Toward A Second Theology: Avant-Garde Art and Theopolitics

This article introduces the conceptual couple first theology and second theology as an answer to J. Kameron Carter’s call for a theopolitical approach beyond the proper practice versus malpractice dualism in Western political theology. In order to find sources to further renegotiate the relationship between the material, the spiritual and the political, the article turns East to Russian avant-garde artists and thinkers Liubov Popova (1889–1924) and Vladimir Tatlin (1885–1953), discussed in relation to Walter Benjamin (1892–1940). The conceptual couple according to which first theology is understood as theology is stuck in a representational logic where proper practice can be easily distinguished from malpractice. Second theology, on the other hand, is a performative approach to theology beyond the representational logic: theology that does and constructs rather than is and represents. Thus, second theology is theology that is political, even activist, without pertaining to truth claims or ideals regarding proper or improper theological practice.