[Reader-list] `Secular Theology and Occidental Imperial Formation: The Latin Roots'; CSDS, Jan 13, 1430

[Rajesh Ramakrishnan]

*Tuesday, 13th January, 2009*


*Peter Fitzpatrick* will speak on


  Secular Theology and Occidental Imperial Formation: The Latin Roots



at *2:30 PM* in the *Seminar Room, CSDS, 29 Rajpur Road, Delhi – 110 054*





The argument here is that the template of modern imperialism is to be found
in a theologic advanced in the teachings of Francisco de Vitoria, especially
those relating to the Spanish colonisation of the Americas. The coherence
and the continuance of that template in its 'secular' rendition is found to
depend on the operative adoption, yet sustained forgetting, of that
theologic. Then, by way of a conclusion, this combined adoption and
forgetting is extended to the imperial affect within occidental political
formation.



Peter Fitzpatrick is currently Anniversary Professor of Law at Birkbeck,
University of London and Honorary Professor of Law in the University of
Kent. In 2007 he was given the James Boyd White Award by The Association for
the Study of Law, Culture and the Humanities. He has taught at universities
in Europe, North America and Papua New Guinea and published many books on
legal philosophy, law and social theory, law and racism, and imperialism,
the latest one being *Law as Resistance: Modernism, Imperialism,
Legalism*(Ashgate, 2008). Outside the academy he has been in an
international legal
practice and was also in the Prime Minister's Office in Papua New Guinea for
several years.