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Daniel Weidner

Trained in German and comparative literature Daniel Weidner received his PhD in 2000 and his Habilitation (second thesis) in 2009 at the Freie Universität Berlin. He teaches German and Comparative Literature at the Freie Universität and has been Visiting Professor in Gießen, Basel, Stanford, Chicago, and Yale. He is head of the program area World Literature and of the project Walter Benjamin’s Journalistic Networks, and Professor for the study of Culture and Religion at the Institute for Cultural History and Theory, Humboldt University of Berlin. His main areas of research are the interrelation of religion and literature, theories of secularization, the history of philology and literary theory, and German-Jewish literature.

Essays

Pussy Riot and the Church

This piece is from the Political Theology Network archives originally posted on August 23, 2012.

In Memoriam: Metropolitan John D. Zizioulas and the Journey of Theology Toward the Future

The prominent Eastern Orthodox theologian Metropolitan John D. Zizioulas of Pergamon (Ecumenical Patriarchate) passed in Athens, on February 2, 2023.

Vulnerability

From Myanmar to Mariupol, from the streets of Memphis to the waves and winds of the Mediterranean Sea: resistance to violence takes many forms. So does political protest against precarity. At which point does the unavoidable vulnerability of the living condition come to expression as political agency? Can such precarious politics constitute or configure an alternative community?

Prophetic Politics: an introduction

Could prophetic politics, with its unique emphases, allow us to envision another, possibly less dogmatic and more differentiated form of political theology? Could focusing on the schism between prophetic voice and political institutions reveal a different understanding of political theological concepts, beyond the realm of power and sovereignty?