Jesus in our Wombs - Embodying Modernity in a Mexican Convent

1. Auflage 2005
ISBN: 978-0-520-24268-5
Verlag: University of California Press

Buch, Englisch, Band 5, 358 Seiten, Trade Paperback, Format (B × H): 153 mm x 225 mm, Gewicht: 482 g

Reihe: Ethnographic Studies in Subjectivity

In Jesus in Our Wombs, Rebecca J. Lester takes us behind the walls of a Roman Catholic convent in central Mexico to explore the lives, training, and experiences of a group of postulants—young women in the first stage of religious training as nuns. Lester, who conducted eighteen months of fieldwork in the convent, provides a rich ethnography of these young women's journeys as they wrestle with doubts, fears, ambitions, and setbacks in their struggle to follow what they believe to be the will of God. Gracefully written, finely textured, and theoretically rigorous, this book considers how these aspiring nuns learn to experience God by cultivating an altered experience of their own female bodies, a transformation they view as a political stance against modernity.

Lester explains that the Postulants work toward what they see as an "authentic" femininity—one that has been eclipsed by the values of modern society. The outcome of this process has political as well as personal consequences. The Sisters learn to understand their very intimate experiences of "the Call"—and their choices in answering it—as politically relevant declarations of self. Readers become intimately acquainted with the personalities, family backgrounds, friendships, and aspirations of the Postulants as Lester relates the practices and experiences of their daily lives. Combining compassionate, engaged ethnography with an incisive and provocative theoretical analysis of embodied selves, Jesus in Our Wombs delivers a profound analysis of what Lester calls the convent's "technology of embodiment" on multiple levels—from the phenomenological to the political.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Lester, Rebecca J.

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Religionswissenschaft Religionswissenschaft Allgemein Religionssoziologie und -psychologie, Spiritualität, Mystik
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Religionssoziologie
• Geisteswissenschaften Christentum, Christliche Theologie Christliche Kirchen, Konfessionen, Denominationen Christliche Orden und Vereinigungen, Ordensgeschichte, Mönchstum

Inhaltsverzeichnis

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part One: Contexts
1. Female Bodies and the Touch of God
2. The Siervas
3. Religious Formation
Part Two: Becoming Women in Christ
4. Brokenness: Restless in My Own Skin
5. Belonging: Sisters in Arms
6. Containment: Producing the Interior
7. Regimentation: Making the Mindful Body
8. Self-Critique: Diagnosing the Soul
9. Surrender: Turning It Over to God
10. Re/Collection: The Temporal Contours of the Self
11. Changing the Subject: Transformations
Part Three: Articulations
12. Mexican Modernities
13. Bodies and Selves: Theorizing Embodiment
Appendix: Glossary of Catholic Terms and Selected Central Prayers
References
Index

Über Autor(innen)

Rebecca J. Lester is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Washington University.