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Mugabe and the Pastor

Last updated on: April 25, 2017 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

The Mail & Guardian Africa reports on Zimbabwean pastor Evan Mawarire, who has inspired a nationwide resistance to Robert Mugabe and now faces sedition charges. In April 2016, Mawarire “draped Zimbabwe’s flag over his shoulders, logged on to Facebook and delivered a passionate appeal to his fellow countrymen. He urged them to have the courage to fight for their nation’s future, using the hashtag #ThisFlag.” His appeal was followed by a general strike in July 2016 that shut down “schools,... Read more

House of Prayer

Last updated on: April 24, 2017 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

The Chronicler’s account of the completion of the house of the Lord (2 Chronicles 5-7) is arranged in a fairly neat chiasm. A. Solomon finishes (shalam) work, 2 Chronicles 5:1 B. Solomon celebrates the feast in the seventh month, 5:2 C. Levites take ark into the house, with sacrifices and music; glory fills house 5:3-6:11 D. Solomon’s prayer of dedication, 6:12-42 C’. Fire falls from heaven, glory in house, with sacrifice and music, 7:1-7 B’. Solomon keeps the feast of... Read more

Silence of the Eyes

Last updated on: April 21, 2017 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Robert Cardinal Sarah (Power of Silence) notes that “For some years there has been a constant onslaught of images, lights, and colors that blind man. His interior dwelling is violated by the unhealthy, provocative images of pornography, bestial violence, and all sorts of worldly obscenities that assault purity of heart and infiltrate through the door of sight” (42). But the problem is broader than seeing what ought not to be seen. Our eyes are dazzled by glitzy gizmos and gadgets... Read more

Nationalism and Reformation

Last updated on: April 21, 2017 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Anthony Marx’s Faith in Nation tells the story of the “exclusionary” basis for modern nationalism. Nations were unified not by inclusive policies but by exclusions within and without. Behind these exclusions were the religious divisions of the Reformation, which posed a challenge to rulers. In England and France, “one alternative path to secular cohesion was to attempt to diminish religious conflict with moderation and relative tolerance. Elizabeth I and Charles II of England, and even more so Henri IV of... Read more

State and Not-State

Last updated on: April 21, 2017 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

In a 1991 essay in the American Political Science Review, Timothy Mitchell assesses various theories of the state, concluding that they all attempt to draw a line between state and society, and fail. He proposes to take the very difficulty of drawing that boundary as the starting point for reflection, rather than as a theoretical problem to be solved. He begins to develop his own conception with this examine from twentieth-century US history: “After World War II, the Saudis demanded... Read more

Ethnicity, Inc

Last updated on: April 21, 2017 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Identity politics has weakened national identity, but it hasn’t destroyed it. As Jean and John Comaroff put it (Theory from the South), “the fractal nature of contemporary political personhood, the fact that it is overlaid and undercut by a politics of difference and identity, does not necessarily involve the negation of national belonging. Merely its uneasy, unresolved, ambiguous coexistence with other modes of being-in-the-world. It is this inherent ambiguity, we suggest, that makes the ostensible concreteness of concepts like ‘citizenship’... Read more

Policulturalism

Last updated on: April 21, 2017 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Jean and John Comaroff offer what they recognize is “a rather stark inventory” of the symptoms of what they call “policulturalism” (Theory from the South), which they describe as “politicization of diversity that expresses itself in demands not merely for recognition, but also for a measure of sovereignty against the state and against the idea of the universal citizen, now less a citizen of the polity than a citizen in it—and likely to be possessed of multiple identities.” The symptoms... Read more

Democracy Without Ballots

Last updated on: April 21, 2017 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

What might democracy mean in Africa? What, in particular, “might it mean in cultural contexts, like those in Africa, in which freedom is not reducible to the exercise of choice, the equivalent to homo politicus of shopping to homo economicus? In which the political subject . . . is not an ‘autonomous’ individual but a social being? In which, also, the rights of citizens—among them the right not just to speak but also to be heard, the right to the... Read more

Disenchanted Marxists

Last updated on: April 21, 2017 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Karol Berger argues (A Theory of Art) that Lyotard’s famed distinction of modern and postmodern is “far too stark.” In fact we aren’t faced with a simple choice “between a belief in universal history grasped by an all-explaining meta-narrative and a belief in a plurality of equally valid life forms and local stories that make sense of them.” On the contrary, “a large and fruitful territory lies between these two extremes, a vision of a plurality of life forms and... Read more

Malick’s Hollywood

Last updated on: April 21, 2017 at 12:00 am By Peter Leithart

Terrence Malick has been on a filmmaking tear, most recently releasing Song to Song. He’s back, but that hasn’t dulled his skepticism about the film industry. Brett McCracken sees Malick’s earlier Knight of Cups as, in part, a reflection of Malick’s “complicated relationship with Hollywood”: “Malick’s critique of Hollywood, as a sort of stand-in for the larger spiritual ‘searches’ of mankind, comes into focus. Hollywood is a dream factory, a purveyor of fantasies and searches for holy grails (or mystical... Read more

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