Messianic Time and Monetary Value1

In this essay we return to Walter Benjamin’s notion of messianic time as outlined in his Theses on the Philosophy of History. Messianic time is read with Benjamin’s Sonnette as a “divestment” from historical time. That is, messianic time is a relinquishing of historical time’s formation of identities within late capitalism. Messianism represents that opening which whispers the possibility of bringing asymmetrical accumulation and subjective formation to a standstill. The aim of the essay is thus to push a rereading of Benjamin’s notion of messianic time as subjective divestment from historical time which in turn breaks the uneven distribution of time, accumulation, and the monetary value of market time at work in our current world of global finance

Religion and the Individual: Belief, Practice, and Identity

This Special Issue is both experimental and comparative. It appropriates diverse disciplinary idioms from the distinctive fields our authors inhabit to focus on the ever-recurrent theme of the individual and the study of religion. Here the familiar topics of "belief", "practice" and "identity" come into conversation with each other from scholars in anthropology, sociology, African-American history, Asian religions, philosophy, religious studies, critical theory, and ancient history. This unashamedly eclectic venture demonstrates both the remarkable diversity enacted by the signifier, “religious”, and the dynamic potential of conversation between interesting scholars working on remarkably interesting topics