IV.
Data Compression
(Conclusion)
Following Blanton’s critical investigation into the media
environments of nineteenth and twentieth century scholars and philosophers,
this essay has suggested that Breton’s radical reimagining of the Apostle
Paul’s faith and mission can be read as a reconfiguration of religion in
relation to contemporary information networks. But, significantly, Blanton’s
argument does not stop there: the necessary task now facing religious and
secular thinkers alike is a reimagining of the medial space that they inhabit
as well as a pushing-forward into the uncharted, leaving signposts along the
way for future inquiry. The only thinkable way to achieve this end, as Blanton
himself suggests in his repeated admonitions toward interdisciplinary
cooperation, is to forget the obsessive privileging of one’s own discourse and
to take seriously one’s responsibility toward the discursive traditions of
others. To do so, a provisional common language, a hybrid tongue fitting for
subjects of difference, will be necessary.
This means that the “Christian legacy,” if scholars and
philosophers together decide that it even exists and that it can still be
useful in service of justice, can no longer be possessed by one or the other,
to be used merely to constitute the hegemony of one’s own discipline or empower
one’s own knowledge-producing machine. Paul
must be shared.
