Please circulate widely!

CALL FOR PAPERS

Trilingual Symposium (English, German, French)
"Anti-Liberalism and Political Theology / Antiliberalismus und
politische Theologie / Antilibéralisme et théologie politique"

Third Annual International Symposium of the Sussex Centre for the
Individual and Society (SCIS), at Sciences Po/The Institute for
Political Studies (IEP) (tbc) in Paris, France, 9-11 July 2008

A keynote will be given by Prof Raymond Plant (Lord Plant of
Highfield), member of the British House of Lords, former Master of St.
Catherine's College (University of Oxford) and currently Vincent
Wright chair at Sciences Po Paris. Currently confirmed participants in
the Symposium will be coming from France, Spain, Ireland, Germany, the
UK and the US, and range from graduate students to college and
university professors.

The second in a planned series of three events on political theology,
this Symposium follows on from the highly successful SCIS Symposium,
"The Resurgence of Political Theology," held in September 2007 in
Pisa, Italy (parallel to the SCIS-organised political theology section
in the General Conference of the European Consortium for Political
Research) and precedes a workshop, "Political Theology and Failure of
Democratization" (title tbc), to be held at the Sixth Annual
Conference "Workshops in Political Theory" in September 2009 in
Manchester, England.

Papers given at the 2008 Symposium in Paris will automatically be
considered for inclusion in an edited volume on "Anti-Liberalism and
Political Theology," which the editors of a series with Continuum have
already expressed an interest in publishing. (Papers on the topic
submitted by authors unable to attend the Symposium are also welcome
and will be considered for inclusion in the volume on a case by case
basis.)
www.continuumbooks.com

Paper proposals (in English, German or French for the Symposium, in
English for the book) are invited on any aspect of the significance of
anti-liberalism in the intellectual history and historical actuality
of political theology as well as on contemporary expressions of
anti-liberal tendencies in political theologies.

The twenty-first century has been called "the age of political
theology." Political theology can as easily express itself as
theology-cum-political thought, theology-cum-politics, or politics or
social and political thought using theology for argument's sake.
Prominent examples are radical Islam, Latin American "liberation
theology," African "black theology," religious Zionism, and the
Christian right in the United States. A recent contribution from
within the discipline of Political Science, "Comparative Political
Theology" (Kofmel, 2007), proposes to gain valuable insights into the
theoretical foundations of the interplay between religion and politics
by comparing political theologies to each other across religious and
cultural boundaries. As a result of such study, it has been suggested
that the single most important factor underlying all political
theologies is anti-
liberalism. The particular expression of anti-liberalism is of course
always contextualized. The argument has been extended to imply that
political theology's being anti-liberal means that it is at least
potentially anti-democratic too.

See Erich Kofmel, "Comparative Political Theology":
http://www.essex.ac.uk/ecpr/events/generalconference/pisa/papers/PP1206.pdf

Post 1989 and, with increased urgency, post 2001, political theology
has come to reappraise the value of Christianity for a
politico-theological project that could at once sustain or replace
discredited Marxism, challenge liberalism for political hegemony, and
hold its own opposite radical Islam. Many contributors to this new
debate seem particularly drawn to Carl Schmitt's straight-forward
"friend/enemy" distinction (elaborated in his 1932 essay, The Concept
of the Political). Surprisingly, radical Islam shares many of the
concerns of Christian political theologies, such as an opposition to
"neo-colonialism" and, more recently, "neo-liberalism" and
"globalization." Radical Islam claims that in Islam theology cannot be
separated from or replaced by politics and is hostile to the spread of
liberal western values such as secularization, capitalism and
democracy. Although radical Islam need not be violent, militants use
arguments of radical Islam to justify acts of terrorism and political
theology has thus become an international security concern. We also
cannot understand the failure of democratization (for example in Iraq,
Pakistan and Zimbabwe) – and increasingly of western democracy –
without understanding modes of anti-democratic thinking and unless we
understand political theology (in all religions) as a major source of
anti-liberal (and thus inherently anti-parliamentarian,
anti-capitalist and anti-democratic) thought.

For those interested to learn more: Two panels on "Comparative
Political Theology" will be part of the section, "Religion,
Globalization and Security," at the Second Global International
Studies Conference of the World International Studies Committee
(WISC), taking place at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, 23-26
July 2008.

Please send proposals for papers to be given at the 2008 SCIS
Symposium in Paris and to be considered for inclusion in the edited
volume to:
[log in to unmask]  or  [log in to unmask]
by 29 February 2008. Thank you.

Erich Kofmel
Managing Director
Sussex Centre for the Individual and Society (SCIS)
www.scis-calibrate.org