Dalit Theology after Continental Philosophy / Postcolonialism and Religions (PDF)

This book,
steeped in the traditions of both postcolonial theory and Continental
philosophy, addresses fundamental questions about God and theology in the
postcolonial world. Namely, Y.T. Vinayaraj asks whether Continental
philosophies of God and the 'other' can attend to the struggles that entail human pain and suffering in the postcolonial context. The volume offers a constructive
proposal for a Dalit theology of immanent God or de-othering God as it emerges
out of the Lokayata, the Indian materialist epistemology. Engaging with the post-Continental
philosophers of immanence such as Gilles Deleuze, Giorgio Agamben, Catherine Malabou,
and Jean-Luc Nancy, Vinayaraj explores
the idea of a Dalit theology of God and body in the post-Continental context. The book investigates how there can be a Dalit theology of God without any
Christian philosophical baggage of transcendentalism. The study ends with a
clarion call for Indian Christian Theology to take a turn toward an immanence
that ispolitical and polydoxical in content.

Y.T. Vinayaraj teaches Theology at the Dharma Jyoti Vidya Peeth and Nav Jyoti Post-Graduate Research Centre (NJPGRC), New Delhi, India. He holds a PhD from Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, USA, and is an ordained minister of the Mar Thoma Church. His research areas are Continental philosophy, cultural hermeneutics, and Dalit theology.