Conversion and the Real: The (Im)Possibility of Testimonial Representation

Abstract

Although the spiritual vibration of conversion can be felt (by the curious outsider) through what conversion performers say in their testimonial discourse, what transforms the convert ‘on stage’ into a ‘new being’ and what is ‘the real’ (le réel) in conversion performance remain unclear. An important question in this connection is, What is ‘real’ in a conversion representation, both with respect to the convert’s interaction with the audience and to the construction of social reality? Following Lacan’s tripartite register of the imaginary, the symbolic, and the real, in this essay I argue that through testimonial discourse converts construct social reality as an answer to the impossibility of ‘the real’ in their performative discursive practice. In the first part, I question the constructed nature of testimonial representations—as well as some academic knowledge production that has governed conversion research in the last few decades—and how these representations encourage ‘outsiders’ to read the narrative repertoire as a negation or mirroring ‘the real’ of the conversion experience. In the second part, I apply Roland Barthes’ analytic reflections on photography to conversion research, especially the notions of the studium (the common ground of cultural meanings) and the punctum (a personal experience that inspires private meaning). This brings me to a number of theorists (mostly never used in the field of religious conversion)—Jacques Lacan, Roland Barthes, and Slavoj Žižek—who are important to the perspective that is developed in this essay.

Negotiating of Self, the Social, and the Sacred in Recovery: A Lived Religion Perspective

“…The religious canonical language and its effect on faith "grammar" serves as a new frame of reference that has the potential to radically transform the worldview of the recovering subject (cf. Sremac 2016). Or perhaps in the vocabulary of Orsi (2016, 90) "the canonical protocols of confession.…”

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The journeying self: From narcissism to solidarity and doxology

“…According to Lacan, for example, any form of testimony that attempts to describe a religious conversion simply cannot be trusted to put us in touch with the reality of the sacred (Sarema 2016). The experience of forgiveness, comfort, and hope that Christians cherish after the confession of sins might turn out in the end to be an illusion.…”

Trauma, Substance Dependence and Religious Coping: A Narrative Spiritual Appraisal in Faith-Based Recovery Programs

“…The narrative exchange is performed in the community by canonical texts, so that one is recognized and confirmed through the mimetic association with the other. Testimony, therefore, functions, as linguistic articulation of traumatic experience and it is an important source of consolation, empathy, and building community in narrative solidarity (Sremac, 2016). It is this community, which provides individuals grammar, metaphors, images, symbols and other ways of speaking about themselves, and empowers them to adopt new social identities.…”