Rights statement: This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Political Theology on 29/08/2018, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/1462317X.2018.1513189
Accepted author manuscript, 259 KB, PDF document
Available under license: CC BY-NC: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Final published version
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
}
TY - JOUR
T1 - Illusions of a Future
T2 - Ishiguro, Liberalism, Political Theology
AU - Bradley, Arthur Humphrey
N1 - This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Political Theology on 29/08/2018, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/1462317X.2018.1513189
PY - 2018
Y1 - 2018
N2 - This article explores the fate of political theology in Kazuo Ishiguro’s speculative fiction Never Let Me Go (2005) and, by implication, in contemporary fiction more broadly. To pursue a reading of Christianity that extends from Hegel through Lacan to Žižek, the article argues that political theology’s future may perversely lie in a materialism emptied of all transcendental guarantees: political theology is the historically privileged master fantasy or illusion which reveals the fantastic or illusory status of our entire relation to the real in (neo-)liberal modernity. In conclusion, the article argues that Ishiguro’s fiction may thus be read less as a melancholic dystopian study in total ideological capture or surrender than as the representation of a state of immanent freedom beyond the power relations of (neo-)liberal subjectivity.
AB - This article explores the fate of political theology in Kazuo Ishiguro’s speculative fiction Never Let Me Go (2005) and, by implication, in contemporary fiction more broadly. To pursue a reading of Christianity that extends from Hegel through Lacan to Žižek, the article argues that political theology’s future may perversely lie in a materialism emptied of all transcendental guarantees: political theology is the historically privileged master fantasy or illusion which reveals the fantastic or illusory status of our entire relation to the real in (neo-)liberal modernity. In conclusion, the article argues that Ishiguro’s fiction may thus be read less as a melancholic dystopian study in total ideological capture or surrender than as the representation of a state of immanent freedom beyond the power relations of (neo-)liberal subjectivity.
KW - Ishiguro
KW - Žižek
KW - Benjamin
KW - Agamben
U2 - 10.1080/1462317X.2018.1513189
DO - 10.1080/1462317X.2018.1513189
M3 - Journal article
VL - 19
SP - 638
EP - 642
JO - Political Theology
JF - Political Theology
SN - 1462-317X
IS - 7
ER -