Daniel Barber, On Diaspora: Christianity, Religion, and Secularity. Eugene, OR: Cascade

Books, 2011. 155 pp. $20.00. ISBN 978-1-60899-400-7 (pbk).

A major task of political theology amid the discussion on the relation between secularityand religion is to interrogate the function and meaning of Christianity as a discursivetradition, in both historical and contemporaneous terms. However, there are many waysinto this questionand not many ways out. Daniel Barber proposes an original approach toboth in On Diaspora, wherein he retheorizes these three termsChristianity, religion, andthe secularityas concepts to be disassembled and rethought by diaspora. Barber maintainsthat the central difficulty facing theologies today is the relationship of identity todifferenceor differentiality. Rather than reiterating identitarian competition and dispute,Barber constructs an ambitious theory of diaspora, so as to energize the problematicoperation within Christianitys properly differential form. Diaspora, contends Barber,explicates the differential constitution at the theoretical heart of Christianity, which alsocomposes its relation with religion and secularity. Diaspora, however, is more than aheuristic; it is a normative articulation of an alternative style of theological thinking. Onemight assume this includes political action, but Barber is silent on this.

Immanence is central to Barbers theorization of diaspora. Eager to disqualify the retreatto a transcendent beyond as the default response to diasporic differentiality and

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inconsistency, Barber turns to Baruch Spinozas naturalization of theology which identifiescause and effect as existing and operating on the same place: The cause is not prior to itseffects, for its essence is affected by what it effects; the cause is constituted by its effects (2).Diaspora modifies immanence insofar as immanence puts into play a reciprocal relaybetween namelessness and excessive signification (xi), which likewise characterizesdiaspora. This relay identifies an exteriority of surplus as the site of diaspora, the substanceof which is unnamable, but is necessarily given fictive expression. It avoids muteness andtaciturnity by breaking the world from the beyond or below of being itself by theapocalyptic movement relay of fictive excess and apophatic refusal, which is properlyimmanent.

Barber proceeds with diasporic readings of particularity, identity, world, chaos, anddifference, all of which structure his rather original take on the relation of the secular toreligion and to Christianity, specifically. Diaspora disarticulates or decomposes theboundaried modality of consistent identities and creatively shifts Christianity in the novelrecomposition of differential forms so as to pose problems to the world by challenging itsontology. This foregrounds the differentialities that make Christianity, religion, andsecularity inherently inconsistent. This promotes an interparticularity that deterrorializesidentity and affirms the other without absorbing it. A diasporic Christianity does not resolveits intrinsic inconsistencies but leverages them to create alternative possibilities for allthought forms in the contemporary world. Barber investigates the relational sites betweenand within Christianity, secularity, and religion by employing diaspora as a kind of criticaltheory, whereby they are interpreted as mutually dominative resolutions to thedifferentialities that disembed it from identitarian forms.

Holding open the possibility of something altogether novel, a diasporic Christianityrefuses to seek after a forgotten or neglected core, which if marshaled would returnChristianity from its apocryphal history to its original authenticity. Diaspora animates theproblematic form of Christianity that actively antagonizes the world as it is, callingattention to its mode of domination. In this way, Christianity proceeds in the world as aproblematic horizon, it declares its content, and in doing so problematizes the world as it ispresently given (38). It does this problematic style of work through a transversal process ofdecomposition and recomposition of variant identity elements. What Christianity meanscan only be determined in-between. It is not its own thing set apart from, say, Judaism orsecularism, but rather is an immanently displaced relation that reconfigures itself apartfrom the borders of its others. Barber expands this differential form of the Christian toboth the concepts of religion and the secular in order to develop a rather full theory ofintrinsic inconsistency, or the differentiality of differentialities, for which diaspora isindispensable.

There is no question about the strength of Barbers thesis, or of the depth or quality ofscholarship he displays. He moves deftly from Spinoza, to Deleuze, to Boyarin, to Yoder,and back to Spinoza, exegeting them all with fair nuance and skillful ease. His choice tobase his argument on broadly Jewish voices in this project will be of particular interest toreaders keen to discover the import of his project on Jewish-Christian relations, a matterthat Barber himself takes up in some detail. His novel theorization of the immanent, theapocalyptic, and the diasporic opens new conceptual spaces for political theologies,especially post-secular debates about political subjectivity amidst religious pluralism. Yet,even though Barber does the very important work of theorizing the concept of diaspora andapplying it to understandings of Christianity in relation to both secularity and religion, hisdescriptive account of diaspora is, in some ways, incomplete, and so, insufficient. This maystem from the fact that Barber is thoroughly conceptual, and not explicitly historical orpolitical. Indeed, the argument seems to be disconnected from and uninformed by actualexperiences of diasporic peoples and their narratives and traditions. His notion of diasporaseems funded by primarily, if not exclusively, North American and Continental intellectual

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traditions, and is quite untouched by any concrete accounts of being diasporic, such as onemight find within postcolonial, or even rabbinic, literature. Since Barber is silent about theparticular history of African, Asian, and even Jewish diasporas, he misses, in my opinion,the rich resources that these diverse experiences bring to understanding what diasporameans for theology and religious studies today. To be sure, Barber does us all a great favorin bringing to our collective attention the conceptual significance of diaspora; perhaps it isour work to apply his insights more specifically to theological issues and political contexts.

SILAS MORGANLoyola University Chicago, IL

smorgan2@luc.edu

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