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1: Foucault and the Study of Religion Seminar

Michel Foucault’s work focuses on Christianity and the West, but his conception of the subject cannot be defined without the Others that mark its boundaries. This panel brings together work on the racialized and gendered subjects that remain unacknowledged within Foucault’s concept of Western Christian subjectivity, and work that applies Foucault’s analytic of power to subjects beyond his consideration. The papers examine his work in light of topics such as the anti-Blackness in his conceptions of religion and race, martyrdom accounts and their gendered representation of the Christian subject, and construction of socially and economically indebted bodies through religious rhetoric, and apply Foucauldian frameworks to the colonial inflection of confession among Indigenous Mexican Christians, and early Dalit Buddhist resistance to Brahmanical power structures. Exploring Foucault’s continuing importance for examining raced, gendered and religious subjectivities across centuries and continents, this conversation reflects on Foucault’s framework through the figures marginalized within it.

Papers

Marlon Millner, Northwestern University

Tending to the Wounding or Life After Death: Black Critical Thought and Foucault’s Use of Religion/Race

Abstract

Subjecting Michel Foucault’s schematization and theorization of biopolitics to Black critical thought is tending to the wounding that makes biopolitics possible and might also be the site of its refusal. Tending to the wounding is the site of the emergence of something called race and religion, the productivity of what Foucault calls biopower. At the same time, the site of life is marked by both Orlando Patterson’s ‘social death,’ and Hortense Spillers’s ‘flesh.’ Tending to the wounding of the emergence of biopolitics by way of Black critical figures such as Patterson and Spillers, allows for reconceiving of Foucault’s utility for the study of religion with acute attention to is constitutive antiblackness. The goal is to forestall the all-too-easy application of Foucault’s biopolitics as diagnostic and analytic on religion and to foreground the Black flesh, so as to adumbrate a mode of Black study which offers otherwise possibility to Foucault.
Mateusz Ozimek, Maria Curie-Sklodowska University in Lublin, Poland

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

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to describe the author’s anthropological research inspired by Foucault’s genealogy of confession. Foucault argues that confession, developed by Christianity, became one of the West's most highly valued techniques for producing truth. Following this statement, the author decided to investigate the practices of confession among the culture of The Tzotzlil - indigenous Maya people of the central highlands of Chiapas, Mexico. The author has conducted ethnographic interviews with both Christian and traditional Maya families. The aim of the investigation was to verify how people with the same ethnic core but professing different religions perceive the role of confession in their lives. The results seem to confirm Foucault’s point of view. People who profess traditional Mayan religion do not have any rituals similar to individual confession but as soon as they convert to Christianity, confession starts to play an important role in their lives.
Nicholas Witkowski, Nanyang Technological University

Thinking with Foucault about Outcaste Buddhism Asceticisms as a Challenge to Panoptic/Carceral Brahmanisms

Abstract

In his essay, “Pedagogy and Pederasty,” Leo Bersani suggested that Foucault’s oeuvre could be split into two distinct conceptions of power. The first was a conception of panoptic power most clearly articulated in Foucault’s poststructuralist masterpiece, _Birth of the Prison_. On this model, the individual body has no freedom—the body is an instrument of the governmental structure which exercises absolute domination. The second was the conception of power found in Foucault’s histories of asceticism. Bersani was extraordinarily critical of these volumes on ancient asceticism, accusing Foucault of abandoning the theoretical rigor of _Birth of the Prison_ and instead buying into the fantasy that one might be made more free through the ascetic process of intensification of one’s relationship to one’s desires. In this paper, I will explore how Foucault’s two seemingly irreconcilable models (explaining how the self negotiates power) help us to articulate a history of “untouchable” Buddhist asceticism.
Deivit Montealegre, University of Toronto

The Indebted Body as an Economic Aggression: The Religious Violence of Economic Debt in Current Racial Capitalism.

Abstract

This paper examines the impact of economic debt within racial capitalism, using the murder of Alexa Negrón Luciano in Puerto Rico as a case study to explore the intersections of identity, religion, and economic violence. It argues that debt functions as a form of economic violence, particularly against marginalized communities, employing theoretical insights from Michel Foucault and Paul B. Preciado. The study highlights debt as a Foucauldian technology of body production intertwined with colonialism and heteronormative structures, transforming individuals into “indebted subjects” and “debtbodies” within a racial capitalist system. This analysis seeks to expose the violent and religious dimensions of economic debt, challenging traditional views and fostering a critical reevaluation of its societal impacts and ethical implications in the interplay between economy, race, religion, and identity.

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90 Minutes

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