Barth and Badiou: The Risk of the Event

I'm literally killing 2 birds with 1 stone. First, I'm working through Church Dogmatics I:1 & I:2 in a doctoral Directed Reading with Dr. John Franke. So far, the reading and the conversations have been stimulating. I will also be reading the so-called Postmodern Barth books (Ward, Johnson, Andrews) as well. In light of these readings, I want to then have Barth dialogue with thinkers like Jean-Luc Nancy, Giorgio Agamben, or Alain Badiou (I just had Barth dialogue with Zizek in a paper on theology/psychology).

I think that we might be past the postmodern or "religious turn" readings often associated with Levinas and Derrida. This is why I plan to put Barth in conversation with the other figures because they are often thinking past Derrida and Levinas (as well as Heidegger).

Second, I need to get ready for my posting for the Karl Barth Blog coming up in July. I will be putting Barth in conversation with Badiou. I wrote a paper for a Theological Method's seminar led by Nancey Murphy on Barth and Badiou on the Event. There are some nice connections but also some clear differences. My goal is to look for the actual connecting points. There have been a number of books recently published that are starting to consider Badiou's Paul book. But more about that later... The idea for my current seminar is to look at Badiou's critique of the turn to language and otherness and see if Barth would connect with him. We shall see if this is successful.

By the way, notice how grandfatherly Badiou and Barth both look in the pictutres. I hope I look that hugable!