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ALSO PUBLISHED IN THE SERIES
MARK C.
Taylor
M A R Y- J A N E
Rubenstein
THOMAS A.
Carlson
30 29 28 27 26 25 24 23 22 21 1 2 3 4 5
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction
omas A. Carlson 1
G AT H E R I N G R E M A I N S
Mark C. Taylor } 19
A B O V E U S , O N LY S K Y
FA C I A L R E C O G N I T I O N
Index 259
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
is conversation began in the 1980s and 1990s in the Religion
Department at Williams College. e time was one of consid-
erable ferment and creativity in the humanities. ough the
world has changed, the issues we explored together are more
urgent today than ever. We dedicate this book to our fellow stu-
dents, who have used the lessons they learned in ways that none
of us could have imagined.
INTRODUCTION
omas A. Carlson
man is God; it is not I, but religion that denies the God who is not
a man, but only an ens rationis,— since it makes God become man,
and then constitutes this God, not distinguished from man, hav-
ing a human form, human feelings, and human thoughts, the ob-
ject of its worship and veneration. I have only found the key to the
cipher of the Christian religion, only extricated its true meaning
from the web of contradictions and delusions called theology.6
us to man “in the nudity of the face.”13 For if the face appears,
as according to Levinas, always in the singular, while calling to
each of us in our likewise singular responsibility, the unity of
our technomilitary and capitalistic world picture amounts, for
Rubenstein, to a totality of just the kind Levinas spent his life re-
sisting. As she puts it, the one-world vision “aains the unity it
commends by sweeping away differences of race, gender, class,
and religion— assembling them all into an undifferentiated,
false male universal” (“Above Us,’ 146).
A vision of seemingly cosmic scope, then, can touch the indi-
vidual in that individual’s singularity and difference— by effac-
ing them. And so likewise today, the singular faces— and private
lives— of individuals are increasingly captured, contained, and
conveyed within surveillance systems of seemingly unlimited
scope. ese are systems of “seeing” wherein each and every
face, and indeed life, can seem to become interchangeable with
any and every other for such purposes as their policing, polit-
ical control, and economic exploitation within what Shoshana
Zuboff analyzes as the age “surveillance capitalism.”14
As Rubenstein points out in her essay, the claim to any vision
of the “whole” is itself blind to its own blindness: it does not
see, or acknowledge, that it can actually never see the whole but
always only some ever-partial aspect. “Until humanity manages
to develop four-dimensional vision, no one will see the planet
‘whole’” (“Above Us,” 145). Such a failure to see the invisible
that conditions any and all vision replicates in its logic the ex-
clusive and violent gestures through which claims to unity and
totality— such as that of “humanity”— are so o$en constituted,
as Rubenstein and her interlocutors show. is is a failure that
pertains also to the lack of humility— revealed in the disconnec-
tion from earth, and the flight from mortality— that is central
as well to Taylor’s analysis and argument here.
Both the effacement of singular individuals through totaliz-
ing gestures and the relation of such effacement to our encoun-
ter with mortality are central to my own essay, “Facial Recog-
omas A. Carlson 13
notes
Mark C. Taylor
“Don’t you see and feel these things more acutely than you used
to? e perils and warnings? Something gathering, no maer
how safe you may feel in your wearable technology. All the voice
commands and hyper-connections that allow you to become
disembodied.”
don delillo, Zero K
approaching disaster
If there were life around him, he did not see it, hear it, feel
it, smell it, taste it. Everything he believed to be real had disap-
peared. Unable to comprehend what had occurred, he was filled
with an apprehension no words could capture. One moment
there is life, the next moment there is death; what lies in be-
tween remains without why. is uncharted interval eternally
returns as a gi$ that strangely marks the impossibility of gi$-
ing. Alone with nowhere to go, he slowly began to gather the
remains, the remains of a life he had once thought was his own.
Earth, fire, water, rock, stone, steel, flesh, bone. He had no idea
why he felt compelled to do this, or what he would do with the
gathered remains.
living death
“ey will do it for you. Because it’s you. Simple injection, se-
rious criminal act.”
“Let it go,” he said.
“And in return, what? You’ve framed wills and trusts and tes-
taments granting them certain resources and holdings well be-
yond what you’ve already given them.”
“Finished?”
“Is it outright murder? Is it a form of assisted suicide that’s
horribly premature? Or is it a metaphysical crime that needs to
be analyzed by philosophers?”
He said, “Enough.”
“Die a while, then live forever.” (Z 114)
salt flats and stone rubble evokes James Turrell’s “Roden Crater”
carved out of a volcano in the Arizona desert or Michael Heizer’s
“City” sunk in the Nevada desert where there is “nothing else,
nowhere else” (Z 4).3 In these massive projects, advanced tech-
nology creates works of art in which high/low, surface/depth,
modern/primitive intersect but are not unified. ese are
laer-day temples of art and religious shrines for pilgrims
searching for meaning and solace in a world the gods have fled.
For Artis, Ross, and their fellow believers, scientists, engineers,
and programmers are high priests who promise to ferry them to
the next world where they will enjoy life everlasting.
roughout history, believers repeatedly have retreated
underground to practice their religion. From the underground
paintings of Lascaux to the catacombs of early Christians to
caves filled with erotic sculptures of Hindu gods and goddesses,
the underworld has been the site of religious rituals. All of these
places are “located at the far margins of plausibility” (Z 115).
e Convergence is surrounded with a religious aura. “Monks”
wrapped in hooded cloaks and schooled in ars technica aend
“pilgrims” awaiting their final trip. In one chapel-like alcove,
a woman quietly speaking to a few people preparing for death
describes “great human spectacles, the white-clad faithful in
Mecca, the hadj, mass devotion, millions, year a$er year, and
Hindus gathered on the banks of the Ganges, millions, tens of
millions, a festival of immortality” (Z 63). A shrewd investor
who has made a living being on surviving future disasters,
Ross admits, “is place may not have been intended as the
new Jerusalem but people made long journeys to find a form of
higher being here, or at least a scientific process that will keep
their body tissue from decomposing” (Z 43).
Jeff will have none of it. In addition to raising serious ethi-
cal issues, he realizes that the mission of the Convergence poses
profound questions about the self, time, and human existence.
“How are you,” he asks, “without your sense of time?” (Z 68).4
Time haunts the halls and chambers of the Convergence in the
Mark C. Taylor 25
form of skulls— one an imposing skull “about five times the size
of an ordinary human skull,” another a work of art reminiscent
of Damien Hirst’s For the Love of God.5 “An oversized human skull
was mounted on a pedestal juing from the wall. e skull was
cracked in places, stained with age, a lurid coppery bronze, a
drained gray. e eyeholes were rimmed with jewels and the
jagged teeth painted silver” (Z 68, 63). Like Hirst, investors in
the Convergence believe they have figured out how to profit
from death.
While touring the facility, Jeff pauses to look through a nar-
row slot into the room in which the massive skull is placed. e
Stenmark twins, whose vision has inspired the enterprise, are
engaged in a conversation that raises many of the questions that
are on his mind.
His girlfriend, Emma, asks him to talk to her adopted son, who
has dropped out of school and, unbeknownst to her, is planning
to go to the Ukraine to join the self-defense forces resisting the
Russian invasion. Jeff takes Stak to an art gallery with a single
work on display— a rock sculpture. is work of art provides the
occasion for Jeff to raise existential questions he suspects the
confused adolescent is pondering.
What Jeff does not tell Stak is that he had first encountered
this claim in the writings of Martin Heidegger. For Heidegger,
sel\ood is inescapably temporal and, therefore, undeniably fi-
nite. Man alone exists because he is the only being who knows
he will die. Inauthenticity, according to Heidegger, is the denial
or avoidance of death; authenticity is Being-toward-death. Only
by confronting death directly and honestly can we realize the
abiding significance of the decisions that define who we are.
is lesson stuck with Jeff; he quietly confesses, “I’d never felt
more human than when my mother lay in bed dying” (Z 248).
To overcome death would be to cease to be human and, perhaps,
to become posthuman.
Research and development at the Convergence are enor-
mously expensive and require constant fundraising as well as
sophisticated advertising techniques. e halls and recesses of
the underground retreat are filled with screens and scrims dis-
playing horrifying events supposedly unfolding above ground:
disaster a$er disaster— some “natural,” others “manmade.”Im-
ages are everywhere and eventually consume viewers— floods,
fires, wars, religious and otherwise, no food, no water, no gas.
Mark C. Taylor 27
form of earth art, land art.” She confessed, “is place, all of it,
seems transitional to me. Filled with people coming and going.
en the others, those who are leaving in one sense, as I am,
but staying in another sense, as I am. Staying and waiting. e
only thing that’s not ephemeral is the art. It’s not made for an
audience. It’s made simply to be here. It’s here, it’s fixed, it’s part
of the foundation, set in stone. e painted walls, the simulated
doors, the movie screens in the halls. Other installations else-
where” (Z 50– 51). What is the work of art a$er the death of man?
Ross eventually decides not to undergo the procedure with
Artis, but two years later changes his mind and returns to the
Convergence to join her. Jeff no longer resists his father’s desire
and agrees to help him on his final journey. As they prepare for
the departure, an “envoy” Jeff dubs Zina or Zara reassures her
clients that their investment is prudent because life on earth is
already a living death.
“at world, the one above,” she said, “is being lost to the sys-
tems. To the transparent networks that slowly occlude the flow of
all those aspects of nature and character that distinguish humans
from elevator buons and doorbells.” . . .
“ose of you who will return to the surface. Haven’t you
felt it? e loss of autonomy. e sense of being virtualized. e
devices you use, the ones you carry everywhere, room to room,
minute to minute, inescapably. Do you ever feel unfleshed? All
the coded impulses you depend on to guide you. All the sensors
in the room that are watching you, listening to you, tracking your
habits, measuring your capabilities. All the linked data designed
to incorporate you into the megadata. Is there something that
makes you uneasy? Do you think about the technovirus, all the
systems down, global implosion? Or is it more personal? Do you
feel steeped in some horrific digital panic that’s everywhere and
nowhere?” (Z 259)
1029
.
1030
.
Brunn. l. c.
1031
.
1032
.
1033
.
1034
.
1035
.
A. S., II, 23, 56; 25, 61; 33, 80; III, 20, 51; 30, 71; 32, 75; 38, 87; 39, 89;
58-9.
1036
.
1037
.
1038
.
1039
.
1040
.
1041
.
1042
.
1043
.
1045
.
1046
.
1047
.
1048
.
1049
.
1050
.
Liv. XXIX, 1.
1051
.
1053
.
1054
.
1055
.
1056
.
1057
.
Appian. De bello mithr., 68, 72; Reinach. Th. Mithrad. Eupator ins
deutsch. übertr. Leipzig 1895, pp. 310, 328.
1058
.
1059
.
1061
.
1062
.
1063
.
Plutarc. Cic. 8.
1064
.
1065
.
1066
.
1067
.
1068
.
l. c.
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