Adam Kotsko

This year, I will be giving two presentations:

“Iblīs, Job, and the Problem of Evil” (Qur’ān Unit), Saturday, 12:30-2:30

Abstract: The Book of Job represents a kind of internal critique of the Deuteronomistic theology that dominates most of the rest of the Hebrew biblical canon. Yet its place in the canon is very marginal, as it does not deal with God’s covenant with Israel and has even been taken by many readers since ancient times as a work of fiction. In the Qur’ān, as with other biblical stories that present moral ambiguities, Job’s story is significantly altered and is, if anything, even more marginal than in the Hebrew Bible. This paper argues, however, that the Qur’ān echoes Job’s critique and in fact places it at the heart of the creation narrative, in the mouth of Iblīs. Like Job’s, Iblīs’s critique is tacitly conceded, but the effect is to reinforce rather than destabilize the Qur’ān’s theology.

“Political Theology in an Islamic Key: Two Case Studies” (Theology and Continental Philosophy), Sunday, 12:30-2:30

Abstract: In recent years, there has been increasing interest in expanding political theology beyond its roots in the Christian tradition. This paper investigates two case studies from the Islamic tradition, corresponding to the two main strains of the field. On the side of politically-engaged theology, it focuses on Hamid Dabashi’s Islamic Liberation Theology: Resisting the Empire (Routledge, 2008), and on the side of genealogical inquiry into transformations of religion in a secular world, it takes up Faisal Devji’s Waning Crescent: The Rise and Fall of Global Islam (Yale, 2025). Both explicitly engage with their Christian forebears—Gustavo Gutiérrez and Carl Schmitt, respectively—making them particularly fruitful interlocutors. Though they come from very different perspectives and take very different approaches, both ultimately show that the problems that Christianity has bequeathed to modernity remain problems for an Islamic political theology as well.

Pittsburgh Review of Books has published an article of mine in which I argue that French New Wave director Éric Rohmer’s greatest film, My Night at Maud’s, is a subtle homage to F.W. Murnau’s silent film Faust. Thanks to Ed Simon for helping me find a home for such a niche piece!

I was invited to contribute an article on Giorgio Agamben for the newly revised Johns Hopkins Guide to Critical and Cultural Theory, which was just released today. Both are available to anyone with Project MUSE access.

I posted a preview of my forthcoming book Political Theology: The Basics at That Blog You Like Is Going to Come Back in Style.

About a year ago, after receiving a royalty statement from a book whose sales had run their course, I was inspired to ask the publishers of some of my older books to revert the rights to me so that I could make the texts freely available online. Those efforts mostly came to nothing, but this morning I learned of one exception — Agamben’s Coming Philosophy, the essay collection I put together with Colby Dickinson. It is more than ten years old, and includes material older than that. We have both written much more on Agamben since that time, and Agamben himself has also written much more. And yet, on the off chance that someone might want to refer back to these essays, the full text can be found here.

Starting this semester, I will be serving as department chair of the Shimer Great Books School at North Central College. We are all grateful to Stuart Patterson for his nine years of service during our sometimes difficult but ultimately successful transition to North Central College. Stuart has generously offered to remain our primary point of contact with the alumni community as part of this transition. For my part, I look forward to sitting in meetings, filling out forms, and reveling in all the other glamorous privileges that come with the position of department chair.

The Oxford Literary Review Supplement has now published all the papers from the session on my work at the Association for Philosophy and Literature conference in Frankfurt this fall.

• Peter Gratton: “Adam Kotsko’s Political Theology: An Introduction”
• Nils Richber: “Left Over: Towards a Post-Apocalyptic Reading of Political Theology”
• Peter Gratton: “A Hell Without End? Neoliberalism and the Grift Society”
• Jay Martin: “‘Every God Has a Devil for a Father’: The Disappearing of the Devil in Hegel”
• Adam Kotsko: “What Have I Been Doing All My Life? A Response”

Thanks again to Peter for arranging the session and publication (and serving as both presider/introducer and presenter) and to Jonathan Basile at the Oxford Literary Review Supplement for hosting the published roundtable.

Los Angeles Review of Books has published a review of mine on Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, season 3. Thank you to Sean Guynes for inviting me to do this!

Readers can stay caught up on my reviews of all recent Star Trek material at my Late Star Trek blog.

I have a new piece out on entertainment franchises and their effects on artistic production at Asia Art Archive, entitled “The Franchise Problem.” Here is a preview:

There is a curious contradiction at the heart of contemporary American popular culture: the most popular and commercially successful framework for artistic production is at the same time the most resented and even reviled. I am speaking of the role of franchises such as Star Wars or the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which take pre-existing characters and storyworlds and generate an open-ended chain of new stories across multiple media (usually some combination of television, film, video games, novels, comic books, and toys, supplemented by branded merchandise). Typically, these new stories are not one-off or self-contained, but purport to take place in the “same” narrative space as all the others, so that they should all not only make sense together but actually clarify and enhance each other. This attempt to flesh out the respective fictional worlds has led to a proliferation of prequels (which are sequels to an existing story but set at an earlier time) that purport to give crucial background for previously published stories and therefore recontextualise them. Once limited to “nerdy” genres like science fiction and superhero comic books, franchise storytelling is now the dominant format for film and television.

Thanks to Paul Fermin for commissioning the piece and to him and his colleagues for their perceptive comments and suggestion, which pushed me to make the piece better!