nevermind the bricolage

bonhoeffer

Today marks the anniversary of the death (by hanging, courtesy of the Nazis) of renowned German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer. His imprisonment and subsequent execution, were the result of his involvement in a plot to get rid of Hitler. The plot failed and thus, close to the end of the war, Bonhoeffer lost his life. He remains a theologian of importance for many.

I have been re-reading Jeffrey Pugh's book, Religionless Christianity: Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Troubled Times, which I find to be an insightful and compelling look at one of Bonhoeffer's least realized but perhaps most enticing ideas--that the future of Christianity is 'religionless.' This concept was only briefly mentioned in one of his letters, but it has generated loads of thoughtful explorations as to what he might have meant.

"we must finally get away from the notion that the gospel is concerned with the salvation of the soul of the individual or with showing the way from despair of the sinner to the sinner's blessedness." DB.

on reading 2

Last month I wrote about a frustration with students and book reviews--a general lack of engagement with the actual material and a virtual ignoring of parameters set by a particualr authour with regard to the topic that they were addressing when it came to writing a review.

I came across this comment in the lovink book in a section on Comment Culture. "We need to keep in mind that in this age of self-representation (italics mine), commenting often lacks a direct confrontation with the text or artwork. The present act of replying does not seek a one-to-one dialogue with the creator..." Lovink is addressing comments made on blogs and the like, but it seems to me that the same could be said for interaction with texts of all kinds these days, virtual or otherwise. I found this comment helpful and will see if it makes sense. I might try and do some anecdotal research around this, not quite sure how or what just yet, but something along the lines of self-representation and interaction. I think there is a truth here--the idea being that a person makes comments that are clues to him or herself, acts of self-representation, rather than a critique of a particular work--a shifting away from focus on the text to focus on the interactor--i.e. 'look at me, this is who I am'--a part of us revealed in the likes and preferences we name not only on our Facebook pages but in our thoughts and opinions over and against everything we come into contact with?

(the image is of medieval margin notes from Laphams Quarterly via BMD Love Blog)

plenty

"Do not ask yourself if you can or cannot cope. It is not about adaptation or choice. The Greek god of hunting and rustic music, pan, is a symbol of plenty and abundance and has never been stigmatized as a problem. Humankind was always impressed by the billions of stars shining in the clear night sky-and never was in a panic about its plentitude." Franco Berardi

I was impressed by the ideas drawn from Italian philosopher Franco Berardi, in one of the books I am presently reading--Geert Lovink's, Networks Without A Cause--which I am finding very stimulating. The book is a critique of social media, but it is also a critique of theories around social media and the way ideas or opinions get traded with little critical reflection on their holistic engagement with issues at hand. Berardi's quote at the top of this post comes in a chapter on the Psychopathology of Information Overload and I really appreciate the way Lovink tackles it--mainly by challenging the idea that too much information is the problem--again, quoting Berardi, "the problem is not in the technology. We have to come to terms with it. The killing element is the combination of info stress and competition. We have to win, and to be the first. The real pathogenic effect is the neo-liberal pressure that makes the network condition so unlivable-not the abundance of information itself."

This book is one of the first social media critiques that actually stimulates my own thinking about it. I have found many of the books on this subject just a little too confident of their own veracity and I haven't fully bought the arguments put forth. This one, however, is really working for me--I find myself generating a new resource pool in terms of thinkers, books and concepts---semio-capitialism/personal information autonomy/hedonic lassitude/soft narcosis/depressive hedonia--(just in one chapter).

It's a good read and may challenge some ideas already firmly ensconsed in your own reasoned reflections on this topic, but one of those books that should be included in any comprehensive reflections on this topic.

Networks without a cause

I am very committed to critical reflection on things, and am also a great believer in the need to explore both the losses and the gains that attend any new artifact or technology. That said, i find that all too often the highlighting of the potential negative aspects of various cultural artifacts, especially in the digital realm of social media, tend toward a bit of fear-mongering in my mind and are often riddled with a certain nostalgia for elements whose cultural cache has been diminished (i.e. mp3 vs. CD vs. cassette. vs. vinyl etc.or rock vs. punk. vs. grunge--you get my drift I hope).

But I find the work of Geert Lovink, though it tends towards a negative critique of technology, to be a compelling and enlightening read. Lovink teaches in the media programme at European Graduate School and is Director of the Institute of Network Cultures at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences--i.e. heavily embedded in media and its effects. His latest book, Networks Without A Cause, is an examination social media and asks some very interesting questions related to our fascination with social media. He wants to question the consequences of media-saturated lives and examination our obsession with identity and self-management. The opening line is,

"Once the internet ruled the world; now the world is changing the internet." If that piques your curiosity then this might be a book for you. This is definitely going to make its way onto the reading list for my theology and media culture class next time around.

Up From Harlem

Up From Harlem is one of my favourite comics found on this site. I'm not a big comic fan, but given that the subject matter is 1970s Christianity, they are a good read. A few things are immediately apparent. Firstly, the way in which slang, our everyday use of language, which shapes, to some degree, our definition of what is cool, moves very quickly from hip to hokey--the language in these comics is a hark back to an entirely different world and hipness, and it is helpful to comprehend that. That language thirty or forty years old would seem so dated is a reminder of the challenge, with english particularly, to move with the times and to realize that once weighty words may have lost their impact in the new vernacular.

The second thing, and it is pretty evident in this comic, is the relationship, built early on in what became contemporary Christianity, between the sensual and the spiritual--religion becomes a substitute for other 'highs'--God is a better high than drugs etc. In this comic, the act of worship is likened to a sexual encounter. It's easy to connect the dots and note how the ecstatic nature of contemporary worship has its roots in the transitions out of counter-culture and how sensualized the whole thing is--what is being crafted, consciously or otherwise, is a religion built on emotional experiences, with ecstatic and sexualized dynamics, that few people seem to honestly acknowledge or address. This is nothing new of course, nuns and mystics have written on about this for centuries-but within the confines of late 20th century Christianity this was not given much attention--and of course, it was attended by a very intense rejection of human sexuality, in all but the most heavily prescribed circumstances (i.e. heterosexual marriage) and outside of that the encounter with the divine, with God, was the environment in which one would practice sublimation, or repression of desire.

I went a number of years ago to hear M.Scott Peck give a one-day seminar on sensuality and spirituality. it was extremely enlightening at the time, as those issues were seldom addressed in the religious environs I inhabited. They should have been, because without addressing desire openly and honestly, and without providing means to 'own it' the substitute experiences don't deliver over the long haul in my experience and leave many people with a vulnerability, and a disappointment with God and more often, with themselves, over their failure to completely transport their desire for intimacy or altered consciousness into their god-experiences.

Finally, these comics highlight the dependence of much of the early contemporary Jesus movement upon apocalyptic and dispensationalist theological perspectives. i realize that comics alone don't tell the whole story, that not everyone was embracing 'end-of-the-world' theologies, but it was central to the movement in many environments and had a key role in shaping much of contemporary Christian culture. These comic books, with their content limitations set by the genre, painted with broad strokes, as comics often do, and they portrayed a particular brand of Christianity and that had influence way beyond anyones expectation or realization I think.

 

on reading

I have noticed a bit of a shift in the way people seem to be reading books. What I have to say is both anecdotal and not even fully thought-through, but I wanted to get some thoughts out as this is something I have been coming into contact with lately.

There is, of course, much debate about books--whether they are dead(like rock music,cds, cassettes, vinyl etc.), because new technologies are offering other ways of accessing information. There are those who bemoan the shift to digital and e-books of various incarnations--the debate is essentially not much different from the vinly versus mp3 conversation--each side arguing the benefit of their preference. personally I am an equal opportunity consumer--I enjoy the various mediums for different reasons and purchase books accordingly.

The conversation that interests me more, is the 'how we are reading' because I think that has changed quite dramatically. In my various professions I spend quite a lot of time in environments where books and their content are often a principle focus--classrooms, discussion groups etc. What I have noticed is a subtle shift in attitude towards books. I find many people, including lots of grad students, incapable of actually reading a book by its own limits--most academic books of any worth state the intentions up front and usuaslly sketch out the landscape and the criteria by which a particualr subject will be addressed. But is is amazing how little effect that seems to have on the interaction readers have with it. They apply their own criteria to it--and maybe that is the point I am trying to make--we read our own views onto the text and judge it based on our own preferecnes rather than engaging with its content and coming to conclusions afterwards--we like or dislike--based on our apriori views. It's another example of the judgment culture we live in (see Lauren Zalaznick's Ted Talk), and it doesn't promote learning in my opinion.

Perhaps it is just me, but I find it increasingly difficult to have a book discussion about a book and not have everything surrounding the book--the information not included in its pages, dominating and shaping the conversation. on one level i dont think this is completely new--but what is new I think is the way books and authors are approached now. We come at books aware that they are incomplete tomes--the wealth of information we can access about a particualr topic is so great that we know a book will only scratch at certain pieces of an issue or topic, but even though we know the limitations, there seems to be an unforgiveness, or perhaps an expectancy, that everything will be included anyway.

I may not be making sense or I might be saying something others have known for years. I can only say that in the past couple of years of teaching I am seeing this more and more. It seems to reflects a certain polarizing within the culture--we read what we want to read and avoid the contrary or converse opinion, or if we read it, we cannot get beyond what 'we think' to let the author present his or her argument before. I find it a frustrating exercise these days. It's not first a question of whether or not we 'like' a book, it is about whether or not there are ideas and things to interact with, whether the author has delivered on a particular promise, whether they actually wrote about what they said they were going to write about--there is too much preferential judgment and not enough engagement with a text if you ask me--whether it is in print or digital.

dont f@*k with god

Am leading a three week course on the Bible: Holy Scripture or Holy Mess? I think tonight will be the weird verses from the scripture night and will journey from there to how we read and interpret texts. No, surprisingly I am not a literalist! The above image is a take on one of those weird verses, of which there are many.

isolation

Earlier in the week I said that I was reading The Last Holiday, Gil Scott-Heron's memoir, as a sort of devotional this week in advance of the MLK holiday tomorrow. There is a particulalry poignant section in which he describes standing in his mother's room after she had died,

"I was repulsed by my lifelong insistence on fucking isolation. Some of it has been justified by a real fear of the consquences awaiting those who befriended me and drew close, tried to settle within an umbrella's ceiling of cover. When I was younger, everything in life was an experiment and a new thrill. On a rainy day, you could find the high-end joy of another body, another soul, squeezing shoulder to shoulder, giggling, sharing warmth deliberately, two midgets who gallop on marinette legs, now jammed in a space that posed a challenge for one. I loved that kind of silliness, but life has taught me that I have to avoid that kind of close. There was no one I could be close to now."

I can relate to that tendency to isolate, it is very easy for me to withdraw and isolate and I can disconnect very easily, too easily sometimes. So I was deeply affected by this section as I saw something of myself in it. I also realized that when it comes to the music we enjoy, there are probably things that are appealing to us, perhaps even unconsciously, beyond the music itself. When I explore the musicians whose work really appeals to me, I discover much in their lives that has echoes of my own journey. That is not to say that all the musician's I like have the same tendencies or emotional and mental issues that I do, just that sometimes there are unspoken impulses that make themselves known in the music and that perhaps contribute to why it is that I like this or that artist and not others.

The Last Holiday

When Gil Scott-Heron passed away quite suddenly last year, I think a lot of fans received the news with heavy hearts and, at the same time, a sense of relief that a man who had obviously struggled so hard to overcome the forces plaguing was finally at some rest. The thought of no new music, especially after his brilliant 'comeback' album I'm New Here, was hard to consider--the music world had lost a vital and unique voice. So it was with great delight that I downloaded, The Last Holiday: A Memoir from the man himself. Given his struggles the idea of a published memoir seemed almost too good to belive but Jamie Byng the director of Canongate, the publishers and a close friend of Heron's revealed that The Last Holiday, completed a year before Heron's death last May, was nearly 20 years in the writing, a process that caused its author no end of angst and entailed some dramatic re-writes, including the scrapping of several chapters told in the third person by a narrator named The Artist.

The title refers to Martin Luther King's National Holiday--a venture inspired and spear-headed by Stevie Wonder but something with which Gil was heavily involved. In fact the book doesn't move much past that event and Stevie Wonder's Hotter than July tour, but maybe that is a good thing. In that sense it looks to be a bit unfinished--mch like the man, sadly gone before all of his work was done.

There is a poignancy about the release of the book in this week before the MLK holiday and reading it has taken on something of a devotional tone for me. If you liked Gil Scott-Heron you need this book, and if you don't what are you doing reading this blog?:)

ministry of stories

The latest issue of Think Quarterly, the Google online magazine, is dedicated to people. One of the features is on Nick Hornby's East London project, Ministry of Stories. Taking a cue from Dave Egger's pirate shop, 836 Valencia, the Ministry of Stories is tucked away inside The Hoxton Street Monster Supplies. It is a space dedicated to encouraging young people to write, to dream, to tell stories--worth a visit on the next trip to London I think. The image below is from a series of bespoke covers creasted by The Church of London-a design group doing some interesting work.

On the COL blog is another cool thing. In conjunction with the paperback release of Zizek's Living in the End Times, Verso books and COL launched a film project inviting people to create responses to Zizek's theory of the end times.

Living in the End Times from Gabriel Tupinambá on Vimeo.