Lost Icons: Reflections on Cultural Bereavement

Lost Icons: Reflections on Cultural Bereavement. By Rowan Williams. London: Morehouse Publishing, 2000 (reprinted 2002). x + 190 pp. $15.95 (paper).

Lost Icons is a sobering inquiry into the structures that support (or fail to support) the development of authentic selfhood and the maintenance of a just society. Williams contends that North Atlantic culture is suffering from the loss of rubrics for interpreting human behavior, which he refers to as "icons." These icons represent "some of the basic constraints on what human beings can reasonably do and say together if they are going to remain within a recognizably human conversation" (pp. 2-3). As their force in our culture wanes, that culture risks becoming a backdrop for escalating rivalry among disconnected individuals.

The argument begins in chapter 1, with examples of the erosion of childhood in North Atlantic societies. Corporations such its Disney, which market vigorously to children, make children into consumers. The act of committing capital is inherently limiting, Williams argues, and this act intrudes upon the freedom of children to experiment and learn through play without their words and actions having consequences outside of the terms of the game (pp. 22-23). As consumers, children are forced prematurely into the adult world where individuals compete with one another for limited resources. The examples of the "right to choose" in the matters of education and abortion serve to illustrate the further point that, in North Atlantic societies, individual choice is exercised without recognizing the limitations that choice imposes upon the freedom of others.

A society structured by the posturing of individuals or special interest groups to protect their claim to resources bespeaks the loss of corporate charity. In chapter 2 Williams contrasts the posture of rivalry with an analogy for charitable relationships based upon the model of conversation, which he defines as "an activity that need not be productive, that presupposes mutual recognition, an activity in which 'success' is measured simply by the maintenance of the activity itself" (p. 58). Unfortunately, relationships based upon such a mutual recognition are difficult to envision in a society where our sense of the need for remorse has become dulled. Williams argues in Chapter 3 that the expression of remorse in situations of violation or betrayal is an indispensable icon because it entails the recognition of a common basis for relating between offender and victim. The act of facing another and taking responsibility for how my actions have shaped both that others story and my own "is in some degree to make internal to myself what I have been in the eyes of another" (p. 110). Remorse recognizes that the offender has been decisively changed, as has the offended. This recognition goes beyond an external exchange to settle a claim by opening the possibility of a common language based upon a common history (p. 114). Remorse (and time) can provide the ground for a new, charitable solidarity.

Williams draws together the many threads of his argument in chapter 4, where he warns that losing the possibility of being in relation to others puts us in danger of losing our souls (the ways of being in the world that make us most human). Williams offers tantalizing suggestions that the single model underlying the social "icons" he identifies is, ultimately, the openness of Jesus' humanity to a divine Other in the Incarnation.

Lost Icons is a probing cultural analysis, with hints that one of the deep impulses of the essay is to fundamental theology, drawing as it does upon the methods and resources of sociology, anthropology, history, media studies, psychology, political science, philosophy, literary theory, and theology. This book ought to be read by anyone interested in the breadth and depth of the intellectual life of the Archbishop of Canterbury; it deserves the serious attention of anyone who thinks critically about the construction of (post)modern selfhood; and it holds intriguing possibilities for those who study the church's mission in contemporary North Atlantic societies, since Williams contends that the church's tradition contains resources capable of addressing many of the problems he identifies in these societies.

DEREK N. ANDERSON

Loyola University Chicago

Chicago, Illinois

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