...John Brenkman Copyright © 2013 Qui Parle 2013 “ . . . wrestling with (my God!) my God” Modernism, Nihilism, and Belief john brenkman Belief’s Modernity In the tradition of Pascal, inherited religious belief is wracked by doubt and the believer is brought face to face...

... . Stanford, CA : Stanford University Press , 2008 . Aquinas Thomas . Summa Theologica , translated by the Fathers of the English Dominican Province. 2nd rev. ed. London : Oates and Washbourne , 1920 . Asad Talal . “ Thinking about Religion, Belief, and Politics .” In The Cambridge...

... of the ascendant cybernetic metaphysics. For Parisi, a necessary move herein is to negotiate the reality of the algorithm’s syntactic operations, their performativity, a move that for her implies a certain form of belief. In tracking this form of belief across disciplines, this interview broaches questions...

...Aaron Frederick Eldridge Abstract How does tradition, a transmission of body and language, disclose a form of life? This article takes as its point of departure Talal Asad’s methodological pivot away from the modern concept of “belief” to Ludwig Wittgenstein’s concept of “form of life...

... criticized Simon for the performative nature of his artificially intelligent systems, mainly for his positivism, but he defended his positivism based on his belief that symbolic computation could stand in for any reality and in fact shape that reality. Simon was not looking to actually re-create human...

... belief in the existence of matter, the reality of consciousness, and the implied being of truth. One wants to know: is Santayana a skeptic or not? If the critic turns to Santayana's copious writings for answers there is certainly the possibility for more confusion. In various places...

... Amelioration Deleuze elaborates this unthought-intolerable immanence in terms of belief. Yet in doing so he ameliorates, evades, and ultimately de- nies groundlessness. This denial stems, specifi cally, from an invest- ment in possibility— not, that is, from the use of belief as such. In fact...

..., the international attention, and the clear belief on the part of the authorities that, accusations of blasphemy notwithstanding, the real stakes were political. As one of the prosecution lawyers put it: “Lurching behind [Pussy Riot] are the real enemies of our state and of the Orthodox Christianity; those...

... .” In Powers of the Secular Modern: Talal Asad and His Interlocutors , edited by Scott David and Hirschkind Charles , 206 – 41 . Stanford, CA : Stanford University Press , 2006 . Asad Talal . “ Thinking about Religion, Belief, and Politics .” In The Cambridge Companion to Religious...

... as to what is Islam will be admitted by the anthropologist only where it applies to the informant’s own beliefs and practices, because it is generally impossible to define beliefs and practices in terms of an isolated subject. A Muslim’s beliefs about the beliefs and practices of others are his own...

... to infuse its own-accursed spirit into all around it, that the people among whom it exists have not the moral power to abolish it. ("RTC," 78) Douglass' appeal to the moral authority of England for aid fell in line with the Garrisonian belief that inspiring...

... belief; but when I assert that such a thing exists I am hypostatizing this datum, placing it in pre- sumptive relations which are not internal toit, and wor- shipping it as an idol or thing. Neither its existence nor mine, nor that of my belief can be given in any datum.6...

... essence rather than a set of beliefs capable of universal appeal. Beliso–De Jesús’s engaging account of the transnational world of Santería practitioners, media, and theological debates provides two important interventions into the theorization of “transnational religion.” First, she argues that Afro...

...? The sense shared by Hall that what is at stake here is not identity but rather the ways in which it might be thought or represented seems to find confirmation in the word innocence , which suggests that any theory of blackness must begin by innocenting itself of any belief that it could ever essentially...

..., starting with a belief in their putative opposition, we misapprehend how they were otherwise conceived even in modernity and thus miss an opportunity for in- sight into contemporary predicaments of secularism, religion, and globalization. The good news is that in some corners of Western...

... of organizing the historicities of Europeans and other humans worldwide, as well as those of natural beings and the myriad technological and scientifi c products of their interaction.8 Insofar as it implies that human history must take an ir- reversible linear form, belief in modernity has...

... it with the aside that I have made it many times. Forgive me if I sound weary. Bérubé: The Futility of the Humanities 99 But the idea that enrollments in English and the humanities have declined in recent years appears to be one of those Zombie Beliefs, something it is physically...

... occasionally apocalyptic rhetoric, the encounter her fi lms propose with what Deleuze repeatedly calls in her case the impossible (c2, 176) is neither a disaster nor the engine of some other process: it is already an act of care and an affi rmation of belief in the world...

... elaborates a theoretical account of metaphor whose implicit performativity becomes the driving force of its representa- tional effects.3° According to Rorty, "Davidson lets us see metaphors on the model of unfamiliar events in the natural world — causes of changing beliefs and desires — rather than...

... immigration.18 The braided language of wounded religious belief, heritage, and majority identity can be seen more directly in a recent Russian case. In June 2013, the lower house of the Russian parliament passed what the American and Western European press called new blasphemy and “anti-gay” laws...