Sixth installment of recent articles on political theology:
Pini Ifergan (Ben-Gurion University of the Negev), "Cutting to the Chase: Carl Schmitt and Hans Blumenberg on Political Theology and Secularization", New German Critique, 37 (3), fall 2010: pp. 149-71.
Abstract: "Is modernity a distinct historical epoch that can be radically distinguished from the one that preceded it? What are the implicit philosophical assumptions regarding our understanding of historical time that determine the sort of answer that we are inclined to give to this question? The debate between Carl Schmitt and Hans Blumenberg concerning the conceptual status of secularization as an explanatory category for the emergence of modernity provides us with a paradigmatic case that sheds light on those questions. With the recent publication of the correspondence between Schmitt and Blumenberg, I suggest in my article a reading of the debate that exposes how they use each other's argument to sharpen their distinctive evaluation of modernity and its relation to Christian theology. These two arguments and their unique dynamic transcend the common ways of either defending or criticizing modernity's claim to be a distinct and legitimate historical epoch. The suggested conceptual reconstructions of the Schmitt-Blumenberg debate point to a revaluation of the terms of the quarrel over modernity, Christian theology, and the relations between them."
Mary Alberi (Pace University), "'Like the Army of God's Camp': Political Theology and Apocalyptic Warfare at Charlemagne's Court", Viator: Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 41 (2), 2010: pp. 1-20.
Abstract: "The political theology of Charlemagne's court drew upon theological concepts to interpret contemporary events and fashion an identity for the populus christianus of the Frankish empire. The formulation of this political theology occurred against a background of political and military crises. A number of sources written by his ecclesiastical courtiers refer to the castra Dei, the militant ecclesia, or 'assembly of God's people,' commanded by Charlemagne, on pilgrimage through the dangerous last days of world history. These apocalyptic dangers called for enhanced royal authority to defend the castra Dei through a program of correction. Correction supported consensus among the king and his ecclesiastical and lay magnates, stabilizing the kingdom internally. Correction also established 'liturgical frontiers' separating the orderly and peaceful castra Dei from the world's chaotic paganism and heresy. This attempt to distinguish the castra Dei from its spiritual enemies gave Charlemagne's empire coherence in its political and military conflicts with enemies over contested frontier zones. The apocalyptic rhetoric surrounding references to the castra Dei was connected to political necessity, rather than expectation of an imminent apocalypse."
Scott M. Thomas (University of Bath), "Living Critically and 'Living Faithfully' in a Global Age: Justice, Emancipation and the Political Theology of International Relations", Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 39 (2), December 2010: pp. 505-24.
Abstract: "This article asks is there a place for religion and spirituality in a critical theory of international relations (IR)? The usual answer is 'no' because of critical theory's generally negative assessment of religion in domestic and international politics. However, while many of these criticisms can be acknowledged, a critical theory of IR still has to grapple with the more complex understanding of religion that already exists in critical theory, and the global resurgence of religion how [sic] Eurocentric its concept of religion actually is and how rooted it is in the European experience of modernisation. For the people of the global South – which comprises most of the people in the world – the struggle to 'live faithfully' amid the problems of world poverty, climate change, conflict and development can not be separated from their struggle for justice and emancipation. Therefore, a greater dialogue between critical theory and theology is necessary if critical theory is to more fully and creatively contribute to our understanding of some of the most important global issues in the study of IR in the 21st century."
Richard Lock-Pullan (University of Birmingham), "Challenging the Political Theology of America's 'War on Terror'", in "Just War on Terror? A Christian and Muslim Response", eds. David Fisher and Brian Wicker (Ashgate, July 2010): pp. 37-52.
www.ashgate.com/default.aspx?page=637&calcTitle=1&title_id=10155&edition_id=13263
Excerpt: "The events of 11 September 2001 and the response of the US to them have confronted many Christians with the question what is an appropriate Christian response to the challenges of living in an age of terror. In this context one can ask what insights Christian doctrine, as opposed to Christian ethics, has to contribute to understanding the present era and how these can then shape the nature of Christian engagement with the current issues [...]. This chapter will argue that one can generate a Christian perspective and subsequent ethics on the basis of seeing theology as an essentially interpretative task that mediates between Christian doctrine and political events. Using this approach President Bush's use of 'evil' is examined and shown to be a source of absolutist and self-righteous thinking, leading to a disastrous and unjust foreign policy. As an alternative, Reinhold Niebuhr's reinterpretation of the doctrine of sin will be shown to be an effective doctrinal lens to avoid these pitfalls, whilst itself generating a practice of Christian Realism that takes seriously the context of international affairs and Christian vision. The revisions of Niebuhr's theology are then used to develop a more liberal approach which gives the church a transformative role in addressing the 'war on terror', and concludes by examining how Obama's post-Niebuhrian liberal religious views shape current policy."
Jürgen Manemann (Hanover Institute of Philosophical Research), "New Orientations of the Political: On the Contemporary Challenge of Political Theology", in "Edward Schillebeeckx and Contemporary Theology", eds. Lieven Boeve, Frederiek Depoortere, and Stephan van Erp (Continuum, December 2010): pp. 67-81.
www.continuumbooks.com/books/detail.aspx?BookId=136299
No abstract provided.
Julia Reinhard Lupton (University of California, Irvine), "Introduction to a Totem Meal: Hans Kelsen, Carl Schmitt and Political Theology", in "The Return of Theory in Early Modern English Studies: Tarrying with the Subjunctive", eds. Paul Cefalu and Bryan Reynolds (Palgrave Macmillan, February 2011): page numbers not known.
www.palgrave.com/products/title.aspx?pid=371052
No abstract provided.
Graham Hammill (State University of New York at Buffalo), "The Marlovian Sublime: Imagination and the Problem of Political Theology", in "The Return of Theory in Early Modern English Studies: Tarrying with the Subjunctive", eds. Paul Cefalu and Bryan Reynolds (Palgrave Macmillan, February 2011): page numbers not known.
No abstract provided.
Ross Bender (independent researcher), "Changing the Calendar: Royal Political Theology and the Suppression of the Tachibana Naramaro Conspiracy of 757", Japanese Journal of Religious Studies, 37 (2), 2010: pp. 223-45.
No abstract provided.
Namsoon Kang (Texas Christian University), "Towards a Cosmopolitan Theology: Constructing Public Theology from the Future", in "Planetary Loves: Spivak, Postcoloniality, and Theology", eds. Stephen D. Moore and Mayra Rivera (Fordham University Press, December 2010): pp. 258-280.
www.fordhampress.com/detail.html?id=9780823233267
Excerpt: "I believe cosmopolitanism can be an effective discourse with which to advocate a politics of trans-identity of overlapping interests and heterogeneous or hybrid subjects in order to challenge conventional notions of exclusive belonging, identity, and citizenship, and to envision a planetary love through an ethical singularity aimed at a more peaceful and just world. I regard cosmopolitanism as a 'stronger mobilizing discourse' that captures Spivak's call for a mind-changing love for the planet. This essay is an effort to illuminate cosmopolitanism as a discourse that calls simultaneously for a planetary love through ethical singularity, in accordance with Spivak's notion, and for a radical neighborly love, in accordance with the Christian notion. As such, it is also an effort to articulate a cosmopolitan theological discourse, which I believe can be a mobilizing discourse for a more just and egalitarian world regardless of who one is."
Wanda Deifelt (Luther College), "Advocacy, Political Participation, and Citizenship: Lutheran Contributions to Public Theology", Dialog: A Journal of Theology, 49 (2), summer 2010: pp. 108-14.
Abstract: "Martin Luther never developed a political theory, but his theology does inform the way Christians live in society, making it both public and political. Luther's 'two kingdom theory' often has been misinterpreted to justify passivity and obedience toward civil authorities. Under closer examination, however, his theology applies to the everyday practices of politics, economics, and religious affairs. In the context of nation-building, a Lutheran theology fosters citizenship not only as individual rights and responsibilities, but as active participation in civil society."
Robert Meister (University of California, Santa Cruz), "Athens, Jerusalem and Rome after Auschwitz: Still the Jewish Question?", Thesis Eleven: Critical Theory and Historical Sociology, 102 (1), August 2010: pp. 76-96.
Abstract: "This article treats post-Holocaust humanitarianism as a secular version of St Paul's 'Jewish Question': why are there still Jews now that the particularities of Jewish history have universal meaning? It considers Paul's Judaeo-Christianity, a distinctively Christian embrace of Jewish survival, as the prototype of today's secular project of conversion to human rights, and asks what it means within this project for Jews to regard themselves as the only Jews. The article concludes by defining an Islamic alternative to the imperial reach of today's human rights discourse, based on the recent publication of 1981 lectures by the late N.O. Brown, who presented Islam as an alternative to the Pauline synthesis of Athens-Jerusalem that would renew, rather than supersede, the prophetic tradition of Jewish monotheism. Following Brown, the article presents Muhammad as the anti-Paul, and considers the key differences between their respective political theologies on issues such as fidelity, cruelty and particularly the urgency of justice. Islam's insistence that there is no 'time between' the end of evil and the beginning of justice shows the limitations of today's human rights discourse as a religion of permanent transition that denies urgency to justice itself. The 'Jewish Question' that Paul formulated for Christians in a Roman world order thus illuminates issues posed by the Holocaust and Israel for professed humanitarians today."
Peniel Rajkumar (United Theological College, Bangalore), "'How' Does the Bible Mean? The Bible and Dalit Liberation in India", Political Theology, 11 (3), 2010: pp. 410-30.
Abstract: "This essay analyses the role of the Bible in Dalit liberation in a context where Dalit theology, despite being increasingly recognized as an academic theology, hasn't been effective practically in either sustaining the Dalits in their struggles for liberation or in challenging the perpetuation of caste discrimination within the Indian churches. In the light of the Dalits' own reception of the Bible as a potential source of Dalit liberation the essay critically revisits some of the defining biblical paradigms articulated by Dalit theologians, using as its epistemological tool the tensions between 'epic' and 'emic' forms of theological conceptualizations, in order to identify the reasons for the lacunae between Dalit theology and its practical viability for Dalit liberation. In the light of this analysis the essay explores and offers the synoptic healing stories as a viable biblical paradigm which can animate the Dalit struggles for liberation and thus enhance the practical efficacy of Dalit liberation."
David Grumett (University of Exeter), "Blondel, the Philosophy of Action and Liberation Theology", Political Theology, 11 (4), 2010: pp. 507-29.
Abstract: "Maurice Blondel's philosophy of action and concrete political theology provide foundations for modern theologies of action. By commencing with the reflective subject, Blondel compensates the deficiencies of collectivist Marxist social analysis. He did not live to complete his account of the social, political and economic implications of his philosophy, but they are realized in the work and witness of others: Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Yves de Montcheuil, Henri de Lubac and John McNeill. Liberation theologians of diverse persuasions need especially to acknowledge their debt to Blondel in an era when, in Western societies, the fundamental context of action is no longer material but intellectual, spiritual and interpersonal. The abstract nature of his thought means that he frequently opens suggestive paths into further reflection rather than prescribing complete solutions to specific practical questions."
Vincent W. Lloyd (Georgia State University), "Review Essay: Political Theology of the Ordinary", Political Theology, 11 (4), 2010: pp. 607-18.
Abstract: "In her recent book, Emergency Politics, political theorist Bonnie Honig proposes a 'Jewish political theology' to support radical democratic theory. Instead of taking Carl Schmitt as the starting point for reflection on the political significance of religious concepts, Honig takes Franz Rosenzweig. This review essay enters Honig's work into conversations about political theology, and it explores the significance and novelty of her position. It suggests that Honig's argument repeatedly runs aground for the same reason: she relies on a background image of democracy as an ethos rather than as a tradition requiring faith."
Dominic O'Sullivan (Charles Sturt University), "Reconciliation: The Political Theological Nexus in Australasian Indigenous Public Policy", International Journal of Public Theology, 4 (4), 2010: pp. 426-45.
Abstract: "Reconciliation brings together Christological and anthropological dimensions of human thought to illustrate the nexus between religious principles and political means. For the state reconciliation is concerned with social cohesion and political stability. For the church, it extends the sacramental notion of reconciliation between God and penitent to public relationships. This article examines Roman Catholic contributions to secular reconciliation debates. It shows how religious precepts create moral imperatives to engagement with secular discourses as a necessary element of Christian mission. It also argues that the church's role in the disruption of indigenous societies creates an additional moral imperative to engage in reconciliation as mission and to articulate a Christian vision of indigenous rights."
Kalemba Mwambazambi (University of South Africa), "A missiological glance at South African Black Theology", Verbum et Ecclesia, 31 (1), 2010: without page numbers. Refereed electronic journal, full text available online:
www.ve.org.za/index.php/VE/article/view/53/412
Abstract: "Black South African theologians created South African Black theology during the late 1960s and early 1970s as a conscious and theological dimension of the liberation struggle against apartheid. They drew inspiration from African-American theology, biblical hermeneutics and the raw material of their own experiences and suffering, whilst simultaneously creating a new theological paradigm and political orientation to liberate Black South Africans from apartheid and European domination. Inevitably, South African Black theology was a liberation theology aimed at helping to eradicate the existing socio-political order. This article gave a missiological overview of Black theology and examined and assessed the relevance of this theology to contemporary post-apartheid South Africa. The critical-theological research method was used."
Showing posts with label early modernity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label early modernity. Show all posts
17 February 2011
30 December 2010
CFP: The "New Monarchy" and political theology
Research Conference "The 'New Monarchy': Rethinking the Relations of Elites and Princes in Europe's Iron Century – 1590s to 1720s" of the European Science Foundation (ESF), Scandic Linköping Väst (hotel), Linköping, Sweden, 5-9 September 2011
www.esf.org/activities/esf-conferences/details/2011/confdetail358.html
Call for papers
Papers on early-modern political theology are particularly invited (see perspective B below).
Description: "Since the 1955 congress of European historians in Rome, the assumption of a completion of institutional absolutist state-building by the later seventeenth century has been steadily eroded. During the last fifty years, a large number of studies has emphasized that unprecedented wars and war related burdens were a major stimulus for crucial changes in the relation of regimes and elites during the seventeenth century, but that these changes should not be characterized primarily in terms of the building of a bureaucratic coercive tax state increasingly independent from society and its pressure groups. The actual early modern innovation was public debt on a hitherto unknown scale. Whatever relevance taxes had gained by 1500 (as in France, England or Castile), the exploding costs of the European arms- and war race severely qualified their contribution to paying overall cost; hence the fact of exploding public debt.
"The new monarchies such as Valois and Bourbon France, Stuart Britain, Habsburg Spain or Vasa Sweden were rather characterized by participation in an unprecedented war- and arms race and the consequences of confessionalisation, subsequent unprecedented rise in public funds, mainly financed by unprecedented debt, and a whole range of new opportunities for profit and challenges for the preservation of status for new and old elites. Rather then [sic] experiencing the emancipation of an institutional bureaucratic state from its social and ecclesiastical elites by way of secure regular enforceable taxes, regimes became increasingly dependant on old and new elites to organize and broker public debt, farm taxes, and buy or pre-finance offices, while these elites became more dependant on the vagrancies on [sic] national politics to participate in new forms of income and protect their assets.
"As Lucien Bely put it with reference to Louis XIV, 'les creanciers du roi sont des groupes financiers, et derriere eux, la noblesse et la bourgeoisie qui pretent ses avoirs'. While certain groups profited from these changes, others felt left behind. Jim Collins described for Brittany as Ronald Hutton for the officers of the royal army in the Civil War the emergence of new elites. Debates and struggles ensued among elites about the distribution of resources and privileges, about access to offices and spoils, about the best course in costly foreign wars and about the legitimacy of the whole process. In these debates, new modes of argument and ritual developed, such as national rhetoric and the imagery of monarchy as a whole. The resulting new modes of government were neither characterized by the power of a bureaucratic state nor did they resemble late medieval relationships between crown, magnates and nobility. They were rather determined by relations of the various units of the dynastic agglomerate among each other and by the new relations of regimes to old and new elites; hence the focus of this conference to compare patterns of relations among regimes and elites across Europe during the crucial 'Iron Century'.
"The most important current collections of essays dealing with the relation of regimes and elites under the impact of war, various volumes of the ESF series on the origins of the modern state, cover in each volume the whole period from 1300 to 1800. Though their value is undisputed, they necessarily attempt to capture very general developments across many centuries and cannot pinpoint the precise impact of the unprecedented burden of war on European societies precisely in Europe's Iron Century. For example, since the overriding importance of public debt is freely acknowledged and documented for the later sixteenth and seventeenth century, the volumes do not draw conclusions from this but rather insist on the long term importance of state taxes over the whole period from 1300 to 1800. Current research suggests three perspectives for the comparison here attempted, each to be approached via three topics:
"A: Representation and Integration: Negotiating Allegiance. This perspective focuses on the strategies of regimes to integrate the elites of their agglomerate polities. The emphasis here is on the forging of the unity of the agglomerate polity by whatever means (including national rhetoric) and on the representation of the regime in relation to their various political nations. Issues include constitutional responses to crises of the agglomerate polity by improvising alleged fundamental laws and constitutions embedded in an alleged 'national' past, coins, paintings, flags, coronation rites as means of political integration, and the role of the court as points of contact. B: Contemporary Analyses of the Agglomerate Polity. New kinds of analysis, in particular comparing the new regimes with the principate and emperorship of Rome, but also with the tyranny of Tiberius and the regime of favorites running illegitimate resources of power, attempted to come to terms with the new nature of politics under the pressure of war and the new needs for legitimacy and persuasion. Issues will be in particular Tacitism and Historiography and the new Political Theology.
"C: Societal Architecture and Social Integration under Pressure of War. The conference will look at the societal architecture under the pressure of war, at the new service elites and the way in which both lower nobility and burgesses and the higher aristocracy and magnates adapted to the shifts in influence happening around them. It is now widely accepted that 'as public (i.e. princely) service became a decisive criterion for social status', nobilities ceased to be elites 'constituted by their own self-consciousness and by the comportment that authorized them', but became dependant on the 'military, ecclesiastical and civil offices and privileges of precedence granted by the ruler'. But while the ability and willingness of nobilities to exercise force with means independent of the crown had significantly shrunken by 1700, we also now know that this resulted in anything but centralized modern bureaucracies. Groups that will be addressed include new service elites such as financiers and officers in church, army, and administration; lower Gentry and 'Noblesse Seconde', Magnates and Higher Aristocracy."
Invited senior scholars will participate in all parts of the programme. The ESF invites younger scholars to apply for participation with a short talk or a poster. Travel grants and financial support for up to 25 younger researchers (PhD required) are available.
Please find further information and an online application form on the above website.
Deadline: 9 June 2011
www.esf.org/activities/esf-conferences/details/2011/confdetail358.html
Call for papers
Papers on early-modern political theology are particularly invited (see perspective B below).
Description: "Since the 1955 congress of European historians in Rome, the assumption of a completion of institutional absolutist state-building by the later seventeenth century has been steadily eroded. During the last fifty years, a large number of studies has emphasized that unprecedented wars and war related burdens were a major stimulus for crucial changes in the relation of regimes and elites during the seventeenth century, but that these changes should not be characterized primarily in terms of the building of a bureaucratic coercive tax state increasingly independent from society and its pressure groups. The actual early modern innovation was public debt on a hitherto unknown scale. Whatever relevance taxes had gained by 1500 (as in France, England or Castile), the exploding costs of the European arms- and war race severely qualified their contribution to paying overall cost; hence the fact of exploding public debt.
"The new monarchies such as Valois and Bourbon France, Stuart Britain, Habsburg Spain or Vasa Sweden were rather characterized by participation in an unprecedented war- and arms race and the consequences of confessionalisation, subsequent unprecedented rise in public funds, mainly financed by unprecedented debt, and a whole range of new opportunities for profit and challenges for the preservation of status for new and old elites. Rather then [sic] experiencing the emancipation of an institutional bureaucratic state from its social and ecclesiastical elites by way of secure regular enforceable taxes, regimes became increasingly dependant on old and new elites to organize and broker public debt, farm taxes, and buy or pre-finance offices, while these elites became more dependant on the vagrancies on [sic] national politics to participate in new forms of income and protect their assets.
"As Lucien Bely put it with reference to Louis XIV, 'les creanciers du roi sont des groupes financiers, et derriere eux, la noblesse et la bourgeoisie qui pretent ses avoirs'. While certain groups profited from these changes, others felt left behind. Jim Collins described for Brittany as Ronald Hutton for the officers of the royal army in the Civil War the emergence of new elites. Debates and struggles ensued among elites about the distribution of resources and privileges, about access to offices and spoils, about the best course in costly foreign wars and about the legitimacy of the whole process. In these debates, new modes of argument and ritual developed, such as national rhetoric and the imagery of monarchy as a whole. The resulting new modes of government were neither characterized by the power of a bureaucratic state nor did they resemble late medieval relationships between crown, magnates and nobility. They were rather determined by relations of the various units of the dynastic agglomerate among each other and by the new relations of regimes to old and new elites; hence the focus of this conference to compare patterns of relations among regimes and elites across Europe during the crucial 'Iron Century'.
"The most important current collections of essays dealing with the relation of regimes and elites under the impact of war, various volumes of the ESF series on the origins of the modern state, cover in each volume the whole period from 1300 to 1800. Though their value is undisputed, they necessarily attempt to capture very general developments across many centuries and cannot pinpoint the precise impact of the unprecedented burden of war on European societies precisely in Europe's Iron Century. For example, since the overriding importance of public debt is freely acknowledged and documented for the later sixteenth and seventeenth century, the volumes do not draw conclusions from this but rather insist on the long term importance of state taxes over the whole period from 1300 to 1800. Current research suggests three perspectives for the comparison here attempted, each to be approached via three topics:
"A: Representation and Integration: Negotiating Allegiance. This perspective focuses on the strategies of regimes to integrate the elites of their agglomerate polities. The emphasis here is on the forging of the unity of the agglomerate polity by whatever means (including national rhetoric) and on the representation of the regime in relation to their various political nations. Issues include constitutional responses to crises of the agglomerate polity by improvising alleged fundamental laws and constitutions embedded in an alleged 'national' past, coins, paintings, flags, coronation rites as means of political integration, and the role of the court as points of contact. B: Contemporary Analyses of the Agglomerate Polity. New kinds of analysis, in particular comparing the new regimes with the principate and emperorship of Rome, but also with the tyranny of Tiberius and the regime of favorites running illegitimate resources of power, attempted to come to terms with the new nature of politics under the pressure of war and the new needs for legitimacy and persuasion. Issues will be in particular Tacitism and Historiography and the new Political Theology.
"C: Societal Architecture and Social Integration under Pressure of War. The conference will look at the societal architecture under the pressure of war, at the new service elites and the way in which both lower nobility and burgesses and the higher aristocracy and magnates adapted to the shifts in influence happening around them. It is now widely accepted that 'as public (i.e. princely) service became a decisive criterion for social status', nobilities ceased to be elites 'constituted by their own self-consciousness and by the comportment that authorized them', but became dependant on the 'military, ecclesiastical and civil offices and privileges of precedence granted by the ruler'. But while the ability and willingness of nobilities to exercise force with means independent of the crown had significantly shrunken by 1700, we also now know that this resulted in anything but centralized modern bureaucracies. Groups that will be addressed include new service elites such as financiers and officers in church, army, and administration; lower Gentry and 'Noblesse Seconde', Magnates and Higher Aristocracy."
Invited senior scholars will participate in all parts of the programme. The ESF invites younger scholars to apply for participation with a short talk or a poster. Travel grants and financial support for up to 25 younger researchers (PhD required) are available.
Please find further information and an online application form on the above website.
Deadline: 9 June 2011
27 December 2010
Book: Wild Materialism: The Ethic of Terror and the Modern Republic
Jacques Lezra, "Wild Materialism: The Ethic of Terror and the Modern Republic" (Fordham University Press, September 2010):
www.fordhampress.com/detail.html?id=9780823232369
Publisher's description: "Wild Materialism speaks to three related questions in contemporary political philosophy. How, if different social interests and demands are constitutively antagonistic, can social unity emerge out of heterogeneity? Does such unity require corresponding universals, and, if so, what are they, where are they found, or how are they built? Finally, how must the concept of democracy be revised in response to economic globalization, state and nonstate terrorism, and religious, ethnic, or national fundamentalism? Polemically rehabilitating the term terror, Lezra argues that it can and should operate as a social universal. Perched perilously somewhere between the private and the public domains, terror is an experience of unboundable, objectless anxiety. It is something other than an interest held by different classes of people; it is not properly a concept (like equality or security) of the sort universal claims traditionally rest on. Yet terror's conceptual deficiency, Lezra argues, paradoxically provides the only adequate, secular way to articulate ethical with political judgments. Social terror, he dramatically proposes, is the foundation on which critiques of terrorist fundamentalisms must be constructed.
"Opening a groundbreaking methodological dialogue between Freud's work and Althusser's late understanding of aleatory materialism, Lezra shows how an ethic of terror, and in the political sphere a radically democratic republic, can be built on what he calls 'wild materialism.' Wild Materialism combines the close reading of cultural texts with detailed treatment of works in the radical-democratic and radical-republican traditions. The originality of its closely argued theses is matched and complemented by the breadth of its focus – encompassing the debates over the 'ticking bomb' scenario; the circumstances surrounding ETA's assassination of Admiral Luis Carrero Blanco in Madrid in 1973; the films of Gillo Pontecorvo; Sade's republican writing; Marx's Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right; and the roots of contemporary radical republicanism in early modern political theology (Bodin, Shakespeare, Parsons, Siliceo)." (some italics originally bold)
Endorsement: "An urgently contemporary study of the relation between 'terror' as a state of expectancy in relation to an event to come, and 'terrorism' as the deadly deployment of force in situations of radical exploitation and oppression." (Julia Reinhard Lupton, University of California, Irvine)
Jacques Lezra is Professor of Comparative Literature and Spanish and Portuguese at New York University.
www.fordhampress.com/detail.html?id=9780823232369
Publisher's description: "Wild Materialism speaks to three related questions in contemporary political philosophy. How, if different social interests and demands are constitutively antagonistic, can social unity emerge out of heterogeneity? Does such unity require corresponding universals, and, if so, what are they, where are they found, or how are they built? Finally, how must the concept of democracy be revised in response to economic globalization, state and nonstate terrorism, and religious, ethnic, or national fundamentalism? Polemically rehabilitating the term terror, Lezra argues that it can and should operate as a social universal. Perched perilously somewhere between the private and the public domains, terror is an experience of unboundable, objectless anxiety. It is something other than an interest held by different classes of people; it is not properly a concept (like equality or security) of the sort universal claims traditionally rest on. Yet terror's conceptual deficiency, Lezra argues, paradoxically provides the only adequate, secular way to articulate ethical with political judgments. Social terror, he dramatically proposes, is the foundation on which critiques of terrorist fundamentalisms must be constructed.
"Opening a groundbreaking methodological dialogue between Freud's work and Althusser's late understanding of aleatory materialism, Lezra shows how an ethic of terror, and in the political sphere a radically democratic republic, can be built on what he calls 'wild materialism.' Wild Materialism combines the close reading of cultural texts with detailed treatment of works in the radical-democratic and radical-republican traditions. The originality of its closely argued theses is matched and complemented by the breadth of its focus – encompassing the debates over the 'ticking bomb' scenario; the circumstances surrounding ETA's assassination of Admiral Luis Carrero Blanco in Madrid in 1973; the films of Gillo Pontecorvo; Sade's republican writing; Marx's Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right; and the roots of contemporary radical republicanism in early modern political theology (Bodin, Shakespeare, Parsons, Siliceo)." (some italics originally bold)
Endorsement: "An urgently contemporary study of the relation between 'terror' as a state of expectancy in relation to an event to come, and 'terrorism' as the deadly deployment of force in situations of radical exploitation and oppression." (Julia Reinhard Lupton, University of California, Irvine)
Jacques Lezra is Professor of Comparative Literature and Spanish and Portuguese at New York University.
28 November 2010
Book: The Theological-Political Origins of the Modern State
Just published: Bernard Bourdin, "The Theological-Political Origins of the Modern State: The Controversy between James I of England and Cardinal Bellarmine" (trans. Susan Pickford; Catholic University of America Press, November 2010):
http://cuapress.cua.edu/books/viewbook.cfm?Book=BOTP
Publisher's description: "Contemporary understanding of the modern state is so bound up with the development of liberal democracy that it may appear anachronistic to identify the origins of the modern state in a theological-political configuration of events. Yet in European history, the sovereignty of the people arose from the divine delegation of royal sovereignty to the temporal and spiritual orders – a theory that the Holy See could not countenance. The controversy that erupted between James I of England and Cardinal Bellarmine following the Gunpowder Plot of 1605 is a striking illustration of this political and ecclesiological dispute over who ultimately holds absolute sovereignty by divine right – the king or the pope? In this work, Bernard Bourdin clearly sets forth the political thought and theology of James I as an early intellectual foundation for the modern state. He offers a comprehensive examination of James's intense dispute with Bellarmine, a controversy that sent shock waves throughout Europe and had a lasting impact on the rise of the modern state."
Bernard Bourdin is Professor of Theology at the University of Metz, France.
http://cuapress.cua.edu/books/viewbook.cfm?Book=BOTP
Publisher's description: "Contemporary understanding of the modern state is so bound up with the development of liberal democracy that it may appear anachronistic to identify the origins of the modern state in a theological-political configuration of events. Yet in European history, the sovereignty of the people arose from the divine delegation of royal sovereignty to the temporal and spiritual orders – a theory that the Holy See could not countenance. The controversy that erupted between James I of England and Cardinal Bellarmine following the Gunpowder Plot of 1605 is a striking illustration of this political and ecclesiological dispute over who ultimately holds absolute sovereignty by divine right – the king or the pope? In this work, Bernard Bourdin clearly sets forth the political thought and theology of James I as an early intellectual foundation for the modern state. He offers a comprehensive examination of James's intense dispute with Bellarmine, a controversy that sent shock waves throughout Europe and had a lasting impact on the rise of the modern state."
Bernard Bourdin is Professor of Theology at the University of Metz, France.
15 November 2010
CFP: Shakespeare's Imagined Orient
International Conference "Shakespeare's Imagined Orient", at the American University of Beirut (AUB), Lebanon, 4-6 May 2011
www.aub.edu.lb/conferences/shake_orient/
Description: "Shakespeare studies has recently experienced a noticeable and dramatic geographical shift. As the textual landscape of Shakespeare's drama changes, it takes on new forms and now points to new horizons, namely the East and the Orient, and more particularly the Levant. From the blasted heaths of England, Shakespeare moves to the most arid and yet fertile soils of the Levant. The aim of the conference, in this emergent field, is to reconsider Shakespeare's diffusion from both Pre and Postcolonial Middle Eastern perspectives and to examine Shakespeare's critical relevance to understanding religion and politics on both a local scale (in the Middle East/the Orient) and globally. Reaching across disciplinary boundaries, Shakespeare's Imagined Orient aims to prove how the critical and artistic reception of Shakespeare in the Orient is paramount to apprehending and reinventing Shakespeare as a cultural and social bridge uniting the 'East' and the 'West' in the landscape of global culture.
"The organisers of the conference hope to offer a critical insight into Shakespeare and Early Modern political theology that would help refashion, remap broader issues that engage the status of cultural and religious identity, nation, and individuality in the landscape of global culture. With such issues in mind, we invite submissions concerning the following range of topics: Representations of the Orient in Shakespeare's Work; Christian/Muslim Representation/Interaction on Shakespeare's/the Early Modern stage; Local/Global Shakespeare (from a Middle Eastern perspective); Shakespeare's Women and The Orient; Desire, Phantasm, and the Orient; Identity and Nationhood; Material Culture and the Imagined Orient on Shakespeare's Stage."
Both paper abstracts (300 words) and session proposals are invited. Proposals should be sent as a Word file and include your name, institution, city and state or country, e-mail address, and phone number. Please attach a brief CV. E-mail your abstracts/session proposals to the conference chair, Prof François-Xavier Gleyzon (AUB), to whom you may also address questions: Shakespeare&theOrient@gmail.com
Deadline: 21 January 2011
Notifications will be sent by 15 February 2011.
Please note that each presentation is limited to 25 minutes (including questions).
Keynote speakers: Jonathan Burton (West Virginia University), Gerald MacLean (University of Exeter), Margaret Litvin (Boston University), and Daniel Vitkus (Florida State University).
The conference is supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the British Council, the Anis K. Makdisi Program in Literature, the Office of the Provost, the Center for American Studies and Research, and the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at AUB.
www.aub.edu.lb/conferences/shake_orient/
Description: "Shakespeare studies has recently experienced a noticeable and dramatic geographical shift. As the textual landscape of Shakespeare's drama changes, it takes on new forms and now points to new horizons, namely the East and the Orient, and more particularly the Levant. From the blasted heaths of England, Shakespeare moves to the most arid and yet fertile soils of the Levant. The aim of the conference, in this emergent field, is to reconsider Shakespeare's diffusion from both Pre and Postcolonial Middle Eastern perspectives and to examine Shakespeare's critical relevance to understanding religion and politics on both a local scale (in the Middle East/the Orient) and globally. Reaching across disciplinary boundaries, Shakespeare's Imagined Orient aims to prove how the critical and artistic reception of Shakespeare in the Orient is paramount to apprehending and reinventing Shakespeare as a cultural and social bridge uniting the 'East' and the 'West' in the landscape of global culture.
"The organisers of the conference hope to offer a critical insight into Shakespeare and Early Modern political theology that would help refashion, remap broader issues that engage the status of cultural and religious identity, nation, and individuality in the landscape of global culture. With such issues in mind, we invite submissions concerning the following range of topics: Representations of the Orient in Shakespeare's Work; Christian/Muslim Representation/Interaction on Shakespeare's/the Early Modern stage; Local/Global Shakespeare (from a Middle Eastern perspective); Shakespeare's Women and The Orient; Desire, Phantasm, and the Orient; Identity and Nationhood; Material Culture and the Imagined Orient on Shakespeare's Stage."
Both paper abstracts (300 words) and session proposals are invited. Proposals should be sent as a Word file and include your name, institution, city and state or country, e-mail address, and phone number. Please attach a brief CV. E-mail your abstracts/session proposals to the conference chair, Prof François-Xavier Gleyzon (AUB), to whom you may also address questions: Shakespeare&theOrient@gmail.com
Deadline: 21 January 2011
Notifications will be sent by 15 February 2011.
Please note that each presentation is limited to 25 minutes (including questions).
Keynote speakers: Jonathan Burton (West Virginia University), Gerald MacLean (University of Exeter), Margaret Litvin (Boston University), and Daniel Vitkus (Florida State University).
The conference is supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the British Council, the Anis K. Makdisi Program in Literature, the Office of the Provost, the Center for American Studies and Research, and the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at AUB.
19 September 2010
Book: Succeeding King Lear: Literature, Exposure, and the Possibility of Politics
Just published: Emily Sun, "Succeeding King Lear: Literature, Exposure, and the Possibility of Politics" (Fordham University Press, September 2010):
www.fordhampress.com/detail.html?id=9780823232802
Publisher's description: "This book investigates the question of the relations between literature and politics in democratic modernity. It makes connections between Shakespeare's tragedy, Wordsworth's poetry, and the documentary nonfiction and photography of James Agee and Walker Evans to offer new ways of thinking of the logic of literary history and the relationship between early modern, Romantic, and twentieth-century texts; and it brings literature into dialogue with contemporary philosophical re-readings of Western political thought. King Lear, Sun argues, opens up a literary succession at the heart of which is a crisis of sovereignty. Interrogating what it is to be a political subject as actor and spectator in the kingdom, the play issues an injunction to transform spectatorship in plural and nonsovereign terms. Thorough engagements with Lear, Wordsworth in the 1790s, and Agee and Evans in the 1930s assume this injunction by generating new artistic genres and modes for their times."
Endorsement: "Emily Sun has written an ambitious study that is a delight to read on how literary works foster a truly active rather than passive spectatorship as well as a 'plural speech' necessary to avoid tyrannous political theologies. Drawing in major contemporary theorists, her patient and clarifying style, with its ability to zoom from large questions to telling textual detail, compels us to think anew about this task." (Geoffrey Hartman, Yale)
Emily Sun is Visiting Assistant Professor of English at the College of the Holy Cross
www.fordhampress.com/detail.html?id=9780823232802
Publisher's description: "This book investigates the question of the relations between literature and politics in democratic modernity. It makes connections between Shakespeare's tragedy, Wordsworth's poetry, and the documentary nonfiction and photography of James Agee and Walker Evans to offer new ways of thinking of the logic of literary history and the relationship between early modern, Romantic, and twentieth-century texts; and it brings literature into dialogue with contemporary philosophical re-readings of Western political thought. King Lear, Sun argues, opens up a literary succession at the heart of which is a crisis of sovereignty. Interrogating what it is to be a political subject as actor and spectator in the kingdom, the play issues an injunction to transform spectatorship in plural and nonsovereign terms. Thorough engagements with Lear, Wordsworth in the 1790s, and Agee and Evans in the 1930s assume this injunction by generating new artistic genres and modes for their times."
Endorsement: "Emily Sun has written an ambitious study that is a delight to read on how literary works foster a truly active rather than passive spectatorship as well as a 'plural speech' necessary to avoid tyrannous political theologies. Drawing in major contemporary theorists, her patient and clarifying style, with its ability to zoom from large questions to telling textual detail, compels us to think anew about this task." (Geoffrey Hartman, Yale)
Emily Sun is Visiting Assistant Professor of English at the College of the Holy Cross
05 September 2010
CONF: Political Theology Reformed?
Biennial Conference of the Reformation Studies Colloquium, University of St Andrews, Scotland, 7-9 September 2010
www.st-andrews.ac.uk/~rsc2010/
This conference features a panel on "Political Theology Reformed? The Influence of the Reformation on Early Modern Political Languages in England, Germany and Poland" (Session 2/Panel 15, 8 September, 11.00 am-12.30 pm, location: Divinity Lecture 2) with the following papers: Maciej Ptaszyński (University of Warsaw), "Language of Resistance: Political, Philosophical and Theological Arguments for Disobedience in Sixteenth-Century Poland"; Philip Hahn (Goethe University Frankfurt), "The Political Language of Lutheran Preachers in Saxonia and Thuringia, ca. 1550-1675: Continuity and Adaptation of a Reformation Heritage"; Ulrich Niggemann (University of Marburg), "Divine Right, 'Courtly Reformation' or Contractarianism? Political and Theological Languages in the Funeral Sermons on King William III"; chair: Natalia Nowakowska (Oxford).
No abstracts provided by the organizers.
Further information (full programme, how to register, etc.) is to be found on the above website.
www.st-andrews.ac.uk/~rsc2010/
This conference features a panel on "Political Theology Reformed? The Influence of the Reformation on Early Modern Political Languages in England, Germany and Poland" (Session 2/Panel 15, 8 September, 11.00 am-12.30 pm, location: Divinity Lecture 2) with the following papers: Maciej Ptaszyński (University of Warsaw), "Language of Resistance: Political, Philosophical and Theological Arguments for Disobedience in Sixteenth-Century Poland"; Philip Hahn (Goethe University Frankfurt), "The Political Language of Lutheran Preachers in Saxonia and Thuringia, ca. 1550-1675: Continuity and Adaptation of a Reformation Heritage"; Ulrich Niggemann (University of Marburg), "Divine Right, 'Courtly Reformation' or Contractarianism? Political and Theological Languages in the Funeral Sermons on King William III"; chair: Natalia Nowakowska (Oxford).
No abstracts provided by the organizers.
Further information (full programme, how to register, etc.) is to be found on the above website.
17 July 2010
CFP: Libertinism and Baroque Performativity in the 17th Century
International one-day symposium "Libertinism and Baroque Performativity in the 17th Century", organized by the IDeA research group at RITS school for audiovisual and performing arts of Erasmushogeschool Brussel (EHB) in collaboration with Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUI) and the HAR research group at Paris West University Nanterre La Défense, at EHB, Brussels, Belgium,
16 November 2010
Papers on "the political-theological body" in baroque performativity are explicitly invited.
Description: "In Sodom or the Quintessence of Debauchery, a Restoration closet drama attributed to John Wilmot, Second Earl of Rochester (1647-1680) and posthumously published in 1684, Bolloxian, King of Sodom, prescribes sodomy as the sole acceptable sexual practice. This simple and straightforward pornographic joke serves as the starting point of a burlesque and satirical parable in which Rochester reveals the libidinous nature state reigning at the court of Charles II, while at the same time radically and unequivocally appealing to the reader's imagination. Sodom is only one of many early modern examples in which intellectual criticism and free-thinking go hand in hand with an erotic and sometimes pornographically grotesque universe in which, through its baroque extravaganza, the distinction between the real and the fictional, between the private and the public disintegrates.
"This symposium focuses on the 17th-century libertine (sub)culture that seeks to combine the critique of everything public and political with a visual regime that lavishly indulges in the sensuous experience of baroque theatricality. Libertinism is both a means of intellectual
(self-)criticism and an utterly performative practice, it is both political reflexion and wilful transgression. It is a locus of self-fashioning, on a sexual level (experimentation with possible sexual roles and identities) and on a political level (as Jeremy Webster explains in Performing Libertinism, the debate itself is an integral part of the available political discourse), as much as it is playful make-believe, joyfully investigating the limits of representation itself. Within this complex bias of seemingly conflicting interests the physical body takes up a central role.
"Exactly this libertine body will be at the heart of this symposium, which takes a double goal as its starting point. It will address and question the culture of libertinism in terms of baroque performativity in which notions such as immersion and transgression are key-points of investigation. In other words: how does libertine discourse produce the effects it names (and shows)? And, secondly, this symposium seeks to investigate the role and the place of the baroque body in all its performative aspects (the burlesque body, the political-theological body, the satirical body, the pornographic body). We welcome any contributions addressing one or both of these questions through the presentation of concrete case studies that might be related to early modern libertine life in Europe, particularly in France and England." (bold removed)
Keynote speakers: Jeremy W. Webster (Ohio University) and Christian Biet (Paris West University Nanterre La Défense)
Please send your abstract (250 words) and a short biographical notice to Karel Vanhaesebrouck (Erasmushogeschool Brussel): karel.vanhaesebrouck@ehb.be
Deadline: 1 September 2010
The definitive programme will be published on 20 September.
The symposium will be preceded by a graduate seminar for MA- and PhD-students on 15 November 2010.
16 November 2010
Papers on "the political-theological body" in baroque performativity are explicitly invited.
Description: "In Sodom or the Quintessence of Debauchery, a Restoration closet drama attributed to John Wilmot, Second Earl of Rochester (1647-1680) and posthumously published in 1684, Bolloxian, King of Sodom, prescribes sodomy as the sole acceptable sexual practice. This simple and straightforward pornographic joke serves as the starting point of a burlesque and satirical parable in which Rochester reveals the libidinous nature state reigning at the court of Charles II, while at the same time radically and unequivocally appealing to the reader's imagination. Sodom is only one of many early modern examples in which intellectual criticism and free-thinking go hand in hand with an erotic and sometimes pornographically grotesque universe in which, through its baroque extravaganza, the distinction between the real and the fictional, between the private and the public disintegrates.
"This symposium focuses on the 17th-century libertine (sub)culture that seeks to combine the critique of everything public and political with a visual regime that lavishly indulges in the sensuous experience of baroque theatricality. Libertinism is both a means of intellectual
(self-)criticism and an utterly performative practice, it is both political reflexion and wilful transgression. It is a locus of self-fashioning, on a sexual level (experimentation with possible sexual roles and identities) and on a political level (as Jeremy Webster explains in Performing Libertinism, the debate itself is an integral part of the available political discourse), as much as it is playful make-believe, joyfully investigating the limits of representation itself. Within this complex bias of seemingly conflicting interests the physical body takes up a central role.
"Exactly this libertine body will be at the heart of this symposium, which takes a double goal as its starting point. It will address and question the culture of libertinism in terms of baroque performativity in which notions such as immersion and transgression are key-points of investigation. In other words: how does libertine discourse produce the effects it names (and shows)? And, secondly, this symposium seeks to investigate the role and the place of the baroque body in all its performative aspects (the burlesque body, the political-theological body, the satirical body, the pornographic body). We welcome any contributions addressing one or both of these questions through the presentation of concrete case studies that might be related to early modern libertine life in Europe, particularly in France and England." (bold removed)
Keynote speakers: Jeremy W. Webster (Ohio University) and Christian Biet (Paris West University Nanterre La Défense)
Please send your abstract (250 words) and a short biographical notice to Karel Vanhaesebrouck (Erasmushogeschool Brussel): karel.vanhaesebrouck@ehb.be
Deadline: 1 September 2010
The definitive programme will be published on 20 September.
The symposium will be preceded by a graduate seminar for MA- and PhD-students on 15 November 2010.
20 June 2010
Book: Politics Reformed: The Anglo-American Legacy of Covenant Theology
Just published: Glenn A. Moots, "Politics Reformed: The Anglo-American Legacy of Covenant Theology" (University of Missouri Press, June 2010):
http://press.umsystem.edu/spring2010/moots.htm
Publisher's description: "Many studies have considered the Bible's relationship to politics, but almost all have ignored the heart of its narrative and theology: the covenant. In this book, Glenn Moots explores the political meaning of covenants past and present by focusing on the theory and application of covenantal politics from the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries. Moots demands that we revisit political theology because it served as the most important school of politics in early modern Europe and America. He describes the strengths of the covenant tradition while also presenting its limitations and dangers. Contemporary political scientists such as Eric Voegelin, Daniel Elazar, and David Novak are called on to provide insight into both the covenant's history and its relevance today.
"Moots's work chronicles and critiques the covenant tradition while warning against both political ideology and religious enthusiasm. It provides an inclusive and objective outline of covenantal politics by considering the variations of Reformed theology and their respective consequences for political practice. This includes a careful account of how covenant theology took root on the European continent in the sixteenth century and then inspired ecclesiastical and civil politics in England, Scotland, and America. Moots goes beyond the usual categories of Calvinism or Puritanism to consider the larger movement of which both were a part. By integrating philosophy, theology, and history, Moots also invites investigation of broader political traditions such as natural law and natural right. Politics Reformed demonstrates how the application of political theology over three centuries has important lessons for our own dilemmas about church and state. It makes a provocative contribution to understanding foundational questions in an era of rising fundamentalism and emboldened secularism, inspiring readers to rethink the importance of religion in political theory and practice, and the role of the covenant tradition in particular."
Endorsements: "This remarkable overview of history and opinion regarding the political theory of the covenant will undoubtedly become a standard resource on the history of this topic." (Thomas S. Kidd, Baylor University)
"Politics Reformed provides a clear and readable study of the idea of covenant in the Anglo-American setting. A particular contribution is its analysis of the place of the natural law tradition in Reformed political theology – a tradition missed by many even within Reformed circles." (Jeffry H. Morrison, Regent University)
Glenn A. Moots is Associate Professor of Political Science and Philosophy at Northwood University, Michigan campus.
http://press.umsystem.edu/spring2010/moots.htm
Publisher's description: "Many studies have considered the Bible's relationship to politics, but almost all have ignored the heart of its narrative and theology: the covenant. In this book, Glenn Moots explores the political meaning of covenants past and present by focusing on the theory and application of covenantal politics from the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries. Moots demands that we revisit political theology because it served as the most important school of politics in early modern Europe and America. He describes the strengths of the covenant tradition while also presenting its limitations and dangers. Contemporary political scientists such as Eric Voegelin, Daniel Elazar, and David Novak are called on to provide insight into both the covenant's history and its relevance today.
"Moots's work chronicles and critiques the covenant tradition while warning against both political ideology and religious enthusiasm. It provides an inclusive and objective outline of covenantal politics by considering the variations of Reformed theology and their respective consequences for political practice. This includes a careful account of how covenant theology took root on the European continent in the sixteenth century and then inspired ecclesiastical and civil politics in England, Scotland, and America. Moots goes beyond the usual categories of Calvinism or Puritanism to consider the larger movement of which both were a part. By integrating philosophy, theology, and history, Moots also invites investigation of broader political traditions such as natural law and natural right. Politics Reformed demonstrates how the application of political theology over three centuries has important lessons for our own dilemmas about church and state. It makes a provocative contribution to understanding foundational questions in an era of rising fundamentalism and emboldened secularism, inspiring readers to rethink the importance of religion in political theory and practice, and the role of the covenant tradition in particular."
Endorsements: "This remarkable overview of history and opinion regarding the political theory of the covenant will undoubtedly become a standard resource on the history of this topic." (Thomas S. Kidd, Baylor University)
"Politics Reformed provides a clear and readable study of the idea of covenant in the Anglo-American setting. A particular contribution is its analysis of the place of the natural law tradition in Reformed political theology – a tradition missed by many even within Reformed circles." (Jeffry H. Morrison, Regent University)
Glenn A. Moots is Associate Professor of Political Science and Philosophy at Northwood University, Michigan campus.
07 June 2010
CONF: Political Theology as the Problem
International conference "Political Theology as the Problem" of the Institute of Political Science and International Relations of the Jagiellonian University and the Institute of Political Science of the Jesuit University of Philosophy and Education "Ignatianum", at the Ignatianum, ul. Kopernika 26, Krakow, Poland, 16-17 September 2010
www.ignatianum.edu.pl/ptheology/
Description: "Political theology is the problem that a modern science of politics should be apt to confront. For that kind of theology means primarily an intellectual as well as moral (with 'moral' coming first) attitude towards the very foundation of a political community that ought to be connected with divine command rather than purely human invention. The political theologian deals with the issues of order, authority, subordination to the Law of God or His will. Indeed, what is at stake is the most basic question of the best way of life men can lead; the life that now appears to be lived according to the command from above. And what is the relation between such a command and the workings of unassisted human reason? Is the possibility of political theology in its current guise not deeply pervaded by a growing distrust of philosophy and science? Is it not a kind of mere abreaction against the world of disenchantment and secularization provided by modern political philosophy? Yet the attitude characteristic of a political theologian may also bear witness to the fact that modern philosophy or science has never truly resolved the tension between what is rational and what is political, between the reason and passion of a citizen. Hence some tradition that preceded anti-traditional modernity must be seriously taken into consideration.
"The problem of political theology refers to a large number of highly differentiated domains of theoretical research. It also has its counterpart on the side of political practice insofar as a continual struggle between various political-theological attitudes can be found within each of the societies of the West. We can perceive, too, some menacing political-theological pressure born in societies that evidently do not share the prevalent Western position, i.e. a conviction that the core of religious matters must be situated in the private sphere. To have our present situation plausibly explained a broad undertaking in the whole field of the history of ideas must be launched. The present conference marks an attempt towards such an undertaking. We want to discuss the problem of political theology as well as some of its sources rooted in ancient and medieval traditions of thought. Thus the problem of political theology may be connected with the problem of modern political atheism in light of some obvious limitations of the modern solution regarding the relations between Reason and Revelation we now face. Last but not least, this is an opportunity to confront some prevalent views on political-theological issues as they appear in the different contexts of the different countries the participants come from."
Speakers include: Victoria Kahn (Berkeley), "Political Theology and Modern Culture: Strauss, Schmitt, Spinoza, and Arendt"; Daniel Tanguay (University of Ottawa), "Democracy as Negative Political Theology: Marcel Gauchet's Theory of Democracy"; David Janssens (Tilburg University), "Violent Grace: The Theologico-Political Problem in Ancient Poetry and Philosophy"; Herfried Münkler (Humboldt University of Berlin), "Politische Mythen als eine Form der politischen Religion" ("Political Myths as a Form of Political Religion"; organizers' translation); Ryszard Legutko (Jagiellonian University), "Problem ciągłości kulturowej narodu w kontekście teologiczno-politycznym" ("Cultural Continuity of a Nation as a Theologico-Political Problem"; organizers' translation); Leora Batnitzky (Princeton), "Law and Belief: Judaism, Christianity, and the Theologico-Political Predicament of Modernity"; Till Kinzel (Braunschweig University of Technology), "Political Theology, Hermeneutics and Bible Criticism: English Thinkers on Reason and Revelation between 'libertas philosophandi' and 'conservatio tranquillitatis' in the 17th and 18th Century"; Emmanuel Patard (University of Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne), "The Theologico-Political Problem and the Strauss-Voegelin Debate"; Marek A. Cichocki (University of Warsaw), "Carl Schmitt's Political Theology"; John McCormick (University of Chicago), "Post-Enlightenment Sources of Political Authority: Biblical Atheism, Political Theology, and the Schmitt-Strauss Exchange"; Arkadiusz Górnisiewicz (Jagiellonian University), "The Problem of the Closure of any Political Theology: Remarks on the Controversy between Erik Peterson, Carl Schmitt, and Hans Blumenberg"
The registration section of the website does not yet provide any information.
People interested in participating may therefore want to contact: tpolityczna@ignatianum.edu.pl
Coordinators: Paweł Armada, Krzysztof Matuszek (both Ignatianum), Mateusz Filary, Arkadiusz Górnisiewicz (both Jagiellonian University)
www.ignatianum.edu.pl/ptheology/
Description: "Political theology is the problem that a modern science of politics should be apt to confront. For that kind of theology means primarily an intellectual as well as moral (with 'moral' coming first) attitude towards the very foundation of a political community that ought to be connected with divine command rather than purely human invention. The political theologian deals with the issues of order, authority, subordination to the Law of God or His will. Indeed, what is at stake is the most basic question of the best way of life men can lead; the life that now appears to be lived according to the command from above. And what is the relation between such a command and the workings of unassisted human reason? Is the possibility of political theology in its current guise not deeply pervaded by a growing distrust of philosophy and science? Is it not a kind of mere abreaction against the world of disenchantment and secularization provided by modern political philosophy? Yet the attitude characteristic of a political theologian may also bear witness to the fact that modern philosophy or science has never truly resolved the tension between what is rational and what is political, between the reason and passion of a citizen. Hence some tradition that preceded anti-traditional modernity must be seriously taken into consideration.
"The problem of political theology refers to a large number of highly differentiated domains of theoretical research. It also has its counterpart on the side of political practice insofar as a continual struggle between various political-theological attitudes can be found within each of the societies of the West. We can perceive, too, some menacing political-theological pressure born in societies that evidently do not share the prevalent Western position, i.e. a conviction that the core of religious matters must be situated in the private sphere. To have our present situation plausibly explained a broad undertaking in the whole field of the history of ideas must be launched. The present conference marks an attempt towards such an undertaking. We want to discuss the problem of political theology as well as some of its sources rooted in ancient and medieval traditions of thought. Thus the problem of political theology may be connected with the problem of modern political atheism in light of some obvious limitations of the modern solution regarding the relations between Reason and Revelation we now face. Last but not least, this is an opportunity to confront some prevalent views on political-theological issues as they appear in the different contexts of the different countries the participants come from."
Speakers include: Victoria Kahn (Berkeley), "Political Theology and Modern Culture: Strauss, Schmitt, Spinoza, and Arendt"; Daniel Tanguay (University of Ottawa), "Democracy as Negative Political Theology: Marcel Gauchet's Theory of Democracy"; David Janssens (Tilburg University), "Violent Grace: The Theologico-Political Problem in Ancient Poetry and Philosophy"; Herfried Münkler (Humboldt University of Berlin), "Politische Mythen als eine Form der politischen Religion" ("Political Myths as a Form of Political Religion"; organizers' translation); Ryszard Legutko (Jagiellonian University), "Problem ciągłości kulturowej narodu w kontekście teologiczno-politycznym" ("Cultural Continuity of a Nation as a Theologico-Political Problem"; organizers' translation); Leora Batnitzky (Princeton), "Law and Belief: Judaism, Christianity, and the Theologico-Political Predicament of Modernity"; Till Kinzel (Braunschweig University of Technology), "Political Theology, Hermeneutics and Bible Criticism: English Thinkers on Reason and Revelation between 'libertas philosophandi' and 'conservatio tranquillitatis' in the 17th and 18th Century"; Emmanuel Patard (University of Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne), "The Theologico-Political Problem and the Strauss-Voegelin Debate"; Marek A. Cichocki (University of Warsaw), "Carl Schmitt's Political Theology"; John McCormick (University of Chicago), "Post-Enlightenment Sources of Political Authority: Biblical Atheism, Political Theology, and the Schmitt-Strauss Exchange"; Arkadiusz Górnisiewicz (Jagiellonian University), "The Problem of the Closure of any Political Theology: Remarks on the Controversy between Erik Peterson, Carl Schmitt, and Hans Blumenberg"
The registration section of the website does not yet provide any information.
People interested in participating may therefore want to contact: tpolityczna@ignatianum.edu.pl
Coordinators: Paweł Armada, Krzysztof Matuszek (both Ignatianum), Mateusz Filary, Arkadiusz Górnisiewicz (both Jagiellonian University)
17 January 2010
Public lecture: The Primal Scenes of Political Theology
University of California at Davis, Davis Humanities Institute (DHI),
126 Vorhies Hall, 1st and A streets, Davis, California, USA,
21 January 2010, 4.00-5.30 pm
Public lecture by Jacques Lezra (Professor of Comparative Literature and Spanish and Portuguese at New York University):
"The Primal Scences of Political Theology"
http://dhi.ucdavis.edu/?p=2987
"And earthly power doth then show likest God's / When mercy seasons justice." – William Shakespeare, "The Merchant of Venice"
"This analogy is the very site of the theologico-political, the hyphen [trait d'union] or translation between the theological and the political." – Jacques Derrida, "Of Spirit: Heidegger and the Question"
In "The Primal Scenes of Political Theology", Jacques Lezra will approach a cluster of urgent questions in contemporary political and cultural theory by reading Freud's readings of Schiller: Is there indeed a "trait d'union" between the theological and the political, marked (as Carl Schmitt and other proponents of the secularization thesis argue) somewhere in the period of early modernity? Which "early modernity" do we mean? And under what conditions can we approach it? What forms of cultural mediation determine the encounter between theology and politics for us today? And conversely: is our understanding of "cultural mediation" itself marked by the encounter between theology and politics in the early modern period?
This event is sponsored by the Graduate Program in Critical Theory, the Departments of English, German, Comparative Literature, Spanish and Portuguese, and the Early Modern Research Cluster.
For more information please contact Matthew Stratton (UC Davis): mstratton@ucdavis.edu
126 Vorhies Hall, 1st and A streets, Davis, California, USA,
21 January 2010, 4.00-5.30 pm
Public lecture by Jacques Lezra (Professor of Comparative Literature and Spanish and Portuguese at New York University):
"The Primal Scences of Political Theology"
http://dhi.ucdavis.edu/?p=2987
"And earthly power doth then show likest God's / When mercy seasons justice." – William Shakespeare, "The Merchant of Venice"
"This analogy is the very site of the theologico-political, the hyphen [trait d'union] or translation between the theological and the political." – Jacques Derrida, "Of Spirit: Heidegger and the Question"
In "The Primal Scenes of Political Theology", Jacques Lezra will approach a cluster of urgent questions in contemporary political and cultural theory by reading Freud's readings of Schiller: Is there indeed a "trait d'union" between the theological and the political, marked (as Carl Schmitt and other proponents of the secularization thesis argue) somewhere in the period of early modernity? Which "early modernity" do we mean? And under what conditions can we approach it? What forms of cultural mediation determine the encounter between theology and politics for us today? And conversely: is our understanding of "cultural mediation" itself marked by the encounter between theology and politics in the early modern period?
This event is sponsored by the Graduate Program in Critical Theory, the Departments of English, German, Comparative Literature, Spanish and Portuguese, and the Early Modern Research Cluster.
For more information please contact Matthew Stratton (UC Davis): mstratton@ucdavis.edu
29 December 2009
CONF: Early Modern/Postmodern: Inventing the Political Subject
8th Annual West Coast Conference on Law and Literature "Early Modern/Postmodern: Inventing the Political Subject", at the University of Southern California's Gould School of Law, University Park Campus, Musick Law Building, Faculty Lounge, Room 433,
13 January 2010, 2-6 pm
http://web-app.usc.edu/ws/eo2/calendar/32/event/871394
The West Coast Conference on Law and Literature explores how the early modern period invented the political subjecthood we inhabit to this day.
How do contemporary studies in political theory, ranging from Hannah Arendt to Carl Schmitt to Michel Foucault, transform our understanding of these debates, and how are the postmodern thinkers in turn inflected (or is it infected?) by those of the earlier period? Are we modern, pre-modern, postmodern, or somehow residing in all three moments at once?
The organizers' goal is not only to return to central questions of the relationship between the individual and the political and turn them a little onto their heads, but to draw anew the connections between law, literature, and the social.
Speakers for the conference include: Julia Reinhard Lupton (English and Comparative Literature, University of California, Irvine), "Arendt in Italy: Or, The Taming of the Shrew"; Victoria Kahn (English and Comparative Literature, UC Berkeley) who will also turn to Arendt, this time in the context of Spinoza, Old Testament law, political theology, and literature; Bernadette Meyler (Law, Cornell University), connecting law and literature, in her case drawing on Schmitt, Foucault, and Hobbes.
The conference will be followed by a reception.
Organizers: Center for Law, History and Culture, in collaboration with the Early Modern Studies Institute at USC.
RSVP: clhcserv@law.usc.edu
13 January 2010, 2-6 pm
http://web-app.usc.edu/ws/eo2/calendar/32/event/871394
The West Coast Conference on Law and Literature explores how the early modern period invented the political subjecthood we inhabit to this day.
How do contemporary studies in political theory, ranging from Hannah Arendt to Carl Schmitt to Michel Foucault, transform our understanding of these debates, and how are the postmodern thinkers in turn inflected (or is it infected?) by those of the earlier period? Are we modern, pre-modern, postmodern, or somehow residing in all three moments at once?
The organizers' goal is not only to return to central questions of the relationship between the individual and the political and turn them a little onto their heads, but to draw anew the connections between law, literature, and the social.
Speakers for the conference include: Julia Reinhard Lupton (English and Comparative Literature, University of California, Irvine), "Arendt in Italy: Or, The Taming of the Shrew"; Victoria Kahn (English and Comparative Literature, UC Berkeley) who will also turn to Arendt, this time in the context of Spinoza, Old Testament law, political theology, and literature; Bernadette Meyler (Law, Cornell University), connecting law and literature, in her case drawing on Schmitt, Foucault, and Hobbes.
The conference will be followed by a reception.
Organizers: Center for Law, History and Culture, in collaboration with the Early Modern Studies Institute at USC.
RSVP: clhcserv@law.usc.edu
04 December 2009
CONF: Renaissance Society of America annual meeting
56th Annual Meeting of the Renaissance Society of America (RSA), in Venice, Italy, 8-10 April 2010
www.rsa.org/meetings/annualmeeting.php
A number of papers on political theology will be given at this conference.
Foremost, a panel on "Early Modern and Contemporary Political Theologies", organized by Travis R. DeCook (Carleton University) and chaired by Paul Anthony Stevens (University of Toronto), will take place on 8 April, 9.00-10.30 am (Università Ca Foscari – San Basilio – Aula 0E).
Abstracts of two papers in this panel: Travis R. DeCook, "Milton and the Post-Postmodern Turn to St. Paul": "Recently, the philosophers Slavoj Žižek and Alain Badiou have emphasized the significance of St. Paul's formulation of universalism for our purportedly 'post-political' era. This paper considers the problematic status of Judaism and Jewish identity within this scheme by taking up the function of the Pauline spirit/letter distinction in the writings of John Milton. Specifically, it considers the role played by the notion of Christianity's supersession of the Jewish past in Milton's political writings and the poems Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes. These late poems offer a suggestive analogy with Badiou and Zizek, since they reflect on the defeat of Milton's revolutionary hopes. The function of Jewish identity in these texts complicates prevailing understandings of Christian supersession; this paper uncovers how such complications play an important role in Milton's post-Restoration politics, and moreover illuminate and challenge how Pauline universalism gets appropriated in today's political thought."
Jennifer Rebecca Rust (Saint Louis University), "Political Theologies of the Corpus Mysticum: Schmitt, Kantorowicz and de Lubac": "The fate of the corpus mysticum in the work of Carl Schmitt and Ernst Kantorowicz measures the distance between these two theorists' 'political theologies.' Schmitt marginalizes the traditional notion of the collective 'mystical body' of the Church in order to foreground the 'concrete' person of the decisive sovereign, while Kantorowicz implicitly corrects Schmitt by emphasizing the transference of the corpus mysticum from an ecclesiastical to a political context in the premodern period. I identify a third way between these two alternatives in a major source for Kantorowicz's analysis of the corpus mysticum, the twentieth-century Catholic theologian Henri de Lubac. Kantorowicz faithfully reproduces much of de Lubac's argument, but he also subtly misreads de Lubac's claims about the dynamic relationship between Eucharistic and ecclesiastical bodies in the early Church. I consider how the corpus mysticum opens a space for dialogue between contemporary theories of political theology and twentieth-century Catholic resourcement theology."
In the panel "Sessions in Honor of Colin Eisler II: Trecento and Quattrocento Devotional Images" (8 April, 11.00 am-12.30 pm, Fondazione Cini – Sala del Piccolo Teatro), Suzanna B. Simor (City University of New York, Queen's College) will be presenting a paper on "The Credo in Siena: Art, Civic Religion and Politics in Sienese Images of the Christian Creeds".
Abstract: "In the span of a mere four decades in the first half of the fifteenth century, Siena produced an unparalleled concentration of ambitious visualizations of the texts of the Christian creeds, realized in commissions for the most powerful patrons of the city-state. The leading communal and ecclesiastical institutions all featured Creed cycles in prominent locations, embedded in coherent and richly symbolic programs. This essay will explore the imagery of these Sienese Creed cycles within their shared tradition and with attention to factors that likely contributed to their individual interpretations. It will demonstrate that within the prescriptive confines of its Creed's content, each of the Sienese renditions was addressed directly to its audience, conceived and employed for specific purposes, and deployed iconography that supported each patron's particular agenda. Reflecting Siena's characteristic blending of religion and politics, the diverse Sienese Credos partake of the political theology of the commune."
In the panel "Politics and Religion: Jesuit and Princely Cooperation in Counter-Reformation Strategies", sponsored by the Society for Early Modern Catholic Studies (9 April, 4.00-5.30 pm, Università Ca Foscari – San Basilio – Aula 2B), Raffaella Santi (Università degli Studi di Urbino) will be presenting a paper on "The Function of Political Theology in Hobbes's Leviathan".
Abstract: "The English version of Leviathan, written by Thomas Hobbes in Paris during the English Civil War, appeared in London in 1651; while the somewhat revised Latin version was published in Amsterdam in 1668, as the third and final part of the collection of Hobbes's Opera philosophica, Quae latine scripsit, Omnia…(in 2 vols). The main change in both versions of Leviathan, with respect to his previous works on political philosophy – namely The Elements of Law, Natural and Politic and De cive – is the great importance attributed to religious and theological matters, and to political theology. For instance, Hobbes discusses the famous De summo pontifice by Cardinal Bellarmino, re-interpreting many biblical passages through his materialistic theology. Emphasizing the 'chiasmus' rhetorical structure of the four parts of Leviathan, I will argue that the Hobbesian analysis of the holy Scriptures is made in order to ensure a theoretical 'theological' foundation for sovereign power, that reinforces the 'scientific' foundation, based on human nature, carried out in the first two parts of Leviathan."
In the same panel, John H. Smith (University of California, Irvine) will be presenting a paper, "Bellarmine, Kings, and The Church": "As the chief apologist and theologian of the post-Trentine Counter-[R]eformation, the Jesuit cardinal Robert Bellarmine (1542-1621) systematized the arguments against Protestantism in his monumental Disputations on Controversies of the Christian Faith against the Heretics (1586-89, 1596, 1608). Central to his discussion are the debates over the extent of the church's political power as well as over the religious authority of temporal leaders. Bellarmine strove to find a middle ground, what Hughes Oliphant Old calls a 'baroque synthesis' between Aquinas and Machiavelli, between the ambitions of the popes and the claims of kings and princes across Europe. On the one hand, his writings were at one point placed on the papal index (by Sixtus V) and, on the other, he delivered a powerful response to James I of England against the oath of allegiance. This paper explores Bellarmine's politico-theological arguments, comparing them to the Protestant thinkers he took so seriously. They have continued relevance today for disputations concerning religious vs. secular political authority."
In the panel "Weimar, Late Medieval and Renaissance Italy: Erich Auerbach and the Quest for European Internationalism", sponsored by the Renaissance Studies Certificate Program at CUNY's Graduate Center (10 April, 2.00-3.30 pm, Biblioteca Marciana), Jane O. Newman (University of California, Irvine) will be presenting a paper on "Modernity, Habitus, Ethics: Worldliness in Auerbach's Dante and Boccaccio".
Abstract: "In his 1921 dissertation on the Renaissance novella, Auerbach maintains that 'this-worldliness' is the essence of the Romance tradition. While the exemplum and fabliau appear to offer anterior models, he claims that it was Dante and his focus in the Commedia on 'secular life' that were the origins of this most 'modern' of genres. My paper investigates the evolution of Auerbach's argument about the relation between Dante and Boccaccio between 1921 and 1946 in the context of the political-theological controversies in Germany during the early twentieth century. In the poetry of Auerbach's exceedingly Thomist Dante, the 'image of man' counterintuitively 'eclipses the image of God' and thus counters the 'spiritualizing' 'figural-Christian' logic associated with Protestant dialectical theology. And yet, it is not clear that the ensuing modern world of Boccaccio's Decameron is much better, ensnared as it is in a habitus of worldly desire with no 'constructive ethical force.'"
You can find further information on the conference, including registration, on the RSA's website.
www.rsa.org/meetings/annualmeeting.php
A number of papers on political theology will be given at this conference.
Foremost, a panel on "Early Modern and Contemporary Political Theologies", organized by Travis R. DeCook (Carleton University) and chaired by Paul Anthony Stevens (University of Toronto), will take place on 8 April, 9.00-10.30 am (Università Ca Foscari – San Basilio – Aula 0E).
Abstracts of two papers in this panel: Travis R. DeCook, "Milton and the Post-Postmodern Turn to St. Paul": "Recently, the philosophers Slavoj Žižek and Alain Badiou have emphasized the significance of St. Paul's formulation of universalism for our purportedly 'post-political' era. This paper considers the problematic status of Judaism and Jewish identity within this scheme by taking up the function of the Pauline spirit/letter distinction in the writings of John Milton. Specifically, it considers the role played by the notion of Christianity's supersession of the Jewish past in Milton's political writings and the poems Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes. These late poems offer a suggestive analogy with Badiou and Zizek, since they reflect on the defeat of Milton's revolutionary hopes. The function of Jewish identity in these texts complicates prevailing understandings of Christian supersession; this paper uncovers how such complications play an important role in Milton's post-Restoration politics, and moreover illuminate and challenge how Pauline universalism gets appropriated in today's political thought."
Jennifer Rebecca Rust (Saint Louis University), "Political Theologies of the Corpus Mysticum: Schmitt, Kantorowicz and de Lubac": "The fate of the corpus mysticum in the work of Carl Schmitt and Ernst Kantorowicz measures the distance between these two theorists' 'political theologies.' Schmitt marginalizes the traditional notion of the collective 'mystical body' of the Church in order to foreground the 'concrete' person of the decisive sovereign, while Kantorowicz implicitly corrects Schmitt by emphasizing the transference of the corpus mysticum from an ecclesiastical to a political context in the premodern period. I identify a third way between these two alternatives in a major source for Kantorowicz's analysis of the corpus mysticum, the twentieth-century Catholic theologian Henri de Lubac. Kantorowicz faithfully reproduces much of de Lubac's argument, but he also subtly misreads de Lubac's claims about the dynamic relationship between Eucharistic and ecclesiastical bodies in the early Church. I consider how the corpus mysticum opens a space for dialogue between contemporary theories of political theology and twentieth-century Catholic resourcement theology."
In the panel "Sessions in Honor of Colin Eisler II: Trecento and Quattrocento Devotional Images" (8 April, 11.00 am-12.30 pm, Fondazione Cini – Sala del Piccolo Teatro), Suzanna B. Simor (City University of New York, Queen's College) will be presenting a paper on "The Credo in Siena: Art, Civic Religion and Politics in Sienese Images of the Christian Creeds".
Abstract: "In the span of a mere four decades in the first half of the fifteenth century, Siena produced an unparalleled concentration of ambitious visualizations of the texts of the Christian creeds, realized in commissions for the most powerful patrons of the city-state. The leading communal and ecclesiastical institutions all featured Creed cycles in prominent locations, embedded in coherent and richly symbolic programs. This essay will explore the imagery of these Sienese Creed cycles within their shared tradition and with attention to factors that likely contributed to their individual interpretations. It will demonstrate that within the prescriptive confines of its Creed's content, each of the Sienese renditions was addressed directly to its audience, conceived and employed for specific purposes, and deployed iconography that supported each patron's particular agenda. Reflecting Siena's characteristic blending of religion and politics, the diverse Sienese Credos partake of the political theology of the commune."
In the panel "Politics and Religion: Jesuit and Princely Cooperation in Counter-Reformation Strategies", sponsored by the Society for Early Modern Catholic Studies (9 April, 4.00-5.30 pm, Università Ca Foscari – San Basilio – Aula 2B), Raffaella Santi (Università degli Studi di Urbino) will be presenting a paper on "The Function of Political Theology in Hobbes's Leviathan".
Abstract: "The English version of Leviathan, written by Thomas Hobbes in Paris during the English Civil War, appeared in London in 1651; while the somewhat revised Latin version was published in Amsterdam in 1668, as the third and final part of the collection of Hobbes's Opera philosophica, Quae latine scripsit, Omnia…(in 2 vols). The main change in both versions of Leviathan, with respect to his previous works on political philosophy – namely The Elements of Law, Natural and Politic and De cive – is the great importance attributed to religious and theological matters, and to political theology. For instance, Hobbes discusses the famous De summo pontifice by Cardinal Bellarmino, re-interpreting many biblical passages through his materialistic theology. Emphasizing the 'chiasmus' rhetorical structure of the four parts of Leviathan, I will argue that the Hobbesian analysis of the holy Scriptures is made in order to ensure a theoretical 'theological' foundation for sovereign power, that reinforces the 'scientific' foundation, based on human nature, carried out in the first two parts of Leviathan."
In the same panel, John H. Smith (University of California, Irvine) will be presenting a paper, "Bellarmine, Kings, and The Church": "As the chief apologist and theologian of the post-Trentine Counter-[R]eformation, the Jesuit cardinal Robert Bellarmine (1542-1621) systematized the arguments against Protestantism in his monumental Disputations on Controversies of the Christian Faith against the Heretics (1586-89, 1596, 1608). Central to his discussion are the debates over the extent of the church's political power as well as over the religious authority of temporal leaders. Bellarmine strove to find a middle ground, what Hughes Oliphant Old calls a 'baroque synthesis' between Aquinas and Machiavelli, between the ambitions of the popes and the claims of kings and princes across Europe. On the one hand, his writings were at one point placed on the papal index (by Sixtus V) and, on the other, he delivered a powerful response to James I of England against the oath of allegiance. This paper explores Bellarmine's politico-theological arguments, comparing them to the Protestant thinkers he took so seriously. They have continued relevance today for disputations concerning religious vs. secular political authority."
In the panel "Weimar, Late Medieval and Renaissance Italy: Erich Auerbach and the Quest for European Internationalism", sponsored by the Renaissance Studies Certificate Program at CUNY's Graduate Center (10 April, 2.00-3.30 pm, Biblioteca Marciana), Jane O. Newman (University of California, Irvine) will be presenting a paper on "Modernity, Habitus, Ethics: Worldliness in Auerbach's Dante and Boccaccio".
Abstract: "In his 1921 dissertation on the Renaissance novella, Auerbach maintains that 'this-worldliness' is the essence of the Romance tradition. While the exemplum and fabliau appear to offer anterior models, he claims that it was Dante and his focus in the Commedia on 'secular life' that were the origins of this most 'modern' of genres. My paper investigates the evolution of Auerbach's argument about the relation between Dante and Boccaccio between 1921 and 1946 in the context of the political-theological controversies in Germany during the early twentieth century. In the poetry of Auerbach's exceedingly Thomist Dante, the 'image of man' counterintuitively 'eclipses the image of God' and thus counters the 'spiritualizing' 'figural-Christian' logic associated with Protestant dialectical theology. And yet, it is not clear that the ensuing modern world of Boccaccio's Decameron is much better, ensnared as it is in a habitus of worldly desire with no 'constructive ethical force.'"
You can find further information on the conference, including registration, on the RSA's website.
06 November 2009
JOB: Assistant Professor of English, with political theology
Pomona College is looking for an
Assistant Professor of English: Early Modern Drama, including Shakespeare (tenure track)
Strong secondary field(s) desirable, including (but not limited to) considerations of race, sexuality, performance, geo-humoralism, and political theology.
PhD in hand or expected by September 2010.
Pomona College, the founding member of the Claremont Colleges, is a highly selective liberal arts college, located 35 miles east of Los Angeles and attracting a diverse, national student body. The College has a strong commitment to interdisciplinary study, as well as to intercollegiate cooperation, providing a stimulating environment for students and faculty alike. Department faculty teach two courses per semester, and are eligible for a one-year junior research leave, regular sabbatical leaves, and generous research support.
www.pomona.edu
Send a letter of application, curriculum vitae, and 1-2 page dissertation abstract to Kevin J.H. Dettmar (Chair, Department of English): shakespeare@pomona.edu
Complete applications received by 6 November will receive full consideration.
Pomona College is committed to increasing its diversity and welcomes applications from women and members of under-represented groups.
Assistant Professor of English: Early Modern Drama, including Shakespeare (tenure track)
Strong secondary field(s) desirable, including (but not limited to) considerations of race, sexuality, performance, geo-humoralism, and political theology.
PhD in hand or expected by September 2010.
Pomona College, the founding member of the Claremont Colleges, is a highly selective liberal arts college, located 35 miles east of Los Angeles and attracting a diverse, national student body. The College has a strong commitment to interdisciplinary study, as well as to intercollegiate cooperation, providing a stimulating environment for students and faculty alike. Department faculty teach two courses per semester, and are eligible for a one-year junior research leave, regular sabbatical leaves, and generous research support.
www.pomona.edu
Send a letter of application, curriculum vitae, and 1-2 page dissertation abstract to Kevin J.H. Dettmar (Chair, Department of English): shakespeare@pomona.edu
Complete applications received by 6 November will receive full consideration.
Pomona College is committed to increasing its diversity and welcomes applications from women and members of under-represented groups.
01 June 2009
CFP: Normative Orders: Justification and Sanctions
Cluster of Excellence "The Formation of Normative Orders" at the Goethe-University Frankfurt/Main, Germany, 24-25 October 2009
Call for papers: Conference for Young Academics "Normative Orders: Justification and Sanctions"
A conference outline (including a list of panels) can be found here:
www.normativeorders.net/en/news/current-topics/132-conference-qnormative-orders-justification-and-sanctionsq
The conference will include a panel "System of Rule and Religion: The Limited Impact of Sanctions and the Relevance of Political-Theological Narratives of Justification in the Foundation of Normative Orders in the Early Modern Period", which invites in particular contributions from historians of early modernity and people working on the history of political ideas.
Panel outline: Religion, and in particular the biblical text, was an important basis of the norms and values used both to legitimate systems of rule and to dispute claims to power in the early modern period. The "Bible as political argument" helped to justify and to deny (new) normative orders.
Within the historical framework of the debates in European estate assemblies in the early modern period, the hypothesis – which this panel will explore – is that sanctions played a lesser role in shaping and confirming normative orders than did political-theological language. Case studies aimed at testing this hypothesis – focusing on the sacral legitimation of power and the theological or natural law foundations of resistance to power – are welcomed.
Finally, the European panorama of conflicts within the estate assemblies leads to the more general question of whether and to what extent the issue of religion and politics can be approached with the categories of "sanctions" and/or "narratives of justification".
How to submit a paper: Each panel will have approximately four contributors. Young academics in the doctoral or post-doctoral phase of their career interested in contributing are invited to submit a 500-word abstract to the responsible panel chair (listed on the website with each panel's description). The deadline is 30 June 2009.
Travel grants: Travel and hotel expenses will be subsidized, although the precise level of subsidization remains to be determined.
A selection of papers will possibly be published.
Proposals for the political theology panel should be sent to Therese Schwager, who will also answer your questions: therese.schwager@normativeorders.net
For general questions on the conference, please contact: Nachwuchskonferenz@normativeorders.net
Call for papers: Conference for Young Academics "Normative Orders: Justification and Sanctions"
A conference outline (including a list of panels) can be found here:
www.normativeorders.net/en/news/current-topics/132-conference-qnormative-orders-justification-and-sanctionsq
The conference will include a panel "System of Rule and Religion: The Limited Impact of Sanctions and the Relevance of Political-Theological Narratives of Justification in the Foundation of Normative Orders in the Early Modern Period", which invites in particular contributions from historians of early modernity and people working on the history of political ideas.
Panel outline: Religion, and in particular the biblical text, was an important basis of the norms and values used both to legitimate systems of rule and to dispute claims to power in the early modern period. The "Bible as political argument" helped to justify and to deny (new) normative orders.
Within the historical framework of the debates in European estate assemblies in the early modern period, the hypothesis – which this panel will explore – is that sanctions played a lesser role in shaping and confirming normative orders than did political-theological language. Case studies aimed at testing this hypothesis – focusing on the sacral legitimation of power and the theological or natural law foundations of resistance to power – are welcomed.
Finally, the European panorama of conflicts within the estate assemblies leads to the more general question of whether and to what extent the issue of religion and politics can be approached with the categories of "sanctions" and/or "narratives of justification".
How to submit a paper: Each panel will have approximately four contributors. Young academics in the doctoral or post-doctoral phase of their career interested in contributing are invited to submit a 500-word abstract to the responsible panel chair (listed on the website with each panel's description). The deadline is 30 June 2009.
Travel grants: Travel and hotel expenses will be subsidized, although the precise level of subsidization remains to be determined.
A selection of papers will possibly be published.
Proposals for the political theology panel should be sent to Therese Schwager, who will also answer your questions: therese.schwager@normativeorders.net
For general questions on the conference, please contact: Nachwuchskonferenz@normativeorders.net
28 January 2009
Two events at UC Irvine
Alain Badiou, "Can the Word Jew Be a Philosophical Concept?"
Saturday, 7 February 2009, 3-5 pm
www.thinkingwithshakespeare.org/index.php?id=377
Conference: "Points of Departure: Political Theology on the Scenes of Early Modernity"
20-21 February 2009, 10 am-2 pm
www.thinkingwithshakespeare.org/index.php?id=347
A conference convened by UCI and SUNY Buffalo under the direction of Julia Reinhard Lupton and Graham Hammill; sponsored by UCI's Department of English, the Political Theology Group, the Program in Religious Studies, the Group for the Study of Early Cultures, with additional support from UCLA's Critical Religious Studies Group and the Department of English at SUNY Buffalo.
In literary studies, the phrase "political theology" has come to designate the common sources and affiliations shared by politics and religion, as well as their antagonisms and internal resistances. In Renaissance and early modern studies, "political theology" unites scholars who aim to develop some of the texts and impulses associated with critical theory (especially psychoanalysis, later deconstruction, and the Baroque meditations of Walter Benjamin) in a direction defined by issues of secularization, sovereignty, and bio power in the Renaissance and in contemporary life. The phrase "political theology" has its origins in medieval iconographies of sacred kingship as distributed and displayed in the political, dramatic, and artistic forms of European civilization, along with the critique of traditional sovereignty mounted by Hobbes, Spinoza, Locke, and others in the seventeenth century. There is thus a special relationship between political theology as a critical approach to literature, politics, and thought and early modernity as a period and area of study.
This conference brings together established and emerging scholars in early modern studies who share an interest in the role that seventeenth century literature and thought has played in modern theories of secularization, sovereignty, and forms of life. We have asked speakers to address texts or moments from the early modern period that have served as a "point of departure" for later developments of politics and theology in modernity. Our goal is to present situated introductions to major figures in modern political theology, revealed through their exegetical engagements with early modern texts. The conference aims to make the case not only for the relevance of political theology as a critical discourse in the humanities today, but for the essential role that Renaissance and Baroque literature and thought have played in its pre- and post-histories.
Contact: Julia Reinhard Lupton, Professor of English and Comparative Literature, jrlupton@uci.edu
Saturday, 7 February 2009, 3-5 pm
www.thinkingwithshakespeare.org/index.php?id=377
Conference: "Points of Departure: Political Theology on the Scenes of Early Modernity"
20-21 February 2009, 10 am-2 pm
www.thinkingwithshakespeare.org/index.php?id=347
A conference convened by UCI and SUNY Buffalo under the direction of Julia Reinhard Lupton and Graham Hammill; sponsored by UCI's Department of English, the Political Theology Group, the Program in Religious Studies, the Group for the Study of Early Cultures, with additional support from UCLA's Critical Religious Studies Group and the Department of English at SUNY Buffalo.
In literary studies, the phrase "political theology" has come to designate the common sources and affiliations shared by politics and religion, as well as their antagonisms and internal resistances. In Renaissance and early modern studies, "political theology" unites scholars who aim to develop some of the texts and impulses associated with critical theory (especially psychoanalysis, later deconstruction, and the Baroque meditations of Walter Benjamin) in a direction defined by issues of secularization, sovereignty, and bio power in the Renaissance and in contemporary life. The phrase "political theology" has its origins in medieval iconographies of sacred kingship as distributed and displayed in the political, dramatic, and artistic forms of European civilization, along with the critique of traditional sovereignty mounted by Hobbes, Spinoza, Locke, and others in the seventeenth century. There is thus a special relationship between political theology as a critical approach to literature, politics, and thought and early modernity as a period and area of study.
This conference brings together established and emerging scholars in early modern studies who share an interest in the role that seventeenth century literature and thought has played in modern theories of secularization, sovereignty, and forms of life. We have asked speakers to address texts or moments from the early modern period that have served as a "point of departure" for later developments of politics and theology in modernity. Our goal is to present situated introductions to major figures in modern political theology, revealed through their exegetical engagements with early modern texts. The conference aims to make the case not only for the relevance of political theology as a critical discourse in the humanities today, but for the essential role that Renaissance and Baroque literature and thought have played in its pre- and post-histories.
Contact: Julia Reinhard Lupton, Professor of English and Comparative Literature, jrlupton@uci.edu
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