E-SUPPLEMENT TO THE JOURNAL FOR CULTURAL AND RELIGIOUS THEORY
Almost a half century ago a change took place in the humanities, and by extension in the fledgling field of religious studies. By the 1990s that change had been a sea change. By the mid-1980s the change had come to be known as “postmodernism”. Today the expression, which is just as vague and polysemic as […]
The following essay introduces the upcoming volume of the Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory featuring reflections on the work of renowned religious studies scholar Charles H. Long (1926-2020). It will be published in July 2022. The new universities, as research institutions, implied a new structure in the order of knowledge on both theoretical and […]
The following is the third of a three-part series. The first can be found here, the second here. Derrida’s suspicion of and discomfort with the seemingly politically-motivated dogmatism that we see guiding Heidegger’s understanding of spirit leads us into the common interpretations of Derrida’s religious thinking as being about a sort of theological indiscretion, an […]
The following is published in three installments. Jacques Derrida’s prolonged and intimate proximity to the thought of Martin Heidegger has played a significant role in the understanding and debate of Derrida’s religious inflections and in the theorizing of the relationship between deconstruction, religion, and politics in general. This proximity becomes particularly clear in the treatment […]
The following is the second of a two-part series. The first can be found here Is it not true, though, that many individuals of different races, creeds, and identities do live together in our cities? Against the backdrop of everyday life is there not a true plurality of subjects and ways of being? According to […]
The following is the first of a two-part series. In her 1992 masterpiece, The Broken Middle, the philosopher Gillian Rose explored what she saw as a baleful crisis of ethics in modern political discourse playing itself out in the malaise and violence of contemporary urban life. Rose believed the root of this crisis was a […]
The following is the first of a two-part series. “God is the ‘beyond’ in the midst of our life.” – Dietrich Bonhoeffer[1] “Are you lost, Father?” “Sorry?” “Are you lost?” “No. I suppose not.” – Darlene Sweet and Father Flynn speaking the first lines of Bad Times at the El Royale Classically, philosophers spoke of […]
The following is the first of a two-part series. It was originally published at a 2019 conference in Athens, Greece.1 Introduction When teaching classes like World Religions or Comparative Religions, many of us utilize a comparative methodology. This methodology was fine- tuned by JZ Smith, who reminds us to not only focus on difference, but […]
After Derrida, how can philosophy continue to think critically, and for our task here, ontologically2…? Can a critique of the context of perception via its textual traces render insight into the presumed meta-context of perception itself, of how we perceive our world? What occurs when perception, or its textual thought, defer? Is the question of […]
The following is the second of a two-part series. The first can be found here. Furthermore there is an element of nostalgia implicit in this desire. Like the armed protestors who stormed city capital buildings across the United States, there is a sense among certain students and faculty, that in the age of Coronavirus and […]