Byung-Chul Han is a Professor of Philosophy and Cultural Studies at Berlin’s University of the Arts. His The Disappearance of Rituals: A Typology of the Present, tr. Daniel Steuer (Polity Press, 2020) is a short but complex critique of our contemporary « symbol-poor, » neoliberal, narcissistic, commodified, consumerist culture. For Han, « rituals serve as a background against which our present times may be seen to stand ot more clearly. » For Han, « rituals are symbolic acts, » that « bring forth a community without communication, » in contrast to which today « communication without community prevails. » Rituals « stabilize life, » through « their self-sameness, their repetitiveness. » Rituals « bring people together and create an alliance, a wholeness, a community. »
Han is particularly critical of the contemporary cult of authenticity., which he calls a « compulsion » which « leads to narcissistic introspection, a permanent occupation with one’s own psychology. » When « ritual gestures and manners decay, affect and emotion gain the upper hand. » Hence, « narcissistic disorders are on the rise because we are increasingly losing the ability to conduct social interactions outside the boundaries of the self. »
Rituals are not exclusively or uniquely religious, but religious rituals and their heightened form in religious festivals have obviously been a prominent part of human ritual experience. He examines, for example, the religious institution of the Sabbath; « when we subordinate rest to work, we ignore the divine. » The silence of the Sabbath « gives rise to listening. It is accompanied by a special receptivity, by a deep contemplative attentiveness. Today’s compulsion of communication means that we can close neither our eyes nor our mouths. It desecrates life. » Unlike traditional religious festivals, « today’s popular festivals have become mass events, and masses are not communities. » he contrasts capitalism with religion. « Money, by itself, has an individualizing and isolating effect. It increases my individual freedom by liberating me from any personal bond with others. »
Han challenges the prevailing conceit that modernity has been liberatory. Sketching what he calls a « genealogy » of rituals’ disappearance, he pointedly interpret that disappearance as not « an emancipatory process. » Our impolite society, it appears, has become a brutalized one. Han is hardly the first critic to make this case, although he does so in a very distinctive manner. His claims are quite sweeping, especially given the shortness of the book. Nor is it completely clear how, if at all, we can emerge from our present malaise. He explicitly eschews nostalgia and introduces his book by saying it « is not animated by a return to ritual. » yet obviously he is somehow trying to point the way toward the recovery of a shared dwelling in our divided world.
