Theology and the Political

Creston Davis is a doctoral candidate in philosophical theology at the University of Virginia.John Milbank is a professor of religion, politics, and ethics at the University of Nottingham. His books include Being Reconciled: Ontology and Pardon and Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason.Slavoj Žižek is a senior researcher at the Institute for Social Studies in Ljubljana, Slovenia. He is the author of Tarrying with the Negative: Kant, Hegel, and the Critique of Ideology, editor of Cogito and the Unconscious: Kant, Hegel, and the Critique of Ideology, and coeditor of Perversion and the Social Relation and Gaze and Voice as Love Objects, all also published by Duke University Press.

“Theology and the Political is a helpful book because it gathers in one volume a representative sample of very serious theologians. . . .” - Stephen H. Webb (First Things) “[A] collection of this caliber on such a timely subject is to be welcomed.” - D. W. Congdon (Princeton Theological Review) “[A] patient reader will be rewarded with some intriguing perspectives and insights that take seriously the difficult challenge confronting political action in the context of global capitalism.” - Christopher Craig Brittain (Dalhousie Review) “[T]hat there is no majority discourse in the book is to the credit of the editors for it has increased the depth and variance of the analyses presented, allowing the book to become more fully a ‘debate.’ Though this format often leads the reader to feel as if the book is somewhat schizophrenic, this is ultimately its greatest strength and precisely why it is worth reading.” - Anthony Paul Smith (Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory) “The new debate referenced in this rich, lengthy, and important collection is a desperately urgent debate. . . . [T]he work itself functions as a symphony, building between and among chapters to orchestrate a complex and fruitful investigation of some of the most crucial theoretical issues we face in our contemporary world and includes some of the most influential contemporary philosophers and theologians working today.” - Clayton Crockett (Journal of the American Academy of Religion) “This book is another ‘deliberate kick against the tide of the times.’” - Stephen Webb (Insights) “This volume is . . . . a welcome and much-needed wake-up call- if not a call to arms, then no less radically because it is a scandal to the postmodern mind, at least a call to truth and its consequences.” - Jeffrey W. Robbins (Political Theology)

• Acknowledgments xiIntroduction / Rowan Williams 1Part I. Revolution and Theological Difference Tragedy and Revolution / Terry Eagleton 7Metanoia: The Theological Praxis of Revolution / Creston Davis and Patrick Aaron Riches 22The “Thrilling Romance of Orthodoxy” / Slavoj Zizek 52Nothing is Something Must Be: Lacan and Creation from No One / Conor Cunningham 72Revelation and Revolution / Regina Mara Schwartz 102Part 2. Ontology, Capital, and Kingdom Capital and Kingdom: An Eschatological Ontology / Philip Goodchild 127Neither Servility nor Sovereignty: Between Metaphysics and Politics / William Desmond 153Of Chrematology: Joyce and Money / Simon Chritchley and Tom McCarthy 183Only Jesus Saves: Toward a Theopolitical Ontology of Judgment / Daniel M. Bell Jr. 200Part 3. Infinite Desire and the Political Subject The Political Subject and Absolute Immanence / Antonio Negri 231Rewriting the Ontological Script of Liberation: On the Question of Finding a New Kind of Political Subject / Kenneth Surin 240Ecclesia: The Art of the Virtual / Anthony Baker and Rocco Gangle 267The Univocalist Mode of Production / Catherine Pickstock 281Part 4. Reenchanting the Political beyond Ontotheology The Unbearable Withness of Being: On the Essentialist Blind Spot of Anit-ontotheology / Mary-Jane Rubenstein 340“To Cut Too Deeply and Not Enough”: Violence and the Incorporeal / Elanor Kaufman 350The Two Sources of the “Theological Machine:: Jacques Derrida and Henri Bergson on Religion, Technicity, War, and Terror / Hent de Vries 366Part 5. Theological Materialism Materialism and Transcendence / John Milbank 393Truth and Peace: Theology and the Body Politic in Augustine and Hobbes / Karl Hefty 427The Politics of the Eye: Toward a Theological Materialism / Phillip Blond 439Notes on Contributors 463Index 467