Enstasis: Toward a Fifth Moment in Grimes’ Masking Typology

Ronald L. Grimes’ typology of masking in Beginnings in Ritual Studies (1982) identifies fourphenomenological moments in the act of masking: concretion, concealment, embodiment, andexpression. This paper argues that the typology, for all its analytical power, does not account for afifth moment: one that has become structurally prominent in late-modern ritual contexts. Drawingon a decade of fieldwork at the Basel Carnival of Fasnacht (Switzerland) and on first-handaccounts of ritualists’ experiences of the Laarve (an oversized mask enclosing the entire head) wepropose enstasis as this fifth moment. Where Grimes’ embodiment moment is ecstatic and orientedtoward the dissolution of the interior-exterior boundary, enstatic masking is meditative andinward-oriented: the mask amplifies rather than dissolves the self’s distance from itself. We arguethat enstasis is phenomenologically irreducible to any of Grimes’ four moments and warrantsformal recognition in the typology.