Haunted by (Ontological) Ancestors and Bodies in Precarity: Religious Education Confronts Ontological Terror, Biopower, and Necropolitics

Abstract

An expansive understanding of ancestors is integral to the opening of imaginative spaces for religious education—particularly in university and adult faith formation settings—to grapple deeply with contexts of precarity and the hopelessness such contexts breed. More specifically, this essay considers how hauntings by one’s past selves (“ontological ancestors”) and by enfleshed others living in precarity can lead to sustained compassion and praxis in response to ontological terror, biopower, and necropolitics. Such hauntings are possible through continual unlearning and dislodging of one’s very self through practices such as askēsis and rhizomatic identity formation. Once these practices become central, religious education can foster possibilities for honest engagements with and deep compassion for present (hopeless) realities and the experiences of bodies in precarity.

Keywords:

• Precarity
• precariousness
• necropolitics
• biopower
• ontological terror
• ontological ancestors
• self-care
• identity
• freedom
• rhizomes

Acknowledgements

My most sincere thanks to the editor of this edition, Dr. Hosffman Ospino, for his invaluable comments, sharp editorial eye, and continual encouragement. Without his help, this essay would have remained “in my head.” To Mark D. Jordan for our countless tertulias. And to my mother: gracias for our conversations, which inspired much of this essay. With love and gratitude always.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 I expand on this concept in my upcoming book. See César “CJ” Baldelomar, Fragmented Theological Imaginings (Miami: Convivium Press, forthcoming).

2 Foucault notes that “multiple relations of power traverse, characterize, and constitute the social body…”

3 “The self is an abstract construction, one continually being redesigned in an ongoing discourse generated by the imperatives of the policing process.” Hutton, “Foucault, Freud, and the Technologies of the Self,” 135.

4 Foucault writes about the importance of “showing the extent to which our own identity—that little totality we constitute in our own eyes: continuity in time and space—is in reality only made up of singular, distinct elements, which are separate from each other, and that basically we are dealing with a false unity.” Hermeneutics of the Subject, 306-307.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

César “CJ” Baldelomar

César “CJ” Baldelomar is a doctoral candidate in Theology and Education at Boston College, where he teaches in the international studies and theology departments. He is at work on his dissertation and on an upcoming book, Fragmented Theological Imaginings (Convivium Press). His work can be found on Academia: https://bc.academia.edu/CesarBaldelomar