Lines in the Innumerable: Enmity, Exceptionalism and Entanglement

Abstract

This article originated from the Literature and Theology Annual Lecture, as the keynote address of the 18th Biennial Conference of the International Society for Religion, Literature and Culture, held at the University of Glasgow, 9–11 September 2016. The lecture speaks both to the theme of the conference—‘Lines in Sand: Borders, Conflicts and Transitions’—and to the (theo)political moment of the time of its delivery: the UK referendum vote to leave the European Union, the 2016 US presidential campaign, and the North Dakota pipeline protests. The piece considers how the ‘line in the sand’ marks difference, even ethical demarcation, but it retains its granular multiplicity; when it hardens it into the borderline between us and them, ‘friend vs. foe’, a recognisable politics is in play, indeed a political theology of hardline power. How does a democratizing multiplicity morph into the Schmittian sovereignty of the exception? Do US and white exceptionalisms work in tandem with a theology of human, and indeed Christian, exceptionalism? How in a perilous time might a theology of entangled difference resist the political theology of the hard line?