Devotions of Desire

This dissertation describes how desiring subjects make devotional worlds in times of radical change. I argue that what is centrally at stake for people who pass through the Şumuleu Ciuc (Hungarian: Csíksomlyó) pilgrimage site in Transylvania, Romania is the question of what makes a good Catholic in relation to the Virgin Mary. Disputes about this question revolve around notions of the desiring subject: What role should forms of sexual, material, and affective self-interest – or lack thereof – play in the life of Mary’s devotees and the life of the Mother of God herself? This formulation of desire and change as intersubjective and relational processes involving divine and human beings breaks new ground among dominantly sociological and symbolic studies of religious change in contemporary Eastern Europe. Chapter One broadly outlines 20th and 21st century social transformations in the Ciuc valley. Chapter Two explores the annual Pentecost pilgrimage event as a ritual intricately caught up in everyday processes of emerging post-socialist masculine subject formation. Chapter Three tells the story of a young woman’s vision of the Virgin Mary that resulted in the installation of a new sta