70 min listen
Gil Anidjar, “Blood: A Critique of Christianity” (Columbia UP, 2014)
Gil Anidjar, “Blood: A Critique of Christianity” (Columbia UP, 2014)
ratings:
Length:
62 minutes
Released:
Jun 28, 2015
Format:
Podcast episode
Description
Blood. It is more than a thing and more than a metaphor. It is an effective concept, an element, with which, and through which, Christianity becomes what it is. Western Christianity – if there is such a thing as “Christianity” singular – embodies a deep hemophilia (a love of blood) and even a hematology (a theology of blood) that divides Christianity from itself: theology from medicine, finance from politics, religion from race, among many other permutations. This is the claim of Gil Anidjar, Professor in the Departments of Religion and Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies at Columbia University. His recent book, Blood: A Critique of Christianity (Columbia University Press, 2014) is a wide-ranging, challenging monograph that is both searing and poetic, taking the reader on a journey through biblical texts, medieval controversies, and contemporary critical theory. It asks what Anidjar calls “the Christian Question” in order to destabilize taken for granted assumptions about the naturalness of certain categories related to blood and contextualize them instead within the particular history of post-Medieval Christianity.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Released:
Jun 28, 2015
Format:
Podcast episode
Titles in the series (100)
Jerry Muller, “Capitalism and the Jews” (Princeton UP, 2010): I confess I was attracted to this book by the title: Capitalism and the Jews (Princeton, 2010). Capitalism is a touchy subject; Jews are a touchy subject. But capitalism and the Jews, that’s a disaster waiting to happen. I don’t suggest you try this, by New Books in Religion