Theologist and anthropologist Lluís Duch will be lecturing about the crisis of cultural transmission
Lluís Duch y Álvarez (Barcelona, 1936) will pronounce the lecture entitled “A society strongly affected by the crisis of transmissions” that will open the IX International Conference Communication and Reality, devoted in this edition to the screen and its role in postmodern societies. Duch’s reflection will aim at describing how contemporary societies are affected by a dramatic crisis of cultural transmissions, or in other words, to the destruction of collective memory. This crisis originates “an intense unwording of the way of life, thus and men and women are trapped by the urgencies of the present time, often made up by economic interests”, in Duch’s words. This grammar crisis that we suffer has some distant precedents: we found it described, analysed, and interpreted in works of 19th century intellectuals such as Georg Simmel, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Arnold Schönberg, and Rainer M. Rilke. Duch’s lecture will update the contemporary conditions for illuminating all of those who work in cultural transmission.
Lluís Duch y Álvarez is a Benedictine monk from the Monastery of Montserrat since 1963 and doctor of theology by the University of Tübingen-Germnay (1973). He is a well respected specialist in European cultural anthropology, area of knowledge to which he has contributed with many works. His last books are L’exili de Déu (2017), Religión y política (2014), Religió i comunicació (2010). He is also author of Un extraño en nuestra casa (2006), Algunes interpretacions del cristianisme (2004), Ambigüitats de l’amor (2004) and Antropología de la religión (2001).
Presentation: Reality and screen, a postmodern mirror
In the last decade the screen has acquired a centrality that implies a cultural change and marks a tipping point in the massive process of digitalization. The screen itself is a singular phenomenon that deserves a specific and differentiated attention because it modifies the very nature of the information. Screen implies connection and, increasingly, interaction, both with information (e.g hypertext) and with people who produce it (e.g. social networks).
The next International Conference ‘Communication and Reality’ 2017 proposes the topic Reality and screen, a postmodern mirror. We invite scholars, practiotioners and students to do a prospect exercise that addresses the following questions: What are the perspectives of this new stage of information society? Are we living irreversible changes or these changes can they be re-thinked (as it occurs with the return of the vinyl)? May it happen in the long term that the screen becomes the access tool to information for the poor, whereas the afluent classes will choose the printed book or the vinil disc?