Was it one of those “where were you” moments?
One day, my teaching assistant and I were walking back to the office after a riveting discussion of history, memory, and social change in our introduction to religious studies course.
Somehow we got onto the topic of pivotal moments, those dates that cement the generational divides.
December 7, 1941, November 22, 1963, September 11, 2001…more locally in Tusacloosa April 27, 2011.
I talked about life before and after 9/11. I had asked her if her generation had a pivotal moment like that. She thoughtfully shared that the recurrence and specter of U.S. school shootings was their synchronic moment, their perpetual state. It brought me back to one of my former student’s reflections on the Parkland school shooting and the habitus of U. S. gun violence.
And with so much of what we call “experience” happening on social media, I wonder whether we will pin down singular moments the same way. Will we instead do deep dives or doomscrolls that take us well beyond a single instant to the algorithmic feed? Like an all-you-can-eat buffet, that informational feed promises nourishment while managing to leave one wanting.
For reasons I alldued to yesterday, I don’t think the answer is unplugging. I do think we would do well to have a different approach to media and information.
In this way, January 6, 2021 is as good a day as any to rethink about the mediation of an experience. I’m not sure whether that day has made the canon of pivotal moments. Is it over and when did it begin? Again, like with school violence, maybe there’s something to be said about the insterstices of perpetual states. And in hindsight, maybe there’s a chance to be reflective about what was and is going on.
If you haven’t, I encourage you to check out Uncivil Religion, a collaborative digital project from the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Alabama and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. Led by my colleauge and friend, Prof. Mike Altman, along with Jeremy Copulsky, this site is a repository rich with ways for you to think through the moment and moments where a nation pivoted on all sorts of matters–religion, politics, democracy, security, family, and more. Check it out and see for yourself what you think is worth remembering.
Uncivil Religion curates pieces of digital media – tweets, videos, photos, FBI files – that represent the various and complex religious dimensions of the “Stop the Steal” protest in Washington, D.C. and riot at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. The project also presents accompanying analysis of these digital media from experts in the study of religion and politics. It is a resource for anyone, from the general public to other scholars, interested in tracing the variety of ways religious identities, ideas, symbols, and rituals intersected with the events of January 6.
Mike Altman and Jeremy Copulsky, “Introduction:
A Religious, Yet Religiously Incoherent Event”
UncivilReligion.org
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