Electronic Rituals, Oracles and Fortune Telling Allison Parrish - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

electronic rituals oracles and fortune telling
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Electronic Rituals, Oracles and Fortune Telling Allison Parrish - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Electronic Rituals, Oracles and Fortune Telling Allison Parrish ITP 2017 ritual Rites of passage (baptism, prom, weddings) Seasonal/calendrical (Halloween, New Years Day, May Day, TNO) Political (court procedures, parliamentary


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Electronic Rituals, Oracles and Fortune Telling

Allison Parrish ITP 2017

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ritual

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  • Rites of passage (baptism, prom, weddings)
  • Seasonal/calendrical (Halloween, New Years Day,

May Day, TNO)

  • Political (court procedures, parliamentary

procedures, elections, parades)

  • Religious (prayer, sacrament, confession)
  • Interpersonal (greetings, gift-giving)
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"the performance of more or less invariant sequences of formal acts and utterances not entirely encoded by the performers"

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  • Related to performance, play, gesture, discourse

studies, etc.

  • Behavior is "ritualized" when it changes from

instrumental to communicative/symbolic (e.g., mating displays in animal behavior)

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Functional views of ritual (what does ritual do?)

  • Solidarity and social cohesion (Durkheim)
  • Collective effervescence (Durkheim) and

"communitas" (Victor Turner)

  • Construction of power (Geertz)
  • Negotiation (courtrooms, elections)
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"the numinous"

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"First came the temple, then the city"

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Inside a ritual, "truth" works differently

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Rituals transform

  • J.L. Austen's concept of performativity ("doing

things with words"): "I now pronounce you husband and wife"; "I promise to buy you lunch another time"

  • Embodiment: the action of a ritual is a physical

experience and can change the body

  • Rituals enact their own abstractions
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Rituals are reflexive

every action in the world (infinite, unknowable)

ritual (abstract, can be described, reasoned about)

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divination

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"ritual(ized) practices

  • f finding things out"
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divination is "subjunctive" (Turner)

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augury, prophecy and prediction

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the -omancies

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every action in the world (infinite, unknowable)

small, easier to interpret chunk of reality

  • bservation
  • f

phenomenon

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(reading is also deciphering, working backwards from evidence to intention)

"reading means approaching something that is just coming into being" (Calvino)

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cleromancy: casting and reading

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dice, cards, yarrow stalks...

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cast a shadow cast a spell making a cast casting lots

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every action in the world (infinite, unknowable)

small, easier to interpret chunk of reality random process ("casting")

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mediums and messages

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electronic contexts

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  • scale
  • speed
  • virtual (and otherwise weird) embodiment (social

and physical)

  • another degree of abstraction (rituals are already

sets of rules, but digital rituals put those rules at another remove from interpretation and intention)

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Net Tarot, Kevin Thrasher (nettarot.net)

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#Fortune, Zach Gage (www.fortune.ly)

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