STUDIES IN RELIGION AND CULTURE

Frank Burch Brown, Gary L. Ebersole,

and Edith Wyschogrod, Editors
RELIGION
AND VIOLENCE IN A
SECULAR WORLD
TOWARD A NEW
POLITICAL THEOLOGY
EDITED BY
CLAYTON CROCKETT
UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA PRESS
CHARLOTTESVILLE AND LONDON
186
EDITH WYSCHOGROD
19. Jacques Derrida, in Giovanna Borradori, "A Dialogue with Jacques Derrida," in
Philosophy in a Time of Terror, 90. Hereafter cited in text as "Dialogue."
20. Jacques Derrida, Acts of Religion, trans. Gil Anidjar (New York: Routledge,
2002), 70. Hereafter cited in text.
21. Dominique Janicaud, Powers of the Rational: Science, Technology and the Fu-
ture of Thought, trans. Peg Birmingham and Elizabeth Birmingham (Blooming-
ton: Indiana University Press, 1994), 65. Hereafter cited in text. This citation
and an earlier version of a few sentences in this section on Janicaud may appear
in my forthcoming essay "The Warring Logics of Genocide," in John Roth,
ed., Genocide and Human Rights: A Philosophical Guide (New York: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2005).
22. Dominique Janicaud, Rationalities, Historicities, trans. Nina Belmonte (Atlan-
tic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1997), 58. Hereafter cited in text.
23. Ibid., 46. Janicaud offers a more positive assessment of Heidegger as one of
several thinkers who moves in the direction of a minimalist phenomenology.
By developing a "phenomenology of the inapparent/' Heii;legger departs from
a spectator view of truth and instead "inhabits the world." See his "Towards
a Minimalist Phenomenology: The End of Overbidding," 98, http://creighton
.edu/u/otd521/Readings/Janicaud.
24. Friedrich Nietzsche, Human All Too Human, trans. Marion Farber with
Stephen Lehmann (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1984), frag. 251, as
cited in }anicaud, Powers of the Rational, 251.
25. Laurie Williams and Alistair Cockburn, "Agile Software Development: It's
about Feedback and Change," Computer 6, no. 6 (June 2003): 39.
26. Kent Beck and Barry Boehm, "Agility through Discipline: A Debate," Com-
puter 6, no. 6(June 2003): 45.
27. Barry Boehm and Richard Thrner, "Using Risk to Balance Agile and Plan-
Driven Methods," Computer 6, no. 61June 2003): 59.
28. Nietzsche, Human All Too Human, frag. 251, in Janicaud, Powers of the Ratio-
nal, 251.
JEFFREY W. ROBBINS
TERROR AND THE
POSTMODERN CONDITION
TOWARD A RADICAL
POLITICAL THEOLOGY
We do not say that a man who takes no interest in politics is a
man who minds his own businessi we say he has no business
here at all.
-Pericles' funeral oration in Thucydides'
History of the Peloponnesian Wars
To SPEAK of religion in a secular world immediately raises the ques-
tion of politics, for the making of the so-called secular world is the
political consequence of a specific religious history-namely, the
post-Reformation history of the Christian West. And to speak of
religion and politics raises the specter of terrorism, for if nothing
else, the series of events set in motion by the visually stunning top-
pling of the World Trade Center's Twin Towers by the terrorist at-
tacks on September 11, 2001, and the U.S--led military toppling of
the regimes in Afghanistan and Iraq that followed, have sparked a
renewed awareness of the always already blurred boundaries that
exist between the church and the state, between the private and the
public, or between the religious and the political. Indeed, this triad
of religion-secularism-politics is the defining issue of our time. The
great difficulty and chief confusion that we face is the fact that each
is embedded within, and inseparable from, the other. What we need,
therefore, is a public theology that will bring both discipline and
imagination to this discussion, by which I mean a reflexive analy-
sis of the operative ultimate values that animate and entangle this
triad of religion-secularism-politics, and a constructive appraisal of
what might be done, if not to untangle, then at least to redirect the
188 JEFFREY W. ROBBINS
violently creative and destructive energies that emanate from this
source. To borrow a formulation from Jacques Derrida, what we need
is a radical political theology that puts both the prevailing political
order and theological understanding in question for the sake of jus-
tice and a democracy still to come.
1
Postmodernism and Its Shadow
It is largely forgotten that at least one part of the stated context for
Lyotard's The Postmodern Condition was a response
to terrorism. Of course, the terrorism he had in mind when this
report was first published in 1979 was not exclusively defined as vio-
lent acts of religious fanaticism or as a problem endemic to Islamic
fundamentalism. Long before 9/11 and the subsequent U.S.-declared
"War on Terror," long before the ideological rhetoric of the" clash of
civilizations" had replaced the atmospherics of cold-war diplomacy,
before even the Iranian revolution upset and overturned standard
myths of modernization and secularization,
2
Lyotard defined the
twentieth century as a century of terror and envisioned the postmod-
ern condition not only as a report on (the delegitimation of) knowl-
edge but also as an agonistic political strategy.
3
As such, Lyotard
effectively deconstructs-or in his terminology, delegitimates-the
two grand narratives upon which both the totality and fundamen-
tal ambivalence of modern philosophy and politics rest. But to say
that is not quite accurate or fair to Lyotard's own intentions. After
all, The Postmodern Condition was written as a report, not a direc-
tive, and considering the care with which he distinguishes between
the immanent logic of the respective language games we play, the
one should not be confused with the other. Thus, more precisely,
the two grand narratives have delegitimated themselves; they have
been the subject of their own deconstruction. Lyotard merely reports
this already accomplished fact, and thus, without either nostalgia
for the past or utopic dreams for the future, settles in for a realistic
assessment of the conditions of possibility for postmodernity. And
in laying out the conditions for postmodernity, he is driven by a hope
beyond despair that the so-called "incredulity towards metanarra-
tives" will translate as an antidote to terror.
The two grand narratives that Lyotard has in mind pose what he
calls the "modern alternative" upon which modern philosophy and
politics-indeed, as we shall come to see, upon which theology and
religion in the modern world as well-are predicated. The modern
alternative is that "either society forms a functional whole, or it is
TERROR AND THE POSTMODERN CONDITION 189
divided in two."
4
The former sees society as a self-regulating system.
It is an inherently optimistic outlook in which any and all distur-
bances, revolutions, or points of resistance are evenfllally subsumed
within the grand narrative of progress and liberation. The latter is
more critical, as it is inspired by Marx's theory of class struggle. But,
as Lyotard points out, though this latter option originates from Marx's
radical critique of political economy, it also runs the risk of losing its
radicality, of mounting no more than a "token protest," and, in the
end, losing its "theoretical standing" in the name of utopia or hope.
Two poles of modernity, two myths of liberation, consisting of two
modern visions of society wherein the alternative seems clear, but
all-too arbitrary.
5
The problem is that as two poles representing one
stark alternative, the state of knowledge and the modes of legitimi-
zation-or, in other words, truth and power-remain firmly in place.
As Lyotard observes, the very attempts to resolve the alternatives
only reproduce them, and thus "the solution itself is caught within
a type of oppositional thinking that is out of step with the most vital
modes of postmodern knowledge."
6

By now, what Lyotard means by the "modes of postmodern knowl-
edge" have become familiar, even cliche. We have witnessed how
the "Babel-like pluralism
117
of postmodernity contributes to a herme-
neutics of suspicion. We have come to appreciate the narrative
structure of meaning and, been forced to wrestle with
the relativization of truth that this implies. Even science "has it-
self been legitimated as a problem, "
8
by recognizing within its own
paradigmatic shifts the linguistic nature of its enterprise. As any
given discourse's logic rebounds back upon itself, the status of truth
and knowledge is made immanent, and thus questionable. This is
the postmodern condition that Lyotard describes. But jump forward
from its publication in 1979 to the present, and the world seems a
strikingly dissimilar place. From the end of the cold war to the so-
called "return of the religious," after the "end of history" and in the
midst of the "clash of civilizations," and somewhere between the
triumph of global capital and the inevitable "blowback,"lies a world
that is distinctly postmodern by its incongruities. The question is
whether Lyotard's agonistic political strategy still applies, whether.
his concern with the twentieth century as a century of terror still has
meaning for the current twenty-first-century battle over terrorism?
Alternatively, to what extent does the so-called postmodem
condition contribute to terrorism, or at least to the rise of certain
strands of religious fundamentalism out of which at least one sort of
militant religiosity springs? This is the argument made by the Italian
190 JEFFREY W. ROBBINS
hermeneutical philosopher Gianni Vattimo, who sees in fundamen-
talism a reactionary movement against the moral ambiguities and
cultural relativism characteristic of the postmodern age. In Vattimo's
words, fundamentalism is the "shadow" of postmodern pluralism:
We should ask whether the death of the moral-metaphysical God must
necessarily lead us to the rebirth of the religious fundamentalism
and of the ethnic-religious or religious-communitarian fundamental-
ism that are spreading around us. The same question, alpeit slightly
modified, can be raised at the philosophical level, too. It would seem
paradoxical that the effect of the overcoming of metaphysics ... is the
pure and simple legitimation of relativism and its shadow, fundamen-
talism, and communitarianism, its democratic version. Judging from
the many signs, this is precisely what is happening.
9
Consider also the landmark work by Michael Hardt and Antonio
Negri entitled Empire. For Hardt and Negri, the postmodern condi-
tion is only a symptom of a much broader cultural, political, and
economical transformation, a shift to a new world order of Empire.
This new political order of globalization moves away from the tra-
ditional understanding of empire as an extension of nationalism, to-
ward Empire as a postnational, postcolonial, even postimperialistic
concept and form of political intervention. As a theoretical concept,
Empire implies the dissolution, or even better, the displacement of
sovereignty, the emptying of sovereignty from the nation-state to
the borderless and increasingly unregulated market of economic and
cultural e:x:change.
The story of Empire, as told by Hardt and Negri, is a history of
ideas, but also an analysis of the mechanisms of production. And
while this passage to Empire is constitutive, it is neither singular
nor univocal, which is why the symptom of postmodernity gives rise
to, or more precisely, stands together with, the rise of fundamental-
isms. As they write, "Like postmodernist and postcolonialist theo-
ries, fundamentalisms too are a symptom of the passage to Empire."
They continue, "The anti-modern thrust that defines fundamental-
isms might be better understood, then, not as a premodern but as a
postmodern project. The postmodernity of fundamentalism has to be
recognized primarily in its refusal of modernity as a weapon of Euro-
American hegemony."
10
So then, from this analysis, fundamental-
ism, as well as the religious militancy it so often inspires, is linked
together with postmodernityi indeed, it is a distinctly postmodern
project. For Hardt and Negri, as for Vattimo, fundamentalism is the
TERROR AND THE POSTMODERN CONDITION 191
specter haunting the postmodern world and the critical question
that a contemporary philosophy must answer.
But that is not all. For Hardt and Negri, the specter of fundamen-
talism might also be reversed, exposing what Lyotard refers to as
the "oppositional thinking" that is still at work. In the words of
Hardt and Negri: "Simplifying a great deal, one could argue that
postmodernist discourses appeal primarily to the winners in the pro-
cess of globalization and fundamentalist discourses to the losers. In
other words, the current global tendencies toward increased mobil-
ity, indeterminacy, and hybridity are experience by some as a kind
of liberation but by others as an exacerbation of their suffering."
11
Winners and losers, liberation for some and suffering for others-as
Lyotard makes clear and as was referenced above, such oppositional
thinking is "out of step with the most vital modes of postmodern
knowledge." Yet this is the state in which we find ourselves faced
with a world in crisis and conflict, a situation not at all unique to
the postmodern condition. Nevertheless, if Lyotard's initial report
was indeed intended as a response to terror, we must wonder as to its
effectiveness, and as to whether a new mode of discourse and analy-
sis is required. Borrowing the concept from Hardt and Negri, perhaps
a step back is needed from the postmodern condition to that which
is even more constitutive, more originary-namely, the concept of
Empire, which contains within it the twin lines of flight of postmo-
dernity and fundamentalism as two discourses that represent flip
sides of the same coin.
So as not to mistake this as an indictment of Lyotard himself or
the care with which he approaches our present cultural predicament,
we can call it a "differend," which, in the book by the same title,
Lyotard defines as "a case of conflict, between (at least) two par-
ties, that cannot be equitably resolved for lack of a rule of judgment
applicable to both arguments." And he continues with what makes
a differend distinct from a form of litigation: "One side's legitimacy
does not imply the other's lack of legitimacy," and "a universal rule
of judgment between heterogeneous genres is lacking in general."
Therefore, between postmodernist and fundamentalist discourses,
there is a differend, and to step back from the one or the other, or
even from the differend that exists between the two, to make appeal
to the concept of Empire, is not to somehow settle a conflict or right
a wrong. Rather, as Lyotard explains, it is to "bear witness," "to save
the honor of thinking," for "the time has come to philosophize.
1112
There is religion. There is violence. There was a time when neither
was thought to be our future. The time has come that we rethink
192 JEFFREY W. ROBBINS
the relation so as to reengage a truly radical political theory and
theology, as if for the first time.
A Future Beyond Terror
Terrorism is not a form of radical politics. On the contrary, it is fun-
damentally reactionary. Even more, it is a sign of a political break-
down, of a complete loss of hope in the political institutions as the
instruments through which human beings craft their future. This is
what Derrida means when he states that there is no "future" toter-
rorism. As he explains in his dialogue with Giovanna Borradori in
the immediate aftermath of 9/11:
What appears to me unacceptable in the "strategy" ... of the "bin
Laden effect" is not only the cruelty, the disregard for human life,
the disrespect for law, for women, the use of what is worst in techno-
capitalist modernity for the purposes of religious fanaticism. No, it is,
above all, the fact that such actions and such discourse open onto no
future and, in my view, have no future. If we are to put any faith in
the perfectibility of the public space and of the world juridico-political
scene, of the "world" itself, then there is, it seems to me, nothing good
to be hoped for from that quarter.
13
However (and this point must be emphasized), this insight cuts both
ways as an indictment, not only of those who operate outside the
established order of international bodies of sanction, but also against
the very credibility of that sanction itself. In other words, terrorism
is not simply the act of a rogue network of individuals harbored by
rogue states, but also at times official state policy and action. It is
not simply the expression of a particular form of religious fanati-
cism, but also the forces of hegemony and homogeneity upon which
the global economic order is based. This is why, again in Derrida's
words, "One can thus condemn unconditionally, as I do here, the
attack of September 11 without having to ignore the real or alleged
conditions that made it possible." Such a realization is why the
question of "Who is the most terrorist?" is "at once necessary and
destined to remain without any answer."
14
Put otherwise, there is no one form or single, uncontested defini-
tion of terrorism. Indeed, as the late Eqbal Ahmad explained in a
speech given in 1998, one year before his death, "The official ap-
proach to terrorism is rather complicated, but not without charac-
teristics."15 It is complicated due to the fact that "terrorists change.
TERROR AND THE POSTMODERN CONDITION 193
The terrorist of yesterday is the hero of today, and the hero of yes-
terday becomes the terrorist of today." Ahmad cites the two most
notable examples of this complicating fact: First, the Jewish under-
ground in Palestine before and after 1944-up through the 1930s and
early 1940s, this underground movement of Zionists was most often
defined as a terrorist group; after 1944 and the news of the horrors
of the Holocaust had spread, they were described as freedom fight-
ers and given the full support of the Western allies. Second, in 1985,
while hosting the Afghan mujahideen at the White House, then
President Ronald Reagan referred to this group that would become
the Taliban as freedom fighters. This very same group would later
be targeted for international sanction due to its violation of human
rights, publicly scorned for its subjugation of women, and eventu-
ally overthrown for its alliance and cooperation with the terrorist
network AI Qaeda. In light of these historic reversals in both policy
and sympathy, one could generously offer up the cliche that hind-
sight is 20/20, but, more realistically, we must confess along with
Ahmad that, whether speaking of the past, present, or futu.re, "in
a constantly changing world of images, we have to keep our heads
straight to know what terrorism is and what is not."
So, then, what is terrorism? As Ahmad explains, "Our first job
should be to define the damn thing, name it, give it a description
other than 'moral equivalent of founding fathers' or 'a moral out-
rage to Western civilization."'
16
And with an appeal to Webster's
Collegiate Dictionary, Ahmad offers the following definition, which
he commends for its simplicity and fairness: Terrorism is "the use
of terrorizing methods of governing or resisting a government."
This definition returns us to the earlier point that terrorism cuts
both ways as a form of resistance, protest, and despair on the part
of those who have lost all hope in the various bodies of political
sanction, and, on the other side, as a form of hegemony through the
strong-armed manipulation of the sanction itself. This is also remi-
niscent of the even earlier point from Lyotard regarding the arbitrary
"modern alternative" between the optimistic view of society as a
functional whole or self-regulating system, and its critique. Recall
that for Lyotard, the problem with this pitting of alternatives is that
it provides no genuine alternative to the actual condition of truth
and power. So too with these twin poles of terrorism: whether it
is terrorism as individual acts of violence that oftentimes targets
civilians and that is oftentimes inspired by various strands of reli-
gious militancy, or terrorism as a state-sanctioned means of control
in which civilians as innocent bystanders are made the collateral
194
JEFFREY W. ROBBINS
damage, neither resolves the problem and each generates the other.
For Slavoj Zi.Zek, this represents a perverse irony, and for Derrida, it
is the vicious circle of repression.'?
As for its sources, Ahmad lists numerous motivating and con-
tributing factors, including (I) the need to be heard, (2) feelings of
helplessness, anger, and isolation, (3) the sense of betrayal connected
to the tribal ethic of revenge, (4) the experience of victimhood, and
(5) the absence of a revolutionary ideology. It is this final cause or
source of terrorism that most relates to our present concerns with a
radical political theology, for what our present global crisis demon-
strates is a complete political breakdown on both sides of the ideo-
logical divide.
18
With the apparent triumph of global capital and the
collapse of the communist alternative, viable forms of protest and
political mobilization have been severed from a comprehensive rev-
olutionary ideology. In the words of Ahmad, as this once potent and
feared revolutionary ideology recedes, it gives way to the politically
disconnected, if not disenfranchised, "globalized individual."
At first glance, this situation laid out by Ahmad would be cause
for grave concern, even a certain fatalism or despair. For others,
such as those who follow the logic of Samuel Huntington's "clash
of civilizations" thesis, it is cause for a renewed political realism of
strength and aggression. For Hardt and Negri, however, this crisis
that ultimately reveals itself by the infinitely dispersed "globalized
individual" is the permanent state of Empire and, ironically, is cause
for optimism and hope, for though the "globalized individual" is politi-
cally disconnected, it is increasingly socially, culturally, and especially
economically interconnected and interdependent. Thus, the "global-
ized individual" contains within itself the inherent, radically demo-
cratic, potential of the multitude. This concept of the multitude is
explored by Hardt and Negri in the closing chapter to Empire:
19
Imperial power can no longer resolve the conflict of social forces
through mediatory schemata that displace the terms of conflict ....
This is the essential novelty of the imperial situation. Empire creates a
greater potential for revolution than did the modern regimes of power
because it presents us, alongside the machine of command, with anal-
ternative: the set of the exploited and the subjugated, a multitude that
is directly opposed to Empire, with no mediation between them.
20
This multitude is the source for radical social transformation, the
means through which Empire, and its integration of the social, po-
litical, and cultural into the global economic order, is turned against
TERROR AND THE POSTMODERN CONDITION 195
itself. It is the socializing of the "globalized individual" as a revolu-
tionary class.
This reactivation of Marx's original vision of the self-destructive
nature and nonsustainability of global capital, renewal of the solidarity
of the international, and reemergence of a revolutionary subjectivity
is thus simultaneously their transformation. This is, therefore, more
than the mindless and by now ineffective effort at actualizing Marx's
utopic vision of classless society. As Negri writes in an earlier work
on Marx's Grundrisse, this is a reactivation of "Marx beyond Marx":
"Beyond the disfiguration of Marxism operated by Marxists ... Marx-
ism shows us Marx as the author of the old competitive capitalism,
incapable of coping with the social capitalism of the present age. I
hate this portrayal as much as I hate the mummification."
21
This is
a "blowback" of a different sort than that examined by Chalmers
Johnson as it moves beyond the logic of retaliation, beyond the web
of oppositional thinking in which we seem inextricably caught and
more and more entangled, to a truly radical political philosophy that
goes to the heart of postmodern subjectivity as constituted.by the
imminent crisis of Empire.
22
Thus, not the inevitable blowback in the
form of terrorism as a form of opposition, nor the state-sanctioned
military retaliation (let alone the newly advanced policy of preemp-
tion), but a form of subversion that goes all the way down to the
sense of displacement, disconnectedness, and the consequent apathy
that allows theprevailing order to remain unquestioned.
Hardt and Negri provide a compelling vision. But in order for the
mistakes of the past not to be repeated, a correlative radical political
theology is still needed. For if the modern history of secularization
has taught us anything, it is that we are never entirely rid of religion,
and that the return of religion, whether for good or evil, remains a
potent vehicle of political mobilization and, correlatively, a poten-
tial source of continued violence and aggression.
Radical Political Theology
There is no truly radical political theology. On the contrary, radical
theology, either wittingly or unwittingly, oftentimes serves to but-
tress an inherent political conservatism, whereas radical political
theory and left-leaning political movements and organizations have
consistendy failed to appreciate the truly revolutionary potential of
religion as a mobilizing and motivating force. When speaking of radi-
cal theology, I have in mind a specific trajectory of late-twentieth-
century Anglo-American theological thought that takes its lead
196 JEFFREY W. ROBBINS
from the methodological reconfiguration of theology that was ac-
complished by the earlier "crisis" theologians, such as Dietrich
Bonhoeffer, Rudolf Bultmann, and Paul Tillich. As the Anglican
Bishop John Robinson so eloquently summarized the challenge these
Protestant thinkers posed to traditional Christian theology in his
best-selling book from 1963, Honest to God, in order for Christianity
to be relevant and credible in the modern, scientific age, it must strip
itself of religion (Bonhoeffer's "religionless Christianity"), mythol-
ogy (Bultmann's method of demythologizing), and supernaturalism
(Tillich's notion of God as the "ground of being").
23
In its American
variant, this trajectory came to expression in the radical death-of-
God movement in which the leading voices included Thomas J. J.
Altizer, William Hamilton, and Gabriel Vahanian. One effect of these
radical, death-of-God theologies was the creation of the seemingly
oxymoronic movement within American philosophical theology
called "secular theology," in which a certain strand of philosophical
theology sought to sever its ties from its traditional bearings in the
church and generate an alternative language of faith as desire.
24
This
marks the onset of postmodern theology as various figures such as
Carl Raschke, Mark C. Taylor, and Charles Winquist incorporated
a deconstructive analysis into their respective theological projects,
thereby radicalizing the earlier theology of crisis by questioning the
very conditions of possibility for theological thinking and extending
the radical death-of-God theologies by announcing the impossibility
of classical theology.
25
While the interests of the radical and postmodern theologians
were characteristically broad and far-ranging, moving seamlessly
from philosophy and theology to literature, psychoanalytic theory,
art, and architecture, the political was marked by its absence. This
lack of interest in, and disengagement from, political theory and
analysis by the radical and postmodern theologians is perhaps most
emblematic when it concerns its treatment and understanding of
Marx. Almost without exception, Marx is conflated with Nietzsche
and Freud as an "evangelist of suspicion" and commended for his
contribution to the hermeneutics of suspicion,
26
whereas Marx's
more programmatic efforts are given little to no attention at all.
My point here is not that radical theology must somehow become
more Marxist in order to engage the political, but rather that even
an overtly political thinker such as Marx is treated in a characteristi-
cally apolitical fashion.
The apolitical nature of radical theology is one thing, but its
essential conservatism is something else. The argument concerning
TERROR AND THE POSTMODERN CONDITION
197
the conservatism of radical theology has been made by Nick Brown
in his observation of the British theological scene. Brown argues
that there is an underlying commitment to inherently conservative
political principles that animates much of the radical theological
project. Indeed, there is a curious connection in "how a number of
radical Christian thinkers, despite [their] commitment to a socialist
reading of the Christian faith, nevertheless demonstrate an interest
and indeed faith in concepts which are valued and promoted within
Conservative traditions as much as they are in any other political
philosophy." Most significantly is the shared emphasis that both
radical theology and conservative political philosophy place on
individualism and, correlatively, anti-institutionalism, by pitting
individual freedom against overbearing institutions (whether that
be the church or the state). Also, as Brown observes, "The love of
freedom and the opposition to overbearing institutions brings with
it a call for individual responsibility."
27
With this shared emphasis
on personal responsibility also comes the importance of tradition
and community (if not institutions) in shaping the moral
of the individual. For Brown, this exemplifies a central tension that
he finds expressed by the radical Christian theologian Don Cupitt:
[There is] a permanent tension within Christianity itself between
order and freedom-between, that is, the need in any historical so-
ciety for standard symbols, rituals, and disciplinary structures, and
the clamour of those who will always try to argue that we have now
outgrown the need fro such structures and can escape into pure spiri-
tual freedom. The excitement and dynamism of Conservatism this
century has been generated by a creative tension between these two
principles: our belief on the one hand in individual freedom ... and on
the other hand a commitment to maintaining the institutions which
hold our nation together.
28
So the creative tension is the difference between revolution and
reform, between the radical deconstructive posture of taking one's
thoughts to and beyond the limits of sustainability, and the alter-
native effort at rehabilitation. A truly radical political theology
would be one that puts both the political and the theological order
in question, whereas what passes as so-called radical theology uses
its theological critique in service of a prevailing, even if unseen or
unquestioned, political order.
A similar observation was made years ago by sociologist of religion
Richard Fenn when commenting on the death-of-God theologies of
198 JEFFREY W. ROBBINS
the 1960s. For Fenn, radical theology is a misnomer "because of its
unwitting tendency to sanctify the dominant, if not ruling, values
in American society."
29
This assertion might seem counterintui-
tive at first glance, especially when considering on the one hand the
personal political leanings of most radical theologians, and on the
other hand the personal piety of most Americans. For instance, it
is a safe assumption that the death-of-God theologians that Fenn
was speaking of (for example, Thomas Altizer, William Hamilton,
Gabriel Vahanian, and Harvey Cox) identified themselves with more
liberal, if not revolutionary, political parties. Also, it is safe to say
that their collective triumphant proclamation of the death of God
was a scandal to, rather than the sanctification of, the dominant re-
ligious values of most within American society. But what Fenn was
identifying was a much deeper form of political ambivalence within
the death-of-God movement expressing itself either in the form of a
religious and political moratorium wherein faith, ritual, and organi-
zation are all suspended indefinitely, or even more problematic, by
its unqualified "Yes" to the world as a balance to its "No" to God.
By evacuating God from its religious, moral, political, and cultural
analyses, the death-of-God movement found itself bereft of a critical
lever by which to judge and direct the energies of society.
30
As Lyotard asks in reference to the postmodern condition, "Where,
after the metanarratives, does legitimacy lie?" In many ways, the
death-of-God theologies anticipate postmodernism by their similar
questionings-namely, where legitimacy resides after the death of
God. Or, to borrow from Dostoyevsky, if God is dead, then every-
thing is permissible. But once again, the expressed concerns from
Vattimo that such radical indeterminacy sets the conditions for a
reactionary religiosity in the form of fundamentalism, and from
Hardt and Negri that such a discourse (whether it be in the idiom
of postmodern philosophy or death-of-God theology) immediately
implies winners and losers in the process of globalization, suggest
that at the very least attention must be paid to the consequent poli-
tics that is born out of our respective theoretical reflections.
This is not to discount or diminish the landmark achievement
of the radical death-of-God movement in theology; for indeed, this
was the crucible through which postmodern theology was born.
31
By
establishing the conditions for postmodern theology and liberating
theological thinking from its ecclesiastical restraints, the effects of
this earlier generation of radical theology can be seen in the blos-
soming of the critical cultural theology of Mark C. Taylor and the
alternative philosophy of religion as charted by Philip Goodchild.
TERROR AND THE POSTMODERN CONDITION 199
Both Taylor and Goodchild have employed the radical interrogative
model of theology in order not only to raise and explore explicit
of faith but, more important, to analyze and critique the
operative values of contemporary society. In Taylor's case, especially
in his essay "Politics of Theory," this has led him to ask the impor-
tant questions of whether all theories are theological and whether
every theology is necessarily sacrificial.
32
In Goodchild's case, he
writes that "philosophy of religion has no higher task than to ques-
tion dominant pieties," which is not to say eternal or transcendent
pieties. That is because after what Goodchild refers to as the "mur-
der of God," the dominant piety of capitalism is reduced "from an
eternal to a temporal perspective," and its theo-logic of transcendent
value must be replaced with an immanent critique.
33
Taylor and Goodchild represent an important but incomplete
political directive for radical theology. But, at the same time, the
limitations of radical theology are also apparent when surveying the
desperate need for a meaningful and viable comprehensive revolu-
tionary ideology to counter the unrestrained and increasingly un-
regulated spread of global capital and to direct the energies of oppo-
sition towards a future beyond terror. Further, not only has radical
theology failed to contribute to contemporary political theory, but
also, and perhaps more telling, it has thus far been unable to gener-
ate an alternative piety. As Goodchild states, there is no higher task,
yet the truth of the matter is that radical theology has yet to break
through into the mind of religion as practiced. It remains, in the
most limited sense, an expression of academic theology. As such,
the long-term change it hoped to effect in the very institution of
religion never materialized. Meanwhile, conservative religiosity, in-
creasingly wed together with a conservative political and cultural
agenda, now reigns supreme.
34
The lone possible exception to this problem of the political con-
servatism or ambivalence of radical theology would be the liberation
theologies that swept through the worlds of both Christianity and,
to a lesser extent, Islam in the latter half of the twentieth century.
35
But even liberation theology, which was perhaps the most effective
and wide-ranging recent political and theological intervention, does .
not escape the problem, and does not entirely mesh both a radical
politics with a radical theology. For while effectively integrating a
Marxist critique and programmatic into an already established theo-
logical framework, whether it be Catholic, Protestant, or Islamic, it
successfully fueled protest and targeted discontent, but never went
so far as to put the established theology into question.
36
The results
200
JEFFREY W. ROBBINS
were half-measured reforms that set the stage for a rebound of both
political and theological conservatism, if not fundamentalism.
This rebounding effect can be witnessed today throughout the
southern hemisphere as the beliefs, practices, and even the very
institution(s) itself of Christianity are being transformed by the forces
of globalization and inculturation. This is the argument made by
Philip Jenkins in his widely discussed book The Next Christendom.
For Jenkins, the future of Christianity lies in the southern hemi-
sphere, and this future is quite different from the one predicted by
Western European and American observers. These observers saw in
the various liberation theologies an opportunity as a site of protest,
revolution, and renewal. But the problem was that these movements
were seen through a largely secular cultural lens, with the result that
the influence of the liberation theologians was perhaps exaggerated
while the actual religious and cultural transformation that was tak-
ing place was entirely overlooked. As Jenkins writes:
Some Western Christians have since the 1960s expected that the reli-
gion of their Third World brethren would be fervently liberal, activist,
and even revolutionary, the model represented by liberation theology.
In this view, the new Christianity would chiefly be concerned with
putting down the mighty from their seats, through political action and
armed struggle. All too often, though, these hopes have proved illusory.
Frequently, the liberationist voices emanating from the Third World
proved to derive from clerics trained in Europe and North America,
and their ideas won only limited local appeal. Southern Hemisphere
Christians would not avoid political activism, but they would become
involved strictly on their own terms.
37
As for the actual religious and cultural transformation that is tak-
ing place, Jenkins insists, "We are currently living through one of
the transforming moments in the history of religion worldwide"-
namely, the fact that "the era of Western Christianity has passed
within our lifetimes, and the day of Southern Christianity is dawn-
ing." Furthermore, "A Southernized Christian future should be dis-
tinctly conservative" in the sense that it is "traditionalists, orthodox,
and supernatural." And as Jenkins remarks time and again, "This
would be an ironic reversal of most Western perceptions about the
future of religion."
38
Once again, therefore, there is no radical political theology. What we
have instead is either a radical theology that effectively deconstructs
the theological tradition while remaining ambivalent or essentially
TJ!RROR AND THE POSTMODERN CONDITION 201
conservative in its basic political philosophy, or a radical political
theory of liberation that remains essentially conservative in its basic
theological commitments.
Conclusion
The world in which we live is simultaneously religious and secular.
Politics is not the instrument by which we resolve this apparent
opposition but rather the instrument with which we allow for their
relatively peaceful coexistence. I have pointed to Hardt and Negri's
concept of Empire as a call for a more radical political theory that
moves beneath and beyond the oppositional thinking that, in the
words of Lyotard, "is out of step with the most vital modes of post-
modern knowledge." A radical politics is needed because the current
battle over and with terrorism reveals the vacuity in the prevail-
ing political order, and as thinkers ranging from Ahmad to Zizek
to Derrida seek to demonstrate, only exacerbates the problem by
feeding the twin poles of terrorism at its source. A radical theology
is needed because it both attends to the always changing nature of
the contemporary religious consciousness and directs our thoughts
to the operative assumptions, beliefs, and values that may or may
not be explicitly religious, while most certainly staking a claim to
ultimacy. In other words, radical theology provides a model for the
revitalization of theological thinking without setting the religious
in opposition to the secular, or the theological in opposition to the
political; instead, its theological reflections are set squarely within,
and emerge out of, the concrete fact of the very diversity of religions
that gave rise to the politics of secularity in the first place. As the
postmodern theologian Mark C. Taylor tells us in About Religion,
"Religion is most interesting where it is least obvious."
39
If such is
the case, then a radical political theology that seeks to join together
the political with the theological, or the secular with the religious,
holds promise not only for great interest but, even more, for great
importance.
Notes
1. Indeed, for Derrida, "justice is deconstruction," and as such, it is not decon-
structible. See Deconstruction and the Possibility of Justice, ed. Drucilla
Cornell, David Carlson, and Michael Rosenfield (New York: Routledge, 1993),
14-15. For a discussion of Derrida's notion of justice and a democracy still to
come, see John Caputo, "Without Sovereignty, Without Being: Unconditional-
ity, the Coming of God and Derrida's Democracy to Come," Journal for Cul-
tural and Religious Theory 4, no. 3 (August 2003): 9-26.
202
JEFFREY W. ROBBINS
2. For instance, see Tariq Ali, who writes of the Iranian Revolution, "This was a
revolt against History, against the Enlightenment, 'Euromania,' 'Westoxifica-
tion' -against Progress. It was a postmodem Revolution before postmodernism
had grown fashionable." See The Clash of Civilizations: Crusades, fihads and
Modernity (New York: Verso, 2002), 131. See also Michael Hardt and Antonio
Negri, Empire (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000): "Insofar as the
Iranian revolution was a powerful rejection of the world market, we might
think of it as the first postmodern revolution" (149).
3. AB Lyotard writes in the closing paragraph of the appendix, "The nineteenth
and twentieth centuries have given us as much terror as we can take. We have
paid a high enough price for the nostalgia of the whole and the one, for the
reconciliation of the concept and the sensible, of the transparent and the com-
municable experience. Under the general demand for slackening and for ap-
peasement, we can hear the mutterings of the desire for a return to terror,
for the realization of the fantasy to seize reality. The answer is: Let us wage
war on totality; let us be witnesses to the unpresentable; let us activate the
differences and save the honor of the name." See Lyotard, The
Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, trans. Geoff Bennington and
Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993), 81-82.
4. Ibid., 11.
5. AB Lyotard writes, "The alternative seems clear: it is a choice between the
homogeneity and intrinsic duality of the social, between functional and critical
knowledge. But the decision seems difficult, or arbitrary" (ibid., 13).
6. Ibid., 14.
7. This is a phrase borrowed from the Italian hermeneutic philosopher Gianni
Vattimo, who uses it to describe what Lyotard means by the postmodern
condition. See Vattimo, After Christianity, trans. Luca D'lsanto (New York:
Columbia University Press, 2002).
8. Lyotard, Postmodem Condition, 27.
9. Vattimo, After Christianity, 19.
10. Hardt and Negri, Empire, 147, 149.
11. Ibid., 150.
12. Lyotard, The Differend: Phrases in Dispute, trans. Georges Van
Den Abbeele (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988), xi, xii, xiii.
13. Philosophy in a Time of Terror: Dialogues with fiirgen Habermas and facques
Derrida, ed. Giovanna Borradori (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003),
113.
14. Ibid., 107.
15. Eqbal Ahmad, "Straight Talk on Terrorism,'' delivered at the University of
Colorado at Boulder on October 12, 1998. This speech was later published in
Monthly Review (January 2002) and included as a part of a published collection
of Ahmad's writings entitled Terrorism: Theirs and Ours (New York: Seven
Stories Press, 2001). Edward Said has described Ahmad as "one of the most
brilliant and unusual political thinkers and activists of the last 35 years" and as
"perhaps the shrewdest and most original anti-imperialist analyst of the post-
war world, especially in the dynamics between the West and the post-colonial
states of Asia and Africa" (Al-Ahram Weekly, May 9, 1999).
16. In other words, polemics have no place here. As Ahmad writes, "The official
approach to terrorism is a posture of inconsistency, one which evades defini-
tion. I have examined at least twenty official documents on terrorism. Not one
offers a definition. All of them explain it polemically in order to arouse our
emotions, rather than exercise our intelligence" (ibid.).
17. This perverse irony has been well chronicled by Slavoj Zi.Zek in his recent turn
to religion. As he writes in The Puppet and the Dwarf, "And is it not a fact
that ... liberal warriors are so eager to fight antidemocratic fundamentalism
TERROR AND THE POSTMODERN CONDITION 203
that they will end up flinging away freedom and democracy themselves, if only
they can fight terror? They have such a passion for proving that non-Christian
fundamentalism is the main threat to freedom that they are ready to fall back
on the position that we have to limit our freedom here and now, in our alleg-
edly Christian societies. If the 'terrorists' are ready to wreck this world for love
of the other, our warriors on terror are ready to wreck their own democratic
world out of hatred for the Muslim other. [They] love human dignity so much
that they are ready to legalize torture-the ultimate degradation of human dig-
nity-to defend it." See Zi.Zek, The Puppet and the Dwarf: The Perverse Core
of Christianity (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2003), 37.
Derrida makes a similar point: "It cannot be said that humanity is defense-
less against the threat of this evil [of terrorism]. But we must recognize that de-
fenses and all the forms of what is called, with two equally problematic words,
the 'war on terrorism' work to regenerate, in the short or long term, the causes
of the evil they claim to eradicate" (Philosophy in a Time of Terror, 100).
18. In reference to this lack of a meaningful revolutionary ideology, Ahmad ex-
poses the political bankruptcy of the first form of terrorism-that is, individual
acts of violence as an expression of protest, resistance, and despair-by offering
the following: "You do not solve social problems by individual acts of violence.
Social problems require social and political mobilization, and thus wars of lib-
eration are to be distinguished from terrorist organizations. The revolutionar-
ies didn't reject violence, but they rejected terror as a viable tactic of revolu-
tion." As for the political bankruptcy of the second form of terrorism-that is,
state terrorism--one could cite any number of examples from the buildup to
the U.S.-led war in Iraq wherein international law was either manipulated or
willfully disregarded, not the least of which was the now discredited primary
justification for the invasion of a sovereign nation based on the case of Saddam
Hussein's supposed possession of weapons of mass destruction.
19. This final chapter from Empire provides the skeleton for Hardt and Negri's
follow-up work in which they turn their analysis from the constitutive base of
Empire to the revolutionary potential of the Multitude. See Michael Hardt and
Antonio Negri, Multitude (New York: Penguin, 2004).
20. Hardt and Negri, Empire, 393.
21. Antonio Negri, Marx Beyond Marx: Lessons on the Grundrisse, trans. Harry
Cleaver, Michael Ryan, and Maurizio Viano (South Hadley, MA: Bergin &.
Garvey, 1984), xv.
22. See Chalmers Johnson, Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American
Empire (New York: Henry Holt, 2000).
23. John Robinson, Honest to God (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1972).
24. See Charles E. Winquist, Desiring Theology (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1995).
25. For instance, see Mark C. Taylor, About Religion: Economies of Faith in Vir-
tual Culture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), 79.
26. Winquist, Desiring Theology, 28-30. See also Winquist, The Surface of the
Deep (Aurora, CO: Davies Group, 2003), 119-21.
27. Nick Brown, "The Conservatism of Radical Theology,'' Political Theology 4,
no. !(November 2002): 83, 87.
28. Ibid., 87-88.
29. Richard Penn, "The Death of God: An Analysis of Ideological Crisis," Review
of Religious Research 9, no. 3 (Spring 1968): 179.
30. Charles Long makes a similar point: "[Death-of-God theologians] have no par-
ticular touchstone, no specific understanding of any reality as ultimate from
which to launch a truly radical attack on these issues [of racial injustice, civil
rights, etc.]. They suffer from a linguistic confusion-an inability to assign the
proper words to reality. They are like that religious figure, the trickster, who
204 TEFFREY W. ROBBINS
has the power to create but no sense of what or how to create. And thus their
works burst above and around us as the ephemeral balloons that they are." See
Significations: Signs, Symbols and Images in the Interpretation of Religion
!Aurora, CO: Davies Group, 19951, 149.
31. See Teffrey W. Robbins, "Becoming Theological," Aquinas 120051, and Clayton
Crockett, "The Double Helix," in The Hermeneutical Thrn of Phenomenology
!Toronto: Hermeneutics Press, 2005).
32. Taylor, About Religion, 78. For Taylor's more extended analysis of the current
political economy, see Confidence Games: Money and Markets in a World
without Redemption !Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004).
33. Philip Goodchild, Capitalism and Religion: The Price of Piety !London: Rout-
ledge, 20021, 2-5.
34. Another way to put this concern, as suggested by the moral philosopher Teffrey
Stout, would be to critique contemporary theology for its self-marginalization
or isolation, with the result being that in the midst of the "return of religion,"
the public is utterly lacking in a meaningful theological understanding. As
Stout writes, "Academic theology seems to have lost its voice, its ability to
command attention as a distinctive contributor to public discourse in our
culture. Can theology speak persuasively to an educated public without sacri-
ficing its own integrity as a recognizable mode of utterance? ... Theologians
with something distinctive to say are apt to be talking to themselves-or, at
best, to a few other theologians of similar breeding. Can a theologian speak
faithfully for a religious tradition, articulating its ethical and political impli-
cations, without withdrawing to the margins of public discourse, essentially
unheard?" He continues, "The worry that this question imposes an exclusive
choice between two foci of loyalty, that one must turn one's back on tradi-
tion in order to be heard by the educated public at large jand vice versa), has
turned many theologians into methodologists. But preoccupation with method
is like clearing your throat: it can go on for only so long before you lose your
audience. Theologians who dwell too long on matters of method can easily
suffer both kinds of alienation they fear. They become increasingly isolated
from the churches as well as from cultural forums such as the academy and
the leading nonsectarian journals of opinion. This isolation helps explain why
the much-heralded religious resurgence in American culture lacks a theologi-
caljas opposed to a prophetic or evangelical) voice and also why theology has
benefited little from the resurgence. The resurgent piety tends not to be disci-
plined by serious thought, just as academic theology tends not to be nourished
by piety-at least not the kind of piety now enjoying resurgence." See Ethics
after Babel: The Languages of Morals and Theii Discontents !Boston: Beacon
Press, 19881, 163-64.
35. Another model of political theology that might be considered is that of process
theology. Like the radical theology discussed above, process theology has ef-
fectively called into question much of traditional Christian thought, especially
the notion of God's omnipotence and sovereignty. And like liberation theology,
it has incorporated analyses of power and raised questions of justice that have
often times been neglected by the radical theologians. For instance, see Marjorie
Hewitt Suchocki, God-Christ-Church: A Practical Guide to Process Theology
!New York: Crossroad, 19891, especially chaps. 7 and 17; and C. Robert Mesle,
Process Theology: A Basic Introduction jSt. Louis: Chalice Press, 1993), espe-
cially chaps. 3 and 9. My critique of process thought is twofold: First, it still
operates almost exclusively from within a Christian confessional framework
and thus remains questionable as a resource for a public theology and limited
as an analysis of postmodern pluralism. Second, process theologians remain
by and large wedded to the speculative philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead,
with the ironic result of turning his famous image of speculative thought as the
TERROR AND THE POSTMODERN CONDITION
205
"flight of an aeroplane" into, at times at least, a rigid system of Whiteheadian
dogma.
36. For instance, see Alistair Kee, "The Conservatism of Liberation Theology:
Four Questions for Ton Sabrina," Political Theology 1, no. 3jNovember 2000):
30-43. Kee's major criticism of liberation theology is for its failure to subject
theology to its own Marxist criticism; in his words, "I myself have accused
Liberation Theology of not being Marxist enough" (32). The result is that lib-
eration theology has never achieved its promise of becoming a theology of
revolution. Instead, it has been content in providing a theological interpreta-
tion of the world of the poor, when the point, at least from a proper Marxist
perspective, should be to change it. Kee concludes, "Unfortunately Liberation
Theology is an essentially conservative force" (42). For a fuller account of this
critique, see Alistair Kee, Marx and the Failure of Liberation Theology (Phila-
delphia: Trinity Press, 1990).
37. Philip Tenkins, The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 7.
38. Ibid., 1, 3, 8.
39. Taylor, About Religion, I.