Nick Routledge@nick_routledge
Reply to @nick_routledge

31/ If something is true, it must be true everywhere. That’s the measure of eco-messianism. Not paradise deferred, but paradise diffused—present everywhere. The garden doesn’t return; it unfolds. On earth as it is in heaven, yes—but also: heaven through earth.

Copy of tweet thread here: ApplesandPeople Over the past few decades in Indian-administered Kashmir, apples have seemingly become the main embodiment of this restive territory’s economic and political identity. From our latest Journal article 'Kashmiri Apples - A Weapon of Resistance' (see link in profile) Image of Kashmiri orchardists The path of global reconciliation and peace necessarily passes directly through the world's most densely militarized zone. Three nuclear powers also vie for it. And, proven, its coincidental history patterning a supreme expression of syncretic planetary consciousness and culture. Image of tweet here: I Broke The sword Molded Sickles Out Of It. - Nund Rishi Quote tweet: The biodiversity story, in Kashmir as elsewhere, intrinsic to the path of peace…
Image description

Original X alt text

Copy of tweet thread here: ApplesandPeople Over the past few decades in Indian-administered Kashmir, apples have seemingly become the main embodiment of this restive territory’s economic and political identity. From our latest Journal article 'Kashmiri Apples - A Weapon of Resistance' (see link in profile) Image of Kashmiri orchardists The path of global reconciliation and peace necessarily passes directly through the world's most densely militarized zone. Three nuclear powers also vie for it. And, proven, its coincidental history patterning a supreme expression of syncretic planetary consciousness and culture. Image of tweet here: I Broke The sword Molded Sickles Out Of It. - Nund Rishi Quote tweet: The biodiversity story, in Kashmir as elsewhere, intrinsic to the path of peace…

Quoted or linked post

Nick Routledge@nick_routledge · 19 Mar 2025

@jasonwblakely 'The Politics to Come', a 2007 anthology, offers a lucid appraisal of political possibilities transcending the hidebound limits of exhausted secular and religious imaginaries and containment. Elsewhere, the Iranian political scientist, Ali Shari’ati, complements the revisioning.

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. - The Politics to Come: Power, Modernity and the Messianic
Image description

Original X alt text

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. - The Politics to Come: Power, Modernity and the Messianic

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? - The Politics to Come: Power, Modernity and the Messianic
Image description

Original X alt text

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? - The Politics to Come: Power, Modernity and the Messianic

[Why the workaround? Twitter only allows 1000-space, alt-texts per image, where Bluesky allows 2000. What's more, the two images here from Glazva and North account for more than 4000 spaces, hence jerry-rigging an a workaround to attach/spread a two-page document in its entirety, over three alt-text images,]
Image description

Original X alt text

[Why the workaround? Twitter only allows 1000-space, alt-texts per image, where Bluesky allows 2000. What's more, the two images here from Glazva and North account for more than 4000 spaces, hence jerry-rigging an a workaround to attach/spread a two-page document in its entirety, over three alt-text images,]

[Why the workaround? Twitter only allows 1000-space, alt-texts per image, where Bluesky allows 2000. What's more, the two images here from Glazva and North account for more than 4000 spaces, hence jerry-rigging an a workaround to attach/spread a two-page document in its entirety, over three alt-text images,]
Image description

Original X alt text

[Why the workaround? Twitter only allows 1000-space, alt-texts per image, where Bluesky allows 2000. What's more, the two images here from Glazva and North account for more than 4000 spaces, hence jerry-rigging an a workaround to attach/spread a two-page document in its entirety, over three alt-text images,]

View this post’s context →