In Search of the Primitive by Diamond Stanley; Wolf Eric R.;

Author:Diamond, Stanley; Wolf, Eric R.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor and Francis
Published: 2017-03-21T16:00:00+00:00

Primitive Ritual Drama

Plato’s opposition to the drama and the dramatist is directly associated with the class and ideational structure of the Republic. At its root, this is also an opposition to the primitive, not merely with reference to the old tie between artist and magician but, more comprehensively, in connection with the form and meaning of the primitive ritual drama.

In the ritual drama, art and life converge; life itself is seen as a drama, roles are symbolically acted out, dangers confronted and overcome and anxieties faced and resolved. Relations among the individual, society, and nature are defined, renewed, and reinterpreted. I am, of course, defining the primitive ritual drama in the broadest possible way, that is, as comprising those ceremonies which cluster around life crises or discontinuities, either of the individual or of the group at large. Generally speaking, the latter are concerned with crises arising from the group’s relation to the natural environment, while the former are concerned with personal crises, that is, with the individual’s relation to himself and the group. In all ritual dramas, however, despite the relative emphasis on the group or the individual, there is an apparent continuity from the individual’s setting in the group to the group’s setting in nature. Moreover, the problems of identity and survival are always the dominant themes, and it is for this reason that we can, I believe, term these primitive ceremonials dramas.

To clarify, let us consider those ceremonials which devolve upon personal crises, such as death, marriage, puberty or illness. These can be considered “existential” situations; that is, people die, marry, sicken, become sexually mature and economically responsible in all societies. In primitive societies, such ordinary human events are made meaningful and valuable through the medium of the dramatic ceremonies. Here we confront man raising himself above the level of the merely biological, affirming his identity and defining his obligations to himself and to the group. The ritual drama, then, focuses on ordinary human events and makes them extraordinary and, in a sense, sacramental.

At the same time, the ceremonials we are speaking of enable the individual to maintain integrity of self while changing life roles. The person is freed to act in new ways without crippling anxiety or becoming a social automaton. The person discharges the new status but the status does not become the person. This, I believe, is the central psychological meaning of the theme of death and rebirth, of constant psychic renewal, which is encountered so frequently in primitive ceremonials. It is an organic theme; what one is emerges out of what one was. There is no mechanical separation, only an organic transition extending over a considerable time, often crowded with events and never traumatic, but modulated and realistic in its effects.44

Hence, the ceremonies of personal crisis are prototypically dramatic in two related ways. They affirm the human struggle for values within a social setting, while confirming individual identity in the face of ordinary “existential” situations such as death or puberty. These ceremonial dramas constitute a shaping and an acting out of the raw materials of life.

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