RITUEL GESTUS: Kroppen som skala og som æstetisk form

Abstract

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.