CFP: The Political Theology of Liberalism: Power, Resistance, Eschatology

It is a truism, after Schmitt, to say that all modern political concepts are secularized theological ones. Politically speaking we have yet to emancipate ourselves from the tyranny of theological reason. Never less so than in an era of neoliberalism in which we remain subjected to what Schmitt called ‘liberal metaphysics’. How does this affect the ways in which wetheorizethe nature of neoliberal regimes of power and political resistance to them? This workshop responds to this question. Our gambit is, however, that securing the human from its ongoing subjection to liberal reason and from the eschatological traditions of thinking bequeathed us by religions of various forms and natures can be achieved only by utilizing religion. Thus the struggle requires us to free ourselves from the simplistically anti-religious reflexes that have often informed discourses of critique and resistance. An important starting point in the process of losing such reflexes is the recognition that there is no such thing as religion in the singular. Just as there is no such thing as Christianity, Islam or Judaism in the singular. The problem today is not simply one of continued shaping of political ideas and practices by religion, but the specificity of the particular forms of religiosity that continue to provide liberalism with its legitimacy. Precisely for this reason, when we examine the works of the most acute critics of liberal modernity,we find that their own thinking concerning how to combat it is shaped by a refusal of any simplistically anti-religious reflex. At the beginning of his essay, “Faith and Knowledge”, Jacques Derrida asked whether “a discourse on religion can be dissociated from a discourse on salvation?” Likewise we might ask what would a politics of resistance to liberalism be todaywithout a discourse on security? Securing the human from its modern subjection to liberalism’s eschatology is a task that may only be achieved by a wielding of tools lentus by various religious traditions. This is, at least, the starting point of this workshop. Resistance to eschatology may require a counter-eschatology. And thus the struggle for all that is worth saving requires a subject not only able to free itself from simplistically anti-religious reflexes but which learns how to differentiate between the form of religiosity it chooses to struggle against and those which it requires in order to do so.

We invite papers that respond to this problematique and related themes. Please send your abstract of 200-300 words to the workshop organizers.

Deadline for proposals: 31 July 2012.

Workshop Committee: 

Professor Julian Reid: [email protected]
Dr Mika Luoma-aho:[email protected]
DrHannesPeltonen: [email protected]