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This book is an exercise in political theology, exploring the problem of gender- based violence by focusing on violent male subjects and the issue of entitlement. It addresses gender-based violence in familial and military settings before engaging with a wider political context. The chapters draw on sources ranging from Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, and Étienne Balibar to Rowan Williams and Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza. Entitlement is theorized and interpreted as a gender pattern, predisposing subjects towards controlling behaviour and/or violent actions. Steven Ogden develops a theology of transformation, stressing immanence. He examines entitled subjects, predisposed to violence, where transformation requires a limit-experience that wrenches the subject from itself. The book then re¿ects on today's pervasive strongman politics, where political rationalities foster proprietorial thinking and entitlement gender patterns, and how theology is called to develop counter-discourses and counter-practices.
List of contents
1 The problem of gender-based violence; 2 Theorizing violence, entitlement, and strongman politics; 3 Entitlement predisposing subjects toward controlling behaviour and violent actions; 4 Diverging trajectories: From Foucault and confession to transformation;5 A theology of transformation; 6 Transforming the subject; 7 6 January 2021: An epiphany of entitlement and the promise of transformation
About the author
Steven G. Ogden is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Public and Contextual Theology at Charles Sturt University, Australia. He is interested in politics and religion, as well as issues around gender, power, and violence. Previous publications include The Church, Authority, and Foucault: Imagining the Church as an Open Space of Freedom (2017).
Summary
This book is an exercise in political theology, exploring the problem of gender-based violence by focusing on violent male subjects and the issue of entitlement.
