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The Anthropology of Religion, Ritual, and Sacrifice

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The Anthropology of Religion, Ritual, and Sacrifice 1 Anthropology 308 The Anthropology of Ritual and Religion Department of Anthropology, Rutgers University Instructor: Parvis Ghassem-Fachandi Class time: Mo/Thu. 9:15-10:35 o’clock. Email: [email protected] Office: RAB 309, Hours: Fri 10-12. Phone: (732) 932 11 39 Location of course: RAB 208 Credits: 3 Semester: Spring 2008 Pre-requisites: 101. This course explores the significance of sacrifice as a variation on the theme of death in ritual, religion, and modern formations such as the nation. In diverse forms such as ritual exchange, witchcraft, spirit possession, renunciation, and national identification, sacrifice is either a rhetorical device, or, a deep structure of human symbolic action. Sacrifice is minimally defined as the constitution of a loss in order to constitute the sacred of a community. What is the value of sacrifice as an analytical concept? The course will engage classic formative texts in anthropological theory and investigate three ethnographic examples in the contemporary world—anti-Jewish pogroms in Poland, anti- Muslim pogroms in India, and anti-Tutsi genocide in Rwanda--where a sacrificial logic comes into play, often connected to the search for immortality. In providing an introduction into ritual technologies, students will also learn to identify and critically appraise their deployment as rhetoric, metaphor, or logic in quasi-religious contexts. Books for Purchase Henri Hubert, and Marcel Mauss. 1964 Sacrifice. It’s Nature and Function. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Mary Douglas. 1966 Purity and Danger. London: Ark Paperbacks Bloch, Maurice. 1992. Prey into Hunter: The politics of Religious Experience. Cambridge University Press Movies Jean Rouch, LES MAITRES FOUS Pier Paolo Pasolini, MEDEA Rakesh Sharma, FINAL SOLUTION, selections Judith Gleason/Elisa Mereghetti, THE KING DOES NOT LIE (The Initiation of a Shango Priest) 2 Reading load: Approximately 100-150 pages/week Course objectives: To provide students with an introduction to theories of sacrifice, which pay particular attention to symbolic form, by focusing on symbolic technologies such as surrogacy, abnegation, substitution, consecration, incorporation, externalization, mimesis, and identification cross-culturally. The students will learn to identify and apply, as well as critically appraise, sacrificial procedures in rhetoric and/or metaphor, concrete violent acts or in deep structure, in contexts which lie outside the usual sphere of religion and ritual proper such as the juridico-political, nationalism, democratic form, gender and sexuality, war, genocide, and ethnic conflict. The seminar will also introduce advanced students to three case studies, which deal with mass violence, and thus enable comparison in relation to the theoretical texts addressed. To help students gain proficiency in the use of critical thinking skills in their assessment of analytical texts on violence, ritual, and religion, anthropological and ethnographic writing, psychoanalysis, history, political science, reports, media, and documentary film. To provide students with the training of reading and presentation skills, the use of central concepts and approaches to society and culture, and a comparative approach to cultural and social difference in the context of violence. Readings: Readings will be on two-hour reserve at the Reserve Desk in Mabel Smith Douglas Library (8 Chapel Drive, Douglas Campus) and/or on electronic reserve on Sakai. Course Requirements and Grading Criteria: Take Home Mid Term Exam (30%), 4-5 pages. Take Home Final Exam (30%), 4-5 pages. Class Participation (30%), Oral Presentation (10%). Students have to complete all readings, participate in class discussion, and write 2-3 questions about each reading in question to be handed in every class. There will be no extra-credit. Students found cheating on exams, handing in exams containing plagiarized passages, or otherwise violating academic integrity policies will be turned in to the appropriate Dean for punishment. Please familiarize yourself, therefore, with the Rutgers academic integrity policy, posted online at http://ctaar.rutgers.edu/integrity/policy.html. 3 Week 1. Theoretical approaches to sacrifice and violence (Thurs. 24th January) Frazer, J.G. 1960. The Golden Bough, abridged edition, Vol I, London: Macmillan and Co., pp. ix-xi, contents, Chapter XXIV, The Killing of the Divine King, pp 348-373, Chapter XXV, Temporary Kings, pp.373-381, and Chapter XXVI, Sacrifice of the King’s Son, 381-386. Smith, William Robertson. 1889 Religion of the Semites, London: Adam and Charles Black, Lecture VII, pp. 244-268 and Lecture VIII, pp.268-311, and from Lecture IX, pp. 312-324. Recommended Mizruchi, Susan L. 1998 Sacrificial Arts and Sciences. In The Science of Sacrifice. American Literature and Modern Social Theory, pp. 25-88. Week 2. Theoretical approaches to sacrifice and violence (Mon. 28th/Thurs. 31st January) Freud, Sigmund. 1950 Totem and Taboo, Chapter IV, London: Routledge&Kegan Paul, pp. 125-200, with particular emphasis on pp. 164-200. Girard, René. 1977 Violence and the Sacred, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University, Chapter I-II, pp. 1-69. Recommended: Carter Jeffrey (ed.). 2003 Understanding Religious Sacrifice: A Reader. London: Continuum, for selective readings; Kierkegaard, Søren. 1985 Fear and Trembling. Dialectical Lyric by Johannes de silentio. Penguin Books. Week 3. Theoretical approaches to sacrifice (Mo. 4th/Thurs. 7th February) Hubert, Henri and Marcel Mauss. 1964 Sacrifice. It’s Nature and Function. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Recommended: Evans-Pritchard, E.E. 1956. Nuer Religion. Chap. VIII-XI, pp. 197-286. Week 4. Sacrifice, Initiation, and Possession (Mo. 11th/Thurs. 14th February) Bloch, Maurice. 1992 From Prey into Hunter. The Politics of Religious Experience. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. TBA Bataille, Georges. 1989 Theory of Religion, New York: Zone Books, Chapter III, esp. 43-61; 1989 The Accursed Share, New York: Zone Books, Vol.1, Part II, pp. 45-77. Recommended: Hammoudi, Abdellah. 1993. The Victim and Its Masks. An Essay on Sacrifice and Masquerade in the Maghreb. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 4 MID TERM TAKE HOME EXAM (Before Spring Break) Week 5. Anti-Jewish pogroms (Mo. 18th/ Thurs. 21st February) Gross, Jan T. 2001 Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland. Princeton University Press. Hsia, R. Po-chia. 1988 Introduction: Ritual, Magic, and Murder, In The Myth of Ritual Murder: Jews and Magic in Reformation Germany. New Haven: Yale University Press. Recommended: Freud, Sigmund.1960 The Meaning of Symptoms, pp. 268-283, In A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis. New York: Washington Square Press; Dundes, Alan (ed.). 1991 The Blood-libel Legend. A Casebook in Anti-Semitic Folklore.U. Wisconsin P. Week 6. Category systems: Pollution (Mo. 25th/Thurs. 28th February) Douglas, Mary. 1966 Purity and Danger. An analysis of concept of pollution and taboo. TBA. Recommended: Malkki, Liisa H. 1995 Purity and Exile. Violence, Memory, and National Cosmology among the Hutu Refugees in Tanzania. University of Chicago Press; Week 7. Witchcraft (Mo. 3rd/Thurs. 6th March) Cannon, Walter B. 1942 ‘Voodoo’ Death. In Lessa and Vogt (eds.), pp. 367-373. Lévi-Strauss, Claude 1963 The Sorcerer and his Magic. In Structural Anthropology, pp. 167-185. Siegel, James T. 2006 Naming the Witch, pp. 29-52; Recommended: Evans-Pritchard, E. E. 1979 Witchcraft explains unfortunate events. In Lessa and Vogt (eds.) Reader in Comparative Religion. An Anthropological Approach. Harper Collins. Week 8. Pogrom in India (Mo. 10th/Thurs. 13th March ) Kakar, Sudhir. 1995 Victims and Others: I. The Hindus, and Victim and Others: II The Muslim. In Colours of Violence, pp. 111-182. Appadurai, Arjun. 1998 Dead Certainty: Ethnic Violence in the Era of Globalization. In Public Culture, Winter, 10:2, pp. 905-925. Sarkar, Tanika. Semiotics of Terror: Muslim Children and Women in Hindu Rashtra, pp. 151-165. In Fascism in India: Faces, Fangs, and Facts. Chaitanya Krishna (ed.). Recommended: McKean, Lisa. 1996 Bharat Mata. Mother India and Her Militant Matriots. In Devi. Goddesses of India. Hawley and Wulff (eds.), pp. 250-280; Human Rights Watch (Report). 2002 “We have no orders to save you,” State Participation and Complicity in Communal Violence in Gujarat. pp. 1-8, 13-46. 5 Week 9. Movie TBA (Mo. 17th/ Thurs. 20th March) Week 10. Genocide in Rwanda (Mo. 24th/ Thurs. 27th March) Gourevitch, Philip. 1999 “We wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families.” Stories from Rwanda. Picador USA, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, New York. TBA Taylor, Christopher. 2002 “The Cultural Face of Terror in the Rwandan Genocide of 1994.” In Annihilating Difference. The Anthropology of Genocide (ed. by Alexander Laban Hinton). Recommended: Pottier, Johan. 2002 Re-Imagining Rwanda: Conflict, Survival and Disinformation in the Late Twentieth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; Mamdani, Mahmood. 2001 When Victims Become Killers: Colonialism, Nativism, and the Genocide in Rwanda. Princeton University Press. Week 11. Death, Nation, and Immortality (Mo. 31st March/Thurs. 3rd April ) Anderson, Benedict. 1991, Imagined Communities, London: Verso, Chapter 1, pp. 1-9, Chapter 2, pp. 9-36. Geyer, Michael. 2002 “There is a land Where Everything is Pure: Its Name is Land of Death”: Some Observations on Catastrophic Nationalism. In Sacrifice and National Belonging in Twentieth-Century Germany, Eghigian and Berg (eds.), pp. 118-147. Recommended:
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