Valentina Napolitano

In this book Napolitano shows the rendering of migration present at the heart of the 21C Roman Catholic Church and why this is a key battleground for a changing Europe. She shows how Catholic Latin American lay and religious migrants and their histories in Rome point to an Atlantic Return from the Americas that challenges an Euro-centric, Roman Catholic identity. She queries national, municipal histories and Vatican pastoral teachings through documented and undocumented migrants' experiences and devotions and shows how multiple forms of being Catholic inform gender, labour and sexuality at the heart of Catholicism in Europe. By studying present celebrations of the Virgin of Guadalupe and El Señor de los Milagros, Papal Encyclicals, the Latin American Catholic Mission and the order of the Legionaries of Christ in Rome she bridges the long-standing divide between the study of popular and institutional Catholicism, and between current circulations of affects around migration in Italy and the Catholic Church's historical anxieties and hopes of conversion since the early missionization of the  Americas. Through an Atlantic and transnational perspective Napolitano shows how the Roman Catholic Church is a passionate machine, an ethical and political subject that reignites a passion for Catholicism based on one hand on Papal liturgy and the importance of the moral truth, and on the other on how diverse Catholic migrants can become an apostolic vessel for new blood in a Europe perceived as having cooled to the Catholic faith.

This workshop aims to establish a dialogue between the critical turn in religious and secular studies and debates around the rise of the radical populist right in the Americas. It explores comparatively new populist theopolitical formations in their relation to a) sovereignty and soil, b) charisma and theatricality; c) neoliberalism and secular-religious assemblages. Whereas the correlation between the continent’s recent turn to the extreme right side of the political spectrum and changes in the religious field (growth of evangelical and Catholic charismatic Christianity) has been widely noticed, the nature of such cross-fertilization remains insufficiently theorized. Our purpose is to explore this theme through comparative inquiry on the shifting structures of religious and political authority in the region, including their theo-political entanglements. We assume that the concept of theopolitics (political theology “from below”) can be a valuable resource to grasp why and how political authority is being newly infused with a theological dimension at a moment in which the liberal democratic social pact is going through a widespread legitimacy crisis. From a geopolitical inception of the Americas and an intra-disciplinary standpoint, we also argue that theopolitics allows for a better understanding of ongoing transformations of theological discourses and practices in the light of an incarnated politics.
https://www.ircpl.columbia.edu/calendar/populism-and-new-theopolitical-formations-in-the-americas?fbclid=IwAR2nHSLFiTZC3RmmGJPppnWctfLtp74zKdhjKcglZpf0ahKaBvcu5b9_Vx0

https://entangledworlds.utoronto.ca : Global Challenge Initiative : a Series of  Workshops, Interviews, Seminars, Lectures, Connecting the  Books events, small grants.

How and why do attachments to soil matter? How do we engage anew with the sacralization of old and new forms of sovereignty? This initiative is an interdisciplinary engagement with the changing nature of theopolitical charisma and the formation of populist forces in multiple urban, historical emplacements. We cross boundaries between the Natural, Social and Human Sciences in attempting to grasp the significance of theological practices to political and social forms of living.

This tri-campus University of Toronto Initiative is funded by a Connaught Global Challenge Award, which is meant to support engagement with pressing concerns of our times. Current constitutional crises in Europe, America and elsewhere indicate a profound lack of consensus not merely over recognition of authority, but also over the very discernment of what constitutes ‘reality.’ These crises of sovereignty are most obviously expressed in a number of interrelated phenomena, relating to questions of sovereign borders, beliefs, and belonging.

Perception of increased and unregulated movement of non-citizens across political borders alongside moral and legal panics over how to respond to such displaced populations need to be interrogated through debates over the role of religion in disrupting or bolstering established forms of sovereignty, expressed most profoundly in questions over the effects of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ religious forms in public and civic life. Nationalist populisms may call for the ‘restoration’ of sovereignty by conflating religious and ethnic bases of identification, and such populisms frequently involve the displacement of one religious form by another and the articulation of affective forces  . We respond to such developments by engaging fresh understandings of newly potent connections between exemplary forms of living, urban communities and theologies. We use theologies in the plural here to highlight their movement away from a single centre, generating different forms of sovereignty within and beyond Euro-American contexts.

At the heart of this initiative is the attempt to examine how divine presences are being made salient anew in religious and political realms, embedded in long histories but also contemporary sensorial apprehension of places. Through workshops, seminars, interviews, training sessions and small grants, our aim is to foster the training and research of all participants in new forms of ethical engagements that take seriously, but not partisanly, the politics of sensing the divine by different social constituencies and the practice of justice that are intrinsic to it..

In this talk I chart a relation between anthropology and political theology through an emergent concept we are beginning to call Theopolitics. I pay particular attention here to its rendering of apophatic spaces (as the labor of the negative, which has a root in Christian theology) and how it lends itself to strengthen current anthropological analyses of the political and changing forms of sovereignty.

This collection of essays explores different aspects of political and regional cultures, territorialization and identity both in Mexican society and among Mexican-American communities in the United States. The book examines current debates related to the articulation between the production of local identities and global processes such as the international market, ecological issues and transnational migration. The effects of globalization are explored in the light of the recent developments in political movements in the Chiapas region, as well as significant changes in traditional political systems of caciquismo and patronage. The volume also addresses the question of the identity of Mexican anthropology and points out some of its roots in European and North American social science studies.

In the aftermath of the UK loss in the 2020 Euro Football Cup, I analyze a theopolitical force of contemporary black football players, as a sovereignty from below epitomized by the figure of Marcus Rashford. Given his meteoric rise in British culture and his prominent social activism against child hunger, Rashford, among the other targets of racial abuse, is a particularly apt exemplar. By integrating anthropological ideas on theopolitics, totemism, charisma, and the sacrality of substance, this paper asks how the iconography, life histories, and social media interventions of young, kingly, Black (mainly Christian) athletes, effect a theopolitical force as an elastic movement of self-referentiality and sovereignty from below that is agonistic rather than antagonistic to the state. Specifically, it explores how these black footballers enliven an exemplar of theopolitical sovereignty that does not decide on letting live or making it die, but on doing a work of undoing injustice.

At the end of July, a remarkable event unfolded in three distinct but significant sites in Canada. Pope Francis, the Argentinian current supreme pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church, travelled to Maskwacis, Ste. Anne de Beaupré and Iqaluit on his "penitential pilgrimage" in Turtle Island (the Indigenous name for North America), an historic visit intended to allow for "forgiveness" for the heinous acts at Catholic Residential Schools which for over almost a century (1885-1996) separated thousands of Indigenous children from their families and communities and subjected them to awful physical, emotional, and sexual abuse.

This short commentary on this Special Issue highlights realms of uneasiness that current recalibrations of Political Theology can bring forward. The grammar of unease here discussed points to possibilities for affective counter-hegemonic power, to new theopolitical reading of Black religious movements (where there were previously none), to (self) estrangement as practice and analytics, and to critiques of a vagueness of whiteness as it exceeds socialized speech. Overall, the articles that constitute this special issues are vibrant examples of what current Political Theological work can offer in a productive engagement with multiple disciplines.  [Intersectionality; political theology; V.Lloyd; J.Herdt; K.Day; J.Tran; L.Bretherton]

Abstract: This article addresses the ‘touch-event’ as a mediated affective encounter that pivots around a tension between intimacy and distance, seduction and sovereignty, investment and withdrawal. Through a rereading of the Pauline event of conversion to Christianity, it argues that an analysis of the evolving significance of touch-events for Catholic liturgy and a religious congregation shows the theopolitical as always already constituted within an economy of enfleshed virtues. Focusing on contemporary examples of touch-events from the life of Francis, the first pope from the Americas, as well as from fieldwork among a group of female Latin American Catholic migrants in Rome, I argue for a closer examination of touch-events in order to grasp some of their theopolitical, radical, emancipatory, and, in some contexts, subjugating effects.
Keywords: Atlantic Return, economies of virtues, incarnation, Pauline event, Pope Francis, sovereignty, theopolitics, touch-event

This chapter is an intervention in an ongoing debate between theology and socio-cultural anthropology and it takes as a starting point the relation between apophatic theology and the ethnographic practicum. Building upon the work of Amy Hollywood, Michel de Certeau, Begoña Arextaga and my own research on the Atlantic Return and the Catholic Church, it argues that a reading of the figure of the migrant and the (Christian) mystic together can bring new perspectives on studies of undocumented migration. Both migrants and mystics are endowed with a potential to interject a different time into history. To consider the figures of the mystic and migrant together raises theological questions on how the infinite breaks through the incarnate moment, while at the same time poses anthropological questions on migrants’ conditions of abjection, their experience of loss, the homely and the unhomely.

Anthropology and Traces

Abstract:
This article explores the trace as a methodological tool and theoretical pathway in anthropology and beyond. Traces signal the limits of representation, they are the materials of knots of histories at the margins, as well as auratic presences. Through a critical reading of key ethnographic works, including an analysis of a Casa del Popolo in Rome which has been turned into a squat by Peruvian migrants, this article argues that the study of traces has an important genealogy in anthropology. This study invites us to explore the mattering of things (as forms becoming of importance), new ways of conjuring and operationalizing ethnographic ‘details’ and to broaden our debate of an anthropology beyond the subject, in the light of the mattering of histories.

[Traces, Migration, Anthropology, Histories, Materialities, Psychoanalysis, Rome]

This article explores the tension between Pope Francis as a 'trickster' and as a much-needed reformer of the Catholic Church at large. He is an exemplar of the longue durée of an embodied ' Atlantic Return' from the Americas to the 'heart' of Catholicism (Rome and the Vatican), with its ambivalent, racialized history. Through the mobilization of material religion, sensuous mediations, and the case of the Lampedusa crosses in particular, I engage with an anthropological analysis of Francis as a Criollo and the first-ever Jesuit pope. Examining Francis's papacy overlapping racial and ethico-political dimensions, I identify coordinates around which the rhetorical, affective, and charis-matic force of Francis as a Criollo has been actualized-between, most crucially, proximity and distance, as well as pastoral versus theological impulses. This article advances an understanding of Francis that emerges from a study of the conjuncture of affective fields, political theology, racialized aesthetics, and mediatic interface. [Open Access: https://www.berghahnjournals.com/view/journals/religion-and-society/10/1/arrs100106.xml]

http://www.istitutoeuroarabo.it/DM/francesco-papa-criollo/
Pubblicato il 1 marzo 2020 da Comitato di Redazione di Valentina Napolitano [*] Considerare Papa Francesco come Criollo-termine usato qui nella sua specifica connotazione latino-americana che rinvia a storie sia di emancipazione sia di repressione-significa presentare una nuova prospettiva antropologica circa l'attuale momento di trasformazione interna alla Chiesa cattolica. Al pari di precedenti studi antropologici sui papati, anche questo mio contributo assume la forma di un palinsesto basato non tanto su etnografie personali e dirette, quanto su momenti, nella vita del Papa, costruiti e trasmessi come eventi mediatici (Beatty 2006: 325; Norget 2017). Non considero Francesco come modello di riferimento-"rappresentante" della Chiesa nel senso di insieme più ampio-e indice sociologico di un gruppo (Mittermaier 2015: 131). Ritengo che la sua esemplarità si esplichi, piuttosto, nell'accogliere Cristo nella sua vita «through sensorially mediated, historically contingent and emplaced forms» (Brown 1983: 8). La mia ipotesi è che la sua esemplare imitatio Christi derivi da quel particolare carisma-affettivo, spazializzato e fondato su un'appartenenza-incentrato sulla figura di un Cristo sofferente e vulnerabile, nonché misericordioso. Al fine di comprendere questa idea di carisma è necessario soffermarsi sui momenti etnografici e affettivi nella vita del Papa che fanno leva mediaticamente sulla sua vita privata e pubblica, i quali, a loro volta, consentono di interpretare la sua figura come quella di un papa orientato in senso pastorale più che teologico. Richiamandosi a studi antropologici sulla razza [1], sul Criollismo e sulle loro storie affettive nelle Americhe, questo saggio s'interroga sulla minaccia alla percepita unità della cattolica Mater Ecclesia che ruota attorno alla tensione istituita tra un Papa considerato pastore e un Papa considerato teologo. Una caratteristica particolare di Francesco risiede nell'attribuzione di valore alle periferie più che ai centri teologici d'ordine formale. Francesco stesso non è un esempio di quella formazione cattolica conservatrice attualmente emergente in Europa, sempre più definita dall'inquietante difesa di uno ius sanguinis et soli (cittadinanza per diritto di sangue e per nascita) e dalla discendenza genealogica dal sangue di Cristo Salvatore/Cristo Re. Il discorso emerso intorno a Francesco è anzitutto conflittuale, irto di tensioni tra centro e periferia, dogma ed eresia, teologia astratta e teologia pratica, Occidente e Resto del mondo. Primo papa eletto dalle Americhe e primo papa gesuita, Francesco è stato visto da una parte del gregge cattolico come leader carismatico ed etico dedito al rinnovamento globale. All'interno di un altro segmento della Chiesa, Francesco è invece considerato come un traditore/sovvertitore della tradizione teologica. Senza trascurare queste posizioni concorrenti-ognuna delle quali rivendica il proprio punto di vista sulla storia della Chiesa e sul ruolo del Papa-la prospettiva che avanzo qui s'inquadra in una cornice di analisi affettiva [2] e razziale. Questo sito o gli strumenti terzi da questo utilizzati si avvalgono di cookie necessari al funzionamento ed utili alle finalità illustrate nella pagina di policy & privacy. Chiudendo questo banner, scorrendo questa pagina, cliccando su un link o proseguendo la navigazione in altra maniera, acconsenti all'uso dei cookie. Approvo Approvo Per saperne di più Per saperne di più

This article explores Catholic, transnational Latin American migration to Rome as a gendered and ethnicized Atlantic Return, which is figured as a source of ‘new blood’ that fortifies the Catholic Church but which also profoundly unset-tles it. I analyze this Atlantic Return as an angle on the affective force of his-tory in critical relation to two main sources: Diego Von Vacano’s reading of the work of Bartolomeo de las Casas, a 16th-century Spanish Dominican friar; and to Nelson Maldonado-Torres’ notion of the ‘coloniality of being’ which he suggests has operated in Atlantic relations as enduring and present forms of racial de-humanization. In his view this latter can be counterbalanced by embracing an economy of the gift understood as gendered. However, I argue that in the light of a contemporary  payback of evangelization  related to the original ‘gift of faith’ to the Americas, this economy of the gift is less liberatory than Maldonado-Torres imagines, and instead part of a polyfaceted reproduc-tion of a postsecular neoliberal affective, and gendered labour regime.

This Lecture argues that a foundational moment of Anthropology (as ethnography) was built upon a theological sacrifice – a sacrifice, a giving up of the potential of apophatic theology. Through the work of Amy Hollywood, Michel de Certeau, Begoña Arextaga and my own-on the Atlantic Return and the Catholic Church-I argue that there is a connection between performed, gendered stories that fall out from the official historical archive-and the figure of the migrant and the mystic. This is because both migrants and mystics have a potential to interject a different time into history. To interrogate the space of the mystic/migrant together is on the one hand to open up theological questions around how the infinite breaks through the incarnate moment, on the other, and at the same time, is to pose anthropological questions about experiential loss. If you wish to receive copy of this Lecture please email me at: v.napolitano@utoronto.ca

This talk is o ered to explore generative relations between anthropology and (mainly Christian) Political Theology as analytics and praxis. If anthropology has historically placed cultural di erence and otherness in the strict domain of the human, by circumscribing God out of its political equation, then when we focus on the long durée of a ective history, a kinetic nature of the divine, it can shed light on a disruption to an economic theology of dominion and secularization. Recently formulated anthropological work on Theopolitics-that focuses on divine justice and sovereignty intrinsic to a never-ending provisional nature of political orders-o ers an enabling critique to an existing anthropology of Theology and Christianity, while reckoning that Christianity is always a political formation which has contributed to coloniality and the spread of racialized primitive accumulation. Finally, I o er some reflections to move forth a straitjacketing of politics of identity in exploring some generative intersections between Christian mystical archives, singularity, degrowth and emerging current radical, political formations.