Dissimulation and simulation as forms of religious reflexivity

Abstract

Abstract This paper discusses conventional illusory enactments, largely recognised as such by those who undertake them, drawn from two Central African male initiation rites: the novices dramatic execution on the one hand, and the purportedly painless sacrifice of the rituals emblematic animal on the other. In doing so, it attempts to elucidate two related forms of religious reflexivity: ritual dissimulation, centred around the manipulation of persons, and ritual simulation, founded upon the manipulation of non-persons (animals, objects, spells, images, and so forth). The actors commitment to such performances as necessary and appropriate ones is related, in the first case, to the interdependent relationship that is set up between the perceptions different categories of participants have of the event they are jointly involved in, and in the second case, to the way the mediating qualities of non-persons serve to embed the participants actions within auto-referential circuits in which relations of causality and representation converge. This paper deals with ritual simulation within the context of initiation rites. This inevitably involves trying to show that ritual secrecy is more than a matter of some people pulling the wool over other peoples eyes. Although I will address this issue, my main concern is not with ritual secrecy as such, but with the emergent properties of ritual simulation generally. I am particularly interested in exploring how the recourse to conventional illusory

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