Bøger af Jayne Svenungsson

For millennia, messianic visions of redemption have inspired men and women to turn against unjust and oppressive orders. Yet these very same traditions are regularly decried as antecedents to the violent and authoritarian ideologies of modernity. Informed in equal parts by theology and historical theory, this book offers a provocative exploration of this double-edged legacy. Author Jayne Svenungsson rigorously pursues a middle path between utopian arrogance and an enervated postmodernism, assessing the impact of Jewish and Christian theologies of history on subsequent thinkers, and in the process identifying a web of spiritual and intellectual motifs extending from ancient Jewish prophets to contemporary radicals such as Giorgio Agamben and Slavoj Zizek.

The essays in this book derive from the Engelsberg Seminar of 2014, and investigate the role which religion plays in society today and in the past. They also explore religion as a phenomenon in relation to the human condition and how it manifests itself as an individual experience. In order to understand ourselves, do we need to understand religion?