Page - 38 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 07/01

38 | Mark K. George www.jrfm.eu 2021, 7/1, 33–44 was used to shape communal and individual behavior.13 Normalization hap- pens within a larger apparatus of government, that is, a system of mecha- nisms and techniques that seeks to shape people’s behavior toward certain ends. Writing offers the possibility of being used normatively, but it is an affordance that must be realized. Assessment and Truth Written words do not require assessment, neither of the words themselves nor of those who make use of them. But once texts become standardized and normalized, assessment becomes possible through some sort of mecha- nism of evaluation. Assessment can be performed on the behaviors of those individuals governed by texts or on a text itself. Texts, for example, can be compared with one another, revised, edited, re-organized, and altered in any number of ways.14 Likewise, behaviors of individuals may be assessed through mechanisms of comparison and evaluation. Conduct may be examined, com- pared with what is written in (normative) texts about such behavior, evaluat- ed, judged, then rewarded or penalized, praised or condemned, encouraged or modified. Mechanisms of assessment reinforce the affordance of stand- ardization and normalization because they make use of standardized texts, which record and preserve certain ideas that function socially to govern how individuals are to conduct themselves. These mechanisms become govern- mental operations, influencing and guiding behaviors while also offering a means whereby individuals and groups can learn the truth about themselves. A simple yes-or-no truth game makes this possible: Did I act correctly? Did we behave as we are supposed to in this circumstance? These are instances of governmentality, intersections of technologies of the self (do individuals conform their conduct, singly and collectively, to what is written in certain texts?) and technologies of power (shaping behavior according to particular texts) that create and govern subjects. 13 Modern debates and disputes about Ten Commandment monuments in the United States offer present-day examples of a type of normativity associated with writing and texts. Among the more notable such debates is the placement of a Ten Commandments monument in the Montgomery, Alabama courthouse lobby by Judge Roy Moore. Kraft 2008. 14 Carr’s arguments about the processes that led to the formation of the Bible could be characterized as describing ancient mechanisms of assessment; Carr 2011.