In her framework of ritual as practice, Bell articulates four aspects of practice that she sees as important to understanding practice:
1) situational
2) strategic
3) “embedded in a misrecognition of what it is in fact doing”
4) “able to reproduce or reconfigure a vision of the order of power in the world, or what I will call ‘redemptive hegemony.’” (2009: 81)
I’ve covered the first two aspects of practice in previous posts. Today I’m going to try and work-out how I see Bell’s concept of redemptive hegemony connecting with ancient manumission. I purposely say “work-out”, because I haven’t yet convinced myself that I grasp all the nuances of Bell’s argument.
Let us start with the word hegemony. Bell is explicit that she is taking this term from Gramsci. For Gramsci, hegemony compliments ideology. While ideology are the ideals of the ruling class, hegemony is the framework of how people actually live their lives in relationship to those ideas. In other words, hegemony is the combination of how people read and act out ideological texts, the combination of their silences on the obvious contradictions and their words for explaining how a particular idea can be useful for their daily lives.
For the word redemptive, Bell explains that she is referring to the work of the anthropologist Burridge. For Burridge, the redemptive process is an opportunity for a participant of a particular culture to discharge a moral duty. Burridge’s thoughts on this are explicitly attempts to move away from theories of motivation that reduce all actions to self-interest. Instead, Burridge ties in two reasons why people would need to move through the redemptive process: to see the truth in things and to ensure themselves that they do in fact see the truth in things.
Let’s now turn to manumission. While the position that there was an ideology of slavery in antiquity is controversial, it is really only controversial viz. the different ways that people use the word ideology. But regardless through which tradition of thinkers one use the word ideology, it is clear that in antiquity there was universal acceptance of the right to own slaves, just as today there is universal acceptance of the necessity of the abolition of slavery (that people do own slaves does not contradict this position, because contemporary slavers have to do a great deal of work to hide their slaves and their history of enslaving; neither plantation owners nor ancient Romans had to do such work). It is easy to see manumission as part of the hegemony of the ideology of slavery, as the manumission allows the slave-owner to configure himself as generous. Something that I will have to think about more later is whether these thoughts generosity are the result of the slave-owner believing his own hype, as recorded in memorializations of manumission as a gift, or because the slave-owner knows that it is important to cultivate the reputation of being a certain kind of slave-owner (Cato’s, Pliny’s and Seneca’s comments on the culture of slave-ownership demonstrate that the Romans were quite happy to consider how a man treated his slaves when judging his character).
But what about the redemptive aspect? Here we need to consider who is seeking the truth in manumission. I would say that it would be a mistake to assume that only the slave-owner was seeking truth through manumission. We definitely need to take the slave’s perspective into consideration. But again, what is the truth in manumission? I have to admit I haven’t worked through this part of Bell’s framework yet.
1) situational
2) strategic
3) “embedded in a misrecognition of what it is in fact doing”
4) “able to reproduce or reconfigure a vision of the order of power in the world, or what I will call ‘redemptive hegemony.’” (2009: 81)
I’ve covered the first two aspects of practice in previous posts. Today I’m going to try and work-out how I see Bell’s concept of redemptive hegemony connecting with ancient manumission. I purposely say “work-out”, because I haven’t yet convinced myself that I grasp all the nuances of Bell’s argument.
Let us start with the word hegemony. Bell is explicit that she is taking this term from Gramsci. For Gramsci, hegemony compliments ideology. While ideology are the ideals of the ruling class, hegemony is the framework of how people actually live their lives in relationship to those ideas. In other words, hegemony is the combination of how people read and act out ideological texts, the combination of their silences on the obvious contradictions and their words for explaining how a particular idea can be useful for their daily lives.
For the word redemptive, Bell explains that she is referring to the work of the anthropologist Burridge. For Burridge, the redemptive process is an opportunity for a participant of a particular culture to discharge a moral duty. Burridge’s thoughts on this are explicitly attempts to move away from theories of motivation that reduce all actions to self-interest. Instead, Burridge ties in two reasons why people would need to move through the redemptive process: to see the truth in things and to ensure themselves that they do in fact see the truth in things.
Let’s now turn to manumission. While the position that there was an ideology of slavery in antiquity is controversial, it is really only controversial viz. the different ways that people use the word ideology. But regardless through which tradition of thinkers one use the word ideology, it is clear that in antiquity there was universal acceptance of the right to own slaves, just as today there is universal acceptance of the necessity of the abolition of slavery (that people do own slaves does not contradict this position, because contemporary slavers have to do a great deal of work to hide their slaves and their history of enslaving; neither plantation owners nor ancient Romans had to do such work). It is easy to see manumission as part of the hegemony of the ideology of slavery, as the manumission allows the slave-owner to configure himself as generous. Something that I will have to think about more later is whether these thoughts generosity are the result of the slave-owner believing his own hype, as recorded in memorializations of manumission as a gift, or because the slave-owner knows that it is important to cultivate the reputation of being a certain kind of slave-owner (Cato’s, Pliny’s and Seneca’s comments on the culture of slave-ownership demonstrate that the Romans were quite happy to consider how a man treated his slaves when judging his character).
But what about the redemptive aspect? Here we need to consider who is seeking the truth in manumission. I would say that it would be a mistake to assume that only the slave-owner was seeking truth through manumission. We definitely need to take the slave’s perspective into consideration. But again, what is the truth in manumission? I have to admit I haven’t worked through this part of Bell’s framework yet.