EMBODIMENT

Catherine Bell

The Field

In ritual studies embodiment may mean many things. While it con-sistently signáis extra theoretical attention to physical human presence,the passive form of this term can imply a submissive imprinting ormolding of this physical iclentity, even the anachronous image ofcaging consciousness in brute physicality. Perhaps for these reasons,ritual studies does not restrict itself to this term in order to give atten-tion to the body. And many theories of the body have flourished overthe last few decades. While there was no lack of attention to thebody in cultural theory throughout the twentieth century, the pub-lication in 1989 of the lovely and provocative Zone volumes, Fragmentsfor a History of the Human Body, signaled something of a high watermark in the new wave of attention.1 Studies of the body and ritual,however, have been far fewer, although general interest in the bodyhas undoubtedly nurtured ritual studies in general.

Writing in 1992, I suggested the leading roles of anthropology andgender studies in this new attention to the body.2 A decade later, itis easier to appreciate more fully the contributions of other disciplines,notably sociology, philosophy, and critical theory. Although most dis-ciplines still pursue fairly distinct theoretical agendas, they all tendto encounter some versión of the so-called Cartesian mind-body prob-lem and therefore seek to propound an expanded view of the bodythat attempts to overeóme this culturally embedded dichotomy. Thesame analytic attraction to the body appears in other less-expectedáreas. In the history of science and even nursing theoiy, for example,the language of embodiment redefines body and mind in terms ofa more authentic holism.3 Other sciences of the 'embodied mind'

1 M. Feher, Fragmente for a Híslory of the Human Body, I-III (London, 1989).1 Bell 1992, 94.:i C. Lawrence and S. Shapin (eds), Science Incarnate. Historical Embodiments of .Natural

Krvntiledge (Chicago, 1997); M.H. Wilde, "VVhy Embodiment Now?" Adsances in NursingScience 22 (1999), 25-38.

534 CATHERINE BELL EMBODIMENT 535

and the 'mindful body' have also provided terminology and furtherÍmpetus to this wave of interest.4 In this environrnent, even a widelyused concept like 'internalízation' is more carefully analyzed thanever before.3

The study of ritual is one place where scholarship on the bodyfrom many of these disciplines is likely to come together. These cross-disciplinary resources are a source of strength for ritual theory, butthey may also contribute to its continued marginality in an era inwhich disciplinary boundaries are still surprisingly robust. Nonetheless,a number of theoretical camps are contributing most directly toanalyses of ritual practices. There are, first of all, the gender analy-ses of critical theorists such as Juclith Butler or historians such asCaroline W. Bynum.6 Sociologists, led by Bryan S. Turner, areresponsible for a particularly sustained disciplinary inquiry, althoughTurner himself continúes to argüe that a more coherent researchagenda is needed for the field. Published in 1984, the first editionof Turner's Body and Society can be credited vvith bringing the bodyinto the center of sociological parlance.7 Several valuable reviewessays in sociology provide a broad introduction to the new empha-sis to 'body' theory in general. Turner's "Introduction. The Embodi-ment of Social Theory" in the second edition of Body and Societydistinguishes major approaches and research áreas,8 while ArthurFrank creatively analyzes work on the body in a number of fields.9

The lead essays by Turner ("Recent Developments in the Theoryof the Bocly") and Frank ("For a Sociology of the Body. An AnalyticReview") in The Body. Social Process and Cultural Theory are probably

4 F.J. Várela, E. Thompson, and E. Rosch, The Embodied Mina. Cognitive Scienceand Human Expeliente (Cambridge, Mass., 1991); N. Scheper-Hughes and M.M. Lock,"The Mindful Body. A Prolegomena to Future Work in Medical Anthropology",Medical Anthropology Quarterly n.s. 1 (1987), 6—41.

0 A.M. Gade, "Taste, Talent, and the Problem of Internalízation. A Qur'anicStudy in Religious Musicality from Southeast Asia", Histmy of Religions 41 (2002),328-368.

6 J. Butler, Bodies that Matter. On the Discurswe Lánits of 'Sex (New York, 1993);C.W. Bynum, Holy Feasl and Holy Fast. Tfie Religious Signifícame of Food to MedievalWomen (Berkeley, 1987).

7 B.S. Turner, The Body and Society. E-cfilorations in Social Tluory (Thousand Oaks,1984; 2d ed., 1996).

8 B.S. Turner, The Body and Society, 1-36.9 A.W. Frank, "Bringing Bodies Back in. A Decade Review", Themj, Culture &

Society 7 (1990), 131-162. '

the best place to begin any investigation into literature on the body.10

As another rich source of theory, anthropological attention to thebody builds on a long tradition loosely anchored in the work of RobertHertz, followed by Victor W. Turner, Mary Douglas, Fierre Bourdieu,Jean Comaroff, and Talal Asad, among others. In a recent work,Thomas J. Gsordas analyzes the ritual healing practices of Gatholiccharismatics, specifically arguing that embodiment provides a newtheoretical paradigm for anthropology." In cognitive studies, under-stood as both philosophy and empirical psychology, the work ofGeorge Lakoff and Mark Johnson continúes to attract the attentionof ritual scholars.12 From their Metaphors We Live By to their mostrecent collaboration, Philosophy in the Flesk,13 Lakoff and Johnson havedeveloped a model of cognition fully rooted in the body that effectivelybreaks free of the classical model of a body-free mind and the mod-emist understanding of objectivism. Another distínct cognitíve approach,one very much interested in analyzing religious ritual in order toexplain the 'architecture of Homo religiosus' is developed in two worksby Robert N. McCauley and E. Thomas Lawson.'4 Francisco Várelaand his colleagues have also forged a 'cognitive science' able toexplore the bodily experience of meditation and Buddhist notions ofself.15 Most recently, philosophers have entered the conversation onthe body and ritual, drawing on Maurice Merleau-Ponty among oth-ers, to suggest the resources of philosophy for analyzing the "howrituals embody the practical wisdom" of those who perform them.16

Scholars of religión usually address the body by investigating thecosmologies thought to be embodied or projected through religiouspractices. For almost a decade, Lawrence Sullivan was an isolated

10 See B.S. Turner, "Recent Developments in the Theoiy of the Body"; A.W. Frank,"For a Sociology of the Body. An Analytic Review", M. Featherstone, M. Hepworth,and B.S. Turner (eds), The Body. Social Process and Cultural Themy (Thousand Oaks,1991), 1-35 and 36-102, respectively.

" TJ. Csordas, "Embodiment as a Paradigm for Anthropology", Étimos 18 (1990),5-87.

12 Bell 1992; Frankiel 2001.13 G. Lakoff and M. Johnson, Metaphors We Une By (Chicago, 1980); G. Lakoff

and M. Johnson, Pkilosaphy in the Flesh. The Embodied Mind and its Challenge to WesternThought (New York, 1999).

14 ' Lawson and McCauley 1990; McCauley and Lawson 2002.13 Várela, Thompson, and Rosch, The Embodied Mind.16 See N. Crossley, "Ritual, Body Techniques, and (Inter)subjectivity", K. Schilbrack

(ed.), Thinkmg Througfi Rituals. Philosoplncal Perspectives (London, 2004).

536 CATHER:NE BELL

voice until joined by William LaFleur's surnmary analysis of theimportance of the category to the field in Critical Terms for RdigwnsStudies}1 Two edited volurnes, Sarah Coakley's Religión and the Bodyand Jane Marie Law's Religious Reflections on the Body, did much toconsolídate the religious studies focus, with broad attention to thevvork of Bryan Turner and Talal Asad, while still offering primarilydiscrete studies of single religious traditions.18 Yet the culturally specificapproach of Thomas Kasulis's 'self as body' in Asia is often citedas a useful model for this form of attention.1!) Philip A. Mellor andChris Shilling's Re-forming the Body. Religión, Commumty and Modernity,vvhich draws heavily on Durkheim to analyze 'somatic experience ofthe sacred' is an example of increasingly complex analyses of body,society, and sacrality.20

An important if muted influence on understandings of the bodyand embodiment comes frorn a diverse group of writers attemptingto describe the body in pain,21 the medicalized body,22 the disabledbody,23 and the relentlessly physical determinants of consciousness.24

Turner's work in medical sociology addresses the construction ofbodies by the various means of social control (often said to be rit-ualized) wielded by medical authorities.25

Towering above all of these theoretical camps is the figure ofMichel Foucault, whose final project, the study of modern sexuality

17 Sullivan 1986; L.E. Sullivan "Body Works. Knowledge of the Body in theStudy of Religión", Hístory of Religions 30 (1990), 86-99; W.R. LaFletir, "Body",M.C. Taylor (ed.), Critical Terms for Religious Studies (Chicago, 1998), 36-54.

18 S. Coakley (ed.), Religión and the Body (Cambridge, 1997); J.M. Law (ed.), ReligiousReflections on the Body (Bloomington, 1995).

19 T.P. Kasulis with R.T. Ames and W. Dissanayake, Self as Body in Asían Tlieoryand Practice (The Body in Culture, History, and Religión; Albany, 1993).

20 P.A. Mellor and C. Shüling, Re-forming the Body. Religión, Commumty, and Modermty(Theory, Culture, and Society; Thousand Oaks, 1997), 1-3.

21 E. Scarry, The Body in Pain. The Making and Unmaking of the World (New York,1985).

22 A.W. Frank, At the Will of tile Body. Reflections on Illness (Boston, 1981; 2d ed.,2002); A. KJeinman, The Illness Narratiues. Suffering, Healing, and the Human Condition(New York, 1988).

23 S.V. Betcher, "Rehabilitating Religious Discourse. Bringing Disability Studiesto the Theological Venue", Reltgious Studies Remew 27 (2001), 341-348.

M Frank, At the Will of the Body; Kleinman, The Illness Narrativa; D.T. Mitchelland S.L. Synder (eds), The Body and Physical Difference. Discourses of Disabihly vi theHumanities (Ann Arbor, 1997); O.W. Sacks, The Man \>Vho Mistook His Wife for a Hatand Other Climcal Tales (New York, 1985).

25 B.S. Turner, Regulating Bodies. Essays m Medical Sociology (London, 1992); B.S.Turner, Medical Power and Social Knowledge (London, 1987; 2d ed., 1995).

EMBODIMENT 537

and the techniques of the self, is invoked by nearly every authorand every discipline. Foucault set out "to investígate those practiceswith which individuáis act on their own bodies, souls, thoughts, con-duct, and way of being in order to transform themselves and attaina certain state of perfection or happiness".26 He demonstrated that"to write the history of feelings, behavior and the body" it is nec-essary to map the mechanisms of power and domination—domina-tion from without, as seen in his study of the clinic and the prison,and domination from within, addressed in his study of sexuality asthe locus for the self-awareness of the modern individual.27 In a dis-cussion of embodiment per se, Turner aptly characterizes the shiftthat Foucault brought to the study of the body. For Foucault, Turnersuggests, the body is "an effect of the deeper structural arrangementsof power and knowledge" in contrast to understanding the body asa "symbol system which produces a set of metaphors by which poweris conceptualized" or as a "consequence of long-term historical changesin human society".28

Yet Foucault is a complex influence on ritual studies. His analy-sis of modern discourse on sexuality, and the sense of self that isanchored to it, are indebted to medieval rituals of confession andpenance—although these rites, as rites, are left behind for more dis-cursive 'truth games'. While Foucault's historical analysis is not nec-essarily reductive (he finds self-examination in Greek culture, not justmedieval Ghristian culture), it suggests the irrelevancy of traditionalritual in the molding of modern identity. While the specific thesesof Foucault's career have been less important perhaps than the ques-tions and methods of inquiry he articulated, these theses may leaveout much of what has dominated ritual studies so far. Still, thereare many provocad ve Foucaultian applications yet to explore, suchas an investigation of the type of truth games put into play by rit-ualized ways of acting.

26 L.H. Martín, H. Gutman, and P.H. Hutton, Technologies of the Self. A Seminarwith Michel Foucault (Amherst, 1988), 4.

" See B.S. Turner, "Recent Developments in the Theory of the Body"; Featherstone,Hepworth, and Turner (eds), The Body. Social Process and Cultural Theory, 17; Martin,Gutman, and Hutton, Technologies of the Self, 19.

-" B.S. Turner, "The Body in Western Society. Social Theory and Its Perspectives",Coakley (ed.), Religión and the Body, 15-41, here 15-16.

538 CATHERINE BELL

Theoretical Reftections on Embodiment

Two rnain concerns have led ritual theorists to turn to embodirnentand the body. The first is a straightforward concern to avoid themind-body dualism, now judged quite inadequate for representinghuman presence and activities. The second concern is to deal withhuman substantiality, usually conceptualized as a material mind-body.An occupation with this materiality may reflect the importance givento increased specificity—these people, at this place, during this time,with these histórica! understandings.29 However, materiality is alsoimportant to the pervasive argument about social constructionism socentral to most disciplines today, including ritual studies. Some stud-ies take a more or less uncomplicated view of constructionism byasking how ritual shapes the body—that is, how social practices such asthose deployed in ritual determine or construct the personal body.For this approach, ritual is only one sphere of action that "writeson the body although it is often given an analytic priority".30 Andsince this approach makes the body the object of social action, therecipient of social molding, it invokes embodiment in its passive sense.

A logical akernative approach asks how the body shapes ritual or howritual is the expressed language of the body, a médium uniquely ableto communicate messages, perform experiences, and créate environ-ments that are impossible with other media. This approach asks howritual emerges from the logic of bodily practice; the body is seen asthe subject of the action and ritual is rendered the object. In this wayof theorizing, the language of embodiment is apt to be used lessoften due its suggestion of puré receptivity. In an analogous schema,Bynum articúlales a distinction in body scholarship between approachesthat view the body as 'constrained' and those that view it as full of'potential'.31

While the first approach (ritual shapes the body) is immediatelyfamiliar from countless examples,32 the second (the body shapes rit-ual) has received less attention as a discrete approach—in part, per-haps, because it has not been identified in terms of a clear set ofquestions. While it is not surprising that the first approach is likely

29 Asad 1993.30 Bell 1992." C.W. Bynum, "Why AH the Fuss about the Body? A Medievalist's Perspective",

Crííicaí Inqmiy 22 (1995), 1-33, here 5.112 E.2., V.VV. Turner 1969.

EMBODIMENT 539

to be the focus of liberal ex-Marxists who worry about the impos-sibility of real human freedom, the second often falls to those whocast ritual and performance as inordinately positive forces in humansociety—for example, in the comparative work of Richard Schechneron the performing body33 or the more ambitious system of Roy A.Rappaport, who suggests that humanity generated ritual and reli-gión as evolutionary adaptive structures with ritual as "the social actmost basic" to human expression.34

When polarized in this way (ritual creates body or body createsritual), it is easy to see the limitations of both approaches and how theymight give rise to a more complex theory of social constructionism—one in which there is no unconstructed priority granted to either rit-ual or the body. This stance is apt to be called a discursive orperformative approach, and it is readily seen in Bourdieu's notion ofthe habitus, Foucault's Corpus of work addressing both inner (the clinicand the prison) and outer (sexuality) forms of domination, Comaroffsanalysis of the 'body of resistance' and my description of the 'ritualbody' and 'ritual mastery'.3'' Particularly interesting remarks on theissues involved in this complex constructionism are offered in JudithButler's Bodies that Matter. With her characteristic clarity, Bynumdescribes Butler's anti-essentialism as the attempt to explain how "thecategories with which we live are created by us as we live them".36

Turner, on the other hand, identifies Butler's main thesis in Bodiesthat Matter as arguing that the "materiality of sex [exists] within ahegemonic order of power which both produces and regúlales bod-ies in social space".37 In this vein the goal of most theories of ritualperformance in the last decade has been to describe a complex andmutual constructionism of bodies, practices, communities and power.38

A few studies have even attempted to do this historically.3-'

33 R. Schechner, Between Theater and AntfiTopologv (Philadelphia, 1985).' Rappaport 1999, 31.

35 P. Bourdieu, An Outhne of a Theory of Practice, trans. R. Nice (Cambridge Studiesin Social Anthropology 16; Cambridge, 1977); P. Bourdieu, The !j)gic of Practice, trans.R. Nice (Stanford, 1990); M. Foucault, Madness and Civilization, trans. R. Howard(New York, 1965); M. Foucault, Discipline and Punis/i. The Birth of the Prison, trans.A. Sheridan (New York, 1977); M. Foucault, The History of Sexuality, I-III, trans.R. Hurley (New York, 1978-1986); J. Comaroff, Body of Power, Spiril of Resistance. TheCulture and History of a South Afrícan People (Chicago, 1985); Bell 1992.

36 Bynum, "Why AH the Fuss about the Body?" 28.3/ B.S. Turner, The Body and Society, 28.18 Bell 1998.•í9 B. Lincoln, Discourse and the Constructwn of Socn'ty. Comparative Studies oj Myth,

540 CATHERINE BELL

As with Foucault, however, cultural theorists have not been par-ticularly concerned with ritual per se. For Butler ritual is simply amatter of repeatable social conventions. In both Bodies that Matter andExcitable Speech, she refers to 'ritualized repetitíons' and characterizeskneeling in prayer as a 'ritualized repetition of conventíon'—for vvhichshe explicitly invokes John L. Austin's theory of the necessity ofrepeatability to language-as-social convention.40 Amy Hollywood pointsout the importance of repetition to how critical theorists, generallynot concerned with ritual, analyze the performative construction ofself, act, or gender.41 Emphasizing repetition can link the analysis ofritual to the more provocative critical theorists, but ritual studieshave long determined ritual to be much more than repeatable acts.

One of the challenges that lie ahead for the study of ritual becomesapparent from Hollywood's analysis. Ritual theorists must make useof the tools provided by critical theory, without which the study ofritual is apt to remain somewhat marginal, dated by simplistic the-ories of constructionism, and even prone to new theological assump-tíons. But we need to use care and imaginatíon in adopting critical toolsthat emerged in a secular culture of few rites and disdained con-ventions. These tools are very effective in representing many culturalpractices, but so far have been quite unable to see the constructionof cosmos, self, and power in the formal and informal rituals thatare still importan! aspects of the modern—and postmodern—world.

Rites with and without Bodies

Scholarship on embodiment, in all formulations of that concept, nowhas a constant stream of analytic ethnographies to digest. To cite arecent and curious example, Mathew N. Schmalz's account of themiracle-working child, Audrey Santo, draws attention to how a bodyimmobilized and silenced by coma becomes the iconic focus of intensedevotion—and múltiple interpretive frameworks.42 Less dramatically,

Ritual, and Classification (New York, 1989); E. Muir, Ritual in Early Modern Europe(Cambridge, 1997); P.C. Johnson, Secrets, Gossip, and Gods. The Transjomiation ofBrazitianCandomblé (New York, 2002).

110 Butler, Bodies that Matter, x, 2, 10; J. Butler, Excitable Speech. A Politics of the Per-formative (New York, 1997), 25, 148, 152, 165 n. 3.

41 Hollywood 2002.42 M.N. Schmalz, "The Silent Body of Audrey Santo", Histoiy of Religions 42

(2002), 116-142.

EMBODIMENT 541

more ordinary ritual routines become visible with a focus on thebody. In mis vein I arn exploring severa! forms of ritualization thatlurk on the margins of most notions of ritual. One form might becalled tending practices, or even grazing rites to be more glib, andincludes such simple routines as lighting votive candles, feeding thedeity in the local shrine, or tending to the orientation of New Agestones. These activities are, of course, particularly ubiquitous and fluid.As acts ritualized by repetition and the simplified evocation of moreelabórate ritual patterns in the culture, such rites hover on the blurryboundary between formal religión and informal domesticity. Perhapswhen formal religious rituals are being culturally abandoned, limitedto a few special events, or simply out of reach for non-official per-sonnel, tending rites can contribute to the construction of a self thatis orientated and ordered, fortified—yet also subdued. If so, theymay go to the very heart of ritualization as the bodily constructionof a social self.

Also on the margins of most notions of ritual would be manyforms of physical exercise, such as the meditativa excrcises of theChinese-based organization, the Falungong. Their prescribed routinesare said to be simply good for one's health, but organization pub-lications also describe them as cultivating more esoteric forms of spir-itual growth and power. The rubric of physical exercise for the healthof the body may serve as a relatively safe language for activities thatare in effect constructing a self quietly if relentlessly resistant to arepressive political regime. From another perspective, Falungong prac-tices for enhancing the flow of qi (chi) may also be effective in defininga body-identity more adapted to the rhythms and perils of the new-sprung capitalist economy.43 For these examples, both Susan Sontag'sclassic Illness as Metaphor** and William H. McNeill's lively KeepingTogether in Time. Dance and Drill in Human History^ continué to sug-gest many points of reflection.

Some recent events have raised the question of rites and bodiesin a compelling manner. In the wake of the destruction of the WorldTrade Center in New York City on September 11, 2001, there were

w C. Bell, "Kórperliche Übung, Ritual und politische Abvveichung. Dic FalúnGong", C. Wulf and J. Zirfas (eds), Die Kultur des Rituals (München, 2004), 237-246.

44 S. Sontag, Illness as Metaphor (New York, 1978).45 W.H. McNeill, Keeping Together in Time. Dance and Drill in Human Histarv (Cambridge,

Mass., 1995).

542 CATHERINE BELL

painstaking efforts to devise appropriate rites of mourning, both forshort-term grief and long-term remembrance. Yet the families ofthose killed regularly voiced the added anguish of having no bodiesto bury. Recovery of the body is the proof needed by the heart thata loved one is nally dead. Without the body emotional closure isdifficult despite the performance of repeated final rites of passage.46

There are, of course, many funeral rites that do not expect to havebodies, most notably military rites for soldiers killed in foreignbattlefields or ships lost at sea. Increasingly, however, Euro-Americansociety has gone to great effort to retrieve bodies. Taking cues fromboth public opinión and the distinct esprit d'corps of the modern armedforces, the military has made a point of bringing back bodies evenat a high degree of risk to the living. Those missing in action in theKorean War far out number the missing of the Vietnam War, pri-marily due to the efforts at recovery after the latter conflict. Thecurrent ethos suggests that a nation may have a right to a soldier'sservice, but the termination of that service by death means that hisor her physical person has a right to return to the family. Similarly,when passenger planes go down at sea, airline companies hurry tobring family members as cióse to the crash site as possible. Televisedimages of ocean maps and flowers cast on the water mark, in ourimaginations, the reassuring location of the dead. There is a bodyresting there.

A funeral without a body may need to rely more heavily on themeaning systems, the plausibility systems to use Peter Berger's term,provided by religious belief (celebration of the soul's passage) ornationalism (hero language for the firemen and others killed at theWorld Trade Towers and Pentagon). If such meaning systems are nolonger very socially effective, funeral rites without a body risk makingall too clear an unnerving fact—that rites are primarily for the living,not for the benefit of the dead. Some families found the funeral ritesa cause of greater grief since their emphasis on the mourners under-mined any sense that the family could facilitate the deceased's pas-sage into a new spiritual life. What can be done for the personwhose body is beyond any loving touch? Yet ritualization is a verycreative activity. A rite without a body must, by eulogy or gesture

46 See, e.g., D. Barry, "For One 9/11 Family, Five Waves of Grief", New TorkTimes, September 10, 2003, Scction A, 1 and 20.

EMBODIMENT 543

or metonymic associaüon, créate a type of body that can be mourned,fondled by grief, and then laid very clearly to rest. Perhaps as mod-ern selfhood comes to be lodged more than ever in the material andcorporeal, rites will become more explicitly about bodies.