Date of Award

2022

Document Type

Masters Thesis

Degree Name

M.A.

Organizational Unit

College of Arts Humanities and Social Sciences, Religious Studies

First Advisor

Carl Raschke

Second Advisor

Dheepa Sundaram

Third Advisor

Robert Urquhart

Keywords

Critical theory, Economic theology, Political theology, Post secularism, Postmodernism, The death of God

Abstract

In light of the ongoing political and economic crises in the twenty-first century, this study aims to apply the discourse of political theology, alongside Nietzsche’s concept of the death of God to an understanding of neoliberalism and the problems it faces on a global level. However, because of the centrality of sovereignty in political theological discourse and the view of neoliberalism as diffusing sovereignty in favor of an ordered system, I attempt to further develop an offshoot discourse of political theology referred to as economic theology. This discourse allows a theological signature of power to be traced through the history of Western governmentality that is continually rationalized over time. The fact that this rationalization, I argue, culminates in the contemporary neoliberal order which, by exteriorizing and alienating knowledge in the name of rationality, undermines this process of rationalization and leads directly to the crises that are currently being faced, illustrates the after effects of the death of God as Nietzsche announced it in the nineteenth century. As such, the crisis of neoliberalism as a manifestation of the death of God necessitates that we disabuse ourselves of the illusion of neoliberalism as an ordered system and embrace a perspectivist, paralogical mode of knowledge legitimation.

Publication Statement

Copyright is held by the author. User is responsible for all copyright compliance.

Rights Holder

Jared A. Lacy

Provenance

Received from ProQuest

File Format

application/pdf

Language

en

File Size

97 pgs

Discipline

Religion

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