E-SUPPLEMENT TO THE JOURNAL FOR CULTURAL AND RELIGIOUS THEORY
Many kinds of structures seem ubiquitous and essential for the kind of meaning humanity concerns itself with. Lévi-Strauss’ early work on myth and kinship are two significant examples with the influence of each visible in much of our daily existence. Still, we must ask, can structures of this sort be universal? How do we avoid […]
Introduction “Ghetto,” a colloquized term that presently designates an impoverished, neglected, or undesirable residential area, originally was used to distinguish similarly undesirable parts of town—Jewish parts of town. Early entomology suggests that the term ghetto describes “the quarter in a city… to which the Jews were restricted”[1], as well as “a quarter in a city, […]
This article appears in three installments. It was originally a paper given at the international conference “The Crisis of Representation” at Melk Conference Center (Stift Melk, Austria) sponsored by the Religion and Transformation in Contemporary Society Platform at the University of Vienna (June 27, 2017). The next two will be published on July 11 and […]
Foregrounding the Problem In his 1975 work Discipline and Punish, Michel Foucault uses the lens of prison and society to examine the ways in which power structures act upon the individual. He maintains that the power and techniques of punishment depend on knowledge which, in turn, creates and categorizes individuals. He also proposes that knowledge derives its […]
The following is the second installment of a two-part series. The first installment was published on October 10 and can be accessed here. If we do not give normative priority to the individual, that is, to the individual as the proper or exclusive form of subjectivity, then we could read the evidence Turkle offers differently. […]
The following is the second installment of a lecture delivered to the faculty and students of the Research Platform on Religion and Transformation from the University of Vienna at Melk Monastery (Austria) on July 26, 2016. The link to the first installment in Religious Theory can be found here. Select portions of this essay appeared […]
The following is the first installment of a lecture delivered to the faculty and students of the Research Platform on Religion and Transformation from the University of Vienna at Melk Monastery (Austria) on July 26, 2016. The second installment will be published on Aug. 29. Select portions of this essay appeared earlier in the online […]
The following article by internationally known theory scholar Gregg Lambert is the second of a two-part series. The first part was published on July 11, 2016 and can be found here. Later, in the same argument, Foucault summarizes this analogy in a manner that will continue to inform the thesis that in the modern period […]
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 […]
The following is the first of a 3-part series. Biopolitics, as Michel Foucault argued, views populations through an economic lens, as capital to be preserved and multiplied to keep the nation or tradition afloat and strong. In the secular sphere, this concerns keeping the population healthy, numerous, and reproducing, largely through the promotion of an […]