Our discussion today ranged far and wide, and tackled numerous marvelous topics, with provocative turns and exhilarating vistas. Thanks very much for a feast of reflection and argumentation.
Among the things I wanted to remember, one was my commendation of Frank Kermode’s book, The Art of Telling.
I wanted to signal the Japanese doujinshi comics-remix culture, which our discussion itself remixed toward preaching one another’s sermons, or writing sermons for another to preach.
I also alluded to the work of Edward Soja: Postmodern Geographies: The Reassertion of Space in Critical Social Theory, Thirdspace: Journeys to Los Angeles and Other Real-And-Imagined Places, and Postmetropolis: Critical Studies of Cities and Regions. Before you tackle Soja, though, you might want to warm up with the essay by Certeau on “Walking In the City,” or the article on “space” in the Handbook of Postmodern Biblical Interpretation.
We struggled with the difference, if there be any, between theological humility and civic humility, and we spent even more quality time thinking along with Scott McCloud.
posted by AKMA @ 11:33 pm
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Comments OffAfter last FridayÕs meeting, I spent the evening with Scott McCloudÕs Understanding Comics and Reinventing Comics, and I have remained plagued by one of his points that Lynette brought up in our discussion. McCloud is very clear that the meaning given to a sequence of text/image combinations is brought by the reader. In other words, the very Òwhite spaceÓ between the panels carries actions as they are provided by the reader. The reader may be nudged by the artist (certain conclusions being more probable than others), but ultimately it is the reader who connects the events/panels together in his or her own way. Quintessentially post-modern idea, right?
McCloud and Liz Phair (who provided the title of this post) have prompted me to spend the week considering unintended and unexpected significations, especially the difficult or hurtful ones weÕd like to Òbox up and bury in the ground, burn up and throw away.Ó We may find some readings more probable or logical than others, but ultimately, we canÕt control how readers read the white space, and we also canÕt deny that each reading has been read.
When I start thinking about different readings and the potential for harmful readings in our liturgy and practice of ministry, then I really start to get nervous! (Of course, there exists an equal potential for creative, affirming readings, but those arenÕt concerning me . . . this week!)
Case Study:
While serving in a parish several years ago, I came to the conclusion that the parts of the service that were written and spoken by individual voices could be Òdangerous partsÓÑthat is, they carried with them the potential to alienate or atomize, especially through what IÕll call Òbad theology.Ó While scripture and Eucharistic prayers can certainly do the same thing, the congregation seemed to have agreed to grapple with the challenges posed by differing interpretations of these texts because they had been accepted into canon. Challenges from the canon were taken as Ògivens.Ó When the congregation was challenged by an individualÕs words in a sermon or in the prayers of the people (which were written and read by individuals) there was an order of magnitude of difference. Congregants were very upset when the sermon or the prayers did not make room for their own readings or differing opinions. If a prayer or sermon was restrictive or non-inclusive, these non-canonical words and their authors were not given the same grace as restrictive, non-inclusive canonical words or stories. I am not sure why this phenomenon took place, other than perhaps a bias against history (Òthey werenÕt smart enough to know better like we post-moderns doÓ). Or perhaps it was because the real hurt inflicted by the words of contemporaries had tangible agents to respond to. Overall, I was intrigued by the high-passions around prayers written by congregants when similar words from the BCP or Bible were not subjected to similar levels of scrutiny.
IÕm left wondering what we do and what we ought to do when our words have unintended, hurtful consequences? How do we acknowledge all readings, and what is our responsibility to the ones we see as misreadings?
posted by Michelle @ 10:22 pm
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4 commentsWas reminded today of Gregory Bateson and how much I admired his essays back in the day– as I searched for the source of this quote and found that of course it was Bateson.
“information is a difference that makes a difference”
So the question then becomes– what’s not information???
posted by Laura @ 4:35 pm
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7 commentsAny attempt to speak without speaking any particular language is not more hopeless than the attempt to have a religion that shall be no religion in particular.
George Santayana, Reason in Religion
You are wrong, therefore, with your universal religion that is to be natural to all; for no one will have his own true and right religion if it is the same for all. . . .
Schleiermacher, On Religion, p. 217 (H & R, 1958)
Liberalism in religion is the doctrine that there is no positive truth in religion, but that one creed is as good as another, and this is the teaching which is gaining substance and force daily. It is inconsistent with the recognition of any religion as true. It teaches that all are to be tolerated, as all are matters of opinion. Revealed religion is not a truth, but a sentiment and a tasteÑnot an objective fact, not miraculous; and it is the right of each individual to make it say just what strikes his fancy.
John Henry Cardinal Newman, Newman Reader
To be of no church is dangerous. Religion, of which the rewards are distant and which is animated only by faith and hope, will glide by degrees out of mind unless it be invigorated and reimpressed by external ordinances, by stated calls to worship, and the salutary influence of example.
Samuel Johnson
In our culture science is usually thought to have the job of describing reality as it really is; but its possession of that franchise, which it wrested away from religion, is a historical achievement not a natural right.
Stanley Fish, Professional Correctness, 72
What has happened that has made images (and by image we mean any sign, work of art, inscription, or picture that acts as a mediation to access something else) the focus of so much passion? To the point that destroying them, erasing them, defacing them, has been taken as the ultimate touchstone to prove the validity of oneÕs faith, of oneÕs science, of oneÕs critical acumen, of oneÕs artistic creativity? To the point where being an iconoclast seems the highest virtue, the highest piety, in intellectual circles?
Furthermore, why is it that all those destroyers of images, those ‘theoclasts’, those iconoclasts, those ‘ideoclasts’ have also generated such a fabulous population of new images, fresh icons, rejuvenated mediators: greater flows of media, more powerful ideas, stronger idols? As if defacing some object would inevitably generate new faces, as if defacement and ‘refacement’ were necessarily coeval. . . .
Bruno Latour, “What Is Iconoclash?"”
Bruno Latour, Science In Action
John Milbank, Theology and Social Theory
George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By
Fred Sanders, Dr. Doctrine’s Christian Comics
posted by AKMA @ 9:55 am
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3 commentsNot because I pretend that these are definitive or essential, but because they’re part of what I bring to the course:
A. K. M. Adam, “This Is Not a Bible,” New Paradigms in Bible Study, ed. Robert M. Fowler, Edith Blumhofer, Fernando F. Segovia (London and New York: T & T Clark, 2004) (online version)
A. K. M. Adam, “Integral and Differential Hermeneutics,” The Meanings We Choose, ed. Charles Cosgrove (Crossroads, 2004) (online version)
A. K. M. Adam, “Walk This Way: Difference, Repetition, and the Imitation of Christ,” Interpretation 55 (2001) 19-33 (no online version yet)
posted by AKMA @ 5:48 pm
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2 commentsThank you for the wonderful conversation this morning. I’ll summarize some of what I wanted to express, only this time I’m doing it in a more durable medium than speech.
My first premise for the course is that ministry constitutes a signifying practice, an active and deliberate participation in the generation, interpretation, manipulation, and articulation of meaning (a nonexclusive list, but a good start). To the extent that this premise is true, it behooves church leaders to devote sustained attention and reflection to the ways they, umm, practice it.
This practice takes place in a context within which everything signifies. Not just words, but gestures, clothes, smells, images, everything signifies. Too often, clergy restrict their attention to very narrow bands of the spectrum of signification, and write themselves a free pass with regard to other facets of signification (or insist that other aspects of signification only mean what they are, or aren’t, intended to mean). While no one can attend to every nuance of omnipresent signification, we can refuse the path of willful ignorance in favor of a chastened willingness to consider more possibilities, more dimensions of meaning, than we ordinarily allow.
Granted, then, that everything signifies — beyond our capacity to apprehend the flux of signification — we have to admit that there’s no controlling signification. We can observe, listen, deliberate, take pains, hope, care, guard, and pray, but we cannot control signification, no matter how hard we try.
Under such conditions, a church leader takes on this signifying practice humbly and cautiously, carefully and with a certain resignation. An alert church leader stands to communicate more effectively, as they place less stock in their capacity to ensure successful communication (and thus, to place responsibility for miscarried communication on the deficiencies of others) and extend more concentrated energy toward listening, absorbing, considering what they hear, how they read the situation they’re addressing.
All these points play into the work of this course as we read works that challenge us to consider aspects of signification, and consequences of signification, that conventional treatments of “hermeneutics” soft-pedal — if they consider them at all.
posted by AKMA @ 5:13 pm
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1 commentD. B. Updike, Some Notes on Liturgical Printing,
and the beginning chapters of The Flight from Authority: Religion, Morality, and the Quest for Autonomy. Vol. 1 in the series, Revisions, ed. Alasdair MacIntyre and Stanley Hauerwas. Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981.
posted by AKMA @ 10:06 am
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Comments OffThe plan for the course will be:
Each week, you’ll be responsible for reading one or more items from the reading list. You’ll prepare a response of about 800 words (750 - 1000, that ballpark) and post it to a weblog that I’ll set up; check in and comment on others’ responses. Your response may involve critical reflection on the claims and premises of the work in question, or on implications of the work for ministry – but our conversation, when we meet, should keep in view the implications of the work for ministry as a signifying practice.
At the end of the term, those of you in for full credit should submit a paper of roughly twenty pages (length is not that important; write as long as is required for you to make your point, but it’s unusual for someone to make a persuasive and noteworthy point in a paper fewer than fifteen pages).
Reading list (for starters):
Edward Tufte, Envisioning Information
Scott McCloud, Understanding Comics
James K. Chandler, Harry Harootunian and Arnold I. Davidson , eds. Questions of Evidence (selected essays)
Mark Cousins, ÒThe Practice of Historical InvestigationÓ in Attrdige et al., Post-structuralism and the Question of History
Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish
Michel de Certeau, ÒWalking in the CityÓ and ÒReading as PoachingÓ
Michael Shapiro, “The Constitution of the Central American Other: The Case
of `Guatemala’ “, in The Politics of Representation
Cornelius Castoriadis, “The Imaginary Institution of Society”
posted by AKMA @ 8:07 pm
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