Ronald L. Grimes - Ritual Criticism: Case Studies in Its Practice, Essays on Its Theory

I have beentold by several people that ritual criticism is my most distinctive scholarlycontribution. Although this is not my view, Ritual Criticism, partlybecause it espouses aspects of performance theory, has become my mostcontroversial book. Catherine Bell worries that performance theoryrests of course on the slippery implications of an extended metaphor (Bell1992:42). Because she considers performance theories to be mere analogies, sheconstrues ritual criticism as if it were theatre criticism. She indicts VictorTurner and me for making ourselves into a peculiar kind of audience necessaryto the ritual event (1992:38-40). The performance analogy, she thinks, is noimprovement on that other, even more revered analogy, ritual as a text that onecan read. Both theories, claims Bell, require interpreters to get at tacitmeanings. In her view, performance theorists like to textualize rituals notbecause they are intrinsically like texts, but because we need something thatcan be deciphered, decoded, or interpreted (1992:45). Bell claims thatperformance theorists devalue rites by positing a latent meaning that can bediscerned from a close reading of the surface of a rite. Why do they do so? she asks rhetorically. To make themselves necessarycrassly, to keep themselves employed. She ignores the fact that forTurner drama is both a source of ritual and a part of ritual, notmerely an analog to it. She also overlooks the fact that for me drama is lessan analog to ritual than an object of study, which I compare to ritual.

In a similar vein, CarolineHumphrey and James Laidlaw (1994) claim that ritual criticism isinappropriately based on a theatrical model, even though I explicitly say thatit is not. It is true that I write about ritual in ways that are tutored bytheatre and film, but I also write in the other direction, that is, about thearts in ways that are steeped in the study of ritual. To my mind, neither is amere analog for the other. Rather, they are dynamically interacting forces. Insome situations, they are quite distinct. In others, they are thoroughlyentangled. Ritual traditions, like theatrical traditions, have a multiplicityof ways of courting and avoiding criticism, and it is this variety that weshould be studying.

One of the most effectiverefutations of claims such as those mounted by Bell, Humphrey, and Laidlaw isUte Hskens collection, When Rituals Go Wrong: Mistakes, Failure, and theDynamics of Ritual (2007). Her book documents traditions around the worldin which ritual criticism is practiced without any urging or imposition byscholars. Hsken and her colleagues show that ritual criticism, far from beingthe invention of analogy-hungry scholars eager to insinuate themselves intoother peoples practices, is an ordinary part of ordinary rituals.