Exploring the way religion and politics are brought into focus through the writings of the Caribbean thinker Sylvia Wynter
Vincent Lloyd is a professor of theology and religious studies and director of the Center for Political Theology at Villanova University. He is the author of Black Dignity (2022), co-author of What Is Political Theology? (2025), and co-editor of Political Theology Reimagined (2025). Lloyd is editor-at-large of the journal Political Theology.
David Kline is Teaching Associate Professor in the Religious Studies Department of the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. He is the author of Racism and the Weakness of Christian Identity: Religious Autoimmunity (Routledge, 2020) and the co-editor of Words Made Flesh: Sylvia Wynter and Religion (Fordham, 2025). He is also a musician and video artist actively involved in the Knoxville music and arts scenes.
Shamara Wyllie Alhassan is Assistant Professor of African American Studies and Religious Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Rafael Vizcaíno is Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy at DePaul University. His work focuses on Latin American and Caribbean philosophy, especially decolonial thought, and on theories of secularization and postsecularity. Winner of the American Philosophical Association’s Essay Prize in Latin American Thought, Rafael is currently working on two book-length manuscripts: an account of the modern dialectics of secularization from the perspective of Latin American and Caribbean thought, and an outline of a postsecular/decolonial philosophy of religion. Rafael’s publications can be found in the anthology Decolonising the University, and the journals Radical Philosophy Review, The CLR James Journal, and Political Theology. Forthcoming work is scheduled to appear in the journals Philosophy and Global Affairs, Comparative and Continental Philosophy, The Journal of Speculative Philosophy, and TRANSMODERNITY: Journal of Peripheral Cultural Production of the Luso-Hispanic World.
My name is Joseph Winters and I am an associate professor at Duke University in Religious Studies and African and African American Studies. I hold secondary appointments in English and Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies. My interests lie at the intersection of black religious thought, black studies, and critical theory. My research examines the ways black literature and aesthetics develop alternative configurations of the sacred-profane, piety, (black) spirit, and secularity in response to the religious underpinnings of anti-black violence and coloniality. My first book, Hope Draped in Black: Race, Melancholy, and the Agony of Progress was published by Duke University Press in 2016. My second book, The Disturbing Profane: Hip Hop, Blackness, and the Sacred will be published in August 2025.
Symposium Essays
Sylvia Wynter and Religion
While Sylvia Wynter is not a scholar of religion, religion plays a significant role in her thinking, offering important lessons for political theology.
Anti-Blackness, the Sacred, and the Demonic
What would it mean to pursue, or even practice, the un-representable? How does the unruliness of the demonic differ from the unruliness that sovereign Man has always been able to claim as a special right, in the name of order and protection?
Stumbling Upon God in Sylvia Wynter’s Fiction
Sylvia Wynter’s fiction invites us to think the secular and the religious together in order to open new “continents of the spirit” and new “planets of the imagination.”
Counter-Worlds: Rastafari Sovereignty
The work of autonomous Rastafari world-makers is instructive for continuing to think about the type of resilience, risk, and endurance it takes to ensure the survival of our human species and our planetary home in the face of authoritarian governance.