Bless to Spoil: Revanchism, Nationalism and Defilement in an anti-Mosque Ritual in Bucharest, Romania
Abstract
Drawing on ethnographic data gathered in Bucharest in 2015 and 2016, the present paper aims at unpacking a specific ritual of defilement and consecration. Fearing that the erection of a mosque would be the cornerstone of a possible Islamisation of Romania, two activists elaborated a strategy to stop the project.
First, they defiled the respective land by digging some pieces of pork bought in a supermarket, and then ((re-Christianized}} the place by driving hundreds of crosses and celebrating a ritual for blessing it. Following Maurice Bloch's reflections on ritual practice, I dwell on the complementarity of functional and symbolic action in a ritual performance composed of two different moments: defilement (of the "other" or aimed at it) and re-consecration (for or aimed at the "self ").
The paper ends arguing that expressions of contemporary inter-religious and inter-ethnic unrest - such as the anti-mosque affair in Bucharest - are better understood in the light of how protesters conceive their historical identity.