality and the necessary limits of ritualised practices in contributing to democratic values. The third part tackles acts of commemoration and resistance that respond to threats to democracy.
Two chapters are dedicated to the memorials that followed the 22 July 2011 attacks in Norway. Jone Salomonsen studies the generative aspects of three reactions to Breivik's ideology and atrocious actions which she qualifies, inspired by Victor Turner, as the 'ritualised creativity of "the weak"' (p. 144) that may be empowering not as explicit manifestations of protest, or purely political acts, but as pre-political tools promoting the ethical norms underlying democracy as well as cultural dialogue and pluralism.
Analysing the interreligious funeral and memorial ceremonies of three Muslim youths killed in Utoya, Ida Marie Hoeg sheds light on the ritual role of flowers as mediators in an exceptionally inclusive and uncertain ritual process bringing together participants of different backgrounds. The chapter points out the potential of a ritually framed interreligious dialogue which accommodates cultural differences in a context of increasing diversity.
Marika Moïsseeff compares mourning practices of small-scale societies and those of the contemporary West. This cross-cultural perspective shows that the collective commemorations that respond to terrorist attacks shift away from Western institutionalised funeral practices which tend to give little place to the externalisation of grief.
In the face of collective tragedies, the shared representation of loss emblematic of extra-European funerary practices acts as a powerful cultural resource that allows the ritualised reaffirmation of community and of the values challenged by those tragedies. Ken Derry furthers the extra-European opening of the volume with an essay on a particular genre of resistance: he analyses three Indigenous films of different cultures (Inuit, Māori and Aboriginal) as 'medicines' intended to heal the individual and collective traumas of colonialism.
As examples of an eminently democratic stance, these films also point to the inherent flaws of democracy they may contribute to repair. The book not only provides a rich and original conceptual apparatus for the understanding of new forms of rituality in democratic settings, but it is also particularly topical for at least two reasons.
On the one hand, the issues raised by the authors are of great importance in a time when far-right values and ideologies continue gaining ground in the social and political landscapes of different European countries. On the other hand, the book was published almost exactly ten years after the terrorist massacre that took the life of seventy-seven persons in Norway.
One cannot help but consider the action of reading it as an effective way of honouring their memory.