Radical incarnation

Abstract

In his 1997 pamphlet Saint Paul: The Foundation of Universalism, Alain Badiou pointed to the cynical interaction between the burgeoning identitarian movements and neoliberal capitalism. As a bulwark against these tendencies, he proposed a creative reinterpretation of Christian universalism inspired by the Pauline letters. This article revisits Badiou’s argument in light of recent debates on the limits of identity politics. First, it gives a brief overview of Badiou’s innovative and thought-provoking reading of Paul, which gave significant impulses to the politico-philosophical debate in the subsequent years. Second, it discusses some of the lacunas of Badiou’s interpretation of Christian universalism. More specifically, it ponders whether these lacunas may help to explain why the radical left-wing universalism of the 2000s never really took off, but was instead replaced with radicalized identitarian movements on the political left as well as the political right. Finally, it argues that the Christian tradition of universalism nonetheless has significant insights to offer contemporary political philosophy. However, this will require that it learns from its past sins, notably its tendencies of legitimizing supersessionist patterns throughout history. The clue to such a “post-critical” Christian universalism, it is argued, lies in a radicalized emphasis on the incarnational nature of Christianity.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 See Lundberg, När postmodernismen kom.

2 One of the first critical studies to appear on the practice of compulsory sterilization was Maija Runcis’s dissertation, Steriliseringar i folkhemmet. However, already before it was published, journalist Maciej Zaremba brought attention to her research in a series of articles in Sweden’s largest daily, Dagens Nyheter, and thereby launched a huge public debate on the issue. The growing attention to the long history of discrimination against Swedish Romani was testified to, for example, by the establishment in 1996 of a governmental working group commissioned to analyze and suggest improvements to the situation of the Romani minority.

3 For an up-to-date overview of these ideological developments, see e.g. Hermansson et al., The International Alt-right.

4 Badiou, Saint Paul.

5 Ibid., 9–11.

6 Ibid., 11–12.

7 Ibid., 4–15; 55–64.

8 Ibid., 76.

9 Ibid., 57.

10 For a recent overview of this debate, see e.g. McKnight and Oropeza, Perspectives on Paul.

11 On the increased emphasis on identity in contemporary far-right political ideology, see – in addition to the already mentioned volume The International Alt-right – Zúquete, The Identitarians, and, with particular regard to the French context, Dupin, La France identitaire.

12 Badiou, Saint Paul, 76.

13 Boyarin, “Paul among the Antiphilosophers.”

14 Badiou, Saint Paul, 10.

15 That this conviction has not faded over the years is evidenced in the interview-based publication In Praise of Politics, 29, where Badious summarizes one of the basic principles of communism as the endeavour “to put an end to the obsession with identities and in particular with national identity”. He then continues: “Let’s not forget that, among other things, Marx said, with a certain vehemence, that ‘the workers have no country’. So, let’s stop imprisoning politics in a straitjacket of identities, be they racial, national, religious, sexual, or other.” Similarly, in Black – the one of his publications in which he most explicitly addresses the question of race – Badiou states that it is his aim to “put an end to any use of so-called colours in all forms of deliberation and collective action.” (102).

16 Marty, Une querelle, 27–28 (my translation).

17 Badiou, Being and Event, 93–103.

18 Paquette, Universal Emancipation, 116.

19 For a recent account of these tendencies, see e.g. Strømmen and Schmiedel, The Claim to Christianity.

20 On the original ideological polarization between Judaism and Christianity, see e.g. Fredriksen, “The Birth of Christianity.”

21 For an extensive discussion of these patterns, see – to mention only a few seminal works – Anidjar, Semites; Asad, Formations of the Secular; and Mahmood, Religious Difference.

22 Vähäkangas, Context, Plurality, and Truth, 10.

23 See, in addition to Vähäkangas, also Patricia Lorenzoni’s trenchant reflection on the continuity of theologically inspired resistance in the Latin American context in “‘One Who Should Die’.”

24 On the ethical, political and anthropological dimensions of the incarnational nature of Christianity, see also Napolitano, “On the Touch-Event”.

25 Heschel, The Prophets, 276.

26 See Maja Lee Langvad’s “Danmark klarar inte av att sörja en brun författare” in Sydsvenska Dagbladet (June 8, 2020). See also the critical comment by Fredrik Ekelund/Marisol M., “Oavsett hudfärg kan vi sörja tillsammans” in Svenska Dagbladet (June 29, 2020).

27 I am referring here to recent developments in theoretical fields as various as sensory anthropology, critical realism, embodied cognitive science, somaesthetics and phenomenology.

28 This is, to be sure, not to deny that the Christian theology of the cross has an ambivalent history, not least from a feminist perspective. For a nuanced discussion of this ambivalence, see Guðmundsdóttir, Meeting God.

29 Interestingly, as Mads Peter Karlsen points out, Badiou originally (in his early readings of Hegel) showed considerable interest in the incarnation as a fruitful theological trope. However, by the time of Saint Paul, this interest had vaporized completely, which casts yet further light on the idealist nature of his reading of Paul’s universalism; see Karlsen, The Grace of Materialism, 126–155.

30 Scarry, The Body in Pain.

31 See e.g. Murdoch, “Rising Racial Nationalism.”