Black Genres of Political Theology

All significant concepts of the modern theory of the state are secularized theological concepts not only because of their historical development … but also because of their systematic structure, the recognition of which is necessary for sociological consideration of these concepts. –Carl Schmitt, Political Theology (1922)
Wave on wave, each with increasing virulence, is dashing this new religion of whiteness on the shores of our time. –W. E. B. Du Bois, Darkwater (1920)
Although defined by Schmitt as methodological or paradigmatic awareness of secularized theological concepts, the contemporary “field” of political theology has been notorious for its definitional ambiguity. It refers all at once to politically informed theologies, religiously inflected politics, and critical methods of excavating the relays between—and thus undermining the categorical distinctions of—the “theological” and “political” as such. Like political theology, Black Study—which is irreducible to the discipline of Black studies (Moten)—has elaborated itself along “anti-disciplinary” (Sharpe) lines as a necessary destabilization of modern categorical distinctions that have themselves gained coherence through anti-Black logics.
Inspired by Du Bois’s example in The Souls of Black Folk (1903) and Darkwater—both of which draw on genres including the essay, auto/biography, historiography, short story, poetry, and prayer—this seminar approaches the definitional ambiguity of political theology as both an object and a method of inquiry from the vantage point of a range of modalities that we call “Black genres.” By Black genres, we mean to invite approaches that consider the means or mediums through which Black thought poses questions to and demands on political theology in its various guises. What are the constraints and potentialities of a given form—e.g., from discourses like theology and psychoanalysis to mediums like literature and music—for articulating Black Study’s practices or critiques of political theology? How do the anti-disciplinary characteristics of Black Study and political theology intersect in a given form or modality of thought?
Though focalized through the figure of “genre,” Black genres, like Black Study, signify capaciously, including but not limited to discourses and forms from any period or location, such as:
Literature, Visual Culture, Music, and Autotheory
Black and Womanist Theologies
Africana Cosmologies
Black Radical Thought
Critical Theory
We welcome papers that explore any permutation of genres, forms, or modes through which Blackness, theology, and the political are interrogated or intertwined—in both their “religious” and “secular” expressions. What would it mean to think of both Black Study and political theology in the first instance as a question of genre? In exploration of these questions, this seminar is interested in how Black “genres” inform or deform political theology as a field of study and a mode of inquiry.