Abstract
With presence in 66 countries, the influence of the Catholic group Opus Dei is as inconspicuous as it is pervasive. This influence is achieved by the action of lay members, who are committed to the specificity of their lay charisma: sanctification in the professional work. In Chile, a radically segregated country, and Milton Friedman’s so-called ‘neoliberal miracle’, Opus Dei’s message has translated into a pronounced over-representation of powerful members of the dominant elite. However, since 2019, massive civil unrest and demands for structural change have threatened Opus Dei’s influence on civil society. If Chile’s renewed public debate is rejecting the values of Opus Dei, how do members continue to imagine their duty towards society? In what forms membership to Opus Dei incarnate neoliberal subjectivities with a particular appraisal of global Catholicism? My paper offers an ethnographic examination to the imagination of duty as a category that integrates the domains of the private and the public, transforming everyday life into a continual liturgy. These forms-of-life exceed the categories of the ‘secular’ and ‘the religious’, offering new terms to think the politics between Church, State, and citizens, by reinstituting a place for the monastic in civil society. The paper explores the nexus between Catholicism, the secular, and neoliberal economics, expanding our knowledge on the moral governance of liberal ideologies, and on the forms of theopolitical agency that are transforming the neoliberal ethos.
Presenters
Josefina Valdes LanasStudent, PhD, University of California Berkeley , California, United States
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
2023 Special Focus—Religion in the Public Sphere: From the Ancient Years to the Post-Modern Era
KEYWORDS
CATHOLICISM, SECULARISM, NEOLIBERALISM, PUBLIC SPHERE, DUTY, FORM-OF-LIFE
