Introduction

This chapter discusses what happened after executions were kept from public view. Even though the “timbers of justice” had exited the urban stage, death and executions had found a new home on television and in newspaper photography, where shootouts, hangings, torture, and other deadly disasters were acceptable fare. Decapitation was the only image to be banned from peak viewing hours, as if executions conducted by decapitation possessed an extra sprinkling of the macabre that transformed death into an obscene sight. The chapter discusses the death penalty as a phenomenon of sovereignty, a political ritual of violence. It talks about Republican sanctions, and the punitive technology that have been challenged by public sensibilities.

Whether conservative Nicholas II? The political views of the last autocrat and his political ritual

For the first time in historiography, the article examines the nature of the political views and political ritual of Nicholas II and the correlation of these factors, which had a decisive influence on the internal political situation of the Russian Empire in the late 19th - early 20th centuries. The author comes to the conclusion that in modernizing societies, political rituals do not so much reveal, but hide the true political views of the modernizing ruler.

Katyń Anniversaries in 1990–2010. The Position and Functions of Political Ritual in the Polish Culture of Remembrance. Research Report

The main goal of the research is to show the functional dimension of the political rituals associated with the celebrations of the Katyń massacre anniversaries in 1990-2010. Using the method of political linguistics, the study makes it possible to identify ten topoi organizing the Katyń anniversary discourse. They include the topos of “an innocent victim”, “violated justice”, “compensation”, “fair Russians”, “friends Muscovites”, “elite”, as well as the topos of “a shared field of remembrance, reconciliation” (“from foes to friends”), the topos of mutual forgiveness and the anniversary as a special occasion, or the topos of “inhuman land”. The pragmatic-semantic analysis of the contents of media reports accompanying the Katyń celebrations allows the author to show a number of functions that the Katyń ritual performed in the Polish culture of remembrance in 1990–2010. The study of functions proceeds from emotional, through normative, legitimization, integration and educational functions, to the performative function.

The Mahishasur Movement Online: a Precarious Network of ‘Demon-Followers’

This article addresses the reframing of Hindu history, mythology and rituals in a WhatsApp group as part of a larger social movement called the ‘Mahishasur movement’ arising from a nation-wide controversy around a religio-political ritual. It addresses the mediatized controversy that led to the movement, the creation of this particular social media network, the material circulated on it and the nature of hierarchy between different participants. Contrary to existing scholarship, the findings from my fieldwork in different parts of India show that non-elite precariat groups involved in identity politics at different levels participate in social media activism which has so far been understood as a domain of Anglophone middle classes. The article shows the possibilities and challenges generated by the participation of these non-elite political activists in rural and small town India in social activism alongside their urban counterparts on social networking sites particularly WhatsApp.