A Postmodern Judith

The following is an excerpt of a 28 February 2015 email exchange between Will and Art.

Judith Beheading Holofernes by Caravaggio

Will:

Okay, so we've already got the apocalyptic vision of Steffi and Carlton. 

What I think we might be developing now is also an Old Testament-informed vision of the cult as electronic-age chosen people. We've got the Tower of Babel going on with Farthington's mode of language vs. Steffi's. Maybe Farthington is a Global Village Solomon.  

Maybe Steffi is a postmodern Judith.   

Nobody ever thinks of the idea that modern secular, digital culture is a widespread belief system with its own codes of behaviors, rites, rituals, creeds, prayers, initiations, liturgies, dress, etc. Maybe we help people see what is so obvious that nobody notices it--that's what McLuhan says artists are supposed to do. Steffi and Farthington can't just be antagonists to Arthur and Will; they are protagonists of digital ascendency. 

We should have a moment of horror when we realize we all worship Steffi's god, not the true God of Arthur.

Art:

Or, as I think we've suggested before, Carlton disappears into Steffi. Maybe at the most basic level he confronts her with the power of his Kurtzian realization, that, in seeing the impotence of imperialism ("pop would go the six-inch guns"), he had discovered the cunnic/yonic power of the jungle, he had transformed himself into a minor monster, enough so as to take a "high seat among the devils of the land."  

But he's no match for a Charybdis, a Leviathan, a Tiamat, a Lady Lazarus, who "eats men like air." His approach is the opposite of God's, who first separated the waters above the vault from the waters below, or Marduk, who split Tiamat in twain; in both cases, the masculine masters the feminine.  

But something new happens when Christ goes down into the waters of baptism. Carlton thinks he has arrived at the new, unassailable solution. And indeed he is well positioned to capitalize on this turbulent reversal where frames trump content. But in Steffi he meets one who surpasses him in this same power, just as Kurtz does in his mistress. 

Long story short, what happens when a black hole meets a bigger black hole? 

This is what happens when he meets Steffi Humboldt (Or Shakespeare's Sister? Or Victoria Woolf?)