Maxwell Kennel

Ontologies of Violence provides a new paradigm for understanding the concept of violence through comparative interpretations of French philosopher Jacques Derrida, philosophical theologians in the Mennonite pacifist tradition, and Grace M. Jantzen’s feminist philosophy of religion. By drawing out and challenging the remarkably similar priorities shared by its three sources, and by challenging the assumption that differences necessarily lead to displacement, Ontologies of Violence provides a critical theory of violence by treating it as a diagnostic concept that implies the violation of value-laden boundaries.

"Kennel’s Ontologies of Violence does not offer a definition that can become the cornerstone of a political vision. Instead, it undoes easy sloganeering and even challenges the headiest of theorizing in order to bring to the fore what is left unsaid when the term ‘violence’ is said." - Guy Lancaster in Marx & Philosophy Review of Books (November 2023)

This book explores how contemporary approaches to the meaning of time and history follow patterns that are simultaneously political and theological. Even after postsecular critiques of Christianity, religion, and secularity, many influential ways of dividing time and history continue to be formed by providential narratives that mediate between experience and expectation in movements from promise to fulfilment. In response to persistent theological influences within ostensibly secular ways of understanding time and history, Postsecular History revisits and revises the concept of periodization by tracing powerful efforts to divide time into past, present, and future, and by critiquing historical partitions between the Reformation and Enlightenment. Developing a postsecular critique of theopolitical periodization in six chapters, Postsecular History questions how relations of possession, novelty, freedom, and instrumentality implied in the prefix ‘post’ are reproduced in postsecular discourses and the field of political theology.

Interview: https://anabaptisthistorians.org/2021/11/25/histories-of-the-postsecular-an-interview-with-maxwell-kennel/

• Maxwell Kennel, “Introduction: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Mennonite Political Theology.”

This special issue of Political Theology collects four exemplary contributions that showcase the interdisciplinary breadth of political theology done by and about Mennonites. Although there are many ways to conceptualize political theology from within established academic disciplines – including Christian political theologies that use theopolitical terms to refine and advance theological terms and ecclesial aims, and self-consciously secular political theologies that analyze powerful confluences of theological and political concepts – my approach to framing this special issue is to suggest that Mennonite Political Theology is at its very best when it is interdisciplinary and pluralistic. The great benefit of political theology is that it can include under its auspices both normative theological projects with constructive aims and critical projects that cast suspicion upon normativity itself, all while allowing scholars to work with the depth of theological and religious concepts without necessarily conforming to predetermined visions of theology or the political.

• Susanna Guenther Loewen, “The Personal is Political: The Politics of Liberation in Mennonite-Feminist Theologies.”

Susanne Guenther Loewen’s essay “The Personal Is Political: The Politics of Liberation in Mennonite-Feminist Theologies” provides the reader with a thorough evaluation and extension of Mennonite-Feminist Theology that demonstrates its political and liberative character. A theologian and pastor on the leading edge of the feminist turn in Mennonite theology, Guenther Loewen follows her dissertation on Dorothee Sölle and nonviolent atonement and builds upon the work of foundational Mennonite feminist theologians like Lydia Neufeld Harder with her unique voice – especially in her forthcoming work on peace theology and sexual violence. In her essay, Guenther Loewen demonstrates how the personal and political comingle at intersections between Mennonite and feminist identities. Drawing from Malinda Berry’s shalom political theology and Doris Janzen Longacre’s theopolitical cookbook and simple living guide, Guenther Loewen shows how traditional women’s work around food and home  has consequences for the pursuit of peace and justice  that patriarchal political theologies pass over.

• Daniel Shank Cruz, “Mennonite Speculative Fiction as Political Theology.”

Daniel Shank Cruz’s essay “Mennonite Speculative Fiction as Political Theology” also cooks up suggestive and experimental readings of queer Mennonite literary works that demonstrate their theopolitical and theapoetic character. Building upon his ground-breaking work in Queering Mennonite Literature: Archives, Activism, and the Search for Community, Cruz’s essay shows religious resonances within speculative fiction, and follows the works of Casey Plett, Sofia Samatar, and Miriam Toews to find acts of resistance that embody Mennonite values like peace and community. Considering Mennonite speculative fiction, in which being ‘in the world but not of the world’ becomes something ‘out of this world,’ Cruz shows how a Mennonite literary ethics is really quite queer and ideally suited for apocalyptic times.

• Russell Johnson, “Building Peace in a Culture War: Christian Witness in a Polarized Society.”

Russell Johnson’s essay “Building Peace in a Culture War” then provides a constructive account of how Mennonite ethics, broadly construed, can contribute to the clear and present need for political depolarization. Gathering insights from his dissertation on communication ethics and nonviolence and addressing the social and cultural conflicts that define American political life, Johnson’s essay treats polarization as a power and principality that calls out for theological remediation. Insisting that dissenting voices be heard rightly, while challenging the persistent resentments that underpin partisan politics, Johnson’s article seeks to prepare the ground for a peace that privileges liberation, justice, and reconciliation.

• Hans Harder, “Between Bourgeois Existence and Violence,” (1979). Trans. Vic Thiessen.

Lastly, we provide a translation of a controversial sermon by the German Mennonite literary figure Johannes (Hans) Harder, titled “Between Bourgeois Existence and Violence.” Translated by Vic Thiessen, and appearing here for the first time in English, Harder’s sermon gives the reader a glimpse into the tensions that Mennonite pacifists sought to address in postwar Germany. Delivered at the funeral of a Mennonite terrorist – Elizabeth von Dyck, a member of the Red Army Faction who was shot dead by police on May 4, 1974 – Harder’s sermon problematically navigates between the poles of apathetic bourgeois class privilege and revolutionary violence. As I point out in my introduction to the sermon, Harder’s work is complicated by his involvement and complicities with the Nazi SS, and his legacy remains a matter of controversy and mystery that is currently being examined by Mennonite scholars who have undertaken a reckoning with historical connections between Mennonites and Nazism.

This article begins with a recapitulation of the author's previous work on philosophy in the Anabaptist and Mennonite traditions, and then provides a reconceptualized vision of the relationship between the two that connects Anabaptism and philosophy without fixing either in place. The core of the essay argues that the complex and contextual mediations between oppositions that characterize Anabaptism (neither Catholic nor Protestant, yet indebted to both) and Mennonite critiques of violence (challenging both passivity and violent action) provide philosophically important resources for moving between and beyond entrenched dichotomies and essentialist distinctions. After three critiques of the Mennonite misrecognition of philosophy, the essay concludes with the suggestion that autobiographical and connective forms of recognition (rather than abstraction or dissociation) provide a way forward for the discourse on Anabaptism and philosophy.

A new road that Mennonites should consider in responding to the problem of technology runs through the philosophy of technology, media studies, and the 'posthumanities. ' The author surveys work by David Wills, Adriana Cavarero, and Thomas Moynihan-scholars who dispute the notion that technological tools are morally neutral and contend that technologies both conceal, and incline us toward, politically saturated and value-laden ends. Concepts discussed include dorsality, spinal catastrophism, uprightness, inclination, and Mennonite ethics. Drawing on J. Lawrence Burkholder's rejection of moderation in favor of the excess of love and ex-Mennonite Grace Jantzen's critique of violence, the author offers an Anabaptist-Mennonite response to Wills, Cavarero, and Moynihan that places the problem of technology close to the problem of violence-and challenges the assumption that humanity stands safely apart from technology.

This essay shows substantial connections between Plato’s dialectical approach in The Republic and Adorno’s 1958 lectures in An Introduction to Dialectics. Although the relationship between Adorno and Aristotle has received some attention, little work has been done either demonstrating or making connections between Plato and Adorno, especially on the topic of the dialectic. This is likely because Adorno himself has little to say about Plato’s dialectic, although he does refer often to Plato’s ideas and forms, and sometimes to his aesthetics. This essay reads against the grain to show how Plato and Adorno conceive of dialectical thinking in strikingly similar ways that run parallel with their discontinuities, and concludes with the suggestion that the figure of chiasmus is well-positioned to push the limits of dialectical thinking.

This study examines one literary expression of the ambiguities of violence in community life through a reading of Patrick Friesen’s The Shunning. By looking to the ways in which the social bonds of community identity are achieved, maintained, and challenged within the ostensibly nonviolent community of Old Colony Russian Mennonites that Friesen’s work portrays, this study focuses on how confluences of community, power, and violence are represented in literary form. Using tools provided by Miranda Joseph’s Against the Romance of Community and Michel Foucault’s critique of Enlightenment blackmail, the following study brings aspects of Mennonite transgressive literature into conversation with critical theory and interprets the portrayal of community discipline in The Shunning within the broader context of the contested relationships between the Enlightenment, Modernity, and postmodernity.

In order to address the politics of temporal regulation and periodization, while considering ways in which competing religious and secular narratives construct contemporary subjectivity, this study compares the quasi-autobiographical narratives of Friedrich Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra and Saint Augustine’s Confessions. Looking beneath the surface differences between these two works, this study draws out surprising affinities and continuities between Zarathustra and the Confessions and compares each work’s vision of time and eternity. By examining Zarathustra’s parable of the gate and its punctuating moment (Augenblick) alongside Augustine’s notion of the distentio animi in Book 11 of the Confessions, this study questions competing Christian and anti-Christian narratives and their use of teleology and providence in the periodization of time, and concludes by contesting these narratives from the standpoint of postsecular critique.

This study explores recently published and collected works of four important voices in the conversation on Mennonite political theology. The article begins with a brief account of the broader discourse of political theology, before critically summarizing the political theologies of A. Harder. After surveying Reimer's vision of the entanglement of ecclesial and public life, Kroeker's messianic political theology, Gingerich Hiebert's genealogy of violence and apocalyptic, and Neufeld Harder's theopolitical challenge of naming, the article concludes by exploring the ways in which the dialogue between Mennonite political theology and feminist critique could be furthered by attending to the work of the late feminist philosopher of religion Grace M. Jantzen.

The radical apocalypticism of the sixteenth century mystic and revolutionary Thomas Müntzer has served as an enduring resource for the political left, from early investigations by Engels and Bloch to the recent works of Alberto Toscano and Wu Ming. In one of his lesser-studied works – the 1947 dissertation Occidental Eschatology – Jewish philosopher Jacob Taubes places Müntzer at a key juncture in the history of eschatology, first by situating him at the end of the Reformation period, and then by connecting his revolutionary apocalypticism to the critiques of Hegel levelled by Marx and Kierkegaard. Like Müntzer for the political left, Taubes remains an important but underappreciated figure in the discourse on political theology, and he is usually included in the tradition that reads Saint Paul philosophically. However, Taubes' work in Occidental Eschatology has not been given scholarly attention comparable to his lectures on Paul. In order to address this gap in the literature, this study aims to give a new perspective on Taubes as a philosopher of history, first by showing potentially surprising connections between Taubes' Occidental Eschatology and the historiography of Anabaptism, and second by making suggestions about how Taubes' distinctively emancipatory philosophy of history might contribute to thinking about time and history within contemporary political theology.

Beginning from the entangled categories of the human and the technological, this exploration surveys thinkers who concern themselves with problems of technology and time, seeking to examine how the confluence of technology and time regulate and condition the formation of subjectivity. Drawing on Bernard Stiegler's work in Technics and Time, Augustine's Confessions, and the myth of Prometheus, the following draws out the technological character of time and makes suggestions about how to reconceptualize these different temporalizing technologies after the critique of capitalism.

This study bridges secular philosophical perspectives and Christian theological perspectives by showing how the critique of metaphysical violence is common to certain representatives of both parties. By examining specifically metaphysical, and therefore epistemologically significant, ways of critiquing violence, this study seeks to show that, just as violence cuts across the sacred-secular divide and spans the distance between abstraction and action, so too does the critique of violence.

Cette étude rapproche les perspectives philosophiques laïques et les perspectives théologiques chrétiennes en montrant comment la critique de la violence métaphysique est commune à certains représentants des deux parties. En examinant spécifiquement les méthodes métaphysiques et, par conséquent, épistémologiquement significatives permettant de critiquer la violence, cette étude cherche à montrer que, tout comme la violence traverse le fossé sacré-laïque et couvre la distance entre l'abstraction et l'action, il en va de même de la critique de la violence.

This study traces the history of the relationship between Mennonite theology and philosophy from its early stages in the work of Ralph C. Kauffman and Robert Friedmann, through the differing attitudes toward theological resourcing of philosophy in the works of John Howard Yoder and A. James Reimer, to recent efforts to bring Yoder into conversation with contemporary philosophers. The essay first addresses the supposed contradictions between Mennonite identity and philosophy, and then—drawing on the work of Lawrence Burkholder, Chris Huebner and Peter Blum—it explores the ways in which these contradictions are both resolved and sustained in the conjugation of Mennonite peace theology and philosophy that constitutes pacifist epistemology and its extension to ontology in the debate with Radical Orthodoxy. The study concludes with an examination of pacifist epistemology and the debate between Radical Reformation thinking and Radical Orthodoxy.

This study provides a particular historical reading of the postsecular moment. In an effort to problematize and historicize the claims of both the secular and the postsecular, this study draws a connecting line between a contemporary postsecular thinker (Daniel Colucciello Barber), and a group of religious dissidents in the seventeenth century Dutch Republic (the Collegiants). In order to demonstrate that the concept of the secular is value-laden and historically situated, the following will explore the ways in which an historical group shares many epistemological characteristics with present postsecular discourse.

This investigation examines the ontological concept of identity through the perspectives of several contemporary European philosophers, specifically attending to the critique of binary thinking contained within their critical conceptions of identity. Although poststructuralist discourse has long rejected simplistic either/or thinking about identity, few sustained attempts have been made to understand exactly what role distinctions between-two play in the process of individuation. In response to this need, the following study reviews several existing perspectives on ontological identity (Ricoeur, Düttmann, Adorno, Kolozova, Zupančič, and Rosset), and provides its own, all in order to suggest that the individuation of identities is radically dependent upon the Two.

Internal Family Systems (IFS) is a psychotherapy modality that combines elements of systems theory with an experiential approach that rests on distinctions between Self and parts of self. Unlike more cognitive approaches such as Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) and psychodynamic 'talk' therapies, IFS challenges traditional divisions between mind and body that have endured in both the treatment of psychological trauma and in the study of religion. This essay provides a summary of IFS as it is conceptualized by Richard Schwartz, Martha Sweezy, and Frank Anderson, and then critically identifies several significant religious resonances in its approach to mediating between a stable 'Self ' and parts of self that are partitioned by traumatic or overwhelming experiences. I conclude with the suggestion that the IFS approach to therapy and the discipline of Religious Studies mutually illuminate and challenge each other in their overlapping approaches to the problems of value-neutrality and normativity.

In 1968 a Mennonite pastor and peace worker named Edgar Metzler published a short booklet in the popular “Focal Pamphlet” series published by Herald Press – a series that includes other more widely read works by Mennonite historians and theologians like Harold S. Bender and J. Lawrence Burkholder. The brief preface on the inside cover gives some indication of its purpose and audience in the context of the American Mennonite experience during the late 1960s:

"This pamphlet is prepared to stimulate the Christian’s peace testimony. Christians need constantly to return to the Bible to discover the message of the gospel. This message must be translated into living terms by every generation. The S. F. Coffman Peace Lectures are sponsored by the Committee on Peace and Social Concerns of the Mennonite Church. They are financed by an individual who has an interest in the message of the gospel of Jesus Christ as it relates to the social needs and the international tensions of the world in which we live."

Metzler’s text is situated amidst the international tensions alluded to above, particularly racial tensions and violence in the United States during the Vietnam War era. The pamphlet is titled Let’s Talk About Extremism, but what the author means by the term “extremism” calls for explanation, some of which the author provides in the first section of the text below.

Although other pamphlets in the series were more widely read, Let’s Talk About Extremism has only been cited a few times since it was published – most recently in a survey of definitions of radicalism and extremism. The lack of scholarly or public engagement with the text in the years since it was published is a problem that I hope to remedy in this edition.

In short, the argument of the pamphlet is that how we think about the relationship between extreme or opposed positions – whether they are political, religious, social, or a combination of all three – matters deeply. For Metzler, ways of thinking and knowing, or what scholars call “epistemologies,” are just as important for the Christian peace witness as more visible manifestations of violence like killing or war. Whereas Metzler refers to “extremism,” today we tend to refer to the problems he addresses by using the term “polarization.” In response to these problems, Metzler calls his readers to consider how hard oppositions between liberals and conservatives are clarified when we think about not only what we think, but also how we think, and how we express what we think.

But rather than staying within the bounds of the liberal-conservative opposition, Metzler enjoins his readers to reframe their vision of extreme positions by measuring ways of thinking against a different standard, asking: “Is this way of thinking closed or open?” Drawing attention to the presence of closed-mindedness at all points on the political spectrum (a pattern recently explored by Francois Cusset), Metzler advocates for openness. Against racist, nationalist, and religious prejudices, Metzler values a kind of open-mindedness that is able to listen to the other, take in new information, and charitably engage with “extreme” perspectives. By contrast, the closed mind is reactive, reliant on questionable second-hand sources, and unable to be moved. This is not to say, however, that Metzler advocates for a kind of passive middle way that sits between extremes and attempts to remain neutral on matters of justice. Rather, Metzler helps his readers to avoid the pitfalls of both polarization and neutrality.

One further benefit of how Metzler frames his argument for openness is that he leaves open the question of how this openness is authorized or validated. For Metzler himself, it is the peaceful figure of Jesus Christ who is the model for a more open epistemology. But Metzler leaves open the possibility of taking on his perspective without confessing Christian faith. Metzler’s resistance to oversimplification, selectivity, black and white thinking, appeals to fear, authoritarianism, and so forth, are critical values that can resonate with the priorities of Christians and religious ‘nones,’ secular and confessional Mennonites, and anyone who is concerned with the problems of our shared world. For this reason, perhaps anachronistically, I would characterize Metzler’s work as “postsecular” – where “postsecular” names a way of thinking that challenges the claims to superiority made by both religions and secularities.

One final point that makes Metzler’s work important today is his critique of conspiratorial thinking. His conversation with an alienated congregation member, as described in the final pages of the pamphlet, is a model for how to openly and critically engage with those who are given to conspiratorial thinking, while seeing through the content of such arguments to the narratives of rejection and victimhood that lie beneath. In a time when conspiracy theories are becoming more influential, concomitant with a decline in public trust and trust in expertise, I think it is essential to consider Metzler’s reminder that beneath the “extreme” positions of those who believe in conspiracy theories is often a common human desire to be heard and recognized. Again, this is not to say that Metzler’s work is a resource for those who would, in the name of ‘free speech,’ give an open platform for hate (for example, the conspiracism and violence of far-right groups). Instead, his concluding comments point to the deeper social roots of present political problems, and provide practical ways of challenging violent ways of thinking.

Emma LaRoque (Ed.). In Search of Peace: A Challenge from Four Non-white North American Mennonites. Originally published in 1976 by the Mennonite Central Committee Peace Section. 40 pp. Edited and digitized by Maxwell Kennel. Published on the Anabaptist Historians blog (October 2020).

Preface by Hubert Schwartzentruber
Chapter 1. A Native American View by Lawrence H. Hart
Chapter 2. An Afro American View by Tony Brown
Chapter 3. A Chicano View by Lupe De Leon, Jr.
Chapter 4. Dynamics of Oppression by Emma LaRocque

Written in 1954 but unpublished in his lifetime, Robert Friedmann’s Design for Living asks that pertinent existential question: how should we live? Drawing on literary, philosophical, and theological sources, Friedmann’s answer begins with a critique of utilitarian ethics and popular apathy, and proceeds through an existential preparation that ascends in confessional style to the question of the meaning of human life, culminating in a fourfold set of principles: regard, concern, service, and love. Along the way, Friedmann’s critical eye remains clearly fixed on his object of study—lived experience, and not abstract principles detached from day-to-day life—and he intentionally guides his reader step by step up the mountain of spiritual and ethical inquiry in a deliberate and serious attempt to educate the heart, mind, and soul. At once accessible and scholarly, while troubling our contemporary divide between religion and the secular, Design for Living presents a rare vision of human meaning and purpose that will appeal to scholarly and public readers alike.

The following study examines the history of the seventeenth century Collegiant group in the Dutch Republic, focusing on their blending of Spiritualist and Rationalist influences. By reading Collegiant Rational Religion through the lenses of social history and the history of ideas, the following study makes explicit the ways in which the Collegiants were simultaneously a religious and secular movement. Being both religious and secular, the historical example of the Collegiant group therefore challenges contemporary distinctions between religion and the secular.
Chapter 1 outlines the history of the Collegiants in the context of the seventeenth century Dutch Republic, from their first meetings in Rijnsburg in 1619 up to their period of Rational Religion. Through an examination of Collegiant ideas and practices, the first chapter describes the genesis of the movement after the Synod of Dordrecht, the early millenarian influence, and the Spiritualist period of the Collegiant group.
Chapter 2 then widens the scope of inquiry by situating the Collegiant group in the Early Enlightenment, focusing in particular on the Radical Enlightenment. The second chapter advances two concurrent arguments against a teleological reading of the Collegiant transition from Spiritualism to Rationalism, each concerned with preserving the dignity of the Collegiant blended period of Rational Religion, rather than reducing it to a transitory phase. The two concurrent arguments against the teleological reading of the Enlightenment include (1) the critique of the concept of Enlightenment as a normative ideal as provided by critical theory, and (2) the recovery of the role of religion during the Enlightenment period as provided by recent revisions to historical scholarship.
Chapter 3 narrows the scope of inquiry to the Collegiant transition to Rationalism, focusing on the ways in which the Collegiants blended together Spiritualism and Rationalism to form a Rational Religion that emphasized the compatibility of faith and reason. Through an examination of Collegiants who belonged to the Spinoza Circle and Collegiants who were also Mennonites, Chapter 3 concludes by describing the schismatic effect of the Bredenburg dispute and the collapse of the blended approach in the late Collegiant Rationalist period.
Chapter 4 of this study seeks to rethink the contemporary divide between the categories of religion and the secular by drawing parallels between Collegiant Rational Religion and the contemporary Continental Philosophy of Religion, the latter of which is represented by theologian and philosopher Daniel Colucciello Barber.

This essay shows substantial connections between Plato’s dialectical approach in The Republic and Adorno’s 1958 lectures in An Introduction to Dialectics. Although the relationship between Adorno and Aristotle has received some attention, little work has been done either demonstrating or making connections between Plato and Adorno, especially on the topic of the dialectic. This is likely because Adorno himself has little to say about Plato’s dialectic, although he does refer often to Plato’s ideas and forms, and sometimes to his aesthetics. This essay reads against the grain to show how Plato and Adorno conceive of dialectical thinking in strikingly similar ways that run parallel with their discontinuities, and concludes with the suggestion that the figure of chiasmus is well-positioned to push the limits of dialectical thinking.

“Between Bourgeois Existence and Violence” is a controversial sermon by the German Mennonite literary figure Johannes (Hans) Harder. Translated by Vic Thiessen, and appearing here for the first time in English, Harder's sermon gives the reader a glimpse into the tensions that Mennonite pacifists sought to address in postwar Germany. Delivered at the funeral of a Mennonite terrorist – Elizabeth von Dyck, a member of the Red Army Faction who was shot and killed by police on May 4, 1974 – Harder's sermon problematically mediates between the poles of apathetic bourgeoise class privilege and revolutionary violence. Harder's work is complicated by his involvement and complicities with the Nazi SS, and his legacy remains a matter of controversy that is currently being examined by Mennonite scholars who have undertaken a reckoning with historical connections between Mennonites and Nazism.

Internal Family Systems (IFS) is a psychotherapy modality that combines elements of systems theory with an experiential approach that rests on distinctions between Self and parts of self. Unlike more cognitive approaches such as Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) and psychodynamic ‘talk’ therapies, IFS challenges traditional divisions between mind and body that have endured in both the treatment of psychological trauma and in the study of religion. This essay provides a summary of IFS as it is conceptualized by Richard Schwartz, Martha Sweezy, and Frank Anderson, and then critically identifies several significant religious resonances in its approach to mediating between a stable ‘Self ’ and parts of self that are partitioned by traumatic or overwhelming experiences. I conclude with the suggestion that the IFS approach to therapy and the discipline of Religious Studies mutually illuminate and challenge each other in their overlapping approaches to the problems of value-neutrality an...

Apokalypse und Politik collects essays, reviews, and shorter writings of Jewish philosopher Jacob Taubes, making several of his English-language essays available for the first time in German translation and adding to a body of work that already includes the collection From Cult to Culture and the lectures contained in The Political Theology of Paul. Divided into four sections—essays and lectures, 1942–1962, essays and lectures 1963–1987, reviews, and public lectures and tributes—the volume spans Taubes's career and includes several texts that will be of interest to the readers of Telos. For example, Apokalypse und Politik makes available in German translation Taubes's…

This study bridges secular philosophical perspectives and Christian theological perspectives by showing how the critique of metaphysical violence is common to certain representatives of both parties. By examining specifically metaphysical, and therefore epistemologically significant, ways of critiquing violence, this study seeks to show that, just as violence cuts across the sacred-secular divide and spans the distance between abstraction and action, so too does the critique of violence.

This study provides a particular historical reading of the postsecular moment. In an effort to problematize and historicize the claims of both the secular and the postsecular, this study draws a connecting line between a contemporary postsecular thinker (Daniel Colucciello Barber), and a group of religious dissidents in the seventeenth century Dutch Republic (the Collegiants). In order to demonstrate that the concept of the secular is value-laden and historically situated, the following will explore the ways in which an historical group shares many epistemological characteristics with present postsecular discourse.

"Through his analyses of figures such as parataxis, hypotaxis, compilation, and selection - and readings of Jabès and Mallarmé, specifically - Maxwell Kennel plots a reminder – for all of those concerned with fragmentary or hierarchical writing – of the importance of the figure of the Compendium and the figure of the Book as indispensable metonymies for grand theories of anything."