Making Space

One of the "most excellent" (to quote Bill and Ted) aspects of doing PhD work has been becoming aware of authors and thinkers I most likely wouldn't have found on my own.  We all tend to get stuck in our little ruts - it's inevitable - and the life of an academic is probably no different.  Through my coursework I've discovered ideas and authors I wish I'd known about sooner.  In that way I can't help but always think I'm late to the party... by the time I catch on to this or that "movement" everyone else has moved on to something else.  No matter - better late then never.

One author I actually discovered on my own this past semester is the late Jesuit thinker Michel De Certeau.  I was reading through the footnotes of Cavanaugh's Theopolitical Imagination and there it was... The Practice of Everyday Life.  I quickly went on Amazon - saw it wasn't that expensive - and ordered it.  I haven't finished it yet - but what I've read thus far has been rich.  De Certeau has provided me with language for speaking about the constant struggle against the dominant forces of culture.  While global capitalism may certainly be a pervasive, homogenizing, force - De Certeau does not leave us helpless - there remains the possibility of subversive action...of making space that evades the panoptic eye of modern institutional life.  This has been helpful for thinking about a theological perspective of ministering to young people.  The tendency - and I'm certainly guilty of this in the past - has been to see young people as subject to the fatalistic forces of popular culture... that they are constantly being duped by technology and consumerism.  Some in youth ministry emphasize the need for unplugging... for moving from one form of enculturation to another - that of the Christian community.  While there are aspects of this perspective that, I would argue, still need to be taken seriously - what De Certeau has helped me think through is how many forms of popular culture are actually modes of subversion - taking what consumer capitalism gives us and turning it into something totally unexpected and challenging.  In some circles the tendency has been to look at the message of popular culture - the meaning - as a way to speak Christianly about cultural engagement.  But there is something also about the mode... the process... the alteration that needs thinking through.  This is what I've learned from De Certeau.  Now... what this means for youth ministry - we'll see... I have a dissertation to write.