Bodily Performance, Ideological State Apparatuses and the Illusion of Belief
Recent materialist theories about bodies have raised many important implications regarding religious practices. Judith Butler argues in Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, that there is no essence or identity inherent to human beings apart from their outward performance. Rather, human beings merely desire an internal core and thus engage in a series of outward performative "gestures, words, enactments" (136) to sustain this illusion. This premise has many implications for religious phenomena such as the human engagement in rituals like prayer. It suggests that corporeal actions are both necessary and sufficient for engendering a sense of belief in human beings. Althusser's idea of Ideological State Apparatuses or, in other words, institutions that materialism ideologies such as churches encourage bodily performance in prayer as a means to hegemonically secure power. In this paper, I will briefly explain the ritual of prayer and I will use a modishly Butlerian-Althusserian perspective to analyze why prayer is transposed into religious duty.
Although the specifics of prayer are variable depending upon the particular religion, the general purpose of prayer is to address God or gods in words through meditation, as in praise, sorrow, gratitude or the like. Prayer usually involves a series of nonverbal, symbolic gestures and can include verbal recitation of a set of designated or non-designated words. Numerous religions encourage or require that individuals gesture to the supernatural being while in prayer. In many Christian faiths, individuals are often encouraged to kneel down and form their hands in an upward union, while reciting words to God or their gods. Assuming a decreed posture symbolically represents the receptiveness and humility necessary to communicate with the divine being. Many religions also have a prescribed set of words that individuals are expected to recite. In the Jewish faith, individuals recite the Kaddish, which is known as a "doxology, a praise of God for the divine holiness" (Carmody 18). The vocalizing of such prayers produces a kind of somnambulistic rhythm, which engages individuals collectively in praise to their God. The reciting of pre-established prayers also serves other functions. Theodore Jennings argues in "On Ritual Knowledge," that specified prayers such as the Catholic faith's, "The Lords Prayer," also serves as a template for individually created or improvised prayers. When individuals are not reciting prayers in the sacred space of a church or temple, they are equipped with the knowledge of how to pray outside of such a context. Although the ritual of prayer can be explained in much greater detail, I have outlined some of its important characteristics.
In Slavoj Zizek's introduction to Mapping Ideology, he uses an example of Althusser's to make a crucial observation about the dynamic of prayer: "Act as if you believe, pray, kneel down, and you shall believe, faith will arrive by itself" (12). Zizek and Althusser are demonstrating that ideas or ideologies are constructed through outward performance. If individuals frequently go through the outward motions of prayer, then they will believe themselves to have internalized the faith. Butler would argue that the internal self which prayer pretends to express is mere "fabrication manufactured and sustained through corporeal signs and other discursive means" (136). The body is merely a vehicle of performance that has no ontological status apart from the outward maintenance of appearances. Similarly, Zizek articulates Althusser's materialist position that religious belief is not an "inner conviction" (12), but a result of the Ideological State Apparatuses or in this case, the churches that disseminate existing ideologies. Therefore, the church creates a false consciousness or disillusioned subjectivity that has no reality beyond the material ISA that engender it. The material ISA's also have particular interests of power and they make use of the principle that the "human subject exists in his actions or ought to exist in his actions" (Althusser 127). Jennings also recognizes that humans gain knowledge of specific rituals through action: "ritual knowledge is gained not by detached observation or contemplation but through action" (327). By preying upon the human desire for an internal self, ISA's encourage elaborate performative rituals such as prayer to sustain the illusion of the internal self and secure their power on the basis of this human desire.
The idea that external behaviour can influence an individual into thinking that they believe a certain ideology seems to give the corporeal body more power than was previously imagined. The physical involvement in ritual such as prayer has the power to engender the illusion of belief. However, this does not reinforce a positive image of the body, for, it seems the body functions at the level of a ruse. That is, the body deceives the mind into believing what the ISAs dictate by engaging the individual in a series of decreed gestures, acts, words and enactments. From the Butlerian perspective, these enactments, gestures and words promoted by the church are mere fabrications that purport to express an identity or inner core. By enforcing the participation in prayer, churches are playing on the human desire to possess an internal self. Althusser's notion of the Ideological State Apparatuses demonstrates the hegemonic interests of the church and their ability to make individuals think they believe a given ideology through the participation in ritual. It seems clear why institutions would transmute and legitimate prayer as a religious discourse. By promoting the physical engagement in prayer, religions can disseminate their ideologies and thus gain a hegemonic stronghold on the masses. This power dynamic not only holds true for religious systems but also for political systems. Fascism, under the Nazi regime, was highly preoccupied in manipulating bodies through gestures and repetitious enactments. By engaging individuals in a series of Nazi "rituals", they began to believe that Nazism was an integral part of their identities. Although the intentions behind religious systems and political systems are often disparate, the way they manipulate the body and therefore the mind can be seem as very similar. By becoming aware of the body and how it can be used to manipulate the mind, it will perhaps make humans less susceptible to hegemonic ideologies, wherever they may exist.
Works Cited
Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge, 1990.
Carmody, Denise. Prayer in World Religions. Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1990.
Grimes, Ronald, ed. Readings in Ritual Studies. Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 1996.
Jennings, Theodore. "On Ritual Knowledge." Grimes 324-334.
Zizek, Slavoj, ed. Mapping Ideology. London: Verso, 1994.
Althusser, Louis. "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses." Slavoj 100-140.
Zizek, Slavoj. "The Spectre of Ideology." Slavoj 1-33.