Whichever option you choose, you will be graded on:

How well you EXPLAIN the theory that you are expounding

How well you USE the theory as a lens to analyze TWO specific examples or snapshots
Part of explaining the theory entails actually quoting and referring to the text .
Part of using the theory entails working with specific details in TWO snaps!
Grading Rubric:
D: You do not have ALL of the following: a presentation of a theory and two snaps/anecdotes that serve as examples of that theory in some way.
C: You have a basic grasp of the theory and how to use it. You do not necessarily get all of its details and points correct, but you have a solid grip on its main points and can use it to make sense of two snaps.
B: You go beyond the main points of the theory, deepening your understanding of the theory by seeing alongside another’s perspective (that is, you are able to use the theory to help you get inside someone’s point of view). You do this by interpreting the details of your two anecdotes
(snaps).
A: Your analysis goes beyond repeating what we have read in our texts or said in class, using these to present original insights or synthesis.
5-8 pages. Double spaced. One inch margins. 12 point font.
Include a bibliography. You can use whatever citation style you are comfortable with.
NUMBER your pages! (If you are using Word, go to the “Insert” tab: page numbers can be found under headers and footers).
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1. To confess or not to confess?
Foucault criticizes the practice of confession – both religious confession to a priest or larger community as well as more secular forms of confession that we do in contemporary culture (to a psychologist, but also to ourselves and each other and in popular culture). He thinks that these psychological forms of self-examination and the search for your authentic sexual self are not the liberating practice that we think they are.
In contrast, Doug Ezzy takes psychology as his primary frame of analysis. (He relies on Jung’s notion of shadow work as well as Jessica Benjamin’s notion of “acting” as a realm in between the conscious and the unconscious in which the therapist strives to bring the shadow to speech, not to resolve tension but to hold the contradictions in relation.)
But Ezzy uses psychology with a twist. After all, he is not analyzing a therapeutic session, but a religious ritual – and in his view, the somatic and collective dimensions of ritual make all the difference! As he sees it, the men and women who attend the Baphomet weekend are not confessing in Foucault’s sense! They are not making sex into a matter of morality! While they are creating an ethics of authenticity, he thinks they are not re-trapping themselves in the powerknowledge relations that arise from confessing one’s true identity -- but rather, are using somatic practices to create a relational ethics of authenticity that is truly different from forms of morality that judge individuals by their obedience to norms or codes.
Write an essay in which you defend Ezzy’s view against Foucault. You can write a traditional essay – or you can stage a conversation between Foucault and Ezzy, or maybe between two attendees of the Baphomet ritual, one who argues Foucault’s take and one who argues Ezzy’s.
To clarify: you earn your grade by your presentation and discussion of Foucault’s theory of confession and Ezzy’s theory of ritual as somatic performance (not Jung or Benjamin).
2. Both Mahmood and Ezzy use the notion of performance to argue that religious rituals work on a) the body, b) to produce capacities for agency and morality that c) enable people to negotiate ambivalence.
**Explain how Mahmood understands performance: specifically, how ritual performances produce 1) moral capacities and 2) forms of agency for the women of the mosque movement. Be sure to discuss one or two examples or snapshots from her book.
**Explain how Ezzy understands performance and how it produces both 1) an acceptance of
‘constrained agency’ and 2) ethical capacities for relating to self and other. Be sure to discuss one or two examples or snapshots from his book.
** When I introduced Judith Butler’s notion of performance, I said that she developed this theory in part to contest the normativity inherent in notions of identity (one category, one cause, one secret). Conclude your essay by reflecting on the multiplicity that is revealed by theorizing religion as performance.
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3. At the end of History of Sexuality vol 1, Foucault argues that rather than trying to claim sexual identity, we should explore the dimensions of the body and pleasure in order to develop forms of ethics that are not preoccupied with obeying or disobeying norms. Write an essay in which you argue that the forms of ethical relation to self and other that are fostered by the bodily practices of the mosque movement and the Baphomet ritual do precisely that.
4. In her theory of performativity, Judith Butler argues that gender identity (and other forms of identity) is formed as individuals repeatedly cite the conventions of their society.
** Analyze how the Underworld and Baphomet ritual cite conventions from Western history
(from the ancient classics to the “flesh”) – but cite them differently so as to engage in religion as a form of counter-conduct.
** Then consider how the women of the mosque movement create forms of agency by working the opposite direction: that is, not by citing conventions differently, but through the process of conforming to ideal models of who or what it is to be a Muslim.
** Conclude! (One possibility would be to conclude by assessing what the lens of performativity can help you see or understand about religion that you might not have been able to see or articulate before … but that is just a suggestion).
5. Write a conversation (or exchange of emails/letters) between three college roommates (or housemates, if you want to mix the genders). One is from Egypt and when she was home last summer she encountered the mosque movement and as a result is considering wearing the veil.
The other attended the Baphomet festival over the summer. And the third person is a Protestant who thinks that religion is about the spirit and beliefs, and finding answers to life’s questions, and something private where what matters is what you intend and feel and experience inside yourself; actions in the world merely express inner experience.
This last person does not understand why the other two are so insistent on doing bodily practices as part of their religion. The Muslim thinks the witch is not really doing something religious: just as an excuse to party. And the witch thinks the Muslim is just rationalizing being subservient to men.
All three meet in the kitchen. Write a conversation (or a set of emails afterward) in which the
Muslim and the witch explain their religious practice (the Protestant is serving as a foil).
Don’t let the genre fool you: you have to do a snapshot for the Muslim and the witch AND you have to explain their view theoretically. To do the latter it helps that the three all had a class together – maybe even this class!
6. Use Mahmood’s theorization of religion as bodily performances that engender ethical capacities to analyze a religious ritual with which you are familiar (either from academic study or personal experience).
Be careful: this option seems the easiest but it is in fact the hardest because you are flying so much on your own! To help, I recommend comparing or contrasting your ritual with
Mahmood’s analysis of specific anecdotes (or snapshots).
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