As we commemorate the 50thth anniversary of A Theology of Liberation’s publication, Gustavo Gutiérrez’s legacy remains central both for Catholic political theology and for any re-vision of it. Gutiérrez’s development of liberation and oppression as theological categories has fueled the theo-political imagination over these five decades, providing rich source material for theological reflection and revisioning. We propose this symposium as a means to re-(en)vision the legacy and theological contributions of Gutiérrez to Catholic political theology through interdisciplinary critique, deconstructive radicalization, and dangerous re/membering.
Each of the contributors for this proposed symposium have engaged the complete textual corpus of Gutiérrez, including unpublished material. Each contributor reads Gutiérrez in relation to political theology from distinct methodological approaches–including queer theory, afro-pessimism, feminist theology, postcolonial theory, theopoetics, black nihilism, poststructuralism, and critical memory studies. Our contributors also work from diverse social locations in terms of race, sexual orientation, economic backgrounds, and male/female/non-binary genders. In and through this dynamic multiplicity, we share the conviction that liberation remains a central question requiring constructive re-vision fifty years after A Theology of Liberation.
Collectively, the focal point of our interventions concern either Gutiérrez’s eschatology of hope or the role of memory and personhood in communal identity. Across these six essays, the role of liberation as either a political end or a methodological concept is problematized as means to thinking beyond liberation to a material politics darkly intuited but urgently needed.
