Listening for the Cry: Certeau Beyond Strategies and Tactics

This essay argues that an accent on resistance pervasive in current literature on consumer culture and religion drives a narrow application of Michel de Certeau's distinction between strategies and tactics. This paradigmatic appropriation of Certeau's work uses his notion of tactics to des...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Modern theology
Main Author: Alonso, Tony (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Wiley-Blackwell [2017]
In: Modern theology
Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains:B Certeau, Michel de 1925-1986 / Consumer society / Practice / Religion / Christian life
IxTheo Classification:AB Philosophy of religion; criticism of religion; atheism
CB Christian life; spirituality
KAJ Church history 1914-; recent history
Online Access: Volltext (Resolving-System)
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Description
Summary:This essay argues that an accent on resistance pervasive in current literature on consumer culture and religion drives a narrow application of Michel de Certeau's distinction between strategies and tactics. This paradigmatic appropriation of Certeau's work uses his notion of tactics to describe a mode of Christian resistance that can persist even without overthrowing the strategic grid of consumer culture. Situating quotidian tactics within the wider body of his work, I argue that they are not, for Certeau, primarily signs of resistance, but signs of absence: living realities that pulse within and against systems of strategies that can never quite contain them. I propose reading tactics through a hermeneutic of absence to open a space for a theological account of consumer culture that takes seriously the irreducibility of our experiences, even those in and through the distortions of the contemporary market.
ISSN:1468-0025
Contains:Enthalten in: Modern theology
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1111/moth.12333