Disposing of Non-Disposable Texts: Conclusions and Prospects for Further Study

The chapters of this volume document that many religious communities practice rituals for disposing of sacred texts and that even more exhibit some concern for their proper disposal. The fact that such rituals regularly take the form of funerals points to widespread recognition of an analogy between sacred texts and people. I think the attention these traditions devote to the disposal of sacred texts brings to light a typical way of thinking about many other kinds of books and texts as well, though certainly not all. As one way of analyzing the practices and beliefs documented so thoroughly in these chapters, I will discuss the general problem of book disposal as well as the analogy between humans and texts in the context of a theory of textual ritualization. This will lay the basis for suggesting some directions for future research to build on the path breaking contributions of the studies presented in this volume.