Page 33 - Aesthetic Formations Media, religion, and the Sense

18 Birgit Meyer

such views of media and public exposure in terms of the erosion of “real”
religion and “real” social bonds. This is why, in Section II, I argued against
contrasting aesthetic and ethic communities in terms of superficial versus
true, as suggested by Zygmunt Bauman, and pleaded for a close analysis of
the actual modes and sensational forms through which bonds are made in
religious practice. For the same reason, I am critical of Manuel Castells’
ideas about the erosion of religion in “the information age” (see also Meyer
and Moors 2006b, 5). In his view the adoption of modern mass media
technologies into religion is supposed to ultimately destroy religion’s legit-
imacy: its claims to point a way out of “the system.” This volume disagrees
with his view that in this process, “societies are finally and truly disen-
chanted because all wonders are online and can be combined into self-
constructed image worlds” (1996–1998, 1: 406).
As explained in the previous section, the contributions to this volume
show that the adoption and use of new media is subject to negotiation and
eventually incorporation into religious mediations. While certainly the
adoption of modern media has intentional and unintentional conse-
quences, it is problematic to analyze this process in terms of disenchant-
ment, as if these media, like a Trojan Horse, would erode religion from
within. The point is not the gradual vanishing of religion, but its transfor-
mation. As Hent de Vries succinctly pointed out in a critique of Castells,
“[w]hat seemed to dry up the resources of religion can equally be viewed as
religion’s most effective and resourceful continuation” (2001, 13). Indeed,
the successful public presence of religion today depends on the ability of its
proponents to locate it in the marketplace of culture, and embrace audio-
visual mass media so as to assert their public presence (see also Moore
1994), whilst still being able to feature as religion, and hence not reducible
to the ordinary. Instead of grounding our analysis on an essentialist view
of either community or religion as being in danger of corruption by the
forces of mass mediatization, entertainment and the logic of the market, it
is more productive to explore how the use of electronic and digital media
actually shapes the transformation—and hence continuation—of both
communities and religion in our time.
Importantly, the implications of the adoption of new media into reli-

gious traditions need to be evaluated in the light of the broader social
order, in particular by examining the ways in which states (are able and
willing to) regulate the place and role of religion in society. As Brian Larkin
shows in his discussion of the use of radio by Muslim reformers in Northern
Nigeria (Chapter 5), preaching via the radio entailed the adaptation of
Islam to colonial modernity. Sheikh Abubakar Gumi’s concern was to
relieve Islam from being an inherited set of practices that underpin every-
day life and affirm the power of Sufi sheiks and their magical-mystical