scholarly journals Revolution as Event: Ritual, Violence, and Transformation

2020 ◽  
pp. 18-40
Keyword(s):  
Ritual Violence

On Sacrifice

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Moshe Halbertal
Keyword(s):  
Ethical Life ◽  
Moral Value ◽  
Hierarchical Relationship ◽  
Ritual Violence ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
Political Ideal ◽  
Self Transcendence ◽  
Political Associations ◽  
The Relationship

The idea and practice of sacrifice play a profound role in religion, ethics, and politics. This book explores the meaning and implications of sacrifice, developing a theory of sacrifice as an offering and examining the relationship between sacrifice, ritual, violence, and love. The book also looks at the place of self-sacrifice within ethical life and at the complex role of sacrifice as both a noble and destructive political ideal. In the religious domain, Halbertal argues, sacrifice is an offering, a gift given in the context of a hierarchical relationship. As such it is vulnerable to rejection, a trauma at the root of both ritual and violence. An offering is also an ambiguous gesture torn between a genuine expression of gratitude and love and an instrument of exchange, a tension that haunts the practice of sacrifice. In the moral and political domains, sacrifice is tied to the idea of self-transcendence, in which an individual sacrifices his or her self-interest for the sake of higher values and commitments. While self-sacrifice has great potential moral value, it can also be used to justify the most brutal acts. The book attempts to unravel the relationship between self-sacrifice and violence, arguing that misguided self-sacrifice is far more problematic than exaggerated self-love. Through the book's exploration of the positive and negative dimensions of self-sacrifice, it also addresses the role of past sacrifice in obligating future generations and in creating a bond for political associations, and considers the function of the modern state as a sacrificial community.

Social and ritual violence and death

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dennis Harding
Keyword(s):  
United Kingdom ◽  
Temporal Bone ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Adult Male ◽  
Arrow Head ◽  
Physical Trauma ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Literary Sources ◽  
Ritual Violence ◽  
Default Position

In recent years the issue of violence in Iron Age society has become polarized between those who believe that it was endemic and those who believe that it has been exaggerated, particularly by conventional stereotypes of ‘warrior Celts’ based on classical and Irish literary sources. Currently, the ‘postprocessual consensus that dominates academic archaeology in the United Kingdom retains, as its default position, a more or less pacifist view of the prehistoric past’ (Armit, 2011: 503). The conventional interpretation of ‘war cemeteries’ and ‘massacre sites’ in hillforts especially may have been unduly simplistic, and it is these therefore that we shall consider first. The archetypal Iron Age war cemetery was that excavated by Wheeler (1943) in the eastern entrance at Maiden Castle, Dorset, where several skeletons bore traces of physical trauma compatible with the sack of the hillfort by Vespasian’s Second Augustan legion. An adult male in grave P7A had an iron arrow-head buried in his spine, and another adult male in grave P7 had a small, square perforation through the left temporal bone, consistent with a Roman ballista bolt. In some instances there were multiple injuries, notably skeleton P12 whose skull bore at least nine sword cuts, a measure of ‘overkill’ that reflected either the ferocity of the attack or systematic degradation after death. In reviewing the physical evidence for warfare in Iron Age Britain Knüsel (2005) divided instances of weapon trauma into three principal categories, those inflicted with a sharp-bladed weapon, such as a sword, those resulting from crushing from a blunt instrument, and wounds from a weapon or missile that penetrated the skeleton. The first two are essentially the same classification as those offered by Wheeler (1943: 351) for the Maiden Castle war cemetery. He too had raised the question whether the peri-mortem injuries apparent on some of the victims were the cause of death, or were inflicted after death.

The Social Dimensions of Ritual Violence

2019 ◽  
pp. 95-106
Author(s):  
Saul M. Olyan
Keyword(s):  
Social Relationships ◽  
Biblical Text ◽  
Social Dimensions ◽  
Primary Interest ◽  
The Social ◽  
Ritual Violence ◽  
The World

This chapter discusses the various ways in which violent rites might have an impact on the shaping of social relationships in the world of the biblical text. The author’s primary interest in this chapter is to illuminate how ritual violence might function to terminate, perpetuate, and even create connections between individuals, groups, or polities. Texts examined include 1 Sam 22:12–19, the story of Saul’s mercenary Doeg the Edomite’s execution of the priests of Nob; 2 Sam 10:1–5, the Ammonites’ public humiliation of David’s embassy of comforters; 2 Sam 16:5–13, the cursing, stoning, and dirt casting of Shimi the Benjaminite as David flees Jerusalem before Absalom’s army; 2 Sam 20:1–22, the execution of the rebel Sheba ben Bikri by the inhabitants of Abel Bet Maacah; and Neh 13:25, the account of Nehemiah’s violent, coercive rites targeting his intermarried opponents.

The Role of Circumstantially Dependent Rites in Ritual Violence

2019 ◽  
pp. 85-94
Author(s):  
Saul M. Olyan
Keyword(s):  
Ritual Violence ◽  
The Dead

This chapter examines a number of ritual actions whose meaning and significance are entirely dependent on the circumstances in which they occur. An agent might be depicted using such rites to cause a foe or wrongdoer injury. But texts suggest that under a different set of conditions, the very same rites can have beneficial functions not only for the agents who undertake them but also for those on whom those agents might act ritually. Circumstantially dependent rites include hair manipulation, disinterment and the movement of the remains of the dead, the burning of corpses or bones, and circumcision. Such rites contrast with other ritual acts that are portrayed as injurious to a victim under any and all circumstances (e.g., public stripping or blinding) as well as rites that always produce some kind of benefit for both agent and patient (e.g., honorable burial or clothing the naked).

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