The Disappearance of Rituals: A Topology of the Present

The narcissistic process of internalization develops an aversion to form. Objective forms are avoided in favour of subjective states. Rituals evade narcissistic interiority. The ego-libido cannot attach itself to them. Those who devote themselves to rituals must ignore themselves.

The present essay is not animated by a desire to return to ritual. Rather, rituals serve as a background against which our present times may be seen to stand out more clearly. Avoiding nostalgia, I sketch a genealogy of their disappearance, a disappearance which, however, I do not interpret as an emancipatory process. Along the way, the pathologies

Rituals are characterized by repetition. Repetition differs from routine in its capacity to create intensity.

Rituals are symbolic acts. They represent, and pass on, the values and orders on which a community is based. They bring forth a community without communication; today, however, communication without community prevails.

The glory of play goes along with sovereignty, where sovereignty simply means being free from necessity, from purpose and utility. Sovereignty reveals a soul ‘which stands aloof from caring about utility’.1 The compulsion of production destroys sovereignty as a form of life. Sovereignty gives way to a new kind of subordination which, however, masqu

Communication without community can be accelerated because it is additive. Rituals, by contrast, are narrative processes that do not allow for acceleration. Symbols stand still. This is not the case with information: information exists by circulating. Stillness only means that communication ceases, stands still. It does not produce anything.

Nowadays one can purchase vegan shoes or clothes; soon there will probably be vegan smartphones too.

The mistrust of play intensifies in the age of the Enlightenment. Kant subordinates play to work. His aesthetics, for instance, is characterized by the primacy of work. In the face of beauty, the cognitive faculties, namely imagination and understanding, are in play mode. The subject likes what is beautiful; the beautiful creates a feeling of pleas

Rituals are characterized by repetition. Repetition differs from routine in its capacity to create intensity.