20-24 septembrie 2009 - Biblioteca Metropolitana Bucuresti

600 Jan E.M. Houbenrepresentative of a functionalist approach in anthropology – implying arejection of any explanatory value of evolutionary schemes – that goes backto MALINOWSKI and RADCLIFF-BROWNE. EVANS-PRITCHARDwanted to get HUBERT’s and MAUSS’s work on the sacrifice translatedinto English not so much for its conclusions, which he finds “rather lame”,but rather because it presents “a study of the structure, or one might almostsay the grammar, of the sacrificial rite” (E.E. EVANS-PRITCHARD inHUBERT and MAUSS 1964, Foreword).2.3 The reception of the theory of meaningless ritual which STAALpresented in 1979 and 1989 can be characterized as stormy: reviewarticles and discussions appeared in which authors of various disciplinarybackgrounds try to argue against STAAL why ritual is in fact "meaningful"or, more rarely, to what extent they can agree with STAAL's view. The reasonfor the fascination with his theory can be summarized in its characterizationby Ivan STRENSKI (1991: 221): those engaged in ritual studies accordingto theories current in STAAL’s time felt: “Enough of meaning madness!”and experienced STAAL’s theory at least as a refreshment. The “meaningmadness” which STAAL seeked to evade applies here not so much (directly)to Frazer but to the intense occupation with meaning of rituals and thecorresponding neglect of their formal structure in the period immediatelypreceding STAAL’s publication. STRENSKI gives two examples of“meaning madness”: the “creative hermeneutics” of Mircea ELIADE,who “tells us he seeks meanings everywhere – ‘even when they are notthere’ ” 6 ; and the “sometimes dazzling, but often just dizzying, displayof meanings-under-every-rock symbolic analysis in the works of VictorTURNER” (STRENSKI 1991: 221). To present his move away from whathe sees as an overemphasis on meaning, Staal criticizes a contemporaryscholar such as S.J. TAMBIAH for not going far enough when showingthat “explanations in terms of meaning are inadequate” (STAAL 1989:163). TAMBIAH, as STAAL happily noticed, had started to advocate “arule-oriented approach” (ibid.). LÉVI-STRAUSS, according to STAAL,“took a similar step” in his “ ‘structuralism’ ... but it was still inextricablyconnected with semantics” (STAAL 1989: 163).STAAL refers to LÉVI-STRAUSS but fails to distinguish sharplywhere his approach is parallel with that followed by LÉVI-STRAUSS, andwhere he goes in a different direction. Since this distinction is crucial forthe project of exploring ritual grammar and morphology in the domain of6STRENSKI (1991: 221, 225) refers for this citation to ELIADE 1977: 85. I havenot yet tried to verify whether the English translation faithfully reflects the French fromwhich it was translated or the Romanian which was, in turn, at the basis of the French.