Narcisismo e Sacrifício: modo de subjetivação e religiosidade contemporânea

Abstract

The subject of this study concerns the relationship between the production of subjectivity and contemporary religiosity. More precisely the study focuses the sacrificial proposal offered by Universal Church of the Kingdom of God (UCKG) and how this sacrificial practice is related to the mode of existence (subjectivation) produced in our contemporary society. The methodology of the study is based on the genealogy of Foucault/Deleuze. The genealogical approach enables the (de)construction of the meaning of sacrifice and makes possible to conceive it as the result of a composition of interacting forces. In other words, the transformations of meaning, carried by the notion of sacrifice, have an intimate implication with the different processes of subjectivation which are produced in different social configurations. In this sense, a genealogical research enables us to see that a sacrificial logic , where the mode of subjectivation takes place in the capitalist (and globalized) configuration, presents conditions of possibility for a religious experience such as it is offered by UCKG. The cupidity, as a driving force that strengthen the capitalist economy, understood as ambition, voracity and avariciousness, animates the sacrificial logic which supports the capitalist structure and at the same time legitimize the proposal of sacrifice offered by UCKG. Such proposal presents itself as a remedy to deal with the contemporary experience of shame. The shame is one of the manifestations mostly inherited in reactive narcissism. The ideal pattern socially produced expressed by economic success, felicity, power and physically and emotionally wellbeing, is far away to be fully obtained and makes the subjectivity feeling ashamed. Therefore, the subjectivity today develops much less guilt and much more shame. For this reason, I defend the thesis that the practice of sacrifice (as presented by UCKG) fits itself directly to the narcissism as experienced in our contemporary society. And this experience of reactive narcissism, produced nowadays, is the condition and essence of the praxis of the UCKG. The study of narcissism and sacrifice contributes to an actual theological reflection. Since it gives attention to the forces which composes the mode of subjectivation and the sacrificial practice in the contemporary society, this study makes a denouncement of the triumph of reactive forces. The reactive narcissism expresses itself in a closure of the individual to the alterity and to the seeking of its selfish interests and produces, in this way, the conservation, adaptation and the reproduction of the same poorness way of existence. Thus, a challenge for contemporary theology points to a necessity to develop a reflection which considers the active forces of narcissism as the seed of creation and the affirmation of life. The potential of creation is activated when the care of the self does not deviate from the care of the other. The reactive forces of narcissism make life poorer and could destroy life, because they turn themselves to themselves and to their self interest. But the active forces affirm the difference (not inequality), and the care of the self and the care of the other, and make from the affirmed difference an object of joy and affirmation.