The Disappearance of Rituals. Byung-Chul Han
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The Disappearance of Rituals
A Topology of the Present
Byung-Chul Han
Translated by Daniel Steuer
polity
Copyright © Byung-Chul Han 2020
First published in German as Vom Verschwinden der Rituale by Ullstein Buchverlage GmbH 2019
This English edition © 2020 by Polity Press
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ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-4277-2
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PRELIMINARY REMARK
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 of the present day will become visible, most of all the erosion of community. At the same time, I offer reflections on different forms of life that might be able to free our society from its collective narcissism.
1 The Compulsion of Production
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. Rituals are constituted by symbolic perception. Symbol (Greek: symbolon) originally referred to the sign of recognition between guest-friends (tessera hospitalis). One guest-friend broke a clay tablet in two, kept one half for himself and gave the other half to another as a sign of guest-friendship. Thus, a symbol serves the purpose of recognition. This recognition is a particular form of repetition:
But what is recognition? It is surely not merely a question of seeing something for the second time. Nor does it imply a whole series of encounters. Recognition means knowing something as that with which we are already acquainted. The unique process by which man ‘makes