The following article by internationally known theory scholar Gregg Lambert is the first of a two-part series. The concept of “dispositif” is best known as a key term in late Foucault that first appeared in his History of Sexuality, Volume 1 (1976) to replace the use of “discursive formation,” which for Foucault was restricted to […]
Year: 2016
Review – The Search For Transcendence In The “Material Phenomenology” of David Foster Wallace (Jeff Appel)
Miller, Adam S. The Gospel According to David Foster Wallace: Boredom and Addiction in an Age of Distraction. New York: Bloomsburg Academic, 2016. ISBN-10: 1474236979. Hardcover, paperback, e-book. 136 pages. In this age of increasing literary interdisciplinarity, books such as Adam S. Miller’s latest project, The Gospel According to David Foster Wallace: Boredom and Addiction […]
Review – The Evolution of the Religious Factor in Fantasy Role-Playing Games (Jeffrey Scholes)
Laycock, Joseph P. Dangerous Games: What the Moral Panic over Role-Playing Games Says about Play, Religion, and Imagined Worlds. Berkeley CA: University of California Press, 2015. ISBN-10: 0520284925. Hardback, paperback, e-book. 368 pp. Anyone growing up in the 1980s or any parent of adolescents during this decade knows more about the game Dungeons and Dragons […]
Force in Religious Thought – Carl Raschke and Victoria Kahn in Dialogue, Part 3 (Roger Green)
The following is the last of a three-part series. The first part was published on May 31, 2016. The second part was published on June 17. Carl Raschke and Force Carl Raschke’s most recent book, Force of God, seeks to address tendencies toward de-historicizing by returning to an idea of force. He does so through […]
Biopolitics and Vajrayana Buddhism, Part 3 (Padraic Fitzgerald)
The following is the third and final installment in a three-part series. The first installment was published on May 27, 2016 and can be found here. The second installment was published on June 13. Despite the longstanding presence of the Dhamra in the Vajrayana cultural area, in particular Tibet, belief in what could be compared […]
Force in Religious Thought – Carl Raschke and Victoria Kahn in Dialogue, Part 2 (Roger Green)
The following is the second of a three-part series. The first part was published on May 31, 2016. Heidegger, Kant, and the Political It is especially significant that Heidegger’s attention to the early modern during Weimar Germany’s liberal democratic crisis lands his larger project in the ancient world. He famously developed his emphasis on ontology […]
Review – Badiou’s Conversations About Theatre Offer Light-Hearted And Quirky Insight Into Mind Of Philosopher (Ryne Beddard)
Badiou, Alain (with Nicolas Truong). In Praise of Theatre. New York: Polity, 2015. ISBN 10: 978-0-7456-8697-4. Hardback, paperback, e-book. 90 pages. In Praise of Theatre is the result of a public conversation which took place between Alain Badiou and Nicolas Truong at the Festival d’Avignon in the summer of 2012 as a part of the […]
Biopolitics and Vajrayana Buddhism, Part 2 (Padraic Fitzgerald)
The following is the second installment in a three-part series. The first installment was published on May 27, 2016 and can be found here. Chod, the Rite of Severance Chod, translated from Tibetan as meaning “severance”, is a ritual that focuses on interaction with supernatural entities. As such, one may postulate that Chod is a […]
Review – Donovan Schaefer’s Call For a Materialist Turn In Religious Theory (Jonathan Russell)
Schaefer, Donovan O. Religious Affects: Animality, Evolution, and Power. Durham NC: Duke University Press, 2015. ISBN 10: 978-0-8223-5982-1, 10: 978-0-8223-5990-6. Hardback, paperback, e-book. 304 pages. Donovan O. Schaefer’s Religious Affects: Animality, Evolution, and Power is at once a whirlwind introduction to the relevance the fields affect theory, critical animal studies, and evolutionary biology have for […]
Force in Religious Thought – Carl Raschke and Victoria Kahn in Dialogue, Part 1 (Roger Green)
The following is the first of a three-part series. The term “political theology” is currently used in a variety of ways in current debate over the place of liberalism amid world crises in politics and globalization. The most common version of the term rests on Carl Schmitt’s argument that all significant political concepts are secularized […]