BIBLICAL INTERPRETATION AS A TECHNOLOGY OF THE SELF:

GAY M E N AND THE ETHICS OF READING

Ken Stone
Chicago Theological Seminary

ABSTRACT
Discussions of "the Ethics of Reading" call attention to the readings of the
Bible emerging from marginalized communities. Such attention opens a
space for gay male readings of the Bible. Yet contemporary critiques of "es-
sentialism" questions the extent to which members of particular commu-
nities share a common identity or essential experience. Hence, gay male read-
ings need to articulate a notion of the reading subject which accounts for the
fluid, shifting nature of identity conceptualized by postmodern thinkers.
Foucault's late work on ethics and the technologies of the self may be helpful
for thinking about the formation of gay male subjects of biblical interpre-
tation in this fashion. Biblical interpretation is a technology of the self inas-
much as it is one route by which new experiences of self and new ethical
subjects are constituted. Gay male subjectivity does not simply produce, but
also emerges from, practices of reading. Comstock's "gay" reading of Vashti's
story can be interpreted in this light. When we evaluate such readings in re-
lation to "the ethics of reading," it is necessary but not sufficient to ask
whether they account for the experiences of marginalized peoples. We must
ask whether they open up possibilities for new experiences and new forms of
cultural existence; or, as Foucault might have put it, a new "ethos."

I
The question of "the ethics of reading" has been pressed at the intersec-
tion of two trends in contemporary Biblical Studies. Scholars influenced by
liberation movements insist upon the ethical and political consequences of
biblical interpretation (e.g. Schüssler Fiorenza, 1988) while scholars influ-
enced by literary theory acknowledge the role of reading in the production of
meaning (e.g. Fowler). The call for an integration of these trends, trends
which we might designate, respectively, a focus on "ethics" and a focus on
"reading," has become increasingly common in biblical scholarship (see, e.g.
Jobling; Weems; Bible and Culture Collective; Segovia and Tolbert). Never-
theless, the two developments do not necessarily entail one another, and ef-
forts to relate them often generate controversy.
Consider, for example, the proposal to focus upon "some of the ways in
which women reading as women can engage the biblical text" (Newsom and
Ringe: xviii, emphasis in original). Schüssler Fiorenza points out in response

-139-
140 SEMEIA

to this proposal that, apart from a feminist consciousness or method, "read-

ing as a woman does not produce a critical or liberating interpretation of the
world." Indeed, she cautions that such terminology may both "reinscribe the
cultural myth of femininity and womanhood" and evade differences that
exist among women (Schüssler Fiorenza, 1993:14; see also 1992:4). In making
this point, Schüssler Fiorenza forces biblical scholars to confront the difficul-
ties associated today with the term "essentialism" (see Fuss, 1989). While
some biblical scholars grapple with "the ethics of reading" by locating read-
ers in terms of their identity or experience, claims about an essential identity
or common experience can elide differences which cut across the identity or
experience in question (cf. Tolbert, 1995a:264-68; Bible and Culture Collec-
tive: 241-44). At the same time, a recognition of this fact raises questions
about the effect of critiques of identity and experience on those who have
never been granted a legitimate identity and experience.1 Hence, it may be
useful to reformulate the question raised by critiques of essentialism in the
following manner: What strategies for resistance remain when the identities
and experiences which might serve as rallying points for resistance are them-
selves interrogated by a "hermeneutics of suspicion" (Schüssler Fiorenza,
1984:15-18)?
The present essay examines this question in relation to gay male readers
of the Bible.2 At a time when biblical scholars claim "that even in centres of in-
stitutional power there are no longer any arbiters of what may and may not
be legitimately and fruitfully said about our texts" (Clines and Exum: 13), I
suggest that a confrontation between gay male readers and the discourse of
biblical scholarship can be, indeed, "fruitful." Unfortunately, biblical scholars
have managed to ignore almost entirely the production of knowledge taking
place under such rubrics as Lesbian and Gay Studies and Queer Theory.3
An analysis of this lack of familiarity might itself be relevant to the question
of the ethics of reading, for, as Eve Sedgwick notes, "ignorance effects," like
effects of knowledge, can be deployed strategically in relation to power
(Sedgwick: 4-8).
My argument, however, focuses on the possibility that reading strate-
gies for marginalized readers (among whom I include gay men) need not
entail the assumption that a monolithic identity, already in place prior to the

1 These questions account in part for the discomfort felt by some feminist theorists with
poststructuralist critiques of the subject. See e.g. Braidotti; Benhabib; cf. Tolbert, 1995b:309-ll.
2 While gay men and lesbians share much in the context of "compulsory heterosexuality"
(Rich), their problematic relation to the social categories "male" and "female" in this context
makes it necessary, in my opinion, to consider their differential production as social subjects
rather than subsuming them under the category of "homosexuality." Cf. de Lauretis, 1991:iv-xi.
3 That such a production of knowledge does indeed exist is clear from the fact that it is im-
possible to list more than a small fraction of the relevant sources. To get started, see Abelove,
Barale, and Halperin; Warner; de Lauretis, 1991; Fuss, 1991; and the sources cited in those works
and throughout the present essay. The literature is much larger than this and is growing quickly.
STONE: BIBLICAL INTERPRETATION AS A TECHNOLOGY OF THE SELF 141

moment of reading, simply precedes interpretation and leads necessarily to

particular meanings. Rather, I wish to suggest that the subject of biblical
interpretation does not only precede but is also formed, in part, through
practices of reading. In order to speak about the gay male subject of biblical
interpretation in this manner, I turn to Foucault's late work on the technology
or practices of the self. I will not, however, comment on Foucault's corpus
as a whole or discuss the many controversies that surround it (Dreyfus and
Rabinow; McNay, 1992,1994; Cook; and Castelli). And, since part of my argu-
ment is that Foucault helps us to clarify theoretically developments that are
already taking place in biblical interpretation, I look first at an example of read-
ing that is in many respects far removed from both my argument and Fou-
cault's work, though it does share with both of those projects the distinction
of having been written by a gay male author.

II
Gary David Comstock devotes much of his book Gay Theology Without
Apology to the relationship between gay men and biblical texts. Comstock
does not ignore the question, "What does the Bible say about homosexu-
ality?" 4 However, he does go on to ask the very different question, "What
do gay men have to say about the Bible?" In the course of his discussion Com-
stock asserts at one point that "we have been in all places at all times"
without discussing adequately the problems involved in positing such a "we"
(Comstock, 1993:47). This claim could be criticized on grounds not altogether
different from the objections of Schüssler Fiorenza cited above. For if it is
difficult to assume that there is a transhistorical, cross-cultural essence of
"woman" shared by all women, it is also difficult to argue that there is an
identity or experience shared by all gay men. Indeed, social constructionist
analyses of modern concepts of "the homosexual" indicate that assumptions
about the transhistorical, cross-cultural validity of the term "gay man" are
perhaps even more problematic than similar assumptions about the term
"woman." Even gay scholars often question whether there exists an experi-
ence of "being gay" which can be described in isolation from specific social,
historical, and ideological contexts (e.g. Halperin, 1990; Weeks, 1985, 1991;
D'Emilio). It is at least clear that all known societies have had some sense of
the differentiation of human beings on the basis of gender, whereas it is not at
all clear that sexual desire has always and everywhere been a relevant mode
of classifying individuals.
Nevertheless, several of Comstock's readings indicate that more is going
on in his encounter with the Bible than simply a projection and relocation of
a presupposed gay identity. His most interesting interpretation in this respect

4 For an important historical-critical discussion of this question, see Olyan. For my own at-
tempt to treat one aspect of this question in relation to anthropological categories, see Stone.
142 SEMEIA

concerns Vashti, the queen who appears in the first chapter of Esther. Com-
stock does not examine Vashti's story because of any obvious link to homo-
sexuality. On the contrary, the book of Esther never refers to homosexuality;
and the only influential gay-affirmative reading of Esther of which I am
aware—namely, Sedgwick's treatment of the homosexual closet, discussed
in relation to Esther's need to "come out" as a Jew—mentions Vashti only in
passing. 5
Comstock approaches Vashti by acknowledging his difficulties in finding
"a role model in the Bible—someone to identify with and admire . . ." (49).
Surprisingly, perhaps, Vashti is singled out by Comstock as one such char-
acter. When Vashti, summoned by the king, refuses to appear, the king's
companions insist that she be punished, for the women of Persia may other-
wise emulate Vashti's disobedience (thereby undermining, one supposes,
Persian "family values"). For Comstock, Vashti, "a feisty, punished Queen,"
is a character with whom gay men can perhaps identify. He finds her story to
be one "in which I find myself, in which I find a role model, someone to
admire, get excited about, to root for, to model my behavior after" (51).
Language about biblical characters as "role models" for contemporary
readers may strike the sufficiently disciplined biblical critic as naive and ahis-
torical. 6 Nevertheless, it does shift the relation between reader and character
from a relation of being to a relation of becoming. Comstock does not focus,
here, on a character who is thought to be like gay male readers in any obvious
sense. 7 Rather, he focuses upon a character who exhibits qualities toward
which Comstock desires gay male readers to aspire. This emphasis on the
transformation of gay male readers through their emulation of Vashti implicitly
recognizes that "gay identity" and "gay experience" are not clearly identifi-
able and describable substances surviving unchanged across cultures, texts,
and individuals. They are, rather, phenomena which Comstock is helping
to create. I hasten to add that, by speaking about the "creation" of gay
identity, I am not suggesting that gay male readers are not "really" gay or,
worse, should "choose" to be or live otherwise. The point is that the precise
contours of this category, "gay man," are by no means clear, unchanging, or
established on the firm foundation of nature or psychological type. They are,
instead, being negotiated and renegotiated in a wide range of contexts, in-

5 Sedgwick's discussion (75-82) actually has less to do with the biblical book of Esther than
with works by Proust and Racine which use Esther as a pre-text.
6 Lest my ironic use of the term "disciplined" be misunderstood, I refer my reader to one of
Foucault's most important texts (1977).
7 In his reading of the relationship between David and Jonathan (1993:79-90), however,
Comstock does follow such a procedure. This is a convenient point at which to note that my read-
ing of Comstock's work is an interpretation of what I consider to be the most interesting section
of his project, and does not entirely agree with all of his own statements or with all of his other
discussions of biblical texts.
STONE: BIBLICAL INTERPRETATION AS A TECHNOLOGY OF THE SELF 143

eluding instances of reading such as that performed by Comstock. I would

also suggest that the same is true for the supposed opposite of the "gay man,"
namely, the so-called "straight man" (cf. Katz); that the same is true as well
for other identity categories, even those such as race which are often taken as
self-evident (cf. Orni and Winant; Mercer; Gates; Davis; Fuss, 1989:73-96; and
Anderson); and that this possibility needs to be taken seriously as biblical
scholars grapple with the ethics of reading.
Some may object that we have assumed for far too long that readers
should model themselves after biblical characters and that types for appro-
priate behavior exist in the Bible waiting to be emulated. To such an objection
one must point out that, in fact, Comstock's interpretation is deviant in sev-
eral ways, for he willingly transgresses a number of reading conventions. The
most obvious of these transgressions has to do with gender. The character
chosen as a role model by Comstock, a gay man, is a woman; and, while
women who read are often encouraged to identify with male characters (cf.
Schweickert: 42), it is much less common—and even less frequently encour-
aged—for male readers to identify with female characters.
Comstock has relatively little to say about gender, but this identifica-
tion across gender seems to be intentional. His ironic play upon Vashti's char-
acterization—she is not just any woman, but a "Queen"—is clearly aimed at
an audience familiar with the social code whereby gay men are associated,
though not unproblematically, with the so-called "feminine" gender. A
"Queen," after all, is a term widely used among gay men to refer to them-
selves, and often connotes not only male homosexuality as such (indeed,
sexual activity is seldom at stake when the term is deployed) but also a par-
ticular style of life which willfully, even playfully, upsets expectations about
gender identity and performance. Such language is not necessarily, and cer-
tainly not in Comstock's case, a reinforcement of traditional gender roles
and stereotypes for women. Since, as Judith Butler argues, the "institution of a
compulsory and naturalized heterosexuality requires and regulates gender
as a binary relation in which the masculine term is differentiated from a femi-
nine term" (Butler: 22-23), Comstock's reading can be read as a challenge to
the ways in which such an institution is reinforced when male readers are
discouraged from identifying with female characters. Comstock's identifi-
cation with Vashti might therefore be considered a "transgressive reinscrip-
tion" (Dollimore: 33) of the terms in which sex and gender are usually cast.
Indeed, Comstock's identification with Vashti does not ignore, but is
rather based upon, a critical recognition of male dominance. Comstock ad-
mires Vashti precisely because she resists the order of the king; and this
resistance signifies as resistance in relation to a patriarchal context. What
Comstock valorizes as a gay man is not Vashti's characterization as a woman,
but rather her characterization as a woman who resists patriarchy. In making
Vashti the object of emulation, Comstock is not, I think, trying to deny gen-
144 SEMEIA

der. Rather, he is renegotiating his relation to the constraints and structures of

his own context, repositioning himself over against the conventional authori-
ties of that context just as Vashti repositions herself over against the king.
Moreover, Comstock transgresses not only the convention of gender
identification but also that convention of reading which asks the reader to
admire those characters which the dominant perspective within the narrative
seems to admire. There are, after all, two queens in the text, and it is the
second of these queens, Esther, who was probably intended as a model for
readers. As Sidnie Ann White suggests, Esther's skillful maneuvering in a
situation of relative powerlessness may represent something like "the para-
digm of the diaspora Jew, who was also powerless in Persian society," a "role
model" for those "seeking to attain a comfortable and successful life in a
foreign society" (White: 126). Thus, rare as it might be for male readers to
identify with female characters, the book of Esther seems to invite such an
identification in the case of Esther herself. Comstock, however, focuses upon
Esther's "foil" (White: 127), acknowledging all the while that his chosen role
model "was not intended as a model for my or anyone else's liberation"
(Comstock, 1993:56). He thus transgresses the norm of authorial intention
not on the basis that such an intention cannot be known but, rather, on the
basis that such an intention, even if inferred, may not be liberating.
Comstock is therefore led by his reading practice into a confrontation
with certain ideas about biblical authority. In this respect his hermeneutic is
rather different from the hermeneutic of those gay readers (e.g. Boswell:
91-117) who argue that the negative evaluation of homosexuality which is
based upon biblical texts is actually a product of post-biblical interpretation.
Comstock is quite critical of such an apologetic approach to the biblical text,
pointing out that "biblical stories revolve largely around the concerns and
control of powerful men and those who serve them" (Comstock, 1993:51).
Comstock, who is also the author of an analysis of violence against lesbians
and gay men and of the biblical texts used to justify such violence (1991),
knows that the Bible can be, in Mieke Bal's words, "the most dangerous"
book, "the one that has been endowed with the power to kill" (Bal: 14). It is
no surprise, then, that he finds it necessary to become what Judith Fetterley
calls "a resisting rather than an assenting reader" (Fetterley: xxii), to emulate
the character who is punished for her disobedience while paying little atten-
tion to the book's heroes or heroines.
However, this difference between Comstock's position and the position
of gay readers who take a more recuperative approach underscores the fact
that there is no single, direct relation between social location and interpreta-
tion such that membership within a particular identity category necessarily
leads to a particular interpretation. It is obvious that not all gay men read the
Bible with Comstock's defiant attitude. Hence, while Comstock's reading can
be linked to his self-nomination as gay, it is not a necessary result of that self-
nomination.
STONE: BIBLICAL INTERPRETATION AS A TECHNOLOGY OF THE SELF 145

Comstock, like an increasing number of biblical scholars, claims to ap­

proach the biblical texts "from the point of view of m y own experience"
(1993:4). Yet such a claim, while important, needs to be reconciled with the
suggestion of Teresa de Lauretis that "experience shifts and is reformed con­
tinually, for each subject, with her or his continuous engagement in social
reality..." (de Lauretis, 1987:18). If such engagement includes the practice of
reading, then a theory of biblical interpretation must account for experience
in a manner that does not simply posit a stable experience acting upon the in­
terpretive process. Such a theory must also recognize that experience is often
the result of reading, and that human consciousness and subjectivity can
be formed and reformed, in part, through the practice of reading. As I have
already hinted by calling attention to Comstock's use of Vashti as a "role
model," Comstock himself implicitly acknowledges that the gay male subject
is not (or not only) a pre-supposed subject that pre-exists biblical interpre­
tation. It is also itself being produced by Comstock's reading, and by other
readings of Comstock's reading, including my own.

ΠΙ

Now in order to account for the most creative aspects of Comstock's

reading while avoiding some of the assumptions that lead to the charge of
"essentialism," and in order to link this account to discussions of "the ethics
of reading," I suggest that we conceptualize biblical interpretation as one
component of what Foucault called the "technology of the self." Toward the
end of his life, Foucault began to speak less about the production of the sub­
ject through its subjection to relations of power and to focus instead upon the
creation of the subject through processes of self-formation. This emphasis
is referred to by one commentator as "Foucault's turn toward subjectivity"
(Cook). Foucault became interested in those processes "which permit indi­
viduals to effect by their own means or with the help of others a certain
number of operations on their own bodies and souls, thoughts, conduct, and
way of being, so as to transform themselves in order to attain a certain state of
happiness, purity, wisdom, perfection, or immortality" (Foucault, 1988a:18,
emphasis mine; cf. Foucault, 1985a:367). He called these processes "technolo­
gies of the self."
Foucault developed his views of "technologies of the self" through analy­
ses of ancient writings and of the links established in those writings among
ethics, modes of sexual conduct, and conceptions of the self (see Foucault,
1985b, 1985c, 1986,1988a). He claimed that, in some of these writings, "the
will to be a moral subject and the search for an ethics of existence were . . .
mainly an attempt to affirm one's liberty and to give one's own life a cer­
tain form in which one could recognize oneself" and "be recognized by oth­
ers. . . . " In contrast to conceptions of ethics which center around what he
called "a code of rules," Foucault was interested in uncovering a different
146 SEMEIA

mode of ethical self-constitution. This alternative notion of ethics caught Fou-

cault's attention "because, for a whole series of reasons, the idea of a morality
as obedience to a code of rules is now disappearing..." (Foucault, 1988b:49).
While Foucault developed his ideas through interpretations of ancient
texts, his research was carried out in relation to what he elsewhere called a
"history of the present" (Foucault, 1977:31). He used analyses of ancient texts
to demonstrate the contingency of some of our conceptions and to outline
a conception of the ethical subject different from our own. Foucault recog-
nized that ethical self-constitution always takes place in specific cultural and
historical contexts and that these contexts make particular patterns of self-
constitution available to the individual (see Foucault, 1987:11). He emphati-
cally denied that ancient concepts and practices could simply be transported
into our own century, as is clear from the following statement:

The Greek ethics were linked to a purely virile society with slaves, in which
women were underdogs whose pleasure had no importance, whose sexual
life had to be oriented toward, determined by, their status as wives. . . .
The Greek ethics of pleasure is linked to a virile society, to dissymmetry,
exclusion of the other, an obsession with penetration, and a kind of threat
of being dispossessed of your own energy, and so on. All that is quite dis-
gustingl
(Foucault, 1984:344,346, emphasis mine; cf. 1988c)

What Foucault wished to reactivate was not the content of ancient beliefs but,
rather, the emphasis upon a type of ethics by which individuals, through "in-
tentional and voluntary actions . . . not only set themselves rules of conduct,
but also seek to transform themselves, to change themselves in their singular
being, and to make their life into an oeuvre that carries certain aesthetic
values and meets certain stylistic criteria" (1985b:10-ll).
Foucault's references to "aesthetics" and "style" need to be understood
in the context of his analyses of Greek and Latin texts, for he was convinced
"that the question of style was central to experience in antiquity—stylization
of the relation to oneself, style of conduct, stylization of the relation to
others" (1988c:244). As the renowned classicist Paul Veyne, with whom Fou-
cault was closely associated, cautions,

Style does not mean distinction here; the word is to be taken in the sense of
the Greeks, for whom an artist was first of all an artisan and a work of art
was first of all a work.... Foucault judged .. . the idea of a work of the self
on the self, to be capable of reacquiring a contemporary meaning.... [T]he
self, taking itself as a work to be accomplished, could sustain an ethics that
is no longer supported by either tradition or reason " (Veyne: 7)

Foucault also spoke of this process of ethical self-constitution in terms of

"asceticism," a word he used not in the sense of "self-denial" but, rather, to
refer to "an exercise of self upon self by which one tries to work out, to trans-
STONE: BIBLICAL INTERPRETATION AS A TECHNOLOGY OF THE SELF 147

form one's self and to attain a certain mode of being" (Foucault, 1987a:2). He
even spoke of a "homosexual ascesis" as one goal for the modern gay move-
ment, urging a gay audience (with which he explicitly identified) to "work on
ourselves and invent, I do not say discover, a manner of being that is still improb-
able" (1989:206, emphasis mine).
Foucault connected the technology of the self to "ethics" by playing
upon the relation between "ethics" and ethos. Ethos, he suggested, "was the
deportment and the way to behave. It was the subject's mode of being and a
certain manner of acting visible to others." This mode of being was by no
means of significance only for the isolated individual. Rather, "Ethos implies
also a relation with others . . ." (1987a:6-7).8 One acts upon and seeks to
transform oneself in part by paying careful attention to and working upon
one's relations with others; consequently, Foucault can speak of the process
as "an intensification of social relations" (1986:53). This process involves an
endless work, a ceaseless labor, and it is based upon what Arnold Davidson
calls "ethics as ascetics," a sort of "moral subjectivation" by which "we con-
stitute ourselves as moral subjects of our own actions" (Davidson: 65-66).
The "technology of the self" is thus not so much about the discovery or
liberation of one's "true" self but, rather, about the creation and recreation of
the self in its variable relations with itself, with others, and with the world.
As several of Foucault's most perceptive readers note (e.g. Halperin, 1995;
Cohen, 1988; Blasius), this distinction underlies Foucault's comments about
the modern gay movement and the constitution of gay male subjectivity.
Foucault rejected the notion that sexuality and desire make up that aspect
of human existence in relation to which one can decipher, or have deci-
phered, one's "true" self (see Foucault, 1978). He argued instead for a shift of
focus from the discovery of one's true self to the constitution of new forms of
existence:
Another thing to distrust is the tendency to relate the question of homo-
sexuality to the problem of "Who am I?" and "What is the secret of my de-
sire?" Perhaps it would be better to ask oneself, "What relations, through
homo-sexuality, can be established, invented, multiplied and modulated?"
The problem is not to discover in oneself the truth of sex but rather to use
sexuality henceforth to arrive at a multiplicity of relationships . . . [W]e have
to work at becoming homosexuals and not be obstinate in recognizing that we
are. (Foucault 1989:203-4)9
Foucault's reference to "becoming homosexuals" has influenced the lan-
guage of a number of lesbian and gay writers who speak, for example, of
"becoming out" instead of "coming out" (e.g. Phelan: 41-56; Blasius: 195,
203-4; cf. Cohen, 1990). However, neither Foucault nor the lesbians and gay

8 For a discussion of the "ethos of lesbian and gay existence" which is explicitly indebted
to Foucault, see Blasius: 179-225.
9 Cf. similar statements by Foucault in Gallagher and Wilson.
148 SEMEIA

men influenced by him are referring to the etiology of homosexual desire.10

What Foucault is talking about is the creation of new kinds of subjectivities
through new practices, new forms of life, new attitudes, new technologies of
the self. As he argues in another interview, "It's not only a matter of integrat-
ing this strange little practice of making love with someone of the same sex
into pre-existing cultures; it's a matter of constructing cultural forms" (Bar-
badette: 36, emphasis mine).
Foucault included reading as one possible component of the "technology
of the self" (e.g. Foucault, 1986:48,51), suggesting that what was "essential"
in the reading of a book was "the experience which the book permits us to
have." The process of reading certain works and writing works of his own
was undertaken in part, Foucault insisted, "to prevent me from always being
the same." He also hoped that his readers would be transformed through the
reading process, as is clear from the following comments about his use of
history:
But the problem isn't that of humoring the professional historians. Rather,
I aim at having an experience myself—by passing through a determinate
historical content—an experience of what we are today, of what is not only
our past but also our present. And I invite others to share the experience.
That is, an experience of our modernity that might permit us to emerge
from it transformed. Which means that at the conclusion of the book we can es-
tablish new relationships with what was at issue.... (Foucault, 1991:33-34, em-
phasis mine)
The link made here between reading and subjective transformation co-
heres well with recent proposals that experience and subjectivity are
themselves semiotic phenomena; or, as one proponent of such a view puts it,
that "human subjects" are "not only . . . users of signs but also . . . themselves
processes and products of semiosis" (Colapietro: 47). Indeed, the overlap be-
tween Foucault's late work and a semiotic concept of the subject has been
noted by Teresa de Lauretis in the course of her own attempt to develop a
semiotic theory of experience and subjectivity. Building upon Peirce's con-
cept of "habit change" to discuss the subjective results of processes of
signification, de Lauretis argues for a dynamic view of human experience "as
a complex of habits, dispositions, associations, perceptions, and expectations
resulting from the continuous semiosic interaction of the self's 'inner world'
with the 'outer world'" (de Lauretis 1994a:299; cf. 1984:158-86; 1994b). Expe-
rience and subjectivity are thus conceptualized by de Lauretis not only as
presuppositions of semiosis but also as effects of semiosis: " . . . the subject is

10 Although he is easily misunderstood on this point, Foucault specifies elsewhere that he

has "absolutely nothing to say" about what his interviewer calls "the distinction between innate
predisposition to homosexual behavior and social conditioning . . ." (Foucault, 1988d:288). Cf.
Blasius: 195-96.
STONE: BIBLICAL INTERPRETATION AS A TECHNOLOGY OF THE SELF 149

the place in which, the body in whom, the significate effects of signs take
hold and are contingently and continuously real-ized." Calling attention to
similarities between the language of Peirce and the language of Foucault, de
Lauretis suggests that "[t]he new experience of self Foucault describes is, in
effect, a habit-change" (1994b:304-5, emphasis in original). Thus, the tech-
nology of the self can be linked to, and may be an integral part of, signifying
practices such as those discussed more explicitly by Peirce and de Lauretis.

IV

Biblical interpretation, as one type of semiotic activity, is a technology of

the self inasmuch as it is one route by which new experiences of self are cre-
ated and recreated, "contingently and continuously," as de Lauretis insists. It
is one of the practices through which we constitute ourselves as ethical sub-
jects, not necessarily in the sense that we must listen to the biblical texts for
ethical admonitions, "a code of rules," but, rather, in the sense that our very
existence as ethical subjects can be effected and modified through our vari-
able interaction with texts which have, for better and for worse, assumed
such a powerful position in our culture.
I thus argue that Comstock's use of Vashti's story is an enactment of
biblical interpretation as something like a technology of the self. Like Fou-
cault, Comstock is concerned about the formation of ethical subjects in a
context where traditional sources of authority (including biblical authority)
have been called into question and where new modes of existence must be
created. And, like Foucault, Comstock hopes that, as a result of reading, gay
men "can establish new relationships" with something that is "at issue" (Fou-
cault, 1991:34). What is "at issue" for Comstock is the traditional negative
evaluation of gay men by religious authorities quoting biblical texts. In hold-
ing up Vashti and her disobedience, Comstock hopes to encourage resistance
to those evaluations among his gay male readers. This resistance does not
follow naturally from gay male identity or experience, however, but is an
element of the ongoing formation of the gay male subject. Gay male subjec-
tivity does not simply produce, but also emerges from, particular practices,
including practices of reading. As Deborah Cook notes in her discussion of
Foucault, "Resistance makes possible new forms of subjectivity. By defining
themselves differently vis à vis prevailing social-political norms in discipli-
nary society, subjects constitute themselves" (Cook: 5). As we might put it in
the context of biblical interpretation, new subjects are constituted when bibli-
cal texts are read in new ways (cf. Chopp: 42-44).
Of course, the conceptualization of biblical interpretation as a technology
of the self could account for quite traditional readings as well as non-tradi-
tional ones. Foucault noted that technologies of the self can differ from one
another in several ways, including "the kind of being to which we aspire
150 SEMEIA

when we behave in a moral way" (Foucault, 1984:355). The kind of being

toward which Comstock aspires is, to play on his own words, a non-apolo-
getic gay male subject. Comstock is interested in the transformation, through
reading, of a particular group of readers. But this transformation takes place,
I suggest, not so much by the recognition and affirmation of a presupposed,
coherent experience and identity but, rather, by a constitution of experience
and identity through the ongoing construction of cultural forms and subjec-
tivities. This construction takes place, among other locations, at the site of
reading insofar as gay readers are encouraged through their reading to re-
spond to the authoritative sources of "compulsory heterosexuality" (Rich) in
the manner that Vashti responds to the authority of the king.
Thus, when we evaluate interpretations of biblical texts in relation to
"the ethics of reading," it is necessary but not sufficient to ask whether such
interpretations cohere with or express the experiences of marginalized peo-
ples. We must also ask whether such interpretations open up possibilities for
new experiences, new relationships (including new relationships to our reli-
gious traditions, as Comstock correctly realizes), and new forms of cultural
existence, or, as Foucault might have put it, a new ethos. These experiences,
these relationships, and these cultural forms will determine whether it will
be possible to effect still more subjective, intersubjective, and material trans-
formations. In this fashion, biblical interpretation as an ethical practice may
help us to "work on" and "invent" those "improbable" modes of being that
Foucault desired (Foucault, 1989:206), that Comstock is creating, and that our
world needs so desperately today.11

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 ^ s
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