ExcerptIntroduction Stephen K. White, whose work represents one of the more well-known recent attempts to define a paradigm of post-metaphysical political thought, is indicative of the omission of an impasse that this article will argue seems to haunt this field. White has proposed, in defense of accusations of a thoroughgoing relativism, that the discipline should be conceived in terms of what he calls, echoing a concept coined by Gianni Vattimo, “weak ontology.”1 White argues that to describe ontology as “weak” denotes (...) that in the absence of transcendent grounds there is necessarily an “essential contestability” to the…. (shrink)

Investigates, through a critical exploration of Derrida's political thought, the foundations of modern secular discourse in relation to issues of race and colonialism.

The article explores Jacques Derrida’s view of the secular as the field of the socio-political. It focuses on his argument as to why religion and politics cannot be strictly separated as in the classical modern paradigm. By engaging Derrida’s later writings, this article shows that the secular domain cannot be purified of all faith and is best thought of as theologico-political, where ‘theologico-political’ indicates the interrelatedness and distinction between the theological and the political. The article’s central claim is that by (...) opening up to some form of the theological that is not reducible to traditional conceptions, and to a faith that is not necessarily religious, Derrida provides significant resources for understanding the secular today in more complex and critical ways than usual approaches offer. (shrink)