CFP: Resistance to Finance

"Polygraph: An International Journal of Culture & Politics", an annual interdisciplinary publication affiliated with the Literature Programme and edited by humanities graduate students of Duke University, is planning an issue (no. 24) on "Resistance to Finance", to be published in 2012, and has released a call for papers. They particularly invite contributors with a background in political theology.

www.duke.edu/web/polygraph/cfp24.html

Description: "What does financial capitalism demand of us in thought and in action today? Financial capital is one of the fundamental structuring forces in our world. Evidence of this is ubiquitous: the severity and extent of the most recent global financial crisis, the collapse of whole national economies (as in Greece and Iceland), the steadily progressing securitization of pensions and savings, a growing volume of derivatives trading that already dwarfs 'real' global GDP. Yet many critical accounts of corporate globalization, free trade, neoliberalism, and so on all too rarely emphasize the fact that high finance constitutes the very condition of possibility of capitalism as we know it. Other available forms of economic critique, from world-systems theory to dependency theory to theories of Empire, often do grant high finance the central role that it in reality occupies, but rarely go beyond critique to directly address the question of resistance. Too often, critique remains mired in highlighting isolated acts and agents of malfeasance rather than producing totalizing, systemic claims with real leverage.

"We now know this state of affairs to be in need of immediate rectification. We also know that action is demanded, but its contours are not yet well defined. The clout of finance capital has received ample attention in Marxist economics, neo-classical economics, and other quarters – yet the accounts produced thus far of what is to be done have been less than satisfactory. What political responses on the part of on-the-ground social movements and both current and potential bodies of governance are necessary? Are some already underway but obscured from view? What alternative economic futures can we begin to construct out of the wreckage of the most recent crisis and the structural shifts that produced and accompany it? Is it necessary to break the global economy of its speculative bent and return it to its 'real' roots, or is this antithesis, stemming from Hilferding's classic critique of 'fictitious capital,' fundamentally ill-conceived? Should the focus of political action be shifted away from past struggles – against multinational corporations, free trade, and the powerful political allies of both – in the direction of the financial crux of the global economy? What would such a change in focus entail?

"Potential topics: Financial capitalism and Marxism (The continued efficacy or potential obsolescence of previous critical outlooks [world systems theory, Empire theory, etc.] in confronting global finance; The centrality of the question of global finance in any meaningful
critical engagement with globalization; Systemic global inequality, post-Fordism and crisis); Resistance (Forms of political subjectivity capable of comprehending and acting within [and against] high finance as it stands; What is the role of the state in confronting financial capital?; Real and hypothetical political movements and direct action; Strategies of flight and subtractive action, whether individual [e.g. walking away from mortgage contracts] or institutional [e.g. Argentina's post-crisis debt restructuring]; Alternative financial institutions and orders (Jacques Sapir's recent call for a 'new Bretton Woods' system [akin to Antonio Negri's call for a 'new New Deal']; Microfinance and financial decentralization; The global Tobin tax on of [sic] financial transactions and other forms of regulation; Neo-Luddism and the return to the 'real' economy; Radical political economy and the pursuit of anti-capitalist alternatives); Other (Historical perspectives on high finance, dealing with periodization, secular trends, particular crises and institutions, and exemplary modes of resistance; Mystification, abstraction and the 'new' digital/virtual economy; Epistemological barriers to adequate critique of the global financial system; Perception and belief as primary structural forces in the financial system; Artistic representations of the financial world as possible critical tools; Socio-political underpinnings of the financialization of the world)"

"Polygraph" welcomes work from a variety of disciplines, including political economy, critical geography, cultural anthropology, political theology, science studies, and systems theory. They also encourage the submission of a variety of formats and genres, i.e. field reports, surveys, interviews, photography, essays, etc.

Please e-mail complete manuscripts to the editor of this issue, Lucas Perkins (Duke University): lucas.perkins@duke.edu

Deadline: 31 January 2011

CFP: Radical Orthodoxy: A Journal of Theology, Philosophy and Politics

"Radical Orthodoxy: A Journal of Theology, Philosophy and Politics" is a new international peer reviewed journal dedicated to exploring academic and policy debates that interface between theology, philosophy, and the social sciences. The editors describe the journals policy as "radically non-partisan" and welcome submissions from scholars and intellectuals "with interesting and relevant things to say about the nature and trajectory of the times in which we live".

They explain that the journal will normally be published four times a year – each volume comprising of standard, special, review, and current affairs issues. The journal will also attempt to pursue an innovative editorial policy by publishing pieces both longer and shorter than those typically published in mainstream academic journals (along with those of standard length).

The first issue of the journal will appear online in autumn 2011: a double special issue on the theology, philosophy, and politics of life. This issue will explore the wider intellectual ramifications of so-called new vitalist philosophical discourses as well as the growing importance of controversies about the nature and significance of life to contemporary theological and social-scientific debates. In particular, submissions are invited on the following subjects: Life and creativity; Everyday life; Life and the gift; Grace and nature; Thomism and vitalism; Life and phenomenology; Michel Henry; The historical significance of 'Deleuzianism'; Nihilism and eliminative materialism; Bio-politics; The philosophy of biology; The theology, philosophy, politics of the neurosciences; Life and cybernetics.

Deadline for submissions for the special issue: 31 August 2011

All paper submissions (for the special issue and later regular issues) should be sent to Neil Turnbull (Editor) or Eric Austin Lee (Managing Editor): papersubmissions@radicalorthodoxy.org

Journal "Teologia Polityczna" on Poland's "Lost Identity" (in Polish)

The Polish journal "Teologia Polityczna" ("Political Theology") has been published five times since 2003. The fifth issue (2009/2010) is titled "Złoty róg, czyli nieodzyskana podmiotowość" ("Lost Identity"; publisher's translation).

Those able to read Polish can find a table of contents here:

http://teologiapolityczna.pl/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=138&Itemid=94

Publisher's description: "What could be described as Poland's identity in modern times? And does Poland have the resources and means to maintain and further develop that identity? Such issues are tackled in detail in the fifth issue of Political Theology, 'Lost identity'. It is not just identity that is taken into account here, but also a certain notion of independence. Can Poland still follow its own path of modernisation and development, maybe one with a greater role of the church, or does it have mimic the increasingly secularized western nations if it wants prominence in the EU? In an article called 'It's Impossible to Xerox Modernity', Dariusz Karłowicz severely criticises a one-size-fits-all approach to political and social progress and modernisation. He argues that each country has its own culture and identity and needs to develop according to that rather than merely copy its seemingly more advanced neighbours. Furthermore, the issue also attempts to affirm and fully understand what it means to be Polish in today's times and what role Poland's unique identity (Solidarity, the role of the church, a newly developing democracy) means in today's cosmpolitan [sic], ever-globalising times. Finally, the advance of secularism in the modern world is looked at it in detail, and the U.S. and European approaches to the issue are compared and contrasted."

To order a copy, please contact: redakcja@teologiapolityczna.pl

Journal "Constellations" on "Political Theologies"

The June 2010 issue of "Constellations: An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory" (17 [2]) features five articles on the theme "Political Theologies":

http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/118514711/home

Contents:

Bernard Flynn (State University of New York), "Political Theology and Its Vicissitudes" (pp. 185-96).

Excerpt: "In this article, I argue that the Judeo-Christian conception of 'the creation of the world from nothing' contains within itself the possibilities for the political transformation of a theological concept. It does this in two respects: on the one hand, the conception of divine providence appears in secular thought in the guise of philosophy of history. I follow Karl Löwith's path, in Meaning in History, of unmasking this secular theory as theology. On the other hand, the theological notion of creation ex nihilo becomes the political concept of the Event. In order to show the centrality of the notion of the Event in recent political thought, I investigate certain aspects of the thought of both Carl Schmitt and Walter Benjamin. Then I conclude by invoking the thought of Claude Lefort who, while practicing political philosophy, is sensitive to the role of theological concepts in the constitution of the political. For the thinkers associated with political theology, this disjunctive opposition between political theology and political philosophy comes to be blurred. It is possible that while practicing political philosophy, in their own self-representation, they are, in fact, in the grips of political theology, notwithstanding even a militant atheism. My claim is that beneath the surface of a secular theory, a theological problematic continues to operate. This claim is stronger than the claim that there are structural similarities between the two; rather it is that unbeknownst to themselves these secular theorists are pursuing a theological enterprise by 'other means.'"

Ruth Marshall (University of Toronto), "The Sovereignty of Miracles: Pentecostal Political Theology in Nigeria" (pp. 197-223).

Excerpt: "This paper will examine aspects of Pentecostalism's global 'revolutionary' project as they are being played out in the post-colonial world today in an effort to clarify elements of a Nigerian Born-Again political theology beyond the epithets and the long-standing antimonies and categories of analysis that have marked our understanding of the relationship between the religious and the political."

Nicolas Guilhot (CNRS, France, and New York University), "American Katechon: When Political Theology Became International Relations Theory" (pp. 224-53).

Excerpt: "While nobody would deny that international relations theory is a secular social science, especially in its 'realist' guise, it is interesting to note that a number of commentators and historians of the discipline often turn to religious metaphors in order to characterize some of its core features or talk about its main thinkers. Such eschatological or theological references run indeed throughout the literature, like a faint but always present watermark. [...] These references are too pervasive, too ubiquitous to be treated as mere coincidences. They point at a theological substratum that once provided an explicit background against which a number of central concepts of IR theory resonated, when the discussion of international affairs still involved not only scholars but also public intellectuals, diplomats, historians, political theorists and, last but not least, theologians, many of whom considered themselves 'Christian realists.' Obviously, the figure of Reinhold Niebuhr loomed large over these discussions. [...] But such considerations pervaded the early search for a 'theory' and were common to a group of individuals who actively discussed the shape of the future discipline. [...] Yet, as the discussion of international politics became an academic specialty enclosed in political science departments, this background was progressively bracketed out."

Carlo Invernizzi Accetti (Columbia University), "Can Democracy Emancipate Itself From Political Theology? Habermas and Lefort on the Permanence of the Theologico-Political" (pp. 254-70).

Excerpt: "In the following paper, I address the relation between political theology and the modern democratic form. To do so, I compare the writings of two authors who have more solid democratic credentials than Carl Schmitt: Jürgen Habermas and Claude Lefort. I argue that both of these authors attempt to put forward a conception of modern democracy that emancipates itself from the dimension of political theology, but that they achieve this goal to different extents. Habermas develops a conception of democracy articulated around the notion of 'communicative rationality' which ultimately ends up reintroducing an element of political theology through the very means that were sought to overcome it. Lefort, on the other hand, delineates a conception of democracy articulated around the notion of an 'empty place of power' which proves more sophisticated in extricating itself from the dimension of political theology because it recognizes the persistence of an irreducible locus of transcendence within the structure of the political itself, but construes it in such a way as to pervert its theologico-political character. From a political point of view, this contrast is instructive because it gives an indication as to what strategies might be more effective for advancing a secularist response to the recent resurgence of attempts to colonize the political with the theological."

Ada S. Jaarsma (Sonoma State University), "Habermas' Kierkegaard and the Nature of the Secular" (pp. 271-92).

Excerpt: "In what follows, I describe Habermas' normative program for the successful and mutually beneficial co-existence of the religious and the non-religious, looking especially at his reliance upon a particular reading of Kierkegaard. [...] As I argue below, the specific ways in which Habermas employs Kierkegaard's thought demonstrates what Habermas himself advocates for others: an appreciative respect for religious insights and simultaneous self-reflection on the limitations of both secular and philosophical thinking."

Journal special issue: The Continental Shift

Creston Davis (Rollins College) is the editor of a special issue of the journal "Political Theology" titled "The Continental Shift" (11 [1], March 2010):

www.politicaltheology.com/PT/issue/view/739

From Davis' introduction ("The Continental Shift", pp. 5-14): "What is at stake for political theology today? This is the basic question this issue attempts to address. It is true that the subject of political theology resists a singular definition; indeed the term functions like a nebulous concept – a Rorschach test whose ink markings are given meaning by the individual perceiver [...]. The core of the cosmic scandal to which Paul refers and whose very meaning interrupts in the void of the cross, in death as such, is love. Indeed, it is this dis-possessive exceptional scandal that ruptures the immediate fake 'universal' (law, morality, ethics, politics etc.) and founds a new universal based on the infinity of love that gives birth to rethinking the very foundations of political theology in our time. What's more, this interruption of the status quo (of the fake universal) establishes the universal-exception of the Incarnational Event, which affords the world new coordinates for how humanity is defined in a manner that radically breaks with [Carl] Schmitt's false dichotomy of friend/enemy, among other things. This radical thesis is what we may call the 'continental shift' in political theology."

Strangely, an entry on Davis' blog seems to be significantly clearer about the aim of this issue than is the introduction: "The journal issue takes seriously the thesis that Political Theology is radically open to debate; indeed this issue opens the doors of debate about the very nature of Political Theology after-Schmitt and in the wake of such Continental thinkers as Jean-Luc Nancy, Alain Badiou, J. Taubes, G. Agamben, S. Zizek and others. In light of these thinkers it is clear that the very coordinates of Political Theology has changed forever. I will argue that Schmitt's indebtedness to Hobbesian demonic version of what constitutes the theoretical space called 'the sovereign' needs to be rejected. [...] Thus the thesis of this issue is that there is no one version that defines Political Theology as such, but is rather more like a moving debate that resists a vulgar reduction down to a singular and absolutist view of 'the Political' or 'the Theological.' Political Theology is thus an inherently dynamic process and not a static boring rerun of the same episode called 'the State' or even 'Carl Schmitt' for that matter."

Articles in this special issue include:

Antonio Negri, "The Eclipse of Eschatology: Conversing with Taubes's Messianism and the Common Body" (trans. Bruno Bosteels; pp. 35-41).

Abstract: "In this article Jacob Taubes's idea of eschatology is examined. Taubes's own understanding of eschatology has profound implications on the very expression of political theology and political practice. If politics – as a practice – assumes that time has a terminal point, than it will invariably change this practice and encumber and even neutralize political action of a commonbody that gives voice to the oppressed. This article agrees with Taubes in that eschatology must announce an end to itself, which is at once a birth of a postmodern possibility of the principle of immanence in which a commonbody announces its infinite possibility. The end of eschatology is the end of transcendence and the beginning of a struggle for liberating the infinite possibility of a common-body of labor."

Kenneth Reinhard (UCLA), "There is Something of One (God): Lacan and Political Theology" (pp. 43-60).

Abstract: "For both Lacan and Badiou, Plato's Parmenides is a primary locus for the question of the One. Moreover, for both Lacan and Badiou, the One ultimately takes on political valence, as key to the problematics of representation and the discursive conditions of collectivity. However, unlike Badiou, Lacan's exploration of the question of One also passes through theology – through what I am calling 'something of One God' – and I want to argue that it is only by bringing the One into explicit relationship with those monotheistic issues that we can fully understand its implications for analytic discourse and political life. Lacan's thinking on the 'something of One [sic] takes a necessary swerve back through a theological problematic, and in the process articulates the terms of a political theology, an essential conjunction of political and religious understandings of sovereignty, subjectivity and collectivity."

Daniel M. Bell, Jr. (Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary), "The Fragile Brillance of Glass: Empire, Multitude, and the Coming Community" (pp. 61-76).

Abstract: "Michael Hardt, Antonio Negri, and Giorgio Agamben are among a handful of contemporary continental philosophers whose thought of the political proves simultaneously most salutary and vexing for the task of articulating a postliberal Augustinian political theology. Their accounts of the political problem of the early twenty-first century West are most helpful while their anticipation of democracy raises serious questions about the viability of the church as a political formation capable of escaping the clutches of the current terror. In the end I argue that the hope nurtured by Agamben, Hardt and Negri fails to hold out the promise of life beyond empire and this because finally they, and not an Augustinian church, are insufficiently democratic."

Mary-Jane Rubenstein (Wesleyan University), "Capital Shares: The Way Back into the With of Christianity" (pp. 103-19).

Abstract: "In the ten years since the publication of Michael Hardt's and Antonio Negri's *Empire*, the relationship between Christianity and global capital has received increasing theological attention among the adherents, critics, sympathizers, and apostates of Radical Orthodoxy. At stake in this conversation is the possibility that Christianity might provide a universal ontology sufficient to ground a counter-hegemonic, specifically socialist, praxis. One question that many of these authors rarely address, however, is the extent to which Christian universalism has been responsible for the emergence of global capital in the first place. This article will address this profound split at the heart of a tradition; that is, Christianity's culpability for and resistance to global capital. To this end, 'Capital Shares' sketches the aporia of Christianity's relation to Empire and then appeals to Jean-Luc Nancy's 'deconstruction of Christianity'; in particular, his attempt to find 'a source of Christianity, more original than Christianity itself, that might provoke another possibility to arise.'"

Further articles: Clayton Crockett (University of Central Arkansas) and Catherine Malabou (Paris West University Nanterre La Défense), "Plasticity and the Future of Philosophy and Theology" (pp. 15-34); C.C. Pecknold (Catholic University of America), "Migrations of the Host: Fugitive Democracy and the Corpus Mysticum" (pp. 77-101); Joshua Delpech-Ramey (Rowan University), "Supernatural Capital: A Note on the Zizek-Milbank Debate" (pp. 121-5); John Milbank (University of Nottingham), "Without Heaven There is Only Hell on Earth: 15 Verdicts on Zizek's Response" (pp. 126-35); Slavoj Zizek (University of Ljubljana/Birkbeck College), "The Atheist Wager"
(pp. 136-40).

The last three articles assess and continue the debate between John Milbank and Slavoj Žižek started in their joint book "The Monstrosity of Christ: Paradox or Dialectic?" (MIT Press, April 2009), which was equally edited by Creston Davis.

CFP: "Italian Critical Theory" and political theology

The journal "Annali d'Italianistica" – based at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill – seeks essays for a special issue on "Italian Critical Theory" (including political theology) to be published in fall 2011.

www.ibiblio.org/annali/upcoming.html

Twenty-one years ago, the publication of Giovanna Borradori's anthology Recoding Metaphysics (1988) and of Gianni Vattimo's The End of Modernity (1988) signaled that the post-war generation of Italian philosophers was ready to join the theoretical debate that was going on in the English-speaking world.

The translation of other works by Vattimo generated an interest that went way beyond the boundaries of Italian Studies. A few years later, the English publication of Giorgio Agamben's The Coming Community (1993), immediately followed by other volumes, made the Italian philosopher a household name in comparative literature departments and continental philosophy programs. The philosophical geography of the North-American universities was indeed opening up to new territories.

The appearance of Carlo Sini's Images of Truth (1993), Massimo Cacciari's Necessary Angel (1994), Mario Perniola's Enigmas (1995), Adriana Cavarero's In Spite of Plato (1995), Antonio Negri's Marx Beyond Marx (1996) – not to mention the books of the same authors that came after, culminating in the best-selling status of Antonio Negri's and Michael Hardt's Empire, 2001 – made clear that contemporary Italian philosophy was now a strong presence in the post-modern theoretical landscape of the American and British universities. Recently, Brian Schroeder's and Silvia Benso's anthology Contemporary Italian Philosophy (2007) has charted an exceptionally varied land, whose richness is second to none in terms of theoretical ambition and hermeneutical subtlety.

Seeking to situate itself within this theoretical context, the 2011 "Annali d'Italianistica" volume intends to address the relevance of Italian critical theory today. It will be divided in two parts. The first section will include invited papers only. Some of the most prominent Italian philosophers have been invited to contribute and they have all accepted the invitation. The second section will be open to the contributions of scholars who wish to engage in this theoretical debate and will answer this call for papers.

As a mere suggestion, submissions may be organized around keywords such as aesthetics, bioethics, biopolitics, cognitive approaches, deconstructionism, difference and identity, existentialism and phenomenology, feminism, geopolitics, genealogy, gender, GLBTQ studies, elites and multitudes, Europe and Empire, grammatology, hermeneutics, humanism and anti-humanism, Idealism and its legacy, metaphysics and its destiny, Marxism and post-Marxism, modernity and post-modernity, North/South dichotomy, otherness and sameness, philosophy and religion, political theology, traveling theories, semiotics, style and the philosophical discourse.

In additional to the theorists who have already been mentioned, "Annali d'Italianistica" will welcome papers on other relevant figures of the Italian thought in the last sixty years.

As "Annali d'Italianistica" intends to make Italian critical theory available to the English speaking world, all contributions will be in English. All contributions will be refereed. Essays, not to exceed twenty-five double-spaced pages, should conform to the MLA style, as set forth under "Norms for Contributors" on the "Annali d'Italianistica" website.

Deadline for submissions: 30 September 2010

Prospective contributors should address all inquiries to Alessandro Carrera (Department of Modern and Classical Languages, University of Houston): acarrera@uh.edu

Journal "Direction": Toward Anabaptist Political Theology

The Spring 2009 issue of the journal "Direction: A Mennonite Brethren Forum" was themed "Toward Anabaptist Political Theology".

Six months after publication of the printed journal, the full-text articles have now become available to read online free of charge:

www.directionjournal.org/toc/?38-1

Articles include "An Anabaptist-Mennonite Political Theology: Theological Presuppositions" (A. James Reimer, formerly Conrad Grebel University College); "Exousiology and Torah: A Suggestion for Mennonite Political Theology with Reference to the Reimer-Yoder Divide" (Jodie Boyer Hatlem, University of Toronto, and Douglas Johnson Hatlem, pastor); "Messianic Political Theology: Yoder contra Redekop" (Travis P. [sic] Kroeker, McMaster University); "A Response to P. Travis Kroeker's 'Messianic Political Theology: Yoder contra Redekop'" (John H. Redekop, Trinity Western University/Wilfrid Laurier University).

The journal's self-description: "Direction journal was begun in 1972 as a partnership among four Mennonite Brethren educational institutions in Canada and the US. Eventually two additional schools joined the group, and the US and Canadian Mennonite Brethren Conferences also provide support. [...] Neither a purely academic journal nor a denominational magazine, Direction highlights the interdependence of Christian reflection and mission."

Journal "Letter & Spirit" on political theology

Volume Five of the "Letter & Spirit" journal – a publication of the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology in Steubenville, Ohio, USA – is concerned with "Liturgy and Empire: Faith in Exile and Political Theology" (Emmaus Road Publishing, 5 November 2009):

www.salvationhistory.com/letter_and_spirit_archive/letter_spirit_volume_5_2009

Publisher's description: "This is the fifth annual volume of the remarkably popular journal of biblical theology edited by Scott Hahn [...]. This volume features important new works by Hahn, Brant Pitre, Matthew Levering, and Robert Barron, among others. The issue explores the biblical themes of Church and state; idolatry and power; religion and violence; worship and sacrifice; the Kingdom of God; and the Eucharist. Highlights include Hahn's new essay on the 'prophetic historiography' of 1 and 2 Chronicles; and Pitre's essay on 'Jesus, the Messianic Banquet, and the Kingdom of God.' The journal, which always seeks to reprint classic texts alongside groundbreaking new works, this time includes a new translation of St. Thomas Aquinas 'Lectures on 2 Thessalonians' – the first time this work has been translated into English. Also included are an influential work by Louis Bouyer on 'Satan and Christ in the New Testament and Early Tradition.' The volume concludes with a classic homily by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI on the 'morality of exile.'"

The journal's editor, Scott Hahn, is Founder, President, and Chairman of the Board of the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology, as well as Chair of Biblical Theology and Liturgical Proclamation at Saint Vincent Seminary in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, and Professor of Scripture and Theology at Franciscan University of Steubenville. According to the Center's website, he "is one of the world's most successful Catholic authors and teachers", with "more than one million books and tapes in print worldwide".

CFP: "Tikvah Journal for Jewish Thought" on religion and reason

Call for papers for the "Tikvah Journal for Jewish Thought", the new graduate online journal of the Centre for Jewish Studies at the University of Toronto.

Proposals on (Jewish) political theology are explicitly welcome.

The first issue of the "Tikvah Journal for Jewish Thought" invites explorations on the theme: "Religion and Reason". Historically, the process of secularization brought about a debate among philosophers, politicians, and theologians concerning the role of religion in the public sphere and distinguishing secular reason from religious conviction. Yet questions pertaining to the nature of the relation between religion and reason are as old as theology and philosophy. The editors welcome papers addressing such questions, spanning the ancient, medieval, modern, and postmodern eras, and drawing from a broad range of disciplinary fields.

Suggested topics include: the crisis of the Enlightenment: skepticism and naturalism; the "end" of metaphysics; faith, rational justification, and common sense; divine attributes and allegorical thought; translation: biblical terms and philosophical concepts or categories; the role of religion in the public sphere; the nature of justification in religious and secular laws; religious calendars and political bonds; political theology; modern alienation

Suggested interlocutors include: Aristotle; Philo of Alexandria; Plotinus; Al-Farabi; Al-Ghazali; Maimonides; Shmuel Ibn Tibbon; Hasdai Crescas; Abarbanel; Descartes; Spinoza; Leibniz; Kant; Fichte; Schelling; Hegel; Kierkegaard; Hermann Cohen; Martin Buber; Franz Rosenzweig; Walter Benjamin; Hans-Georg Gadamer; Emmanuel Lévinas; Paul Ricoeur

Submission details: Please send an abstract no longer than 500 words and prepared for "blind-review" (with the author's name and institutional affiliation appearing on a separate page) to the following e-mail address: tikvahjournal@gmail.com

Deadline: 15 November 2009

If accepted, you will be asked to submit a paper ranging in length between 5,000 and 7,000 words by 15 January 2010. Accepted papers will appear in Vol. 1 of the "Tikvah Journal for Jewish Thought" late in the spring of 2010.

Journal "Telos" on "Political Theologies" / Carl Schmitt discount

The journal Telos has announced its fall 2009 issue, under the title "Political Theologies". Contributors include Bassam Tibi and James V. Schall, S.J. The journal will be published in mid-September and can be pre-ordered with a 15% discount:

www.telospress.com/main/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=378

You currently also save 20% on a whole range of Carl Schmitt books (published by Telos Press Publishing) and select back issues of Telos, including "Hamlet or Hecuba: The Intrusion of the Time into the Play" (first English translation published on 1 October 2009), "The Nomos of the Earth in the International Law of Jus Publicum Europaeum" and "Theory of the Partisan" (books), "Carl Schmitt: Enemy or Foe?" (1987), "Carl Schmitt Now" (1996), "Carl Schmitt, Hannah Arendt, Politics and Empire" (2005), "Culture and Politics in Carl Schmitt" (2008) and "Carl Schmitt and the Event" (2009) (journal back copies):

www.telospress.com/main/index.php?main_page=page&id=86&chapter=0

The offer is valid through 30 September 2009.

Journal "Konturen" on political theology

The first issue (volume 1) of the new interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed journal Konturen is dedicated to "Political Theology: the Border in Question".

Konturen opens with a series of essays on the law of the limit between politics and religion. The question of this law today is of a piece with the broader contemporary problem of the border, threshold, or determining framework, because the modern, Enlightenment privatization of religion repeats and reverses itself as the politicization of privatized religion, and as a consequence the modern subject finds itself in the paradoxical situation of a radical limitation (or finitude) doubled by an equally radical limitlessness (or infinite capacity).

The essays examine this situation in modernist, Baroque, and contemporary contexts. Tracy McNulty, Peter Hohendahl, and Leonard Feldman critically re-examine Carl Schmitt's anti-modern understanding of sovereignty as the foundational interruption of formal law. They question in various ways Schmitt's political-theological attack on the limit-function of law. Turning back to the Baroque threshold of modernity, where the explicit separation of church from state has yet to occur, David Yearsley unfolds the ambiguities of absolutist religious politics in J.S. Bach's secular and sacred music, while Steven Shankman finds an ethical interruption of political-theological totality in Monteverdi, Rembrandt, Shakespeare, and Couperin. Returning then to the religio-cultural politics of the present, Ülker Gökberk reads Orhan Pamuk on the dialectics of secularist modernity and politicized religion in contemporary Turkey, and Claudia Breger analyzes the "headscarf controversy" in order to problematize a number of German cultural and legal responses to the Turkish-German presence in the Federal Republic. Finally, Julia R. Lupton reviews Hannah Arendt's recently collected Jewish Writings, situating Arendt's own limitation in her incapacity to provide an adequate account of the sense of covenantal law in the Jewish context. In Arendt, too, the limit of secular modernity is determined through the delimitation of the law itself.

A list of contents can be found here:

http://konturen.uoregon.edu/volume1.html

Unfortunately, I was unable to find any information on their website as to how to obtain the journal.

Special issue: Theology and Democratic Futures

Corey D. B. Walker (Brown University) has guest edited a special issue of the journal Political Theology (vol. 10, no. 2, 2009) on the theme "Theology and Democratic Futures":

www.politicaltheology.com/ojs/index.php/PT/issue/view/663

Walker's introductory essay is concerned with the "revival in scholarly attention to the question of theology across various formations in the North Atlantic academy" and a tendency that "seeks to challenge the binary and dichotomous logic that separates theological formations and non-theological formations while blurring the boundaries between the two in facilitating a critical thinking in which the theological is pressed into service for the elaboration of other radical and subversive non-theological discourses" as well as an opposite tendency "assisting in bulwarking the sui generis gloss of Christianity's theological claims and doctrines" "in contradistinction to other critical and secular theoretical discourses".

While Walker claims that "[t]o think theology is to think democracy, albeit with a more profound and humbling sense of contingency and without guarantees", other contributors to this special issue seem to view democracy more critically, for example within the discourse of "post-democracy" "as a political order of a privatized and privileged politics that is not responsive to the radical democratic aspirations or potentials of the majority", concluding that "[i]t is this post-democratic landscape that should properly coordinate and calibrate our theological imaginations". Authors in this line of thought engage the evangelical right in the US (Andrew C. Willis) as much as the Islamic Law debate in the UK (Vincent Lloyd).

(BTW: The paper by Lloyd was accepted for presentation at the Third Annual International Symposium of the Sussex Centre for the Individual and Society (SCIS) on "Anti-Liberalism and Political Theology" that took place in July 2008 at Sciences Po/The Institute for Political Studies in Paris, France.)

Bruce Ellis Benson argues that "radical democracy is not nearly radical enough and Christianity, when it has entered the 'public square,' has likewise not been nearly radical enough", while Paul Dafyyd Jones' "close reading and dialectical analysis of Schleiermacher and Barth and the projects of liberation theology enable him to project a broader 'theopolitical imagination' that links classical and liberationist theological perspectives in animating and empowering progressive political projects". Peter Goodwin Heltzel's essay interrogates "the theoretical and political dimensions of [Martin Luther King, Jr.'s] Christian inspired project of 'Beloved Community' and Antonio Negri's Spinoza inspired project of 'Multitude' in confronting the reduced horizon for democratic politics in our contemporary conjuncture".

Further articles concern "the case of [US death-row prisoner] Mumia Abu-Jamal" in the light of the works of Giorgio Agamben and Abdul R. JanMohammed and the "state of exception" (Mark Lewis Taylor), "Hannah Arendt's [polytheistic and thus plural] Political Theology of Democratic Life" (Jane Anna Gordon), and "phenomenology as a mode of thought that welcomes the depth and complexity of existence as an analogue for rethinking radically democratic futures" (Rocco Gangle, Jason Smick). As Walker writers: "It is the plural – whether polytheism or phenomenology – that posits the possibility of theology and democracy as open-ended forms whose futures may be less clear but more hopeful than a resurrection of past practices and forms of thought".

This special issue may help to highlight too "the state of democratic politics that so often transforms the exception into the rule, specifically in the case of the marginal and dispossessed" (Mark Taylor Lewis).

CFP: Special issue of “Telos” on Carl Schmitt's “Hamlet or Hecuba”

David Pan and Julia Reinhard Lupton are the editors of a special issue of the journal “Telos”.

In 1956, Carl Schmitt published a short volume entitled “Hamlet oder Hekuba: Der Einbruch der Zeit in das Spiel”, based on a series of lectures he held on the topic in Düsseldorf the year before. A core section of the essay was translated into English and published in a special issue of “Telos” devoted to Schmitt’s writing in 1987. Twenty-two years later, Telos Press is now publishing a complete English edition of “Hamlet or Hecuba”, translated by David Pan and Jennifer Rust and with introductions by David Pan, Jennifer Rust, and Julia Reinhard Lupton.

The planned special issue of “Telos” invites responses to Schmitt’s Hamlet interpretation from a broad range of perspectives in order to promote a lively discussion. Topics might include: the motivations, symptomology, and insights of Schmitt’s reading of Hamlet; the relation of Hamlet or Hecuba to Schmitt’s other postwar writings; Schmitt’s essay in the framework of the German Shakespeare and/or the German postwar political context; Schmitt’s encounters with Benjamin and Freud through the medium of Hamlet; Schmitt’s cultural and literary theory, including his understanding of myth and tragedy; Schmitt and historicism; Schmitt’s dramaturgy; Schmitt’s ideas on political representation; Schmitt, Shakespeare, and political theology.

We seek submissions of approximately 6,000 words. Deadline: 1 March 2010.

Please direct inquiries to David Pan, Department of German, University of California at Irvine: dtpan@uci.edu
and Julia Reinhard Lupton, Department of English, University of California at Irvine: jrlupton@uci.edu

Roundtable discussion on “Theology and the Political”

Those interested in philosophical theology as it relates to the political may wish to have a look at the most recent issue of the journal “Political Theology” (no. 1, 2009):

www.politicaltheology.com/ojs/index.php/PT/issue/view/653

Some four years after publication of the book, the journal offers a roundtable discussion of “Theology and the Political: The New Debate” (eds. Creston Davis, John Milbank, and Slavoj Žižek, Duke University Press 2005).

Note of caution: Creston Davis, one of the book's editors, is now a review editor at the journal. One of the contributors to the roundtable discussion is also a contributor to the volume, and other roundtable participants are closely linked to book contributors. Still, those interested particularly in the (self-styled) “new debate” and/or Radical Orthodoxy will find this of interest.

Special issue of "New German Critique"

Nitzan Lebovic has edited a special issue of the journal “New German Critique” on political theology:

ngc.dukejournals.org/content/vol35/issue3_105/

The question that preoccupies the contributors to this special issue is whether it makes sense to update political theology by examining how political theology has been theorized by thinkers on the left and the right. The vicissitudes of this double life – especially marked since Michel Foucault applied Schmittian concepts to his critique of biopolitics – owe much to the simplistic link between Weimar politics and the present-day cynical abuse of power by democratic regimes. As secularism once again faces off against theology, the state against religion, and economic power is equated with divine right, the time has certainly come to re-examine the discourse of political theology and its recent apocalyptic scenarios.

Contact: Nitzan Lebovic, nlebovic@fastmail.fm

CFP: Special issue on religion, political theology, and IR

"Perspectives: Review of International Affairs" invites authors to submit their papers for a special issue on religion in international relations and the political theology of international relations.

The editors of the special issue still accept proposals, although the deadline is quickly approaching. If anyone is interested, please submit an abstract as soon as possible.

Background:

The growing interest of the scholarly community in the resurgence of religion after the constructivist turn and the renewed attention to the relation between the discipline’s evolution and religion has led the editors to dedicate the next special issue of the journal to the exploration of the relevance of religion for international relations. Both purely theoretical articles and theoretically relevant empirical studies will be welcome. Every article submitted for publication undergoes the process of double-blind peer review.

On the journal:

"Perspectives" is a distinguished peer-reviewed scholarly journal published twice a year in English. It has been published since 1993, and by now it has established itself as a leading journal in Central and Eastern Europe.

Databases abstracting/indexing the journal: Academic Search Premier (via EBSCO), ABI/INFORM Global, Academic Research Library (via ProQuest), World Affairs Online, Columbia International Affairs Online, IBSS London School of Economics and Political Science, etc.

Contact:

Perspectives: perspectives@iir.cz
Editor-in-Chief: Petr Kratochvíl, kratochvil@iir.cz
Associate Editor: Mats Braun, braun@iir.cz
The guidelines for authors and more can be retrieved from www.iir.cz/perspectives