Toward a Micro-Political Theology
A Dialogue between Michel Foucault and Liberation Theologies
by Yin-An Chen
Foreword by Jeremy Carrette
Imprint: Pickwick Publications
204 Pages, 6.00 x 9.00 x 0.41 in
- Paperback
- 9781725294905
- Published: September 2022
$29.00 / £26.00 / AU$46.00
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- 9781725294929
- Published: September 2022
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Has liberation theology reached a dead end? Has the time come to propose another strategy of political resistance, one that considers and takes account of the complexity of power relationships in daily life? How can we explore the deeper meaning of freedom and liberation? This book begins with a reflection on the "failure" of social movements and revolutions and a review of the methodologies of liberation theologies. Offering a brand-new micro-political theology, it attempts to demonstrate how Michel Foucault can help us recognize the limitations of our standard definitions of liberation. Continuing Foucault's critical engagement with desire, sexuality, and the body, this book opens a fresh dialogue between Althaus-Reid's indecent theology, Latin American liberation theology, and radical orthodoxy, leading to an exploration of how that dialogue can remind us that spirituality and the transformative practice of the self can themselves be fully political. It also urges prayer as both the radical root of political resistance and its action.
Yin-An Chen is research associate at Cambridge Centre for Christianity Worldwide and lecturer of theology and Anglicanism in Taiwan. He received his MPhil in theology from Kent, an MA in Christian theology from Durham, and an MA in anthropology from National Taiwan University. He is interested in queer theology, political theology, and critical theory.
“Have we expected too much of ‘liberation’ in our pursuit of social justice? Has liberation theology fallen captive to the competition for who can speak for the most oppressed? In the most comprehensive engagement between Michel Foucault and liberation theology to date, the brilliant Yin-An Chen builds on Foucault’s micro-politics of resistance to help us rethink ascetic practice not as the renunciation of sexuality, desire, and the body, but a constant process of self-transformation.”
—Marcus Pound, Durham University
“When Liberation Theology gets indecent then the dualism of freedom and resistance comes to the fore. Toward a Micro-Political Theology introduces the reader to a fresh and non-Western reading of Foucault.”
—Michael Hoelzl, University of Manchester
“Chen’s book brings Foucault into conversations with liberation theologies, showing the ways Foucault’s analyses of power relations, sexuality, and subjectification can correct liberation theologies’ blind spots. Toward a Micro-Political Theology opens new avenues for thinking about social change and everyday resistance. I recommend it enthusiastically.”
—Kwok Pui-lan, Candler School of Theology
“In this sharp review and analysis, Yin-An Chen separates the Foucauldian wheat from the faux-liberation tares, showing us what genuine resistance entails and how Foucault helps us imagine it. Full of fine distinctions, and the unsparing critiques that come with them, Toward a Micro-Political Theology first clears the ground of so much detritus piling up in Foucault’s wake and then recovers from the ashes something (self)transformative, a political spirituality.”
—Jonathan Tran, Baylor University
“In this highly insightful book, Yin-An Chen offers a rich micro-political theology that poses hard challenges to extant theologies of liberation. He shows that, to become most effective, liberation theologies should reflect on how subject-selves are constructed via spiritual practice, as a mode of resistance to capitalist accounts of subjectivity. Chen’s call for the development of individual yet simultaneously non-privatized subjectivity, through the dual lenses of resistance and desire, is original and compelling.”
—Susannah Cornwall, University of Exeter
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