Roger Green

BENJAMIN, METHOD, AND WEAK MESSIANISM Walter Benjamin's work remains a touchstone for various academic disciplines. 1 In this essay, I want to focus on his ongoing methodological relevance for religious studies. I stress interdisciplinarity here because Benjamin's work in his own time did not fit well into academic categories. This greatly affected his professional aspirations, as well as his editors' publishing decisions, which kept him in relative obscurity and dire poverty throughout his life. In the twenty-first century, religious studies has become widely interdisciplinary, especially following discussions of a postsecular turn, which gives us an opportunity to reflect on Benjamin in a current context. 1 I am grateful to Sarah Pessin, who invited me-along with Carl Raschke, and Robert Urquhart-to study the "Politico-Theological Fragment" more in-depth, along with graduate students at the university of Denver, following Martin Kavka's visit to campus and his presentation, "

This article argues for an articulation of the “eurochristian worldview” in order to situate neoliberalism as an expression of eurochristian colonialism. It uses an interdisciplinary focus on discourse related to neoliberalism and religion to evidence the necessity for analyses based on world- view. Following the thinking of Indigenous authors and cognitive theory to articulate key distinctions between worldview, culture, and religion, it challenges conventional secularization narratives for being, like neoliberalism, an expression of eurochristian worldview and ongoing colonization.

This paper was presented at a conference put on by The Journal of Cultural and Religious Theory. Its full version is published in the Spring 2019 Special Edition of The Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory, titled "Speaking (or Not Speaking) of God: http://www.jcrt.org/archives/18.2/

These are links to related short pieces that have been published on The New Polis, where I am also the General Editor. The site and forthcoming print journal is an attempt to bring rigorous scholarly writing to more accessible reading environments. Articles are reviewed by multiple editors, though most often by Dr. Carl Raschke and myself. While there are still some assumptions that somehow digital publications don't mean as much on academics' CVs, we're trying to create content that gives lie to that notion. We would rather people have access to and actually read what we write rather than the rather few scholars who might subscribe to a print journal. Sometimes, with longer articles we publish them in serial installments for readability or to encourage current research and reflection. It is the nature of many of our interests to be dealing with emergent and interdisciplinary thinking and to be framing important themes for discursive situations to arise. We have submission and formatting information on the site for those interested.

This essay has been published in electronic form on The New Polis, along with many shorter pieces by Roger Green: http://thenewpolis.com/2018/03/03/like-ghosts-from-an-enchanter-fleeing-denvers-divinatory-poetics-roger-green/ The following is an essay is written as an apparatus for a public talk sponsored by the Denver-based group, Cri. In presenting it, my intention is both to show theoretical work in action and to defend it as a method. I am approaching it from an idea of hermeneutic or interpretive listening as a method for both literary criticism and making art. The intention is to emphasize the creative function that critical theory can play in a processual context. I do this through a meditation on divination as I see it occurring in multiple Denver writers for whom I have composed music over the past several years.

The purpose of this paper is to explore New Religious Movements (NRMs) emergent in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries that use entheogens or psychedelic substances as sacrament.  This means that the use of mind-altering substances performs an important part in theological views and ritual performances for these groups.  While a wide spectrum of theologies exists among these groups, I will argue that the best way of conceptualizing them as NRMs is through transnational impulses, inspired by global economic trade.  This does not mean that features of these groups do not derive from various ancient traditions; it only means that insofar as we recognize them as new, colonizing and emergent globalizing factors allow us to see the motivation to form these communities in response to diasporic and economic conditions.  It does mean I will have to at times in a point-blank way confront existing generalizations about some groups.  This economic analysis requires a combination of theories to provide more than just a materialist critique.  I will further argue that the historical contexts in which such religions arise is often masked by primitivist and perennial rhetorics that ultimately derive from European categories of ‘Religion,’ causing ethical and scholarly problems in studying NRMs.  I begin by discussing psychedelic religions more generally and then develop a more focused critique of ayahuasca religions, ending with some remarks about the transnational spread of them.

This course is the Senior Experience for the English Major, focusing on the production of a capstone project that synthesizes knowledge and skills acquired over the course of the student's undergraduate studies in English, employing critical analysis and reflection on the diversity (of theoretical approaches, textual forms, authorial identities, orientations, audiences) encountered across the wide field of English and textual studies, considering also the history of the field, underlying philosophical tenets, and current and emergent practices. The extended project requires research, close textual analysis, and application of a specific critical or theoretical perspective; it may include, along with the researched academic essay component, other forms of writing, including multi-modal and creative writing.

A long-running undercurrent of Romanticism, imagining itself as inheritor of the
Greco-Roman civilization, merges ancient pastoral aesthetics with modern, alienated nostalgia for a return to nature or to the “pre-political.”  With the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, postcolonialism, and postsecularism the concept of “rights” has taken an increasingly positive turn. Earlier conceptions of “freedom from” increasingly become “freedom to.”  Liberal flourishing, especially since the 1960s, manifests in exorcising the right to transgress various borders and identities. The rhetorics of sustainability and ecocriticism, which often reflect Romantic engagements with “nature,” potentially mask their own entrenchment within the force of history by pining for a wider conception of “the human.”  This is enormously seductive in popular entertainment.  Thus, thinkers like Terence McKenna have advocated an “Archaic Revival” and a return to shamanic culture as anodyne for the trials of globalization.  Fusing with recent research on neuroscience and psychedelics, the figure of the shaman as border-crosser arises as a locus of desire for postsecular and transhuman subjectivities.  This paper attempts to tease out what Lauren Berlant calls “cruel optimism” inherent in the variety of historical narratives – humanistic, Darwinian, and biopolitical – that accompany recent “Western” attempts (in a long line of them) to overcome history itself by focusing on the figure of the Shaman in popular and Anthropological discourses. Based on the work of Michael Taussig and Mina Cheon, my aim is to shed light on the Affective place of the Shaman as it relates to Agamben’s “Archaelology of Glory” in talk of globalization.

.  In this paper, I will argue that the best approach to ayahuasca in international legislation and drug policies that deal with “traditional” uses of plants, should be framed in terms of cognitive liberty in order to account for U.S. hegemony and colonial history affecting the South American region.  Although this may sound extremely “libertarian” at the outset, my rationale is based on the idea that legislation around any traditional or indigenous practices causes more harm than good, even when the legislation is intended to protect certain practices.  While I will be focusing on ayahuasca, there will be implications for, and parallels with, other substances such as the coca leaf as well.  Obviously, the scope of the issue is global, but I my argument frames it here within the particular context and history of U.S. and Latin American relations to emphasize the harmful history of the War on Drugs, which has largely been led by the U.S. since the Nixon administration.  Ignoring the ongoing dominance of the United States in the region is not an option. A particular attention to indigenous and traditional uses is also necessary.

Course Objectives: This course is grounded on the idea that the social construction of " children " is something that changes over time. While we will read a variety of texts considered to be " children's literature, " it will be from the vantage point that such a category is constructed by adults for imagined audiences of both " adults " and " children. " In this section we will particularly explore

(I check at least once every 24 hours during the working week) Office Hours: MW, 9:00am-9:15am and 2:00pm-3:00pm; T, 11:00am-1:30pm Catalog Course Description: In this course, students study diverse texts in literature, film, graphic novels, linguistics, and rhetoric from a critical perspective appropriate to the large field of English studies and aimed at developing critical thinking skills for new reading and writing situations emerging in the twenty-first century. Students learn to analyze forms and uses of language across a variety of media, employing strategies of close textual explication and application of critical perspectives, while exploring the impact of written and visual discourses in shaping ideas, identities, and social values. Required Texts (Other Material on Blackboard). Electronic versions are okay but you need to have a copy at hand in class: