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Humanities Podcasts
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Points of Departure: Political Theology on the Scenes of Early Modernity
02/20/09 | A conference convened by Julia Lupton and Graham Hammill and sponsored by UCI’s Department of English, the International Center for Writing and Translation, Research and Graduate Studies, the Center for Law, Culture and Society, the Political Theology Group, the Program in Religious Studies, the Group for the Study of Early Cultures, and the Department of German, with additional support from UCLA’s Critical Religious Studies Group and the Department of English at SUNY Buffalo.
In literary studies, the phrase “political theology” has come to designate the common sources and affiliations shared by politics and religion, as well as their antagonisms and internal resistances. In Renaissance and early modern studies, “political theology” unites scholars who aim to develop some of the texts and impulses associated with critical theory (especially psychoanalysis, later deconstruction, and the Baroque meditations of Walter Benjamin) in a direction defined by issues of secularization, sovereignty, and biopower in the Renaissance and in contemporary life. The phrase “political theology” has its origins in medieval iconographies of sacred kingship as distributed and displayed in the political, dramatic, and artistic forms of European civilization, along with the critique of traditional sovereignty mounted by Hobbes, Spinoza, Locke, and others in the seventeenth century. There is thus a special relationship between political theology as a critical approach to literature, politics, and thought and early modernity as a period and area of study.
This conference brings together established and emerging scholars in early modern studies who share an interest in the role that seventeenth century literature and thought has played in modern theories of secularization, sovereignty, and forms of life. We have asked speakers to address texts or moments from the early modern period that have served as a "point of departure" for later developments of politics and theology in modernity. Our goal is to present situated introductions to major figures in modern political theology, revealed through their exegetical engagements with early modern texts. The conference aims to make the case not only for the relevance of political theology as a critical discourse in the humanities today, but for the essential role that Renaissance and Baroque literature and thought have played in its pre- and post-histories.
This Podcast includes the afternoon keynote by Victoria Kahn, Department of English, UCB, “Strauss and Spinoza”
Introduced by Jane O. Newman
and a panel on "War and Peace" moderated by Bryan Lowrance, Department of English, Columbia University, and featuring:
Jane O. Newman, Department of Comparative Literature, UCI
“Departing from Pascal: Auerbach on Force and Justice, 1933-1949”
Lowell Gallagher, Department of English, UCLA
“Blanchot and Interwar Theology”
A complete schedule is available here. |
Click on a file name to play:
- Points of Departure: Political Theology on the Scenes of Early Modernity - PointsofDeparture.mp3
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