According to Carrette (2000:138), the Foucauldian theory of governmentality holds together the ethical, spiritual, and political inside a single framework. What the above implies is that governmentality comprises both political and pastoral power. Political power here is concerned with disciplinary power invested in the nation states that has as its object the disciplining of individuals within a territory and regulating populations as resources to be used and optimised (Nicoll and Fejes 2008:11). Pastoral power is also considered a Christian religious concept that focuses on the comprehensive guidance of individuals (Lemke, 2016:13). This study will engage pastoral power more than political power and will endeavour to show that pastoral power is not only a type of power that is affective and caring but that it is also political in its application.
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The identifying features of the Foucauldian analysis of pastoral power are, firstly, a power exercised on people; secondly, it is a power exercised for the care and benefit of the people, and thirdly, the pastor\shepherd is concerned for one and for many, and is prepared to sacrifice for them (Mayes, 2010:111-126). Pastoral power, according to Foucault (1988: 67), seeks to constantly ensure, sustain and improve the lives of each and every person. Golder (2007) like Mayes, also outlines the elements that characterise the Foucauldian Christian pastorate as follows:
Firstly, it is characterised by the principle of analytical responsibility according to which the Pastor must account for every act of his sheep, for everything that may have happened between them, and every good and evil that they may have done at any time. Secondly, there is a principle of exhaustive and instantaneous transfer according to which the merits and demerits of each individual sheep are imputed to the Pastor. Thirdly, there is the principle of sacrificial reversal under which the pastor must be prepared to sacrifice himself to save his sheep. The fourth principle is the alternative correspondence according to which the merits of the sheep, and the prospective salvation are increased in inverse proportion to the failings of their Pastor, and the Pastor rises in the eyes of the Lord (and will assure his salvation) if he has struggled with the recalcitrant flock (2007:165).
In view of the above understanding of the Foucauldian analysis of pastoral power summarised by Mayes (2010) and Golder (2007), and by many scholars who have studied the work of Foucault on governmentality, such as Ojakangas (2010), it gives the impression that pastoral power is the power of care, a power that concerns itself with the salvation of the flock, and promotion of life through the shepherd’s self–sacrifice. Pastoral power as a power of care and affection is concerned more with organizing people in the same way a shepherd cares for the flock from birth to death (Lemke, 2016:14; O’Farrell 2007:8).
Pastoral care as a power of care according to Lemke (2016:14) and O’Farrell (2005:46) is taking care of every aspect of people’s lives from birth to death to guide them to salvation. The instruction and guidance of individuals in pastoral power takes place with a view to other worldly salvation (Lemke 2016). The relationship between the shepherd\Pastor, the leaders and those they lead, in the Foucauldian analysis of pastoral power is viewed as cordial, affectionate and without any hitches, because the aim is to care and save.
Systematic violence, for Zizek, of which exclusion is part, is demonstrated through invisible and subtle forms of coercion that sustains relations of domination and exploitation, including the threat
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of violence. The violence of exclusion as an expression of pastoral care for the flock establishes and maintains the order of the community (2009:8).
What is evident is that pastoral power is non-coercive and works through infiltrating regulation into the very interior experience of the subjects, and in this form of power, the subjects educate, or fashion themselves, a process where subjective experiences are simultaneously shaped and yet paradoxically remain uniquely one’s own (Carrette, 2000:26). Religion in pastoral power for Carrette (2000:136), is constituted as a political force which brings people under a certain system of control, and the subjects are constructed through a series of power relations which shape life, the body and the self. The religious beliefs, ceremonies and rituals enact these relations of power and maintain a system of control through the mechanism of pastoral authority (Carrette 2000). Religious powers govern the individual self through the operation of the said and unsaid, manipulate control by silencing, (Carrette, 2000:19) and this helped Foucault to develop ideas of political spirituality
Pastoral power is therefore both political and a form of pastoral power in the sense that as a power of pastoral care, it is construed as being affective, interactive and relational in the way it deals with members, and it is political in the way it uses rules and laws to control, exclude and punish errant members. The use of pastoral power as political power in the Methodist Church in Zimbabwe is seen in the use of rules and laws that are laid down to be followed by members, and used to control, shape their activities and behaviour, and the spelling out of the acceptable, beliefs, doctrine and behaviour. The Methodist Church in Zimbabwe is very dogmatic and systematic in its administration and the rules and laws are very radical, drastic and severe to members who do not observe them. That the Methodist Church in Zimbabwe is affective, interactive and relational towards its members is realised through the care of individual members, from birth to death, through keeping registers, conducting services for all Christian rites from birth to death, and the visiting of individual members in their respective homes.