Thursday, February 10, 2005
(1:30 PM) | Brad:
When '80s Theological Icons Attack
Despite many of our collective differences on things immanent and transcendent, and those things in-between, I think most of us can probably agree that one of the preeminent icons of the pomo theological world, Mark C. Taylor, has effectively sold his soul to the devil. I'm in the process now of reading and reviewing his most recent book, Confidence Games: Money and Markets in a World Without Redemption, and am finding myself increasingly feeling dirty by the influence his work had on me in my early days of theological study. His unquestioning allegiance to the sovereignty of network culture (the contours of which he explains very well, in prose far more lucid than anything he ever wrote in the '80s) is truly dumbfounding. The degree to which he can celebrate Marx's observations on the functioning of Capital but dismissively rebuke his criticisms of global / network capitalism (not to mention those of Hardt/Negri and Jameson) as failures or obviously not true -- i.e., the degree to which Taylor does not even consider the possibility that network culture's tendency is to function as a new kind of sovereignty, that of complex adaptive markets which represses those singularities that cannot be adapted -- is as brazenly stunning as it is intellectually irresponsible.What really pisses me off, though, is not that Taylor has moved in this direction. Because, really, his later stuff really pointed in this direction, so one ought not be too surprised. No ... what pisses me off is that he sucks in two of my favorite American authors, Herman Melville and William Gaddis, presenting both as being presciently aware and acquiescent of network hegemony.
I can take solace, however, that my PhD thesis deals with Melville, and is inspired by Gaddis, and takes up arms precisely against this position. So, if nothing else, maybe Taylor's book will be read and become the source of much debate in the next year, so that my autumn viva and academic contribution will be lauded as oh so fresh and contemporary. Like any commodity should be, right, Mark?
