Episodes
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Matt and Preston joins the Post Structuralist Tent Revival to discuss Gil Anidjar's essay, "Globalatinology"!
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Catherine Keller recently visited Sweden to deliver a few lectures in Betlehemskyrkan, Gothenburg. This episode is from the opening day which focused on introducing Catherine to the visitors. In the forthcoming weeks we will publish some of her lectures too.
Organizers of the event Teologi som förÀndrar vÀrlden: Göteborgs stift, Equmeniakyrkan, Oscar Fredriks församling, Betlehemskyrkan, Sensus and Gothenburg University.
Participants: KG Hammar, Petra Carlsson and Andreas Nordlander.
Music by: Jonatan BĂ€ckelie and Roma Ransom.
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Episodes manquant?
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In this episode, Matt Baker and Preston Price speak with guests, Catherine Keller, and Clayton Crockett about political theology (among other things), which is the topic for Drew Universityâs impending interdisciplinary colloquium: Political Theology at the Edge: Collectivities of Crisis and Possibility, March 29-31, 2019. Click HERE for more details on how to register. Peace.
Catherine will also be in Sweden March 18-19. Check out the Facebook event for more information.
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The politics of the middle is a way of acting and representing the ordinary in everyday life. It opens up space to think about being political as an ordinary occurrence, something beyond otherworldly concerns. In this episode, Preston Price talks with Vincent Lloyd about the politics of the middle as well as other topics. Lloyd is associate professor of Theology and Religious Studies at Villanova University and the author of the book discussed in the show âThe Problem with Graceâ along with others. Enjoy!
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In this episode of The Catacombic Machine, Preston Price talks with Aaron van Voorhis of Central Avenue Church in Glendale, California. Aaron has been on the show once before talking with Josef about his background in Christianity and the praxis of radical theology. We dive a little deeper into praxis and radical theology as we talked about what it means to minister to a radical community, the best way to engage people in conservative churches, and our current state of affairs in America. You can find more information about Aaron on his website and his churchâs website here.
Connect up with us on Facebook or Twitter and let us know what you think about this episode and previous iterations of the show.
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Out of light comes darkness in the infinite play of destructivity. What was once whole has now become incomplete, a new de-creation of death-in-life. We want to hold onto the very fabric of living and beauty without realizing that each moment slips away, creating space for something new to emerge. It is this space of emergence which we find how meaning is made, through the constructs of destruction.
This all might sound a bit dark, and that is the point. Without the serpent there would be no Fall, hence no redemption. Necropsychoanalysis does not have room for a savior, not even in the form of the analyst, though. One could say that it is a process of becoming attuned to dying, that life is miserable and meaningless, a dark cavern with infinite depths. Instead of analysis leading the subject outside of the world of shadows into the daylight of freedom, necropsychoanalysts seem to be co-developers of a deeper tread into darkness, the lightless plunge further into modes of despair.
Iâm not sure what to make of this, though. On the one hand, hasnât the world seen enough of messiahs? Maybe. However, the principle of developing coping mechanisms is a healthy step when confronted with the evidence that our illusions enslave us to forms of reality which create modes of destruction.
I really appreciated Julieâs thoughtfulness and her pushback towards clarity. Julie Reshe is a necropsychoanalyst with a private practice that can be accessed through her website: https://www.drjuliereshe.com/. She is also professor of philosophy and director of the Institute of Psychoanalysis at the Global Center for Advanced Studies: https://thegcas.org/.
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Barry Taylor talk to Jack Caputo about Jacques Derrida as part of his Patreon series Theology After... Other conversation partners in this series has been Peter Rollins, Peter Sjöstedt-H and Josef Gustafsson. You can find Barry's Patreon page and listen to the other episodes at https://www.patreon.com/barrytaylor
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In this episode, Jake Given and Matt Baker speak with Mary-Jane Rubenstein, about goats, metaphysics, science, Freud, Spinoza, panpsychism, and so on. Mary-Jane Rubenstein is Professor of Religion at Wesleyan University; core faculty in the Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program; and affiliated faculty in the Science and Society Program. She holds a B.A. in Religion and English from Williams College, an M.Phil. in Philosophical Theology from Cambridge University, and a Ph.D. in Philosophy of Religion from Columbia University. Her areas of research include continental philosophy, gender and sexuality studies, science and religion, and the history and philosophy of physics, ecology, and cosmology. She is the author of Strange Wonder: The Closure of Metaphysics and the Opening of Awe (2009) Worlds without End: The Many Lives of the Multiverse (2014), and Pantheologies: Gods, Worlds, Monsters (forthcoming).
Music by Adrian Romero
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In this episode of TCM Preston Price speaks with Jeff Hood who is a Baptist pastor, theologian, and activist in the Texas area.
Music by Adrian Romero
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In this TCM mini-episode youâll hear a very short talk given by Philip Clayton last November as part of the New Materialism, Religion, and Planetary Thinking seminar at AAR in Boston. Youâll also hear brief responses and questions from Karen Brayand Paul Carr.
Philip Clayton is the Ingraham Professor at Claremont School of Theologyin Claremont, California. Clayton has taught or held research professorships at Williams College, California State University, Harvard University, Cambridge University, and the University of Munich. His research focuses on biological emergence, religion and science, process studies, and contemporary issues in ecology, religion, and ethics. He is the recipient of multiple research grants and international lectureships, as well as the author of numerous books, including The Predicament of Belief: Science, Philosophy, Faith(2011); Religion and Science: The Basics(2011); Transforming Christian Theology: For Church and Society(2009); and In Quest of Freedom: The Emergence of Spirit in the Natural World(2009). He also edited The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Science(2006).
In books and lectures, Clayton works to formulate constructive theological responses to developments in contemporary science and philosophy. He has also been a leading advocate for comparative theology and the internationalization of the science-religion dialogue. As P.I. of the âScience and the Spiritual Questâ program and as Provost of a multi-faith university, he worked to expand these fields to include Muslim and Jewish scholars, the Dharma traditions of India, and the religious traditions of Southeast Asia.
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In this two-part episode of The Catacombic Machine we hear from Catherine Keller who was the guest at a recent live event hosted by Brew Theology, NJ. She discusses her book On the Mystery: Discerning Divinity in Process, as well as several other things. Cheers!
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In this two-part episode of The Catacombic Machine we hear from Catherine Keller who was the guest at a recent live event hosted by Brew Theology, NJ. She discusses her book On the Mystery: Discerning Divinity in Process, as well as several other things. Cheers!
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In this episode Matt Baker and Preston Price speak with Robyn Henderson-Espinozaand Tad Delayabout the theo-political climate in US following the controversial zero-tolerance policy separating migrant children from their parents.
Sign up for Homebrewed Christianity's Theologies of Resistance Summer reading group here.
Poem: "Home", by Warsan Shire.Reading: Alissgrey Munoz
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In this episode of TCM, Preston Price speaks with Barry Taylor about several seemingly random topics: art, Freud, spirituality, shoes, food, religion, cartography, etc.
Music - Amon Tobin: Deo. Jonatan BĂ€ckelie: Laudate Guattari
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The subsecular aims to conceptualize the experience of religion being forced into submission by a hegemonic secular culture. Attempts have been made over the years to speak of a âpostsecular conditionâ and the âreturn of Godâ to critique the secularization thesis and to emphasize the continuous role religion plays in culture, politics and so on, but while the postsecular implies an understanding of religion and spirituality which at best is defined by the contours of the secular, the subsecular breaks open the discourse on religion to liberate human spirituality. Rather than allowing for secular society and its established values to dictate the terms for what religion could be, the subsecular accentuates the Spinozist notion that we do not know what a body can do. Philosopher Gilles Deleuze writes:
The slave only conceives of power as the object of a recognition, the content of a representation, the stake in a competition, and therefore makes it depend at the end of a fight on a simple attribution of established valuesThis is how postsecular religiosity has come to relate to power and it has thus turned its will to power upon itself. âThe will to power,â according to Deleuze, âhas its highest level in an intense form, which is neither coveting nor taking, but giving, creating.â More than simply conceptualizing the experience of religion being forced into submission by a dominant secular culture, the subsecular also describes a move away from a spirituality motivated by resentment that depend on established values, towards a spirituality of the future, which is indifferent to the outer boundaries of any hegemonic culture.
The subsecular language of domination and submission draws inspiration from the world of BDSM. The aim is to make clear that the submissive partner is in fact the one controlling the action. One could argue that âsafe wordsâ are not effective as subsecular people exit their spiritual dungeons to go on with their lives in secular societies. This is of course true but the intention is not to demand a safe space but to encourage a mindset of differential affirmation and radical self-expression, which is indifferent to hegemonic systems.
Guest: Jonatan BĂ€ckelie
Audioclips: Larry Harvey, Slavoj Zizek
Music: Jonatan BĂ€ckelie, Jacob E AndradeSubsecular Arts 2.0 is a participatory event taking place at Stora Kines gĂ„rd in Ăstergötland, Sweden. Tickets are available at Biletto. Further info: https://www.facebook.com/events/353564965129680/
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In this episode of The Catacombic Machine, Matt Baker and Preston Price speak with Devin Singhabout his book Divine Currency: The Theological Power of Money in the West, among other things.
Devin Singh is a social theorist and scholar of religion and theology. He is an Assistant Professor of Religionat Dartmouth College. Previously, he was a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Humanities and Lecturer in Religious Studies at Yale University. He received his Ph.D. from Yale, where he was named a Whiting Fellow, Yale's highest recognition for research in the humanities. Singh was also trained in social scientific theory and methods at the University of Chicago (M.A.), theology and divinity at Trinity International University (M.Div.), and religious studies at Pomona College (B.A.).
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In this TCM mini-episode youâll hear a very short talk given by Mary Jane Rubenstein last November as part of the New Materialism, Religion, and Planetary Thinking seminar at AAR in Boston. Your can read more about her here where's there's also links to some great videos.
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In this TCM mini-episode, we hear a short talk given by Devin Singh last November as part of the Race, Coloniality and Philosophy of Religion Unit at AAR in Boston. Devin has recently written a book Divine Currency: The Theological Power of Money in the West. We'll hear more about that in an upcoming episode... Stay tuned.
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In this episode of The Catacombic Machine, Preston Price and Matt Baker speak with Clayton Crockett, Professor and Director of Religious Studies at the University of Arkansas, and author of a number of books, most recently Derrida after the End of Writing: Political Theology and New Materialism. He is a co-editor of the book series âInsurrections: Critical Studies in Religion, Politics, and Cultureâ for Columbia University Press.
Reading: Kathryn Higgins
Vast, glowing vault
with the swarm of
black stars pushing them- selves out and away:
on to a ramâs silicified forehead I brand this image, between the horns, in which,
in the song of the whorls, the marrow of melted heart-oceans swells.
In-
to what
does he not charge?
The world is gone, I must carry you.In Derridaâs late seminar The Beast and the Sovereign, the suggestion is made that ethics begins where the world ends, and conversely, that the end of the world marks the beginning of ethics. To help make this point, Derrida turns to a fragment taken from Paul Celanâs poem, Vast Glowing Vault. The world is gone, I must carry you. By means of repetition, Derrida deploys this fragment to complicate and subvert Heideggerâs theses on world that deprive stone and animal of a world.
As with all poetry, Celan calls us to participation in a world existing somewhere between the semiotic and the explicit, and we enter into this world at the highest level of abstraction and velocity possible. The scale and vector from the outset is strikingly cosmic as we experience a swarm of black stars rushing by. There is a sense of chaos here, yet there is clear direction as well as we plunge almost immediately into a thick atmosphere, slowing our descent, and downward deeper still, into a direct confrontation with the charging sacrificial ram in blood-drenched groves where pious men leap heavenward in their sacred rites. We pause here, asking why is it that the image of slaughter, of purification by means of bloodletting always accompanies the exultant cry of manâs making of the world that is at once his unmaking? But this inquiry only returns to us in the dead-eyed and open-mouthed silence of the slain ram.
We follow the blood, burrowing into the earth, the dark riches of soil pouring in around our bodies, blocking out every thinning ray of of light until at last, we come to rest in the final line of the poem where the world has gone. It is, in this very moment of the worldâs disappearance, in the darkness of mo(u)rning, that you and I, and every other, come into full view. What remains when the world is gone is the face of those we must carry with us. Cast now within a receded and vaulted light, this face is radically changed, altered, transfigured into an infinite series of strange objects passing before us. The face of the other is hence the face of every other, including the face of the earth, over which a shadow now passes.
Crockettâs reading together of Derrida, Malabou, Deleuze, and Barad, among others, creates a singular relationship of differences where several series interact to generate an altogether new intensive series. What might we say of this new identity, or of its dark precursor? Another way of asking this might be: what is the spirit of this text? As with our reading of Celan, were we to push our way past the letter, its technicity, and apocalyptic implications toward the event it harbors, what remains when the world of the text is gone, if not a passion; for life, the earth, its inhabitants, their continuance, and event/ual disappearance.
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In this episode of TCM, Preston Price and Matt Baker speak with Christopher Rodkey, United Church of Christ pastor and religious educator, professor, and author. He is pastor of St. Paul's United Church of Christ in Dallastown, Pennsylvania, and teaches at Penn State York, York College of Pennsylvania, and Lexington Theological Seminary. You can check out his author page on Amazon here.
The Global Center for Advanced Studies is hosting a 3 part live and interactive Seminar on Deleuze: Dismantling Reactive Institutions with Deleuze: Theory and Practice, that will be led by Keith Faulkner. If you enroll by Sunday March 11th and mention "thecatacombicmachine" you can receive a 20% discount on the seminar. For details email . Sign up here. Additional details here.
Intro
In the popular 1984 film The Neverending Story, the protagonist, a young boy of around twelve years old named Bastian is chased by a group of bullies and manages to escape his pursuers by quickly ducking into a bookstore. Inside, he discovers an oversized leather-bound book, into the cover of which is set a large occultish-looking medallion composed of twin interlocking serpents. Bastian seizes this book and later hides himself in an attic where he begins to read aloud. We are transported to a fantastic world, named somewhat unimaginatively âFantasiaâ wherein we encounter a slew of creatures: gnomes, dragons, giant tortoises, characters who are made of rock, and so on; all of whom we soon discover are threatened by an amorphous and terrifying force called the âNothingâ. The Nothing is an abstract concept represented on-screen as a thrashing storm that engulfs entire sections of Fantasia in a black wave of despair that drains life of joy and hope before rendering it meaningless by wiping clear the entire horizon, leaving nothing in its wake. Although this threatening force might be most accurately described as the the possibility of non-existence - and indeed, one New York Times reviewer wrote that the film sounded to him like âThe Pre-Teenager's Guide to Existentialism,â - one may still hear echoes of Nietzscheâs well-known parable in which the madman leaps into the marketplace pronouncing the death of God, asking âwho gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? Are we not straying as through an infinite nothing?â The seriousness of the threat notwithstanding, we should perhaps not worry too long given the title of the film. The story never ends, and in fact, its success spawned a series of painfully unfortunate sequels. And so it is with Christianity.
As the film progresses, Atreyu, Bastianâs co-protagonist approaches the Southern Oracle, colossal twin sphinxes, beyond which he must pass in order to complete his quest. It is perhaps of some interest to note the Sphinx is typically depicted in legend as a guardian figure placed before a threshold or passage. Often found in pairs, they communicate to the uninitiated that beyond lies knowledge forbidden to all but those few deemed worthy, and that those who would dare transgress this limit, do so under the threat of death. And so, in Atreyuâs footsteps we approach the Oracle with a mixture of wonder and terror. With each terrifying step these monstrous figures appear to grow larger before us, their wings stretching out to overtake the sky. With intensity we scan their solemnly closed eyes, for any indication they might open and destroy us with their deathly gaze. Were we to allow our imaginations at this point to wander freely, we might imagine these titanic twin figures as Alpha and Omega, first and final cause, standing in both eternal accord and opposition. Is not their very polarity that which secures the intelligibility of the world? So conceived, these guardians stand as bookends in the never-ending story of Christianity and the West. The passage they guard is thus a book, one that even now opens before us, its opening made possible by its own foreclosure. In a burst of panic, we see the slit of the sphinxes eyes slowly open, and a great light streaming forth from these eyes. For but a brief moment we consider turning to flee, but it is already too late. We find ourselves transfixed, bound by this aporia even as we seek safe passage beyond its limit. Between the intersecting gaze of these beasts, we are now forced to answer their riddle: how does a line become a circle? The answer is in the book. Here is the convergence of identity, difference, and dialectic, the sign of the phoenix, the passage of Gods eternally crucified and resurrected where the death of God appears as merely the descending crest of an oscillating wave-function of the Logos. Hence the closure of the book is at once the possibility of its opening such that the line of history bends ever inward into an infinitely spiraling circuit.
Suggesting that the heart of the Western tradition is indeed a Christian heart, Clayton Crockett in his book on political theology quotes Jean-Luc Nancy who writes, âThe only thing that can be actual is an atheism that contemplates the reality of its Christian originsâ. He then points our attention even further toward this dilemma with the provocative question: âcan Christianity be deconstructed, or is it deconstruction itself, and as such - undeconstructable?â Mary Daly provides language that, although employed in a different context, seems nonetheless appropriate here. âThe wheel of ârenewalâ, she writes, âturns full circle. Those caught in its spokes, broken and ârestored,â re-turn to embrace the very cause of their breakdown.âFor those outside the walls of the Church, the language of Christianity may, as Christopher Rodkey suggests, amount to nothing, and for them this nothingness might rightly be considered a form of non-existence. We recall that in the film, it is the image of the storm that stands in for the Nothing. More malevolent than any mere Nothingness however, the more insidious threat, as Nietzsche knew, is the maelstrom of signs, images, and representations which when taken altogether in the spirit of resentment, brings about Christianityâs own ultimate devaluation.
Growing weary of such navel-gazing, one may be tempted to intervene here, asking âand what of the otherâ? It may certainly be true as Charles Winquist writes, that âepistemic undecidability does not prevent or even inhibit ethical decidability,â but we may still be left reeling from the aforementioned problematic. Indeed, âAre we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there still any up or down? Are we not straying, as through an infinite nothing?â With these questions in mind, should we not simply declare along with Levinas, ethics as first philosophy? Perhaps, yes. Although we may at the same time hear another voice come echoing down from the mountain. âUnhappy do I call all those who have only one choice: either to become evil beasts, or evil beast-tamers. Amongst such would I not build my tabernacle,â so declares Zarathustra. But let us leave it there.
In the ongoing quest for a âreligion without religionâ, we may discover as well a âpolitics beyond politicsâ such that the two crystallize into altogether new formations freed from the allure of reactive forces, where our âyesâ may finally escape the gravitation of ânoâ. Perhaps the alighting of this yes-beyond-no must arrive finally in the language of madmen speaking with tongues of fire. - Montre plus
