Episode 5: Agata Bielik-Robson Lecture

On today’s episode (74 mins) we are lucky to have the recording
of Agata Bielik-Robson’s keynote address to the joint conference
of the Mystical Theology Network and the Association for
Continental Philosophy of Religion. Most of Agata’s work is out
in Polish, but listeners will likely be very interested in her
forthcoming Jewish Cryptotheologies in Late Modernity:
Philosophical Marranos (which hopefully will eventually come
out in paperback). You will hear Steven Shakespeare’s voice
introduce Agata before her keynote, something I forgot to mention
in the program. I also open the podcast with a short discussion
of some materials that I think may help us think towards
protesting Israel without falling into anti-semitism, though I do
not claim to have that figured out. I think anti-semitism, like
anti-black racism (which I see as a more virulent and primary
antagonism in the construction of the West), is less dangerous if
we classify it as something one intentionally does. It is instead
something that we find ourselves structured by and so recognizing
and naming it is far more difficult. Still, I hope my comments
there are taken in the spirit in which they are offered, which is
towards a conversation that would find some way to account for
Isreali racism as well as anti-Jewish prejudice. While I think it
is incumbent for us to remember the scores of Palestinians and
the experience of genocide they are being and have been subjected
to, it is also important we recognize the surge in anti-semitism
in Europe and elsewhere. As Mao said, we must fight on two fronts
(if only we were so lucky and it was only two). 


I hope you may also take some time today and, if nothing else,
remember the names of the murdered.