Seen and Unseen: Visual Culture, Sociology and Theology
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Seen and Unseen Visual Culture, Sociology and Theology Kieran Flanagan Seen and Unseen Also by Kieran Flanagan SOCIOLOGY AND LITURGY: Re-presentations of the Holy THE ENCHANTMENT OF SOCIOLOGY: A Study of Theology and Culture POSTMODERNITY, SOCIOLOGY AND RELIGION (co-editor with Peter C. Jupp) VIRTUE ETHICS AND SOCIOLOGY: Issues of Modernity and Religion (co-editor with Peter C. Jupp) Seen and Unseen Visual Culture, Sociology and Theology Kieran Flanagan Reader in Sociology University of Bristol © Kieran Flanagan 2004 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 4LP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2004 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin’s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN 0–333–99854–5 hardback This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Flanagan, Kieran, 1944– Seen and unseen : visual culture, sociology, and theology / Kieran Flanagan. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0–333–99854–5 1. Christian sociology—Catholic Church. 2. Visual sociology. I. Title BX1753.F595 2004 306.6—dc22 2004042845 10987654321 13 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 Printed and bound in Great Britain by Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham and Eastbourne In fond memory of John Farrell (1926–1998) and Alix Farrell (1929–2003) This page intentionally left blank Contents Preface viii Introduction 1 1 Sociology and Virtual Religion: Issues of Memory and Identity 14 2 Who Sees There? Tales of Character, Virtue and Trust 42 3 Visual Culture and the Virtual: The Internet and Religious Displays 73 4 To See or Not to See: The Plight of the Voyeur 102 5 Piety and Visual Culture: Seeking to See the Unseen 130 6 Dark into Light: A Sociological Navigation 158 Notes and References 194 Bibliography 223 Index 240 vii Preface There is something almost portentous about presenting a third volume of reflections on how to link sociology to theology in ways that enhance mutual understandings. Why bother? To those in sociology such exercises seem futile; and to those in theology they seem unhelpful visitations from a discipline habitually hostile to its claims. Somehow, these studies of ambiguity in ritual, in the field of culture and in relation to the visual seem themselves ambiguous. They do not lie within the accepted contours of each discipline and so, standing outside, they seem affiliated to neither. Furthermore, the studies emerge in a long decline of institutional religion in England over the last two decades to the level where a realisation dawns that it is now a post-Christian society. Yet, before sociology delivers its funeral oration on institutional religion – again – it might realise that the forces of secularisation that have fractured institutional religion now threaten to engulf the discipline itself. Sociology too lacks a mobilising vision and it too is affected by the disenchanting and fracturing powers of modernity as postmodernity came to indicate. Both sociology and theology seem to have arrived at a common sense of dissatis- faction with their place in the culture of postmodernity. For sociology, this culture signifies the burden of life without God; for theology, at least in England, it denotes a terrain peculiarly resistant to the planting of religious belief. Somehow theology lacks a grammar book to read culture in ways that might assuage sociology’s growing fears about life without God. Few in either discipline seem to investigate what happens on the ground of culture, not so much where religion withers, as lazy references to secularisation would indicate, but how it flourishes – for despite the gloom, true believers still fill the pews even if their numbers are in slow decline. Each volume is about working out into a vision, a sensibility of what lies beyond the cold analytical rhetoric of sociology. In the first volume that dealt with liturgy (religious ritual), the movements of representation and re-presentation led into concerns with the apophatic, the theology of post- modernity. The second volume addressed a nagging feeling that there was an implicit theology floating around sociology in its genesis whose implications have seldom been confronted. The more one thought the more it seemed that in the culture of postmodernity, sociology was sleep walking into theology. In peering at the field of culture, sociology did not seem able to see properly. Modernity had in some way disabled the sociological gaze, and postmodernity seemed to confirm its myopia. The need to look to see something beyond what disciplinary eyes can see led to this study. viii Preface ix It is a tale of the sociological gaze directed to the seen and the unseen, the earthly city and the heavenly city of St Augustine. Why might this disciplinary gaze look in that direction? This is to speak of a conversion of sight, a yielding to a wish to see in a particular way that suggests no entry points into sociology. Matters might so remain were it not for the increased recognition of the importance of reflexivity in sociology. This notion denotes the self-awareness peculiar to sociology of its position on the field of analysis and its ethical responsibilities for those so represented in its accounts. But the notion goes further. It relates to the inward facets of the sociologist, the self and its biographical dispositions. These bear amplification in relation to the spiritual dimensions of the self, facets so often neglected in sociology. Opening out these inner facets of reflexivity relates also to the visual sensibilities of the self, what it sees inwardly and without. If what is seen is significant, the actor enters a realm of accountability for the act of seeing, one where moral inquests are held on the gaze. Culpability for seeing relates to social circumstances, dispositions and inclinations such as boredom and temptation and it is these that are set to lead off in a theological direction to face the issue of the study, how sociology comes to treat the seen and the unseen. In seeking to cope with the elusive properties of visual culture, sociology faces dilemmas of distinguishing between the forms of virtual religion and its theological prototype. These complicate the efforts of the sociological gaze to understand the dilemmas of the seen and the unseen that are central to theology but also to visual culture itself. Visual culture reflects the advent of cyberspace, of powers to make virtual reality. These bring into focus wider issues of image and spectacle and questions of how things are seen and are arranged to be so viewed. Images matter, hence the concerns with their packaging. Not all that is seen with the eye of perception counts. The eye needs to attend to what it cannot see, what is left out, what is below the surface, and what is to be inferred. If it lacks this capacity, it has no means of surviving in a visual culture. Recognition of the limits of seeing, of what lies hidden, plays to theological advantage for it points to wider issues of how the unseen is to be seen. Seeing is an act with a narrative, a tale, and if sociology deals with the visual, it has to attend to this facet. As a study of the sociologist’s dilemma in relation to the seen and the unseen, the tale or the narrative of the study becomes apparent. Yet, as the self becomes a project with tales and narratives, one encounters a peculiar paradox: those of sociology seem to have become muted in the public domain. Oddly, sociology seems to have become a victim of its own successes in characterising modernity. Some fifty years ago, it seemed radical for the American sociologist C. Wright Mills to open out the prospect of a sociological imagination, one that articulated public sensibilities and anxieties. Now, the sociological voice is drowned out by many in the mass media, in quality newspapers and in television documentaries which articulate well tales that reflect public x Preface sensibilities. They seem to catch public anxieties better than many sociologists. It might appear as if sociology is now in a peculiarly Indian summer. For a brief period, Giddens placed sociology in a political ambit with the Third Way. The discipline seemed to have arrived as a sort of aide-de-camp to Blairism, but now the demand for messages from sociology appears to have dried up. Likewise, the discipline gained an enormous public profile in France with Pierre Bourdieu, a sociologist with almost priestly powers to consecrate the cultural heart of the nation in the shape of sociological expectation; but he died in 2003.