The End(s) of Political Theology

ZRC SAZU in Univerza Lancaster vabita na enodnevni mednarodni simpozij z naslovom The End(s) of Political Theology. Simpozij bo potekal v angleškem jeziku. Spodaj najdete kratek opis dogodka v angleškem jeziku, program simpozija in plakat pa prilagamo v priponkah.

This international symposium explores the 'ends' – in every sense of that word – of political theology. To be sure, political theology has from the very beginning always been obsessed with the question of its end – of the imminent end-time, of the time that remains, of the eschaton and so on endlessly. In one sense, we might say that the 'end' of political theology – its aim, goal or telos – is nothing less than the 'end' of political theology: its vindication, completion, redundancy or demise.

Yet, despite or because of the fact that its own end-time has never quite arrived, political theology itself still (hopefully, naively, deludedly or cynically?) seems to endure without end. If Hans Blumenberg famously argued that modernity brought the epoch of political theology to a close, for example, Carl Schmitt, Eric Voegelin, Jacob Taubes, Claude Lefort, Giorgio Agamben and Slavoj Žižek and many others have insisted that the political theological tradition continues to perpetuate itself endlessly under different names and guises: secularism, atheism, democracy, materialism.
 

In this symposium, a range of contributors from different traditions – comparative literature, religious studies, philosophy, political theory and psychoanalysis – come together to consider the political theology of the end and the end of political theology. What might the end(s) of political theology look like? How does the political theological tradition contribute, positively or negatively, to a more general thinking of the end in philosophy, religion and culture? To what extent might other ways of thinking the end – from politics, philosophy, literature, mathematics and psychoanalysis – contribute to a new understanding of the ends of political theology or enable us – finally – to bring political theology itself to an end?

Program simpozija

Plakat

*Podoba na plakatu je slikovna reprodukcija voščene skulpture italijanskega umetnika Maurizia Cattelana z naslovom La nona ora (Deveta ura, 1999). Delo je bilo razstavljeno v uglednih galerijah, med drugim v Kunsthalle Basel in v Royal Academy v Londonu.