Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

suspended in her jar

Home
Catholic
Carnivale and Social Justice

Carnivale and Social Justice

Last updated on: February 13, 2018 at 12:37 am by Rebecca Bratten Weiss

Carnivale and Social Justice 2018-02-13T00:37:14-04:00 Rebecca Bratten Weiss

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

What are you doing for Mardi Gras?

In most areas of the the western world, you probably are not celebrating it with the kind of full-tilt plunge into orgiastic decadence associated with cultural celebrations of the day. And even if you are, you’re probably doing it wrong. Because Mardi Gras, Fat Tuesday, can’t be understood in its full ritual significance, or as anything other than just a day for partying, if its seen apart from a broader liturgical understanding of time and culture.

Carnivale – carne vale, farewell to meat, as it’s called in some cultures, is obviously the root of our word “carnival.” When you think of a carnival, you might think of a fun-fair, an area set apart for amusement. But carnival has another meaning. Philosopher and critic Mikhail Bakhtin famously explored the concept of the “carnivalesque” as art or speech drawing upon the ancient folk traditions of ritual license associated with special occasions. The purpose of ritual licence, in which everything but violence is permitted, and no guilt incurred – in which the usual order of things is turned upside down – is not nihilistic or destructive. It is in fact in the service of true, wholesome order – and community.

Carnival itself is a communal action: it can’t be understood properly as a performance to be witnessed; it is a performance to be joined in. Masks and costumes are part of the ritual license, and the overturning of things, because one has the wonderful escape from being trapped in oneself, with all the tiresome rigours of ongoing identity that are forced upon us by the demands of society. There’s a connection here, perhaps, with Nietzsche’s concept of the Dionysian, in which the lines between entities become blurred. But, unlike the Dionysian, the dissolution of dominant order results not in a submersion in primordial chthonic forces, but rather, as an emergence into a realm of imaginative possibility of different orders. Political theorist Andrew Robinson explains:

Carnival is a kind of syncretic, ritualised pageantry which displays a particular perspective. It is a brief moment in which life escapes its official furrows and enacts utopian freedom. It is a form of life at once real and ideal, universal and without remainder. Its defining feature is festivity – life lived as festive. It is also sanctioned by the highest ideal aims of human existence, not by the world of practical conditions.

Carnival is also taken to provide a positive alternative vision. It is not simply a deconstruction of dominant culture, but an alternative way of living based on a pattern of play. It prefigured a humanity constructed otherwise, as a utopia of abundance and freedom. It eliminated barriers among people created by hierarchies, replacing it with a vision of mutual cooperation and equality. Individuals are also subsumed into a kind of lived collective body which is constantly renewed.

The carnivalesque is clearly an aesthetic of profound fecundity for the artist. Artists whose work could be seen as carnivalesque include Aristophanes, Petronius, Chaucer, Shakespeare, Rabelais, Swift, Dostoevsky, Joyce, and O’Connor. The carnivalesque is readily apparent – with its close cousin, the grotesque – in the paintings of Bosch.

It is also associated with activism and the desire for social justice. This is why, as Robinson points out,

Carnival has become an underpinning for activist initiatives such as the Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army, the Laboratory of the Insurrectionary Imagination and Reclaim the Streets, particularly the Carnival against Capital. The free party movement can also be seen as a reclamation of the spirit of carnival.

The carnivalesque style of activism emphasises the deconstruction of relations, including those between activists and police, to create an uncontrollable space. Such tactics can be remarkably successful in disorienting and repelling the monologists of state power.

Abby Peterson’s studies of the ethnography of militant social movements emphasise an affective structure similar to Bakhtin’s carnival. The experience of lived immediacy and joy is constructed through a movement orientation to the enacted event with no separation between actor and audience. This serves as a means to integrate movements without reference to standard techniques of master-signification, though it does require ‘action spaces’ and in many cases adversaries. Peterson echoes Bakhtin’s idea of the immediacy of activist ‘rituals’ as something distinct from theatre or spectacle. David Graeber makes similar reference to puppetry and creativity in protets movements.

Figures of carnivalesque immediacy can also be found in authors such as Hakim Bey and Feral Faun. One can also liken Bakhtin’s view of creating new combinations with Situationist practices of derive and detournement.

Similar strategies can also be seen in social movements such as La Ruta Pacifica, who use techniques of ‘social weaving’ to recompose a sense of empowerment against the fear caused by civil war and state terror. Much of the state’s power is based on anxiety. The Bakhtinian hypothesis is that anxiety can be neutralised through joyous experiences of collective festivity.

These occasions strip power of its performed mystification, breaking into its ideological reproduction. They show its contingency by exposing it to ridicule and distortion. And they create a sense of counter-power through the permanence of the creative force of becoming, counterposed to the fixed order of being. It doesn’t so much confront state power as render it irrelevant and ineffectual.

A Christian view of social justice is one which looks to the transcendent both for a pattern of justice, and in longing for a justice we recognize is ultimately, no matter what we do, beyond the reach of finite, human, and flawed forces. But, contrary to the claims of those who scorn social justice and shrug that “the poor will always be with us,” our commitment to justice must also be immediate, immanent, right here on earth.

“On earth as it is in heaven” is, when you think about it, a pretty radical statement. To pray for the reconfiguration of earth, for the will of God to be done as in heaven, is a strong challenge to the powers of this earth. It is fitting, then, that in our liturgical year of prayer and fasting and feasting, one day be given to the principle of the carnivalesque, the disruption of the calcified orders that tie us down and bind us. Celebration of this day should involve feasting, and play, and art – and this celebration stands in direct opposition to the worldly orders that seek to confine and limit the possibilities of human community, Christian community. This is a day of political implications, in a divinely comedic sense.

Previous Post

February 27, 2017

talking to my child about privilege

Next Post

March 3, 2017 the defense of the unborn, and the demands of justice

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category abortion anti-semitism art Atwood Betrothed church clergy abuse coronavirus culture economics education environmentalism ethics faith family feminism gardening gun violence immigration Judaism literature MaddAddam New Pro Life Movement news pandemic personalism poem politics politics blue Pope Francis racism religion salvation sexuality social justice spirituality Station eleven Stephen King The Stand Trump Uncategorized war World Health Organization

Select a Month March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

What does "Christ" mean in Greek?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Lord of Lords Chosen One Savior Anointed One

Support this
Column