Introduction: Before, around, and beyond the Theologico-Political

Political Theologies: Public Religions in a Post-Secular World

Volumn , Issue , 2006, Pages 1-88

  De Vries, Hent ^a,b  

^a JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY   (United States)

^b UNIVERSITY OF AMSTERDAM   (Netherlands)

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EID: 84895006536     PISSN: None     EISSN: None     Source Type: Book    
DOI: None     Document Type: Editorial

References (235)

1. For the necessary cautions when speaking of "religion," see Tomoko Masuzawa, In Search of Dreamtime: The Quest for the Origin of Religion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993
2. and idem, The Invention of World Religions: Or, How European Universalism Was Preserved in the Language of Pluralism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005
3. See also Etienne Balibar, "Note sur l'origine et les usages du terme 'monothéisme," in Dieu, special issue of Critique, no. 704-5 (2006): 19-45.
4. Hans Joas, Braucht der Mensch Religion? Über Erfahrungen der Selbsttranszendenz (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 2004), 124.
5. The notion is aptly demystified in "Islam, America, and Europe," in The Economist, June 24, 2006.
6. Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe and Jean-Luc Nancy, eds., Le Retrait du politique: Travaux du centre de recherches philosophiques sur le politique (Paris: Galilée, 1983
7. Retreating the Political, ed. Simon Sparks (London: Routledge, 1997).
8. See Hent de Vries, Religion and Violence: Philosophical Reflections from Kant to Derrida (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002).
9. Scott Shane, "Terrorism Has a Global Impact but Is Often Rooted in Local Disputes," in The International Herald Tribune, July 17, 2006.
10. Robert Wright, "Progressive Realism: In Search of a Foreign Policy," in The International Herald Tribune, July 19, 2006. Wright attributes this view to Hans Morgenthau.
11. See my concluding chapter in Hent de Vries, Philosophy and the Turn to Religion (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999).
12. For deterritorialization, see Oliver Roy, Globalized Islam: The Search for the New Ummah (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), 38
13. This book is a revised edition of L'Islam mondialisé (Paris: Seuil, 2002
14. Roy is hardly defending a present-day version of "Orientalism," which he defines as "the prevailing discourse among Islamic intellectuals" and its "mirror vision that still dominates a part of Western Islamic studies," namely, "the perception of Islam and of Muslim societies as one global, timeless cultural system" (Roy, The Failure of Political Islam, trans. Carol Volk [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994], vii
15. On the meaning of Orientalism, see my lemma "Orientalism," in Encyclopedia of Religion, 2d ed., ed. Lindsay Jones (New York: Macmillan, 2005).
16. Roy, Globalized Islam, 39.
17. See the Global Attitudes Project of the Pew Research Center, reported in Le Monde, July 18, 2005, and in "Muslims and Europe: Surprisingly Positive. Pew Finds Changes in Attitudes," in The International Herald Tribune, July 7, 2006
18. See http://pewglobal.org/.
19. The Economist, July 16, 2005. A year after the attack, a video was broadcast by the Qatar-based news channel al-Jazeera in which one of the purported suicide bombers, Shezad Tanweer, announces that "what you have witnessed now is only the beginning," along with separate footage showing Ayman al-Zawahiri, Al Qaeda's number two in command, who thus sought to take credit for the attacks (see The International Herald Tribune, July 7, 2006).
20. Recruitment of volunteers in the targeted country by means of video appeals such as the one referenced in n. 20 may inaugurate a next phase in the logic of terrorism's de- and reterritorialization. See Jessica Stern, "Marketing Jihad: Al Qaeda Changes Its Pitch," in The International Herald Tribune, July 17, 2006
21. Olivier Roy, "The Ideology of Terror," The International Herald Tribune, July 23-24, 2005.
22. Roy, Globalized Islam, 33.
23. Roy, The Failure of Political Islam, ix.
24. The Danish prime minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen was taken to task in the appendix to a recent report by scholars of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at the University of South Denmark for not receiving a delegation that in October 2005 had requested an audition to protest "discriminatory tendencies" and "the abuse of Islam in the name of democracy, freedom of expression, and human rights." This blockage of dialogue, the researchers conclude, constituted "the real offense" in the whole affair, that is to say, "not the fact that the Prophet was insulted, but the fact that the insult was not recognized as such" (see Le Monde, June 6, 2006
25. Olivier Roy, "The Ideology of Terror"
26. See also Roy's "La Communauté virtuelle: L'Internet et la déterritorialisation de l'islam," in Réseaux (Paris: CENT/Hermes Science Publications, 2000).
27. See Roy, Globalized Islam, 42 ff
28. There is an element of autocritique in this comment, if we see it against the background of Roy's pre-9/11 statement that "aside from the Iranian revolution, Islamism has not significantly altered the political landscape of the Middle East. Political Islam does not pass the test of power. In the early 1990s the regimes of 1980 are still in place, and the Gulf War has established American hegemony. A strange Islamic threat indeed, which waged war only against other Muslims (Iran/Iraq) or against the Soviets (Afghanistan) and caused less terrorist damage than the Baader-Meinhof gang, the Red Brigade, the Irish Republican Army, and the Basque separatist ETA, whose small-group actions have been features of the European political landscape longer than hizbullahs and other jihad movements" (The Failure of Political Islam, ix
29. For a discussion of the cultural representation of the RAF, see Thomas Elsaesser, "Antigone Agonistes: Urban Guerilla or Guerilla Urbanism? The RAF, Germany in Autumn and Death Game," in Giving Ground: The Politics of Propinquity, ed. Joan Copjec and Michael Sorkin (London: Verso, 1999).
30. Roy, Globalized Islam, 43.
31. Ibid. Mutatis mutandis, this might hold true for changes in the balance of power within the Middle East itself, where an almost cynical calculation seems to hold sway over ideologicoreligious considerations. See Olivier Roy, "L'Iran fait monter les enchères: La Stratégie de tension que Téhéran organise hors de ses frontières inquiète ses voisins arabes," Le Monde, July 21, 2006.
32. Roy, The Failure of Political Islam, ix.
33. The Economist, June 24, 2006.
34. Marcel Gauchet, Le Désenchantement du monde: Une Histoire politique de la religion (Paris: Gallimard, 1985
35. The Disenchantment of the World: A Political History of Religion, trans. Oscar Burge, with a Foreword by Charles Taylor (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997).
36. Ibid., 44. See also Faisal Devji, Landscapes of the Jihad: Militancy, Morality, Modernity (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005).
37. Roy, Globalized Islam, 49.
38. Oliver Roy, "Get French or Die Trying," The New York Times, November 9, 2005.
39. David Brooks, "Gangsta, in French," The New York Times, November 10, 2005.
40. See The New York Times, January 30, 2006
41. and the "BondyBlog," to be found at www.hebdo.ch/indexBlogs.cfm
42. the corresponding volume edited by L'Hebdo, together with Serge Michel, Bondy Blog: Des journalistes suisses dans le 9-3 (Paris: Seuil, 2006
43. The word blog comes from "weblog," then the pun "we blog." On the "New Social Critique" and "La République des idées," inspired by the work of Pierre Rosanvallon, see the dossier in Le Monde, May 20, 2006, and the volume La Nouvelle Critique sociale (Paris: Seuil and Le Monde, 2006
44. See also David Lepoutre, Coeur de banlieue: Codes, rites et langages (Paris: Odile Jacob, 2001
45. and Loïc Wacquant, Parias Urbains: Ghetto, banlieus, état (Paris: La Découverte: 2006
46. and idem, "Burn Baby Burn, French Style? Roots of the Riots in the French City," an interview to be found on http://sociology.berkeley.-edu/faculty/wacquant/.
47. As I stated earlier, polls find little support for radical Islam: see "Muslims and Europe: Surprisingly Positive. Pew Finds Changes in Attitudes," in The International Herald Tribune, July 7, 2006.
48. Roy, "Get French or Die Trying."
49. See Jean-Marc Manach, "Échos de la guerre sur la blogosphère," in Le Monde, July 29, 2006
50. For Ramzi's blog, see http://ramziblahblah.blogspot.com
51. and Tom Zelter, Jr., "Anne Frank 2006: Web-savvy Youths Record Suffering in Mideast," in The International Herald Tribune, July 25, 2006
52. For the blog and video of Galya Daube, a fifteen-year-old inhabitant of Haifa, see www.snipurl.com/Galya).
53. See Thomas Crampton, "France's Mysterious Embrace of Blogs," in The International Herald Tribune, July 28, 2006
54. See, for a report on the "One Laptop per Child" (OLPC) project, Éric Leser, "À 100 dollars, l'ordinateur des pauvres," in Le Monde 2, June 17, 2006
55. and Nicholas Negroponte, "One Laptop per Child," in The World in 2006, The Economist, 2006.
56. See The Economist, July 29, 2006
57. which leaves no doubt about the answer to this question: "Mobile phones are cheaper, simpler and more reliable than PC's, and market forces-in particular, the combination of pre-paid billing plans and microcredit schemes-are already putting them into the hands of even the world's poorest people. Initiatives to spread PC's in the developing world, in contrast, rely on top-down funding from governments or aid agencies, rather than bottom-up adoption by consumers⋯. There is no question that the PC has democratized computing and unleashed innovation: but it is the mobile phone that now seems most likely to carry the dream of the 'personal computer' to its conclusion." For the history of the personal computer, including its links to countercultural dreams of utopian social engineering in the sixties, see Thierry Bardini, Bootstrapping: Douglas Engelbart, Coevolution, and the Origins of Personal Computing (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000
58. the topic has recently also been taken up by Fred Turner, in From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, The Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006).
59. Marjorie Garber and Rebecca L. Walkowitz, eds., One Nation under God: Religion and American Culture (New York: Routledge, 1999).
60. See Timothy Garton Ash, "New World Disorder," in The Guardian Weekly, July 28-August 3, 2006.
61. Mark Leonard, "The Geopolitics of 2026," in The World in 2006, The Economist, 2006
62. Trouw, May 15, 2006. For the report, see Jos de Haan and Christian van 't Hof, eds., Jaarboek ICT en samenleving: De digitale generatie, published under the auspices of the Sociaal en Cultureel Planbureau and the Rathenau Institute (Amsterdam: Boom, 2006
63. On the general trends in the integration of young migrants, see Dirk Vlasblom, "Het beste van twee werelden: Internationale studie wijst uit dat de meeste jonge immigranten voor integratie kiezen," in NRC Handelsblad, January 8, 2006
64. which reviews a recent study by John W. Berry, Jean S. Phinney, David L. Sam, and Paul Vedder, entitled Immigrant Youth in Transition: Acculturation, Identity, and Adaptation Across National Contexts (Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2006
65. In addition, see the contested report by the Dutch Scientific Council for Government Policy (WRR) entitled Dynamiek is islamitisch activisme: Aanknopingspunten voor democratisering en mensenrechten (The Hague: WRR, Amsterdam University Press, 2006
66. and the report by the Netherlands General Intelligence and Security Service (AIVD) of the Ministry of the Interior, De geweldadige Jihad in Nederland: Actuele trends in de islamitisch-terroristische dreiging (The Hague: Algemene Inlichtingen- en Veiligheidsdienst, 2006).
67. See the front-page article by Howard W. French, "Mob Rule on China's Internet: The Keyboard as Weapon," in The International Herald Tribune, June 1, 2006.
68. Patrick Haenni, L'Islam de marché: L'Autre Révolution conservatrice (Paris: Seuil, 2005), 10.
69. Ibid., 8-12. See also Samantha M. Shapiro, "Ministering to the Upwardly Mobile Muslim," The New York Times Magazine, April 30, 2006
70. See Sonia Kolesnikov-Jessop, "Islamic Banking Seeks New Customers as Wealth Expands," in International Herald Tribune, May 24, 2006.
71. Haenni, L'Islam de marché, 17.
72. Roy, Globalized Islam, 55, 56
73. Of course, one might point to a host of semi-official declarations that have now been assembled, translated, and interpreted. See: Bruce Lawrence, ed., Messages to the World: The Statements of Osama bin Laden (London: Verso, 2005
74. and Gilles Kepel and Jean-Pierre Milelli, eds., Al-Qaida dans le texte: Écrits d'Oussama ben Laden, Abdallah Azzam, Ayman al-Zawahiri et Abou Moussab al-Zarqawi (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2005
75. See also Jason Burke, Al Qaeda: The True Story of Radical Islam (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books, 2003
76. These documents demonstrate a considerable heterodoxy and adaptability in discourse and strategy. In a recent public video statement, broadcast by al-Jazeera on July 27, 2006, Ayman al-Zawahiri, responding to the crisis in Lebanon, appealed to the "disinherited of the world" and the "victims of oppressors" for solidarity with Muslim jihadists. This was the first time Al Qaeda had directly appealed to non-Muslims to join its struggle (see Le Monde, July 29, 2006
77. This rhetoric may reveal that the perceived success of Hezbollah, a Shiite organization sponsored by Iran, may have tripped off mimetic rivalry in the Al Qaeda leadership, who, being Sunnis, consider Shiites to be heretics. Al Qaeda has always found it easier to assert solidarity with Hamas, a Sunni and Muslim Brotherhood organization. Conversely, Hezbollah has always disapproved of Al Qaeda's tactics. To be aware of such distinctions is important, as Roger Cohen insists in "Sacrificing a Democracy While Supporting an Ally," in The International Herald Tribune, July 29-30, 2006
78. "'Everyone understands that a victory for Hezbollah is a victory for world terror,' said Haim Ramon, the Israeli justice minister. Not so: A victory for Hezbollah is a victory for Hezbollah⋯. Trying to turn the problems of the world into a single undifferentiated issues-the war on Islamic terror-does nobody any good." An important source for the Muslim Brotherhood is Oliver Carré, Mystique et politique: Le Coran des islamistes (lecture du Coran par Sayyid Qutb, Frère musulman radical (1906-1966) (Paris: Cerf, 2004
79. Mysticism and Politics: A Critical Reading of Fi Zilal al-Qu'ran by Sayyid Qutb (1906-1966), ed. Reinhard Schulze (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2003
80. For a view taken from everyday life, see Anne Nivat, Islamistes: Comment ils nous voient (Paris: Fayard, 2006).
81. Roy, "The Ideology of Terror."
82. Jessica Stern, "Terrorism: Jihad Is a Global Fad," in The International Herald Tribune, August 2, 2006.
83. See Gabriel Weimann, "Deadly Conversations: Terrorists on the Web," in The International Herald Tribune, July 21, 2006.
84. See Le Monde, August 6, 2005
85. That the very concept of electronic monitoring-as in the cooperation between the American National Security Agency (NSA) and phone companies such as AT&T, Verizon, and BellSouth-is problematic, not just for legal and moral but for logistical or mathematical reasons, is convincingly argued by Jonathan David Farley in "Getting the Terrorists on the Phone: The NSA's Math Problem," in The International Herald Tribune, May 17, 2006
86. See also the informative article "National Security Agency: Les Oreilles de l'Amérique," in Le Monde, June 1, 2006
87. Farley argues that "graph theorists" and "social network analysis specialists" have the greatest difficulty determining the exact factual patterns of communication, with its "central players" and hierarchies, based on a "chart with dots or 'nodes' representing individuals and lines between nodes if one person has called another." An unimportant person in the chain of command may take the most calls; a crucial person in the chain of events may show up only once. The problem is hardly solved by the fact that, in addition to government agencies such as the NSA and CIA, private security companies, such as the Search for International Terrorist Entities (SITE), are either contracted for or volunteer information that they track on jihadist Web sites. See Benjamin Wallace-Wells, "Private Jihad: How Rita Katz Got into the Spying Business," The New Yorker, May 29, 2006
88. For the role of private Internet companies such as Yahoo and its Chinese partner Alibaba.com, Microsoft, Cisco Systems, and Google with regard to sites deemed "obscene" or "politically subversive" by Chinese authorities, see The International Herald Tribune, July 20, 2006
89. and also the special report "China and the Internet: The Party, the People and the Power of Cyber-Talk," in The Economist, April 29, 2006
90. which cites Bill Clinton's insightful comment that China's attempts to curtail Internet access and guide its use are "sort of like trying to nail Jell-O to the wall." China has the second largest group of Internet users after the U.S. and hence constitutes an enormous, growing market, even though it has its own-censored-search engines (such as baidu.com, which exploits approximately 56 percent of the available market). The organization Reporters sans frontiers (Reporters Without Borders) has taken Google to task for indirectly being responsible for the arrest of Internet journalists. Indeed, of the fifty-eight online journalists who, according to some sources, are currently jailed, fifty are in China. The collaboration of Western Internet providers with the Chinese authorities is nothing exceptional. Telecom Italia owns a large portion of the Cuban Internet, and the French company Wanadoo offers broadband services in Tunesia (see Elda Dorren, "Online vrijheid in gevaar," in NRC Handelsblad, June 12, 2006
91. According to Reporters sans frontières (www.rfs.org
92. One might argue that something similar is happening in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in Lebanon. See Steven Erlanger, "How 'Winning' Might Be Defined by Israel and Hezbollah," in The International Herald Tribune, August 3, 2006
93. Erlanger sketches a "battle of perceptions" based upon a dialectic of maximal force with minimal impact and the reverse, which perpetuates itself interminably: "Prime Minister Ehud Olmert wants to ensure that when a cease-fire is finally arranged, Israel is seen as having won a decisive victory over Hezbollah⋯. For Hezbollah, however, victory means simply avoiding defeat." The article, citing a former Israeli negotiator, calls this the "90-10 paradox": "Israel can eliminate 90 percent of Hezbollah's fighting capacity, but Hezbollah can still declare victory and claim to have fought the mighty Israeli Army to a draw." See also Martin van Creveld, "In This War, Too, Victory Is Unlikely," in The International Herald Tribune, August 3, 2006
94. Robert A. Pape, "The Imagined Enemy, and the Real One," in The International Herald Tribune, August 4, 2006
95. "Moderate and secular" Muslim countries have expressed concern about the effects of media images from the conflict in Lebanon on their populations. At an emergency meeting of the fifty-seven-nation Organization of the Islamic Conference in Kuala Lumpur, the president of Indonesia, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, echoing Samuel Huntington's much-decried thesis, was quoted as saying: "This war must stop or it will radicalize the Muslim world, even those of us who are moderate today. From there, it will be just one step away to that ultimate nightmare: a clash of civilizations" (Thomas Fuller, "Terrorism Could Grow, Leaders Say: Muslim Nations Warn of Lebanon Fallout," The International Herald Tribune, August 4, 2006).
96. "Rompre l'escalade," Le Monde, August 5, 2006.
97. Pierre-François Moreau, one of the editors of the critical edition of the Tractatus Theologíco-Politicus, reminds us of this view in his Spinoza: Etat et religion (Paris: ENS Editions, 2005), 41 ff. See also Chantal Jacquet, L'Unité du corps et de l'esprit: Affects, actions et passions chez Spinoza (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2004), chapter 3.
98. Moreau, Spinoza, 46-47.
99. Jacques Derrida, "Above All No Journalists!," in Religion and Media, ed. Hent de Vries and Samuel Weber (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001), 67.
100. Gilles Deleuze, Spinoza: Philosophie pratique (Paris: Minuit, 1981), 60, 61, 46
101. Spinoza: Practical Philosophy, trans. Robert Hurley (San Francisco: City Lights, 1988), 42, 43, and 31
102. For a sobering view, see the reflections of a former correspondent for the Dutch media in Cairo, Beirut, and East Jerusalem: Joris Luyendijk, Het zijn net mensen: Beelden uit het MiddenOosten (Amsterdam: Uitgeverij Podium, 2006).
103. The medieval Iranian "Assassin" sect, founded by Hasan-i-Sabbah, opposed the regime of the Seljuq Turks in Iran. It comprised "a group of devoted and highly trained warriors who targeted high-profile government leaders and commanders and were ready to die in the attempt" (Carole Hillenbrand, "Unholy Aspirations," in The Times Literary Supplement, August 4, 2006
104. See "Zarkaoui: Mort d'un tueur," in Le Monde, June 10, 2006.
105. Jan Assmann, Herrschaft und Heil: Politische Theologie in Altägypten, Israel und Europa (Munich: Carl Hanser, 2000), 15.
106. Ibid., 17. See Godo Lieberg, "Die 'theologia tripertita' in Forschung und Bezeugung," in his Forschung und Bezeugung: Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt, Vol. 1.4, (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1973), 63-115.
107. Ernst H. Kantorowicz, The King's Two Bodies: A Study in Mediaeval Political Theology (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957).
108. Jean-François Courtine, Nature et empire de la loi: Études suaréziennes (Paris: Vrin, 1999
109. cf., for a more general overview, Jean-Claude Eslin, Dieu et le pouvoir: Théologie et politique en Occident (Paris: Seuil, 1999).
110. Pierre-François Moreau, Introduction to Traité théologico-politique, Vol. 3 of Spinoza, Oeuvres (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1999), 3-17
111. See also Jacqueline Lagrée, Spinoza et le d ébat religieux (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2004), 11.
112. Lagrée, Spinoza et le débat religieux, 11.
113. Cf. Luc Foisneau, Hobbes et la toute-puissance de Dieu (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2000).
114. Cf. Gauchet, The Disenchantment of the World. Gauchet studies this process in detail with respect to the genesis, meaning, and fate of the French Declaration of Human Rights in 1789
115. see Marcel Gauchet, La Révolution des droits de l'homme (Paris: Gallimard, 1989).
116. Pierre Manent, Cours familier de philosophie politique (Paris: Gallimard, 2005), chap. 2.
117. Assmann, Herrschaft und Heil, 15.
118. See Marcel Gauchet, "La Dette du sens et les racines de l'État: Politique de la religion primitive" and "Politique et société: La Leçon des sauvages," in idem, La Condition politique (Paris: Gallimard, 2005), 45-89, 91-180.
119. Jean-Luc Nancy, "La Déconstruction du christianisme," in Les Études philosophiques, no. 4 (1998): 503-19
120. "The Deconstruction of Christianity," trans. Simon Sparks, in Religion and Media, ed. Hent de Vries and Samuel Weber, 112-30
121. See also Jean-Luc Nancy, La Déclosion: Décon-struction du christianisme, 1 (Paris: Galilée 2005
122. forthcoming in translation from Fordham University Press. For a useful introduction to Nancy's thought, see B. C. Hutchens, Jean-Luc Nancy and the Future of Philosophy (Chesham: Acumen, 2005).
123. See my "Winke: Divine Topoi in Nancy, Hölderlin, Heidegger," in The Solid Letter: New Readings of Friedrich Hölderlin, ed. Aris Fioretos (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999), 94-120.
124. These are all motifs upon which Derrida touches in his Le toucher-Jean-Luc Nancy (Paris: Galilée, 2000
125. On Touching-Jean-Luc Nancy, trans. Christine Irizarry (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005
126. Nancy's oblique response can be found in Noli me tangere (Paris: Bayard, 2003); forthcoming in translation from Fordham University Press.
127. See Alexandre Dupilet, "Les Deux Corps de M. Chirac: Vivant physiquement mais mourant politiquement, tel est apparu notre président à la télévision," in Le Monde, April 5, 2006
128. See Anselm Haverkamp, "Richard II, Bracton, and the End of Political Theology," Law and Literature 16, no. 3 (Fall 2004): 313-26.
129. Patrick Riley, The General Will Before Rousseau: The Transformation of the Divine into the Civic (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986
130. Dale K. Van Kley, The Religious Origins of the French Revolution: From Calvin to the Civil Constitution, 1560-1791 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996
131. Michael Theunissen, Hegels Lehre vom absoluten Geist als theologisch-politischer Traktat (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1970).
132. Hans Kelsen, "Gott und Staat," in Logos 11 (1922-23): 261-84
133. Heinrich Meier, Das theologisch-politische Problem: Zum Thema von Leo Strauss (Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler, 2003
134. Roberto Esposito, Communitas: Origine et Destin de la communauté (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2000
135. and idem, Catégories de l'impolitique (Paris: Seuil, 2005
136. See also Myriam Revault d'Allonnes, Le Dépérissement de la politique (Paris: Aubier, 1999
137. and idem, Le Pouvoir des commencements: Essai sur l'autorité (Paris: Seuil, 2006).
138. Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Toward a Radical Democratic Politics (London: Verso, 1985).
139. Ernesto Laclau, Emancipation(s) (London: Verso, 1996).
140. Ernesto Laclau, New Reflections on the Revolution of Our Time (London: Verso, 1990
141. idem, with Judith Butler and Slavoj Žižek, Contingency, Hegemony, Universality: Contemporary Dialogues on the Left (London: Verso, 2000).
142. Ernesto Laclau, The Populist Reason (London: Verso, 2005
143. For an overall discussion of Laclau's work, including his responses to his critics, see Simon Critchley and Oliver Marchart, eds., Laclau: A Critical Reader (New York: Routledge, 2004
144. The distinction to which Lefort accords particular value as the "index" of conceptual "ambiguity" is well known from the collective project of Nancy and Lacoue-Labarthe entitled The Retreat of the Political. The opening chapter of Lefort's collection Essais sur le politique, entitled "La Question de la démocratie," was his contribution to this project. It appears in English as "The Question of Democracy," in Claude Lefort, Democracy and Political Theory, trans. David Macey (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1988), 9-20.
145. See The International Herald Tribune, June 30, 2006
146. See also David S. Cloud and Sheryl Gay Stolberg, "White House Offers Plan on Terror Suspects: Bush Draft Steers Clear of Courts-Martial," The International Herald Tribune, July 27, 2006
147. The United Nations Human Rights Committee, in its review of American compliance with the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, requested that the U.S. "immediately shut down any secret detention facilities and grant prompt access by the Red Cross to any person detained in connection with an armed conflict." The official response of the U.S. administration was that "the covenant applied only in the national territory of countries that had signed it and that it did not apply to the U.S. military or its installations abroad, which are governed by other domestic and international laws" (The International Herald Tribune, July 29-30, 2006
148. By the same token, the administration, represented by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales in an appearance before a congressional hearing (and first public statement of policy after the Supreme Court's ruling), urged lawmakers to change the definition of war crimes prohibited by the Geneva Conventions. Asked by senator John McCain whether "evidence obtained through coercion" or "illegal and inhumane treatment" could be admissible as court evidence, Gonzalez, according to news reports, "paused for almost a minute before responding," and then said: "The concern that I would have about such a prohibition is, what does it mean? How do you define it? I think that if we could all reach agreement about the definition of cruel and inhumane and degrading treatment, then perhaps I could give you an answer" (cited in Kate Zernike, "U.S. Official Pushes for Clarity on Handling Terror Suspects," in The International Herald Tribune, August 4, 2006).
149. Judith Butler, Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence (London: Verso, 2004
150. idem, Giving an Account of Oneself (New York: Fordham University Press, 2005).
151. Carl Schmitt, Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty, trans. and introd. George Schwab (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1985
152. Jakob Taubes, Die politische Theologie des Paulus, ed. Aleida and Jan Assmann et al. (Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 1993
153. The Political Theology of Paul, trans. Dana Hollander (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005
154. For a discussion of the latter, see my Religion and Violence, chap. 3, and Joshua Robert Gold, "Jacob Taubes: 'Apocalypse from Below,"' in Telos 134 (Spring 2006): 140-56.
155. Assmann, Herrschaft und Heil, 16.
156. Jean-François Courtine, "Problèmes théologico-politiques," in idem, Nature et empire de la loi, 163-75
157. See also Myriam Revault-d'Allonnes, "Sommes nous vraiment 'déthéologisés'? Carl Schmitt, Hans Blumenberg et la sécularisation des temps modernes," in Les Études philosophiques, no. 1 (2004): 25-37.
158. Carl Schmitt, Politisches Theologie II: Die Legende von der Erledigung jeder politischen Theologie (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1970).
159. Erik Peterson, Der Monotheismus als politisches Problem: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der politischen Theologie im Imperium Romanum (Leipzig: Jakob Hegner, 1935
160. idem, Theologische Traktate (Munich: Kösel, 1951
161. Hans Blumenberg, Die Legitimität der Neuzeit: Erneute Ausgabe (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1988
162. See, for an overview of these debates, Jean-Claude Monod, La Querelle de la sécularisation: Théologie politique et philosophies de l'histoire de Hegel à Blumenberg (Paris: Vrin, 2002).
163. For a different, psychoanalytic perspective, see Kenneth Reinhard, Eric L. Santner, and Slavoj Žižek in their collaborative volume The Neighbor: Three Inquiries in Political Theology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005).
164. More precisely, Enrique Dussel understands his work as a "Filosofía de la Liberacíon." See, for information on his extensive work and collaborative efforts, the Web site http://www.afyl.org
165. See, for an extensive discussion, Peter Scott and William T. Cavanaugh, eds., The Blackwell Companion to Political Theology (Malden: Blackwell, 2004).
166. For the complete English text of Deus caritas est, see http://www.vatican.va/holy-father/benedict-xvi/encyclicals/documents/hf-ben-xvi-enc-20051225-deus-caritas-est-en.html.
167. See Keith Bradsher, "Hong Kong Bishop Condemns China on Tiananmen Anniversary," in The International Herald Tribune, June 5, 2006.
168. Jürgen Habermas and Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Dialektik der Säkularisierung: über Vernunft und Religion, ed. Florian Schuller (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 2005).
169. See, for a general exposition of Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger's intellectual biography and general theological ideas, Aidan Nicols, O.P., The Thought of Benedict XVI: An Introduction to the Theology of Joseph Ratzinger (New York: Burns & Oates, 1988, 2005).
170. Francis Schüssler-Fiorenza, on the intellectual profile of the new pope, in the Harvard Divinity Bulletin 33, no. 2 (Autumn 2005), http://www.hds.harvard.edu/news/bulletin-mag/articles/33-2-fiorenza.html.
171. For a sustained discussion of Habermas's overall position in relation to the question of religion, see my Minimal Theologies: Critiques of Secular Reason in Adorno and Levinas (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005), 1-164
172. See also Joas, Braucht der Mensch Religion?, 122-28.
173. See Nichols, The Thought of Benedict XVI, 284 ff.
174. Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, "Le Pluralisme: Problème posé à l'é glise et à la théologie," in Studia Moralia 24 (1986): 307
175. cited in Nichols, The Thought of Benedict XVI, 287.
176. Cited in Stanley R. Sloan, "All the President's Truths," International Herald Tribune, May 19, 2006.
177. Bruce Lincoln, Holy Terrors: Thinking about Religion after September 11 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003).
178. The emergence of early modern absolutism, as epitomized by Hobbes's Leviathan
179. could likewise be said to capitalize on the "crises in the mediation" between heaven and earth "opened up by Protestantism" (Marcel Gauchet, La Condition historique: Entretiens avec François Azouf et Sylvain Piron [Paris: Gallimard, 2005], 295-96).
180. See also Philip Blond and Adrian Pabst, "The Twisted Religion of Blair and Bush," in The International Herald Tribune, March 11-12, 2006
181. See also Jean-François Colosimo, Dieu est Américain: De la théodémocratie aux états-Unis (Paris: Fayard, 2006
182. and, from a different perspective, Alan Wolfe, The Transformation of American Religion: How We Actually Live Our Faith (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003).
183. For the debate concerning the legacy of Strauss and recent American politics, see Francis Fukuyama, "After Neoconservatism," in The New York Times Magazine, February 19, 2006
184. and, more extensively, his America at the Crossroads: Democracy, Power, and the Neoconservative Legacy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006
185. as well as Anne Norton, Leo Strauss and the Politics of American Empire (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004
186. Heinrich Meier, Leo Strauss and the Theologico-Political Problem (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006
187. I am drawing here on my review of Das theologisch-politische Problem: Zum Thema von Leo Strauss (Stuttgart: Metzler, 2003
188. See Hent de Vries, "In der Gewalt des theologischpolitischen Dilemmas," Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie 52 (2004): 823-29.
189. Leo Strauss, What Is Political Philosophy? and Other Studies (New York: Free Press, 1959), 13
190. cited in Meier, Leo Strauss and the Theologico-Political Problem, xvn.14.
191. Chantal Mouffe, The Return of the Political (London: Verso, 2005
192. The Democratic Paradox (London: Verso, 2000).
193. Jacques Derrida, Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning, and the New International, trans. Peggy Kamuf, introd. Bernd Magnus and Stephen Cullenberg (New York: Routledge, 1994
194. idem, "Faith and Knowledge: The Two Sources of 'Religion' at the Limits of Reason Alone," trans. Samuel Weber, in Religion, ed. Jacques Derrida and Gianni Vattimo (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996), 1-78
195. and idem, Rogues: Two Essays on Reason, trans. Pascale-Anne Brault and Michael Naas (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005).
196. Jacques Derrida, "Autoimmunity: Real and Symbolic Suicides," in Philosophy in a Time of Terror: Dialogues with Jürgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida, ed. Giovanna Borradori (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), 120.
197. Derrida, Rogues, 28.
198. For a sobering overview, see Philippe Sands, Lawless World: Making and Breaking Global Rules (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books, 2005).
199. I am thinking not of U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's laconic "Stuff happens" but of his sophisms relating to the fabricated "evidence" of WMDs (weapons of mass destruction) in Iraq after the invasion: "Simply because you do not have evidence that something exists does not mean that you have evidence that it doesn't exist." And again, "Absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence⋯. There are thing we know that we know. There are known unknowns; that is to say there are things that we now know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we do not know we don't know" (cited in Roger Cohen, "Rumsfeld Is Correct: The Truth Will Get Out," in The International Herald Tribune, June 7, 2006
200. Whether consciously or unconsciously, Rumsfeld seems to have been quoting Carl Sagan, who identifies this as the fallacy of "the appeal to ignorance-the claim that whatever has not been proved false must be true, and vice versa (e.g., There is no compelling evidence that UFOs are not visiting the earth, therefore UFOs exist-and there is intelligent life elsewhere in the Universe⋯). This impatience with ambiguity can be criticized in the phrase: absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" (Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark [New York: Ballantine Books, 1996], 213).
201. Derrida, Rogues, 102.
202. Samuel Weber, Targets of Opportunity: On the Militarization of Thinking (New York: Fordham University Press, 2005
203. Theatricality as Medium (New York: Fordham University Press, 2004).
204. Rafael Sanchez, "Channel-Surfing: Media, Mediumship, and State Authority in the María Lionza Possession Cult (Venezuela)," in Religion and Media, ed. de Vries and Weber, 388-434.
205. Laïcité et République: Rapport de la Commission de réflexion sur l'application du principe de laïcité dans la République remis au Président de la République le 11 décembre 2003, Commission presidée par Bernard Stasi (Paris: La Documentation Française, 2004).
206. The New York Times, December 19, 2003
207. For representative documentation of the whole affair, see: Jean-Michel Helvig, ed., La Laïcité dévoilée: Quinze années de débat en quarante "Rébonds" (Paris: Libération, éditions de l'aube, 2004
208. Pierre Tévanian, Le Voile médiatique: Un Faux Débat: "L'Affaire du foulard islamique" (Paris: Raisons d'agir, 2005
209. Alain Renaut and Alain Touraine, Un Débat sur la laïcité (Paris: Stock, 2005
210. Olivier Roy, La Laïcité face à l'Islam (Paris: Stock, 2005).
211. Michèle Lamont and Eloi Laurent, "France Shows Its True Colors," in The International Herald Tribune, June 6, 2006.
212. For further development of this topic, see Yolande Jansen, Stuck in a Revolving Door: Secularism, Assimilation, and Democratic Pluralism (Amsterdam: Eigen Beheer, 2006).
213. Talal Asad, Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993
214. Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003).
215. David Scott, "The Power of Thinking: An Interview with Talal Asad," in Powers of the Secular Modern: Talal Asad and His Interlocutors, ed. David Scott and Charles Hirschkind (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006), 271.
216. Asad, Formations of the Secular, 23.
217. Scott, "The Power of Thinking," 284.
218. Van Gogh's death was linked to his direction of the short film Submission I, in 2004, authored by Somali-born Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a defender of the "right to offend." A former member of parliament and an outspoken critic of Islam, Hirsi Ali nearly lost her Dutch passport over irregularities in her initial application. The ensuing uproar led to the fall of the Dutch government. A second film, entitled Submission II, whose script Hirsi Ali co-authored with van Gogh shortly before his murder, has been announced for the fall of 2006. Informed sources report that the Dutch government in The Hague has put a crisis team in place well in advance, anticipating new outrage and reprisals. Hirsi Ali has even announced a Submission III, which would feature God-Allah himself. No preparation for that release has been announced, however⋯ See also Ian Buruma, Murder in Amsterdam: The Death of Theo van Gogh and the Limits of Tolerance (New York: Penguin, 2006).
219. Like Hirsi Ali, Job Cohen was singled out for a death threat in the letter stabbed onto van Gogh chest.
220. Time Europe 166, no. 15 (October 10, 2005).
221. On the issue of "Vreemden [Strangers]," Cohen pronounced the Cleveringa lecture at the University of Leiden, in November 2002. For the full text in Dutch, see http://www.amsterdam.nl/gemeente/documenten/toespraken/cohen/inhoud/cleveringa-lezing.
222. A recent government-commissioned report, published in June 2006 by the National Council Against Racial Discrimination, in collaboration with the Anne Frank Foundation and the University of Leiden, found that some 475,000 people (which is almost half of the Netherlands residents of non-Western origin, especially Moroccans, Turks, and descendents from families in the former colonies of the Netherlands Antilles and Surinam) indicated that they suffered from discrimination during job applications, at school, and in verbal and psychic abuse in public transportation, bars, etc. (The International Herald Tribune, June 15, 2006).
223. In the meantime, a host of publications and initiatives indicate a growing awareness of the urgency of these questions in relation to religion. See the special issue of Christendemocratische Verkenningen, the quarterly journal of the scientific bureau of the Christian Democratic Party, Christendemocratisch Appel (CDA), edited by Erik Borgman, Gabriël van den Brink, and Thijs Jansen, Zonder geloof geen democratie (Amsterdam: Boom, 2006
224. Marcel ten Hooven and Theo de Wit, eds., Ongewenste goden: De publieke rol van religie in Nederland (Amsterdam: Sun, 2006
225. Jacques Derrida, Adieu to Emmanuel Levinas, trans. Pascale-Anne Brault and Michael Naas (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999).
226. See the informative introduction by Henri Gouhier to the centenary edition, Henri Bergson, Oeuvres (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1959), xv.
227. Ibid., xvi ; see Henri Bergson, in Bulletin de la Société Française de Philosophie, session of May 2, 1901, 63
228. reprinted in Henri Bergson, Ecrits et paroles; textes reassemblés par R.-M. Mossé-Bastide (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1957-59), 1:158-59.
229. Gouhier, Introduction, in Bergson, Oeuvres, xvi.
230. Ibid., xvi-xvii ; see Bergson, Bulletin de la Société Française de Philosophie, session of May 2, 1901, 63
231. in Ecrits et paroles, 1:158-59.
232. Gouhier, "Introduction," in Bergson, Oeuvres, xxix.
233. Jane Bennett, Thoreau's Nature, 2d ed. (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002
234. and idem, The Enchantment of Modern Life: Attachments, Crossings, and Ethics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001).
235. The term is introduced by the Chairman and CEO of IBM, Samuel Palmisano, in "Multinationals Have Been Superseded," in the Financial Times, June 12, 2006.