copy Koninklijke Brill NV Leiden 2006 Method amp Theory in the Study of Religion

Also available online ndash wwwbrillnl 18 1-36

1 My thanks to James Gulick for image recoveries and Arleen Zimmerle for helpin preparing the electric version of this article first presented at the 2004 AnnualConference of the American Academy of Religion in San Antonio TX

DEUS IN MACHINA MOVET RELIGION IN THE AGE OF TECHNOLOGICAL REPRODUCIBILITY1

J L

Abstract

This essay demonstrates that the concept of feedbackmdashas a technological condition

historical ontology and theoretical framemdashchallenges traditional ways of conceiving

of religion and writing its history This essay ldquobeginsrdquo in 1920rsquos America a

moment when the capacity of machines to regulate both nonhuman and human sys-

tems reached a point of critical mass and intensity Integrating theoretical explo-

ration with historical specificity I address responses to this changing technologicalatmosphere among Anglo-Protestant leaders as well as leaders of the infamous

ldquoRevivalrdquo of Herman Melville and his long-forgotten Moby-Dick (1851) Historically

I argue that Protestant strategies of self-centering so pervasive in the early twentieth

century failed to hold their ground against the billowing nature of feedback technology

Theoretically I argue that Protestant-inspired definitions of what constitutes religious

belief and practice still pervasive in the modern academic study of religion are

not equipped to deal with crises of the natural within (post)modernity

In the past the man has been first in the future the system must be firstndash Frederick Winslow Taylor

The adjustment of reality to the masses and of the masses to reality is aprocess of unlimited scope as much for thinking as for perception

ndash Walter Benjamin

CAPTAIN AHAB How long before this leg is doneCARPENTER Perhaps an hour SirAHAB Bungle away at it then and bring it to me

(turns to go) Oh Life Here I am proud asGreek god and yet standing debtor to thisblockhead for a bone to stand on Cursed bethat mortal inter-indebtedness which will notdo away with ledgers I would be free as airand Irsquom down in the whole worldrsquos books

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 1

2

1 Machines that think and structureless feelings

ldquoWhat an agerdquo exclaimed a columnist for Advertising amp Selling in 1927ldquoPhotographs by radio Machines that think Vending Machines toreplace salesmen The list of modern marvels is practically endlessrdquo(quoted in Marchand 1985 3) The slippagemdashbetween mediation andimmediacy machines and humanity advertising and sellingmdashwas asinspiring as it was unsettling (Parsons 5) With continuing innovationsin the motion picture telephone and automobile industries the appear-ance of neon signs traffic lights airplane travel and lie detector devicesand most vividly extensions of mass media into everyday lifemdashbook-of-the-month clubs and phonographs radio and the advent of modernmarketing and public relationsmdashthe relationship between the self andthe marvels of technology became a site of heightened religious con-cern particularly among a white Protestant majority As ldquoshell-shockedrdquoveterans and amputees from World War I struggled to adjust to domesticlife their machine-induced maladies became metaphors for the experientialshocks of modernity Articles in such popular magazines as Ladies Home

Journal and the Atlantic Monthly introduced readers to the psychologicalminefield of Sigmund Freudmdashcatharsis trauma and the uncannymdashandhinted at the limitations of discerning the real from the phantasmaticon all matter of experiential fronts In 1922 Harvard-trained psychologistAlfred B Kuttner wrote of the strange materiality of machine-ageAmerica and the increased difficulty of maintaining a stable sense ofself within it From Kuttnerrsquos perspective writing from within theProtestant establishment ldquoour society with its kaleidoscopic changes presents a problem of adjustment with which even those who are athome in America find it difficult to coperdquo (439-40) Across the politi-cal spectrum white Protestants struggled to adjust to the seepage oftechnology into everyday life

As historian Martin Marty has written 1920rsquos America ldquoreeked ofreligionrdquo a telling phrase that illumines the kind of anxiety generatedby the atmospheric effects of technological development (1991 4)Liberals for example pointed to the factory system as the infectioussource of economic deprivation Frederick Winslow Taylorrsquos ldquoprinciplesof scientific managementrdquo in addition to their potential application ldquotoall kinds of human activitiesrdquo (not just the assembly lines at the FordMotor Company) could also pollute the voluntary ground of religiousfaith (Taylor 1911 7) The fires of Fundamentalism on the other handwere fueled by relentless attacks upon ldquomechanical and electrical andchemical discoveriesrdquo that ldquoare contributing to our material prosperity

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 2

3

2 In avoiding the radical skepticism of a David Hume Arminians and enlight-ened villagers alike idealized order (a central believerobserver) symmetry (a Godworldthat was centered) and security (desire for this symmetry) And both reasonable faithand faith in reason promised adherents something tangible and permanentmdashin theform of salvation of the soul andor certain knowledge of the material world Froman epistemological perspective Congregationalist minister Jonathan Mayhewrsquos claimldquothat men are naturally endowed with faculties proper for the discerningrdquo of moraldifferences and judging ldquofor themselves in things of a religious concernrdquo was notantithetical to Baconrsquos admission of ldquonothing but on the faith of eyes so thatnothing is exaggerated for wonderrsquos sakerdquo (Mayhew 1749 5 and Bacon 1870 49)

[but] are more rapidly still undermining our moralsrdquo (Riley 1927 438)On more reactionary ends of the Protestant spectrum urban industrialismand the automobile were cited as having contributed to an increase inimmigration internal migration and unpalatable mixings of blood andlanguage In the pursuit of ldquohundred percent Americanismrdquo nativistsfought the fight in gendered terms erecting ldquovirile legislationrdquo and ral-lying against ldquothe radical seeds that have entangled American ideas intheir poisonous theoriesrdquo (Palmer 1920 173)

On one hand technological innovation and expanse threatened todissolve economies of originationmdashpsychological moral and politicalIn responding to what Walter Benjamin once called the machine-inducedprocesses of ldquomingling and contaminationrdquo white Protestants redou-bled their efforts to secure the very linchpin of their religiositymdashanunencumbered act of faith made possible through conditions of episte-mological clarity (Benjamin 1996 454) Such strategies owed much tothe elective affinity between the spiritual rationalism of Jacob Arminius(c 1560-1609) and the empiricism of Francis Bacon (1561-1626)Arminianism had long since been the baseline of Protestant subjectivityits message of spiritual autonomy spread far and wide by nineteenth-century revivalists During this same period Scottish Common Sensephilosophymdashand its Baconian universe consisting of discernible partsand governed by instrumental reasonmdashachieved widespread currencythrough the ldquovillage Enlightenmentrdquo and Industrial Revolutions ( Jaffe1990 328) Both perspectivesmdashldquoreligiousrdquo and ldquoscientificrdquomdashwere consistentin their affirmation of individual rational faculties and the potential forperceptual transparency2

By the 1920s the vocabularies of Arminianism and Common Sensehad come to inflect and organize all manner of communication andeconomic networks (May 1976 56-58 342 Stout 1977 520 Sellers1991 202-3) Together they had cross-pollinated to such a degree asto become epistemic at least for a Protestant majority whose power

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 3

4

3 For a provocative genealogy of the ideology of secularism see Asad (2003)Undergirding this essay is the fact that 1851 the year Moby-Dick was publishedalso marked one of the first prescriptive uses of the term ldquosecularismrdquo (often attrib-uted to George Jacob Holyoakersquos address to the London Hall of Science and hisfounding of the ldquoSociety of Reasonersrdquo) to connote a self and a world that ulti-mately made sense without the need for divine sanction (Chadwick 1975 91)

increased in terms of ideological diffusion even as it decreased in othermore measurable areas But even epistemes change over time or atleast show signs of wear and tear For as the grammatical blend ofArminian rationality and Common Sense empiricism continued to pro-duce the possibilities of and conditions for technological advancementthis particular admixture was itself failing to come to terms with theworld it was advancing On the contrary unsettling moments proliferatedin which neither the self was as active nor the material environmentas passive as had been promised in the instructions manuals for evan-gelical conversion social contracting capitalistic exchange or scientificinquiry

On the other hand cybernetic imaginings and technological devel-opments in feedback control provide opportunities for scholars of reli-gion to rethink both the content of their histories and approach to theirsubject matters When the concept of feedback is taken seriously interms of both history and experience what then separates secular his-tories of religion from religious histories of the secular Although I donot argue that these histories are equivalent I do find the space of thisseparation to be one worth dwelling in The prevalence of movingimages radio voices telephonic messages and automobile exhaust forexample suggested that in the 1920s there were in effect rather thanfact ldquomysterious incalculable forcesrdquo and that ldquoall thingsrdquo could notnecessarily be mastered ldquoby calculationrdquo (Weber 1958 139) Scholarsof religion in other words must entertain the seriousness in which his-torical actors entertained the visible effects of the invisible and the mate-rial dimensions of the immaterial ldquoWhen we learn a little more aboutradio it appears to be the transmission and reception of pure formwithout substancerdquo wrote WH Worrell in 1922 ldquoAnd isnrsquot it amaz-ing to think that this form this exchange of thought is constantly pass-ing about usmdashpassing through usmdashfrom countless transmitting stations at this

very instantrdquo (70) This ldquoatmosphere of magicrdquo defied Max Weberrsquos con-temporaneous description of disenchantment (1917) not to mention theideological prescriptions of secularismmdashreligious belief as voluntarymorals as universal and epistemology as optically grounded and tem-porally consistent3 According to Worrell and others the atmospheric

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 4

5

Scottish Common Sense may have been the most important contributor to ver-sions of American secularism fueling the emergence anthropology political econ-omy and medical professionalism

4 ldquoThough I wrote the Gospels in this centuryrdquo Melville was resigned to thefact that he ldquoshould die in the gutterrdquo (Melville 1993 192)

forces of technology interfered with the elective space between mindsthe affective space between bodies and the ontological space betweenhuman and machine

Herman Melville had already reached this conclusion by the timehe published Moby-Dick in 1851 According to Melville the directivesof ldquoimperial selfhoodrdquo even though they had undergirded numerousprojects of American modernitymdashfrom industry and the economy reli-gion and philosophy to national infrastructures and mental scaffoldingsmdashhad already begun to fail In Moby-Dick Melville explored via CaptainAhab how the relentless pursuit of spiritual autonomy epistemologicalclarity and ocular dominion could eventually result in submission con-fusion and blindness Cursing his ldquointer-indebtednessrdquo to technologyAhab became infused with its logic admitting that ldquothe path to myfixed purpose is laid with iron rails whereon my soul is grooved torunrdquo His madness rendered him incapable of appreciating the spectraldimensions of material existencemdashfirst and foremost the ldquoloomingrdquo pres-ence of the white whale but also the specters within himself and thosegenerated on board the most advanced technology of its timemdashthe self-contained industrial apparatus of the whaling ship Ahab became unhingedby the ldquomessage-carrying airrdquomdashprecisely those material effects that resis-ted observation and calculation (Melville 1925 422 149 402)

By the 1920s the air had only become more saturated with messagesof various kinds Amidst Taylorized working conditions moving picturesand the lingering traumas of industrial warfare Protestant understandingsof spiritual autonomy and renderings of the material world as pliableand inert often failed to do explanatory justice to feelings of mechanicalstructure and structuration This essay addresses particular responses tothis machine static not strictly within religious institutions and groupingsper se but within one of the more underappreciated revivals of thetimemdashthe aptly named ldquoRevivalrdquo of Herman Melville and his long-for-gotten Moby-Dick Although Melville had himself claimed that Moby-Dick

was a new ldquogospelrdquo it was not until the centenary of his birth in 1919that it was fed back into the loop of popular culture4 With the pub-lication of new editions of his works critical studies and biographiesMelville became a literary sensation and a media spectacle capped off

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 5

6

by The Sea Beast (1926) a silent screen dramatization of Moby-Dick star-ring John Barrymore and Dolores Costello The Melville Revival reflectedalbeit from a peculiar angle many of the anxieties and desires of whiteProtestant majorities across the political spectrum Moby-Dick for examplewas enlisted in the service of authorizing American superiority in thegeo-political sphere as well as in the elusive sphere of culture As thelone solitary masculine artist Melville became a literary vehicle bywhich many revivalists expressed their own revulsion toward the senti-mentalism of mass culture and the perceived threat of feminized racial-ized and ignorant masses (Lauter 1994 6-10) Many (but not all)ldquorevivalistsrdquo celebrated Melville and his epic in terms that mirroredAmerican investment in the directives of possessive individualism andthe essential distinction between human and machine

The first two sections of this essay highlight the shared anxiety cours-ing through American Protestantism popular culture and the MelvilleRevival After exploring the prescient analysis of feedback technologyand the fate of human organicism advanced by Lewis Mumfordmdashawriter who participated in each of these three discoursesmdashI offer closereadings of two moments within the Melville Revival that broachedissues of feedback and religiosity Bess Meredithrsquos screenplay for The

Sea Beast and the American phalanx of European Dada associated withBroom the short-lived journal whose title and musings on the machineage were inspired by Ishmaelrsquos retort ldquoWho ainrsquot a slaverdquo In theirexploration of the murky ontological space between human and machinethese unorthodox readings addressed the technological environment interms normally associated with religionmdashrevelation enchantment mys-ticism God They also captured something about the cultural historyof religion in the 1920smdashits dissonant signals its ambient static thoseldquoelements which the society as such [was] not able to realizerdquo (Williams1966 69)

Sensitivity to the tangible buzz of machine-age America serves alarger goal of reimagining what we as scholars talk about when wetalk about religion (Noble 1997 and Nye 1994) For in addition todemonstrating that Protestant strategies of self-centering so pervasivein the early twentieth century had trouble holding their ground againstthe billowing nature of technology I also argue that Protestant-inspireddefinitions of what constitutes religious belief and practice still pervasivein the modern academic study of religion are not equipped to dealwith the crises of the natural within (post)modernity Rather than engagein sustained readings of those who have broached issues of feedbackmdashWalter Benjamin Donna Haraway Judith Butler Guy Debord Michel

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 6

7

5 See for example the role feedback technologies have played in the developmentof the information society and ldquocontrol revolutionrdquo (Beniger 1986 344-89) and inthe development of twentieth-century social science (Richardson 1991)

Foucault among othersmdashmy goal inspired by their work is to explorethe religious effects of feedback technology and to enact a case studyof American religious history in terms of those ldquostructures of feelingrdquothat actively questioned more formal and official versions of reality

2 Protestant feedback

In addition to ldquoreek[ing] of religionrdquo 1920rsquos America also reeked oftechnology as principles of feedback and reproducibility emerged ascentral components of modern life Telephone networks engines power-ing automobiles phonographs and movie projectors not to mentionthe production of consumer desire by Public Relations specialistsmdashallmarked a moment in American history when technology became intenselyexpressive and atmospheric5 For in addition to expanding the horizonof human nature technologies were readily capable of copying natureand regulating both nonhuman and human systems They were inother words becoming cybernetic (from the Greek kubernetes meaningsteersman) ldquorecreatingrdquo the world in their own image According toan advertisement for the advertising agency Calkins amp Holden ldquoYourworld is being recreated today by three important influences first thecloseness of science and discovery of commercial manufacturing secondthe shortness of the link between the manufacturer and the consumerand third the amazing speed with which the American public makesup its mind to change its mindrdquo (ldquoYour World Has Changedrdquo 1927 15)Consumption and efficiency each became scientific ie natural exten-sions of the other in the practice of ldquohundred percentrdquo Americanism

As historian David Mindell argues in his history of feedback controltechnology the cybernetic ideas made popular by Norbert Wiener inthe late 1940s and early 1950s were already emergent by the 1920s(2002 6) Feedback technologies defined by their internal capacity toadjust themselves to the future through knowledge of past conditionswere designed by human operators to ldquorespondrdquo to external distur-bances and maintain a secure relationship between two variables (Wiener1954 32-4) Once the human agent sets a control variablemdashthe tem-perature within a room or the velocity of a turntable or projectormdashadjustment to external fluctuationsmdashthe temperature outside the roomor the changing weight of a film reelmdashproceed automatically Feedback

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 7

8

technology is often associated with computers and artificial intelligenceHowever the capacity to transmit information in order to counterentropy and maintain equilibrium within a unified system was presentin oil lamps from ancient Greece waterclocks from the middle agesand temperature regulators from the early modern period (Mayer 197011-52) The invention of the Watts steam engine (1788) and the Corlissengine (1848) the publication of James Clerk Maxwellrsquos ldquoOn Governorsrdquo(1868) the appearance of air-conditioned factories (1902) speed gov-ernors on trucks and tractors (c1910) automated electric substations(1914) and the Sperry gyropilot (1920) had revolutionized the kind ofmaterial and ideological presence machines assumed within human lifemdashno longer a wholly ldquoartificialrdquo other but a ldquonaturalrdquo component of howthings fit together and moved along

By the 1920s the fluidity between humans and machines nature andsecond nature had intensified dramatically Self-regulating devices andautomated factories were becoming so pervasive as to go almost unrec-ognized What bound together a white Protestant majority was theirstruggle to maintain the social perceptual and racial orders throughwhich ldquohundred-percent Americanismrdquo and related principles weredefined From a historical perspective such struggles were ironic Foreven as Protestants forged new public narratives of identity stories theytold themselves in order to be their natural selves were themselvesbecoming part of a feedback loop in which technology played a centralrole

Rather than retreat from technology liberals were inclined to seeldquothe energy of God realizing itself in human liferdquo through those inno-vations Second-generation social gospellers redoubled their progressiveefforts to extend access to economic and spiritual opportunity ldquoTheredemption of societyrdquo did not mean the abolition of the ldquoindustrialsystemrdquo but the lessening of its negative impact (Rauschenbusch 1917110 143) Instead of seriously considering how technological drives andtheir ldquoreality effectsrdquo might undermine projects of economic reform andself-cultivation liberals confidently chose to direct technology in theservice of humanity It was a ldquodemocraticrdquo strategy that required decisiveaction For only through such action could the political and epistemologicalpromises of Enlightenment become a religious reality By acting upononersquos God-given ldquoinstinctrdquo the Kingdom of God could be achievedand maintained on earth (Coe 1917 168 131)

In their revolt against the material incursions and ideological temptationsof modernity Fundamentalists strategically harnessed God somewhat

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 8

9

6 Such irony can be found in Jonathan Edwardsrsquos ldquoSinners in the Hands of anAngry Godrdquo (1741) A rich and contradictory sermon it instructs parishioners torecognize their always already abject relation to God while simultaneously demand-ing that they willingly submit to his will

ironically as guarantor of an organic version of human subjectivity6

The Fundamentalist defense of biblical inerrancy for example confirmedboth the divine autonomy of the text and the human capacity for accu-rate contemplation of it This underlying tension was resolved withinthe Fundamentalist theory of textuality that hewed to the CommonSense dictum that seeing was in fact on par with authentic belief Justas there was a transparent relationship to be had between the self andGod reader and words on the page the promise of transparency wasalso fulfilled in the human act of vision more generally God was thearchitect and engineer of the world He constructed the eyes as wellas the space that made visions of the world even possible As WilliamJennings Bryan wrote in 1922 ldquoI believe that God made the eyes whenHe made manmdashnot only made the eyes but carved out the caverns inthe skull in which they hangrdquo (97-8)

With similar missionary zeal so-called ldquohundred-percentersrdquo went onthe offensive and designated scapegoats for a decline in ldquooriginal-stockProtestant Americardquo The Red Scare of 1919-1920 led by AttorneyGeneral and ldquofighting Quakerrdquo Mitchell Palmer initiated campaigns ofsurveillance and intimidation of Socialist Party members labor leadersvociferous Jews and immigrants and any others deemed politically sub-versive The Johnson Act of 1921 the more restrictive Immigration Actof 1924 as well as the increased visibility of the Ku Klux Klan dur-ing the decade spoke to burgeoning fears over racial miscegenation(Marty 1991 66-79) At stake in these fantasies of whiteness and strate-gies of purification was the notion of the Anglo-self as autonomouspossessive and immune

In popular culture myths of individual expertise proliferated thatreflected both the Protestant desire for authenticity and the limits ofthis desire more generally For even as Americans searched for signsof their essential humanity they often came to understand themselvesin and through technological terms Babe Ruth Henry Ford and thebusiness entrepreneur offered celebrity assurance of an autonomous sub-ject who could withstand the feminizing assaults of modernity by mas-tering technology (Susman 1984 133) Advertising executive BruceBarton (who worked for General Motors when it organized the production

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 9

10

of automobiles around consumer orders feedback from local dealersand demand forecasting) introduced Jesus in his best-selling The Man

Nobody Knows (1925) as a conflation of all three (Beniger 1986 317)According to Barton Jesus deftly swung his carpenter tools created anldquoorganization that conquered the worldrdquo and awakened to the ldquoinnerconsciousnessrdquo of his ldquopowerrdquo Barton pitched Jesus as a ldquomysticrdquo andldquobig manrdquo who had incorporated the technologies of business adver-tising and manufacturing into his own personality and cult thereof (4 10 13 6)

As feedback technologies ldquoneutralizedrdquo economies of origination andclaims to eternal value both Christologies and psychological narrativesof restoration were mechanically inscribed (Benjamin 2003 252) Inthe wake of the popular Personality How To Build It (1916) self-realizationwas consistently equated with an engineering process of control Outwitting

our Nerves (1922) affirmed ldquothe integrity of our physical machinesrdquo aswell as human ldquopower of choicerdquo over those machines It was a ldquofactrdquothat ldquowe ourselves decide which of all the possible emotions we shallchoose or we decide not to press the button for any emotion at allrdquo( Jackson and Salisbury 1922 296 360) In Self-Mastery Through Conscious

Auto-Suggestion (1922) one of the defining books of the twentieth-centurygenre of ldquoself-helprdquo Emile Coueacute introduced Americans to the controlpanel of their inner autopilots In Why We Behave Like Human Beings

(1925) evolutionary anthropologist George A Dorsey defined humansin terms of the ldquokinesthetic senserdquo and their innate capacity to enactfeedback control upon themselves He assured readers that ldquoevery humanindividual normal enough to live beyond the walls of an asylum livesbecause he has an equipment by which he can keep on making adjust-ments to changing conditionsrdquo (302 301) In We (1927) CharlesLindberghrsquos celebrated chronicle of his trans-Atlantic flight his airplaneldquoThe Spirit of St Louisrdquo assumed its own personality and portrait evenas Lindbergh became ldquomechanizedrdquo in the popular press

3 Melville fed back

Concerns over how to secure and maintain a sense of coherent iden-tity in light of a seemingly animated material world also precipitatedthe ldquorevivalrdquo of Melville in the 1920s As in the various Protestantstrategies of adjustment ldquorevivalistsrdquo (predominantly white and male)embraced Melville as providing a script of American identity and self-governance In hopes of defending themselves against the totalizing

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 10

11

Figure 1 Instrument Board of the Spirit of St Louis from We (1927)

directives of technology revivalists read Melville and his works throughthe lens of anti-Puritanism and the newly discovered script of FreudMelvillersquos celebrity increased as Elsie Clews Parson Van Wyck BrooksHL Mencken Waldo Frank and others accused Puritans of possessinga ldquorepressive impulserdquo of denying ldquolife and desirerdquo and of discardingldquomystical consciousnessrdquo in favor of ldquoinstrumentalrdquo reason (Frank 191966 150 68) In Melvillersquos rejection of Puritanismrsquos ldquorepellant materialismrdquohis work assumed a positively transgresssive quality (Tomlinson 1926621) Opposed to the Puritan life of ldquointolerable monotonyrdquo Melvillewas viewed as ldquoa mystic a treasure-seeker a mystery-monger a delverafter hidden things spiritual and materialrdquo (Weaver 1919 145-46)

Raymond M Weaverrsquos Herman Melville Mariner and Mystic (1921) setthe terms of religious evaluation for the early stages of the RevivalWeaver proclaimed that Melville in his ldquoescape from an inexorableand intolerable world of realityrdquo had achieved ldquopsychological synthesisrdquo

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 11

12

Figure 2 ldquoThe ConquerorrdquomdashCharles Lindbergh from Current History July 1927

(Weaver 1921 19 331) The construction of Melville as mystic wasconcurrent with the discursive construction of mysticism by liberalProtestants as ldquoahistorical poetic essential intuitive and universalrdquo(Schmidt 2003 288) Both intellectual constructionsmdashthe latter integralto the academic study of religion in the twentieth centurymdashsought towrest a degree of ldquorealnessrdquo from a world in which ldquothe realrdquo was feltto be increasingly susceptible to technological erasure (Kippenberg 2002175-86) And whereas mystically inclined Protestants denounced ldquosec-ular activitiesrdquo by calling for the liberation and unity of ldquothe deep-lyingpowers of the inward self into one conscious liferdquo under God revival-ists called on Melville to provide them with an experiential map of thatwhich was utterly and mysteriously human (Bennett 1923 6 Jones1915 156 161) As Henry A Murray flatly announced ldquoMelville dis-covered the Unconscious and commenced to explore itrdquo (1929 526)As a model for authenticity and self-governance Melville was both ana-lyst and analysandmdashldquoa gentleman adventurer in the barbarous outposts

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 12

13

of human experiencerdquo not a ldquostaged dip into studio savageryrdquo Melvillehad penetrated the depths of his own psyche no doubt aided by hisstay among South Sea islanders (detailed in his first two novels Typee

(1846) and Omoo (1847) Indeed the authenticity of Melvillersquos mysticconsciousness was dependent upon his ldquountamed desires in violentconflict with his physical and spiritual environmentrdquo (Weaver 1921 1519 21 24-29)

As opposed to Weaverrsquos vicarious nostalgia for a simpler less com-mercial and more fully ldquorealrdquo existence another Melville biographerLewis Mumford understood the complex simulations of a consumer-driven economy as already emergent during Melvillersquos writerly careerMixing cultural criticism history and theological speculation Mumfordwas a keen observer of the technological revolutions in feedback controlIn his most memorable and encyclopedic work Technics and Civilization

(1934) Mumford claimed that in the seventeenth-century ldquomechanicsrdquohad become ldquothe new religion and [they] gave to the world a new Messiahthe machinerdquo In dramatizing the extent to which technology had shapedand continued to shape human consciousness Mumford explored inexacting and illustrated detail the history and material conditions thatwere allowing ldquotools and utensilsrdquo to assume ldquoan independent existencerdquo

This ldquoneotechnic phaserdquo had begun in the early part of the nineteenthcentury and was marked by efficiency flexibility ldquocomplete automatismrdquoand synthetic materialsmdasha ldquomutationrdquo that was rapidly integrating ldquothemachine and the world of liferdquo (45 321 227 212 254)

Such integration was not without its dangers ldquoWith the invention ofthe telegraphrdquo the ldquowireless telephonerdquo and the ldquotelevisionrdquo wroteMumford humans ldquobegan to bridge the gap in time between communi-cation and responserdquo The sympathetic relations between family memberscould now be replicated on an unprecedented scale through telepathictechnologiesmdashgiving rise to ldquo[immense] possibilities for good and evilrdquoThe building of a personality was no longer a ldquolocalrdquo affair On the con-trary when ldquomass-reactionsrdquo were ldquomobilized and hastenedrdquo the needsand interests of the human became those of the machine As Mumfordsuggested technology was becoming a ldquocreative force carried on by itsown momentumrdquo and ldquoproducing a third estate midway between natureand the humane artsrdquo The drive to overcome distancemdashbetween indi-viduals as well as between self and worldmdashhad itself ldquocreated an inde-pendent environment that has reacted upon every other side of the personalityrdquo (239241 322 324)

According to Mumford such technological interference had been ofintense and abiding concern for Melville (1934 213) In Herman Melville

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 13

14

Figure 3 Neotechnic Automatism from Technics and Civilization (1934)

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 14

15

7 Public relations and advances in advertising were the latest instances of the ldquocontrol revolutionrdquo in which technology of interchangeability so integral to theAmerican System of manufacturing had extended its field of operations under theauspices of consumer capitalism Machines were not simply making parts for othermachines but were integral to the form and content of social reproduction Publicrelations was a particular (and less reliable) version of feedback control Instead ofmaintaining a fixed variable on the inside by responding to fluctuations on the out-side ldquocounselorsrdquo stoked the flames of consumer desire in order to justify an accel-erating rate of production and ideally consumption

(1929) Mumford had chided fellow revivalists for exaggerating Melvillersquosretreat into mystical idealism ldquoMelville was a realistrdquo countered Mumfordldquoin the sense that the great religious teachers are realistsrdquo FurthermoreMelville had witnessed the ldquovolcanic intrusionrdquo of ldquoindustrialism [as] avalue in itself rdquo (1929 5 64-65) But things had gotten much more com-plicated since the mid-nineteenth century Whereas Melville had beheldldquothe servile routine of the factory systemrdquo Mumford was now witness-ing the birth of ldquothe machine system the network of relationshipsthat have followed the financial exploitation of machineryrdquo The differencein other words was the full-scale emergence of self-governing tech-nologiesmdashldquohandicraft devoted to mechanical reproduction and machinerythat is set to reproduce endless simulacrardquo For Mumford this ldquomachineritualrdquo this ldquoendlessrdquo loop of ldquomechanical reproductionrdquo threatened toefface ldquothe human arts of seeing feeling and livingrdquo (1924 67-68 10174-75 105 81) Technology in other words had achieved the capacityfor feedback on two different but related levels first in material devicesthat could copy both nature and themselves and secondly in humansthat governed themselves according to the latest control variables setby the machine As Mumford argued the totalizing power of feedbacktechnologies resulted not simply from designs motors or even materialoutputs but through their economically driven expansion of ldquothe verydomain of the symbol itself rdquo (1934 331)

Mumfordrsquos insights take on more ominous implications when oneconsiders the rise of the American public relations industry during thisperiod7 Public relations consultants such as Edward Bernays and adver-tisers like Bruce Barton actively sought to shape and change the beliefsof individuals in the service of larger economic agendas It was no acci-dent Bernays wrote in 1923 that a ldquoman belongs to one church ratherthan another or to any church at allrdquo It was no accident that ldquoBostonwomen prefer brown eggs and New York women white eggsrdquo Becausethe judgments of individuals were not arrived at through ldquoresearch andlogical deductionrdquo but were ldquodogmatic expressions accepted on theauthority of his parents his teachers his church and of his social his

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 15

16

economic and other leadersrdquo a ldquopublic relations counselrdquo must do thework of reauthorization (Bernays 1923 62) Through the strategic ldquosat-urationrdquo of images text and work-place incentives an entire profes-sional class sought to provide the terms for and effectively monitor theconditions of self-realization (Marchand 1985 94-95)

What then did Melville have to offer those living within ldquothe machinesystemrdquo of the 1920s Mumford and other revivalists championed Moby-

Dick as a blueprint for living within an increasingly mechanical rou-tinized and bureaucratic world They also heaped admiration uponCaptain Ahab an odd choice given the outcome of Moby-Dick Contraryto those who would later read Ahabrsquos technologically enhanced dem-agoguery against the political backdrops of Italian Fascism and NationalSocialism Ahabrsquos madness in the 1920s could be considered ldquoactiveand courageousrdquo as well as a sign of ldquogeniusrdquomdashldquothe very pinnacle ofhuman self-assertionrdquo (Watson 1970 136 Sullivan 1970 163) Suchreadings conflated the white whale with the power of technology andhad Ahab defiantly affirm the principle of free-will and defend theboundary between human and material worlds Mumford for examplewrote of Ahab as the ldquospirit of manrdquo who stood in opposition to ldquothebrute energies of existence blind fatal overpoweringrdquo Ahab was self-directive ldquopurposiverdquo and he pitted his ldquopuniness against this mightand [his] purpose against the blank senselessness of powerrdquo So eventhough Ahabrsquos ldquomethods are ill-chosenrdquo wrote Mumford his ldquodefianceis noblerdquo (Mumford 1929 184-86)

4 People who portray themselves or Ahab on Ahab

Film projectors in addition to utilizing concepts of feedback internallywere often seen as generative of external feedback loops between humansand machines nature and artifice Such loops arguably constituted theldquosociety of the spectaclerdquo Guy Debordrsquos term for the image-saturatedenvironment that arose in the 1920s with the confluence of sound filmtelevision and the perfection of propaganda techniques As one of themore grim assessments of an image-based postmodernity Debord definedthe ldquospectaclerdquo in terms of negative feedback ldquoIt is the omnipresentcelebration of a choice already made in the sphere of production andthe consummate result of that choice In form as in content the spectacleserves as total justification for the conditions and aims of the existingsystem It further ensures the permanent presence of that justification forit governs almost all time spent outside the production process itself rdquo

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 16

17

8 Cahir (1997) has made a similar point Although I agree with her assessmentthat The Sea Beast is about Ahabrsquos ldquoreal pursuit of identityrdquo I take issue with herargument that The Sea Beast validates autonomous autotelic forms of masculine identity

(13) In America Debordian paranoia was rampant as Victorian fearsover the exploitation of pleasure were morphing into general anxietiesconcerning voyeurism and cinematic determinism ldquoThe spectacle ofmechanical progress has made so deep an impressionrdquo argued WalterLippmann in 1922 ldquothat it has suffused the whole moral coderdquo Whatdisturbed Lippmann and other public figures was the specter of circularcausality and the quiet ldquoinsertion between man and his environmentof a pseudo-environmentrdquo composed mainly of images (Lippmann 1922108 15) Unbeknownst to them Americans were in danger of becom-ing automated by images and trapped within what Debord would latercall ldquoan uninterrupted monologue of self-praiserdquo (19) Their perpetualaffirmation of self however was wholly cybernetic given the fact thatthey were oblivious to the fact that ldquoon the screen the whole processof observing describing reporting and then imagining has been accom-plished for yourdquo (92)

In a strange twist that Melville might have enjoyed the most com-pelling representation of Moby-Dick and portrayal of Captain Ahab mayhave occurred via the technology of the moving picture8 The 1926silent film The Sea Beast adapted to the screen by Bess Meredyth andstarring John Barrymore as Captain Ahab dramatized the feedbackdimensions of film and its capacity to regulate the human personalityThe Sea Beast I argue challenged more able-bodied academic inter-pretations by reveling in its status as a technological reproduction The

Sea Beast with its odd juxtapositions visceral jump cuts and perverseattention to Ahabrsquos stump and artificial limb rather than affirm thedesire for self-transparency suggested that the equipment-free reality ofthe self was quite literally an enabling fiction What Americans lackedaccording to Meredythrsquos scenario was the tragic recognition of them-selves as always regulated and already enhanced by technology Takingldquopleasure in the confusion of boundariesrdquo and ldquoresponsibility in their con-structionrdquo The Sea Beast in the borrowed words of Donna Harawaymade ldquoan argument for the cyborg as a fiction mapping our social andbodily reality and as an imaginative resource suggesting some very fruit-ful couplingsrdquo (8)

In 1925 at age forty-three John Barrymore was one of Hollywoodrsquosmost bankable actors (part of the ldquostar-systemrdquo promoted by Edward

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 17

18

Bernays who clearly saw the potential for cross-marketing between enter-tainment business and political campaigns) Barrymore easily convincedWarner Brothers to turn Moby-Dick one of his favorite novels into amovie and to cast him in the role of Captain Ahab Having playedHamlet in the 1922-23 Broadway season Barrymore developed a keeninterest in psychoanalysis and Freudrsquos account of Hamlet in Interpretationof Dreams (1900) The role of Captain Ahab like that of Hamlet allowedBarrymore to reach a larger audience with his newly emotive actingstyle As Captain Ahab he could also remind his audience of his depthand manly credentials He was tired in his words of playing ldquoscentedbepuffed bewigged and ringletted charactersrdquo (quoted in Kobler 1977213) Promotional pamphlets for The Sea Beast seemed to reinforceBarrymorersquos gendered strategy featuring a picture of Barrymore in abusiness suit puffing contemplatively on a pipemdashldquoJohn Barrymore ismore than a name more than a personality he is world institutionrdquo(Hoffman 2001 73)

The opening credits to The Sea Beast begin imprecisely with a close-up of the filmrsquos textual referent Moby Dick or the White Whale Thissimulated text begins not with ldquoExtractsrdquo or even ldquoCall me Ishmaelrdquobut with the following words ldquoThere never was nor ever will be abraver life than the life of the whaler Compared to the game theyhunted the mightiest land beast was but a poodle dogrdquo Adapted tothe screen by Bess Meredyth former actress turned writer The Sea Beast

is noteworthy as one of the earliest if not the first public appropriationsof Melvillersquos novel by a woman By 1926 Meredyth had become aHollywood regular having written the scenarios or continuities for Ben

Hur (1925) Don Juan (1926) and at least 70 other films ldquoThere is nowoman writing todayrdquo read the promotional copy of The Sea Beastldquowho has contributed so much to genuine screen values as Bess Meredythrdquo(Hoffman 2001 74) The ldquogenuinerdquo sense Meredyth made of Melvillersquosepic is significant in its relentless focus on the self as a technologicalconstruct In Meredythrsquos scenario one literally glimpses the spirit ofMelvillersquos rejection of the contemplative insular and hyper-masculinizedself of mid-nineteenth-century religion and science In its plot and per-verse attention to Ahabrsquos stump The Sea Beast suggests that nothing willor even can make up for the loss Ahab suffers

After the opening credits the audience is introduced to a healthyCaptain Ahab atop the masthead He looks out over the sea and downon his crew hard at work his feet tapping to the beat of the sea shantyldquoHanging Johnnyrdquo Nostalgia and the logic of substitution are bothbroached in the opening scenesmdashnot in terms of idealism but in ways

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 18

19

that hint at their subsequent negation As Ahab reads a letter from hisbeloved Esther Harper the daughter of a Christian missionary playedby the nineteen year-old Dolores Costello Ahab looks longingly at hername tattooed on his arm His mind drifts back to their last embraceFollowing a long close-up of his legs Ahab descends from the mastheadthe camera sliding down the rope in real time and from Ahabrsquos pointof view his legs leading the way The experience of vertigo engenderedby the shot suggests that Ahabrsquos identity is already unstable alreadymarked by a palpable lack of ground This shot however is quicklyoffset by numerous scenes that depict the fullness of Ahabrsquos vigor par-ticularly in relation to his healthy pair of legs He jumps he hops heruns around

When Ahabrsquos ship docks in the bay of Mauritius the audience isintroduced to Esther as well as to Derek Ahabrsquos scheming half-brotherIt is here that one is reminded of the words from the 1925 promotionalpublication of Moby-Dick accompanied by scenes from The Sea Beastldquothe screen version of lsquoMoby Dickrsquo exceeds the book The discrepancybetween the two must not be considered as a profanely wanton alterationrdquoTo portray the ldquopsychological studyrdquo of Captain Ahab ldquothe camerahas resorted to means of its own A mental state therefore particularlyan involved condition of mind must be expressed by means of the inci-dents which produced it each tortuous thought composing Ahabrsquos madness must be traced to the event which engendered itrdquo (Buchman1925 x) The most obvious incident being the loss of Ahabrsquos leg butthe film compounds this felt sense of loss by turning Melvillersquos tale intoa misbegotten love triangle between Ahab Derek and Esther the appleof both their eyes

On shore Ahab and Esther declare their love to each other Butafter a few days Ahab sails from Mauritius and scans the shore withhis telescope He spies Estherrsquos window She comes to the window andreturns Ahabrsquos gaze through her own telescope Technology has literallybecome the lens through which they see each other through whicheach declares their commitment They wave and blow kisses until theyare both out of range At sea Ahab is betrayed by Derek who unbe-knownst to Ahab pushes him overboard into the waiting jaws of MobyDick After losing his leg Ahab is distraught Derek then taunts Ahaband suggests that his symbolic castration is too much for any relation-ship to bear As Derek reminds him ldquoEsther was always crazy aboutyour beinrsquo so strong and perfectrdquo Having been fitted with his ivorystump Ahab arrives back at Mauritius Derek then shames Ahab evenfurther by telling him that he and Esther are in love and that Esther

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 19

20

cannot bring herself to tell Ahab of the deceit Derek then goes toEsther to convince her that Ahab has abandoned her When Ahabarrives at Estherrsquos house to confirm Derekrsquos story he sees their shadowscast by the light of spermaceti candles and mistakenly believes thatEsther has indeed left him for Derek It is here that Ahab descendsinto his infamous monomania

Ahab goes onto slay Moby Dick but not before uncovering his half-brotherrsquos double betrayal In a dramatic confrontation Derek pulls aknife on Ahab and is about to get the best of our hero But wait Ahabwedges his ivory stump into the deck leveraging himself in order tofend off Derek Ahab then casts Derek overboard and into the sea Anivory technology marking the absence of Ahabrsquos leg has been trans-formed into a salvific presence Or so it seems when the audience istreated to the restoration of order upon the Pequodrsquos return to portand Ahabrsquos reunion with Esther consummated in their tearful embraceHaving staged and seemingly resolved the crisis of masculine identity(the raison drsquoecirctre of melodrama being that the resolution is alreadypresent in the staging) The Sea Beast on the contrary did anything butrestore the full presence of Ahabrsquos self It suggested through both contentand form that the reality of the self whether it be Ahab or the spec-tator in the theater was neither fully resolvable nor equipment-free

Ahab achieves a kind of liberation on screen by recognizing that heis always already a figment of an imagination that is not his own Afterthe tearful reunion between Ahab and Esther the screen goes blackThe audience is then given a glimpse behind the scenes as it weremdasha scene of the director Millard Webb in his chair issuing directionsto Ahab and Esther in Estherrsquos living room A man in a business suitplays the violin in the background As Ahab and Esther look longinglyinto each otherrsquos eyes Ahab slips a ring onto Estherrsquos finger and theyembrace once again Or is it Barrymore and Costello It is unclearparticularly in light of the rumors of an off screen tryst between themiddle-aged Barrymore and his nineteen-year old costar (they wouldlater marry) The loving embrace is seemingly real an ambiguityreaffirmed by the fact that after Webb yells ldquocutrdquo he has to step betweenthe couple and remind them that they are on film Webb then turnsto the camera and smiles as the screen abruptly cuts to black onceagain

The odd ending of The Sea Beast suggests that Ahabrsquos journey towardreconciliation did not end with self-exposure but that it could neverreally begin Rather than achieve restoration of nature in and througha cultural construction Ahabrsquos artificial leg points to a previously

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 20

21

Figure 4 Final Embrace between AhabBarrymore and EstherCostello

ldquoexcluded and illegible domain that haunts the former domain as thespecter of its own impossibility the very limit of intelligibility its con-stitutive outsiderdquo (Butler 1993 xi) The ending harkens back to the seashanty ldquoHanging Johnnyrdquo Ahabrsquos introductory descent from the mast-head and his telescopic flirtation with Esther both vertiginous slidesinto the unfathomable layers of mediated perception that signal theldquoexecutionrdquo of possessive individualism Rather than erase the sign ofAhabrsquos traumamdashhis ivory legmdashthe ending of The Sea Beast suggests thatAhab and Barrymore are two sides of the same character vacillatingwithin the loop of continuous performativity One is reminded here ofWalter Benjaminrsquos insight into the traumatized subject in the age oftechnological reproducibility As Benjamin argues the trauma can beunderstood as a shift from the stage to the screen in which the actorperforms for a ldquopiece of equipmentrdquo rather than for an audience Citingthe Italian playwright Luigi Pirandello Benjamin suggests that the mod-ern subject is

exiled not only from the stage but from his own person With a vagueunease he senses an inexplicable void stemming from the fact that hisbody has lost its substance that he has been volatilized stripped of his

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 21

22

reality his life his voice the noises he makes when moving about andhas been turned into a mute image that flickers for a moment on thescreen then vanishes into silence (2003 260)

Pirandellorsquos borrowed words speak directly to Meredythrsquos reconfigurationof Melvillersquos text Whereas Melvillersquos Ahab tried and failed to conquerthe very source of visual illuminationmdashthe spermaceti oil that allowedantebellum Americans to see in the darkmdashBarrymorersquos Ahab revels inthe technologically enhanced gaze of his audience When the lightscome up the selves of Ahab Barrymore and the audience have beenre-narrativized as cybernetic that is as permanently divided and fun-damentally transient In affirming the really real offscreen relationshipbetween Barrymore and Costello the uncanny ending of The Sea Beast

supported a notion of selfhood as always already mediated or betteryet the necessity of experience to be mediated in order for it to becomereal or maybe even the necessity of acknowledging that the reality ofthe self is really made up

Barrymorersquos self-conscious performance inspired by his reading ofFreud and designed to overcome middle-class mores did not so muchpenetrate the inner depths of his character as it did the emotional lifeand perceptual apparatus of his audience The Sea Beast does not dram-atize the individual conquest of nature as much as it dramatizes visualtechnologyrsquos seduction of the individual The Sea Beast in its staging ofa cybernetic reality denied the very concept of 100 Americanism byinterrupting the narrative closure on which self-presence dependedNeither Ahab nor Barrymore nor the audience are ever alone even intheir solitude They are haunted not simply by the unconscious butby the specters generated in and through technologies of reproduction(Derrida 1994 97) They are in Benjaminrsquos apt phrase ldquopeople whoportray themselvesrdquo (Benjamin 2003 262)

For Benjamin photography and cinema were technologies of religiousrevelation for better or for worse in that they both exposed variousfeedback loops that constituted onersquos identity On one level Benjaminargued that the category of originality had been challenged by visualtechnologies that put copies ldquoof the original in situations which theoriginal itself cannot attainrdquo (2003 254) On another level the decayof the ldquoaurardquo of authenticity and the blurring of original and reproductionenabled individuals to recognize the fact that they were implicated inthe perceptual field and no longer insulated from what they saw orheard ldquoReception in distractionrdquo wrote Benjamin ldquowhich is increas-ing noticeably in all areas of art and is a symptom of profound changesin apperceptionmdashfinds in film its true training groundrdquo (269) Influenced

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 22

23

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethersquos notion of ldquoafter-imagesrdquo in Theory

of Colours (the same text that informed Melvillersquos ldquoThe Whiteness of theWhalerdquo) Benjamin announced the birth of the ldquooptical unconsciousrdquo(266) According to Benjamin images had become the currency of con-sciousness structuring thought and determining the range of possibleactions Mechanical means of reproduction had liberated the perceptualcapacities of humanity They had also ushered in the prospect of massdeception and control Either way they had resulted in a ldquomassiveupheaval in the domain of objectsrdquo and a ldquoshattering of traditionrdquo (254)

5 American Dada and the aporias of modernity

Within the Melville Revivalmdashan almost clicheacuted instance of Modernismrsquosvogue for the solitary geniusmdashseeds of post-Cartesian doubt were beingsown and the enchanting dimensions of technology considered BecauseMelville ldquowas spell-bound by the strange slidings and collidings ofMatterrdquo his work in the eyes of more atheological critics exposed theenchanting conditions of the machine age (Taylor 1984) ldquoIt is the mate-rial elements he really has to do withrdquo wrote DH Lawrence in 1923ldquoHis drama is with them He was a futurist long before futurism foundpaintrdquo (216) For Lewis Mumford too Melville had not simply dram-atized the incursion of machinesmdasha traditional Romantic tropemdashbuthad embraced a series of insoluble contradictions He has come to rec-ognize those parts of the world and himself that had already been pro-duced by machines and had insisted that the plasticity of self wassomething with which Americans had to struggle and to their spiritualdetriment repress

In broaching the aporias of modernity Mumford saw Melville as hav-ing already given the lie to Weberian diagnoses of disenchantment Thecapacity to effectively turn night into day Mumford suggested the expe-rience of a subway car rumbling past the solid structures of a sky-scraper vanishing into the air the peering into a microscope and theobservation of a ldquorow of bottles each of identical size shape colorstretching away for a quarter of a milerdquo were enough to induce a particular kind of vertigo ldquoThe special visual effect of repeating pat-tern[s]rdquo occurred simultaneously with the experience ldquoof the unique andthe non-repeatablerdquo (Mumford 1934 333-34) The experience of intensesystematicitymdashprecisely what feedback technologies were designed toinducemdashcould be positively disorienting when the infinitely calculableassumed the ldquospecial qualityrdquo of the ldquoincalculablerdquo (Heidegger 1977

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 23

24

135) According to Mumford when technology no longer made imperfectcopies of nature but perfect copies of itself the very notion of ldquonaturalrdquocould become radically suspect With the ldquoliquidationrdquo of the solid book-ends of authenticity and artifice came the prospect that the spectrumitself was socially constructed for better or for worse (Benjamin 2003255) Having torn aside the veil ldquoman has thrown between his ownexperience and the blank reality of the universerdquo Melville neither suc-cumbed to the temptation of nihilism nor retreated into his own pri-vate morality On the contrary he urged his contemporaries to ownup to the constructedness of any and all cultural forms and expressionsand the faith commitments that undergirded them As Mumford wroteldquoto appreciate the reality of the White Whale is to see more deeplyinto the expedience of all our immediate institutions all the spiritualshelters man puts between himself and the uncertain cosmic weatherMeaning significance attends only that little part of the universe manhas built up and settledrdquo (Mumford 1926 150-51)

Whereas Mumford assessed the religious dimensions of technologicalldquoprogressrdquo in a tragic key others tended toward the comic as was thecase with a group of experimental artists associated with Broom An

International Magazine of the Arts Published by Americans in Italy publishedbetween 1921 and 1924 (Tashjian 1975 116-34) Broomrsquos co-editor thepoet Alfred Kreyemborg (who would later co-edit The American Caravan

with Lewis Mumford) had adapted a passage from Moby-Dick for itstitle logo and statement of purpose which appeared on the back coverldquoWhat of itrdquo asks Ishmael

if some old hunks of a seacaptain orders me to get a broom and sweepdown the decks What does that indignity amount to weighed I meanin the scales of the New Testament Do you think the Archangel Gabrielthinks any less of me because I promptly and respectfully obey that oldhunks that particular instance Who ainrsquot a slave (Melville 1925 4)

The first issue of Broom included poems addressing Albert Einsteinrsquostheory of relativity as well as Emmy Veronica Sanders declaration thatldquothe American Machinerdquo was ldquotransforming itself with all its attributesand characteristics into American Mindrdquo ldquoAmericardquo she continuedinitially ldquomade of the Puritan by the Puritan for the Puritanrdquo wasnow being ldquoremade of the Machine by the Machine for the Machinerdquo(89-90) Following Sandersrsquos piece was a David OrsquoNeilrsquos hymn of sup-plication to the new Gods of the machine

When you are sweeping usWith Your cosmic broom

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 24

25

Figure 5 Nature and Second Nature in Technics and Civilization (1934)

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 25

26

Sweeping us out of mouldy rutsSweeping us clean and sweetmdash

RememberWhen wersquore quiveringmdashSensitivemdashbaremdashWe shall be gratefulFor just a few shadows (96)

Broom took Ishmaelrsquos retort quite seriously addressing the revolutionarydimensions of technological artifice and the shadows cast within therealm of technological illumination

Unlike Futurism Broom did not celebrate the beauty of war It didhowever come to express the ldquodreamed-of metallization of the humanbodyrdquo and the playful cybernetic fantasies of Dadaists such as ManRay and Francis Picabia (quoted in Benjamin 2003 269) After someinitial hesitation Broom began to embrace Dadarsquos perspective on the lib-eratory dimensions of the human-machine interface ldquoEverything isartificialrdquo gasped Broom contributor Blaise Cendrars ldquoThe eyes thehand the sexual frenzy of the factory The wheel which turns Thewing which flies The voice which travels far on a wire Your ear ina trumpet Your sense of direction Your rhythm You melt the worldin the mould of your skull Your brain is hollow Like a religion amysterious pill hastens your digestionrdquo (265) Jean Epstein from a slightdifferent angle argued that technology had ldquobecome part of ourselvesrdquoand had democratized human perceptionmdashldquoman has not one memoryof [the] landscape he [now] has a thousand different ones which mayor may not resemble each other Everything possesses hundreds ofapparent diameters which never superimpose exactlyrdquo (6-7)

Broom was soon translating less inflammatory Futurist manifestos suchas Enrico Prampolinirsquos ldquoThe Aesthetic of the Machine and MechanicalIntrospection in Artrdquo in which he declared ldquoIs not the machine todaythe most exuberant symbol of the mystery of human creation Is it notthe new mythical deity which weaves the legends and histories of thecontemporary human drama The Machine in its practical and materialfunction comes to have today in human concepts and thoughts thesignificance of an ideal and spiritual inspirationrdquo The kind of worshipthat ensued was that of the cyborg neither reverent nor memorializ-ing of cosmic law (Haraway 2004 9) Or as Prampolini wrote ldquoOurexperience has convinced us of the truth of certain of our plastic truthsand has allowed us to perceive the errors that lie in othersrdquo (236)

One of the more important pieces of American Dada captured pre-cisely this pointmdashGod (c 1917) designed by Baroness Elsa von Freytag-

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 26

27

Figure 6 Illustration accompanying Enrico Prampolinirsquos ldquoThe Aesthetic of theMachine and Mechanical Introspection in Artrdquo Broom 33 (October 1922) 237

Loringhoven and photographed by Morton Schamberg The invertedcast-iron plumbing trap atop a carpenterrsquos miter box was emblematicof the Melvillean appreciation for technological enchantment Indeedthe pipe is part of an indoor plumbing apparatus a modern conveniencewhose history dates back to some of the earliest feedback technologieson recordmdashthe water-clocks and float-regulators of ancient Greece (Mayr1970 11-26) God resembled the mechanical abstractions Schamberghad been producing before his premature death in 1918 during aninfluenza outbreak in Philadelphia The Baroness a contributor to Broom

and other little magazines had arrived in New York from Germanyin 1913 She was ldquothe first American dadardquo wrote Jane Heap in 1922ldquothe only one living anywhere who dresses dada loves dada lives dadardquo(46) Friends with Marcel Duchamp Djuna Barnes and other NewYork artists the Baroness was a central figure in a burgeoning trans-atlantic avant-garde In addition to her art and poetry the Baronesswas also a ldquoperformancerdquo artist who skillfully inverted gender hierarchiesand attacked through her very presence the traditional sensibilities ofthe middle-class She was notorious for walking around the streets ofGreenwich Village with her shaved head painted purple postage stampspasted to her face and a bird cage around her neck housing a livecanary (Davidson 1996 223-24)

In what must be considered a prescient assault on all manners oflogocentrism the Baroness also carried with her a plaster cast penis thatshe periodically revealed to passersby for maximum shock value (Gammel2002 195) But it was the Barnonessrsquos sculpture God that in addition

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 27

28

Figure 7 God (c 1917) designed by Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven and photographed by Morton Schamberg

to celebrating the mobility and reproducibility of that which was sup-posedly the most fixed and essential repossessed the power of tech-nology as ever imperfect and incomplete As a companion piece of sortsto Duchamprsquos infamous ready-made Fountain an inverted urinal dis-played in the 1917 exhibition of the American Society of IndependentArtists God invited more expressly theological speculation First of allit insisted on supplementing the three traditional symbolic centers ofWestern religious reflectionmdashGod humanity naturemdashwith the machineAnd although it has since been viewed by critics as ldquosacrilegiousrdquo andan instance of ldquoantireligious scatologyrdquo (Naumann 1994 171 Gammel220) the transgressive dimensions to God also affirm a shadowy open-

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 28

29

9 One is reminded here of Melvillersquos letter to Nathaniel Hawthorne in April of1851 ldquoWe incline to think that God cannot explain His own secrets and that Hewould like a little more information upon certain points Himself We mortals aston-ish Him as much as He usrdquo (Melville 1993 186)

ing to radical othernessmdashin the form of imperfection and chancemdashwithin the loops generated by feedback technology

Although the metal pipe ends up pointing toward heaven it firstloops downward in a nod to its human ground Limited by the skillsof the human carpenter on whose box it is anchored the contortedpipe narrativizes both the pitfalls and prospects of the machine ageShit eventually flows up in the case of God not down suggesting thateven the most lofty and noble ideals of the imagination maintain theirhuman aroma Rather than assume the power of divinity classicallyconstrued God staged divinity as nothing more and nothing less thanthat which made life livablemdashthat which kept the smell of human wasteartificially at bay or more ominously managed the flow of thingsthrough feedback control But even more literally God called attentionto the human work in the making of artifice and celebrated the bio-logical possibility for the endless unmaking (and remaking) of selfFeedback technology was not really God but it was for all practicalpurposes Or as the Baroness wrote in a 1927 letter to Peggy GuggenheimGod had much to learn from Henry Ford for he was ldquoclumsily sub-tle-densely-intelligent-inefficiently-immense-(Lord not Fordmdashof course)rdquo9

God the Baroness playfully warned had ldquobetter hotfoot it towardprogressmdashmodernizemdashuse his own omnipotence intelligentlymdashsmart orwersquoll all expire in tangle Well Lord knowsmdash(Does he)rdquo (quoted inGammel 2002 229)

6 Conclusion Deus in machina movet

As Protestant majorities struggled to adjust themselves and their theo-logical inheritance to new technological conditions theologies of themachine age both compelling and disturbing emerged from outsidethe precincts of traditional religious discourse For in addition to beinginspired by the ghost of Herman Melville the Melville Revival wasquite literally haunted by the power of feedback technologiesmdashspectersthat were affective rather than concrete strangely resistant to rationalcontemplation yet recognized through anxious admixtures of thoughtand feeling On one hand the revival reflected the spectrum of Protestant

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 29

30

10 Shortly after the publication of Moby-Dick in November of 1851 reports beganto reach America about the August sinking of the Ann Alexander by a whale in theSouth Pacific It was the first ldquoattack of a whale upon a shiprdquo since the destruc-tion of the Essex in 1820 The story about the Ann Alexander originally appeared inthe Panama Herald on October 16 and was reprinted the following month in New-York Daily Tribune and Littellrsquos Living Age The sperm whale that the Ann Alexander

fears over technological miscegenation The capacity of machines toredraw the boundaries of race and gender disturbed Protestant leadersand revivalists alike On the other hand subversive elements within theMelville Revival offered what must be considered a theological critiqueof how Protestants understood themselves and their God in relation totechnological materials Grant Overton for example saw in Moby-Dick

a deep appreciation for how technological developments had come tounderminemdashquite literally hauntmdashthe epistemological and ontologicalassumptions that made them possible ldquoNo longer able to instance thedeus ex machinardquo wrote Overton Melville was ldquounforgetful that deus inmachina movet and while most of mankind [have] become unable to seethe god for the machine [he] can scarcely perceive the machine forthe god agitating it [His] reports of the machine are somehow unrec-ognizable [his] realism is confronted by Realityrdquo (Overton 1928 231)

Bess Meredythrsquos reimagining of Moby-Dick and Baroness Elsa vonFreytag-Loringhovenrsquos God also explored the otherness that technologyengenders within the modern subject a trace that lingers despite allattempts to extinguish it Their errant readings challenged contempo-raries to reimagine their relationship to technology from an enchantedperspective that did not necessarily conform to the directives of Americanindividualism Resisting the advertisements of both Arminianism andBaconian Common Sense these readings insisted that there was somethingelsemdashsomething wholly othermdashoccurring within the technological workingsof secular modernity Excess or that which unsettled the boundariesbetween body and machine masculine and feminine had resulted inwhat might be called a ldquopost-structure of feelingrdquo The prospect thateither machines or women had begun to think for themselves or atleast possess a kind of agency once attributed to the enlightened malesubject now seemed as likely as a whale vengefully turning against awhaleship10 As Melvillean riffs on the deferred project of religious iden-tity The Sea Beast and God marked the space between human creationand technological determination consent and compulsion and there-fore hinted at the prospect that belief was not an individual state butan embodied activity Consistent with Lewis Mumfordrsquos assessment ofthe symbolic and material powers of feedback technology these works

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 30

31

had first turned upon starboard and larboard boats seizing both in its jaws andcrushing them to pieces It then rushed towards the Ann Alexander ldquoat the rateof fifteen knots In an instant the monster struck the ship with tremendous violence shakingher from stem to sternrdquo (415) Upon reading the article Melville remarked to his pub-lisher ldquothe Whale had almost completely slipped me for the time (amp I was themerrier for it) when Crash comes Moby Dick himself It is really amp truly a sur-prising coincidencemdashto say the least I make no doubt it is Moby Dick himself I wonder if my evil art has raised this monsterrdquo (Melville 1993 209)

11 William Jennings Bryan for example that standard bearer of fundamentalfaith equated faith to a particular kind of technologymdashldquothere is that in each humanliferdquo he wrote ldquothat corresponds to the mainspring of a watchmdashthat which isabsolutely necessary if the life is to be what it should be a real life and not amere existence That necessary thing is a belief in Godrdquo (86) Faith for Bryan wasthat which repeated without difference It was a dependable rational and utterlyrationalizing process It was not however self-regulating It affirmed the ldquorealnessrdquoof the individual believer precisely because it ignored the conditions imposed fromoutside the self But how might faith be viewed in terms of feedback and repro-ducibility rather than repetition a process that does not reaffirm a centered indi-vidual with every tick but adjusts accordingly to external fluctuations

raise numerous questions concerning the ways and means of religionin an age of postmodern complexity and virtual reality

How might a relentless focus on power and the porousness of sub-jectivity change how one views the matter of religion within historyHow might a greater attention to the aesthetic conditions that mediateany and all beliefs challenge the ways in which we distinguish the reli-gious from the secular How might a greater attention to the enchantingpower of material conditions challenge historical and political narrativesof secularization How do technologies and vested interests realize them-selves through the discourses of agency choice and mobility Whatin other words are the conditions of possibility that allow a historicalactor (rather than a Hollywood actor) to make a particular faith com-mitment or for that matter have any faith at all In what languagedo historical actors dream about themselves and divinity and how doesthat language change over time And finally to what degree is faithitself a technology11

By acknowledging the white mythology that still informs say thefield of American religions such questions shift the scholarly emphasisfrom explicit expressions of religious belief and practice to the spacebetween those beliefs and practices and the world at-large Individualswithin American religious history for example have often been depictedas fully formed agents making choices between various faith commitmentsand ever combining religious idioms to suit their specific needs and cir-cumstances (Albanese 1997) No doubt this is true But there is anotherside to this story of radical religious pluralism one that if accounted

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 31

32

12 Such a possibility is very much at odds with the Geertzian model of ldquothickdescriptionrdquo and its formidable legacy in the humanities and social sciences Withoutquestioning the degree to which the self can ever become entirely legible to theself Geertz claimed that every society and individual life and by extension everybelief and every practice ldquocontain their own interpretations One has only to learnhow to gain access to themrdquo (Geertz 1973 453)

13 The ambiguities of agency during the ldquomachine agerdquo have been the subjectof a number of elegant critical studies See for example Anson Rabinbach TheHuman Motor Energy Fatigue and the Origins of Modernity (New York Basic Books1990) Mark Seltzer Bodies and Machines (New York Routledge 1992) MarthaBanta Taylorized Lives Narrative Productions in the Age of Taylor Veblen and Ford (ChicagoUniversity of Chicago Press 1993) Carolyn Thomas de la Pentildea The Body ElectricHow Strange Machines Built the Modern American (New York New York UniversityPress 2003) and Joel Dinerstein The Swinging Machine Modernity Technology andAfrican American Culture Between the World Wars (Amherst University of MassachusettsPress 2003) Dinersteinrsquos work is particularly relevant to the issue of religious com-binativeness given his emphasis on how African American artists strove to refigureldquomachine aestheticsrdquo in and through their artistry Dinersteinrsquos work suggests thatthe self is locatedmdashie the self happensmdashsomewhere between resistance and assim-ilation between choice and coercionmdasha lesson that many Anglo-Americans werenot willing to consider in their triumphal theorizing about the human in relationto the machine The possibility for consideration argues Dinerstein existed inAfrican American jazz swing and dance

for suggests new directions for the study of religion in America Althoughthe ldquolived religionrdquo perspective in American religious history has donemuch to overcome the distinction between ldquodabblersrdquo and ldquotrue believersrdquothe question of power still lingers (Ahlstrom 1972 1052) Religiousbeliefs and practices are neither essential things nor reveal themselvesto the scholar in toto12 Such a position does not replicate the eitherordiscussion regarding the agency of historical actors On the contraryit suggests that religious agency is a hybrid weave of intent and instinctimmediate response and mediated principle knowing and unknowing13

Accounting for the ambiguities of agency has already pushed scholarsof religion toward an anthropology of the secular and an explorationof in the Foucauldian phrasing of Talal Asad ldquothe contingencies thathave come together to give us our certaintiesrdquo (2003 16)

It is with a hint of irony then that one may return to the promotionalpamphlet of The Sea Beast that celebrates the ldquoconquestrdquo of Ahab andthe invisible wafting presence of screenwriter Bess Meredyth ldquoThereis no woman writing today who has contributed so much to genuine

screen values as Bess Meredythrdquo Indeed her son John Meredyth Lucasborn in 1919 continued down his motherrsquos unsettling path as a successfultelevision screenwriter and director His credits included episodes ofldquoStar Trekrdquo ldquoLoganrsquos Runrdquo and that other story of ldquohundred percentrdquoAmericanism ldquoThe Six Million Dollar Manrdquo

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 32

33

Figure 8 The Six Million Dollar Man ldquoGentlemen we can rebuild him Wehave the capability of making the worldrsquos first bionic man We can make him

better than he was before Better Stronger Fasterrdquo

Haverford College370 Lancaster AveHaverford PA 19041jlardashaverfordedu

References

Ahlstrom Sydney E (1972) A Religious History of the American People New HavenYale University Press

Albanese Catherine L (1997) Exchanging selves exchanging souls Contact com-bination and American religious history In Thomas A Tweed (ed) RetellingUS Religious History 200-26 Berkeley University of California Press

Anon (1851) A ship sunk by a whale Littellrsquos Living Age (29 November) 415-16Asad Talal (2003) Formations of the Secular Christianity Islam Modernity Stanford

Stanford University Press

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 33

34

Bacon Francis (1870) The Works of Francis Bacon James Spedding Robert LeslieEllis and Douglas Denon Heath (eds) Vol VIII New York Hurd andHoughton

Barton Bruce (2000) The Man Nobody Knows A Discovery of the Real Jesus ChicagoIvan R Dee

Beniger James R (1986) The Control Revolution Technological and Economic Origins ofthe Information Society Cambridge Harvard University Press

Benjamin Walter (1996) One-way street In Marcus Bullock amp Michael W Jennings(eds) Selected Writings Volume 1 1913-1926 444-88 Cambridge HarvardUniversity Press

mdash (2003) The work of art in the age of its technological reproducibility third ver-sion In Howard Eiland and Michael W Jennings (eds) Selected Writings Volume4 1938-40 251-83 Cambridge Harvard University Press

Bennett Charles A (1923) A Philosophical Study of Mysticism An Essay New HavenYale University Press 1923

Bernays Edward L (1923) Crystallizing Public Opinion New York Liverlight PublishingCorporation

Buchman SR (1925) Moby Dickmdashthe book and The Sea Beastmdashthe picture Anappreciation In Herman Melville Moby Dick or The White Whale ix-xi NewYork Grosset amp Dunlap

Butler Judith (1993) Bodies That Matter On the Discursive Limits of lsquoSexrsquo RoutledgeNew York

Cahir Linda Costanzo (1997) Routinizing the charismatic Melville and Hollywoodrsquosthree Moby-Dicks Melville Society Extracts 110 (September) 11-17

Cendrars Blaise (1922) Profound today Broom 13 ( January) 265-67Chadwick Owen (1975) The Secularization of the European Mind in the Nineteenth Century

Cambridge Cambridge University PressCoe George Albert (1917) A Social Theory of Religious Education New York Charles

Scribnerrsquos SonsDavidson Abraham A (1996) The European art invasion In Francis M Naumann

(ed) with Beth Vann Making Mischief Dada Invades New York 222-27 NewYork Whitney Museum of Art

Debord Guy (1995) Society of the Spectacle translated by Donald Nicholson-SmithNew York Zone Books

Derrida Jacques (1994) Specters of Marx The State of the Debt The Work of Mourningand the New International Peggy Kamuf (trans) New York Routledge

Dorsey George A (1925) Why We Behave Like Human Beings New York BlueRibbon Books

Epstein Jean (1922) The new conditions of literary phenomena Broom 21 (April)3-10

Frank Waldo (1919) Our America New York Boni and LiverightGammel Irene (2002) Baroness Elsa Gender Dada and Everyday Modernitymdasha Cultural

Biography Cambridge The MIT PressGeertz Clifford (1973) Deep play Notes on the Balinese cockfight In The Interpretation

of Cultures 412-53 New York Basic BooksHaraway Donna (2004) A manifesto for cyborgs Science technology and socialist

feminism in the 1980s In The Haraway Reader 7-45 New York RoutledgeHeap Jane (1922) Dada Little Review VII2 (Spring) 46Heidegger Martin (1977) The age of the world-picturerdquo In The Question Concerning

Technology and Other Essays 115-54 William Lovitt (trans) New York Harperamp Row

Hoffman Carol Stein (2001) The Barrymores Hollywoodrsquos First Family LexingtonUniversity of Kentucky Press

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 34

35

Jackson Josephine A and Helen M Salisbury (1922) Outwitting Our Nerves A Primerof Psychotherapy New York The Century Co

Jaffe David (1990) The village enlightenment in New England 1760-1820 TheWilliam and Mary Quarterly XLVII3 ( July) 327-46

Jones Rufus M (1915) Mysticism in present-day religion Harvard Theological ReviewVIII2 (April) 155-65

Kippenberg Hans G (2002) Discovering Religious History in the Modern Age BarbaraHarshav (trans) Princeton Princeton University Press

Kobler John (1977) Damned in Paradise The Life of John Barrymore New YorkAtheneum

Kuttner Alfred B (1922) Nerves In Harold E Stearns (ed) Civilization in the UnitedStates An Enquiry by Thirty Americans 427-42 New York Harcourt

Lauter Paul (1994) Melville climbs the canon American Literature 66 (March) 1-24Lawrence DH (1923) Studies in Classic American Literature New York T SeltzerLindbergh Charles A (1927) We New York GP Putnamrsquos SonsLippmann Walter (1922) Public Opinion New York Macmillan CompanyMarchand Roland (1985) Advertising the American Dream Making Way for Modernity

1920-1940 Berkeley University of California PressMarty Martin E Modern American Religion Vol 2 The Noise of Conflict 1919-1941

Chicago University of Chicago Press 1991May Henry F (1976) The Enlightenment in America New York Oxford University

PressMayhew Jonathan (1749) Concerning the difference between truth and falsehood

right and wrong In Seven Sermons 1-21 Boston Rogers and FowleMayr Otto (1970) The Origins of Feedback Control Cambridge The MIT PressMelville Herman (1993) Correspondence Volume 14 of The Writings of Herman Melville

Lynne Horth (ed) Evanston and Chicago Northwestern University Pressmdash (1925) Moby Dick or The White Whale 1851 New York Grosset amp DunlapMindell David A (2002) Between Human and Machine Feedback Control and Computing

Before Cybernetics Baltimore The Johns Hopkins University PressMumford Lewis (1929) Herman Melville New York The Literary Guild of Americamdash (1924) Sticks and Stones A Study of American Architecture and Civilization New York

Dover Publicationsmdash (1934) Technics and Civilization New York Harcourt Brace and Companymdash (1926) The Golden Day A Study in American Literature and Culture New York Boni

and LiverightMurray Jr HA (1929) Review of Lewis Mumfordrsquos Herman Melville The New

England Quarterly 2 ( July) 523-26Naumann Francis M (1994) New York Dada 1915-23 New York Harry N AbramsNoble David F (1999) The Religion of Technology The Divinity of Man and the Spirit

of Invention New York Penguin BooksNye David E (1994) American Technological Sublime Cambridge The MIT PressOrsquoNeil David (1921) The new Broom Broom 11 (November) 96Overton Grant (1928) The Philosophy of Fiction New York D AppletonPalmer Attorney General (1920) The case against the lsquoRedsrsquo The Forum A Magazine

of Constructive Nationalism 632 (February) 173-85Parsons Floyd W (1927) Everybodyrsquos business Advertising amp Selling ( June 29) 5 64Prampolini Enrico (1922) The aesthetic of the machine and mechanical intro-

spection in art Broom 33 (October) 235-37Rauschenbusch Walter (1917) A Theology for the Social Gospel New York The

Macmillan CompanyRichardson George P (1991) Feedback Thought in Social Science and Systems Theory

Philadelphia University of Pennsylvania Press

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 35

3

2 In avoiding the radical skepticism of a David Hume Arminians and enlight-ened villagers alike idealized order (a central believerobserver) symmetry (a Godworldthat was centered) and security (desire for this symmetry) And both reasonable faithand faith in reason promised adherents something tangible and permanentmdashin theform of salvation of the soul andor certain knowledge of the material world Froman epistemological perspective Congregationalist minister Jonathan Mayhewrsquos claimldquothat men are naturally endowed with faculties proper for the discerningrdquo of moraldifferences and judging ldquofor themselves in things of a religious concernrdquo was notantithetical to Baconrsquos admission of ldquonothing but on the faith of eyes so thatnothing is exaggerated for wonderrsquos sakerdquo (Mayhew 1749 5 and Bacon 1870 49)

[but] are more rapidly still undermining our moralsrdquo (Riley 1927 438)On more reactionary ends of the Protestant spectrum urban industrialismand the automobile were cited as having contributed to an increase inimmigration internal migration and unpalatable mixings of blood andlanguage In the pursuit of ldquohundred percent Americanismrdquo nativistsfought the fight in gendered terms erecting ldquovirile legislationrdquo and ral-lying against ldquothe radical seeds that have entangled American ideas intheir poisonous theoriesrdquo (Palmer 1920 173)

On one hand technological innovation and expanse threatened todissolve economies of originationmdashpsychological moral and politicalIn responding to what Walter Benjamin once called the machine-inducedprocesses of ldquomingling and contaminationrdquo white Protestants redou-bled their efforts to secure the very linchpin of their religiositymdashanunencumbered act of faith made possible through conditions of episte-mological clarity (Benjamin 1996 454) Such strategies owed much tothe elective affinity between the spiritual rationalism of Jacob Arminius(c 1560-1609) and the empiricism of Francis Bacon (1561-1626)Arminianism had long since been the baseline of Protestant subjectivityits message of spiritual autonomy spread far and wide by nineteenth-century revivalists During this same period Scottish Common Sensephilosophymdashand its Baconian universe consisting of discernible partsand governed by instrumental reasonmdashachieved widespread currencythrough the ldquovillage Enlightenmentrdquo and Industrial Revolutions ( Jaffe1990 328) Both perspectivesmdashldquoreligiousrdquo and ldquoscientificrdquomdashwere consistentin their affirmation of individual rational faculties and the potential forperceptual transparency2

By the 1920s the vocabularies of Arminianism and Common Sensehad come to inflect and organize all manner of communication andeconomic networks (May 1976 56-58 342 Stout 1977 520 Sellers1991 202-3) Together they had cross-pollinated to such a degree asto become epistemic at least for a Protestant majority whose power

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 3

4

3 For a provocative genealogy of the ideology of secularism see Asad (2003)Undergirding this essay is the fact that 1851 the year Moby-Dick was publishedalso marked one of the first prescriptive uses of the term ldquosecularismrdquo (often attrib-uted to George Jacob Holyoakersquos address to the London Hall of Science and hisfounding of the ldquoSociety of Reasonersrdquo) to connote a self and a world that ulti-mately made sense without the need for divine sanction (Chadwick 1975 91)

increased in terms of ideological diffusion even as it decreased in othermore measurable areas But even epistemes change over time or atleast show signs of wear and tear For as the grammatical blend ofArminian rationality and Common Sense empiricism continued to pro-duce the possibilities of and conditions for technological advancementthis particular admixture was itself failing to come to terms with theworld it was advancing On the contrary unsettling moments proliferatedin which neither the self was as active nor the material environmentas passive as had been promised in the instructions manuals for evan-gelical conversion social contracting capitalistic exchange or scientificinquiry

On the other hand cybernetic imaginings and technological devel-opments in feedback control provide opportunities for scholars of reli-gion to rethink both the content of their histories and approach to theirsubject matters When the concept of feedback is taken seriously interms of both history and experience what then separates secular his-tories of religion from religious histories of the secular Although I donot argue that these histories are equivalent I do find the space of thisseparation to be one worth dwelling in The prevalence of movingimages radio voices telephonic messages and automobile exhaust forexample suggested that in the 1920s there were in effect rather thanfact ldquomysterious incalculable forcesrdquo and that ldquoall thingsrdquo could notnecessarily be mastered ldquoby calculationrdquo (Weber 1958 139) Scholarsof religion in other words must entertain the seriousness in which his-torical actors entertained the visible effects of the invisible and the mate-rial dimensions of the immaterial ldquoWhen we learn a little more aboutradio it appears to be the transmission and reception of pure formwithout substancerdquo wrote WH Worrell in 1922 ldquoAnd isnrsquot it amaz-ing to think that this form this exchange of thought is constantly pass-ing about usmdashpassing through usmdashfrom countless transmitting stations at this

very instantrdquo (70) This ldquoatmosphere of magicrdquo defied Max Weberrsquos con-temporaneous description of disenchantment (1917) not to mention theideological prescriptions of secularismmdashreligious belief as voluntarymorals as universal and epistemology as optically grounded and tem-porally consistent3 According to Worrell and others the atmospheric

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 4

5

Scottish Common Sense may have been the most important contributor to ver-sions of American secularism fueling the emergence anthropology political econ-omy and medical professionalism

4 ldquoThough I wrote the Gospels in this centuryrdquo Melville was resigned to thefact that he ldquoshould die in the gutterrdquo (Melville 1993 192)

forces of technology interfered with the elective space between mindsthe affective space between bodies and the ontological space betweenhuman and machine

Herman Melville had already reached this conclusion by the timehe published Moby-Dick in 1851 According to Melville the directivesof ldquoimperial selfhoodrdquo even though they had undergirded numerousprojects of American modernitymdashfrom industry and the economy reli-gion and philosophy to national infrastructures and mental scaffoldingsmdashhad already begun to fail In Moby-Dick Melville explored via CaptainAhab how the relentless pursuit of spiritual autonomy epistemologicalclarity and ocular dominion could eventually result in submission con-fusion and blindness Cursing his ldquointer-indebtednessrdquo to technologyAhab became infused with its logic admitting that ldquothe path to myfixed purpose is laid with iron rails whereon my soul is grooved torunrdquo His madness rendered him incapable of appreciating the spectraldimensions of material existencemdashfirst and foremost the ldquoloomingrdquo pres-ence of the white whale but also the specters within himself and thosegenerated on board the most advanced technology of its timemdashthe self-contained industrial apparatus of the whaling ship Ahab became unhingedby the ldquomessage-carrying airrdquomdashprecisely those material effects that resis-ted observation and calculation (Melville 1925 422 149 402)

By the 1920s the air had only become more saturated with messagesof various kinds Amidst Taylorized working conditions moving picturesand the lingering traumas of industrial warfare Protestant understandingsof spiritual autonomy and renderings of the material world as pliableand inert often failed to do explanatory justice to feelings of mechanicalstructure and structuration This essay addresses particular responses tothis machine static not strictly within religious institutions and groupingsper se but within one of the more underappreciated revivals of thetimemdashthe aptly named ldquoRevivalrdquo of Herman Melville and his long-for-gotten Moby-Dick Although Melville had himself claimed that Moby-Dick

was a new ldquogospelrdquo it was not until the centenary of his birth in 1919that it was fed back into the loop of popular culture4 With the pub-lication of new editions of his works critical studies and biographiesMelville became a literary sensation and a media spectacle capped off

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 5

6

by The Sea Beast (1926) a silent screen dramatization of Moby-Dick star-ring John Barrymore and Dolores Costello The Melville Revival reflectedalbeit from a peculiar angle many of the anxieties and desires of whiteProtestant majorities across the political spectrum Moby-Dick for examplewas enlisted in the service of authorizing American superiority in thegeo-political sphere as well as in the elusive sphere of culture As thelone solitary masculine artist Melville became a literary vehicle bywhich many revivalists expressed their own revulsion toward the senti-mentalism of mass culture and the perceived threat of feminized racial-ized and ignorant masses (Lauter 1994 6-10) Many (but not all)ldquorevivalistsrdquo celebrated Melville and his epic in terms that mirroredAmerican investment in the directives of possessive individualism andthe essential distinction between human and machine

The first two sections of this essay highlight the shared anxiety cours-ing through American Protestantism popular culture and the MelvilleRevival After exploring the prescient analysis of feedback technologyand the fate of human organicism advanced by Lewis Mumfordmdashawriter who participated in each of these three discoursesmdashI offer closereadings of two moments within the Melville Revival that broachedissues of feedback and religiosity Bess Meredithrsquos screenplay for The

Sea Beast and the American phalanx of European Dada associated withBroom the short-lived journal whose title and musings on the machineage were inspired by Ishmaelrsquos retort ldquoWho ainrsquot a slaverdquo In theirexploration of the murky ontological space between human and machinethese unorthodox readings addressed the technological environment interms normally associated with religionmdashrevelation enchantment mys-ticism God They also captured something about the cultural historyof religion in the 1920smdashits dissonant signals its ambient static thoseldquoelements which the society as such [was] not able to realizerdquo (Williams1966 69)

Sensitivity to the tangible buzz of machine-age America serves alarger goal of reimagining what we as scholars talk about when wetalk about religion (Noble 1997 and Nye 1994) For in addition todemonstrating that Protestant strategies of self-centering so pervasivein the early twentieth century had trouble holding their ground againstthe billowing nature of technology I also argue that Protestant-inspireddefinitions of what constitutes religious belief and practice still pervasivein the modern academic study of religion are not equipped to dealwith the crises of the natural within (post)modernity Rather than engagein sustained readings of those who have broached issues of feedbackmdashWalter Benjamin Donna Haraway Judith Butler Guy Debord Michel

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 6

7

5 See for example the role feedback technologies have played in the developmentof the information society and ldquocontrol revolutionrdquo (Beniger 1986 344-89) and inthe development of twentieth-century social science (Richardson 1991)

Foucault among othersmdashmy goal inspired by their work is to explorethe religious effects of feedback technology and to enact a case studyof American religious history in terms of those ldquostructures of feelingrdquothat actively questioned more formal and official versions of reality

2 Protestant feedback

In addition to ldquoreek[ing] of religionrdquo 1920rsquos America also reeked oftechnology as principles of feedback and reproducibility emerged ascentral components of modern life Telephone networks engines power-ing automobiles phonographs and movie projectors not to mentionthe production of consumer desire by Public Relations specialistsmdashallmarked a moment in American history when technology became intenselyexpressive and atmospheric5 For in addition to expanding the horizonof human nature technologies were readily capable of copying natureand regulating both nonhuman and human systems They were inother words becoming cybernetic (from the Greek kubernetes meaningsteersman) ldquorecreatingrdquo the world in their own image According toan advertisement for the advertising agency Calkins amp Holden ldquoYourworld is being recreated today by three important influences first thecloseness of science and discovery of commercial manufacturing secondthe shortness of the link between the manufacturer and the consumerand third the amazing speed with which the American public makesup its mind to change its mindrdquo (ldquoYour World Has Changedrdquo 1927 15)Consumption and efficiency each became scientific ie natural exten-sions of the other in the practice of ldquohundred percentrdquo Americanism

As historian David Mindell argues in his history of feedback controltechnology the cybernetic ideas made popular by Norbert Wiener inthe late 1940s and early 1950s were already emergent by the 1920s(2002 6) Feedback technologies defined by their internal capacity toadjust themselves to the future through knowledge of past conditionswere designed by human operators to ldquorespondrdquo to external distur-bances and maintain a secure relationship between two variables (Wiener1954 32-4) Once the human agent sets a control variablemdashthe tem-perature within a room or the velocity of a turntable or projectormdashadjustment to external fluctuationsmdashthe temperature outside the roomor the changing weight of a film reelmdashproceed automatically Feedback

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 7

8

technology is often associated with computers and artificial intelligenceHowever the capacity to transmit information in order to counterentropy and maintain equilibrium within a unified system was presentin oil lamps from ancient Greece waterclocks from the middle agesand temperature regulators from the early modern period (Mayer 197011-52) The invention of the Watts steam engine (1788) and the Corlissengine (1848) the publication of James Clerk Maxwellrsquos ldquoOn Governorsrdquo(1868) the appearance of air-conditioned factories (1902) speed gov-ernors on trucks and tractors (c1910) automated electric substations(1914) and the Sperry gyropilot (1920) had revolutionized the kind ofmaterial and ideological presence machines assumed within human lifemdashno longer a wholly ldquoartificialrdquo other but a ldquonaturalrdquo component of howthings fit together and moved along

By the 1920s the fluidity between humans and machines nature andsecond nature had intensified dramatically Self-regulating devices andautomated factories were becoming so pervasive as to go almost unrec-ognized What bound together a white Protestant majority was theirstruggle to maintain the social perceptual and racial orders throughwhich ldquohundred-percent Americanismrdquo and related principles weredefined From a historical perspective such struggles were ironic Foreven as Protestants forged new public narratives of identity stories theytold themselves in order to be their natural selves were themselvesbecoming part of a feedback loop in which technology played a centralrole

Rather than retreat from technology liberals were inclined to seeldquothe energy of God realizing itself in human liferdquo through those inno-vations Second-generation social gospellers redoubled their progressiveefforts to extend access to economic and spiritual opportunity ldquoTheredemption of societyrdquo did not mean the abolition of the ldquoindustrialsystemrdquo but the lessening of its negative impact (Rauschenbusch 1917110 143) Instead of seriously considering how technological drives andtheir ldquoreality effectsrdquo might undermine projects of economic reform andself-cultivation liberals confidently chose to direct technology in theservice of humanity It was a ldquodemocraticrdquo strategy that required decisiveaction For only through such action could the political and epistemologicalpromises of Enlightenment become a religious reality By acting upononersquos God-given ldquoinstinctrdquo the Kingdom of God could be achievedand maintained on earth (Coe 1917 168 131)

In their revolt against the material incursions and ideological temptationsof modernity Fundamentalists strategically harnessed God somewhat

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 8

9

6 Such irony can be found in Jonathan Edwardsrsquos ldquoSinners in the Hands of anAngry Godrdquo (1741) A rich and contradictory sermon it instructs parishioners torecognize their always already abject relation to God while simultaneously demand-ing that they willingly submit to his will

ironically as guarantor of an organic version of human subjectivity6

The Fundamentalist defense of biblical inerrancy for example confirmedboth the divine autonomy of the text and the human capacity for accu-rate contemplation of it This underlying tension was resolved withinthe Fundamentalist theory of textuality that hewed to the CommonSense dictum that seeing was in fact on par with authentic belief Justas there was a transparent relationship to be had between the self andGod reader and words on the page the promise of transparency wasalso fulfilled in the human act of vision more generally God was thearchitect and engineer of the world He constructed the eyes as wellas the space that made visions of the world even possible As WilliamJennings Bryan wrote in 1922 ldquoI believe that God made the eyes whenHe made manmdashnot only made the eyes but carved out the caverns inthe skull in which they hangrdquo (97-8)

With similar missionary zeal so-called ldquohundred-percentersrdquo went onthe offensive and designated scapegoats for a decline in ldquooriginal-stockProtestant Americardquo The Red Scare of 1919-1920 led by AttorneyGeneral and ldquofighting Quakerrdquo Mitchell Palmer initiated campaigns ofsurveillance and intimidation of Socialist Party members labor leadersvociferous Jews and immigrants and any others deemed politically sub-versive The Johnson Act of 1921 the more restrictive Immigration Actof 1924 as well as the increased visibility of the Ku Klux Klan dur-ing the decade spoke to burgeoning fears over racial miscegenation(Marty 1991 66-79) At stake in these fantasies of whiteness and strate-gies of purification was the notion of the Anglo-self as autonomouspossessive and immune

In popular culture myths of individual expertise proliferated thatreflected both the Protestant desire for authenticity and the limits ofthis desire more generally For even as Americans searched for signsof their essential humanity they often came to understand themselvesin and through technological terms Babe Ruth Henry Ford and thebusiness entrepreneur offered celebrity assurance of an autonomous sub-ject who could withstand the feminizing assaults of modernity by mas-tering technology (Susman 1984 133) Advertising executive BruceBarton (who worked for General Motors when it organized the production

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 9

10

of automobiles around consumer orders feedback from local dealersand demand forecasting) introduced Jesus in his best-selling The Man

Nobody Knows (1925) as a conflation of all three (Beniger 1986 317)According to Barton Jesus deftly swung his carpenter tools created anldquoorganization that conquered the worldrdquo and awakened to the ldquoinnerconsciousnessrdquo of his ldquopowerrdquo Barton pitched Jesus as a ldquomysticrdquo andldquobig manrdquo who had incorporated the technologies of business adver-tising and manufacturing into his own personality and cult thereof (4 10 13 6)

As feedback technologies ldquoneutralizedrdquo economies of origination andclaims to eternal value both Christologies and psychological narrativesof restoration were mechanically inscribed (Benjamin 2003 252) Inthe wake of the popular Personality How To Build It (1916) self-realizationwas consistently equated with an engineering process of control Outwitting

our Nerves (1922) affirmed ldquothe integrity of our physical machinesrdquo aswell as human ldquopower of choicerdquo over those machines It was a ldquofactrdquothat ldquowe ourselves decide which of all the possible emotions we shallchoose or we decide not to press the button for any emotion at allrdquo( Jackson and Salisbury 1922 296 360) In Self-Mastery Through Conscious

Auto-Suggestion (1922) one of the defining books of the twentieth-centurygenre of ldquoself-helprdquo Emile Coueacute introduced Americans to the controlpanel of their inner autopilots In Why We Behave Like Human Beings

(1925) evolutionary anthropologist George A Dorsey defined humansin terms of the ldquokinesthetic senserdquo and their innate capacity to enactfeedback control upon themselves He assured readers that ldquoevery humanindividual normal enough to live beyond the walls of an asylum livesbecause he has an equipment by which he can keep on making adjust-ments to changing conditionsrdquo (302 301) In We (1927) CharlesLindberghrsquos celebrated chronicle of his trans-Atlantic flight his airplaneldquoThe Spirit of St Louisrdquo assumed its own personality and portrait evenas Lindbergh became ldquomechanizedrdquo in the popular press

3 Melville fed back

Concerns over how to secure and maintain a sense of coherent iden-tity in light of a seemingly animated material world also precipitatedthe ldquorevivalrdquo of Melville in the 1920s As in the various Protestantstrategies of adjustment ldquorevivalistsrdquo (predominantly white and male)embraced Melville as providing a script of American identity and self-governance In hopes of defending themselves against the totalizing

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 10

11

Figure 1 Instrument Board of the Spirit of St Louis from We (1927)

directives of technology revivalists read Melville and his works throughthe lens of anti-Puritanism and the newly discovered script of FreudMelvillersquos celebrity increased as Elsie Clews Parson Van Wyck BrooksHL Mencken Waldo Frank and others accused Puritans of possessinga ldquorepressive impulserdquo of denying ldquolife and desirerdquo and of discardingldquomystical consciousnessrdquo in favor of ldquoinstrumentalrdquo reason (Frank 191966 150 68) In Melvillersquos rejection of Puritanismrsquos ldquorepellant materialismrdquohis work assumed a positively transgresssive quality (Tomlinson 1926621) Opposed to the Puritan life of ldquointolerable monotonyrdquo Melvillewas viewed as ldquoa mystic a treasure-seeker a mystery-monger a delverafter hidden things spiritual and materialrdquo (Weaver 1919 145-46)

Raymond M Weaverrsquos Herman Melville Mariner and Mystic (1921) setthe terms of religious evaluation for the early stages of the RevivalWeaver proclaimed that Melville in his ldquoescape from an inexorableand intolerable world of realityrdquo had achieved ldquopsychological synthesisrdquo

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 11

12

Figure 2 ldquoThe ConquerorrdquomdashCharles Lindbergh from Current History July 1927

(Weaver 1921 19 331) The construction of Melville as mystic wasconcurrent with the discursive construction of mysticism by liberalProtestants as ldquoahistorical poetic essential intuitive and universalrdquo(Schmidt 2003 288) Both intellectual constructionsmdashthe latter integralto the academic study of religion in the twentieth centurymdashsought towrest a degree of ldquorealnessrdquo from a world in which ldquothe realrdquo was feltto be increasingly susceptible to technological erasure (Kippenberg 2002175-86) And whereas mystically inclined Protestants denounced ldquosec-ular activitiesrdquo by calling for the liberation and unity of ldquothe deep-lyingpowers of the inward self into one conscious liferdquo under God revival-ists called on Melville to provide them with an experiential map of thatwhich was utterly and mysteriously human (Bennett 1923 6 Jones1915 156 161) As Henry A Murray flatly announced ldquoMelville dis-covered the Unconscious and commenced to explore itrdquo (1929 526)As a model for authenticity and self-governance Melville was both ana-lyst and analysandmdashldquoa gentleman adventurer in the barbarous outposts

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 12

13

of human experiencerdquo not a ldquostaged dip into studio savageryrdquo Melvillehad penetrated the depths of his own psyche no doubt aided by hisstay among South Sea islanders (detailed in his first two novels Typee

(1846) and Omoo (1847) Indeed the authenticity of Melvillersquos mysticconsciousness was dependent upon his ldquountamed desires in violentconflict with his physical and spiritual environmentrdquo (Weaver 1921 1519 21 24-29)

As opposed to Weaverrsquos vicarious nostalgia for a simpler less com-mercial and more fully ldquorealrdquo existence another Melville biographerLewis Mumford understood the complex simulations of a consumer-driven economy as already emergent during Melvillersquos writerly careerMixing cultural criticism history and theological speculation Mumfordwas a keen observer of the technological revolutions in feedback controlIn his most memorable and encyclopedic work Technics and Civilization

(1934) Mumford claimed that in the seventeenth-century ldquomechanicsrdquohad become ldquothe new religion and [they] gave to the world a new Messiahthe machinerdquo In dramatizing the extent to which technology had shapedand continued to shape human consciousness Mumford explored inexacting and illustrated detail the history and material conditions thatwere allowing ldquotools and utensilsrdquo to assume ldquoan independent existencerdquo

This ldquoneotechnic phaserdquo had begun in the early part of the nineteenthcentury and was marked by efficiency flexibility ldquocomplete automatismrdquoand synthetic materialsmdasha ldquomutationrdquo that was rapidly integrating ldquothemachine and the world of liferdquo (45 321 227 212 254)

Such integration was not without its dangers ldquoWith the invention ofthe telegraphrdquo the ldquowireless telephonerdquo and the ldquotelevisionrdquo wroteMumford humans ldquobegan to bridge the gap in time between communi-cation and responserdquo The sympathetic relations between family memberscould now be replicated on an unprecedented scale through telepathictechnologiesmdashgiving rise to ldquo[immense] possibilities for good and evilrdquoThe building of a personality was no longer a ldquolocalrdquo affair On the con-trary when ldquomass-reactionsrdquo were ldquomobilized and hastenedrdquo the needsand interests of the human became those of the machine As Mumfordsuggested technology was becoming a ldquocreative force carried on by itsown momentumrdquo and ldquoproducing a third estate midway between natureand the humane artsrdquo The drive to overcome distancemdashbetween indi-viduals as well as between self and worldmdashhad itself ldquocreated an inde-pendent environment that has reacted upon every other side of the personalityrdquo (239241 322 324)

According to Mumford such technological interference had been ofintense and abiding concern for Melville (1934 213) In Herman Melville

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 13

14

Figure 3 Neotechnic Automatism from Technics and Civilization (1934)

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 14

15

7 Public relations and advances in advertising were the latest instances of the ldquocontrol revolutionrdquo in which technology of interchangeability so integral to theAmerican System of manufacturing had extended its field of operations under theauspices of consumer capitalism Machines were not simply making parts for othermachines but were integral to the form and content of social reproduction Publicrelations was a particular (and less reliable) version of feedback control Instead ofmaintaining a fixed variable on the inside by responding to fluctuations on the out-side ldquocounselorsrdquo stoked the flames of consumer desire in order to justify an accel-erating rate of production and ideally consumption

(1929) Mumford had chided fellow revivalists for exaggerating Melvillersquosretreat into mystical idealism ldquoMelville was a realistrdquo countered Mumfordldquoin the sense that the great religious teachers are realistsrdquo FurthermoreMelville had witnessed the ldquovolcanic intrusionrdquo of ldquoindustrialism [as] avalue in itself rdquo (1929 5 64-65) But things had gotten much more com-plicated since the mid-nineteenth century Whereas Melville had beheldldquothe servile routine of the factory systemrdquo Mumford was now witness-ing the birth of ldquothe machine system the network of relationshipsthat have followed the financial exploitation of machineryrdquo The differencein other words was the full-scale emergence of self-governing tech-nologiesmdashldquohandicraft devoted to mechanical reproduction and machinerythat is set to reproduce endless simulacrardquo For Mumford this ldquomachineritualrdquo this ldquoendlessrdquo loop of ldquomechanical reproductionrdquo threatened toefface ldquothe human arts of seeing feeling and livingrdquo (1924 67-68 10174-75 105 81) Technology in other words had achieved the capacityfor feedback on two different but related levels first in material devicesthat could copy both nature and themselves and secondly in humansthat governed themselves according to the latest control variables setby the machine As Mumford argued the totalizing power of feedbacktechnologies resulted not simply from designs motors or even materialoutputs but through their economically driven expansion of ldquothe verydomain of the symbol itself rdquo (1934 331)

Mumfordrsquos insights take on more ominous implications when oneconsiders the rise of the American public relations industry during thisperiod7 Public relations consultants such as Edward Bernays and adver-tisers like Bruce Barton actively sought to shape and change the beliefsof individuals in the service of larger economic agendas It was no acci-dent Bernays wrote in 1923 that a ldquoman belongs to one church ratherthan another or to any church at allrdquo It was no accident that ldquoBostonwomen prefer brown eggs and New York women white eggsrdquo Becausethe judgments of individuals were not arrived at through ldquoresearch andlogical deductionrdquo but were ldquodogmatic expressions accepted on theauthority of his parents his teachers his church and of his social his

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 15

16

economic and other leadersrdquo a ldquopublic relations counselrdquo must do thework of reauthorization (Bernays 1923 62) Through the strategic ldquosat-urationrdquo of images text and work-place incentives an entire profes-sional class sought to provide the terms for and effectively monitor theconditions of self-realization (Marchand 1985 94-95)

What then did Melville have to offer those living within ldquothe machinesystemrdquo of the 1920s Mumford and other revivalists championed Moby-

Dick as a blueprint for living within an increasingly mechanical rou-tinized and bureaucratic world They also heaped admiration uponCaptain Ahab an odd choice given the outcome of Moby-Dick Contraryto those who would later read Ahabrsquos technologically enhanced dem-agoguery against the political backdrops of Italian Fascism and NationalSocialism Ahabrsquos madness in the 1920s could be considered ldquoactiveand courageousrdquo as well as a sign of ldquogeniusrdquomdashldquothe very pinnacle ofhuman self-assertionrdquo (Watson 1970 136 Sullivan 1970 163) Suchreadings conflated the white whale with the power of technology andhad Ahab defiantly affirm the principle of free-will and defend theboundary between human and material worlds Mumford for examplewrote of Ahab as the ldquospirit of manrdquo who stood in opposition to ldquothebrute energies of existence blind fatal overpoweringrdquo Ahab was self-directive ldquopurposiverdquo and he pitted his ldquopuniness against this mightand [his] purpose against the blank senselessness of powerrdquo So eventhough Ahabrsquos ldquomethods are ill-chosenrdquo wrote Mumford his ldquodefianceis noblerdquo (Mumford 1929 184-86)

4 People who portray themselves or Ahab on Ahab

Film projectors in addition to utilizing concepts of feedback internallywere often seen as generative of external feedback loops between humansand machines nature and artifice Such loops arguably constituted theldquosociety of the spectaclerdquo Guy Debordrsquos term for the image-saturatedenvironment that arose in the 1920s with the confluence of sound filmtelevision and the perfection of propaganda techniques As one of themore grim assessments of an image-based postmodernity Debord definedthe ldquospectaclerdquo in terms of negative feedback ldquoIt is the omnipresentcelebration of a choice already made in the sphere of production andthe consummate result of that choice In form as in content the spectacleserves as total justification for the conditions and aims of the existingsystem It further ensures the permanent presence of that justification forit governs almost all time spent outside the production process itself rdquo

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 16

17

8 Cahir (1997) has made a similar point Although I agree with her assessmentthat The Sea Beast is about Ahabrsquos ldquoreal pursuit of identityrdquo I take issue with herargument that The Sea Beast validates autonomous autotelic forms of masculine identity

(13) In America Debordian paranoia was rampant as Victorian fearsover the exploitation of pleasure were morphing into general anxietiesconcerning voyeurism and cinematic determinism ldquoThe spectacle ofmechanical progress has made so deep an impressionrdquo argued WalterLippmann in 1922 ldquothat it has suffused the whole moral coderdquo Whatdisturbed Lippmann and other public figures was the specter of circularcausality and the quiet ldquoinsertion between man and his environmentof a pseudo-environmentrdquo composed mainly of images (Lippmann 1922108 15) Unbeknownst to them Americans were in danger of becom-ing automated by images and trapped within what Debord would latercall ldquoan uninterrupted monologue of self-praiserdquo (19) Their perpetualaffirmation of self however was wholly cybernetic given the fact thatthey were oblivious to the fact that ldquoon the screen the whole processof observing describing reporting and then imagining has been accom-plished for yourdquo (92)

In a strange twist that Melville might have enjoyed the most com-pelling representation of Moby-Dick and portrayal of Captain Ahab mayhave occurred via the technology of the moving picture8 The 1926silent film The Sea Beast adapted to the screen by Bess Meredyth andstarring John Barrymore as Captain Ahab dramatized the feedbackdimensions of film and its capacity to regulate the human personalityThe Sea Beast I argue challenged more able-bodied academic inter-pretations by reveling in its status as a technological reproduction The

Sea Beast with its odd juxtapositions visceral jump cuts and perverseattention to Ahabrsquos stump and artificial limb rather than affirm thedesire for self-transparency suggested that the equipment-free reality ofthe self was quite literally an enabling fiction What Americans lackedaccording to Meredythrsquos scenario was the tragic recognition of them-selves as always regulated and already enhanced by technology Takingldquopleasure in the confusion of boundariesrdquo and ldquoresponsibility in their con-structionrdquo The Sea Beast in the borrowed words of Donna Harawaymade ldquoan argument for the cyborg as a fiction mapping our social andbodily reality and as an imaginative resource suggesting some very fruit-ful couplingsrdquo (8)

In 1925 at age forty-three John Barrymore was one of Hollywoodrsquosmost bankable actors (part of the ldquostar-systemrdquo promoted by Edward

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 17

18

Bernays who clearly saw the potential for cross-marketing between enter-tainment business and political campaigns) Barrymore easily convincedWarner Brothers to turn Moby-Dick one of his favorite novels into amovie and to cast him in the role of Captain Ahab Having playedHamlet in the 1922-23 Broadway season Barrymore developed a keeninterest in psychoanalysis and Freudrsquos account of Hamlet in Interpretationof Dreams (1900) The role of Captain Ahab like that of Hamlet allowedBarrymore to reach a larger audience with his newly emotive actingstyle As Captain Ahab he could also remind his audience of his depthand manly credentials He was tired in his words of playing ldquoscentedbepuffed bewigged and ringletted charactersrdquo (quoted in Kobler 1977213) Promotional pamphlets for The Sea Beast seemed to reinforceBarrymorersquos gendered strategy featuring a picture of Barrymore in abusiness suit puffing contemplatively on a pipemdashldquoJohn Barrymore ismore than a name more than a personality he is world institutionrdquo(Hoffman 2001 73)

The opening credits to The Sea Beast begin imprecisely with a close-up of the filmrsquos textual referent Moby Dick or the White Whale Thissimulated text begins not with ldquoExtractsrdquo or even ldquoCall me Ishmaelrdquobut with the following words ldquoThere never was nor ever will be abraver life than the life of the whaler Compared to the game theyhunted the mightiest land beast was but a poodle dogrdquo Adapted tothe screen by Bess Meredyth former actress turned writer The Sea Beast

is noteworthy as one of the earliest if not the first public appropriationsof Melvillersquos novel by a woman By 1926 Meredyth had become aHollywood regular having written the scenarios or continuities for Ben

Hur (1925) Don Juan (1926) and at least 70 other films ldquoThere is nowoman writing todayrdquo read the promotional copy of The Sea Beastldquowho has contributed so much to genuine screen values as Bess Meredythrdquo(Hoffman 2001 74) The ldquogenuinerdquo sense Meredyth made of Melvillersquosepic is significant in its relentless focus on the self as a technologicalconstruct In Meredythrsquos scenario one literally glimpses the spirit ofMelvillersquos rejection of the contemplative insular and hyper-masculinizedself of mid-nineteenth-century religion and science In its plot and per-verse attention to Ahabrsquos stump The Sea Beast suggests that nothing willor even can make up for the loss Ahab suffers

After the opening credits the audience is introduced to a healthyCaptain Ahab atop the masthead He looks out over the sea and downon his crew hard at work his feet tapping to the beat of the sea shantyldquoHanging Johnnyrdquo Nostalgia and the logic of substitution are bothbroached in the opening scenesmdashnot in terms of idealism but in ways

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 18

19

that hint at their subsequent negation As Ahab reads a letter from hisbeloved Esther Harper the daughter of a Christian missionary playedby the nineteen year-old Dolores Costello Ahab looks longingly at hername tattooed on his arm His mind drifts back to their last embraceFollowing a long close-up of his legs Ahab descends from the mastheadthe camera sliding down the rope in real time and from Ahabrsquos pointof view his legs leading the way The experience of vertigo engenderedby the shot suggests that Ahabrsquos identity is already unstable alreadymarked by a palpable lack of ground This shot however is quicklyoffset by numerous scenes that depict the fullness of Ahabrsquos vigor par-ticularly in relation to his healthy pair of legs He jumps he hops heruns around

When Ahabrsquos ship docks in the bay of Mauritius the audience isintroduced to Esther as well as to Derek Ahabrsquos scheming half-brotherIt is here that one is reminded of the words from the 1925 promotionalpublication of Moby-Dick accompanied by scenes from The Sea Beastldquothe screen version of lsquoMoby Dickrsquo exceeds the book The discrepancybetween the two must not be considered as a profanely wanton alterationrdquoTo portray the ldquopsychological studyrdquo of Captain Ahab ldquothe camerahas resorted to means of its own A mental state therefore particularlyan involved condition of mind must be expressed by means of the inci-dents which produced it each tortuous thought composing Ahabrsquos madness must be traced to the event which engendered itrdquo (Buchman1925 x) The most obvious incident being the loss of Ahabrsquos leg butthe film compounds this felt sense of loss by turning Melvillersquos tale intoa misbegotten love triangle between Ahab Derek and Esther the appleof both their eyes

On shore Ahab and Esther declare their love to each other Butafter a few days Ahab sails from Mauritius and scans the shore withhis telescope He spies Estherrsquos window She comes to the window andreturns Ahabrsquos gaze through her own telescope Technology has literallybecome the lens through which they see each other through whicheach declares their commitment They wave and blow kisses until theyare both out of range At sea Ahab is betrayed by Derek who unbe-knownst to Ahab pushes him overboard into the waiting jaws of MobyDick After losing his leg Ahab is distraught Derek then taunts Ahaband suggests that his symbolic castration is too much for any relation-ship to bear As Derek reminds him ldquoEsther was always crazy aboutyour beinrsquo so strong and perfectrdquo Having been fitted with his ivorystump Ahab arrives back at Mauritius Derek then shames Ahab evenfurther by telling him that he and Esther are in love and that Esther

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 19

20

cannot bring herself to tell Ahab of the deceit Derek then goes toEsther to convince her that Ahab has abandoned her When Ahabarrives at Estherrsquos house to confirm Derekrsquos story he sees their shadowscast by the light of spermaceti candles and mistakenly believes thatEsther has indeed left him for Derek It is here that Ahab descendsinto his infamous monomania

Ahab goes onto slay Moby Dick but not before uncovering his half-brotherrsquos double betrayal In a dramatic confrontation Derek pulls aknife on Ahab and is about to get the best of our hero But wait Ahabwedges his ivory stump into the deck leveraging himself in order tofend off Derek Ahab then casts Derek overboard and into the sea Anivory technology marking the absence of Ahabrsquos leg has been trans-formed into a salvific presence Or so it seems when the audience istreated to the restoration of order upon the Pequodrsquos return to portand Ahabrsquos reunion with Esther consummated in their tearful embraceHaving staged and seemingly resolved the crisis of masculine identity(the raison drsquoecirctre of melodrama being that the resolution is alreadypresent in the staging) The Sea Beast on the contrary did anything butrestore the full presence of Ahabrsquos self It suggested through both contentand form that the reality of the self whether it be Ahab or the spec-tator in the theater was neither fully resolvable nor equipment-free

Ahab achieves a kind of liberation on screen by recognizing that heis always already a figment of an imagination that is not his own Afterthe tearful reunion between Ahab and Esther the screen goes blackThe audience is then given a glimpse behind the scenes as it weremdasha scene of the director Millard Webb in his chair issuing directionsto Ahab and Esther in Estherrsquos living room A man in a business suitplays the violin in the background As Ahab and Esther look longinglyinto each otherrsquos eyes Ahab slips a ring onto Estherrsquos finger and theyembrace once again Or is it Barrymore and Costello It is unclearparticularly in light of the rumors of an off screen tryst between themiddle-aged Barrymore and his nineteen-year old costar (they wouldlater marry) The loving embrace is seemingly real an ambiguityreaffirmed by the fact that after Webb yells ldquocutrdquo he has to step betweenthe couple and remind them that they are on film Webb then turnsto the camera and smiles as the screen abruptly cuts to black onceagain

The odd ending of The Sea Beast suggests that Ahabrsquos journey towardreconciliation did not end with self-exposure but that it could neverreally begin Rather than achieve restoration of nature in and througha cultural construction Ahabrsquos artificial leg points to a previously

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 20

21

Figure 4 Final Embrace between AhabBarrymore and EstherCostello

ldquoexcluded and illegible domain that haunts the former domain as thespecter of its own impossibility the very limit of intelligibility its con-stitutive outsiderdquo (Butler 1993 xi) The ending harkens back to the seashanty ldquoHanging Johnnyrdquo Ahabrsquos introductory descent from the mast-head and his telescopic flirtation with Esther both vertiginous slidesinto the unfathomable layers of mediated perception that signal theldquoexecutionrdquo of possessive individualism Rather than erase the sign ofAhabrsquos traumamdashhis ivory legmdashthe ending of The Sea Beast suggests thatAhab and Barrymore are two sides of the same character vacillatingwithin the loop of continuous performativity One is reminded here ofWalter Benjaminrsquos insight into the traumatized subject in the age oftechnological reproducibility As Benjamin argues the trauma can beunderstood as a shift from the stage to the screen in which the actorperforms for a ldquopiece of equipmentrdquo rather than for an audience Citingthe Italian playwright Luigi Pirandello Benjamin suggests that the mod-ern subject is

exiled not only from the stage but from his own person With a vagueunease he senses an inexplicable void stemming from the fact that hisbody has lost its substance that he has been volatilized stripped of his

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 21

22

reality his life his voice the noises he makes when moving about andhas been turned into a mute image that flickers for a moment on thescreen then vanishes into silence (2003 260)

Pirandellorsquos borrowed words speak directly to Meredythrsquos reconfigurationof Melvillersquos text Whereas Melvillersquos Ahab tried and failed to conquerthe very source of visual illuminationmdashthe spermaceti oil that allowedantebellum Americans to see in the darkmdashBarrymorersquos Ahab revels inthe technologically enhanced gaze of his audience When the lightscome up the selves of Ahab Barrymore and the audience have beenre-narrativized as cybernetic that is as permanently divided and fun-damentally transient In affirming the really real offscreen relationshipbetween Barrymore and Costello the uncanny ending of The Sea Beast

supported a notion of selfhood as always already mediated or betteryet the necessity of experience to be mediated in order for it to becomereal or maybe even the necessity of acknowledging that the reality ofthe self is really made up

Barrymorersquos self-conscious performance inspired by his reading ofFreud and designed to overcome middle-class mores did not so muchpenetrate the inner depths of his character as it did the emotional lifeand perceptual apparatus of his audience The Sea Beast does not dram-atize the individual conquest of nature as much as it dramatizes visualtechnologyrsquos seduction of the individual The Sea Beast in its staging ofa cybernetic reality denied the very concept of 100 Americanism byinterrupting the narrative closure on which self-presence dependedNeither Ahab nor Barrymore nor the audience are ever alone even intheir solitude They are haunted not simply by the unconscious butby the specters generated in and through technologies of reproduction(Derrida 1994 97) They are in Benjaminrsquos apt phrase ldquopeople whoportray themselvesrdquo (Benjamin 2003 262)

For Benjamin photography and cinema were technologies of religiousrevelation for better or for worse in that they both exposed variousfeedback loops that constituted onersquos identity On one level Benjaminargued that the category of originality had been challenged by visualtechnologies that put copies ldquoof the original in situations which theoriginal itself cannot attainrdquo (2003 254) On another level the decayof the ldquoaurardquo of authenticity and the blurring of original and reproductionenabled individuals to recognize the fact that they were implicated inthe perceptual field and no longer insulated from what they saw orheard ldquoReception in distractionrdquo wrote Benjamin ldquowhich is increas-ing noticeably in all areas of art and is a symptom of profound changesin apperceptionmdashfinds in film its true training groundrdquo (269) Influenced

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 22

23

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethersquos notion of ldquoafter-imagesrdquo in Theory

of Colours (the same text that informed Melvillersquos ldquoThe Whiteness of theWhalerdquo) Benjamin announced the birth of the ldquooptical unconsciousrdquo(266) According to Benjamin images had become the currency of con-sciousness structuring thought and determining the range of possibleactions Mechanical means of reproduction had liberated the perceptualcapacities of humanity They had also ushered in the prospect of massdeception and control Either way they had resulted in a ldquomassiveupheaval in the domain of objectsrdquo and a ldquoshattering of traditionrdquo (254)

5 American Dada and the aporias of modernity

Within the Melville Revivalmdashan almost clicheacuted instance of Modernismrsquosvogue for the solitary geniusmdashseeds of post-Cartesian doubt were beingsown and the enchanting dimensions of technology considered BecauseMelville ldquowas spell-bound by the strange slidings and collidings ofMatterrdquo his work in the eyes of more atheological critics exposed theenchanting conditions of the machine age (Taylor 1984) ldquoIt is the mate-rial elements he really has to do withrdquo wrote DH Lawrence in 1923ldquoHis drama is with them He was a futurist long before futurism foundpaintrdquo (216) For Lewis Mumford too Melville had not simply dram-atized the incursion of machinesmdasha traditional Romantic tropemdashbuthad embraced a series of insoluble contradictions He has come to rec-ognize those parts of the world and himself that had already been pro-duced by machines and had insisted that the plasticity of self wassomething with which Americans had to struggle and to their spiritualdetriment repress

In broaching the aporias of modernity Mumford saw Melville as hav-ing already given the lie to Weberian diagnoses of disenchantment Thecapacity to effectively turn night into day Mumford suggested the expe-rience of a subway car rumbling past the solid structures of a sky-scraper vanishing into the air the peering into a microscope and theobservation of a ldquorow of bottles each of identical size shape colorstretching away for a quarter of a milerdquo were enough to induce a particular kind of vertigo ldquoThe special visual effect of repeating pat-tern[s]rdquo occurred simultaneously with the experience ldquoof the unique andthe non-repeatablerdquo (Mumford 1934 333-34) The experience of intensesystematicitymdashprecisely what feedback technologies were designed toinducemdashcould be positively disorienting when the infinitely calculableassumed the ldquospecial qualityrdquo of the ldquoincalculablerdquo (Heidegger 1977

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 23

24

135) According to Mumford when technology no longer made imperfectcopies of nature but perfect copies of itself the very notion of ldquonaturalrdquocould become radically suspect With the ldquoliquidationrdquo of the solid book-ends of authenticity and artifice came the prospect that the spectrumitself was socially constructed for better or for worse (Benjamin 2003255) Having torn aside the veil ldquoman has thrown between his ownexperience and the blank reality of the universerdquo Melville neither suc-cumbed to the temptation of nihilism nor retreated into his own pri-vate morality On the contrary he urged his contemporaries to ownup to the constructedness of any and all cultural forms and expressionsand the faith commitments that undergirded them As Mumford wroteldquoto appreciate the reality of the White Whale is to see more deeplyinto the expedience of all our immediate institutions all the spiritualshelters man puts between himself and the uncertain cosmic weatherMeaning significance attends only that little part of the universe manhas built up and settledrdquo (Mumford 1926 150-51)

Whereas Mumford assessed the religious dimensions of technologicalldquoprogressrdquo in a tragic key others tended toward the comic as was thecase with a group of experimental artists associated with Broom An

International Magazine of the Arts Published by Americans in Italy publishedbetween 1921 and 1924 (Tashjian 1975 116-34) Broomrsquos co-editor thepoet Alfred Kreyemborg (who would later co-edit The American Caravan

with Lewis Mumford) had adapted a passage from Moby-Dick for itstitle logo and statement of purpose which appeared on the back coverldquoWhat of itrdquo asks Ishmael

if some old hunks of a seacaptain orders me to get a broom and sweepdown the decks What does that indignity amount to weighed I meanin the scales of the New Testament Do you think the Archangel Gabrielthinks any less of me because I promptly and respectfully obey that oldhunks that particular instance Who ainrsquot a slave (Melville 1925 4)

The first issue of Broom included poems addressing Albert Einsteinrsquostheory of relativity as well as Emmy Veronica Sanders declaration thatldquothe American Machinerdquo was ldquotransforming itself with all its attributesand characteristics into American Mindrdquo ldquoAmericardquo she continuedinitially ldquomade of the Puritan by the Puritan for the Puritanrdquo wasnow being ldquoremade of the Machine by the Machine for the Machinerdquo(89-90) Following Sandersrsquos piece was a David OrsquoNeilrsquos hymn of sup-plication to the new Gods of the machine

When you are sweeping usWith Your cosmic broom

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 24

25

Figure 5 Nature and Second Nature in Technics and Civilization (1934)

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 25

26

Sweeping us out of mouldy rutsSweeping us clean and sweetmdash

RememberWhen wersquore quiveringmdashSensitivemdashbaremdashWe shall be gratefulFor just a few shadows (96)

Broom took Ishmaelrsquos retort quite seriously addressing the revolutionarydimensions of technological artifice and the shadows cast within therealm of technological illumination

Unlike Futurism Broom did not celebrate the beauty of war It didhowever come to express the ldquodreamed-of metallization of the humanbodyrdquo and the playful cybernetic fantasies of Dadaists such as ManRay and Francis Picabia (quoted in Benjamin 2003 269) After someinitial hesitation Broom began to embrace Dadarsquos perspective on the lib-eratory dimensions of the human-machine interface ldquoEverything isartificialrdquo gasped Broom contributor Blaise Cendrars ldquoThe eyes thehand the sexual frenzy of the factory The wheel which turns Thewing which flies The voice which travels far on a wire Your ear ina trumpet Your sense of direction Your rhythm You melt the worldin the mould of your skull Your brain is hollow Like a religion amysterious pill hastens your digestionrdquo (265) Jean Epstein from a slightdifferent angle argued that technology had ldquobecome part of ourselvesrdquoand had democratized human perceptionmdashldquoman has not one memoryof [the] landscape he [now] has a thousand different ones which mayor may not resemble each other Everything possesses hundreds ofapparent diameters which never superimpose exactlyrdquo (6-7)

Broom was soon translating less inflammatory Futurist manifestos suchas Enrico Prampolinirsquos ldquoThe Aesthetic of the Machine and MechanicalIntrospection in Artrdquo in which he declared ldquoIs not the machine todaythe most exuberant symbol of the mystery of human creation Is it notthe new mythical deity which weaves the legends and histories of thecontemporary human drama The Machine in its practical and materialfunction comes to have today in human concepts and thoughts thesignificance of an ideal and spiritual inspirationrdquo The kind of worshipthat ensued was that of the cyborg neither reverent nor memorializ-ing of cosmic law (Haraway 2004 9) Or as Prampolini wrote ldquoOurexperience has convinced us of the truth of certain of our plastic truthsand has allowed us to perceive the errors that lie in othersrdquo (236)

One of the more important pieces of American Dada captured pre-cisely this pointmdashGod (c 1917) designed by Baroness Elsa von Freytag-

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 26

27

Figure 6 Illustration accompanying Enrico Prampolinirsquos ldquoThe Aesthetic of theMachine and Mechanical Introspection in Artrdquo Broom 33 (October 1922) 237

Loringhoven and photographed by Morton Schamberg The invertedcast-iron plumbing trap atop a carpenterrsquos miter box was emblematicof the Melvillean appreciation for technological enchantment Indeedthe pipe is part of an indoor plumbing apparatus a modern conveniencewhose history dates back to some of the earliest feedback technologieson recordmdashthe water-clocks and float-regulators of ancient Greece (Mayr1970 11-26) God resembled the mechanical abstractions Schamberghad been producing before his premature death in 1918 during aninfluenza outbreak in Philadelphia The Baroness a contributor to Broom

and other little magazines had arrived in New York from Germanyin 1913 She was ldquothe first American dadardquo wrote Jane Heap in 1922ldquothe only one living anywhere who dresses dada loves dada lives dadardquo(46) Friends with Marcel Duchamp Djuna Barnes and other NewYork artists the Baroness was a central figure in a burgeoning trans-atlantic avant-garde In addition to her art and poetry the Baronesswas also a ldquoperformancerdquo artist who skillfully inverted gender hierarchiesand attacked through her very presence the traditional sensibilities ofthe middle-class She was notorious for walking around the streets ofGreenwich Village with her shaved head painted purple postage stampspasted to her face and a bird cage around her neck housing a livecanary (Davidson 1996 223-24)

In what must be considered a prescient assault on all manners oflogocentrism the Baroness also carried with her a plaster cast penis thatshe periodically revealed to passersby for maximum shock value (Gammel2002 195) But it was the Barnonessrsquos sculpture God that in addition

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 27

28

Figure 7 God (c 1917) designed by Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven and photographed by Morton Schamberg

to celebrating the mobility and reproducibility of that which was sup-posedly the most fixed and essential repossessed the power of tech-nology as ever imperfect and incomplete As a companion piece of sortsto Duchamprsquos infamous ready-made Fountain an inverted urinal dis-played in the 1917 exhibition of the American Society of IndependentArtists God invited more expressly theological speculation First of allit insisted on supplementing the three traditional symbolic centers ofWestern religious reflectionmdashGod humanity naturemdashwith the machineAnd although it has since been viewed by critics as ldquosacrilegiousrdquo andan instance of ldquoantireligious scatologyrdquo (Naumann 1994 171 Gammel220) the transgressive dimensions to God also affirm a shadowy open-

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 28

29

9 One is reminded here of Melvillersquos letter to Nathaniel Hawthorne in April of1851 ldquoWe incline to think that God cannot explain His own secrets and that Hewould like a little more information upon certain points Himself We mortals aston-ish Him as much as He usrdquo (Melville 1993 186)

ing to radical othernessmdashin the form of imperfection and chancemdashwithin the loops generated by feedback technology

Although the metal pipe ends up pointing toward heaven it firstloops downward in a nod to its human ground Limited by the skillsof the human carpenter on whose box it is anchored the contortedpipe narrativizes both the pitfalls and prospects of the machine ageShit eventually flows up in the case of God not down suggesting thateven the most lofty and noble ideals of the imagination maintain theirhuman aroma Rather than assume the power of divinity classicallyconstrued God staged divinity as nothing more and nothing less thanthat which made life livablemdashthat which kept the smell of human wasteartificially at bay or more ominously managed the flow of thingsthrough feedback control But even more literally God called attentionto the human work in the making of artifice and celebrated the bio-logical possibility for the endless unmaking (and remaking) of selfFeedback technology was not really God but it was for all practicalpurposes Or as the Baroness wrote in a 1927 letter to Peggy GuggenheimGod had much to learn from Henry Ford for he was ldquoclumsily sub-tle-densely-intelligent-inefficiently-immense-(Lord not Fordmdashof course)rdquo9

God the Baroness playfully warned had ldquobetter hotfoot it towardprogressmdashmodernizemdashuse his own omnipotence intelligentlymdashsmart orwersquoll all expire in tangle Well Lord knowsmdash(Does he)rdquo (quoted inGammel 2002 229)

6 Conclusion Deus in machina movet

As Protestant majorities struggled to adjust themselves and their theo-logical inheritance to new technological conditions theologies of themachine age both compelling and disturbing emerged from outsidethe precincts of traditional religious discourse For in addition to beinginspired by the ghost of Herman Melville the Melville Revival wasquite literally haunted by the power of feedback technologiesmdashspectersthat were affective rather than concrete strangely resistant to rationalcontemplation yet recognized through anxious admixtures of thoughtand feeling On one hand the revival reflected the spectrum of Protestant

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 29

30

10 Shortly after the publication of Moby-Dick in November of 1851 reports beganto reach America about the August sinking of the Ann Alexander by a whale in theSouth Pacific It was the first ldquoattack of a whale upon a shiprdquo since the destruc-tion of the Essex in 1820 The story about the Ann Alexander originally appeared inthe Panama Herald on October 16 and was reprinted the following month in New-York Daily Tribune and Littellrsquos Living Age The sperm whale that the Ann Alexander

fears over technological miscegenation The capacity of machines toredraw the boundaries of race and gender disturbed Protestant leadersand revivalists alike On the other hand subversive elements within theMelville Revival offered what must be considered a theological critiqueof how Protestants understood themselves and their God in relation totechnological materials Grant Overton for example saw in Moby-Dick

a deep appreciation for how technological developments had come tounderminemdashquite literally hauntmdashthe epistemological and ontologicalassumptions that made them possible ldquoNo longer able to instance thedeus ex machinardquo wrote Overton Melville was ldquounforgetful that deus inmachina movet and while most of mankind [have] become unable to seethe god for the machine [he] can scarcely perceive the machine forthe god agitating it [His] reports of the machine are somehow unrec-ognizable [his] realism is confronted by Realityrdquo (Overton 1928 231)

Bess Meredythrsquos reimagining of Moby-Dick and Baroness Elsa vonFreytag-Loringhovenrsquos God also explored the otherness that technologyengenders within the modern subject a trace that lingers despite allattempts to extinguish it Their errant readings challenged contempo-raries to reimagine their relationship to technology from an enchantedperspective that did not necessarily conform to the directives of Americanindividualism Resisting the advertisements of both Arminianism andBaconian Common Sense these readings insisted that there was somethingelsemdashsomething wholly othermdashoccurring within the technological workingsof secular modernity Excess or that which unsettled the boundariesbetween body and machine masculine and feminine had resulted inwhat might be called a ldquopost-structure of feelingrdquo The prospect thateither machines or women had begun to think for themselves or atleast possess a kind of agency once attributed to the enlightened malesubject now seemed as likely as a whale vengefully turning against awhaleship10 As Melvillean riffs on the deferred project of religious iden-tity The Sea Beast and God marked the space between human creationand technological determination consent and compulsion and there-fore hinted at the prospect that belief was not an individual state butan embodied activity Consistent with Lewis Mumfordrsquos assessment ofthe symbolic and material powers of feedback technology these works

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 30

31

had first turned upon starboard and larboard boats seizing both in its jaws andcrushing them to pieces It then rushed towards the Ann Alexander ldquoat the rateof fifteen knots In an instant the monster struck the ship with tremendous violence shakingher from stem to sternrdquo (415) Upon reading the article Melville remarked to his pub-lisher ldquothe Whale had almost completely slipped me for the time (amp I was themerrier for it) when Crash comes Moby Dick himself It is really amp truly a sur-prising coincidencemdashto say the least I make no doubt it is Moby Dick himself I wonder if my evil art has raised this monsterrdquo (Melville 1993 209)

11 William Jennings Bryan for example that standard bearer of fundamentalfaith equated faith to a particular kind of technologymdashldquothere is that in each humanliferdquo he wrote ldquothat corresponds to the mainspring of a watchmdashthat which isabsolutely necessary if the life is to be what it should be a real life and not amere existence That necessary thing is a belief in Godrdquo (86) Faith for Bryan wasthat which repeated without difference It was a dependable rational and utterlyrationalizing process It was not however self-regulating It affirmed the ldquorealnessrdquoof the individual believer precisely because it ignored the conditions imposed fromoutside the self But how might faith be viewed in terms of feedback and repro-ducibility rather than repetition a process that does not reaffirm a centered indi-vidual with every tick but adjusts accordingly to external fluctuations

raise numerous questions concerning the ways and means of religionin an age of postmodern complexity and virtual reality

How might a relentless focus on power and the porousness of sub-jectivity change how one views the matter of religion within historyHow might a greater attention to the aesthetic conditions that mediateany and all beliefs challenge the ways in which we distinguish the reli-gious from the secular How might a greater attention to the enchantingpower of material conditions challenge historical and political narrativesof secularization How do technologies and vested interests realize them-selves through the discourses of agency choice and mobility Whatin other words are the conditions of possibility that allow a historicalactor (rather than a Hollywood actor) to make a particular faith com-mitment or for that matter have any faith at all In what languagedo historical actors dream about themselves and divinity and how doesthat language change over time And finally to what degree is faithitself a technology11

By acknowledging the white mythology that still informs say thefield of American religions such questions shift the scholarly emphasisfrom explicit expressions of religious belief and practice to the spacebetween those beliefs and practices and the world at-large Individualswithin American religious history for example have often been depictedas fully formed agents making choices between various faith commitmentsand ever combining religious idioms to suit their specific needs and cir-cumstances (Albanese 1997) No doubt this is true But there is anotherside to this story of radical religious pluralism one that if accounted

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 31

32

12 Such a possibility is very much at odds with the Geertzian model of ldquothickdescriptionrdquo and its formidable legacy in the humanities and social sciences Withoutquestioning the degree to which the self can ever become entirely legible to theself Geertz claimed that every society and individual life and by extension everybelief and every practice ldquocontain their own interpretations One has only to learnhow to gain access to themrdquo (Geertz 1973 453)

13 The ambiguities of agency during the ldquomachine agerdquo have been the subjectof a number of elegant critical studies See for example Anson Rabinbach TheHuman Motor Energy Fatigue and the Origins of Modernity (New York Basic Books1990) Mark Seltzer Bodies and Machines (New York Routledge 1992) MarthaBanta Taylorized Lives Narrative Productions in the Age of Taylor Veblen and Ford (ChicagoUniversity of Chicago Press 1993) Carolyn Thomas de la Pentildea The Body ElectricHow Strange Machines Built the Modern American (New York New York UniversityPress 2003) and Joel Dinerstein The Swinging Machine Modernity Technology andAfrican American Culture Between the World Wars (Amherst University of MassachusettsPress 2003) Dinersteinrsquos work is particularly relevant to the issue of religious com-binativeness given his emphasis on how African American artists strove to refigureldquomachine aestheticsrdquo in and through their artistry Dinersteinrsquos work suggests thatthe self is locatedmdashie the self happensmdashsomewhere between resistance and assim-ilation between choice and coercionmdasha lesson that many Anglo-Americans werenot willing to consider in their triumphal theorizing about the human in relationto the machine The possibility for consideration argues Dinerstein existed inAfrican American jazz swing and dance

for suggests new directions for the study of religion in America Althoughthe ldquolived religionrdquo perspective in American religious history has donemuch to overcome the distinction between ldquodabblersrdquo and ldquotrue believersrdquothe question of power still lingers (Ahlstrom 1972 1052) Religiousbeliefs and practices are neither essential things nor reveal themselvesto the scholar in toto12 Such a position does not replicate the eitherordiscussion regarding the agency of historical actors On the contraryit suggests that religious agency is a hybrid weave of intent and instinctimmediate response and mediated principle knowing and unknowing13

Accounting for the ambiguities of agency has already pushed scholarsof religion toward an anthropology of the secular and an explorationof in the Foucauldian phrasing of Talal Asad ldquothe contingencies thathave come together to give us our certaintiesrdquo (2003 16)

It is with a hint of irony then that one may return to the promotionalpamphlet of The Sea Beast that celebrates the ldquoconquestrdquo of Ahab andthe invisible wafting presence of screenwriter Bess Meredyth ldquoThereis no woman writing today who has contributed so much to genuine

screen values as Bess Meredythrdquo Indeed her son John Meredyth Lucasborn in 1919 continued down his motherrsquos unsettling path as a successfultelevision screenwriter and director His credits included episodes ofldquoStar Trekrdquo ldquoLoganrsquos Runrdquo and that other story of ldquohundred percentrdquoAmericanism ldquoThe Six Million Dollar Manrdquo

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 32

33

Figure 8 The Six Million Dollar Man ldquoGentlemen we can rebuild him Wehave the capability of making the worldrsquos first bionic man We can make him

better than he was before Better Stronger Fasterrdquo

Haverford College370 Lancaster AveHaverford PA 19041jlardashaverfordedu

References

Ahlstrom Sydney E (1972) A Religious History of the American People New HavenYale University Press

Albanese Catherine L (1997) Exchanging selves exchanging souls Contact com-bination and American religious history In Thomas A Tweed (ed) RetellingUS Religious History 200-26 Berkeley University of California Press

Anon (1851) A ship sunk by a whale Littellrsquos Living Age (29 November) 415-16Asad Talal (2003) Formations of the Secular Christianity Islam Modernity Stanford

Stanford University Press

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 33

34

Bacon Francis (1870) The Works of Francis Bacon James Spedding Robert LeslieEllis and Douglas Denon Heath (eds) Vol VIII New York Hurd andHoughton

Barton Bruce (2000) The Man Nobody Knows A Discovery of the Real Jesus ChicagoIvan R Dee

Beniger James R (1986) The Control Revolution Technological and Economic Origins ofthe Information Society Cambridge Harvard University Press

Benjamin Walter (1996) One-way street In Marcus Bullock amp Michael W Jennings(eds) Selected Writings Volume 1 1913-1926 444-88 Cambridge HarvardUniversity Press

mdash (2003) The work of art in the age of its technological reproducibility third ver-sion In Howard Eiland and Michael W Jennings (eds) Selected Writings Volume4 1938-40 251-83 Cambridge Harvard University Press

Bennett Charles A (1923) A Philosophical Study of Mysticism An Essay New HavenYale University Press 1923

Bernays Edward L (1923) Crystallizing Public Opinion New York Liverlight PublishingCorporation

Buchman SR (1925) Moby Dickmdashthe book and The Sea Beastmdashthe picture Anappreciation In Herman Melville Moby Dick or The White Whale ix-xi NewYork Grosset amp Dunlap

Butler Judith (1993) Bodies That Matter On the Discursive Limits of lsquoSexrsquo RoutledgeNew York

Cahir Linda Costanzo (1997) Routinizing the charismatic Melville and Hollywoodrsquosthree Moby-Dicks Melville Society Extracts 110 (September) 11-17

Cendrars Blaise (1922) Profound today Broom 13 ( January) 265-67Chadwick Owen (1975) The Secularization of the European Mind in the Nineteenth Century

Cambridge Cambridge University PressCoe George Albert (1917) A Social Theory of Religious Education New York Charles

Scribnerrsquos SonsDavidson Abraham A (1996) The European art invasion In Francis M Naumann

(ed) with Beth Vann Making Mischief Dada Invades New York 222-27 NewYork Whitney Museum of Art

Debord Guy (1995) Society of the Spectacle translated by Donald Nicholson-SmithNew York Zone Books

Derrida Jacques (1994) Specters of Marx The State of the Debt The Work of Mourningand the New International Peggy Kamuf (trans) New York Routledge

Dorsey George A (1925) Why We Behave Like Human Beings New York BlueRibbon Books

Epstein Jean (1922) The new conditions of literary phenomena Broom 21 (April)3-10

Frank Waldo (1919) Our America New York Boni and LiverightGammel Irene (2002) Baroness Elsa Gender Dada and Everyday Modernitymdasha Cultural

Biography Cambridge The MIT PressGeertz Clifford (1973) Deep play Notes on the Balinese cockfight In The Interpretation

of Cultures 412-53 New York Basic BooksHaraway Donna (2004) A manifesto for cyborgs Science technology and socialist

feminism in the 1980s In The Haraway Reader 7-45 New York RoutledgeHeap Jane (1922) Dada Little Review VII2 (Spring) 46Heidegger Martin (1977) The age of the world-picturerdquo In The Question Concerning

Technology and Other Essays 115-54 William Lovitt (trans) New York Harperamp Row

Hoffman Carol Stein (2001) The Barrymores Hollywoodrsquos First Family LexingtonUniversity of Kentucky Press

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 34

35

Jackson Josephine A and Helen M Salisbury (1922) Outwitting Our Nerves A Primerof Psychotherapy New York The Century Co

Jaffe David (1990) The village enlightenment in New England 1760-1820 TheWilliam and Mary Quarterly XLVII3 ( July) 327-46

Jones Rufus M (1915) Mysticism in present-day religion Harvard Theological ReviewVIII2 (April) 155-65

Kippenberg Hans G (2002) Discovering Religious History in the Modern Age BarbaraHarshav (trans) Princeton Princeton University Press

Kobler John (1977) Damned in Paradise The Life of John Barrymore New YorkAtheneum

Kuttner Alfred B (1922) Nerves In Harold E Stearns (ed) Civilization in the UnitedStates An Enquiry by Thirty Americans 427-42 New York Harcourt

Lauter Paul (1994) Melville climbs the canon American Literature 66 (March) 1-24Lawrence DH (1923) Studies in Classic American Literature New York T SeltzerLindbergh Charles A (1927) We New York GP Putnamrsquos SonsLippmann Walter (1922) Public Opinion New York Macmillan CompanyMarchand Roland (1985) Advertising the American Dream Making Way for Modernity

1920-1940 Berkeley University of California PressMarty Martin E Modern American Religion Vol 2 The Noise of Conflict 1919-1941

Chicago University of Chicago Press 1991May Henry F (1976) The Enlightenment in America New York Oxford University

PressMayhew Jonathan (1749) Concerning the difference between truth and falsehood

right and wrong In Seven Sermons 1-21 Boston Rogers and FowleMayr Otto (1970) The Origins of Feedback Control Cambridge The MIT PressMelville Herman (1993) Correspondence Volume 14 of The Writings of Herman Melville

Lynne Horth (ed) Evanston and Chicago Northwestern University Pressmdash (1925) Moby Dick or The White Whale 1851 New York Grosset amp DunlapMindell David A (2002) Between Human and Machine Feedback Control and Computing

Before Cybernetics Baltimore The Johns Hopkins University PressMumford Lewis (1929) Herman Melville New York The Literary Guild of Americamdash (1924) Sticks and Stones A Study of American Architecture and Civilization New York

Dover Publicationsmdash (1934) Technics and Civilization New York Harcourt Brace and Companymdash (1926) The Golden Day A Study in American Literature and Culture New York Boni

and LiverightMurray Jr HA (1929) Review of Lewis Mumfordrsquos Herman Melville The New

England Quarterly 2 ( July) 523-26Naumann Francis M (1994) New York Dada 1915-23 New York Harry N AbramsNoble David F (1999) The Religion of Technology The Divinity of Man and the Spirit

of Invention New York Penguin BooksNye David E (1994) American Technological Sublime Cambridge The MIT PressOrsquoNeil David (1921) The new Broom Broom 11 (November) 96Overton Grant (1928) The Philosophy of Fiction New York D AppletonPalmer Attorney General (1920) The case against the lsquoRedsrsquo The Forum A Magazine

of Constructive Nationalism 632 (February) 173-85Parsons Floyd W (1927) Everybodyrsquos business Advertising amp Selling ( June 29) 5 64Prampolini Enrico (1922) The aesthetic of the machine and mechanical intro-

spection in art Broom 33 (October) 235-37Rauschenbusch Walter (1917) A Theology for the Social Gospel New York The

Macmillan CompanyRichardson George P (1991) Feedback Thought in Social Science and Systems Theory

Philadelphia University of Pennsylvania Press

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 35

4

3 For a provocative genealogy of the ideology of secularism see Asad (2003)Undergirding this essay is the fact that 1851 the year Moby-Dick was publishedalso marked one of the first prescriptive uses of the term ldquosecularismrdquo (often attrib-uted to George Jacob Holyoakersquos address to the London Hall of Science and hisfounding of the ldquoSociety of Reasonersrdquo) to connote a self and a world that ulti-mately made sense without the need for divine sanction (Chadwick 1975 91)

increased in terms of ideological diffusion even as it decreased in othermore measurable areas But even epistemes change over time or atleast show signs of wear and tear For as the grammatical blend ofArminian rationality and Common Sense empiricism continued to pro-duce the possibilities of and conditions for technological advancementthis particular admixture was itself failing to come to terms with theworld it was advancing On the contrary unsettling moments proliferatedin which neither the self was as active nor the material environmentas passive as had been promised in the instructions manuals for evan-gelical conversion social contracting capitalistic exchange or scientificinquiry

On the other hand cybernetic imaginings and technological devel-opments in feedback control provide opportunities for scholars of reli-gion to rethink both the content of their histories and approach to theirsubject matters When the concept of feedback is taken seriously interms of both history and experience what then separates secular his-tories of religion from religious histories of the secular Although I donot argue that these histories are equivalent I do find the space of thisseparation to be one worth dwelling in The prevalence of movingimages radio voices telephonic messages and automobile exhaust forexample suggested that in the 1920s there were in effect rather thanfact ldquomysterious incalculable forcesrdquo and that ldquoall thingsrdquo could notnecessarily be mastered ldquoby calculationrdquo (Weber 1958 139) Scholarsof religion in other words must entertain the seriousness in which his-torical actors entertained the visible effects of the invisible and the mate-rial dimensions of the immaterial ldquoWhen we learn a little more aboutradio it appears to be the transmission and reception of pure formwithout substancerdquo wrote WH Worrell in 1922 ldquoAnd isnrsquot it amaz-ing to think that this form this exchange of thought is constantly pass-ing about usmdashpassing through usmdashfrom countless transmitting stations at this

very instantrdquo (70) This ldquoatmosphere of magicrdquo defied Max Weberrsquos con-temporaneous description of disenchantment (1917) not to mention theideological prescriptions of secularismmdashreligious belief as voluntarymorals as universal and epistemology as optically grounded and tem-porally consistent3 According to Worrell and others the atmospheric

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 4

5

Scottish Common Sense may have been the most important contributor to ver-sions of American secularism fueling the emergence anthropology political econ-omy and medical professionalism

4 ldquoThough I wrote the Gospels in this centuryrdquo Melville was resigned to thefact that he ldquoshould die in the gutterrdquo (Melville 1993 192)

forces of technology interfered with the elective space between mindsthe affective space between bodies and the ontological space betweenhuman and machine

Herman Melville had already reached this conclusion by the timehe published Moby-Dick in 1851 According to Melville the directivesof ldquoimperial selfhoodrdquo even though they had undergirded numerousprojects of American modernitymdashfrom industry and the economy reli-gion and philosophy to national infrastructures and mental scaffoldingsmdashhad already begun to fail In Moby-Dick Melville explored via CaptainAhab how the relentless pursuit of spiritual autonomy epistemologicalclarity and ocular dominion could eventually result in submission con-fusion and blindness Cursing his ldquointer-indebtednessrdquo to technologyAhab became infused with its logic admitting that ldquothe path to myfixed purpose is laid with iron rails whereon my soul is grooved torunrdquo His madness rendered him incapable of appreciating the spectraldimensions of material existencemdashfirst and foremost the ldquoloomingrdquo pres-ence of the white whale but also the specters within himself and thosegenerated on board the most advanced technology of its timemdashthe self-contained industrial apparatus of the whaling ship Ahab became unhingedby the ldquomessage-carrying airrdquomdashprecisely those material effects that resis-ted observation and calculation (Melville 1925 422 149 402)

By the 1920s the air had only become more saturated with messagesof various kinds Amidst Taylorized working conditions moving picturesand the lingering traumas of industrial warfare Protestant understandingsof spiritual autonomy and renderings of the material world as pliableand inert often failed to do explanatory justice to feelings of mechanicalstructure and structuration This essay addresses particular responses tothis machine static not strictly within religious institutions and groupingsper se but within one of the more underappreciated revivals of thetimemdashthe aptly named ldquoRevivalrdquo of Herman Melville and his long-for-gotten Moby-Dick Although Melville had himself claimed that Moby-Dick

was a new ldquogospelrdquo it was not until the centenary of his birth in 1919that it was fed back into the loop of popular culture4 With the pub-lication of new editions of his works critical studies and biographiesMelville became a literary sensation and a media spectacle capped off

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 5

6

by The Sea Beast (1926) a silent screen dramatization of Moby-Dick star-ring John Barrymore and Dolores Costello The Melville Revival reflectedalbeit from a peculiar angle many of the anxieties and desires of whiteProtestant majorities across the political spectrum Moby-Dick for examplewas enlisted in the service of authorizing American superiority in thegeo-political sphere as well as in the elusive sphere of culture As thelone solitary masculine artist Melville became a literary vehicle bywhich many revivalists expressed their own revulsion toward the senti-mentalism of mass culture and the perceived threat of feminized racial-ized and ignorant masses (Lauter 1994 6-10) Many (but not all)ldquorevivalistsrdquo celebrated Melville and his epic in terms that mirroredAmerican investment in the directives of possessive individualism andthe essential distinction between human and machine

The first two sections of this essay highlight the shared anxiety cours-ing through American Protestantism popular culture and the MelvilleRevival After exploring the prescient analysis of feedback technologyand the fate of human organicism advanced by Lewis Mumfordmdashawriter who participated in each of these three discoursesmdashI offer closereadings of two moments within the Melville Revival that broachedissues of feedback and religiosity Bess Meredithrsquos screenplay for The

Sea Beast and the American phalanx of European Dada associated withBroom the short-lived journal whose title and musings on the machineage were inspired by Ishmaelrsquos retort ldquoWho ainrsquot a slaverdquo In theirexploration of the murky ontological space between human and machinethese unorthodox readings addressed the technological environment interms normally associated with religionmdashrevelation enchantment mys-ticism God They also captured something about the cultural historyof religion in the 1920smdashits dissonant signals its ambient static thoseldquoelements which the society as such [was] not able to realizerdquo (Williams1966 69)

Sensitivity to the tangible buzz of machine-age America serves alarger goal of reimagining what we as scholars talk about when wetalk about religion (Noble 1997 and Nye 1994) For in addition todemonstrating that Protestant strategies of self-centering so pervasivein the early twentieth century had trouble holding their ground againstthe billowing nature of technology I also argue that Protestant-inspireddefinitions of what constitutes religious belief and practice still pervasivein the modern academic study of religion are not equipped to dealwith the crises of the natural within (post)modernity Rather than engagein sustained readings of those who have broached issues of feedbackmdashWalter Benjamin Donna Haraway Judith Butler Guy Debord Michel

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 6

7

5 See for example the role feedback technologies have played in the developmentof the information society and ldquocontrol revolutionrdquo (Beniger 1986 344-89) and inthe development of twentieth-century social science (Richardson 1991)

Foucault among othersmdashmy goal inspired by their work is to explorethe religious effects of feedback technology and to enact a case studyof American religious history in terms of those ldquostructures of feelingrdquothat actively questioned more formal and official versions of reality

2 Protestant feedback

In addition to ldquoreek[ing] of religionrdquo 1920rsquos America also reeked oftechnology as principles of feedback and reproducibility emerged ascentral components of modern life Telephone networks engines power-ing automobiles phonographs and movie projectors not to mentionthe production of consumer desire by Public Relations specialistsmdashallmarked a moment in American history when technology became intenselyexpressive and atmospheric5 For in addition to expanding the horizonof human nature technologies were readily capable of copying natureand regulating both nonhuman and human systems They were inother words becoming cybernetic (from the Greek kubernetes meaningsteersman) ldquorecreatingrdquo the world in their own image According toan advertisement for the advertising agency Calkins amp Holden ldquoYourworld is being recreated today by three important influences first thecloseness of science and discovery of commercial manufacturing secondthe shortness of the link between the manufacturer and the consumerand third the amazing speed with which the American public makesup its mind to change its mindrdquo (ldquoYour World Has Changedrdquo 1927 15)Consumption and efficiency each became scientific ie natural exten-sions of the other in the practice of ldquohundred percentrdquo Americanism

As historian David Mindell argues in his history of feedback controltechnology the cybernetic ideas made popular by Norbert Wiener inthe late 1940s and early 1950s were already emergent by the 1920s(2002 6) Feedback technologies defined by their internal capacity toadjust themselves to the future through knowledge of past conditionswere designed by human operators to ldquorespondrdquo to external distur-bances and maintain a secure relationship between two variables (Wiener1954 32-4) Once the human agent sets a control variablemdashthe tem-perature within a room or the velocity of a turntable or projectormdashadjustment to external fluctuationsmdashthe temperature outside the roomor the changing weight of a film reelmdashproceed automatically Feedback

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 7

8

technology is often associated with computers and artificial intelligenceHowever the capacity to transmit information in order to counterentropy and maintain equilibrium within a unified system was presentin oil lamps from ancient Greece waterclocks from the middle agesand temperature regulators from the early modern period (Mayer 197011-52) The invention of the Watts steam engine (1788) and the Corlissengine (1848) the publication of James Clerk Maxwellrsquos ldquoOn Governorsrdquo(1868) the appearance of air-conditioned factories (1902) speed gov-ernors on trucks and tractors (c1910) automated electric substations(1914) and the Sperry gyropilot (1920) had revolutionized the kind ofmaterial and ideological presence machines assumed within human lifemdashno longer a wholly ldquoartificialrdquo other but a ldquonaturalrdquo component of howthings fit together and moved along

By the 1920s the fluidity between humans and machines nature andsecond nature had intensified dramatically Self-regulating devices andautomated factories were becoming so pervasive as to go almost unrec-ognized What bound together a white Protestant majority was theirstruggle to maintain the social perceptual and racial orders throughwhich ldquohundred-percent Americanismrdquo and related principles weredefined From a historical perspective such struggles were ironic Foreven as Protestants forged new public narratives of identity stories theytold themselves in order to be their natural selves were themselvesbecoming part of a feedback loop in which technology played a centralrole

Rather than retreat from technology liberals were inclined to seeldquothe energy of God realizing itself in human liferdquo through those inno-vations Second-generation social gospellers redoubled their progressiveefforts to extend access to economic and spiritual opportunity ldquoTheredemption of societyrdquo did not mean the abolition of the ldquoindustrialsystemrdquo but the lessening of its negative impact (Rauschenbusch 1917110 143) Instead of seriously considering how technological drives andtheir ldquoreality effectsrdquo might undermine projects of economic reform andself-cultivation liberals confidently chose to direct technology in theservice of humanity It was a ldquodemocraticrdquo strategy that required decisiveaction For only through such action could the political and epistemologicalpromises of Enlightenment become a religious reality By acting upononersquos God-given ldquoinstinctrdquo the Kingdom of God could be achievedand maintained on earth (Coe 1917 168 131)

In their revolt against the material incursions and ideological temptationsof modernity Fundamentalists strategically harnessed God somewhat

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 8

9

6 Such irony can be found in Jonathan Edwardsrsquos ldquoSinners in the Hands of anAngry Godrdquo (1741) A rich and contradictory sermon it instructs parishioners torecognize their always already abject relation to God while simultaneously demand-ing that they willingly submit to his will

ironically as guarantor of an organic version of human subjectivity6

The Fundamentalist defense of biblical inerrancy for example confirmedboth the divine autonomy of the text and the human capacity for accu-rate contemplation of it This underlying tension was resolved withinthe Fundamentalist theory of textuality that hewed to the CommonSense dictum that seeing was in fact on par with authentic belief Justas there was a transparent relationship to be had between the self andGod reader and words on the page the promise of transparency wasalso fulfilled in the human act of vision more generally God was thearchitect and engineer of the world He constructed the eyes as wellas the space that made visions of the world even possible As WilliamJennings Bryan wrote in 1922 ldquoI believe that God made the eyes whenHe made manmdashnot only made the eyes but carved out the caverns inthe skull in which they hangrdquo (97-8)

With similar missionary zeal so-called ldquohundred-percentersrdquo went onthe offensive and designated scapegoats for a decline in ldquooriginal-stockProtestant Americardquo The Red Scare of 1919-1920 led by AttorneyGeneral and ldquofighting Quakerrdquo Mitchell Palmer initiated campaigns ofsurveillance and intimidation of Socialist Party members labor leadersvociferous Jews and immigrants and any others deemed politically sub-versive The Johnson Act of 1921 the more restrictive Immigration Actof 1924 as well as the increased visibility of the Ku Klux Klan dur-ing the decade spoke to burgeoning fears over racial miscegenation(Marty 1991 66-79) At stake in these fantasies of whiteness and strate-gies of purification was the notion of the Anglo-self as autonomouspossessive and immune

In popular culture myths of individual expertise proliferated thatreflected both the Protestant desire for authenticity and the limits ofthis desire more generally For even as Americans searched for signsof their essential humanity they often came to understand themselvesin and through technological terms Babe Ruth Henry Ford and thebusiness entrepreneur offered celebrity assurance of an autonomous sub-ject who could withstand the feminizing assaults of modernity by mas-tering technology (Susman 1984 133) Advertising executive BruceBarton (who worked for General Motors when it organized the production

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 9

10

of automobiles around consumer orders feedback from local dealersand demand forecasting) introduced Jesus in his best-selling The Man

Nobody Knows (1925) as a conflation of all three (Beniger 1986 317)According to Barton Jesus deftly swung his carpenter tools created anldquoorganization that conquered the worldrdquo and awakened to the ldquoinnerconsciousnessrdquo of his ldquopowerrdquo Barton pitched Jesus as a ldquomysticrdquo andldquobig manrdquo who had incorporated the technologies of business adver-tising and manufacturing into his own personality and cult thereof (4 10 13 6)

As feedback technologies ldquoneutralizedrdquo economies of origination andclaims to eternal value both Christologies and psychological narrativesof restoration were mechanically inscribed (Benjamin 2003 252) Inthe wake of the popular Personality How To Build It (1916) self-realizationwas consistently equated with an engineering process of control Outwitting

our Nerves (1922) affirmed ldquothe integrity of our physical machinesrdquo aswell as human ldquopower of choicerdquo over those machines It was a ldquofactrdquothat ldquowe ourselves decide which of all the possible emotions we shallchoose or we decide not to press the button for any emotion at allrdquo( Jackson and Salisbury 1922 296 360) In Self-Mastery Through Conscious

Auto-Suggestion (1922) one of the defining books of the twentieth-centurygenre of ldquoself-helprdquo Emile Coueacute introduced Americans to the controlpanel of their inner autopilots In Why We Behave Like Human Beings

(1925) evolutionary anthropologist George A Dorsey defined humansin terms of the ldquokinesthetic senserdquo and their innate capacity to enactfeedback control upon themselves He assured readers that ldquoevery humanindividual normal enough to live beyond the walls of an asylum livesbecause he has an equipment by which he can keep on making adjust-ments to changing conditionsrdquo (302 301) In We (1927) CharlesLindberghrsquos celebrated chronicle of his trans-Atlantic flight his airplaneldquoThe Spirit of St Louisrdquo assumed its own personality and portrait evenas Lindbergh became ldquomechanizedrdquo in the popular press

3 Melville fed back

Concerns over how to secure and maintain a sense of coherent iden-tity in light of a seemingly animated material world also precipitatedthe ldquorevivalrdquo of Melville in the 1920s As in the various Protestantstrategies of adjustment ldquorevivalistsrdquo (predominantly white and male)embraced Melville as providing a script of American identity and self-governance In hopes of defending themselves against the totalizing

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 10

11

Figure 1 Instrument Board of the Spirit of St Louis from We (1927)

directives of technology revivalists read Melville and his works throughthe lens of anti-Puritanism and the newly discovered script of FreudMelvillersquos celebrity increased as Elsie Clews Parson Van Wyck BrooksHL Mencken Waldo Frank and others accused Puritans of possessinga ldquorepressive impulserdquo of denying ldquolife and desirerdquo and of discardingldquomystical consciousnessrdquo in favor of ldquoinstrumentalrdquo reason (Frank 191966 150 68) In Melvillersquos rejection of Puritanismrsquos ldquorepellant materialismrdquohis work assumed a positively transgresssive quality (Tomlinson 1926621) Opposed to the Puritan life of ldquointolerable monotonyrdquo Melvillewas viewed as ldquoa mystic a treasure-seeker a mystery-monger a delverafter hidden things spiritual and materialrdquo (Weaver 1919 145-46)

Raymond M Weaverrsquos Herman Melville Mariner and Mystic (1921) setthe terms of religious evaluation for the early stages of the RevivalWeaver proclaimed that Melville in his ldquoescape from an inexorableand intolerable world of realityrdquo had achieved ldquopsychological synthesisrdquo

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 11

12

Figure 2 ldquoThe ConquerorrdquomdashCharles Lindbergh from Current History July 1927

(Weaver 1921 19 331) The construction of Melville as mystic wasconcurrent with the discursive construction of mysticism by liberalProtestants as ldquoahistorical poetic essential intuitive and universalrdquo(Schmidt 2003 288) Both intellectual constructionsmdashthe latter integralto the academic study of religion in the twentieth centurymdashsought towrest a degree of ldquorealnessrdquo from a world in which ldquothe realrdquo was feltto be increasingly susceptible to technological erasure (Kippenberg 2002175-86) And whereas mystically inclined Protestants denounced ldquosec-ular activitiesrdquo by calling for the liberation and unity of ldquothe deep-lyingpowers of the inward self into one conscious liferdquo under God revival-ists called on Melville to provide them with an experiential map of thatwhich was utterly and mysteriously human (Bennett 1923 6 Jones1915 156 161) As Henry A Murray flatly announced ldquoMelville dis-covered the Unconscious and commenced to explore itrdquo (1929 526)As a model for authenticity and self-governance Melville was both ana-lyst and analysandmdashldquoa gentleman adventurer in the barbarous outposts

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 12

13

of human experiencerdquo not a ldquostaged dip into studio savageryrdquo Melvillehad penetrated the depths of his own psyche no doubt aided by hisstay among South Sea islanders (detailed in his first two novels Typee

(1846) and Omoo (1847) Indeed the authenticity of Melvillersquos mysticconsciousness was dependent upon his ldquountamed desires in violentconflict with his physical and spiritual environmentrdquo (Weaver 1921 1519 21 24-29)

As opposed to Weaverrsquos vicarious nostalgia for a simpler less com-mercial and more fully ldquorealrdquo existence another Melville biographerLewis Mumford understood the complex simulations of a consumer-driven economy as already emergent during Melvillersquos writerly careerMixing cultural criticism history and theological speculation Mumfordwas a keen observer of the technological revolutions in feedback controlIn his most memorable and encyclopedic work Technics and Civilization

(1934) Mumford claimed that in the seventeenth-century ldquomechanicsrdquohad become ldquothe new religion and [they] gave to the world a new Messiahthe machinerdquo In dramatizing the extent to which technology had shapedand continued to shape human consciousness Mumford explored inexacting and illustrated detail the history and material conditions thatwere allowing ldquotools and utensilsrdquo to assume ldquoan independent existencerdquo

This ldquoneotechnic phaserdquo had begun in the early part of the nineteenthcentury and was marked by efficiency flexibility ldquocomplete automatismrdquoand synthetic materialsmdasha ldquomutationrdquo that was rapidly integrating ldquothemachine and the world of liferdquo (45 321 227 212 254)

Such integration was not without its dangers ldquoWith the invention ofthe telegraphrdquo the ldquowireless telephonerdquo and the ldquotelevisionrdquo wroteMumford humans ldquobegan to bridge the gap in time between communi-cation and responserdquo The sympathetic relations between family memberscould now be replicated on an unprecedented scale through telepathictechnologiesmdashgiving rise to ldquo[immense] possibilities for good and evilrdquoThe building of a personality was no longer a ldquolocalrdquo affair On the con-trary when ldquomass-reactionsrdquo were ldquomobilized and hastenedrdquo the needsand interests of the human became those of the machine As Mumfordsuggested technology was becoming a ldquocreative force carried on by itsown momentumrdquo and ldquoproducing a third estate midway between natureand the humane artsrdquo The drive to overcome distancemdashbetween indi-viduals as well as between self and worldmdashhad itself ldquocreated an inde-pendent environment that has reacted upon every other side of the personalityrdquo (239241 322 324)

According to Mumford such technological interference had been ofintense and abiding concern for Melville (1934 213) In Herman Melville

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 13

14

Figure 3 Neotechnic Automatism from Technics and Civilization (1934)

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 14

15

7 Public relations and advances in advertising were the latest instances of the ldquocontrol revolutionrdquo in which technology of interchangeability so integral to theAmerican System of manufacturing had extended its field of operations under theauspices of consumer capitalism Machines were not simply making parts for othermachines but were integral to the form and content of social reproduction Publicrelations was a particular (and less reliable) version of feedback control Instead ofmaintaining a fixed variable on the inside by responding to fluctuations on the out-side ldquocounselorsrdquo stoked the flames of consumer desire in order to justify an accel-erating rate of production and ideally consumption

(1929) Mumford had chided fellow revivalists for exaggerating Melvillersquosretreat into mystical idealism ldquoMelville was a realistrdquo countered Mumfordldquoin the sense that the great religious teachers are realistsrdquo FurthermoreMelville had witnessed the ldquovolcanic intrusionrdquo of ldquoindustrialism [as] avalue in itself rdquo (1929 5 64-65) But things had gotten much more com-plicated since the mid-nineteenth century Whereas Melville had beheldldquothe servile routine of the factory systemrdquo Mumford was now witness-ing the birth of ldquothe machine system the network of relationshipsthat have followed the financial exploitation of machineryrdquo The differencein other words was the full-scale emergence of self-governing tech-nologiesmdashldquohandicraft devoted to mechanical reproduction and machinerythat is set to reproduce endless simulacrardquo For Mumford this ldquomachineritualrdquo this ldquoendlessrdquo loop of ldquomechanical reproductionrdquo threatened toefface ldquothe human arts of seeing feeling and livingrdquo (1924 67-68 10174-75 105 81) Technology in other words had achieved the capacityfor feedback on two different but related levels first in material devicesthat could copy both nature and themselves and secondly in humansthat governed themselves according to the latest control variables setby the machine As Mumford argued the totalizing power of feedbacktechnologies resulted not simply from designs motors or even materialoutputs but through their economically driven expansion of ldquothe verydomain of the symbol itself rdquo (1934 331)

Mumfordrsquos insights take on more ominous implications when oneconsiders the rise of the American public relations industry during thisperiod7 Public relations consultants such as Edward Bernays and adver-tisers like Bruce Barton actively sought to shape and change the beliefsof individuals in the service of larger economic agendas It was no acci-dent Bernays wrote in 1923 that a ldquoman belongs to one church ratherthan another or to any church at allrdquo It was no accident that ldquoBostonwomen prefer brown eggs and New York women white eggsrdquo Becausethe judgments of individuals were not arrived at through ldquoresearch andlogical deductionrdquo but were ldquodogmatic expressions accepted on theauthority of his parents his teachers his church and of his social his

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 15

16

economic and other leadersrdquo a ldquopublic relations counselrdquo must do thework of reauthorization (Bernays 1923 62) Through the strategic ldquosat-urationrdquo of images text and work-place incentives an entire profes-sional class sought to provide the terms for and effectively monitor theconditions of self-realization (Marchand 1985 94-95)

What then did Melville have to offer those living within ldquothe machinesystemrdquo of the 1920s Mumford and other revivalists championed Moby-

Dick as a blueprint for living within an increasingly mechanical rou-tinized and bureaucratic world They also heaped admiration uponCaptain Ahab an odd choice given the outcome of Moby-Dick Contraryto those who would later read Ahabrsquos technologically enhanced dem-agoguery against the political backdrops of Italian Fascism and NationalSocialism Ahabrsquos madness in the 1920s could be considered ldquoactiveand courageousrdquo as well as a sign of ldquogeniusrdquomdashldquothe very pinnacle ofhuman self-assertionrdquo (Watson 1970 136 Sullivan 1970 163) Suchreadings conflated the white whale with the power of technology andhad Ahab defiantly affirm the principle of free-will and defend theboundary between human and material worlds Mumford for examplewrote of Ahab as the ldquospirit of manrdquo who stood in opposition to ldquothebrute energies of existence blind fatal overpoweringrdquo Ahab was self-directive ldquopurposiverdquo and he pitted his ldquopuniness against this mightand [his] purpose against the blank senselessness of powerrdquo So eventhough Ahabrsquos ldquomethods are ill-chosenrdquo wrote Mumford his ldquodefianceis noblerdquo (Mumford 1929 184-86)

4 People who portray themselves or Ahab on Ahab

Film projectors in addition to utilizing concepts of feedback internallywere often seen as generative of external feedback loops between humansand machines nature and artifice Such loops arguably constituted theldquosociety of the spectaclerdquo Guy Debordrsquos term for the image-saturatedenvironment that arose in the 1920s with the confluence of sound filmtelevision and the perfection of propaganda techniques As one of themore grim assessments of an image-based postmodernity Debord definedthe ldquospectaclerdquo in terms of negative feedback ldquoIt is the omnipresentcelebration of a choice already made in the sphere of production andthe consummate result of that choice In form as in content the spectacleserves as total justification for the conditions and aims of the existingsystem It further ensures the permanent presence of that justification forit governs almost all time spent outside the production process itself rdquo

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 16

17

8 Cahir (1997) has made a similar point Although I agree with her assessmentthat The Sea Beast is about Ahabrsquos ldquoreal pursuit of identityrdquo I take issue with herargument that The Sea Beast validates autonomous autotelic forms of masculine identity

(13) In America Debordian paranoia was rampant as Victorian fearsover the exploitation of pleasure were morphing into general anxietiesconcerning voyeurism and cinematic determinism ldquoThe spectacle ofmechanical progress has made so deep an impressionrdquo argued WalterLippmann in 1922 ldquothat it has suffused the whole moral coderdquo Whatdisturbed Lippmann and other public figures was the specter of circularcausality and the quiet ldquoinsertion between man and his environmentof a pseudo-environmentrdquo composed mainly of images (Lippmann 1922108 15) Unbeknownst to them Americans were in danger of becom-ing automated by images and trapped within what Debord would latercall ldquoan uninterrupted monologue of self-praiserdquo (19) Their perpetualaffirmation of self however was wholly cybernetic given the fact thatthey were oblivious to the fact that ldquoon the screen the whole processof observing describing reporting and then imagining has been accom-plished for yourdquo (92)

In a strange twist that Melville might have enjoyed the most com-pelling representation of Moby-Dick and portrayal of Captain Ahab mayhave occurred via the technology of the moving picture8 The 1926silent film The Sea Beast adapted to the screen by Bess Meredyth andstarring John Barrymore as Captain Ahab dramatized the feedbackdimensions of film and its capacity to regulate the human personalityThe Sea Beast I argue challenged more able-bodied academic inter-pretations by reveling in its status as a technological reproduction The

Sea Beast with its odd juxtapositions visceral jump cuts and perverseattention to Ahabrsquos stump and artificial limb rather than affirm thedesire for self-transparency suggested that the equipment-free reality ofthe self was quite literally an enabling fiction What Americans lackedaccording to Meredythrsquos scenario was the tragic recognition of them-selves as always regulated and already enhanced by technology Takingldquopleasure in the confusion of boundariesrdquo and ldquoresponsibility in their con-structionrdquo The Sea Beast in the borrowed words of Donna Harawaymade ldquoan argument for the cyborg as a fiction mapping our social andbodily reality and as an imaginative resource suggesting some very fruit-ful couplingsrdquo (8)

In 1925 at age forty-three John Barrymore was one of Hollywoodrsquosmost bankable actors (part of the ldquostar-systemrdquo promoted by Edward

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 17

18

Bernays who clearly saw the potential for cross-marketing between enter-tainment business and political campaigns) Barrymore easily convincedWarner Brothers to turn Moby-Dick one of his favorite novels into amovie and to cast him in the role of Captain Ahab Having playedHamlet in the 1922-23 Broadway season Barrymore developed a keeninterest in psychoanalysis and Freudrsquos account of Hamlet in Interpretationof Dreams (1900) The role of Captain Ahab like that of Hamlet allowedBarrymore to reach a larger audience with his newly emotive actingstyle As Captain Ahab he could also remind his audience of his depthand manly credentials He was tired in his words of playing ldquoscentedbepuffed bewigged and ringletted charactersrdquo (quoted in Kobler 1977213) Promotional pamphlets for The Sea Beast seemed to reinforceBarrymorersquos gendered strategy featuring a picture of Barrymore in abusiness suit puffing contemplatively on a pipemdashldquoJohn Barrymore ismore than a name more than a personality he is world institutionrdquo(Hoffman 2001 73)

The opening credits to The Sea Beast begin imprecisely with a close-up of the filmrsquos textual referent Moby Dick or the White Whale Thissimulated text begins not with ldquoExtractsrdquo or even ldquoCall me Ishmaelrdquobut with the following words ldquoThere never was nor ever will be abraver life than the life of the whaler Compared to the game theyhunted the mightiest land beast was but a poodle dogrdquo Adapted tothe screen by Bess Meredyth former actress turned writer The Sea Beast

is noteworthy as one of the earliest if not the first public appropriationsof Melvillersquos novel by a woman By 1926 Meredyth had become aHollywood regular having written the scenarios or continuities for Ben

Hur (1925) Don Juan (1926) and at least 70 other films ldquoThere is nowoman writing todayrdquo read the promotional copy of The Sea Beastldquowho has contributed so much to genuine screen values as Bess Meredythrdquo(Hoffman 2001 74) The ldquogenuinerdquo sense Meredyth made of Melvillersquosepic is significant in its relentless focus on the self as a technologicalconstruct In Meredythrsquos scenario one literally glimpses the spirit ofMelvillersquos rejection of the contemplative insular and hyper-masculinizedself of mid-nineteenth-century religion and science In its plot and per-verse attention to Ahabrsquos stump The Sea Beast suggests that nothing willor even can make up for the loss Ahab suffers

After the opening credits the audience is introduced to a healthyCaptain Ahab atop the masthead He looks out over the sea and downon his crew hard at work his feet tapping to the beat of the sea shantyldquoHanging Johnnyrdquo Nostalgia and the logic of substitution are bothbroached in the opening scenesmdashnot in terms of idealism but in ways

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 18

19

that hint at their subsequent negation As Ahab reads a letter from hisbeloved Esther Harper the daughter of a Christian missionary playedby the nineteen year-old Dolores Costello Ahab looks longingly at hername tattooed on his arm His mind drifts back to their last embraceFollowing a long close-up of his legs Ahab descends from the mastheadthe camera sliding down the rope in real time and from Ahabrsquos pointof view his legs leading the way The experience of vertigo engenderedby the shot suggests that Ahabrsquos identity is already unstable alreadymarked by a palpable lack of ground This shot however is quicklyoffset by numerous scenes that depict the fullness of Ahabrsquos vigor par-ticularly in relation to his healthy pair of legs He jumps he hops heruns around

When Ahabrsquos ship docks in the bay of Mauritius the audience isintroduced to Esther as well as to Derek Ahabrsquos scheming half-brotherIt is here that one is reminded of the words from the 1925 promotionalpublication of Moby-Dick accompanied by scenes from The Sea Beastldquothe screen version of lsquoMoby Dickrsquo exceeds the book The discrepancybetween the two must not be considered as a profanely wanton alterationrdquoTo portray the ldquopsychological studyrdquo of Captain Ahab ldquothe camerahas resorted to means of its own A mental state therefore particularlyan involved condition of mind must be expressed by means of the inci-dents which produced it each tortuous thought composing Ahabrsquos madness must be traced to the event which engendered itrdquo (Buchman1925 x) The most obvious incident being the loss of Ahabrsquos leg butthe film compounds this felt sense of loss by turning Melvillersquos tale intoa misbegotten love triangle between Ahab Derek and Esther the appleof both their eyes

On shore Ahab and Esther declare their love to each other Butafter a few days Ahab sails from Mauritius and scans the shore withhis telescope He spies Estherrsquos window She comes to the window andreturns Ahabrsquos gaze through her own telescope Technology has literallybecome the lens through which they see each other through whicheach declares their commitment They wave and blow kisses until theyare both out of range At sea Ahab is betrayed by Derek who unbe-knownst to Ahab pushes him overboard into the waiting jaws of MobyDick After losing his leg Ahab is distraught Derek then taunts Ahaband suggests that his symbolic castration is too much for any relation-ship to bear As Derek reminds him ldquoEsther was always crazy aboutyour beinrsquo so strong and perfectrdquo Having been fitted with his ivorystump Ahab arrives back at Mauritius Derek then shames Ahab evenfurther by telling him that he and Esther are in love and that Esther

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 19

20

cannot bring herself to tell Ahab of the deceit Derek then goes toEsther to convince her that Ahab has abandoned her When Ahabarrives at Estherrsquos house to confirm Derekrsquos story he sees their shadowscast by the light of spermaceti candles and mistakenly believes thatEsther has indeed left him for Derek It is here that Ahab descendsinto his infamous monomania

Ahab goes onto slay Moby Dick but not before uncovering his half-brotherrsquos double betrayal In a dramatic confrontation Derek pulls aknife on Ahab and is about to get the best of our hero But wait Ahabwedges his ivory stump into the deck leveraging himself in order tofend off Derek Ahab then casts Derek overboard and into the sea Anivory technology marking the absence of Ahabrsquos leg has been trans-formed into a salvific presence Or so it seems when the audience istreated to the restoration of order upon the Pequodrsquos return to portand Ahabrsquos reunion with Esther consummated in their tearful embraceHaving staged and seemingly resolved the crisis of masculine identity(the raison drsquoecirctre of melodrama being that the resolution is alreadypresent in the staging) The Sea Beast on the contrary did anything butrestore the full presence of Ahabrsquos self It suggested through both contentand form that the reality of the self whether it be Ahab or the spec-tator in the theater was neither fully resolvable nor equipment-free

Ahab achieves a kind of liberation on screen by recognizing that heis always already a figment of an imagination that is not his own Afterthe tearful reunion between Ahab and Esther the screen goes blackThe audience is then given a glimpse behind the scenes as it weremdasha scene of the director Millard Webb in his chair issuing directionsto Ahab and Esther in Estherrsquos living room A man in a business suitplays the violin in the background As Ahab and Esther look longinglyinto each otherrsquos eyes Ahab slips a ring onto Estherrsquos finger and theyembrace once again Or is it Barrymore and Costello It is unclearparticularly in light of the rumors of an off screen tryst between themiddle-aged Barrymore and his nineteen-year old costar (they wouldlater marry) The loving embrace is seemingly real an ambiguityreaffirmed by the fact that after Webb yells ldquocutrdquo he has to step betweenthe couple and remind them that they are on film Webb then turnsto the camera and smiles as the screen abruptly cuts to black onceagain

The odd ending of The Sea Beast suggests that Ahabrsquos journey towardreconciliation did not end with self-exposure but that it could neverreally begin Rather than achieve restoration of nature in and througha cultural construction Ahabrsquos artificial leg points to a previously

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 20

21

Figure 4 Final Embrace between AhabBarrymore and EstherCostello

ldquoexcluded and illegible domain that haunts the former domain as thespecter of its own impossibility the very limit of intelligibility its con-stitutive outsiderdquo (Butler 1993 xi) The ending harkens back to the seashanty ldquoHanging Johnnyrdquo Ahabrsquos introductory descent from the mast-head and his telescopic flirtation with Esther both vertiginous slidesinto the unfathomable layers of mediated perception that signal theldquoexecutionrdquo of possessive individualism Rather than erase the sign ofAhabrsquos traumamdashhis ivory legmdashthe ending of The Sea Beast suggests thatAhab and Barrymore are two sides of the same character vacillatingwithin the loop of continuous performativity One is reminded here ofWalter Benjaminrsquos insight into the traumatized subject in the age oftechnological reproducibility As Benjamin argues the trauma can beunderstood as a shift from the stage to the screen in which the actorperforms for a ldquopiece of equipmentrdquo rather than for an audience Citingthe Italian playwright Luigi Pirandello Benjamin suggests that the mod-ern subject is

exiled not only from the stage but from his own person With a vagueunease he senses an inexplicable void stemming from the fact that hisbody has lost its substance that he has been volatilized stripped of his

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 21

22

reality his life his voice the noises he makes when moving about andhas been turned into a mute image that flickers for a moment on thescreen then vanishes into silence (2003 260)

Pirandellorsquos borrowed words speak directly to Meredythrsquos reconfigurationof Melvillersquos text Whereas Melvillersquos Ahab tried and failed to conquerthe very source of visual illuminationmdashthe spermaceti oil that allowedantebellum Americans to see in the darkmdashBarrymorersquos Ahab revels inthe technologically enhanced gaze of his audience When the lightscome up the selves of Ahab Barrymore and the audience have beenre-narrativized as cybernetic that is as permanently divided and fun-damentally transient In affirming the really real offscreen relationshipbetween Barrymore and Costello the uncanny ending of The Sea Beast

supported a notion of selfhood as always already mediated or betteryet the necessity of experience to be mediated in order for it to becomereal or maybe even the necessity of acknowledging that the reality ofthe self is really made up

Barrymorersquos self-conscious performance inspired by his reading ofFreud and designed to overcome middle-class mores did not so muchpenetrate the inner depths of his character as it did the emotional lifeand perceptual apparatus of his audience The Sea Beast does not dram-atize the individual conquest of nature as much as it dramatizes visualtechnologyrsquos seduction of the individual The Sea Beast in its staging ofa cybernetic reality denied the very concept of 100 Americanism byinterrupting the narrative closure on which self-presence dependedNeither Ahab nor Barrymore nor the audience are ever alone even intheir solitude They are haunted not simply by the unconscious butby the specters generated in and through technologies of reproduction(Derrida 1994 97) They are in Benjaminrsquos apt phrase ldquopeople whoportray themselvesrdquo (Benjamin 2003 262)

For Benjamin photography and cinema were technologies of religiousrevelation for better or for worse in that they both exposed variousfeedback loops that constituted onersquos identity On one level Benjaminargued that the category of originality had been challenged by visualtechnologies that put copies ldquoof the original in situations which theoriginal itself cannot attainrdquo (2003 254) On another level the decayof the ldquoaurardquo of authenticity and the blurring of original and reproductionenabled individuals to recognize the fact that they were implicated inthe perceptual field and no longer insulated from what they saw orheard ldquoReception in distractionrdquo wrote Benjamin ldquowhich is increas-ing noticeably in all areas of art and is a symptom of profound changesin apperceptionmdashfinds in film its true training groundrdquo (269) Influenced

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 22

23

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethersquos notion of ldquoafter-imagesrdquo in Theory

of Colours (the same text that informed Melvillersquos ldquoThe Whiteness of theWhalerdquo) Benjamin announced the birth of the ldquooptical unconsciousrdquo(266) According to Benjamin images had become the currency of con-sciousness structuring thought and determining the range of possibleactions Mechanical means of reproduction had liberated the perceptualcapacities of humanity They had also ushered in the prospect of massdeception and control Either way they had resulted in a ldquomassiveupheaval in the domain of objectsrdquo and a ldquoshattering of traditionrdquo (254)

5 American Dada and the aporias of modernity

Within the Melville Revivalmdashan almost clicheacuted instance of Modernismrsquosvogue for the solitary geniusmdashseeds of post-Cartesian doubt were beingsown and the enchanting dimensions of technology considered BecauseMelville ldquowas spell-bound by the strange slidings and collidings ofMatterrdquo his work in the eyes of more atheological critics exposed theenchanting conditions of the machine age (Taylor 1984) ldquoIt is the mate-rial elements he really has to do withrdquo wrote DH Lawrence in 1923ldquoHis drama is with them He was a futurist long before futurism foundpaintrdquo (216) For Lewis Mumford too Melville had not simply dram-atized the incursion of machinesmdasha traditional Romantic tropemdashbuthad embraced a series of insoluble contradictions He has come to rec-ognize those parts of the world and himself that had already been pro-duced by machines and had insisted that the plasticity of self wassomething with which Americans had to struggle and to their spiritualdetriment repress

In broaching the aporias of modernity Mumford saw Melville as hav-ing already given the lie to Weberian diagnoses of disenchantment Thecapacity to effectively turn night into day Mumford suggested the expe-rience of a subway car rumbling past the solid structures of a sky-scraper vanishing into the air the peering into a microscope and theobservation of a ldquorow of bottles each of identical size shape colorstretching away for a quarter of a milerdquo were enough to induce a particular kind of vertigo ldquoThe special visual effect of repeating pat-tern[s]rdquo occurred simultaneously with the experience ldquoof the unique andthe non-repeatablerdquo (Mumford 1934 333-34) The experience of intensesystematicitymdashprecisely what feedback technologies were designed toinducemdashcould be positively disorienting when the infinitely calculableassumed the ldquospecial qualityrdquo of the ldquoincalculablerdquo (Heidegger 1977

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 23

24

135) According to Mumford when technology no longer made imperfectcopies of nature but perfect copies of itself the very notion of ldquonaturalrdquocould become radically suspect With the ldquoliquidationrdquo of the solid book-ends of authenticity and artifice came the prospect that the spectrumitself was socially constructed for better or for worse (Benjamin 2003255) Having torn aside the veil ldquoman has thrown between his ownexperience and the blank reality of the universerdquo Melville neither suc-cumbed to the temptation of nihilism nor retreated into his own pri-vate morality On the contrary he urged his contemporaries to ownup to the constructedness of any and all cultural forms and expressionsand the faith commitments that undergirded them As Mumford wroteldquoto appreciate the reality of the White Whale is to see more deeplyinto the expedience of all our immediate institutions all the spiritualshelters man puts between himself and the uncertain cosmic weatherMeaning significance attends only that little part of the universe manhas built up and settledrdquo (Mumford 1926 150-51)

Whereas Mumford assessed the religious dimensions of technologicalldquoprogressrdquo in a tragic key others tended toward the comic as was thecase with a group of experimental artists associated with Broom An

International Magazine of the Arts Published by Americans in Italy publishedbetween 1921 and 1924 (Tashjian 1975 116-34) Broomrsquos co-editor thepoet Alfred Kreyemborg (who would later co-edit The American Caravan

with Lewis Mumford) had adapted a passage from Moby-Dick for itstitle logo and statement of purpose which appeared on the back coverldquoWhat of itrdquo asks Ishmael

if some old hunks of a seacaptain orders me to get a broom and sweepdown the decks What does that indignity amount to weighed I meanin the scales of the New Testament Do you think the Archangel Gabrielthinks any less of me because I promptly and respectfully obey that oldhunks that particular instance Who ainrsquot a slave (Melville 1925 4)

The first issue of Broom included poems addressing Albert Einsteinrsquostheory of relativity as well as Emmy Veronica Sanders declaration thatldquothe American Machinerdquo was ldquotransforming itself with all its attributesand characteristics into American Mindrdquo ldquoAmericardquo she continuedinitially ldquomade of the Puritan by the Puritan for the Puritanrdquo wasnow being ldquoremade of the Machine by the Machine for the Machinerdquo(89-90) Following Sandersrsquos piece was a David OrsquoNeilrsquos hymn of sup-plication to the new Gods of the machine

When you are sweeping usWith Your cosmic broom

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 24

25

Figure 5 Nature and Second Nature in Technics and Civilization (1934)

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 25

26

Sweeping us out of mouldy rutsSweeping us clean and sweetmdash

RememberWhen wersquore quiveringmdashSensitivemdashbaremdashWe shall be gratefulFor just a few shadows (96)

Broom took Ishmaelrsquos retort quite seriously addressing the revolutionarydimensions of technological artifice and the shadows cast within therealm of technological illumination

Unlike Futurism Broom did not celebrate the beauty of war It didhowever come to express the ldquodreamed-of metallization of the humanbodyrdquo and the playful cybernetic fantasies of Dadaists such as ManRay and Francis Picabia (quoted in Benjamin 2003 269) After someinitial hesitation Broom began to embrace Dadarsquos perspective on the lib-eratory dimensions of the human-machine interface ldquoEverything isartificialrdquo gasped Broom contributor Blaise Cendrars ldquoThe eyes thehand the sexual frenzy of the factory The wheel which turns Thewing which flies The voice which travels far on a wire Your ear ina trumpet Your sense of direction Your rhythm You melt the worldin the mould of your skull Your brain is hollow Like a religion amysterious pill hastens your digestionrdquo (265) Jean Epstein from a slightdifferent angle argued that technology had ldquobecome part of ourselvesrdquoand had democratized human perceptionmdashldquoman has not one memoryof [the] landscape he [now] has a thousand different ones which mayor may not resemble each other Everything possesses hundreds ofapparent diameters which never superimpose exactlyrdquo (6-7)

Broom was soon translating less inflammatory Futurist manifestos suchas Enrico Prampolinirsquos ldquoThe Aesthetic of the Machine and MechanicalIntrospection in Artrdquo in which he declared ldquoIs not the machine todaythe most exuberant symbol of the mystery of human creation Is it notthe new mythical deity which weaves the legends and histories of thecontemporary human drama The Machine in its practical and materialfunction comes to have today in human concepts and thoughts thesignificance of an ideal and spiritual inspirationrdquo The kind of worshipthat ensued was that of the cyborg neither reverent nor memorializ-ing of cosmic law (Haraway 2004 9) Or as Prampolini wrote ldquoOurexperience has convinced us of the truth of certain of our plastic truthsand has allowed us to perceive the errors that lie in othersrdquo (236)

One of the more important pieces of American Dada captured pre-cisely this pointmdashGod (c 1917) designed by Baroness Elsa von Freytag-

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 26

27

Figure 6 Illustration accompanying Enrico Prampolinirsquos ldquoThe Aesthetic of theMachine and Mechanical Introspection in Artrdquo Broom 33 (October 1922) 237

Loringhoven and photographed by Morton Schamberg The invertedcast-iron plumbing trap atop a carpenterrsquos miter box was emblematicof the Melvillean appreciation for technological enchantment Indeedthe pipe is part of an indoor plumbing apparatus a modern conveniencewhose history dates back to some of the earliest feedback technologieson recordmdashthe water-clocks and float-regulators of ancient Greece (Mayr1970 11-26) God resembled the mechanical abstractions Schamberghad been producing before his premature death in 1918 during aninfluenza outbreak in Philadelphia The Baroness a contributor to Broom

and other little magazines had arrived in New York from Germanyin 1913 She was ldquothe first American dadardquo wrote Jane Heap in 1922ldquothe only one living anywhere who dresses dada loves dada lives dadardquo(46) Friends with Marcel Duchamp Djuna Barnes and other NewYork artists the Baroness was a central figure in a burgeoning trans-atlantic avant-garde In addition to her art and poetry the Baronesswas also a ldquoperformancerdquo artist who skillfully inverted gender hierarchiesand attacked through her very presence the traditional sensibilities ofthe middle-class She was notorious for walking around the streets ofGreenwich Village with her shaved head painted purple postage stampspasted to her face and a bird cage around her neck housing a livecanary (Davidson 1996 223-24)

In what must be considered a prescient assault on all manners oflogocentrism the Baroness also carried with her a plaster cast penis thatshe periodically revealed to passersby for maximum shock value (Gammel2002 195) But it was the Barnonessrsquos sculpture God that in addition

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 27

28

Figure 7 God (c 1917) designed by Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven and photographed by Morton Schamberg

to celebrating the mobility and reproducibility of that which was sup-posedly the most fixed and essential repossessed the power of tech-nology as ever imperfect and incomplete As a companion piece of sortsto Duchamprsquos infamous ready-made Fountain an inverted urinal dis-played in the 1917 exhibition of the American Society of IndependentArtists God invited more expressly theological speculation First of allit insisted on supplementing the three traditional symbolic centers ofWestern religious reflectionmdashGod humanity naturemdashwith the machineAnd although it has since been viewed by critics as ldquosacrilegiousrdquo andan instance of ldquoantireligious scatologyrdquo (Naumann 1994 171 Gammel220) the transgressive dimensions to God also affirm a shadowy open-

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 28

29

9 One is reminded here of Melvillersquos letter to Nathaniel Hawthorne in April of1851 ldquoWe incline to think that God cannot explain His own secrets and that Hewould like a little more information upon certain points Himself We mortals aston-ish Him as much as He usrdquo (Melville 1993 186)

ing to radical othernessmdashin the form of imperfection and chancemdashwithin the loops generated by feedback technology

Although the metal pipe ends up pointing toward heaven it firstloops downward in a nod to its human ground Limited by the skillsof the human carpenter on whose box it is anchored the contortedpipe narrativizes both the pitfalls and prospects of the machine ageShit eventually flows up in the case of God not down suggesting thateven the most lofty and noble ideals of the imagination maintain theirhuman aroma Rather than assume the power of divinity classicallyconstrued God staged divinity as nothing more and nothing less thanthat which made life livablemdashthat which kept the smell of human wasteartificially at bay or more ominously managed the flow of thingsthrough feedback control But even more literally God called attentionto the human work in the making of artifice and celebrated the bio-logical possibility for the endless unmaking (and remaking) of selfFeedback technology was not really God but it was for all practicalpurposes Or as the Baroness wrote in a 1927 letter to Peggy GuggenheimGod had much to learn from Henry Ford for he was ldquoclumsily sub-tle-densely-intelligent-inefficiently-immense-(Lord not Fordmdashof course)rdquo9

God the Baroness playfully warned had ldquobetter hotfoot it towardprogressmdashmodernizemdashuse his own omnipotence intelligentlymdashsmart orwersquoll all expire in tangle Well Lord knowsmdash(Does he)rdquo (quoted inGammel 2002 229)

6 Conclusion Deus in machina movet

As Protestant majorities struggled to adjust themselves and their theo-logical inheritance to new technological conditions theologies of themachine age both compelling and disturbing emerged from outsidethe precincts of traditional religious discourse For in addition to beinginspired by the ghost of Herman Melville the Melville Revival wasquite literally haunted by the power of feedback technologiesmdashspectersthat were affective rather than concrete strangely resistant to rationalcontemplation yet recognized through anxious admixtures of thoughtand feeling On one hand the revival reflected the spectrum of Protestant

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 29

30

10 Shortly after the publication of Moby-Dick in November of 1851 reports beganto reach America about the August sinking of the Ann Alexander by a whale in theSouth Pacific It was the first ldquoattack of a whale upon a shiprdquo since the destruc-tion of the Essex in 1820 The story about the Ann Alexander originally appeared inthe Panama Herald on October 16 and was reprinted the following month in New-York Daily Tribune and Littellrsquos Living Age The sperm whale that the Ann Alexander

fears over technological miscegenation The capacity of machines toredraw the boundaries of race and gender disturbed Protestant leadersand revivalists alike On the other hand subversive elements within theMelville Revival offered what must be considered a theological critiqueof how Protestants understood themselves and their God in relation totechnological materials Grant Overton for example saw in Moby-Dick

a deep appreciation for how technological developments had come tounderminemdashquite literally hauntmdashthe epistemological and ontologicalassumptions that made them possible ldquoNo longer able to instance thedeus ex machinardquo wrote Overton Melville was ldquounforgetful that deus inmachina movet and while most of mankind [have] become unable to seethe god for the machine [he] can scarcely perceive the machine forthe god agitating it [His] reports of the machine are somehow unrec-ognizable [his] realism is confronted by Realityrdquo (Overton 1928 231)

Bess Meredythrsquos reimagining of Moby-Dick and Baroness Elsa vonFreytag-Loringhovenrsquos God also explored the otherness that technologyengenders within the modern subject a trace that lingers despite allattempts to extinguish it Their errant readings challenged contempo-raries to reimagine their relationship to technology from an enchantedperspective that did not necessarily conform to the directives of Americanindividualism Resisting the advertisements of both Arminianism andBaconian Common Sense these readings insisted that there was somethingelsemdashsomething wholly othermdashoccurring within the technological workingsof secular modernity Excess or that which unsettled the boundariesbetween body and machine masculine and feminine had resulted inwhat might be called a ldquopost-structure of feelingrdquo The prospect thateither machines or women had begun to think for themselves or atleast possess a kind of agency once attributed to the enlightened malesubject now seemed as likely as a whale vengefully turning against awhaleship10 As Melvillean riffs on the deferred project of religious iden-tity The Sea Beast and God marked the space between human creationand technological determination consent and compulsion and there-fore hinted at the prospect that belief was not an individual state butan embodied activity Consistent with Lewis Mumfordrsquos assessment ofthe symbolic and material powers of feedback technology these works

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 30

31

had first turned upon starboard and larboard boats seizing both in its jaws andcrushing them to pieces It then rushed towards the Ann Alexander ldquoat the rateof fifteen knots In an instant the monster struck the ship with tremendous violence shakingher from stem to sternrdquo (415) Upon reading the article Melville remarked to his pub-lisher ldquothe Whale had almost completely slipped me for the time (amp I was themerrier for it) when Crash comes Moby Dick himself It is really amp truly a sur-prising coincidencemdashto say the least I make no doubt it is Moby Dick himself I wonder if my evil art has raised this monsterrdquo (Melville 1993 209)

11 William Jennings Bryan for example that standard bearer of fundamentalfaith equated faith to a particular kind of technologymdashldquothere is that in each humanliferdquo he wrote ldquothat corresponds to the mainspring of a watchmdashthat which isabsolutely necessary if the life is to be what it should be a real life and not amere existence That necessary thing is a belief in Godrdquo (86) Faith for Bryan wasthat which repeated without difference It was a dependable rational and utterlyrationalizing process It was not however self-regulating It affirmed the ldquorealnessrdquoof the individual believer precisely because it ignored the conditions imposed fromoutside the self But how might faith be viewed in terms of feedback and repro-ducibility rather than repetition a process that does not reaffirm a centered indi-vidual with every tick but adjusts accordingly to external fluctuations

raise numerous questions concerning the ways and means of religionin an age of postmodern complexity and virtual reality

How might a relentless focus on power and the porousness of sub-jectivity change how one views the matter of religion within historyHow might a greater attention to the aesthetic conditions that mediateany and all beliefs challenge the ways in which we distinguish the reli-gious from the secular How might a greater attention to the enchantingpower of material conditions challenge historical and political narrativesof secularization How do technologies and vested interests realize them-selves through the discourses of agency choice and mobility Whatin other words are the conditions of possibility that allow a historicalactor (rather than a Hollywood actor) to make a particular faith com-mitment or for that matter have any faith at all In what languagedo historical actors dream about themselves and divinity and how doesthat language change over time And finally to what degree is faithitself a technology11

By acknowledging the white mythology that still informs say thefield of American religions such questions shift the scholarly emphasisfrom explicit expressions of religious belief and practice to the spacebetween those beliefs and practices and the world at-large Individualswithin American religious history for example have often been depictedas fully formed agents making choices between various faith commitmentsand ever combining religious idioms to suit their specific needs and cir-cumstances (Albanese 1997) No doubt this is true But there is anotherside to this story of radical religious pluralism one that if accounted

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 31

32

12 Such a possibility is very much at odds with the Geertzian model of ldquothickdescriptionrdquo and its formidable legacy in the humanities and social sciences Withoutquestioning the degree to which the self can ever become entirely legible to theself Geertz claimed that every society and individual life and by extension everybelief and every practice ldquocontain their own interpretations One has only to learnhow to gain access to themrdquo (Geertz 1973 453)

13 The ambiguities of agency during the ldquomachine agerdquo have been the subjectof a number of elegant critical studies See for example Anson Rabinbach TheHuman Motor Energy Fatigue and the Origins of Modernity (New York Basic Books1990) Mark Seltzer Bodies and Machines (New York Routledge 1992) MarthaBanta Taylorized Lives Narrative Productions in the Age of Taylor Veblen and Ford (ChicagoUniversity of Chicago Press 1993) Carolyn Thomas de la Pentildea The Body ElectricHow Strange Machines Built the Modern American (New York New York UniversityPress 2003) and Joel Dinerstein The Swinging Machine Modernity Technology andAfrican American Culture Between the World Wars (Amherst University of MassachusettsPress 2003) Dinersteinrsquos work is particularly relevant to the issue of religious com-binativeness given his emphasis on how African American artists strove to refigureldquomachine aestheticsrdquo in and through their artistry Dinersteinrsquos work suggests thatthe self is locatedmdashie the self happensmdashsomewhere between resistance and assim-ilation between choice and coercionmdasha lesson that many Anglo-Americans werenot willing to consider in their triumphal theorizing about the human in relationto the machine The possibility for consideration argues Dinerstein existed inAfrican American jazz swing and dance

for suggests new directions for the study of religion in America Althoughthe ldquolived religionrdquo perspective in American religious history has donemuch to overcome the distinction between ldquodabblersrdquo and ldquotrue believersrdquothe question of power still lingers (Ahlstrom 1972 1052) Religiousbeliefs and practices are neither essential things nor reveal themselvesto the scholar in toto12 Such a position does not replicate the eitherordiscussion regarding the agency of historical actors On the contraryit suggests that religious agency is a hybrid weave of intent and instinctimmediate response and mediated principle knowing and unknowing13

Accounting for the ambiguities of agency has already pushed scholarsof religion toward an anthropology of the secular and an explorationof in the Foucauldian phrasing of Talal Asad ldquothe contingencies thathave come together to give us our certaintiesrdquo (2003 16)

It is with a hint of irony then that one may return to the promotionalpamphlet of The Sea Beast that celebrates the ldquoconquestrdquo of Ahab andthe invisible wafting presence of screenwriter Bess Meredyth ldquoThereis no woman writing today who has contributed so much to genuine

screen values as Bess Meredythrdquo Indeed her son John Meredyth Lucasborn in 1919 continued down his motherrsquos unsettling path as a successfultelevision screenwriter and director His credits included episodes ofldquoStar Trekrdquo ldquoLoganrsquos Runrdquo and that other story of ldquohundred percentrdquoAmericanism ldquoThe Six Million Dollar Manrdquo

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 32

33

Figure 8 The Six Million Dollar Man ldquoGentlemen we can rebuild him Wehave the capability of making the worldrsquos first bionic man We can make him

better than he was before Better Stronger Fasterrdquo

Haverford College370 Lancaster AveHaverford PA 19041jlardashaverfordedu

References

Ahlstrom Sydney E (1972) A Religious History of the American People New HavenYale University Press

Albanese Catherine L (1997) Exchanging selves exchanging souls Contact com-bination and American religious history In Thomas A Tweed (ed) RetellingUS Religious History 200-26 Berkeley University of California Press

Anon (1851) A ship sunk by a whale Littellrsquos Living Age (29 November) 415-16Asad Talal (2003) Formations of the Secular Christianity Islam Modernity Stanford

Stanford University Press

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 33

34

Bacon Francis (1870) The Works of Francis Bacon James Spedding Robert LeslieEllis and Douglas Denon Heath (eds) Vol VIII New York Hurd andHoughton

Barton Bruce (2000) The Man Nobody Knows A Discovery of the Real Jesus ChicagoIvan R Dee

Beniger James R (1986) The Control Revolution Technological and Economic Origins ofthe Information Society Cambridge Harvard University Press

Benjamin Walter (1996) One-way street In Marcus Bullock amp Michael W Jennings(eds) Selected Writings Volume 1 1913-1926 444-88 Cambridge HarvardUniversity Press

mdash (2003) The work of art in the age of its technological reproducibility third ver-sion In Howard Eiland and Michael W Jennings (eds) Selected Writings Volume4 1938-40 251-83 Cambridge Harvard University Press

Bennett Charles A (1923) A Philosophical Study of Mysticism An Essay New HavenYale University Press 1923

Bernays Edward L (1923) Crystallizing Public Opinion New York Liverlight PublishingCorporation

Buchman SR (1925) Moby Dickmdashthe book and The Sea Beastmdashthe picture Anappreciation In Herman Melville Moby Dick or The White Whale ix-xi NewYork Grosset amp Dunlap

Butler Judith (1993) Bodies That Matter On the Discursive Limits of lsquoSexrsquo RoutledgeNew York

Cahir Linda Costanzo (1997) Routinizing the charismatic Melville and Hollywoodrsquosthree Moby-Dicks Melville Society Extracts 110 (September) 11-17

Cendrars Blaise (1922) Profound today Broom 13 ( January) 265-67Chadwick Owen (1975) The Secularization of the European Mind in the Nineteenth Century

Cambridge Cambridge University PressCoe George Albert (1917) A Social Theory of Religious Education New York Charles

Scribnerrsquos SonsDavidson Abraham A (1996) The European art invasion In Francis M Naumann

(ed) with Beth Vann Making Mischief Dada Invades New York 222-27 NewYork Whitney Museum of Art

Debord Guy (1995) Society of the Spectacle translated by Donald Nicholson-SmithNew York Zone Books

Derrida Jacques (1994) Specters of Marx The State of the Debt The Work of Mourningand the New International Peggy Kamuf (trans) New York Routledge

Dorsey George A (1925) Why We Behave Like Human Beings New York BlueRibbon Books

Epstein Jean (1922) The new conditions of literary phenomena Broom 21 (April)3-10

Frank Waldo (1919) Our America New York Boni and LiverightGammel Irene (2002) Baroness Elsa Gender Dada and Everyday Modernitymdasha Cultural

Biography Cambridge The MIT PressGeertz Clifford (1973) Deep play Notes on the Balinese cockfight In The Interpretation

of Cultures 412-53 New York Basic BooksHaraway Donna (2004) A manifesto for cyborgs Science technology and socialist

feminism in the 1980s In The Haraway Reader 7-45 New York RoutledgeHeap Jane (1922) Dada Little Review VII2 (Spring) 46Heidegger Martin (1977) The age of the world-picturerdquo In The Question Concerning

Technology and Other Essays 115-54 William Lovitt (trans) New York Harperamp Row

Hoffman Carol Stein (2001) The Barrymores Hollywoodrsquos First Family LexingtonUniversity of Kentucky Press

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 34

35

Jackson Josephine A and Helen M Salisbury (1922) Outwitting Our Nerves A Primerof Psychotherapy New York The Century Co

Jaffe David (1990) The village enlightenment in New England 1760-1820 TheWilliam and Mary Quarterly XLVII3 ( July) 327-46

Jones Rufus M (1915) Mysticism in present-day religion Harvard Theological ReviewVIII2 (April) 155-65

Kippenberg Hans G (2002) Discovering Religious History in the Modern Age BarbaraHarshav (trans) Princeton Princeton University Press

Kobler John (1977) Damned in Paradise The Life of John Barrymore New YorkAtheneum

Kuttner Alfred B (1922) Nerves In Harold E Stearns (ed) Civilization in the UnitedStates An Enquiry by Thirty Americans 427-42 New York Harcourt

Lauter Paul (1994) Melville climbs the canon American Literature 66 (March) 1-24Lawrence DH (1923) Studies in Classic American Literature New York T SeltzerLindbergh Charles A (1927) We New York GP Putnamrsquos SonsLippmann Walter (1922) Public Opinion New York Macmillan CompanyMarchand Roland (1985) Advertising the American Dream Making Way for Modernity

1920-1940 Berkeley University of California PressMarty Martin E Modern American Religion Vol 2 The Noise of Conflict 1919-1941

Chicago University of Chicago Press 1991May Henry F (1976) The Enlightenment in America New York Oxford University

PressMayhew Jonathan (1749) Concerning the difference between truth and falsehood

right and wrong In Seven Sermons 1-21 Boston Rogers and FowleMayr Otto (1970) The Origins of Feedback Control Cambridge The MIT PressMelville Herman (1993) Correspondence Volume 14 of The Writings of Herman Melville

Lynne Horth (ed) Evanston and Chicago Northwestern University Pressmdash (1925) Moby Dick or The White Whale 1851 New York Grosset amp DunlapMindell David A (2002) Between Human and Machine Feedback Control and Computing

Before Cybernetics Baltimore The Johns Hopkins University PressMumford Lewis (1929) Herman Melville New York The Literary Guild of Americamdash (1924) Sticks and Stones A Study of American Architecture and Civilization New York

Dover Publicationsmdash (1934) Technics and Civilization New York Harcourt Brace and Companymdash (1926) The Golden Day A Study in American Literature and Culture New York Boni

and LiverightMurray Jr HA (1929) Review of Lewis Mumfordrsquos Herman Melville The New

England Quarterly 2 ( July) 523-26Naumann Francis M (1994) New York Dada 1915-23 New York Harry N AbramsNoble David F (1999) The Religion of Technology The Divinity of Man and the Spirit

of Invention New York Penguin BooksNye David E (1994) American Technological Sublime Cambridge The MIT PressOrsquoNeil David (1921) The new Broom Broom 11 (November) 96Overton Grant (1928) The Philosophy of Fiction New York D AppletonPalmer Attorney General (1920) The case against the lsquoRedsrsquo The Forum A Magazine

of Constructive Nationalism 632 (February) 173-85Parsons Floyd W (1927) Everybodyrsquos business Advertising amp Selling ( June 29) 5 64Prampolini Enrico (1922) The aesthetic of the machine and mechanical intro-

spection in art Broom 33 (October) 235-37Rauschenbusch Walter (1917) A Theology for the Social Gospel New York The

Macmillan CompanyRichardson George P (1991) Feedback Thought in Social Science and Systems Theory

Philadelphia University of Pennsylvania Press

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 35

5

Scottish Common Sense may have been the most important contributor to ver-sions of American secularism fueling the emergence anthropology political econ-omy and medical professionalism

4 ldquoThough I wrote the Gospels in this centuryrdquo Melville was resigned to thefact that he ldquoshould die in the gutterrdquo (Melville 1993 192)

forces of technology interfered with the elective space between mindsthe affective space between bodies and the ontological space betweenhuman and machine

Herman Melville had already reached this conclusion by the timehe published Moby-Dick in 1851 According to Melville the directivesof ldquoimperial selfhoodrdquo even though they had undergirded numerousprojects of American modernitymdashfrom industry and the economy reli-gion and philosophy to national infrastructures and mental scaffoldingsmdashhad already begun to fail In Moby-Dick Melville explored via CaptainAhab how the relentless pursuit of spiritual autonomy epistemologicalclarity and ocular dominion could eventually result in submission con-fusion and blindness Cursing his ldquointer-indebtednessrdquo to technologyAhab became infused with its logic admitting that ldquothe path to myfixed purpose is laid with iron rails whereon my soul is grooved torunrdquo His madness rendered him incapable of appreciating the spectraldimensions of material existencemdashfirst and foremost the ldquoloomingrdquo pres-ence of the white whale but also the specters within himself and thosegenerated on board the most advanced technology of its timemdashthe self-contained industrial apparatus of the whaling ship Ahab became unhingedby the ldquomessage-carrying airrdquomdashprecisely those material effects that resis-ted observation and calculation (Melville 1925 422 149 402)

By the 1920s the air had only become more saturated with messagesof various kinds Amidst Taylorized working conditions moving picturesand the lingering traumas of industrial warfare Protestant understandingsof spiritual autonomy and renderings of the material world as pliableand inert often failed to do explanatory justice to feelings of mechanicalstructure and structuration This essay addresses particular responses tothis machine static not strictly within religious institutions and groupingsper se but within one of the more underappreciated revivals of thetimemdashthe aptly named ldquoRevivalrdquo of Herman Melville and his long-for-gotten Moby-Dick Although Melville had himself claimed that Moby-Dick

was a new ldquogospelrdquo it was not until the centenary of his birth in 1919that it was fed back into the loop of popular culture4 With the pub-lication of new editions of his works critical studies and biographiesMelville became a literary sensation and a media spectacle capped off

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 5

6

by The Sea Beast (1926) a silent screen dramatization of Moby-Dick star-ring John Barrymore and Dolores Costello The Melville Revival reflectedalbeit from a peculiar angle many of the anxieties and desires of whiteProtestant majorities across the political spectrum Moby-Dick for examplewas enlisted in the service of authorizing American superiority in thegeo-political sphere as well as in the elusive sphere of culture As thelone solitary masculine artist Melville became a literary vehicle bywhich many revivalists expressed their own revulsion toward the senti-mentalism of mass culture and the perceived threat of feminized racial-ized and ignorant masses (Lauter 1994 6-10) Many (but not all)ldquorevivalistsrdquo celebrated Melville and his epic in terms that mirroredAmerican investment in the directives of possessive individualism andthe essential distinction between human and machine

The first two sections of this essay highlight the shared anxiety cours-ing through American Protestantism popular culture and the MelvilleRevival After exploring the prescient analysis of feedback technologyand the fate of human organicism advanced by Lewis Mumfordmdashawriter who participated in each of these three discoursesmdashI offer closereadings of two moments within the Melville Revival that broachedissues of feedback and religiosity Bess Meredithrsquos screenplay for The

Sea Beast and the American phalanx of European Dada associated withBroom the short-lived journal whose title and musings on the machineage were inspired by Ishmaelrsquos retort ldquoWho ainrsquot a slaverdquo In theirexploration of the murky ontological space between human and machinethese unorthodox readings addressed the technological environment interms normally associated with religionmdashrevelation enchantment mys-ticism God They also captured something about the cultural historyof religion in the 1920smdashits dissonant signals its ambient static thoseldquoelements which the society as such [was] not able to realizerdquo (Williams1966 69)

Sensitivity to the tangible buzz of machine-age America serves alarger goal of reimagining what we as scholars talk about when wetalk about religion (Noble 1997 and Nye 1994) For in addition todemonstrating that Protestant strategies of self-centering so pervasivein the early twentieth century had trouble holding their ground againstthe billowing nature of technology I also argue that Protestant-inspireddefinitions of what constitutes religious belief and practice still pervasivein the modern academic study of religion are not equipped to dealwith the crises of the natural within (post)modernity Rather than engagein sustained readings of those who have broached issues of feedbackmdashWalter Benjamin Donna Haraway Judith Butler Guy Debord Michel

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 6

7

5 See for example the role feedback technologies have played in the developmentof the information society and ldquocontrol revolutionrdquo (Beniger 1986 344-89) and inthe development of twentieth-century social science (Richardson 1991)

Foucault among othersmdashmy goal inspired by their work is to explorethe religious effects of feedback technology and to enact a case studyof American religious history in terms of those ldquostructures of feelingrdquothat actively questioned more formal and official versions of reality

2 Protestant feedback

In addition to ldquoreek[ing] of religionrdquo 1920rsquos America also reeked oftechnology as principles of feedback and reproducibility emerged ascentral components of modern life Telephone networks engines power-ing automobiles phonographs and movie projectors not to mentionthe production of consumer desire by Public Relations specialistsmdashallmarked a moment in American history when technology became intenselyexpressive and atmospheric5 For in addition to expanding the horizonof human nature technologies were readily capable of copying natureand regulating both nonhuman and human systems They were inother words becoming cybernetic (from the Greek kubernetes meaningsteersman) ldquorecreatingrdquo the world in their own image According toan advertisement for the advertising agency Calkins amp Holden ldquoYourworld is being recreated today by three important influences first thecloseness of science and discovery of commercial manufacturing secondthe shortness of the link between the manufacturer and the consumerand third the amazing speed with which the American public makesup its mind to change its mindrdquo (ldquoYour World Has Changedrdquo 1927 15)Consumption and efficiency each became scientific ie natural exten-sions of the other in the practice of ldquohundred percentrdquo Americanism

As historian David Mindell argues in his history of feedback controltechnology the cybernetic ideas made popular by Norbert Wiener inthe late 1940s and early 1950s were already emergent by the 1920s(2002 6) Feedback technologies defined by their internal capacity toadjust themselves to the future through knowledge of past conditionswere designed by human operators to ldquorespondrdquo to external distur-bances and maintain a secure relationship between two variables (Wiener1954 32-4) Once the human agent sets a control variablemdashthe tem-perature within a room or the velocity of a turntable or projectormdashadjustment to external fluctuationsmdashthe temperature outside the roomor the changing weight of a film reelmdashproceed automatically Feedback

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 7

8

technology is often associated with computers and artificial intelligenceHowever the capacity to transmit information in order to counterentropy and maintain equilibrium within a unified system was presentin oil lamps from ancient Greece waterclocks from the middle agesand temperature regulators from the early modern period (Mayer 197011-52) The invention of the Watts steam engine (1788) and the Corlissengine (1848) the publication of James Clerk Maxwellrsquos ldquoOn Governorsrdquo(1868) the appearance of air-conditioned factories (1902) speed gov-ernors on trucks and tractors (c1910) automated electric substations(1914) and the Sperry gyropilot (1920) had revolutionized the kind ofmaterial and ideological presence machines assumed within human lifemdashno longer a wholly ldquoartificialrdquo other but a ldquonaturalrdquo component of howthings fit together and moved along

By the 1920s the fluidity between humans and machines nature andsecond nature had intensified dramatically Self-regulating devices andautomated factories were becoming so pervasive as to go almost unrec-ognized What bound together a white Protestant majority was theirstruggle to maintain the social perceptual and racial orders throughwhich ldquohundred-percent Americanismrdquo and related principles weredefined From a historical perspective such struggles were ironic Foreven as Protestants forged new public narratives of identity stories theytold themselves in order to be their natural selves were themselvesbecoming part of a feedback loop in which technology played a centralrole

Rather than retreat from technology liberals were inclined to seeldquothe energy of God realizing itself in human liferdquo through those inno-vations Second-generation social gospellers redoubled their progressiveefforts to extend access to economic and spiritual opportunity ldquoTheredemption of societyrdquo did not mean the abolition of the ldquoindustrialsystemrdquo but the lessening of its negative impact (Rauschenbusch 1917110 143) Instead of seriously considering how technological drives andtheir ldquoreality effectsrdquo might undermine projects of economic reform andself-cultivation liberals confidently chose to direct technology in theservice of humanity It was a ldquodemocraticrdquo strategy that required decisiveaction For only through such action could the political and epistemologicalpromises of Enlightenment become a religious reality By acting upononersquos God-given ldquoinstinctrdquo the Kingdom of God could be achievedand maintained on earth (Coe 1917 168 131)

In their revolt against the material incursions and ideological temptationsof modernity Fundamentalists strategically harnessed God somewhat

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 8

9

6 Such irony can be found in Jonathan Edwardsrsquos ldquoSinners in the Hands of anAngry Godrdquo (1741) A rich and contradictory sermon it instructs parishioners torecognize their always already abject relation to God while simultaneously demand-ing that they willingly submit to his will

ironically as guarantor of an organic version of human subjectivity6

The Fundamentalist defense of biblical inerrancy for example confirmedboth the divine autonomy of the text and the human capacity for accu-rate contemplation of it This underlying tension was resolved withinthe Fundamentalist theory of textuality that hewed to the CommonSense dictum that seeing was in fact on par with authentic belief Justas there was a transparent relationship to be had between the self andGod reader and words on the page the promise of transparency wasalso fulfilled in the human act of vision more generally God was thearchitect and engineer of the world He constructed the eyes as wellas the space that made visions of the world even possible As WilliamJennings Bryan wrote in 1922 ldquoI believe that God made the eyes whenHe made manmdashnot only made the eyes but carved out the caverns inthe skull in which they hangrdquo (97-8)

With similar missionary zeal so-called ldquohundred-percentersrdquo went onthe offensive and designated scapegoats for a decline in ldquooriginal-stockProtestant Americardquo The Red Scare of 1919-1920 led by AttorneyGeneral and ldquofighting Quakerrdquo Mitchell Palmer initiated campaigns ofsurveillance and intimidation of Socialist Party members labor leadersvociferous Jews and immigrants and any others deemed politically sub-versive The Johnson Act of 1921 the more restrictive Immigration Actof 1924 as well as the increased visibility of the Ku Klux Klan dur-ing the decade spoke to burgeoning fears over racial miscegenation(Marty 1991 66-79) At stake in these fantasies of whiteness and strate-gies of purification was the notion of the Anglo-self as autonomouspossessive and immune

In popular culture myths of individual expertise proliferated thatreflected both the Protestant desire for authenticity and the limits ofthis desire more generally For even as Americans searched for signsof their essential humanity they often came to understand themselvesin and through technological terms Babe Ruth Henry Ford and thebusiness entrepreneur offered celebrity assurance of an autonomous sub-ject who could withstand the feminizing assaults of modernity by mas-tering technology (Susman 1984 133) Advertising executive BruceBarton (who worked for General Motors when it organized the production

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 9

10

of automobiles around consumer orders feedback from local dealersand demand forecasting) introduced Jesus in his best-selling The Man

Nobody Knows (1925) as a conflation of all three (Beniger 1986 317)According to Barton Jesus deftly swung his carpenter tools created anldquoorganization that conquered the worldrdquo and awakened to the ldquoinnerconsciousnessrdquo of his ldquopowerrdquo Barton pitched Jesus as a ldquomysticrdquo andldquobig manrdquo who had incorporated the technologies of business adver-tising and manufacturing into his own personality and cult thereof (4 10 13 6)

As feedback technologies ldquoneutralizedrdquo economies of origination andclaims to eternal value both Christologies and psychological narrativesof restoration were mechanically inscribed (Benjamin 2003 252) Inthe wake of the popular Personality How To Build It (1916) self-realizationwas consistently equated with an engineering process of control Outwitting

our Nerves (1922) affirmed ldquothe integrity of our physical machinesrdquo aswell as human ldquopower of choicerdquo over those machines It was a ldquofactrdquothat ldquowe ourselves decide which of all the possible emotions we shallchoose or we decide not to press the button for any emotion at allrdquo( Jackson and Salisbury 1922 296 360) In Self-Mastery Through Conscious

Auto-Suggestion (1922) one of the defining books of the twentieth-centurygenre of ldquoself-helprdquo Emile Coueacute introduced Americans to the controlpanel of their inner autopilots In Why We Behave Like Human Beings

(1925) evolutionary anthropologist George A Dorsey defined humansin terms of the ldquokinesthetic senserdquo and their innate capacity to enactfeedback control upon themselves He assured readers that ldquoevery humanindividual normal enough to live beyond the walls of an asylum livesbecause he has an equipment by which he can keep on making adjust-ments to changing conditionsrdquo (302 301) In We (1927) CharlesLindberghrsquos celebrated chronicle of his trans-Atlantic flight his airplaneldquoThe Spirit of St Louisrdquo assumed its own personality and portrait evenas Lindbergh became ldquomechanizedrdquo in the popular press

3 Melville fed back

Concerns over how to secure and maintain a sense of coherent iden-tity in light of a seemingly animated material world also precipitatedthe ldquorevivalrdquo of Melville in the 1920s As in the various Protestantstrategies of adjustment ldquorevivalistsrdquo (predominantly white and male)embraced Melville as providing a script of American identity and self-governance In hopes of defending themselves against the totalizing

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 10

11

Figure 1 Instrument Board of the Spirit of St Louis from We (1927)

directives of technology revivalists read Melville and his works throughthe lens of anti-Puritanism and the newly discovered script of FreudMelvillersquos celebrity increased as Elsie Clews Parson Van Wyck BrooksHL Mencken Waldo Frank and others accused Puritans of possessinga ldquorepressive impulserdquo of denying ldquolife and desirerdquo and of discardingldquomystical consciousnessrdquo in favor of ldquoinstrumentalrdquo reason (Frank 191966 150 68) In Melvillersquos rejection of Puritanismrsquos ldquorepellant materialismrdquohis work assumed a positively transgresssive quality (Tomlinson 1926621) Opposed to the Puritan life of ldquointolerable monotonyrdquo Melvillewas viewed as ldquoa mystic a treasure-seeker a mystery-monger a delverafter hidden things spiritual and materialrdquo (Weaver 1919 145-46)

Raymond M Weaverrsquos Herman Melville Mariner and Mystic (1921) setthe terms of religious evaluation for the early stages of the RevivalWeaver proclaimed that Melville in his ldquoescape from an inexorableand intolerable world of realityrdquo had achieved ldquopsychological synthesisrdquo

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 11

12

Figure 2 ldquoThe ConquerorrdquomdashCharles Lindbergh from Current History July 1927

(Weaver 1921 19 331) The construction of Melville as mystic wasconcurrent with the discursive construction of mysticism by liberalProtestants as ldquoahistorical poetic essential intuitive and universalrdquo(Schmidt 2003 288) Both intellectual constructionsmdashthe latter integralto the academic study of religion in the twentieth centurymdashsought towrest a degree of ldquorealnessrdquo from a world in which ldquothe realrdquo was feltto be increasingly susceptible to technological erasure (Kippenberg 2002175-86) And whereas mystically inclined Protestants denounced ldquosec-ular activitiesrdquo by calling for the liberation and unity of ldquothe deep-lyingpowers of the inward self into one conscious liferdquo under God revival-ists called on Melville to provide them with an experiential map of thatwhich was utterly and mysteriously human (Bennett 1923 6 Jones1915 156 161) As Henry A Murray flatly announced ldquoMelville dis-covered the Unconscious and commenced to explore itrdquo (1929 526)As a model for authenticity and self-governance Melville was both ana-lyst and analysandmdashldquoa gentleman adventurer in the barbarous outposts

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 12

13

of human experiencerdquo not a ldquostaged dip into studio savageryrdquo Melvillehad penetrated the depths of his own psyche no doubt aided by hisstay among South Sea islanders (detailed in his first two novels Typee

(1846) and Omoo (1847) Indeed the authenticity of Melvillersquos mysticconsciousness was dependent upon his ldquountamed desires in violentconflict with his physical and spiritual environmentrdquo (Weaver 1921 1519 21 24-29)

As opposed to Weaverrsquos vicarious nostalgia for a simpler less com-mercial and more fully ldquorealrdquo existence another Melville biographerLewis Mumford understood the complex simulations of a consumer-driven economy as already emergent during Melvillersquos writerly careerMixing cultural criticism history and theological speculation Mumfordwas a keen observer of the technological revolutions in feedback controlIn his most memorable and encyclopedic work Technics and Civilization

(1934) Mumford claimed that in the seventeenth-century ldquomechanicsrdquohad become ldquothe new religion and [they] gave to the world a new Messiahthe machinerdquo In dramatizing the extent to which technology had shapedand continued to shape human consciousness Mumford explored inexacting and illustrated detail the history and material conditions thatwere allowing ldquotools and utensilsrdquo to assume ldquoan independent existencerdquo

This ldquoneotechnic phaserdquo had begun in the early part of the nineteenthcentury and was marked by efficiency flexibility ldquocomplete automatismrdquoand synthetic materialsmdasha ldquomutationrdquo that was rapidly integrating ldquothemachine and the world of liferdquo (45 321 227 212 254)

Such integration was not without its dangers ldquoWith the invention ofthe telegraphrdquo the ldquowireless telephonerdquo and the ldquotelevisionrdquo wroteMumford humans ldquobegan to bridge the gap in time between communi-cation and responserdquo The sympathetic relations between family memberscould now be replicated on an unprecedented scale through telepathictechnologiesmdashgiving rise to ldquo[immense] possibilities for good and evilrdquoThe building of a personality was no longer a ldquolocalrdquo affair On the con-trary when ldquomass-reactionsrdquo were ldquomobilized and hastenedrdquo the needsand interests of the human became those of the machine As Mumfordsuggested technology was becoming a ldquocreative force carried on by itsown momentumrdquo and ldquoproducing a third estate midway between natureand the humane artsrdquo The drive to overcome distancemdashbetween indi-viduals as well as between self and worldmdashhad itself ldquocreated an inde-pendent environment that has reacted upon every other side of the personalityrdquo (239241 322 324)

According to Mumford such technological interference had been ofintense and abiding concern for Melville (1934 213) In Herman Melville

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 13

14

Figure 3 Neotechnic Automatism from Technics and Civilization (1934)

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 14

15

7 Public relations and advances in advertising were the latest instances of the ldquocontrol revolutionrdquo in which technology of interchangeability so integral to theAmerican System of manufacturing had extended its field of operations under theauspices of consumer capitalism Machines were not simply making parts for othermachines but were integral to the form and content of social reproduction Publicrelations was a particular (and less reliable) version of feedback control Instead ofmaintaining a fixed variable on the inside by responding to fluctuations on the out-side ldquocounselorsrdquo stoked the flames of consumer desire in order to justify an accel-erating rate of production and ideally consumption

(1929) Mumford had chided fellow revivalists for exaggerating Melvillersquosretreat into mystical idealism ldquoMelville was a realistrdquo countered Mumfordldquoin the sense that the great religious teachers are realistsrdquo FurthermoreMelville had witnessed the ldquovolcanic intrusionrdquo of ldquoindustrialism [as] avalue in itself rdquo (1929 5 64-65) But things had gotten much more com-plicated since the mid-nineteenth century Whereas Melville had beheldldquothe servile routine of the factory systemrdquo Mumford was now witness-ing the birth of ldquothe machine system the network of relationshipsthat have followed the financial exploitation of machineryrdquo The differencein other words was the full-scale emergence of self-governing tech-nologiesmdashldquohandicraft devoted to mechanical reproduction and machinerythat is set to reproduce endless simulacrardquo For Mumford this ldquomachineritualrdquo this ldquoendlessrdquo loop of ldquomechanical reproductionrdquo threatened toefface ldquothe human arts of seeing feeling and livingrdquo (1924 67-68 10174-75 105 81) Technology in other words had achieved the capacityfor feedback on two different but related levels first in material devicesthat could copy both nature and themselves and secondly in humansthat governed themselves according to the latest control variables setby the machine As Mumford argued the totalizing power of feedbacktechnologies resulted not simply from designs motors or even materialoutputs but through their economically driven expansion of ldquothe verydomain of the symbol itself rdquo (1934 331)

Mumfordrsquos insights take on more ominous implications when oneconsiders the rise of the American public relations industry during thisperiod7 Public relations consultants such as Edward Bernays and adver-tisers like Bruce Barton actively sought to shape and change the beliefsof individuals in the service of larger economic agendas It was no acci-dent Bernays wrote in 1923 that a ldquoman belongs to one church ratherthan another or to any church at allrdquo It was no accident that ldquoBostonwomen prefer brown eggs and New York women white eggsrdquo Becausethe judgments of individuals were not arrived at through ldquoresearch andlogical deductionrdquo but were ldquodogmatic expressions accepted on theauthority of his parents his teachers his church and of his social his

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 15

16

economic and other leadersrdquo a ldquopublic relations counselrdquo must do thework of reauthorization (Bernays 1923 62) Through the strategic ldquosat-urationrdquo of images text and work-place incentives an entire profes-sional class sought to provide the terms for and effectively monitor theconditions of self-realization (Marchand 1985 94-95)

What then did Melville have to offer those living within ldquothe machinesystemrdquo of the 1920s Mumford and other revivalists championed Moby-

Dick as a blueprint for living within an increasingly mechanical rou-tinized and bureaucratic world They also heaped admiration uponCaptain Ahab an odd choice given the outcome of Moby-Dick Contraryto those who would later read Ahabrsquos technologically enhanced dem-agoguery against the political backdrops of Italian Fascism and NationalSocialism Ahabrsquos madness in the 1920s could be considered ldquoactiveand courageousrdquo as well as a sign of ldquogeniusrdquomdashldquothe very pinnacle ofhuman self-assertionrdquo (Watson 1970 136 Sullivan 1970 163) Suchreadings conflated the white whale with the power of technology andhad Ahab defiantly affirm the principle of free-will and defend theboundary between human and material worlds Mumford for examplewrote of Ahab as the ldquospirit of manrdquo who stood in opposition to ldquothebrute energies of existence blind fatal overpoweringrdquo Ahab was self-directive ldquopurposiverdquo and he pitted his ldquopuniness against this mightand [his] purpose against the blank senselessness of powerrdquo So eventhough Ahabrsquos ldquomethods are ill-chosenrdquo wrote Mumford his ldquodefianceis noblerdquo (Mumford 1929 184-86)

4 People who portray themselves or Ahab on Ahab

Film projectors in addition to utilizing concepts of feedback internallywere often seen as generative of external feedback loops between humansand machines nature and artifice Such loops arguably constituted theldquosociety of the spectaclerdquo Guy Debordrsquos term for the image-saturatedenvironment that arose in the 1920s with the confluence of sound filmtelevision and the perfection of propaganda techniques As one of themore grim assessments of an image-based postmodernity Debord definedthe ldquospectaclerdquo in terms of negative feedback ldquoIt is the omnipresentcelebration of a choice already made in the sphere of production andthe consummate result of that choice In form as in content the spectacleserves as total justification for the conditions and aims of the existingsystem It further ensures the permanent presence of that justification forit governs almost all time spent outside the production process itself rdquo

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 16

17

8 Cahir (1997) has made a similar point Although I agree with her assessmentthat The Sea Beast is about Ahabrsquos ldquoreal pursuit of identityrdquo I take issue with herargument that The Sea Beast validates autonomous autotelic forms of masculine identity

(13) In America Debordian paranoia was rampant as Victorian fearsover the exploitation of pleasure were morphing into general anxietiesconcerning voyeurism and cinematic determinism ldquoThe spectacle ofmechanical progress has made so deep an impressionrdquo argued WalterLippmann in 1922 ldquothat it has suffused the whole moral coderdquo Whatdisturbed Lippmann and other public figures was the specter of circularcausality and the quiet ldquoinsertion between man and his environmentof a pseudo-environmentrdquo composed mainly of images (Lippmann 1922108 15) Unbeknownst to them Americans were in danger of becom-ing automated by images and trapped within what Debord would latercall ldquoan uninterrupted monologue of self-praiserdquo (19) Their perpetualaffirmation of self however was wholly cybernetic given the fact thatthey were oblivious to the fact that ldquoon the screen the whole processof observing describing reporting and then imagining has been accom-plished for yourdquo (92)

In a strange twist that Melville might have enjoyed the most com-pelling representation of Moby-Dick and portrayal of Captain Ahab mayhave occurred via the technology of the moving picture8 The 1926silent film The Sea Beast adapted to the screen by Bess Meredyth andstarring John Barrymore as Captain Ahab dramatized the feedbackdimensions of film and its capacity to regulate the human personalityThe Sea Beast I argue challenged more able-bodied academic inter-pretations by reveling in its status as a technological reproduction The

Sea Beast with its odd juxtapositions visceral jump cuts and perverseattention to Ahabrsquos stump and artificial limb rather than affirm thedesire for self-transparency suggested that the equipment-free reality ofthe self was quite literally an enabling fiction What Americans lackedaccording to Meredythrsquos scenario was the tragic recognition of them-selves as always regulated and already enhanced by technology Takingldquopleasure in the confusion of boundariesrdquo and ldquoresponsibility in their con-structionrdquo The Sea Beast in the borrowed words of Donna Harawaymade ldquoan argument for the cyborg as a fiction mapping our social andbodily reality and as an imaginative resource suggesting some very fruit-ful couplingsrdquo (8)

In 1925 at age forty-three John Barrymore was one of Hollywoodrsquosmost bankable actors (part of the ldquostar-systemrdquo promoted by Edward

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 17

18

Bernays who clearly saw the potential for cross-marketing between enter-tainment business and political campaigns) Barrymore easily convincedWarner Brothers to turn Moby-Dick one of his favorite novels into amovie and to cast him in the role of Captain Ahab Having playedHamlet in the 1922-23 Broadway season Barrymore developed a keeninterest in psychoanalysis and Freudrsquos account of Hamlet in Interpretationof Dreams (1900) The role of Captain Ahab like that of Hamlet allowedBarrymore to reach a larger audience with his newly emotive actingstyle As Captain Ahab he could also remind his audience of his depthand manly credentials He was tired in his words of playing ldquoscentedbepuffed bewigged and ringletted charactersrdquo (quoted in Kobler 1977213) Promotional pamphlets for The Sea Beast seemed to reinforceBarrymorersquos gendered strategy featuring a picture of Barrymore in abusiness suit puffing contemplatively on a pipemdashldquoJohn Barrymore ismore than a name more than a personality he is world institutionrdquo(Hoffman 2001 73)

The opening credits to The Sea Beast begin imprecisely with a close-up of the filmrsquos textual referent Moby Dick or the White Whale Thissimulated text begins not with ldquoExtractsrdquo or even ldquoCall me Ishmaelrdquobut with the following words ldquoThere never was nor ever will be abraver life than the life of the whaler Compared to the game theyhunted the mightiest land beast was but a poodle dogrdquo Adapted tothe screen by Bess Meredyth former actress turned writer The Sea Beast

is noteworthy as one of the earliest if not the first public appropriationsof Melvillersquos novel by a woman By 1926 Meredyth had become aHollywood regular having written the scenarios or continuities for Ben

Hur (1925) Don Juan (1926) and at least 70 other films ldquoThere is nowoman writing todayrdquo read the promotional copy of The Sea Beastldquowho has contributed so much to genuine screen values as Bess Meredythrdquo(Hoffman 2001 74) The ldquogenuinerdquo sense Meredyth made of Melvillersquosepic is significant in its relentless focus on the self as a technologicalconstruct In Meredythrsquos scenario one literally glimpses the spirit ofMelvillersquos rejection of the contemplative insular and hyper-masculinizedself of mid-nineteenth-century religion and science In its plot and per-verse attention to Ahabrsquos stump The Sea Beast suggests that nothing willor even can make up for the loss Ahab suffers

After the opening credits the audience is introduced to a healthyCaptain Ahab atop the masthead He looks out over the sea and downon his crew hard at work his feet tapping to the beat of the sea shantyldquoHanging Johnnyrdquo Nostalgia and the logic of substitution are bothbroached in the opening scenesmdashnot in terms of idealism but in ways

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 18

19

that hint at their subsequent negation As Ahab reads a letter from hisbeloved Esther Harper the daughter of a Christian missionary playedby the nineteen year-old Dolores Costello Ahab looks longingly at hername tattooed on his arm His mind drifts back to their last embraceFollowing a long close-up of his legs Ahab descends from the mastheadthe camera sliding down the rope in real time and from Ahabrsquos pointof view his legs leading the way The experience of vertigo engenderedby the shot suggests that Ahabrsquos identity is already unstable alreadymarked by a palpable lack of ground This shot however is quicklyoffset by numerous scenes that depict the fullness of Ahabrsquos vigor par-ticularly in relation to his healthy pair of legs He jumps he hops heruns around

When Ahabrsquos ship docks in the bay of Mauritius the audience isintroduced to Esther as well as to Derek Ahabrsquos scheming half-brotherIt is here that one is reminded of the words from the 1925 promotionalpublication of Moby-Dick accompanied by scenes from The Sea Beastldquothe screen version of lsquoMoby Dickrsquo exceeds the book The discrepancybetween the two must not be considered as a profanely wanton alterationrdquoTo portray the ldquopsychological studyrdquo of Captain Ahab ldquothe camerahas resorted to means of its own A mental state therefore particularlyan involved condition of mind must be expressed by means of the inci-dents which produced it each tortuous thought composing Ahabrsquos madness must be traced to the event which engendered itrdquo (Buchman1925 x) The most obvious incident being the loss of Ahabrsquos leg butthe film compounds this felt sense of loss by turning Melvillersquos tale intoa misbegotten love triangle between Ahab Derek and Esther the appleof both their eyes

On shore Ahab and Esther declare their love to each other Butafter a few days Ahab sails from Mauritius and scans the shore withhis telescope He spies Estherrsquos window She comes to the window andreturns Ahabrsquos gaze through her own telescope Technology has literallybecome the lens through which they see each other through whicheach declares their commitment They wave and blow kisses until theyare both out of range At sea Ahab is betrayed by Derek who unbe-knownst to Ahab pushes him overboard into the waiting jaws of MobyDick After losing his leg Ahab is distraught Derek then taunts Ahaband suggests that his symbolic castration is too much for any relation-ship to bear As Derek reminds him ldquoEsther was always crazy aboutyour beinrsquo so strong and perfectrdquo Having been fitted with his ivorystump Ahab arrives back at Mauritius Derek then shames Ahab evenfurther by telling him that he and Esther are in love and that Esther

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 19

20

cannot bring herself to tell Ahab of the deceit Derek then goes toEsther to convince her that Ahab has abandoned her When Ahabarrives at Estherrsquos house to confirm Derekrsquos story he sees their shadowscast by the light of spermaceti candles and mistakenly believes thatEsther has indeed left him for Derek It is here that Ahab descendsinto his infamous monomania

Ahab goes onto slay Moby Dick but not before uncovering his half-brotherrsquos double betrayal In a dramatic confrontation Derek pulls aknife on Ahab and is about to get the best of our hero But wait Ahabwedges his ivory stump into the deck leveraging himself in order tofend off Derek Ahab then casts Derek overboard and into the sea Anivory technology marking the absence of Ahabrsquos leg has been trans-formed into a salvific presence Or so it seems when the audience istreated to the restoration of order upon the Pequodrsquos return to portand Ahabrsquos reunion with Esther consummated in their tearful embraceHaving staged and seemingly resolved the crisis of masculine identity(the raison drsquoecirctre of melodrama being that the resolution is alreadypresent in the staging) The Sea Beast on the contrary did anything butrestore the full presence of Ahabrsquos self It suggested through both contentand form that the reality of the self whether it be Ahab or the spec-tator in the theater was neither fully resolvable nor equipment-free

Ahab achieves a kind of liberation on screen by recognizing that heis always already a figment of an imagination that is not his own Afterthe tearful reunion between Ahab and Esther the screen goes blackThe audience is then given a glimpse behind the scenes as it weremdasha scene of the director Millard Webb in his chair issuing directionsto Ahab and Esther in Estherrsquos living room A man in a business suitplays the violin in the background As Ahab and Esther look longinglyinto each otherrsquos eyes Ahab slips a ring onto Estherrsquos finger and theyembrace once again Or is it Barrymore and Costello It is unclearparticularly in light of the rumors of an off screen tryst between themiddle-aged Barrymore and his nineteen-year old costar (they wouldlater marry) The loving embrace is seemingly real an ambiguityreaffirmed by the fact that after Webb yells ldquocutrdquo he has to step betweenthe couple and remind them that they are on film Webb then turnsto the camera and smiles as the screen abruptly cuts to black onceagain

The odd ending of The Sea Beast suggests that Ahabrsquos journey towardreconciliation did not end with self-exposure but that it could neverreally begin Rather than achieve restoration of nature in and througha cultural construction Ahabrsquos artificial leg points to a previously

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 20

21

Figure 4 Final Embrace between AhabBarrymore and EstherCostello

ldquoexcluded and illegible domain that haunts the former domain as thespecter of its own impossibility the very limit of intelligibility its con-stitutive outsiderdquo (Butler 1993 xi) The ending harkens back to the seashanty ldquoHanging Johnnyrdquo Ahabrsquos introductory descent from the mast-head and his telescopic flirtation with Esther both vertiginous slidesinto the unfathomable layers of mediated perception that signal theldquoexecutionrdquo of possessive individualism Rather than erase the sign ofAhabrsquos traumamdashhis ivory legmdashthe ending of The Sea Beast suggests thatAhab and Barrymore are two sides of the same character vacillatingwithin the loop of continuous performativity One is reminded here ofWalter Benjaminrsquos insight into the traumatized subject in the age oftechnological reproducibility As Benjamin argues the trauma can beunderstood as a shift from the stage to the screen in which the actorperforms for a ldquopiece of equipmentrdquo rather than for an audience Citingthe Italian playwright Luigi Pirandello Benjamin suggests that the mod-ern subject is

exiled not only from the stage but from his own person With a vagueunease he senses an inexplicable void stemming from the fact that hisbody has lost its substance that he has been volatilized stripped of his

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 21

22

reality his life his voice the noises he makes when moving about andhas been turned into a mute image that flickers for a moment on thescreen then vanishes into silence (2003 260)

Pirandellorsquos borrowed words speak directly to Meredythrsquos reconfigurationof Melvillersquos text Whereas Melvillersquos Ahab tried and failed to conquerthe very source of visual illuminationmdashthe spermaceti oil that allowedantebellum Americans to see in the darkmdashBarrymorersquos Ahab revels inthe technologically enhanced gaze of his audience When the lightscome up the selves of Ahab Barrymore and the audience have beenre-narrativized as cybernetic that is as permanently divided and fun-damentally transient In affirming the really real offscreen relationshipbetween Barrymore and Costello the uncanny ending of The Sea Beast

supported a notion of selfhood as always already mediated or betteryet the necessity of experience to be mediated in order for it to becomereal or maybe even the necessity of acknowledging that the reality ofthe self is really made up

Barrymorersquos self-conscious performance inspired by his reading ofFreud and designed to overcome middle-class mores did not so muchpenetrate the inner depths of his character as it did the emotional lifeand perceptual apparatus of his audience The Sea Beast does not dram-atize the individual conquest of nature as much as it dramatizes visualtechnologyrsquos seduction of the individual The Sea Beast in its staging ofa cybernetic reality denied the very concept of 100 Americanism byinterrupting the narrative closure on which self-presence dependedNeither Ahab nor Barrymore nor the audience are ever alone even intheir solitude They are haunted not simply by the unconscious butby the specters generated in and through technologies of reproduction(Derrida 1994 97) They are in Benjaminrsquos apt phrase ldquopeople whoportray themselvesrdquo (Benjamin 2003 262)

For Benjamin photography and cinema were technologies of religiousrevelation for better or for worse in that they both exposed variousfeedback loops that constituted onersquos identity On one level Benjaminargued that the category of originality had been challenged by visualtechnologies that put copies ldquoof the original in situations which theoriginal itself cannot attainrdquo (2003 254) On another level the decayof the ldquoaurardquo of authenticity and the blurring of original and reproductionenabled individuals to recognize the fact that they were implicated inthe perceptual field and no longer insulated from what they saw orheard ldquoReception in distractionrdquo wrote Benjamin ldquowhich is increas-ing noticeably in all areas of art and is a symptom of profound changesin apperceptionmdashfinds in film its true training groundrdquo (269) Influenced

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 22

23

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethersquos notion of ldquoafter-imagesrdquo in Theory

of Colours (the same text that informed Melvillersquos ldquoThe Whiteness of theWhalerdquo) Benjamin announced the birth of the ldquooptical unconsciousrdquo(266) According to Benjamin images had become the currency of con-sciousness structuring thought and determining the range of possibleactions Mechanical means of reproduction had liberated the perceptualcapacities of humanity They had also ushered in the prospect of massdeception and control Either way they had resulted in a ldquomassiveupheaval in the domain of objectsrdquo and a ldquoshattering of traditionrdquo (254)

5 American Dada and the aporias of modernity

Within the Melville Revivalmdashan almost clicheacuted instance of Modernismrsquosvogue for the solitary geniusmdashseeds of post-Cartesian doubt were beingsown and the enchanting dimensions of technology considered BecauseMelville ldquowas spell-bound by the strange slidings and collidings ofMatterrdquo his work in the eyes of more atheological critics exposed theenchanting conditions of the machine age (Taylor 1984) ldquoIt is the mate-rial elements he really has to do withrdquo wrote DH Lawrence in 1923ldquoHis drama is with them He was a futurist long before futurism foundpaintrdquo (216) For Lewis Mumford too Melville had not simply dram-atized the incursion of machinesmdasha traditional Romantic tropemdashbuthad embraced a series of insoluble contradictions He has come to rec-ognize those parts of the world and himself that had already been pro-duced by machines and had insisted that the plasticity of self wassomething with which Americans had to struggle and to their spiritualdetriment repress

In broaching the aporias of modernity Mumford saw Melville as hav-ing already given the lie to Weberian diagnoses of disenchantment Thecapacity to effectively turn night into day Mumford suggested the expe-rience of a subway car rumbling past the solid structures of a sky-scraper vanishing into the air the peering into a microscope and theobservation of a ldquorow of bottles each of identical size shape colorstretching away for a quarter of a milerdquo were enough to induce a particular kind of vertigo ldquoThe special visual effect of repeating pat-tern[s]rdquo occurred simultaneously with the experience ldquoof the unique andthe non-repeatablerdquo (Mumford 1934 333-34) The experience of intensesystematicitymdashprecisely what feedback technologies were designed toinducemdashcould be positively disorienting when the infinitely calculableassumed the ldquospecial qualityrdquo of the ldquoincalculablerdquo (Heidegger 1977

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 23

24

135) According to Mumford when technology no longer made imperfectcopies of nature but perfect copies of itself the very notion of ldquonaturalrdquocould become radically suspect With the ldquoliquidationrdquo of the solid book-ends of authenticity and artifice came the prospect that the spectrumitself was socially constructed for better or for worse (Benjamin 2003255) Having torn aside the veil ldquoman has thrown between his ownexperience and the blank reality of the universerdquo Melville neither suc-cumbed to the temptation of nihilism nor retreated into his own pri-vate morality On the contrary he urged his contemporaries to ownup to the constructedness of any and all cultural forms and expressionsand the faith commitments that undergirded them As Mumford wroteldquoto appreciate the reality of the White Whale is to see more deeplyinto the expedience of all our immediate institutions all the spiritualshelters man puts between himself and the uncertain cosmic weatherMeaning significance attends only that little part of the universe manhas built up and settledrdquo (Mumford 1926 150-51)

Whereas Mumford assessed the religious dimensions of technologicalldquoprogressrdquo in a tragic key others tended toward the comic as was thecase with a group of experimental artists associated with Broom An

International Magazine of the Arts Published by Americans in Italy publishedbetween 1921 and 1924 (Tashjian 1975 116-34) Broomrsquos co-editor thepoet Alfred Kreyemborg (who would later co-edit The American Caravan

with Lewis Mumford) had adapted a passage from Moby-Dick for itstitle logo and statement of purpose which appeared on the back coverldquoWhat of itrdquo asks Ishmael

if some old hunks of a seacaptain orders me to get a broom and sweepdown the decks What does that indignity amount to weighed I meanin the scales of the New Testament Do you think the Archangel Gabrielthinks any less of me because I promptly and respectfully obey that oldhunks that particular instance Who ainrsquot a slave (Melville 1925 4)

The first issue of Broom included poems addressing Albert Einsteinrsquostheory of relativity as well as Emmy Veronica Sanders declaration thatldquothe American Machinerdquo was ldquotransforming itself with all its attributesand characteristics into American Mindrdquo ldquoAmericardquo she continuedinitially ldquomade of the Puritan by the Puritan for the Puritanrdquo wasnow being ldquoremade of the Machine by the Machine for the Machinerdquo(89-90) Following Sandersrsquos piece was a David OrsquoNeilrsquos hymn of sup-plication to the new Gods of the machine

When you are sweeping usWith Your cosmic broom

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 24

25

Figure 5 Nature and Second Nature in Technics and Civilization (1934)

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 25

26

Sweeping us out of mouldy rutsSweeping us clean and sweetmdash

RememberWhen wersquore quiveringmdashSensitivemdashbaremdashWe shall be gratefulFor just a few shadows (96)

Broom took Ishmaelrsquos retort quite seriously addressing the revolutionarydimensions of technological artifice and the shadows cast within therealm of technological illumination

Unlike Futurism Broom did not celebrate the beauty of war It didhowever come to express the ldquodreamed-of metallization of the humanbodyrdquo and the playful cybernetic fantasies of Dadaists such as ManRay and Francis Picabia (quoted in Benjamin 2003 269) After someinitial hesitation Broom began to embrace Dadarsquos perspective on the lib-eratory dimensions of the human-machine interface ldquoEverything isartificialrdquo gasped Broom contributor Blaise Cendrars ldquoThe eyes thehand the sexual frenzy of the factory The wheel which turns Thewing which flies The voice which travels far on a wire Your ear ina trumpet Your sense of direction Your rhythm You melt the worldin the mould of your skull Your brain is hollow Like a religion amysterious pill hastens your digestionrdquo (265) Jean Epstein from a slightdifferent angle argued that technology had ldquobecome part of ourselvesrdquoand had democratized human perceptionmdashldquoman has not one memoryof [the] landscape he [now] has a thousand different ones which mayor may not resemble each other Everything possesses hundreds ofapparent diameters which never superimpose exactlyrdquo (6-7)

Broom was soon translating less inflammatory Futurist manifestos suchas Enrico Prampolinirsquos ldquoThe Aesthetic of the Machine and MechanicalIntrospection in Artrdquo in which he declared ldquoIs not the machine todaythe most exuberant symbol of the mystery of human creation Is it notthe new mythical deity which weaves the legends and histories of thecontemporary human drama The Machine in its practical and materialfunction comes to have today in human concepts and thoughts thesignificance of an ideal and spiritual inspirationrdquo The kind of worshipthat ensued was that of the cyborg neither reverent nor memorializ-ing of cosmic law (Haraway 2004 9) Or as Prampolini wrote ldquoOurexperience has convinced us of the truth of certain of our plastic truthsand has allowed us to perceive the errors that lie in othersrdquo (236)

One of the more important pieces of American Dada captured pre-cisely this pointmdashGod (c 1917) designed by Baroness Elsa von Freytag-

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 26

27

Figure 6 Illustration accompanying Enrico Prampolinirsquos ldquoThe Aesthetic of theMachine and Mechanical Introspection in Artrdquo Broom 33 (October 1922) 237

Loringhoven and photographed by Morton Schamberg The invertedcast-iron plumbing trap atop a carpenterrsquos miter box was emblematicof the Melvillean appreciation for technological enchantment Indeedthe pipe is part of an indoor plumbing apparatus a modern conveniencewhose history dates back to some of the earliest feedback technologieson recordmdashthe water-clocks and float-regulators of ancient Greece (Mayr1970 11-26) God resembled the mechanical abstractions Schamberghad been producing before his premature death in 1918 during aninfluenza outbreak in Philadelphia The Baroness a contributor to Broom

and other little magazines had arrived in New York from Germanyin 1913 She was ldquothe first American dadardquo wrote Jane Heap in 1922ldquothe only one living anywhere who dresses dada loves dada lives dadardquo(46) Friends with Marcel Duchamp Djuna Barnes and other NewYork artists the Baroness was a central figure in a burgeoning trans-atlantic avant-garde In addition to her art and poetry the Baronesswas also a ldquoperformancerdquo artist who skillfully inverted gender hierarchiesand attacked through her very presence the traditional sensibilities ofthe middle-class She was notorious for walking around the streets ofGreenwich Village with her shaved head painted purple postage stampspasted to her face and a bird cage around her neck housing a livecanary (Davidson 1996 223-24)

In what must be considered a prescient assault on all manners oflogocentrism the Baroness also carried with her a plaster cast penis thatshe periodically revealed to passersby for maximum shock value (Gammel2002 195) But it was the Barnonessrsquos sculpture God that in addition

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 27

28

Figure 7 God (c 1917) designed by Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven and photographed by Morton Schamberg

to celebrating the mobility and reproducibility of that which was sup-posedly the most fixed and essential repossessed the power of tech-nology as ever imperfect and incomplete As a companion piece of sortsto Duchamprsquos infamous ready-made Fountain an inverted urinal dis-played in the 1917 exhibition of the American Society of IndependentArtists God invited more expressly theological speculation First of allit insisted on supplementing the three traditional symbolic centers ofWestern religious reflectionmdashGod humanity naturemdashwith the machineAnd although it has since been viewed by critics as ldquosacrilegiousrdquo andan instance of ldquoantireligious scatologyrdquo (Naumann 1994 171 Gammel220) the transgressive dimensions to God also affirm a shadowy open-

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 28

29

9 One is reminded here of Melvillersquos letter to Nathaniel Hawthorne in April of1851 ldquoWe incline to think that God cannot explain His own secrets and that Hewould like a little more information upon certain points Himself We mortals aston-ish Him as much as He usrdquo (Melville 1993 186)

ing to radical othernessmdashin the form of imperfection and chancemdashwithin the loops generated by feedback technology

Although the metal pipe ends up pointing toward heaven it firstloops downward in a nod to its human ground Limited by the skillsof the human carpenter on whose box it is anchored the contortedpipe narrativizes both the pitfalls and prospects of the machine ageShit eventually flows up in the case of God not down suggesting thateven the most lofty and noble ideals of the imagination maintain theirhuman aroma Rather than assume the power of divinity classicallyconstrued God staged divinity as nothing more and nothing less thanthat which made life livablemdashthat which kept the smell of human wasteartificially at bay or more ominously managed the flow of thingsthrough feedback control But even more literally God called attentionto the human work in the making of artifice and celebrated the bio-logical possibility for the endless unmaking (and remaking) of selfFeedback technology was not really God but it was for all practicalpurposes Or as the Baroness wrote in a 1927 letter to Peggy GuggenheimGod had much to learn from Henry Ford for he was ldquoclumsily sub-tle-densely-intelligent-inefficiently-immense-(Lord not Fordmdashof course)rdquo9

God the Baroness playfully warned had ldquobetter hotfoot it towardprogressmdashmodernizemdashuse his own omnipotence intelligentlymdashsmart orwersquoll all expire in tangle Well Lord knowsmdash(Does he)rdquo (quoted inGammel 2002 229)

6 Conclusion Deus in machina movet

As Protestant majorities struggled to adjust themselves and their theo-logical inheritance to new technological conditions theologies of themachine age both compelling and disturbing emerged from outsidethe precincts of traditional religious discourse For in addition to beinginspired by the ghost of Herman Melville the Melville Revival wasquite literally haunted by the power of feedback technologiesmdashspectersthat were affective rather than concrete strangely resistant to rationalcontemplation yet recognized through anxious admixtures of thoughtand feeling On one hand the revival reflected the spectrum of Protestant

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 29

30

10 Shortly after the publication of Moby-Dick in November of 1851 reports beganto reach America about the August sinking of the Ann Alexander by a whale in theSouth Pacific It was the first ldquoattack of a whale upon a shiprdquo since the destruc-tion of the Essex in 1820 The story about the Ann Alexander originally appeared inthe Panama Herald on October 16 and was reprinted the following month in New-York Daily Tribune and Littellrsquos Living Age The sperm whale that the Ann Alexander

fears over technological miscegenation The capacity of machines toredraw the boundaries of race and gender disturbed Protestant leadersand revivalists alike On the other hand subversive elements within theMelville Revival offered what must be considered a theological critiqueof how Protestants understood themselves and their God in relation totechnological materials Grant Overton for example saw in Moby-Dick

a deep appreciation for how technological developments had come tounderminemdashquite literally hauntmdashthe epistemological and ontologicalassumptions that made them possible ldquoNo longer able to instance thedeus ex machinardquo wrote Overton Melville was ldquounforgetful that deus inmachina movet and while most of mankind [have] become unable to seethe god for the machine [he] can scarcely perceive the machine forthe god agitating it [His] reports of the machine are somehow unrec-ognizable [his] realism is confronted by Realityrdquo (Overton 1928 231)

Bess Meredythrsquos reimagining of Moby-Dick and Baroness Elsa vonFreytag-Loringhovenrsquos God also explored the otherness that technologyengenders within the modern subject a trace that lingers despite allattempts to extinguish it Their errant readings challenged contempo-raries to reimagine their relationship to technology from an enchantedperspective that did not necessarily conform to the directives of Americanindividualism Resisting the advertisements of both Arminianism andBaconian Common Sense these readings insisted that there was somethingelsemdashsomething wholly othermdashoccurring within the technological workingsof secular modernity Excess or that which unsettled the boundariesbetween body and machine masculine and feminine had resulted inwhat might be called a ldquopost-structure of feelingrdquo The prospect thateither machines or women had begun to think for themselves or atleast possess a kind of agency once attributed to the enlightened malesubject now seemed as likely as a whale vengefully turning against awhaleship10 As Melvillean riffs on the deferred project of religious iden-tity The Sea Beast and God marked the space between human creationand technological determination consent and compulsion and there-fore hinted at the prospect that belief was not an individual state butan embodied activity Consistent with Lewis Mumfordrsquos assessment ofthe symbolic and material powers of feedback technology these works

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 30

31

had first turned upon starboard and larboard boats seizing both in its jaws andcrushing them to pieces It then rushed towards the Ann Alexander ldquoat the rateof fifteen knots In an instant the monster struck the ship with tremendous violence shakingher from stem to sternrdquo (415) Upon reading the article Melville remarked to his pub-lisher ldquothe Whale had almost completely slipped me for the time (amp I was themerrier for it) when Crash comes Moby Dick himself It is really amp truly a sur-prising coincidencemdashto say the least I make no doubt it is Moby Dick himself I wonder if my evil art has raised this monsterrdquo (Melville 1993 209)

11 William Jennings Bryan for example that standard bearer of fundamentalfaith equated faith to a particular kind of technologymdashldquothere is that in each humanliferdquo he wrote ldquothat corresponds to the mainspring of a watchmdashthat which isabsolutely necessary if the life is to be what it should be a real life and not amere existence That necessary thing is a belief in Godrdquo (86) Faith for Bryan wasthat which repeated without difference It was a dependable rational and utterlyrationalizing process It was not however self-regulating It affirmed the ldquorealnessrdquoof the individual believer precisely because it ignored the conditions imposed fromoutside the self But how might faith be viewed in terms of feedback and repro-ducibility rather than repetition a process that does not reaffirm a centered indi-vidual with every tick but adjusts accordingly to external fluctuations

raise numerous questions concerning the ways and means of religionin an age of postmodern complexity and virtual reality

How might a relentless focus on power and the porousness of sub-jectivity change how one views the matter of religion within historyHow might a greater attention to the aesthetic conditions that mediateany and all beliefs challenge the ways in which we distinguish the reli-gious from the secular How might a greater attention to the enchantingpower of material conditions challenge historical and political narrativesof secularization How do technologies and vested interests realize them-selves through the discourses of agency choice and mobility Whatin other words are the conditions of possibility that allow a historicalactor (rather than a Hollywood actor) to make a particular faith com-mitment or for that matter have any faith at all In what languagedo historical actors dream about themselves and divinity and how doesthat language change over time And finally to what degree is faithitself a technology11

By acknowledging the white mythology that still informs say thefield of American religions such questions shift the scholarly emphasisfrom explicit expressions of religious belief and practice to the spacebetween those beliefs and practices and the world at-large Individualswithin American religious history for example have often been depictedas fully formed agents making choices between various faith commitmentsand ever combining religious idioms to suit their specific needs and cir-cumstances (Albanese 1997) No doubt this is true But there is anotherside to this story of radical religious pluralism one that if accounted

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 31

32

12 Such a possibility is very much at odds with the Geertzian model of ldquothickdescriptionrdquo and its formidable legacy in the humanities and social sciences Withoutquestioning the degree to which the self can ever become entirely legible to theself Geertz claimed that every society and individual life and by extension everybelief and every practice ldquocontain their own interpretations One has only to learnhow to gain access to themrdquo (Geertz 1973 453)

13 The ambiguities of agency during the ldquomachine agerdquo have been the subjectof a number of elegant critical studies See for example Anson Rabinbach TheHuman Motor Energy Fatigue and the Origins of Modernity (New York Basic Books1990) Mark Seltzer Bodies and Machines (New York Routledge 1992) MarthaBanta Taylorized Lives Narrative Productions in the Age of Taylor Veblen and Ford (ChicagoUniversity of Chicago Press 1993) Carolyn Thomas de la Pentildea The Body ElectricHow Strange Machines Built the Modern American (New York New York UniversityPress 2003) and Joel Dinerstein The Swinging Machine Modernity Technology andAfrican American Culture Between the World Wars (Amherst University of MassachusettsPress 2003) Dinersteinrsquos work is particularly relevant to the issue of religious com-binativeness given his emphasis on how African American artists strove to refigureldquomachine aestheticsrdquo in and through their artistry Dinersteinrsquos work suggests thatthe self is locatedmdashie the self happensmdashsomewhere between resistance and assim-ilation between choice and coercionmdasha lesson that many Anglo-Americans werenot willing to consider in their triumphal theorizing about the human in relationto the machine The possibility for consideration argues Dinerstein existed inAfrican American jazz swing and dance

for suggests new directions for the study of religion in America Althoughthe ldquolived religionrdquo perspective in American religious history has donemuch to overcome the distinction between ldquodabblersrdquo and ldquotrue believersrdquothe question of power still lingers (Ahlstrom 1972 1052) Religiousbeliefs and practices are neither essential things nor reveal themselvesto the scholar in toto12 Such a position does not replicate the eitherordiscussion regarding the agency of historical actors On the contraryit suggests that religious agency is a hybrid weave of intent and instinctimmediate response and mediated principle knowing and unknowing13

Accounting for the ambiguities of agency has already pushed scholarsof religion toward an anthropology of the secular and an explorationof in the Foucauldian phrasing of Talal Asad ldquothe contingencies thathave come together to give us our certaintiesrdquo (2003 16)

It is with a hint of irony then that one may return to the promotionalpamphlet of The Sea Beast that celebrates the ldquoconquestrdquo of Ahab andthe invisible wafting presence of screenwriter Bess Meredyth ldquoThereis no woman writing today who has contributed so much to genuine

screen values as Bess Meredythrdquo Indeed her son John Meredyth Lucasborn in 1919 continued down his motherrsquos unsettling path as a successfultelevision screenwriter and director His credits included episodes ofldquoStar Trekrdquo ldquoLoganrsquos Runrdquo and that other story of ldquohundred percentrdquoAmericanism ldquoThe Six Million Dollar Manrdquo

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 32

33

Figure 8 The Six Million Dollar Man ldquoGentlemen we can rebuild him Wehave the capability of making the worldrsquos first bionic man We can make him

better than he was before Better Stronger Fasterrdquo

Haverford College370 Lancaster AveHaverford PA 19041jlardashaverfordedu

References

Ahlstrom Sydney E (1972) A Religious History of the American People New HavenYale University Press

Albanese Catherine L (1997) Exchanging selves exchanging souls Contact com-bination and American religious history In Thomas A Tweed (ed) RetellingUS Religious History 200-26 Berkeley University of California Press

Anon (1851) A ship sunk by a whale Littellrsquos Living Age (29 November) 415-16Asad Talal (2003) Formations of the Secular Christianity Islam Modernity Stanford

Stanford University Press

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 33

34

Bacon Francis (1870) The Works of Francis Bacon James Spedding Robert LeslieEllis and Douglas Denon Heath (eds) Vol VIII New York Hurd andHoughton

Barton Bruce (2000) The Man Nobody Knows A Discovery of the Real Jesus ChicagoIvan R Dee

Beniger James R (1986) The Control Revolution Technological and Economic Origins ofthe Information Society Cambridge Harvard University Press

Benjamin Walter (1996) One-way street In Marcus Bullock amp Michael W Jennings(eds) Selected Writings Volume 1 1913-1926 444-88 Cambridge HarvardUniversity Press

mdash (2003) The work of art in the age of its technological reproducibility third ver-sion In Howard Eiland and Michael W Jennings (eds) Selected Writings Volume4 1938-40 251-83 Cambridge Harvard University Press

Bennett Charles A (1923) A Philosophical Study of Mysticism An Essay New HavenYale University Press 1923

Bernays Edward L (1923) Crystallizing Public Opinion New York Liverlight PublishingCorporation

Buchman SR (1925) Moby Dickmdashthe book and The Sea Beastmdashthe picture Anappreciation In Herman Melville Moby Dick or The White Whale ix-xi NewYork Grosset amp Dunlap

Butler Judith (1993) Bodies That Matter On the Discursive Limits of lsquoSexrsquo RoutledgeNew York

Cahir Linda Costanzo (1997) Routinizing the charismatic Melville and Hollywoodrsquosthree Moby-Dicks Melville Society Extracts 110 (September) 11-17

Cendrars Blaise (1922) Profound today Broom 13 ( January) 265-67Chadwick Owen (1975) The Secularization of the European Mind in the Nineteenth Century

Cambridge Cambridge University PressCoe George Albert (1917) A Social Theory of Religious Education New York Charles

Scribnerrsquos SonsDavidson Abraham A (1996) The European art invasion In Francis M Naumann

(ed) with Beth Vann Making Mischief Dada Invades New York 222-27 NewYork Whitney Museum of Art

Debord Guy (1995) Society of the Spectacle translated by Donald Nicholson-SmithNew York Zone Books

Derrida Jacques (1994) Specters of Marx The State of the Debt The Work of Mourningand the New International Peggy Kamuf (trans) New York Routledge

Dorsey George A (1925) Why We Behave Like Human Beings New York BlueRibbon Books

Epstein Jean (1922) The new conditions of literary phenomena Broom 21 (April)3-10

Frank Waldo (1919) Our America New York Boni and LiverightGammel Irene (2002) Baroness Elsa Gender Dada and Everyday Modernitymdasha Cultural

Biography Cambridge The MIT PressGeertz Clifford (1973) Deep play Notes on the Balinese cockfight In The Interpretation

of Cultures 412-53 New York Basic BooksHaraway Donna (2004) A manifesto for cyborgs Science technology and socialist

feminism in the 1980s In The Haraway Reader 7-45 New York RoutledgeHeap Jane (1922) Dada Little Review VII2 (Spring) 46Heidegger Martin (1977) The age of the world-picturerdquo In The Question Concerning

Technology and Other Essays 115-54 William Lovitt (trans) New York Harperamp Row

Hoffman Carol Stein (2001) The Barrymores Hollywoodrsquos First Family LexingtonUniversity of Kentucky Press

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 34

35

Jackson Josephine A and Helen M Salisbury (1922) Outwitting Our Nerves A Primerof Psychotherapy New York The Century Co

Jaffe David (1990) The village enlightenment in New England 1760-1820 TheWilliam and Mary Quarterly XLVII3 ( July) 327-46

Jones Rufus M (1915) Mysticism in present-day religion Harvard Theological ReviewVIII2 (April) 155-65

Kippenberg Hans G (2002) Discovering Religious History in the Modern Age BarbaraHarshav (trans) Princeton Princeton University Press

Kobler John (1977) Damned in Paradise The Life of John Barrymore New YorkAtheneum

Kuttner Alfred B (1922) Nerves In Harold E Stearns (ed) Civilization in the UnitedStates An Enquiry by Thirty Americans 427-42 New York Harcourt

Lauter Paul (1994) Melville climbs the canon American Literature 66 (March) 1-24Lawrence DH (1923) Studies in Classic American Literature New York T SeltzerLindbergh Charles A (1927) We New York GP Putnamrsquos SonsLippmann Walter (1922) Public Opinion New York Macmillan CompanyMarchand Roland (1985) Advertising the American Dream Making Way for Modernity

1920-1940 Berkeley University of California PressMarty Martin E Modern American Religion Vol 2 The Noise of Conflict 1919-1941

Chicago University of Chicago Press 1991May Henry F (1976) The Enlightenment in America New York Oxford University

PressMayhew Jonathan (1749) Concerning the difference between truth and falsehood

right and wrong In Seven Sermons 1-21 Boston Rogers and FowleMayr Otto (1970) The Origins of Feedback Control Cambridge The MIT PressMelville Herman (1993) Correspondence Volume 14 of The Writings of Herman Melville

Lynne Horth (ed) Evanston and Chicago Northwestern University Pressmdash (1925) Moby Dick or The White Whale 1851 New York Grosset amp DunlapMindell David A (2002) Between Human and Machine Feedback Control and Computing

Before Cybernetics Baltimore The Johns Hopkins University PressMumford Lewis (1929) Herman Melville New York The Literary Guild of Americamdash (1924) Sticks and Stones A Study of American Architecture and Civilization New York

Dover Publicationsmdash (1934) Technics and Civilization New York Harcourt Brace and Companymdash (1926) The Golden Day A Study in American Literature and Culture New York Boni

and LiverightMurray Jr HA (1929) Review of Lewis Mumfordrsquos Herman Melville The New

England Quarterly 2 ( July) 523-26Naumann Francis M (1994) New York Dada 1915-23 New York Harry N AbramsNoble David F (1999) The Religion of Technology The Divinity of Man and the Spirit

of Invention New York Penguin BooksNye David E (1994) American Technological Sublime Cambridge The MIT PressOrsquoNeil David (1921) The new Broom Broom 11 (November) 96Overton Grant (1928) The Philosophy of Fiction New York D AppletonPalmer Attorney General (1920) The case against the lsquoRedsrsquo The Forum A Magazine

of Constructive Nationalism 632 (February) 173-85Parsons Floyd W (1927) Everybodyrsquos business Advertising amp Selling ( June 29) 5 64Prampolini Enrico (1922) The aesthetic of the machine and mechanical intro-

spection in art Broom 33 (October) 235-37Rauschenbusch Walter (1917) A Theology for the Social Gospel New York The

Macmillan CompanyRichardson George P (1991) Feedback Thought in Social Science and Systems Theory

Philadelphia University of Pennsylvania Press

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 35

6

by The Sea Beast (1926) a silent screen dramatization of Moby-Dick star-ring John Barrymore and Dolores Costello The Melville Revival reflectedalbeit from a peculiar angle many of the anxieties and desires of whiteProtestant majorities across the political spectrum Moby-Dick for examplewas enlisted in the service of authorizing American superiority in thegeo-political sphere as well as in the elusive sphere of culture As thelone solitary masculine artist Melville became a literary vehicle bywhich many revivalists expressed their own revulsion toward the senti-mentalism of mass culture and the perceived threat of feminized racial-ized and ignorant masses (Lauter 1994 6-10) Many (but not all)ldquorevivalistsrdquo celebrated Melville and his epic in terms that mirroredAmerican investment in the directives of possessive individualism andthe essential distinction between human and machine

The first two sections of this essay highlight the shared anxiety cours-ing through American Protestantism popular culture and the MelvilleRevival After exploring the prescient analysis of feedback technologyand the fate of human organicism advanced by Lewis Mumfordmdashawriter who participated in each of these three discoursesmdashI offer closereadings of two moments within the Melville Revival that broachedissues of feedback and religiosity Bess Meredithrsquos screenplay for The

Sea Beast and the American phalanx of European Dada associated withBroom the short-lived journal whose title and musings on the machineage were inspired by Ishmaelrsquos retort ldquoWho ainrsquot a slaverdquo In theirexploration of the murky ontological space between human and machinethese unorthodox readings addressed the technological environment interms normally associated with religionmdashrevelation enchantment mys-ticism God They also captured something about the cultural historyof religion in the 1920smdashits dissonant signals its ambient static thoseldquoelements which the society as such [was] not able to realizerdquo (Williams1966 69)

Sensitivity to the tangible buzz of machine-age America serves alarger goal of reimagining what we as scholars talk about when wetalk about religion (Noble 1997 and Nye 1994) For in addition todemonstrating that Protestant strategies of self-centering so pervasivein the early twentieth century had trouble holding their ground againstthe billowing nature of technology I also argue that Protestant-inspireddefinitions of what constitutes religious belief and practice still pervasivein the modern academic study of religion are not equipped to dealwith the crises of the natural within (post)modernity Rather than engagein sustained readings of those who have broached issues of feedbackmdashWalter Benjamin Donna Haraway Judith Butler Guy Debord Michel

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 6

7

5 See for example the role feedback technologies have played in the developmentof the information society and ldquocontrol revolutionrdquo (Beniger 1986 344-89) and inthe development of twentieth-century social science (Richardson 1991)

Foucault among othersmdashmy goal inspired by their work is to explorethe religious effects of feedback technology and to enact a case studyof American religious history in terms of those ldquostructures of feelingrdquothat actively questioned more formal and official versions of reality

2 Protestant feedback

In addition to ldquoreek[ing] of religionrdquo 1920rsquos America also reeked oftechnology as principles of feedback and reproducibility emerged ascentral components of modern life Telephone networks engines power-ing automobiles phonographs and movie projectors not to mentionthe production of consumer desire by Public Relations specialistsmdashallmarked a moment in American history when technology became intenselyexpressive and atmospheric5 For in addition to expanding the horizonof human nature technologies were readily capable of copying natureand regulating both nonhuman and human systems They were inother words becoming cybernetic (from the Greek kubernetes meaningsteersman) ldquorecreatingrdquo the world in their own image According toan advertisement for the advertising agency Calkins amp Holden ldquoYourworld is being recreated today by three important influences first thecloseness of science and discovery of commercial manufacturing secondthe shortness of the link between the manufacturer and the consumerand third the amazing speed with which the American public makesup its mind to change its mindrdquo (ldquoYour World Has Changedrdquo 1927 15)Consumption and efficiency each became scientific ie natural exten-sions of the other in the practice of ldquohundred percentrdquo Americanism

As historian David Mindell argues in his history of feedback controltechnology the cybernetic ideas made popular by Norbert Wiener inthe late 1940s and early 1950s were already emergent by the 1920s(2002 6) Feedback technologies defined by their internal capacity toadjust themselves to the future through knowledge of past conditionswere designed by human operators to ldquorespondrdquo to external distur-bances and maintain a secure relationship between two variables (Wiener1954 32-4) Once the human agent sets a control variablemdashthe tem-perature within a room or the velocity of a turntable or projectormdashadjustment to external fluctuationsmdashthe temperature outside the roomor the changing weight of a film reelmdashproceed automatically Feedback

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 7

8

technology is often associated with computers and artificial intelligenceHowever the capacity to transmit information in order to counterentropy and maintain equilibrium within a unified system was presentin oil lamps from ancient Greece waterclocks from the middle agesand temperature regulators from the early modern period (Mayer 197011-52) The invention of the Watts steam engine (1788) and the Corlissengine (1848) the publication of James Clerk Maxwellrsquos ldquoOn Governorsrdquo(1868) the appearance of air-conditioned factories (1902) speed gov-ernors on trucks and tractors (c1910) automated electric substations(1914) and the Sperry gyropilot (1920) had revolutionized the kind ofmaterial and ideological presence machines assumed within human lifemdashno longer a wholly ldquoartificialrdquo other but a ldquonaturalrdquo component of howthings fit together and moved along

By the 1920s the fluidity between humans and machines nature andsecond nature had intensified dramatically Self-regulating devices andautomated factories were becoming so pervasive as to go almost unrec-ognized What bound together a white Protestant majority was theirstruggle to maintain the social perceptual and racial orders throughwhich ldquohundred-percent Americanismrdquo and related principles weredefined From a historical perspective such struggles were ironic Foreven as Protestants forged new public narratives of identity stories theytold themselves in order to be their natural selves were themselvesbecoming part of a feedback loop in which technology played a centralrole

Rather than retreat from technology liberals were inclined to seeldquothe energy of God realizing itself in human liferdquo through those inno-vations Second-generation social gospellers redoubled their progressiveefforts to extend access to economic and spiritual opportunity ldquoTheredemption of societyrdquo did not mean the abolition of the ldquoindustrialsystemrdquo but the lessening of its negative impact (Rauschenbusch 1917110 143) Instead of seriously considering how technological drives andtheir ldquoreality effectsrdquo might undermine projects of economic reform andself-cultivation liberals confidently chose to direct technology in theservice of humanity It was a ldquodemocraticrdquo strategy that required decisiveaction For only through such action could the political and epistemologicalpromises of Enlightenment become a religious reality By acting upononersquos God-given ldquoinstinctrdquo the Kingdom of God could be achievedand maintained on earth (Coe 1917 168 131)

In their revolt against the material incursions and ideological temptationsof modernity Fundamentalists strategically harnessed God somewhat

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 8

9

6 Such irony can be found in Jonathan Edwardsrsquos ldquoSinners in the Hands of anAngry Godrdquo (1741) A rich and contradictory sermon it instructs parishioners torecognize their always already abject relation to God while simultaneously demand-ing that they willingly submit to his will

ironically as guarantor of an organic version of human subjectivity6

The Fundamentalist defense of biblical inerrancy for example confirmedboth the divine autonomy of the text and the human capacity for accu-rate contemplation of it This underlying tension was resolved withinthe Fundamentalist theory of textuality that hewed to the CommonSense dictum that seeing was in fact on par with authentic belief Justas there was a transparent relationship to be had between the self andGod reader and words on the page the promise of transparency wasalso fulfilled in the human act of vision more generally God was thearchitect and engineer of the world He constructed the eyes as wellas the space that made visions of the world even possible As WilliamJennings Bryan wrote in 1922 ldquoI believe that God made the eyes whenHe made manmdashnot only made the eyes but carved out the caverns inthe skull in which they hangrdquo (97-8)

With similar missionary zeal so-called ldquohundred-percentersrdquo went onthe offensive and designated scapegoats for a decline in ldquooriginal-stockProtestant Americardquo The Red Scare of 1919-1920 led by AttorneyGeneral and ldquofighting Quakerrdquo Mitchell Palmer initiated campaigns ofsurveillance and intimidation of Socialist Party members labor leadersvociferous Jews and immigrants and any others deemed politically sub-versive The Johnson Act of 1921 the more restrictive Immigration Actof 1924 as well as the increased visibility of the Ku Klux Klan dur-ing the decade spoke to burgeoning fears over racial miscegenation(Marty 1991 66-79) At stake in these fantasies of whiteness and strate-gies of purification was the notion of the Anglo-self as autonomouspossessive and immune

In popular culture myths of individual expertise proliferated thatreflected both the Protestant desire for authenticity and the limits ofthis desire more generally For even as Americans searched for signsof their essential humanity they often came to understand themselvesin and through technological terms Babe Ruth Henry Ford and thebusiness entrepreneur offered celebrity assurance of an autonomous sub-ject who could withstand the feminizing assaults of modernity by mas-tering technology (Susman 1984 133) Advertising executive BruceBarton (who worked for General Motors when it organized the production

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 9

10

of automobiles around consumer orders feedback from local dealersand demand forecasting) introduced Jesus in his best-selling The Man

Nobody Knows (1925) as a conflation of all three (Beniger 1986 317)According to Barton Jesus deftly swung his carpenter tools created anldquoorganization that conquered the worldrdquo and awakened to the ldquoinnerconsciousnessrdquo of his ldquopowerrdquo Barton pitched Jesus as a ldquomysticrdquo andldquobig manrdquo who had incorporated the technologies of business adver-tising and manufacturing into his own personality and cult thereof (4 10 13 6)

As feedback technologies ldquoneutralizedrdquo economies of origination andclaims to eternal value both Christologies and psychological narrativesof restoration were mechanically inscribed (Benjamin 2003 252) Inthe wake of the popular Personality How To Build It (1916) self-realizationwas consistently equated with an engineering process of control Outwitting

our Nerves (1922) affirmed ldquothe integrity of our physical machinesrdquo aswell as human ldquopower of choicerdquo over those machines It was a ldquofactrdquothat ldquowe ourselves decide which of all the possible emotions we shallchoose or we decide not to press the button for any emotion at allrdquo( Jackson and Salisbury 1922 296 360) In Self-Mastery Through Conscious

Auto-Suggestion (1922) one of the defining books of the twentieth-centurygenre of ldquoself-helprdquo Emile Coueacute introduced Americans to the controlpanel of their inner autopilots In Why We Behave Like Human Beings

(1925) evolutionary anthropologist George A Dorsey defined humansin terms of the ldquokinesthetic senserdquo and their innate capacity to enactfeedback control upon themselves He assured readers that ldquoevery humanindividual normal enough to live beyond the walls of an asylum livesbecause he has an equipment by which he can keep on making adjust-ments to changing conditionsrdquo (302 301) In We (1927) CharlesLindberghrsquos celebrated chronicle of his trans-Atlantic flight his airplaneldquoThe Spirit of St Louisrdquo assumed its own personality and portrait evenas Lindbergh became ldquomechanizedrdquo in the popular press

3 Melville fed back

Concerns over how to secure and maintain a sense of coherent iden-tity in light of a seemingly animated material world also precipitatedthe ldquorevivalrdquo of Melville in the 1920s As in the various Protestantstrategies of adjustment ldquorevivalistsrdquo (predominantly white and male)embraced Melville as providing a script of American identity and self-governance In hopes of defending themselves against the totalizing

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 10

11

Figure 1 Instrument Board of the Spirit of St Louis from We (1927)

directives of technology revivalists read Melville and his works throughthe lens of anti-Puritanism and the newly discovered script of FreudMelvillersquos celebrity increased as Elsie Clews Parson Van Wyck BrooksHL Mencken Waldo Frank and others accused Puritans of possessinga ldquorepressive impulserdquo of denying ldquolife and desirerdquo and of discardingldquomystical consciousnessrdquo in favor of ldquoinstrumentalrdquo reason (Frank 191966 150 68) In Melvillersquos rejection of Puritanismrsquos ldquorepellant materialismrdquohis work assumed a positively transgresssive quality (Tomlinson 1926621) Opposed to the Puritan life of ldquointolerable monotonyrdquo Melvillewas viewed as ldquoa mystic a treasure-seeker a mystery-monger a delverafter hidden things spiritual and materialrdquo (Weaver 1919 145-46)

Raymond M Weaverrsquos Herman Melville Mariner and Mystic (1921) setthe terms of religious evaluation for the early stages of the RevivalWeaver proclaimed that Melville in his ldquoescape from an inexorableand intolerable world of realityrdquo had achieved ldquopsychological synthesisrdquo

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 11

12

Figure 2 ldquoThe ConquerorrdquomdashCharles Lindbergh from Current History July 1927

(Weaver 1921 19 331) The construction of Melville as mystic wasconcurrent with the discursive construction of mysticism by liberalProtestants as ldquoahistorical poetic essential intuitive and universalrdquo(Schmidt 2003 288) Both intellectual constructionsmdashthe latter integralto the academic study of religion in the twentieth centurymdashsought towrest a degree of ldquorealnessrdquo from a world in which ldquothe realrdquo was feltto be increasingly susceptible to technological erasure (Kippenberg 2002175-86) And whereas mystically inclined Protestants denounced ldquosec-ular activitiesrdquo by calling for the liberation and unity of ldquothe deep-lyingpowers of the inward self into one conscious liferdquo under God revival-ists called on Melville to provide them with an experiential map of thatwhich was utterly and mysteriously human (Bennett 1923 6 Jones1915 156 161) As Henry A Murray flatly announced ldquoMelville dis-covered the Unconscious and commenced to explore itrdquo (1929 526)As a model for authenticity and self-governance Melville was both ana-lyst and analysandmdashldquoa gentleman adventurer in the barbarous outposts

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 12

13

of human experiencerdquo not a ldquostaged dip into studio savageryrdquo Melvillehad penetrated the depths of his own psyche no doubt aided by hisstay among South Sea islanders (detailed in his first two novels Typee

(1846) and Omoo (1847) Indeed the authenticity of Melvillersquos mysticconsciousness was dependent upon his ldquountamed desires in violentconflict with his physical and spiritual environmentrdquo (Weaver 1921 1519 21 24-29)

As opposed to Weaverrsquos vicarious nostalgia for a simpler less com-mercial and more fully ldquorealrdquo existence another Melville biographerLewis Mumford understood the complex simulations of a consumer-driven economy as already emergent during Melvillersquos writerly careerMixing cultural criticism history and theological speculation Mumfordwas a keen observer of the technological revolutions in feedback controlIn his most memorable and encyclopedic work Technics and Civilization

(1934) Mumford claimed that in the seventeenth-century ldquomechanicsrdquohad become ldquothe new religion and [they] gave to the world a new Messiahthe machinerdquo In dramatizing the extent to which technology had shapedand continued to shape human consciousness Mumford explored inexacting and illustrated detail the history and material conditions thatwere allowing ldquotools and utensilsrdquo to assume ldquoan independent existencerdquo

This ldquoneotechnic phaserdquo had begun in the early part of the nineteenthcentury and was marked by efficiency flexibility ldquocomplete automatismrdquoand synthetic materialsmdasha ldquomutationrdquo that was rapidly integrating ldquothemachine and the world of liferdquo (45 321 227 212 254)

Such integration was not without its dangers ldquoWith the invention ofthe telegraphrdquo the ldquowireless telephonerdquo and the ldquotelevisionrdquo wroteMumford humans ldquobegan to bridge the gap in time between communi-cation and responserdquo The sympathetic relations between family memberscould now be replicated on an unprecedented scale through telepathictechnologiesmdashgiving rise to ldquo[immense] possibilities for good and evilrdquoThe building of a personality was no longer a ldquolocalrdquo affair On the con-trary when ldquomass-reactionsrdquo were ldquomobilized and hastenedrdquo the needsand interests of the human became those of the machine As Mumfordsuggested technology was becoming a ldquocreative force carried on by itsown momentumrdquo and ldquoproducing a third estate midway between natureand the humane artsrdquo The drive to overcome distancemdashbetween indi-viduals as well as between self and worldmdashhad itself ldquocreated an inde-pendent environment that has reacted upon every other side of the personalityrdquo (239241 322 324)

According to Mumford such technological interference had been ofintense and abiding concern for Melville (1934 213) In Herman Melville

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 13

14

Figure 3 Neotechnic Automatism from Technics and Civilization (1934)

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 14

15

7 Public relations and advances in advertising were the latest instances of the ldquocontrol revolutionrdquo in which technology of interchangeability so integral to theAmerican System of manufacturing had extended its field of operations under theauspices of consumer capitalism Machines were not simply making parts for othermachines but were integral to the form and content of social reproduction Publicrelations was a particular (and less reliable) version of feedback control Instead ofmaintaining a fixed variable on the inside by responding to fluctuations on the out-side ldquocounselorsrdquo stoked the flames of consumer desire in order to justify an accel-erating rate of production and ideally consumption

(1929) Mumford had chided fellow revivalists for exaggerating Melvillersquosretreat into mystical idealism ldquoMelville was a realistrdquo countered Mumfordldquoin the sense that the great religious teachers are realistsrdquo FurthermoreMelville had witnessed the ldquovolcanic intrusionrdquo of ldquoindustrialism [as] avalue in itself rdquo (1929 5 64-65) But things had gotten much more com-plicated since the mid-nineteenth century Whereas Melville had beheldldquothe servile routine of the factory systemrdquo Mumford was now witness-ing the birth of ldquothe machine system the network of relationshipsthat have followed the financial exploitation of machineryrdquo The differencein other words was the full-scale emergence of self-governing tech-nologiesmdashldquohandicraft devoted to mechanical reproduction and machinerythat is set to reproduce endless simulacrardquo For Mumford this ldquomachineritualrdquo this ldquoendlessrdquo loop of ldquomechanical reproductionrdquo threatened toefface ldquothe human arts of seeing feeling and livingrdquo (1924 67-68 10174-75 105 81) Technology in other words had achieved the capacityfor feedback on two different but related levels first in material devicesthat could copy both nature and themselves and secondly in humansthat governed themselves according to the latest control variables setby the machine As Mumford argued the totalizing power of feedbacktechnologies resulted not simply from designs motors or even materialoutputs but through their economically driven expansion of ldquothe verydomain of the symbol itself rdquo (1934 331)

Mumfordrsquos insights take on more ominous implications when oneconsiders the rise of the American public relations industry during thisperiod7 Public relations consultants such as Edward Bernays and adver-tisers like Bruce Barton actively sought to shape and change the beliefsof individuals in the service of larger economic agendas It was no acci-dent Bernays wrote in 1923 that a ldquoman belongs to one church ratherthan another or to any church at allrdquo It was no accident that ldquoBostonwomen prefer brown eggs and New York women white eggsrdquo Becausethe judgments of individuals were not arrived at through ldquoresearch andlogical deductionrdquo but were ldquodogmatic expressions accepted on theauthority of his parents his teachers his church and of his social his

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 15

16

economic and other leadersrdquo a ldquopublic relations counselrdquo must do thework of reauthorization (Bernays 1923 62) Through the strategic ldquosat-urationrdquo of images text and work-place incentives an entire profes-sional class sought to provide the terms for and effectively monitor theconditions of self-realization (Marchand 1985 94-95)

What then did Melville have to offer those living within ldquothe machinesystemrdquo of the 1920s Mumford and other revivalists championed Moby-

Dick as a blueprint for living within an increasingly mechanical rou-tinized and bureaucratic world They also heaped admiration uponCaptain Ahab an odd choice given the outcome of Moby-Dick Contraryto those who would later read Ahabrsquos technologically enhanced dem-agoguery against the political backdrops of Italian Fascism and NationalSocialism Ahabrsquos madness in the 1920s could be considered ldquoactiveand courageousrdquo as well as a sign of ldquogeniusrdquomdashldquothe very pinnacle ofhuman self-assertionrdquo (Watson 1970 136 Sullivan 1970 163) Suchreadings conflated the white whale with the power of technology andhad Ahab defiantly affirm the principle of free-will and defend theboundary between human and material worlds Mumford for examplewrote of Ahab as the ldquospirit of manrdquo who stood in opposition to ldquothebrute energies of existence blind fatal overpoweringrdquo Ahab was self-directive ldquopurposiverdquo and he pitted his ldquopuniness against this mightand [his] purpose against the blank senselessness of powerrdquo So eventhough Ahabrsquos ldquomethods are ill-chosenrdquo wrote Mumford his ldquodefianceis noblerdquo (Mumford 1929 184-86)

4 People who portray themselves or Ahab on Ahab

Film projectors in addition to utilizing concepts of feedback internallywere often seen as generative of external feedback loops between humansand machines nature and artifice Such loops arguably constituted theldquosociety of the spectaclerdquo Guy Debordrsquos term for the image-saturatedenvironment that arose in the 1920s with the confluence of sound filmtelevision and the perfection of propaganda techniques As one of themore grim assessments of an image-based postmodernity Debord definedthe ldquospectaclerdquo in terms of negative feedback ldquoIt is the omnipresentcelebration of a choice already made in the sphere of production andthe consummate result of that choice In form as in content the spectacleserves as total justification for the conditions and aims of the existingsystem It further ensures the permanent presence of that justification forit governs almost all time spent outside the production process itself rdquo

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 16

17

8 Cahir (1997) has made a similar point Although I agree with her assessmentthat The Sea Beast is about Ahabrsquos ldquoreal pursuit of identityrdquo I take issue with herargument that The Sea Beast validates autonomous autotelic forms of masculine identity

(13) In America Debordian paranoia was rampant as Victorian fearsover the exploitation of pleasure were morphing into general anxietiesconcerning voyeurism and cinematic determinism ldquoThe spectacle ofmechanical progress has made so deep an impressionrdquo argued WalterLippmann in 1922 ldquothat it has suffused the whole moral coderdquo Whatdisturbed Lippmann and other public figures was the specter of circularcausality and the quiet ldquoinsertion between man and his environmentof a pseudo-environmentrdquo composed mainly of images (Lippmann 1922108 15) Unbeknownst to them Americans were in danger of becom-ing automated by images and trapped within what Debord would latercall ldquoan uninterrupted monologue of self-praiserdquo (19) Their perpetualaffirmation of self however was wholly cybernetic given the fact thatthey were oblivious to the fact that ldquoon the screen the whole processof observing describing reporting and then imagining has been accom-plished for yourdquo (92)

In a strange twist that Melville might have enjoyed the most com-pelling representation of Moby-Dick and portrayal of Captain Ahab mayhave occurred via the technology of the moving picture8 The 1926silent film The Sea Beast adapted to the screen by Bess Meredyth andstarring John Barrymore as Captain Ahab dramatized the feedbackdimensions of film and its capacity to regulate the human personalityThe Sea Beast I argue challenged more able-bodied academic inter-pretations by reveling in its status as a technological reproduction The

Sea Beast with its odd juxtapositions visceral jump cuts and perverseattention to Ahabrsquos stump and artificial limb rather than affirm thedesire for self-transparency suggested that the equipment-free reality ofthe self was quite literally an enabling fiction What Americans lackedaccording to Meredythrsquos scenario was the tragic recognition of them-selves as always regulated and already enhanced by technology Takingldquopleasure in the confusion of boundariesrdquo and ldquoresponsibility in their con-structionrdquo The Sea Beast in the borrowed words of Donna Harawaymade ldquoan argument for the cyborg as a fiction mapping our social andbodily reality and as an imaginative resource suggesting some very fruit-ful couplingsrdquo (8)

In 1925 at age forty-three John Barrymore was one of Hollywoodrsquosmost bankable actors (part of the ldquostar-systemrdquo promoted by Edward

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 17

18

Bernays who clearly saw the potential for cross-marketing between enter-tainment business and political campaigns) Barrymore easily convincedWarner Brothers to turn Moby-Dick one of his favorite novels into amovie and to cast him in the role of Captain Ahab Having playedHamlet in the 1922-23 Broadway season Barrymore developed a keeninterest in psychoanalysis and Freudrsquos account of Hamlet in Interpretationof Dreams (1900) The role of Captain Ahab like that of Hamlet allowedBarrymore to reach a larger audience with his newly emotive actingstyle As Captain Ahab he could also remind his audience of his depthand manly credentials He was tired in his words of playing ldquoscentedbepuffed bewigged and ringletted charactersrdquo (quoted in Kobler 1977213) Promotional pamphlets for The Sea Beast seemed to reinforceBarrymorersquos gendered strategy featuring a picture of Barrymore in abusiness suit puffing contemplatively on a pipemdashldquoJohn Barrymore ismore than a name more than a personality he is world institutionrdquo(Hoffman 2001 73)

The opening credits to The Sea Beast begin imprecisely with a close-up of the filmrsquos textual referent Moby Dick or the White Whale Thissimulated text begins not with ldquoExtractsrdquo or even ldquoCall me Ishmaelrdquobut with the following words ldquoThere never was nor ever will be abraver life than the life of the whaler Compared to the game theyhunted the mightiest land beast was but a poodle dogrdquo Adapted tothe screen by Bess Meredyth former actress turned writer The Sea Beast

is noteworthy as one of the earliest if not the first public appropriationsof Melvillersquos novel by a woman By 1926 Meredyth had become aHollywood regular having written the scenarios or continuities for Ben

Hur (1925) Don Juan (1926) and at least 70 other films ldquoThere is nowoman writing todayrdquo read the promotional copy of The Sea Beastldquowho has contributed so much to genuine screen values as Bess Meredythrdquo(Hoffman 2001 74) The ldquogenuinerdquo sense Meredyth made of Melvillersquosepic is significant in its relentless focus on the self as a technologicalconstruct In Meredythrsquos scenario one literally glimpses the spirit ofMelvillersquos rejection of the contemplative insular and hyper-masculinizedself of mid-nineteenth-century religion and science In its plot and per-verse attention to Ahabrsquos stump The Sea Beast suggests that nothing willor even can make up for the loss Ahab suffers

After the opening credits the audience is introduced to a healthyCaptain Ahab atop the masthead He looks out over the sea and downon his crew hard at work his feet tapping to the beat of the sea shantyldquoHanging Johnnyrdquo Nostalgia and the logic of substitution are bothbroached in the opening scenesmdashnot in terms of idealism but in ways

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 18

19

that hint at their subsequent negation As Ahab reads a letter from hisbeloved Esther Harper the daughter of a Christian missionary playedby the nineteen year-old Dolores Costello Ahab looks longingly at hername tattooed on his arm His mind drifts back to their last embraceFollowing a long close-up of his legs Ahab descends from the mastheadthe camera sliding down the rope in real time and from Ahabrsquos pointof view his legs leading the way The experience of vertigo engenderedby the shot suggests that Ahabrsquos identity is already unstable alreadymarked by a palpable lack of ground This shot however is quicklyoffset by numerous scenes that depict the fullness of Ahabrsquos vigor par-ticularly in relation to his healthy pair of legs He jumps he hops heruns around

When Ahabrsquos ship docks in the bay of Mauritius the audience isintroduced to Esther as well as to Derek Ahabrsquos scheming half-brotherIt is here that one is reminded of the words from the 1925 promotionalpublication of Moby-Dick accompanied by scenes from The Sea Beastldquothe screen version of lsquoMoby Dickrsquo exceeds the book The discrepancybetween the two must not be considered as a profanely wanton alterationrdquoTo portray the ldquopsychological studyrdquo of Captain Ahab ldquothe camerahas resorted to means of its own A mental state therefore particularlyan involved condition of mind must be expressed by means of the inci-dents which produced it each tortuous thought composing Ahabrsquos madness must be traced to the event which engendered itrdquo (Buchman1925 x) The most obvious incident being the loss of Ahabrsquos leg butthe film compounds this felt sense of loss by turning Melvillersquos tale intoa misbegotten love triangle between Ahab Derek and Esther the appleof both their eyes

On shore Ahab and Esther declare their love to each other Butafter a few days Ahab sails from Mauritius and scans the shore withhis telescope He spies Estherrsquos window She comes to the window andreturns Ahabrsquos gaze through her own telescope Technology has literallybecome the lens through which they see each other through whicheach declares their commitment They wave and blow kisses until theyare both out of range At sea Ahab is betrayed by Derek who unbe-knownst to Ahab pushes him overboard into the waiting jaws of MobyDick After losing his leg Ahab is distraught Derek then taunts Ahaband suggests that his symbolic castration is too much for any relation-ship to bear As Derek reminds him ldquoEsther was always crazy aboutyour beinrsquo so strong and perfectrdquo Having been fitted with his ivorystump Ahab arrives back at Mauritius Derek then shames Ahab evenfurther by telling him that he and Esther are in love and that Esther

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 19

20

cannot bring herself to tell Ahab of the deceit Derek then goes toEsther to convince her that Ahab has abandoned her When Ahabarrives at Estherrsquos house to confirm Derekrsquos story he sees their shadowscast by the light of spermaceti candles and mistakenly believes thatEsther has indeed left him for Derek It is here that Ahab descendsinto his infamous monomania

Ahab goes onto slay Moby Dick but not before uncovering his half-brotherrsquos double betrayal In a dramatic confrontation Derek pulls aknife on Ahab and is about to get the best of our hero But wait Ahabwedges his ivory stump into the deck leveraging himself in order tofend off Derek Ahab then casts Derek overboard and into the sea Anivory technology marking the absence of Ahabrsquos leg has been trans-formed into a salvific presence Or so it seems when the audience istreated to the restoration of order upon the Pequodrsquos return to portand Ahabrsquos reunion with Esther consummated in their tearful embraceHaving staged and seemingly resolved the crisis of masculine identity(the raison drsquoecirctre of melodrama being that the resolution is alreadypresent in the staging) The Sea Beast on the contrary did anything butrestore the full presence of Ahabrsquos self It suggested through both contentand form that the reality of the self whether it be Ahab or the spec-tator in the theater was neither fully resolvable nor equipment-free

Ahab achieves a kind of liberation on screen by recognizing that heis always already a figment of an imagination that is not his own Afterthe tearful reunion between Ahab and Esther the screen goes blackThe audience is then given a glimpse behind the scenes as it weremdasha scene of the director Millard Webb in his chair issuing directionsto Ahab and Esther in Estherrsquos living room A man in a business suitplays the violin in the background As Ahab and Esther look longinglyinto each otherrsquos eyes Ahab slips a ring onto Estherrsquos finger and theyembrace once again Or is it Barrymore and Costello It is unclearparticularly in light of the rumors of an off screen tryst between themiddle-aged Barrymore and his nineteen-year old costar (they wouldlater marry) The loving embrace is seemingly real an ambiguityreaffirmed by the fact that after Webb yells ldquocutrdquo he has to step betweenthe couple and remind them that they are on film Webb then turnsto the camera and smiles as the screen abruptly cuts to black onceagain

The odd ending of The Sea Beast suggests that Ahabrsquos journey towardreconciliation did not end with self-exposure but that it could neverreally begin Rather than achieve restoration of nature in and througha cultural construction Ahabrsquos artificial leg points to a previously

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 20

21

Figure 4 Final Embrace between AhabBarrymore and EstherCostello

ldquoexcluded and illegible domain that haunts the former domain as thespecter of its own impossibility the very limit of intelligibility its con-stitutive outsiderdquo (Butler 1993 xi) The ending harkens back to the seashanty ldquoHanging Johnnyrdquo Ahabrsquos introductory descent from the mast-head and his telescopic flirtation with Esther both vertiginous slidesinto the unfathomable layers of mediated perception that signal theldquoexecutionrdquo of possessive individualism Rather than erase the sign ofAhabrsquos traumamdashhis ivory legmdashthe ending of The Sea Beast suggests thatAhab and Barrymore are two sides of the same character vacillatingwithin the loop of continuous performativity One is reminded here ofWalter Benjaminrsquos insight into the traumatized subject in the age oftechnological reproducibility As Benjamin argues the trauma can beunderstood as a shift from the stage to the screen in which the actorperforms for a ldquopiece of equipmentrdquo rather than for an audience Citingthe Italian playwright Luigi Pirandello Benjamin suggests that the mod-ern subject is

exiled not only from the stage but from his own person With a vagueunease he senses an inexplicable void stemming from the fact that hisbody has lost its substance that he has been volatilized stripped of his

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 21

22

reality his life his voice the noises he makes when moving about andhas been turned into a mute image that flickers for a moment on thescreen then vanishes into silence (2003 260)

Pirandellorsquos borrowed words speak directly to Meredythrsquos reconfigurationof Melvillersquos text Whereas Melvillersquos Ahab tried and failed to conquerthe very source of visual illuminationmdashthe spermaceti oil that allowedantebellum Americans to see in the darkmdashBarrymorersquos Ahab revels inthe technologically enhanced gaze of his audience When the lightscome up the selves of Ahab Barrymore and the audience have beenre-narrativized as cybernetic that is as permanently divided and fun-damentally transient In affirming the really real offscreen relationshipbetween Barrymore and Costello the uncanny ending of The Sea Beast

supported a notion of selfhood as always already mediated or betteryet the necessity of experience to be mediated in order for it to becomereal or maybe even the necessity of acknowledging that the reality ofthe self is really made up

Barrymorersquos self-conscious performance inspired by his reading ofFreud and designed to overcome middle-class mores did not so muchpenetrate the inner depths of his character as it did the emotional lifeand perceptual apparatus of his audience The Sea Beast does not dram-atize the individual conquest of nature as much as it dramatizes visualtechnologyrsquos seduction of the individual The Sea Beast in its staging ofa cybernetic reality denied the very concept of 100 Americanism byinterrupting the narrative closure on which self-presence dependedNeither Ahab nor Barrymore nor the audience are ever alone even intheir solitude They are haunted not simply by the unconscious butby the specters generated in and through technologies of reproduction(Derrida 1994 97) They are in Benjaminrsquos apt phrase ldquopeople whoportray themselvesrdquo (Benjamin 2003 262)

For Benjamin photography and cinema were technologies of religiousrevelation for better or for worse in that they both exposed variousfeedback loops that constituted onersquos identity On one level Benjaminargued that the category of originality had been challenged by visualtechnologies that put copies ldquoof the original in situations which theoriginal itself cannot attainrdquo (2003 254) On another level the decayof the ldquoaurardquo of authenticity and the blurring of original and reproductionenabled individuals to recognize the fact that they were implicated inthe perceptual field and no longer insulated from what they saw orheard ldquoReception in distractionrdquo wrote Benjamin ldquowhich is increas-ing noticeably in all areas of art and is a symptom of profound changesin apperceptionmdashfinds in film its true training groundrdquo (269) Influenced

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 22

23

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethersquos notion of ldquoafter-imagesrdquo in Theory

of Colours (the same text that informed Melvillersquos ldquoThe Whiteness of theWhalerdquo) Benjamin announced the birth of the ldquooptical unconsciousrdquo(266) According to Benjamin images had become the currency of con-sciousness structuring thought and determining the range of possibleactions Mechanical means of reproduction had liberated the perceptualcapacities of humanity They had also ushered in the prospect of massdeception and control Either way they had resulted in a ldquomassiveupheaval in the domain of objectsrdquo and a ldquoshattering of traditionrdquo (254)

5 American Dada and the aporias of modernity

Within the Melville Revivalmdashan almost clicheacuted instance of Modernismrsquosvogue for the solitary geniusmdashseeds of post-Cartesian doubt were beingsown and the enchanting dimensions of technology considered BecauseMelville ldquowas spell-bound by the strange slidings and collidings ofMatterrdquo his work in the eyes of more atheological critics exposed theenchanting conditions of the machine age (Taylor 1984) ldquoIt is the mate-rial elements he really has to do withrdquo wrote DH Lawrence in 1923ldquoHis drama is with them He was a futurist long before futurism foundpaintrdquo (216) For Lewis Mumford too Melville had not simply dram-atized the incursion of machinesmdasha traditional Romantic tropemdashbuthad embraced a series of insoluble contradictions He has come to rec-ognize those parts of the world and himself that had already been pro-duced by machines and had insisted that the plasticity of self wassomething with which Americans had to struggle and to their spiritualdetriment repress

In broaching the aporias of modernity Mumford saw Melville as hav-ing already given the lie to Weberian diagnoses of disenchantment Thecapacity to effectively turn night into day Mumford suggested the expe-rience of a subway car rumbling past the solid structures of a sky-scraper vanishing into the air the peering into a microscope and theobservation of a ldquorow of bottles each of identical size shape colorstretching away for a quarter of a milerdquo were enough to induce a particular kind of vertigo ldquoThe special visual effect of repeating pat-tern[s]rdquo occurred simultaneously with the experience ldquoof the unique andthe non-repeatablerdquo (Mumford 1934 333-34) The experience of intensesystematicitymdashprecisely what feedback technologies were designed toinducemdashcould be positively disorienting when the infinitely calculableassumed the ldquospecial qualityrdquo of the ldquoincalculablerdquo (Heidegger 1977

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 23

24

135) According to Mumford when technology no longer made imperfectcopies of nature but perfect copies of itself the very notion of ldquonaturalrdquocould become radically suspect With the ldquoliquidationrdquo of the solid book-ends of authenticity and artifice came the prospect that the spectrumitself was socially constructed for better or for worse (Benjamin 2003255) Having torn aside the veil ldquoman has thrown between his ownexperience and the blank reality of the universerdquo Melville neither suc-cumbed to the temptation of nihilism nor retreated into his own pri-vate morality On the contrary he urged his contemporaries to ownup to the constructedness of any and all cultural forms and expressionsand the faith commitments that undergirded them As Mumford wroteldquoto appreciate the reality of the White Whale is to see more deeplyinto the expedience of all our immediate institutions all the spiritualshelters man puts between himself and the uncertain cosmic weatherMeaning significance attends only that little part of the universe manhas built up and settledrdquo (Mumford 1926 150-51)

Whereas Mumford assessed the religious dimensions of technologicalldquoprogressrdquo in a tragic key others tended toward the comic as was thecase with a group of experimental artists associated with Broom An

International Magazine of the Arts Published by Americans in Italy publishedbetween 1921 and 1924 (Tashjian 1975 116-34) Broomrsquos co-editor thepoet Alfred Kreyemborg (who would later co-edit The American Caravan

with Lewis Mumford) had adapted a passage from Moby-Dick for itstitle logo and statement of purpose which appeared on the back coverldquoWhat of itrdquo asks Ishmael

if some old hunks of a seacaptain orders me to get a broom and sweepdown the decks What does that indignity amount to weighed I meanin the scales of the New Testament Do you think the Archangel Gabrielthinks any less of me because I promptly and respectfully obey that oldhunks that particular instance Who ainrsquot a slave (Melville 1925 4)

The first issue of Broom included poems addressing Albert Einsteinrsquostheory of relativity as well as Emmy Veronica Sanders declaration thatldquothe American Machinerdquo was ldquotransforming itself with all its attributesand characteristics into American Mindrdquo ldquoAmericardquo she continuedinitially ldquomade of the Puritan by the Puritan for the Puritanrdquo wasnow being ldquoremade of the Machine by the Machine for the Machinerdquo(89-90) Following Sandersrsquos piece was a David OrsquoNeilrsquos hymn of sup-plication to the new Gods of the machine

When you are sweeping usWith Your cosmic broom

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 24

25

Figure 5 Nature and Second Nature in Technics and Civilization (1934)

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 25

26

Sweeping us out of mouldy rutsSweeping us clean and sweetmdash

RememberWhen wersquore quiveringmdashSensitivemdashbaremdashWe shall be gratefulFor just a few shadows (96)

Broom took Ishmaelrsquos retort quite seriously addressing the revolutionarydimensions of technological artifice and the shadows cast within therealm of technological illumination

Unlike Futurism Broom did not celebrate the beauty of war It didhowever come to express the ldquodreamed-of metallization of the humanbodyrdquo and the playful cybernetic fantasies of Dadaists such as ManRay and Francis Picabia (quoted in Benjamin 2003 269) After someinitial hesitation Broom began to embrace Dadarsquos perspective on the lib-eratory dimensions of the human-machine interface ldquoEverything isartificialrdquo gasped Broom contributor Blaise Cendrars ldquoThe eyes thehand the sexual frenzy of the factory The wheel which turns Thewing which flies The voice which travels far on a wire Your ear ina trumpet Your sense of direction Your rhythm You melt the worldin the mould of your skull Your brain is hollow Like a religion amysterious pill hastens your digestionrdquo (265) Jean Epstein from a slightdifferent angle argued that technology had ldquobecome part of ourselvesrdquoand had democratized human perceptionmdashldquoman has not one memoryof [the] landscape he [now] has a thousand different ones which mayor may not resemble each other Everything possesses hundreds ofapparent diameters which never superimpose exactlyrdquo (6-7)

Broom was soon translating less inflammatory Futurist manifestos suchas Enrico Prampolinirsquos ldquoThe Aesthetic of the Machine and MechanicalIntrospection in Artrdquo in which he declared ldquoIs not the machine todaythe most exuberant symbol of the mystery of human creation Is it notthe new mythical deity which weaves the legends and histories of thecontemporary human drama The Machine in its practical and materialfunction comes to have today in human concepts and thoughts thesignificance of an ideal and spiritual inspirationrdquo The kind of worshipthat ensued was that of the cyborg neither reverent nor memorializ-ing of cosmic law (Haraway 2004 9) Or as Prampolini wrote ldquoOurexperience has convinced us of the truth of certain of our plastic truthsand has allowed us to perceive the errors that lie in othersrdquo (236)

One of the more important pieces of American Dada captured pre-cisely this pointmdashGod (c 1917) designed by Baroness Elsa von Freytag-

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 26

27

Figure 6 Illustration accompanying Enrico Prampolinirsquos ldquoThe Aesthetic of theMachine and Mechanical Introspection in Artrdquo Broom 33 (October 1922) 237

Loringhoven and photographed by Morton Schamberg The invertedcast-iron plumbing trap atop a carpenterrsquos miter box was emblematicof the Melvillean appreciation for technological enchantment Indeedthe pipe is part of an indoor plumbing apparatus a modern conveniencewhose history dates back to some of the earliest feedback technologieson recordmdashthe water-clocks and float-regulators of ancient Greece (Mayr1970 11-26) God resembled the mechanical abstractions Schamberghad been producing before his premature death in 1918 during aninfluenza outbreak in Philadelphia The Baroness a contributor to Broom

and other little magazines had arrived in New York from Germanyin 1913 She was ldquothe first American dadardquo wrote Jane Heap in 1922ldquothe only one living anywhere who dresses dada loves dada lives dadardquo(46) Friends with Marcel Duchamp Djuna Barnes and other NewYork artists the Baroness was a central figure in a burgeoning trans-atlantic avant-garde In addition to her art and poetry the Baronesswas also a ldquoperformancerdquo artist who skillfully inverted gender hierarchiesand attacked through her very presence the traditional sensibilities ofthe middle-class She was notorious for walking around the streets ofGreenwich Village with her shaved head painted purple postage stampspasted to her face and a bird cage around her neck housing a livecanary (Davidson 1996 223-24)

In what must be considered a prescient assault on all manners oflogocentrism the Baroness also carried with her a plaster cast penis thatshe periodically revealed to passersby for maximum shock value (Gammel2002 195) But it was the Barnonessrsquos sculpture God that in addition

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 27

28

Figure 7 God (c 1917) designed by Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven and photographed by Morton Schamberg

to celebrating the mobility and reproducibility of that which was sup-posedly the most fixed and essential repossessed the power of tech-nology as ever imperfect and incomplete As a companion piece of sortsto Duchamprsquos infamous ready-made Fountain an inverted urinal dis-played in the 1917 exhibition of the American Society of IndependentArtists God invited more expressly theological speculation First of allit insisted on supplementing the three traditional symbolic centers ofWestern religious reflectionmdashGod humanity naturemdashwith the machineAnd although it has since been viewed by critics as ldquosacrilegiousrdquo andan instance of ldquoantireligious scatologyrdquo (Naumann 1994 171 Gammel220) the transgressive dimensions to God also affirm a shadowy open-

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 28

29

9 One is reminded here of Melvillersquos letter to Nathaniel Hawthorne in April of1851 ldquoWe incline to think that God cannot explain His own secrets and that Hewould like a little more information upon certain points Himself We mortals aston-ish Him as much as He usrdquo (Melville 1993 186)

ing to radical othernessmdashin the form of imperfection and chancemdashwithin the loops generated by feedback technology

Although the metal pipe ends up pointing toward heaven it firstloops downward in a nod to its human ground Limited by the skillsof the human carpenter on whose box it is anchored the contortedpipe narrativizes both the pitfalls and prospects of the machine ageShit eventually flows up in the case of God not down suggesting thateven the most lofty and noble ideals of the imagination maintain theirhuman aroma Rather than assume the power of divinity classicallyconstrued God staged divinity as nothing more and nothing less thanthat which made life livablemdashthat which kept the smell of human wasteartificially at bay or more ominously managed the flow of thingsthrough feedback control But even more literally God called attentionto the human work in the making of artifice and celebrated the bio-logical possibility for the endless unmaking (and remaking) of selfFeedback technology was not really God but it was for all practicalpurposes Or as the Baroness wrote in a 1927 letter to Peggy GuggenheimGod had much to learn from Henry Ford for he was ldquoclumsily sub-tle-densely-intelligent-inefficiently-immense-(Lord not Fordmdashof course)rdquo9

God the Baroness playfully warned had ldquobetter hotfoot it towardprogressmdashmodernizemdashuse his own omnipotence intelligentlymdashsmart orwersquoll all expire in tangle Well Lord knowsmdash(Does he)rdquo (quoted inGammel 2002 229)

6 Conclusion Deus in machina movet

As Protestant majorities struggled to adjust themselves and their theo-logical inheritance to new technological conditions theologies of themachine age both compelling and disturbing emerged from outsidethe precincts of traditional religious discourse For in addition to beinginspired by the ghost of Herman Melville the Melville Revival wasquite literally haunted by the power of feedback technologiesmdashspectersthat were affective rather than concrete strangely resistant to rationalcontemplation yet recognized through anxious admixtures of thoughtand feeling On one hand the revival reflected the spectrum of Protestant

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 29

30

10 Shortly after the publication of Moby-Dick in November of 1851 reports beganto reach America about the August sinking of the Ann Alexander by a whale in theSouth Pacific It was the first ldquoattack of a whale upon a shiprdquo since the destruc-tion of the Essex in 1820 The story about the Ann Alexander originally appeared inthe Panama Herald on October 16 and was reprinted the following month in New-York Daily Tribune and Littellrsquos Living Age The sperm whale that the Ann Alexander

fears over technological miscegenation The capacity of machines toredraw the boundaries of race and gender disturbed Protestant leadersand revivalists alike On the other hand subversive elements within theMelville Revival offered what must be considered a theological critiqueof how Protestants understood themselves and their God in relation totechnological materials Grant Overton for example saw in Moby-Dick

a deep appreciation for how technological developments had come tounderminemdashquite literally hauntmdashthe epistemological and ontologicalassumptions that made them possible ldquoNo longer able to instance thedeus ex machinardquo wrote Overton Melville was ldquounforgetful that deus inmachina movet and while most of mankind [have] become unable to seethe god for the machine [he] can scarcely perceive the machine forthe god agitating it [His] reports of the machine are somehow unrec-ognizable [his] realism is confronted by Realityrdquo (Overton 1928 231)

Bess Meredythrsquos reimagining of Moby-Dick and Baroness Elsa vonFreytag-Loringhovenrsquos God also explored the otherness that technologyengenders within the modern subject a trace that lingers despite allattempts to extinguish it Their errant readings challenged contempo-raries to reimagine their relationship to technology from an enchantedperspective that did not necessarily conform to the directives of Americanindividualism Resisting the advertisements of both Arminianism andBaconian Common Sense these readings insisted that there was somethingelsemdashsomething wholly othermdashoccurring within the technological workingsof secular modernity Excess or that which unsettled the boundariesbetween body and machine masculine and feminine had resulted inwhat might be called a ldquopost-structure of feelingrdquo The prospect thateither machines or women had begun to think for themselves or atleast possess a kind of agency once attributed to the enlightened malesubject now seemed as likely as a whale vengefully turning against awhaleship10 As Melvillean riffs on the deferred project of religious iden-tity The Sea Beast and God marked the space between human creationand technological determination consent and compulsion and there-fore hinted at the prospect that belief was not an individual state butan embodied activity Consistent with Lewis Mumfordrsquos assessment ofthe symbolic and material powers of feedback technology these works

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 30

31

had first turned upon starboard and larboard boats seizing both in its jaws andcrushing them to pieces It then rushed towards the Ann Alexander ldquoat the rateof fifteen knots In an instant the monster struck the ship with tremendous violence shakingher from stem to sternrdquo (415) Upon reading the article Melville remarked to his pub-lisher ldquothe Whale had almost completely slipped me for the time (amp I was themerrier for it) when Crash comes Moby Dick himself It is really amp truly a sur-prising coincidencemdashto say the least I make no doubt it is Moby Dick himself I wonder if my evil art has raised this monsterrdquo (Melville 1993 209)

11 William Jennings Bryan for example that standard bearer of fundamentalfaith equated faith to a particular kind of technologymdashldquothere is that in each humanliferdquo he wrote ldquothat corresponds to the mainspring of a watchmdashthat which isabsolutely necessary if the life is to be what it should be a real life and not amere existence That necessary thing is a belief in Godrdquo (86) Faith for Bryan wasthat which repeated without difference It was a dependable rational and utterlyrationalizing process It was not however self-regulating It affirmed the ldquorealnessrdquoof the individual believer precisely because it ignored the conditions imposed fromoutside the self But how might faith be viewed in terms of feedback and repro-ducibility rather than repetition a process that does not reaffirm a centered indi-vidual with every tick but adjusts accordingly to external fluctuations

raise numerous questions concerning the ways and means of religionin an age of postmodern complexity and virtual reality

How might a relentless focus on power and the porousness of sub-jectivity change how one views the matter of religion within historyHow might a greater attention to the aesthetic conditions that mediateany and all beliefs challenge the ways in which we distinguish the reli-gious from the secular How might a greater attention to the enchantingpower of material conditions challenge historical and political narrativesof secularization How do technologies and vested interests realize them-selves through the discourses of agency choice and mobility Whatin other words are the conditions of possibility that allow a historicalactor (rather than a Hollywood actor) to make a particular faith com-mitment or for that matter have any faith at all In what languagedo historical actors dream about themselves and divinity and how doesthat language change over time And finally to what degree is faithitself a technology11

By acknowledging the white mythology that still informs say thefield of American religions such questions shift the scholarly emphasisfrom explicit expressions of religious belief and practice to the spacebetween those beliefs and practices and the world at-large Individualswithin American religious history for example have often been depictedas fully formed agents making choices between various faith commitmentsand ever combining religious idioms to suit their specific needs and cir-cumstances (Albanese 1997) No doubt this is true But there is anotherside to this story of radical religious pluralism one that if accounted

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 31

32

12 Such a possibility is very much at odds with the Geertzian model of ldquothickdescriptionrdquo and its formidable legacy in the humanities and social sciences Withoutquestioning the degree to which the self can ever become entirely legible to theself Geertz claimed that every society and individual life and by extension everybelief and every practice ldquocontain their own interpretations One has only to learnhow to gain access to themrdquo (Geertz 1973 453)

13 The ambiguities of agency during the ldquomachine agerdquo have been the subjectof a number of elegant critical studies See for example Anson Rabinbach TheHuman Motor Energy Fatigue and the Origins of Modernity (New York Basic Books1990) Mark Seltzer Bodies and Machines (New York Routledge 1992) MarthaBanta Taylorized Lives Narrative Productions in the Age of Taylor Veblen and Ford (ChicagoUniversity of Chicago Press 1993) Carolyn Thomas de la Pentildea The Body ElectricHow Strange Machines Built the Modern American (New York New York UniversityPress 2003) and Joel Dinerstein The Swinging Machine Modernity Technology andAfrican American Culture Between the World Wars (Amherst University of MassachusettsPress 2003) Dinersteinrsquos work is particularly relevant to the issue of religious com-binativeness given his emphasis on how African American artists strove to refigureldquomachine aestheticsrdquo in and through their artistry Dinersteinrsquos work suggests thatthe self is locatedmdashie the self happensmdashsomewhere between resistance and assim-ilation between choice and coercionmdasha lesson that many Anglo-Americans werenot willing to consider in their triumphal theorizing about the human in relationto the machine The possibility for consideration argues Dinerstein existed inAfrican American jazz swing and dance

for suggests new directions for the study of religion in America Althoughthe ldquolived religionrdquo perspective in American religious history has donemuch to overcome the distinction between ldquodabblersrdquo and ldquotrue believersrdquothe question of power still lingers (Ahlstrom 1972 1052) Religiousbeliefs and practices are neither essential things nor reveal themselvesto the scholar in toto12 Such a position does not replicate the eitherordiscussion regarding the agency of historical actors On the contraryit suggests that religious agency is a hybrid weave of intent and instinctimmediate response and mediated principle knowing and unknowing13

Accounting for the ambiguities of agency has already pushed scholarsof religion toward an anthropology of the secular and an explorationof in the Foucauldian phrasing of Talal Asad ldquothe contingencies thathave come together to give us our certaintiesrdquo (2003 16)

It is with a hint of irony then that one may return to the promotionalpamphlet of The Sea Beast that celebrates the ldquoconquestrdquo of Ahab andthe invisible wafting presence of screenwriter Bess Meredyth ldquoThereis no woman writing today who has contributed so much to genuine

screen values as Bess Meredythrdquo Indeed her son John Meredyth Lucasborn in 1919 continued down his motherrsquos unsettling path as a successfultelevision screenwriter and director His credits included episodes ofldquoStar Trekrdquo ldquoLoganrsquos Runrdquo and that other story of ldquohundred percentrdquoAmericanism ldquoThe Six Million Dollar Manrdquo

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 32

33

Figure 8 The Six Million Dollar Man ldquoGentlemen we can rebuild him Wehave the capability of making the worldrsquos first bionic man We can make him

better than he was before Better Stronger Fasterrdquo

Haverford College370 Lancaster AveHaverford PA 19041jlardashaverfordedu

References

Ahlstrom Sydney E (1972) A Religious History of the American People New HavenYale University Press

Albanese Catherine L (1997) Exchanging selves exchanging souls Contact com-bination and American religious history In Thomas A Tweed (ed) RetellingUS Religious History 200-26 Berkeley University of California Press

Anon (1851) A ship sunk by a whale Littellrsquos Living Age (29 November) 415-16Asad Talal (2003) Formations of the Secular Christianity Islam Modernity Stanford

Stanford University Press

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 33

34

Bacon Francis (1870) The Works of Francis Bacon James Spedding Robert LeslieEllis and Douglas Denon Heath (eds) Vol VIII New York Hurd andHoughton

Barton Bruce (2000) The Man Nobody Knows A Discovery of the Real Jesus ChicagoIvan R Dee

Beniger James R (1986) The Control Revolution Technological and Economic Origins ofthe Information Society Cambridge Harvard University Press

Benjamin Walter (1996) One-way street In Marcus Bullock amp Michael W Jennings(eds) Selected Writings Volume 1 1913-1926 444-88 Cambridge HarvardUniversity Press

mdash (2003) The work of art in the age of its technological reproducibility third ver-sion In Howard Eiland and Michael W Jennings (eds) Selected Writings Volume4 1938-40 251-83 Cambridge Harvard University Press

Bennett Charles A (1923) A Philosophical Study of Mysticism An Essay New HavenYale University Press 1923

Bernays Edward L (1923) Crystallizing Public Opinion New York Liverlight PublishingCorporation

Buchman SR (1925) Moby Dickmdashthe book and The Sea Beastmdashthe picture Anappreciation In Herman Melville Moby Dick or The White Whale ix-xi NewYork Grosset amp Dunlap

Butler Judith (1993) Bodies That Matter On the Discursive Limits of lsquoSexrsquo RoutledgeNew York

Cahir Linda Costanzo (1997) Routinizing the charismatic Melville and Hollywoodrsquosthree Moby-Dicks Melville Society Extracts 110 (September) 11-17

Cendrars Blaise (1922) Profound today Broom 13 ( January) 265-67Chadwick Owen (1975) The Secularization of the European Mind in the Nineteenth Century

Cambridge Cambridge University PressCoe George Albert (1917) A Social Theory of Religious Education New York Charles

Scribnerrsquos SonsDavidson Abraham A (1996) The European art invasion In Francis M Naumann

(ed) with Beth Vann Making Mischief Dada Invades New York 222-27 NewYork Whitney Museum of Art

Debord Guy (1995) Society of the Spectacle translated by Donald Nicholson-SmithNew York Zone Books

Derrida Jacques (1994) Specters of Marx The State of the Debt The Work of Mourningand the New International Peggy Kamuf (trans) New York Routledge

Dorsey George A (1925) Why We Behave Like Human Beings New York BlueRibbon Books

Epstein Jean (1922) The new conditions of literary phenomena Broom 21 (April)3-10

Frank Waldo (1919) Our America New York Boni and LiverightGammel Irene (2002) Baroness Elsa Gender Dada and Everyday Modernitymdasha Cultural

Biography Cambridge The MIT PressGeertz Clifford (1973) Deep play Notes on the Balinese cockfight In The Interpretation

of Cultures 412-53 New York Basic BooksHaraway Donna (2004) A manifesto for cyborgs Science technology and socialist

feminism in the 1980s In The Haraway Reader 7-45 New York RoutledgeHeap Jane (1922) Dada Little Review VII2 (Spring) 46Heidegger Martin (1977) The age of the world-picturerdquo In The Question Concerning

Technology and Other Essays 115-54 William Lovitt (trans) New York Harperamp Row

Hoffman Carol Stein (2001) The Barrymores Hollywoodrsquos First Family LexingtonUniversity of Kentucky Press

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 34

35

Jackson Josephine A and Helen M Salisbury (1922) Outwitting Our Nerves A Primerof Psychotherapy New York The Century Co

Jaffe David (1990) The village enlightenment in New England 1760-1820 TheWilliam and Mary Quarterly XLVII3 ( July) 327-46

Jones Rufus M (1915) Mysticism in present-day religion Harvard Theological ReviewVIII2 (April) 155-65

Kippenberg Hans G (2002) Discovering Religious History in the Modern Age BarbaraHarshav (trans) Princeton Princeton University Press

Kobler John (1977) Damned in Paradise The Life of John Barrymore New YorkAtheneum

Kuttner Alfred B (1922) Nerves In Harold E Stearns (ed) Civilization in the UnitedStates An Enquiry by Thirty Americans 427-42 New York Harcourt

Lauter Paul (1994) Melville climbs the canon American Literature 66 (March) 1-24Lawrence DH (1923) Studies in Classic American Literature New York T SeltzerLindbergh Charles A (1927) We New York GP Putnamrsquos SonsLippmann Walter (1922) Public Opinion New York Macmillan CompanyMarchand Roland (1985) Advertising the American Dream Making Way for Modernity

1920-1940 Berkeley University of California PressMarty Martin E Modern American Religion Vol 2 The Noise of Conflict 1919-1941

Chicago University of Chicago Press 1991May Henry F (1976) The Enlightenment in America New York Oxford University

PressMayhew Jonathan (1749) Concerning the difference between truth and falsehood

right and wrong In Seven Sermons 1-21 Boston Rogers and FowleMayr Otto (1970) The Origins of Feedback Control Cambridge The MIT PressMelville Herman (1993) Correspondence Volume 14 of The Writings of Herman Melville

Lynne Horth (ed) Evanston and Chicago Northwestern University Pressmdash (1925) Moby Dick or The White Whale 1851 New York Grosset amp DunlapMindell David A (2002) Between Human and Machine Feedback Control and Computing

Before Cybernetics Baltimore The Johns Hopkins University PressMumford Lewis (1929) Herman Melville New York The Literary Guild of Americamdash (1924) Sticks and Stones A Study of American Architecture and Civilization New York

Dover Publicationsmdash (1934) Technics and Civilization New York Harcourt Brace and Companymdash (1926) The Golden Day A Study in American Literature and Culture New York Boni

and LiverightMurray Jr HA (1929) Review of Lewis Mumfordrsquos Herman Melville The New

England Quarterly 2 ( July) 523-26Naumann Francis M (1994) New York Dada 1915-23 New York Harry N AbramsNoble David F (1999) The Religion of Technology The Divinity of Man and the Spirit

of Invention New York Penguin BooksNye David E (1994) American Technological Sublime Cambridge The MIT PressOrsquoNeil David (1921) The new Broom Broom 11 (November) 96Overton Grant (1928) The Philosophy of Fiction New York D AppletonPalmer Attorney General (1920) The case against the lsquoRedsrsquo The Forum A Magazine

of Constructive Nationalism 632 (February) 173-85Parsons Floyd W (1927) Everybodyrsquos business Advertising amp Selling ( June 29) 5 64Prampolini Enrico (1922) The aesthetic of the machine and mechanical intro-

spection in art Broom 33 (October) 235-37Rauschenbusch Walter (1917) A Theology for the Social Gospel New York The

Macmillan CompanyRichardson George P (1991) Feedback Thought in Social Science and Systems Theory

Philadelphia University of Pennsylvania Press

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 35

7

5 See for example the role feedback technologies have played in the developmentof the information society and ldquocontrol revolutionrdquo (Beniger 1986 344-89) and inthe development of twentieth-century social science (Richardson 1991)

Foucault among othersmdashmy goal inspired by their work is to explorethe religious effects of feedback technology and to enact a case studyof American religious history in terms of those ldquostructures of feelingrdquothat actively questioned more formal and official versions of reality

2 Protestant feedback

In addition to ldquoreek[ing] of religionrdquo 1920rsquos America also reeked oftechnology as principles of feedback and reproducibility emerged ascentral components of modern life Telephone networks engines power-ing automobiles phonographs and movie projectors not to mentionthe production of consumer desire by Public Relations specialistsmdashallmarked a moment in American history when technology became intenselyexpressive and atmospheric5 For in addition to expanding the horizonof human nature technologies were readily capable of copying natureand regulating both nonhuman and human systems They were inother words becoming cybernetic (from the Greek kubernetes meaningsteersman) ldquorecreatingrdquo the world in their own image According toan advertisement for the advertising agency Calkins amp Holden ldquoYourworld is being recreated today by three important influences first thecloseness of science and discovery of commercial manufacturing secondthe shortness of the link between the manufacturer and the consumerand third the amazing speed with which the American public makesup its mind to change its mindrdquo (ldquoYour World Has Changedrdquo 1927 15)Consumption and efficiency each became scientific ie natural exten-sions of the other in the practice of ldquohundred percentrdquo Americanism

As historian David Mindell argues in his history of feedback controltechnology the cybernetic ideas made popular by Norbert Wiener inthe late 1940s and early 1950s were already emergent by the 1920s(2002 6) Feedback technologies defined by their internal capacity toadjust themselves to the future through knowledge of past conditionswere designed by human operators to ldquorespondrdquo to external distur-bances and maintain a secure relationship between two variables (Wiener1954 32-4) Once the human agent sets a control variablemdashthe tem-perature within a room or the velocity of a turntable or projectormdashadjustment to external fluctuationsmdashthe temperature outside the roomor the changing weight of a film reelmdashproceed automatically Feedback

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 7

8

technology is often associated with computers and artificial intelligenceHowever the capacity to transmit information in order to counterentropy and maintain equilibrium within a unified system was presentin oil lamps from ancient Greece waterclocks from the middle agesand temperature regulators from the early modern period (Mayer 197011-52) The invention of the Watts steam engine (1788) and the Corlissengine (1848) the publication of James Clerk Maxwellrsquos ldquoOn Governorsrdquo(1868) the appearance of air-conditioned factories (1902) speed gov-ernors on trucks and tractors (c1910) automated electric substations(1914) and the Sperry gyropilot (1920) had revolutionized the kind ofmaterial and ideological presence machines assumed within human lifemdashno longer a wholly ldquoartificialrdquo other but a ldquonaturalrdquo component of howthings fit together and moved along

By the 1920s the fluidity between humans and machines nature andsecond nature had intensified dramatically Self-regulating devices andautomated factories were becoming so pervasive as to go almost unrec-ognized What bound together a white Protestant majority was theirstruggle to maintain the social perceptual and racial orders throughwhich ldquohundred-percent Americanismrdquo and related principles weredefined From a historical perspective such struggles were ironic Foreven as Protestants forged new public narratives of identity stories theytold themselves in order to be their natural selves were themselvesbecoming part of a feedback loop in which technology played a centralrole

Rather than retreat from technology liberals were inclined to seeldquothe energy of God realizing itself in human liferdquo through those inno-vations Second-generation social gospellers redoubled their progressiveefforts to extend access to economic and spiritual opportunity ldquoTheredemption of societyrdquo did not mean the abolition of the ldquoindustrialsystemrdquo but the lessening of its negative impact (Rauschenbusch 1917110 143) Instead of seriously considering how technological drives andtheir ldquoreality effectsrdquo might undermine projects of economic reform andself-cultivation liberals confidently chose to direct technology in theservice of humanity It was a ldquodemocraticrdquo strategy that required decisiveaction For only through such action could the political and epistemologicalpromises of Enlightenment become a religious reality By acting upononersquos God-given ldquoinstinctrdquo the Kingdom of God could be achievedand maintained on earth (Coe 1917 168 131)

In their revolt against the material incursions and ideological temptationsof modernity Fundamentalists strategically harnessed God somewhat

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 8

9

6 Such irony can be found in Jonathan Edwardsrsquos ldquoSinners in the Hands of anAngry Godrdquo (1741) A rich and contradictory sermon it instructs parishioners torecognize their always already abject relation to God while simultaneously demand-ing that they willingly submit to his will

ironically as guarantor of an organic version of human subjectivity6

The Fundamentalist defense of biblical inerrancy for example confirmedboth the divine autonomy of the text and the human capacity for accu-rate contemplation of it This underlying tension was resolved withinthe Fundamentalist theory of textuality that hewed to the CommonSense dictum that seeing was in fact on par with authentic belief Justas there was a transparent relationship to be had between the self andGod reader and words on the page the promise of transparency wasalso fulfilled in the human act of vision more generally God was thearchitect and engineer of the world He constructed the eyes as wellas the space that made visions of the world even possible As WilliamJennings Bryan wrote in 1922 ldquoI believe that God made the eyes whenHe made manmdashnot only made the eyes but carved out the caverns inthe skull in which they hangrdquo (97-8)

With similar missionary zeal so-called ldquohundred-percentersrdquo went onthe offensive and designated scapegoats for a decline in ldquooriginal-stockProtestant Americardquo The Red Scare of 1919-1920 led by AttorneyGeneral and ldquofighting Quakerrdquo Mitchell Palmer initiated campaigns ofsurveillance and intimidation of Socialist Party members labor leadersvociferous Jews and immigrants and any others deemed politically sub-versive The Johnson Act of 1921 the more restrictive Immigration Actof 1924 as well as the increased visibility of the Ku Klux Klan dur-ing the decade spoke to burgeoning fears over racial miscegenation(Marty 1991 66-79) At stake in these fantasies of whiteness and strate-gies of purification was the notion of the Anglo-self as autonomouspossessive and immune

In popular culture myths of individual expertise proliferated thatreflected both the Protestant desire for authenticity and the limits ofthis desire more generally For even as Americans searched for signsof their essential humanity they often came to understand themselvesin and through technological terms Babe Ruth Henry Ford and thebusiness entrepreneur offered celebrity assurance of an autonomous sub-ject who could withstand the feminizing assaults of modernity by mas-tering technology (Susman 1984 133) Advertising executive BruceBarton (who worked for General Motors when it organized the production

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 9

10

of automobiles around consumer orders feedback from local dealersand demand forecasting) introduced Jesus in his best-selling The Man

Nobody Knows (1925) as a conflation of all three (Beniger 1986 317)According to Barton Jesus deftly swung his carpenter tools created anldquoorganization that conquered the worldrdquo and awakened to the ldquoinnerconsciousnessrdquo of his ldquopowerrdquo Barton pitched Jesus as a ldquomysticrdquo andldquobig manrdquo who had incorporated the technologies of business adver-tising and manufacturing into his own personality and cult thereof (4 10 13 6)

As feedback technologies ldquoneutralizedrdquo economies of origination andclaims to eternal value both Christologies and psychological narrativesof restoration were mechanically inscribed (Benjamin 2003 252) Inthe wake of the popular Personality How To Build It (1916) self-realizationwas consistently equated with an engineering process of control Outwitting

our Nerves (1922) affirmed ldquothe integrity of our physical machinesrdquo aswell as human ldquopower of choicerdquo over those machines It was a ldquofactrdquothat ldquowe ourselves decide which of all the possible emotions we shallchoose or we decide not to press the button for any emotion at allrdquo( Jackson and Salisbury 1922 296 360) In Self-Mastery Through Conscious

Auto-Suggestion (1922) one of the defining books of the twentieth-centurygenre of ldquoself-helprdquo Emile Coueacute introduced Americans to the controlpanel of their inner autopilots In Why We Behave Like Human Beings

(1925) evolutionary anthropologist George A Dorsey defined humansin terms of the ldquokinesthetic senserdquo and their innate capacity to enactfeedback control upon themselves He assured readers that ldquoevery humanindividual normal enough to live beyond the walls of an asylum livesbecause he has an equipment by which he can keep on making adjust-ments to changing conditionsrdquo (302 301) In We (1927) CharlesLindberghrsquos celebrated chronicle of his trans-Atlantic flight his airplaneldquoThe Spirit of St Louisrdquo assumed its own personality and portrait evenas Lindbergh became ldquomechanizedrdquo in the popular press

3 Melville fed back

Concerns over how to secure and maintain a sense of coherent iden-tity in light of a seemingly animated material world also precipitatedthe ldquorevivalrdquo of Melville in the 1920s As in the various Protestantstrategies of adjustment ldquorevivalistsrdquo (predominantly white and male)embraced Melville as providing a script of American identity and self-governance In hopes of defending themselves against the totalizing

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 10

11

Figure 1 Instrument Board of the Spirit of St Louis from We (1927)

directives of technology revivalists read Melville and his works throughthe lens of anti-Puritanism and the newly discovered script of FreudMelvillersquos celebrity increased as Elsie Clews Parson Van Wyck BrooksHL Mencken Waldo Frank and others accused Puritans of possessinga ldquorepressive impulserdquo of denying ldquolife and desirerdquo and of discardingldquomystical consciousnessrdquo in favor of ldquoinstrumentalrdquo reason (Frank 191966 150 68) In Melvillersquos rejection of Puritanismrsquos ldquorepellant materialismrdquohis work assumed a positively transgresssive quality (Tomlinson 1926621) Opposed to the Puritan life of ldquointolerable monotonyrdquo Melvillewas viewed as ldquoa mystic a treasure-seeker a mystery-monger a delverafter hidden things spiritual and materialrdquo (Weaver 1919 145-46)

Raymond M Weaverrsquos Herman Melville Mariner and Mystic (1921) setthe terms of religious evaluation for the early stages of the RevivalWeaver proclaimed that Melville in his ldquoescape from an inexorableand intolerable world of realityrdquo had achieved ldquopsychological synthesisrdquo

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 11

12

Figure 2 ldquoThe ConquerorrdquomdashCharles Lindbergh from Current History July 1927

(Weaver 1921 19 331) The construction of Melville as mystic wasconcurrent with the discursive construction of mysticism by liberalProtestants as ldquoahistorical poetic essential intuitive and universalrdquo(Schmidt 2003 288) Both intellectual constructionsmdashthe latter integralto the academic study of religion in the twentieth centurymdashsought towrest a degree of ldquorealnessrdquo from a world in which ldquothe realrdquo was feltto be increasingly susceptible to technological erasure (Kippenberg 2002175-86) And whereas mystically inclined Protestants denounced ldquosec-ular activitiesrdquo by calling for the liberation and unity of ldquothe deep-lyingpowers of the inward self into one conscious liferdquo under God revival-ists called on Melville to provide them with an experiential map of thatwhich was utterly and mysteriously human (Bennett 1923 6 Jones1915 156 161) As Henry A Murray flatly announced ldquoMelville dis-covered the Unconscious and commenced to explore itrdquo (1929 526)As a model for authenticity and self-governance Melville was both ana-lyst and analysandmdashldquoa gentleman adventurer in the barbarous outposts

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 12

13

of human experiencerdquo not a ldquostaged dip into studio savageryrdquo Melvillehad penetrated the depths of his own psyche no doubt aided by hisstay among South Sea islanders (detailed in his first two novels Typee

(1846) and Omoo (1847) Indeed the authenticity of Melvillersquos mysticconsciousness was dependent upon his ldquountamed desires in violentconflict with his physical and spiritual environmentrdquo (Weaver 1921 1519 21 24-29)

As opposed to Weaverrsquos vicarious nostalgia for a simpler less com-mercial and more fully ldquorealrdquo existence another Melville biographerLewis Mumford understood the complex simulations of a consumer-driven economy as already emergent during Melvillersquos writerly careerMixing cultural criticism history and theological speculation Mumfordwas a keen observer of the technological revolutions in feedback controlIn his most memorable and encyclopedic work Technics and Civilization

(1934) Mumford claimed that in the seventeenth-century ldquomechanicsrdquohad become ldquothe new religion and [they] gave to the world a new Messiahthe machinerdquo In dramatizing the extent to which technology had shapedand continued to shape human consciousness Mumford explored inexacting and illustrated detail the history and material conditions thatwere allowing ldquotools and utensilsrdquo to assume ldquoan independent existencerdquo

This ldquoneotechnic phaserdquo had begun in the early part of the nineteenthcentury and was marked by efficiency flexibility ldquocomplete automatismrdquoand synthetic materialsmdasha ldquomutationrdquo that was rapidly integrating ldquothemachine and the world of liferdquo (45 321 227 212 254)

Such integration was not without its dangers ldquoWith the invention ofthe telegraphrdquo the ldquowireless telephonerdquo and the ldquotelevisionrdquo wroteMumford humans ldquobegan to bridge the gap in time between communi-cation and responserdquo The sympathetic relations between family memberscould now be replicated on an unprecedented scale through telepathictechnologiesmdashgiving rise to ldquo[immense] possibilities for good and evilrdquoThe building of a personality was no longer a ldquolocalrdquo affair On the con-trary when ldquomass-reactionsrdquo were ldquomobilized and hastenedrdquo the needsand interests of the human became those of the machine As Mumfordsuggested technology was becoming a ldquocreative force carried on by itsown momentumrdquo and ldquoproducing a third estate midway between natureand the humane artsrdquo The drive to overcome distancemdashbetween indi-viduals as well as between self and worldmdashhad itself ldquocreated an inde-pendent environment that has reacted upon every other side of the personalityrdquo (239241 322 324)

According to Mumford such technological interference had been ofintense and abiding concern for Melville (1934 213) In Herman Melville

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 13

14

Figure 3 Neotechnic Automatism from Technics and Civilization (1934)

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 14

15

7 Public relations and advances in advertising were the latest instances of the ldquocontrol revolutionrdquo in which technology of interchangeability so integral to theAmerican System of manufacturing had extended its field of operations under theauspices of consumer capitalism Machines were not simply making parts for othermachines but were integral to the form and content of social reproduction Publicrelations was a particular (and less reliable) version of feedback control Instead ofmaintaining a fixed variable on the inside by responding to fluctuations on the out-side ldquocounselorsrdquo stoked the flames of consumer desire in order to justify an accel-erating rate of production and ideally consumption

(1929) Mumford had chided fellow revivalists for exaggerating Melvillersquosretreat into mystical idealism ldquoMelville was a realistrdquo countered Mumfordldquoin the sense that the great religious teachers are realistsrdquo FurthermoreMelville had witnessed the ldquovolcanic intrusionrdquo of ldquoindustrialism [as] avalue in itself rdquo (1929 5 64-65) But things had gotten much more com-plicated since the mid-nineteenth century Whereas Melville had beheldldquothe servile routine of the factory systemrdquo Mumford was now witness-ing the birth of ldquothe machine system the network of relationshipsthat have followed the financial exploitation of machineryrdquo The differencein other words was the full-scale emergence of self-governing tech-nologiesmdashldquohandicraft devoted to mechanical reproduction and machinerythat is set to reproduce endless simulacrardquo For Mumford this ldquomachineritualrdquo this ldquoendlessrdquo loop of ldquomechanical reproductionrdquo threatened toefface ldquothe human arts of seeing feeling and livingrdquo (1924 67-68 10174-75 105 81) Technology in other words had achieved the capacityfor feedback on two different but related levels first in material devicesthat could copy both nature and themselves and secondly in humansthat governed themselves according to the latest control variables setby the machine As Mumford argued the totalizing power of feedbacktechnologies resulted not simply from designs motors or even materialoutputs but through their economically driven expansion of ldquothe verydomain of the symbol itself rdquo (1934 331)

Mumfordrsquos insights take on more ominous implications when oneconsiders the rise of the American public relations industry during thisperiod7 Public relations consultants such as Edward Bernays and adver-tisers like Bruce Barton actively sought to shape and change the beliefsof individuals in the service of larger economic agendas It was no acci-dent Bernays wrote in 1923 that a ldquoman belongs to one church ratherthan another or to any church at allrdquo It was no accident that ldquoBostonwomen prefer brown eggs and New York women white eggsrdquo Becausethe judgments of individuals were not arrived at through ldquoresearch andlogical deductionrdquo but were ldquodogmatic expressions accepted on theauthority of his parents his teachers his church and of his social his

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 15

16

economic and other leadersrdquo a ldquopublic relations counselrdquo must do thework of reauthorization (Bernays 1923 62) Through the strategic ldquosat-urationrdquo of images text and work-place incentives an entire profes-sional class sought to provide the terms for and effectively monitor theconditions of self-realization (Marchand 1985 94-95)

What then did Melville have to offer those living within ldquothe machinesystemrdquo of the 1920s Mumford and other revivalists championed Moby-

Dick as a blueprint for living within an increasingly mechanical rou-tinized and bureaucratic world They also heaped admiration uponCaptain Ahab an odd choice given the outcome of Moby-Dick Contraryto those who would later read Ahabrsquos technologically enhanced dem-agoguery against the political backdrops of Italian Fascism and NationalSocialism Ahabrsquos madness in the 1920s could be considered ldquoactiveand courageousrdquo as well as a sign of ldquogeniusrdquomdashldquothe very pinnacle ofhuman self-assertionrdquo (Watson 1970 136 Sullivan 1970 163) Suchreadings conflated the white whale with the power of technology andhad Ahab defiantly affirm the principle of free-will and defend theboundary between human and material worlds Mumford for examplewrote of Ahab as the ldquospirit of manrdquo who stood in opposition to ldquothebrute energies of existence blind fatal overpoweringrdquo Ahab was self-directive ldquopurposiverdquo and he pitted his ldquopuniness against this mightand [his] purpose against the blank senselessness of powerrdquo So eventhough Ahabrsquos ldquomethods are ill-chosenrdquo wrote Mumford his ldquodefianceis noblerdquo (Mumford 1929 184-86)

4 People who portray themselves or Ahab on Ahab

Film projectors in addition to utilizing concepts of feedback internallywere often seen as generative of external feedback loops between humansand machines nature and artifice Such loops arguably constituted theldquosociety of the spectaclerdquo Guy Debordrsquos term for the image-saturatedenvironment that arose in the 1920s with the confluence of sound filmtelevision and the perfection of propaganda techniques As one of themore grim assessments of an image-based postmodernity Debord definedthe ldquospectaclerdquo in terms of negative feedback ldquoIt is the omnipresentcelebration of a choice already made in the sphere of production andthe consummate result of that choice In form as in content the spectacleserves as total justification for the conditions and aims of the existingsystem It further ensures the permanent presence of that justification forit governs almost all time spent outside the production process itself rdquo

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 16

17

8 Cahir (1997) has made a similar point Although I agree with her assessmentthat The Sea Beast is about Ahabrsquos ldquoreal pursuit of identityrdquo I take issue with herargument that The Sea Beast validates autonomous autotelic forms of masculine identity

(13) In America Debordian paranoia was rampant as Victorian fearsover the exploitation of pleasure were morphing into general anxietiesconcerning voyeurism and cinematic determinism ldquoThe spectacle ofmechanical progress has made so deep an impressionrdquo argued WalterLippmann in 1922 ldquothat it has suffused the whole moral coderdquo Whatdisturbed Lippmann and other public figures was the specter of circularcausality and the quiet ldquoinsertion between man and his environmentof a pseudo-environmentrdquo composed mainly of images (Lippmann 1922108 15) Unbeknownst to them Americans were in danger of becom-ing automated by images and trapped within what Debord would latercall ldquoan uninterrupted monologue of self-praiserdquo (19) Their perpetualaffirmation of self however was wholly cybernetic given the fact thatthey were oblivious to the fact that ldquoon the screen the whole processof observing describing reporting and then imagining has been accom-plished for yourdquo (92)

In a strange twist that Melville might have enjoyed the most com-pelling representation of Moby-Dick and portrayal of Captain Ahab mayhave occurred via the technology of the moving picture8 The 1926silent film The Sea Beast adapted to the screen by Bess Meredyth andstarring John Barrymore as Captain Ahab dramatized the feedbackdimensions of film and its capacity to regulate the human personalityThe Sea Beast I argue challenged more able-bodied academic inter-pretations by reveling in its status as a technological reproduction The

Sea Beast with its odd juxtapositions visceral jump cuts and perverseattention to Ahabrsquos stump and artificial limb rather than affirm thedesire for self-transparency suggested that the equipment-free reality ofthe self was quite literally an enabling fiction What Americans lackedaccording to Meredythrsquos scenario was the tragic recognition of them-selves as always regulated and already enhanced by technology Takingldquopleasure in the confusion of boundariesrdquo and ldquoresponsibility in their con-structionrdquo The Sea Beast in the borrowed words of Donna Harawaymade ldquoan argument for the cyborg as a fiction mapping our social andbodily reality and as an imaginative resource suggesting some very fruit-ful couplingsrdquo (8)

In 1925 at age forty-three John Barrymore was one of Hollywoodrsquosmost bankable actors (part of the ldquostar-systemrdquo promoted by Edward

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 17

18

Bernays who clearly saw the potential for cross-marketing between enter-tainment business and political campaigns) Barrymore easily convincedWarner Brothers to turn Moby-Dick one of his favorite novels into amovie and to cast him in the role of Captain Ahab Having playedHamlet in the 1922-23 Broadway season Barrymore developed a keeninterest in psychoanalysis and Freudrsquos account of Hamlet in Interpretationof Dreams (1900) The role of Captain Ahab like that of Hamlet allowedBarrymore to reach a larger audience with his newly emotive actingstyle As Captain Ahab he could also remind his audience of his depthand manly credentials He was tired in his words of playing ldquoscentedbepuffed bewigged and ringletted charactersrdquo (quoted in Kobler 1977213) Promotional pamphlets for The Sea Beast seemed to reinforceBarrymorersquos gendered strategy featuring a picture of Barrymore in abusiness suit puffing contemplatively on a pipemdashldquoJohn Barrymore ismore than a name more than a personality he is world institutionrdquo(Hoffman 2001 73)

The opening credits to The Sea Beast begin imprecisely with a close-up of the filmrsquos textual referent Moby Dick or the White Whale Thissimulated text begins not with ldquoExtractsrdquo or even ldquoCall me Ishmaelrdquobut with the following words ldquoThere never was nor ever will be abraver life than the life of the whaler Compared to the game theyhunted the mightiest land beast was but a poodle dogrdquo Adapted tothe screen by Bess Meredyth former actress turned writer The Sea Beast

is noteworthy as one of the earliest if not the first public appropriationsof Melvillersquos novel by a woman By 1926 Meredyth had become aHollywood regular having written the scenarios or continuities for Ben

Hur (1925) Don Juan (1926) and at least 70 other films ldquoThere is nowoman writing todayrdquo read the promotional copy of The Sea Beastldquowho has contributed so much to genuine screen values as Bess Meredythrdquo(Hoffman 2001 74) The ldquogenuinerdquo sense Meredyth made of Melvillersquosepic is significant in its relentless focus on the self as a technologicalconstruct In Meredythrsquos scenario one literally glimpses the spirit ofMelvillersquos rejection of the contemplative insular and hyper-masculinizedself of mid-nineteenth-century religion and science In its plot and per-verse attention to Ahabrsquos stump The Sea Beast suggests that nothing willor even can make up for the loss Ahab suffers

After the opening credits the audience is introduced to a healthyCaptain Ahab atop the masthead He looks out over the sea and downon his crew hard at work his feet tapping to the beat of the sea shantyldquoHanging Johnnyrdquo Nostalgia and the logic of substitution are bothbroached in the opening scenesmdashnot in terms of idealism but in ways

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 18

19

that hint at their subsequent negation As Ahab reads a letter from hisbeloved Esther Harper the daughter of a Christian missionary playedby the nineteen year-old Dolores Costello Ahab looks longingly at hername tattooed on his arm His mind drifts back to their last embraceFollowing a long close-up of his legs Ahab descends from the mastheadthe camera sliding down the rope in real time and from Ahabrsquos pointof view his legs leading the way The experience of vertigo engenderedby the shot suggests that Ahabrsquos identity is already unstable alreadymarked by a palpable lack of ground This shot however is quicklyoffset by numerous scenes that depict the fullness of Ahabrsquos vigor par-ticularly in relation to his healthy pair of legs He jumps he hops heruns around

When Ahabrsquos ship docks in the bay of Mauritius the audience isintroduced to Esther as well as to Derek Ahabrsquos scheming half-brotherIt is here that one is reminded of the words from the 1925 promotionalpublication of Moby-Dick accompanied by scenes from The Sea Beastldquothe screen version of lsquoMoby Dickrsquo exceeds the book The discrepancybetween the two must not be considered as a profanely wanton alterationrdquoTo portray the ldquopsychological studyrdquo of Captain Ahab ldquothe camerahas resorted to means of its own A mental state therefore particularlyan involved condition of mind must be expressed by means of the inci-dents which produced it each tortuous thought composing Ahabrsquos madness must be traced to the event which engendered itrdquo (Buchman1925 x) The most obvious incident being the loss of Ahabrsquos leg butthe film compounds this felt sense of loss by turning Melvillersquos tale intoa misbegotten love triangle between Ahab Derek and Esther the appleof both their eyes

On shore Ahab and Esther declare their love to each other Butafter a few days Ahab sails from Mauritius and scans the shore withhis telescope He spies Estherrsquos window She comes to the window andreturns Ahabrsquos gaze through her own telescope Technology has literallybecome the lens through which they see each other through whicheach declares their commitment They wave and blow kisses until theyare both out of range At sea Ahab is betrayed by Derek who unbe-knownst to Ahab pushes him overboard into the waiting jaws of MobyDick After losing his leg Ahab is distraught Derek then taunts Ahaband suggests that his symbolic castration is too much for any relation-ship to bear As Derek reminds him ldquoEsther was always crazy aboutyour beinrsquo so strong and perfectrdquo Having been fitted with his ivorystump Ahab arrives back at Mauritius Derek then shames Ahab evenfurther by telling him that he and Esther are in love and that Esther

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 19

20

cannot bring herself to tell Ahab of the deceit Derek then goes toEsther to convince her that Ahab has abandoned her When Ahabarrives at Estherrsquos house to confirm Derekrsquos story he sees their shadowscast by the light of spermaceti candles and mistakenly believes thatEsther has indeed left him for Derek It is here that Ahab descendsinto his infamous monomania

Ahab goes onto slay Moby Dick but not before uncovering his half-brotherrsquos double betrayal In a dramatic confrontation Derek pulls aknife on Ahab and is about to get the best of our hero But wait Ahabwedges his ivory stump into the deck leveraging himself in order tofend off Derek Ahab then casts Derek overboard and into the sea Anivory technology marking the absence of Ahabrsquos leg has been trans-formed into a salvific presence Or so it seems when the audience istreated to the restoration of order upon the Pequodrsquos return to portand Ahabrsquos reunion with Esther consummated in their tearful embraceHaving staged and seemingly resolved the crisis of masculine identity(the raison drsquoecirctre of melodrama being that the resolution is alreadypresent in the staging) The Sea Beast on the contrary did anything butrestore the full presence of Ahabrsquos self It suggested through both contentand form that the reality of the self whether it be Ahab or the spec-tator in the theater was neither fully resolvable nor equipment-free

Ahab achieves a kind of liberation on screen by recognizing that heis always already a figment of an imagination that is not his own Afterthe tearful reunion between Ahab and Esther the screen goes blackThe audience is then given a glimpse behind the scenes as it weremdasha scene of the director Millard Webb in his chair issuing directionsto Ahab and Esther in Estherrsquos living room A man in a business suitplays the violin in the background As Ahab and Esther look longinglyinto each otherrsquos eyes Ahab slips a ring onto Estherrsquos finger and theyembrace once again Or is it Barrymore and Costello It is unclearparticularly in light of the rumors of an off screen tryst between themiddle-aged Barrymore and his nineteen-year old costar (they wouldlater marry) The loving embrace is seemingly real an ambiguityreaffirmed by the fact that after Webb yells ldquocutrdquo he has to step betweenthe couple and remind them that they are on film Webb then turnsto the camera and smiles as the screen abruptly cuts to black onceagain

The odd ending of The Sea Beast suggests that Ahabrsquos journey towardreconciliation did not end with self-exposure but that it could neverreally begin Rather than achieve restoration of nature in and througha cultural construction Ahabrsquos artificial leg points to a previously

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 20

21

Figure 4 Final Embrace between AhabBarrymore and EstherCostello

ldquoexcluded and illegible domain that haunts the former domain as thespecter of its own impossibility the very limit of intelligibility its con-stitutive outsiderdquo (Butler 1993 xi) The ending harkens back to the seashanty ldquoHanging Johnnyrdquo Ahabrsquos introductory descent from the mast-head and his telescopic flirtation with Esther both vertiginous slidesinto the unfathomable layers of mediated perception that signal theldquoexecutionrdquo of possessive individualism Rather than erase the sign ofAhabrsquos traumamdashhis ivory legmdashthe ending of The Sea Beast suggests thatAhab and Barrymore are two sides of the same character vacillatingwithin the loop of continuous performativity One is reminded here ofWalter Benjaminrsquos insight into the traumatized subject in the age oftechnological reproducibility As Benjamin argues the trauma can beunderstood as a shift from the stage to the screen in which the actorperforms for a ldquopiece of equipmentrdquo rather than for an audience Citingthe Italian playwright Luigi Pirandello Benjamin suggests that the mod-ern subject is

exiled not only from the stage but from his own person With a vagueunease he senses an inexplicable void stemming from the fact that hisbody has lost its substance that he has been volatilized stripped of his

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 21

22

reality his life his voice the noises he makes when moving about andhas been turned into a mute image that flickers for a moment on thescreen then vanishes into silence (2003 260)

Pirandellorsquos borrowed words speak directly to Meredythrsquos reconfigurationof Melvillersquos text Whereas Melvillersquos Ahab tried and failed to conquerthe very source of visual illuminationmdashthe spermaceti oil that allowedantebellum Americans to see in the darkmdashBarrymorersquos Ahab revels inthe technologically enhanced gaze of his audience When the lightscome up the selves of Ahab Barrymore and the audience have beenre-narrativized as cybernetic that is as permanently divided and fun-damentally transient In affirming the really real offscreen relationshipbetween Barrymore and Costello the uncanny ending of The Sea Beast

supported a notion of selfhood as always already mediated or betteryet the necessity of experience to be mediated in order for it to becomereal or maybe even the necessity of acknowledging that the reality ofthe self is really made up

Barrymorersquos self-conscious performance inspired by his reading ofFreud and designed to overcome middle-class mores did not so muchpenetrate the inner depths of his character as it did the emotional lifeand perceptual apparatus of his audience The Sea Beast does not dram-atize the individual conquest of nature as much as it dramatizes visualtechnologyrsquos seduction of the individual The Sea Beast in its staging ofa cybernetic reality denied the very concept of 100 Americanism byinterrupting the narrative closure on which self-presence dependedNeither Ahab nor Barrymore nor the audience are ever alone even intheir solitude They are haunted not simply by the unconscious butby the specters generated in and through technologies of reproduction(Derrida 1994 97) They are in Benjaminrsquos apt phrase ldquopeople whoportray themselvesrdquo (Benjamin 2003 262)

For Benjamin photography and cinema were technologies of religiousrevelation for better or for worse in that they both exposed variousfeedback loops that constituted onersquos identity On one level Benjaminargued that the category of originality had been challenged by visualtechnologies that put copies ldquoof the original in situations which theoriginal itself cannot attainrdquo (2003 254) On another level the decayof the ldquoaurardquo of authenticity and the blurring of original and reproductionenabled individuals to recognize the fact that they were implicated inthe perceptual field and no longer insulated from what they saw orheard ldquoReception in distractionrdquo wrote Benjamin ldquowhich is increas-ing noticeably in all areas of art and is a symptom of profound changesin apperceptionmdashfinds in film its true training groundrdquo (269) Influenced

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 22

23

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethersquos notion of ldquoafter-imagesrdquo in Theory

of Colours (the same text that informed Melvillersquos ldquoThe Whiteness of theWhalerdquo) Benjamin announced the birth of the ldquooptical unconsciousrdquo(266) According to Benjamin images had become the currency of con-sciousness structuring thought and determining the range of possibleactions Mechanical means of reproduction had liberated the perceptualcapacities of humanity They had also ushered in the prospect of massdeception and control Either way they had resulted in a ldquomassiveupheaval in the domain of objectsrdquo and a ldquoshattering of traditionrdquo (254)

5 American Dada and the aporias of modernity

Within the Melville Revivalmdashan almost clicheacuted instance of Modernismrsquosvogue for the solitary geniusmdashseeds of post-Cartesian doubt were beingsown and the enchanting dimensions of technology considered BecauseMelville ldquowas spell-bound by the strange slidings and collidings ofMatterrdquo his work in the eyes of more atheological critics exposed theenchanting conditions of the machine age (Taylor 1984) ldquoIt is the mate-rial elements he really has to do withrdquo wrote DH Lawrence in 1923ldquoHis drama is with them He was a futurist long before futurism foundpaintrdquo (216) For Lewis Mumford too Melville had not simply dram-atized the incursion of machinesmdasha traditional Romantic tropemdashbuthad embraced a series of insoluble contradictions He has come to rec-ognize those parts of the world and himself that had already been pro-duced by machines and had insisted that the plasticity of self wassomething with which Americans had to struggle and to their spiritualdetriment repress

In broaching the aporias of modernity Mumford saw Melville as hav-ing already given the lie to Weberian diagnoses of disenchantment Thecapacity to effectively turn night into day Mumford suggested the expe-rience of a subway car rumbling past the solid structures of a sky-scraper vanishing into the air the peering into a microscope and theobservation of a ldquorow of bottles each of identical size shape colorstretching away for a quarter of a milerdquo were enough to induce a particular kind of vertigo ldquoThe special visual effect of repeating pat-tern[s]rdquo occurred simultaneously with the experience ldquoof the unique andthe non-repeatablerdquo (Mumford 1934 333-34) The experience of intensesystematicitymdashprecisely what feedback technologies were designed toinducemdashcould be positively disorienting when the infinitely calculableassumed the ldquospecial qualityrdquo of the ldquoincalculablerdquo (Heidegger 1977

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 23

24

135) According to Mumford when technology no longer made imperfectcopies of nature but perfect copies of itself the very notion of ldquonaturalrdquocould become radically suspect With the ldquoliquidationrdquo of the solid book-ends of authenticity and artifice came the prospect that the spectrumitself was socially constructed for better or for worse (Benjamin 2003255) Having torn aside the veil ldquoman has thrown between his ownexperience and the blank reality of the universerdquo Melville neither suc-cumbed to the temptation of nihilism nor retreated into his own pri-vate morality On the contrary he urged his contemporaries to ownup to the constructedness of any and all cultural forms and expressionsand the faith commitments that undergirded them As Mumford wroteldquoto appreciate the reality of the White Whale is to see more deeplyinto the expedience of all our immediate institutions all the spiritualshelters man puts between himself and the uncertain cosmic weatherMeaning significance attends only that little part of the universe manhas built up and settledrdquo (Mumford 1926 150-51)

Whereas Mumford assessed the religious dimensions of technologicalldquoprogressrdquo in a tragic key others tended toward the comic as was thecase with a group of experimental artists associated with Broom An

International Magazine of the Arts Published by Americans in Italy publishedbetween 1921 and 1924 (Tashjian 1975 116-34) Broomrsquos co-editor thepoet Alfred Kreyemborg (who would later co-edit The American Caravan

with Lewis Mumford) had adapted a passage from Moby-Dick for itstitle logo and statement of purpose which appeared on the back coverldquoWhat of itrdquo asks Ishmael

if some old hunks of a seacaptain orders me to get a broom and sweepdown the decks What does that indignity amount to weighed I meanin the scales of the New Testament Do you think the Archangel Gabrielthinks any less of me because I promptly and respectfully obey that oldhunks that particular instance Who ainrsquot a slave (Melville 1925 4)

The first issue of Broom included poems addressing Albert Einsteinrsquostheory of relativity as well as Emmy Veronica Sanders declaration thatldquothe American Machinerdquo was ldquotransforming itself with all its attributesand characteristics into American Mindrdquo ldquoAmericardquo she continuedinitially ldquomade of the Puritan by the Puritan for the Puritanrdquo wasnow being ldquoremade of the Machine by the Machine for the Machinerdquo(89-90) Following Sandersrsquos piece was a David OrsquoNeilrsquos hymn of sup-plication to the new Gods of the machine

When you are sweeping usWith Your cosmic broom

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 24

25

Figure 5 Nature and Second Nature in Technics and Civilization (1934)

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 25

26

Sweeping us out of mouldy rutsSweeping us clean and sweetmdash

RememberWhen wersquore quiveringmdashSensitivemdashbaremdashWe shall be gratefulFor just a few shadows (96)

Broom took Ishmaelrsquos retort quite seriously addressing the revolutionarydimensions of technological artifice and the shadows cast within therealm of technological illumination

Unlike Futurism Broom did not celebrate the beauty of war It didhowever come to express the ldquodreamed-of metallization of the humanbodyrdquo and the playful cybernetic fantasies of Dadaists such as ManRay and Francis Picabia (quoted in Benjamin 2003 269) After someinitial hesitation Broom began to embrace Dadarsquos perspective on the lib-eratory dimensions of the human-machine interface ldquoEverything isartificialrdquo gasped Broom contributor Blaise Cendrars ldquoThe eyes thehand the sexual frenzy of the factory The wheel which turns Thewing which flies The voice which travels far on a wire Your ear ina trumpet Your sense of direction Your rhythm You melt the worldin the mould of your skull Your brain is hollow Like a religion amysterious pill hastens your digestionrdquo (265) Jean Epstein from a slightdifferent angle argued that technology had ldquobecome part of ourselvesrdquoand had democratized human perceptionmdashldquoman has not one memoryof [the] landscape he [now] has a thousand different ones which mayor may not resemble each other Everything possesses hundreds ofapparent diameters which never superimpose exactlyrdquo (6-7)

Broom was soon translating less inflammatory Futurist manifestos suchas Enrico Prampolinirsquos ldquoThe Aesthetic of the Machine and MechanicalIntrospection in Artrdquo in which he declared ldquoIs not the machine todaythe most exuberant symbol of the mystery of human creation Is it notthe new mythical deity which weaves the legends and histories of thecontemporary human drama The Machine in its practical and materialfunction comes to have today in human concepts and thoughts thesignificance of an ideal and spiritual inspirationrdquo The kind of worshipthat ensued was that of the cyborg neither reverent nor memorializ-ing of cosmic law (Haraway 2004 9) Or as Prampolini wrote ldquoOurexperience has convinced us of the truth of certain of our plastic truthsand has allowed us to perceive the errors that lie in othersrdquo (236)

One of the more important pieces of American Dada captured pre-cisely this pointmdashGod (c 1917) designed by Baroness Elsa von Freytag-

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 26

27

Figure 6 Illustration accompanying Enrico Prampolinirsquos ldquoThe Aesthetic of theMachine and Mechanical Introspection in Artrdquo Broom 33 (October 1922) 237

Loringhoven and photographed by Morton Schamberg The invertedcast-iron plumbing trap atop a carpenterrsquos miter box was emblematicof the Melvillean appreciation for technological enchantment Indeedthe pipe is part of an indoor plumbing apparatus a modern conveniencewhose history dates back to some of the earliest feedback technologieson recordmdashthe water-clocks and float-regulators of ancient Greece (Mayr1970 11-26) God resembled the mechanical abstractions Schamberghad been producing before his premature death in 1918 during aninfluenza outbreak in Philadelphia The Baroness a contributor to Broom

and other little magazines had arrived in New York from Germanyin 1913 She was ldquothe first American dadardquo wrote Jane Heap in 1922ldquothe only one living anywhere who dresses dada loves dada lives dadardquo(46) Friends with Marcel Duchamp Djuna Barnes and other NewYork artists the Baroness was a central figure in a burgeoning trans-atlantic avant-garde In addition to her art and poetry the Baronesswas also a ldquoperformancerdquo artist who skillfully inverted gender hierarchiesand attacked through her very presence the traditional sensibilities ofthe middle-class She was notorious for walking around the streets ofGreenwich Village with her shaved head painted purple postage stampspasted to her face and a bird cage around her neck housing a livecanary (Davidson 1996 223-24)

In what must be considered a prescient assault on all manners oflogocentrism the Baroness also carried with her a plaster cast penis thatshe periodically revealed to passersby for maximum shock value (Gammel2002 195) But it was the Barnonessrsquos sculpture God that in addition

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 27

28

Figure 7 God (c 1917) designed by Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven and photographed by Morton Schamberg

to celebrating the mobility and reproducibility of that which was sup-posedly the most fixed and essential repossessed the power of tech-nology as ever imperfect and incomplete As a companion piece of sortsto Duchamprsquos infamous ready-made Fountain an inverted urinal dis-played in the 1917 exhibition of the American Society of IndependentArtists God invited more expressly theological speculation First of allit insisted on supplementing the three traditional symbolic centers ofWestern religious reflectionmdashGod humanity naturemdashwith the machineAnd although it has since been viewed by critics as ldquosacrilegiousrdquo andan instance of ldquoantireligious scatologyrdquo (Naumann 1994 171 Gammel220) the transgressive dimensions to God also affirm a shadowy open-

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 28

29

9 One is reminded here of Melvillersquos letter to Nathaniel Hawthorne in April of1851 ldquoWe incline to think that God cannot explain His own secrets and that Hewould like a little more information upon certain points Himself We mortals aston-ish Him as much as He usrdquo (Melville 1993 186)

ing to radical othernessmdashin the form of imperfection and chancemdashwithin the loops generated by feedback technology

Although the metal pipe ends up pointing toward heaven it firstloops downward in a nod to its human ground Limited by the skillsof the human carpenter on whose box it is anchored the contortedpipe narrativizes both the pitfalls and prospects of the machine ageShit eventually flows up in the case of God not down suggesting thateven the most lofty and noble ideals of the imagination maintain theirhuman aroma Rather than assume the power of divinity classicallyconstrued God staged divinity as nothing more and nothing less thanthat which made life livablemdashthat which kept the smell of human wasteartificially at bay or more ominously managed the flow of thingsthrough feedback control But even more literally God called attentionto the human work in the making of artifice and celebrated the bio-logical possibility for the endless unmaking (and remaking) of selfFeedback technology was not really God but it was for all practicalpurposes Or as the Baroness wrote in a 1927 letter to Peggy GuggenheimGod had much to learn from Henry Ford for he was ldquoclumsily sub-tle-densely-intelligent-inefficiently-immense-(Lord not Fordmdashof course)rdquo9

God the Baroness playfully warned had ldquobetter hotfoot it towardprogressmdashmodernizemdashuse his own omnipotence intelligentlymdashsmart orwersquoll all expire in tangle Well Lord knowsmdash(Does he)rdquo (quoted inGammel 2002 229)

6 Conclusion Deus in machina movet

As Protestant majorities struggled to adjust themselves and their theo-logical inheritance to new technological conditions theologies of themachine age both compelling and disturbing emerged from outsidethe precincts of traditional religious discourse For in addition to beinginspired by the ghost of Herman Melville the Melville Revival wasquite literally haunted by the power of feedback technologiesmdashspectersthat were affective rather than concrete strangely resistant to rationalcontemplation yet recognized through anxious admixtures of thoughtand feeling On one hand the revival reflected the spectrum of Protestant

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 29

30

10 Shortly after the publication of Moby-Dick in November of 1851 reports beganto reach America about the August sinking of the Ann Alexander by a whale in theSouth Pacific It was the first ldquoattack of a whale upon a shiprdquo since the destruc-tion of the Essex in 1820 The story about the Ann Alexander originally appeared inthe Panama Herald on October 16 and was reprinted the following month in New-York Daily Tribune and Littellrsquos Living Age The sperm whale that the Ann Alexander

fears over technological miscegenation The capacity of machines toredraw the boundaries of race and gender disturbed Protestant leadersand revivalists alike On the other hand subversive elements within theMelville Revival offered what must be considered a theological critiqueof how Protestants understood themselves and their God in relation totechnological materials Grant Overton for example saw in Moby-Dick

a deep appreciation for how technological developments had come tounderminemdashquite literally hauntmdashthe epistemological and ontologicalassumptions that made them possible ldquoNo longer able to instance thedeus ex machinardquo wrote Overton Melville was ldquounforgetful that deus inmachina movet and while most of mankind [have] become unable to seethe god for the machine [he] can scarcely perceive the machine forthe god agitating it [His] reports of the machine are somehow unrec-ognizable [his] realism is confronted by Realityrdquo (Overton 1928 231)

Bess Meredythrsquos reimagining of Moby-Dick and Baroness Elsa vonFreytag-Loringhovenrsquos God also explored the otherness that technologyengenders within the modern subject a trace that lingers despite allattempts to extinguish it Their errant readings challenged contempo-raries to reimagine their relationship to technology from an enchantedperspective that did not necessarily conform to the directives of Americanindividualism Resisting the advertisements of both Arminianism andBaconian Common Sense these readings insisted that there was somethingelsemdashsomething wholly othermdashoccurring within the technological workingsof secular modernity Excess or that which unsettled the boundariesbetween body and machine masculine and feminine had resulted inwhat might be called a ldquopost-structure of feelingrdquo The prospect thateither machines or women had begun to think for themselves or atleast possess a kind of agency once attributed to the enlightened malesubject now seemed as likely as a whale vengefully turning against awhaleship10 As Melvillean riffs on the deferred project of religious iden-tity The Sea Beast and God marked the space between human creationand technological determination consent and compulsion and there-fore hinted at the prospect that belief was not an individual state butan embodied activity Consistent with Lewis Mumfordrsquos assessment ofthe symbolic and material powers of feedback technology these works

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 30

31

had first turned upon starboard and larboard boats seizing both in its jaws andcrushing them to pieces It then rushed towards the Ann Alexander ldquoat the rateof fifteen knots In an instant the monster struck the ship with tremendous violence shakingher from stem to sternrdquo (415) Upon reading the article Melville remarked to his pub-lisher ldquothe Whale had almost completely slipped me for the time (amp I was themerrier for it) when Crash comes Moby Dick himself It is really amp truly a sur-prising coincidencemdashto say the least I make no doubt it is Moby Dick himself I wonder if my evil art has raised this monsterrdquo (Melville 1993 209)

11 William Jennings Bryan for example that standard bearer of fundamentalfaith equated faith to a particular kind of technologymdashldquothere is that in each humanliferdquo he wrote ldquothat corresponds to the mainspring of a watchmdashthat which isabsolutely necessary if the life is to be what it should be a real life and not amere existence That necessary thing is a belief in Godrdquo (86) Faith for Bryan wasthat which repeated without difference It was a dependable rational and utterlyrationalizing process It was not however self-regulating It affirmed the ldquorealnessrdquoof the individual believer precisely because it ignored the conditions imposed fromoutside the self But how might faith be viewed in terms of feedback and repro-ducibility rather than repetition a process that does not reaffirm a centered indi-vidual with every tick but adjusts accordingly to external fluctuations

raise numerous questions concerning the ways and means of religionin an age of postmodern complexity and virtual reality

How might a relentless focus on power and the porousness of sub-jectivity change how one views the matter of religion within historyHow might a greater attention to the aesthetic conditions that mediateany and all beliefs challenge the ways in which we distinguish the reli-gious from the secular How might a greater attention to the enchantingpower of material conditions challenge historical and political narrativesof secularization How do technologies and vested interests realize them-selves through the discourses of agency choice and mobility Whatin other words are the conditions of possibility that allow a historicalactor (rather than a Hollywood actor) to make a particular faith com-mitment or for that matter have any faith at all In what languagedo historical actors dream about themselves and divinity and how doesthat language change over time And finally to what degree is faithitself a technology11

By acknowledging the white mythology that still informs say thefield of American religions such questions shift the scholarly emphasisfrom explicit expressions of religious belief and practice to the spacebetween those beliefs and practices and the world at-large Individualswithin American religious history for example have often been depictedas fully formed agents making choices between various faith commitmentsand ever combining religious idioms to suit their specific needs and cir-cumstances (Albanese 1997) No doubt this is true But there is anotherside to this story of radical religious pluralism one that if accounted

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 31

32

12 Such a possibility is very much at odds with the Geertzian model of ldquothickdescriptionrdquo and its formidable legacy in the humanities and social sciences Withoutquestioning the degree to which the self can ever become entirely legible to theself Geertz claimed that every society and individual life and by extension everybelief and every practice ldquocontain their own interpretations One has only to learnhow to gain access to themrdquo (Geertz 1973 453)

13 The ambiguities of agency during the ldquomachine agerdquo have been the subjectof a number of elegant critical studies See for example Anson Rabinbach TheHuman Motor Energy Fatigue and the Origins of Modernity (New York Basic Books1990) Mark Seltzer Bodies and Machines (New York Routledge 1992) MarthaBanta Taylorized Lives Narrative Productions in the Age of Taylor Veblen and Ford (ChicagoUniversity of Chicago Press 1993) Carolyn Thomas de la Pentildea The Body ElectricHow Strange Machines Built the Modern American (New York New York UniversityPress 2003) and Joel Dinerstein The Swinging Machine Modernity Technology andAfrican American Culture Between the World Wars (Amherst University of MassachusettsPress 2003) Dinersteinrsquos work is particularly relevant to the issue of religious com-binativeness given his emphasis on how African American artists strove to refigureldquomachine aestheticsrdquo in and through their artistry Dinersteinrsquos work suggests thatthe self is locatedmdashie the self happensmdashsomewhere between resistance and assim-ilation between choice and coercionmdasha lesson that many Anglo-Americans werenot willing to consider in their triumphal theorizing about the human in relationto the machine The possibility for consideration argues Dinerstein existed inAfrican American jazz swing and dance

for suggests new directions for the study of religion in America Althoughthe ldquolived religionrdquo perspective in American religious history has donemuch to overcome the distinction between ldquodabblersrdquo and ldquotrue believersrdquothe question of power still lingers (Ahlstrom 1972 1052) Religiousbeliefs and practices are neither essential things nor reveal themselvesto the scholar in toto12 Such a position does not replicate the eitherordiscussion regarding the agency of historical actors On the contraryit suggests that religious agency is a hybrid weave of intent and instinctimmediate response and mediated principle knowing and unknowing13

Accounting for the ambiguities of agency has already pushed scholarsof religion toward an anthropology of the secular and an explorationof in the Foucauldian phrasing of Talal Asad ldquothe contingencies thathave come together to give us our certaintiesrdquo (2003 16)

It is with a hint of irony then that one may return to the promotionalpamphlet of The Sea Beast that celebrates the ldquoconquestrdquo of Ahab andthe invisible wafting presence of screenwriter Bess Meredyth ldquoThereis no woman writing today who has contributed so much to genuine

screen values as Bess Meredythrdquo Indeed her son John Meredyth Lucasborn in 1919 continued down his motherrsquos unsettling path as a successfultelevision screenwriter and director His credits included episodes ofldquoStar Trekrdquo ldquoLoganrsquos Runrdquo and that other story of ldquohundred percentrdquoAmericanism ldquoThe Six Million Dollar Manrdquo

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 32

33

Figure 8 The Six Million Dollar Man ldquoGentlemen we can rebuild him Wehave the capability of making the worldrsquos first bionic man We can make him

better than he was before Better Stronger Fasterrdquo

Haverford College370 Lancaster AveHaverford PA 19041jlardashaverfordedu

References

Ahlstrom Sydney E (1972) A Religious History of the American People New HavenYale University Press

Albanese Catherine L (1997) Exchanging selves exchanging souls Contact com-bination and American religious history In Thomas A Tweed (ed) RetellingUS Religious History 200-26 Berkeley University of California Press

Anon (1851) A ship sunk by a whale Littellrsquos Living Age (29 November) 415-16Asad Talal (2003) Formations of the Secular Christianity Islam Modernity Stanford

Stanford University Press

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 33

34

Bacon Francis (1870) The Works of Francis Bacon James Spedding Robert LeslieEllis and Douglas Denon Heath (eds) Vol VIII New York Hurd andHoughton

Barton Bruce (2000) The Man Nobody Knows A Discovery of the Real Jesus ChicagoIvan R Dee

Beniger James R (1986) The Control Revolution Technological and Economic Origins ofthe Information Society Cambridge Harvard University Press

Benjamin Walter (1996) One-way street In Marcus Bullock amp Michael W Jennings(eds) Selected Writings Volume 1 1913-1926 444-88 Cambridge HarvardUniversity Press

mdash (2003) The work of art in the age of its technological reproducibility third ver-sion In Howard Eiland and Michael W Jennings (eds) Selected Writings Volume4 1938-40 251-83 Cambridge Harvard University Press

Bennett Charles A (1923) A Philosophical Study of Mysticism An Essay New HavenYale University Press 1923

Bernays Edward L (1923) Crystallizing Public Opinion New York Liverlight PublishingCorporation

Buchman SR (1925) Moby Dickmdashthe book and The Sea Beastmdashthe picture Anappreciation In Herman Melville Moby Dick or The White Whale ix-xi NewYork Grosset amp Dunlap

Butler Judith (1993) Bodies That Matter On the Discursive Limits of lsquoSexrsquo RoutledgeNew York

Cahir Linda Costanzo (1997) Routinizing the charismatic Melville and Hollywoodrsquosthree Moby-Dicks Melville Society Extracts 110 (September) 11-17

Cendrars Blaise (1922) Profound today Broom 13 ( January) 265-67Chadwick Owen (1975) The Secularization of the European Mind in the Nineteenth Century

Cambridge Cambridge University PressCoe George Albert (1917) A Social Theory of Religious Education New York Charles

Scribnerrsquos SonsDavidson Abraham A (1996) The European art invasion In Francis M Naumann

(ed) with Beth Vann Making Mischief Dada Invades New York 222-27 NewYork Whitney Museum of Art

Debord Guy (1995) Society of the Spectacle translated by Donald Nicholson-SmithNew York Zone Books

Derrida Jacques (1994) Specters of Marx The State of the Debt The Work of Mourningand the New International Peggy Kamuf (trans) New York Routledge

Dorsey George A (1925) Why We Behave Like Human Beings New York BlueRibbon Books

Epstein Jean (1922) The new conditions of literary phenomena Broom 21 (April)3-10

Frank Waldo (1919) Our America New York Boni and LiverightGammel Irene (2002) Baroness Elsa Gender Dada and Everyday Modernitymdasha Cultural

Biography Cambridge The MIT PressGeertz Clifford (1973) Deep play Notes on the Balinese cockfight In The Interpretation

of Cultures 412-53 New York Basic BooksHaraway Donna (2004) A manifesto for cyborgs Science technology and socialist

feminism in the 1980s In The Haraway Reader 7-45 New York RoutledgeHeap Jane (1922) Dada Little Review VII2 (Spring) 46Heidegger Martin (1977) The age of the world-picturerdquo In The Question Concerning

Technology and Other Essays 115-54 William Lovitt (trans) New York Harperamp Row

Hoffman Carol Stein (2001) The Barrymores Hollywoodrsquos First Family LexingtonUniversity of Kentucky Press

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 34

35

Jackson Josephine A and Helen M Salisbury (1922) Outwitting Our Nerves A Primerof Psychotherapy New York The Century Co

Jaffe David (1990) The village enlightenment in New England 1760-1820 TheWilliam and Mary Quarterly XLVII3 ( July) 327-46

Jones Rufus M (1915) Mysticism in present-day religion Harvard Theological ReviewVIII2 (April) 155-65

Kippenberg Hans G (2002) Discovering Religious History in the Modern Age BarbaraHarshav (trans) Princeton Princeton University Press

Kobler John (1977) Damned in Paradise The Life of John Barrymore New YorkAtheneum

Kuttner Alfred B (1922) Nerves In Harold E Stearns (ed) Civilization in the UnitedStates An Enquiry by Thirty Americans 427-42 New York Harcourt

Lauter Paul (1994) Melville climbs the canon American Literature 66 (March) 1-24Lawrence DH (1923) Studies in Classic American Literature New York T SeltzerLindbergh Charles A (1927) We New York GP Putnamrsquos SonsLippmann Walter (1922) Public Opinion New York Macmillan CompanyMarchand Roland (1985) Advertising the American Dream Making Way for Modernity

1920-1940 Berkeley University of California PressMarty Martin E Modern American Religion Vol 2 The Noise of Conflict 1919-1941

Chicago University of Chicago Press 1991May Henry F (1976) The Enlightenment in America New York Oxford University

PressMayhew Jonathan (1749) Concerning the difference between truth and falsehood

right and wrong In Seven Sermons 1-21 Boston Rogers and FowleMayr Otto (1970) The Origins of Feedback Control Cambridge The MIT PressMelville Herman (1993) Correspondence Volume 14 of The Writings of Herman Melville

Lynne Horth (ed) Evanston and Chicago Northwestern University Pressmdash (1925) Moby Dick or The White Whale 1851 New York Grosset amp DunlapMindell David A (2002) Between Human and Machine Feedback Control and Computing

Before Cybernetics Baltimore The Johns Hopkins University PressMumford Lewis (1929) Herman Melville New York The Literary Guild of Americamdash (1924) Sticks and Stones A Study of American Architecture and Civilization New York

Dover Publicationsmdash (1934) Technics and Civilization New York Harcourt Brace and Companymdash (1926) The Golden Day A Study in American Literature and Culture New York Boni

and LiverightMurray Jr HA (1929) Review of Lewis Mumfordrsquos Herman Melville The New

England Quarterly 2 ( July) 523-26Naumann Francis M (1994) New York Dada 1915-23 New York Harry N AbramsNoble David F (1999) The Religion of Technology The Divinity of Man and the Spirit

of Invention New York Penguin BooksNye David E (1994) American Technological Sublime Cambridge The MIT PressOrsquoNeil David (1921) The new Broom Broom 11 (November) 96Overton Grant (1928) The Philosophy of Fiction New York D AppletonPalmer Attorney General (1920) The case against the lsquoRedsrsquo The Forum A Magazine

of Constructive Nationalism 632 (February) 173-85Parsons Floyd W (1927) Everybodyrsquos business Advertising amp Selling ( June 29) 5 64Prampolini Enrico (1922) The aesthetic of the machine and mechanical intro-

spection in art Broom 33 (October) 235-37Rauschenbusch Walter (1917) A Theology for the Social Gospel New York The

Macmillan CompanyRichardson George P (1991) Feedback Thought in Social Science and Systems Theory

Philadelphia University of Pennsylvania Press

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 35

8

technology is often associated with computers and artificial intelligenceHowever the capacity to transmit information in order to counterentropy and maintain equilibrium within a unified system was presentin oil lamps from ancient Greece waterclocks from the middle agesand temperature regulators from the early modern period (Mayer 197011-52) The invention of the Watts steam engine (1788) and the Corlissengine (1848) the publication of James Clerk Maxwellrsquos ldquoOn Governorsrdquo(1868) the appearance of air-conditioned factories (1902) speed gov-ernors on trucks and tractors (c1910) automated electric substations(1914) and the Sperry gyropilot (1920) had revolutionized the kind ofmaterial and ideological presence machines assumed within human lifemdashno longer a wholly ldquoartificialrdquo other but a ldquonaturalrdquo component of howthings fit together and moved along

By the 1920s the fluidity between humans and machines nature andsecond nature had intensified dramatically Self-regulating devices andautomated factories were becoming so pervasive as to go almost unrec-ognized What bound together a white Protestant majority was theirstruggle to maintain the social perceptual and racial orders throughwhich ldquohundred-percent Americanismrdquo and related principles weredefined From a historical perspective such struggles were ironic Foreven as Protestants forged new public narratives of identity stories theytold themselves in order to be their natural selves were themselvesbecoming part of a feedback loop in which technology played a centralrole

Rather than retreat from technology liberals were inclined to seeldquothe energy of God realizing itself in human liferdquo through those inno-vations Second-generation social gospellers redoubled their progressiveefforts to extend access to economic and spiritual opportunity ldquoTheredemption of societyrdquo did not mean the abolition of the ldquoindustrialsystemrdquo but the lessening of its negative impact (Rauschenbusch 1917110 143) Instead of seriously considering how technological drives andtheir ldquoreality effectsrdquo might undermine projects of economic reform andself-cultivation liberals confidently chose to direct technology in theservice of humanity It was a ldquodemocraticrdquo strategy that required decisiveaction For only through such action could the political and epistemologicalpromises of Enlightenment become a religious reality By acting upononersquos God-given ldquoinstinctrdquo the Kingdom of God could be achievedand maintained on earth (Coe 1917 168 131)

In their revolt against the material incursions and ideological temptationsof modernity Fundamentalists strategically harnessed God somewhat

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 8

9

6 Such irony can be found in Jonathan Edwardsrsquos ldquoSinners in the Hands of anAngry Godrdquo (1741) A rich and contradictory sermon it instructs parishioners torecognize their always already abject relation to God while simultaneously demand-ing that they willingly submit to his will

ironically as guarantor of an organic version of human subjectivity6

The Fundamentalist defense of biblical inerrancy for example confirmedboth the divine autonomy of the text and the human capacity for accu-rate contemplation of it This underlying tension was resolved withinthe Fundamentalist theory of textuality that hewed to the CommonSense dictum that seeing was in fact on par with authentic belief Justas there was a transparent relationship to be had between the self andGod reader and words on the page the promise of transparency wasalso fulfilled in the human act of vision more generally God was thearchitect and engineer of the world He constructed the eyes as wellas the space that made visions of the world even possible As WilliamJennings Bryan wrote in 1922 ldquoI believe that God made the eyes whenHe made manmdashnot only made the eyes but carved out the caverns inthe skull in which they hangrdquo (97-8)

With similar missionary zeal so-called ldquohundred-percentersrdquo went onthe offensive and designated scapegoats for a decline in ldquooriginal-stockProtestant Americardquo The Red Scare of 1919-1920 led by AttorneyGeneral and ldquofighting Quakerrdquo Mitchell Palmer initiated campaigns ofsurveillance and intimidation of Socialist Party members labor leadersvociferous Jews and immigrants and any others deemed politically sub-versive The Johnson Act of 1921 the more restrictive Immigration Actof 1924 as well as the increased visibility of the Ku Klux Klan dur-ing the decade spoke to burgeoning fears over racial miscegenation(Marty 1991 66-79) At stake in these fantasies of whiteness and strate-gies of purification was the notion of the Anglo-self as autonomouspossessive and immune

In popular culture myths of individual expertise proliferated thatreflected both the Protestant desire for authenticity and the limits ofthis desire more generally For even as Americans searched for signsof their essential humanity they often came to understand themselvesin and through technological terms Babe Ruth Henry Ford and thebusiness entrepreneur offered celebrity assurance of an autonomous sub-ject who could withstand the feminizing assaults of modernity by mas-tering technology (Susman 1984 133) Advertising executive BruceBarton (who worked for General Motors when it organized the production

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 9

10

of automobiles around consumer orders feedback from local dealersand demand forecasting) introduced Jesus in his best-selling The Man

Nobody Knows (1925) as a conflation of all three (Beniger 1986 317)According to Barton Jesus deftly swung his carpenter tools created anldquoorganization that conquered the worldrdquo and awakened to the ldquoinnerconsciousnessrdquo of his ldquopowerrdquo Barton pitched Jesus as a ldquomysticrdquo andldquobig manrdquo who had incorporated the technologies of business adver-tising and manufacturing into his own personality and cult thereof (4 10 13 6)

As feedback technologies ldquoneutralizedrdquo economies of origination andclaims to eternal value both Christologies and psychological narrativesof restoration were mechanically inscribed (Benjamin 2003 252) Inthe wake of the popular Personality How To Build It (1916) self-realizationwas consistently equated with an engineering process of control Outwitting

our Nerves (1922) affirmed ldquothe integrity of our physical machinesrdquo aswell as human ldquopower of choicerdquo over those machines It was a ldquofactrdquothat ldquowe ourselves decide which of all the possible emotions we shallchoose or we decide not to press the button for any emotion at allrdquo( Jackson and Salisbury 1922 296 360) In Self-Mastery Through Conscious

Auto-Suggestion (1922) one of the defining books of the twentieth-centurygenre of ldquoself-helprdquo Emile Coueacute introduced Americans to the controlpanel of their inner autopilots In Why We Behave Like Human Beings

(1925) evolutionary anthropologist George A Dorsey defined humansin terms of the ldquokinesthetic senserdquo and their innate capacity to enactfeedback control upon themselves He assured readers that ldquoevery humanindividual normal enough to live beyond the walls of an asylum livesbecause he has an equipment by which he can keep on making adjust-ments to changing conditionsrdquo (302 301) In We (1927) CharlesLindberghrsquos celebrated chronicle of his trans-Atlantic flight his airplaneldquoThe Spirit of St Louisrdquo assumed its own personality and portrait evenas Lindbergh became ldquomechanizedrdquo in the popular press

3 Melville fed back

Concerns over how to secure and maintain a sense of coherent iden-tity in light of a seemingly animated material world also precipitatedthe ldquorevivalrdquo of Melville in the 1920s As in the various Protestantstrategies of adjustment ldquorevivalistsrdquo (predominantly white and male)embraced Melville as providing a script of American identity and self-governance In hopes of defending themselves against the totalizing

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 10

11

Figure 1 Instrument Board of the Spirit of St Louis from We (1927)

directives of technology revivalists read Melville and his works throughthe lens of anti-Puritanism and the newly discovered script of FreudMelvillersquos celebrity increased as Elsie Clews Parson Van Wyck BrooksHL Mencken Waldo Frank and others accused Puritans of possessinga ldquorepressive impulserdquo of denying ldquolife and desirerdquo and of discardingldquomystical consciousnessrdquo in favor of ldquoinstrumentalrdquo reason (Frank 191966 150 68) In Melvillersquos rejection of Puritanismrsquos ldquorepellant materialismrdquohis work assumed a positively transgresssive quality (Tomlinson 1926621) Opposed to the Puritan life of ldquointolerable monotonyrdquo Melvillewas viewed as ldquoa mystic a treasure-seeker a mystery-monger a delverafter hidden things spiritual and materialrdquo (Weaver 1919 145-46)

Raymond M Weaverrsquos Herman Melville Mariner and Mystic (1921) setthe terms of religious evaluation for the early stages of the RevivalWeaver proclaimed that Melville in his ldquoescape from an inexorableand intolerable world of realityrdquo had achieved ldquopsychological synthesisrdquo

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 11

12

Figure 2 ldquoThe ConquerorrdquomdashCharles Lindbergh from Current History July 1927

(Weaver 1921 19 331) The construction of Melville as mystic wasconcurrent with the discursive construction of mysticism by liberalProtestants as ldquoahistorical poetic essential intuitive and universalrdquo(Schmidt 2003 288) Both intellectual constructionsmdashthe latter integralto the academic study of religion in the twentieth centurymdashsought towrest a degree of ldquorealnessrdquo from a world in which ldquothe realrdquo was feltto be increasingly susceptible to technological erasure (Kippenberg 2002175-86) And whereas mystically inclined Protestants denounced ldquosec-ular activitiesrdquo by calling for the liberation and unity of ldquothe deep-lyingpowers of the inward self into one conscious liferdquo under God revival-ists called on Melville to provide them with an experiential map of thatwhich was utterly and mysteriously human (Bennett 1923 6 Jones1915 156 161) As Henry A Murray flatly announced ldquoMelville dis-covered the Unconscious and commenced to explore itrdquo (1929 526)As a model for authenticity and self-governance Melville was both ana-lyst and analysandmdashldquoa gentleman adventurer in the barbarous outposts

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 12

13

of human experiencerdquo not a ldquostaged dip into studio savageryrdquo Melvillehad penetrated the depths of his own psyche no doubt aided by hisstay among South Sea islanders (detailed in his first two novels Typee

(1846) and Omoo (1847) Indeed the authenticity of Melvillersquos mysticconsciousness was dependent upon his ldquountamed desires in violentconflict with his physical and spiritual environmentrdquo (Weaver 1921 1519 21 24-29)

As opposed to Weaverrsquos vicarious nostalgia for a simpler less com-mercial and more fully ldquorealrdquo existence another Melville biographerLewis Mumford understood the complex simulations of a consumer-driven economy as already emergent during Melvillersquos writerly careerMixing cultural criticism history and theological speculation Mumfordwas a keen observer of the technological revolutions in feedback controlIn his most memorable and encyclopedic work Technics and Civilization

(1934) Mumford claimed that in the seventeenth-century ldquomechanicsrdquohad become ldquothe new religion and [they] gave to the world a new Messiahthe machinerdquo In dramatizing the extent to which technology had shapedand continued to shape human consciousness Mumford explored inexacting and illustrated detail the history and material conditions thatwere allowing ldquotools and utensilsrdquo to assume ldquoan independent existencerdquo

This ldquoneotechnic phaserdquo had begun in the early part of the nineteenthcentury and was marked by efficiency flexibility ldquocomplete automatismrdquoand synthetic materialsmdasha ldquomutationrdquo that was rapidly integrating ldquothemachine and the world of liferdquo (45 321 227 212 254)

Such integration was not without its dangers ldquoWith the invention ofthe telegraphrdquo the ldquowireless telephonerdquo and the ldquotelevisionrdquo wroteMumford humans ldquobegan to bridge the gap in time between communi-cation and responserdquo The sympathetic relations between family memberscould now be replicated on an unprecedented scale through telepathictechnologiesmdashgiving rise to ldquo[immense] possibilities for good and evilrdquoThe building of a personality was no longer a ldquolocalrdquo affair On the con-trary when ldquomass-reactionsrdquo were ldquomobilized and hastenedrdquo the needsand interests of the human became those of the machine As Mumfordsuggested technology was becoming a ldquocreative force carried on by itsown momentumrdquo and ldquoproducing a third estate midway between natureand the humane artsrdquo The drive to overcome distancemdashbetween indi-viduals as well as between self and worldmdashhad itself ldquocreated an inde-pendent environment that has reacted upon every other side of the personalityrdquo (239241 322 324)

According to Mumford such technological interference had been ofintense and abiding concern for Melville (1934 213) In Herman Melville

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 13

14

Figure 3 Neotechnic Automatism from Technics and Civilization (1934)

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 14

15

7 Public relations and advances in advertising were the latest instances of the ldquocontrol revolutionrdquo in which technology of interchangeability so integral to theAmerican System of manufacturing had extended its field of operations under theauspices of consumer capitalism Machines were not simply making parts for othermachines but were integral to the form and content of social reproduction Publicrelations was a particular (and less reliable) version of feedback control Instead ofmaintaining a fixed variable on the inside by responding to fluctuations on the out-side ldquocounselorsrdquo stoked the flames of consumer desire in order to justify an accel-erating rate of production and ideally consumption

(1929) Mumford had chided fellow revivalists for exaggerating Melvillersquosretreat into mystical idealism ldquoMelville was a realistrdquo countered Mumfordldquoin the sense that the great religious teachers are realistsrdquo FurthermoreMelville had witnessed the ldquovolcanic intrusionrdquo of ldquoindustrialism [as] avalue in itself rdquo (1929 5 64-65) But things had gotten much more com-plicated since the mid-nineteenth century Whereas Melville had beheldldquothe servile routine of the factory systemrdquo Mumford was now witness-ing the birth of ldquothe machine system the network of relationshipsthat have followed the financial exploitation of machineryrdquo The differencein other words was the full-scale emergence of self-governing tech-nologiesmdashldquohandicraft devoted to mechanical reproduction and machinerythat is set to reproduce endless simulacrardquo For Mumford this ldquomachineritualrdquo this ldquoendlessrdquo loop of ldquomechanical reproductionrdquo threatened toefface ldquothe human arts of seeing feeling and livingrdquo (1924 67-68 10174-75 105 81) Technology in other words had achieved the capacityfor feedback on two different but related levels first in material devicesthat could copy both nature and themselves and secondly in humansthat governed themselves according to the latest control variables setby the machine As Mumford argued the totalizing power of feedbacktechnologies resulted not simply from designs motors or even materialoutputs but through their economically driven expansion of ldquothe verydomain of the symbol itself rdquo (1934 331)

Mumfordrsquos insights take on more ominous implications when oneconsiders the rise of the American public relations industry during thisperiod7 Public relations consultants such as Edward Bernays and adver-tisers like Bruce Barton actively sought to shape and change the beliefsof individuals in the service of larger economic agendas It was no acci-dent Bernays wrote in 1923 that a ldquoman belongs to one church ratherthan another or to any church at allrdquo It was no accident that ldquoBostonwomen prefer brown eggs and New York women white eggsrdquo Becausethe judgments of individuals were not arrived at through ldquoresearch andlogical deductionrdquo but were ldquodogmatic expressions accepted on theauthority of his parents his teachers his church and of his social his

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 15

16

economic and other leadersrdquo a ldquopublic relations counselrdquo must do thework of reauthorization (Bernays 1923 62) Through the strategic ldquosat-urationrdquo of images text and work-place incentives an entire profes-sional class sought to provide the terms for and effectively monitor theconditions of self-realization (Marchand 1985 94-95)

What then did Melville have to offer those living within ldquothe machinesystemrdquo of the 1920s Mumford and other revivalists championed Moby-

Dick as a blueprint for living within an increasingly mechanical rou-tinized and bureaucratic world They also heaped admiration uponCaptain Ahab an odd choice given the outcome of Moby-Dick Contraryto those who would later read Ahabrsquos technologically enhanced dem-agoguery against the political backdrops of Italian Fascism and NationalSocialism Ahabrsquos madness in the 1920s could be considered ldquoactiveand courageousrdquo as well as a sign of ldquogeniusrdquomdashldquothe very pinnacle ofhuman self-assertionrdquo (Watson 1970 136 Sullivan 1970 163) Suchreadings conflated the white whale with the power of technology andhad Ahab defiantly affirm the principle of free-will and defend theboundary between human and material worlds Mumford for examplewrote of Ahab as the ldquospirit of manrdquo who stood in opposition to ldquothebrute energies of existence blind fatal overpoweringrdquo Ahab was self-directive ldquopurposiverdquo and he pitted his ldquopuniness against this mightand [his] purpose against the blank senselessness of powerrdquo So eventhough Ahabrsquos ldquomethods are ill-chosenrdquo wrote Mumford his ldquodefianceis noblerdquo (Mumford 1929 184-86)

4 People who portray themselves or Ahab on Ahab

Film projectors in addition to utilizing concepts of feedback internallywere often seen as generative of external feedback loops between humansand machines nature and artifice Such loops arguably constituted theldquosociety of the spectaclerdquo Guy Debordrsquos term for the image-saturatedenvironment that arose in the 1920s with the confluence of sound filmtelevision and the perfection of propaganda techniques As one of themore grim assessments of an image-based postmodernity Debord definedthe ldquospectaclerdquo in terms of negative feedback ldquoIt is the omnipresentcelebration of a choice already made in the sphere of production andthe consummate result of that choice In form as in content the spectacleserves as total justification for the conditions and aims of the existingsystem It further ensures the permanent presence of that justification forit governs almost all time spent outside the production process itself rdquo

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 16

17

8 Cahir (1997) has made a similar point Although I agree with her assessmentthat The Sea Beast is about Ahabrsquos ldquoreal pursuit of identityrdquo I take issue with herargument that The Sea Beast validates autonomous autotelic forms of masculine identity

(13) In America Debordian paranoia was rampant as Victorian fearsover the exploitation of pleasure were morphing into general anxietiesconcerning voyeurism and cinematic determinism ldquoThe spectacle ofmechanical progress has made so deep an impressionrdquo argued WalterLippmann in 1922 ldquothat it has suffused the whole moral coderdquo Whatdisturbed Lippmann and other public figures was the specter of circularcausality and the quiet ldquoinsertion between man and his environmentof a pseudo-environmentrdquo composed mainly of images (Lippmann 1922108 15) Unbeknownst to them Americans were in danger of becom-ing automated by images and trapped within what Debord would latercall ldquoan uninterrupted monologue of self-praiserdquo (19) Their perpetualaffirmation of self however was wholly cybernetic given the fact thatthey were oblivious to the fact that ldquoon the screen the whole processof observing describing reporting and then imagining has been accom-plished for yourdquo (92)

In a strange twist that Melville might have enjoyed the most com-pelling representation of Moby-Dick and portrayal of Captain Ahab mayhave occurred via the technology of the moving picture8 The 1926silent film The Sea Beast adapted to the screen by Bess Meredyth andstarring John Barrymore as Captain Ahab dramatized the feedbackdimensions of film and its capacity to regulate the human personalityThe Sea Beast I argue challenged more able-bodied academic inter-pretations by reveling in its status as a technological reproduction The

Sea Beast with its odd juxtapositions visceral jump cuts and perverseattention to Ahabrsquos stump and artificial limb rather than affirm thedesire for self-transparency suggested that the equipment-free reality ofthe self was quite literally an enabling fiction What Americans lackedaccording to Meredythrsquos scenario was the tragic recognition of them-selves as always regulated and already enhanced by technology Takingldquopleasure in the confusion of boundariesrdquo and ldquoresponsibility in their con-structionrdquo The Sea Beast in the borrowed words of Donna Harawaymade ldquoan argument for the cyborg as a fiction mapping our social andbodily reality and as an imaginative resource suggesting some very fruit-ful couplingsrdquo (8)

In 1925 at age forty-three John Barrymore was one of Hollywoodrsquosmost bankable actors (part of the ldquostar-systemrdquo promoted by Edward

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 17

18

Bernays who clearly saw the potential for cross-marketing between enter-tainment business and political campaigns) Barrymore easily convincedWarner Brothers to turn Moby-Dick one of his favorite novels into amovie and to cast him in the role of Captain Ahab Having playedHamlet in the 1922-23 Broadway season Barrymore developed a keeninterest in psychoanalysis and Freudrsquos account of Hamlet in Interpretationof Dreams (1900) The role of Captain Ahab like that of Hamlet allowedBarrymore to reach a larger audience with his newly emotive actingstyle As Captain Ahab he could also remind his audience of his depthand manly credentials He was tired in his words of playing ldquoscentedbepuffed bewigged and ringletted charactersrdquo (quoted in Kobler 1977213) Promotional pamphlets for The Sea Beast seemed to reinforceBarrymorersquos gendered strategy featuring a picture of Barrymore in abusiness suit puffing contemplatively on a pipemdashldquoJohn Barrymore ismore than a name more than a personality he is world institutionrdquo(Hoffman 2001 73)

The opening credits to The Sea Beast begin imprecisely with a close-up of the filmrsquos textual referent Moby Dick or the White Whale Thissimulated text begins not with ldquoExtractsrdquo or even ldquoCall me Ishmaelrdquobut with the following words ldquoThere never was nor ever will be abraver life than the life of the whaler Compared to the game theyhunted the mightiest land beast was but a poodle dogrdquo Adapted tothe screen by Bess Meredyth former actress turned writer The Sea Beast

is noteworthy as one of the earliest if not the first public appropriationsof Melvillersquos novel by a woman By 1926 Meredyth had become aHollywood regular having written the scenarios or continuities for Ben

Hur (1925) Don Juan (1926) and at least 70 other films ldquoThere is nowoman writing todayrdquo read the promotional copy of The Sea Beastldquowho has contributed so much to genuine screen values as Bess Meredythrdquo(Hoffman 2001 74) The ldquogenuinerdquo sense Meredyth made of Melvillersquosepic is significant in its relentless focus on the self as a technologicalconstruct In Meredythrsquos scenario one literally glimpses the spirit ofMelvillersquos rejection of the contemplative insular and hyper-masculinizedself of mid-nineteenth-century religion and science In its plot and per-verse attention to Ahabrsquos stump The Sea Beast suggests that nothing willor even can make up for the loss Ahab suffers

After the opening credits the audience is introduced to a healthyCaptain Ahab atop the masthead He looks out over the sea and downon his crew hard at work his feet tapping to the beat of the sea shantyldquoHanging Johnnyrdquo Nostalgia and the logic of substitution are bothbroached in the opening scenesmdashnot in terms of idealism but in ways

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 18

19

that hint at their subsequent negation As Ahab reads a letter from hisbeloved Esther Harper the daughter of a Christian missionary playedby the nineteen year-old Dolores Costello Ahab looks longingly at hername tattooed on his arm His mind drifts back to their last embraceFollowing a long close-up of his legs Ahab descends from the mastheadthe camera sliding down the rope in real time and from Ahabrsquos pointof view his legs leading the way The experience of vertigo engenderedby the shot suggests that Ahabrsquos identity is already unstable alreadymarked by a palpable lack of ground This shot however is quicklyoffset by numerous scenes that depict the fullness of Ahabrsquos vigor par-ticularly in relation to his healthy pair of legs He jumps he hops heruns around

When Ahabrsquos ship docks in the bay of Mauritius the audience isintroduced to Esther as well as to Derek Ahabrsquos scheming half-brotherIt is here that one is reminded of the words from the 1925 promotionalpublication of Moby-Dick accompanied by scenes from The Sea Beastldquothe screen version of lsquoMoby Dickrsquo exceeds the book The discrepancybetween the two must not be considered as a profanely wanton alterationrdquoTo portray the ldquopsychological studyrdquo of Captain Ahab ldquothe camerahas resorted to means of its own A mental state therefore particularlyan involved condition of mind must be expressed by means of the inci-dents which produced it each tortuous thought composing Ahabrsquos madness must be traced to the event which engendered itrdquo (Buchman1925 x) The most obvious incident being the loss of Ahabrsquos leg butthe film compounds this felt sense of loss by turning Melvillersquos tale intoa misbegotten love triangle between Ahab Derek and Esther the appleof both their eyes

On shore Ahab and Esther declare their love to each other Butafter a few days Ahab sails from Mauritius and scans the shore withhis telescope He spies Estherrsquos window She comes to the window andreturns Ahabrsquos gaze through her own telescope Technology has literallybecome the lens through which they see each other through whicheach declares their commitment They wave and blow kisses until theyare both out of range At sea Ahab is betrayed by Derek who unbe-knownst to Ahab pushes him overboard into the waiting jaws of MobyDick After losing his leg Ahab is distraught Derek then taunts Ahaband suggests that his symbolic castration is too much for any relation-ship to bear As Derek reminds him ldquoEsther was always crazy aboutyour beinrsquo so strong and perfectrdquo Having been fitted with his ivorystump Ahab arrives back at Mauritius Derek then shames Ahab evenfurther by telling him that he and Esther are in love and that Esther

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 19

20

cannot bring herself to tell Ahab of the deceit Derek then goes toEsther to convince her that Ahab has abandoned her When Ahabarrives at Estherrsquos house to confirm Derekrsquos story he sees their shadowscast by the light of spermaceti candles and mistakenly believes thatEsther has indeed left him for Derek It is here that Ahab descendsinto his infamous monomania

Ahab goes onto slay Moby Dick but not before uncovering his half-brotherrsquos double betrayal In a dramatic confrontation Derek pulls aknife on Ahab and is about to get the best of our hero But wait Ahabwedges his ivory stump into the deck leveraging himself in order tofend off Derek Ahab then casts Derek overboard and into the sea Anivory technology marking the absence of Ahabrsquos leg has been trans-formed into a salvific presence Or so it seems when the audience istreated to the restoration of order upon the Pequodrsquos return to portand Ahabrsquos reunion with Esther consummated in their tearful embraceHaving staged and seemingly resolved the crisis of masculine identity(the raison drsquoecirctre of melodrama being that the resolution is alreadypresent in the staging) The Sea Beast on the contrary did anything butrestore the full presence of Ahabrsquos self It suggested through both contentand form that the reality of the self whether it be Ahab or the spec-tator in the theater was neither fully resolvable nor equipment-free

Ahab achieves a kind of liberation on screen by recognizing that heis always already a figment of an imagination that is not his own Afterthe tearful reunion between Ahab and Esther the screen goes blackThe audience is then given a glimpse behind the scenes as it weremdasha scene of the director Millard Webb in his chair issuing directionsto Ahab and Esther in Estherrsquos living room A man in a business suitplays the violin in the background As Ahab and Esther look longinglyinto each otherrsquos eyes Ahab slips a ring onto Estherrsquos finger and theyembrace once again Or is it Barrymore and Costello It is unclearparticularly in light of the rumors of an off screen tryst between themiddle-aged Barrymore and his nineteen-year old costar (they wouldlater marry) The loving embrace is seemingly real an ambiguityreaffirmed by the fact that after Webb yells ldquocutrdquo he has to step betweenthe couple and remind them that they are on film Webb then turnsto the camera and smiles as the screen abruptly cuts to black onceagain

The odd ending of The Sea Beast suggests that Ahabrsquos journey towardreconciliation did not end with self-exposure but that it could neverreally begin Rather than achieve restoration of nature in and througha cultural construction Ahabrsquos artificial leg points to a previously

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 20

21

Figure 4 Final Embrace between AhabBarrymore and EstherCostello

ldquoexcluded and illegible domain that haunts the former domain as thespecter of its own impossibility the very limit of intelligibility its con-stitutive outsiderdquo (Butler 1993 xi) The ending harkens back to the seashanty ldquoHanging Johnnyrdquo Ahabrsquos introductory descent from the mast-head and his telescopic flirtation with Esther both vertiginous slidesinto the unfathomable layers of mediated perception that signal theldquoexecutionrdquo of possessive individualism Rather than erase the sign ofAhabrsquos traumamdashhis ivory legmdashthe ending of The Sea Beast suggests thatAhab and Barrymore are two sides of the same character vacillatingwithin the loop of continuous performativity One is reminded here ofWalter Benjaminrsquos insight into the traumatized subject in the age oftechnological reproducibility As Benjamin argues the trauma can beunderstood as a shift from the stage to the screen in which the actorperforms for a ldquopiece of equipmentrdquo rather than for an audience Citingthe Italian playwright Luigi Pirandello Benjamin suggests that the mod-ern subject is

exiled not only from the stage but from his own person With a vagueunease he senses an inexplicable void stemming from the fact that hisbody has lost its substance that he has been volatilized stripped of his

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 21

22

reality his life his voice the noises he makes when moving about andhas been turned into a mute image that flickers for a moment on thescreen then vanishes into silence (2003 260)

Pirandellorsquos borrowed words speak directly to Meredythrsquos reconfigurationof Melvillersquos text Whereas Melvillersquos Ahab tried and failed to conquerthe very source of visual illuminationmdashthe spermaceti oil that allowedantebellum Americans to see in the darkmdashBarrymorersquos Ahab revels inthe technologically enhanced gaze of his audience When the lightscome up the selves of Ahab Barrymore and the audience have beenre-narrativized as cybernetic that is as permanently divided and fun-damentally transient In affirming the really real offscreen relationshipbetween Barrymore and Costello the uncanny ending of The Sea Beast

supported a notion of selfhood as always already mediated or betteryet the necessity of experience to be mediated in order for it to becomereal or maybe even the necessity of acknowledging that the reality ofthe self is really made up

Barrymorersquos self-conscious performance inspired by his reading ofFreud and designed to overcome middle-class mores did not so muchpenetrate the inner depths of his character as it did the emotional lifeand perceptual apparatus of his audience The Sea Beast does not dram-atize the individual conquest of nature as much as it dramatizes visualtechnologyrsquos seduction of the individual The Sea Beast in its staging ofa cybernetic reality denied the very concept of 100 Americanism byinterrupting the narrative closure on which self-presence dependedNeither Ahab nor Barrymore nor the audience are ever alone even intheir solitude They are haunted not simply by the unconscious butby the specters generated in and through technologies of reproduction(Derrida 1994 97) They are in Benjaminrsquos apt phrase ldquopeople whoportray themselvesrdquo (Benjamin 2003 262)

For Benjamin photography and cinema were technologies of religiousrevelation for better or for worse in that they both exposed variousfeedback loops that constituted onersquos identity On one level Benjaminargued that the category of originality had been challenged by visualtechnologies that put copies ldquoof the original in situations which theoriginal itself cannot attainrdquo (2003 254) On another level the decayof the ldquoaurardquo of authenticity and the blurring of original and reproductionenabled individuals to recognize the fact that they were implicated inthe perceptual field and no longer insulated from what they saw orheard ldquoReception in distractionrdquo wrote Benjamin ldquowhich is increas-ing noticeably in all areas of art and is a symptom of profound changesin apperceptionmdashfinds in film its true training groundrdquo (269) Influenced

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 22

23

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethersquos notion of ldquoafter-imagesrdquo in Theory

of Colours (the same text that informed Melvillersquos ldquoThe Whiteness of theWhalerdquo) Benjamin announced the birth of the ldquooptical unconsciousrdquo(266) According to Benjamin images had become the currency of con-sciousness structuring thought and determining the range of possibleactions Mechanical means of reproduction had liberated the perceptualcapacities of humanity They had also ushered in the prospect of massdeception and control Either way they had resulted in a ldquomassiveupheaval in the domain of objectsrdquo and a ldquoshattering of traditionrdquo (254)

5 American Dada and the aporias of modernity

Within the Melville Revivalmdashan almost clicheacuted instance of Modernismrsquosvogue for the solitary geniusmdashseeds of post-Cartesian doubt were beingsown and the enchanting dimensions of technology considered BecauseMelville ldquowas spell-bound by the strange slidings and collidings ofMatterrdquo his work in the eyes of more atheological critics exposed theenchanting conditions of the machine age (Taylor 1984) ldquoIt is the mate-rial elements he really has to do withrdquo wrote DH Lawrence in 1923ldquoHis drama is with them He was a futurist long before futurism foundpaintrdquo (216) For Lewis Mumford too Melville had not simply dram-atized the incursion of machinesmdasha traditional Romantic tropemdashbuthad embraced a series of insoluble contradictions He has come to rec-ognize those parts of the world and himself that had already been pro-duced by machines and had insisted that the plasticity of self wassomething with which Americans had to struggle and to their spiritualdetriment repress

In broaching the aporias of modernity Mumford saw Melville as hav-ing already given the lie to Weberian diagnoses of disenchantment Thecapacity to effectively turn night into day Mumford suggested the expe-rience of a subway car rumbling past the solid structures of a sky-scraper vanishing into the air the peering into a microscope and theobservation of a ldquorow of bottles each of identical size shape colorstretching away for a quarter of a milerdquo were enough to induce a particular kind of vertigo ldquoThe special visual effect of repeating pat-tern[s]rdquo occurred simultaneously with the experience ldquoof the unique andthe non-repeatablerdquo (Mumford 1934 333-34) The experience of intensesystematicitymdashprecisely what feedback technologies were designed toinducemdashcould be positively disorienting when the infinitely calculableassumed the ldquospecial qualityrdquo of the ldquoincalculablerdquo (Heidegger 1977

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 23

24

135) According to Mumford when technology no longer made imperfectcopies of nature but perfect copies of itself the very notion of ldquonaturalrdquocould become radically suspect With the ldquoliquidationrdquo of the solid book-ends of authenticity and artifice came the prospect that the spectrumitself was socially constructed for better or for worse (Benjamin 2003255) Having torn aside the veil ldquoman has thrown between his ownexperience and the blank reality of the universerdquo Melville neither suc-cumbed to the temptation of nihilism nor retreated into his own pri-vate morality On the contrary he urged his contemporaries to ownup to the constructedness of any and all cultural forms and expressionsand the faith commitments that undergirded them As Mumford wroteldquoto appreciate the reality of the White Whale is to see more deeplyinto the expedience of all our immediate institutions all the spiritualshelters man puts between himself and the uncertain cosmic weatherMeaning significance attends only that little part of the universe manhas built up and settledrdquo (Mumford 1926 150-51)

Whereas Mumford assessed the religious dimensions of technologicalldquoprogressrdquo in a tragic key others tended toward the comic as was thecase with a group of experimental artists associated with Broom An

International Magazine of the Arts Published by Americans in Italy publishedbetween 1921 and 1924 (Tashjian 1975 116-34) Broomrsquos co-editor thepoet Alfred Kreyemborg (who would later co-edit The American Caravan

with Lewis Mumford) had adapted a passage from Moby-Dick for itstitle logo and statement of purpose which appeared on the back coverldquoWhat of itrdquo asks Ishmael

if some old hunks of a seacaptain orders me to get a broom and sweepdown the decks What does that indignity amount to weighed I meanin the scales of the New Testament Do you think the Archangel Gabrielthinks any less of me because I promptly and respectfully obey that oldhunks that particular instance Who ainrsquot a slave (Melville 1925 4)

The first issue of Broom included poems addressing Albert Einsteinrsquostheory of relativity as well as Emmy Veronica Sanders declaration thatldquothe American Machinerdquo was ldquotransforming itself with all its attributesand characteristics into American Mindrdquo ldquoAmericardquo she continuedinitially ldquomade of the Puritan by the Puritan for the Puritanrdquo wasnow being ldquoremade of the Machine by the Machine for the Machinerdquo(89-90) Following Sandersrsquos piece was a David OrsquoNeilrsquos hymn of sup-plication to the new Gods of the machine

When you are sweeping usWith Your cosmic broom

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 24

25

Figure 5 Nature and Second Nature in Technics and Civilization (1934)

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 25

26

Sweeping us out of mouldy rutsSweeping us clean and sweetmdash

RememberWhen wersquore quiveringmdashSensitivemdashbaremdashWe shall be gratefulFor just a few shadows (96)

Broom took Ishmaelrsquos retort quite seriously addressing the revolutionarydimensions of technological artifice and the shadows cast within therealm of technological illumination

Unlike Futurism Broom did not celebrate the beauty of war It didhowever come to express the ldquodreamed-of metallization of the humanbodyrdquo and the playful cybernetic fantasies of Dadaists such as ManRay and Francis Picabia (quoted in Benjamin 2003 269) After someinitial hesitation Broom began to embrace Dadarsquos perspective on the lib-eratory dimensions of the human-machine interface ldquoEverything isartificialrdquo gasped Broom contributor Blaise Cendrars ldquoThe eyes thehand the sexual frenzy of the factory The wheel which turns Thewing which flies The voice which travels far on a wire Your ear ina trumpet Your sense of direction Your rhythm You melt the worldin the mould of your skull Your brain is hollow Like a religion amysterious pill hastens your digestionrdquo (265) Jean Epstein from a slightdifferent angle argued that technology had ldquobecome part of ourselvesrdquoand had democratized human perceptionmdashldquoman has not one memoryof [the] landscape he [now] has a thousand different ones which mayor may not resemble each other Everything possesses hundreds ofapparent diameters which never superimpose exactlyrdquo (6-7)

Broom was soon translating less inflammatory Futurist manifestos suchas Enrico Prampolinirsquos ldquoThe Aesthetic of the Machine and MechanicalIntrospection in Artrdquo in which he declared ldquoIs not the machine todaythe most exuberant symbol of the mystery of human creation Is it notthe new mythical deity which weaves the legends and histories of thecontemporary human drama The Machine in its practical and materialfunction comes to have today in human concepts and thoughts thesignificance of an ideal and spiritual inspirationrdquo The kind of worshipthat ensued was that of the cyborg neither reverent nor memorializ-ing of cosmic law (Haraway 2004 9) Or as Prampolini wrote ldquoOurexperience has convinced us of the truth of certain of our plastic truthsand has allowed us to perceive the errors that lie in othersrdquo (236)

One of the more important pieces of American Dada captured pre-cisely this pointmdashGod (c 1917) designed by Baroness Elsa von Freytag-

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 26

27

Figure 6 Illustration accompanying Enrico Prampolinirsquos ldquoThe Aesthetic of theMachine and Mechanical Introspection in Artrdquo Broom 33 (October 1922) 237

Loringhoven and photographed by Morton Schamberg The invertedcast-iron plumbing trap atop a carpenterrsquos miter box was emblematicof the Melvillean appreciation for technological enchantment Indeedthe pipe is part of an indoor plumbing apparatus a modern conveniencewhose history dates back to some of the earliest feedback technologieson recordmdashthe water-clocks and float-regulators of ancient Greece (Mayr1970 11-26) God resembled the mechanical abstractions Schamberghad been producing before his premature death in 1918 during aninfluenza outbreak in Philadelphia The Baroness a contributor to Broom

and other little magazines had arrived in New York from Germanyin 1913 She was ldquothe first American dadardquo wrote Jane Heap in 1922ldquothe only one living anywhere who dresses dada loves dada lives dadardquo(46) Friends with Marcel Duchamp Djuna Barnes and other NewYork artists the Baroness was a central figure in a burgeoning trans-atlantic avant-garde In addition to her art and poetry the Baronesswas also a ldquoperformancerdquo artist who skillfully inverted gender hierarchiesand attacked through her very presence the traditional sensibilities ofthe middle-class She was notorious for walking around the streets ofGreenwich Village with her shaved head painted purple postage stampspasted to her face and a bird cage around her neck housing a livecanary (Davidson 1996 223-24)

In what must be considered a prescient assault on all manners oflogocentrism the Baroness also carried with her a plaster cast penis thatshe periodically revealed to passersby for maximum shock value (Gammel2002 195) But it was the Barnonessrsquos sculpture God that in addition

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 27

28

Figure 7 God (c 1917) designed by Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven and photographed by Morton Schamberg

to celebrating the mobility and reproducibility of that which was sup-posedly the most fixed and essential repossessed the power of tech-nology as ever imperfect and incomplete As a companion piece of sortsto Duchamprsquos infamous ready-made Fountain an inverted urinal dis-played in the 1917 exhibition of the American Society of IndependentArtists God invited more expressly theological speculation First of allit insisted on supplementing the three traditional symbolic centers ofWestern religious reflectionmdashGod humanity naturemdashwith the machineAnd although it has since been viewed by critics as ldquosacrilegiousrdquo andan instance of ldquoantireligious scatologyrdquo (Naumann 1994 171 Gammel220) the transgressive dimensions to God also affirm a shadowy open-

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 28

29

9 One is reminded here of Melvillersquos letter to Nathaniel Hawthorne in April of1851 ldquoWe incline to think that God cannot explain His own secrets and that Hewould like a little more information upon certain points Himself We mortals aston-ish Him as much as He usrdquo (Melville 1993 186)

ing to radical othernessmdashin the form of imperfection and chancemdashwithin the loops generated by feedback technology

Although the metal pipe ends up pointing toward heaven it firstloops downward in a nod to its human ground Limited by the skillsof the human carpenter on whose box it is anchored the contortedpipe narrativizes both the pitfalls and prospects of the machine ageShit eventually flows up in the case of God not down suggesting thateven the most lofty and noble ideals of the imagination maintain theirhuman aroma Rather than assume the power of divinity classicallyconstrued God staged divinity as nothing more and nothing less thanthat which made life livablemdashthat which kept the smell of human wasteartificially at bay or more ominously managed the flow of thingsthrough feedback control But even more literally God called attentionto the human work in the making of artifice and celebrated the bio-logical possibility for the endless unmaking (and remaking) of selfFeedback technology was not really God but it was for all practicalpurposes Or as the Baroness wrote in a 1927 letter to Peggy GuggenheimGod had much to learn from Henry Ford for he was ldquoclumsily sub-tle-densely-intelligent-inefficiently-immense-(Lord not Fordmdashof course)rdquo9

God the Baroness playfully warned had ldquobetter hotfoot it towardprogressmdashmodernizemdashuse his own omnipotence intelligentlymdashsmart orwersquoll all expire in tangle Well Lord knowsmdash(Does he)rdquo (quoted inGammel 2002 229)

6 Conclusion Deus in machina movet

As Protestant majorities struggled to adjust themselves and their theo-logical inheritance to new technological conditions theologies of themachine age both compelling and disturbing emerged from outsidethe precincts of traditional religious discourse For in addition to beinginspired by the ghost of Herman Melville the Melville Revival wasquite literally haunted by the power of feedback technologiesmdashspectersthat were affective rather than concrete strangely resistant to rationalcontemplation yet recognized through anxious admixtures of thoughtand feeling On one hand the revival reflected the spectrum of Protestant

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 29

30

10 Shortly after the publication of Moby-Dick in November of 1851 reports beganto reach America about the August sinking of the Ann Alexander by a whale in theSouth Pacific It was the first ldquoattack of a whale upon a shiprdquo since the destruc-tion of the Essex in 1820 The story about the Ann Alexander originally appeared inthe Panama Herald on October 16 and was reprinted the following month in New-York Daily Tribune and Littellrsquos Living Age The sperm whale that the Ann Alexander

fears over technological miscegenation The capacity of machines toredraw the boundaries of race and gender disturbed Protestant leadersand revivalists alike On the other hand subversive elements within theMelville Revival offered what must be considered a theological critiqueof how Protestants understood themselves and their God in relation totechnological materials Grant Overton for example saw in Moby-Dick

a deep appreciation for how technological developments had come tounderminemdashquite literally hauntmdashthe epistemological and ontologicalassumptions that made them possible ldquoNo longer able to instance thedeus ex machinardquo wrote Overton Melville was ldquounforgetful that deus inmachina movet and while most of mankind [have] become unable to seethe god for the machine [he] can scarcely perceive the machine forthe god agitating it [His] reports of the machine are somehow unrec-ognizable [his] realism is confronted by Realityrdquo (Overton 1928 231)

Bess Meredythrsquos reimagining of Moby-Dick and Baroness Elsa vonFreytag-Loringhovenrsquos God also explored the otherness that technologyengenders within the modern subject a trace that lingers despite allattempts to extinguish it Their errant readings challenged contempo-raries to reimagine their relationship to technology from an enchantedperspective that did not necessarily conform to the directives of Americanindividualism Resisting the advertisements of both Arminianism andBaconian Common Sense these readings insisted that there was somethingelsemdashsomething wholly othermdashoccurring within the technological workingsof secular modernity Excess or that which unsettled the boundariesbetween body and machine masculine and feminine had resulted inwhat might be called a ldquopost-structure of feelingrdquo The prospect thateither machines or women had begun to think for themselves or atleast possess a kind of agency once attributed to the enlightened malesubject now seemed as likely as a whale vengefully turning against awhaleship10 As Melvillean riffs on the deferred project of religious iden-tity The Sea Beast and God marked the space between human creationand technological determination consent and compulsion and there-fore hinted at the prospect that belief was not an individual state butan embodied activity Consistent with Lewis Mumfordrsquos assessment ofthe symbolic and material powers of feedback technology these works

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 30

31

had first turned upon starboard and larboard boats seizing both in its jaws andcrushing them to pieces It then rushed towards the Ann Alexander ldquoat the rateof fifteen knots In an instant the monster struck the ship with tremendous violence shakingher from stem to sternrdquo (415) Upon reading the article Melville remarked to his pub-lisher ldquothe Whale had almost completely slipped me for the time (amp I was themerrier for it) when Crash comes Moby Dick himself It is really amp truly a sur-prising coincidencemdashto say the least I make no doubt it is Moby Dick himself I wonder if my evil art has raised this monsterrdquo (Melville 1993 209)

11 William Jennings Bryan for example that standard bearer of fundamentalfaith equated faith to a particular kind of technologymdashldquothere is that in each humanliferdquo he wrote ldquothat corresponds to the mainspring of a watchmdashthat which isabsolutely necessary if the life is to be what it should be a real life and not amere existence That necessary thing is a belief in Godrdquo (86) Faith for Bryan wasthat which repeated without difference It was a dependable rational and utterlyrationalizing process It was not however self-regulating It affirmed the ldquorealnessrdquoof the individual believer precisely because it ignored the conditions imposed fromoutside the self But how might faith be viewed in terms of feedback and repro-ducibility rather than repetition a process that does not reaffirm a centered indi-vidual with every tick but adjusts accordingly to external fluctuations

raise numerous questions concerning the ways and means of religionin an age of postmodern complexity and virtual reality

How might a relentless focus on power and the porousness of sub-jectivity change how one views the matter of religion within historyHow might a greater attention to the aesthetic conditions that mediateany and all beliefs challenge the ways in which we distinguish the reli-gious from the secular How might a greater attention to the enchantingpower of material conditions challenge historical and political narrativesof secularization How do technologies and vested interests realize them-selves through the discourses of agency choice and mobility Whatin other words are the conditions of possibility that allow a historicalactor (rather than a Hollywood actor) to make a particular faith com-mitment or for that matter have any faith at all In what languagedo historical actors dream about themselves and divinity and how doesthat language change over time And finally to what degree is faithitself a technology11

By acknowledging the white mythology that still informs say thefield of American religions such questions shift the scholarly emphasisfrom explicit expressions of religious belief and practice to the spacebetween those beliefs and practices and the world at-large Individualswithin American religious history for example have often been depictedas fully formed agents making choices between various faith commitmentsand ever combining religious idioms to suit their specific needs and cir-cumstances (Albanese 1997) No doubt this is true But there is anotherside to this story of radical religious pluralism one that if accounted

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 31

32

12 Such a possibility is very much at odds with the Geertzian model of ldquothickdescriptionrdquo and its formidable legacy in the humanities and social sciences Withoutquestioning the degree to which the self can ever become entirely legible to theself Geertz claimed that every society and individual life and by extension everybelief and every practice ldquocontain their own interpretations One has only to learnhow to gain access to themrdquo (Geertz 1973 453)

13 The ambiguities of agency during the ldquomachine agerdquo have been the subjectof a number of elegant critical studies See for example Anson Rabinbach TheHuman Motor Energy Fatigue and the Origins of Modernity (New York Basic Books1990) Mark Seltzer Bodies and Machines (New York Routledge 1992) MarthaBanta Taylorized Lives Narrative Productions in the Age of Taylor Veblen and Ford (ChicagoUniversity of Chicago Press 1993) Carolyn Thomas de la Pentildea The Body ElectricHow Strange Machines Built the Modern American (New York New York UniversityPress 2003) and Joel Dinerstein The Swinging Machine Modernity Technology andAfrican American Culture Between the World Wars (Amherst University of MassachusettsPress 2003) Dinersteinrsquos work is particularly relevant to the issue of religious com-binativeness given his emphasis on how African American artists strove to refigureldquomachine aestheticsrdquo in and through their artistry Dinersteinrsquos work suggests thatthe self is locatedmdashie the self happensmdashsomewhere between resistance and assim-ilation between choice and coercionmdasha lesson that many Anglo-Americans werenot willing to consider in their triumphal theorizing about the human in relationto the machine The possibility for consideration argues Dinerstein existed inAfrican American jazz swing and dance

for suggests new directions for the study of religion in America Althoughthe ldquolived religionrdquo perspective in American religious history has donemuch to overcome the distinction between ldquodabblersrdquo and ldquotrue believersrdquothe question of power still lingers (Ahlstrom 1972 1052) Religiousbeliefs and practices are neither essential things nor reveal themselvesto the scholar in toto12 Such a position does not replicate the eitherordiscussion regarding the agency of historical actors On the contraryit suggests that religious agency is a hybrid weave of intent and instinctimmediate response and mediated principle knowing and unknowing13

Accounting for the ambiguities of agency has already pushed scholarsof religion toward an anthropology of the secular and an explorationof in the Foucauldian phrasing of Talal Asad ldquothe contingencies thathave come together to give us our certaintiesrdquo (2003 16)

It is with a hint of irony then that one may return to the promotionalpamphlet of The Sea Beast that celebrates the ldquoconquestrdquo of Ahab andthe invisible wafting presence of screenwriter Bess Meredyth ldquoThereis no woman writing today who has contributed so much to genuine

screen values as Bess Meredythrdquo Indeed her son John Meredyth Lucasborn in 1919 continued down his motherrsquos unsettling path as a successfultelevision screenwriter and director His credits included episodes ofldquoStar Trekrdquo ldquoLoganrsquos Runrdquo and that other story of ldquohundred percentrdquoAmericanism ldquoThe Six Million Dollar Manrdquo

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 32

33

Figure 8 The Six Million Dollar Man ldquoGentlemen we can rebuild him Wehave the capability of making the worldrsquos first bionic man We can make him

better than he was before Better Stronger Fasterrdquo

Haverford College370 Lancaster AveHaverford PA 19041jlardashaverfordedu

References

Ahlstrom Sydney E (1972) A Religious History of the American People New HavenYale University Press

Albanese Catherine L (1997) Exchanging selves exchanging souls Contact com-bination and American religious history In Thomas A Tweed (ed) RetellingUS Religious History 200-26 Berkeley University of California Press

Anon (1851) A ship sunk by a whale Littellrsquos Living Age (29 November) 415-16Asad Talal (2003) Formations of the Secular Christianity Islam Modernity Stanford

Stanford University Press

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 33

34

Bacon Francis (1870) The Works of Francis Bacon James Spedding Robert LeslieEllis and Douglas Denon Heath (eds) Vol VIII New York Hurd andHoughton

Barton Bruce (2000) The Man Nobody Knows A Discovery of the Real Jesus ChicagoIvan R Dee

Beniger James R (1986) The Control Revolution Technological and Economic Origins ofthe Information Society Cambridge Harvard University Press

Benjamin Walter (1996) One-way street In Marcus Bullock amp Michael W Jennings(eds) Selected Writings Volume 1 1913-1926 444-88 Cambridge HarvardUniversity Press

mdash (2003) The work of art in the age of its technological reproducibility third ver-sion In Howard Eiland and Michael W Jennings (eds) Selected Writings Volume4 1938-40 251-83 Cambridge Harvard University Press

Bennett Charles A (1923) A Philosophical Study of Mysticism An Essay New HavenYale University Press 1923

Bernays Edward L (1923) Crystallizing Public Opinion New York Liverlight PublishingCorporation

Buchman SR (1925) Moby Dickmdashthe book and The Sea Beastmdashthe picture Anappreciation In Herman Melville Moby Dick or The White Whale ix-xi NewYork Grosset amp Dunlap

Butler Judith (1993) Bodies That Matter On the Discursive Limits of lsquoSexrsquo RoutledgeNew York

Cahir Linda Costanzo (1997) Routinizing the charismatic Melville and Hollywoodrsquosthree Moby-Dicks Melville Society Extracts 110 (September) 11-17

Cendrars Blaise (1922) Profound today Broom 13 ( January) 265-67Chadwick Owen (1975) The Secularization of the European Mind in the Nineteenth Century

Cambridge Cambridge University PressCoe George Albert (1917) A Social Theory of Religious Education New York Charles

Scribnerrsquos SonsDavidson Abraham A (1996) The European art invasion In Francis M Naumann

(ed) with Beth Vann Making Mischief Dada Invades New York 222-27 NewYork Whitney Museum of Art

Debord Guy (1995) Society of the Spectacle translated by Donald Nicholson-SmithNew York Zone Books

Derrida Jacques (1994) Specters of Marx The State of the Debt The Work of Mourningand the New International Peggy Kamuf (trans) New York Routledge

Dorsey George A (1925) Why We Behave Like Human Beings New York BlueRibbon Books

Epstein Jean (1922) The new conditions of literary phenomena Broom 21 (April)3-10

Frank Waldo (1919) Our America New York Boni and LiverightGammel Irene (2002) Baroness Elsa Gender Dada and Everyday Modernitymdasha Cultural

Biography Cambridge The MIT PressGeertz Clifford (1973) Deep play Notes on the Balinese cockfight In The Interpretation

of Cultures 412-53 New York Basic BooksHaraway Donna (2004) A manifesto for cyborgs Science technology and socialist

feminism in the 1980s In The Haraway Reader 7-45 New York RoutledgeHeap Jane (1922) Dada Little Review VII2 (Spring) 46Heidegger Martin (1977) The age of the world-picturerdquo In The Question Concerning

Technology and Other Essays 115-54 William Lovitt (trans) New York Harperamp Row

Hoffman Carol Stein (2001) The Barrymores Hollywoodrsquos First Family LexingtonUniversity of Kentucky Press

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 34

35

Jackson Josephine A and Helen M Salisbury (1922) Outwitting Our Nerves A Primerof Psychotherapy New York The Century Co

Jaffe David (1990) The village enlightenment in New England 1760-1820 TheWilliam and Mary Quarterly XLVII3 ( July) 327-46

Jones Rufus M (1915) Mysticism in present-day religion Harvard Theological ReviewVIII2 (April) 155-65

Kippenberg Hans G (2002) Discovering Religious History in the Modern Age BarbaraHarshav (trans) Princeton Princeton University Press

Kobler John (1977) Damned in Paradise The Life of John Barrymore New YorkAtheneum

Kuttner Alfred B (1922) Nerves In Harold E Stearns (ed) Civilization in the UnitedStates An Enquiry by Thirty Americans 427-42 New York Harcourt

Lauter Paul (1994) Melville climbs the canon American Literature 66 (March) 1-24Lawrence DH (1923) Studies in Classic American Literature New York T SeltzerLindbergh Charles A (1927) We New York GP Putnamrsquos SonsLippmann Walter (1922) Public Opinion New York Macmillan CompanyMarchand Roland (1985) Advertising the American Dream Making Way for Modernity

1920-1940 Berkeley University of California PressMarty Martin E Modern American Religion Vol 2 The Noise of Conflict 1919-1941

Chicago University of Chicago Press 1991May Henry F (1976) The Enlightenment in America New York Oxford University

PressMayhew Jonathan (1749) Concerning the difference between truth and falsehood

right and wrong In Seven Sermons 1-21 Boston Rogers and FowleMayr Otto (1970) The Origins of Feedback Control Cambridge The MIT PressMelville Herman (1993) Correspondence Volume 14 of The Writings of Herman Melville

Lynne Horth (ed) Evanston and Chicago Northwestern University Pressmdash (1925) Moby Dick or The White Whale 1851 New York Grosset amp DunlapMindell David A (2002) Between Human and Machine Feedback Control and Computing

Before Cybernetics Baltimore The Johns Hopkins University PressMumford Lewis (1929) Herman Melville New York The Literary Guild of Americamdash (1924) Sticks and Stones A Study of American Architecture and Civilization New York

Dover Publicationsmdash (1934) Technics and Civilization New York Harcourt Brace and Companymdash (1926) The Golden Day A Study in American Literature and Culture New York Boni

and LiverightMurray Jr HA (1929) Review of Lewis Mumfordrsquos Herman Melville The New

England Quarterly 2 ( July) 523-26Naumann Francis M (1994) New York Dada 1915-23 New York Harry N AbramsNoble David F (1999) The Religion of Technology The Divinity of Man and the Spirit

of Invention New York Penguin BooksNye David E (1994) American Technological Sublime Cambridge The MIT PressOrsquoNeil David (1921) The new Broom Broom 11 (November) 96Overton Grant (1928) The Philosophy of Fiction New York D AppletonPalmer Attorney General (1920) The case against the lsquoRedsrsquo The Forum A Magazine

of Constructive Nationalism 632 (February) 173-85Parsons Floyd W (1927) Everybodyrsquos business Advertising amp Selling ( June 29) 5 64Prampolini Enrico (1922) The aesthetic of the machine and mechanical intro-

spection in art Broom 33 (October) 235-37Rauschenbusch Walter (1917) A Theology for the Social Gospel New York The

Macmillan CompanyRichardson George P (1991) Feedback Thought in Social Science and Systems Theory

Philadelphia University of Pennsylvania Press

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 35

9

6 Such irony can be found in Jonathan Edwardsrsquos ldquoSinners in the Hands of anAngry Godrdquo (1741) A rich and contradictory sermon it instructs parishioners torecognize their always already abject relation to God while simultaneously demand-ing that they willingly submit to his will

ironically as guarantor of an organic version of human subjectivity6

The Fundamentalist defense of biblical inerrancy for example confirmedboth the divine autonomy of the text and the human capacity for accu-rate contemplation of it This underlying tension was resolved withinthe Fundamentalist theory of textuality that hewed to the CommonSense dictum that seeing was in fact on par with authentic belief Justas there was a transparent relationship to be had between the self andGod reader and words on the page the promise of transparency wasalso fulfilled in the human act of vision more generally God was thearchitect and engineer of the world He constructed the eyes as wellas the space that made visions of the world even possible As WilliamJennings Bryan wrote in 1922 ldquoI believe that God made the eyes whenHe made manmdashnot only made the eyes but carved out the caverns inthe skull in which they hangrdquo (97-8)

With similar missionary zeal so-called ldquohundred-percentersrdquo went onthe offensive and designated scapegoats for a decline in ldquooriginal-stockProtestant Americardquo The Red Scare of 1919-1920 led by AttorneyGeneral and ldquofighting Quakerrdquo Mitchell Palmer initiated campaigns ofsurveillance and intimidation of Socialist Party members labor leadersvociferous Jews and immigrants and any others deemed politically sub-versive The Johnson Act of 1921 the more restrictive Immigration Actof 1924 as well as the increased visibility of the Ku Klux Klan dur-ing the decade spoke to burgeoning fears over racial miscegenation(Marty 1991 66-79) At stake in these fantasies of whiteness and strate-gies of purification was the notion of the Anglo-self as autonomouspossessive and immune

In popular culture myths of individual expertise proliferated thatreflected both the Protestant desire for authenticity and the limits ofthis desire more generally For even as Americans searched for signsof their essential humanity they often came to understand themselvesin and through technological terms Babe Ruth Henry Ford and thebusiness entrepreneur offered celebrity assurance of an autonomous sub-ject who could withstand the feminizing assaults of modernity by mas-tering technology (Susman 1984 133) Advertising executive BruceBarton (who worked for General Motors when it organized the production

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 9

10

of automobiles around consumer orders feedback from local dealersand demand forecasting) introduced Jesus in his best-selling The Man

Nobody Knows (1925) as a conflation of all three (Beniger 1986 317)According to Barton Jesus deftly swung his carpenter tools created anldquoorganization that conquered the worldrdquo and awakened to the ldquoinnerconsciousnessrdquo of his ldquopowerrdquo Barton pitched Jesus as a ldquomysticrdquo andldquobig manrdquo who had incorporated the technologies of business adver-tising and manufacturing into his own personality and cult thereof (4 10 13 6)

As feedback technologies ldquoneutralizedrdquo economies of origination andclaims to eternal value both Christologies and psychological narrativesof restoration were mechanically inscribed (Benjamin 2003 252) Inthe wake of the popular Personality How To Build It (1916) self-realizationwas consistently equated with an engineering process of control Outwitting

our Nerves (1922) affirmed ldquothe integrity of our physical machinesrdquo aswell as human ldquopower of choicerdquo over those machines It was a ldquofactrdquothat ldquowe ourselves decide which of all the possible emotions we shallchoose or we decide not to press the button for any emotion at allrdquo( Jackson and Salisbury 1922 296 360) In Self-Mastery Through Conscious

Auto-Suggestion (1922) one of the defining books of the twentieth-centurygenre of ldquoself-helprdquo Emile Coueacute introduced Americans to the controlpanel of their inner autopilots In Why We Behave Like Human Beings

(1925) evolutionary anthropologist George A Dorsey defined humansin terms of the ldquokinesthetic senserdquo and their innate capacity to enactfeedback control upon themselves He assured readers that ldquoevery humanindividual normal enough to live beyond the walls of an asylum livesbecause he has an equipment by which he can keep on making adjust-ments to changing conditionsrdquo (302 301) In We (1927) CharlesLindberghrsquos celebrated chronicle of his trans-Atlantic flight his airplaneldquoThe Spirit of St Louisrdquo assumed its own personality and portrait evenas Lindbergh became ldquomechanizedrdquo in the popular press

3 Melville fed back

Concerns over how to secure and maintain a sense of coherent iden-tity in light of a seemingly animated material world also precipitatedthe ldquorevivalrdquo of Melville in the 1920s As in the various Protestantstrategies of adjustment ldquorevivalistsrdquo (predominantly white and male)embraced Melville as providing a script of American identity and self-governance In hopes of defending themselves against the totalizing

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 10

11

Figure 1 Instrument Board of the Spirit of St Louis from We (1927)

directives of technology revivalists read Melville and his works throughthe lens of anti-Puritanism and the newly discovered script of FreudMelvillersquos celebrity increased as Elsie Clews Parson Van Wyck BrooksHL Mencken Waldo Frank and others accused Puritans of possessinga ldquorepressive impulserdquo of denying ldquolife and desirerdquo and of discardingldquomystical consciousnessrdquo in favor of ldquoinstrumentalrdquo reason (Frank 191966 150 68) In Melvillersquos rejection of Puritanismrsquos ldquorepellant materialismrdquohis work assumed a positively transgresssive quality (Tomlinson 1926621) Opposed to the Puritan life of ldquointolerable monotonyrdquo Melvillewas viewed as ldquoa mystic a treasure-seeker a mystery-monger a delverafter hidden things spiritual and materialrdquo (Weaver 1919 145-46)

Raymond M Weaverrsquos Herman Melville Mariner and Mystic (1921) setthe terms of religious evaluation for the early stages of the RevivalWeaver proclaimed that Melville in his ldquoescape from an inexorableand intolerable world of realityrdquo had achieved ldquopsychological synthesisrdquo

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 11

12

Figure 2 ldquoThe ConquerorrdquomdashCharles Lindbergh from Current History July 1927

(Weaver 1921 19 331) The construction of Melville as mystic wasconcurrent with the discursive construction of mysticism by liberalProtestants as ldquoahistorical poetic essential intuitive and universalrdquo(Schmidt 2003 288) Both intellectual constructionsmdashthe latter integralto the academic study of religion in the twentieth centurymdashsought towrest a degree of ldquorealnessrdquo from a world in which ldquothe realrdquo was feltto be increasingly susceptible to technological erasure (Kippenberg 2002175-86) And whereas mystically inclined Protestants denounced ldquosec-ular activitiesrdquo by calling for the liberation and unity of ldquothe deep-lyingpowers of the inward self into one conscious liferdquo under God revival-ists called on Melville to provide them with an experiential map of thatwhich was utterly and mysteriously human (Bennett 1923 6 Jones1915 156 161) As Henry A Murray flatly announced ldquoMelville dis-covered the Unconscious and commenced to explore itrdquo (1929 526)As a model for authenticity and self-governance Melville was both ana-lyst and analysandmdashldquoa gentleman adventurer in the barbarous outposts

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 12

13

of human experiencerdquo not a ldquostaged dip into studio savageryrdquo Melvillehad penetrated the depths of his own psyche no doubt aided by hisstay among South Sea islanders (detailed in his first two novels Typee

(1846) and Omoo (1847) Indeed the authenticity of Melvillersquos mysticconsciousness was dependent upon his ldquountamed desires in violentconflict with his physical and spiritual environmentrdquo (Weaver 1921 1519 21 24-29)

As opposed to Weaverrsquos vicarious nostalgia for a simpler less com-mercial and more fully ldquorealrdquo existence another Melville biographerLewis Mumford understood the complex simulations of a consumer-driven economy as already emergent during Melvillersquos writerly careerMixing cultural criticism history and theological speculation Mumfordwas a keen observer of the technological revolutions in feedback controlIn his most memorable and encyclopedic work Technics and Civilization

(1934) Mumford claimed that in the seventeenth-century ldquomechanicsrdquohad become ldquothe new religion and [they] gave to the world a new Messiahthe machinerdquo In dramatizing the extent to which technology had shapedand continued to shape human consciousness Mumford explored inexacting and illustrated detail the history and material conditions thatwere allowing ldquotools and utensilsrdquo to assume ldquoan independent existencerdquo

This ldquoneotechnic phaserdquo had begun in the early part of the nineteenthcentury and was marked by efficiency flexibility ldquocomplete automatismrdquoand synthetic materialsmdasha ldquomutationrdquo that was rapidly integrating ldquothemachine and the world of liferdquo (45 321 227 212 254)

Such integration was not without its dangers ldquoWith the invention ofthe telegraphrdquo the ldquowireless telephonerdquo and the ldquotelevisionrdquo wroteMumford humans ldquobegan to bridge the gap in time between communi-cation and responserdquo The sympathetic relations between family memberscould now be replicated on an unprecedented scale through telepathictechnologiesmdashgiving rise to ldquo[immense] possibilities for good and evilrdquoThe building of a personality was no longer a ldquolocalrdquo affair On the con-trary when ldquomass-reactionsrdquo were ldquomobilized and hastenedrdquo the needsand interests of the human became those of the machine As Mumfordsuggested technology was becoming a ldquocreative force carried on by itsown momentumrdquo and ldquoproducing a third estate midway between natureand the humane artsrdquo The drive to overcome distancemdashbetween indi-viduals as well as between self and worldmdashhad itself ldquocreated an inde-pendent environment that has reacted upon every other side of the personalityrdquo (239241 322 324)

According to Mumford such technological interference had been ofintense and abiding concern for Melville (1934 213) In Herman Melville

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 13

14

Figure 3 Neotechnic Automatism from Technics and Civilization (1934)

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 14

15

7 Public relations and advances in advertising were the latest instances of the ldquocontrol revolutionrdquo in which technology of interchangeability so integral to theAmerican System of manufacturing had extended its field of operations under theauspices of consumer capitalism Machines were not simply making parts for othermachines but were integral to the form and content of social reproduction Publicrelations was a particular (and less reliable) version of feedback control Instead ofmaintaining a fixed variable on the inside by responding to fluctuations on the out-side ldquocounselorsrdquo stoked the flames of consumer desire in order to justify an accel-erating rate of production and ideally consumption

(1929) Mumford had chided fellow revivalists for exaggerating Melvillersquosretreat into mystical idealism ldquoMelville was a realistrdquo countered Mumfordldquoin the sense that the great religious teachers are realistsrdquo FurthermoreMelville had witnessed the ldquovolcanic intrusionrdquo of ldquoindustrialism [as] avalue in itself rdquo (1929 5 64-65) But things had gotten much more com-plicated since the mid-nineteenth century Whereas Melville had beheldldquothe servile routine of the factory systemrdquo Mumford was now witness-ing the birth of ldquothe machine system the network of relationshipsthat have followed the financial exploitation of machineryrdquo The differencein other words was the full-scale emergence of self-governing tech-nologiesmdashldquohandicraft devoted to mechanical reproduction and machinerythat is set to reproduce endless simulacrardquo For Mumford this ldquomachineritualrdquo this ldquoendlessrdquo loop of ldquomechanical reproductionrdquo threatened toefface ldquothe human arts of seeing feeling and livingrdquo (1924 67-68 10174-75 105 81) Technology in other words had achieved the capacityfor feedback on two different but related levels first in material devicesthat could copy both nature and themselves and secondly in humansthat governed themselves according to the latest control variables setby the machine As Mumford argued the totalizing power of feedbacktechnologies resulted not simply from designs motors or even materialoutputs but through their economically driven expansion of ldquothe verydomain of the symbol itself rdquo (1934 331)

Mumfordrsquos insights take on more ominous implications when oneconsiders the rise of the American public relations industry during thisperiod7 Public relations consultants such as Edward Bernays and adver-tisers like Bruce Barton actively sought to shape and change the beliefsof individuals in the service of larger economic agendas It was no acci-dent Bernays wrote in 1923 that a ldquoman belongs to one church ratherthan another or to any church at allrdquo It was no accident that ldquoBostonwomen prefer brown eggs and New York women white eggsrdquo Becausethe judgments of individuals were not arrived at through ldquoresearch andlogical deductionrdquo but were ldquodogmatic expressions accepted on theauthority of his parents his teachers his church and of his social his

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 15

16

economic and other leadersrdquo a ldquopublic relations counselrdquo must do thework of reauthorization (Bernays 1923 62) Through the strategic ldquosat-urationrdquo of images text and work-place incentives an entire profes-sional class sought to provide the terms for and effectively monitor theconditions of self-realization (Marchand 1985 94-95)

What then did Melville have to offer those living within ldquothe machinesystemrdquo of the 1920s Mumford and other revivalists championed Moby-

Dick as a blueprint for living within an increasingly mechanical rou-tinized and bureaucratic world They also heaped admiration uponCaptain Ahab an odd choice given the outcome of Moby-Dick Contraryto those who would later read Ahabrsquos technologically enhanced dem-agoguery against the political backdrops of Italian Fascism and NationalSocialism Ahabrsquos madness in the 1920s could be considered ldquoactiveand courageousrdquo as well as a sign of ldquogeniusrdquomdashldquothe very pinnacle ofhuman self-assertionrdquo (Watson 1970 136 Sullivan 1970 163) Suchreadings conflated the white whale with the power of technology andhad Ahab defiantly affirm the principle of free-will and defend theboundary between human and material worlds Mumford for examplewrote of Ahab as the ldquospirit of manrdquo who stood in opposition to ldquothebrute energies of existence blind fatal overpoweringrdquo Ahab was self-directive ldquopurposiverdquo and he pitted his ldquopuniness against this mightand [his] purpose against the blank senselessness of powerrdquo So eventhough Ahabrsquos ldquomethods are ill-chosenrdquo wrote Mumford his ldquodefianceis noblerdquo (Mumford 1929 184-86)

4 People who portray themselves or Ahab on Ahab

Film projectors in addition to utilizing concepts of feedback internallywere often seen as generative of external feedback loops between humansand machines nature and artifice Such loops arguably constituted theldquosociety of the spectaclerdquo Guy Debordrsquos term for the image-saturatedenvironment that arose in the 1920s with the confluence of sound filmtelevision and the perfection of propaganda techniques As one of themore grim assessments of an image-based postmodernity Debord definedthe ldquospectaclerdquo in terms of negative feedback ldquoIt is the omnipresentcelebration of a choice already made in the sphere of production andthe consummate result of that choice In form as in content the spectacleserves as total justification for the conditions and aims of the existingsystem It further ensures the permanent presence of that justification forit governs almost all time spent outside the production process itself rdquo

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 16

17

8 Cahir (1997) has made a similar point Although I agree with her assessmentthat The Sea Beast is about Ahabrsquos ldquoreal pursuit of identityrdquo I take issue with herargument that The Sea Beast validates autonomous autotelic forms of masculine identity

(13) In America Debordian paranoia was rampant as Victorian fearsover the exploitation of pleasure were morphing into general anxietiesconcerning voyeurism and cinematic determinism ldquoThe spectacle ofmechanical progress has made so deep an impressionrdquo argued WalterLippmann in 1922 ldquothat it has suffused the whole moral coderdquo Whatdisturbed Lippmann and other public figures was the specter of circularcausality and the quiet ldquoinsertion between man and his environmentof a pseudo-environmentrdquo composed mainly of images (Lippmann 1922108 15) Unbeknownst to them Americans were in danger of becom-ing automated by images and trapped within what Debord would latercall ldquoan uninterrupted monologue of self-praiserdquo (19) Their perpetualaffirmation of self however was wholly cybernetic given the fact thatthey were oblivious to the fact that ldquoon the screen the whole processof observing describing reporting and then imagining has been accom-plished for yourdquo (92)

In a strange twist that Melville might have enjoyed the most com-pelling representation of Moby-Dick and portrayal of Captain Ahab mayhave occurred via the technology of the moving picture8 The 1926silent film The Sea Beast adapted to the screen by Bess Meredyth andstarring John Barrymore as Captain Ahab dramatized the feedbackdimensions of film and its capacity to regulate the human personalityThe Sea Beast I argue challenged more able-bodied academic inter-pretations by reveling in its status as a technological reproduction The

Sea Beast with its odd juxtapositions visceral jump cuts and perverseattention to Ahabrsquos stump and artificial limb rather than affirm thedesire for self-transparency suggested that the equipment-free reality ofthe self was quite literally an enabling fiction What Americans lackedaccording to Meredythrsquos scenario was the tragic recognition of them-selves as always regulated and already enhanced by technology Takingldquopleasure in the confusion of boundariesrdquo and ldquoresponsibility in their con-structionrdquo The Sea Beast in the borrowed words of Donna Harawaymade ldquoan argument for the cyborg as a fiction mapping our social andbodily reality and as an imaginative resource suggesting some very fruit-ful couplingsrdquo (8)

In 1925 at age forty-three John Barrymore was one of Hollywoodrsquosmost bankable actors (part of the ldquostar-systemrdquo promoted by Edward

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 17

18

Bernays who clearly saw the potential for cross-marketing between enter-tainment business and political campaigns) Barrymore easily convincedWarner Brothers to turn Moby-Dick one of his favorite novels into amovie and to cast him in the role of Captain Ahab Having playedHamlet in the 1922-23 Broadway season Barrymore developed a keeninterest in psychoanalysis and Freudrsquos account of Hamlet in Interpretationof Dreams (1900) The role of Captain Ahab like that of Hamlet allowedBarrymore to reach a larger audience with his newly emotive actingstyle As Captain Ahab he could also remind his audience of his depthand manly credentials He was tired in his words of playing ldquoscentedbepuffed bewigged and ringletted charactersrdquo (quoted in Kobler 1977213) Promotional pamphlets for The Sea Beast seemed to reinforceBarrymorersquos gendered strategy featuring a picture of Barrymore in abusiness suit puffing contemplatively on a pipemdashldquoJohn Barrymore ismore than a name more than a personality he is world institutionrdquo(Hoffman 2001 73)

The opening credits to The Sea Beast begin imprecisely with a close-up of the filmrsquos textual referent Moby Dick or the White Whale Thissimulated text begins not with ldquoExtractsrdquo or even ldquoCall me Ishmaelrdquobut with the following words ldquoThere never was nor ever will be abraver life than the life of the whaler Compared to the game theyhunted the mightiest land beast was but a poodle dogrdquo Adapted tothe screen by Bess Meredyth former actress turned writer The Sea Beast

is noteworthy as one of the earliest if not the first public appropriationsof Melvillersquos novel by a woman By 1926 Meredyth had become aHollywood regular having written the scenarios or continuities for Ben

Hur (1925) Don Juan (1926) and at least 70 other films ldquoThere is nowoman writing todayrdquo read the promotional copy of The Sea Beastldquowho has contributed so much to genuine screen values as Bess Meredythrdquo(Hoffman 2001 74) The ldquogenuinerdquo sense Meredyth made of Melvillersquosepic is significant in its relentless focus on the self as a technologicalconstruct In Meredythrsquos scenario one literally glimpses the spirit ofMelvillersquos rejection of the contemplative insular and hyper-masculinizedself of mid-nineteenth-century religion and science In its plot and per-verse attention to Ahabrsquos stump The Sea Beast suggests that nothing willor even can make up for the loss Ahab suffers

After the opening credits the audience is introduced to a healthyCaptain Ahab atop the masthead He looks out over the sea and downon his crew hard at work his feet tapping to the beat of the sea shantyldquoHanging Johnnyrdquo Nostalgia and the logic of substitution are bothbroached in the opening scenesmdashnot in terms of idealism but in ways

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 18

19

that hint at their subsequent negation As Ahab reads a letter from hisbeloved Esther Harper the daughter of a Christian missionary playedby the nineteen year-old Dolores Costello Ahab looks longingly at hername tattooed on his arm His mind drifts back to their last embraceFollowing a long close-up of his legs Ahab descends from the mastheadthe camera sliding down the rope in real time and from Ahabrsquos pointof view his legs leading the way The experience of vertigo engenderedby the shot suggests that Ahabrsquos identity is already unstable alreadymarked by a palpable lack of ground This shot however is quicklyoffset by numerous scenes that depict the fullness of Ahabrsquos vigor par-ticularly in relation to his healthy pair of legs He jumps he hops heruns around

When Ahabrsquos ship docks in the bay of Mauritius the audience isintroduced to Esther as well as to Derek Ahabrsquos scheming half-brotherIt is here that one is reminded of the words from the 1925 promotionalpublication of Moby-Dick accompanied by scenes from The Sea Beastldquothe screen version of lsquoMoby Dickrsquo exceeds the book The discrepancybetween the two must not be considered as a profanely wanton alterationrdquoTo portray the ldquopsychological studyrdquo of Captain Ahab ldquothe camerahas resorted to means of its own A mental state therefore particularlyan involved condition of mind must be expressed by means of the inci-dents which produced it each tortuous thought composing Ahabrsquos madness must be traced to the event which engendered itrdquo (Buchman1925 x) The most obvious incident being the loss of Ahabrsquos leg butthe film compounds this felt sense of loss by turning Melvillersquos tale intoa misbegotten love triangle between Ahab Derek and Esther the appleof both their eyes

On shore Ahab and Esther declare their love to each other Butafter a few days Ahab sails from Mauritius and scans the shore withhis telescope He spies Estherrsquos window She comes to the window andreturns Ahabrsquos gaze through her own telescope Technology has literallybecome the lens through which they see each other through whicheach declares their commitment They wave and blow kisses until theyare both out of range At sea Ahab is betrayed by Derek who unbe-knownst to Ahab pushes him overboard into the waiting jaws of MobyDick After losing his leg Ahab is distraught Derek then taunts Ahaband suggests that his symbolic castration is too much for any relation-ship to bear As Derek reminds him ldquoEsther was always crazy aboutyour beinrsquo so strong and perfectrdquo Having been fitted with his ivorystump Ahab arrives back at Mauritius Derek then shames Ahab evenfurther by telling him that he and Esther are in love and that Esther

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 19

20

cannot bring herself to tell Ahab of the deceit Derek then goes toEsther to convince her that Ahab has abandoned her When Ahabarrives at Estherrsquos house to confirm Derekrsquos story he sees their shadowscast by the light of spermaceti candles and mistakenly believes thatEsther has indeed left him for Derek It is here that Ahab descendsinto his infamous monomania

Ahab goes onto slay Moby Dick but not before uncovering his half-brotherrsquos double betrayal In a dramatic confrontation Derek pulls aknife on Ahab and is about to get the best of our hero But wait Ahabwedges his ivory stump into the deck leveraging himself in order tofend off Derek Ahab then casts Derek overboard and into the sea Anivory technology marking the absence of Ahabrsquos leg has been trans-formed into a salvific presence Or so it seems when the audience istreated to the restoration of order upon the Pequodrsquos return to portand Ahabrsquos reunion with Esther consummated in their tearful embraceHaving staged and seemingly resolved the crisis of masculine identity(the raison drsquoecirctre of melodrama being that the resolution is alreadypresent in the staging) The Sea Beast on the contrary did anything butrestore the full presence of Ahabrsquos self It suggested through both contentand form that the reality of the self whether it be Ahab or the spec-tator in the theater was neither fully resolvable nor equipment-free

Ahab achieves a kind of liberation on screen by recognizing that heis always already a figment of an imagination that is not his own Afterthe tearful reunion between Ahab and Esther the screen goes blackThe audience is then given a glimpse behind the scenes as it weremdasha scene of the director Millard Webb in his chair issuing directionsto Ahab and Esther in Estherrsquos living room A man in a business suitplays the violin in the background As Ahab and Esther look longinglyinto each otherrsquos eyes Ahab slips a ring onto Estherrsquos finger and theyembrace once again Or is it Barrymore and Costello It is unclearparticularly in light of the rumors of an off screen tryst between themiddle-aged Barrymore and his nineteen-year old costar (they wouldlater marry) The loving embrace is seemingly real an ambiguityreaffirmed by the fact that after Webb yells ldquocutrdquo he has to step betweenthe couple and remind them that they are on film Webb then turnsto the camera and smiles as the screen abruptly cuts to black onceagain

The odd ending of The Sea Beast suggests that Ahabrsquos journey towardreconciliation did not end with self-exposure but that it could neverreally begin Rather than achieve restoration of nature in and througha cultural construction Ahabrsquos artificial leg points to a previously

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 20

21

Figure 4 Final Embrace between AhabBarrymore and EstherCostello

ldquoexcluded and illegible domain that haunts the former domain as thespecter of its own impossibility the very limit of intelligibility its con-stitutive outsiderdquo (Butler 1993 xi) The ending harkens back to the seashanty ldquoHanging Johnnyrdquo Ahabrsquos introductory descent from the mast-head and his telescopic flirtation with Esther both vertiginous slidesinto the unfathomable layers of mediated perception that signal theldquoexecutionrdquo of possessive individualism Rather than erase the sign ofAhabrsquos traumamdashhis ivory legmdashthe ending of The Sea Beast suggests thatAhab and Barrymore are two sides of the same character vacillatingwithin the loop of continuous performativity One is reminded here ofWalter Benjaminrsquos insight into the traumatized subject in the age oftechnological reproducibility As Benjamin argues the trauma can beunderstood as a shift from the stage to the screen in which the actorperforms for a ldquopiece of equipmentrdquo rather than for an audience Citingthe Italian playwright Luigi Pirandello Benjamin suggests that the mod-ern subject is

exiled not only from the stage but from his own person With a vagueunease he senses an inexplicable void stemming from the fact that hisbody has lost its substance that he has been volatilized stripped of his

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 21

22

reality his life his voice the noises he makes when moving about andhas been turned into a mute image that flickers for a moment on thescreen then vanishes into silence (2003 260)

Pirandellorsquos borrowed words speak directly to Meredythrsquos reconfigurationof Melvillersquos text Whereas Melvillersquos Ahab tried and failed to conquerthe very source of visual illuminationmdashthe spermaceti oil that allowedantebellum Americans to see in the darkmdashBarrymorersquos Ahab revels inthe technologically enhanced gaze of his audience When the lightscome up the selves of Ahab Barrymore and the audience have beenre-narrativized as cybernetic that is as permanently divided and fun-damentally transient In affirming the really real offscreen relationshipbetween Barrymore and Costello the uncanny ending of The Sea Beast

supported a notion of selfhood as always already mediated or betteryet the necessity of experience to be mediated in order for it to becomereal or maybe even the necessity of acknowledging that the reality ofthe self is really made up

Barrymorersquos self-conscious performance inspired by his reading ofFreud and designed to overcome middle-class mores did not so muchpenetrate the inner depths of his character as it did the emotional lifeand perceptual apparatus of his audience The Sea Beast does not dram-atize the individual conquest of nature as much as it dramatizes visualtechnologyrsquos seduction of the individual The Sea Beast in its staging ofa cybernetic reality denied the very concept of 100 Americanism byinterrupting the narrative closure on which self-presence dependedNeither Ahab nor Barrymore nor the audience are ever alone even intheir solitude They are haunted not simply by the unconscious butby the specters generated in and through technologies of reproduction(Derrida 1994 97) They are in Benjaminrsquos apt phrase ldquopeople whoportray themselvesrdquo (Benjamin 2003 262)

For Benjamin photography and cinema were technologies of religiousrevelation for better or for worse in that they both exposed variousfeedback loops that constituted onersquos identity On one level Benjaminargued that the category of originality had been challenged by visualtechnologies that put copies ldquoof the original in situations which theoriginal itself cannot attainrdquo (2003 254) On another level the decayof the ldquoaurardquo of authenticity and the blurring of original and reproductionenabled individuals to recognize the fact that they were implicated inthe perceptual field and no longer insulated from what they saw orheard ldquoReception in distractionrdquo wrote Benjamin ldquowhich is increas-ing noticeably in all areas of art and is a symptom of profound changesin apperceptionmdashfinds in film its true training groundrdquo (269) Influenced

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 22

23

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethersquos notion of ldquoafter-imagesrdquo in Theory

of Colours (the same text that informed Melvillersquos ldquoThe Whiteness of theWhalerdquo) Benjamin announced the birth of the ldquooptical unconsciousrdquo(266) According to Benjamin images had become the currency of con-sciousness structuring thought and determining the range of possibleactions Mechanical means of reproduction had liberated the perceptualcapacities of humanity They had also ushered in the prospect of massdeception and control Either way they had resulted in a ldquomassiveupheaval in the domain of objectsrdquo and a ldquoshattering of traditionrdquo (254)

5 American Dada and the aporias of modernity

Within the Melville Revivalmdashan almost clicheacuted instance of Modernismrsquosvogue for the solitary geniusmdashseeds of post-Cartesian doubt were beingsown and the enchanting dimensions of technology considered BecauseMelville ldquowas spell-bound by the strange slidings and collidings ofMatterrdquo his work in the eyes of more atheological critics exposed theenchanting conditions of the machine age (Taylor 1984) ldquoIt is the mate-rial elements he really has to do withrdquo wrote DH Lawrence in 1923ldquoHis drama is with them He was a futurist long before futurism foundpaintrdquo (216) For Lewis Mumford too Melville had not simply dram-atized the incursion of machinesmdasha traditional Romantic tropemdashbuthad embraced a series of insoluble contradictions He has come to rec-ognize those parts of the world and himself that had already been pro-duced by machines and had insisted that the plasticity of self wassomething with which Americans had to struggle and to their spiritualdetriment repress

In broaching the aporias of modernity Mumford saw Melville as hav-ing already given the lie to Weberian diagnoses of disenchantment Thecapacity to effectively turn night into day Mumford suggested the expe-rience of a subway car rumbling past the solid structures of a sky-scraper vanishing into the air the peering into a microscope and theobservation of a ldquorow of bottles each of identical size shape colorstretching away for a quarter of a milerdquo were enough to induce a particular kind of vertigo ldquoThe special visual effect of repeating pat-tern[s]rdquo occurred simultaneously with the experience ldquoof the unique andthe non-repeatablerdquo (Mumford 1934 333-34) The experience of intensesystematicitymdashprecisely what feedback technologies were designed toinducemdashcould be positively disorienting when the infinitely calculableassumed the ldquospecial qualityrdquo of the ldquoincalculablerdquo (Heidegger 1977

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 23

24

135) According to Mumford when technology no longer made imperfectcopies of nature but perfect copies of itself the very notion of ldquonaturalrdquocould become radically suspect With the ldquoliquidationrdquo of the solid book-ends of authenticity and artifice came the prospect that the spectrumitself was socially constructed for better or for worse (Benjamin 2003255) Having torn aside the veil ldquoman has thrown between his ownexperience and the blank reality of the universerdquo Melville neither suc-cumbed to the temptation of nihilism nor retreated into his own pri-vate morality On the contrary he urged his contemporaries to ownup to the constructedness of any and all cultural forms and expressionsand the faith commitments that undergirded them As Mumford wroteldquoto appreciate the reality of the White Whale is to see more deeplyinto the expedience of all our immediate institutions all the spiritualshelters man puts between himself and the uncertain cosmic weatherMeaning significance attends only that little part of the universe manhas built up and settledrdquo (Mumford 1926 150-51)

Whereas Mumford assessed the religious dimensions of technologicalldquoprogressrdquo in a tragic key others tended toward the comic as was thecase with a group of experimental artists associated with Broom An

International Magazine of the Arts Published by Americans in Italy publishedbetween 1921 and 1924 (Tashjian 1975 116-34) Broomrsquos co-editor thepoet Alfred Kreyemborg (who would later co-edit The American Caravan

with Lewis Mumford) had adapted a passage from Moby-Dick for itstitle logo and statement of purpose which appeared on the back coverldquoWhat of itrdquo asks Ishmael

if some old hunks of a seacaptain orders me to get a broom and sweepdown the decks What does that indignity amount to weighed I meanin the scales of the New Testament Do you think the Archangel Gabrielthinks any less of me because I promptly and respectfully obey that oldhunks that particular instance Who ainrsquot a slave (Melville 1925 4)

The first issue of Broom included poems addressing Albert Einsteinrsquostheory of relativity as well as Emmy Veronica Sanders declaration thatldquothe American Machinerdquo was ldquotransforming itself with all its attributesand characteristics into American Mindrdquo ldquoAmericardquo she continuedinitially ldquomade of the Puritan by the Puritan for the Puritanrdquo wasnow being ldquoremade of the Machine by the Machine for the Machinerdquo(89-90) Following Sandersrsquos piece was a David OrsquoNeilrsquos hymn of sup-plication to the new Gods of the machine

When you are sweeping usWith Your cosmic broom

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 24

25

Figure 5 Nature and Second Nature in Technics and Civilization (1934)

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 25

26

Sweeping us out of mouldy rutsSweeping us clean and sweetmdash

RememberWhen wersquore quiveringmdashSensitivemdashbaremdashWe shall be gratefulFor just a few shadows (96)

Broom took Ishmaelrsquos retort quite seriously addressing the revolutionarydimensions of technological artifice and the shadows cast within therealm of technological illumination

Unlike Futurism Broom did not celebrate the beauty of war It didhowever come to express the ldquodreamed-of metallization of the humanbodyrdquo and the playful cybernetic fantasies of Dadaists such as ManRay and Francis Picabia (quoted in Benjamin 2003 269) After someinitial hesitation Broom began to embrace Dadarsquos perspective on the lib-eratory dimensions of the human-machine interface ldquoEverything isartificialrdquo gasped Broom contributor Blaise Cendrars ldquoThe eyes thehand the sexual frenzy of the factory The wheel which turns Thewing which flies The voice which travels far on a wire Your ear ina trumpet Your sense of direction Your rhythm You melt the worldin the mould of your skull Your brain is hollow Like a religion amysterious pill hastens your digestionrdquo (265) Jean Epstein from a slightdifferent angle argued that technology had ldquobecome part of ourselvesrdquoand had democratized human perceptionmdashldquoman has not one memoryof [the] landscape he [now] has a thousand different ones which mayor may not resemble each other Everything possesses hundreds ofapparent diameters which never superimpose exactlyrdquo (6-7)

Broom was soon translating less inflammatory Futurist manifestos suchas Enrico Prampolinirsquos ldquoThe Aesthetic of the Machine and MechanicalIntrospection in Artrdquo in which he declared ldquoIs not the machine todaythe most exuberant symbol of the mystery of human creation Is it notthe new mythical deity which weaves the legends and histories of thecontemporary human drama The Machine in its practical and materialfunction comes to have today in human concepts and thoughts thesignificance of an ideal and spiritual inspirationrdquo The kind of worshipthat ensued was that of the cyborg neither reverent nor memorializ-ing of cosmic law (Haraway 2004 9) Or as Prampolini wrote ldquoOurexperience has convinced us of the truth of certain of our plastic truthsand has allowed us to perceive the errors that lie in othersrdquo (236)

One of the more important pieces of American Dada captured pre-cisely this pointmdashGod (c 1917) designed by Baroness Elsa von Freytag-

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 26

27

Figure 6 Illustration accompanying Enrico Prampolinirsquos ldquoThe Aesthetic of theMachine and Mechanical Introspection in Artrdquo Broom 33 (October 1922) 237

Loringhoven and photographed by Morton Schamberg The invertedcast-iron plumbing trap atop a carpenterrsquos miter box was emblematicof the Melvillean appreciation for technological enchantment Indeedthe pipe is part of an indoor plumbing apparatus a modern conveniencewhose history dates back to some of the earliest feedback technologieson recordmdashthe water-clocks and float-regulators of ancient Greece (Mayr1970 11-26) God resembled the mechanical abstractions Schamberghad been producing before his premature death in 1918 during aninfluenza outbreak in Philadelphia The Baroness a contributor to Broom

and other little magazines had arrived in New York from Germanyin 1913 She was ldquothe first American dadardquo wrote Jane Heap in 1922ldquothe only one living anywhere who dresses dada loves dada lives dadardquo(46) Friends with Marcel Duchamp Djuna Barnes and other NewYork artists the Baroness was a central figure in a burgeoning trans-atlantic avant-garde In addition to her art and poetry the Baronesswas also a ldquoperformancerdquo artist who skillfully inverted gender hierarchiesand attacked through her very presence the traditional sensibilities ofthe middle-class She was notorious for walking around the streets ofGreenwich Village with her shaved head painted purple postage stampspasted to her face and a bird cage around her neck housing a livecanary (Davidson 1996 223-24)

In what must be considered a prescient assault on all manners oflogocentrism the Baroness also carried with her a plaster cast penis thatshe periodically revealed to passersby for maximum shock value (Gammel2002 195) But it was the Barnonessrsquos sculpture God that in addition

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 27

28

Figure 7 God (c 1917) designed by Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven and photographed by Morton Schamberg

to celebrating the mobility and reproducibility of that which was sup-posedly the most fixed and essential repossessed the power of tech-nology as ever imperfect and incomplete As a companion piece of sortsto Duchamprsquos infamous ready-made Fountain an inverted urinal dis-played in the 1917 exhibition of the American Society of IndependentArtists God invited more expressly theological speculation First of allit insisted on supplementing the three traditional symbolic centers ofWestern religious reflectionmdashGod humanity naturemdashwith the machineAnd although it has since been viewed by critics as ldquosacrilegiousrdquo andan instance of ldquoantireligious scatologyrdquo (Naumann 1994 171 Gammel220) the transgressive dimensions to God also affirm a shadowy open-

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 28

29

9 One is reminded here of Melvillersquos letter to Nathaniel Hawthorne in April of1851 ldquoWe incline to think that God cannot explain His own secrets and that Hewould like a little more information upon certain points Himself We mortals aston-ish Him as much as He usrdquo (Melville 1993 186)

ing to radical othernessmdashin the form of imperfection and chancemdashwithin the loops generated by feedback technology

Although the metal pipe ends up pointing toward heaven it firstloops downward in a nod to its human ground Limited by the skillsof the human carpenter on whose box it is anchored the contortedpipe narrativizes both the pitfalls and prospects of the machine ageShit eventually flows up in the case of God not down suggesting thateven the most lofty and noble ideals of the imagination maintain theirhuman aroma Rather than assume the power of divinity classicallyconstrued God staged divinity as nothing more and nothing less thanthat which made life livablemdashthat which kept the smell of human wasteartificially at bay or more ominously managed the flow of thingsthrough feedback control But even more literally God called attentionto the human work in the making of artifice and celebrated the bio-logical possibility for the endless unmaking (and remaking) of selfFeedback technology was not really God but it was for all practicalpurposes Or as the Baroness wrote in a 1927 letter to Peggy GuggenheimGod had much to learn from Henry Ford for he was ldquoclumsily sub-tle-densely-intelligent-inefficiently-immense-(Lord not Fordmdashof course)rdquo9

God the Baroness playfully warned had ldquobetter hotfoot it towardprogressmdashmodernizemdashuse his own omnipotence intelligentlymdashsmart orwersquoll all expire in tangle Well Lord knowsmdash(Does he)rdquo (quoted inGammel 2002 229)

6 Conclusion Deus in machina movet

As Protestant majorities struggled to adjust themselves and their theo-logical inheritance to new technological conditions theologies of themachine age both compelling and disturbing emerged from outsidethe precincts of traditional religious discourse For in addition to beinginspired by the ghost of Herman Melville the Melville Revival wasquite literally haunted by the power of feedback technologiesmdashspectersthat were affective rather than concrete strangely resistant to rationalcontemplation yet recognized through anxious admixtures of thoughtand feeling On one hand the revival reflected the spectrum of Protestant

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 29

30

10 Shortly after the publication of Moby-Dick in November of 1851 reports beganto reach America about the August sinking of the Ann Alexander by a whale in theSouth Pacific It was the first ldquoattack of a whale upon a shiprdquo since the destruc-tion of the Essex in 1820 The story about the Ann Alexander originally appeared inthe Panama Herald on October 16 and was reprinted the following month in New-York Daily Tribune and Littellrsquos Living Age The sperm whale that the Ann Alexander

fears over technological miscegenation The capacity of machines toredraw the boundaries of race and gender disturbed Protestant leadersand revivalists alike On the other hand subversive elements within theMelville Revival offered what must be considered a theological critiqueof how Protestants understood themselves and their God in relation totechnological materials Grant Overton for example saw in Moby-Dick

a deep appreciation for how technological developments had come tounderminemdashquite literally hauntmdashthe epistemological and ontologicalassumptions that made them possible ldquoNo longer able to instance thedeus ex machinardquo wrote Overton Melville was ldquounforgetful that deus inmachina movet and while most of mankind [have] become unable to seethe god for the machine [he] can scarcely perceive the machine forthe god agitating it [His] reports of the machine are somehow unrec-ognizable [his] realism is confronted by Realityrdquo (Overton 1928 231)

Bess Meredythrsquos reimagining of Moby-Dick and Baroness Elsa vonFreytag-Loringhovenrsquos God also explored the otherness that technologyengenders within the modern subject a trace that lingers despite allattempts to extinguish it Their errant readings challenged contempo-raries to reimagine their relationship to technology from an enchantedperspective that did not necessarily conform to the directives of Americanindividualism Resisting the advertisements of both Arminianism andBaconian Common Sense these readings insisted that there was somethingelsemdashsomething wholly othermdashoccurring within the technological workingsof secular modernity Excess or that which unsettled the boundariesbetween body and machine masculine and feminine had resulted inwhat might be called a ldquopost-structure of feelingrdquo The prospect thateither machines or women had begun to think for themselves or atleast possess a kind of agency once attributed to the enlightened malesubject now seemed as likely as a whale vengefully turning against awhaleship10 As Melvillean riffs on the deferred project of religious iden-tity The Sea Beast and God marked the space between human creationand technological determination consent and compulsion and there-fore hinted at the prospect that belief was not an individual state butan embodied activity Consistent with Lewis Mumfordrsquos assessment ofthe symbolic and material powers of feedback technology these works

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 30

31

had first turned upon starboard and larboard boats seizing both in its jaws andcrushing them to pieces It then rushed towards the Ann Alexander ldquoat the rateof fifteen knots In an instant the monster struck the ship with tremendous violence shakingher from stem to sternrdquo (415) Upon reading the article Melville remarked to his pub-lisher ldquothe Whale had almost completely slipped me for the time (amp I was themerrier for it) when Crash comes Moby Dick himself It is really amp truly a sur-prising coincidencemdashto say the least I make no doubt it is Moby Dick himself I wonder if my evil art has raised this monsterrdquo (Melville 1993 209)

11 William Jennings Bryan for example that standard bearer of fundamentalfaith equated faith to a particular kind of technologymdashldquothere is that in each humanliferdquo he wrote ldquothat corresponds to the mainspring of a watchmdashthat which isabsolutely necessary if the life is to be what it should be a real life and not amere existence That necessary thing is a belief in Godrdquo (86) Faith for Bryan wasthat which repeated without difference It was a dependable rational and utterlyrationalizing process It was not however self-regulating It affirmed the ldquorealnessrdquoof the individual believer precisely because it ignored the conditions imposed fromoutside the self But how might faith be viewed in terms of feedback and repro-ducibility rather than repetition a process that does not reaffirm a centered indi-vidual with every tick but adjusts accordingly to external fluctuations

raise numerous questions concerning the ways and means of religionin an age of postmodern complexity and virtual reality

How might a relentless focus on power and the porousness of sub-jectivity change how one views the matter of religion within historyHow might a greater attention to the aesthetic conditions that mediateany and all beliefs challenge the ways in which we distinguish the reli-gious from the secular How might a greater attention to the enchantingpower of material conditions challenge historical and political narrativesof secularization How do technologies and vested interests realize them-selves through the discourses of agency choice and mobility Whatin other words are the conditions of possibility that allow a historicalactor (rather than a Hollywood actor) to make a particular faith com-mitment or for that matter have any faith at all In what languagedo historical actors dream about themselves and divinity and how doesthat language change over time And finally to what degree is faithitself a technology11

By acknowledging the white mythology that still informs say thefield of American religions such questions shift the scholarly emphasisfrom explicit expressions of religious belief and practice to the spacebetween those beliefs and practices and the world at-large Individualswithin American religious history for example have often been depictedas fully formed agents making choices between various faith commitmentsand ever combining religious idioms to suit their specific needs and cir-cumstances (Albanese 1997) No doubt this is true But there is anotherside to this story of radical religious pluralism one that if accounted

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 31

32

12 Such a possibility is very much at odds with the Geertzian model of ldquothickdescriptionrdquo and its formidable legacy in the humanities and social sciences Withoutquestioning the degree to which the self can ever become entirely legible to theself Geertz claimed that every society and individual life and by extension everybelief and every practice ldquocontain their own interpretations One has only to learnhow to gain access to themrdquo (Geertz 1973 453)

13 The ambiguities of agency during the ldquomachine agerdquo have been the subjectof a number of elegant critical studies See for example Anson Rabinbach TheHuman Motor Energy Fatigue and the Origins of Modernity (New York Basic Books1990) Mark Seltzer Bodies and Machines (New York Routledge 1992) MarthaBanta Taylorized Lives Narrative Productions in the Age of Taylor Veblen and Ford (ChicagoUniversity of Chicago Press 1993) Carolyn Thomas de la Pentildea The Body ElectricHow Strange Machines Built the Modern American (New York New York UniversityPress 2003) and Joel Dinerstein The Swinging Machine Modernity Technology andAfrican American Culture Between the World Wars (Amherst University of MassachusettsPress 2003) Dinersteinrsquos work is particularly relevant to the issue of religious com-binativeness given his emphasis on how African American artists strove to refigureldquomachine aestheticsrdquo in and through their artistry Dinersteinrsquos work suggests thatthe self is locatedmdashie the self happensmdashsomewhere between resistance and assim-ilation between choice and coercionmdasha lesson that many Anglo-Americans werenot willing to consider in their triumphal theorizing about the human in relationto the machine The possibility for consideration argues Dinerstein existed inAfrican American jazz swing and dance

for suggests new directions for the study of religion in America Althoughthe ldquolived religionrdquo perspective in American religious history has donemuch to overcome the distinction between ldquodabblersrdquo and ldquotrue believersrdquothe question of power still lingers (Ahlstrom 1972 1052) Religiousbeliefs and practices are neither essential things nor reveal themselvesto the scholar in toto12 Such a position does not replicate the eitherordiscussion regarding the agency of historical actors On the contraryit suggests that religious agency is a hybrid weave of intent and instinctimmediate response and mediated principle knowing and unknowing13

Accounting for the ambiguities of agency has already pushed scholarsof religion toward an anthropology of the secular and an explorationof in the Foucauldian phrasing of Talal Asad ldquothe contingencies thathave come together to give us our certaintiesrdquo (2003 16)

It is with a hint of irony then that one may return to the promotionalpamphlet of The Sea Beast that celebrates the ldquoconquestrdquo of Ahab andthe invisible wafting presence of screenwriter Bess Meredyth ldquoThereis no woman writing today who has contributed so much to genuine

screen values as Bess Meredythrdquo Indeed her son John Meredyth Lucasborn in 1919 continued down his motherrsquos unsettling path as a successfultelevision screenwriter and director His credits included episodes ofldquoStar Trekrdquo ldquoLoganrsquos Runrdquo and that other story of ldquohundred percentrdquoAmericanism ldquoThe Six Million Dollar Manrdquo

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 32

33

Figure 8 The Six Million Dollar Man ldquoGentlemen we can rebuild him Wehave the capability of making the worldrsquos first bionic man We can make him

better than he was before Better Stronger Fasterrdquo

Haverford College370 Lancaster AveHaverford PA 19041jlardashaverfordedu

References

Ahlstrom Sydney E (1972) A Religious History of the American People New HavenYale University Press

Albanese Catherine L (1997) Exchanging selves exchanging souls Contact com-bination and American religious history In Thomas A Tweed (ed) RetellingUS Religious History 200-26 Berkeley University of California Press

Anon (1851) A ship sunk by a whale Littellrsquos Living Age (29 November) 415-16Asad Talal (2003) Formations of the Secular Christianity Islam Modernity Stanford

Stanford University Press

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 33

34

Bacon Francis (1870) The Works of Francis Bacon James Spedding Robert LeslieEllis and Douglas Denon Heath (eds) Vol VIII New York Hurd andHoughton

Barton Bruce (2000) The Man Nobody Knows A Discovery of the Real Jesus ChicagoIvan R Dee

Beniger James R (1986) The Control Revolution Technological and Economic Origins ofthe Information Society Cambridge Harvard University Press

Benjamin Walter (1996) One-way street In Marcus Bullock amp Michael W Jennings(eds) Selected Writings Volume 1 1913-1926 444-88 Cambridge HarvardUniversity Press

mdash (2003) The work of art in the age of its technological reproducibility third ver-sion In Howard Eiland and Michael W Jennings (eds) Selected Writings Volume4 1938-40 251-83 Cambridge Harvard University Press

Bennett Charles A (1923) A Philosophical Study of Mysticism An Essay New HavenYale University Press 1923

Bernays Edward L (1923) Crystallizing Public Opinion New York Liverlight PublishingCorporation

Buchman SR (1925) Moby Dickmdashthe book and The Sea Beastmdashthe picture Anappreciation In Herman Melville Moby Dick or The White Whale ix-xi NewYork Grosset amp Dunlap

Butler Judith (1993) Bodies That Matter On the Discursive Limits of lsquoSexrsquo RoutledgeNew York

Cahir Linda Costanzo (1997) Routinizing the charismatic Melville and Hollywoodrsquosthree Moby-Dicks Melville Society Extracts 110 (September) 11-17

Cendrars Blaise (1922) Profound today Broom 13 ( January) 265-67Chadwick Owen (1975) The Secularization of the European Mind in the Nineteenth Century

Cambridge Cambridge University PressCoe George Albert (1917) A Social Theory of Religious Education New York Charles

Scribnerrsquos SonsDavidson Abraham A (1996) The European art invasion In Francis M Naumann

(ed) with Beth Vann Making Mischief Dada Invades New York 222-27 NewYork Whitney Museum of Art

Debord Guy (1995) Society of the Spectacle translated by Donald Nicholson-SmithNew York Zone Books

Derrida Jacques (1994) Specters of Marx The State of the Debt The Work of Mourningand the New International Peggy Kamuf (trans) New York Routledge

Dorsey George A (1925) Why We Behave Like Human Beings New York BlueRibbon Books

Epstein Jean (1922) The new conditions of literary phenomena Broom 21 (April)3-10

Frank Waldo (1919) Our America New York Boni and LiverightGammel Irene (2002) Baroness Elsa Gender Dada and Everyday Modernitymdasha Cultural

Biography Cambridge The MIT PressGeertz Clifford (1973) Deep play Notes on the Balinese cockfight In The Interpretation

of Cultures 412-53 New York Basic BooksHaraway Donna (2004) A manifesto for cyborgs Science technology and socialist

feminism in the 1980s In The Haraway Reader 7-45 New York RoutledgeHeap Jane (1922) Dada Little Review VII2 (Spring) 46Heidegger Martin (1977) The age of the world-picturerdquo In The Question Concerning

Technology and Other Essays 115-54 William Lovitt (trans) New York Harperamp Row

Hoffman Carol Stein (2001) The Barrymores Hollywoodrsquos First Family LexingtonUniversity of Kentucky Press

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 34

35

Jackson Josephine A and Helen M Salisbury (1922) Outwitting Our Nerves A Primerof Psychotherapy New York The Century Co

Jaffe David (1990) The village enlightenment in New England 1760-1820 TheWilliam and Mary Quarterly XLVII3 ( July) 327-46

Jones Rufus M (1915) Mysticism in present-day religion Harvard Theological ReviewVIII2 (April) 155-65

Kippenberg Hans G (2002) Discovering Religious History in the Modern Age BarbaraHarshav (trans) Princeton Princeton University Press

Kobler John (1977) Damned in Paradise The Life of John Barrymore New YorkAtheneum

Kuttner Alfred B (1922) Nerves In Harold E Stearns (ed) Civilization in the UnitedStates An Enquiry by Thirty Americans 427-42 New York Harcourt

Lauter Paul (1994) Melville climbs the canon American Literature 66 (March) 1-24Lawrence DH (1923) Studies in Classic American Literature New York T SeltzerLindbergh Charles A (1927) We New York GP Putnamrsquos SonsLippmann Walter (1922) Public Opinion New York Macmillan CompanyMarchand Roland (1985) Advertising the American Dream Making Way for Modernity

1920-1940 Berkeley University of California PressMarty Martin E Modern American Religion Vol 2 The Noise of Conflict 1919-1941

Chicago University of Chicago Press 1991May Henry F (1976) The Enlightenment in America New York Oxford University

PressMayhew Jonathan (1749) Concerning the difference between truth and falsehood

right and wrong In Seven Sermons 1-21 Boston Rogers and FowleMayr Otto (1970) The Origins of Feedback Control Cambridge The MIT PressMelville Herman (1993) Correspondence Volume 14 of The Writings of Herman Melville

Lynne Horth (ed) Evanston and Chicago Northwestern University Pressmdash (1925) Moby Dick or The White Whale 1851 New York Grosset amp DunlapMindell David A (2002) Between Human and Machine Feedback Control and Computing

Before Cybernetics Baltimore The Johns Hopkins University PressMumford Lewis (1929) Herman Melville New York The Literary Guild of Americamdash (1924) Sticks and Stones A Study of American Architecture and Civilization New York

Dover Publicationsmdash (1934) Technics and Civilization New York Harcourt Brace and Companymdash (1926) The Golden Day A Study in American Literature and Culture New York Boni

and LiverightMurray Jr HA (1929) Review of Lewis Mumfordrsquos Herman Melville The New

England Quarterly 2 ( July) 523-26Naumann Francis M (1994) New York Dada 1915-23 New York Harry N AbramsNoble David F (1999) The Religion of Technology The Divinity of Man and the Spirit

of Invention New York Penguin BooksNye David E (1994) American Technological Sublime Cambridge The MIT PressOrsquoNeil David (1921) The new Broom Broom 11 (November) 96Overton Grant (1928) The Philosophy of Fiction New York D AppletonPalmer Attorney General (1920) The case against the lsquoRedsrsquo The Forum A Magazine

of Constructive Nationalism 632 (February) 173-85Parsons Floyd W (1927) Everybodyrsquos business Advertising amp Selling ( June 29) 5 64Prampolini Enrico (1922) The aesthetic of the machine and mechanical intro-

spection in art Broom 33 (October) 235-37Rauschenbusch Walter (1917) A Theology for the Social Gospel New York The

Macmillan CompanyRichardson George P (1991) Feedback Thought in Social Science and Systems Theory

Philadelphia University of Pennsylvania Press

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 35

10

of automobiles around consumer orders feedback from local dealersand demand forecasting) introduced Jesus in his best-selling The Man

Nobody Knows (1925) as a conflation of all three (Beniger 1986 317)According to Barton Jesus deftly swung his carpenter tools created anldquoorganization that conquered the worldrdquo and awakened to the ldquoinnerconsciousnessrdquo of his ldquopowerrdquo Barton pitched Jesus as a ldquomysticrdquo andldquobig manrdquo who had incorporated the technologies of business adver-tising and manufacturing into his own personality and cult thereof (4 10 13 6)

As feedback technologies ldquoneutralizedrdquo economies of origination andclaims to eternal value both Christologies and psychological narrativesof restoration were mechanically inscribed (Benjamin 2003 252) Inthe wake of the popular Personality How To Build It (1916) self-realizationwas consistently equated with an engineering process of control Outwitting

our Nerves (1922) affirmed ldquothe integrity of our physical machinesrdquo aswell as human ldquopower of choicerdquo over those machines It was a ldquofactrdquothat ldquowe ourselves decide which of all the possible emotions we shallchoose or we decide not to press the button for any emotion at allrdquo( Jackson and Salisbury 1922 296 360) In Self-Mastery Through Conscious

Auto-Suggestion (1922) one of the defining books of the twentieth-centurygenre of ldquoself-helprdquo Emile Coueacute introduced Americans to the controlpanel of their inner autopilots In Why We Behave Like Human Beings

(1925) evolutionary anthropologist George A Dorsey defined humansin terms of the ldquokinesthetic senserdquo and their innate capacity to enactfeedback control upon themselves He assured readers that ldquoevery humanindividual normal enough to live beyond the walls of an asylum livesbecause he has an equipment by which he can keep on making adjust-ments to changing conditionsrdquo (302 301) In We (1927) CharlesLindberghrsquos celebrated chronicle of his trans-Atlantic flight his airplaneldquoThe Spirit of St Louisrdquo assumed its own personality and portrait evenas Lindbergh became ldquomechanizedrdquo in the popular press

3 Melville fed back

Concerns over how to secure and maintain a sense of coherent iden-tity in light of a seemingly animated material world also precipitatedthe ldquorevivalrdquo of Melville in the 1920s As in the various Protestantstrategies of adjustment ldquorevivalistsrdquo (predominantly white and male)embraced Melville as providing a script of American identity and self-governance In hopes of defending themselves against the totalizing

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 10

11

Figure 1 Instrument Board of the Spirit of St Louis from We (1927)

directives of technology revivalists read Melville and his works throughthe lens of anti-Puritanism and the newly discovered script of FreudMelvillersquos celebrity increased as Elsie Clews Parson Van Wyck BrooksHL Mencken Waldo Frank and others accused Puritans of possessinga ldquorepressive impulserdquo of denying ldquolife and desirerdquo and of discardingldquomystical consciousnessrdquo in favor of ldquoinstrumentalrdquo reason (Frank 191966 150 68) In Melvillersquos rejection of Puritanismrsquos ldquorepellant materialismrdquohis work assumed a positively transgresssive quality (Tomlinson 1926621) Opposed to the Puritan life of ldquointolerable monotonyrdquo Melvillewas viewed as ldquoa mystic a treasure-seeker a mystery-monger a delverafter hidden things spiritual and materialrdquo (Weaver 1919 145-46)

Raymond M Weaverrsquos Herman Melville Mariner and Mystic (1921) setthe terms of religious evaluation for the early stages of the RevivalWeaver proclaimed that Melville in his ldquoescape from an inexorableand intolerable world of realityrdquo had achieved ldquopsychological synthesisrdquo

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 11

12

Figure 2 ldquoThe ConquerorrdquomdashCharles Lindbergh from Current History July 1927

(Weaver 1921 19 331) The construction of Melville as mystic wasconcurrent with the discursive construction of mysticism by liberalProtestants as ldquoahistorical poetic essential intuitive and universalrdquo(Schmidt 2003 288) Both intellectual constructionsmdashthe latter integralto the academic study of religion in the twentieth centurymdashsought towrest a degree of ldquorealnessrdquo from a world in which ldquothe realrdquo was feltto be increasingly susceptible to technological erasure (Kippenberg 2002175-86) And whereas mystically inclined Protestants denounced ldquosec-ular activitiesrdquo by calling for the liberation and unity of ldquothe deep-lyingpowers of the inward self into one conscious liferdquo under God revival-ists called on Melville to provide them with an experiential map of thatwhich was utterly and mysteriously human (Bennett 1923 6 Jones1915 156 161) As Henry A Murray flatly announced ldquoMelville dis-covered the Unconscious and commenced to explore itrdquo (1929 526)As a model for authenticity and self-governance Melville was both ana-lyst and analysandmdashldquoa gentleman adventurer in the barbarous outposts

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 12

13

of human experiencerdquo not a ldquostaged dip into studio savageryrdquo Melvillehad penetrated the depths of his own psyche no doubt aided by hisstay among South Sea islanders (detailed in his first two novels Typee

(1846) and Omoo (1847) Indeed the authenticity of Melvillersquos mysticconsciousness was dependent upon his ldquountamed desires in violentconflict with his physical and spiritual environmentrdquo (Weaver 1921 1519 21 24-29)

As opposed to Weaverrsquos vicarious nostalgia for a simpler less com-mercial and more fully ldquorealrdquo existence another Melville biographerLewis Mumford understood the complex simulations of a consumer-driven economy as already emergent during Melvillersquos writerly careerMixing cultural criticism history and theological speculation Mumfordwas a keen observer of the technological revolutions in feedback controlIn his most memorable and encyclopedic work Technics and Civilization

(1934) Mumford claimed that in the seventeenth-century ldquomechanicsrdquohad become ldquothe new religion and [they] gave to the world a new Messiahthe machinerdquo In dramatizing the extent to which technology had shapedand continued to shape human consciousness Mumford explored inexacting and illustrated detail the history and material conditions thatwere allowing ldquotools and utensilsrdquo to assume ldquoan independent existencerdquo

This ldquoneotechnic phaserdquo had begun in the early part of the nineteenthcentury and was marked by efficiency flexibility ldquocomplete automatismrdquoand synthetic materialsmdasha ldquomutationrdquo that was rapidly integrating ldquothemachine and the world of liferdquo (45 321 227 212 254)

Such integration was not without its dangers ldquoWith the invention ofthe telegraphrdquo the ldquowireless telephonerdquo and the ldquotelevisionrdquo wroteMumford humans ldquobegan to bridge the gap in time between communi-cation and responserdquo The sympathetic relations between family memberscould now be replicated on an unprecedented scale through telepathictechnologiesmdashgiving rise to ldquo[immense] possibilities for good and evilrdquoThe building of a personality was no longer a ldquolocalrdquo affair On the con-trary when ldquomass-reactionsrdquo were ldquomobilized and hastenedrdquo the needsand interests of the human became those of the machine As Mumfordsuggested technology was becoming a ldquocreative force carried on by itsown momentumrdquo and ldquoproducing a third estate midway between natureand the humane artsrdquo The drive to overcome distancemdashbetween indi-viduals as well as between self and worldmdashhad itself ldquocreated an inde-pendent environment that has reacted upon every other side of the personalityrdquo (239241 322 324)

According to Mumford such technological interference had been ofintense and abiding concern for Melville (1934 213) In Herman Melville

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 13

14

Figure 3 Neotechnic Automatism from Technics and Civilization (1934)

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 14

15

7 Public relations and advances in advertising were the latest instances of the ldquocontrol revolutionrdquo in which technology of interchangeability so integral to theAmerican System of manufacturing had extended its field of operations under theauspices of consumer capitalism Machines were not simply making parts for othermachines but were integral to the form and content of social reproduction Publicrelations was a particular (and less reliable) version of feedback control Instead ofmaintaining a fixed variable on the inside by responding to fluctuations on the out-side ldquocounselorsrdquo stoked the flames of consumer desire in order to justify an accel-erating rate of production and ideally consumption

(1929) Mumford had chided fellow revivalists for exaggerating Melvillersquosretreat into mystical idealism ldquoMelville was a realistrdquo countered Mumfordldquoin the sense that the great religious teachers are realistsrdquo FurthermoreMelville had witnessed the ldquovolcanic intrusionrdquo of ldquoindustrialism [as] avalue in itself rdquo (1929 5 64-65) But things had gotten much more com-plicated since the mid-nineteenth century Whereas Melville had beheldldquothe servile routine of the factory systemrdquo Mumford was now witness-ing the birth of ldquothe machine system the network of relationshipsthat have followed the financial exploitation of machineryrdquo The differencein other words was the full-scale emergence of self-governing tech-nologiesmdashldquohandicraft devoted to mechanical reproduction and machinerythat is set to reproduce endless simulacrardquo For Mumford this ldquomachineritualrdquo this ldquoendlessrdquo loop of ldquomechanical reproductionrdquo threatened toefface ldquothe human arts of seeing feeling and livingrdquo (1924 67-68 10174-75 105 81) Technology in other words had achieved the capacityfor feedback on two different but related levels first in material devicesthat could copy both nature and themselves and secondly in humansthat governed themselves according to the latest control variables setby the machine As Mumford argued the totalizing power of feedbacktechnologies resulted not simply from designs motors or even materialoutputs but through their economically driven expansion of ldquothe verydomain of the symbol itself rdquo (1934 331)

Mumfordrsquos insights take on more ominous implications when oneconsiders the rise of the American public relations industry during thisperiod7 Public relations consultants such as Edward Bernays and adver-tisers like Bruce Barton actively sought to shape and change the beliefsof individuals in the service of larger economic agendas It was no acci-dent Bernays wrote in 1923 that a ldquoman belongs to one church ratherthan another or to any church at allrdquo It was no accident that ldquoBostonwomen prefer brown eggs and New York women white eggsrdquo Becausethe judgments of individuals were not arrived at through ldquoresearch andlogical deductionrdquo but were ldquodogmatic expressions accepted on theauthority of his parents his teachers his church and of his social his

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 15

16

economic and other leadersrdquo a ldquopublic relations counselrdquo must do thework of reauthorization (Bernays 1923 62) Through the strategic ldquosat-urationrdquo of images text and work-place incentives an entire profes-sional class sought to provide the terms for and effectively monitor theconditions of self-realization (Marchand 1985 94-95)

What then did Melville have to offer those living within ldquothe machinesystemrdquo of the 1920s Mumford and other revivalists championed Moby-

Dick as a blueprint for living within an increasingly mechanical rou-tinized and bureaucratic world They also heaped admiration uponCaptain Ahab an odd choice given the outcome of Moby-Dick Contraryto those who would later read Ahabrsquos technologically enhanced dem-agoguery against the political backdrops of Italian Fascism and NationalSocialism Ahabrsquos madness in the 1920s could be considered ldquoactiveand courageousrdquo as well as a sign of ldquogeniusrdquomdashldquothe very pinnacle ofhuman self-assertionrdquo (Watson 1970 136 Sullivan 1970 163) Suchreadings conflated the white whale with the power of technology andhad Ahab defiantly affirm the principle of free-will and defend theboundary between human and material worlds Mumford for examplewrote of Ahab as the ldquospirit of manrdquo who stood in opposition to ldquothebrute energies of existence blind fatal overpoweringrdquo Ahab was self-directive ldquopurposiverdquo and he pitted his ldquopuniness against this mightand [his] purpose against the blank senselessness of powerrdquo So eventhough Ahabrsquos ldquomethods are ill-chosenrdquo wrote Mumford his ldquodefianceis noblerdquo (Mumford 1929 184-86)

4 People who portray themselves or Ahab on Ahab

Film projectors in addition to utilizing concepts of feedback internallywere often seen as generative of external feedback loops between humansand machines nature and artifice Such loops arguably constituted theldquosociety of the spectaclerdquo Guy Debordrsquos term for the image-saturatedenvironment that arose in the 1920s with the confluence of sound filmtelevision and the perfection of propaganda techniques As one of themore grim assessments of an image-based postmodernity Debord definedthe ldquospectaclerdquo in terms of negative feedback ldquoIt is the omnipresentcelebration of a choice already made in the sphere of production andthe consummate result of that choice In form as in content the spectacleserves as total justification for the conditions and aims of the existingsystem It further ensures the permanent presence of that justification forit governs almost all time spent outside the production process itself rdquo

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 16

17

8 Cahir (1997) has made a similar point Although I agree with her assessmentthat The Sea Beast is about Ahabrsquos ldquoreal pursuit of identityrdquo I take issue with herargument that The Sea Beast validates autonomous autotelic forms of masculine identity

(13) In America Debordian paranoia was rampant as Victorian fearsover the exploitation of pleasure were morphing into general anxietiesconcerning voyeurism and cinematic determinism ldquoThe spectacle ofmechanical progress has made so deep an impressionrdquo argued WalterLippmann in 1922 ldquothat it has suffused the whole moral coderdquo Whatdisturbed Lippmann and other public figures was the specter of circularcausality and the quiet ldquoinsertion between man and his environmentof a pseudo-environmentrdquo composed mainly of images (Lippmann 1922108 15) Unbeknownst to them Americans were in danger of becom-ing automated by images and trapped within what Debord would latercall ldquoan uninterrupted monologue of self-praiserdquo (19) Their perpetualaffirmation of self however was wholly cybernetic given the fact thatthey were oblivious to the fact that ldquoon the screen the whole processof observing describing reporting and then imagining has been accom-plished for yourdquo (92)

In a strange twist that Melville might have enjoyed the most com-pelling representation of Moby-Dick and portrayal of Captain Ahab mayhave occurred via the technology of the moving picture8 The 1926silent film The Sea Beast adapted to the screen by Bess Meredyth andstarring John Barrymore as Captain Ahab dramatized the feedbackdimensions of film and its capacity to regulate the human personalityThe Sea Beast I argue challenged more able-bodied academic inter-pretations by reveling in its status as a technological reproduction The

Sea Beast with its odd juxtapositions visceral jump cuts and perverseattention to Ahabrsquos stump and artificial limb rather than affirm thedesire for self-transparency suggested that the equipment-free reality ofthe self was quite literally an enabling fiction What Americans lackedaccording to Meredythrsquos scenario was the tragic recognition of them-selves as always regulated and already enhanced by technology Takingldquopleasure in the confusion of boundariesrdquo and ldquoresponsibility in their con-structionrdquo The Sea Beast in the borrowed words of Donna Harawaymade ldquoan argument for the cyborg as a fiction mapping our social andbodily reality and as an imaginative resource suggesting some very fruit-ful couplingsrdquo (8)

In 1925 at age forty-three John Barrymore was one of Hollywoodrsquosmost bankable actors (part of the ldquostar-systemrdquo promoted by Edward

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 17

18

Bernays who clearly saw the potential for cross-marketing between enter-tainment business and political campaigns) Barrymore easily convincedWarner Brothers to turn Moby-Dick one of his favorite novels into amovie and to cast him in the role of Captain Ahab Having playedHamlet in the 1922-23 Broadway season Barrymore developed a keeninterest in psychoanalysis and Freudrsquos account of Hamlet in Interpretationof Dreams (1900) The role of Captain Ahab like that of Hamlet allowedBarrymore to reach a larger audience with his newly emotive actingstyle As Captain Ahab he could also remind his audience of his depthand manly credentials He was tired in his words of playing ldquoscentedbepuffed bewigged and ringletted charactersrdquo (quoted in Kobler 1977213) Promotional pamphlets for The Sea Beast seemed to reinforceBarrymorersquos gendered strategy featuring a picture of Barrymore in abusiness suit puffing contemplatively on a pipemdashldquoJohn Barrymore ismore than a name more than a personality he is world institutionrdquo(Hoffman 2001 73)

The opening credits to The Sea Beast begin imprecisely with a close-up of the filmrsquos textual referent Moby Dick or the White Whale Thissimulated text begins not with ldquoExtractsrdquo or even ldquoCall me Ishmaelrdquobut with the following words ldquoThere never was nor ever will be abraver life than the life of the whaler Compared to the game theyhunted the mightiest land beast was but a poodle dogrdquo Adapted tothe screen by Bess Meredyth former actress turned writer The Sea Beast

is noteworthy as one of the earliest if not the first public appropriationsof Melvillersquos novel by a woman By 1926 Meredyth had become aHollywood regular having written the scenarios or continuities for Ben

Hur (1925) Don Juan (1926) and at least 70 other films ldquoThere is nowoman writing todayrdquo read the promotional copy of The Sea Beastldquowho has contributed so much to genuine screen values as Bess Meredythrdquo(Hoffman 2001 74) The ldquogenuinerdquo sense Meredyth made of Melvillersquosepic is significant in its relentless focus on the self as a technologicalconstruct In Meredythrsquos scenario one literally glimpses the spirit ofMelvillersquos rejection of the contemplative insular and hyper-masculinizedself of mid-nineteenth-century religion and science In its plot and per-verse attention to Ahabrsquos stump The Sea Beast suggests that nothing willor even can make up for the loss Ahab suffers

After the opening credits the audience is introduced to a healthyCaptain Ahab atop the masthead He looks out over the sea and downon his crew hard at work his feet tapping to the beat of the sea shantyldquoHanging Johnnyrdquo Nostalgia and the logic of substitution are bothbroached in the opening scenesmdashnot in terms of idealism but in ways

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 18

19

that hint at their subsequent negation As Ahab reads a letter from hisbeloved Esther Harper the daughter of a Christian missionary playedby the nineteen year-old Dolores Costello Ahab looks longingly at hername tattooed on his arm His mind drifts back to their last embraceFollowing a long close-up of his legs Ahab descends from the mastheadthe camera sliding down the rope in real time and from Ahabrsquos pointof view his legs leading the way The experience of vertigo engenderedby the shot suggests that Ahabrsquos identity is already unstable alreadymarked by a palpable lack of ground This shot however is quicklyoffset by numerous scenes that depict the fullness of Ahabrsquos vigor par-ticularly in relation to his healthy pair of legs He jumps he hops heruns around

When Ahabrsquos ship docks in the bay of Mauritius the audience isintroduced to Esther as well as to Derek Ahabrsquos scheming half-brotherIt is here that one is reminded of the words from the 1925 promotionalpublication of Moby-Dick accompanied by scenes from The Sea Beastldquothe screen version of lsquoMoby Dickrsquo exceeds the book The discrepancybetween the two must not be considered as a profanely wanton alterationrdquoTo portray the ldquopsychological studyrdquo of Captain Ahab ldquothe camerahas resorted to means of its own A mental state therefore particularlyan involved condition of mind must be expressed by means of the inci-dents which produced it each tortuous thought composing Ahabrsquos madness must be traced to the event which engendered itrdquo (Buchman1925 x) The most obvious incident being the loss of Ahabrsquos leg butthe film compounds this felt sense of loss by turning Melvillersquos tale intoa misbegotten love triangle between Ahab Derek and Esther the appleof both their eyes

On shore Ahab and Esther declare their love to each other Butafter a few days Ahab sails from Mauritius and scans the shore withhis telescope He spies Estherrsquos window She comes to the window andreturns Ahabrsquos gaze through her own telescope Technology has literallybecome the lens through which they see each other through whicheach declares their commitment They wave and blow kisses until theyare both out of range At sea Ahab is betrayed by Derek who unbe-knownst to Ahab pushes him overboard into the waiting jaws of MobyDick After losing his leg Ahab is distraught Derek then taunts Ahaband suggests that his symbolic castration is too much for any relation-ship to bear As Derek reminds him ldquoEsther was always crazy aboutyour beinrsquo so strong and perfectrdquo Having been fitted with his ivorystump Ahab arrives back at Mauritius Derek then shames Ahab evenfurther by telling him that he and Esther are in love and that Esther

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 19

20

cannot bring herself to tell Ahab of the deceit Derek then goes toEsther to convince her that Ahab has abandoned her When Ahabarrives at Estherrsquos house to confirm Derekrsquos story he sees their shadowscast by the light of spermaceti candles and mistakenly believes thatEsther has indeed left him for Derek It is here that Ahab descendsinto his infamous monomania

Ahab goes onto slay Moby Dick but not before uncovering his half-brotherrsquos double betrayal In a dramatic confrontation Derek pulls aknife on Ahab and is about to get the best of our hero But wait Ahabwedges his ivory stump into the deck leveraging himself in order tofend off Derek Ahab then casts Derek overboard and into the sea Anivory technology marking the absence of Ahabrsquos leg has been trans-formed into a salvific presence Or so it seems when the audience istreated to the restoration of order upon the Pequodrsquos return to portand Ahabrsquos reunion with Esther consummated in their tearful embraceHaving staged and seemingly resolved the crisis of masculine identity(the raison drsquoecirctre of melodrama being that the resolution is alreadypresent in the staging) The Sea Beast on the contrary did anything butrestore the full presence of Ahabrsquos self It suggested through both contentand form that the reality of the self whether it be Ahab or the spec-tator in the theater was neither fully resolvable nor equipment-free

Ahab achieves a kind of liberation on screen by recognizing that heis always already a figment of an imagination that is not his own Afterthe tearful reunion between Ahab and Esther the screen goes blackThe audience is then given a glimpse behind the scenes as it weremdasha scene of the director Millard Webb in his chair issuing directionsto Ahab and Esther in Estherrsquos living room A man in a business suitplays the violin in the background As Ahab and Esther look longinglyinto each otherrsquos eyes Ahab slips a ring onto Estherrsquos finger and theyembrace once again Or is it Barrymore and Costello It is unclearparticularly in light of the rumors of an off screen tryst between themiddle-aged Barrymore and his nineteen-year old costar (they wouldlater marry) The loving embrace is seemingly real an ambiguityreaffirmed by the fact that after Webb yells ldquocutrdquo he has to step betweenthe couple and remind them that they are on film Webb then turnsto the camera and smiles as the screen abruptly cuts to black onceagain

The odd ending of The Sea Beast suggests that Ahabrsquos journey towardreconciliation did not end with self-exposure but that it could neverreally begin Rather than achieve restoration of nature in and througha cultural construction Ahabrsquos artificial leg points to a previously

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 20

21

Figure 4 Final Embrace between AhabBarrymore and EstherCostello

ldquoexcluded and illegible domain that haunts the former domain as thespecter of its own impossibility the very limit of intelligibility its con-stitutive outsiderdquo (Butler 1993 xi) The ending harkens back to the seashanty ldquoHanging Johnnyrdquo Ahabrsquos introductory descent from the mast-head and his telescopic flirtation with Esther both vertiginous slidesinto the unfathomable layers of mediated perception that signal theldquoexecutionrdquo of possessive individualism Rather than erase the sign ofAhabrsquos traumamdashhis ivory legmdashthe ending of The Sea Beast suggests thatAhab and Barrymore are two sides of the same character vacillatingwithin the loop of continuous performativity One is reminded here ofWalter Benjaminrsquos insight into the traumatized subject in the age oftechnological reproducibility As Benjamin argues the trauma can beunderstood as a shift from the stage to the screen in which the actorperforms for a ldquopiece of equipmentrdquo rather than for an audience Citingthe Italian playwright Luigi Pirandello Benjamin suggests that the mod-ern subject is

exiled not only from the stage but from his own person With a vagueunease he senses an inexplicable void stemming from the fact that hisbody has lost its substance that he has been volatilized stripped of his

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 21

22

reality his life his voice the noises he makes when moving about andhas been turned into a mute image that flickers for a moment on thescreen then vanishes into silence (2003 260)

Pirandellorsquos borrowed words speak directly to Meredythrsquos reconfigurationof Melvillersquos text Whereas Melvillersquos Ahab tried and failed to conquerthe very source of visual illuminationmdashthe spermaceti oil that allowedantebellum Americans to see in the darkmdashBarrymorersquos Ahab revels inthe technologically enhanced gaze of his audience When the lightscome up the selves of Ahab Barrymore and the audience have beenre-narrativized as cybernetic that is as permanently divided and fun-damentally transient In affirming the really real offscreen relationshipbetween Barrymore and Costello the uncanny ending of The Sea Beast

supported a notion of selfhood as always already mediated or betteryet the necessity of experience to be mediated in order for it to becomereal or maybe even the necessity of acknowledging that the reality ofthe self is really made up

Barrymorersquos self-conscious performance inspired by his reading ofFreud and designed to overcome middle-class mores did not so muchpenetrate the inner depths of his character as it did the emotional lifeand perceptual apparatus of his audience The Sea Beast does not dram-atize the individual conquest of nature as much as it dramatizes visualtechnologyrsquos seduction of the individual The Sea Beast in its staging ofa cybernetic reality denied the very concept of 100 Americanism byinterrupting the narrative closure on which self-presence dependedNeither Ahab nor Barrymore nor the audience are ever alone even intheir solitude They are haunted not simply by the unconscious butby the specters generated in and through technologies of reproduction(Derrida 1994 97) They are in Benjaminrsquos apt phrase ldquopeople whoportray themselvesrdquo (Benjamin 2003 262)

For Benjamin photography and cinema were technologies of religiousrevelation for better or for worse in that they both exposed variousfeedback loops that constituted onersquos identity On one level Benjaminargued that the category of originality had been challenged by visualtechnologies that put copies ldquoof the original in situations which theoriginal itself cannot attainrdquo (2003 254) On another level the decayof the ldquoaurardquo of authenticity and the blurring of original and reproductionenabled individuals to recognize the fact that they were implicated inthe perceptual field and no longer insulated from what they saw orheard ldquoReception in distractionrdquo wrote Benjamin ldquowhich is increas-ing noticeably in all areas of art and is a symptom of profound changesin apperceptionmdashfinds in film its true training groundrdquo (269) Influenced

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 22

23

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethersquos notion of ldquoafter-imagesrdquo in Theory

of Colours (the same text that informed Melvillersquos ldquoThe Whiteness of theWhalerdquo) Benjamin announced the birth of the ldquooptical unconsciousrdquo(266) According to Benjamin images had become the currency of con-sciousness structuring thought and determining the range of possibleactions Mechanical means of reproduction had liberated the perceptualcapacities of humanity They had also ushered in the prospect of massdeception and control Either way they had resulted in a ldquomassiveupheaval in the domain of objectsrdquo and a ldquoshattering of traditionrdquo (254)

5 American Dada and the aporias of modernity

Within the Melville Revivalmdashan almost clicheacuted instance of Modernismrsquosvogue for the solitary geniusmdashseeds of post-Cartesian doubt were beingsown and the enchanting dimensions of technology considered BecauseMelville ldquowas spell-bound by the strange slidings and collidings ofMatterrdquo his work in the eyes of more atheological critics exposed theenchanting conditions of the machine age (Taylor 1984) ldquoIt is the mate-rial elements he really has to do withrdquo wrote DH Lawrence in 1923ldquoHis drama is with them He was a futurist long before futurism foundpaintrdquo (216) For Lewis Mumford too Melville had not simply dram-atized the incursion of machinesmdasha traditional Romantic tropemdashbuthad embraced a series of insoluble contradictions He has come to rec-ognize those parts of the world and himself that had already been pro-duced by machines and had insisted that the plasticity of self wassomething with which Americans had to struggle and to their spiritualdetriment repress

In broaching the aporias of modernity Mumford saw Melville as hav-ing already given the lie to Weberian diagnoses of disenchantment Thecapacity to effectively turn night into day Mumford suggested the expe-rience of a subway car rumbling past the solid structures of a sky-scraper vanishing into the air the peering into a microscope and theobservation of a ldquorow of bottles each of identical size shape colorstretching away for a quarter of a milerdquo were enough to induce a particular kind of vertigo ldquoThe special visual effect of repeating pat-tern[s]rdquo occurred simultaneously with the experience ldquoof the unique andthe non-repeatablerdquo (Mumford 1934 333-34) The experience of intensesystematicitymdashprecisely what feedback technologies were designed toinducemdashcould be positively disorienting when the infinitely calculableassumed the ldquospecial qualityrdquo of the ldquoincalculablerdquo (Heidegger 1977

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 23

24

135) According to Mumford when technology no longer made imperfectcopies of nature but perfect copies of itself the very notion of ldquonaturalrdquocould become radically suspect With the ldquoliquidationrdquo of the solid book-ends of authenticity and artifice came the prospect that the spectrumitself was socially constructed for better or for worse (Benjamin 2003255) Having torn aside the veil ldquoman has thrown between his ownexperience and the blank reality of the universerdquo Melville neither suc-cumbed to the temptation of nihilism nor retreated into his own pri-vate morality On the contrary he urged his contemporaries to ownup to the constructedness of any and all cultural forms and expressionsand the faith commitments that undergirded them As Mumford wroteldquoto appreciate the reality of the White Whale is to see more deeplyinto the expedience of all our immediate institutions all the spiritualshelters man puts between himself and the uncertain cosmic weatherMeaning significance attends only that little part of the universe manhas built up and settledrdquo (Mumford 1926 150-51)

Whereas Mumford assessed the religious dimensions of technologicalldquoprogressrdquo in a tragic key others tended toward the comic as was thecase with a group of experimental artists associated with Broom An

International Magazine of the Arts Published by Americans in Italy publishedbetween 1921 and 1924 (Tashjian 1975 116-34) Broomrsquos co-editor thepoet Alfred Kreyemborg (who would later co-edit The American Caravan

with Lewis Mumford) had adapted a passage from Moby-Dick for itstitle logo and statement of purpose which appeared on the back coverldquoWhat of itrdquo asks Ishmael

if some old hunks of a seacaptain orders me to get a broom and sweepdown the decks What does that indignity amount to weighed I meanin the scales of the New Testament Do you think the Archangel Gabrielthinks any less of me because I promptly and respectfully obey that oldhunks that particular instance Who ainrsquot a slave (Melville 1925 4)

The first issue of Broom included poems addressing Albert Einsteinrsquostheory of relativity as well as Emmy Veronica Sanders declaration thatldquothe American Machinerdquo was ldquotransforming itself with all its attributesand characteristics into American Mindrdquo ldquoAmericardquo she continuedinitially ldquomade of the Puritan by the Puritan for the Puritanrdquo wasnow being ldquoremade of the Machine by the Machine for the Machinerdquo(89-90) Following Sandersrsquos piece was a David OrsquoNeilrsquos hymn of sup-plication to the new Gods of the machine

When you are sweeping usWith Your cosmic broom

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 24

25

Figure 5 Nature and Second Nature in Technics and Civilization (1934)

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 25

26

Sweeping us out of mouldy rutsSweeping us clean and sweetmdash

RememberWhen wersquore quiveringmdashSensitivemdashbaremdashWe shall be gratefulFor just a few shadows (96)

Broom took Ishmaelrsquos retort quite seriously addressing the revolutionarydimensions of technological artifice and the shadows cast within therealm of technological illumination

Unlike Futurism Broom did not celebrate the beauty of war It didhowever come to express the ldquodreamed-of metallization of the humanbodyrdquo and the playful cybernetic fantasies of Dadaists such as ManRay and Francis Picabia (quoted in Benjamin 2003 269) After someinitial hesitation Broom began to embrace Dadarsquos perspective on the lib-eratory dimensions of the human-machine interface ldquoEverything isartificialrdquo gasped Broom contributor Blaise Cendrars ldquoThe eyes thehand the sexual frenzy of the factory The wheel which turns Thewing which flies The voice which travels far on a wire Your ear ina trumpet Your sense of direction Your rhythm You melt the worldin the mould of your skull Your brain is hollow Like a religion amysterious pill hastens your digestionrdquo (265) Jean Epstein from a slightdifferent angle argued that technology had ldquobecome part of ourselvesrdquoand had democratized human perceptionmdashldquoman has not one memoryof [the] landscape he [now] has a thousand different ones which mayor may not resemble each other Everything possesses hundreds ofapparent diameters which never superimpose exactlyrdquo (6-7)

Broom was soon translating less inflammatory Futurist manifestos suchas Enrico Prampolinirsquos ldquoThe Aesthetic of the Machine and MechanicalIntrospection in Artrdquo in which he declared ldquoIs not the machine todaythe most exuberant symbol of the mystery of human creation Is it notthe new mythical deity which weaves the legends and histories of thecontemporary human drama The Machine in its practical and materialfunction comes to have today in human concepts and thoughts thesignificance of an ideal and spiritual inspirationrdquo The kind of worshipthat ensued was that of the cyborg neither reverent nor memorializ-ing of cosmic law (Haraway 2004 9) Or as Prampolini wrote ldquoOurexperience has convinced us of the truth of certain of our plastic truthsand has allowed us to perceive the errors that lie in othersrdquo (236)

One of the more important pieces of American Dada captured pre-cisely this pointmdashGod (c 1917) designed by Baroness Elsa von Freytag-

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 26

27

Figure 6 Illustration accompanying Enrico Prampolinirsquos ldquoThe Aesthetic of theMachine and Mechanical Introspection in Artrdquo Broom 33 (October 1922) 237

Loringhoven and photographed by Morton Schamberg The invertedcast-iron plumbing trap atop a carpenterrsquos miter box was emblematicof the Melvillean appreciation for technological enchantment Indeedthe pipe is part of an indoor plumbing apparatus a modern conveniencewhose history dates back to some of the earliest feedback technologieson recordmdashthe water-clocks and float-regulators of ancient Greece (Mayr1970 11-26) God resembled the mechanical abstractions Schamberghad been producing before his premature death in 1918 during aninfluenza outbreak in Philadelphia The Baroness a contributor to Broom

and other little magazines had arrived in New York from Germanyin 1913 She was ldquothe first American dadardquo wrote Jane Heap in 1922ldquothe only one living anywhere who dresses dada loves dada lives dadardquo(46) Friends with Marcel Duchamp Djuna Barnes and other NewYork artists the Baroness was a central figure in a burgeoning trans-atlantic avant-garde In addition to her art and poetry the Baronesswas also a ldquoperformancerdquo artist who skillfully inverted gender hierarchiesand attacked through her very presence the traditional sensibilities ofthe middle-class She was notorious for walking around the streets ofGreenwich Village with her shaved head painted purple postage stampspasted to her face and a bird cage around her neck housing a livecanary (Davidson 1996 223-24)

In what must be considered a prescient assault on all manners oflogocentrism the Baroness also carried with her a plaster cast penis thatshe periodically revealed to passersby for maximum shock value (Gammel2002 195) But it was the Barnonessrsquos sculpture God that in addition

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 27

28

Figure 7 God (c 1917) designed by Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven and photographed by Morton Schamberg

to celebrating the mobility and reproducibility of that which was sup-posedly the most fixed and essential repossessed the power of tech-nology as ever imperfect and incomplete As a companion piece of sortsto Duchamprsquos infamous ready-made Fountain an inverted urinal dis-played in the 1917 exhibition of the American Society of IndependentArtists God invited more expressly theological speculation First of allit insisted on supplementing the three traditional symbolic centers ofWestern religious reflectionmdashGod humanity naturemdashwith the machineAnd although it has since been viewed by critics as ldquosacrilegiousrdquo andan instance of ldquoantireligious scatologyrdquo (Naumann 1994 171 Gammel220) the transgressive dimensions to God also affirm a shadowy open-

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 28

29

9 One is reminded here of Melvillersquos letter to Nathaniel Hawthorne in April of1851 ldquoWe incline to think that God cannot explain His own secrets and that Hewould like a little more information upon certain points Himself We mortals aston-ish Him as much as He usrdquo (Melville 1993 186)

ing to radical othernessmdashin the form of imperfection and chancemdashwithin the loops generated by feedback technology

Although the metal pipe ends up pointing toward heaven it firstloops downward in a nod to its human ground Limited by the skillsof the human carpenter on whose box it is anchored the contortedpipe narrativizes both the pitfalls and prospects of the machine ageShit eventually flows up in the case of God not down suggesting thateven the most lofty and noble ideals of the imagination maintain theirhuman aroma Rather than assume the power of divinity classicallyconstrued God staged divinity as nothing more and nothing less thanthat which made life livablemdashthat which kept the smell of human wasteartificially at bay or more ominously managed the flow of thingsthrough feedback control But even more literally God called attentionto the human work in the making of artifice and celebrated the bio-logical possibility for the endless unmaking (and remaking) of selfFeedback technology was not really God but it was for all practicalpurposes Or as the Baroness wrote in a 1927 letter to Peggy GuggenheimGod had much to learn from Henry Ford for he was ldquoclumsily sub-tle-densely-intelligent-inefficiently-immense-(Lord not Fordmdashof course)rdquo9

God the Baroness playfully warned had ldquobetter hotfoot it towardprogressmdashmodernizemdashuse his own omnipotence intelligentlymdashsmart orwersquoll all expire in tangle Well Lord knowsmdash(Does he)rdquo (quoted inGammel 2002 229)

6 Conclusion Deus in machina movet

As Protestant majorities struggled to adjust themselves and their theo-logical inheritance to new technological conditions theologies of themachine age both compelling and disturbing emerged from outsidethe precincts of traditional religious discourse For in addition to beinginspired by the ghost of Herman Melville the Melville Revival wasquite literally haunted by the power of feedback technologiesmdashspectersthat were affective rather than concrete strangely resistant to rationalcontemplation yet recognized through anxious admixtures of thoughtand feeling On one hand the revival reflected the spectrum of Protestant

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 29

30

10 Shortly after the publication of Moby-Dick in November of 1851 reports beganto reach America about the August sinking of the Ann Alexander by a whale in theSouth Pacific It was the first ldquoattack of a whale upon a shiprdquo since the destruc-tion of the Essex in 1820 The story about the Ann Alexander originally appeared inthe Panama Herald on October 16 and was reprinted the following month in New-York Daily Tribune and Littellrsquos Living Age The sperm whale that the Ann Alexander

fears over technological miscegenation The capacity of machines toredraw the boundaries of race and gender disturbed Protestant leadersand revivalists alike On the other hand subversive elements within theMelville Revival offered what must be considered a theological critiqueof how Protestants understood themselves and their God in relation totechnological materials Grant Overton for example saw in Moby-Dick

a deep appreciation for how technological developments had come tounderminemdashquite literally hauntmdashthe epistemological and ontologicalassumptions that made them possible ldquoNo longer able to instance thedeus ex machinardquo wrote Overton Melville was ldquounforgetful that deus inmachina movet and while most of mankind [have] become unable to seethe god for the machine [he] can scarcely perceive the machine forthe god agitating it [His] reports of the machine are somehow unrec-ognizable [his] realism is confronted by Realityrdquo (Overton 1928 231)

Bess Meredythrsquos reimagining of Moby-Dick and Baroness Elsa vonFreytag-Loringhovenrsquos God also explored the otherness that technologyengenders within the modern subject a trace that lingers despite allattempts to extinguish it Their errant readings challenged contempo-raries to reimagine their relationship to technology from an enchantedperspective that did not necessarily conform to the directives of Americanindividualism Resisting the advertisements of both Arminianism andBaconian Common Sense these readings insisted that there was somethingelsemdashsomething wholly othermdashoccurring within the technological workingsof secular modernity Excess or that which unsettled the boundariesbetween body and machine masculine and feminine had resulted inwhat might be called a ldquopost-structure of feelingrdquo The prospect thateither machines or women had begun to think for themselves or atleast possess a kind of agency once attributed to the enlightened malesubject now seemed as likely as a whale vengefully turning against awhaleship10 As Melvillean riffs on the deferred project of religious iden-tity The Sea Beast and God marked the space between human creationand technological determination consent and compulsion and there-fore hinted at the prospect that belief was not an individual state butan embodied activity Consistent with Lewis Mumfordrsquos assessment ofthe symbolic and material powers of feedback technology these works

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 30

31

had first turned upon starboard and larboard boats seizing both in its jaws andcrushing them to pieces It then rushed towards the Ann Alexander ldquoat the rateof fifteen knots In an instant the monster struck the ship with tremendous violence shakingher from stem to sternrdquo (415) Upon reading the article Melville remarked to his pub-lisher ldquothe Whale had almost completely slipped me for the time (amp I was themerrier for it) when Crash comes Moby Dick himself It is really amp truly a sur-prising coincidencemdashto say the least I make no doubt it is Moby Dick himself I wonder if my evil art has raised this monsterrdquo (Melville 1993 209)

11 William Jennings Bryan for example that standard bearer of fundamentalfaith equated faith to a particular kind of technologymdashldquothere is that in each humanliferdquo he wrote ldquothat corresponds to the mainspring of a watchmdashthat which isabsolutely necessary if the life is to be what it should be a real life and not amere existence That necessary thing is a belief in Godrdquo (86) Faith for Bryan wasthat which repeated without difference It was a dependable rational and utterlyrationalizing process It was not however self-regulating It affirmed the ldquorealnessrdquoof the individual believer precisely because it ignored the conditions imposed fromoutside the self But how might faith be viewed in terms of feedback and repro-ducibility rather than repetition a process that does not reaffirm a centered indi-vidual with every tick but adjusts accordingly to external fluctuations

raise numerous questions concerning the ways and means of religionin an age of postmodern complexity and virtual reality

How might a relentless focus on power and the porousness of sub-jectivity change how one views the matter of religion within historyHow might a greater attention to the aesthetic conditions that mediateany and all beliefs challenge the ways in which we distinguish the reli-gious from the secular How might a greater attention to the enchantingpower of material conditions challenge historical and political narrativesof secularization How do technologies and vested interests realize them-selves through the discourses of agency choice and mobility Whatin other words are the conditions of possibility that allow a historicalactor (rather than a Hollywood actor) to make a particular faith com-mitment or for that matter have any faith at all In what languagedo historical actors dream about themselves and divinity and how doesthat language change over time And finally to what degree is faithitself a technology11

By acknowledging the white mythology that still informs say thefield of American religions such questions shift the scholarly emphasisfrom explicit expressions of religious belief and practice to the spacebetween those beliefs and practices and the world at-large Individualswithin American religious history for example have often been depictedas fully formed agents making choices between various faith commitmentsand ever combining religious idioms to suit their specific needs and cir-cumstances (Albanese 1997) No doubt this is true But there is anotherside to this story of radical religious pluralism one that if accounted

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 31

32

12 Such a possibility is very much at odds with the Geertzian model of ldquothickdescriptionrdquo and its formidable legacy in the humanities and social sciences Withoutquestioning the degree to which the self can ever become entirely legible to theself Geertz claimed that every society and individual life and by extension everybelief and every practice ldquocontain their own interpretations One has only to learnhow to gain access to themrdquo (Geertz 1973 453)

13 The ambiguities of agency during the ldquomachine agerdquo have been the subjectof a number of elegant critical studies See for example Anson Rabinbach TheHuman Motor Energy Fatigue and the Origins of Modernity (New York Basic Books1990) Mark Seltzer Bodies and Machines (New York Routledge 1992) MarthaBanta Taylorized Lives Narrative Productions in the Age of Taylor Veblen and Ford (ChicagoUniversity of Chicago Press 1993) Carolyn Thomas de la Pentildea The Body ElectricHow Strange Machines Built the Modern American (New York New York UniversityPress 2003) and Joel Dinerstein The Swinging Machine Modernity Technology andAfrican American Culture Between the World Wars (Amherst University of MassachusettsPress 2003) Dinersteinrsquos work is particularly relevant to the issue of religious com-binativeness given his emphasis on how African American artists strove to refigureldquomachine aestheticsrdquo in and through their artistry Dinersteinrsquos work suggests thatthe self is locatedmdashie the self happensmdashsomewhere between resistance and assim-ilation between choice and coercionmdasha lesson that many Anglo-Americans werenot willing to consider in their triumphal theorizing about the human in relationto the machine The possibility for consideration argues Dinerstein existed inAfrican American jazz swing and dance

for suggests new directions for the study of religion in America Althoughthe ldquolived religionrdquo perspective in American religious history has donemuch to overcome the distinction between ldquodabblersrdquo and ldquotrue believersrdquothe question of power still lingers (Ahlstrom 1972 1052) Religiousbeliefs and practices are neither essential things nor reveal themselvesto the scholar in toto12 Such a position does not replicate the eitherordiscussion regarding the agency of historical actors On the contraryit suggests that religious agency is a hybrid weave of intent and instinctimmediate response and mediated principle knowing and unknowing13

Accounting for the ambiguities of agency has already pushed scholarsof religion toward an anthropology of the secular and an explorationof in the Foucauldian phrasing of Talal Asad ldquothe contingencies thathave come together to give us our certaintiesrdquo (2003 16)

It is with a hint of irony then that one may return to the promotionalpamphlet of The Sea Beast that celebrates the ldquoconquestrdquo of Ahab andthe invisible wafting presence of screenwriter Bess Meredyth ldquoThereis no woman writing today who has contributed so much to genuine

screen values as Bess Meredythrdquo Indeed her son John Meredyth Lucasborn in 1919 continued down his motherrsquos unsettling path as a successfultelevision screenwriter and director His credits included episodes ofldquoStar Trekrdquo ldquoLoganrsquos Runrdquo and that other story of ldquohundred percentrdquoAmericanism ldquoThe Six Million Dollar Manrdquo

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 32

33

Figure 8 The Six Million Dollar Man ldquoGentlemen we can rebuild him Wehave the capability of making the worldrsquos first bionic man We can make him

better than he was before Better Stronger Fasterrdquo

Haverford College370 Lancaster AveHaverford PA 19041jlardashaverfordedu

References

Ahlstrom Sydney E (1972) A Religious History of the American People New HavenYale University Press

Albanese Catherine L (1997) Exchanging selves exchanging souls Contact com-bination and American religious history In Thomas A Tweed (ed) RetellingUS Religious History 200-26 Berkeley University of California Press

Anon (1851) A ship sunk by a whale Littellrsquos Living Age (29 November) 415-16Asad Talal (2003) Formations of the Secular Christianity Islam Modernity Stanford

Stanford University Press

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 33

34

Bacon Francis (1870) The Works of Francis Bacon James Spedding Robert LeslieEllis and Douglas Denon Heath (eds) Vol VIII New York Hurd andHoughton

Barton Bruce (2000) The Man Nobody Knows A Discovery of the Real Jesus ChicagoIvan R Dee

Beniger James R (1986) The Control Revolution Technological and Economic Origins ofthe Information Society Cambridge Harvard University Press

Benjamin Walter (1996) One-way street In Marcus Bullock amp Michael W Jennings(eds) Selected Writings Volume 1 1913-1926 444-88 Cambridge HarvardUniversity Press

mdash (2003) The work of art in the age of its technological reproducibility third ver-sion In Howard Eiland and Michael W Jennings (eds) Selected Writings Volume4 1938-40 251-83 Cambridge Harvard University Press

Bennett Charles A (1923) A Philosophical Study of Mysticism An Essay New HavenYale University Press 1923

Bernays Edward L (1923) Crystallizing Public Opinion New York Liverlight PublishingCorporation

Buchman SR (1925) Moby Dickmdashthe book and The Sea Beastmdashthe picture Anappreciation In Herman Melville Moby Dick or The White Whale ix-xi NewYork Grosset amp Dunlap

Butler Judith (1993) Bodies That Matter On the Discursive Limits of lsquoSexrsquo RoutledgeNew York

Cahir Linda Costanzo (1997) Routinizing the charismatic Melville and Hollywoodrsquosthree Moby-Dicks Melville Society Extracts 110 (September) 11-17

Cendrars Blaise (1922) Profound today Broom 13 ( January) 265-67Chadwick Owen (1975) The Secularization of the European Mind in the Nineteenth Century

Cambridge Cambridge University PressCoe George Albert (1917) A Social Theory of Religious Education New York Charles

Scribnerrsquos SonsDavidson Abraham A (1996) The European art invasion In Francis M Naumann

(ed) with Beth Vann Making Mischief Dada Invades New York 222-27 NewYork Whitney Museum of Art

Debord Guy (1995) Society of the Spectacle translated by Donald Nicholson-SmithNew York Zone Books

Derrida Jacques (1994) Specters of Marx The State of the Debt The Work of Mourningand the New International Peggy Kamuf (trans) New York Routledge

Dorsey George A (1925) Why We Behave Like Human Beings New York BlueRibbon Books

Epstein Jean (1922) The new conditions of literary phenomena Broom 21 (April)3-10

Frank Waldo (1919) Our America New York Boni and LiverightGammel Irene (2002) Baroness Elsa Gender Dada and Everyday Modernitymdasha Cultural

Biography Cambridge The MIT PressGeertz Clifford (1973) Deep play Notes on the Balinese cockfight In The Interpretation

of Cultures 412-53 New York Basic BooksHaraway Donna (2004) A manifesto for cyborgs Science technology and socialist

feminism in the 1980s In The Haraway Reader 7-45 New York RoutledgeHeap Jane (1922) Dada Little Review VII2 (Spring) 46Heidegger Martin (1977) The age of the world-picturerdquo In The Question Concerning

Technology and Other Essays 115-54 William Lovitt (trans) New York Harperamp Row

Hoffman Carol Stein (2001) The Barrymores Hollywoodrsquos First Family LexingtonUniversity of Kentucky Press

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 34

35

Jackson Josephine A and Helen M Salisbury (1922) Outwitting Our Nerves A Primerof Psychotherapy New York The Century Co

Jaffe David (1990) The village enlightenment in New England 1760-1820 TheWilliam and Mary Quarterly XLVII3 ( July) 327-46

Jones Rufus M (1915) Mysticism in present-day religion Harvard Theological ReviewVIII2 (April) 155-65

Kippenberg Hans G (2002) Discovering Religious History in the Modern Age BarbaraHarshav (trans) Princeton Princeton University Press

Kobler John (1977) Damned in Paradise The Life of John Barrymore New YorkAtheneum

Kuttner Alfred B (1922) Nerves In Harold E Stearns (ed) Civilization in the UnitedStates An Enquiry by Thirty Americans 427-42 New York Harcourt

Lauter Paul (1994) Melville climbs the canon American Literature 66 (March) 1-24Lawrence DH (1923) Studies in Classic American Literature New York T SeltzerLindbergh Charles A (1927) We New York GP Putnamrsquos SonsLippmann Walter (1922) Public Opinion New York Macmillan CompanyMarchand Roland (1985) Advertising the American Dream Making Way for Modernity

1920-1940 Berkeley University of California PressMarty Martin E Modern American Religion Vol 2 The Noise of Conflict 1919-1941

Chicago University of Chicago Press 1991May Henry F (1976) The Enlightenment in America New York Oxford University

PressMayhew Jonathan (1749) Concerning the difference between truth and falsehood

right and wrong In Seven Sermons 1-21 Boston Rogers and FowleMayr Otto (1970) The Origins of Feedback Control Cambridge The MIT PressMelville Herman (1993) Correspondence Volume 14 of The Writings of Herman Melville

Lynne Horth (ed) Evanston and Chicago Northwestern University Pressmdash (1925) Moby Dick or The White Whale 1851 New York Grosset amp DunlapMindell David A (2002) Between Human and Machine Feedback Control and Computing

Before Cybernetics Baltimore The Johns Hopkins University PressMumford Lewis (1929) Herman Melville New York The Literary Guild of Americamdash (1924) Sticks and Stones A Study of American Architecture and Civilization New York

Dover Publicationsmdash (1934) Technics and Civilization New York Harcourt Brace and Companymdash (1926) The Golden Day A Study in American Literature and Culture New York Boni

and LiverightMurray Jr HA (1929) Review of Lewis Mumfordrsquos Herman Melville The New

England Quarterly 2 ( July) 523-26Naumann Francis M (1994) New York Dada 1915-23 New York Harry N AbramsNoble David F (1999) The Religion of Technology The Divinity of Man and the Spirit

of Invention New York Penguin BooksNye David E (1994) American Technological Sublime Cambridge The MIT PressOrsquoNeil David (1921) The new Broom Broom 11 (November) 96Overton Grant (1928) The Philosophy of Fiction New York D AppletonPalmer Attorney General (1920) The case against the lsquoRedsrsquo The Forum A Magazine

of Constructive Nationalism 632 (February) 173-85Parsons Floyd W (1927) Everybodyrsquos business Advertising amp Selling ( June 29) 5 64Prampolini Enrico (1922) The aesthetic of the machine and mechanical intro-

spection in art Broom 33 (October) 235-37Rauschenbusch Walter (1917) A Theology for the Social Gospel New York The

Macmillan CompanyRichardson George P (1991) Feedback Thought in Social Science and Systems Theory

Philadelphia University of Pennsylvania Press

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 35

11

Figure 1 Instrument Board of the Spirit of St Louis from We (1927)

directives of technology revivalists read Melville and his works throughthe lens of anti-Puritanism and the newly discovered script of FreudMelvillersquos celebrity increased as Elsie Clews Parson Van Wyck BrooksHL Mencken Waldo Frank and others accused Puritans of possessinga ldquorepressive impulserdquo of denying ldquolife and desirerdquo and of discardingldquomystical consciousnessrdquo in favor of ldquoinstrumentalrdquo reason (Frank 191966 150 68) In Melvillersquos rejection of Puritanismrsquos ldquorepellant materialismrdquohis work assumed a positively transgresssive quality (Tomlinson 1926621) Opposed to the Puritan life of ldquointolerable monotonyrdquo Melvillewas viewed as ldquoa mystic a treasure-seeker a mystery-monger a delverafter hidden things spiritual and materialrdquo (Weaver 1919 145-46)

Raymond M Weaverrsquos Herman Melville Mariner and Mystic (1921) setthe terms of religious evaluation for the early stages of the RevivalWeaver proclaimed that Melville in his ldquoescape from an inexorableand intolerable world of realityrdquo had achieved ldquopsychological synthesisrdquo

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 11

12

Figure 2 ldquoThe ConquerorrdquomdashCharles Lindbergh from Current History July 1927

(Weaver 1921 19 331) The construction of Melville as mystic wasconcurrent with the discursive construction of mysticism by liberalProtestants as ldquoahistorical poetic essential intuitive and universalrdquo(Schmidt 2003 288) Both intellectual constructionsmdashthe latter integralto the academic study of religion in the twentieth centurymdashsought towrest a degree of ldquorealnessrdquo from a world in which ldquothe realrdquo was feltto be increasingly susceptible to technological erasure (Kippenberg 2002175-86) And whereas mystically inclined Protestants denounced ldquosec-ular activitiesrdquo by calling for the liberation and unity of ldquothe deep-lyingpowers of the inward self into one conscious liferdquo under God revival-ists called on Melville to provide them with an experiential map of thatwhich was utterly and mysteriously human (Bennett 1923 6 Jones1915 156 161) As Henry A Murray flatly announced ldquoMelville dis-covered the Unconscious and commenced to explore itrdquo (1929 526)As a model for authenticity and self-governance Melville was both ana-lyst and analysandmdashldquoa gentleman adventurer in the barbarous outposts

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 12

13

of human experiencerdquo not a ldquostaged dip into studio savageryrdquo Melvillehad penetrated the depths of his own psyche no doubt aided by hisstay among South Sea islanders (detailed in his first two novels Typee

(1846) and Omoo (1847) Indeed the authenticity of Melvillersquos mysticconsciousness was dependent upon his ldquountamed desires in violentconflict with his physical and spiritual environmentrdquo (Weaver 1921 1519 21 24-29)

As opposed to Weaverrsquos vicarious nostalgia for a simpler less com-mercial and more fully ldquorealrdquo existence another Melville biographerLewis Mumford understood the complex simulations of a consumer-driven economy as already emergent during Melvillersquos writerly careerMixing cultural criticism history and theological speculation Mumfordwas a keen observer of the technological revolutions in feedback controlIn his most memorable and encyclopedic work Technics and Civilization

(1934) Mumford claimed that in the seventeenth-century ldquomechanicsrdquohad become ldquothe new religion and [they] gave to the world a new Messiahthe machinerdquo In dramatizing the extent to which technology had shapedand continued to shape human consciousness Mumford explored inexacting and illustrated detail the history and material conditions thatwere allowing ldquotools and utensilsrdquo to assume ldquoan independent existencerdquo

This ldquoneotechnic phaserdquo had begun in the early part of the nineteenthcentury and was marked by efficiency flexibility ldquocomplete automatismrdquoand synthetic materialsmdasha ldquomutationrdquo that was rapidly integrating ldquothemachine and the world of liferdquo (45 321 227 212 254)

Such integration was not without its dangers ldquoWith the invention ofthe telegraphrdquo the ldquowireless telephonerdquo and the ldquotelevisionrdquo wroteMumford humans ldquobegan to bridge the gap in time between communi-cation and responserdquo The sympathetic relations between family memberscould now be replicated on an unprecedented scale through telepathictechnologiesmdashgiving rise to ldquo[immense] possibilities for good and evilrdquoThe building of a personality was no longer a ldquolocalrdquo affair On the con-trary when ldquomass-reactionsrdquo were ldquomobilized and hastenedrdquo the needsand interests of the human became those of the machine As Mumfordsuggested technology was becoming a ldquocreative force carried on by itsown momentumrdquo and ldquoproducing a third estate midway between natureand the humane artsrdquo The drive to overcome distancemdashbetween indi-viduals as well as between self and worldmdashhad itself ldquocreated an inde-pendent environment that has reacted upon every other side of the personalityrdquo (239241 322 324)

According to Mumford such technological interference had been ofintense and abiding concern for Melville (1934 213) In Herman Melville

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 13

14

Figure 3 Neotechnic Automatism from Technics and Civilization (1934)

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 14

15

7 Public relations and advances in advertising were the latest instances of the ldquocontrol revolutionrdquo in which technology of interchangeability so integral to theAmerican System of manufacturing had extended its field of operations under theauspices of consumer capitalism Machines were not simply making parts for othermachines but were integral to the form and content of social reproduction Publicrelations was a particular (and less reliable) version of feedback control Instead ofmaintaining a fixed variable on the inside by responding to fluctuations on the out-side ldquocounselorsrdquo stoked the flames of consumer desire in order to justify an accel-erating rate of production and ideally consumption

(1929) Mumford had chided fellow revivalists for exaggerating Melvillersquosretreat into mystical idealism ldquoMelville was a realistrdquo countered Mumfordldquoin the sense that the great religious teachers are realistsrdquo FurthermoreMelville had witnessed the ldquovolcanic intrusionrdquo of ldquoindustrialism [as] avalue in itself rdquo (1929 5 64-65) But things had gotten much more com-plicated since the mid-nineteenth century Whereas Melville had beheldldquothe servile routine of the factory systemrdquo Mumford was now witness-ing the birth of ldquothe machine system the network of relationshipsthat have followed the financial exploitation of machineryrdquo The differencein other words was the full-scale emergence of self-governing tech-nologiesmdashldquohandicraft devoted to mechanical reproduction and machinerythat is set to reproduce endless simulacrardquo For Mumford this ldquomachineritualrdquo this ldquoendlessrdquo loop of ldquomechanical reproductionrdquo threatened toefface ldquothe human arts of seeing feeling and livingrdquo (1924 67-68 10174-75 105 81) Technology in other words had achieved the capacityfor feedback on two different but related levels first in material devicesthat could copy both nature and themselves and secondly in humansthat governed themselves according to the latest control variables setby the machine As Mumford argued the totalizing power of feedbacktechnologies resulted not simply from designs motors or even materialoutputs but through their economically driven expansion of ldquothe verydomain of the symbol itself rdquo (1934 331)

Mumfordrsquos insights take on more ominous implications when oneconsiders the rise of the American public relations industry during thisperiod7 Public relations consultants such as Edward Bernays and adver-tisers like Bruce Barton actively sought to shape and change the beliefsof individuals in the service of larger economic agendas It was no acci-dent Bernays wrote in 1923 that a ldquoman belongs to one church ratherthan another or to any church at allrdquo It was no accident that ldquoBostonwomen prefer brown eggs and New York women white eggsrdquo Becausethe judgments of individuals were not arrived at through ldquoresearch andlogical deductionrdquo but were ldquodogmatic expressions accepted on theauthority of his parents his teachers his church and of his social his

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 15

16

economic and other leadersrdquo a ldquopublic relations counselrdquo must do thework of reauthorization (Bernays 1923 62) Through the strategic ldquosat-urationrdquo of images text and work-place incentives an entire profes-sional class sought to provide the terms for and effectively monitor theconditions of self-realization (Marchand 1985 94-95)

What then did Melville have to offer those living within ldquothe machinesystemrdquo of the 1920s Mumford and other revivalists championed Moby-

Dick as a blueprint for living within an increasingly mechanical rou-tinized and bureaucratic world They also heaped admiration uponCaptain Ahab an odd choice given the outcome of Moby-Dick Contraryto those who would later read Ahabrsquos technologically enhanced dem-agoguery against the political backdrops of Italian Fascism and NationalSocialism Ahabrsquos madness in the 1920s could be considered ldquoactiveand courageousrdquo as well as a sign of ldquogeniusrdquomdashldquothe very pinnacle ofhuman self-assertionrdquo (Watson 1970 136 Sullivan 1970 163) Suchreadings conflated the white whale with the power of technology andhad Ahab defiantly affirm the principle of free-will and defend theboundary between human and material worlds Mumford for examplewrote of Ahab as the ldquospirit of manrdquo who stood in opposition to ldquothebrute energies of existence blind fatal overpoweringrdquo Ahab was self-directive ldquopurposiverdquo and he pitted his ldquopuniness against this mightand [his] purpose against the blank senselessness of powerrdquo So eventhough Ahabrsquos ldquomethods are ill-chosenrdquo wrote Mumford his ldquodefianceis noblerdquo (Mumford 1929 184-86)

4 People who portray themselves or Ahab on Ahab

Film projectors in addition to utilizing concepts of feedback internallywere often seen as generative of external feedback loops between humansand machines nature and artifice Such loops arguably constituted theldquosociety of the spectaclerdquo Guy Debordrsquos term for the image-saturatedenvironment that arose in the 1920s with the confluence of sound filmtelevision and the perfection of propaganda techniques As one of themore grim assessments of an image-based postmodernity Debord definedthe ldquospectaclerdquo in terms of negative feedback ldquoIt is the omnipresentcelebration of a choice already made in the sphere of production andthe consummate result of that choice In form as in content the spectacleserves as total justification for the conditions and aims of the existingsystem It further ensures the permanent presence of that justification forit governs almost all time spent outside the production process itself rdquo

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 16

17

8 Cahir (1997) has made a similar point Although I agree with her assessmentthat The Sea Beast is about Ahabrsquos ldquoreal pursuit of identityrdquo I take issue with herargument that The Sea Beast validates autonomous autotelic forms of masculine identity

(13) In America Debordian paranoia was rampant as Victorian fearsover the exploitation of pleasure were morphing into general anxietiesconcerning voyeurism and cinematic determinism ldquoThe spectacle ofmechanical progress has made so deep an impressionrdquo argued WalterLippmann in 1922 ldquothat it has suffused the whole moral coderdquo Whatdisturbed Lippmann and other public figures was the specter of circularcausality and the quiet ldquoinsertion between man and his environmentof a pseudo-environmentrdquo composed mainly of images (Lippmann 1922108 15) Unbeknownst to them Americans were in danger of becom-ing automated by images and trapped within what Debord would latercall ldquoan uninterrupted monologue of self-praiserdquo (19) Their perpetualaffirmation of self however was wholly cybernetic given the fact thatthey were oblivious to the fact that ldquoon the screen the whole processof observing describing reporting and then imagining has been accom-plished for yourdquo (92)

In a strange twist that Melville might have enjoyed the most com-pelling representation of Moby-Dick and portrayal of Captain Ahab mayhave occurred via the technology of the moving picture8 The 1926silent film The Sea Beast adapted to the screen by Bess Meredyth andstarring John Barrymore as Captain Ahab dramatized the feedbackdimensions of film and its capacity to regulate the human personalityThe Sea Beast I argue challenged more able-bodied academic inter-pretations by reveling in its status as a technological reproduction The

Sea Beast with its odd juxtapositions visceral jump cuts and perverseattention to Ahabrsquos stump and artificial limb rather than affirm thedesire for self-transparency suggested that the equipment-free reality ofthe self was quite literally an enabling fiction What Americans lackedaccording to Meredythrsquos scenario was the tragic recognition of them-selves as always regulated and already enhanced by technology Takingldquopleasure in the confusion of boundariesrdquo and ldquoresponsibility in their con-structionrdquo The Sea Beast in the borrowed words of Donna Harawaymade ldquoan argument for the cyborg as a fiction mapping our social andbodily reality and as an imaginative resource suggesting some very fruit-ful couplingsrdquo (8)

In 1925 at age forty-three John Barrymore was one of Hollywoodrsquosmost bankable actors (part of the ldquostar-systemrdquo promoted by Edward

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 17

18

Bernays who clearly saw the potential for cross-marketing between enter-tainment business and political campaigns) Barrymore easily convincedWarner Brothers to turn Moby-Dick one of his favorite novels into amovie and to cast him in the role of Captain Ahab Having playedHamlet in the 1922-23 Broadway season Barrymore developed a keeninterest in psychoanalysis and Freudrsquos account of Hamlet in Interpretationof Dreams (1900) The role of Captain Ahab like that of Hamlet allowedBarrymore to reach a larger audience with his newly emotive actingstyle As Captain Ahab he could also remind his audience of his depthand manly credentials He was tired in his words of playing ldquoscentedbepuffed bewigged and ringletted charactersrdquo (quoted in Kobler 1977213) Promotional pamphlets for The Sea Beast seemed to reinforceBarrymorersquos gendered strategy featuring a picture of Barrymore in abusiness suit puffing contemplatively on a pipemdashldquoJohn Barrymore ismore than a name more than a personality he is world institutionrdquo(Hoffman 2001 73)

The opening credits to The Sea Beast begin imprecisely with a close-up of the filmrsquos textual referent Moby Dick or the White Whale Thissimulated text begins not with ldquoExtractsrdquo or even ldquoCall me Ishmaelrdquobut with the following words ldquoThere never was nor ever will be abraver life than the life of the whaler Compared to the game theyhunted the mightiest land beast was but a poodle dogrdquo Adapted tothe screen by Bess Meredyth former actress turned writer The Sea Beast

is noteworthy as one of the earliest if not the first public appropriationsof Melvillersquos novel by a woman By 1926 Meredyth had become aHollywood regular having written the scenarios or continuities for Ben

Hur (1925) Don Juan (1926) and at least 70 other films ldquoThere is nowoman writing todayrdquo read the promotional copy of The Sea Beastldquowho has contributed so much to genuine screen values as Bess Meredythrdquo(Hoffman 2001 74) The ldquogenuinerdquo sense Meredyth made of Melvillersquosepic is significant in its relentless focus on the self as a technologicalconstruct In Meredythrsquos scenario one literally glimpses the spirit ofMelvillersquos rejection of the contemplative insular and hyper-masculinizedself of mid-nineteenth-century religion and science In its plot and per-verse attention to Ahabrsquos stump The Sea Beast suggests that nothing willor even can make up for the loss Ahab suffers

After the opening credits the audience is introduced to a healthyCaptain Ahab atop the masthead He looks out over the sea and downon his crew hard at work his feet tapping to the beat of the sea shantyldquoHanging Johnnyrdquo Nostalgia and the logic of substitution are bothbroached in the opening scenesmdashnot in terms of idealism but in ways

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 18

19

that hint at their subsequent negation As Ahab reads a letter from hisbeloved Esther Harper the daughter of a Christian missionary playedby the nineteen year-old Dolores Costello Ahab looks longingly at hername tattooed on his arm His mind drifts back to their last embraceFollowing a long close-up of his legs Ahab descends from the mastheadthe camera sliding down the rope in real time and from Ahabrsquos pointof view his legs leading the way The experience of vertigo engenderedby the shot suggests that Ahabrsquos identity is already unstable alreadymarked by a palpable lack of ground This shot however is quicklyoffset by numerous scenes that depict the fullness of Ahabrsquos vigor par-ticularly in relation to his healthy pair of legs He jumps he hops heruns around

When Ahabrsquos ship docks in the bay of Mauritius the audience isintroduced to Esther as well as to Derek Ahabrsquos scheming half-brotherIt is here that one is reminded of the words from the 1925 promotionalpublication of Moby-Dick accompanied by scenes from The Sea Beastldquothe screen version of lsquoMoby Dickrsquo exceeds the book The discrepancybetween the two must not be considered as a profanely wanton alterationrdquoTo portray the ldquopsychological studyrdquo of Captain Ahab ldquothe camerahas resorted to means of its own A mental state therefore particularlyan involved condition of mind must be expressed by means of the inci-dents which produced it each tortuous thought composing Ahabrsquos madness must be traced to the event which engendered itrdquo (Buchman1925 x) The most obvious incident being the loss of Ahabrsquos leg butthe film compounds this felt sense of loss by turning Melvillersquos tale intoa misbegotten love triangle between Ahab Derek and Esther the appleof both their eyes

On shore Ahab and Esther declare their love to each other Butafter a few days Ahab sails from Mauritius and scans the shore withhis telescope He spies Estherrsquos window She comes to the window andreturns Ahabrsquos gaze through her own telescope Technology has literallybecome the lens through which they see each other through whicheach declares their commitment They wave and blow kisses until theyare both out of range At sea Ahab is betrayed by Derek who unbe-knownst to Ahab pushes him overboard into the waiting jaws of MobyDick After losing his leg Ahab is distraught Derek then taunts Ahaband suggests that his symbolic castration is too much for any relation-ship to bear As Derek reminds him ldquoEsther was always crazy aboutyour beinrsquo so strong and perfectrdquo Having been fitted with his ivorystump Ahab arrives back at Mauritius Derek then shames Ahab evenfurther by telling him that he and Esther are in love and that Esther

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 19

20

cannot bring herself to tell Ahab of the deceit Derek then goes toEsther to convince her that Ahab has abandoned her When Ahabarrives at Estherrsquos house to confirm Derekrsquos story he sees their shadowscast by the light of spermaceti candles and mistakenly believes thatEsther has indeed left him for Derek It is here that Ahab descendsinto his infamous monomania

Ahab goes onto slay Moby Dick but not before uncovering his half-brotherrsquos double betrayal In a dramatic confrontation Derek pulls aknife on Ahab and is about to get the best of our hero But wait Ahabwedges his ivory stump into the deck leveraging himself in order tofend off Derek Ahab then casts Derek overboard and into the sea Anivory technology marking the absence of Ahabrsquos leg has been trans-formed into a salvific presence Or so it seems when the audience istreated to the restoration of order upon the Pequodrsquos return to portand Ahabrsquos reunion with Esther consummated in their tearful embraceHaving staged and seemingly resolved the crisis of masculine identity(the raison drsquoecirctre of melodrama being that the resolution is alreadypresent in the staging) The Sea Beast on the contrary did anything butrestore the full presence of Ahabrsquos self It suggested through both contentand form that the reality of the self whether it be Ahab or the spec-tator in the theater was neither fully resolvable nor equipment-free

Ahab achieves a kind of liberation on screen by recognizing that heis always already a figment of an imagination that is not his own Afterthe tearful reunion between Ahab and Esther the screen goes blackThe audience is then given a glimpse behind the scenes as it weremdasha scene of the director Millard Webb in his chair issuing directionsto Ahab and Esther in Estherrsquos living room A man in a business suitplays the violin in the background As Ahab and Esther look longinglyinto each otherrsquos eyes Ahab slips a ring onto Estherrsquos finger and theyembrace once again Or is it Barrymore and Costello It is unclearparticularly in light of the rumors of an off screen tryst between themiddle-aged Barrymore and his nineteen-year old costar (they wouldlater marry) The loving embrace is seemingly real an ambiguityreaffirmed by the fact that after Webb yells ldquocutrdquo he has to step betweenthe couple and remind them that they are on film Webb then turnsto the camera and smiles as the screen abruptly cuts to black onceagain

The odd ending of The Sea Beast suggests that Ahabrsquos journey towardreconciliation did not end with self-exposure but that it could neverreally begin Rather than achieve restoration of nature in and througha cultural construction Ahabrsquos artificial leg points to a previously

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 20

21

Figure 4 Final Embrace between AhabBarrymore and EstherCostello

ldquoexcluded and illegible domain that haunts the former domain as thespecter of its own impossibility the very limit of intelligibility its con-stitutive outsiderdquo (Butler 1993 xi) The ending harkens back to the seashanty ldquoHanging Johnnyrdquo Ahabrsquos introductory descent from the mast-head and his telescopic flirtation with Esther both vertiginous slidesinto the unfathomable layers of mediated perception that signal theldquoexecutionrdquo of possessive individualism Rather than erase the sign ofAhabrsquos traumamdashhis ivory legmdashthe ending of The Sea Beast suggests thatAhab and Barrymore are two sides of the same character vacillatingwithin the loop of continuous performativity One is reminded here ofWalter Benjaminrsquos insight into the traumatized subject in the age oftechnological reproducibility As Benjamin argues the trauma can beunderstood as a shift from the stage to the screen in which the actorperforms for a ldquopiece of equipmentrdquo rather than for an audience Citingthe Italian playwright Luigi Pirandello Benjamin suggests that the mod-ern subject is

exiled not only from the stage but from his own person With a vagueunease he senses an inexplicable void stemming from the fact that hisbody has lost its substance that he has been volatilized stripped of his

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 21

22

reality his life his voice the noises he makes when moving about andhas been turned into a mute image that flickers for a moment on thescreen then vanishes into silence (2003 260)

Pirandellorsquos borrowed words speak directly to Meredythrsquos reconfigurationof Melvillersquos text Whereas Melvillersquos Ahab tried and failed to conquerthe very source of visual illuminationmdashthe spermaceti oil that allowedantebellum Americans to see in the darkmdashBarrymorersquos Ahab revels inthe technologically enhanced gaze of his audience When the lightscome up the selves of Ahab Barrymore and the audience have beenre-narrativized as cybernetic that is as permanently divided and fun-damentally transient In affirming the really real offscreen relationshipbetween Barrymore and Costello the uncanny ending of The Sea Beast

supported a notion of selfhood as always already mediated or betteryet the necessity of experience to be mediated in order for it to becomereal or maybe even the necessity of acknowledging that the reality ofthe self is really made up

Barrymorersquos self-conscious performance inspired by his reading ofFreud and designed to overcome middle-class mores did not so muchpenetrate the inner depths of his character as it did the emotional lifeand perceptual apparatus of his audience The Sea Beast does not dram-atize the individual conquest of nature as much as it dramatizes visualtechnologyrsquos seduction of the individual The Sea Beast in its staging ofa cybernetic reality denied the very concept of 100 Americanism byinterrupting the narrative closure on which self-presence dependedNeither Ahab nor Barrymore nor the audience are ever alone even intheir solitude They are haunted not simply by the unconscious butby the specters generated in and through technologies of reproduction(Derrida 1994 97) They are in Benjaminrsquos apt phrase ldquopeople whoportray themselvesrdquo (Benjamin 2003 262)

For Benjamin photography and cinema were technologies of religiousrevelation for better or for worse in that they both exposed variousfeedback loops that constituted onersquos identity On one level Benjaminargued that the category of originality had been challenged by visualtechnologies that put copies ldquoof the original in situations which theoriginal itself cannot attainrdquo (2003 254) On another level the decayof the ldquoaurardquo of authenticity and the blurring of original and reproductionenabled individuals to recognize the fact that they were implicated inthe perceptual field and no longer insulated from what they saw orheard ldquoReception in distractionrdquo wrote Benjamin ldquowhich is increas-ing noticeably in all areas of art and is a symptom of profound changesin apperceptionmdashfinds in film its true training groundrdquo (269) Influenced

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 22

23

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethersquos notion of ldquoafter-imagesrdquo in Theory

of Colours (the same text that informed Melvillersquos ldquoThe Whiteness of theWhalerdquo) Benjamin announced the birth of the ldquooptical unconsciousrdquo(266) According to Benjamin images had become the currency of con-sciousness structuring thought and determining the range of possibleactions Mechanical means of reproduction had liberated the perceptualcapacities of humanity They had also ushered in the prospect of massdeception and control Either way they had resulted in a ldquomassiveupheaval in the domain of objectsrdquo and a ldquoshattering of traditionrdquo (254)

5 American Dada and the aporias of modernity

Within the Melville Revivalmdashan almost clicheacuted instance of Modernismrsquosvogue for the solitary geniusmdashseeds of post-Cartesian doubt were beingsown and the enchanting dimensions of technology considered BecauseMelville ldquowas spell-bound by the strange slidings and collidings ofMatterrdquo his work in the eyes of more atheological critics exposed theenchanting conditions of the machine age (Taylor 1984) ldquoIt is the mate-rial elements he really has to do withrdquo wrote DH Lawrence in 1923ldquoHis drama is with them He was a futurist long before futurism foundpaintrdquo (216) For Lewis Mumford too Melville had not simply dram-atized the incursion of machinesmdasha traditional Romantic tropemdashbuthad embraced a series of insoluble contradictions He has come to rec-ognize those parts of the world and himself that had already been pro-duced by machines and had insisted that the plasticity of self wassomething with which Americans had to struggle and to their spiritualdetriment repress

In broaching the aporias of modernity Mumford saw Melville as hav-ing already given the lie to Weberian diagnoses of disenchantment Thecapacity to effectively turn night into day Mumford suggested the expe-rience of a subway car rumbling past the solid structures of a sky-scraper vanishing into the air the peering into a microscope and theobservation of a ldquorow of bottles each of identical size shape colorstretching away for a quarter of a milerdquo were enough to induce a particular kind of vertigo ldquoThe special visual effect of repeating pat-tern[s]rdquo occurred simultaneously with the experience ldquoof the unique andthe non-repeatablerdquo (Mumford 1934 333-34) The experience of intensesystematicitymdashprecisely what feedback technologies were designed toinducemdashcould be positively disorienting when the infinitely calculableassumed the ldquospecial qualityrdquo of the ldquoincalculablerdquo (Heidegger 1977

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 23

24

135) According to Mumford when technology no longer made imperfectcopies of nature but perfect copies of itself the very notion of ldquonaturalrdquocould become radically suspect With the ldquoliquidationrdquo of the solid book-ends of authenticity and artifice came the prospect that the spectrumitself was socially constructed for better or for worse (Benjamin 2003255) Having torn aside the veil ldquoman has thrown between his ownexperience and the blank reality of the universerdquo Melville neither suc-cumbed to the temptation of nihilism nor retreated into his own pri-vate morality On the contrary he urged his contemporaries to ownup to the constructedness of any and all cultural forms and expressionsand the faith commitments that undergirded them As Mumford wroteldquoto appreciate the reality of the White Whale is to see more deeplyinto the expedience of all our immediate institutions all the spiritualshelters man puts between himself and the uncertain cosmic weatherMeaning significance attends only that little part of the universe manhas built up and settledrdquo (Mumford 1926 150-51)

Whereas Mumford assessed the religious dimensions of technologicalldquoprogressrdquo in a tragic key others tended toward the comic as was thecase with a group of experimental artists associated with Broom An

International Magazine of the Arts Published by Americans in Italy publishedbetween 1921 and 1924 (Tashjian 1975 116-34) Broomrsquos co-editor thepoet Alfred Kreyemborg (who would later co-edit The American Caravan

with Lewis Mumford) had adapted a passage from Moby-Dick for itstitle logo and statement of purpose which appeared on the back coverldquoWhat of itrdquo asks Ishmael

if some old hunks of a seacaptain orders me to get a broom and sweepdown the decks What does that indignity amount to weighed I meanin the scales of the New Testament Do you think the Archangel Gabrielthinks any less of me because I promptly and respectfully obey that oldhunks that particular instance Who ainrsquot a slave (Melville 1925 4)

The first issue of Broom included poems addressing Albert Einsteinrsquostheory of relativity as well as Emmy Veronica Sanders declaration thatldquothe American Machinerdquo was ldquotransforming itself with all its attributesand characteristics into American Mindrdquo ldquoAmericardquo she continuedinitially ldquomade of the Puritan by the Puritan for the Puritanrdquo wasnow being ldquoremade of the Machine by the Machine for the Machinerdquo(89-90) Following Sandersrsquos piece was a David OrsquoNeilrsquos hymn of sup-plication to the new Gods of the machine

When you are sweeping usWith Your cosmic broom

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 24

25

Figure 5 Nature and Second Nature in Technics and Civilization (1934)

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 25

26

Sweeping us out of mouldy rutsSweeping us clean and sweetmdash

RememberWhen wersquore quiveringmdashSensitivemdashbaremdashWe shall be gratefulFor just a few shadows (96)

Broom took Ishmaelrsquos retort quite seriously addressing the revolutionarydimensions of technological artifice and the shadows cast within therealm of technological illumination

Unlike Futurism Broom did not celebrate the beauty of war It didhowever come to express the ldquodreamed-of metallization of the humanbodyrdquo and the playful cybernetic fantasies of Dadaists such as ManRay and Francis Picabia (quoted in Benjamin 2003 269) After someinitial hesitation Broom began to embrace Dadarsquos perspective on the lib-eratory dimensions of the human-machine interface ldquoEverything isartificialrdquo gasped Broom contributor Blaise Cendrars ldquoThe eyes thehand the sexual frenzy of the factory The wheel which turns Thewing which flies The voice which travels far on a wire Your ear ina trumpet Your sense of direction Your rhythm You melt the worldin the mould of your skull Your brain is hollow Like a religion amysterious pill hastens your digestionrdquo (265) Jean Epstein from a slightdifferent angle argued that technology had ldquobecome part of ourselvesrdquoand had democratized human perceptionmdashldquoman has not one memoryof [the] landscape he [now] has a thousand different ones which mayor may not resemble each other Everything possesses hundreds ofapparent diameters which never superimpose exactlyrdquo (6-7)

Broom was soon translating less inflammatory Futurist manifestos suchas Enrico Prampolinirsquos ldquoThe Aesthetic of the Machine and MechanicalIntrospection in Artrdquo in which he declared ldquoIs not the machine todaythe most exuberant symbol of the mystery of human creation Is it notthe new mythical deity which weaves the legends and histories of thecontemporary human drama The Machine in its practical and materialfunction comes to have today in human concepts and thoughts thesignificance of an ideal and spiritual inspirationrdquo The kind of worshipthat ensued was that of the cyborg neither reverent nor memorializ-ing of cosmic law (Haraway 2004 9) Or as Prampolini wrote ldquoOurexperience has convinced us of the truth of certain of our plastic truthsand has allowed us to perceive the errors that lie in othersrdquo (236)

One of the more important pieces of American Dada captured pre-cisely this pointmdashGod (c 1917) designed by Baroness Elsa von Freytag-

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 26

27

Figure 6 Illustration accompanying Enrico Prampolinirsquos ldquoThe Aesthetic of theMachine and Mechanical Introspection in Artrdquo Broom 33 (October 1922) 237

Loringhoven and photographed by Morton Schamberg The invertedcast-iron plumbing trap atop a carpenterrsquos miter box was emblematicof the Melvillean appreciation for technological enchantment Indeedthe pipe is part of an indoor plumbing apparatus a modern conveniencewhose history dates back to some of the earliest feedback technologieson recordmdashthe water-clocks and float-regulators of ancient Greece (Mayr1970 11-26) God resembled the mechanical abstractions Schamberghad been producing before his premature death in 1918 during aninfluenza outbreak in Philadelphia The Baroness a contributor to Broom

and other little magazines had arrived in New York from Germanyin 1913 She was ldquothe first American dadardquo wrote Jane Heap in 1922ldquothe only one living anywhere who dresses dada loves dada lives dadardquo(46) Friends with Marcel Duchamp Djuna Barnes and other NewYork artists the Baroness was a central figure in a burgeoning trans-atlantic avant-garde In addition to her art and poetry the Baronesswas also a ldquoperformancerdquo artist who skillfully inverted gender hierarchiesand attacked through her very presence the traditional sensibilities ofthe middle-class She was notorious for walking around the streets ofGreenwich Village with her shaved head painted purple postage stampspasted to her face and a bird cage around her neck housing a livecanary (Davidson 1996 223-24)

In what must be considered a prescient assault on all manners oflogocentrism the Baroness also carried with her a plaster cast penis thatshe periodically revealed to passersby for maximum shock value (Gammel2002 195) But it was the Barnonessrsquos sculpture God that in addition

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 27

28

Figure 7 God (c 1917) designed by Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven and photographed by Morton Schamberg

to celebrating the mobility and reproducibility of that which was sup-posedly the most fixed and essential repossessed the power of tech-nology as ever imperfect and incomplete As a companion piece of sortsto Duchamprsquos infamous ready-made Fountain an inverted urinal dis-played in the 1917 exhibition of the American Society of IndependentArtists God invited more expressly theological speculation First of allit insisted on supplementing the three traditional symbolic centers ofWestern religious reflectionmdashGod humanity naturemdashwith the machineAnd although it has since been viewed by critics as ldquosacrilegiousrdquo andan instance of ldquoantireligious scatologyrdquo (Naumann 1994 171 Gammel220) the transgressive dimensions to God also affirm a shadowy open-

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 28

29

9 One is reminded here of Melvillersquos letter to Nathaniel Hawthorne in April of1851 ldquoWe incline to think that God cannot explain His own secrets and that Hewould like a little more information upon certain points Himself We mortals aston-ish Him as much as He usrdquo (Melville 1993 186)

ing to radical othernessmdashin the form of imperfection and chancemdashwithin the loops generated by feedback technology

Although the metal pipe ends up pointing toward heaven it firstloops downward in a nod to its human ground Limited by the skillsof the human carpenter on whose box it is anchored the contortedpipe narrativizes both the pitfalls and prospects of the machine ageShit eventually flows up in the case of God not down suggesting thateven the most lofty and noble ideals of the imagination maintain theirhuman aroma Rather than assume the power of divinity classicallyconstrued God staged divinity as nothing more and nothing less thanthat which made life livablemdashthat which kept the smell of human wasteartificially at bay or more ominously managed the flow of thingsthrough feedback control But even more literally God called attentionto the human work in the making of artifice and celebrated the bio-logical possibility for the endless unmaking (and remaking) of selfFeedback technology was not really God but it was for all practicalpurposes Or as the Baroness wrote in a 1927 letter to Peggy GuggenheimGod had much to learn from Henry Ford for he was ldquoclumsily sub-tle-densely-intelligent-inefficiently-immense-(Lord not Fordmdashof course)rdquo9

God the Baroness playfully warned had ldquobetter hotfoot it towardprogressmdashmodernizemdashuse his own omnipotence intelligentlymdashsmart orwersquoll all expire in tangle Well Lord knowsmdash(Does he)rdquo (quoted inGammel 2002 229)

6 Conclusion Deus in machina movet

As Protestant majorities struggled to adjust themselves and their theo-logical inheritance to new technological conditions theologies of themachine age both compelling and disturbing emerged from outsidethe precincts of traditional religious discourse For in addition to beinginspired by the ghost of Herman Melville the Melville Revival wasquite literally haunted by the power of feedback technologiesmdashspectersthat were affective rather than concrete strangely resistant to rationalcontemplation yet recognized through anxious admixtures of thoughtand feeling On one hand the revival reflected the spectrum of Protestant

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 29

30

10 Shortly after the publication of Moby-Dick in November of 1851 reports beganto reach America about the August sinking of the Ann Alexander by a whale in theSouth Pacific It was the first ldquoattack of a whale upon a shiprdquo since the destruc-tion of the Essex in 1820 The story about the Ann Alexander originally appeared inthe Panama Herald on October 16 and was reprinted the following month in New-York Daily Tribune and Littellrsquos Living Age The sperm whale that the Ann Alexander

fears over technological miscegenation The capacity of machines toredraw the boundaries of race and gender disturbed Protestant leadersand revivalists alike On the other hand subversive elements within theMelville Revival offered what must be considered a theological critiqueof how Protestants understood themselves and their God in relation totechnological materials Grant Overton for example saw in Moby-Dick

a deep appreciation for how technological developments had come tounderminemdashquite literally hauntmdashthe epistemological and ontologicalassumptions that made them possible ldquoNo longer able to instance thedeus ex machinardquo wrote Overton Melville was ldquounforgetful that deus inmachina movet and while most of mankind [have] become unable to seethe god for the machine [he] can scarcely perceive the machine forthe god agitating it [His] reports of the machine are somehow unrec-ognizable [his] realism is confronted by Realityrdquo (Overton 1928 231)

Bess Meredythrsquos reimagining of Moby-Dick and Baroness Elsa vonFreytag-Loringhovenrsquos God also explored the otherness that technologyengenders within the modern subject a trace that lingers despite allattempts to extinguish it Their errant readings challenged contempo-raries to reimagine their relationship to technology from an enchantedperspective that did not necessarily conform to the directives of Americanindividualism Resisting the advertisements of both Arminianism andBaconian Common Sense these readings insisted that there was somethingelsemdashsomething wholly othermdashoccurring within the technological workingsof secular modernity Excess or that which unsettled the boundariesbetween body and machine masculine and feminine had resulted inwhat might be called a ldquopost-structure of feelingrdquo The prospect thateither machines or women had begun to think for themselves or atleast possess a kind of agency once attributed to the enlightened malesubject now seemed as likely as a whale vengefully turning against awhaleship10 As Melvillean riffs on the deferred project of religious iden-tity The Sea Beast and God marked the space between human creationand technological determination consent and compulsion and there-fore hinted at the prospect that belief was not an individual state butan embodied activity Consistent with Lewis Mumfordrsquos assessment ofthe symbolic and material powers of feedback technology these works

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 30

31

had first turned upon starboard and larboard boats seizing both in its jaws andcrushing them to pieces It then rushed towards the Ann Alexander ldquoat the rateof fifteen knots In an instant the monster struck the ship with tremendous violence shakingher from stem to sternrdquo (415) Upon reading the article Melville remarked to his pub-lisher ldquothe Whale had almost completely slipped me for the time (amp I was themerrier for it) when Crash comes Moby Dick himself It is really amp truly a sur-prising coincidencemdashto say the least I make no doubt it is Moby Dick himself I wonder if my evil art has raised this monsterrdquo (Melville 1993 209)

11 William Jennings Bryan for example that standard bearer of fundamentalfaith equated faith to a particular kind of technologymdashldquothere is that in each humanliferdquo he wrote ldquothat corresponds to the mainspring of a watchmdashthat which isabsolutely necessary if the life is to be what it should be a real life and not amere existence That necessary thing is a belief in Godrdquo (86) Faith for Bryan wasthat which repeated without difference It was a dependable rational and utterlyrationalizing process It was not however self-regulating It affirmed the ldquorealnessrdquoof the individual believer precisely because it ignored the conditions imposed fromoutside the self But how might faith be viewed in terms of feedback and repro-ducibility rather than repetition a process that does not reaffirm a centered indi-vidual with every tick but adjusts accordingly to external fluctuations

raise numerous questions concerning the ways and means of religionin an age of postmodern complexity and virtual reality

How might a relentless focus on power and the porousness of sub-jectivity change how one views the matter of religion within historyHow might a greater attention to the aesthetic conditions that mediateany and all beliefs challenge the ways in which we distinguish the reli-gious from the secular How might a greater attention to the enchantingpower of material conditions challenge historical and political narrativesof secularization How do technologies and vested interests realize them-selves through the discourses of agency choice and mobility Whatin other words are the conditions of possibility that allow a historicalactor (rather than a Hollywood actor) to make a particular faith com-mitment or for that matter have any faith at all In what languagedo historical actors dream about themselves and divinity and how doesthat language change over time And finally to what degree is faithitself a technology11

By acknowledging the white mythology that still informs say thefield of American religions such questions shift the scholarly emphasisfrom explicit expressions of religious belief and practice to the spacebetween those beliefs and practices and the world at-large Individualswithin American religious history for example have often been depictedas fully formed agents making choices between various faith commitmentsand ever combining religious idioms to suit their specific needs and cir-cumstances (Albanese 1997) No doubt this is true But there is anotherside to this story of radical religious pluralism one that if accounted

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 31

32

12 Such a possibility is very much at odds with the Geertzian model of ldquothickdescriptionrdquo and its formidable legacy in the humanities and social sciences Withoutquestioning the degree to which the self can ever become entirely legible to theself Geertz claimed that every society and individual life and by extension everybelief and every practice ldquocontain their own interpretations One has only to learnhow to gain access to themrdquo (Geertz 1973 453)

13 The ambiguities of agency during the ldquomachine agerdquo have been the subjectof a number of elegant critical studies See for example Anson Rabinbach TheHuman Motor Energy Fatigue and the Origins of Modernity (New York Basic Books1990) Mark Seltzer Bodies and Machines (New York Routledge 1992) MarthaBanta Taylorized Lives Narrative Productions in the Age of Taylor Veblen and Ford (ChicagoUniversity of Chicago Press 1993) Carolyn Thomas de la Pentildea The Body ElectricHow Strange Machines Built the Modern American (New York New York UniversityPress 2003) and Joel Dinerstein The Swinging Machine Modernity Technology andAfrican American Culture Between the World Wars (Amherst University of MassachusettsPress 2003) Dinersteinrsquos work is particularly relevant to the issue of religious com-binativeness given his emphasis on how African American artists strove to refigureldquomachine aestheticsrdquo in and through their artistry Dinersteinrsquos work suggests thatthe self is locatedmdashie the self happensmdashsomewhere between resistance and assim-ilation between choice and coercionmdasha lesson that many Anglo-Americans werenot willing to consider in their triumphal theorizing about the human in relationto the machine The possibility for consideration argues Dinerstein existed inAfrican American jazz swing and dance

for suggests new directions for the study of religion in America Althoughthe ldquolived religionrdquo perspective in American religious history has donemuch to overcome the distinction between ldquodabblersrdquo and ldquotrue believersrdquothe question of power still lingers (Ahlstrom 1972 1052) Religiousbeliefs and practices are neither essential things nor reveal themselvesto the scholar in toto12 Such a position does not replicate the eitherordiscussion regarding the agency of historical actors On the contraryit suggests that religious agency is a hybrid weave of intent and instinctimmediate response and mediated principle knowing and unknowing13

Accounting for the ambiguities of agency has already pushed scholarsof religion toward an anthropology of the secular and an explorationof in the Foucauldian phrasing of Talal Asad ldquothe contingencies thathave come together to give us our certaintiesrdquo (2003 16)

It is with a hint of irony then that one may return to the promotionalpamphlet of The Sea Beast that celebrates the ldquoconquestrdquo of Ahab andthe invisible wafting presence of screenwriter Bess Meredyth ldquoThereis no woman writing today who has contributed so much to genuine

screen values as Bess Meredythrdquo Indeed her son John Meredyth Lucasborn in 1919 continued down his motherrsquos unsettling path as a successfultelevision screenwriter and director His credits included episodes ofldquoStar Trekrdquo ldquoLoganrsquos Runrdquo and that other story of ldquohundred percentrdquoAmericanism ldquoThe Six Million Dollar Manrdquo

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 32

33

Figure 8 The Six Million Dollar Man ldquoGentlemen we can rebuild him Wehave the capability of making the worldrsquos first bionic man We can make him

better than he was before Better Stronger Fasterrdquo

Haverford College370 Lancaster AveHaverford PA 19041jlardashaverfordedu

References

Ahlstrom Sydney E (1972) A Religious History of the American People New HavenYale University Press

Albanese Catherine L (1997) Exchanging selves exchanging souls Contact com-bination and American religious history In Thomas A Tweed (ed) RetellingUS Religious History 200-26 Berkeley University of California Press

Anon (1851) A ship sunk by a whale Littellrsquos Living Age (29 November) 415-16Asad Talal (2003) Formations of the Secular Christianity Islam Modernity Stanford

Stanford University Press

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 33

34

Bacon Francis (1870) The Works of Francis Bacon James Spedding Robert LeslieEllis and Douglas Denon Heath (eds) Vol VIII New York Hurd andHoughton

Barton Bruce (2000) The Man Nobody Knows A Discovery of the Real Jesus ChicagoIvan R Dee

Beniger James R (1986) The Control Revolution Technological and Economic Origins ofthe Information Society Cambridge Harvard University Press

Benjamin Walter (1996) One-way street In Marcus Bullock amp Michael W Jennings(eds) Selected Writings Volume 1 1913-1926 444-88 Cambridge HarvardUniversity Press

mdash (2003) The work of art in the age of its technological reproducibility third ver-sion In Howard Eiland and Michael W Jennings (eds) Selected Writings Volume4 1938-40 251-83 Cambridge Harvard University Press

Bennett Charles A (1923) A Philosophical Study of Mysticism An Essay New HavenYale University Press 1923

Bernays Edward L (1923) Crystallizing Public Opinion New York Liverlight PublishingCorporation

Buchman SR (1925) Moby Dickmdashthe book and The Sea Beastmdashthe picture Anappreciation In Herman Melville Moby Dick or The White Whale ix-xi NewYork Grosset amp Dunlap

Butler Judith (1993) Bodies That Matter On the Discursive Limits of lsquoSexrsquo RoutledgeNew York

Cahir Linda Costanzo (1997) Routinizing the charismatic Melville and Hollywoodrsquosthree Moby-Dicks Melville Society Extracts 110 (September) 11-17

Cendrars Blaise (1922) Profound today Broom 13 ( January) 265-67Chadwick Owen (1975) The Secularization of the European Mind in the Nineteenth Century

Cambridge Cambridge University PressCoe George Albert (1917) A Social Theory of Religious Education New York Charles

Scribnerrsquos SonsDavidson Abraham A (1996) The European art invasion In Francis M Naumann

(ed) with Beth Vann Making Mischief Dada Invades New York 222-27 NewYork Whitney Museum of Art

Debord Guy (1995) Society of the Spectacle translated by Donald Nicholson-SmithNew York Zone Books

Derrida Jacques (1994) Specters of Marx The State of the Debt The Work of Mourningand the New International Peggy Kamuf (trans) New York Routledge

Dorsey George A (1925) Why We Behave Like Human Beings New York BlueRibbon Books

Epstein Jean (1922) The new conditions of literary phenomena Broom 21 (April)3-10

Frank Waldo (1919) Our America New York Boni and LiverightGammel Irene (2002) Baroness Elsa Gender Dada and Everyday Modernitymdasha Cultural

Biography Cambridge The MIT PressGeertz Clifford (1973) Deep play Notes on the Balinese cockfight In The Interpretation

of Cultures 412-53 New York Basic BooksHaraway Donna (2004) A manifesto for cyborgs Science technology and socialist

feminism in the 1980s In The Haraway Reader 7-45 New York RoutledgeHeap Jane (1922) Dada Little Review VII2 (Spring) 46Heidegger Martin (1977) The age of the world-picturerdquo In The Question Concerning

Technology and Other Essays 115-54 William Lovitt (trans) New York Harperamp Row

Hoffman Carol Stein (2001) The Barrymores Hollywoodrsquos First Family LexingtonUniversity of Kentucky Press

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 34

35

Jackson Josephine A and Helen M Salisbury (1922) Outwitting Our Nerves A Primerof Psychotherapy New York The Century Co

Jaffe David (1990) The village enlightenment in New England 1760-1820 TheWilliam and Mary Quarterly XLVII3 ( July) 327-46

Jones Rufus M (1915) Mysticism in present-day religion Harvard Theological ReviewVIII2 (April) 155-65

Kippenberg Hans G (2002) Discovering Religious History in the Modern Age BarbaraHarshav (trans) Princeton Princeton University Press

Kobler John (1977) Damned in Paradise The Life of John Barrymore New YorkAtheneum

Kuttner Alfred B (1922) Nerves In Harold E Stearns (ed) Civilization in the UnitedStates An Enquiry by Thirty Americans 427-42 New York Harcourt

Lauter Paul (1994) Melville climbs the canon American Literature 66 (March) 1-24Lawrence DH (1923) Studies in Classic American Literature New York T SeltzerLindbergh Charles A (1927) We New York GP Putnamrsquos SonsLippmann Walter (1922) Public Opinion New York Macmillan CompanyMarchand Roland (1985) Advertising the American Dream Making Way for Modernity

1920-1940 Berkeley University of California PressMarty Martin E Modern American Religion Vol 2 The Noise of Conflict 1919-1941

Chicago University of Chicago Press 1991May Henry F (1976) The Enlightenment in America New York Oxford University

PressMayhew Jonathan (1749) Concerning the difference between truth and falsehood

right and wrong In Seven Sermons 1-21 Boston Rogers and FowleMayr Otto (1970) The Origins of Feedback Control Cambridge The MIT PressMelville Herman (1993) Correspondence Volume 14 of The Writings of Herman Melville

Lynne Horth (ed) Evanston and Chicago Northwestern University Pressmdash (1925) Moby Dick or The White Whale 1851 New York Grosset amp DunlapMindell David A (2002) Between Human and Machine Feedback Control and Computing

Before Cybernetics Baltimore The Johns Hopkins University PressMumford Lewis (1929) Herman Melville New York The Literary Guild of Americamdash (1924) Sticks and Stones A Study of American Architecture and Civilization New York

Dover Publicationsmdash (1934) Technics and Civilization New York Harcourt Brace and Companymdash (1926) The Golden Day A Study in American Literature and Culture New York Boni

and LiverightMurray Jr HA (1929) Review of Lewis Mumfordrsquos Herman Melville The New

England Quarterly 2 ( July) 523-26Naumann Francis M (1994) New York Dada 1915-23 New York Harry N AbramsNoble David F (1999) The Religion of Technology The Divinity of Man and the Spirit

of Invention New York Penguin BooksNye David E (1994) American Technological Sublime Cambridge The MIT PressOrsquoNeil David (1921) The new Broom Broom 11 (November) 96Overton Grant (1928) The Philosophy of Fiction New York D AppletonPalmer Attorney General (1920) The case against the lsquoRedsrsquo The Forum A Magazine

of Constructive Nationalism 632 (February) 173-85Parsons Floyd W (1927) Everybodyrsquos business Advertising amp Selling ( June 29) 5 64Prampolini Enrico (1922) The aesthetic of the machine and mechanical intro-

spection in art Broom 33 (October) 235-37Rauschenbusch Walter (1917) A Theology for the Social Gospel New York The

Macmillan CompanyRichardson George P (1991) Feedback Thought in Social Science and Systems Theory

Philadelphia University of Pennsylvania Press

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 35

12

Figure 2 ldquoThe ConquerorrdquomdashCharles Lindbergh from Current History July 1927

(Weaver 1921 19 331) The construction of Melville as mystic wasconcurrent with the discursive construction of mysticism by liberalProtestants as ldquoahistorical poetic essential intuitive and universalrdquo(Schmidt 2003 288) Both intellectual constructionsmdashthe latter integralto the academic study of religion in the twentieth centurymdashsought towrest a degree of ldquorealnessrdquo from a world in which ldquothe realrdquo was feltto be increasingly susceptible to technological erasure (Kippenberg 2002175-86) And whereas mystically inclined Protestants denounced ldquosec-ular activitiesrdquo by calling for the liberation and unity of ldquothe deep-lyingpowers of the inward self into one conscious liferdquo under God revival-ists called on Melville to provide them with an experiential map of thatwhich was utterly and mysteriously human (Bennett 1923 6 Jones1915 156 161) As Henry A Murray flatly announced ldquoMelville dis-covered the Unconscious and commenced to explore itrdquo (1929 526)As a model for authenticity and self-governance Melville was both ana-lyst and analysandmdashldquoa gentleman adventurer in the barbarous outposts

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 12

13

of human experiencerdquo not a ldquostaged dip into studio savageryrdquo Melvillehad penetrated the depths of his own psyche no doubt aided by hisstay among South Sea islanders (detailed in his first two novels Typee

(1846) and Omoo (1847) Indeed the authenticity of Melvillersquos mysticconsciousness was dependent upon his ldquountamed desires in violentconflict with his physical and spiritual environmentrdquo (Weaver 1921 1519 21 24-29)

As opposed to Weaverrsquos vicarious nostalgia for a simpler less com-mercial and more fully ldquorealrdquo existence another Melville biographerLewis Mumford understood the complex simulations of a consumer-driven economy as already emergent during Melvillersquos writerly careerMixing cultural criticism history and theological speculation Mumfordwas a keen observer of the technological revolutions in feedback controlIn his most memorable and encyclopedic work Technics and Civilization

(1934) Mumford claimed that in the seventeenth-century ldquomechanicsrdquohad become ldquothe new religion and [they] gave to the world a new Messiahthe machinerdquo In dramatizing the extent to which technology had shapedand continued to shape human consciousness Mumford explored inexacting and illustrated detail the history and material conditions thatwere allowing ldquotools and utensilsrdquo to assume ldquoan independent existencerdquo

This ldquoneotechnic phaserdquo had begun in the early part of the nineteenthcentury and was marked by efficiency flexibility ldquocomplete automatismrdquoand synthetic materialsmdasha ldquomutationrdquo that was rapidly integrating ldquothemachine and the world of liferdquo (45 321 227 212 254)

Such integration was not without its dangers ldquoWith the invention ofthe telegraphrdquo the ldquowireless telephonerdquo and the ldquotelevisionrdquo wroteMumford humans ldquobegan to bridge the gap in time between communi-cation and responserdquo The sympathetic relations between family memberscould now be replicated on an unprecedented scale through telepathictechnologiesmdashgiving rise to ldquo[immense] possibilities for good and evilrdquoThe building of a personality was no longer a ldquolocalrdquo affair On the con-trary when ldquomass-reactionsrdquo were ldquomobilized and hastenedrdquo the needsand interests of the human became those of the machine As Mumfordsuggested technology was becoming a ldquocreative force carried on by itsown momentumrdquo and ldquoproducing a third estate midway between natureand the humane artsrdquo The drive to overcome distancemdashbetween indi-viduals as well as between self and worldmdashhad itself ldquocreated an inde-pendent environment that has reacted upon every other side of the personalityrdquo (239241 322 324)

According to Mumford such technological interference had been ofintense and abiding concern for Melville (1934 213) In Herman Melville

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 13

14

Figure 3 Neotechnic Automatism from Technics and Civilization (1934)

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 14

15

7 Public relations and advances in advertising were the latest instances of the ldquocontrol revolutionrdquo in which technology of interchangeability so integral to theAmerican System of manufacturing had extended its field of operations under theauspices of consumer capitalism Machines were not simply making parts for othermachines but were integral to the form and content of social reproduction Publicrelations was a particular (and less reliable) version of feedback control Instead ofmaintaining a fixed variable on the inside by responding to fluctuations on the out-side ldquocounselorsrdquo stoked the flames of consumer desire in order to justify an accel-erating rate of production and ideally consumption

(1929) Mumford had chided fellow revivalists for exaggerating Melvillersquosretreat into mystical idealism ldquoMelville was a realistrdquo countered Mumfordldquoin the sense that the great religious teachers are realistsrdquo FurthermoreMelville had witnessed the ldquovolcanic intrusionrdquo of ldquoindustrialism [as] avalue in itself rdquo (1929 5 64-65) But things had gotten much more com-plicated since the mid-nineteenth century Whereas Melville had beheldldquothe servile routine of the factory systemrdquo Mumford was now witness-ing the birth of ldquothe machine system the network of relationshipsthat have followed the financial exploitation of machineryrdquo The differencein other words was the full-scale emergence of self-governing tech-nologiesmdashldquohandicraft devoted to mechanical reproduction and machinerythat is set to reproduce endless simulacrardquo For Mumford this ldquomachineritualrdquo this ldquoendlessrdquo loop of ldquomechanical reproductionrdquo threatened toefface ldquothe human arts of seeing feeling and livingrdquo (1924 67-68 10174-75 105 81) Technology in other words had achieved the capacityfor feedback on two different but related levels first in material devicesthat could copy both nature and themselves and secondly in humansthat governed themselves according to the latest control variables setby the machine As Mumford argued the totalizing power of feedbacktechnologies resulted not simply from designs motors or even materialoutputs but through their economically driven expansion of ldquothe verydomain of the symbol itself rdquo (1934 331)

Mumfordrsquos insights take on more ominous implications when oneconsiders the rise of the American public relations industry during thisperiod7 Public relations consultants such as Edward Bernays and adver-tisers like Bruce Barton actively sought to shape and change the beliefsof individuals in the service of larger economic agendas It was no acci-dent Bernays wrote in 1923 that a ldquoman belongs to one church ratherthan another or to any church at allrdquo It was no accident that ldquoBostonwomen prefer brown eggs and New York women white eggsrdquo Becausethe judgments of individuals were not arrived at through ldquoresearch andlogical deductionrdquo but were ldquodogmatic expressions accepted on theauthority of his parents his teachers his church and of his social his

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 15

16

economic and other leadersrdquo a ldquopublic relations counselrdquo must do thework of reauthorization (Bernays 1923 62) Through the strategic ldquosat-urationrdquo of images text and work-place incentives an entire profes-sional class sought to provide the terms for and effectively monitor theconditions of self-realization (Marchand 1985 94-95)

What then did Melville have to offer those living within ldquothe machinesystemrdquo of the 1920s Mumford and other revivalists championed Moby-

Dick as a blueprint for living within an increasingly mechanical rou-tinized and bureaucratic world They also heaped admiration uponCaptain Ahab an odd choice given the outcome of Moby-Dick Contraryto those who would later read Ahabrsquos technologically enhanced dem-agoguery against the political backdrops of Italian Fascism and NationalSocialism Ahabrsquos madness in the 1920s could be considered ldquoactiveand courageousrdquo as well as a sign of ldquogeniusrdquomdashldquothe very pinnacle ofhuman self-assertionrdquo (Watson 1970 136 Sullivan 1970 163) Suchreadings conflated the white whale with the power of technology andhad Ahab defiantly affirm the principle of free-will and defend theboundary between human and material worlds Mumford for examplewrote of Ahab as the ldquospirit of manrdquo who stood in opposition to ldquothebrute energies of existence blind fatal overpoweringrdquo Ahab was self-directive ldquopurposiverdquo and he pitted his ldquopuniness against this mightand [his] purpose against the blank senselessness of powerrdquo So eventhough Ahabrsquos ldquomethods are ill-chosenrdquo wrote Mumford his ldquodefianceis noblerdquo (Mumford 1929 184-86)

4 People who portray themselves or Ahab on Ahab

Film projectors in addition to utilizing concepts of feedback internallywere often seen as generative of external feedback loops between humansand machines nature and artifice Such loops arguably constituted theldquosociety of the spectaclerdquo Guy Debordrsquos term for the image-saturatedenvironment that arose in the 1920s with the confluence of sound filmtelevision and the perfection of propaganda techniques As one of themore grim assessments of an image-based postmodernity Debord definedthe ldquospectaclerdquo in terms of negative feedback ldquoIt is the omnipresentcelebration of a choice already made in the sphere of production andthe consummate result of that choice In form as in content the spectacleserves as total justification for the conditions and aims of the existingsystem It further ensures the permanent presence of that justification forit governs almost all time spent outside the production process itself rdquo

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 16

17

8 Cahir (1997) has made a similar point Although I agree with her assessmentthat The Sea Beast is about Ahabrsquos ldquoreal pursuit of identityrdquo I take issue with herargument that The Sea Beast validates autonomous autotelic forms of masculine identity

(13) In America Debordian paranoia was rampant as Victorian fearsover the exploitation of pleasure were morphing into general anxietiesconcerning voyeurism and cinematic determinism ldquoThe spectacle ofmechanical progress has made so deep an impressionrdquo argued WalterLippmann in 1922 ldquothat it has suffused the whole moral coderdquo Whatdisturbed Lippmann and other public figures was the specter of circularcausality and the quiet ldquoinsertion between man and his environmentof a pseudo-environmentrdquo composed mainly of images (Lippmann 1922108 15) Unbeknownst to them Americans were in danger of becom-ing automated by images and trapped within what Debord would latercall ldquoan uninterrupted monologue of self-praiserdquo (19) Their perpetualaffirmation of self however was wholly cybernetic given the fact thatthey were oblivious to the fact that ldquoon the screen the whole processof observing describing reporting and then imagining has been accom-plished for yourdquo (92)

In a strange twist that Melville might have enjoyed the most com-pelling representation of Moby-Dick and portrayal of Captain Ahab mayhave occurred via the technology of the moving picture8 The 1926silent film The Sea Beast adapted to the screen by Bess Meredyth andstarring John Barrymore as Captain Ahab dramatized the feedbackdimensions of film and its capacity to regulate the human personalityThe Sea Beast I argue challenged more able-bodied academic inter-pretations by reveling in its status as a technological reproduction The

Sea Beast with its odd juxtapositions visceral jump cuts and perverseattention to Ahabrsquos stump and artificial limb rather than affirm thedesire for self-transparency suggested that the equipment-free reality ofthe self was quite literally an enabling fiction What Americans lackedaccording to Meredythrsquos scenario was the tragic recognition of them-selves as always regulated and already enhanced by technology Takingldquopleasure in the confusion of boundariesrdquo and ldquoresponsibility in their con-structionrdquo The Sea Beast in the borrowed words of Donna Harawaymade ldquoan argument for the cyborg as a fiction mapping our social andbodily reality and as an imaginative resource suggesting some very fruit-ful couplingsrdquo (8)

In 1925 at age forty-three John Barrymore was one of Hollywoodrsquosmost bankable actors (part of the ldquostar-systemrdquo promoted by Edward

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 17

18

Bernays who clearly saw the potential for cross-marketing between enter-tainment business and political campaigns) Barrymore easily convincedWarner Brothers to turn Moby-Dick one of his favorite novels into amovie and to cast him in the role of Captain Ahab Having playedHamlet in the 1922-23 Broadway season Barrymore developed a keeninterest in psychoanalysis and Freudrsquos account of Hamlet in Interpretationof Dreams (1900) The role of Captain Ahab like that of Hamlet allowedBarrymore to reach a larger audience with his newly emotive actingstyle As Captain Ahab he could also remind his audience of his depthand manly credentials He was tired in his words of playing ldquoscentedbepuffed bewigged and ringletted charactersrdquo (quoted in Kobler 1977213) Promotional pamphlets for The Sea Beast seemed to reinforceBarrymorersquos gendered strategy featuring a picture of Barrymore in abusiness suit puffing contemplatively on a pipemdashldquoJohn Barrymore ismore than a name more than a personality he is world institutionrdquo(Hoffman 2001 73)

The opening credits to The Sea Beast begin imprecisely with a close-up of the filmrsquos textual referent Moby Dick or the White Whale Thissimulated text begins not with ldquoExtractsrdquo or even ldquoCall me Ishmaelrdquobut with the following words ldquoThere never was nor ever will be abraver life than the life of the whaler Compared to the game theyhunted the mightiest land beast was but a poodle dogrdquo Adapted tothe screen by Bess Meredyth former actress turned writer The Sea Beast

is noteworthy as one of the earliest if not the first public appropriationsof Melvillersquos novel by a woman By 1926 Meredyth had become aHollywood regular having written the scenarios or continuities for Ben

Hur (1925) Don Juan (1926) and at least 70 other films ldquoThere is nowoman writing todayrdquo read the promotional copy of The Sea Beastldquowho has contributed so much to genuine screen values as Bess Meredythrdquo(Hoffman 2001 74) The ldquogenuinerdquo sense Meredyth made of Melvillersquosepic is significant in its relentless focus on the self as a technologicalconstruct In Meredythrsquos scenario one literally glimpses the spirit ofMelvillersquos rejection of the contemplative insular and hyper-masculinizedself of mid-nineteenth-century religion and science In its plot and per-verse attention to Ahabrsquos stump The Sea Beast suggests that nothing willor even can make up for the loss Ahab suffers

After the opening credits the audience is introduced to a healthyCaptain Ahab atop the masthead He looks out over the sea and downon his crew hard at work his feet tapping to the beat of the sea shantyldquoHanging Johnnyrdquo Nostalgia and the logic of substitution are bothbroached in the opening scenesmdashnot in terms of idealism but in ways

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 18

19

that hint at their subsequent negation As Ahab reads a letter from hisbeloved Esther Harper the daughter of a Christian missionary playedby the nineteen year-old Dolores Costello Ahab looks longingly at hername tattooed on his arm His mind drifts back to their last embraceFollowing a long close-up of his legs Ahab descends from the mastheadthe camera sliding down the rope in real time and from Ahabrsquos pointof view his legs leading the way The experience of vertigo engenderedby the shot suggests that Ahabrsquos identity is already unstable alreadymarked by a palpable lack of ground This shot however is quicklyoffset by numerous scenes that depict the fullness of Ahabrsquos vigor par-ticularly in relation to his healthy pair of legs He jumps he hops heruns around

When Ahabrsquos ship docks in the bay of Mauritius the audience isintroduced to Esther as well as to Derek Ahabrsquos scheming half-brotherIt is here that one is reminded of the words from the 1925 promotionalpublication of Moby-Dick accompanied by scenes from The Sea Beastldquothe screen version of lsquoMoby Dickrsquo exceeds the book The discrepancybetween the two must not be considered as a profanely wanton alterationrdquoTo portray the ldquopsychological studyrdquo of Captain Ahab ldquothe camerahas resorted to means of its own A mental state therefore particularlyan involved condition of mind must be expressed by means of the inci-dents which produced it each tortuous thought composing Ahabrsquos madness must be traced to the event which engendered itrdquo (Buchman1925 x) The most obvious incident being the loss of Ahabrsquos leg butthe film compounds this felt sense of loss by turning Melvillersquos tale intoa misbegotten love triangle between Ahab Derek and Esther the appleof both their eyes

On shore Ahab and Esther declare their love to each other Butafter a few days Ahab sails from Mauritius and scans the shore withhis telescope He spies Estherrsquos window She comes to the window andreturns Ahabrsquos gaze through her own telescope Technology has literallybecome the lens through which they see each other through whicheach declares their commitment They wave and blow kisses until theyare both out of range At sea Ahab is betrayed by Derek who unbe-knownst to Ahab pushes him overboard into the waiting jaws of MobyDick After losing his leg Ahab is distraught Derek then taunts Ahaband suggests that his symbolic castration is too much for any relation-ship to bear As Derek reminds him ldquoEsther was always crazy aboutyour beinrsquo so strong and perfectrdquo Having been fitted with his ivorystump Ahab arrives back at Mauritius Derek then shames Ahab evenfurther by telling him that he and Esther are in love and that Esther

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 19

20

cannot bring herself to tell Ahab of the deceit Derek then goes toEsther to convince her that Ahab has abandoned her When Ahabarrives at Estherrsquos house to confirm Derekrsquos story he sees their shadowscast by the light of spermaceti candles and mistakenly believes thatEsther has indeed left him for Derek It is here that Ahab descendsinto his infamous monomania

Ahab goes onto slay Moby Dick but not before uncovering his half-brotherrsquos double betrayal In a dramatic confrontation Derek pulls aknife on Ahab and is about to get the best of our hero But wait Ahabwedges his ivory stump into the deck leveraging himself in order tofend off Derek Ahab then casts Derek overboard and into the sea Anivory technology marking the absence of Ahabrsquos leg has been trans-formed into a salvific presence Or so it seems when the audience istreated to the restoration of order upon the Pequodrsquos return to portand Ahabrsquos reunion with Esther consummated in their tearful embraceHaving staged and seemingly resolved the crisis of masculine identity(the raison drsquoecirctre of melodrama being that the resolution is alreadypresent in the staging) The Sea Beast on the contrary did anything butrestore the full presence of Ahabrsquos self It suggested through both contentand form that the reality of the self whether it be Ahab or the spec-tator in the theater was neither fully resolvable nor equipment-free

Ahab achieves a kind of liberation on screen by recognizing that heis always already a figment of an imagination that is not his own Afterthe tearful reunion between Ahab and Esther the screen goes blackThe audience is then given a glimpse behind the scenes as it weremdasha scene of the director Millard Webb in his chair issuing directionsto Ahab and Esther in Estherrsquos living room A man in a business suitplays the violin in the background As Ahab and Esther look longinglyinto each otherrsquos eyes Ahab slips a ring onto Estherrsquos finger and theyembrace once again Or is it Barrymore and Costello It is unclearparticularly in light of the rumors of an off screen tryst between themiddle-aged Barrymore and his nineteen-year old costar (they wouldlater marry) The loving embrace is seemingly real an ambiguityreaffirmed by the fact that after Webb yells ldquocutrdquo he has to step betweenthe couple and remind them that they are on film Webb then turnsto the camera and smiles as the screen abruptly cuts to black onceagain

The odd ending of The Sea Beast suggests that Ahabrsquos journey towardreconciliation did not end with self-exposure but that it could neverreally begin Rather than achieve restoration of nature in and througha cultural construction Ahabrsquos artificial leg points to a previously

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 20

21

Figure 4 Final Embrace between AhabBarrymore and EstherCostello

ldquoexcluded and illegible domain that haunts the former domain as thespecter of its own impossibility the very limit of intelligibility its con-stitutive outsiderdquo (Butler 1993 xi) The ending harkens back to the seashanty ldquoHanging Johnnyrdquo Ahabrsquos introductory descent from the mast-head and his telescopic flirtation with Esther both vertiginous slidesinto the unfathomable layers of mediated perception that signal theldquoexecutionrdquo of possessive individualism Rather than erase the sign ofAhabrsquos traumamdashhis ivory legmdashthe ending of The Sea Beast suggests thatAhab and Barrymore are two sides of the same character vacillatingwithin the loop of continuous performativity One is reminded here ofWalter Benjaminrsquos insight into the traumatized subject in the age oftechnological reproducibility As Benjamin argues the trauma can beunderstood as a shift from the stage to the screen in which the actorperforms for a ldquopiece of equipmentrdquo rather than for an audience Citingthe Italian playwright Luigi Pirandello Benjamin suggests that the mod-ern subject is

exiled not only from the stage but from his own person With a vagueunease he senses an inexplicable void stemming from the fact that hisbody has lost its substance that he has been volatilized stripped of his

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 21

22

reality his life his voice the noises he makes when moving about andhas been turned into a mute image that flickers for a moment on thescreen then vanishes into silence (2003 260)

Pirandellorsquos borrowed words speak directly to Meredythrsquos reconfigurationof Melvillersquos text Whereas Melvillersquos Ahab tried and failed to conquerthe very source of visual illuminationmdashthe spermaceti oil that allowedantebellum Americans to see in the darkmdashBarrymorersquos Ahab revels inthe technologically enhanced gaze of his audience When the lightscome up the selves of Ahab Barrymore and the audience have beenre-narrativized as cybernetic that is as permanently divided and fun-damentally transient In affirming the really real offscreen relationshipbetween Barrymore and Costello the uncanny ending of The Sea Beast

supported a notion of selfhood as always already mediated or betteryet the necessity of experience to be mediated in order for it to becomereal or maybe even the necessity of acknowledging that the reality ofthe self is really made up

Barrymorersquos self-conscious performance inspired by his reading ofFreud and designed to overcome middle-class mores did not so muchpenetrate the inner depths of his character as it did the emotional lifeand perceptual apparatus of his audience The Sea Beast does not dram-atize the individual conquest of nature as much as it dramatizes visualtechnologyrsquos seduction of the individual The Sea Beast in its staging ofa cybernetic reality denied the very concept of 100 Americanism byinterrupting the narrative closure on which self-presence dependedNeither Ahab nor Barrymore nor the audience are ever alone even intheir solitude They are haunted not simply by the unconscious butby the specters generated in and through technologies of reproduction(Derrida 1994 97) They are in Benjaminrsquos apt phrase ldquopeople whoportray themselvesrdquo (Benjamin 2003 262)

For Benjamin photography and cinema were technologies of religiousrevelation for better or for worse in that they both exposed variousfeedback loops that constituted onersquos identity On one level Benjaminargued that the category of originality had been challenged by visualtechnologies that put copies ldquoof the original in situations which theoriginal itself cannot attainrdquo (2003 254) On another level the decayof the ldquoaurardquo of authenticity and the blurring of original and reproductionenabled individuals to recognize the fact that they were implicated inthe perceptual field and no longer insulated from what they saw orheard ldquoReception in distractionrdquo wrote Benjamin ldquowhich is increas-ing noticeably in all areas of art and is a symptom of profound changesin apperceptionmdashfinds in film its true training groundrdquo (269) Influenced

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 22

23

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethersquos notion of ldquoafter-imagesrdquo in Theory

of Colours (the same text that informed Melvillersquos ldquoThe Whiteness of theWhalerdquo) Benjamin announced the birth of the ldquooptical unconsciousrdquo(266) According to Benjamin images had become the currency of con-sciousness structuring thought and determining the range of possibleactions Mechanical means of reproduction had liberated the perceptualcapacities of humanity They had also ushered in the prospect of massdeception and control Either way they had resulted in a ldquomassiveupheaval in the domain of objectsrdquo and a ldquoshattering of traditionrdquo (254)

5 American Dada and the aporias of modernity

Within the Melville Revivalmdashan almost clicheacuted instance of Modernismrsquosvogue for the solitary geniusmdashseeds of post-Cartesian doubt were beingsown and the enchanting dimensions of technology considered BecauseMelville ldquowas spell-bound by the strange slidings and collidings ofMatterrdquo his work in the eyes of more atheological critics exposed theenchanting conditions of the machine age (Taylor 1984) ldquoIt is the mate-rial elements he really has to do withrdquo wrote DH Lawrence in 1923ldquoHis drama is with them He was a futurist long before futurism foundpaintrdquo (216) For Lewis Mumford too Melville had not simply dram-atized the incursion of machinesmdasha traditional Romantic tropemdashbuthad embraced a series of insoluble contradictions He has come to rec-ognize those parts of the world and himself that had already been pro-duced by machines and had insisted that the plasticity of self wassomething with which Americans had to struggle and to their spiritualdetriment repress

In broaching the aporias of modernity Mumford saw Melville as hav-ing already given the lie to Weberian diagnoses of disenchantment Thecapacity to effectively turn night into day Mumford suggested the expe-rience of a subway car rumbling past the solid structures of a sky-scraper vanishing into the air the peering into a microscope and theobservation of a ldquorow of bottles each of identical size shape colorstretching away for a quarter of a milerdquo were enough to induce a particular kind of vertigo ldquoThe special visual effect of repeating pat-tern[s]rdquo occurred simultaneously with the experience ldquoof the unique andthe non-repeatablerdquo (Mumford 1934 333-34) The experience of intensesystematicitymdashprecisely what feedback technologies were designed toinducemdashcould be positively disorienting when the infinitely calculableassumed the ldquospecial qualityrdquo of the ldquoincalculablerdquo (Heidegger 1977

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 23

24

135) According to Mumford when technology no longer made imperfectcopies of nature but perfect copies of itself the very notion of ldquonaturalrdquocould become radically suspect With the ldquoliquidationrdquo of the solid book-ends of authenticity and artifice came the prospect that the spectrumitself was socially constructed for better or for worse (Benjamin 2003255) Having torn aside the veil ldquoman has thrown between his ownexperience and the blank reality of the universerdquo Melville neither suc-cumbed to the temptation of nihilism nor retreated into his own pri-vate morality On the contrary he urged his contemporaries to ownup to the constructedness of any and all cultural forms and expressionsand the faith commitments that undergirded them As Mumford wroteldquoto appreciate the reality of the White Whale is to see more deeplyinto the expedience of all our immediate institutions all the spiritualshelters man puts between himself and the uncertain cosmic weatherMeaning significance attends only that little part of the universe manhas built up and settledrdquo (Mumford 1926 150-51)

Whereas Mumford assessed the religious dimensions of technologicalldquoprogressrdquo in a tragic key others tended toward the comic as was thecase with a group of experimental artists associated with Broom An

International Magazine of the Arts Published by Americans in Italy publishedbetween 1921 and 1924 (Tashjian 1975 116-34) Broomrsquos co-editor thepoet Alfred Kreyemborg (who would later co-edit The American Caravan

with Lewis Mumford) had adapted a passage from Moby-Dick for itstitle logo and statement of purpose which appeared on the back coverldquoWhat of itrdquo asks Ishmael

if some old hunks of a seacaptain orders me to get a broom and sweepdown the decks What does that indignity amount to weighed I meanin the scales of the New Testament Do you think the Archangel Gabrielthinks any less of me because I promptly and respectfully obey that oldhunks that particular instance Who ainrsquot a slave (Melville 1925 4)

The first issue of Broom included poems addressing Albert Einsteinrsquostheory of relativity as well as Emmy Veronica Sanders declaration thatldquothe American Machinerdquo was ldquotransforming itself with all its attributesand characteristics into American Mindrdquo ldquoAmericardquo she continuedinitially ldquomade of the Puritan by the Puritan for the Puritanrdquo wasnow being ldquoremade of the Machine by the Machine for the Machinerdquo(89-90) Following Sandersrsquos piece was a David OrsquoNeilrsquos hymn of sup-plication to the new Gods of the machine

When you are sweeping usWith Your cosmic broom

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 24

25

Figure 5 Nature and Second Nature in Technics and Civilization (1934)

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 25

26

Sweeping us out of mouldy rutsSweeping us clean and sweetmdash

RememberWhen wersquore quiveringmdashSensitivemdashbaremdashWe shall be gratefulFor just a few shadows (96)

Broom took Ishmaelrsquos retort quite seriously addressing the revolutionarydimensions of technological artifice and the shadows cast within therealm of technological illumination

Unlike Futurism Broom did not celebrate the beauty of war It didhowever come to express the ldquodreamed-of metallization of the humanbodyrdquo and the playful cybernetic fantasies of Dadaists such as ManRay and Francis Picabia (quoted in Benjamin 2003 269) After someinitial hesitation Broom began to embrace Dadarsquos perspective on the lib-eratory dimensions of the human-machine interface ldquoEverything isartificialrdquo gasped Broom contributor Blaise Cendrars ldquoThe eyes thehand the sexual frenzy of the factory The wheel which turns Thewing which flies The voice which travels far on a wire Your ear ina trumpet Your sense of direction Your rhythm You melt the worldin the mould of your skull Your brain is hollow Like a religion amysterious pill hastens your digestionrdquo (265) Jean Epstein from a slightdifferent angle argued that technology had ldquobecome part of ourselvesrdquoand had democratized human perceptionmdashldquoman has not one memoryof [the] landscape he [now] has a thousand different ones which mayor may not resemble each other Everything possesses hundreds ofapparent diameters which never superimpose exactlyrdquo (6-7)

Broom was soon translating less inflammatory Futurist manifestos suchas Enrico Prampolinirsquos ldquoThe Aesthetic of the Machine and MechanicalIntrospection in Artrdquo in which he declared ldquoIs not the machine todaythe most exuberant symbol of the mystery of human creation Is it notthe new mythical deity which weaves the legends and histories of thecontemporary human drama The Machine in its practical and materialfunction comes to have today in human concepts and thoughts thesignificance of an ideal and spiritual inspirationrdquo The kind of worshipthat ensued was that of the cyborg neither reverent nor memorializ-ing of cosmic law (Haraway 2004 9) Or as Prampolini wrote ldquoOurexperience has convinced us of the truth of certain of our plastic truthsand has allowed us to perceive the errors that lie in othersrdquo (236)

One of the more important pieces of American Dada captured pre-cisely this pointmdashGod (c 1917) designed by Baroness Elsa von Freytag-

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 26

27

Figure 6 Illustration accompanying Enrico Prampolinirsquos ldquoThe Aesthetic of theMachine and Mechanical Introspection in Artrdquo Broom 33 (October 1922) 237

Loringhoven and photographed by Morton Schamberg The invertedcast-iron plumbing trap atop a carpenterrsquos miter box was emblematicof the Melvillean appreciation for technological enchantment Indeedthe pipe is part of an indoor plumbing apparatus a modern conveniencewhose history dates back to some of the earliest feedback technologieson recordmdashthe water-clocks and float-regulators of ancient Greece (Mayr1970 11-26) God resembled the mechanical abstractions Schamberghad been producing before his premature death in 1918 during aninfluenza outbreak in Philadelphia The Baroness a contributor to Broom

and other little magazines had arrived in New York from Germanyin 1913 She was ldquothe first American dadardquo wrote Jane Heap in 1922ldquothe only one living anywhere who dresses dada loves dada lives dadardquo(46) Friends with Marcel Duchamp Djuna Barnes and other NewYork artists the Baroness was a central figure in a burgeoning trans-atlantic avant-garde In addition to her art and poetry the Baronesswas also a ldquoperformancerdquo artist who skillfully inverted gender hierarchiesand attacked through her very presence the traditional sensibilities ofthe middle-class She was notorious for walking around the streets ofGreenwich Village with her shaved head painted purple postage stampspasted to her face and a bird cage around her neck housing a livecanary (Davidson 1996 223-24)

In what must be considered a prescient assault on all manners oflogocentrism the Baroness also carried with her a plaster cast penis thatshe periodically revealed to passersby for maximum shock value (Gammel2002 195) But it was the Barnonessrsquos sculpture God that in addition

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 27

28

Figure 7 God (c 1917) designed by Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven and photographed by Morton Schamberg

to celebrating the mobility and reproducibility of that which was sup-posedly the most fixed and essential repossessed the power of tech-nology as ever imperfect and incomplete As a companion piece of sortsto Duchamprsquos infamous ready-made Fountain an inverted urinal dis-played in the 1917 exhibition of the American Society of IndependentArtists God invited more expressly theological speculation First of allit insisted on supplementing the three traditional symbolic centers ofWestern religious reflectionmdashGod humanity naturemdashwith the machineAnd although it has since been viewed by critics as ldquosacrilegiousrdquo andan instance of ldquoantireligious scatologyrdquo (Naumann 1994 171 Gammel220) the transgressive dimensions to God also affirm a shadowy open-

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 28

29

9 One is reminded here of Melvillersquos letter to Nathaniel Hawthorne in April of1851 ldquoWe incline to think that God cannot explain His own secrets and that Hewould like a little more information upon certain points Himself We mortals aston-ish Him as much as He usrdquo (Melville 1993 186)

ing to radical othernessmdashin the form of imperfection and chancemdashwithin the loops generated by feedback technology

Although the metal pipe ends up pointing toward heaven it firstloops downward in a nod to its human ground Limited by the skillsof the human carpenter on whose box it is anchored the contortedpipe narrativizes both the pitfalls and prospects of the machine ageShit eventually flows up in the case of God not down suggesting thateven the most lofty and noble ideals of the imagination maintain theirhuman aroma Rather than assume the power of divinity classicallyconstrued God staged divinity as nothing more and nothing less thanthat which made life livablemdashthat which kept the smell of human wasteartificially at bay or more ominously managed the flow of thingsthrough feedback control But even more literally God called attentionto the human work in the making of artifice and celebrated the bio-logical possibility for the endless unmaking (and remaking) of selfFeedback technology was not really God but it was for all practicalpurposes Or as the Baroness wrote in a 1927 letter to Peggy GuggenheimGod had much to learn from Henry Ford for he was ldquoclumsily sub-tle-densely-intelligent-inefficiently-immense-(Lord not Fordmdashof course)rdquo9

God the Baroness playfully warned had ldquobetter hotfoot it towardprogressmdashmodernizemdashuse his own omnipotence intelligentlymdashsmart orwersquoll all expire in tangle Well Lord knowsmdash(Does he)rdquo (quoted inGammel 2002 229)

6 Conclusion Deus in machina movet

As Protestant majorities struggled to adjust themselves and their theo-logical inheritance to new technological conditions theologies of themachine age both compelling and disturbing emerged from outsidethe precincts of traditional religious discourse For in addition to beinginspired by the ghost of Herman Melville the Melville Revival wasquite literally haunted by the power of feedback technologiesmdashspectersthat were affective rather than concrete strangely resistant to rationalcontemplation yet recognized through anxious admixtures of thoughtand feeling On one hand the revival reflected the spectrum of Protestant

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 29

30

10 Shortly after the publication of Moby-Dick in November of 1851 reports beganto reach America about the August sinking of the Ann Alexander by a whale in theSouth Pacific It was the first ldquoattack of a whale upon a shiprdquo since the destruc-tion of the Essex in 1820 The story about the Ann Alexander originally appeared inthe Panama Herald on October 16 and was reprinted the following month in New-York Daily Tribune and Littellrsquos Living Age The sperm whale that the Ann Alexander

fears over technological miscegenation The capacity of machines toredraw the boundaries of race and gender disturbed Protestant leadersand revivalists alike On the other hand subversive elements within theMelville Revival offered what must be considered a theological critiqueof how Protestants understood themselves and their God in relation totechnological materials Grant Overton for example saw in Moby-Dick

a deep appreciation for how technological developments had come tounderminemdashquite literally hauntmdashthe epistemological and ontologicalassumptions that made them possible ldquoNo longer able to instance thedeus ex machinardquo wrote Overton Melville was ldquounforgetful that deus inmachina movet and while most of mankind [have] become unable to seethe god for the machine [he] can scarcely perceive the machine forthe god agitating it [His] reports of the machine are somehow unrec-ognizable [his] realism is confronted by Realityrdquo (Overton 1928 231)

Bess Meredythrsquos reimagining of Moby-Dick and Baroness Elsa vonFreytag-Loringhovenrsquos God also explored the otherness that technologyengenders within the modern subject a trace that lingers despite allattempts to extinguish it Their errant readings challenged contempo-raries to reimagine their relationship to technology from an enchantedperspective that did not necessarily conform to the directives of Americanindividualism Resisting the advertisements of both Arminianism andBaconian Common Sense these readings insisted that there was somethingelsemdashsomething wholly othermdashoccurring within the technological workingsof secular modernity Excess or that which unsettled the boundariesbetween body and machine masculine and feminine had resulted inwhat might be called a ldquopost-structure of feelingrdquo The prospect thateither machines or women had begun to think for themselves or atleast possess a kind of agency once attributed to the enlightened malesubject now seemed as likely as a whale vengefully turning against awhaleship10 As Melvillean riffs on the deferred project of religious iden-tity The Sea Beast and God marked the space between human creationand technological determination consent and compulsion and there-fore hinted at the prospect that belief was not an individual state butan embodied activity Consistent with Lewis Mumfordrsquos assessment ofthe symbolic and material powers of feedback technology these works

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 30

31

had first turned upon starboard and larboard boats seizing both in its jaws andcrushing them to pieces It then rushed towards the Ann Alexander ldquoat the rateof fifteen knots In an instant the monster struck the ship with tremendous violence shakingher from stem to sternrdquo (415) Upon reading the article Melville remarked to his pub-lisher ldquothe Whale had almost completely slipped me for the time (amp I was themerrier for it) when Crash comes Moby Dick himself It is really amp truly a sur-prising coincidencemdashto say the least I make no doubt it is Moby Dick himself I wonder if my evil art has raised this monsterrdquo (Melville 1993 209)

11 William Jennings Bryan for example that standard bearer of fundamentalfaith equated faith to a particular kind of technologymdashldquothere is that in each humanliferdquo he wrote ldquothat corresponds to the mainspring of a watchmdashthat which isabsolutely necessary if the life is to be what it should be a real life and not amere existence That necessary thing is a belief in Godrdquo (86) Faith for Bryan wasthat which repeated without difference It was a dependable rational and utterlyrationalizing process It was not however self-regulating It affirmed the ldquorealnessrdquoof the individual believer precisely because it ignored the conditions imposed fromoutside the self But how might faith be viewed in terms of feedback and repro-ducibility rather than repetition a process that does not reaffirm a centered indi-vidual with every tick but adjusts accordingly to external fluctuations

raise numerous questions concerning the ways and means of religionin an age of postmodern complexity and virtual reality

How might a relentless focus on power and the porousness of sub-jectivity change how one views the matter of religion within historyHow might a greater attention to the aesthetic conditions that mediateany and all beliefs challenge the ways in which we distinguish the reli-gious from the secular How might a greater attention to the enchantingpower of material conditions challenge historical and political narrativesof secularization How do technologies and vested interests realize them-selves through the discourses of agency choice and mobility Whatin other words are the conditions of possibility that allow a historicalactor (rather than a Hollywood actor) to make a particular faith com-mitment or for that matter have any faith at all In what languagedo historical actors dream about themselves and divinity and how doesthat language change over time And finally to what degree is faithitself a technology11

By acknowledging the white mythology that still informs say thefield of American religions such questions shift the scholarly emphasisfrom explicit expressions of religious belief and practice to the spacebetween those beliefs and practices and the world at-large Individualswithin American religious history for example have often been depictedas fully formed agents making choices between various faith commitmentsand ever combining religious idioms to suit their specific needs and cir-cumstances (Albanese 1997) No doubt this is true But there is anotherside to this story of radical religious pluralism one that if accounted

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 31

32

12 Such a possibility is very much at odds with the Geertzian model of ldquothickdescriptionrdquo and its formidable legacy in the humanities and social sciences Withoutquestioning the degree to which the self can ever become entirely legible to theself Geertz claimed that every society and individual life and by extension everybelief and every practice ldquocontain their own interpretations One has only to learnhow to gain access to themrdquo (Geertz 1973 453)

13 The ambiguities of agency during the ldquomachine agerdquo have been the subjectof a number of elegant critical studies See for example Anson Rabinbach TheHuman Motor Energy Fatigue and the Origins of Modernity (New York Basic Books1990) Mark Seltzer Bodies and Machines (New York Routledge 1992) MarthaBanta Taylorized Lives Narrative Productions in the Age of Taylor Veblen and Ford (ChicagoUniversity of Chicago Press 1993) Carolyn Thomas de la Pentildea The Body ElectricHow Strange Machines Built the Modern American (New York New York UniversityPress 2003) and Joel Dinerstein The Swinging Machine Modernity Technology andAfrican American Culture Between the World Wars (Amherst University of MassachusettsPress 2003) Dinersteinrsquos work is particularly relevant to the issue of religious com-binativeness given his emphasis on how African American artists strove to refigureldquomachine aestheticsrdquo in and through their artistry Dinersteinrsquos work suggests thatthe self is locatedmdashie the self happensmdashsomewhere between resistance and assim-ilation between choice and coercionmdasha lesson that many Anglo-Americans werenot willing to consider in their triumphal theorizing about the human in relationto the machine The possibility for consideration argues Dinerstein existed inAfrican American jazz swing and dance

for suggests new directions for the study of religion in America Althoughthe ldquolived religionrdquo perspective in American religious history has donemuch to overcome the distinction between ldquodabblersrdquo and ldquotrue believersrdquothe question of power still lingers (Ahlstrom 1972 1052) Religiousbeliefs and practices are neither essential things nor reveal themselvesto the scholar in toto12 Such a position does not replicate the eitherordiscussion regarding the agency of historical actors On the contraryit suggests that religious agency is a hybrid weave of intent and instinctimmediate response and mediated principle knowing and unknowing13

Accounting for the ambiguities of agency has already pushed scholarsof religion toward an anthropology of the secular and an explorationof in the Foucauldian phrasing of Talal Asad ldquothe contingencies thathave come together to give us our certaintiesrdquo (2003 16)

It is with a hint of irony then that one may return to the promotionalpamphlet of The Sea Beast that celebrates the ldquoconquestrdquo of Ahab andthe invisible wafting presence of screenwriter Bess Meredyth ldquoThereis no woman writing today who has contributed so much to genuine

screen values as Bess Meredythrdquo Indeed her son John Meredyth Lucasborn in 1919 continued down his motherrsquos unsettling path as a successfultelevision screenwriter and director His credits included episodes ofldquoStar Trekrdquo ldquoLoganrsquos Runrdquo and that other story of ldquohundred percentrdquoAmericanism ldquoThe Six Million Dollar Manrdquo

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 32

33

Figure 8 The Six Million Dollar Man ldquoGentlemen we can rebuild him Wehave the capability of making the worldrsquos first bionic man We can make him

better than he was before Better Stronger Fasterrdquo

Haverford College370 Lancaster AveHaverford PA 19041jlardashaverfordedu

References

Ahlstrom Sydney E (1972) A Religious History of the American People New HavenYale University Press

Albanese Catherine L (1997) Exchanging selves exchanging souls Contact com-bination and American religious history In Thomas A Tweed (ed) RetellingUS Religious History 200-26 Berkeley University of California Press

Anon (1851) A ship sunk by a whale Littellrsquos Living Age (29 November) 415-16Asad Talal (2003) Formations of the Secular Christianity Islam Modernity Stanford

Stanford University Press

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 33

34

Bacon Francis (1870) The Works of Francis Bacon James Spedding Robert LeslieEllis and Douglas Denon Heath (eds) Vol VIII New York Hurd andHoughton

Barton Bruce (2000) The Man Nobody Knows A Discovery of the Real Jesus ChicagoIvan R Dee

Beniger James R (1986) The Control Revolution Technological and Economic Origins ofthe Information Society Cambridge Harvard University Press

Benjamin Walter (1996) One-way street In Marcus Bullock amp Michael W Jennings(eds) Selected Writings Volume 1 1913-1926 444-88 Cambridge HarvardUniversity Press

mdash (2003) The work of art in the age of its technological reproducibility third ver-sion In Howard Eiland and Michael W Jennings (eds) Selected Writings Volume4 1938-40 251-83 Cambridge Harvard University Press

Bennett Charles A (1923) A Philosophical Study of Mysticism An Essay New HavenYale University Press 1923

Bernays Edward L (1923) Crystallizing Public Opinion New York Liverlight PublishingCorporation

Buchman SR (1925) Moby Dickmdashthe book and The Sea Beastmdashthe picture Anappreciation In Herman Melville Moby Dick or The White Whale ix-xi NewYork Grosset amp Dunlap

Butler Judith (1993) Bodies That Matter On the Discursive Limits of lsquoSexrsquo RoutledgeNew York

Cahir Linda Costanzo (1997) Routinizing the charismatic Melville and Hollywoodrsquosthree Moby-Dicks Melville Society Extracts 110 (September) 11-17

Cendrars Blaise (1922) Profound today Broom 13 ( January) 265-67Chadwick Owen (1975) The Secularization of the European Mind in the Nineteenth Century

Cambridge Cambridge University PressCoe George Albert (1917) A Social Theory of Religious Education New York Charles

Scribnerrsquos SonsDavidson Abraham A (1996) The European art invasion In Francis M Naumann

(ed) with Beth Vann Making Mischief Dada Invades New York 222-27 NewYork Whitney Museum of Art

Debord Guy (1995) Society of the Spectacle translated by Donald Nicholson-SmithNew York Zone Books

Derrida Jacques (1994) Specters of Marx The State of the Debt The Work of Mourningand the New International Peggy Kamuf (trans) New York Routledge

Dorsey George A (1925) Why We Behave Like Human Beings New York BlueRibbon Books

Epstein Jean (1922) The new conditions of literary phenomena Broom 21 (April)3-10

Frank Waldo (1919) Our America New York Boni and LiverightGammel Irene (2002) Baroness Elsa Gender Dada and Everyday Modernitymdasha Cultural

Biography Cambridge The MIT PressGeertz Clifford (1973) Deep play Notes on the Balinese cockfight In The Interpretation

of Cultures 412-53 New York Basic BooksHaraway Donna (2004) A manifesto for cyborgs Science technology and socialist

feminism in the 1980s In The Haraway Reader 7-45 New York RoutledgeHeap Jane (1922) Dada Little Review VII2 (Spring) 46Heidegger Martin (1977) The age of the world-picturerdquo In The Question Concerning

Technology and Other Essays 115-54 William Lovitt (trans) New York Harperamp Row

Hoffman Carol Stein (2001) The Barrymores Hollywoodrsquos First Family LexingtonUniversity of Kentucky Press

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 34

35

Jackson Josephine A and Helen M Salisbury (1922) Outwitting Our Nerves A Primerof Psychotherapy New York The Century Co

Jaffe David (1990) The village enlightenment in New England 1760-1820 TheWilliam and Mary Quarterly XLVII3 ( July) 327-46

Jones Rufus M (1915) Mysticism in present-day religion Harvard Theological ReviewVIII2 (April) 155-65

Kippenberg Hans G (2002) Discovering Religious History in the Modern Age BarbaraHarshav (trans) Princeton Princeton University Press

Kobler John (1977) Damned in Paradise The Life of John Barrymore New YorkAtheneum

Kuttner Alfred B (1922) Nerves In Harold E Stearns (ed) Civilization in the UnitedStates An Enquiry by Thirty Americans 427-42 New York Harcourt

Lauter Paul (1994) Melville climbs the canon American Literature 66 (March) 1-24Lawrence DH (1923) Studies in Classic American Literature New York T SeltzerLindbergh Charles A (1927) We New York GP Putnamrsquos SonsLippmann Walter (1922) Public Opinion New York Macmillan CompanyMarchand Roland (1985) Advertising the American Dream Making Way for Modernity

1920-1940 Berkeley University of California PressMarty Martin E Modern American Religion Vol 2 The Noise of Conflict 1919-1941

Chicago University of Chicago Press 1991May Henry F (1976) The Enlightenment in America New York Oxford University

PressMayhew Jonathan (1749) Concerning the difference between truth and falsehood

right and wrong In Seven Sermons 1-21 Boston Rogers and FowleMayr Otto (1970) The Origins of Feedback Control Cambridge The MIT PressMelville Herman (1993) Correspondence Volume 14 of The Writings of Herman Melville

Lynne Horth (ed) Evanston and Chicago Northwestern University Pressmdash (1925) Moby Dick or The White Whale 1851 New York Grosset amp DunlapMindell David A (2002) Between Human and Machine Feedback Control and Computing

Before Cybernetics Baltimore The Johns Hopkins University PressMumford Lewis (1929) Herman Melville New York The Literary Guild of Americamdash (1924) Sticks and Stones A Study of American Architecture and Civilization New York

Dover Publicationsmdash (1934) Technics and Civilization New York Harcourt Brace and Companymdash (1926) The Golden Day A Study in American Literature and Culture New York Boni

and LiverightMurray Jr HA (1929) Review of Lewis Mumfordrsquos Herman Melville The New

England Quarterly 2 ( July) 523-26Naumann Francis M (1994) New York Dada 1915-23 New York Harry N AbramsNoble David F (1999) The Religion of Technology The Divinity of Man and the Spirit

of Invention New York Penguin BooksNye David E (1994) American Technological Sublime Cambridge The MIT PressOrsquoNeil David (1921) The new Broom Broom 11 (November) 96Overton Grant (1928) The Philosophy of Fiction New York D AppletonPalmer Attorney General (1920) The case against the lsquoRedsrsquo The Forum A Magazine

of Constructive Nationalism 632 (February) 173-85Parsons Floyd W (1927) Everybodyrsquos business Advertising amp Selling ( June 29) 5 64Prampolini Enrico (1922) The aesthetic of the machine and mechanical intro-

spection in art Broom 33 (October) 235-37Rauschenbusch Walter (1917) A Theology for the Social Gospel New York The

Macmillan CompanyRichardson George P (1991) Feedback Thought in Social Science and Systems Theory

Philadelphia University of Pennsylvania Press

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 35

13

of human experiencerdquo not a ldquostaged dip into studio savageryrdquo Melvillehad penetrated the depths of his own psyche no doubt aided by hisstay among South Sea islanders (detailed in his first two novels Typee

(1846) and Omoo (1847) Indeed the authenticity of Melvillersquos mysticconsciousness was dependent upon his ldquountamed desires in violentconflict with his physical and spiritual environmentrdquo (Weaver 1921 1519 21 24-29)

As opposed to Weaverrsquos vicarious nostalgia for a simpler less com-mercial and more fully ldquorealrdquo existence another Melville biographerLewis Mumford understood the complex simulations of a consumer-driven economy as already emergent during Melvillersquos writerly careerMixing cultural criticism history and theological speculation Mumfordwas a keen observer of the technological revolutions in feedback controlIn his most memorable and encyclopedic work Technics and Civilization

(1934) Mumford claimed that in the seventeenth-century ldquomechanicsrdquohad become ldquothe new religion and [they] gave to the world a new Messiahthe machinerdquo In dramatizing the extent to which technology had shapedand continued to shape human consciousness Mumford explored inexacting and illustrated detail the history and material conditions thatwere allowing ldquotools and utensilsrdquo to assume ldquoan independent existencerdquo

This ldquoneotechnic phaserdquo had begun in the early part of the nineteenthcentury and was marked by efficiency flexibility ldquocomplete automatismrdquoand synthetic materialsmdasha ldquomutationrdquo that was rapidly integrating ldquothemachine and the world of liferdquo (45 321 227 212 254)

Such integration was not without its dangers ldquoWith the invention ofthe telegraphrdquo the ldquowireless telephonerdquo and the ldquotelevisionrdquo wroteMumford humans ldquobegan to bridge the gap in time between communi-cation and responserdquo The sympathetic relations between family memberscould now be replicated on an unprecedented scale through telepathictechnologiesmdashgiving rise to ldquo[immense] possibilities for good and evilrdquoThe building of a personality was no longer a ldquolocalrdquo affair On the con-trary when ldquomass-reactionsrdquo were ldquomobilized and hastenedrdquo the needsand interests of the human became those of the machine As Mumfordsuggested technology was becoming a ldquocreative force carried on by itsown momentumrdquo and ldquoproducing a third estate midway between natureand the humane artsrdquo The drive to overcome distancemdashbetween indi-viduals as well as between self and worldmdashhad itself ldquocreated an inde-pendent environment that has reacted upon every other side of the personalityrdquo (239241 322 324)

According to Mumford such technological interference had been ofintense and abiding concern for Melville (1934 213) In Herman Melville

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 13

14

Figure 3 Neotechnic Automatism from Technics and Civilization (1934)

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 14

15

7 Public relations and advances in advertising were the latest instances of the ldquocontrol revolutionrdquo in which technology of interchangeability so integral to theAmerican System of manufacturing had extended its field of operations under theauspices of consumer capitalism Machines were not simply making parts for othermachines but were integral to the form and content of social reproduction Publicrelations was a particular (and less reliable) version of feedback control Instead ofmaintaining a fixed variable on the inside by responding to fluctuations on the out-side ldquocounselorsrdquo stoked the flames of consumer desire in order to justify an accel-erating rate of production and ideally consumption

(1929) Mumford had chided fellow revivalists for exaggerating Melvillersquosretreat into mystical idealism ldquoMelville was a realistrdquo countered Mumfordldquoin the sense that the great religious teachers are realistsrdquo FurthermoreMelville had witnessed the ldquovolcanic intrusionrdquo of ldquoindustrialism [as] avalue in itself rdquo (1929 5 64-65) But things had gotten much more com-plicated since the mid-nineteenth century Whereas Melville had beheldldquothe servile routine of the factory systemrdquo Mumford was now witness-ing the birth of ldquothe machine system the network of relationshipsthat have followed the financial exploitation of machineryrdquo The differencein other words was the full-scale emergence of self-governing tech-nologiesmdashldquohandicraft devoted to mechanical reproduction and machinerythat is set to reproduce endless simulacrardquo For Mumford this ldquomachineritualrdquo this ldquoendlessrdquo loop of ldquomechanical reproductionrdquo threatened toefface ldquothe human arts of seeing feeling and livingrdquo (1924 67-68 10174-75 105 81) Technology in other words had achieved the capacityfor feedback on two different but related levels first in material devicesthat could copy both nature and themselves and secondly in humansthat governed themselves according to the latest control variables setby the machine As Mumford argued the totalizing power of feedbacktechnologies resulted not simply from designs motors or even materialoutputs but through their economically driven expansion of ldquothe verydomain of the symbol itself rdquo (1934 331)

Mumfordrsquos insights take on more ominous implications when oneconsiders the rise of the American public relations industry during thisperiod7 Public relations consultants such as Edward Bernays and adver-tisers like Bruce Barton actively sought to shape and change the beliefsof individuals in the service of larger economic agendas It was no acci-dent Bernays wrote in 1923 that a ldquoman belongs to one church ratherthan another or to any church at allrdquo It was no accident that ldquoBostonwomen prefer brown eggs and New York women white eggsrdquo Becausethe judgments of individuals were not arrived at through ldquoresearch andlogical deductionrdquo but were ldquodogmatic expressions accepted on theauthority of his parents his teachers his church and of his social his

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 15

16

economic and other leadersrdquo a ldquopublic relations counselrdquo must do thework of reauthorization (Bernays 1923 62) Through the strategic ldquosat-urationrdquo of images text and work-place incentives an entire profes-sional class sought to provide the terms for and effectively monitor theconditions of self-realization (Marchand 1985 94-95)

What then did Melville have to offer those living within ldquothe machinesystemrdquo of the 1920s Mumford and other revivalists championed Moby-

Dick as a blueprint for living within an increasingly mechanical rou-tinized and bureaucratic world They also heaped admiration uponCaptain Ahab an odd choice given the outcome of Moby-Dick Contraryto those who would later read Ahabrsquos technologically enhanced dem-agoguery against the political backdrops of Italian Fascism and NationalSocialism Ahabrsquos madness in the 1920s could be considered ldquoactiveand courageousrdquo as well as a sign of ldquogeniusrdquomdashldquothe very pinnacle ofhuman self-assertionrdquo (Watson 1970 136 Sullivan 1970 163) Suchreadings conflated the white whale with the power of technology andhad Ahab defiantly affirm the principle of free-will and defend theboundary between human and material worlds Mumford for examplewrote of Ahab as the ldquospirit of manrdquo who stood in opposition to ldquothebrute energies of existence blind fatal overpoweringrdquo Ahab was self-directive ldquopurposiverdquo and he pitted his ldquopuniness against this mightand [his] purpose against the blank senselessness of powerrdquo So eventhough Ahabrsquos ldquomethods are ill-chosenrdquo wrote Mumford his ldquodefianceis noblerdquo (Mumford 1929 184-86)

4 People who portray themselves or Ahab on Ahab

Film projectors in addition to utilizing concepts of feedback internallywere often seen as generative of external feedback loops between humansand machines nature and artifice Such loops arguably constituted theldquosociety of the spectaclerdquo Guy Debordrsquos term for the image-saturatedenvironment that arose in the 1920s with the confluence of sound filmtelevision and the perfection of propaganda techniques As one of themore grim assessments of an image-based postmodernity Debord definedthe ldquospectaclerdquo in terms of negative feedback ldquoIt is the omnipresentcelebration of a choice already made in the sphere of production andthe consummate result of that choice In form as in content the spectacleserves as total justification for the conditions and aims of the existingsystem It further ensures the permanent presence of that justification forit governs almost all time spent outside the production process itself rdquo

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 16

17

8 Cahir (1997) has made a similar point Although I agree with her assessmentthat The Sea Beast is about Ahabrsquos ldquoreal pursuit of identityrdquo I take issue with herargument that The Sea Beast validates autonomous autotelic forms of masculine identity

(13) In America Debordian paranoia was rampant as Victorian fearsover the exploitation of pleasure were morphing into general anxietiesconcerning voyeurism and cinematic determinism ldquoThe spectacle ofmechanical progress has made so deep an impressionrdquo argued WalterLippmann in 1922 ldquothat it has suffused the whole moral coderdquo Whatdisturbed Lippmann and other public figures was the specter of circularcausality and the quiet ldquoinsertion between man and his environmentof a pseudo-environmentrdquo composed mainly of images (Lippmann 1922108 15) Unbeknownst to them Americans were in danger of becom-ing automated by images and trapped within what Debord would latercall ldquoan uninterrupted monologue of self-praiserdquo (19) Their perpetualaffirmation of self however was wholly cybernetic given the fact thatthey were oblivious to the fact that ldquoon the screen the whole processof observing describing reporting and then imagining has been accom-plished for yourdquo (92)

In a strange twist that Melville might have enjoyed the most com-pelling representation of Moby-Dick and portrayal of Captain Ahab mayhave occurred via the technology of the moving picture8 The 1926silent film The Sea Beast adapted to the screen by Bess Meredyth andstarring John Barrymore as Captain Ahab dramatized the feedbackdimensions of film and its capacity to regulate the human personalityThe Sea Beast I argue challenged more able-bodied academic inter-pretations by reveling in its status as a technological reproduction The

Sea Beast with its odd juxtapositions visceral jump cuts and perverseattention to Ahabrsquos stump and artificial limb rather than affirm thedesire for self-transparency suggested that the equipment-free reality ofthe self was quite literally an enabling fiction What Americans lackedaccording to Meredythrsquos scenario was the tragic recognition of them-selves as always regulated and already enhanced by technology Takingldquopleasure in the confusion of boundariesrdquo and ldquoresponsibility in their con-structionrdquo The Sea Beast in the borrowed words of Donna Harawaymade ldquoan argument for the cyborg as a fiction mapping our social andbodily reality and as an imaginative resource suggesting some very fruit-ful couplingsrdquo (8)

In 1925 at age forty-three John Barrymore was one of Hollywoodrsquosmost bankable actors (part of the ldquostar-systemrdquo promoted by Edward

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 17

18

Bernays who clearly saw the potential for cross-marketing between enter-tainment business and political campaigns) Barrymore easily convincedWarner Brothers to turn Moby-Dick one of his favorite novels into amovie and to cast him in the role of Captain Ahab Having playedHamlet in the 1922-23 Broadway season Barrymore developed a keeninterest in psychoanalysis and Freudrsquos account of Hamlet in Interpretationof Dreams (1900) The role of Captain Ahab like that of Hamlet allowedBarrymore to reach a larger audience with his newly emotive actingstyle As Captain Ahab he could also remind his audience of his depthand manly credentials He was tired in his words of playing ldquoscentedbepuffed bewigged and ringletted charactersrdquo (quoted in Kobler 1977213) Promotional pamphlets for The Sea Beast seemed to reinforceBarrymorersquos gendered strategy featuring a picture of Barrymore in abusiness suit puffing contemplatively on a pipemdashldquoJohn Barrymore ismore than a name more than a personality he is world institutionrdquo(Hoffman 2001 73)

The opening credits to The Sea Beast begin imprecisely with a close-up of the filmrsquos textual referent Moby Dick or the White Whale Thissimulated text begins not with ldquoExtractsrdquo or even ldquoCall me Ishmaelrdquobut with the following words ldquoThere never was nor ever will be abraver life than the life of the whaler Compared to the game theyhunted the mightiest land beast was but a poodle dogrdquo Adapted tothe screen by Bess Meredyth former actress turned writer The Sea Beast

is noteworthy as one of the earliest if not the first public appropriationsof Melvillersquos novel by a woman By 1926 Meredyth had become aHollywood regular having written the scenarios or continuities for Ben

Hur (1925) Don Juan (1926) and at least 70 other films ldquoThere is nowoman writing todayrdquo read the promotional copy of The Sea Beastldquowho has contributed so much to genuine screen values as Bess Meredythrdquo(Hoffman 2001 74) The ldquogenuinerdquo sense Meredyth made of Melvillersquosepic is significant in its relentless focus on the self as a technologicalconstruct In Meredythrsquos scenario one literally glimpses the spirit ofMelvillersquos rejection of the contemplative insular and hyper-masculinizedself of mid-nineteenth-century religion and science In its plot and per-verse attention to Ahabrsquos stump The Sea Beast suggests that nothing willor even can make up for the loss Ahab suffers

After the opening credits the audience is introduced to a healthyCaptain Ahab atop the masthead He looks out over the sea and downon his crew hard at work his feet tapping to the beat of the sea shantyldquoHanging Johnnyrdquo Nostalgia and the logic of substitution are bothbroached in the opening scenesmdashnot in terms of idealism but in ways

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 18

19

that hint at their subsequent negation As Ahab reads a letter from hisbeloved Esther Harper the daughter of a Christian missionary playedby the nineteen year-old Dolores Costello Ahab looks longingly at hername tattooed on his arm His mind drifts back to their last embraceFollowing a long close-up of his legs Ahab descends from the mastheadthe camera sliding down the rope in real time and from Ahabrsquos pointof view his legs leading the way The experience of vertigo engenderedby the shot suggests that Ahabrsquos identity is already unstable alreadymarked by a palpable lack of ground This shot however is quicklyoffset by numerous scenes that depict the fullness of Ahabrsquos vigor par-ticularly in relation to his healthy pair of legs He jumps he hops heruns around

When Ahabrsquos ship docks in the bay of Mauritius the audience isintroduced to Esther as well as to Derek Ahabrsquos scheming half-brotherIt is here that one is reminded of the words from the 1925 promotionalpublication of Moby-Dick accompanied by scenes from The Sea Beastldquothe screen version of lsquoMoby Dickrsquo exceeds the book The discrepancybetween the two must not be considered as a profanely wanton alterationrdquoTo portray the ldquopsychological studyrdquo of Captain Ahab ldquothe camerahas resorted to means of its own A mental state therefore particularlyan involved condition of mind must be expressed by means of the inci-dents which produced it each tortuous thought composing Ahabrsquos madness must be traced to the event which engendered itrdquo (Buchman1925 x) The most obvious incident being the loss of Ahabrsquos leg butthe film compounds this felt sense of loss by turning Melvillersquos tale intoa misbegotten love triangle between Ahab Derek and Esther the appleof both their eyes

On shore Ahab and Esther declare their love to each other Butafter a few days Ahab sails from Mauritius and scans the shore withhis telescope He spies Estherrsquos window She comes to the window andreturns Ahabrsquos gaze through her own telescope Technology has literallybecome the lens through which they see each other through whicheach declares their commitment They wave and blow kisses until theyare both out of range At sea Ahab is betrayed by Derek who unbe-knownst to Ahab pushes him overboard into the waiting jaws of MobyDick After losing his leg Ahab is distraught Derek then taunts Ahaband suggests that his symbolic castration is too much for any relation-ship to bear As Derek reminds him ldquoEsther was always crazy aboutyour beinrsquo so strong and perfectrdquo Having been fitted with his ivorystump Ahab arrives back at Mauritius Derek then shames Ahab evenfurther by telling him that he and Esther are in love and that Esther

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 19

20

cannot bring herself to tell Ahab of the deceit Derek then goes toEsther to convince her that Ahab has abandoned her When Ahabarrives at Estherrsquos house to confirm Derekrsquos story he sees their shadowscast by the light of spermaceti candles and mistakenly believes thatEsther has indeed left him for Derek It is here that Ahab descendsinto his infamous monomania

Ahab goes onto slay Moby Dick but not before uncovering his half-brotherrsquos double betrayal In a dramatic confrontation Derek pulls aknife on Ahab and is about to get the best of our hero But wait Ahabwedges his ivory stump into the deck leveraging himself in order tofend off Derek Ahab then casts Derek overboard and into the sea Anivory technology marking the absence of Ahabrsquos leg has been trans-formed into a salvific presence Or so it seems when the audience istreated to the restoration of order upon the Pequodrsquos return to portand Ahabrsquos reunion with Esther consummated in their tearful embraceHaving staged and seemingly resolved the crisis of masculine identity(the raison drsquoecirctre of melodrama being that the resolution is alreadypresent in the staging) The Sea Beast on the contrary did anything butrestore the full presence of Ahabrsquos self It suggested through both contentand form that the reality of the self whether it be Ahab or the spec-tator in the theater was neither fully resolvable nor equipment-free

Ahab achieves a kind of liberation on screen by recognizing that heis always already a figment of an imagination that is not his own Afterthe tearful reunion between Ahab and Esther the screen goes blackThe audience is then given a glimpse behind the scenes as it weremdasha scene of the director Millard Webb in his chair issuing directionsto Ahab and Esther in Estherrsquos living room A man in a business suitplays the violin in the background As Ahab and Esther look longinglyinto each otherrsquos eyes Ahab slips a ring onto Estherrsquos finger and theyembrace once again Or is it Barrymore and Costello It is unclearparticularly in light of the rumors of an off screen tryst between themiddle-aged Barrymore and his nineteen-year old costar (they wouldlater marry) The loving embrace is seemingly real an ambiguityreaffirmed by the fact that after Webb yells ldquocutrdquo he has to step betweenthe couple and remind them that they are on film Webb then turnsto the camera and smiles as the screen abruptly cuts to black onceagain

The odd ending of The Sea Beast suggests that Ahabrsquos journey towardreconciliation did not end with self-exposure but that it could neverreally begin Rather than achieve restoration of nature in and througha cultural construction Ahabrsquos artificial leg points to a previously

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 20

21

Figure 4 Final Embrace between AhabBarrymore and EstherCostello

ldquoexcluded and illegible domain that haunts the former domain as thespecter of its own impossibility the very limit of intelligibility its con-stitutive outsiderdquo (Butler 1993 xi) The ending harkens back to the seashanty ldquoHanging Johnnyrdquo Ahabrsquos introductory descent from the mast-head and his telescopic flirtation with Esther both vertiginous slidesinto the unfathomable layers of mediated perception that signal theldquoexecutionrdquo of possessive individualism Rather than erase the sign ofAhabrsquos traumamdashhis ivory legmdashthe ending of The Sea Beast suggests thatAhab and Barrymore are two sides of the same character vacillatingwithin the loop of continuous performativity One is reminded here ofWalter Benjaminrsquos insight into the traumatized subject in the age oftechnological reproducibility As Benjamin argues the trauma can beunderstood as a shift from the stage to the screen in which the actorperforms for a ldquopiece of equipmentrdquo rather than for an audience Citingthe Italian playwright Luigi Pirandello Benjamin suggests that the mod-ern subject is

exiled not only from the stage but from his own person With a vagueunease he senses an inexplicable void stemming from the fact that hisbody has lost its substance that he has been volatilized stripped of his

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 21

22

reality his life his voice the noises he makes when moving about andhas been turned into a mute image that flickers for a moment on thescreen then vanishes into silence (2003 260)

Pirandellorsquos borrowed words speak directly to Meredythrsquos reconfigurationof Melvillersquos text Whereas Melvillersquos Ahab tried and failed to conquerthe very source of visual illuminationmdashthe spermaceti oil that allowedantebellum Americans to see in the darkmdashBarrymorersquos Ahab revels inthe technologically enhanced gaze of his audience When the lightscome up the selves of Ahab Barrymore and the audience have beenre-narrativized as cybernetic that is as permanently divided and fun-damentally transient In affirming the really real offscreen relationshipbetween Barrymore and Costello the uncanny ending of The Sea Beast

supported a notion of selfhood as always already mediated or betteryet the necessity of experience to be mediated in order for it to becomereal or maybe even the necessity of acknowledging that the reality ofthe self is really made up

Barrymorersquos self-conscious performance inspired by his reading ofFreud and designed to overcome middle-class mores did not so muchpenetrate the inner depths of his character as it did the emotional lifeand perceptual apparatus of his audience The Sea Beast does not dram-atize the individual conquest of nature as much as it dramatizes visualtechnologyrsquos seduction of the individual The Sea Beast in its staging ofa cybernetic reality denied the very concept of 100 Americanism byinterrupting the narrative closure on which self-presence dependedNeither Ahab nor Barrymore nor the audience are ever alone even intheir solitude They are haunted not simply by the unconscious butby the specters generated in and through technologies of reproduction(Derrida 1994 97) They are in Benjaminrsquos apt phrase ldquopeople whoportray themselvesrdquo (Benjamin 2003 262)

For Benjamin photography and cinema were technologies of religiousrevelation for better or for worse in that they both exposed variousfeedback loops that constituted onersquos identity On one level Benjaminargued that the category of originality had been challenged by visualtechnologies that put copies ldquoof the original in situations which theoriginal itself cannot attainrdquo (2003 254) On another level the decayof the ldquoaurardquo of authenticity and the blurring of original and reproductionenabled individuals to recognize the fact that they were implicated inthe perceptual field and no longer insulated from what they saw orheard ldquoReception in distractionrdquo wrote Benjamin ldquowhich is increas-ing noticeably in all areas of art and is a symptom of profound changesin apperceptionmdashfinds in film its true training groundrdquo (269) Influenced

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 22

23

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethersquos notion of ldquoafter-imagesrdquo in Theory

of Colours (the same text that informed Melvillersquos ldquoThe Whiteness of theWhalerdquo) Benjamin announced the birth of the ldquooptical unconsciousrdquo(266) According to Benjamin images had become the currency of con-sciousness structuring thought and determining the range of possibleactions Mechanical means of reproduction had liberated the perceptualcapacities of humanity They had also ushered in the prospect of massdeception and control Either way they had resulted in a ldquomassiveupheaval in the domain of objectsrdquo and a ldquoshattering of traditionrdquo (254)

5 American Dada and the aporias of modernity

Within the Melville Revivalmdashan almost clicheacuted instance of Modernismrsquosvogue for the solitary geniusmdashseeds of post-Cartesian doubt were beingsown and the enchanting dimensions of technology considered BecauseMelville ldquowas spell-bound by the strange slidings and collidings ofMatterrdquo his work in the eyes of more atheological critics exposed theenchanting conditions of the machine age (Taylor 1984) ldquoIt is the mate-rial elements he really has to do withrdquo wrote DH Lawrence in 1923ldquoHis drama is with them He was a futurist long before futurism foundpaintrdquo (216) For Lewis Mumford too Melville had not simply dram-atized the incursion of machinesmdasha traditional Romantic tropemdashbuthad embraced a series of insoluble contradictions He has come to rec-ognize those parts of the world and himself that had already been pro-duced by machines and had insisted that the plasticity of self wassomething with which Americans had to struggle and to their spiritualdetriment repress

In broaching the aporias of modernity Mumford saw Melville as hav-ing already given the lie to Weberian diagnoses of disenchantment Thecapacity to effectively turn night into day Mumford suggested the expe-rience of a subway car rumbling past the solid structures of a sky-scraper vanishing into the air the peering into a microscope and theobservation of a ldquorow of bottles each of identical size shape colorstretching away for a quarter of a milerdquo were enough to induce a particular kind of vertigo ldquoThe special visual effect of repeating pat-tern[s]rdquo occurred simultaneously with the experience ldquoof the unique andthe non-repeatablerdquo (Mumford 1934 333-34) The experience of intensesystematicitymdashprecisely what feedback technologies were designed toinducemdashcould be positively disorienting when the infinitely calculableassumed the ldquospecial qualityrdquo of the ldquoincalculablerdquo (Heidegger 1977

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 23

24

135) According to Mumford when technology no longer made imperfectcopies of nature but perfect copies of itself the very notion of ldquonaturalrdquocould become radically suspect With the ldquoliquidationrdquo of the solid book-ends of authenticity and artifice came the prospect that the spectrumitself was socially constructed for better or for worse (Benjamin 2003255) Having torn aside the veil ldquoman has thrown between his ownexperience and the blank reality of the universerdquo Melville neither suc-cumbed to the temptation of nihilism nor retreated into his own pri-vate morality On the contrary he urged his contemporaries to ownup to the constructedness of any and all cultural forms and expressionsand the faith commitments that undergirded them As Mumford wroteldquoto appreciate the reality of the White Whale is to see more deeplyinto the expedience of all our immediate institutions all the spiritualshelters man puts between himself and the uncertain cosmic weatherMeaning significance attends only that little part of the universe manhas built up and settledrdquo (Mumford 1926 150-51)

Whereas Mumford assessed the religious dimensions of technologicalldquoprogressrdquo in a tragic key others tended toward the comic as was thecase with a group of experimental artists associated with Broom An

International Magazine of the Arts Published by Americans in Italy publishedbetween 1921 and 1924 (Tashjian 1975 116-34) Broomrsquos co-editor thepoet Alfred Kreyemborg (who would later co-edit The American Caravan

with Lewis Mumford) had adapted a passage from Moby-Dick for itstitle logo and statement of purpose which appeared on the back coverldquoWhat of itrdquo asks Ishmael

if some old hunks of a seacaptain orders me to get a broom and sweepdown the decks What does that indignity amount to weighed I meanin the scales of the New Testament Do you think the Archangel Gabrielthinks any less of me because I promptly and respectfully obey that oldhunks that particular instance Who ainrsquot a slave (Melville 1925 4)

The first issue of Broom included poems addressing Albert Einsteinrsquostheory of relativity as well as Emmy Veronica Sanders declaration thatldquothe American Machinerdquo was ldquotransforming itself with all its attributesand characteristics into American Mindrdquo ldquoAmericardquo she continuedinitially ldquomade of the Puritan by the Puritan for the Puritanrdquo wasnow being ldquoremade of the Machine by the Machine for the Machinerdquo(89-90) Following Sandersrsquos piece was a David OrsquoNeilrsquos hymn of sup-plication to the new Gods of the machine

When you are sweeping usWith Your cosmic broom

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 24

25

Figure 5 Nature and Second Nature in Technics and Civilization (1934)

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 25

26

Sweeping us out of mouldy rutsSweeping us clean and sweetmdash

RememberWhen wersquore quiveringmdashSensitivemdashbaremdashWe shall be gratefulFor just a few shadows (96)

Broom took Ishmaelrsquos retort quite seriously addressing the revolutionarydimensions of technological artifice and the shadows cast within therealm of technological illumination

Unlike Futurism Broom did not celebrate the beauty of war It didhowever come to express the ldquodreamed-of metallization of the humanbodyrdquo and the playful cybernetic fantasies of Dadaists such as ManRay and Francis Picabia (quoted in Benjamin 2003 269) After someinitial hesitation Broom began to embrace Dadarsquos perspective on the lib-eratory dimensions of the human-machine interface ldquoEverything isartificialrdquo gasped Broom contributor Blaise Cendrars ldquoThe eyes thehand the sexual frenzy of the factory The wheel which turns Thewing which flies The voice which travels far on a wire Your ear ina trumpet Your sense of direction Your rhythm You melt the worldin the mould of your skull Your brain is hollow Like a religion amysterious pill hastens your digestionrdquo (265) Jean Epstein from a slightdifferent angle argued that technology had ldquobecome part of ourselvesrdquoand had democratized human perceptionmdashldquoman has not one memoryof [the] landscape he [now] has a thousand different ones which mayor may not resemble each other Everything possesses hundreds ofapparent diameters which never superimpose exactlyrdquo (6-7)

Broom was soon translating less inflammatory Futurist manifestos suchas Enrico Prampolinirsquos ldquoThe Aesthetic of the Machine and MechanicalIntrospection in Artrdquo in which he declared ldquoIs not the machine todaythe most exuberant symbol of the mystery of human creation Is it notthe new mythical deity which weaves the legends and histories of thecontemporary human drama The Machine in its practical and materialfunction comes to have today in human concepts and thoughts thesignificance of an ideal and spiritual inspirationrdquo The kind of worshipthat ensued was that of the cyborg neither reverent nor memorializ-ing of cosmic law (Haraway 2004 9) Or as Prampolini wrote ldquoOurexperience has convinced us of the truth of certain of our plastic truthsand has allowed us to perceive the errors that lie in othersrdquo (236)

One of the more important pieces of American Dada captured pre-cisely this pointmdashGod (c 1917) designed by Baroness Elsa von Freytag-

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 26

27

Figure 6 Illustration accompanying Enrico Prampolinirsquos ldquoThe Aesthetic of theMachine and Mechanical Introspection in Artrdquo Broom 33 (October 1922) 237

Loringhoven and photographed by Morton Schamberg The invertedcast-iron plumbing trap atop a carpenterrsquos miter box was emblematicof the Melvillean appreciation for technological enchantment Indeedthe pipe is part of an indoor plumbing apparatus a modern conveniencewhose history dates back to some of the earliest feedback technologieson recordmdashthe water-clocks and float-regulators of ancient Greece (Mayr1970 11-26) God resembled the mechanical abstractions Schamberghad been producing before his premature death in 1918 during aninfluenza outbreak in Philadelphia The Baroness a contributor to Broom

and other little magazines had arrived in New York from Germanyin 1913 She was ldquothe first American dadardquo wrote Jane Heap in 1922ldquothe only one living anywhere who dresses dada loves dada lives dadardquo(46) Friends with Marcel Duchamp Djuna Barnes and other NewYork artists the Baroness was a central figure in a burgeoning trans-atlantic avant-garde In addition to her art and poetry the Baronesswas also a ldquoperformancerdquo artist who skillfully inverted gender hierarchiesand attacked through her very presence the traditional sensibilities ofthe middle-class She was notorious for walking around the streets ofGreenwich Village with her shaved head painted purple postage stampspasted to her face and a bird cage around her neck housing a livecanary (Davidson 1996 223-24)

In what must be considered a prescient assault on all manners oflogocentrism the Baroness also carried with her a plaster cast penis thatshe periodically revealed to passersby for maximum shock value (Gammel2002 195) But it was the Barnonessrsquos sculpture God that in addition

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 27

28

Figure 7 God (c 1917) designed by Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven and photographed by Morton Schamberg

to celebrating the mobility and reproducibility of that which was sup-posedly the most fixed and essential repossessed the power of tech-nology as ever imperfect and incomplete As a companion piece of sortsto Duchamprsquos infamous ready-made Fountain an inverted urinal dis-played in the 1917 exhibition of the American Society of IndependentArtists God invited more expressly theological speculation First of allit insisted on supplementing the three traditional symbolic centers ofWestern religious reflectionmdashGod humanity naturemdashwith the machineAnd although it has since been viewed by critics as ldquosacrilegiousrdquo andan instance of ldquoantireligious scatologyrdquo (Naumann 1994 171 Gammel220) the transgressive dimensions to God also affirm a shadowy open-

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 28

29

9 One is reminded here of Melvillersquos letter to Nathaniel Hawthorne in April of1851 ldquoWe incline to think that God cannot explain His own secrets and that Hewould like a little more information upon certain points Himself We mortals aston-ish Him as much as He usrdquo (Melville 1993 186)

ing to radical othernessmdashin the form of imperfection and chancemdashwithin the loops generated by feedback technology

Although the metal pipe ends up pointing toward heaven it firstloops downward in a nod to its human ground Limited by the skillsof the human carpenter on whose box it is anchored the contortedpipe narrativizes both the pitfalls and prospects of the machine ageShit eventually flows up in the case of God not down suggesting thateven the most lofty and noble ideals of the imagination maintain theirhuman aroma Rather than assume the power of divinity classicallyconstrued God staged divinity as nothing more and nothing less thanthat which made life livablemdashthat which kept the smell of human wasteartificially at bay or more ominously managed the flow of thingsthrough feedback control But even more literally God called attentionto the human work in the making of artifice and celebrated the bio-logical possibility for the endless unmaking (and remaking) of selfFeedback technology was not really God but it was for all practicalpurposes Or as the Baroness wrote in a 1927 letter to Peggy GuggenheimGod had much to learn from Henry Ford for he was ldquoclumsily sub-tle-densely-intelligent-inefficiently-immense-(Lord not Fordmdashof course)rdquo9

God the Baroness playfully warned had ldquobetter hotfoot it towardprogressmdashmodernizemdashuse his own omnipotence intelligentlymdashsmart orwersquoll all expire in tangle Well Lord knowsmdash(Does he)rdquo (quoted inGammel 2002 229)

6 Conclusion Deus in machina movet

As Protestant majorities struggled to adjust themselves and their theo-logical inheritance to new technological conditions theologies of themachine age both compelling and disturbing emerged from outsidethe precincts of traditional religious discourse For in addition to beinginspired by the ghost of Herman Melville the Melville Revival wasquite literally haunted by the power of feedback technologiesmdashspectersthat were affective rather than concrete strangely resistant to rationalcontemplation yet recognized through anxious admixtures of thoughtand feeling On one hand the revival reflected the spectrum of Protestant

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 29

30

10 Shortly after the publication of Moby-Dick in November of 1851 reports beganto reach America about the August sinking of the Ann Alexander by a whale in theSouth Pacific It was the first ldquoattack of a whale upon a shiprdquo since the destruc-tion of the Essex in 1820 The story about the Ann Alexander originally appeared inthe Panama Herald on October 16 and was reprinted the following month in New-York Daily Tribune and Littellrsquos Living Age The sperm whale that the Ann Alexander

fears over technological miscegenation The capacity of machines toredraw the boundaries of race and gender disturbed Protestant leadersand revivalists alike On the other hand subversive elements within theMelville Revival offered what must be considered a theological critiqueof how Protestants understood themselves and their God in relation totechnological materials Grant Overton for example saw in Moby-Dick

a deep appreciation for how technological developments had come tounderminemdashquite literally hauntmdashthe epistemological and ontologicalassumptions that made them possible ldquoNo longer able to instance thedeus ex machinardquo wrote Overton Melville was ldquounforgetful that deus inmachina movet and while most of mankind [have] become unable to seethe god for the machine [he] can scarcely perceive the machine forthe god agitating it [His] reports of the machine are somehow unrec-ognizable [his] realism is confronted by Realityrdquo (Overton 1928 231)

Bess Meredythrsquos reimagining of Moby-Dick and Baroness Elsa vonFreytag-Loringhovenrsquos God also explored the otherness that technologyengenders within the modern subject a trace that lingers despite allattempts to extinguish it Their errant readings challenged contempo-raries to reimagine their relationship to technology from an enchantedperspective that did not necessarily conform to the directives of Americanindividualism Resisting the advertisements of both Arminianism andBaconian Common Sense these readings insisted that there was somethingelsemdashsomething wholly othermdashoccurring within the technological workingsof secular modernity Excess or that which unsettled the boundariesbetween body and machine masculine and feminine had resulted inwhat might be called a ldquopost-structure of feelingrdquo The prospect thateither machines or women had begun to think for themselves or atleast possess a kind of agency once attributed to the enlightened malesubject now seemed as likely as a whale vengefully turning against awhaleship10 As Melvillean riffs on the deferred project of religious iden-tity The Sea Beast and God marked the space between human creationand technological determination consent and compulsion and there-fore hinted at the prospect that belief was not an individual state butan embodied activity Consistent with Lewis Mumfordrsquos assessment ofthe symbolic and material powers of feedback technology these works

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 30

31

had first turned upon starboard and larboard boats seizing both in its jaws andcrushing them to pieces It then rushed towards the Ann Alexander ldquoat the rateof fifteen knots In an instant the monster struck the ship with tremendous violence shakingher from stem to sternrdquo (415) Upon reading the article Melville remarked to his pub-lisher ldquothe Whale had almost completely slipped me for the time (amp I was themerrier for it) when Crash comes Moby Dick himself It is really amp truly a sur-prising coincidencemdashto say the least I make no doubt it is Moby Dick himself I wonder if my evil art has raised this monsterrdquo (Melville 1993 209)

11 William Jennings Bryan for example that standard bearer of fundamentalfaith equated faith to a particular kind of technologymdashldquothere is that in each humanliferdquo he wrote ldquothat corresponds to the mainspring of a watchmdashthat which isabsolutely necessary if the life is to be what it should be a real life and not amere existence That necessary thing is a belief in Godrdquo (86) Faith for Bryan wasthat which repeated without difference It was a dependable rational and utterlyrationalizing process It was not however self-regulating It affirmed the ldquorealnessrdquoof the individual believer precisely because it ignored the conditions imposed fromoutside the self But how might faith be viewed in terms of feedback and repro-ducibility rather than repetition a process that does not reaffirm a centered indi-vidual with every tick but adjusts accordingly to external fluctuations

raise numerous questions concerning the ways and means of religionin an age of postmodern complexity and virtual reality

How might a relentless focus on power and the porousness of sub-jectivity change how one views the matter of religion within historyHow might a greater attention to the aesthetic conditions that mediateany and all beliefs challenge the ways in which we distinguish the reli-gious from the secular How might a greater attention to the enchantingpower of material conditions challenge historical and political narrativesof secularization How do technologies and vested interests realize them-selves through the discourses of agency choice and mobility Whatin other words are the conditions of possibility that allow a historicalactor (rather than a Hollywood actor) to make a particular faith com-mitment or for that matter have any faith at all In what languagedo historical actors dream about themselves and divinity and how doesthat language change over time And finally to what degree is faithitself a technology11

By acknowledging the white mythology that still informs say thefield of American religions such questions shift the scholarly emphasisfrom explicit expressions of religious belief and practice to the spacebetween those beliefs and practices and the world at-large Individualswithin American religious history for example have often been depictedas fully formed agents making choices between various faith commitmentsand ever combining religious idioms to suit their specific needs and cir-cumstances (Albanese 1997) No doubt this is true But there is anotherside to this story of radical religious pluralism one that if accounted

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 31

32

12 Such a possibility is very much at odds with the Geertzian model of ldquothickdescriptionrdquo and its formidable legacy in the humanities and social sciences Withoutquestioning the degree to which the self can ever become entirely legible to theself Geertz claimed that every society and individual life and by extension everybelief and every practice ldquocontain their own interpretations One has only to learnhow to gain access to themrdquo (Geertz 1973 453)

13 The ambiguities of agency during the ldquomachine agerdquo have been the subjectof a number of elegant critical studies See for example Anson Rabinbach TheHuman Motor Energy Fatigue and the Origins of Modernity (New York Basic Books1990) Mark Seltzer Bodies and Machines (New York Routledge 1992) MarthaBanta Taylorized Lives Narrative Productions in the Age of Taylor Veblen and Ford (ChicagoUniversity of Chicago Press 1993) Carolyn Thomas de la Pentildea The Body ElectricHow Strange Machines Built the Modern American (New York New York UniversityPress 2003) and Joel Dinerstein The Swinging Machine Modernity Technology andAfrican American Culture Between the World Wars (Amherst University of MassachusettsPress 2003) Dinersteinrsquos work is particularly relevant to the issue of religious com-binativeness given his emphasis on how African American artists strove to refigureldquomachine aestheticsrdquo in and through their artistry Dinersteinrsquos work suggests thatthe self is locatedmdashie the self happensmdashsomewhere between resistance and assim-ilation between choice and coercionmdasha lesson that many Anglo-Americans werenot willing to consider in their triumphal theorizing about the human in relationto the machine The possibility for consideration argues Dinerstein existed inAfrican American jazz swing and dance

for suggests new directions for the study of religion in America Althoughthe ldquolived religionrdquo perspective in American religious history has donemuch to overcome the distinction between ldquodabblersrdquo and ldquotrue believersrdquothe question of power still lingers (Ahlstrom 1972 1052) Religiousbeliefs and practices are neither essential things nor reveal themselvesto the scholar in toto12 Such a position does not replicate the eitherordiscussion regarding the agency of historical actors On the contraryit suggests that religious agency is a hybrid weave of intent and instinctimmediate response and mediated principle knowing and unknowing13

Accounting for the ambiguities of agency has already pushed scholarsof religion toward an anthropology of the secular and an explorationof in the Foucauldian phrasing of Talal Asad ldquothe contingencies thathave come together to give us our certaintiesrdquo (2003 16)

It is with a hint of irony then that one may return to the promotionalpamphlet of The Sea Beast that celebrates the ldquoconquestrdquo of Ahab andthe invisible wafting presence of screenwriter Bess Meredyth ldquoThereis no woman writing today who has contributed so much to genuine

screen values as Bess Meredythrdquo Indeed her son John Meredyth Lucasborn in 1919 continued down his motherrsquos unsettling path as a successfultelevision screenwriter and director His credits included episodes ofldquoStar Trekrdquo ldquoLoganrsquos Runrdquo and that other story of ldquohundred percentrdquoAmericanism ldquoThe Six Million Dollar Manrdquo

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 32

33

Figure 8 The Six Million Dollar Man ldquoGentlemen we can rebuild him Wehave the capability of making the worldrsquos first bionic man We can make him

better than he was before Better Stronger Fasterrdquo

Haverford College370 Lancaster AveHaverford PA 19041jlardashaverfordedu

References

Ahlstrom Sydney E (1972) A Religious History of the American People New HavenYale University Press

Albanese Catherine L (1997) Exchanging selves exchanging souls Contact com-bination and American religious history In Thomas A Tweed (ed) RetellingUS Religious History 200-26 Berkeley University of California Press

Anon (1851) A ship sunk by a whale Littellrsquos Living Age (29 November) 415-16Asad Talal (2003) Formations of the Secular Christianity Islam Modernity Stanford

Stanford University Press

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 33

34

Bacon Francis (1870) The Works of Francis Bacon James Spedding Robert LeslieEllis and Douglas Denon Heath (eds) Vol VIII New York Hurd andHoughton

Barton Bruce (2000) The Man Nobody Knows A Discovery of the Real Jesus ChicagoIvan R Dee

Beniger James R (1986) The Control Revolution Technological and Economic Origins ofthe Information Society Cambridge Harvard University Press

Benjamin Walter (1996) One-way street In Marcus Bullock amp Michael W Jennings(eds) Selected Writings Volume 1 1913-1926 444-88 Cambridge HarvardUniversity Press

mdash (2003) The work of art in the age of its technological reproducibility third ver-sion In Howard Eiland and Michael W Jennings (eds) Selected Writings Volume4 1938-40 251-83 Cambridge Harvard University Press

Bennett Charles A (1923) A Philosophical Study of Mysticism An Essay New HavenYale University Press 1923

Bernays Edward L (1923) Crystallizing Public Opinion New York Liverlight PublishingCorporation

Buchman SR (1925) Moby Dickmdashthe book and The Sea Beastmdashthe picture Anappreciation In Herman Melville Moby Dick or The White Whale ix-xi NewYork Grosset amp Dunlap

Butler Judith (1993) Bodies That Matter On the Discursive Limits of lsquoSexrsquo RoutledgeNew York

Cahir Linda Costanzo (1997) Routinizing the charismatic Melville and Hollywoodrsquosthree Moby-Dicks Melville Society Extracts 110 (September) 11-17

Cendrars Blaise (1922) Profound today Broom 13 ( January) 265-67Chadwick Owen (1975) The Secularization of the European Mind in the Nineteenth Century

Cambridge Cambridge University PressCoe George Albert (1917) A Social Theory of Religious Education New York Charles

Scribnerrsquos SonsDavidson Abraham A (1996) The European art invasion In Francis M Naumann

(ed) with Beth Vann Making Mischief Dada Invades New York 222-27 NewYork Whitney Museum of Art

Debord Guy (1995) Society of the Spectacle translated by Donald Nicholson-SmithNew York Zone Books

Derrida Jacques (1994) Specters of Marx The State of the Debt The Work of Mourningand the New International Peggy Kamuf (trans) New York Routledge

Dorsey George A (1925) Why We Behave Like Human Beings New York BlueRibbon Books

Epstein Jean (1922) The new conditions of literary phenomena Broom 21 (April)3-10

Frank Waldo (1919) Our America New York Boni and LiverightGammel Irene (2002) Baroness Elsa Gender Dada and Everyday Modernitymdasha Cultural

Biography Cambridge The MIT PressGeertz Clifford (1973) Deep play Notes on the Balinese cockfight In The Interpretation

of Cultures 412-53 New York Basic BooksHaraway Donna (2004) A manifesto for cyborgs Science technology and socialist

feminism in the 1980s In The Haraway Reader 7-45 New York RoutledgeHeap Jane (1922) Dada Little Review VII2 (Spring) 46Heidegger Martin (1977) The age of the world-picturerdquo In The Question Concerning

Technology and Other Essays 115-54 William Lovitt (trans) New York Harperamp Row

Hoffman Carol Stein (2001) The Barrymores Hollywoodrsquos First Family LexingtonUniversity of Kentucky Press

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 34

35

Jackson Josephine A and Helen M Salisbury (1922) Outwitting Our Nerves A Primerof Psychotherapy New York The Century Co

Jaffe David (1990) The village enlightenment in New England 1760-1820 TheWilliam and Mary Quarterly XLVII3 ( July) 327-46

Jones Rufus M (1915) Mysticism in present-day religion Harvard Theological ReviewVIII2 (April) 155-65

Kippenberg Hans G (2002) Discovering Religious History in the Modern Age BarbaraHarshav (trans) Princeton Princeton University Press

Kobler John (1977) Damned in Paradise The Life of John Barrymore New YorkAtheneum

Kuttner Alfred B (1922) Nerves In Harold E Stearns (ed) Civilization in the UnitedStates An Enquiry by Thirty Americans 427-42 New York Harcourt

Lauter Paul (1994) Melville climbs the canon American Literature 66 (March) 1-24Lawrence DH (1923) Studies in Classic American Literature New York T SeltzerLindbergh Charles A (1927) We New York GP Putnamrsquos SonsLippmann Walter (1922) Public Opinion New York Macmillan CompanyMarchand Roland (1985) Advertising the American Dream Making Way for Modernity

1920-1940 Berkeley University of California PressMarty Martin E Modern American Religion Vol 2 The Noise of Conflict 1919-1941

Chicago University of Chicago Press 1991May Henry F (1976) The Enlightenment in America New York Oxford University

PressMayhew Jonathan (1749) Concerning the difference between truth and falsehood

right and wrong In Seven Sermons 1-21 Boston Rogers and FowleMayr Otto (1970) The Origins of Feedback Control Cambridge The MIT PressMelville Herman (1993) Correspondence Volume 14 of The Writings of Herman Melville

Lynne Horth (ed) Evanston and Chicago Northwestern University Pressmdash (1925) Moby Dick or The White Whale 1851 New York Grosset amp DunlapMindell David A (2002) Between Human and Machine Feedback Control and Computing

Before Cybernetics Baltimore The Johns Hopkins University PressMumford Lewis (1929) Herman Melville New York The Literary Guild of Americamdash (1924) Sticks and Stones A Study of American Architecture and Civilization New York

Dover Publicationsmdash (1934) Technics and Civilization New York Harcourt Brace and Companymdash (1926) The Golden Day A Study in American Literature and Culture New York Boni

and LiverightMurray Jr HA (1929) Review of Lewis Mumfordrsquos Herman Melville The New

England Quarterly 2 ( July) 523-26Naumann Francis M (1994) New York Dada 1915-23 New York Harry N AbramsNoble David F (1999) The Religion of Technology The Divinity of Man and the Spirit

of Invention New York Penguin BooksNye David E (1994) American Technological Sublime Cambridge The MIT PressOrsquoNeil David (1921) The new Broom Broom 11 (November) 96Overton Grant (1928) The Philosophy of Fiction New York D AppletonPalmer Attorney General (1920) The case against the lsquoRedsrsquo The Forum A Magazine

of Constructive Nationalism 632 (February) 173-85Parsons Floyd W (1927) Everybodyrsquos business Advertising amp Selling ( June 29) 5 64Prampolini Enrico (1922) The aesthetic of the machine and mechanical intro-

spection in art Broom 33 (October) 235-37Rauschenbusch Walter (1917) A Theology for the Social Gospel New York The

Macmillan CompanyRichardson George P (1991) Feedback Thought in Social Science and Systems Theory

Philadelphia University of Pennsylvania Press

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 35

14

Figure 3 Neotechnic Automatism from Technics and Civilization (1934)

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 14

15

7 Public relations and advances in advertising were the latest instances of the ldquocontrol revolutionrdquo in which technology of interchangeability so integral to theAmerican System of manufacturing had extended its field of operations under theauspices of consumer capitalism Machines were not simply making parts for othermachines but were integral to the form and content of social reproduction Publicrelations was a particular (and less reliable) version of feedback control Instead ofmaintaining a fixed variable on the inside by responding to fluctuations on the out-side ldquocounselorsrdquo stoked the flames of consumer desire in order to justify an accel-erating rate of production and ideally consumption

(1929) Mumford had chided fellow revivalists for exaggerating Melvillersquosretreat into mystical idealism ldquoMelville was a realistrdquo countered Mumfordldquoin the sense that the great religious teachers are realistsrdquo FurthermoreMelville had witnessed the ldquovolcanic intrusionrdquo of ldquoindustrialism [as] avalue in itself rdquo (1929 5 64-65) But things had gotten much more com-plicated since the mid-nineteenth century Whereas Melville had beheldldquothe servile routine of the factory systemrdquo Mumford was now witness-ing the birth of ldquothe machine system the network of relationshipsthat have followed the financial exploitation of machineryrdquo The differencein other words was the full-scale emergence of self-governing tech-nologiesmdashldquohandicraft devoted to mechanical reproduction and machinerythat is set to reproduce endless simulacrardquo For Mumford this ldquomachineritualrdquo this ldquoendlessrdquo loop of ldquomechanical reproductionrdquo threatened toefface ldquothe human arts of seeing feeling and livingrdquo (1924 67-68 10174-75 105 81) Technology in other words had achieved the capacityfor feedback on two different but related levels first in material devicesthat could copy both nature and themselves and secondly in humansthat governed themselves according to the latest control variables setby the machine As Mumford argued the totalizing power of feedbacktechnologies resulted not simply from designs motors or even materialoutputs but through their economically driven expansion of ldquothe verydomain of the symbol itself rdquo (1934 331)

Mumfordrsquos insights take on more ominous implications when oneconsiders the rise of the American public relations industry during thisperiod7 Public relations consultants such as Edward Bernays and adver-tisers like Bruce Barton actively sought to shape and change the beliefsof individuals in the service of larger economic agendas It was no acci-dent Bernays wrote in 1923 that a ldquoman belongs to one church ratherthan another or to any church at allrdquo It was no accident that ldquoBostonwomen prefer brown eggs and New York women white eggsrdquo Becausethe judgments of individuals were not arrived at through ldquoresearch andlogical deductionrdquo but were ldquodogmatic expressions accepted on theauthority of his parents his teachers his church and of his social his

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 15

16

economic and other leadersrdquo a ldquopublic relations counselrdquo must do thework of reauthorization (Bernays 1923 62) Through the strategic ldquosat-urationrdquo of images text and work-place incentives an entire profes-sional class sought to provide the terms for and effectively monitor theconditions of self-realization (Marchand 1985 94-95)

What then did Melville have to offer those living within ldquothe machinesystemrdquo of the 1920s Mumford and other revivalists championed Moby-

Dick as a blueprint for living within an increasingly mechanical rou-tinized and bureaucratic world They also heaped admiration uponCaptain Ahab an odd choice given the outcome of Moby-Dick Contraryto those who would later read Ahabrsquos technologically enhanced dem-agoguery against the political backdrops of Italian Fascism and NationalSocialism Ahabrsquos madness in the 1920s could be considered ldquoactiveand courageousrdquo as well as a sign of ldquogeniusrdquomdashldquothe very pinnacle ofhuman self-assertionrdquo (Watson 1970 136 Sullivan 1970 163) Suchreadings conflated the white whale with the power of technology andhad Ahab defiantly affirm the principle of free-will and defend theboundary between human and material worlds Mumford for examplewrote of Ahab as the ldquospirit of manrdquo who stood in opposition to ldquothebrute energies of existence blind fatal overpoweringrdquo Ahab was self-directive ldquopurposiverdquo and he pitted his ldquopuniness against this mightand [his] purpose against the blank senselessness of powerrdquo So eventhough Ahabrsquos ldquomethods are ill-chosenrdquo wrote Mumford his ldquodefianceis noblerdquo (Mumford 1929 184-86)

4 People who portray themselves or Ahab on Ahab

Film projectors in addition to utilizing concepts of feedback internallywere often seen as generative of external feedback loops between humansand machines nature and artifice Such loops arguably constituted theldquosociety of the spectaclerdquo Guy Debordrsquos term for the image-saturatedenvironment that arose in the 1920s with the confluence of sound filmtelevision and the perfection of propaganda techniques As one of themore grim assessments of an image-based postmodernity Debord definedthe ldquospectaclerdquo in terms of negative feedback ldquoIt is the omnipresentcelebration of a choice already made in the sphere of production andthe consummate result of that choice In form as in content the spectacleserves as total justification for the conditions and aims of the existingsystem It further ensures the permanent presence of that justification forit governs almost all time spent outside the production process itself rdquo

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 16

17

8 Cahir (1997) has made a similar point Although I agree with her assessmentthat The Sea Beast is about Ahabrsquos ldquoreal pursuit of identityrdquo I take issue with herargument that The Sea Beast validates autonomous autotelic forms of masculine identity

(13) In America Debordian paranoia was rampant as Victorian fearsover the exploitation of pleasure were morphing into general anxietiesconcerning voyeurism and cinematic determinism ldquoThe spectacle ofmechanical progress has made so deep an impressionrdquo argued WalterLippmann in 1922 ldquothat it has suffused the whole moral coderdquo Whatdisturbed Lippmann and other public figures was the specter of circularcausality and the quiet ldquoinsertion between man and his environmentof a pseudo-environmentrdquo composed mainly of images (Lippmann 1922108 15) Unbeknownst to them Americans were in danger of becom-ing automated by images and trapped within what Debord would latercall ldquoan uninterrupted monologue of self-praiserdquo (19) Their perpetualaffirmation of self however was wholly cybernetic given the fact thatthey were oblivious to the fact that ldquoon the screen the whole processof observing describing reporting and then imagining has been accom-plished for yourdquo (92)

In a strange twist that Melville might have enjoyed the most com-pelling representation of Moby-Dick and portrayal of Captain Ahab mayhave occurred via the technology of the moving picture8 The 1926silent film The Sea Beast adapted to the screen by Bess Meredyth andstarring John Barrymore as Captain Ahab dramatized the feedbackdimensions of film and its capacity to regulate the human personalityThe Sea Beast I argue challenged more able-bodied academic inter-pretations by reveling in its status as a technological reproduction The

Sea Beast with its odd juxtapositions visceral jump cuts and perverseattention to Ahabrsquos stump and artificial limb rather than affirm thedesire for self-transparency suggested that the equipment-free reality ofthe self was quite literally an enabling fiction What Americans lackedaccording to Meredythrsquos scenario was the tragic recognition of them-selves as always regulated and already enhanced by technology Takingldquopleasure in the confusion of boundariesrdquo and ldquoresponsibility in their con-structionrdquo The Sea Beast in the borrowed words of Donna Harawaymade ldquoan argument for the cyborg as a fiction mapping our social andbodily reality and as an imaginative resource suggesting some very fruit-ful couplingsrdquo (8)

In 1925 at age forty-three John Barrymore was one of Hollywoodrsquosmost bankable actors (part of the ldquostar-systemrdquo promoted by Edward

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 17

18

Bernays who clearly saw the potential for cross-marketing between enter-tainment business and political campaigns) Barrymore easily convincedWarner Brothers to turn Moby-Dick one of his favorite novels into amovie and to cast him in the role of Captain Ahab Having playedHamlet in the 1922-23 Broadway season Barrymore developed a keeninterest in psychoanalysis and Freudrsquos account of Hamlet in Interpretationof Dreams (1900) The role of Captain Ahab like that of Hamlet allowedBarrymore to reach a larger audience with his newly emotive actingstyle As Captain Ahab he could also remind his audience of his depthand manly credentials He was tired in his words of playing ldquoscentedbepuffed bewigged and ringletted charactersrdquo (quoted in Kobler 1977213) Promotional pamphlets for The Sea Beast seemed to reinforceBarrymorersquos gendered strategy featuring a picture of Barrymore in abusiness suit puffing contemplatively on a pipemdashldquoJohn Barrymore ismore than a name more than a personality he is world institutionrdquo(Hoffman 2001 73)

The opening credits to The Sea Beast begin imprecisely with a close-up of the filmrsquos textual referent Moby Dick or the White Whale Thissimulated text begins not with ldquoExtractsrdquo or even ldquoCall me Ishmaelrdquobut with the following words ldquoThere never was nor ever will be abraver life than the life of the whaler Compared to the game theyhunted the mightiest land beast was but a poodle dogrdquo Adapted tothe screen by Bess Meredyth former actress turned writer The Sea Beast

is noteworthy as one of the earliest if not the first public appropriationsof Melvillersquos novel by a woman By 1926 Meredyth had become aHollywood regular having written the scenarios or continuities for Ben

Hur (1925) Don Juan (1926) and at least 70 other films ldquoThere is nowoman writing todayrdquo read the promotional copy of The Sea Beastldquowho has contributed so much to genuine screen values as Bess Meredythrdquo(Hoffman 2001 74) The ldquogenuinerdquo sense Meredyth made of Melvillersquosepic is significant in its relentless focus on the self as a technologicalconstruct In Meredythrsquos scenario one literally glimpses the spirit ofMelvillersquos rejection of the contemplative insular and hyper-masculinizedself of mid-nineteenth-century religion and science In its plot and per-verse attention to Ahabrsquos stump The Sea Beast suggests that nothing willor even can make up for the loss Ahab suffers

After the opening credits the audience is introduced to a healthyCaptain Ahab atop the masthead He looks out over the sea and downon his crew hard at work his feet tapping to the beat of the sea shantyldquoHanging Johnnyrdquo Nostalgia and the logic of substitution are bothbroached in the opening scenesmdashnot in terms of idealism but in ways

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 18

19

that hint at their subsequent negation As Ahab reads a letter from hisbeloved Esther Harper the daughter of a Christian missionary playedby the nineteen year-old Dolores Costello Ahab looks longingly at hername tattooed on his arm His mind drifts back to their last embraceFollowing a long close-up of his legs Ahab descends from the mastheadthe camera sliding down the rope in real time and from Ahabrsquos pointof view his legs leading the way The experience of vertigo engenderedby the shot suggests that Ahabrsquos identity is already unstable alreadymarked by a palpable lack of ground This shot however is quicklyoffset by numerous scenes that depict the fullness of Ahabrsquos vigor par-ticularly in relation to his healthy pair of legs He jumps he hops heruns around

When Ahabrsquos ship docks in the bay of Mauritius the audience isintroduced to Esther as well as to Derek Ahabrsquos scheming half-brotherIt is here that one is reminded of the words from the 1925 promotionalpublication of Moby-Dick accompanied by scenes from The Sea Beastldquothe screen version of lsquoMoby Dickrsquo exceeds the book The discrepancybetween the two must not be considered as a profanely wanton alterationrdquoTo portray the ldquopsychological studyrdquo of Captain Ahab ldquothe camerahas resorted to means of its own A mental state therefore particularlyan involved condition of mind must be expressed by means of the inci-dents which produced it each tortuous thought composing Ahabrsquos madness must be traced to the event which engendered itrdquo (Buchman1925 x) The most obvious incident being the loss of Ahabrsquos leg butthe film compounds this felt sense of loss by turning Melvillersquos tale intoa misbegotten love triangle between Ahab Derek and Esther the appleof both their eyes

On shore Ahab and Esther declare their love to each other Butafter a few days Ahab sails from Mauritius and scans the shore withhis telescope He spies Estherrsquos window She comes to the window andreturns Ahabrsquos gaze through her own telescope Technology has literallybecome the lens through which they see each other through whicheach declares their commitment They wave and blow kisses until theyare both out of range At sea Ahab is betrayed by Derek who unbe-knownst to Ahab pushes him overboard into the waiting jaws of MobyDick After losing his leg Ahab is distraught Derek then taunts Ahaband suggests that his symbolic castration is too much for any relation-ship to bear As Derek reminds him ldquoEsther was always crazy aboutyour beinrsquo so strong and perfectrdquo Having been fitted with his ivorystump Ahab arrives back at Mauritius Derek then shames Ahab evenfurther by telling him that he and Esther are in love and that Esther

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 19

20

cannot bring herself to tell Ahab of the deceit Derek then goes toEsther to convince her that Ahab has abandoned her When Ahabarrives at Estherrsquos house to confirm Derekrsquos story he sees their shadowscast by the light of spermaceti candles and mistakenly believes thatEsther has indeed left him for Derek It is here that Ahab descendsinto his infamous monomania

Ahab goes onto slay Moby Dick but not before uncovering his half-brotherrsquos double betrayal In a dramatic confrontation Derek pulls aknife on Ahab and is about to get the best of our hero But wait Ahabwedges his ivory stump into the deck leveraging himself in order tofend off Derek Ahab then casts Derek overboard and into the sea Anivory technology marking the absence of Ahabrsquos leg has been trans-formed into a salvific presence Or so it seems when the audience istreated to the restoration of order upon the Pequodrsquos return to portand Ahabrsquos reunion with Esther consummated in their tearful embraceHaving staged and seemingly resolved the crisis of masculine identity(the raison drsquoecirctre of melodrama being that the resolution is alreadypresent in the staging) The Sea Beast on the contrary did anything butrestore the full presence of Ahabrsquos self It suggested through both contentand form that the reality of the self whether it be Ahab or the spec-tator in the theater was neither fully resolvable nor equipment-free

Ahab achieves a kind of liberation on screen by recognizing that heis always already a figment of an imagination that is not his own Afterthe tearful reunion between Ahab and Esther the screen goes blackThe audience is then given a glimpse behind the scenes as it weremdasha scene of the director Millard Webb in his chair issuing directionsto Ahab and Esther in Estherrsquos living room A man in a business suitplays the violin in the background As Ahab and Esther look longinglyinto each otherrsquos eyes Ahab slips a ring onto Estherrsquos finger and theyembrace once again Or is it Barrymore and Costello It is unclearparticularly in light of the rumors of an off screen tryst between themiddle-aged Barrymore and his nineteen-year old costar (they wouldlater marry) The loving embrace is seemingly real an ambiguityreaffirmed by the fact that after Webb yells ldquocutrdquo he has to step betweenthe couple and remind them that they are on film Webb then turnsto the camera and smiles as the screen abruptly cuts to black onceagain

The odd ending of The Sea Beast suggests that Ahabrsquos journey towardreconciliation did not end with self-exposure but that it could neverreally begin Rather than achieve restoration of nature in and througha cultural construction Ahabrsquos artificial leg points to a previously

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 20

21

Figure 4 Final Embrace between AhabBarrymore and EstherCostello

ldquoexcluded and illegible domain that haunts the former domain as thespecter of its own impossibility the very limit of intelligibility its con-stitutive outsiderdquo (Butler 1993 xi) The ending harkens back to the seashanty ldquoHanging Johnnyrdquo Ahabrsquos introductory descent from the mast-head and his telescopic flirtation with Esther both vertiginous slidesinto the unfathomable layers of mediated perception that signal theldquoexecutionrdquo of possessive individualism Rather than erase the sign ofAhabrsquos traumamdashhis ivory legmdashthe ending of The Sea Beast suggests thatAhab and Barrymore are two sides of the same character vacillatingwithin the loop of continuous performativity One is reminded here ofWalter Benjaminrsquos insight into the traumatized subject in the age oftechnological reproducibility As Benjamin argues the trauma can beunderstood as a shift from the stage to the screen in which the actorperforms for a ldquopiece of equipmentrdquo rather than for an audience Citingthe Italian playwright Luigi Pirandello Benjamin suggests that the mod-ern subject is

exiled not only from the stage but from his own person With a vagueunease he senses an inexplicable void stemming from the fact that hisbody has lost its substance that he has been volatilized stripped of his

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 21

22

reality his life his voice the noises he makes when moving about andhas been turned into a mute image that flickers for a moment on thescreen then vanishes into silence (2003 260)

Pirandellorsquos borrowed words speak directly to Meredythrsquos reconfigurationof Melvillersquos text Whereas Melvillersquos Ahab tried and failed to conquerthe very source of visual illuminationmdashthe spermaceti oil that allowedantebellum Americans to see in the darkmdashBarrymorersquos Ahab revels inthe technologically enhanced gaze of his audience When the lightscome up the selves of Ahab Barrymore and the audience have beenre-narrativized as cybernetic that is as permanently divided and fun-damentally transient In affirming the really real offscreen relationshipbetween Barrymore and Costello the uncanny ending of The Sea Beast

supported a notion of selfhood as always already mediated or betteryet the necessity of experience to be mediated in order for it to becomereal or maybe even the necessity of acknowledging that the reality ofthe self is really made up

Barrymorersquos self-conscious performance inspired by his reading ofFreud and designed to overcome middle-class mores did not so muchpenetrate the inner depths of his character as it did the emotional lifeand perceptual apparatus of his audience The Sea Beast does not dram-atize the individual conquest of nature as much as it dramatizes visualtechnologyrsquos seduction of the individual The Sea Beast in its staging ofa cybernetic reality denied the very concept of 100 Americanism byinterrupting the narrative closure on which self-presence dependedNeither Ahab nor Barrymore nor the audience are ever alone even intheir solitude They are haunted not simply by the unconscious butby the specters generated in and through technologies of reproduction(Derrida 1994 97) They are in Benjaminrsquos apt phrase ldquopeople whoportray themselvesrdquo (Benjamin 2003 262)

For Benjamin photography and cinema were technologies of religiousrevelation for better or for worse in that they both exposed variousfeedback loops that constituted onersquos identity On one level Benjaminargued that the category of originality had been challenged by visualtechnologies that put copies ldquoof the original in situations which theoriginal itself cannot attainrdquo (2003 254) On another level the decayof the ldquoaurardquo of authenticity and the blurring of original and reproductionenabled individuals to recognize the fact that they were implicated inthe perceptual field and no longer insulated from what they saw orheard ldquoReception in distractionrdquo wrote Benjamin ldquowhich is increas-ing noticeably in all areas of art and is a symptom of profound changesin apperceptionmdashfinds in film its true training groundrdquo (269) Influenced

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 22

23

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethersquos notion of ldquoafter-imagesrdquo in Theory

of Colours (the same text that informed Melvillersquos ldquoThe Whiteness of theWhalerdquo) Benjamin announced the birth of the ldquooptical unconsciousrdquo(266) According to Benjamin images had become the currency of con-sciousness structuring thought and determining the range of possibleactions Mechanical means of reproduction had liberated the perceptualcapacities of humanity They had also ushered in the prospect of massdeception and control Either way they had resulted in a ldquomassiveupheaval in the domain of objectsrdquo and a ldquoshattering of traditionrdquo (254)

5 American Dada and the aporias of modernity

Within the Melville Revivalmdashan almost clicheacuted instance of Modernismrsquosvogue for the solitary geniusmdashseeds of post-Cartesian doubt were beingsown and the enchanting dimensions of technology considered BecauseMelville ldquowas spell-bound by the strange slidings and collidings ofMatterrdquo his work in the eyes of more atheological critics exposed theenchanting conditions of the machine age (Taylor 1984) ldquoIt is the mate-rial elements he really has to do withrdquo wrote DH Lawrence in 1923ldquoHis drama is with them He was a futurist long before futurism foundpaintrdquo (216) For Lewis Mumford too Melville had not simply dram-atized the incursion of machinesmdasha traditional Romantic tropemdashbuthad embraced a series of insoluble contradictions He has come to rec-ognize those parts of the world and himself that had already been pro-duced by machines and had insisted that the plasticity of self wassomething with which Americans had to struggle and to their spiritualdetriment repress

In broaching the aporias of modernity Mumford saw Melville as hav-ing already given the lie to Weberian diagnoses of disenchantment Thecapacity to effectively turn night into day Mumford suggested the expe-rience of a subway car rumbling past the solid structures of a sky-scraper vanishing into the air the peering into a microscope and theobservation of a ldquorow of bottles each of identical size shape colorstretching away for a quarter of a milerdquo were enough to induce a particular kind of vertigo ldquoThe special visual effect of repeating pat-tern[s]rdquo occurred simultaneously with the experience ldquoof the unique andthe non-repeatablerdquo (Mumford 1934 333-34) The experience of intensesystematicitymdashprecisely what feedback technologies were designed toinducemdashcould be positively disorienting when the infinitely calculableassumed the ldquospecial qualityrdquo of the ldquoincalculablerdquo (Heidegger 1977

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 23

24

135) According to Mumford when technology no longer made imperfectcopies of nature but perfect copies of itself the very notion of ldquonaturalrdquocould become radically suspect With the ldquoliquidationrdquo of the solid book-ends of authenticity and artifice came the prospect that the spectrumitself was socially constructed for better or for worse (Benjamin 2003255) Having torn aside the veil ldquoman has thrown between his ownexperience and the blank reality of the universerdquo Melville neither suc-cumbed to the temptation of nihilism nor retreated into his own pri-vate morality On the contrary he urged his contemporaries to ownup to the constructedness of any and all cultural forms and expressionsand the faith commitments that undergirded them As Mumford wroteldquoto appreciate the reality of the White Whale is to see more deeplyinto the expedience of all our immediate institutions all the spiritualshelters man puts between himself and the uncertain cosmic weatherMeaning significance attends only that little part of the universe manhas built up and settledrdquo (Mumford 1926 150-51)

Whereas Mumford assessed the religious dimensions of technologicalldquoprogressrdquo in a tragic key others tended toward the comic as was thecase with a group of experimental artists associated with Broom An

International Magazine of the Arts Published by Americans in Italy publishedbetween 1921 and 1924 (Tashjian 1975 116-34) Broomrsquos co-editor thepoet Alfred Kreyemborg (who would later co-edit The American Caravan

with Lewis Mumford) had adapted a passage from Moby-Dick for itstitle logo and statement of purpose which appeared on the back coverldquoWhat of itrdquo asks Ishmael

if some old hunks of a seacaptain orders me to get a broom and sweepdown the decks What does that indignity amount to weighed I meanin the scales of the New Testament Do you think the Archangel Gabrielthinks any less of me because I promptly and respectfully obey that oldhunks that particular instance Who ainrsquot a slave (Melville 1925 4)

The first issue of Broom included poems addressing Albert Einsteinrsquostheory of relativity as well as Emmy Veronica Sanders declaration thatldquothe American Machinerdquo was ldquotransforming itself with all its attributesand characteristics into American Mindrdquo ldquoAmericardquo she continuedinitially ldquomade of the Puritan by the Puritan for the Puritanrdquo wasnow being ldquoremade of the Machine by the Machine for the Machinerdquo(89-90) Following Sandersrsquos piece was a David OrsquoNeilrsquos hymn of sup-plication to the new Gods of the machine

When you are sweeping usWith Your cosmic broom

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 24

25

Figure 5 Nature and Second Nature in Technics and Civilization (1934)

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 25

26

Sweeping us out of mouldy rutsSweeping us clean and sweetmdash

RememberWhen wersquore quiveringmdashSensitivemdashbaremdashWe shall be gratefulFor just a few shadows (96)

Broom took Ishmaelrsquos retort quite seriously addressing the revolutionarydimensions of technological artifice and the shadows cast within therealm of technological illumination

Unlike Futurism Broom did not celebrate the beauty of war It didhowever come to express the ldquodreamed-of metallization of the humanbodyrdquo and the playful cybernetic fantasies of Dadaists such as ManRay and Francis Picabia (quoted in Benjamin 2003 269) After someinitial hesitation Broom began to embrace Dadarsquos perspective on the lib-eratory dimensions of the human-machine interface ldquoEverything isartificialrdquo gasped Broom contributor Blaise Cendrars ldquoThe eyes thehand the sexual frenzy of the factory The wheel which turns Thewing which flies The voice which travels far on a wire Your ear ina trumpet Your sense of direction Your rhythm You melt the worldin the mould of your skull Your brain is hollow Like a religion amysterious pill hastens your digestionrdquo (265) Jean Epstein from a slightdifferent angle argued that technology had ldquobecome part of ourselvesrdquoand had democratized human perceptionmdashldquoman has not one memoryof [the] landscape he [now] has a thousand different ones which mayor may not resemble each other Everything possesses hundreds ofapparent diameters which never superimpose exactlyrdquo (6-7)

Broom was soon translating less inflammatory Futurist manifestos suchas Enrico Prampolinirsquos ldquoThe Aesthetic of the Machine and MechanicalIntrospection in Artrdquo in which he declared ldquoIs not the machine todaythe most exuberant symbol of the mystery of human creation Is it notthe new mythical deity which weaves the legends and histories of thecontemporary human drama The Machine in its practical and materialfunction comes to have today in human concepts and thoughts thesignificance of an ideal and spiritual inspirationrdquo The kind of worshipthat ensued was that of the cyborg neither reverent nor memorializ-ing of cosmic law (Haraway 2004 9) Or as Prampolini wrote ldquoOurexperience has convinced us of the truth of certain of our plastic truthsand has allowed us to perceive the errors that lie in othersrdquo (236)

One of the more important pieces of American Dada captured pre-cisely this pointmdashGod (c 1917) designed by Baroness Elsa von Freytag-

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 26

27

Figure 6 Illustration accompanying Enrico Prampolinirsquos ldquoThe Aesthetic of theMachine and Mechanical Introspection in Artrdquo Broom 33 (October 1922) 237

Loringhoven and photographed by Morton Schamberg The invertedcast-iron plumbing trap atop a carpenterrsquos miter box was emblematicof the Melvillean appreciation for technological enchantment Indeedthe pipe is part of an indoor plumbing apparatus a modern conveniencewhose history dates back to some of the earliest feedback technologieson recordmdashthe water-clocks and float-regulators of ancient Greece (Mayr1970 11-26) God resembled the mechanical abstractions Schamberghad been producing before his premature death in 1918 during aninfluenza outbreak in Philadelphia The Baroness a contributor to Broom

and other little magazines had arrived in New York from Germanyin 1913 She was ldquothe first American dadardquo wrote Jane Heap in 1922ldquothe only one living anywhere who dresses dada loves dada lives dadardquo(46) Friends with Marcel Duchamp Djuna Barnes and other NewYork artists the Baroness was a central figure in a burgeoning trans-atlantic avant-garde In addition to her art and poetry the Baronesswas also a ldquoperformancerdquo artist who skillfully inverted gender hierarchiesand attacked through her very presence the traditional sensibilities ofthe middle-class She was notorious for walking around the streets ofGreenwich Village with her shaved head painted purple postage stampspasted to her face and a bird cage around her neck housing a livecanary (Davidson 1996 223-24)

In what must be considered a prescient assault on all manners oflogocentrism the Baroness also carried with her a plaster cast penis thatshe periodically revealed to passersby for maximum shock value (Gammel2002 195) But it was the Barnonessrsquos sculpture God that in addition

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 27

28

Figure 7 God (c 1917) designed by Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven and photographed by Morton Schamberg

to celebrating the mobility and reproducibility of that which was sup-posedly the most fixed and essential repossessed the power of tech-nology as ever imperfect and incomplete As a companion piece of sortsto Duchamprsquos infamous ready-made Fountain an inverted urinal dis-played in the 1917 exhibition of the American Society of IndependentArtists God invited more expressly theological speculation First of allit insisted on supplementing the three traditional symbolic centers ofWestern religious reflectionmdashGod humanity naturemdashwith the machineAnd although it has since been viewed by critics as ldquosacrilegiousrdquo andan instance of ldquoantireligious scatologyrdquo (Naumann 1994 171 Gammel220) the transgressive dimensions to God also affirm a shadowy open-

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 28

29

9 One is reminded here of Melvillersquos letter to Nathaniel Hawthorne in April of1851 ldquoWe incline to think that God cannot explain His own secrets and that Hewould like a little more information upon certain points Himself We mortals aston-ish Him as much as He usrdquo (Melville 1993 186)

ing to radical othernessmdashin the form of imperfection and chancemdashwithin the loops generated by feedback technology

Although the metal pipe ends up pointing toward heaven it firstloops downward in a nod to its human ground Limited by the skillsof the human carpenter on whose box it is anchored the contortedpipe narrativizes both the pitfalls and prospects of the machine ageShit eventually flows up in the case of God not down suggesting thateven the most lofty and noble ideals of the imagination maintain theirhuman aroma Rather than assume the power of divinity classicallyconstrued God staged divinity as nothing more and nothing less thanthat which made life livablemdashthat which kept the smell of human wasteartificially at bay or more ominously managed the flow of thingsthrough feedback control But even more literally God called attentionto the human work in the making of artifice and celebrated the bio-logical possibility for the endless unmaking (and remaking) of selfFeedback technology was not really God but it was for all practicalpurposes Or as the Baroness wrote in a 1927 letter to Peggy GuggenheimGod had much to learn from Henry Ford for he was ldquoclumsily sub-tle-densely-intelligent-inefficiently-immense-(Lord not Fordmdashof course)rdquo9

God the Baroness playfully warned had ldquobetter hotfoot it towardprogressmdashmodernizemdashuse his own omnipotence intelligentlymdashsmart orwersquoll all expire in tangle Well Lord knowsmdash(Does he)rdquo (quoted inGammel 2002 229)

6 Conclusion Deus in machina movet

As Protestant majorities struggled to adjust themselves and their theo-logical inheritance to new technological conditions theologies of themachine age both compelling and disturbing emerged from outsidethe precincts of traditional religious discourse For in addition to beinginspired by the ghost of Herman Melville the Melville Revival wasquite literally haunted by the power of feedback technologiesmdashspectersthat were affective rather than concrete strangely resistant to rationalcontemplation yet recognized through anxious admixtures of thoughtand feeling On one hand the revival reflected the spectrum of Protestant

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 29

30

10 Shortly after the publication of Moby-Dick in November of 1851 reports beganto reach America about the August sinking of the Ann Alexander by a whale in theSouth Pacific It was the first ldquoattack of a whale upon a shiprdquo since the destruc-tion of the Essex in 1820 The story about the Ann Alexander originally appeared inthe Panama Herald on October 16 and was reprinted the following month in New-York Daily Tribune and Littellrsquos Living Age The sperm whale that the Ann Alexander

fears over technological miscegenation The capacity of machines toredraw the boundaries of race and gender disturbed Protestant leadersand revivalists alike On the other hand subversive elements within theMelville Revival offered what must be considered a theological critiqueof how Protestants understood themselves and their God in relation totechnological materials Grant Overton for example saw in Moby-Dick

a deep appreciation for how technological developments had come tounderminemdashquite literally hauntmdashthe epistemological and ontologicalassumptions that made them possible ldquoNo longer able to instance thedeus ex machinardquo wrote Overton Melville was ldquounforgetful that deus inmachina movet and while most of mankind [have] become unable to seethe god for the machine [he] can scarcely perceive the machine forthe god agitating it [His] reports of the machine are somehow unrec-ognizable [his] realism is confronted by Realityrdquo (Overton 1928 231)

Bess Meredythrsquos reimagining of Moby-Dick and Baroness Elsa vonFreytag-Loringhovenrsquos God also explored the otherness that technologyengenders within the modern subject a trace that lingers despite allattempts to extinguish it Their errant readings challenged contempo-raries to reimagine their relationship to technology from an enchantedperspective that did not necessarily conform to the directives of Americanindividualism Resisting the advertisements of both Arminianism andBaconian Common Sense these readings insisted that there was somethingelsemdashsomething wholly othermdashoccurring within the technological workingsof secular modernity Excess or that which unsettled the boundariesbetween body and machine masculine and feminine had resulted inwhat might be called a ldquopost-structure of feelingrdquo The prospect thateither machines or women had begun to think for themselves or atleast possess a kind of agency once attributed to the enlightened malesubject now seemed as likely as a whale vengefully turning against awhaleship10 As Melvillean riffs on the deferred project of religious iden-tity The Sea Beast and God marked the space between human creationand technological determination consent and compulsion and there-fore hinted at the prospect that belief was not an individual state butan embodied activity Consistent with Lewis Mumfordrsquos assessment ofthe symbolic and material powers of feedback technology these works

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 30

31

had first turned upon starboard and larboard boats seizing both in its jaws andcrushing them to pieces It then rushed towards the Ann Alexander ldquoat the rateof fifteen knots In an instant the monster struck the ship with tremendous violence shakingher from stem to sternrdquo (415) Upon reading the article Melville remarked to his pub-lisher ldquothe Whale had almost completely slipped me for the time (amp I was themerrier for it) when Crash comes Moby Dick himself It is really amp truly a sur-prising coincidencemdashto say the least I make no doubt it is Moby Dick himself I wonder if my evil art has raised this monsterrdquo (Melville 1993 209)

11 William Jennings Bryan for example that standard bearer of fundamentalfaith equated faith to a particular kind of technologymdashldquothere is that in each humanliferdquo he wrote ldquothat corresponds to the mainspring of a watchmdashthat which isabsolutely necessary if the life is to be what it should be a real life and not amere existence That necessary thing is a belief in Godrdquo (86) Faith for Bryan wasthat which repeated without difference It was a dependable rational and utterlyrationalizing process It was not however self-regulating It affirmed the ldquorealnessrdquoof the individual believer precisely because it ignored the conditions imposed fromoutside the self But how might faith be viewed in terms of feedback and repro-ducibility rather than repetition a process that does not reaffirm a centered indi-vidual with every tick but adjusts accordingly to external fluctuations

raise numerous questions concerning the ways and means of religionin an age of postmodern complexity and virtual reality

How might a relentless focus on power and the porousness of sub-jectivity change how one views the matter of religion within historyHow might a greater attention to the aesthetic conditions that mediateany and all beliefs challenge the ways in which we distinguish the reli-gious from the secular How might a greater attention to the enchantingpower of material conditions challenge historical and political narrativesof secularization How do technologies and vested interests realize them-selves through the discourses of agency choice and mobility Whatin other words are the conditions of possibility that allow a historicalactor (rather than a Hollywood actor) to make a particular faith com-mitment or for that matter have any faith at all In what languagedo historical actors dream about themselves and divinity and how doesthat language change over time And finally to what degree is faithitself a technology11

By acknowledging the white mythology that still informs say thefield of American religions such questions shift the scholarly emphasisfrom explicit expressions of religious belief and practice to the spacebetween those beliefs and practices and the world at-large Individualswithin American religious history for example have often been depictedas fully formed agents making choices between various faith commitmentsand ever combining religious idioms to suit their specific needs and cir-cumstances (Albanese 1997) No doubt this is true But there is anotherside to this story of radical religious pluralism one that if accounted

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 31

32

12 Such a possibility is very much at odds with the Geertzian model of ldquothickdescriptionrdquo and its formidable legacy in the humanities and social sciences Withoutquestioning the degree to which the self can ever become entirely legible to theself Geertz claimed that every society and individual life and by extension everybelief and every practice ldquocontain their own interpretations One has only to learnhow to gain access to themrdquo (Geertz 1973 453)

13 The ambiguities of agency during the ldquomachine agerdquo have been the subjectof a number of elegant critical studies See for example Anson Rabinbach TheHuman Motor Energy Fatigue and the Origins of Modernity (New York Basic Books1990) Mark Seltzer Bodies and Machines (New York Routledge 1992) MarthaBanta Taylorized Lives Narrative Productions in the Age of Taylor Veblen and Ford (ChicagoUniversity of Chicago Press 1993) Carolyn Thomas de la Pentildea The Body ElectricHow Strange Machines Built the Modern American (New York New York UniversityPress 2003) and Joel Dinerstein The Swinging Machine Modernity Technology andAfrican American Culture Between the World Wars (Amherst University of MassachusettsPress 2003) Dinersteinrsquos work is particularly relevant to the issue of religious com-binativeness given his emphasis on how African American artists strove to refigureldquomachine aestheticsrdquo in and through their artistry Dinersteinrsquos work suggests thatthe self is locatedmdashie the self happensmdashsomewhere between resistance and assim-ilation between choice and coercionmdasha lesson that many Anglo-Americans werenot willing to consider in their triumphal theorizing about the human in relationto the machine The possibility for consideration argues Dinerstein existed inAfrican American jazz swing and dance

for suggests new directions for the study of religion in America Althoughthe ldquolived religionrdquo perspective in American religious history has donemuch to overcome the distinction between ldquodabblersrdquo and ldquotrue believersrdquothe question of power still lingers (Ahlstrom 1972 1052) Religiousbeliefs and practices are neither essential things nor reveal themselvesto the scholar in toto12 Such a position does not replicate the eitherordiscussion regarding the agency of historical actors On the contraryit suggests that religious agency is a hybrid weave of intent and instinctimmediate response and mediated principle knowing and unknowing13

Accounting for the ambiguities of agency has already pushed scholarsof religion toward an anthropology of the secular and an explorationof in the Foucauldian phrasing of Talal Asad ldquothe contingencies thathave come together to give us our certaintiesrdquo (2003 16)

It is with a hint of irony then that one may return to the promotionalpamphlet of The Sea Beast that celebrates the ldquoconquestrdquo of Ahab andthe invisible wafting presence of screenwriter Bess Meredyth ldquoThereis no woman writing today who has contributed so much to genuine

screen values as Bess Meredythrdquo Indeed her son John Meredyth Lucasborn in 1919 continued down his motherrsquos unsettling path as a successfultelevision screenwriter and director His credits included episodes ofldquoStar Trekrdquo ldquoLoganrsquos Runrdquo and that other story of ldquohundred percentrdquoAmericanism ldquoThe Six Million Dollar Manrdquo

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 32

33

Figure 8 The Six Million Dollar Man ldquoGentlemen we can rebuild him Wehave the capability of making the worldrsquos first bionic man We can make him

better than he was before Better Stronger Fasterrdquo

Haverford College370 Lancaster AveHaverford PA 19041jlardashaverfordedu

References

Ahlstrom Sydney E (1972) A Religious History of the American People New HavenYale University Press

Albanese Catherine L (1997) Exchanging selves exchanging souls Contact com-bination and American religious history In Thomas A Tweed (ed) RetellingUS Religious History 200-26 Berkeley University of California Press

Anon (1851) A ship sunk by a whale Littellrsquos Living Age (29 November) 415-16Asad Talal (2003) Formations of the Secular Christianity Islam Modernity Stanford

Stanford University Press

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 33

34

Bacon Francis (1870) The Works of Francis Bacon James Spedding Robert LeslieEllis and Douglas Denon Heath (eds) Vol VIII New York Hurd andHoughton

Barton Bruce (2000) The Man Nobody Knows A Discovery of the Real Jesus ChicagoIvan R Dee

Beniger James R (1986) The Control Revolution Technological and Economic Origins ofthe Information Society Cambridge Harvard University Press

Benjamin Walter (1996) One-way street In Marcus Bullock amp Michael W Jennings(eds) Selected Writings Volume 1 1913-1926 444-88 Cambridge HarvardUniversity Press

mdash (2003) The work of art in the age of its technological reproducibility third ver-sion In Howard Eiland and Michael W Jennings (eds) Selected Writings Volume4 1938-40 251-83 Cambridge Harvard University Press

Bennett Charles A (1923) A Philosophical Study of Mysticism An Essay New HavenYale University Press 1923

Bernays Edward L (1923) Crystallizing Public Opinion New York Liverlight PublishingCorporation

Buchman SR (1925) Moby Dickmdashthe book and The Sea Beastmdashthe picture Anappreciation In Herman Melville Moby Dick or The White Whale ix-xi NewYork Grosset amp Dunlap

Butler Judith (1993) Bodies That Matter On the Discursive Limits of lsquoSexrsquo RoutledgeNew York

Cahir Linda Costanzo (1997) Routinizing the charismatic Melville and Hollywoodrsquosthree Moby-Dicks Melville Society Extracts 110 (September) 11-17

Cendrars Blaise (1922) Profound today Broom 13 ( January) 265-67Chadwick Owen (1975) The Secularization of the European Mind in the Nineteenth Century

Cambridge Cambridge University PressCoe George Albert (1917) A Social Theory of Religious Education New York Charles

Scribnerrsquos SonsDavidson Abraham A (1996) The European art invasion In Francis M Naumann

(ed) with Beth Vann Making Mischief Dada Invades New York 222-27 NewYork Whitney Museum of Art

Debord Guy (1995) Society of the Spectacle translated by Donald Nicholson-SmithNew York Zone Books

Derrida Jacques (1994) Specters of Marx The State of the Debt The Work of Mourningand the New International Peggy Kamuf (trans) New York Routledge

Dorsey George A (1925) Why We Behave Like Human Beings New York BlueRibbon Books

Epstein Jean (1922) The new conditions of literary phenomena Broom 21 (April)3-10

Frank Waldo (1919) Our America New York Boni and LiverightGammel Irene (2002) Baroness Elsa Gender Dada and Everyday Modernitymdasha Cultural

Biography Cambridge The MIT PressGeertz Clifford (1973) Deep play Notes on the Balinese cockfight In The Interpretation

of Cultures 412-53 New York Basic BooksHaraway Donna (2004) A manifesto for cyborgs Science technology and socialist

feminism in the 1980s In The Haraway Reader 7-45 New York RoutledgeHeap Jane (1922) Dada Little Review VII2 (Spring) 46Heidegger Martin (1977) The age of the world-picturerdquo In The Question Concerning

Technology and Other Essays 115-54 William Lovitt (trans) New York Harperamp Row

Hoffman Carol Stein (2001) The Barrymores Hollywoodrsquos First Family LexingtonUniversity of Kentucky Press

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 34

35

Jackson Josephine A and Helen M Salisbury (1922) Outwitting Our Nerves A Primerof Psychotherapy New York The Century Co

Jaffe David (1990) The village enlightenment in New England 1760-1820 TheWilliam and Mary Quarterly XLVII3 ( July) 327-46

Jones Rufus M (1915) Mysticism in present-day religion Harvard Theological ReviewVIII2 (April) 155-65

Kippenberg Hans G (2002) Discovering Religious History in the Modern Age BarbaraHarshav (trans) Princeton Princeton University Press

Kobler John (1977) Damned in Paradise The Life of John Barrymore New YorkAtheneum

Kuttner Alfred B (1922) Nerves In Harold E Stearns (ed) Civilization in the UnitedStates An Enquiry by Thirty Americans 427-42 New York Harcourt

Lauter Paul (1994) Melville climbs the canon American Literature 66 (March) 1-24Lawrence DH (1923) Studies in Classic American Literature New York T SeltzerLindbergh Charles A (1927) We New York GP Putnamrsquos SonsLippmann Walter (1922) Public Opinion New York Macmillan CompanyMarchand Roland (1985) Advertising the American Dream Making Way for Modernity

1920-1940 Berkeley University of California PressMarty Martin E Modern American Religion Vol 2 The Noise of Conflict 1919-1941

Chicago University of Chicago Press 1991May Henry F (1976) The Enlightenment in America New York Oxford University

PressMayhew Jonathan (1749) Concerning the difference between truth and falsehood

right and wrong In Seven Sermons 1-21 Boston Rogers and FowleMayr Otto (1970) The Origins of Feedback Control Cambridge The MIT PressMelville Herman (1993) Correspondence Volume 14 of The Writings of Herman Melville

Lynne Horth (ed) Evanston and Chicago Northwestern University Pressmdash (1925) Moby Dick or The White Whale 1851 New York Grosset amp DunlapMindell David A (2002) Between Human and Machine Feedback Control and Computing

Before Cybernetics Baltimore The Johns Hopkins University PressMumford Lewis (1929) Herman Melville New York The Literary Guild of Americamdash (1924) Sticks and Stones A Study of American Architecture and Civilization New York

Dover Publicationsmdash (1934) Technics and Civilization New York Harcourt Brace and Companymdash (1926) The Golden Day A Study in American Literature and Culture New York Boni

and LiverightMurray Jr HA (1929) Review of Lewis Mumfordrsquos Herman Melville The New

England Quarterly 2 ( July) 523-26Naumann Francis M (1994) New York Dada 1915-23 New York Harry N AbramsNoble David F (1999) The Religion of Technology The Divinity of Man and the Spirit

of Invention New York Penguin BooksNye David E (1994) American Technological Sublime Cambridge The MIT PressOrsquoNeil David (1921) The new Broom Broom 11 (November) 96Overton Grant (1928) The Philosophy of Fiction New York D AppletonPalmer Attorney General (1920) The case against the lsquoRedsrsquo The Forum A Magazine

of Constructive Nationalism 632 (February) 173-85Parsons Floyd W (1927) Everybodyrsquos business Advertising amp Selling ( June 29) 5 64Prampolini Enrico (1922) The aesthetic of the machine and mechanical intro-

spection in art Broom 33 (October) 235-37Rauschenbusch Walter (1917) A Theology for the Social Gospel New York The

Macmillan CompanyRichardson George P (1991) Feedback Thought in Social Science and Systems Theory

Philadelphia University of Pennsylvania Press

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 35

15

7 Public relations and advances in advertising were the latest instances of the ldquocontrol revolutionrdquo in which technology of interchangeability so integral to theAmerican System of manufacturing had extended its field of operations under theauspices of consumer capitalism Machines were not simply making parts for othermachines but were integral to the form and content of social reproduction Publicrelations was a particular (and less reliable) version of feedback control Instead ofmaintaining a fixed variable on the inside by responding to fluctuations on the out-side ldquocounselorsrdquo stoked the flames of consumer desire in order to justify an accel-erating rate of production and ideally consumption

(1929) Mumford had chided fellow revivalists for exaggerating Melvillersquosretreat into mystical idealism ldquoMelville was a realistrdquo countered Mumfordldquoin the sense that the great religious teachers are realistsrdquo FurthermoreMelville had witnessed the ldquovolcanic intrusionrdquo of ldquoindustrialism [as] avalue in itself rdquo (1929 5 64-65) But things had gotten much more com-plicated since the mid-nineteenth century Whereas Melville had beheldldquothe servile routine of the factory systemrdquo Mumford was now witness-ing the birth of ldquothe machine system the network of relationshipsthat have followed the financial exploitation of machineryrdquo The differencein other words was the full-scale emergence of self-governing tech-nologiesmdashldquohandicraft devoted to mechanical reproduction and machinerythat is set to reproduce endless simulacrardquo For Mumford this ldquomachineritualrdquo this ldquoendlessrdquo loop of ldquomechanical reproductionrdquo threatened toefface ldquothe human arts of seeing feeling and livingrdquo (1924 67-68 10174-75 105 81) Technology in other words had achieved the capacityfor feedback on two different but related levels first in material devicesthat could copy both nature and themselves and secondly in humansthat governed themselves according to the latest control variables setby the machine As Mumford argued the totalizing power of feedbacktechnologies resulted not simply from designs motors or even materialoutputs but through their economically driven expansion of ldquothe verydomain of the symbol itself rdquo (1934 331)

Mumfordrsquos insights take on more ominous implications when oneconsiders the rise of the American public relations industry during thisperiod7 Public relations consultants such as Edward Bernays and adver-tisers like Bruce Barton actively sought to shape and change the beliefsof individuals in the service of larger economic agendas It was no acci-dent Bernays wrote in 1923 that a ldquoman belongs to one church ratherthan another or to any church at allrdquo It was no accident that ldquoBostonwomen prefer brown eggs and New York women white eggsrdquo Becausethe judgments of individuals were not arrived at through ldquoresearch andlogical deductionrdquo but were ldquodogmatic expressions accepted on theauthority of his parents his teachers his church and of his social his

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 15

16

economic and other leadersrdquo a ldquopublic relations counselrdquo must do thework of reauthorization (Bernays 1923 62) Through the strategic ldquosat-urationrdquo of images text and work-place incentives an entire profes-sional class sought to provide the terms for and effectively monitor theconditions of self-realization (Marchand 1985 94-95)

What then did Melville have to offer those living within ldquothe machinesystemrdquo of the 1920s Mumford and other revivalists championed Moby-

Dick as a blueprint for living within an increasingly mechanical rou-tinized and bureaucratic world They also heaped admiration uponCaptain Ahab an odd choice given the outcome of Moby-Dick Contraryto those who would later read Ahabrsquos technologically enhanced dem-agoguery against the political backdrops of Italian Fascism and NationalSocialism Ahabrsquos madness in the 1920s could be considered ldquoactiveand courageousrdquo as well as a sign of ldquogeniusrdquomdashldquothe very pinnacle ofhuman self-assertionrdquo (Watson 1970 136 Sullivan 1970 163) Suchreadings conflated the white whale with the power of technology andhad Ahab defiantly affirm the principle of free-will and defend theboundary between human and material worlds Mumford for examplewrote of Ahab as the ldquospirit of manrdquo who stood in opposition to ldquothebrute energies of existence blind fatal overpoweringrdquo Ahab was self-directive ldquopurposiverdquo and he pitted his ldquopuniness against this mightand [his] purpose against the blank senselessness of powerrdquo So eventhough Ahabrsquos ldquomethods are ill-chosenrdquo wrote Mumford his ldquodefianceis noblerdquo (Mumford 1929 184-86)

4 People who portray themselves or Ahab on Ahab

Film projectors in addition to utilizing concepts of feedback internallywere often seen as generative of external feedback loops between humansand machines nature and artifice Such loops arguably constituted theldquosociety of the spectaclerdquo Guy Debordrsquos term for the image-saturatedenvironment that arose in the 1920s with the confluence of sound filmtelevision and the perfection of propaganda techniques As one of themore grim assessments of an image-based postmodernity Debord definedthe ldquospectaclerdquo in terms of negative feedback ldquoIt is the omnipresentcelebration of a choice already made in the sphere of production andthe consummate result of that choice In form as in content the spectacleserves as total justification for the conditions and aims of the existingsystem It further ensures the permanent presence of that justification forit governs almost all time spent outside the production process itself rdquo

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 16

17

8 Cahir (1997) has made a similar point Although I agree with her assessmentthat The Sea Beast is about Ahabrsquos ldquoreal pursuit of identityrdquo I take issue with herargument that The Sea Beast validates autonomous autotelic forms of masculine identity

(13) In America Debordian paranoia was rampant as Victorian fearsover the exploitation of pleasure were morphing into general anxietiesconcerning voyeurism and cinematic determinism ldquoThe spectacle ofmechanical progress has made so deep an impressionrdquo argued WalterLippmann in 1922 ldquothat it has suffused the whole moral coderdquo Whatdisturbed Lippmann and other public figures was the specter of circularcausality and the quiet ldquoinsertion between man and his environmentof a pseudo-environmentrdquo composed mainly of images (Lippmann 1922108 15) Unbeknownst to them Americans were in danger of becom-ing automated by images and trapped within what Debord would latercall ldquoan uninterrupted monologue of self-praiserdquo (19) Their perpetualaffirmation of self however was wholly cybernetic given the fact thatthey were oblivious to the fact that ldquoon the screen the whole processof observing describing reporting and then imagining has been accom-plished for yourdquo (92)

In a strange twist that Melville might have enjoyed the most com-pelling representation of Moby-Dick and portrayal of Captain Ahab mayhave occurred via the technology of the moving picture8 The 1926silent film The Sea Beast adapted to the screen by Bess Meredyth andstarring John Barrymore as Captain Ahab dramatized the feedbackdimensions of film and its capacity to regulate the human personalityThe Sea Beast I argue challenged more able-bodied academic inter-pretations by reveling in its status as a technological reproduction The

Sea Beast with its odd juxtapositions visceral jump cuts and perverseattention to Ahabrsquos stump and artificial limb rather than affirm thedesire for self-transparency suggested that the equipment-free reality ofthe self was quite literally an enabling fiction What Americans lackedaccording to Meredythrsquos scenario was the tragic recognition of them-selves as always regulated and already enhanced by technology Takingldquopleasure in the confusion of boundariesrdquo and ldquoresponsibility in their con-structionrdquo The Sea Beast in the borrowed words of Donna Harawaymade ldquoan argument for the cyborg as a fiction mapping our social andbodily reality and as an imaginative resource suggesting some very fruit-ful couplingsrdquo (8)

In 1925 at age forty-three John Barrymore was one of Hollywoodrsquosmost bankable actors (part of the ldquostar-systemrdquo promoted by Edward

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 17

18

Bernays who clearly saw the potential for cross-marketing between enter-tainment business and political campaigns) Barrymore easily convincedWarner Brothers to turn Moby-Dick one of his favorite novels into amovie and to cast him in the role of Captain Ahab Having playedHamlet in the 1922-23 Broadway season Barrymore developed a keeninterest in psychoanalysis and Freudrsquos account of Hamlet in Interpretationof Dreams (1900) The role of Captain Ahab like that of Hamlet allowedBarrymore to reach a larger audience with his newly emotive actingstyle As Captain Ahab he could also remind his audience of his depthand manly credentials He was tired in his words of playing ldquoscentedbepuffed bewigged and ringletted charactersrdquo (quoted in Kobler 1977213) Promotional pamphlets for The Sea Beast seemed to reinforceBarrymorersquos gendered strategy featuring a picture of Barrymore in abusiness suit puffing contemplatively on a pipemdashldquoJohn Barrymore ismore than a name more than a personality he is world institutionrdquo(Hoffman 2001 73)

The opening credits to The Sea Beast begin imprecisely with a close-up of the filmrsquos textual referent Moby Dick or the White Whale Thissimulated text begins not with ldquoExtractsrdquo or even ldquoCall me Ishmaelrdquobut with the following words ldquoThere never was nor ever will be abraver life than the life of the whaler Compared to the game theyhunted the mightiest land beast was but a poodle dogrdquo Adapted tothe screen by Bess Meredyth former actress turned writer The Sea Beast

is noteworthy as one of the earliest if not the first public appropriationsof Melvillersquos novel by a woman By 1926 Meredyth had become aHollywood regular having written the scenarios or continuities for Ben

Hur (1925) Don Juan (1926) and at least 70 other films ldquoThere is nowoman writing todayrdquo read the promotional copy of The Sea Beastldquowho has contributed so much to genuine screen values as Bess Meredythrdquo(Hoffman 2001 74) The ldquogenuinerdquo sense Meredyth made of Melvillersquosepic is significant in its relentless focus on the self as a technologicalconstruct In Meredythrsquos scenario one literally glimpses the spirit ofMelvillersquos rejection of the contemplative insular and hyper-masculinizedself of mid-nineteenth-century religion and science In its plot and per-verse attention to Ahabrsquos stump The Sea Beast suggests that nothing willor even can make up for the loss Ahab suffers

After the opening credits the audience is introduced to a healthyCaptain Ahab atop the masthead He looks out over the sea and downon his crew hard at work his feet tapping to the beat of the sea shantyldquoHanging Johnnyrdquo Nostalgia and the logic of substitution are bothbroached in the opening scenesmdashnot in terms of idealism but in ways

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 18

19

that hint at their subsequent negation As Ahab reads a letter from hisbeloved Esther Harper the daughter of a Christian missionary playedby the nineteen year-old Dolores Costello Ahab looks longingly at hername tattooed on his arm His mind drifts back to their last embraceFollowing a long close-up of his legs Ahab descends from the mastheadthe camera sliding down the rope in real time and from Ahabrsquos pointof view his legs leading the way The experience of vertigo engenderedby the shot suggests that Ahabrsquos identity is already unstable alreadymarked by a palpable lack of ground This shot however is quicklyoffset by numerous scenes that depict the fullness of Ahabrsquos vigor par-ticularly in relation to his healthy pair of legs He jumps he hops heruns around

When Ahabrsquos ship docks in the bay of Mauritius the audience isintroduced to Esther as well as to Derek Ahabrsquos scheming half-brotherIt is here that one is reminded of the words from the 1925 promotionalpublication of Moby-Dick accompanied by scenes from The Sea Beastldquothe screen version of lsquoMoby Dickrsquo exceeds the book The discrepancybetween the two must not be considered as a profanely wanton alterationrdquoTo portray the ldquopsychological studyrdquo of Captain Ahab ldquothe camerahas resorted to means of its own A mental state therefore particularlyan involved condition of mind must be expressed by means of the inci-dents which produced it each tortuous thought composing Ahabrsquos madness must be traced to the event which engendered itrdquo (Buchman1925 x) The most obvious incident being the loss of Ahabrsquos leg butthe film compounds this felt sense of loss by turning Melvillersquos tale intoa misbegotten love triangle between Ahab Derek and Esther the appleof both their eyes

On shore Ahab and Esther declare their love to each other Butafter a few days Ahab sails from Mauritius and scans the shore withhis telescope He spies Estherrsquos window She comes to the window andreturns Ahabrsquos gaze through her own telescope Technology has literallybecome the lens through which they see each other through whicheach declares their commitment They wave and blow kisses until theyare both out of range At sea Ahab is betrayed by Derek who unbe-knownst to Ahab pushes him overboard into the waiting jaws of MobyDick After losing his leg Ahab is distraught Derek then taunts Ahaband suggests that his symbolic castration is too much for any relation-ship to bear As Derek reminds him ldquoEsther was always crazy aboutyour beinrsquo so strong and perfectrdquo Having been fitted with his ivorystump Ahab arrives back at Mauritius Derek then shames Ahab evenfurther by telling him that he and Esther are in love and that Esther

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 19

20

cannot bring herself to tell Ahab of the deceit Derek then goes toEsther to convince her that Ahab has abandoned her When Ahabarrives at Estherrsquos house to confirm Derekrsquos story he sees their shadowscast by the light of spermaceti candles and mistakenly believes thatEsther has indeed left him for Derek It is here that Ahab descendsinto his infamous monomania

Ahab goes onto slay Moby Dick but not before uncovering his half-brotherrsquos double betrayal In a dramatic confrontation Derek pulls aknife on Ahab and is about to get the best of our hero But wait Ahabwedges his ivory stump into the deck leveraging himself in order tofend off Derek Ahab then casts Derek overboard and into the sea Anivory technology marking the absence of Ahabrsquos leg has been trans-formed into a salvific presence Or so it seems when the audience istreated to the restoration of order upon the Pequodrsquos return to portand Ahabrsquos reunion with Esther consummated in their tearful embraceHaving staged and seemingly resolved the crisis of masculine identity(the raison drsquoecirctre of melodrama being that the resolution is alreadypresent in the staging) The Sea Beast on the contrary did anything butrestore the full presence of Ahabrsquos self It suggested through both contentand form that the reality of the self whether it be Ahab or the spec-tator in the theater was neither fully resolvable nor equipment-free

Ahab achieves a kind of liberation on screen by recognizing that heis always already a figment of an imagination that is not his own Afterthe tearful reunion between Ahab and Esther the screen goes blackThe audience is then given a glimpse behind the scenes as it weremdasha scene of the director Millard Webb in his chair issuing directionsto Ahab and Esther in Estherrsquos living room A man in a business suitplays the violin in the background As Ahab and Esther look longinglyinto each otherrsquos eyes Ahab slips a ring onto Estherrsquos finger and theyembrace once again Or is it Barrymore and Costello It is unclearparticularly in light of the rumors of an off screen tryst between themiddle-aged Barrymore and his nineteen-year old costar (they wouldlater marry) The loving embrace is seemingly real an ambiguityreaffirmed by the fact that after Webb yells ldquocutrdquo he has to step betweenthe couple and remind them that they are on film Webb then turnsto the camera and smiles as the screen abruptly cuts to black onceagain

The odd ending of The Sea Beast suggests that Ahabrsquos journey towardreconciliation did not end with self-exposure but that it could neverreally begin Rather than achieve restoration of nature in and througha cultural construction Ahabrsquos artificial leg points to a previously

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 20

21

Figure 4 Final Embrace between AhabBarrymore and EstherCostello

ldquoexcluded and illegible domain that haunts the former domain as thespecter of its own impossibility the very limit of intelligibility its con-stitutive outsiderdquo (Butler 1993 xi) The ending harkens back to the seashanty ldquoHanging Johnnyrdquo Ahabrsquos introductory descent from the mast-head and his telescopic flirtation with Esther both vertiginous slidesinto the unfathomable layers of mediated perception that signal theldquoexecutionrdquo of possessive individualism Rather than erase the sign ofAhabrsquos traumamdashhis ivory legmdashthe ending of The Sea Beast suggests thatAhab and Barrymore are two sides of the same character vacillatingwithin the loop of continuous performativity One is reminded here ofWalter Benjaminrsquos insight into the traumatized subject in the age oftechnological reproducibility As Benjamin argues the trauma can beunderstood as a shift from the stage to the screen in which the actorperforms for a ldquopiece of equipmentrdquo rather than for an audience Citingthe Italian playwright Luigi Pirandello Benjamin suggests that the mod-ern subject is

exiled not only from the stage but from his own person With a vagueunease he senses an inexplicable void stemming from the fact that hisbody has lost its substance that he has been volatilized stripped of his

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 21

22

reality his life his voice the noises he makes when moving about andhas been turned into a mute image that flickers for a moment on thescreen then vanishes into silence (2003 260)

Pirandellorsquos borrowed words speak directly to Meredythrsquos reconfigurationof Melvillersquos text Whereas Melvillersquos Ahab tried and failed to conquerthe very source of visual illuminationmdashthe spermaceti oil that allowedantebellum Americans to see in the darkmdashBarrymorersquos Ahab revels inthe technologically enhanced gaze of his audience When the lightscome up the selves of Ahab Barrymore and the audience have beenre-narrativized as cybernetic that is as permanently divided and fun-damentally transient In affirming the really real offscreen relationshipbetween Barrymore and Costello the uncanny ending of The Sea Beast

supported a notion of selfhood as always already mediated or betteryet the necessity of experience to be mediated in order for it to becomereal or maybe even the necessity of acknowledging that the reality ofthe self is really made up

Barrymorersquos self-conscious performance inspired by his reading ofFreud and designed to overcome middle-class mores did not so muchpenetrate the inner depths of his character as it did the emotional lifeand perceptual apparatus of his audience The Sea Beast does not dram-atize the individual conquest of nature as much as it dramatizes visualtechnologyrsquos seduction of the individual The Sea Beast in its staging ofa cybernetic reality denied the very concept of 100 Americanism byinterrupting the narrative closure on which self-presence dependedNeither Ahab nor Barrymore nor the audience are ever alone even intheir solitude They are haunted not simply by the unconscious butby the specters generated in and through technologies of reproduction(Derrida 1994 97) They are in Benjaminrsquos apt phrase ldquopeople whoportray themselvesrdquo (Benjamin 2003 262)

For Benjamin photography and cinema were technologies of religiousrevelation for better or for worse in that they both exposed variousfeedback loops that constituted onersquos identity On one level Benjaminargued that the category of originality had been challenged by visualtechnologies that put copies ldquoof the original in situations which theoriginal itself cannot attainrdquo (2003 254) On another level the decayof the ldquoaurardquo of authenticity and the blurring of original and reproductionenabled individuals to recognize the fact that they were implicated inthe perceptual field and no longer insulated from what they saw orheard ldquoReception in distractionrdquo wrote Benjamin ldquowhich is increas-ing noticeably in all areas of art and is a symptom of profound changesin apperceptionmdashfinds in film its true training groundrdquo (269) Influenced

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 22

23

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethersquos notion of ldquoafter-imagesrdquo in Theory

of Colours (the same text that informed Melvillersquos ldquoThe Whiteness of theWhalerdquo) Benjamin announced the birth of the ldquooptical unconsciousrdquo(266) According to Benjamin images had become the currency of con-sciousness structuring thought and determining the range of possibleactions Mechanical means of reproduction had liberated the perceptualcapacities of humanity They had also ushered in the prospect of massdeception and control Either way they had resulted in a ldquomassiveupheaval in the domain of objectsrdquo and a ldquoshattering of traditionrdquo (254)

5 American Dada and the aporias of modernity

Within the Melville Revivalmdashan almost clicheacuted instance of Modernismrsquosvogue for the solitary geniusmdashseeds of post-Cartesian doubt were beingsown and the enchanting dimensions of technology considered BecauseMelville ldquowas spell-bound by the strange slidings and collidings ofMatterrdquo his work in the eyes of more atheological critics exposed theenchanting conditions of the machine age (Taylor 1984) ldquoIt is the mate-rial elements he really has to do withrdquo wrote DH Lawrence in 1923ldquoHis drama is with them He was a futurist long before futurism foundpaintrdquo (216) For Lewis Mumford too Melville had not simply dram-atized the incursion of machinesmdasha traditional Romantic tropemdashbuthad embraced a series of insoluble contradictions He has come to rec-ognize those parts of the world and himself that had already been pro-duced by machines and had insisted that the plasticity of self wassomething with which Americans had to struggle and to their spiritualdetriment repress

In broaching the aporias of modernity Mumford saw Melville as hav-ing already given the lie to Weberian diagnoses of disenchantment Thecapacity to effectively turn night into day Mumford suggested the expe-rience of a subway car rumbling past the solid structures of a sky-scraper vanishing into the air the peering into a microscope and theobservation of a ldquorow of bottles each of identical size shape colorstretching away for a quarter of a milerdquo were enough to induce a particular kind of vertigo ldquoThe special visual effect of repeating pat-tern[s]rdquo occurred simultaneously with the experience ldquoof the unique andthe non-repeatablerdquo (Mumford 1934 333-34) The experience of intensesystematicitymdashprecisely what feedback technologies were designed toinducemdashcould be positively disorienting when the infinitely calculableassumed the ldquospecial qualityrdquo of the ldquoincalculablerdquo (Heidegger 1977

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 23

24

135) According to Mumford when technology no longer made imperfectcopies of nature but perfect copies of itself the very notion of ldquonaturalrdquocould become radically suspect With the ldquoliquidationrdquo of the solid book-ends of authenticity and artifice came the prospect that the spectrumitself was socially constructed for better or for worse (Benjamin 2003255) Having torn aside the veil ldquoman has thrown between his ownexperience and the blank reality of the universerdquo Melville neither suc-cumbed to the temptation of nihilism nor retreated into his own pri-vate morality On the contrary he urged his contemporaries to ownup to the constructedness of any and all cultural forms and expressionsand the faith commitments that undergirded them As Mumford wroteldquoto appreciate the reality of the White Whale is to see more deeplyinto the expedience of all our immediate institutions all the spiritualshelters man puts between himself and the uncertain cosmic weatherMeaning significance attends only that little part of the universe manhas built up and settledrdquo (Mumford 1926 150-51)

Whereas Mumford assessed the religious dimensions of technologicalldquoprogressrdquo in a tragic key others tended toward the comic as was thecase with a group of experimental artists associated with Broom An

International Magazine of the Arts Published by Americans in Italy publishedbetween 1921 and 1924 (Tashjian 1975 116-34) Broomrsquos co-editor thepoet Alfred Kreyemborg (who would later co-edit The American Caravan

with Lewis Mumford) had adapted a passage from Moby-Dick for itstitle logo and statement of purpose which appeared on the back coverldquoWhat of itrdquo asks Ishmael

if some old hunks of a seacaptain orders me to get a broom and sweepdown the decks What does that indignity amount to weighed I meanin the scales of the New Testament Do you think the Archangel Gabrielthinks any less of me because I promptly and respectfully obey that oldhunks that particular instance Who ainrsquot a slave (Melville 1925 4)

The first issue of Broom included poems addressing Albert Einsteinrsquostheory of relativity as well as Emmy Veronica Sanders declaration thatldquothe American Machinerdquo was ldquotransforming itself with all its attributesand characteristics into American Mindrdquo ldquoAmericardquo she continuedinitially ldquomade of the Puritan by the Puritan for the Puritanrdquo wasnow being ldquoremade of the Machine by the Machine for the Machinerdquo(89-90) Following Sandersrsquos piece was a David OrsquoNeilrsquos hymn of sup-plication to the new Gods of the machine

When you are sweeping usWith Your cosmic broom

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 24

25

Figure 5 Nature and Second Nature in Technics and Civilization (1934)

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 25

26

Sweeping us out of mouldy rutsSweeping us clean and sweetmdash

RememberWhen wersquore quiveringmdashSensitivemdashbaremdashWe shall be gratefulFor just a few shadows (96)

Broom took Ishmaelrsquos retort quite seriously addressing the revolutionarydimensions of technological artifice and the shadows cast within therealm of technological illumination

Unlike Futurism Broom did not celebrate the beauty of war It didhowever come to express the ldquodreamed-of metallization of the humanbodyrdquo and the playful cybernetic fantasies of Dadaists such as ManRay and Francis Picabia (quoted in Benjamin 2003 269) After someinitial hesitation Broom began to embrace Dadarsquos perspective on the lib-eratory dimensions of the human-machine interface ldquoEverything isartificialrdquo gasped Broom contributor Blaise Cendrars ldquoThe eyes thehand the sexual frenzy of the factory The wheel which turns Thewing which flies The voice which travels far on a wire Your ear ina trumpet Your sense of direction Your rhythm You melt the worldin the mould of your skull Your brain is hollow Like a religion amysterious pill hastens your digestionrdquo (265) Jean Epstein from a slightdifferent angle argued that technology had ldquobecome part of ourselvesrdquoand had democratized human perceptionmdashldquoman has not one memoryof [the] landscape he [now] has a thousand different ones which mayor may not resemble each other Everything possesses hundreds ofapparent diameters which never superimpose exactlyrdquo (6-7)

Broom was soon translating less inflammatory Futurist manifestos suchas Enrico Prampolinirsquos ldquoThe Aesthetic of the Machine and MechanicalIntrospection in Artrdquo in which he declared ldquoIs not the machine todaythe most exuberant symbol of the mystery of human creation Is it notthe new mythical deity which weaves the legends and histories of thecontemporary human drama The Machine in its practical and materialfunction comes to have today in human concepts and thoughts thesignificance of an ideal and spiritual inspirationrdquo The kind of worshipthat ensued was that of the cyborg neither reverent nor memorializ-ing of cosmic law (Haraway 2004 9) Or as Prampolini wrote ldquoOurexperience has convinced us of the truth of certain of our plastic truthsand has allowed us to perceive the errors that lie in othersrdquo (236)

One of the more important pieces of American Dada captured pre-cisely this pointmdashGod (c 1917) designed by Baroness Elsa von Freytag-

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 26

27

Figure 6 Illustration accompanying Enrico Prampolinirsquos ldquoThe Aesthetic of theMachine and Mechanical Introspection in Artrdquo Broom 33 (October 1922) 237

Loringhoven and photographed by Morton Schamberg The invertedcast-iron plumbing trap atop a carpenterrsquos miter box was emblematicof the Melvillean appreciation for technological enchantment Indeedthe pipe is part of an indoor plumbing apparatus a modern conveniencewhose history dates back to some of the earliest feedback technologieson recordmdashthe water-clocks and float-regulators of ancient Greece (Mayr1970 11-26) God resembled the mechanical abstractions Schamberghad been producing before his premature death in 1918 during aninfluenza outbreak in Philadelphia The Baroness a contributor to Broom

and other little magazines had arrived in New York from Germanyin 1913 She was ldquothe first American dadardquo wrote Jane Heap in 1922ldquothe only one living anywhere who dresses dada loves dada lives dadardquo(46) Friends with Marcel Duchamp Djuna Barnes and other NewYork artists the Baroness was a central figure in a burgeoning trans-atlantic avant-garde In addition to her art and poetry the Baronesswas also a ldquoperformancerdquo artist who skillfully inverted gender hierarchiesand attacked through her very presence the traditional sensibilities ofthe middle-class She was notorious for walking around the streets ofGreenwich Village with her shaved head painted purple postage stampspasted to her face and a bird cage around her neck housing a livecanary (Davidson 1996 223-24)

In what must be considered a prescient assault on all manners oflogocentrism the Baroness also carried with her a plaster cast penis thatshe periodically revealed to passersby for maximum shock value (Gammel2002 195) But it was the Barnonessrsquos sculpture God that in addition

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 27

28

Figure 7 God (c 1917) designed by Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven and photographed by Morton Schamberg

to celebrating the mobility and reproducibility of that which was sup-posedly the most fixed and essential repossessed the power of tech-nology as ever imperfect and incomplete As a companion piece of sortsto Duchamprsquos infamous ready-made Fountain an inverted urinal dis-played in the 1917 exhibition of the American Society of IndependentArtists God invited more expressly theological speculation First of allit insisted on supplementing the three traditional symbolic centers ofWestern religious reflectionmdashGod humanity naturemdashwith the machineAnd although it has since been viewed by critics as ldquosacrilegiousrdquo andan instance of ldquoantireligious scatologyrdquo (Naumann 1994 171 Gammel220) the transgressive dimensions to God also affirm a shadowy open-

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 28

29

9 One is reminded here of Melvillersquos letter to Nathaniel Hawthorne in April of1851 ldquoWe incline to think that God cannot explain His own secrets and that Hewould like a little more information upon certain points Himself We mortals aston-ish Him as much as He usrdquo (Melville 1993 186)

ing to radical othernessmdashin the form of imperfection and chancemdashwithin the loops generated by feedback technology

Although the metal pipe ends up pointing toward heaven it firstloops downward in a nod to its human ground Limited by the skillsof the human carpenter on whose box it is anchored the contortedpipe narrativizes both the pitfalls and prospects of the machine ageShit eventually flows up in the case of God not down suggesting thateven the most lofty and noble ideals of the imagination maintain theirhuman aroma Rather than assume the power of divinity classicallyconstrued God staged divinity as nothing more and nothing less thanthat which made life livablemdashthat which kept the smell of human wasteartificially at bay or more ominously managed the flow of thingsthrough feedback control But even more literally God called attentionto the human work in the making of artifice and celebrated the bio-logical possibility for the endless unmaking (and remaking) of selfFeedback technology was not really God but it was for all practicalpurposes Or as the Baroness wrote in a 1927 letter to Peggy GuggenheimGod had much to learn from Henry Ford for he was ldquoclumsily sub-tle-densely-intelligent-inefficiently-immense-(Lord not Fordmdashof course)rdquo9

God the Baroness playfully warned had ldquobetter hotfoot it towardprogressmdashmodernizemdashuse his own omnipotence intelligentlymdashsmart orwersquoll all expire in tangle Well Lord knowsmdash(Does he)rdquo (quoted inGammel 2002 229)

6 Conclusion Deus in machina movet

As Protestant majorities struggled to adjust themselves and their theo-logical inheritance to new technological conditions theologies of themachine age both compelling and disturbing emerged from outsidethe precincts of traditional religious discourse For in addition to beinginspired by the ghost of Herman Melville the Melville Revival wasquite literally haunted by the power of feedback technologiesmdashspectersthat were affective rather than concrete strangely resistant to rationalcontemplation yet recognized through anxious admixtures of thoughtand feeling On one hand the revival reflected the spectrum of Protestant

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 29

30

10 Shortly after the publication of Moby-Dick in November of 1851 reports beganto reach America about the August sinking of the Ann Alexander by a whale in theSouth Pacific It was the first ldquoattack of a whale upon a shiprdquo since the destruc-tion of the Essex in 1820 The story about the Ann Alexander originally appeared inthe Panama Herald on October 16 and was reprinted the following month in New-York Daily Tribune and Littellrsquos Living Age The sperm whale that the Ann Alexander

fears over technological miscegenation The capacity of machines toredraw the boundaries of race and gender disturbed Protestant leadersand revivalists alike On the other hand subversive elements within theMelville Revival offered what must be considered a theological critiqueof how Protestants understood themselves and their God in relation totechnological materials Grant Overton for example saw in Moby-Dick

a deep appreciation for how technological developments had come tounderminemdashquite literally hauntmdashthe epistemological and ontologicalassumptions that made them possible ldquoNo longer able to instance thedeus ex machinardquo wrote Overton Melville was ldquounforgetful that deus inmachina movet and while most of mankind [have] become unable to seethe god for the machine [he] can scarcely perceive the machine forthe god agitating it [His] reports of the machine are somehow unrec-ognizable [his] realism is confronted by Realityrdquo (Overton 1928 231)

Bess Meredythrsquos reimagining of Moby-Dick and Baroness Elsa vonFreytag-Loringhovenrsquos God also explored the otherness that technologyengenders within the modern subject a trace that lingers despite allattempts to extinguish it Their errant readings challenged contempo-raries to reimagine their relationship to technology from an enchantedperspective that did not necessarily conform to the directives of Americanindividualism Resisting the advertisements of both Arminianism andBaconian Common Sense these readings insisted that there was somethingelsemdashsomething wholly othermdashoccurring within the technological workingsof secular modernity Excess or that which unsettled the boundariesbetween body and machine masculine and feminine had resulted inwhat might be called a ldquopost-structure of feelingrdquo The prospect thateither machines or women had begun to think for themselves or atleast possess a kind of agency once attributed to the enlightened malesubject now seemed as likely as a whale vengefully turning against awhaleship10 As Melvillean riffs on the deferred project of religious iden-tity The Sea Beast and God marked the space between human creationand technological determination consent and compulsion and there-fore hinted at the prospect that belief was not an individual state butan embodied activity Consistent with Lewis Mumfordrsquos assessment ofthe symbolic and material powers of feedback technology these works

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 30

31

had first turned upon starboard and larboard boats seizing both in its jaws andcrushing them to pieces It then rushed towards the Ann Alexander ldquoat the rateof fifteen knots In an instant the monster struck the ship with tremendous violence shakingher from stem to sternrdquo (415) Upon reading the article Melville remarked to his pub-lisher ldquothe Whale had almost completely slipped me for the time (amp I was themerrier for it) when Crash comes Moby Dick himself It is really amp truly a sur-prising coincidencemdashto say the least I make no doubt it is Moby Dick himself I wonder if my evil art has raised this monsterrdquo (Melville 1993 209)

11 William Jennings Bryan for example that standard bearer of fundamentalfaith equated faith to a particular kind of technologymdashldquothere is that in each humanliferdquo he wrote ldquothat corresponds to the mainspring of a watchmdashthat which isabsolutely necessary if the life is to be what it should be a real life and not amere existence That necessary thing is a belief in Godrdquo (86) Faith for Bryan wasthat which repeated without difference It was a dependable rational and utterlyrationalizing process It was not however self-regulating It affirmed the ldquorealnessrdquoof the individual believer precisely because it ignored the conditions imposed fromoutside the self But how might faith be viewed in terms of feedback and repro-ducibility rather than repetition a process that does not reaffirm a centered indi-vidual with every tick but adjusts accordingly to external fluctuations

raise numerous questions concerning the ways and means of religionin an age of postmodern complexity and virtual reality

How might a relentless focus on power and the porousness of sub-jectivity change how one views the matter of religion within historyHow might a greater attention to the aesthetic conditions that mediateany and all beliefs challenge the ways in which we distinguish the reli-gious from the secular How might a greater attention to the enchantingpower of material conditions challenge historical and political narrativesof secularization How do technologies and vested interests realize them-selves through the discourses of agency choice and mobility Whatin other words are the conditions of possibility that allow a historicalactor (rather than a Hollywood actor) to make a particular faith com-mitment or for that matter have any faith at all In what languagedo historical actors dream about themselves and divinity and how doesthat language change over time And finally to what degree is faithitself a technology11

By acknowledging the white mythology that still informs say thefield of American religions such questions shift the scholarly emphasisfrom explicit expressions of religious belief and practice to the spacebetween those beliefs and practices and the world at-large Individualswithin American religious history for example have often been depictedas fully formed agents making choices between various faith commitmentsand ever combining religious idioms to suit their specific needs and cir-cumstances (Albanese 1997) No doubt this is true But there is anotherside to this story of radical religious pluralism one that if accounted

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 31

32

12 Such a possibility is very much at odds with the Geertzian model of ldquothickdescriptionrdquo and its formidable legacy in the humanities and social sciences Withoutquestioning the degree to which the self can ever become entirely legible to theself Geertz claimed that every society and individual life and by extension everybelief and every practice ldquocontain their own interpretations One has only to learnhow to gain access to themrdquo (Geertz 1973 453)

13 The ambiguities of agency during the ldquomachine agerdquo have been the subjectof a number of elegant critical studies See for example Anson Rabinbach TheHuman Motor Energy Fatigue and the Origins of Modernity (New York Basic Books1990) Mark Seltzer Bodies and Machines (New York Routledge 1992) MarthaBanta Taylorized Lives Narrative Productions in the Age of Taylor Veblen and Ford (ChicagoUniversity of Chicago Press 1993) Carolyn Thomas de la Pentildea The Body ElectricHow Strange Machines Built the Modern American (New York New York UniversityPress 2003) and Joel Dinerstein The Swinging Machine Modernity Technology andAfrican American Culture Between the World Wars (Amherst University of MassachusettsPress 2003) Dinersteinrsquos work is particularly relevant to the issue of religious com-binativeness given his emphasis on how African American artists strove to refigureldquomachine aestheticsrdquo in and through their artistry Dinersteinrsquos work suggests thatthe self is locatedmdashie the self happensmdashsomewhere between resistance and assim-ilation between choice and coercionmdasha lesson that many Anglo-Americans werenot willing to consider in their triumphal theorizing about the human in relationto the machine The possibility for consideration argues Dinerstein existed inAfrican American jazz swing and dance

for suggests new directions for the study of religion in America Althoughthe ldquolived religionrdquo perspective in American religious history has donemuch to overcome the distinction between ldquodabblersrdquo and ldquotrue believersrdquothe question of power still lingers (Ahlstrom 1972 1052) Religiousbeliefs and practices are neither essential things nor reveal themselvesto the scholar in toto12 Such a position does not replicate the eitherordiscussion regarding the agency of historical actors On the contraryit suggests that religious agency is a hybrid weave of intent and instinctimmediate response and mediated principle knowing and unknowing13

Accounting for the ambiguities of agency has already pushed scholarsof religion toward an anthropology of the secular and an explorationof in the Foucauldian phrasing of Talal Asad ldquothe contingencies thathave come together to give us our certaintiesrdquo (2003 16)

It is with a hint of irony then that one may return to the promotionalpamphlet of The Sea Beast that celebrates the ldquoconquestrdquo of Ahab andthe invisible wafting presence of screenwriter Bess Meredyth ldquoThereis no woman writing today who has contributed so much to genuine

screen values as Bess Meredythrdquo Indeed her son John Meredyth Lucasborn in 1919 continued down his motherrsquos unsettling path as a successfultelevision screenwriter and director His credits included episodes ofldquoStar Trekrdquo ldquoLoganrsquos Runrdquo and that other story of ldquohundred percentrdquoAmericanism ldquoThe Six Million Dollar Manrdquo

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 32

33

Figure 8 The Six Million Dollar Man ldquoGentlemen we can rebuild him Wehave the capability of making the worldrsquos first bionic man We can make him

better than he was before Better Stronger Fasterrdquo

Haverford College370 Lancaster AveHaverford PA 19041jlardashaverfordedu

References

Ahlstrom Sydney E (1972) A Religious History of the American People New HavenYale University Press

Albanese Catherine L (1997) Exchanging selves exchanging souls Contact com-bination and American religious history In Thomas A Tweed (ed) RetellingUS Religious History 200-26 Berkeley University of California Press

Anon (1851) A ship sunk by a whale Littellrsquos Living Age (29 November) 415-16Asad Talal (2003) Formations of the Secular Christianity Islam Modernity Stanford

Stanford University Press

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 33

34

Bacon Francis (1870) The Works of Francis Bacon James Spedding Robert LeslieEllis and Douglas Denon Heath (eds) Vol VIII New York Hurd andHoughton

Barton Bruce (2000) The Man Nobody Knows A Discovery of the Real Jesus ChicagoIvan R Dee

Beniger James R (1986) The Control Revolution Technological and Economic Origins ofthe Information Society Cambridge Harvard University Press

Benjamin Walter (1996) One-way street In Marcus Bullock amp Michael W Jennings(eds) Selected Writings Volume 1 1913-1926 444-88 Cambridge HarvardUniversity Press

mdash (2003) The work of art in the age of its technological reproducibility third ver-sion In Howard Eiland and Michael W Jennings (eds) Selected Writings Volume4 1938-40 251-83 Cambridge Harvard University Press

Bennett Charles A (1923) A Philosophical Study of Mysticism An Essay New HavenYale University Press 1923

Bernays Edward L (1923) Crystallizing Public Opinion New York Liverlight PublishingCorporation

Buchman SR (1925) Moby Dickmdashthe book and The Sea Beastmdashthe picture Anappreciation In Herman Melville Moby Dick or The White Whale ix-xi NewYork Grosset amp Dunlap

Butler Judith (1993) Bodies That Matter On the Discursive Limits of lsquoSexrsquo RoutledgeNew York

Cahir Linda Costanzo (1997) Routinizing the charismatic Melville and Hollywoodrsquosthree Moby-Dicks Melville Society Extracts 110 (September) 11-17

Cendrars Blaise (1922) Profound today Broom 13 ( January) 265-67Chadwick Owen (1975) The Secularization of the European Mind in the Nineteenth Century

Cambridge Cambridge University PressCoe George Albert (1917) A Social Theory of Religious Education New York Charles

Scribnerrsquos SonsDavidson Abraham A (1996) The European art invasion In Francis M Naumann

(ed) with Beth Vann Making Mischief Dada Invades New York 222-27 NewYork Whitney Museum of Art

Debord Guy (1995) Society of the Spectacle translated by Donald Nicholson-SmithNew York Zone Books

Derrida Jacques (1994) Specters of Marx The State of the Debt The Work of Mourningand the New International Peggy Kamuf (trans) New York Routledge

Dorsey George A (1925) Why We Behave Like Human Beings New York BlueRibbon Books

Epstein Jean (1922) The new conditions of literary phenomena Broom 21 (April)3-10

Frank Waldo (1919) Our America New York Boni and LiverightGammel Irene (2002) Baroness Elsa Gender Dada and Everyday Modernitymdasha Cultural

Biography Cambridge The MIT PressGeertz Clifford (1973) Deep play Notes on the Balinese cockfight In The Interpretation

of Cultures 412-53 New York Basic BooksHaraway Donna (2004) A manifesto for cyborgs Science technology and socialist

feminism in the 1980s In The Haraway Reader 7-45 New York RoutledgeHeap Jane (1922) Dada Little Review VII2 (Spring) 46Heidegger Martin (1977) The age of the world-picturerdquo In The Question Concerning

Technology and Other Essays 115-54 William Lovitt (trans) New York Harperamp Row

Hoffman Carol Stein (2001) The Barrymores Hollywoodrsquos First Family LexingtonUniversity of Kentucky Press

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 34

35

Jackson Josephine A and Helen M Salisbury (1922) Outwitting Our Nerves A Primerof Psychotherapy New York The Century Co

Jaffe David (1990) The village enlightenment in New England 1760-1820 TheWilliam and Mary Quarterly XLVII3 ( July) 327-46

Jones Rufus M (1915) Mysticism in present-day religion Harvard Theological ReviewVIII2 (April) 155-65

Kippenberg Hans G (2002) Discovering Religious History in the Modern Age BarbaraHarshav (trans) Princeton Princeton University Press

Kobler John (1977) Damned in Paradise The Life of John Barrymore New YorkAtheneum

Kuttner Alfred B (1922) Nerves In Harold E Stearns (ed) Civilization in the UnitedStates An Enquiry by Thirty Americans 427-42 New York Harcourt

Lauter Paul (1994) Melville climbs the canon American Literature 66 (March) 1-24Lawrence DH (1923) Studies in Classic American Literature New York T SeltzerLindbergh Charles A (1927) We New York GP Putnamrsquos SonsLippmann Walter (1922) Public Opinion New York Macmillan CompanyMarchand Roland (1985) Advertising the American Dream Making Way for Modernity

1920-1940 Berkeley University of California PressMarty Martin E Modern American Religion Vol 2 The Noise of Conflict 1919-1941

Chicago University of Chicago Press 1991May Henry F (1976) The Enlightenment in America New York Oxford University

PressMayhew Jonathan (1749) Concerning the difference between truth and falsehood

right and wrong In Seven Sermons 1-21 Boston Rogers and FowleMayr Otto (1970) The Origins of Feedback Control Cambridge The MIT PressMelville Herman (1993) Correspondence Volume 14 of The Writings of Herman Melville

Lynne Horth (ed) Evanston and Chicago Northwestern University Pressmdash (1925) Moby Dick or The White Whale 1851 New York Grosset amp DunlapMindell David A (2002) Between Human and Machine Feedback Control and Computing

Before Cybernetics Baltimore The Johns Hopkins University PressMumford Lewis (1929) Herman Melville New York The Literary Guild of Americamdash (1924) Sticks and Stones A Study of American Architecture and Civilization New York

Dover Publicationsmdash (1934) Technics and Civilization New York Harcourt Brace and Companymdash (1926) The Golden Day A Study in American Literature and Culture New York Boni

and LiverightMurray Jr HA (1929) Review of Lewis Mumfordrsquos Herman Melville The New

England Quarterly 2 ( July) 523-26Naumann Francis M (1994) New York Dada 1915-23 New York Harry N AbramsNoble David F (1999) The Religion of Technology The Divinity of Man and the Spirit

of Invention New York Penguin BooksNye David E (1994) American Technological Sublime Cambridge The MIT PressOrsquoNeil David (1921) The new Broom Broom 11 (November) 96Overton Grant (1928) The Philosophy of Fiction New York D AppletonPalmer Attorney General (1920) The case against the lsquoRedsrsquo The Forum A Magazine

of Constructive Nationalism 632 (February) 173-85Parsons Floyd W (1927) Everybodyrsquos business Advertising amp Selling ( June 29) 5 64Prampolini Enrico (1922) The aesthetic of the machine and mechanical intro-

spection in art Broom 33 (October) 235-37Rauschenbusch Walter (1917) A Theology for the Social Gospel New York The

Macmillan CompanyRichardson George P (1991) Feedback Thought in Social Science and Systems Theory

Philadelphia University of Pennsylvania Press

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 35

16

economic and other leadersrdquo a ldquopublic relations counselrdquo must do thework of reauthorization (Bernays 1923 62) Through the strategic ldquosat-urationrdquo of images text and work-place incentives an entire profes-sional class sought to provide the terms for and effectively monitor theconditions of self-realization (Marchand 1985 94-95)

What then did Melville have to offer those living within ldquothe machinesystemrdquo of the 1920s Mumford and other revivalists championed Moby-

Dick as a blueprint for living within an increasingly mechanical rou-tinized and bureaucratic world They also heaped admiration uponCaptain Ahab an odd choice given the outcome of Moby-Dick Contraryto those who would later read Ahabrsquos technologically enhanced dem-agoguery against the political backdrops of Italian Fascism and NationalSocialism Ahabrsquos madness in the 1920s could be considered ldquoactiveand courageousrdquo as well as a sign of ldquogeniusrdquomdashldquothe very pinnacle ofhuman self-assertionrdquo (Watson 1970 136 Sullivan 1970 163) Suchreadings conflated the white whale with the power of technology andhad Ahab defiantly affirm the principle of free-will and defend theboundary between human and material worlds Mumford for examplewrote of Ahab as the ldquospirit of manrdquo who stood in opposition to ldquothebrute energies of existence blind fatal overpoweringrdquo Ahab was self-directive ldquopurposiverdquo and he pitted his ldquopuniness against this mightand [his] purpose against the blank senselessness of powerrdquo So eventhough Ahabrsquos ldquomethods are ill-chosenrdquo wrote Mumford his ldquodefianceis noblerdquo (Mumford 1929 184-86)

4 People who portray themselves or Ahab on Ahab

Film projectors in addition to utilizing concepts of feedback internallywere often seen as generative of external feedback loops between humansand machines nature and artifice Such loops arguably constituted theldquosociety of the spectaclerdquo Guy Debordrsquos term for the image-saturatedenvironment that arose in the 1920s with the confluence of sound filmtelevision and the perfection of propaganda techniques As one of themore grim assessments of an image-based postmodernity Debord definedthe ldquospectaclerdquo in terms of negative feedback ldquoIt is the omnipresentcelebration of a choice already made in the sphere of production andthe consummate result of that choice In form as in content the spectacleserves as total justification for the conditions and aims of the existingsystem It further ensures the permanent presence of that justification forit governs almost all time spent outside the production process itself rdquo

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 16

17

8 Cahir (1997) has made a similar point Although I agree with her assessmentthat The Sea Beast is about Ahabrsquos ldquoreal pursuit of identityrdquo I take issue with herargument that The Sea Beast validates autonomous autotelic forms of masculine identity

(13) In America Debordian paranoia was rampant as Victorian fearsover the exploitation of pleasure were morphing into general anxietiesconcerning voyeurism and cinematic determinism ldquoThe spectacle ofmechanical progress has made so deep an impressionrdquo argued WalterLippmann in 1922 ldquothat it has suffused the whole moral coderdquo Whatdisturbed Lippmann and other public figures was the specter of circularcausality and the quiet ldquoinsertion between man and his environmentof a pseudo-environmentrdquo composed mainly of images (Lippmann 1922108 15) Unbeknownst to them Americans were in danger of becom-ing automated by images and trapped within what Debord would latercall ldquoan uninterrupted monologue of self-praiserdquo (19) Their perpetualaffirmation of self however was wholly cybernetic given the fact thatthey were oblivious to the fact that ldquoon the screen the whole processof observing describing reporting and then imagining has been accom-plished for yourdquo (92)

In a strange twist that Melville might have enjoyed the most com-pelling representation of Moby-Dick and portrayal of Captain Ahab mayhave occurred via the technology of the moving picture8 The 1926silent film The Sea Beast adapted to the screen by Bess Meredyth andstarring John Barrymore as Captain Ahab dramatized the feedbackdimensions of film and its capacity to regulate the human personalityThe Sea Beast I argue challenged more able-bodied academic inter-pretations by reveling in its status as a technological reproduction The

Sea Beast with its odd juxtapositions visceral jump cuts and perverseattention to Ahabrsquos stump and artificial limb rather than affirm thedesire for self-transparency suggested that the equipment-free reality ofthe self was quite literally an enabling fiction What Americans lackedaccording to Meredythrsquos scenario was the tragic recognition of them-selves as always regulated and already enhanced by technology Takingldquopleasure in the confusion of boundariesrdquo and ldquoresponsibility in their con-structionrdquo The Sea Beast in the borrowed words of Donna Harawaymade ldquoan argument for the cyborg as a fiction mapping our social andbodily reality and as an imaginative resource suggesting some very fruit-ful couplingsrdquo (8)

In 1925 at age forty-three John Barrymore was one of Hollywoodrsquosmost bankable actors (part of the ldquostar-systemrdquo promoted by Edward

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 17

18

Bernays who clearly saw the potential for cross-marketing between enter-tainment business and political campaigns) Barrymore easily convincedWarner Brothers to turn Moby-Dick one of his favorite novels into amovie and to cast him in the role of Captain Ahab Having playedHamlet in the 1922-23 Broadway season Barrymore developed a keeninterest in psychoanalysis and Freudrsquos account of Hamlet in Interpretationof Dreams (1900) The role of Captain Ahab like that of Hamlet allowedBarrymore to reach a larger audience with his newly emotive actingstyle As Captain Ahab he could also remind his audience of his depthand manly credentials He was tired in his words of playing ldquoscentedbepuffed bewigged and ringletted charactersrdquo (quoted in Kobler 1977213) Promotional pamphlets for The Sea Beast seemed to reinforceBarrymorersquos gendered strategy featuring a picture of Barrymore in abusiness suit puffing contemplatively on a pipemdashldquoJohn Barrymore ismore than a name more than a personality he is world institutionrdquo(Hoffman 2001 73)

The opening credits to The Sea Beast begin imprecisely with a close-up of the filmrsquos textual referent Moby Dick or the White Whale Thissimulated text begins not with ldquoExtractsrdquo or even ldquoCall me Ishmaelrdquobut with the following words ldquoThere never was nor ever will be abraver life than the life of the whaler Compared to the game theyhunted the mightiest land beast was but a poodle dogrdquo Adapted tothe screen by Bess Meredyth former actress turned writer The Sea Beast

is noteworthy as one of the earliest if not the first public appropriationsof Melvillersquos novel by a woman By 1926 Meredyth had become aHollywood regular having written the scenarios or continuities for Ben

Hur (1925) Don Juan (1926) and at least 70 other films ldquoThere is nowoman writing todayrdquo read the promotional copy of The Sea Beastldquowho has contributed so much to genuine screen values as Bess Meredythrdquo(Hoffman 2001 74) The ldquogenuinerdquo sense Meredyth made of Melvillersquosepic is significant in its relentless focus on the self as a technologicalconstruct In Meredythrsquos scenario one literally glimpses the spirit ofMelvillersquos rejection of the contemplative insular and hyper-masculinizedself of mid-nineteenth-century religion and science In its plot and per-verse attention to Ahabrsquos stump The Sea Beast suggests that nothing willor even can make up for the loss Ahab suffers

After the opening credits the audience is introduced to a healthyCaptain Ahab atop the masthead He looks out over the sea and downon his crew hard at work his feet tapping to the beat of the sea shantyldquoHanging Johnnyrdquo Nostalgia and the logic of substitution are bothbroached in the opening scenesmdashnot in terms of idealism but in ways

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 18

19

that hint at their subsequent negation As Ahab reads a letter from hisbeloved Esther Harper the daughter of a Christian missionary playedby the nineteen year-old Dolores Costello Ahab looks longingly at hername tattooed on his arm His mind drifts back to their last embraceFollowing a long close-up of his legs Ahab descends from the mastheadthe camera sliding down the rope in real time and from Ahabrsquos pointof view his legs leading the way The experience of vertigo engenderedby the shot suggests that Ahabrsquos identity is already unstable alreadymarked by a palpable lack of ground This shot however is quicklyoffset by numerous scenes that depict the fullness of Ahabrsquos vigor par-ticularly in relation to his healthy pair of legs He jumps he hops heruns around

When Ahabrsquos ship docks in the bay of Mauritius the audience isintroduced to Esther as well as to Derek Ahabrsquos scheming half-brotherIt is here that one is reminded of the words from the 1925 promotionalpublication of Moby-Dick accompanied by scenes from The Sea Beastldquothe screen version of lsquoMoby Dickrsquo exceeds the book The discrepancybetween the two must not be considered as a profanely wanton alterationrdquoTo portray the ldquopsychological studyrdquo of Captain Ahab ldquothe camerahas resorted to means of its own A mental state therefore particularlyan involved condition of mind must be expressed by means of the inci-dents which produced it each tortuous thought composing Ahabrsquos madness must be traced to the event which engendered itrdquo (Buchman1925 x) The most obvious incident being the loss of Ahabrsquos leg butthe film compounds this felt sense of loss by turning Melvillersquos tale intoa misbegotten love triangle between Ahab Derek and Esther the appleof both their eyes

On shore Ahab and Esther declare their love to each other Butafter a few days Ahab sails from Mauritius and scans the shore withhis telescope He spies Estherrsquos window She comes to the window andreturns Ahabrsquos gaze through her own telescope Technology has literallybecome the lens through which they see each other through whicheach declares their commitment They wave and blow kisses until theyare both out of range At sea Ahab is betrayed by Derek who unbe-knownst to Ahab pushes him overboard into the waiting jaws of MobyDick After losing his leg Ahab is distraught Derek then taunts Ahaband suggests that his symbolic castration is too much for any relation-ship to bear As Derek reminds him ldquoEsther was always crazy aboutyour beinrsquo so strong and perfectrdquo Having been fitted with his ivorystump Ahab arrives back at Mauritius Derek then shames Ahab evenfurther by telling him that he and Esther are in love and that Esther

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 19

20

cannot bring herself to tell Ahab of the deceit Derek then goes toEsther to convince her that Ahab has abandoned her When Ahabarrives at Estherrsquos house to confirm Derekrsquos story he sees their shadowscast by the light of spermaceti candles and mistakenly believes thatEsther has indeed left him for Derek It is here that Ahab descendsinto his infamous monomania

Ahab goes onto slay Moby Dick but not before uncovering his half-brotherrsquos double betrayal In a dramatic confrontation Derek pulls aknife on Ahab and is about to get the best of our hero But wait Ahabwedges his ivory stump into the deck leveraging himself in order tofend off Derek Ahab then casts Derek overboard and into the sea Anivory technology marking the absence of Ahabrsquos leg has been trans-formed into a salvific presence Or so it seems when the audience istreated to the restoration of order upon the Pequodrsquos return to portand Ahabrsquos reunion with Esther consummated in their tearful embraceHaving staged and seemingly resolved the crisis of masculine identity(the raison drsquoecirctre of melodrama being that the resolution is alreadypresent in the staging) The Sea Beast on the contrary did anything butrestore the full presence of Ahabrsquos self It suggested through both contentand form that the reality of the self whether it be Ahab or the spec-tator in the theater was neither fully resolvable nor equipment-free

Ahab achieves a kind of liberation on screen by recognizing that heis always already a figment of an imagination that is not his own Afterthe tearful reunion between Ahab and Esther the screen goes blackThe audience is then given a glimpse behind the scenes as it weremdasha scene of the director Millard Webb in his chair issuing directionsto Ahab and Esther in Estherrsquos living room A man in a business suitplays the violin in the background As Ahab and Esther look longinglyinto each otherrsquos eyes Ahab slips a ring onto Estherrsquos finger and theyembrace once again Or is it Barrymore and Costello It is unclearparticularly in light of the rumors of an off screen tryst between themiddle-aged Barrymore and his nineteen-year old costar (they wouldlater marry) The loving embrace is seemingly real an ambiguityreaffirmed by the fact that after Webb yells ldquocutrdquo he has to step betweenthe couple and remind them that they are on film Webb then turnsto the camera and smiles as the screen abruptly cuts to black onceagain

The odd ending of The Sea Beast suggests that Ahabrsquos journey towardreconciliation did not end with self-exposure but that it could neverreally begin Rather than achieve restoration of nature in and througha cultural construction Ahabrsquos artificial leg points to a previously

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 20

21

Figure 4 Final Embrace between AhabBarrymore and EstherCostello

ldquoexcluded and illegible domain that haunts the former domain as thespecter of its own impossibility the very limit of intelligibility its con-stitutive outsiderdquo (Butler 1993 xi) The ending harkens back to the seashanty ldquoHanging Johnnyrdquo Ahabrsquos introductory descent from the mast-head and his telescopic flirtation with Esther both vertiginous slidesinto the unfathomable layers of mediated perception that signal theldquoexecutionrdquo of possessive individualism Rather than erase the sign ofAhabrsquos traumamdashhis ivory legmdashthe ending of The Sea Beast suggests thatAhab and Barrymore are two sides of the same character vacillatingwithin the loop of continuous performativity One is reminded here ofWalter Benjaminrsquos insight into the traumatized subject in the age oftechnological reproducibility As Benjamin argues the trauma can beunderstood as a shift from the stage to the screen in which the actorperforms for a ldquopiece of equipmentrdquo rather than for an audience Citingthe Italian playwright Luigi Pirandello Benjamin suggests that the mod-ern subject is

exiled not only from the stage but from his own person With a vagueunease he senses an inexplicable void stemming from the fact that hisbody has lost its substance that he has been volatilized stripped of his

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 21

22

reality his life his voice the noises he makes when moving about andhas been turned into a mute image that flickers for a moment on thescreen then vanishes into silence (2003 260)

Pirandellorsquos borrowed words speak directly to Meredythrsquos reconfigurationof Melvillersquos text Whereas Melvillersquos Ahab tried and failed to conquerthe very source of visual illuminationmdashthe spermaceti oil that allowedantebellum Americans to see in the darkmdashBarrymorersquos Ahab revels inthe technologically enhanced gaze of his audience When the lightscome up the selves of Ahab Barrymore and the audience have beenre-narrativized as cybernetic that is as permanently divided and fun-damentally transient In affirming the really real offscreen relationshipbetween Barrymore and Costello the uncanny ending of The Sea Beast

supported a notion of selfhood as always already mediated or betteryet the necessity of experience to be mediated in order for it to becomereal or maybe even the necessity of acknowledging that the reality ofthe self is really made up

Barrymorersquos self-conscious performance inspired by his reading ofFreud and designed to overcome middle-class mores did not so muchpenetrate the inner depths of his character as it did the emotional lifeand perceptual apparatus of his audience The Sea Beast does not dram-atize the individual conquest of nature as much as it dramatizes visualtechnologyrsquos seduction of the individual The Sea Beast in its staging ofa cybernetic reality denied the very concept of 100 Americanism byinterrupting the narrative closure on which self-presence dependedNeither Ahab nor Barrymore nor the audience are ever alone even intheir solitude They are haunted not simply by the unconscious butby the specters generated in and through technologies of reproduction(Derrida 1994 97) They are in Benjaminrsquos apt phrase ldquopeople whoportray themselvesrdquo (Benjamin 2003 262)

For Benjamin photography and cinema were technologies of religiousrevelation for better or for worse in that they both exposed variousfeedback loops that constituted onersquos identity On one level Benjaminargued that the category of originality had been challenged by visualtechnologies that put copies ldquoof the original in situations which theoriginal itself cannot attainrdquo (2003 254) On another level the decayof the ldquoaurardquo of authenticity and the blurring of original and reproductionenabled individuals to recognize the fact that they were implicated inthe perceptual field and no longer insulated from what they saw orheard ldquoReception in distractionrdquo wrote Benjamin ldquowhich is increas-ing noticeably in all areas of art and is a symptom of profound changesin apperceptionmdashfinds in film its true training groundrdquo (269) Influenced

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 22

23

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethersquos notion of ldquoafter-imagesrdquo in Theory

of Colours (the same text that informed Melvillersquos ldquoThe Whiteness of theWhalerdquo) Benjamin announced the birth of the ldquooptical unconsciousrdquo(266) According to Benjamin images had become the currency of con-sciousness structuring thought and determining the range of possibleactions Mechanical means of reproduction had liberated the perceptualcapacities of humanity They had also ushered in the prospect of massdeception and control Either way they had resulted in a ldquomassiveupheaval in the domain of objectsrdquo and a ldquoshattering of traditionrdquo (254)

5 American Dada and the aporias of modernity

Within the Melville Revivalmdashan almost clicheacuted instance of Modernismrsquosvogue for the solitary geniusmdashseeds of post-Cartesian doubt were beingsown and the enchanting dimensions of technology considered BecauseMelville ldquowas spell-bound by the strange slidings and collidings ofMatterrdquo his work in the eyes of more atheological critics exposed theenchanting conditions of the machine age (Taylor 1984) ldquoIt is the mate-rial elements he really has to do withrdquo wrote DH Lawrence in 1923ldquoHis drama is with them He was a futurist long before futurism foundpaintrdquo (216) For Lewis Mumford too Melville had not simply dram-atized the incursion of machinesmdasha traditional Romantic tropemdashbuthad embraced a series of insoluble contradictions He has come to rec-ognize those parts of the world and himself that had already been pro-duced by machines and had insisted that the plasticity of self wassomething with which Americans had to struggle and to their spiritualdetriment repress

In broaching the aporias of modernity Mumford saw Melville as hav-ing already given the lie to Weberian diagnoses of disenchantment Thecapacity to effectively turn night into day Mumford suggested the expe-rience of a subway car rumbling past the solid structures of a sky-scraper vanishing into the air the peering into a microscope and theobservation of a ldquorow of bottles each of identical size shape colorstretching away for a quarter of a milerdquo were enough to induce a particular kind of vertigo ldquoThe special visual effect of repeating pat-tern[s]rdquo occurred simultaneously with the experience ldquoof the unique andthe non-repeatablerdquo (Mumford 1934 333-34) The experience of intensesystematicitymdashprecisely what feedback technologies were designed toinducemdashcould be positively disorienting when the infinitely calculableassumed the ldquospecial qualityrdquo of the ldquoincalculablerdquo (Heidegger 1977

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 23

24

135) According to Mumford when technology no longer made imperfectcopies of nature but perfect copies of itself the very notion of ldquonaturalrdquocould become radically suspect With the ldquoliquidationrdquo of the solid book-ends of authenticity and artifice came the prospect that the spectrumitself was socially constructed for better or for worse (Benjamin 2003255) Having torn aside the veil ldquoman has thrown between his ownexperience and the blank reality of the universerdquo Melville neither suc-cumbed to the temptation of nihilism nor retreated into his own pri-vate morality On the contrary he urged his contemporaries to ownup to the constructedness of any and all cultural forms and expressionsand the faith commitments that undergirded them As Mumford wroteldquoto appreciate the reality of the White Whale is to see more deeplyinto the expedience of all our immediate institutions all the spiritualshelters man puts between himself and the uncertain cosmic weatherMeaning significance attends only that little part of the universe manhas built up and settledrdquo (Mumford 1926 150-51)

Whereas Mumford assessed the religious dimensions of technologicalldquoprogressrdquo in a tragic key others tended toward the comic as was thecase with a group of experimental artists associated with Broom An

International Magazine of the Arts Published by Americans in Italy publishedbetween 1921 and 1924 (Tashjian 1975 116-34) Broomrsquos co-editor thepoet Alfred Kreyemborg (who would later co-edit The American Caravan

with Lewis Mumford) had adapted a passage from Moby-Dick for itstitle logo and statement of purpose which appeared on the back coverldquoWhat of itrdquo asks Ishmael

if some old hunks of a seacaptain orders me to get a broom and sweepdown the decks What does that indignity amount to weighed I meanin the scales of the New Testament Do you think the Archangel Gabrielthinks any less of me because I promptly and respectfully obey that oldhunks that particular instance Who ainrsquot a slave (Melville 1925 4)

The first issue of Broom included poems addressing Albert Einsteinrsquostheory of relativity as well as Emmy Veronica Sanders declaration thatldquothe American Machinerdquo was ldquotransforming itself with all its attributesand characteristics into American Mindrdquo ldquoAmericardquo she continuedinitially ldquomade of the Puritan by the Puritan for the Puritanrdquo wasnow being ldquoremade of the Machine by the Machine for the Machinerdquo(89-90) Following Sandersrsquos piece was a David OrsquoNeilrsquos hymn of sup-plication to the new Gods of the machine

When you are sweeping usWith Your cosmic broom

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 24

25

Figure 5 Nature and Second Nature in Technics and Civilization (1934)

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 25

26

Sweeping us out of mouldy rutsSweeping us clean and sweetmdash

RememberWhen wersquore quiveringmdashSensitivemdashbaremdashWe shall be gratefulFor just a few shadows (96)

Broom took Ishmaelrsquos retort quite seriously addressing the revolutionarydimensions of technological artifice and the shadows cast within therealm of technological illumination

Unlike Futurism Broom did not celebrate the beauty of war It didhowever come to express the ldquodreamed-of metallization of the humanbodyrdquo and the playful cybernetic fantasies of Dadaists such as ManRay and Francis Picabia (quoted in Benjamin 2003 269) After someinitial hesitation Broom began to embrace Dadarsquos perspective on the lib-eratory dimensions of the human-machine interface ldquoEverything isartificialrdquo gasped Broom contributor Blaise Cendrars ldquoThe eyes thehand the sexual frenzy of the factory The wheel which turns Thewing which flies The voice which travels far on a wire Your ear ina trumpet Your sense of direction Your rhythm You melt the worldin the mould of your skull Your brain is hollow Like a religion amysterious pill hastens your digestionrdquo (265) Jean Epstein from a slightdifferent angle argued that technology had ldquobecome part of ourselvesrdquoand had democratized human perceptionmdashldquoman has not one memoryof [the] landscape he [now] has a thousand different ones which mayor may not resemble each other Everything possesses hundreds ofapparent diameters which never superimpose exactlyrdquo (6-7)

Broom was soon translating less inflammatory Futurist manifestos suchas Enrico Prampolinirsquos ldquoThe Aesthetic of the Machine and MechanicalIntrospection in Artrdquo in which he declared ldquoIs not the machine todaythe most exuberant symbol of the mystery of human creation Is it notthe new mythical deity which weaves the legends and histories of thecontemporary human drama The Machine in its practical and materialfunction comes to have today in human concepts and thoughts thesignificance of an ideal and spiritual inspirationrdquo The kind of worshipthat ensued was that of the cyborg neither reverent nor memorializ-ing of cosmic law (Haraway 2004 9) Or as Prampolini wrote ldquoOurexperience has convinced us of the truth of certain of our plastic truthsand has allowed us to perceive the errors that lie in othersrdquo (236)

One of the more important pieces of American Dada captured pre-cisely this pointmdashGod (c 1917) designed by Baroness Elsa von Freytag-

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 26

27

Figure 6 Illustration accompanying Enrico Prampolinirsquos ldquoThe Aesthetic of theMachine and Mechanical Introspection in Artrdquo Broom 33 (October 1922) 237

Loringhoven and photographed by Morton Schamberg The invertedcast-iron plumbing trap atop a carpenterrsquos miter box was emblematicof the Melvillean appreciation for technological enchantment Indeedthe pipe is part of an indoor plumbing apparatus a modern conveniencewhose history dates back to some of the earliest feedback technologieson recordmdashthe water-clocks and float-regulators of ancient Greece (Mayr1970 11-26) God resembled the mechanical abstractions Schamberghad been producing before his premature death in 1918 during aninfluenza outbreak in Philadelphia The Baroness a contributor to Broom

and other little magazines had arrived in New York from Germanyin 1913 She was ldquothe first American dadardquo wrote Jane Heap in 1922ldquothe only one living anywhere who dresses dada loves dada lives dadardquo(46) Friends with Marcel Duchamp Djuna Barnes and other NewYork artists the Baroness was a central figure in a burgeoning trans-atlantic avant-garde In addition to her art and poetry the Baronesswas also a ldquoperformancerdquo artist who skillfully inverted gender hierarchiesand attacked through her very presence the traditional sensibilities ofthe middle-class She was notorious for walking around the streets ofGreenwich Village with her shaved head painted purple postage stampspasted to her face and a bird cage around her neck housing a livecanary (Davidson 1996 223-24)

In what must be considered a prescient assault on all manners oflogocentrism the Baroness also carried with her a plaster cast penis thatshe periodically revealed to passersby for maximum shock value (Gammel2002 195) But it was the Barnonessrsquos sculpture God that in addition

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 27

28

Figure 7 God (c 1917) designed by Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven and photographed by Morton Schamberg

to celebrating the mobility and reproducibility of that which was sup-posedly the most fixed and essential repossessed the power of tech-nology as ever imperfect and incomplete As a companion piece of sortsto Duchamprsquos infamous ready-made Fountain an inverted urinal dis-played in the 1917 exhibition of the American Society of IndependentArtists God invited more expressly theological speculation First of allit insisted on supplementing the three traditional symbolic centers ofWestern religious reflectionmdashGod humanity naturemdashwith the machineAnd although it has since been viewed by critics as ldquosacrilegiousrdquo andan instance of ldquoantireligious scatologyrdquo (Naumann 1994 171 Gammel220) the transgressive dimensions to God also affirm a shadowy open-

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 28

29

9 One is reminded here of Melvillersquos letter to Nathaniel Hawthorne in April of1851 ldquoWe incline to think that God cannot explain His own secrets and that Hewould like a little more information upon certain points Himself We mortals aston-ish Him as much as He usrdquo (Melville 1993 186)

ing to radical othernessmdashin the form of imperfection and chancemdashwithin the loops generated by feedback technology

Although the metal pipe ends up pointing toward heaven it firstloops downward in a nod to its human ground Limited by the skillsof the human carpenter on whose box it is anchored the contortedpipe narrativizes both the pitfalls and prospects of the machine ageShit eventually flows up in the case of God not down suggesting thateven the most lofty and noble ideals of the imagination maintain theirhuman aroma Rather than assume the power of divinity classicallyconstrued God staged divinity as nothing more and nothing less thanthat which made life livablemdashthat which kept the smell of human wasteartificially at bay or more ominously managed the flow of thingsthrough feedback control But even more literally God called attentionto the human work in the making of artifice and celebrated the bio-logical possibility for the endless unmaking (and remaking) of selfFeedback technology was not really God but it was for all practicalpurposes Or as the Baroness wrote in a 1927 letter to Peggy GuggenheimGod had much to learn from Henry Ford for he was ldquoclumsily sub-tle-densely-intelligent-inefficiently-immense-(Lord not Fordmdashof course)rdquo9

God the Baroness playfully warned had ldquobetter hotfoot it towardprogressmdashmodernizemdashuse his own omnipotence intelligentlymdashsmart orwersquoll all expire in tangle Well Lord knowsmdash(Does he)rdquo (quoted inGammel 2002 229)

6 Conclusion Deus in machina movet

As Protestant majorities struggled to adjust themselves and their theo-logical inheritance to new technological conditions theologies of themachine age both compelling and disturbing emerged from outsidethe precincts of traditional religious discourse For in addition to beinginspired by the ghost of Herman Melville the Melville Revival wasquite literally haunted by the power of feedback technologiesmdashspectersthat were affective rather than concrete strangely resistant to rationalcontemplation yet recognized through anxious admixtures of thoughtand feeling On one hand the revival reflected the spectrum of Protestant

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 29

30

10 Shortly after the publication of Moby-Dick in November of 1851 reports beganto reach America about the August sinking of the Ann Alexander by a whale in theSouth Pacific It was the first ldquoattack of a whale upon a shiprdquo since the destruc-tion of the Essex in 1820 The story about the Ann Alexander originally appeared inthe Panama Herald on October 16 and was reprinted the following month in New-York Daily Tribune and Littellrsquos Living Age The sperm whale that the Ann Alexander

fears over technological miscegenation The capacity of machines toredraw the boundaries of race and gender disturbed Protestant leadersand revivalists alike On the other hand subversive elements within theMelville Revival offered what must be considered a theological critiqueof how Protestants understood themselves and their God in relation totechnological materials Grant Overton for example saw in Moby-Dick

a deep appreciation for how technological developments had come tounderminemdashquite literally hauntmdashthe epistemological and ontologicalassumptions that made them possible ldquoNo longer able to instance thedeus ex machinardquo wrote Overton Melville was ldquounforgetful that deus inmachina movet and while most of mankind [have] become unable to seethe god for the machine [he] can scarcely perceive the machine forthe god agitating it [His] reports of the machine are somehow unrec-ognizable [his] realism is confronted by Realityrdquo (Overton 1928 231)

Bess Meredythrsquos reimagining of Moby-Dick and Baroness Elsa vonFreytag-Loringhovenrsquos God also explored the otherness that technologyengenders within the modern subject a trace that lingers despite allattempts to extinguish it Their errant readings challenged contempo-raries to reimagine their relationship to technology from an enchantedperspective that did not necessarily conform to the directives of Americanindividualism Resisting the advertisements of both Arminianism andBaconian Common Sense these readings insisted that there was somethingelsemdashsomething wholly othermdashoccurring within the technological workingsof secular modernity Excess or that which unsettled the boundariesbetween body and machine masculine and feminine had resulted inwhat might be called a ldquopost-structure of feelingrdquo The prospect thateither machines or women had begun to think for themselves or atleast possess a kind of agency once attributed to the enlightened malesubject now seemed as likely as a whale vengefully turning against awhaleship10 As Melvillean riffs on the deferred project of religious iden-tity The Sea Beast and God marked the space between human creationand technological determination consent and compulsion and there-fore hinted at the prospect that belief was not an individual state butan embodied activity Consistent with Lewis Mumfordrsquos assessment ofthe symbolic and material powers of feedback technology these works

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 30

31

had first turned upon starboard and larboard boats seizing both in its jaws andcrushing them to pieces It then rushed towards the Ann Alexander ldquoat the rateof fifteen knots In an instant the monster struck the ship with tremendous violence shakingher from stem to sternrdquo (415) Upon reading the article Melville remarked to his pub-lisher ldquothe Whale had almost completely slipped me for the time (amp I was themerrier for it) when Crash comes Moby Dick himself It is really amp truly a sur-prising coincidencemdashto say the least I make no doubt it is Moby Dick himself I wonder if my evil art has raised this monsterrdquo (Melville 1993 209)

11 William Jennings Bryan for example that standard bearer of fundamentalfaith equated faith to a particular kind of technologymdashldquothere is that in each humanliferdquo he wrote ldquothat corresponds to the mainspring of a watchmdashthat which isabsolutely necessary if the life is to be what it should be a real life and not amere existence That necessary thing is a belief in Godrdquo (86) Faith for Bryan wasthat which repeated without difference It was a dependable rational and utterlyrationalizing process It was not however self-regulating It affirmed the ldquorealnessrdquoof the individual believer precisely because it ignored the conditions imposed fromoutside the self But how might faith be viewed in terms of feedback and repro-ducibility rather than repetition a process that does not reaffirm a centered indi-vidual with every tick but adjusts accordingly to external fluctuations

raise numerous questions concerning the ways and means of religionin an age of postmodern complexity and virtual reality

How might a relentless focus on power and the porousness of sub-jectivity change how one views the matter of religion within historyHow might a greater attention to the aesthetic conditions that mediateany and all beliefs challenge the ways in which we distinguish the reli-gious from the secular How might a greater attention to the enchantingpower of material conditions challenge historical and political narrativesof secularization How do technologies and vested interests realize them-selves through the discourses of agency choice and mobility Whatin other words are the conditions of possibility that allow a historicalactor (rather than a Hollywood actor) to make a particular faith com-mitment or for that matter have any faith at all In what languagedo historical actors dream about themselves and divinity and how doesthat language change over time And finally to what degree is faithitself a technology11

By acknowledging the white mythology that still informs say thefield of American religions such questions shift the scholarly emphasisfrom explicit expressions of religious belief and practice to the spacebetween those beliefs and practices and the world at-large Individualswithin American religious history for example have often been depictedas fully formed agents making choices between various faith commitmentsand ever combining religious idioms to suit their specific needs and cir-cumstances (Albanese 1997) No doubt this is true But there is anotherside to this story of radical religious pluralism one that if accounted

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 31

32

12 Such a possibility is very much at odds with the Geertzian model of ldquothickdescriptionrdquo and its formidable legacy in the humanities and social sciences Withoutquestioning the degree to which the self can ever become entirely legible to theself Geertz claimed that every society and individual life and by extension everybelief and every practice ldquocontain their own interpretations One has only to learnhow to gain access to themrdquo (Geertz 1973 453)

13 The ambiguities of agency during the ldquomachine agerdquo have been the subjectof a number of elegant critical studies See for example Anson Rabinbach TheHuman Motor Energy Fatigue and the Origins of Modernity (New York Basic Books1990) Mark Seltzer Bodies and Machines (New York Routledge 1992) MarthaBanta Taylorized Lives Narrative Productions in the Age of Taylor Veblen and Ford (ChicagoUniversity of Chicago Press 1993) Carolyn Thomas de la Pentildea The Body ElectricHow Strange Machines Built the Modern American (New York New York UniversityPress 2003) and Joel Dinerstein The Swinging Machine Modernity Technology andAfrican American Culture Between the World Wars (Amherst University of MassachusettsPress 2003) Dinersteinrsquos work is particularly relevant to the issue of religious com-binativeness given his emphasis on how African American artists strove to refigureldquomachine aestheticsrdquo in and through their artistry Dinersteinrsquos work suggests thatthe self is locatedmdashie the self happensmdashsomewhere between resistance and assim-ilation between choice and coercionmdasha lesson that many Anglo-Americans werenot willing to consider in their triumphal theorizing about the human in relationto the machine The possibility for consideration argues Dinerstein existed inAfrican American jazz swing and dance

for suggests new directions for the study of religion in America Althoughthe ldquolived religionrdquo perspective in American religious history has donemuch to overcome the distinction between ldquodabblersrdquo and ldquotrue believersrdquothe question of power still lingers (Ahlstrom 1972 1052) Religiousbeliefs and practices are neither essential things nor reveal themselvesto the scholar in toto12 Such a position does not replicate the eitherordiscussion regarding the agency of historical actors On the contraryit suggests that religious agency is a hybrid weave of intent and instinctimmediate response and mediated principle knowing and unknowing13

Accounting for the ambiguities of agency has already pushed scholarsof religion toward an anthropology of the secular and an explorationof in the Foucauldian phrasing of Talal Asad ldquothe contingencies thathave come together to give us our certaintiesrdquo (2003 16)

It is with a hint of irony then that one may return to the promotionalpamphlet of The Sea Beast that celebrates the ldquoconquestrdquo of Ahab andthe invisible wafting presence of screenwriter Bess Meredyth ldquoThereis no woman writing today who has contributed so much to genuine

screen values as Bess Meredythrdquo Indeed her son John Meredyth Lucasborn in 1919 continued down his motherrsquos unsettling path as a successfultelevision screenwriter and director His credits included episodes ofldquoStar Trekrdquo ldquoLoganrsquos Runrdquo and that other story of ldquohundred percentrdquoAmericanism ldquoThe Six Million Dollar Manrdquo

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 32

33

Figure 8 The Six Million Dollar Man ldquoGentlemen we can rebuild him Wehave the capability of making the worldrsquos first bionic man We can make him

better than he was before Better Stronger Fasterrdquo

Haverford College370 Lancaster AveHaverford PA 19041jlardashaverfordedu

References

Ahlstrom Sydney E (1972) A Religious History of the American People New HavenYale University Press

Albanese Catherine L (1997) Exchanging selves exchanging souls Contact com-bination and American religious history In Thomas A Tweed (ed) RetellingUS Religious History 200-26 Berkeley University of California Press

Anon (1851) A ship sunk by a whale Littellrsquos Living Age (29 November) 415-16Asad Talal (2003) Formations of the Secular Christianity Islam Modernity Stanford

Stanford University Press

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 33

34

Bacon Francis (1870) The Works of Francis Bacon James Spedding Robert LeslieEllis and Douglas Denon Heath (eds) Vol VIII New York Hurd andHoughton

Barton Bruce (2000) The Man Nobody Knows A Discovery of the Real Jesus ChicagoIvan R Dee

Beniger James R (1986) The Control Revolution Technological and Economic Origins ofthe Information Society Cambridge Harvard University Press

Benjamin Walter (1996) One-way street In Marcus Bullock amp Michael W Jennings(eds) Selected Writings Volume 1 1913-1926 444-88 Cambridge HarvardUniversity Press

mdash (2003) The work of art in the age of its technological reproducibility third ver-sion In Howard Eiland and Michael W Jennings (eds) Selected Writings Volume4 1938-40 251-83 Cambridge Harvard University Press

Bennett Charles A (1923) A Philosophical Study of Mysticism An Essay New HavenYale University Press 1923

Bernays Edward L (1923) Crystallizing Public Opinion New York Liverlight PublishingCorporation

Buchman SR (1925) Moby Dickmdashthe book and The Sea Beastmdashthe picture Anappreciation In Herman Melville Moby Dick or The White Whale ix-xi NewYork Grosset amp Dunlap

Butler Judith (1993) Bodies That Matter On the Discursive Limits of lsquoSexrsquo RoutledgeNew York

Cahir Linda Costanzo (1997) Routinizing the charismatic Melville and Hollywoodrsquosthree Moby-Dicks Melville Society Extracts 110 (September) 11-17

Cendrars Blaise (1922) Profound today Broom 13 ( January) 265-67Chadwick Owen (1975) The Secularization of the European Mind in the Nineteenth Century

Cambridge Cambridge University PressCoe George Albert (1917) A Social Theory of Religious Education New York Charles

Scribnerrsquos SonsDavidson Abraham A (1996) The European art invasion In Francis M Naumann

(ed) with Beth Vann Making Mischief Dada Invades New York 222-27 NewYork Whitney Museum of Art

Debord Guy (1995) Society of the Spectacle translated by Donald Nicholson-SmithNew York Zone Books

Derrida Jacques (1994) Specters of Marx The State of the Debt The Work of Mourningand the New International Peggy Kamuf (trans) New York Routledge

Dorsey George A (1925) Why We Behave Like Human Beings New York BlueRibbon Books

Epstein Jean (1922) The new conditions of literary phenomena Broom 21 (April)3-10

Frank Waldo (1919) Our America New York Boni and LiverightGammel Irene (2002) Baroness Elsa Gender Dada and Everyday Modernitymdasha Cultural

Biography Cambridge The MIT PressGeertz Clifford (1973) Deep play Notes on the Balinese cockfight In The Interpretation

of Cultures 412-53 New York Basic BooksHaraway Donna (2004) A manifesto for cyborgs Science technology and socialist

feminism in the 1980s In The Haraway Reader 7-45 New York RoutledgeHeap Jane (1922) Dada Little Review VII2 (Spring) 46Heidegger Martin (1977) The age of the world-picturerdquo In The Question Concerning

Technology and Other Essays 115-54 William Lovitt (trans) New York Harperamp Row

Hoffman Carol Stein (2001) The Barrymores Hollywoodrsquos First Family LexingtonUniversity of Kentucky Press

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 34

35

Jackson Josephine A and Helen M Salisbury (1922) Outwitting Our Nerves A Primerof Psychotherapy New York The Century Co

Jaffe David (1990) The village enlightenment in New England 1760-1820 TheWilliam and Mary Quarterly XLVII3 ( July) 327-46

Jones Rufus M (1915) Mysticism in present-day religion Harvard Theological ReviewVIII2 (April) 155-65

Kippenberg Hans G (2002) Discovering Religious History in the Modern Age BarbaraHarshav (trans) Princeton Princeton University Press

Kobler John (1977) Damned in Paradise The Life of John Barrymore New YorkAtheneum

Kuttner Alfred B (1922) Nerves In Harold E Stearns (ed) Civilization in the UnitedStates An Enquiry by Thirty Americans 427-42 New York Harcourt

Lauter Paul (1994) Melville climbs the canon American Literature 66 (March) 1-24Lawrence DH (1923) Studies in Classic American Literature New York T SeltzerLindbergh Charles A (1927) We New York GP Putnamrsquos SonsLippmann Walter (1922) Public Opinion New York Macmillan CompanyMarchand Roland (1985) Advertising the American Dream Making Way for Modernity

1920-1940 Berkeley University of California PressMarty Martin E Modern American Religion Vol 2 The Noise of Conflict 1919-1941

Chicago University of Chicago Press 1991May Henry F (1976) The Enlightenment in America New York Oxford University

PressMayhew Jonathan (1749) Concerning the difference between truth and falsehood

right and wrong In Seven Sermons 1-21 Boston Rogers and FowleMayr Otto (1970) The Origins of Feedback Control Cambridge The MIT PressMelville Herman (1993) Correspondence Volume 14 of The Writings of Herman Melville

Lynne Horth (ed) Evanston and Chicago Northwestern University Pressmdash (1925) Moby Dick or The White Whale 1851 New York Grosset amp DunlapMindell David A (2002) Between Human and Machine Feedback Control and Computing

Before Cybernetics Baltimore The Johns Hopkins University PressMumford Lewis (1929) Herman Melville New York The Literary Guild of Americamdash (1924) Sticks and Stones A Study of American Architecture and Civilization New York

Dover Publicationsmdash (1934) Technics and Civilization New York Harcourt Brace and Companymdash (1926) The Golden Day A Study in American Literature and Culture New York Boni

and LiverightMurray Jr HA (1929) Review of Lewis Mumfordrsquos Herman Melville The New

England Quarterly 2 ( July) 523-26Naumann Francis M (1994) New York Dada 1915-23 New York Harry N AbramsNoble David F (1999) The Religion of Technology The Divinity of Man and the Spirit

of Invention New York Penguin BooksNye David E (1994) American Technological Sublime Cambridge The MIT PressOrsquoNeil David (1921) The new Broom Broom 11 (November) 96Overton Grant (1928) The Philosophy of Fiction New York D AppletonPalmer Attorney General (1920) The case against the lsquoRedsrsquo The Forum A Magazine

of Constructive Nationalism 632 (February) 173-85Parsons Floyd W (1927) Everybodyrsquos business Advertising amp Selling ( June 29) 5 64Prampolini Enrico (1922) The aesthetic of the machine and mechanical intro-

spection in art Broom 33 (October) 235-37Rauschenbusch Walter (1917) A Theology for the Social Gospel New York The

Macmillan CompanyRichardson George P (1991) Feedback Thought in Social Science and Systems Theory

Philadelphia University of Pennsylvania Press

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 35

17

8 Cahir (1997) has made a similar point Although I agree with her assessmentthat The Sea Beast is about Ahabrsquos ldquoreal pursuit of identityrdquo I take issue with herargument that The Sea Beast validates autonomous autotelic forms of masculine identity

(13) In America Debordian paranoia was rampant as Victorian fearsover the exploitation of pleasure were morphing into general anxietiesconcerning voyeurism and cinematic determinism ldquoThe spectacle ofmechanical progress has made so deep an impressionrdquo argued WalterLippmann in 1922 ldquothat it has suffused the whole moral coderdquo Whatdisturbed Lippmann and other public figures was the specter of circularcausality and the quiet ldquoinsertion between man and his environmentof a pseudo-environmentrdquo composed mainly of images (Lippmann 1922108 15) Unbeknownst to them Americans were in danger of becom-ing automated by images and trapped within what Debord would latercall ldquoan uninterrupted monologue of self-praiserdquo (19) Their perpetualaffirmation of self however was wholly cybernetic given the fact thatthey were oblivious to the fact that ldquoon the screen the whole processof observing describing reporting and then imagining has been accom-plished for yourdquo (92)

In a strange twist that Melville might have enjoyed the most com-pelling representation of Moby-Dick and portrayal of Captain Ahab mayhave occurred via the technology of the moving picture8 The 1926silent film The Sea Beast adapted to the screen by Bess Meredyth andstarring John Barrymore as Captain Ahab dramatized the feedbackdimensions of film and its capacity to regulate the human personalityThe Sea Beast I argue challenged more able-bodied academic inter-pretations by reveling in its status as a technological reproduction The

Sea Beast with its odd juxtapositions visceral jump cuts and perverseattention to Ahabrsquos stump and artificial limb rather than affirm thedesire for self-transparency suggested that the equipment-free reality ofthe self was quite literally an enabling fiction What Americans lackedaccording to Meredythrsquos scenario was the tragic recognition of them-selves as always regulated and already enhanced by technology Takingldquopleasure in the confusion of boundariesrdquo and ldquoresponsibility in their con-structionrdquo The Sea Beast in the borrowed words of Donna Harawaymade ldquoan argument for the cyborg as a fiction mapping our social andbodily reality and as an imaginative resource suggesting some very fruit-ful couplingsrdquo (8)

In 1925 at age forty-three John Barrymore was one of Hollywoodrsquosmost bankable actors (part of the ldquostar-systemrdquo promoted by Edward

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 17

18

Bernays who clearly saw the potential for cross-marketing between enter-tainment business and political campaigns) Barrymore easily convincedWarner Brothers to turn Moby-Dick one of his favorite novels into amovie and to cast him in the role of Captain Ahab Having playedHamlet in the 1922-23 Broadway season Barrymore developed a keeninterest in psychoanalysis and Freudrsquos account of Hamlet in Interpretationof Dreams (1900) The role of Captain Ahab like that of Hamlet allowedBarrymore to reach a larger audience with his newly emotive actingstyle As Captain Ahab he could also remind his audience of his depthand manly credentials He was tired in his words of playing ldquoscentedbepuffed bewigged and ringletted charactersrdquo (quoted in Kobler 1977213) Promotional pamphlets for The Sea Beast seemed to reinforceBarrymorersquos gendered strategy featuring a picture of Barrymore in abusiness suit puffing contemplatively on a pipemdashldquoJohn Barrymore ismore than a name more than a personality he is world institutionrdquo(Hoffman 2001 73)

The opening credits to The Sea Beast begin imprecisely with a close-up of the filmrsquos textual referent Moby Dick or the White Whale Thissimulated text begins not with ldquoExtractsrdquo or even ldquoCall me Ishmaelrdquobut with the following words ldquoThere never was nor ever will be abraver life than the life of the whaler Compared to the game theyhunted the mightiest land beast was but a poodle dogrdquo Adapted tothe screen by Bess Meredyth former actress turned writer The Sea Beast

is noteworthy as one of the earliest if not the first public appropriationsof Melvillersquos novel by a woman By 1926 Meredyth had become aHollywood regular having written the scenarios or continuities for Ben

Hur (1925) Don Juan (1926) and at least 70 other films ldquoThere is nowoman writing todayrdquo read the promotional copy of The Sea Beastldquowho has contributed so much to genuine screen values as Bess Meredythrdquo(Hoffman 2001 74) The ldquogenuinerdquo sense Meredyth made of Melvillersquosepic is significant in its relentless focus on the self as a technologicalconstruct In Meredythrsquos scenario one literally glimpses the spirit ofMelvillersquos rejection of the contemplative insular and hyper-masculinizedself of mid-nineteenth-century religion and science In its plot and per-verse attention to Ahabrsquos stump The Sea Beast suggests that nothing willor even can make up for the loss Ahab suffers

After the opening credits the audience is introduced to a healthyCaptain Ahab atop the masthead He looks out over the sea and downon his crew hard at work his feet tapping to the beat of the sea shantyldquoHanging Johnnyrdquo Nostalgia and the logic of substitution are bothbroached in the opening scenesmdashnot in terms of idealism but in ways

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 18

19

that hint at their subsequent negation As Ahab reads a letter from hisbeloved Esther Harper the daughter of a Christian missionary playedby the nineteen year-old Dolores Costello Ahab looks longingly at hername tattooed on his arm His mind drifts back to their last embraceFollowing a long close-up of his legs Ahab descends from the mastheadthe camera sliding down the rope in real time and from Ahabrsquos pointof view his legs leading the way The experience of vertigo engenderedby the shot suggests that Ahabrsquos identity is already unstable alreadymarked by a palpable lack of ground This shot however is quicklyoffset by numerous scenes that depict the fullness of Ahabrsquos vigor par-ticularly in relation to his healthy pair of legs He jumps he hops heruns around

When Ahabrsquos ship docks in the bay of Mauritius the audience isintroduced to Esther as well as to Derek Ahabrsquos scheming half-brotherIt is here that one is reminded of the words from the 1925 promotionalpublication of Moby-Dick accompanied by scenes from The Sea Beastldquothe screen version of lsquoMoby Dickrsquo exceeds the book The discrepancybetween the two must not be considered as a profanely wanton alterationrdquoTo portray the ldquopsychological studyrdquo of Captain Ahab ldquothe camerahas resorted to means of its own A mental state therefore particularlyan involved condition of mind must be expressed by means of the inci-dents which produced it each tortuous thought composing Ahabrsquos madness must be traced to the event which engendered itrdquo (Buchman1925 x) The most obvious incident being the loss of Ahabrsquos leg butthe film compounds this felt sense of loss by turning Melvillersquos tale intoa misbegotten love triangle between Ahab Derek and Esther the appleof both their eyes

On shore Ahab and Esther declare their love to each other Butafter a few days Ahab sails from Mauritius and scans the shore withhis telescope He spies Estherrsquos window She comes to the window andreturns Ahabrsquos gaze through her own telescope Technology has literallybecome the lens through which they see each other through whicheach declares their commitment They wave and blow kisses until theyare both out of range At sea Ahab is betrayed by Derek who unbe-knownst to Ahab pushes him overboard into the waiting jaws of MobyDick After losing his leg Ahab is distraught Derek then taunts Ahaband suggests that his symbolic castration is too much for any relation-ship to bear As Derek reminds him ldquoEsther was always crazy aboutyour beinrsquo so strong and perfectrdquo Having been fitted with his ivorystump Ahab arrives back at Mauritius Derek then shames Ahab evenfurther by telling him that he and Esther are in love and that Esther

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 19

20

cannot bring herself to tell Ahab of the deceit Derek then goes toEsther to convince her that Ahab has abandoned her When Ahabarrives at Estherrsquos house to confirm Derekrsquos story he sees their shadowscast by the light of spermaceti candles and mistakenly believes thatEsther has indeed left him for Derek It is here that Ahab descendsinto his infamous monomania

Ahab goes onto slay Moby Dick but not before uncovering his half-brotherrsquos double betrayal In a dramatic confrontation Derek pulls aknife on Ahab and is about to get the best of our hero But wait Ahabwedges his ivory stump into the deck leveraging himself in order tofend off Derek Ahab then casts Derek overboard and into the sea Anivory technology marking the absence of Ahabrsquos leg has been trans-formed into a salvific presence Or so it seems when the audience istreated to the restoration of order upon the Pequodrsquos return to portand Ahabrsquos reunion with Esther consummated in their tearful embraceHaving staged and seemingly resolved the crisis of masculine identity(the raison drsquoecirctre of melodrama being that the resolution is alreadypresent in the staging) The Sea Beast on the contrary did anything butrestore the full presence of Ahabrsquos self It suggested through both contentand form that the reality of the self whether it be Ahab or the spec-tator in the theater was neither fully resolvable nor equipment-free

Ahab achieves a kind of liberation on screen by recognizing that heis always already a figment of an imagination that is not his own Afterthe tearful reunion between Ahab and Esther the screen goes blackThe audience is then given a glimpse behind the scenes as it weremdasha scene of the director Millard Webb in his chair issuing directionsto Ahab and Esther in Estherrsquos living room A man in a business suitplays the violin in the background As Ahab and Esther look longinglyinto each otherrsquos eyes Ahab slips a ring onto Estherrsquos finger and theyembrace once again Or is it Barrymore and Costello It is unclearparticularly in light of the rumors of an off screen tryst between themiddle-aged Barrymore and his nineteen-year old costar (they wouldlater marry) The loving embrace is seemingly real an ambiguityreaffirmed by the fact that after Webb yells ldquocutrdquo he has to step betweenthe couple and remind them that they are on film Webb then turnsto the camera and smiles as the screen abruptly cuts to black onceagain

The odd ending of The Sea Beast suggests that Ahabrsquos journey towardreconciliation did not end with self-exposure but that it could neverreally begin Rather than achieve restoration of nature in and througha cultural construction Ahabrsquos artificial leg points to a previously

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 20

21

Figure 4 Final Embrace between AhabBarrymore and EstherCostello

ldquoexcluded and illegible domain that haunts the former domain as thespecter of its own impossibility the very limit of intelligibility its con-stitutive outsiderdquo (Butler 1993 xi) The ending harkens back to the seashanty ldquoHanging Johnnyrdquo Ahabrsquos introductory descent from the mast-head and his telescopic flirtation with Esther both vertiginous slidesinto the unfathomable layers of mediated perception that signal theldquoexecutionrdquo of possessive individualism Rather than erase the sign ofAhabrsquos traumamdashhis ivory legmdashthe ending of The Sea Beast suggests thatAhab and Barrymore are two sides of the same character vacillatingwithin the loop of continuous performativity One is reminded here ofWalter Benjaminrsquos insight into the traumatized subject in the age oftechnological reproducibility As Benjamin argues the trauma can beunderstood as a shift from the stage to the screen in which the actorperforms for a ldquopiece of equipmentrdquo rather than for an audience Citingthe Italian playwright Luigi Pirandello Benjamin suggests that the mod-ern subject is

exiled not only from the stage but from his own person With a vagueunease he senses an inexplicable void stemming from the fact that hisbody has lost its substance that he has been volatilized stripped of his

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 21

22

reality his life his voice the noises he makes when moving about andhas been turned into a mute image that flickers for a moment on thescreen then vanishes into silence (2003 260)

Pirandellorsquos borrowed words speak directly to Meredythrsquos reconfigurationof Melvillersquos text Whereas Melvillersquos Ahab tried and failed to conquerthe very source of visual illuminationmdashthe spermaceti oil that allowedantebellum Americans to see in the darkmdashBarrymorersquos Ahab revels inthe technologically enhanced gaze of his audience When the lightscome up the selves of Ahab Barrymore and the audience have beenre-narrativized as cybernetic that is as permanently divided and fun-damentally transient In affirming the really real offscreen relationshipbetween Barrymore and Costello the uncanny ending of The Sea Beast

supported a notion of selfhood as always already mediated or betteryet the necessity of experience to be mediated in order for it to becomereal or maybe even the necessity of acknowledging that the reality ofthe self is really made up

Barrymorersquos self-conscious performance inspired by his reading ofFreud and designed to overcome middle-class mores did not so muchpenetrate the inner depths of his character as it did the emotional lifeand perceptual apparatus of his audience The Sea Beast does not dram-atize the individual conquest of nature as much as it dramatizes visualtechnologyrsquos seduction of the individual The Sea Beast in its staging ofa cybernetic reality denied the very concept of 100 Americanism byinterrupting the narrative closure on which self-presence dependedNeither Ahab nor Barrymore nor the audience are ever alone even intheir solitude They are haunted not simply by the unconscious butby the specters generated in and through technologies of reproduction(Derrida 1994 97) They are in Benjaminrsquos apt phrase ldquopeople whoportray themselvesrdquo (Benjamin 2003 262)

For Benjamin photography and cinema were technologies of religiousrevelation for better or for worse in that they both exposed variousfeedback loops that constituted onersquos identity On one level Benjaminargued that the category of originality had been challenged by visualtechnologies that put copies ldquoof the original in situations which theoriginal itself cannot attainrdquo (2003 254) On another level the decayof the ldquoaurardquo of authenticity and the blurring of original and reproductionenabled individuals to recognize the fact that they were implicated inthe perceptual field and no longer insulated from what they saw orheard ldquoReception in distractionrdquo wrote Benjamin ldquowhich is increas-ing noticeably in all areas of art and is a symptom of profound changesin apperceptionmdashfinds in film its true training groundrdquo (269) Influenced

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 22

23

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethersquos notion of ldquoafter-imagesrdquo in Theory

of Colours (the same text that informed Melvillersquos ldquoThe Whiteness of theWhalerdquo) Benjamin announced the birth of the ldquooptical unconsciousrdquo(266) According to Benjamin images had become the currency of con-sciousness structuring thought and determining the range of possibleactions Mechanical means of reproduction had liberated the perceptualcapacities of humanity They had also ushered in the prospect of massdeception and control Either way they had resulted in a ldquomassiveupheaval in the domain of objectsrdquo and a ldquoshattering of traditionrdquo (254)

5 American Dada and the aporias of modernity

Within the Melville Revivalmdashan almost clicheacuted instance of Modernismrsquosvogue for the solitary geniusmdashseeds of post-Cartesian doubt were beingsown and the enchanting dimensions of technology considered BecauseMelville ldquowas spell-bound by the strange slidings and collidings ofMatterrdquo his work in the eyes of more atheological critics exposed theenchanting conditions of the machine age (Taylor 1984) ldquoIt is the mate-rial elements he really has to do withrdquo wrote DH Lawrence in 1923ldquoHis drama is with them He was a futurist long before futurism foundpaintrdquo (216) For Lewis Mumford too Melville had not simply dram-atized the incursion of machinesmdasha traditional Romantic tropemdashbuthad embraced a series of insoluble contradictions He has come to rec-ognize those parts of the world and himself that had already been pro-duced by machines and had insisted that the plasticity of self wassomething with which Americans had to struggle and to their spiritualdetriment repress

In broaching the aporias of modernity Mumford saw Melville as hav-ing already given the lie to Weberian diagnoses of disenchantment Thecapacity to effectively turn night into day Mumford suggested the expe-rience of a subway car rumbling past the solid structures of a sky-scraper vanishing into the air the peering into a microscope and theobservation of a ldquorow of bottles each of identical size shape colorstretching away for a quarter of a milerdquo were enough to induce a particular kind of vertigo ldquoThe special visual effect of repeating pat-tern[s]rdquo occurred simultaneously with the experience ldquoof the unique andthe non-repeatablerdquo (Mumford 1934 333-34) The experience of intensesystematicitymdashprecisely what feedback technologies were designed toinducemdashcould be positively disorienting when the infinitely calculableassumed the ldquospecial qualityrdquo of the ldquoincalculablerdquo (Heidegger 1977

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 23

24

135) According to Mumford when technology no longer made imperfectcopies of nature but perfect copies of itself the very notion of ldquonaturalrdquocould become radically suspect With the ldquoliquidationrdquo of the solid book-ends of authenticity and artifice came the prospect that the spectrumitself was socially constructed for better or for worse (Benjamin 2003255) Having torn aside the veil ldquoman has thrown between his ownexperience and the blank reality of the universerdquo Melville neither suc-cumbed to the temptation of nihilism nor retreated into his own pri-vate morality On the contrary he urged his contemporaries to ownup to the constructedness of any and all cultural forms and expressionsand the faith commitments that undergirded them As Mumford wroteldquoto appreciate the reality of the White Whale is to see more deeplyinto the expedience of all our immediate institutions all the spiritualshelters man puts between himself and the uncertain cosmic weatherMeaning significance attends only that little part of the universe manhas built up and settledrdquo (Mumford 1926 150-51)

Whereas Mumford assessed the religious dimensions of technologicalldquoprogressrdquo in a tragic key others tended toward the comic as was thecase with a group of experimental artists associated with Broom An

International Magazine of the Arts Published by Americans in Italy publishedbetween 1921 and 1924 (Tashjian 1975 116-34) Broomrsquos co-editor thepoet Alfred Kreyemborg (who would later co-edit The American Caravan

with Lewis Mumford) had adapted a passage from Moby-Dick for itstitle logo and statement of purpose which appeared on the back coverldquoWhat of itrdquo asks Ishmael

if some old hunks of a seacaptain orders me to get a broom and sweepdown the decks What does that indignity amount to weighed I meanin the scales of the New Testament Do you think the Archangel Gabrielthinks any less of me because I promptly and respectfully obey that oldhunks that particular instance Who ainrsquot a slave (Melville 1925 4)

The first issue of Broom included poems addressing Albert Einsteinrsquostheory of relativity as well as Emmy Veronica Sanders declaration thatldquothe American Machinerdquo was ldquotransforming itself with all its attributesand characteristics into American Mindrdquo ldquoAmericardquo she continuedinitially ldquomade of the Puritan by the Puritan for the Puritanrdquo wasnow being ldquoremade of the Machine by the Machine for the Machinerdquo(89-90) Following Sandersrsquos piece was a David OrsquoNeilrsquos hymn of sup-plication to the new Gods of the machine

When you are sweeping usWith Your cosmic broom

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 24

25

Figure 5 Nature and Second Nature in Technics and Civilization (1934)

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 25

26

Sweeping us out of mouldy rutsSweeping us clean and sweetmdash

RememberWhen wersquore quiveringmdashSensitivemdashbaremdashWe shall be gratefulFor just a few shadows (96)

Broom took Ishmaelrsquos retort quite seriously addressing the revolutionarydimensions of technological artifice and the shadows cast within therealm of technological illumination

Unlike Futurism Broom did not celebrate the beauty of war It didhowever come to express the ldquodreamed-of metallization of the humanbodyrdquo and the playful cybernetic fantasies of Dadaists such as ManRay and Francis Picabia (quoted in Benjamin 2003 269) After someinitial hesitation Broom began to embrace Dadarsquos perspective on the lib-eratory dimensions of the human-machine interface ldquoEverything isartificialrdquo gasped Broom contributor Blaise Cendrars ldquoThe eyes thehand the sexual frenzy of the factory The wheel which turns Thewing which flies The voice which travels far on a wire Your ear ina trumpet Your sense of direction Your rhythm You melt the worldin the mould of your skull Your brain is hollow Like a religion amysterious pill hastens your digestionrdquo (265) Jean Epstein from a slightdifferent angle argued that technology had ldquobecome part of ourselvesrdquoand had democratized human perceptionmdashldquoman has not one memoryof [the] landscape he [now] has a thousand different ones which mayor may not resemble each other Everything possesses hundreds ofapparent diameters which never superimpose exactlyrdquo (6-7)

Broom was soon translating less inflammatory Futurist manifestos suchas Enrico Prampolinirsquos ldquoThe Aesthetic of the Machine and MechanicalIntrospection in Artrdquo in which he declared ldquoIs not the machine todaythe most exuberant symbol of the mystery of human creation Is it notthe new mythical deity which weaves the legends and histories of thecontemporary human drama The Machine in its practical and materialfunction comes to have today in human concepts and thoughts thesignificance of an ideal and spiritual inspirationrdquo The kind of worshipthat ensued was that of the cyborg neither reverent nor memorializ-ing of cosmic law (Haraway 2004 9) Or as Prampolini wrote ldquoOurexperience has convinced us of the truth of certain of our plastic truthsand has allowed us to perceive the errors that lie in othersrdquo (236)

One of the more important pieces of American Dada captured pre-cisely this pointmdashGod (c 1917) designed by Baroness Elsa von Freytag-

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 26

27

Figure 6 Illustration accompanying Enrico Prampolinirsquos ldquoThe Aesthetic of theMachine and Mechanical Introspection in Artrdquo Broom 33 (October 1922) 237

Loringhoven and photographed by Morton Schamberg The invertedcast-iron plumbing trap atop a carpenterrsquos miter box was emblematicof the Melvillean appreciation for technological enchantment Indeedthe pipe is part of an indoor plumbing apparatus a modern conveniencewhose history dates back to some of the earliest feedback technologieson recordmdashthe water-clocks and float-regulators of ancient Greece (Mayr1970 11-26) God resembled the mechanical abstractions Schamberghad been producing before his premature death in 1918 during aninfluenza outbreak in Philadelphia The Baroness a contributor to Broom

and other little magazines had arrived in New York from Germanyin 1913 She was ldquothe first American dadardquo wrote Jane Heap in 1922ldquothe only one living anywhere who dresses dada loves dada lives dadardquo(46) Friends with Marcel Duchamp Djuna Barnes and other NewYork artists the Baroness was a central figure in a burgeoning trans-atlantic avant-garde In addition to her art and poetry the Baronesswas also a ldquoperformancerdquo artist who skillfully inverted gender hierarchiesand attacked through her very presence the traditional sensibilities ofthe middle-class She was notorious for walking around the streets ofGreenwich Village with her shaved head painted purple postage stampspasted to her face and a bird cage around her neck housing a livecanary (Davidson 1996 223-24)

In what must be considered a prescient assault on all manners oflogocentrism the Baroness also carried with her a plaster cast penis thatshe periodically revealed to passersby for maximum shock value (Gammel2002 195) But it was the Barnonessrsquos sculpture God that in addition

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 27

28

Figure 7 God (c 1917) designed by Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven and photographed by Morton Schamberg

to celebrating the mobility and reproducibility of that which was sup-posedly the most fixed and essential repossessed the power of tech-nology as ever imperfect and incomplete As a companion piece of sortsto Duchamprsquos infamous ready-made Fountain an inverted urinal dis-played in the 1917 exhibition of the American Society of IndependentArtists God invited more expressly theological speculation First of allit insisted on supplementing the three traditional symbolic centers ofWestern religious reflectionmdashGod humanity naturemdashwith the machineAnd although it has since been viewed by critics as ldquosacrilegiousrdquo andan instance of ldquoantireligious scatologyrdquo (Naumann 1994 171 Gammel220) the transgressive dimensions to God also affirm a shadowy open-

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 28

29

9 One is reminded here of Melvillersquos letter to Nathaniel Hawthorne in April of1851 ldquoWe incline to think that God cannot explain His own secrets and that Hewould like a little more information upon certain points Himself We mortals aston-ish Him as much as He usrdquo (Melville 1993 186)

ing to radical othernessmdashin the form of imperfection and chancemdashwithin the loops generated by feedback technology

Although the metal pipe ends up pointing toward heaven it firstloops downward in a nod to its human ground Limited by the skillsof the human carpenter on whose box it is anchored the contortedpipe narrativizes both the pitfalls and prospects of the machine ageShit eventually flows up in the case of God not down suggesting thateven the most lofty and noble ideals of the imagination maintain theirhuman aroma Rather than assume the power of divinity classicallyconstrued God staged divinity as nothing more and nothing less thanthat which made life livablemdashthat which kept the smell of human wasteartificially at bay or more ominously managed the flow of thingsthrough feedback control But even more literally God called attentionto the human work in the making of artifice and celebrated the bio-logical possibility for the endless unmaking (and remaking) of selfFeedback technology was not really God but it was for all practicalpurposes Or as the Baroness wrote in a 1927 letter to Peggy GuggenheimGod had much to learn from Henry Ford for he was ldquoclumsily sub-tle-densely-intelligent-inefficiently-immense-(Lord not Fordmdashof course)rdquo9

God the Baroness playfully warned had ldquobetter hotfoot it towardprogressmdashmodernizemdashuse his own omnipotence intelligentlymdashsmart orwersquoll all expire in tangle Well Lord knowsmdash(Does he)rdquo (quoted inGammel 2002 229)

6 Conclusion Deus in machina movet

As Protestant majorities struggled to adjust themselves and their theo-logical inheritance to new technological conditions theologies of themachine age both compelling and disturbing emerged from outsidethe precincts of traditional religious discourse For in addition to beinginspired by the ghost of Herman Melville the Melville Revival wasquite literally haunted by the power of feedback technologiesmdashspectersthat were affective rather than concrete strangely resistant to rationalcontemplation yet recognized through anxious admixtures of thoughtand feeling On one hand the revival reflected the spectrum of Protestant

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 29

30

10 Shortly after the publication of Moby-Dick in November of 1851 reports beganto reach America about the August sinking of the Ann Alexander by a whale in theSouth Pacific It was the first ldquoattack of a whale upon a shiprdquo since the destruc-tion of the Essex in 1820 The story about the Ann Alexander originally appeared inthe Panama Herald on October 16 and was reprinted the following month in New-York Daily Tribune and Littellrsquos Living Age The sperm whale that the Ann Alexander

fears over technological miscegenation The capacity of machines toredraw the boundaries of race and gender disturbed Protestant leadersand revivalists alike On the other hand subversive elements within theMelville Revival offered what must be considered a theological critiqueof how Protestants understood themselves and their God in relation totechnological materials Grant Overton for example saw in Moby-Dick

a deep appreciation for how technological developments had come tounderminemdashquite literally hauntmdashthe epistemological and ontologicalassumptions that made them possible ldquoNo longer able to instance thedeus ex machinardquo wrote Overton Melville was ldquounforgetful that deus inmachina movet and while most of mankind [have] become unable to seethe god for the machine [he] can scarcely perceive the machine forthe god agitating it [His] reports of the machine are somehow unrec-ognizable [his] realism is confronted by Realityrdquo (Overton 1928 231)

Bess Meredythrsquos reimagining of Moby-Dick and Baroness Elsa vonFreytag-Loringhovenrsquos God also explored the otherness that technologyengenders within the modern subject a trace that lingers despite allattempts to extinguish it Their errant readings challenged contempo-raries to reimagine their relationship to technology from an enchantedperspective that did not necessarily conform to the directives of Americanindividualism Resisting the advertisements of both Arminianism andBaconian Common Sense these readings insisted that there was somethingelsemdashsomething wholly othermdashoccurring within the technological workingsof secular modernity Excess or that which unsettled the boundariesbetween body and machine masculine and feminine had resulted inwhat might be called a ldquopost-structure of feelingrdquo The prospect thateither machines or women had begun to think for themselves or atleast possess a kind of agency once attributed to the enlightened malesubject now seemed as likely as a whale vengefully turning against awhaleship10 As Melvillean riffs on the deferred project of religious iden-tity The Sea Beast and God marked the space between human creationand technological determination consent and compulsion and there-fore hinted at the prospect that belief was not an individual state butan embodied activity Consistent with Lewis Mumfordrsquos assessment ofthe symbolic and material powers of feedback technology these works

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 30

31

had first turned upon starboard and larboard boats seizing both in its jaws andcrushing them to pieces It then rushed towards the Ann Alexander ldquoat the rateof fifteen knots In an instant the monster struck the ship with tremendous violence shakingher from stem to sternrdquo (415) Upon reading the article Melville remarked to his pub-lisher ldquothe Whale had almost completely slipped me for the time (amp I was themerrier for it) when Crash comes Moby Dick himself It is really amp truly a sur-prising coincidencemdashto say the least I make no doubt it is Moby Dick himself I wonder if my evil art has raised this monsterrdquo (Melville 1993 209)

11 William Jennings Bryan for example that standard bearer of fundamentalfaith equated faith to a particular kind of technologymdashldquothere is that in each humanliferdquo he wrote ldquothat corresponds to the mainspring of a watchmdashthat which isabsolutely necessary if the life is to be what it should be a real life and not amere existence That necessary thing is a belief in Godrdquo (86) Faith for Bryan wasthat which repeated without difference It was a dependable rational and utterlyrationalizing process It was not however self-regulating It affirmed the ldquorealnessrdquoof the individual believer precisely because it ignored the conditions imposed fromoutside the self But how might faith be viewed in terms of feedback and repro-ducibility rather than repetition a process that does not reaffirm a centered indi-vidual with every tick but adjusts accordingly to external fluctuations

raise numerous questions concerning the ways and means of religionin an age of postmodern complexity and virtual reality

How might a relentless focus on power and the porousness of sub-jectivity change how one views the matter of religion within historyHow might a greater attention to the aesthetic conditions that mediateany and all beliefs challenge the ways in which we distinguish the reli-gious from the secular How might a greater attention to the enchantingpower of material conditions challenge historical and political narrativesof secularization How do technologies and vested interests realize them-selves through the discourses of agency choice and mobility Whatin other words are the conditions of possibility that allow a historicalactor (rather than a Hollywood actor) to make a particular faith com-mitment or for that matter have any faith at all In what languagedo historical actors dream about themselves and divinity and how doesthat language change over time And finally to what degree is faithitself a technology11

By acknowledging the white mythology that still informs say thefield of American religions such questions shift the scholarly emphasisfrom explicit expressions of religious belief and practice to the spacebetween those beliefs and practices and the world at-large Individualswithin American religious history for example have often been depictedas fully formed agents making choices between various faith commitmentsand ever combining religious idioms to suit their specific needs and cir-cumstances (Albanese 1997) No doubt this is true But there is anotherside to this story of radical religious pluralism one that if accounted

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 31

32

12 Such a possibility is very much at odds with the Geertzian model of ldquothickdescriptionrdquo and its formidable legacy in the humanities and social sciences Withoutquestioning the degree to which the self can ever become entirely legible to theself Geertz claimed that every society and individual life and by extension everybelief and every practice ldquocontain their own interpretations One has only to learnhow to gain access to themrdquo (Geertz 1973 453)

13 The ambiguities of agency during the ldquomachine agerdquo have been the subjectof a number of elegant critical studies See for example Anson Rabinbach TheHuman Motor Energy Fatigue and the Origins of Modernity (New York Basic Books1990) Mark Seltzer Bodies and Machines (New York Routledge 1992) MarthaBanta Taylorized Lives Narrative Productions in the Age of Taylor Veblen and Ford (ChicagoUniversity of Chicago Press 1993) Carolyn Thomas de la Pentildea The Body ElectricHow Strange Machines Built the Modern American (New York New York UniversityPress 2003) and Joel Dinerstein The Swinging Machine Modernity Technology andAfrican American Culture Between the World Wars (Amherst University of MassachusettsPress 2003) Dinersteinrsquos work is particularly relevant to the issue of religious com-binativeness given his emphasis on how African American artists strove to refigureldquomachine aestheticsrdquo in and through their artistry Dinersteinrsquos work suggests thatthe self is locatedmdashie the self happensmdashsomewhere between resistance and assim-ilation between choice and coercionmdasha lesson that many Anglo-Americans werenot willing to consider in their triumphal theorizing about the human in relationto the machine The possibility for consideration argues Dinerstein existed inAfrican American jazz swing and dance

for suggests new directions for the study of religion in America Althoughthe ldquolived religionrdquo perspective in American religious history has donemuch to overcome the distinction between ldquodabblersrdquo and ldquotrue believersrdquothe question of power still lingers (Ahlstrom 1972 1052) Religiousbeliefs and practices are neither essential things nor reveal themselvesto the scholar in toto12 Such a position does not replicate the eitherordiscussion regarding the agency of historical actors On the contraryit suggests that religious agency is a hybrid weave of intent and instinctimmediate response and mediated principle knowing and unknowing13

Accounting for the ambiguities of agency has already pushed scholarsof religion toward an anthropology of the secular and an explorationof in the Foucauldian phrasing of Talal Asad ldquothe contingencies thathave come together to give us our certaintiesrdquo (2003 16)

It is with a hint of irony then that one may return to the promotionalpamphlet of The Sea Beast that celebrates the ldquoconquestrdquo of Ahab andthe invisible wafting presence of screenwriter Bess Meredyth ldquoThereis no woman writing today who has contributed so much to genuine

screen values as Bess Meredythrdquo Indeed her son John Meredyth Lucasborn in 1919 continued down his motherrsquos unsettling path as a successfultelevision screenwriter and director His credits included episodes ofldquoStar Trekrdquo ldquoLoganrsquos Runrdquo and that other story of ldquohundred percentrdquoAmericanism ldquoThe Six Million Dollar Manrdquo

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 32

33

Figure 8 The Six Million Dollar Man ldquoGentlemen we can rebuild him Wehave the capability of making the worldrsquos first bionic man We can make him

better than he was before Better Stronger Fasterrdquo

Haverford College370 Lancaster AveHaverford PA 19041jlardashaverfordedu

References

Ahlstrom Sydney E (1972) A Religious History of the American People New HavenYale University Press

Albanese Catherine L (1997) Exchanging selves exchanging souls Contact com-bination and American religious history In Thomas A Tweed (ed) RetellingUS Religious History 200-26 Berkeley University of California Press

Anon (1851) A ship sunk by a whale Littellrsquos Living Age (29 November) 415-16Asad Talal (2003) Formations of the Secular Christianity Islam Modernity Stanford

Stanford University Press

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 33

34

Bacon Francis (1870) The Works of Francis Bacon James Spedding Robert LeslieEllis and Douglas Denon Heath (eds) Vol VIII New York Hurd andHoughton

Barton Bruce (2000) The Man Nobody Knows A Discovery of the Real Jesus ChicagoIvan R Dee

Beniger James R (1986) The Control Revolution Technological and Economic Origins ofthe Information Society Cambridge Harvard University Press

Benjamin Walter (1996) One-way street In Marcus Bullock amp Michael W Jennings(eds) Selected Writings Volume 1 1913-1926 444-88 Cambridge HarvardUniversity Press

mdash (2003) The work of art in the age of its technological reproducibility third ver-sion In Howard Eiland and Michael W Jennings (eds) Selected Writings Volume4 1938-40 251-83 Cambridge Harvard University Press

Bennett Charles A (1923) A Philosophical Study of Mysticism An Essay New HavenYale University Press 1923

Bernays Edward L (1923) Crystallizing Public Opinion New York Liverlight PublishingCorporation

Buchman SR (1925) Moby Dickmdashthe book and The Sea Beastmdashthe picture Anappreciation In Herman Melville Moby Dick or The White Whale ix-xi NewYork Grosset amp Dunlap

Butler Judith (1993) Bodies That Matter On the Discursive Limits of lsquoSexrsquo RoutledgeNew York

Cahir Linda Costanzo (1997) Routinizing the charismatic Melville and Hollywoodrsquosthree Moby-Dicks Melville Society Extracts 110 (September) 11-17

Cendrars Blaise (1922) Profound today Broom 13 ( January) 265-67Chadwick Owen (1975) The Secularization of the European Mind in the Nineteenth Century

Cambridge Cambridge University PressCoe George Albert (1917) A Social Theory of Religious Education New York Charles

Scribnerrsquos SonsDavidson Abraham A (1996) The European art invasion In Francis M Naumann

(ed) with Beth Vann Making Mischief Dada Invades New York 222-27 NewYork Whitney Museum of Art

Debord Guy (1995) Society of the Spectacle translated by Donald Nicholson-SmithNew York Zone Books

Derrida Jacques (1994) Specters of Marx The State of the Debt The Work of Mourningand the New International Peggy Kamuf (trans) New York Routledge

Dorsey George A (1925) Why We Behave Like Human Beings New York BlueRibbon Books

Epstein Jean (1922) The new conditions of literary phenomena Broom 21 (April)3-10

Frank Waldo (1919) Our America New York Boni and LiverightGammel Irene (2002) Baroness Elsa Gender Dada and Everyday Modernitymdasha Cultural

Biography Cambridge The MIT PressGeertz Clifford (1973) Deep play Notes on the Balinese cockfight In The Interpretation

of Cultures 412-53 New York Basic BooksHaraway Donna (2004) A manifesto for cyborgs Science technology and socialist

feminism in the 1980s In The Haraway Reader 7-45 New York RoutledgeHeap Jane (1922) Dada Little Review VII2 (Spring) 46Heidegger Martin (1977) The age of the world-picturerdquo In The Question Concerning

Technology and Other Essays 115-54 William Lovitt (trans) New York Harperamp Row

Hoffman Carol Stein (2001) The Barrymores Hollywoodrsquos First Family LexingtonUniversity of Kentucky Press

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 34

35

Jackson Josephine A and Helen M Salisbury (1922) Outwitting Our Nerves A Primerof Psychotherapy New York The Century Co

Jaffe David (1990) The village enlightenment in New England 1760-1820 TheWilliam and Mary Quarterly XLVII3 ( July) 327-46

Jones Rufus M (1915) Mysticism in present-day religion Harvard Theological ReviewVIII2 (April) 155-65

Kippenberg Hans G (2002) Discovering Religious History in the Modern Age BarbaraHarshav (trans) Princeton Princeton University Press

Kobler John (1977) Damned in Paradise The Life of John Barrymore New YorkAtheneum

Kuttner Alfred B (1922) Nerves In Harold E Stearns (ed) Civilization in the UnitedStates An Enquiry by Thirty Americans 427-42 New York Harcourt

Lauter Paul (1994) Melville climbs the canon American Literature 66 (March) 1-24Lawrence DH (1923) Studies in Classic American Literature New York T SeltzerLindbergh Charles A (1927) We New York GP Putnamrsquos SonsLippmann Walter (1922) Public Opinion New York Macmillan CompanyMarchand Roland (1985) Advertising the American Dream Making Way for Modernity

1920-1940 Berkeley University of California PressMarty Martin E Modern American Religion Vol 2 The Noise of Conflict 1919-1941

Chicago University of Chicago Press 1991May Henry F (1976) The Enlightenment in America New York Oxford University

PressMayhew Jonathan (1749) Concerning the difference between truth and falsehood

right and wrong In Seven Sermons 1-21 Boston Rogers and FowleMayr Otto (1970) The Origins of Feedback Control Cambridge The MIT PressMelville Herman (1993) Correspondence Volume 14 of The Writings of Herman Melville

Lynne Horth (ed) Evanston and Chicago Northwestern University Pressmdash (1925) Moby Dick or The White Whale 1851 New York Grosset amp DunlapMindell David A (2002) Between Human and Machine Feedback Control and Computing

Before Cybernetics Baltimore The Johns Hopkins University PressMumford Lewis (1929) Herman Melville New York The Literary Guild of Americamdash (1924) Sticks and Stones A Study of American Architecture and Civilization New York

Dover Publicationsmdash (1934) Technics and Civilization New York Harcourt Brace and Companymdash (1926) The Golden Day A Study in American Literature and Culture New York Boni

and LiverightMurray Jr HA (1929) Review of Lewis Mumfordrsquos Herman Melville The New

England Quarterly 2 ( July) 523-26Naumann Francis M (1994) New York Dada 1915-23 New York Harry N AbramsNoble David F (1999) The Religion of Technology The Divinity of Man and the Spirit

of Invention New York Penguin BooksNye David E (1994) American Technological Sublime Cambridge The MIT PressOrsquoNeil David (1921) The new Broom Broom 11 (November) 96Overton Grant (1928) The Philosophy of Fiction New York D AppletonPalmer Attorney General (1920) The case against the lsquoRedsrsquo The Forum A Magazine

of Constructive Nationalism 632 (February) 173-85Parsons Floyd W (1927) Everybodyrsquos business Advertising amp Selling ( June 29) 5 64Prampolini Enrico (1922) The aesthetic of the machine and mechanical intro-

spection in art Broom 33 (October) 235-37Rauschenbusch Walter (1917) A Theology for the Social Gospel New York The

Macmillan CompanyRichardson George P (1991) Feedback Thought in Social Science and Systems Theory

Philadelphia University of Pennsylvania Press

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 35

18

Bernays who clearly saw the potential for cross-marketing between enter-tainment business and political campaigns) Barrymore easily convincedWarner Brothers to turn Moby-Dick one of his favorite novels into amovie and to cast him in the role of Captain Ahab Having playedHamlet in the 1922-23 Broadway season Barrymore developed a keeninterest in psychoanalysis and Freudrsquos account of Hamlet in Interpretationof Dreams (1900) The role of Captain Ahab like that of Hamlet allowedBarrymore to reach a larger audience with his newly emotive actingstyle As Captain Ahab he could also remind his audience of his depthand manly credentials He was tired in his words of playing ldquoscentedbepuffed bewigged and ringletted charactersrdquo (quoted in Kobler 1977213) Promotional pamphlets for The Sea Beast seemed to reinforceBarrymorersquos gendered strategy featuring a picture of Barrymore in abusiness suit puffing contemplatively on a pipemdashldquoJohn Barrymore ismore than a name more than a personality he is world institutionrdquo(Hoffman 2001 73)

The opening credits to The Sea Beast begin imprecisely with a close-up of the filmrsquos textual referent Moby Dick or the White Whale Thissimulated text begins not with ldquoExtractsrdquo or even ldquoCall me Ishmaelrdquobut with the following words ldquoThere never was nor ever will be abraver life than the life of the whaler Compared to the game theyhunted the mightiest land beast was but a poodle dogrdquo Adapted tothe screen by Bess Meredyth former actress turned writer The Sea Beast

is noteworthy as one of the earliest if not the first public appropriationsof Melvillersquos novel by a woman By 1926 Meredyth had become aHollywood regular having written the scenarios or continuities for Ben

Hur (1925) Don Juan (1926) and at least 70 other films ldquoThere is nowoman writing todayrdquo read the promotional copy of The Sea Beastldquowho has contributed so much to genuine screen values as Bess Meredythrdquo(Hoffman 2001 74) The ldquogenuinerdquo sense Meredyth made of Melvillersquosepic is significant in its relentless focus on the self as a technologicalconstruct In Meredythrsquos scenario one literally glimpses the spirit ofMelvillersquos rejection of the contemplative insular and hyper-masculinizedself of mid-nineteenth-century religion and science In its plot and per-verse attention to Ahabrsquos stump The Sea Beast suggests that nothing willor even can make up for the loss Ahab suffers

After the opening credits the audience is introduced to a healthyCaptain Ahab atop the masthead He looks out over the sea and downon his crew hard at work his feet tapping to the beat of the sea shantyldquoHanging Johnnyrdquo Nostalgia and the logic of substitution are bothbroached in the opening scenesmdashnot in terms of idealism but in ways

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 18

19

that hint at their subsequent negation As Ahab reads a letter from hisbeloved Esther Harper the daughter of a Christian missionary playedby the nineteen year-old Dolores Costello Ahab looks longingly at hername tattooed on his arm His mind drifts back to their last embraceFollowing a long close-up of his legs Ahab descends from the mastheadthe camera sliding down the rope in real time and from Ahabrsquos pointof view his legs leading the way The experience of vertigo engenderedby the shot suggests that Ahabrsquos identity is already unstable alreadymarked by a palpable lack of ground This shot however is quicklyoffset by numerous scenes that depict the fullness of Ahabrsquos vigor par-ticularly in relation to his healthy pair of legs He jumps he hops heruns around

When Ahabrsquos ship docks in the bay of Mauritius the audience isintroduced to Esther as well as to Derek Ahabrsquos scheming half-brotherIt is here that one is reminded of the words from the 1925 promotionalpublication of Moby-Dick accompanied by scenes from The Sea Beastldquothe screen version of lsquoMoby Dickrsquo exceeds the book The discrepancybetween the two must not be considered as a profanely wanton alterationrdquoTo portray the ldquopsychological studyrdquo of Captain Ahab ldquothe camerahas resorted to means of its own A mental state therefore particularlyan involved condition of mind must be expressed by means of the inci-dents which produced it each tortuous thought composing Ahabrsquos madness must be traced to the event which engendered itrdquo (Buchman1925 x) The most obvious incident being the loss of Ahabrsquos leg butthe film compounds this felt sense of loss by turning Melvillersquos tale intoa misbegotten love triangle between Ahab Derek and Esther the appleof both their eyes

On shore Ahab and Esther declare their love to each other Butafter a few days Ahab sails from Mauritius and scans the shore withhis telescope He spies Estherrsquos window She comes to the window andreturns Ahabrsquos gaze through her own telescope Technology has literallybecome the lens through which they see each other through whicheach declares their commitment They wave and blow kisses until theyare both out of range At sea Ahab is betrayed by Derek who unbe-knownst to Ahab pushes him overboard into the waiting jaws of MobyDick After losing his leg Ahab is distraught Derek then taunts Ahaband suggests that his symbolic castration is too much for any relation-ship to bear As Derek reminds him ldquoEsther was always crazy aboutyour beinrsquo so strong and perfectrdquo Having been fitted with his ivorystump Ahab arrives back at Mauritius Derek then shames Ahab evenfurther by telling him that he and Esther are in love and that Esther

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 19

20

cannot bring herself to tell Ahab of the deceit Derek then goes toEsther to convince her that Ahab has abandoned her When Ahabarrives at Estherrsquos house to confirm Derekrsquos story he sees their shadowscast by the light of spermaceti candles and mistakenly believes thatEsther has indeed left him for Derek It is here that Ahab descendsinto his infamous monomania

Ahab goes onto slay Moby Dick but not before uncovering his half-brotherrsquos double betrayal In a dramatic confrontation Derek pulls aknife on Ahab and is about to get the best of our hero But wait Ahabwedges his ivory stump into the deck leveraging himself in order tofend off Derek Ahab then casts Derek overboard and into the sea Anivory technology marking the absence of Ahabrsquos leg has been trans-formed into a salvific presence Or so it seems when the audience istreated to the restoration of order upon the Pequodrsquos return to portand Ahabrsquos reunion with Esther consummated in their tearful embraceHaving staged and seemingly resolved the crisis of masculine identity(the raison drsquoecirctre of melodrama being that the resolution is alreadypresent in the staging) The Sea Beast on the contrary did anything butrestore the full presence of Ahabrsquos self It suggested through both contentand form that the reality of the self whether it be Ahab or the spec-tator in the theater was neither fully resolvable nor equipment-free

Ahab achieves a kind of liberation on screen by recognizing that heis always already a figment of an imagination that is not his own Afterthe tearful reunion between Ahab and Esther the screen goes blackThe audience is then given a glimpse behind the scenes as it weremdasha scene of the director Millard Webb in his chair issuing directionsto Ahab and Esther in Estherrsquos living room A man in a business suitplays the violin in the background As Ahab and Esther look longinglyinto each otherrsquos eyes Ahab slips a ring onto Estherrsquos finger and theyembrace once again Or is it Barrymore and Costello It is unclearparticularly in light of the rumors of an off screen tryst between themiddle-aged Barrymore and his nineteen-year old costar (they wouldlater marry) The loving embrace is seemingly real an ambiguityreaffirmed by the fact that after Webb yells ldquocutrdquo he has to step betweenthe couple and remind them that they are on film Webb then turnsto the camera and smiles as the screen abruptly cuts to black onceagain

The odd ending of The Sea Beast suggests that Ahabrsquos journey towardreconciliation did not end with self-exposure but that it could neverreally begin Rather than achieve restoration of nature in and througha cultural construction Ahabrsquos artificial leg points to a previously

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 20

21

Figure 4 Final Embrace between AhabBarrymore and EstherCostello

ldquoexcluded and illegible domain that haunts the former domain as thespecter of its own impossibility the very limit of intelligibility its con-stitutive outsiderdquo (Butler 1993 xi) The ending harkens back to the seashanty ldquoHanging Johnnyrdquo Ahabrsquos introductory descent from the mast-head and his telescopic flirtation with Esther both vertiginous slidesinto the unfathomable layers of mediated perception that signal theldquoexecutionrdquo of possessive individualism Rather than erase the sign ofAhabrsquos traumamdashhis ivory legmdashthe ending of The Sea Beast suggests thatAhab and Barrymore are two sides of the same character vacillatingwithin the loop of continuous performativity One is reminded here ofWalter Benjaminrsquos insight into the traumatized subject in the age oftechnological reproducibility As Benjamin argues the trauma can beunderstood as a shift from the stage to the screen in which the actorperforms for a ldquopiece of equipmentrdquo rather than for an audience Citingthe Italian playwright Luigi Pirandello Benjamin suggests that the mod-ern subject is

exiled not only from the stage but from his own person With a vagueunease he senses an inexplicable void stemming from the fact that hisbody has lost its substance that he has been volatilized stripped of his

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 21

22

reality his life his voice the noises he makes when moving about andhas been turned into a mute image that flickers for a moment on thescreen then vanishes into silence (2003 260)

Pirandellorsquos borrowed words speak directly to Meredythrsquos reconfigurationof Melvillersquos text Whereas Melvillersquos Ahab tried and failed to conquerthe very source of visual illuminationmdashthe spermaceti oil that allowedantebellum Americans to see in the darkmdashBarrymorersquos Ahab revels inthe technologically enhanced gaze of his audience When the lightscome up the selves of Ahab Barrymore and the audience have beenre-narrativized as cybernetic that is as permanently divided and fun-damentally transient In affirming the really real offscreen relationshipbetween Barrymore and Costello the uncanny ending of The Sea Beast

supported a notion of selfhood as always already mediated or betteryet the necessity of experience to be mediated in order for it to becomereal or maybe even the necessity of acknowledging that the reality ofthe self is really made up

Barrymorersquos self-conscious performance inspired by his reading ofFreud and designed to overcome middle-class mores did not so muchpenetrate the inner depths of his character as it did the emotional lifeand perceptual apparatus of his audience The Sea Beast does not dram-atize the individual conquest of nature as much as it dramatizes visualtechnologyrsquos seduction of the individual The Sea Beast in its staging ofa cybernetic reality denied the very concept of 100 Americanism byinterrupting the narrative closure on which self-presence dependedNeither Ahab nor Barrymore nor the audience are ever alone even intheir solitude They are haunted not simply by the unconscious butby the specters generated in and through technologies of reproduction(Derrida 1994 97) They are in Benjaminrsquos apt phrase ldquopeople whoportray themselvesrdquo (Benjamin 2003 262)

For Benjamin photography and cinema were technologies of religiousrevelation for better or for worse in that they both exposed variousfeedback loops that constituted onersquos identity On one level Benjaminargued that the category of originality had been challenged by visualtechnologies that put copies ldquoof the original in situations which theoriginal itself cannot attainrdquo (2003 254) On another level the decayof the ldquoaurardquo of authenticity and the blurring of original and reproductionenabled individuals to recognize the fact that they were implicated inthe perceptual field and no longer insulated from what they saw orheard ldquoReception in distractionrdquo wrote Benjamin ldquowhich is increas-ing noticeably in all areas of art and is a symptom of profound changesin apperceptionmdashfinds in film its true training groundrdquo (269) Influenced

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 22

23

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethersquos notion of ldquoafter-imagesrdquo in Theory

of Colours (the same text that informed Melvillersquos ldquoThe Whiteness of theWhalerdquo) Benjamin announced the birth of the ldquooptical unconsciousrdquo(266) According to Benjamin images had become the currency of con-sciousness structuring thought and determining the range of possibleactions Mechanical means of reproduction had liberated the perceptualcapacities of humanity They had also ushered in the prospect of massdeception and control Either way they had resulted in a ldquomassiveupheaval in the domain of objectsrdquo and a ldquoshattering of traditionrdquo (254)

5 American Dada and the aporias of modernity

Within the Melville Revivalmdashan almost clicheacuted instance of Modernismrsquosvogue for the solitary geniusmdashseeds of post-Cartesian doubt were beingsown and the enchanting dimensions of technology considered BecauseMelville ldquowas spell-bound by the strange slidings and collidings ofMatterrdquo his work in the eyes of more atheological critics exposed theenchanting conditions of the machine age (Taylor 1984) ldquoIt is the mate-rial elements he really has to do withrdquo wrote DH Lawrence in 1923ldquoHis drama is with them He was a futurist long before futurism foundpaintrdquo (216) For Lewis Mumford too Melville had not simply dram-atized the incursion of machinesmdasha traditional Romantic tropemdashbuthad embraced a series of insoluble contradictions He has come to rec-ognize those parts of the world and himself that had already been pro-duced by machines and had insisted that the plasticity of self wassomething with which Americans had to struggle and to their spiritualdetriment repress

In broaching the aporias of modernity Mumford saw Melville as hav-ing already given the lie to Weberian diagnoses of disenchantment Thecapacity to effectively turn night into day Mumford suggested the expe-rience of a subway car rumbling past the solid structures of a sky-scraper vanishing into the air the peering into a microscope and theobservation of a ldquorow of bottles each of identical size shape colorstretching away for a quarter of a milerdquo were enough to induce a particular kind of vertigo ldquoThe special visual effect of repeating pat-tern[s]rdquo occurred simultaneously with the experience ldquoof the unique andthe non-repeatablerdquo (Mumford 1934 333-34) The experience of intensesystematicitymdashprecisely what feedback technologies were designed toinducemdashcould be positively disorienting when the infinitely calculableassumed the ldquospecial qualityrdquo of the ldquoincalculablerdquo (Heidegger 1977

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 23

24

135) According to Mumford when technology no longer made imperfectcopies of nature but perfect copies of itself the very notion of ldquonaturalrdquocould become radically suspect With the ldquoliquidationrdquo of the solid book-ends of authenticity and artifice came the prospect that the spectrumitself was socially constructed for better or for worse (Benjamin 2003255) Having torn aside the veil ldquoman has thrown between his ownexperience and the blank reality of the universerdquo Melville neither suc-cumbed to the temptation of nihilism nor retreated into his own pri-vate morality On the contrary he urged his contemporaries to ownup to the constructedness of any and all cultural forms and expressionsand the faith commitments that undergirded them As Mumford wroteldquoto appreciate the reality of the White Whale is to see more deeplyinto the expedience of all our immediate institutions all the spiritualshelters man puts between himself and the uncertain cosmic weatherMeaning significance attends only that little part of the universe manhas built up and settledrdquo (Mumford 1926 150-51)

Whereas Mumford assessed the religious dimensions of technologicalldquoprogressrdquo in a tragic key others tended toward the comic as was thecase with a group of experimental artists associated with Broom An

International Magazine of the Arts Published by Americans in Italy publishedbetween 1921 and 1924 (Tashjian 1975 116-34) Broomrsquos co-editor thepoet Alfred Kreyemborg (who would later co-edit The American Caravan

with Lewis Mumford) had adapted a passage from Moby-Dick for itstitle logo and statement of purpose which appeared on the back coverldquoWhat of itrdquo asks Ishmael

if some old hunks of a seacaptain orders me to get a broom and sweepdown the decks What does that indignity amount to weighed I meanin the scales of the New Testament Do you think the Archangel Gabrielthinks any less of me because I promptly and respectfully obey that oldhunks that particular instance Who ainrsquot a slave (Melville 1925 4)

The first issue of Broom included poems addressing Albert Einsteinrsquostheory of relativity as well as Emmy Veronica Sanders declaration thatldquothe American Machinerdquo was ldquotransforming itself with all its attributesand characteristics into American Mindrdquo ldquoAmericardquo she continuedinitially ldquomade of the Puritan by the Puritan for the Puritanrdquo wasnow being ldquoremade of the Machine by the Machine for the Machinerdquo(89-90) Following Sandersrsquos piece was a David OrsquoNeilrsquos hymn of sup-plication to the new Gods of the machine

When you are sweeping usWith Your cosmic broom

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 24

25

Figure 5 Nature and Second Nature in Technics and Civilization (1934)

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 25

26

Sweeping us out of mouldy rutsSweeping us clean and sweetmdash

RememberWhen wersquore quiveringmdashSensitivemdashbaremdashWe shall be gratefulFor just a few shadows (96)

Broom took Ishmaelrsquos retort quite seriously addressing the revolutionarydimensions of technological artifice and the shadows cast within therealm of technological illumination

Unlike Futurism Broom did not celebrate the beauty of war It didhowever come to express the ldquodreamed-of metallization of the humanbodyrdquo and the playful cybernetic fantasies of Dadaists such as ManRay and Francis Picabia (quoted in Benjamin 2003 269) After someinitial hesitation Broom began to embrace Dadarsquos perspective on the lib-eratory dimensions of the human-machine interface ldquoEverything isartificialrdquo gasped Broom contributor Blaise Cendrars ldquoThe eyes thehand the sexual frenzy of the factory The wheel which turns Thewing which flies The voice which travels far on a wire Your ear ina trumpet Your sense of direction Your rhythm You melt the worldin the mould of your skull Your brain is hollow Like a religion amysterious pill hastens your digestionrdquo (265) Jean Epstein from a slightdifferent angle argued that technology had ldquobecome part of ourselvesrdquoand had democratized human perceptionmdashldquoman has not one memoryof [the] landscape he [now] has a thousand different ones which mayor may not resemble each other Everything possesses hundreds ofapparent diameters which never superimpose exactlyrdquo (6-7)

Broom was soon translating less inflammatory Futurist manifestos suchas Enrico Prampolinirsquos ldquoThe Aesthetic of the Machine and MechanicalIntrospection in Artrdquo in which he declared ldquoIs not the machine todaythe most exuberant symbol of the mystery of human creation Is it notthe new mythical deity which weaves the legends and histories of thecontemporary human drama The Machine in its practical and materialfunction comes to have today in human concepts and thoughts thesignificance of an ideal and spiritual inspirationrdquo The kind of worshipthat ensued was that of the cyborg neither reverent nor memorializ-ing of cosmic law (Haraway 2004 9) Or as Prampolini wrote ldquoOurexperience has convinced us of the truth of certain of our plastic truthsand has allowed us to perceive the errors that lie in othersrdquo (236)

One of the more important pieces of American Dada captured pre-cisely this pointmdashGod (c 1917) designed by Baroness Elsa von Freytag-

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 26

27

Figure 6 Illustration accompanying Enrico Prampolinirsquos ldquoThe Aesthetic of theMachine and Mechanical Introspection in Artrdquo Broom 33 (October 1922) 237

Loringhoven and photographed by Morton Schamberg The invertedcast-iron plumbing trap atop a carpenterrsquos miter box was emblematicof the Melvillean appreciation for technological enchantment Indeedthe pipe is part of an indoor plumbing apparatus a modern conveniencewhose history dates back to some of the earliest feedback technologieson recordmdashthe water-clocks and float-regulators of ancient Greece (Mayr1970 11-26) God resembled the mechanical abstractions Schamberghad been producing before his premature death in 1918 during aninfluenza outbreak in Philadelphia The Baroness a contributor to Broom

and other little magazines had arrived in New York from Germanyin 1913 She was ldquothe first American dadardquo wrote Jane Heap in 1922ldquothe only one living anywhere who dresses dada loves dada lives dadardquo(46) Friends with Marcel Duchamp Djuna Barnes and other NewYork artists the Baroness was a central figure in a burgeoning trans-atlantic avant-garde In addition to her art and poetry the Baronesswas also a ldquoperformancerdquo artist who skillfully inverted gender hierarchiesand attacked through her very presence the traditional sensibilities ofthe middle-class She was notorious for walking around the streets ofGreenwich Village with her shaved head painted purple postage stampspasted to her face and a bird cage around her neck housing a livecanary (Davidson 1996 223-24)

In what must be considered a prescient assault on all manners oflogocentrism the Baroness also carried with her a plaster cast penis thatshe periodically revealed to passersby for maximum shock value (Gammel2002 195) But it was the Barnonessrsquos sculpture God that in addition

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 27

28

Figure 7 God (c 1917) designed by Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven and photographed by Morton Schamberg

to celebrating the mobility and reproducibility of that which was sup-posedly the most fixed and essential repossessed the power of tech-nology as ever imperfect and incomplete As a companion piece of sortsto Duchamprsquos infamous ready-made Fountain an inverted urinal dis-played in the 1917 exhibition of the American Society of IndependentArtists God invited more expressly theological speculation First of allit insisted on supplementing the three traditional symbolic centers ofWestern religious reflectionmdashGod humanity naturemdashwith the machineAnd although it has since been viewed by critics as ldquosacrilegiousrdquo andan instance of ldquoantireligious scatologyrdquo (Naumann 1994 171 Gammel220) the transgressive dimensions to God also affirm a shadowy open-

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 28

29

9 One is reminded here of Melvillersquos letter to Nathaniel Hawthorne in April of1851 ldquoWe incline to think that God cannot explain His own secrets and that Hewould like a little more information upon certain points Himself We mortals aston-ish Him as much as He usrdquo (Melville 1993 186)

ing to radical othernessmdashin the form of imperfection and chancemdashwithin the loops generated by feedback technology

Although the metal pipe ends up pointing toward heaven it firstloops downward in a nod to its human ground Limited by the skillsof the human carpenter on whose box it is anchored the contortedpipe narrativizes both the pitfalls and prospects of the machine ageShit eventually flows up in the case of God not down suggesting thateven the most lofty and noble ideals of the imagination maintain theirhuman aroma Rather than assume the power of divinity classicallyconstrued God staged divinity as nothing more and nothing less thanthat which made life livablemdashthat which kept the smell of human wasteartificially at bay or more ominously managed the flow of thingsthrough feedback control But even more literally God called attentionto the human work in the making of artifice and celebrated the bio-logical possibility for the endless unmaking (and remaking) of selfFeedback technology was not really God but it was for all practicalpurposes Or as the Baroness wrote in a 1927 letter to Peggy GuggenheimGod had much to learn from Henry Ford for he was ldquoclumsily sub-tle-densely-intelligent-inefficiently-immense-(Lord not Fordmdashof course)rdquo9

God the Baroness playfully warned had ldquobetter hotfoot it towardprogressmdashmodernizemdashuse his own omnipotence intelligentlymdashsmart orwersquoll all expire in tangle Well Lord knowsmdash(Does he)rdquo (quoted inGammel 2002 229)

6 Conclusion Deus in machina movet

As Protestant majorities struggled to adjust themselves and their theo-logical inheritance to new technological conditions theologies of themachine age both compelling and disturbing emerged from outsidethe precincts of traditional religious discourse For in addition to beinginspired by the ghost of Herman Melville the Melville Revival wasquite literally haunted by the power of feedback technologiesmdashspectersthat were affective rather than concrete strangely resistant to rationalcontemplation yet recognized through anxious admixtures of thoughtand feeling On one hand the revival reflected the spectrum of Protestant

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 29

30

10 Shortly after the publication of Moby-Dick in November of 1851 reports beganto reach America about the August sinking of the Ann Alexander by a whale in theSouth Pacific It was the first ldquoattack of a whale upon a shiprdquo since the destruc-tion of the Essex in 1820 The story about the Ann Alexander originally appeared inthe Panama Herald on October 16 and was reprinted the following month in New-York Daily Tribune and Littellrsquos Living Age The sperm whale that the Ann Alexander

fears over technological miscegenation The capacity of machines toredraw the boundaries of race and gender disturbed Protestant leadersand revivalists alike On the other hand subversive elements within theMelville Revival offered what must be considered a theological critiqueof how Protestants understood themselves and their God in relation totechnological materials Grant Overton for example saw in Moby-Dick

a deep appreciation for how technological developments had come tounderminemdashquite literally hauntmdashthe epistemological and ontologicalassumptions that made them possible ldquoNo longer able to instance thedeus ex machinardquo wrote Overton Melville was ldquounforgetful that deus inmachina movet and while most of mankind [have] become unable to seethe god for the machine [he] can scarcely perceive the machine forthe god agitating it [His] reports of the machine are somehow unrec-ognizable [his] realism is confronted by Realityrdquo (Overton 1928 231)

Bess Meredythrsquos reimagining of Moby-Dick and Baroness Elsa vonFreytag-Loringhovenrsquos God also explored the otherness that technologyengenders within the modern subject a trace that lingers despite allattempts to extinguish it Their errant readings challenged contempo-raries to reimagine their relationship to technology from an enchantedperspective that did not necessarily conform to the directives of Americanindividualism Resisting the advertisements of both Arminianism andBaconian Common Sense these readings insisted that there was somethingelsemdashsomething wholly othermdashoccurring within the technological workingsof secular modernity Excess or that which unsettled the boundariesbetween body and machine masculine and feminine had resulted inwhat might be called a ldquopost-structure of feelingrdquo The prospect thateither machines or women had begun to think for themselves or atleast possess a kind of agency once attributed to the enlightened malesubject now seemed as likely as a whale vengefully turning against awhaleship10 As Melvillean riffs on the deferred project of religious iden-tity The Sea Beast and God marked the space between human creationand technological determination consent and compulsion and there-fore hinted at the prospect that belief was not an individual state butan embodied activity Consistent with Lewis Mumfordrsquos assessment ofthe symbolic and material powers of feedback technology these works

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 30

31

had first turned upon starboard and larboard boats seizing both in its jaws andcrushing them to pieces It then rushed towards the Ann Alexander ldquoat the rateof fifteen knots In an instant the monster struck the ship with tremendous violence shakingher from stem to sternrdquo (415) Upon reading the article Melville remarked to his pub-lisher ldquothe Whale had almost completely slipped me for the time (amp I was themerrier for it) when Crash comes Moby Dick himself It is really amp truly a sur-prising coincidencemdashto say the least I make no doubt it is Moby Dick himself I wonder if my evil art has raised this monsterrdquo (Melville 1993 209)

11 William Jennings Bryan for example that standard bearer of fundamentalfaith equated faith to a particular kind of technologymdashldquothere is that in each humanliferdquo he wrote ldquothat corresponds to the mainspring of a watchmdashthat which isabsolutely necessary if the life is to be what it should be a real life and not amere existence That necessary thing is a belief in Godrdquo (86) Faith for Bryan wasthat which repeated without difference It was a dependable rational and utterlyrationalizing process It was not however self-regulating It affirmed the ldquorealnessrdquoof the individual believer precisely because it ignored the conditions imposed fromoutside the self But how might faith be viewed in terms of feedback and repro-ducibility rather than repetition a process that does not reaffirm a centered indi-vidual with every tick but adjusts accordingly to external fluctuations

raise numerous questions concerning the ways and means of religionin an age of postmodern complexity and virtual reality

How might a relentless focus on power and the porousness of sub-jectivity change how one views the matter of religion within historyHow might a greater attention to the aesthetic conditions that mediateany and all beliefs challenge the ways in which we distinguish the reli-gious from the secular How might a greater attention to the enchantingpower of material conditions challenge historical and political narrativesof secularization How do technologies and vested interests realize them-selves through the discourses of agency choice and mobility Whatin other words are the conditions of possibility that allow a historicalactor (rather than a Hollywood actor) to make a particular faith com-mitment or for that matter have any faith at all In what languagedo historical actors dream about themselves and divinity and how doesthat language change over time And finally to what degree is faithitself a technology11

By acknowledging the white mythology that still informs say thefield of American religions such questions shift the scholarly emphasisfrom explicit expressions of religious belief and practice to the spacebetween those beliefs and practices and the world at-large Individualswithin American religious history for example have often been depictedas fully formed agents making choices between various faith commitmentsand ever combining religious idioms to suit their specific needs and cir-cumstances (Albanese 1997) No doubt this is true But there is anotherside to this story of radical religious pluralism one that if accounted

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 31

32

12 Such a possibility is very much at odds with the Geertzian model of ldquothickdescriptionrdquo and its formidable legacy in the humanities and social sciences Withoutquestioning the degree to which the self can ever become entirely legible to theself Geertz claimed that every society and individual life and by extension everybelief and every practice ldquocontain their own interpretations One has only to learnhow to gain access to themrdquo (Geertz 1973 453)

13 The ambiguities of agency during the ldquomachine agerdquo have been the subjectof a number of elegant critical studies See for example Anson Rabinbach TheHuman Motor Energy Fatigue and the Origins of Modernity (New York Basic Books1990) Mark Seltzer Bodies and Machines (New York Routledge 1992) MarthaBanta Taylorized Lives Narrative Productions in the Age of Taylor Veblen and Ford (ChicagoUniversity of Chicago Press 1993) Carolyn Thomas de la Pentildea The Body ElectricHow Strange Machines Built the Modern American (New York New York UniversityPress 2003) and Joel Dinerstein The Swinging Machine Modernity Technology andAfrican American Culture Between the World Wars (Amherst University of MassachusettsPress 2003) Dinersteinrsquos work is particularly relevant to the issue of religious com-binativeness given his emphasis on how African American artists strove to refigureldquomachine aestheticsrdquo in and through their artistry Dinersteinrsquos work suggests thatthe self is locatedmdashie the self happensmdashsomewhere between resistance and assim-ilation between choice and coercionmdasha lesson that many Anglo-Americans werenot willing to consider in their triumphal theorizing about the human in relationto the machine The possibility for consideration argues Dinerstein existed inAfrican American jazz swing and dance

for suggests new directions for the study of religion in America Althoughthe ldquolived religionrdquo perspective in American religious history has donemuch to overcome the distinction between ldquodabblersrdquo and ldquotrue believersrdquothe question of power still lingers (Ahlstrom 1972 1052) Religiousbeliefs and practices are neither essential things nor reveal themselvesto the scholar in toto12 Such a position does not replicate the eitherordiscussion regarding the agency of historical actors On the contraryit suggests that religious agency is a hybrid weave of intent and instinctimmediate response and mediated principle knowing and unknowing13

Accounting for the ambiguities of agency has already pushed scholarsof religion toward an anthropology of the secular and an explorationof in the Foucauldian phrasing of Talal Asad ldquothe contingencies thathave come together to give us our certaintiesrdquo (2003 16)

It is with a hint of irony then that one may return to the promotionalpamphlet of The Sea Beast that celebrates the ldquoconquestrdquo of Ahab andthe invisible wafting presence of screenwriter Bess Meredyth ldquoThereis no woman writing today who has contributed so much to genuine

screen values as Bess Meredythrdquo Indeed her son John Meredyth Lucasborn in 1919 continued down his motherrsquos unsettling path as a successfultelevision screenwriter and director His credits included episodes ofldquoStar Trekrdquo ldquoLoganrsquos Runrdquo and that other story of ldquohundred percentrdquoAmericanism ldquoThe Six Million Dollar Manrdquo

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 32

33

Figure 8 The Six Million Dollar Man ldquoGentlemen we can rebuild him Wehave the capability of making the worldrsquos first bionic man We can make him

better than he was before Better Stronger Fasterrdquo

Haverford College370 Lancaster AveHaverford PA 19041jlardashaverfordedu

References

Ahlstrom Sydney E (1972) A Religious History of the American People New HavenYale University Press

Albanese Catherine L (1997) Exchanging selves exchanging souls Contact com-bination and American religious history In Thomas A Tweed (ed) RetellingUS Religious History 200-26 Berkeley University of California Press

Anon (1851) A ship sunk by a whale Littellrsquos Living Age (29 November) 415-16Asad Talal (2003) Formations of the Secular Christianity Islam Modernity Stanford

Stanford University Press

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 33

34

Bacon Francis (1870) The Works of Francis Bacon James Spedding Robert LeslieEllis and Douglas Denon Heath (eds) Vol VIII New York Hurd andHoughton

Barton Bruce (2000) The Man Nobody Knows A Discovery of the Real Jesus ChicagoIvan R Dee

Beniger James R (1986) The Control Revolution Technological and Economic Origins ofthe Information Society Cambridge Harvard University Press

Benjamin Walter (1996) One-way street In Marcus Bullock amp Michael W Jennings(eds) Selected Writings Volume 1 1913-1926 444-88 Cambridge HarvardUniversity Press

mdash (2003) The work of art in the age of its technological reproducibility third ver-sion In Howard Eiland and Michael W Jennings (eds) Selected Writings Volume4 1938-40 251-83 Cambridge Harvard University Press

Bennett Charles A (1923) A Philosophical Study of Mysticism An Essay New HavenYale University Press 1923

Bernays Edward L (1923) Crystallizing Public Opinion New York Liverlight PublishingCorporation

Buchman SR (1925) Moby Dickmdashthe book and The Sea Beastmdashthe picture Anappreciation In Herman Melville Moby Dick or The White Whale ix-xi NewYork Grosset amp Dunlap

Butler Judith (1993) Bodies That Matter On the Discursive Limits of lsquoSexrsquo RoutledgeNew York

Cahir Linda Costanzo (1997) Routinizing the charismatic Melville and Hollywoodrsquosthree Moby-Dicks Melville Society Extracts 110 (September) 11-17

Cendrars Blaise (1922) Profound today Broom 13 ( January) 265-67Chadwick Owen (1975) The Secularization of the European Mind in the Nineteenth Century

Cambridge Cambridge University PressCoe George Albert (1917) A Social Theory of Religious Education New York Charles

Scribnerrsquos SonsDavidson Abraham A (1996) The European art invasion In Francis M Naumann

(ed) with Beth Vann Making Mischief Dada Invades New York 222-27 NewYork Whitney Museum of Art

Debord Guy (1995) Society of the Spectacle translated by Donald Nicholson-SmithNew York Zone Books

Derrida Jacques (1994) Specters of Marx The State of the Debt The Work of Mourningand the New International Peggy Kamuf (trans) New York Routledge

Dorsey George A (1925) Why We Behave Like Human Beings New York BlueRibbon Books

Epstein Jean (1922) The new conditions of literary phenomena Broom 21 (April)3-10

Frank Waldo (1919) Our America New York Boni and LiverightGammel Irene (2002) Baroness Elsa Gender Dada and Everyday Modernitymdasha Cultural

Biography Cambridge The MIT PressGeertz Clifford (1973) Deep play Notes on the Balinese cockfight In The Interpretation

of Cultures 412-53 New York Basic BooksHaraway Donna (2004) A manifesto for cyborgs Science technology and socialist

feminism in the 1980s In The Haraway Reader 7-45 New York RoutledgeHeap Jane (1922) Dada Little Review VII2 (Spring) 46Heidegger Martin (1977) The age of the world-picturerdquo In The Question Concerning

Technology and Other Essays 115-54 William Lovitt (trans) New York Harperamp Row

Hoffman Carol Stein (2001) The Barrymores Hollywoodrsquos First Family LexingtonUniversity of Kentucky Press

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 34

35

Jackson Josephine A and Helen M Salisbury (1922) Outwitting Our Nerves A Primerof Psychotherapy New York The Century Co

Jaffe David (1990) The village enlightenment in New England 1760-1820 TheWilliam and Mary Quarterly XLVII3 ( July) 327-46

Jones Rufus M (1915) Mysticism in present-day religion Harvard Theological ReviewVIII2 (April) 155-65

Kippenberg Hans G (2002) Discovering Religious History in the Modern Age BarbaraHarshav (trans) Princeton Princeton University Press

Kobler John (1977) Damned in Paradise The Life of John Barrymore New YorkAtheneum

Kuttner Alfred B (1922) Nerves In Harold E Stearns (ed) Civilization in the UnitedStates An Enquiry by Thirty Americans 427-42 New York Harcourt

Lauter Paul (1994) Melville climbs the canon American Literature 66 (March) 1-24Lawrence DH (1923) Studies in Classic American Literature New York T SeltzerLindbergh Charles A (1927) We New York GP Putnamrsquos SonsLippmann Walter (1922) Public Opinion New York Macmillan CompanyMarchand Roland (1985) Advertising the American Dream Making Way for Modernity

1920-1940 Berkeley University of California PressMarty Martin E Modern American Religion Vol 2 The Noise of Conflict 1919-1941

Chicago University of Chicago Press 1991May Henry F (1976) The Enlightenment in America New York Oxford University

PressMayhew Jonathan (1749) Concerning the difference between truth and falsehood

right and wrong In Seven Sermons 1-21 Boston Rogers and FowleMayr Otto (1970) The Origins of Feedback Control Cambridge The MIT PressMelville Herman (1993) Correspondence Volume 14 of The Writings of Herman Melville

Lynne Horth (ed) Evanston and Chicago Northwestern University Pressmdash (1925) Moby Dick or The White Whale 1851 New York Grosset amp DunlapMindell David A (2002) Between Human and Machine Feedback Control and Computing

Before Cybernetics Baltimore The Johns Hopkins University PressMumford Lewis (1929) Herman Melville New York The Literary Guild of Americamdash (1924) Sticks and Stones A Study of American Architecture and Civilization New York

Dover Publicationsmdash (1934) Technics and Civilization New York Harcourt Brace and Companymdash (1926) The Golden Day A Study in American Literature and Culture New York Boni

and LiverightMurray Jr HA (1929) Review of Lewis Mumfordrsquos Herman Melville The New

England Quarterly 2 ( July) 523-26Naumann Francis M (1994) New York Dada 1915-23 New York Harry N AbramsNoble David F (1999) The Religion of Technology The Divinity of Man and the Spirit

of Invention New York Penguin BooksNye David E (1994) American Technological Sublime Cambridge The MIT PressOrsquoNeil David (1921) The new Broom Broom 11 (November) 96Overton Grant (1928) The Philosophy of Fiction New York D AppletonPalmer Attorney General (1920) The case against the lsquoRedsrsquo The Forum A Magazine

of Constructive Nationalism 632 (February) 173-85Parsons Floyd W (1927) Everybodyrsquos business Advertising amp Selling ( June 29) 5 64Prampolini Enrico (1922) The aesthetic of the machine and mechanical intro-

spection in art Broom 33 (October) 235-37Rauschenbusch Walter (1917) A Theology for the Social Gospel New York The

Macmillan CompanyRichardson George P (1991) Feedback Thought in Social Science and Systems Theory

Philadelphia University of Pennsylvania Press

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 35

19

that hint at their subsequent negation As Ahab reads a letter from hisbeloved Esther Harper the daughter of a Christian missionary playedby the nineteen year-old Dolores Costello Ahab looks longingly at hername tattooed on his arm His mind drifts back to their last embraceFollowing a long close-up of his legs Ahab descends from the mastheadthe camera sliding down the rope in real time and from Ahabrsquos pointof view his legs leading the way The experience of vertigo engenderedby the shot suggests that Ahabrsquos identity is already unstable alreadymarked by a palpable lack of ground This shot however is quicklyoffset by numerous scenes that depict the fullness of Ahabrsquos vigor par-ticularly in relation to his healthy pair of legs He jumps he hops heruns around

When Ahabrsquos ship docks in the bay of Mauritius the audience isintroduced to Esther as well as to Derek Ahabrsquos scheming half-brotherIt is here that one is reminded of the words from the 1925 promotionalpublication of Moby-Dick accompanied by scenes from The Sea Beastldquothe screen version of lsquoMoby Dickrsquo exceeds the book The discrepancybetween the two must not be considered as a profanely wanton alterationrdquoTo portray the ldquopsychological studyrdquo of Captain Ahab ldquothe camerahas resorted to means of its own A mental state therefore particularlyan involved condition of mind must be expressed by means of the inci-dents which produced it each tortuous thought composing Ahabrsquos madness must be traced to the event which engendered itrdquo (Buchman1925 x) The most obvious incident being the loss of Ahabrsquos leg butthe film compounds this felt sense of loss by turning Melvillersquos tale intoa misbegotten love triangle between Ahab Derek and Esther the appleof both their eyes

On shore Ahab and Esther declare their love to each other Butafter a few days Ahab sails from Mauritius and scans the shore withhis telescope He spies Estherrsquos window She comes to the window andreturns Ahabrsquos gaze through her own telescope Technology has literallybecome the lens through which they see each other through whicheach declares their commitment They wave and blow kisses until theyare both out of range At sea Ahab is betrayed by Derek who unbe-knownst to Ahab pushes him overboard into the waiting jaws of MobyDick After losing his leg Ahab is distraught Derek then taunts Ahaband suggests that his symbolic castration is too much for any relation-ship to bear As Derek reminds him ldquoEsther was always crazy aboutyour beinrsquo so strong and perfectrdquo Having been fitted with his ivorystump Ahab arrives back at Mauritius Derek then shames Ahab evenfurther by telling him that he and Esther are in love and that Esther

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 19

20

cannot bring herself to tell Ahab of the deceit Derek then goes toEsther to convince her that Ahab has abandoned her When Ahabarrives at Estherrsquos house to confirm Derekrsquos story he sees their shadowscast by the light of spermaceti candles and mistakenly believes thatEsther has indeed left him for Derek It is here that Ahab descendsinto his infamous monomania

Ahab goes onto slay Moby Dick but not before uncovering his half-brotherrsquos double betrayal In a dramatic confrontation Derek pulls aknife on Ahab and is about to get the best of our hero But wait Ahabwedges his ivory stump into the deck leveraging himself in order tofend off Derek Ahab then casts Derek overboard and into the sea Anivory technology marking the absence of Ahabrsquos leg has been trans-formed into a salvific presence Or so it seems when the audience istreated to the restoration of order upon the Pequodrsquos return to portand Ahabrsquos reunion with Esther consummated in their tearful embraceHaving staged and seemingly resolved the crisis of masculine identity(the raison drsquoecirctre of melodrama being that the resolution is alreadypresent in the staging) The Sea Beast on the contrary did anything butrestore the full presence of Ahabrsquos self It suggested through both contentand form that the reality of the self whether it be Ahab or the spec-tator in the theater was neither fully resolvable nor equipment-free

Ahab achieves a kind of liberation on screen by recognizing that heis always already a figment of an imagination that is not his own Afterthe tearful reunion between Ahab and Esther the screen goes blackThe audience is then given a glimpse behind the scenes as it weremdasha scene of the director Millard Webb in his chair issuing directionsto Ahab and Esther in Estherrsquos living room A man in a business suitplays the violin in the background As Ahab and Esther look longinglyinto each otherrsquos eyes Ahab slips a ring onto Estherrsquos finger and theyembrace once again Or is it Barrymore and Costello It is unclearparticularly in light of the rumors of an off screen tryst between themiddle-aged Barrymore and his nineteen-year old costar (they wouldlater marry) The loving embrace is seemingly real an ambiguityreaffirmed by the fact that after Webb yells ldquocutrdquo he has to step betweenthe couple and remind them that they are on film Webb then turnsto the camera and smiles as the screen abruptly cuts to black onceagain

The odd ending of The Sea Beast suggests that Ahabrsquos journey towardreconciliation did not end with self-exposure but that it could neverreally begin Rather than achieve restoration of nature in and througha cultural construction Ahabrsquos artificial leg points to a previously

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 20

21

Figure 4 Final Embrace between AhabBarrymore and EstherCostello

ldquoexcluded and illegible domain that haunts the former domain as thespecter of its own impossibility the very limit of intelligibility its con-stitutive outsiderdquo (Butler 1993 xi) The ending harkens back to the seashanty ldquoHanging Johnnyrdquo Ahabrsquos introductory descent from the mast-head and his telescopic flirtation with Esther both vertiginous slidesinto the unfathomable layers of mediated perception that signal theldquoexecutionrdquo of possessive individualism Rather than erase the sign ofAhabrsquos traumamdashhis ivory legmdashthe ending of The Sea Beast suggests thatAhab and Barrymore are two sides of the same character vacillatingwithin the loop of continuous performativity One is reminded here ofWalter Benjaminrsquos insight into the traumatized subject in the age oftechnological reproducibility As Benjamin argues the trauma can beunderstood as a shift from the stage to the screen in which the actorperforms for a ldquopiece of equipmentrdquo rather than for an audience Citingthe Italian playwright Luigi Pirandello Benjamin suggests that the mod-ern subject is

exiled not only from the stage but from his own person With a vagueunease he senses an inexplicable void stemming from the fact that hisbody has lost its substance that he has been volatilized stripped of his

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 21

22

reality his life his voice the noises he makes when moving about andhas been turned into a mute image that flickers for a moment on thescreen then vanishes into silence (2003 260)

Pirandellorsquos borrowed words speak directly to Meredythrsquos reconfigurationof Melvillersquos text Whereas Melvillersquos Ahab tried and failed to conquerthe very source of visual illuminationmdashthe spermaceti oil that allowedantebellum Americans to see in the darkmdashBarrymorersquos Ahab revels inthe technologically enhanced gaze of his audience When the lightscome up the selves of Ahab Barrymore and the audience have beenre-narrativized as cybernetic that is as permanently divided and fun-damentally transient In affirming the really real offscreen relationshipbetween Barrymore and Costello the uncanny ending of The Sea Beast

supported a notion of selfhood as always already mediated or betteryet the necessity of experience to be mediated in order for it to becomereal or maybe even the necessity of acknowledging that the reality ofthe self is really made up

Barrymorersquos self-conscious performance inspired by his reading ofFreud and designed to overcome middle-class mores did not so muchpenetrate the inner depths of his character as it did the emotional lifeand perceptual apparatus of his audience The Sea Beast does not dram-atize the individual conquest of nature as much as it dramatizes visualtechnologyrsquos seduction of the individual The Sea Beast in its staging ofa cybernetic reality denied the very concept of 100 Americanism byinterrupting the narrative closure on which self-presence dependedNeither Ahab nor Barrymore nor the audience are ever alone even intheir solitude They are haunted not simply by the unconscious butby the specters generated in and through technologies of reproduction(Derrida 1994 97) They are in Benjaminrsquos apt phrase ldquopeople whoportray themselvesrdquo (Benjamin 2003 262)

For Benjamin photography and cinema were technologies of religiousrevelation for better or for worse in that they both exposed variousfeedback loops that constituted onersquos identity On one level Benjaminargued that the category of originality had been challenged by visualtechnologies that put copies ldquoof the original in situations which theoriginal itself cannot attainrdquo (2003 254) On another level the decayof the ldquoaurardquo of authenticity and the blurring of original and reproductionenabled individuals to recognize the fact that they were implicated inthe perceptual field and no longer insulated from what they saw orheard ldquoReception in distractionrdquo wrote Benjamin ldquowhich is increas-ing noticeably in all areas of art and is a symptom of profound changesin apperceptionmdashfinds in film its true training groundrdquo (269) Influenced

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 22

23

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethersquos notion of ldquoafter-imagesrdquo in Theory

of Colours (the same text that informed Melvillersquos ldquoThe Whiteness of theWhalerdquo) Benjamin announced the birth of the ldquooptical unconsciousrdquo(266) According to Benjamin images had become the currency of con-sciousness structuring thought and determining the range of possibleactions Mechanical means of reproduction had liberated the perceptualcapacities of humanity They had also ushered in the prospect of massdeception and control Either way they had resulted in a ldquomassiveupheaval in the domain of objectsrdquo and a ldquoshattering of traditionrdquo (254)

5 American Dada and the aporias of modernity

Within the Melville Revivalmdashan almost clicheacuted instance of Modernismrsquosvogue for the solitary geniusmdashseeds of post-Cartesian doubt were beingsown and the enchanting dimensions of technology considered BecauseMelville ldquowas spell-bound by the strange slidings and collidings ofMatterrdquo his work in the eyes of more atheological critics exposed theenchanting conditions of the machine age (Taylor 1984) ldquoIt is the mate-rial elements he really has to do withrdquo wrote DH Lawrence in 1923ldquoHis drama is with them He was a futurist long before futurism foundpaintrdquo (216) For Lewis Mumford too Melville had not simply dram-atized the incursion of machinesmdasha traditional Romantic tropemdashbuthad embraced a series of insoluble contradictions He has come to rec-ognize those parts of the world and himself that had already been pro-duced by machines and had insisted that the plasticity of self wassomething with which Americans had to struggle and to their spiritualdetriment repress

In broaching the aporias of modernity Mumford saw Melville as hav-ing already given the lie to Weberian diagnoses of disenchantment Thecapacity to effectively turn night into day Mumford suggested the expe-rience of a subway car rumbling past the solid structures of a sky-scraper vanishing into the air the peering into a microscope and theobservation of a ldquorow of bottles each of identical size shape colorstretching away for a quarter of a milerdquo were enough to induce a particular kind of vertigo ldquoThe special visual effect of repeating pat-tern[s]rdquo occurred simultaneously with the experience ldquoof the unique andthe non-repeatablerdquo (Mumford 1934 333-34) The experience of intensesystematicitymdashprecisely what feedback technologies were designed toinducemdashcould be positively disorienting when the infinitely calculableassumed the ldquospecial qualityrdquo of the ldquoincalculablerdquo (Heidegger 1977

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 23

24

135) According to Mumford when technology no longer made imperfectcopies of nature but perfect copies of itself the very notion of ldquonaturalrdquocould become radically suspect With the ldquoliquidationrdquo of the solid book-ends of authenticity and artifice came the prospect that the spectrumitself was socially constructed for better or for worse (Benjamin 2003255) Having torn aside the veil ldquoman has thrown between his ownexperience and the blank reality of the universerdquo Melville neither suc-cumbed to the temptation of nihilism nor retreated into his own pri-vate morality On the contrary he urged his contemporaries to ownup to the constructedness of any and all cultural forms and expressionsand the faith commitments that undergirded them As Mumford wroteldquoto appreciate the reality of the White Whale is to see more deeplyinto the expedience of all our immediate institutions all the spiritualshelters man puts between himself and the uncertain cosmic weatherMeaning significance attends only that little part of the universe manhas built up and settledrdquo (Mumford 1926 150-51)

Whereas Mumford assessed the religious dimensions of technologicalldquoprogressrdquo in a tragic key others tended toward the comic as was thecase with a group of experimental artists associated with Broom An

International Magazine of the Arts Published by Americans in Italy publishedbetween 1921 and 1924 (Tashjian 1975 116-34) Broomrsquos co-editor thepoet Alfred Kreyemborg (who would later co-edit The American Caravan

with Lewis Mumford) had adapted a passage from Moby-Dick for itstitle logo and statement of purpose which appeared on the back coverldquoWhat of itrdquo asks Ishmael

if some old hunks of a seacaptain orders me to get a broom and sweepdown the decks What does that indignity amount to weighed I meanin the scales of the New Testament Do you think the Archangel Gabrielthinks any less of me because I promptly and respectfully obey that oldhunks that particular instance Who ainrsquot a slave (Melville 1925 4)

The first issue of Broom included poems addressing Albert Einsteinrsquostheory of relativity as well as Emmy Veronica Sanders declaration thatldquothe American Machinerdquo was ldquotransforming itself with all its attributesand characteristics into American Mindrdquo ldquoAmericardquo she continuedinitially ldquomade of the Puritan by the Puritan for the Puritanrdquo wasnow being ldquoremade of the Machine by the Machine for the Machinerdquo(89-90) Following Sandersrsquos piece was a David OrsquoNeilrsquos hymn of sup-plication to the new Gods of the machine

When you are sweeping usWith Your cosmic broom

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 24

25

Figure 5 Nature and Second Nature in Technics and Civilization (1934)

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 25

26

Sweeping us out of mouldy rutsSweeping us clean and sweetmdash

RememberWhen wersquore quiveringmdashSensitivemdashbaremdashWe shall be gratefulFor just a few shadows (96)

Broom took Ishmaelrsquos retort quite seriously addressing the revolutionarydimensions of technological artifice and the shadows cast within therealm of technological illumination

Unlike Futurism Broom did not celebrate the beauty of war It didhowever come to express the ldquodreamed-of metallization of the humanbodyrdquo and the playful cybernetic fantasies of Dadaists such as ManRay and Francis Picabia (quoted in Benjamin 2003 269) After someinitial hesitation Broom began to embrace Dadarsquos perspective on the lib-eratory dimensions of the human-machine interface ldquoEverything isartificialrdquo gasped Broom contributor Blaise Cendrars ldquoThe eyes thehand the sexual frenzy of the factory The wheel which turns Thewing which flies The voice which travels far on a wire Your ear ina trumpet Your sense of direction Your rhythm You melt the worldin the mould of your skull Your brain is hollow Like a religion amysterious pill hastens your digestionrdquo (265) Jean Epstein from a slightdifferent angle argued that technology had ldquobecome part of ourselvesrdquoand had democratized human perceptionmdashldquoman has not one memoryof [the] landscape he [now] has a thousand different ones which mayor may not resemble each other Everything possesses hundreds ofapparent diameters which never superimpose exactlyrdquo (6-7)

Broom was soon translating less inflammatory Futurist manifestos suchas Enrico Prampolinirsquos ldquoThe Aesthetic of the Machine and MechanicalIntrospection in Artrdquo in which he declared ldquoIs not the machine todaythe most exuberant symbol of the mystery of human creation Is it notthe new mythical deity which weaves the legends and histories of thecontemporary human drama The Machine in its practical and materialfunction comes to have today in human concepts and thoughts thesignificance of an ideal and spiritual inspirationrdquo The kind of worshipthat ensued was that of the cyborg neither reverent nor memorializ-ing of cosmic law (Haraway 2004 9) Or as Prampolini wrote ldquoOurexperience has convinced us of the truth of certain of our plastic truthsand has allowed us to perceive the errors that lie in othersrdquo (236)

One of the more important pieces of American Dada captured pre-cisely this pointmdashGod (c 1917) designed by Baroness Elsa von Freytag-

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 26

27

Figure 6 Illustration accompanying Enrico Prampolinirsquos ldquoThe Aesthetic of theMachine and Mechanical Introspection in Artrdquo Broom 33 (October 1922) 237

Loringhoven and photographed by Morton Schamberg The invertedcast-iron plumbing trap atop a carpenterrsquos miter box was emblematicof the Melvillean appreciation for technological enchantment Indeedthe pipe is part of an indoor plumbing apparatus a modern conveniencewhose history dates back to some of the earliest feedback technologieson recordmdashthe water-clocks and float-regulators of ancient Greece (Mayr1970 11-26) God resembled the mechanical abstractions Schamberghad been producing before his premature death in 1918 during aninfluenza outbreak in Philadelphia The Baroness a contributor to Broom

and other little magazines had arrived in New York from Germanyin 1913 She was ldquothe first American dadardquo wrote Jane Heap in 1922ldquothe only one living anywhere who dresses dada loves dada lives dadardquo(46) Friends with Marcel Duchamp Djuna Barnes and other NewYork artists the Baroness was a central figure in a burgeoning trans-atlantic avant-garde In addition to her art and poetry the Baronesswas also a ldquoperformancerdquo artist who skillfully inverted gender hierarchiesand attacked through her very presence the traditional sensibilities ofthe middle-class She was notorious for walking around the streets ofGreenwich Village with her shaved head painted purple postage stampspasted to her face and a bird cage around her neck housing a livecanary (Davidson 1996 223-24)

In what must be considered a prescient assault on all manners oflogocentrism the Baroness also carried with her a plaster cast penis thatshe periodically revealed to passersby for maximum shock value (Gammel2002 195) But it was the Barnonessrsquos sculpture God that in addition

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 27

28

Figure 7 God (c 1917) designed by Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven and photographed by Morton Schamberg

to celebrating the mobility and reproducibility of that which was sup-posedly the most fixed and essential repossessed the power of tech-nology as ever imperfect and incomplete As a companion piece of sortsto Duchamprsquos infamous ready-made Fountain an inverted urinal dis-played in the 1917 exhibition of the American Society of IndependentArtists God invited more expressly theological speculation First of allit insisted on supplementing the three traditional symbolic centers ofWestern religious reflectionmdashGod humanity naturemdashwith the machineAnd although it has since been viewed by critics as ldquosacrilegiousrdquo andan instance of ldquoantireligious scatologyrdquo (Naumann 1994 171 Gammel220) the transgressive dimensions to God also affirm a shadowy open-

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 28

29

9 One is reminded here of Melvillersquos letter to Nathaniel Hawthorne in April of1851 ldquoWe incline to think that God cannot explain His own secrets and that Hewould like a little more information upon certain points Himself We mortals aston-ish Him as much as He usrdquo (Melville 1993 186)

ing to radical othernessmdashin the form of imperfection and chancemdashwithin the loops generated by feedback technology

Although the metal pipe ends up pointing toward heaven it firstloops downward in a nod to its human ground Limited by the skillsof the human carpenter on whose box it is anchored the contortedpipe narrativizes both the pitfalls and prospects of the machine ageShit eventually flows up in the case of God not down suggesting thateven the most lofty and noble ideals of the imagination maintain theirhuman aroma Rather than assume the power of divinity classicallyconstrued God staged divinity as nothing more and nothing less thanthat which made life livablemdashthat which kept the smell of human wasteartificially at bay or more ominously managed the flow of thingsthrough feedback control But even more literally God called attentionto the human work in the making of artifice and celebrated the bio-logical possibility for the endless unmaking (and remaking) of selfFeedback technology was not really God but it was for all practicalpurposes Or as the Baroness wrote in a 1927 letter to Peggy GuggenheimGod had much to learn from Henry Ford for he was ldquoclumsily sub-tle-densely-intelligent-inefficiently-immense-(Lord not Fordmdashof course)rdquo9

God the Baroness playfully warned had ldquobetter hotfoot it towardprogressmdashmodernizemdashuse his own omnipotence intelligentlymdashsmart orwersquoll all expire in tangle Well Lord knowsmdash(Does he)rdquo (quoted inGammel 2002 229)

6 Conclusion Deus in machina movet

As Protestant majorities struggled to adjust themselves and their theo-logical inheritance to new technological conditions theologies of themachine age both compelling and disturbing emerged from outsidethe precincts of traditional religious discourse For in addition to beinginspired by the ghost of Herman Melville the Melville Revival wasquite literally haunted by the power of feedback technologiesmdashspectersthat were affective rather than concrete strangely resistant to rationalcontemplation yet recognized through anxious admixtures of thoughtand feeling On one hand the revival reflected the spectrum of Protestant

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 29

30

10 Shortly after the publication of Moby-Dick in November of 1851 reports beganto reach America about the August sinking of the Ann Alexander by a whale in theSouth Pacific It was the first ldquoattack of a whale upon a shiprdquo since the destruc-tion of the Essex in 1820 The story about the Ann Alexander originally appeared inthe Panama Herald on October 16 and was reprinted the following month in New-York Daily Tribune and Littellrsquos Living Age The sperm whale that the Ann Alexander

fears over technological miscegenation The capacity of machines toredraw the boundaries of race and gender disturbed Protestant leadersand revivalists alike On the other hand subversive elements within theMelville Revival offered what must be considered a theological critiqueof how Protestants understood themselves and their God in relation totechnological materials Grant Overton for example saw in Moby-Dick

a deep appreciation for how technological developments had come tounderminemdashquite literally hauntmdashthe epistemological and ontologicalassumptions that made them possible ldquoNo longer able to instance thedeus ex machinardquo wrote Overton Melville was ldquounforgetful that deus inmachina movet and while most of mankind [have] become unable to seethe god for the machine [he] can scarcely perceive the machine forthe god agitating it [His] reports of the machine are somehow unrec-ognizable [his] realism is confronted by Realityrdquo (Overton 1928 231)

Bess Meredythrsquos reimagining of Moby-Dick and Baroness Elsa vonFreytag-Loringhovenrsquos God also explored the otherness that technologyengenders within the modern subject a trace that lingers despite allattempts to extinguish it Their errant readings challenged contempo-raries to reimagine their relationship to technology from an enchantedperspective that did not necessarily conform to the directives of Americanindividualism Resisting the advertisements of both Arminianism andBaconian Common Sense these readings insisted that there was somethingelsemdashsomething wholly othermdashoccurring within the technological workingsof secular modernity Excess or that which unsettled the boundariesbetween body and machine masculine and feminine had resulted inwhat might be called a ldquopost-structure of feelingrdquo The prospect thateither machines or women had begun to think for themselves or atleast possess a kind of agency once attributed to the enlightened malesubject now seemed as likely as a whale vengefully turning against awhaleship10 As Melvillean riffs on the deferred project of religious iden-tity The Sea Beast and God marked the space between human creationand technological determination consent and compulsion and there-fore hinted at the prospect that belief was not an individual state butan embodied activity Consistent with Lewis Mumfordrsquos assessment ofthe symbolic and material powers of feedback technology these works

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 30

31

had first turned upon starboard and larboard boats seizing both in its jaws andcrushing them to pieces It then rushed towards the Ann Alexander ldquoat the rateof fifteen knots In an instant the monster struck the ship with tremendous violence shakingher from stem to sternrdquo (415) Upon reading the article Melville remarked to his pub-lisher ldquothe Whale had almost completely slipped me for the time (amp I was themerrier for it) when Crash comes Moby Dick himself It is really amp truly a sur-prising coincidencemdashto say the least I make no doubt it is Moby Dick himself I wonder if my evil art has raised this monsterrdquo (Melville 1993 209)

11 William Jennings Bryan for example that standard bearer of fundamentalfaith equated faith to a particular kind of technologymdashldquothere is that in each humanliferdquo he wrote ldquothat corresponds to the mainspring of a watchmdashthat which isabsolutely necessary if the life is to be what it should be a real life and not amere existence That necessary thing is a belief in Godrdquo (86) Faith for Bryan wasthat which repeated without difference It was a dependable rational and utterlyrationalizing process It was not however self-regulating It affirmed the ldquorealnessrdquoof the individual believer precisely because it ignored the conditions imposed fromoutside the self But how might faith be viewed in terms of feedback and repro-ducibility rather than repetition a process that does not reaffirm a centered indi-vidual with every tick but adjusts accordingly to external fluctuations

raise numerous questions concerning the ways and means of religionin an age of postmodern complexity and virtual reality

How might a relentless focus on power and the porousness of sub-jectivity change how one views the matter of religion within historyHow might a greater attention to the aesthetic conditions that mediateany and all beliefs challenge the ways in which we distinguish the reli-gious from the secular How might a greater attention to the enchantingpower of material conditions challenge historical and political narrativesof secularization How do technologies and vested interests realize them-selves through the discourses of agency choice and mobility Whatin other words are the conditions of possibility that allow a historicalactor (rather than a Hollywood actor) to make a particular faith com-mitment or for that matter have any faith at all In what languagedo historical actors dream about themselves and divinity and how doesthat language change over time And finally to what degree is faithitself a technology11

By acknowledging the white mythology that still informs say thefield of American religions such questions shift the scholarly emphasisfrom explicit expressions of religious belief and practice to the spacebetween those beliefs and practices and the world at-large Individualswithin American religious history for example have often been depictedas fully formed agents making choices between various faith commitmentsand ever combining religious idioms to suit their specific needs and cir-cumstances (Albanese 1997) No doubt this is true But there is anotherside to this story of radical religious pluralism one that if accounted

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 31

32

12 Such a possibility is very much at odds with the Geertzian model of ldquothickdescriptionrdquo and its formidable legacy in the humanities and social sciences Withoutquestioning the degree to which the self can ever become entirely legible to theself Geertz claimed that every society and individual life and by extension everybelief and every practice ldquocontain their own interpretations One has only to learnhow to gain access to themrdquo (Geertz 1973 453)

13 The ambiguities of agency during the ldquomachine agerdquo have been the subjectof a number of elegant critical studies See for example Anson Rabinbach TheHuman Motor Energy Fatigue and the Origins of Modernity (New York Basic Books1990) Mark Seltzer Bodies and Machines (New York Routledge 1992) MarthaBanta Taylorized Lives Narrative Productions in the Age of Taylor Veblen and Ford (ChicagoUniversity of Chicago Press 1993) Carolyn Thomas de la Pentildea The Body ElectricHow Strange Machines Built the Modern American (New York New York UniversityPress 2003) and Joel Dinerstein The Swinging Machine Modernity Technology andAfrican American Culture Between the World Wars (Amherst University of MassachusettsPress 2003) Dinersteinrsquos work is particularly relevant to the issue of religious com-binativeness given his emphasis on how African American artists strove to refigureldquomachine aestheticsrdquo in and through their artistry Dinersteinrsquos work suggests thatthe self is locatedmdashie the self happensmdashsomewhere between resistance and assim-ilation between choice and coercionmdasha lesson that many Anglo-Americans werenot willing to consider in their triumphal theorizing about the human in relationto the machine The possibility for consideration argues Dinerstein existed inAfrican American jazz swing and dance

for suggests new directions for the study of religion in America Althoughthe ldquolived religionrdquo perspective in American religious history has donemuch to overcome the distinction between ldquodabblersrdquo and ldquotrue believersrdquothe question of power still lingers (Ahlstrom 1972 1052) Religiousbeliefs and practices are neither essential things nor reveal themselvesto the scholar in toto12 Such a position does not replicate the eitherordiscussion regarding the agency of historical actors On the contraryit suggests that religious agency is a hybrid weave of intent and instinctimmediate response and mediated principle knowing and unknowing13

Accounting for the ambiguities of agency has already pushed scholarsof religion toward an anthropology of the secular and an explorationof in the Foucauldian phrasing of Talal Asad ldquothe contingencies thathave come together to give us our certaintiesrdquo (2003 16)

It is with a hint of irony then that one may return to the promotionalpamphlet of The Sea Beast that celebrates the ldquoconquestrdquo of Ahab andthe invisible wafting presence of screenwriter Bess Meredyth ldquoThereis no woman writing today who has contributed so much to genuine

screen values as Bess Meredythrdquo Indeed her son John Meredyth Lucasborn in 1919 continued down his motherrsquos unsettling path as a successfultelevision screenwriter and director His credits included episodes ofldquoStar Trekrdquo ldquoLoganrsquos Runrdquo and that other story of ldquohundred percentrdquoAmericanism ldquoThe Six Million Dollar Manrdquo

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 32

33

Figure 8 The Six Million Dollar Man ldquoGentlemen we can rebuild him Wehave the capability of making the worldrsquos first bionic man We can make him

better than he was before Better Stronger Fasterrdquo

Haverford College370 Lancaster AveHaverford PA 19041jlardashaverfordedu

References

Ahlstrom Sydney E (1972) A Religious History of the American People New HavenYale University Press

Albanese Catherine L (1997) Exchanging selves exchanging souls Contact com-bination and American religious history In Thomas A Tweed (ed) RetellingUS Religious History 200-26 Berkeley University of California Press

Anon (1851) A ship sunk by a whale Littellrsquos Living Age (29 November) 415-16Asad Talal (2003) Formations of the Secular Christianity Islam Modernity Stanford

Stanford University Press

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 33

34

Bacon Francis (1870) The Works of Francis Bacon James Spedding Robert LeslieEllis and Douglas Denon Heath (eds) Vol VIII New York Hurd andHoughton

Barton Bruce (2000) The Man Nobody Knows A Discovery of the Real Jesus ChicagoIvan R Dee

Beniger James R (1986) The Control Revolution Technological and Economic Origins ofthe Information Society Cambridge Harvard University Press

Benjamin Walter (1996) One-way street In Marcus Bullock amp Michael W Jennings(eds) Selected Writings Volume 1 1913-1926 444-88 Cambridge HarvardUniversity Press

mdash (2003) The work of art in the age of its technological reproducibility third ver-sion In Howard Eiland and Michael W Jennings (eds) Selected Writings Volume4 1938-40 251-83 Cambridge Harvard University Press

Bennett Charles A (1923) A Philosophical Study of Mysticism An Essay New HavenYale University Press 1923

Bernays Edward L (1923) Crystallizing Public Opinion New York Liverlight PublishingCorporation

Buchman SR (1925) Moby Dickmdashthe book and The Sea Beastmdashthe picture Anappreciation In Herman Melville Moby Dick or The White Whale ix-xi NewYork Grosset amp Dunlap

Butler Judith (1993) Bodies That Matter On the Discursive Limits of lsquoSexrsquo RoutledgeNew York

Cahir Linda Costanzo (1997) Routinizing the charismatic Melville and Hollywoodrsquosthree Moby-Dicks Melville Society Extracts 110 (September) 11-17

Cendrars Blaise (1922) Profound today Broom 13 ( January) 265-67Chadwick Owen (1975) The Secularization of the European Mind in the Nineteenth Century

Cambridge Cambridge University PressCoe George Albert (1917) A Social Theory of Religious Education New York Charles

Scribnerrsquos SonsDavidson Abraham A (1996) The European art invasion In Francis M Naumann

(ed) with Beth Vann Making Mischief Dada Invades New York 222-27 NewYork Whitney Museum of Art

Debord Guy (1995) Society of the Spectacle translated by Donald Nicholson-SmithNew York Zone Books

Derrida Jacques (1994) Specters of Marx The State of the Debt The Work of Mourningand the New International Peggy Kamuf (trans) New York Routledge

Dorsey George A (1925) Why We Behave Like Human Beings New York BlueRibbon Books

Epstein Jean (1922) The new conditions of literary phenomena Broom 21 (April)3-10

Frank Waldo (1919) Our America New York Boni and LiverightGammel Irene (2002) Baroness Elsa Gender Dada and Everyday Modernitymdasha Cultural

Biography Cambridge The MIT PressGeertz Clifford (1973) Deep play Notes on the Balinese cockfight In The Interpretation

of Cultures 412-53 New York Basic BooksHaraway Donna (2004) A manifesto for cyborgs Science technology and socialist

feminism in the 1980s In The Haraway Reader 7-45 New York RoutledgeHeap Jane (1922) Dada Little Review VII2 (Spring) 46Heidegger Martin (1977) The age of the world-picturerdquo In The Question Concerning

Technology and Other Essays 115-54 William Lovitt (trans) New York Harperamp Row

Hoffman Carol Stein (2001) The Barrymores Hollywoodrsquos First Family LexingtonUniversity of Kentucky Press

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 34

35

Jackson Josephine A and Helen M Salisbury (1922) Outwitting Our Nerves A Primerof Psychotherapy New York The Century Co

Jaffe David (1990) The village enlightenment in New England 1760-1820 TheWilliam and Mary Quarterly XLVII3 ( July) 327-46

Jones Rufus M (1915) Mysticism in present-day religion Harvard Theological ReviewVIII2 (April) 155-65

Kippenberg Hans G (2002) Discovering Religious History in the Modern Age BarbaraHarshav (trans) Princeton Princeton University Press

Kobler John (1977) Damned in Paradise The Life of John Barrymore New YorkAtheneum

Kuttner Alfred B (1922) Nerves In Harold E Stearns (ed) Civilization in the UnitedStates An Enquiry by Thirty Americans 427-42 New York Harcourt

Lauter Paul (1994) Melville climbs the canon American Literature 66 (March) 1-24Lawrence DH (1923) Studies in Classic American Literature New York T SeltzerLindbergh Charles A (1927) We New York GP Putnamrsquos SonsLippmann Walter (1922) Public Opinion New York Macmillan CompanyMarchand Roland (1985) Advertising the American Dream Making Way for Modernity

1920-1940 Berkeley University of California PressMarty Martin E Modern American Religion Vol 2 The Noise of Conflict 1919-1941

Chicago University of Chicago Press 1991May Henry F (1976) The Enlightenment in America New York Oxford University

PressMayhew Jonathan (1749) Concerning the difference between truth and falsehood

right and wrong In Seven Sermons 1-21 Boston Rogers and FowleMayr Otto (1970) The Origins of Feedback Control Cambridge The MIT PressMelville Herman (1993) Correspondence Volume 14 of The Writings of Herman Melville

Lynne Horth (ed) Evanston and Chicago Northwestern University Pressmdash (1925) Moby Dick or The White Whale 1851 New York Grosset amp DunlapMindell David A (2002) Between Human and Machine Feedback Control and Computing

Before Cybernetics Baltimore The Johns Hopkins University PressMumford Lewis (1929) Herman Melville New York The Literary Guild of Americamdash (1924) Sticks and Stones A Study of American Architecture and Civilization New York

Dover Publicationsmdash (1934) Technics and Civilization New York Harcourt Brace and Companymdash (1926) The Golden Day A Study in American Literature and Culture New York Boni

and LiverightMurray Jr HA (1929) Review of Lewis Mumfordrsquos Herman Melville The New

England Quarterly 2 ( July) 523-26Naumann Francis M (1994) New York Dada 1915-23 New York Harry N AbramsNoble David F (1999) The Religion of Technology The Divinity of Man and the Spirit

of Invention New York Penguin BooksNye David E (1994) American Technological Sublime Cambridge The MIT PressOrsquoNeil David (1921) The new Broom Broom 11 (November) 96Overton Grant (1928) The Philosophy of Fiction New York D AppletonPalmer Attorney General (1920) The case against the lsquoRedsrsquo The Forum A Magazine

of Constructive Nationalism 632 (February) 173-85Parsons Floyd W (1927) Everybodyrsquos business Advertising amp Selling ( June 29) 5 64Prampolini Enrico (1922) The aesthetic of the machine and mechanical intro-

spection in art Broom 33 (October) 235-37Rauschenbusch Walter (1917) A Theology for the Social Gospel New York The

Macmillan CompanyRichardson George P (1991) Feedback Thought in Social Science and Systems Theory

Philadelphia University of Pennsylvania Press

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 35

20

cannot bring herself to tell Ahab of the deceit Derek then goes toEsther to convince her that Ahab has abandoned her When Ahabarrives at Estherrsquos house to confirm Derekrsquos story he sees their shadowscast by the light of spermaceti candles and mistakenly believes thatEsther has indeed left him for Derek It is here that Ahab descendsinto his infamous monomania

Ahab goes onto slay Moby Dick but not before uncovering his half-brotherrsquos double betrayal In a dramatic confrontation Derek pulls aknife on Ahab and is about to get the best of our hero But wait Ahabwedges his ivory stump into the deck leveraging himself in order tofend off Derek Ahab then casts Derek overboard and into the sea Anivory technology marking the absence of Ahabrsquos leg has been trans-formed into a salvific presence Or so it seems when the audience istreated to the restoration of order upon the Pequodrsquos return to portand Ahabrsquos reunion with Esther consummated in their tearful embraceHaving staged and seemingly resolved the crisis of masculine identity(the raison drsquoecirctre of melodrama being that the resolution is alreadypresent in the staging) The Sea Beast on the contrary did anything butrestore the full presence of Ahabrsquos self It suggested through both contentand form that the reality of the self whether it be Ahab or the spec-tator in the theater was neither fully resolvable nor equipment-free

Ahab achieves a kind of liberation on screen by recognizing that heis always already a figment of an imagination that is not his own Afterthe tearful reunion between Ahab and Esther the screen goes blackThe audience is then given a glimpse behind the scenes as it weremdasha scene of the director Millard Webb in his chair issuing directionsto Ahab and Esther in Estherrsquos living room A man in a business suitplays the violin in the background As Ahab and Esther look longinglyinto each otherrsquos eyes Ahab slips a ring onto Estherrsquos finger and theyembrace once again Or is it Barrymore and Costello It is unclearparticularly in light of the rumors of an off screen tryst between themiddle-aged Barrymore and his nineteen-year old costar (they wouldlater marry) The loving embrace is seemingly real an ambiguityreaffirmed by the fact that after Webb yells ldquocutrdquo he has to step betweenthe couple and remind them that they are on film Webb then turnsto the camera and smiles as the screen abruptly cuts to black onceagain

The odd ending of The Sea Beast suggests that Ahabrsquos journey towardreconciliation did not end with self-exposure but that it could neverreally begin Rather than achieve restoration of nature in and througha cultural construction Ahabrsquos artificial leg points to a previously

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 20

21

Figure 4 Final Embrace between AhabBarrymore and EstherCostello

ldquoexcluded and illegible domain that haunts the former domain as thespecter of its own impossibility the very limit of intelligibility its con-stitutive outsiderdquo (Butler 1993 xi) The ending harkens back to the seashanty ldquoHanging Johnnyrdquo Ahabrsquos introductory descent from the mast-head and his telescopic flirtation with Esther both vertiginous slidesinto the unfathomable layers of mediated perception that signal theldquoexecutionrdquo of possessive individualism Rather than erase the sign ofAhabrsquos traumamdashhis ivory legmdashthe ending of The Sea Beast suggests thatAhab and Barrymore are two sides of the same character vacillatingwithin the loop of continuous performativity One is reminded here ofWalter Benjaminrsquos insight into the traumatized subject in the age oftechnological reproducibility As Benjamin argues the trauma can beunderstood as a shift from the stage to the screen in which the actorperforms for a ldquopiece of equipmentrdquo rather than for an audience Citingthe Italian playwright Luigi Pirandello Benjamin suggests that the mod-ern subject is

exiled not only from the stage but from his own person With a vagueunease he senses an inexplicable void stemming from the fact that hisbody has lost its substance that he has been volatilized stripped of his

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 21

22

reality his life his voice the noises he makes when moving about andhas been turned into a mute image that flickers for a moment on thescreen then vanishes into silence (2003 260)

Pirandellorsquos borrowed words speak directly to Meredythrsquos reconfigurationof Melvillersquos text Whereas Melvillersquos Ahab tried and failed to conquerthe very source of visual illuminationmdashthe spermaceti oil that allowedantebellum Americans to see in the darkmdashBarrymorersquos Ahab revels inthe technologically enhanced gaze of his audience When the lightscome up the selves of Ahab Barrymore and the audience have beenre-narrativized as cybernetic that is as permanently divided and fun-damentally transient In affirming the really real offscreen relationshipbetween Barrymore and Costello the uncanny ending of The Sea Beast

supported a notion of selfhood as always already mediated or betteryet the necessity of experience to be mediated in order for it to becomereal or maybe even the necessity of acknowledging that the reality ofthe self is really made up

Barrymorersquos self-conscious performance inspired by his reading ofFreud and designed to overcome middle-class mores did not so muchpenetrate the inner depths of his character as it did the emotional lifeand perceptual apparatus of his audience The Sea Beast does not dram-atize the individual conquest of nature as much as it dramatizes visualtechnologyrsquos seduction of the individual The Sea Beast in its staging ofa cybernetic reality denied the very concept of 100 Americanism byinterrupting the narrative closure on which self-presence dependedNeither Ahab nor Barrymore nor the audience are ever alone even intheir solitude They are haunted not simply by the unconscious butby the specters generated in and through technologies of reproduction(Derrida 1994 97) They are in Benjaminrsquos apt phrase ldquopeople whoportray themselvesrdquo (Benjamin 2003 262)

For Benjamin photography and cinema were technologies of religiousrevelation for better or for worse in that they both exposed variousfeedback loops that constituted onersquos identity On one level Benjaminargued that the category of originality had been challenged by visualtechnologies that put copies ldquoof the original in situations which theoriginal itself cannot attainrdquo (2003 254) On another level the decayof the ldquoaurardquo of authenticity and the blurring of original and reproductionenabled individuals to recognize the fact that they were implicated inthe perceptual field and no longer insulated from what they saw orheard ldquoReception in distractionrdquo wrote Benjamin ldquowhich is increas-ing noticeably in all areas of art and is a symptom of profound changesin apperceptionmdashfinds in film its true training groundrdquo (269) Influenced

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 22

23

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethersquos notion of ldquoafter-imagesrdquo in Theory

of Colours (the same text that informed Melvillersquos ldquoThe Whiteness of theWhalerdquo) Benjamin announced the birth of the ldquooptical unconsciousrdquo(266) According to Benjamin images had become the currency of con-sciousness structuring thought and determining the range of possibleactions Mechanical means of reproduction had liberated the perceptualcapacities of humanity They had also ushered in the prospect of massdeception and control Either way they had resulted in a ldquomassiveupheaval in the domain of objectsrdquo and a ldquoshattering of traditionrdquo (254)

5 American Dada and the aporias of modernity

Within the Melville Revivalmdashan almost clicheacuted instance of Modernismrsquosvogue for the solitary geniusmdashseeds of post-Cartesian doubt were beingsown and the enchanting dimensions of technology considered BecauseMelville ldquowas spell-bound by the strange slidings and collidings ofMatterrdquo his work in the eyes of more atheological critics exposed theenchanting conditions of the machine age (Taylor 1984) ldquoIt is the mate-rial elements he really has to do withrdquo wrote DH Lawrence in 1923ldquoHis drama is with them He was a futurist long before futurism foundpaintrdquo (216) For Lewis Mumford too Melville had not simply dram-atized the incursion of machinesmdasha traditional Romantic tropemdashbuthad embraced a series of insoluble contradictions He has come to rec-ognize those parts of the world and himself that had already been pro-duced by machines and had insisted that the plasticity of self wassomething with which Americans had to struggle and to their spiritualdetriment repress

In broaching the aporias of modernity Mumford saw Melville as hav-ing already given the lie to Weberian diagnoses of disenchantment Thecapacity to effectively turn night into day Mumford suggested the expe-rience of a subway car rumbling past the solid structures of a sky-scraper vanishing into the air the peering into a microscope and theobservation of a ldquorow of bottles each of identical size shape colorstretching away for a quarter of a milerdquo were enough to induce a particular kind of vertigo ldquoThe special visual effect of repeating pat-tern[s]rdquo occurred simultaneously with the experience ldquoof the unique andthe non-repeatablerdquo (Mumford 1934 333-34) The experience of intensesystematicitymdashprecisely what feedback technologies were designed toinducemdashcould be positively disorienting when the infinitely calculableassumed the ldquospecial qualityrdquo of the ldquoincalculablerdquo (Heidegger 1977

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 23

24

135) According to Mumford when technology no longer made imperfectcopies of nature but perfect copies of itself the very notion of ldquonaturalrdquocould become radically suspect With the ldquoliquidationrdquo of the solid book-ends of authenticity and artifice came the prospect that the spectrumitself was socially constructed for better or for worse (Benjamin 2003255) Having torn aside the veil ldquoman has thrown between his ownexperience and the blank reality of the universerdquo Melville neither suc-cumbed to the temptation of nihilism nor retreated into his own pri-vate morality On the contrary he urged his contemporaries to ownup to the constructedness of any and all cultural forms and expressionsand the faith commitments that undergirded them As Mumford wroteldquoto appreciate the reality of the White Whale is to see more deeplyinto the expedience of all our immediate institutions all the spiritualshelters man puts between himself and the uncertain cosmic weatherMeaning significance attends only that little part of the universe manhas built up and settledrdquo (Mumford 1926 150-51)

Whereas Mumford assessed the religious dimensions of technologicalldquoprogressrdquo in a tragic key others tended toward the comic as was thecase with a group of experimental artists associated with Broom An

International Magazine of the Arts Published by Americans in Italy publishedbetween 1921 and 1924 (Tashjian 1975 116-34) Broomrsquos co-editor thepoet Alfred Kreyemborg (who would later co-edit The American Caravan

with Lewis Mumford) had adapted a passage from Moby-Dick for itstitle logo and statement of purpose which appeared on the back coverldquoWhat of itrdquo asks Ishmael

if some old hunks of a seacaptain orders me to get a broom and sweepdown the decks What does that indignity amount to weighed I meanin the scales of the New Testament Do you think the Archangel Gabrielthinks any less of me because I promptly and respectfully obey that oldhunks that particular instance Who ainrsquot a slave (Melville 1925 4)

The first issue of Broom included poems addressing Albert Einsteinrsquostheory of relativity as well as Emmy Veronica Sanders declaration thatldquothe American Machinerdquo was ldquotransforming itself with all its attributesand characteristics into American Mindrdquo ldquoAmericardquo she continuedinitially ldquomade of the Puritan by the Puritan for the Puritanrdquo wasnow being ldquoremade of the Machine by the Machine for the Machinerdquo(89-90) Following Sandersrsquos piece was a David OrsquoNeilrsquos hymn of sup-plication to the new Gods of the machine

When you are sweeping usWith Your cosmic broom

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 24

25

Figure 5 Nature and Second Nature in Technics and Civilization (1934)

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 25

26

Sweeping us out of mouldy rutsSweeping us clean and sweetmdash

RememberWhen wersquore quiveringmdashSensitivemdashbaremdashWe shall be gratefulFor just a few shadows (96)

Broom took Ishmaelrsquos retort quite seriously addressing the revolutionarydimensions of technological artifice and the shadows cast within therealm of technological illumination

Unlike Futurism Broom did not celebrate the beauty of war It didhowever come to express the ldquodreamed-of metallization of the humanbodyrdquo and the playful cybernetic fantasies of Dadaists such as ManRay and Francis Picabia (quoted in Benjamin 2003 269) After someinitial hesitation Broom began to embrace Dadarsquos perspective on the lib-eratory dimensions of the human-machine interface ldquoEverything isartificialrdquo gasped Broom contributor Blaise Cendrars ldquoThe eyes thehand the sexual frenzy of the factory The wheel which turns Thewing which flies The voice which travels far on a wire Your ear ina trumpet Your sense of direction Your rhythm You melt the worldin the mould of your skull Your brain is hollow Like a religion amysterious pill hastens your digestionrdquo (265) Jean Epstein from a slightdifferent angle argued that technology had ldquobecome part of ourselvesrdquoand had democratized human perceptionmdashldquoman has not one memoryof [the] landscape he [now] has a thousand different ones which mayor may not resemble each other Everything possesses hundreds ofapparent diameters which never superimpose exactlyrdquo (6-7)

Broom was soon translating less inflammatory Futurist manifestos suchas Enrico Prampolinirsquos ldquoThe Aesthetic of the Machine and MechanicalIntrospection in Artrdquo in which he declared ldquoIs not the machine todaythe most exuberant symbol of the mystery of human creation Is it notthe new mythical deity which weaves the legends and histories of thecontemporary human drama The Machine in its practical and materialfunction comes to have today in human concepts and thoughts thesignificance of an ideal and spiritual inspirationrdquo The kind of worshipthat ensued was that of the cyborg neither reverent nor memorializ-ing of cosmic law (Haraway 2004 9) Or as Prampolini wrote ldquoOurexperience has convinced us of the truth of certain of our plastic truthsand has allowed us to perceive the errors that lie in othersrdquo (236)

One of the more important pieces of American Dada captured pre-cisely this pointmdashGod (c 1917) designed by Baroness Elsa von Freytag-

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 26

27

Figure 6 Illustration accompanying Enrico Prampolinirsquos ldquoThe Aesthetic of theMachine and Mechanical Introspection in Artrdquo Broom 33 (October 1922) 237

Loringhoven and photographed by Morton Schamberg The invertedcast-iron plumbing trap atop a carpenterrsquos miter box was emblematicof the Melvillean appreciation for technological enchantment Indeedthe pipe is part of an indoor plumbing apparatus a modern conveniencewhose history dates back to some of the earliest feedback technologieson recordmdashthe water-clocks and float-regulators of ancient Greece (Mayr1970 11-26) God resembled the mechanical abstractions Schamberghad been producing before his premature death in 1918 during aninfluenza outbreak in Philadelphia The Baroness a contributor to Broom

and other little magazines had arrived in New York from Germanyin 1913 She was ldquothe first American dadardquo wrote Jane Heap in 1922ldquothe only one living anywhere who dresses dada loves dada lives dadardquo(46) Friends with Marcel Duchamp Djuna Barnes and other NewYork artists the Baroness was a central figure in a burgeoning trans-atlantic avant-garde In addition to her art and poetry the Baronesswas also a ldquoperformancerdquo artist who skillfully inverted gender hierarchiesand attacked through her very presence the traditional sensibilities ofthe middle-class She was notorious for walking around the streets ofGreenwich Village with her shaved head painted purple postage stampspasted to her face and a bird cage around her neck housing a livecanary (Davidson 1996 223-24)

In what must be considered a prescient assault on all manners oflogocentrism the Baroness also carried with her a plaster cast penis thatshe periodically revealed to passersby for maximum shock value (Gammel2002 195) But it was the Barnonessrsquos sculpture God that in addition

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 27

28

Figure 7 God (c 1917) designed by Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven and photographed by Morton Schamberg

to celebrating the mobility and reproducibility of that which was sup-posedly the most fixed and essential repossessed the power of tech-nology as ever imperfect and incomplete As a companion piece of sortsto Duchamprsquos infamous ready-made Fountain an inverted urinal dis-played in the 1917 exhibition of the American Society of IndependentArtists God invited more expressly theological speculation First of allit insisted on supplementing the three traditional symbolic centers ofWestern religious reflectionmdashGod humanity naturemdashwith the machineAnd although it has since been viewed by critics as ldquosacrilegiousrdquo andan instance of ldquoantireligious scatologyrdquo (Naumann 1994 171 Gammel220) the transgressive dimensions to God also affirm a shadowy open-

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 28

29

9 One is reminded here of Melvillersquos letter to Nathaniel Hawthorne in April of1851 ldquoWe incline to think that God cannot explain His own secrets and that Hewould like a little more information upon certain points Himself We mortals aston-ish Him as much as He usrdquo (Melville 1993 186)

ing to radical othernessmdashin the form of imperfection and chancemdashwithin the loops generated by feedback technology

Although the metal pipe ends up pointing toward heaven it firstloops downward in a nod to its human ground Limited by the skillsof the human carpenter on whose box it is anchored the contortedpipe narrativizes both the pitfalls and prospects of the machine ageShit eventually flows up in the case of God not down suggesting thateven the most lofty and noble ideals of the imagination maintain theirhuman aroma Rather than assume the power of divinity classicallyconstrued God staged divinity as nothing more and nothing less thanthat which made life livablemdashthat which kept the smell of human wasteartificially at bay or more ominously managed the flow of thingsthrough feedback control But even more literally God called attentionto the human work in the making of artifice and celebrated the bio-logical possibility for the endless unmaking (and remaking) of selfFeedback technology was not really God but it was for all practicalpurposes Or as the Baroness wrote in a 1927 letter to Peggy GuggenheimGod had much to learn from Henry Ford for he was ldquoclumsily sub-tle-densely-intelligent-inefficiently-immense-(Lord not Fordmdashof course)rdquo9

God the Baroness playfully warned had ldquobetter hotfoot it towardprogressmdashmodernizemdashuse his own omnipotence intelligentlymdashsmart orwersquoll all expire in tangle Well Lord knowsmdash(Does he)rdquo (quoted inGammel 2002 229)

6 Conclusion Deus in machina movet

As Protestant majorities struggled to adjust themselves and their theo-logical inheritance to new technological conditions theologies of themachine age both compelling and disturbing emerged from outsidethe precincts of traditional religious discourse For in addition to beinginspired by the ghost of Herman Melville the Melville Revival wasquite literally haunted by the power of feedback technologiesmdashspectersthat were affective rather than concrete strangely resistant to rationalcontemplation yet recognized through anxious admixtures of thoughtand feeling On one hand the revival reflected the spectrum of Protestant

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 29

30

10 Shortly after the publication of Moby-Dick in November of 1851 reports beganto reach America about the August sinking of the Ann Alexander by a whale in theSouth Pacific It was the first ldquoattack of a whale upon a shiprdquo since the destruc-tion of the Essex in 1820 The story about the Ann Alexander originally appeared inthe Panama Herald on October 16 and was reprinted the following month in New-York Daily Tribune and Littellrsquos Living Age The sperm whale that the Ann Alexander

fears over technological miscegenation The capacity of machines toredraw the boundaries of race and gender disturbed Protestant leadersand revivalists alike On the other hand subversive elements within theMelville Revival offered what must be considered a theological critiqueof how Protestants understood themselves and their God in relation totechnological materials Grant Overton for example saw in Moby-Dick

a deep appreciation for how technological developments had come tounderminemdashquite literally hauntmdashthe epistemological and ontologicalassumptions that made them possible ldquoNo longer able to instance thedeus ex machinardquo wrote Overton Melville was ldquounforgetful that deus inmachina movet and while most of mankind [have] become unable to seethe god for the machine [he] can scarcely perceive the machine forthe god agitating it [His] reports of the machine are somehow unrec-ognizable [his] realism is confronted by Realityrdquo (Overton 1928 231)

Bess Meredythrsquos reimagining of Moby-Dick and Baroness Elsa vonFreytag-Loringhovenrsquos God also explored the otherness that technologyengenders within the modern subject a trace that lingers despite allattempts to extinguish it Their errant readings challenged contempo-raries to reimagine their relationship to technology from an enchantedperspective that did not necessarily conform to the directives of Americanindividualism Resisting the advertisements of both Arminianism andBaconian Common Sense these readings insisted that there was somethingelsemdashsomething wholly othermdashoccurring within the technological workingsof secular modernity Excess or that which unsettled the boundariesbetween body and machine masculine and feminine had resulted inwhat might be called a ldquopost-structure of feelingrdquo The prospect thateither machines or women had begun to think for themselves or atleast possess a kind of agency once attributed to the enlightened malesubject now seemed as likely as a whale vengefully turning against awhaleship10 As Melvillean riffs on the deferred project of religious iden-tity The Sea Beast and God marked the space between human creationand technological determination consent and compulsion and there-fore hinted at the prospect that belief was not an individual state butan embodied activity Consistent with Lewis Mumfordrsquos assessment ofthe symbolic and material powers of feedback technology these works

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 30

31

had first turned upon starboard and larboard boats seizing both in its jaws andcrushing them to pieces It then rushed towards the Ann Alexander ldquoat the rateof fifteen knots In an instant the monster struck the ship with tremendous violence shakingher from stem to sternrdquo (415) Upon reading the article Melville remarked to his pub-lisher ldquothe Whale had almost completely slipped me for the time (amp I was themerrier for it) when Crash comes Moby Dick himself It is really amp truly a sur-prising coincidencemdashto say the least I make no doubt it is Moby Dick himself I wonder if my evil art has raised this monsterrdquo (Melville 1993 209)

11 William Jennings Bryan for example that standard bearer of fundamentalfaith equated faith to a particular kind of technologymdashldquothere is that in each humanliferdquo he wrote ldquothat corresponds to the mainspring of a watchmdashthat which isabsolutely necessary if the life is to be what it should be a real life and not amere existence That necessary thing is a belief in Godrdquo (86) Faith for Bryan wasthat which repeated without difference It was a dependable rational and utterlyrationalizing process It was not however self-regulating It affirmed the ldquorealnessrdquoof the individual believer precisely because it ignored the conditions imposed fromoutside the self But how might faith be viewed in terms of feedback and repro-ducibility rather than repetition a process that does not reaffirm a centered indi-vidual with every tick but adjusts accordingly to external fluctuations

raise numerous questions concerning the ways and means of religionin an age of postmodern complexity and virtual reality

How might a relentless focus on power and the porousness of sub-jectivity change how one views the matter of religion within historyHow might a greater attention to the aesthetic conditions that mediateany and all beliefs challenge the ways in which we distinguish the reli-gious from the secular How might a greater attention to the enchantingpower of material conditions challenge historical and political narrativesof secularization How do technologies and vested interests realize them-selves through the discourses of agency choice and mobility Whatin other words are the conditions of possibility that allow a historicalactor (rather than a Hollywood actor) to make a particular faith com-mitment or for that matter have any faith at all In what languagedo historical actors dream about themselves and divinity and how doesthat language change over time And finally to what degree is faithitself a technology11

By acknowledging the white mythology that still informs say thefield of American religions such questions shift the scholarly emphasisfrom explicit expressions of religious belief and practice to the spacebetween those beliefs and practices and the world at-large Individualswithin American religious history for example have often been depictedas fully formed agents making choices between various faith commitmentsand ever combining religious idioms to suit their specific needs and cir-cumstances (Albanese 1997) No doubt this is true But there is anotherside to this story of radical religious pluralism one that if accounted

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 31

32

12 Such a possibility is very much at odds with the Geertzian model of ldquothickdescriptionrdquo and its formidable legacy in the humanities and social sciences Withoutquestioning the degree to which the self can ever become entirely legible to theself Geertz claimed that every society and individual life and by extension everybelief and every practice ldquocontain their own interpretations One has only to learnhow to gain access to themrdquo (Geertz 1973 453)

13 The ambiguities of agency during the ldquomachine agerdquo have been the subjectof a number of elegant critical studies See for example Anson Rabinbach TheHuman Motor Energy Fatigue and the Origins of Modernity (New York Basic Books1990) Mark Seltzer Bodies and Machines (New York Routledge 1992) MarthaBanta Taylorized Lives Narrative Productions in the Age of Taylor Veblen and Ford (ChicagoUniversity of Chicago Press 1993) Carolyn Thomas de la Pentildea The Body ElectricHow Strange Machines Built the Modern American (New York New York UniversityPress 2003) and Joel Dinerstein The Swinging Machine Modernity Technology andAfrican American Culture Between the World Wars (Amherst University of MassachusettsPress 2003) Dinersteinrsquos work is particularly relevant to the issue of religious com-binativeness given his emphasis on how African American artists strove to refigureldquomachine aestheticsrdquo in and through their artistry Dinersteinrsquos work suggests thatthe self is locatedmdashie the self happensmdashsomewhere between resistance and assim-ilation between choice and coercionmdasha lesson that many Anglo-Americans werenot willing to consider in their triumphal theorizing about the human in relationto the machine The possibility for consideration argues Dinerstein existed inAfrican American jazz swing and dance

for suggests new directions for the study of religion in America Althoughthe ldquolived religionrdquo perspective in American religious history has donemuch to overcome the distinction between ldquodabblersrdquo and ldquotrue believersrdquothe question of power still lingers (Ahlstrom 1972 1052) Religiousbeliefs and practices are neither essential things nor reveal themselvesto the scholar in toto12 Such a position does not replicate the eitherordiscussion regarding the agency of historical actors On the contraryit suggests that religious agency is a hybrid weave of intent and instinctimmediate response and mediated principle knowing and unknowing13

Accounting for the ambiguities of agency has already pushed scholarsof religion toward an anthropology of the secular and an explorationof in the Foucauldian phrasing of Talal Asad ldquothe contingencies thathave come together to give us our certaintiesrdquo (2003 16)

It is with a hint of irony then that one may return to the promotionalpamphlet of The Sea Beast that celebrates the ldquoconquestrdquo of Ahab andthe invisible wafting presence of screenwriter Bess Meredyth ldquoThereis no woman writing today who has contributed so much to genuine

screen values as Bess Meredythrdquo Indeed her son John Meredyth Lucasborn in 1919 continued down his motherrsquos unsettling path as a successfultelevision screenwriter and director His credits included episodes ofldquoStar Trekrdquo ldquoLoganrsquos Runrdquo and that other story of ldquohundred percentrdquoAmericanism ldquoThe Six Million Dollar Manrdquo

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 32

33

Figure 8 The Six Million Dollar Man ldquoGentlemen we can rebuild him Wehave the capability of making the worldrsquos first bionic man We can make him

better than he was before Better Stronger Fasterrdquo

Haverford College370 Lancaster AveHaverford PA 19041jlardashaverfordedu

References

Ahlstrom Sydney E (1972) A Religious History of the American People New HavenYale University Press

Albanese Catherine L (1997) Exchanging selves exchanging souls Contact com-bination and American religious history In Thomas A Tweed (ed) RetellingUS Religious History 200-26 Berkeley University of California Press

Anon (1851) A ship sunk by a whale Littellrsquos Living Age (29 November) 415-16Asad Talal (2003) Formations of the Secular Christianity Islam Modernity Stanford

Stanford University Press

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 33

34

Bacon Francis (1870) The Works of Francis Bacon James Spedding Robert LeslieEllis and Douglas Denon Heath (eds) Vol VIII New York Hurd andHoughton

Barton Bruce (2000) The Man Nobody Knows A Discovery of the Real Jesus ChicagoIvan R Dee

Beniger James R (1986) The Control Revolution Technological and Economic Origins ofthe Information Society Cambridge Harvard University Press

Benjamin Walter (1996) One-way street In Marcus Bullock amp Michael W Jennings(eds) Selected Writings Volume 1 1913-1926 444-88 Cambridge HarvardUniversity Press

mdash (2003) The work of art in the age of its technological reproducibility third ver-sion In Howard Eiland and Michael W Jennings (eds) Selected Writings Volume4 1938-40 251-83 Cambridge Harvard University Press

Bennett Charles A (1923) A Philosophical Study of Mysticism An Essay New HavenYale University Press 1923

Bernays Edward L (1923) Crystallizing Public Opinion New York Liverlight PublishingCorporation

Buchman SR (1925) Moby Dickmdashthe book and The Sea Beastmdashthe picture Anappreciation In Herman Melville Moby Dick or The White Whale ix-xi NewYork Grosset amp Dunlap

Butler Judith (1993) Bodies That Matter On the Discursive Limits of lsquoSexrsquo RoutledgeNew York

Cahir Linda Costanzo (1997) Routinizing the charismatic Melville and Hollywoodrsquosthree Moby-Dicks Melville Society Extracts 110 (September) 11-17

Cendrars Blaise (1922) Profound today Broom 13 ( January) 265-67Chadwick Owen (1975) The Secularization of the European Mind in the Nineteenth Century

Cambridge Cambridge University PressCoe George Albert (1917) A Social Theory of Religious Education New York Charles

Scribnerrsquos SonsDavidson Abraham A (1996) The European art invasion In Francis M Naumann

(ed) with Beth Vann Making Mischief Dada Invades New York 222-27 NewYork Whitney Museum of Art

Debord Guy (1995) Society of the Spectacle translated by Donald Nicholson-SmithNew York Zone Books

Derrida Jacques (1994) Specters of Marx The State of the Debt The Work of Mourningand the New International Peggy Kamuf (trans) New York Routledge

Dorsey George A (1925) Why We Behave Like Human Beings New York BlueRibbon Books

Epstein Jean (1922) The new conditions of literary phenomena Broom 21 (April)3-10

Frank Waldo (1919) Our America New York Boni and LiverightGammel Irene (2002) Baroness Elsa Gender Dada and Everyday Modernitymdasha Cultural

Biography Cambridge The MIT PressGeertz Clifford (1973) Deep play Notes on the Balinese cockfight In The Interpretation

of Cultures 412-53 New York Basic BooksHaraway Donna (2004) A manifesto for cyborgs Science technology and socialist

feminism in the 1980s In The Haraway Reader 7-45 New York RoutledgeHeap Jane (1922) Dada Little Review VII2 (Spring) 46Heidegger Martin (1977) The age of the world-picturerdquo In The Question Concerning

Technology and Other Essays 115-54 William Lovitt (trans) New York Harperamp Row

Hoffman Carol Stein (2001) The Barrymores Hollywoodrsquos First Family LexingtonUniversity of Kentucky Press

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 34

35

Jackson Josephine A and Helen M Salisbury (1922) Outwitting Our Nerves A Primerof Psychotherapy New York The Century Co

Jaffe David (1990) The village enlightenment in New England 1760-1820 TheWilliam and Mary Quarterly XLVII3 ( July) 327-46

Jones Rufus M (1915) Mysticism in present-day religion Harvard Theological ReviewVIII2 (April) 155-65

Kippenberg Hans G (2002) Discovering Religious History in the Modern Age BarbaraHarshav (trans) Princeton Princeton University Press

Kobler John (1977) Damned in Paradise The Life of John Barrymore New YorkAtheneum

Kuttner Alfred B (1922) Nerves In Harold E Stearns (ed) Civilization in the UnitedStates An Enquiry by Thirty Americans 427-42 New York Harcourt

Lauter Paul (1994) Melville climbs the canon American Literature 66 (March) 1-24Lawrence DH (1923) Studies in Classic American Literature New York T SeltzerLindbergh Charles A (1927) We New York GP Putnamrsquos SonsLippmann Walter (1922) Public Opinion New York Macmillan CompanyMarchand Roland (1985) Advertising the American Dream Making Way for Modernity

1920-1940 Berkeley University of California PressMarty Martin E Modern American Religion Vol 2 The Noise of Conflict 1919-1941

Chicago University of Chicago Press 1991May Henry F (1976) The Enlightenment in America New York Oxford University

PressMayhew Jonathan (1749) Concerning the difference between truth and falsehood

right and wrong In Seven Sermons 1-21 Boston Rogers and FowleMayr Otto (1970) The Origins of Feedback Control Cambridge The MIT PressMelville Herman (1993) Correspondence Volume 14 of The Writings of Herman Melville

Lynne Horth (ed) Evanston and Chicago Northwestern University Pressmdash (1925) Moby Dick or The White Whale 1851 New York Grosset amp DunlapMindell David A (2002) Between Human and Machine Feedback Control and Computing

Before Cybernetics Baltimore The Johns Hopkins University PressMumford Lewis (1929) Herman Melville New York The Literary Guild of Americamdash (1924) Sticks and Stones A Study of American Architecture and Civilization New York

Dover Publicationsmdash (1934) Technics and Civilization New York Harcourt Brace and Companymdash (1926) The Golden Day A Study in American Literature and Culture New York Boni

and LiverightMurray Jr HA (1929) Review of Lewis Mumfordrsquos Herman Melville The New

England Quarterly 2 ( July) 523-26Naumann Francis M (1994) New York Dada 1915-23 New York Harry N AbramsNoble David F (1999) The Religion of Technology The Divinity of Man and the Spirit

of Invention New York Penguin BooksNye David E (1994) American Technological Sublime Cambridge The MIT PressOrsquoNeil David (1921) The new Broom Broom 11 (November) 96Overton Grant (1928) The Philosophy of Fiction New York D AppletonPalmer Attorney General (1920) The case against the lsquoRedsrsquo The Forum A Magazine

of Constructive Nationalism 632 (February) 173-85Parsons Floyd W (1927) Everybodyrsquos business Advertising amp Selling ( June 29) 5 64Prampolini Enrico (1922) The aesthetic of the machine and mechanical intro-

spection in art Broom 33 (October) 235-37Rauschenbusch Walter (1917) A Theology for the Social Gospel New York The

Macmillan CompanyRichardson George P (1991) Feedback Thought in Social Science and Systems Theory

Philadelphia University of Pennsylvania Press

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 35

21

Figure 4 Final Embrace between AhabBarrymore and EstherCostello

ldquoexcluded and illegible domain that haunts the former domain as thespecter of its own impossibility the very limit of intelligibility its con-stitutive outsiderdquo (Butler 1993 xi) The ending harkens back to the seashanty ldquoHanging Johnnyrdquo Ahabrsquos introductory descent from the mast-head and his telescopic flirtation with Esther both vertiginous slidesinto the unfathomable layers of mediated perception that signal theldquoexecutionrdquo of possessive individualism Rather than erase the sign ofAhabrsquos traumamdashhis ivory legmdashthe ending of The Sea Beast suggests thatAhab and Barrymore are two sides of the same character vacillatingwithin the loop of continuous performativity One is reminded here ofWalter Benjaminrsquos insight into the traumatized subject in the age oftechnological reproducibility As Benjamin argues the trauma can beunderstood as a shift from the stage to the screen in which the actorperforms for a ldquopiece of equipmentrdquo rather than for an audience Citingthe Italian playwright Luigi Pirandello Benjamin suggests that the mod-ern subject is

exiled not only from the stage but from his own person With a vagueunease he senses an inexplicable void stemming from the fact that hisbody has lost its substance that he has been volatilized stripped of his

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 21

22

reality his life his voice the noises he makes when moving about andhas been turned into a mute image that flickers for a moment on thescreen then vanishes into silence (2003 260)

Pirandellorsquos borrowed words speak directly to Meredythrsquos reconfigurationof Melvillersquos text Whereas Melvillersquos Ahab tried and failed to conquerthe very source of visual illuminationmdashthe spermaceti oil that allowedantebellum Americans to see in the darkmdashBarrymorersquos Ahab revels inthe technologically enhanced gaze of his audience When the lightscome up the selves of Ahab Barrymore and the audience have beenre-narrativized as cybernetic that is as permanently divided and fun-damentally transient In affirming the really real offscreen relationshipbetween Barrymore and Costello the uncanny ending of The Sea Beast

supported a notion of selfhood as always already mediated or betteryet the necessity of experience to be mediated in order for it to becomereal or maybe even the necessity of acknowledging that the reality ofthe self is really made up

Barrymorersquos self-conscious performance inspired by his reading ofFreud and designed to overcome middle-class mores did not so muchpenetrate the inner depths of his character as it did the emotional lifeand perceptual apparatus of his audience The Sea Beast does not dram-atize the individual conquest of nature as much as it dramatizes visualtechnologyrsquos seduction of the individual The Sea Beast in its staging ofa cybernetic reality denied the very concept of 100 Americanism byinterrupting the narrative closure on which self-presence dependedNeither Ahab nor Barrymore nor the audience are ever alone even intheir solitude They are haunted not simply by the unconscious butby the specters generated in and through technologies of reproduction(Derrida 1994 97) They are in Benjaminrsquos apt phrase ldquopeople whoportray themselvesrdquo (Benjamin 2003 262)

For Benjamin photography and cinema were technologies of religiousrevelation for better or for worse in that they both exposed variousfeedback loops that constituted onersquos identity On one level Benjaminargued that the category of originality had been challenged by visualtechnologies that put copies ldquoof the original in situations which theoriginal itself cannot attainrdquo (2003 254) On another level the decayof the ldquoaurardquo of authenticity and the blurring of original and reproductionenabled individuals to recognize the fact that they were implicated inthe perceptual field and no longer insulated from what they saw orheard ldquoReception in distractionrdquo wrote Benjamin ldquowhich is increas-ing noticeably in all areas of art and is a symptom of profound changesin apperceptionmdashfinds in film its true training groundrdquo (269) Influenced

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 22

23

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethersquos notion of ldquoafter-imagesrdquo in Theory

of Colours (the same text that informed Melvillersquos ldquoThe Whiteness of theWhalerdquo) Benjamin announced the birth of the ldquooptical unconsciousrdquo(266) According to Benjamin images had become the currency of con-sciousness structuring thought and determining the range of possibleactions Mechanical means of reproduction had liberated the perceptualcapacities of humanity They had also ushered in the prospect of massdeception and control Either way they had resulted in a ldquomassiveupheaval in the domain of objectsrdquo and a ldquoshattering of traditionrdquo (254)

5 American Dada and the aporias of modernity

Within the Melville Revivalmdashan almost clicheacuted instance of Modernismrsquosvogue for the solitary geniusmdashseeds of post-Cartesian doubt were beingsown and the enchanting dimensions of technology considered BecauseMelville ldquowas spell-bound by the strange slidings and collidings ofMatterrdquo his work in the eyes of more atheological critics exposed theenchanting conditions of the machine age (Taylor 1984) ldquoIt is the mate-rial elements he really has to do withrdquo wrote DH Lawrence in 1923ldquoHis drama is with them He was a futurist long before futurism foundpaintrdquo (216) For Lewis Mumford too Melville had not simply dram-atized the incursion of machinesmdasha traditional Romantic tropemdashbuthad embraced a series of insoluble contradictions He has come to rec-ognize those parts of the world and himself that had already been pro-duced by machines and had insisted that the plasticity of self wassomething with which Americans had to struggle and to their spiritualdetriment repress

In broaching the aporias of modernity Mumford saw Melville as hav-ing already given the lie to Weberian diagnoses of disenchantment Thecapacity to effectively turn night into day Mumford suggested the expe-rience of a subway car rumbling past the solid structures of a sky-scraper vanishing into the air the peering into a microscope and theobservation of a ldquorow of bottles each of identical size shape colorstretching away for a quarter of a milerdquo were enough to induce a particular kind of vertigo ldquoThe special visual effect of repeating pat-tern[s]rdquo occurred simultaneously with the experience ldquoof the unique andthe non-repeatablerdquo (Mumford 1934 333-34) The experience of intensesystematicitymdashprecisely what feedback technologies were designed toinducemdashcould be positively disorienting when the infinitely calculableassumed the ldquospecial qualityrdquo of the ldquoincalculablerdquo (Heidegger 1977

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 23

24

135) According to Mumford when technology no longer made imperfectcopies of nature but perfect copies of itself the very notion of ldquonaturalrdquocould become radically suspect With the ldquoliquidationrdquo of the solid book-ends of authenticity and artifice came the prospect that the spectrumitself was socially constructed for better or for worse (Benjamin 2003255) Having torn aside the veil ldquoman has thrown between his ownexperience and the blank reality of the universerdquo Melville neither suc-cumbed to the temptation of nihilism nor retreated into his own pri-vate morality On the contrary he urged his contemporaries to ownup to the constructedness of any and all cultural forms and expressionsand the faith commitments that undergirded them As Mumford wroteldquoto appreciate the reality of the White Whale is to see more deeplyinto the expedience of all our immediate institutions all the spiritualshelters man puts between himself and the uncertain cosmic weatherMeaning significance attends only that little part of the universe manhas built up and settledrdquo (Mumford 1926 150-51)

Whereas Mumford assessed the religious dimensions of technologicalldquoprogressrdquo in a tragic key others tended toward the comic as was thecase with a group of experimental artists associated with Broom An

International Magazine of the Arts Published by Americans in Italy publishedbetween 1921 and 1924 (Tashjian 1975 116-34) Broomrsquos co-editor thepoet Alfred Kreyemborg (who would later co-edit The American Caravan

with Lewis Mumford) had adapted a passage from Moby-Dick for itstitle logo and statement of purpose which appeared on the back coverldquoWhat of itrdquo asks Ishmael

if some old hunks of a seacaptain orders me to get a broom and sweepdown the decks What does that indignity amount to weighed I meanin the scales of the New Testament Do you think the Archangel Gabrielthinks any less of me because I promptly and respectfully obey that oldhunks that particular instance Who ainrsquot a slave (Melville 1925 4)

The first issue of Broom included poems addressing Albert Einsteinrsquostheory of relativity as well as Emmy Veronica Sanders declaration thatldquothe American Machinerdquo was ldquotransforming itself with all its attributesand characteristics into American Mindrdquo ldquoAmericardquo she continuedinitially ldquomade of the Puritan by the Puritan for the Puritanrdquo wasnow being ldquoremade of the Machine by the Machine for the Machinerdquo(89-90) Following Sandersrsquos piece was a David OrsquoNeilrsquos hymn of sup-plication to the new Gods of the machine

When you are sweeping usWith Your cosmic broom

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 24

25

Figure 5 Nature and Second Nature in Technics and Civilization (1934)

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 25

26

Sweeping us out of mouldy rutsSweeping us clean and sweetmdash

RememberWhen wersquore quiveringmdashSensitivemdashbaremdashWe shall be gratefulFor just a few shadows (96)

Broom took Ishmaelrsquos retort quite seriously addressing the revolutionarydimensions of technological artifice and the shadows cast within therealm of technological illumination

Unlike Futurism Broom did not celebrate the beauty of war It didhowever come to express the ldquodreamed-of metallization of the humanbodyrdquo and the playful cybernetic fantasies of Dadaists such as ManRay and Francis Picabia (quoted in Benjamin 2003 269) After someinitial hesitation Broom began to embrace Dadarsquos perspective on the lib-eratory dimensions of the human-machine interface ldquoEverything isartificialrdquo gasped Broom contributor Blaise Cendrars ldquoThe eyes thehand the sexual frenzy of the factory The wheel which turns Thewing which flies The voice which travels far on a wire Your ear ina trumpet Your sense of direction Your rhythm You melt the worldin the mould of your skull Your brain is hollow Like a religion amysterious pill hastens your digestionrdquo (265) Jean Epstein from a slightdifferent angle argued that technology had ldquobecome part of ourselvesrdquoand had democratized human perceptionmdashldquoman has not one memoryof [the] landscape he [now] has a thousand different ones which mayor may not resemble each other Everything possesses hundreds ofapparent diameters which never superimpose exactlyrdquo (6-7)

Broom was soon translating less inflammatory Futurist manifestos suchas Enrico Prampolinirsquos ldquoThe Aesthetic of the Machine and MechanicalIntrospection in Artrdquo in which he declared ldquoIs not the machine todaythe most exuberant symbol of the mystery of human creation Is it notthe new mythical deity which weaves the legends and histories of thecontemporary human drama The Machine in its practical and materialfunction comes to have today in human concepts and thoughts thesignificance of an ideal and spiritual inspirationrdquo The kind of worshipthat ensued was that of the cyborg neither reverent nor memorializ-ing of cosmic law (Haraway 2004 9) Or as Prampolini wrote ldquoOurexperience has convinced us of the truth of certain of our plastic truthsand has allowed us to perceive the errors that lie in othersrdquo (236)

One of the more important pieces of American Dada captured pre-cisely this pointmdashGod (c 1917) designed by Baroness Elsa von Freytag-

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 26

27

Figure 6 Illustration accompanying Enrico Prampolinirsquos ldquoThe Aesthetic of theMachine and Mechanical Introspection in Artrdquo Broom 33 (October 1922) 237

Loringhoven and photographed by Morton Schamberg The invertedcast-iron plumbing trap atop a carpenterrsquos miter box was emblematicof the Melvillean appreciation for technological enchantment Indeedthe pipe is part of an indoor plumbing apparatus a modern conveniencewhose history dates back to some of the earliest feedback technologieson recordmdashthe water-clocks and float-regulators of ancient Greece (Mayr1970 11-26) God resembled the mechanical abstractions Schamberghad been producing before his premature death in 1918 during aninfluenza outbreak in Philadelphia The Baroness a contributor to Broom

and other little magazines had arrived in New York from Germanyin 1913 She was ldquothe first American dadardquo wrote Jane Heap in 1922ldquothe only one living anywhere who dresses dada loves dada lives dadardquo(46) Friends with Marcel Duchamp Djuna Barnes and other NewYork artists the Baroness was a central figure in a burgeoning trans-atlantic avant-garde In addition to her art and poetry the Baronesswas also a ldquoperformancerdquo artist who skillfully inverted gender hierarchiesand attacked through her very presence the traditional sensibilities ofthe middle-class She was notorious for walking around the streets ofGreenwich Village with her shaved head painted purple postage stampspasted to her face and a bird cage around her neck housing a livecanary (Davidson 1996 223-24)

In what must be considered a prescient assault on all manners oflogocentrism the Baroness also carried with her a plaster cast penis thatshe periodically revealed to passersby for maximum shock value (Gammel2002 195) But it was the Barnonessrsquos sculpture God that in addition

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 27

28

Figure 7 God (c 1917) designed by Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven and photographed by Morton Schamberg

to celebrating the mobility and reproducibility of that which was sup-posedly the most fixed and essential repossessed the power of tech-nology as ever imperfect and incomplete As a companion piece of sortsto Duchamprsquos infamous ready-made Fountain an inverted urinal dis-played in the 1917 exhibition of the American Society of IndependentArtists God invited more expressly theological speculation First of allit insisted on supplementing the three traditional symbolic centers ofWestern religious reflectionmdashGod humanity naturemdashwith the machineAnd although it has since been viewed by critics as ldquosacrilegiousrdquo andan instance of ldquoantireligious scatologyrdquo (Naumann 1994 171 Gammel220) the transgressive dimensions to God also affirm a shadowy open-

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 28

29

9 One is reminded here of Melvillersquos letter to Nathaniel Hawthorne in April of1851 ldquoWe incline to think that God cannot explain His own secrets and that Hewould like a little more information upon certain points Himself We mortals aston-ish Him as much as He usrdquo (Melville 1993 186)

ing to radical othernessmdashin the form of imperfection and chancemdashwithin the loops generated by feedback technology

Although the metal pipe ends up pointing toward heaven it firstloops downward in a nod to its human ground Limited by the skillsof the human carpenter on whose box it is anchored the contortedpipe narrativizes both the pitfalls and prospects of the machine ageShit eventually flows up in the case of God not down suggesting thateven the most lofty and noble ideals of the imagination maintain theirhuman aroma Rather than assume the power of divinity classicallyconstrued God staged divinity as nothing more and nothing less thanthat which made life livablemdashthat which kept the smell of human wasteartificially at bay or more ominously managed the flow of thingsthrough feedback control But even more literally God called attentionto the human work in the making of artifice and celebrated the bio-logical possibility for the endless unmaking (and remaking) of selfFeedback technology was not really God but it was for all practicalpurposes Or as the Baroness wrote in a 1927 letter to Peggy GuggenheimGod had much to learn from Henry Ford for he was ldquoclumsily sub-tle-densely-intelligent-inefficiently-immense-(Lord not Fordmdashof course)rdquo9

God the Baroness playfully warned had ldquobetter hotfoot it towardprogressmdashmodernizemdashuse his own omnipotence intelligentlymdashsmart orwersquoll all expire in tangle Well Lord knowsmdash(Does he)rdquo (quoted inGammel 2002 229)

6 Conclusion Deus in machina movet

As Protestant majorities struggled to adjust themselves and their theo-logical inheritance to new technological conditions theologies of themachine age both compelling and disturbing emerged from outsidethe precincts of traditional religious discourse For in addition to beinginspired by the ghost of Herman Melville the Melville Revival wasquite literally haunted by the power of feedback technologiesmdashspectersthat were affective rather than concrete strangely resistant to rationalcontemplation yet recognized through anxious admixtures of thoughtand feeling On one hand the revival reflected the spectrum of Protestant

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 29

30

10 Shortly after the publication of Moby-Dick in November of 1851 reports beganto reach America about the August sinking of the Ann Alexander by a whale in theSouth Pacific It was the first ldquoattack of a whale upon a shiprdquo since the destruc-tion of the Essex in 1820 The story about the Ann Alexander originally appeared inthe Panama Herald on October 16 and was reprinted the following month in New-York Daily Tribune and Littellrsquos Living Age The sperm whale that the Ann Alexander

fears over technological miscegenation The capacity of machines toredraw the boundaries of race and gender disturbed Protestant leadersand revivalists alike On the other hand subversive elements within theMelville Revival offered what must be considered a theological critiqueof how Protestants understood themselves and their God in relation totechnological materials Grant Overton for example saw in Moby-Dick

a deep appreciation for how technological developments had come tounderminemdashquite literally hauntmdashthe epistemological and ontologicalassumptions that made them possible ldquoNo longer able to instance thedeus ex machinardquo wrote Overton Melville was ldquounforgetful that deus inmachina movet and while most of mankind [have] become unable to seethe god for the machine [he] can scarcely perceive the machine forthe god agitating it [His] reports of the machine are somehow unrec-ognizable [his] realism is confronted by Realityrdquo (Overton 1928 231)

Bess Meredythrsquos reimagining of Moby-Dick and Baroness Elsa vonFreytag-Loringhovenrsquos God also explored the otherness that technologyengenders within the modern subject a trace that lingers despite allattempts to extinguish it Their errant readings challenged contempo-raries to reimagine their relationship to technology from an enchantedperspective that did not necessarily conform to the directives of Americanindividualism Resisting the advertisements of both Arminianism andBaconian Common Sense these readings insisted that there was somethingelsemdashsomething wholly othermdashoccurring within the technological workingsof secular modernity Excess or that which unsettled the boundariesbetween body and machine masculine and feminine had resulted inwhat might be called a ldquopost-structure of feelingrdquo The prospect thateither machines or women had begun to think for themselves or atleast possess a kind of agency once attributed to the enlightened malesubject now seemed as likely as a whale vengefully turning against awhaleship10 As Melvillean riffs on the deferred project of religious iden-tity The Sea Beast and God marked the space between human creationand technological determination consent and compulsion and there-fore hinted at the prospect that belief was not an individual state butan embodied activity Consistent with Lewis Mumfordrsquos assessment ofthe symbolic and material powers of feedback technology these works

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 30

31

had first turned upon starboard and larboard boats seizing both in its jaws andcrushing them to pieces It then rushed towards the Ann Alexander ldquoat the rateof fifteen knots In an instant the monster struck the ship with tremendous violence shakingher from stem to sternrdquo (415) Upon reading the article Melville remarked to his pub-lisher ldquothe Whale had almost completely slipped me for the time (amp I was themerrier for it) when Crash comes Moby Dick himself It is really amp truly a sur-prising coincidencemdashto say the least I make no doubt it is Moby Dick himself I wonder if my evil art has raised this monsterrdquo (Melville 1993 209)

11 William Jennings Bryan for example that standard bearer of fundamentalfaith equated faith to a particular kind of technologymdashldquothere is that in each humanliferdquo he wrote ldquothat corresponds to the mainspring of a watchmdashthat which isabsolutely necessary if the life is to be what it should be a real life and not amere existence That necessary thing is a belief in Godrdquo (86) Faith for Bryan wasthat which repeated without difference It was a dependable rational and utterlyrationalizing process It was not however self-regulating It affirmed the ldquorealnessrdquoof the individual believer precisely because it ignored the conditions imposed fromoutside the self But how might faith be viewed in terms of feedback and repro-ducibility rather than repetition a process that does not reaffirm a centered indi-vidual with every tick but adjusts accordingly to external fluctuations

raise numerous questions concerning the ways and means of religionin an age of postmodern complexity and virtual reality

How might a relentless focus on power and the porousness of sub-jectivity change how one views the matter of religion within historyHow might a greater attention to the aesthetic conditions that mediateany and all beliefs challenge the ways in which we distinguish the reli-gious from the secular How might a greater attention to the enchantingpower of material conditions challenge historical and political narrativesof secularization How do technologies and vested interests realize them-selves through the discourses of agency choice and mobility Whatin other words are the conditions of possibility that allow a historicalactor (rather than a Hollywood actor) to make a particular faith com-mitment or for that matter have any faith at all In what languagedo historical actors dream about themselves and divinity and how doesthat language change over time And finally to what degree is faithitself a technology11

By acknowledging the white mythology that still informs say thefield of American religions such questions shift the scholarly emphasisfrom explicit expressions of religious belief and practice to the spacebetween those beliefs and practices and the world at-large Individualswithin American religious history for example have often been depictedas fully formed agents making choices between various faith commitmentsand ever combining religious idioms to suit their specific needs and cir-cumstances (Albanese 1997) No doubt this is true But there is anotherside to this story of radical religious pluralism one that if accounted

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 31

32

12 Such a possibility is very much at odds with the Geertzian model of ldquothickdescriptionrdquo and its formidable legacy in the humanities and social sciences Withoutquestioning the degree to which the self can ever become entirely legible to theself Geertz claimed that every society and individual life and by extension everybelief and every practice ldquocontain their own interpretations One has only to learnhow to gain access to themrdquo (Geertz 1973 453)

13 The ambiguities of agency during the ldquomachine agerdquo have been the subjectof a number of elegant critical studies See for example Anson Rabinbach TheHuman Motor Energy Fatigue and the Origins of Modernity (New York Basic Books1990) Mark Seltzer Bodies and Machines (New York Routledge 1992) MarthaBanta Taylorized Lives Narrative Productions in the Age of Taylor Veblen and Ford (ChicagoUniversity of Chicago Press 1993) Carolyn Thomas de la Pentildea The Body ElectricHow Strange Machines Built the Modern American (New York New York UniversityPress 2003) and Joel Dinerstein The Swinging Machine Modernity Technology andAfrican American Culture Between the World Wars (Amherst University of MassachusettsPress 2003) Dinersteinrsquos work is particularly relevant to the issue of religious com-binativeness given his emphasis on how African American artists strove to refigureldquomachine aestheticsrdquo in and through their artistry Dinersteinrsquos work suggests thatthe self is locatedmdashie the self happensmdashsomewhere between resistance and assim-ilation between choice and coercionmdasha lesson that many Anglo-Americans werenot willing to consider in their triumphal theorizing about the human in relationto the machine The possibility for consideration argues Dinerstein existed inAfrican American jazz swing and dance

for suggests new directions for the study of religion in America Althoughthe ldquolived religionrdquo perspective in American religious history has donemuch to overcome the distinction between ldquodabblersrdquo and ldquotrue believersrdquothe question of power still lingers (Ahlstrom 1972 1052) Religiousbeliefs and practices are neither essential things nor reveal themselvesto the scholar in toto12 Such a position does not replicate the eitherordiscussion regarding the agency of historical actors On the contraryit suggests that religious agency is a hybrid weave of intent and instinctimmediate response and mediated principle knowing and unknowing13

Accounting for the ambiguities of agency has already pushed scholarsof religion toward an anthropology of the secular and an explorationof in the Foucauldian phrasing of Talal Asad ldquothe contingencies thathave come together to give us our certaintiesrdquo (2003 16)

It is with a hint of irony then that one may return to the promotionalpamphlet of The Sea Beast that celebrates the ldquoconquestrdquo of Ahab andthe invisible wafting presence of screenwriter Bess Meredyth ldquoThereis no woman writing today who has contributed so much to genuine

screen values as Bess Meredythrdquo Indeed her son John Meredyth Lucasborn in 1919 continued down his motherrsquos unsettling path as a successfultelevision screenwriter and director His credits included episodes ofldquoStar Trekrdquo ldquoLoganrsquos Runrdquo and that other story of ldquohundred percentrdquoAmericanism ldquoThe Six Million Dollar Manrdquo

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 32

33

Figure 8 The Six Million Dollar Man ldquoGentlemen we can rebuild him Wehave the capability of making the worldrsquos first bionic man We can make him

better than he was before Better Stronger Fasterrdquo

Haverford College370 Lancaster AveHaverford PA 19041jlardashaverfordedu

References

Ahlstrom Sydney E (1972) A Religious History of the American People New HavenYale University Press

Albanese Catherine L (1997) Exchanging selves exchanging souls Contact com-bination and American religious history In Thomas A Tweed (ed) RetellingUS Religious History 200-26 Berkeley University of California Press

Anon (1851) A ship sunk by a whale Littellrsquos Living Age (29 November) 415-16Asad Talal (2003) Formations of the Secular Christianity Islam Modernity Stanford

Stanford University Press

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 33

34

Bacon Francis (1870) The Works of Francis Bacon James Spedding Robert LeslieEllis and Douglas Denon Heath (eds) Vol VIII New York Hurd andHoughton

Barton Bruce (2000) The Man Nobody Knows A Discovery of the Real Jesus ChicagoIvan R Dee

Beniger James R (1986) The Control Revolution Technological and Economic Origins ofthe Information Society Cambridge Harvard University Press

Benjamin Walter (1996) One-way street In Marcus Bullock amp Michael W Jennings(eds) Selected Writings Volume 1 1913-1926 444-88 Cambridge HarvardUniversity Press

mdash (2003) The work of art in the age of its technological reproducibility third ver-sion In Howard Eiland and Michael W Jennings (eds) Selected Writings Volume4 1938-40 251-83 Cambridge Harvard University Press

Bennett Charles A (1923) A Philosophical Study of Mysticism An Essay New HavenYale University Press 1923

Bernays Edward L (1923) Crystallizing Public Opinion New York Liverlight PublishingCorporation

Buchman SR (1925) Moby Dickmdashthe book and The Sea Beastmdashthe picture Anappreciation In Herman Melville Moby Dick or The White Whale ix-xi NewYork Grosset amp Dunlap

Butler Judith (1993) Bodies That Matter On the Discursive Limits of lsquoSexrsquo RoutledgeNew York

Cahir Linda Costanzo (1997) Routinizing the charismatic Melville and Hollywoodrsquosthree Moby-Dicks Melville Society Extracts 110 (September) 11-17

Cendrars Blaise (1922) Profound today Broom 13 ( January) 265-67Chadwick Owen (1975) The Secularization of the European Mind in the Nineteenth Century

Cambridge Cambridge University PressCoe George Albert (1917) A Social Theory of Religious Education New York Charles

Scribnerrsquos SonsDavidson Abraham A (1996) The European art invasion In Francis M Naumann

(ed) with Beth Vann Making Mischief Dada Invades New York 222-27 NewYork Whitney Museum of Art

Debord Guy (1995) Society of the Spectacle translated by Donald Nicholson-SmithNew York Zone Books

Derrida Jacques (1994) Specters of Marx The State of the Debt The Work of Mourningand the New International Peggy Kamuf (trans) New York Routledge

Dorsey George A (1925) Why We Behave Like Human Beings New York BlueRibbon Books

Epstein Jean (1922) The new conditions of literary phenomena Broom 21 (April)3-10

Frank Waldo (1919) Our America New York Boni and LiverightGammel Irene (2002) Baroness Elsa Gender Dada and Everyday Modernitymdasha Cultural

Biography Cambridge The MIT PressGeertz Clifford (1973) Deep play Notes on the Balinese cockfight In The Interpretation

of Cultures 412-53 New York Basic BooksHaraway Donna (2004) A manifesto for cyborgs Science technology and socialist

feminism in the 1980s In The Haraway Reader 7-45 New York RoutledgeHeap Jane (1922) Dada Little Review VII2 (Spring) 46Heidegger Martin (1977) The age of the world-picturerdquo In The Question Concerning

Technology and Other Essays 115-54 William Lovitt (trans) New York Harperamp Row

Hoffman Carol Stein (2001) The Barrymores Hollywoodrsquos First Family LexingtonUniversity of Kentucky Press

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 34

35

Jackson Josephine A and Helen M Salisbury (1922) Outwitting Our Nerves A Primerof Psychotherapy New York The Century Co

Jaffe David (1990) The village enlightenment in New England 1760-1820 TheWilliam and Mary Quarterly XLVII3 ( July) 327-46

Jones Rufus M (1915) Mysticism in present-day religion Harvard Theological ReviewVIII2 (April) 155-65

Kippenberg Hans G (2002) Discovering Religious History in the Modern Age BarbaraHarshav (trans) Princeton Princeton University Press

Kobler John (1977) Damned in Paradise The Life of John Barrymore New YorkAtheneum

Kuttner Alfred B (1922) Nerves In Harold E Stearns (ed) Civilization in the UnitedStates An Enquiry by Thirty Americans 427-42 New York Harcourt

Lauter Paul (1994) Melville climbs the canon American Literature 66 (March) 1-24Lawrence DH (1923) Studies in Classic American Literature New York T SeltzerLindbergh Charles A (1927) We New York GP Putnamrsquos SonsLippmann Walter (1922) Public Opinion New York Macmillan CompanyMarchand Roland (1985) Advertising the American Dream Making Way for Modernity

1920-1940 Berkeley University of California PressMarty Martin E Modern American Religion Vol 2 The Noise of Conflict 1919-1941

Chicago University of Chicago Press 1991May Henry F (1976) The Enlightenment in America New York Oxford University

PressMayhew Jonathan (1749) Concerning the difference between truth and falsehood

right and wrong In Seven Sermons 1-21 Boston Rogers and FowleMayr Otto (1970) The Origins of Feedback Control Cambridge The MIT PressMelville Herman (1993) Correspondence Volume 14 of The Writings of Herman Melville

Lynne Horth (ed) Evanston and Chicago Northwestern University Pressmdash (1925) Moby Dick or The White Whale 1851 New York Grosset amp DunlapMindell David A (2002) Between Human and Machine Feedback Control and Computing

Before Cybernetics Baltimore The Johns Hopkins University PressMumford Lewis (1929) Herman Melville New York The Literary Guild of Americamdash (1924) Sticks and Stones A Study of American Architecture and Civilization New York

Dover Publicationsmdash (1934) Technics and Civilization New York Harcourt Brace and Companymdash (1926) The Golden Day A Study in American Literature and Culture New York Boni

and LiverightMurray Jr HA (1929) Review of Lewis Mumfordrsquos Herman Melville The New

England Quarterly 2 ( July) 523-26Naumann Francis M (1994) New York Dada 1915-23 New York Harry N AbramsNoble David F (1999) The Religion of Technology The Divinity of Man and the Spirit

of Invention New York Penguin BooksNye David E (1994) American Technological Sublime Cambridge The MIT PressOrsquoNeil David (1921) The new Broom Broom 11 (November) 96Overton Grant (1928) The Philosophy of Fiction New York D AppletonPalmer Attorney General (1920) The case against the lsquoRedsrsquo The Forum A Magazine

of Constructive Nationalism 632 (February) 173-85Parsons Floyd W (1927) Everybodyrsquos business Advertising amp Selling ( June 29) 5 64Prampolini Enrico (1922) The aesthetic of the machine and mechanical intro-

spection in art Broom 33 (October) 235-37Rauschenbusch Walter (1917) A Theology for the Social Gospel New York The

Macmillan CompanyRichardson George P (1991) Feedback Thought in Social Science and Systems Theory

Philadelphia University of Pennsylvania Press

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 35

22

reality his life his voice the noises he makes when moving about andhas been turned into a mute image that flickers for a moment on thescreen then vanishes into silence (2003 260)

Pirandellorsquos borrowed words speak directly to Meredythrsquos reconfigurationof Melvillersquos text Whereas Melvillersquos Ahab tried and failed to conquerthe very source of visual illuminationmdashthe spermaceti oil that allowedantebellum Americans to see in the darkmdashBarrymorersquos Ahab revels inthe technologically enhanced gaze of his audience When the lightscome up the selves of Ahab Barrymore and the audience have beenre-narrativized as cybernetic that is as permanently divided and fun-damentally transient In affirming the really real offscreen relationshipbetween Barrymore and Costello the uncanny ending of The Sea Beast

supported a notion of selfhood as always already mediated or betteryet the necessity of experience to be mediated in order for it to becomereal or maybe even the necessity of acknowledging that the reality ofthe self is really made up

Barrymorersquos self-conscious performance inspired by his reading ofFreud and designed to overcome middle-class mores did not so muchpenetrate the inner depths of his character as it did the emotional lifeand perceptual apparatus of his audience The Sea Beast does not dram-atize the individual conquest of nature as much as it dramatizes visualtechnologyrsquos seduction of the individual The Sea Beast in its staging ofa cybernetic reality denied the very concept of 100 Americanism byinterrupting the narrative closure on which self-presence dependedNeither Ahab nor Barrymore nor the audience are ever alone even intheir solitude They are haunted not simply by the unconscious butby the specters generated in and through technologies of reproduction(Derrida 1994 97) They are in Benjaminrsquos apt phrase ldquopeople whoportray themselvesrdquo (Benjamin 2003 262)

For Benjamin photography and cinema were technologies of religiousrevelation for better or for worse in that they both exposed variousfeedback loops that constituted onersquos identity On one level Benjaminargued that the category of originality had been challenged by visualtechnologies that put copies ldquoof the original in situations which theoriginal itself cannot attainrdquo (2003 254) On another level the decayof the ldquoaurardquo of authenticity and the blurring of original and reproductionenabled individuals to recognize the fact that they were implicated inthe perceptual field and no longer insulated from what they saw orheard ldquoReception in distractionrdquo wrote Benjamin ldquowhich is increas-ing noticeably in all areas of art and is a symptom of profound changesin apperceptionmdashfinds in film its true training groundrdquo (269) Influenced

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 22

23

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethersquos notion of ldquoafter-imagesrdquo in Theory

of Colours (the same text that informed Melvillersquos ldquoThe Whiteness of theWhalerdquo) Benjamin announced the birth of the ldquooptical unconsciousrdquo(266) According to Benjamin images had become the currency of con-sciousness structuring thought and determining the range of possibleactions Mechanical means of reproduction had liberated the perceptualcapacities of humanity They had also ushered in the prospect of massdeception and control Either way they had resulted in a ldquomassiveupheaval in the domain of objectsrdquo and a ldquoshattering of traditionrdquo (254)

5 American Dada and the aporias of modernity

Within the Melville Revivalmdashan almost clicheacuted instance of Modernismrsquosvogue for the solitary geniusmdashseeds of post-Cartesian doubt were beingsown and the enchanting dimensions of technology considered BecauseMelville ldquowas spell-bound by the strange slidings and collidings ofMatterrdquo his work in the eyes of more atheological critics exposed theenchanting conditions of the machine age (Taylor 1984) ldquoIt is the mate-rial elements he really has to do withrdquo wrote DH Lawrence in 1923ldquoHis drama is with them He was a futurist long before futurism foundpaintrdquo (216) For Lewis Mumford too Melville had not simply dram-atized the incursion of machinesmdasha traditional Romantic tropemdashbuthad embraced a series of insoluble contradictions He has come to rec-ognize those parts of the world and himself that had already been pro-duced by machines and had insisted that the plasticity of self wassomething with which Americans had to struggle and to their spiritualdetriment repress

In broaching the aporias of modernity Mumford saw Melville as hav-ing already given the lie to Weberian diagnoses of disenchantment Thecapacity to effectively turn night into day Mumford suggested the expe-rience of a subway car rumbling past the solid structures of a sky-scraper vanishing into the air the peering into a microscope and theobservation of a ldquorow of bottles each of identical size shape colorstretching away for a quarter of a milerdquo were enough to induce a particular kind of vertigo ldquoThe special visual effect of repeating pat-tern[s]rdquo occurred simultaneously with the experience ldquoof the unique andthe non-repeatablerdquo (Mumford 1934 333-34) The experience of intensesystematicitymdashprecisely what feedback technologies were designed toinducemdashcould be positively disorienting when the infinitely calculableassumed the ldquospecial qualityrdquo of the ldquoincalculablerdquo (Heidegger 1977

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 23

24

135) According to Mumford when technology no longer made imperfectcopies of nature but perfect copies of itself the very notion of ldquonaturalrdquocould become radically suspect With the ldquoliquidationrdquo of the solid book-ends of authenticity and artifice came the prospect that the spectrumitself was socially constructed for better or for worse (Benjamin 2003255) Having torn aside the veil ldquoman has thrown between his ownexperience and the blank reality of the universerdquo Melville neither suc-cumbed to the temptation of nihilism nor retreated into his own pri-vate morality On the contrary he urged his contemporaries to ownup to the constructedness of any and all cultural forms and expressionsand the faith commitments that undergirded them As Mumford wroteldquoto appreciate the reality of the White Whale is to see more deeplyinto the expedience of all our immediate institutions all the spiritualshelters man puts between himself and the uncertain cosmic weatherMeaning significance attends only that little part of the universe manhas built up and settledrdquo (Mumford 1926 150-51)

Whereas Mumford assessed the religious dimensions of technologicalldquoprogressrdquo in a tragic key others tended toward the comic as was thecase with a group of experimental artists associated with Broom An

International Magazine of the Arts Published by Americans in Italy publishedbetween 1921 and 1924 (Tashjian 1975 116-34) Broomrsquos co-editor thepoet Alfred Kreyemborg (who would later co-edit The American Caravan

with Lewis Mumford) had adapted a passage from Moby-Dick for itstitle logo and statement of purpose which appeared on the back coverldquoWhat of itrdquo asks Ishmael

if some old hunks of a seacaptain orders me to get a broom and sweepdown the decks What does that indignity amount to weighed I meanin the scales of the New Testament Do you think the Archangel Gabrielthinks any less of me because I promptly and respectfully obey that oldhunks that particular instance Who ainrsquot a slave (Melville 1925 4)

The first issue of Broom included poems addressing Albert Einsteinrsquostheory of relativity as well as Emmy Veronica Sanders declaration thatldquothe American Machinerdquo was ldquotransforming itself with all its attributesand characteristics into American Mindrdquo ldquoAmericardquo she continuedinitially ldquomade of the Puritan by the Puritan for the Puritanrdquo wasnow being ldquoremade of the Machine by the Machine for the Machinerdquo(89-90) Following Sandersrsquos piece was a David OrsquoNeilrsquos hymn of sup-plication to the new Gods of the machine

When you are sweeping usWith Your cosmic broom

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 24

25

Figure 5 Nature and Second Nature in Technics and Civilization (1934)

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 25

26

Sweeping us out of mouldy rutsSweeping us clean and sweetmdash

RememberWhen wersquore quiveringmdashSensitivemdashbaremdashWe shall be gratefulFor just a few shadows (96)

Broom took Ishmaelrsquos retort quite seriously addressing the revolutionarydimensions of technological artifice and the shadows cast within therealm of technological illumination

Unlike Futurism Broom did not celebrate the beauty of war It didhowever come to express the ldquodreamed-of metallization of the humanbodyrdquo and the playful cybernetic fantasies of Dadaists such as ManRay and Francis Picabia (quoted in Benjamin 2003 269) After someinitial hesitation Broom began to embrace Dadarsquos perspective on the lib-eratory dimensions of the human-machine interface ldquoEverything isartificialrdquo gasped Broom contributor Blaise Cendrars ldquoThe eyes thehand the sexual frenzy of the factory The wheel which turns Thewing which flies The voice which travels far on a wire Your ear ina trumpet Your sense of direction Your rhythm You melt the worldin the mould of your skull Your brain is hollow Like a religion amysterious pill hastens your digestionrdquo (265) Jean Epstein from a slightdifferent angle argued that technology had ldquobecome part of ourselvesrdquoand had democratized human perceptionmdashldquoman has not one memoryof [the] landscape he [now] has a thousand different ones which mayor may not resemble each other Everything possesses hundreds ofapparent diameters which never superimpose exactlyrdquo (6-7)

Broom was soon translating less inflammatory Futurist manifestos suchas Enrico Prampolinirsquos ldquoThe Aesthetic of the Machine and MechanicalIntrospection in Artrdquo in which he declared ldquoIs not the machine todaythe most exuberant symbol of the mystery of human creation Is it notthe new mythical deity which weaves the legends and histories of thecontemporary human drama The Machine in its practical and materialfunction comes to have today in human concepts and thoughts thesignificance of an ideal and spiritual inspirationrdquo The kind of worshipthat ensued was that of the cyborg neither reverent nor memorializ-ing of cosmic law (Haraway 2004 9) Or as Prampolini wrote ldquoOurexperience has convinced us of the truth of certain of our plastic truthsand has allowed us to perceive the errors that lie in othersrdquo (236)

One of the more important pieces of American Dada captured pre-cisely this pointmdashGod (c 1917) designed by Baroness Elsa von Freytag-

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 26

27

Figure 6 Illustration accompanying Enrico Prampolinirsquos ldquoThe Aesthetic of theMachine and Mechanical Introspection in Artrdquo Broom 33 (October 1922) 237

Loringhoven and photographed by Morton Schamberg The invertedcast-iron plumbing trap atop a carpenterrsquos miter box was emblematicof the Melvillean appreciation for technological enchantment Indeedthe pipe is part of an indoor plumbing apparatus a modern conveniencewhose history dates back to some of the earliest feedback technologieson recordmdashthe water-clocks and float-regulators of ancient Greece (Mayr1970 11-26) God resembled the mechanical abstractions Schamberghad been producing before his premature death in 1918 during aninfluenza outbreak in Philadelphia The Baroness a contributor to Broom

and other little magazines had arrived in New York from Germanyin 1913 She was ldquothe first American dadardquo wrote Jane Heap in 1922ldquothe only one living anywhere who dresses dada loves dada lives dadardquo(46) Friends with Marcel Duchamp Djuna Barnes and other NewYork artists the Baroness was a central figure in a burgeoning trans-atlantic avant-garde In addition to her art and poetry the Baronesswas also a ldquoperformancerdquo artist who skillfully inverted gender hierarchiesand attacked through her very presence the traditional sensibilities ofthe middle-class She was notorious for walking around the streets ofGreenwich Village with her shaved head painted purple postage stampspasted to her face and a bird cage around her neck housing a livecanary (Davidson 1996 223-24)

In what must be considered a prescient assault on all manners oflogocentrism the Baroness also carried with her a plaster cast penis thatshe periodically revealed to passersby for maximum shock value (Gammel2002 195) But it was the Barnonessrsquos sculpture God that in addition

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 27

28

Figure 7 God (c 1917) designed by Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven and photographed by Morton Schamberg

to celebrating the mobility and reproducibility of that which was sup-posedly the most fixed and essential repossessed the power of tech-nology as ever imperfect and incomplete As a companion piece of sortsto Duchamprsquos infamous ready-made Fountain an inverted urinal dis-played in the 1917 exhibition of the American Society of IndependentArtists God invited more expressly theological speculation First of allit insisted on supplementing the three traditional symbolic centers ofWestern religious reflectionmdashGod humanity naturemdashwith the machineAnd although it has since been viewed by critics as ldquosacrilegiousrdquo andan instance of ldquoantireligious scatologyrdquo (Naumann 1994 171 Gammel220) the transgressive dimensions to God also affirm a shadowy open-

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 28

29

9 One is reminded here of Melvillersquos letter to Nathaniel Hawthorne in April of1851 ldquoWe incline to think that God cannot explain His own secrets and that Hewould like a little more information upon certain points Himself We mortals aston-ish Him as much as He usrdquo (Melville 1993 186)

ing to radical othernessmdashin the form of imperfection and chancemdashwithin the loops generated by feedback technology

Although the metal pipe ends up pointing toward heaven it firstloops downward in a nod to its human ground Limited by the skillsof the human carpenter on whose box it is anchored the contortedpipe narrativizes both the pitfalls and prospects of the machine ageShit eventually flows up in the case of God not down suggesting thateven the most lofty and noble ideals of the imagination maintain theirhuman aroma Rather than assume the power of divinity classicallyconstrued God staged divinity as nothing more and nothing less thanthat which made life livablemdashthat which kept the smell of human wasteartificially at bay or more ominously managed the flow of thingsthrough feedback control But even more literally God called attentionto the human work in the making of artifice and celebrated the bio-logical possibility for the endless unmaking (and remaking) of selfFeedback technology was not really God but it was for all practicalpurposes Or as the Baroness wrote in a 1927 letter to Peggy GuggenheimGod had much to learn from Henry Ford for he was ldquoclumsily sub-tle-densely-intelligent-inefficiently-immense-(Lord not Fordmdashof course)rdquo9

God the Baroness playfully warned had ldquobetter hotfoot it towardprogressmdashmodernizemdashuse his own omnipotence intelligentlymdashsmart orwersquoll all expire in tangle Well Lord knowsmdash(Does he)rdquo (quoted inGammel 2002 229)

6 Conclusion Deus in machina movet

As Protestant majorities struggled to adjust themselves and their theo-logical inheritance to new technological conditions theologies of themachine age both compelling and disturbing emerged from outsidethe precincts of traditional religious discourse For in addition to beinginspired by the ghost of Herman Melville the Melville Revival wasquite literally haunted by the power of feedback technologiesmdashspectersthat were affective rather than concrete strangely resistant to rationalcontemplation yet recognized through anxious admixtures of thoughtand feeling On one hand the revival reflected the spectrum of Protestant

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 29

30

10 Shortly after the publication of Moby-Dick in November of 1851 reports beganto reach America about the August sinking of the Ann Alexander by a whale in theSouth Pacific It was the first ldquoattack of a whale upon a shiprdquo since the destruc-tion of the Essex in 1820 The story about the Ann Alexander originally appeared inthe Panama Herald on October 16 and was reprinted the following month in New-York Daily Tribune and Littellrsquos Living Age The sperm whale that the Ann Alexander

fears over technological miscegenation The capacity of machines toredraw the boundaries of race and gender disturbed Protestant leadersand revivalists alike On the other hand subversive elements within theMelville Revival offered what must be considered a theological critiqueof how Protestants understood themselves and their God in relation totechnological materials Grant Overton for example saw in Moby-Dick

a deep appreciation for how technological developments had come tounderminemdashquite literally hauntmdashthe epistemological and ontologicalassumptions that made them possible ldquoNo longer able to instance thedeus ex machinardquo wrote Overton Melville was ldquounforgetful that deus inmachina movet and while most of mankind [have] become unable to seethe god for the machine [he] can scarcely perceive the machine forthe god agitating it [His] reports of the machine are somehow unrec-ognizable [his] realism is confronted by Realityrdquo (Overton 1928 231)

Bess Meredythrsquos reimagining of Moby-Dick and Baroness Elsa vonFreytag-Loringhovenrsquos God also explored the otherness that technologyengenders within the modern subject a trace that lingers despite allattempts to extinguish it Their errant readings challenged contempo-raries to reimagine their relationship to technology from an enchantedperspective that did not necessarily conform to the directives of Americanindividualism Resisting the advertisements of both Arminianism andBaconian Common Sense these readings insisted that there was somethingelsemdashsomething wholly othermdashoccurring within the technological workingsof secular modernity Excess or that which unsettled the boundariesbetween body and machine masculine and feminine had resulted inwhat might be called a ldquopost-structure of feelingrdquo The prospect thateither machines or women had begun to think for themselves or atleast possess a kind of agency once attributed to the enlightened malesubject now seemed as likely as a whale vengefully turning against awhaleship10 As Melvillean riffs on the deferred project of religious iden-tity The Sea Beast and God marked the space between human creationand technological determination consent and compulsion and there-fore hinted at the prospect that belief was not an individual state butan embodied activity Consistent with Lewis Mumfordrsquos assessment ofthe symbolic and material powers of feedback technology these works

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 30

31

had first turned upon starboard and larboard boats seizing both in its jaws andcrushing them to pieces It then rushed towards the Ann Alexander ldquoat the rateof fifteen knots In an instant the monster struck the ship with tremendous violence shakingher from stem to sternrdquo (415) Upon reading the article Melville remarked to his pub-lisher ldquothe Whale had almost completely slipped me for the time (amp I was themerrier for it) when Crash comes Moby Dick himself It is really amp truly a sur-prising coincidencemdashto say the least I make no doubt it is Moby Dick himself I wonder if my evil art has raised this monsterrdquo (Melville 1993 209)

11 William Jennings Bryan for example that standard bearer of fundamentalfaith equated faith to a particular kind of technologymdashldquothere is that in each humanliferdquo he wrote ldquothat corresponds to the mainspring of a watchmdashthat which isabsolutely necessary if the life is to be what it should be a real life and not amere existence That necessary thing is a belief in Godrdquo (86) Faith for Bryan wasthat which repeated without difference It was a dependable rational and utterlyrationalizing process It was not however self-regulating It affirmed the ldquorealnessrdquoof the individual believer precisely because it ignored the conditions imposed fromoutside the self But how might faith be viewed in terms of feedback and repro-ducibility rather than repetition a process that does not reaffirm a centered indi-vidual with every tick but adjusts accordingly to external fluctuations

raise numerous questions concerning the ways and means of religionin an age of postmodern complexity and virtual reality

How might a relentless focus on power and the porousness of sub-jectivity change how one views the matter of religion within historyHow might a greater attention to the aesthetic conditions that mediateany and all beliefs challenge the ways in which we distinguish the reli-gious from the secular How might a greater attention to the enchantingpower of material conditions challenge historical and political narrativesof secularization How do technologies and vested interests realize them-selves through the discourses of agency choice and mobility Whatin other words are the conditions of possibility that allow a historicalactor (rather than a Hollywood actor) to make a particular faith com-mitment or for that matter have any faith at all In what languagedo historical actors dream about themselves and divinity and how doesthat language change over time And finally to what degree is faithitself a technology11

By acknowledging the white mythology that still informs say thefield of American religions such questions shift the scholarly emphasisfrom explicit expressions of religious belief and practice to the spacebetween those beliefs and practices and the world at-large Individualswithin American religious history for example have often been depictedas fully formed agents making choices between various faith commitmentsand ever combining religious idioms to suit their specific needs and cir-cumstances (Albanese 1997) No doubt this is true But there is anotherside to this story of radical religious pluralism one that if accounted

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 31

32

12 Such a possibility is very much at odds with the Geertzian model of ldquothickdescriptionrdquo and its formidable legacy in the humanities and social sciences Withoutquestioning the degree to which the self can ever become entirely legible to theself Geertz claimed that every society and individual life and by extension everybelief and every practice ldquocontain their own interpretations One has only to learnhow to gain access to themrdquo (Geertz 1973 453)

13 The ambiguities of agency during the ldquomachine agerdquo have been the subjectof a number of elegant critical studies See for example Anson Rabinbach TheHuman Motor Energy Fatigue and the Origins of Modernity (New York Basic Books1990) Mark Seltzer Bodies and Machines (New York Routledge 1992) MarthaBanta Taylorized Lives Narrative Productions in the Age of Taylor Veblen and Ford (ChicagoUniversity of Chicago Press 1993) Carolyn Thomas de la Pentildea The Body ElectricHow Strange Machines Built the Modern American (New York New York UniversityPress 2003) and Joel Dinerstein The Swinging Machine Modernity Technology andAfrican American Culture Between the World Wars (Amherst University of MassachusettsPress 2003) Dinersteinrsquos work is particularly relevant to the issue of religious com-binativeness given his emphasis on how African American artists strove to refigureldquomachine aestheticsrdquo in and through their artistry Dinersteinrsquos work suggests thatthe self is locatedmdashie the self happensmdashsomewhere between resistance and assim-ilation between choice and coercionmdasha lesson that many Anglo-Americans werenot willing to consider in their triumphal theorizing about the human in relationto the machine The possibility for consideration argues Dinerstein existed inAfrican American jazz swing and dance

for suggests new directions for the study of religion in America Althoughthe ldquolived religionrdquo perspective in American religious history has donemuch to overcome the distinction between ldquodabblersrdquo and ldquotrue believersrdquothe question of power still lingers (Ahlstrom 1972 1052) Religiousbeliefs and practices are neither essential things nor reveal themselvesto the scholar in toto12 Such a position does not replicate the eitherordiscussion regarding the agency of historical actors On the contraryit suggests that religious agency is a hybrid weave of intent and instinctimmediate response and mediated principle knowing and unknowing13

Accounting for the ambiguities of agency has already pushed scholarsof religion toward an anthropology of the secular and an explorationof in the Foucauldian phrasing of Talal Asad ldquothe contingencies thathave come together to give us our certaintiesrdquo (2003 16)

It is with a hint of irony then that one may return to the promotionalpamphlet of The Sea Beast that celebrates the ldquoconquestrdquo of Ahab andthe invisible wafting presence of screenwriter Bess Meredyth ldquoThereis no woman writing today who has contributed so much to genuine

screen values as Bess Meredythrdquo Indeed her son John Meredyth Lucasborn in 1919 continued down his motherrsquos unsettling path as a successfultelevision screenwriter and director His credits included episodes ofldquoStar Trekrdquo ldquoLoganrsquos Runrdquo and that other story of ldquohundred percentrdquoAmericanism ldquoThe Six Million Dollar Manrdquo

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 32

33

Figure 8 The Six Million Dollar Man ldquoGentlemen we can rebuild him Wehave the capability of making the worldrsquos first bionic man We can make him

better than he was before Better Stronger Fasterrdquo

Haverford College370 Lancaster AveHaverford PA 19041jlardashaverfordedu

References

Ahlstrom Sydney E (1972) A Religious History of the American People New HavenYale University Press

Albanese Catherine L (1997) Exchanging selves exchanging souls Contact com-bination and American religious history In Thomas A Tweed (ed) RetellingUS Religious History 200-26 Berkeley University of California Press

Anon (1851) A ship sunk by a whale Littellrsquos Living Age (29 November) 415-16Asad Talal (2003) Formations of the Secular Christianity Islam Modernity Stanford

Stanford University Press

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 33

34

Bacon Francis (1870) The Works of Francis Bacon James Spedding Robert LeslieEllis and Douglas Denon Heath (eds) Vol VIII New York Hurd andHoughton

Barton Bruce (2000) The Man Nobody Knows A Discovery of the Real Jesus ChicagoIvan R Dee

Beniger James R (1986) The Control Revolution Technological and Economic Origins ofthe Information Society Cambridge Harvard University Press

Benjamin Walter (1996) One-way street In Marcus Bullock amp Michael W Jennings(eds) Selected Writings Volume 1 1913-1926 444-88 Cambridge HarvardUniversity Press

mdash (2003) The work of art in the age of its technological reproducibility third ver-sion In Howard Eiland and Michael W Jennings (eds) Selected Writings Volume4 1938-40 251-83 Cambridge Harvard University Press

Bennett Charles A (1923) A Philosophical Study of Mysticism An Essay New HavenYale University Press 1923

Bernays Edward L (1923) Crystallizing Public Opinion New York Liverlight PublishingCorporation

Buchman SR (1925) Moby Dickmdashthe book and The Sea Beastmdashthe picture Anappreciation In Herman Melville Moby Dick or The White Whale ix-xi NewYork Grosset amp Dunlap

Butler Judith (1993) Bodies That Matter On the Discursive Limits of lsquoSexrsquo RoutledgeNew York

Cahir Linda Costanzo (1997) Routinizing the charismatic Melville and Hollywoodrsquosthree Moby-Dicks Melville Society Extracts 110 (September) 11-17

Cendrars Blaise (1922) Profound today Broom 13 ( January) 265-67Chadwick Owen (1975) The Secularization of the European Mind in the Nineteenth Century

Cambridge Cambridge University PressCoe George Albert (1917) A Social Theory of Religious Education New York Charles

Scribnerrsquos SonsDavidson Abraham A (1996) The European art invasion In Francis M Naumann

(ed) with Beth Vann Making Mischief Dada Invades New York 222-27 NewYork Whitney Museum of Art

Debord Guy (1995) Society of the Spectacle translated by Donald Nicholson-SmithNew York Zone Books

Derrida Jacques (1994) Specters of Marx The State of the Debt The Work of Mourningand the New International Peggy Kamuf (trans) New York Routledge

Dorsey George A (1925) Why We Behave Like Human Beings New York BlueRibbon Books

Epstein Jean (1922) The new conditions of literary phenomena Broom 21 (April)3-10

Frank Waldo (1919) Our America New York Boni and LiverightGammel Irene (2002) Baroness Elsa Gender Dada and Everyday Modernitymdasha Cultural

Biography Cambridge The MIT PressGeertz Clifford (1973) Deep play Notes on the Balinese cockfight In The Interpretation

of Cultures 412-53 New York Basic BooksHaraway Donna (2004) A manifesto for cyborgs Science technology and socialist

feminism in the 1980s In The Haraway Reader 7-45 New York RoutledgeHeap Jane (1922) Dada Little Review VII2 (Spring) 46Heidegger Martin (1977) The age of the world-picturerdquo In The Question Concerning

Technology and Other Essays 115-54 William Lovitt (trans) New York Harperamp Row

Hoffman Carol Stein (2001) The Barrymores Hollywoodrsquos First Family LexingtonUniversity of Kentucky Press

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 34

35

Jackson Josephine A and Helen M Salisbury (1922) Outwitting Our Nerves A Primerof Psychotherapy New York The Century Co

Jaffe David (1990) The village enlightenment in New England 1760-1820 TheWilliam and Mary Quarterly XLVII3 ( July) 327-46

Jones Rufus M (1915) Mysticism in present-day religion Harvard Theological ReviewVIII2 (April) 155-65

Kippenberg Hans G (2002) Discovering Religious History in the Modern Age BarbaraHarshav (trans) Princeton Princeton University Press

Kobler John (1977) Damned in Paradise The Life of John Barrymore New YorkAtheneum

Kuttner Alfred B (1922) Nerves In Harold E Stearns (ed) Civilization in the UnitedStates An Enquiry by Thirty Americans 427-42 New York Harcourt

Lauter Paul (1994) Melville climbs the canon American Literature 66 (March) 1-24Lawrence DH (1923) Studies in Classic American Literature New York T SeltzerLindbergh Charles A (1927) We New York GP Putnamrsquos SonsLippmann Walter (1922) Public Opinion New York Macmillan CompanyMarchand Roland (1985) Advertising the American Dream Making Way for Modernity

1920-1940 Berkeley University of California PressMarty Martin E Modern American Religion Vol 2 The Noise of Conflict 1919-1941

Chicago University of Chicago Press 1991May Henry F (1976) The Enlightenment in America New York Oxford University

PressMayhew Jonathan (1749) Concerning the difference between truth and falsehood

right and wrong In Seven Sermons 1-21 Boston Rogers and FowleMayr Otto (1970) The Origins of Feedback Control Cambridge The MIT PressMelville Herman (1993) Correspondence Volume 14 of The Writings of Herman Melville

Lynne Horth (ed) Evanston and Chicago Northwestern University Pressmdash (1925) Moby Dick or The White Whale 1851 New York Grosset amp DunlapMindell David A (2002) Between Human and Machine Feedback Control and Computing

Before Cybernetics Baltimore The Johns Hopkins University PressMumford Lewis (1929) Herman Melville New York The Literary Guild of Americamdash (1924) Sticks and Stones A Study of American Architecture and Civilization New York

Dover Publicationsmdash (1934) Technics and Civilization New York Harcourt Brace and Companymdash (1926) The Golden Day A Study in American Literature and Culture New York Boni

and LiverightMurray Jr HA (1929) Review of Lewis Mumfordrsquos Herman Melville The New

England Quarterly 2 ( July) 523-26Naumann Francis M (1994) New York Dada 1915-23 New York Harry N AbramsNoble David F (1999) The Religion of Technology The Divinity of Man and the Spirit

of Invention New York Penguin BooksNye David E (1994) American Technological Sublime Cambridge The MIT PressOrsquoNeil David (1921) The new Broom Broom 11 (November) 96Overton Grant (1928) The Philosophy of Fiction New York D AppletonPalmer Attorney General (1920) The case against the lsquoRedsrsquo The Forum A Magazine

of Constructive Nationalism 632 (February) 173-85Parsons Floyd W (1927) Everybodyrsquos business Advertising amp Selling ( June 29) 5 64Prampolini Enrico (1922) The aesthetic of the machine and mechanical intro-

spection in art Broom 33 (October) 235-37Rauschenbusch Walter (1917) A Theology for the Social Gospel New York The

Macmillan CompanyRichardson George P (1991) Feedback Thought in Social Science and Systems Theory

Philadelphia University of Pennsylvania Press

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 35

23

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethersquos notion of ldquoafter-imagesrdquo in Theory

of Colours (the same text that informed Melvillersquos ldquoThe Whiteness of theWhalerdquo) Benjamin announced the birth of the ldquooptical unconsciousrdquo(266) According to Benjamin images had become the currency of con-sciousness structuring thought and determining the range of possibleactions Mechanical means of reproduction had liberated the perceptualcapacities of humanity They had also ushered in the prospect of massdeception and control Either way they had resulted in a ldquomassiveupheaval in the domain of objectsrdquo and a ldquoshattering of traditionrdquo (254)

5 American Dada and the aporias of modernity

Within the Melville Revivalmdashan almost clicheacuted instance of Modernismrsquosvogue for the solitary geniusmdashseeds of post-Cartesian doubt were beingsown and the enchanting dimensions of technology considered BecauseMelville ldquowas spell-bound by the strange slidings and collidings ofMatterrdquo his work in the eyes of more atheological critics exposed theenchanting conditions of the machine age (Taylor 1984) ldquoIt is the mate-rial elements he really has to do withrdquo wrote DH Lawrence in 1923ldquoHis drama is with them He was a futurist long before futurism foundpaintrdquo (216) For Lewis Mumford too Melville had not simply dram-atized the incursion of machinesmdasha traditional Romantic tropemdashbuthad embraced a series of insoluble contradictions He has come to rec-ognize those parts of the world and himself that had already been pro-duced by machines and had insisted that the plasticity of self wassomething with which Americans had to struggle and to their spiritualdetriment repress

In broaching the aporias of modernity Mumford saw Melville as hav-ing already given the lie to Weberian diagnoses of disenchantment Thecapacity to effectively turn night into day Mumford suggested the expe-rience of a subway car rumbling past the solid structures of a sky-scraper vanishing into the air the peering into a microscope and theobservation of a ldquorow of bottles each of identical size shape colorstretching away for a quarter of a milerdquo were enough to induce a particular kind of vertigo ldquoThe special visual effect of repeating pat-tern[s]rdquo occurred simultaneously with the experience ldquoof the unique andthe non-repeatablerdquo (Mumford 1934 333-34) The experience of intensesystematicitymdashprecisely what feedback technologies were designed toinducemdashcould be positively disorienting when the infinitely calculableassumed the ldquospecial qualityrdquo of the ldquoincalculablerdquo (Heidegger 1977

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 23

24

135) According to Mumford when technology no longer made imperfectcopies of nature but perfect copies of itself the very notion of ldquonaturalrdquocould become radically suspect With the ldquoliquidationrdquo of the solid book-ends of authenticity and artifice came the prospect that the spectrumitself was socially constructed for better or for worse (Benjamin 2003255) Having torn aside the veil ldquoman has thrown between his ownexperience and the blank reality of the universerdquo Melville neither suc-cumbed to the temptation of nihilism nor retreated into his own pri-vate morality On the contrary he urged his contemporaries to ownup to the constructedness of any and all cultural forms and expressionsand the faith commitments that undergirded them As Mumford wroteldquoto appreciate the reality of the White Whale is to see more deeplyinto the expedience of all our immediate institutions all the spiritualshelters man puts between himself and the uncertain cosmic weatherMeaning significance attends only that little part of the universe manhas built up and settledrdquo (Mumford 1926 150-51)

Whereas Mumford assessed the religious dimensions of technologicalldquoprogressrdquo in a tragic key others tended toward the comic as was thecase with a group of experimental artists associated with Broom An

International Magazine of the Arts Published by Americans in Italy publishedbetween 1921 and 1924 (Tashjian 1975 116-34) Broomrsquos co-editor thepoet Alfred Kreyemborg (who would later co-edit The American Caravan

with Lewis Mumford) had adapted a passage from Moby-Dick for itstitle logo and statement of purpose which appeared on the back coverldquoWhat of itrdquo asks Ishmael

if some old hunks of a seacaptain orders me to get a broom and sweepdown the decks What does that indignity amount to weighed I meanin the scales of the New Testament Do you think the Archangel Gabrielthinks any less of me because I promptly and respectfully obey that oldhunks that particular instance Who ainrsquot a slave (Melville 1925 4)

The first issue of Broom included poems addressing Albert Einsteinrsquostheory of relativity as well as Emmy Veronica Sanders declaration thatldquothe American Machinerdquo was ldquotransforming itself with all its attributesand characteristics into American Mindrdquo ldquoAmericardquo she continuedinitially ldquomade of the Puritan by the Puritan for the Puritanrdquo wasnow being ldquoremade of the Machine by the Machine for the Machinerdquo(89-90) Following Sandersrsquos piece was a David OrsquoNeilrsquos hymn of sup-plication to the new Gods of the machine

When you are sweeping usWith Your cosmic broom

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 24

25

Figure 5 Nature and Second Nature in Technics and Civilization (1934)

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 25

26

Sweeping us out of mouldy rutsSweeping us clean and sweetmdash

RememberWhen wersquore quiveringmdashSensitivemdashbaremdashWe shall be gratefulFor just a few shadows (96)

Broom took Ishmaelrsquos retort quite seriously addressing the revolutionarydimensions of technological artifice and the shadows cast within therealm of technological illumination

Unlike Futurism Broom did not celebrate the beauty of war It didhowever come to express the ldquodreamed-of metallization of the humanbodyrdquo and the playful cybernetic fantasies of Dadaists such as ManRay and Francis Picabia (quoted in Benjamin 2003 269) After someinitial hesitation Broom began to embrace Dadarsquos perspective on the lib-eratory dimensions of the human-machine interface ldquoEverything isartificialrdquo gasped Broom contributor Blaise Cendrars ldquoThe eyes thehand the sexual frenzy of the factory The wheel which turns Thewing which flies The voice which travels far on a wire Your ear ina trumpet Your sense of direction Your rhythm You melt the worldin the mould of your skull Your brain is hollow Like a religion amysterious pill hastens your digestionrdquo (265) Jean Epstein from a slightdifferent angle argued that technology had ldquobecome part of ourselvesrdquoand had democratized human perceptionmdashldquoman has not one memoryof [the] landscape he [now] has a thousand different ones which mayor may not resemble each other Everything possesses hundreds ofapparent diameters which never superimpose exactlyrdquo (6-7)

Broom was soon translating less inflammatory Futurist manifestos suchas Enrico Prampolinirsquos ldquoThe Aesthetic of the Machine and MechanicalIntrospection in Artrdquo in which he declared ldquoIs not the machine todaythe most exuberant symbol of the mystery of human creation Is it notthe new mythical deity which weaves the legends and histories of thecontemporary human drama The Machine in its practical and materialfunction comes to have today in human concepts and thoughts thesignificance of an ideal and spiritual inspirationrdquo The kind of worshipthat ensued was that of the cyborg neither reverent nor memorializ-ing of cosmic law (Haraway 2004 9) Or as Prampolini wrote ldquoOurexperience has convinced us of the truth of certain of our plastic truthsand has allowed us to perceive the errors that lie in othersrdquo (236)

One of the more important pieces of American Dada captured pre-cisely this pointmdashGod (c 1917) designed by Baroness Elsa von Freytag-

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 26

27

Figure 6 Illustration accompanying Enrico Prampolinirsquos ldquoThe Aesthetic of theMachine and Mechanical Introspection in Artrdquo Broom 33 (October 1922) 237

Loringhoven and photographed by Morton Schamberg The invertedcast-iron plumbing trap atop a carpenterrsquos miter box was emblematicof the Melvillean appreciation for technological enchantment Indeedthe pipe is part of an indoor plumbing apparatus a modern conveniencewhose history dates back to some of the earliest feedback technologieson recordmdashthe water-clocks and float-regulators of ancient Greece (Mayr1970 11-26) God resembled the mechanical abstractions Schamberghad been producing before his premature death in 1918 during aninfluenza outbreak in Philadelphia The Baroness a contributor to Broom

and other little magazines had arrived in New York from Germanyin 1913 She was ldquothe first American dadardquo wrote Jane Heap in 1922ldquothe only one living anywhere who dresses dada loves dada lives dadardquo(46) Friends with Marcel Duchamp Djuna Barnes and other NewYork artists the Baroness was a central figure in a burgeoning trans-atlantic avant-garde In addition to her art and poetry the Baronesswas also a ldquoperformancerdquo artist who skillfully inverted gender hierarchiesand attacked through her very presence the traditional sensibilities ofthe middle-class She was notorious for walking around the streets ofGreenwich Village with her shaved head painted purple postage stampspasted to her face and a bird cage around her neck housing a livecanary (Davidson 1996 223-24)

In what must be considered a prescient assault on all manners oflogocentrism the Baroness also carried with her a plaster cast penis thatshe periodically revealed to passersby for maximum shock value (Gammel2002 195) But it was the Barnonessrsquos sculpture God that in addition

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 27

28

Figure 7 God (c 1917) designed by Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven and photographed by Morton Schamberg

to celebrating the mobility and reproducibility of that which was sup-posedly the most fixed and essential repossessed the power of tech-nology as ever imperfect and incomplete As a companion piece of sortsto Duchamprsquos infamous ready-made Fountain an inverted urinal dis-played in the 1917 exhibition of the American Society of IndependentArtists God invited more expressly theological speculation First of allit insisted on supplementing the three traditional symbolic centers ofWestern religious reflectionmdashGod humanity naturemdashwith the machineAnd although it has since been viewed by critics as ldquosacrilegiousrdquo andan instance of ldquoantireligious scatologyrdquo (Naumann 1994 171 Gammel220) the transgressive dimensions to God also affirm a shadowy open-

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 28

29

9 One is reminded here of Melvillersquos letter to Nathaniel Hawthorne in April of1851 ldquoWe incline to think that God cannot explain His own secrets and that Hewould like a little more information upon certain points Himself We mortals aston-ish Him as much as He usrdquo (Melville 1993 186)

ing to radical othernessmdashin the form of imperfection and chancemdashwithin the loops generated by feedback technology

Although the metal pipe ends up pointing toward heaven it firstloops downward in a nod to its human ground Limited by the skillsof the human carpenter on whose box it is anchored the contortedpipe narrativizes both the pitfalls and prospects of the machine ageShit eventually flows up in the case of God not down suggesting thateven the most lofty and noble ideals of the imagination maintain theirhuman aroma Rather than assume the power of divinity classicallyconstrued God staged divinity as nothing more and nothing less thanthat which made life livablemdashthat which kept the smell of human wasteartificially at bay or more ominously managed the flow of thingsthrough feedback control But even more literally God called attentionto the human work in the making of artifice and celebrated the bio-logical possibility for the endless unmaking (and remaking) of selfFeedback technology was not really God but it was for all practicalpurposes Or as the Baroness wrote in a 1927 letter to Peggy GuggenheimGod had much to learn from Henry Ford for he was ldquoclumsily sub-tle-densely-intelligent-inefficiently-immense-(Lord not Fordmdashof course)rdquo9

God the Baroness playfully warned had ldquobetter hotfoot it towardprogressmdashmodernizemdashuse his own omnipotence intelligentlymdashsmart orwersquoll all expire in tangle Well Lord knowsmdash(Does he)rdquo (quoted inGammel 2002 229)

6 Conclusion Deus in machina movet

As Protestant majorities struggled to adjust themselves and their theo-logical inheritance to new technological conditions theologies of themachine age both compelling and disturbing emerged from outsidethe precincts of traditional religious discourse For in addition to beinginspired by the ghost of Herman Melville the Melville Revival wasquite literally haunted by the power of feedback technologiesmdashspectersthat were affective rather than concrete strangely resistant to rationalcontemplation yet recognized through anxious admixtures of thoughtand feeling On one hand the revival reflected the spectrum of Protestant

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 29

30

10 Shortly after the publication of Moby-Dick in November of 1851 reports beganto reach America about the August sinking of the Ann Alexander by a whale in theSouth Pacific It was the first ldquoattack of a whale upon a shiprdquo since the destruc-tion of the Essex in 1820 The story about the Ann Alexander originally appeared inthe Panama Herald on October 16 and was reprinted the following month in New-York Daily Tribune and Littellrsquos Living Age The sperm whale that the Ann Alexander

fears over technological miscegenation The capacity of machines toredraw the boundaries of race and gender disturbed Protestant leadersand revivalists alike On the other hand subversive elements within theMelville Revival offered what must be considered a theological critiqueof how Protestants understood themselves and their God in relation totechnological materials Grant Overton for example saw in Moby-Dick

a deep appreciation for how technological developments had come tounderminemdashquite literally hauntmdashthe epistemological and ontologicalassumptions that made them possible ldquoNo longer able to instance thedeus ex machinardquo wrote Overton Melville was ldquounforgetful that deus inmachina movet and while most of mankind [have] become unable to seethe god for the machine [he] can scarcely perceive the machine forthe god agitating it [His] reports of the machine are somehow unrec-ognizable [his] realism is confronted by Realityrdquo (Overton 1928 231)

Bess Meredythrsquos reimagining of Moby-Dick and Baroness Elsa vonFreytag-Loringhovenrsquos God also explored the otherness that technologyengenders within the modern subject a trace that lingers despite allattempts to extinguish it Their errant readings challenged contempo-raries to reimagine their relationship to technology from an enchantedperspective that did not necessarily conform to the directives of Americanindividualism Resisting the advertisements of both Arminianism andBaconian Common Sense these readings insisted that there was somethingelsemdashsomething wholly othermdashoccurring within the technological workingsof secular modernity Excess or that which unsettled the boundariesbetween body and machine masculine and feminine had resulted inwhat might be called a ldquopost-structure of feelingrdquo The prospect thateither machines or women had begun to think for themselves or atleast possess a kind of agency once attributed to the enlightened malesubject now seemed as likely as a whale vengefully turning against awhaleship10 As Melvillean riffs on the deferred project of religious iden-tity The Sea Beast and God marked the space between human creationand technological determination consent and compulsion and there-fore hinted at the prospect that belief was not an individual state butan embodied activity Consistent with Lewis Mumfordrsquos assessment ofthe symbolic and material powers of feedback technology these works

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 30

31

had first turned upon starboard and larboard boats seizing both in its jaws andcrushing them to pieces It then rushed towards the Ann Alexander ldquoat the rateof fifteen knots In an instant the monster struck the ship with tremendous violence shakingher from stem to sternrdquo (415) Upon reading the article Melville remarked to his pub-lisher ldquothe Whale had almost completely slipped me for the time (amp I was themerrier for it) when Crash comes Moby Dick himself It is really amp truly a sur-prising coincidencemdashto say the least I make no doubt it is Moby Dick himself I wonder if my evil art has raised this monsterrdquo (Melville 1993 209)

11 William Jennings Bryan for example that standard bearer of fundamentalfaith equated faith to a particular kind of technologymdashldquothere is that in each humanliferdquo he wrote ldquothat corresponds to the mainspring of a watchmdashthat which isabsolutely necessary if the life is to be what it should be a real life and not amere existence That necessary thing is a belief in Godrdquo (86) Faith for Bryan wasthat which repeated without difference It was a dependable rational and utterlyrationalizing process It was not however self-regulating It affirmed the ldquorealnessrdquoof the individual believer precisely because it ignored the conditions imposed fromoutside the self But how might faith be viewed in terms of feedback and repro-ducibility rather than repetition a process that does not reaffirm a centered indi-vidual with every tick but adjusts accordingly to external fluctuations

raise numerous questions concerning the ways and means of religionin an age of postmodern complexity and virtual reality

How might a relentless focus on power and the porousness of sub-jectivity change how one views the matter of religion within historyHow might a greater attention to the aesthetic conditions that mediateany and all beliefs challenge the ways in which we distinguish the reli-gious from the secular How might a greater attention to the enchantingpower of material conditions challenge historical and political narrativesof secularization How do technologies and vested interests realize them-selves through the discourses of agency choice and mobility Whatin other words are the conditions of possibility that allow a historicalactor (rather than a Hollywood actor) to make a particular faith com-mitment or for that matter have any faith at all In what languagedo historical actors dream about themselves and divinity and how doesthat language change over time And finally to what degree is faithitself a technology11

By acknowledging the white mythology that still informs say thefield of American religions such questions shift the scholarly emphasisfrom explicit expressions of religious belief and practice to the spacebetween those beliefs and practices and the world at-large Individualswithin American religious history for example have often been depictedas fully formed agents making choices between various faith commitmentsand ever combining religious idioms to suit their specific needs and cir-cumstances (Albanese 1997) No doubt this is true But there is anotherside to this story of radical religious pluralism one that if accounted

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 31

32

12 Such a possibility is very much at odds with the Geertzian model of ldquothickdescriptionrdquo and its formidable legacy in the humanities and social sciences Withoutquestioning the degree to which the self can ever become entirely legible to theself Geertz claimed that every society and individual life and by extension everybelief and every practice ldquocontain their own interpretations One has only to learnhow to gain access to themrdquo (Geertz 1973 453)

13 The ambiguities of agency during the ldquomachine agerdquo have been the subjectof a number of elegant critical studies See for example Anson Rabinbach TheHuman Motor Energy Fatigue and the Origins of Modernity (New York Basic Books1990) Mark Seltzer Bodies and Machines (New York Routledge 1992) MarthaBanta Taylorized Lives Narrative Productions in the Age of Taylor Veblen and Ford (ChicagoUniversity of Chicago Press 1993) Carolyn Thomas de la Pentildea The Body ElectricHow Strange Machines Built the Modern American (New York New York UniversityPress 2003) and Joel Dinerstein The Swinging Machine Modernity Technology andAfrican American Culture Between the World Wars (Amherst University of MassachusettsPress 2003) Dinersteinrsquos work is particularly relevant to the issue of religious com-binativeness given his emphasis on how African American artists strove to refigureldquomachine aestheticsrdquo in and through their artistry Dinersteinrsquos work suggests thatthe self is locatedmdashie the self happensmdashsomewhere between resistance and assim-ilation between choice and coercionmdasha lesson that many Anglo-Americans werenot willing to consider in their triumphal theorizing about the human in relationto the machine The possibility for consideration argues Dinerstein existed inAfrican American jazz swing and dance

for suggests new directions for the study of religion in America Althoughthe ldquolived religionrdquo perspective in American religious history has donemuch to overcome the distinction between ldquodabblersrdquo and ldquotrue believersrdquothe question of power still lingers (Ahlstrom 1972 1052) Religiousbeliefs and practices are neither essential things nor reveal themselvesto the scholar in toto12 Such a position does not replicate the eitherordiscussion regarding the agency of historical actors On the contraryit suggests that religious agency is a hybrid weave of intent and instinctimmediate response and mediated principle knowing and unknowing13

Accounting for the ambiguities of agency has already pushed scholarsof religion toward an anthropology of the secular and an explorationof in the Foucauldian phrasing of Talal Asad ldquothe contingencies thathave come together to give us our certaintiesrdquo (2003 16)

It is with a hint of irony then that one may return to the promotionalpamphlet of The Sea Beast that celebrates the ldquoconquestrdquo of Ahab andthe invisible wafting presence of screenwriter Bess Meredyth ldquoThereis no woman writing today who has contributed so much to genuine

screen values as Bess Meredythrdquo Indeed her son John Meredyth Lucasborn in 1919 continued down his motherrsquos unsettling path as a successfultelevision screenwriter and director His credits included episodes ofldquoStar Trekrdquo ldquoLoganrsquos Runrdquo and that other story of ldquohundred percentrdquoAmericanism ldquoThe Six Million Dollar Manrdquo

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 32

33

Figure 8 The Six Million Dollar Man ldquoGentlemen we can rebuild him Wehave the capability of making the worldrsquos first bionic man We can make him

better than he was before Better Stronger Fasterrdquo

Haverford College370 Lancaster AveHaverford PA 19041jlardashaverfordedu

References

Ahlstrom Sydney E (1972) A Religious History of the American People New HavenYale University Press

Albanese Catherine L (1997) Exchanging selves exchanging souls Contact com-bination and American religious history In Thomas A Tweed (ed) RetellingUS Religious History 200-26 Berkeley University of California Press

Anon (1851) A ship sunk by a whale Littellrsquos Living Age (29 November) 415-16Asad Talal (2003) Formations of the Secular Christianity Islam Modernity Stanford

Stanford University Press

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 33

34

Bacon Francis (1870) The Works of Francis Bacon James Spedding Robert LeslieEllis and Douglas Denon Heath (eds) Vol VIII New York Hurd andHoughton

Barton Bruce (2000) The Man Nobody Knows A Discovery of the Real Jesus ChicagoIvan R Dee

Beniger James R (1986) The Control Revolution Technological and Economic Origins ofthe Information Society Cambridge Harvard University Press

Benjamin Walter (1996) One-way street In Marcus Bullock amp Michael W Jennings(eds) Selected Writings Volume 1 1913-1926 444-88 Cambridge HarvardUniversity Press

mdash (2003) The work of art in the age of its technological reproducibility third ver-sion In Howard Eiland and Michael W Jennings (eds) Selected Writings Volume4 1938-40 251-83 Cambridge Harvard University Press

Bennett Charles A (1923) A Philosophical Study of Mysticism An Essay New HavenYale University Press 1923

Bernays Edward L (1923) Crystallizing Public Opinion New York Liverlight PublishingCorporation

Buchman SR (1925) Moby Dickmdashthe book and The Sea Beastmdashthe picture Anappreciation In Herman Melville Moby Dick or The White Whale ix-xi NewYork Grosset amp Dunlap

Butler Judith (1993) Bodies That Matter On the Discursive Limits of lsquoSexrsquo RoutledgeNew York

Cahir Linda Costanzo (1997) Routinizing the charismatic Melville and Hollywoodrsquosthree Moby-Dicks Melville Society Extracts 110 (September) 11-17

Cendrars Blaise (1922) Profound today Broom 13 ( January) 265-67Chadwick Owen (1975) The Secularization of the European Mind in the Nineteenth Century

Cambridge Cambridge University PressCoe George Albert (1917) A Social Theory of Religious Education New York Charles

Scribnerrsquos SonsDavidson Abraham A (1996) The European art invasion In Francis M Naumann

(ed) with Beth Vann Making Mischief Dada Invades New York 222-27 NewYork Whitney Museum of Art

Debord Guy (1995) Society of the Spectacle translated by Donald Nicholson-SmithNew York Zone Books

Derrida Jacques (1994) Specters of Marx The State of the Debt The Work of Mourningand the New International Peggy Kamuf (trans) New York Routledge

Dorsey George A (1925) Why We Behave Like Human Beings New York BlueRibbon Books

Epstein Jean (1922) The new conditions of literary phenomena Broom 21 (April)3-10

Frank Waldo (1919) Our America New York Boni and LiverightGammel Irene (2002) Baroness Elsa Gender Dada and Everyday Modernitymdasha Cultural

Biography Cambridge The MIT PressGeertz Clifford (1973) Deep play Notes on the Balinese cockfight In The Interpretation

of Cultures 412-53 New York Basic BooksHaraway Donna (2004) A manifesto for cyborgs Science technology and socialist

feminism in the 1980s In The Haraway Reader 7-45 New York RoutledgeHeap Jane (1922) Dada Little Review VII2 (Spring) 46Heidegger Martin (1977) The age of the world-picturerdquo In The Question Concerning

Technology and Other Essays 115-54 William Lovitt (trans) New York Harperamp Row

Hoffman Carol Stein (2001) The Barrymores Hollywoodrsquos First Family LexingtonUniversity of Kentucky Press

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 34

35

Jackson Josephine A and Helen M Salisbury (1922) Outwitting Our Nerves A Primerof Psychotherapy New York The Century Co

Jaffe David (1990) The village enlightenment in New England 1760-1820 TheWilliam and Mary Quarterly XLVII3 ( July) 327-46

Jones Rufus M (1915) Mysticism in present-day religion Harvard Theological ReviewVIII2 (April) 155-65

Kippenberg Hans G (2002) Discovering Religious History in the Modern Age BarbaraHarshav (trans) Princeton Princeton University Press

Kobler John (1977) Damned in Paradise The Life of John Barrymore New YorkAtheneum

Kuttner Alfred B (1922) Nerves In Harold E Stearns (ed) Civilization in the UnitedStates An Enquiry by Thirty Americans 427-42 New York Harcourt

Lauter Paul (1994) Melville climbs the canon American Literature 66 (March) 1-24Lawrence DH (1923) Studies in Classic American Literature New York T SeltzerLindbergh Charles A (1927) We New York GP Putnamrsquos SonsLippmann Walter (1922) Public Opinion New York Macmillan CompanyMarchand Roland (1985) Advertising the American Dream Making Way for Modernity

1920-1940 Berkeley University of California PressMarty Martin E Modern American Religion Vol 2 The Noise of Conflict 1919-1941

Chicago University of Chicago Press 1991May Henry F (1976) The Enlightenment in America New York Oxford University

PressMayhew Jonathan (1749) Concerning the difference between truth and falsehood

right and wrong In Seven Sermons 1-21 Boston Rogers and FowleMayr Otto (1970) The Origins of Feedback Control Cambridge The MIT PressMelville Herman (1993) Correspondence Volume 14 of The Writings of Herman Melville

Lynne Horth (ed) Evanston and Chicago Northwestern University Pressmdash (1925) Moby Dick or The White Whale 1851 New York Grosset amp DunlapMindell David A (2002) Between Human and Machine Feedback Control and Computing

Before Cybernetics Baltimore The Johns Hopkins University PressMumford Lewis (1929) Herman Melville New York The Literary Guild of Americamdash (1924) Sticks and Stones A Study of American Architecture and Civilization New York

Dover Publicationsmdash (1934) Technics and Civilization New York Harcourt Brace and Companymdash (1926) The Golden Day A Study in American Literature and Culture New York Boni

and LiverightMurray Jr HA (1929) Review of Lewis Mumfordrsquos Herman Melville The New

England Quarterly 2 ( July) 523-26Naumann Francis M (1994) New York Dada 1915-23 New York Harry N AbramsNoble David F (1999) The Religion of Technology The Divinity of Man and the Spirit

of Invention New York Penguin BooksNye David E (1994) American Technological Sublime Cambridge The MIT PressOrsquoNeil David (1921) The new Broom Broom 11 (November) 96Overton Grant (1928) The Philosophy of Fiction New York D AppletonPalmer Attorney General (1920) The case against the lsquoRedsrsquo The Forum A Magazine

of Constructive Nationalism 632 (February) 173-85Parsons Floyd W (1927) Everybodyrsquos business Advertising amp Selling ( June 29) 5 64Prampolini Enrico (1922) The aesthetic of the machine and mechanical intro-

spection in art Broom 33 (October) 235-37Rauschenbusch Walter (1917) A Theology for the Social Gospel New York The

Macmillan CompanyRichardson George P (1991) Feedback Thought in Social Science and Systems Theory

Philadelphia University of Pennsylvania Press

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 35

24

135) According to Mumford when technology no longer made imperfectcopies of nature but perfect copies of itself the very notion of ldquonaturalrdquocould become radically suspect With the ldquoliquidationrdquo of the solid book-ends of authenticity and artifice came the prospect that the spectrumitself was socially constructed for better or for worse (Benjamin 2003255) Having torn aside the veil ldquoman has thrown between his ownexperience and the blank reality of the universerdquo Melville neither suc-cumbed to the temptation of nihilism nor retreated into his own pri-vate morality On the contrary he urged his contemporaries to ownup to the constructedness of any and all cultural forms and expressionsand the faith commitments that undergirded them As Mumford wroteldquoto appreciate the reality of the White Whale is to see more deeplyinto the expedience of all our immediate institutions all the spiritualshelters man puts between himself and the uncertain cosmic weatherMeaning significance attends only that little part of the universe manhas built up and settledrdquo (Mumford 1926 150-51)

Whereas Mumford assessed the religious dimensions of technologicalldquoprogressrdquo in a tragic key others tended toward the comic as was thecase with a group of experimental artists associated with Broom An

International Magazine of the Arts Published by Americans in Italy publishedbetween 1921 and 1924 (Tashjian 1975 116-34) Broomrsquos co-editor thepoet Alfred Kreyemborg (who would later co-edit The American Caravan

with Lewis Mumford) had adapted a passage from Moby-Dick for itstitle logo and statement of purpose which appeared on the back coverldquoWhat of itrdquo asks Ishmael

if some old hunks of a seacaptain orders me to get a broom and sweepdown the decks What does that indignity amount to weighed I meanin the scales of the New Testament Do you think the Archangel Gabrielthinks any less of me because I promptly and respectfully obey that oldhunks that particular instance Who ainrsquot a slave (Melville 1925 4)

The first issue of Broom included poems addressing Albert Einsteinrsquostheory of relativity as well as Emmy Veronica Sanders declaration thatldquothe American Machinerdquo was ldquotransforming itself with all its attributesand characteristics into American Mindrdquo ldquoAmericardquo she continuedinitially ldquomade of the Puritan by the Puritan for the Puritanrdquo wasnow being ldquoremade of the Machine by the Machine for the Machinerdquo(89-90) Following Sandersrsquos piece was a David OrsquoNeilrsquos hymn of sup-plication to the new Gods of the machine

When you are sweeping usWith Your cosmic broom

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 24

25

Figure 5 Nature and Second Nature in Technics and Civilization (1934)

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 25

26

Sweeping us out of mouldy rutsSweeping us clean and sweetmdash

RememberWhen wersquore quiveringmdashSensitivemdashbaremdashWe shall be gratefulFor just a few shadows (96)

Broom took Ishmaelrsquos retort quite seriously addressing the revolutionarydimensions of technological artifice and the shadows cast within therealm of technological illumination

Unlike Futurism Broom did not celebrate the beauty of war It didhowever come to express the ldquodreamed-of metallization of the humanbodyrdquo and the playful cybernetic fantasies of Dadaists such as ManRay and Francis Picabia (quoted in Benjamin 2003 269) After someinitial hesitation Broom began to embrace Dadarsquos perspective on the lib-eratory dimensions of the human-machine interface ldquoEverything isartificialrdquo gasped Broom contributor Blaise Cendrars ldquoThe eyes thehand the sexual frenzy of the factory The wheel which turns Thewing which flies The voice which travels far on a wire Your ear ina trumpet Your sense of direction Your rhythm You melt the worldin the mould of your skull Your brain is hollow Like a religion amysterious pill hastens your digestionrdquo (265) Jean Epstein from a slightdifferent angle argued that technology had ldquobecome part of ourselvesrdquoand had democratized human perceptionmdashldquoman has not one memoryof [the] landscape he [now] has a thousand different ones which mayor may not resemble each other Everything possesses hundreds ofapparent diameters which never superimpose exactlyrdquo (6-7)

Broom was soon translating less inflammatory Futurist manifestos suchas Enrico Prampolinirsquos ldquoThe Aesthetic of the Machine and MechanicalIntrospection in Artrdquo in which he declared ldquoIs not the machine todaythe most exuberant symbol of the mystery of human creation Is it notthe new mythical deity which weaves the legends and histories of thecontemporary human drama The Machine in its practical and materialfunction comes to have today in human concepts and thoughts thesignificance of an ideal and spiritual inspirationrdquo The kind of worshipthat ensued was that of the cyborg neither reverent nor memorializ-ing of cosmic law (Haraway 2004 9) Or as Prampolini wrote ldquoOurexperience has convinced us of the truth of certain of our plastic truthsand has allowed us to perceive the errors that lie in othersrdquo (236)

One of the more important pieces of American Dada captured pre-cisely this pointmdashGod (c 1917) designed by Baroness Elsa von Freytag-

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 26

27

Figure 6 Illustration accompanying Enrico Prampolinirsquos ldquoThe Aesthetic of theMachine and Mechanical Introspection in Artrdquo Broom 33 (October 1922) 237

Loringhoven and photographed by Morton Schamberg The invertedcast-iron plumbing trap atop a carpenterrsquos miter box was emblematicof the Melvillean appreciation for technological enchantment Indeedthe pipe is part of an indoor plumbing apparatus a modern conveniencewhose history dates back to some of the earliest feedback technologieson recordmdashthe water-clocks and float-regulators of ancient Greece (Mayr1970 11-26) God resembled the mechanical abstractions Schamberghad been producing before his premature death in 1918 during aninfluenza outbreak in Philadelphia The Baroness a contributor to Broom

and other little magazines had arrived in New York from Germanyin 1913 She was ldquothe first American dadardquo wrote Jane Heap in 1922ldquothe only one living anywhere who dresses dada loves dada lives dadardquo(46) Friends with Marcel Duchamp Djuna Barnes and other NewYork artists the Baroness was a central figure in a burgeoning trans-atlantic avant-garde In addition to her art and poetry the Baronesswas also a ldquoperformancerdquo artist who skillfully inverted gender hierarchiesand attacked through her very presence the traditional sensibilities ofthe middle-class She was notorious for walking around the streets ofGreenwich Village with her shaved head painted purple postage stampspasted to her face and a bird cage around her neck housing a livecanary (Davidson 1996 223-24)

In what must be considered a prescient assault on all manners oflogocentrism the Baroness also carried with her a plaster cast penis thatshe periodically revealed to passersby for maximum shock value (Gammel2002 195) But it was the Barnonessrsquos sculpture God that in addition

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 27

28

Figure 7 God (c 1917) designed by Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven and photographed by Morton Schamberg

to celebrating the mobility and reproducibility of that which was sup-posedly the most fixed and essential repossessed the power of tech-nology as ever imperfect and incomplete As a companion piece of sortsto Duchamprsquos infamous ready-made Fountain an inverted urinal dis-played in the 1917 exhibition of the American Society of IndependentArtists God invited more expressly theological speculation First of allit insisted on supplementing the three traditional symbolic centers ofWestern religious reflectionmdashGod humanity naturemdashwith the machineAnd although it has since been viewed by critics as ldquosacrilegiousrdquo andan instance of ldquoantireligious scatologyrdquo (Naumann 1994 171 Gammel220) the transgressive dimensions to God also affirm a shadowy open-

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 28

29

9 One is reminded here of Melvillersquos letter to Nathaniel Hawthorne in April of1851 ldquoWe incline to think that God cannot explain His own secrets and that Hewould like a little more information upon certain points Himself We mortals aston-ish Him as much as He usrdquo (Melville 1993 186)

ing to radical othernessmdashin the form of imperfection and chancemdashwithin the loops generated by feedback technology

Although the metal pipe ends up pointing toward heaven it firstloops downward in a nod to its human ground Limited by the skillsof the human carpenter on whose box it is anchored the contortedpipe narrativizes both the pitfalls and prospects of the machine ageShit eventually flows up in the case of God not down suggesting thateven the most lofty and noble ideals of the imagination maintain theirhuman aroma Rather than assume the power of divinity classicallyconstrued God staged divinity as nothing more and nothing less thanthat which made life livablemdashthat which kept the smell of human wasteartificially at bay or more ominously managed the flow of thingsthrough feedback control But even more literally God called attentionto the human work in the making of artifice and celebrated the bio-logical possibility for the endless unmaking (and remaking) of selfFeedback technology was not really God but it was for all practicalpurposes Or as the Baroness wrote in a 1927 letter to Peggy GuggenheimGod had much to learn from Henry Ford for he was ldquoclumsily sub-tle-densely-intelligent-inefficiently-immense-(Lord not Fordmdashof course)rdquo9

God the Baroness playfully warned had ldquobetter hotfoot it towardprogressmdashmodernizemdashuse his own omnipotence intelligentlymdashsmart orwersquoll all expire in tangle Well Lord knowsmdash(Does he)rdquo (quoted inGammel 2002 229)

6 Conclusion Deus in machina movet

As Protestant majorities struggled to adjust themselves and their theo-logical inheritance to new technological conditions theologies of themachine age both compelling and disturbing emerged from outsidethe precincts of traditional religious discourse For in addition to beinginspired by the ghost of Herman Melville the Melville Revival wasquite literally haunted by the power of feedback technologiesmdashspectersthat were affective rather than concrete strangely resistant to rationalcontemplation yet recognized through anxious admixtures of thoughtand feeling On one hand the revival reflected the spectrum of Protestant

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 29

30

10 Shortly after the publication of Moby-Dick in November of 1851 reports beganto reach America about the August sinking of the Ann Alexander by a whale in theSouth Pacific It was the first ldquoattack of a whale upon a shiprdquo since the destruc-tion of the Essex in 1820 The story about the Ann Alexander originally appeared inthe Panama Herald on October 16 and was reprinted the following month in New-York Daily Tribune and Littellrsquos Living Age The sperm whale that the Ann Alexander

fears over technological miscegenation The capacity of machines toredraw the boundaries of race and gender disturbed Protestant leadersand revivalists alike On the other hand subversive elements within theMelville Revival offered what must be considered a theological critiqueof how Protestants understood themselves and their God in relation totechnological materials Grant Overton for example saw in Moby-Dick

a deep appreciation for how technological developments had come tounderminemdashquite literally hauntmdashthe epistemological and ontologicalassumptions that made them possible ldquoNo longer able to instance thedeus ex machinardquo wrote Overton Melville was ldquounforgetful that deus inmachina movet and while most of mankind [have] become unable to seethe god for the machine [he] can scarcely perceive the machine forthe god agitating it [His] reports of the machine are somehow unrec-ognizable [his] realism is confronted by Realityrdquo (Overton 1928 231)

Bess Meredythrsquos reimagining of Moby-Dick and Baroness Elsa vonFreytag-Loringhovenrsquos God also explored the otherness that technologyengenders within the modern subject a trace that lingers despite allattempts to extinguish it Their errant readings challenged contempo-raries to reimagine their relationship to technology from an enchantedperspective that did not necessarily conform to the directives of Americanindividualism Resisting the advertisements of both Arminianism andBaconian Common Sense these readings insisted that there was somethingelsemdashsomething wholly othermdashoccurring within the technological workingsof secular modernity Excess or that which unsettled the boundariesbetween body and machine masculine and feminine had resulted inwhat might be called a ldquopost-structure of feelingrdquo The prospect thateither machines or women had begun to think for themselves or atleast possess a kind of agency once attributed to the enlightened malesubject now seemed as likely as a whale vengefully turning against awhaleship10 As Melvillean riffs on the deferred project of religious iden-tity The Sea Beast and God marked the space between human creationand technological determination consent and compulsion and there-fore hinted at the prospect that belief was not an individual state butan embodied activity Consistent with Lewis Mumfordrsquos assessment ofthe symbolic and material powers of feedback technology these works

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 30

31

had first turned upon starboard and larboard boats seizing both in its jaws andcrushing them to pieces It then rushed towards the Ann Alexander ldquoat the rateof fifteen knots In an instant the monster struck the ship with tremendous violence shakingher from stem to sternrdquo (415) Upon reading the article Melville remarked to his pub-lisher ldquothe Whale had almost completely slipped me for the time (amp I was themerrier for it) when Crash comes Moby Dick himself It is really amp truly a sur-prising coincidencemdashto say the least I make no doubt it is Moby Dick himself I wonder if my evil art has raised this monsterrdquo (Melville 1993 209)

11 William Jennings Bryan for example that standard bearer of fundamentalfaith equated faith to a particular kind of technologymdashldquothere is that in each humanliferdquo he wrote ldquothat corresponds to the mainspring of a watchmdashthat which isabsolutely necessary if the life is to be what it should be a real life and not amere existence That necessary thing is a belief in Godrdquo (86) Faith for Bryan wasthat which repeated without difference It was a dependable rational and utterlyrationalizing process It was not however self-regulating It affirmed the ldquorealnessrdquoof the individual believer precisely because it ignored the conditions imposed fromoutside the self But how might faith be viewed in terms of feedback and repro-ducibility rather than repetition a process that does not reaffirm a centered indi-vidual with every tick but adjusts accordingly to external fluctuations

raise numerous questions concerning the ways and means of religionin an age of postmodern complexity and virtual reality

How might a relentless focus on power and the porousness of sub-jectivity change how one views the matter of religion within historyHow might a greater attention to the aesthetic conditions that mediateany and all beliefs challenge the ways in which we distinguish the reli-gious from the secular How might a greater attention to the enchantingpower of material conditions challenge historical and political narrativesof secularization How do technologies and vested interests realize them-selves through the discourses of agency choice and mobility Whatin other words are the conditions of possibility that allow a historicalactor (rather than a Hollywood actor) to make a particular faith com-mitment or for that matter have any faith at all In what languagedo historical actors dream about themselves and divinity and how doesthat language change over time And finally to what degree is faithitself a technology11

By acknowledging the white mythology that still informs say thefield of American religions such questions shift the scholarly emphasisfrom explicit expressions of religious belief and practice to the spacebetween those beliefs and practices and the world at-large Individualswithin American religious history for example have often been depictedas fully formed agents making choices between various faith commitmentsand ever combining religious idioms to suit their specific needs and cir-cumstances (Albanese 1997) No doubt this is true But there is anotherside to this story of radical religious pluralism one that if accounted

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 31

32

12 Such a possibility is very much at odds with the Geertzian model of ldquothickdescriptionrdquo and its formidable legacy in the humanities and social sciences Withoutquestioning the degree to which the self can ever become entirely legible to theself Geertz claimed that every society and individual life and by extension everybelief and every practice ldquocontain their own interpretations One has only to learnhow to gain access to themrdquo (Geertz 1973 453)

13 The ambiguities of agency during the ldquomachine agerdquo have been the subjectof a number of elegant critical studies See for example Anson Rabinbach TheHuman Motor Energy Fatigue and the Origins of Modernity (New York Basic Books1990) Mark Seltzer Bodies and Machines (New York Routledge 1992) MarthaBanta Taylorized Lives Narrative Productions in the Age of Taylor Veblen and Ford (ChicagoUniversity of Chicago Press 1993) Carolyn Thomas de la Pentildea The Body ElectricHow Strange Machines Built the Modern American (New York New York UniversityPress 2003) and Joel Dinerstein The Swinging Machine Modernity Technology andAfrican American Culture Between the World Wars (Amherst University of MassachusettsPress 2003) Dinersteinrsquos work is particularly relevant to the issue of religious com-binativeness given his emphasis on how African American artists strove to refigureldquomachine aestheticsrdquo in and through their artistry Dinersteinrsquos work suggests thatthe self is locatedmdashie the self happensmdashsomewhere between resistance and assim-ilation between choice and coercionmdasha lesson that many Anglo-Americans werenot willing to consider in their triumphal theorizing about the human in relationto the machine The possibility for consideration argues Dinerstein existed inAfrican American jazz swing and dance

for suggests new directions for the study of religion in America Althoughthe ldquolived religionrdquo perspective in American religious history has donemuch to overcome the distinction between ldquodabblersrdquo and ldquotrue believersrdquothe question of power still lingers (Ahlstrom 1972 1052) Religiousbeliefs and practices are neither essential things nor reveal themselvesto the scholar in toto12 Such a position does not replicate the eitherordiscussion regarding the agency of historical actors On the contraryit suggests that religious agency is a hybrid weave of intent and instinctimmediate response and mediated principle knowing and unknowing13

Accounting for the ambiguities of agency has already pushed scholarsof religion toward an anthropology of the secular and an explorationof in the Foucauldian phrasing of Talal Asad ldquothe contingencies thathave come together to give us our certaintiesrdquo (2003 16)

It is with a hint of irony then that one may return to the promotionalpamphlet of The Sea Beast that celebrates the ldquoconquestrdquo of Ahab andthe invisible wafting presence of screenwriter Bess Meredyth ldquoThereis no woman writing today who has contributed so much to genuine

screen values as Bess Meredythrdquo Indeed her son John Meredyth Lucasborn in 1919 continued down his motherrsquos unsettling path as a successfultelevision screenwriter and director His credits included episodes ofldquoStar Trekrdquo ldquoLoganrsquos Runrdquo and that other story of ldquohundred percentrdquoAmericanism ldquoThe Six Million Dollar Manrdquo

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 32

33

Figure 8 The Six Million Dollar Man ldquoGentlemen we can rebuild him Wehave the capability of making the worldrsquos first bionic man We can make him

better than he was before Better Stronger Fasterrdquo

Haverford College370 Lancaster AveHaverford PA 19041jlardashaverfordedu

References

Ahlstrom Sydney E (1972) A Religious History of the American People New HavenYale University Press

Albanese Catherine L (1997) Exchanging selves exchanging souls Contact com-bination and American religious history In Thomas A Tweed (ed) RetellingUS Religious History 200-26 Berkeley University of California Press

Anon (1851) A ship sunk by a whale Littellrsquos Living Age (29 November) 415-16Asad Talal (2003) Formations of the Secular Christianity Islam Modernity Stanford

Stanford University Press

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 33

34

Bacon Francis (1870) The Works of Francis Bacon James Spedding Robert LeslieEllis and Douglas Denon Heath (eds) Vol VIII New York Hurd andHoughton

Barton Bruce (2000) The Man Nobody Knows A Discovery of the Real Jesus ChicagoIvan R Dee

Beniger James R (1986) The Control Revolution Technological and Economic Origins ofthe Information Society Cambridge Harvard University Press

Benjamin Walter (1996) One-way street In Marcus Bullock amp Michael W Jennings(eds) Selected Writings Volume 1 1913-1926 444-88 Cambridge HarvardUniversity Press

mdash (2003) The work of art in the age of its technological reproducibility third ver-sion In Howard Eiland and Michael W Jennings (eds) Selected Writings Volume4 1938-40 251-83 Cambridge Harvard University Press

Bennett Charles A (1923) A Philosophical Study of Mysticism An Essay New HavenYale University Press 1923

Bernays Edward L (1923) Crystallizing Public Opinion New York Liverlight PublishingCorporation

Buchman SR (1925) Moby Dickmdashthe book and The Sea Beastmdashthe picture Anappreciation In Herman Melville Moby Dick or The White Whale ix-xi NewYork Grosset amp Dunlap

Butler Judith (1993) Bodies That Matter On the Discursive Limits of lsquoSexrsquo RoutledgeNew York

Cahir Linda Costanzo (1997) Routinizing the charismatic Melville and Hollywoodrsquosthree Moby-Dicks Melville Society Extracts 110 (September) 11-17

Cendrars Blaise (1922) Profound today Broom 13 ( January) 265-67Chadwick Owen (1975) The Secularization of the European Mind in the Nineteenth Century

Cambridge Cambridge University PressCoe George Albert (1917) A Social Theory of Religious Education New York Charles

Scribnerrsquos SonsDavidson Abraham A (1996) The European art invasion In Francis M Naumann

(ed) with Beth Vann Making Mischief Dada Invades New York 222-27 NewYork Whitney Museum of Art

Debord Guy (1995) Society of the Spectacle translated by Donald Nicholson-SmithNew York Zone Books

Derrida Jacques (1994) Specters of Marx The State of the Debt The Work of Mourningand the New International Peggy Kamuf (trans) New York Routledge

Dorsey George A (1925) Why We Behave Like Human Beings New York BlueRibbon Books

Epstein Jean (1922) The new conditions of literary phenomena Broom 21 (April)3-10

Frank Waldo (1919) Our America New York Boni and LiverightGammel Irene (2002) Baroness Elsa Gender Dada and Everyday Modernitymdasha Cultural

Biography Cambridge The MIT PressGeertz Clifford (1973) Deep play Notes on the Balinese cockfight In The Interpretation

of Cultures 412-53 New York Basic BooksHaraway Donna (2004) A manifesto for cyborgs Science technology and socialist

feminism in the 1980s In The Haraway Reader 7-45 New York RoutledgeHeap Jane (1922) Dada Little Review VII2 (Spring) 46Heidegger Martin (1977) The age of the world-picturerdquo In The Question Concerning

Technology and Other Essays 115-54 William Lovitt (trans) New York Harperamp Row

Hoffman Carol Stein (2001) The Barrymores Hollywoodrsquos First Family LexingtonUniversity of Kentucky Press

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 34

35

Jackson Josephine A and Helen M Salisbury (1922) Outwitting Our Nerves A Primerof Psychotherapy New York The Century Co

Jaffe David (1990) The village enlightenment in New England 1760-1820 TheWilliam and Mary Quarterly XLVII3 ( July) 327-46

Jones Rufus M (1915) Mysticism in present-day religion Harvard Theological ReviewVIII2 (April) 155-65

Kippenberg Hans G (2002) Discovering Religious History in the Modern Age BarbaraHarshav (trans) Princeton Princeton University Press

Kobler John (1977) Damned in Paradise The Life of John Barrymore New YorkAtheneum

Kuttner Alfred B (1922) Nerves In Harold E Stearns (ed) Civilization in the UnitedStates An Enquiry by Thirty Americans 427-42 New York Harcourt

Lauter Paul (1994) Melville climbs the canon American Literature 66 (March) 1-24Lawrence DH (1923) Studies in Classic American Literature New York T SeltzerLindbergh Charles A (1927) We New York GP Putnamrsquos SonsLippmann Walter (1922) Public Opinion New York Macmillan CompanyMarchand Roland (1985) Advertising the American Dream Making Way for Modernity

1920-1940 Berkeley University of California PressMarty Martin E Modern American Religion Vol 2 The Noise of Conflict 1919-1941

Chicago University of Chicago Press 1991May Henry F (1976) The Enlightenment in America New York Oxford University

PressMayhew Jonathan (1749) Concerning the difference between truth and falsehood

right and wrong In Seven Sermons 1-21 Boston Rogers and FowleMayr Otto (1970) The Origins of Feedback Control Cambridge The MIT PressMelville Herman (1993) Correspondence Volume 14 of The Writings of Herman Melville

Lynne Horth (ed) Evanston and Chicago Northwestern University Pressmdash (1925) Moby Dick or The White Whale 1851 New York Grosset amp DunlapMindell David A (2002) Between Human and Machine Feedback Control and Computing

Before Cybernetics Baltimore The Johns Hopkins University PressMumford Lewis (1929) Herman Melville New York The Literary Guild of Americamdash (1924) Sticks and Stones A Study of American Architecture and Civilization New York

Dover Publicationsmdash (1934) Technics and Civilization New York Harcourt Brace and Companymdash (1926) The Golden Day A Study in American Literature and Culture New York Boni

and LiverightMurray Jr HA (1929) Review of Lewis Mumfordrsquos Herman Melville The New

England Quarterly 2 ( July) 523-26Naumann Francis M (1994) New York Dada 1915-23 New York Harry N AbramsNoble David F (1999) The Religion of Technology The Divinity of Man and the Spirit

of Invention New York Penguin BooksNye David E (1994) American Technological Sublime Cambridge The MIT PressOrsquoNeil David (1921) The new Broom Broom 11 (November) 96Overton Grant (1928) The Philosophy of Fiction New York D AppletonPalmer Attorney General (1920) The case against the lsquoRedsrsquo The Forum A Magazine

of Constructive Nationalism 632 (February) 173-85Parsons Floyd W (1927) Everybodyrsquos business Advertising amp Selling ( June 29) 5 64Prampolini Enrico (1922) The aesthetic of the machine and mechanical intro-

spection in art Broom 33 (October) 235-37Rauschenbusch Walter (1917) A Theology for the Social Gospel New York The

Macmillan CompanyRichardson George P (1991) Feedback Thought in Social Science and Systems Theory

Philadelphia University of Pennsylvania Press

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 35

25

Figure 5 Nature and Second Nature in Technics and Civilization (1934)

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 25

26

Sweeping us out of mouldy rutsSweeping us clean and sweetmdash

RememberWhen wersquore quiveringmdashSensitivemdashbaremdashWe shall be gratefulFor just a few shadows (96)

Broom took Ishmaelrsquos retort quite seriously addressing the revolutionarydimensions of technological artifice and the shadows cast within therealm of technological illumination

Unlike Futurism Broom did not celebrate the beauty of war It didhowever come to express the ldquodreamed-of metallization of the humanbodyrdquo and the playful cybernetic fantasies of Dadaists such as ManRay and Francis Picabia (quoted in Benjamin 2003 269) After someinitial hesitation Broom began to embrace Dadarsquos perspective on the lib-eratory dimensions of the human-machine interface ldquoEverything isartificialrdquo gasped Broom contributor Blaise Cendrars ldquoThe eyes thehand the sexual frenzy of the factory The wheel which turns Thewing which flies The voice which travels far on a wire Your ear ina trumpet Your sense of direction Your rhythm You melt the worldin the mould of your skull Your brain is hollow Like a religion amysterious pill hastens your digestionrdquo (265) Jean Epstein from a slightdifferent angle argued that technology had ldquobecome part of ourselvesrdquoand had democratized human perceptionmdashldquoman has not one memoryof [the] landscape he [now] has a thousand different ones which mayor may not resemble each other Everything possesses hundreds ofapparent diameters which never superimpose exactlyrdquo (6-7)

Broom was soon translating less inflammatory Futurist manifestos suchas Enrico Prampolinirsquos ldquoThe Aesthetic of the Machine and MechanicalIntrospection in Artrdquo in which he declared ldquoIs not the machine todaythe most exuberant symbol of the mystery of human creation Is it notthe new mythical deity which weaves the legends and histories of thecontemporary human drama The Machine in its practical and materialfunction comes to have today in human concepts and thoughts thesignificance of an ideal and spiritual inspirationrdquo The kind of worshipthat ensued was that of the cyborg neither reverent nor memorializ-ing of cosmic law (Haraway 2004 9) Or as Prampolini wrote ldquoOurexperience has convinced us of the truth of certain of our plastic truthsand has allowed us to perceive the errors that lie in othersrdquo (236)

One of the more important pieces of American Dada captured pre-cisely this pointmdashGod (c 1917) designed by Baroness Elsa von Freytag-

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 26

27

Figure 6 Illustration accompanying Enrico Prampolinirsquos ldquoThe Aesthetic of theMachine and Mechanical Introspection in Artrdquo Broom 33 (October 1922) 237

Loringhoven and photographed by Morton Schamberg The invertedcast-iron plumbing trap atop a carpenterrsquos miter box was emblematicof the Melvillean appreciation for technological enchantment Indeedthe pipe is part of an indoor plumbing apparatus a modern conveniencewhose history dates back to some of the earliest feedback technologieson recordmdashthe water-clocks and float-regulators of ancient Greece (Mayr1970 11-26) God resembled the mechanical abstractions Schamberghad been producing before his premature death in 1918 during aninfluenza outbreak in Philadelphia The Baroness a contributor to Broom

and other little magazines had arrived in New York from Germanyin 1913 She was ldquothe first American dadardquo wrote Jane Heap in 1922ldquothe only one living anywhere who dresses dada loves dada lives dadardquo(46) Friends with Marcel Duchamp Djuna Barnes and other NewYork artists the Baroness was a central figure in a burgeoning trans-atlantic avant-garde In addition to her art and poetry the Baronesswas also a ldquoperformancerdquo artist who skillfully inverted gender hierarchiesand attacked through her very presence the traditional sensibilities ofthe middle-class She was notorious for walking around the streets ofGreenwich Village with her shaved head painted purple postage stampspasted to her face and a bird cage around her neck housing a livecanary (Davidson 1996 223-24)

In what must be considered a prescient assault on all manners oflogocentrism the Baroness also carried with her a plaster cast penis thatshe periodically revealed to passersby for maximum shock value (Gammel2002 195) But it was the Barnonessrsquos sculpture God that in addition

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 27

28

Figure 7 God (c 1917) designed by Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven and photographed by Morton Schamberg

to celebrating the mobility and reproducibility of that which was sup-posedly the most fixed and essential repossessed the power of tech-nology as ever imperfect and incomplete As a companion piece of sortsto Duchamprsquos infamous ready-made Fountain an inverted urinal dis-played in the 1917 exhibition of the American Society of IndependentArtists God invited more expressly theological speculation First of allit insisted on supplementing the three traditional symbolic centers ofWestern religious reflectionmdashGod humanity naturemdashwith the machineAnd although it has since been viewed by critics as ldquosacrilegiousrdquo andan instance of ldquoantireligious scatologyrdquo (Naumann 1994 171 Gammel220) the transgressive dimensions to God also affirm a shadowy open-

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 28

29

9 One is reminded here of Melvillersquos letter to Nathaniel Hawthorne in April of1851 ldquoWe incline to think that God cannot explain His own secrets and that Hewould like a little more information upon certain points Himself We mortals aston-ish Him as much as He usrdquo (Melville 1993 186)

ing to radical othernessmdashin the form of imperfection and chancemdashwithin the loops generated by feedback technology

Although the metal pipe ends up pointing toward heaven it firstloops downward in a nod to its human ground Limited by the skillsof the human carpenter on whose box it is anchored the contortedpipe narrativizes both the pitfalls and prospects of the machine ageShit eventually flows up in the case of God not down suggesting thateven the most lofty and noble ideals of the imagination maintain theirhuman aroma Rather than assume the power of divinity classicallyconstrued God staged divinity as nothing more and nothing less thanthat which made life livablemdashthat which kept the smell of human wasteartificially at bay or more ominously managed the flow of thingsthrough feedback control But even more literally God called attentionto the human work in the making of artifice and celebrated the bio-logical possibility for the endless unmaking (and remaking) of selfFeedback technology was not really God but it was for all practicalpurposes Or as the Baroness wrote in a 1927 letter to Peggy GuggenheimGod had much to learn from Henry Ford for he was ldquoclumsily sub-tle-densely-intelligent-inefficiently-immense-(Lord not Fordmdashof course)rdquo9

God the Baroness playfully warned had ldquobetter hotfoot it towardprogressmdashmodernizemdashuse his own omnipotence intelligentlymdashsmart orwersquoll all expire in tangle Well Lord knowsmdash(Does he)rdquo (quoted inGammel 2002 229)

6 Conclusion Deus in machina movet

As Protestant majorities struggled to adjust themselves and their theo-logical inheritance to new technological conditions theologies of themachine age both compelling and disturbing emerged from outsidethe precincts of traditional religious discourse For in addition to beinginspired by the ghost of Herman Melville the Melville Revival wasquite literally haunted by the power of feedback technologiesmdashspectersthat were affective rather than concrete strangely resistant to rationalcontemplation yet recognized through anxious admixtures of thoughtand feeling On one hand the revival reflected the spectrum of Protestant

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 29

30

10 Shortly after the publication of Moby-Dick in November of 1851 reports beganto reach America about the August sinking of the Ann Alexander by a whale in theSouth Pacific It was the first ldquoattack of a whale upon a shiprdquo since the destruc-tion of the Essex in 1820 The story about the Ann Alexander originally appeared inthe Panama Herald on October 16 and was reprinted the following month in New-York Daily Tribune and Littellrsquos Living Age The sperm whale that the Ann Alexander

fears over technological miscegenation The capacity of machines toredraw the boundaries of race and gender disturbed Protestant leadersand revivalists alike On the other hand subversive elements within theMelville Revival offered what must be considered a theological critiqueof how Protestants understood themselves and their God in relation totechnological materials Grant Overton for example saw in Moby-Dick

a deep appreciation for how technological developments had come tounderminemdashquite literally hauntmdashthe epistemological and ontologicalassumptions that made them possible ldquoNo longer able to instance thedeus ex machinardquo wrote Overton Melville was ldquounforgetful that deus inmachina movet and while most of mankind [have] become unable to seethe god for the machine [he] can scarcely perceive the machine forthe god agitating it [His] reports of the machine are somehow unrec-ognizable [his] realism is confronted by Realityrdquo (Overton 1928 231)

Bess Meredythrsquos reimagining of Moby-Dick and Baroness Elsa vonFreytag-Loringhovenrsquos God also explored the otherness that technologyengenders within the modern subject a trace that lingers despite allattempts to extinguish it Their errant readings challenged contempo-raries to reimagine their relationship to technology from an enchantedperspective that did not necessarily conform to the directives of Americanindividualism Resisting the advertisements of both Arminianism andBaconian Common Sense these readings insisted that there was somethingelsemdashsomething wholly othermdashoccurring within the technological workingsof secular modernity Excess or that which unsettled the boundariesbetween body and machine masculine and feminine had resulted inwhat might be called a ldquopost-structure of feelingrdquo The prospect thateither machines or women had begun to think for themselves or atleast possess a kind of agency once attributed to the enlightened malesubject now seemed as likely as a whale vengefully turning against awhaleship10 As Melvillean riffs on the deferred project of religious iden-tity The Sea Beast and God marked the space between human creationand technological determination consent and compulsion and there-fore hinted at the prospect that belief was not an individual state butan embodied activity Consistent with Lewis Mumfordrsquos assessment ofthe symbolic and material powers of feedback technology these works

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 30

31

had first turned upon starboard and larboard boats seizing both in its jaws andcrushing them to pieces It then rushed towards the Ann Alexander ldquoat the rateof fifteen knots In an instant the monster struck the ship with tremendous violence shakingher from stem to sternrdquo (415) Upon reading the article Melville remarked to his pub-lisher ldquothe Whale had almost completely slipped me for the time (amp I was themerrier for it) when Crash comes Moby Dick himself It is really amp truly a sur-prising coincidencemdashto say the least I make no doubt it is Moby Dick himself I wonder if my evil art has raised this monsterrdquo (Melville 1993 209)

11 William Jennings Bryan for example that standard bearer of fundamentalfaith equated faith to a particular kind of technologymdashldquothere is that in each humanliferdquo he wrote ldquothat corresponds to the mainspring of a watchmdashthat which isabsolutely necessary if the life is to be what it should be a real life and not amere existence That necessary thing is a belief in Godrdquo (86) Faith for Bryan wasthat which repeated without difference It was a dependable rational and utterlyrationalizing process It was not however self-regulating It affirmed the ldquorealnessrdquoof the individual believer precisely because it ignored the conditions imposed fromoutside the self But how might faith be viewed in terms of feedback and repro-ducibility rather than repetition a process that does not reaffirm a centered indi-vidual with every tick but adjusts accordingly to external fluctuations

raise numerous questions concerning the ways and means of religionin an age of postmodern complexity and virtual reality

How might a relentless focus on power and the porousness of sub-jectivity change how one views the matter of religion within historyHow might a greater attention to the aesthetic conditions that mediateany and all beliefs challenge the ways in which we distinguish the reli-gious from the secular How might a greater attention to the enchantingpower of material conditions challenge historical and political narrativesof secularization How do technologies and vested interests realize them-selves through the discourses of agency choice and mobility Whatin other words are the conditions of possibility that allow a historicalactor (rather than a Hollywood actor) to make a particular faith com-mitment or for that matter have any faith at all In what languagedo historical actors dream about themselves and divinity and how doesthat language change over time And finally to what degree is faithitself a technology11

By acknowledging the white mythology that still informs say thefield of American religions such questions shift the scholarly emphasisfrom explicit expressions of religious belief and practice to the spacebetween those beliefs and practices and the world at-large Individualswithin American religious history for example have often been depictedas fully formed agents making choices between various faith commitmentsand ever combining religious idioms to suit their specific needs and cir-cumstances (Albanese 1997) No doubt this is true But there is anotherside to this story of radical religious pluralism one that if accounted

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 31

32

12 Such a possibility is very much at odds with the Geertzian model of ldquothickdescriptionrdquo and its formidable legacy in the humanities and social sciences Withoutquestioning the degree to which the self can ever become entirely legible to theself Geertz claimed that every society and individual life and by extension everybelief and every practice ldquocontain their own interpretations One has only to learnhow to gain access to themrdquo (Geertz 1973 453)

13 The ambiguities of agency during the ldquomachine agerdquo have been the subjectof a number of elegant critical studies See for example Anson Rabinbach TheHuman Motor Energy Fatigue and the Origins of Modernity (New York Basic Books1990) Mark Seltzer Bodies and Machines (New York Routledge 1992) MarthaBanta Taylorized Lives Narrative Productions in the Age of Taylor Veblen and Ford (ChicagoUniversity of Chicago Press 1993) Carolyn Thomas de la Pentildea The Body ElectricHow Strange Machines Built the Modern American (New York New York UniversityPress 2003) and Joel Dinerstein The Swinging Machine Modernity Technology andAfrican American Culture Between the World Wars (Amherst University of MassachusettsPress 2003) Dinersteinrsquos work is particularly relevant to the issue of religious com-binativeness given his emphasis on how African American artists strove to refigureldquomachine aestheticsrdquo in and through their artistry Dinersteinrsquos work suggests thatthe self is locatedmdashie the self happensmdashsomewhere between resistance and assim-ilation between choice and coercionmdasha lesson that many Anglo-Americans werenot willing to consider in their triumphal theorizing about the human in relationto the machine The possibility for consideration argues Dinerstein existed inAfrican American jazz swing and dance

for suggests new directions for the study of religion in America Althoughthe ldquolived religionrdquo perspective in American religious history has donemuch to overcome the distinction between ldquodabblersrdquo and ldquotrue believersrdquothe question of power still lingers (Ahlstrom 1972 1052) Religiousbeliefs and practices are neither essential things nor reveal themselvesto the scholar in toto12 Such a position does not replicate the eitherordiscussion regarding the agency of historical actors On the contraryit suggests that religious agency is a hybrid weave of intent and instinctimmediate response and mediated principle knowing and unknowing13

Accounting for the ambiguities of agency has already pushed scholarsof religion toward an anthropology of the secular and an explorationof in the Foucauldian phrasing of Talal Asad ldquothe contingencies thathave come together to give us our certaintiesrdquo (2003 16)

It is with a hint of irony then that one may return to the promotionalpamphlet of The Sea Beast that celebrates the ldquoconquestrdquo of Ahab andthe invisible wafting presence of screenwriter Bess Meredyth ldquoThereis no woman writing today who has contributed so much to genuine

screen values as Bess Meredythrdquo Indeed her son John Meredyth Lucasborn in 1919 continued down his motherrsquos unsettling path as a successfultelevision screenwriter and director His credits included episodes ofldquoStar Trekrdquo ldquoLoganrsquos Runrdquo and that other story of ldquohundred percentrdquoAmericanism ldquoThe Six Million Dollar Manrdquo

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 32

33

Figure 8 The Six Million Dollar Man ldquoGentlemen we can rebuild him Wehave the capability of making the worldrsquos first bionic man We can make him

better than he was before Better Stronger Fasterrdquo

Haverford College370 Lancaster AveHaverford PA 19041jlardashaverfordedu

References

Ahlstrom Sydney E (1972) A Religious History of the American People New HavenYale University Press

Albanese Catherine L (1997) Exchanging selves exchanging souls Contact com-bination and American religious history In Thomas A Tweed (ed) RetellingUS Religious History 200-26 Berkeley University of California Press

Anon (1851) A ship sunk by a whale Littellrsquos Living Age (29 November) 415-16Asad Talal (2003) Formations of the Secular Christianity Islam Modernity Stanford

Stanford University Press

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 33

34

Bacon Francis (1870) The Works of Francis Bacon James Spedding Robert LeslieEllis and Douglas Denon Heath (eds) Vol VIII New York Hurd andHoughton

Barton Bruce (2000) The Man Nobody Knows A Discovery of the Real Jesus ChicagoIvan R Dee

Beniger James R (1986) The Control Revolution Technological and Economic Origins ofthe Information Society Cambridge Harvard University Press

Benjamin Walter (1996) One-way street In Marcus Bullock amp Michael W Jennings(eds) Selected Writings Volume 1 1913-1926 444-88 Cambridge HarvardUniversity Press

mdash (2003) The work of art in the age of its technological reproducibility third ver-sion In Howard Eiland and Michael W Jennings (eds) Selected Writings Volume4 1938-40 251-83 Cambridge Harvard University Press

Bennett Charles A (1923) A Philosophical Study of Mysticism An Essay New HavenYale University Press 1923

Bernays Edward L (1923) Crystallizing Public Opinion New York Liverlight PublishingCorporation

Buchman SR (1925) Moby Dickmdashthe book and The Sea Beastmdashthe picture Anappreciation In Herman Melville Moby Dick or The White Whale ix-xi NewYork Grosset amp Dunlap

Butler Judith (1993) Bodies That Matter On the Discursive Limits of lsquoSexrsquo RoutledgeNew York

Cahir Linda Costanzo (1997) Routinizing the charismatic Melville and Hollywoodrsquosthree Moby-Dicks Melville Society Extracts 110 (September) 11-17

Cendrars Blaise (1922) Profound today Broom 13 ( January) 265-67Chadwick Owen (1975) The Secularization of the European Mind in the Nineteenth Century

Cambridge Cambridge University PressCoe George Albert (1917) A Social Theory of Religious Education New York Charles

Scribnerrsquos SonsDavidson Abraham A (1996) The European art invasion In Francis M Naumann

(ed) with Beth Vann Making Mischief Dada Invades New York 222-27 NewYork Whitney Museum of Art

Debord Guy (1995) Society of the Spectacle translated by Donald Nicholson-SmithNew York Zone Books

Derrida Jacques (1994) Specters of Marx The State of the Debt The Work of Mourningand the New International Peggy Kamuf (trans) New York Routledge

Dorsey George A (1925) Why We Behave Like Human Beings New York BlueRibbon Books

Epstein Jean (1922) The new conditions of literary phenomena Broom 21 (April)3-10

Frank Waldo (1919) Our America New York Boni and LiverightGammel Irene (2002) Baroness Elsa Gender Dada and Everyday Modernitymdasha Cultural

Biography Cambridge The MIT PressGeertz Clifford (1973) Deep play Notes on the Balinese cockfight In The Interpretation

of Cultures 412-53 New York Basic BooksHaraway Donna (2004) A manifesto for cyborgs Science technology and socialist

feminism in the 1980s In The Haraway Reader 7-45 New York RoutledgeHeap Jane (1922) Dada Little Review VII2 (Spring) 46Heidegger Martin (1977) The age of the world-picturerdquo In The Question Concerning

Technology and Other Essays 115-54 William Lovitt (trans) New York Harperamp Row

Hoffman Carol Stein (2001) The Barrymores Hollywoodrsquos First Family LexingtonUniversity of Kentucky Press

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 34

35

Jackson Josephine A and Helen M Salisbury (1922) Outwitting Our Nerves A Primerof Psychotherapy New York The Century Co

Jaffe David (1990) The village enlightenment in New England 1760-1820 TheWilliam and Mary Quarterly XLVII3 ( July) 327-46

Jones Rufus M (1915) Mysticism in present-day religion Harvard Theological ReviewVIII2 (April) 155-65

Kippenberg Hans G (2002) Discovering Religious History in the Modern Age BarbaraHarshav (trans) Princeton Princeton University Press

Kobler John (1977) Damned in Paradise The Life of John Barrymore New YorkAtheneum

Kuttner Alfred B (1922) Nerves In Harold E Stearns (ed) Civilization in the UnitedStates An Enquiry by Thirty Americans 427-42 New York Harcourt

Lauter Paul (1994) Melville climbs the canon American Literature 66 (March) 1-24Lawrence DH (1923) Studies in Classic American Literature New York T SeltzerLindbergh Charles A (1927) We New York GP Putnamrsquos SonsLippmann Walter (1922) Public Opinion New York Macmillan CompanyMarchand Roland (1985) Advertising the American Dream Making Way for Modernity

1920-1940 Berkeley University of California PressMarty Martin E Modern American Religion Vol 2 The Noise of Conflict 1919-1941

Chicago University of Chicago Press 1991May Henry F (1976) The Enlightenment in America New York Oxford University

PressMayhew Jonathan (1749) Concerning the difference between truth and falsehood

right and wrong In Seven Sermons 1-21 Boston Rogers and FowleMayr Otto (1970) The Origins of Feedback Control Cambridge The MIT PressMelville Herman (1993) Correspondence Volume 14 of The Writings of Herman Melville

Lynne Horth (ed) Evanston and Chicago Northwestern University Pressmdash (1925) Moby Dick or The White Whale 1851 New York Grosset amp DunlapMindell David A (2002) Between Human and Machine Feedback Control and Computing

Before Cybernetics Baltimore The Johns Hopkins University PressMumford Lewis (1929) Herman Melville New York The Literary Guild of Americamdash (1924) Sticks and Stones A Study of American Architecture and Civilization New York

Dover Publicationsmdash (1934) Technics and Civilization New York Harcourt Brace and Companymdash (1926) The Golden Day A Study in American Literature and Culture New York Boni

and LiverightMurray Jr HA (1929) Review of Lewis Mumfordrsquos Herman Melville The New

England Quarterly 2 ( July) 523-26Naumann Francis M (1994) New York Dada 1915-23 New York Harry N AbramsNoble David F (1999) The Religion of Technology The Divinity of Man and the Spirit

of Invention New York Penguin BooksNye David E (1994) American Technological Sublime Cambridge The MIT PressOrsquoNeil David (1921) The new Broom Broom 11 (November) 96Overton Grant (1928) The Philosophy of Fiction New York D AppletonPalmer Attorney General (1920) The case against the lsquoRedsrsquo The Forum A Magazine

of Constructive Nationalism 632 (February) 173-85Parsons Floyd W (1927) Everybodyrsquos business Advertising amp Selling ( June 29) 5 64Prampolini Enrico (1922) The aesthetic of the machine and mechanical intro-

spection in art Broom 33 (October) 235-37Rauschenbusch Walter (1917) A Theology for the Social Gospel New York The

Macmillan CompanyRichardson George P (1991) Feedback Thought in Social Science and Systems Theory

Philadelphia University of Pennsylvania Press

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 35

26

Sweeping us out of mouldy rutsSweeping us clean and sweetmdash

RememberWhen wersquore quiveringmdashSensitivemdashbaremdashWe shall be gratefulFor just a few shadows (96)

Broom took Ishmaelrsquos retort quite seriously addressing the revolutionarydimensions of technological artifice and the shadows cast within therealm of technological illumination

Unlike Futurism Broom did not celebrate the beauty of war It didhowever come to express the ldquodreamed-of metallization of the humanbodyrdquo and the playful cybernetic fantasies of Dadaists such as ManRay and Francis Picabia (quoted in Benjamin 2003 269) After someinitial hesitation Broom began to embrace Dadarsquos perspective on the lib-eratory dimensions of the human-machine interface ldquoEverything isartificialrdquo gasped Broom contributor Blaise Cendrars ldquoThe eyes thehand the sexual frenzy of the factory The wheel which turns Thewing which flies The voice which travels far on a wire Your ear ina trumpet Your sense of direction Your rhythm You melt the worldin the mould of your skull Your brain is hollow Like a religion amysterious pill hastens your digestionrdquo (265) Jean Epstein from a slightdifferent angle argued that technology had ldquobecome part of ourselvesrdquoand had democratized human perceptionmdashldquoman has not one memoryof [the] landscape he [now] has a thousand different ones which mayor may not resemble each other Everything possesses hundreds ofapparent diameters which never superimpose exactlyrdquo (6-7)

Broom was soon translating less inflammatory Futurist manifestos suchas Enrico Prampolinirsquos ldquoThe Aesthetic of the Machine and MechanicalIntrospection in Artrdquo in which he declared ldquoIs not the machine todaythe most exuberant symbol of the mystery of human creation Is it notthe new mythical deity which weaves the legends and histories of thecontemporary human drama The Machine in its practical and materialfunction comes to have today in human concepts and thoughts thesignificance of an ideal and spiritual inspirationrdquo The kind of worshipthat ensued was that of the cyborg neither reverent nor memorializ-ing of cosmic law (Haraway 2004 9) Or as Prampolini wrote ldquoOurexperience has convinced us of the truth of certain of our plastic truthsand has allowed us to perceive the errors that lie in othersrdquo (236)

One of the more important pieces of American Dada captured pre-cisely this pointmdashGod (c 1917) designed by Baroness Elsa von Freytag-

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 26

27

Figure 6 Illustration accompanying Enrico Prampolinirsquos ldquoThe Aesthetic of theMachine and Mechanical Introspection in Artrdquo Broom 33 (October 1922) 237

Loringhoven and photographed by Morton Schamberg The invertedcast-iron plumbing trap atop a carpenterrsquos miter box was emblematicof the Melvillean appreciation for technological enchantment Indeedthe pipe is part of an indoor plumbing apparatus a modern conveniencewhose history dates back to some of the earliest feedback technologieson recordmdashthe water-clocks and float-regulators of ancient Greece (Mayr1970 11-26) God resembled the mechanical abstractions Schamberghad been producing before his premature death in 1918 during aninfluenza outbreak in Philadelphia The Baroness a contributor to Broom

and other little magazines had arrived in New York from Germanyin 1913 She was ldquothe first American dadardquo wrote Jane Heap in 1922ldquothe only one living anywhere who dresses dada loves dada lives dadardquo(46) Friends with Marcel Duchamp Djuna Barnes and other NewYork artists the Baroness was a central figure in a burgeoning trans-atlantic avant-garde In addition to her art and poetry the Baronesswas also a ldquoperformancerdquo artist who skillfully inverted gender hierarchiesand attacked through her very presence the traditional sensibilities ofthe middle-class She was notorious for walking around the streets ofGreenwich Village with her shaved head painted purple postage stampspasted to her face and a bird cage around her neck housing a livecanary (Davidson 1996 223-24)

In what must be considered a prescient assault on all manners oflogocentrism the Baroness also carried with her a plaster cast penis thatshe periodically revealed to passersby for maximum shock value (Gammel2002 195) But it was the Barnonessrsquos sculpture God that in addition

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 27

28

Figure 7 God (c 1917) designed by Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven and photographed by Morton Schamberg

to celebrating the mobility and reproducibility of that which was sup-posedly the most fixed and essential repossessed the power of tech-nology as ever imperfect and incomplete As a companion piece of sortsto Duchamprsquos infamous ready-made Fountain an inverted urinal dis-played in the 1917 exhibition of the American Society of IndependentArtists God invited more expressly theological speculation First of allit insisted on supplementing the three traditional symbolic centers ofWestern religious reflectionmdashGod humanity naturemdashwith the machineAnd although it has since been viewed by critics as ldquosacrilegiousrdquo andan instance of ldquoantireligious scatologyrdquo (Naumann 1994 171 Gammel220) the transgressive dimensions to God also affirm a shadowy open-

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 28

29

9 One is reminded here of Melvillersquos letter to Nathaniel Hawthorne in April of1851 ldquoWe incline to think that God cannot explain His own secrets and that Hewould like a little more information upon certain points Himself We mortals aston-ish Him as much as He usrdquo (Melville 1993 186)

ing to radical othernessmdashin the form of imperfection and chancemdashwithin the loops generated by feedback technology

Although the metal pipe ends up pointing toward heaven it firstloops downward in a nod to its human ground Limited by the skillsof the human carpenter on whose box it is anchored the contortedpipe narrativizes both the pitfalls and prospects of the machine ageShit eventually flows up in the case of God not down suggesting thateven the most lofty and noble ideals of the imagination maintain theirhuman aroma Rather than assume the power of divinity classicallyconstrued God staged divinity as nothing more and nothing less thanthat which made life livablemdashthat which kept the smell of human wasteartificially at bay or more ominously managed the flow of thingsthrough feedback control But even more literally God called attentionto the human work in the making of artifice and celebrated the bio-logical possibility for the endless unmaking (and remaking) of selfFeedback technology was not really God but it was for all practicalpurposes Or as the Baroness wrote in a 1927 letter to Peggy GuggenheimGod had much to learn from Henry Ford for he was ldquoclumsily sub-tle-densely-intelligent-inefficiently-immense-(Lord not Fordmdashof course)rdquo9

God the Baroness playfully warned had ldquobetter hotfoot it towardprogressmdashmodernizemdashuse his own omnipotence intelligentlymdashsmart orwersquoll all expire in tangle Well Lord knowsmdash(Does he)rdquo (quoted inGammel 2002 229)

6 Conclusion Deus in machina movet

As Protestant majorities struggled to adjust themselves and their theo-logical inheritance to new technological conditions theologies of themachine age both compelling and disturbing emerged from outsidethe precincts of traditional religious discourse For in addition to beinginspired by the ghost of Herman Melville the Melville Revival wasquite literally haunted by the power of feedback technologiesmdashspectersthat were affective rather than concrete strangely resistant to rationalcontemplation yet recognized through anxious admixtures of thoughtand feeling On one hand the revival reflected the spectrum of Protestant

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 29

30

10 Shortly after the publication of Moby-Dick in November of 1851 reports beganto reach America about the August sinking of the Ann Alexander by a whale in theSouth Pacific It was the first ldquoattack of a whale upon a shiprdquo since the destruc-tion of the Essex in 1820 The story about the Ann Alexander originally appeared inthe Panama Herald on October 16 and was reprinted the following month in New-York Daily Tribune and Littellrsquos Living Age The sperm whale that the Ann Alexander

fears over technological miscegenation The capacity of machines toredraw the boundaries of race and gender disturbed Protestant leadersand revivalists alike On the other hand subversive elements within theMelville Revival offered what must be considered a theological critiqueof how Protestants understood themselves and their God in relation totechnological materials Grant Overton for example saw in Moby-Dick

a deep appreciation for how technological developments had come tounderminemdashquite literally hauntmdashthe epistemological and ontologicalassumptions that made them possible ldquoNo longer able to instance thedeus ex machinardquo wrote Overton Melville was ldquounforgetful that deus inmachina movet and while most of mankind [have] become unable to seethe god for the machine [he] can scarcely perceive the machine forthe god agitating it [His] reports of the machine are somehow unrec-ognizable [his] realism is confronted by Realityrdquo (Overton 1928 231)

Bess Meredythrsquos reimagining of Moby-Dick and Baroness Elsa vonFreytag-Loringhovenrsquos God also explored the otherness that technologyengenders within the modern subject a trace that lingers despite allattempts to extinguish it Their errant readings challenged contempo-raries to reimagine their relationship to technology from an enchantedperspective that did not necessarily conform to the directives of Americanindividualism Resisting the advertisements of both Arminianism andBaconian Common Sense these readings insisted that there was somethingelsemdashsomething wholly othermdashoccurring within the technological workingsof secular modernity Excess or that which unsettled the boundariesbetween body and machine masculine and feminine had resulted inwhat might be called a ldquopost-structure of feelingrdquo The prospect thateither machines or women had begun to think for themselves or atleast possess a kind of agency once attributed to the enlightened malesubject now seemed as likely as a whale vengefully turning against awhaleship10 As Melvillean riffs on the deferred project of religious iden-tity The Sea Beast and God marked the space between human creationand technological determination consent and compulsion and there-fore hinted at the prospect that belief was not an individual state butan embodied activity Consistent with Lewis Mumfordrsquos assessment ofthe symbolic and material powers of feedback technology these works

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 30

31

had first turned upon starboard and larboard boats seizing both in its jaws andcrushing them to pieces It then rushed towards the Ann Alexander ldquoat the rateof fifteen knots In an instant the monster struck the ship with tremendous violence shakingher from stem to sternrdquo (415) Upon reading the article Melville remarked to his pub-lisher ldquothe Whale had almost completely slipped me for the time (amp I was themerrier for it) when Crash comes Moby Dick himself It is really amp truly a sur-prising coincidencemdashto say the least I make no doubt it is Moby Dick himself I wonder if my evil art has raised this monsterrdquo (Melville 1993 209)

11 William Jennings Bryan for example that standard bearer of fundamentalfaith equated faith to a particular kind of technologymdashldquothere is that in each humanliferdquo he wrote ldquothat corresponds to the mainspring of a watchmdashthat which isabsolutely necessary if the life is to be what it should be a real life and not amere existence That necessary thing is a belief in Godrdquo (86) Faith for Bryan wasthat which repeated without difference It was a dependable rational and utterlyrationalizing process It was not however self-regulating It affirmed the ldquorealnessrdquoof the individual believer precisely because it ignored the conditions imposed fromoutside the self But how might faith be viewed in terms of feedback and repro-ducibility rather than repetition a process that does not reaffirm a centered indi-vidual with every tick but adjusts accordingly to external fluctuations

raise numerous questions concerning the ways and means of religionin an age of postmodern complexity and virtual reality

How might a relentless focus on power and the porousness of sub-jectivity change how one views the matter of religion within historyHow might a greater attention to the aesthetic conditions that mediateany and all beliefs challenge the ways in which we distinguish the reli-gious from the secular How might a greater attention to the enchantingpower of material conditions challenge historical and political narrativesof secularization How do technologies and vested interests realize them-selves through the discourses of agency choice and mobility Whatin other words are the conditions of possibility that allow a historicalactor (rather than a Hollywood actor) to make a particular faith com-mitment or for that matter have any faith at all In what languagedo historical actors dream about themselves and divinity and how doesthat language change over time And finally to what degree is faithitself a technology11

By acknowledging the white mythology that still informs say thefield of American religions such questions shift the scholarly emphasisfrom explicit expressions of religious belief and practice to the spacebetween those beliefs and practices and the world at-large Individualswithin American religious history for example have often been depictedas fully formed agents making choices between various faith commitmentsand ever combining religious idioms to suit their specific needs and cir-cumstances (Albanese 1997) No doubt this is true But there is anotherside to this story of radical religious pluralism one that if accounted

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 31

32

12 Such a possibility is very much at odds with the Geertzian model of ldquothickdescriptionrdquo and its formidable legacy in the humanities and social sciences Withoutquestioning the degree to which the self can ever become entirely legible to theself Geertz claimed that every society and individual life and by extension everybelief and every practice ldquocontain their own interpretations One has only to learnhow to gain access to themrdquo (Geertz 1973 453)

13 The ambiguities of agency during the ldquomachine agerdquo have been the subjectof a number of elegant critical studies See for example Anson Rabinbach TheHuman Motor Energy Fatigue and the Origins of Modernity (New York Basic Books1990) Mark Seltzer Bodies and Machines (New York Routledge 1992) MarthaBanta Taylorized Lives Narrative Productions in the Age of Taylor Veblen and Ford (ChicagoUniversity of Chicago Press 1993) Carolyn Thomas de la Pentildea The Body ElectricHow Strange Machines Built the Modern American (New York New York UniversityPress 2003) and Joel Dinerstein The Swinging Machine Modernity Technology andAfrican American Culture Between the World Wars (Amherst University of MassachusettsPress 2003) Dinersteinrsquos work is particularly relevant to the issue of religious com-binativeness given his emphasis on how African American artists strove to refigureldquomachine aestheticsrdquo in and through their artistry Dinersteinrsquos work suggests thatthe self is locatedmdashie the self happensmdashsomewhere between resistance and assim-ilation between choice and coercionmdasha lesson that many Anglo-Americans werenot willing to consider in their triumphal theorizing about the human in relationto the machine The possibility for consideration argues Dinerstein existed inAfrican American jazz swing and dance

for suggests new directions for the study of religion in America Althoughthe ldquolived religionrdquo perspective in American religious history has donemuch to overcome the distinction between ldquodabblersrdquo and ldquotrue believersrdquothe question of power still lingers (Ahlstrom 1972 1052) Religiousbeliefs and practices are neither essential things nor reveal themselvesto the scholar in toto12 Such a position does not replicate the eitherordiscussion regarding the agency of historical actors On the contraryit suggests that religious agency is a hybrid weave of intent and instinctimmediate response and mediated principle knowing and unknowing13

Accounting for the ambiguities of agency has already pushed scholarsof religion toward an anthropology of the secular and an explorationof in the Foucauldian phrasing of Talal Asad ldquothe contingencies thathave come together to give us our certaintiesrdquo (2003 16)

It is with a hint of irony then that one may return to the promotionalpamphlet of The Sea Beast that celebrates the ldquoconquestrdquo of Ahab andthe invisible wafting presence of screenwriter Bess Meredyth ldquoThereis no woman writing today who has contributed so much to genuine

screen values as Bess Meredythrdquo Indeed her son John Meredyth Lucasborn in 1919 continued down his motherrsquos unsettling path as a successfultelevision screenwriter and director His credits included episodes ofldquoStar Trekrdquo ldquoLoganrsquos Runrdquo and that other story of ldquohundred percentrdquoAmericanism ldquoThe Six Million Dollar Manrdquo

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 32

33

Figure 8 The Six Million Dollar Man ldquoGentlemen we can rebuild him Wehave the capability of making the worldrsquos first bionic man We can make him

better than he was before Better Stronger Fasterrdquo

Haverford College370 Lancaster AveHaverford PA 19041jlardashaverfordedu

References

Ahlstrom Sydney E (1972) A Religious History of the American People New HavenYale University Press

Albanese Catherine L (1997) Exchanging selves exchanging souls Contact com-bination and American religious history In Thomas A Tweed (ed) RetellingUS Religious History 200-26 Berkeley University of California Press

Anon (1851) A ship sunk by a whale Littellrsquos Living Age (29 November) 415-16Asad Talal (2003) Formations of the Secular Christianity Islam Modernity Stanford

Stanford University Press

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 33

34

Bacon Francis (1870) The Works of Francis Bacon James Spedding Robert LeslieEllis and Douglas Denon Heath (eds) Vol VIII New York Hurd andHoughton

Barton Bruce (2000) The Man Nobody Knows A Discovery of the Real Jesus ChicagoIvan R Dee

Beniger James R (1986) The Control Revolution Technological and Economic Origins ofthe Information Society Cambridge Harvard University Press

Benjamin Walter (1996) One-way street In Marcus Bullock amp Michael W Jennings(eds) Selected Writings Volume 1 1913-1926 444-88 Cambridge HarvardUniversity Press

mdash (2003) The work of art in the age of its technological reproducibility third ver-sion In Howard Eiland and Michael W Jennings (eds) Selected Writings Volume4 1938-40 251-83 Cambridge Harvard University Press

Bennett Charles A (1923) A Philosophical Study of Mysticism An Essay New HavenYale University Press 1923

Bernays Edward L (1923) Crystallizing Public Opinion New York Liverlight PublishingCorporation

Buchman SR (1925) Moby Dickmdashthe book and The Sea Beastmdashthe picture Anappreciation In Herman Melville Moby Dick or The White Whale ix-xi NewYork Grosset amp Dunlap

Butler Judith (1993) Bodies That Matter On the Discursive Limits of lsquoSexrsquo RoutledgeNew York

Cahir Linda Costanzo (1997) Routinizing the charismatic Melville and Hollywoodrsquosthree Moby-Dicks Melville Society Extracts 110 (September) 11-17

Cendrars Blaise (1922) Profound today Broom 13 ( January) 265-67Chadwick Owen (1975) The Secularization of the European Mind in the Nineteenth Century

Cambridge Cambridge University PressCoe George Albert (1917) A Social Theory of Religious Education New York Charles

Scribnerrsquos SonsDavidson Abraham A (1996) The European art invasion In Francis M Naumann

(ed) with Beth Vann Making Mischief Dada Invades New York 222-27 NewYork Whitney Museum of Art

Debord Guy (1995) Society of the Spectacle translated by Donald Nicholson-SmithNew York Zone Books

Derrida Jacques (1994) Specters of Marx The State of the Debt The Work of Mourningand the New International Peggy Kamuf (trans) New York Routledge

Dorsey George A (1925) Why We Behave Like Human Beings New York BlueRibbon Books

Epstein Jean (1922) The new conditions of literary phenomena Broom 21 (April)3-10

Frank Waldo (1919) Our America New York Boni and LiverightGammel Irene (2002) Baroness Elsa Gender Dada and Everyday Modernitymdasha Cultural

Biography Cambridge The MIT PressGeertz Clifford (1973) Deep play Notes on the Balinese cockfight In The Interpretation

of Cultures 412-53 New York Basic BooksHaraway Donna (2004) A manifesto for cyborgs Science technology and socialist

feminism in the 1980s In The Haraway Reader 7-45 New York RoutledgeHeap Jane (1922) Dada Little Review VII2 (Spring) 46Heidegger Martin (1977) The age of the world-picturerdquo In The Question Concerning

Technology and Other Essays 115-54 William Lovitt (trans) New York Harperamp Row

Hoffman Carol Stein (2001) The Barrymores Hollywoodrsquos First Family LexingtonUniversity of Kentucky Press

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 34

35

Jackson Josephine A and Helen M Salisbury (1922) Outwitting Our Nerves A Primerof Psychotherapy New York The Century Co

Jaffe David (1990) The village enlightenment in New England 1760-1820 TheWilliam and Mary Quarterly XLVII3 ( July) 327-46

Jones Rufus M (1915) Mysticism in present-day religion Harvard Theological ReviewVIII2 (April) 155-65

Kippenberg Hans G (2002) Discovering Religious History in the Modern Age BarbaraHarshav (trans) Princeton Princeton University Press

Kobler John (1977) Damned in Paradise The Life of John Barrymore New YorkAtheneum

Kuttner Alfred B (1922) Nerves In Harold E Stearns (ed) Civilization in the UnitedStates An Enquiry by Thirty Americans 427-42 New York Harcourt

Lauter Paul (1994) Melville climbs the canon American Literature 66 (March) 1-24Lawrence DH (1923) Studies in Classic American Literature New York T SeltzerLindbergh Charles A (1927) We New York GP Putnamrsquos SonsLippmann Walter (1922) Public Opinion New York Macmillan CompanyMarchand Roland (1985) Advertising the American Dream Making Way for Modernity

1920-1940 Berkeley University of California PressMarty Martin E Modern American Religion Vol 2 The Noise of Conflict 1919-1941

Chicago University of Chicago Press 1991May Henry F (1976) The Enlightenment in America New York Oxford University

PressMayhew Jonathan (1749) Concerning the difference between truth and falsehood

right and wrong In Seven Sermons 1-21 Boston Rogers and FowleMayr Otto (1970) The Origins of Feedback Control Cambridge The MIT PressMelville Herman (1993) Correspondence Volume 14 of The Writings of Herman Melville

Lynne Horth (ed) Evanston and Chicago Northwestern University Pressmdash (1925) Moby Dick or The White Whale 1851 New York Grosset amp DunlapMindell David A (2002) Between Human and Machine Feedback Control and Computing

Before Cybernetics Baltimore The Johns Hopkins University PressMumford Lewis (1929) Herman Melville New York The Literary Guild of Americamdash (1924) Sticks and Stones A Study of American Architecture and Civilization New York

Dover Publicationsmdash (1934) Technics and Civilization New York Harcourt Brace and Companymdash (1926) The Golden Day A Study in American Literature and Culture New York Boni

and LiverightMurray Jr HA (1929) Review of Lewis Mumfordrsquos Herman Melville The New

England Quarterly 2 ( July) 523-26Naumann Francis M (1994) New York Dada 1915-23 New York Harry N AbramsNoble David F (1999) The Religion of Technology The Divinity of Man and the Spirit

of Invention New York Penguin BooksNye David E (1994) American Technological Sublime Cambridge The MIT PressOrsquoNeil David (1921) The new Broom Broom 11 (November) 96Overton Grant (1928) The Philosophy of Fiction New York D AppletonPalmer Attorney General (1920) The case against the lsquoRedsrsquo The Forum A Magazine

of Constructive Nationalism 632 (February) 173-85Parsons Floyd W (1927) Everybodyrsquos business Advertising amp Selling ( June 29) 5 64Prampolini Enrico (1922) The aesthetic of the machine and mechanical intro-

spection in art Broom 33 (October) 235-37Rauschenbusch Walter (1917) A Theology for the Social Gospel New York The

Macmillan CompanyRichardson George P (1991) Feedback Thought in Social Science and Systems Theory

Philadelphia University of Pennsylvania Press

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 35

27

Figure 6 Illustration accompanying Enrico Prampolinirsquos ldquoThe Aesthetic of theMachine and Mechanical Introspection in Artrdquo Broom 33 (October 1922) 237

Loringhoven and photographed by Morton Schamberg The invertedcast-iron plumbing trap atop a carpenterrsquos miter box was emblematicof the Melvillean appreciation for technological enchantment Indeedthe pipe is part of an indoor plumbing apparatus a modern conveniencewhose history dates back to some of the earliest feedback technologieson recordmdashthe water-clocks and float-regulators of ancient Greece (Mayr1970 11-26) God resembled the mechanical abstractions Schamberghad been producing before his premature death in 1918 during aninfluenza outbreak in Philadelphia The Baroness a contributor to Broom

and other little magazines had arrived in New York from Germanyin 1913 She was ldquothe first American dadardquo wrote Jane Heap in 1922ldquothe only one living anywhere who dresses dada loves dada lives dadardquo(46) Friends with Marcel Duchamp Djuna Barnes and other NewYork artists the Baroness was a central figure in a burgeoning trans-atlantic avant-garde In addition to her art and poetry the Baronesswas also a ldquoperformancerdquo artist who skillfully inverted gender hierarchiesand attacked through her very presence the traditional sensibilities ofthe middle-class She was notorious for walking around the streets ofGreenwich Village with her shaved head painted purple postage stampspasted to her face and a bird cage around her neck housing a livecanary (Davidson 1996 223-24)

In what must be considered a prescient assault on all manners oflogocentrism the Baroness also carried with her a plaster cast penis thatshe periodically revealed to passersby for maximum shock value (Gammel2002 195) But it was the Barnonessrsquos sculpture God that in addition

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 27

28

Figure 7 God (c 1917) designed by Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven and photographed by Morton Schamberg

to celebrating the mobility and reproducibility of that which was sup-posedly the most fixed and essential repossessed the power of tech-nology as ever imperfect and incomplete As a companion piece of sortsto Duchamprsquos infamous ready-made Fountain an inverted urinal dis-played in the 1917 exhibition of the American Society of IndependentArtists God invited more expressly theological speculation First of allit insisted on supplementing the three traditional symbolic centers ofWestern religious reflectionmdashGod humanity naturemdashwith the machineAnd although it has since been viewed by critics as ldquosacrilegiousrdquo andan instance of ldquoantireligious scatologyrdquo (Naumann 1994 171 Gammel220) the transgressive dimensions to God also affirm a shadowy open-

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 28

29

9 One is reminded here of Melvillersquos letter to Nathaniel Hawthorne in April of1851 ldquoWe incline to think that God cannot explain His own secrets and that Hewould like a little more information upon certain points Himself We mortals aston-ish Him as much as He usrdquo (Melville 1993 186)

ing to radical othernessmdashin the form of imperfection and chancemdashwithin the loops generated by feedback technology

Although the metal pipe ends up pointing toward heaven it firstloops downward in a nod to its human ground Limited by the skillsof the human carpenter on whose box it is anchored the contortedpipe narrativizes both the pitfalls and prospects of the machine ageShit eventually flows up in the case of God not down suggesting thateven the most lofty and noble ideals of the imagination maintain theirhuman aroma Rather than assume the power of divinity classicallyconstrued God staged divinity as nothing more and nothing less thanthat which made life livablemdashthat which kept the smell of human wasteartificially at bay or more ominously managed the flow of thingsthrough feedback control But even more literally God called attentionto the human work in the making of artifice and celebrated the bio-logical possibility for the endless unmaking (and remaking) of selfFeedback technology was not really God but it was for all practicalpurposes Or as the Baroness wrote in a 1927 letter to Peggy GuggenheimGod had much to learn from Henry Ford for he was ldquoclumsily sub-tle-densely-intelligent-inefficiently-immense-(Lord not Fordmdashof course)rdquo9

God the Baroness playfully warned had ldquobetter hotfoot it towardprogressmdashmodernizemdashuse his own omnipotence intelligentlymdashsmart orwersquoll all expire in tangle Well Lord knowsmdash(Does he)rdquo (quoted inGammel 2002 229)

6 Conclusion Deus in machina movet

As Protestant majorities struggled to adjust themselves and their theo-logical inheritance to new technological conditions theologies of themachine age both compelling and disturbing emerged from outsidethe precincts of traditional religious discourse For in addition to beinginspired by the ghost of Herman Melville the Melville Revival wasquite literally haunted by the power of feedback technologiesmdashspectersthat were affective rather than concrete strangely resistant to rationalcontemplation yet recognized through anxious admixtures of thoughtand feeling On one hand the revival reflected the spectrum of Protestant

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 29

30

10 Shortly after the publication of Moby-Dick in November of 1851 reports beganto reach America about the August sinking of the Ann Alexander by a whale in theSouth Pacific It was the first ldquoattack of a whale upon a shiprdquo since the destruc-tion of the Essex in 1820 The story about the Ann Alexander originally appeared inthe Panama Herald on October 16 and was reprinted the following month in New-York Daily Tribune and Littellrsquos Living Age The sperm whale that the Ann Alexander

fears over technological miscegenation The capacity of machines toredraw the boundaries of race and gender disturbed Protestant leadersand revivalists alike On the other hand subversive elements within theMelville Revival offered what must be considered a theological critiqueof how Protestants understood themselves and their God in relation totechnological materials Grant Overton for example saw in Moby-Dick

a deep appreciation for how technological developments had come tounderminemdashquite literally hauntmdashthe epistemological and ontologicalassumptions that made them possible ldquoNo longer able to instance thedeus ex machinardquo wrote Overton Melville was ldquounforgetful that deus inmachina movet and while most of mankind [have] become unable to seethe god for the machine [he] can scarcely perceive the machine forthe god agitating it [His] reports of the machine are somehow unrec-ognizable [his] realism is confronted by Realityrdquo (Overton 1928 231)

Bess Meredythrsquos reimagining of Moby-Dick and Baroness Elsa vonFreytag-Loringhovenrsquos God also explored the otherness that technologyengenders within the modern subject a trace that lingers despite allattempts to extinguish it Their errant readings challenged contempo-raries to reimagine their relationship to technology from an enchantedperspective that did not necessarily conform to the directives of Americanindividualism Resisting the advertisements of both Arminianism andBaconian Common Sense these readings insisted that there was somethingelsemdashsomething wholly othermdashoccurring within the technological workingsof secular modernity Excess or that which unsettled the boundariesbetween body and machine masculine and feminine had resulted inwhat might be called a ldquopost-structure of feelingrdquo The prospect thateither machines or women had begun to think for themselves or atleast possess a kind of agency once attributed to the enlightened malesubject now seemed as likely as a whale vengefully turning against awhaleship10 As Melvillean riffs on the deferred project of religious iden-tity The Sea Beast and God marked the space between human creationand technological determination consent and compulsion and there-fore hinted at the prospect that belief was not an individual state butan embodied activity Consistent with Lewis Mumfordrsquos assessment ofthe symbolic and material powers of feedback technology these works

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 30

31

had first turned upon starboard and larboard boats seizing both in its jaws andcrushing them to pieces It then rushed towards the Ann Alexander ldquoat the rateof fifteen knots In an instant the monster struck the ship with tremendous violence shakingher from stem to sternrdquo (415) Upon reading the article Melville remarked to his pub-lisher ldquothe Whale had almost completely slipped me for the time (amp I was themerrier for it) when Crash comes Moby Dick himself It is really amp truly a sur-prising coincidencemdashto say the least I make no doubt it is Moby Dick himself I wonder if my evil art has raised this monsterrdquo (Melville 1993 209)

11 William Jennings Bryan for example that standard bearer of fundamentalfaith equated faith to a particular kind of technologymdashldquothere is that in each humanliferdquo he wrote ldquothat corresponds to the mainspring of a watchmdashthat which isabsolutely necessary if the life is to be what it should be a real life and not amere existence That necessary thing is a belief in Godrdquo (86) Faith for Bryan wasthat which repeated without difference It was a dependable rational and utterlyrationalizing process It was not however self-regulating It affirmed the ldquorealnessrdquoof the individual believer precisely because it ignored the conditions imposed fromoutside the self But how might faith be viewed in terms of feedback and repro-ducibility rather than repetition a process that does not reaffirm a centered indi-vidual with every tick but adjusts accordingly to external fluctuations

raise numerous questions concerning the ways and means of religionin an age of postmodern complexity and virtual reality

How might a relentless focus on power and the porousness of sub-jectivity change how one views the matter of religion within historyHow might a greater attention to the aesthetic conditions that mediateany and all beliefs challenge the ways in which we distinguish the reli-gious from the secular How might a greater attention to the enchantingpower of material conditions challenge historical and political narrativesof secularization How do technologies and vested interests realize them-selves through the discourses of agency choice and mobility Whatin other words are the conditions of possibility that allow a historicalactor (rather than a Hollywood actor) to make a particular faith com-mitment or for that matter have any faith at all In what languagedo historical actors dream about themselves and divinity and how doesthat language change over time And finally to what degree is faithitself a technology11

By acknowledging the white mythology that still informs say thefield of American religions such questions shift the scholarly emphasisfrom explicit expressions of religious belief and practice to the spacebetween those beliefs and practices and the world at-large Individualswithin American religious history for example have often been depictedas fully formed agents making choices between various faith commitmentsand ever combining religious idioms to suit their specific needs and cir-cumstances (Albanese 1997) No doubt this is true But there is anotherside to this story of radical religious pluralism one that if accounted

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 31

32

12 Such a possibility is very much at odds with the Geertzian model of ldquothickdescriptionrdquo and its formidable legacy in the humanities and social sciences Withoutquestioning the degree to which the self can ever become entirely legible to theself Geertz claimed that every society and individual life and by extension everybelief and every practice ldquocontain their own interpretations One has only to learnhow to gain access to themrdquo (Geertz 1973 453)

13 The ambiguities of agency during the ldquomachine agerdquo have been the subjectof a number of elegant critical studies See for example Anson Rabinbach TheHuman Motor Energy Fatigue and the Origins of Modernity (New York Basic Books1990) Mark Seltzer Bodies and Machines (New York Routledge 1992) MarthaBanta Taylorized Lives Narrative Productions in the Age of Taylor Veblen and Ford (ChicagoUniversity of Chicago Press 1993) Carolyn Thomas de la Pentildea The Body ElectricHow Strange Machines Built the Modern American (New York New York UniversityPress 2003) and Joel Dinerstein The Swinging Machine Modernity Technology andAfrican American Culture Between the World Wars (Amherst University of MassachusettsPress 2003) Dinersteinrsquos work is particularly relevant to the issue of religious com-binativeness given his emphasis on how African American artists strove to refigureldquomachine aestheticsrdquo in and through their artistry Dinersteinrsquos work suggests thatthe self is locatedmdashie the self happensmdashsomewhere between resistance and assim-ilation between choice and coercionmdasha lesson that many Anglo-Americans werenot willing to consider in their triumphal theorizing about the human in relationto the machine The possibility for consideration argues Dinerstein existed inAfrican American jazz swing and dance

for suggests new directions for the study of religion in America Althoughthe ldquolived religionrdquo perspective in American religious history has donemuch to overcome the distinction between ldquodabblersrdquo and ldquotrue believersrdquothe question of power still lingers (Ahlstrom 1972 1052) Religiousbeliefs and practices are neither essential things nor reveal themselvesto the scholar in toto12 Such a position does not replicate the eitherordiscussion regarding the agency of historical actors On the contraryit suggests that religious agency is a hybrid weave of intent and instinctimmediate response and mediated principle knowing and unknowing13

Accounting for the ambiguities of agency has already pushed scholarsof religion toward an anthropology of the secular and an explorationof in the Foucauldian phrasing of Talal Asad ldquothe contingencies thathave come together to give us our certaintiesrdquo (2003 16)

It is with a hint of irony then that one may return to the promotionalpamphlet of The Sea Beast that celebrates the ldquoconquestrdquo of Ahab andthe invisible wafting presence of screenwriter Bess Meredyth ldquoThereis no woman writing today who has contributed so much to genuine

screen values as Bess Meredythrdquo Indeed her son John Meredyth Lucasborn in 1919 continued down his motherrsquos unsettling path as a successfultelevision screenwriter and director His credits included episodes ofldquoStar Trekrdquo ldquoLoganrsquos Runrdquo and that other story of ldquohundred percentrdquoAmericanism ldquoThe Six Million Dollar Manrdquo

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 32

33

Figure 8 The Six Million Dollar Man ldquoGentlemen we can rebuild him Wehave the capability of making the worldrsquos first bionic man We can make him

better than he was before Better Stronger Fasterrdquo

Haverford College370 Lancaster AveHaverford PA 19041jlardashaverfordedu

References

Ahlstrom Sydney E (1972) A Religious History of the American People New HavenYale University Press

Albanese Catherine L (1997) Exchanging selves exchanging souls Contact com-bination and American religious history In Thomas A Tweed (ed) RetellingUS Religious History 200-26 Berkeley University of California Press

Anon (1851) A ship sunk by a whale Littellrsquos Living Age (29 November) 415-16Asad Talal (2003) Formations of the Secular Christianity Islam Modernity Stanford

Stanford University Press

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 33

34

Bacon Francis (1870) The Works of Francis Bacon James Spedding Robert LeslieEllis and Douglas Denon Heath (eds) Vol VIII New York Hurd andHoughton

Barton Bruce (2000) The Man Nobody Knows A Discovery of the Real Jesus ChicagoIvan R Dee

Beniger James R (1986) The Control Revolution Technological and Economic Origins ofthe Information Society Cambridge Harvard University Press

Benjamin Walter (1996) One-way street In Marcus Bullock amp Michael W Jennings(eds) Selected Writings Volume 1 1913-1926 444-88 Cambridge HarvardUniversity Press

mdash (2003) The work of art in the age of its technological reproducibility third ver-sion In Howard Eiland and Michael W Jennings (eds) Selected Writings Volume4 1938-40 251-83 Cambridge Harvard University Press

Bennett Charles A (1923) A Philosophical Study of Mysticism An Essay New HavenYale University Press 1923

Bernays Edward L (1923) Crystallizing Public Opinion New York Liverlight PublishingCorporation

Buchman SR (1925) Moby Dickmdashthe book and The Sea Beastmdashthe picture Anappreciation In Herman Melville Moby Dick or The White Whale ix-xi NewYork Grosset amp Dunlap

Butler Judith (1993) Bodies That Matter On the Discursive Limits of lsquoSexrsquo RoutledgeNew York

Cahir Linda Costanzo (1997) Routinizing the charismatic Melville and Hollywoodrsquosthree Moby-Dicks Melville Society Extracts 110 (September) 11-17

Cendrars Blaise (1922) Profound today Broom 13 ( January) 265-67Chadwick Owen (1975) The Secularization of the European Mind in the Nineteenth Century

Cambridge Cambridge University PressCoe George Albert (1917) A Social Theory of Religious Education New York Charles

Scribnerrsquos SonsDavidson Abraham A (1996) The European art invasion In Francis M Naumann

(ed) with Beth Vann Making Mischief Dada Invades New York 222-27 NewYork Whitney Museum of Art

Debord Guy (1995) Society of the Spectacle translated by Donald Nicholson-SmithNew York Zone Books

Derrida Jacques (1994) Specters of Marx The State of the Debt The Work of Mourningand the New International Peggy Kamuf (trans) New York Routledge

Dorsey George A (1925) Why We Behave Like Human Beings New York BlueRibbon Books

Epstein Jean (1922) The new conditions of literary phenomena Broom 21 (April)3-10

Frank Waldo (1919) Our America New York Boni and LiverightGammel Irene (2002) Baroness Elsa Gender Dada and Everyday Modernitymdasha Cultural

Biography Cambridge The MIT PressGeertz Clifford (1973) Deep play Notes on the Balinese cockfight In The Interpretation

of Cultures 412-53 New York Basic BooksHaraway Donna (2004) A manifesto for cyborgs Science technology and socialist

feminism in the 1980s In The Haraway Reader 7-45 New York RoutledgeHeap Jane (1922) Dada Little Review VII2 (Spring) 46Heidegger Martin (1977) The age of the world-picturerdquo In The Question Concerning

Technology and Other Essays 115-54 William Lovitt (trans) New York Harperamp Row

Hoffman Carol Stein (2001) The Barrymores Hollywoodrsquos First Family LexingtonUniversity of Kentucky Press

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 34

35

Jackson Josephine A and Helen M Salisbury (1922) Outwitting Our Nerves A Primerof Psychotherapy New York The Century Co

Jaffe David (1990) The village enlightenment in New England 1760-1820 TheWilliam and Mary Quarterly XLVII3 ( July) 327-46

Jones Rufus M (1915) Mysticism in present-day religion Harvard Theological ReviewVIII2 (April) 155-65

Kippenberg Hans G (2002) Discovering Religious History in the Modern Age BarbaraHarshav (trans) Princeton Princeton University Press

Kobler John (1977) Damned in Paradise The Life of John Barrymore New YorkAtheneum

Kuttner Alfred B (1922) Nerves In Harold E Stearns (ed) Civilization in the UnitedStates An Enquiry by Thirty Americans 427-42 New York Harcourt

Lauter Paul (1994) Melville climbs the canon American Literature 66 (March) 1-24Lawrence DH (1923) Studies in Classic American Literature New York T SeltzerLindbergh Charles A (1927) We New York GP Putnamrsquos SonsLippmann Walter (1922) Public Opinion New York Macmillan CompanyMarchand Roland (1985) Advertising the American Dream Making Way for Modernity

1920-1940 Berkeley University of California PressMarty Martin E Modern American Religion Vol 2 The Noise of Conflict 1919-1941

Chicago University of Chicago Press 1991May Henry F (1976) The Enlightenment in America New York Oxford University

PressMayhew Jonathan (1749) Concerning the difference between truth and falsehood

right and wrong In Seven Sermons 1-21 Boston Rogers and FowleMayr Otto (1970) The Origins of Feedback Control Cambridge The MIT PressMelville Herman (1993) Correspondence Volume 14 of The Writings of Herman Melville

Lynne Horth (ed) Evanston and Chicago Northwestern University Pressmdash (1925) Moby Dick or The White Whale 1851 New York Grosset amp DunlapMindell David A (2002) Between Human and Machine Feedback Control and Computing

Before Cybernetics Baltimore The Johns Hopkins University PressMumford Lewis (1929) Herman Melville New York The Literary Guild of Americamdash (1924) Sticks and Stones A Study of American Architecture and Civilization New York

Dover Publicationsmdash (1934) Technics and Civilization New York Harcourt Brace and Companymdash (1926) The Golden Day A Study in American Literature and Culture New York Boni

and LiverightMurray Jr HA (1929) Review of Lewis Mumfordrsquos Herman Melville The New

England Quarterly 2 ( July) 523-26Naumann Francis M (1994) New York Dada 1915-23 New York Harry N AbramsNoble David F (1999) The Religion of Technology The Divinity of Man and the Spirit

of Invention New York Penguin BooksNye David E (1994) American Technological Sublime Cambridge The MIT PressOrsquoNeil David (1921) The new Broom Broom 11 (November) 96Overton Grant (1928) The Philosophy of Fiction New York D AppletonPalmer Attorney General (1920) The case against the lsquoRedsrsquo The Forum A Magazine

of Constructive Nationalism 632 (February) 173-85Parsons Floyd W (1927) Everybodyrsquos business Advertising amp Selling ( June 29) 5 64Prampolini Enrico (1922) The aesthetic of the machine and mechanical intro-

spection in art Broom 33 (October) 235-37Rauschenbusch Walter (1917) A Theology for the Social Gospel New York The

Macmillan CompanyRichardson George P (1991) Feedback Thought in Social Science and Systems Theory

Philadelphia University of Pennsylvania Press

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 35

28

Figure 7 God (c 1917) designed by Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven and photographed by Morton Schamberg

to celebrating the mobility and reproducibility of that which was sup-posedly the most fixed and essential repossessed the power of tech-nology as ever imperfect and incomplete As a companion piece of sortsto Duchamprsquos infamous ready-made Fountain an inverted urinal dis-played in the 1917 exhibition of the American Society of IndependentArtists God invited more expressly theological speculation First of allit insisted on supplementing the three traditional symbolic centers ofWestern religious reflectionmdashGod humanity naturemdashwith the machineAnd although it has since been viewed by critics as ldquosacrilegiousrdquo andan instance of ldquoantireligious scatologyrdquo (Naumann 1994 171 Gammel220) the transgressive dimensions to God also affirm a shadowy open-

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 28

29

9 One is reminded here of Melvillersquos letter to Nathaniel Hawthorne in April of1851 ldquoWe incline to think that God cannot explain His own secrets and that Hewould like a little more information upon certain points Himself We mortals aston-ish Him as much as He usrdquo (Melville 1993 186)

ing to radical othernessmdashin the form of imperfection and chancemdashwithin the loops generated by feedback technology

Although the metal pipe ends up pointing toward heaven it firstloops downward in a nod to its human ground Limited by the skillsof the human carpenter on whose box it is anchored the contortedpipe narrativizes both the pitfalls and prospects of the machine ageShit eventually flows up in the case of God not down suggesting thateven the most lofty and noble ideals of the imagination maintain theirhuman aroma Rather than assume the power of divinity classicallyconstrued God staged divinity as nothing more and nothing less thanthat which made life livablemdashthat which kept the smell of human wasteartificially at bay or more ominously managed the flow of thingsthrough feedback control But even more literally God called attentionto the human work in the making of artifice and celebrated the bio-logical possibility for the endless unmaking (and remaking) of selfFeedback technology was not really God but it was for all practicalpurposes Or as the Baroness wrote in a 1927 letter to Peggy GuggenheimGod had much to learn from Henry Ford for he was ldquoclumsily sub-tle-densely-intelligent-inefficiently-immense-(Lord not Fordmdashof course)rdquo9

God the Baroness playfully warned had ldquobetter hotfoot it towardprogressmdashmodernizemdashuse his own omnipotence intelligentlymdashsmart orwersquoll all expire in tangle Well Lord knowsmdash(Does he)rdquo (quoted inGammel 2002 229)

6 Conclusion Deus in machina movet

As Protestant majorities struggled to adjust themselves and their theo-logical inheritance to new technological conditions theologies of themachine age both compelling and disturbing emerged from outsidethe precincts of traditional religious discourse For in addition to beinginspired by the ghost of Herman Melville the Melville Revival wasquite literally haunted by the power of feedback technologiesmdashspectersthat were affective rather than concrete strangely resistant to rationalcontemplation yet recognized through anxious admixtures of thoughtand feeling On one hand the revival reflected the spectrum of Protestant

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 29

30

10 Shortly after the publication of Moby-Dick in November of 1851 reports beganto reach America about the August sinking of the Ann Alexander by a whale in theSouth Pacific It was the first ldquoattack of a whale upon a shiprdquo since the destruc-tion of the Essex in 1820 The story about the Ann Alexander originally appeared inthe Panama Herald on October 16 and was reprinted the following month in New-York Daily Tribune and Littellrsquos Living Age The sperm whale that the Ann Alexander

fears over technological miscegenation The capacity of machines toredraw the boundaries of race and gender disturbed Protestant leadersand revivalists alike On the other hand subversive elements within theMelville Revival offered what must be considered a theological critiqueof how Protestants understood themselves and their God in relation totechnological materials Grant Overton for example saw in Moby-Dick

a deep appreciation for how technological developments had come tounderminemdashquite literally hauntmdashthe epistemological and ontologicalassumptions that made them possible ldquoNo longer able to instance thedeus ex machinardquo wrote Overton Melville was ldquounforgetful that deus inmachina movet and while most of mankind [have] become unable to seethe god for the machine [he] can scarcely perceive the machine forthe god agitating it [His] reports of the machine are somehow unrec-ognizable [his] realism is confronted by Realityrdquo (Overton 1928 231)

Bess Meredythrsquos reimagining of Moby-Dick and Baroness Elsa vonFreytag-Loringhovenrsquos God also explored the otherness that technologyengenders within the modern subject a trace that lingers despite allattempts to extinguish it Their errant readings challenged contempo-raries to reimagine their relationship to technology from an enchantedperspective that did not necessarily conform to the directives of Americanindividualism Resisting the advertisements of both Arminianism andBaconian Common Sense these readings insisted that there was somethingelsemdashsomething wholly othermdashoccurring within the technological workingsof secular modernity Excess or that which unsettled the boundariesbetween body and machine masculine and feminine had resulted inwhat might be called a ldquopost-structure of feelingrdquo The prospect thateither machines or women had begun to think for themselves or atleast possess a kind of agency once attributed to the enlightened malesubject now seemed as likely as a whale vengefully turning against awhaleship10 As Melvillean riffs on the deferred project of religious iden-tity The Sea Beast and God marked the space between human creationand technological determination consent and compulsion and there-fore hinted at the prospect that belief was not an individual state butan embodied activity Consistent with Lewis Mumfordrsquos assessment ofthe symbolic and material powers of feedback technology these works

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 30

31

had first turned upon starboard and larboard boats seizing both in its jaws andcrushing them to pieces It then rushed towards the Ann Alexander ldquoat the rateof fifteen knots In an instant the monster struck the ship with tremendous violence shakingher from stem to sternrdquo (415) Upon reading the article Melville remarked to his pub-lisher ldquothe Whale had almost completely slipped me for the time (amp I was themerrier for it) when Crash comes Moby Dick himself It is really amp truly a sur-prising coincidencemdashto say the least I make no doubt it is Moby Dick himself I wonder if my evil art has raised this monsterrdquo (Melville 1993 209)

11 William Jennings Bryan for example that standard bearer of fundamentalfaith equated faith to a particular kind of technologymdashldquothere is that in each humanliferdquo he wrote ldquothat corresponds to the mainspring of a watchmdashthat which isabsolutely necessary if the life is to be what it should be a real life and not amere existence That necessary thing is a belief in Godrdquo (86) Faith for Bryan wasthat which repeated without difference It was a dependable rational and utterlyrationalizing process It was not however self-regulating It affirmed the ldquorealnessrdquoof the individual believer precisely because it ignored the conditions imposed fromoutside the self But how might faith be viewed in terms of feedback and repro-ducibility rather than repetition a process that does not reaffirm a centered indi-vidual with every tick but adjusts accordingly to external fluctuations

raise numerous questions concerning the ways and means of religionin an age of postmodern complexity and virtual reality

How might a relentless focus on power and the porousness of sub-jectivity change how one views the matter of religion within historyHow might a greater attention to the aesthetic conditions that mediateany and all beliefs challenge the ways in which we distinguish the reli-gious from the secular How might a greater attention to the enchantingpower of material conditions challenge historical and political narrativesof secularization How do technologies and vested interests realize them-selves through the discourses of agency choice and mobility Whatin other words are the conditions of possibility that allow a historicalactor (rather than a Hollywood actor) to make a particular faith com-mitment or for that matter have any faith at all In what languagedo historical actors dream about themselves and divinity and how doesthat language change over time And finally to what degree is faithitself a technology11

By acknowledging the white mythology that still informs say thefield of American religions such questions shift the scholarly emphasisfrom explicit expressions of religious belief and practice to the spacebetween those beliefs and practices and the world at-large Individualswithin American religious history for example have often been depictedas fully formed agents making choices between various faith commitmentsand ever combining religious idioms to suit their specific needs and cir-cumstances (Albanese 1997) No doubt this is true But there is anotherside to this story of radical religious pluralism one that if accounted

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 31

32

12 Such a possibility is very much at odds with the Geertzian model of ldquothickdescriptionrdquo and its formidable legacy in the humanities and social sciences Withoutquestioning the degree to which the self can ever become entirely legible to theself Geertz claimed that every society and individual life and by extension everybelief and every practice ldquocontain their own interpretations One has only to learnhow to gain access to themrdquo (Geertz 1973 453)

13 The ambiguities of agency during the ldquomachine agerdquo have been the subjectof a number of elegant critical studies See for example Anson Rabinbach TheHuman Motor Energy Fatigue and the Origins of Modernity (New York Basic Books1990) Mark Seltzer Bodies and Machines (New York Routledge 1992) MarthaBanta Taylorized Lives Narrative Productions in the Age of Taylor Veblen and Ford (ChicagoUniversity of Chicago Press 1993) Carolyn Thomas de la Pentildea The Body ElectricHow Strange Machines Built the Modern American (New York New York UniversityPress 2003) and Joel Dinerstein The Swinging Machine Modernity Technology andAfrican American Culture Between the World Wars (Amherst University of MassachusettsPress 2003) Dinersteinrsquos work is particularly relevant to the issue of religious com-binativeness given his emphasis on how African American artists strove to refigureldquomachine aestheticsrdquo in and through their artistry Dinersteinrsquos work suggests thatthe self is locatedmdashie the self happensmdashsomewhere between resistance and assim-ilation between choice and coercionmdasha lesson that many Anglo-Americans werenot willing to consider in their triumphal theorizing about the human in relationto the machine The possibility for consideration argues Dinerstein existed inAfrican American jazz swing and dance

for suggests new directions for the study of religion in America Althoughthe ldquolived religionrdquo perspective in American religious history has donemuch to overcome the distinction between ldquodabblersrdquo and ldquotrue believersrdquothe question of power still lingers (Ahlstrom 1972 1052) Religiousbeliefs and practices are neither essential things nor reveal themselvesto the scholar in toto12 Such a position does not replicate the eitherordiscussion regarding the agency of historical actors On the contraryit suggests that religious agency is a hybrid weave of intent and instinctimmediate response and mediated principle knowing and unknowing13

Accounting for the ambiguities of agency has already pushed scholarsof religion toward an anthropology of the secular and an explorationof in the Foucauldian phrasing of Talal Asad ldquothe contingencies thathave come together to give us our certaintiesrdquo (2003 16)

It is with a hint of irony then that one may return to the promotionalpamphlet of The Sea Beast that celebrates the ldquoconquestrdquo of Ahab andthe invisible wafting presence of screenwriter Bess Meredyth ldquoThereis no woman writing today who has contributed so much to genuine

screen values as Bess Meredythrdquo Indeed her son John Meredyth Lucasborn in 1919 continued down his motherrsquos unsettling path as a successfultelevision screenwriter and director His credits included episodes ofldquoStar Trekrdquo ldquoLoganrsquos Runrdquo and that other story of ldquohundred percentrdquoAmericanism ldquoThe Six Million Dollar Manrdquo

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 32

33

Figure 8 The Six Million Dollar Man ldquoGentlemen we can rebuild him Wehave the capability of making the worldrsquos first bionic man We can make him

better than he was before Better Stronger Fasterrdquo

Haverford College370 Lancaster AveHaverford PA 19041jlardashaverfordedu

References

Ahlstrom Sydney E (1972) A Religious History of the American People New HavenYale University Press

Albanese Catherine L (1997) Exchanging selves exchanging souls Contact com-bination and American religious history In Thomas A Tweed (ed) RetellingUS Religious History 200-26 Berkeley University of California Press

Anon (1851) A ship sunk by a whale Littellrsquos Living Age (29 November) 415-16Asad Talal (2003) Formations of the Secular Christianity Islam Modernity Stanford

Stanford University Press

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 33

34

Bacon Francis (1870) The Works of Francis Bacon James Spedding Robert LeslieEllis and Douglas Denon Heath (eds) Vol VIII New York Hurd andHoughton

Barton Bruce (2000) The Man Nobody Knows A Discovery of the Real Jesus ChicagoIvan R Dee

Beniger James R (1986) The Control Revolution Technological and Economic Origins ofthe Information Society Cambridge Harvard University Press

Benjamin Walter (1996) One-way street In Marcus Bullock amp Michael W Jennings(eds) Selected Writings Volume 1 1913-1926 444-88 Cambridge HarvardUniversity Press

mdash (2003) The work of art in the age of its technological reproducibility third ver-sion In Howard Eiland and Michael W Jennings (eds) Selected Writings Volume4 1938-40 251-83 Cambridge Harvard University Press

Bennett Charles A (1923) A Philosophical Study of Mysticism An Essay New HavenYale University Press 1923

Bernays Edward L (1923) Crystallizing Public Opinion New York Liverlight PublishingCorporation

Buchman SR (1925) Moby Dickmdashthe book and The Sea Beastmdashthe picture Anappreciation In Herman Melville Moby Dick or The White Whale ix-xi NewYork Grosset amp Dunlap

Butler Judith (1993) Bodies That Matter On the Discursive Limits of lsquoSexrsquo RoutledgeNew York

Cahir Linda Costanzo (1997) Routinizing the charismatic Melville and Hollywoodrsquosthree Moby-Dicks Melville Society Extracts 110 (September) 11-17

Cendrars Blaise (1922) Profound today Broom 13 ( January) 265-67Chadwick Owen (1975) The Secularization of the European Mind in the Nineteenth Century

Cambridge Cambridge University PressCoe George Albert (1917) A Social Theory of Religious Education New York Charles

Scribnerrsquos SonsDavidson Abraham A (1996) The European art invasion In Francis M Naumann

(ed) with Beth Vann Making Mischief Dada Invades New York 222-27 NewYork Whitney Museum of Art

Debord Guy (1995) Society of the Spectacle translated by Donald Nicholson-SmithNew York Zone Books

Derrida Jacques (1994) Specters of Marx The State of the Debt The Work of Mourningand the New International Peggy Kamuf (trans) New York Routledge

Dorsey George A (1925) Why We Behave Like Human Beings New York BlueRibbon Books

Epstein Jean (1922) The new conditions of literary phenomena Broom 21 (April)3-10

Frank Waldo (1919) Our America New York Boni and LiverightGammel Irene (2002) Baroness Elsa Gender Dada and Everyday Modernitymdasha Cultural

Biography Cambridge The MIT PressGeertz Clifford (1973) Deep play Notes on the Balinese cockfight In The Interpretation

of Cultures 412-53 New York Basic BooksHaraway Donna (2004) A manifesto for cyborgs Science technology and socialist

feminism in the 1980s In The Haraway Reader 7-45 New York RoutledgeHeap Jane (1922) Dada Little Review VII2 (Spring) 46Heidegger Martin (1977) The age of the world-picturerdquo In The Question Concerning

Technology and Other Essays 115-54 William Lovitt (trans) New York Harperamp Row

Hoffman Carol Stein (2001) The Barrymores Hollywoodrsquos First Family LexingtonUniversity of Kentucky Press

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 34

35

Jackson Josephine A and Helen M Salisbury (1922) Outwitting Our Nerves A Primerof Psychotherapy New York The Century Co

Jaffe David (1990) The village enlightenment in New England 1760-1820 TheWilliam and Mary Quarterly XLVII3 ( July) 327-46

Jones Rufus M (1915) Mysticism in present-day religion Harvard Theological ReviewVIII2 (April) 155-65

Kippenberg Hans G (2002) Discovering Religious History in the Modern Age BarbaraHarshav (trans) Princeton Princeton University Press

Kobler John (1977) Damned in Paradise The Life of John Barrymore New YorkAtheneum

Kuttner Alfred B (1922) Nerves In Harold E Stearns (ed) Civilization in the UnitedStates An Enquiry by Thirty Americans 427-42 New York Harcourt

Lauter Paul (1994) Melville climbs the canon American Literature 66 (March) 1-24Lawrence DH (1923) Studies in Classic American Literature New York T SeltzerLindbergh Charles A (1927) We New York GP Putnamrsquos SonsLippmann Walter (1922) Public Opinion New York Macmillan CompanyMarchand Roland (1985) Advertising the American Dream Making Way for Modernity

1920-1940 Berkeley University of California PressMarty Martin E Modern American Religion Vol 2 The Noise of Conflict 1919-1941

Chicago University of Chicago Press 1991May Henry F (1976) The Enlightenment in America New York Oxford University

PressMayhew Jonathan (1749) Concerning the difference between truth and falsehood

right and wrong In Seven Sermons 1-21 Boston Rogers and FowleMayr Otto (1970) The Origins of Feedback Control Cambridge The MIT PressMelville Herman (1993) Correspondence Volume 14 of The Writings of Herman Melville

Lynne Horth (ed) Evanston and Chicago Northwestern University Pressmdash (1925) Moby Dick or The White Whale 1851 New York Grosset amp DunlapMindell David A (2002) Between Human and Machine Feedback Control and Computing

Before Cybernetics Baltimore The Johns Hopkins University PressMumford Lewis (1929) Herman Melville New York The Literary Guild of Americamdash (1924) Sticks and Stones A Study of American Architecture and Civilization New York

Dover Publicationsmdash (1934) Technics and Civilization New York Harcourt Brace and Companymdash (1926) The Golden Day A Study in American Literature and Culture New York Boni

and LiverightMurray Jr HA (1929) Review of Lewis Mumfordrsquos Herman Melville The New

England Quarterly 2 ( July) 523-26Naumann Francis M (1994) New York Dada 1915-23 New York Harry N AbramsNoble David F (1999) The Religion of Technology The Divinity of Man and the Spirit

of Invention New York Penguin BooksNye David E (1994) American Technological Sublime Cambridge The MIT PressOrsquoNeil David (1921) The new Broom Broom 11 (November) 96Overton Grant (1928) The Philosophy of Fiction New York D AppletonPalmer Attorney General (1920) The case against the lsquoRedsrsquo The Forum A Magazine

of Constructive Nationalism 632 (February) 173-85Parsons Floyd W (1927) Everybodyrsquos business Advertising amp Selling ( June 29) 5 64Prampolini Enrico (1922) The aesthetic of the machine and mechanical intro-

spection in art Broom 33 (October) 235-37Rauschenbusch Walter (1917) A Theology for the Social Gospel New York The

Macmillan CompanyRichardson George P (1991) Feedback Thought in Social Science and Systems Theory

Philadelphia University of Pennsylvania Press

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 35

29

9 One is reminded here of Melvillersquos letter to Nathaniel Hawthorne in April of1851 ldquoWe incline to think that God cannot explain His own secrets and that Hewould like a little more information upon certain points Himself We mortals aston-ish Him as much as He usrdquo (Melville 1993 186)

ing to radical othernessmdashin the form of imperfection and chancemdashwithin the loops generated by feedback technology

Although the metal pipe ends up pointing toward heaven it firstloops downward in a nod to its human ground Limited by the skillsof the human carpenter on whose box it is anchored the contortedpipe narrativizes both the pitfalls and prospects of the machine ageShit eventually flows up in the case of God not down suggesting thateven the most lofty and noble ideals of the imagination maintain theirhuman aroma Rather than assume the power of divinity classicallyconstrued God staged divinity as nothing more and nothing less thanthat which made life livablemdashthat which kept the smell of human wasteartificially at bay or more ominously managed the flow of thingsthrough feedback control But even more literally God called attentionto the human work in the making of artifice and celebrated the bio-logical possibility for the endless unmaking (and remaking) of selfFeedback technology was not really God but it was for all practicalpurposes Or as the Baroness wrote in a 1927 letter to Peggy GuggenheimGod had much to learn from Henry Ford for he was ldquoclumsily sub-tle-densely-intelligent-inefficiently-immense-(Lord not Fordmdashof course)rdquo9

God the Baroness playfully warned had ldquobetter hotfoot it towardprogressmdashmodernizemdashuse his own omnipotence intelligentlymdashsmart orwersquoll all expire in tangle Well Lord knowsmdash(Does he)rdquo (quoted inGammel 2002 229)

6 Conclusion Deus in machina movet

As Protestant majorities struggled to adjust themselves and their theo-logical inheritance to new technological conditions theologies of themachine age both compelling and disturbing emerged from outsidethe precincts of traditional religious discourse For in addition to beinginspired by the ghost of Herman Melville the Melville Revival wasquite literally haunted by the power of feedback technologiesmdashspectersthat were affective rather than concrete strangely resistant to rationalcontemplation yet recognized through anxious admixtures of thoughtand feeling On one hand the revival reflected the spectrum of Protestant

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 29

30

10 Shortly after the publication of Moby-Dick in November of 1851 reports beganto reach America about the August sinking of the Ann Alexander by a whale in theSouth Pacific It was the first ldquoattack of a whale upon a shiprdquo since the destruc-tion of the Essex in 1820 The story about the Ann Alexander originally appeared inthe Panama Herald on October 16 and was reprinted the following month in New-York Daily Tribune and Littellrsquos Living Age The sperm whale that the Ann Alexander

fears over technological miscegenation The capacity of machines toredraw the boundaries of race and gender disturbed Protestant leadersand revivalists alike On the other hand subversive elements within theMelville Revival offered what must be considered a theological critiqueof how Protestants understood themselves and their God in relation totechnological materials Grant Overton for example saw in Moby-Dick

a deep appreciation for how technological developments had come tounderminemdashquite literally hauntmdashthe epistemological and ontologicalassumptions that made them possible ldquoNo longer able to instance thedeus ex machinardquo wrote Overton Melville was ldquounforgetful that deus inmachina movet and while most of mankind [have] become unable to seethe god for the machine [he] can scarcely perceive the machine forthe god agitating it [His] reports of the machine are somehow unrec-ognizable [his] realism is confronted by Realityrdquo (Overton 1928 231)

Bess Meredythrsquos reimagining of Moby-Dick and Baroness Elsa vonFreytag-Loringhovenrsquos God also explored the otherness that technologyengenders within the modern subject a trace that lingers despite allattempts to extinguish it Their errant readings challenged contempo-raries to reimagine their relationship to technology from an enchantedperspective that did not necessarily conform to the directives of Americanindividualism Resisting the advertisements of both Arminianism andBaconian Common Sense these readings insisted that there was somethingelsemdashsomething wholly othermdashoccurring within the technological workingsof secular modernity Excess or that which unsettled the boundariesbetween body and machine masculine and feminine had resulted inwhat might be called a ldquopost-structure of feelingrdquo The prospect thateither machines or women had begun to think for themselves or atleast possess a kind of agency once attributed to the enlightened malesubject now seemed as likely as a whale vengefully turning against awhaleship10 As Melvillean riffs on the deferred project of religious iden-tity The Sea Beast and God marked the space between human creationand technological determination consent and compulsion and there-fore hinted at the prospect that belief was not an individual state butan embodied activity Consistent with Lewis Mumfordrsquos assessment ofthe symbolic and material powers of feedback technology these works

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 30

31

had first turned upon starboard and larboard boats seizing both in its jaws andcrushing them to pieces It then rushed towards the Ann Alexander ldquoat the rateof fifteen knots In an instant the monster struck the ship with tremendous violence shakingher from stem to sternrdquo (415) Upon reading the article Melville remarked to his pub-lisher ldquothe Whale had almost completely slipped me for the time (amp I was themerrier for it) when Crash comes Moby Dick himself It is really amp truly a sur-prising coincidencemdashto say the least I make no doubt it is Moby Dick himself I wonder if my evil art has raised this monsterrdquo (Melville 1993 209)

11 William Jennings Bryan for example that standard bearer of fundamentalfaith equated faith to a particular kind of technologymdashldquothere is that in each humanliferdquo he wrote ldquothat corresponds to the mainspring of a watchmdashthat which isabsolutely necessary if the life is to be what it should be a real life and not amere existence That necessary thing is a belief in Godrdquo (86) Faith for Bryan wasthat which repeated without difference It was a dependable rational and utterlyrationalizing process It was not however self-regulating It affirmed the ldquorealnessrdquoof the individual believer precisely because it ignored the conditions imposed fromoutside the self But how might faith be viewed in terms of feedback and repro-ducibility rather than repetition a process that does not reaffirm a centered indi-vidual with every tick but adjusts accordingly to external fluctuations

raise numerous questions concerning the ways and means of religionin an age of postmodern complexity and virtual reality

How might a relentless focus on power and the porousness of sub-jectivity change how one views the matter of religion within historyHow might a greater attention to the aesthetic conditions that mediateany and all beliefs challenge the ways in which we distinguish the reli-gious from the secular How might a greater attention to the enchantingpower of material conditions challenge historical and political narrativesof secularization How do technologies and vested interests realize them-selves through the discourses of agency choice and mobility Whatin other words are the conditions of possibility that allow a historicalactor (rather than a Hollywood actor) to make a particular faith com-mitment or for that matter have any faith at all In what languagedo historical actors dream about themselves and divinity and how doesthat language change over time And finally to what degree is faithitself a technology11

By acknowledging the white mythology that still informs say thefield of American religions such questions shift the scholarly emphasisfrom explicit expressions of religious belief and practice to the spacebetween those beliefs and practices and the world at-large Individualswithin American religious history for example have often been depictedas fully formed agents making choices between various faith commitmentsand ever combining religious idioms to suit their specific needs and cir-cumstances (Albanese 1997) No doubt this is true But there is anotherside to this story of radical religious pluralism one that if accounted

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 31

32

12 Such a possibility is very much at odds with the Geertzian model of ldquothickdescriptionrdquo and its formidable legacy in the humanities and social sciences Withoutquestioning the degree to which the self can ever become entirely legible to theself Geertz claimed that every society and individual life and by extension everybelief and every practice ldquocontain their own interpretations One has only to learnhow to gain access to themrdquo (Geertz 1973 453)

13 The ambiguities of agency during the ldquomachine agerdquo have been the subjectof a number of elegant critical studies See for example Anson Rabinbach TheHuman Motor Energy Fatigue and the Origins of Modernity (New York Basic Books1990) Mark Seltzer Bodies and Machines (New York Routledge 1992) MarthaBanta Taylorized Lives Narrative Productions in the Age of Taylor Veblen and Ford (ChicagoUniversity of Chicago Press 1993) Carolyn Thomas de la Pentildea The Body ElectricHow Strange Machines Built the Modern American (New York New York UniversityPress 2003) and Joel Dinerstein The Swinging Machine Modernity Technology andAfrican American Culture Between the World Wars (Amherst University of MassachusettsPress 2003) Dinersteinrsquos work is particularly relevant to the issue of religious com-binativeness given his emphasis on how African American artists strove to refigureldquomachine aestheticsrdquo in and through their artistry Dinersteinrsquos work suggests thatthe self is locatedmdashie the self happensmdashsomewhere between resistance and assim-ilation between choice and coercionmdasha lesson that many Anglo-Americans werenot willing to consider in their triumphal theorizing about the human in relationto the machine The possibility for consideration argues Dinerstein existed inAfrican American jazz swing and dance

for suggests new directions for the study of religion in America Althoughthe ldquolived religionrdquo perspective in American religious history has donemuch to overcome the distinction between ldquodabblersrdquo and ldquotrue believersrdquothe question of power still lingers (Ahlstrom 1972 1052) Religiousbeliefs and practices are neither essential things nor reveal themselvesto the scholar in toto12 Such a position does not replicate the eitherordiscussion regarding the agency of historical actors On the contraryit suggests that religious agency is a hybrid weave of intent and instinctimmediate response and mediated principle knowing and unknowing13

Accounting for the ambiguities of agency has already pushed scholarsof religion toward an anthropology of the secular and an explorationof in the Foucauldian phrasing of Talal Asad ldquothe contingencies thathave come together to give us our certaintiesrdquo (2003 16)

It is with a hint of irony then that one may return to the promotionalpamphlet of The Sea Beast that celebrates the ldquoconquestrdquo of Ahab andthe invisible wafting presence of screenwriter Bess Meredyth ldquoThereis no woman writing today who has contributed so much to genuine

screen values as Bess Meredythrdquo Indeed her son John Meredyth Lucasborn in 1919 continued down his motherrsquos unsettling path as a successfultelevision screenwriter and director His credits included episodes ofldquoStar Trekrdquo ldquoLoganrsquos Runrdquo and that other story of ldquohundred percentrdquoAmericanism ldquoThe Six Million Dollar Manrdquo

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 32

33

Figure 8 The Six Million Dollar Man ldquoGentlemen we can rebuild him Wehave the capability of making the worldrsquos first bionic man We can make him

better than he was before Better Stronger Fasterrdquo

Haverford College370 Lancaster AveHaverford PA 19041jlardashaverfordedu

References

Ahlstrom Sydney E (1972) A Religious History of the American People New HavenYale University Press

Albanese Catherine L (1997) Exchanging selves exchanging souls Contact com-bination and American religious history In Thomas A Tweed (ed) RetellingUS Religious History 200-26 Berkeley University of California Press

Anon (1851) A ship sunk by a whale Littellrsquos Living Age (29 November) 415-16Asad Talal (2003) Formations of the Secular Christianity Islam Modernity Stanford

Stanford University Press

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 33

34

Bacon Francis (1870) The Works of Francis Bacon James Spedding Robert LeslieEllis and Douglas Denon Heath (eds) Vol VIII New York Hurd andHoughton

Barton Bruce (2000) The Man Nobody Knows A Discovery of the Real Jesus ChicagoIvan R Dee

Beniger James R (1986) The Control Revolution Technological and Economic Origins ofthe Information Society Cambridge Harvard University Press

Benjamin Walter (1996) One-way street In Marcus Bullock amp Michael W Jennings(eds) Selected Writings Volume 1 1913-1926 444-88 Cambridge HarvardUniversity Press

mdash (2003) The work of art in the age of its technological reproducibility third ver-sion In Howard Eiland and Michael W Jennings (eds) Selected Writings Volume4 1938-40 251-83 Cambridge Harvard University Press

Bennett Charles A (1923) A Philosophical Study of Mysticism An Essay New HavenYale University Press 1923

Bernays Edward L (1923) Crystallizing Public Opinion New York Liverlight PublishingCorporation

Buchman SR (1925) Moby Dickmdashthe book and The Sea Beastmdashthe picture Anappreciation In Herman Melville Moby Dick or The White Whale ix-xi NewYork Grosset amp Dunlap

Butler Judith (1993) Bodies That Matter On the Discursive Limits of lsquoSexrsquo RoutledgeNew York

Cahir Linda Costanzo (1997) Routinizing the charismatic Melville and Hollywoodrsquosthree Moby-Dicks Melville Society Extracts 110 (September) 11-17

Cendrars Blaise (1922) Profound today Broom 13 ( January) 265-67Chadwick Owen (1975) The Secularization of the European Mind in the Nineteenth Century

Cambridge Cambridge University PressCoe George Albert (1917) A Social Theory of Religious Education New York Charles

Scribnerrsquos SonsDavidson Abraham A (1996) The European art invasion In Francis M Naumann

(ed) with Beth Vann Making Mischief Dada Invades New York 222-27 NewYork Whitney Museum of Art

Debord Guy (1995) Society of the Spectacle translated by Donald Nicholson-SmithNew York Zone Books

Derrida Jacques (1994) Specters of Marx The State of the Debt The Work of Mourningand the New International Peggy Kamuf (trans) New York Routledge

Dorsey George A (1925) Why We Behave Like Human Beings New York BlueRibbon Books

Epstein Jean (1922) The new conditions of literary phenomena Broom 21 (April)3-10

Frank Waldo (1919) Our America New York Boni and LiverightGammel Irene (2002) Baroness Elsa Gender Dada and Everyday Modernitymdasha Cultural

Biography Cambridge The MIT PressGeertz Clifford (1973) Deep play Notes on the Balinese cockfight In The Interpretation

of Cultures 412-53 New York Basic BooksHaraway Donna (2004) A manifesto for cyborgs Science technology and socialist

feminism in the 1980s In The Haraway Reader 7-45 New York RoutledgeHeap Jane (1922) Dada Little Review VII2 (Spring) 46Heidegger Martin (1977) The age of the world-picturerdquo In The Question Concerning

Technology and Other Essays 115-54 William Lovitt (trans) New York Harperamp Row

Hoffman Carol Stein (2001) The Barrymores Hollywoodrsquos First Family LexingtonUniversity of Kentucky Press

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 34

35

Jackson Josephine A and Helen M Salisbury (1922) Outwitting Our Nerves A Primerof Psychotherapy New York The Century Co

Jaffe David (1990) The village enlightenment in New England 1760-1820 TheWilliam and Mary Quarterly XLVII3 ( July) 327-46

Jones Rufus M (1915) Mysticism in present-day religion Harvard Theological ReviewVIII2 (April) 155-65

Kippenberg Hans G (2002) Discovering Religious History in the Modern Age BarbaraHarshav (trans) Princeton Princeton University Press

Kobler John (1977) Damned in Paradise The Life of John Barrymore New YorkAtheneum

Kuttner Alfred B (1922) Nerves In Harold E Stearns (ed) Civilization in the UnitedStates An Enquiry by Thirty Americans 427-42 New York Harcourt

Lauter Paul (1994) Melville climbs the canon American Literature 66 (March) 1-24Lawrence DH (1923) Studies in Classic American Literature New York T SeltzerLindbergh Charles A (1927) We New York GP Putnamrsquos SonsLippmann Walter (1922) Public Opinion New York Macmillan CompanyMarchand Roland (1985) Advertising the American Dream Making Way for Modernity

1920-1940 Berkeley University of California PressMarty Martin E Modern American Religion Vol 2 The Noise of Conflict 1919-1941

Chicago University of Chicago Press 1991May Henry F (1976) The Enlightenment in America New York Oxford University

PressMayhew Jonathan (1749) Concerning the difference between truth and falsehood

right and wrong In Seven Sermons 1-21 Boston Rogers and FowleMayr Otto (1970) The Origins of Feedback Control Cambridge The MIT PressMelville Herman (1993) Correspondence Volume 14 of The Writings of Herman Melville

Lynne Horth (ed) Evanston and Chicago Northwestern University Pressmdash (1925) Moby Dick or The White Whale 1851 New York Grosset amp DunlapMindell David A (2002) Between Human and Machine Feedback Control and Computing

Before Cybernetics Baltimore The Johns Hopkins University PressMumford Lewis (1929) Herman Melville New York The Literary Guild of Americamdash (1924) Sticks and Stones A Study of American Architecture and Civilization New York

Dover Publicationsmdash (1934) Technics and Civilization New York Harcourt Brace and Companymdash (1926) The Golden Day A Study in American Literature and Culture New York Boni

and LiverightMurray Jr HA (1929) Review of Lewis Mumfordrsquos Herman Melville The New

England Quarterly 2 ( July) 523-26Naumann Francis M (1994) New York Dada 1915-23 New York Harry N AbramsNoble David F (1999) The Religion of Technology The Divinity of Man and the Spirit

of Invention New York Penguin BooksNye David E (1994) American Technological Sublime Cambridge The MIT PressOrsquoNeil David (1921) The new Broom Broom 11 (November) 96Overton Grant (1928) The Philosophy of Fiction New York D AppletonPalmer Attorney General (1920) The case against the lsquoRedsrsquo The Forum A Magazine

of Constructive Nationalism 632 (February) 173-85Parsons Floyd W (1927) Everybodyrsquos business Advertising amp Selling ( June 29) 5 64Prampolini Enrico (1922) The aesthetic of the machine and mechanical intro-

spection in art Broom 33 (October) 235-37Rauschenbusch Walter (1917) A Theology for the Social Gospel New York The

Macmillan CompanyRichardson George P (1991) Feedback Thought in Social Science and Systems Theory

Philadelphia University of Pennsylvania Press

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 35

30

10 Shortly after the publication of Moby-Dick in November of 1851 reports beganto reach America about the August sinking of the Ann Alexander by a whale in theSouth Pacific It was the first ldquoattack of a whale upon a shiprdquo since the destruc-tion of the Essex in 1820 The story about the Ann Alexander originally appeared inthe Panama Herald on October 16 and was reprinted the following month in New-York Daily Tribune and Littellrsquos Living Age The sperm whale that the Ann Alexander

fears over technological miscegenation The capacity of machines toredraw the boundaries of race and gender disturbed Protestant leadersand revivalists alike On the other hand subversive elements within theMelville Revival offered what must be considered a theological critiqueof how Protestants understood themselves and their God in relation totechnological materials Grant Overton for example saw in Moby-Dick

a deep appreciation for how technological developments had come tounderminemdashquite literally hauntmdashthe epistemological and ontologicalassumptions that made them possible ldquoNo longer able to instance thedeus ex machinardquo wrote Overton Melville was ldquounforgetful that deus inmachina movet and while most of mankind [have] become unable to seethe god for the machine [he] can scarcely perceive the machine forthe god agitating it [His] reports of the machine are somehow unrec-ognizable [his] realism is confronted by Realityrdquo (Overton 1928 231)

Bess Meredythrsquos reimagining of Moby-Dick and Baroness Elsa vonFreytag-Loringhovenrsquos God also explored the otherness that technologyengenders within the modern subject a trace that lingers despite allattempts to extinguish it Their errant readings challenged contempo-raries to reimagine their relationship to technology from an enchantedperspective that did not necessarily conform to the directives of Americanindividualism Resisting the advertisements of both Arminianism andBaconian Common Sense these readings insisted that there was somethingelsemdashsomething wholly othermdashoccurring within the technological workingsof secular modernity Excess or that which unsettled the boundariesbetween body and machine masculine and feminine had resulted inwhat might be called a ldquopost-structure of feelingrdquo The prospect thateither machines or women had begun to think for themselves or atleast possess a kind of agency once attributed to the enlightened malesubject now seemed as likely as a whale vengefully turning against awhaleship10 As Melvillean riffs on the deferred project of religious iden-tity The Sea Beast and God marked the space between human creationand technological determination consent and compulsion and there-fore hinted at the prospect that belief was not an individual state butan embodied activity Consistent with Lewis Mumfordrsquos assessment ofthe symbolic and material powers of feedback technology these works

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 30

31

had first turned upon starboard and larboard boats seizing both in its jaws andcrushing them to pieces It then rushed towards the Ann Alexander ldquoat the rateof fifteen knots In an instant the monster struck the ship with tremendous violence shakingher from stem to sternrdquo (415) Upon reading the article Melville remarked to his pub-lisher ldquothe Whale had almost completely slipped me for the time (amp I was themerrier for it) when Crash comes Moby Dick himself It is really amp truly a sur-prising coincidencemdashto say the least I make no doubt it is Moby Dick himself I wonder if my evil art has raised this monsterrdquo (Melville 1993 209)

11 William Jennings Bryan for example that standard bearer of fundamentalfaith equated faith to a particular kind of technologymdashldquothere is that in each humanliferdquo he wrote ldquothat corresponds to the mainspring of a watchmdashthat which isabsolutely necessary if the life is to be what it should be a real life and not amere existence That necessary thing is a belief in Godrdquo (86) Faith for Bryan wasthat which repeated without difference It was a dependable rational and utterlyrationalizing process It was not however self-regulating It affirmed the ldquorealnessrdquoof the individual believer precisely because it ignored the conditions imposed fromoutside the self But how might faith be viewed in terms of feedback and repro-ducibility rather than repetition a process that does not reaffirm a centered indi-vidual with every tick but adjusts accordingly to external fluctuations

raise numerous questions concerning the ways and means of religionin an age of postmodern complexity and virtual reality

How might a relentless focus on power and the porousness of sub-jectivity change how one views the matter of religion within historyHow might a greater attention to the aesthetic conditions that mediateany and all beliefs challenge the ways in which we distinguish the reli-gious from the secular How might a greater attention to the enchantingpower of material conditions challenge historical and political narrativesof secularization How do technologies and vested interests realize them-selves through the discourses of agency choice and mobility Whatin other words are the conditions of possibility that allow a historicalactor (rather than a Hollywood actor) to make a particular faith com-mitment or for that matter have any faith at all In what languagedo historical actors dream about themselves and divinity and how doesthat language change over time And finally to what degree is faithitself a technology11

By acknowledging the white mythology that still informs say thefield of American religions such questions shift the scholarly emphasisfrom explicit expressions of religious belief and practice to the spacebetween those beliefs and practices and the world at-large Individualswithin American religious history for example have often been depictedas fully formed agents making choices between various faith commitmentsand ever combining religious idioms to suit their specific needs and cir-cumstances (Albanese 1997) No doubt this is true But there is anotherside to this story of radical religious pluralism one that if accounted

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 31

32

12 Such a possibility is very much at odds with the Geertzian model of ldquothickdescriptionrdquo and its formidable legacy in the humanities and social sciences Withoutquestioning the degree to which the self can ever become entirely legible to theself Geertz claimed that every society and individual life and by extension everybelief and every practice ldquocontain their own interpretations One has only to learnhow to gain access to themrdquo (Geertz 1973 453)

13 The ambiguities of agency during the ldquomachine agerdquo have been the subjectof a number of elegant critical studies See for example Anson Rabinbach TheHuman Motor Energy Fatigue and the Origins of Modernity (New York Basic Books1990) Mark Seltzer Bodies and Machines (New York Routledge 1992) MarthaBanta Taylorized Lives Narrative Productions in the Age of Taylor Veblen and Ford (ChicagoUniversity of Chicago Press 1993) Carolyn Thomas de la Pentildea The Body ElectricHow Strange Machines Built the Modern American (New York New York UniversityPress 2003) and Joel Dinerstein The Swinging Machine Modernity Technology andAfrican American Culture Between the World Wars (Amherst University of MassachusettsPress 2003) Dinersteinrsquos work is particularly relevant to the issue of religious com-binativeness given his emphasis on how African American artists strove to refigureldquomachine aestheticsrdquo in and through their artistry Dinersteinrsquos work suggests thatthe self is locatedmdashie the self happensmdashsomewhere between resistance and assim-ilation between choice and coercionmdasha lesson that many Anglo-Americans werenot willing to consider in their triumphal theorizing about the human in relationto the machine The possibility for consideration argues Dinerstein existed inAfrican American jazz swing and dance

for suggests new directions for the study of religion in America Althoughthe ldquolived religionrdquo perspective in American religious history has donemuch to overcome the distinction between ldquodabblersrdquo and ldquotrue believersrdquothe question of power still lingers (Ahlstrom 1972 1052) Religiousbeliefs and practices are neither essential things nor reveal themselvesto the scholar in toto12 Such a position does not replicate the eitherordiscussion regarding the agency of historical actors On the contraryit suggests that religious agency is a hybrid weave of intent and instinctimmediate response and mediated principle knowing and unknowing13

Accounting for the ambiguities of agency has already pushed scholarsof religion toward an anthropology of the secular and an explorationof in the Foucauldian phrasing of Talal Asad ldquothe contingencies thathave come together to give us our certaintiesrdquo (2003 16)

It is with a hint of irony then that one may return to the promotionalpamphlet of The Sea Beast that celebrates the ldquoconquestrdquo of Ahab andthe invisible wafting presence of screenwriter Bess Meredyth ldquoThereis no woman writing today who has contributed so much to genuine

screen values as Bess Meredythrdquo Indeed her son John Meredyth Lucasborn in 1919 continued down his motherrsquos unsettling path as a successfultelevision screenwriter and director His credits included episodes ofldquoStar Trekrdquo ldquoLoganrsquos Runrdquo and that other story of ldquohundred percentrdquoAmericanism ldquoThe Six Million Dollar Manrdquo

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 32

33

Figure 8 The Six Million Dollar Man ldquoGentlemen we can rebuild him Wehave the capability of making the worldrsquos first bionic man We can make him

better than he was before Better Stronger Fasterrdquo

Haverford College370 Lancaster AveHaverford PA 19041jlardashaverfordedu

References

Ahlstrom Sydney E (1972) A Religious History of the American People New HavenYale University Press

Albanese Catherine L (1997) Exchanging selves exchanging souls Contact com-bination and American religious history In Thomas A Tweed (ed) RetellingUS Religious History 200-26 Berkeley University of California Press

Anon (1851) A ship sunk by a whale Littellrsquos Living Age (29 November) 415-16Asad Talal (2003) Formations of the Secular Christianity Islam Modernity Stanford

Stanford University Press

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 33

34

Bacon Francis (1870) The Works of Francis Bacon James Spedding Robert LeslieEllis and Douglas Denon Heath (eds) Vol VIII New York Hurd andHoughton

Barton Bruce (2000) The Man Nobody Knows A Discovery of the Real Jesus ChicagoIvan R Dee

Beniger James R (1986) The Control Revolution Technological and Economic Origins ofthe Information Society Cambridge Harvard University Press

Benjamin Walter (1996) One-way street In Marcus Bullock amp Michael W Jennings(eds) Selected Writings Volume 1 1913-1926 444-88 Cambridge HarvardUniversity Press

mdash (2003) The work of art in the age of its technological reproducibility third ver-sion In Howard Eiland and Michael W Jennings (eds) Selected Writings Volume4 1938-40 251-83 Cambridge Harvard University Press

Bennett Charles A (1923) A Philosophical Study of Mysticism An Essay New HavenYale University Press 1923

Bernays Edward L (1923) Crystallizing Public Opinion New York Liverlight PublishingCorporation

Buchman SR (1925) Moby Dickmdashthe book and The Sea Beastmdashthe picture Anappreciation In Herman Melville Moby Dick or The White Whale ix-xi NewYork Grosset amp Dunlap

Butler Judith (1993) Bodies That Matter On the Discursive Limits of lsquoSexrsquo RoutledgeNew York

Cahir Linda Costanzo (1997) Routinizing the charismatic Melville and Hollywoodrsquosthree Moby-Dicks Melville Society Extracts 110 (September) 11-17

Cendrars Blaise (1922) Profound today Broom 13 ( January) 265-67Chadwick Owen (1975) The Secularization of the European Mind in the Nineteenth Century

Cambridge Cambridge University PressCoe George Albert (1917) A Social Theory of Religious Education New York Charles

Scribnerrsquos SonsDavidson Abraham A (1996) The European art invasion In Francis M Naumann

(ed) with Beth Vann Making Mischief Dada Invades New York 222-27 NewYork Whitney Museum of Art

Debord Guy (1995) Society of the Spectacle translated by Donald Nicholson-SmithNew York Zone Books

Derrida Jacques (1994) Specters of Marx The State of the Debt The Work of Mourningand the New International Peggy Kamuf (trans) New York Routledge

Dorsey George A (1925) Why We Behave Like Human Beings New York BlueRibbon Books

Epstein Jean (1922) The new conditions of literary phenomena Broom 21 (April)3-10

Frank Waldo (1919) Our America New York Boni and LiverightGammel Irene (2002) Baroness Elsa Gender Dada and Everyday Modernitymdasha Cultural

Biography Cambridge The MIT PressGeertz Clifford (1973) Deep play Notes on the Balinese cockfight In The Interpretation

of Cultures 412-53 New York Basic BooksHaraway Donna (2004) A manifesto for cyborgs Science technology and socialist

feminism in the 1980s In The Haraway Reader 7-45 New York RoutledgeHeap Jane (1922) Dada Little Review VII2 (Spring) 46Heidegger Martin (1977) The age of the world-picturerdquo In The Question Concerning

Technology and Other Essays 115-54 William Lovitt (trans) New York Harperamp Row

Hoffman Carol Stein (2001) The Barrymores Hollywoodrsquos First Family LexingtonUniversity of Kentucky Press

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 34

35

Jackson Josephine A and Helen M Salisbury (1922) Outwitting Our Nerves A Primerof Psychotherapy New York The Century Co

Jaffe David (1990) The village enlightenment in New England 1760-1820 TheWilliam and Mary Quarterly XLVII3 ( July) 327-46

Jones Rufus M (1915) Mysticism in present-day religion Harvard Theological ReviewVIII2 (April) 155-65

Kippenberg Hans G (2002) Discovering Religious History in the Modern Age BarbaraHarshav (trans) Princeton Princeton University Press

Kobler John (1977) Damned in Paradise The Life of John Barrymore New YorkAtheneum

Kuttner Alfred B (1922) Nerves In Harold E Stearns (ed) Civilization in the UnitedStates An Enquiry by Thirty Americans 427-42 New York Harcourt

Lauter Paul (1994) Melville climbs the canon American Literature 66 (March) 1-24Lawrence DH (1923) Studies in Classic American Literature New York T SeltzerLindbergh Charles A (1927) We New York GP Putnamrsquos SonsLippmann Walter (1922) Public Opinion New York Macmillan CompanyMarchand Roland (1985) Advertising the American Dream Making Way for Modernity

1920-1940 Berkeley University of California PressMarty Martin E Modern American Religion Vol 2 The Noise of Conflict 1919-1941

Chicago University of Chicago Press 1991May Henry F (1976) The Enlightenment in America New York Oxford University

PressMayhew Jonathan (1749) Concerning the difference between truth and falsehood

right and wrong In Seven Sermons 1-21 Boston Rogers and FowleMayr Otto (1970) The Origins of Feedback Control Cambridge The MIT PressMelville Herman (1993) Correspondence Volume 14 of The Writings of Herman Melville

Lynne Horth (ed) Evanston and Chicago Northwestern University Pressmdash (1925) Moby Dick or The White Whale 1851 New York Grosset amp DunlapMindell David A (2002) Between Human and Machine Feedback Control and Computing

Before Cybernetics Baltimore The Johns Hopkins University PressMumford Lewis (1929) Herman Melville New York The Literary Guild of Americamdash (1924) Sticks and Stones A Study of American Architecture and Civilization New York

Dover Publicationsmdash (1934) Technics and Civilization New York Harcourt Brace and Companymdash (1926) The Golden Day A Study in American Literature and Culture New York Boni

and LiverightMurray Jr HA (1929) Review of Lewis Mumfordrsquos Herman Melville The New

England Quarterly 2 ( July) 523-26Naumann Francis M (1994) New York Dada 1915-23 New York Harry N AbramsNoble David F (1999) The Religion of Technology The Divinity of Man and the Spirit

of Invention New York Penguin BooksNye David E (1994) American Technological Sublime Cambridge The MIT PressOrsquoNeil David (1921) The new Broom Broom 11 (November) 96Overton Grant (1928) The Philosophy of Fiction New York D AppletonPalmer Attorney General (1920) The case against the lsquoRedsrsquo The Forum A Magazine

of Constructive Nationalism 632 (February) 173-85Parsons Floyd W (1927) Everybodyrsquos business Advertising amp Selling ( June 29) 5 64Prampolini Enrico (1922) The aesthetic of the machine and mechanical intro-

spection in art Broom 33 (October) 235-37Rauschenbusch Walter (1917) A Theology for the Social Gospel New York The

Macmillan CompanyRichardson George P (1991) Feedback Thought in Social Science and Systems Theory

Philadelphia University of Pennsylvania Press

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 35

31

had first turned upon starboard and larboard boats seizing both in its jaws andcrushing them to pieces It then rushed towards the Ann Alexander ldquoat the rateof fifteen knots In an instant the monster struck the ship with tremendous violence shakingher from stem to sternrdquo (415) Upon reading the article Melville remarked to his pub-lisher ldquothe Whale had almost completely slipped me for the time (amp I was themerrier for it) when Crash comes Moby Dick himself It is really amp truly a sur-prising coincidencemdashto say the least I make no doubt it is Moby Dick himself I wonder if my evil art has raised this monsterrdquo (Melville 1993 209)

11 William Jennings Bryan for example that standard bearer of fundamentalfaith equated faith to a particular kind of technologymdashldquothere is that in each humanliferdquo he wrote ldquothat corresponds to the mainspring of a watchmdashthat which isabsolutely necessary if the life is to be what it should be a real life and not amere existence That necessary thing is a belief in Godrdquo (86) Faith for Bryan wasthat which repeated without difference It was a dependable rational and utterlyrationalizing process It was not however self-regulating It affirmed the ldquorealnessrdquoof the individual believer precisely because it ignored the conditions imposed fromoutside the self But how might faith be viewed in terms of feedback and repro-ducibility rather than repetition a process that does not reaffirm a centered indi-vidual with every tick but adjusts accordingly to external fluctuations

raise numerous questions concerning the ways and means of religionin an age of postmodern complexity and virtual reality

How might a relentless focus on power and the porousness of sub-jectivity change how one views the matter of religion within historyHow might a greater attention to the aesthetic conditions that mediateany and all beliefs challenge the ways in which we distinguish the reli-gious from the secular How might a greater attention to the enchantingpower of material conditions challenge historical and political narrativesof secularization How do technologies and vested interests realize them-selves through the discourses of agency choice and mobility Whatin other words are the conditions of possibility that allow a historicalactor (rather than a Hollywood actor) to make a particular faith com-mitment or for that matter have any faith at all In what languagedo historical actors dream about themselves and divinity and how doesthat language change over time And finally to what degree is faithitself a technology11

By acknowledging the white mythology that still informs say thefield of American religions such questions shift the scholarly emphasisfrom explicit expressions of religious belief and practice to the spacebetween those beliefs and practices and the world at-large Individualswithin American religious history for example have often been depictedas fully formed agents making choices between various faith commitmentsand ever combining religious idioms to suit their specific needs and cir-cumstances (Albanese 1997) No doubt this is true But there is anotherside to this story of radical religious pluralism one that if accounted

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 31

32

12 Such a possibility is very much at odds with the Geertzian model of ldquothickdescriptionrdquo and its formidable legacy in the humanities and social sciences Withoutquestioning the degree to which the self can ever become entirely legible to theself Geertz claimed that every society and individual life and by extension everybelief and every practice ldquocontain their own interpretations One has only to learnhow to gain access to themrdquo (Geertz 1973 453)

13 The ambiguities of agency during the ldquomachine agerdquo have been the subjectof a number of elegant critical studies See for example Anson Rabinbach TheHuman Motor Energy Fatigue and the Origins of Modernity (New York Basic Books1990) Mark Seltzer Bodies and Machines (New York Routledge 1992) MarthaBanta Taylorized Lives Narrative Productions in the Age of Taylor Veblen and Ford (ChicagoUniversity of Chicago Press 1993) Carolyn Thomas de la Pentildea The Body ElectricHow Strange Machines Built the Modern American (New York New York UniversityPress 2003) and Joel Dinerstein The Swinging Machine Modernity Technology andAfrican American Culture Between the World Wars (Amherst University of MassachusettsPress 2003) Dinersteinrsquos work is particularly relevant to the issue of religious com-binativeness given his emphasis on how African American artists strove to refigureldquomachine aestheticsrdquo in and through their artistry Dinersteinrsquos work suggests thatthe self is locatedmdashie the self happensmdashsomewhere between resistance and assim-ilation between choice and coercionmdasha lesson that many Anglo-Americans werenot willing to consider in their triumphal theorizing about the human in relationto the machine The possibility for consideration argues Dinerstein existed inAfrican American jazz swing and dance

for suggests new directions for the study of religion in America Althoughthe ldquolived religionrdquo perspective in American religious history has donemuch to overcome the distinction between ldquodabblersrdquo and ldquotrue believersrdquothe question of power still lingers (Ahlstrom 1972 1052) Religiousbeliefs and practices are neither essential things nor reveal themselvesto the scholar in toto12 Such a position does not replicate the eitherordiscussion regarding the agency of historical actors On the contraryit suggests that religious agency is a hybrid weave of intent and instinctimmediate response and mediated principle knowing and unknowing13

Accounting for the ambiguities of agency has already pushed scholarsof religion toward an anthropology of the secular and an explorationof in the Foucauldian phrasing of Talal Asad ldquothe contingencies thathave come together to give us our certaintiesrdquo (2003 16)

It is with a hint of irony then that one may return to the promotionalpamphlet of The Sea Beast that celebrates the ldquoconquestrdquo of Ahab andthe invisible wafting presence of screenwriter Bess Meredyth ldquoThereis no woman writing today who has contributed so much to genuine

screen values as Bess Meredythrdquo Indeed her son John Meredyth Lucasborn in 1919 continued down his motherrsquos unsettling path as a successfultelevision screenwriter and director His credits included episodes ofldquoStar Trekrdquo ldquoLoganrsquos Runrdquo and that other story of ldquohundred percentrdquoAmericanism ldquoThe Six Million Dollar Manrdquo

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 32

33

Figure 8 The Six Million Dollar Man ldquoGentlemen we can rebuild him Wehave the capability of making the worldrsquos first bionic man We can make him

better than he was before Better Stronger Fasterrdquo

Haverford College370 Lancaster AveHaverford PA 19041jlardashaverfordedu

References

Ahlstrom Sydney E (1972) A Religious History of the American People New HavenYale University Press

Albanese Catherine L (1997) Exchanging selves exchanging souls Contact com-bination and American religious history In Thomas A Tweed (ed) RetellingUS Religious History 200-26 Berkeley University of California Press

Anon (1851) A ship sunk by a whale Littellrsquos Living Age (29 November) 415-16Asad Talal (2003) Formations of the Secular Christianity Islam Modernity Stanford

Stanford University Press

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 33

34

Bacon Francis (1870) The Works of Francis Bacon James Spedding Robert LeslieEllis and Douglas Denon Heath (eds) Vol VIII New York Hurd andHoughton

Barton Bruce (2000) The Man Nobody Knows A Discovery of the Real Jesus ChicagoIvan R Dee

Beniger James R (1986) The Control Revolution Technological and Economic Origins ofthe Information Society Cambridge Harvard University Press

Benjamin Walter (1996) One-way street In Marcus Bullock amp Michael W Jennings(eds) Selected Writings Volume 1 1913-1926 444-88 Cambridge HarvardUniversity Press

mdash (2003) The work of art in the age of its technological reproducibility third ver-sion In Howard Eiland and Michael W Jennings (eds) Selected Writings Volume4 1938-40 251-83 Cambridge Harvard University Press

Bennett Charles A (1923) A Philosophical Study of Mysticism An Essay New HavenYale University Press 1923

Bernays Edward L (1923) Crystallizing Public Opinion New York Liverlight PublishingCorporation

Buchman SR (1925) Moby Dickmdashthe book and The Sea Beastmdashthe picture Anappreciation In Herman Melville Moby Dick or The White Whale ix-xi NewYork Grosset amp Dunlap

Butler Judith (1993) Bodies That Matter On the Discursive Limits of lsquoSexrsquo RoutledgeNew York

Cahir Linda Costanzo (1997) Routinizing the charismatic Melville and Hollywoodrsquosthree Moby-Dicks Melville Society Extracts 110 (September) 11-17

Cendrars Blaise (1922) Profound today Broom 13 ( January) 265-67Chadwick Owen (1975) The Secularization of the European Mind in the Nineteenth Century

Cambridge Cambridge University PressCoe George Albert (1917) A Social Theory of Religious Education New York Charles

Scribnerrsquos SonsDavidson Abraham A (1996) The European art invasion In Francis M Naumann

(ed) with Beth Vann Making Mischief Dada Invades New York 222-27 NewYork Whitney Museum of Art

Debord Guy (1995) Society of the Spectacle translated by Donald Nicholson-SmithNew York Zone Books

Derrida Jacques (1994) Specters of Marx The State of the Debt The Work of Mourningand the New International Peggy Kamuf (trans) New York Routledge

Dorsey George A (1925) Why We Behave Like Human Beings New York BlueRibbon Books

Epstein Jean (1922) The new conditions of literary phenomena Broom 21 (April)3-10

Frank Waldo (1919) Our America New York Boni and LiverightGammel Irene (2002) Baroness Elsa Gender Dada and Everyday Modernitymdasha Cultural

Biography Cambridge The MIT PressGeertz Clifford (1973) Deep play Notes on the Balinese cockfight In The Interpretation

of Cultures 412-53 New York Basic BooksHaraway Donna (2004) A manifesto for cyborgs Science technology and socialist

feminism in the 1980s In The Haraway Reader 7-45 New York RoutledgeHeap Jane (1922) Dada Little Review VII2 (Spring) 46Heidegger Martin (1977) The age of the world-picturerdquo In The Question Concerning

Technology and Other Essays 115-54 William Lovitt (trans) New York Harperamp Row

Hoffman Carol Stein (2001) The Barrymores Hollywoodrsquos First Family LexingtonUniversity of Kentucky Press

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 34

35

Jackson Josephine A and Helen M Salisbury (1922) Outwitting Our Nerves A Primerof Psychotherapy New York The Century Co

Jaffe David (1990) The village enlightenment in New England 1760-1820 TheWilliam and Mary Quarterly XLVII3 ( July) 327-46

Jones Rufus M (1915) Mysticism in present-day religion Harvard Theological ReviewVIII2 (April) 155-65

Kippenberg Hans G (2002) Discovering Religious History in the Modern Age BarbaraHarshav (trans) Princeton Princeton University Press

Kobler John (1977) Damned in Paradise The Life of John Barrymore New YorkAtheneum

Kuttner Alfred B (1922) Nerves In Harold E Stearns (ed) Civilization in the UnitedStates An Enquiry by Thirty Americans 427-42 New York Harcourt

Lauter Paul (1994) Melville climbs the canon American Literature 66 (March) 1-24Lawrence DH (1923) Studies in Classic American Literature New York T SeltzerLindbergh Charles A (1927) We New York GP Putnamrsquos SonsLippmann Walter (1922) Public Opinion New York Macmillan CompanyMarchand Roland (1985) Advertising the American Dream Making Way for Modernity

1920-1940 Berkeley University of California PressMarty Martin E Modern American Religion Vol 2 The Noise of Conflict 1919-1941

Chicago University of Chicago Press 1991May Henry F (1976) The Enlightenment in America New York Oxford University

PressMayhew Jonathan (1749) Concerning the difference between truth and falsehood

right and wrong In Seven Sermons 1-21 Boston Rogers and FowleMayr Otto (1970) The Origins of Feedback Control Cambridge The MIT PressMelville Herman (1993) Correspondence Volume 14 of The Writings of Herman Melville

Lynne Horth (ed) Evanston and Chicago Northwestern University Pressmdash (1925) Moby Dick or The White Whale 1851 New York Grosset amp DunlapMindell David A (2002) Between Human and Machine Feedback Control and Computing

Before Cybernetics Baltimore The Johns Hopkins University PressMumford Lewis (1929) Herman Melville New York The Literary Guild of Americamdash (1924) Sticks and Stones A Study of American Architecture and Civilization New York

Dover Publicationsmdash (1934) Technics and Civilization New York Harcourt Brace and Companymdash (1926) The Golden Day A Study in American Literature and Culture New York Boni

and LiverightMurray Jr HA (1929) Review of Lewis Mumfordrsquos Herman Melville The New

England Quarterly 2 ( July) 523-26Naumann Francis M (1994) New York Dada 1915-23 New York Harry N AbramsNoble David F (1999) The Religion of Technology The Divinity of Man and the Spirit

of Invention New York Penguin BooksNye David E (1994) American Technological Sublime Cambridge The MIT PressOrsquoNeil David (1921) The new Broom Broom 11 (November) 96Overton Grant (1928) The Philosophy of Fiction New York D AppletonPalmer Attorney General (1920) The case against the lsquoRedsrsquo The Forum A Magazine

of Constructive Nationalism 632 (February) 173-85Parsons Floyd W (1927) Everybodyrsquos business Advertising amp Selling ( June 29) 5 64Prampolini Enrico (1922) The aesthetic of the machine and mechanical intro-

spection in art Broom 33 (October) 235-37Rauschenbusch Walter (1917) A Theology for the Social Gospel New York The

Macmillan CompanyRichardson George P (1991) Feedback Thought in Social Science and Systems Theory

Philadelphia University of Pennsylvania Press

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 35

32

12 Such a possibility is very much at odds with the Geertzian model of ldquothickdescriptionrdquo and its formidable legacy in the humanities and social sciences Withoutquestioning the degree to which the self can ever become entirely legible to theself Geertz claimed that every society and individual life and by extension everybelief and every practice ldquocontain their own interpretations One has only to learnhow to gain access to themrdquo (Geertz 1973 453)

13 The ambiguities of agency during the ldquomachine agerdquo have been the subjectof a number of elegant critical studies See for example Anson Rabinbach TheHuman Motor Energy Fatigue and the Origins of Modernity (New York Basic Books1990) Mark Seltzer Bodies and Machines (New York Routledge 1992) MarthaBanta Taylorized Lives Narrative Productions in the Age of Taylor Veblen and Ford (ChicagoUniversity of Chicago Press 1993) Carolyn Thomas de la Pentildea The Body ElectricHow Strange Machines Built the Modern American (New York New York UniversityPress 2003) and Joel Dinerstein The Swinging Machine Modernity Technology andAfrican American Culture Between the World Wars (Amherst University of MassachusettsPress 2003) Dinersteinrsquos work is particularly relevant to the issue of religious com-binativeness given his emphasis on how African American artists strove to refigureldquomachine aestheticsrdquo in and through their artistry Dinersteinrsquos work suggests thatthe self is locatedmdashie the self happensmdashsomewhere between resistance and assim-ilation between choice and coercionmdasha lesson that many Anglo-Americans werenot willing to consider in their triumphal theorizing about the human in relationto the machine The possibility for consideration argues Dinerstein existed inAfrican American jazz swing and dance

for suggests new directions for the study of religion in America Althoughthe ldquolived religionrdquo perspective in American religious history has donemuch to overcome the distinction between ldquodabblersrdquo and ldquotrue believersrdquothe question of power still lingers (Ahlstrom 1972 1052) Religiousbeliefs and practices are neither essential things nor reveal themselvesto the scholar in toto12 Such a position does not replicate the eitherordiscussion regarding the agency of historical actors On the contraryit suggests that religious agency is a hybrid weave of intent and instinctimmediate response and mediated principle knowing and unknowing13

Accounting for the ambiguities of agency has already pushed scholarsof religion toward an anthropology of the secular and an explorationof in the Foucauldian phrasing of Talal Asad ldquothe contingencies thathave come together to give us our certaintiesrdquo (2003 16)

It is with a hint of irony then that one may return to the promotionalpamphlet of The Sea Beast that celebrates the ldquoconquestrdquo of Ahab andthe invisible wafting presence of screenwriter Bess Meredyth ldquoThereis no woman writing today who has contributed so much to genuine

screen values as Bess Meredythrdquo Indeed her son John Meredyth Lucasborn in 1919 continued down his motherrsquos unsettling path as a successfultelevision screenwriter and director His credits included episodes ofldquoStar Trekrdquo ldquoLoganrsquos Runrdquo and that other story of ldquohundred percentrdquoAmericanism ldquoThe Six Million Dollar Manrdquo

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 32

33

Figure 8 The Six Million Dollar Man ldquoGentlemen we can rebuild him Wehave the capability of making the worldrsquos first bionic man We can make him

better than he was before Better Stronger Fasterrdquo

Haverford College370 Lancaster AveHaverford PA 19041jlardashaverfordedu

References

Ahlstrom Sydney E (1972) A Religious History of the American People New HavenYale University Press

Albanese Catherine L (1997) Exchanging selves exchanging souls Contact com-bination and American religious history In Thomas A Tweed (ed) RetellingUS Religious History 200-26 Berkeley University of California Press

Anon (1851) A ship sunk by a whale Littellrsquos Living Age (29 November) 415-16Asad Talal (2003) Formations of the Secular Christianity Islam Modernity Stanford

Stanford University Press

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 33

34

Bacon Francis (1870) The Works of Francis Bacon James Spedding Robert LeslieEllis and Douglas Denon Heath (eds) Vol VIII New York Hurd andHoughton

Barton Bruce (2000) The Man Nobody Knows A Discovery of the Real Jesus ChicagoIvan R Dee

Beniger James R (1986) The Control Revolution Technological and Economic Origins ofthe Information Society Cambridge Harvard University Press

Benjamin Walter (1996) One-way street In Marcus Bullock amp Michael W Jennings(eds) Selected Writings Volume 1 1913-1926 444-88 Cambridge HarvardUniversity Press

mdash (2003) The work of art in the age of its technological reproducibility third ver-sion In Howard Eiland and Michael W Jennings (eds) Selected Writings Volume4 1938-40 251-83 Cambridge Harvard University Press

Bennett Charles A (1923) A Philosophical Study of Mysticism An Essay New HavenYale University Press 1923

Bernays Edward L (1923) Crystallizing Public Opinion New York Liverlight PublishingCorporation

Buchman SR (1925) Moby Dickmdashthe book and The Sea Beastmdashthe picture Anappreciation In Herman Melville Moby Dick or The White Whale ix-xi NewYork Grosset amp Dunlap

Butler Judith (1993) Bodies That Matter On the Discursive Limits of lsquoSexrsquo RoutledgeNew York

Cahir Linda Costanzo (1997) Routinizing the charismatic Melville and Hollywoodrsquosthree Moby-Dicks Melville Society Extracts 110 (September) 11-17

Cendrars Blaise (1922) Profound today Broom 13 ( January) 265-67Chadwick Owen (1975) The Secularization of the European Mind in the Nineteenth Century

Cambridge Cambridge University PressCoe George Albert (1917) A Social Theory of Religious Education New York Charles

Scribnerrsquos SonsDavidson Abraham A (1996) The European art invasion In Francis M Naumann

(ed) with Beth Vann Making Mischief Dada Invades New York 222-27 NewYork Whitney Museum of Art

Debord Guy (1995) Society of the Spectacle translated by Donald Nicholson-SmithNew York Zone Books

Derrida Jacques (1994) Specters of Marx The State of the Debt The Work of Mourningand the New International Peggy Kamuf (trans) New York Routledge

Dorsey George A (1925) Why We Behave Like Human Beings New York BlueRibbon Books

Epstein Jean (1922) The new conditions of literary phenomena Broom 21 (April)3-10

Frank Waldo (1919) Our America New York Boni and LiverightGammel Irene (2002) Baroness Elsa Gender Dada and Everyday Modernitymdasha Cultural

Biography Cambridge The MIT PressGeertz Clifford (1973) Deep play Notes on the Balinese cockfight In The Interpretation

of Cultures 412-53 New York Basic BooksHaraway Donna (2004) A manifesto for cyborgs Science technology and socialist

feminism in the 1980s In The Haraway Reader 7-45 New York RoutledgeHeap Jane (1922) Dada Little Review VII2 (Spring) 46Heidegger Martin (1977) The age of the world-picturerdquo In The Question Concerning

Technology and Other Essays 115-54 William Lovitt (trans) New York Harperamp Row

Hoffman Carol Stein (2001) The Barrymores Hollywoodrsquos First Family LexingtonUniversity of Kentucky Press

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 34

35

Jackson Josephine A and Helen M Salisbury (1922) Outwitting Our Nerves A Primerof Psychotherapy New York The Century Co

Jaffe David (1990) The village enlightenment in New England 1760-1820 TheWilliam and Mary Quarterly XLVII3 ( July) 327-46

Jones Rufus M (1915) Mysticism in present-day religion Harvard Theological ReviewVIII2 (April) 155-65

Kippenberg Hans G (2002) Discovering Religious History in the Modern Age BarbaraHarshav (trans) Princeton Princeton University Press

Kobler John (1977) Damned in Paradise The Life of John Barrymore New YorkAtheneum

Kuttner Alfred B (1922) Nerves In Harold E Stearns (ed) Civilization in the UnitedStates An Enquiry by Thirty Americans 427-42 New York Harcourt

Lauter Paul (1994) Melville climbs the canon American Literature 66 (March) 1-24Lawrence DH (1923) Studies in Classic American Literature New York T SeltzerLindbergh Charles A (1927) We New York GP Putnamrsquos SonsLippmann Walter (1922) Public Opinion New York Macmillan CompanyMarchand Roland (1985) Advertising the American Dream Making Way for Modernity

1920-1940 Berkeley University of California PressMarty Martin E Modern American Religion Vol 2 The Noise of Conflict 1919-1941

Chicago University of Chicago Press 1991May Henry F (1976) The Enlightenment in America New York Oxford University

PressMayhew Jonathan (1749) Concerning the difference between truth and falsehood

right and wrong In Seven Sermons 1-21 Boston Rogers and FowleMayr Otto (1970) The Origins of Feedback Control Cambridge The MIT PressMelville Herman (1993) Correspondence Volume 14 of The Writings of Herman Melville

Lynne Horth (ed) Evanston and Chicago Northwestern University Pressmdash (1925) Moby Dick or The White Whale 1851 New York Grosset amp DunlapMindell David A (2002) Between Human and Machine Feedback Control and Computing

Before Cybernetics Baltimore The Johns Hopkins University PressMumford Lewis (1929) Herman Melville New York The Literary Guild of Americamdash (1924) Sticks and Stones A Study of American Architecture and Civilization New York

Dover Publicationsmdash (1934) Technics and Civilization New York Harcourt Brace and Companymdash (1926) The Golden Day A Study in American Literature and Culture New York Boni

and LiverightMurray Jr HA (1929) Review of Lewis Mumfordrsquos Herman Melville The New

England Quarterly 2 ( July) 523-26Naumann Francis M (1994) New York Dada 1915-23 New York Harry N AbramsNoble David F (1999) The Religion of Technology The Divinity of Man and the Spirit

of Invention New York Penguin BooksNye David E (1994) American Technological Sublime Cambridge The MIT PressOrsquoNeil David (1921) The new Broom Broom 11 (November) 96Overton Grant (1928) The Philosophy of Fiction New York D AppletonPalmer Attorney General (1920) The case against the lsquoRedsrsquo The Forum A Magazine

of Constructive Nationalism 632 (February) 173-85Parsons Floyd W (1927) Everybodyrsquos business Advertising amp Selling ( June 29) 5 64Prampolini Enrico (1922) The aesthetic of the machine and mechanical intro-

spection in art Broom 33 (October) 235-37Rauschenbusch Walter (1917) A Theology for the Social Gospel New York The

Macmillan CompanyRichardson George P (1991) Feedback Thought in Social Science and Systems Theory

Philadelphia University of Pennsylvania Press

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 35

33

Figure 8 The Six Million Dollar Man ldquoGentlemen we can rebuild him Wehave the capability of making the worldrsquos first bionic man We can make him

better than he was before Better Stronger Fasterrdquo

Haverford College370 Lancaster AveHaverford PA 19041jlardashaverfordedu

References

Ahlstrom Sydney E (1972) A Religious History of the American People New HavenYale University Press

Albanese Catherine L (1997) Exchanging selves exchanging souls Contact com-bination and American religious history In Thomas A Tweed (ed) RetellingUS Religious History 200-26 Berkeley University of California Press

Anon (1851) A ship sunk by a whale Littellrsquos Living Age (29 November) 415-16Asad Talal (2003) Formations of the Secular Christianity Islam Modernity Stanford

Stanford University Press

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 33

34

Bacon Francis (1870) The Works of Francis Bacon James Spedding Robert LeslieEllis and Douglas Denon Heath (eds) Vol VIII New York Hurd andHoughton

Barton Bruce (2000) The Man Nobody Knows A Discovery of the Real Jesus ChicagoIvan R Dee

Beniger James R (1986) The Control Revolution Technological and Economic Origins ofthe Information Society Cambridge Harvard University Press

Benjamin Walter (1996) One-way street In Marcus Bullock amp Michael W Jennings(eds) Selected Writings Volume 1 1913-1926 444-88 Cambridge HarvardUniversity Press

mdash (2003) The work of art in the age of its technological reproducibility third ver-sion In Howard Eiland and Michael W Jennings (eds) Selected Writings Volume4 1938-40 251-83 Cambridge Harvard University Press

Bennett Charles A (1923) A Philosophical Study of Mysticism An Essay New HavenYale University Press 1923

Bernays Edward L (1923) Crystallizing Public Opinion New York Liverlight PublishingCorporation

Buchman SR (1925) Moby Dickmdashthe book and The Sea Beastmdashthe picture Anappreciation In Herman Melville Moby Dick or The White Whale ix-xi NewYork Grosset amp Dunlap

Butler Judith (1993) Bodies That Matter On the Discursive Limits of lsquoSexrsquo RoutledgeNew York

Cahir Linda Costanzo (1997) Routinizing the charismatic Melville and Hollywoodrsquosthree Moby-Dicks Melville Society Extracts 110 (September) 11-17

Cendrars Blaise (1922) Profound today Broom 13 ( January) 265-67Chadwick Owen (1975) The Secularization of the European Mind in the Nineteenth Century

Cambridge Cambridge University PressCoe George Albert (1917) A Social Theory of Religious Education New York Charles

Scribnerrsquos SonsDavidson Abraham A (1996) The European art invasion In Francis M Naumann

(ed) with Beth Vann Making Mischief Dada Invades New York 222-27 NewYork Whitney Museum of Art

Debord Guy (1995) Society of the Spectacle translated by Donald Nicholson-SmithNew York Zone Books

Derrida Jacques (1994) Specters of Marx The State of the Debt The Work of Mourningand the New International Peggy Kamuf (trans) New York Routledge

Dorsey George A (1925) Why We Behave Like Human Beings New York BlueRibbon Books

Epstein Jean (1922) The new conditions of literary phenomena Broom 21 (April)3-10

Frank Waldo (1919) Our America New York Boni and LiverightGammel Irene (2002) Baroness Elsa Gender Dada and Everyday Modernitymdasha Cultural

Biography Cambridge The MIT PressGeertz Clifford (1973) Deep play Notes on the Balinese cockfight In The Interpretation

of Cultures 412-53 New York Basic BooksHaraway Donna (2004) A manifesto for cyborgs Science technology and socialist

feminism in the 1980s In The Haraway Reader 7-45 New York RoutledgeHeap Jane (1922) Dada Little Review VII2 (Spring) 46Heidegger Martin (1977) The age of the world-picturerdquo In The Question Concerning

Technology and Other Essays 115-54 William Lovitt (trans) New York Harperamp Row

Hoffman Carol Stein (2001) The Barrymores Hollywoodrsquos First Family LexingtonUniversity of Kentucky Press

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 34

35

Jackson Josephine A and Helen M Salisbury (1922) Outwitting Our Nerves A Primerof Psychotherapy New York The Century Co

Jaffe David (1990) The village enlightenment in New England 1760-1820 TheWilliam and Mary Quarterly XLVII3 ( July) 327-46

Jones Rufus M (1915) Mysticism in present-day religion Harvard Theological ReviewVIII2 (April) 155-65

Kippenberg Hans G (2002) Discovering Religious History in the Modern Age BarbaraHarshav (trans) Princeton Princeton University Press

Kobler John (1977) Damned in Paradise The Life of John Barrymore New YorkAtheneum

Kuttner Alfred B (1922) Nerves In Harold E Stearns (ed) Civilization in the UnitedStates An Enquiry by Thirty Americans 427-42 New York Harcourt

Lauter Paul (1994) Melville climbs the canon American Literature 66 (March) 1-24Lawrence DH (1923) Studies in Classic American Literature New York T SeltzerLindbergh Charles A (1927) We New York GP Putnamrsquos SonsLippmann Walter (1922) Public Opinion New York Macmillan CompanyMarchand Roland (1985) Advertising the American Dream Making Way for Modernity

1920-1940 Berkeley University of California PressMarty Martin E Modern American Religion Vol 2 The Noise of Conflict 1919-1941

Chicago University of Chicago Press 1991May Henry F (1976) The Enlightenment in America New York Oxford University

PressMayhew Jonathan (1749) Concerning the difference between truth and falsehood

right and wrong In Seven Sermons 1-21 Boston Rogers and FowleMayr Otto (1970) The Origins of Feedback Control Cambridge The MIT PressMelville Herman (1993) Correspondence Volume 14 of The Writings of Herman Melville

Lynne Horth (ed) Evanston and Chicago Northwestern University Pressmdash (1925) Moby Dick or The White Whale 1851 New York Grosset amp DunlapMindell David A (2002) Between Human and Machine Feedback Control and Computing

Before Cybernetics Baltimore The Johns Hopkins University PressMumford Lewis (1929) Herman Melville New York The Literary Guild of Americamdash (1924) Sticks and Stones A Study of American Architecture and Civilization New York

Dover Publicationsmdash (1934) Technics and Civilization New York Harcourt Brace and Companymdash (1926) The Golden Day A Study in American Literature and Culture New York Boni

and LiverightMurray Jr HA (1929) Review of Lewis Mumfordrsquos Herman Melville The New

England Quarterly 2 ( July) 523-26Naumann Francis M (1994) New York Dada 1915-23 New York Harry N AbramsNoble David F (1999) The Religion of Technology The Divinity of Man and the Spirit

of Invention New York Penguin BooksNye David E (1994) American Technological Sublime Cambridge The MIT PressOrsquoNeil David (1921) The new Broom Broom 11 (November) 96Overton Grant (1928) The Philosophy of Fiction New York D AppletonPalmer Attorney General (1920) The case against the lsquoRedsrsquo The Forum A Magazine

of Constructive Nationalism 632 (February) 173-85Parsons Floyd W (1927) Everybodyrsquos business Advertising amp Selling ( June 29) 5 64Prampolini Enrico (1922) The aesthetic of the machine and mechanical intro-

spection in art Broom 33 (October) 235-37Rauschenbusch Walter (1917) A Theology for the Social Gospel New York The

Macmillan CompanyRichardson George P (1991) Feedback Thought in Social Science and Systems Theory

Philadelphia University of Pennsylvania Press

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 35

34

Bacon Francis (1870) The Works of Francis Bacon James Spedding Robert LeslieEllis and Douglas Denon Heath (eds) Vol VIII New York Hurd andHoughton

Barton Bruce (2000) The Man Nobody Knows A Discovery of the Real Jesus ChicagoIvan R Dee

Beniger James R (1986) The Control Revolution Technological and Economic Origins ofthe Information Society Cambridge Harvard University Press

Benjamin Walter (1996) One-way street In Marcus Bullock amp Michael W Jennings(eds) Selected Writings Volume 1 1913-1926 444-88 Cambridge HarvardUniversity Press

mdash (2003) The work of art in the age of its technological reproducibility third ver-sion In Howard Eiland and Michael W Jennings (eds) Selected Writings Volume4 1938-40 251-83 Cambridge Harvard University Press

Bennett Charles A (1923) A Philosophical Study of Mysticism An Essay New HavenYale University Press 1923

Bernays Edward L (1923) Crystallizing Public Opinion New York Liverlight PublishingCorporation

Buchman SR (1925) Moby Dickmdashthe book and The Sea Beastmdashthe picture Anappreciation In Herman Melville Moby Dick or The White Whale ix-xi NewYork Grosset amp Dunlap

Butler Judith (1993) Bodies That Matter On the Discursive Limits of lsquoSexrsquo RoutledgeNew York

Cahir Linda Costanzo (1997) Routinizing the charismatic Melville and Hollywoodrsquosthree Moby-Dicks Melville Society Extracts 110 (September) 11-17

Cendrars Blaise (1922) Profound today Broom 13 ( January) 265-67Chadwick Owen (1975) The Secularization of the European Mind in the Nineteenth Century

Cambridge Cambridge University PressCoe George Albert (1917) A Social Theory of Religious Education New York Charles

Scribnerrsquos SonsDavidson Abraham A (1996) The European art invasion In Francis M Naumann

(ed) with Beth Vann Making Mischief Dada Invades New York 222-27 NewYork Whitney Museum of Art

Debord Guy (1995) Society of the Spectacle translated by Donald Nicholson-SmithNew York Zone Books

Derrida Jacques (1994) Specters of Marx The State of the Debt The Work of Mourningand the New International Peggy Kamuf (trans) New York Routledge

Dorsey George A (1925) Why We Behave Like Human Beings New York BlueRibbon Books

Epstein Jean (1922) The new conditions of literary phenomena Broom 21 (April)3-10

Frank Waldo (1919) Our America New York Boni and LiverightGammel Irene (2002) Baroness Elsa Gender Dada and Everyday Modernitymdasha Cultural

Biography Cambridge The MIT PressGeertz Clifford (1973) Deep play Notes on the Balinese cockfight In The Interpretation

of Cultures 412-53 New York Basic BooksHaraway Donna (2004) A manifesto for cyborgs Science technology and socialist

feminism in the 1980s In The Haraway Reader 7-45 New York RoutledgeHeap Jane (1922) Dada Little Review VII2 (Spring) 46Heidegger Martin (1977) The age of the world-picturerdquo In The Question Concerning

Technology and Other Essays 115-54 William Lovitt (trans) New York Harperamp Row

Hoffman Carol Stein (2001) The Barrymores Hollywoodrsquos First Family LexingtonUniversity of Kentucky Press

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 34

35

Jackson Josephine A and Helen M Salisbury (1922) Outwitting Our Nerves A Primerof Psychotherapy New York The Century Co

Jaffe David (1990) The village enlightenment in New England 1760-1820 TheWilliam and Mary Quarterly XLVII3 ( July) 327-46

Jones Rufus M (1915) Mysticism in present-day religion Harvard Theological ReviewVIII2 (April) 155-65

Kippenberg Hans G (2002) Discovering Religious History in the Modern Age BarbaraHarshav (trans) Princeton Princeton University Press

Kobler John (1977) Damned in Paradise The Life of John Barrymore New YorkAtheneum

Kuttner Alfred B (1922) Nerves In Harold E Stearns (ed) Civilization in the UnitedStates An Enquiry by Thirty Americans 427-42 New York Harcourt

Lauter Paul (1994) Melville climbs the canon American Literature 66 (March) 1-24Lawrence DH (1923) Studies in Classic American Literature New York T SeltzerLindbergh Charles A (1927) We New York GP Putnamrsquos SonsLippmann Walter (1922) Public Opinion New York Macmillan CompanyMarchand Roland (1985) Advertising the American Dream Making Way for Modernity

1920-1940 Berkeley University of California PressMarty Martin E Modern American Religion Vol 2 The Noise of Conflict 1919-1941

Chicago University of Chicago Press 1991May Henry F (1976) The Enlightenment in America New York Oxford University

PressMayhew Jonathan (1749) Concerning the difference between truth and falsehood

right and wrong In Seven Sermons 1-21 Boston Rogers and FowleMayr Otto (1970) The Origins of Feedback Control Cambridge The MIT PressMelville Herman (1993) Correspondence Volume 14 of The Writings of Herman Melville

Lynne Horth (ed) Evanston and Chicago Northwestern University Pressmdash (1925) Moby Dick or The White Whale 1851 New York Grosset amp DunlapMindell David A (2002) Between Human and Machine Feedback Control and Computing

Before Cybernetics Baltimore The Johns Hopkins University PressMumford Lewis (1929) Herman Melville New York The Literary Guild of Americamdash (1924) Sticks and Stones A Study of American Architecture and Civilization New York

Dover Publicationsmdash (1934) Technics and Civilization New York Harcourt Brace and Companymdash (1926) The Golden Day A Study in American Literature and Culture New York Boni

and LiverightMurray Jr HA (1929) Review of Lewis Mumfordrsquos Herman Melville The New

England Quarterly 2 ( July) 523-26Naumann Francis M (1994) New York Dada 1915-23 New York Harry N AbramsNoble David F (1999) The Religion of Technology The Divinity of Man and the Spirit

of Invention New York Penguin BooksNye David E (1994) American Technological Sublime Cambridge The MIT PressOrsquoNeil David (1921) The new Broom Broom 11 (November) 96Overton Grant (1928) The Philosophy of Fiction New York D AppletonPalmer Attorney General (1920) The case against the lsquoRedsrsquo The Forum A Magazine

of Constructive Nationalism 632 (February) 173-85Parsons Floyd W (1927) Everybodyrsquos business Advertising amp Selling ( June 29) 5 64Prampolini Enrico (1922) The aesthetic of the machine and mechanical intro-

spection in art Broom 33 (October) 235-37Rauschenbusch Walter (1917) A Theology for the Social Gospel New York The

Macmillan CompanyRichardson George P (1991) Feedback Thought in Social Science and Systems Theory

Philadelphia University of Pennsylvania Press

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 35

35

Jackson Josephine A and Helen M Salisbury (1922) Outwitting Our Nerves A Primerof Psychotherapy New York The Century Co

Jaffe David (1990) The village enlightenment in New England 1760-1820 TheWilliam and Mary Quarterly XLVII3 ( July) 327-46

Jones Rufus M (1915) Mysticism in present-day religion Harvard Theological ReviewVIII2 (April) 155-65

Kippenberg Hans G (2002) Discovering Religious History in the Modern Age BarbaraHarshav (trans) Princeton Princeton University Press

Kobler John (1977) Damned in Paradise The Life of John Barrymore New YorkAtheneum

Kuttner Alfred B (1922) Nerves In Harold E Stearns (ed) Civilization in the UnitedStates An Enquiry by Thirty Americans 427-42 New York Harcourt

Lauter Paul (1994) Melville climbs the canon American Literature 66 (March) 1-24Lawrence DH (1923) Studies in Classic American Literature New York T SeltzerLindbergh Charles A (1927) We New York GP Putnamrsquos SonsLippmann Walter (1922) Public Opinion New York Macmillan CompanyMarchand Roland (1985) Advertising the American Dream Making Way for Modernity

1920-1940 Berkeley University of California PressMarty Martin E Modern American Religion Vol 2 The Noise of Conflict 1919-1941

Chicago University of Chicago Press 1991May Henry F (1976) The Enlightenment in America New York Oxford University

PressMayhew Jonathan (1749) Concerning the difference between truth and falsehood

right and wrong In Seven Sermons 1-21 Boston Rogers and FowleMayr Otto (1970) The Origins of Feedback Control Cambridge The MIT PressMelville Herman (1993) Correspondence Volume 14 of The Writings of Herman Melville

Lynne Horth (ed) Evanston and Chicago Northwestern University Pressmdash (1925) Moby Dick or The White Whale 1851 New York Grosset amp DunlapMindell David A (2002) Between Human and Machine Feedback Control and Computing

Before Cybernetics Baltimore The Johns Hopkins University PressMumford Lewis (1929) Herman Melville New York The Literary Guild of Americamdash (1924) Sticks and Stones A Study of American Architecture and Civilization New York

Dover Publicationsmdash (1934) Technics and Civilization New York Harcourt Brace and Companymdash (1926) The Golden Day A Study in American Literature and Culture New York Boni

and LiverightMurray Jr HA (1929) Review of Lewis Mumfordrsquos Herman Melville The New

England Quarterly 2 ( July) 523-26Naumann Francis M (1994) New York Dada 1915-23 New York Harry N AbramsNoble David F (1999) The Religion of Technology The Divinity of Man and the Spirit

of Invention New York Penguin BooksNye David E (1994) American Technological Sublime Cambridge The MIT PressOrsquoNeil David (1921) The new Broom Broom 11 (November) 96Overton Grant (1928) The Philosophy of Fiction New York D AppletonPalmer Attorney General (1920) The case against the lsquoRedsrsquo The Forum A Magazine

of Constructive Nationalism 632 (February) 173-85Parsons Floyd W (1927) Everybodyrsquos business Advertising amp Selling ( June 29) 5 64Prampolini Enrico (1922) The aesthetic of the machine and mechanical intro-

spection in art Broom 33 (October) 235-37Rauschenbusch Walter (1917) A Theology for the Social Gospel New York The

Macmillan CompanyRichardson George P (1991) Feedback Thought in Social Science and Systems Theory

Philadelphia University of Pennsylvania Press

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 35

36

Riley WB (1927) The faith of the fundamentalists Current History 262 ( June)434-40

Sanders Emmy Veronica (1921) America invades Europe Broom 11 (November)89-93

Schmidt Leigh Eric (2003) The making of modern lsquoMysticismrsquo Journal of the AmericanAcademy of Religion 712 ( June) 273-302

Sellers Charles (1991) The Market Revolution Jacksonian America 1815-1846 NewYork Oxford University Press

Stout Harry S (1977) Religion communications and the ideological origins ofthe American revolution The William and Mary Quarterly 344 519-41

Sullivan JWN (1970) Herman Melville (1923) Reprinted in Hershel Parker ampHarrison Hayford (eds) Moby-Dick as Doubloon Essays and Extract (1851-1970)158-65 New York Norton amp Company

Susman Warren I (1984) Culture as History The Transformation of American Society inthe Twentieth Century New York Pantheon Books

Tashjian Dickran (1975) Skyscraper Primitives Dada and the American Avant-Garde 1910-1925 Middletown Wesleyan University Press

Taylor Frederick Winslow (1911) The Principles of Scientific Management New YorkHarper and Brothers

Taylor Mark C (1984) Erring A Postmodern Atheology Chicago University ofChicago Press

Tomlinson HM (1926) Two Americans and a whale Some fruits of a Londonluncheon Harpers Magazine 152 (April) 618-21

Watson EL Grant (1970) Moby Dick (1920) Reprinted in Hershel Parker ampHarrison Hayford (eds) Moby-Dick as Doubloon Essays and Extract (1851-1970)134-37 New York Norton amp Company

Weaver Raymond M (1921) Herman Melville Mariner and Mystic New York GeorgeH Doran Company

Weaver Raymond M (1919) The centennial of Herman Melville Nation 109 (2 August) 145-46

Weber Max (1958) ldquoScience as a vocationrdquo In HH Gerth and C Wright Mills(eds) From Max Weber Essays in Sociology 129-56 New York Oxford UniversityPress

Wiener Norbert (1954) The Human Use of Human Beings Cybernetics and Society 2ndedition Garden City Doubleday Anchor Books

Williams Raymond (1966) The Long Revolution New York HarperWorrell WH (1922) Do brains of dollars operate your set Radio Broadcast 2

(November) 70Your world Has changed (1927) Advertisement Advertising amp Selling ( June 29) 15

Filmography

The Sea Beast (1926) Scenario by Bess Meredyth Dir Millard Webb Perf JohnBarrymore and Dolores Costello Warner Brothers 1926

MTSR 181_f2_1-36I 22406 604 PM Page 36