Edmund Waldstein, O.Cist. (Heiligenstift, Austria), gives the first talk in Session 2: Political (Dis-) Orders, part of the Political Demonology conference, held at Worcester College on 20th May 2016.

Political Demonology: The Logic of Evil in Contemporary Literature and Theology

The Dialectics of Individualism and Totalitarianism in Charles de Koninck, David Foster Wallace, and Michel Houellebecq

This conference brings philosophers of religion, political theorists and literary scholars together to frame approaches to the problem of political evil–a project one might call ‘political demonology’–for our contemporary political and cultural crisis. What or who is the political enemy? What is political evil or sin? If we are living in the age of ‘the complete triumph of the individual’ (Gilles Chatelet), then the status of ‘individuality,’ ‘subjectivity,’ and ‘soul’ must be attended to within this context. But if individuality is coming to some kind of end (post-modern, post-capitalist, post-material, or otherwise), what moral-political regime is, or should be, appearing on the horizon? And what, then, is the meaning, place, and aesthetic of evil as a political phenomenon? Would the transformation of the individual mean liberation, oblivion, or even new forms of violence? And what is the role of statehood or the social? Through this interdisciplinary dialogue we seek to reformulate our own definitions, even as various contemporary crises violently reformulate them for us.

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Political Demonology: The Logic of Evil in Contemporary Literature and Theology