White, Ryan. The Hidden God: Pragmatism and Posthumanism in American Thought. New York: Columbia University Press, 2015. ISBN-10: 0231171005. Hardcover, e-book. 248 pages. Ryan White’s The Hidden God: Pragmatism and Posthumanism in American Thought (Columbia University Press, 2015) sets for itself a rather Herculean task of coherently discussing perhaps the sole concept that is unavailable for conceptual analysis: […]
Reviews
Review – Raising the Vegetal Question (Hollis Phelps)
Irigaray, Luce and Michael Marder, Through Vegetal Being: Two Philosophical Perspectives. New York, Columbia University Press, 2016. ISBN-10: 0231173873 Hardcover, paperback, e-book. 248 pages. Through Vegetal Being is not a book about plants but, rather, an attempt to think with and through them. For some that may seem an odd, even impossible, endeavor. The Western […]
Review – Aaron Hughes’ ‘Islam and the Tyranny of Authenticity’ (Daniel Tutt)
Hughes, Aaron. Islam and the Tyranny of Authenticity: An Inquiry into Disciplinary Apologetics and Self-Deception. London: Equinox Publishing, 2016. ISBN-10: 1781792178. Hardcover, paperback. 256 pages. Introduction: It has never been exactly clear what apologetic scholarship achieves. Are apologetic scholars reinforcing a certain status quo that lies outside of academe, one that is located in the particular […]
Review – Of Politics and Motion (Joshua Lawrence)
Nail, Thomas. The Figure of the Migrant. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2015. ISBN-10: 0804796580. 312 pages. If the 21st century is indeed the century of the migrant, then Thomas Nail’s work is a timely consideration of this oft-neglected shadow of human civilization. To be precise, Nail argues for the necessity of this figure throughout terrestrial […]
Review – L.L. Welborn’s Synthesis of New Testament Scholarship and Critical Theory’s Recent Interest in the Apostle Paul (Benjamin Steele-Fisher)
Welborn, Larry L. Paul’s Summons to Messianic Life: Political Theology and the Coming Awakening (Insurrections: Critical Studies in Religion, Politics, and Culture). New York: Columbia University Press, 2015. ISBN 9780231171311. Hardcover, paperback, e-book. 154 pages. With the unprecedented amount of political upheaval throughout the west since the turn of the century, especially after the supposed […]
Review – Love’s Unfortunate Presence between Faith and Belief (Daniel Boscaljon)
Schrijvers, Joeri. Between Faith and Belief: Toward a Contemporary Phenomenology of Religious Life (SUNY Series in Theology and Continental Thought). New York: State University of New York Press, 2016. ISBN-10: 143846021X Hardcover, e-book. 398 pages. The landscape of contemporary philosophical theology is doing much to confront the human, all too human, ghosts of the death […]
Review – Giorgio Agamben and the Theory of Civil War (Ignas Kalpokas)
Agamben, Giorgio. Stasis: Civil War as a Political Paradigm (Meridian: Crossing Aesthetics). Translated by Nicholas Heron. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2015. ISBN 10: 0804797315 Hardcover, paperback, e-book. 96 pages. Giorgio Agamben’s Stasis is yet another addition to his Homo Sacer project. This time Agamben tackles what he sees as yet another lacuna in political theor y: […]
Review – A Darker, Grittier Deleuze (Timothy Snediker)
Culp, Andrew. Dark Deleuze (Forerunners: Ideas First). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2016. ISBN 10: 1517901332 Paperback, e-book. 90 pages. For several decades there has been a general consensus among readers of Gilles Deleuze: the influential French philosopher was, is, and will be a thinker of affirmation, joy, and plenitude. Notwithstanding the fact that Deleuze […]
Review – Altered States: Buddhism and Psychedelic Spirituality in America (Roger Green)
Osto, Douglas. Altered States: Buddhism and Psychedelic Spirituality in America. New York: Columbia University Press, 2016. ISNB 10: 0231177305 Hardcover, e-book. 328 pages. In recent years, the amount of published scholarly work on psychedelics, religion, and spirituality has grown enormously. Even so, many writers still feel it necessary to do a rhetorical dance around the […]
Review – Agamben’s Political Reading of the Trial of Jesus (Ryne Beddard)
Agamben, Giorgio. Pilate and Jesus (Meridian: Crossing Aesthetics). Translated by Adam Kotsko. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2015. ISBN 10: 0804794545 Hardcover, paperback, e-book. 88 pages. Why is it the case that the divine incarnation, the meeting place of earthly and heavenly authority, should, in its climactic moment, assume the form of a trial? What can […]