Unattended Affect

2019 ◽  
pp. 185-212
Author(s):  
Karen Bray
Keyword(s):  
Political Theology ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
Black Studies ◽  
Collective Guilt ◽  
Societal Transformation ◽  
The Way

“Unattended Affect” asks to which affects and archives we have not trustily attended. Engaging black studies and black political theology, most particularly in the work of Fred Moten and Kelly Brown Douglas, this concluding chapter draws a picture of how a political theology of the unredeemed might take shape when it gravely attends to the spaces of blackness unwilling to participate in the making proper on offer by white supremacy. Following the work of Moten, this chapter argues that it is in the unattended affects, those left open by the unpaid debt of whiteness to blackness, where a political theology of and for the unredeemed might take its most forceful shape. Surmising that it is in part our inability to sit with individual and collective guilt over these debts that stands in the way of societal transformation, in this conclusion grave attending is offered as a mode of witness and resistance to these sites of cheap and violent redemption.

Reverence, Revision and Creaturely Life: Whitehead’s Political Theology of Enjoyment

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Beatrice Marovich
Keyword(s):  
Political Theology ◽  
Free Society ◽  
Actual Entity ◽  
Symbolic Code ◽  
Strategic Motivation ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Way

‘The art of free society’, A.N. Whitehead declares in his essay on symbolism, is fundamentally dual. It consists of both ‘maintenance of the symbolic code’ and a ‘fearlessness of [its] revision’. This tension, on the surface paradoxical, is what Whitehead believes will prevent social decay, anarchy, or ‘the slow atrophy of a life stifled by useless shadows’. Bearing in mind Whitehead’s own thoughts on the nature of symbolism, this chapter argues that the figure of the creature has been underappreciated in his work as a symbol. It endeavors to examine and contextualize the symbolic potency of creatureliness in Whitehead’s work, with particular attention directed toward the way the creature helps him to both maintain and revise an older symbolic code. In Process and Reality, ‘creature’ serves as Whitehead’s alternate name for the ‘individual fact’ or the ‘actual entity’—including (perhaps scandalously, for his more orthodox readers) the figure of God. What was Whitehead’s strategic motivation for deploying this superfluous title for an already-named category? In this chapter, it is suggested that his motivation was primarily poetic (Whitehead held the British romantic tradition in some reverence) and so, in this sense, always and already aware of its rich symbolic potency.

The Political Theology of Schelling

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Saitya Brata Das
Keyword(s):  
Martin Heidegger ◽  
Jacques Derrida ◽  
Political Theology ◽  
The Political ◽  
Franz Rosenzweig ◽  
Political Works ◽  
The Way

This book rigorously examines the theologico-political works of Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling, setting his thought against Hegel's and showing how he prepared the way for the post-metaphysical philosophy of Martin Heidegger, Franz Rosenzweig and Jacques Derrida.

Toward an expanded approach on Black mobilities

2021 ◽  
pp. 030913252110303
Author(s):  
Bradley Hinger
Keyword(s):  
Research Agenda ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
Black Studies ◽  
White People ◽  
Inherent Characteristic ◽  
Black Geographies ◽  
Forced Movement

Mobilities scholars have shown how injustices may arise from forced movement or stillness. However, with notable exceptions, these studies tend to collapse analyses of race into a simplistic binary of immobility as an inherent characteristic of non-white people and the possibility of movement as only granted to white people. In this article, I call for an expanded approach that is inclusive of both the controlling forces of white supremacy and life-affirming resistance against and despite these constraints. Drawing from Black studies and Black Geographies, I argue for a more unified Black mobilities research agenda.

scholarly journals Daredevil as Legal Emblem

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 198-226
Author(s):  
Timothy D Peters
Keyword(s):  
Political Theology ◽  
Legal Scholarship ◽  
Legal Studies ◽  
The Way

This article draws together two trajectories of legal scholarship: the turn to the visual in legal studies and the emergence of the subfield of law and comics, or ‘graphic justice’. It does this via an analysis of superhero comics as fitting within a particular genealogy of the ius imaginum, or law of images. This is not to argue simply that superhero comics are dominated by narratives of law, justice and legality—they are—but rather that the very theatrical figure of the superhero and its encompassing of a dual persona is a presentation of a particular political theology of the image. The article analyses the way in which this political theology is rendered visible in Charles Soule’s Daredevil: Back in Black, highlighting the image of the superhero and its connection to both sovereignty and the biopolitics of personhood.

Convicted and Condemned

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keesha M. Middlemass
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Criminal Justice System ◽  
Justice System ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
Public Policies ◽  
Felony Conviction ◽  
Disability Theory ◽  
The Common ◽  
Common Understanding ◽  
The Way

Convicted and Condemned is a critical assessment of how a felony conviction operates as an integral part of prisoner reentry. Drawing on an interdisciplinary framework and ethnographic data, the book advances knowledge about the connection among politics, racial animosity, history, public policies, and a felony conviction, which is rooted in historical notions of infamy and the political system of white supremacy. By applying social disability theory to the way a felony conviction functions outside of the criminal justice system, this book explores the evolution of a felony conviction, the common understanding of it, and the way it became shorthand for criminality and deviance specifically linked to black skin. On the basis of social practices, politicians took the common understanding of a felony conviction and extended its function beyond the boundaries of the criminal justice system so that a felony conviction is now embedded in policies that deny felons access to public housing, educational grants, and employment opportunities. Unique ethnographic and interview data reveal that because felons no longer can be physically exiled to faraway lands, a form of internal exile is performed when a felony conviction intersects with public policies, resulting in contemporary outlaws. The book argues that the punitive discourse around a felony conviction allows for the extension of the carceral state beyond the penitentiary to create socially disabled felons, and that the understanding of who and what a felon is shapes societal actions, reinforces the color line, and is a contributing factor undermining felons’ ability to reenter society successfully.

Political Theology and the Workings of Authority

2021 ◽  
pp. 107-136
Author(s):  
Silvianne Aspray
Keyword(s):  
Political Theology ◽  
Word Of God ◽  
Focal Points ◽  
Power Needs ◽  
The Way ◽  
Power And Authority

This chapter argues that the two focal points of authority in Vermigli’s political theology – the magistrate and the word of God – do not function in the same way. Rather, each presupposes a different metaphysical framework of being and causality. Vermigli teaches that magistrates mediate God’s power and authority. This mediation implies a participatory, hierarchical metaphysics in which God is not only the pre-eminent giver of power but also the source of being. However, this stands in contrast to the way Vermigli envisages the authority of the Word of God, where Vermigli maintains that God’s power needs no mediation. Implied in this denial, as this chapter argues, is a univocal understanding of being – quite in contrast to the structures of being implied in his theology of the magistrate.

Black Empowerment in Jackson

2020 ◽  
pp. 99-126
Author(s):  
Emma J. Folwell
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
The State ◽  
Freedom Struggle ◽  
Poverty Program ◽  
Youth Council ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Black Activist ◽  
Class Divisions ◽  
The Way

Chapter four traces the intersection between Mississippi’s long freedom struggle and the federally funded war on poverty in the state capitol, Jackson. First, it describes the development of the capitol’s civil rights activism through the 1950s and into the 1960s, with sit-in campaigns drawing on the vibrancy of Tougaloo College, the Jackson NAACP Youth Council, and the leadership of Medgar Evers. The chapter then explores the way in which the class divisions which undermined activism in Jackson fed into the creation of the city’s anti-poverty program, Community Services Association. It traces the way in which one black activist and poverty warrior, Don Jackson, used his position in the Neighborhood Youth Corps to foster the city’s youthful activism. These efforts were, however, quickly undermined by the city’s powerful mechanisms of white supremacy, notably the state sovereignty commission.

Carl Schmitt's Political Theology

October ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 146 ◽  
pp. 65-92
Author(s):  
Hugo Ball
Keyword(s):  
Political Theology ◽  
Daily Practice ◽  
Carl Schmitt ◽  
The World ◽  
The Way

Carl Schmitt ranks among the few German savants who are equal to the professional dangers of a teaching chair in the present era. I do not hesitate to suggest that he has taken and established for himself the type of the new German savant. If the writings of this remarkable professor (not to say confessor) served only towards the recognition and study of its author's catholic (universal) physiognomy, that alone would be enough to assure him a preeminent status. In a fine essay, “On Ideals,” Chesterton says that the remediation of our confused and desperate age in no way requires the great “practical man” who is clamored for the world over, but rather the great ideologist. “A practical man means a man accustomed to mere daily practice, to the way things commonly work. When things do not work, you must have the thinker, the man who has some doctrine about why they work at all. It is wrong to fiddle while Rome is burning; but it is quite right to study the theory of hydraulics while Rome is burning.” Carl Schmitt belongs to those who “study the theory of hydraulics.” He is an ideologist of rare conviction, and indeed it's safe to say that he will restore to this word a new prestige, which among Germans has carried a pejorative meaning since Bismarck.

scholarly journals Texas Resistance: Mexican American Studies and the Fight Against Whiteness and White Supremacy in K-12 at the Turn of the 21st Century

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 64-84
Author(s):  
Josué Puente ◽  
Stephanie Alvarez
Keyword(s):  
Mexican American ◽  
American Studies ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
First Century ◽  
Community Members ◽  
Mexican American Studies ◽  
Language And Literature ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
K 12 ◽  
The Way

This essay recounts the efforts by various groups throughout Texas with a special emphasis on the Rio Grande Valley to implement Mexican American Studies at the turn of the twenty-first century. We offer a historical timeline of events that demonstrates how the Mexican American Studies course came into existence. We also detail the way in which some Mexican American Studies courses were implemented. In other cases, we describe the way different groups were able to offer professional development to teachers to help them incorporate more Mexican American Studies content in their non-Mexican American studies courses or provide the community with the resources on how to include Mexican American Studies at their school. The common theme throughout is an undeniable resistance and mobilization on the part of many, hundreds, of educators, students, and community members to ensure that the youth do not continue to receive a whitewashed education, to ensure that students receive a more accurate representation of history, culture, language, and literature. In essence, the essay details a very hard-fought battle against White supremacy in the schools at the turn of the twenty-first century in Texas in which Mexican American Studies emerged victorious many steps of the way.

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