Postmodernism and the Revolution in Religious Theory: Toward a Semiotics of the Event

by Carl Raschke

Overview

While the academic study of religion has increased almost exponentially in the past fifty years, general theories of religion have been in significant decline. In his new book, Carl Raschke offers the first systematic exploration of how the postmodern philosophical theories of Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze, Alain Badiou, and Slavoj Žižek have contributed significantly to the development of a theory of religion as a whole. The bold paradigm he uses to articulate the framework for a revolution in religious theory comes from semiotics—namely, the problem of the sign and the "singularity" or "event horizon" from which a sign is generated.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780813933085
Publisher:	University of Virginia Press
Publication date:	10/04/2012
Series:	Studies in Religion and Culture
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	248
File size:	412 KB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Carl Raschke, Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Denver, is the author of The Next Reformation: Why Evangelicals Must Embrace Postmodernity, among other books.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction 1

Part I The Revolution of the Sign

1 Religion and the Semiotic Revolution 13

2 Theory and the Deus Evanescens: Can There Truly Be a "Science" of Religion? 34

3 Postmodernism and the Return of the "Religious" 52

4 Radical Religion in the "Desert of the Real" 70

Part II Sources

5 Bataille and Altizer: The Sacrificial Background of Postmodern Religious Theory 89

6 Levinas and the Final À-dieu to Theology 108

7 Deleuze and Nomadology 141

8 Zizek and the Failure of the Subject 165

9 Badiou and the Prospects for Theory 184

Conclusion: Toward a Revival of Religious Theory 203

Notes 213

Index 229

Editorial Reviews

An excellent and provocative book. Raschke is one of the original American postmodern theologians, and he is a brilliant thinker and religious and cultural theorist. This book breaks new ground in religious thought and theory, and it is one of the most original, intense, and dazzling encounters with these ideas that exists.

Clayton Crockettf

An excellent and provocative book. Raschke is one of the original American postmodern theologians, and he is a brilliant thinker and religious and cultural theorist. This book breaks new ground in religious thought and theory, and it is one of the most original, intense, and dazzling encounters with these ideas that exists.

Clayton Crockett

"An excellent and provocative book. Raschke is one of the original American postmodern theologians, and he is a brilliant thinker and religious and cultural theorist. This book breaks new ground in religious thought and theory, and it is one of the most original, intense, and dazzling encounters with these ideas that exists. "—Clayton Crockett, University of Central Arkansas, author of A Theology of the Sublime

From the Publisher