Of
course I jest, and yet such claims have merit. Often we look for the activity
of God, the work of the Spirit, the presence of Christ, in all kinds of places
separate from the very places we tend to hang out. God cannot be here, with me
on the futon typing these words on an old Mac laptop, right? Yet the answer is
God is, and can. However, a theological analysis is still necessary because
although it is certainly true that God works through means, God seems to have
preferred means for working God’s work in the world. It behooves us, given this
reality, to try and tease out precisely what aspects of the development of new
media are especially fertile for the Spirit, which aspects of new media are in
actuality more temptation than opportunity, curse than blessing. Much of the
contemporary discourse around technology tends to either demonize or deify it;
in this situation, subtle awareness of theological implications is as important
as the awareness of media effects we have been trying to cultivate in previous
chapters.
So
let us begin raising awareness of theological implications by attending to a
rather incredible and famous essay by Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the
Age of Its Technological Reproducibility.” Here we have an excellent test case,
because at first look, it seems referencing Benjamin’s work is simply once again
attending to secular cultural analysis rather than the theological canon
proper. But bear with me. Benjamin begins his essay arguing that the work of
art prior to the age of technological reproducibility had an aura because it had a history, and was
embedded within a tradition. This “aura” is “a strange tissue of space and
time: the unique apparition of distance, however near it may be.”[1]
We are familiar with this aura, it is the awe experienced because of the
proximate distance from us of a celebrity, an historic painting, or
architectural wonders. Benjamin, however, sees strange things happening to this
aura in the era of mechanical reproducibility, arising out of “the desire of
the present-day masses to ‘get closer’ to things, and their equally passionate
concern for overcoming each thing’s uniqueness by assimilating it as a
reproduction.”[2]
Already at this point it is clear that careful cultural analysis on Benjamin’s
part is bearing theological fruit. Then he continues, “The stripping of the
veil from the object, the destruction of the aura, is the signature of a
perception whose ‘sense for all that is the same in the world’ has so increased
that, by means of reproduction, it extracts sameness even from what is unique.
Thus is manifested in the field of perception what in the theoretical sphere is
noticeable in the increasing significance of statistics. The alignment of
reality with the masses and of the masses with reality is a process of
immeasurable importance for both thinking and perception.”[3]
Benjamin’s
insight here is remarkable. He turns the tables on statistics. Instead of
statistics serving as a secular science that can inform ecclesial discourse,
Benjamin sees the rise in significance of statistics occuring precisely as the
result of an apocalyptic flattening, even dissolving, of reality into the
masses and the masses into reality. At the very least this is a theologically
anthropological observation. It may even have soteriological implications. Aura
is transfigured and displaced in this new era, and just so what is perceived as
spiritual and real are perceived differently because of the rise of new
(reproducible) media. More precisely, in the case of statistics, which are a perfect example because statistics are so often referenced in ecclesial strategies and planning, statistics become not tools for "reading the audience" but are instead what make reality itself and become the new scripture. Statistics in this picture do not simply give us new insight into reality. Instead, whatever statistics say are the reality to which reality then conforms. So in short order we have already illustrated the degree to
which cultural analysis properly considered is itself theological.
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