Ritual textuality : pattern and motion in performance / Matt Tomlinson.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Tomlinson, Matt, 1970- author.

Series:

Oxford ritual studies

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Rites and ceremonies--Fiji.

Rites and ceremonies.

Performance--Religious aspects.

Performance.

Christianity--Fiji.

Christianity.

Religion.

Fiji--Religion.

Fiji.

Physical Description:

xii, 169 pages : illustrations, map ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Oxford ; New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2014]

Summary:

A classic question in studies of ritual is how ritual performances achieve - or fail to achieve - their effects. In this pathbreaking book, Matt Tomlinson argues that participants condition their own expectations of ritual success by interactively creating distinct textual patterns of sequence, conjunction, contrast, and substitution. Drawing on long-term research in Fiji, Ritual Textuality presents in-depth studies of each of these patterns, taken from a wide range of settings: a fiery, soul-saving Pentecostal crusade; relaxed gatherings at which people drink the narcotic beverage kava; deathbeds at which missionaries eagerly await the signs of good Christians' "happy deaths"; and the monologic pronouncements of a military-led government determined to make the nation speak in a single voice. In each of these cases, Tomlinson also examines the broad ideologies of motion which frame participants' ritual actions, such as Pentecostals' beliefs that effective worship requires ecstatic movement like jumping, dancing, and clapping, and nineteenth-century missionaries insistence that the journeys of the soul in the afterlife should follow a new path. By approaching ritual as an act of "entextualization" - in which the flow of discourse is turned into object-like texts - while analyzing the ways people expect words, things, and selves to move in performance, this book presents a new and compelling way to understand the efficacy of ritual action. Book jacket.

Contents:

1 Into Motion 1

2 The Holy Ghost Is About to Fall 22

3 Crossed Signs 48

4 Happy Deaths Are Public Deaths 72

5 A Chorus of Assent Will Lift Us All 92

6 Full Stop 118.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 145-161) and index.

ISBN:

9780199341146

0199341141

9780199341139

0199341133

OCLC:

880778825