Agama, Seksualitas, Kebudayaan

Buku ini dibuka dengan pengantar James Bernauer, professor filsafat di Boston College Massachusetts AS, dengan menyatakan bahwa praktik intelektual Foucault pada tahap akhir ini lebih dekat pada gaya tertentu praktik diri Kristen awal ketimbang gaya pagan. Ambisi praktiknya bukan hendak menguatkan jiwa atau mengonfirmasi dalam kebenarannya, tapi meninggalkannya, melanggar batas-batasnya. Menciptakan kembali hubungan kita dengannya. Sehingga, ciri khas gaya intelektual Foucault disini adalah “melampaui” tanpa batas, bahkan tak mengenal batas sama sekali.Jeremmy Carette, dosen kajian agama di University of Stirling Inggris sekaligus penyunting buku ini, adalah salah satu diantara sekian banyak pengamat pemikiran Michel Foucault yang telaten mendedah, menelisik, serta mengkritisi persoalan agama, seksualitas dan kebudayaan secara komprehensif. Dalam buku ini, Carette mendedahkan pelbagai filsafat Foucault yang tampak ‘aneh’, khususnya ihwal agama dan teologi, karena sejatinya Foucault selama hidupnya jarang —untuk tidak menyebut tak pernah— bersinggungan dengan diskursus agama dan teologi secara intens

“Spiritual Gymnastics”: Reflections on Michel Foucault’s On the Government of the Living 1980 Collège de France lectures

This review locates the 1980 lectures within the context of the wider discussions of Foucault and religion; highlighting the influence of George Dumézil on the comparative and structural analysis. Assessing the problem of the historical accuracy of Christian history in Foucault’s work and the nature of the archaeological approach, the review explores what would be fair to ask of Foucault’s 1980 lectures on Christianity. The review focuses on the internal consistency, selections and theoretical tensions. While acknowledging that Foucault picks up the important shift towards external ritual performance of early Christian life, the review questions Foucault’s lack of appreciation of the notion of “sacramentum,” which informs the central interpretative framework of “truth acts.” The review suggests that Foucault’s thinking is shaped by an “expressionist theology” and operates on a false binary distinction between faith and practice. It shows the problematic reading of Tertullian and the indivisibility between acts and faith in his work and reveals the counter-conduct and freedom practices in Tertullian’s later Montanist commitment—which rejected church authority for inner commitment to God—and also suggests a gendered dimension to expressionist acts. The review reveals Foucault’s own inability to split the faith-practice dichotomy—on which his expressionistic argument depends—and highlights the tensions that persist in maintaining a “truth-act” model from early Christian life. It concludes by suggesting that the philosophy-theology relation in Foucault opens more questions than it resolves

Passionate Belief: William James, Emotion and Religious Experience

This essay appears in the first collection of papers on Foucault and theology. The book was an attempt by Bernauer and Carrette to bring together a variety of engagements with Foucault’s thought since his death in 1984 in order to capture a watershed in the intellectual exchange. It has become a defining text in this genre. The article captures this new frontier of engagements by trying to explore the implications of Foucault’s genealogy of sexuality in terms of how his work inspired writings in gay and lesbian literature known as ‘queer theory’. The article explores the close relation between discourses of sexuality and theology and attempts to show how Foucault’s rejection of sexuality presents a challenge to monotheistic theology. The position is substantiated by excursions into Foucault’s model of the self and examinations of Buddhist traditions, which develop concepts of desire not sexuality. The article shows the importance of Foucault’s work for rethinking theology in terms of contemporary discussions of queer sexuality

William James's Hidden Religious Imagination: A Universe of Relations

This book offers a radical new reading of William James’s work on the idea of ‘religion.’ Moving beyond previous psychological and philosophical interpretations, it uncovers a dynamic, imaginative, and critical use of the category of religion. This work argues that we can only fully understand James’s work on religion by returning to the ground of his metaphysics of relations and by incorporating literary and historical themes