Mock Ritual in the Modern Era

Reviews / Votes

At the heart of this lively and astute study is the vexed entwinement of ritual with ridicule. In a briskly paced series of readings of literary works from Voltaire and Diderot to Michel Houellebecq and Charlie Hebdo, McGinnis and Smyth show us that while every ritual threatens to become a parody of itself, so does even the fiercest mockery of ritual inevitably assume its own ritualistic aspect. We are as ensnared today as were the writers and philosophers of the Enlightenment, in the joke of jokes: that to laugh at high seriousness is to claim a no less risible high seriousness for ourselves. * James English, John Welsh Centennial Professor of English, University of Pennsylvania * Imbued with a wide-ranging spirit of inquiry, this book takes us through a bold review of 'mock rituals': a complex category with a double meaning. The authors pursue their topic with gusto from eighteenth century French literature to a sweeping interpretation of contemporary issues. Much food for thought is in this feast of representations of rituals. * Pamela J. Stewart and Andrew J. Strathern, co-editors of The Palgrave Handbook of Anthropological Ritual Studies * Ranging in focus from Diderot to Charlie Hebdo, McGinnis and Smyth succeed brilliantly in providing us with a new cultural hermeneutics that both reveals and transcends the limitations of traditional literary analysis, cultural anthropology, and film and media theory. This capacious book offers nothing less than a theory of virtual sacrifice-that is to say, a new theory of sacrifice. * Robert Doran, Professor of French and Comparative Literature, University of Rochester * The book is divided into an introduction, seven chapters, a summation, and a "Concluding Unscientific Postscript." It discusses the role of mockery in several, generally French, examples of cinema and literature. As the first full-length study of its kind, the book offers an insightful groundwork into mock ritual and how it can transform into genuine ritual, a beneficial source for academics discussing anything from religious practices to parody. * Rob Perry, Saint Mary's University, K'jipuktuk, Mi'km'ki - Halifax, Nova Scotia * McGinnis and Smyth define a 'mock ritual' in a way that draws from comparative anthropology and religious studies, as 'attenuated or sham rituals such as those in which a figural killing replaces a literal one, or [...] in which physical violence is replaced by ridicule'... in the wide-ranging assortment of cases studied, from Judge Judy to the film Le Diner de cons, Pierre Bourdieu's erotics of art to the controversies surrounding Charlie Hebdo's caricatures, McGinnis and Smyth consistently show that as much as rituals can be mocked, mockeries can also be ritualized. While working toward an overarching theory of ritual and mockery, McGinnis and Smyth are attentive readers, pairing ritual and performance theory to draw new conclusions even with the books we think we know well. * H-France * Expansive and illuminating work. * Madison Mainwaring, H-France Review *