I ve not read everything that sci-fi/fantasy author Lois McMaster Bujold has written, but from what I have read, she sure loves to set a fantasy world in a key site of the emergence of the modern racial structures whilst trying to imagine what it might have been like if they d been good, actually. Her Chalion/World Continue reading Going Lakewalker
Su Fang Ng makes (I think) a pretty compelling case that that Hobbes rejects the story of Lucretia s rape as the foundational myth of Rome in favour of the wolf suckling Remus and Romulus, which represents a more monarchical aetiological myth of state formation. According to the story, Lucretia, a Roman noblewoman, is raped by Continue reading Ruled by Wolves
This year I designed and taught a number of new modules in my new job and I ll be posting my syllabi for them over the summer while I finally get time to catch my breath and think about how to rework the modules from this year that I ll be teaching next year, alongside planning a Continue reading The God Question and the Problem of Evil syllabus
Last week I gave a keynote address at the Society for the Study of Theology annual conference, which was on the theme Theology: A Discipline of Failure? Below is the text of my paper. “I couldn’t encounter my loss face to face”[1][2] As I write this piece, US and Israeli bombs continue to fall on Continue reading I couldn t encounter my loss face to face
Thomas Hobbes biographer Arnold Rogow writes that, Hobbes may never have loved a woman, but no one has ever hinted that he was homosexual (Radical in the Service of Reaction, 66). Even if that was true at the time Rogow was writing (1986), I m sure it can t possibly be true any more; but I Continue reading Was Hobbes gay?
I have decided to start a new solo blog entitled That Blog You Like Is Going to Come Back in Style. My first post is an attempt to set an appropriate tone. My reason for doing this is a sense that I need a change. It may be permanent or it may fizzle out. In Continue reading New blogging venture
Yesterday, a friend I d not seen in person in a while asked me how my back pain was doing. He asked because he follows me on Facebook, which I use as a personal diary, and I had mentioned back problems there frequently for the last several week. The odd thing about that is that I Continue reading I m not sick, but I m not well
No matter how well-matched a couple is, every relationship brings with it some kind of compromise. In our household, one such compromise has resulted in me being a near scholar of the survival reality show Alone. I ve hated camping for as long as I can remember and, in general, share Socrates s preference for the city Continue reading Alone and the Neoliberal Sublime
I hate generative AI. I hate how it s destroying writing pedagogy and giving students even more excuses not to read (because they can just read a summary ). I hate how whiny and defensive AI users are about the pathetic little ways they ve integrated it into their lives. If I could push a button and permanently Continue reading ChatGPT is going to kill God
[This paper was presented at the European Academy of Religion conference in Vienna on July 11, 2025, in a session entitled Agamben’s Theological-Political Horizons: Reimaging Judaism, Christianity, and Messianic Potentiality, organized by Libera Pisano, Federico Dal Bo, and Carlo Salzani. The topic of my paper drifted a bit from my original proposal, which was going Continue reading Agamben…