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Tag: Symposia

The Montage of Privation: Islam and the Architecture of Sinicization in China

Islam in China is going through a period of architectural amputation called Sinicization. The result is a haunting landscape where dome-less and minaret-less mosques visualize deficiency as a definition of what it means to be Muslim in China today.

Exonerating Marxism: Sacrifice without Telos

Benjamin devises a pure sacrificial ethos, devoid of the profanities of teleology. Benjamin’s account of sacrifice is saturated with emancipatory sacred dispositions.

Religion and Public Life

Luke Roberts introduces the essays in the symposium on Religion and Public Life.

The Redeeming Potential of Childhood

Everywhere, adults laugh at children for their giddy games, whereas they are blind to the ways in which their pretend play shapes every aspect of their lives and leads to exploitation and injustice. Human experience, particularly the experience of the youngster – where the ground of the soul and the ground of God come together in an overflow of light, constitutes the basis for the radical immanence of God within the world.

Benjamin, Jewish Law, and the End of Capitalism

Benjamin argues that the violence of law emerges from its governing force and therefore from its ability to bind or impose itself. To this extent, the objective of my intervention is to frame a form of normativity that not only does not entail a binding power but that prohibits it as well.

Walter Benjamin’s Epistemology Through Art

This article delves into Walter Benjamin’s epistemology, focusing especially on his perspective on art and historical reflection.

Negating the Common Good

On Democratic Disagreement as Ethical Formation

Negative Political Theology as a Way of Life

Whenever someone tries to become an absolute sovereign, to make oneself “King” or “God”, such an act of sovereignization brings about the de-sovereignization or in-sovereignization of everyone else.

There is Power in Negative Political Theology

Negativity cuts against a politics of nostalgia (which seeks to conserve the imagined glories of the past) and apocalypse (which rejects the world as irredeemably compromised)

URGENCY: On Teaching in Crisis

What does thinking about affect mean for the politics of the religious studies classroom?

The Face of the Sovereign

Why does Trump’s face matter? Why does Trump—a world-class performer and master of the craft of showmanship—practice shaping his face? What does his face do? Is Trump’s face part of his power?