Can “Dangerous Memories” be Communicated? Extending Insights from the Intercultural Theology of Robert J. Schreiter into Dialogue with Subculture and Racialization

Robert J. Schreiter's groundbreaking work on the connection between theological discourse and intercultural hermeneutics is a sound foundation for a theological project that engages culture and its connection to globalization and racialization within the United States. This essay extends insights from Schreiter's work to bear upon the theological problem within the US context of communicating "dangerous memories" of racialized suffering by bringing Schreiter's insights regarding semiotics and intercultural hermeneutics into engagement with the concepts of subculture and racialization. I conclude that this approach can assist theological communication of "dangerous memories" of racialized suffering through highlighting the aberrant theological anthropology conferred through racialization-and its dehumanizing hierarchy of race that offers and prohibits access to the benefits of globalized society depending upon one's entrance into "whiteness"-and semiotically focusing upon culture and subculture as the locations through which communication is possible. Such an approach may lead to a broader, re-humanizing reinterpretation of the signs, codes, and messages that are intertwined with phenotype.