Dieser Beitrag gibt einen Überblick der zentralen postsäkularen Debatten im Kontext der Schnittstelle von Religions- und Geschlechterforschung. Aus postkolonialer, postsäkularer und Geschlechter-/queerer Perspektive ist eine eigene Epistemologie für die Untersuchung von ‚Religion‘ und ‚Geschlecht‘ entwickelt worden. Die Methode der Intersektionalität wird für die Analyse von ‚Religion‘ überarbeitet. Die Kategorie ‚Religion‘, die in der Geschlechterforschung häufig vernachlässigt oder essentialisiert wird, wird in Abhängigkeit von ‚Geschlecht‘, ‚Sexualität‘, ‚Race‘, ‚Nation‘, ‚Klasse‘, ‚Spezies‘ etc. weiterdiskutiert und als diskursive, intersektionale, performative Kategorie elaboriert. ‚Geschlecht‘ und ‚Religion‘ (...) werden als diskursive, intersektionale, performative Kategorien der Wissensproduktion erarbeitet. Diese Kategorien werden nicht nur dekonstruiert und deessentialisiert, sondern konsequent denaturalisiert und desidentifiziert, um epistemische Gewalt zu überkommen. Weiterhin kann Religion – konzeptualisiert als Wissenskategorie – nicht nur zum individuellen, sondern auch zum kollektiven Handlungsmachtgewinn beisteuern. Zudem werden Weiterentwicklungen feministischer Theorie im postsäkularen Kontext und in der queer-feministisch-materialistischen Theoriebildung und Religion diskutiert. (shrink)

As reaction to the failures of the globalization process, which is based on a commodification of the whole life new resistance mobilizations occurred. The Occupy Wall Street Movement has underlined that the social consequences of the neoliberal empire call for new resistances, new visions of solidarity, and new ways of representation. It has become clear, that capitalism’s influence on democracy has made that concept insufficient. The sovereign biopower is regulating life and survival via granting access or exclusion from resources. It (...) not only disciplines and normalizes sexualities, bodies and gender but regulates health, security, etc. of everybody. Therefore responsible theology needs to expand Feminist, Gender and Queer critique and my approach is to offer a reaction by developing a critical Bio-Theology using Foucault’s critique of biopower and Castoriadis’ concept of the radical social imaginary. This paper uses inter- and transdisciplinary methodology bringing together ‘beyond liberation theology’ approaches with queer, postcolonial, epistemological intersectionality critique and post-secular debates. (shrink)

This paper underlines the surprising ways in which subject formation, agency and human flourishing emerge in counter discourses. As examples I offer a post-colonial critique of Rosa Parks in the USA and Fayza in the film Cairo 678. Economic and epistemic violence of neo-liberalism, neo-colonialism, racism, fundamentalism, nationalism, classism, sexism, homophobia, speciesism, etc. call for a critique of religion with corresponding answers. For such a project, the analysis brings together the theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the post-colonial scholar Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, (...) and questions their notions of religion and gender as well as resistance and representation. Spivak’s critique of capitalism, the post-colonial condition and epistemic violence in terms of gender constructions is seminal. However, her understanding of ‘religion’ remains ambivalent, yet influences post-colonial theologies tremendously. Bonhoeffer is interesting for a de-essentialized understanding of religion in the post-secular context, because he keeps the tension between a secularized world, engagement with the world and the appreciation of religious knowledge. His final perspective on gender and representation might be more advanced than expected. (shrink)

The latest book by Louis Dupré, The Quest of the Absolute, is the third and final volume of a trilogy on the intellectual history of modernity. It follows Passage to Modernity (1993) and The Enlightenment and the Intellectual Foundations of Modern Culture (2004). Elegant writing and remarkable erudition go hand in hand with a deep insight into the objectives, achievements and deadlocks of the Romantic movement. It is not possible to look into the overwhelming variety of issues and figures that (...) come to the fore in this book and the trilogy as a whole; instead, this article focuses on Dupré’s central claim as to the development and significance of modern Western culture, starting from a specific question that time and again recurs as a key motive throughout the three volumes of his trilogy: are we postmodern or late modern? Dupré’s answer that we are dwellers of a late modern era rather than inhabitants of a postmodern age is dependent on his definition of modernity as a still ongoing ‘event that has transformed the relation between the cosmos, its transcendent source, and its human interpreter’. Since we are still standing in the midst of the event of modernity, shaped by the evolutionary process of and the strains and tensions within and between its three waves (humanism, Enlightenment, romanticism), Dupré underlines the necessity to move from hermeneutic to ontological questions. He even explicitly pleads for the rediscovery of a symbolic religious language in a tentative search for its ontological dimension and for a source of significance beyond the realm of human mind. The main question, however, is whether contemporary Western man is still capable of such a rediscovery. (shrink)

Over the last twenty years, Jürgen Habermas has been at the forefront of debates involving religion in the public sphere. In the wake of 9/11 he has responded to the problems of terrorism, “radical Islam,” and the so-called Muslim question in Europe, attempting to align these issue with his broader theories of deliberative democracy and postsecularism. Although Habermas aims for an inclusive model of deliberation in the public sphere, I argue that his reliance on macro theories of secularization and modernization (...) reproduce an ideal of secular liberal democracy as the standard by which to think about various “Others,” including Muslims. As a result, I claim that he ends up reproducing a soft variety of the “clash of civilizations” thesis by failing to account for the complexity of Muslim identities. In conclusion, I look at alternative models that are better able to historicize and contextualize “Islam” in the past and present, and point to significant gaps that must be filled if his proposals are to be taken seriously. (shrink)

Based on extensive archival work, this essay assesses the contribution of a Palestinian liberation theology to a comprehensive view of peacebuilding that involves not only liberation from oppressive occupation but also a holistic vision and strategy for attaining just societal structures. Emerging out of the victim's viewpoint, a PLT is consistent with a multiperspectival approach to justice. It articulates a call for a holistic transformation of the interrelations between Jews and Palestinians, envisioning a just peace that must entail a re-framing (...) of geopolitical structures as well as ideological discourses that vindicate systemic and symbolic violence against the Palestinians. However, the author shows that a PLT is asymmetrical: while it challenges the theopolitical affinities between Christian and Jewish Zionists and the structural injustices and social mechanisms they endorse, it refrains from contesting the symbolic boundaries of a Palestinian national identity. This bears important implications for the broader debate concerning the role of religion in peacebuilding. The author argues that the limits of a PLT as a peacebuilding framework relate to its conceptual reliance on an unreconstructed secularist interpretation of a future Palestinian state and on its elective affinity with a supersessionist and theological orientation that, by definition, hermeneutically de-Zionizes the Bible and its interpretations. (shrink)

Traditional Christian descriptions of homosexuality as a “sin against nature” rely on a claim about the transparency of the sexed body to universal reason: homosexual acts are sins against nature because natural law renders them obviously unnatural. This moral description “unnatural” subverts itself for two reasons. First, neo-traditionalist descriptions conflate “natural” and “normal.” Dialogue with Didier Eribon's work on the “insult” shows how such moral descriptions self-subvert and render chastity impossible. Second, neo-traditionalists use the description to require celibacy, which the (...) tradition teaches is likely impossible without a special gift. This use of natural law thus fails to be self-consistent or true to reality and so undermines its ability to serve as a critical principle in the search for truth. A critical use of natural law allows for an alternative, non-insulting description of homosexual characters. This essay outlines the character description through immanent critique of two spheres of Catholic teachings about sex: Augustinian sexual ethics and nuptial theology. (shrink)

Part of Cornel West's prophetic pragmatism purpose is to link ethics and politics to art. In this approach, ethics becomes the basis of aesthetics and politics. He presents a picture of moral life that emphasizes the uniqueness of human characteristics. His goal of prophetic pragmatism is not to answer the questions of Western philosophy. West sees the root of these problems in Western philosophy in the epistemology of Descartes and Kant and believes that it must be overcome. The purpose of (...) prophetic pragmatism is to provide answers to short-term problems and ongoing cultural interpretations in a specific historical period. West sees nihilism as evil, as opposed to democracy, and turns to art to combat this nihilism. He believes that original art has a common concern with the oppressed and can fight nihilism. He considers this original art to have anti-nihilistic properties. Artists in this approach are struggling to achieve democracy and must follow ethics based on religious love. In this article, after examining the relationship between politics and ethics in art, we critique West's views. (shrink)

Abstrak Arendt banyak dikenal, baik sebagai seorang ilmuwan politik, maupun seorang filsuf. Para sarjana mendiskusikan ide-idenya, beserta korespondensi ide-ide tersebut dengan situasi politik kontemporer; baik di Indonesia, maupun di tempat lain di dunia. Gagasan Arendt tentang banalitas kejahatan, tentang kekerasan dan tentang asal usul totalitarianisme telah mendorong penelitian dan analisis lebih lanjut tentang masalah fenomena populisme, intoleransi dan polarisasi politik di Indonesia kontemporer, serta di belahan dunia lainnya. Tulisan ini membahas korespondensi antara filsafat politik Arendtian dengan Pancasila dan Undang-Undang Dasar (...) Negara Republik Indonesia Tahun 1945, beserta ragam interpretasi kontemporernya. Makalah ini akan signifikan dalam memperkuat pembentukan karakter bangsa dan persatuan nasional Indonesia, baik secara konseptual maupun praktis. Tulisan ini didasarkan pada penelitian konseptual dengan metode penelitian kualitatif. Tulisan ini diharapkan dapat menjawab permasalahan kebangkitan populisme, retorika politik intoleran dan polarisasi politik yang saat ini terjadi di tanah air. Kata Kunci: Demokrasi Pancasila; Filsafat Politik; Filsafat Politik Arendtian; Hannah Arendt. (shrink)

This article aims to present Judith Butler’s theory of diaspora as a theological paradigm for post-secular social existence. Her accounts of dispossession, statelessness, and exilic identity all afford us a normative challenge for how to think politics and the theological together. We begin by framing Judith Butler’s diasporic theory of politics within Adriennes Rich’s poetic perspective on ecstatic identity. We proceed to argue that by emphasizing both the precariousness and interdependency of social life, Rich and Butler’s shared commitments to universalizing (...) queer forms of collective belonging and affective relations offer an alternative post-secular paradigm to that offered so far by theorists such as Charles Taylor or Jürgen Habermas. Achieving a post-secular “state” may ultimately be a matter of embracing the failure of our own representations, particularly the failures of contemporary religion to represent either the divine or the human, or to constitute a society with its own political theology. It is paradoxically this kind of failure that can open us up to look at ourselves, and to focus on the precariousness and vulnerability of human existence that we see with our very eyes and reproduced by our very own hands. (shrink)

There are two basic positions where tolerance as political strategy and moral viewpoint is rejected or made redundant. We are hostile to tolerance when we hold that we are defending an objective truth—religious or secular—which should also be defended and maintained by means of political and legal power. And tolerance become superfluous also when the affirmation of plurality becomes total, and tolerance identical to a vive la difference. As recent developments in my own country—the Netherlands—have demonstrated, the political outcome of (...) this last position is remarkably enough not necessarily an all-inclusive relativistic tolerance. It may just as well be one of intolerance towards ‘believers’ of all kinds, in short: tolerance becomes polemical and belligerent. Turning to religious fundamentalism or ultra-orthodoxy could then become a possible reaction to this relativistic and subjectivist position, as demonstrated in Isaac Bashevis Singer’s novel The Penitent. Between these two positions of hostility or indifference towards tolerance, we can situate that democratic attitude which may rightly be called ‘tolerance’. As ethical position, the tolerant citizen accepts the democratic disjunction between my truth and the symmetrical justice between citizens. As political strategy, a tolerant democratic regime is based upon a political act of exclusion of what I will here call ‘political fundamentalism’. (shrink)

The aim of my paper is to assess in a critical way the views presented by Graeme Smith in his book _A Short History of Secularism_ as well as in his paper _Talking to Ourselves: An Investigation into the Christian Ethics Inherent in Secularism_. According to Smith, secular Western societies are underpinned by Christian ethics. An example of a moral norm that – in Smith’s opinion – derives from medieval Christianity and shapes the moral condition of the members of contemporary (...) societies, is the concern about the poor. My criticism of Smith’s thesis is based on the distinction between moral norms and the ways of justifying them. Referring to this distinction, my objective is to show that certain norms which appear to be the same cannot be treated as identical due to the significant differences in their justification. (shrink)

Orson Scott Card and his Ender Series have had a profound impact on the genre of contemporary science fiction, meriting an academic analysis of some of his more theoretical ideas. I have chosen to analyze his concept of “Center” and “Edge” nations found in Xenocide and Children of the Mind through the lens of international relations, sociological, and political theory, in order to bring nuance to an underdeveloped theory that many non-academics may be familiar with. Ultimately, we must conclude that (...) Card’s concept of “Center” and “Edge” nations is too stagnant and does not account for social and hegemonic change, which influences the justifications of why these “nations” may be considered “Center” in the first place. (shrink)