Hi Rob,
I agree. A worthwhile read (
http://www.metamute.org/en/content/how_not_to_be_an_atheist ). There
was Bakhtin where I wanted him to be, and "A Thousand Plateaus"
interpreted aright. And amen to the observation that "old media" has
always been a lot more "interactive" and "non-linear" than new media
apologists care to admit (cf: Ranciere on the emancipated
"spectator"). The review touched on a lot of my interests. Some
thoughts:
1.
There exists an overly facile misconception that language and bodily
affect are at odds with each other. Actually, language is always
already doing more than Saussure observed. Yes, language does operate
in the regime of linguistic signs. But language (even written
language) is always also massively affective, particularly if an
author takes pains to write like Deleuze (or even Derrida, even
moreso Lewis Carroll, Samuel Beckett, Emily Dickinson, even Ronald
Reagan). As if a Robert Louis Stevenson children's poem and a Samuel
Johnson dictionary entry are operating with the same affective agency
simply because they both use the same alphabet.
2.
There exists an overly facile correlation between Christianity and
indo-european subject/predicate language systems. In fact, there is a
robust history of reverent orthodox Christian tradition that goes to
great pains to un-perform and un-say the reduction of God to
language. The God that can be encapsulated in a reductive linguistic
statement ("God does exist" / "God does not exist") is on its way to
calcifying into an idolatrous human invention unworthy of our worship
(or even our adamant disavowal). The God Who Is There eludes such
statements (and such titles like "The God Who Is There", and such
summative sentences as this summative sentence, and such
parenthetical caveats as this parenthetical caveat) and keeps on
trucking (with and/or without our linguistic assent/dissent).
3.
There exists an overly reactionary, historically inaccurate reductive
equating of Christianity and neo-Platonism. Accompanying this
caricature is an overly facile misconception that immanence and
transcendence are at odds with each other, that one must be banished
(or sublimated) for the other to properly ascend. Yet orthodox
Christianity gives us Jesus, the confoundingly incarnate God-man.
Just as any digital medium must ultimately become analog (bits on a
CD must vibrate analog soundwaves in order for our bodies to receive
them), any transcendence must ultimately become immanent in order to
be experienced in any way that "matters" (pun intended). A symbolic,
metaphorical, esoteric "healing" of cancer doesn't do the embodied
cancer victim any good. Transcendence must ultimately become immanent
in order to meet us here. Confound it all (literally, spiritually,
materially).
Rock & Roll Is Just Rock & Roll,
Curt
>On 02/01/10 23:39, Alan Sondheim wrote:
>>
>>
>> How does Rotman deal with Tibetan, Sanskrit, and other alphabetic
>> scripts that are inherent in Buddhism, Jainism, Hinduism, and other
>> non-montheis- tic religions or concepts?
>
>I think this (the lack of comparative religious knowledge) is one of the
>criticisms touched on in the review, which I do recommend sticking with
>until the end.
>
>- Rob.
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