Postcolonial Body and Theology: Intersticing Mbembe and Ambedkar

Postcolonial Body and Theology: Intersticing Mbembe and Ambedkar                                                        

  Y. T. Vinayaraj

  The body of the dead man on the cross

is not reducible to its fundamental thingness.

In fact, the figurative dimension is already there,

poetic, clothed in appearance: the face of the shadow.

Achille Mbembe (2001:223) 

Achille Mbembe, the African political thinker, interrogates Christian Theology for being inadequate to address the question of necropolitics-the material destruction of the human bodies and populations- in the postcolonial world.  According to Mbembe, the Continental philosophers and theologians delimit the whole discussion within the Western cultural/ political/ philosophical tradition and neglect the people who are born to be killed and never have a human life outside of the politics of death.  Following Frantz Fanon, Mbembe signifies a radical political theology of postcolonial body that offers a materialist and immanent turn for Christian theology. In the same vein of thought,  B. R. Ambedkar proposes sharp criticism towards the efficacy of the Christian doctrines and sacraments in the colonial-postcolonial Indian context of caste discrimination and pollution. Ambedkar brings the question of the untouchable body in the sacramental discourses of the Christian theology. Ambedkar interrogates Christian theology for being inherently transcendental and immaterial to address the materiality of the ‘untouchable’ body. This article offers a constructive proposal for a radical political theology of postcolonial body by intersticing Mbembe and Ambedkar.  

Abstract

(Article to be published soon)