Ritual as Enunciative Praxis

Some Reflections from Katsuragi, Japan

Abstract

This article uses the concept of enunciative praxis from Paris School semiotics, showing its possible intersections with Michael Silverstein’s idea of ritualization as “dynamic figuration,” and with other anthropological theories of ritual. I explore these intersections through an analysis of ritual action in a community of ascetic practice involved in the revival of the pilgrimage to the “Sutra Mounds of the Twenty-Eight Lodges of Katsuragi” (Katsuragi no nijūhasshuku kyōzuka), a mountain area in central Japan. Following these pilgrims, we ‘walk’ through different forms of ritualization, from an informal “interaction ritual” to a highly metricalized “full-tilt ritual,” passing through examples of ritual apprenticeship involving missteps and adjustment. I argue that the concepts of enunciation and enunciative praxis offer an accurate framework to describe the metapragmatic dynamics through which social roles are performatively redefined via verbal and nonverbal semiotic acts. Finally, by looking at the way notions of personhood, subjectivity, sacred language, and the cosmos are conceptualized by members of this ascetic group, I show how an impersonal and diagrammatic conception of enunciation—what I would like to call, after Marshall Sahlins, metapersonal enunciation—best fits the world-remaking rituals enacted by these ascetic practitioners.