22/05/2024 11:00 - 13:15

HALL: FATESI - MARCATAJO

Proponent: Lynch T.

Chair: Loland O.J.

Speaker: Dubilet A., Loland O.J., Lynch T., Misje Bergem R., Rose M.

In recent years, political theology has undergone a renaissance. It is a flourishing interdisciplinary space that engages materials, methods, and perspectives from anthropology to religious studies, from black studies to literary studies. These three papers examine the way that classic themes within political theology (sovereignty, violence and legitimacy) have been reconfigured by this disciplinary shift. In 'Cosmic General Antagonism and Undercommon Gnosis', Dubilet examines sovereignty's constitutive claim of having overcome civil war by reconstructing a perspective that affirms the primacy of civil war.
Through a reading of Augustine's return to Gnosticism, he theorizes Gnostic revolt as a general antagonism on a cosmic scale. Similarly, Lynch argues for a political theology opposed to sovereignty in his 'Destituent Apocalypticism'. Through a reading of Walter Benjamin and recent work in environmental political philosophy, he argues that sovereignty is pervasive in conceptualising autonomy and freedom. In 'A Political Theology of Care', Rose argues that the division of the world into public and private spheres, the division of the political from the theological, and the emergence of forms of sovereignty structured by private property are all gendered transformations. Drawing on recent work on the relationship between religion, the family and reproduction, this paper will suggest that a political theology of care must account for the entanglement of care with violence.