Bonhoeffer Conference Call for Papers- Notre Dame

CALL FOR PAPERS

New Conversations on Bonhoeffer’s Theology

A Graduate Student Conference at the University of Notre Dame

April 10-11, 2011

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-45) remains one of the most prominent and contested modern German theologians.

Spoiler Alert Thursday: Mad Men, “Hands and Knees”

In last week’s episode, Faye spoke very explicitly about her decision to forgo motherhood in order to have a career. That women were (and still are) often forced to make a painful and exclusive choice between career and family is surely not news.

But among the women on Mad Men, Faye, who at least got to make an affirmative choice, is relatively privileged.  

When I hear the word “radical center,” I reach for my gun

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: if someone is trying to sell you a solution that purports to be “beyond Left and Right” and is anything other than plain old liberalism, what they’re trying to sell is fascism. Indeed, I eagerly await the Milbank article that will lament the fact that the laudable legacy of Italian fascism has been tarred through its unfortunate association with Nazism. (His dissociation of Schmitt from the authentic Catholic political tradition is a nice step down this path already, though.)

Another highlight of this article is its strange emphasis on Methodism. Excluded from the good kinds of Christianity, though not explicitly mentioned: Lutheran and Reformed traditions, presumably because of their voluntarist (i.e., nihilist) foundations. Weirdly, though, Islam, which is surely the ultimate in voluntarism in Milbank’s mind, gets a couple positive references — continuing the pattern of opportunism in his recent articles, where he’ll happily take up an alliance with, for example, Enlightenment values when it serves his immediate rhetorical purposes.

In addition, his desire to reform the House of Lords, presumably to make it more aristocratic, might help him to find an audience in Tea Party circles, where it’s become something of a trend to try to roll back the popular election of senators and go back to an appointment system. I could also definitely see the “Big Society” idea catching on among Tea Partiers, above all because it sounds really principled but doesn’t come anywhere close to representing an actual political program.

Thoughts on beginning my second year of teaching

I wasn’t fully conscious of it at the time, but it’s clear in retrospect that I was in a state of constant panic all last year. I was still figuring out what exactly I was doing on so many levels that I had trouble prepping for class on a longer time horizon than one session at time — so that every time I finished teaching for the day, my first thought was, “Oh crap, what am I going to do next time?!”

This time I’m repeating a class from last year and doing another class that I spent all summer developing, so things are qualitatively different.

Dominic Fox reviews Politics of Redemption

Dominic Fox has posted what is surely the first review of my book Politics of Redemption (now available from Amazon.co.uk and pre-orderable from the US site). I’ll quote some of the most favorable material, though it is overall a very generous review:

Politics of Redemption makes a strong case – leading by example – for white theology to recognise that it must make itself intellectually accountable to the thought of black and feminist/womanist theologians in order to remain faithful to its ideal of accountability to the Gospel itself. Kotsko’s detailed working out of “the social logic of salvation” itself proceeds through a series of readings of patristic authors (Irenaeus, Gregory of Nyssa, Anselm) alongside contemporary social theorists (Laclau and Mouffe, Judith Butler). I’m not competent to say whether specialists in patristics will find these readings illuminating, but they succeed in “re-motivating” the ontological problems addressed by these authors, and I hope will prove suggestive for future discussion of the Christian intellectual tradition. A particularly bold and effective move is Kotsko’s adoption from Korean theology of the concept of han, a term one might loosely translate as “heartbreak”, as a social-relational corrective to the overly-”religious” (in Bonhoeffer’s sense) and individualistic Western concept of sin.

Kotsko’s commitment to a social-relational worldview is borne out, finally, by the written style of the book: wry, serious and gently surprising, it never loses its sense of accountability to the reader (or, more properly, of mutual accountability between reader and author). Kotsko shows considerable skill in drawing clear argumentative sequences out of difficult texts (such as those of Jean-Luc Nancy), without ever traducing the complexity of his sources. I would readily recommend Politics of Redemption to students of theology, as well as practising theologians — and, of course, to anyone with an unprofessional interest like my own.

After years of blogging have sometimes made me question whether it’s intrinsically impossible to make myself understood, it’s a relief to see a response to my most significant work so far that so clearly grasps my intention and argument. Thanks, Dominic.

Self-Promotion

Has it come to this for Alain Badiou, that he has to blurb his own books?

Caputo’s Fall Courses and Accelerationism Audio

I’ve been pretty quiet since moving to Chicago for the Fall quarter, buried under lecture writing and work on my dissertation, but I wanted to flag up two audio resources that may be of interest to AUFS readers.

First, John Caputo is teaching his final two graduate courses before he retires at the end of the academic year. You may find pdfs of the course syllabi at his website. One course is on Derrida and the other is on the future of Continental philosophy of religion. For the second course he is engaging with AUFS favorites Catherine Malabou and François Laruelle (Caputo is the first to use Future Christ: A Lesson in Heresy in a course) in addition to using parts of the the edited volume After the Postsecular and the Postmodern: New Essays in Continental Philosophy of Religion (Amazon: US, UK). Audio of the lectures are being posted online as they happen, so those interested may follow along with the course and the readings.

Recently, in London, there was an event on the release of a collection of essays by the theorist Nick Land. A number of people spoke at the event, including Ray Brassier and AUFS contributor Alex Andrews. The audio is available at the Backdoor Broadcasting Company website.

The terrible fruits of getting bored at church

A couple of my students pointed out a passage in Augustine’s Confessions (III.3) that we all had difficulty interpreting. Outler’s translation is relatively tame: “I dared, even while thy solemn rites were being celebrated inside the walls of thy church, to desire and to plan a project which merited death as its fruit.” The Penguin edition we’re using, however, has the following: “I defied you even so far as to relish the thought of lust, and gratify it too, within the walls of your church during the celebration of your mysteries.”

The Latin is as follows: “ausus sum etiam in celebritate sollemnitatum tuarum, intra parietes ecclesiae tuae, concupiscere et agere negotium procurandi fructus mortis.” It seems to me at first glance that Outler’s translation is more accurate and the Penguin is reaching — either way, though, it’s difficult to understand what Augustine might be referring to. Indeed, in the Penguin edition it seems possible that he’s confessing to masturbating during church.

Spoiler Alert Thursday: Mad Men, “The Beautiful Girls”

A couple of quick thoughts:

 

Come to think of it, I’ve not read much of City of God either

Today Adam & I found ourselves talking about David Lodge’s semi-classic Changing Places, particularly the parlor game found therein, called Humiliation, in which participants confess classic pieces of literature they’ve never read. The winner, of course, is the one with the most cringe-worthy confession. The winner in Lodge’s novel is a professor of English literature who admits he has never read Hamlet. In the process of winning the game, he loses his job.

Thinking about this compelled me scandalously to confess seminal, absolutely vital works of theology that I’ve neither owned nor checked out of the library — not once even opened in a bookstore. (I will not so openly publish here my worst offense, but I will own up to the fact that I’ve read far more of Bultmann’s commentary on the Gospel of John than I have Barth’s commentary on Romans.) You should feel free, if you dare, to reciprocate.

More likely, though, you will be inclined (& are thus invited) to tell us what philosophy/theology’s Hamlet would be? Which work would win you the game, but lose you your livelihood?