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RITUAL AND AESTHETIC PRESENTIVITY It is possible to differentiate between the various types of ritual on the basis of form and meaning and on the basis of social function. These types include, for example, transitional rituals (Les rites de passages — Arnold van Gennep); hunting/sacrifice rituals (Walter Burkert); scapegoat rituals (René Girard); liminality rituals, ie., particular rituals to give experience and strength to a community across social boundaries (Victor Turner); and cleansing and purity rituals (Mary Douglas). Literature can participate in all these types of rituals: semantically, thematically, socio-functionally, and structurally. The (dramatic) tragedy is the most conspicuous genre when demonstrating the links between literature and ritual. Indeed, it is possible to discuss tragedy as being a form of sacrificial ritual.* RELIGION, CIVIL RELIGION, AND RITUALS Rituals seem to be universal cultural components that extend across all religions and all societies. Namely, “religion” and “society” demand determined, repetitive social practices to encourage people to perform good deeds and live a good life, to depict and honour saints, and to mark the culmination of religious and secular communitisation. Even traces left by prehistoric humans often contain an indication of ritual practices which demonstrate a need for sense and a focus on meaning. For societies founded on religion, the ritual system gives a shared ritual structure to life as a whole. This ritual system covers ritual practices over the course of the growing cycle, or the arrangement of the ecclesiastical year. However, the study of the sociology of religion has long shown the strength of social and cultural practices in modern societies. Such modern societies would certainly describe themselves as secular, but they are also characterised by pervasive “religioid” elements (with the word “religioid” being based on Georg Simmel and Robert Musil’s coinage, “ratioid”). It is worthwhile keeping an eye open for the “religioid” dimension of allegedly secular rituals, such as in politics. Totalitarian regimes (Nazism, Stalinism, youth initiation ceremonies in former East Germany) tend to make use of “religioid” rituals in order to give legitimacy to their politics in an aesthetic, performative, theatrical and dramaturgical way. Even in secular civil society there are inescapable, supreme values that provide a sense of community and unity. The upholding of these values can be described as a “civil religion.” They also call for performative acts and aesthetic experiences, in a manner akin to the ritual (national public holidays, international volunteering day, Labor Day). Nevertheless, rituals cannot be 3 Anton Bierl — Wolfgang Braungart (eds.): Gewalt und Opfer: Im Dialog mit Walter Burkert, Berlin/New York, De Gruyter, 2010.
