From the Footnotes

I’ve been thinking about the critical comparative study of scriptures and ritual studies. Despite a lot of overlap in bibliography and documented collegial exchanges, there’s less explicit discussions of “scriptures” and “ritual” than one may expect. This got me reading around about why one gets privileged over the other—rather than discussed in tandem—in scholarly accounts.

Anyway, I came across an interesting footnote that names some exceptions the rule here.

Many scholars, in particular, are likely to resist the notion that textual interpretation should be considered a form of ritual. But J.Z. SMith’s defintion of ritual as detailed attention to ordinary activities describes rather well the practices of academic interpolation. Scholarly exegesis tends to be rule-bound and requires explicit location within particular traditions of interpretation, and its expression in conference papers and journal articles tends to take the form of highly formalized performances—all characteristic features of ritualized activities as described by [Catherine] Bell.”

James W. Watts, Footnote 5 in “Three Dimensions of Scriptures,” Iconic Books & Texts, ed. James W. Watts (Equinox 2015 [2006]), 18.

In Conversation With…

Catherine Bell, Ritual Theory and Ritual Practice (Oxford University Press).

Jonathan Z. Smith, To Take Place: Toward Theory in Ritual (University of Chicago Press 1987).

*I am hoping that I left the Bell book at the office and didn’t lend it out. If the latter, it’s almost certainly never coming back—though there are worse books to repurchase.