The Unevenness of Political Theology

ABSTRACT

Those who agree that Carl Schmitt was correct to prefer to political theology to liberalism nonetheless need to develop an account of how an authority structure can sustain itself without imposing an ideology on those over whom it rules. This article suggests that one possibility forward is found in the mystical political theology of Jacob Taubes's 1955 essay “On The Symbolic Order of Modern Democracy,” since that essay posits a political body in which sovereignty is distributed, without forcing that distribution in an arbitrary manner.     

Poetic Theology: Paul and Form

ABSTRACT

The article offers a reading of the letters of Paul in relation to their interpretation by a number of figures – Carl Schmitt, Jacob Taubes, Giorgio Agamben, and Alain Badiou. It traces the persistence of an economy of terms in Paul, in relation to the part and the whole, death and life, spirit and the flesh, and others, to argue that this economy morphs and transforms itself in the modern world, imparting and imposing a sociality of living and dying, a coercive distribution and withholding of violence in colonization, on a global scale. And this paper argues, at the same time, that the economy of terms Paul’s letters advance is interrupted, that it comes undone, and that, in this coming undone, the theological becomes poetic – that the letters if Paul teach us to read what may be called “poetic theology.”     

The Theology of Carl Schmitt's Political Theology

The theological turn in studies of Carl Schmitt is pronounced. This paper does not challenge this turn, but questions what theology means for Schmitt. Specifically, it challenges the assumption that Schmitt's political theology is grounded in divine revelation. By distinguishing between “theology in the sense of divine revelation” and “theology in the sense of epistemic faith,” it argues that Schmitt's political theology is epistemic in origin. Schmitt's political theology is not rooted in faith in divine revelation, but in the narrower notion that human cognition is, ultimately, rooted in faith not reason, revelation, or common sense.     

On Political Theology: The Hidden Dialogue between C. Schmitt and Ernst H. Kantorowicz in The King's Two Bodies

In recent years, Ernst H. Kantorowicz's work The King's Two Bodies (1957) has been the object of both historical and philosophical research. Kantorowicz decided to subtitle his book ‘A Study in Medieval Political Theology’, but few scholars have actually recognised his work as research in ‘political theology’. The aim of this article, then, is to uncover the sense(s) in which his book might be considered a work of ‘political theology’, especially in the sense coined by Carl Schmitt in 1922. Such a discussion ultimately aims to contribute to the foundation of political-theology research, a subject that has been widespread among European intellectuals in the twentieth century and which continues to be a focus of interest. This article argues that Kantorowicz's book can be interpreted as a practice of—and also an enriching addition to—Schmitt's thesis on political theology, even if it does not mention Schmitt's name. Such a conclusion is only possible by accepting that there was a heated dialogue between Kantorowicz and Schmitt through Erik Peterson's work. The article further discusses its approach with other scholars that, even though they are based on similar hypotheses, make different conclusions.     

Creating a Nation of Joiners: Democracy and Civil Society in Early National Massachusetts

Abstract

The Occupy Wall Street protest that has spread to other cities across the United States in the autumn of 2011 bears striking similarities to the American Railway Union's strike against the Pullman Palace Car Company near Chicago in 1894, led by Eugene Debs. That protest movement laid the foundations for progressive reforms in the early twentieth century.     

“Go get a job right after you take a bath”: Occupy Wall Street as Matter Out of Place

Anthropological studies of purity reveal how notions of cleanliness influence political and social life. During its 2011 Zuccotti Park occupation in Lower Manhattan, Occupy Wall Street (OWS) contested spatial and symbolic manifestations of neoliberalism by re‐inserting Otherness into sanitized and privatized space. But the demonstration provoked reactions from politicians and news media that entwined discourses of cleanliness and productivity (such as Newt Gingrich's riposte to the protestors: “Go get a job right after you take a bath”). This ethnographic study argues that such representations had spatial and political effects. In particular, our account illuminates the plural agency of Occupiers, where resistance to depictions of dirt and idleness existed alongside the use of such discourses to discipline each other. We trace a discursive legacy of these events as notions of productivity and cleanliness have circulated within activist responses to 2012's Superstorm Sandy and the 2014 Flood Wall Street mobilization.     

The historical geography of Scotland since 1707

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.     

The Language of Postwar Intellectual Schmittianism

The article analyzes the work of Hanno Kesting, Reinhart Koselleck, Roman Schnur, and Nicolaus Sombart—four young followers of Carl Schmitt in postwar Germany. Their “intellectual Schmittianism” was less than a full commitment to Schmitt’s political positions, yet had more than an arbitrary similarity with them: it pertained to assumptions, categories, and modes of thought. Drawing on Pocock’s terminology, I identify a particular “language” of intellectual Schmittianism, introduce its key components, and analyze their interaction. I focus on six categories derived from Schmitt’s narrative of European political modernity: discrimination, historical parallels, secularization, global civil war, open/latent civil war, and category blurs. The analysis shows that these categories were interlinked argumentative devices rather than mere rhetoric and that they systematically upheld the postwar scholars’ arguments. While the Schmittian language enabled the young scholars to express their political skepticism without necessarily rejecting the newly adopted institutional forms, it also constrained their choices. Linguistic resources can always be used for novel purposes, yet the dense internal structure of the language of postwar intellectual Schmittianism hindered revaluation and selective utilization. Kesting excluded, the young scholars gradually grew critical of Schmitt to varying degrees, but they never directly confronted his problematic language.     

The Political Aesthetics of Middle Class Housing in (not so) Neoliberal Mozambique

This article explores the social and material repercussions of middle class aspirations in a system that is still infused by socialist aesthetics in Maputo, Mozambique. We argue the activation of “middle classness” reproduces ingrained inequalities and boundaries. This is demonstrated through two ethnographic case studies of urban housing, long central to imaginaries of prosperity. First, fearing downward mobility, members of the upper middle class seek to embody a liberal ideology of “autonomy”, while simultaneously being dependent on state structures. Second, members of the lower middle class attempt to create enclaves to experiment with forms of privatisation normally only accessible to a privileged elite. Through this examination of the ways in which a spectrum of privileged urbanites attempts to secure their position in the face of a precarious future, the article outlines middle classness under contemporary capitalist conditions and how this is shaped by the legacies of the past.     

评严复的社会起源说

严复的社会起源说总共包括三部分,即君主起源说、求存合群说,“群肇于家”说。前者配合维新运动,否定君权神授,具有积极意义。次者探索初民合群的动机,后者阐明家庭是社会的起点,各有合理成分。但在实际上,前者和后者并不一致。前者是西方契约理论影响下的产物,而后者却是冲破契约理论的锐利武器。总之,严复的社会起源说与他对西方契约理论的态度密切相关。     

南京政府初期文科与实科比例失衡的社会政治效应

南京政府所谓的“青年问题”实质上反映了它们对1920年代和1930年代中国政治继续动荡的恐惧与抵制。民初以来的高等教育,其文科与实科的比例结构与社会需求之间严重失衡倾向的日益积累,导致了越来越多游离于社会生产结构之外的文科学生成为批判现实的社会科学最为热情的接受群体。当他们的切身遭遇在学理上被引向对社会制度的道德质问时,社会科学表现为20世纪30年代具有颠覆性的一种时尚。这些学生也由此为抗议南京政府的政治组织所吸纳,从而掀起了此起彼伏的让南京当局头痛的政治风浪。     

The Political Thought of David Walsh: A Symposium

Abstract

David Walsh has published a trilogy of books on the ideological, political, and philosophical trajectories of modernity. He confronts the crisis of modernity and argues that modernity has the resources within itself to reestablish a collective commitment to the order of existence. This symposium offers four essays reflecting on and responding to Walsh's assessment of modernity and its prospects.     

The Judgment of God and the Immeasurable: Political Theology and Organizations of Power

Abstract

This article considers how political theologies understand and organize power. It begins with an axiomatic understanding of politics as concerned with the organization of power. This understanding of politics requires a theological inquiry, as it is concerned with questions of piety and belief that underlie and direct power within these conscious organizations. It then provides a survey of three dominant forms of political theology: liberal political theology, exemplified by John D. Caputo; conservative political theology, exemplified by John Milbank; and political anti-theology, exemplified by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. It ends by way of a speculative account of a political non-theology, based on the non-philosophy of François Laruelle, that makes each of these political theologies relative to the immeasurable itself and thus turns them into simple material that may be used to construct relative different organizations of power with greater situational efficacies.     

明代以来朱元璋出生地"二说"始末考述

朱元璋的出生地,近年来出现了凤阳、盱眙二说。其实,早在朱元璋在世时,凤阳说是唯一一说。永乐以后,围绕朱元璋出生前后所发生的圣瑞之象,在社会上被炒作得越发神奇,在以讹传讹的过程中,泗州盱眙地方官员采用编纂地方志等方式,将这些圣瑞之象拉入盱眙县,从而产生盱眙说。盱眙说从产生之日起,一直是作为社会上流传的小道而存在,而凤阳说在明清两代一直是全社会及史学界的共识。近年来,盱眙说再次抬头,向凤阳说挑战。     

The Ethics of Gender and Globalization: Military Madness and Ecological Stress

Abstract

Globalization has an impact on gender relations in complex and contradictory ways. The consequences are neither solely detrimental nor the same everywhere. Globalization may offer new opportunities to women, but overall globalization from above has exacerbated gender inequality. Globalization disperses local and national decision-making powers. Flexible labor laws weaken worker protections and job security. All of these threaten advancement in women's interests. The oft-accompanying environmental degradation directly affects women responsible for domestic necessities and caring labor, which is the situation of most women within the Pacific Rim. Military activities around the Pacific Rim continually erode women's rights. This paper discusses the ethics of globalization, adopting micro, macro and global categories.     

The chimera of national identity

ABSTRACT. In both popular discourse and many academic works, the existence of national identity is largely taken as given. Although researchers disagree on whether national identities are modern or perennial, and how best to gauge the intensity of identification with a particular nation, there is near unanimity on the view that national identities are real and perceptible entities. In contrast to this view I argue not only that there was no national identity before modernity but also that there is little empirical evidence for the existence of national identities in the modern age either. While it is obvious that many individuals show great affinity for their nations and often express sincere devotion to the ‘national cause’, none of these are reliable indicators of the existence of a durable, continuous, stable and monolithic entity called ‘national identity’. To fully understand the character of popular mobilisation in modernity it is paramount to refocus our attention from the slippery and non‐analytical idiom of ‘identity’ towards well‐established sociological concepts such as ‘ideology’ and ‘solidarity’. In particular, the central object of this research becomes the processes through which large‐scale social organisations successfully transform earnest micro‐solidarity into an all‐encompassing nationalist ideology.     

中国古代长城的历史角色

中国古代中原王朝为加强防御,在北部边疆长期建立了长城防御体系,明代在海洋空间面临实质性挑战后,在东部近海地区也开始构建了长城防御体系。长城一方面起到了有效的防御作用,但另一方面,由于被动特征,无法彻底解决来自北方族群与东部海域的威胁,反而产生“反噬效应”,造成巨大的财政负担与社会动荡,甚至带来全方位的政权危机,这是影响中国古代历史变迁的重要因素。长城虽然是政权之间的界限,却并非族群之间的界限,而是一条生态过渡区的界限。     

The Political Art of Patience: Adivasi Resistance in India

Abstract: This article documents the emergence of the Denotified Rights Action Group (DNG‐RAG), a national social movement orchestrated to assert the citizenship rights of adivasi (indigenous) populations in India. It assesses the movement's efforts to engage the central Indian government in meaningful dialogue to accommodate the inclusion of marginalized adivasis in the democratic politics of the nation. In doing so, the DNT‐RAG reasserts the primacy of the Indian state as the principal engine driving the project of nation building, and as such, the site that activists target to further an agenda of equitable development and democratic rights for those known as India's Denotified Tribes.     

北宋政治得失与政治文化

在社会化系统中,直接影响与作用于政治的是政治化。北宋政治化是中国传统政治化发展演变的一个历史阶段。在北宋繁荣的学术化与学艺术的促进下,北宋政治化的发展更加成熟,具有自己的独特内容。在北宋社会的长期稳定与发展中,可以明显看到北宋政治化对政治所发挥的影响与导向功能。在北宋的政治危机以及北宋败亡中,则可以清楚地看到政治化所具有的缺陷与弊端。北宋政治化不仅具有中国传统政治化所固有的缺陷,而且在其形成发展中又产生了新的问题。