SEMINAR IN EXPERIMENTAL CRITICAL THEORY (SECT)
UCHRI welcomes you to the fourth annual Seminar in Experimental Critical Theory (SECT):
Cartographies of the Theological-Political
August 6-17, 2007
University of California Humanities Research Institute
On the campus of the University of California, Irvine
CONVENERS:
Charles Hirschkind, UC Berkeley
Saba Mahmood, UC Berkeley
OTHER PARTICIPANTS INCLUDE:
Kirstie McClure, UCLA
Michael Warner, Yale University
Wendy Brown, UC Berkeley
Judith Butler, UC Berkeley
Richard Thompson Ford, Stanford University
Achille Mbembe, Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research, University of Witwatersrand and UC Irvine
Mohammad Fadel, University of Toronto
Gauri Viswanathan, Columbia University
The Seminar in Experimental Critical Theory (SECT) is an intensive two-week summer program offered by the University of California Humanities Research Institute (UCHRI). SECT convenes distinguished instructors with a group of 40-60 faculty, graduate students, independent scholars, and public intellectuals from both the US and the international community. Neither an introductory survey nor an advanced research seminar, SECT functions as a ‘laboratory’ where participants at all levels of experience can study with scholars at the leading edge of creative theoretical thought. The hallmark of SECT is its attention to both ‘pure’ and ‘applied’ modes of contemporary critical theory.
The fourth annual SECT, Cartographies of the Theological-Political, will critically re-think religio-theological strains within disparate traditions of political thought. Debates about liberal governance in the 1980s and 1990s tended to privilege issues of culture and justice. By contrast, more recent scholarship has increasingly turned attention to how the Christian tradition is deeply entwined with the secular moral and political order. The development of secularism has come to be seen as importantly enable and encumbered by the resources of (Christian) theology. SECT IV will investigate the place of the theological within the genealogy of the modern political order, with a particular focus on the significance of this historical legacy for how we think about and respond to contemporary political challenges and concerns.
This exploration of Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment philosophical and political writings will be coupled with an inquiry into different traditions of political thought and practice – traditions that sit at odds with the Christian trajectory of the theological-political currently privileged in discussions about secular modernity. In SECT IV, we will collectively think about how classical conceptions of pluralism, tolerance and freedom of conscience – so central to liberal political rule – might be reconsidered in light of different practices and histories of the theological-political, those embodied within Europe’s own minor traditions as well as those indebted to historical developments outside of European Christianity.
We will ask:
- How might ethics, justice, violence, and responsibility be rethought in light of different trajectories of the theological-political?
- What are the linguistic and hermeneutical assumptions that underlie the theological-political as a constitutive element of the modern political order?
- What are the contours of the ethical and political subject normative to different cartographies of the theological political?
Application fee: $20
Registration fee: $1,750
Note: A limited number of scholarships may be available for full-time registered graduate students. Applications must be submitted on the FASTAPPS system.