[lbo-talk] Eagleton's take (was M. Parenti joins the New Atheists?)

[James Leveque]

> Marxism has suffered in our time a staggering political rebuff; and
> one of the places to which those radical impulses have migrated is-
> of all things-theology. In theology nowadays, one can find some of
> the most informed and animated discussions of Deleuze and Badiou,
> Foucault and feminism, Marx and Heidegger. That is not entirely
> surprising, since theology, however implausible many of its truth
> claims, is one of the most ambitious theoretical arenas left in an
> increasingly specialized world-one whose subject is nothing less
> than the nature and transcendental destiny of humanity itself. These
> are not issues easily raised in analytic philosophy or political
> science. Theology?s remoteness from pragmatic questions is an
> advantage in this respect.

I don't think Marxism's interest in theology is as recent as Eagleton makes
it out to be. I have a copy of Roland Boer's 'On Marxism and Theology',
where he looks at investigations into theology and Bible by Bloch, Benjamin,
Gramsci, Althusser, Lefebvre, and Adorno. Maybe since the book was published
in 2007, that just confirms Eagleton's point, but given that those guys are
hardly what one would call newcomers, it looks more like a longstanding
tradition to me. (Ironically, the book also has a chapter on one Terry
Eagleton.)

-- 
James Patrick Leveque
MSc Student in Comparative & General Literature
School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures
University of Edinburgh