A Religious Technology of the Self

Abstract

This article deals with the rise of the modern prison system in Denmark and internationally from the late decades of the 18th century until the mid-19th century. The theoretical focus will be on the interconnectedness of scientific and religious conceptions that – according to this interpretation – formed an ideological base for modern prisons. I discuss how rationality and religion can be understood as naturally conjoined elements in this context, and show how religion, rather than simply diminishing in influence, took on new roles and functions in modern society. Two religious ‘modes of operation’ can be identified: religion as a power strategy and religion as a technology of the self. The main part of the article addresses the thinking behind, and experiments with, the modern penitentiary – which finally broke through in the United States during the 1820s and from there was re-imported to Europe. I show, recalling Weber, how the liberal and modern-minded bourgeois Danish reformers simultaneously embraced both the religious and rational implications of the modern prison project. The intense debates of this period on the best methods of reforming prisoners disclose distinctively modern accounts of human nature, in which science and religion are mutually involved.