Maurice Bloch has for many years been developing an original and
influential theory of ritual. In this book he synthesises a radical
theory of religion. Rituals in a great many societies deny the
transience of life and of human institutions. Bloch argues that
they enact this denial by symbolically sacrificing the participants
themselves, so allowing them to participate in the immortality of a
transcendent entity. Such sacrifices are achieved through acts of
symbolic violence, ranging from bodily mutilations to the killing
of animals. The theme is developed with reference to rituals of
many types, from a variety of ethnographic sources, and Bloch shows
that even exogamous marriage rituals can be reinterpreted in the
light of this thesis. He concludes by considering the indirect
relation of symbolic and ritual violence to political violence.
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