Book: "Political Theologies in the Holy Land"

A number of books on political theology in Israel and Jewish political theology have been released recently or about to be released by authors and editors associated with the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute and in particular with a former study group/research programme of the latter on political theology, which was discontinued about two years ago.

Among them, David Ohana (Ben-Gurion University of the Negev) wrote a book on "Political Theologies in the Holy Land: Israeli Messianism and Its Critics" (Routledge, 15 October 2009):

www.routledge.com/books/Political-Theologies-in-the-Holy-Land-isbn9780415491686

Publisher's description: "This book examines the role of messianism in Zionist ideology, from the birth of the Zionist movement through to the present. Is shows how messianism is not just a religious or philosophical term but a very tangible political practice and theology which has shaped Israeli identity.

"The author explores key issues such as: the current presence of messianism in the Israeli public sphere and the debates with [J]ewish settlers in the occupied territories after the 1967 war; the difference between transcendental messianism and [P]romethean messianism; the disparity between the political ideology and political practice in the history of Israel; the evolution of the messianic idea in the actions of David Ben-Gurion; the debate between Martin Buber, Gershom Scholem, Isaiah Leibowitz, J.L. Talmon and other intellectual figures with Ben-Gurion; the implications of political theology and the presence of messianic ideas in Israeli politics.

"As the first book to examine the messianism in Israeli debate since the creation of the Israeli state, it will be particularly relevant for students and scholars of Political Science, modern intellectual history, Israel studies, Judaism and messianism."

Those able to read Hebrew may be equally interested in a recent book edited by Christoph Schmidt (Hebrew University of Jerusalem) and co-edited by Eli Schonfeld (University of Tel Aviv and Hebrew University): "Ha-Elohim lo yealem dom: ha-moderna ha-yehudit ve-ha-teologia ha-politit" (God will not stand still: Jewish modernity and political theology; Van Leer Jerusalem Institute and Hakibbutz Hameuchad Publishing House, Tel Aviv, 2009).

www.vanleer.org.il/eng/content.asp?id=330

According to a review of this book in today's Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, it appears to be on exactly the same subject matter as the book by Ohana, who is present with a chapter in Schmidt's collection.

The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute and Hakibbutz Hameuchad also just published "State of exception and state of emergency" (translation), edited by Yehouda Shenhav, Christoph Schmidt and Shimshon Zelniker. Presumably this book too is on political theology. Unfortunately, I don't have the original Hebrew title.

CFP: Journal "Res Publica" invites contributions on political theology

The journal "Res Publica: Revista de Filosofía Política" – published by the Universidad de Murcia in Spain – invites contributions on political theology.

http://revistas.um.es/respublica/index

"Res Publica" is an open access journal, available free of charge on the Internet, dedicated to the study of political philosophy and history, and often a very methodological approach of conceptual history. At the same time, it gives special importance to the tradition of political ideals based on the republican spirit and always understood in their proper historical context.

The journal intends to create a digital section that will become recognized as "Res publica hispana", which will analyze the most important works of history of political thought and Hispanic political relations, as well as major new publications on this subject.

Another focus of the journal is offered by those authors who have challenged the possibilities of republicanism, whether from political theology, more traditional views of sovereignty, or from the most current versions of the impolitic. "Res Publica" is also interested in understanding the political thinkers of the Weimar Republic, and what their significance means for the work of Max Weber in the construction of democratic legitimacy in a society that falls squarely in the era of the masses.

Abstracts are available in Spanish and English. Articles are available in Spanish in PDF format. Please check with the editors whether articles have to be submitted in Spanish.

Editorial contacts: Prof José Luis Villacañas Berlanga and Prof Antonio Rivera García (both Universidad de Murcia): jlvilla@um.es, anrivera@um.es

CFP: The Politics of Peace

2010 biennial conference of the Society for Continental Philosophy and Theology (SCPT), Messiah College, Grantham, Pennsylvania, USA,
16-17 April 2010

Call for papers: "The Politics of Peace"

Keynote speakers:
- Catherine Keller (Drew University)
- William T. Cavanaugh (University of St. Thomas)

SCPT's 2010 conference will focus on Peace. They invite papers that examine the many dimensions of peace from social, political, religious, scientific, theological, and philosophical points of view. They also seek papers dealing with complementary topics such as justice, reconciliation, forgiveness, and peace-making, and that deal with the practical aspects of the above topics.

SCPT is an organization that seeks to promote inquiry at the intersection of philosophy and theology, through the study of phenomenology, deconstruction, feminism, Radical Orthodoxy, and other related fields:

www.scptonline.org

Only complete papers with a maximum of 3,000 words will be accepted. Papers should be prepared for blind review and sent to: peacestudies@messiah.edu

Deadline: 8 February 2010

Book: New Carl Schmitt biography in German

Reinhard Mehring (Humboldt University of Berlin) has written, in German, "the first truly comprehensive" (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung) biography about Carl Schmitt, titled "Carl Schmitt. Aufstieg und Fall" (Carl Schmitt: Rise and Fall; my translation; published by C.H. Beck, September 2009):

www.chbeck.de/productview.aspx?product=28142

According to the publisher's description, Carl Schmitt – along with Martin Heidegger and Max Weber one of the most influential German thinkers of the twentieth century – is a "Shakespearean figure at the centre of the German catastrophe". A "white raven", as Schmitt called himself, torn between his brilliancy and aspirations and a deep-seated resentment against the smugness of bourgeois existence.

His radical theories about political theology, friend and enemy, legality and legitimacy, and the concept of the political have been translated into all major languages and are read by Catholic conservatives and communist revolutionaries alike.

The new biography already ranks at no. 1 among Philosophy titles on the German Amazon site.

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

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

Proposals on (Jewish) political theology are explicitly welcome.

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

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

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

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

Deadline: 15 November 2009

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

CFP: Deadline extended for "The Absent Center" graduate student conference on political theology

The deadline for this previously announced conference has been extended to 1 November 2009:

Call for papers: "The Absent Center: A Graduate Student Conference on Contemporary Issues in Political Theology"

University of Texas at Austin, Government Department,
19-20 February 2010

For details see the original post:

www.political-theology.com/2009/04/cfp-absent-center.html

Journal "Political Theology" increases frequency

In line with the increase in interest in political theology, Equinox, the publisher of the journal "Political Theology", has announced that the journal will in 2010 increase its pagination and frequency to 6 issues per volume (until now 4).

While other Equinox journals retain 2009 price levels in 2010, "Political Theology" will become accordingly dearer.

As of today, there is no information to be found on the journal's website. You can find submission guidelines, though:

www.equinoxjournals.com/ojs/index.php/PT

Journal description: "Political Theology is a journal that investigates and examines religious and political issues. The journal is interdisciplinary, drawing on the disciplines of theology, religious studies, politics, philosophy, ethics, cultural studies, social theory and economics. As such, it aims to reflect the diversity of religious and theological engagements with public and political life. Articles are welcome from scholars, practioners and clergy that address religion and political life in all its variety. The journal has a review section which embraces reflections upon religion, theology, polit[i]cal [sic] theory, political biography, film and fiction."

Book: "Religious Anarchism: New Perspectives"

Alexandre J.M.E. Christoyannopoulos recently published an edited volume on "Religious Anarchism: New Perspectives" with Cambridge Scholars Publishing (August 2009):

www.c-s-p.org/Flyers/Religious-Anarchism--New-Perspectives1-4438-1132-7.htm

On that site a link is provided to a sample PDF including table of contents. Already the first chapter, by Richard Fitch (Birkbeck), mentions political theology repeatedly.

Publisher's description: "Both religion and anarchism have been increasingly politically active of late. This edited volume presents twelve chapters of fresh scholarship on diverse facets of the area where they meet: religious anarchism.

"The book is structured along three themes: [1] early Christian anarchist 'pioneers', including Pelagius, Coppe, Hungarian Nazarenes, and Dutch Christian anarchists; [2] Christian anarchist reflections on specific topics such as Kierkegaardian indifference, Romans 13, Dalit religious practice, and resistance to race and nation; [3] religious anarchism in other traditions, ranging from Wu Nengzi's Daoism and Rexroth's Zen Buddhism to various currents of Islam, including an original Anarca-Islamic 'clinic'.

"This unique book therefore furthers scholarship on anarchism, on millenarian and revolutionary thinkers and movements, and on religion and politics. It is also of value to members of the wider public interested in radical politics and in the political implications of religion. And of course, it is relevant to those interested in any of the specific themes and thinkers focused on within individual chapters. In short, this book presents a range of innovative perspectives on a web of topics that, while held together by the common thread of religious anarchism, also speaks to numerous broader themes which have been increasingly prominent in the twenty-first century."

The editor, Alexandre Christoyannopoulos (University of Kent and Canterbury Christ Church University), last year contributed a chapter on Leo Tolstoy's Christian anarchism to my own book, "Anti-Democratic Thought" (Imprint Academic, 2008). His other publications include a chapter in the present volume as well as peer-reviewed articles in Anarchist Studies, The Heythrop Journal, and Politics and Religion.

"Bringing together the work of international writers, both new and established scholars and practitioners, this book fills an important gap in the existing literature. [...] Another important strength is that the authors work in variety of disciplinary fields and are thus able to bring insights from history, philosophy and political theory as well as anarchist studies, to bear on the subject. [...] [T]he authors examine a range of ethical questions about the legitimate boundaries of the state and the limits of authority, the duty of obedience and the primacy of conscience in political action." – Ruth Kinna (Loughborough University)

"[I]t presents a wide range of little known and unexpected sources, inspiring a fresh look at contemporary approaches to change. [...] Each article explores new issues in areas as diverse as Pelagian studies, Hungarian history and Islamic political theology." – Ronald Creagh (Université Paul Valéry, Montpellier)

CONF: Association for Jewish Studies 2009 annual conference

41st Annual Conference of the Association for Jewish Studies (AJS), Hyatt Regency Century Plaza Hotel, Los Angeles, California, USA,
20-22 December 2009

This year's annual conference of the AJS features a multi-panel session on "Modern Jewish Thought and Theology" with a particular interest in political theology.

Scheduled panels include, firstly, "Jacob Taubes's Political Theology in Light of His Relationship to Carl Schmitt" (21 December, 2-4 pm, Room 3):

Abstract: The panel is devoted to Jacob Taubes, the Jewish thinker, historian of religion, gnosticism, and apocalyptic strains in Judaism and Christianity, who influenced generations of scholars during his academic career at the Hebrew University, Harvard, Columbia, the Free University at Berlin, and the Maison des Sciences de l'Homme in Paris, but whose work has elicited much wider attention of late. This is due, in part, to a general, renewed interest in the problem of political theology, due, as well, to the engagement with his work on the part of Giorgio Agamben and others, but chiefly to the recent translation of his powerful late lectures on "The Political Theology of Paul". Taubes's articles are about to be collected for the first time in an English-language edition, and more is to follow. Taubes was a prodigious letter writer, and the first correspondence to be published is the one between Taubes and the political theorist Carl Schmitt, 35 years his senior, with whose work Taubes was deeply engaged since the immediate postwar period while keeping a measured distance until the late 1970s, when the two men exchanged a series of letters and Taubes visited Schmitt in his remote refuge in Plettenberg.

The panel is led by Martin Treml's presentation on the letters exchanged between Taubes and Schmitt. Treml is currently finishing his edition of the Taubes-Schmitt correspondence at the Center for Literary and Cultural Research Berlin, which houses Taubes's literary estate. Nitzan Lebovic (Sussex) and Arnd Wedemeyer (Princeton), who both have conducted research at the Taubes Archive, will discuss the context of the correspondence and its implications for Taubes's conception of political theology. Lebovic will reconstruct Taubes's unique mobilization of apocalypticism for his antinomian conception of the law, devised, Lebovic argues, not only as an answer to Schmitt's theopolitical antiliberalism, but also to Martin Buber's own reaction against Schmitt. Wedemeyer will focus on one particular problem of Pauline theology, the so-called "curse of the law", in the context both of Taubes's relation to Schmitt, as well as to previous Jewish interpreters of Paul.

Second panel: "Political Theology and Judaism in Spinoza, Mendelssohn and Fackenheim" (22 December, 8.30-10.30 am, Room 9):

Abstract: If "political theology" means a politics guided by theological considerations and/or a theology guided by political considerations, then if these considerations are in tension or incompatible, which should take priority? Our panel examines this question in three key modern Jewish thinkers. For each, "politics" means liberal democracy (or, for Mendelssohn, constitutional monarchy), and "theology" means biblical theology (or, for Spinoza and Mendelssohn, some "rationalist" equivalent).

Joshua Parens (Dallas) explores what Spinoza's "Ethics" indicates about his political theology in "Tractatus Theologico-Politicus" (TTP). What does the congeniality between TTP and the "rationalist" theology of "Ethics", its introduction, teach about Spinoza's political theology: if the "Ethics" provides deeper insight into Spinoza's modified version of biblical theology in TTP than does TTP by itself, is the ground for that theology biblical or utilitarian, as TTP leads us to suspect?

Martin D. Yaffe (North Texas) asks how well Mendelssohn's rationalist theology serves to underwrite his practical-political argument for Christian-Jewish tolerance. Yaffe compares Mendelssohn's theologically-grounded argument with Lessing's, which Mendelssohn professes not to understand. Lessing's argument, Yaffe finds, is more "political" than "theological" – being designed not just to rubber-stamp its readers' Christian theology, but to expand that theology towards increased appreciation and tolerance for Judaism. Mendelssohn's rationalist political theology fails to come to grips with Lessing's politically (and philosophically) motivated irony.

Sharon Portnoff (Connecticut College) suggests that Fackenheim's political theology is located in his "quasi-historicism". She suggests that Fackenheim was well aware of the dangers of incorporating historicism into Jewish theology and explores the way in which Fackenheim navigated these dangers. She finds that Fackenheim's quasi-historicism both serves to defend Jews and Judaism politically and also, paradoxically, remains open to the political possibility that it evolve into its own obsolescence.

Kenneth Green (Toronto) considers the phrase "demonic evil" in Fackenheim's mature thought. He asks how much Fackenheim's related subterranean emphasis on the devil is a significant even if largely unrecognized factor in his theological response to the Holocaust and radical evil. Green raises a question with regard to Fackenheim's political theology: because rejection of the devil issues in concerted political action, is it as a direct consequence that he disallow as immoral any political neutrality on such political action?

Further panels of particular interest to political theology include "Monotheism and Its Discontents" (21 December, 8.30-10.30 am, Room 12); "Religion, Politics, Ethics" – including a paper "Determined to be Free: Spinoza's Political Theology of Freedom" by Steven H. Frankel (Xavier University) – (22 December, 10.45 am-12.45 pm, Room 9); and "Rosenzweig and Arendt" – including a paper "'The Light of the Public Obscures Everything': Arendt and the Public Threat of Political Theology" by Benjamin Aldes Wurgaft (Berkeley) – (20 December, 2-4 pm, Room 11).

The detailed conference programme can be browsed and searched here:

http://64.112.226.77/one/ajs/ajs09/index.php?cmd=ajs09&id=

General conference information (including a link to the registration page) is to be found at:

www.ajsnet.org/generalinfo.htm

CFP: Catholic Practical Theology and political theology

2010 Convention of the Catholic Theological Society of America (CTSA), Cleveland Renaissance Hotel, Cleveland, Ohio, USA,
10-13 June 2010

www.ctsa-online.org/convention_2010_general_info.html

The Topic Session "Practical Theology" of the CTSA has issued a call for papers for next year's convention, particularly inviting contributions on political theology:

Catholic Practical Theology is not limited to seminary preparation. It can also be seen as a kind of political theology embedded in church membership and life that engages ethical issues defined by feminist, sexuality, trauma, and postcolonial theories.

The Practical Theology Administrative Team (Tom Beaudoin, Lynn Bridgers, Susan Abraham) encourages proposals for individual papers, or for complete panels (no more than three persons), that address the prophetic dimension of practical theology today, or the ways in which current trends in practical theology rework the prophetic. We particularly invite proposals that engage practical theology's recent political, ethnographic, communicative, and local-ecclesiological developments. Additionally, we welcome proposals on any aspect of practical theology that relates to Catholic contexts.

Please submit proposals of 100 words to Tom Beaudoin (Fordham University): tbeaudoin@fordham.edu

Include name(s) of presenters, institutional affiliation, and e-mail contact information. CTSA policy restricts each member to one speaking/presenting role per convention. Proposals were due by 1 September 2009 and notifications will be made by 30 September. (Please check with the organizers whether proposals will still be accepted and whether non-members can submit.) Any audio-visual needs must be clearly stated in proposals.

Postcolonial Theology Network on Facebook

A "Postcolonial Theology Network", also interested in political theology, has formed on the social networking site Facebook:

www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=23694574926

The self-description of the group: "The Postcolonial Theology Network (PTN) is committed to encouraging postcolonial theological research and activism. In May 2008 the Lincoln Theological Institute at the University of Manchester gathered an international group of scholars to address questions associated with 'Church, [I]dentity(ies) and Postcolonialism'. From that conference, the first of its kind in Britain, the PTN emerged.

"The PTN exists to bring together and resource all persons especially scholars, activists and pastors who seek to identify, examine, and critique the role of the colonial in theologies. Since our initial May 2008 PTN meeting the postcolonial has been addressed by our members around the world broadly focused on colonialism, empire, imperialism and neo-colonialism by Latin@/Hispanic, Native American, First Nation, indigenous, feminist, black, evangelical and queer PTN members.

"The PTN is also broadly inter-disciplinary within theology drawing scholars in biblical studies, political theology, ecclesiology, Christology, hermeneutics and pastoral studies and seeks to expand further by your interests. [...] To define the postcolonial is colonial. Colonialism touches upon all aspects of life, culture and politics inviting multi-lens theological considerations.

"The PTN is not like any other Facebook group. The PTN is not organized along the conventional obscurity of research questions that have little impact on the world but on a few scholars in the same field. The PTN is organized around the urgency of a social movement through on and off-line networking. PTN is actively seeking to decolonize research cultures" by measures such as "networking scholars across geographies, faiths and disciplines"; "connecting theorists with theologians breaking secular-sacred ideological divides"; "fostering on-line, open access publishing in addition to traditional research media"; "linking centers of scholarship around the world"; "embodying postcolonial research into activism and activism into research – real change for people".

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

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

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

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

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

The offer is valid through 30 September 2009.

CFP: Political theology in Islam

2010 Regional Meeting of the Southeastern Commission for the Study of Religion (SECSOR) at the Century City Marriott Hotel in Atlanta, Georgia, USA, 5-7 March 2010

http://174.36.9.161/About_AAR/Regions/Southeast/call.asp

The SECSOR section or program unit "Islam" has been allocated five panels at this conference. Proposals on all topics in Islamic Studies will be considered, but proposals on political theology are especially invited (along with such on social and economic justice; teaching Islam; scripture, religion, and science; and Islam in the West).

Members who wish to present a paper or coordinate a session are invited to submit proposals (1-2 pages) or complete manuscripts to the section chairs, Rachel Scott (Virginia Tech): rmscott@vt.edu
and Dave Damrel (University of Southern Carolina, Upstate): ddamrel@uscupstate.edu

Deadline: 1 October 2009

Please use the proposal submission form available on the SECSOR website:

www.secsor.appstate.edu

Each member is limited to one proposal. (Check with SECSOR whether proposals by non-members are admissible.)

Please note that papers must be of such a length as can be presented and discussed within 45 minutes. Planned use of audio-visual equipment must be noted on the submission form. Due to the very high cost of renting audio-visual equipment, presenters who wish to use such equipment must provide it themselves. SECSOR will provide a limited number of designated AV rooms with a screen, cart, and cords; however, presenters must bring their own projection, audio, and other AV equipment. It is still necessary for program planners to know which presenters are planning on using AV equipment, though, so they can be scheduled in the appropriate rooms (see proposal form). The copying of handouts is also the responsibility of the presenter.

All program participants must be pre-registered for the meeting.

CONF: Euro-Islam: The Dynamics of Effective Integration

The Southeast Europe Project of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC, USA, has put online the video and transcripts of a conference on "Euro-Islam: The Dynamics of Effective Integration", held on 21 June 2006:

www.wilsoncenter.org/index.cfm?topic_id=109941&fuseaction=topics.event_summary&event_id=185188

They say: This Wilson Center conference explores the diplomatic, cultural, and security ramifications of this newly-emergent issue through the twin prisms of social ideology and political theology, using country-specific case studies of Muslim populations in European states, assessing future trends, opportunities, and dangers, with an overarching emphasis on US policy options.

Journal "Konturen" on political theology

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

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

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

A list of contents can be found here:

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

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

CFP: Political Theology in the Middle Ages

45th International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo, Michigan, USA, 13-16 May 2010

A panel is to be organized for this conference. The panel asks for papers which explore what medieval studies can gain from the perspective of "political theology" – a term which has been widely known to medievalists (through Ernst Kantorowicz's The King's Two Bodies: A Study in Medieval Political Theology) but which has lately gained new prominence through the work of theorists such as Agamben, Žižek, Badiou, and Carl Schmitt, as well as that of medievalists such as Kathleen Biddick and Kathleen Davis.

We welcome papers which explore the following questions: Does the study of "political theology" differ from the traditional study of medieval political thought? Can this perspective enter into dialogue with, or render a critique of, those traditional studies? What sources and methodologies are appropriate to it? Do medieval theological conceptions of sovereignty persist in our own era, and if so, how? How do theological conceptions of sovereignty relate to the themes of secularity, periodization, biopower, legality, and colonialism in the medieval period? Papers dealing with all geographical regions and medieval periods are welcome.

Submission details: Submit one-page abstracts and contact information to Matthew Brown (University of Notre Dame): mbrown5@nd.edu

No later than 15 September 2009.

CFP: The Sacred in Contemporary Culture

Fifteenth Annual Cultural Studies Workshop organized by the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences (CSSSC), Calcutta, India, to be held at Santiniketan, West Bengal, 30 January-4 February 2010

Call for papers: "The Sacred in Contemporary Culture"

In collaboration with Ford Foundation and the South-South Exchange Programme for the History of Development (SEPHIS, Netherlands).

Far from "phenomena born of religious conceptions" being everywhere in decline, fulfilling the prediction of its retreat from the spheres of art, education, or politics, the realm of the sacred has been historically reconstituted within contemporary life in a number of unanticipated ways. Instances of such reconstitution include: the renewed enchantment with, rather than repression of, the magical, even within industry and science; an increasing political focus on the consecration or desecration of icons, heroes, or histories; a secularism of the state matched by the supplemental sacrality of modern institutional spaces and processes; the adaptation of new technologies to the service of the sacred; modern states and their use of political theology. Indeed, we might say that the sacred and the secular have forged a new dependence in contemporary cultures, calling for a fresh assessment of the status of the sacred in contemporary life.

Within this broad focus, the Cultural Studies Workshop 2010 will discuss the following themes:

1. The Sacredness of Science: What are the disenchantments and new enchantments that have proliferated alongside scientific discourses and cultures, and with what consequences for the future of the secular?

2. Objects, Images, Icons: The emergence of cult values within an increasingly commodified society; new economies of sacrality that attach to a wide range of objects; the return of the sacred to the worlds of literature, art, and museums.

3. Consecrations and Desecrations : The politics of reverence and offence, the impact on lives, histories, spaces, and objects and the capacity for mobilization of communities and identities.

4. Institutions and Rituals: Has the sacred been "disembedded" from the social, and confined to specific sites and processes? Has it been kept at bay by the institutions of the state, or assumed only a relatively shrunken role within the realms of the personal and the private?

5. Political Theology: Have modern states and political ideologies refashioned for their use concepts that are innately theological? Do ideas of sovereignty, human rights, democracy, or justice make their claims largely on the basis of faith?

The workshop is intended to give young researchers an opportunity to share their work with senior scholars in the field, including some of the faculty of the CSSSC. It is aimed at doctoral or post-doctoral students (below the age of 35) whose ongoing or just completed work focuses on one or more of the themes listed above.

CSSSC will bear the expenses of rail travel (AC two-tier) and accommodation at Santiniketan for all selected candidates from India. Priority will be given to students currently affiliated to Indian educational institutions.

International participants who have studied, or have been working long-term, in countries of the global South are also invited to apply. Their airfare and local hospitality will be covered by the CSSSC in collaboration with SEPHIS. All readings and discussions will be in English, and applicants are required to be proficient in that language.

Those wishing to participate in the workshop may apply with their current CV, clearly indicating date of birth, current academic affiliation, and current postal and e-mail addresses. Applications must include a brief description (no more than one typed page) of the paper they intend to present which draws on their dissertation research.

Applications are to be sent to Ranjana Dasgupta (Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, R-I Baishnabghata Patuli Township, Kolkata 700 094, India): csw@cssscal.org, cssscal@vsnl.net

Deadline: 10 September 2009

Special issue: Theology and Democratic Futures

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CFP: Normative Orders: Justification and Sanctions

Cluster of Excellence "The Formation of Normative Orders" at the Goethe-University Frankfurt/Main, Germany, 24-25 October 2009

Call for papers: Conference for Young Academics "Normative Orders: Justification and Sanctions"

A conference outline (including a list of panels) can be found here:

www.normativeorders.net/en/news/current-topics/132-conference-qnormative-orders-justification-and-sanctionsq

The conference will include a panel "System of Rule and Religion: The Limited Impact of Sanctions and the Relevance of Political-Theological Narratives of Justification in the Foundation of Normative Orders in the Early Modern Period", which invites in particular contributions from historians of early modernity and people working on the history of political ideas.

Panel outline: Religion, and in particular the biblical text, was an important basis of the norms and values used both to legitimate systems of rule and to dispute claims to power in the early modern period. The "Bible as political argument" helped to justify and to deny (new) normative orders.

Within the historical framework of the debates in European estate assemblies in the early modern period, the hypothesis – which this panel will explore – is that sanctions played a lesser role in shaping and confirming normative orders than did political-theological language. Case studies aimed at testing this hypothesis – focusing on the sacral legitimation of power and the theological or natural law foundations of resistance to power – are welcomed.

Finally, the European panorama of conflicts within the estate assemblies leads to the more general question of whether and to what extent the issue of religion and politics can be approached with the categories of "sanctions" and/or "narratives of justification".

How to submit a paper: Each panel will have approximately four contributors. Young academics in the doctoral or post-doctoral phase of their career interested in contributing are invited to submit a 500-word abstract to the responsible panel chair (listed on the website with each panel's description). The deadline is 30 June 2009.

Travel grants: Travel and hotel expenses will be subsidized, although the precise level of subsidization remains to be determined.

A selection of papers will possibly be published.

Proposals for the political theology panel should be sent to Therese Schwager, who will also answer your questions: therese.schwager@normativeorders.net

For general questions on the conference, please contact: Nachwuchskonferenz@normativeorders.net

CONF: 2009 meeting of the North American Association for the Study of Religion

Annual Meeting of the North American Association for the Study of Religion (NAASR), Montréal, Canada, 7-10 November 2009

As usual, NAASR will meet concurrently with the American Academy of Religion (AAR). In addition to the four panels on political theology scheduled to take place at the AAR meeting proper (see blog entry of 15 May), a session on political theology has also been announced for the NAASR meeting.

Under the title "Disenchantment and Reenchantment in Political Theology: Diagnosing the Crisis of Liberalism", it is to take place on 6 November, 4-6.30 pm (exact location yet to be determined). The respondent will be John Milbank (University of Nottingham).

Of interest may also be a session titled "Postcoloniality, Secular Critique, and Democratic Futures", at least one speaker and the chair of which are known to be associated with the discourse on political theology (scheduled for 7 November, 9-11.30 am).

Further information is available at:

www.naasr.com/upcomingconferences.html

CONF: Political Philosophy vs. Political Theology?

Theological Faculty of the University of Innsbruck, Austria,
11-13 June 2009

Conference (Fachtagung): "Politische Philosophie vs. Politische Theologie? Die Frage der Gewalt im Spannungsfeld von Politik und Religion" ("Political Philosophy vs. Political Theology? The Question of Violence in the Area of Tension between Politics and Religion")

Organized by the ARGE "Politik, Religion, Gewalt" ("Politics, Religion, Violence") of the Österreichische Forschungsgemeinschaft (Austrian Research Association) and the research platform "Weltordnung – Religion – Gewalt" ("World order – Religion – Violence") of the University of Innsbruck.

This conference will build up on an argument advanced by Mark Lilla in his recent book, The Stillborn God: Religion, Politics, and the Modern West (2007), claiming that in the modern West, in consequence of the religious wars of the seventeenth century and the works of Hobbes, Locke, and Hume, political theology was replaced by political philosophy. Lilla calls this the "Great Separation".

What he identifies as liberal political theologies of the nineteenth century (Harnack, Troeltsch, Cohen), following on from Rousseau, Kant, and Hegel, according to Lilla, was not able to live up to the religious expectations people had after the crisis of the First World War – their God had been "stillborn". Theological protest against liberal theology awoke in Karl Barth and Franz Rosenzweig and various forms of political theology, with different political leanings (from religious socialism [Tillich] to national socialism [Hirsch, Gogarten]), gained importance at that time. Heinrich Meier makes an equal distinction between political philosophy and political theology when comparing Leo Strauss and Carl Schmitt.

The conference will be discussing the arguments by Lilla and Meier in light of the currently observed return of the religious into politics, particularly with regard to violence and Islam. From a historical perspective, it will also study "political religions" such as religious socialism, Marxism-Leninism, and national socialism.

The programme of the conference (which will be held in German) is available at:

www.uibk.ac.at/plattform-wrg/projekte/arge/arge-fachtagung_2009_programm.pdf

For further information and registration, please contact Maria Hahnen or Mathias Moosbrugger: mathias.moosbrugger@student.uibk.ac.at

Officially, the deadline for registration was 11 May 2009.

CONF: 2009 meeting of the American Academy of Religion

Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion (AAR), Montréal, Canada, 7-10 November 2009

In 2009, a significant increase is to be observed in the number of panels accepted for the annual meeting of the AAR that are concerned with political theology.

First, Hent de Vries (Johns Hopkins University) and Corey D. B. Walker (Brown University) invited contributions to a "Theology and the Political Consultation". Besides co-sponsering a panel on "Augustine and Democratic Politics", they also organize as part of their consultation a panel on "Aesthetics, Ethics, and the Politics of Theology" (event locations are only available to members logged in to the AAR’s website.)

The consultation wants to provide a forum for religious studies scholars, philosophers, and theologians to critically reflect on different conceptions of the "political" and draw out the theoretical and practical significance for the tasks of theology. The panel at this year's AAR meeting features papers that critically examine the cultural, political, and philosophical aspects of discourses of aesthetics and ethics as related to historic and contemporary elaborations of political theology and political theory.

Second, the "Feminist Theory and Religious Reflection Group" organizes a panel on "Political Subjectivity and Praxis: Feminist Theoretical Approaches to Public/Political Theology".

Third, the "Religion and Politics Section" sponsors a panel on "Political Theology: Public and Private, Culture, and Counterculture".

Fourth, the "Philosophy of Religion Section" and the "Study of Judaism Section" co-sponsor a panel on "The Mosaic Distinction: Judaism after Political Theology".

This panel will analyze recent trends in political theology from the perspective of the meaning of the "Mosaic Distinction". Within Judaism, the "Mosaic Distinction" invokes the event of God’s unique and sovereign revelation to the Jewish people at Sinai as lived through Jewish law. The legitimacy of this account is presupposed in varying expressions throughout the prophetic, rabbinic, philosophical, and mystical traditions. Nonetheless, the authority and meaning of this concept has been reinterpreted and challenged by an intellectual movement now commonly referred to as political theology. The purpose of the panel is to offer analyses of how the "Mosaic Distinction" has been dealt with in the work of leading figures in political theology, including Freud, Assmann, Taubes, Žižek, Agamben, and Schmitt, and to present constructive responses by leading contemporary Jewish philosophers.

The AAR annual meeting online programme (including abstracts of the respective papers in each panel) is available and searchable at:

www.aarweb.org/Meetings/Annual_Meeting/Current_Meeting/Program_Book/default.asp?ANum=&DayTime=&KeyWord=&Submit=View+Program+Book

Further information and registration:

www.aarweb.org/Meetings/Annual_Meeting/Current_Meeting/default.asp

CONF: Bund and Borders: German Jewish Thinking Between Faith and Power

Jewish Museum Berlin, Lindenstrasse 9-14, 10969 Berlin, Germany
17-19 May 2009

Conference: "Bund and Borders: German Jewish Thinking Between Faith and Power"

The conference describes the history of German Jewry in light of two principle ideas: the notion of a Bund between the Jewish people and God and the need to define this Bund (Hebrew: Brith) within geopolitical and social borders.

Traditionally, German Jews stood between two systems of ideas: the world of fun­damental faith and religious commitment and the world of secular power in poli­tics. Since the Haskala, the majority of German Jews was committed to the idea of a religious Bund that should be transformed into a strong notion of cultural identity between well-defined borders. They did so by integrating the tools of intellectual critique on the one hand, and of moderate politics, on the other. Many German Jews transferred the same intermediary forms they learned and practiced to the cultures they were emigrating to, most notably to the heart of the Jewish Yishuv and then the new Jewish state. Responsible for much of the activity among Israel’s cultural elite, German Jews reworked an intensive culture of mediation and moderation.

Ingrained in today’s tension between religious and secular segments in Israeli society is the notion that many of the early achievements were rescinded. As a result, a variety of voices have recently pleaded to return to a model of German-Jewish critique, one that dares to ask difficult questions but strives to find mod­erate solutions. At the heart of this rediscovery lies a concept that immigrated with German Jews to Palestine; the supposedly utopian alternative to the Zionist idea of a Jewish State, or as Martin Buber called it, the "theopolitical". In the background of this utopia lies a radical critique that was formulated by the late Prague circle in Jerusalem, in Jacob Taubes’s correspondence with Carl Schmitt, and in the current debate on the relation between religion and politics in Israel.

"Bund and Borders" relates to the ideas of key German Jewish scholars who for­mulated a language of dialogue and defined distinctions between state and relig­ion, power and faith, operative language and its philosophy. With regard to these scholars the conference aims at defining a fruitful and promising relation be­tween the notion of Bund, in its religious and political form, and borders, in its geo-political context, its social as well as methodological relevance.

The first afternoon session on 18 May, 2-4 pm, is particularly concerned with "A Jewish Political Theology?":

Jacob Taubes redefined Carl Schmitt’s concept of political theology in terms of Jewish religious traditions, posing a series of questions: What is the task of po­litical theology in a world very different from the one Schmitt knew? How did it become such a hotly debated topic? How should it be contextualized? Presentations will be given by Vivian Liska (University of Antwerp), Menachem Lorberbaum (University of Tel Aviv), Nitzan Lebovic (University of Tel Aviv/University of Sussex).

The conference was initiated and shaped by Nitzan Lebovic and Mirjam Wenzel, two former Fellows of the Leo Baeck Fellowship Programme. It is organized by the Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes in cooperation with the Jewish Museum Berlin and supported by the Stiftung "Erinnerung, Verantwortung und Zukunft". The programme can be found here:

www.sdvnet.de/leobaeck/Program.html

For further information and registration please contact Johannes Sabel (Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes): sabel@studienstiftung.de

Deadline for registration is 10 May.

CONF: Re-Describing the Sacred/Secular Divide: The Legal Story II

University of Buffalo Law School, 1-2 May 2009

Conference: "Re-Describing the Sacred/Secular Divide: The Legal Story II"

"For the walls collapse and the spaces which were once distinct intermingle and penetrate each other, as in a labyrinthine architecture of light." (Carl Schmitt, Political Theology II)

This conference brings together scholars of law, humanities and the social sciences for a sustained conversation regarding contemporary relations between law and religion. Public policy in this area is being reconsidered at every level of government in many parts of the world, and the boundaries between the "sacred" and the "secular" seem very much in play in a variety of contexts and traditions. The conference seeks to diagnose and re-describe our current environment and to deepen understanding of the dynamics connecting law and religion.

www.law.buffalo.edu/baldycenter/sacredSecularDivide09.html

Panel II on 1 May, 1-3 pm, is particularly concerned with "Law and Political Theology":

- Paul Kahn (Yale Law School): "Why Political Theology Again"
- Robert Yelle (History, University of Memphis): "Moses' Veil: Secularization as Christian Myth"
- Leonard Kaplan (Law, University of Wisconsin): "The Political as Prior: Arendt, Schmitt and Strauss"
- Bruce Rosenstock (Religious Studies, University of Illinois, Urbana): "Sovereign Impunity: The Theologico-Political Horizon of the International Criminal Court"

Two papers from Panel VI "Sacrifice" on 2 May, 3-5 pm:

- Banu Bargu (Politics, New School for Social Research): "Stasiology: Political Theology and the Figure of the Sacrificial Enemy"
- Thomas Blom Hansen (Sociology and Anthropology, University of Amsterdam): "Cool Passion: The Political Theology of Modern Conviction"

Abstracts of all papers can be found on the conference website.

Registration is open for both Friday and Saturday, 1 and 2 May. Register for the conference by sending your name, address (including institutional affiliation), email address, and telephone number to Anita Mazurek: amazurek@buffalo.edu

Indicate whether you will attend on Friday, Saturday, or both days. There is no registration fee, but registration is required as space is limited.

CFP: The Absent Center: A Graduate Student Conference

University of Texas at Austin, Government Department,
19-20 February 2010

Call for papers: “The Absent Center: A Graduate Student Conference on Contemporary Issues in Political Theology”

Keynote speakers:

- Simon Critchley (New School for Social Research)
- Eric Santner (University of Chicago)

The secular Enlightenment sought to replace religion as a foundation for political legitimacy and personal meaning. It led to a profound disappointment, one not specific to contemporary life. Even Spinoza, the great rationalist and philosopher of immanence, feared for a society lacking any belief in salvation whatsoever.

Precisely because the transition to secular modernity has failed, contemporary society has invested with renewed critical interest and urgency the age-old question: “What might be the best normative center for any society?” Even those who say with Nietzsche that “God is dead” would likely concede that a divine center, even though absent and yet to be replaced, retains for many a powerful force upon political imagination.

The Absent Center Conference will examine these circumstances in terms of the following questions: Is a normative center necessary for political life? Are multiple centers possible? If so, which can or ought to be affirmed, and who should decide, by what criteria? Alternatively, can political community and political action be centerless, as philosophers such as Alain Badiou and Simon Critchley argue? Can secular reason and its contemporary political form – liberal democracy – harness the passions and channel the grievances of a thoroughly secular political life? Can alternative post-secular forms of political life be imagined? Could they ever be realized without a return to the religious?

Graduate students interested in presenting a paper should e-mail an abstract of no more than 300 words, together with a CV, to: absentcenterconference@gmail.com

Submission deadline: 1 August 2009

Authors of accepted proposals will be notified in early September 2009.

CFP: Democracy's Linkage to Capitalism

Please circulate widely! Blog about it! etc.

Call for papers: “Democracy's Linkage to Capitalism”

Fourth Annual International Symposium of the Sussex Centre for the Individual and Society (SCIS), 7-9 September 2009, in Geneva, Switzerland

For decades, scholars have been describing the period we live in as “late capitalism”. Why then have so many people been surprised that capitalism could indeed fall into a global crisis? And how do we explain the silence of the political left in the face of that crisis of the despised capitalist order? Besides the academic self-assertion of a few leftist scholars and publicists that had already given up on the revolution, there appears to be no organized political movement (anywhere) that seeks to overthrow capitalism now that it is weak. Anti- and alter-globalization movements and protests (most recently observed at the Nato and G20 summits) are smaller now than they were ten years ago. New scholarship is scarce on the failure of (neo-)liberal political-economic theories and the “science” of Economics.

The reason for all this, I propose, is that we are only too aware that any fundamental criticism of capitalism in the current situation would also imply a fundamental critique of democracy. As we all know, it is democratic nation states that keep capitalism alive now. Never before has it been so obvious that democracy is intrinsically linked to capitalism. No one dares to point it out: whoever wants to fight capitalism now must be prepared to fight democracy as well.

I argued this first in 2004 in my paper “Fighting Capitalism and Democracy”:

books.google.com/books?printsec=frontcover&id=KkMdJtaaeOYC#PPA187,M1

A summary of which is to be found here:

www.political-theology-agenda.blogspot.com/2009/04/fighting-capitalism-and-democracy.html

Why don't people dare to criticize democracy? While capitalism has been in crises before (though arguably not of such global dimensions), it is the first time that there exists no obvious alternative to capitalism and democracy. At the time of the last crises, socialism/communism or even fascism seemed viable political options. They are not anymore, and no new alternatives have arisen. China has become capitalist, and so has Russia. All criticisms of democracy available to us hail from a time when democracy had not been consolidated yet, in most countries. All this results in empty gestures of (journalistic) criticism of capitalism, without political content or demands.

On this, see my book “Anti-Democratic Thought”:

books.google.com/books?printsec=frontcover&id=KkMdJtaaeOYC

None of this should stop us from using the moment to further investigate the intrinsic linkage of democracy to capitalism. Papers on this and related themes are invited from affiliated and non-affiliated scholars of any discipline or background. Papers may be theoretical and/or empirical in nature.

Deadline for proposals is 30 June 2009, but later submissions may be accepted. Earlier submission is strongly encouraged and proposals may be accepted as they come in. Please send your proposal to: e.kofmel@scis-calibrate.org

SCIS Symposia are small interdisciplinary workshop-style events with 15-20 participants. Each paper is allocated about an hour for presentation and discussion. Previous SCIS Symposia took place at the University of Sussex and the Institute of Development Studies, Brighton, England (2006); University of Pisa and Hotel Santa Croce in Fossabanda, Pisa, Italy (2007); and Sciences Po/The Institute for Political Studies in Paris, France (2008). Keynote speakers included full professors from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard; Duke University; King's College London/British House of Lords; etc.

As always, no fees will be charged for participation in this Symposium, and no funding is available for participants' travel and accommodation cost. We will be glad to issue letters of invitation on request though to assist participants with applications to their usual sources of funding. All participants are responsible to make their own travel and accommodation arrangements. The Symposium starts Monday afternoon and ends Wednesday at lunchtime.

Because we expect that particularly doctoral candidates and young researchers may experience problems obtaining funding for travel in the current economic situation, we will also accept tabled papers (i.e. authors do not need to be present personally; their full papers will be circulated among all participants prior to the Symposium). If in such a case you would like to make a video of your presentation, it can be shown to participants during the Symposium. If not stated otherwise, we will assume that proposed papers are to be presented in person in Geneva.

Erich Kofmel
Managing Director
Sussex Centre for the Individual and Society (SCIS)
http://www.scis-calibrate.org

Postal address:
Sussex Centre for the Individual and Society
1200 Geneva
Switzerland

SCIS is an international association under Swiss law.

Fighting capitalism and democracy (summarily)

“What has been, that will be; what has been done, that will be done. Nothing is new under the sun.” – Qoheleth 1:9

The concluding paper in my volume “Anti-Democratic Thought”, entitled “Fighting Capitalism and Democracy”, was written in 2004, long before the global financial crisis set in. Surveying various bodies of theory and research (historical and empirical evidence, liberal and modernization theory, among them), the paper argues that democracy and capitalism are inextricably linked – and goes on to ask what this means for a politics of resistance.

The paper finds that capitalism can exist (for a lengthy period of time) without needing or leading to democracy. (Ultimately, though, every form of capitalism will lead to some form of democracy.) Democracy, on the other hand, cannot exist without capitalism. (The few cases in which democracy survived in not-yet-capitalist circumstances only confirm that rule – the reasons for the survival of democracy lie in circumstances outside the democracy-capitalism nexus.)

I didn't need the global financial crisis to realize this. However, the financial crisis most certainly has confirmed all my findings in that much earlier paper. Democratic governments everywhere have found it necessary to stabilize the capitalist economic system(s) without which these democracies would fail immediately. (Due, for example, to popular uprisings caused by economic distress of the population.)

My paper comes to some conclusions. If the basic assumptions of the paper have been reinforced by the financial crisis, so must have been the conclusions drawn from the linkage between capitalism and democracy: whoever wants to fight capitalism (like Islamist terrorists or the anti- and alter-globalization protesters we observed most recently at the Nato and G20 summits) must be prepared to fight democracy as well.

Here a summary of the argument (of much interest to people engaged in and with political theology, I am sure):

Since the 1950s, political scientists, historians, sociologists, and economists have been attempting to prove scientifically common sense observations about an inherent linkage between capitalism and democracy (“Any causal glance at the world will show that poor countries tend to have authoritarian regimes, and wealthy countries democratic ones”: Przeworski et al.: Democracy and Development).

They built upon arguments presented in the literature that emerged in the wake of the Second World War and the independence of former colonies on the economic development of so-called underdeveloped or developing countries. Soon this body of literature led to the academic discipline of development studies and a scientific theory of development, usually called “modernization theory”, which was of major influence in the 1950s and 60s and again, along with neo-liberalism, in the 1980s and 90s.

While many of the early authors of modernization theory were only concerned with the economic side of capitalist development, others such as Seymour Martin Lipset (1959 in his article Some Social Requisites of Democracy) assumed that economic development – capitalism –, would lead to political development – democracy.

One year earlier than Lipset, in an often cited non-empirical study (The Passing of Traditional Society), Daniel Lerner had already proposed a causal sequence of urbanization leading to literacy and media growth, which in turn would lead to the development of institutions of participatory politics. Karl de Schweinitz (Industrialization and Democracy) went on to claim that the process of causation runs from industrialization to political democracy and he linked this to people being “disciplined to the requirements of the industrial order” and therefore more willing to resolve conflicts, arising for example from the distribution of national income, peacefully.

De Schweinitz affirmed that this form of rationality would only develop “in a high-income economy”, but not in a mere “subsistence economy”. Samuel P. Huntington, an influential author of the second wave of modernization theory, argued that democratization will usually happen “at the middle levels of economic development. In poor countries democratization is unlikely; in rich countries it has already occurred” (The Third Wave).

Processes associated with industrialization make it, in Huntington's eyes, more difficult for authoritarian regimes to control the population, not least because they promote the growth of an urban middle class.

With their writings authors of modernization theory prepared the theoretical foundations for numerous comparative and cross-cultural studies trying to establish correlations and the causal relationship between capitalism and democracy. The task is made more difficult by the fact that there is no agreement as to what constitutes either “capitalism” or “democracy” and the proper measures of both remain contested.

This as well as the application of a wide array of research designs did however not change the fundamental finding of such studies that democracy, at the national level, stands little chance of survival if not coupled to a capitalist economic system.

In my paper, I suggest that the few deviant cases in which a democratic constitution that predated capitalism did not fail were sustained by variables external to both capitalism and democracy.

While there is disagreement as to whether democratization is a linear or near-linear positive function of economic growth or a threshold phenomenon associated with a country (or its citizens) reaching a particular level of income, either accounts for the fact that capitalism can, and does, exist in countries without democracy.

Still others have argued that only in countries above a certain economic threshold democracy will not be overthrown once it has been introduced. Steady economic growth appears to mitigate the danger of failure of democracy even in circumstances in which such a threshold has not yet been reached. Democracy, in its turn, has been shown to stimulate further economic growth.

Before Francis Fukuyama proclaimed The End of History and that liberal democracy and capitalism might constitute the “end point of mankind’s ideological evolution”, only once in twenty years a major liberal author had bothered to write about the linkage of democracy to capitalism at all, and then, as Milton Friedman put it, “to keep options open until circumstances make change necessary [...], to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes politically inevitable” (Capitalism and Freedom).

Jeremy Bentham and James Mill had been the first though to become convinced, in the early nineteenth century, that far from destroying “property” the poor would let themselves be guided by the property-owning classes. Vladimir Lenin thus called democracy “the best possible political shell for capitalism”. Capitalism, he concluded, could not be overcome by democratic means (The State and Revolution).

Oswald Spengler put it succinctly: “In the form of democracy, money has won”. It becomes effective, he said (often repeated since), by manufacturing public opinion and enslaving free will through the media and campaigning and the systemic corruption of all the people (The Decline of the West).

Henry C. Simons, the first of many professors to turn the University of Chicago into a centre of so-called neo-liberal thought, took the “preservation of democratic institutions” to be one of the “objectives of economic policy” in the US in the face of communism and fascism (A Positive Program for Laissez Faire).

Decades of economic growth under democracy as well as the welfare state, much despised by the Chicago school, further consolidated the capitalist economic system in the West by bestowing property and entitlements upon almost every citizen and thus muting fundamental opposition.

The notion that democracy is intrinsically linked to money, and democratic power is linked to material wealth, is as old as democracy itself. Athenian democracy excluded men who did not own property and Caesar, who brought the Roman Republic to its end, was the richest man of his time.

Wherever a form of democracy arose, be it the Italian city republics or the Swiss ur-cantons, preceding economic development and the introduction of “capitalist” modes of production can be detected. The American Revolution only took place, it appears, once there was a “capitalist” cause to fight for – the spoils of the New World. All Americans were united in their ardent desire for what Alexis de Tocqueville called “material well-being” (Democracy in America).

Much of what has been written against an inherent linkage between capitalism and democracy appears, after the fall of communism, outdated. Socialists may still argue that the two are separable and that one can fight capitalism without harming democracy. However, while capitalist democracy continues, all attempts at socialist democracy collapsed at an early stage.

One cannot fight capitalism, it seems, and replace it with some non-liberal democracy because every form of democracy, if sustained long enough, will in turn give rise to some form of capitalism.

Factors associated with a capitalist economic system are among the necessary preconditions for a stable democracy.

This is the deeper meaning of the inextricable linkage of democracy to capitalism: whoever wants to fight capitalism must be prepared to fight democracy as well.

Being anti-capitalist one must be anti-democratic too.

Islamist terrorists have understood this.

The one who really means to fight the system must stand entirely outside of it.

> Read the full paper here:
books.google.com/books?printsec=frontcover&id=KkMdJtaaeOYC#PPA187,M1

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

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

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

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

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

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

Book: “The Monstrosity of Christ: Paradox or Dialectic?”

Those of us who still seek to understand what Slavoj Žižek and political theology could possibly have to do with each other may be interested in the most recent publication from the prolific Creston Davis editorial stables: “The Monstrosity of Christ: Paradox or Dialectic?”, a dialogue between Žižek and Radical Orthodox theologian John Milbank (MIT Press 2009).

mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=11672

From the book ad:

“What matters is not so much that Žižek is endorsing a demythologized, disenchanted Christianity without transcendence, as that he is offering in the end (despite what he sometimes claims) a heterodox version of Christian belief.” – John Milbank

“To put it even more bluntly, my claim is that it is Milbank who is effectively guilty of heterodoxy, ultimately of a regression to paganism: in my atheism, I am more Christian than Milbank.” – Slavoj Žižek

In this corner, philosopher Slavoj Žižek, who represents the critical-materialist stance against religion's illusions; in the other corner, “radical orthodox” theologian John Milbank, an influential and provocative thinker who argues that theology is the only foundation upon which knowledge, politics, and ethics can stand. In “The Monstrosity of Christ”, Žižek and Milbank go head to head for three rounds, employing an impressive arsenal of moves to advance their positions and press their respective advantages. By the closing bell, they have proven themselves worthy adversaries – and have also shown that faith and reason are not simply and intractably opposed.

Žižek has long been interested in the emancipatory potential offered by Christian theology. And Milbank, seeing global capitalism as the new century's greatest ethical challenge, has pushed his own ontology in more political and materialist directions. Their debate in “The Monstrosity of Christ” concerns nothing less than the future of religion, secularity, and political hope in light of a monsterful event – God becoming human. For the first time since Žižek's turn toward theology, we have a true debate between an atheist and a theologian about the very meaning of theology, Christ, the Church, the Holy Ghost, universality, and the foundations of logic. The result goes far beyond the popularized atheist/theist point/counterpoint of recent books by Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, and others.

Žižek begins, and Milbank answers, countering dialectics with "paradox." The debate centers on the nature of and relation between paradox and parallax, between analogy and dialectics, between transcendent glory and liberation.

Book: "Twenty Theses on Politics"

A new book by the liberation theologian Enrique Dussel (Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana) has been published: "Twenty Theses on Politics" (Duke University Press 2008)

Translated by George Ciccariello-Maher (University of California at Berkeley), with an introduction to the English-language edition by Eduardo Mendieta (Stony Brook University).

www.dukeupress.edu/cgibin/forwardsql/search.cgi?template0=nomatch.htm&template2=books/book_detail_page.htm&user_id=6403&Bmain.item_option=1&Bmain.item=18809

Note: The ad text mentions philosophy of liberation, but not theology; Walter Mignolo has recently been attempting to link political theology and de-colonial studies, though:

“Twenty Theses on Politics is a groundbreaking manifesto charting new terrain toward de-colonial political philosophy and political theory. It is based on the experience and interpretation of current events in Latin America. There is nothing comparable.” – Walter D. Mignolo, author of “The Idea of Latin America”

“Enrique Dussel is one of the giants of emancipatory thought and liberation philosophy. This grand text is a concise expression of his subtle analysis and courageous vision!” – Cornel West, Princeton University

“Twenty Theses on Politics” is a major statement on political philosophy from Enrique Dussel, one of Latin America’s – and the world’s – most important philosophers and a founder of the philosophy of liberation. Synthesizing a half-century of his pioneering work in moral and political philosophy, Dussel presents a succinct rationale for the development of political alternatives to the exclusionary, exploitative institutions of neoliberal globalization. In twenty short, provocative theses he lays out the foundational elements for a politics of just and sustainable co-existence. Dussel first constructs a theory of political power and its institutionalization. He insists that political projects must criticize or reject as unsustainable all political systems, actions, and institutions whose negative effects are suffered by oppressed or excluded victims. Turning to the deconstruction or transformation of political power, he explains the political principles of liberation and addresses matters such as reform and revolution.

"Twenty Theses on Politics" is inspired by recent political transformations in Latin America. Throughout the twenty theses Dussel engages with Latin American thinkers and activists and with radical political projects such as the World Social Forum. He is also in dialogue with theorists including Marx, Hegel, Habermas, Rawls, and Negri, offering insights into the applications and limits of their thinking in light of recent Latin American political thought and practice.