The Disappearance of Rituals. Byung-Chul Han

      10 10. Ibid., p. 4.

      11 11. Handke, Phantasien der Wiederholung, p. 57.

      12 12. Rosa, Resonances, p. 173.

      13 13. Transl. note: ‘Community’ in English in the original.

      14 14. Barthes, The Neutral, p. 124.

      15 15. The need for ritual and fixed rules is being felt again following years of excessive deregulation. It is no coincidence that the subtitle of Jordan B. Peterson’s well-known self-help book, 12 Rules for Life, is An Antidote to Chaos. The demand for individually designed rites to mark the phases of life and their transitional points is also on the increase, with the place of priests now taken by so-called ritual designers. These novel rituals have to obey the imperative of authenticity and creativity. But they are not rituals in the proper sense. They do not exert the symbolic force which directs life towards something higher and thus provides meaning and orientation. Where there is no longer a higher order, rituals disappear.