Haunted by (Ontological) Ancestors and Bodies in Precarity: Religious Education Confronts Ontological Terror, Biopower, and Necropolitics

Abstract An expansive understanding of ancestors is integral to the opening of imaginative spaces for religious education—particularly in university and adult faith formation settings—to grapple deeply with contexts of precarity and the hopelessness such contexts breed. More specifically, this essay considers how hauntings by one’s past selves (“ontological ancestors”) and by enfleshed others living in precarity can lead to sustained compassion and praxis in response to ontological terror, biopower, and necropolitics. Such hauntings are possible through continual unlearning and dislodging of one’s very self through practices such as askēsis and rhizomatic identity formation. Once these practices become central, religious education can foster possibilities for honest engagements with and deep compassion for present (hopeless) realities and the experiences of bodies in precarity.