BONNET GERARD :RITUAL EXHIBITIONISM IN QUESTION

Should the rite necessarily exhibit itself, at the risk of provoking those who do not share the same convictions and inciting violence ? Before answering the question, one must first recall that the rite is a sexual practice in the sense psychoanalysis gives sexuality. It is to ideal sexuality what coitus is to genital sexuality, and pleasure of the anal or oral type is to pre-genital or drive sexuality. This is why the symptomatic practice which is closest to the group rite and which is most able to illuminate it profoundly is not obsessive practice or the behavior of the masses, but perverse practice. The analogies between this and the rite are indeed striking, and many ritual excesses are equivalent to forms of perversion : this is the case of exhibitionism, of which there is so much talk nowadays. The surest way to avoid such overflowing is to push the comparison between the two practices as far as possible, and restore to the rite its own signification, which is to be speech enshrined within codified practice.