Reading Glissant is important because he not only asks us to think about political life in terms of public speech and activity, he also reminds us always to situate that politics within the landscape and the seascape.
For those witnessing today’s televised violence and mass destruction, the collapse of meaning renders nihilism seductive. Can the collapse of meaning be resisted?
Translating Senghor’s political writings shows the continued relevance of Negritude in the conceptualization of political community in the wake of the encounter between Africa and Euro-America. However, framing the translation, like engaging any of Senghor’s work, ought to pay close attention to his African critics.
Mary is anti-polarizing and liberative while not collapsing difference or homogenizing identity. Latine theology has a word for that: mestizo/a/e
We need to critique the fact that political theology has turned into ideology in Africa.
Those who presume upon God’s support but act in ways that defy God’s standard will find their presumption turned upside-down in divine disavowal.
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?
How does one read, providentially, such a murderous and malleable phenomenon as the nation-state in Africa?
In this passage in John, light is associated with Jesus and with the love of God for the entire world. Light is explicitly linked with a capacious love that was present from the beginning of creation and includes all of creation. It is therefore opposed to racism of any kind.
Jesus’ parable identifies chosenness in those who resist, dissent, protest and refuse the invitations of the empire.
I want to pretend that the “land flowing with milk and honey” was in fact an unoccupied land—a specially preserved paradise, just waiting for the Israelite people to discover it. But, unfortunately, we all know the rest of the story.
As tempting as it might be to assign murderous impulses to so-called former colonial times, Christians would do well to pay attention to how such logic continues to operate today in theological and political thinking.