``Why do you call this buildings religious icons? I get the metonymy, I'm just curious anyway. In Juergenmeyers book, one of the people he interviewed talks about how 'at least if America was Christian, they would have morals.' The thing is, as much as capitalism and the 'american way of life' is; parallel to religious ritual, mythology, and etc., religious traditions (for the most part) to not embrance the ongoing transformation of their methods and means of reproduction... in a way, capitalism is 'more religious than religion' (to use a Hegelian mode of thought for a second) - it overtakes itself...'' Ken Mack
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You answered the question better. What I had in mind was, that in the eyes of the people who crashed into them, they were equivalent to religious icons.
I am not so sure about this functional separation between capitalism and religious activity. Religious activity might embrace the ongoing transformation of its methods and means of reproduction---while it is a living and dominant means to organize social life. I think that's what people do---I mean that is how we behave as social actors.
``...So, and I'm just toying here, it isn't that icons are a residue of the religious past, it is that the past itself that is a residue of capitalism, its remainder, an uncontrolled excess, the symbolic limitation of the logic of capital... perhaps we could talk about the 'religious effects of capitalism' - through its own failure, and revision, 'the past' is created, new nostalgic forms emerge out of its own internal limitations....'' (KM)
Well, only in the sense that capitalism supposed justification is that it produces the needed material for living---things like buildings---but I agree its extortions are so excessive the remainders pile up and up---literally. On the other hand, what I was referring to was that we in secular life have mystified our own economic system to the point of making it a religious belief system and our mythopoetic sensiblity has completely absorbed its functional tenets as if they were the dictates of our imam. So, yes,
``...But isn't this the perfect ideological matrix: the depoliticization of the economy... at the same time, there is the inverse...'' (KM)
I think we have in effect not only normalized or naturalized our political economy but mystified it so that its functional dictates and needs have become our moral universe and our religious cosmology. In the beginning there was a need and the need was good...
``...When I get hired my first priority will be to learn something about history, and hopefully a bit about religion, thus living up to my disciplinary boundaries and impetus. Until then I'm just going to be inspired by other people who have found fascination where I long to be. It is weird though, I've always wanted to be a history of religion kind of scholar, but all the methods and theories ended up being quack, so I have to get a grasp on the abstract theory part because I felt that I lacked the tools to do the materialistic part of that historicity. With Lacan and Habermas, now, finally, I think I can begin to think... about some/thing....'' (KM)
Pick a period, pick a place and just go to it. I picked Alexandria in late antiquity for a lot of reasons, beginning with math history. Then while I was wondering around looking for connections and cross currents between judaism, christianity, and islam, I rediscovered Venice. I was looking at this web page on the Talmud with clickable references and one of them was for the first printings of the Talmud in Venice, first by Soncion in the 1480s then Bomberg 1520s.
This is going to be very meandering because it follows a mental tracery, but I had already spent some time reading about Venice first in math history, because the first Latin translations of Euclid from Arabic texts was done there (1035?). Later, in an art context, the trip that Durer made out of Nuremberg to Venice to sell woodcuts and where he bought a Latin copy of Euclid (1505).
So putting all this together, I imagined an teeming book trade that joins scribes and numerous crafts together with a mixed scholastic community of jewish, christian and islamic scholars and translators. Then add a little Venetian political history. Venice became an independent state when it refused to follow a Byzantine iconoclastic decree in 727(?). Since the Lombards controlled the north central sections from Pavia, Rome encouraged independence to try to break up the Lombard hold. Venice played along, and elected their own goverment, the Doge and a city council. The election was from the nobles (with inland estates? or controlling merchant guilds), not a general plebiscite. And, therefore the likely motive was probably business---manufacturing icons, religious wares, paintings, glass, castings, books, decorations, etc---all the stuff the Byzantines wanted to burn.
See we think of scholasticism as some abstracted monk-like activity---which it probably was in some places. But it could more likely have been (in Venice), a business of trading and buying up old manuscripts sold either for their paper or as potential source material. These then get translated, maybe commented, studied, then newly copied, transcribed, decorated, and bound up for sale. The Venetians because of their early independence traded with the Muslim world (Egypt/Lavant certainly), and in places like Barcelona which was soon threatened by Charlemagne and then Cordova which was came apart from internal wars between the Moors---so guess where some of the islamic and jewish scholars fled along with their manuscripts?---Venice among other places (there is also an olive oil connection in there somewhere too).
Well, so I rambled. The idea is that the material basis is there and emerges out of the history as you think about it. And then later the higher levels of theory and so forth come out in the various connections and confluences.
Chuck Grimes