[Themaintainers] theologies of maintenance

[Lee Vinsel]

Hi, David.

I think you and I met briefly at SHOT St. Louis. Thanks for writing the
list.

I have been very interested in the relationship between religion and
maintenance since Andy and I started working on this topic. I have talked
to several people about this topic and some have brought it up at our
Maintainers conferences. For instance, Varun Adibhatla talked about the
image I paste below, drawing on Hindu theology around Vishnu, Siva, and
Brahma. And I have talked to the philosopher Paul Boshears about notions of
innovation, maintenance, and tradition in Confucianism. (A big issue is how
different faiths approach these fundamental concepts.) But to my knowledge
there has yet to be a larger conversation about it - I would love to see a
workshop on the topic! - and I don't know of many publications.

Of course, we have to be careful with our terms. At the broadest scale,
religions with long histories are clearly very good at "maintaining"
cultures by passing down ideas, beliefs, practices, etc. But even at a
narrower level - the maintenance and repair of physical objects (that
aren't neurons - lol) - religions have a lot to say. On pages 8-9 of
"After Innovation, Turn to Maintenance" (attached), Andy and I layout a few
thoughts, mostly in hopes of spurring further research. We talk about rules
within Judaism around the inspection, maintenance, and repair of holy
objects (which I learned about from my friend Robin Hammerman), and we
discuss Francesca Bray's foundational work on Confucianism and technology,
which has influenced us a great deal. Finally, Mike Geselowitz of the IEEE
History Center is very interested in the precise idea you bring up from
Jewish theology and Kabbalism: that without God's constant maintenance - or
maybe more accurately constant RE-creation - existence would not exist. Oh,
and a final, final thought: I have a soft spot for Bruno Latour's essay on
Frankenstein, "Love Your Monsters
<https://thebreakthrough.org/journal/issue-2/love-your-monsters>," which I
think you could read in a theological light, including the light of
Latour's Catholicism.

Hopefully some other folks on the list will have more literature thoughts
for you. I'm sure I'm forgetting things . . . it's Sunday and I'm foggy (as
you can tell by the fact that I brought up Latour).

Lee

*From Varun Adibhatla's Maintainers talk: *

[image: unnamed.png]


On Sun, Mar 17, 2019 at 9:29 AM David Zvi Kalman <depst at sas.upenn.edu>
wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> I'm a PhD student working at the intersection of Jewish history and the
> history of technology. I'm currently doing research on "theologies of
> maintenance" — that is, understandings of God as a being without whom the
> universe would cease to exist/fall apart/etc.
>
> Does anyone know if this frame has been associated with technological
> maintenance in the past? There is so much rich material to work with and I
> would be surprised if I'm the first to look into this.
>
> Thanks,
>
> David Zvi Kalman
>
> --
> David Zvi Kalman
> PhD Candidate
> Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations
> University of Pennsylvania
> _______________________________________________
> Themaintainers mailing list
> Themaintainers at lists.stevens.edu
> https://lists.stevens.edu/mailman/listinfo/themaintainers
>


-- 
Assistant Professor
Department of Science, Technology, and Society
Virginia Tech
leevinsel.com
Twitter: @STS_News
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