Today begins a discussion series at the collaborative theology blog An und für sich (AUFS) on Daniel Barber’s recent book, On Diaspora: Christianity, Religion, and Secularity. In a blurb for the book, Gil Anidjar describes it as follows:
What are we to do, asks Daniel Barber, with Christianity? With our unavoidable inheritance of its tradition? Barber’s thoughtful, albeit astonishing, answer is that we must formulate, finally, a concept of Christianity, gather it out of its disseminated state, from the originary diaspora Christianity has yet to achieve. Whether Christianity, “actually existing Christianity,” retains the potential for such a challenge appears nowhere more in doubt-and nowhere more necessary-than in this unflinching meditation.
Daniel Whisper from the University of Liverpool makes the start in the AUFS series:
I envisage each chapter of On Diaspora as charting a series of effects emanating from the cry, ‘Immanence!’. This is important because, as Barber himself pointed out a couple of weeks ago, one should expect no starting point, no transcendental argument for the possibility (or even existence) of immanence. Immanence is posited and is only to be justified by the productivity of its effects. Indeed (and I return to this at the end), I would contend that Barber is committed to the dismantling of the transcendental/critical project in its entirety (replacing it with something like a pragmatic constructivism).
Read Whistler’s response in its entirety here.
The discussion series will continue until February 15 and include contributions by Adam Kotsko and Beatrice Marovich. See the full schedule here.