Panel: «THE PLACE OF THE OTHER». HISTORY, RELIGION AND SOCIO-CULTURAL TRANSFORMATIONS IN MICHEL DE CERTEAU'S WORK



293.1 - MICHEL DE CERTEAU AND LIBERATION THEOLOGY. BETWEEN ATTRACTION AND CRITICAL DISTANCE

AUTHORS:
Álvarez C. (Universidad Alberto Hurtado ~ Santiago de Chile ~ Chile)
Text:
The Church's involvement in the political and social life of Latin America has made it an extremely interesting laboratory for elaborating a new political theology, or at least for elucidating the complex relationship between revolution and tradition, between making and saying. In other words, Michel de Certeau wants to explore the possibilities opened up by the circulation of political and theological knowledge and practices, capable of confronting his own reality in France with that of Latin America and vice-versa. In this key, Gustavo Gutiérrez's book, Liberation Theology (1971), which is the act of birth of this plural and diverse theological current, with its accent on orthopraxis, arouses his interest, sympathy and attention. For Certeau, "making truth" is the first condition of the Christian journey today. Such a journey would be linked to making a body with history, to making the problems of our contemporaries the fundamental concerns of faith. However, Certeau distances himself from the pretension of associating the believing experience to a single sociological place, for example, of linking revelation only to the working class world, as well as criticizing the fact that liberation theology still works with too many European theoretical dispositives. What understandings of theology can we rescue from his position in relation to liberation theology? How does his understanding of non-place play in Certeau's understanding of theology? What does a Christianity that becomes a fable mean?