>What I had in mind was, that in the eyes of the people who crashed into
>them, they were equivalent to religious icons.
Wouldn't it be more appropriate to say, symbols of power and secularism? Targets are usually intimately related to the aims of the 'terrorists.' In a property dispute, trains and buses are more commonly targeted, for instance (symbolically transporting X into the space of Y), buildings are more often targeted if there is a 'lifestyle' issue...
>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.
... On the level of belief, for instance, 'we all know' that money is just paper, but we don't act that way. In effect, we are fetishists in practice, not in theory. I guess, in this sense, religion and capitalism could be seen to be similar, insofar as people are 'believing' and 'confessing' without actually 'knowing.' I mean, we have convictions not because we believe, but because we doubt that we believe, thus the verbal ritual enacts what we do not know, in a 'depth' grammatical kind of way... Isn't this Pascal's wager: even if you don't believe that capitalism is the best system, act as though you did believe and your life will be so much the better... So, perhaps I'd agree in this sense, that capitalism and religion is functionally similar. But in the extremes, I can't say that this is the case. The 'extreme' religious adherent doesn't believe with words alone, they believe through their actions without an enunciation... Is there a parallel for this, a kind of capitalist fundamentalism?
>``...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...
This reminds me of Habermas... in the beginning there was communication.. and this communication entails unavoidable pressupositions... But, to your point, I'm not sure if a good many people think that capitalism addresses needs. Certainly there is massive evidence to the contrary, evidence that anyone who picks up a newspaper can figure out. A simple question like, "Why does poverty exist?" should be enough to draw skepticism about the effects of the dominant capitalist cosmology. I agree that the processes are mystified and all that, but they are mystified not because people believe, but because they don't believe, and adopt a cynical distance which allows them to 'act' without 'believing.' This is what it means to be postmodern doesn't it? "I know full well that the big Other does not exist (ie. that capitalism is good for everyone), but, I am going to act as though it is because... ABC."
>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
I once knew a scholar looking at the spread of particular 'religious ideas' via trade routes. Fascinating stuff, how one idea pops up a thousand miles away, in a different context, but containing the same kernel text... looking at the road system helps explain how this happens, rather than chalking it up to comparative theology or something. Another MA thesis I once read dealt with a particular phrase found in Revelations and did a sociological analysis of where and when this phrase appears... as it turns out, it had to do with a particular political constellation... a key series of events that kept leading to the same apocalyptic image... I wish I could remember the phrase though. ; )
ken