2025/03/24 by David Frankfurter · 1 voice
Social Sciences · #Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies #Middle East and Rwanda Conflicts #Political Conflict and Governance
paper · pdf · doi:10.1017/s0010417525000076
openalex publication_date 2025/03/24 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/05/21
Abstract The concept of ritual has been all too loosely applied to violence and atrocity with assumptions of repetitiveness, mythic symbolism, and religious overtones. This paper examines a selection of modern cases of atrocity for specific ritual elements: attention to body and spaces as frames for meaning; a prescripted mode of action; and performative enaction of a new millennial or transgressive order. Focal cases include American lynching (nineteenth–twentieth centuries) and militia atrocities in Sierra Leone and Liberia (1990s), while examples of gendered atrocity in ritualized forms (perpetrated by Bosnian Serbs and the Islamic State) are broached in the conclusion. Ritualization is not typical to modern atrocities but allows perpetrating groups to experience meaningfulness in the violent acts they assemble, often in situations of crisis.