Ritual and Emotions: Moving Relations, Patterned Effusions

This article reconsiders the connection between 'ritual' and 'emotion' from a pragmatic, relational perspective in which rituals are seen as dynamic interactive contexts and emotions as fairly short-lived emergent properties and integral components of these interactions. It empha...

Full description

Saved in:  
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Religion and society
Authors: Berthomé, François (Author) ; Houseman, Michael (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
Check availability: HBZ Gateway
Journals Online & Print:
Drawer...
Fernleihe:Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste
Published: Berghahn [2010]
In: Religion and society
Year: 2010, Volume: 1, Issue: 1, Pages: 57-75
Further subjects:B Reflexivity
B pragmatic approach
B Ritual
B relational approach
B Emotion
Online Access: Presumably Free Access
Volltext (Resolving-System)
Volltext (doi)
Description
Summary:This article reconsiders the connection between 'ritual' and 'emotion' from a pragmatic, relational perspective in which rituals are seen as dynamic interactive contexts and emotions as fairly short-lived emergent properties and integral components of these interactions. It emphasizes ritual's capacity to reallocate social positions by instantiating characteristic patterns of relationship, and the way particular emotions crystallize and express these patterns. In short, ritual emotions are treated as the sensate qualities of ritual relationships. From this standpoint, emotions feature in ceremonial settings not as striking experiences grafted onto practices and representations, but as constitutive aspects of ritual interactions themselves, whose properties of bodily salience and relational reflexivity both reflect and inflect the latter's course in a variety of sensory, expressive, moral, and strategic ways. Four issues relating to ritual and emotion are discussed within the framework of particular ceremonial practices that have been the object of much recent research: (1) the ritual expression of emotions in funerary laments, (2) the waning of cathartic models in the interpretation of rites of affliction, (3) the intense emotional arousal characteristic of initiatory ordeals, and (4) the self-constructive, affective dimensions of contemporary devotional practices.
ISSN:2150-9301
Contains:Enthalten in: Religion and society
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.3167/arrs.2010.010105