Febiana Halawa

PERFORMANCE STUDIES AND RITUAL

NPM: 116224013

INTRODUCTION

       1.1       The Background of the Research

The one overriding And underlying assumption of performance studies is that the field is open. There is no finality of performance studies, either theoretically or operationally. There are many voices, themes, opinions, methods, and subjects. Performance are actions. As a discipline, performance studies takes action very seriously in four ways. First, behavior is the “archive” extensively- in books, photographs, the archeological record, historical remains, etc. Second, artistic practice is a big part of performance studies project. Third, fieldwork as “participant observation” is a much- prized method adapted from anthropology and put to new uses. Fourth, it follows that performance studies is actively involved in social practices and advocacies.

As a method of studying performances, the relatively new discipline of performance studies is still in its formative stage. Performance studies draws on and synthesizes approaches from a wide variety of disciplines  including performing arts, social sciences, feminist, studies, gender studies, history, psychoanalysis, queer theory, semiotics, ethology, cybernetics, area, studies, media and popular culture theory, and cultural studies.

According to Barbara Kirshenblatt- Gimblett explains performance studies is “  more than a sum of its inclusions. Performance studies starts from the premise that its objects of study are not to be divide up and parceled out, medium by medium, to various other disciplines- music, dance, dramatic literature, arts by medium is arbitrary, as is the creation of fields and departments devoted to each”.

A provisional coalescence on the move, performance studies is more than the sum of its inclusions. While it might be argued that “ as an art form, performance lacks a distinctive medium” ( Carroll, 1986: 78).

The word “ritual” is first recorded in English in 1570, and came into use in the 1600s to mean “the prescribed order of performing religious services” or more particularly a book of these prescriptions. The ritual is the scripted performance of ceremonial action, usually for a perceived supernatural purpose. The ritual is a sequence of activities involving gestures, words, and objects, performed in a sequestered place, and performed according to set sequence. Ritual may be prescribed by the traditions of a community, including a religious community. Rituals are characterized by formalism, traditionalism, invariance, rule- governance, sacral symbolism and performance. The ritual include not only the various worship rites and sacraments of organized religions and cults, but also the rites of passage of certain societies, atonement and purification rites, oaths of allegiance, dedication ceremonies, coronations and presidential inaugurations, marriages and funerals, school “rush” traditions and graduations, club meetings, sports events, Halloween parties, veterans parades, Christmas shopping and more.

       1.2       The Formulation of the Problems

Research problem formulated in the following questions     :

1.      What is the performance studies?

2.      What is the ritual?

       1.3       The Purpose of the Research

The research is aimed to find the answer of the research problems. The research is purposed to describe     :

1.      The performance studies.

2.      The ritual.

CHAPTER II

DISCUSSION

      2.1.      The Performance Studies

Performance studies examines performances in two broad categories:  artistic performances and cultural performances. Artistic performances are performance marked and understood as art: solo- performance, performance art, performances of literature, theatrical storytelling, plays, and performance poetry are all example of this sort of performance. This category considers performance as an art form

Cultural performances include those events embedded in everyday life in which a culture’s values are displayed for their perpetuation: rituals such as parades, religious ceremonies, and community festivals as well as conversational storytelling, performances of social and professional roles, and individual performances of race, gender, sexuality, and class. This category considers performance as a way of studying how people move through the world as individuals, construct identity, and build community together.

Performance studies is also keenly interested in the intersection between these categories. For instance, one might study the performances of a particular culture and turn that study into a staged performance about that culture. Cultural performances influences the kinds of artistic performances that a culture creates and in turn, those artistic performances influence cultural performances. Therefore, performance studies embraces the creative process of making art as well as the critical process of analyzing performances.

Performance studies first emerged as its own field of study in the last decades of the twentieth century in formed by insight from anthropology, sociology, theatre, oral interpretation, communication studies, literary criticism, cultural studies, ethnography, folkloristic, mythological studies, and psychology.

In the science, performance as an organizing idea has been responsive not only to new modes of live action, but also science. Citing mediated performance art, Phillip Auslander (1992) takes issue with the assumption  of human agents, live bodies, and presence as organizing concepts for performance studies.

Performance studies is an interdisciplinary field that  examines performance in all it expansiveness. From theatre, dance, music, visual art, and other “framed” performances, to an individual’s actions and behaviors in everyday life; from storytelling, folklore, and blogs; to political speeches, rituals, and celebrations, performance studies analyzes “twice- behaved behavior” – that is, repeatable, embodied activies. Performance studies is distinguished by its two- fold focus on theory and practice; by its borrowings from anthropology, sociology, and cultural studies, as well as from theatre history, theory and practice; and by the global reach of its objects of study and its examples.

      2.2.      The Ritual

First, the writer will discuss about in the ritual. Ritual is a ceremony conducted according to tradition or religious communities within a particular group of people.

In the entry on ritual by Elizabeth S. Evans In The Encyclopedia of Cultural Anthropology, it is noted that “ ritual “ has slipped its original moorings in the elaboration of religious practice such that its contemporary usage in anthropology identifies “ formal, patterned, and stereotyped public performances”. (p. 1)

However defining ritual as” formal, patterned, and stereotyped public performances” does not help us to identify what might make ritual distinctive as distinguished from rotine repetitive acts to which subjects attach no heightened significance.

Robert Hertz in his study of the rituals associated with death presents explanations of death rituals based on two elements out of a possible three in each case. The three elements by which he structures the first section of contribution a une etude sur la representation collective de la mort are the body, the soul and the living. Thus an explanation for rituals deriving from fear of the corpse could be adduced from consideration of the kinds of relationshipbeing severed by death. Considering the living and the corpse, the death of an individual rents the social fabric and if the personheld a position of power may destabilise society. Considering the soul and the corpse, the physical remainder of the decaying body is an unresolved and threatening intimation of further death that serves to characterise the transition of the soul to the afterlife as gradual rather than complete and thereby implies a contagion. Considering the soul and the living, the contradiction which must be resolved is that the social personhood of the deceased still exist in the self- conceptions of the living and in the configuration of relationship networks. (p.86)

Ritual and performance provides a fascinating range of case studies about human behaviour in relation to contexts in which reality is more than that of everyday routines. It will provide essential reading for all students of social and cultural antropology, cultural studies and performance.

Turner’s influential work on ritual attempted to explain human behaviour in more animated terms than most functionalist accounts had tended to do. His solution was to attribute to ritual the potential to release humans from the structure of their quotidian life into a creative and liberating “anti structure”, or “communitas”. (1996:16)

This approach has been challenged recurrently by claims that ritual’s function is restrictive and produces conformity (Bloch, 1974:16), or that “communitas” is pervaded by political differences and competing interests. (Sallnow, 1981: 16)

CHAPTER III

CONCLUSION

Performance studies is an interdisciplinary field that  examines performance in all it expansiveness. From theatre, dance, music, visual art, and other “framed” performances, to an individual’s actions and behaviors in everyday life; from storytelling, folklore, and blogs; to political speeches, rituals, and celebrations, performance studies analyzes “twice- behaved behavior” – that is, repeatable, embodied activies. Performance studies is distinguished by its two- fold focus on theory and practice; by its borrowings from anthropology, sociology, and cultural studies, as well as from theatre history, theory and practice; and by the global reach of its objects of study and its examples.

Ritual is a ceremony conducted according to tradition or religious communities within a particular group of people.

Ritual and performance provides a fascinating range of case studies about human behaviour in relation to contexts in which reality is more than that of everyday routines.

REFERENCES

Andrew Lang (1871), Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Retrieved  January 01, 2015, from http://myth,ritual,andreligionbyAndrewLang.pdf

ARNOLD S. LEESE (1938), My Irrelevant Defence being Meditations Inside Gaol and Out on Jewish Ritual Murder, The IFL Printing & Publishing Co. : London, Retrieved November 22, 2014, from  http://www.jrbooksonline.com/PDFs/Jewish Ritual Murder JR.pdf

Douglas Ayling, What use is ritual, Retrieved  January 01, 2015, from http://whatuseisritual.pdf

Felicia Hughes- Freeland (1998), Ritual, Performance, Media, Routledge: London.

Henry Bial (2004), The Performance Studies Reader, Routledge: London, Retrieved  January 01, 2015, from http://bial-perfprmance-studies.pdf

Performance Studies: A Moving Target, Retrieved  January 01, 2015, from http://performance_studies.pdf

Richard Schechner (1977), Performance Theory, Routledge: London, Retrieved  January 01, 2015, from http://performancetheory-richardschechner(1977).pdf

Richard Schechner (2002), Performance Studies- An Introduction (Second Edition), Routledge: London.

Ritualistic Statutes (1983), p. 1, Retrieved November 22, 2014, from  http://download.cabledrum.net/wikileaks_archive/file/sigma-chi-ritual-2002.pdf

What is Performance Studies, Retrieved  January 01, 2015, from http://what-is-performance-studies.pdf