Art • Rituel • Mémoire

1. Anthropology and history of the arts of memory

The arts of memory have been associated for a long time with the classical works of France A. Yates. However for contemporary historians, the arts of memory no longer reflect the vestiges of a « magical » conception of the world. Mary Carruthers and Lina Bolzoni, have used a perspective closer to social anthropology and suggest that the artes memorandi should instead be considered as techniques for « manufacturing» thought. These techniques then lead to a vast set of practices concerning memorization and mental imagery. In fact, studying memory always involves studying thought at work. Fieldwork has brought the existence of several different mnemonic techniques, in Oceania, in Africa and in America to the surface. Therefore the hypothesis we seek to articulate is that the logic behind memorization through images, structures a number of traditions that have until now been referred to as « oral ». The matter at hand therefore, is to reconstruct, in collaboration with historical investigations, an anthropology of the arts of memory. Western arts of memory, in their ancient but also in their medieval forms, stand out as one of the possibilities of an ideal series of cognitive techniques that lead to the establishment of a tradition.

2. Traditional Graphic Systems and Pictographies

Our approach to graphic systems and pictographic traditions is based on the conviction that they must be understood according to their context of use and not according to a semiotics reducing them to simple forerunners of writing. That is why the study of these traditions should first take into account the ritual setting in which they are always embedded. Therefore, special attention should be paid to the relationships between these graphic traditions and ritual discourses, themselves highly constrained and stabilized by poetic or rhetorical principles. However, this should not lead to a mere reduction of these graphic traditions to the ritual discourses, with which they are associated : they use their expressive potential in various ways, always beyond their apparent subjection to ritual orality.

3. Prophetic Images

Prophetic movements, in addition to the religious message they deliver, often invent images. Indeed, new techniques of expression, diffusion and argumentation are put in place in order to stabilize doctrines and ritual mechanisms. From this point of view, we will consider how actors try to associate different kinds of legitimization, discourses, iconographic configurations or graphic techniques, in order to deliver a new narrative and ritual repertoire - to what is often a culturally diversified audience. This repertoire must capture the audience’s imagination giving rise to proselytism. Therefore we want to reopen the files on prophetic movements, with a focus on the content that is diffused (rather than the circumstances under which the movements appear), in order to further our understanding of how innovation becomes tradition, or to the contrary fails to establish itself.

4. Ritual Scripts

In societies with so called “oral traditions”, writing plays an uncontested role in ritual innovation. Innovation can come in the form of an invention of a new script, or the re-appropriation of a preexisting written form. Thus, “scripturary prophetisms” often draw on an iconic use of the written word that is used above all to manifest the prophet’s charismatic authority. Scriptural ideology is far from being the reflection of immutable “magico-relgious” thought. It underlies ritual custom and is inseparable from the context that gives it its meaning. Writing is not a neutral cognitive technology that has always had the same effect everywhere; it is in fact necessarily located and grounded in a social, cultural and historical context. Script as a technology of power, as well as a technology of knowledge is intimately related to the two pilars of colonial power; religious missions and colonial administration. Ritual specialists therefore try to integrate script into their religious traditions, and through mimicry, appropriate scriptural power.

5. Images in action: objects and ritual action

The anthropology of art can not be separated from the anthropology of ritual, as Alfred Gell has clearly shown. Here we propose to study the specific social relations that agents from a society establish through the production of objects, substances and images. From this point of view, it is essential to take the artifacts’ pragmatic and performative dimensions into account. As a matter of fact the objects are not simple symbolic props. They constitute a genuine means of acting upon others, and complex mechanisms of mediation, imbued with meaning, values and specific intentionalities. The objects are attributed with agency, based on the establishment of complex identities. These identities are the result of ritual relationships and not, as it is often assumed, due to a universal anthropomorphic tendency. We must therefore try and discover the different kinds of identities that are transfered onto objects, as well as the different types of ritual relationships (authoritative, therapeutic, influencing, or identifying) that they maintain.

6. Anthropology and pragmatics

The act of speech is not only embedded within social interaction, it can also be the source, the instrument or the issue at stake. This pragmatic aspect of speech has interested anthropologists for some time, in so far as the meaning behind a proposition can be compared with an effective action. However this strong intuitive interest has not been taken completely seriously. The encounter between linguistics and anthropology raises the issue of how to define the concept of “context.” While the definition of “context” is strictly restricted to linguistic modes of expression for some, others see the necessity to widen it in order to include other forms of communication. Can we therefore imagine a style of analysis that would include the previously acquired technical knowledge of linguistic analysis, but also to take into consideration the contribution of non linguistic means of communication? How can we articulate an approach based on the identification of linguistic indications about the context, and an approach centered on the study of social modalities of interaction. And can we, through this interdisciplinary lens, take a fresh look at ritual communication?