oa Afwezig Ritueel: Proeve van een typologie

This article wants to explore absent ritual as a more or less ritual repertoire of its own by distinguishing a series of forms or types of manifestation, use and appropriation. In addition to emerging ritual, grassroots ritual, failed ritual, transferred ritual, and postponed ritual, there is also absent ritual. Absent ritual is always accompanied by ambivalence. It plays a role especially in situations in which there are all kinds of hindrances to ritual presence as in rituals associated with disasters, tragedies, atrocities, and more generally with practices of memorialization and victimhood. Studying current ritual repertoires like absent ritual enables to study ritual and cultural dynamics. After preliminary notes on the concept of absent ritual, ritual and ritualization, and the perspective and nature of the typology there is a presentation of ten types of absent ritual. As a coda the author formulates a reflection on functions or qualities of ritual in the context of absent ritual.