Foucault and Theology

225 Pages·2011·1.155 MB·English

by  Jonathan Tran

Foucault and Theology
Other titles in the Philosophy and Theology series include:
Zizek and Theology, Adam Kotsko
Nietzsche and Theology, Craig Hovey
Girard and Theology, Michael Kirwan
Wittgenstein and Theology, Tim Labron
Hegel and Theology, Martin J. De Nys
Derrida and Theology, Steven Shakespeare
Badiou and Theology, Frederiek Depoortere
Vattimo and Theology, Thomas G. Guarino
Kierkegaard and Theology, Murray Rae
Kant and Theology, Pamela Sue Anderson and Jordan Bell
Adorno and Theology, Christopher Craig Brittain
Foucault and
Theology
Jonathan Tran
Published by T&T Clark International
A Continuum Imprint
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All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopying, recording or any information storage or
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
© Jonathan Tran, 2011
Jonathan Tran has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents
Act, 1988, to be identified as the Author of this work.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
EISBN 978-0-567-51039-6
Typeset by Newgen Imaging Systems Pvt Ltd, Chennai, India
Printed and bound in Great Britain
For Thierry McEldowney

Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction 1
1. Witness, not Resistance 3
2. Global Capitalism’s Power 7
3. Overview 13
Part 1 Power and Totality
1 Power 17
1. Retheorizing Power 22
2. Biopower 26
3. Power’s Ruse 34
4. “Courage to Begin Anew” 39
2 Capitalism, Totality, and Resistance 48
1. “Immanence in Its Simplest Form” 50
2. The Demise of the Nation-State 53
3. Empire 55
4. The Church’s New Visibility 61
Part 2 Self-Writing
3 Biography and Biopolitics 67
1. What Is Biography? 69
2. Salmagundi 97 73
3. The Modern Self’s Biography 76
4. Biography and Absence 82
5. Biography as Theology 86
4 Writing the Self 93
1. Where There Is Power, There Are Selves 97
2. Surfaces of Emergence: For and Against Heidegger 102
3. Confessing the Self 112
vii
Contents
5 Self-Care: The Case of Animals 125
1. Eating Animals 130
2. The Claims of V egetarianism 135
3. Coming to Terms 139
4. The Difficulty of Reality 145
5. Seeing 149
6. Companionship with Animals: Eucharistic Seeing 153
Postscript 160
Notes 163
Index 207
viii
Acknowledgments
Long before Michel Foucault taught me the work thought brings
to bear on itself, my brother Thierry taught me to love thinking, a
gift about as endless as one can receive. To him I dedicate this book
with greatest affection.
My wife Carrie and I lost two babies to miscarriages as this
book was being completed. Mourning those losses has helped me
appreciate more fully Carrie’s deep grace and the extraordinary
gifts that are our other children, Tahlia and David. We can only
hope that all my time with Michel Foucault will somehow
help us more joyfully join our lives to the gracious gift of God’s
triune life.
This book could not have been written without consecutive
Summer Sabbatical Grants from the Office of the Vice President
for Research at Baylor University, a 2009 Baylor University Arts
and Humanities Research Development Grant, and subsequent
summer travel allowances provided by Dr. Bill Bellinger, Chair of
Baylor’s Religion Department. Dr. William Storrar of Princeton
Theological Seminary provided summer research residency at the
Center for Theological Inquiry, Princeton, NJ in summer of 2008,
as did Dr. Mark Mann at the Wesleyan Center for 21st Century
Thought at Point Loma Nazarene University in summers 2009
and 2010. Moody-Jones Library at Baylor University, especially its
staff and highly proficient inter-library loan and delivery services,
made research less cumbersome than it could have been. Lindsay
Cleveland, K. C. Flynn, and Tyler Grant provided fantastic research
assistance in every facet. Stanley Hauerwas, Craig Hovey, Chris
Moore, Jenny Howell, and John Wright each read portions of this
book and offered invaluable suggestions. Tom Kraft at T&T Clark
proved to be an exceedingly responsive and patient editor.
Portions of this book were presented at the Annual Meetings
of the Society of Christian Ethics as well as the Institute for
ix