The Disappearance of Rituals. Byung-Chul Han

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by the neoliberal regime is in truth simply a life of intense consumption. In the face of an illusory ‘intense life’, we must consider the possibility that there may be another form of life that is more intense than that of constant consumption and communication.

      Rituals bring forth a community in which resonances occur, one that is capable of accord, of a common rhythm:

      Rituals produce sociocultural axes of resonance along which may be experienced three different kinds of resonant relationship: vertical (e.g. to the gods, the cosmos, time, or eternity), horizontal (within one’s social community), and diagonal (with respect to things).12

      Rituals are processes of embodiment and bodily performances. In them, the valid order and values of a community are physically experienced and solidified. They are written into the body, incorporated, that is, physically internalized. Thus, rituals create a bodily knowledge and memory, an embodied identity, a bodily connection. A ritual community is a communal body [Körperschaft], and there is a bodily dimension inherent to community. To the extent that it exerts a disembodying influence, digitalization weakens common ties. Digital communication is disembodied communication.

      The neoliberal regime isolates people while at the same time invoking empathy. Because it is a resonant body, however, ritual community does not require empathy. The demand for empathy can be heard in particular in atomized societies. The present hype surrounding the concept has primarily economic causes: empathy is used as an efficient means of production; it serves the purpose of emotionally influencing and directing people. Under the neoliberal regime, a person is not only exploited during working hours; rather, the whole person is exploited. In this context, emotional management turns out to be more effective than rational management. The former reaches deeper into a person than does the latter. Neoliberal psycho-politics attempts to elicit positive emotions and to exploit them. In the final analysis, it is freedom itself that is here being exploited. In this respect, neoliberal psycho-politics differs from the biopolitics of industrial modernity, which operates through disciplinary compulsion and command.

      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. In the post-industrial age, the noise of the machines gives way to the noise of communication. More information and more communication holds out the promise of more production. Thus, the compulsion of production expresses itself in the compulsion of communication.

      In a society governed by ritual, there is no depression. In such a society, the soul is fully absorbed by ritual forms; it is even emptied out. Rituals contain aspects of the world, and they produce in us a strong relationship to the world. Depression, by contrast, is based on an excessive relation to self. Wholly incapable of leaving the self behind, of transcending ourselves and relating to the world, we withdraw into our shells. The world disappears. We circle around ourselves, tortured by feelings of emptiness. Rituals, by contrast, disburden the ego of the self, de-psychologizing and de-internalizing the ego.

      1 1. Gadamer, ‘The Relevance of the Beautiful’, in The Relevance of the Beautiful and Other Essays, p. 47.

      2 2. Saint-Exupéry, The Wisdom of the Sands, p. 16.

      3 3. Arendt, The Human Condition, p. 137.

      4 4. Handke, Phantasien der Wiederholung, p. 8.

      5 5. See ‘Tee trinkend die Welt verändern? Yes, we Kännchen’, at https://blog.naturkost.com/2016/11/charitea-bio-tee-fair-trade.

      6 6. Douglas, Natural Symbols, p. 1.

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