The Genealogy of the Confessing Subject. Confessional practices among the indigenous people of Chiapas, México.

During my investigation concerning the genealogy of the confessing subject, I came across some contradictory views regarding the origin and development of confession as a cultural practice through which the subject is revealing some hidden truth about himself. Some authors, like Erik Berggren (Berggren, 1975, p. 3) and Peter Brown (Brown, 1967, p. 165), claim that the need to confess is something immutable through centuries and that it is somehow inscribed in human nature. Therefore, they assume that Christian confession functioned to respond to the psychological needs of penitents, and was itself an act of consolation which was supposed to cure anxiety – in the way that modern secularized forms of confession such as autobiography or psychoanalysis are assumed to function today. Other authors, such as Thomas N. Tentler (Tentler, 1977, p. xiii) and Michel Foucault himself (Foucault, 1980, p. 194-228), tend to describe the history of confession as something much more complicated and strictly connected with disciplinary power. From this perspective, sacramental confession was designed to cause guilt as much as to cure guilt, to control and to discipline as much as to comfort.

On the other hand, if we look into anthropological research, we may find authors like Weston La Barre who claimed that many Native Americans of both North and South America believed that physical and mental health required exposure – often through elaborate confession ceremonies involving shamans (La Barre, 1947, p. 294-309). Moreover, in a book concerning the forced introduction of the Chrisian confession in Mexico by the European missionaries in XVI-XVII century, Óscar Martiarena claims that some missionaries discovered indigenous practices which resembled Christian confession and therefore they used those practices to accelerate the indoctrination of the indigenous habitants of Mexico (Martiarena, 1999, p. 86-98).

Therefore, I decided to investigate the practices of confession among the culture of The Tzotzil - indigenous Maya people of the central highlands of Chiapas, Mexico. My plan was to look for indigenous religious rituals which may be similar to Christian confession and, secondly, to conduct a series of ethnographic interviews with both Christian and traditional Maya families in order to examine the importance of confession for those groups. This investigation was programmed to study how people with the same ethnic core but professing different religions perceive the role of confession in their lives. Moreover, by comparing those two approaches among the Maya people I will try to verify the two contradictory hypotheses concerning the genealogy of confession which I mentioned above. My presumption was that the Christians will attribute a great importance to the confession in their lives, meanwhile for the traditionalists, confession should play a rather peripheral role, even if it forms part of some of their religious rituals.

The interviews and readings of anthropological works concerning the region that I completed so far seem to confirm my hypotheses. People who profess traditional Mayan religion (costumbres, as they call themselves) do not have any rituals comparable to individual confession. The only moment when they confess their general sinfulness, or more precisely, their filthiness is when they ask the guarding angels for permission to enter a sacred place in order to pray there. But it is more like a common prayer formula and it does not include a confession of particular personal sins. Meanwhile, for local Christians, the practice of confession plays a very important role. The case of the local Presbyterian Church is especially interesting. Even though they do not acknowledge sacramental confession, like Roman-Catholics do, they still have the obligation to confess any serious sin they committed to their pastors and the sins are then publicly announced during the Sunday’s service. It is self-evident, that this practice functions as an element of social-control in Foucault’s terms, as the officials of Presbyterian Church themselves affirm that the absolution is only received directly from God, without the necessity of pastor’s intermediation.

During the seminar, after presenting the outcomes of my research project, which I believe would be about a 45 minutes presentation, I would like to discuss with other participants several philosophical problems related to my investigation. Firstly, the problem of confession as an instrument of disciplinary power. Do power relations established in a ritual of confession reduce or increase individual freedom in Foucault’s terms? Secondly, can we analyze Christian confession in terms of Foucauldian technologies of the Self or is it merely an oppressive practice designed to control individuals? Thirdly, how does constituting someone as a confessing subject changes the nature of one’s self? What does it mean for the individual to suddenly become a sinner who, moreover, is obliged to confess his sins to another person? And finally, I would like to discuss together a question which constitutes the very core of my investigation: is the need to confess a part of human nature (a term which Foucault obviously would not use) or is it juts a useful instrument of social control invented by Christianity?