Table of Contents

Acknowledgments Introduction: The Freedom of Radical Theology After the Death of God 1. The Parallax of Religion: Theology and Ideology 2. Sovereignty and the Weakness of God 3. Baruch Spinoza and the Potential for a Radical Political Theology 4. Carl Schmitt, Leo Strauss, and the Theo-Political Problem of Liberalism 5. Elements for Radical Democracy: Plasticity, Equality, and Governmentality 6. Law Beyond Law: Agamben, Deleuze, and the Unconscious Event 7. Radical Theology and the Event: St. Paul with Deleuze 8. Plasticity and the Future of Theology: Messianicity and the Deconstruction of Christianity Conclusion: Six Theses on Political Theology Notes Index

Promotional Information

Crockett has a knack for making unexpected and striking comparisons between thinkers who might not otherwise be immediately associated, and the result is an experience of reading and thinking that throws theology and philosophy off the usual rails in exhilarating ways. -- Ward Blanton, University of Glascow Is it possible to detach the politics of modernity from the religion of modernity and, after the exhaustion of every theory of foundation, recognize God as hope? Is it possible not to confuse religion with liberalism while the latter extinguishes itself as the dominant ideology? Can the hope for a radical democracy recognize forms for its realization? And how can hope become a weapon against the continual and ferocious reappearance of conservatism? What does such a revolution of spirit mean when every material condition of freedom is collapsing in the global crisis? Which ethics follows the extinction of the theological-political one? This book opens answers to these questions. None of us can deny searching for the answers to such fundamental problems. With strong arguments, Crockett convinces even me, a committed atheist, that it is necessary to declare it-to come out with it. -- Antonio Negri, coauthor of Empire A fresh voice rises from the fray of political theology! Inhabiting the space blasted open by death-of-God theologies, Crockett proposes an incisive alternative to the hollow secularism pretending to expel religion from politics and to the empty transcendence of the return to orthodoxy. With canny courage, his theory produces game-changing criteria for a radical democracy able--potentially--to see us through the crisis our unsustainable civilization will soon face. -- Catherine Keller, Drew University, author of Face of the Deep: A Theology of Becoming Clayton Crockett, one of the leading lights in the younger generation of radical theologians, applies his considerable theoretical skills and impressive erudition to the political question: what comes after the collapse of secularism, liberalism, and free market euphoria? In a superbly crafted argument, he draws the dark lines of an imminent catastrophe, at once economic, ecological, and political, and imagines the possibility of a radical democracy animated by a radically rethought theology. An urgently needed and important book. -- John D. Caputo, Syracuse University, coauther of After the Death of God

About the Author

Clayton Crockett is associate professor of philosophy and director of religious studies at the University of Central Arkansas. He is the author of Deleuze Beyond Badiou: Ontology, Multiplicity, and Event and Interstices of the Sublime: Theology and Psychoanalytic Theory, and is coeditor of Hegel and the Infinite: Religion, Politics, and the Dialectic.

Reviews

A tour de force that should be required reading for theologians, philosophers, and critical, political and economic theorists alike. -- Brent A. R. Hege Radical Philosophy This is a thoughtful, clearly written and challenging book. Philosophy in Review ...this is a valuable work indeed that deserves a wide hearing in theological circles. -- Daniel Liechty Religion Crockett... introduces his concept of radical political theology through an impressive analysis of its relation to the rise of the Religious Right. This capacity to intertwine the theoretical and the everyday is part of the promise of [his] thought... Political Theology