Description
Book SynopsisThis volume aims to create--in Walter Benjamin's terms--dialectical images from early Christian texts and the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It blasts the past and the present into one another, creating new constellations of thought, ones connected with tensions and mediated by theory (mediation being what Theodor Adorno adds to Benjamin's concept of the dialectical image). Our ancient images derive from the Gospels, the Apostle Paul, Revelation, Irenaeus, Origen, and Augustine. Our modern images and theories derive from Walter Benjamin, Gilles Deleuze, Alain Badiou, and Judith Butler. Together these images and theories challenge the way we think about gentrification, progress, early Christianity, revolutionary movements, history, the body of Christ, canonicity, language, gender, and bodies, both human and non-human. Eleven international scholars contribute to this volume. These scholars are experts in the fields of Biblical Studies, Early Christian Studies, Philosophy, and Critical Theory.
Table of ContentsPreface: Dialectical Images and Critical Theory Mathew G. Whitlock 1. Introduction: Making Early Christian Texts Strange (Again) Matthew G. Whitlock Part I Walter Benjamin 2. Walter Benjamin and Early Christian Texts Matthew G. Whitlock 3. Reading, Libraries, and Urban Change in the Shadow of Capitalism and Apocalypse: Reading Walter Benjamin and John of Patmos Robert Paul Seesengood, Albright College, Pennsylvania 4. “On the Concept of History”: St. Augustine and Walter Benjamin C.A. Levenson, Idaho State University Part II Gilles Deleuze 5. Gilles Deleuze and Early Christian Texts Matthew G. Whitlock 6. The Deleuzioguattarian Body of Christ without Organs B. H. McLean, University of Toronto 7. The Many Acts of the Apostles: Simulacra and Simulation Matthew G. Whitlock and Philip Tite, University of Washington 8. Face-ing the Nations: Becoming a Majority Empire of God Reterritorialization, Language, and Imperial Racism in Revelation 7:9-17 Sharon Jacob, Pacific School of Religion Part III Alain Badiou 9. Alain Badiou and Early Christian Texts Matthew G. Whitlock 10. Christianity Appears First, As Itself Bruce Worthington, University of Toronto 11. Towards a Vulgar Marxist Reading of Christian Origins Today James Crossley, St Marys University, London 12. Recapitulating the Event: Reading Irenaeus with Badiou Hollis Phelps, Mercer University, Georgia Part IV Judith Butler 13. Judith Butler and Early Christian Texts Matthew G. Whitlock 14. Paul Exposed: Reading Galatians with Judith Butler Valérie Nicolet, Institut protestant de théologie, faculté de Paris 15. Mattering Bodies: Animacy and Justice in Origen’s On First Principles Peter Anthony Mena, University of San Diego
