This week I am delving into the introduction of my dissertation in order to elaborate on the methods of how I conceive of manumission. What I am specifically working on at the moment is why I think that it is productive to think of/through manumission as a ritual. As a result of this perspective, I have been making my way through Catherine Bell’s wonderful book “Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice.”
Bell’s book is wonderful because she is fully aware of the large variety of thinkers who have approached the concept of ritual: sociologists, anthropologists, religious studies, philosophers and on and on. Bell’s book is also wonderful because she approaches head on a number of thinkers who are well known for being obscure, such as Foucault, Bordieu, and rather than dismissing them because of their obtuseness, instead takes their ideas as seriously as thinkers who have a reputation of writing clearly, such as the anthropologists Geertz and Douglas. Bell herself is also a writer who values clarity, laying out her argument in three parts.
The first part of the book is an investigation into how other thinkers have theorized ritual; that is, what kind of discourse do these writers incorporate ritual into. Bell is aware of how in all these approaches, scholars are careful to always use ritual in such a way that it supports their ideas of the social, the individual, religion etc. However, this investigation is no mere summary: Bell first notes that all these writers use ritual as a meeting point for various social and cultural oppositions. The oppositions include pretty much any sort of sociological or anthropological binary you could think of: belief and behavior, individual and group, tradition and change are some of the more basic oppositions that expressed through more complicated jargon. Bell then argues that in these analyses also have a pattern of slippage. Although ritual begins as the site of opposition, the writer will then incorporate ritual into one side of the binary. For example, a writer could begin by saying that ritual is the site of the opposition of belief and behavior but then go onto cite rituals as examples of particular kinds of behaviors. This slippage is not the result of thinkers being stupid but because of the underappreciated flexibility of their own systems. Going back to our hypothetical example, it is because ritual happens at the location of the opposition of belief and behavior that retains the status of being either/or, thereby keeping it available for use in other oppositions demanded by the theory.
Another reason that I like Bell is that it is clear that she is interested in theory because she understands that it raises practical considerations about how scholars approach their work. For example, it is easy for me to imagine a scholar to get excited about the type of argumentation that I laid out in the previous paragraph and then make that type of argumentation the focus of a book. However, for Bell this type of argumentation is not enough. It isn’t enough because she is concerned about the use of these writers. That is, how much of of what Geertz says about Javanese funerals are patterns that are “out there” to the extent that another observer could find them and how much are these patterns that are simply in Geertz’s scholarship?
We have gotten pretty far from manumission so let me tie it back in. The most important scholar for slave studies in the past half century is Orlando Patterson. His theorization of slavery is that it is a form of social death. Because of this theorization, it is not surprising that he conceptualizes manumission as a form of life-giving and life-creation and argues that the words and actions that surround manumission in various cultures reflect this conception. Bell’s work tells us to be more cautious here. Is there really a strong connection to life-giving, or are they there primarily to balance out the rest of Patterson’s theory of slavery as social death?
Bell’s book is wonderful because she is fully aware of the large variety of thinkers who have approached the concept of ritual: sociologists, anthropologists, religious studies, philosophers and on and on. Bell’s book is also wonderful because she approaches head on a number of thinkers who are well known for being obscure, such as Foucault, Bordieu, and rather than dismissing them because of their obtuseness, instead takes their ideas as seriously as thinkers who have a reputation of writing clearly, such as the anthropologists Geertz and Douglas. Bell herself is also a writer who values clarity, laying out her argument in three parts.
The first part of the book is an investigation into how other thinkers have theorized ritual; that is, what kind of discourse do these writers incorporate ritual into. Bell is aware of how in all these approaches, scholars are careful to always use ritual in such a way that it supports their ideas of the social, the individual, religion etc. However, this investigation is no mere summary: Bell first notes that all these writers use ritual as a meeting point for various social and cultural oppositions. The oppositions include pretty much any sort of sociological or anthropological binary you could think of: belief and behavior, individual and group, tradition and change are some of the more basic oppositions that expressed through more complicated jargon. Bell then argues that in these analyses also have a pattern of slippage. Although ritual begins as the site of opposition, the writer will then incorporate ritual into one side of the binary. For example, a writer could begin by saying that ritual is the site of the opposition of belief and behavior but then go onto cite rituals as examples of particular kinds of behaviors. This slippage is not the result of thinkers being stupid but because of the underappreciated flexibility of their own systems. Going back to our hypothetical example, it is because ritual happens at the location of the opposition of belief and behavior that retains the status of being either/or, thereby keeping it available for use in other oppositions demanded by the theory.
Another reason that I like Bell is that it is clear that she is interested in theory because she understands that it raises practical considerations about how scholars approach their work. For example, it is easy for me to imagine a scholar to get excited about the type of argumentation that I laid out in the previous paragraph and then make that type of argumentation the focus of a book. However, for Bell this type of argumentation is not enough. It isn’t enough because she is concerned about the use of these writers. That is, how much of of what Geertz says about Javanese funerals are patterns that are “out there” to the extent that another observer could find them and how much are these patterns that are simply in Geertz’s scholarship?
We have gotten pretty far from manumission so let me tie it back in. The most important scholar for slave studies in the past half century is Orlando Patterson. His theorization of slavery is that it is a form of social death. Because of this theorization, it is not surprising that he conceptualizes manumission as a form of life-giving and life-creation and argues that the words and actions that surround manumission in various cultures reflect this conception. Bell’s work tells us to be more cautious here. Is there really a strong connection to life-giving, or are they there primarily to balance out the rest of Patterson’s theory of slavery as social death?