Tiina Arppe and Christian Borch: Editorial: The Sacred
Camille Tarot: Emile Durkheim and After: The War over the Sacred in French Sociology in the 20th Century
This article analyzes the main lines of the French debate or 'war' over the 'sacred' during the 20th century. Durkheim, who emphasized the social origin of religion and its integrating function, tied this idea closely together with the sacred/profane -distinction: it is through this distinction that society reflects itself in individuals and imposes its norms and values on them. On the other hand, he explains the alleged universality of the distinction precisely by its social origin. In spite of Durkheim's emphasis on the central place of the sacred in the analysis of religion, the French religious sociology has ever since contested this claim. However, the article claims that these criticisms can be divided into two categories depending on the reasons given for the attack against the Durkheimian conception. These critical approaches, in turn, constitute two ultimately antagonistic sets of theories of the religious itself. The defenders of the 'subjective sacred' (Eliade) find the Durkheimian thesis about the social origin of the sacred reductionist, whereas the proponents of the 'non-existentialist' theory (Lévi-Strauss) contest not only the universality but the very existence of the sacred. As a last 'act' of the French war over the sacred, the article discusses René Girard's attempt to bring back the problem of sacred by linking it to the intrinsically mimetic and hence violent nature of human desire. Two major conclusions of this debate are drawn: 1) the equilibrium between the symbolic and the sacred has to be conserved in any viable theory of religion; 2) the 'sacred' is not to be conceived as an ideology, but rather as a category connected to the ritual side of religion.
Keywords: 20th century; definition of religion; Durkheimianism; French sociology; sacred; symbolic; structuralism; violence.
Tiina Arppe: Sacred Violence: Girard, Bataille and the Vicissitudes of Human Desire
The article deals with two famous attempts to analyse the relationship between affective violence and the sacred, namely those made by René Girard and Georges Bataille. Despite the apparent similarities of the problems (religious sacrifice as the affective foundation of community and the primordial role of violence therein) Girard and Bataille end up with profoundly different visions of society's entire affective economy. For Girard, religious sacrifice is a mechanism of projection and of repression by means of which the society channels its own unmotivated violence to one arbitrarily chosen individual (a classical functionalist approach); for Bataille, sacrifice is a means of sharing the experience of death which constitutes the repulsive core of the human community (a more phenomenological approach). The article shows that these differences can be traced back to two different (theoretical) sources. The first one is Durkheim's theory of the sacred, particularly his vision of the 'collective turmoil' as the origin of society and his interpretation of the 'ambivalence of the sacred'. The second one is Alexandre Kojève's anthropological interpretation of Hegel, especially his theory of human desire, which has clearly influenced both theorists although they both criticize it (albeit in different fashions). What Girard and Bataille seem to propose us, are two different and even opposing models regarding both the conceptualisation of human 'desire' and the theoretical/methodological approach we should adopt when dealing with it.
Keywords: Death; desire; economy; negativity; sacred; sacrifice; violence.
Elisa Heinämäki: Politics of the Sacred: Eliade, Bataille and the Fascination of Fascism
Between the two World Wars, the rise of the fascist politico-religious movements proved a fateful return of the 'collective effervescence' that Emile Durkheim had placed at the core of the sacred. This article analyses the conception of the sacred in the work of two scholars, Mircea Eliade and Georges Bataille, who both responded to this phenomenon in their work. Their theories are scrutinized with an eye to their political implications: What political commitments underlie their theories? Do the theories contribute to the understanding of the fateful amalgam of religion and politics? It is demonstrated how, despite some important similarities, the two develop radically differing interpretations of the sacred. Eliade occults the political background as well as the violent ramifications of his idealized view of the sacred. Bataille, in his turn, does not shun a certain complicity with forces that fascism exploited, a complicity that does not correspond bit by bit with his overt statements of commitment. Still, from his writing emerges a dynamic conception of the sacred, undersood as a fundamentally ambiguous force, that helps to grasp the - also political - uses, abuses, as well a certain useless residue of the sacred.
Keywords: Bataille; Eliade; fascism; impurity; politics; power; the sacred; violence.
Bjørn Schiermer: Fashion Objects: Breaking Up the Durkheimian Cult
This article attempts to create a framework for understanding modern fashion phenomena on the basis of Durkheim's sociology of religion. It focuses on Durkheim's conception of the relation between the cult and the sacred object, on his notion of 'exteriorisation', and on his theory of the social symbol in an attempt to describe the peculiar attraction of the fashion object and its social constitution. However, Durkheim's notions of cult and ritual must undergo profound changes if they are to be used in an analysis of fashion. The article tries to expand the Durkheimian cult, radically enlarging it without totally dispersing it; depicting it as held together exclusively by the sheer 'force' of the sacred object. Firstly, the article introduces the themes and problems surrounding Durkheim's conception of the sacred. Next, it briefly sketches an outline of fashion phenomena in Durkheimian categories - an outline which at the same time indicates the need for transformations of the Durkheimian model on decisive points. Thus, thirdly, it returns to Durkheim and undertakes to develop his concepts in a direction suitable for a sociological theory of fashion. Finally, it discusses the theoretical implications of the enlargement of the cult into individual behaviour.
Keywords: Cult; Durkheim; fashion; object; the sacred.
Helene Ratner: Suggestive Objects at Work: A New Form of Organizational Spirituality?
In Western secular societies, spiritual life is no longer limited to classical religious institutions but can also be found at workplace organizations. While spirituality is conventionally understood as a subjective and internal process, this paper proposes the concept of 'suggestive objects', constructed by combining insights from Gabriel Tarde's sociology with Bruno Latour's actor-network theory, to theorize the material dimension of organizational spirituality. The sacred in organizations arises not from the internalization of collective values but through the establishment of material scaffolding. This has deep implications for our understanding of the sacred, including a better appreciation of the way that suggestive objects make the sacred durable, the way they organize it.
Keywords: Actor-network theory; Gabriel Tarde; organizational spirituality; suggestive objects.