Superman in a Secular Age: an Examination of Charles Taylor’S a Secular Age Through the Lens of the Superhero Genre
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Superman in a Secular Age: An Examination of Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age Through the Lens of the Superhero Genre Nathan Gibbard Faculty of Religious Studies McGill University December, 2014 A thesis submitted to McGill University in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Ph.D. © Nathan Gibbard 2014 This work is dedicated to the two great loves of my life. For my wife, whose tireless support and encouragement has helped see this project through to its completion. And for my mom, who did not live to see the end product, but whose spirit of love, passion, and hope can be seen on every page. ii Acknowledgements I would like to thank my supervisor, Daniel Cere, for helping to initiate this project, and offering guidance and direction along the way. Without his assistance this dissertation would not have been possible. I would also like to thank Paul Gibbard for his help in editing early drafts of this dissertation. Thank you as well to Richard Bernier for his assistance with the French portion of the abstract. It has been an honour to travel this road with you, your insights, listening ear, and friendship have been far more valuable than your more explicit contribution to this dissertation. I would also like to thank all of those at the Religious Studies Faculty – both professors, staff, and students – who have encouraged me along the way, helping where they could to make the process more manageable. Likewise for the Newman Centre staff and students. You have helped keep my feet firmly planted on the ground, and reminded me that there are many things more important than a dissertation. You also help remind me that studying superheroes and religion should be fun. Finally, I would like to thank three people without whom this dissertation could never have been completed. First, Judith Gibbard, whose intellectual pursuits first opened me to an amazing world of thought. For Nanna Jean Gibbard, who always believed. And Karina Gibbard, whose support, patience, and encouragement through this entire process serves as the bedrock for everything that follows. iii Abstract The present work builds upon Charles Taylor’s invitation in response to Stanley Hauerwas and Romand Coles, to continue to test and refine his hypotheses set out in A Secular Age. Taylor makes claims that he is describing the ‘conditions of lived experience’ within the modern North Atlantic world, yet his sources largely end with the 1960s, which makes claims to relevance in describing the modern conditions of Western society suspect. By using a contemporary genre and medium, the superhero genre in comic book form, we will examine Taylor’s arguments along two main concerns: Taylor’s presentation of disenchantment/re-enchantment, and his conception of the role of the sublime in modern culture. Both of these aspects touch upon important themes in the North Atlantic contexts, and many of Taylor’s insights are bolstered by a reading of the evolving dynamics of the superhero genre. However, there are also crucial weaknesses in Taylor’s work when examined in the light of popular culture, the chief being Taylor’s insistence on the existence of a robust buffered self within modernity. This is premised on a reading of the development of the Western self that takes disenchantment not only as normative, but as completely overcoming prior forms of enchantment. Such a view is not borne out in the material examined, which still bears traces of a lingering original enchantment not easily done away. Additionally, Taylor’s rejection of modern forms of the sublime, especially the monstrous sublime, ignores the ways in which the buffered self is not an already established fact, but a fragile construction in constant need of repair. Resumé Le présent ouvrage s'appuie sur la réponse de Charles Taylor à Stanley Hauerwas et à Romand Coles, où Taylor nous invite à vérifier et à affiner les hypothèses énoncées dans son oeuvre A Secular Age. Taylor prétend décrire les « conditions d’une expérience vécue » dans le monde moderne de l'Atlantique Nord, mais il se limite pour la plupart à des sources qui datent, au plus récent, aux années soixante, ce qui rend douteuse la pertinence de son projet aux circonstances de la société moderne occidentale. Par le biais d’un médium et une mode d’expression contemporain, à savoir le genre super-héros tel que représenté dans les bandes dessinées, j’examinerai les propos de Taylor autour de deux préoccupations principales: d’abord, sa présentation de ce qu’il appelle le « désenchantement/ré-enchantement », et par la suite, sa notion de la place du sublime dans la culture moderne. Ces deux aspects abordent des thèmes importants dans le contexte de la culture de l'Atlantique Nord; en plus, de nombreuses prises-de- conscience de Taylor se trouvent à être soutenues par un analyse de la dynamique évolutive du genre super-héros. Cependant, il y a aussi des faiblesses fondamentales dans le travail de Taylor qui se révèlent lorsqu’on l'examine à la lumière de la culture populaire; la plus fondamentale de ces faiblesses étant l'insistance de Taylor qu’il existe un « buffered self » à l’intérieur de la modernité. Ceci est fondé sur une façon de voir l'évolution du soi occidental, qui prend pour acquis non seulement que le désenchantement soit normatif, mais aussi qu’il prime sur toute expression antérieure de l'enchantement. En fait, ce point de vue n'est pas validé par les documents dont je fait l’étude, qui portent encore, en revanche, les traces d'un enchantement iv original et dur à supprimer. En outre, le rejet par Taylor des expressions modernes du sublime, surtout du « sublime monstrueux », ne tient pas compte du fait que le « buffered self » n'est pas un fait déjà établi, mais il est une fabrication fragile, ayant constamment besoin de réparation. v Table of Contents Acknowledgements ii Abstract iii Introduction 1 Chapter 1 – Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age 24 Chapter 2 – Taylor and Popular Culture 47 Chapter 3 – The Superhero Genre 76 Chapter 4 – Disenchantment/Re-enchantment/Enchantment 110 Chapter 5 – The Sublime 165 Conclusion 222 Bibliography 233 1 Introduction In 2010, in response to a critique by Stanley Hauerwas and Romand Coles of his major publication, A Secular Age, Templeton award-winning scholar Charles Taylor stated, “This book is in a sense a first draft, of some basic theses which could eventually be tested and refined (but not by me, and I hope not refined out of any recognizable shape.)”1 This dissertation is one particular response to that request. A Secular Age brings together and develops Taylor’s evolving project on the sources of the modern self and society. In an earlier influential study, Sources of the Self, Taylor attempted to “articulate and write a history of the modern identity” and the sources that gave rise to its construction.2 For Taylor, in this earlier work, the sources of the self that have given rise to modern conceptions of identity are primarily moral sources, created and affirmed through qualitative commitments to certain values. Taylor developed his approach to the construction of the modern self, focusing more closely on religion, in two subsequent works: A Catholic Modernity and Varieties of Religion Today: William James Revisited. In A Secular Age, Taylor continues the project started in Sources of the Self by attempting to describe the conditions of our lived experience in the modern Western world, particularly, how we moved “… from a society in which it was virtually impossible not to believe in God, to one in which faith, even for the staunchest believer, is one human possibility among others.”3 The basis of approach for A Secular Age is philosophical anthropology, touching upon history, art, philosophy, political theory, and linguistics to construct its argument. The study should be approached, as Taylor describes it, not as a “continuous story-and-argument, but rather as a set of interlocking essays, which shed light on each other, and offer a context of relevance for each 1 Charles Taylor, “Challenging Issues about the Secular Age,” Modern Theology, 26: 3 (July 2010), 411. 2 Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989), ix. 3 Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007), 3. 2 other.”4 It is in this context, namely the complex play of perspectives that informs his analysis, that we should understand Taylor’s comment to Hauerwas and Coles. Taylor is here asking and seeking for an engagement from a variety of viewpoints and fields to test, adjust, and revise his hypotheses about the modern age.5 This dissertation, at its heart, is an attempt to follow-up on that request, testing certain elements of Taylor’s hypotheses in light of a particular expression of popular culture and religion: the superhero genre in comic books. Choosing to examine Taylor’s A Secular Age through the lens of popular culture might seem an odd choice, but it is well warranted given the attention to the use of popular culture in A Secular Age.6 In particular, when Taylor turns to an analysis of the “age of authenticity,” references to popular culture begin to abound: Madonna’s Material Girl,7 shopping malls, brand logos, slogans, Playboy, and New Age festivals – all are employed by Taylor in presenting an overview of the modern age of authenticity.8 Nike marketing becomes a site for exploring dimensions of expressive individuality, with connections to both alienation and the authenticity of the modern self.9 Taylor delves into descriptions of dieting cultures prevalent in the 1990s and early 2000s.10 A central concern in the modern psyche is even referred to by Taylor as the “Peggy Lee axis,” named after the popular Jazz singer.11 According to Taylor, Lee’s 1969 song 4 Ibid., vix.