- Title Pages
- Preface
- Political Theologies
- Introduction
- The Gods of Politics in Early Greek Cities
- Church, State, Resistance
- Politics and Finitude: The Temporal Status of Augustine's Civitas Permixta
- The Scandal of Religion: Luther and Public Speech in the Reformation
- On the Names of God
- The Permanence of the Theologico-political?
- Violence in the State of Exception: Reflections on Theologico-Political Motifs in Benjamin and Schmitt
- Critique, Coercion, and Sacred Life in Benjamin's “Critique of Violence”
- From Rosenzweig to Levinas: Philosophy of War
- Levinas, Spinoza, and the Theologico-Political Meaning of Scripture
- On the Relations Between the Secular Liberal State and Religion
- Prepolitical Moral Foundations of a Free Republic
- Bush's God Talk
- Pluralism and Faith
- Subjects of Tolerance: Why We Are Civilized and They Are the Barbarians
- Religion, Liberal Democracy, and Citizenship
- Toleration Without Tolerance: Enlightenment and the Image of Reason
- Saint John: The Miracle of Secular Reason
- Reinhabiting Civil Disobedience
- Rogue Democracy and the Hidden God
- Intimate Publicities: Retreating the Theologico-Political in the Chávez Regime?
- The Figure of the Abducted Woman: The Citizen as Sexed
- How to Recognize a Muslim When You See One: Western Secularism and the Politics of Conversion
- Laïcité, or the Politics of Republican Secularism
- Trying to Understand French Secularism
- Pim Fortuyn, Theo van Gogh, and the Politics of Tolerance in the Netherlands
- Can a Minority Retain Its Identity in Law? The 2005 Multatuli Lecture
- Prophetic Justice in a Home Haunted by Strangers: Transgressive Solidarity and Trauma in the Work of an Israeli Rabbis' Group
- Mysticism and the Foundation of the Open Society: Bergsonian Politics
- The Agency of Assemblages and the North American Blackout
- Automatic Theologies Surrealism and the Politics of Equality
- Theoscopy: Transparency, Omnipotence, and Modernity
- Come On, Humans, One More Effort if You Want to Be Post-Christians!
- The Right Not to Use Rights: Human Rights and the Structure of Judgments
Theoscopy: Transparency, Omnipotence, and Modernity
Theoscopy: Transparency, Omnipotence, and Modernity
- Chapter:
- (p.633) Theoscopy: Transparency, Omnipotence, and Modernity
- Source:
- Political Theologies
- Author(s):
Stefanos Geroulanos
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
By taking up the motif of a “theoscopic” regime, this chapter connects the religious and theological tradition in which God's omniscient gaze is a central if not constitutive characteristic of His omnipotence to two recent theories of power and society: the analysis of panopticism in Michel Foucault and that of the spectacle in Guy Debord. It shows how their analyses of the use of power and vision to organize and oppress deploy a series of similar theologico-political operations and themes. In both, humans are defined by the limitations of a finite individual's gaze, and consequently are mired in social structures and power relations that exploit this limitation. For these thinkers, human entanglement in visually encoded interpersonal relations results in submission to social structures that enforce the metaphor of theoscopy, that is to say, the projection of a perfect, divine gaze on the very form of modern society. The chapter explores the role of tropes, traditions, metaphors, and practices normally attributed to religious thought in a post-“death of God” conception of the political and the social.
Keywords: Michel Foucault, Guy Debord, spectacle, panopticism, theoscopy, omnipotence, God, divine gaze, power, social structures
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- Title Pages
- Preface
- Political Theologies
- Introduction
- The Gods of Politics in Early Greek Cities
- Church, State, Resistance
- Politics and Finitude: The Temporal Status of Augustine's Civitas Permixta
- The Scandal of Religion: Luther and Public Speech in the Reformation
- On the Names of God
- The Permanence of the Theologico-political?
- Violence in the State of Exception: Reflections on Theologico-Political Motifs in Benjamin and Schmitt
- Critique, Coercion, and Sacred Life in Benjamin's “Critique of Violence”
- From Rosenzweig to Levinas: Philosophy of War
- Levinas, Spinoza, and the Theologico-Political Meaning of Scripture
- On the Relations Between the Secular Liberal State and Religion
- Prepolitical Moral Foundations of a Free Republic
- Bush's God Talk
- Pluralism and Faith
- Subjects of Tolerance: Why We Are Civilized and They Are the Barbarians
- Religion, Liberal Democracy, and Citizenship
- Toleration Without Tolerance: Enlightenment and the Image of Reason
- Saint John: The Miracle of Secular Reason
- Reinhabiting Civil Disobedience
- Rogue Democracy and the Hidden God
- Intimate Publicities: Retreating the Theologico-Political in the Chávez Regime?
- The Figure of the Abducted Woman: The Citizen as Sexed
- How to Recognize a Muslim When You See One: Western Secularism and the Politics of Conversion
- Laïcité, or the Politics of Republican Secularism
- Trying to Understand French Secularism
- Pim Fortuyn, Theo van Gogh, and the Politics of Tolerance in the Netherlands
- Can a Minority Retain Its Identity in Law? The 2005 Multatuli Lecture
- Prophetic Justice in a Home Haunted by Strangers: Transgressive Solidarity and Trauma in the Work of an Israeli Rabbis' Group
- Mysticism and the Foundation of the Open Society: Bergsonian Politics
- The Agency of Assemblages and the North American Blackout
- Automatic Theologies Surrealism and the Politics of Equality
- Theoscopy: Transparency, Omnipotence, and Modernity
- Come On, Humans, One More Effort if You Want to Be Post-Christians!
- The Right Not to Use Rights: Human Rights and the Structure of Judgments
