Theocratic Biopolitics

Vassilios Paipais is Professor of International Political Theory and Director of the Institute of International Relations (IDIS) at Panteion University, Athens. He has previously taught at the Universities of St Andrews, Edinburgh, and at the LSE. His work focuses on International Relations (IR) theory, political theory, political ontology, and political theology. His articles have appeared in leading IR, political theory and political theology journals. He is the author of Political Ontology and International Political Thought: Voiding a Pluralist World (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017). He has edited three volumes: Theology and World Politics: Metaphysics, Genealogies, Political Theologies (Palgrave McMillan, 2020), Perspectives on International Political Theory in Europe (Palgrave McMillan, 2021), and The Civil Condition in World Politics: Beyond Tragedy and Utopianism (Bristol University Press, 2022).

Paipais delivers an impressive and original synthesis of the debates on political theology and biopolitics of the last decades, reining in the former from its tendency to escape into transcendence and keeping the latter from foundering in a vitalist immanence.

• Prologue: From Political Theology to Affirmative Biopolitics1. Neutralising Eschatology: Carl Schmitt’s Katechontic Anti-Apocalypticism2. Political Eschatology and the Allure of the Apocalyptic: the Dialectics of Antinomianism3. St Paul’s Eschatology and the Persistence of Antinomianism4. Creaturely Life: Towards a Phenomenology of TransimmanenceEpilogue: The Politics of Creaturely LifeBibliography