The Monstrosity of Christ

If the theological was marginalized in the age of Western secular modernity, it has now returned with a vengeance. Theology is reconfi guring the very makeup of the humanities in general, with disciplines like philosophy, political science, literature, history, psychoanalysis, and critical theory, in particular, feeling the impact of this return. There are many ways of accounting for this surprising development but one stands out, namely, the collapse of communism in the late 1980s and early 1990s and the subsequent global expansion of capitalism under the fl ag of the American Global Empire. So extensive and profound have been the effects of this development that some have celebrated it as the victory not merely of an economic order or ideology, but of life itself. We are told that life, history, humanity has attained its end.
But just as humanity was said to be reaching the summit of its development, a feeling emerged in the collective consciousnesses of philosophers, critics, poets, and theologians. Something was being lost, forgotten. The exceeding depth of humanity was being overrun by the fi end of mindless material consumption, and the mysterious truths and hopes of humanity and history were being sold out to the markets: the new logic of this new world order was a crass conspicuous logic of the nouveau riche.
In response to the advent of this capitalist nihilism, thought—the act of thinking—was forced to fi nd a new way forward, a new source of hope. It had to appeal to a tradition that could resist the hegemony of capitalism and its presupposition—the individual will- to- power. Thinkers of resistance to capitalist depredation could no longer appeal to the humanist- Marxist tradition alone, especially as the history of actually existing Marxism fi nally folded before the juggernaut of capitalism. This was the opening for the theological. The portal to theology was opened precisely because capitalism is ultimately a self- enclosed structure, and so theology gives us a way to transcend capital premised on relationality and not on Ego (the Hegelian “In- Itself”). Yet, this new thought could not simply embrace the theological and repudiate the older tradition of resistance. Not

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