Convulsing Bodies: Religion and Resistance in Foucault

268 Pages·2014·1.26 MB·English

by  Mark Jordan

CONVULSING BODIES

CONVULSING BODIES
RELIGION AND RESISTANCE IN FOUCAULT
MARK D. JORDAN
STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
STANFORD, CALIFORNIA
Stanford University Press
Stanford, California
© 2015 Mark D. Jordan. All rights reserved.
An earlier version of some portions of Chapter 4 appeared as “Foucault’s
Ironies and the Important Earnestness of Theory,” Foucault Studies, no. 14
(September 2012): 7–19.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by
any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording,
or in any information storage or retrieval system without the prior written
permission of Stanford University Press.
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free, archival-quality paper
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Jordan, Mark D., author.
Convulsing bodies : religion and resistance in Foucault / Mark D. Jordan.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 978-0-8047-8902-8 (cloth : alk. paper) —
isbn 978-0-8047-9276-9 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Foucault, Michel, 1926-1984—Religion. 2. Human body (Philosophy) I. Title.
b2430.f724j67 2014
194—dc23
isbn 0-8047-9280-6 (electronic)
Typeset by Bruce Lundquist in 10/14 Palatino
CONTENTS
Introduction:
Embodied Reading, or The Masked Philosopher 1
1 Hunter of the Sacred 13
2 The Dismembered Assassin and the
Well-Scrubbed Delinquents 41
3 The Buffoon-King and the Possessed Nuns 63
4 Chatting Genitals 93
5 The Sobbing Matron and the Loquacious Monk 119
6 The Artist of Pleasures 143
7 The Violated Mother and the Naked Philosopher 169
Conclusion:
Embodied Writing, or Among the Mourners 193
Acknowledgments 201
Notes 203
Bibliography 229
Index 239

CONVULSING BODIES

INTRODUCTION
EMBODIED READING, OR THE MASKED PHILOSOPHER
READING TAKES TIME. Its passing often leaves traces—in
marginal scribbles, in typed outlines, in proud commentaries on col-
lected works. Some traces are evidently grander than others. Some
even pretend to be analytic geometries within spheres of pure thought.
For all that, they are still traces of a body’s time spent.
Reading, no matter how cumulative, occupies different times. I began
to read books by Foucault more than thirty-five years ago. I started to
record this reading on a warm Cambridge Saturday in June 2011. I fin-
ished recording about two years later in San Francisco. The traces would
have been different if I had recorded them over another interval.
A reader moves through texts in segments of bodily life. Reading
falls among other episodes—accomplishments, boredoms, traumas.
It calls on other readings already done or set aside. Before starting
through Foucault this time, I had studied more of Nietzsche, Bataille,
Klossowski, Blanchot—whom I have come to count as Foucault’s
teachers of writing. I took up novels that Foucault cited or that he
professed in conversation to admire. I listened to music that taught
him form, including music by one of his lovers. But I followed as well
my own associations to Henry James, Guy Davenport after Fourier,
Marguerite Yourcenar on Piranesi.
Before writing down this record of a reading, I “came out” as a gay
man, fell away from Christian community, and returned to it. I spent