The otherwise and grace: Exploring theopolitical connections

Abstract

Although they are not often in explicit conversation with each other, several scholarly contributions about the otherwise and grace, respectively, echo each other in striking ways. In this article, the author explores some of these echoes. Assembling theoretically various approaches to the otherwise and grace allows him to show that they both tread on similar theopolitical paths, and to identify three points on which they converge: excess, incarnation and turbulence. The article is structured around these three confluences. Each section begins with a description of a particular way of approaching the otherwise, which is then compared with a similar way of approaching grace. Each section concludes with reflections on the spaces of convergence thus identified, and it is argued that they constitute promising sites for the deployment of a ‘theopolitical analytics’ in anthropology.