Political Theology for the US-Mexico Borderlands

Bryan M. Ellrod, Ph.D. (2021), Emory University, is Director of Pre-Law at Wake Forest University and teaches in the Interdisciplinary Humanities Program. His research and teaching engage the intersection of law and the humanities, with a special interest in ethics.

• Preface: Besetting DangerAcknowledgmentsList of FiguresIntroduction1 The Bones in the Valley2 Politics as a Project of Redemption3 Pernicious Messianism in the Borderlands4 Between Worlds5 Argument SummaryPART 1. Realism, Bodies Politic, and Bodies Remembered<\h2>1 Contesting Realism in the Christian Ethics of Migration1 Introduction: Christian Ethics and Political Theology2 Christian Realism3 Realism and the Christian Ethics of Migration4 Hopelessness in the Borderlands5 An Eschatological Imperative2 The Remembrance of Dismembered Bodies1 Mortalities on the Margins and the Danger of Spectacle2 The Ethical Demand3 The Distribution of the Sensible4 “Las Madres/No Mas Lágrimas:” a Metonymic Encounter with the Dead5 Metonymy in the Scriptural ImaginaryPART 2. Cain & Abel<\h2>3 Politics Haunted1 Strangers or Estranged Siblings?2 Fratricide: a Problem of Beginning3 Abel’s Ghost: a Theological Case for Haunting4 Troubled Closure: Haunting and the Politics of Self-Determination5 A Riven Condition4 Exorcising the Ghosts1 Prevention through Deterrence as Practical Solution2 The Making of the ‘Alien’3 Legal Rights and the Dignification of Demands4 Disappeared in the Landscape5 Fatal Contradictions6 Can These Bones Live? a Provisional Answer to the QuestionPART 3. Samaritans & Sojourners<\h2>5 The Samaritan’s Virtue1 From Contempt to Compassion2 “Who is my Neighbor?”: the Parable’s Context & Stakes3 On the Road from Jerusalem to Jericho: the Neighbor as Object4 Moved by Compassion: the Neighbor as Ethical Subject5 Compassion and Law6 A Samaritan in the Sonoran1 What Must We Do to Live?2 Encounters on a Different Road3 What is in the Law? How Do You Read It?4 The Samaritan Moved with Compassion5 The Works of theNomikosConclusion: Political Theology in the US-Mexico Borderlands1 In Failure’s Wake2 Sin, Redemption, and the Collectively Self-Determining State3 Weak Messianic Force & the Law4 A Case for Hope5 The Bones in the ValleysReferencesIndex