Smartphones, Memory and the Cross

Last updated on: October 11, 2012 at 11:26 pm by Matthew Tan

Smartphones, Memory and the Cross 2012-10-11T23:26:00+10:00 Matthew Tan

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

The smartphone has become the sacrament (James KA Smith calls it the “liturgical instrument”) of the postmodern city. More specifically, it is the one concrete site where one has a concentrated experience of the forces circulating through contemporary urban life.

One thing that the smartphone demonstrates about the contemporary city, it is that our social context is hostile to memory. Indeed, the postmodern city is proactively destructive of memory. Looking at one’s emails on a smartphone, for instance, one notices that only a certain range of communications are stored on a device. Details of the past are lost almost as instantaneously as they appear. A rather disturbing parallel can be found in a report from the BBC on the retention of old data on social networking sites, another icon of the postmodern city. Rather than being a limitless storehouse of memory, the report refers to an article which outlines a tendency within social networking to lose information about an event, whether through manual or automatic deletion, as early as a year after its occurrence.

This treatment of communications as disposable is symptomatic of the postmodern city’s attitude to memory. Now in its post-fordist phase, the city embodies a culture of authenticity that emphasises living in the now. “Now” is the special messianic moment within postmodern culture. However, this is far from the fulfilment of the same passage we find in 2 Corinthians 6:2. To intensify the significance of “Now”, “Now” is deliberately cut off from its connections with the past as well as the future, and life for the urban dweller ends up becoming a process of disjointed present moments.

Such a life of commodified time snaps have a profound influence on one’s attitudes, particularly to memory. In a world dominated by the “Now”, memories are something that we presume we can relegate to the past so we can “live for the moment”. We presume that this rendering of experiences to manageable micro-units is something that liberates us from the determinative effects of our past, in pretty much the same way that the individualism of Liberal thought liberates us from the domination of traditional communal belongings.

This attitude is understandable, given that many memories are marked by what psalm 92 calls “emptiness and pain”, be they failures in aspirations, brokenness in human relations, or the scars of what Shakespeare calls the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune”. We understandably prefer to free ourselves from the grip of such memories by concentrating on the present, and the postmodern city’s never-ending production of new pleasures to replace the old provides the perfect social backdrop to help “take our mind off things”.

In spite of these assurances for our mental comfort, however, we cannot simply “take our mind off things”. The urban dweller’s quintessentially embodied experience of the city is guaranteed to bring up such painful memories in ways and moments that will surprise and disarm. These memories can come from sights and sounds as mundane as the sight of a table at a cafe, the wrong turn down an arcade, the sound of a bird or a taste of a particular dish (the author Marcel Proust spoke of memories being triggered by Madeleine biscuits in his In Search of Lost Time). This is so because the body has deeply embedded imprints of experiences that are more visceral and more enduring than the memories that reside in one’s mind. As a result, the things of the city that the body experiences will often trigger a memory that the mind may have conveniently forgotten. If this memory is painful this will lead to an anxiety, and the urban dweller may intensify his efforts to expunge such memories by immersing himself ever deeper into the momentary pleasures of the postmodern city.

For the Christian, such struggles with memory in urban life should remind us that we carry within ourselves a whole corpus of memories that cannot be expunged by the mind. We can neither “take our minds off things”, nor can we pick and choose the memories he wishes to retain, contrary to the techniques and associated promises of the postmodern city. Part of the Christian call to “take up one’s cross” thus will involve taking up one’s memories imprinted within the body, rather than trying to cut them off (as an aside, it is significant that one service the postmodern city offers as an opportunity to forget one’s past is through various forms of plastic surgery, though this must be explored in another post). This need not be masochistic and hermetic, but can be a concrete way to be what Paul calls the offering of one’s body as a living sacrifice (Romans 12:1) in an urban context.

http://schemas.google.com/blogger/2008/kind#post

Radical Orthodoxy

Previous Post

October 4, 2012

Bonaventure, Francis & the End of the World

Next Post

October 18, 2012 On Liking the Gospel: the Church and New Media

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category architecture art Augustine Belloc Benedict XVI bible blogs books bourgeois Christianity Campion College Chesterton Christianisation Church and Culture Church Fathers citizen conference conservative consumer culture cybernetics Desert Fathers discipleship distributism drinking ecclesiology economics education environment Evagrius of Pontus formation Foucault George Weigel Girard Graham Ward http://schemas.google.com/blogger/2008/kind#post interfaith Jacques Ellul John Chrysostom Julia Kristeva Latin liturgy mall marriage monasticism Music Narrative news philosophy polis politics pop culture postmodern city postsecular prayer prostestant quote Quotes Radical Orthodoxy resources Rome Rule of St. Benedict saint Saints secular sociology theological anthropology theology transcendance Uncategorized videos William Cavanaugh

Select a Month December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 October 2009 February 2008 December 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

Which king was killed at the Battle of Megiddo?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Josiah Asa Jehoash Amaziah