On September 28th, in Petrovac, Montenegro, the Institute of Advanced Studies was honored to present the first Montenegrin translation of Saul Newman’s seminal book Political Theology: A Critical Introduction (1st ed.), translated by Anton Markoč, hosting the author and the translator who presented the book in a lively exchange.
Political Theology aims to explain the persistence of religious concepts and ideas in secular political discourse and institutions, and the ways in which power is legitimized in modernity by appeal to religious imaginary. It pays special attention to political theology in contemporary world order, with its raising populism, authoritarianism, neoliberalism, and religious fundamentalism. The book’s central thesis is that political theology fills the void of religion in modernity and that the aspirations of political theologists, both of the Right and the Left, are a reaction to the “religion of power” that came to occupy the place of the sacred and the transcendent.
An intellectual tour-de-force, Political Theology traces the sensibility of political theology to Mikhail Bakunin and Carl Schmitt and insightfully examines the dialogues between them and between Schmitt and his challengers such as Leo Strauss and Jacob Taubes. Strategies to trace political theology and work a way out of it are surveyed across the thought of authors as diverse as Max Stirner, Thomas Hobbes, Ernest Kantorowicz, Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan, Michel Foucault, Walter Benjamin, Giorgio Agamben, Jacques Ellul, and Ivan Illich.
The exchange between Newman and Markoč revolved around the issues concerning the content of the book and the motivations of the author in writing it and the potential readers in being interested in the theme of political theology. Markoč raised questions about the ideas of the central figures of the book, from Schmitt to Stirner to Benjamin to Agamben, and Newman provided summaries of his main arguments in connection to them in reply but also went beyond the book’s content, providing novel arguments and interpretations from his work-in-progress. The collocutors touched upon the book being a reaction to the current political climate, especially neoliberal capitalism and the rise of national sovereignty. The perception of political theology among the general public was also discussed, with the emphasis on Schmitt’s resurgence in contemporary radical political thought.
The discussion was followed by Q&A, in which the audience raised questions about St. Paul (whose depiction by Guercino features on the cover of the Montenegrin edition of Political Theology), the role of his messianism and the concept of katechon in Schmitt’s thought, the eschatology in capitalism (or the lack of it), the persistence of the discourse of political theology in the Russo-Ukrainian War, as well as the difficulties in translating the ideas of political theory, to which both Newman and Markoč offered their insights.
Politička teologija: kritički uvod is published by the University of Montenegro/the Institute of Advanced Studies.
