Digital Icons: Special Issue CfP

Fri Feb 14 17:03:44 UTC 2014

*Digital Orthodoxy: Mediating Post-Secularity in Russia and Ukraine*

*Call for Special Issue of 'Digital Icons'** www.digitalicons.org
<http://www.digitalicons.org/>*

Guest edited by

Mikhail Suslov, Maria Engström and Gregory Simons

(Uppsala University, Sweden)

Announcing the publication of a special issue of *Digital Icons: Studies in
Russian, Eurasian and Central European New Media* (DI), which aims to
explore the relationship between new media and religion, focusing on the
Russian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchy).

Orthodox Christianity has travelled a long way through the centuries,
amassing the intellectual riches of many generations of theologians, and
shaping the cultures and even histories of many countries, Russia included,
before the arrival of the digital era. For many an Orthodox believer, the
internet is purely instrumental - so to raise the problem 'Orthodoxy and
the internet' is akin to asking, how do internal-combustion engines impact
Orthodoxy? The answer would be not at all, whether a believer uses a
motor-car or not is irrelevant to the spirit of Christ's teaching. This
analogy, however, hardly works in relation to new media which have
revolutionized communications and relations among people, ways of
identity-making, and our understanding and use of power, among many other
things. New media posit questions that, when answered, fundamentally change
many aspects of religious practice and thinking, and challenge many fields
of Orthodox theology. For example, an Orthodox believer may enter a virtual
chapel, light a candle by drag and drop operations, send an online prayer
request and worship virtual icons and relics. How is the Orthodox
ecclesiology influenced in such digital environments? What is the role of
clerics? How is the notion of 'sobornost' [collectivity] being transformed
here? Could these actions be counted as authentic religious practices? How
does the virtual religious life intersect with religious experience in the
'real' church?

In 1997 Patriarch Aleksii II blessed the world-wide web information
technology as a new means of Orthodox missionary work. Today, the Yandex
search engine returns 19 million hits for the query 'Orthodox website';
believers have Orthodox social networks, dating web-based services, and
information agencies. One can follow Patriarch Kirill on Facebook, exchange
tweets with priest Ivan Okhlobystin, or leave comments on the blog of
Deacon Andrei Kuraev. In recent years, however, Church leaders and public
figures have become increasingly skeptical about new media. The internet,
some of them argue, breaches Russia's 'spiritual sovereignty' and 'implants
values and ideas alien to the Russian culture'. The question is how the
ROC, seeking to preserve a traditional ethos in the secularized world, can
cope with individualism, social activism and inclusiveness nurtured by Web
2.0 technologies? Moreover, the internet creates a platform for all kinds
of hybridizations and mixtures of different confessional practices and
ideas, including monotheistic religions, pagan cults, esoteric doctrines
and so on. In the end the ROC has but very little control on the meandering
religious developments of its spiritual children. Besides, large sectors of
the Runet voice anti-Orthodox criticism. Digital technologies provide
powerful leverage for anti-clerical activists who effectively parody
Orthodox tweeters, create demotivators and disseminate memes which ridicule
the Orthodox Church. 'Digital Orthodoxy' finds itself in a world of 'web
wars', and the ROC has to engage with them if it wishes to remain in that
world.

This special issue of DI welcomes contributions from specialists in both
new media and Russian Orthodoxy in order to map the overlapping terrain of
these fields of cultural production, and to analyze cases of the most
intensive interaction between them. This may include but is not limited to,
the official take of the ROC on new media, political Orthodoxy on the web,
virtual rituals in Orthodoxy, the internet and  Orthodox communal
subjectivity, the internet and Orthodox theology. This special issue aims
to provide an in-depth study of new media and old beliefs, and seeks to
build a new field of intellectual enquiry.

Contributions to the special issue may include research articles (8-10,000
words), essays (5-6,000 words), interviews, site reviews, artwork and so
forth. For more information on the editorial process please visit DI's web
site (www.digitalicons.org).

Please send a short bio (6-8 lines) stating your research interests and an
abstract (up to 300 words) or description of your possible contribution to
Dr Mikhail Suslov (Mikhail.suslov at ucrs.uu.se) by 1 March 2014. Contributors
will be notified by 10 March 2014. Selected authors will be required to
submit full drafts of their contributions by 1 June 2014. The peer review
process will take place in the summer-autumn 2014. The anticipated
publication date is winter 2014-15.

For more information please contact:

*Dr. Mikhail Suslov*
E-post: Mikhail.suslov at ucrs.uu.se
Tel.: +46-0728487258
Uppsala Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, Uppsala University
Gamla torget 3, Box 514, SE 75120 Uppsala, Sweden

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