Transcript
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 1: -- with us, a primary paper this morning, given by Dr. David Tracy and two respondents. A response from Mark Taylor of Princeton and Kendra Dean. This is not William O'Brien. This is Kendra Dean from Princeton, here. The format we will follow is that Dr. Tracy will give his paper, and then Kendra
and Mark will each give seven to 10 minute responses, and then we will open the floor to questions. Dr. David Tracy is the Andrew Thomas Greeley and Grace McNichols Greeley Distinguished Service Professor of Catholic Studies and Professor of Theology and the Philosophy of Religion at the Divinity School and the Committee on Social Thought, which has to be the longest title of anyone here.
He has made many, many publications. They include The Analogical Imagination, Christian Theology, and The Culture of Pluralism. And, more recently, a book called On Naming the Present: Reflections on God, Hermeneutics, and the Church. His paper is a wonderful combination of a refreshing approach to the subject, erudition, and constructive
commentary. It's refreshing because given the topic, Globalization and the Media, he manages to talk about it without once mentioning televangelists, fundraising, or the liberal bias of the media. And I think for this alone, he should be credited. It's erudite as everything he does is. And it's constructive in that he talks about both the hazards and the potential of the media
for the church's enterprise. Our first respondent will be Kendra Dean -- Kenda Dean -- who is assistant professor of youth culture and the church here at Princeton Theological Seminary. She has an MA in communication from Miami University of Ohio, an MD from Wesleyan Theological Seminary, and a Ph.D.
from Princeton, here. She's an ordained United Methodist Pastor and author of a book caled The God Bearing Life: The Art of Soul-Tending in Youth Ministry. Mark Taylor is associate professor of theology and culture here at Princeton. His M. Div. is from Union Seminary in Virginia. His Ph.D. from the University of Chicago Divinity School. His many books
include Beyond Explanation: Religious Dimensions in Cultural Anthropology and Remembering Esperanza: A Cultural Political Theology for North American Praxis. He also edited Paul Tillich: Theologian of the Boundaries. So, we'll begin with Dr. Tracy.
TRACY: [I'm?] very happy to be here, and I will confine my remarks to 18 to 20 minutes. And in order to do so, I have taken a larger paper, which my colleagues have been kind enough to read, and spoken, really, of what I consider two examples -- only that -- two examples of the issue of globalization through the mass media and contemporary
theology for the church. The first example is what I think is a positive factor that I think we can -- we theologians and theologically concerned persons and church persons can learn from this recent globalization, specifically in relationship to such media as internet and email and, of course, television and film. And at this -- and the second one is a resource that it seems to me
is present in our Jewish and Christian eschatological and Biblical traditions that may be badly needed by the other side of the role of the media and of globalization through the media in our period, namely the negative side. So, as usual with my work, I try to examine the phenomenon -- in this case of mass media and the problem of globalization as an ambiguous one. Ambiguous meaning that there is both good and
bad, truth and falsehood, and in specifically Christian terms, divine and demonic possibilities. The first, therefore -- the first example is one where I've -- I, at least, have tried to think a long time about -- by reading a lot of the new literature, you might say, like Mark Poster and David Lyons and others on post-modernity and globalization, and a positive factor
as a result. [Right?]. I have tried to defend the notion elsewhere that we live more in a post-modern than a modern age. This is not to -- place to rehearse those familiar arguments back and forth. However, this much needs emphasis at the moment. This admittedly often [encolored?] category, post-modern, means for the purposes of this lecture the emphasis across the disciplines and in culture more generally
on the categories the other, the different, especially the marginally other. For that -- reasons and theology as elsewhere, the issues of otherness, difference, marginality, and social location issues on gender, race, and class need to be addressed and are being addressed. This insistence on the other and the different implies ethically and ethics of resistance in much postmodern thought, secular and religious,
to the leveling effects that mass media can have. Post-modernity is, after all, first an ethical or cultural category, and increasingly a religious and theological category. However, it is also a social scientific category trying to describe our present society as it makes a transition from an industrial to an information age. And, as such, it helps to interpret many major social and
cultural changes occurring at the end of the twentieth century. On that reading, the process of globalization of all social systems from the economy through culture, politics, and even religion is deeply influenced by the extraordinary pace of technological change, especially in such phenomena as the mass media. We may indeed already be involved in a global culture, certainly in the sense
that there is instantaneous communication -- or there can be -- of anything that occurs across the culture. Across the globe. And we may indeed, especially in a society like the United States, be moving from a post-industrial, even late modern society to a post-modern information society, even -- it is claimed by many -- economically, by about 40 years. It is impossible in this brief
space to discuss all the intense conflicts of interpretation on the role of communications in post-modernity, and how these social scientific debates on technology and globalization relate to the theological debates on otherness and difference, though I believe they do. In my own use of the language, which is not merely my own, when one says postmodernity, one is referring basically to the shift to the information age, the technological age.
When one says postmodernism, one was referring to all these intellectual movements that emphasize otherness, difference, and then possibilities of participation. What fascinates me -- it's the technological reality that allows for new forms of participation that seems to be uniting intellectually with the emphasis on otherness and difference. I shall confine myself in this first section, therefore, to one example,
merely one, of how these new technologies and the attendant social world may be related to the widespread social and intellectual recovery of religion as manifestation, as I shall call it, or participation. This is a first, and it seems to me, entirely positive sense of hope provided by the new [redality?]. This emphasis on diversity, difference, and otherness surprisingly meets -- and this is what
fascinates me -- a new technologically informed sense of new possibilities of participation on the global scale. This sense, in its turn, has given rise to a new sense that human beings may participate more fully than was the case in the mechanistic or industrial age, since this is cybernetic in nature. But notice not the romantic, the organic attempt to return
to nature. If you have the division, the basic division so many make between the organic models of the relationships -- romantics being the greatest, like Wordsworth or Emerson or many others, and then the mechanistic models, and now the cybernetic model. This new form of participation made possible by the cybernetic model is what is fascinating, because it may provide possibilities of communication that are -- that certainly
are not present in the mechanistic models and need not be a romantic return to nature, which doesn’t, to me, seem to get us very far. This sense, then, may give rise to a new sense of the possibilities of human participation in nature, in the cosmos, in the emerging global community, and at the limit, for those who are theologically informed, of the [divine?]. I'm very fascinated,
actually, by the work -- Max Stackhouse and others on covenant, precisely as -- seeming to me to be cybernetic-like imagery, as distinct from some other images, like subsidiarity or communion or Catholicity, even, and has -- having enormous possibilities for this period. Whether you read it as modern or postmodern in that case doesn't matter. But it's covenant that allows for these cybernetic-like relationships. Seems
to me it might end up being one of the great Christian contributions to the contemporary discussion. Now, this new participatory sensibility, at once surprising and heartening, deserves attention from theologians' concern to understand the shifting religious sensibilities of many in our period. This sensibility can be seen most clearly, perhaps, in the ecological movement, which is based, after all, on a sense of radical human participation
in nature, the cosmos, and often the divine, and the new postmodern -- that is, ecological or holistic understandings of the natural sciences themselves, so-called postmodern science. Tillman and [Foray?] and many others. The natural sciences in our day, at least the postmodern, usually ecological sciences or holistic, are singular among the contemporary disciplines for also highlighting -- notice not just difference and otherness, as any postmodern position
will do. [I mean?], that's standard. But also, a new felt sense of participation of ourselves in nature. Ecological science, for example, is ahead of most other postmodernist cultural thought in defending both otherness and difference -- and in that sense diversity including radical biodiversity -- and a sense of participation. And it's curiously harmonious
with much postmodern technological communications culture in this double insistence on both otherness and difference and participation. If, therefore, radical diversity is also grounded, as it may well be in the new situation, in a new sense of participation -- I repeat, neither romantic nor mechanistic -- of ourselves in nature, paradoxically often encouraged by modern participatory technology
like the internet or email or television and the news service, then this becomes an occasion to recover too often forgotten and [indeed?] marginalized resources in the Western Christian theological tradition, which deserve renewed attention by all serious thinkers, especially -- and this is the example I'll end this first one with -- religion as manifestation. Maybe I'll summarize this next part, if you don't mind. I and others have tried
to suggest that there are two basic distinctions in religion, and it gets very -- can get complicated but need not. The most basic one that Eliade and [Lecure?] and I and others have tried to work out is the distinction between religion as manifestation and religion as participation. Religion as manifestation means the -- involves for the moment -- let me just give this part of it -- involves a sense of our deep participation in the cosmos, in
nature, in God. Think of how for the ancients, with the very notion of reason -- unlike the moderns -- the very notion of reason is a deeply participatory notion. Logos for the Greeks or intellectus for the Medieval. That is to say human being is a microcosmos for any ancient thinker, so that we try to understand ourselves since we are intrinsically participatory in and related to the whole, the cosmos, we're
understanding the whole -- especially therefore intelligence becomes such a key for all ancients. And for the Christians, love becomes such a key, right? Moreover, with the Christian emergence of the idea -- Judaism before it, of course -- but the specifically Christian or Christological idea of we are also not only microcosmos but image of God. It also becomes our clue to understanding God. So, these manifestation possibilities, present, of course,
in rituals, in sacraments, in early -- in the Patristic and medieval period, what is their chief problem? How can you have a Creator God and not have that God outside this sense of felt participation in the cosmos and the whole, right? Not redemption, notice. That's -- becomes a chief problem later, especially with the Reformation. But Creation. Now, it's this that I'm suggesting -- this new sense
of participation in the media may give us a new chance to recover aspects of -- which seems to me we badly need to recover, and without making that romantic. That's what fascinates, because of course you can recover it if you want to be a great new romantic and return to nature in that sense. The other form of religion is, of course -- begins in the West with the great prophetic religions -- Judaism, Christianity, Islam -- with
proclamation. And notice proclamation always begins -- the prophets -- with a sense of interruption. A word that proclaims and interrupts, breaks some of these bonds of the self and nature and the cosmos through this Word of God that judges and promises and now focuses one's attention on history and ethics in history, right? Now, you could put the same thing more theologically as sacrament and Word.
Or the great innovation when Luther made Word or preaching into sacrament, when you have -- and it seems to me a great deal of contemporary theology, especially liberation political theory but not solely -- is an attempt, as [Butierette?] says, to bring together the mystical and the political -- as I prefer to say, to bring together manifestation and proclamation. Or, the meditative, the participatory, the manifesting, and at the extreme, the mystical. And the prophetic,
and at the extreme, the apocalyptic. And this sense, it seems to me, is now back among us, and can be aided by and learned from the non-romantic cybernetic model of modern communications. Because if you suddenly have human beings with the real possibility of being in instantaneous communication, you have possibilities that were never foreseen before of
participation with one another, and at the limit -- especially through the new physics and so forth -- of the cosmos. And, I would say -- [this is?] what I've learned most from my colleagues -- through covenantal thought with God. OK, so that's the first [that I?] think -- positive sign, theologically. The second, and I'll send with this, is the proclamation side. That is to say, the prophetic side of interrupting a word of judgment and promise
and then of hope. I've tried to suggest here -- too briefly, I know -- and elsewhere some positive possibilities of new participation made real by modern communications. At the same time, as you well know, there are familiar problems set by modern communications. The first might be called the difficulty, for how do we have now a public realm -- that is to say the realm where all discuss polity issues?
How can we have that? I mean, that was developed -- that whole notion of public space, public realm, especially in our United States culture, of course, by the founders. They all assumed there is such a realm where, despite all other differences, everyone can come together to discuss these issues, the issues of values, [ends?] for society. But what if only technical reason were allowed? That is to say, all you could discuss are the
means, the technical means to achieve a given end, but it no longer seems possible to discuss the end, because things seemed too pluralistic and too virtual in terms of the communication. The mass media. Notice again it's ambiguous. It makes it both far more positive, the reality, and far more difficult. And that's been discussed -- the problem of technical reason. The second difficulty is that the participation
in community, which I've just tried to praise as a chance to recover aspects of manifestation, present through modern communications may be merely virtual. That seems to me to be the great issue there. What do we mean by virtual community? What surely that means, at least -- it is very difficult in such a situation where you have a discussion of means but not ends
-- technical means including communication means -- and a virtual community, but not yet an actual global community, and allow the wisdom and traditions of particular communities to be heard. Very difficult. That's why I say however they're heard, like the Christian -- this case, let me take again the example of covenant -- you have to translate it,
and you have to translate it from the particular Christian and Jewish communities on covenant to this wider virtual community and see if it can still function, as I think it can. These difficulties are familiar and have been treated by many, many analysts. I myself have written elsewhere a lot on the public realm and its difficulties. However, what I'd like to describe is a -- the proclamation possibility that I've worked for this paper is less familiar and, I think, more
perplexing. It is -- it starts with the thought that time is what changes us all. As Bessie Smith, that wonderful singer said, unless you're really weak, money and fame won't change you, really, fundamentally. But time will take you on. And if you shift your sense of time, you're shifting yourself, right? And if you no longer can have the narrative continuity that time
once had for many people when you have a situation of instantaneous communication, that's going to have difference. That's going to make differences. And when Christian theologians try to think of time, as Christians, I think they usually try to think eschatologically, which is [what?] -- I've been driven to eschatology much more than I expected to. It is time that changes us all, and in a situation of global instantaneous communication, it is very difficult to see
how an understanding of time, including the theological one, can easily maintain the continuity that is involved for a community -- an actual, not virtual community of communication. All the work on how the Christian communities, for example, depend upon the common narrative that forms the common community, as do other communities, right? But then, what do you do in the situation where all particular communities
are now communicating. For that reason, I would like to turn my attention to focus on the possible import of explicitly eschatological images, and indeed proclamation images as interruptive of instantaneous communication [and this?] sense of time by bringing this other sense of eschatological time, a break in the leveling of time through an acknowledgement, though eschatology, of the
always already not yet aspect of time, and the emergence therefore of judgment, of threat, of promise, and above all, theologically, of hope. To understand our own situation rightly, one must, of course, expand the cultural horizons of the contemporary Western discussion, which I've been involved in, beyond this awful Western sense of we are the center and Western sense of its own pluralism.
I've written a lot on pluralism, but I've changed to the word -- ugly word, admittedly, but it reminds us of something -- polycentrism, not pluralism. We must do so in order to allow for a new global sense of polycentrism. There are many centers. For there is no longer, in fact, in this new situation, even though the technology emerges there first, a Western -- simply a Western cultural center with margins. There are many centers now, of which
the West is merely one. Moreover, once one drops the Western (inaudible) narrative -- in effect, everything leads to us, and anyone else [is trying?] to be us -- the continuities of that narrative begin to dissolve. And then we may need these profoundly eschatological -- imagery from the proclamation traditions, especially the Reformation and the prophetic -- Biblical prophetic and the Reformation traditions.
And in the technological period -- this is my suggestion here -- shift the interest from text, which I'm usually involved in and most theologians, to image, to eschatological image as also -- it isn't just a word that proclaims and interrupts. It's also images in this image laden culture, right? You need to also find eschatological images that can break and interrupt.
Or what I'll call images as fragments, as saturated and erratic, especially the marginal fragment that recalls forgotten, even repressed memories of the suffering of all the victims of history, as in Mark Taylor's fine work on Esperanza, [I think?]. And the forgotten of our own personal history should be privileged over other images, especially the modern image of celebrity. That's one of the great ones to investigate, in my opinion. Because
if you think even as recently as the late nineteenth century, Nietzsche is always puzzling about the artist, the thinker, the great actors in history and, for a while, the saints. He then, later, for various reasons, dropped saints. But these paradigmatic or classical human beings. What happens when all of them can become merely celebrity? Celebrity is a notion -- [that shift?] -- it [would?] -- shows both -- which shows the possibility and the danger.
I won't go in here, but it can show how -- well, I'll give an example from [my own?] tradition. We await studies, [maybe from?] Judith and others who've worked so well on refugees. But we [work?] studies on -- not just televangelists and so forth, but what happens to the papacy in this new culture? It's quite extraordinary. I mean, no Pope has ever had this. And, of course, he's an extraordinary person in many ways. But
it's a matter of images, and it's a matter of the power of images coming forth, it's -- in a new situation. And it makes things theologically -- or at least ecclesially quite different. OK, I think -- I bet I'm -- I went over time. I hope this is clear enough, that it -- I'm looking, then, as many are, for these eschatological
images that can break and interrupt and call into question and call into judgment this image saturated culture and find images that can do that. And we all have in our mind, I think, certain images from the media, all of us. I mean, I -- well, I was born in '39, but who can forget that image of the little boy, Jewish boy, surrendering to the Nazis? Or that extraordinary image from Vietnam of the young girl with napalm running down,
or the image of the Berlin Wall falling? I mean, the role of images in our minds -- or what was happening with Princess Diana's funeral, I mean as a global event. What was that all about? Or, I repeat, what is happening in this new situation with the role of the Pope, not only in the Catholic Church but more widely. These are the things that I think provide possibilities, both for new resources of manifestation and new need for radical
proclamation. Thank [you?].
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 1: Mark Taylor.
TAYLOR: It's an honor for me to respond to a former teacher who now is colleague, but who, after reading his paper, I am convinced, remains teacher. So, [I -- no?] -- how, then, might theology engage the world of global mass media communications? Let me put the question that directly and then try to summarize very briefly Professor Tracy's position, because I believe his paper gives us some profound guidance, and it will then set the stage for my critique.
As I have heard him, the position goes like this: theology need not step aside, as in [Benyoning's?] words, "wizened and best kept out of sight." To the contrary, theology has a special relationship to the complex constellation of images that make up mass communications. Theology's contribution becomes clearest to me as I read Tracy when he described mass media's major temptation, [one that?] theology needs to redress.
So, we might ask what is the temptation of mass media, and what of theology's mode of address? The temptation -- indeed, the central temptation, as he puts it, is a drive to systematize, to take aim at totality. Along with modernity, the mass media is tempted to efface difference and distinction. It works to create a kind of sameness, or at least enough problematic homogeneity that a problematic similarity prevails.
Perhaps, to me, the example of this is maybe the Benetton commercial that has all the cultures of the world represented among the children, yet they're all dressed in the same upscale, comfortable, cleanly scrubbed, casual clothing -- of course, with a 1-800 number in the corner for ordering said -- just as modernity's larger conceptual [archi-tectonics?] are problematic, so the mass media, if it seeks to render present any totality system, also yields to temptation.
This is problematic, as I read him, because when a total system is rendered present by or facilitated by mass media, when difference and distinction are effaced, then properly human communication and dialogue is damaged, a requisite for human life and coexistence. Now, it's this tendency towards totality in mass media that theology might dare to redress. And as I read him, theology does this in two ways.
First, it employs a particular understanding of history, which he calls eschatological, indeed apocalyptic and messianic. This is part of that religion as proclamation that he was summarizing for us. By eschatological, Tracy seems to mean generally interruptive of the totalities that besiege us, and towards which we are tempted. And this interruption might even take the form of destruction of the totalities that are around us at
present. There are special resources for this, but the particular value of this interruption is that it might release the subjugated knowledges, to use Foucault's languages, by forces of sexism, racism, classism, and economic exploitation. When this is done, we make real -- and the implied ethics of resistance that is implicit in a post-modern sensibility. But a second way of redress for theology
is that it frees certain redemptive images from repressed traditions to be these eschatological, imagistic, powerful modes of transformation. And here, the [Markham?] discourse, which is open and non-closed, is preferred by Tracy to the continuous narrative of Luke. Tracy's version of the Markham eschatological apocalyptic project, which interrupts totalities and emblazons
marginalized peoples, fragmantic image into the chaos of images of mass communications, is, interestingly, a kind of renewal of that other, first mode of religion that he talks about: religion as participation. So, what I find particularly interesting here -- and perhaps I'm engaging in my own synthetic moment here -- is that the advocacy of an eschatological, proclamatory move for the marginalized, for the victims of history, actually becomes an occasion for not only
resisting totality but for creating a more radical experience of the whole wherein a religion of participation can occur. This means that for all of Tracy's worries about a mass media system being tempted to totalizing impulses, its global reach across differentiated worlds stimulates anew a radical sense of participation in nature and in some notion of the whole. And hence, the internet becomes an
an example of this. In short, mass media communications, though tempted to totality, might both save their positive features -- this global reach which maximizes participation -- and yet be in need of theological interruption by the images that come from marginalized peoples' lives and is lifted up by texts like the Gospel of Mark. Now, I've taken time to summarize Tracy's framework
because I think it's valuable for us to hear as we embrace the question of globalized mass media, and just to respect the contours of dialogue, to see if I heard right what we had presented to us. This makes my questions, I think, all the more important, and I have three major ones. And they're actually clusters of questions, so I'm going to summarize them in order to respect our time limit. I was actually never told how much time we had. Is it 10 or 15 or something
like this?
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 1: Ten.
TAYLOR: Ten, OK. First question. What exactly is the totality today in question? References to the totality tend to be left, in rather abstract terms, in the paper. And this is fruitfully abstract, enabling important generalizations. But I think it would be fruitful to get more specific about the totality. What, precisely, is the totality that menaces us and to which or by which mass media communications is
tempted? Is it the sheer fact of a rendered totality that's problematic? I don't think so. After all, if it was a life giving kind of totality, it might only increase radical participation and be affirmed by Tracy. No, I'd like to suggest that the totality that menaces us is a totalizing force, one that often usurps and dominates, that creates victims of history. That totality is a problem.
Tracy hints at this, I think, when he talks in the part of the paper he didn't give about a totality that colonizes and colonizes [life worlds in Habermassian?] tones. So, I'm asking for a more empirical description of the totality. And I would like to suggest -- and I can't go into it in detail right now -- that the leveling, homogenizing totality, the complex whole that both serves and menaces us today -- and Tracy is aware of both, the ambiguity
again -- is a theorizable one that can be named corporate globalism, a global reach for the whole powered by the interests of capital, circulating among and still shrinking, and a still shrinking global elite. The totality towards which we are tempted is, in fact, an ever expanding hegemony of trans-national monied interests. Global corporatism is described
by many sources -- and I'm going to skip over this part, but I point out that its characteristics include a certain ideology of corporate libertarianism, where the liberties of the corporation are primary, and this is, in fact, grounded in law in the United States and in the construction of the World Trade Organization in the present. It includes, secondly, a concentration of wealth in an ever shrinking elite operative in the United States, which I believe could also be documented. I'm listing these, I'm not arguing them, so
we'll see where we are on these. There is also a growing gap between the elite and the poorer groups in the United States and globally that is part of corporate globalism today. And by the way, even the internet replicates this growing gap. I read in Continental Airlines on the way over here a Business Week article about how the mammoth -- truly mammoth corporations now don't believe the internet or the web is safe for their competitive relationships. And so, they're setting up their own quicker modes of
computer communications, which, of course, takes millions, sometimes billions of dollars to set up as an alternative to the kind of rough and ready internet work, you know, that I do or that many of us do, perhaps. Maybe some of you have access to these others, I don't know. There is also an increasing resort of capitalist systems to carceral power to control restless and disenfranchised populations within a disparate global order.
And then finally, there's -- perhaps most important to this session -- the subversion of communication through control of the mass media. All of that literature on how few corporations actually control the mass media. A Time-Warner executive said by the end of the century, he expects about a half a dozen major mega-corporations to be those who control and own our mass media in the United States. And this is very difficult to talk about in the mass media.
I mean, even on a radio show once, I was told in a commercial break, "Don't discuss anymore the issue of the ownership of the mass media in the United States, because the manager won't like it." That's just one example. Bill Moyers has his own stories about what he can and cannot air on even public television that many of us in the intellectual class often take to be reliable data. Well, second question -- that's the first one. And what is the nature of the totality, especially if the totality can be read as
an affirmation and facilitation of a hegemonic totality that works on so many levels in our lives today? Second point, and I'll be even -- I'll be brief about these last two. I think I'm less optimistic than is Professor Tracy about postmodernism's embrace of difference and otherness as being the route to an ethics of resistance, especially if what we need to resist is a totality that has the character,
I suggested, of a hegemonic totality of corporate globalism. True, postmodernism is an explosion of repressed people's arts and dreams of resistance towards life, and you can trace that historically -- postmodernism back into the artistic worlds of bohemian culture and jazz and the blues and the voodoo aesthetics in the history of U.S. artistic and intellectual life. But the problem is that corporate globalism, especially through the media and through educational institutions,
easily and routinely co-opts postmodern celebrations of difference to create a sense of diversity that often hides the kinds of structural repression that I summarized as characteristic of the totalizing hegemony. I would like to say to Tracy that something more is needed to guard postmodernism from this co-optation, because simply the celebration of difference does not give rise to the kind of resistance we need. Otherwise, I'm also puzzled
why the images of the marginalized get privileged by Professor Tracy, as he says they do. Why, among the whole polyglot and infoglot of postmodern image making in the mass media communication must the marginalized ones be privileged, as he says, above all others? I think it's because the totality feared is not just totality in general. It is a totality that creates marginalized victims of history. I'd like to see that said.
For Latin America, there comes this critique of postmodernism. Martin Hopenhayn from Chile says it's more attractive, often, to talk about diversity than the market, about desire than the maximization of profits, about play than conflict, about personal creativity than the private appropriation of the economic surplus, about global communication and interaction than the strategies of transnational companies to promote their goods and services. And so,
the media and globally supported educational institutions easily serve up a postmodernism that is not, it seems to me, what Professor Tracy intends, but a postmodernism that is a kind of anarcho-capitalism, a play of images that actually glosses the working -- the structured working of devastating capitalism. I'd like to know how we name and resist this distortion of the postmodernism that Professor Tracy endorses. Finally, and even more briefly,
I like that powerful line in Tracy's conclusion which, unfortunately, he did not read, calling us to "blast the marginalized fragments of the past, alive with the memory of suffering and hope." Blast, I take it, into the public realm. Blast into the media communications constellation of images. I'd like to think that this, as a challenge to theologians, is a call to recognize that, in fact, this is already going on by
oppressed peoples and their lives. The images are alive in African and Caribbean diaspora movements in the U.S., alive in indigenous movements in the Americas, especially in Mesoamerica, among the Zapatista movements. And these are resistant to corporate globalism and give us a new wave of proceeding. Theologians also will be challenged then to embrace an alternative media: the people's video network, underground newsletters and
videos. We need to embrace those instead of just those served up by corporate globalism. And then, finally, theologians, I think, can choose to work within a new architecture for global political economy, other than the brutal corporate globalism we have today. The choice is not just between corporate globalism and an isolationist nationalism, as many voices in corporate globalism today teach. There is not only a third way. There are fourth, fifth, sixth,
and multiply more ways toward a new, non-isolationist, fully, radically participatory global order. It's one that I hope Princeton Seminary can dream and that I hope that World Vision can envision. But we will have to resist corporate globalism, that hegemonic totality, in order to enact that dream, to envision that hope. And from our situatedness, in the movements that exist in tension with that order,
we can begin to dream new theology and work new ways. Dr. Tracy has both helped our movements toward such a future and left open some questions that need further discussion. Thank you.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 1: Professor Kenda Dean.
DEAN: Wow. It's a great loss that Professor O'Brien could not be here. I understand that his wife had a stroke, is that right? And we should keep them in our prayers, I think, this day. I'm privileged to be here. I'm privileged to breathe the same air as the people on this panel here. So, I had planned to be sitting where you are this morning, and so I chose, in looking at this paper, not to get out of my own way. So, I should say that I'm going to organize my remarks around some questions that came up
as I was reading this -- and that these questions also come from my own perspective, which is that of a Christian from the tribe called Methodist, and also as one whose primary research commitments embrace the relationship between youth, church, and culture. These are entities that you just can't study in their current forms without taking into account a global mass media. So, I thought it was interesting yesterday that Roland Robertson, in his discussion of globalization -- or
gloco-lization, which is a term I can see myself now using -- used as his definition of globalization the compression of the world. Now, of course, compression has two connotations, doesn't it? The first, of course, is that the world is smaller. We experience the world as smaller, which is the way he defines it in some of his early work on globalization. But compression also connotes pressure, doesn't it? So, globalization also implies our experience of the world having contents under pressure,
ready to explode if things get above room temperature. I submit that the mass media contributes directly to both of those connotations. And so, let me take just -- I'm going to work around three questions here and hope that it will focus discussion on the part of everyone a little bit later. I, too, wanted to ask some questions around the postmodern emphasis on diversity and otherness that's so much a part of
Dr. Tracy's work here, and others. And the assumption that this gives rise to, what he calls a participatory sensibility, a new and invigorating sense of participation -- I think that there's need to look further at what constitutes the leveling effects that are alluded to here, and is not directly part of this discussion and yet lies behind it in ways that probably merits unpacking. Mark did some of that, and I agree that the
temptation of mass media is to lean towards heterogeneity -- or, I'm sorry, mass homogeneity -- and that one of the jobs of theology is to recover some of that diversity and otherness that postmodernism is open to in some new ways. But not because it makes it marketable, not because it's a way of marketing, but because God's ideal speech situation was, in logos, was radically particular. And so, it's a way of being faithful
in a postmodern context, to recover some of that diversity and sense of otherness. And the totalities that we've talked about, I think, in my own opinion, are embraced but go beyond an economic explanation. Because the leveling that I see taking place not only includes the leveling of religious tradition, but also the leveling of generations, the leveling of information privilege, which are things that we can go into at another
time. But there are a lot of different kinds of leveling going on out there that extend beyond pure economic analysis, I think. Now, that led me to wonder, then: OK, if this radical emphasis on otherness and diversity is out there, which I would agree with in some ways, what is it about that that necessarily creates a sense of participation? Because one of the things I see in the images that are out there among the
mass media is not the privileging of the images of the marginalized, but it -- what I read as a privileging of the images of power, where even on television -- you know, as diverse as we try to make our markets, the fact is what is aired is what makes money. And so, just how is it that diversity and otherness inspires the sense of participation on the part of others, especially because otherness can also inspire fear and hostility
and withdrawal. So, there's an ambiguity there that I'm interested in unpacking a little bit more. I do think that there are lots of new forms of participation available to the marginalized. And I count youth around the world among the marginalized. And it's interesting that when I talked -- I think adults, basically, are less with it on the technology thing, that -- anybody got a fourth grader at home, you know -- than the youth are. When I talk to adults about globalization, some of this, I get, "Huh?"
You talk to a 17-year-old, they go, "Duh!" You know? "This is -- where have you been?" And some of our frantic [dismay -- be a?] sense that we need to catch up. But that participation is ambiguous, because a lot of studies on media also show that media contributes to passivity. It's true that children will choose watching TV over playing with their peers. And I think the brain waves on somebody watching TV are equivalent to somebody in a coma or something like that, you know? So, there is
a body of research that needs to be taken into account when we talk about participation that says something about the passivity inspired by mass media as well as participation. All that said, I've got a hunch that Dr. Tracy's right, that there is something radically participatory that's new that's available that both the church and theology need to take seriously. And, really, the prime piece of evidence that I think we could all point to is the ecological
movement. You know, 95% of American youth believe in God, but almost all of them recycle, you know? So, there's something about the ecological movement which I read as a secular eschatology, as a secular doctrine of hope that says wait a minute, there is something that's being inspired by this otherness. There is a kind of participation that's available. And so, I think you're onto something here, recovering the tension between those religion -- the religion of manifestation and the religion of
proclamation. That tension may be key to recovering at least one group of the marginalized, the youth, for Christianity. And this is a generation whose consciousness, not just their interest, but their very consciousness has been shaped by their exposure to the mass media. Their participation has been marginalized in culture in some ways, and now there's a mass media available. Man, if you've got a mouse, you don't need a mentor, you know? You can get that information without any adult
being there to serve as a gatekeeper. Not just true of youth, but true of -- I've read studies of media going into rural cultures, for example, in Afghanistan, where -- these are pre-modern, in some ways, pre-literate cultures. And James [Chesborough?] and [Kathleen Jamison?] and others are arguing that, well, you know, the image, not the word, is the primary unit of literacy these days, OK? And if that's the case, then you've got these cultures who now have access to TVs and
technology and computers -- they're just sort of skipping over literacy. So, why worry about being literate with the Word if image is the primary unit of literacy for postmodernity? So, I think the new media consciousness does relate to participation. If we look at young people as an example of that, we see that they're very understanding of truth as radically connected to participation. Truth is ambiguous, the rules
aren't all laid out there for them. You learn it by doing it. It's a personal experience. Experience is privileged. It's very fertile ground for theology, in part because this is a view of truth in which truth happens. It's not something you believe. It's an event, OK? And theology has a lot to offer here, particularly if we do as Dr. Tracy suggests and return to some of the pre-modern resources of our own tradition. We have a vast interest among young people in icon, in
mysticism, in sacrament. These are forms of religious expression available in the Christian tradition, at least, that do preserve the tension between manifestation and proclamation. And there's something there that needs to be looked at more closely, particularly because of the role of image in the new literacy. And I need to say that -- I don't know how many people know Princeton well, but if it is true that the image is something that
needs to be taken seriously by theology as well as by mass media, then churches like Nassau Church are in big trouble. You ever been in the -- got in the sanctuary of Nassau Presbyterian Church? Not a single picture in the whole place. Got some pretty words up front. Words. What's wrong with this picture? Anyway, another story. OK, let me just jump ahead here to my next question, which is related to my last question. In preparing for this response, I went back to some of the background
that I had from my Ph.D. program, introducing me to Dr. Tracy's work. Tried to get straight some of these categories that I might be asked to actually articulate here. And among other things is the discussion of various publics. OK, now, as we talk about the virtual world, here's the question that comes to mind. Would it be possible that the Mass Media is creating a virtual public? OK? A fourth public, in addition to the worshipping church -- the congregation of the church
in addition to the academic world of theology in a world -- in addition to the way theology addresses society in practical ways? Is it possible that virtual reality -- does it require a virtual theology? I don't know. But I do think it's possible that there might be a fourth function of theology, a fourth mode of reflection that may be out there being developed and is probably coming from some of these marginalized communities, which are discovering a new sense of expression
through the mass media. Now, I need to say that I think the verdict is still out on that, because there's plenty of information out there which suggests that media, mass media, destroys publics, does not create them, in the sense that publics often also function as communities. And it elevates individualism on a mass scale, if you can wrap your mind around that. And it tends to reduce interpersonal interaction. The hyper-specialization of marketing
reduces the amount of common ground, even among consumers. [Sharon De Los Parks?] has argued eloquently that the loss of the commons in American public life is very damaging to a sense of responsibility for one's neighbor, and that the media is partly responsible for -- in their hyper-specialization -- for the loss of common ground in American communities. On the other hand, for the church to assume that there might be a fourth
public, a virtual public maybe, in which the church is called to be present -- that has some intriguing possibilities. I know of a church in Seattle, for example, that takes some of its budget devoted to, I think, college ministry, and they actually pay a couple of college students over the summer -- or maybe they're seminary students, because they're people whose theology they're fairly confident of -- and they pay these kids to go online, into those religious chat rooms, for the mere purpose of inserting
some decent theology into the discussion, OK? And this is just a way of the church beginning to participate in that one small slice of that virtual world. Now, this is a public that is not created, if it is created at all -- is not created by market niche-ing. It's created, I think, by a change in what David Tracy suggests, in the concept of time, OK, which affects the kind of epistemology that goes on in people who
are shaped by media. It's a new way of knowing that may in fact suggest a distinct way of knowing about God. It's non-linear, it's image driven, it's ambiguous, it's subjective, and it's participatory. It's a form of rationality not well addressed by the church, although indeed, we do have some of our pre-modern resources that we might turn to in that. Sherry [Turkle?] has argued that computers have formed a new form
of consciousness based on fragmentary images rather than sustained narratives. That's kind of interesting if we've got communities that, by definition, are based on narratives. What do you do now that you've got virtual communities based on this new fragmentary kind of narrative? The rules have all changed. And I'd suggest, by the way, that the Pope uses these images pretty well. I mean, the Pope is very well loved by Catholic young people. These are people who are, you know, media savvy. And the Pope is no fool when it comes to technology on this.
In fact, the latest encyclical just -- what, it was two weeks ago -- was made available through the internet. So, this virtual community has some things that it may teach us about another public that we may have overlooked, and that even affects the way we learn. Multivalent learning is very common. If you've got kids in school, you probably know that they actually can do their homework with their headphones on, the TV going, and the computer on, all at the same time. I don't know how that happens, but they do that. And we are still teaching Sunday school with a
flannel board Jesus. What's wrong with this picture? This would raise questions, then, for further discussion about what would be normative to a theology appropriate to a virtual public, and even whether it's worthy of further discussion as we consider where this is going to lead us. I think I will close with that so that others can participate.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 1: We have 30 minutes, but I wondered if -- Dr. Tracy, if you would like to give a five minute brief response, or --
TRACY: I think probably the audience would like to talk. I just want to say a deep thanks to both of these papers, which both instructed me and lead me to some of the questions I had already thought of and some I had not, and I'm very thankful. I took very good notes.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 1: Good.
TRACY: And it will show up in the -- I'd be happy to say more, but it seems to me we've all gone a little long, and maybe the wider --
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 1: OK.
TRACY: -- number of voices should be heard.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 1: OK, thank you. What are your questions, then? Dr. Robinson?
ROBINSON: I find it such a provocative (inaudible) [mainly?] in the best sense of the word provocative, [and it made me?] think [meta?], so to speak -- [a few more?] pages, [but?] (inaudible) [all I can do, because?] I would like to say so much but I want to give other people a chance -- is to simply go through [like a gunfight?] series of questions and comments. So, excuse me for the speed with which I do this (inaudible)
first of all, I have some considerable difficulty with the use of the adjective cybernetic. I have difficulty there because my strong impression (inaudible) discipline of cybernetics [as some sort of?] paradigm cutting across the social and the physical sciences was that it became very strong, [beginning in the?] 1930s [and was just a?] -- very much -- particularly until the 1960s. In other words, it well
precedes and [has?] virtually nothing to do with the way in which, for example (inaudible) the word cyberspace. I mean, basically, cybernetics, I always thought of and used in my own work as having primarily to do with the relationship between information and energy. Secondly, I find it puzzling, although I don't object to it -- but I find it puzzling that somebody should say in a public context
-- but maybe that's my disciplinary problem, even though I think of myself as a multi-discipline person -- I find it puzzling that somebody should be so enthusiastic in using the word postmodernism and postmodernity. Because in the circles in which I move and the books that I read, the journals that I read, the [joke?] is that postmodernity has come and gone. It lasted about 10, 15 years, and [it's been?]
[effaced?]. How has it been effaced? It's been effaced by the so-called global [edge?], to put it [crudely?], by globalization in the most comprehensive sense -- that globalization, in a sense, explains the existence of what was called and apparently still is called in some circles postmodernity. There is [a lot more?] -- thirdly, the point [which emerged?] particularly with respect to the second commentator has to do
with the ecological domain, as it were. I think of the ecological concerns for the modern period as primarily back to nature romanticism. Now, the irony is -- well, I don't think it's an irony -- but the irony, I assume, must be, at least for Professor Tracy, that, in fact, this -- what I would call romanticism is, in fact, promoted and facilitated by what?
By the modern forms of electronic media and communication. So, I think this is, perhaps, the greatest [difficulty?] you're having (inaudible) [really stark dimension?]. Incidentally, I agree very much with the idea that our major problem, theologically and in other ways, is [the breakthrough to?] image-saturated world. [So?], finally, the point which was [brought upon by?] the second commentator (inaudible) was the question
of can we (inaudible) now, I don't myself believe and I don't see the evidence for this massive swell [or sweep?] of sameness which people seem to be taking for granted. As anybody who attended by lecture yesterday -- it's clear that I could not believe, [so -- it's?] changed my mind so quickly in 24 hours or so. My -- I would [quickly?]
draw attention to something that is very evident in the mass modern global media. And whether we like it or not, whether we think of it as a form of gross commercialism, as a cynical move, the fact that it -- that such global media as CNN, BBC World, Sky Television, and the
company or agency whose name I forget which Rupert Murdoch runs in Asia --
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 1: STAR.
ROBINSON: -- and others --
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 1: STAR, [I think?].
ROBINSON: STAR -- that all of these stations, to varying degrees -- but all of these stations attempt -- systematically, maybe cynically -- to be (inaudible) not to be global. Why is it, for example, that if you (inaudible) any country, you watch CNN, and every few minutes, particularly in the place which is taken by advertising in the United States but not by advertising in
Hungary or in Austria or in Brazil or wherever -- is taken up by talking about the local holidays, by something seemingly of interest to the local population. And I think that tendency to combine the global with the local is increasing. [And I think because it's seen?] to be profitable. Let's not make any special -- give
any special (inaudible) to these global media for doing that. And the same applies to this great emphasis upon global corporatism. [I mean, global?] corporatism may want to, may wish to homogenize the world, but it's not in their interest to do this. And that's why they don't do it. That's why they sell products in different ways to different markets. That's what the very notion of micro-marketing means. That's
what the world global means in schools of business study and so on and so forth. So, in fact, global corporations and to an extent global media do promote diversity. It may well be not the kind of -- what I would put in heavy quotation marks -- we would like to see in the way of authentic diversity. And I don't think [there's such?] a possibility [of a thing?] (inaudible) authentic diversity [that?] some people
may believe in such a notion -- [though there is a quick concession?] (inaudible) all of which I could elaborate on at [great length?].
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 1: Thank you very much. Would anyone like to comment on any one of Professor Robinson's four --
TRACY: No, I think it would be a wonderful beginning of [a?] much larger discussion. Your work is very important on these [issues?]. Perhaps I -- just say one comment on postmodernity and postmodernism. It seems to me that as the distinction is ordinarily used in at least both communications work and in cultural work, it's not a bad phrase to
have in mind. I have no particular interest in promoting it or keeping it or anything like that. But I -- what I like about it and what seems to me important about it is precisely what you're -- you have emphasized, too, under notions of diversity and difference and otherness. And so, I think if there were agreement on that substance, I have very little interest in defending any particular descriptive word for that new substantive global reality.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 1: OK, thank you. Yes?
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 2: I would like to suggest that -- or at least I need more clarity on this term participation, because I'm picking up on two senses of it. And to -- with -- related to that, two senses of otherness. I live in China, most of the last 10 years, and I've watched Chinese television, [and I do?] look at the advertisements and so on. One of the images I think is so telling of what you were mentioning, David, is the young man that stood up against the cannons in Tiananmen Square
as a prophetic image.
TRACY: Yes.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 2: But that's precisely where I'd want to look at the two notions of participation. And I like Mark Taylor's focus on the -- a kind of superficial difference that the monolithic media is attending to. In China, all the time, we have the minorities dancing, the -- and as if to say that -- see? The Chinese government, the monolithic government is saying, "We're paying attention to the minorities. They're participating. See, here they are. They're dancing, they're doing their circus act."
It bothers me. And so, we're attending to difference and we're -- it's that wonderful culling of the differences by the monolith itself. That's a -- calling it diversity, that's a kind of otherness that the larger corporations are celebrating as if to say we can do that. But I think the suggestion of -- and you could say that they're participating in the larger whole, but it's almost a buy off. And I think there's another sense of participation that you're suggesting, which is the more Christian one that talks about the
individual, like that young man standing up against the monolith, and being other in the sense of other agent. I think there's a sense of participate, otherness as diversity which doesn't mean agency. Then there's a sense of otherness as participative, which means I am an independent agent. And so, I think there's two senses of participation or two senses of otherness that are being discussed.
TRACY: Very helpful. I took one of Mark's points to be that. I very much like what he did about -- what he said about precisely an emphasis on the proclamatory [and?] the prophetic --
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 2: Yeah.
TRACY: -- including the sense you describe with the extraordinary image of the young man and the tank in Tiananmen Square, is also bringing in participation or manifestation. It's precisely the tension -- I agree with Mark and with you, Diane, if I understand you -- is precisely that that needs to be recovered. In my judgment, in the contemporary -- in contemporary religion, religious -- serious religious thought, theological and religious thought, that's what's happening
across the religions. It -- what fascinates me in the Chinese example, as I mentioned on another occasion, as you know -- reason some of us are trying to study Neo-Confucianism, not only [its?] historical role, important as that is, but as an explicit attempt to bring together the manifestation traditions of Taoism and Shan Buddhism -- and to be sure [that?] proclamatory tradition -- but civil, political tradition of
classical Confucianism. And with some success. If you observe what has -- happening in Judaism now, in the scholarship on Judaism, the shift from the Modern Reform discussion of great figures like Mendelssohn and Cohen, of Judaism as, quote, "the ethical monotheism" to the contemporary discussion where you have [all?] these marginal cabalistic traditions -- before [Sholum?], everyone thought they were just crazy, right? And suddenly,
as Sholum summed it up nicely, they may know something we don't and we'd be wise to listen. And relating that to the new forms of messianism -- Mark was right to pick up -- I'm saying messianic and apocalyptic because the more interesting postmodern thinkers, like Derrida, the main thing they're attempting to do right now is to develop an ethic. And the ethic is not merely the implicit ethics of resistance that Mark correctly says I have in this paper -- but the reason I put in messianic and apocalyp-- it's
explicitly an attempt to have a Jewish messianic apocalyptic ethic. That's exactly what [he said?] (inaudible) [by the way?], right? So, I think what you're -- that's what's a -- I'm really taken -- [and tried?] to participate in and contribute to the discussion within Christianity. I take it for granted now that any serious form of Christian theology is ecumenical. Among other things, that means it's both manifestory and
proclamatory, and tries explicitly to maintain that tension, right? The thing that we Western Roman Catholics and heirs and heiresses of the Reform tradition have to learn from the Orthodox, as was suggested by Professor Dean, on icons, for example, on the role of images is something we really need to learn, right? And that will increase that tension and will increase that possibility, I would say.
I think it's especially true and most importantly true, as you were saying in your example, in the political theologies and in the liberation theologies. They're all becoming -- I mean, look at [Moltman?]. Suddenly he discovers the mystical traditions, the creation traditions, the cosmos. Why suddenly does [Gutietev?] and so many others have such interest in -- because it seems to me there's a really acknowledged sense now of this need to
keep this tension alive and of new possibilities, as Professor Dean was saying, to keep it alive. And as you were saying. And I love your -- it's one of the great images of our era, especially -- we don't know his name.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 2: Or what happened to him.
TRACY: Or what happened to him.
DEAN: [Oh, yeah?].
TRACY: All the more powerful. You know, the very ambiguity of [what that is?].
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 2: [Yeah?] (inaudible) it's both.
TRACY: It's both, yeah. And it is participatory. You're quite right. There is a way in which profoundly proclamatory, prophetic images produce participation. Amazing phenomenon. Because the proclamation traditions on the whole begin breaking the forms of participation that were otherwise present. That's why I think anyone in a truly prophetic tradition can't be merely romantic. Romanticism is the pure
form -- is the attempt at a pure form of participation that simply doesn't work. [I mean?], all these things even began with such basic differences, after all, as urban and rural. What are -- who were the pagans for the Jews, the Christians, and the Muslims? The pagani. It's the country people. It's the people that kept alive these ancient traditions that even the cross, the tree that Jesus is crucified on, is also the cosmic tree. You know, all these -- so,
I think we're living -- theologically, I'm saying now, not in terms of a description of the social situation -- but theologically, if you look across religious studies generally and the revisioning of each of the major traditions, and in Christian theology especially, the resources -- I quite agree with Professor Dean -- the resources are extraordinary. And one of the differences of what is called postmodern
thought -- I mean people like Derrida and Julia Kristeva discovering the love mystics and the apophatic mystics, again, and the hidden God of Luther and the covenantal theory of the Reform tradition and so forth, all of these extraordinary resources -- one of the differences, I agree fully, is that postmoderns are far more open to pre-modern resources on the whole than are many moderns. Many moderns have far more of a temptation to -- totality, you're
absolutely right that I have to -- that it should be more concrete. The abstract comment, however, is not inappropriate from [Levinas?], as you know. The difference between a totality and an -- is the differences between a totality and infinity. That is to say, the opposition, which I take to be prophetic, is to any totality system that would close off all other -- infinite -- openness to infinity. Infinity is totally
open and systematic. There's nothing wrong with system. It's just -- does -- must it be a system with a closure? And I agree with Mark, too, very much -- I didn't bring it up in my paper because I simply don't know enough, but I've read studies and it seems to be terribly important, these -- the relationships with global market capitalism and corporate capitalism. Can't be ignored, because it may be the new totality system. Or it may
be a new possibility. I think these covenantal ideas -- I'm really very taken by them as providing genuine possibilities from the Christian perspective -- as I repeat, almost a gift to the present situation of rethinking. And, of course, it would be differently rethought of -- it's thought on explicitly in a -- Christian terms, as it should be. Then you have to know who is God, who is Christ, etc. And
as something, as I've tried to say, that is also made available to a wider public, and to a wider public as something that may really help the situation, because I don't see any other model around at the moment that could provide [notice?] both to critique necessary -- like what Mark is emphasizing -- and the participation possibilities, so --
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 1: Thank you very much. Yes, Judy?
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 3: I come [with a hat?], a long time ago, of being a television producer, both for Turner Broadcasting and public television in Chicago. And one of the things that I think as far as -- and would like [to hear?] as far as image is that image is critical, and it can be profound, and it can be shown. But, to a degree, image remains somewhat simplistic, because it can't
get the whole picture or go into depth. It can't -- or Rwanda, for example, you can see a lot of bodies strewn in a church there and see the genocide that happened, but you can't go into the whys of it. And so many people will take it as, oh, they've been at each other's throats forever and it's just something ethnic. Whereas, it isn't. So, how do you bring about the
image that can bring a blast in understanding, but also come to bring the depth that you can only get --
TRACY: Yes, yes.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 3: -- ultimately through the word, I think, and when you're talking about your youth, in particular. And I think, also, in regard to the money situation, which I've been acquainted with in that, is that they will go where they think that they can get the most sensational image or, you know, get what viewers will look at. For example, I was in Bosnia, and The Today Show and People Magazine came with us and -- to film us
there, because it was -- I was dealing with the women of -- rape as a weapon of war. [I was appointed?] directly to Southern Sudan from there. [Asked and said, well, you?] can come, you know, to The Today Show producer. And she said, "My executive producer will tell me the story isn't there." And yet, what was happening there is -- was just as profound if not more profound than in Bosnia.
DEAN: Bosnia.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 3: But what is given to the public is often times dependent on the money, the advertising, whatever comes with that. So, how do you, you know, differentiate (inaudible; overlapping dialogue) [simplicity?] and the [depth?]?
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 1: Max, you want to follow on that?
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 4: I want to, if I may, jump in and build on that, because you're talking about the story is there. And it struck me that your comment is it's not only the image as a sort of fixed photograph, but a mini-story. And that seems to [me the?] (inaudible) this triggered some things I thought about in other contexts, and I'd like to pose it with your comment to this panel and asking them to respond. It seems to me that two or three
(inaudible) of storytelling -- not only in the news bit that tells a miniature story, but the advertisement. The advertisement is the most expensive minute on TV. And the other one is MTV in the youth culture. MTV and now it's also MTV -- country music MTV, rock MTV, pop MTV. You got five channels of MTV.
And these are niche markets. So, this goes to the question of diversity, as well. And all the corporations are trying to tell, through this miniature moment of advertisement, all the MTV genres are trying to telemarket to a niche audience. This multiplies the possibility. Here's the question. The great theory that dominated the Romantic era
for a while about how to produce an aesthetic event that grabs intellectually, emotionally, was Wagner. The theory of the [gasamp kunst?], that all of the arts are congealed into a particular moment to make a grand, general -- [that?] he did it in four hour and sixteen hour operas. But now, with this media, what we're getting is the condensation of
that into a 30 second bit or a minute and a half story. I don't know what to make of it except this question: I'm [delighted with this, then, panel?]. And we have motifs of Christian ethics and Christian doctrine to deal with this. Do we have yet anything like a Christian aesthetic to deal with
what your point is? I don't think so.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 1: Who would like to --
TRACY: Say -- I would say a word. I don't promise this will be successful, but the book I'm writing on naming God, it starts with the thought that we have so many good resources now on -- in theology and philosophy, on re-healing the separation of practice and theory and on re-healing the separation of passion or emotion and reason. I mean, we could all give several instances. But we don't -- on what I call the third separation, form and content,
or you might say the aesthetic -- and for that reason, the whole book is about that, and I try to defend, as the form presently needed -- what I used here but didn't defend -- the fragment. Because a fragment is both -- you can both -- it fragments in the sense of we live in a -- can live in a more fragmented world than people once did. And at the same time, it's fragment in the positive sense of this openness to infinity, to transcendence,
to God. And it's a search for such fragments, in my opinion. And you can see that across the ideological spectrum. You can see how neo-conservatives -- the example I used before, as you know, is Eliot, that fragments are initially in the wasteland, that which we have to shore up against our ruin. Then they become, in the [quartets?], in both Buddhist and Christian form for Eliot, and Platonic form -- they become these amazing hints and guesses, right? You can see it in the so-called postmodern thinkers,
where they're always interested in fragments, precisely as [excess?] of it [of?] and transgressive towards the present totality in their reading, right? And you can see a development of a theory of a fragment, which is not romantic. Romantics, to be sure, the first to discover the fragment. Schlegel, specifically, the German romantics. But the postmoderns, it's a quite different theory and quite interesting. And then the third, the one I'm developing, relates mostly to people as this
[talk, as you could tell, to the?] -- now, I never mentioned his name. Mark picked it up immediately -- to figures like [Benyuman and Toseemonbay?] -- precisely these notions of what I would call these theological notions of the fragment. [What the?] --
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 4: [You know?], I heard you the other day talk about fragments a little bit, and I have one additional word I want to say. It gives a whole new meaning to parable.
TRACY: Yes, oh, yes. Yes, yes, yes, yes.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 4: Parable all of a sudden becomes paradigmatic.
TRACY: Absolutely. [That's it?]. And, you know, it's very interesting to see how parables are transformed in [the interesting?] way a fragment becomes important. Benyuman is exactly right, in my opinion, that Kafka, that's what he's about. He's turning the parabolic form into a specifically fragmentary [parabolic?] form, or you might say rendering it even more obvious. [My?] --
TAYLOR: As I understood your paper, it was very important to not see fragment and parable as opposed to narrative. That --
TRACY: Right.
DEAN: Right.
TAYLOR: -- in -- that, in fact --
TRACY: Right, right.
TAYLOR: -- narrative is still very important --
TRACY: Absolutely.
TAYLOR: -- in [this?] sense. I actually have some hope that narrative treatments of some of the crises besetting us can be found in mass media communications. But it needs to be said, as I think you pointed out, that mass media communications is resistant to it, or it poses certain obstacles, especially to the placement of narrative or marginalized fragmented peoples with the [resonant?] suffering and the hope there. And
this is relative, I think, to our example of the inspiring image in the Tiananmen Square. We have the inspiring image. Without narrative, though, it tends to be individual image of courageous protest, and it's -- you don’t have a study of the student movement in any depth conveyed to the peoples. Similarly, when sufferers are portrayed, whether refugees or, say, the Haitian peoples when they were fleeing the island of Haiti,
you see privileged the suffering individual victim. You don't see the mobilizing Haitian agent women talking about dictatorship, U.S. policy, structural adjustment issues -- the very kinds of things that would raise questions about the global matrix within which mass media communications is situated. So, I think for the interruption that you talk about so much, we need not only fragmented image, but when it's the image
of the marginalized, the victims of history, all the more we need the relation to a narrative. And that's very difficult to get into the sound bite culture, if you will, of the mass media. Even a 30 minute documentary narrative on, say, Haitian political economy or Rwanda or political imprisonment in this country and other countries is very difficult to get into --
TRACY: Yes, yes.
TAYLOR: -- the matrix of considerations of the global mass media.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 1: Kenda, do you have a comment?
DEAN: Well, just briefly, given the nature of our discussion, I certainly agree that image is a simplistic form of communication, as is a fragment in some ways. But it's also ambiguous enough to be laden with meaning that is very different from the kind of meaning that our usual verbal narratives provide. I think, actually, that these fragments compose a new form of narrative, with lots of gaps. It's kind of like strobe light
narratives, you know? And I think that, given our interest in participation this morning, it's worth pointing out that one of the theories of communication behind image involves the enthymeme, and that is a highly participatory form of communication on the part of the audience. What I mean by that is, you got an image, it's ambiguous. That leaves the audience to supply the referent, OK? Now you got a popular culture out there that's got tons of free-floating religious images, and the assumption
is that, well, the audience is going to supply the referent. Well, you know that there is not enough literacy out there in terms of any kind of religious tradition to make that a very reliable premise at all. And so, in some ways, I think it -- part of the job of theology is to figure out how is it that we can help supply reference to go with these images that are very rich in meaning?
They're simplistic in one way and very complex in another way.
TRACY: Yeah, that's -- mm-hmm.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 1: We are out of time, unfortunately. Thank you very much --
TRACY: Thank you.
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 1: -- to our panel for [the presentation?]. And thank you all very much for your participation, too, yeah.
TRACY: [That's one -- OK?] --
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 1: Thank you.
DEAN: Thank you, thank you,
TAYLOR: (inaudible) [paper to Mexico with me and I?] --
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER 1: (inaudible)