Time and place of trial lecture
The trial lecture will take place 21 April at 10.15 in auditorium U40, Domus Theologica.
Adjudication committee
- Dr. Ward Blanton, Religious Studies, University of Kent (first opponent)
- Professor Jayne Svenungsson, Centrum för teologi och religionsvetenskap, Lunds Universitet (second opponent)
- Marianne Bjelland Kartzow, Faculty of Theology, University of Oslo.
Leader of the disputation
Dean of studies Oddbjørn Leirvik
About the dissertation
"Pauline Refigurations" is a study in the reception of Paul in the works of the philosophers Jacob Taubes (1923-1987) and Slavoj Žižek (1949-). By taking these two representatives of the continental philosophical tradition as cases, the study investigates the use and function of the apostle’s legacy in various historical contexts for intellectual debates within twentieth-century European thought. With reliance on Brennan W. Breed’s reception theory as one of its methodological points of departure, this investigation aims at rewriting our understanding of the Pauline texts by exploring their potential meaning in relation to the reception of them in the philosophers’ works. By comparing the different appropriations of Paul’s legacy in Taubes and Žižek, the study seeks to gain knowledge of the possibilities of meanings of Paul’s texts and of the recent turn to Paul in contemporary continental philosophy. The reception of Paul in continental philosophy is also considered as examples of how notions of "the historical" and "philosophical" are constructed within contemporary debates about Paul’s legacy.