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Tension and Ambiguity: Paul Tillich and Kendrick Lamar on Courage and Faith

2017; Toronto School of Theology; Volume: 33; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.3138/tjt.2017-0003

1918-6371

Adam Wert,

American Political and Social Dynamics

This article shows how Tillich's ontological structures can be used to illuminate the tensive reflexivity in Lamar's music—in which he both reflects on the tensions in his life and induces listeners to experience those same tensions—and suggests that Lamar's narrated experience demands a shift in Tillich's soteriology. Three lessons are taken from Tillich on the spiritual as the dimension of depth within all aspects of life, which is essentially in a state of healthy tension, and is necessarily marked by unavoidable ambiguities. We can understand the various juxtapositions of Kendrick Lamar's songs as devices that help maintain this tension by refusing easy answers, secure castles shut off from the fullness of reality. Lamar's dogged determination to be is not simply affirmation, but affirmation in tension with doubt. These concepts are applied to several songs from Lamar's To Pimp a Butterfly, especially “The Blacker the Berry.” While the claim of hypocrisy within the song has, with merit, been understood as advocating respectability politics, this Tillichian lens allows us to understand the song as dealing with the anxiety of guilt and condemnation, which needs to be genuinely felt in order for courage to exist. Doing justice to Lamar's articulation of dehumanization requires that we recognize a fourth anxiety alongside Tillich's three, of recognition and respect, in which non-being threatens one's ability to be seen as a full participant in a social world, thus cutting one off from the spiritual and historical dimensions of life. Lamar also challenges Tillich's presentation of faith and courage as coming from outside of one in spite of the particularity of one's existence. For Lamar, on the other hand, one should not seek the resolution to the tensions and contradictions of one's life by looking for an external solution, but be elevated by experiencing them fully.