Called to God: Event, Narration and Subject Formation in the Vocation of a Catholic Nun

Abstract

The literature emphasizes institutional formation in the process of a young woman becoming a nun or sees her motivations as stemming from expectations of social and economic mobility. This article focuses on the nun’s call as event ( Badiou 2001 ; Humphrey 2008 ), revealing its truth to the subject and reconstituting her by her fidelity to it. However, its validation and realization are only accomplished within the structured formation and discipline of congregational life. Through an ethnographic analysis of the lives of nuns in two indigenous Catholic convents in Kerala, South India, the article shows that they often have to struggle against their families to embrace their call. The congregation endorses the authenticity of a young woman’s call while requiring its constant reexamination through prayer and meditation. Thus, a nun’s call is encoded in formulaic structures through institutional formation, but its sensory and imaginary experiences are uniquely hers. Analytically distinguishing the calling event from the narrated event, the article integrates a Foucauldian understanding of disciplinary practices with Alain Badiou’s idea of the singular event for a grounded ethnographic grasp of the subject formation of a nun within her calling.