When We Fail to Understand Ourselves

Reflections on Theology in the Crisis of Representation

Abstract

The mobilization of Christian discourse by versions of nationalism, na­tivist populism, and champions of "Western civilization" puts new pressure on the question of how theologians should relate Christian resources for imagining communal identity to the general processes of representation in society at large. In this article, I analyze the contemporary crisis of rep­resentation as a problem on the symbolic level of societies: as a crisis of social intelligibility. I do so in order to develop a theological perspective on how churches can respond to these crises and what resources theol­ogy may offer to the larger project of understanding our contemporary political crises. In particular, I suggest that we develop a theological analysis of the limits of representation, which will, among other things, involve attention to the times and places of social unintelligibility.