Daria Dubovka

Forgotten Time, or Techniques of the Self in Contemporary Orthodox Convents

Daria Dubovka - Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (St. Petersburg, Russia). ddubovka@gmail.com

According to secular views, some religious techniques of the self, such as complete subordination of a person to spiritual leader, seem to violate basic human rights, and hence unacceptable. Conversely, religious traditions have different views on the subject and his/her good, and how this good can be achieved. In today's world, however, religious groups have to relate their views with the secular environment, and, therefore, some self-cultivation techniques represent a mixture of different worldviews. This article examines the techniques of the self in contemporary Orthodox convents. It explores how the notion of spiritual growth is influenced by an inner contradiction within the Orthodox Christian concept of sainthood - namely, between the deep perception of one's sinfulness and the rising of virtues. The secular understanding of time, which exists in today's monasteries, emphasizes this contradiction and puts into question the possibility of spiritual growth. By concentrating on diachronic dimension of self-transformation techniques, this article challenges current understanding of the secular and non-secular agency.

Keywords: anthropology of religion, contemporary Orthodox monasteries, techniques of the self, secular and non-secular agency, subjectivity.

At the END of the 19th century, the emerging anthropology did not stay away from the general scientific trend - evolutionary schemes, according to which religious beliefs were to be replaced by scientific knowledge. However, during the following-

Dubovka D. Zabytoe vremya, ili Praktiki samotransformatsii v sovremennom pravoslavnom monastyre [Forgotten Time, or the Practice of self-transformation in a modern Orthodox monastery]. 2015. N 3 (33). pp. 322-344.

Dubovka, Daria (2015) "Forgotten Time, or Techniques of the Self in Contemporary Orthodox Convents", Gosudarstvo. religiia, tserkov' v Rossii i za rubezhom 33(3): 322 - 344.

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Over the past century, the growing influence of political Islam, the surge of neo-Protestant movements, and interest in esoteric practices have proved that expectations of an early secular era are unfounded. Moreover, the subject of analytical consideration by anthropologists is not only religions, but also secularism itself as a specific ideological system with a special disposition of power, certain ideas about the subject, space and time, as well as about legitimate ways of argumentation.1 The Western norm of relations between the state and religious institutions was revised: the displacement of religion from the public sphere was now described not as the only one, but as only one of the possible ways in the history of states. Secularization has also come to be seen as a heterogeneous process, occurring differently in different countries.2
One of the most pressing topics studied by the anthropology of religion is the analysis of practices that people use to achieve spiritual growth. Some of these practices contradict the norms of Western secular subjectivity. Such, for example, are the popular requirements in various religious teachings to subordinate one's own will to the will of another subject or to the precepts of tradition. How to describe insults and humiliations of a person, if the believer himself is inclined to consider his sufferings cleansing the soul? Such a view of self-transformation techniques clearly does not correspond to the Western understanding of agency, based on the ability to act, which is caused by the internal feelings and desires of the subject: being inaccessible/ hidden from others, these desires must be born somewhere in the depths of the subject and, thus, must necessarily be his own, not conditioned by tradition, the norm, or even more so by direct compulsion 3. Known long before modern times, the idea of "working on oneself", in connection with this concept of agency, necessarily entailed the internal autonomy of the subject and its independence from authoritarian prescriptions.

1. Asad, T. (2003) Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press; Taylor, Ch. (2007) A Secular Age. Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

2. Casanova, J. (1994) Public Religions in the Modern World. Chicago, London: University of Chicago Press.

3. Coleman, J. (2005) "Pre-Modern Property and Self-Ownership Before and After Locke: Or, When did Common Decency Become a Private rather than a Public Virtue?", European Journal of Political Theory 4: 128 - 129.

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norm. In the European secular tradition, agency necessarily implied the subject's tendency to resist and even his duty to overthrow any power that suppressed him4.

In this article, I will describe how anthropologists have used the theoretical possibilities of agency and subjectivity to analyze religious practices that are troubling Western secular consciousness. After that, I will use the material collected in modern Russian Orthodox women's monasteries to examine what happens to seemingly coherent research schemes for explaining spiritual transformations, if we add a temporal dimension to them. Time plays a twofold role in this article. On the one hand, it is already included in the ideas of my informants about spiritual growth, and my task is to consider it in the general context of these "emic" (from the opposition etic vs. emic) ideas. On the other hand, time appears as an analytical category, which I propose to take into account as an integral part of the concept of agency and which is often forgotten in anthropological research.

Theoretical developments of the concept of agency

Perhaps some of the most striking anthropological works devoted to the problems of relations between the state, religious institutions and the subject are based on the materials of Islamic countries, primarily Egypt. 5 This region attracts the attention of researchers because in the social imagination and political programs of its population there is a complex game between the conditions of existence in the world set by the privileged "Western paradigm" and the desire to build a modern state based on a much greater role of religion in the public space. The expansion of the public presence of religion is always alarming in Western society, as it is associated with the potential suppression of individual rights and freedoms. However, is it not one of the manifestations of individual freedom to voluntarily submit oneself to a religious tradition?

4. Asad, T. Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity, p. 71.

5. Cm. Asad, op. cit, p. 205 - 256; Hirschkind, Ch. (2006) The Ethical Soundscape: Cassette Sermons and Islamic Counterpublics. New York: Columbia University Press; Mahmood, S. (2005) Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject. Princeton: Princeton University Press; Mittermaier, A. (2011) Dreams That Matter: Egyptian landscapes of the Imagination. Berkeley: University of California Press.

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I will focus in more detail on Saba Mahmud's article 6, which challenges the understanding of agency described above and offers a new description of non-Western religious subjectivity. Mahmoud's work explores why the Muslim renaissance (which includes, among other things, things that are oppressive in the European view, such as the wearing of veils and other restrictions in clothing) was supported by many women in Muslim countries. All previous studies on this issue have found external reasons, such as the pressure of patriarchal society, economic benefits, cheapness and practicality of traditional clothing, support for social norms, wearing the veil as an expression of national identity, etc.Mahmoud drew attention to what the informants themselves say, who supported the return to traditional clothing. They mostly talked about self-improvement, practicing piety, and the ability to influence the inner state through appearance and thus develop the habit of virtue.

Faced with the fact that in non-European cultures some groups see the resource of self-transformation in direct adherence to tradition, Mahmoud suggests considering agency not as an indispensable resistance to any power, but as an ability to act, which includes and creates certain historically determined subordination relations.7 In this case, power is conceived not as an exclusively suppressive and coercive force, but as a set of relations that creates an opportunity for the realization of some actions and desires and hinders others. The agency offered by the Muslim tradition has little to do with protecting one's interests against custom, divine will, or adverse circumstances. In this way, Mahmoud breaks the unquestionable link between agency and the willingness to resist authority that has been established in Western academic thought. In the religious system described by Mahmud, certain external actions, disciplinary practices (for example, wearing a veil) will be encouraged, which, in turn, should cause "correct" feelings, set up for internal goodness-

6. Mahmood, S. (2001) "Feminist Theory, Embodiment, and the Docile Agent: Some Reflections on the Egyptian Islamic", Cultural Anthropology 16 (2): 202 - 236.

7. Ibid., p. 203.

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stie. Mahmoud calls this process of spiritual self-improvement "self-cultivation" and emphasizes the intentionality of such actions, thereby demonstrating the illegality of describing his informants as passive victims of fundamentalism.

Public presentations of the results of this study caused a mixed reaction. Mahmoud writes that she had to defend herself against accusations of non-interference and indirect promotion of the disenfranchised status of women in Muslim countries. However, in her opinion, before evaluating a particular activity as degrading to human dignity, it is necessary to recall our own European presuppositions and understand the desires and motivations of those people for whom these practices are important.8
It is no coincidence that Mahmoud's article caused a heated discussion in American academic circles. Her answer to the question of why the practice of wearing the veil has met with the support of so many women in Islamic countries is, on the one hand, the most "correct" and thus the most sensitive to the culture being studied - since Mahmoud does not cite external economic or social reasons, but describes what her informants actually say. In their answers, wearing the veil appears to be a consequence of free choice, namely their desire for religious self-improvement. On the other hand, such an explanation does not complement but undermines the Western concept of agency and subject, which is one of the cornerstones of modern democratic ideology. By accepting Saba Mahmud's concept of agency, one must assume that someone voluntarily wants to submit to a religious tradition and / or a charismatic leader, and this, in turn, can create conditions for justifying authoritarian power.

In addition to the above-mentioned ideological anxiety that raises questions about Mahmoud's article, this work is also a challenge for all anthropologists who face similar problems in their field research. What should an anthropologist do if, for example, the performance of a religious practice humiliates his informants, and the latter themselves - and not just an outsider-may agree with this interpretation? But they also insist that it is

8. Ibid., pp. 223 - 225.

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humiliation is good for their souls, which is the path of self-improvement. Should the researcher critically describe this practice, thereby somehow attributing false consciousness to his informants, or should he / she agree with the words of his / her informants, thereby showing respect for a different way of being human and thus justifying the social injustice that he/she sees in the community under study?

Probably, there is no clear answer to this question - in fact, the question of evaluating someone else's culture - does not exist. By focusing on the gap Saba Mahmoud has pointed out between the Western understanding of agency and that offered by other religious systems, I will show that these two different understandings of agency are no longer isolated from each other, and that it is possible that secular ideas may have influenced the modern "religious subject." In Mahmoud's article, we will talk about modern Islam, and I will talk about Orthodoxy. The differences in the two religions ' understanding of the subject are not as important to me here as their general difference from secular ideology.

Self-transformation in an Orthodox monastery

Despite the fact that monasteries seem to an outsider to be a rather closed social space, the current situation of Russian Orthodox monasteries allows the researcher to directly participate in their practices. Almost all current monasteries, recovering from the Soviet era, need labor assistance, so they are willing to accept temporary workers. These are people who, for various reasons, want to spend days or months of their life in a monastery, often without the intention of staying there permanently. In some monasteries, especially small ones, temporary workers very quickly become part of a monastic sisterhood / fraternity, which means that these groups meet not only during church services, but also work together on obediences (daily work duties) and share meals. Thus, participation in monastic life as a temporary employee gives the researcher the opportunity to observe the monastic everyday life on an integrated basis.9 Everyday life

9. Following the research ethic, I do not hide my scientific intentions, which causes various consequences: from the desire to talk to me and clarify the situation-

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a resident of one of these monasteries, located in a small town in the central part of Russia, formed the ethnographic basis of this article.

In this small monastery (consisting of eleven people: five nuns, four nuns, two novices), I spent a couple of weeks in the fall of 201210. My first week was spent in the monastery, which was left without leadership: the abbess and the dean of the monastery were in the hospital. The eldest was appointed the most intelligent novice, who, whether because of her character or the short duration of her leadership position and the lack of authority to punish and instruct spiritually, introduced rather democratic management standards, trying to listen to the wishes of the other sisters. Strange as it may seem to me, such a soft leadership style was not well received by everyone: perhaps because it left no room for disciplinary practices - a powerful resource for self-transformation. The abbess's usual management style was strikingly different from the new one. I first met him before the abbess returned. Below are two excerpts from my field diary, slightly transformed in the direction of less emotionality and greater consistency of the text. These excerpts do not correspond to the style of objective scientific writing, but their surprise and a certain irony clearly convey the mood of a person who professes secular values and finds himself in a religious environment; as I emphasized above, in the case of field research, the conceptualization of agency ceases to be only a theoretical question, since it depends on the behavior of the researcher and his relationship with informants.

some moments of monastic life before expressing doubts about the necessity of my activity and asserting the futility of secular knowledge. The sisters of the monastery, which will be mainly described in this article, asked not to mention the names of their monastery, saying that otherwise the publication would attract too many pilgrims (I believe that the nuns did not distinguish between journalistic and scientific publications).

10. By this time, I already had a long experience of living in different monasteries, so I was familiar with the basic rules and logic of monastic everyday life.

11. Abbess-abbess of the monastery. The dean in women's monasteries is called the deputy abbess, who is often responsible for the entire economic life of the monastery.

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It was late September-time to dig potatoes. A busload of pilgrims came to the monastery's aid to feed them. The abbess called from the hospital and gave the task-to fry fish cutlets - and dictated the recipe. When it was time to cook, the residents began to discuss the cooking technology indicated in the recipe with fervor. The sisters who participated in the discussion, all middle-aged or elderly, had different culinary experiences, but they were all immediately confused by the recipe, which offered too little milk and too much bread for an acceptable amount of minced fish. I was sure that they would now put down the paper and start cooking according to their experience and common sense, but apparently I didn't understand the power of the recipe. The denizens read it over and over again. One of the nuns, Euphrosyne 12, occasionally exclaimed: "Blessing 13 is yes, of course, it should be done as it was blessed," but immediately added that she would have taken a smaller amount of bread. Another minute passed, and Efrosina lamented: "But who is 'I', 'I' is ugh, ' I ' can't be pronounced at all." Then her sanity would take over again, and she would add: "Yes, of course, there is a recipe, but you need to think a little yourself." However, there was something subtly dangerous about this call to think with your own head. As a result, they decided to do everything exactly according to the recipe, for which they had to add another technological operation to the cooking process: an additional scrolling of minced meat in a meat grinder, which took three hours of working time, but this did not bother anyone. When the minced meat was ready in half, the sisters found the final item in the recipe: salt and pepper to taste. This point caused a new storm of discussions. Whose taste is considered a reference? Naturally, the abbess was supposed to be the decisive taster, but who, in her absence, will take on expert knowledge about the proper salinity of cutlets?

12. All names have been changed.

13. Blessing in monastic life is very closely related to obedience, in fact, a blessing is either a permission or a command to do something. Usually it is required to have the blessing of the abbess for any business. For more information about obedience in parishes, see: K. Rousselet. Prikhod i obshchina v sovremennom pravoslavii: kornevaya sistema rossiiskoi religioznosti [Parish and Community in modern Orthodoxy: the root system of Russian Religiosity]. Ed. by A. Agadzhanyan, K. Russele, Moscow: Vse Mir Publishing House, 2011, pp. 298-316. About obedience in monasteries, see: Dubovka D. Obedience as physical labor and virtue: semiotic saturation of production in modern monasteries of the Russian Orthodox Church / / Invention of Religion: desecularization in the post-Soviet society / Ed. by Zh. V. Kormina, A. A. Panchenko, S. A. Shtyrkova. St. Petersburg: Publishing House of the European University in St. Petersburg, 2015. pp. 63-81; Zabaev I. The main categories of economic ethics of modern Russian Orthodoxy // Social reality. 2007. N 9. From 5-26.

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Late in the evening, the abbess called to see how things were going. Adults, even elderly women, described in great detail and in high intonations what was going on in the kitchen, how many people, who was doing what, whether the baking trays were clean and what color the cutlets turned when frying. I may be a bit of a culinary insensitive person, but I've never experienced such a literal approach to a recipe before. For me, cooking is a matter of luck and chance, while in this monastery cooking concealed other powers that I still don't understand.

The absurdity of what was happening to an outsider was caused by the fact that a routine profane practice - cooking - was included in the context of religious self-transformation. After the abbess's return, I was able to see even more clearly how cooking can contribute to the growth of virtues.

For dinner, one of the novices, let's call her Tamara, was to prepare a stew of cabbage. Mother 14 tasted the cabbage and was extremely dissatisfied with the taste (admittedly, the dish really failed). Tamara began to analyze the cooking technology in detail, trying to figure out where she went wrong. Finally, the root of the evil was found - it turned out to be pepper, added by the novice at her own risk. I thought that would be the end of this strange food parsing. But no, for at least another half hour, Mother blamed the novice for the failure of the cabbage because of the cook's vanity. They say that last time Tamara was praised, but now she wanted to surpass herself, thought about how to improve the recipe, and added pepper. Tamara timidly remarked that she wanted to do what was best. From what the abbess was even more angry: "How much better I wanted! Don't do what's best, do what you're blessed to do! And you have your own will everywhere!" Tamara almost burst into tears. After that, the abbess and the dean discussed for some time whether Tamara could be trusted to prepare food for a group of visiting pilgrims. The dean asked the novice, " Can you handle it?" Tamara: "I'll try." Abbess: "Here, I'll try again! As God wills - and you're back with your own will." Tamara is already in tears: "I always say to myself, Mother, as God wills."

14. The accepted appeal to the abbess in the monastery.

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After this conversation, the novice, who was escorting me to the building, probably, judging by the expression on my face, realized that I needed to make some comments. Tamara said that my mother was really very kind. I chuckled. Tamara continued that the abbess had arranged everything very well for her. She herself didn't even understand, because we don't notice how our passions live in us, and the abbess noticed the sin and pointed it out. And such a public rebuke was very useful to Tamara, because the Lord only humbles the proud in this way, they need to be criticized in front of other people. Only while you are a beginner, they will mess with you, and as you become spiritually stronger, they will become tougher to treat you. But this only means that you have strayed from the right path, and the Lord has corrected you.

In Tamara's words, the following points can be distinguished. A hidden sin lives in a person-hidden primarily from the bearer himself, and the public disclosure of this sin cultivates the virtue of humility, which contributes to the salvation of a person. I will consider this scheme in detail.

Hidden passion. According to Orthodox anthropology, today's man is already inherently sinful by nature as a result of the fall of Adam and Eve. The sacrament of Baptism cleanses the believer from original sin, but in order to overcome his own impure tendencies, a person still has a lot of work to do. Most people, with the exception of some religious virtuosos, are so sinful that they do not even realize it, or they are aware of it in general terms, but they do not see any specific manifestations of their deplorable state.

The denouncer of passion. This role is played by abbots, confessors, elders, and all those who are called to exercise pastoral leadership. The abbess should look for sin in her wards, if she does not do this, it means that she is not engaged in the spiritual life of the nuns, and the sisters themselves will be dissatisfied with her.

Identified passion. Self-improvement begins with understanding your current state. Passions manifest themselves through external activities. This is not the only way to capture the passions developed in the Christian tradition. Thus, the ability to see the spiritual state of a person at first glance is attributed to the elders and elders. Based on early Christian sources, Michel Foucault shows monastic techniques of self-transformation as a detailed disclosure

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to the confessor of your smallest motives and desires 15. The task of the mentor is to distinguish between good and bad thoughts in this stream of consciousness (or self-description). The current monastic pastoral guidance is based in its interpretation on more objective, tangible subjects, such as a tasteless dish, an incorrect position of the icon on the lectern, an error in reading prayers during the divine service. Thus, any failure to comply with the written, unwritten or implied rules of the management is regarded as a manifestation of the sin of pride. The convenience of this form of spiritual guidance is that the sin committed by the nuns can almost always be visualized and objectified - for example, in the pepper added to the dish, as in the case described above.

Obedience. As daily labor operations, obedience becomes an applied tool that facilitates the search for sin. Obedience becomes a rule that makes any deviation from it noticeable, especially since in some cases the rule itself contains the need for such a deviation. So, in the described case with the preparation of lunch: in the economic sense, it was necessary to move away from the existing recipe, but in terms of "saving the soul" it was necessary to follow it exactly. And it is no coincidence that Nun Efrosina was so tormented by the choice between hoping for her common sense and submitting to the culinary questionable wishes of the abbess. As soon as Efrosina started talking about the wisdom of changing the recipe, she interrupted herself, blaming her "I". Thus, a practical solution is associated with pride. The irony is that any choice a person makes can be interpreted as their fault. It all depends on what line of interpretation my mother prefers. Here, for example, is another excerpt from the diary.

In her absence, the abbess ordered the purchase of sawdust to cover the cellar with. On her return, the abbess accused the novice Tamara, who was still in charge, of not being able to find dry sawdust. Tamara replied that the sawdust that had arrived yesterday was almost dry. The next remark of the abbess: "Why didn't you think to order another car in this case? You'll need a lot of sawdust, but you need to look a little further."

15. Foucault M. Tehnologii samo [Technologies of self]. 2008. N 2. pp. 118-122.

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As you can see, even a strict adherence to the rules will not save the inhabitants from censure. The abbess can find in the daily life of her flock those subjects that the nun herself did not consider possible to consider as spiritually significant - which causes surprise and often rejection in the nun, because it does not correspond to her picture of what is happening and inner feelings. Watching this confusion, the initial refusal to agree with the abbess's interpretation, and the sisters ' occasional tears was the hardest part of my research. But if we move away from the secular understanding of agency, it turns out that in the monastic system of values, humiliation means spiritual growth.

Humility. If the wards don't like being scolded, this is a good sign. This means that spiritual work is underway on them. In this regard, the emotions of fear and humiliation are an integral part of monastic agency. And, by that logic, I should only have been happy for Sister Tamara when the abbess denounced her, because that was how Tamara was getting closer to salvation.

Here we could summarize by concluding that the model of the "Western subject" and "Western norms of agency" are irrelevant for non-secular traditions. For example, in the case of a modern monastic subject, his agency will manifest itself in the conscious acceptance of interpretations of his religious state from a spiritual mentor who is supposed to have reliable knowledge of the desires and motives of his ward, while the person himself does not see the true motives for his actions. A similar conclusion about a different understanding of agency in its Egyptian field is made by Saba Mahmoud. However, it seems to me that this is a somewhat hasty conclusion, and here's why.

In the modern world, secular norms and values are more or less familiar to all communities. According to Charles Taylor's definition, competing ways of presenting oneself and the world are precisely the hallmark of the secular era: a "naive" belief in certain dogmas and practices as best/ true/ most appropriate is juxtaposed with knowledge of possible other relationships with the world, whether atheistic or based on other religious tenets. 16 this " naive "view is intertwined with the" relativistic " one, giving rise to inevitable doubts. Of course, in different countries

16. Taylor, Ch. A Secular Age, pp. 12 - 14.

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In different cultures, the ratio of "naive" and "relativistic" views will be different. And perhaps for the Muslim community described by Saba Mahmoud, the European discourse on the subject and its rights, although an integral part of the media space, is not dominant, especially in some groups. Yet the complete, unambiguous dominance of the "naive" view is hardly possible now, even in these societies.

The same is true for our case. All of my informants share a common late-Soviet past, in which the understanding of subject and agency was different from the Western one, but not as radically as in traditional societies. 17 Therefore, for today's monasteries, the problem of the relationship between "relativistic" and "naive" views will be even more confusing. After all," naive " for the modern inhabitants of monasteries will be those religious views that were often adopted by them in adulthood, during the period of conversion to the faith 18. This means that these views are unlikely to ever become as solid as the ideas of people who grew up in a traditional culture and do not have an alternative description of themselves, others and the world.

Time dimension of agency

Orthodox people have different views on the nature of the subject. Based on the materials of a study by Jareth Zigon, conducted in Moscow in the 2000s and devoted to the ideas of morality and ethics, his religious informants formulated the need for a respectful attitude to another, since any person is a spark of God / Image of God19. However, this view of one's neighbor is not widespread in modern monasteries. An alternative was the tradition that emphasizes

17. I refer here to traditional societies/cultures as objects of research in classical anthropology-local small groups that were mostly non-literate and had little contact with Europeans.

18. The vast majority of the women in the monasteries where I conducted my research came to faith in the early 1990s. Usually, only abbesses got experience of religious life - they went to a monastery-back in the days of Soviet power. In fact, it was often based on this criterion, namely, the experience of monastic life, that the church leadership then appointed abbesses to newly opened monasteries.

19. Zigon, J. (2009) "Developing the Moral Person: The Concepts of Human, Godmanhood, and Feelings in Some Russian Articulations of Morality", Anthropology of Consciousness 20(1): 1 - 26.

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the sinful nature of each person is recognized, and this way of perceiving oneself is unusual and problematic, I believe, for all nuns. Nun Efrosina expressed her surprise at being introduced to the Orthodox tradition, which suggests that even (or above all) a saint will feel like a sinner for the rest of his life: "How difficult, I thought, am I really so bad, but it turns out that with all the saints there was such a spiritual battle for the rest of his life."

This internal contradiction between the habitual image of oneself and the one cultivated in the monastery can become the core of all spiritual life for a long time. According to Niklaus Largier, this drama of feelings played a significant role in the life of medieval Catholic monasticism.21 It was based, of course, on different aesthetics and practices, but the emotional dynamics followed a similar scenario. In the monastery I have described, the development of spiritual life can be described as follows: a sinful person, but not suspecting it, is shown (in this case, through the words of the abbess) his true sinful nature. This unsightly image first causes rejection and refusal of the "sinner" to recognize himself as such, after which catharsis follows, and the person sees himself and the motivation for his actions in a different light. The discovery of one's sinful nature is paradoxically the key to salvation, since from this moment one sees the truth about oneself and can begin to ascend the path to virtue. In Largier's description, the spiritual life of a medieval Catholic monk was largely based on the work of the imagination. During the prayer, the monk began with as detailed representations as possible (up to the smells and sensations) of images of hell, torment and temptations. And when he was able to bring these terrible images to life, he was terrified of his own future fate, he imagined a merciful God, and the hope of a divine transformation of his sinful soul brought the desired catharsis.

What these two styles of spiritual life have in common is that they are cyclical. Hope for salvation or a true vision of yourself as a climax-

20. For the popularity of such ideas in the parish community, see Knorre B. Categories of "guilt" and "humility" in the system of values of the church-parish subculture / / Parish and community in modern Orthodoxy: the root system of Russian religiosity / Edited by A. Aghajanyan and K. Russele, Moscow: Vse Mir Publishing House, 2011, pp. 317-340.

21. Largier, N. (2008) "Praying by Numbers: an Essay on Medieval Aesthetics", Representations 104(1): 73 - 91.

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the evolution of such a religious experience is experienced over and over again through the same mechanisms. However, in the patristic tradition, there are many texts depicting a different time trajectory of spiritual life. These texts describe a gradual increase in the virtues, thus presenting the path to God as an ascending line, and not as a "sinusoid" of emotional ups and downs.

Perhaps one of the most famous images of the ascent is the "Ladder" of John of Sinai 22. Written in the sixth century, this treatise visualizes spiritual growth in the form of thirty degrees of virtue. Starting from the lowest stages of renunciation of earthly vanity, those who long for the Kingdom of Heaven ascend to repentance, struggle with passions, ascetic work, and finally reach the summit that unites the three main virtues: faith, hope, and love. Currently, in order to be familiar with the image of the ladder, it is not necessary to read the book itself, since the image of the ladder leading to heaven and the monks ascending it is very popular in Byzantine and Russian iconography.

There are also theologians who are closer to our time, who talk in their writings about the gradual cultivation of virtues. The works of two nineteenth-century prelates, Theophan the Recluse and Ignatius Bryanchaninov, have been widely published in the last decade. Their writings are perceived in the Orthodox academic community as a basis for understanding spiritual life, since it was they who translated the early Christian patristic tradition into a language familiar to their contemporaries and, accordingly, closer to us. The Path to Salvation by Theophan the Recluse already contains in its table of contents the temporary pledge of spiritual life: "the sinner's awakening from sinful slumber", "rising to the determination to leave sin", "how the Christian life is being accomplished, matures and grows stronger in us","the beginnings of the ascent to living communion with God" 23. This is just a shortened list of the table of contents, many of the subsections, in turn, have a step structure. So, for example, human nature is depicted as consisting of three parts-Spirit, Soul and Body, which are in hierarchical relations to each other. In the lower part - Tele-development-

22. Our Venerable Father John Abbot of Mount Sinai. The ladder. Kiev: Kiev-Pechersk Dormition Lavra Publ., 1998.

23. Theophan the Recluse, saint. The Path to Salvation: a brief outline of Christian Asceticism, Moscow: Blagovest, 2001.

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the sins of fornication, laziness, and gluttony are reclaimed; envy, despondency, sadness, anger, vanity, and fornication find refuge in the Soul; the spirit may suffer from petrification of the senses, self-creation, fearlessness, self-repose, indifference to spiritual things, and self-justification.24 Accordingly, the struggle against these sins also takes place gradually and in a hierarchical sequence from the lowest to the highest.

The book" Ascetic Experiences " by St. Ignatius Bryanchaninov is a collection of articles written in different years and collected and edited by the author at the end of his life, so it has a less consistent structure.25 However, it contains all the same sections on repentance, the eight main passions and ways to deal with them, and the main virtues that replace these passions. Much attention is paid to prayer in general and the Jesus Prayer 26 in particular. The latter seems to be the culmination of monastic activity; the fulfillment of this prayer, when it reaches perfection, becomes the beginning of Communion with God.

The mentioned works of Ignatius Bryanchaninov and Feofan the Recluse are usually somehow familiar to the nuns of monasteries and many visiting workers. The popularity of these books or modern compilations of the holy Fathers, which follow a similar structure, even caused discontent among the clergy. Some temporary workers told me that their priests did not recommend reading these prelates to their parishioners, explaining the prohibition by saying that these books contain recommendations for monks, people who already have experience of spiritual life; and when in modern conditions the novice immediately takes up the most difficult task - the Jesus Prayer, he fails, is disappointed or is not able to read the Holy Scriptures. falls into the sin of pride.

So, a clear hierarchy of sins, a well-defined order of substituting virtues for them, and an obvious peak of the spiritual path, according to-

24. Theophan the Recluse, saint. Passions and the fight against them: Excerpts from works and letters/ Comp. Igumen Feofan (Kryukov), Moscow: Danilovsky Blagovestnik, 2003, pp. 19, 65-190. (The original spelling has been preserved).

25. Ignatius Bryanchaninov, the Holy Hierarch. Biography. Ascetic experiences. Kniga pervaya, Moscow: Blagovest Publ., 2011.

26. The Jesus Prayer is a short phrase: "Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me a sinner", the performance of which was especially practiced in hesychasm - a mystical Christian movement that connects the possibility of deification of a person with the constant creation of this prayer.

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the constant Jesus prayer-all this is built up in distinguishable stages of the spiritual path. And some people who want to live a monastic life come to the monastery, having a similar image of practices that gradually transform a person. They see the monastery as what can be called a "disciplinary institution"in scientific parlance. Indeed, for those believers who want to move as far as possible in spiritual development, going to a monastery should be the most logical life step, an opportunity to" professionalize " their interest. However, after some time of living in the monastery, such self-focused nuns face the fact that the modern monastic understanding of human nature and self-transformation techniques based on the metaphor of progress are incompatible. What kind of self-transformation can we talk about if there are no criteria for understanding one's own spiritual growth and success in working on oneself should not be realized by the person himself? After all, the sanctity or sinfulness of a person is recognized with relative certainty only after his death, and in the end, the only judge of the human soul is God.

In order to analyze this issue in more detail, we need to return to the concept of a disciplinary institution and the closely related concept of self-transformation techniques. In the form in which Michel Foucault presented disciplinary institutions, 27 they can be characterized by the following parameters. There is a norm and deviation scale that can accommodate students / patients/soldiers, etc. However, the monastery does not have such a scale. A person is always deliberately and in advance in sin, because the norm is holiness. But, according to the canons of the Orthodox Church, it is possible to declare someone a saint, to canonize them, only after the person's death. Accordingly, it remains for the monastery to see only deviations from the norm in the nuns, that is, to identify sinfulness. Moreover, in the Orthodox tradition there is an idea that if a person goes the right way, the closer he is to God, the more noticeable even the smallest sin in himself is. The hagiographic stories about saints crying on their deathbed and recognizing themselves as great sinners are characteristic confirmations of this idea (and a kind of guide to action). In this sense, it is logical that the monastery takes on the role of a peculiar

27. Foucault, M. (1975) Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York: Random House.

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a search engine aimed at identifying all the bad things in a person, if the dweller does not do it himself. If a monk / nun is also passionate about tracking their behavior and thoughts, then the more hard they work on themselves, the more they see sin in themselves, which is also development, but only growth in depth. Ideally, the monastery (or the person himself) should consider every act, every step of the nuns as sinful. This, among other things, is reflected in the absolute lack of praise and gratitude in modern convents.

Also, in the traditional disciplinary institutions identified by Foucault, the subject being trained is called upon to acquire new skills. It is difficult to say the same about the current monasteries: nothing can save a person from being looked at as a sinner, moreover, he must look at himself in this way. The only new skill that nuns still get in the monasteries is the ability to interpret their daily behavior as sinful. Such an analysis is quite simple: usually obeisances, that is, routine economic operations, allow you to identify only one passion-pride/vanity. If a person has done something wrong, it means that pride has been shown in him in this way. Since the spiritual life becomes a matter of interpretation, the struggle with passion itself is always delayed, because sin is visible to the dweller (or indicated to her) only after it is committed. The struggle with passion in the patristic literature is called attention to thoughts and the ability to recognize its consequences before performing an action. In modern monasteries, however, such a struggle is substituted (self -)punishment for an act already committed. At first, the sinful nature was hidden in the person, then the abbess pointed it out, after which repentance, prayers, and penance followed. But the natives are doomed to the constant repetition of the same plots, constant - because the sin cannot be eradicated, and its detection is associated with the same type of labor operations.

All of the above does not correspond well to the work of the disciplinary institute and, in principle, to pedagogical logic. In the monastery, there is no scale on which you can mark the acquisition of a new skill, examine it, perform exercises to consolidate it, etc. That is, there is no work on the soul, which implies a change and the ability to track it, but a "recursion" of identifying sin in similar contexts.

I believe that such a contradiction in the vision of spiritual ascent and real practices is not relevant for all nuns. For

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for someone, for example, the very presence in a sacred place is significant. But those nuns who came to the monastery with the image of working on their souls as a set of systematic exercises with observed progress, after a while find themselves in a dead end. According to the patristic teaching, monastics should first analytically examine their soul and see in it the sins/passions that they should get rid of. However, the modern monasteries of the Russian Orthodox Church that I know of identify practically only one sin - vanity/pride, and the evidence of "working on yourself" is, paradoxically, the presence of sins (that is, seeing them), and not their eradication.

In the initial period of familiarization with such a system, nuns who have come to the monastery to work on themselves find a way out in interpreting their daily life as a manifestation of passions and developing an emotional reaction to these discoveries. But when they have learned to structure their daily experience in new categories, the development of this system stops. However much this may contradict the above-mentioned works of the prelates, it is almost impossible in the Orthodox tradition to say with certainty: I have outlived such and such a sin or developed such and such a virtue. Such behavior in the patristic literature is called charm - the highest form of pride and self-deception. You can recall the above-mentioned phrase of Nun Efrosina, who lamented when she learned that spiritual struggle is for life, and to feel like a sinner is also for life.

The lack of progress in the techniques of self-transformation that exist in the current nunneries, periodically leads to the departure of female monks from the monasteries. This has happened more than once, for example, in the Resurrection Goritsky Monastery of the Vologda region, which I visited for several years. On my first visit, I saw only a cyclical scheme of spiritual life: the mistakes made by the nuns in their labor obeisances, and the subsequent vision of their sinful nature through these mistakes. This behavior puzzled me, but as a researcher I had to admit that the agency of a nun or novice-in complete similarity to the concept of agency of Saba Mahmud - is expressed precisely in the submission of one's will to the will of the abbess. However, one by one people left Goritsa who at some point decided that their development in this monastery had stopped and was unlikely to be possible in the future. Moreover, more and more often from their Orthodox friends who visit different mo-

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Nastyri, I have heard stories about the schisms of monasteries, about a large "turnover" among the inhabitants and about the return of some sisters to the world. Those who left, with whom I was able to talk in person, believed that they had exhausted the opportunities for spiritual growth in their monastery. In a new monastery or in their city apartment, they hoped that they would be able to pay more attention to deep prayer, which would purify their soul and open up the possibility of direct communication with God. This interest in the mystical, "hesychast" direction in Orthodoxy deserves separate consideration, but here I would like to emphasize that for many nuns who were waiting for spiritual growth, it was clearly not enough to constantly repeat the same practices.

Conclusion

The reason for my revision of my own original views on the nature of monastic agency (namely, submission to the will of the abbess) is that changes have taken place in the field itself: monasteries have been split up, nuns have returned to the world. This diachronic aspect of the study made me notice that the academic definition of agency is designed for an unchanging subject who either resists authority/tradition (the prevailing Western paradigm) or (according to Mahmoud) submits to it.

But does this immutable subject exist? Remembering the words of Ch. While we can safely assume that, in any case, in the post-Soviet space, most informants will be familiar with more than one way of looking at the world and at themselves in it. For example, those believers who came to the monastery and tried to assimilate the Christian norms of power relations unfamiliar to them from the Soviet past, as well as an understanding of the subject, his desires and motivations, could nevertheless retain a secular idea of linear time. Although the secular understanding of time grew out of Christian eschatology28 and has much in common with the image of linear growth described by John of the Ladder, it is in modern society that it has become widespread. All socializing institutions-school, university, army-os-

28. Taylor, Ch. A Secular Age, pp. 539 - 593.

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They are based on the idea of progressive progressive development. Therefore, for a modern person who wants to improve in something, it will be natural to evaluate their activities by comparing the time and effort spent with success in moving towards the goal.

Such a belief in the progressive development of abilities has a disastrous effect on modern monasteries. First, it is not sensitive to the paradox inherent in Eastern Christianity of growing in virtues while simultaneously deepening the vision of one's own sinfulness. Secondly, the recursive model of spiritual life that exists in the monasteries I study does not correspond to the idea of progressive development. Here I would venture to suggest that the inclusion of a secular understanding of time in the concept of spiritual development is characteristic of many people who have passed through secular socializing institutions. The pressure of secular times, by the way, is even more pronounced in monasteries than among the laity - after all, for some of the nuns, tonsuring was a rational choice: to succeed as much as possible on the way to the Kingdom of Heaven during the short earthly life-while the life of the laity, even in the conditions of "religious revival", is not limited only to spiritual practitioners.

Due to the importance of this "time factor", the situation with the current Muslim revival in Egypt makes me want to know whether the heroes of Saba Mahmoud's article continue to perform their religious practices for a sufficiently long period of time. As noted by Mahmoud, her informants counted on the cumulative effect of disciplinary practices rather than being content with their mechanical repetition. 29 In the case of modern Egypt, this means, for example, that the long wearing of the veil must eventually lead to inner piety. How far are Makhmud's informants from wanting not just to follow the tradition, but also to evaluate the success of their path, to measure their growth?

Now the academic concept of agency is essentially based on attributing different types of activity to one of the parts of the opposition activity/passivity. Saba Mahmoud changed the usual vector of description, saying that submission can be a characteristic of "activity". I think it's the same activity

29. Mahmood, S. "Feminist Theory, Embodiment, and the Docile Agent: Some Reflections on the Egyptian Islamic", p. 216.

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for example, obedience), considered on the secular time scale, may initially be perceived by informants as their active and conscious choice, as work on themselves, which for the researcher will be a manifestation of the informants ' agency; later, having turned into a routine, the same activity will become unnecessary for informants, and they will try to avoid it - and the researcher will also changes the sign in its agency description. Linear time, which implies constant changes, obsolescence of previous practices and the introduction of new ones, affects the religious practices of many believers, and accordingly, it should be taken into account in academic concepts describing these believers.

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