Censorship as a strategy of church power

Armstrong outlines one of the primary reasons for her leaving the church: the belief that she was not permitted to speak up against church doctrine. A strategy of censorship is one that supports the power of the church by silencing dissent and dulling resistance efforts.

Here's part of the text of this post:

And so, I guess to be honest and maybe as an attempt to continue healing, I'll tell you that this issue is one of the reasons why I left the Mormon Church. And although it may seem like an issue specific to just Utah culture, you have to understand that for a Mormon it's very hard to disagree with any Mormon doctrine or practice and still maintain good standing in the church. And I don't know if you can tell or not, but I have a hard time agreeing with anything.

Armstrong's strategy then was to leave the church in order to express her freedom and the recalcitrance of her will. Her strategy to continue to speak against the church provokes a dialectic that is productive of that which she is resisting. In the same way that church sponsored censorship contains within it its opposite so Armstrong's espousal of free speech contains within it a constraint and a censorship of the church.

Limits and swearing

Armstrong describes the first time she uses the word "fuck".

On March 12, 1997, ten minutes after opening a rejection letter from the admissions of one of BYU's graduate programs, I stood up next to the open window of my bedroom and shouted, "FUCK!" for the first and most precious time of my life. It was a euphoric rebirth, a ceremonial exit from the womb and refutation of everything that had tethered me to what I now regard as mythical nonsense.

It's worth noting the language about rebirth and the untethering of the self from the power operating within the church.

Sex and repression on dooce

Here's a fascinating entry relating to Armstrong's account of her first kiss. It combines a number of elements anticipated in Foucault. First, the post contains a quote from a letter Armstrong sent to a friend. Foucault would probably read this as a hupomnema or perhaps more accurately as correspondence. Letter writing is an important technology of the self in Foucault's technologies of the self. Second, the account documents a limit moment where Armstrong's bodily experience lead to the creation of new limits. She uses this experience as a source of reflection on her various relationships with power. Finally, she refers to her conscience at play as a result of the experience, a move anticipated in Foucault's understanding of power and subjectivity.

Here is a quote from the post:

David kissed me in I guess what he would consider sensual fury, what I
would consider beastly uncoordination. At about midnight I pulled out of his
driveway never to see him again, well, never to see him for a long, long time. I
was really messed up from the experience even though all we did was smooch. In
the eyes of the Church, I thought, I must be a heathen, a stiffnecked wayward, a
virtual Lamanite. For about three months I lingered on the brink of
self-destruction. David was gone forever far far away in a land called Caltech.
My innocence was gone forever far far away with Nirvana as my only
witness.

And then Armstrong reflects on her subjectivity at the time:

And then I remembered just how distraught I was at that first kiss, how I seriously thought I was going to hell because my tongue had entered another human being's mouth for purposes other than life support. And I so totally and completely don't want my daughter to ever have to go through that sort of self-loathing.


So I'm going to keep this letter -- a single-spaced account of my whole sexual non-history from ages 14-18 that is written in one whole paragraph and stretches over seven pages -- and hope that when the time comes I'll be able to teach my daughter about making healthy personal decisions about sex and about relationships, and about never using the word "uncoordination" because it DOESN'T EXIST.

A can of worms | dooce ®

Here's a striking post from Heather Armstrong which begins to address the intersection between power and sexuality. Whilst Armstrong's observations amount to a candid dislike of the Mormon church along human rights lines, her post opens up issues of how pastoral power is used in conjunction with the creation of sexual identities.

I prefer not to use such long quotes, however the manner in which Armstrong connects homosexuality, polygamy, and monogamy as a problematic for relationships of power within the church is rather striking. What is also worthy of note is the way Armstrong here carefully renegotiates a new boundary to her subject position. In previous posts she stepped back from saying anything overtly political about the church, but here she is directly critical and asserts a position whilst reinforcing a subject position that is respectful to her parents beliefs as practicing Mormons.

A can of worms | dooce ®:

"Mormons believe that polygamy will be practiced in the afterlife, and what I can't help thinking is that when the civil right of marriage is ultimately extended to homosexuals and then to polygamists, why wouldn't the Mormon Church start practicing it again? And when they do start practicing it again, how are the members of the church going to handle it? If Mormons truly believe their religion they have to believe that polygamy is their destiny, so why are they always trying to distance themselves from it? I think that many of them don't want to ask themselves that question because they might be terrified of the answer: they aren't okay with it.

It was this very issue that started me on my way out of the religion, this issue and that of the role of women in the church. I realized that I valued myself too much to ever be okay with sharing my partner with anyone else. I deserve all of him, and he deserves all of me, nothing less. I had a hard time reconciling the fact that my father (although he has a civil divorce from my mother) is married to both my mother and my step-mother in the Mormon temple, but my mother, unless she gets a temple divorce from my father, can never remarry another man in the temple. She doesn't have the same rights as a man in the church. That isn't okay to me."

SPOILER ALERT: YOU CAN SUCK IT, plus Mormon Doctrine recited from memory | dooce ®

SPOILER ALERT: YOU CAN SUCK IT, plus Mormon Doctrine recited from memory | dooce ®: "'We believe that the first principles and ordinances of the Gospel are FIRST faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, SECOND repentance, THIRD baptism by immersion for the remission of sins, FOURTH laying on of hands for the gift of the Holy Ghost.'

That's right. LAYING ON OF HANDS. It doesn't get much truer than that. As a former President of Early Morning Seminary and Earner of the Young Women's Medallion and as Someone Who Repented of Her First Kiss,..."

There's an indication here of a key aspect of pastoral power and that is the revelation of all of a person's truth - an important part of repentance and something that is performed in Rousseau's Confessions - and we see Armstrong claiming to repent of her first kiss, a classic instance of revealing the tiniest truth and the shaping of an individual through the confession.

There's a lady who's sure all that glitters is gold | dooce ®

There's a lady who's sure all that glitters is gold | dooce ®: "I think that's the thing I've realized lately through all the reading I've been doing, that I didn't have a choice. I was forced at birth into a life full of guilt and repression, a life of thinking that my eternal salvation was at risk with every thought and desire in my heart. I lived 22 years in constant fear."

This post gets to the heart of the individualising influence of pastoral power. The care for the individuals soul in this life and the next and the creation of an individuality borne out of a personal confession that both creates and shapes the individual. As Foucault attests, the power of pastoral care is the way the individual is shaped and submitted to "a set of very specific patterns." In Armstrong's case these patters are those developed and dictated by the Mormon church.

Heather Armstrong (Dooce), August 2005 :: Rebecca Blood: Bloggers On Blogging

Heather Armstrong (Dooce), August 2005 :: Rebecca Blood: Bloggers On Blogging: "Some days I feel my website writing itself".

What I find interesting here is Armstrong's reference to her website having a life of its own. Such an understanding of a blog is anticipated by Foucault in that he suggests that self-writing isn't the revealing of the self but in fact the self being expressed.

The hupomnema

"...the intent is not to pursue the unspeakable, nor to reveal the hidden, nor to say the unsaid, but on the contrary to capture the already-said, to collect what one has managed to hear or read, and for a purposes that is nothing less than the shaping of the self" (Foucault, 1997, p. 211).

In this we see the project on which Armstrong embarked, not as a way to reveal something deep and hidden within herself, but as a way to reveal that which she heard and saw. These included interactions with her supervisor, the Asian database administrator, and the colleague with whom she car-pooled. Her hupomnema - her blog - also shaped the self free from the constraints of her religion through the revelation of what she heard, did, and said in relation to her departure from the church.

Foucault, M. (1997). Self writing. In P. Rabinow (Ed.), Ethics: subjectivity and truth. New York: The New Press.

A can of worms | dooce ®

A can of worms | dooce ®: "I have been reluctant to write about it here because my response to this show goes way beyond a cursory thumbs up or down. It is inextricably tied to how I feel about the Mormon church, and if I explain those feelings I am going to be crossing into some really uncomfortable territory for many members of my family who read this website."

Armstrong backgrounds her departure from the church and her reluctance to discuss some matters on her blog.

Relaunch | dooce ®

Relaunch | dooce ®: "Dooce.com, however, will continue to offer up the best in expletive-laden religious and social frustration. This is who I am, just now I will leave my family out of it."

Note the words "this is who I am". An initial reading of the statement would suggest that the words represent who Armstrong is, but a post-structuralist understanding of the statement would indicate that the blog itself is Armstrong. Armstrong is not separate from the blog.

Memoirs of a Recovering Mormon | dooce ®

Memoirs of a Recovering Mormon | dooce ®: "I have wasted the last several hours of my life reading my journals from my freshman and sophomore years at BYU. I don't think any other activity could be quite as depressing, except perhaps actually attending BYU. The following are selected excerpts from the sophomore year journal. Accounts of my freshman year are just too horrifying."

It's worth noting here that Armstrong makes a claim to being a prolific journal writer. This is one of the technologies of the self outlined by Foucault.

Baptistic Jihad | dooce ®

Baptistic Jihad | dooce ®: "It's a little known fact that I grew up in a Mormon household in a very non-Mormon part of the country some like to call The Bible Belt, or what I like to remember as The Bible Shall Be Shoved Down Your Throat Or We Shall Whip You With a Belt."

Technologies of the self

Michel Foucault (1998): "This contact between the technologies of domination of others and those of the self I call governmentality" (p. 19).

In ToS Foucault was more interested in the latter.The Greeks believed it was important to take care of oneself but this was replaced by the now more common concept of know thyself. But in ancient times knowing oneself came out of taking care of oneself. This has occurred possibly due to the Christian idea of self renunciation being essential for salvation. We are also conditioned to accept external rules as the basis of morality rather than something internal. Additionally, since Descartes, self-knowledge is important for the development of the thinking subject.

Epimelesthai: An activity that involves taking care of ones health and wealth. "Taking pains with oneself" (p. 25). What is the self to which Alcibiades was to be concerned? The question really becomes, rather than "what is the self?", "what is the plateau on which the self might be found?". When we take care of the body we don't take care of the self. It's taking care of the activity of taking care of the soul that is care of the self. (p. 25) How can we take care of the soul? First, we must know what it is by looking into a mirror. We must contemplate the divine element of the soul which will then give us the right rules for action. Writing was seen in ancient Greece as an important technique of taking care of the self.

"Taking care of oneself became linked to constant writing activity. The self is something to write about, a theme or object (subject) of writing activity. This is not a modern trait born of the Reformation or of romanticism; it is one of the most ancient Western traditions. It was well established and deeply rotted when Augustine started his Confessions" (p. 27).

This style of writing marked a shift to a new experience of self that involved introspection. Writing and vigilance were connected. A new range of experiences were opened up as a result. 

Anachoresis: As in the retreat of an army, a retreat into oneself, a spiritual retreat, a retiring into the self to uncover, not faults but to "remember rules of action, the main laws of behavior" (p. 34). 

Askesis: A Stoic technique, "not a disclosure of the secret self but a remembering" (p. 35).

Stoics believed the truth was in the logoi, the "teaching of the teachers". You remember what you hear and convert that into rules of conduct and a subjectivity based on this truth. It's not a renunciation of the self or of reality but a progressive working on oneself through the "acquisition and assimilation of truth" and allows one to access the reality of this world rather than some future reality (p. 35).

Truth is tested by melete (meditation), a form of remembering certain truths and arguments so as to have them available during (real or imagained) dialogue and gymnasia (testing oneself through bodily training).

Christianity is both a salvation and confessional religion. One must believe certain truths and dogma and show that you believe them and accept institutional authority. (p. 40) Individuals must know who they are so they can confess their sins and weaknesses to God or another. 

Exemologesis: The public recognition of the fact of ones Christianity and faith, the recognising oneself as a sinner seeking penitence. (p. 41) "The acts by which he punishes himself are indistinguishable from the acts by which he reveals himself." Exemologesis "rubs out the sin and yet reveals the sinner" (p. 42). The thinking behind this revealing behaviour is the appeasement of the judges by being contrite and the way a person should face martyrdom before relinquishing his faith. "The theories and practices of penance were elaborated around the problem of the man who prefers to die rather than to compromise or abandon the faith. The way the martyr faces death is the model for the penitent. For the relapsed to be integrated into the church, he must expose himself voluntarily to ritual martyrdom" (p. 43).

*Interesting aside here in relation to Armstrong who had a similar defiance after being fired. It appears that her ritual martyrdom may have been performed in an attempt to be (re)-integrated back into the folds of the secular church (main-stream society); and we could analyse her pre-dismissal interview with her immediate manager as a way of being offered penance but accepting the offer. A bit speculative possibly but worth considering.*

"Penance is the affect of change, of rupture with self, past, and world. It's a way to sho that you are able to renounce life and self, to show that you can face and accept death. Penitence of sin doesn't have as its target the establishing of an identity but serves instead to mark the refusal of the self., the breaking away from the self: Ego non sum, ego...It represents a break with one's past identity. These ostentatious gestures have the function of showing the truth of the state of being of the sinner. Self-revelation is at the same time self-destruction" (p. 43).

Exemolgesis is not verbal but, rather, ritual and symbolic and the truth about the self is imposed by violent dissociation and rupture, whereas in the Stoic techne self-knowledge is achieved through memorising rules.  

Exagoreusis (p. 42-49): a Christian tradition based on obedience and contemplation; a continual verbalisation of thoughts to the master; all aspects of ones life is addressed in this techne; attempts to still the consciousness through awareness of thoughts that lead to, or away from, God. We must be like the miller who sorts the good grains from the bad or the money changer who examines and weighs coins to determine their value. The way to know if a thought is "good or "bad" is to tell all to a master, a "permanent verbalization of our thoughts" (p. 47);

"By telling himself not only his thoughts but also the smallest movements of consciousness, his intentions, the monk stands in a hermeneutic reations not onlyy to the master but to himself" (p. 47).

*Armstrong may have performed a similar act through creating her readers as a master and continually expressing her inner thoughts on her blog to her reader-masters and therefore being guided to the "right" answer. It appears that Penelope Trunk is on a similar path.* Everything that can't be expressed becomes a sin and therefore the techne relies on a vigorous and all-encompassing confession.

The common theme between exomologesis and exagoreusis is that one "cannot disclose without renouncing" (p. 48). In the latter the permanent disclosure of self and permanent obedience to master renounces the self but it is possible to use this constant verbalisation of the self as a means to create a new self. *Which is what I contend was Armstrong's project.*

Foucault, M. (1988). Technologies of the Self. In L. Martin, H. Gutman & P. Hutton (Eds.), Technologies of the self. Massachusetts: Massachusetts Press.

Heather Armstrong (Dooce), August 2005 :: Rebecca Blood: Bloggers On Blogging

Heather Armstrong (Dooce), August 2005 :: Rebecca Blood: Bloggers On Blogging: "About a month after I lost my job I sunk into a suffocating depression and couldn't bring myself to write anything anymore. After that I took my site down for about six months. I think I had a bit of a pre-mid-life crisis and I didn't want to carry it out in public."

Heather Armstrong (Dooce), August 2005 :: Rebecca Blood: Bloggers On Blogging

Heather Armstrong (Dooce), August 2005 :: Rebecca Blood: Bloggers On Blogging: "I've come to terms with the boundaries I've had to draw to maintain order in my life."

Relaunch | dooce

Relaunch | dooce ®: "You see, late last week one of the more technically-inclined members of my family found my website, serendipitously enough just after I posted an anti-Mormon diatribe Friday afternoon. They are devastated, and I've come to understand, rightfully so. I think that both my family and I have been living in a dream world when it comes to sharing who I am and what I believe."

Comments about dooce on MetaFilter

Here's a link to a significant body of comments about Heather Armstrong's dismissal.

Dooced arhive | Armstrong

Didn't really need to do the last half dozen posts. Here's the dooced archives which contain all the main posts relating to Armstrong's dismissal.

About | Armstrong

In an "About" archive, Armstrong self-describes as "...that girl who lost her job because of her website."

Unemployed & Unrepentant | Armstrong

Armstrong created her own Unemployed & Unrepentant masthead. Indicative of struggle and contestation against her previous employer.