I have a piece up at The Guardian to help you prepare for your New Year’s Eve party tonight.
I have a piece up at The Guardian to help you prepare for your New Year’s Eve party tonight.
Due to my workaholism, I have just submitted a proposal to Zero Books for a sequel to Awkwardness, entitled The Love of Sociopaths. Though I originally conceived it as “another pop culture book about negative character traits,” I found myself much more closely relating the two phenomena, and I’m really happy with the way my draft intro has turned out.
Assuming it is approved, I’m tentatively planning on writing it over the course of the winter quarter. My work on Awkwardness went very quickly once I finally sat down to write it — I had worked up a full draft in a matter of a few weeks. Since I’ve already written a similar book and have a much clearer idea of my goals for The Love of Sociopaths, I assume the process will be relatively painless.
It seems clear to me that these books are unlikely to help my academic career in any direct way. My reasons for writing them, however, are as follows:
Therefore: why not, right? I don’t waste a good idea, I keep myself busy and off the streets, and I have an outside chance of getting a payoff bigger than the pittance that accompanies academic publishing. (I suppose I could just content myself with the blog, but when writing a piece like this, I don’t have to deal with commenters.)
A preview of the next issue of Scottish Journal of Theology has been posted online, including my long-awaited article on Augustine’s De trinitate. (You can view the PDF for free on the site as far as I can tell, but I don’t want to try to link to it directly because in my experience those kinds of links don’t work well on journal websites.)
This reduces my “forthcoming” queue to only one: an article for a special issue of Revue Internationale de Philosophie on Zizek. I do have an article under review, so hopefully that will work out — if I don’t have any work forthcoming, I may well cease to exist.
A new issue of The International Journal for Zizek Studies on theology is now up, at long last, featuring articles by Marcus Pound, Thomas Lynch, and me. Although some passages will seem very familiar from my recent stuff on Zizek, I assure you that this article is actually the original of which the others are a copy, and I think it draws broader conclusions about the significance and possible future direction of Zizek’s project.
At this point, all of our books are past the pre-order phase. Anthony’s translation of Laruelle’s Future Christ has crossed the crucial treshold between “available for preorder” and “temporarily out of stock” on the UK Amazon page, and my translation of Agamben’s Sacrament of Language is in a similar state on the US version.
For US customers, Book Depository — which offers free international shipping — remains the best way to get Awkwardness, as Amazon’s complex computer algorithm can’t seem to figure out that it sells out within a couple days every time they receive another shipment and therefore they should maybe order more.
Book Depository is also a good option for Politics of Redemption or, if you’re feeling retro, Zizek and Theology, though both are readily available on Amazon as well.
For Beyond the Postsecular and the Postmodern, however, your best bet remains Amazon (US, UK
Or rather, remember yesterday’s date — because that was the date on which Awkwardness was available for purchase to my fellow Americans.
I received my author copies on Thursday, and it looks pretty good to me. It’s a pocket-sized volume, perfect for the train, the back of the toilet, or just a lazy afternoon. As Zizek so accurately points out in his blurb on the back, I manage to do for awkwardness what Heidegger did for anxiety — but in a much more leisurely and accessible way. I’m also not a Nazi, so you can throw that on the scales as well.
I encourage all of you to purchase, read, and treasure this book forever, not only so that I can make some money and have a shot at getting interviewed by a local NPR affiliate, but also so that I can secure a contract to write two further books on popular culture that I have projected: The Love of Sociopaths and Fun: A Critique.
The Villanova University online journal Expositions has a new issue out, including a “roundtable discussion” of Zizek and Milbank’s Monstrosity of Christ. Surprisingly, I have a contribution (PDF), and since I’ve already written so much on the book, I used this as an opportunity to reflect on its overall structure and impact. Ultimately, as my title indicates, I regard the volume as a missed encounter and a missed opportunity. Other roundtable participants include Clayton Crockett, Jeff Robbins, and Frederiek Depoortere.
At least it is from Amazon, well ahead of the stated December 30 release date. Copies will also be available at Continuum’s booth at the AAR meeting next weekend.
This page describes the argument, and Dominic Fox has written a very generous review. Catherine Keller and Ted Jennings have also provided blurbs.
I have an article in the new issue of Methodist History (October, 2010) titled “Methodist Heretic: Thomas Altizer and the Death of God at Emory University.” The article tries to historically contextalize what went on at Emory, from my hindsight view, through the lens of the Methodist Church, who ran Emory University.
To make my argument I make refernce to the Altzier archive at Syracuse University, which holds boxes and boxes of letters, resolutions, and and snarky letters from Methodists to Altizer. I don’t mean to offer a complete history but one told from inside of the church, and attempt to make sense of it from a theological perspective.
The most important discourse brought to light, in my opinion, in my article is the genealogy of Methodists’ response to Altzier, which culminated in the Methodist Bishops making a doctrinal statement condemning the theology, clearly having no idea what he was saying and likely not caring. The statement clearly demonstrates the lack of seriousness the American church takes its own theology. In terms of research, I had found several historical references to the Bishops’ statements but with the help of some Methodist historians I was able to locate the actual statement pronounced by the bishops. It represents one of the few examples of a large Protestant denomination officially declaring a school of thought to be heresy. Read the rest of this entry »
Though they may soon be unable to get an education in the humanities, British subjects can console themselves that they are now able to purchase my book Awkwardness. Currently only 2 copies remain.
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Adam Kotsko
Anthony Paul Smith
Brad Johnson
Thomas J. J. Altizer
dominicfox
JD
Nate Kerr
danbarber
thomaslynch
Alex
Thomas J Bridges
clayton crockett
Andy
spinozanetwork
lissamccullough
Ryan Krahn
Christopher Rodkey
jms
Robert Minto
Dan
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