Mock Ritual in the Modern Era (OXFORD RITUAL STUDIES SERIES) 9780197637432, 0197637434

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Series
Mock Ritual in the Modern Era
Copyright
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Ridicule
2. Mock Ritual in Diderot and d’Alembert’s Encyclopedia
3. Mocking Priests in Tristram Shandy and Jacques le fataliste
4. Mock Ritual and the Emergence of Objectivity in Madame Bovary
5. Mock Ritual and Medicine in Flaubert’s Dictionary of Received Ideas
6. The Duel as Privatized Mock Ritual
7. Charlie Hebdo: The Ambivalence of Mockery
Summation
Concluding Unscientific Postscript: Mock Ritual Now
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

Mock Ritual in the Modern Era

OX F OR D R I TUAL STUDIES Series Editors Ronald Grimes, Ritual Studies International Ute Hüsken, University of Oslo Barry Stephenson, Memorial University NARRATIVES OF SORROW AND DIGNITY Japanese Women, Pregnancy Loss, and Modern Rituals of Grieving Bardwell L. Smith MAKING THINGS BETTER A Workbook on Ritual, Cultural Values, and Environmental Behavior A. David Napier AYAHUASCA SHAMANISM IN THE AMAZON AND BEYOND Edited by Beatriz Caiuby Labate and Clancy Cavnar HOMA VARIATIONS The Study of Ritual Change across the Longue Durée Edited by Richard K. Payne and Michael Witzel HOMO RITUALIS Hindu Ritual and Its Significance to Ritual Theory Axel Michaels RITUAL GONE WRONG What We Learn from Ritual Disruption Kathryn T. McClymond SINGING THE RITE TO BELONG Ritual, Music, and the New Irish Helen Phelan RITES OF THE GOD-​KING Śānti, Orthopraxy, and Ritual Change in Early Hinduism Marko Geslani BUDDHISTS, SHAMANS, AND SOVIETS Rituals of History in Post-​Soviet Buryatia Justine Buck Quijada VOICES OF THE RITUAL Devotion to Female Saints and Shrines in the Holy Land Nurit Stadler PILGRIMAGE, LANDSCAPE, AND IDENTITY Reconstructing Sacred Geographies in Norway Marion Grau MOCK RITUAL IN THE MODERN ERA Reginald McGinnis and John Vignaux Smyth

Mock Ritual in the Modern Era R E G I NA L D M C G I N N I S A N D J O H N V IG NAU X SM Y T H

Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and certain other countries. Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America. © Oxford University Press 2022 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above. You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer. Library of Congress Control Number: 2022900150 ISBN 978–​0–​19–​763743–​2 DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197637432.001.0001 1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2 Printed by Integrated Books International, United States of America

Contents Acknowledgments 

Introduction 

vii

1

1. Ridicule 

14

2. Mock Ritual in Diderot and d’Alembert’s Encyclopedia 

27

3. Mocking Priests in Tristram Shandy and Jacques le fataliste 

40

4. Mock Ritual and the Emergence of Objectivity in Madame Bovary 

54

5. Mock Ritual and Medicine in Flaubert’s Dictionary of Received Ideas 

78

6. The Duel as Privatized Mock Ritual 

95

7. Charlie Hebdo: The Ambivalence of Mockery 

108

S ummation 

124

Concluding Unscientific Postscript: Mock Ritual Now 

133

Notes  Bibliography  Index 

161 221 237

Acknowledgments During the years we were working on this book we were aided by the conversation and advice of many friends and colleagues. Early versions of some sections were aired at meetings of the Canadian, American, Midwestern, and Western Societies for Eighteenth-​Century Studies. We wish to thank Mark R. Anspach for his helpful observations on drafts of ­chapters 1 and 7. We are particularly grateful to Barbara Herrnstein Smith for her detailed comments on an early draft of our manuscript, which resulted in significant changes and improvements. We also warmly thank the musician Kyle Morton for reading and responding to a slightly later draft. Two anonymous readers for Oxford University Press helped us immeasurably by detailing their criticisms as well as their support of our project. We are grateful to them as well as to Ronald L. Grimes, Ute Hüsken, and Barry Stephenson for welcoming us to the Oxford Ritual Studies series. As is customary, we nevertheless emphasize that none of the early respondents bear any responsibility for the contents of the final product. Special thanks are due to Cynthia Read for her willingness to consider our work, and to everyone who has helped us during the production process, particularly Zara Cannon-​Mohammed of Oxford University Press, Hinduja Dhanasegaran of Newgen Knowledge Works, and our copy editor, Bob Land. Preliminary versions of ­chapter 1 and the first part of ­chapter 7 appeared previously as “Mocking Ritual in French Philosophy and Cinema: Patrice Leconte’s Ridicule,” Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia 69, nos. 3–​4 (2013): 685–​ 699; and “The Ambivalence of Mockery,” Studies in Eighteenth-​Century Culture 47 (2018): 257–​260.

Introduction The usual thing happened. Ritual cast out at the door came in again in disguise. A. M. Hocart, The Life-​Giving Myth

In February 2019, a new scandal surfaced in the French media world. A group of young journalists, editors, and publicists, mainly men, had for several years been engaged in online harassment. Their victims, largely women and minorities, had been mocked and humiliated via email and Twitter in an endless stream of jokes, pranks, and personal threats. Ridicule and abuse had pushed one woman to quit her job and left another suicidal. This story was shocking not only in its crudity and violence, but because the members of this group, the League of LOL, worked mostly for progressive and leftist newspapers. The whole affair appeared in contradiction with the values embraced publicly by the harassers. The story of the Ligue du LOL was reported by virtually all major French media outlets, particularly Libération, which had employed two of the group’s most prominent members. One aspect of this story emphasized by several commentators concerned the return of archaic practices in our digital age. Simon Blin, in an article titled “New Codes of an Old Dominance,” suggested that “by excluding women from Twitter via mockery,” the members of this boys’ club “reproduced a traditional pattern of conserving power.”1 According to Mélanie Gourarier, the League of LOL was “a textbook case for anthropology and gender studies,” where, as Blin puts it, “masculine solidarity is organized under the guise of a cult of mockery.”2 For David Le Breton, it was “a long virilization ritual” and “an exorcism” of difference.3 The laughers in this story, as stated in a further article, “did not come from nowhere.”4 The League of LOL had a genealogy, with precedents from previous decades in French television and literature; the British fun clubs depicted by

Mock Ritual in the Modern Era. Reginald McGinnis and John Vignaux Smyth, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2022. DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197637432.003.0001

2  Mock Ritual in the Modern Era Victor Hugo in his novel, The Man Who Laughs; and, more distantly, the aristocratic culture of the court of Versailles. As our book will show, the journalists who saw remnants of old ritual in the League of LOL were not mistaken. This story is but a recent enactment of a scenario that has played out repeatedly throughout the modern era. Henry Fielding, for instance, denounced the fashion of “roasting,” a form of collective mockery, in eighteenth-​century England, which he compared to barbaric ritual,5 but nonetheless exploited to great comic effect in Joseph Andrews. More recently, this subject has inspired films such as Patrice Leconte’s Ridicule and Mark Waters’s Mean Girls. The pattern illustrated by the League of LOL is part of a problem we approach here under the larger heading of mock ritual, particularly as related to the evolution or, according to some, the decline of ritual in modern societies.6 Drawing on a variety of primarily though not exclusively European sources, we combine under this heading what we see as several interrelated phenomena. On the one hand, we use it to describe the kind of mocking or parodying of ritual that frequently accompanies modern rationalism, notably of the atheist variety, but also, for instance, of Catholic ritual by Protestants, or pagan ritual by Catholics. On the other hand, however, we also emphasize how such mockery may itself become quasi-​ritualized, a mocking ritual, and how mockery and laughter generally—​often explicitly ritualized, like weeping, in more archaic societies—​may exhibit ritualistic features, however well disguised. In addition, and relatedly, we use the term mock ritual to describe attenuated or sham rituals such as those in which a figural killing replaces a literal one, or, particularly germane to our subject, in which physical violence is replaced by ridicule.7 The venerable metaphor of a “killing” joke, or something “killingly funny,” is worth recalling here, not only because it turns literal into figural murder, but because it reminds us that the process can be reversed, that jokes too may kill.8 Several aspects of mock ritual as just outlined are illustrated in James George Frazer’s The Golden Bough, a work unique in its influence in both literature and anthropology. In a passage on substitute kings, for instance, Frazer considers the custom of regicide and its evolution in different parts of the world. In some places where regicide has been abolished, “the king still abdicates annually for a short time,” he writes, “and his place is filled by a more or less nominal sovereign; but at the close of his short reign the latter is no longer killed, though sometimes a mock execution still survives as a memorial of the time when he was actually put to death.”9 Working from

Introduction  3 the premise that in “rude society,” as he calls it, human beings were “commonly killed to promote the growth of the crops,”10 Frazer also offers numerous examples from modern rural Europe showing how the person representing the “corn-​spirit” is no longer killed, but ridiculed. During harvest, “the person who cuts or binds or threshes the last sheaf,” we are told, “is often exposed to rough treatment at the hands of his fellow-​laborers,” or, “if he is spared this horseplay, he is at least the subject of ridicule.”11 Similarly, “the woman who bound the last sheaf goes herself by the name of the Old Man till the next harvest, and is often mocked with the cry, ‘Here comes the Old Man.’ ”12 In the Dutch province of Zeeland the workers take a passing stranger regarded as the personification of the corn-​spirit back to the field “and bury him in the earth up to his middle at least jeering at him the while; then they ease nature before his face.”13 Frazer’s view of history, influenced by thinkers such as the Marquis de Condorcet,14 is one in which human societies progress from magic to religious belief and ultimately science; and he presents such transitions from execution to mock execution and from killing to ridiculing not just as improvements, understandably, but as steps on this path. Frazer has been described as “a late-​eighteenth-​century mind in a late-​nineteenth-​century setting: Enlightenment anti-​clerical rationalism overlaid with late Victorian evolutionary progressivism.”15 From this perspective, ritual is seen as dwindling, with the growth of civilization, “into mere pageant and pastime,”16 or as degenerating into “a simple game.”17 Presented as originating in superstition, ritual often appears, as underlined by Frazer’s critics, more ridiculous than sublime. Stanley Edgar Hyman, for instance, remarked that The Golden Bough could be seen “as a comic or ironic mock-​epic of human absurdity.”18 Frazer nevertheless presents ridicule, as well as mimic or merely “theatrical” executions, as illustrating how rituals evolve by patterns of both serious and mock symbolic substitution.19 Though such ridiculous ritual or ritualized ridicule may be scarcely less absurd for him than the original bloody sacrifice of the king, ridicule and mock sacrifice seem at least marginally more enlightened than actual killing.20 Indeed, since our book also focuses on the relation between ridicule and rationality—​that is, on the role of mockery in supposedly enlightened modern societies and modes of thought—​Frazer also conveniently exemplifies our problem in another way, by having himself become the butt of derision. Wittgenstein, for example, has been described as treating Frazer derisively21 precisely for being himself supposedly derisive toward his subjects,

4  Mock Ritual in the Modern Era presenting their rituals essentially “as stupid actions.”22 According to Wittgenstein, Frazer “cannot imagine a priest who is not basically an English parson of our times with all his stupidity and feebleness.”23 He even mocks Frazer as “much more savage than most of his savages, for these savages will not be so far from any understanding of spiritual matters as an Englishman of the twentieth century.”24 And in the twenty-​first century, where in many academic quarters, “Frazer’s work is widely dismissed, even ridiculed”25 (though usually for less “spiritual” reasons), this chain of mockery has only continued, intensified by charges of colonialism, racism, and ethnocentricity of a kind from which Wittgenstein himself was perhaps not immune either.26 Here, then, we arrive at another related sense of mock ritual where Frazer—​or of course anyone else, including his mockers—​may be accused of going through the motions of rational thought or action while in fact reproducing a more or less sham ritual or theatrical performance, “much more savage than most of his savages,” masquerading as science or objective ethnography. Since it concerns one of the main issues of our inquiry, moreover, we suggest that one does not have to be an uncritical reader of Frazer—​quite the contrary—​to wonder at what point in history, if any, more or less ritualized ridicule of the sort he cites is supposed to have given way to this kind of purportedly rational, nonritualized, and ethical substitute—​or by what means or criteria, if any, such a distinction can be made. While more detailed discussion of Frazer would lead us too far afield here, it is therefore not frivolous to compare him briefly in a way to his own “savage” king. For in slightly earlier times he might certainly have been executed, in several European countries and elsewhere, for heresy. And if he is now ridiculed instead, on supposedly more ethical and rational grounds, this may be plausibly regarded in terms of the way that academic disciplines and intellectual fashions, like political and artistic movements, not to mention religious cults, characteristically evolve: attempting to purge by ridicule, in addition to mere argument, or force, those who now appall or embarrass the latest practitioners, including their own foundational figures. The question we are outlining here is, in a sense, a question for all of human history. It could doubtless be posed in different terms for different times and places. But from our perspective, the eighteenth century, and more specifically the French eighteenth century, is a particularly relevant place to start, given its emphasis on what would later be called ritual (the rites and ceremonies prescribed by different religions) as an object of critique.27 In the writings of deists and atheists alike, of Voltaire and the Baron d’Holbach,

Introduction  5 for instance, ritual is routinely reduced to superstition, and the progress of human societies is largely viewed as dependent on its elimination. One could say, too, that, for d’Holbach in particular, all ritual is “mock ritual.” There is virtually no ritual, in his atheist critique of religion, that is not a sham and deserving of mockery. In Voltaire similarly, and particularly in texts from the 1760s such as The Philosophical Dictionary and The Philosophy of History, ritual is repeatedly presented both as farce and a subject of ridicule. If ritual is often held in derision during the “age of reason,” this is, quite simply, because it is largely viewed as irrational. In Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d’Alembert’s Encyclopedia, notably, reason is proposed as the principle authorizing the mockery of the “extravagant ceremonies” of the different religions of the world.28 The Encyclopedia is, moreover, among many other things, a kind of catalogue of ridiculous rituals. The word buffoon, for instance, is said to be derived from an ancient Greek ritual in which the sacrificer, after immolating an ox, fled the scene leaving his axe to be judged in his stead. “Since this ceremony and this judgment were completely burlesque,” explains the author of this article, the Abbé Edme Mallet, “the words buffoonish and buffooneries were used for all the other mummeries and farces that appeared ridiculous.”29 Similarly, one of the other main contributors to the Encyclopedia, Louis de Jaucourt, considers the medieval Feast of Fools “so extravagant that the reader would have a hard time believing it.” Evoking “the farcical and rude ceremonies” that were part of this feast, “almost all of which were derived from Paganism, initiated during unenlightened times, and against which the Church often unleashed its wrath to no avail,” Jaucourt is particularly concerned with the process of enlightenment, which specifically involves in this instance the overcoming of ritual: “the revival of Letters contributed more in the space of fifty years to the abolishment of this old and shameful feast than the ecclesiastical and secular powers in a thousand years.”30 These articles from the Encyclopedia suggest how the perception of ritual as ridiculous is paired with the idea that it should be abolished. The same association is, moreover, widely observed in Frazer.31 Yet throughout the modern era, the elimination of ritual, understood either as having already occurred or as ongoing, continually gives rise to substitutive rituals, appearing either as vestiges or as part of a critique, and often as both indistinguishably. We trace this pattern roughly from Voltaire to Charlie Hebdo, taking our examples from a variety of sources, including historical memoirs, encyclopedias, newspapers, literature, and film.

6  Mock Ritual in the Modern Era The film with which we begin, Patrice Leconte’s award-​winning Ridicule, is concerned with customs at Versailles in the years prior to the French Revolution, and particularly with various aspects of what we are calling mock ritual. The mocking of novices is an essential part of courtly life, and the specific rites enacted by the courtiers are visibly patterned on archaic models. That the ritual humiliations in this film take place in elegant salons with fine food and pretty clothes only accentuates their savagery. The story is set in the final decades of the eighteenth century, reputedly a time of disenchantment. Leconte’s courtiers, including the clerics, are anticlerical rationalists who cynically reenact more or less empty rituals. Ridicule is premised on an opposition between science and ritual as a vestige of magical thinking—​essentially the same opposition as in Frazer, and which constantly resurfaces in the modern era. This opposition seems to be resolved in the film’s conclusion, where aristocratic wit is replaced by the Revolutionary rhetoric of social and scientific progress. But we would evidently have to be blind to our own world to take this conclusion at face value and assume that mocking rituals had disappeared, in the filmmakers’ view, with the purging of the French aristocracy. More generally, modern mock rituals may come in all sorts of guises, purportedly rational or otherwise, from parodic ridicule to pornographic mock crucifixions, from university hazings to medical procedures, and from the penal justice system to the presidential pardoning of the Thanksgiving turkey. Indeed, we do not restrict the term to bloodless procedures, since such things as ISIS executions, for instance, or secular dueling, may also be regarded as more or less grotesque parodies of ritual. Droll contemporary examples are cited in a recent issue of the British magazine Private Eye concerning a woman in the Dominican Republic who held her own funeral while still alive (“everything [was provided] for the neighbours to cry as if it really was the last day they would see their dear friend”); a bodybuilder in Kazakhstan who “married” (and “divorced”) dolls (“a proud Agalmatophiliac”); and an invisible “work of art” called Io Sono (which “finds form in its own nothingness”) that was sold in May 2021 at the Art-​Rite auction house in Milan for 15,000 euros.32 A recurrent theme in contemporary popular culture, mock ritual appears also in modern philosophy from Friedrich Nietzsche to Georges Bataille, where it occurs, in part, as a response to a loss of traditional ritual connected to the so-​called death of God. But perhaps the most striking illustration of the various aspects of our question is found in Flaubert’s Madame Bovary,

Introduction  7 and particularly the portrayal of the novel’s anticlerical pharmacist, Homais, whose claims to modern scientific rationality routinely result not in the end, but in an unwitting reinvention, of ritual. When Homais jokes, for instance, that if he were the government, he would have the priests bled once a month, he is effectively proposing bloodletting as a cure for religion, appealing to a medical practice that was still fashionable in the early nineteenth century and that in some ways replicates, as a purgative and cathartic, the kind of so-​called superstitious rituals it is meant to replace. Effectively substituting doctors for priests, Homais calls his Voltairean anticlerical stance a “religion,” and routinely uses magical, expiatory, or sacrificial language in his advertisement of modern medicine. In view of the controversies surrounding the Enlightenment in recent decades (whether “it” was good or bad, or even occurred in the sense commonly assumed),33 we should state at the outset that our initial linking of the problem of mock ritual with the eighteenth century runs counter to many narratives of progress associated with this period. With the rituals of enlightened French society analyzed in our second chapter we are very far from Jürgen Habermas’s egalitarian and inclusive conception of the public sphere.34 In addition, Jonathan I. Israel’s division of the Enlightenment into moderate and radical camps seems largely inconsequential for our inquiry. At a time when public schooling in France was mainly religious and when basic subjects were taught between prayers and catechism—​which prompted d’Alembert to say that students usually left school more foolish and ignorant than when they entered35—​both moderate and radical thinkers, to use Israel’s terms,36 were opposed to church control of education. The objective of substituting philosophy for religion and reason for faith is common to both the so-​called moderate and radical camps—​exemplified, respectively, by Voltaire and d’Holbach—​as is their concern with rites and ceremonies. If anything, the resurgence of ritual is even more evident among radicals than moderates. Mockery and parody of ritual are of course not in themselves modern or necessarily secular, but assume a distinctive form when religion becomes a generalized target of rationalist philosophy, and when religious rituals increasingly mutate into secular ones. The general problem of mock ritual thus spans the supposed divide or chasm, if any, between Enlightenment and pre-​Enlightenment culture,37 while the modern forms of mockery and ritual we highlight can often be considered both the product and antithesis of “Enlightenment,” alternately condemned and a means of condemnation.

8  Mock Ritual in the Modern Era We begin in the past to illuminate what ultimately appears as a thoroughly contemporary dilemma. Although we focus on examples primarily from Europe and the West, our inquiry could also be extended to other cultures. In rituals of the Zinacanteco Indians of Highland Chiapas, for instance, according to Victoria Reifler Bricker, costumed figures are “allowed to mock curing rites, prayer, and change-​of-​office ceremonies.”38 The festival of the water, Yarqa Aspiy, in a Peruvian indigenous community studied by Frédérique Apffel-​Marglin, is the occasion for parodies of the Mass and performances of mock weddings, baptisms, and benedictions.39 Among the Akan in Ghana, as Mercy Amba Oduyoye writes, women “take part in cathartic ‘mocking’ rituals intended to release pent-​up feelings against powerful personalities.”40 In Amazonian ayahuasca ceremonies, reinvented to meet the expectations of Western tourists, indigenous specialists are given to ridiculing apprentice shamans.41 A ritual associated with the marriage of Shiva in Madurai in Southern India exposes deities no less than humans to derisive humor “that cuts as it comes and cuts as it goes.”42 Various aspects of mock ritual figure also in Aimé Césaire’s Tragedy of King Christophe, beginning with the prologue, where political rivals are vicariously represented in a cockfight. According to the stage directions, the entire first act of this play set in early nineteenth-​century Haiti “is in farcical and parodic style.”43 The cast of characters includes not only a buffoon but also a buffoonish “master of ceremonies,” whose role is ostensibly to oversee a ridiculous rehearsal for the king’s coronation. We are told, moreover, that this character is a white man sent to Christophe by the TESCO (Technical, Educational, Scientific Cooperation Organization) to provide assistance to underdeveloped regions. Césaire’s TESCO is visibly a parody of UNESCO (the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization), founded in 1945—​an intentional anachronism bringing history into the present and equating mock ritual with postcolonial politics. While prominent in Césaire’s tragedy, mock ritual is perhaps the very essence of Jean Rouch’s film Les maîtres fous (The Mad Masters).44 An early example of cinéma-​vérité, this film documents an important annual ritual of the Hauka of the West African city of Accra. Featuring scenes of spirit possession and animal sacrifice, The Mad Masters was alternatively viewed at the time of its release as a mockery of colonial military authorities and a caricature of traditional African customs, as a form of political resistance and as perpetuating racial stereotypes. The varying interpretations of Rouch’s

Introduction  9 documentary reflect an ambivalence that is seemingly inseparable from its subject, as evidenced repeatedly in our European examples. The mock (or mocking) ritual of the Hauka is, moreover, presented by Rouch as a “violent game” that mirrors modern Western civilization. The Hauka ritual in many ways lends itself to comparison with Mikhail Bakhtin’s theory of carnival laughter. It may be seen, for instance, according to Diane Scheinman, “as a carnivalesque, community rite of political resistance and cultural renewal.”45 The same could be said of scenes from Césaire’s play depicting “the popular frankness of the marketplace,”46 use of “abusive language” and “insulting words or expressions,”47 as well as a burlesque ceremony rehearsal. Presented by Bakhtin as ambivalent, “gay, triumphant, and at the same time mocking, deriding,”48 carnival laughter is often understood as purely festive and unifying. Our own view is closer to that of Michael Billig who, while partially agreeing with Bakhtin, questions whether there is ultimately a clear distinction between “good” and “bad” laughter, and regards laughter as potentially either unifying or divisive.49 The problem of laughter as a source of either unity or division, which arises particularly in our chapter on Charlie Hebdo, is captured by a headline in the New York Times from December 2020: “Once a Slogan of Unity, ‘Je Suis Charlie’ Now Divides France.”50 What we call the ambivalence of mockery may be viewed as related to the origins of laughter itself. In Violence and the Sacred, for example, René Girard suggests that the “serious” expulsion he saw in sacrificial ritual must have always been accompanied by “an act of expulsion based at least in part on ridicule.”51 But his emphasis on the probable antiquity of such rituals of derision is counterbalanced by an equal or greater stress on a still more primitive model of laughter, like that of Konrad Lorenz, in which the laugher is not the aggressor but the potential or symbolic victim. Lorenz proposed that “laughter probably evolved by ritualization of a redirected threatening movement” in animals,52 and that “our human laughter in its original form was [ . . . ] an appeasement or greeting ceremony,”53 the very opposite of aggressive. Similarly, beginning with behavior that precedes speech in children, Girard presents the laughing mock victim in tickling as “one of the most primitive, if not the most primitive form of laughter.”54 Stressing that such laughter usually only occurs when there is a clear distinction between serious and mock aggression,55 he nevertheless also underlines how laughter is greatly intensified when the laugher is the mock victim of a threat that is symbolically maximal. Just as “Tickling is mock total warfare on the other’s body,” so,

10  Mock Ritual in the Modern Era according to Girard’s perspective, “comedy is intellectual tickling,”56 a kind of mock warfare of the mind. Such a “perilous balance” (as his essay title puts it) between the mock and the serious doubtless illuminates how the one can turn so easily into the other, and why, as has often been observed, “even he who no longer fears anything else in the world fears ridicule.”57 In Girard’s account, laughter itself (like crying) is incarnated in a quasi-​ ritualized, because essentially figural, behavior of the body, which reacts as if under physical threat, convulsing as if trying to expel an object from its eyes or stomach or lungs. According to him, “Laughter seems closer than tears to a paroxysm that would turn it into actual convulsions, to a climactic experience of rejection and expulsion.”58 In this respect the physiological origins of laughter discussed in “Perilous Balance” echo, at an even more fundamental level, the expulsion-​by-​ridicule or laughter mentioned in Violence and the Sacred. Observing, in addition, that “in the modern world our everyday, very much diluted forms of social ostracism are generally based on ridicule,” Girard also claims that “much contemporary literature is explicitly or implicitly based on this phenomenon.”59 Several parts of our book explore this intuition. Our work has a number of precedents in classical anthropology, philosophy, and ritual studies. Though distant from us in his approach, we may mention Hans-​Georg Soeffner’s chapter from The Order of Rituals titled “Rituals of Anti-​Ritualism.”60 More direct is the influence of Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno who, in Dialectic of Enlightenment, propose, for instance, that “the history of civilization is the history of the introversion of sacrifice,”61 and that such introversion takes a particularly deceptive form in Enlightenment claims to have transcended sacrificial ritual via rationality.62 As mentioned previously, the problem of mock ritual could doubtless be approached from different angles, drawing on different sources than ours. One might consider, for instance, the ritualized performances of early Dada,63 or the rituals of Surrealism64 and Acéphale.65 Our own choice of materials follows from our initial linking of modern mock ritual with the Enlightenment—​a period associated with the idea of a fundamental break with the past.66 Beginning with a film set in the eighteenth century that spawned comparisons with late-​twentieth-​century society, we then proceed chronologically from Diderot and d’Alembert’s Encyclopedia to the twenty-​ first century with Charlie Hebdo. Each of our chapters is either devoted or directly refers to the eighteenth century. We emphasize Flaubert because his

Introduction  11 elaboration of the problem of mock ritual in many ways anticipates our own. The chapter on post-​Enlightenment dueling offers an exemplary historical illustration of the relation between official ritual and unofficial mock ritual we discuss throughout the book. In addition, while writing chapters concerned with the past, we often reflected on aspects of ritual and the role of mockery in contemporary secular society. As teachers in American universities who were brought up respectively in Canada and Scotland, the examples that came to mind for us were mainly British and American rather than French. Some of the fruits of our reflection appear in our postscript. Our exploration of mock ritual can be considered as an extension of the study of ritual per se during the period when the meaning of the word evolved, according to Talal Asad, from “a script for regulating practice” to “a type of practice.”67 Starting from the premise stated by Asad and others that the very concept of ritual is intimately related to modernity—​at once the site of its invention and the reflection of an antiritualism associated with secular societies68—​we attempt to trace the evolution of mock ritual, in various forms, throughout the modern era. We use the word ritual without rehearsing or refining its ordinary dictionary definitions.69 The examples of expiations, initiations, and baptisms we draw from eighteenth-​and nineteenth-​century texts, for instance, will be easily recognized by readers; and we use the term, moreover, in accordance with any number of twentieth-​century and contemporary authors we cite, from Mary Douglas to Michael Taussig, from Erving Goffman to Gaye Tuchman, and from Jessie Weston to David Lodge. When Goffman, for instance, observes that “the person in our urban secular world is allotted a kind of sacredness that is displayed and confirmed by symbolic acts,”70 and that “profanations are to be expected, for every religious ceremony creates the possibility of a black mass,”71 he effectively describes both a form of secular ritual and its susceptibility to parody. Our emphasis on the resurgence of ritual forms within what appears as an ongoing process of rational elimination recalls A. M. Hocart’s observation that since it is “in a state of perpetual flux,” “ritual may become the negation of ritual”72 or equally, as we argue, vice versa. As secular substitutes have replaced religious rituals in modernity, so these too, vulnerable to similar treatment, proliferate. Our study of this process is interrogative and exploratory rather than prescriptive: we draw no final conclusions about what should or should not be mocked, for example, or the degree to which rational behavior can be satisfactorily distinguished, at least in principle, from ritual and the sacred, whether religious or secular in conception.

12  Mock Ritual in the Modern Era Deconstructions of ritual, from Asad and Catherine Bell to Philippe Buc, have helped shape our thinking without moving us to significantly revise our vocabulary.73 Rationalist attempts to purge the practice of ritual are not without potential analogies to critical attempts to dismantle the concept and get rid of the term altogether. In her first book, devoted largely to questioning assumptions and practices associated with ritual, Bell nonetheless foresaw the many difficulties entailed in discarding it, for instance “eventually find[ing] that the disgraced presuppositions of the abandoned term ha[d]‌resurfaced in a newly deployed set of categories” or “end[ing] up simply repackaging older problems in new jargon.”74 Similarly, while cautioning, in The Dangers of Ritual, against using “the concept, and even the term, of ritual” for the historiography of the Middle Ages, Buc ultimately acknowledges having been unable to avoid doing so himself.75 He endorses Bell’s deconstruction, but in the same breath faults her “alternate concept, that of ‘ritualization’ ” as being “very much open to the same criticisms that she levies against ritual.”76 Indeed the immediate reintroduction of the putatively purged concept seems evident in the terms themselves. If applying the word ritual to eighteenth-​and nineteenth-​century thought is anachronistic, it is only marginally so. While she follows Asad in underlining a shift in the meaning of ritual from “a script for regulating practice” in the earliest editions of the Encyclopedia Britannica (from 1771 to 1852) to “a type of practice” in the 1910 edition, Bell notes that “the Oxford English Dictionary gives a more complicated picture of the evidence that Asad deduces from the Britannica.”77 Her comment is, to say the very least, understated. The Oxford English Dictionary contains several examples of definitions other than scriptural from the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, specifically “the prescribed form or order of religious or ceremonial rites,” and “a ritual act or ceremonial observance.” Decades prior to the first edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, for instance, Henry Stebbing wrote that “sects or heresies may be formed about rituals as well as about points of doctrine.”78 And we could add examples not cited by the Oxford English Dictionary, including Herman Melville’s evocation in Typee—​first published in 1846 during the period when ritual was still defined as a “book” in the Encyclopedia Britannica—​of a space “set apart for the celebration of the fantastical religious ritual” of the Marquesan Islanders.79 Our own retention of the term is consistent with usage in the field of ritual studies as represented by Ronald L. Grimes, Ute Hüsken, and Barry Stephenson.80 With the spirit of openness characteristic of ritual studies

Introduction  13 from its beginnings, Grimes writes, in Fictive Ritual, of a need to attend to “the ways ritual is imagined both in specific works of literature and in popular culture generally,” and to “theories that enable scholars to shuttle between the study of ritual and literary criticism.”81 We had sometimes feared that our work would be too “literary” for students of ritual and too “ritualistic” for literary critics.

1 Ridicule Often, the less there is to justify a traditional custom, the harder it is to get rid of it. Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

Chosen as the opening film at the 1996 Cannes Film Festival, and recipient of several awards, including for Best Film in France and Best Film not in the English Language in England, Patrice Leconte’s Ridicule was one of the most successful French movies of its decade.1 While much of the commentary focused on its artistic quality, critics were also led to wonder what a film ostensibly concerned with the past might tell us about the present.2 The following pages are devoted to Leconte’s depiction of ritualized mockery as a social ill and the question of how what was relevant to the eighteenth century may remain so today. Ridicule tells the story of a country nobleman, Grégoire Ponceludon de Malavoy, and his adventures at the court of Louis XVI. Distressed at seeing the local peasants dying of fever, Ponceludon goes to Versailles to request assistance for a project to drain the pestilent swamps on his estate. At court, his simple manners and humanitarian objectives are met with indifference. Only wit will gain him recognition. A quotation from the Duke de Guines displayed as an intertitle at the beginning of the film—​“In this country, vices are without consequence, but ridicule can kill”—​sets the tone for everything that follows. One character commits suicide because of his repeated humiliations. Another is so wounded by a remark after falling on the dance floor that he goes into exile. Parties and gatherings are punctuated by well-​turned insults. And when one rival finally succumbs in a duel, this is only an extension of a verbal contest that is part of daily life. In a review published in New York magazine, David Denby asked, “Can we believe it? Is any of it true? Did these people do nothing but sit around Mock Ritual in the Modern Era. Reginald McGinnis and John Vignaux Smyth, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2022. DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197637432.003.0002

Ridicule  15 uttering pompous epigrams and playing tricks on one another?”3 Similar questions were raised, if not regarding Stephen Frears’s 1988 film, Dangerous Liaisons, to which Ridicule was almost invariably compared, then about Choderlos de Laclos’s novel from 1782 on which Frears’s film was based. Presented as a collection of letters from actual correspondence, the work is preceded by a fictive publisher’s note questioning its authenticity. But the publisher’s primary argument, that the work’s immoral characters could not possibly have lived in Laclos’s philosophical age, is visibly false. And Laclos’s imitation of social reality is so convincing that the novel was, until relatively recently, widely taken to be based on genuine correspondence.4 The interplay of fiction and reality is equally complex in Ridicule, parts of which, including the story of the Chevalier de Milletail who leaves for America after being humiliated at a ball, are drawn from the Memoirs of the Comtesse de Boigne.5 But the film’s success cannot, of course, be attributed entirely to its historical accuracy, particularly given the insistence of reviewers on the story’s relevance to the late twentieth century. Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times, for instance, compared the eighteenth-​century milieu of Ridicule, “insincere, obsessed with appearances and armed with well-​ developed systems of humiliation,” to today’s Hollywood.6 And, according to Mireille Rosello, Ponceludon’s dilemma, as to whether he must play dirty to succeed, “is narrativized in ways that are almost uncomfortably too close to current cultural debates.”7 Set in the early 1780s, Ridicule depicts a way of life and a form of amusement that would, in principle, disappear during the French Revolution. The question of the erosion of comedy, or at least of cruel comedy, by social progress is, however, no less relevant today than then. In a recent interview with Le Figaro, for instance, writer and director Francis Veber reflects on the hobbling of comedy by political correctness.8 Veber’s own films, including his award-​winning 1998 comedy, Le dîner de cons (The Dinner Game),9 are generally defiant of modern taboos. And in spite of Leconte’s observation that he found Ridicule “rather politically correct” on a first viewing,10 it actually has much in common with The Dinner Game. In Veber’s comedy, a prominent publisher, Pierre Brochant, attends a weekly dinner with a group of Parisian businessmen to which each of the guests brings an “idiot” for them to make fun of. The setting is no longer the court of Louis XVI, but late-​twentieth-​century Paris. But, as in Ridicule, comic effect is created at the expense of a victim, and social distinctions are based on wit.

16  Mock Ritual in the Modern Era As with Ridicule again, The Dinner Game is based on reality. In an interview from 1998 with the online magazine CINOPSIS, Veber stated that the idiots’ dinner “really existed” and that he knew people who took part in it.11 And just as reviewers of Ridicule were drawn to the film’s resonance with current social issues, it is easy to find historical precedents for The Dinner Game. An article published on the French citizen journalism website AgoraVox displaying the poster for Veber’s film invites a comparison with the adventures of eighteenth-​century author Antoine-​Henri Poinsinet, “repeatedly the victim of what today would be called ‘idiot’s dinners.’ ”12 The story of Poinsinet, which dates from the 1750s, was widely told in the following decades and published in an appendix to Jean Monnet’s memoirs in 1772. But if Poinsinet was notoriously a victim of idiot’s dinners, he was by no means the only victim of what had, by the time Laclos wrote Dangerous Liaisons, become a well-​established feature of Parisian life. The scene from Stephen Frears’s film where the Vicomte de Valmont writes a letter to Madame de Tourvel using his mistress, a prostitute named Émilie, as a writing desk, for instance, takes place in Laclos’s novel following a dinner where Émilie and a group of friends make fun of a wealthy Dutchman. One may also think of the dinners organized by Valmont’s rival, Prévan, to ridicule his mistresses, and by the Marquise de Merteuil to ridicule Prévan. A dinner, called not an “idiots’ ” but a “wits’ dinner,” is also featured in Ridicule. Following a scene where the Comtesse de Blayac and the Abbé de Vilecourt are caught cheating by Ponceludon at “bouts-​rimés” (a poetic game), Vilecourt is worried that Ponceludon will ridicule him in front of the king. The Comtesse, however, has a plan to make sure that Ponceludon never sits at the king’s table: “I’ll have a dinner. . . . And serve Ponceludon de Malavoy a dish of ridicule.” This scene has been compared by critics to an “execution.”13 And while Ponceludon is, of course, not literally “executed,” the dinner does, however, result in a social execution akin to that of Milletail who, we may recall, had gone into exile after being humiliated at a ball. As a result of the dinner, Ponceludon goes back to his marshy estate. Only when a young boy he had promised to help dies from the fever does he resolve to return to Versailles. The Comtesse de Blayac’s dinner is a kind of comedy, largely scripted, and with all of the guests playing their part. The Comtesse begins by observing that there are thirteen of them and that to avoid such an unlucky number, they must either have a servant come to sit with them or have someone leave. The idea of a servant sitting at the table being judged unacceptable, the

Ridicule  17 Abbé de Vilecourt proposes a contest in which the person who has shown the least wit when the soup arrives will go. The ensuing conversation follows a preestablished order, with Vilecourt responding to a question from the Comtesse and the other guests speaking in turn. Throughout the exchange of witticisms, the Comtesse distracts Ponceludon by caressing and sexually arousing him, so that when finally he speaks, after everyone else and only when he is prompted, as if awaking from a daydream, he misquotes a line from Voltaire. Suddenly aware of the Comtesse’s treachery, Ponceludon acknowledges defeat and takes his leave. Everything in this scene is conducted according to the protocol set by the Comtesse, whose husband, the Comte de Blayac, was responsible for the humiliation of Milletail. While this dinner is, in a sense, as Virginie Gournay and Yves Le Troquer have said, an execution, it may be more specifically termed a sacrifice. The unlucky number thirteen, which is the pretext for the contest, is reminiscent of the number present at the Last Supper. And by virtue of his comparing the Comtesse to Judas for betraying him, Ponceludon implicitly compares himself to Jesus Christ. The sacrificial character of the scene is suggested, moreover, by the Chevalier de Saint-​Tronchain’s response to the concern over there being thirteen of them at the table: “Que le moins titré d’entre nous se sacrifie.”14 In this scene as elsewhere, the sacrificial vocabulary disappears from the English subtitles. “Que le moins titré d’entre nous se sacrifie” becomes “He of lowest rank [must leave].” Later, when Ponceludon is tripped on the dance floor, “Qui sera la prochaine victime?” is translated as “Whose turn is next?” The same tendency is visible in modern English translations of Les Liaisons dangereuses where Laclos’s sacrificial vocabulary is often replaced with more neutral expressions. In Helen Constantine’s 2007 Penguin translation, Valmont speaks of “put[ting] off ” writing a letter, Prévan of “giving up” his box at the theater, and Merteuil of “giv[ing] up” the idea of bringing Danceny with her to her country house.15 Douglas Parmée’s 1995 Oxford translation similarly offers alternatives to “sacrifice,” notably in passages where the word is used in the libertine sense of “giving up” a lover for someone else. Attenuation of Laclos’s language may be motivated by a variety of different reasons. These could be stylistic, to avoid what may appear as undue repetitions, or “cultural,” having to do, for instance, with our sense of greater distance from religion. What is certain, though, when modern translators attenuate Laclos’s usage of sacrifice, is the loss of continuity between its metaphorical and literal senses. If the usage of the word, particularly in the

18  Mock Ritual in the Modern Era first half of the novel, is mostly metaphorical—​for instance, when Valmont speaks of “sacrificing” his time to stay in the country with his aunt, Madame de Rosemonde—​it becomes more literal toward the end. According to their arrangement, Merteuil is to be the “reward” for Valmont’s seduction of Madame de Tourvel. When finally Madame de Tourvel “capitulates,” the Marquise reneges on her promise, evoking the “sacrifices” she would demand of him and that, she says, he would be unable to make. The powerful ending to the novel hinges largely on the confusion surrounding these statements. Initially understood by Valmont as a demand for him to give up Cécile Volanges, the Marquise’s words in fact refer to Madame de Tourvel. But the ambiguity regarding the identity of the victim is coupled with a further confusion as to the nature of the “sacrifices.” With both Cécile and Madame de Tourvel, the prospect of being “given up” is part of a larger, more sinister scenario. Merteuil, who has set herself up as a “Divinity, with blind mortals vying in their prayers to [her] while she never change[s]‌[her] immutable decrees,” conspires with Valmont to “turn [Cécile] into a real disaster.”16 Pregnant by Valmont without knowing it, Cécile suffers a miscarriage, is publicly disgraced when the correspondence between Merteuil and Valmont is circulated, and ends up committing herself to a convent. Similarly, after receiving a letter from Valmont, but dictated by Merteuil, explaining that a woman whom he desperately loves is insisting that he “give her up,” Madame de Tourvel falls gravely ill, becomes delirious, and dies in the midst of deep spiritual torment, unable to survive her shame and her misfortune. The sacrifice of Cécile and of Madame de Tourvel is part of the novel’s tragic denouement culminating in the death of Valmont and the ostracism of the Marquise. The components of the tragedy are, however, first presented in a comic mode. The coupling of sacrifice and ridicule that we find in Leconte’s film is equally prominent in Dangerous Liaisons. As the Marquise explains to him, Valmont “sacrifices” Madame de Tourvel because he himself is afraid of ridicule: “You would have sacrificed a thousand more rather than be laughed at.”17 Similarly, Madame de Tourvel, prior to receiving the letter where Valmont announces he is leaving her, writes in despair to Madame de Rosemonde, saying that she has been “sacrificed” by Valmont after being publicly ridiculed by Émilie, whom she encounters by chance next to him at the Opera: “What you will scarcely believe is that this same girl, who had apparently an odious knowledge of who I am, did not leave the carriage window, nor stop staring at me, and was attracting everyone’s attention by laughing quite openly.”18

Ridicule  19 The attenuation of sacrificial language in English versions of Dangerous Liaisons and Ridicule may suggest, as we have said, that modern translators, who are usually well attuned to public sensitivities, consider such language unessential or overused. It may seem to them, too, as to Derek Hughes in his recent study of sacrifice in literature and opera, that “literary human sacrifice rarely has much connection with the real thing.”19 If the “real thing” is understood as the literal “religious sacrifice of a human victim,”20 then there are, to be sure, important distinctions to be made. But that does not mean that little connection exists between the “literary” and the “real,” or between figurative and literal senses of the term. Perusal of Diderot and d’Alembert’s Encyclopedia suggests a broad array of meanings for sacrifice, from the “worship of a divinity through the offering of a victim, or of some other present”21 to figural expressions such as “sacrificing oneself for someone” or “being sacrificed to someone’s ambition.”22 The article IMMOLATION, IMMOLATE underlines the shifts that have occurred over time in the meaning of these words, and concludes with an example that describes this practice as ongoing: “Sometimes a man is immolated through mockery, in a very cruel fashion. Those to whose disdain one of their kind is exposed are wicked if they are not revolted, and if they coldly accept the sacrifice offered to them.”23 The kind of immolation described here is similar to what we have seen in Ridicule and Dangerous Liaisons. While this mocking ritual is not properly a religious sacrifice, it is visibly modeled on sacrifice. The offering of a victim, the cruelty of the ritual, and the wickedness of its participants correspond to what enlightened thinkers saw in literal human sacrifice. This ritual is presented in the Encyclopedia as a social reality. The same reality is also reflected in Rameau’s Nephew, for instance, where Diderot writes, “It is a very common form of meanness to sacrifice a man for the amusement of others.”24 Among other things, Rameau’s Nephew is a commentary, albeit a highly personal commentary, on contemporary society, and particularly on the “society of men of letters.” The “sacrifice” mentioned here takes place at a gathering of Diderot’s enemies, some of whom were known, moreover, to have mocked Poinsinet, cited previously as a prototypical victim of idiot’s dinners. The practice of sacrificing a man “for the amusement of others” belongs to a time of reputed disenchantment, to use Max Weber’s term, and takes place within an intellectual culture that is purportedly antisacrificial. While these rituals, in Rameau’s Nephew, were performed not by the encyclopedists but

20  Mock Ritual in the Modern Era by their enemies, Diderot and his entourage are known to have conducted similar rituals themselves. As is often the case in Diderot, a given philosophical position (in this instance, the critique of sacrifice) is paired with its contradiction. Nothing was more appealing to Diderot’s philosophical temperament than paradox. And the renewal of sacrificial ritual represents a singular paradox for eighteenth-​century philosophy. Of sacrifice in Dangerous Liaisons, one could argue that Laclos is simply following in the tradition of “libertine novels” by using religious language in the realm of seduction.25 But while he undeniably exploits the language of a literary genre, Laclos’s implications are more than “literary.” The sacrificial scenario in Dangerous Liaisons contradicts the prevailing discourse of philosophical progress in his time—​it is the assumption of progress, after all, that leads Laclos’s publisher to dismiss the story as fiction—​and suggests more particularly that religious or at least mock religious patterns survive, or are even intensified, in the world of secular eroticism. The sacrifices enacted by Valmont and Merteuil are all the more scandalous in that these characters are themselves products of enlightenment. Critics perceive the court of Versailles in Ridicule as a highly ritualized world. As Michel Boujut observes in his preface to an issue of L’avant-​scène devoted to Leconte’s film, it is the Marquis de Bellegarde “who will educate [Ponceludon] and initiate him to the codes and rituals of the Versailles tribe.”26 Bellegarde is initially hesitant to introduce Ponceludon at court. He has already seen many country gentlemen fail in their quest to receive an audience with the king, and is aware of the dangers to which a novice is exposed in this milieu. In spite of some important differences, the parallels with Dangerous Liaisons are once again quite striking. In contrast with Ponceludon’s guide in Ridicule, the good-​natured Marquis de Bellegarde, the responsibility of initiating novices to society in Dangerous Liaisons belongs to the libertine protagonists. But while ostensibly liberated from religious superstition, Valmont and Merteuil continually craft their plans in a cynical imitation of religion. As the guides for Cécile Volanges and the Chevalier Danceny, they conduct themselves in the manner of priests as portrayed, for instance, by Voltaire or d’Holbach. They use their authority to establish dominance over their novices, and the initiatory process results not in enlightenment, but rather in obscurantism. The plan to have Cécile’s correspondence with Danceny revealed, for instance, is contrived specifically to produce “mystery,” in the hope that Danceny will become more ardent in his pursuit of Cécile.

Ridicule  21 In Dangerous Liaisons as in Ridicule, initiation is a prelude to mockery. But the novices in Dangerous Liaisons are themselves only pawns in a larger game. In the same letter where Merteuil tells Valmont how she has revealed to Madame de Volanges that a dangerous liaison exists between Cécile and Danceny, she reminds him that the “principal object of her attentions” is her former lover and Cécile’s fiancé, the Comte de Gercourt. While the “education” of Cécile and Danceny is a main preoccupation in the correspondence, the original agreement to have Valmont seduce Cécile is undertaken only to make Gercourt the laughingstock of Paris. During the 1996 Toronto Film Festival, Patrice Leconte suggested that in comparison with Stephen Frears’s Dangerous Liaisons, “the scenario of Ridicule is more universal and more timeless.”27 Regardless of whether the latter scenario is, in fact, more timeless and universal—​which is debatable given the modern international success of Laclos’s novel that, subsequently to Frears’s adaptation, has inspired major film productions in the United States, Korea, and China28—​it is certain that Ridicule was intended to transcend its historical setting: “I decided to make a film,” Leconte explains, “as though I was a very poor student; as though I had not read or seen anything about the 18th century. I tried each minute to forget that it was a period film.”29 In contrast to Leconte, who viewed Dangerous Liaisons more as “a story of four people” than as “a story of a society,”30 we may observe, however, that while principally concerned with a few main characters, Dangerous Liaisons is, nonetheless, presented as a “collection of letters from one section of society and published for the edification of others.” Implicitly, Laclos’s readers will be initiated into the secrets of a certain “section of society,” or more accurately following the French original, of a specific “society.”31 The entire pedagogy of the novel corresponds to a ritual process. This same process is also, of course, at the heart of Ridicule. In an article comparing Leconte’s film to a novel by Laclos’s contemporary Joseph de Maimieux, Élisabeth Bourguinat concludes that “the experience of ridicule—​ ridicule specific to the group to which one wishes to be admitted—​plays a determining role in all initiations.”32 While Bourguinat bases her claim on parallels with traditional tribal and magical initiations, the association of ridicule with initiation is no less visible in twenty-​first-​century culture. North American university policies on hazing, for instance, routinely mention ridicule as an example of forbidden conduct associated with initiation into student organizations.

22  Mock Ritual in the Modern Era In his interview with Pamela Cuthbert, Leconte goes so far as to say that the essence of Ridicule actually has little to do with the eighteenth century: “The modernity of it comes through treating the story as something universal, and why not—​something of today.”33 The film’s relevance to contemporary culture is illustrated, notably, in Mark Waters’s 2004 hit movie Mean Girls,34 which is set not at a university but at a high school. In order to convey the modernity of Rémi Waterhouse’s script and for the actors to avoid appearing “stiff ” in their eighteenth-​century costumes, Leconte told them to act “as if they were wearing blue jeans.” In Mean Girls, the actors are wearing blue jeans while often appearing stiff. The story revolves around the efforts of the new girl, Cady Heron, to be accepted into the school’s most exclusive clique, “The Plastics,” who, like the courtiers at Versailles, have their own codes and rituals: “Having lunch with The Plastics was like leaving the actual world and entering ‘Girl World.’ And Girl World had a lot of rules.” In Mean Girls the characters are subjected not only to ridicule but also, as the title suggests, to acts of cruelty, as in Ridicule and The Dinner Game.35 In each of these films, cruelty appears at once as a source of humor and something to be overcome. In The Dinner Game, Pierre Brochant’s wife, Christine, leaves him because she does not approve of the idiots’ dinners he attends each week, and only considers coming back to him when she is told that he has changed his evil ways. In Ridicule, as Ginette Vincendeau observes, “a none-​too-​subtle contrast” between the “ritualised and corrupt old order of the court” and “the new broom of scientific progress arising from the Enlightenment”36 is resolved when Ponceludon carries out his project to reclaim the swamps with the aid not of the king, but of the Revolutionary government, and aristocratic wit gives way to the inflated rhetoric of Danton and Saint-​Just. While Waterhouse’s script avoids the facile conclusion that ridicule and its hierarchical rituals were killed off during the reign of terror along with the aristocrats, the ending of Mean Girls jokingly suggests that the threat of malevolent cliques re-​forming in the future could be removed by having their members run over by a bus. The condemnation of cruelty in these films evidently reflects a “real-​ world problem.”37 As in Ridicule, where pestilence and wit are eliminated as a consequence of the same progressive movement, contemporary society tends to look for rational solutions. The website StopHazing.org, for instance, was created for the purpose of “educating to eliminate hazing.”38 Education is presented here as a solution to hazing, much as it was presented by Enlightenment thinkers as a remedy for superstition, although, unlike

Ridicule  23 most contemporary pedagogical approaches, Enlightenment critiques regularly relied also on parody. A pivotal scene near the end of Ridicule shows the Comtesse de Blayac and her entourage arranging for Ponceludon to trip and fall while dancing at a masked ball. In a repetition of his own humiliation by the Comte de Blayac, Milletail mocks the fallen Ponceludon, calling him the “Marquis des Antipodes.” But in contrast to Milletail, who remains within a cycle of ritualized vengeance where victims in turn become torturers, Ponceludon breaks from this cycle in renouncing vengeance and unmasking his persecutors. Addressing the circle of mockers, Ponceludon tells them that while they admire Voltaire’s biting wit, Voltaire, who had a “ridiculous sensitivity to the misfortunes of humankind,” would cry if he could see them. The name Voltaire is, of course, emblematic of his age. And the conclusion to Ridicule suggests that French society became more enlightened in vanquishing the physical and moral ills of the “old regime.” “It is, however,” according to film critic Michael Medved, “a minor flaw in a fine film that offers wisdom as the ultimate antidote to wit and shows that those who ruthlessly wield ridicule are themselves most ridiculous.”39 Whereas Ponceludon’s denunciation of mockery rests on a distinction between philosophical wit and that of the courtiers, they themselves take Voltaire as a model of wit, and a closer look at Voltaire shows that this distinction is less clear than is commonly assumed. Voltaire’s writings on religion offer a version of the degeneration theory common to many eighteenth-​century thinkers according to which religious practices were originally pure but were corrupted over time. As exemplified by numerous passages on the customs and usages of different nations from the Essay on Manners, rites and ceremonies for Voltaire are usually synonymous with superstition. With reference to the degeneration of the Brahmins, for instance, he describes their book of rites as “a mass of superstitious ceremonies that make anyone laugh who was not born on the banks of the Ganges or the Indus, or rather anyone who, not being a philosopher, is surprised by the follies of other peoples and not by those of one’s country.”40 We may observe in passing a similar comparison of cultures in Ridicule, notably at the king’s reception of the Sioux leaders at Versailles where Monseigneur d’Artimont remarks to the person next to him that the “savage,” “half-​naked, with a necklace of rattles and bones and the name of Stinking Bear,” almost makes them look ridiculous. The entire film, from Milletail’s vengeance on the Comte de Blayac to Ponceludon’s duel with the Colonel de

24  Mock Ritual in the Modern Era Chevernoy, may be interpreted in the light of this comparison in which the Versailles tribe appears more savage than the “savages.”41 Of the ceremonies of the ancient world, Voltaire insists particularly on expiation and sacrifice. He emphasizes what appears either most absurd, such as cleansing one’s soul with fire or water, or most horrible, such as offering to God what was held most dear, including one’s own children. Voltaire could say of ritual, regarded as a school of folly and a theater of horrors, what he says in his Homilies of superstition: “[It] has been so horrible among nearly all nations that if there were no monuments of it still in existence, it would be impossible to believe what we are told.”42 Given Voltaire’s repeated assimilation of ritual to cruelty and folly, we might assume he simply wants to abolish it, as is suggested, for instance, in a prayer addressed to God in the Sermon of the Fifty, where he writes, “If one can insult you with unworthy sacrifices, abolish those infamous mysteries.”43 But his condemnation is by no means absolute. Apart from what he calls “innocent superstitions,” such as dancing in honor of secondary gods on feast days,44 Voltaire describes expiation as “perhaps the most beautiful institution of antiquity,” a ceremony “which repressed crimes by warning that they must be punished, and which calmed the despair of the guilty by making them atone for their transgressions by various kinds of penitence.”45 This view of expiation as an exception in the repertoire of superstitious ceremonies is expressed repeatedly, for instance in the introduction to the Essay on Manners. Voltaire even based an entire play, Olympia, on this subject. These apparent contradictions concerning expiation may be explained by distinguishing different moments in its evolution, as in the following passage from Questions on the Encyclopedia: As soon as religions were established, there were expiations; the ceremonies accompanying them were ridiculous: for what connection is there between the water of the Ganges and a murder? How could a man repair a homicide by bathing himself? . . . The water of the Nile had later the same virtue as the water of the Ganges: to these purifications other ceremonies were added, which were even less to the point. The Egyptians took two goats, and drew lots for which of the two should be cast down, charged with the sins of the guilty. The name of “Hazazel,” the expiator, was given to this goat. What connection, I ask you, is there between a goat and a man’s crime?46

Ridicule  25 With established religions, which Voltaire distinguishes from natural religion considered as having preceded them,47 expiations have been corrupted by superstitious ceremonies. But if expiations were worsened by superstition, as in the movement from “bathing” to sacrificial ritual, it follows that they could be improved by tempering it: “Men have done better [since]. They invented the mysteries, whereby the guilty might receive absolution by undergoing painful ordeals, and by swearing that they would lead a new life.”48 In contrast with the “infamous mysteries” mentioned in the Sermon of the Fifty that Voltaire wished to see abolished, the mysteries are said here to have been invented “only to make men better.”49 In claiming that these mysteries were invented for the improvement of mankind, Voltaire attributes to ritual a function that he usually assigns to philosophy.50 Starting from the opposition of philosophy and ritual, we arrive, if not at their equivalence, then at least at their possible alliance. The teaching of virtue associated with philosophy can also lead, if not to a literal sacrifice, then to mock ritual. The pedagogical use of mockery is illustrated, notably, in a passage from the article SECT in the Philosophical Dictionary opposing virtue to superstition: When Zoroaster, Hermes, Orpheus, Minos and all great men say: “Let us worship God and be just,” nobody laughs; but the whole world hisses the man who claims that we can please God only by holding a cow’s tail when we die, and the one who wants us to have a bit of foreskin cut off, and the one who consecrates crocodiles and onions.51

In contrasting men who teach the love of God and virtue with those who are mocked—​or rather that his readers are invited to mock—​for their beliefs, Voltaire wishes to eliminate what he considers superstition by holding up as objects of universal scorn the men who believe in it. The teaching of virtue, in this instance, takes the form of an expiatory rite. The men “the whole world” laughs at, though chosen here for a reason rather than by lot,52 are charged with errors of which Voltaire wishes to rid humanity, just as the Egyptians reportedly charged a goat named Hazazel with the sins of the guilty; and although there is no confusion between goats and men’s crimes of the kind he ridicules in the allegedly Egyptian ceremony, the risk of scapegoating humans instead is evident. We may note that, while notoriously anticlerical, Voltaire’s critique finds significant parallels within the Brahmanic tradition. In an illuminating

26  Mock Ritual in the Modern Era passage from Homo Ritualis, Axel Michaels outlines how ritual ablution succeeded sacrifice, rather than vice versa, but also, more importantly for us, how it came into being as a critique of sacrifice—​from which Michaels deduces that “criticism of ritual does not mean an absence of ritual,” but, sooner or later, “becomes a ritual itself.”53 While critical to our analysis of secular modernity, the patterns we have underlined in Voltaire are shown by Michaels to have religious precedents. Above all, for us, Michaels observes that “sometimes even the brahmanic ritualists and their commentators laugh at the rituals,” citing the example of the Maṇḍūka or “Frog” Upaniṣad “mock[ing] the recitation of mantras in initiation.”54 In considering Voltaire, we are in a sense never very far away from our own time. The mocking rituals in Leconte’s Ridicule were, as we have mentioned, seen by critics as much as a reflection of modern societies as of pre-​ Revolutionary France. And Voltaire’s name has, if anything, figured even more prominently in cultural debates of the post–​September 11, 2001, era and the renewed conflict of secular and religious values. One may think particularly here of the terrorist attack on the offices of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in 2015, where mockery of the prophet Muhammad, which had been the motive for the attack, became associated once again, as if inevitably, with Voltaire. We will return to Voltaire and Charlie Hebdo in a later chapter.

2 Mock Ritual in Diderot and d’Alembert’s Encyclopedia The philosophers thought to escape persecution by adopting, in imitation of the priests themselves, the practice of a double doctrine, confiding only to proven disciples opinions that too openly offended vulgar prejudices. Condorcet, Outlines of an Historical View of the Progress of the Human Mind

Written by a “society of men of letters,” Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d’Alembert’s Encyclopedia is remembered as one of the principal publications of the French Enlightenment. The work is usually associated with the idea of progress—​its aim, according to Diderot, was nothing less than to “change the common way of thinking”1—​and is often cited in reference to a transition from traditional to modern societies. The Encyclopedia is perceived in particular as having precipitated the decline of religion in the years leading to the French Revolution and, in so doing, having laid the intellectual foundations for our secular democracies. While interpretations differ, the influence of the Encyclopedia is unquestioned. It may be taken to exemplify important aspects of modernity. Within the Encyclopedia we can identify several articles related to what we are calling mock ritual. A number of these are devoted to French customs of the Middle Ages, which are typically viewed with disdain, as in the chevalier de Jaucourt’s article FEAST OF FOOLS. Presented as a “disorderly, vulgar and impious celebration made by the sub-​deacons, the deacons and even the priests in most churches” between Christmas and the Epiphany, this feast is associated with ceremonies described by Jaucourt as “farcical” and “grotesque.”2 During the divine office, the priests and clerics are said to have been absurdly dressed, some as clowns, others in women’s clothing. “Not content with singing indecent songs in the chancel,” he writes, “they ate and played at Mock Ritual in the Modern Era. Reginald McGinnis and John Vignaux Smyth, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2022. DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197637432.003.0003

28  Mock Ritual in the Modern Era dice next to the priest celebrating mass. They put excrement in the censers, and ran around the church jumping, laughing, singing, uttering dirty words, and making all sorts of obscene gestures.”3 In comparison with Jaucourt’s own reputedly philosophical century, the Middle Ages appears as decidedly unenlightened. “This feast,” he observes, “was truly so extravagant that the reader would find it difficult to believe if he wasn’t informed as to the ignorance and barbarity of the centuries preceding the rebirth of letters in Europe.”4 The feast of fools is denounced for its extravagance and vulgarity, but also for its mixing of the sacred and the profane—​a critique Jaucourt reiterates elsewhere, as in the article PASSION PLAYS, which he describes as “pious farces” and a “shameful alloy of religion and buffoonery.”5 Jaucourt observes approvingly that the feast of fools and Passion plays—​which is to say, according to his own interpretation, farce, associated broadly with the Middle Ages—​were later abolished, attributing their disappearance to the progress of the arts and sciences. Other contributors to the Encyclopedia on a variety of topics follow a similar line of reasoning—​Louis de Cahusac, for instance, on the abolishment of comic opera, in which he sees the remnants of farce, and which he calls “a spectacle as dangerous for morals as it is detrimental to the progress and perfection of taste.”6 Another example of mock ritual comes from an article on seafaring by Jacques-​Nicolas Bellin. The baptism of the tropic or of the line, he writes, “is a ridiculous ceremony, but an old and inviolable one among sailors, who practice it routinely on those who cross for the first time the tropic or the equinoctial line.”7 We are told that every nation approaches this ceremony differently, and that variations even exist among different crews of a given nation. The variation presented by Bellin, which is said to be the most common form among French crews, is carefully choreographed. The ship’s pilot and sailors are given specific roles, with the man who is to be baptized being made to swear an oath on a book of nautical charts before being flipped from a plank into a tub and doused with several pails of water. Bellin concludes his article by observing that a version involving cutting rather than dousing is reserved for the ships themselves, adding that this ceremony is being abolished. Judging from these examples, mock ritual appears remote from the world of the encyclopedists and alien to eighteenth-​century thought. The feast of fools is relegated to a distant past, and there is the suggestion in Bellin’s article that the baptism of the tropic or of the line should also be suppressed.

Mock Ritual in Diderot and d’Alembert’s Encyclopedia  29 If we expand our inquiry, however, we discover within the Encyclopedia a more intimate, and more disturbing, connection between Enlightenment reason and mock ritual—​a term we are using here, we should recall, in different but related senses, including sham ritual and ritualized mockery, but also the mockery of ritual. Clearly the latter kind of mockery risks, if there is any more than a superficial confusion or overlap between these categories, not merely repeating the errors it condemns, but evolving them to a qualitatively new level of self-​deception. The Abbé Mallet’s observation in the article FREETHINKING, that it is reason that authorized the mockery of the “extravagant ceremonies of all religions” other than “true religion,”8 is reiterated in the unsigned article REASON, which states that if one does not distinguish the limits of faith and reason, “there will be no place for reason in matters of religion, and one will have no right to mock the opinions and extravagant ceremonies one observes in most of the world’s religions.”9 The notion of reason serving as a touchstone for the mockery of religious ceremonies, which is stated explicitly in FREETHINKING and REASON, is also pervasive notably in the articles on divination as, for instance, when Mallet cites Cato the Elder’s line on the haruspices, whose function was to interpret omens from the entrails of sacrificial victims, that he didn’t understand how one of them could look at another without laughing. As regards sham ritual, we may recall the reference in the article BUFFOON to an ancient Greek ceremony in which the sacrificer, after immolating an ox, is said to have fled the scene, leaving his axe to be judged in his stead—​ a ceremony and a judgment considered so ridiculous that “the words buffoonish and buffooneries were used for all the other mummeries and farces that appeared ridiculous.”10 In a related article attributed to Diderot, “mummery” is defined as “buffoonery, or a ridiculous and hypocritical appearance, or a laughable, pitiful and vile ceremony”—​to which it is added that “there is no religion that is not disfigured by some mummeries.”11 As “laughable, pitiful and vile” ceremonies, examples of which may be found in all religions, mummeries are easily assimilated into the antireligious strain of eighteenth-​ century philosophy. But the conclusion to this short article suggests that the question is not one-​sided and that what is first presented as something specific to religion may also exist outside of it: There are people whose entire life is nothing but a continual mummery; they laugh in the depth of their souls at the thing they appear to respect, and

30  Mock Ritual in the Modern Era before which they have the crowd of fools they deceive bow down. Many so-​called sciences are nothing but mummeries!12

While the attitude depicted here, consisting of creating the appearance of belief as a means of deceiving people, is typical notably of that ascribed to priests by the baron d’Holbach in his articles on superstition, there is no restriction placed on the “thing” before which “the crowd of fools” are made to bow down. The rituals or the idols could, in this instance, be secular as well as religious. Similarly, the idea that “many so-​called sciences are nothing but mummeries” reverses the usual paradigm in which religion is opposed to science. Such a reversal, as we have mentioned, is later illustrated in Flaubert’s pharmacist Homais, who is a kind of antireligious fanatic, but also calls his faith in Enlightenment values his “religion” and practices a form of mass deception in promoting faulty science. We have already encountered a prototype of ritualized mockery, of a man being “immolated through mockery,”13 in the previously quoted article IMMOLATION, IMMOLATE. This kind of mockery is presented explicitly as sacrificial—​a troubling recurrence of reputedly outmoded practices—​ and reappears in several articles whose titles do not show any obvious link with sacrifice. There is, at the very least, the suggestion in these articles that eighteenth-​century French society can be viewed from the standpoint of archaic ritual. The reference in IMMOLATION, IMMOLATE is to human sacrifice, which the chevalier de Jaucourt considered the worst of the “impious and wicked actions”14 of superstitious religions. Offering examples from a variety of ancient and modern sources, Jaucourt’s article HUMAN VICTIM concludes with the observation that the only human sacrifices known in mid-​eighteenth-​century Europe “are those ordered from time to time by the Inquisition” and a call for the abolishment of autos-​da-​fé (ritual punishments, such as burnings at the stake, called “acts of faith”) “in all of the Spanish possessions of the old and new world.”15 At a time when human sacrifice is said to be absent from Europe and when its vestiges in judicial ritual (if this is what we have with auto-​da-​fé) are an object of critique, it is in a sense surprising to discover its reappearance in a comic form, for instance in Jaucourt’s article MEANNESS: “a new term invented for our nation in particular, and which needs to be defined. It is a kind of disparagement uttered agreeably and in keeping with good taste.”16 If “meanness” is a “new term” at the time of the Encyclopedia, it is of course not without precedent. The idea of evil or malice was obviously not invented

Mock Ritual in Diderot and d’Alembert’s Encyclopedia  31 in the eighteenth century. It is a very specific kind of meanness, then, that Jaucourt refers to in which mockery is allied with notions of pleasure and good taste. We are using “disparagement” here for the French médisance, which is usually translated as “gossip,” because médisance in this instance is actually equivalent to persiflage. And an important distinction between gossip and persiflage is that, whereas one usually only gossips about others in their absence, persiflage often pertains specifically to malicious speech directed at someone who is present.17 Citing Charles Pinot Duclos’s Considerations on the Manners of This Century, Jaucourt writes that this kind of meanness “is the soul of certain societies in our country, and has ceased to be odious without losing its name,” to which he adds that “it is even a fashion.”18 The phrasing here suggests that the behavior referred to as “meanness” is quite pervasive, habitual even in some places, and that it entails an inversion of moral values, so that what is nominally odious is no longer regarded as such. Jaucourt naturally disapproves of what he is describing, and the entire article is condemnatory in a way that, as we see in the following sentences, is consistent with the evocation of sacrifice in HUMAN VICTIMS: Minor subaltern meanies ordinarily impose themselves on strangers whom chance has thrown in their way, just as foreigners were formerly sacrificed in some lands where an unhappy fate had led them. The upper-​level meanies keep to their compatriots, and sacrifice them mercilessly to whatever witty remark comes to mind and that can strike a blow.19

The image of French society in this passage openly invites comparison with so-​called barbaric customs, in keeping with articles under the heading of superstition regarding, for instance, the sacrifices of the Mexicans or peoples of the Congo. As in d’Holbach’s theorization of the priesthood in the article PRIESTS, the sacrifices exacted in parts of French society are said to be a means of acquiring or maintaining status. And a simple transposition of terms would allow us to identify Jaucourt’s “meanies” with d’Holbach’s priests. The division of sacrificers into higher and lower castes in MEANNESS corresponds notably to that of superior and “subaltern” priests in the article NGOMBOS.20 Comparison of eighteenth-​ century France with foreign cultures and different periods is, moreover, explicitly invited by Duclos, whose Considerations on the Manners of This Century is the source of Jaucourt’s

32  Mock Ritual in the Modern Era article. In the introduction to this work, Duclos declares that although it appears to be “specifically devoted to the understanding of the manners of [his own] century,” he hopes that “the consideration of current manners may further the understanding of people of all times.”21 Looking back at the eighteenth century, we can see how Duclos and his contemporaries viewed their own society in relation to those of former times. But we may also consider how the recurrence of archaic ritual in Enlightenment France could be relevant to us. With respect to meanness specifically, there are obvious parallels again with Mark Waters’s Mean Girls. The film’s main character, Cady Heron, is the daughter of zoologist parents and has grown up in the wilds of Africa. But, as stated on the DVD jacket, it is only in coming to high school in America that she truly learns the meaning of “survival of the fittest.” In the words of Susan Shapiro Barash, Cady observes the “elaborate rituals of gossip” and “humiliation” of her schoolmates “with scientific detachment.”22 Similar terms are used by other critics, noting in particular Cady’s repeated comparison of high school rituals with those of the African jungle.23 And while Mean Girls is obviously fiction, Tina Fey’s screenplay is nonetheless inspired by a bestselling work of nonfiction, Rosalind Wiseman’s Queen Bees and Wannabes: Helping Your Daughter Survive Cliques, Gossip, Boyfriends, and Other Realities of Adolescence.24 No one doubts that the actions depicted in the film reflect actual experience. As regards eighteenth-​century France, the passage from Duclos, Jaucourt’s source, is much more thorough than the Encyclopedia article, and its portrayal of fashionable societies is even more blatantly sacrificial. But after commenting at length on this aspect of French manners, Duclos seems to recant in part, cautioning that such societies are actually very rare. “There is nothing but truly good company,” he adds, “that is more so.”25 However one chooses to interpret Duclos’s commentary, it is hard to ignore the contradiction in his insistence on the rarity of societies that he constantly refers to in the plural and describes as fashionable. And one might wonder also why his observations on meanness would have been included in the Encyclopedia and other scientific works from this period, such as Didier-​Pierre Chicaneau de Neuville’s Portable Philosophical Dictionary, if it were entirely uncommon.26 Meanness in Duclos appears as a kind of cultural non sequitur. It is both presented as archaic and likened to modern inventions, the essence of which is to be continually perfected.27 Jaucourt seems to take particularly from Duclos whatever contradicts the accepted norms of polite society. Whereas

Mock Ritual in Diderot and d’Alembert’s Encyclopedia  33 sociability is usually defined as “kindness towards other men,”28 we read in SOCIABLE, AMIABLE that the amiable man is “most indifferent to the public good, eager to please every society where his own taste or chance may lead him, and ready to sacrifice any particular member of it.”29 Similarly, in the article RIDICULE—​and here we may think again of Leconte’s film—​ Jaucourt takes from Duclos the idea that the mockers “are like criminals who become executioners to save their own lives,” but also that “we often sacrifice our honor to our fortune, and sometimes our fortune to the fear of ridicule.”30 While mock sacrifice is presented openly in the articles we have just considered, it is more subtly alluded to elsewhere. To the uninitiated, Diderot’s article COTERIE may appear unrelated to our previous discussion. But a familiar pattern begins to emerge if one looks beneath the surface: COTERIE, a term borrowed from minor trade associations, where everyone provides one’s share of costs, and receives one’s share of gains, and which has lost none of the force of its first meaning in being applied to small societies where one lives very informally, with set days for meetings and foundation meals, where everyone offers one’s share of good or bad jokes, where one makes witticisms that are understood nowhere else, though it is almost in good taste to use them elsewhere, and to find ridiculous those who do not understand them, etc.31

Jaucourt provides a clue to the interpretation of this article, saying, “Meanness has been reduced to an art” that “commonly takes the place of merit for those who have no other” and “often makes them respected in many coteries.”32 Diderot draws a parallel here between the kind of small societies considered by Jaucourt in MEANNESS and minor trade associations, observing that the term coterie “has lost none of its force” in its secondary sphere of application where one offers jokes in lieu of money. While this article makes no specific mention of sacrifice, one nonetheless finds here the idea that someone unable to understand a joke may be treated as ridiculous or, to quote Duclos, of someone being “sacrificed without his knowing it to the malignancy of a group making him at once the instrument and victim of the joke.”33 The “foundation meals” (repas de fondation) mentioned in COTERIE undoubtedly have less in common with fundraising for pious or other good works, as dictionaries from the period suggest,34 than with the meals at the financier Bertin’s in Rameau’s Nephew, which exemplify the kind of sacrifice considered by Duclos: “There are plenty of us, and each one has to pay his scot.

34  Mock Ritual in the Modern Era When we have sacrificed the large animals we offer up the others.”35 Here, as in the encyclopedia entry, we are told that everyone has to pay one’s share, or “scot”—​quote-​part and écot being synonymous in French—​and jokes are alternately equivalent to money and to sacrifice. That making jokes in the presence of people who do not understand them would be almost “in good taste” (du bon ton), as stated in COTERIE, is, moreover, consistent with Duclos, as are its concluding sentences comparing “good” and “bad” societies.36 In all probability, Diderot is alluding to the same passage that Jaucourt borrows from in MEANNESS. In contrast with articles such as FEAST OF FOOLS or BAPTISM OF THE TROPIC OR OF THE LINE, where mock ritual appears at a safe remove, the practices evoked in MEANNESS, SOCIABLE, and COTERIE are directly concerned with enlightened French society. The article COTERIE, in particular, seems to point to a milieu with which its author, Diderot, was well acquainted. The word coterie is famously associated with the baron d’Holbach’s salon, which met every Sunday and Thursday in the rue Royale-​ Saint-​Roch, and whose guests included Diderot, d’Alembert, and several other contributors to the Encyclopedia. It is reasonable to view the article COTERIE itself as a kind of private joke that would have been opaque to most, but easily understood by those directly familiar with the subject. A story first recorded by Friedrich Melchior Grimm in the Correspondance littéraire may serve as an illustration. On Shrove Sunday 1754, a young curate from a small parish in Normandy, the Abbé Petit, was invited to read his tragedy, David and Bathsheba, in d’Holbach’s salon, not because d’Holbach and his friends believed that they would appreciate the play, but simply so that they could make fun of its author.37 Fifteen to twenty people, according to Grimm, were in attendance and “ready to mock [the curate] and ultimately drive him crazy if anything was amiss.”38 Since almost everything in this play was, in fact, amiss, criticisms were abundant. Grimm offers several examples of observations made by the audience and how these were answered by the curate, and suggests that this exercise was even more amusing than the play itself. Grimm’s account of the event shows the Abbé Petit’s being strung along by his audience through a mixture of criticism and disingenuous praise: “sacrificed without knowing it,” in Duclos’s phrase, “to the malignancy of a group making him at once the instrument and victim of the joke.” Grimm’s article is also reminiscent, in some respects, of Francis Veber’s Le dîner de cons, the opening sequence of which shows Pierre Brochant and his high-​society friends recruiting idiots for their weekly dinner. These

Mock Ritual in Diderot and d’Alembert’s Encyclopedia  35 so-​called idiots are sought out for their oddities and may be found, for instance, throwing boomerangs in the park or showing off their matchstick models to strangers on the train. Similarly, as Diderot’s biographer Arthur Wilson tells us, the Abbé Petit was introduced to Diderot while walking in the Luxembourg Gardens in the summer of 1753. Asked by the Abbé to comment on a madrigal he had written, Diderot is said to have told him that he should write tragedies rather than wasting his time on madrigals, adding that he would not listen to a single verse of his before he brought him a tragedy. Diderot’s advice to the Abbé Petit, like the words of Veber’s modern-​day pranksters, is clearly aimed at seducing his prey. “Some months later,” Wilson notes, “the Abbé Petit showed up with his tragedy, and Diderot arranged for him to read it at d’Holbach’s.”39 The story of the Abbé Petit is not in itself entirely exceptional. The idiots’ dinners involving Poinsinet, for instance, later described in an appendix to Jean Monnet’s Memoirs, date from the same period. What is striking here is that the coterie is composed neither of aristocratic rogues nor of anti-​ philosophes, but of Diderot, d’Holbach, and others elsewhere critical of such comedies.40 This scene of mockery corresponds to what is termed a sacrifice in the article IMMOLATION and to what Jaucourt and Duclos call meanness. And in contrast to what Jesus said of those who sacrificed him, Diderot, d’Holbach, and their companions seemingly knew what they were doing.41 Grimm’s account of the mocking of the Abbé Petit is in the form of a letter to his friend Saint-​Lambert who had asked for news of Shrovetide (les jours gras). What began as a private joke was eventually shared with a broader community of readers. Several years later, another more famous joke begun around Shrovetide would also be published by Grimm in the Correspondance littéraire: “M. de la Harpe’s Nun roused my conscience from ten years of sleep,” writes Grimm in February 1770, “reminding me of a horrible plot of which I was the soul along with M. Diderot and three or four other close friends, villains like ourselves. It is really time that I confessed and tried, during this holy period of Lent, to obtain forgiveness for this along with my other sins.”42 The “plot” that Grimm alludes to here is the joke on the Marquis de Croismare that is at the origin of Diderot’s novel The Nun. The Marquis, we are told, had left his friends in Paris to go to his estate in Normandy where he ended up staying and adopting a life of piety. Recalling that a little while before leaving, the Marquis had gone to speak at the Parliament of Paris in favor of a young nun who was making a legal appeal against her vows, but who had ended up losing her case, Diderot decided to use this story for his own

36  Mock Ritual in the Modern Era purposes. He pretended that this nun, Suzanne Simonin, had been fortunate enough to escape from her convent and wrote in her name to the Marquis, asking for his help and protection. Chronologically, the story of Suzanne’s misfortunes is preceded by a number of letters supposedly from her, or from a Madame Madin writing on her behalf, and the Marquis. But these letters are usually, paradoxically, published as a preface at the end of the novel. Regarding this correspondence, Diderot’s eighteenth-​century editor Jacques-​André Naigeon observes that the letters attributed to the Marquis, whom he calls “the only one of the actors in this drama not to be in on the joke,”43 are truly from him. As previously with the Abbé Petit, we can see how the Marquis is made to participate in the hoax that is being played on him. And although not physically present at the philosophes’ dinners, he is nonetheless the object of their attention. “We would spend our evenings [soupers],” writes Grimm, “reading and bursting with laughter at letters which were supposed to reduce our good Marquis to tears, and we also read and laughed just as much at the polite replies that this worthy and generous friend sent.”44 The conjunction of mockery and sacrifice that reappears in encyclopedia articles from IMMOLATION to MEANNESS and SOCIABLE is particularly striking in The Nun. The traditional question concerning the relation of the novel to the “preface,” for instance, can be viewed in this perspective. Suzanne’s first-​person telling of her story, or the novel as it has often been published on its own, appears as an entirely serious (though actually, of course, largely fictitious) account of her abuse, while the “preface” appears as a historical account of the mockery of the Marquis who took her story so seriously. Suzanne is a sacrificial victim—​forced into a convent as the price for her mother’s marital infidelity and tortured by her religious community—​ and the Marquis, her would-​be savior, is the butt of a joke. It is striking but not surprising, then, that Diderot makes Suzanne explicitly disapprove of jokes, specifically those of other nuns, on the grounds that they create victims. But it is equally striking that he himself turned the historical prank played on the Marquis into the genesis of a novel often compared to Samuel Richardson’s Clarissa, a tragic work famously eulogized by Diderot in his Éloge de Richardson, in which Clarissa is raped while unconscious and eventually dies from it. Instead of seriousness repeating itself as farce, it seems to be the other way around. The mock ritual is the genesis of the serious one.45 The joke on the Marquis de Croismare and the first draft of The Nun date from 1760. This was a particularly difficult year for Diderot and his

Mock Ritual in Diderot and d’Alembert’s Encyclopedia  37 associates. Publication of the Encyclopedia had been suspended by government decree. Its authors were denounced in political speeches and satirized, notably in a play titled Les Philosophes by Diderot’s enemy, Charles Palissot. This play, which enjoyed considerable success, seems to have inspired a short dialogue on laughter, Cinqmars et Derville.46 Diderot apparently did not take well to being ridiculed in front of a Parisian audience and was deeply afflicted by the personal nature of Palissot’s attacks. The main character in this dialogue, Cinqmars, says that “[his] soul is appalled by such horrors.”47 Cinqmars et Derville was seemingly written in response to Palissot’s play, but its main focus is an idiots’ dinner. The dialogue takes place in the gardens of a hospital following a meal where the host, Versac, and his friends have arranged among themselves to ridicule one of the guests. Whereas Derville, along with the others in attendance, has thoroughly enjoyed the afternoon, saying that he “almost died laughing” at Versac’s last story, Cinqmars is distraught by the scene he has witnessed. He is struck by what he views as the injustice done to a character named d’Arcy, who was singled out as an object of ridicule, and by the thoughtlessness of the other guests. The mocking of d’Arcy in Cinqmars et Derville corresponds to what is referred to in the Encyclopedia as meanness, or what we have also called mock sacrifice. But, as Pierre Chartier observes, derision in this dialogue is considered from the victim’s point of view.48 Cinqmars et Derville is, in this sense, a complete reversal from Grimm’s account of the mocking of the Abbé Petit, where Diderot, we may recall, was on the side of the laughers. Chartier also notes a similarity between this dialogue and The Nun. Just like Diderot, who turns the joke played on Croismare into “a woeful eulogy of Suzanne (condemned by God and society),” Cinqmars sides with “true merit persecuted” (d’Arcy at Versac’s dinner, but also Diderot on the Parisian stage) “in the midst of unbearable laughter.”49 As in The Nun, moreover, mockery in Cinqmars et Derville is made to coincide with sacrifice. Versac’s last story, from which Derville says he almost died laughing, is the story of a crucifixion, which is related in the dialogue as follows: [Versac] was curious to attend a gathering of convulsionnaires. He saw one who was given padding, who mimicked a child and walked on her knees before being laid on a cross; she was actually crucified, her hands and feet pierced with nails; her face was covered in cold sweat and she went into convulsions. In the midst of her torments she asked for some candy, to go

38  Mock Ritual in the Modern Era to bed, many other extravagances I don’t recall. Taken down from the cross, her hands still bleeding, she stroked the spectators’ arms and faces.50

The convulsionnaires were famous in the 1730s for a number of miraculous healings witnessed in the churchyard of Saint-​Médard in Paris. This movement, associated with Jansenism, represented a scandal both for French society and for modern scientific thought. And by the late 1750s, what had begun with fits of ecstasy at the tomb of the Jansenist ascetic François de Pâris had given way to crucifixions. The story related in Cinqmars et Derville is a brief summary of reports by eyewitnesses published the following year by Grimm in the Corrrespondance littéraire.51 Cinqmars’s denunciation of what he calls an “indecent pantomime,”52 and what Diderot, in the Encyclopedia article SECOURS, calls “a dismal and indecent farce,”53 is a prelude to a meditation on the causes of laughter. Cinqmars’s theory, in a word, is that there is in fact only one cause, which is the idea of a flaw, “a flaw either in the ideas, in the expression, or in the person who is acting or speaking, or who is the object of the discussion”54—​ to which he adds that one may laugh at physical and moral defects as long as the laughter is not harmful. In this dialogue, Cinqmars seeks to bring about a conversion, namely that of Derville, who is progressively led to abandon the circle of laughers in adopting the victim’s point of view.55 Given the context of this dialogue and the obvious association of the authorial voice with Cinqmars, one may wonder whether Diderot himself underwent such a conversion around this time. Indeed it is hard to imagine how he could have written a novel such as The Nun, where he is at once part of the circle of laughers and an advocate for “true merit persecuted,” alternately soliciting and shedding tears while writing the story of Suzanne’s misery, without having experienced something similar. Whatever the case may be, the renunciation of laughter that Cinqmars advocates in this dialogue appears to reflect at most a momentary and not a lasting change of life. There is no definitive conversion for Diderot as it is thought there may have been for Jean-​Jacques Rousseau some years earlier.56 There is apparently nothing, for instance, to keep Diderot from telling d’Alembert in 1765 how much he enjoyed reading his Account of the Destruction of the Jesuits in France in which the convulsionnaires are repeatedly ridiculed, including the Abbé Bécherand, who had one leg shorter than the other: “He would dance about on the tomb,” writes d’Alembert, “to try

Mock Ritual in Diderot and d’Alembert’s Encyclopedia  39 and lengthen it; every week, the Jansenist journalist gave the number of lines by which his leg had grown; in adding all these lines, the leg that used to be shorter was found to be longer than the other.”57 An Account of the Destruction of the Jesuits in France wavers between serious historical inquiry and what Adrien Paschoud calls “a discreetly Voltairean tone.”58 Diderot in his letter picks up on a passage where d’Alembert mocks the centuries-​long dispute between Jansenists and Molinists, remarking that if both parties were brought together and forced to explain the subject that divided them, no one could actually say what they were fighting for: “I only wish,” Diderot writes, “that there were a Molinist journal, just as there is a Jansenist journal, so that your epigraph could be corroborated and that you could have the pleasure of seeing one approving what was condemned by the other.”59 One might think that d’Alembert included jokes about the Jansenists in this work simply for his own amusement, or possibly for that of friends like Diderot and Voltaire. Doubtless, too, he had a personal score to settle with the Jansenists, who had been among the harshest critics of the Encyclopedia. But there is a further objective, explicitly stated by d’Alembert, in his use of ridicule, which is the elimination of fanaticism. The convulsions, according to him, are “the opprobrium and the ridicule of [his] century,”60 a recurrence of medieval farce. And the solution he proposes consists essentially in turning farce against itself. In lieu of the official punishments imposed by the French authorities, such as prison or exile, d’Alembert suggests that the convulsionnaires be ordered to perform their “farces” at the fair for money, next to tightrope dancers and jugglers.61 Like the medieval dancers, jokers, and buffoons, who are said to have been banished from the French stage by good taste,62 the convulsionnaires would eventually disappear if they were made to show themselves in public. D’Alembert’s appeal to ridicule as a means of expiation is essentially the same as what we saw earlier with Voltaire, but it also has equivalents in later philosophy, as, for instance, in what Paul E. Kirkland calls “the ridiculous repetition of ritual” in Nietzsche.63 One may think too of the resurgence of mockery in the festivals of the French Revolution,64 whose parodic episodes are interpreted by Mona Ozouf simply as “a way of saying farewell to the old world,”65 but which appear more, from our perspective, as an eternal return. Ritualized mockery would be similarly employed, for instance, in Soviet festivals during the years following the 1917 Revolution.66 Mock ritual, in this perspective, is as much the heritage as the antithesis of the Enlightenment.

3 Mocking Priests in Tristram Shandy and Jacques le fataliste Laughter is itself sacrifice. Natalie Strobach

Patrice Leconte’s film Ridicule concludes with the doctor, the Marquis de Bellegarde, fleeing France and discovering, on the cliffs of Dover, a more benign English “humor” in place of killing French “wit” (esprit). As if confirming this nationalist line of thinking, colloquial English of the period called teeth-​showing smiling mouths “French.”1 Thus, in part because he often presented himself, and was presented, then as now, as a key champion of such amiable humor, we too cross the English Channel to consider the novelist and Anglican priest Laurence Sterne; and more particularly—​since it concerns our central topic so explicitly—​to foreground what is quite literally the mock ritual death of Parson Yorick (complete with black mock tombstone page) in volume 1 of Tristram Shandy, as a consequence of his jokes. Here it seems we have a frank reversal of the pattern we previously encountered, since the joker is the laughing sacrificial victim instead of the sort of mocking persecutor dramatized in Ridicule. Because Sterne’s novel was a crucial intellectual influence on Diderot’s Jacques le fataliste, our discussion of Yorick will also prepare us to return to Diderot in the second part of this chapter, and particularly to a scene from Jacques in which a vicar is also the comic object of ritualistic violence, a kind of charivari. These two passages highlight mock ritual in a performative as well as discursive sense, since the comic fiction in each case not only treats mock ritual, but effectively is one (just as Greek comedy emerged from the mock ritual Dionysiac rites, and the jester-​fool of Renaissance drama—​for example, Shakespeare’s Yorick—​emerged out of carnival as well as the “serious” ritual tradition of the royal jester).2 In addition, while our previous chapters Mock Ritual in the Modern Era. Reginald McGinnis and John Vignaux Smyth, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2022. DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197637432.003.0004

Mocking Priests in Tristram Shandy and Jacques le fataliste  41 have highlighted Enlightenment mockery of religion and superstition—​the kind of witty attacks more recently illustrated by English biologist Richard Dawkins, for example, or the cartoonists of Charlie Hebdo—​Sterne frankly reverses this pattern by making the priest into the model joker. It is also perhaps worth emphasizing at the start how remarkable it may seem to many twenty-​first-​century readers that a novel by an Anglican clergyman should have been not only a model for Diderot’s Jacques, a politically radical and seemingly antireligious novel that mocks priests, but also, perhaps even more remarkably, a model of freedom for Nietzsche, a philosopher notorious for his attacks on Christianity as a “slave” religion (not to mention his frequent denigration of British thought and culture). Nietzsche famously modified Goethe’s praise of Sterne by calling him, not just the freest spirit of the eighteenth century as Goethe did, but “the freest writer of all ages.”3 The famous opening lines of Beyond Good and Evil—​“Suppose truth were a woman. What then?”—​are essentially plagiarized from Tristram Shandy;4 and, more immediately pertinent from our perspective, Thus Spoke Zarathustra identifies mock ritual, and specifically the mock ritual of the ass—​a highly Shandean figure that occurs in reference to the religious rituals of Saint Hilarion, for example, as well as multiple times elsewhere in Sterne’s fiction5—​with the highest kind of “gay” wisdom, one that even Zarathustra takes some time to learn.6 Published later in the same year as Voltaire’s Candide, 1759, volume 1 of Tristram Shandy singles out “CANDID and Miss Cunegonde’s affairs”7 as a commercial rival. Indeed volume 1 includes the kind of mockery of religious ritual already firmly associated with Voltaire. Tristram cites verbatim in French, for example, the entire 1733 Sorbonne document justifying baptism by intravaginal injection of holy water by “petite canulle,” and volume 3 includes a Latin Excommunicatio read aloud by the lascivious Catholic obstetrician, Dr. Slop. Both of these anti-​Catholic satires were approvingly mentioned by Voltaire.8 That Sterne perhaps to some degree even imitated Voltaire on Catholic excesses is suggested by the fact that he included, in volumes 2 and 9, a sentimental treatment of Trim’s brother Tom, imprisoned in Lisbon by the Inquisition for courting a Jewish widow who makes pork-​free sausages, just as ­chapter 6 of Candide, “An Auto-​Da-​Fé” (referring to the historical event in Lisbon of 1756), less sentimentally narrates the burning of two Portuguese “who were seen throwing away the bacon garnish while eating a chicken.”9

42  Mock Ritual in the Modern Era Unlike Voltaire, however, Sterne evidently defends Anglican Christianity—​including himself as priest in Tristram’s opening idealization of Parson Yorick (Sterne’s pseudonym in his other works, including his Sermons)—​on the grounds, among other things, that it has emancipated itself from ridiculous literalization of the figures or symbols of ritual, such as baptism or the quasi-​cannibalistic “transubstantiation” of the Eucharist.10 In fact, perhaps the most important aspect of Sterne’s equation between parson and Shakespearean jester concerns their mobilization of figural over literal (or fully “materialized”) meanings, the equation between ritual and “play.” Tristram’s critique of John Locke’s attack on figural language—​on “wit” in the broadest sense, as opposed to literal-​minded “judgment”—​belongs to the same pattern.11 From this point of view the philosopher made a mistake not wholly unlike the letter-​bound Catholic who wanted to baptize children in the womb, or the Protestant fundamentalist who insists on a wholly literal reading of the Bible.12 As regards Ridicule’s distinction between “Voltairean” wit and “English” humor, it is also worth noting that Voltaire himself criticized Sterne for not being more concerned “to teach the English not to let themselves be duped any longer by the charlatanry of novelists,” and to correct “the long declining taste of the nation which has abandoned the study of Lockes and Newtons for the most extravagant and frivolous works.” (“Born poor and gay,” he added, Sterne “wished to laugh at England’s expense and to make some money.”)13 Voltaire’s satirical wit thus aligns itself with Locke’s and Newton’s scientific seriousness as against Sterne’s seeming frivolity.14 Indeed such a distinction between critical wit and affable humor (though often entailing contrary evaluations) has also been emphasized by some of the most recent Sterne criticism. Just as Locke distinguished wit and judgment by aligning the former with the perception of similarities and the latter with distinctions or discriminations, so Marc Martinez, for example, has recently argued that “humour is basically non-​judgmental and conciliatory, while irony and satire are critical and disjunctive.”15 Yorick’s death, Martinez claims, “does not just signal the demise of the satirical spirit: it heralds the advent of humour.”16 In short, while satirical mockery is one of the most serious forms of aggression, merely humorous attacks (as, for instance, in friendly or amorous teasing) are supposed to be like play fighting, and hence produce benign and healthy reciprocity between mock victim and mock persecutor. It is accordingly no surprise that contemporary commentators favorable to Sterne

Mocking Priests in Tristram Shandy and Jacques le fataliste  43 still often stress, following his lead, not just the moral benefits of humor and laughter, but their medical ones too (as we often also hear today from many sources, both popular and scientific). Alexis Tadié, for instance, claims that “laughter is above all a medical cure,”17 and that “the true import of laughter . . . is aimed at purging the minds and bodies of readers, at improving their healths and extending their lives, it is both a social and a medical issue.”18 Similarly, Anne Dromart regards Sterne as offering “an idiosyncratic definition of a healthy attitude towards existence.”19 But not all modern accounts of Sterne’s humor are so sanguine. For example, Eve Sedgwick’s chapter on Sterne titled “A Sentimental Journey: Sexualism and the Citizen of the World” specifically identifies Yorick’s “wit” as a name “for the circulable social solvent, the sign that both represented political power in the male homo-​social framework, and could through sublimation . . . come to be a supposedly classless commodity in its own right.”20 (Yorick is simultaneously the narrator, main character, and pseudonymous author of Sterne’s second novel.) Similarly, in her article “ ‘A Man Who Laughs Is Never Dangerous’: Character and Class in Sterne’s A Sentimental Journey,” Judith Frank has extended Sedgwick’s critique to Yorick’s technique of self-​parody in particular—​often identified by others precisely with the self-​reflexivity that distinguishes self-​deprecating and morally healthy humor from aggressive wit—​arguing that it belongs to a strategy of “the benevolist’s self-​empowerment” that can occur “because of Yorick’s [bourgeois] vacillation about his own class status.”21 Though Frank’s class-​oriented article has been criticized by Sterne’s most comprehensive modern editor, Melvyn New, as morally and politically “supercilious” in a way that New himself satirically links to “the bastion of social consciousness and proletarian economics that one finds in today’s new and enlightened English departments,”22 she nevertheless effectively undermines the critical sentimentalization of Yorick’s humor that makes it into a reliable index of psychological health or moral probity. Indeed, whereas her own title mocks the line “A Man Who Laughs Is Never Dangerous,” cited from Yorick in A Sentimental Journey, we may begin by observing that Tristram Shandy, by contrast, makes it quite clear from the start that a man who laughs can be extremely dangerous both to himself and others. This is in fact the most conspicuous moral of Yorick’s death, presented by Tristram as a result of the revenge of those who feel themselves to be the serious butt of his jokes. Indeed Tristram pointedly compares the jester to the mortgageé—​literally a “death pledger”—​who must eventually pay his debts.

44  Mock Ritual in the Modern Era Sterne was also clearly aware that self-​parody as a strategy of more or less benign modesty (whether ethical, intellectual, or sexual) cannot easily escape the structural double-​bind (to invoke Gregory Bateson’s term) of modesty generally. An exceptionally modest person, for example, cannot say, “I am exceptionally modest,” without seeming to fall into self-​contradiction and hypocrisy. Gestures and rituals of modesty, including sexual modesty (notoriously seductive in novels as in life), can always be read as their opposites, like jokes. Sexual modesty, in its interplay with obscenity, is obviously a crucial theme as well as comic technique in both novels, and especially important to the Yorick of Tristram Shandy, who is more clearly defined in terms of his clerical role as contrasted with the secular gentleman called Tristram. As counterbalance to Nietzsche’s laudatory generalization that “Sterne is the great master of equivocation—​taking this term in fairness much more broadly than we generally do when we use it thinking of sexual relations,”23 it is again worth citing Sedgwick, sharply critical of Yorick’s (and Sterne’s) “sexualism.” As indicated by her subtitle “Sexualism and the Citizen of the World” (emphasis added), such sexualism is accused of a male, bourgeois claim to global validity or “universalism” in a way that Sedgwick compares to Michel Foucault’s critique of Freud. We should add to this, however, that Yorick’s own presumably clerical judgment of Tristram Shandy, in its famous final sentence, as a “cock and bull story” (however excellent “of its kind”) might seem to take a line comparable to Sedgwick’s own, putting the novel’s apparently phallic or rather mock phallic, and in many ways feminist, obsession with sex in its secular (literally “temporal” or historical) place. We should also observe that any serious defense of Yorick against charges of classism and sexism would doubtless emphasize the fact, among others, that he is responsible for criticizing Walter Shandy’s Lockean “Upon Political or Civil Government,” in volume 5, for unwarrantedly naturalizing both master-​servant relations and masculine dominance. (For example, Yorick corrects Walter’s potent “bull,” in the relevant passage on both subjects, by changing it to castrated “ox”).24 We do not need to defend Yorick, however, to observe that both political and sexual “potencies” in Tristram Shandy are symbolically constituted to the maximum degree, and hence always potentially reversible, like the symbolic powers of laughter. Indeed, as Frank rightly says about Yorick’s strategy of self-​parody—​and as Shakespeare’s fools (like modern sadomasochists) observe25—​maximum symbolic or sacrificial power can derive precisely from playing the role of victim.

Mocking Priests in Tristram Shandy and Jacques le fataliste  45 The crucial symbolic as well as merely instrumental dimension of power, whether classist or sexist, also reminds us that victims are not just victimized or dominated by force, but often—​and most effectively—​by their own self-​ sacrifice. Thus, analysis of the symbolic dynamics of sacrifice is essential to any adequate understanding of class and sex, even when detached from religion. Like the movement from Catholic to Protestant interpretations of the Eucharist, Sterne’s portrayal of Yorick’s sacrifice pivots around a movement from the physical world (however itself inevitably symbolic) to the mental or psychological one, from “literal” to “figural.” That this is also a key secular issue is illustrated by the novel’s repeated return to the question of which hurts more, a wound in the knee or a wound in the groin. This question—​ also addressed at the very start of Jacques le fataliste—​evidently concerns the relative gravities of physical and psychological or symbolic injury. Given its location, Toby’s wound in the groin is linked to his “feminine” sexual modesty. (“Toby” also means “ass” or buttocks.) Yorick’s own specifically clerical modesty, meanwhile, is most clearly symbolized by his “jack-​ass of a horse,” compared to Don Quixote’s Rocinante, who has an additional and related drawback: he is not “a horse at all points.”26 On the one hand this impotent horse is an illustration of the parson’s class modesty—​his charity and distaste for conspicuous display that makes him willing to see himself as “the true point of ridicule”27 among his neighbors—​ but on the other it is a figure for his peculiarly ambiguous sexual status. For whereas the Catholic priest is supposed to sacrifice physical sex altogether, that is, embrace chaste “impotence,” any special chastity claimed by a Protestant parson must be at best ambiguous. (Yorick is not himself impotent; only his horse, his symbolic substitute, is; and in A Sentimental Journey he engages in several ambiguously erotic relations.) It is thus no surprise that his enemies refuse, then as now, to take seriously his package of religious, sexual, and “foolish” humilities. To say the least, as Sedgwick puts it, “However fully Yorick goes in for renunciation . . . he never lets go of the thematics—​the ‘universal’ currency—​of sexual desire.”28 Indeed Tristram later stages a scene of his own literal sexual impotence figured, also in economic terms, as an apparent loss from which he in fact gains a symbolic profit.29 The “economic” or concrete character of the problem is further underlined by Tristram’s analogy, as we have seen, between jesting and mortgaging. The parson’s enemies thus regard his jokes at their expense as “on the same plane,” as Martinez puts it, as “physical aggression.”30 Yet Yorick’s death—​even if regarded “realistically” rather than as a mock ritual filched

46  Mock Ritual in the Modern Era from Hamlet—​comes from blows to the head31 that are decidedly not physical but symbolic, and, if we read realistically, his death must be psychosomatic, the result of a broken heart, or depression, that proves the primacy of the symbolic world over even physical health. Turning now to the specifically sacrificial language of Yorick’s friend Eugenius—​here warning him of the dire consequences of being a joker—​we see that the pattern of symbolic substitution not only remains pertinent, but in fact defines the sacrificial structure: Trust me, Yorick, When to gratify a private appetite, it is once resolved upon, that an innocent and an helpless creature shall be sacrificed, ’tis an easy matter to pick up sticks enew from any thicket where it has strayed, to make a fire to offer it up with.32

Though the immediate source for this passage is very likely Thomas Tenison,33 an archbishop of Canterbury referring to the impeachment of Francis Bacon for political corruption, its biblical reference is to the “mock” sacrifice of Isaac in Genesis, where a ram—​the sacrificial substitute for Isaac—​is caught in a thicket. Indeed while Sterne may conceivably have chosen a roundabout way (via Tenison and Bacon) of comparing Yorick to Isaac, orthodoxly a prefiguration of Christ, in part because a more direct comparison might appear immodest, it seems nevertheless remarkable that no one, to our knowledge, has ever noted why such a comparison makes sense: because “Isaac” means “laughs.” According to theologian Karl-​Josef Kuschel, the role of laughter in Isaac’s story makes for “an unprecedented scene whose theological explosiveness traditional Old Testament exegesis has sought to play down.”34 Whereas traditional readings often ascribe the meaning of “Isaac” simply to the joy with which Abraham and Sarah greet the birth of their child—​and some glosses read “(he) laughs” as “God laughs”—​Kuschel regards this story “with human laughter at its centre” in terms of “human being[s]‌[laughing] at God.”35 When the latter first tells Abraham he will have a child, “outwardly he performs the due gesture of humility”36 by falling on his face, but he also laughs; and Sarah is actually rebuked by God for laughing—​indeed she initially lies about it—​not merely at the thought that she will have a child at a ridiculously advanced age, but that she may experience sexual pleasure with her ancient husband. (Her laughter contains “a touch of flirting,”37 claims Kuschel, and thus also of sexual modesty or immodesty, depending on how one looks at it.)

Mocking Priests in Tristram Shandy and Jacques le fataliste  47 Bearing in mind what has been called the “association between joking rituals and rites of purification in a number of cultures,”38 including many analogies with the Isaac pattern of substitution, it also seems plausible that this “incarnation” of laughter in Isaac bears not merely on his conception and birth, but also on his role as a sacrificial victim manqué, or, what amounts to the same thing, as a purely symbolic victim. In some cultures victims laugh ritually, while in others their sacrificers do; but of course Isaac has every reason to laugh insofar as his story entails a substitution of the symbolic sheep for himself—​prefiguring, for a priest like Yorick or Sterne, the later substitution of the purely symbolic Eucharist for blood-​sacrifice in general. In this sense “Isaac =​Laughs” is precisely the right formula for a Christian mock sacrifice like Yorick’s, as well as recalling Konrad Lorenz’s theory of the origins of laughter as a ritualized response to redirected aggression. (The “laughing savior” of Gnosticism, and “the crucified Jesus as fool,” also come to mind.)39 By analogy with Frank’s and Sedgwick’s argument about Yorick, one might also agree that Isaac gains considerable power by playing the role of symbolic victim. He gains maximal sacrificial prestige, as illustrated by the orthodox parallel with Christ, without actually being sacrificed.40 In “On Laughter and Other Sacrifices,” Natalie Strobach arrives via a very different route from ours to a comparable conclusion. She credits Jacques Derrida and Hélène Cixous as perceiving the sacrificial character of laughter; but both authors of course knew George Bataille’s equation between the two, as Bataille in turn was influenced by Nietzsche, and Nietzsche by Sterne. Indeed the naming of Isaac in Genesis, as she suggests, already makes the connection in a sufficiently provocative and original (or “genetic”) manner: It is this union of laughter and sacrifice that characterizes Isaac and renders him the figure for literary creation itself. Thus, like much of Genesis, this tale serves as an allegory: a primal scene for the inception of writing.41

That a scene more usually interpreted as an allegory of animal in place of human sacrifice is interpreted by Strobach in terms of writing, and even “literary creation,” certainly underlines the role of symbolic substitution or figuration at the heart of all these operations. Her “literary” claim about Isaac seems also quite plausible if applied to the mock ritual sacrifice of Yorick. For the latter must die at the beginning of Tristram Shandy, not just because “Yorick” is a self-​sacrificial jester or fool already dead and lamented

48  Mock Ritual in the Modern Era in Hamlet, but also because he represents the clerical Sterne who must be replaced by the gentleman author Tristram, a more secular version of Sterne (also associated with the fool’s cap and bells) who at one point even predicts the disappearance of the soul along with the end of Christianity, complete with a kind of playful “Nietzschean” rebirth of the pagan gods.42 Yorick nevertheless “rises from the dead”—​or, like Isaac, is only mock sacrificed—​in the sense that he continues to play a crucial role until the novel’s terminal line, not to mention “authoring” Sterne’s later works. “On Laughter and Other Sacrifices” is primarily about contemporary literature. But Strobach’s “universal” claim that laughter is itself “sacrifice” obviously extends vastly beyond writing in general, as well as literary creation in particular. We will return later to the anthropological dimension of her formula, which she doesn’t herself elaborate. The death of Yorick is a striking instance of what we call mock ritual and of the kinds of questions that accompany it in Enlightenment literature, although Sterne’s mock sacrifice of a clergyman is, of course, not without precedent in eighteenth-​century fiction. We may recall notably the mocking, or “roasting,” of Parson Adams in Henry Fielding’s Joseph Andrews.43 Fielding offers a compelling illustration not only of what we may call, for lack of a better term, the ambivalence of this practice, which he alternately exploits for comic purposes and denounces as a modern vice, but also of its supposed derivation from ritual. In a newspaper article from 1740, prior to the publication of Joseph Andrews, Fielding condemns roasting as a diversion “in some vogue with the polite part of the world” and as a barbarous “sacrifice to luxury” while alluding—​no doubt mockingly to some degree—​to theories on the origin of this custom in cannibalism or in the roasting of heretics.44 His observations on this subject in a sense anticipate the writings of Duclos and the encyclopedists. Now, however, we turn to an episode from Diderot’s Jacques le fataliste, both because the novel was directly influenced by Tristram Shandy and because it contains another striking scene in which a priest is the subject of quasi-​ ritualized mockery. This scene, which is usually said to be anticlerical, even violently so,45 shows us a grotesquely ugly, deformed, and lecherous priest being pitchforked by Jacques into a hayloft, and compelled to watch a woman called Suzanne copulate with Jacques himself. The focus seems here to be, baldly put, the relation between Christianity and sex. Everyone laughs hysterically at the curate, who is not just hypocritical, but “physically” repulsive.

Mocking Priests in Tristram Shandy and Jacques le fataliste  49 If we ask why Diderot bothered to create this deformed priest simply to be maltreated and mocked, we are inclined to answer—​and to our knowledge no one has ever suggested otherwise—​that we too are supposed to join the laughers. What edifying fun to see the novel ridicule a deformed and repulsive cleric ludicrously inveighing against sexual freedom, when he would love to copulate with the same woman that the healthy, good-​looking, and lovable Jacques is penetrating right under his nose! Knowing that Diderot is commonly viewed as anti-​Christian—​having reputedly written, for instance, that “man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest”46—​the standard reading of this passage makes Diderot one of the laughers like all the rest. The priest, according to this reading, amounts to a cartoonlike satire, unbelievably handicapped and repulsive, of a perverse Christianity—​regarded, in proto-​ Nietzschean fashion perhaps, as a hypocritical crutch for the naturally weak and disadvantaged47—​full of ressentiment, and thus fundamentally invidious. The entire scene in some ways recalls what Nietzsche presented, in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, as a mock ritual starring “the ugliest man.”48 Diderot’s relation to Sterne, Nietzsche’s favorite novelist, is also particularly interesting in this context. On the one hand, like Diderot, Sterne mocks Catholicism, particularly in its relation to sex; and like Sterne, Diderot defends literary obscenity in the pages immediately following this scene, taking Voltaire’s Pucelle as example. But on the other hand, it seems that Diderot is here attacking Christian (not merely Catholic) modesty altogether, which we have seen to be a focus of Yorick’s humor about his own clerical status. Nevertheless, even if we are inclined to polarize them along religious and antireligious lines, Diderot shows how closely he is following Sterne on the subject of sex when in the opening pages of Jacques, as mentioned earlier, he semicovertly “plagiarizes” the Shandean question of which is most painful, a wound in the groin or a wound in the knee: a symbolic or psychological wound entailing sexual modesty, like Uncle Toby’s, or a physical one like Trim’s and Jacques’s. Having mentioned Jacques’s wounded knee on the first page of the novel—​an obvious reference to, or imitation of, Trim’s that leads, similarly, to the story of his loves—​on page 3 Diderot has a doctor or barber-​ surgeon stage a comic demonstration of the (“wounded groin”) threat to modesty by pushing a woman off her horse, revealing her private parts.49 In addition to mocking the curate’s prudishness, then, it is important to note how the same scene depicts the relation between sex and laughter

50  Mock Ritual in the Modern Era more generally, stressing their mutual relation to symbolic violence. Like Shakespeare, Diderot metaphorizes intercourse as the penetration of the sheath by the knife: a symbolic stabbing that paradoxically also symbolizes peaceful reciprocity (the sheathed knife).50 Like Shakespeare and Sterne, Diderot draws attention to the resemblance and interplay between the mock violences of wit and of sex, simultaneously aggressive and reconciliatory. Indeed he completes the allegoric equation by making being laughed at or playfully insulted into an implied trope for copulation itself, where who is laughing at whom seems as potentially reversible as who is “on top” in the sexual act.51 Whereas Jacques’s girlfriends, Suzanne and Marguerite, seem to enter a friendly reciprocity with each other (and with Jacques) on learning that the laugh is on both of them—​he has supposedly lost his virginity with both women—​it is as well to recall, on the other hand, that the Suzanne who is the formidable protagonist of Diderot’s La Religieuse explicitly dislikes jokes on the grounds that they tend to produce friendly reciprocity at the expense of a victim (her weapon against laughter is her music, which unites people in a different way).52 Indeed we are suggesting that Diderot constructed the pitchforked curate, the butt of unanimous derision and physical abuse, as a scapegoat of precisely this kind. That the scene is really no joke is suggested by the fact that, in his humiliation, he is said to be “ready to throw himself from the top of the barn at the risk of killing himself,”53 though Jacques can’t help laughing even at this. First of all, if Diderot had really intended to make the vicar simply represent the risibility of Christianity as such, or Christian sexual modesty as such, even of a repulsively corrupt and prudish sort, it would be completely unnecessary and indeed positively counterproductive to give him every kind of malign physical deformity on top of his moral and intellectual ones. To call him “jealous and lecherous” (jaloux, paillard) is one thing—​many priests doubtless were and are these things —​but to make him into “a sort of dwarf, a knock-​kneed, stuttering, one-​eyed hunchback”54 (une espèce de nain, bossu, crochu, bègue, borgne55) is quite another. For these are precisely the kind of characteristics that enlightened people pride themselves on treating with respect rather than derision.56 If one wanted to attack the stupidities of modern physicists, for example, one surely wouldn’t go about it by singling out the physical deformities of the late Stephen Hawking.57 Even more important, however, is the fact that Diderot portrays the pitchforked curate as a substitute victim. Even his official religious title, a

Mocking Priests in Tristram Shandy and Jacques le fataliste  51 vicar, suggests his vicarious or substitutive role. Introduced in the text by Jacques as “un petit homme,” a little man, he is first understood by the master to refer to Suzanne’s or Marguerite’s husband and not to a priest at all.58 This must be strategic on Diderot’s part. Just as Marguerite finds herself a substitute for Suzanne in Jacques’s bed, and Suzanne again replaces Marguerite in the scene with the priest, so the jealous curate first appears as a kind of ridiculous substitute for the cuckolded husband, furiously reprimanding his wife’s and her lover’s obscenities. After Jacques and the priest trade insults—​ which among secular gentlemen would almost certainly have led to a duel—​Jacques grabs the pitchfork, thrusts it between the priest’s legs, and levers him into the hayloft, where he is forced to witness the copulation and starts shouting. Suzanne’s husband then comes running, but instead of avenging or even remarking his cuckoldry, puts the curate on the fork again and threatens to parade him around the village. The husband, Jacques, Jacques’s father, and the master (who doesn’t “like priests”)59 all unite in laughter at this spectacle—​the latter pair by hearsay or vicariously, like the reader. We note that this unanimous fixation with the pitchforked curate60 functions, without anyone noticing it, as a quasi-​magical curative for the husband’s jealousy and potential hostility. The vicar too is jealous, of course, and given his incredible repulsiveness might even be regarded as a kind of ridiculous incarnation of every jealous man. When David Coward, a recent translator of Jacques, calls the curate the “small oaf ” and the husband a “great oaf,”61 he is unfaithful to the French original but captures the essential reciprocity between the two men. Instead of appearing himself jealous, morally outraged, and risible, Suzanne’s husband targets another man who is jealous, morally outraged, and risible, and acts in derisory complicity with the very man, Jacques, who has made him a cuckold. Moreover, the potential reciprocity between the vicar and Jacques himself is even more evident than that between the two jealous men, insofar as the former vicariously substitutes for the latter as object of the husband’s revenge. From this point of view, the vicar is the only one who says the truth, calling the husband a cuckold and a fool for laughing,62 since everyone else buys into the mock sacrificial substitution. What we have called the standard reading cannot account for this pattern, nor for the fact that in a tiny, easily forgotten, but presumably crucial phrase Diderot suggests that the priest “was maybe even loved by Suzanne,”63 despite his appearing so repulsive. Beneath the appearance of the complete nonreciprocity between the surrogate victim and

52  Mock Ritual in the Modern Era the comic hero, and between the mockers and the object of mockery, again lies a potential symmetry. Diderot, astonishingly, raises the possibility that he might even be Jacques’s successful rival for Suzanne. Either Diderot was an incoherent writer or these details matter. Moreover, since he began and ended Jacques le fataliste with explicit “plagiarisms” of Tristram Shandy, and there are a multitude of more covert allusions to Sterne in the novel, it is extremely unlikely that he was unaware of the potential parallel between the humiliation of the vicar and the sacrifice of Parson Yorick.64 Both episodes are relatively self-​enclosed (Diderot’s vicar plays no further role in the novel), and both entail attacks on the priests’ supposed false modesty. Peter Jimack has shown, comparably, how Diderot’s Supplement to the Voyage of Bougainville appears at first to be anti-​Christian propaganda—​ complete with a hypocritical Catholic priest (wailing absurdly, “My religion! My religion!”) who eagerly copulates publicly with a Tahitian native—​but is in fact far more complex, undermining in various ways the superficially absolute moral opposition between supposedly “natural” (Tahitian) sex and the “unnatural” hypocrisies and mock rituals of colonialist Christianity. In particular, “natural” sex turns out to be highly ritualized,65 and by no means exempt from the distortions of jealousy and coquetry.66 If we are tempted to oppose absolutely Diderot’s vicar to Sterne’s Yorick on the grounds simply that one is a hypocrite, the other genuinely modest, we might also recall Georges Bataille’s warning that “feigned modesty . . . is the essence of modesty.”67 We conclude by observing, in any event, that both Sterne and Diderot encourage reflection not just on laughter as a kind of mock sacrificial ritual, but on its relation to the more or less risible rituals or mock rituals of sexual modesty that are here its butt. For example, it is by no means clear that modern practices of sexual modesty and display are any more rational, or less ludicrous, than the Christian ones they purport to replace. Of course, every modern secular state still outlaws public copulation—​the pitchforked vicar’s “prudery” is universal—​since secular people are no less liable to jealousy, disgust, or claims of “sexual harassment” than their religious predecessors. When it comes to what is allowed, moreover, modern Western secular practices may seem more like a parody of the Christian modesties from which they historically derive than a genuine break with them. In Victorian times, the sight of an ankle, let alone a knee, might be filled with erotic charge. But this seems no more, and perhaps less, risible than those

Mocking Priests in Tristram Shandy and Jacques le fataliste  53 contemporary sartorial habits—​tights, G-​strings, thongs, and so on—​that barely conceal the genitals and anuses whose mock sacrality they accordingly trumpet. Modern attacks on the Muslim burka, however conceivably plausible in themselves, can hardly claim that contemporary Western sartorial practices lack mock rituals of the most ludicrous kind. Indeed, in concerning the face, the burka debate perhaps offers a welcome relief from the relentless Western fetishization of genitals and anuses. On the “private” side of modern mock rituals of sex, finally, we may also cite those proverbial sex clubs in New York and San Francisco—​of the kind that fascinated Michel Foucault, among others—​whose mock ritual whippings are colorfully anticipated by the third lesbian convent, full of nuns’ laughter, in Diderot’s La Religieuse. In this novel—​which, as we noted earlier, began from an extensive joke played on the Marquis de Croismare—​sadomasochist eroticism is explicitly modeled on Christian or mock-​Christian expiation.68 Twenty-​first-​century pornography too, besides still often parodying religious sacrifice, and the crucifixion in particular, also regularly codifies laughter.

4 Mock Ritual and the Emergence of Objectivity in Madame Bovary A ritual includes the letting of blood. Rituals which fail in this requirement are but mock rituals. Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian

In our opening chapters we have moved between fiction and nonfiction in showing mock ritual to be an essential component of emergent modernity. Our reliance on literature and film in addressing anthropological questions has precedents in the work of, for instance, Georges Bataille, who viewed literature as “the principal heir” of “the game of religions,”1 and more recently Ronald L. Grimes, whose reflection, in Fictive Ritual as elsewhere, is largely concerned with the kinds of ritualization that arise “when rites themselves, especially liturgical celebrations, are in a state of decline or denial.”2 Interpreting works by nineteenth-​and twentieth-​century European and American authors against the backdrop of a relative absence of ritual in modern Western societies, Grimes repeatedly underlines reversals analogous to those we have observed in declaring, for instance, that “the avoidance of ritual may become ritual avoidance,”3 or that the loss of faith “does not bring with it the loss of ritual,” but may intensify one’s need of it.4 Not only is “fictive” distinct, for Grimes, from “false” or “unreal”—​he calls it rather “meta-​real”5—​but “fiction,” he writes in a book devoted to reinventing rites of passage, “is sometimes more revealing than journalistic or ethnographic description.”6 Whereas the preceding chapters have been devoted principally to works from the French and British Enlightenment, with Flaubert and Madame Bovary we turn to the mid-​nineteenth century and to a work, perhaps unique in its influence on world literature, that has been called “the first modern novel.”7 In Flaubert we find not only striking new elaborations of our central themes—​mockery, ritual, and evolving relations between the sacred and Mock Ritual in the Modern Era. Reginald McGinnis and John Vignaux Smyth, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2022. DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197637432.003.0005

The Emergence of Objectivity in Madame Bovary  55 the secular, including science, especially here medicine—​but also a highly original treatment of artistic technique that is also linked to the problem of mockery. In addition, while he is nowadays frequently celebrated for his precocious modernity, or even his anticipation of so-​called postmodernity, we have by no means left the eighteenth century behind. We invoke Flaubert as a massively influential Janus figure, looking both backward and forward in time, and as a shrewd analyst of the consequences, both good and ill, of the Enlightenment. He is famed, after all, for his obsession with la bêtise, modern stupidity: Enlightenment’s blindness. Flaubert was, of course, as Anne Coudreuse observes, “an attentive and critical reader of eighteenth-​ century literature.”8 Madame Bovary itself concludes with the derisory triumph of the pharmacist, Homais, admirer of Voltaire, who is awarded the Cross of the Legion of Honor in the final line. Though Homais is perhaps the main villain of the piece, if it can be said to have villains, we know that his creator was also influenced by Voltaire, who has even been called Flaubert’s favorite writer, and whose theatre and Philosophical Dictionary he annotated in the 1840s.9 The aspect of Voltaire that Flaubert stresses above everything, by now unsurprisingly for us, is his manipulation of laughter: A joke is the most powerful, the most terrible thing, it is irresistible—​there is no tribunal to call it to account in the name of either reason or feeling—​a thing held in derision is a dead thing, a man who laughs is stronger than one who is afflicted. Voltaire was the king of his century because he knew how to laugh—​that was his entire genius, it was everything.10

We see that Flaubert is particularly emphatic about the “killing” function of laughter: “a thing held in derision is a dead thing.” We will shortly see that he is also fully aware of the potential symmetry between such mock killings and the frequent object of derision in Voltaire, sacrificial rituals—​and, moreover, that a whole set of strategies in his work underlines the ironies pertaining to modern disenchantment. In Madame Bovary, the curate, M. Bournisien, and the anticlerical pharmacist are both jokers of a kind, and the apparent impasse between modern religion and modern science or pseudoscience is famously emblematized when the rivals fall asleep symmetrically over Emma Bovary’s corpse. As just mentioned, Homais advertises himself as a Voltairean, a deist, as well as a scientific and political descendent of les Lumières:

56  Mock Ritual in the Modern Era I have a religion, my religion, and I even have more than all these others with their mummeries and their juggling. I adore God, on the contrary. I believe in the Supreme Being, in a Creator, whatever he may be. I care little who has placed us here below to fulfill our duties as citizens and parents; but I don’t need to go to church to kiss silver plates, and fatten, out of my pocket, a lot of good-​for-​nothings who live better than we do. For one can know him as well in a wood, in a field, or even contemplating the ethereal heavens like the ancients. My God is the God of Socrates, of Franklin, of Voltaire, and of Béranger! I support the Profession de Foi du vicaire savoyard and the immortal principles of ’89!11

Even if Theodore Besterman was right to claim that “Voltaire was the writer who most influenced Flaubert,”12 this satirical portrait of Homais at his most serious, “religious,” and politically correct doubtless tends to discourage any too great a rapprochement between Flaubert and “enlightened” ideology, at least in its conventional forms, including Voltaire’s attitude to religion.13 But whatever he says seriously, it is above all in Homais’s jokes, not surprisingly, that Flaubert sums up the key issues at stake in his ridicule of Christianity. When, for example, he says he keeps his pharmaceuticals in what he calls his Capharnaüm—​a “messy place” (in French), derived from the name of the town, home to several of the apostles, in which Jesus cast out unclean spirits and was asked to heal the sick—​Homais thinks he is making fun of religion in an affably self-​deprecating way by comparing his medicines to Christian magic. However, he is also unknowingly stating one of the central structural devices of the novel: its running mock counterpoint between religious ritual and scientific practice—​between the priest’s holy water and the pharmacist’s chlorine water, for example, or between moral penance and medical bleeding. On the subject of bleeding, Homais also makes an anticlerical joke that can function, as we indicated in the introduction, as a model of our entire analysis: I, if I were the Government, I’d have the priests bled once a month. Yes, Madame Lefrançois, every month—​a good phlebotomy, in the interests of the police and morals. (66)

This joke effectively illustrates what we are calling mock ritual in more than one sense, since Homais here turns his serious ridicule of priests, not into

The Emergence of Objectivity in Madame Bovary  57 a mock killing (as in Flaubert’s commentary on Voltaire), but, even better, into a mock bleeding, quasi-​ritually, once a month. “Even better,” because Flaubert thus has Homais appeal, in his mock cure for ritualistic religion, to a deadly serious medical practice that might itself appear ridiculous: that is, a pseudoritual whose medical efficacy, when not disastrous or even fatal, was doubtless generally limited to what we now call the placebo effect, and which significantly resembled, in purgative or cathartic form, the very religious superstitions and sacrificial practices that Homais ridicules. We will return at the end of this chapter to Flaubert’s rather cunning treatment of bleeding, both medical and otherwise. The twin themes of mockery and education have been central to the work’s reception ever since its trial for immorality in 1857. In response to the prosecution’s charge that the novel “ridicul[ed] things that should be held in the respect of all,”14 and was dangerous since it contained not a single “wise” person representing a standard by which the follies and indecencies of the rest might be judged, M. Sénard’s defense emphasized the problem of pedagogy in the book itself. The adulteress was doubtless culpable to a considerable degree, admitted the defense, but Emma was also the victim of her convent education, including a “kind of religion which is generally spoken of to young girls, which is the worst of all religion.”15 As for her husband, Charles, Sénard insisted, [M. Flaubert] is a great artist, as has been said, because he has left the husband as he was, he has not transformed him, and to the end he is the same good man, commonplace, mediocre, full of the duties of his profession, loving his wife well, but destitute of education or elevation of thought.16

If the good, even “sublime” Charles (as Sénard also calls him) is destitute of education, however, it is not for lack of schooling, but because he receives mainly mock education: either a derisory pseudo-​education, as when he finally passes his medical exams by rote memorization, understanding “nothing of it at all” (12), or an emphatic education in mockery itself—​first at the hands of his father, and then in the famous opening scene of collective ridicule on his first day at school. Not unlike Homais in playing the enlightened philosopher, though sexist in a more old-​fashioned way, and without his scientific and politically correct pretensions, Charles’s father seems to believe an education in mockery, and

58  Mock Ritual in the Modern Era especially mockery of religion, to be a kind of psychological equivalent to an education in physical virility: Playing the philosopher, [M. Bovary] even said he might as well go about quite naked like the young of animals. . . . He sent him to bed without any fire, taught him to drink off large draughts of rum and to jeer at religious processions. But, peaceable by nature, the boy responded poorly to his notions. (10; emphasis added)

Unlike his wife, M. Bovary maintains that a man needs little education except in such mocking practices, for “with brashness [toupet] a man can always make his way in the world” (10). He is the first representative of the masculine farceur later associated with Emma’s lover, Rodolphe, as well as the subject of two entries (ARTISTS and YOUNG MAN) in Flaubert’s Dictionary of Received Ideas. It is typical of Flaubert’s method, moreover, that his account of M. Bovary entails not merely his trying to teach his son to mock religious rituals, but in performing mock religious rituals himself, as when he later “baptizes” his granddaughter in champagne. The mockery of ritual is itself mock ritualized, according to a pattern with which we are now familiar. It is also typical of Flaubert’s method that between this paternal pedagogy and the scene of ridicule at Charles’s first school, we glimpse another kind of education that might at first seem equally hollow, equally “mock,” but is perhaps not really so. For in response to his father’s virile attempt to educate him in secular ridicule and toupet, Charles’s mother insists that he study with the local curate: “the curé took him in hand; but the lessons were so short and irregular that they could not be of much use” (10). They are given “hurriedly, between a baptism and a burial,” or at the foot of a tree “for a quarter of an hour,” or else the “good man” (bonhomme) and his pupil fall asleep together after the Angelus. “All the same he was always pleased with him, and even said the ‘young man’ had a very good memory” (10–​11). For someone like Homais this pedagogical interlude would doubtless merely prove that curates are typically inept and irresponsible teachers. However, this tutelage, which completely lacks compulsion or even much discipline, let alone definite ideological content, might even be called the best Charles ever has: “He grew like an oak; he was strong of hand, ruddy of complexion” (10). If the lessons could not be “of much use,” at least they don’t do

The Emergence of Objectivity in Madame Bovary  59 any harm—​and this modest episode will be worth bearing in mind when we come to discuss the novel’s more famous curate, Bournisien. Excepting this brief clerical interlude, however, Charles’s early education revolves almost entirely around mockery: first in his failure to learn from his father how to ridicule others, and then, in the opening scene at the lycée, when he himself is collectively ridiculed by his schoolmates (for his famous hat and pronunciation of his name, Charbovari) and compelled by the schoolmaster, “who liked to joke” (7),17 to copy “ridiculus sum” twenty times. Though the other boys are also disciplined, this formal punishment makes the mockery of Charles strictly unanimous. He is punished not just by, but for being laughed at. In a recent article titled “Ridiculus Sum: Le ridicule dans Madame Bovary,” Juliette Azoulai convincingly argues that the “specter of ridicule” haunts all the characters of the book except Charles himself, who never learns the lesson any more than he learns to be a farceur from his dad: “If Charles [in this opening scene] thus assumes the role of the humiliated clown, it is because he is totally foreign to the sentiment of ridicule.”18 This does not mean, of course, that his life is not shaped by it, or that his initiatory victimage is not, in an almost ritualistic sense (like a modern American university hazing), at the heart of his education. Indeed, aside from Azoulai’s recent article, there is also a significant critical tradition that employs the terms “initiation” and “ritual” in relation to this opening scene, which is narrated by a “we” (nous), apparently one of the schoolboys recalling it in later life. Francisco González, for example, who devoted an entire book to Flaubert’s use of this “nous” in the opening pages, stresses the initiatory and even “originary” aspect of the episode.19 Claude Duchet similarly writes of the ritualistic character of the sequence. Indeed he also speaks of a trick (leurre) connected to the use of the first-​person plural, arguing that the “nous” includes at once the pupils and the reader.20 Such implication of the reader, and even the author, goes back (at least) to Jean-​Paul Sartre’s L’Idiot de la famille: “Flaubert says we ‘in order to put himself on the side of the mockers and present [Charles’s] character from outside in all his opacity.’ ”21 This kind of generalization of the significance of Charles’s humiliation is in a way already suggested by Flaubert’s description of his hat, one of the main butts of the collective joke, as “one of those poor things, in fine, whose dumb ugliness has depths of expression, like an imbecile’s face” (7, emphasis added). For this simile does not properly apply to Charles, who is by no means an

60  Mock Ritual in the Modern Era imbecile (what is now often called “mentally disabled”), but rather reminds us—​like the “stupid eyes” of the club-​footed Hippolyte later—​of how people tend to see such unfortunates generally. An explicitly ritualistic extension of the scene, moreover, is suggested by a number of critics who have noted the resemblance between “Charbovari” (the name that Charles’s peers mockingly repeat at high volume) and the folk ritual of charivari or “rough music”—​the collective mockery of deviants or misfits that typically targeted disapproved sexual and domestic behavior, especially marriages. Citing Jean-​Marie Privat on the connection, Azoulai uses his analysis in part to justify her own description of Charles as “an expiatory victim.”22 Azoulai’s language fits well with our own perspective. Not only does she call Charles an expiatory victim, but she also compares him to a clown, “even in what is Christlike in the character,” reminding readers of Jean Starobinski’s argument that “the clown is an emblematic double of Christ being mocked.”23 Indeed, in her insistence on the significance of Charles’s victimage for the novel as a whole, she might also remind us of Harry Levin’s claim that “Dr. Bovary is the neglected protagonist. If Emma is a victim of the situation, he is her victim.”24 “His very schoolmates have found him too unromantic, yet his love is the most devoted that Emma finds—​as Flaubert expressly states in his work-​sheets, adding: ‘This must be made very clear.’ ”25 Shortly before her death, she says to Charles, “You’re good, not like the others” (251); and at her funeral her father also says, “You’re a good man!” (268). Azoulai’s argument is also useful for us because she generalizes the significance of ridicule not only for the novel’s characters but for “Flaubertian aesthetics.” One might even say that she reads the novel primarily as an education in the proper attitude toward mockery. Thus she deals with “the disappearance of the ‘nous’ after the first chapter”—​an issue that, as we shall shortly see, has vexed many critics—​by arguing that “it can be interpreted as . . . a conversion from sadistic laughter to empathy, a renunciation of ridicule (‘normalized’ comedy, restricted to the point of view of a social group).”26 Citing Flaubert’s own distinction between “relative ridicule” or “conventional comedy” (ce comique convenu) and what he calls “le grotesque triste” (the sadly grotesque), “the ridicule intrinsic to human life itself,” Azoulai suggests that Madame Bovary leads us from the “relative ridicule” of Charles for us, to the “grotesque triste” of Charles in himself (en soi), as an example of the human condition:

The Emergence of Objectivity in Madame Bovary  61 Such would be the course leading to the aesthetic ideal of the “superior joke,” according to Flaubert’s expression, the point of view which consists in seeing the facts “as the good God sees them, from above.”27

We will return later to the opposition between human jokes and those of an imagined “good god.” But first it is worth underlining how Azoulai’s analysis recalls what Leconte’s film Ridicule calls the difference between (French) wit (esprit) and (English) humor. She also cites the film, noting that “in effect the ridicule of a person is generally associated with witty humor [au comique d’esprit], which Flaubert asserts that he loathes in art [qu’il ‘exècre en art’].”28 In short, the key difference between the two forms of “humor” seems to lie, as we have seen before, in making wit self-​reflexive; and a privileged figure of such humor, as we have seen in Sterne’s Yorick as well as Azoulai, is the clown or “idiot”—​a figure by which she links Charles Bovary not only to Christ but, in the final sentence of her essay, to the Flaubertian artist. The artist, she concludes, is an actor “who humbles himself in the guise of the fool while pointing to his mask, thus inviting the spectator to turn his laughter against himself.”29 A notable argument about the way in which Madame Bovary mocks its “spectators” can be found in Jonathan Culler’s perspicacious Flaubert: The Uses of Uncertainty. Whereas the prosecution accused the book of demoralizing in an ethical sense, Culler stresses “the ways in which the Flaubertian text can demoralize”30 epistemologically, and its “uses of uncertainty.” Yet the epistemological question, in his account, seems as tied up with ridicule as the ethical one, and turns out to be centered in part on his own mockery of what he calls critical “seriousness”—​frequently naively realist, and lacking a sense of humor, or artistic play. Indeed Culler explicitly regards Flaubert’s treatment of the transition from the we of the opening to the quasi-​objective free indirect speech (style indirect libre) as a trap for fools (piège à cons). And whereas we have so far considered the problem of the we in terms of the initiatory ridicule of Charles, one might say without much exaggeration that Culler treats it as a kind of intellectual initiation rite for the critics, and often a pretty humiliating one. Culler’s central point crystallizes around the famous final sentence by the us that occurs toward the conclusion of the first chapter: “It would now be impossible for any of us to remember any thing about him [Charles]” (11). For not only is this sentence the (realistically unexplained) last appearance of the “nous,” but worse, if interpreted literally, it seems ridiculously

62  Mock Ritual in the Modern Era self-​contradictory inasmuch as the narrator has just “remembered” a great deal, not just about Charles at school, but about his family history, and even his inner feelings.31 Already, in short, there seems to be an apparently impossible or incoherent combination of the first-​and third-​person narrative.32 Citing an array of critics, Culler notes widespread puzzlement and indeed befuddlement about this issue, to the point where not a few admirers of Flaubert hardly dare hypothesize how such a famously meticulous craftsman could make such a gross technical and aesthetic mistake.33 Culler generalizes, as we have said, that “this puzzlement seems a result of the seriousness which incapacitates so much Flaubert criticism.”34 He accuses Léon Bopp, for example, of “grasping at straws” when the latter remarks that “perhaps . . . Flaubert is trying to excuse the brevity of his account, or suggest that Charles is unremarkable.”35 Poor Bopp is apparently a prime instance of an overly serious fool (con). Indeed this particular example directly precedes Culler’s rather backhanded expression of gratitude to such critical “fools” that itself makes a notable rhetorical move—​perhaps unintentionally ironic in the circumstances—​from the first person to the third: “One [emphasis added] is grateful to such critics for revealing so nicely the effectiveness of [Flaubert’s] piège à cons and for providing evidence about the ways in which the Flaubertian text can demoralize.”36 The potential conneries here, one might say, are multiple, and recall Azoulai’s warning that mockers in Flaubert’s world often risk finding themselves the butt of their own jokes. Indeed the “one” who is grateful to the serious cons for so helpfully displaying their critical follies is perhaps not a million miles from the superiority of the we (usually nous but also on in the French37) that opens the novel itself. One knows clearly who the fools are (like Charles, they are named), but not quite who one is, except that it must include smart people whose intelligence is not incapacitated by seriousness. The one is of course a we or even an I dressed up in the third person—​just like the free indirect speech itself. Though we certainly don’t intend to make fun of Culler—​and his analysis is very useful for our own—​we do wish to emphasize how difficult it is to exit the circle of mockery, both in and outside the text. As regards attempting to transcend the violent dynamics of ridicule altogether, Flaubert wrote to Louise Colet, “To live in peace, one should put oneself on the side neither of those who are laughed at, nor of those who laugh. Let’s remain to the side, outside [en dehors], but for that it is necessary to renounce action.”38 But this itself states the (perhaps insurmountable) difficulty in a nutshell; since even

The Emergence of Objectivity in Madame Bovary  63 if a certain sort of writing or art is regarded as a sacrificial or ascetic alternative to living, as Flaubert himself famously stated,39 writing is evidently an action. Moreover, it seems obvious, as we have emphasized, that although objective or impersonal judgment is in principle “above” or “outside” subjective attitudes like derision, in actuality we often perceive opponents’ arguments not just as incorrect, but as absurd or frankly ludicrous; and indeed such judgments might in many cases be regarded as objective criteria for what we mean by claims to objectivity. Thus, just as Sartre underlined how ridicule objectivizes (presenting Charles “from outside in all his opacity”), so we are now again emphasizing how putative objectivity ridicules, and how claims to impersonality or rationality may provide the basis of intellectual ridicule even when the argument, as here, is “anti-​realist” or “anti-​objectivist.” As Walter Benjamin remarked, “There is no better starting point for thought than laughter.”40 Culler’s critique of the realist dimension of Flaubert’s narration is therefore in several ways exemplary for us, formulating the problem not only of ridicule but of artistic “play” in a new, more generalized form. Having mocked critics for their realist seriousness, their falling for Flaubert’s piege à cons, his “main point” is “that the text is not narrated by anyone and that the attempt to read it as if it were can only lead to confusion.”41 In certain ways he is right.42 As we will see shortly, Flaubert also explicitly if covertly undermines any naively realist illusion toward the conclusion of the novel in a way that might even seem to illustrate his claim that he wrote Madame Bovary “out of hatred of realism.”43 As Mario Vargas Llosa puts it, “Impassibility and objectivity are simply clever, surreptitious ways of turning [the author’s] subjectivity into narrative.”44 However, in contrast to Culler’s formula that “the text is not narrated by anyone,” Vargas Llosa also emphasizes that “the facts that make up the fictitious reality do not proliferate spontaneously: they are recounted by someone.”45 Léon Bopp might therefore in our view be defended when he hazards, however “naively,” that in writing “It would now be impossible for any of us to remember anything about him,” “perhaps Flaubert is trying . . . to suggest that Charles was unremarkable,” and hence eminently forgettable. Indeed we have seen that the question of whose side Flaubert takes, or what he is suggesting about Charles, is also addressed very explicitly by Sartre, whose influence Culler acknowledges, and whom he does not mock:

64  Mock Ritual in the Modern Era Charles Bovary is not Gustave—​although the author embodies himself several times in this character. But the future health officer’s confusion when he enters school is certainly something little Flaubert experienced under the same circumstances. This identity of feelings is one justification, in the first chapter of Madame Bovary, for the use of the first person plural: when he recalls his first days at the collège, the author has an excessive tendency to put himself on the side of the derided; he says “we” in order to constrain himself to share solidarity with those doing the deriding.46

According to Culler, “Sartre’s explanation, that Flaubert says we ‘in order to put himself on the side of the mockers and present [Charles’s] character from outside in all his opacity,’ ” is unconvincing because this effect “could have been achieved in other ways and the choice of means is put down to Flaubert’s personal pathology.”47 Flaubert compensates for his own masochistic tendencies (his all too ready identification with the role of victim), in Sartre’s hypothesis, by presenting himself as in sadistic solidarity with the mockers, though he finds nothing funny about the ridicule of Charles.48 Whether or not Sartre is conceivably right or wrong about Flaubert’s “personal pathology,” Culler’s reluctance to ascribe the objective narrative strategy to such pathology seems also right to us. Indeed Sartre’s sense that the objectifying narration, not only of the we but also at many points of the free indirect speech, mimics the quasi-​sadistic perspective of the mockers is confirmed by Flaubert’s sly introduction of a coded alias for himself in a single line of an episode, toward the end of the novel, when Charles goes to Rouen with Homais to choose a tomb for Emma after her suicide, accompanied also by “an artist, one Vaufrylard, a friend of Bridoux’s, who never ceased to make puns [calembours]” (272). Nothing here perturbs the realistic surface of the text except if we have inside knowledge that Vaufrylard was one of the author’s own nicknames in his youth. Once we know this, however, we are faced both with a superficial confirmation of Culler’s ridicule of those who read the novel “realistically,” and also, more importantly, with irrefutable proof that the free indirect speech is secretly the product, not just of a we, but an I. In short, Flaubert here objectivizes himself as an artistic punster or farceur, creating a work of art that is very precisely at this point, moreover, a tragicomic mock ritual, since the episode concerns choosing a mock tomb.49 After much study, Charles chooses a mausoleum with a “spirit bearing an extinguished torch” on either side, topped off with a ridiculous Latin

The Emergence of Objectivity in Madame Bovary  65 inscription laboriously invented by Homais: “Sta viator, amabilem conjugem calcas” (Stop traveler, you tread on a beloved wife) (272).50 This kitsch memorial, in short, seems sadistically designed to discourage us—​if we think we have good taste—​from any deep emotional identification with Charles, now widowed, and about to lose everything.51 Thus, whereas we have seen that the transition from the we to free indirect speech is regarded by Azoulai in terms of a renunciation of ridicule in favor of the superior joke of an invisible god, and contemplation of the sadly grotesque Charles “in himself,” our analysis, on the contrary, stresses that the first person remains implicit in, as well as concealed by, the objective narrative. Azoulai’s underlining of how Flaubert makes ridicule self-​reflexive, on the other hand, could hardly be better illustrated than by this ridiculous portrayal of the artist himself as a punster engaged in assisting at a mock ritual. In fact it is precisely this undermining of realist convention that signals a genuine, though comic, objectivization of the real relation between the artist and the work of art. In this connection, finally, it is worth adding that Flaubert’s own presumably serious claim about the truth value of literature—​“Poetry is as precise as geometry. Induction is as accurate as deduction”52—​specifies what distinguishes poetic from mathematical or purely deductive rigor in a way also relevant to our argument. For while inductive reasoning is essential not only to poetry but to empirical science,53 such reasoning has been shown nevertheless to stubbornly resist full objectification or rationalization, remaining logically dependent on what the analytic philosopher Nelson Goodman has called a history of “projective entrenchment,”54 on a we that stands behind any claim to objective verification. Having shown how Flaubert here allegorizes his art more or less explicitly as a kind of sacrificial mock ritual, we now turn to how he conceives the theme of eroticism along comparable lines. Given the double significance of sexuality and farce in our previous chapter on Diderot and Sterne, this is hardly surprising; yet Flaubert offers something perhaps even more absurdly generalized. In the Dictionary of Received Ideas, for example, the entry for ARTISTS begins: “All jokers” (Tous farceurs).55 But the entry for YOUNG MAN equally reads: “Always a joker [Toujours farceur]. He must be! Act astonished when he isn’t.”56 “In Madame Bovary,” as Vargas Llosa puts it, “the erotic element is basic”;57 and we have already seen how M. Bovary senior is an aging erotic farceur, who believes that virility consists in mocking religious rituals and even in

66  Mock Ritual in the Modern Era performing mock rituals himself, or in any case in behaving as far as possible with witty masculine toupet. But it is Homais who points out, in his arguments with Bournisien, that erotic farces were originally a conspicuous part of religious rituals themselves, even Christian ones. Defending modern actors (comédiens) against excommunication by the church, he triumphantly reminds the priest of medieval history: “They would play right in the middle of the choir and perform a kind of farce called ‘mystery plays’ that frequently offended against the laws of decency” (175).58 Like some modern intellectuals, Homais is keen to point out that the sacred is often farcically sexual—​a characteristic supposedly repressed by Christianity59—​but does not consider that this equation can also be read in reverse. The complicity of eroticism and the sacred in Emma Bovary is of course a staple of Flaubert criticism, beginning with the prosecution and defense alike. When Emma kisses the crucifix on her deathbed, for example, this is eroticized by Flaubert as her voluptuous kissing of the “Man-​God.” As a self-​proclaimed Voltairean, Homais also naturally regards ribald laughter as a key weapon against religion, and himself as an excellent joker and erotic farceur. He mocks religious celibacy as unnatural, and evidently thinks himself a connoisseur of women. Getting tipsy with Emma’s lover Léon, for example, he begins “expounding scandalous theories on women. What attracted him above all was ‘chic.’ He adored an elegant outfit and hairdo in a well-​furnished apartment, and when it came to their physical proportions, he didn’t mind them on the plump side” (220). He even launches into what Flaubert calls an “ethnographic digression” on the temperaments of German, French, and Italian women, who are respectively said to be “vaporish,” “licentious,” “and passionate”: “And black women?” asked the clerk. “They are for artistic tastes!” said Homais. “Waiter! Two demi-​tasses!” (220)

The pharmacist, turned ethnographer here, incarnates a dubious modern alliance between supposed scientific rationality, sexual liberation, artistic taste, and wit itself. Though socially progressive in his own eyes (he later takes to defending battered women and stray dogs, for example), he looks obviously sexist and racist to twenty-​first-​century ones. Yet, in his nineteenth-​century naiveté, he also draws attention to what Jean Baudrillard (for instance) has called the widespread modern eroticization, not only of victims, but also the aesthetic signs of victimage in quite “normal” modern culture—​a key example

The Emergence of Objectivity in Madame Bovary  67 for Baudrillard being precisely the novel taste for dark skins, especially among whites, that has produced the huge modern tanning industry and predilection for mass sunbathing that would have appeared ridiculous, both medically and aesthetically, to many earlier Europeans.60 The eroticization of black women is also one of the more obvious jokes in the Dictionary: “Hotter than white women. (See BRUNETTES and BLONDES.)”61 As regards the more intimate relation between joking and eroticism, Azoulai points out that mockery plays its part in both Rodolphe’s and Léon’s seductions of Emma, producing complicity between the lovers by laughing at others, and she mentions the “patriarchal” character of Rodolphe’s derision of Charles.62 But this does not account for Flaubert’s equation between virility and farce as such, or the eroticization by men and women alike of the specifically male farceur. Here, certainly, Emma’s dream lover Rodolphe is the incarnation of the theme; for though an individual, and not a very appealing one, he is sometimes described entirely formulaically, as though he stepped directly out of the Dictionary. Not knowing that Rodolphe has just broken off his affair with Emma, for example, Charles makes the mistake of describing him to her as a “garçon” (bachelor) who “isn’t exactly starved for pleasures” (s’amuse joliment), adding, “C’est un farceur” (166). Only a few lines later, seeing Rodolphe’s carriage pass through the square, she faints, and not long after that attempts suicide for the first time. The image of the farceur thus merges with what in jocular English used to be called the lady-​killer. Similarly, during an amorous encounter with Léon much later, she is told by their boatman that he recently took out “un tas de farceurs” (a jolly bunch of ladies and gentlemen with cakes, champagne, trumpets) among whom is Rodolphe, unnamed this time, but recognizable precisely because he is described as a womanizer with a small moustache and “joliment amusant” (the life of the party [203]). Indeed the Dictionary entry titled FARCE (PRACTICAL JOKE) repeats exactly the same point: “Il faut en faire lorsqu’on est en partie de campagne avec des dames” (Must be made while on a country outing with ladies).63 Along with whips, knives, a military bearing, and facial hair,64 joking or farce is a recurring sign of the male seducer in both texts. Of course, despite its extremity, this pattern is only a farcical exaggeration of conventional erotic fashions, and hardly new to us. We saw that Diderot, for example, metaphorized copulation itself as being laughed at, a metaphor consistent with his more commonplace figuration of erotic penetration as the knife in the sheath, a different kind of mock violence. Indeed it is

68  Mock Ritual in the Modern Era precisely the ambivalence of the joke and the farceur that makes it and him properly mock sacrificial in character, producing not only the victimization of victims, and the vilification of persecutors, but their erotic idealization. We are of course familiar too with the old stereotype, still very current, that women are attracted to a sense of humor, to “a good laugh” (as it is reassuringly put in Britain), even more than to “good looks,”65 whereas stereotypical “patriarchal” men are supposed stupidly to go for the latter. But while modern feminists have long pointed out the sacrificial dimension of the idolization of feminine beauty (the idolization of the victim), it is rarer to find its farcical male counterpart, the attractive joker, analyzed in similar terms; though indeed contemporary female comics very often remark on the prejudice they still meet from both sexes, as though making jokes were too aggressive or shameless to suit a woman—​unless of course she is ugly or “butch.”66 We might perhaps be reminded again of Nietzsche’s celebration of “holy” laughter in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, which entails his depiction of a mock ritual starring “the ugliest man.” It is also worth noting that the gendering of laughter is still often discussed in comparable ways. In her preface to the collection titled Women and Comedy, for instance, Regina Barreca observes, “At its best, the most sacrilegious humor has something sacred in it, as I learned from Erasmus. . . . Perhaps that’s another reason women were kept from performing the duties required of humor’s chief officers.”67 In addition, “loud laughter and joke telling have traditionally marked a woman as loose or unfeminine,”68 just as Baubo, known in Greek myth as the goddess of mirth, is associated with the obscene revelation of her vulva. (Aphrodite in Homer—​perhaps “loose,” but surely not “unfeminine”—​is also called a “lover of laughter.”)69 Regarding the ethics of laughter, Barreca claims in a manner reminiscent of Bakhtin’s idealization of carnival that “feminine comedy doesn’t attack the powerless; it makes fun of the powerful. It doesn’t create barriers; it can dismantle them.”70 Similarly, in The Female Trickster, Ricki Stefanie Tannen asserts that “men use a negative tone in jokes while women use a more positive tone.”71 But, needless to say, as in Mean Girls, counterexamples to such rules (presumably statistical in nature) aren’t difficult to find. For example, according to Sean Zwagerman, the American pundit Ann Coulter’s “work cautions us against assuming humor’s power to alter, transgress, resist, deconstruct, unmask, or open up spaces.”72 When asked how her career would have been different had she “looked like [liberal political humorist] Molly Ivins,” Coulter answered, “I’d be a lot uglier.”73

The Emergence of Objectivity in Madame Bovary  69 It cannot be by chance that Flaubert chose Chateaubriand’s Le Génie du Christianisme to be read “as a recreation” (32) on Sundays at Emma’s convent school. The opening chapters of this (then) well-​known book not only recommend how Christians should respond to ridicule, but make several other arguments relevant to Flaubert’s concern with the overlap between secular and sacred. For example, just as Homais triumphantly recalls the historical complicity between Christian mysteries and farce, so Chateaubriand argues that there is no religion without mysteries: “it is these which, together with sacrifice, essentially constitute the cult.”74 Furthermore such mysteries are defended by analogy with secular modesty and secrecy: “modesty, chaste love, virtuous friendship, are full of secrets. One could say that hearts that love each other understand each other implicitly [à demi-​mot], and are only half open [entrouverts].”75 Chateaubriand also claims that Jesus established only two “social sacraments”: celibacy and marriage.76 The “social” or quasi-​ secularized aspect of the sacred concerns sex. Just as germane are the opening lines of the book which stress the threat to Christianity from “those seemingly frivolous men, who destroy everything with ridicule.”77 While serious attacks from various quarters have been dealt with quite successfully according to Chateaubriand, Christian apologists have been “less successful against derision.”78 Under the Roman emperor Julian, for example, “Christians were spared from violence, but treated with disdain”79—​as though derision were a more effective kind of violence than physical torture. “When Julian is serious, Saint Cyril triumphs over the philosopher; but when the emperor uses irony, the patriarch loses his advantage.”80 Moreover, in a key historical claim obviously relevant to Flaubert’s depiction of Homais, and to our study as a whole, Chateaubriand writes that “Voltaire revived Julian’s persecution.”81 However, he also adds that Voltaire was so “superior” to his disciples that he could not help laughing at their “irreligious enthusiasm” (enthousiasme being itself, in the “age of reason,” a pejorative term for religious feeling), thus confirming the pattern we have already detailed whereby antireligious ridicule takes on a “religious” structure. Chateaubriand also argues that it is a mistake for Christians to respond seriously to ridicule, reminding us of the humorous strategy of Sterne’s Parson Yorick, but also perhaps of Culler’s decidedly secular warnings against the kind of seriousness that risks making people into fools (cons). Indeed, Flaubert’s Bournisien seems to have taken Chateaubriand’s lesson to heart;

70  Mock Ritual in the Modern Era for when Homais attacks celibacy for being unnatural and leading to unspecified crimes, the curate interrupts him by saying that the confessional depends on it, as though the whole issue concerned the inability of married people to keep secrets. Similarly, when Homais points out that the Bible contains details “bordering on obscenity” (175), the curate replies that only Protestants recommend reading the Bible.82 Another of his jokes concerning the relation between religion and sex is slightly more subtle but worth mentioning since it also reflects Flaubert’s conception of their overlap. When Emma tries to console herself with religion after becoming disillusioned with marriage, she tells the curé she is suffering, and he replies that he is too: “The first heat of the year is hard to bear, isn’t it? But, after all, we are born to suffer, as St. Paul says. But what does M. Bovary make of it?” (93). Emma replies impatiently that she wants a religious, not a medical cure, let alone from her husband; but the curé interrupts her by scolding one of the boys in his church, a carpenter’s son whom he likes.83 Then when she pleads that “you solace all sorrows,” he replies, “Ah! don’t tell me of it, Madame Bovary. This morning I had to go to Bas-​Diauville for a cow that was all swollen, they thought it was under a spell [sort]. All their cows, I don’t know how it is” (93). The curate’s implied joke that her religious request is like asking him to cure a cow of a superstitious spell puts him in direct complicity with the author, since Flaubert/​Vaufrylard of course knows—​and this is but one of several bovine allusions in the novel—​that Madame Bovary is herself the “cow” asking to be cured of her amorous dissatisfaction. (Similarly, we may recall that Léon marries a woman called Mlle. Leboeuf to substitute for Emma, and that a Madame Tuvache says that adulterous women like Emma should be whipped. Vaufrylard was a truly terrible punster.) Though the practical upshot of this joke doubtless amounts to a more or less kindly warning not to look to superstitious cures for amorous woes, there is no doubt that Flaubert also wanted to emphasize the complicity between sexuality and the sacred, as well as the priest’s propensity for erotic humor, and in a way that at first seems to confirm Homais’s view of clerical hypocrisy. For example, not only does it seem easy to mock the curate for having nothing but Christian platitudes with which to comfort the gangrenous Hippolyte after his disastrous surgery, but he “even told [presumably racy] anecdotes [to the landlady] interspersed with jokes and puns that Hippolyte did not understand” (146, emphasis added). However, the text does not accuse him of indifference to his parishioner, whom he visits daily, whereas we

The Emergence of Objectivity in Madame Bovary  71 are told that Homais and Dr. Canivet smugly discuss the virtue of surgeons—​ cool as great generals, says Homais, “a sacred office,” says Canivet—​“without any consideration for Hippolyte, who was sweating with agony” (148, emphasis added). Homais also reprimands what he calls “the priest’s machinations” for giving Hippolyte sufficient hope to desire to go on a pilgrimage if he is cured. But the curate says simply to Hippolyte that “he saw no objection; two precautions were better than one; it certainly could do no harm” (147). Indeed, even when it comes to dealing with Emma’s own amorous situation, it would seem that the curate is perhaps surprisingly more intelligent and considerate than Homais and several others. For whereas the snobbish pharmacist foolishly thinks Léon is having an affair with Emma’s maid, and tries to get him to gossip about it, Bournisien simply warns Emma that he is not the only one to know the truth. Moreover, instead of moralizing about her adultery or revealing it to others, he again tactfully appears to change the subject precisely by making another joke about sex, specifically about a seductive young priest in Rouen who is drawing crowds of women to the cathedral. Clerics and their admirers, he implies, are as susceptible to erotic aberrations as Emma herself. Thus, though Bournisien may seem at first sight to illustrate Homais’s views not merely of clerical superstition and self-​interested proselytizing but also of hypocritical licentiousness and drinking—​one of the curate’s jokes is about how the goodness of cider is made clear when it squirts into your eye (174)84—​we believe that closer consideration tends to undermine the ethical symmetry between the two men so often asserted by modern commentators. According to Vargas Llosa, for instance, Homais and Bournisien, are two sides of a single coin: “In the last analysis, the two of them—​Bournisien and his deism, Homais and his materialism—​represent one and the same form of human abdication. Together they embody the worst possible variety of Flaubertian bêtise: the intellectual sort.”85 But Sénard’s defense, on the contrary, maintained that while Flaubert was accused of portraying a “materialistic curate,” as bad as Homais himself, he is in fact merely “a country curate, who in his function of country curate is, like M. Bovary, an ordinary man.”86 It is notable that as intelligent a reader as Vargas Llosa mocks Sénard’s defense of the novel as being “as pharisaical as the accusation against it put before the court by Pinard, the public prosecutor, a composer in secret of pornographic verses.”87 Thus, not only Homais and Bournisien inside the novel, but Sénard and Pinard outside it, are presented as being essentially at

72  Mock Ritual in the Modern Era the same level—​that of pornographers. In fact such a position also effectively turns Flaubert’s own eloquent dedication of his novel to Sénard into yet another mock ritual or piège à cons, especially hypocritical (or perhaps deluded) insofar as it specifies, “By becoming part of your magnificent defense, my work has acquired for myself, as it were, an unexpected authority.”88 In resisting Vargas Llosa’s conclusions, we are not of course denying the quasi-​symmetrical impasse between religious and scientific ritual and ideology illustrated, as mentioned earlier, when the two men by turns sprinkle holy water and chlorine water around Emma’s corpse, or when they debate the merits of Christianity (recommending to each other Voltaire and the Encyclopedia on the one hand, and the Letters of Some Portuguese Jews and The Meaning of Christianity on the other), both talking at once “without listening to each other” (261). Indeed, when they both get tipsy and giggle together over Emma’s body, and the priest claps the pharmacist on the back, declaring, “We’ll end up good friends, you and I” (264), we may be reminded of an earlier argument that ends with their agreeing on the value of tolerance (175) like politically correct opponents of our own day. This mock symmetry is belied, however, by what Homais immediately afterward calls their prise de bec, a cockfight that he thinks he has won, and might remind us of Flaubert’s Dictionary entry CONCILIATION: “Always preach it, even when the contraries are absolute.”89 Moreover, we emphatically agree with Sénard that in practical terms there is no comparison between the two men. For even if the priest seems impotent at best to solve the problems that surround him, he at no point stoops to the level of the pharmacist. Not only is Homais ultimately responsible, as the landlady rightly thinks, for the botched operation on Hippolyte, and not only is he a snob motivated by what the text calls the “baseness of his vanity” (270), but he famously concludes the novel by conducting a vicious and mendacious journalistic campaign against a crippled blind man that ends by having him incarcerated for life in the name of moral and scientific progress. Worse, it is evident that Flaubert thinks such persecution eminently compatible with the enlightened championing of battered women and stray dogs. Bournisien’s final and apparently ridiculous appearance in the novel also highlights the mock symmetry between Voltairean derision of the Bible and “Christian” derision of Voltaire, since it concerns the myth that Voltaire died eating his own excrement just as he had mocked Ezekiel for eating human dung.90 Bournisien “was growing bigoted, fanatic, according to Homais. He thundered against the spirit of the age, and never failed, every other week, to

The Emergence of Objectivity in Madame Bovary  73 recount the death agony of Voltaire, who died devouring his excrements, as everyone knows” (272).91 We observe, however, that whereas Flaubert could very easily have presented this anecdote about the aging priest in the objective third person, he attributes it to Homais whom we know to be a liar and his enemy. As regards the general destiny of curates in Madame Bovary, this is clearly enough allegorized by the plaster curé of the opening chapters, whose right foot gets broken off in the Bovary garden at Tostes, and who subsequently gets smashed into “a thousand pieces” (74) on the road in Quincampoix. One of the most obvious modern replacements for the “doctor of souls,” as the curate calls himself, is the scientific doctor of bodies and brains; and we began this chapter with Homais’s joke about bleeding priests because it suggests a grotesque application of the medical cure to the religious curé. Indeed, bleeding plays a subtle but key role in both the events and metaphors of Madame Bovary, and might even be regarded as a fundamental trope for sacrificial ritual, as our epigraph from Cormac McCarthy also wryly suggests: rituals without bloodletting are “but mock rituals.” Although the novel’s programmatic counterpoint between religion and medicine is of course partly a comic artifice, Flaubert was also the son of a doctor seriously interested in the history of medicine. Accordingly, we should briefly suggest what makes bleeding such a good example of the ambiguous relation, both in Flaubert and in history, between ritual and medical science. For example, while various types of bloodletting as curative or purgative hark back to ancient practices in which the differentiation between sacred cult and medicine was more or less nonexistent, it is a striking fact that medical bleeding became most fashionable and pandemic, not during the days of Hippocrates, for instance, or the cult-​filled Middle Ages, but precisely during the Enlightenment period that is generally regarded as the cradle of modern scientific medicine. Medical textbooks and encyclopedias of the eighteenth to mid-​nineteenth centuries list bleeding as a treatment for almost every conceivable complaint in a way that now looks comic; and it doubtless killed many people we associate with the dawn of the enlightened modern world, such as George Washington.92 Though widely practiced by medical professionals with scientific pretensions, including Charles, bleeding is introduced to the novel as a peasant superstition that also provides the occasion for Emma’s first meeting with Rodolphe. Demanding to be bled because he feels a tingling all over, Rodolphe’s servant says, “It will clear me out” (ça me purgera) as “an answer

74  Mock Ritual in the Modern Era to all reasonable objections” (104, emphasis added). It is in rituals of catharsis or purgation, of course, that medical and ritual practices often most obviously overlap. This overlap is also satirically emphasized by Flaubert in Homais’s advertising for Charles’s disastrous operation on Hippolyte’s club foot, which should have been in theory, like modern surgery, an advance on such deluded practices. Having failed to persuade the patient to have the operation—​ grotesquely, his lame leg is said to work better than his healthy one—​by telling him that “at the very most [he’ll] feel a slight pain, a small prick, like a little blood letting,” and by despicably appealing to his masculine pride as a potential lover and soldier, Homais then resorts to applying social pressure on Hippolyte that is said to be “like a conspiracy” (conjuration) (142). The promotion of what is essentially, for Homais, a business venture as an act of philanthropy is prophetic of modern advertising, where the principle of charity is routinely placed in the service of profit.93 Moreover, in the triumphant newspaper article that Homais publishes immediately after the operation, Flaubert outdoes himself. Not only is the operation said to be “performed as if by magic,” so that “barely a few drops of blood appeared on the skin, as though to say that the rebellious tendon had at last given way beneath the efforts of the medical arts,” but Homais indulges in a ridiculously patronizing Dionysiac fantasy that makes him sound like a fifth-​rate Nietzsche: “Who knows if, at our next village festivity we shall not see our good Hippolyte appear in midst of a bacchic dance, surrounded by a group of gay companions (144–​145). Just as the pharmacist calls his anti-​Christian Enlightenment stance a “religion,” so his advertisement for modern medicine is aligned with mock Bacchic rites and a “magic” triumphantly confirmed by the “discreet” appearance of blood. Indeed bleeding, as we have said, more or less discreetly figures as a kind of secular equivalent to sacrificial ritual that pervades the imagery of the entire novel,94 including not only medicine but even economics, and above all erotic love. Emma’s love affairs in particular are characterized in sacrificial terms that not only apply to the internal psychology of her relationships, but are also linked to the objective facts of bleeding and the operation on Hippolyte. Charles, who generally avoids all but the most anodyne treatments (including a doctor’s “caresses,” as his kindness is called), since he very sensibly fears killing his patients, is nevertheless a purger (he bleeds, extracts teeth, etc.). Thus it seems at first merely realistic that Emma first meets Rodolphe

The Emergence of Objectivity in Madame Bovary  75 via the bleeding of his servant. But if we are reading closely enough to remember that Emma is also first called by name in the novel when she bleeds by pricking her finger at the beginning of her courtship with Charles, or that one of Rodolphe’s most sentimental memories of her recalls one of her nosebleeds, we are forced to conclude that Flaubert’s strategy is more mischievous and comprehensive, and that the medical bleeding forms part of a larger “originary”95 sacrificial pattern that is at once both literal and figural, realistic and ritualistic. For example, when Emma first begins to buy luxuries on credit—​precisely to “bleed” Lheureux, as the lender himself puts it96—​this is described in the context of the sacrifices she thinks she is making through marriage: “A woman who has consented to such sacrifices could well allow herself certain whims. She bought a gothic prie-​Dieu, and in a month spent fourteen francs on lemons for polishing her nails” (102). It is, moreover, typical of Flaubert’s pattern that the French word for her mock religious gothic “whims” here—​fantaisies—​is the same one used by Rodolphe in the same chapter when he advises his servant “to be quiet, now that his whim [fantaisie]” for being bled “was satisfied” (106). When Rodolphe thinks, at the end of the chapter, “I’ll have myself bled, if need be” in order to have an excuse to see Emma for a second time, one might say that this makes the mock ritualistic equation between bleeding and erotic “fantasy” almost explicit, though of course the realistic explanation remains pragmatic. Indeed, Flaubert’s Dictionary entry titled BLOODLETTING (SAIGNER) reads laconically, “Have yourself bled in the spring,” as though the medical fashion for bleeding had simply replaced the more old-​fashioned erotic rites of spring. Finally, that Flaubert wanted us to pay special attention to the simultaneous eroticization and medicalization of sacrificial ritual is well illustrated by the mock romantic exchange between Emma and Léon during their courtship in which they comically attempt to outdo one another in their claims to “find consolation,” as she puts it, “in the thought of the sacrifice” (185). He begins “in praise of virtue, duty, and silent immolation, having himself an incredible longing for self-​sacrifice that he could not satisfy,” to which Emma responds that she would like to work in a hospital “as a nursing Sister [religieuse],” to which Léon answers in turn that unfortunately “no such holy vocations are open to men,” except perhaps that of a doctor (186). That their “holy” fantasy of self-​sacrifice finds no better expression than in medicine is emphasized by the ambiguity of the French religieuse d’hôpital.

76  Mock Ritual in the Modern Era But of course these ridiculous medical fantasies of sacrifice are portrayed by Flaubert as mere pretext for the real game, the erotic fantasy of sacrifice that Rodolphe also exploits in his seduction of Emma when he speaks of feeling the need “of giving everything, sacrificing everything to [a]‌person” (116). Needless to say, no reader can be in much doubt as to what is really going on in these mock sacrificial maneuvers. Just as Rodolphe betrays her with a ridiculously contrived final “romantic” letter breaking their relationship, so the cowardly Léon is encouraged to be brave enough to dump her, which he wants to do anyway, by way of an explicit appeal to the way in which any distinction between self-​sacrifice and self-​interest can be entirely abolished: “[Dubocage] implored him to break with her, and, if he would not make this sacrifice in his own interest, to do it at least for his, Dubocage’s sake” (229, emphasis added). Earlier in the novel, moreover, Flaubert carefully interweaves the narrative of Emma’s own fantasies of amorous self-​sacrifice with the mutilation of Hippolyte, “martyred” at the hands of Homais’s local conspiracy that persuades him to accept the treatment. (When the club foot begins to suffer from gangrene, Charles recommends dieting, while the landlady feeds him, saying, “Haven’t they tortured [martyrisé] you enough already?” [146].) Indeed the proposal to operate on Hippolyte is pointedly first mentioned in connection with Emma’s renewed desire to sacrifice herself for Charles at the end of the previous chapter where, after being stood up by Rodolphe three times in a row, she “repents” and “even wondered why she hated Charles,” and if it wouldn’t have been better if she could have loved him: “But he offered little hold for these reawakened sentiments, so she remained rather embarrassed with her sacrificial intentions, until the pharmacist provided her with a timely opportunity” (141, emphasis added). This sentence makes clear how carefully Flaubert planned the operation, which now Emma suddenly champions, to be directly linked—​with Homais’s supposedly philanthropic help—​to her “sacrificial intentions”: both her temporary renunciation of Rodolphe and her fantasies of renewed self-​sacrifice for her husband. To make the point clear, the text specifies that she first gives up having sex with Charles to underline her devotion to Rodolphe (though the latter finds her confession of this detail to be in bad taste), then gives up Rodolphe to sacrifice herself again for Charles, before the marital humiliation associated with the amputation of Hippolyte’s leg, after the operation has failed, returns her to Rodolphe once more.

The Emergence of Objectivity in Madame Bovary  77 The sacrifice of Hippolyte therefore exactly coincides with her amorous delusions of self-​sacrifice for Charles, and the end of this disastrous series of events is that Emma reflects not just on the “madness” that had “driven her to ruin her life by continual sacrifices,” but on the fact that Charles doesn’t even suspect “the ridicule of his name would henceforth sully hers as well as his” (149). Charles and Hippolyte accordingly merge as sacrificial victims, we might say, when Emma regards the latter as “the living embodiment of [Charles’s] hopeless ineptitude” (199). In short, we have returned again to fear of ridicule as a basic motivation for sacrifice, while Hippolyte may be regarded as a victim simultaneously of modern medicine and modern love—​a complicity we will explore further in the next chapter.

5 Mock Ritual and Medicine in Flaubert’s Dictionary of Received Ideas Even if some of Moses’s dietary rules were hygienically beneficial it is a pity to treat him as an enlightened public health official, rather than as a spiritual leader. Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger

In the last chapter we saw something of the complexity with which Madame Bovary deploys mock ritual connections or even homologies between its major themes of ridicule, religion, medicine, education, sexuality, and art itself. Thanks partly to its mock didactic form, Flaubert’s droll Dictionnaire des idées reçues can now help expand some of these connections and develop their mutual implications, particularly for the emergence of modern medicine. As the posthumously published Dictionary was also planned, according to Flaubert’s notes, to be included in his unfinished final novel, Bouvard et Pécuchet, we include references to the latter’s treatment of medicine where relevant. In their concern with a healthy diet, for example, Bouvard and Pécuchet follow food assiduously from mouth to anus “with almost religious attention.”1 Meanwhile, far from renouncing ridicule, as we saw Juliette Azoulai sanguinely hoped in connection with Madame Bovary, these texts seem to make it programmatic. As part of his project to produce a new kind of “comedy of ideas,” Flaubert wrote of providing for the Dictionary “a good preface where we would indicate how the work has been written to reconnect the public to tradition, to order, to general convention, and arranged in such a manner that the reader is not to know whether or not he is being played for a fool [si on se fout de lui].”2 Moreover, the relation between mockery and medicine seems significantly reciprocal. Modern medicine is often portrayed as ridiculous in its purgative Mock Ritual in the Modern Era. Reginald McGinnis and John Vignaux Smyth, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2022. DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197637432.003.0006

Medicine in Flaubert’s Dictionary  79 fashions and pretensions, but modern ridicule, including Flaubert’s own, is often described as purgative or medicinal. It cannot be a coincidence, for example, that the Dictionary entries PATIENT (MALADE)—​“To make a patient feel better, laugh at his illness and deny his suffering”3—​and MEDICINE—​“Scoff at it when one is feeling fit”4—​both concern mockery. Indeed when it comes to describing his own work, in this case Bouvard and Pécuchet, Flaubert writes that it aims to “speak some truths” and be a “kind of critical encyclopedia”5—​the objective claims—​but also that “By this means I hope to purge myself.” “I will try to vomit my venom into my book. This hope soothes me!” “I shall at last vent my resentment, vomit my hatred, spit out my bile, ejaculate my rage, cleanse my indignation.”6 This cathartic frenzy is formulated in more “impersonal” terms in a letter to Louise Colet, where Flaubert employs a directly sacrificial metaphor for his mock Dictionary project: “I should sacrifice the great men to all the nitwits, the martyrs to all the executioners”7—​providing a mock martyrdom of even martyrs. He also aimed, we might say, to mock sacrifice his own readers, as illustrated by his oft-​quoted hope that after reading the book we would desist, “for fear of coming out with one of the statements it contains,”8 from opening our mouths ever again. (This has sadly not worked in our case.) One of the most striking aspects of the Dictionary’s treatment of health and disease is not merely its moronic, but its oxymoronic character. Over and over again we read that the very same things that lead to health lead also to sickness, or, conversely, that diseases are a definite sign of health. Thus, for example, HYGIENE: “Must always be maintained. Prevents illnesses, except when it causes them.”9 HYDROTHERAPY: “Cure and cause of every illness.”10 FEVERS: “A sign of the strength of the blood. Caused by prunes, melons, the sun in April, etc.”11 HEMORRHOIDS: “Come from sitting on stoves and stone benches. St. Fiacre’s evil [mal].12 A sign of health—​hence do not try to rid yourself of them.” PIMPLES: “On the face or anywhere else, a sign of health and ‘strong blood.’ Do not try to get rid of them.”13 SCURF: “Sign of good health (See PIMPLES).”14 ODOR (foot): “Sign of good health.”15 Just in case we should think such absurdities merely local, we are fed the general rule in HEALTH: “Too much health is a cause of illness,”16 or conversely PAIN: “Always has a favorable outcome. Real pain is always held in check.”17 Beyond medicine, and showing how Flaubert also generalizes this oxymoronic pattern to nonmedical matters as well as vice versa, this resembles the untranslatable BONNES: “Toutes mauvaises”—​untranslatable

80  Mock Ritual in the Modern Era because the English MAIDS: “All bad” makes invisible the punning equation between good and bad all too evident in the French.18 Here at the start, since these patterns may at first seem either utterly perverse or trivial, or both, it may be helpful to recall the importance of the etymological connection, famously argued in Jacques Derrida’s “Plato’s Pharmacy,”19 but also, directed specifically at twentieth-​ century medicine, in Thomas Szasz’s Ceremonial Chemistry: The Ritual Persecution of Drugs, Addicts, and Pushers,20 between the ambivalence of the Greek word pharmakon (drug: remedy or poison, or both at once) and that of the religious or magical pharmakos (purgative sacrifice) and/​or pharmakeus (magician, shaman, doctor, priest). If we want to emphasize the pharmakon medicine as superstition or placebo we can compare it to homeopathy mentioned in the Dictionary under INFINITESIMAL: “No one knows what it is, but it’s related to homeopathy.”21 If we want to make it sound scientific we can cite VACCINE: “Frequent only vaccinated individuals.”22 But in any case the oxymoronic patterns of the Dictionary make medicine pharmacological in Derrida’s and Szasz’s sense as well as the ordinary one, and hence also raise the question of to what extent modern medicine—​as in the case of bleeding discussed in the last chapter—​tends to repeat while supposedly transcending, via the scientific method, what Émile Durkheim in the Elementary Forms of Religious Life called “the ambiguity of the notion of the sacred.”23 Aside from psychiatrist Thomas Szasz’s well-​known attacks on modern “pharmacracy”—​a “new despotism,” as he argues, in which secular medicine plays a coercive and deluded role formerly associated with religion24—​ another analogy to Flaubert’s critique of modern medicine can be found in the polemical opening to Ivan Illich’s Limits to Medicine, which speaks of “the disease of medical progress,” and re-​coins a Greek term for what Illich calls the “epidemic” of modern doctor-​induced sicknesses: Iatrogenesis.25 In Flaubert’s work, among many possible examples, we may again think of Dr. Larivière whose (futile) appearance at Emma Bovary’s deathbed is described as like that of “a god,” and causes the Yonville population instantly to develop a rash of diverse illnesses of the kind we now attribute to the placebo or nocebo effect. (We will mention later an interesting analogy in Kafka, whose “A Country Doctor” also concerns the way in which the modern doctor has replaced the priest.) The most trivial of the Dictionary entries on this subject are significant, one might say, because they exist solely to make such patterns and analogies ridiculously clear. For instance, EXTIRPATE: “Verb used only for heresies and foot corns.”26 Or, in a secular

Medicine in Flaubert’s Dictionary  81 vein, HIPPOCRATES: “One should always quote him in Latin because he wrote in Greek, except in this phrase: ‘Hippocrates says yes, but Galen says no.’ ”27 Even the reference to Latin and Greek is inanely oxymoronic. Returning to bleeding, blood is of course one of the substances (perhaps the substance) most obviously characterized by sacred ambiguity in Durkheim’s sense—​a medium of purification but also of potentially contagious defilement whose dangers are still evident in dietary laws, for example, like kosher ones that specify how animals should be killed, or how their blood should be “hygienically” treated. Indeed though (or perhaps precisely because) the Dictionary entry we cited in ­chapter 4—​BLOODLETTING: “Have yourself bled in the spring”28—​now seems oblivious to the dangers of the fashionable medical practice, let alone its possible connections to ritual (turning it into a health-​conscious vogue somewhat akin to the perennial fashion for enemas),29 we suggest that Flaubert would not have been surprised to find that now bleeding has been thoroughly discredited as a medical treatment except in rare cases (by dehydrating the patient it does the exact opposite of what most conditions require), it has nevertheless dramatically reemerged in our own time as what is generally regarded as an alarmingly widespread psychological illness.30 Thus so-​called self-​cutting (among various forms of “self-​harm”) has now reached epidemic proportions not only among girls and young women (the examples most commonly cited), but among both sexes and a broad spectrum of ages. The epidemic staple of Enlightenment medicine has thus mutated, to use a genetic metaphor, into an epidemic quasi-​ritualistic “pathology,” where drawing blood, even in small quantities, is often perceived by sufferers as in some sense curative or cathartic. That the sacral or even festive character of blood is also quite often on Flaubert’s mind in the Dictionary can be more slyly illustrated by PUDDING (BLACK): “A sign of revelry [gaieté] in the house. Indispensable on Christmas Eve.”31 And as though this inane equation between feast days and (usually pork) blood pudding needed repeating, RÉVEILLON (CHRISTMAS EVE) seems merely to reiterate PUDDING (BLACK): “It’s the pudding really makes it so.”32 Here some explanation is needed, for while both these entries might loosely resemble, for Americans, something like TURKEYS: “Crucial to Thanksgiving”—​that is, merely as registering a cultural banality—​we would have to add something like, “In a mock ritual, the president always pardons one,” to arrive (while maintaining the wholly banal appearance) at a pattern closer to the ritual ambivalence of blood and meat-​eating that surely underlies

82  Mock Ritual in the Modern Era Flaubert’s seemingly vain repetition of PUDDING. It may be worth mentioning in this context that in an author like Samuel Beckett, for example, the fact that pigs are slaughtered by someone called Lambert on Christmas Eve in Malone Dies, or that a character in Molloy gets sick from eating Shepherd’s pie (an allegory of the lamb sacrifice), is linked to those novels’ evident sacrificial and religious themes. Indeed, we have already seen in Madame Bovary that Flaubert is no less concerned than Beckett (and of course many others) with the cannibalistic imagery of the Eucharist, so that Emma dies shortly after “glueing her lips to the body of the Man-​God” (on the crucifix) “like one suffering from thirst”33—​here the sacred “drinking” (orthodoxly of divine blood) is eroticized—​nor that Felicité, in Un Coeur simple, dies during the feast of Corpus Christi, which of course also celebrates the corporality of the man-​god eaten and drunk in the Eucharist. Moreover, although Flaubert does not go so far in the Dictionary as to make a blood pudding joke about Corpus Christi itself, reflection on the two blood pudding entries may deduce that while they may seem “stupidly” to repeat each other, this is not without a motive. In particular, the réveillon was often seen as the profane or even pagan aspect of the Christmas ritual.34 In Pierre Larousse’s Grand dictionnaire universel du XIXe siècle, one reads that while “the enemies of religion persist in asserting that religious ideas have had their day, and devotional practices are definitively abandoned,” nevertheless “from Lent we still have carnival, and from the Christmas fast and Christmas mass we still have le réveillon.” And especially, “We don’t go to church anymore, it is true, but we still eat the blood pudding.”35 The same article also specifies that “it is to be presumed that Christians, to better distinguish themselves from Jews,” thought it appropriate to introduce the flesh of this “impure animal” to their tables.36 The Dictionary’s sacrificial counterpoint between religion and modern medicine reappears in three entries concerning cannibalism (“blood pudding” with a vengeance) that make it ludicrously at once religious, medical, and erotic. First, IDOLATORS: “Are cannibals.”37 Second, MEDICAL STUDENTS: “Sleep near corpses. Some even eat them.”38 And third, PORK BUTCHER (CHARCUTIER): “Stories of paté made of human flesh. All pork butchers have pretty wives [Toutes les charcutières sont jolies].”39 That modern medical students are like pagans needs no commentary or otherwise would need a very long one: they are both, shall we say, “material” threats to Christianity. But it is worth specifying about PORK BUTCHER that just as Christianity provides a symbolic mutation or

Medicine in Flaubert’s Dictionary  83 spiritualization of cannibalistic imagery in the Mass, so we see again, in this entry, a movement from the literal eating of flesh to a quasi-​symbolic and eroticized equivalent, from cannibalism to sex and good looks. That Flaubert repeatedly returns to a kind of mock ritualistic symbolization of cannibalism is also illustrated in Madame Bovary by Madame Homais, who “was very fond of those small, heavy loaves shaped like turbans which are eaten during Lent with salt butter: a last relic of Gothic fare, going back, perhaps, to the Crusades, and with which the hardy Normans would stuff themselves in times gone by, thinking that they saw, illuminated in the golden light of the torches, between the tankards of Hippocras and the gigantic slabs of meat, the heads of Saracens to be devoured.”40 Not only are Christians here fantasizing about eating their Muslim enemies (as they were reported to have done during the Crusades),41 but the vegetarian substitutes—​the turbaned loaves—​are a food specifically eaten in Lent, the period in which meat was characteristically sacrificed. In case we fail to get the bloody ambiguity, we are told that Homais buys these vegetarian foods in the Rue Massacre. Returning again to charcuterie, the Dictionary also provides a kind of running joke linking pork not only to human flesh, but also, as in the Grand dictionnaire universel, to the opposition between Judaism and Christianity.42 PIG—​which recommends using pigs as anatomical models in hospitals because they so resemble us—​further emphasizes the equation between pork and human flesh already seen in PORK BUTCHER, while the entry titled HAM (how many pig entries this short dictionary has!) is singularly complex, even devious, despite (but also because of) its deceptive appearance of transparency. HAM: “Always from Mayence. Beware of it, because of trichina [intestinal worms].”43 At first it would seem that this impressively specific medical diagnosis of the dangers of eating ham has nothing whatever to do with the pattern by which modern medical science claims to explain and replace religious taboo—​illustrated, for example, by LENT: “At bottom, just a hygienic measure.”44 Religion here, let alone cannibalism, seems utterly irrelevant until we discover that Mayence not only became known for its hams partly in connection with a town official, a prefect, actually called Monsieur Jambon45—​this extraordinary conflation of pig and human is of course perfect for Flaubert’s purposes—​but is also a town where, more notoriously, medieval Jews were accused of various crimes, including ritual murder, and repeatedly massacred.46

84  Mock Ritual in the Modern Era Indeed to demonstrate that the Dictionary intends slyly but relentlessly to beat its readers about the head with the religious implications of charcuterie—​as though almost any subject may end in the same issue—​the entry SAINTE-​BEUVE yields nothing about the famous critic’s views of literature, religion, or anything else, except: “On Good Friday, ate only pork products.”47 The reference in this instance is to a dinner held on Friday, April 10, 1868, to which Sainte-​Beuve invited a number of friends, including Flaubert, Ernest Renan, Hippolyte Taine, and Prince Napoleon. According to Sainte-​ Beuve’s personal secretary, Jules Troubat, the date was chosen randomly, irrespective of the religious holiday, because it was the only day Prince Napoleon was free. But the dinner was portrayed in newspaper articles as an anticlerical demonstration, or even a libertine orgy, and soon became a subject of concern among politicians. Approached by the president of the Senate, M. Troplong, prior to the May 7, 1868 session, in which he was to make a speech on freedom of the press, Sainte-​Beuve is said to have quipped, “What a lot of fuss for a lard omelet!” Lest this witticism be taken by readers as proof of impiety, Sainte-​Beuve’s apologist, Troubat, cautions against believing that sausage and blood pudding were actually eaten on this occasion—​an assertion he supports by providing the complete menu in which, he maintains, “there is nothing either religious or anti-​religious.”48 Supposing that no provocation was originally intended in this dinner whose guests included such notorious freethinkers as Prince Napoleon and Renan, and that there was “not a word of truth” in what had been written, Sainte-​ Beuve nonetheless considered the event a milestone in what he calls the withdrawal of waning religions. As he wrote to Auguste Villemot, who had published an article in his defense, “Our innocent Friday will be one of these little milestones.”49 Eating pork on Good Friday obviously symbolizes being both non-​ Catholic and non-​Judaic (if not necessarily anti-​Catholic or anti-​Semitic),50 since Catholicism banned eating any kind of meat on Fridays, above all Good Friday, while orthodox Judaism (and of course Islam) still bans eating pork at any time. Elsewhere on the other hand—​as when priests are said to be in collusion with the pork butchers in Madame Bovary—​a predilection for pork is a sign of a distinction between Christianity and Judaism, as we saw earlier, and potentially of Christian anti-​Semitism. The choice of foods, especially meats, is very often a code in Flaubert for sacred alliances and rivalries, and it is likely that even a Dictionary entry concerning meat that makes no overt

Medicine in Flaubert’s Dictionary  85 reference to religion—​CHATEAUBRIAND: “Mainly known for the steak that bears his name”—​covertly belongs to the same pattern.51 In short, what Sainte-​Beuve called “the withdrawal of waning religions” is also connected to the hope that the world might finally rid itself of its sacred “eating disorders,” and hence of its sacred and sacrificial delusions in general. Yet just as in the case of bleeding, the purging of one kind of error or disease seems only to lead to another—​not least since most medical and social histories of modern secular “eating disorders” (anorexia, bulimia, and so on) begin at roughly the same period, the second half of the nineteenth century, that religious taboos and rituals concerning food and fasting, according to Sainte-​Beuve (and of course many others), are perhaps in terminal decline. As regards Flaubert’s own parallels between religious and secular dieting, these are often obvious enough. For example, when Bouvard and Pécuchet begin to study medicine, gaily sacrificing both people and animals to their experiments, the question of “nutrition tormented them,” and they are therefore delighted when a traveling salesman offers to sell them “almanacs, religious works, holy medallions, and finally François Raspail’s manual on health.”52 They are even more delighted that this manual attributes all infections to worms; and, with “his mind now focused on intestinal worms,” Pécuchet treats Madame Bordin, “despite the fear of mercury,” with calomel, a mercurial purgative, and “One month later, Mme. Bordin was cured.”53 We recall that the impressive diagnosis of trichinosis or intestinal worms was an important part of HAM. The mixing of superstition (bleeding) and science (vaccines) is also illustrated when the hapless pair “showed great enthusiasm for vaccines, learned how to let blood by practicing on cabbage leaves, and even acquired a pair of lancets.”54 They are particularly “amazed that sedatives were sometimes stimulants, emetics sometimes purgatives, that the same medicine could apply to different conditions, and that a single illness might be cured by opposing treatments.”55 Disillusioned with the worm-​obsessed Raspail manual of health, and moving on to “a manual of hygiene by Dr. Morin,” they wondered “How had they managed to survive until then? The dishes they loved were forbidden.” In short, we now get a prohibition of foods—​either by chance, or more likely the opposite, the ones they most loved—​that claims to replace religious taboo with medical insight: All meats have drawbacks. Sausage and pork products, pickled herring, lobster, and game are “resistant.” The fattier a fish is, the more gelatin it

86  Mock Ritual in the Modern Era contains, and therefore the heavier it is. Vegetables cause heartburn, macaroni gives you bad dreams, cheeses, “as a general rule, are hard to digest.” A glass of water in the morning is “dangerous.” Every food and beverage was followed by a similar warning, or else by the words “Harmful! To be consumed in moderation! Not recommended for everyone!”56

This at first seems to confirm the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan’s mock reversal of a famous line in Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov: far from everything being permitted when God is dead, nothing is—​the taboo against desirable foods, drugs, and everything else is absolute.57 Luckily for Bouvard and Pécuchet, however, they soon discover another medical treatise in which they read, “pork is a perfectly ‘good foodstuff,’ tobacco completely innocent, and coffee ‘indispensable to military men.’ ”58 This brings our discussion of pork and blood pudding full circle, since Flaubert clearly arranged that medical reversals concerning pork resemble the religious ones. Moreover, while the details of his analysis are now of course usually scientifically—​though by no means ideologically and politically—​out of date, the whole scenario readily reminds us of our own period during which dietary manias have only intensified, and such products as butter and margarine, tobacco and cannabis, wine and coffee, vegetarian and nonvegetarian, and so on (the list would constitute a dictionary in itself) have undergone similarly dramatic reversals over the last half century or so. In addition, as Thomas Szasz has argued, the temptation to medicalize ritual practices, including the avoidance of pork, retrospectively—​Szasz cites, in this connection, the same satirical passage by Mary Douglas that we use as the epigraph to this chapter59—​has only increased since Flaubert’s time. For example, another contemporary medical practice with Judaic ritual origins particularly relevant to our themes, and that Flaubert himself might have exploited had he lived long enough to see its secular development, is neonatal circumcision, still performed routinely in the United States despite its lack, according to Szasz, of health benefits for the patient. Viewing Abraham’s introduction of ritual circumcision in the Bible as “an attenuated version of child sacrifice” (thus linking it to the Isaac case we discussed earlier), Szasz observes that “in France, legislation enacted in 1845 prohibited the practice of metzitzah [requiring the circumciser to take the circumcised penis in his mouth and suck out the blood] and mandated that circumcision ‘be performed in a rational manner.’ ”60 While the medieval philosopher Maimonides, for instance, wrote that no one should circumcise himself or his

Medicine in Flaubert’s Dictionary  87 son “for any other reason than pure faith,” and while later efforts “to attribute a medical rationale to this primitive practice have no basis in scholarship,”61 it is notable that the modern medical practice began in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as a way of discouraging masturbation. “Since then, medical hysteria has shifted from masturbation to other health hazards, such as smoking and obesity,” and “today, circumcision is considered as a ‘strategy for AIDS prevention,’ ”62 or dubiously justified in terms of genital hygiene or even sexual pleasure. Szasz argues that “the American enthusiasm for preventing masturbation and for promoting circumcision are manifestations of the same Puritanical zeal for health as virtue that have fueled other typically American crowd madnesses, such as Prohibition, the war on drugs, and the mental health movement,”63 and that “the medical rationalization of mass circumcision is one of the most obvious and most overlooked illustrations of our acculturation to the ideology of the therapeutic state.”64 On the other hand, if we want an example linking bloody superstition to scientific breakthrough rather than error we may cite, for example, Ludwik Fleck’s The Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact, which shows how the semimythological connection of syphilis with “bad blood” led researchers eventually to the correct diagnosis of its cause. Fleck, normally sober, wrote wittily enough, “They [the researchers] wanted evidence for an antigen or amboceptor. Instead, they fulfilled the ancient wish of the collective: the demonstration of syphilitic blood.”65 Progressing from religious ritual and taboo to physical health, as we have just done following Flaubert, may seem like a non sequitur between the social and the natural sciences, the symbolic-​psychological and the physical worlds. Clearly things immediately become more complex if we include so-​ called mental health;66 but as a matter of fact we know, and Flaubert often emphasizes, that what we now call placebo and nocebo effects can also have a dramatic (and sometimes scientifically quantifiable) impact on physical pain as well as diseases and disorders of various kinds. In this context Flaubert’s concern with such old-​fashioned issues as the symbolic cannibalism of the Christian Mass may suddenly seem less musty; for if we want an up-​to-​date scientific equivalent to the Christian doctrine of the incarnation or the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation—​that the Word really is made flesh—​we need look no further than the placebo effect, which remains as much of a scientific mystery, so far, as the Christian one.67 Merely renaming a drug, as pharmaceutical companies and the National Institutes of Health

88  Mock Ritual in the Modern Era well know, may often make it work better or worse. Moreover, the scientific study of the placebo extends importantly from drugs to “rituals,” including the symbols, procedures, and general ambience of medical practice, and even surgeries.68 It is almost as though, to quote Ronald L. Grimes, “modern surgery, Christian communion, and tribal sacrifice [were] ritually equivalent,”69 or at any rate significantly related: “Somatic symbolization is common to ritual, drama, and medicine.”70 Before coming to this matter directly in Flaubert, however, we must first return in the Dictionary to the theme of laughter, whose health benefits both psychological and physical are nowadays often touted, and which might itself be considered in terms of its placebo effects, as PATIENT suggests. On the other hand—​as suggested by CLOWN: “Has been dislocated since childhood” (an ambiguous quasi-​sacrificial characterization if ever there was one)71—​the other face of the placebo is the nocebo, for instance, the effect of laughter on those being ridiculed, “sad clowns,” and the like. Aside from the two entries on laughter and medicine already cited, the majority of the Dictionary’s other entries that explicitly mention mockery once again concern the ideological divide between Enlightenment rationality and various forms of religion or superstition. On one side we have what sound more or less like reactionary positions. PHILOSOPHY: “One should always snicker at it.”72 ENCYCLOPEDIA (The): “Laugh at it pityingly as an outdated work [un ouvrage rococo], and even thunder against it.” WAGNER: “Snicker when his name is mentioned, and make jokes about the music of the future.”73 ARTISTS: “All jokers [farceurs] . . . What artists do can’t be called work.”74 VOLTAIRE: “Famous for his frightful grin or rictus. Learning superficial.”75 (The supposedly healthy laugh considered in our previous chapters is here turned into a mock deformity.) SCIENCE: “A little science leads you away from religion, a lot of it brings you back.”76 MEPHISTOPHELIAN: “Should be said of any bitter laugh.”77 And SAINT-​BARTHOLOMEW: “Old joke” (This is a bit like calling the Nazi Holocaust a joke, or “old wives’ tale” as Barzun and Polizzotti both translate “blague,” since the reference is to the Catholic massacre of Protestants in 1572). On the other side, we have what sound more or less like Enlightenment attacks on superstition, religion, and associated philosophical doctrines. COMETS: “Laugh at populations [gens] that were afraid of them.”78 WRATH (OF THE VATICAN): “Laugh at it.”79 INNATE IDEAS: “Scoff at them.”80 PANTHEISM: “Thunder against it: absurd.”81 MAGIC: “Scoff at it.”82 METAMORPHOSIS: “Laugh about the time when they believed in it. Ovid

Medicine in Flaubert’s Dictionary  89 is its inventor.”83 METAPHYSICS: “Laughing at it is the proof of a superior mind [esprit].”84 DOCTRINAIRES: “Despise them. Why? Nobody knows.”85 Because it recalls Homais’s joke that they should be bled once a week, we may also mention PRIESTS: “Should be castrated. Sleep with their maids, and have children that they call their ‘nephews.’ All the same, there are good ones.”86 And one imagines that COFFEE: “Induces wit . . .”87 might also be put on this side of the equation. Yet, of course, Flaubert is on neither side, or on either side by turns; and it is predictable that there are two or three entries that make fun of laughter itself. LAUGHTER: “Always Homeric.”88 HOMER: “Never existed. Famous for his way of laughing.”89 And FUNNY (DRÔLE): “Should be used on all occasions: ‘how funny!’ ”90 Here laughter is laughable, and mockery mocked. But the joke does not stop there, since in the case of VOLTAIRE, for example, mockery of mockery is mocked (Voltaire is not the simple butt of Flaubert’s joke), and we can easily imagine a fourth level in which things are even more ambiguous (nevertheless Voltaire does not get away scot-​free, etc.). There is no “hygienic exit” from ridicule or meta-​ridicule any more than there is a hygienic exit, as we see in a moment, from placebo and meta-​placebo effects. Though our central emphasis here is on self-​reflexive “pharmacological” and placebo-​like patterns, where the line between science and “magic” is difficult to draw—​as, for instance, when Pécuchet “suspected a liver condition, wondered, ‘Am I in pain?’ and ended up deciding that he was”91—​we should also mention that many of the Dictionary’s medical entries still apply more straightforwardly. Thus, for instance, ALCOHOLISM: “Cause of all modern diseases. (See ABSINTHE and TOBACCO)”92 and TOBACCO: “Cause of all diseases of the brain and spinal cord”93 would be relevant today even if the usual governmental “cure” for smoking and drinking were still not to penalize the poor by prohibitive taxation—​a practice protested by socialists in Bouvard and Pécuchet94—​since modern medicine, like modern justice, has a grotesque record (e.g., in the case of cannabis, which in some US states is now legal and illegal at the same time) when it comes to dealing with medical versus “recreational” drugs.95 Perhaps even more up to date, as regards contemporary health fashions, are the entries GYMNASIUM—​“Branch of the Comédie Française”—​and GYMNASTICS: “One can never do enough. Wears children out.”96 Barzun notes that a more or less topical reference in GYMNASE (le) is “to a theatre

90  Mock Ritual in the Modern Era in Paris which for a time received a government subsidy, like the Comédie Française and others.”97 However, we suggest reading GYMNASIUM and GYMNASTICS together, alongside ­chapter 8 of Bouvard and Pécuchet. Bouvard and Pécuchet’s gym is wildly comic and theatrical—​they even plan to commit suicide in it—​and one wonders whether our own fashionable gyms will look any less so a century from now.98 Indeed, if we have just seen intellectual mockery in the Dictionary function as a rather ludicrous attempt to keep ideologies “hygienically” in their place—​science and religion, or religion and magic, for example—​it is by the same token when ideology and health are most inextricably entangled that they may appear most tragicomic. We have seen that the recommendation in PATIENT that laughter be used as a direct medical intervention—​laugh at patients’ sufferings to make them feel better—​is ludicrously ambivalent; the placebo can just as easily function as a nocebo. DOCTOR stresses that our attitude to the doctor is all-​important: DOCTOR: “Always preceded by ‘the good.’ Among men, in familiar conversation, ‘Oh! balls, doctor!’ Is a wizard when he enjoys your confidence, a jackass when you’re no longer on terms. All are materialists: ‘You can’t probe for faith with a scalpel.’ ”99 We cite here Barzun, who gives “balls” as an equivalent of the French foutre, stating that he has “no design to take refuge in euphemism, but only to render the exact force of the expletive.” He adds that “the literal equivalent [fuck] would be entirely out of key and therefore inexact.”100 But while plausible in itself (depending on one’s age perhaps, and where one lives), the translation of foutre as “balls” nonetheless obscures the literal meaning, which we think crucial and to which we will return momentarily. First, however, we note that while the last sentence in quotation marks sounds like that of a religious antimaterialist, it could equally well come from a scientific materialist for whom scalpels also work quite independently of faith. (Flaubert called himself both anti-​idealist and antimaterialist.)101 Moreover, either way, this sentence appears wrong, if we consider that modern surgeries, possibly even more than drugs, are subject to placebo and nocebo effects that may depend in part on faith or confidence. As Ronald L. Grimes puts it, citing Jerome D. Frank, “If a doctor gives patients placebos, treats them with ‘fictive medicine,’ or even performs a mock operation, they may be healed.”102 Since following this subject to the end in Flaubert would take considerable space, we refer readers to ­chapters 3 and especially 8 in Bouvard and Pécuchet, in which placebo and nocebo problems, and other issues

Medicine in Flaubert’s Dictionary  91 surrounding “suggestibility”—​now at the “cutting edge” of twenty-​first-​century medical research—​are clearly anticipated. Flaubert’s examples include bleeding, hypnotism, somnambulism, magnetism, electricity, all kinds of apparently superstitious or psychosomatic remedies and diseases, and laughter itself. Not only is “suggestibility” dramatically illustrated, as we have seen, by Dr. Larivière in Madame Bovary, who produces sicknesses in the population by his mere appearance, or by Pécuchet when he develops pain from his own diagnosis, but Dr. Vaucorbeil in Bouvard and Pécuchet explains the phenomenon not just by analogy with children who can be persuaded that adults are wolves who are going to eat them, but also by analogy with virtuous people who can be convinced they are cannibals!103 That such “pharmacological” interferences and feedback relations between ideologies and illnesses, drugs, surgeries, and other medical rituals are not merely Flaubert’s laughable fictions, but of key importance to contemporary as well as archaic medicine, can also be illustrated by such modern works as The Powerful Placebo: From Ancient Priest to Modern Physician by Arthur and Elaine Shapiro,104 and Rewriting the Soul: Multiple Personality and the Sciences of Memory by philosopher of science Ian Hacking.105 Moreover, though our comparison of laughter to a placebo or nocebo might seem metaphorical, placebo effects are themselves, as we have said, like “incarnated” metaphors (or ideologies and beliefs), and for this very reason have the structure of jokes. It is “funny,” after all, that a placebo can take away severe pain, or that morphine can fail to do so if we are told it is not morphine, but it is still “funnier” that placebos may work even when we know or guess they are placebos: An unexpected recent development is the new ethical, emotional, and clinical respect afforded placebos. In fact, belief in the power of placebos has become exaggerated owing to a “bandwagon effect,” and the heretofore lowly and unethical placebo now has more of a placebo effect than ever before.106

This situation, as stated by the Shapiros’ The Powerful Placebo, resembles Michael Taussig’s observation, in connection with his study of shamans and witch doctors, that “magic is efficacious not despite the trick but on account of its exposure,”107 and his claim that the more important anthropological insight is not that “religion is made of tricks and disguises, but that these are unmasked.”108 At the limit, he argues, “magic, one might say, [is] the highest form of science.”109

92  Mock Ritual in the Modern Era Finally, it is more than curious that the sole entry directly linked by Flaubert to DOCTOR is the entry FUCK (FOUTRE): “Use this word only as a swear-​ word, if at all. (See DOCTOR.)”110 For either this linkage is utterly trivial—​ depending on the mere occurrence of “Ah! fuck, Doctor!” in DOCTOR (which in turn can be interpreted as a trivial expression of manly bravado or the like)—​or more pointed. It is in interpreting entries like these that the reader is most challenged to decide just how far Flaubert has decided to “play him for a fool” (si on se fout de lui), or (more etymologically) to “fuck with him.” Just as the meaning of seemingly simplistic but in fact rather hieroglyphic entries like HAM required some historical knowledge for proper comprehension, so the significance of FUCK in relation to DOCTOR benefits from some simple cultural and linguistic reflection. Of course, as regards FUCK taken by itself, one may conclude that Flaubert is just banally making fun of prudish people who don’t like obscenities, just as the entry COITUS, COPULATION reads, “Words to avoid. Say ‘they had relations’. . . .”111 But this, besides being of little interest, utterly fails to explain the reference to DOCTOR except trivially. We therefore suggest a route from FUCK to DOCTOR that highlights the mock ritual character of swearing, not merely as a formal structure but with substantive consequences. Old-​ fashioned profanity clearly reveals the mock ritual character of swearing, since it is literally a profanation or “taking in vain” of the sacred. Thus, just as the sacred (or legal) phrase “I swear by almighty God” mutates into the mock ritual curse “God almighty!” so ritual anathemas of the kind cited in Tristram Shandy become the mock ritual “Damn you!” and so on. In fact, the only other Dictionary entry with a swearword as title is precisely GODDAM: “ ‘The essence of the English language,’ said Beaumarchais. Snicker patronizingly [et là-​dessus on ricane de pitié]. ”112 The fact that we use the same verb to describe both “good” and “bad” swearing suggests the “pharmacological” or oxymoronic structure of the mock ritual, its inversion of values. Since we generally swear by our highest or most serious values, whether positive (God) or negative (hell), we may reasonably infer that how we swear indicates these values, or at least those of a given culture. The most obvious modern development in Western swearing has been the gradual dropping of religious words and phrases in favor of sexual and scatological ones. Sacred profanity has now largely mutated into secular obscenity, so that “God,” “hell,” “bloody,” and so on, have been largely replaced by “fuck,” “shit,” “cunt,” and so on.113 (In the United States,

Medicine in Flaubert’s Dictionary  93 “cunt”—​“the C word”—​is perhaps nowadays the most obscene, and in this sense “holy,” word of all.) In short, as swearwords like “fuck” replace curses like “goddamn” in the common lexicon of swearing, so the ritual or mock ritual values of sex replace those of religion, and the doctor (mental as well as physical) replaces the priest.114 The sacralization of sex mutates into its medicalization. In DOCTOR, it is remarkable that “Ah! fuck, doctor!” is left wholly unexplained, though the obscenity, immediately preceded by a reference to the phrase “good doctor,” is immediately followed by the oxymoronic transformation of eagle (translated by Barzun as “wizard,” and by Polizzotti as “miracle worker”) into ass. It is also notable that this transformation is explained not by any medical reflection or outcome, but entirely in terms of one’s trust in, and personal relation to, the doctor. In addition, it seems unlikely that Flaubert (fond of such jokes) was indifferent here to the obscene meaning of “ass,” especially when juxtaposed so closely to “Ah! fuck.” By way of comparison, we cite the well-​known eighteenth-​century joke, perhaps also known to him: “Where love’s the case, the doctor’s an ass.”115 In this case the official doctor is useless, an ass in the sense of fool, because the truly effective doctor, “wizard,” “miracle worker,” or medicine, is an ass in the sense of bum, butt, or arse. Of course, the eroticization of the doctor is so common in the comic tradition—​from Sterne’s lascivious Doctor Slop to, for instance, Woody Allen’s Dr. Maxwell in A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy—​that it may obscure its serious counterpart, which is the reciprocal sexualization of medicine and medicalization of sex that have increasingly characterized both fields, medicine and sex, since the eighteenth century. That Flaubert was fully cognizant of the tendency is neatly illustrated by HYSTERIA: “Confuse it with nymphomania”116—​an entry that conjures up the entire nineteenth-​ century obsession with (and often invention of) so-​called female pathologies, including, of course, the ineptly named “hysteria” itself. Moreover, it is evidently no accident that the manual on the gym in Bouvard and Pécuchet is by an expert called Amoros,117 or that the doctor diagnoses Pécuchet when he is having seizures (while wearing a cap modeled on Amoros) as having “love spots”: “Aha! Fructus belli! Those are syphilitic blotches, my friend! You need treatment, for goodness’ sake! One mustn’t trifle with love.”118 Bouvard has particular success in treating female nervous or psychiatric disorders because he is the more attractive of the two. Having successfully treated a hysterical young woman who talks of having a “worm” inside her, for example, the friends become concerned that their practice is so potent that

94  Mock Ritual in the Modern Era their female patients may be “overcome by uncontrollable erotic urges.”119 In a different emotional key, Madame Homais is also aroused when her husband dresses up in his latest electric medical contraption. Indeed, we recall that in Madame Bovary Emma and Léon flirt while fantasizing about being doctor and nurse, as though the ideal copulation were between two medical professionals. Beyond Flaubert, examples of the medicalization of sex are so familiar that they hardly need belaboring: the centrality of sex in psychoanalytic theory since Freud; the centrality of sexual trauma in much “empirical” psychiatric and psychological theory more generally (as illustrated, for example, in Ian Hacking’s account of multiple personality disorder); common talk, both professional and otherwise, of “addictions” to sex as though it were a drug; and so on. Among others, Michel Foucault is well known for his polemical arguments on this score, including his claim in The History of Sexuality, relevant to us, that the Enlightenment period saw a general transition from societies organized around an overtly sacrificial “symbolics of blood” to those (our own “society of sex”) organized around a secular “analytics of sexuality.”120 We do not need to subscribe to Foucault’s theories more generally, however, to perceive that the grip of professional medicine over sex has only tightened since he expounded them.121 Perhaps the most concentrated analogy to Flaubert on this subject can be found in “A Country Doctor”—​a brief story written in 1917, not long after the Dictionary was first published (in 1910), by Kafka, whose writing, at least according to Vladimir Nabokov, was above all influenced by Flaubert.122 For this story specifies (1) that the doctor replaces the Christian priest; (2) that he is being “misused for sacred ends,” as he claims, since people expect from the “merciful surgeon’s knife” what they used to get from religion (precisely recalling DOCTOR, finding or not finding faith at the end of a scalpel); (3) that his own practice, though no longer religious, is still a kind of sacrificial ritual (indeed backed up by ritual or mock ritual death threats, sung by the school choir, against the doctor himself); and finally (4) that he is now being displaced by a new kind of medicine that will, he says, no more succeed in replacing him than he can succeed in replacing the priest, and that is ludicrously summarized by the “faulty” optimistic song sung by the children’s choir that concludes the story: Oh be joyful, all you patients, The doctor’s laid in bed beside you.123

6 The Duel as Privatized Mock Ritual Sacrificing to a deity in which no one believes. John Leigh, Touché: The Duel in Literature

The significance of post-​Enlightenment dueling for our subject is manifold. We have discussed, via Flaubert, how the quasi-​magical and ritualistic character of bloodletting—​and the belief in curative bleeding—​survived the development from peasant superstition to medical science in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, as it has now metamorphosed into the widespread “pathology” of so-​called self-​cutting, the former cure having become a disease. In Gentlemen’s Blood, as we shall see shortly, Barbara Holland describes dueling bloodletting as no less “magical” in character, and we note that “ritual” and “ritualized combat”1 are terms applied to the duel by historians and novelists alike, although the practice was also increasingly diagnosed as an alarmingly ubiquitous social illness. Because secular dueling has been regarded by so many commentators as an “unofficial,” generally illegal, and fundamentally absurd modern derivative of the official medieval ritual called “trial by combat,” the history of dueling also arguably provides an exemplary illustration of a mutation from public ritual to what we call privatized mock ritual, all the more interesting because it concerns the relation between public and private justice. Since, from a rational point of view, legally and religiously sanctioned trial by combat, like trial by ordeal, was already a grotesque parody of justice, post-​ Enlightenment secular dueling may easily appear as parody to the second power. According to the contemporary critic John Leigh, for example, “the duel is an absurdity . . . playing out a hollow ritual with no conviction,”2 and in 1888, Octave Mirbeau called dueling “of all human absurdities, the most absurdly absurd absurdity.”3 The literary depiction of dueling can be interesting in part because of its highly symbolic as well as potentially tragicomic character, and we Mock Ritual in the Modern Era. Reginald McGinnis and John Vignaux Smyth, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2022. DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197637432.003.0007

96  Mock Ritual in the Modern Era accordingly conclude this chapter by returning to Diderot’s Jacques le fataliste; but our primary focus is on the shockingly educational character of the actual practice. If a duel could be terminated on the first appearance of the tiniest spot of blood, thus appearing as a harmless mock sacrifice, purely symbolic, even formalistic, the same duel might also terminate in the death of one, or even both, of the duelers. Such ambiguity between “play” and deadly seriousness, honorable “sport” and murder, may seem peculiar or even incomprehensible to us now. As Holland has warned, “We’re embarrassed by the historical fact of dueling and thrust it away into the clouds of myth and fiction and melodrama.”4 Given our emphasis on the French Enlightenment, it is interesting that the 1878 Encyclopædia Britannica claims that France is “the country where [dueling] first arose and the soil on which it has most flourished.”5 Adding that “a list of duels fought within the last fifty years in France would occupy no inconsiderable space, and would include some of the most famous names in literature and politics,” Britannica also observed that France was one of the last European countries to renounce dueling, though it was eventually “chiefly confined to military circles, and a small section of Parisian journalists.”6 While the first known European Code Duello originated in Italy as far back as 1409—​and Britannica may perhaps be suspected of anti-​French bias—​its claims about France (the first European country to implement a revolutionary and at first atheistic constitution on the basis of Enlightenment equality) bear reflection, though of course dueling was widespread in many other countries too. A century before Mirbeau, for example, the Scottish John Geddes, in his Reflections on Duelling and the Most Effective Means of Preventing It, already called the duel not merely “barbarous”7—​as was common from Voltaire and the Encyclopedia onward—​but also “absurd.”8 Another Frenchman, Gabriel Tarde, the famous sociologist of mimesis and crowd behavior, echoed the Scot in 1892: “The duel is not only barbarous but ridiculous.”9 Secular dueling was thus widely regarded as “tragicomic,”10 and the practice—​which, far from being common in ancient or classical times, as was sometimes supposed or claimed, had its pandemic heyday in Europe and America roughly between the Enlightenment period and the First World War11—​was in several other ways connected to derision and laughter. For example, while one sure way to precipitate a duel was to call someone (of your own class) a liar, another was to ridicule him or her. Moreover, if ridicule or derisive insult was thus often the proximate cause of the duel, it

The Duel as Privatized Mock Ritual  97 was even more often also the social punishment for refusing to duel,12 even though from the time of Louis XIV onward dueling was increasingly illegal throughout Europe. (Indeed its heyday, as has been widely observed, more or less coincided with its illegality.) What’s more, precisely because people willing to risk their lives dueling were unlikely to be deterred by serious legal penalties such as capital punishment, and the law was in any case rarely fully enforced, it was often argued, especially in the Enlightenment period, that duelers “needed to be deterred by ridicule,”13 a fate presumably worse than death. Thus mockery was supposed, by turns, to punish both the duel and the refusal to duel, as well as being often the cause of it. Like dueling, mockery evidently operated outside the law. Indeed, to put the icing on the cake, a derisive smile might even occasionally be regarded as a weapon by which a duel might be psychologically “won”—​for instance, in cases where the dueler derisively deloped, meaning that he fired his (or occasionally her) pistol into the air.14 Such purely symbolic or ritualistic victory was also illustrated by the many duels that were terminated, as we have mentioned, on the first appearance of blood. One particularly unnerving aspect of the history of dueling lies in the fact that nineteenth-​century attitudes and practices (as also in the case, for example, of medical theories of gender)15 often seem to have regressed from the century that preceded it. For example, whereas Voltaire and Enlightenment thinkers poured scorn—​as does the entry on dueling, for instance, in the Encyclopedia Britannica—​on the delusion that it was an ancient, let alone universal phenomenon, the 1824 British Code of Duel opens with the (perhaps intentionally) fantastic claim that dueling, by analogy with war, has “prevailed in all ages and countries”;16 and both proto-​and post-​Darwinian apologists and/​or explanations for dueling often claimed that it was inherent in natural evolution, like the quasi-​ritualized fights between stags.17 By contrast, Enlightenment critics of dueling regularly underlined the absence of any equivalent to the private duel in “civilized” ancient Greece or Rome,18 for example, and—​like the 1878 Britannica and virtually all twenty-​ first-​century historians—​also located its relatively recent, though no less “barbaric,” origin in the judicial duel or trial by combat dating from the early medieval period, as thoroughly superstitious as “trial by ordeal” and similar travesties of justice and good sense. Here, as mentioned previously, we have the serious (though retrospectively absurd) religious and public judicial ritual, officially approved by the Christian church between the eighth and twelfth centuries, against which such critics measured the modern private

98  Mock Ritual in the Modern Era and illegal duel as a mere mock ritual or ludicrous parody—​doubly ridiculous inasmuch as its defenders were usually secular (or at any rate so-​called Christians in flagrant contradiction with official doctrine), bereft even of the superstitions that might “rationalize” their views. Here—​to the horror of Voltaireans—​the official Christian position seemed less absurd than the supposedly emancipated secular one, which often, to add insult to injury, justified itself by appeals to democratic equality. A comparable sense of dismay, as we shall shortly see, may suddenly grip Marxists if they read Marx and Engels on the subject. Comparing the sacrificial symbolics of dueling to curative bleeding, a similar juxtaposition to that with which we began, Barbara Holland evokes its quasi-​magical and even “redemptive” dimension: Blood, a gentleman’s blood, even a few drops of it dotting the loser’s arm, had a redemptive power no bank deposit can match. As my grandmother used to say, “Let it bleed a little, that’s nature’s way of cleaning it.” Blood is magical. The word “blessing,” or “bless,” has bloody roots; the Oxford English Dictionary says, “Bless: To make ‘sacred’ or ‘holy’ with blood; to consecrate by some sacrificial rite.”19

Like sacrifice, ideally, “the duel has a magical expiatory effect, wiping away whatever sin preceded it.”20 Like sacrifice, dueling is characterized by its ambivalent or even oxymoronic character. For example, Leigh begins his Touché by quoting Flaubert’s Dictionary entry—​“DUEL: Thunder against it. Not a proof of courage. Prestige of the man who has had a duel”—​noting that “the contradictions in this little huddle of lazy assertions are highly characteristic of the responses provoked by dueling in the previous two centuries.”21 While thoroughly secular and generally criminal, since usually proscribed by both church and state, what Holland characterizes as the sacrificial dimension of dueling blood thus seems still to illustrate, at the heart of the Enlightenment, something like “sacred ambivalence”—​and secular apologists of course regarded dueling as a kind of just criminality. Leigh similarly devotes his final chapter to the “Paradoxes of the Duel,” beginning with its tragicomic character, and listing a whole series of apparent contradictions: a horrifically real “ritualized combat [appearing] to belong to the realms of fiction,”22 game, or masquerade; “at once absurd and dignified,”23 where “the effect always mocks and supersedes the cause;”24 marrying “politeness and brutality,”25 selfishness and selflessness, words and deeds,

The Duel as Privatized Mock Ritual  99 present and past, the “outsider and . . . insider, an outlaw who is part of the establishment.” “Its exponents always celebrate the fact that it is liminal.”26 “The duellist is apparently trying to kill another man yet not wanting to do so,” seeking, ideally, “to prevail in a duel by inflicting a symbolic wound.”27 Or where the outcome was fatal: “By killing a man, his right to have lived as an equal is recognized.”28 Indeed, there are also many historical as well as fictional accounts in which dueling led to reconciliation between the antagonists, whether they eventually survived the encounter or not. A farcical version of this is illustrated by the oft-​quoted Devil’s Dictionary of Ambrose Bierce, which defines the duel as “a formal ceremony preliminary to the reconciliation of two enemies.”29 In Uri Eisenzweig’s Le Duel introuvable, as its title suggests, these seemingly self-​contradictory dimensions of the duel lead to an analysis of how the heart of the matter appears to become more and more “unfindable”—​ or elusive—​in the classic literature of the subject, such as Pushkin and the Russian tradition, while the documentary importance of literary treatments stems in part from the relative paucity of nonfictional evidence, linked both to the duel’s illegality and to its relation to private matters of honor. In his epigraph, Eisenzweig cites an 1891 journal entry of Jules Renard: “A duel has the air of being the dress rehearsal for a duel,”30 as though constituted less by historical singularity than a series of “scriptural” relays.31 We have noted how, lacking a better alternative—​since post-​Enlightenment dueling only multiplied along with statutes outlawing it (though the French government, for instance, repeatedly claimed that it had been abolished)32—​ ridicule, whether literary or otherwise, was often wishfully thought to be the most effective deterrent. Yet “if eventually,” as Leigh argues, “dueling was more or less ‘laughed into extinction’ ”33 after World War I—​though with notable exceptions in Germany, Italy, and elsewhere—​he also observes how the ambivalence of dueling was matched by that of the ridicule that was supposed to deter it: “Ridicule may sometimes contrive to legitimate the very people or practices it means to deride. By showing us the absurdity of a duel without real cause or a bout fought for the most risible of reasons, writers may merely gratify an image of noble insouciance and unaccountability.”34 Shockingly then, far from seeing a reduction in dueling, the nineteenth century democratized the practice, spreading it to the bourgeois professions—​doctors, lawyers, journalists, artists, poets, critics, professors, and democratic politicians—​ along with the old staples of aristocrats, gamblers, and military men. Serious defenses of dueling, and its increasingly

100  Mock Ritual in the Modern Era elaborate codification, also belong to this century more than the previous one, while many of those thinkers whom we might expect to offer lucid criticism of the practice, like Marx and Engels, strikingly fail to do so. Although understandably often associated with aristocratic and conservative values, since aristocrats at first claimed it for themselves, dueling is fundamentally misunderstood when limited to this mystified aristocratic perspective. As Barbara Holland and others remark, discussing the dueling transition from swords to pistols, “Pistols were democratic.”35 Responding to Marx, who defended dueling “as an exceptional emergency resort . . . in exceptional circumstances,” she adds that “dueling in Germany was neither aristocratic nor [as Marx wrote] ‘the relic of a past stage of culture’ ”; rather, it was “just then going into high gear, becoming a national pastime in the 1880s until the First World War and never entirely dying out.”36 Similarly, Eisenzweig observes that when Marx wrote a letter attempting to dissuade Ferdinand Lassalle, the German socialist, from dueling in 1858, he contented himself with arguing that Lassalle’s adversaries would not make possible “an honorable duel,” rather than “developing a radical critique of the ritual.”37 Indeed, Marx wrote that “we don’t think that, in a general way, an affair as relative as a duel can be subsumed under the categories of good or evil.” “In the final analysis, for Marx,” claims Eisenzweig, “the duel was simply ‘irrational,’ if not a ‘farce.’ ”38 Meanwhile, Engels, who in a letter from 1841 boasted to Marx of the “marvelous slash on the forehead—​from top to bottom—​a real beauty”39 he had given one of his own dueling opponents, called the duel that killed Lassalle a “tragicomedy.”40 Since Marx and Engels are such famous critics of the evils of private (capitalist) competition, it is perhaps surprising that they did not extend their critique to privatized dueling. Citing the historian Ute Frevert, Richard Hopton offers seven common Enlightenment defenses of the duel, including its being “a medium for achieving reconciliation,” “one of the last remaining bastions of individual freedom, something beyond the reach of the state,” and a means of establishing “social equality,”41 insofar as duelists are “necessarily social equals.”42 Such defenses also find a more recent sympathetic echo in Mika LaVaque-​Manty’s article “Dueling for Equality: Masculine Honor and the Modern Politics of Dignity.” Arguing that “dueling has potential for modern politics of equal dignity, although the potential is limited,” Lavaque-​ Manty treats sympathetically what he calls “the ambivalence [of] modern theorists, especially in the eighteenth century” toward dueling: “for example, Montesquieu, Rousseau, and Kant are far more measured about dueling than

The Duel as Privatized Mock Ritual  101 Bacon and Richelieu,”43 who seem “to confirm our own Enlightened view of dueling as an irrational throwback.”44 Understanding this ambivalence about the practice “helps us see how it can coherently play a part in the shift to the kind of politics we consider modern, and why that politics necessarily remains outside the state and at the same time connected to it.”45 While LaVaque-​Manty’s article offers no more unexpected example of “refashioned dueling with potential for modern politics of equal dignity” than modern sport,46 his focus on privatized rather than state-​organized equality and dignity would be music to the ears of the anonymous author of The British Code of Duel of 1824, as well as the ex-​governor of North Carolina, John Lyde Wilson, who published The Code of Honor in 1838, the year before dueling was made illegal in the District of Columbia. Like Marx, both authors claimed to be opposed to dueling except in very special circumstances. Both lamented that there were far too many “frivolous” and immoral duels, and hoped for a society one day sufficiently well educated and honorable, not to mention Christian, to make dueling obsolete. But just as LaVaque-​Manty apparently thinks dueling not entirely misguided or irrational, and therefore still educational for us, so both the British and the American Codes emphasized how a proper attitude to dueling should be a critical part of modern higher education—​the opening “Advertisement” of the British Code being explicitly addressed to “our universities and other seminaries of education.”47 Since this linkage between dueling and higher education may remind modern readers of the National Socialists—​who relegalized the duel, and even made it an obligation for university students in the 1930s—​it is perhaps worth underlining that the Nazis therefore didn’t just want to kill or wound Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, blacks, and clear-​thinking people of any stripe, but—​in this perverse sense they were true “socialists”—​to kill or wound each other for “pedagogical” reasons. Even “Jews, shut out by the elite dueling clubs, set up their own dueling fraternities, described as ‘ferocious.’ ” Indeed, as Holland observes, prior to 1914, long before the Nazis, “roughly a quarter of the postgraduate duels were fatal.”48 On the other side of the coin, however, she also caustically remarks that winning or losing was incidental: “Without scars you were nobody. You could scarcely even prove you’d been to university at all.”49 Had Engels more thoroughly considered that fashionable duels and their resulting scars often led not just to reconciliation as well as enmity, but to erotic prestige and “sexiness” as well as uglification and disability, he might perhaps have been less complacent about the “real beauty” of the “marvelous

102  Mock Ritual in the Modern Era slash” he dealt his opponent. (In so-​called archaic cultures, too, experts have often found it difficult to distinguish between marks of piacular initiation or scarification and those of beautification.)50 Doubtless twenty-​first-​century university hazings —​mock rituals of a different but comparable kind to university dueling—​often more or less faintly echo, or at least parody, the same kind of ambiguity between mock victimage and prestige. The hallmark of the modern duel was precisely its claim to enact private rather than public justice—​its appeal to “privilege” in the etymological sense of private law—​so it is consistent but no less striking that the British Code of Duel effectively not only distinguishes between the public or overt and private or covert aspects of dueling education (and by extension moral and political education more generally), but also links this to the relation between seriousness and jest, real and mock pedagogy. The British Code begins by attacking the contradiction between theory and practice, public and private, whereby dueling prevails “throughout the higher orders of society, including legislators,” while being “indirectly proclaimed contrary to law.”51 Accordingly, its anonymous author is clearly aware of the irony of openly asking British universities to teach covertly the merits of the codified duel (which, being a necessary evil, is “morally lawful”), while insisting that his intention is by no means to “promote” dueling. Strikingly enough from our point of view, the opening of his contents page, immediately following the “Advertisement,” refers to the joking strategies of Parson Yorick, no less—​to be found “in the edition princeps of that learned scholiast Laurentius Sternius”52—​in case “levity should be ascribed to some of the following heads” (that is, chapter titles, such as the first one: “How duel morally lawful”).53 It would seem, then, that our characterization of the duel as mock ritual finds an interesting parallel in the Sternean “levity” of its 1824 Code—​whose opening allusions to Sterne’s jester, after all, are all the more provocative because the clergyman author was known internationally for his sentimental nonviolence and his portrayal, in Tristram Shandy, of Uncle Toby, a man obsessed with war but devoted to saving even flies from injury. The British Code is also educational because of its concern to demystify the grotesque practice of alternate firing in pistol duels, a practice that lays bare the sacrificial character of dueling in the sense that the victim, like the sacrificial goat (also one of two) in the book of Leviticus, is in principle entirely arbitrary. For while we may mock public trial by combat, as well as the private “aristocratic” duel with swords, as morally arbitrary—​on the derisive basis that “might makes right”—​neither of these kinds of duel approaches the

The Duel as Privatized Mock Ritual  103 sacrificial absurdity of alternate firing, however codified. For the person who fired first, often at more or less point-​blank range—​even sometimes muzzle to muzzle, as in a parody of sword-​fighting—​was essentially given the chance to execute his opponent. The fact that faulty pistols and aims often interfered with this principle is not, of course, irrelevant, but should not distract from it. “The custom of alternative firing is now justly exploded,” announced the British Code, “the only end which could ever have authorized it, is answered by the party offending beyond power of redress being bound not to fire upon his opponent.”54 Here the assumption is that the challenged party fired first, so that in the ideal duel, where the challenger was legitimately aggrieved, a genuine victim, he was essentially paying for his chance at justice by first offering himself as a potential sacrifice. This first-​fire rule is the one most usually mentioned by historians and the only one regarded as worth consideration in the British Code, which recommends, as we have just seen, that the first firer, the person challenged (in theory for good reason), frankly reverse the sacrificial stakes by deloping. (Perhaps its only genuine merit, not mentioned by the Code, was that it discouraged “frivolous” challenges.) Where the challenger, on the other hand, was given first fire—​as was shockingly most often the case, according to Robert Shoemaker, in eighteenth-​century England55—​the duel even more obviously amounted, especially when the challenge was deemed unjustified, to the frank legitimization of murder. Only an intense fear of “social death” and ridicule, one imagines, could in such circumstances persuade an innocent victim to duel with an unjust challenger. The solution offered by the British Code is nevertheless even more instructive for us than the alternate firing problem itself. For while first fire, unless decided by toss of a coin, gave a capital advantage to either challenger or challenged, the Code recommended “firing [at the same time] by signal,” such as “by motion of handkerchief,” on the grounds that “it prevents that decisive aim, which might give one party the advantage over another, and is always to be avoided.”56 What the Code presents as a reform and a demystification—​ that the inequality inherent in alternate firing should give way not merely to the reciprocity of simultaneous firing, but to an equality achieved by preventing “decisive aim”—​can hardly be called a resounding victory for either justice or rationality. (Holland and others conjecture that the practice of standing back-​to-​back, walking X paces, then turning and firing, was designed to have similarly deleterious effects on even skilled marksmanship.) As Shoemaker observes, “The duel turned into an exercise in which the

104  Mock Ritual in the Modern Era chances of death” were “essentially equal (and random) on both sides.” And while nothing “prevented the participants from practicing beforehand,” and employing other self-​interested strategies, “what is impressive is how often the rules for maintaining fair play and reducing the bloodshed were actually followed.”57 We see then that the merely moral arbitrariness of judicial dueling, far from disappearing with the “advanced” desacralized private duel, mutates into a cultivation of randomness per se—​the opposite not just of justice, but also of the “interest of the stronger.” The conventional Enlightenment linkage of dueling and gambling is therefore more than circumstantial. It is as though, instead of merely killing him, Cain first played dice with Abel to decide the victim. Thus LaVaque-​Manty’s “dueling for equality” degenerates into an equality that is entirely negative and amounts to randomized self-​ sacrifice, like so-​called Russian roulette. No wonder modern accounts of the duel, such as Maupassant’s story “The Coward,” so often link it to suicide. But whereas “Russian roulette” seems to have been invented by the Swiss fiction writer George Surdez, who lived and published in America during the Great Depression,58 it is significant, as Holland points out, that the directly comparable “American duel” was a myth invented by European historians, who often claimed, well into the twentieth century, that it was pandemic in the New World.59 Though mythical, this American duel—​in which the “dueling” parties drew lots, and the unlucky one committed suicide—​seems to evoke the internal logic of the self-​sacrificial duel as we have analyzed it in Europe by projecting it onto Americans. Far from being imagined as a good “old-​fashioned fight” between tough, down-​to-​earth modern men (as in Hollywood Westerns), the American duel was imagined as taking place in a brave new egalitarian world that had returned to a kind of parody of archaic ritual in which life or death was decided by drawing lots. In the duel of the country that most often, for Europeans, represented the democratic future, there is no fight at all, just randomized murder-​suicide. As regards the question of what, if anything, has replaced dueling in modern democracies, sport and private lawsuits are often suggested as candidates; but of course neither of these entails killing except sometimes as a side-​effect, as in the case of football violence. However, suicide murders are increasingly characteristic not just of attacks of the Islamist type—​there is a historical precedent for this in so-​called running amok60—​but also of contemporary high school students, among others, in the United States and elsewhere. Often attributed to the desire for fame or to “mental illness,” these

The Duel as Privatized Mock Ritual  105 killings are perhaps just as well regarded, in a society where targeted dueling is more or less impossible except in criminal gangs, as its closest equivalent.61 It also seems likely that such suicidal killers, like duelers, often see themselves as defending their personal honor or self-​respect. One of the morals to be drawn from what so many authorities call the “farcical” structure of the duel doubtless lies in a pattern of mimetic reciprocity and ambiguous ressentiment that has not disappeared from modern societies with dueling.62 In suicide killings, for example, “equality” between victims and killers is established in their reciprocal deaths, as with the assassins of the September 11, 2001, attacks who likened their first victims to sacrificial animals who would mercifully die, like their killers, instantaneously. Nowhere is such a strict pattern of reciprocity more programmatic than in Diderot’s Jacques le fataliste, which generalizes the significance of the duel to every profession: “Duels recur in many forms in our society—​between priests, between magistrates, between men of letters, between philosophers.”63 The novel also contains three “literal” dueling stories, all of which emphasize symmetry between the antagonists to an extent that at first appears ridiculously artificial, but all the more clearly systematic for that, and with which we accordingly conclude our analysis. The duels of Jacques’s old military captain offer the first model, which the narrator insists is nonfictional despite its evident absurdity,64 and that makes the duelers entirely identical except in wealth: “The only difference between them was that one was rich and the other wasn’t. My Captain was the rich one. This similarity was bound to produce either the greatest sympathy or the most violent antipathy. In fact it produced both.”65 The dueling doubles are described as “two sincere friends each facing death at the other’s hands, [where] the one who died would certainly not have been the one deserving the most pity.”66 In short, they oscillate between fighting and falling into each other’s arms, and their total reciprocity is made sentimentally explicit by the captain’s partner: “Do you believe, my friend, that I would survive you for long if I killed you?”67 Although we probably more commonly associate such psychological patterns with lovers and so-​called frenemies than with heads of state, we may recall that President Saddam Hussein challenged President George Bush to a duel on the eve of the Second Gulf War. When, in a further example of presidential mock diplomacy, President Donald J. Trump tweeted derisively about mad “rocket-​man” Kim Jong-​un of North Korea, and Kim reciprocated by using state television news to mock Trump as “senile,” commentators

106  Mock Ritual in the Modern Era feared that this might provoke a serious military or even “tactical” nuclear exchange. Yet we all know, said the president on May 25, 2018, again in the Korean context, that “everybody plays games.”68 And on June 10, he was sitting down warmly with the Supreme Leader, hoping they would “like one another.” By the fall, moreover, he was speaking of his relationship with Kim in explicitly amorous terms, stating at a rally in West Virginia on September 29 that he and his North Korean counterpart “fell in love.”69 George Galloway, in his RT program Sputnik on January 12, 2019, drew attention to the exchange of “love letters” between the two; and former director of national intelligence James Clapper, in his PBS News interview of May 20, 2019, also discussed the development from mutual insults to “a love affair.” Confirming such risible complicity between symbolic violence and “love,” the second dueling story in Jacques le fataliste is essentially a repetition of the first about Jacques’s captain. Ironically, since Jacques is said to have “a profound dislike of repetition,”70 a fault he attributes especially to the Bible, these stories are all about repetition. The captain’s friend, who is said to have a story similar if not quite identical to that of the real M. de Guerchy, knifes a gambling opponent, but then is “eight or ten times” stabbed by him in repeated encounters, although receiving aid from his stabber afterward, and even throwing his arms around his neck.71 Moreover, insofar as there is any important difference between the first and second stories, it entails a further undermining of difference. In the first case, as we have seen, the only distinction between the duelers is economic—​a distinction that is relatively stable because it is based on inherited wealth—​while the second story revolves around gambling, so that the monetary difference between the duelers is essentially arbitrary and may evaporate overnight. The third and final dueling allegory concerns a rivalry that is erotic instead of economic and, crucially from our perspective, presents a risible collapse of all distinction. Called the story of Desglands’s “spot” or “patch,”72 it tells of how Desglands, in love with a widow,73 repeatedly duels with a rival who appears to be replacing him in her affections, while absurdly pinning a taffeta patch to his cheek, and cutting a piece of it every time he wins the duel—​ a mock ritual with a vengeance! The supposed difference between the two rivals, ridiculously symbolized by the patch, thus gets smaller and smaller until Desglands hears of the death of the other man, at which point he tears it off altogether. The story is evidently an allegory of “dueling for equality” (in LaVaque-​Manty’s phrase) where symbolic equality is achieved, moreover, only when actual equality is abolished.74 Yet, at the same time, any genuine

The Duel as Privatized Mock Ritual  107 distinction between the duelers has entirely dissolved.75 Only Desglands’s patch, a ludicrously ostentatious and artificial symbol of his claim to be a genuine victim, proclaims otherwise. Diderot’s comic emphasis on the simultaneous opposition and reciprocity between physical violence and symbolic communion, as well as between literal and symbolic violence in general, anticipates the focus of our next chapter, the tragic killings of the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists in 2015. The symmetry between the antagonists has been neatly summed up by Xavier Delucq in a cartoon that reads, “The Islamists like caricature, but we don’t use the same pen!”76 In short, the cartoonists’ satirical attacks and mock rituals are merely symbolic and artistic, and doubtless try to be killingly funny, but the Islamists’ killings are no less caricatural, no less a mockery of ritual, than the cartoons themselves.

7 Charlie Hebdo The Ambivalence of Mockery

The worst caricature of Islam was made by the Kouachi brothers. Zineb1

If we take an abstract view of things, forgetting momentarily what we know and considering the attack on the offices of Charlie Hebdo as a future possibility, it does not appear obvious that this event would necessarily come to be associated, as it did, with an eighteenth-​century writer and a debate over the place of Enlightenment principles in today’s societies. Although the contributors to Charlie Hebdo had been variously referred to as “progressives,” “republicans,” “democrats,” “secular,” “rationalists,” and “humanists,” one may outline the history of events leading up to January 2015, as Jane Weston Vauclair and David Vauclair do in their book, De Charlie Hebdo à #Charlie, with almost no mention of Voltaire.2 There is something quite extraordinary then in the almost unanimous and more or less spontaneous appeal to Voltaire that we witnessed on this occasion. As John Dugdale observed in The Guardian, in the wake of the attacks the author’s name and image were hard to avoid. The Treatise on Tolerance had become a bestseller 250 years after its original publication. “It was down Paris’s Boulevard Voltaire that record numbers (including 44 world leaders) marched [January 11, 2015], and it was a portrait of him that the Palace of Versailles put on display in tribute to the jihadists’ victims.”3 What was understood by people identifying with Charlie Hebdo, whether by holding a “Je suis Charlie” sign or liking the hashtag, may have varied from person to person. And there was actually also a “Je ne suis pas Charlie” movement.4 But looking back over what was written at the time, one observes, nonetheless, a very broad consensus in the expression of solidarity with the victims of the attack and about how Charlie was related to Voltaire. The Mock Ritual in the Modern Era. Reginald McGinnis and John Vignaux Smyth, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2022. DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197637432.003.0008

Charlie Hebdo: The Ambivalence of Mockery  109 foreword to a small book published in February titled Je suis Charlie states that millions of French people rose up unanimously to defend values such as tolerance and freedom of expression.5 The same theme was echoed in a booklet also published in February 2015 under the title Nous sommes Charlie, bringing together excerpts from Voltaire, Diderot, and Beaumarchais with texts by contemporary writers, several of whom refer specifically to Voltaire,6 and always in a manner consistent with what we might call the “standard interpretation”—​an interpretation exemplified by the Société Voltaire in an article published in L’Express a week after the attack titled “Voltaire Too Would Be Charlie,” and which begins by stating, “It was also Voltaire that [the killers] wanted to assassinate,” meaning the values he symbolized.7 In this interpretation, Voltaire’s philosophy is seen as an antidote to fanaticism, and secular values are opposed to religious obscurantism. To present Voltaire in this way is, of course, largely legitimate. What we are calling the “standard interpretation” can be substantiated by countless quotations, including those provided by the Société Voltaire in its L’Express article. But this interpretation on its own is insufficient, particularly in the context of the Charlie Hebdo attack. By presenting things in terms of what amounts to an opposition between philosophy and religion, one tends to overlook another aspect of Voltaire’s writings, which is, perhaps, no less important, pertaining to his systematic reliance on religious forms in his critique of religion.8 Before exploring further the equation of Charlie Hebdo and Voltaire, let us briefly recall our earlier discussion of superstition in the Philosophical Dictionary. In our example from the article SECT, superstitious men who believe, for instance, in circumcision, consecration, or charms are held up as objects of universal scorn. Laughter here is philosophical in the sense that it is intended as a corrective. But it is also ritualistic. Superstition is implicitly expelled along with those who believe in it by laughter, just as the sins of Israel, or the Egyptians, are said to have been carried away by a goat named Hazazel.9 The critique of ritual in Voltaire, as we have seen, does not result simply in the end of ritual, but in a paradoxical renewal—​and this pattern is visible again in Charlie Hebdo. When the Société Voltaire writes that the artists of the satirical magazine killed in the attack were “among the most brilliant, influential and exemplary representatives of a Voltairean spirit that is still alive,”10 this also holds for their imitation of religious forms. Stéphane “Charb” Charbonnier, for instance, wrote a monthly entry for the magazine

110  Mock Ritual in the Modern Era Fluide glacial under the heading “The Ayatollah Charb’s Fatwa,” and would later author two volumes under a similar title. The Voltairean spirit attributed to the artists of Charlie Hebdo is reflected also in reactions to the terrorist attacks. Régis Debray, in an interview with the magazine Le Un, suggested that what people could do in response to the jihadists was “to laugh even harder, with no hesitation.”11 For Debray, this would be in keeping with the French tradition of freedom of expression, a way of owning one’s cultural DNA. Similarly, British journalist Brian Reade suggested that if people really wanted to be Charlie, they could post one of the magazine’s cartoons on Twitter or Facebook, observing that “if everyone [did] the same, it [would] travel the world hundreds of millions of times.” This would mean, according to Reade, “that the terrorists had ended up promoting the joke,” that they themselves “would be the ones responsible for making the world laugh at their god,” and that, perhaps, “they [might] even execute themselves for it.”12 Reade’s suggestion for our digital age, to make a laughingstock of the jihadists through social media, is essentially the same as Voltaire’s proposal for superstitious men in the article SECT. With modern technology, the idea of deriding someone “from one end of the universe to the other”13 can be taken almost literally. In 2009, Charb published fifty-​nine “fatwas” under the title Little Treatise on Intolerance. Apart from the obvious reference to Voltaire’s Treatise on Tolerance, this collection is also Voltairean in its joking cooption of a religious term—​we may think, for instance, of Voltaire’s “homilies” discussed in our opening chapter—​and its mixing of the serious and the frivolous. Directed essentially at uncontroversial subjects—​festivals, readers of free newspapers, butter croissants—​Charb’s mock fatwas are, on the surface, a politically insignificant expression of intolerance. Even the fatwa on Bashar al-​Assad concerns not the politician but his mustache. Implicitly, comparison serves here to trivialize the serious fatwa. The opening chapter, or fatwa, is titled “Death to the Theoreticians of Laughter!” “They are many,” writes Charb, “the bistro philosophers and the after-​dinner thinkers who, at some point in the conversation, blurt out: ‘One can laugh at anything’ ”—​to which he adds that most often, unfortunately, this “perfectly imbecilic statement,” as he dubs it, does not end with a period, but with a comma: “You can laugh at anything, but. . . .”14 These theoreticians, for Charb, doubtless include university professors like ourselves, but also, more generally, the various members of the public who contribute to the

Charlie Hebdo: The Ambivalence of Mockery  111 current climate of subtle, or not-​so-​subtle, forms of interdiction associated with the politically correct. The line attributed to the theoreticians of laughter, “One can laugh at anything, but . . . ,” is presented as a linguistic tic, the habitual repetition of a line from the French humorist Pierre Desproges: “One can laugh at anything, but not with anybody” (Desproges’s examples included “practicing Stalinists,” “hysterical terrorists,” and “far-​right activists”).15 The model for the common theorization of laughter is, on the surface, a secular model. Nevertheless, a late-​twentieth-​century radio and TV personality is notably coupled here with a religious figure, Jesus Christ, whom he is said to resemble both in being dead and in being a humorist: “When they were alive,” writes Charb, “these two jokers filled entire halls with laughter. Once they were gone, some sorry fools began repeating endlessly excerpts from their skits as if these were divine commandments.”16 Charb’s comparison offers a perspective in which the comic effectively precedes the serious. If we follow Charb in viewing episodes from the life of Christ as a series of skits that were later sacralized, we might consider even the crucifixion as a joke that, as in the Gnostic gospels we mentioned, only began to be taken seriously with the invention of the Eucharistic rite. The same process is visible in the case of the followers of Desproges, “self-​ proclaimed curate[s]‌” whose “benediction” Charb decidedly does not wish for, and who produce sacrality, as it were, through the endless repetition of comic skits. Charb’s derivation of religion from comedy is consistent with both a dismissive view of religion and the view of laughter as dismissive, for instance in the sense of the ritualized expulsion by mockery mentioned earlier. Or one could say simply, perhaps, that it is the consequence of these views. And if religion is reducible to comedy (as though, in Frazer’s account, the mock ritual were not merely modeled on the serious, but there from the beginning), then one might wonder also whether comedy, inversely, is equivalent here to religion, and whether laughter, for Charb at least, becomes the new sacred. His comparison of Desproges’s followers to clerics is all the more striking in that Desproges himself said that we “must” laugh at everything as a way to “desacralize stupidity”17 (a pattern of reversal of desacralization we will see again later), and because Charb explicitly objected to the prescription as well as proscription of laughter.18 “Laughter is like sex,” he remarks in the same text; there is always a curate “who tries to impose his own limits.”19

112  Mock Ritual in the Modern Era A similar approach is adopted by Charb’s colleague “Cabu” in his comic book titled Can One Still Laugh at Everything? Whereas the cover depicts an unlikely assortment of religious and secular characters united in their will to limit laughter, the cartoons contained in this collection invariably mock such restrictive efforts. To the extent that readers laugh at these cartoons on a variety of social, political, and religious subjects, the contents of the book offer a clever and, in a sense, scientific refutation of the opposing view. The precedence of mock ritual over the serious, implicit in Charb’s comparison of Jesus and Desproges, reappears in Cabu’s cartoon titled “Can One Still Laugh at Christianity?” where the crucifixion is presented quite specifically as a skit. Under the caption, “But don’t just go walking around naked!”20 Jesus is shown carrying his cross, which he has broken off at the stem, wearing only his loincloth and crown of thorns. The stage set is credited to Roger Harth and the costumes to Donald Cardwell.21 The first part of this cartoon is relatively transparent. Jesus appears to have given up on the crucifixion part way through, literally undercutting its sacramental and sacrificial interpretations, while his scant attire contravenes the rules of Christian modesty. The second part is a cultural joke, alluding to a popular French TV show, Au théâtre ce soir, which, from the mid-​1960s to the mid-​1980s, broadcast live comedies from the Marigny Theater in Paris. At the end of each performance, the cast would introduce themselves and recite the famous line, “The stage set is by Roger Harth and the costumes by Donald Cardwell.” During the final years, according to Wikipédia, it was the live audience that would “ritually” chant the names of those responsible for the stage set and the costumes.22 Following the events of January 2015, as we have seen, Voltaire became associated with Charlie Hebdo in debates over the heritage of the Enlightenment. This filiation, though contested by some,23 is relatively easy to show from our perspective. The theory of laughter advocated by Charb and Cabu, for instance, is consistent with statements by Voltaire who wrote to d’Alembert in May 1760 that “the only reasonable choice in a ridiculous century is to laugh at everything.”24 As previously mentioned, the authors of Charlie Hebdo also display a pattern we have observed repeatedly in our preceding chapters in which the mockery of ritual is itself ritualized. In a passage from his Open Letter on Blasphemy, Charb proposes a virtual pedagogy of mockery, inviting believers, ironically, as it were, not to reserve their “insults to Reason for the privacy of those tombs of thought [they] call temples, churches, synagogues

Charlie Hebdo: The Ambivalence of Mockery  113 and mosques,” but to “publish newspapers and blogs,” and, especially, to “stage plays and puppet shows, to mock what [they] see as the absurdity of life without God.”25 We may view this proposal as a variant of d’Alembert’s suggestion in his Account of the Destruction of the Jesuits in France to have the convulsionnaires perform their rituals as farces next to clowns at the fair. Here Charb appeals to believers to use the same mocking approach toward Reason and atheism that he himself practices with respect to God and religion. But his assumption is doubtless that Reason and atheism will hold up better to mockery than God and religion. Comparison with Charlie Hebdo illustrates further a paradox embedded in eighteenth-​century philosophy, where laughter at once appears subordinate to reason and corresponds to a supposedly irrational ritual process. The model of expiatory laughter outlined earlier is, of course, used by Charb in his mock proposal for believers, but also, for instance, in his second volume of fatwas from 2014, where he writes that “whereas fear empowers the Salafists, ridicule, contrary to the adage, kills them.”26 The ritual underpinnings of what is presented by rationalists as philosophical or curative laughter are identified, notably, by one of Charlie Hebdo’s harshest critics, Emmanuel Todd, who states that, while consciously claiming to be following positive universal values, Charlie is “unconsciously [looking] for a scapegoat.”27 Charlie, in Todd’s analysis, is not only the satirical magazine. The name is taken more broadly to represent the French middle class. A large segment of society is thus characterized by the sort of scapegoating Todd sees in the magazine’s approach to ridicule. In eighteenth-​century philosophy, as we have seen, mock ritual appears alternately as a by-​product and a means of demystification. The recurrence of human sacrifice in comic guise appears at once fashionable and scandalous, a modern perversion that is routinely condemned from Duclos to our own time. When Todd accuses Charlie Hebdo of scapegoating, he is also implicitly condemning what we have referred to as philosophical laughter. In his analysis of January 2015, Todd brings out a different aspect of mock ritual, emphasizing what appears as a façade of national unity. What seemed ridiculous, from his perspective, was the “enshrining” of Charlie Hebdo and its caricatures of the prophet Muhammad, the street demonstrations fueled by secularist “hysteria,” and “the incantation of the ritual formula ‘I am Charlie,’ ” which, he says, became synonymous with “I am French.”28

114  Mock Ritual in the Modern Era Todd’s critique of Charlie Hebdo and of what it represents—​which is to say, according to him, a rising xenophobia in Western societies—​may be seen at once as an extension of Enlightenment thought and as its negation. The spectacle of a population gripped by hysteria enacting what appear as ridiculous rituals in response to a catastrophe could be compared notably to the chapter from Candide on the Lisbon earthquake. One could effectively read Todd’s account of January 2015 as a transposition of Voltaire’s portrayal of the inquisitorial auto-​da-​fé, substituting French government officials for the inquisitors and the French Muslim population for Candide and his unfortunate companions. But unlike the auto-​da-​fé in Candide, Todd’s description of mock ritual in January 2015 is not funny. Readers who adopt Todd’s view of Charlie Hebdo are not swayed by laughter but by moral considerations associated with a rejection of xenophobia. In contrast with Charlie Hebdo, Todd maintains that religion must be taken seriously, “especially when it starts to disappear.”29 The demonstrations of January 2015, in his interpretation, are the sign of a religious crisis stemming from a history of de-​Christianization. Whereas, since the eighteenth century, according to Todd, the Catholic Church had existed “in a negative mode,” as a “reliable metaphysical reference point” for unbelievers, contemporary secular France finds itself in a boundless void.30 The godless are left to face, for the first time as it were, the question of the ultimate aims of human existence after religion. On the backdrop of uneasy atheism, Islam would thus come to fill the structural void left by Catholicism as a negative reference. The indictment of Charlie Hebdo as Islamophobic exemplifies a stance that is widely adopted in current debates where antiracism, as Pascal Bruckner observes, appears in contradiction with Enlightenment principles.31 From the standpoint of antiracism, Voltairean mockery appears outdated. Ridicule is no longer seen as cathartic, but as something to be purged. Nevertheless, while ostensibly opposed to the authors of Charlie Hebdo, whose caricaturing of the prophet Muhammad he sees as emblematic of racism, Todd tacitly agrees with at least some of their thinking on this subject. His theorization of racism as a form of scapegoating is reminiscent of Charb, for instance, who writes, in his Open Letter on Blasphemy, that “racism has existed in all countries ever since the invention of the scapegoat.”32 The equation of racism and scapegoating is common to both authors, despite their differences.

Charlie Hebdo: The Ambivalence of Mockery  115 Against Todd’s allegation that Charlie was “specialized in stigmatizing a minority religion,”33 Bruno Chaouat contends that the magazine was never reactionary and Islamophobic, but what he calls an “equal-​opportunity offender.”34 Chaouat’s characterization of Charlie could apply also to Voltaire. The expression “equal-​opportunity offender,” unsettling the usual connotation of the adjective as related, for instance, to housing or employment, would seem to invite reconsideration of modern views of discrimination. Depending on one’s approach, Voltaire’s writings will appear either racist or universally critical of religion, either offensive to Jews, Muslims, and other religious groups or legitimately derisive of superstition in different world religions. The generalized mockery of ritual as the manifestation of what appears most superstitious in religion is an important aspect of what we have been calling mock ritual, and doubtless also a significant factor in the decline of French Catholicism alluded to by Todd in Who Is Charlie? (Catholicism, after all, was the main target of Voltaire’s critique.) If, as some have suggested, Voltairean mockery, in this phase of history, has become impracticable,35 we may wonder about the implications of such a loss. One may incline to think that a curtailing of mockery would simply result in greater civility. In the light of our preceding chapters, however, where mockery as a means of eliminating ritual is often associated with other forms of mock ritual, which it either induces or replicates, we may wonder how such a transition would occur. Since what we are calling mock ritual, like ritual in general, entails a process of substitution, transformation, or displacement, we may wonder how its own elimination would escape this process. It would, in any case, be remarkable if antiracist rhetoric had accomplished in a few years what could not be achieved by centuries of moral condemnation. To move beyond philosophical mockery is, of course, not necessarily to move beyond whatever it sought to eliminate, which essentially involves, as we have seen, various manifestations of what Enlightenment thinkers viewed as superstition. The history of Charlie Hebdo is riddled with events that would lend themselves to a Voltairean critique, from the firebombing of the offices of the magazine in 2011 and French rapper Nekfeu’s subsequent call for an auto-​da-​fé for its authors to their assassination in 2015 by Islamist extremists. It is possible to imagine in this climate that forbidding the mockery of religious subjects would end not in progress but in regression. The evolution of mock ritual, according to our analysis, makes visible a shift in parameters of thought or, perhaps, as Todd suggests, the loss of a

116  Mock Ritual in the Modern Era “reliable metaphysical reference point.” Critics of the “I am Charlie” movement observed, no doubt rightly to some extent, that those who identified with the slain journalists as representatives of Enlightenment values did not know precisely what principles they were defending. But we may wonder also exactly what set of principles the “I am not Charlie” movement embraced in promoting tolerance, as it were, in opposition to the Enlightenment. Seen from a rationalist perspective, forbidding the mockery of religious subjects would be to confuse the poison with the cure and to relinquish what Voltaire in his Treatise on Tolerance calls “a powerful barrier against the excesses of all sectarians.”36 When, in July 2015, the editor-​in-​chief of Charlie Hebdo, Laurent “Riss” Sourisseau, announced that the magazine would no longer publish caricatures of the prophet Muhammad, this change of policy was interpreted by some, not implausibly, as a surrender to violence.37 Riss’s colleague Renald “Luz” Luzier, who drew the picture of a weeping Muhammad for the first issue of Charlie Hebdo following the attack on its offices in January, had left the magazine a few months earlier saying that the pressure had become too much to bear. The Danish newspaper Jyllands-​Posten, famous for its publication of caricatures of Muhammad in 2005, had similarly decided not to reprint Charlie Hebdo’s cartoons out of security concerns, its editorial stating with uncommon frankness that “violence works.”38 The defense of the right to caricature had, of course, been an integral part of the identity of Charlie Hebdo prior to the events of January 2015. Charb remained to the very end defiant of all forms of censorship, which he mocked repeatedly, for instance in his Open Letter on Blasphemy, but also, along with his coauthor Zineb El Rhazoui, in the preface to The Life of Muhammad, published in 2013. Pushing the limits of censorship was, according to Zineb, an obligation for the caricaturist who had “made a vocation of irreverence,”39 and the people who thought that “drawing the prophet of Islam was going too far” were essentially suggesting that this religion is, in fact, “very far behind the Enlightenment.”40 The affirmation or rejection of the Enlightenment that accompanies discussions of Charlie Hebdo was equally pervasive in prior controversies over caricatures of the prophet Muhammad published by Jyllands-​Posten and the staging of Voltaire’s tragedy Fanaticism, or Mahomet the Prophet. An article by Andrew Higgins in the Wall Street Journal, “Blame It on Voltaire: Muslims Ask French to Cancel 1741 Play,” underscored the coincidence of protests over Fanaticism in the small French town of Saint-​Genis-​Pouilly in December

Charlie Hebdo: The Ambivalence of Mockery  117 2005 and the international furor over the Danish cartoons. Anticipating a trope from a decade later, Higgins noted particularly how in the wider debate over faith and freedom of expression Voltaire’s name was frequently cited as an embodiment of the Enlightenment tradition.41 We have observed in previous chapters how the elements of comedy often coincide with those of tragedy. With Charlie Hebdo, similarly, the comic and the tragic are constantly intermingled. One refers to the assassination of Charb, Cabu and their coworkers as a tragedy while debates have focused largely on the limits of comedy perceived as a form of violence. We might also recall in this respect Flaubert who, in Madame Bovary, has his pharmacist Homais quote the well-​known Latin dictum on using ridicule to correct morals, Castigat ridendo mores, in observing that Voltaire’s tragedies are “a source of philosophical reflections” and a “school of morality for the people.”42 Despite his being portrayed as exemplifying modern stupidity, Homais’s eliding of the tragic and the comic may contain an important insight. Assigning a purgative function not only to comedy but also, as has been usual since Aristotle, to tragedy, Voltaire asks in a letter to Frederick II of Prussia from 1740 regarding Fanaticism, for instance, whether his play might serve to eradicate (déraciner) the sentiments of fanatics such as his youthful hero Seid, stating that he would consider himself well rewarded for his efforts if even one of these “weak souls” could be saved from the seductions of false religion by reading his work.43 As a source of “philosophical reflections,” to use Flaubert’s expression, Fanaticism highlights the cynical use of religious language to legitimate political action. Some of its most famous, and most parodied, scenes show Muhammad explaining to his allies or his opponents how he uses religion as a means of manipulating the masses.44 And if this play, along with Voltaire’s other tragedies, constitutes a “school of morality,” this is doubtless in a manner similar to what we saw in Madame Bovary where “school” is both synonymous with and a subject of mockery. Here, as in Voltaire’s later philosophical writings, religious teachings are made to appear ridiculous. All ritual in this play is, moreover, mock ritual. Its central action consists of an assassination disguised as a sacrifice. Manipulated by Muhammad into believing that he is serving God in killing the prophet’s political enemy Zopir, the youthful Seid strikes Zopir while he is praying at the altar of the local deities. The mock ritual killing of Zopir by Seid is modeled on the Qur’anic story of Ibrahim’s aborted sacrifice of his son Isma’il, which is specifically mentioned

118  Mock Ritual in the Modern Era by Muhammad in persuading Seid to obey his commands. Voltaire does not simply follow the Qur’an, but represents a corruption of the Qur’anic text in reversing the roles and having the son effectively murder the father. An unwitting parricide, Seid is both the instrument and the victim of Muhammad’s duplicity. The sacrificial imagery of Voltaire’s tragedy is similarly deployed in modern terrorist attacks, including most obviously in the French town of Saint-​Étienne-​du-​Rouvray in July 2016, where a Catholic priest, Father Jacques Hamel, was slain at the altar during Mass,45 but also in the “Final Instructions to the Hijackers of September 11” found in the luggage of Mohamed Atta where verses from the Qur’an were used, according to Bruce Lincoln, “not simply to justify, but to sanctify the shedding of blood.”46 The first victims of the 9/​11 hijackers were compared in this document to sacrificial animals “whose throats would be slit in ritual fashion”47 without causing discomfort, “because this was one of the practices of the prophet.”48 The story of Seid resonates with the present time much in the same way that Voltaire insisted on its relevance for his own century, which had seen a recurrence of fanaticism despite the apparent progress of philosophy. Seid may be considered at once as a prototype of twenty-​first-​century fanatics and a composite of models drawn from European history, including those mentioned by Voltaire in his letter to Frederick of Prussia, from assassins and would-​be assassins of European monarchs to Alfonso Díaz, who had his brother Juan Díaz murdered for apostasy. It is precisely because of its renewed relevance that Voltaire’s play has been a subject of controversy in recent decades. In the early 1990s French theatre director Hervé Loichemol proposed staging Fanaticism to mark the three hundredth anniversary of Voltaire’s birth. Islamic activists objected, among them Tariq Ramadan, who in an open letter warned that performing this tragedy would be “another brick in an edifice of hatred and rejection in which Muslims [felt] they [were] being enclosed.”49 After weeks of debate, the Geneva authorities decided to drop the play, citing financial reasons. Faced with the alternative between a reputedly xenophobic secularism and Islamic obscurantism, some may wish for a different approach.50 One such approach would entail a more nuanced understanding of freedom of expression than that espoused by the authors of Charlie Hebdo, as suggested, for instance, in an article published by the leftist online journal Médiapart in March 2015, “A Different Heritage of the Enlightenment: The Encyclopedia against Voltaire’s Mahomet.”51 Recalling how in recent debates over the

Charlie Hebdo: The Ambivalence of Mockery  119 staging of Fanaticism the defenders of freedom of expression had relied on a “second-​degree reading” of the play, according to which Voltaire would be critiquing Christianity under the veil of Islam, the authors of this article sustain a “first-​degree,” or Islamophobic, reading, an example of which is provided in Diderot and d’Alembert’s Encyclopedia. We are reminded that, in the article FANATICISM from the sixth volume of the Encyclopedia, Alexandre Deleyre appeals to “the law of nations” and “the respect that different peoples owe each other” in denouncing Voltaire’s caricatural representation of the prophet Muhammad, which he ultimately views as an insult to Islam. But while the article FANATICISM does in fact offer a more nuanced view of freedom of expression, when it comes to the actual question of eliminating fanaticism, Deleyre’s reasoning is essentially the same as what we have seen repeatedly in Voltaire, d’Alembert, and Charlie Hebdo. He, too, concludes by proposing a form of mock ritual: The only things that can discredit and weaken fanatics are disdain and ridicule. It is said that a chief of police, to put an end to the influence of fanaticism, had resolved, in concert with a famous chemist, to have them parodied by clowns at the fair. The remedy was well chosen, if people could be disabused without grave risks.52

Our discussion would be incomplete without some mention of Michel Houellebecq’s novel Submission, which is inextricably linked to the fate of Charlie Hebdo. By an extraordinary coincidence, this novel depicting France under Islamic rule in 2022 was published the very day of the deadly attack even as the author appeared on the cover of the magazine with the caption “The Predictions of seer Houellebecq: In 2015, I lose my teeth. . . . In 2022, I observe Ramadan!”53 As noted by Gaby Wood in the Daily Telegraph, it soon became difficult to disentangle the book from the events that followed its release.54 With Submission Houellebecq had inserted himself into a debate that was already raging in France at once over Islam and intolerance55 and over the limits of satire. Though distinct in his views from Charlie Hebdo, Houellebecq is similarly discussed as a comic or satirical writer. According to Mark S. Heim, Submission “defies the reader to find the line between parody and philosophy.”56 The novel’s “political elements” are said by Christian Lorentzen to be “so comically exaggerated that it’s hard to take them very seriously.”57 Writing in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Charles Taylor calls the alliance

120  Mock Ritual in the Modern Era of the socialist and center-​right parties with the Muslim Brotherhood in the runoff against the National Front “one of Houellebecq’s best jokes,”58 while the collaboration of the French elite with the Islamic regime is similarly referred to by Adam Gopnik in the New Yorker as “the book’s central joke.”59 While opinions are divided as to whether Islam is truly the object of Houellebecq’s satire, the book as originally conceived was not about Islam at all. As Houellebecq explained in an interview in the Paris Review prior to its publication, the title at the beginning was not Soumission, but La Conversion. And in the original project, the narrator converted, not to Islam as in Submission, but to Catholicism.60 The question of conversion in Submission, as will soon be apparent, is closely related to our discussion of the evolution of ritual in modernity. The narrator of Submission, François, according to the blurb from the back cover of the English translation, is “bored . . . a middle-​aged lecturer at the New Sorbonne University and an expert on [Joris-​Karl] Huysmans, the famed nineteenth-​century novelist associated with the Decadent movement.” Like the narrator in Houellebecq’s original project, François’s story is modeled on the life of Huysmans. For several years as a doctoral student writing a dissertation on Huysmans, François lives “in his more or less permanent presence.”61 Like Huysmans, François is “haunted by Catholicism” and “revolted with [his] life.”62 He makes pilgrimages to Ligugé Abbey, “where Huysmans had taken his monastic vows,”63 and the Chapel of Our Lady in Rocamadour, where, after a fleeting mystical experience, he thinks again of Huysmans, “of the sufferings and doubts of his conversion, and of his desperate desire to be part of a religion,”64 or, more literally, “initiated into a rite.”65 While fully deserving of the praise it has received, Lorin Stein’s elegant translation effaces an aura of ritual attached to Huysmans not only in this passage but throughout the novel, as in the opening pages where we are reminded that he was for more than thirty years a civil servant in the “Ministry of the Interior and Ecclesiastical Affairs,” or, more literally, “of the Interior and Worship” (cultes), connotating the practice of rites and ceremonies. If, as Houellebecq has said, the key scene of the book is François’s failed conversion to Catholicism in Rocamadour,66 this is mainly because it serves as a prelude to his future conversion to Islam. Following the election and the subsequent renaming of Paris III as the Islamic University of Paris–​Sorbonne, François and his non-​Muslim colleagues are no longer permitted to teach. Freed from his academic duties, but still “in his prime” with a guaranteed income, François may hope to

Charlie Hebdo: The Ambivalence of Mockery  121 benefit from all that liberal democratic society has to offer. Instead, he finds himself alone, “with even less desire to live and nothing to look forward to but aggravations.”67 His ex-​girlfriend has met someone new, he has lost both his parents, and no one writes to him for the New Year. He starts visiting escorts. Brief moments of hope soon fade as he sinks more deeply into despair. In the meantime, he learns that the new Islamic administration of the University of Paris has rehired one of his colleagues, a professor of French poetry, on the condition not only that he convert but, as Adam Gopnik observes, “that he teach Rimbaud’s conjectured conversion to Islam as an established fact.”68 François, in turn, is soon courted by the new university president, Robert Rediger,69 with an offer to return to teaching, under the stipulation that he too must convert. During a conversation in his sumptuous home in the fifth arrondissement, Rediger tells the story of his own conversion several years earlier. His motivation was what he refers to as “the suicide of Europe,” symbolized by the closing of the bar at the Hôtel Métropole de Bruxelles, marking the end of a time when “one could order sandwiches and beer, Viennese chocolates, and cakes with cream in that absolute masterpiece of decorative art, [when] one could live one’s daily life surrounded by beauty.”70 The following day, as Rediger explains, he went to see an imam in Zaventem. “And the day after that—​Easter Monday—​in front of a handful of witnesses, [he] spoke the ritual words and converted to Islam.”71 The academics in Submission are largely defined by the subjects of their doctoral dissertations. While François follows in the footsteps of Huysmans, Rediger takes his cues from René Guénon, who predicted that liberal democracies would eventually be replaced by a return to religion.72 While the bar at the Hôtel Métropole hearkens back to the time of Huysmans when Christianity was being eclipsed by secular modernity, its closing marks, in turn, the end of secular modernity and the advent of a new era. Though seemingly a joke—​the notion that someone would convert because of a restaurant closure—​Rediger’s reasoning is consistent with his theorization of the end of Europe and impending Muslim dominance, not only in conversation, but also in his writings, which, however serious, as François remarks, are not devoid of humor: Rediger was a good writer. He was clear and concise, and occasionally humorous, for example when he derided a colleague—​no doubt a rival Muslim intellectual—​who had coined the phrase “imams 2.0” to describe imams who made it their mission to reconvert French youth from Muslim

122  Mock Ritual in the Modern Era immigrant backgrounds. It was time, Rediger countered, to launch imams 3.0: the ones who’d convert the natives.73

Adapting language specific to versions of software and stages of development of the World Wide Web to his discussion of Islam, Rediger suggests that the world itself, or at least France, has entered a new stage of development. In contrast with some of his earlier novels that were influenced by his reading of Auguste Comte and a belief in the necessity of a new religion compatible with the state of modern science, the raw material for Submission, as Houellebecq explains in an interview from 2017, “is that, far from a new religion being formed, it may well be that an old one is revived.”74 This shift in thinking motivated by what Houellebecq views as the failure of Comte’s own endeavor—​“he actually seriously tried himself to found a new religion; he baptized proletarians into the new positive faith, etc., and it didn’t work”75 —​is illustrated in Submission not only by Rediger, but by the new French president, Mohammed Ben Abbes, who, rather than presenting sharia “as forward-​looking” or “revolutionary,” as did his sometime rival Tariq Ramadan, “restore[s]‌its reassuring, traditional value—​with a perfume of exoticism that ma[kes] it all the more attractive.”76 Appealing to imams to attend to “natives” rather than the children of immigrants, Rediger advocates an approach he himself adopts in converting, for instance, François and other French colleagues at the university. As Houellebecq has observed, however, most of the characters in Submission are not truly Muslims, but only “declare themselves Muslims because it suits them,” or to satisfy their personal ambitions.77 Such is the case, notably, of François, whose conversion to Islam is more opportunistic than sincere. Shifting to the future for the brief final chapter, François imagines a “very simple”78 ceremony, following “a sort of pretend waiting period,”79 most likely taking place at the Paris Mosque, “since that was easiest for all involved,”80 in the presence of Rediger and the provost, “or at least one of his senior staff,” and possibly a few ordinary worshippers, since “the mosque wouldn’t close for the occasion.”81 He would be “specially allowed inside the hammam, which was ordinarily closed to men,” to purify himself. “Then [he’d] get dressed in the new clothes [he’d] brought with [him]; and [he] would enter the great hall of worship,” where he would ultimately recite the shahada, the Muslim profession of faith, “which [he’d] have learned phonetically.”82 This description suggests at once an adherence to the formal aspects of the ceremony and a relative lack of sincerity. Lorin Stein’s rendering of “comme

Charlie Hebdo: The Ambivalence of Mockery  123 une espèce de délai de décence” as “like a sort of pretend waiting period” amplifies a note of irony that, however subtle in the original, pervades the entire passage. The venue, for instance, is dictated by convenience (rather than symbolic or spiritual motives) “for all involved,” which is to say very few people, since no acquaintances other than one or two university administrators are likely to attend. Similarly, while François is to be “specially allowed inside the hammam,” the occasion is not so significant as to warrant the closing of the mosque. His phonetic learning of the shahada suggests, moreover, a lack of spiritual investment, or at least a superficial relation to the language, especially for someone like François whose professional life has been devoted to the study of words. The conversion ceremony is juxtaposed with François’s reception at the Sorbonne, which appears both as its sequel and its antithesis. In contrast to the first ceremony, we are told, for instance, that the second would be “a much longer affair,”83 and that it would be well attended.84 The relative importance of the event is suggested, moreover, by Rediger’s insistence, despite the increasing demands of his political career, on giving the speech for François’s induction (intronisation)—​a speech that would be “excellent” and that Rediger would “enjoy giving,”85 effectively the counterpart to François’s mechanical recitation of the shahada at the mosque. Unlike the first ceremony, which would be held in a traditionally religious setting, the second would take place in an academic institution that had for a very long period been purely secular. But on this occasion, as François remarks, “everyone would be in gowns, the Saudi authorities having recently reestablished the wearing of ceremonial dress.”86 Religion, implicitly, would have reentered the university for the first time since the eighteenth century. As previously with our analysis of Charlie Hebdo, the conclusion of Houellebecq’s novel returns us to a form of mock ritual. In contrast to the authors of Charlie Hebdo, however, who after the events of January 2015 were routinely associated with Voltaire, Submission, according to Houellebecq, describes the “destruction of the philosophy handed down from the Enlightenment.”87 And rather than the reemergence of a ritual pattern from within a supposed process of elimination, ritual is employed cynically by characters in this novel to buttress a new political regime.

Summation Then she became divinely possessed, exposed her breasts, and pushed her skirt-​band down to her genitals. Then Takama-​nö-​para shook as the eight-​hundred myriad deities laughed at once. Kojiki1

We began with a film depicting mocking rituals in the court of King Louis XVI that was widely interpreted as an allegory of late-​twentieth-​century French society. Following a line of inquiry suggested by this temporal juxtaposition, we turned our attention to philosophical, historical, and literary texts from the eighteenth century forward in considering how the critique of what would come to be called ritual is related to modern narratives of disenchantment. From Diderot and d’Alembert’s Encyclopedia to Flaubert’s Madame Bovary and Dictionary of Received Ideas and the history of modern dueling we have observed examples of ritual surviving its condemnation in a process that seemingly continues even today. We have considered particularly how mockery ostensibly aimed at eliminating ritual is enmeshed in this process, even to the point of becoming its own ritual. From Voltaire’s Philosophical Dictionary to Charlie Hebdo, we have seen how the collective mockery of religious practices is modeled on expiatory ritual such that the pattern persists despite an apparent contradiction, assuming new forms that may at first be hard to recognize. In the wake of the attacks on the Charlie Hebdo offices in 2015, such recurrences were observable on both sides of a debate over secular values and freedom of expression. We saw, on the one hand, how the magazine’s defense of the right to laugh at everything was manifested, notably, in a series of “fatwas” where ridicule was directed at religious extremists with the explicitly stated aim of killing them. On the other hand, we saw how, in Emmanuel Todd’s interpretation, the national response to the killing of journalists by religious extremists took the form of an elaborate mock ritual replete with sacralizations, incantations, and scapegoatings. Mock Ritual in the Modern Era. Reginald McGinnis and John Vignaux Smyth, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2022. DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197637432.003.0009

Summation  125 While our approach relying largely on literary and philosophical texts as well as films may appear unconventional, the questions we address are nonetheless similar to those of anthropologists and sociologists. Throughout our inquiry we have considered the migration of ritual out of traditional settings such as temples, mosques, or churches into literary salons, schools, and public spaces—​which is to say that we are interested, like Ronald L. Grimes, in the status of ritual in today’s world, and notably in the question of how, “like a weed or a pest it resists being stomped out” and “springs up underfoot, making troublesome appearances in unlikely places.”2 Without wishing to suggest that we ourselves believe all ritual to be harmful or ridiculous—​far from it!—​we have chosen to emphasize the role of mockery in the history of its evolution. Viewed from this angle, the evolution of ritual appears as a process of displacement and mutation in which mockery is alternately a means of eliminating and the substance of ritual. That this process is relevant to current reflection on ritual is evidenced, for instance, in a short book titled Faut-​il brûler les rites? (Must we burn rites?)—​ a title that seemingly alludes to Simone de Beauvoir’s famous essay on the Marquis de Sade—​by Pascal Lardellier, who begins by observing that the perception in modern Western society of rites as being outdated is such that “to inquire into their meaning is now almost suspect, when it isn’t comical.”3 That the outmoding of rites would result, as stated here, in an aura of ridicule surrounding their study is but a version of a pattern we have observed repeatedly in which the study of ritual and its antecedents is undertaken in a comic mode—​a pattern seen by Lardellier no less than ourselves as related to the question of eliminating ritual within a rationalist tradition dating from the eighteenth century.4 Still more recently, Barry Stephenson, in Ritual: A Very Short Introduction, characterizes the philosophes of the Enlightenment as having promoted “individual autonomy, rationality, and social reform” while taking aim at religious beliefs and ritual: “Ritual came to be viewed,” Stephenson writes, “as staid and outmoded, a superstitious remnant of a primitive past, a past that prevented humanity from truly advancing. Ritual, like its cousin myth, became a matter of suspicion and derision.”5 Yet, as we have seen, derision and mockery often have a striking tendency to repeat the very patterns they mock. Recalling the famous example from Baudelaire’s “On the Essence of Laughter” of a man standing on ice who laughs so hard at a falling man that he falls himself, René Girard observes that “reciprocity is reestablished through the very actions that are meant to undo it.”6 Most fundamental in Girard’s view is Baudelaire’s perception of

126  Mock Ritual in the Modern Era “the difference between the mocker and the mocked as a disintegrating and vanishing difference, as creeping identity.”7 Similarly, also highlighting such vanishing difference, Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno drew attention to the reflexive and mimetic character of Nazi ridicule of the Jews: “They cannot stand the Jews, but imitate them.”8 Charging them with “practicing forbidden magic and bloody rituals,” their Nazi mockers have “a subliminal craving . . . to revert to mimetic sacrificial practices.”9 Such comparison of secular mockery to the ritual past may remind us that one of the most immediately striking facts about so-​called archaic cultures as contrasted with our own is the degree to which they prescribe laughter in sacred contexts, such that serious and mock ritual sometimes seem indistinguishable. To put our post-​Enlightenment materials in perspective, we will accordingly now briefly exemplify the ambivalence of laughter in sacred premodernity as well as in modern secular societies. Not only has laughter been associated by Mary Douglas, for instance, with “rites of purification in a number of cultures,”10 but it has also reputedly played a striking role in rituals that entail actual killing. Ritualized laughter is also tied especially to rituals and myths of death and rebirth, to which we may add “ritual scurrility between the sexes,”11 and laughter surrounding copulation and birth itself. More emphatically, as Mikhail Bakhtin writes, “all forms of [ancient] ritual laughter were linked with death and rebirth, with the reproductive act, with symbols of the reproductive force.”12 Similarly, the data “prove,” according to Vladimir Propp, “that laughter not only accompanies the transition to life but also calls it forth.”13 Propp links the story of Isaac, for instance, to a folkloric and mythical pattern whereby laughter causes pregnancy, not the other way around.14 He also mentions a “laughing threshold” separating life from death: “That side of the threshold it is forbidden to laugh; this side it is necessary to laugh.”15 Victor Turner, for his part, interprets sacred laughter in terms of liminality: the sacred clown occupies a position not only between life and death, but also “between perennially sacred and perennially sacrilegious.”16 And Ingvild Gilhus underscores the relation between sacred “laughter of derision and laughter of regeneration,”17 between a “divine laughter” that was “hardly a nice laughter”18 and an ostensibly good outcome such as resurrection. Having claimed that the Romans honored Risus, the god of laughter, as “the most sacred and beautiful god,” Propp also evokes the origin of the phrase “sardonic laughter,” now meaning “cruel, malicious laughter,” in what he calls the “at first glance baffling” ritual whereby the ancient Sardi or

Summation  127 Sardinians laughed loudly while killing their old people. The association of laughter with killing is understood by Propp as transforming death into a new birth, “[nullifying] murder as such.”19 Similar instances of laughter accompanying death among different peoples of the ancient Mediterranean had been summarized as follows by Salomon Reinach: “The Sards laughed while sacrificing their old people; the Troglodytes, while stoning their corpses; the Phoenicians, when they put their children to death; the Thracians, when one of them was on the verge of death.”20 Natalie Strobach’s previously cited formula that “laughter is itself sacrifice” is thus shown to have antecedents in classical ethnography. Given its association with resurrection, the ambivalence of mockery also seems here indistinguishable from the ambivalence of sacrifice itself, insofar as laughter is both a part of the killing and, as it were, an essential part of its “cure.” Eli Sagan has discussed a memorable example of this purgative dimension of derision in connection with Maori cannibalism, where the returning cannibal warriors were “met outside the village by the priestesses, who danced a whaka-​tama (‘dance of derision’)” and where “the warriors were not allowed to mingle with the joyful people of the village until they had gone through the rite of whaka-​hoa (‘making common’).”21 The “dance of derision” at once mock ritually purges the cannibalism that has just taken place outside the village, and prepares for the reintegration of the transgressors via the rite of “making common.” Sagan’s linkage of cannibalism to ritualized derision may also remind us that some contemporary scholars, skeptical of previous colonial accounts, have gone so far as to suggest—​for instance in Gananath Obeyesekere’s Cannibal Talk—​not merely that some indigenous people’s accounts of their own cannibalism were parodically exaggerated or even invented in order either to flatter or to deride colonial views, but that “the colonial intrusion produced a complex self-​fulfilling prophecy whereby the fantasy of cannibalism became a reality, as natives on occasion began to eat both Europeans and their own enemies in acts of ‘conspicuous anthropophagy.’ ”22 This intricate drama becomes even more striking when we consider that derision and parody were already a part of traditional ritual, including cannibalism. Cannibal Talk does not deny that “very limited forms of cannibalism might have occurred in Polynesian societies,” specifying that “they were largely in connection with human sacrifice and carried out by a select community in well-​defined sacramental rituals.”23 But now, according to Obeyesekere, the solemn sacrament mutates into a parodic ritual even bloodier than “the real

128  Mock Ritual in the Modern Era thing,” here attributed to colonial misrepresentation in a more or less comic distortion of Western ethnography. Thus, while one practical moral of this story underlines the contagious dangers of misinformed and racist “cannibal talk,” another is that serious cannibalism could so swiftly be transformed into a bloody caricature of itself, not just by colonizers, but by the maligned natives themselves. Since we began this book by highlighting the fine line between “serious” ritual and its early modern parodies, such examples of so-​called archaic ritual in which the line is effectively erased are important for several reasons. Not only do they suggest the widespread ambivalence of ritualized mockery in various contexts worldwide, but they also make clear that we are not telling a story in which “serious” ritual of the premodern sort merely degenerates under the glare of Enlightenment rationality into some kind of entirely secondary and derivative “mock” version. We are not presenting some sort of decline and fall. On the contrary, the evidence seems to suggest that mock ritual—​in the double sense of mockery of ritual and evidently “fake” ritual—​ was an essential and possibly even original part of the so-​called archaic picture. And if that is the case, our view of modernity is in some important ways in continuity with premodern and even archaic patterns. Accordingly, we now turn briefly to discussion of what might be called “fake” ritual as treated by anthropologist Michael Taussig. For whereas we have just outlined some of the ways in which ritualized laughter has been mythologized—​perhaps sometimes as much by ethnographers as by their sources—​as indicating belief in resurrection, cure, or the like, Taussig stresses not just the way in which magic and sacrificial ritual can survive their demystification but, as we mentioned earlier, more provocatively how “the crucial quality is not that the religion is made of tricks and disguises, but that these are unmasked.”24 Moreover, such “unmasking” is itself said to be “tantamount to sacrifice”25—​sacrifice of the ritual itself, and of what Taussig calls the “public secret” that sustains it. Proposing a precise analogy between the sacrificial victim and the sacrificial secret, Taussig cites Hubert and Mauss as well as Georges Bataille to the effect that “sacrifice consecrates that which it destroys.”26 The word “sacrifice” itself, as Taussig explains elsewhere, derives from the Latin words sacer and facere: literally “to make sacred.”27 Just as in modern parodies of religious (and other) rituals and beliefs, this kind of revelation of the ritual secret can occur explicitly as a mock ritual, as for example in Gregory Bateson’s famous study of the Sepik where “men ‘terminated’ the ceremonial life of the village by wrathfully exposing its

Summation  129 secrets to the women and children,” in a “public enactment of the whole initiatory cycle, albeit abbreviated.” However, these “terminations of ritual life” appear curiously according to Bateson as “merely temporary” and “cyclical.”28 Thus serious and mock ritual, the sacred and its violation, alternate, leading Taussig to invoke Durkheim’s idea of the “impure” or “negative” sacred, which so fascinated Bataille, “and which Lévi-​Strauss alludes to in his discussion of the role of pollution and of menstrual blood.”29 Moreover, the mock ritual that demystifies the ritual can equally well occur within it, as in Kafka’s famous aphorism about leopards who repeatedly break into the temple and drink the sacrificial vessels dry, but then become part of the ceremony.30 For instance, in an initiation ritual in Tierra del Fuego, a “sacred violence in the mimetics of the Hain” is said by Taussig to exist “in two quite contrary ways.”31 While, on the one hand, the women and children forming the audience must pretend “on pain of death that what they witness are the real gods and not their kinsmen acting as gods,” the male initiates, on the other hand, are forced to witness separately “the demasking of the gods.”32 The imperative of preserving a “public secret” is balanced with the transfer of the mimetic faculty from the older to the younger men, so that “the duped becomes one with the dupers.”33 This pattern differs fundamentally from the Voltairean model of religious deception in which an elite priesthood or ruling class fools the rest, since here the secret is a “public secret,” available potentially to all. The Hain initiation ritual must be preserved despite knowledge that it is fake. Taussig says his account of ritual fraud, in which mock ritual can hardly be distinguished from the real thing, was inspired by “the notion emerging from Frazer’s discussion of imitative magic as power that the copy extracts from the original,”34 and he conceives the movement from archaic to modern societies in terms of different kinds of “organization of mimesis,”35 underlining also “how fundamental a role the passage from trick to technique is in Horkheimer and Adorno’s argument regarding the role of mimesis.”36 For example, whereas ritualized laughter may be regarded by Enlightenment rationalists as part and parcel of the sacrificial box of tricks that make up archaic religions, they commonly present “rational” mockery not as a sacrificial trick, but as a “healthy” technique for purging people of their stupidity and superstition. In claiming to unmask and transcend sacrificial ritual and myth, in short, the Enlightenment “becomes the sacrifice of sacrifice, its internalization,” as Guy Brassier puts it, underlining “the fatal complicity between enchantment and disenchantment, myth and enlightenment.”37

130  Mock Ritual in the Modern Era For Taussig, as we have just seen, the ritualized sacrifice of sacrificial ritual characteristically entails a “violence of demasking fused with laughter.” And though he applies this phrase to a Hain initiation rite, his repeated invocations of Nietzsche and Georges Bataille among other moderns and postmoderns, such as William S. Burroughs, make clear that it also applies for him to modernity in the broad sense. Bataille, in particular, is famous as a self-​styled philosopher of sacrificial laughter, insisting that the “games” of modern sexuality and modern art are both thoroughly sacrificial. And here again any fundamental distinction between the serious and the mock seems erased, not just inasmuch as sacrifice is conceived as “a [sacred] game,” and compared to the novel,38 but inasmuch as laughter itself is conceived in a manner modeled explicitly on the mock ritual of Nietzsche’s Zarathustra. “Insofar as I am doing philosophical work,” Bataille wrote in 1953, “my philosophy is a philosophy of laughter,” and “it is necessary to associate [the problem of laughter] with the problem of tears, the problem of sacrifice, and so on.”39 This leads, in what he calls his “atheology,” to a sacralization of laughter that takes its cue directly from Nietzsche—​“Zarathustra made laughter sacred”40—​and that he links to his desire to create “a form of spiritual life, unimaginable prior to Nietzsche.”41 The relation with Nietzsche is further ritualized, or mock ritualized, in The Accursed Share, when he claims he is “the only one who thinks of himself not as a commentator of Nietzsche but as being the same as he.”42 Comparing their relation to that between Saint Teresa and Saint John of the Cross,43 Bataille claims to be “assuming a fundamentally religious attitude”44—​though Nietzsche himself might have preferred his references to a more Dionysiac sacred, such as “the figures of the Mexican Valhalla, simultaneously covered with blood and dying of laughter.”45 Indeed Bataille’s appeal to laughter is not just sacrificial, but above all, at least in theory, self-​sacrificial, apparently to the point of masochism: “the stake is the laughter,” in short, and “the summit from which I laugh at myself is an ‘impaling stake’ which rips me to shreds.”46 He claimed, as we have said, moreover, that literature “only continues the game of religions,” of which it is said to be “the principal heir,” having, above all, “received sacrifice as a legacy,”47 and that “eroticism is analogous to a tragedy . . . precisely inasmuch as love is a kind of immolation.”48 Our postscript will illustrate just how pertinent Bataille’s seemingly outrageous “Nietzschean” perspective remains to twenty-​first-​century art and sex. Indeed his position on the general importance of sacrificial laughter and mock ritual might be almost regarded as an extreme model for our own. We

Summation  131 too have pursued the modern evolution of mock ritual in part via the novel and film; and of course Bataille is not the only artist or philosopher to have linked modern art and eroticism directly to laughter and sacrifice. We previously observed that Samuel Beckett, for instance, figures writing as a kind of mock ritual cannibalism or Eucharist in his novel Malone Dies, and Kafka treats art as a sacrificial or mock sacrificial ritual throughout his work—​for instance, in “The Hunger Artist” and “Josephine the Singer.” Conversely, however, Bataille’s affirmation of sacrificial laughter—​the “impaling stake which rips me to shreds”—​resembles what Ingvild Gilhus, as we saw earlier, calls remythologizations of laughter. Whereas we are already surrounded by medical and self-​help media advertisements for the health benefits of laughter (like sex)—​sometimes not too distant from “resurrection,” or at least longevity and rejuvenation—​Bataille would apparently have us turn laughter (like sex) into an atheological religion. The association of laughter with the teaching of Buddhism has similarly been played up and sometimes ridiculously reinvented by modern interpreters to suit the needs of Western audiences.49 Even the Dalai Lama provides a rather clear example of the issue, perhaps especially interesting given his tendency, as Georges Dreyfus presents it, to devalue ritual.50 “I laugh often,” says this celebrated advocate of scientific as well as Buddhist enlightenment, “and my laughter is contagious. When people ask me how I find the strength to laugh now, I reply that I am a professional laugher.”51 And having at the request of a Swiss radio station done an entire interview without laughing, he claimed he laughed—​mock ritually, one might say—​for a full ten minutes afterward. “ ‘My apologies,’ he told the journalist, ‘I had to catch up. I simply cannot live without laughing!’ ”52 Such championing of “healthy” laughter extends presently from spiritual and even scientific authorities53 to defenders of former president Donald Trump, and stand-​up comedy is as prestigious among millennials as music and cinema. At the same time, as American comedians complain about college campuses, contemporary Western societies also appear schizophrenic on the subject, since we are surrounded by efforts to strictly circumscribe, in the name of justice and enlightenment, the fool’s comic license. The Dalai Lama has himself recently landed in trouble, perhaps deservedly, for joking that a future female Dalai Lama would have to be “very attractive, otherwise not much use.”54 But whereas ritualized scurrility between the sexes has ancient roots and was often symmetrical, jokes about sex and gender are now often treated directly as abuse or “hate speech.” Even the most common

132  Mock Ritual in the Modern Era forms of laughter have a ritual dimension, often playing with the line between maintaining and violating taboo or acceptable decorum, and the question of what kinds of jokes are permitted is fundamental to what is considered sacred in any society.55 In the light of these observations, we may wonder whether humor in contemporary societies is at times more serious than seriousness itself.

Concluding Unscientific Postscript Mock Ritual Now

The serious is not serious and only humor can be warranted as serious. Henri Atlan, Enlightenment to Enlightenment

The importance of mockery and humor in contemporary societies can of course be discussed without reference to the history of ritual or its correlates. Social media techniques of derisive bullying, outing, trolling, and sexual shaming, for example, may be regarded as copycat phenomena in their own right, without considering similarities and differences to folk rituals such as charivari, or other kinds of more or less ritualized derision. Similarly, while considerable attention is often paid to the role of ridicule in contemporary politics,1 this is understandably usually viewed in terms of political strategy, individual personality, or ethics, at a considerable remove from the highly mannered character, for instance, of Louis XVI’s court in Leconte’s film Ridicule.2 Yet precisely one of the main points of the film, as we noted earlier, is surely to question how far the role of ridicule has really advanced since the Enlightenment, if at all, and whether we are more or less aware of its implications than our predecessors.3 Since ritualized laughter was once common in some serious ceremonies, it is worth observing that moderns too often laugh and smile when there is no joke—​for instance, out of embarrassment or politeness. It is also worth repeating that the secularization of laughter occurred extensively within religion itself. The expulsion of laughter from the sacred arguably reached an apogee, in the modern West, in Puritanism, which Max Weber regarded as a model of modern “disenchantment,”4 and which also rejected the serious ritual forms associated with Anglican Protestantism, not to mention the secular theatre. Mock Ritual in the Modern Era. Reginald McGinnis and John Vignaux Smyth, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2022. DOI: 10.1093/​oso/​9780197637432.003.0010

134  Mock Ritual in the Modern Era While modern laughter is usually conceived of as thoroughly secular and even individualistic, it is nevertheless obvious that ordinary bullying techniques, for instance—​as when a group of children circle and ridicule their favorite victim in the school playground—​can be viewed as echoing the forms of scapegoat ritual, unconsciously or otherwise. Such patterns are famously exploited in William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, in which a fat boy wearing glasses nicknamed Piggy is surrounded by derisive jeering before being killed, and in which the human killings are anticipated, first by the killing of a pig, then by “a mock ceremony that gets out of hand” in which another boy plays a pig.5 Here farce repeats itself as tragedy. Golding’s tragedy may also be juxtaposed, from this point of view, to the comedies of Monty Python’s Flying Circus. The Life of Brian, for example, draws a tragicomic parallel between mocking and ritual stoning, and treats the crucifixion—​like the gnostic texts we have mentioned—​as having the structure of a bad joke in which the victim (Brian) is a sacrificial substitute. Other Monty Python sketches exhibit a comparable mock sacrificial pattern. Several of Terry Gilliam’s cartoon animations, for example, involve the violent abuse of children. In one such, a classical painting depicts a woman holding her baby, probably Mary and Jesus. After the painter (also depicted) makes a bad pun—​linking this sketch to the preceding one about a game show for Marxists (Marx, Lenin, Mao, and Che Guevara) who fail to display any knowledge of English football—​the woman says, “Enough bad jokes. And now a bit of fun.” She then slaps the baby’s face repeatedly.6 Another cartoon depicts a woman dislocating a baby’s limbs;7 and a sketch titled “Silly Disturbances (the Rev. Arthur Belling)” features a vicar, played by Michael Palin, who disturbs a couple’s romantic dinner by smashing plates and repeatedly shaking a baby (a rag doll) at them before throwing it violently onto their table.8 By way of a more “highbrow” comparison we may recall Samuel Beckett’s “The Expelled,” containing a comic episode in which his narrator considers killing a child—​“I would have crushed him gladly, I loathe children, and it would have been doing him a service”9—​but ends up knocking over a substitute victim, an old lady, instead. In “Cannibal Babies,” Terry Gilliam’s babies also get their revenge by eating old ladies, making adult-​child abuse mutually reciprocal. The members of Monty Python very likely knew, like Beckett, that ritualized laughter sometimes accompanied initiatory and sacrificial rites of the Isaac type. (Terry Jones was a medievalist who certainly would have known, at any rate, how the Jews were mocked and persecuted for their supposed

Concluding Unscientific Postscript  135 child sacrifices.) But BBC viewers like ourselves, adolescents in the 1970s, of course did not need to know anything like this to laugh—​or, like our mothers, be appalled. Rather, such sketches simply exploited the fact that mock violence directed against innocents, the more innocent the better, can be funny, and also our metalevel amusement or “guilty” insight that all that was needed to make us giggle was such mock child abuse. Such examples also illustrate the futility of universal rules about what kinds of jokes should be prohibited.10 In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the BBC broadcast Monty Python late at night. Conceivably such comic child abuse might be banned nowadays on mainstream networks, as might another Python sketch about an athletics race for disabled hospital patients, which could perhaps be construed as an unacceptable parody of the Paralympic Games or the like.11 Indeed, had Gilliam’s cartoons entailed sexual abuse, the BBC itself would doubtless have banned them—​not because sexual abuse is worse than nonsexual assault, but because the former is now, in the affluent West, far closer to home. As regards the connection of these sketches to religion, it is also ideal for our purposes that “Silly Disturbances” entails the romantic couple’s conversion to the vicar’s “disturbing” violations of decorum and taboo, so that they not only start doing the same thing at home, but end by going to church, St. Loony’s, every Sunday to do it there. “Disturbing” comedy is directly presented, in short, as a religious rite. Yet laughter and mockery are of course nowadays typically unofficial, like a judge’s jokes in a courtroom, or an epigraph from Alice through the Looking-​ Glass in a scientific paper. As suggested by the motto Ridendo castigat mores, they are also traditionally the unofficial face or instrument of justice or injustice, as the case may be—​sometimes ministering to other unofficial instruments of justice or injustice, as we have seen, such as dueling. We have also observed that ridicule is very often, and relatedly, the unofficial face of official claims to rationality or objectivity. Mathematicians speak of proof by reductio ad absurdum, whereby a false hypothesis can be shown to lead to a contradiction. But where no contradiction can be demonstrated—​as in the case of many of the most important disagreements—​we may nevertheless portray our opponents’ arguments as basically absurd. In this sense, humor is again more decisive than seriousness, as Henri Atlan remarks. Enlightenment critiques of religion obviously frequently relied on this technique, as well as vice–​versa.12 And it evidently occurs nowadays in myriad forms, not just in Christopher Hitchens–​or Richard Dawkins–​style polemics

136  Mock Ritual in the Modern Era like God Is Not Great and The God Delusion, but in intellectual duels over secular philosophical positions such as “absolutism” and “relativism,” for example, or arguments about the existence or nonexistence of “free will” as we shall see shortly, not to mention a host of other issues. Our focus on the extensive interrelation between laughter and ritual should also highlight the fact that just as there is no absolute distinction between ritualized and nonritualized laughter, so what modern Western people tend to call “ritual” or “ritualized” usually depends not only upon whether they are favorably inclined toward the behaviors in question, but on a set of family resemblances rather than an analytic definition.13 Evidently, circumcision is called a ritual when performed for religious or ethnic reasons, but a surgical procedure by doctors who believe in its medical efficacy. Evidently, we are surrounded by all kinds of behaviors—​religious or not—​that are often called rituals or pseudo-​rituals, such as the Freemasons’ ceremony where the initiate is led in with a noose around his neck,14 college fraternity initiations, ISIS killings, or the American president’s pardoning of the Thanksgiving turkey. Modern boxing is generally called a sport, but if boxers more often died in the ring (rather than merely developing brain damage) it would likely often be called a ritual, like dueling.15 Boxers are also associated with “ritualistic superstitions” that Erving Goffman has compared to those of gamblers who “exhibit similar, if less religious, superstitions.”16 Professional wrestling, on the other hand, might be called a mock ritual as well as lurid spectacle because it is a sham, and entails pain exaggerated theatrically to the maximum degree.17 Much theatre and cinema can be conceived along comparable lines. According to Barbara Creed, “Human sacrifice as a religious abomination is constructed as the abject in virtually all horror films”;18 and Jon Pahl has described the film Hostel (2005), for example, as belonging to the kind of “torture porn” in which directors and producers “become postmodern shamans and priests,” conducting initiations for the young.19 Even much milder fictions, like the detective stories of G. K. Chesterton and Agatha Christie, highlight the “joke” that kindly priests and polite old ladies are supreme experts in ruthless murder; and the detective genre as a whole, like tragedy and horror films, obviously depends quasi-​r itually on its victims—​on the body in the library. Insofar as we emphasize their fictional character, moreover, all such artistic rituals are “mock,” just as a French comédien is an actor, a mere player, however superficially grave.

Concluding Unscientific Postscript  137 That violence or mock violence, as well as a more or less formalized and mimetic character, is often a key ingredient to what we call ritual is obvious. We are more inclined to call executions rituals, whether performed by ISIS or the state of Texas, than the issuing of fines or parking tickets.20 Indeed, our previously quoted line from Cormac McCarthy defines the difference between ritual and mock ritual merely in terms of the presence or absence of blood. However, when form or symbolism seems sufficiently to triumph over substance, almost anything can be regarded as “ritualized.” We have already mentioned placebo and nocebo effects in modern medicine that bear analogy with archaic practices.21 And Goffman, for instance, uses the term ritual to describe any activity, “however informal and secular,” in which “the individual must guard and design the symbolic implications of his acts while in the immediate presence of an object that has special value for him,” whether this be another person or “some object or idol, as when a sailor salutes the quarterdeck upon boarding ship, or when a Catholic genuflects to the altar.”22 Similarly, when Jean-​Pierre Dupuy in The Mark of the Sacred treats democratic voting as a “rite,” he emphasizes that, according to Kenneth Arrow’s theorem, outcomes may, even in principle, be determined by formal procedures, and, in practice, that modern Oregon voters, to take a banal example, have never needed to vote in the presidential election.23 In the latter case, Oregonians sacrifice, not (at least directly) their blood, but time and money to vote for symbolic reasons, to affirm their formal commitment to the “ritual,” “game,” or “ideal” of democracy. Needless to say, the labels of “game” and “play” often overlap with and may even substitute for “ritual,” not only in post-​Nietzschean and post-​ Wittgensteinian views of the world, but also those influenced by Johan Huizinga’s famous theory of play in Homo Ludens, Henri Atlan’s elaboration of “man-​as-​game” in Enlightenment to Enlightenment,24 and many comparable conceptions in a variety of disciplines and traditions, including non-​ Western ones.25 Especially when rituals are deprived of their transcendental or external warranty, religious or otherwise, or are sufficiently attenuated to appear like the mock rituals of carnival or even nursery rhymes (for instance in “London Bridge”26), they tend to be renamed and reconceived as play, art, or spectacle. On the other hand, the same passage can obviously be traversed in the opposite direction; and especially “games” or “performances” that are organized around taboos and fetishes, like so-​called sex play, for example, or “transgressive” works of art, offer an evident continuity of sorts (as the terms taboo and fetish suggest) with the sacred.

138  Mock Ritual in the Modern Era Many festive and laughing games, too, like the French galette des rois or the Mexican piñata, are believed to have sacred or ritual origins,27 and modern sports are regularly compared to mock warfare, what J. A. Mangan calls “war without weapons,” in which physical education is conceived as “a ritual process.”28 Pier Paolo Pasolini claimed, with some exaggeration, that “football is the last sacred ritual of our time.”29 More pragmatically, while watching a game of cricket at Eton, the Duke of Wellington famously remarked that “the Battle of Waterloo was won here,”30 regarding sport as a dress rehearsal for more serious matters. One should not forget, however, that serious warfare itself has often been ludicrously unpragmatic, as in eighteenth-​century battles where opposing troops lined up neatly in a row and exchanged fire, a masochistic strategy memorably depicted in Stanley Kubrick’s film of Thackeray’s The Memoirs of Barry Lyndon, Esq. (a book that similarly highlights the absurdities of dueling). We may also recall that during the First World War German and British troops played football with each other on Christmas day before resuming the killing again after Boxing Day, a practice almost unimaginable now. Although the Duke of Wellington’s remark about cricket emphasizes the relation between sport and violence, it does not unduly confuse them. When the British outlawed the Trobriand islanders’ ritualized warfare, on the other hand, it is notable that the islanders notoriously, and doubtless rather mockingly, imported the symbolic apparatus of ritual warfare into cricket, including teams that could sometimes number more than fifty instead of eleven. The game was altered, moreover, so that each “out” was followed by a celebratory dance performed by the opposing team, often with a sexual content, and mocking the other team. Interestingly, this ritualized version of the game also entailed the rule that the home team always won, whereas in modern sport this “rule” is statistical, based on what is referred to as homefield advantage, the effect of crowd support.31 Thus, the Trobriand ritual loser was known in advance, as though by fate, just as in Monty Python’s “Batsmen of the Kalahari: Cricket Match” the outcome is inevitable because the Kalahari bowlers use spears instead of cricket balls against hapless English players all called “Pratt” (“prat” being a British term of abuse meaning fool or arse).32 In Peter Greenaway’s film Drowning by Numbers, similarly, almost all of its many grotesque games, including a version of cricket, are explicitly mock sacrificial in character.33 Of course, any game (or society) with winners must have losers, and in sporting or musical contests, for example, the procedure is usually that losers

Concluding Unscientific Postscript  139 are progressively eliminated from the tournament until only one winner remains (who sometimes modestly says, “It’s not winning or losing that counts, but playing the game or the music,” etc.). However, in contemporary so-​ called reality TV shows like the American Survivor or British Big Brother, where losers are also eliminated successively, the focus on the loser is nevertheless visibly accentuated, since losers are chosen in turn, either by the other players (in Survivor) or by the mass audience (in Big Brother). This contrasts starkly with games where losers and winners are selected, if not by fate, then at least by factors (talent, health, confidence on the day, etc.) certainly beyond the control of the audience, and usually the players. Furthermore, whereas in Strictly Come Dancing, for example, what is being judged is (in theory at least) dancing skill, in Big Brother contestants are voted off, frequently, simply because the mass audience doesn’t like them, and indeed mocks them as repulsive, morally or otherwise, like Nietzsche’s “ugliest man”—​or very often, in Big Brother, woman. One suspects that the attraction of The Apprentice, for example, depended as much on the slogan “You’re fired” as on anything else; and many suicides have been linked to shows like Love Island, the British equivalent of Survivor.34 Voltaire mocked the Lisbon auto-​da-​fé as a fraud insofar as it was scapegoating dressed up as Catholic ritual justice. One may dislike Big Brother, similarly, as a series of expulsions dressed up as a supposedly progressive reality TV show. In “proper” ritual, as the Trobrianders illustrate, the victim is characteristically determined by fate—​whether by chance (as in the goat of Leviticus) or by rule (as in Trobriand cricket)—​and this is precisely what is required, of course, in order to exteriorize or objectivize the process, and hence to distinguish ritual sacrifice from naked aggression. In Big Brother, on the other hand, fate enacts its decrees in the “ejections” voted on, one imagines, by an often rather unpleasant subset of the British viewing public. On this side of the Atlantic, perhaps no TV reality show illustrates the relevance of our subject so thoroughly as Survivor. A runaway hit from the beginning, the show’s success has been attributed, among other things, to its format (originally inspired by the Swedish Expedition Robinson), its slick production, and diverse casting. In its inaugural season, sixteen people of different ages and professions would spend thirty-​nine days with virtually no supplies on a remote island off the coast of Borneo. Every third day, one of the participants would be voted off the island until only one remained. Viewers of Survivor identified with the situations of average Americans whose lives and work resembled their own. People were drawn into the

140  Mock Ritual in the Modern Era drama of the competition as it unfolded, seduced by the intrigue of alliances, friendships, and betrayals, either cheering or lamenting the results of the vote. From our perspective, it is hard not to notice the pseudo-​religious aura surrounding the entire production, and more specifically the various elements of mock ritual. Participants were separated into two tribes that vied with each other for possession of a sacred idol granting the winners immunity from the weekly voting ritual. The vote took place at a meeting called a tribal council amid faux-​Mayan columns and tiki torches symbolizing life, with the torch belonging to the person eliminated being snuffed out as host Jeff Probst ritually recited the words, “The tribe has spoken.”35 An area for contestants wishing to vent emotions alone into the camera was known as the confessional. There is a visible incongruity in the spectacle of sixteen average Americans acting out the rituals and obeying the supposed gods of the distant Pulau Tiga. The participants do not look like they could believe the immunity idol had the power to spare them from the voting exercise or that the fire of the torches actually corresponded to their life, except as part of a game that one might think could equally be played in the absence of religious ornaments. While the infusing of what is essentially a competition among Americans with Malaysian mythological imagery may seem unconvincing or frivolous, the situations created on the show resonated strongly with viewers at home who, according to Jennifer Thackaberry’s analysis, saw parallels with contemporary office politics, calling Survivor “a replica of the American workplace” or a “parable of corporate life.”36 Viewers recognized, for instance, as Thackaberry writes, “sudden and binding corporate layoffs in the way ousted Survivor contestants were immediately banished from the tribal council,”37 and the eventual winner, Richard Hatch, was seen as representing the corporate ritual of promoting business “by falsely encouraging everyone to get along.”38 For some, the parallels were “so compelling that they began to talk and write about what might be learned about actual office politics in the workplace by watching the show.”39 And since office politics, according to Thackaberry, is often a “taboo” topic in everyday workplaces, discussing Survivor “may have offered people a new opportunity to talk about ‘real’ office politics.”40 The genealogy of Survivor may be traced to both popular and what we may broadly call literary culture. In his companion book to the show, producer Mark Burnett mentions, for instance, an episode of Gilligan’s Island where Gilligan is made to endure a rite of passage to prove himself worthy of marriage to a native woman41 while acknowledging having borrowed from

Concluding Unscientific Postscript  141 cultural anthropology and religious ritual42 as well as from William Golding’s The Lord of the Flies.43 From The Lord of the Flies, one arrives quickly in the nineteenth century with R. M. Ballantyne’s The Coral Island, which was famously Golding’s model. And from Ballantyne, it is only a short step to the eighteenth century, since The Coral Island was influenced by Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, which Jean-​Jacques Rousseau had praised as “the most felicitous treatise on natural education” ever written.44 We will return to the theme of “enlightened” education at the end, after readdressing three other subjects that have played a prominent role in the previous chapters, and that are central to what is still called a “liberal education”: justice, sexuality, and art. Since we have dealt with these topics mainly via eighteenth-​and nineteenth-​century materials (rituals of sexual modesty via Sterne and Diderot, for instance, or justice via dueling), we conclude our analysis by bringing it up to date, invoking a number of more recent examples and dilemmas in addition to those mentioned earlier. Our approach to such grand themes, of course, is necessarily schematic. But our examples suggest that far from having become less “ritualistic” (or more “rational”) in the twentieth and the twenty-​first centuries, many aspects of behavior, not to mention theory, in these areas seem equally or more so, however this may sometimes be concealed (in the case of sex or art, for example) under the cover of parody or “performance.” We begin with some aspects and discussions of contemporary justice, presumably a matter of the utmost seriousness. Judge Judy is a popular American daytime reality show that has aired continuously on CBS since 1996. Its star, Judith Sheindlin, a former Manhattan family court judge, is known particularly “for her sharp tongue and no-​nonsense wit”45 and for her ethic of personal responsibility. From the parodying of judicial ritual in the introduction, for instance, where Sheindlin poses as Lady Justice peeking out from under her blindfold,46 to the ridiculing of litigants in the execution of television justice,47 Judge Judy displays various aspects of what we have been calling mock ritual. While Sheindlin dresses the part of a judge, “wearing a robe and even a collar like the ones worn by Supreme Court Justice Ginsburg and former Justice O’Connor,” her behavior, as Nancy S. Marder observes, “is entirely inappropriate.”48 Regular judges do not, for instance, “insult those who appear before them,” “make jokes at the parties’ expense, or look for laughs from the public spectators.”49

142  Mock Ritual in the Modern Era Marder is not alone in noting Sheindlin’s habit of making jokes and inciting laughter in the audience. Similar observations are found in countless newspaper articles and online commentaries. Sheindlin will sometimes laugh directly at plaintiffs or defendants, either in summarizing their argument, or simply calling them idiots. If a litigant is flippant with her, Sheindlin will declare that she is “the only one who makes jokes” on her show. Usually the party mocked by Sheindlin ends up losing the case, an object of derision not only for the studio audience but also, as Sheindlin herself observes, for millions of television viewers.50 Anyone shocked by the judge’s frank incorporation of mockery into quite serious, if relatively minor, judicial procedures may be unpleasantly reminded that the global history of justice is likely to appear to any fair-​ minded person as quite generally a mockery. Hardly more grotesque than the burning of supposed witches who survived their trials by dunking—​ while those drowned were notoriously declared innocent—​has been the ongoing use of torture to obtain confessions, for instance, not to mention extreme punishments for petty theft and sexual deviance of various sorts that have regularly been imposed worldwide. Moreover, while it is perhaps nowadays hard to swallow that many of those responsible for such practices—​ that often seem retrospectively like bad jokes—​genuinely believed in their justice, future generations will doubtless be equally incredulous that we too have regarded it as just to jail people for life for such offenses as petty drug-​ dealing, for example, or even possession of very similar kinds of drugs to those that doctors prescribe, sometimes forcibly, to children with “behavioral disorders” or obesity.51 And this kind of example, whose ritualistic character is highlighted by Thomas Szasz’s Ceremonial Chemistry: The Ritual Persecution of Drugs, Addicts, and Pushers, is only the tip of the iceberg. The frequently absurd paradoxes surrounding modern capital punishment are beyond our remit here; but we may note in passing that while attempted suicide was until recently illegal,52 and punishable by imprisonment, as it still is in many places—​or even, risibly, death53—​admitting to suicidal thoughts (which Albert Camus argued was the mark of a serious philosopher)54 may still be reason for being incarcerated indefinitely in a mental hospital. Given its history—​and in considerable tension with contemporary enthusiasm for justice of both leftist and rightist persuasions—​it is thus hardly surprising that some of the most careful thinkers on the subject have concluded that, far from being wholly desirable, justice, especially criminal justice, but also supposedly benign medical para-​justice, is very largely an almost

Concluding Unscientific Postscript  143 unmitigated evil, albeit to some degree a necessary one.55 Even in a world without corruption, after all, we would surely by mistake execute and imprison many innocent as well as guilty parties. Meanwhile, American lawyer Alan Dershowitz has recently claimed that 90 percent of those accused in US federal courts plead guilty, whether or not they are so, because a not-​guilty plea may lead to a sentence ten times more severe.56 In answer to the question of whether “we will ever arrive one day at freeing judicial proceedings [le procès] from their ceremonial trappings [sa gangue imaginaire], their symbolic violence and archaic elements,” French judge Antoine Garapon has replied that “alas, everything would seem to indicate that we will not,” and that therefore it is necessary “to try to rethink justice not against, but along with ritual.”57 Citing Garapon, Pascal Lardellier has similarly remarked that while “dispensing justice in a purely functional manner would disenchant it,” “the ceremonial pomp and dress inherent in the trial are not simply useful, but absolutely indispensable (at any rate in the [French] judicial system).”58 At first, then, the position taken by the famous twentieth-​ century American philosopher W. V. O. Quine might seem like a breath of fresh air, offering a rational way out of such a ritualistic perspective. For like many contemporary scientists and philosophers of various intellectual and political stripes,59 Quine proposed that criminal justice be reconceived along lines that do away with the superstition of “free will” in the traditional sense—​the hypothesis that we may at least sometimes choose to do otherwise than what we do—​and therefore with any justifications that are not purely functional and founded squarely, as he argues, on deterrence. Readers may doubtless be amused—​or not—​to find that we are thus suddenly back again in the quasi-​Spinozan world of Jacques le fataliste: a world in which Jacques’s amateur doctrine that he is not ultimately responsible for anything he does,60 inherited from his military captain, and thence supposedly from Spinoza, makes everything have the structure of a joke, or at any rate a comic novel. Whereas the Christian doctrine of “free will” was seen by Christian philosophers and others as liberating the world from pernicious superstitions concerning fate—​where Oedipus, for instance, was supposed to have become “guilty” of parricide and incest in a manner quite beyond his control—​Quine and others turn the tables, and accordingly seem to reverse the superstitious stakes, in a way that dramatically returns us to fate, whether deterministic or aleatory,61 though naturally in a way that is presented as thoroughly up to date, emancipated, and scientific. Though Quine is slightly

144  Mock Ritual in the Modern Era more cautious than some other thinkers, we observe that the idea of “free will” is now often dismissed as a metaphysical delusion or self-​intoxication, whether religious or merely mock religious, as when its proponents are atheists supposed to be suffering from a metaphysical hangover.62 Moreover, whereas we have begun here with examples of merely local judicial mockeries, dependent on particular individuals or societies, denial of “free will” of course has radical implications for justice anywhere at any time. The “joke” thus becomes quasi-​universal; or at any rate turns almost all current “enlightened” practices—​employing judges, juries, and laws generally presupposing “illusory” commonsensical notions of volition63—​into mock rituals of a truly breathtaking order. It has even been argued that “it is in general better to live under the illusion of free will than to embrace free will skepticism.”64 “This position is called ‘illusionism,’ ”65 and is comparable to the role of what Quine calls “wholesome delusion”66 in connection with the beneficial effects of religion. When asked whether he believed in free will, Christopher Hitchens was not the first to make the Jacques-​like joke that he had no choice. Henri Atlan calls this illusory sense of free will a “ruse of nature.”67 Since many thousands of pages have been written on this subject, we do not propose to make ourselves the latest butt of the joke by claiming to resolve the problem.68 Instead we observe, as has been observed by others, that “philosophical discussion of the dilemma often resembles ‘a dialogue of the deaf,’ ”69 a mock ritual in which victory is declared by derision, inasmuch as neither side concedes the rationality of the other.70 Moreover, we have cited Quine not just because he was self-​confident enough to treat the matter in a mere few paragraphs of his openly Voltairean philosophical dictionary Quiddities, and with characteristic wit,71 but also because his analysis shows with exemplary clarity how the attempt to rid justice of the supposed superstitions and rituals associated with “free will” remains ambivalent. Observing that “causal determinism applies widely, surely, even if not universally,” and that “it may very well hold for human behavior,”72 Quine makes explicit the implications of the latter assumption: “If one’s choices are determined by prior events, and ultimately by forces outside oneself, then how can one choose otherwise? Very well, one cannot.” Making the same point as Jacques’s captain, that “the enjoyment of freedom which could be exercised without any motivation would be the real hallmark of a maniac,”73 he adds, “But freedom to choose to do otherwise than what one likes or sees fit would be a sordid boon.”74 Accordingly, “the social efficacy” of the penal system

Concluding Unscientific Postscript  145 “does not hinge on freedom of will as opposed to causal determinism”; and inasmuch as “punishment deters by setting an example to lend credence to threat,” this, “and not the sweetness of revenge, is its utility.”75 Having edifyingly expelled “sweet revenge” and its mock rituals from justice in theory, however, he then immediately rehabilitates them in practice: “Still, let outrage and vengefulness not be deplored; they have survival value in social evolution by sustaining the institution of punishment. It might otherwise languish under pressure of fellow feeling, which is also a lively social force, valuable in its place.”76 Thus, just as mockery is usually nowadays, at least in theory, banished from the solemnity of the legal rituals that condemn even, and especially, the most serious criminals,77 so here the ritualistic and superstitious vengefulness cast out at the theoretical door immediately comes in again through the practical one—​and not even, as in Hocart’s dictum, in disguise. It is this transparency that is at once shocking and admirable in Quine’s droll analysis. Other advocates of the same position are not always so clear, or so laconic.78 In returning now to the themes of sexuality and art, subjects characteristically interrelated, we do not leave behind the problem of justice. Rather, in making explicit some of the ritual and mock ritual aspects of sex and art in the contemporary world, we seek to extend some of the key points and patterns we have already broached in Diderot, Sterne, and Flaubert. In Madame Bovary, for example, we saw how modern eroticism is consistently conceived along mock sacrificial lines, and how Flaubert portrays himself as an artistic joker. We have also several times discussed ways in which art and eroticism overlap with the secularization of the sacred. Matthew Arnold’s famous line that “most of what now passes with us for religion will be replaced by poetry” is consistent with (though his perspective is very different from) Georges Bataille’s earlier-​cited view of literature and art as continuing the “game” of religions. Perhaps more importantly, even those whom the arts and religion leave cold seem often to be mesmerized in one way or another by sex. The experience of erotic love is arguably, as the biblical Song of Songs suggests, the closest profane analogy to a “religious” experience of sacred objects—​perhaps especially for people who regard themselves as thoroughly secular. And of course the mock sacrality of sex does not necessarily dissipate when “romantic” feelings are absent, as pornography and many other sexual behaviors make clear. “Sex is always sacred,” it has been argued; “whether it is religious or not depends on the attitude of the particular society.”79

146  Mock Ritual in the Modern Era Samuel Beckett makes the same point in characteristic fashion by punning on “sacrum,” the pelvic bone.80 That sex is connected to both sacrifice and ritualized laughter is evident in many cultures. For instance, according to Roberto Calasso’s striking account of the Vedic tradition, “Every sacrificial act is interwoven with a sexual act. And vice-​versa.”81 Laughter and “irreverence towards the gods” (“no god is mocked and jeered more than Indra, the king of kings”)82 are intrinsic to the rituals that “recount the comedy of seduction.”83 Similarly, Mahdi Tourage has stressed the sexual undertones of the Arabic term for sacrifice, Q-​R-​B, the root form of qurban—​identical to the word korban in the Hebrew Bible—​linking it to the term muqāraba, a derivative of QaRuBa, meaning “raising the leg (or the legs, of a woman)” for penetration.84 Meanwhile, Henri Atlan remarks that “the Hebrew root (s.h.q) that designates both game and laughter in the Bible is read by the Midrash as designating sexual intercourse.”85 Along comparable lines, in a chapter titled “The Sexualization of Ritual Killing,” Hellenist and anthropologist Walter Burkert stresses not merely the general anthropological significance of such sexualization, but also that it is bound up with patterns of ritual substitution that are, as we saw in the Isaac case, fundamentally linked to laughter: “The larger the phallus, the greater the element of humor. . . . For man, the inventor of serious weapons, the lighthearted threats in obscene gestures are all too transparent. Aggression dissolves into laughter.”86 We have also noted a kind of secularized version of this double relation to violence and laughter in Diderot’s Jacques le fataliste, where sex is figured as putting a knife in a sheath on the one hand, and as laughing at (or with) somebody on the other. Shakespeare anticipates Diderot on both counts.87 When Juliet, stabbing herself at the end of Romeo and Juliet, famously cries, “O happy dagger, this is thy sheath!” she is evidently a hairsbreadth from obscene comedy.88 Her tragic suicide literalizes what should be a mock sacrifice and a “little death.” The knife in the sheath should be a figure of peace, not stabbing. In our own time many people have taken, like Juliet, only rather more self-​consciously, to incarnating such figures of violence. It is not uncommonly argued that sexual sadomasochism, for example, is quintessentially modern, even “a ritual for the modern age,”89 and Michel Foucault claimed that “Sadism is not a name finally given to a practice as old as Eros” but “a massive cultural fact which appeared precisely at the end of the eighteenth

Concluding Unscientific Postscript  147 century.”90 Instead of dreaming up tortures and humiliations for their political or religious enemies, as in Shakespeare’s day, people now devise mock tortures and humiliations for their lovers or themselves, often making this theatre of cruelty as “serious” and fully embodied as possible. Secular modernity may perhaps generally lack a taste for old-​fashioned celebration of sacrifice or “curative” violence, as Roberto Calasso suggests,91 but, if so, it seems to focus much of what is allowably left of this taste on modern eroticism and art. Not uncommonly, pornographers, performance artists, and sadomasochistic practitioners make an explicit connection with religious or penal rituals by imitating or parodying them. Among a plethora of possible examples, we cite Ron Athey’s 1992 performance piece titled Martyrs and Saints, which might be summarized as a cross between modern pornography and a gnostic black mass.92 Athey, raised as a Pentecostal Christian, is presented as practicing “sadomasochistic ritual as a personal religion, using it as a means of transcendence.”93 Like other such performers, he is often viewed as antipatriarchal,94 using his theatrical rituals purportedly to mock paternal authority—​a kind of modern version, one might say, of the ritual ridiculing of the king. Because sadomasochism is often touted as a “game,” entailing mock rather than serious ritual, it is not surprising that humor and laughter are often deployed in both highbrow and lowbrow treatments of the subject. Pornography regularly codifies the flagellation of men (especially old and ugly ones) as comic, while the torture of beautiful women (and gay men) is more often presented as deadly serious and even poetic. (As Edgar Allen Poe put it, the death “of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world.”95) Meanwhile, such philosophers as Gilles Deleuze have gone so far as to align sadism and masochism, rather technically, with “irony” and “humor,” respectively, recalling the opposition between aggressive wit and self-​deprecating humor we discussed previously.96 Nevertheless, according to Deleuze, “For the masochist, the modern contract as it is elaborated in the bedroom corresponds to the oldest rites once enacted in the swamps and the steppes.”97 Given Michel Foucault’s enduring prestige as a cultural theorist, as well as his practical embrace of sadomasochistic practices (recounted, for instance, in the Christologically titled The Passion of Michel Foucault), it is worth noting that his own History of Sexuality is ambivalent, if not downright sardonic, about any modern “invitation to eliminate taboos”98 or promise of sexual “liberation.”99 Foucault’s political call to arms concerned

148  Mock Ritual in the Modern Era not “sex-​desire,” he claimed, but “bodies and pleasures”;100 and indeed he explicitly associated so-​called BDSM activities with “the desexualization of pleasure,”101 emphasizing also the kind of pleasures to be had with strangers, people one does not love, or (presumably) even “sexually” desire. Henri Atlan has discussed the desexualization of the sacred102—​and hence the supposed desacralization of sex—​in modernity. It seems to us, however, that precisely when both the sacred and pleasure are supposedly desexualized, the latter, for Foucault and Deleuze, in sadomasochistic practices that often resemble, even when they do not exactly copy, “the oldest rites,” we see the clearest possible connection between them.103 And though contemporary cultural theorists often emphasize the “subversive” parodic element of BDSM rituals or mock rituals104—​whether gay, lesbian, straight, or trans—​we have seen that this mock or mocking element is, often, an intrinsic part of the “serious” originals. All this is by no means to suggest, despite Deleuze’s claim about the swamps and the steppes, that modern sexuality merely repeats archaic models (any more than “primitivist” art is really primitive), or that its precise forms of ritualization as well as rationalization aren’t themselves largely original to modernity. Foucault’s dating of sadomasochism to the Enlightenment period may of course be questioned or even mocked, but other non-​Foucauldian historians and theoreticians have taken comparable positions, including those for whom the physical theater of sadomasochism is emphatically secondary to the psychological and social patterns that characterize quite “normal” eroticism in modernity.105 According to Pierre Bourdieu, not just sadomasochism but pure love, “the art for art’s sake of love, is a relatively recent historical invention”;106 and in “the economy of symbolic exchanges” the “supreme form is the gift of self, and of one’s body, a sacred object, excluded from commercial circulation.”107 Erotic love therefore now incarnates “a powerful symbolic autarky,” and “becomes endowed with the power to rival successfully all the consecrations that are ordinarily asked of the institutions and rites of ‘Society,’ the secular substitute for God.”108 Beyond the theater of sadomasochism, such a mock divinity doubtless demands rituals and sacrifices of various types and degrees, as we saw in Madame Bovary. Leaving aside modern eating disorders and health regimes that appear to have the form of quasi-​ascetic practices, for example, or plastic surgeries aimed blatantly at good looks and rejuvenation, one of the most dramatic physical “sacrifices” important to the politics and ideology of twenty-​first-​century sexuality occurs in transsexual surgery, which attempts,

Concluding Unscientific Postscript  149 literally, to incarnate one’s desired or felt “gender identity.” Not only does this usually entail risky, costly, and often traumatic medical and compulsory psychiatric procedures, but far from undermining the so-​called binary structure of male and female roles, as is often recommended by those who see themselves as sexually progressive, it affirms that binary to the utmost degree—​ even or especially when a man, for example, changes sex in order to become lesbian with his wife. Here, far from being a joke, even if it has the structure of one, what Virginia Woolf called the “mystic boundary”109 between men and women seems once again elevated to quasi-​transcendental status. Yet writer Jan (originally James) Morris, to take a famous case, who has remained with wife Elizabeth Tuckniss for over sixty years, was able to say that “nothing important changed in their relationship except that detail she [Morris] refers to as ‘this sex-​change thing—​so-​called.’  ”110 Of course, one of the most obvious staples of comedy, both traditional and contemporary, conservative and liberal, has been cross-​dressing and other forms of so-​called gender bending. Where violation of Woolf ’s mystic boundary has not provoked disgust or outrage, it has traditionally provoked laughter in the West—​and in so-​called archaic societies cross-​gendered people, such as the “not-​men” and “not-​women” of North American tribes, or the “bissu” of Sulawesi in Indonesia, also often play an important sacred role, with all the ambivalence that often entails, including an association with laughter, whether more or less benign.111 Among the Winnebago, for example, the “true berdache” was revered, while the “false” or mock berdache, sometimes forced into the role as punishment, was derided.112 While we are certainly not proposing to call sex-​change surgeries “rituals,” the adoption of postures, practices, and mannerisms associated with a given sex evidently belongs to ritualization in Erving Goffman’s sense, one that applies to gendered behavior generally. Moreover, because modern transsexuals transform their original sex by surgeries more radical than ritual or medical practices like circumcision, or even so-​called female circumcision,113 not to mention the role-​playing of transgendered people in traditional societies, we face here a reversal of the pattern of ritual attenuation by which sacrificing boys like Isaac would have been replaced in time by circumcising them, for example, or executing kings by pretending to do so. Rather than merely “playing” or “performing” symbolic roles, such as adopting the habits and dress of the other sex, like modern transvestites or like women who “passed” as men in the past, contemporary transsexuals

150  Mock Ritual in the Modern Era evidently do something more “serious” and physically drastic, as though gendered souls or “identities” could find themselves in the wrong body, and discard it like inappropriate clothes. Not surprisingly, then, the issue often violently splits “homosexuals” as well as “heterosexuals,”114 “progressives” as well as “conservatives,” particularly when the medical process begins in preadolescence by the delaying of puberty.115 The main point for us, however, lies not in the medical outcomes and costs but in the simple fact that what in traditional societies was often a sacred matter is now legally considered a purely medical one, best evaluated by psychiatrists, sexologists, and surgeons, and that “instead of scrutinizing the nature of ‘transsexualism,’ sexologists are now busily attacking and defending sex-​change operations.”116 In particular, since gender identity and sexual orientation, whatever their biological or genetic dimension, are certainly to a considerable degree malleable and mimetic—​made as well as found—​it is all the more important that contemporary societies not descend into a polarized secular parody of the Winnebago pattern by alternately deriding transsexuals, as do bigots, and regarding them as models of sexual emancipation. It is also worth observing that the political issue comes to a head in the contemporary West less commonly over an informed debate about gender, including the relevance of ethnological models, than over the rituals of modest defecation and the use of public toilets, as though we were living in a political comedy by Aristophanes. Especially considering that defecation and urination have not always been either private, to say the least, or strictly gendered, it is perhaps difficult to guess whether future generations will regard our battles over who can use whose “restroom” as more comic or tragic.117 Apropos, we may cite W. B. Yeats’s Crazy Jane—​doubtless, in a sense, the poet’s own cross-​gendered alter ego—​who concludes “Crazy Jane Talks to the Bishop” as follows: But Love has pitched his mansion in The place of excrement; For nothing can be sole or whole That has not been rent.

Applied by Crazy Jane to erotic love, we shall see in a moment how both dimensions of this formula, the excremental and the ritualistic “rending,” are also more or less directly applicable to two famous works of modern art.

Concluding Unscientific Postscript  151 It is hardly news that what we call “art” has had a long-​standing and complex relation, not only with ritual, but also with illusion, parody, and fraud, and that this relation has been underlined not just by its enemies, but by some of the most prestigious artists. There is also no shortage of examples that present art, including especially modern art,118 as a kind of mock ritual. We have already highlighted Sterne’s mock sacrifice of Yorick in Tristram Shandy, Diderot’s comic scapegoating of the pitchforked curate in Jacques le fataliste, as well as Flaubert’s portrayal of himself as the punster Vaufrylard helping Charles select Emma’s kitsch tombstone in Madame Bovary. We have also mentioned Samuel Beckett’s allegory of his writing, in Malone Dies, as a symbolic mock cannibalism like that of the Eucharist. Especially useful for our discussion of twentieth-​and twenty-​first-​century art, however, is Franz Kafka’s portrayal of what he calls “musicians” in “Investigations of a Dog.” These dogs are not literal musicians, but rather dancers or performance artists of a kind, where the effect of their gymnastics is described as a kind of “music” experienced by the young dog of the story as an overwhelming violence that appears paradoxically to cure itself.119 Their art consists of breaching two of the canine community’s most important rules: first, by standing on their hind legs, revealing their private parts, thus violating the public rituals of modest concealment; and second, by refusing to answer questions about what they are doing, a violation not just of the rituals of politeness, one might say, but of all serious “accountability.” That the status of their “art” or “music” depends frankly on the violation of sexual and social taboo—​anticipating many more recent “artists”120—​is itself quite striking. And if we turn now to consider Marcel Duchamp’s celebrated Fountain (1917)—​voted by five hundred artists and art professionals, in 2004, as the most influential visual artwork of the twentieth century—​several analogies with Kafka’s model are worth noting. Often revered as the inaugural work of so-​called conceptual art, Fountain consisted of a urinal that was never exhibited. Having submitted the commercial porcelain pissoir under the name R. Mutt—​though he apparently repeatedly claimed, even to his sister, that “a female friend” had submitted the work121—​Duchamp resigned from the board of directors that organized the 1917 exhibition for the Society of Independent Artists when it was hidden from view during the show, both for decorum’s sake and because a urinal entirely unmodified was not considered to be a bona fide work of art. (The rules of the show were that all works would be accepted if the correct fee was paid.) Photographed once by Alfred Stieglitz, the actual urinal disappeared

152  Mock Ritual in the Modern Era without a trace. However, Duchamp allowed “copies” to be exhibited in Milan in 1957, one selling for over $1.7 million in 1999, and several are currently exhibited in prestigious galleries like the Tate in London (which has a 1964 version authorized by Duchamp). Like Kafka’s dogs standing on their hind legs, Fountain evidently shocks and mocks by violating the questionable distinction between art and non-​art, as well as by its indecorous “subject matter.” To appropriate Yeats’s phrase, art literally here “has pitched his mansion in the place of excrement.” Interestingly, the piece was almost immediately mock sacralized, first by Louise Norton’s 1917 essay, in The Blind Man, titled “The Buddha of the Bathroom,” and then in a 1918 Mercure de France article by the poet Guillaume Apollinaire, which mistakenly attributed Norton’s title to the work itself,122 and claimed that the urinal depicted a sitting Buddha. Eroticized interpretations of the forms of the urinal are also common, and Sherrie Levine’s Fountain, Madonna (1991), for example, sacralizes these by allusion to the Virgin Mary.123 Contemporary elevation of Fountain to the highest echelons of what sociologist Pierre Bourdieu regards as the cultural “sacred,”124 however, obviously owes much less to parodic religion than to the specifically artistic and scatological mock ritual just outlined. Bourdieu calls art in general “a sort of miracle of transubstantiation,”125 and this echoes Duchamp himself, who described the effect of the viewer’s mere looking as having “a diabolical influence,” entailing “the change of inert matter into a work of art” whereby “an actual transubstantiation has taken place.”126 Robert Lebel also called the effect of Duchamp’s ready-​mades “a kind of sacralization.”127 Robert Kilroy, following others, has stressed how Fountain’s sacralizing effect is connected to the double-​bind it seems to pose. To call it “ ‘art’ one must accept its status as ‘anti-​art’ ”; by accepting it as “‘anti-​art’ one can no longer call anything ‘art.’”128 Duchamp’s own defense of the work as created by his choice of object—​so that the artwork is produced by fiat or ex cathedra—​ not only makes Fountain into “a sort of miracle of transubstantiation,” but also evokes Kafka’s dogs who refuse to answer questions. “Long before Joseph Beuys declared that ‘the silence of Marcel Duchamp is overrated,’ ” according to art critic Thierry de Duve, “he stopped talking and let others put a value on his silence.”129 And to assert, as Duchamp did of his Fountain, that it was “a form of denying the possibility of defining art”130 adds nothing effectively to this. He claimed to have “played [his] part as an artistic clown,”131 “while laughing just the same,”132 but also to have become “a non-​artist, not an anti-​artist.” “The anti-​artist is like an atheist—​he believes negatively. I don’t

Concluding Unscientific Postscript  153 believe in art.”133 Though Apollinaire opined that Duchamp would “reconcile art and the people,” the latter commented, “What a joke!”134 That Duchamp supposedly gave up art for professional chess seems consistent with such a position. On the other hand, Kilroy argues that he was instead still engaged in “a strategic game of chess”135 with his audience (including so-​called friends)136 as well as posterity, at once encouraging the mock transubstantiation of “conceptual art” and preparing (especially with his secret and obscenely “retinal” posthumous work, Étant donnés) for a reversal of “the operation of transubstantiation.”137 Be that as it may, it seems clear that such a claim does little to undo his “consecration” or role as a “star.”138 The mock ritual, as we have seen in other cases, survives its demystification. Along comparable lines, in the world of contemporary art, we may also fast-​forward to the British artist and prankster Banksy, a version of whose Girl with Balloon partially self-​shredded immediately after being sold to a woman for $1.4 million at Sotheby’s in October 2018. The artist explained that his intention had been to shred the work completely, citing Picasso (supposedly) to the effect that “The urge to destroy is also a creative urge.”139 Meanwhile, Alex Branczik, Sotheby’s head of contemporary art, Europe, stated that “Banksy didn’t destroy an artwork in the auction, he created one,” calling it “the first artwork in history to have been created live during an auction.”140 To create something by destroying, not something else, but the thing itself, is of course a perfect parody of the seeming paradox by which sacrificial destruction sacralizes and hence “creates” its object. We note, moreover, that while Banksy’s mock sacrificial prank risked liquidating his buyer’s $1.4 million—​here art frankly took the form, to all appearances, of sacrificing not just the Balloon Girl but also the female customer who would invest so much in such a trivial object—​the simultaneously artistic and financial “miracle of transubstantiation” in this case turned out extremely well for her, adding even more value to the partially shredded girl. Banksy obligingly renamed the piece Love in the Bin (i.e. the garbage can), making it a new or “original” work.141 Art here appears, one might say, not just as an allegory of its own “binning” of traditional content (for instance, the evocation of love and beauty—​the kitsch girl with her heart-​shaped balloon) but also as a kind of parody of ritual potlatch: both the sacrifice of valuable objects and the creation of value by that very process, as though “nothing can be sole or whole,” in Yeats’s phrase, “that

154  Mock Ritual in the Modern Era has not been rent.” Moreover, just as Duchamp’s Fountain “allows us to see,” according to Kilroy, “the intrinsic connection between commodity-​form and art-​form,”142 or between artistic and economic value, so there is effectively no distinction here between “genuine” and “mock,” since the economic values that supposedly reflect artistic and “conceptual” ones—​or is it vice versa?—​ are at least temporarily real or operative; and in recent times of economic crisis, modern artworks have increasingly rivaled gold as preferred objects of speculation. Adopting the word from Alfred Jarry’s Ubu Roi, de Duve calls Duchamp “the phynancier of modern life,” adding that “laziness is the best of foremen” and “humor the most efficient of dealers.”143 Indeed, an account of the relevance of mock ritual to modern economics might do worse than to begin with this confluence of “conceptual” and monetary speculation, or in other words with “money as joker.”144 Though we have singled out visual art for discussion here, where the distinction between original and copy has incarnated aesthetic value in the ownable and potentially tradeable object, the general mock ritual pattern evidently often applies also in the other arts. In music, John Cage’s 4′33″ (four minutes and thirty-​three seconds of “silence” or ambient noise)—​that Cage said was inspired by Robert Rauschenberg’s “blank” canvases and that he apparently considered his most important work—​may serve as an obvious example. In this case, the mock ritual dimension is emphasized by having an actual “score,” indeed more than one, a closed piano in “performances,” and so forth. Here also, as in Kilroy’s account of Duchamp’s Fountain, “the work of music is defined not only by its content but by the behavior it elicits from the audience.”145 This sacrifice of music in favor of ambient noise and audience reaction might accordingly also be compared, in a different key to be sure, to the potlatch-​like smashing or burning of costly instruments by rock stars, where indeed the mimetic behavior of large audiences often more obviously evokes mock Dionysiac ritual—​complete, in the case of Beatles’ concerts, with “hysterical” fans whose involuntary urination flooded auditorium floors, and whose mock-​idolatrous screams often (to the performers’ annoyance in this case) also effectively silenced the music. That this silencing appears in Cage as a mock ritual or highbrow joke and in the Beatles’ and some other famous concerts, including classical ones, as serious popular mayhem may remind us that the word “hysterical” can refer to something either maximally funny or maximally serious and alarming.146 In addition, while we have concentrated here for brevity on artistic mock rituals that, without their notoriety and influence, might well seem entirely

Concluding Unscientific Postscript  155 trivial, we should observe that both Cage and Duchamp were also concerned, in their mock sacrifices of art, to emphasize what art itself tends to sacrifice on its altars: for example, the value of ordinary ambient sounds; of “the beautiful things [that] have disappeared,”147 as Duchamp put it; in short, of the primacy of “real life.” To paraphrase the import of such artistic jokes seriously, we may recall Theodor Adorno’s almost comically extreme and melancholic summary: “All that art is capable of is to grieve for the sacrifice it makes and which it itself, in its powerlessness, is.”148 Returning finally to the subject of education—​one that includes all the rest—​ the dissolving of education into mock ritual is a subject we have touched on repeatedly in the preceding chapters, from Laclos’s parodying of Rousseau in Dangerous Liaisons to the pedagogy of dueling in modern British and German universities. This subject has been similarly explored in recent decades in both fiction and nonfiction—​for instance, in the campus novel. David Lodge’s Small World: An Academic Romance begins with a prologue comparing the medieval pilgrimage to the modern academic conference viewed as a ritual of self-​perpetuation. The book is avowedly based on Jessie Weston’s From Ritual to Romance, according to which “the quest for the Holy Grail, associated with the Arthurian knights, was only superficially a Christian legend,” and whose true meaning “was to be sought in pagan fertility ritual.”149 In Small World, mock romance plays out against the backdrop of ridiculous ritual as the protagonist, a modern-​day knight errant, travels around the world from one academic conference to another in pursuit of the woman he loves. Richard Russo’s Straight Man similarly revolves around what one of his characters calls the ridiculous ritual of semester-​by-​semester budget negotiations.150 In one memorable scene from this novel, the dedication of a new building, the Technical Careers Complex, devolves into a mock execution ritual in which ducks from the adjacent pond—​described elsewhere as “year-​round residents, tenured and content”151—​are substituted for faculty members in the Department of English who, absent a budget for the coming year, fear losing their jobs in an impending purge.152 The protagonist of J. M. Coetzee’s Disgrace is a former professor of classical and modern languages who has been reappointed as adjunct professor of communications in a restructuring of his university. His story is reflective not only of the realignment of academic institutions during the 1990s with the imperatives of the corporate world, but also of broader modernist notions concerning the flight of the gods and the decline of lyricism. “Burdened with

156  Mock Ritual in the Modern Era upbringings inappropriate to the tasks they are set to perform,” David Lurie and other of his colleagues among the “rationalized personnel” at the new Cape Technical University are “clerks in a post-​religious age.”153 Virtually everything in Lurie’s story can be rephrased as mock ritual. A disciple of Wordsworth assigned to classes in communication, he earns a living through the empty ritual of teaching a theory of language in which he himself does not believe. His affair with his student, Melanie Isaacs, begins with a seduction ritual—​Lurie later says that he “became a servant of Eros”154—​and quickly lands him in front of a university-​wide committee on discrimination that is in every sense prejudicial: “First the sentence, then the trial.”155 That the committee charged to act on a complaint from Ms. Isaacs is chaired by a professor of religious studies suggests, moreover, that Lurie’s hearing corresponds to a more primitive form of justice.156 His case is tried not only by the university committee, but by the local media and the gossip mill—​“the community of the righteous, holding their sessions in corners, over the telephone, behind closed doors”157—​whose guiding principle is schadenfreude, literally joy derived from the humiliation of others.158 Published in 2009, Gaye Tuchman’s Wannabe U: Inside the Corporate University is a sociological account of American higher education in a period of transformation.159 Written during the decade following Straight Man and Disgrace, this book may be viewed as a kind of scientific counterpart to our fictional narratives. Drawing on extensive research and interviews conducted over a period of years, Tuchman’s methods and objectives are doubtless very different from those of Russo or Coetzee. But like these novelists, she repeatedly refers to ritual, which is always to some degree ridiculous, in her portrayal of academic life. Introductory receptions and retirement parties, for instance, are “ceremonial affairs” that reflect the institutional hierarchy according to the status of those in attendance and the quality of the refreshments.160 In response to initiatives introduced by upper-​level administrators intended to increase their power within the university, faculty members sometimes resort to what Tuchman calls “ritual compliance” as a means of resistance, creating the appearances of complying by going through the motions.161 The meetings of the trustees are similarly described as choreographed and carefully scripted rituals “imbued with unspoken politics.”162 Wannabe U is devoted in part to a critique of an emerging audit culture and what Tuchman calls a “ritual of verification measuring if and how institutions

Concluding Unscientific Postscript  157 and individuals have conformed to agreed-​upon procedures of self-​policing.”163 “Besotted with these rituals, an audit society transforms itself into an accountability regime,”164 as in British universities where, according to Mary Evans, the Research Assessment Exercise “makes circus monkeys out of academics, in that it demands performance in a certain ritual of behaviour and the organization of all behaviour toward the pattern of that ritual.”165 From her observations on the perverse effects of auditing in British universities, Evans turns to a broader consideration of ritual in modern Western societies. In these societies where rituals are, “for many people, relatively few,” she writes, “it would seem to be the case that institutions are developing new rituals to fill this vacuum.”166 Evans formulates here in her own terms a question concerning the reemergence of ritual that we have explored throughout our own inquiry and of which we have encountered numerous examples. Bruce Wilshire, in The Moral Collapse of the University, identifies a similar recurrence in academic professionalism—​essentially the formation of groups into distinct professional organizations with corresponding meetings and journals and the prioritizing of publication over teaching—​which he sees as “an inevitable response to the modern shift in authority from the sacred to the secular.”167 Summarizing his thoughts in his prologue to this book that is part reflection on the evolution of modern universities and part personal memoir, Wilshire writes, “Veiled by scientific research and professionalism are, I believe, archaic initiational and purificational practices which establish the identity of group and individual member through the exclusion of the unwashed and uncertified.”168 Barbara Herrnstein Smith, a former president of the Modern Language Association, has described how such initiatory and purifying practices can function in a university classroom. “As often observed,” she writes, “the enlightenment of the young in formal education operates through a process not dissimilar from other inductions into orthodoxy, from boot camp to the monastery”—​a process likened by her to “an ordeal” in which “public humiliation has emerged as a favored technique.”169 Though specifically concerned in this passage with the humiliation of philosophical “relativists” as supposedly self-​refuting, Smith’s evocation of such public humiliation may be generalized to other targets, and provides a kind of university-​level equivalent to the schoolboy humiliation of Charles Bovary. Moreover, since public humiliation has not usually been condoned in recent decades as a classroom tool, the role of wit and irony, as she implies, is all the more important in blurring the line between playful and serious mockery.

158  Mock Ritual in the Modern Era Such pedagogical use of mockery substantiates our earlier observation that it is frequently the unofficial face of putative rationality or “correct” thinking, while the demand that anything be kept partly or wholly exempt from laughter and jokes can be regarded as an operative definition of what many contemporary people, secular as well as religious, hold to be “sacred.” In this sense, although he mocks “sacredness” as a “nebulous rubric,”170 Steven Pinker’s recent Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress illustrates our point in its own way, and usefully provides a kind of concluding echo of the Enlightenment materials with which we began. Attempting “to restate the ideals of the Enlightenment in the language and concepts of the 21st century,”171 Pinker views religions as irrational, particularly in their ratifying of sacred narratives and enforcing of “rituals and taboos,”172 and condemns them as “inherently relativistic.”173 Not content with making serious arguments about, for example, modern theists’ likely inferior intelligence—​“as countries get smarter, they turn away from God”174—​ the rationalist critique also lends itself here again, as if inevitably, to a parody of ritual. Contemplating the possibility that Enlightenment reason might ultimately fail in not sufficiently appealing to “primal human needs,” for instance, Pinker asks sardonically whether humanists should “hold revival meetings at which preachers thump Spinoza’s Ethics on the pulpit and ecstatic congregants roll back their eyes and babble in Esperanto.”175 Even the epigraph to the first part of his book, quoted from Alfred North Whitehead—​ “The common sense of the eighteenth century . . . acted on the world like a bath of moral cleansing”176—​has an aura of ritual purgation. Of particular interest is Pinker’s discussion of contemporary joking and taboo, in the course of which he upbraids “older and less-​educated people (mainly white men) [who] may not respect the benign taboos on racism, sexism, and homophobia that have become second nature to the mainstream.”177 However, since such “benign taboos” nowadays often censor the mere usage of certain derogatory words, especially by professors like himself, his own reference to “nigger jokes,” “fag jokes,” and “bitch jokes”178 (instead of, say, “to racist, homophobic, and sexist jokes”) effectively illustrates how the violation of ritual (polite taboo) may very easily become part of the ritual itself (academic decorum), something surely not lost on him. The point of Kafka’s aphorism about leopards breaking into the temple is here formally instantiated by the mere addition of quotation marks around the offensive words. In this sense, he exploits a strategy not unlike those used by black, gay, and female comedians who appropriate the very words formerly

Concluding Unscientific Postscript  159 used to deride them, or by English professors who cite the obscene jokes of Shakespeare’s fools. When it comes to denigrating religious faith, however, Pinker evidently respects no such “benign taboos” (however ambiguous) to the extent that his religious students at Harvard University might be forgiven for finding themselves in a hardly more enviable position than that of women, gays, and blacks in classes taught by sexists, homophobes, and racists. Moreover, while Pinker is not wholly unlike Charb in deriding religion, his apparent affirmation of secular taboos surrounding sex and race is of course egregiously discriminatory from Charb’s point of view, which is that nothing should be off-​limits to mockery, since all such taboos against laughter essentially sacralize their objects whether or not they are technically religious. It is also significant from this point of view that Enlightenment Now itself concludes by appealing to values that should not be funny. Fearing, or pretending to fear, that Nietzsche “may seem edgy, authentic, baaad [sic],” to university students and others, while his own brand of “humanism” may seem “sappy, unhip, uncool,”179 and perhaps faintly ridiculous, Pinker counters, “But what’s so funny about peace, love, and understanding?”180

Notes Introduction 1. “En excluant les femmes de Twitter, par la moquerie et le harcèlement, les membres de ce boys’ club, encouragés par l’effet de meute, ont reproduit un schéma traditionnel de conservation du pouvoir.” Simon Blin, “ ‘Ligue du LOL’: Les nouveaux codes d’une vieille domination.” Libération, 15 février 2019. https://​www.lib​erat​ion.fr/​deb​ats/​2019/​ 02/​15/​ligue-​du-​lol-​les-​nouve​aux-​codes-​d-​une-​viei​lle-​dom​inat​ion_​1709​707 (accessed May 10, 2019). 2. “Un cas d’école pour l’anthropologie et les études de genre”; “Sous couvert d’un culte de la moquerie, une solidarité masculine s’organise.” Simon Blin, “ ‘Ligue du LOL.’ ” https://​w ww.lib​erat​ion.fr/​deb​ats/​2019/​02/​15/​ligue-​du-​lol-​les-​nouve ​aux-​codes-​d-​ une-​viei​lle-​dom​inat​ion_​1709​707 (accessed May 10, 2019). 3. “Un long rite de virilisation”; “un exorcisme d’une différence.” David Le Breton, “La Police du rire.” Libération, 25 février 2019. https://​www.lib​erat​ion.fr/​deb​ats/​2019/​02/​ 25/​la-​pol​ice-​du-​rire_​1711​542 (accessed May 10, 2019). 4. “Les loleurs ne venaient pas de nulle part.” Daniel Schneidermann, “Vie et mort du LOL.” Libération, 17 février 2019. https://​www.lib​erat​ion.fr/​deb​ats/​2019/​02/​17/​vie-​et-​ mort-​du-​lol_​1709​947 (accessed May 10, 2019). 5. Contemporary roasting is similarly compared by Mindy Kaling to organized dog fighting. See “Roasts Are Terrible,” in Is Everyone Hanging Out without Me? (And Other Concerns) (New York: Crown Archetype, 2011), 132–​133. 6. It was at least for a long time “something of a sociological truism,” to quote Catherine Bell, “that ritual and religion decline in proportion to modernization.” Ritual: Perspectives and Dimensions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 254. 7. A further meaning of mock ritual that we consider only marginally, e.g., in c­ hapter 6, concerns the idea of a rehearsal or a practice run. For a purely optimistic example of mock ritual in this sense, see “ ‘Attending’ Your Own Funeral: South Koreans Fake Their Funerals for Life Lessons.” https://​www.yout​ube.com/​watch?v=​rQQY​EcbT​ UrA&t=​5s (accessed May 17, 2021). 8. This point is made comically in the final skit of the inaugural 1969 episode of Monty Python’s Flying Circus’s BBC television series, a skit titled “The Funniest Joke in the World,” about a joke that kills anyone who reads or hears it, and can therefore be used as a lethal weapon of interest to the Ministry of Defense. For a serious equivalent, see J. Michael Waller, “Weaponizing Ridicule,” Military Review 97, no. 5 (September-​ October 2017): 49–​59. 9. James George Frazer, The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion. 12 vols. (New York: MacMillan, 1935), 4: 148.

162 Notes 10. Frazer, The Golden Bough, 7: 252. 11. Frazer, The Golden Bough, 7: 218. 12. Frazer, The Golden Bough, 7: 219. 13. Frazer, The Golden Bough, 7: 231. 14. See, for instance, James George Frazer, Condorcet and the Progress of the Human Mind (Oxford: Clarendon, 1933). See also Brian R. Clark, Wittgenstein, Frazer, and Religion (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999), 8–​9. 15. Robert Ackerman, The Myth and Ritual School: J. G. Frazer and the Cambridge Ritualists (New York: Routledge, 2002), xiv. 16. Frazer, The Golden Bough, 4: 214. 17. Frazer, The Golden Bough, 7: 110n. 18. Stanley Edgar Hyman, The Tangled Bank: Darwin, Marx, Frazer and Freud as Imaginative Writers (New York: Atheneum, 1962), 262. 19. The evolutionary function of ritual is summarized, with reference to Victor Turner’s studies of the subject, by Ronald L. Grimes: “Ritual is not a bastion of social conservatism whose symbols merely condense cherished cultural values. Rather, ritual holds the generating source of culture and structure.” Ronald L. Grimes, Beginnings in Ritual Studies (Washington, DC: University of America Press, 1982), 150. 20. The history of religion is famously defined by Frazer as “a long attempt to reconcile old custom with new reason, to find a sound theory for an absurd practice.” The Golden Bough, 8: 40. 21. Anders Klostergaard Petersen, for instance, emphasizes Wittgenstein’s derision of Frazer. See “Wittgenstein’s Remarks on Frazer: An Emotional Philosophical Puppet,” in Wittgenstein’s Remarks on Frazer: The Text and the Matter, ed. Lars Albinus, Josef G. F. Rothhaupt, and Aidan Seery (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2016), 393. 22. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Remarks on Frazer’s Golden Bough, ed. Rush Rhees (Retford: Brynmill Press, 1979), 8. 23. Wittgenstein, Remarks on Frazer’s Golden Bough, 5. 24. Wittgenstein, Remarks on Frazer’s Golden Bough, 8. 25. Felicia DeSmith, “Frazer, Wittgenstein, and the Interpretation of Ritual Practice,” Macalester Journal of Philosophy 14, no. 1 (2005): 59. 26. Moreover, the same Wittgenstein who rebuked Frazer for his “savage” treatment of “savages” is reputed to have beaten schoolchildren merely for making mistakes in mathematics. See Ray Monk, Ludwig Wittgenstein: The Duty of Genius (London: Cape, 1990), 232–​233; Alexander Waugh, The House of Wittgenstein: A Family at War (New York: Doubleday, 2008), 148–​149. 27. On the emergence of ritual as a concept, see Catherine Bell, Ritual: Perspectives and Dimensions, 259–​266. 28. FREETHINKING (LIBERTÉ DE PENSER), Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d’Alembert, eds., Encyclopédie; ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, 17 vols. (Paris: Briasson, 1751–​1765), 9: 473. 29. BUFFOON (BOUFFON), Denis Diderot et Jean le Rond d’Alembert, eds., Encyclopédie, 2: 355.

Notes  163 30. FEAST OF FOOLS (FÊTE DES FOUS), Denis Diderot et Jean le Rond d’Alembert, eds., Encyclopédie, 6: 573–​575. 31. “[Frazer’s] style was the direct outgrowth and expression of his viewpoint, frequent heavy irony being his response to the endless panorama of human aberration that lay spread before him as he regarded humanity struggling toward rationality.” Ackerman, The Myth and Ritual School, 64. 32. Victor Lewis-​Smith, “Funny Old World,” Private Eye, July 9, 2021, 26. 33. For an overview of the various controversies concerning the Enlightenment, see Antoine Lilti, L’héritage des Lumières: Ambivalences de la modernité (Paris: Seuil/​ Gallimard, 2017); Geoff Boucher and Henry Martyn Lloyd, eds., Rethinking the Enlightenment: Between History, Philosophy, and Politics (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2018). 34. See Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, trans. Thomas Burger and Frederick Lawrence (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989). On the relevance of Habermas’s theories to eighteenth-​century French society, see Dena Goodman, The Republic of Letters: A Cultural History of the French Enlightenment (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994); Antoine Lilti, The World of the Salons: Sociability and Worldliness in Eighteenth-​Century Paris, trans. Lydia G. Cochrane (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017). Reflection on a transition during what Habermas defines very broadly as modernity from the authority of the sacred founded on ritual to consensus grounded on rational arguments spans his work from The Theory of Communicative Action to Postmetaphysical Thinking II. See, for instance, The Theory of Communicative Action, trans. Thomas McCarthy, 2 vols. (Boston: Beacon Press, 1984–​1987), 2: 43–​111; Postmetaphysical Thinking II, trans. Ciaran Cronan (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2017), 43–​56. 35. COLLÈGE, Diderot and d’Alembert, eds., Encyclopédie, 3: 365. 36. See, for instance, Jonathan I. Israel, Democratic Enlightenment: Philosophy, Revolution, and Human Rights, 1750–​1790 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 648–​683. 37. See Bruno Latour, We Have Never Been Modern, trans. Catherine Porter (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993). 38. Victoria Reifler Bricker, Ritual Humor in Highland Chiapas (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1973), 12–​13. 39. Frédérique Apffel-​Marglin, Subversive Spiritualities: How Rituals Enact the World (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 81. 40. Mercy Amba Oduyoye, Beads and Strands: Reflections of an African Woman on Christianity in Africa (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2004), 85. 41. Bernd Brabec de Mori, “From the Native’s Point of View: How Shipibo-​Konibo Experience and Interpret Ayahuasca Drinking with ‘Gringos,’” in Ayahuasca Shamanism in the Amazon and Beyond, ed. Beatriz Caiuby Labate and Clancy Cavnar (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 206–​231. 42. William P. Harman, “Laughing until It Hurts . . . Somebody Else: The Pain of a Ritual Joke,” in Sacred Play: Ritual Levity and Humor in South Asian Religions, ed. Selva J. Raj and Corinne G. Dempsey (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2010), 107–​122 (121).

164 Notes 43. “Tout ce premier acte est en style bouffon et parodique, où le sérieux et le tragique se font brusquement jour par déchirures d’éclair.” Aimé Césaire, La Tragédie du roi Christophe (Paris: Présence africaine, 1963), 18. 44. According to the Internet Movie Database, this film is “one of the first mockumentaries ever created.” https://​www.imdb.com/​title/​tt0048​363/​(accessed July 14, 2018). 45. Diane Scheinman, “The ‘Dialogic Imagination’ of Jean Rouch: Covert Conversations in Les maîtres fous,” in Documenting the Documentary: Close Readings of Documentary Film and Video, ed. Barry Keith Grant and Jeannette Sloniowski (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2013), 178–​195 (190). 46. Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, trans. Hélène Iswolsky (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1968), 105. 47. Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, 16. 48. Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, 11–​12. 49. Michael Billig, Laughter and Ridicule: Towards a Social Critique of Humour (London: Sage, 2005), 200–​235. 50. Norimitsu Onishi and Constant Méheut, “Once a Slogan of Unity, ‘Je Suis Charlie’ Now Divides France.” New York Times, December 19, 2020. 51. René Girard, Violence and the Sacred, trans. Patrick Gregory (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977), 254. 52. Konrad Lorenz, On Aggression, trans. Marjorie Kerr Wilson (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1966), 293. 53. Lorenz, On Aggression, 177. 54. René Girard, “Perilous Balance: A Comic Hypothesis,” in “To Double Business Bound”: Essays on Literature, Mimesis, and Anthropology (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978), 121–​135 (132). 55. Girard, “To Double Business Bound,”132. 56. Girard, “To Double Business Bound,” 133. 57. Alexander Kozintsev quotes this line from Nikolai Gogol’s play Leaving the Theater, in The Mirror of Laughter, trans. Richard P. Martin (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2010), 65. 58. Girard, “To Double Business Bound,” 125. 59. Girard, Violence and the Sacred, 254. 60. Hans-​Georg Soeffner, The Order of Rituals: The Interpretation of Everyday Life, trans. Lara Luckmann (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1997), 71–​94. 61. Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments, ed. Gunzelin Schmid Noerr, trans. Edmund Jephcott (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2002), 152–​153. 62. See Jürgen Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity: Twelve Lectures, trans. Frederick G. Lawrence (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1990), 106–​130. 63. See, for instance, Cornelius Partsch, “The Mysterious Moment: Early Dada Performance as Ritual,” in Dada Culture: Critical Texts on the Avant-​Garde, ed. Dafydd Jones (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2006), 37–​65. 64. A section of André Breton’s manifesto titled “Secrets of the Magical Surrealist Art,” according to Jason Earle, offers a series of directives for automatic writing “through

Notes  165 a parodic mimicry of magic books,” impelling readers “to perform certain acts according to the rites and rituals prescribed by Surrealism.” Jason Earle, “Surrealism’s Secret Societies.” L’Esprit Créateur 53, no. 3 (2013): 129–​142 (131–​132). 65. See Patrick Lepetit, The Esoteric Secrets of Surrealism: Origins, Magic, and Secret Societies, trans. Jon E. Graham (Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions, 2014), 43–​48. 66. See Antoine Lilti, L’héritage des Lumières: Ambivalences de la modernité (Paris: Seuil/​ Gallimard, 2017), 20; Jonathan I. Israel, Enlightenment Contested: Philosophy, Modernity, and the Emancipation of Man, 1670–​1720 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), vii; Apffel-​Marglin, Subversive Spiritualities, 3. 67. See Talal Asad, Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993), 57. 68. See Catherine Bell, Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 14, 222. 69. According to Jan A. M. Snoek, “defining the term ‘rituals’ is a notoriously problematic task. The number of definitions proposed is endless, and no one seems to like the definitions proposed by anyone else.” Theorizing Rituals: Issues, Topics, Approaches, Concepts, ed. Jens Kreinath, Jan Snoek, and Michael Stausberg (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 3. 70. Erving Goffman, Interaction Ritual: Essays on Face-​to-​Face Behavior (Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1967), 47. 71. Goffman, Interaction Ritual, 86. 72. The Life-​Giving Myth and Other Essays (London: Methuen, 1952), 64. 73. Regarding the respective critiques of Asad, Bell, and Buc, see Ronald L. Grimes, Endings in Ritual Studies (Waterloo, ON: Ritual Studies International, 2020), 191–​ 208; see also Grimes’s The Craft of Ritual Studies (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 185–​197. 74. Bell, Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice, 6. 75. Philippe Buc, “The Monster and the Critics: A Ritual Reply,” Early Medieval Europe 15, no. 2 (2007): 441. 76. Philippe Buc, The Dangers of Ritual: Between Early Medieval Text and Social Scientific Theory (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001), 248. 77. Catherine Bell, Ritual: Perspectives and Dimensions, 311n20. 78. Henry Stebbing, A True State of the Controversy with Mr. Foster on the Subject of Heresy (London: Pemberton, 1736), 3. 79. Herman Melville, Typee, ed. Ruth Blair (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 114. The figurative use of rituel in French is dated by dictionaries to the eighteenth century, citing Voltaire. See Émile Littré, Dictionnaire de la langue française, 4 vols. (Paris: Hachette, 1873–​1874), 4: 1737. 80. See Grimes, The Craft of Ritual Studies, 189–​197; Barry Stephenson, Ritual: A Very Short Introduction (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 70–​85. In their introduction to Ritual Matters: Dynamic Dimensions in Practice, Christiane Brosius and Ute Hüsken explore “the complex—​and impossible—​undertaking of trying to define ‘ritual.’ ” Ritual Matters (London: Routledge, 2010), 1–​6 (1). 81. Ronald L. Grimes, Fictive Ritual: Reading, Writing, and Ritualizing (Waterloo, ON: Ritual Studies International, 2013), 15.

166 Notes

Chapter 1 1. Patrice Leconte, Ridicule (Burbank: Miramax Home Entertainment, 2003; 1996) (DVD) (103 min.). 2. See Lisa Downing, Patrice Leconte (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004), 40–​41. 3. David Denby, “Ridicule Conjures an Ancien Régime in Which Wordplay and Wit Win the King’s Favor.” New York, December 9, 1996, 74. 4. See Pierre Ambroise François Choderlos de Laclos, Les liaisons dangereuses, ed. Yves Le Hir (Paris: Garnier, 1961), x. 5. See Yves Alion, “Entretien avec Rémi Waterhouse,” L’avant-​scène, no. 521 (avril 2003): 8. In the Memoirs of the Comtesse de Boigne, ed. Charles Nicoullaud, 3 vols. (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1907), 1: 20–​21, one reads, for instance. “It was not only wealth that furnished victims for the Queen’s balls. M. de Chabanes, of high birth, handsome, rich, and almost the man of the hour, in making his first appearance was so clumsy as to fall down while dancing, and was so tactless as to cry “Jésus Maria!’ as he fell. It was a fall from which he never rose again; the designation clung to him permanently, to his complete despair. He volunteered for the American wars, and distinguished himself in action, but he came back ‘Jésus Maria,’ as he went out.” 6. Kenneth Turan, “Ridicule Relishes Chance to Play around with Words.” Los Angeles Times, December 6, 1996, 16. 7. Mireille Rosello, “Dissident Voices before the Revolution: Ridicule (Leconte 1996),” in French Cinema in the 1990s, ed. Phil Powrie (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 81. 8. Jean-​Luc Wachtausen, “Francis Veber: ‘La comédie est suspecte parce qu’elle veut plaire au public.’” Le Figaro, February 28, 2013, 36. 9. Francis Veber, The Dinner Game (Universal City, CA: Universal, 2000) (DVD) (81 min.). 10. Yves Alion, “Entretien avec Patrice Leconte,” 3. 11. “Il a réellement existé. Je connais des gens qui y ont participé.” Olivier Guéret, “Interview de Francis Veber.” http://​diner.chez.com/​int.htm (accessed July 10, 2019); previously published in April 1998: http://​www.cinop​sis.com/​inte​rv_​m​ain.cfm?ID=​ 2814&lang=​fr (accessed October 19, 2013). An English translation of this interview is available at http://​fam​ille​mour​oux.free.fr/​TheDin​nerG​ame.html (accessed July 10, 2019). 12. “Victime récidiviste de ce que l’on appellerait aujourd’hui des ‘dîners de con.’ ” FERGUS, “Le Roi des naïfs.” AgoraVox (September 14, 2009). http://​www.agora​vox. fr/​cult​ure-​lois​irs/​etonn​ant/​arti​cle/​le-​roi-​des-​naifs-​61477 (accessed July 10, 2019). 13. Virginie Gournay and Yves Le Troquer, Dossier pédagogique élaboré dans le cadre du dispositif Collège au Cinéma (Orne). https://​www.scr​ibd.com/​docum​ent/​395371​ 136/​Doss​ier-​peda​gogi​que-​d-​apres-​le-​film-​Ridic​ule-​pdf?doc​_​id=​395371​136&downl​ oad=​true&order=​471013​792 (accessed July 10, 2019). 14. Ponceludon’s role as sacrificial victim in this scene is underscored in Waterhouse’s literary version of the screenplay: “Tous les regards avaient convergé vers le sacrifié,

Notes  167 comme pour le bouter hors du salon. La méchanceté froide, absolue et brutale qui se concentrait sur Ponceludon était l’avers d’un triste pourboire dont le revers était le lâche soulagement général.” Rémi Waterhouse, Ridicule ou Les désordres causés par Grégoire Ponceludon de Malevoy à la cour de Versailles (Paris: Le Pré aux clercs, 1996), 225. 15. Pierre Ambroise François Choderlos de Laclose, Dangerous Liaisons, trans. Helen Constantine (London: Penguin, 2007), 96, 196, 280. 16. Pierre Ambroise François Choderlos de Laclos, Les Liaisons dangereuses, trans. Douglas Parmée (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 119, 235. 17. Choderlos de Laclos, Dangerous Liaisons, trans. Constantine, 352. 18. Choderlos de Laclos, Dangerous Liaisons, trans. Constantine, 334. 19. Derek Hughes, Culture and Sacrifice: Ritual Death in Literature and Opera (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 6. 20. Hughes, Culture and Sacrifice, 2. 21. SACRIFICE (SACRIFICE), Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d’Alembert, eds., Encyclopédie; ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, 17 vols. (Paris: Briasson, 1751–​1765), 14: 478. 22. SACRIFICE (SACRIFIER), Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d’Alembert, eds., Encyclopédie, 14: 484–​485. 23. IMMOLATION, IMMOLATE (IMMOLATION, IMMOLER), Diderot and d’Alembert, eds., Encyclopédie, 8: 576. 24. Denis Diderot, Rameau’s Nephew, and D’Alembert’s Dream, trans. L. W. Tancock (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1966), 81. 25. Regarding Laclos’s usage of religious language, see, for instance, Béatrice Didier, Choderlos de Laclos, Les liaisons dangereuses: Pastiches et ironie (Paris: Editions du Temps, 1998), 167–​171. “In its very quest for the new,” writes Pierre Saint-​ Amand, “The Immortals,” Yale French Studies, no. 94 (1998): 116–​129, “the practice of seduction nevertheless remains entangled in a network of allusions to the very thing from which it is attempting to free itself: above all its associations with Christian dramaturgy. In trying to validate itself, to forge a symbolic guarantee—​in short, to find a language of its own—​seduction tends to fall back on celebrating evil-​doing in the very terms that belong to mythical and religious discourse” (116). 26. “C’est lui qui fera son éducation et l’initiera aux codes et rituels de la tribu versaillaise.” Michel Boujut, “Versailles, rive gauche.” L’avant-​scène, no. 521 (avril 2003): 1. 27. Pamela Cuthbert, “Going to Court.” Eye Weekly, December 12, 1996, 20. 28. Roger Kumble, Cruel Intentions (Culver City, CA: Columbia TriStar Home Video, 1999) (DVD) (97 min.); Jae-​yong Lee, Untold Scandal (New York: Kino on Video, 2005) (DVD) (124 min.); Jin-​Ho Hur, Dangerous Liaisons (Australia: VM Distribution, 2012) (DVD) (110 min.). 29. Cuthbert, “Going to Court,” 20. 30. Cuthbert, “Going to Court,” 20. 31. The subtitle to Laclos’s novel is Lettres recueillies dans une société et publiées pour l’instruction de quelques autres.

168 Notes 32. “l’apprentissage du ridicule—​du ridicule propre à la société dans laquelle on veut entrer—​ joue un rôle determinant dans toute initiation.” Élisabeth Bourguinat, “Le comte de Saint-​Méran de Joseph de Maimieux (1788): Le rôle initiatique de l’apprentissage du ridicule,” Humoresques 9 (1998): 50. 33. Cuthbert, “Going to Court,” 20. 34. Mark Waters, Mean Girls (Hollywood, CA: Paramount, 2004) (DVD) (96 min.). 35. The Dinner Game and Ridicule have been called, respectively, a “secret theatre of cruelty” and “a stinging portrait of verbal cruelty as refined in the court rituals of King Louis XVI.” Peter Bradshaw, “Con Trick.” The Guardian, July 1, 1999. http://​www. theg​uard​ian.com/​film/​1999/​jul/​02/​4 (accessed July 10, 2019); Charles Trueheart, “Director Takes Aim at Ridicule.” Chicago Sun-​Times, January 17, 1997, 22. 36. Ginette Vincendeau, “Ridicule.” Sight and Sound 7, no. 2 (1997), 56. 37. The connection of cinema to reality is underscored, for instance, in an article in the Kansas City Star. Jenée Osterheldt, “Mean Girls Lives On in Film and Real Life.” Kansas City Star, September 11, 2013. 38. See http://​www.sto​phaz​ing.org/​(accessed July 10, 2019). 39. Michael Medved, “Courtly Drama to Count On.” New York Post, November 27, 1996, 50. 40. “un ramas de cérémonies superstitieuses, qui font rire quiconque n’est pas né sur les bords du Gange et de l’Indus, ou plutôt quiconque n’étant pas philosophe, s’étonne des sottises des autres peuples, et ne s’étonne point de celles de son pays.” Voltaire, Essai sur les mœurs, ed. René Pomeau, 2 vols. (Paris: Bordas, 1990), 1: 243. 41. The article SAVAGES from Diderot and d’Alembert’s Encyclopedia, 14: 729, for instance, concludes with the following statement: “Une grande partie de l’Amérique est peuplée de sauvages, la plûpart encore féroces, & qui se nourrissent de chair humaine.” Regarding the depiction of Versailles in Ridicule, Leconte would say in an interview, “Tout cela est d’une sauvagerie poudrée.” Yann Tobin, “Entretien avec Patrice Leconte: Ridicule, c’est le titre de ma vie entière,” Positif (May 1996): 27. 42. Voltaire on Religion: Selected Writings, trans. Kenneth W. Applegate (New York: Frederick Ungar, 1974), 56. 43. Voltaire, The Sermon of the Fifty, trans. J. A. R. Séguin (Jersey City, NJ: R. Paxton, 1963), 11. 44. Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary, trans. and ed. Theodore Besterman (London: Penguin, 1972), 383. 45. EXPIATION, Questions on the Encyclopedia, in Voltaire, The Portable Voltaire, ed. Ben Ray Redman (New York: Viking Press, 1949), 116. 46. The Portable Voltaire, 117. 47. In natural religion, expiation is said to be the result of natural remorse and penitence: “Remorse must necessarily have preceded expiation, for diseases are older than medicine, and all needs have existed before relief.” The Portable Voltaire, 116. 48. The Portable Voltaire, 118. 49. The Portable Voltaire, 118. 50. That the improvement of mankind is the aim of philosophy is something Voltaire says repeatedly, for instance in his Homilies; see Voltaire on Religion, 59, where he speaks of

Notes  169 curing people of superstition, specifying that “by speaking and writing, we can make men better and more enlightened.” 51. Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary, 375. 52. “What is the cause of this universal scorn and hissing from one end of the universe to the other? Things at which everybody laughs can hardly be obvious truths.” Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary, 375. The reasoning according to which people are laughed at because they are ridiculous, or ridiculous because they are laughed at, as shown in Ridicule, is easily reversible. 53. Axel Michaels, Homo Ritualis: Hindu Ritual and Its Significance for Ritual Theory (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), 143. 54. Michaels, Homo Ritualis, 141.

Chapter 2 1. “Le caractère que doit avoir un bon dictionnaire . . . est de changer la façon commune de penser.” ENCYCLOPÉDIE (ENCYCLOPEDIA), Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d’Alembert, eds., Encyclopédie; ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, 17 vols. (Paris: Briasson, 1751–​1765), 5: 642. The aim of “changing the common way of thinking” would not be out of place in a twenty-​first-​century university mission statement. 2. “cérémonies bouffonnes et grossières,” FEAST OF FOOLS (FÊTE DES FOUS), Diderot and d’Alembert, Encyclopédie, 6: 573. 3. “Non contents de chanter dans le choeur des chansons déshonnêtes, ils mangeaient et jouaient aux dés sur l’autel, à côté du prêtre qui célébrait la messe. Ils mettaient des ordures dans les encensoirs, et couraient autour de l’église, sautant, riant, chantant, proférant des paroles sales, et faisant mille postures indécentes.” FEAST OF FOOLS (FÊTE DES FOUS), Diderot and d’Alembert, Encyclopédie, 6: 574. 4. “Cette fête était réellement d’une telle extravagance, que le lecteur aurait peine à y ajouter foi, s’il n’était instruit de l’ignorance et de la barbarie des siècles qui ont précédé la renaissance des lettres en Europe.” FEAST OF FOOLS (FÊTE DES FOUS), Diderot and d’Alembert, Encyclopédie, 6: 573. 5. “farces pieuses”; “alliage honteux de religion et de bouffonnerie.” MYSTÈRES DE LA PASSION, Diderot and d’Alembert, Encyclopédie, 10: 923. 6. “aussi dangereux pour les moeurs que préjudiciable au progrès et à la perfection du goût.” BALADIN, Diderot and d’Alembert, Encyclopédie, 2: 24. 7. “c’est une cérémonie ridicule, mais d’un usage ancien et inviolable parmi les gens de mer, qui la pratiquent bien régulièrement sur ceux qui passent pour la première fois le tropique ou la ligne équinoctiale.” BAPTISM OF THE TROPIC OR OF THE LINE (BAPTÊME DU TROPIQUE OU DE LA LIGNE), Diderot and d’Alembert, Encyclopédie, 2: 265. 8. “les cérémonies extravagantes qu’on remarque dans toutes les religions, excepté la véritable.” FREEETHINKING (LIBERTÉ DE PENSER), Diderot and d’Alembert, Encyclopédie, 9: 473.

170 Notes 9. “Si l’on n’a pas soin de distinguer les différentes jurisdictions de la foi et de la raison par le moyen de ces bornes, la raison n’aura point de lieu en matière de religion, et l’on n’aura aucun droit de se moquer des opinions et des cérémonies extravagantes qu’on remarque dans la plupart des religions du monde.” REASON (RAISON), Diderot and d’Alembert, Encyclopédie, 13: 774. 10. “on a appelé depuis bouffon et bouffonneries toutes les autres momeries et farces qu’on a trouvées ridicules” BUFFOON (BOUFFON), Diderot and d’Alembert, Encyclopédie, 2: 355. 11. “bouffonnerie, ou maintien hypocrite et ridicule, ou cérémonie vile, miserable et risible. Il n’y a point de religion qui ne soit défigurée par quelques momeries.” MOMERIE (MUMMERY), Diderot and d’Alembert, Encyclopédie, 10: 633. 12. “Il y a des gens dont la vie n’est qu’une momerie continuelle; ils se rient au fond de leur âme de la chose qu’ils semblent respecter, et devant laquelle ils font mettre le front dans la poussière à la foule des imbécilles qu’ils trompent. Combien de prétendues sciences qui ne sont que des momeries!” MOMERIE (MUMMERY), Diderot and d’Alembert, Encyclopédie, 10: 633. 13. “On immole quelquefois un homme par la raillerie, d’une manière bien cruelle.” IMMOLATION, Diderot and d’Alembert, Encyclopédie, 8: 576. 14. “actions impies et détestables.” HUMAN VICTIM (VICTIME HUMAINE), Diderot and d’Alembert, Encyclopédie, 17: 240. 15. “L’Europe ne connaît aujourd’hui d’autres sacrifices humains que ceux que l’Inquisition ordonne de temps en temps”; “dans toutes les possession espagnoles du vieux et du nouveau monde.” HUMAN VICTIM (VICTIME HUMAINE), Diderot and d’Alembert, Encyclopédie, 17: 242. 16. “nouveau terme fait pour notre nation en particulier, et qu’il faut définir. C’est une espèce de médisance débitée avec agrément et dans le goût du bon ton.” MEANNESS (MÉCHANCETÉ), Diderot and d’Alembert, Encyclopédie, 10: 219. 17. Contrasting raillerie with médisance, Jaucourt observes that “one would rather be disparaged in one’s absence than directly exposed to mockery.” [On aimerait mieux être décrié dans l’absence que d’essuyer des plaisanteries en face]. RAILLERIE, Diderot and d’Alembert, Encyclopédie, 13: 766. 18. “se trouve aujourd’hui l’âme de certaines sociétés de notre pays, et a cessé d’être odieuse sans perdre son nom: c’est même une mode.” MEANNESS (MÉCHANCETÉ), Diderot and d’Alembert, Encyclopédie, 10: 219. 19. “Les petits méchants subalternes se signalent ordinairement sur les étrangers que le hasard leur adresse, comme on sacrifiait autrefois dans quelques contrées ceux que leur mauvais sort y faisaient aborder. Les méchants du haut étage s’en tiennent à leurs compatriotes, et les sacrifient impitoyablement au moindre trait heureux qui se présente à leur esprit.” MEANNESS (MÉCHANCETÉ), Diderot and d’Alembert, Encyclopédie, 10: 220. 20. “Les ngombos ont au-​dessous d’eux des prêtres ordinaires appelés gangas qui ne sont que des fripons subalternes.” NGOMBOS, Diderot and d’Alembert, Encyclopédie, 11: 129.

Notes  171 21. “Quoique cet ouvrage semble avoir pour objet particulier la connaissance des moeurs de ce siècle, j’espère que l’examen des moeurs actuelles pourra servir à faire connaître l’homme de tous les temps.” Charles Pinot Duclos, Considérations sur les mœurs de ce siècle (Paris: Prault, 1751), 4. 22. Susan Shapiro Barash, Tripping the Prom Queen: The Truth about Women and Rivalry (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2006), 76. 23. See Melisssa Samaroo, A Complete Guide to Writing a Successful Screenplay: Everything You Need to Know to Write and Sell a Winning Script (Ocala, FL: Atlantic Publishing Group, 2015), 125. 24. Rosalind Wiseman, Queen Bees and Wannabes: Helping Your Daughter Survive Cliques, Gossip, Boyfriends, and Other Realities of Adolescence (New York: Crown, 2002). See, in particular, ­chapter 5, “Power Plays: Group Dynamics and Rites of Passage,” 151–​174. 25. “Il faut convenir que les sociétés dont je parle sont fort rares; il n’y a que la parfaitement bonne qui le soit davantage.” Duclos, Considérations sur les moeurs, 179. 26. Chicaneau de Neuville, Dictionnaire philosophique portatif, ou introduction à la connaissance de l’homme, 2nd ed. (Lyon: Jean-​Marie Bruyset, 1756), 197, quotes Duclos’s Considérations sur les mœurs de ce siècle in the article PERSIFLAGE. Chicaneau de Neuville, in the “avertissement” to the first edition of his dictionary (London, 1751), iii, writes, “The title Philosophical Dictionary, which I am giving this work, would seem to require a definition of all of the terms specific to this science” [Le titre de Dictionnaire philosophique, que je donne à cet ouvrage, semble exiger une définition de tous les termes propres de de cette science]. The scientific character of Diderot and d’Alembert’s “dictionary” is suggested by the full title, Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers [Encyclopedia, or a Systematic Dictionary of the Sciences, Arts, and Crafts. This form of mockery is also the subject of a comedy by Louis-​Edme Brillardon de Sauvigny, Le Persifleur. Regarding the “buffoons” or “jokers” found at certain society dinners, Sauvigny writes, “Tantôt ils plaisantent sous le voile de l’approbation, tantôt en faisant tomber dans quelque embuſcade, et toujours en amufant les autres et eux mêmes aux dépens de quelque victime. C’eſt là ce qui conſtitue, non le Persifleur de telle ou telle fociété, mais le Persifleur en général” (Le Persifleur [Paris: Delalain, 1771], xiii). 27. “comme les inventions nouvelles vont toujours en se perfectionnant.” Duclos, Considérations sur les moeurs, 172. 28. “la bienveillance envers les autres hommes” NATURELLE, LOI. Diderot and d’Alembert, Encyclopédie, 11: 46. 29. “L’homme aimable, dit M. Duclos, du moins celui à qui l’on donne aujourd’hui ce titre, est fort indifférent sur le bien public, ardent à plaire à toutes les sociétés où son goût et le hasard le jettent, et prêt à en sacrifier chaque particulier.” SOCIABLE, Diderot and d’Alembert, Encyclopédie, 15: 251; Duclos, Considérations sur les moeurs, 161. 30. “ils ressemblent à ces criminels qui se font exécuteurs pour sauver leur vie.” Duclos, Considérations sur les moeurs, 190; “On sacrifie souvent son honneur à sa fortune,

172 Notes et parfois sa fortune à la crainte du ridicule.” RIDICULE, Encyclopédie, Diderot and d’Alembert, Encyclopédie, 14: 286–​287; cf. Duclos, Considérations sur les moeurs, 189. 31. “terme emprunté des associations de commerce subalterne, où chacun fournit sa cote part du prix, et reçoit sa cote part du gain, et auquel on n’a rien ôté de la force de sa première acception, en le transportant à de petites sociétés où l’on vit très-​ familièrement, où l’on a des jours réglés d’assemblées et des repas de fondation, où chacun fournit sa cote part de plaisanterie, bonne ou mauvaise; où l’on fait des mots qui ne sont entendus que là, quoiqu’il soit presque du bon ton d’en user partout ailleurs, et de trouver ridicules ceux qui ne les entendent point, etc.” COTERIE, Diderot and d’Alembert, Encyclopédie, 4: 305. 32. “Aujourd’hui la méchanceté est reduite en art; elle tient communément lieu de mérite à ceux qui n’en ont point d’autre, et souvent leur donne de la consideration dans plusieurs cotteries.” MEANNESS, Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d’Alembert, eds., Encyclopédie, 10: 219–​220. 33. “Ce mauvais genre est quelquefois moins extravagant; et alors il n’en est que plus dangereux. C’est lorsqu’on immole quelqu’un, sans qu’il s’en doute, à la malignité d’une assemblée, en le rendant tout à la fois, instrument et victime de la plaisanterie, comme par les choses qu’on lui suggère, et les aveux ingénus qu’on en tire.” Duclos, Considérations sur les moeurs, 171–​172. 34. “Il signifie aussi un fonds légué pour des œuvres de piété, ou pour quelque autre usage louable.” Dictionnaire de l’Académie française, 4th ed. (Paris: Bernard Brunet, 1762). 35. Denis Diderot, Rameau’s Nephew and D’Alembert’s Dream, trans. L. W. Tancock (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1966), 80. “Nous sommes beaucoup, et il faut que chacun paye son écot. Après le sacrifice des grands animaux, nous immolons les autres.” Denis Diderot, Contes et nouvelles, ed. Michel Delon (Paris: Gallimard, 2004), 624. 36. “Toute la ville est divisée en coteries, ennemies les unes des autres et s’entre-​méprisant beaucoup. Il y a telle coterie obscure qui équivaut à une bonne société, et telle société brillante qui n’équivaut tout juste qu à une mauvaise coterie. Il n’y a presque point de bonnes coteries, gaies, libres, et franches, sous les mauvais regnes.” COTERIE, Diderot and d’Alembert, Encyclopédie, 4: 305. 37. The Abbé Petit’s reading in d’Holach’s salon, February 3, 1754, is contemporary with the article COTERIE published in volume 4 of the Encyclopedia in October of the same year. 38. “Voilà donc le pauvre curé au milieu de quinze à vingt baudets, tout prêts à le persifler et à achever de le rendre fou s’il y manquait quelque chose.” Friedrich Melchior Grimm, Denis Diderot, and Jacques-​ Henri Meister, Correspondance littéraire, philosophique et critique par Grimm, Diderot, Raynal, Meister, etc., revue sur les textes originaux, comprenant outre ce qui a été publié à diverses époques les fragments supprimés en 1813 par la censure, les parties inédites conservées à la Bibliothèque ducale de Gotha et à L’Arsenal à Paris, ed. Maurice Tourneux, 16 vols. (Paris: Garnier, 1877–​ 1882), 3: 59–​71 (61). 39. Arthur M. Wilson, Diderot (New York: Oxford University Press, 1972), 182. 40. Poinsinet’s persecutors are referred to by Grimm, Correspondance littéraire, 8: 350, as “lowlife” [crapule] and “bad company” [mauvaise compagnie].

Notes  173 41. The question that arises here is curiously similar to what we find in d’Holbach’s article on the Chinese tribunal of rites—​a tribunal composed of mandarins and literati, and whose purpose, we are told, is “to attend to affairs concerning religion, and to prevent the superstitions and innovations some may wish to preach from entering the kingdom of China” [dont la destination est de veiller sur les affaires qui regardent la religion, et d’empêcher qu’il ne s’introduise dans le royaume de la Chine, les superstitions et innovations que l’on voudrait y prêcher]. D’Holbach observes that while the mandarins who belong to this tribunal are from the sect of the literati “who follow none of the superstitions of the bonzes or the vulgar, . . . some of these literati are sometimes accused of engaging privately in superstitious practices which they disavow and condemn in public” [(qui) ne suivent aucune des superstitions adoptées par les bonzes et par le vulgaire. Cependant, on accuse quelques-​uns de ces lettrés de se livrer en privé à des pratiques superstitieuses qu’ils désavouent et condamnent en public]). RITES, TRIBUNAL DES, Diderot and d’Alembert, Encyclopédie, 14: 302. 42. “La Religieuse de M. de La Harpe a réveillé ma conscience endormie depuis dix ans, en me rappelant un horrible complot dont j’ai été l’âme, de concert avec M. Diderot, et deux ou trois autres bandits de cette trempe de nos amis intimes. Ce n’est pas trop tôt de s’en confesser, et de tâcher, en ce saint temps de carême, d’en obtenir la rémission avec mes autres péchés.” Denis Diderot, Œuvres complètes de Diderot, revues sur les éditions originales comprenant ce qui a été publié à diverses époques et les manuscrits inédits conservés à la Bibliothèque de l’Hermitage, ed. J. Assézat, 20 vols. (Paris: Garnier, 1875–​1877), 5: 175–​176. Our translation. 43. “le seul des tous les acteurs de ce drame qui ne fût pas dans le secret de la plaisanterie.” Diderot, Œuvres complètes, 5: 175n1. 44. Diderot, The Nun, trans. Russell Goulbourne (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 154. 45. We are well aware that much more could be said on this complicated subject. In Diderot’s novel, Suzanne is the victim not of rape (unless her lesbian Mother Superior can be accused of this, though Suzanne at first acquiesces to her fondlings and even describes, in a supposedly innocent or ignorant way, her orgasm), but of attempted rape by a priest, and its conclusion, after she escapes convent life, is not so much clearly tragic as ambiguous. Moreover, certain temporal and other potential discrepancies in her account, often put down to Diderot’s inadvertence, are very probably intentional, and tend to “comically” compromise the superficial realism of the text in a way that is inconceivable in Richardson’s Clarissa. Just as Sade parodied the kind of Richardson spectacle of Virtue sexually abused in his preface to Justine, a pornographic comic-​strip version of Diderot’s novel was published by Georges Pichard in 2011. Diderot’s serious “Richardsonian” novel and his comically obscene “Sternean” one, Jacques le fataliste, which we discuss in the next chapter, are doubtless not so far apart as they superficially appear. 46. In Œuvres complètes de Diderot, 4: 463–​474. Regarding the attribution of this dialogue, see Pierre Chartier, Vies de Diderot: Portrait du philosophe en mystificateur, 3 vols. (Paris: Hermann, 2012), 2: 35–​36. 47. “Mon âme est révoltée de semblables horreurs.” Œuvres complètes de Diderot, 4: 473.

174 Notes 48. “C’est la victime qui, sous un nom d’emprunt, a la parole!” Chartier, Vies de Diderot, 2: 36. 49. “À l’image sensible du vertueux Philosophe, qui a su retourner la plaisanterie exercée contre Croismare en éloge pathétique de Suzanne (condamnée par Dieu et les hommes), Cinqmars n’a-​t-​il pas su ménager, parmi les ris insupportables, convulsions d’une société égarée, le parti du vrai merite persécuté qui est, bien sûr, celui de Diderot?” Chartier, Vies de Diderot, 2: 38. 50. “Eh bien, le chevalier a été curieux d’assister à une assemblée de convulsionnaires. Il en a vu une à qui on mit un bourrelet, qui contrefaisait l’enfant, marchait sur ses genoux, et qu’on étendit ensuite sur une croix; en effet, on la crucifia, on lui perça de clous les pieds et les mains; son visage se couvrit d’une sueur froide, elle tomba en convulsion. Au milieu de ses tourments, elle demandait du bonbon, à faire dodo, et mille autres extravagances que je ne me rappelle pas. Détachée de la croix, elle caressait avec ses mains, encore ensanglantées, le visage et les bras des spectateurs.” Œuvres complètes de Diderot, 4: 466. 51. These reports are by Charles Marie de la Condamine and Gérard du Doyer de Gastel. Grimm, Correspondance littéraire, 4: 379–​394. 52. “cette indécente pantomime.” Œuvres complètes de Diderot, 4: 467. 53. “une farce lugubre et indécente.” SECOURS, Diderot and d’Alembert, Encyclopédie, 14: 861. 54. “C’est toujours l’idée de défaut qui excite en nous le rire; défaut ou dans les idées, ou dans l’expression, ou dans la personne qui agit, ou qui parle, ou qui fait l’objet de l’entretien.” Œuvres complètes de Diderot, 4: 468. 55. The conversion outlined in this dialogue corresponds to René Girard’s line from The One by Whom Scandal Comes, trans. M. B. DeBevoise (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2014), 60: “Knowing the emissary victim requires a certain kind of conversion, namely, that one has come to see oneself as a persecutor.” 56. See Élisabeth Bourguinat, “Rousseau persifleur?,” Dix-​huitième siècle 26 (1994): 453–​ 463 (462). 57. “Le fameux abbé Bécherand, celui qui a inventé les convulsions, avait une jambe plus courte que l’autre: il gambadait sur le tombeau pour tâcher de l’allonger; le gazetier janséniste donnait chaque semaine le nombre de lignes dont sa jambe était crue; en ajoutant toutes ces lignes, la jambe ci-​devant plus courte se trouvait plus longue que l’autre.” Sur la destruction des jésuites en France, in Œuvres complètes de d’Alembert, 5 vols. (Paris: Belin, 1821), 2: 97. 58. “un ton discrètement voltairien.” Adrien Paschoud, “Sur la destruction des jésuites en France (1765) de D’Alembert: Pensée du politique et écriture polémique,” Revue de métaphysique et de morale, no. 1 (2017): 59–​72 (59). 59. “Je voudrais bien qu’il y eût une gazette moliniste, comme il y en a une janséniste, afin que votre épigraphe se vérifiât et que vous eussiez le plaisir de voir l’une approuvant ce que l’autre blâmerait.” Lettre XXXI, from Diderot to d’Alembert, in Œuvres complètes de Diderot, 19: 472. The epigraph to d’Alembert’s Histoire de la destruction des jésuites en France, from the first book of Tacitus’s Histories, “Incorruptam fidem professis, nec amore quisquam, et sine odio dicendiis est” [Quiconque fait vœu de dire la vérité, doit

Notes  175 être sourd à l’amitié comme à la haine], is sometimes translated into English as, “Those who profess inviolable fidelity to truth must write of no man with affection or with hatred.” 60. “l’opprobre et le ridicule de notre siècle.” Œuvres complètes de d’Alembert, 2: 94. 61. Œuvres complètes de d’Alembert, 2: 70. 62. “BALADIN, s.m. danseur, farceur, boufffon, qui en dansant, en parlant ou en agissant, fait des postures de bas comique. Le bon goût semblait avoir banni des spectacles de France ces sortes de caractères, qui y étaient autrefois en usage.” Diderot and d’Alembert, Encyclopédie, 2: 23. 63. Paul E. Kirkland, Nietzsche’s Noble Aims: Affirming Life, Contesting Modernity (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2009), 247. See in particular the section titled “Mock Ritual,” 248–​252. 64. See Mona Ozouf, Festivals and the French Revolution, trans. Alan Sheridan (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988), 83–​105. 65. Mona Ozouf, Festivals and the French Revolution, 97. 66. Regarding the Soviet festivals of the 1920s, Richard Stites observes notably that “the tradition of ritualized mockery of political foes—​past or present—​remains very much alive to this day. The old enemies—​Kerensky, the White generals, rival party leaders of 1917—​are still buffoons in circus, folk ensemble concerts, puppet theater and other media.” Revolutionary Dreams: Utopian Vision and Experimental Life in the Russian Revolution (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 99.

Chapter 3 1. Anca Parvulescu, Laughter: Notes on a Passion (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2010), 170 n73. 2. See, for instance, Stephen Halliwell, Greek Laughter: A Study of Cultural Psychology from Homer to Early Christianity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 179n73, 206, on Dionysiac rites and charivari, and on Aristophanes’s application of the “specific vocabulary of ‘secret rites’ (orgia) directly to his genre.” 3. Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human II and Unpublished Fragments from the Period of Human All Too Human II (Spring 1878–​Fall 1879), trans. Gary Handwerk (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2013), 50. Emphasis added. 4. Walter Shandy, Tristram’s philosopher father, in volume 3, ­chapter 41 of The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, compares truth to an impregnable woman. Laurence Sterne, The Florida Edition of the Works of Laurence Sterne, ed. Melvyn New and Joan New, 9 vols. (Gainesville: University Presses of Florida, 1978), 1: 282. 5. Sterne connects Saint Hilarion to hilarity via the latter’s reported claim—​said “with more facetiousness than became a hermit”—​that his rituals (“his abstinence, his watchings, flagellations,” etc.) “were the means he used, to make his ass (meaning his body) leave off kicking” (Works of Laurence Sterne, 2: 715). Asses—​often at once

176 Notes stubborn donkeys and eroticized buttocks—​figure at several key points of the novel, including, predictably (since the ass was a traditional figure of the ironist), its treatment of “IRONY” (capitalized in the original: Works of Laurence Sterne, 2: 634). Yorick’s horse is also a “jack-​ass of a horse” (Works of Laurence Sterne, 1: 18). 6. See Friedrich Nietzsche, part 4, sections 17 and 18, “The Awakening” and “The Ass Festival,” in Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for Everyone and Nobody, trans. Graham Parkes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 271–​277. See also “Mock Ritual” in Paul E. Kirkland, Nietzsche’s Noble Aims (New York: Lexington Books, 2009), 248–​252. 7. Works of Laurence Sterne, 1: 16–​17. 8. Voltaire mentions the Sorbonne passage in the article CONSCIENCE from Questions sur l’Encyclopédie, and the excommunication passage in his review of Joseph-​Pierre Frénais’s translation of Tristram Shandy, noting that the latter passage was censored to suit French propriety. 9. Candide, or Optimism, trans. Theo Cuffe (New York: Penguin, 2005), 15–​16. “deux Portugais qui en mangeant un poulet en avaient arraché le lard.” Voltaire, Romans et contes, ed. Frédéric Deloffre and Jacques Van den Heuvel (Paris: Gallimard, 1979), 158. 10. Dr. Slop, in volume 2, c­ hapter 9, Works of Laurence Sterne, 1: 123, is “transubstantiated” by being covered with mud—​possibly a comic figure for shit. 11. Sterne’s response to Locke is most explicit in Tristram’s “Preface” (in volume 3), Works of Laurence Sterne, 1: 227–​238, but it is in effect the novel as a whole, in which Locke frequently appears explicitly or otherwise. 12. It is not that literal meanings are not crucial for Sterne, but that the figures of wit, like those of ritual and Scripture, require analysis. We note in addition that Locke, at the key moment of his Essay concerning Human Understanding, condemns rhetoric using a rhetorical figure that compares its dangerous charms to those of women. For pertinent commentary, see Paul de Man, “The Epistemology of Metaphor,” in Aesthetic Ideology, ed. Andrzej J. Warminski (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), 34–​50. 13. Quoted in Alan B. Howes, ed., Sterne: The Critical Heritage (Hoboken, NJ: Taylor and Francis, 1995), 392. Voltaire admits that “There are, in Sterne, flashes of superior insight, such as one finds in Shakespeare,” but adds condescendingly, “And where do we not find them?” Sterne: The Critical Heritage, 392. 14. In Human, All Too Human II, trans. Handwerk, 51, Nietzsche claimed: “In regard to humor—​and especially to humor taking itself humorously—​the French are too serious.” 15. Marc Martinez, “Asses, Artichokes, and Macaroons: The Joco-​Serious Humour of Tristram Shandy,” in Hilarion’s Asse: Laurence Sterne and Humour, ed. Anne Bandry-​ Scubbi and Peter de Voogd (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013), 53–​ 65 (54). 16. Marc Martinez, “The Death of Yorick or the Demise of Satire: Burlesque, Ridicule and Humour in Tristram Shandy,” The Shandean 19 (2008): 27–​46 (34). 17. Alexis Tadié, “A Book That Excites Laughter: The Physiology of Laughter in Tristram Shandy,” in Hilarion’s Asse, 25–​36 (30).

Notes  177 18. Tadié, in Hilarion’s Asse, 36. 19. Anne Dromart, “‘Make Them Like Unto a Wheel’: Motion and Humour in Tristram Shandy,” in Hilarion’s Asse, 15–​23 (22–​23). 20. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, “A Sentimental Journey: Sexualism and the Citizen of the World,” in Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985), 67–​82 (73). 21. Judith Frank, “‘A Man Who Laughs Is Never Dangerous’: Character and Class in Sterne’s A Sentimental Journey,” English Literary History 56, no. 1 (1989): 97–​124 (114). Emphasis added. 22. Melvyn New, “Three Sentimental Journeys: Sterne, Shklovsky, Svevo,” The Shandean 11 (1999–​2000), 134n9, 127. 23. Nietzsche, Human, All-​Too Human II, trans. Handwerk, 50. 24. Works of Laurence Sterne, 1: 466–​468. Though apparently referring only to Hesiod, this passage actually refers directly to Locke’s “Of Political or Civil Government” in the Second Treatise of Government, where servants (as opposed to slaves) are included in Locke’s model of the “original of society.” 25. While Tristram, Works of Laurence Sterne, 2: 765, distances himself from the “pelting kind of thersitical satire” exemplified by Shakespeare’s Thersites in Troilus and Cressida, Thersites is also fully aware of the connection between the fool’s license or privilege and his role as victim. 26. Works of Laurence Sterne, 1: 18. 27. Works of Laurence Sterne, 1: 20. 28. Sedgwick, Between Men, 77. 29. Works of Laurence Sterne, 2: 622–​624. 30. Martinez, “The Death of Yorick or the Demise of Satire,” 41. 31. Works of Laurence Sterne, 1: 34. 32. Works of Laurence Sterne, 1: 32. 33. See Works of Laurence Sterne, 3: 73. Tenison noted that Bacon said to King James that he hoped to be the “last sacrifice,” like Christ according to Saint Paul. 34. Karl-​Josef Kuschel, Laughter: A Theological Essay, trans. John Bowden (New York: Continuum, 1994), p. 51. 35. Kuschel, Laughter, 49–​50. 36. Kuschel, Laughter, 51. 37. Kuschel, Laughter, 49. 38. Halliwell, 167, citing Mary Douglas, Implicit Meanings: Essays in Anthropology (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1975), 107–​108. 39. Kuschel, Laughter, 66, 80. 40. In the Gnostic Apocalypse of St. Peter, Christ does something comparable by laughing at another man, “a pseudo-​Jesus,” who is nailed to the cross in his place. See Kuschel, Laughter, 65–​66. Kurt Rudolph, Gnosis: The Nature and History of Gnosticism, ed. Robert McLachlan Wilson (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1984), 161, 169, considers the “varying conceptions of the nature of Christ” in the gnostic schools, observing that “the docetic conception made it possible to have Christ represented at the crucifixion as a substitute, be it the earthly and bodily Jesus or another man.”

178 Notes 41. Natalie Strobach, “Laughter and Other Sacrifices,” Angelaki 18, no. 2 (2013): 77–​ 89 (78). 42. Works of Laurence Sterne, 2: 595. 43. See Simon Dickie, “Joseph Andrews and the Great Laughter Debate,” in Cruelty and Laugher: Forgotten Comic Literature and the Unsentimental Eighteenth Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), 156–​189. 44. We quote from Fielding’s article in The Champion, March 13, 1740, reprinted in Joseph Andrews, ed. Paul A. Scanlon (Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press, 2001), 483–​484. 45. See Jacques le fataliste, ed. Simone Lecointre and Jean Le Galliot (Geneva: Droz, 1976), 458n202. 46. This line attributed to Diderot is based on a poem first published in La Décade philosophique during the French Revolution, but written in 1772. As Diderot explains in his preface, “Les Éleuthéromanes, ou abdication d’un roi de la fève,” was composed after his having been crowned king for a third straight year in the same société. The circumstances for this serious poem, as he explains, were frivolous. See Oeuvres completes de Diderot, ed. J. Assézat (Paris: Garnier, 1875), 9: 9–​11. Though often described simply as atheistic, Diderot was perhaps, in some ways, no less skeptical of atheism than of Christianity. In a letter to Madame De Maux from 1769, for instance, he wrote, “Atheism is very similar to a kind of superstition that is almost as puerile as the other kind.” See Marian Hobson, Diderot and Rousseau: Networks of Enlightenment, ed. Kate E. Tunstall and Caroline Warman (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2011), 158. 47. A character from a different episode of the novel, which we will return to in ­chapter 6, a widow, “used to say jokingly of religion and the law that they were a pair of crutches which were not to be taken away from those who had weak limbs.” Denis Diderot, Jacques the Fatalist, trans. Michael Henry (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1986), 229. 48. Part 4, section 7 of Thus Spoke Zarathustra is titled “The Ugliest Man,” who figures again in sections 17 and 18, “The Awakening” and “The Ass Festival.” In the latter, the ugliest man, who is earlier said to have killed God, claims: “But one thing I know—​ from yourself I learned it once, O Zarathustra: whoever would kill most thoroughly, laughs.” Thus Spoke Zarathustra, trans. Graham Parkes, 276. 49. “to judge from the state of this woman from her screams, she had hurt herself badly.” Diderot, Jacques the Fatalist, 23. Though Sterne’s “wound in the groin” is not mentioned in this connection, this is certainly part of Diderot’s “plagiarism” of Sterne’s pattern of symbolic injury and “feminine” modesty. 50. Diderot, Jacques the Fatalist, 114. 51. While Jacques copulates with Marguerite, whom he mistakenly calls “Suzanne” or “Suzon” (emphasizing further a confusion of identities), the former, realizing she is not Jacques’s first love, says, “ ‘You mean, it was Suzanne and not me who . . .’ To which, in fact, I replied: ‘In fact it wasn’t either of you.’ In fact while she was busy seeing that the laugh was on herself, on Suzanne, and on both husbands, and heaping little insults on me, I ended up on top of her with her, consequently, under me, and then, admitting that she had enjoyed it very much but not as much as the other way, she found herself on top of me again with me, consequently, under her.” Jacques the Fatalist, trans. David Coward (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 180–​81.

Notes  179 Michael Henry, in his Penguin translation (196), retains Diderot’s “Suzon” instead of “Suzanne” at this point in the text, which is more correct but also more confusing for our readers. 52. Noting that her fellow nuns chat about “the funny little ways of those who were absent, and jollity prevailed,” Suzanne comments disapprovingly that “you need far too much wit to make a good teller of jokes, and in any case who is without his ridiculous side? While they were all laughing I played a few chords, and gradually I attracted attention.” Diderot, The Nun, trans. Leonard Tancock (London: Penguin, 1974), 127. 53. Diderot, Jacques the Fatalist, trans. Henry, 197. 54. Diderot, Jacques the Fatalist, trans. Coward, 182. 55. Denis Diderot, Contes et romans, ed. Michel Delon (Paris: Gallimard, 2004), 832. 56. We may recall here Diderot’s dialogue Cinqmars et Derville, discussed in the previous chapter. In this dialogue, Cinqmars, who condemns Palissot for having mocked Diderot in his play Les philosophes, says notably that you won’t see anyone laugh at a deformed man [“Vous ne verrez point rire à l’aspect d’un homme contrefait”] and that it is not the person with a hunchback in their family who will laugh at those they come across [“Ce ne sera pas celui qui a un bossu dans sa famille qui rira de ceux qu’il rencontre”]. The overall idea here is that people given to reflection must laugh less than others [“les gens accoutumés à la rélexion doivent rire moins que les autres”]. And thus philosophers, judges, and magistrates rarely laugh [“Un philosophe, un juge, un magistrate rit rarement”]. 57. It is also worth noting that in the continuation of this scene the parading of the pitchforked curate around the barn by the husband is accompanied by the same kind of music (une espèce de chant en faux-​bourdon) as that which accompanies the procession in Candide, where the Biscayan and the two men who had been unwilling to eat lard are burned, Pangloss hung, and Candide spanked. Since Jacques the Fatalist has often been viewed as an imitation of Candide, it is reasonable to think that Diderot may have been echoing Voltaire’s ridiculous auto-​da-​fé, applying the same kind of rustic or liturgical music, the plain chant or false drone, to the sexual humiliation of the curate. As regards the comparison by critics with Candide, see, for instance, Jacques le fataliste, ed. Lecointre and Galliot, lxxxiin3. We should add, however, that Diderot’s use of what Nicholas Cronk, “Jacques le fataliste et le renouveau du roman carnavalesque,” Dix-​huitième Siècle 32 (2000): 47, calls “traces of popular narrative”—​including carnivalesque “mock stories,” among other things—​ also demonstrates, as Cronk puts it, “la grande originalité de Jacques par rapport à Candide.” 58. Diderot, Jacques the Fatalist, trans. Henry, 197. 59. Diderot, Jacques the Fatalist, trans. Henry, 198. 60. David Coward translates “vicaire” as “curate,” (182–​183) where Michael Henry writes “priest” (197–​198). 61. Diderot, Jacques the Fatalist, trans. Coward, 184. 62. “That’s right, laugh, you fool” (Diderot, Jacques the Fatalist, trans. Henry, 199). The French sot means at once “fool” and “cuckold.” 63. Diderot, Jacques the Fatalist, trans. Henry, 197.

180 Notes 64. Nietzsche asked, “Was [Diderot], in his Jacques le Fataliste, imitating, admiring, mocking, or parodying Sterne—​we cannot fully make it out—​and perhaps this is exactly what its author wished.” Human, All Too Human, trans. Handwerk, 51. There is certainly a temptation to read Sterne as conventionally Anglican and politically conservative in his treatment of masters and servants, as against Diderot’s anti-​Christian protorevolutionary radicalism. But that this opposition may be simplistic is suggested by the many French imitations of Sterne that were in fact connected to the French Revolution (as though imitating Sterne signified a revolutionary attitude), as well as a careful reading of Sterne himself. For example, though Trim, unlike Jacques, never openly challenges his master, the latter in certain crucial respects takes his servant as a model. As previously mentioned, Tristram’s and Yorick’s critique of Locke’s naturalizing of master-​servant relations also suggests a less than conservative political theory. 65. Peter Jimack, Diderot: Supplément au voyage de Bougainville (London: Grant and Cutler, 1988), 23. 66. “Diderot’s polemical technique consists of saying to the reader: ‘What you have read so far will no doubt have led you to certain apparently obvious conclusions; but the conclusions in reality are far from obvious, and the problem is not so simple as you think.’ The technique is neatly embodied in the discussion about what is and is not natural: A assumes from what B has said that he believes that coquetry and jealousy are not ‘dans la nature,’ but when A seeks confirmation of this, B puts him down with: ‘Je ne dis pas cela.’ ” Jimack, Diderot, 64. 67. Georges Bataille, The Accursed Share: An Essay on General Economy, trans. Robert Hurley, 3 vols. (New York: Zone Books, 1988–​1991), 3: 416. 68. As has been widely noted, the Marquis de Sade’s pornography also superimposes mock religious terms on the secular body.

Chapter 4 1. Georges Bataille, The Accursed Share: An Essay on General Economy, trans. Robert Hurley, 3 vols. (New York: Zone Books, 1988–​1991), 2: 106. 2. Ronald L. Grimes, Fictive Ritual: Reading, Writing, and Ritualizing (Waterloo, ON: Ritual Studies International, 2013), 135. 3. Grimes, Fictive Ritual, 36. Similarly, in his chapter on Søren Kierkegaard, Grimes illustrates how “the denial of ritual” ends in ritualization. Fictive Ritual, 113–​139. 4. Grimes, Fictive Ritual, 85. 5. Grimes, Fictive Ritual, 50. 6. Ronald L. Grimes, Deeply into the Bone: Re-​Inventing Rites of Passage (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 94. 7. “The First Modern Novel” is the title of section 3 of Mario Vargas Llosa’s The Perpetual Orgy: Flaubert and Madame Bovary, trans. Helen Lane (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1986), 213–​240.

Notes  181 8. Anne Coudreuse, “Flaubert lecteur du XVIIIe siècle: Pathos, ironie et apathie dans la correspondance,” La Licorne 43 (1997): 129–​142 (139). Coudreuse underlines Flaubert’s admiration for Voltaire and rejection of Rousseau’s pathos. 9. See Gustave Flaubert, Le Théâtre de Voltaire, ed. Theodore Besterman, 2 vols. (Geneva: Institut et musée Voltaire, 1967), 1:10. 10. Quoted in Jean-​ Paul Sartre, The Family Idiot, trans. Carol Cosman, 5 vols. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), 3:104–​105. 11. Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary, ed. Margaret Cohen, trans. Eleanor Marx Aveling and Paul de Man (New York: Norton, 2005), 66. Hereafter, page numbers will appear parenthetically in the text. 12. Theodore Besterman, “Preface,” in Le théâtre de Voltaire, 1:10. To be clear, we are not taking any position on who most influenced Flaubert, let alone whom he most admired. Vargas Llosa, The Perpetual Orgy, 77–​78, mentions Montaigne, Rabelais, and others. 13. Indeed, Flaubert’s treatment of religion in other works, such as The Temptation of Saint Anthony or Three Tales, seems very far from Voltaire. 14. Gustave Flaubert, Best Known Works of Gustave Flaubert (New York: Blue Ribbon Books, 1904), 279. Quotations from Flaubert’s trial refer to this edition. 15. Flaubert, Best Known Works, 249. Protesting against the prosecution’s suggestion that the novel might as well have as subtitle “The Story of the Adulteries of a Provincial Woman,” Sénard suggested instead, if a second title were needed, “the story of the education too often met with in the provinces . . . and the deplorable life of which such an education is often the preface.” Flaubert, Best Known Works, 238. 16. Flaubert, Best Known Works, 255. 17. “qui était un homme d’esprit.” 18. “Si Charles assume ainsi le rôle du bouffon humilié, c’est qu’il est totalement étranger au sentiment du ridicule.” Juliette Azoulai, “Ridiculus sum: Le ridicule dans Madame Bovary,” Flaubert [En ligne], 16 | 2016, mis en ligne le 08 décembre 2016. http://​flaub​ ert.rev​ues.org/​2658 (accessed June 15, 2017). 19. “Ce n’est donc pas seulement dans le but de le ridiculiser que Flaubert fait souffrir au nouveau une cérémonie initiatique, le rite de passage signale également la scène originale comme une scène originaire [It is not only in order to ridicule him that Flaubert has the new boy undergo an initiation ceremony. The rite of passage suggests also that the initial scene is an originary scene]. Francisco González, La scène originaire de Madame Bovary (Oviedo: Universidad de Oviedo, 1999), 164. 20. Duchet asserts that the classroom is a “ritual space of the reproduction of knowledge” [“lieu rituel de la reproduction d’un savoir”]. Claude Duchet, “Pour une socio-​critique ou variations sur un incipit,” Littérature 1 (février 1971): 5–​14 (11). See also Jean-​ Marie Privat, Bovary Charivari: Essai d’ethno-​critique (Paris: CNRS Éditions, 1994), 111–​141. 21. Cited from Jonathan Culler, Flaubert: The Uses of Uncertainty (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1974), 111. 22. Azoulai, “Ridiculus sum.” Editor Roger Clark, among others, also makes the connection with charivari. See Madame Bovary (Ware, UK: Wordsworth Editions, 2001),

182 Notes 271. We should also note that Flaubert himself highlights, at Charles’s wedding to Emma, a milder but still potentially aggressive form of charivari—​obscene jokes, lewd gestures, etc. See Privat, Bovary Charivari, 49–​74. 23. “jusque dans la dimension christique du personage”; “le clown est un double emblématique du Christ aux outrages.” Azoulai, “Ridiculus sum.” 24. “Harry Levin, “Madame Bovary: The Cathedral and the Hospital,” in Madame Bovary, ed. Paul de Man (New York: Norton, 1965), 425. 25. Levin, “Madame Bovary,” 425. Same observation in Harry Levin, The Gates of Horn (New York: Oxford University Press, 1963), 256. 26. Azoulai, “Ridiculus sum.” 27. Azoulai, “Ridiculus sum.” 28. Azoulai, “Ridiculus sum.” 29. “L’artiste est donc l’acteur qui s’humilie sous la figure de l’idiot tout en montrant son masque du doigt, invitant ainsi le spectateur à retourner son rire contre lui-​même.” Azoulai, “Ridiculus sum.” 30. Jonathan Culler, Flaubert and the Uses of Uncertainty (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1974), 112. 31. How, for example, he likes “to feel himself borne upward” (10) by the rope when he rings the church bells. 32. Vargas Llosa, 184–​209, for instance, finds several quasi-​narrators or narrative voices in the opening. 33. We may cite Enid Starkie as an admirably humble example: “It [the opening] is different in tone from the rest of the novel, and the first-​person narrator takes from the impersonality of the book, while the transition to the third person, without any warning, is somewhat clumsy, and one cannot help feeling that there has been here an error in technique—​though it is certainly presumptuous, and probably incorrect, to accuse so meticulous and scrupulous an artist of error. It is, however, difficult to discover what has been the gain from this method.” Flaubert: The Making of the Master (New York: Atheneum, 1967), 292–​293. 34. Culler, Flaubert and the Uses of Uncertainty, 111. 35. Culler, Flaubert and the Uses of Uncertainty, 112. 36. Culler, Flaubert and the Uses of Uncertainty, 112. 37. For example, “On commença la récitation des leçons,” translated by Marx-​Aveling as, “We began repeating the lesson.” 38. Gustave Flaubert à Louise Colet, 15 janvier 1854, Correspondance, ed. Jean Bruneau, 5 vols. (Paris: Gallimard, 1973–​2007), 2: 508. Cited by Azoulai, “Ridiculus sum.” 39. Asserting that Flaubert’s life was “a monkish sequestration,” James Wood cites Flaubert himself to the effect that “To my mind, the true poet is a priest,” and that “Great achievements always require fanaticism. Fanaticism is religion.” https://​newr​ epub​lic.com/​arti​cle/​120​543/​james-​wood-​flaub​ert-​and-​chekh​ovs-​influe​nce-​style-​ and-​lit​erat​ure (accessed March 27, 2020). 40. Walter Benjamin, Understanding Brecht, trans. Anna Bostock (London: Verso, 1998), 101. Emphasis added. 41. Culler, Flaubert and the Uses of Uncertainty, 112.

Notes  183 42. Vargas Llosa confirms, “The root of the style indirect libre is ambiguity, a doubt or confusion as to the point of view, which is no longer that of the narrator but still is not that of the character.” The Perpetual Orgy, 200. 43. Vargas Llosa, The Perpetual Orgy, 222. Vargas Llosa generalizes that “no great novel can be called realistic without more or less misconstruing the term” (128). Sartre also wrote that “Flaubert despised realism.” “Flaubert and Madame Bovary: Outline of a New Method,” in Madame Bovary, ed. Paul de Man (New York: Norton, 1965), 308. 44. Vargas Llosa, The Perpetual Orgy, 191. 45. Vargas Llosa, The Perpetual Orgy, 167, emphasis added. 46. Jean-​Paul Sartre, The Family Idiot, 3: 97. 47. Culler, Flaubert and the Uses of Uncertainty, 111. 48. Commenting on the allusions to Sade’s La Nouvelle Justine in Flaubert’s correspondence—​mentioning only the names of libertine characters, but never that of the victims—​Anne Coudreuse concludes that Flaubert, like Sade, “is not interested in the victim’s point of view” (Coudreuse, “Flaubert lecteur du XVIIIe siècle,” 140). Sartre obviously differs, though he underlines the sadistic appearance. 49. In this sense, Flaubert anticipates Jacques Rancière, “Why Emma Bovary Had to Be Killed,” Critical Inquiry 34, no. 2 (2008): 233–​248, which attributes her killing to the author. 50. This inscription is modeled on that of General Franz von Mercy. In ­chapter 3 of Le siècle de Louis XIV, Œuvres historiques, ed. René Pomeau (Paris: Gallimard, 1957), 639, Voltaire writes, “Ce général, regardé comme un des plus grands capitaines, fut enterré près du champ de bataille; et on grava sur sa tombe: STA VIATOR; HEROEM CALCAS. Arrête, voyageur; tu foules un héros.” 51. One might also argue that the tragicomic ritual is not restricted to choice of tomb, but effectively extends to every realistic detail that Flaubert invents to further victimize his character. Rodolphe famously finds Charles’s grand phrase “It’s fate,” as well as his forgiveness, faintly ridiculous. Charles’s maid, Felicité, steals Emma’s clothes and runs off with a man called Théodore. He falls out with his mother, who finds his attachment to his wife’s memory absurd. Even his poor daughter will end in a cotton mill, with incipient tuberculosis, while the vile Homais, in the novel’s final line, gets the Cross of the Legion of Honor. (We note, by the way, that there is also an erotic liaison between a Felicité and a Théodore in Un Coeur simple: in Flaubert’s mock rituals it seems that young women called “Happiness” are fated to date young men called “God’s Gift.”) Vargas Llosa makes explicit what he calls the “cathartic” effect of such realistic suffering when he confesses the effect on him of Emma’s death agonies—​which he calls an “agonizing ceremony”—​ saying, “Emma was killing herself that I might live.” Vargas Llosa, The Perpetual Orgy, 17. 52. From the famous letter to Louise Colet dated August 14, 1853, in which Flaubert says that there must, inductively, be a Madame Bovary in twenty villages of France. See Madame Bovary, ed. Margaret Cohen (New York: Norton, 2005), 307. 53. Whereas mathematical induction means something different, and is no less deductive than the rest of mathematics.

184 Notes 54. See Nelson Goodman, Fact, Fiction, Forecast (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1955), 87–​107. 55. Flaubert, Œuvres complètes, vol. 5, ed. Stéphanie Dord-​Crouslé et al. (Paris: Gallimard, 2021), 1138. We return to Flaubert’s Dictionary in c­ hapter 5. 56. Flaubert, Œuvres complètes, vol. 5, 1170. 57. Vargas Llosa, The Perpetual Orgy, 26. Vargas Llosa also generalizes that “no novel arouses my fervent enthusiasm . . . unless it acts, if only to a slight degree, as an erotic stimulant” (25). 58. In this context, Homais also defends theatrical satire by citing the traditional phrase Castigat ridendo mores [it corrects morals by ridicule]. Ironically, however, Flaubert has him cite in this connection, not any comedy or satire, but “most of Voltaire’s tragedies . . . [containing] a wealth of philosophical considerations that make them into a real school of morals and diplomacy for the people” (174). The “philosophical” part of tragedy—​or at least Voltaire’s tragedy—​is thus on the side of comedy or ridicule. 59. Here as elsewhere, Flaubert stresses analogies as well as oppositions between Christianity and paganism. For example: “the confessional faces a small Madonna . . . with cheeks stained red like an idol of the Sandwich Islands” (61). 60. Jean Baudrillard, Symbolic Exchange and Death, trans. Iain Hamilton Grant (London: Sage, 1993), 104–​105. 61. Flaubert, Œuvres complètes, vol. 5, 1177. 62. Azoulai, “Ridiculus sum.” 63. Flaubert, Œuvres complètes, vol. 5, 1236. 64. For example, Emma wants even Léon (whom she sometimes treats like her child or her mistress) to grow a beard in imitation of Louis XIII (218–​219)—​a king notorious for banishing his own mother and executing her followers. (In her relation to Léon, we are told, she is still not entirely free of her “subjugation” to Rodolphe.) 65. As anecdotal evidence that tends to shock modern students, we note that French women in the 1980s voted Woody Allen the most beddable man in the world. 66. On this subject see, for example, Christopher Hitchens, “Why Women Aren’t Funny,” in Arguably (London: Atlantic Books, 2012), 389–​396, and Mindy Kaling, Is Everyone Hanging Out without Me? (And Other Concerns) (New York: Crown Archetype, 2011). Hitchens, while stressing that women are often very funny, nevertheless makes a dubious evolutionary case for the stereotype, linking it to his thesis that “it is females who are the rank-​and-​file mainstay of religion, which in turn is the official enemy of all humor” (395). Kaling, by contrast, writes (to herself), “Why didn’t you talk about whether women are funny or not,” and replies, “I just felt that by commenting on that in any real way, it would be tacit approval of it as a legitimate debate, which it isn’t. . . . I try not to make it a habit to seriously discuss nonsensical hot-​button issues” (218). 67. Regina Barreca, “Preface,” Women and Comedy: History, Theory, Practice, ed. Peter Dickinson et al. (Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2013), xv. 68. Barreca as summarized by Lisa Perfetti in Women and Comedy, 46. 69. Laurie O’Higgins, “Laughing Aphrodite,” in Women and Comedy, 4. 70. Barreca, “Preface,” in Women and Comedy, xi. In Samuel Beckett’s “The Calmative,” incidentally, a model of comedy is a man in a brown suit telling a story evidently

Notes  185 about male impotence—​a story at which the women laugh even more than the men, no doubt because it mocks what the narrator calls “the reigning penis.” Samuel Beckett: The Complete Short Prose, 1929–​1989, ed. S. E. Gontarski (New York: Grove Press, 1995), 63. 71. Ricki Stefanie Tannen, The Female Trickster: The Mask That Reveals (New York: Routledge, 2007), 157. Cited by Sean Zwagerman, “A Cautionary Tale: Ann Coulter and the Failure of Humor,” in Women and Comedy, 172. 72. Zwagerman, “A Cautionary Tale,” 174. 73. Zwagerman, “A Cautionary Tale,” 172. 74. “[C]‌ e sont eux qui, avec le sacrifice, constituent essentiellement le culte.” Chateaubriand, Essai sur les révolutions, Génie du christianisme, ed. Maurice Regard (Paris: Gallimard, 1978), 474. 75. “[L]‌a pudeur, l’amour chaste, l’amitié vertueuse sont pleines de secrets. On dirait que les coeurs qui s’aiment s’entendent a demi-​mot, et qu’ils ne sont que comme entrouverts.” Chateaubriand, Génie du christianisme, 472. 76. Chateaubriand, Génie du christianisme, 496. 77. “ces hommes, en apparence frivoles, qui detruisent tout en riant.” Chateaubriand, Génie du christianisme, 465. 78. “moins heureux contre la derision” Chateaubriand, Génie du christianisme, 465. 79. “On n’employa pas la violence contre les chrétiens, mais on leur prodigua le mépris.” Génie du christianisme, 466. 80. “Lorsque Julien est sérieux, saint Cyrille triomphe du philosophe; mais lorsque l’empereur a recours à l’ironie, le patriarche perd ses avantages.” Chateaubriand, Génie du christianisme, 467. 81. “Voltaire faisait renaître la persécution de Julien.” Chateaubriand, Génie du christianisme, 467–​468. 82. One of us (Smyth) went to a Benedictine school in the 1960s in which the monks made a similar joke: only Protestants read the Old Testament. (Or, by implication, read it literally.) 83. That the priest likes and protects a carpenter’s son (though from a relatively well-​off family and a bit spoiled) is surely Flaubert’s own “joke,” since a good Christian should certainly like carpenter’s sons! Similarly, there is an easily overlooked parallel between the carpenter’s wife who nurses Emma’s little girl and the Virgin Mary (76). Indeed, the curate’s interruption of Emma’s request for Christian succor might therefore even be interpreted as an implicit response to it: religion should not concern itself with superstitious cures, but with being kind to carpenters’ sons and the like. For further discussion of this and other jokes considered in this chapter, see Peter Rogers, The Mystery Play in Madame Bovary (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2009). 84. So, when the curate refuses a drink, Homais assumes this is clerical hypocrisy. 85. Vargas Llosa, The Perpetual Orgy, 165. 86. Regarding the quarrels between Homais and the curate, Sénard asked, “Who is it that is beaten, buffeted, and ridiculed? It is Homais; to him is the most comic role given, because he is the most true, because he best paints our skeptical epoch, a fury whom we call a priest-​hater.” Flaubert, Best Known Works, 275.

186 Notes 87. Vargas Llosa, The Perpetual Orgy, 12. 88. Madame Bovary, ed. Margaret Cohen, 5. Sénard himself regarded the trial as a mock trial, a bad joke, given what he saw as the evidently moral character of the novel that was being prosecuted for its “immorality.” 89. “La prêcher toujours,—​même quand les contraires sont absolus.” Flaubert, Œuvres complètes, vol. 5, 1226. 90. We note that William Blake, in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, for example, had a famously non-​Voltairean attitude to the problem of Ezekiel and enlightenment: “I then asked Ezekiel why he eat dung; and lay so long on his right and left side. He answered, ‘The desire of raising other men into a perception of the infinite. This the North American tribes practise, and is he honest who resists his genius or conscience only for the sake of present ease or gratification?’ ” Blake: The Complete Poems, ed. W. H. Stevenson, 3rd ed. (Harlow, UK: Pearson Education, 2007), 119. 91. Like blood, excrement plays an interesting role in Madame Bovary. There are beautiful birds on top of an oozing dunghill at Rouault’s farm, for example, and the first amorous dialogue between Emma and Rodolphe is famously punctuated by an agricultural lecture on manure. 92. It has been argued that the mania for bloodletting only went out of style in the mid-​to late nineteenth century perhaps not so much because of increasing recognition of its disastrous effects, as because it was being displaced by exciting new manias: for electricity, mesmerism, and the like. Indeed, bleeding was still widely and futilely used as late as the flu epidemic of 1918. 93. Vargas Llosa observes, similarly, that Lheureux’s manipulation of Emma fulfills “the same function as modern advertising.” The Perpetual Orgy, 140. 94. According to Barbara Vinken, Flaubert shows in Madame Bovary that “contemporary society, in defiance of its own Christian or enlightened secular self-​understanding, is still ruled by the logic of the scapegoat.” Flaubert Postsecular: Modernity Crossed Out, trans. Aarnoud Rommens with Susan L. Solomon (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2015), 54. 95. Regarding the ritualistic significance of bleeding, see Rogers, The Mystery Play in Madame Bovary, 170–​178. 96. Lheureux (who has an “American” eye) means “the happy one,” and says “that he was ‘bleeding’ himself for her” (226). We note that the application of medical metaphors to financial investment becomes entirely programmatic when he hopes “that his puny little investment, thriving in the doctor’s care like a patient in a rest home, would return to him one day considerably plumper, fat enough to burst the bag” (169–​170, emphasis added).

Chapter 5 1. Gustave Flaubert, Bouvard and Pécuchet, trans. A. J. Krailsheimer (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1976), 73.

Notes  187 2. Cited in Flaubert, Bouvard and Pécuchet, trans. Mark Polizzotti (Normal, IL: Dalkey Archive Press, 2005), xxxiii. 3. Flaubert, Bouvard and Pécuchet, trans. Polizzotti, 316. To approximate more closely the original French, we alternately refer, in addition to the Dalkey Archive edition, to Gustave Flaubert, Dictionary of Accepted Ideas, trans. Jacques Barzun (Norfolk, CT: New Directions Books, 1954); Flaubert, Bouvard et Pécuchet, trans. Krailsheimer; and Gustave Flaubert, Dictionary of Received Ideas, trans. Gregory Norminton (Richmond, UK: Alma Classics, 2010). 4. Flaubert, Bouvard and Pécuchet, trans. Polizzotti, 311. 5. Raymond Queneau, “Preface,” in Flaubert, Bouvard and Pécuchet, trans. Polizzotti, xxii. 6. Cited from Flaubert’s letters in Polizzotti’s “Introduction” to Bouvard and Pécuchet, ix. 7. Cited from a letter to Louise Colet (December 17, 1852) in Flaubert, Dictionary of Accepted Ideas, trans. Barzun, 3. 8. Cited in Flaubert, Bouvard and Pécuchet, trans. Polizzotti, xvii. 9. Flaubert, Bouvard and Pécuchet, trans. Polizzotti, 305. 10. Flaubert, Bouvard and Pécuchet, trans. Polizzotti, 305. 11. Flaubert, The Dictionary of Accepted Ideas, trans. Barzun, 36. 12. Flaubert, Bouvard and Pécuchet, trans. Polizzotti, 304; Flaubert, Dictionary of Accepted Ideas, trans. Barzun, 44. Polizzotti’s translation gives “disease” for “mal”; we here use Barzun’s “evil.” The ambiguity between religious and medical language is of course wholly pertinent. 13. Flaubert, Dictionary of Accepted Ideas, trans. Barzun, 67. 14. Flaubert, Bouvard et Pécuchet, trans. Krailsheimer, 325. 15. Flaubert, Bouvard and Pécuchet, trans. Polizzotti, 314. 16. Flaubert, Bouvard and Pécuchet, trans. Polizzotti, 304, emphasis added. 17. Flaubert, Bouvard and Pécuchet, trans. Polizzotti, 315. 18. Flaubert, Bouvard and Pécuchet, trans. Polizzotti, 311. The rest of the entry, as translated by Polizzotti, reads, “Good help is hard to find these days!” Flaubert, Dictionary of Accepted Ideas, trans. Barzun, 56, translates this as “Servants are a thing of the past.” 19. See Jacques Derrida, Dissemination, trans. Barbara Johnson (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), 128–​133. In Derrida’s analysis of Plato the main focus is on the “pharmacological” ambivalence of writing and mimesis rather than on medical drugs, but his pharmacological language is both medical and sacrificial. 20. See especially “The Scapegoat as Drug and the Drug as Scapegoat,” in Thomas Szasz, Ceremonial Chemistry: The Ritual Persecution of Drugs, Addicts, and Pushers, rev. ed. (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2003), 19–​27. The fact that Szasz’s other intellectual positions have little if anything in common with Derrida’s makes their coincidence here all the more striking. Our analyses are in many ways closer to Szasz’s views of medicine than to Derrida’s philosophy. 21. Flaubert, Bouvard and Pécuchet, trans. Polizzotti, 306. 22. Flaubert, Bouvard and Pécuchet, trans. Polizzotti, 324. 23. Émile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, trans. Carol Cosman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 289–​309. See Elisa Heinämäki, “Durkheim,

188 Notes Bataille, and Girard on the Ambiguity of the Sacred: Reconsidering Saints and Demoniacs,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 83, no. 2 (2015): 513–​536. 24. See Szasz, “Pharmacracy: The New Despotism” in The Medicalization of Everyday Life: Selected Essays (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2007), 150–​168. 25. Ivan Illich, Medical Nemesis; The Expropriation of Health (New York: Pantheon Books, 1976), 3–​10. 26. Flaubert, Bouvard and Pécuchet, trans. Polizzotti, 298. 27. Flaubert, Bouvard and Pécuchet, trans. Polizzotti, 304. 28. Flaubert, Bouvard and Pécuchet, trans. Polizzotti, 288. 29. Mahatma Gandhi, for example, was a famous believer in frequent enemas, as were many Europeans of the early twentieth century. 30. The ambiguities of medical bleeding are suggested, among other things, in Bouvard and Pécuchet, trans. Polizzotti, 288, 309, by juxtaposing BLOODLETTING: “Have yourself bled in the spring” with LANCET: “Always keep one in your pocket, but be afraid to use it.” 31. Flaubert, Dictionary of Accepted Ideas, trans. Barzun, 70. 32. Flaubert, Dictionary of Accepted Ideas, trans. Barzun, 22. 33. Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary, ed. Margaret Cohen (New York: Norton, 2005), 256. 34. Guy de Maupassant’s short story “Un Réveillon” rests on a juxtaposition of Christmas Mass with a rustic réveillon in which two peasants consume blood pudding (boudin) over a bread bin containing the dead body of their recently deceased grandfather. Guy de Maupassant, Contes et nouvelles I, ed. Louis Forestier (Paris: Gallimard, 1974), 336–​341. 35. “Les ennemis de la religion s’obstinent à affirmer que les idées religieuses ont fait leur temps, que les pratiques dévotes sont définitivement abandonnées. Cela n’est pas absolument exact. Du carême, il nous est resté le carnaval; le jeûne de la Noël et la messe de minuit nous ont laissé le réveillon. On ne va plus à l’église, c’est vrai, mais on mange toujours du boudin.” Pierre Larousse, Grand dictionnaire universel du XIXe siècle: français, historique, géographique, mythologique, bibliographique, littéraire, artistique, scientifique, etc., etc.: comprenant la langue française; la prononciation; les étymologies; . . . la biographie de tous les hommes remarquables; . . . les sciences physiques, mathématiques et naturelles; . . . les caricatures politiques et sociales; la bibliographie générale; . . . les beaux-​arts et l’analyse de toutes les oeuvres d’art., 17 vols. (Paris: Administration du Grand dictionnaire universel, 1866–​1890), 13: 1098. 36. “Il est à présumer que les chrétiens, pour mieux se distinguer des juifs auxquels l’usage du porc était interdit, ont pensé qu’ils devaient introduire sur leur table la chair de cet impur animal.” Larousse, Grand dictionnaire universel, 13: 1098. 37. Flaubert, Bouvard and Pécuchet, trans. Polizzotti, 306. 38. Flaubert, Bouvard and Pécuchet, trans. Polizzotti, 311. 39. Flaubert, Bouvard and Pécuchet, trans. Polizzotti, 317. Flaubert’s seemingly absurd juxtaposition of religious with secular cannibalism or mock cannibalism may be compared to the ethnographic fact that “the vocabulary of some cannibals makes a

Notes  189 distinction between human flesh consumed under religious auspices and flesh that is eaten casually or privately.” See Eli Sagan, Cannibalism: Human Aggression and Cultural Form (New York: Harper and Row, 1974), 103. 40. Flaubert, Madame Bovary, ed. Cohen, 237. 41. The medieval Norman chronicler Raoul de Caen records that “adults from among the gentiles were put into the cooking pot and their youth were fixed on spits and roasted.” The Gesta Tancredi of Ralph of Caen: A History of the Normans on the First Crusade, trans. Bernard S. Bachrach and David S. Bachrach (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2005), 116. Similarly, in Albert d’Aix, one reads that “Christians did not shrink from eating not only killed Turks or Saracens, but even dogs.” Albert of Aachen, Historia Ierosolimitana: History of the Journey to Jerusalem, trans. Susan Edgington (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2007), 375. A medieval romance tells the story of a joke played on Richard Coeur de Lion during the siege of Acre where the king was cured of a fever by his servants, who contrived to satisfy his craving for pork by serving him the body and then the head of a Saracen. See Alan S. Ambrisco, “Cannibalism and Cultural Encounters in Richard Coeur de Lion,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 29, no. 3 (Fall 1999): 499–​528. 42. Though they may conceivably be wrong, commentators as diverse as Juvenal, Theodor Adorno, and Christopher Hitchens have connected the Judaic taboo against pork to the taboo against human sacrifice and cannibalism. See, for instance, “A Short Digression on the Pig; or, Why Heaven Hates Ham,” c­ hapter 3 in Hitchens’s God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything (New York: Twelve, 2009). The substitution of pigs for humans also occurs in connection with a ritual for killing the old in the New Hebrides: “Aged people were put to death by burying them alive. The victim was placed in a hole with a live pig tied to each arm. Before the grave was closed, the pigs were released; they were subsequently killed and eaten. Instead of eating the corpse, people ate the pigs.” Sagan, Cannibalism, 126. 43. Flaubert, Bouvard and Pécuchet, trans. Polizzotti, 306. 44. Translated under FASTING in Flaubert, Bouvard and Pécuchet, trans. Polizzotti, 298. Regarding hygienic interpretations of ritual avoidance, see Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger (London: Routledge, 1994), 30–​41. Douglas points specifically, among other examples, to medical explanations of Jewish and Islamic avoidance of pork. 45. See “Letters from the Continent, during the Months of October, November, and December, 1818; including a Visit to Aix-​la-​Chapelle, and the Left Bank of the Rhine,” Eclectic Review 14 (October 1820), 283–​286 (285). 46. See Gotthard Deutsch and Siegmund Salfeld, “Mayence,” in The Jewish Encyclopedia; A Descriptive Record of the History, Religion, Literature, and Customs of the Jewish People from the Earliest Times to the Present Day, 12 vols. (New York and London: Funk and Wagnalls, 1901–​1906), 8: 386–​391. 47. Flaubert, Bouvard and Pécuchet, trans. Polizzotti, 320. 48. Charles-​Augustin Sainte-​Beuve, Souvenirs et indiscrétions, Le vendredi-​saint, publiés par son dernier secrétaire, nouvelle édition, avec une préface par Charles Monselet (Paris: Calmann-​Lévy, 1880), 219. 49. Sainte-​Beuve, Souvenirs et indiscrétions, 234–​235.

190 Notes 50. In his essay titled “Pour Sainte-​Beuve,” Jeffrey Mehlman claims that in some French intellectual genealogies “anti-​Beuvianism is . . . associated metaphorically with the Jews.” “Pour Sainte-​Beuve: Maurice Blanchot, 10 March 1942,” in Maurice Blanchot: The Demand of Writing, ed. Carolyn Bailey Gill (London: Routledge, 1996), 221. 51. Flaubert, Bouvard and Pécuchet, trans. Polizzotti, 290. The name Chateaubriand is hardly neutral as regards religion, since he was one of its most famous Romantic defenders, or indeed as regards Christian anti-​Semitism, since he famously accused Jews not only of being “dirty and ugly” (yet “favorites of kings and beautiful women”), and of “governing” modern Christianity, but even of “eating pig after selling old hats.” Perhaps, in fact, this utterly oxymoronic anti-​Semitism is not irrelevant to Flaubert’s singling out the beefsteak—​specifically loin—​that bears Chateaubriand’s name (especially when CHATEAUBRIAND is directly juxtaposed with SAINTE-​BEUVE), since eating pork is what dirty (and all too sexy) Jews really do, while claiming they eat beef, etc.—​and one wouldn’t want to imitate a Jew. The relevant passage in Chateaubriand is the following: “Heureux juifs, marchands de crucifix, qui gouvernez aujourd’hui la chrétienté, qui décidez de la paix ou de la guerre, qui mangez du cochon après avoir vendu de vieux chapeaux, qui êtes les favoris des rois et des belles, tout laids et tout sales que vous êtes!” Mémoires d’outre-​tombe, ed. Jean-​Paul Clément, 2 vols. (Paris: Gallimard, 1997), 2: 2373–​2375. 52. Flaubert, Bouvard and Pécuchet, trans. Polizzotti, 60–​61. 53. Flaubert, Bouvard and Pécuchet, trans. Polizzotti, 61. 54. Flaubert, Bouvard and Pécuchet, trans. Polizzotti, 62. 55. Flaubert, Bouvard and Pécuchet, trans. Polizzotti, 62. 56. Flaubert, Bouvard and Pécuchet, trans. Polizzotti, 66. 57. See Slavoj Žižek and Boris Gunjević, God in Pain: Inversions of Apocalypse (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2012), 44. 58. Flaubert, Bouvard and Pécuchet, trans. Polizzotti, 66. 59. Szasz, Ceremonial Chemistry, 35. 60. Szasz, The Medicalization of Everyday Life, 81–​82. 61. Szasz, The Medicalization of Everyday Life, 82. A comic reference to the same practice (“a dish of sucking Jew”) occurs in Beckett’s “First Love” (originally “Premier amour”), as though the ritual practice were relevant to the story’s erotic themes. See Jackie Blackman, “BECKETT JUDAIZING BECKETT: ‘a Jew from Greenland’ in Paris,” Samuel Beckett Today /​Aujourd’hui 18 (2007): 325–​340. 62. Szasz, The Medicalization of Everyday Life, 84. 63. Szasz, The Medicalization of Everyday Life, 83. 64. Szasz, The Medicalization of Everyday Life, 87. 65. Ludwik Fleck, Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact, ed. Thaddeus J. Trenn and Robert K. Merton, trans. Fred Bradley and Thaddeus J. Trenn (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979), 70. 66. For example, Thomas Szasz devoted most of his life to arguing that so-​called mental illnesses that are not physical brain diseases, such as epilepsy, should be regarded as “metaphorical diseases.” (See, for instance, “Mental Illness: A Metaphorical Disease” in The Medicalization of Everyday Life, 3–​9.) If one hesitates to entertain such a radical

Notes  191 position, it nevertheless seems likely that what we call mental health is often susceptible to suggestion of various kinds, and is frequently a social and mimetic as well as a physical phenomenon. Szasz ridicules what he calls “the quasi-​theological faith in the claim that all mental illnesses are, eo ipso, brain diseases” (Psychiatry: The Science of Lies [Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2008], 88), and remarks, “Religious miracles and mental illnesses resemble one another. Each forms the foundational lies of a grand system of beliefs and social practices. Ridiculing such false beliefs undermines important social values. Religion thus banishes laughter from the church; medicine banishes laughter from the clinic. Charcot’s clinical theater was a watermark. The public was permitted to laugh at the hysterics’ performances. Doctors were expected to take them seriously as the signs of neurological diseases.” Szasz, Psychiatry, 110. 67. For an introduction to placebo and nocebo effects, see Michael Brooks, “The Placebo Effect: Who’s Being Deceived?” in 13 Things That Don’t Make Sense: The Most Baffling Scientific Mysteries of Our Time (New York: Doubleday, 2008), 164–​180. “A 1954 paper in the Lancet declared that the placebo effect is only useful in treating ‘some unintelligent or inadequate patients’; that seems almost laughable now” (167). For a more technical discussion of how “meaning” lies at the heart of the matter, see Daniel E. Moerman and Wayne B. Jonas, “Deconstructing the Placebo Effect and Finding the Meaning Response.” Annals of Internal Medicine 136.6 (2002): 471–​476. 68. As Michael Brooks observes, “Witch doctors, shamans, and other purveyors of the magical arts are known to deal in placebos. When they carry out a sham ritual to cure a paying believer, that cure can work wonders.” 13 Things That Don’t Make Sense, 165. 69. Ronald L. Grimes is summarizing here the work of psychiatrist Gotthard Booth. Beginnings in Ritual Studies (Washington, DC: University Press of America, 1982), 127. 70. Grimes, Beginnings in Ritual Studies, 130. Grimes further remarks, “Some interesting possibilities emerge when we accept the notion that both rituals and somatic organ systems express metaphorically a person’s or culture’s highest values” (130). 71. We use Gregory Norminton’s literal translation of CLOWN, Dictionary of Received Ideas, 18, “A été disloqué dès l’enfance,” since it maintains the ambivalence of the original. Polizzotti’s “Was double-​jointed as a child” and even Barzun’s “His joints were made so in infancy” sound too unambiguously positive, considering that possible synonyms of disloqué include cassé and brisé [broken]. 72. Flaubert, Bouvard and Pécuchet, trans. Polizzotti, 316. 73. Flaubert, Bouvard and Pécuchet, trans. Polizzotti, 325. 74. Flaubert, Bouvard and Pécuchet, trans. Polizzotti, 286. 75. Flaubert, Dictionary of Accepted Ideas, trans. Barzun, 83. 76. Flaubert, Bouvard and Pécuchet, trans. Polizzotti, 320. 77. Flaubert, Bouvard and Pécuchet, trans. Polizzotti, 312. 78. Flaubert, Bouvard and Pécuchet, trans. Polizzotti, 318. 79. Flaubert, Bouvard and Pécuchet, trans. Krailsheimer, 330. 80. Flaubert, Bouvard and Pécuchet, trans. Polizzotti, 307. 81. Flaubert, Bouvard and Pécuchet, trans. Polizzotti, 315.

192 Notes 82. Flaubert, Bouvard and Pécuchet, trans. Polizzotti, 311. 83. Flaubert, Bouvard and Pécuchet, trans. Polizzotti, 312. 84. Flaubert, Bouvard and Pécuchet, trans. Polizzotti, 312. 85. Flaubert, Dictionary of Accepted Ideas, trans. Barzun, 30. 86. Flaubert, Bouvard and Pécuchet, trans. Polizzotti, 318. 87. Flaubert, Dictionary of Accepted Ideas, trans. Barzun, 23. 88. Flaubert, Bouvard and Pécuchet, trans. Polizzotti, 309. 89. Flaubert, Bouvard and Pécuchet, trans. Polizzotti, 304. 90. Flaubert, Dictionary of Accepted Ideas, trans. Barzun, 38. 91. Flaubert, Bouvard and Pécuchet, trans. Polizzotti, 65. 92. Flaubert, Dictionary of Accepted Ideas, trans. Barzun, 14. 93. Flaubert, Bouvard and Pécuchet, trans. Polizzotti, 324. 94. Flaubert, Bouvard and Pécuchet, trans. Polizzotti, 156. 95. As regards alcohol, we may recall that the American Medical Association not very long ago regarded drinking two glasses of wine a day as a sign of alcoholism, before then recommending one or two glasses a day as part of a healthy “Mediterranean” diet. On the cultural and medical history of smoking, see, for example, Richard Klein, Cigarettes Are Sublime (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1993). Once again Szasz, Ceremonial Chemistry, 36, provides a relevant and provocative account, both legal and scientific, claiming that “modern American drug laws have the same social function and same symbolic significance as had, for example, the dietary laws of the ancient Jews.” 96. Flaubert, Bouvard and Pécuchet, trans. Polizzotti, 303. 97. Flaubert, Dictionary of Accepted Ideas, trans. Barzun, 42n9. 98. An Italian friend recently remarked of his nineteen-​year-​old son that not going to the gym amounts nowadays in Vicenza to what he called “social death.” 99. Flaubert, Dictionary of Accepted Ideas, trans. Barzun, 29. 100. Flaubert, Dictionary of Accepted Ideas, trans. Barzun, 29n7. 101. “In short, materialism and spiritualism seem to me to be two impertinences.” Cited from Flaubert’s letters by Raymond Queneau in his preface to Flaubert, Bouvard and Pécuchet, trans. Polizzotti, xxxii. 102. Grimes, Beginnings in Ritual Studies, 46; see Jerome D. Frank’s “Foreword” in Magic, Faith, and Healing: Studies in Primitive Psychiatry Today, ed. Ari Kiev (New York: Free Press, 1964), x. 103. Flaubert, Bouvard and Pécuchet, trans. Polizzotti, 182. 104. Arthur K. Shapiro and Elaine Shapiro, The Powerful Placebo: From Ancient Priest to Modern Physician (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997). 105. Ian Hacking, Rewriting the Soul: Multiple Personality and the Sciences of Memory (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995). Hacking discusses the way in which medical treatments and theories may contribute to the development of “a [patient’s] personality structure” (i.e., the form taken by their psychological “disorder”) (245), and stresses that “We have very little grasp of the workings of ‘suggestion,’ a word that, as Nietzsche said of ‘psychological pain,’ so often stands for a question mark rather than for a clear idea” (255). 106. Shapiro and Shapiro, The Powerful Placebo, 85.

Notes  193 107. Michael Taussig, “Viscerality, Faith, and Skepticism,” in Magic and Modernity: Interfaces of Revelation and Concealment, ed. Birgit Meyer and Peter Pels (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003), 273. 108. Taussig, Defacement, 204. 109. Taussig, “Viscerality, Faith, and Skepticism,” 306. 110. Flaubert, Bouvard et Pécuchet, trans. Krailsheimer, 306. The cross-​reference to DOCTOR, omitted by Krailsheimer, is included in the translations by Barzun, Polizzotti, and Norminton. 111. Flaubert, Bouvard and Pécuchet, trans. Polizzotti, 291. 112. Flaubert, Bouvard and Pécuchet, trans. Polizzotti, 302. 113. Melissa Mohr, Holy Shit: A Brief History of Swearing (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 129–​172, dates “the rise of obscenity” to the Renaissance. As regards swearing by blood, as in “bloody hell!” or “what a bloody shit!” for instance, the origins of “bloody” used as an intensifier are disputed, although swearing by God’s or Christ’s blood is illustrated euphemistically by “’Sblood!” and it has been suggested that “bloody” may also sometimes be a euphemism for “By our lady.” In any case, such more or less literal or figural usage is consistent with the other bloody themes of this chapter. 114. Sexual swearing, of course, merely highlights the mock ritualistic character of sex more generally, especially relations between modesty and immodesty, purity and obscenity, organized nowadays as much around secular as religious taboo. Dictionary entries such as DIANA: “Goddess of the chas(t)e” (Polizzotti) or “Goddess of chase-​titty” (Norminton) [de la chasse-​teté] overtly suggest the oxymoronic character of sexual modesty. (In ­chapter 3 we called this the double bind of modesty.) Similarly, the entry LINEN [LINGE]—​“One cannot display it too much; too little,” Flaubert, Dictionary of Accepted Ideas, trans. Barzun, 55—​makes it comically imperative to show off one’s linen or one’s underwear. Polizzotti translates this entry as UNDERGARMENT (324). (We may be reminded of the 1980s fashion for sporting underwear oxymoronically as outerwear, associated with the pop star Madonna, herself a mock Virgin). 115. This joke can be found, for example, in Daniel Defoe’s Moll Flanders. 116. Flaubert, Bouvard and Pécuchet, trans. Polizzotti, 306. 117. Francisco Amorós y Ondeano was the author of Manuel d’éducation physique, gymnastique et morale (Paris: Roret, 1830). 118. Flaubert, Bouvard and Pécuchet, trans. Polizzotti, 189. 119. Flaubert, Bouvard and Pécuchet, trans. Polizzotti, 177. 120. See Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, trans. Robert Hurley, 3 vols. (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978), 1: 148. 121. See, for instance, Thomas Szasz, Sex by Prescription (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1981) and “Pedophilia Therapy,” in The Medicalization of Everyday Life, 94–​101. 122. Vladimir Nabokov, Lectures on Literature, ed. Fredson Bowers, 2 vols. (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980), 1: 256. 123. Franz Kafka, The Complete Stories, ed. Nahum N. Glatzer (New York: Schocken Books, 1971), 225. The German reads Freuet Euch, Ihr Patienten, /​Der Arzt ist Euch

194 Notes ins Bett gelegt! [Rejoice you patients, the doctor has put you in bed]. (This may also be read: the doctor has “put you in bed” in the sense of made you sick.) For a serious literalization of Kafka’s joke in modern medical treatment, where American doctors sometimes had “therapeutic sex” with patients, see Sex by Prescription, in which Szasz reminds us of the use of “surrogate partners,” including doctors, to treat sexual disorders in the second half of the twentieth century: “Projecting the image of the doctor as self-​sacrificing hero—​in the best tradition of the bacteriologist inoculating himself with yellow fever!—​Masters and Johnson here reveal that one of their ‘surrogate partners’ was a female physician. She did it all for the love of science, of course.” Szasz, Sex by Prescription, 31–​32.

Chapter 6 1. See, for instance, among innumerable examples, John Leigh, Touché: The Duel in Literature (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015), 282 and Uri Eisenzweig, Le Duel introuvable (Saint-​Denis: Presses Universitaires de Vincennes, 2017), 21. Eisenzweig even writes of the duel as “a rite rather than an event” [“un rite plutôt qu’un événement”] (33). 2. Leigh, Touché, 284. 3. “de toutes les absurdités humaines, l’absurdité la plus absurdement absurde.” Octave Mirbeau, “A propos du duel,” Le Figaro, December 27, 1888, quoted in Uri Eisenzweig, Le duel introuvable (Saint-​Denis: Presses Universitaires de Vincennes, 2017), 28. 4. Barbara Holland, Gentlemen’s Blood: A History of Dueling from Swords at Dawn to Pistols at Dusk (New York: Bloomsbury, 2003), 286. 5. DUEL, in The Encyclopædia Britannica, A Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, and General Literature, ed. T. Spencer Baynes, 9th ed., 25 vols. (New York: C. Scribner’s Sons, 1878–​1879), 7: 512. 6. Encyclopædia Britannica, 7: 513. 7. “We have shown [dueling],” writes Geddes, “to be irrational and absurd; to be inhuman, barbarous, and cruel.” Reflections on Duelling, and on the Most Effectual Means for Preventing It (Edinburgh: Printed for W. Creech, by Grant and Moir, Paterson’s Court, 1790), 21. 8. Eisenzweig, Le Duel Introuvable, 72. 9. “Le duel est non seulement barbare mais il est ridicule.” Gabriel Tarde, Études pénales et sociales (Paris: Masson, 1892), 5. Quoted in Eisenzweig, Le Duel Introuvable, 73. 10. As illustrated memorably, for example, by Jean-​Léon Gérôme’s 1857 painting of a dying clown, titled Suite d’un bal masqué (The Duel after the Masquerade). See John Leigh, Touché, 256–​259. 11. As Leigh puts it, Touché, 15, “The past is a veil. Once discovered, questions of legitimacy, autonomy, and freedom that the duelist asks of society turn out to be troublingly modern.”

Notes  195 12. See, for instance, Leigh, Touché, on legal measures taken in Venice to minimize the force of such “public derision” (150). “Declining a duel entailed social death” (255). 13. Leigh, Touché, 39. 14. Deloping was sometimes proscribed, in fact, on the grounds that it rendered the duel a mockery. 15. Just as the developing medical sciences concerned with gender and sex led in the nineteenth century to risible theories of masturbation, for example, or of femininity, Leigh, Touché, 27, notes that “from the late seventeenth century onward, increasingly, in common with suicide, duelling is seen as a medical problem, with scientific explanations replacing those based on morality and religion.” 16. Anonymous, The British Code of Duel: A Reference to the Laws of Honour and the Character of Gentleman (London: Knight and Lacey, Paternoster Row, 1824), 1. 17. See, for example, John Leigh, Touché, 114–​116. 18. “Fougeroux de Campigneulles, one of the more moderate, informed critics of dueling” maintained that “what is more, the Ancients could not even begin to suspect or imagine that duels might possibly exist.” Leigh, Touché, 26. 19. Holland, Gentlemen’s Blood, 5. 20. Leigh, Touché, 179. 21. Leigh, Touché, 1. 22. Leigh, Touché, 256. 23. Leigh, Touché, 259. 24. Leigh, Touché, 258. 25. Leigh, Touché, 260. 26. Leigh, Touché, 262. 27. Leigh, Touché, 263. 28. Leigh, Touché, 263. 29. Leigh, Touché, 203. 30. “Un duel, ça a l’air d’être la répétition générale d’un duel.” Quoted in Eisenzweig, Le duel introuvable, 63. 31. “une série de relais scripturaux.” Eisenzweig, Le duel introuvable, 68. 32. Leigh, Touché, 22. 33. Leigh, Touché, 254. 34. Leigh, Touché, 9. 35. Holland, Gentlemen’s Blood, 79. 36. Holland, Gentlemen’s Blood, 263. 37. Eisenzweig, Le duel introuvable, 73. Our translations. 38. Eisenzweig, Le duel introuvable, 74. Our translations. 39. See W. O. Henderson, The Life of Friedrich Engels, 2 vols. (London: Frank Cass and Co., 1976), 1: 34n40. 40. Eisenzweig, Le duel introuvable, 74. 41. Richard Hopton, Pistols at Dawn: A History of Duelling (London: Piatkus, 2011), 185. 42. Leigh, Touché, 269.

196 Notes 43. Mika LaVaque-​Manty, “Dueling for Equality: Masculine Honor and the Modern Politics of Dignity,” Political Theory 34, no. 6 (2006), 715–​740 (718). 44. LaVaque-​Manty, “Dueling for Equality,” 717. 45. LaVaque-​Manty, “Dueling for Equality,” 734. 46. Holland, by contrast, treats the replacement of old-​ fashioned fencing by the modern gym with scorn, sardonically advocating a return from the latter to the former: “Perhaps a chance for personal vengeance would defuse some of the tension in the world,” she speculates. “Perhaps, properly regulated, a return to the [fencing] duel would serve a social purpose,” causing considerably less bloodshed than “we inflict on each other with road rage.” Holland, Gentlemen’s Blood, 289. 47. The British Code of Duel, vii. Similarly, Wilson’s preface “To the Public” takes up the question of education: “Those, therefore, who condemn all who do not denounce duelling in every case, should establish schools where a passive submission to force would be the exercise of a commendable virtue. I have not the least doubt, that if I had been educated in such a school, and lived in such a society, I would have proved a very good member of it. But I much doubt, if a seminary of learning was established, where this Christian forbearance was inculcated and enforced, whether there would be many scholars.” John Lyde Wilson, The Code of Honor; or Rules for the Government of Principals and Seconds in Duelling (Charleston, SC: Printed by Thomas J. Eccles, 1838), 5. 48. Holland, Gentlemen’s Blood, 264. 49. Holland, Gentlemen’s Blood, 260. 50. See, for instance, Margo De Mello, Encyclopedia of Body Adornment (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2007), 235–​238; Abimbola Adelakun, “Circumcision and Facial Scarification,” in Encyclopedia of the Yoruba, ed. Toyin Falola and Akintunde Akinyemi (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2016), 67. On the website of the South African Ezakwantu Gallery, one reads, “Scarification is a permanent procedure to decorate and beautify the body.” https://​web.arch​ive.org/​web/​201​2102​0002​029/​ http://​www.ezakwa​ntu.com/​Gall​ery%20Sc​arif​i cat​ion.htm (accessed July 13, 2019). 51. The British Code of Duel, 4. 52. The British Code of Duel, ix. 53. The British Code of Duel, ix. 54. The British Code of Duel, 48. 55. Robert Shoemaker, The London Mob: Violence and Disorder in Eighteenth-​Century England (London: Hambledon and London, 2007), 184–​185. 56. The British Code of Duel, 48. 57. Shoemaker, The London Mob, 184–​185. 58. It is notable that the ritual itself seems to have been practiced (perhaps to some extent as a consequence of Surdez’s coinage) considerably more in the economically depressed America of the 1930s than in the depressed czarist army of 1917 to which he attributed it. 59. Holland, Gentlemen’s Blood, 97–​98, 265. 60. In Diderot and d’Alembert’s Encyclopedia, MOQUA (of which amok is doubtless a syllabic inversion, or vice versa) is defined as “a fanatical ceremony in usage among

Notes  197 Indian Muslims” in which, after returning from the pilgrimage to Mecca, “one of them takes a run at those who do not follow the law of Muhammad.” For this purpose, we are told, “he takes in his hand a dagger of which half of the blade is poisoned, and, running through the streets, kills all of those he comes across who are not Muslims, until someone kills him. These madmen believe they are pleasing God and their prophet by sacrificing such victims: the multitude after their death reveres them as saints and holds magnificent funerals for them.” What is presented in an eighteenth-​century encyclopedia as a ceremony would be later analyzed in medical terms. See, for instance, Manuel L. Saint Martin, “Running Amok: A Modern Perspective on a Culture-​Bound Syndrome,” Primary Care Companion to the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry 1, no. 3 (1999): 66–​70. The shift from religion to medicine is consistent with Leigh’s previously cited remarks (Touché, 27) concerning dueling. 61. “In the years since Columbine, school shootings changed; they became ritualized.” Malcolm Gladwell, “Thresholds of Violence: How School Shootings Catch On.” The New Yorker, October 19, 2015. 62. For a more general account of mimetic reciprocity as related to Enlightenment and post-​Enlightenment political theory and culture, including dueling, see Pierre Saint-​ Amand, “Original Vengeance: Politics, Anthropology, and the French Enlightenment,” Eighteenth-​Century Studies 6, no. 3 (Spring 1993): 399–​417. 63. Denis Diderot, Jacques the Fatalist and His Master, trans. Michael Henry (London: Penguin, 1986), 75. 64. “You are going to take the story of Jacques’s Captain as a mere fiction, but you will be wrong.” Diderot, Jacques the Fatalist, 71. 65. Diderot, Jacques the Fatalist, 68. 66. Diderot, Jacques the Fatalist, 68–​69. 67. Diderot, Jacques the Fatalist, 70. 68. “Trump on North Korea: ‘Everybody Plays Games.’ ” BBC News/​Us and Canada, May 25, 2018. https://​www.bbc.com/​news/​av/​world-​us-​can​ada-​44258​279/​trump-​on-​ north-​korea-​everyb​ody-​plays-​games (accessed March 27, 2020). 69. https://​www.cnn.com/​vid​eos/​polit​ics/​2018/​09/​30/​trump-​kim-​jong-​un-​fell-​in-​love-​ west-​virgi​nia-​rally-​bts-​vpx.cnn (accessed March 27, 2020). 70. Diderot, Jacques the Fatalist, 116. 71. Diderot, Jacques the Fatalist, 116–​118. 72. emplâtre, which means plaster, cataplasm, or poultice, i.e., remedy for a wound. 73. Just how far Diderot means to undo all meaningful distinctions in this story, including ultimately even that between the living and the dead, is illustrated by the fact that the widow (veuve) appears both to survive and predecease her husband. 74. This story absurdly literalizes the metaphor used by Jacques’s captain to justify his rejection of the Christian notion of turning the other cheek, i.e., the refusal to duel, saying that “the cheek of every man of honour is the same” (Diderot, Jacques the Fatalist, 66); “La joue de tous les hommes d’honneur est la même.” Jacques le fataliste, in Diderot, Contes et romans, ed. Michel Delon (Paris: Gallimard, 2004), 710. Desglands’s cheek will be the same as his rival’s only once the patch has been removed.

198 Notes 75. Since this entirely symmetrical situation would seem to be a good reason to give up dueling altogether, it is educational to note that the only European country never to have developed modern secular dueling, after getting rid of the sacralized judicial variety, was Iceland, and this because, as Holland, Gentlemen’s Blood, 23, puts it, “long, long ago, according to tradition, two great and beloved poets, Gunnlaug and Rafn, fought for the hand of Helga of the Golden Hair, and killed each other. A mourning national assembly gathered and, stricken with grief, agreed that there should be no more dueling forever, and there wasn’t.” Given this emphasis on artists and writers, we cite again the 1878 Britannica about more modern times: “Even at the present hour . . . an editor of the Pays must be an adept with swords and pistols no less than a skilled writer.” Encyclopædia Britannica, 7: 513. “Édouard Manet,” as noted by Holland, Gentlemen’s Blood, 232, “challenged, fought and wounded an art critic who, in his review of a group show, mentioned Manet’s work only once.” And Marcel Proust, in 1896, fought with poet Jean Lorrain for criticizing Les plaisirs et les jours and calling him “one of those pretty little society boys who have managed to get themselves pregnant with literature.” Extending personal vendettas to literary genres, “a brace of literary critics fired four shots at one another to determine the relative merits of the classical and romantic schools of fiction.” Holland, Gentlemen’s Blood, 232. 76. “LES ISLAMISTES AIMENT LA CARICATURE MAIS ON N’UTILISE PAS LE MÊME STYLO!” Delucq’s caricature actually shows a terrorist holding a firebomb. http://​www.del​ucq.com/​rec​herc​her/​pict​ure.php?id=​201​1110​2150​630 (accessed April 29, 2021). Due perhaps to Delucq’s passing in September 2021, this site is currently inaccessible.

Chapter 7 1. “La plus laide, la pire caricature de l’Islam, elle a été faite par les frères Kouachi. Pas par les petits bonhommes de mes collègues.” Caroline G. Murphy, “ ‘Philippe Couillard risque d’être l’une de nos prochaines cibles’—​Zineb el Rhazoui, journaliste au Charlie Hebdo.” Le Journal de Montréal, dimanche 1er février 2015. http://​www.journa​ldem​ ontr​eal.com/​2015/​02/​01/​phili​ppe-​couill​ard-​ris​que-​detre-​lune-​de-​nos-​pro​chai​nes-​ cib​les-​-​-​zineb-​el-​rhaz​oui-​jour​nali​ste-​au-​char​lie-​hebdo (accessed July 7, 2018). 2. Jane Weston Vauclair and David Vauclair, De Charlie Hebdo à #Charlie: Enjeux, histoire, perspectives (Paris: Eyrolles, 2015). 3. “Voltaire’s Treatise on Tolerance Becomes Bestseller following Paris Attacks.” The Guardian, January 16, 2015. http://​www.theg​uard​ian.com/​books/​2015/​jan/​16/​volta​ ire-​treat​ise-​tolera​nce-​bestel​ler-​paris-​att​ack (accessed April 13, 2016). 4. Vauclair and Vauclair, De Charlie Hebdo à #Charlie, 13. 5. Je suis Charlie: Liberté, j’écris tes mots (Paris: Éditions First, 2015), 3–​4. 6. Nous sommes Charlie: 60 écrivains unis pour la liberté d’expression (Paris: Librairie Générale Française, 2015).

Notes  199 7. “À Charlie Hebdo, le 7 janvier 2015, c’est aussi Voltaire qu’on a voulu assassiner.” Société Voltaire, “Voltaire aussi serait Charlie.” L’Express, 14 janvier 2015. http://​www. lexpr​ess.fr/​actual​ite/​ral​liem​ent-​a-​volta​ire_​1640​602.html (accessed April 13, 2016). Marc Lambron similarly observes: “The attack against Charlie Hebdo is an attack against Voltaire, which is to say against the democratic right to mockery and blasphemy” [“L’attentat contre Charlie Hebdo est un attentat contre Voltaire, c’est-​à-​dire contre le droit démocratique à la moquerie et au blasphème”]. Lambron, “A French Killing,” in Nous sommes Charlie, 87. 8. For adherents to the “standard interpretation,” this reliance is often explained as irony. In an April 2015 article in the Revue des deux mondes , Michel Delon attributes Voltaire’s imitation of religious forms to “a taste for pastiche” [“le goût du pastiche”]. Delon, “Comment Voltaire est devenu voltairien,” Revue des deux mondes (avril 2015), 28. 9. In Voltaire’s Treatise on Tolerance, trans. Brian Masters (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 54, similarly, the transferring of the sins of the Jewish people to a goat is taken, along with consecration rites and dietary prohibitions, to exemplify the arbitrariness of divine law. 10. “Les artistes assassinés de Charlie Hebdo ont compté et compteront parmi les représentants les plus brillants, les plus marquants, les plus exemplaires d’un esprit voltairien encore et toujours vivant.” Société Voltaire, “Voltaire aussi serait Charlie.” 11. “C’est le moment d’assumer notre ADN culturel.” Le un, no. 39, 19 janvier 2015. https://​le1he​bdo.fr/​jour​nal/​num​ero/​39/​c-​est-​le-​mom​ent-​d-​assu​mer-​notre-​adn-​ cultu​rel-​658.html (accessed March 17, 2022). 12. “Could Twitter Be the Downfall of Terrorists Even If We’re Not Really All Charlie?” The Daily Mirror, January 9, 2015. http://​www.mir​ror.co.uk/​news/​uk-​news/​could-​ twit​ter-​downf​all-​ter​rori​sts-​even-​4951​051 (accessed April 13, 2016). 13. Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary, trans. and ed. Theodore Besterman (London: Penguin, 1972), 375. 14. “Ils sont nombreux, les philosophes de bistrot et les penseurs de fin de repas qui, à un tournant de la conversation, lâchent: ‘On peut rire de tout.’ Malheureusement, la plupart du temps, cette sentence parfaitement imbécile ne se termine pas part un point, mais par une virgule: ‘On peut rire de tout, mais. . . .’ ” Les fatwas de Charb: Petit traité d’intolérance (Paris: Éditions Les Échappés, 2009), 7. 15. Pierre Desproges, Les réquisitoires du tribunal des flagrants délires, 2 vols. (Paris: Seuil, 2003), 2: 110–​111. 16. “De leur vivant, ces deux rigolos ont fait marrer des salles entières. Une fois disparus, des tristes cons se sont mis à répéter en boucle des extraits de leurs sketchs comme s’il s’agissait de commandements divins.” Charb, Les fatwas de Charb, 7. 17. “désacraliser la bêtise” Desproges, Les réquisitoires du tribunal des flagrants délires, 110. 18. “Je n’ai pas besoin de ta bénédiction pour rire de ce dont j’ai envie de rire, mais en plus je n’ai pas forcément envie de rire de tout.” Charb, Les fatwas de Charb, 7. 19. “Le rire, c’est comme le cul, il y a toujours un curé autoproclamé pour tenter vous imposer ses propres limites.” Charb, Les fatwas de Charb, 8.

200 Notes 20. “Mais n’te promène donc pas tout nu!” Cabu, Peut-​ on encore rire de tout? (Paris: Cherche midi, 2012), 44. 21. “Décors de Roger Hart /​Costumes de Ronald Caldwell (sic.).” Cabu, Peut-​on encore rire de tout?, 44. 22. See the subheading “Rituel” from the Wikipédia article “Au théâtre ce soir.” https://​ fr.wikipe​dia.org/​wiki/​Au_​th%C3%A9%C3%A2tre_​ce_​s​oir (accessed September 22, 2017). 23. See, for instance, Benoît Garnot, Voltaire et Charlie (Dijon: Éditions universitaires de Dijon, 2015). According to Garnot, Voltaire was more an opponent than a true representative of tolerance or freedom of expression. Of his campaign against the Catholic Church, Garnot observes, for instance, that Voltaire’s approach (summarized by the phrase “Écraser l’infâme”) had more in common (mutatis mutandis) with that of modern Islamic terrorists than with that of Charlie Hebdo (22). Voltaire’s persecution of Jean-​Jacques Rousseau is similarly compared to a fatwa (28). 24. “Le seul parti raisonnable dans un siècle ridicule, c’est de rire de tout.” (Voltaire’s Correspondence, ed. Theodor Besterman, 107 vols. (Genève: Institut et musée Voltaire, 1953–​1965), 42: 54. 25. Open Letter on Blasphemy (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2015), 79. 26. “La peur donne de l’importance aux pitoyables fachos, le ridicule, contrairement à ce que prétend l’adage, les tue.” Charb, Les fatwas de Charb: Petit traité d’intolérance, tome II (Paris: Les Échappés, 2012), 106. 27. Emmanuel Todd, Who Is Charlie?: Xenophobia and the New Middle Class, trans. Andrew Brown (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2015), ix–​x. 28. Todd, Who Is Charlie?, 1–​2. 29. Todd, Who Is Charlie?, 20. 30. Todd, Who Is Charlie?, 45. 31. “Everything that used to be part of the spirit of the Enlightenment—​criticism, but also anti-​clerical, theological and philosophical discourse, as well as satire—​is now supposed to be seen as defamation.” Pascal Bruckner, An Imaginary Racism: Islamophobia and Guilt, trans. Steven Rendall and Lisa Neal (Cambridge: Polity, 2018), 16. 32. Charb, Open Letter on Blasphemy, 4. 33. Todd, Who Is Charlie?, 12. 34. Bruno Chaouat, Is Theory Good for the Jews?: French Thought and the Challenge of the New Antisemitism (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2016), 240. 35. Decisions such as those by the editors of Charlie Hebdo and Jyllans-​Posten in 2015 to refrain from publishing caricatures of Islam, though representative of a degree of censorship, can obviously not be equated with any thoroughgoing elimination of mockery which continues to proliferate notably online. 36. Our translation. Cf. Voltaire, Treatise on Tolerance, 25. Brian Masters translates sectaires as bigots. 37. See Michael Moynihan, “Charlie Hebdo Waves the White Flag: the Muslim Prophet, Muhammad, Will Be Mocked No More.” Politico, July 20, 2015 https://​www.polit​ico. eu/​arti​cle/​char​lie-​hebdo-​911-​qaeda-​moham​mad/​(accessed February 11, 2018).

Notes  201 38. Reuters Staff, “Danish Newspaper Says Won’t Print Prophet Cartoons.” Reuters, January 9, 2015. https://​www.reut​ers.com/​arti​cle/​us-​fra​nce-​shoot​ing-​denm​ark/​dan​ ish-​newspa​per-​says-​wont-​print-​prop​het-​carto​ons-​idUSKB​N0KI​0WD2​0150​109 (accessed February 11, 2018). 39. “le caricaturiste qui a fait de l’irrévérence un sacerdoce.” Charb and Zineb, La vie de Mahomet (Paris: Les Échappés, 2013), 5. 40. “très loin derrière les Lumières.” Charb and Zineb, La vie de Mahomet, 6. 41. See Andrew Higgins, “Blame It on Voltaire: Muslims Ask French to Cancel 1741 Play: Alpine Village Riles Activists by Letting Show Go On; Calling on the Riot Police.” Wall Street Journal, March 6, 2006. https://​www.wsj.com/​artic​les/​SB114​1613​ 2786​7090​087 (accessed March 19, 2018). 42. Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary, ed. Margaret Cohen (New York: Norton, 2005), 174. 43. Quoted in Voltaire, Le fanatisme, ou Mahomet le prophète, tragédie par M. de Voltaire (Amsterdam: Étienne Ledet, 1743). 44. See, for instance, scenes 7 and 8 of Charles Simon Favart’s parody, L’empirique, ed. G. L. Van Roosbroeck. (New York: Institute of French Studies, 1929), 39–​50. 45. “Il y a aussi le fait que cela se soit passé juste à la fin de l’eucharistie. La mort d’un prêtre durant la messe renvoie à la dimension forte de l’eucharistie: le Christ a donné sa vie, et le prêtre et ses fidèles sont appelés à s’associer au Christ.” Jan de Volder, Martyr: Vie et mort du père Jacques Hamel (Paris: éditions du Cerf, 2016), 94. 46. Bruce Lincoln, Holy Terrors: Thinking about Religion after September 11, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), 10. 47. Lincoln, Holy Terrors, 10. 48. Lincoln, Holy Terrors, 98, 101. 49. Quoted in Higgins, “Blame It on Voltaire.” 50. While sharing this wish, we ourselves do not offer any solution. Rather than siding with or against Charlie Hebdo, as virtually all commentators have tended to do, we attempt here to show the relevance of mock ritual to this debate. 51. Les Invités de Médiapart, “Un autre héritage des Lumières: L’Encyclopédie contre le Mahomet de Voltaire.” Médiapart, March 2, 2015. https://​blogs.mediap​art. fr/​e dit ​i on/​l es-​i nvi​t es-​d e-​m ediap​a rt/​a rti​c le/​0 20​3 15/​u n-​autre-​h erit​a ge-​d es-​ lumie​res-​l-​encyc​lope​die-​con​tre-​le-​maho​met-​de-​volta​ire (accessed April 13, 2018). 52. “Il n’y a que le mépris et le ridicule qui puissent décréditer et affaiblir [les fanatiques]. On dit qu’un chef de police, pour faire cesser les prestiges du fanatisme, avait résolu, de concert avec un chimiste célèbre, de les faire parodier à la foire par des charlatans. Le remède était spécifique, si l’on pouvait desabuser les hommes sans de grands risques.” FANATICISM (FANATISME), Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d’Alembert, eds., Encyclopédie; ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, 17 vols. (Paris: Briasson, 1751–​1765), 6: 400. 53. “Les prédictions du mage Houellebecq. En 2015, je perds mes dents. . . . En 2022, je fais Ramadan!”

202 Notes 54. Gaby Wood, “Michel Houellebecq’s Soumission: ‘More Prescient Than Provocative’; Michel Houellebecq’s Novel Submission Has Become Inextricably Linked with the Charlie Hebdo Attack. But What Is It Like?” Daily Telegraph, January 15, 2015. 55. David Sexton, “France’s Cassandra: Why Michel Houellebecq Predicts an Islamist France in 2022.” London Evening Standard, January 8, 2015. 56. S. Mark Heim, “Saved by Islam?” Christian Century, October 28, 2015, 35. 57. Christian Lorentzen, “Submitting to What? Michel Houellebecq’s Latest Provocation.” New York, November 2, 2015, np. 58. Charles Taylor, “Answers No One Wants to Hear.” Los Angeles Review of Books, November 18, 2015. 59. Adam Gopnik, “The Next Thing.” New Yorker, January 26, 2015, 28. 60. “Scare Tactics: Michel Houellebecq Defends His Controversial New Book.” Interview with Sylvain Bourmeau. Paris Review, January 2, 2015. https://​www.the​pari​srev​iew. org/​blog/​2015/​01/​02/​scare-​tact​ics-​mic​hel-​houe​lleb​ecq-​on-​his-​new-​book/​ (accessed May 10, 2022). 61. Michel Houellebecq, Submission, trans. Lorin Stein (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015), 5. 62. Houellebecq, Submission, 1. 63. Houellebecq, Submission, 170. 64. Houellebecq, Submission, 136–​137. 65. “son désir désespéré de s’incorporer à un rite.” Soumission (Paris: Flammarion, 2015), 169. 66. See “Scare Tactics” and “Entretien avec Marin de Viry et Valérie Toranian,” in Interventions 2020 (Paris: Flammarion, 2020), 324. 67. Houellebecq, Submission, 160. 68. Gopnik, “The Next Thing,” 28. 69. As Mark Lilla explained, this name is a joking reference to Robert Redeker, a French philosophy professor who was forced into seclusion after publishing an article critical of Islam in Le Figaro. Mark Lilla, “Slouching toward Mecca.” New York Review of Books, April 2, 2015, 41–​43 (42). 70. Houellebecq, Submission, 208. 71. Houellebecq, Submission, 210. 72. See, in particular, the chapter titled “From Anti-​Tradition to Counter-​Tradition,” in René Guénon, The Reign of Quantity and the Signs of the Times, trans. Lord Northbourne (Hillsdale, NY: Sophia Perennis, 2001), 260–​266. We note, in passing, that Guénon returns repeatedly subjects close to our own, as when he writes, for instance, “If it were necessary to give examples chosen from the various manifestations of the modern spirit, there would be only too many from which to choose, beginning with the ‘civic’ or ‘lay’ pseudo-​rites that have developed so extensively in the last few years, and are intended to provide the ‘masses’ with a purely human substitute for real religious rites.” Guénon, The Reign of Quantity, 199. 73. Houellebecq, Submission, 223.

Notes  203 74. “loin qu’il y ait une nouvelle religion qui se forme, il se peut très bien qu’une ancienne se reveille.” “Entretien avec Agathe Novak-​Lechevalier,” in Houellebecq, Interventions 2020, 372. 75. “il a vraiment sérieusement essayé, lui, de fonder une nouvelle religion, il a baptisé des prolétaires dans la foi positive, etc. et ça n’a pas marché.” Houellebecq, “Entretien avec Agathe Novak-​Lechevalier,” 371–​372. 76. Houellebecq, Submission, 124. 77. Houellebecq, Interventions 2020, 361–​362. 78. Houellebecq, Submission, 244. 79. Houellebecq, Submission, 243. 80. Houellebecq, Submission, 244. 81. Houellebecq, Submission, 244. 82. Houellebecq, Submission, 244. 83. Houellebecq, Submission, 245. 84. We have previously been told that by gathering together at a time when “many people still considered it slightly shameful to have to bow to the new Saudi regime,” “the teachers showed strength in numbers,” “gave one another courage,” and “took a special satisfaction in welcoming a new colleague into their midst.” Houellebecq, Submission, 235–​236. 85. Houellebecq, Submission, 245. 86. Houellebecq, Submission, 245. 87. Paris Review, January 2, 2015.

Summation 1. Kojiki, trans. Donald L. Philippi (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015), 84. 2. Ronald L. Grimes, Rite out of Place: Ritual, Media, and the Arts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), ix–​x. 3. “s’interroger sur le sens des rites est presque suspect aujourd’hui, quand la chose n’est pas cocasse.” Pascal Lardellier, Faut-​il brûler les rites? (Grolley, Switzerland: Éditions de l’Hèbe, 2007), 10. 4. Lardellier, Faut-​il brûler les rites?, 10. 5. Barry Stephenson, Ritual: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 103. 6. René Girard, “To Double Business Bound”: Essays on Literature, Mimesis, and Anthropology (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978), 128–​129. 7. Girard, “To Double Business Bound,” 129. 8. Michael Taussig uses this line as the epigraph to “The Golden Army: The Organization of Mimesis,” ­chapter 5 of Mimesis and Alterity: A Particular History of the Senses (New York: Routledge, 1993), 59.

204 Notes 9. Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments, ed. Gunzelin Schmid Noerr, trans. Edmund Jephcott (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2002), 152–​153. 10. Mary Douglas, Implicit Meanings: Essays in Anthropology (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1975), 107–​108. 11. Stephen Halliwell, Greek Laughter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 186. 12. Mikhail Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, ed. and trans. Caryl Emerson (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), 127. 13. Vladimir Propp, Theory and History of Folklore, trans. Ariadna Y. Martin and Richard P. Martin, ed. Anatoly Liberman (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), 132. 14. Propp, Theory and History of Folklore, 133. 15. Propp, Theory and History of Folklore, 133. “So frequently are joking and buffoonery associated in various parts of the world with death,” writes Hocart, “that when we come across ceremonial joking it is advisable to consider whether we are not in the presence of death, real or mystical, or whether the spirits of the dead are not concerned.” A. M. Hocart, Kingship (London: Oxford University Press, 1927), 74. 16. Victor Turner, “Images of Anti-​Temporality: An Essay in the Anthropology of Experience,” Harvard Theological Review 75, no. 2 (1982): 243–​265 (256). 17. Gilhus, Laughing Gods, Weeping Virgins: Laughter in the History of Religion (London: Routledge, 1997), 14–​27. 18. Gilhus, Laughing Gods, Weeping Virgins, 16. 19. Propp, Theory and History of Folklore, 134. 20. Quoted in Propp, Theory and History of Folklore, 134. See Salomon Reinach, Cultes, Mythes et Religions, 5 vols. (Paris: E. Leroux, 1905–​1923), 4: 124. 21. Eli Sagan, Cannibalism: Human Aggression and Cultural Form (New York: Harper and Row, 1974), 17. In a different context, Propp explains the ritual connection between certain “derisory” dances and laughter: “The dance is merely a convulsive fit. Convulsive fits are often the tool of a shaman, and at this stage laughter is just such a convulsive effort.” Propp, Theory and History of Folklore, 136. Because cannibalism has been a recurring theme in our study, for instance in Flaubert, we should also observe that cannibalism has a benign as well as malign dimension, treated by Sagan in Cannibalism, ­chapter 2, “Affectionate Cannibalism,” 22–​34. 22. Gananath Obeyesekere, Cannibal Talk (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), publisher’s description. https://​www.ucpr​ess.edu/​ebook/​978052​0938​311/​ canni​bal-​talk (accessed April 15, 2022). 23. Obeyesekere, Cannibal Talk., publisher’s description. 24. Michael Taussig, Defacement: Public Secrecy and the Labor of the Negative (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999), 204. 25. Taussig, Defacement, 147. 26. Taussig, Defacement, 143.

Notes  205 27. Michael Taussig, “On Sacrifice: Some Paschal Reflections on a Human Ritual Practice.” Tablet Magazine, March 26, 2021. https://​www.tablet​mag.com/​secti​ons/​ arts-​lett​ers/​artic​les/​ani​mal-​sacrif​i ce-​mich​ael-​taus​sig (accessed May 19, 2021). 28. Cited in Taussig, Defacement, 217. 29. Taussig, Defacement, 146. 30. “Leopards break into the temple and drink all the sacrificial vessels dry; it keeps happening; in the end, it can be calculated in advance and is incorporated into the ritual.” The Zürau Aphorisms of Franz Kafka, trans. Michael Hofmann (New York: Schocken, 2006), 20. 31. Taussig, Mimesis and Alterity, 85. 32. Taussig, Mimesis and Alterity, 85. 33. Taussig, Mimesis and Alterity, 85–​86. 34. Taussig, Mimesis and Alterity, 59. 35. Taussig, Mimesis and Alterity, 59–​69. 36. Taussig, “Viscerality, Faith, and Skepticism,” in Magic and Modernity: Interfaces of Revelation and Concealment, ed. Birgit Meyer and Peter Pels (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003), 288. 37. Guy Brassier, Nihil Unbound: Enlightenment and Extinction (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 37 (emphasis added). This evidently ambivalent, even risible sacrificial formula occurs elsewhere in modern psychology and philosophy too, notably in the contemporary philosopher Slavoj Žižek—​himself famously attacked in The New Republic as a “deadly jester”—​who cites Jacques Lacan’s psychoanalytic exhortation that we “sacrifice sacrifice.” See Slavoj Žižek, Enjoy Your Symptom!: Jacques Lacan in Hollywood and Out (New York: Routledge, 1992), 165–​173. See also Adam Kirsch, “The Deadly Jester,” The New Republic, December 1, 2008. 38. Georges Bataille, The Accursed Share: An Essay on General Economy, trans. Robert Hurley, 3 vols. (New York: Zone Books, 1988–​1991), 2: 106. 39. Georges Bataille, “Non-​Knowledge, Laughter, and Tears,” in The Unfinished System of Nonknowledge, ed. Stuart Kendall, trans. Michelle Kendall and Stuart Kendall (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001), 138. 40. Bataille, “Nietzsche’s Laughter,” in The Unfinished System of Nonknowledge, 23. 41. Bataille, “Nietzsche’s Laughter,” 25. 42. Bataille, The Accursed Share, 3: 367. 43. Bataille, “Non-​Knowledge, Laughter, and Tears,” 142. 44. Bataille, “Non-​Knowledge, Laughter, and Tears,” 146. 45. Mikkel Borch-​Jacobsen, “The Laughter of Being,” MLN 102, no. 4 (1987): 737–​ 760 (740). 46. Borch-​Jacobsen, “The Laughter of Being,” 739. 47. Bataille, The Accursed Share, 2: 106. 48. Bataille, The Accursed Share, 2: 119. 49. See Gilhus’s chapter “Religion of Jokes: Flirtation with the East,” in Laughing Gods, Weeping Virgins, 122–​134.

206 Notes 50. “From Protective Deities to International Stardom: An Analysis of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama’s Stance toward Modernity and Buddhism.” In The Dalai Lamas: A Visual History, ed. Martin Brauen (Chicago: Serindia Publications, 2005), 172. 51. Dalai Lama, with Sofia Stril-​Rever, My Spiritual Journey (New York: HarperCollins, 2011), 23. 52. His Holiness the Dalai Lama with Franz Alt, An Appeal to the World: The Way to Peace in a Time of Division (New York: William Morrow, 2017), 102. 53. Contemplating a universe that perhaps began from “nothing” and will end in it too, the astrophysicist Lawrence Krauss, for example, compares the labors of scientists to those of Albert Camus’s Sisyphus: “As Camus imagined, Sisyphus was smiling, and so should we. Our journey, whatever the outcome, provides its own reward.” Lawrence M. Krauss, A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather Than Nothing, with an afterword by Richard Dawkins (London: Simon and Schuster, 2012), 182. 54. Damien Gayle, “Dalai Lama’s ‘Sexist’ Quip Ruffles Equality Activists.” The Guardian, September 24, 2015. https://​www.theg​uard​ian.com/​world/​2015/​sep/​24/​dalai-​lama-​ sex​ist-​quip-​ruff​l es-​equal​ity-​activi​sts (accessed September 23, 2019). 55. Regarding mockery as related to what she calls “the nature of our competing commitments to the sacred” in contemporary secular societies, see Elena Russo, “On Giving and Taking Offence,” Studies in Eighteenth-​ Century Culture 48 (2018): 275–​279.

Concluding Unscientific Postscript: Mock Ritual Now 1. On November 9, 2018, for instance, PBS News’s Mark Shields and David Brooks spent considerable time commenting on former president Trump’s use of what they called “ridicule” and “derision” against the White House press, including several black reporters. https://​www.pbs.org/​video/​shields-​and-​brooks-​on-​midterm-​results-​and-​ loyalty-​to-​trump-​1541807747/​(accessed April 15, 2022). On November 14, 2018, the BBC reported on his “mocking” of French president Macron. These are of course merely two examples among innumerable candidates. https://​www.bbc.com/​news/​ world-​eur​ope-​46212​727 (accessed April 19, 2022). 2. Of the French court from Louis XIV onward, Gunter Gebauer and Cristoph Wulf observe, “When the actual meaning comes to be attributed to the mimetic world as opposed to historical reality, the power of signs is increased and the (political) power that relies on signs intensified. Signs then represent, as is demonstrated in the example of the court society of Versailles, a kind of higher reality.” Gebauer and Wulf, Mimesis: Culture-​Art-​Society, trans. Don Reneau (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 318. 3. That the role played by laughter is changing in contemporary society is maintained by Pascal Lardellier, Nos modes, nos mythes, nos rites: Le social, entre sens et sensible (Cormelles-​le royal: Éditions EMS, 2013), 183; for instance: “Laughter is more and

Notes  207 more present in our society,” having “become almost an obligation, a sign at once of mental health and social integration” [Le rire est de plus en plus présent dans notre société . . . Rire est presque devenu une obligation, un signe, tout à la fois, de santé mentale et d’intégration sociale]. Meanwhile, Terry Gilliam lamented, as reported by Caryn James, “Monty Python’s Terry Gilliam Wishes Comedy Hadn’t Changed,” in the Wall Street Journal (April 16, 2019), that “we can’t laugh at anyone because it causes offense.” https://​w ww.wsj.com/​artic​les/​monty-​pyth​ons-​ terry-​gill​iam-​wis​hes-​com​edy-​hadnt-​chan​ged-​1155​5333​940 (accessed March 27, 2020). 4. Although this phrase is often taken to mean a complete break with religion, magic, and superstition, Weber himself associated “disenchantment” with Puritanism: “The complete disenchantment of the world has only been carried to its full conclusion [in Puritanism]. But that did not mean freedom from what we are today accustomed to call ‘superstition.’ ” Cited by Jason Ā. Josephson-​Storm, in The Myth of Disenchantment: Magic, Modernity, and the Birth of the Human Sciences (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017), 270–​271. Josephson-​Storm notes further that “disenchantment is often mistakenly identified with rationalization as a whole.” The Myth of Disenchantment, 272. 5. L. L. Dickson, The Modern Allegories of William Golding (Tampa: University of South Florida Press, 1990), 16. 6. This animation occurs in the twenty-​fifth episode (in series 2) of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, between sketches 5 and 6, the first titled “World Forum: Communist Quiz” and the latter a sketch about the First World War. See Monty Python: Almost Everything Ever in One Gloriously Fabulous Ludicrously Luxurious Boxset (London: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, 2008) (DVD). 7. Though friends confirm that they too recall the cartoon, we have so far been unable to find it on the “almost everything” Python box set or elsewhere. However, we typed “Terry Gilliam child abuse animation” into Google and discovered one frame from it at the top of a website that turned out to be frankly pornographic. 8. “Silly Disturbances (the Rev. Arthur Belling)” is series 3, episode 36, sketch 5. 9. Samuel Beckett, The Complete Short Prose, ed. S. E. Gontarski (New York: Grove Press, 1995), 51. 10. In Giving Offense, J. M. Coetzee wrote, “A censor pronouncing a ban, whether on an obscene spectacle or a derisive imitation, is like a man trying to stop his penis from standing up. The spectacle is ridiculous, so ridiculous that he is soon a victim not only of his unruly member but of pointing fingers, laughing voices. That is why the institution of censorship has to surround itself with secondary bans on the infringement of its dignity. From being sour to being laughed at for being sour to banning laughter at what is sour is an all-​too-​familiar progression in tyranny, one that should give us further cause for caution.” Coetzee, Giving Offense: Essays on Censorship (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 13. 11. “Hospital Run by RSM” (regimental sergeant major) is series 2, episode 26, sketch 14. 12. In c­ hapter 4 we noted how Chateaubriand, for instance, recommended that Christians respond humorously rather than seriously to those who mocked their beliefs.

208 Notes 13. Barry Stephenson’s view is that “family resemblances are the best we can do when it comes to delineating what ritual is.” Ritual: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 73. 14. When the London society of Masons opened their initiation ceremony in Covent Garden to television, they revealed that it included quasi-​real beatings as well as the mock noose. Noting that they might be accused of having sacrificial goats, one joked that it was not goats but sheep. In the 2015 Russian film titled Catherine the Great, there is a scene where Catherine bonds with a friend from France by mimicking Masonic ceremonies that they associated explicitly with the names Voltaire, Diderot, and Rousseau. They bond by putting sacks over each other’s heads and piercing each other’s breasts with a sword. 15. Joyce Carol Oates writes that “boxing’s mimesis is not that of a mere game,” and that in some historic matches “identification with the fighters is so intense, it is as if barriers between egos dissolve, and one is in the presence of a Dionysian rite of cruelty, sacrifice, and redemption.” On Boxing (New York: Harper Perennial, 2006), 186, 187. For discussion of the interplay between modern American sport and ritual, see, for example, Vernon L. Andrews, “Rituals of the African American Domus: Church, Community, Sport, and LeBron James,” in God in the Details: American Religion in Popular Culture, ed. Erich Michael Mazur and Kate McCarthy (New York: Routledge, 2011), 120–​139. 16. Erving Goffman, Interaction Ritual: Essays on Face-​to-​Face Behavior (Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1967), 178, 179. 17. The sporting equivalent, perhaps, of a cross between an action and a horror movie. Pascal Lardellier, Nos modes, nos mythes, nos rites, 223–​225, discusses professional wrestling (le néo-​catch) under the rubric of “American tragi-​ comedy” [“tragi-​ comédie américaine”], complete with “martyred adversary” [“adversaire martyrisé”]. Meanwhile, a number of recent books have discussed diverse kinds of more or less sacrificial or mock sacrificial rituals and religious influences in modern Western and American culture, including Jon Pahl’s Empire of Sacrifice: The Religious Origins of American Violence (New York: New York University Press, 2010), and God in the Details: American Religion in Popular Culture, ed. Eric Mazur and Kate McCarthy (New York: Routledge, 2011). For a treatment of contemporary secular rituals of various kinds, see also Pascal Lardellier, Les nouveaux rites: Du mariage gay aux Oscars (Paris: Belin, 2005), and of justice in particular, Antoine Garapon, Bien juger: Essai sur le rituel judicaire (Paris: Odile Jacob, 1997). 18. Cited in Pahl, Empire of Sacrifice, 45. 19. Pahl, Empire of Sacrifice, 39. 20. As regards the ritualized killing of animals rather than humans, Alain Finkielkraut cites Roger Scruton’s essay “Eating Our Friends,” which advocates a return to a “ceremonial” relation between farmers and the animals they kill, as opposed to the unceremonious industrial killing prevalent today. See Alain Finkielkraut, ed., Des Animaux et des hommes (Paris: Éditions Stock, 2018), 52–​53. 21. See, for instance, Ted J. Kaptchuk, “Placebo Studies and Ritual Theory: A Comparative Analysis of Navajo, Acupuncture and Biomedical Healing,” Philosophical Transactions: Biological Sciences 366, no. 1572 (2011): 1849–​1858.

Notes  209 22. Goffman, Interaction Ritual, 57. 23. See Jean-​Pierre Dupuy, “Rationality and Ritual: The Babylon Lottery,” in The Mark of the Sacred, trans. M. B. DeBevoise (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2013), 125–​150. Oregonians have only once made a difference in the presidential election, in 1876. Kenneth Arrow’s so-​called impossibility theorem proves that in any rank order election with more than two alternatives, the procedure itself cannot be guaranteed to produce results that satisfy seemingly self-​evident fairness criteria, nor exclude the possibility of a “dictator” whose vote effectively decides the outcome. 24. See Henri Atlan, “Man-​as-​Game (Winnicott, Fink, Wittgenstein),” in Enlightenment to Enlightenment: Intercritique of Science and Myth, trans. Lenn J. Schramm (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993), 289–​330. 25. Herbert Fingarette, for example, in Confucius: The Secular as Sacred (New York: Harper and Row, 1972), 14n, 71–​ 80, compares Confucius’s treatment of “li” (rite) to J. L. Austin and the later Wittgenstein, arguing that the secular itself, in Confucius, is sacralized in ceremony, and that man is conceived as a holy “sacrificial vessel.” 26. See Alice Bertha Gomme, The Traditional Games of England, Scotland, and Ireland, 2 vols. (New York: Dover Publications, 1964), 1: 347, 2: 501–​503. 27. Virginia Nylander Ebinger, for instance, writes that “even the piñata, which at first seems totally secular, was used to teach and convert the Indians, each part of it having religious significance.” Ebinger observes, along with many others, that the piñata was first brought to Europe by Marco Polo, and that “Spanish missionaries discovered very soon after their arrival in the early sixteenth century that a somewhat similar tradition existed among the natives as part of the celebration for their god Huitzilopochtli’s birthday.” Ebinger, Aguinaldos: Christmas Customs, Music, and Foods of the Spanish-​Speaking Countries of the Americas (Santa Fe, NM: SunStone Press, 2008), 100. 28. See, for example, Militarism, Sport, Europe: War without Weapons, ed. J. A. Mangan (London: Frank Cass, 2003), and Mangan’s “Physical Education as a Ritual Process,” in Physical Education and Sport: Sociological and Cultural Perspectives, ed. J. A. Mangan (Oxford: Blackwell, 1973), 87–​102. 29. See, for example, Donal Fallon, “Football is the Last Sacred Ritual of our Time.” Póg Mo Goal, November 5, 2018. https://​pogmog​oal.com/​the-​blog-​reel/​footb​all-​is-​the-​ last-​sac​red-​rit​ual-​of-​our-​time/​25630/​ (accessed March 27, 2020). Pasolini’s own films about Sade and Christ, however, surely rival football in this department. 30. This remark is better known as the probably apocryphal “the Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton.” 31. Similarly, as noted by Nancy Morrow, Dreadful Games: The Play of Desire in the Nineteenth-​Century Novel (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1988), 19, “Lévi-​ Strauss describes the way that some cultures will play competitive games, like football, over and over, not until one side emerges clearly as the ‘winner,’ but until the opposing sides have each won an equal number of games—​until, in effect, the opposition is eliminated.” 32. Though this sketch might be regarded as racist for propagating stereotypes of African men as violent savages, the British “prats” are evidently the primary butts of the joke.

210 Notes It also seems likely that the Monty Python writers were aware of, and even directly inspired by, Trobriand cricket. 33. Peter Greenaway, Drowning by Numbers (London: Palace Video, 1988). 34. Mel Evans, “38 People Have ‘Died by Suicide’ after Finding Reality TV Fame as Stars Continue to Mourn Mike Thalassitis.” Metro, March 24, 2019. https://​metro.co.uk/​ 2019/​03/​24/​38-​peo​ple-​died-​suic​ide-​find​ing-​real​ity-​tv-​fame-​stars-​conti​nue-​mourn-​ mike-​thal​assi​tis-​8996​868/​(accessed March 27, 2020). 35. Tribal council is specifically referred to in the first episode of season one as a ritual. In a later episode, Jeff Probst explains that tribal council is “certainly a ritual,” and the vote, “definitely a sacrifice” (Survivor: Marquesas, February 28, 2002). 36. Jennifer Thackaberry, “Mutual Metaphors of Survivor and Office Politics: Images of Work in Popular Survivor Criticism,” in Survivor Lessons: Essays on Communication and Reality Television, ed. Matthew J. Smith and Andrew F. Wood (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2003), 153–​181 (156, 158). 37. Thackaberry, “Mutual Metaphors of Survivor and Office Politics,” 162. 38. Thackaberry, “Mutual Metaphors of Survivor and Office Politics,” 173. 39. Thackaberry, “Mutual Metaphors of Survivor and Office Politics,” 154. 40. Thackaberry, “Mutual Metaphors of Survivor and Office Politics,” 157. 41. Mark Burnett and Martin Dugard, Survivor: The Ultimate Game: The Official Companion Book to the CBS Television Show (New York: TV Books, 2000), 217. 42. Burnett and Dugard, Survivor, 12. 43. Burnett and Dugard, Survivor, 10. 44. Jean-​Jacques Rousseau, Emile, or, On Education: Includes Emile and Sophie, or, The Solitaries, trans. and ed. Christopher Kelly and Allan Bloom (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 2010), 114. Minnie Singh, “The Government of Boys: Golding’s Lord of the Flies and Ballantyne’s Coral Island,” Children’s Literature 25 (1997): 207, views the first part of The Coral Island as “a protracted meditation on a Rousseaustic education.” 45. “Judith Sheindlin,” Wikiquote. https://​en.wikiqu​ote.org/​wiki/​Judit​h_​Sh​eind​lin (accessed March 27, 2020). 46. The practice of blindfolding Justice in France, according to Frédéric Chauvaud, “Introduction: La maison des juges et la perte du sacré,” in Le sanglot judiciaire: La désacralisation de la justice (VIIIe–​XXe siècles), ed. Frédéric Chauvaud (Paris: Créaphis, 1999), 14, dates from the period between 1495 and 1530. 47. See Sarah Kozinn, Justice Performed: Courtroom TV Shows and the Theaters of Popular Law (London: Bloomsbury, 2015), 169–​172. 48. Nancy S. Marder, “Judging Judge Judy,” in Lawyers in Your Living Room!: Law on Television, ed. Michael Asimov (Chicago: American Bar Association, 2009), 300–​301. 49. Marder, “Judging Judge Judy,” 302. 50. In some instances, Sheindlin’s manipulation of laughter is more subtle, and even an eventual winner can appear ridiculous. Such is the case of actress Karina Roy, whom Sheindlin awarded two hundred dollars in a suit against her former landlord Nicole Tzimeas. Although successful in her suit, Roy would later complain of “years of online humiliation” and harassment due to the inclusion of her appearance on Judge Judy

Notes  211 in her biography and filmography on the IMDb website. See “Karina Roy,” Internet Movie Database. https://​gets​atis​fact​ion.com/​imdb/​top​ics/​re_​karina_​roy_​actress_​ f​rom_​kari​nafe​fifo​fina​_​mem​ber. (accessed March 27, 2020). Roy v. Tzimeas is featured on the DVD Judge Judy: Justice Served (Woodland Hills, CA: Allumination FilmWorks, 2007). 51. Thomas Szasz, Ceremonial Chemistry: The Ritual Persecution of Drugs, Addicts, and Pushers, rev. ed. (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2003), 109. Similarly, while “recreational” opiates are illegal, there is now a medical crisis resulting from doctors addicting millions of patients to them legally. 52. In Britain, suicide was made legal in 1961. In the United States, several states still consider it an unwritten common law crime, as held by the Virginia Supreme Court in 1992. 53. In late-​nineteenth-​century Britain, attempted suicide was considered as attempted murder, and was therefore potentially a hanging offense. 54. “There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide.” Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays, trans. Justin O’Brien (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1955), 3. 55. See, for example, Leo Strauss, “On Plato’s Republic,” in The City and Man (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964), 50–​138. 56. RT, January 17, 2019. 57. Garapon, Bien Juger, 303. Our translation. 58. “Rendre la justice de manière purement fonctionnelle la désenchanterait. . . . Car les atours et l’apparat cérémoniel inhérents au procès ne sont pas simplement utiles, mais absolument indispensables (dans notre système judiciaire en tout cas).” Lardellier, Les nouveau rites, 97. Our translation. 59. Mark Balaguer notes, in Free Will (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2014), 48, that “a recent survey showed that 60 percent of professional philosophers endorse compatibilism,” that is, the position taken by Quine that “freedom” should be reconceived in a way that doesn’t contradict determinism. 60. In some moral vocabularies, like the one proposed by Henri Atlan, “responsibility” is distinguished from “culpability.” Neither Jacques nor anyone else is culpable for any action, while we remain still responsible in the attenuated sense that Atlan compares to “civil, administrative and political responsibility,” where we can be punished for events beyond our control. See Henri Atlan and Bertrand Vergely, Sommes-​nous libres? (Paris: Éditions Salvator, 2012), 42. 61. Unlike Spinoza, Quine and many others now accept that determinism doesn’t seem to apply universally—​for example, to quantum physics—​but that we may be determined by chance as well as necessity makes no obvious difference to “free will.” Beyond our remit here, but important, are such complications as illustrated by the free will theorem of mathematicians John H. Conway and Simon B. Kochen. John Conway and Simon Kochen, “The Free Will Theorem,” Foundations of Physics 36, no. 10 (2006): 1441–​1473. 62. Thomas Szasz, in Psychiatry: The Science of Lies (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2008), refers to what is “dismissively called ‘belief in free will’ ” in connection

212 Notes with Freud and modern “scientists who view belief in free will as similar to belief in superstition” (48). . Daniel C. Dennett speaks of “moral levitation performed by immaterial souls or other spectral puppeteers,” and the “false security of a miracle-​ working Self or Soul.” Dennett, Freedom Evolves (London: Penguin, 2003), 290, 306. Belief in free will in the traditional sense is thus compared to a “gag,” like telling Dumbo he can fly. Dennett, Freedom Evolves, 14. 63. For instance, “The U.S. Supreme Court has called free will a ‘universal and persistent’ foundation for our system of law.” Sam Harris, Free Will (New York: Free Press, 2012), 48. 64. Saul Smilansky as cited by Joseph Keim Campbell in Free Will (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2011), 85. Michael Brooks, persuaded by scientific arguments against free will, similarly observes, “Taking the ultrarational option might get us nowhere—​and that would most likely be the best result we could hope for. . . . It is possible that if invoked in legislation, our scientific efforts could undermine some of the foundations on which human society has been constructed.” See “Free Will” in Brooks, 13 Things That Don’t Make Sense: The Most Baffling Scientific Mysteries of Our Time (New York: Doubleday, 2008), 163. 65. Campbell, Free Will, 85. 66. See W. V. O. Quine, “Tolerance,” in Quiddities: An Intermittently Philosophical Dictionary (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1987), 206–​ 210 (209). 67. Atlan and Vergely, Sommes-​nous libres?, 45–​48. 68. According to John Searle, “The problem of free will is unusual among contemporary philosophical issues in that we are nowhere remotely near to having a solution.” Searle, Freedom and Neurobiology (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006), 11. 69. Timothy O’Connor, citing Alan Donagan, in Persons and Causes: The Metaphysics of Free Will (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 5. 70. In “The Illusionist,” a review of Daniel Dennett’s From Bacteria to Bach and Back, David Bentley Hart remarks that “if you believe that you know you are not a zombie ‘unwittingly’ imagining that you have ‘real consciousness with real qualia,’ Dennett’s reply is a curt ‘No, you don’t’—​because, you see, ‘The only support for that conviction is the vehemence of the conviction itself.’ It is hard to know how to answer this argument without mockery.” The New Atlantis 53 (Spring/​Summer 2017): 109–​21. 71. Quine describes Quiddities in his preface as “one of a loosely linked series of loose-​ knit books inspired by Voltaire’s Philosophical Dictionary.” Quine, Quiddities, viii. 72. Quine, “Free Will,” in Quiddities, 71. He adds, “But, as I have just argued, the will is free for all that” (71). 73. Denis Diderot, Jacques the Fatalist, trans. Michael Henry (London: Penguin, 1986), 236. 74. Quine, Quiddities, 70. 75. Quine, Quiddities, 71. The position that deterrence should be the primary or even exclusive aim of criminal justice has considerable force, of course, whether or not one denies “free will.” (A quasi-​Spinozan position has also been understandably appealing to many left-​wing thinkers, such as Karl Marx, Louis Althusser, Gilles Deleuze,

Notes  213 Antonio Negri, and Étienne Balibar, as well to political conservatives like Quine.) As Socrates remarks in book 1 of Plato’s Republic, the severe punishment of humans is hardly more likely to improve them than the maltreatment of other animals. 76. Quine, Quiddities, 71. 77. For example, the ridicule of Saddam Hussein at his (private but filmed) execution was widely condemned as seriously compromising its justice. Similarly, a short article in the Italian Republica Sunday magazine L’Espresso of January 17, 2019, titled “And the Children Sing ‘Throw Away the Key,’ ” lamented that according to political expert Levi Pumpkin, “the separation between institutions and the crowd is only a distant memory” (25). In a different key, Thomas Szasz noted that in his testimony in the 1980 trial of Darlin June Cromer for the murder of a five-​year-​old African American, Cromer “instilled humor into the proceedings” by mocking psychiatrists’ competence to determine Cromer’s supposed insanity. Szasz and Quine were both skeptical of the insanity defense, but for precisely opposite reasons: Szasz because of his insistence that so-​called insane people were often free to choose nevertheless, Quine because he thought that so-​called sane people were no more free (in the “free will” sense) than anyone else. See Szasz, The Medicalization of Everyday Life (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2007), 112. See also Quine’s discussion of “the rightly but insufficiently maligned insanity plea” in Quiddities, 71. 78. See, for example, Dennett, Freedom Evolves. 79. Eli Sagan, Cannibalism: Human Aggression and Cultural Form (New York: Harper and Row, 1974), 100. 80. For examples of Samuel Beckett’s punning on sacrum, see Murphy (New York: Grove Press, 1957), 278; Watt (New York: Grove Press, 1959), 103. 81. Roberto Calasso, Ardor, trans. Richard Dixon (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2014), 181. Emphasis added. 82. Calasso, Ardor, 185. 83. Calasso, Ardor, 113. 84. Mahdi Tourage, “The Erotics of Sacrifice in the Qur’anic Tale of Abel and Cain,” International Journal of Žižek Studies 5, no. 2 (2011): 11. See also Jill Robbins, “Sacrifice,” in Critical Terms for Religious Studies, ed. Mark C. Taylor (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 286. 85. Henri Atlan, Enlightenment to Enlightenment: Intercritique of Science and Myth, trans. Lenn J. Schramm (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993), 377. 86. Walter Burkert, Homo Necans: The Anthropology of Ancient Greek Sacrificial Ritual and Myth, trans. Peter Bing (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), 71–​72. 87. As previously mentioned, the equation between wit and sex, as modes of mock or symbolic violence, is made throughout Shakespeare, and wit is specifically metaphorized as a knife in a sheath in, for example, Much Ado about Nothing, 5.1.125. 88. And specifically from “Piramus and Thisbe” in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, probably written immediately after Romeo and Juliet. 89. Peter Tupper, A Lover’s Pinch: A Cultural History of Sadomasochism (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2018), 21.

214 Notes 90. Michel Foucault, Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason, trans. Richard Howard (New York: Pantheon Books, 1965), 210. However, such celebrated examples as the Etruscan “Tomb of the Whipping,” as well as the apparently Dionysian flagellation scenes on the walls of Pompeii, suggest some possible archaic models; and Peter Tupper cites “perhaps the earliest discussion of voluntary flagellation in secular, materialist terms” in Pico della Mirandola’s astrological treatise of 1503. Tupper, A Lover’s Pinch, 35. 91. See Roberto Calasso, “Antecedents and Consequences,” in Ardor, trans. Richard Dixon (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux), 335–​362. 92. “There was a nurse whipping a woman with a riding crop, Athey giving another man an enema, the man emptying his bowels into a bucket, ritual piercing and bleeding, bondage, an abundance of Nazi paraphernalia—​all juxtaposed with an altar boasting an array of Pentecostal imagery.” Cited from Achy Obejas, “Martyrs and Saints.” Chicago Reader, June 10, 1993. https://​chicag​orea​der.com/​arts-​cult​ure/​ mart​yrs-​and-​sai​nts/​ (accessed March 27, 2020). 93. See Catherine Gund and Ron Athey, Hallelujah! Ron Athey: A Story of Deliverance (New York: Aubin Pictures, 1997). https://​aubinp​ictu​res.com/​film/​hal​lelu​jah-​ron-​ athey-​story-​deli​vera​nce (accessed May 10, 2022). 94. Mary Richards, for instance, considers “how Ron Athey’s performance works, using masochism as a key element, achieve a poignant critique of the structuring mechanisms of patriarchal power and patriarchy’s influence on notions of fixed subjectivity, particularly ‘desirable’ masculine subjectivity.” Richards, “Ron Athey, A.I.D.S. and the Politics of Pain,” Body, Space & Technology 3, no. 2 (2003). http://​ doi.org/​10.16995/​bst.224 (accessed June 15, 2019). Cited in Fintan Walsh, Male Trouble: Masculinity and the Performance of Crisis (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 111. See also Aspasia Stephanou, “Bodies of Blood: Performing for the Law,” Journal for Cultural Research 15, no. 4 (October 2011): 409–​426. 95. Edgar Allan Poe, “The Philosophy of Composition,” in The Complete Poems and Stories of Edgar Allen Poe, with Selections from His Critical Writings, ed. Arthur Hobson Quinn and Edward H. O’Neill, 2 vols. (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1958), 2: 982. 96. See Gilles Deleuze, “Coldness and Cruelty,” in Gilles Deleuze and Leopold von Sacher-​Masoch, Masochism, trans. Jean McNeil (New York: Zone Books, 1989), 81–​90. 97. Deleuze, “Coldness and Cruelty,” 102. 98. Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, trans. Robert Hurley, 3 vols. (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978), 1: 80. 99. Foucault, The History of Sexuality, 1: 159. 100. Foucault, The History of Sexuality, 1: 157. 101. “In one of the innumerable interviews that he gave in later years, Foucault praised sadomasochism as ‘a creative enterprise, which has as one of its main features what I call the desexualization of pleasure.’ ” Quoted in Roger Kimball, “The Perversions of M. Foucault,” New Criterion 11, no. 7 (March 1993): 10. 102. Atlan, From Enlightenment to Enlightenment, 127.

Notes  215 103. “In other cultures, the closest we can see to modern BDSM is religious rituals.” Tupper, A Lover’s Pinch, 253. Tupper also invokes Victor Turner’s analysis of ritual, in The Ritual Process, as relevant to current BDSM: For people who “participate in the modern primitive and body modification subcultures,” “sadomasochism is a spiritual practice, not sexual.” Tupper, A Lover’s Pinch, 7. 104. Pierre Bourdieu, for example, cites “the ‘parodic performances’ favored by Judith Butler.” Bourdieu, Masculine Domination, trans. Richard Nice (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001), viii. 105. See, for instance, René Girard’s chapter, “Masochism and Sadism,” in Deceit, Desire, and the Novel, trans. Yvonne Freccero (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1965), 176–​192. The banalization of sadomasochism, its embrace by “normal” people, is often said to be illustrated by E. L. James’s bestselling Fifty Shades of Grey. 106. Bourdieu, Masculine Domination, 111. 107. Bourdieu, Masculine Domination, 110–​111. 108. Bourdieu, Masculine Domination, 112. 109. Cited by Bourdieu in Masculine Domination, 108. 110. Andy McSmith, “Love Story: Jan Morris—​Divorce, the Death of a Child, and a Sex Change . . . but Still Together,” Independent, June 4, 2008. McSmith considers Morris’s and Tuckniss’s partnership “one of the most remarkable of modern times.” https://​w ww.inde​p end​ent.co.uk/​news/​u k/​t his-​brit​ain/​love-​story-​j an-​mor​r is-​ divo​rce-​the-​death-​of-​a-​child-​and-​a-​sex-​cha​nge-​but-​still-​toget​her-​839​602.html (accessed January 8, 2020). 111. The Iatmul Naven rite, for instance, has a long history of commentary in anthropology dating back to Gregory Bateson. In the introduction to his own book on this subject, Eric Kline Silverman observes that “Bateson saw naven as a perplexing rite of passage of transvestism and ridicule,” to which he adds, “Mothers’ brothers, then and now, dress like old hags and lampoon birth while women, adorned with male finery, boastfully prance in a burlesque rendition of masculinity.” Silverman, Masculinity, Motherhood, and Mockery: Psychoanalyzing Culture and the Iatmul Naven Rite in New Guinea (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2001), 3. In The Construction of Homosexuality, David F. Greenberg writes, “While some reports of hostility seem to express the authors’ feelings rather than those of the Indians, many—​particularly those that describe the berdaches being ridiculed—​have the ring of authenticity. The range of reported responses to the berdaches—​from reverence to derision—​has never been explained in the abundant anthropological literature.” Greenberg, The Construction of Homosexuality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 50. See also, for example, Andrew Sullivan, Same-​Sex Marriage: Pro and Con (New York: Vintage Books, 2004), 40. 112. Nancy Oestreich Lurie, “Winnebago Berdache,” American Anthropologist 55, no. 5, part 1 (December 1953): 712. The nonnative and potentially offensive word berdache is now usually eschewed in favor of “two spirit” person. 113. Such ritual practices, including infibulation and others, can of course often be very damaging both mentally and physically, although sometimes so-​called female circumcision or genital cutting can also entail what Britannica calls a “symbolic nick,”

216 Notes less drastic than male circumcision. See Elizabeth Prine Pauls, “Female genital cutting: Ritual Surgical Procedure,” Encyclopedia Britannica, February 11, 2019. https://​www.bri​tann​ica.com/​topic/​fem​ale-​geni​tal-​cutt​ing (accessed January 8, 2020). 114. It was widely reported and lamented, for instance, that the London gay pride march of 2018 was led by lesbians who vociferously objected to transsexual men (i.e., “women” after surgery and hormones) being treated in all respects as women. On the BBC’s Newsnight, June 3, 2018, a spokesperson for the trans community suggested that lesbians tend to resist transsexual ideology more than do many others, doubtless because the lesbian tradition often celebrates its emancipation from the shackles of masculinity and patriarchy, and may doubt that men necessarily lose their objectionable qualities by having sex changes. Openly gay female tennis legend Martina Navratilova was roundly criticized by members of the trans as well as gay and straight communities for having written that “letting men compete as women simply if they change their name and take hormones is unfair.” “The Rules on Trans Athletes Reward Cheats and Punish the Innocent.” The Times, February 17, 2019. https://​www.theti​mes.co.uk/​edit​ion/​comm​ent/​the-​rules-​on-​trans-​athle​ tes-​rew​ard-​che​ats-​and-​pun​ish-​the-​innoc​ent-​klsrq6​h3x (accessed March 27, 2020). Thomas Szasz comments, “Doped athleticism is fake athleticism; doped sex change is genuine treatment. This view is, of course, a new cultural convention, owing in part to the discovery of sex hormones, and in part to the secularization and medicalization of gender roles.” See Szasz, Psychiatry: The Science of Lies, 84. 115. Though the child, of course, consents to this procedure and indeed often demands it, the influence of parents and psychiatrists, not to mention peers and the media, can hardly be overestimated; and such consent is considered freely given long before the person is considered by law free to engage in sex, or even to smoke or drink. In 2019, thirty-​five psychologists resigned from London’s Gender Identity Development Service at the Tavistock and Portman NHS foundation Trust, on the grounds that “children are being over diagnosed for gender dysphoria and over-​ prescribed puberty blocking drugs” (Caroline Berger, “The Truth about Being a Parent to a Transitioning Teen.” Daily Telegraph, December 13, 2019). The same year, the Scottish Council on Human Bioethics reported in a submission to the Scottish government that “a significant minority” of transsexuals later express regret (Shingi Mararike, “Suicide Fears from Scottish Council on Human Bioethics over Changing Gender.” The Times, February 10, 2019). 116. Thomas Szasz, Sex by Prescription (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1981), 89. Though this was written in 1980, it still seems relevant. Szasz also cites Voltaire—​ “Theology is to religion what poisons are to food”—​ in his “conclusion that, paraphrasing Voltaire, sexology is to human sexuality what slavery is to freedom.” Szasz, Sex by Prescription, 157. 117. “As we in the twenty-​first century tussle over gender-​neutral toilets, our Anglo-​ Saxon ancestors might have wondered what on earth all the fuss was about.” Cathy Newman, Bloody Brilliant Women: The Pioneers, Revolutionaries and Geniuses Your History Teacher Forgot to Mention (London: William Collins, 2018), 7. For

Notes  217 discussion of the modern toilet and its origins, see Ivan Illich observes that Louis XIV’s Versailles was littered with human excrement and regards Marie Antoinette as one of the first to properly “privatize” defecation by creating a special privy chamber. Illich, H2O and the Waters of Forgetfulness: Reflections on the Historicity of “Stuff ” (Dallas: Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture, 1985), 46, 57. 118. T. J. Clark observes that according to Stanley Cavell, for example, “modernism in the arts is bound up with ‘the possibility of fraudulence.’ ” T. J. Clark, “All the Things I Said about Duchamp,” in Martha Buskirk and Mignon Nixon, eds., The Duchamp Effect (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996), 226. 119. The music “robbed me of my wits, whirled me round in its circles as if I were one of the musicians instead of being only their victim, cast me hither and thither, no matter how much I begged for mercy, and rescued me finally from its own violence.” Franz Kafka, “Investigations of a Dog,” in The Complete Stories, ed. Nahum N. Glatzer (New York: Schocken Books, 1971), 282. 120. Aside from performers like Ron Athey, we may mention performances or “art works” that consist, for example, of people “discreetly” urinating or (supposedly) masturbating behind screens in art galleries (one of us remembers this from a trip to a New York art gallery in the 1990s). We may also recall the notorious Piss Christ by Andres Serrano. “In 1989, the 60x40in red and yellow photograph of a crucifix plunged into a vat of Serrano’s urine ignited a congressional debate on US public arts funding; in France last year [2011], it was physically attacked.” “At the time I made Piss Christ, I wasn’t trying to get anything across,” Serrano told The Guardian. “In hindsight, I’d say Piss Christ is a reflection of my work, not only as an artist, but as a Christian.” Amanda Holpuch, “Andres Serrano’s controversial Piss Christ goes on view in New York.” The Guardian, September 28, 2012. https://​www.theg​uard​ian. com/​artan​ddes​ign/​2012/​sep/​28/​and​res-​serr​ano-​piss-​chr​ist-​new-​york (accessed April 17, 2022). 121. See Robert Kilroy, Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain: One Hundred Years Later (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Pivot, 2018), 68. 122. Kilroy, Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain, 62. 123. Such allusions to the Madonna, incidentally, also play a formal role in the artwork voted the third most influential of the twentieth century, Andy Warhol’s Marilyn Monroe diptych. The diptych traditionally depicted the crucified Christ on one side and Mary on the other. Warhol’s religious reference is commonly interpreted as applying to the erotic idolization of Monroe. 124. Pierre Bourdieu, The Rules of Art: Genesis and Structure of the Literary Field, trans. Susan Emanuel (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1996), 185. 125. Bourdieu, The Rules of Art, 291. 126. Kilroy, Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain, 91. 127. Kilroy, Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain, 128. 128. Kilroy, Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain, 18. This in turn is connected to the modern/​ postmodern distinction, and, within art criticism, to the retinal/​conceptual one. 129. Thierry de Duve, Sewn in the Sweatshops of Marx: Beuys, Warhol, Klein, Duchamp, trans. Rosalind E. Krauss (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012), 59.

218 Notes 130. Kilroy, Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain, 53. 131. Kilroy, Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain, 156. 132. Kilroy, Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain, 84. 133. Kilroy, Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain, 84. Duchamp also called art a “sedative drug” and a “lure.” Kilroy, Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain, 73. 134. Kilroy, Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain, 60. 135. Kilroy, Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain, 6. 136. Kilroy remarks that “when it comes to Duchamp, the question of ‘friendship’ is never a clear-​cut matter.” Kilroy, Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain, 60. 137. Kilroy, Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain, 93. 138. Kilroy, Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain, 141. 139. The line originated with nineteenth-​century anarchist Mikhail Bakunin. 140. Mattha Busby, “Woman Who Bought Shredded Banksy Artwork Will Go Through with Purchase.” The Guardian, October 11, 2018. 141. See also, in this connection, Henri Atlan’s discussion of the value of broken vases in the Talmud, in Fraud: The World of Ona’ah, trans. Nils F. Schott (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2013), 83. 142. Kilroy, Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain, 148. 143. De Duve, Sewn in the Sweatshops of Marx, 61. 144. See Marcel Hénaff, “Money as Joker, or the Truly General Equivalent,” in The Price of Truth: Gift, Money, and Philosophy (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2010), 331–​333. The joker here refers to the playing card, which can “jokingly” assume any value or identity. See also Italo Svevo, Zeno’s Conscience, trans. William Weaver (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2001), c­ hapter 5, “The Story of a Business Partnership,” 272–​401, where the financial broker is called Nilini, around whom Zeno cannot bear to joke even at this comic nullity’s expense since he has so much serious power, and who treats the stock market mock ritualistically, as if it were a person. 145. Richard Trauskin, The Oxford History of Western Music, 5 vols. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 5: 71. 146. The confrontation between the serious and the comic is illustrated not just by Cage’s “joke” that silences music, but, in the opposite direction, by Suzanne’s resort to music to silence laughter, as we have noted, in Diderot’s La Religieuse. Similarly, in Kafka’s “Josephine the Singer, or the Mouse-​Folk,” the mere sight of the musician is said to be “enough to make one stop laughing.” Kafka, The Complete Stories, 365. 147. Kilroy, Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain, 155. 148. Cited by Robert Hullot-​Kentor, “Foreword,” in Theodor Adorno, Kierkegaard: Construction of the Aesthetic, ed. and trans. Robert Hullot-​Kentor (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989), xi. 149. David Lodge, Small World: An Academic Romance (London: Secker and Warburg, 1984), 12. 150. Richard Russo, Straight Man (New York: Vintage, 1998), 68. 151. Russo, Straight Man, 70. 152. Russo, Straight Man, 8, 111–​115. 153. J. M. Coetzee, Disgrace (New York: Viking, 1999), 4.

Notes  219 154. Coetzee, Disgrace, 52. 155. Coetzee, Disgrace, 42. 156. That a religious studies professor is judging the case of someone called Isaacs and—​ since the name Melanie derives from “blackness”—​potentially the case of a black or Cape Colored (and female) Isaac, we should observe that all the ambiguities concerning what we earlier called the mock sacrifice (or non-​sacrifice) of the Biblical Isaac doubtless resurface here, since it seems highly improbable that Coetzee chose the name “Isaacs” by chance. 157. Coetzee, Disgrace, 42. 158. A version of schadenfreude is evoked later in the novel following the rape of Lurie’s daughter Lucy. Understanding that Lucy is adamant in her refusal to report rape as part of the crime she has suffered, Lurie imagines the reactions of her attackers: “The men will watch the newspapers, listen to the gossip. They will read that they are being sought for robbery and assault and nothing else. It will dawn on them that over the body of the woman silence is being drawn like a blanket. Too ashamed, they will say to each other, too ashamed to tell, and they will chuckle luxuriously, recollecting their exploit.” J.M. Coetzee, Disgrace, 110. 159. Gaye Tuchman, Wannabe U: Inside the Corporate University (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009). 160. Tuchman, Wannabe U, 88. 161. Tuchman, Wannabe U, 109. 162. Tuchman, Wannabe U, 87. 163. Tuchman, Wannabe U, 12. 164. Tuchman, Wannabe U, 12. 165. Mary Evans, Killing Thinking: The Death of the Universities (London: Continuum, 2004), 120. Quoted in Tuchman, Wannabe U, 186. 166. Evans, Killing Thinking, 120. 167. Bruce Wilshire, The Moral Collapse of the University: Professionalism, Purity, and Alienation (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990), 51. 168. Wilshire, The Moral Collapse of the University, xiii. Lisiunia A. Romanienko similarly underscores the resurgence of seemingly outmoded ritual practices in contemporary American universities in Degradation Rituals: Our Sadomasochistic Society (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014). 169. Barbara Herrnstein Smith, Belief and Resistance: Dynamics of Contemporary Intellectual Controversy. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), 82. 170. Steven Pinker, Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism and Progress (London: Allen Lane, 2018), 402. 171. Pinker, Enlightenment Now, 5. If Pinker can shift the Enlightenment into the present, this is because this age of rational demystification “was never demarcated by opening and closing ceremonies like the Olympic games.” Pinker, Enlightenment Now, 7–​8. 172. Pinker, Enlightenment Now, 30. We may add that Pinker’s view of history is similar to Frazer’s in emphasizing the decline of religion and, implicitly, of ritual in the modern era. Pinker suggests, for instance, that today’s enlightened believers “read the Bible

220 Notes through the lens of Enlightenment humanism,” separating its humane injunctions from its vicious ones. Like Frazer, who saw ritual as “dwindling into mere pageant and pastime,” Pinker suggests that religious activities, including rituals, provided these have been appropriately demystified, or “unbundled,” may become a source of enjoyment. Similarly, “The scientific refutation of the theory of vengeful gods and occult forces undermines practices such as human sacrifice, witch hunts, faith healing, trial by ordeal, and the persecution of heretics.” Pinker, Enlightenment Now, 429, 431–​432, 394. 173. Pinker, Enlightenment Now, 429. 174. Pinker, Enlightenment Now, 438. 175. Pinker, Enlightenment Now, 451. 176. Quoted in Pinker, Enlightenment Now, 1. 177. Pinker, Enlightenment Now, 219. 178. Pinker, Enlightenment Now, 217–​218. 179. Pinker, Enlightenment Now, 452. 180. Pinker, Enlightenment Now, 452.

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Index For the benefit of digital users, indexed terms that span two pages (e.g., 52–​53) may, on occasion, appear on only one of those pages. ablution, ritual, 25–​26 Abraham, 46, 86–​87 absolutism, 135–​36 Ackerman, Robert, 163n.31 addiction, 94 Adorno, Theodor W., 10, 125–​26, 129, 154–​55, 189n.42, 204n.9 aesthetics, 60, 154 aggression and laughter, 146 and mockery, 42–​43 naked, 139 physical, 45–​46 redirected, 9–​10, 47 and sex, 49–​50 and wit, 43, 49–​50 AIDS, 86–​87 Al-​Assad, Bashar, 110 Albert of Aachen, 189n.41 Allen, Woody, 93, 184n.65 Althusser, Louis, 212–​13n.75 American Medical Association, 192n.95 anthropology classical, 10 and the evolution of ritual, 125 and gender studies, 1–​2 and laughter, 9–​10, 126–​30, 146 and literature, 2–​3, 54 and the sexualization of sacrifice, 146 and Survivor, 140–​41 anthropophagy, 127–​28 antisemitism, 84–​85, 125–​26, 190n.51 Apffel-​Marglin, Frédérique, 8 Aphrodite, 68 Apollinaire, Guillaume, 152–​53 The Apprentice, 138–​39 arbitrariness, 102–​4, 106–​7, 199n.9

Aristophanes, 150, 175n.2 Arrow, Kenneth, 137, 209n.23 art, artists for art’s sake, 148 and dueling, 99–​100, 198n.75 and economics, 153–​54 and excrement, 152 and induction, 65 and joking, 88, 153–​54 and laughter, 130–​31 and the people, 152–​53 and play, 63 primitivist, 148 and ritual, 6, 64–​65, 130–​31, 136, 137, 150–​55 and sacralization, 152 and sacrifice, 62–​63, 65, 130, 136, 146–​ 47, 154–​55 and secularization of the sacred, 145–​46 and sex, 145–​46 and symbolic violence, 107 and transubstantiation, 152 and violation of taboo, 151 Art-​Rite Auction House, Milan, 6 Asad, Talal, 11, 12 atheism, atheists, 4–​5, 113, 114, 143–​44, 152–​53, 178n.46 Athey, Ron, 147, 214nn.92–​94, 217n.120 Atlan, Henri, 135–​36, 137, 144, 146, 148, 211n.60 Atta, Mohamed, 118 Austin, J.A., 209n.25 Au théâtre ce soir, 112 auto-​da-​fé, 30–​31, 41, 114, 115, 139, 179n.57 Azoulai, Juliette, 59, 60–​61, 62, 65, 67, 78

238 Index Bacon, Francis, 46, 177n.33 Bakhtin, Mikhail, 9, 68, 126 Balaguer, Mark, 211n.59 Ballantyne, R.M., The Coral Island, 140–​ 41, 210n.44 Banksy, 153–​54 baptism, 8, 11, 41, 42, 58 of the tropic or of the line, 28–​29, 34 Barash, Susan Shapiro, 32 Barzun, Jacques, 88, 89–​90, 93, 191n.71, 193n.110 Bataille, Georges, 6–​7, 47, 52, 54, 128–​29, 130–​31, 145–​46 Bateson, Gregory, 44, 128–​29, 215n.111 Baudrillard, Jean, 66–​67 BBC, 134–​35, 161n.8, 216n.114 BDSM, 147–​48, 215n.103 Beatles, The, 154–​55 Beaumarchais, Pierre-​Augustin Caron de, 92 Bécherand, Abbé, 38–​39 Beckett, Samuel and child sacrifice, 134 and circumcision, 190n.61 and lamb sacrifice, 81–​82 and laughter, 184–​85n.70 and mock cannibalism, 130–​31, 151 and the sacrum, 145–​46 Bell, Catherine, 12, 161n.6 Bellin, Jacques-​Nicolas, 28–​29 Benjamin, Walter, 63 Béranger, Pierre-​Jean, 56 Besterman, Theodore, 56, 181n.9 bêtise, 54–​55 Bible, 42, 69–​70, 72–​73, 86–​87, 106, 146, 219–​20n.172 Big Brother, 138–​39 Bierce, Ambrose, 99 bleeding, bloodletting as art, 214n.92 dueling, 95, 98 medical, 6–​7, 56–​57, 73–​75, 81, 85, 90–​ 91, 95, 98, 186n.92, 186n.96, 188n.30, 214n.92 as pathology, 81, 85 Blin, Simon, 1–​2 blood pudding, 81–​82, 188n.34

Boigne, Louise-​Eléonore-​Charlotte-​ Adélaide d'Osmond, comtesse de, 15, 166n.5 Bourdieu, Pierre, 148, 152, 215n.104 Bourguinat, Élisabeth, 21 boxing, 136, 208n.15 Bradshaw, Peter, 168n.35 Brahmins, 23 Brassier, Ray, 129 Brooks, David, 206n.1 Brooks, Michael, 191nn.67–​68, 212n.64 Bruckner, Pascal, 114, 200n.31 Buc, Philippe, 12 Buddhism, 131–​32 buffoon, buffoonery, 5, 8, 28, 29, 39, 171n.26, 175n.66 burka, 52–​53 Burkert, Walter, 146 Burnett, Mark, 140–​41 Burroughs, William S., 130 Cabu 112, 117 Cage, John, 154–​55, 218n.146 Cahusac, Louis de, 28 Calasso, Roberto, 146–​47 Camus, Albert, 142, 206n.53 cannibalism, 42, 48, 81–​83, 87–​88, 90–​91, 127–​28, 130–​31, 134, 151, 188–​ 89n.39, 189n.42, 204n.21 Capharnaüm, 56 carnival, 9, 40–​41, 68, 82, 137 catharsis, 73–​74 Catholicism, Catholics, 2, 41–​42, 45–​46, 49, 52, 84–​85, 87–​88, 114, 115, 120, 137, 139, 200n.23 celibacy, 45–​46, 66, 69–​70 ceremonies, 4–​5, 7, 8, 9–​10, 11, 23, 24–​25, 27–​28, 29, 99, 120, 122–​23, 128–​29, 133, 136, 196–​97n.60, 208n.14, 209n.25, 219n.171, See also rites; ritual Césaire, Aimé, 8, 9 Chaouat, Bruno, 115 Charb, 109–​11, 112–​13, 114, 116, 117, 159 charivari, 40–​41, 60, 133, 175n.2, 181–​82n.22 Charlie Hebdo and Christianity, 112, 114, 115

Index  239 and Enlightenment values, 108, 112, 114, 115–​16 and Islam, 114–​15 and laughter, 9, 110–​12 and racism, 114–​15 and ritual, 112–​13, 115 and scapegoating, 113, 114 and sex, 111 and Voltaire (see under Voltaire) and xenophobia, 114 Chartier, Pierre, 37 Chateaubriand, François-​René de, 69–​70, 84–​85, 190n.51, 207n.12 Chauvaud, Frédéric, 210n.46 Chesterton, G.K., 136 Chicaneau de Neuville, Didier-​Pierre, 32, 171n.26 chlorine water, 56, 72 Choderlos de Laclos, Pierre Ambroise François, 14–​15, 16, 17–​19, 20, 21, 155, 167n.25 Christianity Anglican, 42 and cannibalism, 82–​83, 87–​88 colonialist, 52 and communion, 87–​88 critique of, 118–​19 and derision, 72–​73 end of, 47–​48 and farce, 69 and Isaac, 47 and Jews, 82, 83, 84–​85 meaning of, 72 and mysteries, 69 perverse, 49 priest, replaced by doctor, 94 ridicule of, 56, 69–​70, 112 and sacrifice, 69 and sadomasochist expiation, 53 and secular modernity, 121 and sex, 48 and sexual modesty, 50, 52–​53, 65–​66 as slave religion, 41 and transubstantiation, 87–​88 Christie, Agatha, 136 Christmas, Christmas Eve, 27–​28, 81–​82, 188n.34, See also blood pudding cinéma-​vérité, 8–​9

circumcision, 86–​87, 109, 136, 149–​50, 215–​16n.113 Clapper, James, 105–​6 Clark, Roger, 181–​82n.22 Clark, T.J., 217n.118 clown, 27–​28, 59, 60, 61, 88, 113, 119, 126, 152–​53, 191n.71 Coetzee, J.M., 155–​56, 219n.156, 219n.158 coffee, 86, 89 coitus, copulation, 48, 49–​50, 51, 52–​53, 67–​68, 92, 94, 146 Comédie Française, 89–​90 comedy cruel, 15 and defecation, 150 erosion of, 15 feminine, 68 of ideas, 78 as intellectual tickling, 9–​10 as mock warfare, 9–​10 normalized, 60 obscene, 146 political, 150 and political correctness, 15 purgative, 117 and religion, 111 and ritual, 40–​41, 135 of seduction, 146 stand-​up, 131–​32 tragicomedy, 96–​97, 100, 117, 208n.17 Comte, Auguste, 122 Condorcet, Nicolas de, 3 conspiracy, 74, 76 Constantine, Helen, 17 contests, 14, 16–​17, 138–​39 convent, 18, 35–​36, 40–​41, 53, 57, 69, 173n.45 convulsionnaires, 37–​39, 113 corn-​spirit, 2–​3 Corpus Christi, 81–​82 Coudreuse, Anne, 55, 181n.8, 183n.48 Coward, David 51, 179n.60 cricket, 138, 139, 209–​10n.32 Cromer, Darlin June, 213n.77 crucifix, crucifixion, 6, 37, 38, 53, 66, 81–​ 82, 111, 112, 134, 177n.40, 190n.51, 217n.120 Crusades, 82–​83

240 Index cuckold, 50–​52, 179n.62 Culler, Jonathan, 61–​64, 69–​70 Cuthbert, Pamela, 22 Dalai Lama, 131–​32 D’Alembert, Jean le Rond Account of the Destruction of the Jesuits in France, 38–​39, 113 and education, 7 jokes about the Jansenists, 38–​39 and private jokes, 34 and ridicule, 39, 118–​19 dancers, 39, 151 Danish cartoons, 116–​17 Dawkins, Richard, 40–​41, 135–​36 Debray, Régis, 110 de-​Christianization, 47–​48, 114 deduction, 65 defecation, 2–​3, 150, 216–​17n.117 Defoe, Daniel, Robinson Crusoe, 140–​41 deists, 4–​5, 55 Deleuze, Gilles, 147 Deleyre, Alexandre, 118–​19 Delon, Michel, 199n.8 demystification, 103–​4, 113, 128, 153, 219n.171 Denby, David, 14–​15 Dennett, Daniel D., 211–​12n.62, 212n.70 derision, 3–​4, 5, 37, 50, 55, 63, 69, 72–​ 73, 96–​97, 125–​26, 133, 142, 144, 215n.111 dance of, 127 and justice, 141–​42 purgative, 127 Derrida, Jacques, 47, 80, 187n.19 Dershowitz, Alan, 142–​43 desacralization, 111, 148 desexualization of pleasure, 147–​48, 214n.101 of the sacred, 148 Desproges, Pierre, 111 detective genre, 136 Diderot, Denis and Christianity, 49, 52–​53, 178n.46, 180n.64, 197n.74 Cinqmars et Derville, 37–​39, 179n.56 and the decline of religion, 27 and dueling, 105, 106–​7

and idiots’ dinners, 34–​35, 37 joke on the Marquis de Croismare, 35–​36 and laughter, 38–​39, 49–​50, 179n.56 and mummeries, 29 The Nun, 35–​37, 53, 173n.45, 179n.52 and priests, 48–​52 Rameau’s Nephew, 19, 33–​34 and reason, 5 and sacrifice, 19 Supplement to the Voyage of Bougainville, 52, 180n.66 and trade associations, 33–​34 and Voltaire, 179n.57 dieting, 76, 85 disenchantment, 6, 19–​20, 55, 124, 129, 133, 207n.4 doctors, 6–7, 49, 73, 74–​75, 80–​81, 90, 92–​ 94, 193–​94n.123, See also medicine; shamans; witch doctors Dostoevsky, Fyodor, 86 Douglas, Mary, 11, 86, 126, 189n.44 Downing, Lisa, 166n.2 Dreyfus, Georges B, 131 Duchamp, Marcel Étant donnés, 153 Fountain, 151–​54 transubstantiation, 152–​53 Duchet, Claude, 59, 181n.20 Duclos, Charles Pinot, 31–​34, 171n.21 duel, dueling absurdity of, 95, 96, 138 American, 104 arbitrariness of, 102–​4, 106 British Code of Duel, The, 97, 101, 102–​4 and Enlightenment, 96–​98, 100–​1, 104 and equality, 96, 98–​99, 100–​1, 104, 105, 106–​7 and higher education, 101–​2, 155 intellectual, 105, 135–​36 irrationality of, 100–​1 judicial, 95, 97–​98, 104, 135–​36, 141 literary depictions of, 95–​96, 99 and mimetic reciprocity, 105, 197n.62 origins of, 96, 97–​98 and political figures, 105–​6 post-​Enlightenment, 10–​11, 95, 99 private, privatized, 95, 97–​98, 100–​1, 102, 104

Index  241 public, 95, 96, 102 and ridicule, 14, 96–​97, 99 as ritual, ritualized combat, 95, 98–​ 99, 194n.1 and sacrifice, 95–​96, 98, 102–​3 secular, 6, 51, 95, 96–​97, 198n.75 and suicide, 104–​5, 195n.15 Dugdale, John, 108 Dupuy, Jean-​Pierre, 137, 209n.23 Durkheim, Émile, 80 Ebinger, Virginia Nylander, 209n.27 economics, 43, 74, 153–​54 education in campus novels, 155–​56 and dueling, 95–​96, 101, 102, 196n.47 and hazing, 22–​23 higher, 156, 157 and mockery, 57–​58, 59, 60, 157 and morality, 57, 181n.15 physical, 57–​58, 138 and postcolonial politics, 8 and public humiliation, 59, 157 religious, 7, 57 and ritual, 20, 59, 157 and rote memorization, 57 Eisenzweig, Uri, 99, 100, 194n.1 Encyclopedia Britannica, 12, 96, 97–​98, 198n.75 Engels, Friedrich, 97–​98, 99–​102 Enlightenment and antiracism, 114 controversies concerning, 7–​8 Dialectic of Enlightenment (see Adorno, Theodor W.; Horkheimer, Max) and dueling, 10–​11, 95, 96–​98, 99, 100–​ 1, 104, 133 Enlightenment to Enlightenment (see Atlan, Henri) Enlightenment Now (see Pinker, Steven) heritage of, 39, 112, 114, 115–​17, 118–​ 19, 123 and laughter, 23, 34–​38, 112–​13, 135–​ 36, 159 medicine, 81 moderate, 7 process of, 5 and progress, 22–​23, 158

radical, 7 as religion, 30, 74 and sacrifice, 10, 19–​20, 30–​31, 33–​34, 129 and sadomasochism, 146–​47, 148 and sex, 94, 148, 167n.25 eroticism, eroticization and artistic taste, 66–​67, 146–​47 of bleeding, 74, 75, 81 and consecration, 148 of doctors, 93–​94 and dueling, 101–​2, 106–​7 and excrement, 150, 152 and farce, 65–​66, 67 and joking, 67 and medicine, 75, 94 of persecutors, 67–​68 and race, 66–​67 and religion, 45–​46, 70, 71, 81–​82, 175–​76n.5 and sacrifice, 20, 53, 75, 76, 130–​31, 145–​46, 150 secular, 20, 52–​53, 145–​46, 148 and symbolic cannibalism, 82–​83 and tragedy, 130 of victims, 67–​68 ethnography, 4, 54, 66, 126–​28, 188–​89n.39 Eucharist, 42, 45, 47, 81–​82, 111, 130–​31, 151, 201n.45 Evans, Mary, 156–​57 excommunication, 65–​66, 176n.8 excrement, 27–​28, 72–​73, 150 executions, mock executions, 2–​3, 6, 16–​ 17, 137, 155, 213n.77 Expedition Robinson, 139 expiation, 11, 24–​25, 39, 53, 168n.37 expulsion, 9–​10, 111, 133, 139 Facebook, 110 faith healing, 90, 219–​20n.172 fanaticism, 39, 108–​9, 116–​17, 118–​19, 182n.39 fantasy cannibalistic, 82–​83, 127–​28 Dionysiac 74 erotic, 75, 76 medical, 75, 93–​94 sacrificial, 75–​76

242 Index farce, 5, 28, 29, 36, 38, 39, 65–​66, 67, 69, 100, 113, 134 farceur, 58, 59, 64–​66, 67–​68, 88 fatwa, 109–​11, 113, 124 feast of fools, 5, 27–​28, 34 fetish, fetishization, 52–​53, 137 fiction, 15, 20, 32, 40–​41, 48, 54, 90–​91, 95–​96, 98–​99, 136, 155–​56 Fielding, Henry, 2, 48 figuration, figural, 2, 10, 19, 42, 45, 74–​75, 193n.113 Fingarette, Herbert, 209n.25 Finkielkraut, Alain, 208n.20 flagellation, 147, 175–​76n.5, 214n.90 Flaubert, Gustave and bleeding, 56–​57, 73–​74, 75, 81, 89, 95 and cannibalism, 81–​83, 87–​88, 90–​91, 188–​89n.39, 204n.21 and Christianity, 56, 66, 69–​70, 72, 82–​ 83, 84–​85, 87–​88, 181n.13, 184n.59, 186n.94 and Christmas, 81–​82 and the decline of religions, 84, 85 and deduction, 65 and dietary prohibitions, 83, 85–​86 and dueling, 98 and education, 57–​58, 59, 60, 117, 181n.15 and expiation, 60 and free indirect speech, 61, 62–​63, 64, 65 and immorality, 57, 186n.88 and induction, 65 and initiation, 59, 61, 181n.19 and jokers, 55, 62, 65, 66, 67–​68, 88, 145–​46 jokes in, 55, 56–​57, 59–​60, 61, 62–​63, 66–​68, 70–​71, 82, 83, 88–​89, 91, 93, 181–​82n.22, 185n.83 and Kafka, 78, 94 and laughter, 55, 60, 61, 62–​63, 66, 68, 88, 89, 90–​91 and medicine, 73, 74, 78–​81, 83, 86–​ 87, 94 and morality, 117 and objectivity, 63 and realism, 61–​62, 63, 64, 65, 74–​75, 183n.43

and ridicule, 56–​57, 58, 59, 60–​61, 62–​ 63, 64, 65, 69–​70, 77, 78–​79, 88, 89, 117, 184n.58 and ritual, 6–​7, 10–​11, 55, 56–​57, 58, 59, 60, 64–​66, 71–​72, 73–​75, 81–​82, 86–​88, 92–​93, 94, 95, 183n.51 and sacrifice, 55, 56–​57, 62–​63, 69, 73, 74–​77, 79, 80, 81–​82, 85, 86–​88, 94, 145–​46 and science, 55, 56, 57–​58, 65, 72–​74, 83, 85, 86–​88, 89, 90–​91 and sex, 66, 69, 70, 93–​94 and swearing, 90, 92–​93, 193n.114 and transubstantiation, 87–​88 and Voltaire, 55–​56, 69, 72–​73, 88, 89 Fleck, Ludwik, 87 Fluide glacial, 109–​10 Foucault, Michel, 44, 53, 94, 146–​48, 214n.101 Frank, Judith, 43, 44 Franklin, Benjamin, 56 fraud, 129, 139, 151, 217n.118 Frazer, James George, 2–​4, 5, 6, 111, 129, 163n.31, 219–​20n.172 Frederick II of Prussia, 117, 118 freedom of expression, 84, 108–​9, 110, 116–​17, 118–​19, 124, 200n.23 Freemasons, 136 freethinkers, freethinking, 29, 84–​85 free will, 135–​36, 143–​45, 211n.59, 211–​ 12nn.60–​62, 212nn.63–​64, 212n.68, 212–​13n.75, 213n.77 galette des rois, 138 Galloway, George, 105–​6 gamblers, gambling, 99–​100, 104, 106, 136 games, 3, 8–​9, 21, 76, 98–​99, 105–​6, 130, 134, 137–​39, 140, 145–​46, 147, 153, 208n.15, 209n.31, 219n.171 Garapon, Antoine, 143 Garnot, Benoît, 200n.23 Gebauer, Gunter, 206n.2 Geddes, John, 96, 194n.7 gender, 1–​2, 68, 97, 131–​32, 148–​50, 195n.15, 216nn.114–​15, 216–​17n.117 Gilhus, Ingvild Saelid, 126, 130–​31 Gilliam, Terry, 134, 135, 206–​7n.3 Gilligan’s Island, 140–​41

Index  243 Ginsburg, Ruth Bader, 141 Girard, René, 9–​10, 125–26, 174n.55 God, death of, 6–​7 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 41 Goffman, Erving, 11, 136, 137, 149–​50 Golding, William, 134, 140–​41, 210n.44 González, Francisco, 59 Good Friday, 84–​85 Goodman, Nelson, 65 Gopnik, Adam, 119–​21 gossip, 30–​31, 32, 71, 156, 219n.158 Gourarier, Mélanie, 1–​2 Greenaway, Peter, 138 Greenberg, David F., 215n.111 Grimes, Ronald L., 12–​13, 54, 87–​88, 90, 125, 162n.19, 191nn.69–​70 Grimm, Friedrich Melchior, 34–​36, 37, 38, 172n.40 Guénon, René, 121, 202n.72 Gunnlaug, Gunnlaugs Saga, 198n.75 gym, gymnastics, 89–​90, 93–​94, 151, 192n.98, 196n.46

Hughes, Derek, 19 Hugo, Victor, 1–​2 Huizinga, Johan, 137 humiliation, 6, 14, 15, 17, 23, 32, 50, 52, 59–​60, 76, 146–​47, 156, 157, 179n.57, 210–​11n.50 humor English, 40, 42–​43, 61, 176nn.15–​16, 177n.19 erotic, 70 French, 40, 61 female, 68 male, 67–​68 sacrilegious, 68 self-​deprecating, 43, 49 sense of, 61, 68 seriousness of, 131–​32, 135–​36 Hüsken, Ute, 12–​13, 165n.80 Huysmans, Joris-​Karl, 120, 121 hygiene, 79, 85, 86–​87 Hyman, Stanley Edgar, 3 hysteria, 86–​87, 93, 113–​14

Hacking, Ian, 90–​91, 94, 192n.105 ham, 83, 85, 92, 189n.42. See also pork Hamel, Jacques, 118 Hart, David Bentley, 212n.70 Hatch, Richard, 140 Hazazel, 24, 25, 109 hazing, 6, 21, 22–​23, 59, 101–​2, 168n.38 health, 43, 46, 79–​80, 85, 86–​88, 90, 113, 190–​91n.66, 206–​7n.3, See also doctor; medicine Higgins, Andrew, 116–​17 Hippocrates, 73, 80–​81 Hitchens, Christopher, 135–​36, 144, 184n.66, 189n.42 Hocart, A.M., 11, 145, 204n.15 Holland, Barbara, 95–​96, 98, 100, 101, 103–​4, 196n.46, 198n.75 Hollywood, 15, 104 holy water, 41, 56, 72 Homer, 68, 89 homosociality, 43 Hopton, Richard, 100–​1 Horkheimer, Max, 10, 125–​26, 129 horror films, 136 Houellebecq, Michel, 119–​23

iatrogenesis, 80–​81 idol, idolators, idolization, 30, 68, 72, 82, 137, 139–​40, 154, 184n.59, 217n.123 Illich, Ivan, 80–​81, 216–​17n.117 incantation, 113, 124 Indra, 146 induction logical, 65 mathematical, 183n.53 ritual, 116–​17, 157 initiation, 11, 20–​21, 25–​26, 59, 61, 101–​2, 128–​30, 136, 157, 181n.19, 208n.14 Isaac, 46–​48, 86–​87, 126, 134–​35, 146, 149–​50, 156, 219n.156 ISIS, 6, 136, 137 Islam, 84–​85, 104–​5, 114, 116, 118–​22 Islamists, 107, 115, 118 Islamophobia, 114, 115, 118–​19 Jansenism, Jansenists, 38, 39 jester, 40–​41, 42, 43, 47–​48, 102, 205n.37 Jesus Christ, 17, 47, 56, 111, 112, 177n.33 Jews, 41, 82, 83, 84–​85, 101, 115, 125–​ 26, 134–​35, 189n.44, 190nn.50–​ 51, 199n.9

244 Index jihadists, 108, 110 Jimack, Peter, 52, 180n.66 jokers artists as, 65, 88, 145–​46 medieval, 39 money as, 153–​54 priests as, 40–​41, 55 and religion, 111 as sacrificial victims, 40, 46 Voltairean, 66 young men as, 65, 68 jokes ambivalence of, 44, 67–​68 anticlerical, 56–​57 about Christianity, 56, 185n.83 and coteries, 33–​34 about the crucifixion, 111, 134 about free will, 144 as hate speech, 131–​32 about Jansenists, 38–​39 and justice, 141–​42 killing, 2, 40, 55, 161n.8 and modesty, 44 as money, 33–​34, 43 about music, 88 obscene, 158–​59 as physical aggression, 45–​46 about pork, 83 about priests, 6–​7, 56–​57, 73, 136 by priests, 43, 45–​46, 70, 71 prohibition of, 131–​32, 135 and the sacred, 158 as sacrifice, 33–​34, 40 about Saint Bartholomew massacre, 88 about sex, 131–​32 superior, 61, 65 women’s, 68 Josephson-​Storm, Jason Ā, 207n.4 Judaism, 83, 84–​85. See also Jews Judge Judy. See Sheindlin, Judith Julian (emperor), 69 justice and arbitrariness, 103–​4 and circumscription of laughter, 131–​32 contemporary, 141 and drugs, 89 and dueling, 102–​4 and free will, 143–​45

and joking, 141–​42 and laughter, 135–​36, 210–​11n.50 penal, 6 private, 95, 102 and ridicule, 210–​11n.50, 213n.77 and sacrifice, 103 and trial by combat, 97–​98, 102–​3 and trial by ordeal, 97–​98 university, 156 Jyllands-​Posten, 116 Kafka, Franz, 128–​29, 130–​31, 158–​59 “A Country Doctor,” 80–​81, 94, 193–​94n.123 “Investigations of a Dog,” 151, 152, 217n.119 “Josephine the Singer, or the Mouse-​ Folk,” 218n.146 Kaling, Mindy, 161n.5, 184n.66 killing of animals, 134, 208n.20 and equality, 98–​99 figural, 2, 3 ISIS, 136 and laughter, 55, 124, 126–​27 and sacrifice, 117–​18, 126–​27 sexualization of, 146 suicide, 105 and wit, 14–​15, 40 Kilroy, Robert, 152–​54, 218n.136 Kim Jong-​un, 105–​6 kings, 2–​3, 4, 16, 20, 49, 146, 147, 149–​ 50, 178n.46 Kirkland, Paul E., 39 kosher, 81 Krauss, Lawrence M., 206n.53 Kuschel, Karl-​Josef, 46 Lacan, Jacques, 86, 205n.37 Lady Justice, 141 Lardellier, Pascal, 125, 143, 206–​7n.3, 208n.17 laughing threshold, 126 laughter. See also comedy; derision; humor; jokers; jokes; mockery; ridicule; wit carnival, 9, 68 and censorship, 110–​12, 135, 207n.10

Index  245 cruel, 15, 19, 36–​37, 51, 55, 60 and dueling, 96–​97 expiatory, 53, 109, 111, 113 gendering of, 68, 149 and health, 42–​43, 88, 90–​91, 113, 190–​91n.66 Homeric, 89 and music, 50 non-​ritualized, 135–​36 origins of, 9–​10 and pornography, 53, 147 and reciprocity, 125–​26 ribald, 66 ritualized, 2, 47, 52, 68, 113, 126–​27, 128, 129–​30, 131–​32, 133, 146 and the sacred, 46, 111, 127, 130, 131–​ 32, 133, 158, 159, 204n.21 sacrificial, 19, 36, 40, 44, 47, 52, 53, 130–​31 sardonic, 126–​27 and sexuality, 46, 49–​50, 53, 130–​31, 146, 147, 149 and tears, 10, 36, 38, 130 and theory, 9–​10, 110–​11, 112, 125–​26 and thought, 63, 109, 113 LaVaque-​Manty, Mika, 100–​1, 104, 106–​7 Lebel, Robert, 152 Le Breton, David, 1–​2 Leconte, Patrice, 2, 6, 14–15, 20, 21, 22, 40, 61, 133 Leigh, John, 95, 99, 194–​95nn.11–​12, 195n.15 Lent, 36, 82–​83 Levin, Harry, 60 Levine, Sherrie, 152 Leviticus, 102–​3 Libération, 1–​2 Ligue du LOL, 1–​2 Lilla, Mark, 202n.69 Lincoln, Bruce, 118 literalization, 42, 193–​94n.123 Locke, John, 42, 44, 176n.11, 177n.24, 180n.64 Lodge, David, 11, 155 Loichemol, Hervé, 118 “London Bridge,” 137 Lorentzen, Christian, 119–​20 Lorenz, Konrad, 9–​10, 47

Louis XIII, 184n.64 Louis XIV, 96–​97, 206n.2, 216–​17n.117 Louis XVI, 14, 15, 124, 133, 168n.35 Love Island, 138–​39 Lurie, Nancy Oestreich, 215n.112 Luz, 116 Macron, Emmanuel, 206n.1 Madonna, 152, 184n.59, 217n.123, See also Virgin Mary pop star, 193n.114 magic and bloodletting, 95, 98 Christian, 56 and evolution, 3 imitative, 129 and initiation, 21 and medicine, 6–​7, 74, 89, 191n.68 and Nazi persecution, 125–​26 and religion, 90 and revelation, 91, 128 and ridicule, 88–​89 and sacrifice, 81 and science, 91 and Surrealism, 164–​65n.64 Maimieux, Joseph de, 21 Maimonides, 86–​87 Mallet, Edme, 5, 29 Manet, Édouard, 198n.75 Mangan, J.A., 138 Marder, Nancy S., 141–​42 Marie Antoinette, 216–​17n.117 marriage, 8, 60, 69, 75, 140–​41 Martinez, Marc, 42, 45–​46 martyr, martyrdom, 76, 79, 147 Marx, Karl, 97–​98, 100–​1, 134 Maupassant, Guy de, 188n.34 McCarthy, Cormac, 73, 137 McSmith, Andy, 215n.110 Médiapart, 118–​19 medicine archaic, 90–​91, 137 banishing laughter, 190–​91n.66 and bloodletting, 73–​74, 81 and circumcision, 86–​87, 149–​50, 215–​16n.113 and drugs, 89 and eating disorders, 85

246 Index medicine (cont.) and emetics, 85 and gymnastics, 89–​90 and homeopathy, 80 and iatrogenesis, 80–​81 and laughter, 88, 90, 91 limits to, 80–​81 and magic, 56, 74, 91 and masturbation, 86–​87 and materialism, 90 and metaphor, 91 and mockery, 78–​79, 88 and nutrition, 78, 85–​86 and pharmakon/​pharmakos, 80 and placebo, 56–​57, 80–​81, 87–​88, 89, 90–​91, 137, 191nn.67–​68 replacing religion, 6–​7, 93, 196–​97n.60 and ritual, 73–​74, 81 and sacrifice, 75, 80 and self-​cutting, 81 and sex, 77, 90, 92–​94 and somatic symbolization, 87–​88 and trichinosis, 83, 85 and vaccines, 80, 85 and worms, 85, 93–​94 Medved, Michael, 23 Mehlman, Jeffrey, 190n.50 Melville, Herman, 12 Mercure de France, 152 metaphysics, 88–​89, 114, 115–​16, 143–​44 metzitzah, 86–​87 Michaels, Axel, 25–​26 Middle Ages, 5, 12, 27–​28, 39, 65–​66, 73, 83, 86–​87, 95, 97–​98, 134–​35, 155, 157, 189n.41 Mirbeau, Octave, 95 mockery and aggression, 42–​43 ambivalence of, 9–​10, 111, 115, 125–​ 27, 128 and artistic technique, 54–​55, 60, 61 of colonial authorities, 8–​9 of critical seriousness, 61 cult of, 1–​2 denunciation of, 23 of deviants, 60 and dueling, 96–​97 and education, 57–​58, 59, 157–​58

elimination of, 115 and Enlightenment, 7–​8, 40–​41, 88 and good taste, 30–​31 and immolation, 19, 30 and initiation, 21 and justice, 142, 145 limits of, 159 and medicine, 78–​79 of mockery, 89 of Muhammad, 26 and reason, 4–​5, 113, 129 and ritual, 2–​3, 7–​8, 14, 28–​29, 41, 48, 58, 107, 112–​13, 115, 124–​25, 126, 128 and sacrifice, 14, 35, 36, 37 and seduction, 67 as virilization ritual, 1–​2 Voltairean, 25, 114, 115 modernity and advertising, 74 and art, 145–​46, 151–​55 and cannibalism, 127–​28, 130–​31 and circumcision, 86–​87 and disenchantment, 133, 207n.4 and dueling, 95–​96, 100–​1, 102, 104, 105 and eating disorders, 85 and education, 7–​8, 21, 22–​23, 57, 59, 155–​58 and equality, 100–​1, 105, 115 and laughter, 133–​34, 135–​36 and masturbation, 86–​87 and medicine, 78–​79, 86–​88, 90–​91, 93–​94, 192n.95 and mental health, 86–​87 and rationality, 4, 5, 6, 7–​8, 10, 11–​12, 29, 66–​67, 69, 129, 158, 163n.34 and ritual, 1–​2, 5, 6–​9, 10–​11, 22, 26, 39, 48, 52–​53, 54, 65–​66, 73–​74, 87–​88, 94, 95, 113, 118, 120, 121–​22, 124–​25, 128, 129–​31, 136–​38, 145–​46, 161n.6, 163n.34 and scapegoating, 76–​77, 113, 186n.94 and sex, 52–​53, 66–​67, 93–​94, 145–​50, 193–​94n.123 and suicide killings, 105

Index  247 modesty, 44, 45–​46, 49, 50, 52–​53, 69, 112, 141, 178n.49, 193n.114 Molinists, 39 money, 42, 137 and bleeding, 75 for farces, 39 as joker, 153–​54, 216n.114 jokes equivalent to, 33–​34 jokes instead of, 33–​34 Monroe, Marilyn, 217n.123 Montesquieu, Charles-​Louis de Secondat, baron de, 100–​1 Monty Python’s Flying Circus, 134–​35, 138, 161n.8, 206–​7n.3, 209–​10n.32 Morris, Jan, 215n.110 Muhammad, 26, 113, 114, 116–​19, 196–​97n.60 mummeries, 5, 29–​30, 56 Muslims, 52–​53, 82–​83, 114, 115, 116–​17, 118, 119–​22 mystery, mysteries, 24, 25, 69, 87–​88 mystery plays, 65–​66, 185n.83, 186n.95 mystic boundary, 148–​49 Nabokov, Vladimir, 94 Naigeon, Jacques-​André, 36 Navratilova, Martina, 216n.114 Nazis, 101, 125–​26 Nekfeu, 115 New, Melvyn, 43 Newman, Cathy, 216–​17n.117 Nietzsche, Friedrich Beyond Good and Evil, 41 and the death of God, 6–​7 and freedom, 41 Human, All Too Human, 176n.14, 180n.64 and laughter, 47, 68, 130 and ritual, 39 Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 41, 49, 130, 176n.6, 178n.48 university students’ perceptions of, 159 nocebo, 80–​81, 87–​88, 90–​91, 137 Oates, Joyce Carol, 208n.15 Obeyesekere, Gananath, 127–​28 objectification, 65 objectivity, 63, 135–​36

obscenity, 44, 49, 69–​70, 92–​93, 193nn.113–​14 obscurantism, 20, 108–​9, 118–​19 Oduyoye, Mercy Amba, 8 Oedipus, 143–​44 operation, surgical, 72, 74, 76, 90, 150 Pahl, Jon, 136, 208n.17 pain, 25, 49, 74, 79–​80, 87–​88, 89, 90–​91, 136, 192n.105 Palin, Michael, 134 Palissot de Montenoy, Charles, 36–​37, 174n.56 Parmée, Douglas, 17 parody, 119–​20, 135, 141, 151, 155 of Christian modesty, 52–​53 of justice, 95, 97–​98 of religious sacrifice, 53, 153 of ritual, 2, 7–​8, 11, 101–​2, 104, 127–​28, 141, 147, 158 secular, 150 self-​parody, 43, 44 of UNESCO, 8 parricide, 117–​18, 143–​44 Pasolini, Pier Paolo, 138, 209n.29 Passion plays, 28 pathology, 64, 81, 95 patients, 74–​75, 78–​79, 81, 88, 90, 93–​94, 135, 186n.96 patriarchy, 67, 68, 69, 214n.94, 216n.114 penance, 56 Petit, Abbé, 34–​36, 37 phallus, phallic, 44, 146 philanthropy, 74 philosophy eighteenth-​century, 19–​20, 29, 113 Enlightenment, 7, 25, 108–​9, 123, 168–​69n.50 of laughter, 130 modern, 6–​7, 39, 88 progress of, 118 rationalist, 7–​8 Picasso, Pablo, 153 piñata, 138, 209n.27 Pinker, Steven, 158–​59 placebo, 56–​57, 80–​81, 87–​88, 89, 90–​91, 137, 191nn.67–​68 plagiarism, 41, 49, 52, 178n.49

248 Index play, 35–​36, 61, 63, 95–​96, 137 Poinsinet, Antoine-​Henri, 16, 19, 35 politeness, 32–​33, 36, 48, 98–​99, 133, 136, 151, 158–​59 political correctness, politically correct, 15, 56, 57–​58, 72, 110–​11 politics contemporary, 133, 148–​49 modern, 100–​1 office, 140 postcolonial, 8 university, 156 Polizzotti, Mark, 88, 93 pork, 41, 81, 83, 84–​86, 189n.41, 189n.42, 189n.44, 190n.51 pork butcher, 82–​83, 84–​85 pornography, 53, 71–​72, 145–​46, 147, 173n.45, 180n.68 potlatch, 153–​54 power of blood, 98 of erotic love, 148 of humor, 68 of imitative magic, 129 patriarchal, 214n.94 of placebos, 91, 214n.94 political, 43 sacrificial, 44 of signs, 206n.2 symbolic, 47 within universities, 156 pranks, pranksters, 1, 34–​35, 36, 153 priestesses, 127 priesthood, 31, 129 priests, 3–​4, 6–​7, 20, 27–​28, 30, 31, 40–​41, 42, 45–​46, 47, 48–​49, 50–​52, 56–​57, 65–​66, 70, 71, 72–​73, 80–​81, 84–​85, 89, 92–​93, 94, 105, 118, 136, 173n.45, 182n.39, 185n.83 Prince Napoleon, 84 Probst, Jeff, 139–​40, 210n.35 profanation, 11, 92 professional wrestling, 136, 208n.17 progress Enlightenment narratives of, 7, 20, 27, 158 of human societies, 4–​5 medical, 80–​81

scientific, 6, 22, 28, 72 social, 6, 15 prohibitions, dietary. See under Flaubert, Gustave projective entrenchment, 65 Propp, Vladimir, 126–​27, 204n.21 Protestantism, Protestants, 2, 42, 69–​70, 88, 133, 185n.82 Proust, Marcel, 198n.75 punishment, 30, 39, 59, 96–​97, 142, 144–​ 45, 149, 212–​13n.75 puns, punsters, 64–​65, 70–​71, 79–​80, 134, 145–​46, 151 purgatives, 6–​7, 56–​57, 73, 78–​79, 85, 117, 127 purification, 24, 47, 81, 126, 157 Puritanism, 133, 207n.4 Pushkin, Alexander, 99 Quine, W.V.O., 143–​45, 211n.59, 211n.61, 213n.77 Qur’an, 117–​18 racism, racists, 3–​4, 114, 158–​59 Ramadan, Tariq, 118, 119, 122 Raspail, François, 85 rationalism, rationalists, 2, 3, 6, 108, 113, 129 rationality, 3, 10, 63, 88, 103–​4, 125, 128, 135–​36, 144, 158, 163n.31, 209n.23 scientific, 6–​7, 65, 66–​67 Rauschenberg, Robert, 154 Reade, Brian, 110 reality TV, 138–​42 reason, 5, 7, 29, 55, 69, 112–​13, 158, 162n.20 reciprocity, 42–​43, 49–​50, 51–​52, 103–​4, 105, 107, 125–​26, 197n.62 reductio ad absurdum, 135–​36 regicide, 2–​3 Reifler Bricker, Victoria, 8 Reinach, Salomon, 126–​27 relativism, relativists, 135–​36 religion, religions, 4–​5, 6–​8, 17–​18, 20, 23, 24, 28, 29, 30, 40–​41, 45, 52, 54, 55–​ 57, 66, 69, 70, 73, 74, 80–​81, 82, 83–​ 85, 88–​89, 90, 91, 92–​93, 94, 111, 113, 115, 116, 117, 120, 128, 130, 133, 135,

Index  249 144, 145–​46, 147, 161n.6, 162n.20, 168n.47, 173n.41, 178n.47, 181n.13, 182n.39, 184n.66, 185n.83, 190n.51, 190–​91n.66, 195n.15, 196–​97n.60, 207n.4, 216n.116, 219–​20n.172 archaic, 129 atheological, 130–​31 critique of, 4–​5, 109, 135–​36 decline of, 27, 84, 85, 114 false, 117 irrational, 158 mockery of, 40–​41, 57–​58, 159 new, 122 parodic, 152 and reason, 29 return of, 121, 123 true, 29 Renan, Ernest, 84 Renard, Jules, 99 Research Assessment Exercise, 156–​57 ressentiment, 49, 105 retirement parties, 156 Revolution, French, 6, 15, 27, 39 Revolution, Russian, 39, 175n.66 Richardson, Samuel, 36, 173n.45 ridendo castigat mores, 117, 135–​36, 184n.58 ridicule, 1, 2–​5, 6, 16, 36–​37, 38–​39, 45–​ 46, 49, 57, 58, 60, 61, 62–​63, 64, 65, 69–​70, 77, 78–​79, 88, 89, 114, 125–​26, 133, 206n.1, 213n.77, 215n.111, See also derision; laughter; Leconte, Patrice; mockery; wit of Christianity, 56–​57 correction of morals by, 117, 135–​36, 184n.58 and dueling, 96–​97, 99 expulsion by, 4, 9–​10, 25, 37, 39, 113, 119, 124, 190–​91n.66 fear of, 9–​10, 18, 32–​33, 103 and initiation, 21, 59, 61, 77 of priests, 49, 56–​57 (see also priests) as purgative, 78–​79 (see also derision) and rationality, 3, 135–​36 ritualized, 3, 4, 22, 134 and sacrifice, 9–​10, 18, 32–​33, 56–​57 Riss, 116 Risus, the god of laughter, 126–​27

rites, 4–​5, 6, 7, 23, 54, 120, 125, 135, 147, 148, 202n.72 Bacchic, 74 Chinese tribunal of, 173n.41 consecration, 199n.9 curing, 8 Dionysian, 40–​41, 154, 208n.15 Eucharistic, 111 expiatory, 25 initiation, 61, 130 of passage, 54, 140–​41, 181n.19, 215n.111 of political resistance, 9 of purification, 47 sacrificial, 98, 134–​35 of spring, 75 of whaka-​hoa (“making common”), 127 of whaka-​tama (“dance of derision”), 127 ritual, rituals absence of, 25–​26, 54 academic, 156–​57 archaic, 2, 30, 31–​32, 104, 128 artistic, 136 attenuated, 2, 3 avoidance of, 54 barbaric, 2 bathing, 24–​26 of catharsis, 73–​74 Catholic, 2, 139 compliance, 156 corporate, 140 decline of, 2, 161n.6, 219–​20n.172 definitions of, 11–​13, 136, 208n.13 Dionysiac, 154 elimination of, 4–​5, 115, 123, 124–​25 empty, 6, 156 evolution of, 2, 3, 120, 125, 162n.19 fake, 128 of gossip, 31–​32 Greek, 5 Hauka, 8–​9 high school, 32 hollow, 95 initiation, 21, 59, 128–​29 joking, 47 judicial, 30–​31, 97–​98, 141, 145 loss of, 3, 6–​7, 54

250 Index ritual, rituals (cont.) medical, 87–​88, 90–​91 (see also bleeding) medicalization of, 86 modern forms of, 7–​8 of modesty, 44, 151 pagan, 2 parodying of, 2, 6, 7–​8, 127–​29, 153–​ 54, 158 penal, 147 and play, 42 of politeness, 151 privatized, 95 public, 95, 97–​98, 151 of purgation, 73–​74, 158 reemergence of, 6–​7, 11, 19–​20, 30, 109–​10, 113, 123, 157, 219n.168 religious, 7–​8, 12–​13, 41, 56, 58, 65–​66, 72, 87–​88, 140–​41, 215n.103 ridiculous, 5, 52, 114, 155 sacrificial, 9–​10, 19–​20, 25, 30, 31, 33–​ 34, 47–​48, 52, 55, 65, 73, 74–​77, 94, 117–​18, 126–​28, 129–​31, 139, 146, 208n.17, 210n.35 scientific, 72 secular, 7–​8, 11, 74, 208n.17 seduction, 156 sham, 2, 4–​5, 28–​29, 191n.68 substitutive, 5, 189n.42 theatrical, 4, 147 of verification, 156–​57 violation of, 128–​29, 158–​59 of virilization, 1–​2 voting, 137, 139–​40 ritualization, 9–​10, 12, 54, 148, 149–​50, 180n.3 ritualists, brahmanic, 25–​26 ritual studies, 10, 12–​13 roasting, 2, 48, 161n.5 Romanienko, Lisiunia A., 219n.168 Rosello, Mireille, 15 Rouch, Jean, 8–​9 Rousseau, Jean-​Jacques, 38–​39, 100–​1, 140–​41, 155 Russian roulette, 104 Russo, Richard, 155 sacrality, sacredness, 11, 52–​53, 111, 145–​ 46, 158

sacralization, 92–​93, 111, 124, 130, 152–​ 53, 159, 198n.75, 209n.25 sacred, the, 11, 28, 54–​55, 66, 69, 70, 80, 92, 128–​29, 130, 133, 137, 145–​46, 148, 152, 157, 163n.34 competing commitments to, 206n.55 new, 111 sacrifice ambivalence of, 126–​27 animal, 8–​9 of art, 154–​55 child, 86–​87, 134–​35 and consecration, 128 (see also Bataille, Georges; Taussig, Michael) critique of, 19–​20, 25–​26 and cult, 69 (see also Chateaubriand, François-​René de) in Diderot’s Cinqmars et Derville, 37 in Diderot’s The Nun, 36, 37 as disguise for assassination, 117 and dueling, 98, 103 and horror film, 136 human, 19, 113, 127–​28, 136, 189n.42 introversion of, 10 (see also Adorno, Theodor W.; Horkheimer, Max) and Isaac, 46–​48, 219n.156 and Isma’il, 117–​18 in Laclos, 20 lamb, 81–​82 and laughter, 46–​47, 126–​27, 130–​31 in Leconte, 17 of meat, 82–​83 and medicine, 75–​77 of music, 154 and pornography, 53, 136 and potlatch, 153–​54 purgative, 80 of ritual, 128 and the sacred, 128 sacrifice of, 129–​30 self-​, 45, 75–​76, 77, 104, 130, 193–​94n.123 and sex, 75, 130–​31, 146 translations of, 17–​19 tribal, 87–​88 in Voltaire, 24–​25 Sade, Marquis de, 125, 173n.45, 180n.68, 183n.48, 209n.29

Index  251 sadism, 146–​48 sadomasochism, 44, 53, 130, 146–​49, 214n.101, 215n.103, 215n.105 Sagan, Eli, 127–​28, 189n.42, 204n.21 Saint Bartholomew, 88–​89 Saint Cyril, 69 Sainte-​Beuve, Charles-​Augustin, 84, 85, 190nn.50–​51 Saint Hilarion, 41, 175–​76n.5 Sarah, 46 Sartre, Jean-​Paul, 59, 63, 64, 183n.43, 183n.48 Sauvigny, Louis-​Edme Brillardon de, 171n.26 savage, savagery, 3–​4, 6, 23–​24, 162n.26, 168n.41, 209–​10n.32 scapegoat, scapegoating, 25, 50, 113, 114, 124, 139, 151, 186n.94 science, 3, 4–​5, 30, 55, 65, 85, 88, 89, 90, 91, 122, 171n.26, 193–​94n.123 faulty, 30, 55 medical, 73, 83, 95, 195n.15 Searle, John, 212n.68 secularism, 25–​26, 108–​9, 118–​19, 121, 124, 157 secularization, 133, 145–​46, 216n.114 Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky, 44, 177n.20 self-​cutting, 81, 95 Sénard, Marie-​Antoine-​Jules, 57, 71–​72, 181n.15, 185n.86, 186n.88 September 11, 2001, 26, 105, 118 seriousness, 36, 42, 61, 62, 63, 69–​70, 95–​ 96, 102, 131–​32, 135–​36, 141 sex, 44, 45–​46, 48, 49–​50, 52, 53, 69, 70, 71, 76, 82–​83, 92–​93, 94, 111, 130–​32, 145–​46, 147–​50 sex play, 137 sexuality, 65, 70, 94, 130, 141, 145–​46, 148–​49, 150, 216n.116 Shakespeare, William, 40–​41, 42, 44, 49–​ 50, 146, 158–​59 shamans, 8, 80, 91, 136, 191n.68, 204n.21 Shapiro, Arthur K., and Elaine Shapiro, 90–​91 Sheindlin, Judith, 141–​42, 210–​11n.50 Shoemaker, Robert, 103–​4 Shrove Sunday, Shrovetide, 34, 35–​36 Silverman, Eric Kline, 215n.111

Singh, Minnie, 210n.44 Smith, Barbara Herrnstein, 157 Snoek, Jan, 165n.69 social media, 1–​2, 110, 133 Société Voltaire, 108–​10 Socrates, 56, 212–​13n.75 solidarity, 1–​2, 64, 108–​9 Sorbonne, New Sorbonne, 41, 120–​21, 123, 176n.8 Soviet festivals, 39, 175n.66 Spinoza, 143–​44, 158, 211n.61 sport, sports, 95–​96, 101, 104–​5, 136, 138 Starkie, Enid, 182n.33 Stebbing, Henry, 12 Stein, Lorin, 120, 122–​23 Stephenson, Barry, 12–​13, 125, 208n.13 Sterne, Laurence and dueling, 102 and English humor, 40, 42 and fool’s license, 177n.25 influence on Diderot, 40–​41, 49–​50, 52, 173n.45 and Isaac, 46–​48 and laughter, 42–​43 literal vs. figural interpretation, 45–​46, 176n.12 and Nietzsche, 41, 180n.64 sacrifice of Yorick, 46, 47–​48, 151 and Saint Hilarion, 175–​76n.5 and self-​parody, 43, 44 and sexualism, 44 and transubstantiation, 42, 176n.10 and Voltaire, 41 Stites, Richard, 175n.66 Strictly Come Dancing, 138–​39 Strobach, Natalie, 47–​48, 126–​27 stupidity, 3–​4, 54–​55, 111, 117, 129 substitute, substitutes ethical, 4 human, 202n.72 sacrificial, 46, 134, 177n.40 secular, 11, 148 symbolic, 45–​46 vegetarian, 82–​83 substitution, 3, 46, 47–​48, 51–​52, 115, 146, 189n.42 suicide, 14, 64, 67, 89–​90, 104–​5, 120–​21, 138–​39, 142, 146, 195n.15, 211nn.52–​54

252 Index superstition, 3, 4–​5, 20, 22–​23, 24, 25, 30, 31, 40–​41, 56–​57, 71, 73–​74, 80, 85, 87, 88–​89, 95, 97–​98, 109, 115, 129, 136, 143–​44, 168–​69n.50, 173n.41, 178n.46, 207n.4, 211–​12n.62 surgery, 70–​71, 74, 87–​88, 148–​49, 216n.114 Survivor, 138–​41, 210n.35 swearing, 90, 92–​93, 193nn.113–​14 symmetry, 51–​52, 55, 71, 72–​73, 105, 107 Szasz, Thomas, 80–​81, 86–​87, 142, 187n.20, 190–​91n.66, 192n.95, 193–​94n.123, 211–​12n.62, 213n.77, 216n.114, 216n.116 taboo against cannibalism, 189n.42 elimination of, 147–​48 against foods, 86 Judaic, 189n.42 against laughter, 158 modern, 15, 86, 131–​32, 140, 158–​59 and play, 137 religious, 83, 85, 87–​88, 158–​59 secular, 159, 193n.114 violation of, 131–​32, 135, 151 Taine, Hippolyte, 84 Tarde, Gabriel, 96 Taussig, Michael, 11, 91, 128–​30 Taylor, Charles, 119–​20 Tenison, Thomas, 46, 177n.33 terrorism, 26, 110, 111, 118, 198n.76, 200n.23 Thackaberry, Jennifer, 140 Thanksgiving. See turkey theater, theatre, 17, 24, 55, 89–​90, 112, 133, 136, 146–​47, 148–​49, 168n.35, 190–​91n.66 Todd, Emmanuel, 113–​14, 115–​16, 124 toilets, 150, 216–​17n.117 tolerance, 72, 108–​9, 110, 115–​16, 200n.23 tomb, mock, 40, 64–​65, 151, 183nn.50–​51 Tourage, Mahdi, 146 tragedy, 8–​9, 18, 34–​35, 116–​17, 118, 130, 134, 136, 184n.58 transubstantiation, 42, 87–​88, 152–​53, 176n.10 trial, by combat, 95, 97–​98, 102–​3

Troubat, Jules, 84 Trump, Donald J., 105–​6, 206n.1 Tuchman, Gaye, 11, 156–​57 Tuckniss, Elizabeth, 215n.110 Tupper, Peter, 214n.90, 215n.103 Turan, Kenneth, 15 turkey, American President’s pardoning of, 6, 81–​82, 136 Turner, Victor W., 126, 162n.19, 215n.103 Twitter, 1–​2, 110 Le Un, 110 UNESCO, 8 Vargas Llosa, Mario, 63, 65–​66, 71–​72, 181n.12, 182n.32, 183nn.42–​43, 183n.51, 184n.57, 186n.93 Veber, Francis, 15–​16, 22, 34–​35, 168n.35 vengeance, 23–​24, 196n.46, 197n.62 vicar, 40–​41, 50–​52, 134, 135 victim arbitrary, 104, 139 eroticization of, 66–​67 expiatory, 60, 174n.55 of fanaticism, 117–​18 human, 30, 31 idolization of, 68 innocent, 103, 106–​7 mock, 9–​10, 42–​43 of modern medicine, 77 of ridicule, 15–​16, 23, 33–​34, 37, 38, 134, 166n.5, 207n.10 sacrificial, 17, 18, 19, 29, 36, 40, 45, 77, 102–​3, 105, 118, 128, 166–​67n.14, 189n.42, 196–​97n.60 substitute, 50–​51, 134 symbolic, 9–​10, 41, 45, 47 of terrorism, 108–​9, 118 Villemot, Auguste, 84 Vincendeau, Ginette, 22 Vinken, Barbara, 186n.94 violence, 1, 69, 104–​5, 116 curative, 147, 151, 217n.119 mock, 49–​50, 67–​68, 134–​35, 137 physical, 2, 107 ritualistic, 40–​41, 128–​29, 130 sexual, 146–​47 and sport, 104–​5, 138

Index  253 surrogate, 51–​52 symbolic, 49–​50, 106, 107, 117, 143, 213n.87 Virgin Mary, 152, 185n.83 virility, and mockery, 57–​58, 65–​66, 67 Voltaire Candide, 41, 114, 179n.57 and Charlie Hebdo, 108–​10, 112 and Chateaubriand, 69 critique of religion, 109 and derision, 72–​73, 110 and dueling, 96, 97 Essay on Manners, 23, 24 and fanaticism, 108–​9 Fanaticism, or Mahomet the Prophet, 116–​17, 118–​19 and freedom of expression, 116–​17, 200n.23 Homilies, 24, 168–​69n.50 influence on Flaubert, 55–​56, 181n.8, 181n.13, 183n.50, 184n.58 and laughter, 25, 89, 110, 112 and Laurence Sterne, 176n.13 Olympia, 24 Philosophical Dictionary, 4–​5, 25, 55, 124, 212n.71 Philosophy of History, 1–​2 and priests, 20, 129 Pucelle d’Orléans, La, 49 Questions on the Encyclopedia, 24 and religion, 6–​7, 23, 25, 115, 117, 168n.47, 168–​69n.50, 216n.116 and ritual, 4–​5, 23, 24, 25–​26 Sermon of the Fifty, 24 Treatise on Tolerance, 108, 110, 116 Voltairean spirit, 109–​10 and wit, 23, 42 Wagner, Richard, 88 war First World, 99, 100, 138

nuclear, 105–​6 Second Gulf, 105–​6 warfare mock, 9–​10, 138 ritualized, 138 Warhol, Andy, 217n.123 warriors, 127 Washington, George, 73 Waterhouse, Rémi, 22, 166–​67n.14 Waterloo, battle of, 138 Waters, Mark, 2, 22, 32 Weber, Max, 19–​20, 133, 207n.4 weeping, 2, 10 Wellington, Duke of, 138 Western civilization, 8–​9. See also Rouch, Jean Wilshire, Bruce, 157 Wilson, Arthur M., 34–​35 Wilson, John Lyde, 101, 196n.47 Wiseman, Rosalind, 32 wit, 6, 14, 16–​17, 33, 40–​41, 42, 43, 89 aggressive, 43 aristocratic, 22 French, 40, 61 killing, 40 and sex, 49–​50, 65–​66 Voltairean, 23, 42 witch doctors, 91, 191n.68 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 3–​4, 137, 162n.26 Wood, Gaby, 119 Wood, James, 182n.39 Woolf, Virginia, 148–​49 workplace, 140 Wulf, Cristoph, 206n.2 xenophobia, 114 Yeats, W.B., 150, 152, 153–​54 Zineb, 116 Žižek, Slavoj, 205n.37