Foucault, Art, and Radical Theology

‘Foucault, Art, and Radical Theology gives us not only a compelling interpretation of Foucault, but also a vital conception of a materialist and non-representational theology. Petra Carlsson Redell engages Foucault’s reflections on painting, from Velasquez and Manet to Magritte, Rebeyrolle, and Fromanger, to grasp the complex interaction of bodies and things on a surface of infinite appearances. However, unlike the a/theology of Mark C. Taylor, Carlsson Redell emphasizes the political significance of Foucault’s aesthetics, and how it contributes to a materialist theology that refuses transcendence while still infusing transformative political activism. This is a wonderful book that imagines a new future for theology!’ – Clayton Crockett, University of Central Arkansas. Author of Radical Political Theology

‘In this riotously refreshing theopolitics of material performativity, art, ritual and protest generate an entrancing mystery. With her beautiful writing and her companionable theorizing, Petra Carlsson Redell paints a surface –a brilliantly luminous surface—of theology’s radical and ironic potential for political action.’ – Catherine Keller, George T. Cobb Professor of Constructive Theology, The Theological School, Drew University. Author of Cloud of the Impossible: Negative Theology and Planetary Entanglement

‘In Foucault, Art, and Radical Theology Petra Carlsson Redell deftly articulates Foucault’s renewal of painting’s engagement with surfaces, suggesting that it is time to rethink theology in material terms. "Mysteries" can now be understood as carnal and performative liturgies, not simply as secrets of transcendent realities. Carlsson Redell argues forcefully that contemporary interruptions of conventional religion – like the Russian group Pussy Riot – are not anti-religious but embody new forms of sacramentality.’ – Gary Shapiro, University of Richmond. Author of Archaeologies of Vision: Foucault and Nietzsche on Seeing and Saying

‘Petra Carlsson Redell’s study provokes us to realize—some of us for the first time—how often Michel Foucault employed fine-art painting as a vehicle for creative philosophizing. He reflected with profound attention to specific painters’ unique sensibilities as manifested in the purposive quests and obsessions of their works: Velázquez, Manet, Magritte, Rebeyrolle, Fromanger. For him, paintings provide the "erratic space" in which the creative play between words and things, images and ideas, turns self-ironizing and maximally paradoxical. The author traces through the later decades of Foucault’s career, documenting how the philosopher took stock of paintings as implicit philosophies, harbingers of epochal modes of vision in the making. She then demonstrates how this "live" philosophizing via artistic sensibility can potentially inspire new modes of theological reflection that are wholly immanent within worldly life and duly sensitive to the mysteries—visible and invisible, named and unnamable—that abound in our midst. As she puts it in her own words: "Rather than pursuing a theology against the grain of the surrealist play with nonsense and meaninglessness, I have endeavored to infuse theology with the challenges of avant-garde and surrealist thought.’ – Lissa McCullough, Adjunct professor of Philosophy, California State University. Author of The Call to Radical Theology

‘Petra Carlsson Redell’s Foucault, Art, and Radical Theology offers an enlightening review of Michel Foucault’s aesthetic writings in order to draw out the significance of his thought on the whole for radical theological reflection. As each chapter draws richly from the works of various artists, and Foucault’s timely responses to them, we see a narrative unfold on the mystery of surface appearances that actually speaks to the profound depths of human experience. No theologically-minded individual can read this work and walk away unchanged.’ – Colby Dickinson, Loyola University Chicago

"Petra Carlsson Redell’s Foucault, Art, and Radical Theology: The Mystery of Things presents a remarkable connection between Michel Foucault’s writings on art and Carlsson Redell’s expertise in the field of radical theology." - Lieke Wijnia, Reading Religion