Critical Theory and Religion (468-0-20)

Instructors

Christine M Helmer
847/491-2616
Kresge Hall #3341
Office Hours: Wed 2-4 pm on zoom

Meeting Info

Crowe 4-130 Rel Studies Sem Rm: Tues 3:30PM - 6:00PM

Overview of class

A current discussion in the humanities concerns "repair" as integral to the "postcritical turn," with repair referring to approaches to culture, religion, and politics that emphasize imagination, creativity, and possibility. While "critique" unmasks the power relations deployed in discourse, the postcritical turn explores ways in which the harm done by the will to power may be alleviated. This seminar turns to the Frankfurt School (Horkheimer and Marcuse, in particular) to begin the work of conceptualizing repair at the outer boundaries of philosophy and religious theory. Other proposals in religious-conceptual and theological categories, as well as in empirical anthropological and sociological terms, are studied in order to explore options past and present for how a transcendent notion of repair is related dialectically to immanence. Topics addressed are a metaphysic of history; epistemology of religious knowledge; Roman Catholic, Protestant and Jewish theologies of the relation between system and deity; current empirical studies of the supernatural; the question of political resistance; and importantly, the pressing issue of climate apocalypse that exacerbates the question of repair. Readings from Felski, Stuelke, Schelling, Barth, Bonhoeffer, Haraway, and Orsi.