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A Political Theology for the US-Mexico Borderlands
âCan These Bones Live?â
Series: - Political and Public Theologies, Volume: 6
Author:
Since 1994, over 4,000 human remains have been recovered from the Sonoran Desert. Victims of a border enforcement strategy that weaponizes the landscape against migrants, the ever-growing ledger of the dead counts the human cost at which the present political paradigm is secured. Through a series of readings of biblical texts, informed by philosophical, theological, and legal theory, this book facilitates a reckoning between the self-determining polity and the excluded outsiderâs ethical demand. Finding in their demand the motivation for novel forms of legal interpretation and political agency, Ellrod sketches a hopeful, life-affirming alternative to Realist Political Theologies of Migration.
Bryan M. Ellrod, Ph.D. (2021), Emory University, is Director of Pre-Law at Wake Forest University and teaches in the Interdisciplinary Humanities Program. His research and teaching engage the intersection of law and the humanities, with a special interest in ethics.
Preface: Besetting Danger
Acknowledgments
List of Figures
Introduction
â1 The Bones in the Valley
â2 Politics as a Project of Redemption
â3 Pernicious Messianism in the Borderlands
â4 Between Worlds
â5 Argument Summary
PART 1. Realism, Bodies Politic, and Bodies Remembered<\h2>
PART 2. Cain & Abel<\h2>
PART 3. Samaritans & Sojourners<\h2>
Acknowledgments
List of Figures
Introduction
â1 The Bones in the Valley
â2 Politics as a Project of Redemption
â3 Pernicious Messianism in the Borderlands
â4 Between Worlds
â5 Argument Summary
PART 1. Realism, Bodies Politic, and Bodies Remembered<\h2>
1 Contesting Realism in the Christian Ethics of Migration
â1 Introduction: Christian Ethics and Political Theology
â2 Christian Realism
â3 Realism and the Christian Ethics of Migration
â4 Hopelessness in the Borderlands
â5 An Eschatological Imperative
2 The Remembrance of Dismembered Bodies
â1 Mortalities on the Margins and the Danger of Spectacle
â2 The Ethical Demand
â3 The Distribution of the Sensible
â4 âLas Madres/No Mas Lágrimas:â a Metonymic Encounter with the Dead
â5 Metonymy in the Scriptural Imaginary
PART 2. Cain & Abel<\h2>
3 Politics Haunted
â1 Strangers or Estranged Siblings?
â2 Fratricide: a Problem of Beginning
â3 Abelâs Ghost: a Theological Case for Haunting
â4 Troubled Closure: Haunting and the Politics of Self-Determination
â5 A Riven Condition
4 Exorcising the Ghosts
â1 Prevention through Deterrence as Practical Solution
â2 The Making of the âAlienâ
â3 Legal Rights and the Dignification of Demands
â4 Disappeared in the Landscape
â5 Fatal Contradictions
â6 Can These Bones Live? a Provisional Answer to the Question
PART 3. Samaritans & Sojourners<\h2>
5 The Samaritanâs Virtue
â1 From Contempt to Compassion
â2 âWho is my Neighbor?â: the Parableâs Context & Stakes
â3 On the Road from Jerusalem to Jericho: the Neighbor as Object
â4 Moved by Compassion: the Neighbor as Ethical Subject
â5 Compassion and Law
6 A Samaritan in the Sonoran
â1 What Must We Do to Live?
â2 Encounters on a Different Road
â3 What is in the Law? How Do You Read It?
â4 The Samaritan Moved with Compassion
â5 The Works of theNomikos
Conclusion: Political Theology in the US-Mexico Borderlands
â1 In Failureâs Wake
â2 Sin, Redemption, and the Collectively Self-Determining State
â3 Weak Messianic Force & the Law
â4 A Case for Hope
â5 The Bones in the Valleys
References
Index
This bookâs contributions lie at the intersections of political theology, Christian ethics, and law. It is recommended to graduate students and specialists in these fields.