The predicament of pastoral sovereignty

This paper seeks to understand the conditions of possibility of “sanctuary” – the claiming of a “sacred” space of (humanitarian) exception - in the midst of civil war. Sanctuary codifies an exceptional space where sovereign and pastoral registers of power converge into a form of “pastoral sovereignty” that can temporarily “interrupt” the law of violence of sovereign power. In civil war this can enable civilians to be saved and protected from killings and suffering. However, this pastoral sovereignty is precarious as it depends on the belligerents' good will and tacit authorization: this is what we call the predicament of pastoral sovereignty. Using the case study of Church sanctuary in Sri Lanka's civil war, this paper explores how this predicament of pastoral sovereignty comes into effect in moments of acute crisis. Throughout Sri Lanka's brutal civil war, Catholic priests provided “sanctuary” to Tamil civilians in the form of territorial sanctuary (Church compounds), bodily sanctuary (the priests' bodies providing protection), and numerous other humanitarian activities. Our ethnographic material illustrates the force and fragility of the Church's claims to pastoral sovereignty and its sanctuary practices and provides detailed accounts of numerous constellations. The paper thereby raises fundamental questions about the ontology of sovereignty and its operability in moments of humanitarian crisis.     

Ideology and the ‘Liberation of Theology’: The Role of Critique in Juan Luis Segundo and Slavoj Žižek

The turn to religion within critical theory has brought the critique of ideology back into theological view. This essay examines the relation of theology to ideology in the liberation theology of Juan Luis Segundo. Segundo's key contribution is his use of the concept of ideology as an efficacious force in theological work in service to poor communities. I argue that the critical and political force of Segundo's theology is dulled by this neutral use of ideology critique. This may be ameliorated by consulting Slavoj ?i?ek's negative use of Christianity as ideology critique. Without endorsing ?i?ek over Segundo, I propose that ?i?ek's critical use of political theology can help liberation theology reengage the role of negativity and critique in the immanent relation of theory and praxis.     

The hinc et nunc of moral theology: Francisco de Vitoria’s lesson and the missionary experience*

In the sixteenth century, as moral theology was being consolidated as an autonomous academic discipline, theologians at the University of Salamanca, including the Dominican Francisco de Vitoria, began to incorporate current moral and political issues into their teaching agendas. Prominent among these issues were those arising out of the conquest of the Americas. Their students, a generation of university-trained missionaries, then went to work in Spanish possessions in the Americas and the Philippines. These missionaries and men of learning included the Augustinians Alonso de la Veracruz (in Mexico) and Martín de Rada (in the Philippines and China). As their world expanded, Vitoria's teachings were rendered fully intelligible in the confusing reality of the colonial enterprise, and these missionaries struggled to apply his lessons to the questions of conscience they encountered. The result can be considered a new chapter in the relationship between theological knowledge, the production of facts, and moral certainty, all against the backdrop of the territorial and economic expansion of Spain.     

ET SI C'ÉTAIT PAR LA FIN QUE TOUT COMMENÇAIT? PEN BEFORE PLOT,OR TRESCH ON POE'S REVERSALS

This brief comment offers some reflections on John Tresch's “Compositor's Reversal.” Contrasting his approach with Gaston Bachelard's, I situate Tresch in the tradition of reading Edgar A. Poe's Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym as a riddle to be decoded. I suggest that Tresch's analytical emphasis on material composition practices rather than Pym's content opens up insightful ways of reading both Pym itself in terms of its composition, style, and narrative voice, and also Poe's well‐known programmatic Philosophy of Composition. The key achievement of Tresch's article beyond its engagement with Poe scholarship is its contribution to the study of writing practices and media studies more broadly. By demonstrating the tight connection Poe forged between natural theology and the material practice of typography, Tresch inserts the typesetting process as an important step in the historiographical trajectory between pen and typewriter. He shows that the mid‐nineteenth‐century context of natural theology marks a decisive difference in connotation between Poe's compositional play with questions of authorship and plausibility, of truth and appearance both described in and performed by his narrative, and later concerns with the apparatus and its potential for the production of an écriture automatique.     

Thomas Hobbes as a Theorist of Anarchy: A Theological Interpretation

Summary

Scholars of international relations generally invoke Hobbes as the quintessential theorist of international anarchy. David Armitage challenges this characterisation, arguing that Hobbes is regarded as a foundational figure in international relations theory in spite of as much as because of what he wrote on the subject. Thus, for Armitage, Hobbes is not the theorist of anarchy that he is made out to be. This article agrees with the general thrust of Armitage's critique while maintaining that it is still possible to imagine Hobbes as a theorist of anarchy. Hobbes is a theorist of anarchy, not in a political sense, but in a metaphysical sense. This conception of anarchy is a reflection of a comprehensive theological account of reality that is grounded in an omnipotent God. Any historical inquiry into the foundations of modern international thought must take account of theology, because theology defines the ultimate coordinates of reality in terms of which the concepts of international thought are intelligible.     

Secularism Meets Coloniality: Mariategui's Andean Political Theology

This article seeks to clarify the link between Mariategui's political theology and his critique of modern-secular-coloniality. I argue that understanding the place and the significance of Mariategui's critique of secularism/colonialism helps us grasp the fuller extent of Mariategui's thought, a pioneering critic of modernity in the early twentieth century who keenly understood the limits of modern-liberal framework for analyzing the political problems of Latin America. Mariategui's reading of Marx and revolution raises important challenges to various forms of twenty-first-century political theologies that tackle modernity from within Western liberal modernity (postmodern theories and philosophies). Mariategui offers important insights not only for critics of the secular and modernity who fail to attest to the important question of coloniality from which secularism/modernity must be disentangled, but also for critics of colonialism/coloniality who fail to view religion as the key fabric of coloniality.     

The Option for the Poor as a Decolonial Option: Latin American Liberation Theology in Conversation with Teología India and Womanist Theology

Decolonial theorists pose a new challenge to liberation theology: Does its formulation of the option for the poor address the coloniality that distinguishes the modern context? This article argues that an option for the poor within theology, as a decolonial option, has to retrieve and deepen two central concerns of liberation theologians’ early articulation of the option for the poor: (1) the commitment to the poor and the way the divine is manifested historically, and (2) the affirmation of the need for social analysis and the need for this analysis to impact the commitment to God. The article draws on Teología India and womanist theology to indicate how these two interrelated commitments within the option for the poor can strengthen the option for the poor as a decolonial option.     

“The Power to Empty Oneself”: Hegel,Kenosis, and Intellectual Virtue

This article considers Hegel's idea of Entäußerung, or kenosis, as a model for an intellectual virtue that enables people to confront difference and disagreement without domination. According to Hegel, Entäußerung involves a refusal to use one's epistemic status – of being one among many reciprocally recognized loci of authority – as a basis for dominating others. The article considers the development of this idea in Hegel's work, addresses affinities between Hegel's idea of Entäußerung and recent feminist theology, and suggests its relevance for thinking about political and ethical conflict.     

Ultra-modern thoughts: political theology in Leo Strauss’s Philosophy and Law

A primary theme in Leo Strauss’s early work is how medieval Jewish and Islamic political philosophy, while influenced by Plato, differs from him in crucial ways. This theme is central to Strauss’s 1935 book Philosophy and Law. Philosophy and Law concerns the medieval ‘philosophic foundation of the law,’ which provides a rational justification of revelation. For Strauss, the foundation provides this justification by virtue of some difference it has from Plato. In this paper, I offer a new interpretation of Strauss’s view of this difference. I suggest that, for Strauss, whereas Plato conceived of the legislator and his legislation, the foundation conceives of the sovereign and his sovereign laws. On this basis, I also suggest a solution to a perennial mystery of Philosophy and Law: Strauss claims that the medieval foundation reveals ‘ultra-modern thoughts,’ yet does not explicitly state the identity of these thoughts. I suggest that their author is Carl Schmitt.     

William T. Cavanaugh and René Girard

Abstract

This article examines the argument of William T. Cavanaugh’s The Myth of Religious Violence in the light of the mimetic theory of the French-American cultural theorist Rene Girard. Though the two projects are significantly different I argue for their mutual compatibility. Each author is “apologetic” for the Christian revelation, though the presence of theology in “The Myth . . .” is muted or implicit, as in Walter Benjamin’s parable of the puppet and the dwarf. I argue for four areas of specific convergence between Cavanaugh and Girard, arising from a shared Augustinian, “two Cities” suspicion of the state, and their resistance to the secularising marginalisation of the Judeo-Christian tradition. The notion of martyrdom as a “dramatic” performance is a further shared dimension. Finally, I argue that the apparent divergence of their approaches, between an anthropological thesis (Girard’s) and a historical one (Cavanaugh’s) is narrowed when we consider the later work of Girard and its examination of nineteenth century dynamics of escalation in warfare in his last book Battling to the End.