RITUEL GESTUS: Kroppen som skala og som æstetisk form

Resumé

Jørgen Østergård Andersen: Ritual

Gestures. The Body as Scale and as

Aesthetic Form

The article focuses on ritual gestures, and it

delineates a theoretical field of investigation,

which gives expression to aesthetic

practices, which are beyond - or rather,

intersticial zones in - the semantic domains.

It is argued that the ritual gestures generate a

contact with a sphere, which is termed

“sacred” in the anthropological tradition and

“sublime” in the aesthetic, philosophical

tradition. It is further argued that the aesthetic

field cannot be reduced to the social order

of semantic domains, since this would imply

a misrepresentation of the meaning of ritual

performances. The widespread contextual

signification of rituals in anthropological

debates and in ritual studies is therefore

challenged in the article, and it is argued that

such analyses do not give expression to the

meaning or structure of the rituals. Such

analysis, which merely describes the social

context of the ritual, puts an end to the theoretical

exploration into the singular meaning

of the ritual - even before the analysis of the

meaning gets under way. To illustrate these

points, the ahjaliputa gesture is decribed and

two “rites de passage” in Sri Lanka are

analysed: kota hålu (giris puberty rituals)

and upasampadå (monks higher ordination

rituals). The subtitle - the body as scale and

as aesthetic form - points to a further

argument in the article that the body is a

scale, which organises the semantic domains

in a hierarchy of concrete, material objects.

The aesthetic zones are found in such transitions

from object to domain and they imply a

transition from one scale to another. It is

argued that the ambiguity of ritual gestures

explores such intersticial zones.