Margo Kitts

Contemporary discussions of the link between religion and violence are plagued by the contested nature of the terms. This essay summarizes some problems of definition and scope for those terms, and then introduces the four studies and postscript that follow. The four studies theorize and contextualize violent acts and religious rhetoric in today’s India and the Democratic Republic of Congo, in the 1920s United States, and in fifteenth century Morocco. The postscript identifies a theme common to the four essays, which is the capacity of violent rhetoric and acts to empower religious pundits in the public sphere.

This chapter reviews the selected religious myths of violent death under three rubrics: when death is primordially wrong; when violent death is cosmically right; and when violent death, particularly in the form of suicide, is enshrined as martyrdom. A brief speculation on religious imagination and its peculiar obsessions is given. There are few themes in religious studies that justify a sweeping overview, but violent death is recurrent enough to be one of them. The biblical Chaoskampf theme needs death, rescue, and restoration. Two motifs that illustrate the violent deaths are the dema and the Chaoskampf. The first focuses on the victim, the other on the victor. The spectacle of violent death has concentrated individuals and mobs across traditions. Although the examples presented consider the mythology of violent death, the ritualistic display of violent death could have been treated in equal breadth.

The notion of a martyr, or martys, has undergone a significant conceptual shift since its first attestation in the Iliad, where the martyroi are those witnesses who punish oath-violators with gruesome deaths rather than those who suffer gruesome deaths, as in later usage. This essay traces the conceptual shift of the Greek term martys from the Homeric precedent through the Book of Revelation. Then it explores the visual focus on dying in the Iliad and in ancient martyr texts, as well as some rhetorical means for conveying it. It concludes with a glance at some common ritual features between the Iliad’s oath-sacrifices and Christian martyr spectacles.

« Des bœufs mugissants égorgés ». Leitmotive rituels et pressions poétiques au chant XXIII de l’Iliade. En utilisant la notion d’ordres liturgiques de Rappaport, l’étude affirme que la fixité des traits de certaines scènes rituelles de l’Iliade pourrait refléter un registre communicationnel élevé, ainsi qu’un niveau de sacralité. Les traits des scènes de sacrifice alimentaire et de sacrifice juratoire sont comparés et mis en contraste – la mort est soulignée dans le sacrifice juratoire, dissimulée dans le sacrifice alimentaire. La rareté relative de langage figuré caractérise les scènes rituelles, à l’exception du « bronze sans pitié » qui prend la vie des agneaux et de l’ours dans les sacrifices juratoires des chants III et XIX. Une telle rareté s’oppose au foisonnement de ce type de langage dans les scènes qui décrivent les tueries sur le champ de bataille. Enfin, les traits des sacrifices de crémation du chant XXIII sont examinés en regard de ceux des sacrifices alimentaires et juratoires. La mise en perspective des « bœufs mugissants égorgés » dans la célébration qui précède la crémation est frappante, dans la mesure où elle détonne par rapport aux sacrifices alimentaires typiques, mais peut s’expliquer par la nature décousue de la narration et l’insertion ponctuelle du leitmotiv d’un rituel juratoire. Par contraste, les véritables sacrifices de crémation s’insèrent dans un ordre liturgique fortement formalisé qui ne permet pas la mise en perspective des victimes mourantes, en dépit des références à la poinē qui introduit et referme les sacrifices funèbres.

On the surface, comparative projects may seem frivolous, particularly those whose comparata are separated by millennia; this is especially true if one is attaching meaning simply to common event-sequences across time. However, for exploring the perceptual dynamics behind ancient reports of ritualized violence whose contexts and intended effects are somewhat elusive, a contemporary comparison may prove insightful. This should be true for rituals whose intent is menace, such as oath-making rituals and curses. Although we undoubtedly are missing much in the way of context and intended effects for ancient oath-making rituals, a close examination of one Islamic State “message” video of 2014 may enable us to envision some common perceptual dynamics. This short essay proposes to evaluate the persuasive effects of an ancient ritual in the light of a contemporary, by pondering embodied and visual modes of perception.

Responding to the papers herein, this essay ponders religious perspectives on pain and the memorialization of trauma; the opaque dynamics of self-immolation and the aesthetics of trauma art; grand narratives in wars on terror; and the existential disfiguring of the character of Job, a disfiguring which might be analyzed through lenses associated with ritual or poetics. The last theme broaches the point of the entire volume, which is the plethora of theoretical lenses that can help us to make sense of the behavior and imaginative expressions of religion and violence.