ABSTRACT
Paul Connerton suggests that the social memories are distinct and separate processes, and he argues that it is the active participation in ritual events that is the significant means of encoding social memory into the individual body. However, Paul Connerton want to give more equal weight to both bodily and cognitive processes, and Paul Connerton will begin by considering the importance of the performative aspects of 'festive occasions' before returning to the role of extracting meaning from ritual events, in this case through the interpretation of symbols and images. The focus of interest at ritual events may be a rarefied or an abstracted facet of communal life, and the proceedings may be structured so as to distance the event from routine activities; but it none the less remains central to the social world. The participants become the subject of the performance, which, for Connerton, is nothing less than a re-enactment: through physical involvement each of the participants shares in the primal suffering.
