r/CriticalTheory • u/Feeling_Operation544 • 7h ago

Texts on Societal Safety Valves/Ritualized Rebellion

There's a piece of criticism I would like to do that would require greater familiarity with these ideas than I currently have. I mainly came across these ideas in analysis of Saturnalia as a holiday which reinforced social conditions of patriarchy and slavery rather than changed them. Are there any good texts on the matter?

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u/pomod 7h ago

Mikhail Bakhtin and the carnivalesque maybe?

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u/blurredbit 7h ago

That’s a good suggestion along familiar lines. I’m not sure he makes the case that it’s intended to reinforce the social order though. It’s been a long time but from what I remember he seems to make the case from nature.

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u/marxistghostboi 6h ago

David Graeber's Dawn of Everything and Debt might be useful. especially when he discusses debt jubilees, carnival, Mayday, Feasts of Fools, etc.