Critique of Political Theology: Ancient

The seminar offers a critique of Political Theology through exploratory and reflexive readings of ancient canonical texts considered as foundational in the traditions of Western philosophy, Judaism, and Christianity. Texts and excerpts from Anaximander, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristotle, the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, or the Renaissance musings of Etienne de La Boetie will be read alongside 20th century thinkers—Carl Schmitt, Pierre Clastres, Cornelius Castoriadis, Jean Pierre Vernant , Michel Foucault, Regina Schwartz, Jan Assmann, Giorgio Agamben, Judith Butler, and Bonnie Honig.

Key questions: How do we – and want does it mean to – read ancient texts in our contemporary world? Can engagement with ancient canons (both political and theological) be both non-anachronistic and critical? Must critique be secular? Or Gnostic? Can the political be separated from the theological? What can formations of ancient theo-political imagination teach us about the prospects and limits of ours?

We will try to show that ancient formations of theopolitical imagination have never been completely eradicated in the course of modern secularization—a concept we will have to use cautiously and critically. We will look for traces of the theopolitical in contemporary political discourse and imagination and examine the possibility whether a “theological unconscious” might still be widely at work today. And as we will proceed from Sophocles and Anaximander to the New Testament, we will try to redraw the line between polytheism or paganism and monotheism in theopolitical terms. In this context, we will examine the following statement—the oneness of God in the ancient texts was no less desired and no more secured than the oneness of the modern state—and explore its premises and consequences.     

This seminar will bring together graduate students from Brown and Columbia universities—sponsored by the Kogut Institute for the Humanities and the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society respectively—in a joint seminar that will run parallel and occasionally together on zoom, with professors Gourgouris and Ophir visiting each other’s classes in situ twice each during the term. Brown students will be welcome to sit as virtual guests at Professor’s Gourgouris’ seminar at Columbia, and Columbia students will be welcome as virtual guests to Professor Ophir’s seminar at Brown.

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