Oldal 18 [18]
WOLFGANG BRAUNGART
constrained within the field of religion either in the narrower sense of ritual¬
istic form, or in the broader sense of “religioid” civil religion. This is particu¬
larly true for the individualistic modern age, which is skeptical of rituals. The
“fatigued self” (Alain Ehrenberg) is always a menace to the individual in our
times. It appears that this “fatigued self” even encourages the desire for sensory
experience via sequences of ritual acts insofar as the subject finds that these
acts are pre-existing within culture. The subject can confide in them; it does
not have to invent them anew and give them meaning. Events such as the sig¬
nificant number of intellectual conversions to Catholicism, a strictly ritualised
faith, from the Romantic period to the present, may even be explained by this.
The age of Enlightenment placed its trust in the communicative rationality
common to all people, which fundamentally enabled them to handle their
tasks and conflicts themselves, and yet, despite this, it is the century of secret
associations and societies with their own ritual practices of social integration
(e.g., the rituals of the Freemasons). Even Protestantism, a religion which is
skeptical of rituals, is currently discovering the liberating power that the ritual
can offer. Freedom and self-determination, on the one hand, and the desire to
belong, on the other: these are two sides of the same coin. Indeed, rituals can
change and bring themselves into line with new historical expectations of their
function. They are, nevertheless, conservatively persistent; they cannot subju¬
gate themselves to the pressure to outdo one another within the “experience
society” [Erlebnisgesellschaft] (cf. Gerhard Schulze) without also doing away
with themselves. This is also highly relevant to the aesthetic of originality and
one-upmanship that characterises the modern age. The renouveau catholique
arose from modern French intellectual and aesthetic culture. This example, in
particular, demonstrates that the conservatism of the ritual has its own place
within a society’s dynamics, and that this conservatism can even contribute
to cultural dynamisation.*
RITUAL AND LITERATURE: THESIS
A ritual is performative; it is an experience and an event that carries sense
and meaning, evidence and significance. This applies both to active involve¬
ment in a ritual and the observation of a ritual: each of which is participatory.
The meaning of the occurrences within a religious ritual must be learnt, and
must, therefore, be revealed. It is not a matter of discourse but of aesthetic
experience. One can only ever experience something. Even those following the
* Burckhard Dücker: Rituale: Formen — Funktionen — Geschichte, Stuttgart/Weimar, Metzler,
2007, 182.
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