What is the place and power of rituals today? On its 30th<\/sup> anniversary, Culture & D\u00e9mocratie<\/em> devotes a second issue to rituals and their benefits as fictions that \u2018reinforce a culture of the commons\u2019.<\/p>\n The issue presents a startling array of rituals. Although rituals are not intrinsically positive \u2013 they can also be used to conjure illiberalism and hate \u2013 the forms of this secular magic described are benevolent. As collective practices, they stress the need for a culture of the commons, and for change based on \u2018collective intelligence, DNA of democracy\u2019.<\/p>\n In the past, rituals \u2018mobilized symbolism to represent the irrepresentable\u2019, writes Pierre Hemptinne. <\/em>They were a tool to grasp what escaped us, to confront what we couldn\u2019t master and need protection from.<\/p>\n But in the present, humankind is suffering \u2018the consequences of a large-scale rejection of the irrepresentable\u2019, a product of \u2018capitalism\u2019s rational materialism\u2019. Cut off from the invisible and the immaterial, we are left in a state of eco-anxiety, ill-prepared to navigate a menacing future.<\/p>\n The conditions are ripe for creating new knowledge, beliefs and stories to guide us towards \u2018unprecedented solutions\u2019. But for these to take root, some kind of ceremony is needed: \u2018rituals that intertwine the energies, convictions, hopes, knowledge and know-how of all people.\u2019<\/p>\n Jay Jordan writes about the fight to defend a rural commune in western France, Notre-Dame-des-Landes, from being developed into an airport. In the 1970s, farmers there had refused to sell their land to the state, but the planners pushed ahead. By 2008, some land and buildings had been left empty. A handful of activists settled there, and the zone \u00e0 d\u00e9fendre <\/em>(ZAD) was born.<\/p>\n Each time the ZAD community was threatened with expulsion, tens of thousands of supporters would show up to blockade the site. In February 2016, sixty thousand people partied on the stretch of motorway where the bulldozers were meant to start digging. \u2018These actions worked like rituals, spells to build the collective energy and focus it on a clear intention: preventing the expulsions.\u2019<\/p>\n The government eventually ceded but, out of spite, sent in police, helicopters and tanks to destroy the ZAD. Abandoning the site and accepting the state\u2019s conditions led to rifts and conflict among the activists.<\/p>\n A year later, in 2019, Jordan and three others set out to use \u2018the power of ritual as a tool of \u2018care\u2019 for their community\u2019. With giant puppets, songs and fire the group acted out the defeat of the riot police and the mending of the community\u2019s heart \u2013 rituals that \u2018anchored the community by giving it strength and shared intentions, and contributing to the development of a common story and imaginary\u2019.<\/p>\n In the 1990s, the power of rituals was harnessed by the queer community through \u2018artivism\u2019. This new form of protest emerged in response to the AIDS epidemic and the accompanying wave of homophobia, which constrained traditional political action. Antoine Pickels explores the tactics of this \u2018often symbolic and ritualized\u2019 activist performance art and asks what new strategies it can inspire.<\/p>\n Seeking maximum impact, artivism combined performance art, advertising language, and visual media, drawing on Pop Art and the camp aesthetic. Some of it was disruptive, \u2018playing on provocation and scandal\u2019. It was also necessarily theatrical: at risk of social stigmatization, participants often preferred to conceal their identity; and given their small number, \u2018they had to play on the symbolic and use images to make themselves visible\u2019.<\/p>\n Actions included \u2018die-ins\u2019 (bodies stretched on the floor, playing dead) and \u2018kiss-ins\u2019 (people kissing on the mouth in public to remind onlookers that the virus isn\u2019t transmitted through saliva). The performances \u2018played endlessly with the theme of death\u2019 but worked more like incantations to ward it off rather than acts of mourning. For some, these actions functioned as \u2018a release\u2019, others found \u2018a feeling of still being alive<\/em>\u2019 when death was closing in. Some survivors have said that it helped them \u2018to fight the illness better, or to live with it in a less defeatist manner\u2019.<\/p>\n In recent years, \u2018guided by other urgencies\u2019, artivism has spread. From armies of clowns marching against globalization to the \u2018standing man\u2019 protesting state and police violence in Istanbul, its performative dimensions have lent power to their actions.<\/p>\n Virginie Fizaine makes a case for using rituals to recreate lost bonds with nature. A former professor and bookseller, she now grows medicinal plants in Anderlecht, Belgium, which she uses to make tea, \u2018returning to the ancestral practices of women considered sorceresses.\u2019 Her farming practices, a mixture of biointensive agriculture and permaculture, respect the environment, following the rhythms of the seasons and the cycles of the earth.<\/p>\n Working outdoors in harmony with the natural world, she discovered better physical and mental health. Since 2020 she has run ritual celebrations, the \u2018Sorceress Cycles\u2019, to enable others, trapped in the \u2018modern rhythms\u2019 of life, to reconnect with themselves and nature.<\/p>\n \u2018Our increasingly materialist society is now devoid of the kinds of rites and rituals that exist in many religions.\u2019 But, she writes, these have \u2018the power to create in us and with regard to others a sense of trust and stability\u2019 at a time when patriarchy and capitalism have fragmented society and wreaked havoc on our planet. This reconnection is essential: \u2018Our health, and that of the planet, depend on it.\u2019<\/p>\n Published in cooperation with CAIRN International Edition. <\/a><\/em><\/i>Review by Cadenza Academic Translations<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.eurozine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/CultureetDemocratie22023-1024x768.jpg\")
<\/p>\nRituals and rationalism<\/h2>\n
Activism<\/h2>\n
Artivism<\/h2>\n
Reconnecting rituals<\/h2>\n
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