### Menu

- [Home](/)

- [About](/about/) [Contact](/contact/)

- [Open Access](/open-access/)

- [Peer Review](/peer-review/)

- [Editorial Board](/editors/)

- [Journal Archive](/archives/)

- [News](/blog/)

- [Religious Theory](/religioustheory/)

- [Search](/search/)

- [Submissions](/submissions/)

### The New Polis

                    ![The New Polis is an online publication dedicated to critical theory, social analysis, and political philosophy and theology.](https://files.jcrt.org/images/tnp.webp)

The New Polis is an online publication dedicated to critical theory, social analysis, and political philosophy and theology.

                    ![The New Polis Journal is a peer-reviewed academic journal publishing cutting-edge work in political philosophy, social theory, and related fields.](https://files.jcrt.org/images/tnpj.webp)

The New Polis Journal is a peer-reviewed academic journal publishing cutting-edge work in political philosophy, social theory, and related fields.

	Whitestone Foundation

### Get in touch

The Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory (JCRT) is a publication of The Whitestone Foundation, a 501(c)3 non-profit corporation registered in the state of Colorado.

[Contact Us](/contact/)

---

[Built with Eleventy](https://www.11ty.dev/) | Design: [HTML5 UP](https://html5up.net/) | Maintained by [Adam DJ Brett](https://adamdjbrett.com) | [Credits](/credits/)

[Listed at Duotrope](https://duotrope.com/magazine/journal-cultural-religious-theory-20464?ref=lst-7vbKB-7r3u0g8&pc=L-7VBKB)

        JCRT
        The Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory

      JCRT

          The Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory

- [Home](/)

- [Archives](/archives/)

- [25.2](/archives/25.2/)

- Article No. 08

# Caught in the Act: Voyeurism and Performance in Augustine’s *Confessions*

            Paige Spencer
            Syracuse University

               August 24, 2026

                 |  doi.org/10.17613/hctwd-0z729

               Download Article

               Download Citation (RIS)

               Download Citation (JSON)

## Table of Contents

Through theories of performativity and as performance, this article explores Augustine’s troubled relationship with spectacles of suffering in *Confessions*. For Augustine, pleasure at pain proves the most apt example of all pleasure as an end in itself—all pleasure that does not end in God. And all who partake of this pleasure are guilty of a kind of voyeurism.

But can *Confessions* be saved from Augustine’s own critique? Many scholars have suggested it can. Some claim that Augustine’s theatricality finds its *telos* in God. Others point to the performativity of prayer, suggesting that this performativity precludes voyeuristic engagement. The profound performativity of *Confessions* has not been overlooked. Yet by using concepts interior to the text (theater, prayer, imitation, suffering, curiosity, humility) as a framework for interpreting the text as a whole, this article exposes the (still) unresolved dilemma suspended at the heart of that performativity.

[![CC BY 4.0]](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) © 2026 the author(s). This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) license. Authors retain copyright.

          Keywords:

            augustine

            confessions

            voyeurism

            performativity

            performance-studies

            theater

            prayer

            suffering

            curiosity

            humility

            patristics

            Share Openly

[The Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory (JCRT)](https://jcrt.org) is an online, peer-reviewed, academic publication published by [The Whitestone Foundation](http://thewhitestonefoundation.org/), a 501c3 corporation located in Boulder, Colorado. ISSN 1530-5228. Articles are open access under a [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) license; authors retain copyright. Indexed by [EBSCO](https://www.ebsco.com/). Listed with [Duotrope](https://duotrope.com/magazine/journal-cultural-religious-theory-20464?ref=lst-7vbKB-7r3u0g8&pc=L-7VBKB). Website © The Whitestone Foundation dba The Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory 1999-2026.

[JCRT](https://jcrt.org/) | [The New Polis Journal](https://journal.thenewpolis.com/) | [The New Polis](https://thenewpolis.com/) | [Esthesis](https://esthesis.org/) | [Wild Globalization](https://wildglobalization.com/) | [The Whitestone Foundation](https://thewhitestonefoundation.org/)

[The Whitestone Foundation](https://thewhitestonefoundation.org/)