Little Gestures of Disappearance: Interpassivity and the Theory of Ritual

Abstract

There is a recurrent remark in many anthropological studies concerning ritual: the more people believe (for instance in their religion), the less they appear willing to follow this very religion’s rituals. This hostility reveals a question proper to the theory of interpassivity: Is it possible that people suspect ritual not to express their inner beliefs, but rather to replace them? Is ritual a vicarious agent that renders inner conviction superfluous? Do we have to conclude for cultural history in general that which Freud did for fetishism, namely: that the colourful materiality of the ritual and its objects is, in fact, the symptom of an abandoned belief?

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