HSST2189: History and Theology of the Modern Church

What "was" "modernity"? What "is" "postmodernity"? -

What was/is a "postcolonial" timespace?

modernity: a Western timespace. Term derives from Latin modernus, 'new, now', later used to distinguish one's own time from that of antiquity.
(Gustavo Benavides, "Modernity" in: Critical Terms for Religious Studies, Mark C. Taylor, ed.)

postmodernity: applies more generally and describes a version of Zeitgeist, if not a “different historical condition”, perhaps suggesting that “the cultural configuration of postmodernism may itself be a constitutive element or a larger socioeconomic and political constellation."

postmodernism: shifts in “sensibility, practices, and discourse formation” and generally found first within the arts and within architecture, referring to an art and architectural style.
[source: Barry Smart. Postmodernity. Routledge, 1993]

Some features of the "postmodern", whatever it is...
*most famous definition by Lyotard: “incredulity towards grand narratives” such as... reality, representation, being, progress, history, subjectivity, patriarchy, colonialism, gender roles and gender binaries....
*late capitalism and proliferation of consumerism, the shift from Fordism to flexible production, with parts coming from all over the place to be assembled in one location (David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity)
* emphasis on the apparent constructedness of concepts such as truth, power, knowledge, reality, move away from claims to 'objectivity' in research or represenation
*fragmentation: where as modernism laments fragmentation, postmodernism celebrates it
* the simulacrum: image, representation, feel of unreal, Gulf War graphics on TV, Las Vegas, the dissolution of the 'real'. (Jean Baudrillard.)
* identical goods, dissolution of singularity, the age of the copy, the mass-produced item as art/efact (Andy Warhol’s Campbell Soup canvas is the oft-cited example) (Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism or: The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism)
* rewriting of the ‘enlightenment project’ in a more 'humble' (?) fashion
* blurring of genres and distinctions
* citational architectural style, including fragments from past styles, Disneyworld's Swan and Dolphin, eclecticism, 'bricolage', the 'toolbox' (Claude Levi-Strauss, Jameson, Harvey) *intertextuality as literary phenomenon highlighted
*shrinking of timespace: global travel, space-time relations drastically changed (Harvey, Jameson)
*dissolution between high and low culture, interest in pop culture
*increasing importance of the mundane, the everday, the ordinary
*the problematization of notions of agency and subjectivity
* the end of formal colonialism and the persistence of neocolonial dependencies in the form of globalizing consumer capitalist patterns
*the “triumph of aesthetics over ethics”, facade over substance

July 15, 1972 at 3:32 p.m., the detonation of the modernist Pruit-Igoe Housing Project in St. Louis: By some considered the "beginning" of "postmodernity" (in America)

Pictures of the Pruitt-Igoe Housing Project

Some Important "Postmodern" Thinkers:
- Jean-François Lyotard (wrote Postmodernism: A Report on Knowledge)
- Jean Baudrillard
- Richard Rorty
- Theodor Adorno (Frankfurt School)
- Max Horkheimer (Frankfurt School)
- Jürgen Habermas (German thinker in the tradition of the Frankfurt School, coined term 'critical theory')
- Fredric Jameson (neo-marxist critic, identifies postmodernism with late capitalism)
- David Harvey (neo-marxist critic, investigates the geography of postmodernity)

Post-structuralist Thinkers:
- De Saussure (Structuralist, Course in Linguistics)
- Michel Foucault (concept of power, new historicism, purveyor of 'genealogies', History of Sexuality, Discipline and Punish)
- Jacques Derrida (différance, deconstruction, counterfeit, unveilor of the failure of language to refer)
- Luce Irigaray (ethics of sexual difference, gender and psychology, French feminist theorist)
Donna Haraway (Historian of science at UCSC) on the impact of postmodern theory:

"Humanity, on the whole, is not autochtonous. Nobody is self-made. Least of all man. That is the spiritual and political meaning of poststructuralism and postmodernism for me."
(in Feminists Theorize the Political, 88.)

Stanley Fish on Relativism:
[Referring to the events of 9/11/2001...]"Is this the end of relativism? If by relativism one means a cast of mind that renders you unable to prefer your own convictions to those of your adversary, then relativism could hardly end because it never began. Our convictions are by definition preferred; that’s what makes them our convictions. Relativizing them is neither an option, nor a danger.
But if by relativism one means the practice of putting yourself in your adversary’s shoes, not in order to wear them as your own but in order to have some understanding (far short of approval) of why someone else might want to wear them, then relativism will not and should not end, because it is simply another name for serious thought."
(Condemnation Without Absolutes, NY Times, Oct 15, 2002)

Theological Responses to Postmodernism:

A Hyperapplication of postmodern critique to theology, to the point at which it becomes "a/theology":
- death of God theology (Thomas Altizer, Mark C. Taylor)
- secular theology (Harvey Cox, Donn Cupitt)

-A critically modified but constructive application of postmodern thought to the work of theology
-constructive theology
-process theology
-ecotheology
-feminist theology (?)

- A counter-modern, or antimodern response that sees postmodernity as the end of modernity and all its evils, hoping in it a resurgence of traditional creedal faith, or biblical supremacy
- GenX hip crypto-traditionalism (see emerging church or ginkworld.net Use of hip pomo lingo and fragmentary packaging, but the content is remarkably unchanged)
- evangelical, conservative readings that see postmodernity as the triumphant victory over the evils of modernity, a find a new upsurge of faith (Stanley Grenz)
- radical orthodoxy: sees postmodern theology as the end of modernist "nihilist textualism and secularism" (John Milbank, Catherine Pickstock, et al.)

More Questions:
--- Are the following postmodern theologies or not?
the case for: they are enabled/aided by the fragmentation and democratization of Western modernist universal knowledge claims
the case against: they are not emergent from the Western matrix out of which post/modernity has emerged, thus there is a danger that they might be 'assimilated' into a new 'postmodern' hypertheory, a new 'universalism'...

- black theology
- feminist theology
- liberation theology
- gay/lesbian theology
- Hispanic/Latino theology
- theology of disability
- queer theology
- ecotheology
- womanist theology
...

Post-colonial Thought: Some Definitions
(by and large excerpted from Ashcroft, et al., eds. Post-colonial Studies: The Key Concepts, Routledge, 2000)

colonialism: often referring to a specific form of cultural exploitation that developed with the expansion of Europe: European post-Renaissance colonial expansion through imperialist (dominating urban center ruling a distant territory) practices often coterminous with development with capitalist system of economic exchange. Ideology of race was crucial part of construction of an unequal form (intrinsic inferiority of colonized peoples) of intercultural relations. With increasing ethical sensitivity, colonial practices mutate into/ are labeled “development and aid’ maintaining the same dependency and power-regimes.

imperialism: the practice, theory and attitudes of a dominating metropolitan center ruling a distant territory (Edward Said). Associated with the Europeanization of the globe involving also mercantilist and later industrial capitalism. The term comes into usage only around 1880s, in distinction from the term empire, which heretofore conjured an apparently benevolent process of European expansion. The expansionist policies of pursued by the modern industrial powers from 1880 have been described as classical imperialism. The year 1885, when the Berlin Congo Conference ended and the 'scramble for Africa' got underway, has been regarded as the beginning of classical imperialism.While this European expansion is used for a relatively recent European expansion, its historical roots extend back to Roman times and the ideology of a 'republican' Imperium Populi Romani and the more monarchical Imperium Romanum.

In the neo-Marxist vision of Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri's "Empire" however define empire as something that now, in our time, transcends the power of any nation state, even the most powerful, and is a huge conglomeration of capitalist economic dynamics that have the potential to structure both conformilty and resistance in a setting where a "multitude" (the title of their follow-up book) will work for the economic and social democratization of global structures, based on a concept of love.

post-colonialism: deals with the effects of colonization on cultures and societies. Designates the ‘post-independence’ period, used by lit crits to discuss various cultural effects of colonization. Widely used to signify the political, linguistic and cultural experience of societies that were former European colonies. Heavy post-structuralist influence on major exponents: Said (Foucault), Homi Bhabha (Althusser and Lacan), Spivak (Derida). Despite diverse approaches, it most often includes the study and analysis of European territorial conquests, colonial institutions, discursive operations of empire, subtleties of subject construction in colonial discourse and the differing approaches to resistance of those subjects. Post-colonial theory is becoming widely used in historical, political, sociological and economic analyses. The prefix post- has come under further scrutiny through a more elaborate understanding of how Post-colonial cultures work. Is the colonial time actually over or not? In what sense are economic dependencies etc, forms of neo-colonialism? The label of Post-colonial theory is increasingly being expanded to include very varied practices and contexts of theory.

Anti-colonialism: The political struggle of colonized peoples against the specific ideology and practice of colonialism. Emphasizes need to reject colonial power and restore local control. Paradoxically, often anti-colonial movements express themselves in the appropriated/subversion of forms from institutions of the colonizers. In mid-twentieth century often articulated in terms of a radical, Marxist discourse of liberation. Unlike later nationalist formulations of the new bourgeois post-independence elites, there is no sentimental or mythologized attachment to an idealized pre-colonial condition.

Decolonialization: the process of revealing and dismantling colonialist power in all its forms. Initially, the process of resistance was often conducted in terms or institutions appropriated from the colonizing culture itself. Decolonization, if at all possible, remains a highly complex and conflictual process especially in a global economic scenario and is complicated by the existence of colonized bourgeois elites that may function to block/divert it.

Post-colonial Thinkers:
- Frantz Fanon (from Martinique, a French overseas ‘département’) Wrote The Wretched of the Earth (1961) and Black Skins, White Masks.
- Edward Said, (a Palestinian American, educated in Anglican context in Palestine, last Professor at Columbia U, NY, practicing Episcopalian.) Classic Texts: "Orientalism" and "Culture and Imperialism"
- Homi Bhabha Classic Essay Collection: The Location of Culture
- Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Indian American, Professor at Columbia) Many writings, among which is "A Critique of Postcolonial Reason" and "Death of a Discipline."

Post-colonial Biblical Studies and Theology:
The concerns of postcolonial studies have only been reponded to in the complex of biblical studies within the last 10 or so years. The response within the area of theology is even more recent. Within biblical studies, the most important names are: R.S. Sugirtharajah and Fernando Segovia. Within Theology, the first explicitly postcolonial theology was Marcella Althaus-Reid's Indecent Theology in 2001.

Suggested Reading and Browsing:
Althaus-Reid. Indecent Theology
Bauman, Zygmunt. Liquid Modernity
Eagleton, Terry. After Theory. (Highly recommended for an update on where we might be now on issues of pomo theory)
Hardt/Negri. Empire
Hardt/Negri. Multitude
Harvey, David.The Condition of Postmodernity.
Huyssen, Andreas. "Mapping the Postmodern," in Feminism/Postmodernism, ed. Linda Nicholson.
Huyssen, Andreas. After the Great Divide: Modernism, Mass Culture, Postmodernism.
Jameson, Fredric. Postmodernism or: The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism
Keller, Rivera and Nausner, eds. Postcolonial Theologies: Divinity and Empire (2004)
Lakeland, Paul. Postmodernity: Christian Identity in a Fragmented Age.
Lyon, David. Jesus in Disneyland: Religion in Postmodern Times

Edgar, Andrew and Peter Sedgwick. Key Concepts in Cultural Theory.
Barry, Peter. Beginning Theory: An Introduction to literary and Cultural Theory.
Ashcroft, Griffiths, and Tiffin. Post-colonial Studies: The Key Concepts

Webspaces:
Derrida at Stanford U
U of Colorado, Denver: Postmodernism
Baudrillard on the Web
Everything Postmodern
An Emerging Church Website (Postmodern Ministry)

Images at top:

1. Michel Foucault [source: pomo.freeservers.com/ foucault.html]

2. Jacques Derrida [source: http://prelectur.stanford.edu/lecturers/derrida/index.html]

3. Luce Irigaray [source: www.silviavegettifinzi.net/ vegetti/donne.html]