Ceremony, Genealogy, Political Theology

This chapter begins the work of interrogating the concept and practice of ceremony historically and theoretically. There has been some important recent work that examines the question of ceremony and its contemporary political instantiations and that examines specific ceremonial practices in different historical periods. This chapter discusses this work, develops an argument about how to understand ceremony in relation to political theology, and shows how tracing the etymology and history of ceremony can be helpful in understanding it today. All ceremonies have at least the trace of a religious lineage, even if they appear to be for purely secular purposes. The chapter explores themes around bodies and materials—gesture, choreography, clothing, and objects; the texts or liturgy of ceremony; and the temporality and spatiality of ceremony. The ceremonial is an aspect of the performance of politics but also of the politics of performance. Through a brief discussion of Shakespeare’s play Henry V, the chapter explores this question of political theater.