The Eye of Ritual – Exploring Generative Processes in Contemporary Society
Ritual opens towards horizons of understanding that much anthropology and other fields of academic thought and practice – in their rationalisms of understanding – ignore. Seeing through ritual, as is the point of departure for this symposium, implies opening up for the generatively emerging human experience; the bringing forth and the shaping of social form. With its process-oriented metaphysics, this approach suggests an openness towards the aesthetic dynamics of creative and symbolic processes (Cassirer), of existential bodily beginnings (Merleau-Ponty), of the amalgamation of feeling and form (Langer), and the organic folding and unfolding of human life (Whitehead). With the metaphysical gaze of generative ritual theory emphasis is put on the processual, dynamic, aesthetic and affectual qualities of not only ritual and ritual practices, but social phenomena in general. The idea of seeing through ritual blends artistic and critically engaged anthropology with innovative theorizing to provoke reflection on generative societal phenomena and explore the potentialities of transformative change and world-making. Taking an abductive approach – toing and froing between a range of ethnographic contexts, artistic modalities, critical anthropological theorizing and conceptual innovation – we seek to explore two main trajectories of contemporary societies on a local to global scale. To know more: https://therai.org.uk/events/the-eye-of-ritual-exploring-generative-processes-in-contemporary-society/
