Document Type

Article

Publication Date

1-8-2019

Abstract

There has been a generalized anxiety concerning the future of continental philosophy of religion as a discipline, with a number of books, articles, conferences, and presentations taking up this theme. This anxiety exists because as a discipline continental philosophy of religion lacks a clear claim to an identity. This article analyses the anxiety concerning the future of continental philosophy of religion as an anxiety of reproduction. By locating the philosopher’s anxiety within a wider anxiety of reproduction we begin to understand this anxiety through the queer anti-social critique of Lee Edelman. This anxiety is traced through three processes of reproduction: intellectual reproduction, disciplinary reproduction, and institutional reproduction. The article goes on to sketch out a position against the reproduction of continental philosophy of religion by taking on and celebrating the discipline’s improper nature. Appealing neither to secular reason nor to established traditions, we draw on the Malleus Maleficarum (as read through queer theory and non-philosophy) to craft various models for thought. Here we find abortion prized over the future of the race, miscegenation over blood purity, and impotence and infertility over the sovereign power of the father. These models are explored both in terms of their historical context and as providing a different image of the work that can be carried out in the discipline of continental philosophy of religion. The article concludes by suggesting other perverse lines of relation that may be opened up when one gives up on the reproduction of the discipline.

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-018-0207-4

Language

English

Comments

This article is the authors' final published version in Palgrave Communications, Volume 5, Issue 2, January 8, 2019, Article number 2.

The published version is available at https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-018-0207-4. Copyright © Rose & Smith

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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