Abstract
Those of us in theological studies who take seriously our place in public life often undertake “political theology” to join theology with public issues. Just what constitutes political theology today is highly contested (de Vries and Sullivan 2006). I will argue for a political theology not because we need an already-constituted guild discipline, Theology (its guild status denoted by a capital “T”) to address political problems, making “political theology” a sub-discipline of Theology proper. Instead, I hold that Theology, whatever its subject-matter (God, Christ or church, social justice, existential concerns) is always already political. It has a “politicality,” its discourses inscribed in a complex play of public forces of antagonism. Political theology, as I have long proposed, is theological discourse always mindful of its inscription (embed-dedness) in antagonisms, generated by assemblages of social constructs: class, empire, race, gender, sexuality, nation. Political theology is also, in Jean-Luc Nancy’s sense, an “exscription,” a writing-out from bodies suffering these antagonisms, toward an integral liberation. Especially as exscription, political theology, I argue here, is reflection on the arts at work in social movements with liberating impact. In the spirit of Zheng’s epigraph above, political theology’s discourse arises from sites of enlivening synergy between art and social movement, making liberation thinkable, achievable (Zheng 2007, 40).1
I’ve written my first poem
I called myself a poet to motivate me to write
Because I knew poets will set us free
In 1998 I was granted parole.
—Eddy Zheng “Autobiography@33”
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Alexander, Michelle. 2010. The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. New York: The New Press.
Benítez-Rojo, Antonio. 1996. The Repeating Island: The Caribbean and the Postmodern Perspective. 2nd edition. Durham and London: Duke University Press.
Castillo, Ana. 1993. So Far from God. New York: W. W. Norton.
Crockett, Clayton and Jeffrey W. Robbins. 2012. Religion, Politics and the Earth: The New Materialism. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
De Vries, Hent and Lawrence Sullivan. 2006. Political Theologies: Public Religions in a Post-Secular World. New York: Fordham University Press.
Dussel, Enrique. 2008. Twenty Theses on Politics. Durham and London: Duke University Press.
Ellacuría, Ignacio. 1973. Teología política. San Salvador: Ediciones del Secretariado Social Interdiocesano.
Farmer, Paul. 2003. Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights and the New War on the Poor. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Hardt, Michal and Antonio Negri. 2009. Commonwealth. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Isasi-Díaz, Ada María. 1996. Mujerista Theology: A Theology for the Twenty-First Century. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books.
JanMohamed, Abdul R. 2005. The Death-Bound Subject: Richard Wright’s Archaeology of Death. Durham and London: Duke University Press.
Joh, Wonhee Anne. 2006. Heart of the Cross: A Postcolonial Christology. Nashville, TN: Westminster John Knox Press.
Kahn, Paul W. 2011. Political Theology: Four New Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty. New York: Columbia University Press.
Kim, Jodi. 2010. Ends of Empire: Asian American Critique and the Cold War. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Kwok, Pui-lan and Jeorg Rieger. 2012. Occupy Religion: Theology of the Multitude. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.
Lloyd, Vincent W. 2012, ed. Race and Political Theology. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Louie, Miriam Ching. 1992. “Immigrant Asian Women in Bay Area Garment Sweat Shops.” Amer Asia Journal 18.1: 1–26.
Mignolo, Walter D. 2011. The Darker Side of Modernity. Durham and London: Duke University Press.
Nancy, Jean-Luc. 1996, 1994. The Muses. Translated by Peggy Kamuf. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Nancy, Jean-Luc.-. 2007. The Creation of the World, Or Globalization. Albany: SUNY Press.
Nancy, Jean-Luc.-. 2008. Corpus. Translated by Richard A. Rand. New York: Fordham University Press.
Nguyen, Tram. 2005. We Are All Suspects Now: Untold Stories from Immigrant Communities after 9/11. Boston: Beacon Press.
Quijano, Aníbal. 2000. “Coloniality of Power, Ethnocentrism and Latin America.” Nepantla 1.3: 533–80.
Rancière, Jacques. 1999. Disagreement: Politics and Philosophy. Translated by Julie Rose. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Sanger, David. 2012. Confront and Conceal: Obama’s Secret War and Surprising Use of American Power. New York: Crown Publishers.
Sharma, Nitasha Tamar. 2010. Hip Hop Desis: South Asian American, Blackness and Global Race Consciousness. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Sung, Jung Mo. 2011. The Subject, Capitalism and Religion: Horizons of Hope in Complex Societies. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Taylor, Mark Lewis. 2005. Religion, Politics and the Christian Right: Post-9/11 Powers and American Empire. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press.
Taylor, Mark Lewis.-. 2011. The Theological and the Political: On the Weight of the World. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press.
Taylor, Mark Lewis.-. 2008. “Empire and Transcendence: Hardt and Negri’s Challenge to Theology and Ethics.” In Evangelicals and Empire: Christian Alternatives to the Political Status Quo, edited by Bruce Ellis Benson and Peter Goodwin Heltzel. Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press.
Wright, Richard. 1991. Richard Wright: Early Works. Washington, DC: Library of America.
Zheng, Eddy. 2007. “Autobiography@33.” In Other: An Asian & Pacific Islander Prisoners’ Anthology, edited by Eddy Zheng. The Asian Prisoner Support Committee. San Leandro, CA: Dakota Press.
Editor information
Copyright information
© 2013 Ada María Isasi-Díaz, Mary McClintock Fulkerson, and Rosemary P. Carbine
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Taylor, M.L. (2013). Political Theology: Reflecting on the Arts of a Liberating Politics. In: Isasi-Díaz, A.M., Fulkerson, M.M., Carbine, R.P. (eds) Theological Perspectives for Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. New Approaches to Religion and Power. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137372215_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137372215_8
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-137-37222-2
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-37221-5
eBook Packages: Palgrave Religion & Philosophy CollectionPhilosophy and Religion (R0)