José María Rodríguez García, "The City of Translation: Poetry and Ideology in Nineteenth-Century Colombia" (Palgrave Macmillan, August 2010):
http://us.macmillan.com/thecityoftranslation
Publisher's description: "The two principal questions that The City of Translation sets out to answer are: how did poetry, philology, catechesis, and literary translation legitimate a coterie of right-wing literati's [sic] rise to power in Colombia? And how did these men proceed to dismantle a long-standing liberal-democratic state without derogating basic constitutional freedoms? To answer those questions, José María Rodríguez García investigates the emergence, development, and decline of what he calls 'the reactionary city of translation' – a variation on, and a correction to, Ángel Rama's understanding of the nineteenth-century 'lettered city' as a primarily liberal and modernizing project. The City of Translation makes the tropes of 'translatio' the conceptual nucleus of a comprehensive analysis that cuts across academic disciplines, ranging from political philosophy and the history of concepts to the relationship of literature to religious doctrine and the law."
The last chapter of the book is titled "Conclusion: On Lettered Cities, Political Theologies, and the Writing of Lyric".
Endorsements: "Few books deserve to be described as necessary. This one does. Rodríguez García brings remarkable rigor and insight to his examination of the nineteenth-century debates that defined the first decades of the Colombian republic. Particularly significant are his penetrating reconstructions of conservative thought, a much neglected area since 'progressive' historians often seem more interested in finding antecedents for their own ideas rather than taking seriously the arguments of Catholic imbued anti-liberalism. He also brings remarkable insight to the ways that notions of proper grammatical usage and belle-lettriste literature were early marshaled to support conservative, hierarchical notions of society and government. In sum, this is an excellent book and a major contribution to nineteenth-century studies." (Nicolas Shumway, Rice University)
"The City of Translation elucidates the complex strategies of the reactionary Colombian political elite to usher in new legislation under the guise of a homogenizing national project. The author's keen insights on the pivotal role of lyrical production, translation (in theory and practice), and the mediating agency of the translator/lyricist in political objectives constitute an outstanding contribution to Latin American intellectual history, one that will compel us to expand our understanding of the term 'foundational fictions.'" (Carlos J. Alonso, Columbia University)
Spanish-born José María Rodríguez García is Associate Professor of Spanish and Latin American Studies at Duke University.
Showing posts with label literary studies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label literary studies. Show all posts
31 December 2010
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.
CFP: The Neighbor
Interdisciplinary German Studies Conference "The Neighbor" at the University of California, Berkeley, USA, 11-13 March 2011
http://german.berkeley.edu/newsevents/showevent.php?id=183
Call for papers
Description: "The image of 'the neighbor' evokes both nearness and distance, familiarity and foreignness, belonging and isolation. Pregnant with implications for kinship, community, and affiliation particular to the German-speaking world, the concept of 'the neighbor' has engendered numerous meditations on hospitality and love by thinkers from Luther and Kant to Freud, Schmitt, and Rosenzweig. At the same time, the presence of neighbors has often served as the basis for ostracism and exclusion, as an incitement to war, or as fuel for fantasies about local and global neighborhoods. How do we identify a 'neighbor' or 'neighborhood' in our current age of increased migration and mobility? How might an examination of these themes enrich our understanding of not only genocide and violence but also exchange, aid, and co-operation? For the conference, we are encouraging a comparative approach by seeking perspectives on 'neighbors' and 'neighborhoods' from scholars working in literature, history, linguistics, film, media studies, anthropology, and the social sciences.
"Possible topics include but are not limited to: The Notion of Neighbors Inside and Outside the European Union; Reactions in Theology, Philosophy, or Ethics to the Imperative 'Love Your Neighbor'; The Role of the Neighbor in Identity Formation and Identity Politics; The Status of Friends, Enemies, and Neighbors in Geographical and Territorial Disputes; Rivalries and Diplomacy between Neighbors on a Local, Regional, or National Scale; The Construction of Dialects vis-à-vis Neighbors; Linguistic Interaction between Neighboring Regions; Community, Isolation, or Gentrification in Urban Neighborhoods; The Kiez in Berlin, Grätzl in Vienna, or Veedel in Cologne; Images of Neighborhoods in Suburban and Rural Settings; The Subjection of Neighbors to Suspicion and Surveillance; Cohabitation, Intimacy and Proximity in Collective Memory; The Status of the Neighbor Before and After die Wende; Media and Neighbors in the Global Village"
Keynote speaker: Kenneth Reinhard (Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature at UCLA and co-author, with Slavoj Žižek and Eric L. Santner, of "The Neighbor: Three Inquiries in Political Theology" [University of Chicago Press, 2005])
To participate, please send a 250-word abstract in English or German with a separate cover sheet indicating the proposed title, author's name, affiliation, and e-mail address to: neighbor@berkeley.edu
Deadline: 3 January 2011
http://german.berkeley.edu/newsevents/showevent.php?id=183
Call for papers
Description: "The image of 'the neighbor' evokes both nearness and distance, familiarity and foreignness, belonging and isolation. Pregnant with implications for kinship, community, and affiliation particular to the German-speaking world, the concept of 'the neighbor' has engendered numerous meditations on hospitality and love by thinkers from Luther and Kant to Freud, Schmitt, and Rosenzweig. At the same time, the presence of neighbors has often served as the basis for ostracism and exclusion, as an incitement to war, or as fuel for fantasies about local and global neighborhoods. How do we identify a 'neighbor' or 'neighborhood' in our current age of increased migration and mobility? How might an examination of these themes enrich our understanding of not only genocide and violence but also exchange, aid, and co-operation? For the conference, we are encouraging a comparative approach by seeking perspectives on 'neighbors' and 'neighborhoods' from scholars working in literature, history, linguistics, film, media studies, anthropology, and the social sciences.
"Possible topics include but are not limited to: The Notion of Neighbors Inside and Outside the European Union; Reactions in Theology, Philosophy, or Ethics to the Imperative 'Love Your Neighbor'; The Role of the Neighbor in Identity Formation and Identity Politics; The Status of Friends, Enemies, and Neighbors in Geographical and Territorial Disputes; Rivalries and Diplomacy between Neighbors on a Local, Regional, or National Scale; The Construction of Dialects vis-à-vis Neighbors; Linguistic Interaction between Neighboring Regions; Community, Isolation, or Gentrification in Urban Neighborhoods; The Kiez in Berlin, Grätzl in Vienna, or Veedel in Cologne; Images of Neighborhoods in Suburban and Rural Settings; The Subjection of Neighbors to Suspicion and Surveillance; Cohabitation, Intimacy and Proximity in Collective Memory; The Status of the Neighbor Before and After die Wende; Media and Neighbors in the Global Village"
Keynote speaker: Kenneth Reinhard (Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature at UCLA and co-author, with Slavoj Žižek and Eric L. Santner, of "The Neighbor: Three Inquiries in Political Theology" [University of Chicago Press, 2005])
To participate, please send a 250-word abstract in English or German with a separate cover sheet indicating the proposed title, author's name, affiliation, and e-mail address to: neighbor@berkeley.edu
Deadline: 3 January 2011
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
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
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.
25 October 2010
CFP: New Chaucer Society 2012 call for session proposals
The 18th Biennial Congress of the New Chaucer Society (NCS) will take place in Portland, Oregon, USA, in 2012 (the exact date has not yet been set, it seems).
Call for session proposals
The congress will be comprised equally of sessions tied to a particular thematic thread and open sessions. The thread "Neighbor" invites proposals for sessions on political theology.
Description: "The neighbor is uniquely situated between friend and enemy, and long linked to the golden rule – the imperative to love the neighbor as the self. This thread welcomes sessions considering aspects of neighbors, neighborhoods, or neighborliness, including but not limited to the following: the vicissitudes of community, the ethics of charity, recent theoretical work on the political theology of neighbor love, borders between human and divine, unusual neighborhoods of people or texts; relations of proximity between peoples, cultures, authors, languages, or literatures. This thread will conclude with a session on 'Neighbor/Oceans,' bringing together different ways of thinking about propinquity and community."
Sessions may be proposed in any of the following formats: Paper Panels (either three papers at 20 minutes each or four papers at 15 minutes each); Roundtables (discussions between 5-7 speakers on a topic of common interest; speakers do not deliver papers, though they may speak from notes); Seminars (limited to ten participants; convened to consider works in progress by participants, or some text of common interest); Working Groups (extended seminars that convene virtually in advance of the congress, with a culminating session in Portland).
Proposals for sessions should be sent to the thread convenor (and programme co-chair), Patricia Ingham (Indiana University): pingham@indiana.edu
Deadline: 22 November 2010
After the sessions and session organizers have been determined by the programme committee, a call for papers will be announced in early February 2011. Session organizers are expected to select session participants from among proposals submitted in response to the February CFP.
More information on the NCS is to be found here:
http://artsci.wustl.edu/~chaucer/
Call for session proposals
The congress will be comprised equally of sessions tied to a particular thematic thread and open sessions. The thread "Neighbor" invites proposals for sessions on political theology.
Description: "The neighbor is uniquely situated between friend and enemy, and long linked to the golden rule – the imperative to love the neighbor as the self. This thread welcomes sessions considering aspects of neighbors, neighborhoods, or neighborliness, including but not limited to the following: the vicissitudes of community, the ethics of charity, recent theoretical work on the political theology of neighbor love, borders between human and divine, unusual neighborhoods of people or texts; relations of proximity between peoples, cultures, authors, languages, or literatures. This thread will conclude with a session on 'Neighbor/Oceans,' bringing together different ways of thinking about propinquity and community."
Sessions may be proposed in any of the following formats: Paper Panels (either three papers at 20 minutes each or four papers at 15 minutes each); Roundtables (discussions between 5-7 speakers on a topic of common interest; speakers do not deliver papers, though they may speak from notes); Seminars (limited to ten participants; convened to consider works in progress by participants, or some text of common interest); Working Groups (extended seminars that convene virtually in advance of the congress, with a culminating session in Portland).
Proposals for sessions should be sent to the thread convenor (and programme co-chair), Patricia Ingham (Indiana University): pingham@indiana.edu
Deadline: 22 November 2010
After the sessions and session organizers have been determined by the programme committee, a call for papers will be announced in early February 2011. Session organizers are expected to select session participants from among proposals submitted in response to the February CFP.
More information on the NCS is to be found here:
http://artsci.wustl.edu/~chaucer/
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
13 September 2010
CFP: Political Theology Agenda Symposium 2011
Please circulate widely!
CALL FOR PAPERS
Political Theology Agenda Symposium 2011
Organized by: Sussex Centre for the Individual and Society (SCIS)
Location: Ecumenical Institute of the World Council of Churches (WCC) and the University of Geneva, Château de Bossey, near Geneva, Switzerland
Date: 12-13 July 2011
The "Political Theology Agenda" (www.political-theology-agenda.blogspot.com) has been run by the Sussex Centre for the Individual and Society since January 2009. The blog is the premier resource on the net for the comparative study of political theology and political theologies across the boundaries of various traditions and academic disciplines.
The Political Theology Agenda Symposium 2011 will be the second event we organize in conjunction with the blog. It follows on from a highly successful first symposium held in Geneva in August 2010 and two equally well-received events on comparative political theology SCIS organized earlier, namely, in September 2007, a section and symposium at the General Conference of the European Consortium for Political Research in Pisa, Italy, and, in July 2008, a stand-alone symposium at Sciences Po/the Institute for Political Studies (IEP) in Paris, France. All three events drew participants from the world over.
The Political Theology Agenda Symposium 2011 is set to be equally international and interdisciplinary in scope. We invite affiliated academics, independent scholars, and doctoral students and candidates from a wide range of disciplines, such as Theology, Religious Studies, Philosophy, Political Theory, Political Science, International Relations, Law, Literature, History, Jewish Studies, Education, Cultural Studies, Geography, and so on. Papers may not only cover any and all aspects of political theology, but also related concepts, such as liberation theology, public theology, black theology, the Christian Right, Radical Orthodoxy, religious anarchism, Minjung theology, Dalit theology, radical Islam, religious Zionism, political religion, civil religion, etc. Have a look at the blog to see what might be of interest and falls within our remit. Papers may be theoretical and/or empirical in nature. Although not a condition, we particularly encourage a comparative perspective. Work in progress is welcome too.
We expect that 15-20 participants will be attending the workshop-style Political Theology Agenda Symposium 2011. Over the course of two full days, each presenter will have 45-60 minutes (depending on the number of participants) to present his or her paper and discuss it with all others. The symposium starts early on Tuesday and ends Wednesday late in the afternoon. Due to the small size of the symposium, all participants are expected to attend both days.
As with all SCIS events, no fees will be charged from participants, and no funding is available to cover participants' travel and accommodation expenses. We will be glad to issue letters of acceptance on request to assist participants in securing funding from their usual sources. The 18th-century Château de Bossey, set in an outstanding natural environment overlooking Lake Geneva and the French Alps, offers comfortable accommodation at reasonable prices. Further information will be provided to confirmed participants.
Please send your proposal to: e.kofmel@sussexcentre.org
Deadline: 31 January 2011
Later submissions may still be accepted, but early submission is strongly advised and proposals may be accepted as they come in.
Cordially,
Erich Kofmel
Managing Director / Research Professor of Political Theory
Sussex Centre for the Individual and Society (SCIS)
www.sussexcentre.org
E-mail: e.kofmel@sussexcentre.org
Postal address:
Sussex Centre for the Individual and Society
1200 Geneva
Switzerland
SCIS is an international association under Swiss law.
Founded 2006 at the University of Sussex.
CALL FOR PAPERS
Political Theology Agenda Symposium 2011
Organized by: Sussex Centre for the Individual and Society (SCIS)
Location: Ecumenical Institute of the World Council of Churches (WCC) and the University of Geneva, Château de Bossey, near Geneva, Switzerland
Date: 12-13 July 2011
The "Political Theology Agenda" (www.political-theology-agenda.blogspot.com) has been run by the Sussex Centre for the Individual and Society since January 2009. The blog is the premier resource on the net for the comparative study of political theology and political theologies across the boundaries of various traditions and academic disciplines.
The Political Theology Agenda Symposium 2011 will be the second event we organize in conjunction with the blog. It follows on from a highly successful first symposium held in Geneva in August 2010 and two equally well-received events on comparative political theology SCIS organized earlier, namely, in September 2007, a section and symposium at the General Conference of the European Consortium for Political Research in Pisa, Italy, and, in July 2008, a stand-alone symposium at Sciences Po/the Institute for Political Studies (IEP) in Paris, France. All three events drew participants from the world over.
The Political Theology Agenda Symposium 2011 is set to be equally international and interdisciplinary in scope. We invite affiliated academics, independent scholars, and doctoral students and candidates from a wide range of disciplines, such as Theology, Religious Studies, Philosophy, Political Theory, Political Science, International Relations, Law, Literature, History, Jewish Studies, Education, Cultural Studies, Geography, and so on. Papers may not only cover any and all aspects of political theology, but also related concepts, such as liberation theology, public theology, black theology, the Christian Right, Radical Orthodoxy, religious anarchism, Minjung theology, Dalit theology, radical Islam, religious Zionism, political religion, civil religion, etc. Have a look at the blog to see what might be of interest and falls within our remit. Papers may be theoretical and/or empirical in nature. Although not a condition, we particularly encourage a comparative perspective. Work in progress is welcome too.
We expect that 15-20 participants will be attending the workshop-style Political Theology Agenda Symposium 2011. Over the course of two full days, each presenter will have 45-60 minutes (depending on the number of participants) to present his or her paper and discuss it with all others. The symposium starts early on Tuesday and ends Wednesday late in the afternoon. Due to the small size of the symposium, all participants are expected to attend both days.
As with all SCIS events, no fees will be charged from participants, and no funding is available to cover participants' travel and accommodation expenses. We will be glad to issue letters of acceptance on request to assist participants in securing funding from their usual sources. The 18th-century Château de Bossey, set in an outstanding natural environment overlooking Lake Geneva and the French Alps, offers comfortable accommodation at reasonable prices. Further information will be provided to confirmed participants.
Please send your proposal to: e.kofmel@sussexcentre.org
Deadline: 31 January 2011
Later submissions may still be accepted, but early submission is strongly advised and proposals may be accepted as they come in.
Cordially,
Erich Kofmel
Managing Director / Research Professor of Political Theory
Sussex Centre for the Individual and Society (SCIS)
www.sussexcentre.org
E-mail: e.kofmel@sussexcentre.org
Postal address:
Sussex Centre for the Individual and Society
1200 Geneva
Switzerland
SCIS is an international association under Swiss law.
Founded 2006 at the University of Sussex.
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.
04 May 2010
CFP: Political Theology Agenda Symposium 2010
Please circulate widely!
CALL FOR PAPERS
Political Theology Agenda Symposium 2010
Organized by: Sussex Centre for the Individual and Society (SCIS)
Location: Ecumenical Institute of the World Council of Churches (WCC) and the University of Geneva, Château de Bossey, near Geneva, Switzerland
Date: 18-19 August 2010
The "Political Theology Agenda" (www.political-theology-agenda.blogspot.com) has been run by the Sussex Centre for the Individual and Society since January 2009. The blog is the premier resource on the net for the comparative study of political theology and political theologies across the boundaries of various traditions and academic disciplines.
The Political Theology Agenda Symposium 2010 will be the first event we organize in conjunction with the blog. It will build up though on two highly successful events on comparative political theology SCIS organized earlier. Namely, in September 2007, a section and symposium at the General Conference of the European Consortium for Political Research in Pisa, Italy, and, in July 2008, a stand-alone symposium at Sciences Po/the Institute for Political Studies (IEP) in Paris, France. Both events drew participants from the world over.
The Political Theology Agenda Symposium 2010 is set to be equally international and interdisciplinary in scope. We invite affiliated academics, independent scholars, and doctoral students and candidates from a wide range of disciplines, such as Theology, Religious Studies, Philosophy, Political Theory, Political Science, International Relations, Law, Literature, History, Jewish Studies, Education, Cultural Studies, Geography, and so on. Papers may not only cover any and all aspects of political theology, but also related concepts, such as liberation theology, public theology, black theology, the Christian Right, radical Orthodoxy, religious anarchism, minjung theology, Dalit theology, radical Islam, religious Zionism, political religion, civil religion, etc. Have a look at the blog to see what might be of interest and falls within our remit. Papers may be theoretical and/or empirical in nature. Although not a condition, we particularly encourage a comparative perspective. Work in progress is welcome too.
We expect that 15-20 participants will be attending the workshop-style Political Theology Agenda Symposium 2010. Over the course of two full days, each presenter will have 45-60 minutes (depending on the number of participants) to present his or her paper and discuss it with all others.
As with all SCIS events, no fees will be charged from participants, and no funding is available to cover participants' travel and accommodation expenses. We will be glad to issue letters of invitation on request to assist participants in securing funding from their usual sources. The 18th-century Château de Bossey, set in an outstanding natural environment overlooking Lake Geneva and the French Alps, offers comfortable accommodation at reasonable prices. Alternatively, participants may decide to stay in Geneva and commute to the symposium. Further information will be provided to confirmed participants. The symposium starts early on Wednesday and ends Thursday late in the afternoon.
Please send your proposal to: e.kofmel@sussexcentre.org
Extended deadline: 15 July 2010
Later submissions may still be accepted, but early submission is strongly advised and proposals may be accepted as they come in.
Cordially,
Erich Kofmel
Managing Director / Research Professor of Political Theory
Sussex Centre for the Individual and Society (SCIS)
www.sussexcentre.org
E-mail: e.kofmel@sussexcentre.org
Postal address:
Sussex Centre for the Individual and Society
1200 Geneva
Switzerland
SCIS is an international association under Swiss law.
Founded 2006 at the University of Sussex.
CALL FOR PAPERS
Political Theology Agenda Symposium 2010
Organized by: Sussex Centre for the Individual and Society (SCIS)
Location: Ecumenical Institute of the World Council of Churches (WCC) and the University of Geneva, Château de Bossey, near Geneva, Switzerland
Date: 18-19 August 2010
The "Political Theology Agenda" (www.political-theology-agenda.blogspot.com) has been run by the Sussex Centre for the Individual and Society since January 2009. The blog is the premier resource on the net for the comparative study of political theology and political theologies across the boundaries of various traditions and academic disciplines.
The Political Theology Agenda Symposium 2010 will be the first event we organize in conjunction with the blog. It will build up though on two highly successful events on comparative political theology SCIS organized earlier. Namely, in September 2007, a section and symposium at the General Conference of the European Consortium for Political Research in Pisa, Italy, and, in July 2008, a stand-alone symposium at Sciences Po/the Institute for Political Studies (IEP) in Paris, France. Both events drew participants from the world over.
The Political Theology Agenda Symposium 2010 is set to be equally international and interdisciplinary in scope. We invite affiliated academics, independent scholars, and doctoral students and candidates from a wide range of disciplines, such as Theology, Religious Studies, Philosophy, Political Theory, Political Science, International Relations, Law, Literature, History, Jewish Studies, Education, Cultural Studies, Geography, and so on. Papers may not only cover any and all aspects of political theology, but also related concepts, such as liberation theology, public theology, black theology, the Christian Right, radical Orthodoxy, religious anarchism, minjung theology, Dalit theology, radical Islam, religious Zionism, political religion, civil religion, etc. Have a look at the blog to see what might be of interest and falls within our remit. Papers may be theoretical and/or empirical in nature. Although not a condition, we particularly encourage a comparative perspective. Work in progress is welcome too.
We expect that 15-20 participants will be attending the workshop-style Political Theology Agenda Symposium 2010. Over the course of two full days, each presenter will have 45-60 minutes (depending on the number of participants) to present his or her paper and discuss it with all others.
As with all SCIS events, no fees will be charged from participants, and no funding is available to cover participants' travel and accommodation expenses. We will be glad to issue letters of invitation on request to assist participants in securing funding from their usual sources. The 18th-century Château de Bossey, set in an outstanding natural environment overlooking Lake Geneva and the French Alps, offers comfortable accommodation at reasonable prices. Alternatively, participants may decide to stay in Geneva and commute to the symposium. Further information will be provided to confirmed participants. The symposium starts early on Wednesday and ends Thursday late in the afternoon.
Please send your proposal to: e.kofmel@sussexcentre.org
Extended deadline: 15 July 2010
Later submissions may still be accepted, but early submission is strongly advised and proposals may be accepted as they come in.
Cordially,
Erich Kofmel
Managing Director / Research Professor of Political Theory
Sussex Centre for the Individual and Society (SCIS)
www.sussexcentre.org
E-mail: e.kofmel@sussexcentre.org
Postal address:
Sussex Centre for the Individual and Society
1200 Geneva
Switzerland
SCIS is an international association under Swiss law.
Founded 2006 at the University of Sussex.
31 March 2010
Book: From Utopia to Apocalypse: Science Fiction and the Politics of Catastrophe
Just published: Peter Y. Paik, "From Utopia to Apocalypse: Science Fiction and the Politics of Catastrophe" (University of Minnesota Press, March 2010).Publisher's description: "Revolutionary narratives in recent science fiction graphic novels and films compel audiences to reflect on the politics and societal ills of the day. Through character and story, science fiction brings theory to life, giving shape to the motivations behind the action as well as to the consequences they produce. In From Utopia to Apocalypse, Peter Y. Paik shows how science fiction generates intriguing and profound insights into politics. He reveals that the fantasy of putting annihilating omnipotence to beneficial effect underlies the revolutionary projects that have defined the collective upheavals of the modern age. Paik traces how this political theology is expressed, and indeed literalized, in popular superhero fiction, examining works including Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons's graphic novel Watchmen, the science fiction cinema of Jang Joon-Hwan, the manga of Hayao Miyazaki, Alan Moore's V for Vendetta, and the Matrix trilogy.
"Superhero fantasies are usually seen as compensations for individual feelings of weakness, victimization, and vulnerability. But Paik presents these fantasies as social constructions concerned with questions of political will and the disintegration of democracy rather than with the psychology of the personal. What is urgently at stake, Paik argues, is a critique of the limitations and deadlocks of the political imagination. The utopias dreamed of by totalitarianism, which must be imposed through torture, oppression, and mass imprisonment, nevertheless persist in liberal political systems. With this reality looming throughout, Paik demonstrates the uneasy juxtaposition of saintliness and cynically manipulative realpolitik, of torture and the assertion of human dignity, of cruelty and benevolence."
www.upress.umn.edu/Books/P/paik_utopia.html
Contents: Introduction: The God That Succeeded; 1. Utopia Achieved: The Case of Watchmen; 2. The Defense of Necessity: On Jang Joon-Hwan's Save the Green Planet; 3. The Saintly Politics of Catastrophe: Hayao Miyazaki's Nausicaä of the Valley of Wind; 4. Between Trauma and Tragedy: From The Matrix to V for Vendetta
Endorsements: "I read Peter Y. Paik's lucid, graceful, ruthless book in one single astonished sitting. I scarred it all over with arrows and exclamation points, so I can read it again as soon as possible." (Bruce Sterling, novelist)
"Uncommonly powerful and original, From Utopia to Apocalypse both raises issues that are disturbing and disturbingly relevant, and casts a whole genre of cultural fictions in an entirely new light." (Steven Shaviro, Wayne State University)
Peter Y. Paik is Associate Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
Book: Representations of Homosexuality: Black Liberation Theology and Cultural Criticism
Just published: Roger A. Sneed, "Representations of Homosexuality: Black Liberation Theology and Cultural Criticism" (Palgrave Macmillan, March 2010):
http://us.macmillan.com/representationsofhomosexuality
Publisher's description: "This book challenges black religious and cultural critics to rethink theological and ethical approaches to homosexuality. Sneed demonstrates how black liberation theology and [sic] has often characterized homosexuality as a problem to be solved, and his work here offers a different way for black religious scholars to approach black homosexuality and religious experiences. Drawing on a range of black gay writers from Essex Hemphill to J.L. King, Sneed identifies black gay men's literature as a rich source for theological and ethical reflection and points black religious scholarship toward an ethics of openness."
Endorsement: "This important work by Sneed challenges theologies that ground themselves in Black experience – Black and Womanist
[–], to recognize that without the inclusion of the experience of gay Black men our work is incomplete. This book will add significantly to conversations about the future of Black and Womanist theologies." (Stephen G. Ray Jr., Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary)
Roger A. Sneed is Assistant Professor of Religion at Furman University.
http://us.macmillan.com/representationsofhomosexuality
Publisher's description: "This book challenges black religious and cultural critics to rethink theological and ethical approaches to homosexuality. Sneed demonstrates how black liberation theology and [sic] has often characterized homosexuality as a problem to be solved, and his work here offers a different way for black religious scholars to approach black homosexuality and religious experiences. Drawing on a range of black gay writers from Essex Hemphill to J.L. King, Sneed identifies black gay men's literature as a rich source for theological and ethical reflection and points black religious scholarship toward an ethics of openness."
Endorsement: "This important work by Sneed challenges theologies that ground themselves in Black experience – Black and Womanist
[–], to recognize that without the inclusion of the experience of gay Black men our work is incomplete. This book will add significantly to conversations about the future of Black and Womanist theologies." (Stephen G. Ray Jr., Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary)
Roger A. Sneed is Assistant Professor of Religion at Furman University.
12 February 2010
CONF: Rethinking the Theological-Political Complex: Derrida's Spinoza
Half-day symposium "Rethinking the Theological-Political Complex: Derrida's Spinoza" of the Jackman Humanities Institute (JHI), co-sponsored by the Centre for Jewish Studies, the Centre for Comparative Literature, the Department of Philosophy, and the Department of French at the University of Toronto, Jackman Humanities Building, Room 100, 170 St. George Street, Toronto, Canada, (Sunday!) 7 March 2010, 2.00-6.00 pm
www.humanities.utoronto.ca/event_details/id=198
Speakers: Warren Montag (English and Comparative Literature, Occidental College): "Immanence, Transcendence and the Trace: Derrida Between Levinas and Spinoza"; Gerard Bensussan (Philosophy, University of Strasbourg): "L'effroi de Spinoza: Derrida lecteure du Traité théologico-politique"; Willi Goetschel (German, University of Toronto): "Rethinking the Theological-Political: Derrida's Spinoza"; followed by a round table.
The location is wheelchair-accessible. If you are a person with a disability and require accommodation, please contact Kim Yates by
1 March 2010 to make appropriate arrangements: jhi.associate@utoronto.ca
You may want to contact them upfront to see whether persons from outside the University of Toronto can participate.
www.humanities.utoronto.ca/event_details/id=198
Speakers: Warren Montag (English and Comparative Literature, Occidental College): "Immanence, Transcendence and the Trace: Derrida Between Levinas and Spinoza"; Gerard Bensussan (Philosophy, University of Strasbourg): "L'effroi de Spinoza: Derrida lecteure du Traité théologico-politique"; Willi Goetschel (German, University of Toronto): "Rethinking the Theological-Political: Derrida's Spinoza"; followed by a round table.
The location is wheelchair-accessible. If you are a person with a disability and require accommodation, please contact Kim Yates by
1 March 2010 to make appropriate arrangements: jhi.associate@utoronto.ca
You may want to contact them upfront to see whether persons from outside the University of Toronto can participate.
03 February 2010
CFP: "GBS: Global Bernard Shaw" and political theology
Modern Language Association Convention, Los Angeles, California, USA, 6-9 January 2011
www.mla.org/convention
A "Special Shaw Session", titled "GBS: Global Bernard Shaw", is to be organized for this conference.
"Zoo. Why should you travel for pleasure! Can you not enjoy yourself at home?
The Elderly Gentleman. I wish to see the world." –
"Tragedy of an Elderly Gentleman", Back to Methuselah
An international celebrity, world traveler, and global citizen, George Bernard Shaw was never at a loss for words on the matter of the world he lived in. This special session seeks papers that think through the entailments of "GBS" as Global Bernard Shaw. Topics may include (but are not limited to): Gender and international feminisms; Colonialism and postcolonialism (from Ireland to India and beyond); Cosmopolitanism; The "transatlantic" Shaw; Nationalism and transnationalism; Geopolitics and world order studies; Conflict, war, and peace; neoliberalism and free-market capitalism; Globalization and modernization; "Empire", "multitude", and "commonwealth" (Hardt and Negri); International Marxist, communist, and socialist movements; Religion and political theology (liberation theology, Zionism, Islamic radicalism, etc.); Cross-cultural performance; Influence, appropriation, and adaptation; Shaw as world literature (canonicity, translation, "the world republic of letters"); Shaw as world traveler
Please send a 250-word abstract and a short CV as e-mail attachment to Charles Joseph Del Dotto (Duke University): cjd@duke.edu
Deadline: 15 March 2010
All participants in convention sessions must be MLA members by
7 April 2010. At the discretion of the executive director, waivers of the membership requirement may be granted for non-scholars (medical doctors, visual artists, etc.) and scholars in the United States and Canada who work in disciplines other than language and literature. The request must be made on the Request for Waiver of Membership form, which is available on the MLA website. The form must be submitted no later than 1 April 2010. Speakers may be granted a waiver once every five years. The speaker's discipline (History, Economics, Psychology, etc.) or profession (curator, archivist, attorney, etc.) must be specified on the form. Please note that waived non-members cannot organize or chair a session.
A member may participate as speaker or respondent only twice (e.g. by organizing and chairing a meeting, reading a paper, or serving as a speaker, panelist, or respondent in one or two sessions) at a single convention.
Participants must indicate their audiovisual needs when they respond to a call for papers and should check with the chair of the session or with the MLA convention office to be sure that the necessary equipment has been ordered on the appropriate program copy forms by 1 April 2010. Because the need for audiovisual equipment is a major factor in the scheduling of meetings (and because the movement of equipment is both costly and hazardous), the deadline is firm.
Limited travel grants for certain participants and attendees who are members may be available. For further information, please visit the MLA website. Each year the MLA Executive Council authorizes very limited funds to provide partial assistance to persons who are not MLA members and who would not normally be expected to attend a professional meeting in the field of language and literature. Those who are eligible to receive such funds include distinguished persons in fields other than those directly represented by the MLA, creative writers who do not have academic positions, and MLA honorary members and fellows. Requests for such funds must be made on the fund-request form (which may be obtained on the MLA website), must be submitted by 15 April 2010, and must explain how the participant would enrich the program.
Calls for papers are simply statements of intent to propose a session; they do not in any way bind the organizer or the Program Committee.
www.mla.org/convention
A "Special Shaw Session", titled "GBS: Global Bernard Shaw", is to be organized for this conference.
"Zoo. Why should you travel for pleasure! Can you not enjoy yourself at home?
The Elderly Gentleman. I wish to see the world." –
"Tragedy of an Elderly Gentleman", Back to Methuselah
An international celebrity, world traveler, and global citizen, George Bernard Shaw was never at a loss for words on the matter of the world he lived in. This special session seeks papers that think through the entailments of "GBS" as Global Bernard Shaw. Topics may include (but are not limited to): Gender and international feminisms; Colonialism and postcolonialism (from Ireland to India and beyond); Cosmopolitanism; The "transatlantic" Shaw; Nationalism and transnationalism; Geopolitics and world order studies; Conflict, war, and peace; neoliberalism and free-market capitalism; Globalization and modernization; "Empire", "multitude", and "commonwealth" (Hardt and Negri); International Marxist, communist, and socialist movements; Religion and political theology (liberation theology, Zionism, Islamic radicalism, etc.); Cross-cultural performance; Influence, appropriation, and adaptation; Shaw as world literature (canonicity, translation, "the world republic of letters"); Shaw as world traveler
Please send a 250-word abstract and a short CV as e-mail attachment to Charles Joseph Del Dotto (Duke University): cjd@duke.edu
Deadline: 15 March 2010
All participants in convention sessions must be MLA members by
7 April 2010. At the discretion of the executive director, waivers of the membership requirement may be granted for non-scholars (medical doctors, visual artists, etc.) and scholars in the United States and Canada who work in disciplines other than language and literature. The request must be made on the Request for Waiver of Membership form, which is available on the MLA website. The form must be submitted no later than 1 April 2010. Speakers may be granted a waiver once every five years. The speaker's discipline (History, Economics, Psychology, etc.) or profession (curator, archivist, attorney, etc.) must be specified on the form. Please note that waived non-members cannot organize or chair a session.
A member may participate as speaker or respondent only twice (e.g. by organizing and chairing a meeting, reading a paper, or serving as a speaker, panelist, or respondent in one or two sessions) at a single convention.
Participants must indicate their audiovisual needs when they respond to a call for papers and should check with the chair of the session or with the MLA convention office to be sure that the necessary equipment has been ordered on the appropriate program copy forms by 1 April 2010. Because the need for audiovisual equipment is a major factor in the scheduling of meetings (and because the movement of equipment is both costly and hazardous), the deadline is firm.
Limited travel grants for certain participants and attendees who are members may be available. For further information, please visit the MLA website. Each year the MLA Executive Council authorizes very limited funds to provide partial assistance to persons who are not MLA members and who would not normally be expected to attend a professional meeting in the field of language and literature. Those who are eligible to receive such funds include distinguished persons in fields other than those directly represented by the MLA, creative writers who do not have academic positions, and MLA honorary members and fellows. Requests for such funds must be made on the fund-request form (which may be obtained on the MLA website), must be submitted by 15 April 2010, and must explain how the participant would enrich the program.
Calls for papers are simply statements of intent to propose a session; they do not in any way bind the organizer or the Program Committee.
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
07 January 2010
CFP: Deconstructing the Gods: Towards a Post-Religious Criticism
Third Annual Brooklyn College Graduate English Conference, at Brooklyn College (a part of CUNY), New York, USA, 10 April 2010
Call for papers: "Deconstructing the Gods: Towards a Post-Religious Criticism"
Papers on liberation theologies are explicitly invited, but I am sure they also mean political theologies.
"If one were asked to provide a single explanation for the growth of English studies in the later nineteenth century, one could do worse than reply, 'the failure of religion.'" (Terry Eagleton)
"Literature would begin wherever one no longer knows who writes and who signs the narrative of the call – and of the 'Here I Am' – between the absolute Father and Son." (Jacques Derrida)
The concept of "God", in our increasingly pluralist postmodern environment, is protean and subject to vastly divergent individual definitions. Yet gods are often regarded as the most objective and stable nuclei of religious communities. Whereas gods may be imagined as idealized selves, and may epitomize correct morality for a believer, they may simultaneously be said to function as political and rhetorical devices – dangerously slippery proxies of both transcendent subjectivity and faith-based violence.
One of the more liberating tasks of literary criticism, especially since the latter half of the 20th century, has been its attempt to uncover traces of dominant structures that lie dormant in literary texts. Marxist criticism has brought an examination of economic structures in a text. Feminist criticism has brought a critique of patriarchal forces. Postcolonial thought has unfolded the effects of colonialism and imperialism. Where, one might ask, is the criticism of religious power, and how might it be foregrounded?
Unlike other modes of thought, religious discourse is uniquely protected by a veneer of the sacred, which allows it to be self-censoring or, as Derrida said, auto-immunizing. Literary criticism operates as a sort of secular exegesis; it is perhaps for this reason, and because of the pseudo-religious assumptions of criticism, that religion is often elided from critical inquiry. What might a post-religious criticism reveal about the religious forces at work within texts and canons? Within criticism itself?
From the feudal warrior culture of Beowulf to the heretical Catholicisms of Ulysses, religious forces are active, whether as narrative fulcra or dynamic backdrops. Literary works such as The Song of Roland depict warring factions of religionists, each with a god-concept at the helm of their ideological battleship. Dissecting these gods with the tools of cultural criticism has the potential to bring new insight, and to uncover power structures previously unnoticed.
How might we discover, for instance, textual evidence for ways in which religions have been used as a means of solidifying tribal identity, and for ways in which religions have been the ideological forces behind genocide? This conference seeks to explore the significance of the "post-religious" in all of its senses, both as an object of literary representation and as a condition of literary study.
Sample topics might include, but are by no means limited to: The Divine Author(ity); Homoeroticism in Early Modern Devotional Literature; Eden, Exile, and the Fortunate Fall; Divine Revelation and the Muse; Via Negativa: What God Isn't; God, Ego, and the God-Self; The Sacred and the Taboo: Religion as a Self-Censoring Discourse; Atheist Literature of the 19th century; Ghosts: Spiritualism in the 19th Century; The Poetics of Transcendent Experience; The Apostate in Islamic Literature; Confessional Literature and the Catholic Confessional; Holy Texts and the Language of Violence; Alterity: Demonization of the "Other" Religion; Liberation Theologies; Blasphemous Humor as Social Satire; Madness and Heresy; The Christian Rhetoric of Imperialism.
Abstracts of no more than 300 words are to be sent in the body of an e-mail to: bcgradconference@gmail.com
Deadline: 31 January 2010
Call for papers: "Deconstructing the Gods: Towards a Post-Religious Criticism"
Papers on liberation theologies are explicitly invited, but I am sure they also mean political theologies.
"If one were asked to provide a single explanation for the growth of English studies in the later nineteenth century, one could do worse than reply, 'the failure of religion.'" (Terry Eagleton)
"Literature would begin wherever one no longer knows who writes and who signs the narrative of the call – and of the 'Here I Am' – between the absolute Father and Son." (Jacques Derrida)
The concept of "God", in our increasingly pluralist postmodern environment, is protean and subject to vastly divergent individual definitions. Yet gods are often regarded as the most objective and stable nuclei of religious communities. Whereas gods may be imagined as idealized selves, and may epitomize correct morality for a believer, they may simultaneously be said to function as political and rhetorical devices – dangerously slippery proxies of both transcendent subjectivity and faith-based violence.
One of the more liberating tasks of literary criticism, especially since the latter half of the 20th century, has been its attempt to uncover traces of dominant structures that lie dormant in literary texts. Marxist criticism has brought an examination of economic structures in a text. Feminist criticism has brought a critique of patriarchal forces. Postcolonial thought has unfolded the effects of colonialism and imperialism. Where, one might ask, is the criticism of religious power, and how might it be foregrounded?
Unlike other modes of thought, religious discourse is uniquely protected by a veneer of the sacred, which allows it to be self-censoring or, as Derrida said, auto-immunizing. Literary criticism operates as a sort of secular exegesis; it is perhaps for this reason, and because of the pseudo-religious assumptions of criticism, that religion is often elided from critical inquiry. What might a post-religious criticism reveal about the religious forces at work within texts and canons? Within criticism itself?
From the feudal warrior culture of Beowulf to the heretical Catholicisms of Ulysses, religious forces are active, whether as narrative fulcra or dynamic backdrops. Literary works such as The Song of Roland depict warring factions of religionists, each with a god-concept at the helm of their ideological battleship. Dissecting these gods with the tools of cultural criticism has the potential to bring new insight, and to uncover power structures previously unnoticed.
How might we discover, for instance, textual evidence for ways in which religions have been used as a means of solidifying tribal identity, and for ways in which religions have been the ideological forces behind genocide? This conference seeks to explore the significance of the "post-religious" in all of its senses, both as an object of literary representation and as a condition of literary study.
Sample topics might include, but are by no means limited to: The Divine Author(ity); Homoeroticism in Early Modern Devotional Literature; Eden, Exile, and the Fortunate Fall; Divine Revelation and the Muse; Via Negativa: What God Isn't; God, Ego, and the God-Self; The Sacred and the Taboo: Religion as a Self-Censoring Discourse; Atheist Literature of the 19th century; Ghosts: Spiritualism in the 19th Century; The Poetics of Transcendent Experience; The Apostate in Islamic Literature; Confessional Literature and the Catholic Confessional; Holy Texts and the Language of Violence; Alterity: Demonization of the "Other" Religion; Liberation Theologies; Blasphemous Humor as Social Satire; Madness and Heresy; The Christian Rhetoric of Imperialism.
Abstracts of no more than 300 words are to be sent in the body of an e-mail to: bcgradconference@gmail.com
Deadline: 31 January 2010
05 January 2010
Journal articles on political theology 2009
Some articles on political theology published in 2009 in academic journals of all conceivable disciplines:
David Theo Goldberg (University of California, Irvine), "A Political Theology of Race: Articulating Racial Southafricanization", Cultural Studies, 23 (4), July 2009: pp. 513-37.
Abstract: "Over the past three decades Stuart Hall has provided many of the key terms for (re)thinking the social, the cultural, and the political. Largely absent from his work has been consideration of religion and, given more recent theoretical developments, of the theologico-political. I pose a series of questions to Stuart Hall by considering an analysis of race as political theology, exemplified by a focus on the history of South African apartheid and its afterlife."
Mika Luoma-aho (University of Lapland), "Political Theology, Anthropomorphism, and Person-hood of the State: The Religion of IR", International Political Sociology, 3 (3), September 2009: pp. 293-309.
Abstract: "In this article I identify international relations as a form of religion. My identification takes two epistemological paths. The first one has been cleared by political theologians such as Carl Schmitt, who teach that 'secular' political ideas not only have a divine origin, but also structural identity with Christian theology. I will clear the second path with help from a cognitive theory of religion that identifies anthropomorphism as a defining criterion of religion. International relations is a religion, because it is a system of thought that takes the metaphorical image of the personified, embodied state more seriously than other, more idiosyncratic forms of anthropomorphism. What we have in academic IR is, thus, a theology that works to generalize and systematize this religious image into a disciplinary form."
Dimitris Vardoulakis (University of Western Sydney), "Stasis: Beyond Political Theology?", Cultural Critique, 73, fall 2009, pp. 125-47.
From the preview: "Political theology refers to the impossibility of both to completely separate and to completely conflate politics and religion. [...] It remains a point of contention, however, what the repercussions of the trespassing of theological concepts into the political are. [...] Despite the differences between these thinkers, there is one abiding characteristic. There is a constitutive disjunction between politics and the political, between law and justice. As a result, political theology forecloses meaning in politics – that is, no political party or representative can be thought to represent the political ideal. More emphatically, there is no end of history. I will explore here whether it is possible to understand the foreclosure of meaning not as the conclusion, but rather as the condition of the possibility of the political. Can the meaningless or the irrational function as the basis of the intertwining and imbrication of the secular and the sacred?"
Nur Masalha (St Mary's University College), "Reading the Bible with the Eyes of the Canaanites: Neo-Zionism, Political Theology and the Land Traditions of the Bible (1967 to Gaza 2009)", Holy Land Studies, 8 (1), May 2009: pp. 55-108.
Abstract: "In modern times, a whole range of colonial enterprises have used the Bible. The book of Joshua and other biblical texts evoking the exploits of ancient Israelites have been deployed in support of secular Zionism and settler colonisation in Palestine. The mega narratives of the Bible, however, appeared to mandate the ethnic cleansing and even genocide of the indigenous population of Canaan. This article argues that, with the rise of messianic Zionism since 1967, a Jewish theology of zealotocracy, based on the land traditions of the Bible, has emerged in Israel – a political theology that demanded the destruction of the so-called modern Canaanites; since 1967 fundamentalist rabbis have routinely compared the Palestinian people to the ancient Canaanites, Philistines and Amalekites, whose annihilation or expulsion by the ancient Israelites was predestined by a divine design. This article focuses on the politics of reading the Bible by neo-Zionists and examines the theology of the messianic current which embraces the paradigm of Jews as a divinely 'chosen people' and sees the indigenous Palestinians as no more than illegitimate squatters, and a threat to the process of messianic redemption; their human and civil rights are no match for the biblically ordained holy war of conquering and settling the 'Promised Land'."
Rutger Henneman (researcher and activist) and Alastair McIntosh (University of Strathclyde), "The Political Theology of Modern Scottish Land Reform", Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture, 3 (3), 2009: pp. 340-75.
Abstract: "This paper gathers evidence that modern Scottish land reform was influenced by applied liberation theology from both grassroot community activists and institutional churches. Scotland's land tenure was feudal to the late twentieth century. Plutocratic ownership impacted the economics and psychology of community wellbeing. The 1990s produced a land reform movement culminating in the new Scottish Parliament's Abolition of Feudal Tenure etc. (Scotland) Act 2000 and the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003. These created a conditional 'community right to buy' and affirmed freedom of 'right to roam'. Two percent of Scottish land is now in community ownership. Our research interviewed fifteen movers and shakers – both national theologians and local activists from the vanguard land trusts of Eigg, Assynt and Gigha. We conclude that spirituality and religion can be subtle drivers of community empowerment. By inspiring, informing and legitimising socio-political transformation, a 'Remnant' theology factored into Scottish legislation of international significance."
Erin Runions (Pomona College), "Detranscendentalizing Decisionism: Political Theology after Gayatri Spivak", Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, 25 (2), fall 2009, pp. 67-85.
Abstract: "This essay uses the thought of Gayatri Spivak to reread one religious trope – the antichrist – commonly used in conservative political discourse to motivate a masculinist theopolitical decisionism. Runions draws a connection between Spivak's insistence on detranscendentalizing radical alterity – which is a deconstructive literary approach to religious narratives – and Spivak's larger concern with ethics. The project of detranscendentalizing is an important first step toward the impossible ethical encounter with the other; it thus charts a course for critiquing theopolitics and imagining new modes of political engagement, in ways that resist the usual conservative accusations of neutrality. To illustrate, the essay draws to the fore the ancient Near Eastern mythological filiations between Christ and antichrist; it reads the antichrist as a detranscendentalized figure that ironically disrupts the masculinist authority of decisions made in the name of Christ and makes room for the singular encounter with the political other."
Anthony O'Mahony (Heythrop College), "The Vatican and Europe: Political Theology and Ecclesiology in Papal Statements from Pius XII to Benedict XVI", International Journal for the Study of the Christian Church, 9 (3), August 2009, pp. 177-94.
Abstract: "The article examines the origins and evolution of the Vatican's political theology and ecclesiology for Europe from Pius XII (especially after the Second World War) and including the pontificates of John XXIII, Paul VI, John Paul II and Benedict XVI. It seeks to examine the continuities of the 'Idea of Europe' in papal thought against a background of changing political context – the end of the Second World War, the Cold War, the fall of the communist state system, the emergence of a united but diverse Europe after 1989. The political structures of the continent now include within its geographic sweep Western and Eastern Christian churches which, divided by tradition and modern history, find their relationship a key marker in the contemporary religious identity of Europe. This reality is a significant framework for Vatican thinking on Europe especially for John Paul II and Benedict XVI."
Victoria Kahn (University of California at Berkeley), "Political Theology and Fiction in The King's Two Bodies", Representations, 106, spring 2009: pp. 77-101.
Abstract: "This essay argues that Ernst Kantorowicz's The King's Two Bodies is intended as a contribution to twentieth-century debates about political theology and that modern students of political theology can learn from Kantorowicz's association of political theology with legal fiction."
Jennifer R. Rust (Saint Louis University), "Political Theology and Shakespeare Studies", Literature Compass, 6 (1), January 2009: pp. 175-90.
Abstract: "The current focus on political theology in Shakespeare studies is largely devoted to tracing how Shakespeare's dramas illuminate the structural link between religious and political forms in both early modernity and modern liberal democracy. Critics concerned with addressing Shakespeare's engagement with political theology are also interested in how Shakespeare's portrayal of sovereign bodies in crisis constitute an early representation of 'biopolitics'. These critics draw on theorists ranging from Carl Schmitt to Giorgio Agamben to inform their analyses of the way Shakespeare dramatizes sovereignty in a 'state of emergency' in his histories and tragedies. Plays such as Richard II, Coriolanus, and Hamlet have drawn particular attention insofar as they vividly interrogate the nature of the sovereign exception and decision highlighted by theorists of political theology. While this line of criticism adds a new theoretical dimension to Shakespeare studies, it also offers the potential for remapping our understanding of the religious and political history of early modern England in its attention to the deforming pressure of religious schism on traditional structures of sovereignty."
Aaron Riches (University of Nottingham), "Political Theology and Pauline Law: Notes Toward a Sapiential Legality", Telos, 146, spring 2009, pp. 140-57.
Excerpt: "In 1979, on the thirty-ninth anniversary of the closing of the Franco-Spanish border at Port Bou and one day before the anniversary of the suicide of Walter Benjamin, Jacob Taubes and Carl Schmitt opened the Bible in the Sauerland. The two men sat down in Plettenburg to read St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans, chapters 9-11. As if in memory of Benjamin, they spoke 'under a priestly seal': Schmitt, the most important state law theorist of the twentieth century, a Roman Catholic and sometime member of the Nazi Party; Taubes, a Jewish philosopher of a Messianic and oddly left-wing disposition ..."
Mike Grimshaw (University of Canterbury), "Responding not Believing: Political Theology and Post-Secular Society", Political Theology, 10 (3), fall 2009: pp. 537-57.
Abstract: "In the past decade social theorists and Continental philosophers have returned again to an engagement with Christianity and the legacy of Christian belief. This is framed in the context of a Europe seen in transition to a post-secular identity and, often implicitly, against what is seen as an encroaching Islamic presence within Europe. This move has often brought together Marxist, post-Marxist, and Catholic-legacy philosophers, together with philosophical Protestants in an attempt to recover what I term a political theology of response. Response, in opposition to belief, signals an alternative post-secular turn of attempted inclusion out of a perceived shared cultural legacy. This essay asks if, in such a cultural philosophical turn, the alternative post-secular turn of a political theology of response signals that belief remains within the private sphere as we seek to engage in a public conversation of non-believing 'response'?"
The same journal, "Political Theology", carried, on occasion of the 500th birthday of John Calvin, in issue 3 of its 10th volume (fall 2009) a symposium on "John Calvin and Political Theology":
www.politicaltheology.com/ojs/index.php/PT/issue/view/690
Articles include: "Editorial: Remembering Geneva's Calvin" by Marilynne Robinson (University of Iowa); "John Calvin and the Jews: A Problem in Political Theology" by David C. Steinmetz (Duke Divinity School); "Calvin and Natural Rights" by David Little (Harvard Divinity School); "Calvin's Legacy for Public Theology" by Richard J. Mouw (Fuller Theological Seminary); and "What Reformed Theology in a Calvinist Key Brings to Conversations about Justice" by Douglas F. Ottati (Davidson College).
Aristide Tessitore (Furman University), "Political Theology and the Theological-Political Problem", Perspectives on Political Science, 38 (1), winter 2009: pp. 5-12.
Abstract: "This essay offers a critical appreciation of Mark Lilla's Stillborn God. To his credit, Lilla understands the primacy and enduring appeal of political theology, as well as the danger of intellectual complacency about the underlying principles of modern politics. Lilla maintains that modern politics is a relatively recent and radically novel experiment that aims at nothing less than displacing a primordial and perennial way of constituting politics with reference to the divine. My essay compares Lilla's analysis of the fundamental antagonism between political theology and modern liberal politics to Strauss's analysis of the theological-political problem. In doing so, I bring to light both the strengths and limits of Lilla's attempt to clarify the relationship between politics, biblical religion, and philosophic rationalism."
Sandrine Baume (University of Lausanne), "On Political Theology: A Controversy Between Hans Kelsen and Carl Schmitt", History of European Ideas, 35 (3), September 2009: pp. 369-81.
Abstract: "This article pays special attention to the large number of references to political theology by Hans Kelsen and Carl Schmitt, particularly in the interwar period, and seeks to interpret these references in a new way. While Schmitt's analogies between God and state are to be expected considering his strong Catholic roots, such comparisons are much more surprising for a positivist like Hans Kelsen, who always tried to relieve state and law from transcendental elements. The article concludes that, far from being marginal in the doctrinal dispute between Schmitt and Kelsen, references to political theology express and summarize their major controversy about the relation between state and law, as well as about the sources of the state's unity. The heart of the disputatio between the two jurists concerned the ability of the political power to emancipate itself from the juridical order. The 'legal miracle' – in this context meaning the occasional autonomization of the state from law – was for Schmitt the manifestation of sovereign power. However, for Kelsen it represented the negation of the state's essence, whose actions must be determined only by the legal order."
Anna Schmidt (University of Munich), "The Problem of Carl Schmitt's Political Theology", Interpretation: A Journal of Political Philosophy, 36 (3), summer 2009: pp. 219-52.
No abstract available.
Boaventura de Sousa Santos (University of Coimbra, University of Wisconsin-Madison, and University of Warwick), "If God Were a Human Rights Activist: Human Rights and the Challenge of Political Theologies", Law, Social Justice and Global Development Journal (LGD), 13, 2009 (1), March, refereed electronic journal, full text available online:
http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/law/elj/lgd/2009_1/santos
Abstract: "Citing the inability of conventional human rights thinking to address the 'strong' questions raised by our times, this article pursues a twofold objective: to identify the major challenges that the rise of political theologies at the beginning of the twentieth-first [sic] century posed to human rights; and second, to select within a broad landscape of theological analysis the types of reflections and practices that might contribute to expand and deepen the canon of human rights politics. In order to achieve this double goal the article uses complexity as its main analytical guideline making distinctions from which significant consequences were drawn: on one side, distinctions among different types of political theologies (pluralist versus revelationist, traditionalist versus progressive); and, on the other, between two contrasting discourses and practices of human rights politics (hegemonic versus counter-hegemonic). Depending on the circumstances, even conventional or hegemonic human rights struggles may be a progressive tool against social practices and norms derived from traditionalist and revelationist theologies. Pluralist and progressive theologies, in turn, may be a source of radical energy toward more ambitious, counter-hegemonic human rights struggles."
Please let me know if I missed any important articles.
David Theo Goldberg (University of California, Irvine), "A Political Theology of Race: Articulating Racial Southafricanization", Cultural Studies, 23 (4), July 2009: pp. 513-37.
Abstract: "Over the past three decades Stuart Hall has provided many of the key terms for (re)thinking the social, the cultural, and the political. Largely absent from his work has been consideration of religion and, given more recent theoretical developments, of the theologico-political. I pose a series of questions to Stuart Hall by considering an analysis of race as political theology, exemplified by a focus on the history of South African apartheid and its afterlife."
Mika Luoma-aho (University of Lapland), "Political Theology, Anthropomorphism, and Person-hood of the State: The Religion of IR", International Political Sociology, 3 (3), September 2009: pp. 293-309.
Abstract: "In this article I identify international relations as a form of religion. My identification takes two epistemological paths. The first one has been cleared by political theologians such as Carl Schmitt, who teach that 'secular' political ideas not only have a divine origin, but also structural identity with Christian theology. I will clear the second path with help from a cognitive theory of religion that identifies anthropomorphism as a defining criterion of religion. International relations is a religion, because it is a system of thought that takes the metaphorical image of the personified, embodied state more seriously than other, more idiosyncratic forms of anthropomorphism. What we have in academic IR is, thus, a theology that works to generalize and systematize this religious image into a disciplinary form."
Dimitris Vardoulakis (University of Western Sydney), "Stasis: Beyond Political Theology?", Cultural Critique, 73, fall 2009, pp. 125-47.
From the preview: "Political theology refers to the impossibility of both to completely separate and to completely conflate politics and religion. [...] It remains a point of contention, however, what the repercussions of the trespassing of theological concepts into the political are. [...] Despite the differences between these thinkers, there is one abiding characteristic. There is a constitutive disjunction between politics and the political, between law and justice. As a result, political theology forecloses meaning in politics – that is, no political party or representative can be thought to represent the political ideal. More emphatically, there is no end of history. I will explore here whether it is possible to understand the foreclosure of meaning not as the conclusion, but rather as the condition of the possibility of the political. Can the meaningless or the irrational function as the basis of the intertwining and imbrication of the secular and the sacred?"
Nur Masalha (St Mary's University College), "Reading the Bible with the Eyes of the Canaanites: Neo-Zionism, Political Theology and the Land Traditions of the Bible (1967 to Gaza 2009)", Holy Land Studies, 8 (1), May 2009: pp. 55-108.
Abstract: "In modern times, a whole range of colonial enterprises have used the Bible. The book of Joshua and other biblical texts evoking the exploits of ancient Israelites have been deployed in support of secular Zionism and settler colonisation in Palestine. The mega narratives of the Bible, however, appeared to mandate the ethnic cleansing and even genocide of the indigenous population of Canaan. This article argues that, with the rise of messianic Zionism since 1967, a Jewish theology of zealotocracy, based on the land traditions of the Bible, has emerged in Israel – a political theology that demanded the destruction of the so-called modern Canaanites; since 1967 fundamentalist rabbis have routinely compared the Palestinian people to the ancient Canaanites, Philistines and Amalekites, whose annihilation or expulsion by the ancient Israelites was predestined by a divine design. This article focuses on the politics of reading the Bible by neo-Zionists and examines the theology of the messianic current which embraces the paradigm of Jews as a divinely 'chosen people' and sees the indigenous Palestinians as no more than illegitimate squatters, and a threat to the process of messianic redemption; their human and civil rights are no match for the biblically ordained holy war of conquering and settling the 'Promised Land'."
Rutger Henneman (researcher and activist) and Alastair McIntosh (University of Strathclyde), "The Political Theology of Modern Scottish Land Reform", Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture, 3 (3), 2009: pp. 340-75.
Abstract: "This paper gathers evidence that modern Scottish land reform was influenced by applied liberation theology from both grassroot community activists and institutional churches. Scotland's land tenure was feudal to the late twentieth century. Plutocratic ownership impacted the economics and psychology of community wellbeing. The 1990s produced a land reform movement culminating in the new Scottish Parliament's Abolition of Feudal Tenure etc. (Scotland) Act 2000 and the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003. These created a conditional 'community right to buy' and affirmed freedom of 'right to roam'. Two percent of Scottish land is now in community ownership. Our research interviewed fifteen movers and shakers – both national theologians and local activists from the vanguard land trusts of Eigg, Assynt and Gigha. We conclude that spirituality and religion can be subtle drivers of community empowerment. By inspiring, informing and legitimising socio-political transformation, a 'Remnant' theology factored into Scottish legislation of international significance."
Erin Runions (Pomona College), "Detranscendentalizing Decisionism: Political Theology after Gayatri Spivak", Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, 25 (2), fall 2009, pp. 67-85.
Abstract: "This essay uses the thought of Gayatri Spivak to reread one religious trope – the antichrist – commonly used in conservative political discourse to motivate a masculinist theopolitical decisionism. Runions draws a connection between Spivak's insistence on detranscendentalizing radical alterity – which is a deconstructive literary approach to religious narratives – and Spivak's larger concern with ethics. The project of detranscendentalizing is an important first step toward the impossible ethical encounter with the other; it thus charts a course for critiquing theopolitics and imagining new modes of political engagement, in ways that resist the usual conservative accusations of neutrality. To illustrate, the essay draws to the fore the ancient Near Eastern mythological filiations between Christ and antichrist; it reads the antichrist as a detranscendentalized figure that ironically disrupts the masculinist authority of decisions made in the name of Christ and makes room for the singular encounter with the political other."
Anthony O'Mahony (Heythrop College), "The Vatican and Europe: Political Theology and Ecclesiology in Papal Statements from Pius XII to Benedict XVI", International Journal for the Study of the Christian Church, 9 (3), August 2009, pp. 177-94.
Abstract: "The article examines the origins and evolution of the Vatican's political theology and ecclesiology for Europe from Pius XII (especially after the Second World War) and including the pontificates of John XXIII, Paul VI, John Paul II and Benedict XVI. It seeks to examine the continuities of the 'Idea of Europe' in papal thought against a background of changing political context – the end of the Second World War, the Cold War, the fall of the communist state system, the emergence of a united but diverse Europe after 1989. The political structures of the continent now include within its geographic sweep Western and Eastern Christian churches which, divided by tradition and modern history, find their relationship a key marker in the contemporary religious identity of Europe. This reality is a significant framework for Vatican thinking on Europe especially for John Paul II and Benedict XVI."
Victoria Kahn (University of California at Berkeley), "Political Theology and Fiction in The King's Two Bodies", Representations, 106, spring 2009: pp. 77-101.
Abstract: "This essay argues that Ernst Kantorowicz's The King's Two Bodies is intended as a contribution to twentieth-century debates about political theology and that modern students of political theology can learn from Kantorowicz's association of political theology with legal fiction."
Jennifer R. Rust (Saint Louis University), "Political Theology and Shakespeare Studies", Literature Compass, 6 (1), January 2009: pp. 175-90.
Abstract: "The current focus on political theology in Shakespeare studies is largely devoted to tracing how Shakespeare's dramas illuminate the structural link between religious and political forms in both early modernity and modern liberal democracy. Critics concerned with addressing Shakespeare's engagement with political theology are also interested in how Shakespeare's portrayal of sovereign bodies in crisis constitute an early representation of 'biopolitics'. These critics draw on theorists ranging from Carl Schmitt to Giorgio Agamben to inform their analyses of the way Shakespeare dramatizes sovereignty in a 'state of emergency' in his histories and tragedies. Plays such as Richard II, Coriolanus, and Hamlet have drawn particular attention insofar as they vividly interrogate the nature of the sovereign exception and decision highlighted by theorists of political theology. While this line of criticism adds a new theoretical dimension to Shakespeare studies, it also offers the potential for remapping our understanding of the religious and political history of early modern England in its attention to the deforming pressure of religious schism on traditional structures of sovereignty."
Aaron Riches (University of Nottingham), "Political Theology and Pauline Law: Notes Toward a Sapiential Legality", Telos, 146, spring 2009, pp. 140-57.
Excerpt: "In 1979, on the thirty-ninth anniversary of the closing of the Franco-Spanish border at Port Bou and one day before the anniversary of the suicide of Walter Benjamin, Jacob Taubes and Carl Schmitt opened the Bible in the Sauerland. The two men sat down in Plettenburg to read St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans, chapters 9-11. As if in memory of Benjamin, they spoke 'under a priestly seal': Schmitt, the most important state law theorist of the twentieth century, a Roman Catholic and sometime member of the Nazi Party; Taubes, a Jewish philosopher of a Messianic and oddly left-wing disposition ..."
Mike Grimshaw (University of Canterbury), "Responding not Believing: Political Theology and Post-Secular Society", Political Theology, 10 (3), fall 2009: pp. 537-57.
Abstract: "In the past decade social theorists and Continental philosophers have returned again to an engagement with Christianity and the legacy of Christian belief. This is framed in the context of a Europe seen in transition to a post-secular identity and, often implicitly, against what is seen as an encroaching Islamic presence within Europe. This move has often brought together Marxist, post-Marxist, and Catholic-legacy philosophers, together with philosophical Protestants in an attempt to recover what I term a political theology of response. Response, in opposition to belief, signals an alternative post-secular turn of attempted inclusion out of a perceived shared cultural legacy. This essay asks if, in such a cultural philosophical turn, the alternative post-secular turn of a political theology of response signals that belief remains within the private sphere as we seek to engage in a public conversation of non-believing 'response'?"
The same journal, "Political Theology", carried, on occasion of the 500th birthday of John Calvin, in issue 3 of its 10th volume (fall 2009) a symposium on "John Calvin and Political Theology":
www.politicaltheology.com/ojs/index.php/PT/issue/view/690
Articles include: "Editorial: Remembering Geneva's Calvin" by Marilynne Robinson (University of Iowa); "John Calvin and the Jews: A Problem in Political Theology" by David C. Steinmetz (Duke Divinity School); "Calvin and Natural Rights" by David Little (Harvard Divinity School); "Calvin's Legacy for Public Theology" by Richard J. Mouw (Fuller Theological Seminary); and "What Reformed Theology in a Calvinist Key Brings to Conversations about Justice" by Douglas F. Ottati (Davidson College).
Aristide Tessitore (Furman University), "Political Theology and the Theological-Political Problem", Perspectives on Political Science, 38 (1), winter 2009: pp. 5-12.
Abstract: "This essay offers a critical appreciation of Mark Lilla's Stillborn God. To his credit, Lilla understands the primacy and enduring appeal of political theology, as well as the danger of intellectual complacency about the underlying principles of modern politics. Lilla maintains that modern politics is a relatively recent and radically novel experiment that aims at nothing less than displacing a primordial and perennial way of constituting politics with reference to the divine. My essay compares Lilla's analysis of the fundamental antagonism between political theology and modern liberal politics to Strauss's analysis of the theological-political problem. In doing so, I bring to light both the strengths and limits of Lilla's attempt to clarify the relationship between politics, biblical religion, and philosophic rationalism."
Sandrine Baume (University of Lausanne), "On Political Theology: A Controversy Between Hans Kelsen and Carl Schmitt", History of European Ideas, 35 (3), September 2009: pp. 369-81.
Abstract: "This article pays special attention to the large number of references to political theology by Hans Kelsen and Carl Schmitt, particularly in the interwar period, and seeks to interpret these references in a new way. While Schmitt's analogies between God and state are to be expected considering his strong Catholic roots, such comparisons are much more surprising for a positivist like Hans Kelsen, who always tried to relieve state and law from transcendental elements. The article concludes that, far from being marginal in the doctrinal dispute between Schmitt and Kelsen, references to political theology express and summarize their major controversy about the relation between state and law, as well as about the sources of the state's unity. The heart of the disputatio between the two jurists concerned the ability of the political power to emancipate itself from the juridical order. The 'legal miracle' – in this context meaning the occasional autonomization of the state from law – was for Schmitt the manifestation of sovereign power. However, for Kelsen it represented the negation of the state's essence, whose actions must be determined only by the legal order."
Anna Schmidt (University of Munich), "The Problem of Carl Schmitt's Political Theology", Interpretation: A Journal of Political Philosophy, 36 (3), summer 2009: pp. 219-52.
No abstract available.
Boaventura de Sousa Santos (University of Coimbra, University of Wisconsin-Madison, and University of Warwick), "If God Were a Human Rights Activist: Human Rights and the Challenge of Political Theologies", Law, Social Justice and Global Development Journal (LGD), 13, 2009 (1), March, refereed electronic journal, full text available online:
http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/law/elj/lgd/2009_1/santos
Abstract: "Citing the inability of conventional human rights thinking to address the 'strong' questions raised by our times, this article pursues a twofold objective: to identify the major challenges that the rise of political theologies at the beginning of the twentieth-first [sic] century posed to human rights; and second, to select within a broad landscape of theological analysis the types of reflections and practices that might contribute to expand and deepen the canon of human rights politics. In order to achieve this double goal the article uses complexity as its main analytical guideline making distinctions from which significant consequences were drawn: on one side, distinctions among different types of political theologies (pluralist versus revelationist, traditionalist versus progressive); and, on the other, between two contrasting discourses and practices of human rights politics (hegemonic versus counter-hegemonic). Depending on the circumstances, even conventional or hegemonic human rights struggles may be a progressive tool against social practices and norms derived from traditionalist and revelationist theologies. Pluralist and progressive theologies, in turn, may be a source of radical energy toward more ambitious, counter-hegemonic human rights struggles."
Please let me know if I missed any important articles.
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: American Comparative Literature Association annual meeting
Annual Meeting of the American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA), in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA, 1-4 April 2010 (Thursday evening through Sunday noon)
www.acla.org/acla2010/
Three seminars taking place at this conference may be of particular interest to those engaged in the study of political theology.
A seminar on "Rethinking Secularism" will be organized by Elizabeth S. Anker and Bernadette A. Meyler (both Cornell University):
Debates about secularism have increasingly provided a focal point for theorizing the legal and political institutions, practices, and beliefs that regulate collective existence, or the individual's inscription within the community. The many issues raised by the status of the secular assume different aspects with reference to the nation state, democratic systems of governance, religious cultures, and/or the cosmopolitan order more generally. This seminar will focus on the nexus between the legal and cultural dimensions of secularism and, in doing so, will explore the limits of discourses on the secular.
More concretely, questions may include: What relationships do indigenous epistemologies and worldviews have to secular humanism? Is nationalism better explained through the rubric of secularism or instead that of political theology? Are the conceptions of time and history that gird ostensibly secular political ideologies in fact informed by religious frameworks? How might one theorize post-secular ontologies or modalities of embodied and affective belonging otherwise discounted within liberal rationalism? Can reform occur through religions or religious dissent rather than by means of secularization and reasoned public deliberation? What role has the language of tolerance played in shaping the religious/secular divide? How do certain images, like that of the veil, become iconic representations of the conflict between religious and secular? Through what mechanisms do rhetoric, and even law, migrate from the religious to the secular and back again? Finally, what roles do literature and art perform in mapping the shifting terrain that demarcates the secular from the religious?
A seminar on "Theory and the Theological" will be organized by Peter Y. Paik (University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee):
Theorists in recent years have looked to theology for conceptual models to address certain impasses inherent to postmodernity. Alain Badiou draws heavily from theological categories in setting forth his account of political commitment, while tropes drawn from mystical and heterodox sources are prominent in the writings of Giorgio Agamben when he evokes modes of being that go beyond the constraints of bare life. Theology plays a significant role in the theorization of radical politics in the work of Slavoj Žižek and Antonio Negri, while Judith Butler and Simon Critchley look to the work of Emmanuel Levinas to provide an ethical grounding for the political. Meanwhile, theologians such as Catherine Pickstock, John Milbank, and David Bentley Hart engage postmodernity from the standpoint of faith. Finally, these debates have been anticipated in the work of earlier thinkers such as Christopher Lasch, Philip Rieff, Alasdair MacIntyre, and Eric Voegelin, whose respective critiques of liberal modernity parallel and diverge in striking ways from the battle lines most familiar to the present.
The seminar will take up such questions as: What kinds of resources does theological reflection provide in imagining sociopolitical forms of life beyond the liberal capitalist status quo? How has the resurgence of religious belief and the politics of religious militancy affected literary and cultural production? Are theologically-informed critiques of neo-liberal capitalism more promising than those launched on secular grounds? Or are these critiques neutralized by liberal relativism, or by what Philip Rieff terms the "therapeutic ethos"?
A seminar on "Literature and Criticism after Secularism" will be organized by Thomas Dancer and Jack Dudley (both University of Wisconsin, Madison):
Much scholarship on modern and contemporary literature has taken it as an article of faith that writers either turned away from or actively rejected religion. While this "narrative of secularization", to use Pericles Lewis' terms, still holds sway in literary studies, the fields of critical theory, political science, and sociology have increasingly interrogated the categories "secular" and "religious", as in the work of Charles Taylor, Hent de Vries, William E. Connolly, Talal Asad, and Slavoj Žižek. Such work has generated the new category, "post-secular", which examines the anxieties and absences in secular imaginaries, philosophies, and politics. This work also challenges the "secular" as the unconscious norm of intellectual practice.
Our moment, then, sees criticism and intellectual discourse as facing a public sphere that can no longer be understood to privilege the values of secularism. Papers contributed to this seminar will engage this moment by exploring the long historical entanglement of secularism, religion, and the post-secular, while following recent developments that aim to recuperate or refashion "secularity" in a way more consistent with an open, pluralistic public space.
The ACLA's annual conferences have a unique structure in which most papers are grouped into 9-12 person seminars that meet two hours per day, for the three days of the conference, in order to foster discussion. Some 8-person seminars meet the first two days of the conference. The conference will also include plenary sessions, workshops, a business meeting, a banquet, and other events in downtown New Orleans and on the Tulane campus. Please check with the conference and/or seminar organizers whether people can participate in seminars who do not present a paper themselves. Contact: info@acla.org
You can find further information on the conference, including registration, on the ACLA's website. The schedule of events, including locations, should be up in early 2010.
www.acla.org/acla2010/
Three seminars taking place at this conference may be of particular interest to those engaged in the study of political theology.
A seminar on "Rethinking Secularism" will be organized by Elizabeth S. Anker and Bernadette A. Meyler (both Cornell University):
Debates about secularism have increasingly provided a focal point for theorizing the legal and political institutions, practices, and beliefs that regulate collective existence, or the individual's inscription within the community. The many issues raised by the status of the secular assume different aspects with reference to the nation state, democratic systems of governance, religious cultures, and/or the cosmopolitan order more generally. This seminar will focus on the nexus between the legal and cultural dimensions of secularism and, in doing so, will explore the limits of discourses on the secular.
More concretely, questions may include: What relationships do indigenous epistemologies and worldviews have to secular humanism? Is nationalism better explained through the rubric of secularism or instead that of political theology? Are the conceptions of time and history that gird ostensibly secular political ideologies in fact informed by religious frameworks? How might one theorize post-secular ontologies or modalities of embodied and affective belonging otherwise discounted within liberal rationalism? Can reform occur through religions or religious dissent rather than by means of secularization and reasoned public deliberation? What role has the language of tolerance played in shaping the religious/secular divide? How do certain images, like that of the veil, become iconic representations of the conflict between religious and secular? Through what mechanisms do rhetoric, and even law, migrate from the religious to the secular and back again? Finally, what roles do literature and art perform in mapping the shifting terrain that demarcates the secular from the religious?
A seminar on "Theory and the Theological" will be organized by Peter Y. Paik (University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee):
Theorists in recent years have looked to theology for conceptual models to address certain impasses inherent to postmodernity. Alain Badiou draws heavily from theological categories in setting forth his account of political commitment, while tropes drawn from mystical and heterodox sources are prominent in the writings of Giorgio Agamben when he evokes modes of being that go beyond the constraints of bare life. Theology plays a significant role in the theorization of radical politics in the work of Slavoj Žižek and Antonio Negri, while Judith Butler and Simon Critchley look to the work of Emmanuel Levinas to provide an ethical grounding for the political. Meanwhile, theologians such as Catherine Pickstock, John Milbank, and David Bentley Hart engage postmodernity from the standpoint of faith. Finally, these debates have been anticipated in the work of earlier thinkers such as Christopher Lasch, Philip Rieff, Alasdair MacIntyre, and Eric Voegelin, whose respective critiques of liberal modernity parallel and diverge in striking ways from the battle lines most familiar to the present.
The seminar will take up such questions as: What kinds of resources does theological reflection provide in imagining sociopolitical forms of life beyond the liberal capitalist status quo? How has the resurgence of religious belief and the politics of religious militancy affected literary and cultural production? Are theologically-informed critiques of neo-liberal capitalism more promising than those launched on secular grounds? Or are these critiques neutralized by liberal relativism, or by what Philip Rieff terms the "therapeutic ethos"?
A seminar on "Literature and Criticism after Secularism" will be organized by Thomas Dancer and Jack Dudley (both University of Wisconsin, Madison):
Much scholarship on modern and contemporary literature has taken it as an article of faith that writers either turned away from or actively rejected religion. While this "narrative of secularization", to use Pericles Lewis' terms, still holds sway in literary studies, the fields of critical theory, political science, and sociology have increasingly interrogated the categories "secular" and "religious", as in the work of Charles Taylor, Hent de Vries, William E. Connolly, Talal Asad, and Slavoj Žižek. Such work has generated the new category, "post-secular", which examines the anxieties and absences in secular imaginaries, philosophies, and politics. This work also challenges the "secular" as the unconscious norm of intellectual practice.
Our moment, then, sees criticism and intellectual discourse as facing a public sphere that can no longer be understood to privilege the values of secularism. Papers contributed to this seminar will engage this moment by exploring the long historical entanglement of secularism, religion, and the post-secular, while following recent developments that aim to recuperate or refashion "secularity" in a way more consistent with an open, pluralistic public space.
The ACLA's annual conferences have a unique structure in which most papers are grouped into 9-12 person seminars that meet two hours per day, for the three days of the conference, in order to foster discussion. Some 8-person seminars meet the first two days of the conference. The conference will also include plenary sessions, workshops, a business meeting, a banquet, and other events in downtown New Orleans and on the Tulane campus. Please check with the conference and/or seminar organizers whether people can participate in seminars who do not present a paper themselves. Contact: info@acla.org
You can find further information on the conference, including registration, on the ACLA's website. The schedule of events, including locations, should be up in early 2010.
08 November 2009
Public lecture: The Cosmopolitan Neighborhood
Portland State University, Smith Memorial Student Union, Room 296, Portland, Oregon, USA, 19 November 2009, 6.30 pm
Kenneth Reinhard (UCLA) will be speaking on "The Cosmopolitan Neighborhood: Political Theological Models for Living in an Open World".
www.publichumanities.pdx.edu/ResearchGroups/cosmo.html
What does the simultaneously political and theological imperative to "love thy neighbor" suggest to us in the challenging contemporary era of globalization? What philosophical and ethical trajectories can be drawn from the ancient injunction of the Book of Leviticus to the arena of the international community?
For Kenneth Reinhard, an Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature at UCLA, "neighbor love" is as a core element in what he understands to be the tradition of "political theology" in the West.
Reinhard is an expert in early modern English literature, Shakespeare, psychoanalysis, Jewish studies, and critical theory. He is the author, with Slavoj Žižek and Eric Santner, of "The Neighbor: Three Inquiries in Political Theology" (University of Chicago Press, 2005). Currently, he is writing a book on the ethics of the neighbor in religion (Torah, Talmud, and Patristic writings), philosophy (Kant, Kierkegaard, Adorno, Rosenzweig, and Levinas), and psychoanalysis (Freud and Lacan) for Princeton University Press.
If you have any questions regarding this event, please feel free to contact the Portland Center for Public Humanities: publichumanities@pdx.edu
The event is free and open to the public.
Kenneth Reinhard (UCLA) will be speaking on "The Cosmopolitan Neighborhood: Political Theological Models for Living in an Open World".
www.publichumanities.pdx.edu/ResearchGroups/cosmo.html
What does the simultaneously political and theological imperative to "love thy neighbor" suggest to us in the challenging contemporary era of globalization? What philosophical and ethical trajectories can be drawn from the ancient injunction of the Book of Leviticus to the arena of the international community?
For Kenneth Reinhard, an Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature at UCLA, "neighbor love" is as a core element in what he understands to be the tradition of "political theology" in the West.
Reinhard is an expert in early modern English literature, Shakespeare, psychoanalysis, Jewish studies, and critical theory. He is the author, with Slavoj Žižek and Eric Santner, of "The Neighbor: Three Inquiries in Political Theology" (University of Chicago Press, 2005). Currently, he is writing a book on the ethics of the neighbor in religion (Torah, Talmud, and Patristic writings), philosophy (Kant, Kierkegaard, Adorno, Rosenzweig, and Levinas), and psychoanalysis (Freud and Lacan) for Princeton University Press.
If you have any questions regarding this event, please feel free to contact the Portland Center for Public Humanities: publichumanities@pdx.edu
The event is free and open to the public.
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