Foucault and Theology - Paperback

by Jonathan Tran (Author)

Near the end of his life, Michel Foucault turned his attention to the early church Fathers. He did so not for anything like a return to God but rather because he found in those sources alternatives for re-imaging the self. And though Foucault never seriously entertained Christianity beyond theorizing its aesthetic style one might argue that Christian practices like confession or Eucharist share family resemblances to Foucaultian sensibilities. This book will explain how to do theology in light of Foucault, or more precisely, to read Foucault as if God mattered. Therefore, it will seek to articulate practices like confession, prayer, and so on as techniques for the self, situate "the church as politics" within present constellations of power, disclose theological knowledges as modes of critical intervention, or what Foucault called archaeology, and conceptualize Christian existence in time through mnemonic practices of genealogy.

Author Biography

Jonathan Tran is Assistant Professor of Theological Ethics at Baylor University, Waco, Texas. His book Theology and the Vietnam War: History, Memory, and Redemption is forthcoming in the Blackwell series "Challenges in Contemporary Theology"