Postsecular History or Figural Messianism?

Abstract

Anyone who reads Postsecular History: Political Theology and the Politics of Time will know that Maxwell Kennel is an exciting scholar to think with! I’m grateful to have been able to spend five years with him at McMaster University. The intellectual liveliness, curiosity, careful close reading, and collegial affection that he brought was a delight, and this book puts all of these gifts on display. There’s obviously far too much to respond to, and given that he first drafted a couple of his chapters as essays in graduate seminars (on Nietzsche and Augustine, and on Melville), I’m going to continue the conversation here by returning to what he rightly identifies as a primary interest of mine: namely,messianic political theology from an apocalyptic, figural perspective. I think Kennel and I agree that a messianic political theology and a postsecular one differ significantly, though both of us aim to trouble periodization when it comes to religion, secularity, and politics. As he suggests in Postsecular History, the prefix “‘post’ better serves to name mediations, entanglements, and figural reconfigurations of the tensions and terms it purports to move beyond.” These latter terms consistently frame his narration of the historiographical project between conflicting normative orders, especially those rooted in narrow identitarian agendas that seek to “possess, instrumentalize and manage’ these terms. Such agendas include the enforcement of binaries between religion and the secular in exclusivist and increasingly violent directions. I worry, however, that these framing considerations—despite all the engaged close readings of a remarkable range of sources—remain overly abstract. “Postsecular,” like “posthistorical,” in the literal Augustinian sense, would suggest that we’d be “out of time,” just as “posthuman” or even worse “transhuman” might suggest that we’re “out of nature” too! Perhaps this is also found in the figurative sense intended in Francis Fukuyama’s provocative The End of History, paired nicely in his title with Nietzsche’s nightmare of the Last Man. This might help prove just how prophetic Fredric Jameson was when he said that “someone said” it’s easier for us now to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. We should rightly be nervous about all this “post” language! It seems we