Pixar’s Wall-E (2008) tells the story of an impolite robot, a world that is collapsing in every imaginable way (biologically, socially, economically), and a human race that has divorced itself from that world. The demi-god of the ruling commerce culture declares that the planet is toxic and forbids the return of the exiles. Freed from the tragic cost of doing business terrestrially and floating aimlessly in space aboard their interstellar pseudo-ark, the Axiom, humans decline into overweight, non-ambulatory automatons, divorced even from each other, aside from superficial conversations via the heads-up video display inches from their faces that filters out the real for the virtual, the simulacra. The fact that the H.U.D. is transparent is more a salve to their eroded consciences than it is a legitimate window to the real. In one of the most poignant scenes of the film, the robot Wall-E, having stowed aboard the Axiom, interrupts several of the ship’s denizens in their dematerialized reverie, and introduces himself. And for many on the Axiom, robot and human alike, the introduction of this personal, conversant presence is unwelcome. Wall-E does not accept, or rather can not fathom the terms of their anti-dialogical existence. He lives for relationship and, even in this alien environment, can not help but make friends. But, at times, even making friends can be an impolite act – to contest what in Wall-E was really toxic, the exchange of real conversation for a fetish with commercial simulacra.
This is the kind of impoliteness that Graham Ward calls for in The Politics of Discipleship: Becoming Post-Material Citizens. The act of being a citizen does look crass next to the polished acquiescence to consumerism and endless materialism. But for the theologian, who is not a citizen of this world, Ward’s is a call to a radical kind of impoliteness, the scandal of the Christ.
Great introduction to your review Dan. As you know, I am only partly through Ward’s wonderful book (comprehensive exam readings unfortunately do not include him). I find his notion of “impolite interruption” to be particularly helpful and to be illumined quite helpfully by the WALL-E story. It seems to me that “interruption” of the simulacrum of global capitalistic culture can take (perhaps) a number of different forms, one of which at least is not really an interruption at all. It contrasts with Ward’s form of interruption in that it seems agonistic and merely a continuation of the unending war of equally valid value preferences (of course there is the assumption of an Enlightenment metaphysic at work here that assumes a world of indisputable facts, which are quite distinguishable from these value preferences…we have brother Weber and the culture of capitalism to thank for this).
I am thinking of a couple of examples of this in particular, one of which is pointed out by Ward himself (at least as far as I have read TPOD (The Politics of Discipleship). One, perhaps more banal, form of interruption that is no interruption, but a continuation, is the plethora of cultural/political commentary shows which fill both the radio and television air waves. They are no interruption because they do not acknowledge that politics are imagined and therefore require certain kinds of mythologies to fund and give them shape. They assume a very flat world in which everyone simply comes to the table with a common and basic rationality (namely, we are all individual consumers with value-laden preferences whose base desires can be appealed to in order to gain our confidence and support…often the support of our purchasing power). A lot of decontextualized stats and sophistry are thrown at us as viewers/consumers with no sense of the history(ies) and or socio-political traditions and assumptions out of which these stats and sophisms arise. An example would be Sean Hannity or Keith Oberman appealing for a particular judgement of “The Tea Party” movement (or whatever exactly it is).
Another, which Ward describes, and which arises out of this same global capitalistic culture, is the way campaigns for state and national governmental offices are ran or campaigns or protests for issues of justice and peace are pursued. Moveon.org, pro-life, gay rights, antiwar, and some other groups and campaigns could be considered here. These campaigns (some of which I have participated in) are less and less about actual face to face meetings with those who one represents or hopes to represent and more and more about media consultants and lobbyists. Now, I certainly want to affirm the goodness of campaigns for a healthy justice, peace, etc. but the way these campaigns are conducted through the media and modes of capitalistic consumerism is more and more like the sophistry and ahistorical nature of the cultural/political pundits I mentioned above.
These campaigns and commentary programs assume this same flat-consumerstic framework and are therefore agonistic in how they battle for our desires. I have not quite found a way to articulate it yet, but Ward’s work of “interruption” seems to be of a different kind. Perhaps it is because he is seeking, through sustained engagement of the various streams of Christian theology/philosophy and contemporary philosophy, to shape another kind of imagination. And while he uses resources like the great theological ethicist John Howard Yoder, I don’t get the sense the this imaginary or mythos he is articulating is one which paints a hard and fast boundary between Church and World. Therefore the Church is the erotic community that is to embody this imaginary and be engaged, as the Body of Christ, with the world so dominated by the Global Capitalistic, Post-democratic imaginary (ies).
These are just some thoughts that are bouncing around my mind as I read him and the beginnings of your review on him. Again, great choice with the WALL-E analogy. I look forward to the rest of the review and any thoughts you have in reaction to what I have said.
Peace,
Greg (Darkness Whistler)
And…the “non-diaglogical” exstience of the humans in WALL-E as a parallel to the culture Ward is describing seems to me to be right on.