peter nesteruk
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Rituality defined.
'From here to eternity.'
What happens at the heart of ritual:
where temporality becomes eternity, and eternity sets
the seal on the return of a chastened temporality? Is this in any way different
to the workings of the universal proposition, where tautology always implies an
appeal to the extra-temporal and axiomatics shores up
this putative extra-temporality by sacrificing dissent? The pretensions of the
universal proposition represent ritual at its coldest (unembodied
repetition). The world of 'objectivity' here consists of a (ritual) washing
away of the self matched by a blindness to the
rhetoric of eternity. Ritual henceforth becomes hot, requires the
ever-increasing imbrication of the self and its
emotions. The distant horizon of eternity is balanced as on the finest scales
with the immediacy of the affect.
Eternity once attained stabilises
temporality for a future no longer waiting apart, but happily sutured into the
present. The bar of ritual is now placed firmly behind one, simultaneously
distancing the past (with its worn down and faulty forms) and preserving its
preferred features (ritual as ritual Aufhebung after
Hegel). Before ritual; anticipation of ritual: after ritual; anticipation of
the future...
Maximal
(I) In a space, a time, accentuated to
infinity by a framing of this same space by physical means (boundaries, the end
point of a journey, a sense of place) by the framing of this same time by its
removal from everyday time, a time set aside, sacrificed from temporal ends, a
time echoing a chain of similar times, a passage of occasions, final support in
the bridge of repetition - the latest of these special times. In a space, a
time, a sacrifice (an exchange as made, over and above the cost of the time and
space so designated, a further sacrifice, a gift, a personal offering for the
better motivation of personal involvement). The greater the sacrifice, the
greater the depth to which the roots of the exchange enter the body (whose time
and energy has been spent to pay for this moment, to set up a debt; of the mind
to its bodily expenditure, as of the gods to ourselves, of ourselves to them -
a debt incurred at the price of great sacrifice) and the greater the sacrifice,
the greater the sense of occasion. In a space, a time, intensified to the point
of temporal disruption, of spatial transport, a further dislocation; the
transformation of mere things, worldly possessions, into the property of the
sacred, possessing sacred properties. Otherworldly. A
plenitude of objects, sacrificial gifts, mimic the
wished-for plenitude of the sacred realm; our presents guarantee our presence
there, their plenitude, our presence.
(II) All the resources of the present,
of the moment in which we live, in which we live forever, while we live and are
conscious, are brought to bear and accentuated by the sacrifice and the
accompanying sense of occasion. The framing of space and time themselves is
such that their figurative attributes may be brought to bear at the maximal
productive pitch. All these factors are brought into play to summon the eternal
in the present - to allow the unending aspect of the 'now' moment of the
present to predominate. The 'now' moment in the 'eternal now' flattens out, is forgotten, the horizon that constitutes the temporal expands
to infinity: no past, no future, only an eternal present. In the crucible of
the ritual experience only an unending presence remains. Self in community
bathes in the light of the eternal, Grail and guarantor of sublunary law, site
of Law, abode of gods, universal propositions, and all morality - it is this exposure that resets the flow of
the temporal into a comprehensible and safe ordering, a flow no longer chaotic
but navigable by all.
(III) Finally set on course for the
future, certain of itself, its place and its goals, identity finds itself again
secure (having survived its shaking in the game of ritual transgression)
cemented, positioned... poised, into a sense of community (real or imaginary).
Returned to a space, a time, where all co-ordinates have full meaning, into a
metaphysics, where what lies beyond the senses, beyond sense itself, itself
makes sense (even if only as a 'mystery') and so contributes to the ordering of
first and last things that constitutes a 'world'; the subject (ourselves);
through the copula ('is') of ritual.
Minimal
In minimal forms (a handshake, a
greeting, a stare) a minimum exchange, a basic
exchange of recognition, is sufficient.
If a different quality of identity is involved (and a different quantity
of affect invested and harvested), it is nevertheless a ritual exchange which
functions in the same way as its less frequently observed, but costlier,
cousin. If the general effect, the function of self-positioning, is lighter and
dispersed over a wider area, then the sheer quantity of transactions involved
(encompassing synchronic as well as linear repetition) makes up for any
apparent lack of intensity. While privatised in form (but not private, not a
set of private rituals personal to someone and defining their personality,
rather a ritual of civil society), such repetitions can produce an affect
shared by millions, productive therefore a social force to be reckoned with -
certainly one to be recognised. (It is here that we witness the flavour of a
culture as conveyed by its greetings, by its public forms of sociability).
This fundamental form (appearing here in
minimal guise and so suggesting meiosis as the trope of essence) when augmented
by the ostensible trappings of ritual, will once again begin grow
proportionately in influence and intensity. With the addition of extra layers,
with the compaction and accretion of many strata of experience, as space and
time, sacrifice, all the drama, all the ingredients of rituality, are more
clearly formalised, concentrated and focused upon their aim, so the boundaries
of meaning covered by the ritual act begin to stretch and expand until infinity
(the comprehension of all as one) is again successfully attained. And so we
return toward the glow of the great event, the millennial rebirth, the fountain
of renewal, that sets us once again certain on our course in the ocean of life.
Copyright 2004 Peter Nesteruk