Content

Where it has often been contested that all political concepts are secularised theological concepts, this unit experiments with the idea that all economic concepts are secularised theological concepts. Throughout this unit students will engage in an economic-theological archaeology of the idea of economy, paying attention to the theological origins and modifications of economic concepts, e.g., debt, interest, labour, property, possession, and credit. Following the secularisation of various concepts will illuminate the role of economic-theological concepts in forms of racialisation and colonisation. The unit, therefore, will pay particular attention to the recent literature in political theology and religion on the coterminous production of the racial imagination and the emergence of modern global market economies.

Unit code: CT9666T

Unit status: Approved (New unit)

Points: 24.0

Unit level: Postgraduate Elective

Unit discipline: Systematic Theology

Proposing College: Trinity College Theological School

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Learning outcomes

1.

Critically evaluate the constitutive relationship between economic concepts and theological concepts.

2.

Articulate forms of secularisation particular to economic conceptuality.

3.

Critically assess the relationship between the coterminous production of the racial imagination and capitalism, and their theological roots.

4.

Demonstrate a familiarity with the intersection of critiques of economic forms and theological critique in postcolonial theological literature

5.

Critically assess the relationship between the economic and theological temporalities.

Unit sequence

Elective postgraduate unit requiring foundation level CT unit.

Pedagogy

Flipped classroom

Indicative Bibliography

  • Agamben, Giorgio., The Kingdom and the Glory: For a Genealogy of Economy and Government (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007).
  • Anidjar, Gil., Blood: A Critique of Christianity (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014).
  • Goodchild, Philip., Theology of Money (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009).
  • Jennings, Willie James., The Christian Imagination: Theology and the Origins of Race (New Haven: Yale, 2010).
  • Masuzawa, Tomoko., The Invention of World Religions: Or, How European Universalism was Preserved in the Language of Pluralism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005).
  • Mbembe, Achille., Critique of Black Reason (Durham: Duke University Press, 2017).
  • Ferreira da Silva, Denise., Toward a Global Idea of Race (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007).
  • Pattel-Gray, Anne., The Great White Flood: Racism in Australia Critically Appraised from an Aboriginal Historico-Theological Point of View (Atlanta: AAR, 1998).
  • Patterson, Orlando., Slavery and Social Death (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983).
  • Singh, Devin., Divine Currency: The Theological Power of Money in the West (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2018). ‘

Assessment

Type Description Word count Weight (%)
Seminar or Tutorial - Presentation

Classroom presentation.

1000 20.0
Book Review - Book Review

Review of a set text, as determined by the lecturer

2000 30.0
Essay - Essay

Research essay on a topic, as determined by the lecturer

5000 50.0
Approvals

Unit approved for the University of Divinity by Prof Albert Haddad on 29 Sep, 2022

Unit record last updated: 2022-09-29 14:15:57 +1000