Slave Christologies: Augustine and the Enduring Trouble with the “Form of a Slave” (Phil 2:5–7)

2020 ◽  
Vol 75 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-32
Author(s):  
Matthew Elia
Keyword(s):  
Jesus Christ ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Political ◽  
Augustine Of Hippo ◽  
The Social ◽  
Contemporary Christian ◽  
Forms Of Life ◽  
Christian Thought ◽  
Racial Slavery

This essay finds in the thought of Augustine of Hippo a key moment in the development of a strand of the Western theological tradition I will call slave Christologies: theological accounts of the person and work of Jesus Christ that, drawing from the Philippians hymn (Phil 2:5–11), symbolically identify his body with the body of the enslaved, and in so doing, weave the order of slaveholding into the texture of Christian thought. I approach the political and theological implications of this tradition under the pressure of a twofold haunting: of the perennial, if hard to specify, interplay between ideas and forms of life, between the symbolic and the social; and of the contingent, specific historical afterlife of racial slavery which provides the conditions for contemporary Christian thought.

scholarly journals Risk as Moral Danger: The Social and Political Functions of Risk Discourse in Public Health

1993 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 425-435 ◽  
Author(s):  
Deborah Lupton
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Body Politic ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Social ◽  
Divine Retribution ◽  
Multiple Meanings ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Risk Discourse

Risk is a concept with multiple meanings and is ideologically loaded. The author reviews the literature on risk perception and risk as a sociocultural construct, with particular reference to the domain of public health. Pertinent examples of the political and moral function of risk discourse in public health are given. The author concludes that risk discourse is often used to blame the victim, to displace the real reasons for ill-health upon the individual, and to express outrage at behavior deemed socially unacceptable, thereby exerting control over the body politic as well as the body corporeal. Risk discourse is redolent with the ideologies of mortality, danger, and divine retribution. Risk, as it is used in modern society, therefore cannot be considered a neutral term.

From Being to Love: Reconceiving the Trinity in Light of Jean-Luc Marion's Phenomenological Shift

Horizons ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 22-48
Author(s):  
Heidi Russell
Keyword(s):  
Jesus Christ ◽  
Human Person ◽  
The Body ◽  
Trinitarian Theology ◽  
Body Of Christ ◽  
Parallel Shift ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Trinity

This article uses the work of Jean-Luc Marion, emphasizing his shift from Being to Love as an analogue for God, to make a parallel shift from Person to Love in Trinitarian theology, thereby addressing some of the issues raised by the social trinitarians. The article then focuses on the work of Catherine Mowry LaCugna as particularly congruent with the shift suggested by Marion, but adds to LaCugna's work a conception of the immanent Trinity that is grounded in Marion's phenomenological shift. Conceiving of God as the unoriginate source of Love that is revealed in Word and enacted in Spirit allows one to understand personhood and community, not in and through the relationships between the Trinitarian Persons, but in and through Love incarnate in the human person of Jesus Christ, and Love enacted in the Spirit present in the community, forming it into the Body of Christ.

Corporeal Ontology: Beyond Mind-Body Dualism?

Politics ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Jenkins
Keyword(s):  
Political Science ◽  
Human Body ◽  
Human Subject ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Social ◽  
Scientific Status ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Dynamic Interplay

The definition and boundaries of the political have received considerable attention in recent times in political science, perhaps as a result of the wavering confidence in the scientific status of the knowledge that the discipline creates. However, a conspicuous absence continues to haunt mainstream political science, one that if rectified threatens, in some ways, to broaden both the nature of the political still further and to challenge the very division of knowledge into the social and natural sciences. This absence is the human body and this article seeks to ask after its exclusion and to suggest that its exclusion is both political and needs rectifying. I argue that the exclusion of the body in political science is a consequence of an inadequate ontological short cut, which is accepted (mostly) unquestioningly by political analysts and which has severe epistemological and methodological consequences. I suggest that a more reflective consideration of the body and its dynamic interplay with the mind could offer the discipline a greater understanding of the human subject, as well as alter power-knowledge relations.

The Microbial State

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefanie R. Fishel
Keyword(s):  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Body Politic ◽  
Continental Philosophy ◽  
World Politics ◽  
The State ◽  
The Body ◽  
Radioactive Isotopes ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Social ◽  
Radical Shift

For three centuries the rational and disembodied state has been animated by one of the most powerful metaphors in politics: the body-politic, a claustrophobic and bounded image of the collective, the state, the nation, of the sovereign alienated among sovereigns. Drawing sources from continental philosophy, science and technology studies and world politics, this pathbreaking book challenges the body-politic on the grounds of its materiality. Just as the human body is not whole and separate from other bodies, but populated by microbes, bacteria, water and radioactive isotopes, Stefanie Fishel argues that the body-politic of the state exists in dense entanglement with other communities and forms of life. Yet rather than follow the nihilistic critiques of biopolitics and sovereignty into their political and metaphysical dead ends, Fishel challenges us to think and live hopefully beyond the body-politic: to think of bodies and states as lively vessels, living harmoniously coevolved with multiplicity and the biosphere. From global trade to people movements and climate change, this radical shift in metaphors promises to open up new forms of global political practice and community and challenge a politics based on fear and survival. Fishel concludes that we should not aim for mere living: we need to set our sights on building a world for thriving. This book will be of interest to a range of scholars in the humanities and the social and natural sciences. Fishel provides connections between the political and practical in clear terms using multiple approaches and disciplines.

Zionism and Post-Holocaust Christian Theology: A Jewish Perspective

2009 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-54
Author(s):  
Mark Braverman
Keyword(s):  
Political Process ◽  
Christian Theology ◽  
The Political ◽  
Christian Tradition ◽  
Holy Land ◽  
Work Related ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
Contemporary Christian ◽  
Christian Thought ◽  
State Of Israel

Analysis of the Israel–Palestine conflict tends to focus on politics and history. But other forces are at work, related to beliefs and feelings deeply embedded in Judeo-Christian tradition. The revisionist Christian theology that emerged following the Nazi Holocaust attempted to correct the legacy of Christian anti-Semitism. In the process it has fostered an unquestioning support of the State of Israel that undermines efforts to achieve peace in the region. The conflict in Christian thought between a commitment to universal justice and the granting to Jews a superior right to historic Palestine permeates the current discourse and is evidenced in the work of even the most politically progressive thinkers. The article reviews the work of four contemporary Christian theologians and discusses the implications of this issue for interfaith dialogue, the political process, and the achievement of peace in the Holy Land.

scholarly journals The rise and fall of the Pentecostals: the role and significance of the body in Pentecostal spirituality

2011 ◽  
Vol 23 ◽  
pp. 381-399 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Singleton
Keyword(s):  
Social Context ◽  
The Body ◽  
Spiritual Experiences ◽  
Outward Appearance ◽  
Bodily Appearance ◽  
Depth Interview ◽  
The Social ◽  
Contemporary Christian ◽  
Bodily Experiences ◽  
Late Modern

This paper addresses the role and significance of the body in contempor­ary Pentecostalism. It begins with a description of the various body-centred spiritual experiences common in this tradition. Next, it considers the social context of the Pentecostal body, arguing that the premium and importance placed on outward bodily experiences is consistent with a broader societal focus on bodies and bodily appearance. Finally, it draws on in-depth interview data with Pentecostals to illustrate the processes involved in coming to have an experience in which one’s body becomes the highly visible locus of spirituality. No longer restrained and ordered, the contemporary Christian body is exuberant, released to worship and be overcome by God. Being slain in the Spirit is the most prominent example of this shift in contemporary spirituality. The Pentecostal emphasis on bodily experiences is consistent with the late modern interest in the outward appearance of the body.

scholarly journals Post-foundational Ontology and the Charge of Social Weightlessness in Radical Democratic Theory: A Response to Lois McNay’s The Misguided Search for the Political

2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tom N. Henderson
Keyword(s):  
Democratic Theory ◽  
Radical Democracy ◽  
The Body ◽  
Direct Result ◽  
The Political ◽  
Social Suffering ◽  
Ontological Approach ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Status ◽  
Foundational Ontology

This article responds to the accusation made by Lois McNay in The Misguided Search for the Political that much radical democratic theory is ‘socially weightless’ as a direct result of its turn towards an ontological understanding of the political. It argues that the social weightlessness identified in the work of the particular theorists McNay singles out for critique is not the result of the ontological approach per se. After briefly summarising McNay’s argument, Oliver Marchart’s ontology of political difference is used to defend the ‘search for the political’ against four aspects of McNay’s argument: the status of the ontological in post-foundational thought, the question of universality in relation to the political, the relationship between the social and the political, and that between indeterminacy and agency. Following this, the methodology of the disclosing critique of social suffering that McNay puts forward as an alternative to the ontological paradigm will be examined. This will be shown not only to be compatible with such a paradigm, but to be rooted in the very same parts of Heidegger’s philosophy. Moreover, her approach is found to enhance the ontological approach to the political by recovering its hermeneutical dimension, and in turn reconnecting hermeneutics to the question of the body. These are steps which, if further built upon, could add not only social, but also fleshly weight to ontological theories of the political, strengthening the critical potential of radical democracy.

The Social Body of Béla Balázs

2020 ◽  
Vol 47 (3) ◽  
pp. 7-20
Author(s):  
Erica Carter
Keyword(s):  
Film Theory ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Political ◽  
Popular Politics ◽  
Social Body ◽  
Expressive Movement ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Realm ◽  
Politics Of The Body ◽  
Film Aesthetics

Abstract Focusing on the interwar writings of the film journalist and theorist Béla Balázs, this article argues for an understanding of Balázs’s film aesthetics as grounded in a popular politics of the body. Balázs understood film as a medium in which experiences of image, sound, and expressive movement and gesture shape human subjectivities within a newly mediatized social realm. The article explores Balázs’s consequent plea for a film politics of popular embodiment and asks what a survey of Balázs’s writings as both critic and theorist tell us about the political valences of his film theory now.

scholarly journals Political action in machiavellian republicanism

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 182-193
Author(s):  
Marcone Costa Cerqueira
Keyword(s):  
Social Context ◽  
Political Action ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Body ◽  
Central Focus ◽  
The Social

Our objective in this brief article is guided by the demonstration of the existence of a theory of political action in Machiavelli's republican thought, with such a theory having its own character that directs it to highlight the action of individuals in the social context. In addition to this objective, we hope to support the thesis that such a theory of political action has a republican scope, not just “republicanist”, in keeping with the Machiavellian preference for institutions that impress on individuals a civic sense based above all on the materiality of political action in the body social. From this assertion, we indicate that our itinerary will be guided by the demonstration of the search for the valorization of political action in Machiavelli's theory, the materiality of such action, to the detriment of its pure intention, the central focus of Florentine's work. This disposition of the centrality of political action in Machiavelli republicanism will underscore its appreciation for outlining the political functions of the search for recognition, glory and especially the benefit of the political body as a whole.

The Forgotten Political Art Par Excellence? Architecture, Design and the Social Sculpting of the Body Politic

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gabriel Rockhill
Keyword(s):  
Body Politic ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Art ◽  
Social Body ◽  
Art And Politics ◽  
Collective Decisions ◽  
The Social ◽  
Historical Relationship

With a few rare but important exceptions, it is arguable that major contemporary debates on the historical relationship between art and politics—from the work of Lukács and Adorno to that of Lyotard and Rancière—have generally favored the visual arts and literature over and against architecture and urban design. However, as a few thinkers like Benjamin and Foucault have recognized, if there is one art that appears to be prototypically political (in the sense that it is almost inevitably the site of collective decisions that directly shape the social body while simultaneously being subject to multifarious communal appropriations), it is surely architecture. This paradox leads to a question of central importance, which serves to guide the analysis in this final chapter: why have many of the foremost philosophic debates on the historical relation between art and politics sidelined what is perhaps the political art par excellence? This leads to a critical re-examination of the metaphilosophical assumptions undergirding many of the standard historical narratives regarding the development of art and its relationship to politics.

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