Is Continental Philosophy of Religion Dead?

Jack Caputo's keynote from last week's Postmodernism, Culture and Religion 4 conference, "The Future of Continental Philosophy of Religion," is now available online here as an audio file. You can listen to the keynote address, entitled, "Is Continental Philosophy of Religion as We Know It Dead?", as well as B. Keith Putt's introduction.

Springfield, Springfield!

It's a hell of a town, the schoolyard's up and the shopping mall's down!

I'm off to Springfield (Missouri) tomorrow where I'll be presenting at Drury University's "Subverting the Norm: The Emerging Church, Postmodernism and the Future of Christianity." Their website has an impressive-sounding blurb for me, so hopefully delegates won't be disappointed. I'll be speaking on, "An Emerging A/Theistic Fighting Collective? A Caputian Introduction to Zizek's Pneumatology." Now that it's (almost) edited down to 6,000 words, it's a little more theory-laden then I had anticipated, but I'll be introducing Zizek's pneumatology, his deployment of the term "Holy Spirit" as a community of truth-subjects, a "fighting collective," and staging a conversation between Zizek and Caputo on atheism and theism, metaphysics and materialism. But it will cover:

• Zizek, Caputo, Badiou, Milbank, Lacan (argh!), Saint Paul, and a bit of Hegel and Kant - oh, and Nietzsche and Kierkegaard and Augustine and Barth;
• the big Other, the vanishing mediator, the formulae of sexuation, constitutive exception, and non-all;
• contingency and necessity;
• the truth-event, the truth-subject, and truth-procedure(s);
• universalism;
• hermeneutics, narrativity, metanarrativity and meta-metanarrativity;
• determination, indeterminacy, and relative determinacy;
• atheism, theism, and a/theism;
• materialist materialism, theological materialism and true materialism;
• call, cause and responsibility;
• crucifixion and resurrection;
• the death of God and the death of the death of God;
• spectral materialism and spectral messianism; and
• incarnation and carnality.

So far, the schedule is as follows:

FRIDAY, OCT. 15: RADICAL THEOLOGY IN EMERGING CHRISTIANITY

9 am: Registration

10 am: "Beating God to Death: Radical Theology & the New Atheism," Roundtable conversation with Jeffrey Robbins, Christopher Rodkey and professors from Drury University's department of philosophy and religion

11 am: "An Emerging Radical Theology: On Politics and Ecclesiology," Jeffrey Robbins and Christopher Rodkey

12 pm: Lunch (on your own)

1 pm: "The Emerging Church 101: An introduction for those new to the conversation," Gary Black

2 pm: "To Believe Is Human, to Doubt Divine: Introducing Zizek’s Christology," Peter Rollins

3 pm: "An Emerging A/Theistic Fighting Collective? A Caputian Introduction to Žižek’s Pneumatology," Katharine Moody

4 pm: "Just Us: The undeconstructible Christ community in the age that is passing away," Carl Raschke

7 pm: Keynote presentation I: "Radical Theology—or What’s the Emerging in Emergent?" John Caputo

8:15 pm: Keynote presentation II, Peter Rollins

9:15 – 10 pm: After Session Conversation with John Caputo, Peter Rollins, Carl Raschke, Katharine Moody, Jeffrey Robbins & Christopher Rodkey

10:30 pm: Revival! Transformance Art with Peter Rollins and VOID, a collective from Waco, Texas, at the Creamery Arts Center in Downtown Springfield

SATURDAY, OCT. 16: EMERGING CHRISTIANITY AND THE FUTURE OF THE CHURCH

8 am: Coffee & Bagels

8:30 am: Keynote Presentation III, Karen Ward

10 am: Church practitioners workshop, Peter Rollins & John Caputo

11:30 am: Lunch, on your own unless you registered for the Saturday lunch option (see registration packet for local options)

1 pm: Keynote presentation IV, Karen Ward

2:15 – 3:15 pm & 3:30 – 4:30 pm: Breakout Sessions for Church Practitioners

2:15 – 3:15:
Emily Bowen: "Megachurch or Megasubversion? Transformative Ritual in the Emerging Church"
Chris Rodkey: "Satanism in the Suburbs: Ordination as Insubordination"
Julie Kennedy: "The Open Invitation: Tearing Down Labels at the Door"
Phil Snider: "Preaching After the Death of God: With A Little Help From Derrida & Caputo"

3:30 – 4:30:
Laura Fregin: "Art and Justice in Emergent Communities"
David Weiss: "Putting the ‘Queer’ back in Christianity: How extending a full welcome to LGBT persons reclaims the work of Jesus for today"
Lindsey Arnold: "Messiahs, Monsters & Others: The Search for Christ Figures in the TV Show Lost"
Travis Cooper: "Postmodernism, Pentecostalism & the Emergent Church: The Persistence of Azusa-Oriented Praxis"
Matt Gallion, Chris Rodkey & Phil Snider: "Why We're Not Emergent: By Three Guys Who Used to Be"

7 pm: [D]mergent meet-up, Venue TBA

Attending to the Other Round-Up: Part One

I got back yesterday from the International Society for Religion, Literature and Culture conference, "Attending to the Other: Critical Theory and Spiritual Practice," hosted by the Faculty of Theology at St. Catherine's College, Oxford. Here's a (very long) round-up of the event:




After drinks in a splendid room in the Bodleian Library, the first night consisted of a dinner and a keynote address by Amy Hollywood (Harvard University), "A for Antigone: Reading Derrida's 'Differance' Again" - which was hard to follow not only due to the content, but also because of the aforementioned drinking and because she spoke very quickly and often too quietly, and, ultimately, wasn't particularly "audience friendly" in her presentation style, which was disappointing. Pamela Sue Anderson (University of Oxford) chaired the session, and it was nice to catch up after meeting her at the inaugural conference for the Association for Continental Philosophy of Religion (Liverpool Hope University) last year.

I stayed at my uncle and aunt's house "near" (40 min train ride, 30 min walk) Oxford to try to keep the cost of the conference down, but on Saturday morning someone had stolen copper off the railway line or something, so my uncle very kindly drove me in so I wasn't late for the start of the day. After a quick cup of coffee from the refectory, I went to Modern Theology panel of the first parallel sessions of the conference, chaired by Trevor Hart (Universiy of St. Andrews). I particularly enjoyed Natalie Wigg's paper, "Christology as Crucible: Practising Wisdom at the Intersection of Church and Academy," which framed theology as a component of ecclesial practice, but was primarily a methodological reflection on her positioning within the church community she is studying.

She began with an introduction to Pierre Bordieu's notion of "habitus" and by characterising the ethnographer's task as that of identifying the objective structures and governing forces that shape participants. The ethnographer has to also, however, develop the subjective experience of possessing the habitus him/herself. However, unlike researchers such as Loic Wacquant, who himself became a student of boxing in order to study the habitus of prizefighting in American black ghettos, Natalie is already a part of the community she is studying. Thus she already inhabits the habitus. Her research methodology therefore involves teaching classes at her church, wherein the group explore together their shared habitus, to bring their habitus to light, to reflect upon why they think what they think, why they do what they do, why they say what they say, why they desire what they desire, etc.

After a coffee break, we all reconvened together for the second keynote address, "Critical Theory and Spirituality: Restless Bedfellows," from Graham Ward (University of Manchester). In this address, Graham not only addressed the relationship of critical theory to spirituality, but of "critique" to "theory," since critique is necessarily parasitical on the theory it criticises. He began by recounting Descartes' experience during the 30 years' war of being in a dense forest. Imagining being lost, Descartes reasoned that the decision/choice/wager of the direction in which to walk could be a moment of conviction only. From this, therefore, the forging of a method, tool or theory could likewise only be based upon conviction. Graham enumerated the differences, however, between critical theory - which he defined as a practice - and spirituality - a discipline, since it aims to form particular types of persons, i.e. disciples - as:

1. The telos of Christian spirituality is worship. Therefore it's orientation is liturgical, soteriological and doxological. In contrast, critique is orientated around the immanent structures of the world and not, therefore, towards a transcendent redemption that will necessarily ever arrive.
2. Christian spirituality is not the enemy of, neither does it withdraw from, materiality. Spirituality begins with an entrance into the material more profoundly, and - following the central narrative of Radical Orthodoxy - only metaphysics of transcendence can grant meaning to the immanent. Critical theory, in its refusal of the transcendent, makes the immanent nihilistic.
3. Rather than the attainment of mystical feelings or knowledge, Christian spirituality is a discipline and not just an emotional or intellectual practice. It is a submission to being governed and formed by an authority, a disciplining and discipleship.
4. Spirituality is not an end in itself, but a means to conformity to Christ, the resurrection of the body and the redemption of the soul.
5. While spirituality concerns immanence, it arises from transcendence, and therefore moves across boundaries of immanence and transcendence, secularity and sacrality. In contrast, critique (parasitic on theory, which it exposes as contradictory) is itself generative of contradictions, tensions and dualism - e.g. individual versus social, natural versus ideological, the proletariat versus the bourgeoisie.

Graham's paper, therefore, exhibits the central structuring motif of many arguments by those associated with Radical Orthodoxy - only Christianity! Only Christian spiritual practice (understood properly as a discipline that forms disciples) can perform the kinds of critiques that critical theory itself attempts and fails. Victor Seidler (Goldsmiths, University of London), who's own keynote later took up the image of walking, asked why exactly Graham rejects "walking" or the practices of theorising - philosophy, as well as theology - as spiritual. To my mind, this question was never really answered.

At lunch, I had a good catch up with Steve Shakespeare. Chatting with various people at lunch, meant I was late for the first ("Theological Materialism") of the panels organised by the Association for Continental Philosophy of Religion (Liverpool Hope), which Steve was chairing. I missed the gist of - and had to stand up for! - Jeff Kauss' paper, "Slavoj Zizek and Dynamic Incarnationalism: Towards a Lived Material Theology of Personhood," and then wasn't familiar enough with Meillassoux or Bataille to get much out of the other papers. Hopefully I can get Jeff to email me a copy of his paper, though. After lunch, I went to two panels on "Theological Humanism," but I was too tired to concentrate and decided to go back to my uncle and aunt's early to have a rest and go over my paper for the next day. It did mean, though, that I missed Toril Moi's keynote, which others said was much more "audience friendly" than Amy Hollywood's.

On Saturday morning, I went to the second Continental Philosophy of Religion panel ("Phenomenology and Deconstruction") where I was keen to hear Dan Miller - a student of Jack's from Syracuse who finished his dissertation, on radical democracy as religious affirmation, earlier this year too - give a paper on Milbank, and to catch up with Neal DeRoo (Dordt College, Iowa) whom I met at the Society for Continental Philosophy and Theology's "Postmodernism, Truth and Religious Pluralism" conference in April 2008.

Dan's paper, "Synchronicity and the Flattening of Materiality: Evaluating the Phenomenological Turn in John Milbank's Theology," framed Milbank's work in terms of a shift from a non-realist narrative philosophy to a phenomenological and materialist realist philosophy, arguing that the philosophy thus produced is open to a deconstructive criticism since it requires a metaphysical supplement to preserve the integrity of the material. While Milbank asserts that when we attend to the world (the phenomenological shift Dan identifies in Milbank's theological method) we see a "harmonious synchronicity" of the transcendent in the material. However, this must be a harmony that is eschatlogically given, since, if we attend to the world as it is given to us now, harmony is not synchronically present but diachronous with traumatic disruption, fragmentation and brokenness.

While I enjoyed Dan's paper and largely agree with his assessment of Milbank's project, I disagreed with how he presented what he regarded as Milbank's earlier work of "suspending the material," since this suspension is explicitly not one of "putting the material aside" (as Dan suggested) but of demonstrating that only participation in the transcendent can "suspend the material" over and against the void (as in a suspension bridge). Further, I wanted to know whether he had engaged with Gavin Hyman's book on Radical Orthodoxy - The Predicament of Postmodern Theology: Radical Orthodoxy or Textualist Nihilism? which argues that Don Cupitt's (non-realist) critique of Radical Orthodoxy distorts it into a realist framework when Radical Orthodoxy attempts to overcome such dualisms as non-realist/realist. I felt that the shift Dan identified in Milbank's theological method (from non-realist narrativity to realist materialist phenomenology) risked the same distortion.

Dan took these points constructively, acknowledging that he possibly hadn't fairly represented the meaning of the phrase "suspending the material" and that the language of realism and non-realism is problematic in relation to Radical Orthodoxy. However, he maintained that, even at points where Milbank stresses that the Christian narrative is not grounded in anything other than itself (hence, Dan's characterisation of this position as non-realist), he is left - as a reader - unconvinced that Milbank doesn't "actually believe" the narrative is a realist one. As a project, Radical Orthodoxy depends upon the persuasive powers of its story... I guess it has a way to go to convince Dan, then... or me.

Neal's paper, "Phemoneology as Eschatological Materialism," reflected upon broader questions of the nature of phenomenology. How can phenomenology - the study of "things themselves" - talk of God without turning God into a thing? Neal suggested that phenomenology's recent so-called "turn" to eschatology enables us to see that, rather than eschatology adding to phenomenology "from without," we might say, phenomenology is revealed as inherently eschatological. Specifically, not only does phenomenological reflection on intentionality reveal a two-fold notion of time as horizontal and diachronic, but that this two-fold notion of time is what phenomenology is. It is, therefore, inherently eschatological. This means, further, that the eschatological turn in phenomenology is, rather, a making explicit of what is already central to phenomenology. One of Neal's edited collection adds to these suggestions: Phenomenology and Eschatology: Not Yet in the Now.

After Paul Fiddes' keynote, "The Sublime, the Conflicted Self, and Attention to the Other: Neglected Contributions from Iris Murdoch and Julia Kristeva," I took myself off to read through my paper before presenting in the late afternoon. This has already been a rather long post, so I'll leave my reflections on the rest of Saturday's events, as well as on the panel I was most looking forward to - Sunday morning's "Political Theology" panel from the Association of Continental Philosophy of Religion - for another day.

The Future of Continental Philosophy of Religion

I blogged a few months back about the 4th conference in the Postmodernism, Culture and Religion series at Syracuse, "The Future of Continental Philosophy of Religion." Over the last few days, churchandpomo have posted the contributions to a symposium on continental philosophy of religion that were first published in Faith and Philosophy vol.6, no.9 (Oct 2009).

First, James K.A. Smith (Calvin College) wrote, "Continental Philosophy of Religion: Prescriptions for a Healthy Subdiscipline." Abstract: Over the past decade there has been a burgeoning of work in philosophy of religion that has drawn upon and been oriented by "continental" sources in philosophy—associated with figures such as Martin Heidegger, Jacques Derrida, Emmanuel Levinas, Jean-Luc Marion, Gilles Deleuze, and others. This is a significant development and one that should be welcomed by the community of Christian philosophers. However, in this dialogue piece I take stock of the field of "continental philosophy of religion" and suggest that the field is developing some un-healthy patterns and habits. The burden of the paper is to suggest a prescription for the future health of this important field by articulating six key practices that should characterize further scholarship in continental philosophy of religion.

Then Bruce Ellis Benson (Wheaton College) replied with, "A Response to Smith's 'Continental Philosophy of Religion'." Abstract: All of us working in continental philosophy of religion can be grateful to James K. A. Smith for his call to consider which practices will best further the "health" of the burgeoning subdiscipline of continental philosophy of religion. Given that he offers his suggestions "in the spirit of 'conversation starters,'" my response is designed to continue what I hope will be an ongoing conversation. With that goal in mind, I respond to Smith by considering not only the practicality of each suggestion but also whether adopting practices he suggests would actually improve the health of the subdiscipline.

And then Jamie responded with, "The End of Enclaves: A Reply to Benson." Abstract: In reply to Benson’s response, I agree that we should be seeking the dissolution of all enclaves in philosophy of religion—whether continental or analytic. But I continue to suggest that continental philosophy of religion bears special burdens in this respect.

PCR4 - The Future of Continental Philosophy of Religion

In April next year, Syracuse University will be hosting the fourth Postmodernism, Culture and Religion conference, convened by Jack Caputo. The conference will explore the theme of "The Future of Continental Philosophy of Religion," a topic which I'm sure will, by examining the possibilities of new intellectual directions in continental philosophy of religion, impact both directly and indirectly upon current debates about the social value of philosophy and other humanities disciplines (as well as the social sciences and arts) in the face of growing pressure to demonstrate the immediate economic value of higher education (basically restricted to the sciences and business studies). See in particular the high-profile short-sighted closure of the philosophy department at Middlesex University (including the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy) here, here and (partially saved by Kingston University) here and here.

Anyway, here's some information and blurb from for PCR4, which will run from April 7 - 9 2011.

Plenary speakers will include Jack Caputo, Thomas J. Watson Professor of Religion and Humanities (Syracuse University), Philip Goodchild, Professor of Theology and Religous Studies (University of Nottingham), and Catherine Malabou, Professor of Philosophy (Universite Paris Quest Nanterre La Defense).

The call for papers blurb is as follows:

"Paper submissions are invited on the topic "The Future of Continental Philosophy of Religion," its past and present, its history and its prospects, in the widest possible terms, addressing the whole range of its implications—politics, feminism, constructive theology, philosophy, history, literature, interfaith dialogue, and the hermeneutics of sacred texts.

"In the past, these conferences, which have provided a forum for the most influential philosophers, theologians, and cultural theorists to interact, have consisted solely of several keynote speakers. This conference will be different. It will feature three plenary speakers and offer multiple concurrent sessions devoted to papers submitted on a diversity of issues relating to the primary theme. This call for papers is deliberately open, befitting the conference's animating concern with the future."

The call for papers then lists some very interesting questions which papers could address:

• What now, or what comes next—specifically, after the death, if not of God, at least of the generation consisting of Derrida, Deleuze, Foucault, Levinas, etc.? This question concerns not only the future after those significant theorists, but also the future after-life of these eminent minds who have left such a deep impact on continental philosophy of religion.
• What is the future of Kant and German Idealism, of Kierkegaard and Nietzsche in continental philosophy of religion?
• What remains for the future of phenomenology?
• Of the "theological turn" in the phenomenology of Jean-Luc Marion and others?
• Of Gadamer, Ricoeur and philosophical hermeneutics?
• Of apophatic or mystical theology?
• What is the future of feminism and continental philosophy of religion?
• What are the status and future of the new trinity of Agamben, Badiou and Zizek?
• What relevance do the political interpretations of Antonio Negri, Michael Hardt, and the more recent continental philosophers such as François Laruelle and Catherine Malabou have to philosophy of religion and political theology?
• What about the future of sovereignty, of money and capitalism, as in the work of Philip Goodchild?
• What is the future of the movements of Radical Orthodoxy and of radical death of God theology, whether in their original or contemporary manifestations?
• What about the new sciences of information and complexity in thinkers like Mark C. Taylor and Michel Serres?
• What about Continental philosophy of religion and our “companion species” in Donna Haraway?
• What about “Post-Humanism”?
• What is the future of continental Philosophy of religion and Judaism?
• And Islam?
• Or world religions generally?
• What is the relationship between postmodernism, religion and postcolonialism?
• What role can continental philosophy play in the future of religion?
• In the professional study of religion?
• How does continental philosophical theology relate to the ethnological and empirical-scientific study of religion?
• How does continental philosophy of religion differ from traditional philosophy of religion?
• Or from analytic philosophy of religion?
• What is continental philosophy of religion anyway?
  

Hmmm.... cogs turning... ideas developing...

...wonder if I'll have a job by April 2011 in order to afford to go???

The call for papers asks for electronic copies of completed papers (previously unpublished and up to 3,000 words) to be subject to a double blind review by a selection committee, so include your name, paper title and contact information on a separate page. and put the paper title (but not name) on header or footer of each numbered page of the paper itself. These submissions are due by December 15, 2010 and should be sent to pcrconf@syr.edu. Acceptances will be made by February 15, 2011.

This information is also available on a (very hard on the eyes) website here.

The Association for Continental Philosophy of Religion

I thought I'd post a few things about the ACPR, the Association for Continental Philosophy of Religion that was launched at its inaugural conference, "Towards a Philosophy of Life," at the end of June 2009 (see my blog post here for some reflections on this event). The ACPR has a website (here) and facebook group (here). Here's some blurb:

The Association seeks to promote renewed critical thinking on religion, drawing upon the continental tradition of philosophy. This tradition draws much of its impetus from Kant's transcendental project of exploring what makes knowledge and faith possible. Kant inspired reflection upon the active, constructive role played by the subject of knowledge as well as the creative transgression of the limits of reason in articulating religious ideas.

Subsequent to Kant, the continental tradition encompasses such figures as Hegel, Schelling, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Husserl, Heidegger, Weil, de Beauvoir, Sartre, Derrida, Levinas, Irigaray, Deleuze, Agamben, Kristeva, Zizek, Ricoeur, Henry, Le Doeuff and Badiou. Despite the radical differences between these thinkers, key issues emerge about the attempt of philosophy to think its 'other', acknowledging the role played by history, culture and embodiment in our being in the world.

Reflecting on the wake of Nietzsche's proclamation of the'death of God’', continental philosophy of religion seeks creative ways of articulating the nature of faith, without presupposing any confessional stance. Which God has died? What future is there for the divine and the religious? What new possibilities are there for thinking philosophy's others in the light of 'postmodernism' and its after effects?

The Association is based at Liverpool Hope University in the UK. Its facilitators are Hope's lecturers in philosophy, Dr Patrice Haynes and Dr Steven Shakespeare, together with our colleague Dr Charlie Blake of the Media department. The Association is supported by a board of advisors, consisting of internationally recognised scholars in the field (incl. Jack Caputo, Pamela Sue Anderson and George Pattison).

The Association promotes research and reflection on continental philosophy of religion by:

• Holding regular seminars with invited speakers
  
• Running annual themed day conferences
  
• Organising occasional major international conferences
  
• Sponsoring colloquia on particular subjects
  
• Running a regular philosophical reading group
  
• Sharing information with other relevant networks and groups, particularly with regard to conferences, publications and sharing good practice in teaching continental philosophy of religion
  
• Encouraging research and publication
  
• Utilising online resources to promote wider discussion and dissemination of ideas
  
• Exploring the promotion of adult community learning initiatives through short courses on topics such as postmodernism and religion
  

In an embryonic form, the Association has already been involved (jointly with Liverpool John Moores University) in running a successful colloquium on Ethics and Animality, with a view to preparing a publication for 2010. Seminars, a day conference on the work of philosopher Mark C Taylor and other initiatives are being planned for 2009-10.

Philosophy of Life Conference Round-Up

I got back last night from Liverpool Hope's "Towards a Philosophy of Life: Reflections on the Concept of Life in Continental Philosophy of Religion" conference, having had a thoroughly enjoyable (if not totally follow-able) weekend. My own learning style is not comfortable with listening to people read written papers. I'm much more at home with people presenting, rather than reading, work. But philosophers tend to go for the practice of writing a journal paper or book chapter or whatever, and then just reading it out - rather than thinking about their audience's learning styles and altering the piece in order to facilitate rather than alienate others! Only very few of the papers this weekend were easy to follow (even if you knew the material they were talking about) which was disappointing. But I have always felt that sociologists of religion are much better presenters, thereby actually helping their audience follow their argument. Didn't mean to start this post off with a bit of a moan, but philosophers' styles of presentation do tend to detract from the enjoyment of philosophy conferences.

I met a cool bunch of people, including Simon Scott (PhD student at Warwick), Shahida Bari (How To Live blog), Aaron Landau (University of Hong Kong), Todd Mei (University of Kent) and Chad Lackies (Concordia Seminary, here's his blog). It was particularly great to meet Colby Dickinson (KU Leuven) whose paper on Agamben, the messianic and canonicity was really stimulating because of a resonance with my own work. Canonicity, Colby writes, is "the 'desire' for the canonical over and beyond any canon," clearly mirroring the hope against hope for the messianic given voice in but not restricted to determinate concrete messianisms. My paper also charted this dual movement, but in relation to Jack Caputo's historical association with Christianity (I was looking particularly at creation and kingdom in order to refute Jamie Smith's characterization of Caputo's work as allergic to determinate particularities, more of which in a later post) and messianic disassociation. Colby made some intriguing connections with identity formation, and Jack, Colby and I had a useful discussion after his paper about how communities that adopt deconstructive theologies actually do (ir)religious community. It's what I'm hoping to work on next, getting together a proposal for a research fellowship after I've finished my thesis.

Anyway, Jack's paper on "Bodies Without Flesh: The Soft Gnosticism of Incarnational Theology" was very thought provoking, though I know there were a lot of people that were very disppointed that John Milbank only came for his own paper, rather than engaging with Caputo's criticisms of Radical Orthodoxy's incarnational theology. His excuse was that he had, apparently, been stuck on one of the amphibious vehicles (duck) that take you on tours round Liverpool and brokedown (lame). Well, Jack's paper draws from his work towards a sequel to The Weakness of God, currently entitled The Weakness of Flesh. He argued that incarnational theology's incarnation is not radical enough. It is a theology of in-carnation, rather than a theology of carnality. It places "the life of flesh within an economy of bodies without flesh." Like contemporary robotologists, incarnational theology attempts to transform bodies of flesh into bodies without flesh, in the process "betraying" flesh, harbouring a secret "horror of flesh." Instead, he asked, "What would a theology of carnality itself, before or without In-carnation, look like?" "Instead of a transaction between fleshly and fleshless being, I propose a more radical conception of incarnation as an event of flesh itself, of becoming-flesh," of taking, therefore, Christianity seriously, at its word, as the Word made flesh. Caputo is, as I intimated above, not removing himself from the Christian tradition but trying to make the tradition "make good" on its promises. Looking forward to The Weakness of Flesh already!

Philosophy of Life

Conference gallore at the moment. Here's another one. It looks fantastic. Steven Shakespeare is one of the co-organisers (I blogged here about his introduction to Radical Orthodoxy, but he's publishing Derrida and Theology soon - can't wait! - and has cool taste in music). Anyway, this conference (Towards a Philosophy of Life: Reflections on the Concept of Life in Continental Philosophy of Religion) has some great speakers lined up (including

• Dr. Pamela Sue Anderson (The University of Oxford)
• Professor John D. Caputo (Syracuse University)
• Professor Don Cupitt (The University of Cambridge)
• Professor Jean-Yves Lacoste (Institut Catholique, Paris) [couldn't find a uni page!]
• Professor John Milbank (The University of Nottingham)

It's hosted by Liverpool Hope University, runs from Friday 26th - Sunday 28th June 2009, and the conference organisers expect to edit a book of a selection of papers from the proceedings. Here's the blurb and call for submission details:

"The question whether it is still possible to live is the form in which metaphysics impinges on us urgently today," Adorno, Metaphysics: Concepts and Problems, p.112.

"Traditionally, a common conception of philosophy has been as a melete thanatou or 'meditation upon death'. However, in recent years it is the significance of the concept of 'life' which has begun to receive increasing attention in contemporary European philosophy. Indeed, writing in the wake of the brutalization of life in the death camps of Auschwitz, Adorno poses a central question for current philosophical debate on life, namely, 'How might life live?'

"The aim of this conference is to address this question and in doing so assess recent philosophies of life. In particular, the conference seesk to explore metaphysical, phenomenological, ethical and religious underpinnings of philosophies of life, especially in light of the emergence of 'continental philosophy of religion.' By enquiring into conceptions of life in contemporary philosophical and religious thought, this conference also aims to reconsider the key project of ancient philosophy: the teaching of the good life."

The call for abstracts (400 words) suggests a broad range of themes, including

• The concept of life in vitalism and philosophies of immanence (Spinoza, Nietzsche, Bergson, Gilles Deleuze, Michel Henry, Alain Badiou, etc)
• Life, power and politics (esp. Foucault and Giorgio Agamben)
• Alterity, gift and life: deconstruction and phenomenology
• Rethinking life in light of the body, natality and sexual difference: feminist philosophy of religion and feminist theology
• Psychoanalysis (life, death and desire)
• Theologies of life (creation, incarnation, sacrament and grace)

The deadline for submitting abstracts (400 words) is Friday 17 April 2009. To submit abstracts (or for further details) email Dr. Patrice Haynes - haynesp@hope.ac.uk

My thinking on this so far is to try to solidify some of my thoughts regarding Jamie Smith's criqitue of Derridean deconstruction and Caputian deconstructive theology as assuming a logic of determinism (I've blogged about it a few times here and here). Smith characterizes Radical Orthodoxy, or what he is increasingly referring to as a 'catholic postmodernism,' as a logic of incarnation but then doesn't extend the same clear connection to the Christian tradition to deconstructive theolology (by naming it as a logic of determinism). I think I could argue that it can be seen as a logic of creation instead. Yes, deconstruction emphasises finitude, particularity, singularity, determinancy, etc, but it simultaneously emphasises alterity and responsibility. As Caputo has said, we have to "make good" on God's "good" in Genesis. So I think I'm going to write something around these themes, possibly titled something like, "'Making good' on the 'Good' of Life: The Pragmatic Translation of Truth into Justice."

Mark Mason (Chichester University) is one of the guys who has joined the conference group on Facebook. He's written some very interesting things, including a chapter in Evaluating Fresh Expressions. A conference paper he emailed me, entitled "Impossible Ecclesiology? John D. Caputo and the Emerging Church (Movement?)", was great.