The Confessional Ethic and the Spirits of the Screen. Reflections on the Modern Fear of Alienation

7/28/2019 The Confessional Ethic and the Spirits of the Screen. Reflections on the Modern Fear of Alienation

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The Confessional Ethic and the Spirits of the Screen. Reflections on the Modern Fear ofAlienationAuthor(s): Peter PelsReviewed work(s):Source: Etnofoor, Vol. 15, No. 1/2, SCREENS (2002), pp. 91-119Published by: Stichting EtnofoorStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25758026 .

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The Confessional Ethic and theSpirits of theScreen.Reflections on theModern Fear ofAlienationPeter Pels, University ofAmsterdam

ABSTRACT Modern confessions expect amoment of de-alienating authenticity, of revealing one'strue self. Yet, in distinguishing an imperfect, existing self from themature ideal towards whichit should grow, modem confession also divides the self, raising the question whether itsmain dealienating presupposition - that there is such a thing as an authentic self - can be upheld. Thisessay aims to trace the career of this typically modem paradox. It argues that the combination ofan undertow of modem occultism and the development of the 'society of the spectacle' throughcommodification and screen technology has increasingly shifted confession towards a multiplicityof spiritual ideals of self-reform. Thus, itundermines the individual autonomy on which humanist

modernity based its fears of alienation.

In 1982, a St. Louis, Missouri broadcast company angered and offended itsviewers whenitinterrupted soap opera with newsflashes of theattempttoassassinate Pope JohnPaul IIinRome. Not only did theactuality of global news disrupt the viewers' soap opera, itdidso forno good reason, since thevictimwas not even anAmerican (as reported byKeyser[2000: 28]). It seems that,for some, the television screen's fictions overruled thenews ofwhat happened to themost powerful religious leader in theworld. A puzzling hierarchyof values appears: the simulacrum of the screen seems tobe preferredover theactualityof global news. Had thePope been anAmerican, the reactionmight have been differentbut thatmerely raises thequestion why some imagined communities are privileged overothers (Anderson 1983).Most believers in a grand narrative ofmodernization or progressive emancipation willinterpret this event as degeneration or alienation. Whether classified as a temporaryaberration or as a doomsday prediction of the decline of civilization, itmarks a loss ofobjectivity,a failureof reason tochoose factover fiction,and a loss of individual autonomyto thepowers of theculture industry. n contrast, certain poststructuralist thinkerswouldread theevent as a challenge to thegrandnarrativesof rationalization and individualizationand see itas an invitation to explore a new politics of simulacra, fiction and subjectivity,alternative to one based on emancipation by objective knowledge. Iwould like tokeepan initialdistance from themoral imperativesof both positions, and startwith the simpleobservation thatwhat we encounter here is a capacity tofixate one's life on a televisionscreen thatviolates a certain 'modern' expectation ofhow life should be lived.This raises

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two questions. One would be to ask what enables and authorizes people to live, at leastpartly, their 'life on the screen' (cf. Turkle 1995); the other,why and how such a lifeviolates 'modern' expectations.Without pretending togive an exhaustive answer to thesequestions, thisessay addressestwo issues that connect them. The firstquestion raises, I feel, the furtherquestion ofwhat form of life (Wittgenstein),Lebensfiihrung (Weber) or technology of self (Foucault)supports lifeon the screen - understood here as a surface onwhich todisplay somethingto an audience.1 The soap opera provides an interestingclue here, formost of its drama(or, some would say, lack of it) resides in the emotional tension between confession andconcealment, of 'bringingto the surface theunofficial truths f familial relationships' likeincest,adulteryor illegitimacy (Das 1995:169). Did X lie toherpartnerabout her abortionor not? Has Y been honest tohis wife about his gay past? This constant valuation andviolation of theneed to reveal oneself truthfully arks theoperation of what Iwould liketo call theconfessional (or testimonial) ethic. It seems tofind its full popularization anddemocratization in soap operas, in thecloning ofOprah Winfrey shows, and in thewaysinwhich so-called 'real-life' television reveals one's person to theBig Brother or Sisternamed Audience.

However, this essay deals only obliquely with soap operas and television. Theconfessional ethic was a central feature of modern culture long before the rise of thetechnologies of the screen. From Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Confessions onwards, thistechnology of the self defined authentic persons as people who tryto free theirgenuineselves from the indoctrinationby social conventions. By theirconscious effort,theyhopeto grow towards a futuregoverned by the values that theywould individually choosefor themselves. This conception provides at least a provisional answer to thequestion ofwhy modern persons would regard life on the screen as alienating: itsquasi-evolutionistconception of the self argues that one should progressively shed one's conventional,religious or traditional blinkers in favor of an unobstructed view of objective nature,including one's own - an individualistic parallel to the dominant acultural theory of

modernity (Taylor 2001: 173). Such theoriesdo not look approvingly at adult indulgenceinfiction instead of fact.According to such a view, theviewers in St. Louis, Missouri,lost their self to the (fictional) confessions of the soap opera theywere watching ratherthanconstituting themselves throughtheir independent, rational assessment of thevalueof global news.However, there is a paradox here, one that is constitutive of the structures of

feeling ofmodernity.2Modern confessions, fromRousseau toOprah Winfrey, expectamoment of authenticity, f layingbare the facts about oneself - of de-alienation. Yet, indistinguishing an imperfect,existing self from themature ideal towardswhich it shouldgrow, confession actually divides the self, raising the question whether itsmain dealienating presupposition

-thatthere is such a thingas an authentic self

-can be upheld.This essay aims to trace thecareer of thistypicallymodern paradox. Itdoes so in threesteps:

firstly, y showinghow themediations of theconfessional ethic constantlyundermined thepossibility of reaching themodern, purified ideal of thehumanistic, non-alienated, self92


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sufficient erson; secondly, by indicatinghow a popular culture ofmodern occultism andesotericism institutionalized the confessional ethic'smultiplication of desirable selves -an arrayof spiritsand spiritualities thatfound a fertilebreeding ground on the screens ofthemodern culture industry resulting inwhat we now call the 'NewAge' movement; andlastly,by suggesting that 'NewAge' spiritualitiesnot justprovidedmuch of thecontentofpresent-day cyberculture,but played an importantrole in theproduction of thecomputerscreen's technologies itselfas well. Thus, I hope to argue that themodern ideal of theunified,humanistic self (and its foundation in theoppositions of culture versus nature, andorganic evolution versusmechanistic construction) is losingmuch of the cultural territoryitused tooccupy to theform of life that spromoted by thecomputer screen.The modernassessment of 'alienation' is based on assumptions that the sociability required fora lifeon the computer screen seems to subvert.This hypothesis (given the limits and scope of thisessay, itcannot be more than that)argues that themodern, humanist ideal of thenaturally-evolved and self-possessed personof the nineteenth and twentiethcenturyhas helped toproduce a cultural disposition at thestartof the twenty-firstentury thatcan almost be regarded as itsopposite. This iswhyI evoke the spiritofMax Weber: his Protestantische Ethik showed how a 17th-centuryreligious ascetic temperamentcould paradoxically generate indulgence in secular profitmaking. A very similar social paradox seems to characterize themovement of modernsociety into thedigital age, because themore people participate in the 'authentic' imagesof 'self that themedia seem tooffer,themore theyaffirm theauthorityof the screen-fedimages thatusurps this authenticity of the self. JustasWeber argued that the Protestantethic unexpectedly reinforced the secular spiritof capitalism, just so Iwant to show thatthe confessional ethic increasinglyundermined, throughthemediations ofpopular culture,itsown valuation of the self-possessed individual. In thefollowing section, I would liketo say a littlemore about such paradoxes ofmodernity, and trytoembed them in awiderconception of current sociocultural change. In the third section I will outline thebasicfeatures of the confessional ethic, itsparadoxes and its social importance.Following that,I hope todiscuss how modern occultism and esotericism startedto subvert thehegemonyof the humanistic ideal and to show that there is an uncanny complicity between thedevelopment of screen technologies and these forms of modern magic. Lastly, I hopeto show that this complicity - the generation of themultiple 'spirits of the screen' -continues in therelationship between the social and cultural impact of computer screensand the heir tomodern occultism, 'New Age' discourse. In conclusion, I return to theissue ofwhat thismay tellus aboutmodern assessments of 'alienation'.Within the spanof thisessay, of course,most of these steps remain tentative a program tobe testedby,ratherthanan abstraction of, research.But as such, I hope these reflectionsmay be of useto thosewho ethnographically study thehistory,culture and social competence of livingon a screen

today.3

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Modernity and itsparadoxesUsually, the attempt to describe what one can understand by 'modernity' founders onparadox and contradiction. The social scientific identification of a positive attributeofmodernity - say, rationalization, secularization, or individualism - was, throughout itscareer,more often thannot contradicted by arguments that saymodern institutionsorpractices can also produce or supportexactly theopposite - irrationalism,fanatic religion,ormassification. Bruno Latour (1993) has argued that this ispreciselywhat 'modernity' isall about. On theone hand,modern discourse generates purified ideals (like reason versusbelief, secular versus religious, or individual versus collective); on theother, itrelegates thehistorical, social and culturalmediations and translations thatconnect these purificationsto each other to a subordinate plane. Thus, modern discourse always remains incapableof explaining itself. It is useful to readMax Weber's account of how theProtestant ethicgenerated a secularized 'spirit f capitalism' in this light.On thesurface, itmay be read asa story f secularization; looked at inmore depth, itbecomes clear thatsuch secularization,inWeber's account, could only be produced by a specifically religious form of life (orLebensfuhrung, inWeber's terms).4Paradoxically, itwas only by sanctifyingcommercethat secular commerce could become hegemonic. As a resultof suchmediations, moderndiscourse required a constant effortat purification- ofmaintaining thatcommerce wassecular, universal or natural - in order to deny that such paradoxical sanctificationwasmore than incidental.Dominant theories ofmodernity exemplify thiseffort tpurification:modernity's normal

way of accounting for itselfwas to say that it frees human beings of the fetters oftradition and religion, tohave them face natural realitywithout blinkers. This acultural or'subtraction' theoryof historical development came in two variations: one stressed thatsuch subtractionwas a form of liberation,while the other regarded it as a loss (Taylor2001: 175-6). Both variants carried a critique of alienation. The most recent form of thefirst that of liberal modernization theory defined tradition and religion as alienatingand promised to free ('natural') individuals by secularization and 'detraditionalization'.This would turnthese individuals into 'mobile' or 'modular' personswho could freelyandself-sufficientlychoose between political interests,religious beliefs, consumer desires,or identities,without their choice affecting the general form of politics and society -the form of thenation-state, the capitalist economy, and the authorityof scientific andtechnological expertise (see Gellner 1994, 1995; Heelas, Lash & Morris 1996; Lerner1958).5 However, parallel and inopposition to this liberal view, amore or lessRomanticcritiquemaintained that technology and capitalism, in particular,marked a specificallymodern form of alienation, of the loss of one's true 'spiritual' self to the 'materialist'incentives of gaining power, making profit and maximizing consumer desires. Bothvariants, therefore,emphasized theultimate goal of a self-sufficient nd self-propelled,'humanistic' personality, even if the first starkly opposed science-driven, liberal andrational choice to the second's anti-materialist, 'spiritual' realization of truehumanity.Marxist thinking scientific and materialist, yet heavily indebted toRomanticism -94


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combined these twovisions of alienation, by accepting thevalidity of thebourgeois idealof the self-sufficient erson capable of controlling his own destiny (his own labor powerinparticular),while at the same timediagnosing thepower of technology and capitalismas standing in theway of the realization of such self-sufficiency. Its ambivalence tomodernity influenced scholars whose diagnosis of themodern conditionwas much more'spiritual' - Georg Simmel,Max Weber, and within theMarxist tradition, alter Benjaminand Theodor Adorno - and who thereby laidmuch of thegroundwork foran alternative,'cultural' theoryofmodernity inwhich thedefense of themoral and natural superiorityof themodern form of life can no longer be solely based on the claim thatmodernityguarantees a more objective, natural or culture-neutralperception of theworld.This essay cannotdiscuss themerits of these intellectualdevelopments except implicitly,by accepting some of the conclusions reached by the scholarsmentioned above.6 For mypurposes, it ismore important to highlight a middle ground between these differentdiagnoses of alienation thatwas provided by the laterwork ofMichel Foucault. Foucault'snotion of 'governmentality' (thatis,amodern cultureof efficientrule) encompassed, on theone hand, the technologies of domination thatcarriedmuch of thealienation lamentedbymany Romantics (butalso byMarx, Weber andAdorno), and on theother, 'technologies oftheself that ould be seen as practices of freedom, strugglingwith theformer towards theEnlightenment promise ofmodern de-alienation and self-sufficiency(see Foucault 1991;1997: 28Iff., 303ff.). Thus, governmentality can be seen as mediating those paradoxesofmodernity thatappear in its contradictory assessment of a liberated as opposed to analienatedmodern self.Recent research increasinglydocuments how the acultural theory fa progressive liberation fromtraditionand prejudice was underpinned by a new culture ofclassifying, surveying,enumerating, ranking,and producing confessions and testimoniesby interrogationor self-help- a methodical arsenal developed by the rise ofmodernscientific epistemology (Daston 1995; Poovey 1998; Shapin 1994), the emergence ofthe nation-state (Anderson 1983) and its techniques of domination (Foucault 1991), notleast in the context of violent colonial encounters (Cohn 1996; Cohn and Dirks 1988;Pels 1997). Such studies often indicate, likeWeber did, how these mediations built on'non-modern' formsof conduct, just as theyoftenpromotedmodern conduct on thebasisof non-modernmotivations and ideals. Thus, they show that 'we' have, indeed, in somerespects 'never been modern' (Latour 1993). However, ifone wants to go beyond thesuggestion that 'modernity'was nevermore thanamere ideology, one needs a sociologyand anthropology of thesemediations as well, one that shows how and towhat extenthuman conduct has been transformedbymodernity's real effects.For thisessay, thecentral observation is thatthemodern confession was, toFoucault, acore featureof governmentality, simultaneously functioningas technology of dominationaswell as technologyof self,mediating resistance todomination aswell as channeling theeffects of power. The humanistic ideal of the autonomous and self-sufficient ndividualwas to a considerable extent forged in the crucible of confession, and confession standsout as one ofmodernity's main modes of purification. However, if this technology ofthe self firstpurified theProtestant self of false promises of salvation, it subsequently

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promised the secular humanistic person that it could help thisperson shed the trammelsof traditionand religion to educate itself towards a freeperception of itsown nature andtrueself.Adding, still later,yet another layer to its checkered historical career, itbecameessential to theproduction of the 'spiritual' self ofRomanticism, modern occultism and'New Age'. If thisdistinguishes confession as a major modern form of mediation andtranslation that, interestingly enough, still carries its religious connotation with it, thequestion becomes how this form ofmediation could persist froma religious age, into theheydays of secular liberalism,up to thepointwhere, in itsdecline, itonce more seems toguide another cultural shift. he answer seems to lie in theway inwhich the confessionalethic, on theone hand, promised topurify the self,and on theother,mediated its divisionintoan existing and a desirable self- thusmanaging tocombine instantauthenticitywiththe incorporation of futureotherness and self-transformation.Before attempting todeal with thisfurther, should at leastbriefly indicatemy positionin relation to a problematic that is inescapable once one discusses shifts in the culturalfabric ofmodernity: the issue of 'postmodernity'. No cultural diagnosis of thepresent canavoid noting that the shiftfromFordism toa flexible economy, and from thehegemony ofindustrial tofinancial capital, bothmarked by thedemise of theBrettonWoods agreementsin the 1970s, has deeplymodified human life all over theglobe (Harvey 1990). Nor can oneignore the fact thatthiswent togetherwith theglobal demise of a politics of national welfareor development planning in favor of a politics of audit and accountability (Power 1994;Shore andWright 1997; Strathern2000) inwhich national boundaries have not somuchdisappeared as changed shape.The cultural and historical preconditions and effectsof theseshiftsguarantee that,far from turningtheworld intoMarshall McLuhan's homogenized'global village', they increasingly displace 'modernity' and its standard oppositions tonew disjunctures (Appadurai 1996). For the present essay, however, it is important tonote that a large number of the cultural shifts that it refers to are tightly interwovenwith the increasing political dominance of an economic discourse of 'accountability', thatstresses social control bymeans of audit, civil society and consumer preference. Since Iconcentratemostly on thecultural contexts ofEuropean andNorth American society, the

hegemony of consumerism (and to a lesser extent, audit) ismuch in evidence. Consumerculture is, in these contexts, largelymediated by film, television and computer screens,and audit is often translated as 'monitoring' - that is, screening - the performance ofcitizens, companies, organizations, or employees. I am willing to call this commodifiedscreen-culture 'postmodern'. However, it seemsmore important to use the studyof thecareer of theconfessional ethic tofindoutwhat kind ofmodernity we aremoving 'post'.

The confessional ethicThe English word 'confession', in failing to distinguish between Catholic ritual on theone hand and its transformationsby Protestant and secular practice on theother,may notbe the best translationof theFrench aveu (Foucault 1976: 82) or theDutch bekentenis96


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or belijdenis. 'Confession' has amore specifically religiousmeaning than thenotion of'accounting foroneself, but perhaps the term 'testimony'more adequately conveys bothitsreligious traces and itspeculiar historical location inmodernity.7As Foucault argued,confession underwent a transformationin thecourse ofEuropean history, shedding bothconfessor and seal of confession. Protestants dismissed, that is, theauthoritywho was atthe same time thepenitent's audience, and renounced this authority's promise thatwhatwas confessed would remain secret except before God. The turntoward testimony thatgave confession itsplace inmodern jurisprudence,medicine, education, love and familylife tookplace as a shiftfroma practice inwhich status, identity nd value were conferredon thepenitent by an authoritativeorder - theCatholic church as embodied by thepriestlyconfessor - to one inwhich persons were valued according to the story that they cantell about themselves.This was accompanied by an individualization and democratizationof salvation: if the confession was a test administered by a priest,whose embodimentof divine charisma allowed him to absolve his penitents of their sins, the turn towardtestimonymore andmore attributedsalvation topenitents' capacity to tell the truth boutthemselves.

Thus, confession turned into a sign rather thana test (Foucault 1976: 89), a display ofhonesty, salvation and redemption. Such confessions were no longerdirected at containingthe sinful secretwithin the confessional stall, but at (public or private) revelation. Therelated notions of 'accounting foroneself or 'making up the balance' of one's sins showhow much thisdevelopment inProtestantismwas related to thebookkeeping mindset ofearly capitalism.Weber's Protestantische Ethik, however,mostly emphasized theway inwhich the this-worldlyexhortation to self-control and thriftyabor produced the spiritofcapitalism, andwhile he mentioned thedismissal ofPrivatbeichte alongwith othermagicalmeans of salvation,he paid less attentionto the ethic and discipline ofProtestant testimonyas such (Weber 1947: 97). What Weber called 'the' ethic of Protestantism covered onlypart of itsoperations: he failed to do justice to another,more sentimental and pietisticform thatmanifested itself through testimony.Such testimonywas equally important inshaping the inwardness of thebourgeois subject and itsneed for self-knowledge and selfreformation (Campbell 1987; Taylor 1989: 302) and inproducing themodern definitionof religion as based on belief or personal conviction - that is,based on an individual anddemocratic authority thatopposed thedogmatic traditionsof the (Catholic) Church.This formofpersonal revelationfirstacquired secular shape ina genre epitomized by theConfessions of Jean-JacquesRousseau (1765), perhaps themost significantcelebration ofthehumanistic 'atomistic,autonomous self (Gutman 1988:100). In thisgenre, theauthornot only constituteshimself by revealing how he became theperson he is,but also arguesthathis imagination can picture a betterworld that ould have produced a betterperson thantheone he is (1988:110). Hence themost salient featureof themodern confessional ethic:itproduces a double personality by dividing theperson intoan object thatcan be studiedand represented (as if itwere a thirdperson), and a subject whose imagination, desireand/orday-dreams show inwhich direction thisobject-self can or should be reformed (asif itwere anT). The first, xisting personality confessed is authentic in the sense that it

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represent the 'real' person; the second, desired personality is authentic in the sense thatitrepresentswhat theperson 'really'wants tobe - itsdeepest aspirations for itself.Thetwo sides of thispersonality can be reconciled because they re relatedby self-reform ndlearning.The predominantmetaphor for thisself-reform within themajority of formsofmodernoccultism as much as within modern education or psychology - is not so much therevolutionary switch of conversion or sudden illumination but theorganicist idea of growthandmaturing, or of developing one's self.8As such, this conception of betterment andgrowth could, after arwin, be closely affiliated toevolutionism, and to thegrowing ideasabout humanity's mental evolution inparticular.9This notion of growth towards a fullyrealized or developed self also tallieswith an acultural theory fmodernity: human growthisnot a mere natural process, it is also bound tobe growth towards a humanistic 'truth',realization of one's trueself (that is, theperson one 'reallywants tobe'). It is, therefore, heconception of personal growthbased on an organicmetaphor thatconnects the twopartsof themodern confessional personality in such away that it turnsthisperson (back) intoan in-dividual, unified by his or her (future)autobiography. I submit that this conceptionof individualmental growth stands at the basis ofmost of our fears of alienation and thatthe confessional ethic continually reproduces this conception and its conflictingdesires.It is expressed in the fear of becoming an animal (or in thecase of severe brain-damage,a mere vegetable) - since in the subhuman universe, there isno 'mind' todevelop. Morepertinently tomy purpose, it is expressed in the fear of the 'humanmachine': the fear ofbeing reduced to

a robot, a cog in amachine, an image on a screen, or a mere cipher insomeone's marketing strategy. Iwill saymore about themechanical metaphor below.)Confession generates itsown epistemological possibilities and problems. The personswho constitute themselves bymodern confession can only be accepted as authentic bytheir audience's belief in the truthfulness f their testimony,because, at themoment ofdisplay and revelation, the confession cannot carry the context that allows others to testitsauthenticitywith it.Confessions, therefore, lways demand the trust f theiraudiencein the authenticityof what is being confessed. If that trust s not granted, the testimonycan be 'unmasked' as a 'false' moral stance: one of the standard operations of modern'folk' ethics (Maclntyre 1984:10-11). This need for trust nd thepotential forunmaskingis a problem that testimony shared with earlymodern conversion stories and with therevelations of ethnographic experience (Stewart 1994). The constitution of this 'moraltopography' took place by slow shifts and over a long period (Taylor 1989: 111). Itbecame one of the standardmodern modes ofknowing (and controlling) persons throughsuch secularizing instances as Rousseau's Confessions, but also because testimonywasan importantpart of themoral economy of science. Ever since Descartes, the honesttestimonyof one's actions and experiences was part of scientific discourse, although itwas also disciplined by othermoralities of scientific interaction, such as 'method' andthe turningof curiosity into a virtue (Daston 1995; see also Foucault 1997: 279; Taylor1989: 143ff.).10More importantwas that such modes of telling the truth bout oneselfwere embedded in legal and penal forms of interrogation,thehealing regimes ofmedicine98


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and psychiatry, and not least, in state-sponsoredmodes of producing proper citizens bymeans of statisticalquestionnaires and educational institutions all institutions thatweresupposed togenerate a secularized, autonomous modern subject capable of choosing fromwhatever market,media and political parties have tooffer.However, there is another,more religious aspect to thecareer of theconfessional ethicthatdoes not figureas prominently in theFoucauldian analysis ofmodern secular power,and thatmay be more important in understanding itsmass mediated popularization inthe twentieth-century. nmany forms of popular Protestantism testimonybecame oneof the central forms of revealing divine experience, and especially the inspiration bytheHoly Ghost. Testimony was briefly secularized in early nineteenth-centurypopularsciencemovements such as phrenology andmesmerism, where itcould serve to reveal aperson's hidden 'character' or his or her 'other'mental states (Cooter 1984; Pels 2003b;Winter 1998). Phrenology andmesmerism, however,when discredited by therising casteof scientific professionals by the 1870s, were turned into two of the supporting pillarsof modern occultism. Apart from popular science, occultism also drew on a legacyof early modern esoteric currents, as well as the knowledge of the exotic thatwasbeing popularized bymass publishing and popular exhibitions. Thus, a scientific formof testimony joined with the esoteric quest to discover hidden aspects of oneself in anew formof popular, half-scientific,half-religiousmovement thatwas announced by thefoundingof theTheosophical Society in 1875, and that finds itscurrent identityunder the(contested) label of 'NewAge'.Making a long story short (but see below), one can say that thisdevelopment of theconfessional ethic created the space, inpopular culture, foran epistemology of authentic

experience. In formal educational, penal, medical and psychiatric institutions,testimonyand thepersonal experience that it reported on were contextualized by othermethodsof diagnosing and correcting a person's mental evolution, and thereforemade subjectto thediscipline associated with those other methods. In thepopular culture of modernoccultism and New Age, however, personal experience, like the Protestant testimonyof divine experience earlier, became a democratic form within which to criticize thenarrowly 'materialist' orientations of the socially dominant institutions of church, state,science and themarket. Inspired by the esotericism that also characterized theRomanticmovement, modern occultism and New Age therebydeveloped a notion of personalexperience thatincreasingly relied on testimonyas its sole authorizing instance (althoughthey frequentlydrew upon scientistic rhetoric- rather than scientificmethod - as well:seeHammer 2001; Pels 2003b). While thedominant social institutionsusually kept alivea bourgeois and liberal critique of alienation thathighlighted individual liberation througheducation and self-knowledge, these popular descendants of the Romantic movementrepeated, time and again, therefrain thatmodern 'materialism' itself alienated thepersonfrom his or her 'true' spirituality, nd confessed these experiences of a higher, spiritualself in a privatized, domestic or commercial, sphere (seeHanegraaff 1996; Heelas 1996).Paradoxically, however, these confessions of spiritual experience, thought to be moreauthentic than the alienated experience generated by thematerialist world of commerce,

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would themselves turn ut tobe gristfor themills of the twentieth-century's ommodifiedand mass-mediated entertainment industry.Thus, 'authentic' spiritual experience wasincreasingly prefabricated by thecommercial multiplication of spiritualitiesand spirits.

The spirits of the screenJust sWeber argued thattheProtestant ethic evaporated fromthe 'ironcage' (stahlhartesGehduse - more correctly, 'steely shell': Weber 1947: 203) of the capitalist duty towork, just so I submit thatRousseau's humanistic ideal of an autonomous self that isgrowing towards individual perfection isevaporating from theway selves are produced byconsumer culture and screen technologies. To support this, would like toelaborate in thissection onmy earlier suggestion thatEuropean popular culturegenerated amultiplicity ofspiritsalternative to thedominant Geist ofmodernity, and that these spirits, transformedby the 1960s counter-culture, became 'mainstream', that is, fully commercialized inthe 1980s under the name of 'New Age'. Subsequently, I propose that this helped totransferthe 'double personality' characteristic of the confessional ethic fromRomanticesotericism to consumer culture, and that this transformed the production of both theimperfect and the desirable selves of the confessional ethic. Lastly, I hope to showthat this transformation increasingly abolished the cultural distance between imperfectand desirable selves, reducing the room thatwas available for the conception of mentalevolution that is characteristic of humanistic rationalism, and thus turningthe transitionfrom imperfecttodesirable selfmore andmore intoamiraculous leap of trust.Above, I showed thatthepurified ideal of thefreely choosing and autonomous modernsubject,made hegemonic by modern nation-states' production of citizens and by theemphasis on inwardness of modern philosophy, was always mediated by the doublepersonality of the confessional ethic. The modern ideal of the autonomous person wasdominated by theorganicist metaphor of self-reformthroughgrowth. InHegelian terms,one could shape theperson by Bildung in order to attain an individual embodiment oftheGeist of reason, as objectified in themodern state.11Modern state institutions likeschools, universities, and courts of law worked to turnpeople into the social factof beingan autonomous individual capable of buying and selling (himself) on themarket. Thisunification of the self, however, could only work in specific circumstances of control,where personal growthwas institutionalized in such a way that the existing object-selfwas successfully oriented towards thesubject-selfdesired, and the lack of trust hatalwayshaunts self-testimonycould be controlled or absolved. However, such control - whetherby the state or by the 'invisible hand' of commerce - could always be experienced asalien: in the termsof the 1960s counterculture, as 'the system' thatprevents one fromreally becoming theperson thatone should be.To counter such alienation, the confessional ethic's production of double-personalityon-trustwas also employed toproduce radical Romantic alternatives to the 'materialism'of society - alternatives that took root in theworld ofmodern religion and romantic100


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spirituality, s a kind of undertow ofmultiplied personalities and spirits tomodernity'scurrentof strivingfor a unified, autonomous and self-sufficientself.Thus, pace Weber,(early)modern Protestantism was not just characterized by JohnWesley's exhortationto believers to improve themselves by thediscipline required to become rich, but alsoby themiraculous improvement through the inspiration of theHoly Spirit, reported bytestimony which included doubts about whether this spiritual influencewas divine orsatanic (Davies 1963: 7; Garrett 1987: 74ff.; 133). This spiritual contest between theDevil and theHoly Ghost suggests that themodern miracle of self-improvement throughspiritual influence seems to privilege a conception of spirits in the plural (rather thanthe singular spirit of reason professed by more hegemonic discourses). Elsewhere, Iargued that, in thecourse of the nineteenth century, thisplurality of spiritsdeveloped anuncanny alliance with themultiple personalities that o interestedpopular science and earlypsychology.12 Experiments withmesmerism, evenwhen guided by professional doctors,suggested fromearly on that the altered stateof the tranceproduced an influenceon themedium thatmanifested itself nclairvoyance andmiraculous healing (Winter 1998).Whenmesmerism was takenup within theSpiritualistmovement, thesemiraculous capacitieswere transferredto the spiritsof thedead, who could be consulted throughthemediumin trance, and whose authority,coupled with the essentially democratic epistemology ofthepersonal experience of theSpiritualist experimenter,was used tocriticize thereligiousand scientific establishments (Pels 2000; 2003b; see also Braude 1989; Owen 1989).This cultural undertow of modern multiple spiritswas institutionalized inmodernoccultism, especially asmarked by thefounding of theTheosophical Society in 1875 byHelena Petrovna Blavatsky andHenry Steel Olcott andThe Hermetic Order of theGoldenDawn in 1888 byMcGregor Mathers. Summarized crudely, one can say thatBlavatskyand her fellow modern gurus transformedmesmerism and spiritualism by an exoticized(predominantly orientalist) reinterpetationof European esoteric thought, claiming theauthorityof thehigherwisdom of a group of occultmasters (theMahatmas) supposedlyresiding somewhere inTibet. In the Order of the Golden Dawn, Western esotericismwas reinvented to produce a specificallymodern, psychologized form of 'magic' thatconcentrated (especially in the work of one of its later adherents, Aleister Crowley)on the improvement of one's individual will in order toproduce miraculous influenceson the natural world and on others. The central role thatgnostic introspection playedinbothmovements provided a particularly hospitable environment for the confessionalethic.However, while modern occultism retained the ideal of individual self-realization,itconstantlyviolated personal self-sufficiency y thenecessary incursions of spiritsof thedead, of invisibleMahatmas or real gurus, or themental powers of themodern magician.The occultists claimed to represent a more advanced science as well as a more universaland personal religion (see, forexample, Blavatsky 1972 [1877]). However, because theywere barred from thebastions of scientificexpertise (as symbolized by statisticalmethodand the laboratory), themodern occultists' 'science' could not adopt themethodical claimsof thenew scientificexperts, and fell back on the single element of themoral economyof science that remained democratically accessible: the honest testimony of personal

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experience. Modern occultism andNew Age founded their truthsby saying 'trustme -my experience tellsme there ismore between heaven and earth thanour (scientific andreligious) conventions allow for'.This interpretation f theconfessional ethic looked upontheexisting self as having been indoctrinatedby scientificand religious conventions, andtried to liberate the ideal self from these bonds by themiraculous intervention of thosespiritswho had already escaped these conventions and come to understand how theyobscure esoteric wisdom.

This essay leaves no scope to trace the historical development of this paradoxicalcombination of the confessional ethic and themultiple spirits ofmodernity, from thenineteenth-centuryexemplars of 'NewThought' and Spiritualism, through heosophy andmodern magic, to twentieth-century ovements likeAnthroposophy, modern witchcraft,theHuman PotentialMovement, and a host ofothermodern institutionalizationsofmiracleandmagic (but seeHammer 2001; Hanegraaff 1996; Heelas 1996; Pels 2000, 2003b).13Here, I have torestrictmyself tonoting that thesemovements provided a running critique -fromboth progressive aswell as reactionary angles - on the insufficiency f the dominantscientific and materialistic Geist ofmodernity, and that thiscritiquewas stronglyrooted inRomantic self-fashioning bymeans of theemphasis on creative expression and imaginativeintrospection (Hanegraaff 1996: 415ff.; Heelas 1996: 42). As such, itmanifested itselfagain ina particularly strongform in themore Romantic aspects of theWestern 'counterculture' of the 1960s and 1970s, where theRomantic exhortation to improve oneself was(often tenuously) allied to the revolutionary rhetoric of improving society as a whole.When the revolutionary critique lostmomentum by the late 1970s, it left the individualpsychodynamics of personal experience as themajor determining characteristic ofwhat,by 1980,many people startedtocall 'NewAge'.14 Its central doctrine can be paraphrasedas follows: T found out thatmy conventional life did or does notwork; I discovered thatthere is a divine experience withinme that these conventions preventme fromrealizing;ifonly I can drop this conventional ego, I will free thedivine that I carrywithinme andbe fulfilled' (afterHeelas 1996: 18-20). The division between a despised object-self andan imagined trueT, and the testimonies that (if trusted) relate the one to the other, isnear-perfectRousseau - but theFrench philosopher would probably have parted companywith New Agers at thepointwhere the latter ssume a divine self,miraculously releasedby 'dropping' theego.This spiritualized confessional ethic was the counter-culture's entry ticket into themainstream, inparticular throughitsfast and pervasive commercialization (Moerland andVan Otterloo 1996). This brings anothermajor paradox ofmodernity into view. ColinCampbell, inhis brilliant revision ofWeber's classic, has persuasively argued fora strongconnection between Romantic self-fashioning and hedonist consumerism - a connectionhe set out to discover afterworking on 'New Agey' religious movements. Campbell'sargument that the consumerist personality is characteristically double

-split, that is,between a 'puritan' discipline binding one's existing self, and a 'romantic' yearningtowards fulfillmentby consumption - show it to be close, ifnot identical, to the splitperson of the confessional ethic (Campbell 1987: 223). But if this double personality

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could be transferredfrom pietist confessions to romanticism and from there to the'spirit of consumerism' (Campbell 1987: 223; see also Taylor 1989: 60), an equallystrong relationshipmight exist between Romantic and occultist expressions of gnostic'experience' and themodels provided for itby the industrythat feedsmass consumption.In otherwords, the 'authentic' experience of self confessed in somany formsofmodernreligionmay be a commodity offered by the culture industry at first,predominantlymediated bymass publishing, but increasingly so by the technologies of the screen.One can easily pinpoint early connections between theemergingmass media, thefirstscreen technologies, andmodern occultism. The mass publishing industrymade the imagesof occultism available to large audiences, fromEdward Bulwer-Lytton's 'Rosicrucian'novels and Charles Dickens' mesmerism toH. Rider Haggard's exotic best-sellers.15AlfredWallace was one of the spiritualistswho thought that thephoto-camera revealedthe real existence of spirits that,before, only gnostic introspectionmade accessible (Pels2003b). When the British film-industrymade itsfirstfeeble steps,Haggard's occultistbestsellers provided much of its subjectmaterial - not least because thisnew technologyof the screen could display miracles in a way that everyday life could not. A similarrelation between mass publishing and film technology seems to apply today:whereas,as Tanya Luhrmann has shown (1994), themagic of J.R. Tolkien's bestseller The Lordof theRings revived and transformed thepractices of modern magic and witchcraft inthe 1960s and 1970s, the book gained, likeHaggard's She, a. new lease of lifewhen theadvancement of film technology bymeans of thecomputer allowed filmmakers toportrayitsmagic even to thepoint of realistically showing small (but humanoid) Hobbits in thesame frame as theirnormal-sized human fellows in thequest for the destruction of theRing. The cinema's capacity to realize fantasies thateveryday life stubbornlyrefused tomaterialize was amajor boost tomodern occultism.

Thus, mass consumption and thenew technologies of the screen seemed to be quitehospitable to the spiritsofmodern occultism. Even more, Colin Campbell's connectionbetween Romanticism and consumerism suggests that there are also deep culturalcontinuities connecting these different social movements' presentations of self. In 1935,Walter Benjamin pioneered the view that the camera stimulates a new form of selfrepresentation, embodied by the movie-star as well as themodern political leader.Benjamin famously argued that thecamera fragmented theperson represented intodiscretetakes, turningthe ctor intoa producer of a formof lifespecific tothescreen: a commodified'personality' thatmade a lasting impression on an audience in the absence of the actor(1977: 153^). Because this 'personality' was no longer tied into the shared physicalpresence of actor and audience, the ideal ormodel that it representedwas more easilydivorced from theexisting person representing it. ikewise, for theconsumers of screenedimages, '[c]inema rescue[d] all thatexperience allow[ed], save risking thebody' and thusprovided themwith a 'magical double' thataffected its real counterpart asmuch as viceversa (Moore 2000: 162). Itgave theexisting selfof theviewer a virtual experience (liketrue love, real adventure, or hair-raising horror) thatwas seductively real, but thatcouldor should not be experienced ineveryday life.According toBenjamin, the cinematic shift

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towardsa disembodied and fragmented 'personality' re-enchanted its bservers by a certainabolition of visual distance - a 'tactile' grabbing-by-the-gutrather thanan invitation toreflect n the film's time-frame ina disengaged manner. Interestingly, e did not think thatthis re-enchantmentwas restrictedto themedium of thecamera. Rather than suggesting -a laMcLuhan - that themedium of the camera generated 'its own' messages, he madeclear that similar processes had already occurred during the rise of themass publishingindustry and indeed, occultist novels likeH. Rider Haggard's She were reviled by 'highculture' (but admired by Haggard's colleagues Andrew Lang, Robert Louis Stevensonand Rudyard Kipling) for theirway of capturing a gullible audience in the fantasyworld of 'romance', filledwith true love (and its increasingly explicit sexuality) and realadventure (and its increasingly gory details). Thus, the representations of self ofmasspublished romance preceded the flat-screenpersonalities ofmovie-star and dictator thatBenjamin saw emerging in the 1930s. By now, theyhave become a common political form:sinceHollywood cowboy Ronald Reagan became governor ofCalifornia, and BollywoodheroM.G. Ramachandram president ofMadras, movie-star image-making and politicalleadership have combined toproduce more andmore versions of the commodified andexchangeable Miss-World-smiles of the likes of Bill Clinton, Tony Blair or GerhardSchroder. IfBenjamin could still identify democratic promise inmass-mediated film,itseems as if, since he wrote, ithas mostly been made good by spin-doctor politics, NewAge fantasies and so-called reality television (see Benjamin 1977: 156).What interestsme here is theway inwhich Benjamin connected commodity fetishismwith the cinematic generation of 'magical doubles' to suggest that both developmentsprovided Romantic consumers with a proliferation of desirable selves and day-dreams,capable ofmiraculously transporting them into another, better life (if only within theboundaries of a book's covers or thewalls of themovie-theatre). This proliferation ofimagined worlds implies an - at least temporary reduction of the distance betweenimaginary and everyday lives, one that, at present, can be observed to occur globally(Appadurai 1996). As Benjamin suggested, this could mean an - at least virtual -democratization of this-worldlysalvation thatbrings theexperiences that re normally theprivilege of celebrities, power holders, or the spiritually liberatedwithin thegrasp of thecrowd. But consumers do not only feed on salvation and thegood - asAyesha, theEgyptianwitch and central heroine ofRider Haggard's She remindsus, they re nourished by horror,imperfectionand evil aswell.16 Indeed, commerce and screen have also turned images ofpersons' imperfectand ever sinful selves intobig business. In relation to the confessionalethic, thebest example of thiscan perhaps not be found in 'NewAge', but in theglobalspread of confessional culture throughPentecostalism and Christian fundamentalism,financed in considerable measure by conglomerates ofAmerican televangelists. Its useof the screen produced a powerful renovation of the 'demonstrative' and confessionalEuropean Evangelism of around 1800 (Csordas 1992: 4). Moreover, the scandals aroundsome of theseAmerican televangelists in the 1980s gave another,more perverse twistto such confessional performance: the fundamentalists'market for religious controversywas fueled by the excitement of questioning whether thepreachers accused of sinful,104


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commercial conductwere making truthful onfessions of theirsins or not (Harding 2000;see alsoMoore 1994: 118ff.).As Susan Harding brings out sowell, this juxtaposition ofimages of sin andmiraculous salvation produced thefundamentalists' sensationalism aswell as theircredibility in theeyes of theconverted.Thus, commerce and the screen seemto increasingly set the two elements of theconfession - the images of a sinfulexisting selfand of themiracle of salvation by a desired ideal - thatshould, according tohumanisticrationality,be related by thegradual work of Bildung ormental evolution, rightnext toeach other, in a direct confrontationmediated by the screen. Paradoxically, the sins thatshould not be commodified become amajor source of commercial appeal. Although NewAgers have littlepatience with the concept of sin, their idea of personal responsibility(as in 'you are responsible foryour own illness': see Hay [1984]) has a similar role toplay. Even more, theNew Age industryhas turnedthatwhich itregarded as inalienable -authentic, anti-materialist and therefore anti-commercial 'spiritual' experience - into acommodity tobe sold on themarket thattheyso despise.17This marks the society of the spectacle (or the simulacrum: Baudrillard 1994; Debord1983): a world in which social control is increasingly exerted by the presentationof one's self in a multiplicity of commodified performances like fixed bureaucraticforms,conspicuously consumed life-styles,or commercially generated spiritualities.Thespectacle has come to dominate consumer society as well as theworld of auditing andaccounting: as the recentmega-scandals around Enron's and WorldCom's presentationof false accounts show, 'trust in the fact that an audit is done' can displace 'publicpreoccupations with what is done and what is discovered' (Power 1994: 25-6). Audit, likeconfession, relies on thetrust n itselfthat sgenerated at themoment of itsperformance.18Likewise, audit and confession both face thepossibility that theirperformances are notaccepted as authentic,which leads to the scandal of unmasking theperformance as false.Therefore, themore social control relies on commodified spectacle, themore itwill besubject to a moral economy of trust-and-scandal, in which evil and perdition lie justaround the corner from salvation. Hence, the general form of the soap opera, thrivingon the alternatingdisplay of trust nd the violation of trust;hence, the fact thatOprah

Winfrey's confessionals strivingfor human purification are just a channel away from theimperfectionsof theJerry pringer Show; hence, theparadox of 'Big Brother's' cameraspretending to film the so-called 'private' life of people who are, in fact, tryingtowina prize by putting up a public performance. I submit that this is theway inwhich thejoint forces of commerce and thescreen - of spectacle - increasingly abolish thedistancebetween people's imperfectionsand their deals ofwhat theyreallywant tobe: because theimperfectand the ideal come to sit rightnext to each other in thecourse of everyday life,they eave littleroom forthetemporalorderofgrowthandmental evolution thathumanisticrationalityrequired tomanifest itself.As a result, thehardwork of salvation by self-reformis fazed out infavorof increasinglymore miraculous formsof self-improvementavailablein the spiritual supermarket.19Nevertheless, many people will stillfeeluncomfortablewhen watching CNN employUriGeller as an 'expert' commentator on themultiple suicide of themembers of theHeaven's

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Gate sect in 1997, even after this formerpsychic spoon-bender had been unmasked as afraud (repeatedly).Although Geller's commentary ridiculed theHeaven's Gate members'desire toreach (in the language of computergames) a 'higherlevel' by leaving theirearthlybody and hitching a ride on the tail of the, supposedly UFO-driven, Hale-Bopp comet,the CNN interviewer did not seem to be bothered by the fact thatGeller prefaced hiscomments by stressing that 'ofcourse,UFOs exist' (as another 80% of theUS populationseems tobelieve). This is just one example of thespread ofmiracle thatBenjamin expectedwould occur throughmass commodification and screen technology.Television series likeThe X-files, Charmed, and Buffy theVampire-Slayer only prefigured how, today,HarryPotter and a revivifiedTolkien liberate thepostmodern genie out of the rationalist bottle.This erosion of the authorityof humanistic rationalism, as exemplified by the growingappeal of the spirits of the screen, seems to coincide with the fragmentation of publicbroadcasting, as commercial broadcasting increasingly privatizes thepublic sphere (seeKeane 1998: 163-9). However, this is still not sufficient to explain why I think that,paradoxically, thehumanistic spirit is evaporating from theplastic shell of the computer.I feel that, through the computer,we are experiencing another twist in the relationshipbetween thepresentation of self, the spiritsof modern occultism and New Age, and thecommodification fed by screen technology, thatmay transform the relationship betweenculture and technology inan even more radical way.

'New Age' and lifeon the cyber screenWalter Benjamin argued that themessage of thefilm screen is the commodified image.This does not answer the question whether the camera could have been invented in asociety thatwas not dominated by commodity fetishism (I do not know enough about filmand television history to engage the issue) but it seems clear that the camera would nothave contributed to such cultural and political transformationswithout thatbackground.As I turn to the relationship between New Age and the rise of the computer screen, it

may become more self-evident that themedium does not justmake themessage, but thatthemessage itself also seems tohave had a formative influence on themedium. Manyof the inhabitants of the 1960s counterculture have turned intopioneers and advocatesof a life of the cyber screen. It seems as ifcounter cultural technophilia, exemplified bythose who tried to enhance their selves by LSD, cybernetics and the computer, fed thecyborgmentality that led to the electronic explosion thatemanated fromSilicon Valley inthe last decades of the twentiethcentury.However, as themedium turnsmore andmorehuman beings intoorganisms that re - at leastpart of theday - 'improved' by electronicadditions, it is chipping away at some of the cultural foundations of humanism and itsreliance on thedifferencebetween humans and machines inparticular. In otherwords, ifNew Age has indeed helped tocreate thecomputer, computer-driven societymay now bechangingNew Age beyond recognition.The culture of trippers ikeTimothyLeary and fansofThe Grateful Dead, materialized in106


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publications like theWhole Earth Catalog, produced many of the inventors of cyberspacetechnology and advocates of itssupposedly radical democracy. StewartBrand, founder oftheWhole Earth Catalog, coined theword 'personal computer'; 'acidhead' and part-timeBuddhist Steven Jobs produced (with StevenWozniak) theApple-computer, and thus-throughthe 'mediation' ofMicrosoft's Windows - thematerial appearance of theglobalcomputer screen itself;Mitch Kapor, inventorof Lotus 1-2-3, emerged fromLSD andtranscendentalmeditation; GratefulDead-fan JohnPerryBarlow became, withKapor, thefounder of theElectronic FrontierFoundation that ims todefend democratic cyber rights(Davis 1998: 165-8). The freedom desired by this reinvented frontier(and Beach-Boy)

mentality is furthercalifornianizing theworld by its invitation to 'surf' the Internet.20Although thehyper speed commercialization of the nternetfrustratesmany of themore

optimistic views of itspotential democracy, it is still easy to see how much the Internetis geared toNew Age-related egalitarian sentiments: 'Networking is theprocess which istransforming urworld intoanAge of Peace andHarmony as people sharewith each otherinformation nd resources. It is the tool thatcan single-handedly transform urworld intoa Paradise' as an author of aNew Age website put it.21 irectory sites become 'portals' tospiritual enlightenment, just as other cyberdelics proclaim thatcomputers ('machines ofloving grace') augur a 'cyberneticmeadow where mammals and computers live togetherinmutually programming harmony', where we are 'freeof our labors and joined back tonature' (Richard Brautigan, quoted inDery 1996: 30). Thus, New Age and cyberneticscombine in a formof technophilia thatpromises a liberation from the bonds of thebodythat seems farmore radical - but that also echoes - Rousseau's attempt to escape hisexisting self throughhis Romantic imagination. Even the seemingly traditionalist,antitechnological, and nativist 'neo-pagans' - thenew witches and Druids - are among themost numerous and creative producers ofwebsites, computer games and chat-boxes - the'technopagans' (Aupers 2001: 312ff.;Davis 1998: 179ff.).This goes togetherwith new developments in the spread ofmodern magic and miracle.Computer technicians have always been a significantgroup within covens ofmodernmagicians andwitches (Luhrmann 1994). This may be because, within theassumptions ofmodern discourse, thecomputer itselfseems tobe amiracle, something that snot supposedto exist: an artificial intelligence, amachine that is, like an organism, alive. A growingnumber of computer termserase theboundary between organisms and machines: viruses,'bots', 'spiders' or 'worms' (software versions of a mechanical robot 'thatperformsfunctions normally ascribed to humans'), and 'personal agents' (Aupers 2001: 300-6).

Computers users themselves feelmagically liberated from theirorganism, including itsgender.As a female technopagan (or techno shaman) put it: 'Gender-fuckingandmorphing[i.e. changing one's sex in cyberspace, pp] can be intenselymagical [M]orphing andnet-sex can have an intense and unsettling effect on the psyche, one that enables theecstatic state fromwhich Pagan magic is done' (quoted inAupers 2001: 314). Computergames (like 'Dungeons andDragons') have proved tobe a particularly successfulmeansof spreading themagical worlds modeled on Tolkien's The Lord of theRings. WilliamGibson's suggestion in 1984 thatcyberspace and artificial intelligencewere actually divine

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and shouldbe understood inreligious termshas left cience fictionand isnow being arguedby serious scholars (Gibson 1984;Wertheim 1999).22 Even more: Erik Davis has been verypersuasive in arguing thatcomputer screen technology invites a new gnosis, reinforcingthe intellectual tendencies ofmodern occultism andNew Age by its form (Davis 1998).Lastly, New Agers may be glad thatthe Internet's space isvirtually infinite, orotherwiseitwould already be full to the brimwith New Age websites, each proclaiming its ownmode of salvation. Thus, if 'NewAge' counterculturehelped to turnus into cyborgs, thecyber screen actively contributes to the turning f themodern Geist intoGeister, plural.However, themedium of the computer does not need people to commit themselvesexplicitly tomodern miracle, magic or gnosis - itcan generate 'New Agey' effectsbyitself. he attempttocombine lifeon and offa computer screen isproducing curious formsof human interaction:

'Iwiped out at that part with the ladders.''Ladders? What ladders?''You know, after the rooms.''Oh, you mean the stairs?''No, I think theywere ladders. I remember, because I died there twice.'T neverkilledyou aroundany ladders. killedyouwhere you jumpdownoff thiswall.''Wall?You mean by thegates of thecity?''Are there gates around the city? I always called it the castle.'

The two boys who tried to discuss the computer game that they played (in anotheridentity)on the screen gave up tryingto understand each other in the end: they couldnot fully relive off the screenwhat thepersonalities theyhad adopted on ithad done.This breakdown of singular self-representation- or, put differently,the fact thatone isforcefully reminded that thepersonality or personalities thatone lives on the screen aredifferentfrom the ones living off it not only occurs among children, but also amongadults surfing n theNet (Ullman 2000).23 In fact, I suspect thatmost laypersonswho trytoconduct a conversationwith their local ICT-expert about theircomputerwill recognizethefrustration f experiencing therupturesbetween on- and off-line communication, andbetween the lingo of the screen and thatof everyday life.According toSherryTurkle, theinteractionbetween thevirtual identitiespeople use incyberspace and theiroff-linebeingis at worst likemultiple personality disorder and at best an experience of a 'collectiveself - as if themultiple spirits thatprovide theNew Age person with itsdesirable selvesnow enterour livesunbidden,without people asking them in, throughthecomputer screen.As a result, therelationship thatused topertain between existing and ideal representations of self, or thedifferentmodels of what one would 'really'want tobe, is changingfurther. have already suggested that onsumerism and filmand televisionworked togetherto reduce the cultural space for the conception ofmental evolution thatconnected theexisting subject-self and the ideal subject-self of the confessional ethic.Now, computertechnologyhas started toundermine the implicit cultural assumptions thatform thebasisfor this conception. As these cultural assumptions - thedefinition of a human being asa thinking organism, distinct from animals andmachines; and thedefinition of mental108


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development in termsof (organic) growth- are being displaced, the confessional ethicwill probably lose the humanistic content thatcharacterized it sinceRousseau, and thus,lose theconceptual basis for themodern fearof alienation.The electronic romance of 'mammal and computer' that I cited above goes togetherwith thedecline of themetaphor of theorganic human individual - thehumanistic personwho is not amachine and who reformshimself through growth and learning- and therise of the cyborg - theperson whose 'organism' has become partmachine.24 The firstcomputer users still spoke of their screens in termsof amachine (amechanical 'other')thatone could open, like a car or amotorcycle, to adjust some lining,valve or pistonin its innerworking. From themid-1980s onwards, however, computer technology hasbecome more and more inaccessible and occult, which has resulted in a decline of thelanguage of human control over this technology, that is, of the hardware thatkeeps thesurface of the screen going (Davis 1998: 181;Aupers 2001). Even more importantis thatpeople increasingly refrainfrom trying ounderstand theworking of software:Macintoshcomputer users were among thefirstto starttalking about 'transparency' as an attributeof the screen's icons rather than of one's ability to 'open thehood' and rummage in theinterior Turkle 1999: 543).

In our culture of simulation, when people say that something is transparent, theymean that theycan easily see how tomake itwork. They don'tmean thattheyknowwhy it isworking byreference to an underlying process. (Turkle 1999: 544)Again, we encounter a commodified image, the computer screen 'icon', that guidespersons,while thesepersons themselves have relinquished theattempt tofindauthenticityin some kind of 'deep' organic ormechanical structurewhere one finds 'natural' unity.The hierarchies of value expressed by distinguishing on- and off-line life,or a superficialknowledge of thescreen as compared to theunderstanding of how itrepresents the 'inside'aremade subservient topure pragmatism, just as New Age erases the value-differencesbetween truth nd belief by its catchphrase 'nevermind, as long as itworks' (Aupers1998).For present-day children who do not share themodernist organic philosophers'abhorrence of conflatingbio-organic and artificial intelligence, the screen and itspersonaeare perfectly admissible company: 'Childrenwho have grown up with computationalobjects don't experience thatdichotomy [betweenmachines and biological organisms, pp].They turnthedichotomy intoa menu and cycle through itschoices' (Turkle 1999: 548).Unlike theorganicist ormechanicist, theyare comfortablewith livingon the screen.Thescreen sociability required by a computer turns 'society' into an actor network inwhichsome actors aremachines, many communicative events are produced bymechanicallyenhanced humanoids, and the ideal of human autonomy andmastery has been abolished(see Aupers 2001; Callon 1986; Latour 1993). Mammal and computer, side by side, ina cyberneticEden of equality - or,more likely, in thebleakMatrix ofWilliam Gibson'scyberspace, rivenas it isby electronic power differences (Gibson 1984). Leaving sciencefiction aside, the contradiction between on-line and off-line practice - as it comes out

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most starklyin theepidemic of computer-induced repetitive strain injuries (RSI) - bringsout how much we are being guided into a new phase of modern paradox, inwhich thepart of our person that splugged intoa computer is actively harming thepart of ourselvesthat is a biological organism. If cinema allowed us tohave experiences thatdo not 'riskthebody' (Moore 2000: 162), thecomputer screenmay make us forget thebody to suchan extent that itphysically reacts. The boundaries between humans and machines thatmodern thoughtdeclared tobe so solid, are being permeated ina number ofways.As a result, the distance between people's existing self and their images of personalsalvation shrinks yet again. The consumer's imaginative fulfillment, that could, in thepast, only temporarily realize itselfby the financial sacrifice of acquiring a commodity;the ideal self of Rousseau, that could only be realized by painful self-searching andconfession; the freedemocracy and self-realization that is always being contained in reallifeby theconventions and inequalities of class, gender or race - all of these daydreamsseem immediately procurable in cyberspace, where the fettersof time,place and body -and, indeed, the necessity for an individual self- appear to drop away. Cyber delicsand computer technophiles cheer these developments, and promise freedom beyond thefrontier f the screen.But cyber technophiliamay also be a newmyth of Icarus, a 'theologyof the ejector seat' thatblinkers our understanding ofwhy electronic technology seemsto increase rather than lighten the burden of work in thenew, flexible, economy (Dery1996: 12, 17). As the example of the two boys who could not discuss their life on thescreen together shows, the computer screenmay also fragmentand trap a person in itsdifferentwindows (cf.Miller 2000). Thus, both the technophiles and theneo-Luddites ofthe computer have a conception of alienation - one thinkingthat the computer liberatesus from alienation, the other that it alienates even further Graham 1999). Let me, inconclusion, turn to these issues.

ConclusionWhat enables people to live on a screen, and why would modern people regard lifeonthe screen as alienating? Iwill startwith the latter ssue, noting thatto criticize someonewho prefershis soap opera over importantglobal news as being alienated is just a lesserversion of the critique of persons who appear to be gobbled up by the computer. It isprobably not exaggerated to say that majority of social scientistswould regard computertechnophileswho thinkthatwe can free ourselves of all alienation by leaving our bodiesand becoming cybernetic entities as profoundly naive ormisguided beings. In contrast,

many of our academic fellows will probably agree that thecomputer is an integralpart ofa social process inwhich people increasingly lose control over their labor time,over theirwork performance, over the social mode of producing knowledge and over thenature oftheirauthentic experiences. Instead of us dominating thecomputer, computers dominateus,marking a further lienation by commodity logic and capitalistmodes and forces ofproduction. The potentialmultiplication of individual ideals and desires by the spiritsof110


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the screenmay look like liberation to some, but will appear tobe a further oss ofmoraldirection to others (cf.Maclntyre 1984). If this is the case, many social scientists are'neo-Luddites' who expect theworst fromthenew technology (Graham 1999). In a sense,thatposition is as old as industrialization. Itwould thereforenot be surprising if it turnsout tobe informedby deeply rootedmodern assumptions.Above, I already referred to two distinctmodern ideas of alienation, one thatregardstraditionalauthorityand religion as themain bonds fromwhich human beings have tobeliberated,and another that identifiesmodernity itselfas thealienating instance.Howevermuch theyare opposed, thesemodern visions of alienation - frommodernization theory,

throughRomanticism, toMarxism - are united by the assumption thata person who isnot alienated is self-possessed. Of course, tobe self-possessed there has tobe a self topossess: inmodernization theory, his self isdefined by thereason and capacity forchoicethatevery individual is supposed tohave; inRomanticism, occultism and New Age, byone's individual creativityand unique spirituality; inMarxism, by one's laborpower. Butsuppose there is no such essence, no such self- that the individual self is an ideologicaleffectofmodern discourse rather thana naturalpartof thehuman person? In that ase, bothversions of themodern critique of alienation - that is,bothNew Age technophilia and theneo-Luddite lament that themedia are colonizing human nature - lose theirconceptualground. It doesn't mean thatwe cannot criticize certain aspects of lifeon the screen asdoing good or being harmful - we just cannot say thattheyare good or harmful becausetheyrealize, or alienate someone from,his or her 'truenature'.This seemingly simple conclusion has far-reachingconsequences, because themodernself's truenaturewas, as the termindicates,understood as 'natural' - thatis, self-evidentas well as universal, something that isorganically present ineveryhuman being, and canand need not be 'made'. Itwas, in otherwords, defined implicitlyby thecontrast betweenthenatural individual and culture or society, and between humans and machines. Themore New Age, the culture industry nd screen technologies spew outmultiple imagesof spiritual 'experience', themore room is lost for the organic conception of 'growth'throughwhich an individual is perfected.The more New Age and thecyber screen erodethebarrier between organism andmachine, themore we lose the conceptual basis with

which tocriticize culturaldevelopments thatthreatento turn uman beings intomachines -at least inpart.We may be witnessing a development inwhich what Foucault identifiedas themodern episteme - an order of knowledge founded on the conception of organicstructure Foucault 1973) - isgivingway toanotherontology,one that sperhaps based oncybernetics and thenotion of 'information' (cf.Lyotard 1979). As a result, theconceptionof human development or growth characteristic of humanism is losing itsprominencein contemporary discourses of improvement.As one ofmy students reported, a NewAge psychotherapistwas complaining thatmore andmore of her clientswere no longerinterested in growth and development, and asked for instant therapeutic solutions andexperiences instead (Veenstra 2002:117). As anotherNew Ager put it,we have entered an'age of experience' (quoted by Bakker 2002: 64). As I hope tohave shown, 'experience'is a central category of bothNew Age and themediatized entertainment industry, s both

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promise an increasing variety ofways to be instantly transported into another form ofexistence - as ifthenotion of growth is increasingly being displaced by a process wherespiritual change is conceptualized in termsof channel-surfing,or the click of themouse(see Sanchez 2001).This seems to point to the emergence of a form of life on the screen which leaveslittleroom fora certain crucial element ofmodern discourse - thefocus on the individualas organism and as a self thatone can possess. Anthropologists have, of course, longquestioned the universality of themodern concept of the person, and in recent years,a growing number of ethnographies of 'dividual' rather than individual personhood hasappeared (Marriot 1976; Strathern 1988; LiPuma 1998). However, these ethnographiesstill strugglewith the opposition of dividual personhood, generated by the logic of therelation or the gift, and individuality as the result of a commodity logic - generatingan image of 'modernity' on the basis of the latter thatmay be increasingly out of date.Indeed, if the boundaries of the person turn out to be permeable by the flow of gifts(Strathern 1988) or the flow of bodily fluids or occult and spiritual substances (Niehaus2002), thenwe might as easily presume that, in societies dominated by the spectacle ofthecommodity, individual bodies are increasingly interpreted s being permeated by theflow of information whether, forexample, in termsof themultiple spiritsof New Ageand the screen, or in termsof the informationflows of genetics. Commodity logicmaygenerate dividuality as easily as itsnon-modern opposites (Niehaus 2002).Of course, thismay simply reinforce the conclusion that individualism ismerely ahegemonic ideal thatobscures modern realities (cf.Elias 1971: 131). It isno coincidencethatrecent arguments for 'dividuality' in termsof dividual or cyborgpersons have arisenfrom feminist scholarship, which punctures the implicit gendering of the notion of theindividual, and lays bare itsroots in a predominantlymasculine constellation ofmodernpower (Haraway 1991; Strathern 1988). Likewise, themultiple spiritsofmodern occultismseem tohave led a subordinate lifeoutside themodern mainstream (oftenguided by femaleleaders likeMadame Blavatsky) until the arrival ofNew Age in the 1980s. However, itwould be naive to declare individualism dead, since the functioning ofmany modernstate institutions still imply thenotions of personhood associated with it. Instead, weseem to be in need of ethnographies of individualism as well as alternative notions ofpersonhood - and related to that,ethnographies of how people thinkabout alienation -thatcan provide us with theactually existingways inwhich people reflecton themselvesand on theway inwhich theyhope to realize theiraspirations.What, forexample, does itmean in theory swell as inpracticewhen New Agers say thatmany people do not realizethat 'there is nothing inside theircolor TV, and thatsociety is 'empty'when everythingturns roundmoney (quoted byBakker 2002: 55).What do people 'tune into'when theytune into the 'big current' (quoted byVeenstra 2002: 69)? And what does thatmean fortheirengagement ineveryday lifewith thepractices ofmodern education, bureaucracy, orpolitics?I hope tohave shown that such ethnographies can be informedby a certain idea aboutthe formof life that is increasingly promoted by screen technologies, but thattheyrequire112


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reflectionson the historical continuities inwhich this form of life is embedded as well.Whereas the confessional ethic provided many of the socialmovements discussed in thisessay with a usually implicit 'technology of self, the 'age of experience', while drawingon some of thecore assumptions of theconfessional ethic, leaves other elements, such astheconcept of human growth, increasingly aside. Instead,we seem tobe facing a situationwhere people's everyday care for themselves is increasinglyunderstood in termsofhaving(alternating) 'experiences'. These experiences easily transgresstheboundaries of thebodyas an organism, especially when human identities are proliferating in interactionwith avariety of screens. This form of life remains 'modern' to the extent that it is based -perhaps more than ever - on commodity logic: the display and control of persons bymeans of a succession of prefabricated images. However, we may be departing fromthephase of 'modernity' thatdeclared the individual tobe theprime source of humanauthenticity,and thatmade this conception hegemonic. Instead,we seem tomove into aphase inwhich human authenticitycan be derived fromamultiplicity of sources,whereeach confession of authenticitycan be juxtaposed with other images that undermine it,andwhere we have to cope with amoral and political economy of alternating trust ndscandal. Perhaps many ofus academics think that thismarks a superficial, that s, alienatedform ofpolitical engagement, and surely thereis reason to suspect it, fonly for thereasonthatscandal usually emerges only afterpeople have been harmed. But theauthoritywithwhich social scientists could innocently claim access to transcendentknowledge of a'deep' social structure,modeled onmodern biological notions of organic philosophy, israpidly evaporating. Instead, asWalter Benjamin argued,we have to immerse ourselvesin the superficialities of our past and present rather thandeny them,because only theirstudycan remind ourselves of what our futures frightening s well as promising - canbe.25

Author's e-mail address: ppels/pscw.uva.nl

Notes1. This definition of the screen is certainly too wide, but allows me to discuss both bodies andtexts as screens on which to display something, which is useful for a comparative and historicaldiscussion of the confessional ethic. That does not mean that I think the body or the text arescreens - as media for communication they carry, obviously, rather different possibilities.2. For thenotionof a 'structuref feeling', seeWilliams (1977: 128).3. This isperhaps the estplace tothank y studentsAnneBakker,Daphne Brakenhoff, argo

Brands, Joris van Diemen, Guyonne Metsers and JantVeenstra in particular), who have taughtme most of theempiricalknowledgeabout recentdevelopments nNew Age and cyberculturethat I possess. Unfortunately, this essay leaves little scope to discuss their findings. Also, Iwantto thank the editors of Etnofoor, and Suzanne Kuik in particular, for their comments on anearlier version of this essay.

4. This sense of paradox and contradiction is what distinguishes Weber's Protestantische Ethikand itsbrilliant ritiquebyColin Campbell (1987) fromfunctionalism; sordas' use of theWeberian formula, however, tends more to the latter (1992).

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5. Perhaps needless to say, this image of the person was, of course, culturally specific, becausebased on the nineteenth-century ideal of themale, propertied, independent, informed citizencapable of rational choice.6. However, it is important to note thatTaylor's preference for a cultural theory of modernity (apreference that I share) does not get us out of the woods ofmodern paradox: one also needs toaccount for the fact that the seemingly 'natural' notion of culture is at least partly a product ofmodernity - or to be more precise, of a colonial, that is, a more openly violent and repressivemodernity Dirks 1992).7. Nevertheless, I continue to use 'confession', mainly because of the currency it gained throughtheEnglish translation of Foucault's History of Sexuality.8. Note thatMichel Foucault argued that the episteme (or 'unconscious of science') (1973: xi) thathas dominatedWestern thought rom bout 1800 untilrecently as groundedin thenotion oforganic structure1973: 227).9. See, for the role of mental evolution in early modern occultism, Pels (2000, 2003b).10. Descartes' Discourse on Method (1994 [1637]), for example, is written in one of the standardgenres of confessional literature: autobiography.11. I already referred to a more recent version of this image: the 'mobile' or 'modular' personof modernization theory, who manifest themselves in politics or in themarketplace by theircapacityfor utonomouschoice (Gellner1994, 1995;Lerner 1958).12. See Pels (2003b). The psychologists' fascinationwithmultiple personalityand occult phenomena iswell documentedby Ian Hacking (1995) and Alison Winter (1998), althoughHacking eventually shares the psychologists' suspicion that such 'dissociation' is unhealthy(or alienated).

13. I am aware that I am playing with 'magic' and 'miracle' here without doing much to clarify theseconcepts. Both terms have an (emic and etic) history inmodern thought that, I think, legitimatestheir use in the modern present, although anthropologists have, up to now, rarely addressedthe issue theoretically (but see Luhrmann 1994). For 'magic', see Pels (2003a). 'Miracle' canbe provisionally defined, inmodern terms, as anything acting against what is perceived as thenormal natural order (whereby occultists and New Agers argue that this perception of nature iswrong).14. Marked by the publication of what Hanegraaff rightly calls the 'optimistic' equivalentof Christopher Lasch's Culture of Narcissism (1979), Marilyn Ferguson's The AquarianConspiracy (1980; Hanegraaff 1996: 107). It should be noted that a 'culture of narcissism'is, by definition, a culture of self-testimony.15. Bulwer-Lytton'snovelsprefiguredridinspired lavatskyherself(Liljegren1957);Haggard'sShe (1991 [1887]) andAyesha (1978 [1904-5]) broughttheesotericizationofEgyptian andAsian magic, cultivated by Bulwer-Lytton and Blavatsky, tomass audiences.16. Jojada Verrips has described the extremes of good and evil in cinema and popular culture as atypically estern form fpensee sauvage (1996; 2001a; 2001b).His essay in this olumedoesamuch betterjob atdescribingthesensual reduction f distanceby screensthan can do inmine.

17. It should be noted, however, that there are strong currents in New Age that gladly embracethe market, in a latter-day variation of the Protestant injunction that spiritual salvation isdemonstrated by becoming rich.18. It is, therefore, not surprising that in some more businesslike forms of New Age, such asScientology or Erhard Seminars Training, audit and confession are easily combined as a corefeature f their odes of self-reformDavis 1998: 139).19. However, this impression of 'immediate' availability is an illusion, generated by the fact thatthese forms of self-improvement are mediated by their commodity form.

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20. Perhaps superfluously, I should say that this does not mean that cyberculture manifests itselfeverywhere in the same way, as, for example, the explosion of software engineering in Indiaand by Indians proves. Imerely want to stress itsmost dominant local origin.21. J. Shapiro (1996), 'What isNA Net Global?' (www.v-j-enterprises.com/nanetglb.html; accessed3/3/2000).

22. William Gibson's Neuromancer (1984) was the revolutionary science-fiction novel that coinedtheword cyberspace.Itand itssequels (especiallyCountZero, 1986) first ormulated omeoftheproblemsof themultiple identitiestplay in thecyborgreligions f the omputer creen.23. I thank Susan Farranto for bringing Ullman's essay tomy notice.24. And, as I argued above, whose machines are increasingly described in organic terms. Of course,thishappens partlythroughmutual redefinitionf bothorganicism ndmechanist thinking ycybernetics and information technology (as, for example, in genetics).25. This conclusion owes much toHoward Caygill's brilliant analysis of Benjamin's idea of critique(Caygill 1998).

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The Confessional Ethic and the Spirits of the Screen. Reflections on the Modern Fear of Alienation