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.
William Apess, like Walter Benjamin a century later, sought to shift the paradigms of society with history and theology as orienting poles for colonial critique. Anticipating Benjamin, Apess looked to those who had been wrecked by the advance of colonialism as the grounding site for historical and political theological inquiry.
People need structures to believe in, to focus their hopes and fears on – and when those structures disappear, the rupture can be disturbing, as those energies quickly get re-configured around something else.
The Hindu nationalist project is out-and-out an Orientalist one. It is not indigenous. It is inspired almost entirely within a colonial, Orientalist framework of knowledge.
Mamdani’s latest book defends the promise of decolonization against the ongoing nationalist violence of modernity. Rafael Vizcaíno sits with the renowned Ugandan intellectual to discuss postcolonial and decolonial scholarship, the reform-revolution debate, anti-racism, and the example of South Africa.
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.