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Maria José de Abreu

De Abreu’s work engages with a range of anthropological, philosophical, and literary debates about religion, temporality, movement, personhood, the human senses and their technological extensions. Her first book, The Charismatic Gymnasium: Evangelicalism and Extension in Contemporary Brazil  (forthcoming with Duke University Press), centers on a form of Catholic Charismatic revivalism in contemporary urban São Paulo, Brazil. A second project in progress is dedicated to thinking impasse as a condition intrinsic, though not exclusive, to neoliberal governance. Focusing on Portugal during and after the 2008 financial crisis, this second project is an attempt at theorizing from spaces of tension and performative paradox in ways that make decision—though not governance—difficult or impossible. Her work has appeared in Current Anthropology, Critical Inquiry, Anthropological Theory, Social Text, Social Analysis, The Immanent Frame and E-flux.

Essays

States of Extreme

The power of Jair Bolsonaro and Donald Trump’s political extremism lies precisely their ability to erase extremism from their respective political actions.

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?