Nick Routledge@nick_routledge
Reply to @davidrieff

@davidrieff @nils_gilman David, hi. Surprised to stumble upon a fundamentally secular community of interest and vernacular addressing "the political and temporal dynamism of eschatology" as it relates to "the possibility of a messianic Politics to Come." Nils' "radical philosophical event" comes to mind.

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Nick Routledge@nick_routledge · 29 Aug 2022

5/ In eschatological terms, an extinction tyranny of materialist and religious fetishism urges a summons beyond all cultural or religious containment. Time, then, for a fresh start transcending the co-evolutionary limits of the world's secular and religious imaginaries.

To be sure, modernity famously expels Judaeo-Christian messianism to the margins of thought – by variously labeling it dogma, superstition, fanaticism, false consciousness or ressentiment – but it does so precisely by taking as its own the political and temporal dynamism of eschatology... Yet, at the same time, it is possible to detect what, with apologies to Kant, we might call a newly arisen ‘messianic tone’ within contemporary thought. For Jacques Derrida, to take only the most prominent recent example, it is clear that the messianic represents the last – and perhaps even the best – means of keeping open a relation to an absolute, unforeseeable future in the face of every political, theological or economic attempt to foreclose upon that future: what he calls a ‘messianism without messianism’ becomes the best way of articulating ‘the “yes” to the arrivante(e), the “come” to the future that cannot be anticipated.
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To be sure, modernity famously expels Judaeo-Christian messianism to the margins of thought – by variously labeling it dogma, superstition, fanaticism, false consciousness or ressentiment – but it does so precisely by taking as its own the political and temporal dynamism of eschatology... Yet, at the same time, it is possible to detect what, with apologies to Kant, we might call a newly arisen ‘messianic tone’ within contemporary thought. For Jacques Derrida, to take only the most prominent recent example, it is clear that the messianic represents the last – and perhaps even the best – means of keeping open a relation to an absolute, unforeseeable future in the face of every political, theological or economic attempt to foreclose upon that future: what he calls a ‘messianism without messianism’ becomes the best way of articulating ‘the “yes” to the arrivante(e), the “come” to the future that cannot be anticipated.

What does it mean, then, to speak of ‘a Politics to Come’ today? Where does it come from? And why has it emerged now? Is it – to be crude – a step backwards into premodern theological dogma? Is it – equally crudely – the final nail in the coffin of an exhausted Enlightenment utopianism or communism? Or could this wary messianism – which despite every attempt to assimilate it still remains somehow stubbornly irreducible to the sovereign order of neo-liberal modernity – perhaps represent a way of thinking the theologico-political condition of modernity otherwise? Why has the possibility of a messianic Politics to Come reasserted itself now? Is it a ‘turn’ or a ‘return’? Is it a monstrous anachronism, postmodern kitsch or the logical outworking of modernity’s own theological origins? To what extent might it be the basis of a new political theology – or the sign of an irreducible theological remainder within the political? Arthur Bradley and Paul Fletcher
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What does it mean, then, to speak of ‘a Politics to Come’ today? Where does it come from? And why has it emerged now? Is it – to be crude – a step backwards into premodern theological dogma? Is it – equally crudely – the final nail in the coffin of an exhausted Enlightenment utopianism or communism? Or could this wary messianism – which despite every attempt to assimilate it still remains somehow stubbornly irreducible to the sovereign order of neo-liberal modernity – perhaps represent a way of thinking the theologico-political condition of modernity otherwise? Why has the possibility of a messianic Politics to Come reasserted itself now? Is it a ‘turn’ or a ‘return’? Is it a monstrous anachronism, postmodern kitsch or the logical outworking of modernity’s own theological origins? To what extent might it be the basis of a new political theology – or the sign of an irreducible theological remainder within the political? Arthur Bradley and Paul Fletcher

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Quoted byRT @nick_routledge: @MintPressNews @ChrisLynnHedges True. Where materialist fundamentalism represents but the flip-side of precisely the same coin. What form then, a summons transcending the secular and religious symbiosis of an Extinction Tyranny imagining itself as the highest ground of necessity, probity and significance?Quoted by@MintPressNews @ChrisLynnHedges True. Where materialist fundamentalism represents but the flip-side of precisely the same coin. What form then, a summons transcending the secular and religious symbiosis of an Extinction Tyranny imagining itself as the highest ground of necessity, probity and significance?Quoted byRT @nick_routledge: @MaxJerneck @nils_gilman 1/ Illich, no fool, called the Jesus Event a 'spiritual anarchist', though, as Wittgenstein names it, the limits of our language are the limits of our world. And the limit of our vision, too? Ultimately, the nation state amounts to a functional rationalization of hatred and pain.Quoted by@MaxJerneck @nils_gilman 1/ Illich, no fool, called the Jesus Event a 'spiritual anarchist', though, as Wittgenstein names it, the limits of our language are the limits of our world. And the limit of our vision, too? Ultimately, the nation state amounts to a functional rationalization of hatred and pain.Quoted by@nils_gilman The real fight isn't politics. Rather the imperative to eclipse a puerile Spectacle imagining itself as the highest ground of necessity, probity and significance. We rise not as a political category but as a moral fusion movement obviating a pissing match pointed at a mass grave.