Abstract
Abstract This article starts from the observation that current debates about race and racism are often couched in soteriological terms such as guilt and forgiveness, or confession and exoneration, and it argues that this overlap calls for theological analysis. Using the debate about Achille Mbembe’s disinvitation from the German art festival ‘Ruhrtriennale’ 2020 as a case that is typical of a specifically Western European discourse on race, it first sketches a brief genealogy of the modern/colonial history of religio-racialisation and its intersections with Christian tradition, in which racial categories were forged in soteriological discourses, and in which, in turn, soteriological categories were shaped by racist discourses. It proposes that in this process, Christianity, Whiteness and salvation were conflated in a way that has sponsored White supremacy, disguised as innocence. Engaging with performative race theory, the article concludes by making a constructive proposal for a performative theology of race that can account for the profound intersections between racism and soteriology, but also opens trajectories for transforming hegemonic discourses of race and their theological underpinnings.
Highlights
In a column for the magazine FOCUS, Jan Fleischhauer argues that we can observe profound changes in recent debates about racism: discussing the growing impact of anti-racism movements in Germany, he posits that racism is no longer treated as a psychological problem or political ideology, but as “a theological concept that cannot really be understood without the help of religious categories.”1 More racism is framed theologically as hereditary sin: “White people are born with the stigma of racism [...]
This article starts from the observation that current debates about race and racism are often couched in soteriological terms such as guilt and forgiveness, or confession and exoneration, and it argues that this overlap calls for theological analysis
Engaging with performative race theory, the article concludes by making a constructive proposal for a performative theology of race that can account for the profound intersections between racism and soteriology, and opens trajectories for transforming hegemonic discourses of race and their theological underpinnings
Summary
In a column for the magazine FOCUS, Jan Fleischhauer argues that we can observe profound changes in recent debates about racism: discussing the growing impact of anti-racism movements in Germany, he posits that racism is no longer treated as a psychological problem or political ideology, but as “a theological concept that cannot really be understood without the help of religious categories.” More racism is framed theologically as hereditary sin: “White people are born with the stigma of racism [...]. The article turns to a case study that allows to further unfold this argument: the debate about Achille Mbembe’s invitation to the art festival “Ruhrtriennale” (Germany 2020) Reading this controversy as a typical performance of White Christian innocence opens a gateway for sketching a brief genealogy of European racial discourse that unmasks Christian imaginaries of salvation as a central instrument in the production of White supremacy (part 2). Wekker herself does not further investigate these theological traces, but a case study can help us to substantiate this argument and connect it to an emergent body of research that scrutinizes the intimate relations between racial and theological discourses: the debate about Achille Mbembe’s invitation to the art festival “Ruhrtriennale” At first glance, this controversy did not focus on the possible presence of racism in Germany, but on Wekker, White Innocence, p. It offers a gateway for sketching a brief genealogy that examines the interrelations between European racial and religious discourses, and shows how Christian superiority has been transformed into white supremacy in the course of modern colonial expansion
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