The recognition of the autocephaly of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) by the Ecumenical Patriarchate in 2019 sparked a debate in the Orthodox world about the legitimacy of such an act. In the ...present study, we aim to explain, through the concept of theopolitics, this event which has caused a schism in the contemporary Orthodox Church. Following a brief introduction to Buber’s concept of theopolitics, we focus on a historical overview, demonstrating that the problems of the Orthodox world do not originate in theological issues, as it might seem at first glance, but primarily in political issues. The case of the autocephaly of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church proves the importance of theopolitics.
This introduction outlines an anthropological concept of ‘theopolitics’ emergent from ethnographic engagements with the oldest site of European colonialism—the (Latin) Americas. Defined as a query ...into the sensorial regimes enabling incarnate forms of power, theopolitics focuses on the sovereignties from below that are immanent in struggles between the universalisms of Christian imperialisms and the autochthonous forces they seek to police and unmake. The articles comprising this special issue advance this query by exploring processes of attunement to the prophetic voices of the dead and life itself, of the elasticity of incarnate forms of political charisma and crowds, and the potencies of precious matter and touch as domains for rethinking relationships among political anthropology, political economy, and political theology beyond a focus on the state.
In Mexico the dispatching of relics-body parts, skin, blood, or other personal objects with saintly residue-has become relatively commonplace. With a focus on the 2011 tour of the wax effigy and ...relics of Pope John Paul II, this essay draws on recent work at the intersection of religion, aesthetics, materiality, death, and violence to reveal the unique dimensions, coherence, and patterns of movement within contemporary Catholic Church evangelism that is necessarily both spiritual and political. In emphasizing the role of media, I develop two main lines of exploration: first, the dynamics of contemporary mediatic global Catholicism which has increased its reliance on images and objects such as relics; and second, the media-spectacle of narco-violence through which images of dead bodies circulate and saturate the Mexican social imaginary. I suggest that critical scholarly attention to Catholicism as a dynamic theopolitical infrastructure is critical for a broader and more dimensioned anthropology of Christianity.
Prophecy and Powerlessness Brody, Samuel Hayim
Political theology : the journal of Christian Socialism,
02/2020, Letnik:
21, Številka:
1-2
Journal Article
Recenzirano
This essay attempts to answer questions faced by social movements about whether "prophetic" struggles for justice are necessarily destined either for failure (if they do not win power) or corruption ...(if they do). It draws on a neglected work of Martin Buber, Der Gesalbte The Anointed, in which Buber presents the oral core of the Book of Samuel as originating with the school of the prophet Nathan, for lessons about the promise and danger of attempting to combine prophecy and power.
Abstract
Recent studies have renewed focus on Martin Buber's "theopolitics" in contrast to "theological politics." The present study expands this work by looking at what Buber meant by God. His ...approach to the Bible, informed by his view that "extended, the lines of relationship meet in the Eternal Thou," illuminates his analysis of the five types of biblical leadership. That analysis, far from separating "religion" and "politics," seemed to assume what might be designated a civil religion. The social order was integrated with religious concerns. Underneath the socio-religious surface, however, Buber discerned universal principles of relationship. Analyzing each stage in biblical leadership as Buber presented it shows how he extended the lines of historical relationships to reveal an aspect of the Eternal Thou.
Humpty Dumpty Populism Sanchez, Rafael
Social analysis,
12/2020, Letnik:
64, Številka:
4
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
This article analyzes Venezuelan Chavismo as an unstable formation gnawed by the unsolvable contradiction between, on the one hand, the politico-theological ambition to totalize sociality as a ...visible ‘people’ collected around the invisible ‘Spirit’ of Venezuela’s ‘Founding Father’ Simón Bolívar and, on the other, the non-totalizable theopolitical energies of a social field suffused with myriad globalized ‘spirits’ that admits no clear-cut demarcation between ‘visible’ and ‘invisible’ or ‘material’ and ‘spiritual’. Incapable of totalizing sociality as a discrete ‘society’, the political logic informing Chavismo, as with other recent populisms, shifts from hegemony to ‘dominance without hegemony’, a situation where, à la Humpty Dumpy, the ‘people’ is whatever is ‘lovingly’ decreed as such from above, always in tension with a host of deconstructive, often theopolitically imbued agencies and spirits.
Acts Is Acts de Abreu, Maria Jose
Social analysis,
12/2020, Letnik:
64, Številka:
4
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
My aim in this article is threefold. First, to identify the function of tautology in Catholic Charismatic religious practices. Second, to analyze the formal structure of tautology as an embodied ...regime of citationality. Third, to expose how Charismatic practice both mirrors and anticipates the unfolding dramaturgy of sovereignty within current populism in Brazil and elsewhere. These aims converge in a reflection on the nature of political theater within and beyond political theology.
On the Touch-Event Napolitano, Valentina
Social analysis,
12/2020, Letnik:
64, Številka:
4
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
This article addresses the ‘touch-event’ as a mediated affective encounter that pivots around a tension between intimacy and distance, seduction and sovereignty, investment and withdrawal. Through a ...rereading of the Pauline event of conversion to Christianity, it argues that an analysis of the evolving significance of touch-events for Catholic liturgy and a religious congregation shows the theopolitical as always already constituted within an economy of enfleshed virtues. Focusing on contemporary examples of touch-events from the life of Francis, the first pope from the Americas, as well as from fieldwork among a group of female Latin American Catholic migrants in Rome, I argue for a closer examination of touch-events in order to grasp some of their theopolitical, radical, emancipatory, and, in some contexts, subjugating effects.
Nature and Norm Rashkover, Randi
2020, 2020-12-15, 2021-02-02
eBook
Nature and Norm is a book about the encounter between Jewish and Christian thought and the fact-value divide that invites the unsettling recognition of the dramatic acosmism that shadows and ...undermines a considerable number of modern and contemporary Jewish and Christian thought systems.
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