On Diaspora

"Writing with extraordinary philosophical imagination, Barber provides an account of Christianity that will challenge Christian and non-Christian alike. Barber will soon be recognized as an intellectual force whose work cannot be ignored."

-Stanley Hauerwas

Duke University



"What a mysterious meditation unfolds here, oscillating subtly 'between namelessness and excessive signification.' May its illumining construction of diaspora as a composition of differences in their 'intermattering' refresh current conversations about religion, Christianity, and the secular; about immanence and negative theology; about the co-constitution of beings beyond preexisting identities and the construction of value."

-Catherine Keller

Drew University



"What are we to do, asks Daniel Barber, with Christianity? With our unavoidable inheritance of its tradition? Barber's thoughtful, albeit astonishing, answer is that we must formulate, finally, a concept of Christianity, gather it out of its disseminated state, from the originary diaspora Christianity has yet to achieve. Whether Christianity, 'actually existing Christianity,' retains the potential for such a challenge appears nowhere more in doubt-and nowhere more necessary-than in this unflinching meditation."

-Gil Anidjar

Columbia University



"This bold Spinozist-Deleuzian (and original) argument for diaspora as that which expresses the profound link between Christianity and differentiality (discontinuity) is simultaneously an extraordinarily nuanced and lucid critique of Pauline thought, of the secular, and of the continuity between Judaism and Christianity. It marks the emergence of a major new voice in the philosophy of religion."

-Eleanor Kaufman

University of California, Los Angeles