About Religion: Economies of Faith in a Virtual Culture

Mark C. Taylor, About Religion: Economies of Faith in a Virtual Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999. 292pp. $19.00 (paper).

Can we talk directly about religion at the turn of the century? Or is religion instead an antiquated, ontotheological misnomer, which is inappropriately ascribed to the areas of literary criticism, art, economics, and psychology? These questions are at the center of this work with no center. About Religion is a collection of essays, half of which have previously appeared in other publications, that talk about and around the phenomenon of religion. Taylor can only talk "about" religion because the phenomenon itself is not something which can be examined directly, but instead religion reveals itself indirectly through the examination of other phenomena.

Those familiar with Taylor's previous work will be accustomed to the cryptic and sometimes exaggerated linguistic gyrations around which Taylor weaves his musings. For those who know and appreciate Taylor's work, this collection will not disappoint. For the others who know and are frustrated by Taylor's corpus to date, there are refreshing moments of lucidity within the pages of this collection, which should draw a greater readership to his work. Those unfamiliar with Taylor's work find here a set of essays in the "tradition" of postmodern a-theology. The subject matter, religion, is not the focus of this book, but instead the essays address economics, art, architecture, science, and epistemology. All of these subjects are addressed within the larger context of today's virtual reality. Though only one essay specifically addresses the issue of cyberspace, the loci associated with postmodern cyberreality infuse this work and give it organization and structure. This book is not just a reflection on contemporary cultural dynamics and how they may or may not relate to talk about religion. Instead, the essays draw on the nineteenth century as their ever-present conversation partner. Hegel, Marx, Freud, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Kant, and others frame the discussion and give it whatever foundation is possible in this floating discourse.

Three themes capture the flavor of this collection: virtual commerce, postmodern art, and self revelation. The first theme within the essays is economics. Taylor does a masterful job here of drawing on economic theory, literary criticism, and cybercommerce to invite one into an encounter with the "death of Go(l)d" (165). The loss of the gold standard has left the twenty-first-century economies floating without moorings. Theology, religion's commerce commission, already lost its go(l)d standard with Nietzsche's famous funeral announcement. Current economies of virtual dollars present an overvalued e-portfolio to an eager throng of faithful followers. Both "Discrediting God" and "Christianity and the Capitalism of Spirit" should be on the reading lists of anyone interested in either religion or the economy of the next century.

A second theme can be found in Taylor's reflections on art and architecture. The works of Sandback and Serra, as well as the city of Las Vegas, offer Taylor ample fodder for his examination of space, time, location, and relationality. Sandback's use of string to delimit the space of the work of art and Serra's use of steel sculptures with no center and therefore no closure call forth the religious insights of Buddhism and Christian a-theology. At the same time, because there is not a starting point, the Buddhist insights of illusion and anatman combine with post-modern discourse on presence/absence to delimit the arena for a discussion of modern art. Taylor discusses art and architecture in order to talk about religion, but religion is always already a part of the artist and so there is no clear place to start and no center to the discussion.

Finally, the theme of self-revelation and family tragedy become the dynamics through which Taylor talks about the absent God. The last essay, entitled "indifference," is arguably the best in the collection. It is compelling because it allows one into the heart and mind of Taylor himself; it is especially of interest for readers of Taylor's other works since his previous writings have often been so abstract and impersonal. In this last essay, his writing makes a final transition from poetic prose to poetry. It is Taylor's version of Augustine's Confessions. For Taylor here reveals himself, not as plainly as did Augustine, but in a Tayloresque fashion with jumps and starts in a reve(a)ling meditation on his own family secret. His sister, whom he never met, is the source of his family's secret. She is the present/absent member of his family system. Taylor says of his mother and father, "Did they realize, long before I, that the writing I believed was my own betrayed a secret I did not know by rewriting a diary I had never read" (262). This kind of self discovery is the means through which Taylor discusses the indifference of the divine abandonment.