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Author: Chris Watkin
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The unspoken pandemic: on the illicit enjoyment of plague
For the full series of “Lets read Camus’ La Peste” posts, please click here. Everyone is writing about the pandemic right now, but we are not writing everything. There are some some impulses, some reactions, some fleeting thoughts that we prudently keep under our hats at a time like this. Once the COVID-19 pandemic
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COVID, Camus and the Cross: An Easter Meditation
For the full series of “Lets read Camus’ La Peste” posts, please click here. I have come across an impressive amount of self-styled insight in the past few days: what the world will look like after the virus, how we should reshape it, what an opportunity this is, how things will never be the
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Statistics in a time of pandemic: sublimity, mysticism, and the illusion of exactitude
For the full series of “Lets read Camus’ La Peste” posts, please click here. There has been much talk over the past weeks of COVID-19 being an “invisible enemy”. Setting the war metaphor aside for a moment, it is illuminating to reflect on the ways in which we make pandemics visible. In La Peste figures and
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Sir Donald Hay on Being a Christian Academic
Over on the DCM at Oxford blog there is an excellent article entitled ‘On Being a Christian Academic‘, written by Donald Hay, retired professor of Economics and fellow of Jesus College, Oxford, former acting Pro Vice Chancellor for Planning and Resources for the university, and founder of the Developing a Christian Mind programme at Oxford. Hay says
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The threefold biblical scandal of the personal, the material and the historical. Extract from my forthcoming book on Deleuze and theology
This is the seventh in a series of extracts from my forthcoming book on Deleuze (to be published in the same P&R ‘Great Thinkers’ series as the Derrida and Foucault volumes). It argues that the Bible has a radical view of history, the material world and the human person that set it apart from almost
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Do you know what is most shaping your desires and beliefs? This quick exercise can help you find out… and change it
In a recent post we briefly discussed the way in which the media we consume shapes to a significant extent what we desire, what we think, and how we feel about ourselves and our society. The issue merits further reflection for Christians studying or working in an academic setting. Christian academics are, so to speak, professional consumers and interpreters
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Deleuze and the biblical asymmetry of good and evil. Extract from my forthcoming book on Deleuze and theology
This is the sixth in a series of extracts from my forthcoming book on Deleuze (to be published in the same P&R ‘Great Thinkers’ series as the Derrida and Foucault volumes). It compares the way in which Deleuze draws an ethics and politics out of his ontology with the biblical creation-fall-redemption schema. To see all
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Be careful what you pray for, Christian scholar
In our prayers as Christian scholars we will often find ourselves asking for wisdom, knowledge, depth of insight, and understanding. But do we realise that with the granting of these gifts comes an increased responsibility? Now let me say right at the beginning of this post that this truth is not unique to gifts of the mind.
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How does Deleuze know his view is true? Six points. Extract from my forthcoming book on Deleuze and theology
This is the fourth in a series of extracts from my forthcoming book on Deleuze (to be published in the same P&R ‘Great Thinkers’ series as the Derrida and Foucault volumes). In this extract I discuss six important points to take into account if we want to understand how Deleuze thinks about truth. To see
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Pandemic temporality: the creation, fall and redemption of COVID-19
For the full series of “Lets read Camus’ La Peste” posts, please click here. A pandemic does strange things to time. We are used to living in different times at once. There is the clock time of regular 60-second minutes and 24-hour days. There is the joy of youthful infatuation when a day with one’s
