CHAPTER 1

§ Passions:"An Oblique Offering"

Let us imagine a scholar. A specialist in ritual analysis, he seizesupon this work, assuming that someone has not presented himwith it (something we will never know). At any rate, he makesquite a thing of it, believing he can recognize in it the ritualizedunfolding of a ceremony, or even a liturgy, and this becomes atheme, an object of analysis for him. Ritual, to be sure, does notdefine a field. There is ritual everywhere. Without it, there wouldbe no society, no institutions, no history. Anyone can specialize inthe analysis of rituals; it is not therefore a specialty. This scholar, letus call him an analyst, may also be, for example, a sociologist, ananthropologist, a historian, whatever you prefer, an art critic or aliterary critic, perhaps even a philosopher. You or me. Throughexperience and more or less spontaneously, each of us can to somedegree play the part of an analyst or critic of rituals; no one refrainsfrom it. Moreover, to play a role in this work, to play a role whereverit may be, one must at the same time be inscribed in the logic ofritual and, precisely so as to perform properly in it, to avoidmistakes and transgressions, one must to some extent be able toanalyze it. One must understand its norms and interpret the rulesof its functioning.

Between the actor and the analyst, whatever the distance ordifferences may be, the boundary therefore appears uncertain.Always permeable. It must even be crossed at some point not onlyfor there to be analysis at all but also for behavior to be appropriateand ritualized normally.

But a "critical reader" would quite properly object that not allanalyses are equivalent. Is there not an essential difference between,on the one hand, the analysis of him or her who, in order toparticipate properly in a ritual, must understand its norms, and ananalysis which, instead of aligning itself with the ritual, tries toexplain it, to "objectify" it, to give an account of its principle and ofits purpose? A critical difference, to be exact? Perhaps, but what is acritical difference? Because in the end if he is to analyze, read, orinterpret, the participant must also maintain a certain criticalposition. And in a certain manner, an "objectifying" position. Evenif his activity is often close to passivity, if not passion, the participantgoes on to critical and criteriological acts: a vigilant discriminationis required from whoever, in one capacity or another, becomesan interested party in the ritual process (the agent, thebeneficiary, the priest, the sacrificer, the property man, and eventhe excluded, the victim, the villain or the pharmakos, who may bethe offering itself, because the offering is never a simple thing, butalready a discourse, at least the possibility of a discourse, putting asymbolicity to work). The participant must make choices, distinguish,differentiate, evaluate. He must operate according tosome krinein. Even the "spectator," here the reader, in the volumeor outside the volume, finds himself in the same situation in thisregard. Instead of opposing critique to noncritique, instead ofchoosing or deciding between critique and noncritique, objectivityand its contrary, it would be necessary, then, both to mark thedifferences between the critiques and to situate the noncritical in aplace which would no longer be opposed to, nor even perhapsexterior to, critique. Critique and noncritique are surely not identical,but, deep down, they may remain the same. In any case, theyparticipate in the same.

I

Let us then imagine this work being proposed (delivered, offered,given) to a reader-analyst concerned with objectivity. Thisanalyst may be among us: any recipient or sender of this book. Wecan imagine that without making available an unlimited credit tosuch a reader. At any rate the analyst (I choose this word, of course,with the use that Poe made of it in mind) would be sure, perhapsrashly, that he had come across the coded unfolding of a ceremony,an unfolding both foreseeable and prescribed. Ceremony is doubtlessthe most precise and the richest word to bring together all theaspects [traits] of the event. How could I, then, how could you,how could we, how could they, not be ceremonious? What preciselyis the subject of a ceremony?

But it is here in the description and the analysis of ritual, indeciphering it or, if you prefer, in reading it, that a difficultysuddenly arises, a sort of dysfunctioning, what could be called acrisis. In short, a critical moment. Perhaps it would affect the veryunfolding of the symbolic process.

What crisis? Was it foreseeable or unforeseeable? And what if thecrisis even concerned the very concept of crisis or of critique?

Some philosophers have got together or have been gatheredtogether by academic and editorial procedures familiar to us. Let usemphasize the critical determination (impossible because open,open to you, precisely) of this personal pronoun: who is "us," whoare we precisely? These philosophers, university academics fromdifferent countries, are known and nearly all know each other (herewould follow a detailed description of each of them, of their typeand of their singularity, of their sexual allegiance—only one woman—of their national affiliation, of their socio-academic status, oftheir past, their publications, their interests, etc.). So, on theinitiative of one of them, who cannot be just any one and issomeone whose interests are certainly not uninteresting, theyagreed to get together and participate in a volume whose focus(relatively determinate, thus indeterminate, one could say secret upto a certain point—and the crisis remains too open to merit thename of crisis yet) will be such and such (relatively determined,etc., relatively identifiable, in principle, by his work, his publications,his proper name, his signatures, "signatures" being perhapsbest left in the plural, because it is impossible, at the outset, andeven if legal, illegitimate, to preclude their multiplicity). If a criticaldifficulty arises in this case, one likely—but this is not yet certain—toput in difficulty the programmes of ritual or of its analysis, itdoes not necessarily have to do with the content, the theses, thepositive or negative evaluations, most often infinitely overdetermined.It need not, in short, concern the quality of the discourse ofthis or that person, what they translate, or what they make of theirrelation to the title, to the pretext, or to the object of the book. Thecritical difficulty concerns the fact that it has been thought necessaryto ask, propose, or offer (for reasons which it is possible toanalyze) to the supposed signatory of the texts which are the focusof the book ("me," surely?) the opportunity of intervening, as theysay, of "contributing," which...