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Essays

The Sacred in Édouard Glissant

Édouard Glissant’s political theology appears in Poetics of Relation. His idea of “a modern form of the sacred” shifts how we understand ethics and human rights.

The “Ideal” Islamic Polity: History-Making and the Modern Nation-State in Khoja-Moolji’s <em>Sovereign Attachments</em>

At its core, Khoja-Moojli’s work explores the Pakistani culture wars and the affective attachments they elicit in the public domain as a discursive clash between the Tahrik-e-Taliban (TTP) movement and the Pakistani state.

When we serve the least among us, we serve God

God’s call is not to engage in politics of personal power or self-service, but engage in a politics of liberation, one that ends the idolatrous hold on power so many have.

On Milinda Banerjee’s <em>The Mortal God: Imagining the Sovereign in Colonial India</em>

Specifically, in Banerjee’s work, the sovereign is at once a figure that was used extensively for conjuring anew political and ethical communities and a bridge (or more accurately a plurality of local constructions) for forming, ironically, a non-monarchical Indian nation-state.

Unity of Being against State and Capital

In hearing [Fadl’s] story, we follow the travels of wandering saints and pilgrims, the insurrections of Malayali and Arab rebels, and the armed forces of the British and Ottoman Empires.

Farewell to the Flesh

Paul’s “Flesh/Spirit” dichotomy is not an overly-spiritualized, anti-body othering (i.e., a devaluation of the body against supposedly holy disembodiment) but an ethical cleavage with profoundly political repercussions.

Introduction: Religion, State, Sovereignty: Interventions and Conversations

The essays seek a genealogy of and reckoning with the place of religion in modern regimes of sovereignty, its pre-colonial histories and post-colonial legacies, as well as an accounting of the fissures that remain in its emplacement, out of which new life continues to grow.

<strong>The Colonial Christian Kernel of African Anti-LGBT+ Politics and Queer Humanitarianism: Conversation with Kwame E. Otu</strong>

“We should think of queer humanitarianism as a theological project. It suffers from a messianic complex.”

<strong>Dream Life Book: On Susan Taubes’s <em>Divorcing</em></strong>

Taubes’s novel continuously asks how we distinguish—if we can—between dreams, life, and books. Who or what speaks to the one who dreams? To the reader of a novel? Are dreams and novels and other kinds of books various mediums through which the dead speak? Can we hold this to be true while still honoring the dead as dead?

Decolonizing Knowledge with Brenna Moore and Onaje X.O. Woodbine

“Both authors travel to the margins and then send back a warning signal to fellow scholars about the limits and potential intrusiveness of our established methods.”

When Faithfulness to God Hurts Our Neighbor

Whatever our exegesis of scripture and tradition may suggest, it is imperative that we take into account the pain and damage our religious piety causes to others. Is our perception of divine instruction sufficient justification for actual injury (physical, psychological, and/or spiritual) to our neighbors?

Between Family and Nation State: Revisiting <em>The Hindu Family and the Emergence of Modern India </em>(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013)

The Hindu Code Bill has traditionally been seen as a women’s bill, brought by a post-colonial government committed to social transformation and equality that came to be watered down by a more conservative legislature. In this interview, Eleanor Newbigin discusses her new book The Hindu Family and the Emergence of Modern India. In it Newbigin argues that the codification project was primarily shaped by changes in the structure of the Indian state and political economy brought about by the devolution of power and introduction of direct representation.