Michel Foucault acknowledged that the Reformation was a pastoral battle and a reorganization of pastoral power. He did not, however, analyze Protestantism much further. This article broadens the scope of critical research on Protestantism, focusing on Lutheranism. Preaching is a fruitful way to overcome overemphasis on confession. In this endeavor I apply Foucault’s concept of “master’s discourse.” I argue that while, in Lutheranism, conversion through comprehensive soul-searching is an individual matter, at the same time it relies on technologies aimed at (...) a collective audience, such as preaching. Since preaching is divine speech, the Lutheran priest wields enormous spiritual power: the preacher is the truth-teller and the subject is required to listen to and internalize the proclaimed truth, instead of confessing their sins. (shrink)

In theological discourse of sexuality, queer theory has often been regarded as an extension of the project of gay and lesbian liberation, when it actually challenges an organizing value of the entire discourse, because it challenges any ascription of ultimate value to "sex," an imaginative formation of power relations. Rather than appeal to God to authorize the privileged status of sex, queer commentary suggests that theological writers should refuse assertions of the absolute importance of any particular formation of human imagination (...) as a basis of relation between self and God. The goal is to recognize the violence—symbolized and real—that enforces the worth of certain imaginations of intelligibly sexed personal identity and stunts the formation of alternative imaginations of intelligible personal identity. Critical account of this violence as sentimental-homicidal-suicidal opens space to confess a theological discourse of personal identities that is entirely beyond sex. (shrink)

Working within an Archerian morphogenetic framework, I suggest that we need to pay more attention to practices. Instead of the mainstream focus on practice as action, I argue that we should pay attention to practices as a key structural and cultural element of analysis. Practices cannot be simply read-off from beliefs, that is, they are not an inevitable practical counterpart to belief. Although belief is relevant, it does not provide the full explanation for the presence of practices. Therefore, the same (...) or similar beliefs can result in significantly different practices depending on factors such as advances in technology and changes in modes of dissemination of theological doctrine. To illustrate my argument, I consider historical work on comparative religious practices, specifically the distinction between rituals and routines. A focus on the latter, as the conditions of possibility for the former, leads to some implications for the thesis of the morphogenesis of contemporary society. An analysis of the relationship between religious rituals and routines stresses the importance of placing both in their wider cultural and structural context. (shrink)

An examination of the practice of self-examination in Scottish Presbyterianism shows the value of following the later Foucault in the examination of religion as a social practice. His attention to the influence of pastoral power on governmentality is shown to have been embedded in a Roman Catholic heritage leading to a stress on the confessional. By contrast, an examination of one aspect of Protestant pastoral power indicates the genealogy of practices of self-help. An historical examination of both the structure of (...) the Scottish church and the diaries of believers indicates the emphasis placed in this tradition on accountability. It also points to the need to reassess Foucault's treatment of Seneca, whose place in the Christian tradition, as exemplified by the Scottish experience, was more important than Foucault allows. (shrink)

Foucault’s conceptualization of “pastoral power” is important in the development and application of the notion of “governmentality” or the regulation of mass populations. However, Foucault’s exploration of pastoral power, especially in the form of confessional practice, owes a good deal to his Roman Catholic heritage. Hints in his work, which were never developed, suggest some aspects of Protestant forms of pastoral power. These hints are taken up to explore one Protestant tradition, that of Scottish Presbyterianism, in detail. Based on the (...) history of the church in the eighteenth century, four aspects of Protestant pastoral power are outlined: examination, accountability, ecclesiology, and organizing as a good in its own right. (shrink)

This paper assumes that educators are now involved in a struggle for their souls and for the souls of their students. The idea of the soul in this case is not the religious one, but the soul invoked by Foucault to name that aspect of self, that ‘exists, or is produced … within the body … or born … out of methods of punishment, supervision and constraint’. Neoliberalising social policy not only aims to transform structures and enact new technologies of (...) control but also involves the transformation of values and cultures, and hence the formation of new subjectivities. With that in mind this paper argues for an education understood as experiments with alternative modalities of self-formation that are responsive to the key challenges of our times. The paper experiments with as aphoristic style and hence is structured through six fragments that provide various takes on this problematic, including: an autobiographical moment; a brief rendering of Foucault’s genealogy of the relationship between truth and the subject; Hadot’s genealogy of philosophy; various definitions of spirituality; and an account of Buddhist epistemology that distinguishes knowing and realization. The paper concludes by arguing for a Buddhist inspired pedagogy that is defined in terms of the relationships between teacher, student and realization. From such a perspective, it is not identity work that is the ethico-political project of our times, but of learning how to quite literally get free of our self. (shrink)

The internal resistance to religious forms of power is often at issue in Michel Foucault’s genealogy of Christianity. For this anti-clerical Nietzschean, religion is, like science, always a battle over bodies and souls. In his 1978 Collège de France lectures, he traced the nature and descent of an apparatus of “pastoral power” characterized by confession, direction, obedience, and sacrifice. Governmental rationality, both individualizing and totalizing, is its modern descendant. At different moments, Foucault rather infamously opposed to the pastorate and governmentality (...) such ethico-political spiritualities as the Iranian Revolution and ancient Greek ascesis, but he also took care to identify numerous forms of resistance specific and internal to Christianity itself. His lecture of 1 March 1978 outlined five examples of “insurrections of conduct”: “eschatology, Scripture, mysticism, the community, and ascesis.” I will detail Foucault’s analysis of pastoral counter-conducts, and explore how he sets up the nature and stakes of this tension within Christianity and its secular kin. (shrink)

This article provides an introductory guide to queer scholarship in religious studies and theology. It also outlines approaches to queer studies and how they have been, and might be, appropriated in religious studies and theology. Finally, the article argues that greater clarity is needed when naming projects as “queer,” given that the terms “queer,” “queer theory,” and “queer studies” cover such a wide variety of approaches.

This article pays close attention to Michel Foucault's theory that political regimes are enlightened through courageous free speech. A Foucaultian enlightenment occurs not when philosophical reason completely replaces superstition and enthusiasm in the public sphere, but instead when the parrhesiast partially organizes competing claims to know and to speak the truth. While much of the recent scholarly literature on Foucault’s later lectures emphasizes the political importance of the parrhesiast, less attention has been paid to the overlap and/or incompatibility between parrhesia (...) and the other modes of truth-telling. Below, I explain Foucault’s analysis of the basic modes of philosophical truth-telling: prophesy, philosophy, teaching, and parrhesia. I provide examples of speakers working within these modes in the ancient and modern world. I explain the overlap and tension between these modes, and I analyze Foucault’s partial organization of them through the image of the parrhesiast. I briefly compare Foucault’s position to the agonistic democratic theory of Chantal Mouffe and distinguish Foucault’s view from consensus-based views of public reason. Finally, I provide practical and theoretical examples of parrhesiastic activity in the contemporary world. (shrink)

Dieser Beitrag gibt einen Überblick der zentralen postsäkularen Debatten im Kontext der Schnittstelle von Religions- und Geschlechterforschung. Aus postkolonialer, postsäkularer und Geschlechter-/queerer Perspektive ist eine eigene Epistemologie für die Untersuchung von ‚Religion‘ und ‚Geschlecht‘ entwickelt worden. Die Methode der Intersektionalität wird für die Analyse von ‚Religion‘ überarbeitet. Die Kategorie ‚Religion‘, die in der Geschlechterforschung häufig vernachlässigt oder essentialisiert wird, wird in Abhängigkeit von ‚Geschlecht‘, ‚Sexualität‘, ‚Race‘, ‚Nation‘, ‚Klasse‘, ‚Spezies‘ etc. weiterdiskutiert und als diskursive, intersektionale, performative Kategorie elaboriert. ‚Geschlecht‘ und ‚Religion‘ (...) werden als diskursive, intersektionale, performative Kategorien der Wissensproduktion erarbeitet. Diese Kategorien werden nicht nur dekonstruiert und deessentialisiert, sondern konsequent denaturalisiert und desidentifiziert, um epistemische Gewalt zu überkommen. Weiterhin kann Religion – konzeptualisiert als Wissenskategorie – nicht nur zum individuellen, sondern auch zum kollektiven Handlungsmachtgewinn beisteuern. Zudem werden Weiterentwicklungen feministischer Theorie im postsäkularen Kontext und in der queer-feministisch-materialistischen Theoriebildung und Religion diskutiert. (shrink)

This Paper tries to prove that it is possible to use postmodern methodologies in Islamic theological studies. Accordingly, the three main steps in this paper are taken to defend this thesis. The first step explains that the Iranian philosophical mentality disregards any use of postmodernism in Islamic studies. The paper points out that the problem with this mentality is that this mentality usually sees a fundamental contradiction between materialism and relativism in postmodernism and Islamic understanding of theology. In the second (...) step, the paper shows that, contrary to this understanding of the relation between postmodernism and Islamic theology, the use of postmodernism as a methodology in theological studies opens up new horizons of critical thinking in Islamic studies. In this regard the paper explains how the process of applying postmodern methodologies to theological studies can be justified if we rely on an epistemological feature of postmodernism: Postmodern methodologies defend the preference of epistemology over ontology. In the third step, in order to explain the realization of this thesis in the real world, it shows how Christian theology could well use postmodern methodology and creates a valuable postmodern theological literature. This comparison is based on the assumption that theology, Christian and Islamic, have the same ontological similarity in defending the theological metaphysics and in rejecting the modern ontological cognitive. (shrink)

Breath is a perceptual practice, a form of listening, of attending. These words begin to mark out the unique space of this thesis. It is ‘written from the breath’, a stance that breaks free of the silencing of breath in contemporary language theory. Importantly, the thesis makes the large claim that the closing down of conceptual breathing spaces in the twentieth century parallels the asphyxiation of a spiritual connection with the world. This is seen by Helen Sharp, the author of (...) this posthumous thesis, as ‘the loss of the profane halo’. Sharp acknowledges a debt to Georgio Agamben’s notion of the ‘Halo’ in The Coming Community as composed of a ‘tiny displacement’. She identifies such displacements as breath movement. ‘Each breath event develops as a potentiality of relationship where self is re-conceived and born anew in tiny little flutters…’ of each inhalation and exhalation. Here lies the core of her thinking where the movement of life surges forth in the ‘imperceptible trembling of the finite’. This, she writes, is equivalent to ‘the illuminated field of the breath as halo’. Moving into the realm of the artistic-poetic, the thesis itself comes to take on the character of a work of art. Its three edges are written dialogues, performance prologues, and breath practice including breath dialogue. (shrink)