But how subversive can a contemporary inquiry be if it remains a paradigmatically modern- and Euro-centric affair (as the critical literature on the secular has historically been). My suggestion is that if the secular is a temporal and spatial concept emanating from the modern West (as many would agree), its “shadows” will necessarily lie elsewhere.
We are left with the possibility that this time of revelation can not only visibilize the harm that colonial relations have wrought but also enable a resurgence of counter practices and lifeways that actively build a new world out of the ashes of this one.
Both Benjamin and Apess discern that historical narratives are imbricated with notions of futurity, that is, which bodies and polities are allowed to inhabit and thrive within the temporality in which the “not yet” and the “always already” co-constitute each other.
The following is the first of a short series on partition and/as political theology, which will be published in the journal Political Theology in 2024.
Judith Butler’s work in queer theory inspires Catholics to consider the material relations of the body and contributes to a mystical-political, eschatological hope.
[1]">Like authoritarian regimes throughout history and around the world, threats to cultural and political power are leading many on the Christian Right to fear declining national birth rates and promote traditional gender roles and having more babies for “the nation.”
White Christian Nationalism is being actively transformed into a theo-political program – and a grave threat to American Democracy.
If theorizations of care are to more directly address the current “crisis of care,” we need not only to prioritize the kinds of embodied, particularized care that care ethics has highlighted in the past, but to explore a wider range of caring relationships and their diverse structures.
The judgment of history is a moral belief that, somehow in the long run, the good and the true will win out, since the “long arc of the universe bends towards justice.”
In this second set quick takes, feminist ethicists respond to the recent Dobbs v. Jackson decision, mixing and challenging Catholic ideas regarding reproductive health and justice.