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RITUAL AND AESTHETIC PRESENTIVITY ——~<~o»—___ WOLFGANG BRAUNGART The ritual is a regulated and inherently structured act performed by or for a community. It is one of the fundamental forms of social activity and a universal cultural component that extends across all religions and societies. Ritual is performative; it allows an aesthetic experience and takes place as an event that carries sense and meaning, obviousness, and significance. Everything that people do or create as a cultural act or expression is connected to cultural semantics. It’s the same with the ritual. One can differentiate between the various types of ritual on the basis of form, meaning, and social function. Literature can participate in all types of rituals in various ways: semantically, thematically, socio-functionally, and structurally. The dimension of understanding a ritual is decisively connected with aesthetic explicitness, clarity, the performativity of the aesthetic, and the convincing nature of its overall appearance, which inscribe “significance” to the ritual. Literature makes use of the entire spectrum of expression inherent to the ritual. INTRODUCTION Everything that is articulated culturally must show itself in a specific way: clothes, furniture, texts, buildings, music, everyday objects, goods, actions — everything. The way in which something appears and is articulated creates aesthetic meaning: aesthetic, not conceptual meaning. This can never be achieved by any concept (Kant); but it is no less important and significant. All aesthetic meaning is inscribed in cultural-historical order of meaning. The dimension of literature that relates to this aesthetic meaning or generates aesthetic meaning is usually referred to as “form.” “Form,” of course, is a category central to literature’ — as it is to ritual. ! Dieter Burdorf: Poetik der Form: Eine Begriffs- und Problemgeschichte, Stuttgart/Weimar, Metzler, 2001. +13 +
