Sovereignty and Event: The Political in

John D. Caputo’s Radical Theology

Calvin D. Ullrich
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Religion in Philosophy and Theology
Editor
INGOLF U. DALFERTH (Claremont)
Advisory Board
THOMAS RENTSCH (Dresden)
HARTMUT VON SASS (Berlin)
HEIKO SCHULZ (Erfurt/Frankfurt a. M.)

105
 Calvin D. Ullrich

Sovereignty and Event

The Political in John D. Caputo’s
Radical Theology

Mohr Siebeck
Calvin D. Ullrich, born 1990; 2019 PhD in Systematic Theology at Stellenbosch University,
South Africa; currently Research Fellow in the Ecumenical Institute at Ruhr-University-
Bochum, Germany.
orcid.org/0000-0002-7129-1488

ISBN 978-3-16-159230-0 / eISBN 978-3-16-159231-7

DOI 10.1628/978-3-16-159231-7
ISSN 1616-346X/ eISSN 2568-7425 (Religion in Philosophy and Theology)
The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliographie;
detailed bibliographic data are available at http://dnb.dnb.de.

© 2021 Mohr Siebeck Tübingen, Germany. www.mohrsiebeck.com

This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, in any form (beyond that permitted by
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ductions, translations and storage and processing in electronic systems.
The book was printed on non-aging paper by Laupp & Göbel in Gomaringen and bound by
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Printed in Germany.
For my sister, Chloé.
 Preface

In the evolution of any book one learns that it is never a wholly remote un-
dertaking, occurring across several junctures that interact and blend into a
variety of dynamic contexts; intellectual, geographic, and personal. As is
often the case, graduate study provided the catalyst at the genesis of this en-
deavor, more precisely, after reading the philosophical writing of Simon
Critchley and his 2012 work, Faith of the Faithless. The general tenor of the
latter was that faith was more ambiguous than simply observing normative
religious beliefs and that it could also operate exterior to confessional bound-
aries, while being implicated at the same time in a complex process in which
political subjects are constituted. This thesis provided the architectonic for
the present study’s central interests. But while Critchley innovatively situated
the poles of continental philosophy and political theology, respectively, an
approach which amounted to a secular ethics, it did not satisfy the conditions
for an adequate theological perspective. I then encountered the ‘radical’ the-
ology of John D. Caputo; in particular, his Prayers and Tears of Jacques
Derrida (1997) and Weakness of God (2006). Reading these texts, it became
possible to imagine an alternate horizon for theology; one which might resist
the temptations of coerciveness or desire for ideological stability. Moreover,
this original and idiosyncratic theological architecture, would also not have to
relinquish Critchley’s appeal to non-confessional persuasions, nor at the same
time would it have to be an obstacle, but rather could be deployed as a critical
resource for invigorating traditional and confessional convictions too. If Ca-
puto’s work established a novel project which decoupled some of theology’s
associations with force and violence, then it was the implicit connection to
power, and therefore the implications to ‘the political,’ that still needed to be
drawn out and made explicit; that is, the question of how a radical theology
could be (or become) political. This is what the present book will describe as
a ‘radical political theology.’
The notion of political theology has a complex and textured history in the
country I call home, South Africa. Indeed, the nationwide student-protests
that occurred there while undertaking graduate study at Stellenbosch Univer-
sity in 2015–16, could be explained as a tacit response to the ongoing effects
of the theologically-inspired politics of apartheid. But just as unconventional
a theological confrère was Caputo in that context, so too was the way of entry
VIII Preface

into political theology. Diverging from the dominant mode of theologizing in

the ‘post-apartheid’ dispensation, which emphasizes the ‘public’ nature of
theology and draws from the archive of liberation theology, my energies
instead turned to the political theology of the German jurist, Carl Schmitt,
during my time at the Tübinger Stift in Baden-Württemberg in 2017. Between
walks along the Neckar and days spent in the Theologicum library, it was not
the figures of Barth, Bonhoeffer, and Moltmann, but rather Schmitt’s political
theology of sovereignty and the subsequent hermeneutic link it forged with
Caputo’s radical theology, which occupied my energies. This ultimately gave
shape to the current monograph. What followed appeared to be a relatively
straight-forward attempt to map this link onto Caputo’s project of a radical
theology of the ‘event.’ However, amidst further investigation it also became
necessary to trace the genealogy of Caputo’s radical theology and its key
concepts. In compiling these stages together, then, this book seeks to recon-
struct Caputo’s œuvre according to the analytic of ‘sovereignty and the
event’; beginning in his early engagements with Heidegger – where the dis-
course concerning event first emerges – to Derrida and the ethics of the
event, and finally to religion and theology, where the encounter with the
political is more acutely revealed. In a broad sense, what emerges in this
philosophical-theological exploration, is a vindication of the continued signif-
icance of the relationship between postmodern thought and theology, and
specifically, a certain gravitas that is to be accorded to Caputo’s contribution
to this ongoing dynamic. Finally, and more controversially perhaps, not only
does Sovereignty and Event argue for the indispensability of radical theology
for problematizing the nature of power and politics in secular democracy, but
also for a poetic efficacy that radical theology produces in the ongoing strug-
gle to re-imagine new political ways-of-being.
Sections of chapter two, “Overcoming Metaphysics,” have appeared in
“On Caputo’s Heidegger: A Prolegomenon of Transgressions to a Religion
without Religion,” in De Gruyter: Open Theology, 6 no. 1 (2020): 241–255
(doi: 10.1515/opth-2020-0020); sections of chapter five, “The Event of Sov-
ereignty,” have appeared in “Theopoetics to Theopraxis: Toward a Critchlean
Supplement to Caputo’s Radical Political Theology,” in Forum Philosophi-
cum, 26 no. 1 (2020): 163–182 (doi: 10.35765/forphil.2020.2501.10). I would
like to thank these journals for their permission to include parts of these texts
into this monograph, which is the realized product of my doctoral disserta-
tion, completed in 2019.

Calvin D. Ullrich
August, 2020, Cape Town, South Africa
IX

Table of Contents

Preface .......................................................................................................... VII

Introduction.................................................................................................... 1

A. Protests, Masters, and Events ........................................................................ 3

Sovereignty .............................................................................................. 8
The Event .............................................................................................. 15

B. Notes on Methodology ................................................................................. 22

C. Outline of Chapters ..................................................................................... 25

Chapter 1: Carl Schmitt, Sovereignty, and Democracy ................ 30

A. Introduction ................................................................................................. 30

B. The Crisis of Liberal Democracy ................................................................. 41

Three Examples in Democracy’s Crisis ................................................. 43
The Postdemocratic Condition .............................................................. 45

C. Schmitt’s Political Theology ........................................................................ 48

The Age of Neutralizations and Depoliticizations ................................. 50
The Friend-Enemy Distinction ............................................................. 53
Carl Schmitt’s Concept of Sovereignty ............................................... 56
Political Theology ............................................................................... 58

D. Schmitt’s Eschatology ................................................................................. 61

Schmitt’s Concept(s) of History ............................................................. 63
The Katechon ........................................................................................ 65
X Table of Contents

E. Radical Hermeneutics of Sovereignty? ........................................................ 70

Chapter 2: Overcoming Metaphysics .................................................. 76

A. Introduction ................................................................................................. 76

B. Heidegger’s Critique of Scholasticism according to Caputo....................... 80

Metaphysics as the History of Being...................................................... 81
Identity and Difference ......................................................................... 84
Language ............................................................................................. 88
The ‘Ereignis’ in Time and Being ....................................................... 89

C. The Mystical Element in Thomas Aquinas................................................... 92

The Early Greeks: Anaximander ............................................................ 93
Heraclitus and Parmenides.................................................................... 95
Re-reading the Metaphysics of esse .................................................... 96

D. Heidegger against Heidegger.................................................................... 100

The ‘upon-which’ in Being and Time .................................................. 101
Cold Hermeneutics ............................................................................. 104
Demythologized Heidegger and the turn to Derrida .......................... 107

Chapter 3: The Il/logic of the sans ..................................................... 111

A. Introduction ............................................................................................... 111

B. Postmodernism, Derrida, and Différance .................................................. 116

Postmodernism ..................................................................................... 117
Jacques Derrida................................................................................... 120
Différance .......................................................................................... 122

C. Ethics sans Ethics ...................................................................................... 125

Against Ethics ...................................................................................... 127
Heteromorphism vs Heteronomism .................................................... 129
Anthropologia Negativa .................................................................... 133

D. Religion sans Religion ............................................................................... 134

 Table of Contents XI

The Apophatic ...................................................................................... 136

Translatability ..................................................................................... 140

Chapter 4: From Radical Religion to Radical Theology............. 144

A. Introduction ............................................................................................... 144

B. The Messianic ............................................................................................ 146

C. The Gift of Apocalypse .............................................................................. 152

Apocalypse without Apocalypse .......................................................... 152
The Gift of Givenness ......................................................................... 154
The Gift without Givenness............................................................... 156
Derrida’s Religion ............................................................................. 160

D. Radical Theology....................................................................................... 163

The Quasi-Structure of ‘Name-Event’ ................................................. 166
The Death of God, Theology, and Justice ........................................... 170
God without Sovereignty ................................................................... 178

Chapter 5: The Event of Sovereignty ................................................ 183

A. Introduction ............................................................................................... 183

B. Sovereignty without Sovereignty ................................................................ 187

The Friend-Enemy Deconstruction ...................................................... 188
Between Law and Justice .................................................................... 193
Sovereignty, Autoimmunity, and the Democracy to Come ............... 198

C. Theological Materialisms: Badiou, Agamben, Žižek ................................. 204

Alain Badiou ........................................................................................ 206
Giorgio Agamben ............................................................................... 209
Slavoj Žižek ....................................................................................... 211

D. The Theo-poetics of Radical Political Theology ....................................... 215

The ‘Poetics’ of Theo-poetics .............................................................. 216
The ‘Theos’ of Theo-poetics ............................................................... 222
The Three Pills of Theo-poetics ........................................................ 228
XII Table of Contents

Avoiding the Third-Way of Theo-poetics? ....................................... 242

E. A Conclusion: ‘The King is Dead – Long Live the King!’ ......................... 244

Postscript .................................................................................................... 249

Bibliography .............................................................................................. 253

Author Index.............................................................................................. 265

Subject Index ............................................................................................. 267

 Introduction

What you aspire to as revolutionaries is a master. You will get one.

Jacques Lacan1

The question of the master raised by this utterance of the psychoanalyst,

Jacques Lacan, or the notion of the ‘sovereign’ in the work of the French
philosopher, Jacques Derrida, as we will see shortly, is the fundamental polit-
ical-theological question which motivates the present book. On the one hand,
the master or sovereign figure is a political one, not only because it has to do
with power and authority, but also because it raises questions of political
legitimacy, autonomy, freedom, and democracy. On the other hand, the con-
cept of the master/sovereign also has a particular theological resonance, and
to that extent requires theological reflection. The point of departure for this
resonance is obtained from the political theorist Carl Schmitt, who can be
credited with bringing the formal concept of political theology back into
twentieth and twenty-first century debate. In its most basic form, Schmitt’s
hypothesis was that the political sovereign receives its conceptual force from
the sovereign omnipotent God. It is this God which will need to be reflected
upon, lest we acquire a new master that we neither want nor deserve.
The importance of Jacques Derrida in what follows lies not only in the
connections he makes with Carl Schmitt, but also in his influence on its cen-
tral interlocutor, the American philosopher and theologian, John D. Caputo.2
While Derrida’s writing contains a number of theological characteristics, it is
Caputo’s work which has become most well-known for its theological inter-
pretation of deconstruction. Since the political-theological concept of sover-
eignty requires theological reflection, and because Derrida does not engage
this systematically himself, the aim of this book can be said to be an explora-

1
Jacques Lacan, The Seminar of Jacques Lacan: The Other Side of Psychoanalysis, Book
XVII, ed. Jacques-Alain Miller and trans. Russell Grigg (New York: W.W. Norton, 2007),
207.
2
John D. Caputo is presently the Thomas J. Watson Professor of Religion Emeritus at Sy-
racuse University and the David R. Cook Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at Villanova
University.
2 Introduction

tion of John D. Caputo’s ‘radical theology of the event,’ as an exemplary site

in which this reflection takes place. It will be argued, more specifically, that
Caputo’s radical theology presents resources to reimagine the sovereign and
thus aims to contribute to the ongoing quandary of the status of theological
sovereignty and its relation not only to the political, but also to ethics and
religion.
To this end, the scope of this book consists in a systematic theoretical and
philosophical-theological reflection on the work of John D. Caputo. While
taking its point of departure from the theological-political sense of sovereign-
ty given by Carl Schmitt, the study traces this concept through Caputo’s
œuvre as it specifically interacts in the various domains of his thought with
what is called ‘the event.’ The event takes on a heuristic function here, as an
organizing concept that demarcates the unique contributions of Caputo’s
philosophical and theological project. From the influence of Jacques Derri-
da’s deconstructive approach, Caputo incorporates the concept of the ‘event’
into a ‘radical theology’ that not only challenges dominant modes of theolog-
ical discourse, but also offers an alternative and novel mode of theological
reflection. This mode of reflection, which Caputo calls ‘theo-poetics,’ un-
dermines traditional notions of God and theology insofar as the latter is a
‘logical’ discourse which mediates on the former as both an omnipotent and
sovereign Being. Theo-poetics, on the other hand, suggests a mode which
attempts to think of God without sovereignty. To think of God without sover-
eignty is to think of a ‘weak’ God beyond the order of a Supreme Being or
Infinite Entities. Part of the claim of this book will be to show, however, that
‘God’s weakness’ does not mean ‘God’s impotence’ but rather alludes to a
‘weak force’ of God which lays claim on us. Theo-poetics is the discourse
that endeavors to articulate this weak force and, therefore, will be central to
the project of imagining a God without sovereignty.
It will be demonstrated that to think or imagine a God without sovereignty
is not just a cerebral exercise, but is an urgent and necessary task requiring
sustained theological reflection. Reasons for this reside in the conviction that
modern democratic life is not a value-free zone, but is rather imbued with
theological referents. To the extent that sovereignty is one of the central con-
cepts that continues to influence the way in which democracy is both con-
ceived and carried out, it cannot be left to the realm of political or legal theo-
ry. Much theological discourse, to be clarified further below, has already
sought to interrogate the dangers of a political theology of sovereignty which
might serve as justification for potentially violent political ambitions. This
reflection has usually consisted in submitting alternative political theologies
that conceive God’s sovereignty as a transcending force that is able to cri-
tique ‘this-worldly’ projects of statecraft. While the argument offered here
would affirm such political-theological approaches, it would insist that main-
taining this connection to God’s sovereignty is always a risk, no matter how
 A. Protests, Masters, and Events 3

transcendent it is of the political realm. Therefore, by running together this

political-theological notion of sovereignty and Caputo’s theo-poetics of radi-
cal theology – which imagines a God without sovereignty – an attempt will
be made to formulate a ‘radical political theology’ that might not only be
more prepared to manage this risk, but which also offers an original and ‘con-
structive’ mode of theological discourse with which to engage political chal-
lenges.

A. Protests, Masters, and Events

A. Protests, Masters, and Events
I would like to begin this introductory chapter by making some brief remarks
regarding the motivational genesis of this book. In 2015, universities across
South Africa were emerging from a wave of animated and, at times, violent
student protests. What started in January as a small demonstration relating to
defaulting student fees at the University of the Witwatersrand, soon took a
dramatic turn far exceeding the critical failures of the National Student Fi-
nancial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) the purported source of the tension at the time.
The catalyzing moment, however, occurred on Monday, March 9, when
Chumani Maxele, a student at the University of Cape Town (UCT), hurled
human excrement onto a large concrete statue located in the center of UCT’s
campus. The statue was that of the notorious British mining magnate, former
prime minister of the Cape Colony, and veritable symbol of colonial imperi-
alism, Cecil John Rhodes. The hashtag #RhodesMustFall began trending
across the country and beyond, igniting protests as far as Rhodes’ alma mater,
Oriel College, Oxford. Exactly one month later the statue had been removed
from UCT’s campus a prescient moment, indeed, as one reflects in 2020 on
the Black Lives Matter movement.
But Pandora’s box had been proverbially opened. Further energized by the
spurning of university executive committees to amend tuition-fee policies, as
well those events at UCT, activist groups and self-styled ‘movements’ began
forming across campuses nationwide under the banner of #FeesMustFall. It
became quickly clear, however, given the assortment of issues being raised,3
that what was at stake did not simply reside in access to higher education or
the presence of colonial statues. Two underlying but significantly inter-
related objects of discontent could be identified. The first was the perceived

3
At Stellenbosch University, for example, a historically white Afrikaans institution, the
‘Open Stellenbosch’ movement that mobilized in April, called for greater inclusion by means
of adjusting the university language policy, which, they argued, ultimately excluded students
whose first language was not Afrikaans. See Tammy Peterson, “Students protest in Stellen-
bosch over language,” News24, www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/Students-protest-in-
Stellenbosch-over-language-20150727 (27 July, 2015).
4 Introduction

failure of the governing party, the African National Congress (ANC), to make
good on its promises of a ‘post-apartheid’ era that would inaugurate a new
dispensation of prosperity, at least, that is, for a generation of ‘born-free’
black youth – those born after the formal end of the apartheid regime. Along-
side the pillaging of state resources, cronyism, and state corruption, many felt
that an economically progressive agenda which had been promised, was ulti-
mately compromised by deals made with white-owned businesses. The ma-
jority of black people, it was argued, had been left behind.4 Secondly, under-
pinning the latter was the meta-historical argument of the still-felt implica-
tions of European colonialism. At the university but also in wider public
discourse, this was, and still is, variously referred to as the persistence of
‘white privilege.’ The phenomenon was not only to be recorded in the cele-
bratory symbolic status of colonial statues or even in acts of overt racism, but
was rooted more deeply in the very experience of ‘coloniality’5 itself, or what
the Peruvian sociologist Aníbal Quijano called, ‘the coloniality of power.’6 In
short, the indignation of the student protestors directed at South Africa’s
colonial history and the persisting forms of structural oppression and exclu-
sion, under the negligence of the state and its commitment to an overly neo-
liberal model for economic growth, marked a turning point for South African
democracy. A turning point, which, notwithstanding the unique challenges
facing any fledgling democracy, is less surprising when juxtaposed with
global trends of political pessimism. Liberal democracy may indeed be reced-
ing in practice – the purported ‘ground’ upon which it laid its foundations
trembles as authoritarianisms dressed in different garbs continue to surge. But
the vigorous responses to this universal moment, whether grass-roots move-
ments or new forms of political articulation, suggest that detachment from the
ideological transcending of limitations (ontological, moral, or collective) may
point to a self-revision that is of salvific importance. It is in this context that
the motivations for this book and the analysis it contains, have emerged.

4
See Roger Southall, “How ANC’s path to corruption was set in South Africa’s 1994
transition,” The Conversation, https://theconversation.com/how-ancs-path-to-corruption-was-
set-in-south-africas-1994-transition-64774 (6 Sep, 2016); see also Roger Southall, “The ANC
for Sale? Money, Morality and Business in South Africa,” Review of African Political Econ-
omy 35 no. 116 (2008): 281–299.
5
It is perhaps worth drawing a distinction following Ramón Grosfoguel between colonial-
ism and coloniality: the latter is the “continuity of colonial forms of domination after the end
of colonial administrations, produced by colonial cultures and structures in the mod-
ern/colonial capitalist/patriarchal world-system.” See Ramón Grosfoguel, “The Epistemic
Decolonial Turn: Beyond political-economy paradigms” in Cultural Studies 21 no. 2–3
(March/May, 2007): 211–223, 219.
6
See Aníbal Quijano, “Coloniality of Power, Eurocentrism, and Latin America”, trans.
Michael Ennis in Nepantla: Views from South 1 no. 3 (Sep, 2000): 533–580.
 A. Protests, Masters, and Events 5

The epigraph above refers to Lacan’s infamous remarks to disgruntled stu-

dents on December 3, 1969, at the newly established ‘experimental’ Universi-
té de Paris VIII at Vincennes (included at the end of Seminar XVII: ‘The
Other Side of Psychoanalysis’), following the widely commented-on revolts
of May 1968. In the gathering from where these words were recorded, Lacan
was faced with a group of heckling students who wanted him to perform a
‘self-criticism,’ since they were disgusted at the formalized inclusion of the
psychoanalytic discipline in the university curriculum.7 To the contrary, they
thought, psychoanalysis was supposed to be the discourse providing the very
means by which the bureaucratization of the university could be undermined.
Instead, by creating a department of psychoanalysis, the disruptive and non-
formalizable nature of the discourse, they argued, was now being coopted
into the university itself. Though sympathetic with the students, Lacan’s tone
toward them, as his biographer Élisabeth Roudinesco noted, was more of a
‘stern father,’ perhaps even a little authoritarian.8 Paradoxically, the question
could be asked: Was the threat of psychoanalysis to the university not to be
found in its marginal status but rather in the inherent anti-egalitarianism of its
master-slave/analyst-analysand dialectic? As one of the hecklers put it, “[w]e
already have priests, but since that was no longer working, we now have
psychoanalysts.”9
And yet, in the aftermath of ‘68, Lacan was certainly convinced of the rad-
ical potential of psychoanalysis, as the distinction between the famous ‘four
discourses’ makes clear. In university discourse “knowledge loses its capacity
to radicalize,” since it is ‘flattened’ and ‘bureaucratized,’ whereas psychoa-
nalysis “calls this kind of knowledge into question,” Stephen Frosh notes.
Consequently, “what happens ‘in’ the university is at odds with psychoanaly-
sis, even when psychoanalysis appears in the university itself, and even when
what happens in the university is a rebellion against the university.”10 Lacan’s
point to the students was that it does not matter whether you are ‘inside’ or
‘outside’ rebelling against the system, you are always ‘stamped’ by the mode
of university knowledge. When a student cantankerously interjects Lacan’s
lecture, complaining that he did not understand Lacan’s usage of the word

7
The Department of Psychoanalysis would be the first of its kind in the French university
system and would fall under the umbrella of the Department of Philosophy, headed by Michel
Foucault. It boasted a fresh list of admirable young philosophers at the time, including Gilles
Deleuze, Jacques Rancière, Alain Badiou, and Jean-François Lyotard. See Stephen Frosh,
“Everyone Longs for a Master: Lacan and 1968” in 1968 in Retrospect: History, Theory,
Alterity, eds., Gurminder K. Bhambra and Ipek Demir (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009),
100–112; 100–101.
8
Élisabeth Roudinesco, Jacques Lacan, trans. Barbara Bray (New York: Columbia Uni-
versity Press, 1997), 343.
9
Lacan, The Other Side of Psychoanalysis, 200.
10
Frosh, “Everyone Longs for a Master,” 102–103.
6 Introduction

‘aphasic,’ the moment becomes illustrative:11 revolutionary displays from

‘outside’ of the university are nothing more than just that, displays of igno-
rance (the student doesn’t understand basic Greek) and which are themselves
put on display. With condescension, Lacan replied: “for you fulfil the role of
helots of this regime. You don’t know what that means either? The regime is
putting you on display. It says, ‘Look at them enjoying!’”12 Thus, the revolu-
tionary impulse of the students is ultimately a search for a more totalizing
university discourse and “this search for unity produces totalitarianism in the
form of a master – and in hunting for revolutionary upheaval in the way that
they do, that is where the students will end up.”13 The new master which the
students were given, one memorably recalls, was an even stronger Gaullist
party.
With perceptive insight, as the renowned Slovenian philosopher, Slavoj
Žižek, has been variously elaborating for the last couple of decades, Lacan’s
words about the master’s return continue to haunt movements which agitate
against the dominant global-economic and western-democratic apparatus,
including the likes of Occupy Wall Street, the Indignados in Spain or Syriza
in Greece. Referring to the now defunct Occupy movement, Žižek described
the art of politics as the insistence on a demand that is ‘realistic’ insofar as it
disturbs the hegemonic order but which also is de facto impossible. The para-
dox, therefore, is that “we should indeed endeavor to mobilize people around
such demands – however, it is no less important to remain simultaneously
subtracted from the pragmatic field of negotiations and ‘concrete’ pro-
posals.”14 Žižek’s political analysis here is an expansion on the central La-
canian insight that a true revolution is the Freudian revolution, according to
which the desire for total knowledge is suspended in the process of ‘transfer-
ence’ when the analysand comes to realize that the analyst is not ‘the one
who knows.’ The subject is thus left to fall upon its divided-self or what La-
can called the pas-tout (non-all/non-whole): “without this pas-tout, there will
always be a demand for a master.”15
Lacanian psychoanalysis and especially the conceptualization of Freudian
subjectivity allows one to view the student protests through a helpful critical
framework. Reflecting on the recent South African student protests, the phi-
losopher, Achille Mbembe remarks, “the winds blowing from our campuses

11
“But outside what? Because when you leave here you become aphasic? When you leave
here you continue to speak, consequently you continue to be inside. INTERVENTION: I do
not know what aphasic is. You do not know what aphasic is? That’s extremely revolting. You
don’t what an aphasic is? There is a minimum one has to know, nevertheless.” Lacan, The
Other Side of Psychoanalysis, 205–206.
12
Ibid., 208.
13
Frosh, “Everyone Longs for a Master,” 106.
14
Slavoj Žižek, The Year of Dreaming Dangerously (London: Verso, 2012), 84.
15
Frosh, “Everyone Longs for a Master,” 100.
 A. Protests, Masters, and Events 7

can be felt afar … it goes by the name ‘decolonization’ – in truth a psychic

state more than a political project.”16 While Mbembe is categorical – “this is
not May 68,”17 – it is not difficult to discern and consequently evaluate the
protests through the Lacanian lens as others have done at length.18 Instead of
pursuing this line further, however, this contextual heuristic, and in particular
the reference to the ‘master’, now function as a pivot for introducing the
central themes and concerns of this book.
In its most basic form, the consequence of ‘68 was the decline of the old
(authoritarian) master and the emergence of the new master-figure in the
form of the ‘expert’ (university discourse). The problem, as Žižek points out,
is that these experts show themselves not to be experts or masters at all, but
rather impotent bureaucrats who pave the way for the unsurprising return of
strong-man authoritarians who inspires the populist alternative.19 Much of
this can be mapped onto the situation described above: i.e. the decline of the
old colonial master or the Apartheid state, only to be replaced by a new re-
gime of experts that are struggling to consolidate a positive social vision in
the context of a young and vulnerable democracy. The students require a
master. But the question that emerges is what will the precise character of
this new master be? It can neither be the return of the authoritarian nor the
depoliticizing neutrality of ‘university discourse.’ This question, therefore,
raises the issue of the complex relationship between mastery or the analogous
notion of sovereignty and the (theological) foundations that allegedly consti-

16
Achille Mbembe, “The State of South African Political Life,” Africa Is A Country,
www.africaisacountry.com/2015/09/achille-mbembe-on-the-state-of-south-african-politics
(19 Sep, 2015). Although short, this concise essay provided an accessible statement of the
state of South African politics during 2015, it was also widely disseminated.
17
This is taken from an excerpt of Mbembe’s “Diary of My South African Years” that
was published online: see Achille Mbembe, “Theodor Adorno vs Herbert Marcuse on student
protests, violence and democracy,” First Thing – Daily Maverick, http://
firstthing.dailymaverick.co.za/article?id=73620 (27 Oct, 2018). This psychic state can be
understood as characteristic of a larger phenomenon that is shaping the twenty-first century,
what Mbembe as recently called a ‘politics of enmity.’ See Achille Mbembe, “The Society of
Enmity”, trans. Giovanni Menegalle in Radical Philosophy 200 (Nov/Dec, 2016): 23–35.
This article is a translation of chapter two of Achille Mbembe, Politiques de l’inimitié (Paris:
La Découverte, 2016).
18
See Bert Olivier for example, “Protests, ‘acting out’, group psychology, surplus enjoy-
ment and neo-liberal capitalism” in Psychology in Society, 53 (2017): 30–50.
19
As Žižek recently comments, “recall how the experts in Brussels acted in negotiations
with Greece’s Syriza government during the euro crisis in 2014: no debate, this has to be
done. I think today’s populism reacts to the fact that experts are not really masters, that their
expertise doesn’t work.” See Slavoj Žižek, “Are liberals and populists just searching for a
new master? A book excerpt and interview with Slavoj Žižek,” The Economist, https://
www.economist.com/open-future/2018/10/08/are-liberals-and-populists-justsearching-for-a-
new-master (8 Oct, 2018).
8 Introduction

tute democratic life. To pursue this question further, this book will draw on
the insights of Jacques Derrida as they are specifically taken up in the work
of John D. Caputo and his radical theology.
For the remainder of this introductory chapter, then, I will introduce two
conceptual axes which run throughout and frame the content of this book,
namely, ‘sovereignty and event.’ With respect to the former, I will discuss the
conditions in which sovereignty emerges as both a political and theological
concept, and which finds its modern articulation in Carl Schmitt. This will
allow a reflection on the reception of Schmitt’s thought, as well as the oppor-
tunity to make further remarks regarding his contribution to the present anal-
ysis. With respect to the second axis, I will present the vision of what I intend
to pursue regarding Caputo’s radical theology of event, further delimiting his
project from other radical theological projects, before finally situating his
own work and introducing his core theological contribution. The introduction
concludes with a brief word concerning methodology, followed by a short
summary of each chapter.

I. Sovereignty
On the way to formulating an answer to the question of the master figure in
politics, our reference now turns to another figure, namely, that of the sover-
eign. The French philosopher Jacques Derrida (a contemporary of Lacan), in
his last seminars conducted before his death explicitly links the master to the
sovereign: “the master (and what is said of the master is easily transferable to
the first of all, the prince, the sovereign), the master is he who is said to be,
and who can say ‘himself’ to be, the (self-)same, ‘myself.’”20 Derrida contin-
ues, expanding on this definition:
The concept of sovereignty will always imply the possibility of this positionality, this
thesis, this self-thesis, this autoposition of him who posits or posits himself as ipse, the
(self-)same, oneself. And that will be just as much the case for all the ‘firsts,’ for the sov-
ereign as princely person, the monarch or the emperor or the dictator, as for the people in a
democracy, or even for the citizen-subject in the exercise of his sovereign liberty (for
example, when he votes or places his secret ballot in the box, sovereignly). In sum, wher-
ever there is a decision worthy of the name, in the classical sense of the term.

In this description of the master/sovereign Derrida consciously implicates a

wide scope of the tradition of liberal modernity in the semantic field of a
certain political theology. Despite early-modern efforts to imagine an imma-
nent account of human nature (Bodin, Hobbes, Vico, Machiavelli) – exempli-
fied in Vico’s famous aphorism, verum esse ipsum factum (‘what is true is

20
Jacques Derrida, The Beast and The Sovereign, eds. Michel Lisse, Marie-Louise Mallet
and Ginette Michaud, trans. Geoffrey Bennington (Chicago: Chicago University Press,
[2009] 2011), 67.
 A. Protests, Masters, and Events 9

precisely what is made’)21 – Derrida concludes, nonetheless, that these at-

tempts at ‘anthropologization, modernization and secularization’ remain
“essentially attached by the skein of a double umbilical cord.”22 On the one
side of this double connection Derrida refers to imitation, which describes the
‘human’ institution of the state as “copies of the work of God.” On the other,
he speaks of a (Christian) logic of lieutenance – of the human sovereign as
the taking-place of God (tient lieu de Dieu) and as place-taking (lieu-tenant):
“the place standing in for the absolute sovereign: God.”23 To those unfamiliar
with Derrida and the sensitivities of postmodern thought, such comments
might be disconcerting for modern sensibilities. How is it that such language
of God and Christianity, or even religion, could be spoken in such proximity
to the political order?
The possibility for such claims arise in what is now a well-documented
phenomenon; i.e. the crisis of secular-liberal modernity in which religion
once banished from the public sphere has made a tremendous comeback.24
This (re)turn or ‘resurgence’ is not merely private religiosity but in a number
of particular ways quite public and therefore political.25 The crucial move of
modernity was to maintain the link between classical liberalism and secular-
ism: the value-free space of the former in which the market could operate
untethered, combined with the ideological assumption of the latter that reli-
gion could be separated from public life. However, the maintenance of this
link has failed and the boundaries between the religious and the secular – and
indeed, many of the modern distinctions: subject/object, faith/reason, theolo-

21
See Victoria Kahn, The Future of Illusion: Political Theology and Early Modern Texts
(Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2014), 6–9.
22
Derrida, The Beast and the Sovereign, 53.
23
Ibid.
24
See for example; Hans Joas, Faith as Option: Possible Futures for Christianity (Stan-
ford: Stanford University Press, 2014), Charles Taylor’s, A Secular Age (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 2007), Peter L. Berger, “The Desecularization of the World: A Global
Overview", in The Desecularization of the World: Resurgent Religion and World Politics, ed.
Peter L. Berger (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), Sharpe, M. and Nickelson, D. eds., Secu-
larisations and Their Debates: Perspectives on the Return of Religion in the Contemporary
West, (Dordrecht: Springer, 2014), William E. Connolly, Why I Am Not a Secularist (Minne-
apolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999), and Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular:
Christianity, Islam, Modernity (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003).
25
Graham Ward, for example, speaks of ‘resurgence’ or ‘the new visibility of religion,’
rather than ‘return.’ For him return implies continuity with the past, but the ‘postsecular’
phenomenon has very little to do with old forms of religiosity he claims. For example, he
indicates that mainline church attendance has declined, or if anything, has remained stagnant.
Ward posits a threefold typology for describing this new visibility: Fundamentalism, Depri-
vatization, and Religion and Culture (in terms of its commodification). See Graham Ward,
The Politics of Discipleship: Becoming Postmaterial Citizens (Grand Rapids: Baker Academ-
ic, 2009), especially see chapter three, 117–158.
10 Introduction

gy/philosophy etc., – have become ever-more porous, leading some to won-

der how modern we even were to begin with.26 An important consequence of
this ‘post-secular’ environment for what follows, is that the resources of the-
ology (or religion) used to interrogate questions of politics cannot be con-
fined only to classical theological reflection, insofar as the very distinction
between (political) theology and (political) philosophy is no longer secure.
While further reasons and implications of the ‘post-modern’ or ‘post-secular’
will become clearer as we continue, it is in this context one can understand
the recent fascination of a number of predominantly ‘secular’ thinkers who
have begun to show interest in precisely the intellectual offerings of religion
and theology. These include, among others, Slavoj Žižek, Giorgio Agamben,
Alain Badiou, Antonio Negri, Michael Hardt, Jean-Luc Nancy, Gianni
Vattimo, and indeed, Jacques Derrida.
One of the first to consider this complex entanglement of ‘the political’
and ‘the theological’ in the twentieth century, however, was the controversial
conservative German political theorist, Carl Schmitt (1888–1985), notably in
his short book, Political Theology (1922).27 Indeed, it is thanks to Schmitt
that the term ‘political theology’ has re-entered the modern lexicon, which he
most likely gathered from Baruch Spinoza’s Tractatus Theologico-Politicus
(1670).28 As a part of his incisive critique of Weimar liberalism, parliamen-
tarianism, and cosmopolitanism, Schmitt put political theology to work
through the concept of sovereignty by defining it as “he who decides on the
exception” with respect to the juridical-legal order.29 This understanding of
sovereignty for his formulation of political theology was not an appeal to
religious tradition for political legitimacy, but rather involved the claim that
the political order is structurally analogous to a metaphysical reality. The
primary analogue for this claim was to be found in the sovereign God, insofar
as God is that which both founds the political order and simultaneously re-
mains a part of and external to it. Schmitt’s argument went on to define the
concept of politics in a circumscription that referred to an irreducible conflict

26
See Bruno Latour, We Have Never Been Modern (Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, [1991] 1993). While this book had to do with the false distinction that modernity made
between nature and society, it nonetheless captures well the general mood of the times.
27
Carl Schmitt, Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty, trans.
George Schwab (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2005).
28
Despite the frequent reference to Schmitt as the originator of the phrase ‘political theol-
ogy,’ he has no role in conceiving it. Indeed, apart from Spinoza, whom he certainly had read,
the phrase also shows up in other literature, for example, Simon van Heenvliedt’s Theologi-
co-Politica Dissertatio (Utrecht: Jacob Waterman, 1662). The earliest usage seems to date
back to Marcus Terentius Varro (116–27 B.C.E.), see Hent de Vries and Lawrence E. Sulli-
van, eds., Political Theologies: Public Religions in a Post-Secular World (New York: Ford-
ham University Press), 25–26.
29
Schmitt, Political Theology, 5.
 A. Protests, Masters, and Events 11

between ‘friend and enemy,’ which he detailed in his second most-often cited
book, The Concept of the Political (1932).30 From these definitions Schmitt
derived the normative conclusion that the theological-political element of
politics needed to be reclaimed. Infamously, he later became a member of the
Nazi Party, with the after effects generally construing political theology as a
long anti-democratic and authoritarian shadow casted over the twentieth cen-
tury.31 In chapter one, Schmitt’s political theology and concept of sovereignty
will be further elaborated and shown to culminate in what will be called a
‘politics of presence.’ This desire for presence, which is the desire of sover-
eignty itself, will be placed in consistent tension with the second axis men-
tioned above: the event. Given Schmitt’s contributions to political theology
and the concept of sovereignty in particular, some further comments about his
reception are necessary in order to situate and justify his inclusion into the
present work.
After his defense of the political-theological heritage which must be re-
claimed for modern politics, a number of critical responses were generated
arising both before and after the Second World War. Some of these responses
were historical-theological in nature, while others focused on secularization
and the use of theological concepts in politics. To the former, the neo-
Kantian legal scholar, Hans Kelsen, and the conservative theologian, Erik
Peterson, both argued in different ways that Schmitt’s theory evaded the
crucial Trinitarian aspect of theology.32 Many years later, in Political Theolo-
gy II (1969),33 Schmitt responded to these criticisms arguing that they were
based on theological dogma, whereas his interests were epistemological and
had to do with the history of ideas.34 Another series of critical responses to

30
Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political: Expanded Edition, trans. George Schwab
(Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2007).
31
See Annika Thiem, “Schmittian Shadows and Contemporary Theological-Political Con-
stellations,” Social Research 80 no. 1 (Spring, 2013): 1–33. Thiem details a comprehensive
reception history of Schmitt in this valuable essay.
32
For Kelsen, a Trinitarian incarnational model restricts divine omnipotence implied by
Schmitt’s concept of sovereignty, and rather forces the political order to bind itself to the
concrete limitations of law. See Hens Kelsen, “Gott und Staat,” Logos: Internationale
Zeitschrift Für Philosophie Der Kultur 11 (1922): 261–284; 275. For Peterson, the combina-
tion of Trinitarian theology and Augustinian eschatology, refutes the claim of hierarchal
sovereignty on the one hand, and on the other, necessarily requires the provisional nature of
any political order and at the same time disallows such a thing as Christian political theology.
See Erik Peterson, “Monotheism as a Political Problem: A Contribution to the History of
Political Theology in the Roman Empire” in Theological Tractatus, eds. Erik Peterson and
Michael J. Hollerich (Stanford: Stanford University Press, [1953] 2011), 68–105.
33
Carl Schmitt, Political Theology II: The Myth of the Closure of and Political Theology,
trans. Michael Hoelzl and Graham Ward (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2008).
34
Thiem, “Schmittian Shadows,” 7.
12 Introduction

Schmitt, including Eric Voegelin, Jacob Taubes and Karl Löwith,35 for exam-
ple, were concerned about the negative influences of theological concepts on
philosophies of history. Walter Benjamin, in his The Origin of German Trag-
ic Drama (1925), drew particular attention to the fact that sovereignty was
not the structural analogue to an omnipotent God, but rather emerged as an
imagined consequence of a changed sense of history, namely, the possibility
of an eschatological destruction of the world.36 In another vein, Hans Blu-
menberg criticized Schmitt’s theory of secularization, arguing that it did not
allow for the rearrangement of theological concepts but instead arrested them
in such a way that they were always unchanging. In Blumenberg’s view,
while modernity is indebted to its theological roots, it does not require tran-
scendental norms for its self-assertion.37 As the discussion above concerning

35
For Taubes’ relationship with Schmitt see the appendices, including two letters, in Ja-
cob Taubes, The Political Theology of Paul, eds. Aleida Assmann and Jan Assmann, trans.
Dana Hollander (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004), 97–113. See also Jacob Taubes,
To Carl Schmitt. Letters and Reflections, trans. Keith Tribe (New York: Columbia University
Press, 2013). Taubes defends a radically ‘negative political theology’ where the future may
not be appropriated by worldly power. See Marin Tepstra and Theo de Wit, “’No Spiritual
Investment in the World as it is.’ Jacob Taubes’ Negative Political Theology,” in Flight of the
Gods. Philosophical Perspectives on Negative Political Theology, eds. Ilse N. Bulhof and
Laurens ten Kate (New York: Fordham University Press), 320–353. Löwith also directly
engages Schmitt in an early essay, where he argued that after the First World War, the decline
of modern philosophies of history, and therefore the loss of criteria for truth or action, led
Schmitt to defend the sovereign decision as the only means with which to respond to the
‘actual’ (faktische) situation. See Karl Löwith, “The Occasional Decisionism of Carl Schmitt”
in Martin Heidegger and European Nihilism, eds. Karl Löwith and Richard Wolin, trans.
Gary Steiner (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995).
36
Benjamin’s cynical view seems to have been, in a way, affirmed by Schmitt, when he
later drew on the New Testament figure of the katechon who acts with decisiveness in order
to stave off the end of history. But their differences, nonetheless, remained stark. Benjamin
believed that Schmitt’s assertion of the sovereign was an imaginative act in the midst of
radical contingency, and that the justification for decisiveness based on a political theology of
omnipotent sovereignty, is a symptom of nostalgia for a concept of political theology that
longer exists. See Walter Benjamin, The Origin of German Tragic Drama, trans. John Os-
borne (London: Verso, 2003), 66, and Carl Schmitt, The Nomos of the Earth: in the Interna-
tional Law of the Jus Publicum Europaeum, trans. G. L. Ulman (New York: Telos, 2006).
Benjamin’s approach to political-theological questions through the aesthetics of Baroque
drama, bears similarities also with Ernst Kantorowicz’s study in The Kings Two Bodies: A
Study in Medieval Political Theology (Princeton: Princeton University Press, [1957] 2016).
There, the aesthetic production of images, specifically the image of the king’s body, which
harbors both the corporeal body and the mystical unity of the polity together, illustrates how,
according to Thiem, “the unity and imperishable continuity of sovereignty are supported and
enabled by the theological production of images that allow for the mediation of transience
and persistence.” See Thiem, “Schmittian Shadows,” 7.
37
Hans Blumenberg, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age, trans. Robert M. Wallace (Cam-
bridge: MIT Press, [1966] 1985). Following Blumenberg, Victoria Kahn has recently argued
 A. Protests, Masters, and Events 13

the porosity of the sacred and secular alludes, the position taken in this book,
as will become further evident throughout, opposes itself to this view on the
basis that it implicitly assumes modernity’s superiority, which is itself an
ideological construal.38
On more explicitly theological grounds, a number of theologians inspired
in large part by the critical theory of the Frankfurt School, as well as the de-
veloping Latin American liberation theologies, responded to Schmitt’s ‘old’
political theology by arguing for a ‘new’ political theology.39 These thinkers,
including Johann Baptist Metz, Jürgen Moltmann, Dorothee Sölle, Gustavo
Gutiérrez and Jon Sobrino, were united with Schmitt only in their criticism of
liberalism. They thought that the critique of liberalism did not require a reas-
sertion of decisive action as Schmitt thought, but rather should issue from the
inherently emancipatory potential of theology itself. Under liberalism, theol-
ogy and religion were confined to the private, and this, the new political theo-
logians argued, was a betrayal of its mission to challenge structural systems
of injustice, colonialism, racism and sexism. Drawing particularly from the
work of Ernst Bloch and Walter Benjamin, they argued against apathy in
light of the ethical and political implications of a Christian understanding of
time.40 For example, the ‘dangerous memory’ as Metz put it, of past and pre-
sent suffering admonishes us to strive for an emancipation for those disre-
garded by history.41 Despite their overtly Marxist orientations they encour-
aged mostly social-democratic styles of government. Moreover, their empha-
sis on those marginalized by society inspired a second wave of political the-
ologies constructed in close proximity to critical theory, including, among
others, feminist theology, black theologies, and queer theology. While the
second half of the twentieth century saw debates about Schmitt’s political
theology largely confined to theologians, sociologists, and historians, the

that current debates about political theology are indeed about the ‘legitimacy of the modern
project of self-assertion.’ See Victoria Kahn, The Future of Illusion, 5–6.
38
See Kathleen Davis’ critique in Periodization and Sovereignty: How Ideas of Feudalism
and Secularization Govern the Politics of Time (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania
Press, 2008), 85–87.
39
For the distinction between ‘old’ and ‘new’ political theology, although this is not a
precise demarcation, see the important volume Francis Schlüssler Fiorenza, Klaus Tanner and
Michael Welker, eds. Political Theology: Contemporary challenges and future directions
(Louisville, CY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2013). The volume includes contributions
from the editors as well as Jürgen Moltmann, Johann Baptist Metz, and Michael Welker.
40
See Jürgen Moltmann, Theology of Hope: On the Ground and Implications of a Chris-
tian Eschatology (New York: Harper and Row, [1967] 1975).
41
For Metz, this dangerous memory is tied to the particular memory of Jesus’ life, death
and resurrection, and it is the Church which “acts as the public memory of the freedom of
Jesus in the systems of our emancipative society.” See Johann Baptist Metz, Faith in History
and Society: Toward a Practical Fundamental Theology, trans. D. Smith (New York: Sea-
bury, 1980), 91.
14 Introduction

latter part, as well as the beginning of the twenty-first century, has seen a
resurgence of interest from the quarters of political theory. This includes
many of the names already mentioned above (Žižek, Badiou, Agamben) and
other leading luminaries: Chantal Mouffe, Ernesto Laclau, and Claude Lefort.
Much of this interest, again, has to do with the crisis of liberalism, its more
aggressive neo-liberal iterations, the new public visibility of religion, and
consequently, the continued and still unresolved ambiguity between theologi-
cal concepts and what constitutes democratic political legitimacy.42
As this brief reception history demonstrates, Schmitt’s enduring signifi-
cance and wide-ranging impact on twentieth-century thought, with respect to
his critique of liberalism, his formulation of political theology, and concept of
sovereignty, make him an important point of reference for the argument of
this book. In particular, it is Schmitt’s thesis of the theological origins of
political sovereignty which motivates many of the later themes in Derrida’s
(and therefore Caputo’s) work – especially as they pertain to deconstructing
the ‘thesis of theogony’ present in modern concepts.43 The approach in what
follows will not be to jettison political theology, but rather, insofar as Caputo
is a preeminent interpreter of Derrida, the intention will be to present a ‘radi-
cal’ reconfiguration of theology that might contribute toward re-thinking the
concept of sovereignty, and thereby introduce a more radical political theol-
ogy.
The phrase, ‘radical political theology,’ is borrowed from the title of Clay-
ton Crockett’s book, Radical Political Theology (2011).44 Crockett’s motiva-
tions are congenial to the present analysis, to the extent that he is also con-
cerned with what alternatives can be thought at the breakdown of liberalism.
For him, and which the argument of this book would affirm, is that the an-
swer is not to be sought in neoconservative forms of politics and theology,
but rather in more radical forms that avoid the horrors of Marxism. This re-
quires a political theology that is neither liberal, liberational, nor orthodox,
but rather one that is inspired by a more radical philosophy of religion that

42
A brief look at the varying contributions in the prodigious volume edited by Hent de
Vries and Lawrence E. Sullivan, illustrates just how wide and contested political theology
remains in the twenty-first century. See Hent de Vries and Lawrence E. Sullivan, eds. Politi-
cal Theologies: Public Religions in a Post-Secular World (New York: Fordham, 2006).
43
See Michael Naas, Derrida From Now On (New York: Fordham University Press,
2008), who argues convincingly for this motivation in Derrida’s later work. Naas writes,
“Whether one agrees or disagrees with Schmitt’s – and thus Derrida’s – diagnosis of sover-
eignty, it is hard to contest that it is this conjunction of sovereignty and theology in Schmitt
that interests Derrida,” 65.
44
Clayton Crockett, Radical Political Theology: Religion and Politics After Liberalism
(New York: Columbia University Press, 2011). Another book which is also in close proximi-
ty to Crockett and radical theological possibilities for politics is Jeffrey Robbins’, Radical
Democracy and Political Theology (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011).
 A. Protests, Masters, and Events 15

directly treats political ideas. Crockett dedicates a short chapter to Caputo

and the theme of sovereignty and weakness, and argues that Caputo along
with Derrida and Catherine Keller, offer resources in the direction of a radical
political theology which conceives a non-sovereign God.45 His book is lim-
ited, however, only by the sheer breadth of its undertaking, enlisting a litany
of thinkers; Deleuze, Agamben, Lacan, Malabou, Nancy, Spinoza, Strauss,
and others. The aim of this book, then, could be said to rely on Crockett’s
chapter as a springboard for taking-up the challenge of a more vigorous and
‘close’ reading of Caputo and the question of sovereignty and political theol-
ogy. To put this succinctly: to arrive at a radical political theology there is the
need for a radical theology, the resources for which, it will be argued, are to
be found in the various stages and loci of the work of John D. Caputo and his
radical theology of the ‘event.’ It should be further added here that while
Schmitt’s political theology provides the immediate political context for
sovereignty, the various stages in Caputo’s work are going to become the
sites in which a reconstruction of his understanding of sovereignty will be
worked out, and thus, not necessarily or initially ‘political’ in the strict sense.
This is precisely because, following Derrida who is following Schmitt, the
concept of sovereignty relies on a ‘thesis’ of theogony, of the ‘auto-
positioning’ of the self, and therefore implicates not only metaphysics, but
also ethical subjectivity and the ‘exceptional’ discourse of theology or reli-
gion more generally. Indeed, because of the lack of an overt political charac-
ter, Caputo’s thought is almost exclusively considered in philosophical and
theological debates, and is very rarely taken up with respect to politics. A part
of the hope for this book’s novelty, then, will be located in its attempt to read
Caputo with these more explicitly political questions and implications in
mind.46

II. The Event

If political theology and the concept of sovereignty remain enduring sites for
reflection in the context of global political and economic challenges, then the
task is to continue to think with these categories in the imagining and creation
of new possibilities. One of the key assumptions here will be that in order to
develop these new possibilities in the mode of a more radical political theol-
ogy, we will need a more radical theology. The quest for a radical theology
does not entail (or intend) undermining the valuable contributions of other

45
Crockett, Radical Political Theology, 43–59.
46
Besides Crockett and Robbins, who as we have noted make only brief allusions to Ca-
puto’s work for its political potentials, this author is aware of only one other book-length
study that considers Caputo in a more political register. See Katherine Sarah Moody’s, Radi-
cal Theology and Emerging Christianity: Deconstruction, Materialism and Religious Prac-
tices (Farnham: Ashgate, 2015).
16 Introduction

theological projects. For example, the tradition of political and liberation

theologies mentioned above has been rightly recognized as vital for challeng-
ing canonical forms of theology which have been predominantly skewed in
favor of Western contexts. Moreover, these traditions of theological reflec-
tion have also presented valuable accounts of God’s sovereignty in the con-
text of political oppression. In South Africa, this was especially important in
the midst of the intra-church struggle to theologically justify the rejection of
apartheid.47 While the ideology of apartheid is formally in the past, the differ-
ent peoples of South Africa continue to grapple with its ongoing legacy (as
the example of the student protests illustrates) and thus the sovereignty of
God remains an active theological concept with respect to democracy. In this
regard, theological reflection on God’s sovereignty in South Africa can be
said to have its roots in the ‘new’ political theology mentioned above, where
it is understood as a prophetic or liberative metaphor that resists power.48 In
this line the well-known Reformed theologian John de Gruchy comments:
Sovereignty is not only a royal metaphor which separated God from the world, thereby
legitimising hierarchy and paving the way for a theocratic-style tyranny; it is also a pro-
phetic metaphor which, when applied to God, de-absolutizes and relativizes all other
claimants to absolute power … Thus, whatever the inadequacy of sovereignty as a divine
attribute we dare not surrender the theological claim that is being made.49

De Gruchy continues by arguing that the sovereignty of God should be un-

derstood with respect to the doctrine of the trinity, since it is here that sover-
eignty can be the basis of both a “critique of authoritarian regimes, while at
the same time providing theological grounds for the democratic social or-
der.”50 Given the importance of ‘the future’ (or the ‘to come’ for Derrida) for
radical theology, theological approaches which emphasize prophetic and
liberative potentials of God’s sovereignty are to be affirmed, insofar as they
also stress the always contingent element of worldly government and, there-

47
See John de Gruchy, Christianity and Democracy: A Theology for a Just World Order
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995) and John de Gruchy and Steve de Gruchy,
The Church Struggle in South Africa: Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Edition (Minneapolis: For-
tress Press, 2005).
48
See Dirkie Smit, “For Allan Boesak: Resisting ‘Lordless Powers’” in Remembering
Theologians – Doing Theology: Collected essays Dirkie Smit, vol. 5, ed. Robert Vosloo
(Stellenbosch: SUN Media, 2013), 77–95. See also Prince Dibeela, Puleng Lenka-Bula and
Vuyani Vellem, eds. Prophet from the South: Essays in honour of Allan Aubrey Boesak
(Stellenbosch: SUN Media, 2014) and Tanya van Wyk, “Political Theology as critical theol-
ogy” in HTS Teologisie Studies/Theological Studies 71 no. 3 (Aug, 2015): 1–8. Accessed at:
http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/hts.v71i3.3026.
49
De Gruchy, Christianity and Democracy, 257–258, quoted in Robert Vosloo, “’Democ-
racy is coming to the RSA’: On democracy, theology, and futural history” in Verbum et
Ecclesia 37 no. 1 (May, 2016), 6. Accessed at: https://doi.org/10.4102/ve.v37i1.1523.
50
De Gruchy, Christianity and Democracy, 258.
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
 APPENDIX
MEASURES AND WEIGHTS.
A few tables of measures may be helpful here because accurate
measurements are necessary to insure success in the preparation of
any article of food.
All dry ingredients, such as flour, meal, powdered sugar, etc.,
should be sifted before measuring.
The standard measuring cup contains one-half pint and is divided
into fourths and thirds.
To measure a cupful or spoonful of dry ingredients, fill the cup or
spoon and then level off with the back of a case-knife.
In measures of weight the gram is the unit.
A “heaping cupful” is a level cup with two tablespoonsful added.
A “scant cupful” is a level cup with two tablespoonsful taken out.
A “salt spoon” is one-fourth of a level teaspoon.
To measure butter, lard and other solid foods, pack solidly in
spoon or cup and measure level with a knife.
TABLE OF MEASURES AND WEIGHTS[13]
4 saltspoons = 1 teaspoon, tsp.
3 teaspoons = 1 tablespoon, tbsp.
4 tablespoons = ¼ cup or ½ gill.
16 tablespoons (dry ingredients) = 1 cup, c.
12 tablespoons (liquid) = 1 cup.
2 gills = 1 cup.
2 cups = 1 pint.
2 pints = 1 quart.
4 quarts = 1 gallon.
 2 tablespoons butter = 1 ounce.
1 tablespoon melted butter = 1 ounce.
4 tablespoons flour = 1 ounce.
2 tablespoons granulated sugar = 1 ounce.
2 tablespoons liquid = 1 ounce.
2 tablespoons powdered lime = 1 ounce.
1 cup of stale bread crumbs = 2 ounces.
1 square Baker’s unsweetened chocolate = 1 ounce.
Juice of one lemon = (about) 3 tablespoons
5 tablespoons liquid = 1 wineglassful.
4 cups of sifted flour = 1 pound
2 cups of butter (packed solid) = 1 pound
2 cups of finely chopped meat (packed solidly) = 1 pound
2 cups of granulated sugar = 1 pound
2⅔ cups of powdered sugar = 1 pound
2⅔ cups brown sugar = 1 pound
2⅔ cups oatmeal = 1 pound
4¾ cups rolled oats = 1 pound
9 to 10 eggs = 1 pound
1 cup of rice = ½ pound.
APOTHECARIES WEIGHTS[13]
20 grains = 1 scruple, ℈
3 scruples = 1 drachm, ʒ
8 drachms (or 480 grains) = 1 ounce, ℥
12 ounces = 1 pound, lb.
APOTHECARIES MEASURES[13]
60 minims (M) = 1 fluid drachm, f ʒ
8 fluid drachms = 1 fluid ounce, f ℥
16 fluid ounces = 1 pint, O or pt.
2 pints = 1 quart, qt.
4 quarts = 1 gallon, gal.
APPROXIMATE MEASURES[13]
One teaspoonful equals about 1 fluid drachm.
One dessertspoonful equals about 2 fluid drachms.
One tablespoonful equals about 4 fluid drachms.
One wineglassful equals about 2 ounces.
One cup (one-half pint) equals about 8 ounces.
 METRIC MEASURES OF WEIGHT[13]
In measures of weight the gram is the unit.
1 gram 1.0 gm.
1 decigram 0.1 gm.
1 centigram 0.01 gm.
1 milligram 0.001 gm.

FOOTNOTES:
[13] Practical Diatetics, Alida Frances Pattee, Publisher, Mt.
Vernon, N. Y.
 Classification of Diets.
The purpose is not to give below such receipts as are found in
ordinary cook books, but simply to suggest foods useful for invalids,
for semi-invalids, or for chronic, abnormal conditions of digestive
organs.

BEVERAGES.
Beverages are primarily to relieve thirst; they may also contain
food elements; they may be used for their effect in heat and cold; for
their flavor which helps to increase the appetite; or for their
stimulating properties.
WATER. Pure and carbonated; mineral waters contain iron, sulphur,
lithium, etc.
Hot drinks should be served at a temperature of from 122 to 140
degrees F. When water is used as a hot drink it should be freshly
drawn, brought to a boil and used at once. This sterilizes and
develops a better flavor.
Cold water should be thoroughly cooled, but not iced, unless ice
water is sipped very slowly and held in the mouth until the chill is off.
Water is best cooled by placing the receptacle on ice rather than by
putting ice in the water.

FRUIT JUICES. Under fruit juices are

Grape juice, apple juice,
Currant juice, pineapple juice,
Orangeade and lemonade.
They are especially grateful to fever patients and are often used to
stimulate the appetite. They are particularly valuable for the acids
which they contain, which stimulate the action of the kidneys and the
peristaltic action of the digestive tract; they also increase the alkalinity
of the blood.
Apples contain malic acid, lemons citric acid and grapes tartaric
acid. The ferment in the ripe pineapple juice aids in the digestion of
proteins.[14]

Lemonade. Wash and wipe a lemon. Cut a slice from the middle
into two pieces to be used in the garnish before serving; then squeeze
the juice of the rest of the lemon into a bowl, keeping back the seeds.
Add sugar and boiling water; cover and put on ice to cool; strain and
pour into a glass.

Fruit Lemonade. To change and vary the flavor, fresh fruit of all
kinds may be added to strong lemonade, using boiling water as
directed above.

Egg Lemonade. Beat an egg thoroughly, add 2 tablespoonsful of

sugar, 2 tablespoonsful of lemon juice and gradually pour in one cup
of cold water. Stir until smooth and well mixed. Serve thoroughly cold.
This drink is very easily digested, the lemon having partly digested the
egg; 2 tablespoonsful of sherry or port may be added.

Bran Lemonade. Mix ¼ cup of wheat bran with 2 cups of cold

water. Allow this to stand over night and in the morning add the juice
of a lemon.

Pineapple Lemonade. Mix ½ cup of grated pineapple with the juice

of 1 lemon and 2 tablespoonsful of sugar; add ½ cup of boiling water,
put on ice until cool, then add 1 cup of ice cold water. Strain and
serve.

Grape Lemonade. To one cup of lemonade, made as directed

above, rather sweet, add ½ cup of grape juice.

Orangeade is prepared as lemonade. The juice of one sour orange

to 2 tablespoonsful of sugar and ½ cup of boiling water is about the
right proportion.

Mixed Fruit Drink. Mix ¼ cup of grated pineapple, the juice of ½ a

lemon, the juice of ½ an orange, 1 cup of boiling water and sugar to
taste. Put on the ice until cool. Strain and add more cold water and
sugar according to taste.

Pineapple Juice. Pour ½ cup of pineapple juice over crushed ice

and serve in a dainty glass. This is especially helpful in cases of weak
digestion and in some throat troubles—as stated above, the pineapple
aids protein digestion.

Lemon Whey. Heat one cup of milk in a small sauce pan, over hot
water, or in a double boiler. Add two tablespoonsful of lemon juice;
cook without stirring until the whey separates. Strain through cheese
cloth and add two teaspoons of sugar. Serve hot or cold. Garnish with
small pieces of lemon.

Wine Whey may be made in the same way, using ¼ cup of sherry
wine to 1 cup of hot milk.
 Grape Juice, Apple Juice and Currant Juice are tonics and make
a dainty variety for the sick room. They should be used according to
their strength, usually about ⅓ of juice to ⅔ water. They should be
kept cold and tightly corked until ready to serve.

Grape Lithia. Add 4 ounces of Lithia water to 1 ounce of grape

juice and two teaspoons of sugar.

Grape Nectar. Boil together 1 pound of sugar and ½ pint of water

until it begins to thread. Remove from the fire and when cool add the
juice of 6 lemons and one quart of grape juice. Let stand over night.
Serve with ice water, Apollinaris, or plain soda water.

Tea Punch. Pour boiling lemonade, sweetened to taste, over tea

leaves. Allow the liquid to stand until cool. Then strain and serve with
shaved ice and slices of lemon. This makes a delicious cooling drink
for hot weather.

LIQUID FOODS.
Under this heading such liquids are given as are actual foods.
MILK. Milk is a complete food and a perfect food for infants, but not
a perfect food for adults. It may be used as
Whole or skimmed;
Peptonized; boiled;
Sterilized, pasteurized;
Milk with lime water, Vichy or Apollinaris;
With equal parts of farinaceous liquids;
Albuminized milk with white of egg;
 Milk with egg yolk, flavored with vanilla, cinnamon or nutmeg;
Milk flavored with coffee, cocoa, or meat broth;
Milk punch; milk lemonade;
Koumiss; kefir or whey, with lemon juice, as above.

EGG PREPARATIONS. These consist of

Albumin water (diluted white of egg), flavored with fruit juice;
Egg lemonade; egg orangeade;
Egg with meat broth;
Egg with coffee and milk;
Chocolate eggnog.
Often the white of egg, dissolved in water or milk, is given when the
yolk cannot be digested, because of the amount of fat which the yolk
contains.
Where one is inclined to billiousness, the egg is better digested if
beaten in wine.
The albuminous or egg drinks are best prepared cold.

Eggnog. To make eggnog, separate the white and the yolk, beat
the yolk with ¾ of a tablespoonful of sugar and a speck of salt until
creamy. Add ¾ of a cup of milk and 1 tablespoonful of brandy. Beat
the white until foamy, add to the above mixture and serve immediately.
A little nutmeg may be substituted for the brandy. The eggs and milk
should be chilled before using. Eggnog is very nutritious.

Egg Broth. Beat the yolk of 1 egg, add 1 tablespoonful of sugar

and a speck of salt. Add 1 cup of hot milk and pour it on gradually.
Flavor with nutmeg.
Dried and rolled bread crumbs may be added, or beef, mutton or
chicken broth may be used in place of the milk, and the sugar may be
omitted. The whole egg may be used if desired.
This is very delicious made with beef broth, instead of hot milk.
Pineapple juice or coffee may be used.

Coffee Eggnog. 1 egg, 1¼ teaspoons of sugar, ½ scant cup of milk

or cream, ½ scant cup of coffee.

Egg Malted Milk. Mix 1 tablespoonful of Horlick’s Malted Milk with 1

tablespoonful of crushed fruit and 1 egg; beat for five minutes. Strain
and add 20 drops of acid phosphate, 1 tablespoonful of crushed ice
and ¾ cup of ice water. A grating of nutmeg may be used for flavor.

Grape Yolk. Separate the white and the yolk of an egg, beat the
yolk, add the sugar and let the yolk and sugar stand while the white of
the egg is thoroughly whipped. Add two tablespoonsful of grape juice
to the yolk and pour this on to the beaten white, blending carefully.
Have all ingredients chilled before blending and serve cold.

Albuminized Milk. Beat ½ cup of milk and the white of one egg
with a few grains of salt. Put into a fruit jar, shake thoroughly until
blended. Strain into a glass and serve cold.

Albumin Water. Albumin water is used chiefly for infants in cases of

acute stomach and intestinal disorders, in which some nutritious and
easily assimilated food is needed. The white of 1 egg is dissolved in a
pint of water, which has been boiled and cooled.
 Albuminized Grape Juice. Put two tablespoonsful of grape juice
into a dainty glass with pure chopped ice. Beat the white of one egg,
turn into the glass, sprinkle a little sugar over the top and serve.

FARINACEOUS BEVERAGES. These are all made by slowly

adding cereals, such as barley, rice, oatmeal, etc., to a large quantity
of boiling water and cooking from two to three hours and then
straining off the liquid and seasoning to taste. They are particularly
valuable when only a small amount of nutriment can be assimilated.
Since the chief ingredient is starch, long cooking is necessary to make
soluble the starch globules and to change the starch into dextrin, so
that it can be more readily digested. Since these drinks are given only
in case of weak digestion, it is important that they be taken slowly and
held in the mouth until they are thoroughly mixed with the saliva.

Barley Water. (Infant feeding). Mix 1 teaspoonful of barley flour with

two tablespoonsful of cold water, until it is a smooth paste. Put in the
top of a double boiler and add gradually one pint of boiling water. Boil
over direct heat five minutes, stirring constantly; then put into a double
boiler, over boiling water, and cook fifteen minutes longer. This is used
as a diluent with normal infants and to check diarrhoea.
For children or adults use ½ teaspoonful of barley or rice flour, 1
cup of boiling water and ¼ teaspoonful of salt. Cream or milk and salt
may be added for adults, or, lemon juice and sugar, according to the
condition.
Barley water is an astringent and used to check the bowels when
they are too laxative.

Rice Water. Wash two tablespoonsful of rice, add 3 cups of cold

water and soak thirty minutes. Then heat gradually and cook one hour
until the rice is tender. Strain through muslin, re-heat and dilute with
boiling water or hot milk to the consistency desired. Season with salt;
sugar may be added if desired and cinnamon, if allowed, may be
cooked with it to assist in reducing a laxative condition. 1 teaspoonful
of stoned raisins may be added to the rice, before boiling, if there is no
bowel trouble.

Oatmeal Water. Mix 1 tablespoonful of oatmeal with 1 tablespoonful

of cold water. Add a speck of salt and stir into it a quart of boiling
water. Boil for three hours, replenishing the water as it boils away.
Strain through a fine sieve or cheese cloth, season and serve cold.
Sufficient water should be added to keep the drink almost as thin as
water.

Toast Water. Toast thin slices of stale bread in the oven; break up
into crumbs; add 1 cup of boiling water and let it stand for an hour.
Rub through a fine strainer, season with a little salt. Milk, or cream and
sugar may be added if desirable. This is valuable in cases of fever or
extreme nausea.

Crust Coffee. Dry crusts of brown bread in the oven until they are
hard and crisp. Pound or roll them and pour boiling water over. Let
soak for fifteen minutes, then strain carefully through a fine sieve.

Meat Juice. Meat juice may be prepared in three ways:

(1) Broil quickly, or even scorch, a small piece of beef. Squeeze out
the juice with a lemon squeezer, previously dipped in boiling water.
Catch the juice in a hot cup. Season and serve. If desirable to heat it
further, do so by placing the cup in hot water.
(2) Broil quickly and put the small piece into a glass jar. Set the
covered jar in a pan of cold water. Heat gradually for an hour, never
allowing the water to come to a boil. Strain and press out the clear,
red juice, season and serve. One pound of beef yields eight
tablespoonsful of juice.
 (3) Grind raw beef in a meat grinder; place in a jar with a light cover
and add one gill of cold water to a pound of beef. Stand it on ice over
night, strain and squeeze through a bag. Season and serve.

Meat Tea. Meat tea is made in the proportion of a pound of meat to

a pint of water. Grind the meat in the meat grinder, place in a jar and
cover with cold water. Set the jar in an open kettle of water and cook
for two hours or more, not allowing the water to boil. Strain, squeeze
through a bag, skim off the fat and season.

Meat Broth. Meat broth is made from meat and bone, with and
without vegetables. The proportion is a quart of water to a pound of
meat. Cut the meat into small pieces, add the cold water and simmer
until the quantity is reduced one-half. Strain, skim and season with
salt. Chicken, veal, mutton and beef may be used in this way. They
may be seasoned with onions, celery, bay-leaves, cloves, carrots,
parsnips, rice, barley, tapioca; stale bread crumbs may be added.

Soups. Clear soups are made by cooking raw meat or vegetables,

or both together, slowly, for a long time, straining and using the liquid.
The flavor may be changed by browning the meat or vegetables in
butter before adding the water.
Cream Soups are made in the proportion of one quart of
vegetables, (such as corn, peas, beans, tomatoes, celery or
asparagus) to one pint of water and a pint of milk. Cook the
vegetables thoroughly in water and mash through a colander. To this
water and pulp add a cream sauce made in the proportion of 4
tablespoonsful of flour, 4 tablespoonsful of butter and a pint of milk for
vegetables poor in starch or protein. Add 2 tablespoonsful of flour, 2
tablespoonsful of butter and a pint of milk for those rich in protein.
Season to taste.
Tomato acid should be counteracted by the addition of one-eighth
tablespoonful of soda before the milk is added.
Potato soup may be flavored with onion or celery, or both.
 SEMI-SOLID FOODS.

The following lists of foods are given for ready reference.[15]

Jellies.
(a) Meat Jellies and gelatin; veal, beef, chicken, mutton.
(b) Starch Jellies, flavored with fruit; cornstarch,
arrowroot, sago, tapioca.
(c) Fruit jellies and gelatin.
Custards.
(a) Junkets, milk or milk and egg (rennet curdled),
flavored with nutmeg, etc.
(b) Egg, milk custard, boiled or baked.
(c) Corn starch, tapioca, boiled custard.
(d) Frozen custard (New York Ice cream.)
Gruels. (Farinaceous)
(a) Milk gruels.
(b) Water gruels.
Toasts.
(a) Cream toast.
(b) Milk toast.
(c) Water toast.
Creams.
(a) Plain.
(b) Whipped.
(c) Ice cream.
Oils.
(a) Plain olive, cotton seed, or nut.
(b) Butter.
(c) Emulsion, as mayonnaise.
(d) Cod liver oil, plain or emulsified.
 SOLID FOODS.
(Suitable for Invalids.)
Cereals.
(a) Porridges and mushes—Oatmeal, cornmeal, wheat,
rice, etc.
(b) Dry preparations—Shredded wheat biscuit, corn flakes,
puffed rice, puffed wheat, triscuit.
Breads.
(a) Plain—White, graham, nutri-meal, whole wheat, brown,
rye, etc.
(b) Toasts—Dry, buttered, zwieback.
(c) Crackers—Soda, graham, oatmeal, Boston butter, milk.
(d) Biscuits—Yeast biscuits (24 hours old), baking powder
biscuit, beaten biscuit.
Egg Preparations.
(a) Boiled, poached, scrambled, baked.
(b) Omelets.
(c) Souffles of meat and of potatoes.
Meats.
(a) Beef or mutton—Broiled or roasted.
(b) Chicken, turkey or game—Broiled or roasted.
(c) Fish—Broiled, boiled or baked.
(d) Oysters—Canned, stewed, etc.
(e) Clams—Chowder, broiled or baked.
Vegetables.
(a) Potatoes—Baked, boiled, creamed and escalloped.
(b) Sweet potatoes, baked and boiled.
(c) Green peas, plain and creamed.
(d) Lima beans, plain and creamed; string beans, plain and
creamed; cauliflower, plain and creamed; carrots,
parsnips.
 Fruits.
(a) Fresh—Oranges, grapes, melons, etc. etc.
(b) Stewed apples, plums, apricots, pears, berries, etc.
(c) Baked apples, bananas, pears.
(d) Canned peaches, apricots, plums, pears.
(e) Preserved peaches, plums.

SEMI-SOLID FOODS.
jellies. Meat Jellies are made in two ways:
(1) Cook soup meat (containing gristle and bone) slowly for a long
time in just enough water to cover. Strain and set the liquid away in a
mold to cool and set. If desired, bits of shredded meat may be added
to the liquid before molding.
(2) Use meat broth and gelatin in the proportion of one tablespoon
gelatin to three quarters of a cup of hot broth. Pour into mold and set
on ice.

Starch Jellies.—Starch Jellies are made by cooking in a pint of fruit

juice or water until clear, two tablespoons of tapioca, arrowroot, sago,
cornstarch, or flour. Sweeten to taste.
If water is used, fresh fruit may be used either in the jelly or in a
sauce poured over the jelly.

Fruit Jellies.—These are made:

(1) Of fruit juice and sugar in equal quantities, cooked until it will set
when cooled;
(2) Of fruit juice and gelatin in the proportion of one tablespoon of
gelatin to three fourths of a cup of fruit juice, or one half box gelatin to
one and a half pints of juice. Sugar to taste. Made tea or coffee, or
cocoa or lemonade may be used in the same proportion.
 custards.—These are made with (1) milk, (2) milk and eggs, (3)
milk, egg and some farinaceous substances as rice, cornstarch,
tapioca. In the first the coagulum is produced by the addition of
rennet, in the other two by the application of heat.
Plain Junket.—Dissolve in a cup of lukewarm milk (never warmer),
a tablespoon of sugar or caramel syrup. Add a quarter of a junket
tablet, previously dissolved in a tablespoon of cold water. Stir a few
times, add vanilla, nuts, or nutmeg if desired. Pour into a cup and set
aside to cool and solidify. This may be served plain or with whipped
cream, or boiled custard.

Egg-Milk Custard.—When eggs are used for thickening, not less

than four eggs should be used to a quart of milk (more eggs make it
richer).

Boiled Custard.—One pint of milk, two eggs, half cup of sugar, half
saltspoon of salt. Scald the milk, add the salt and sugar, and stir until
dissolved. Beat the eggs very thick and smooth. Pour the boiling milk
on the eggs slowly, stirring all the time. Pour the mixture into a double
boiler, set over the fire and stir for ten minutes. Add flavoring. As soon
as a thickening of the mixture is noticed remove from the fire, pour
into a dish and set away to cool. This custard makes cup custard, the
sauce for such puddings as snow pudding, and when decorated with
spoonfuls of beaten egg-white, makes floating island.

Baked Custard.—Proceed as in boiled custard, but instead of

pouring into a double boiler pour into a baking dish. Set the dish in a
pan of water, place in the oven and bake until the mixture is set in the
middle.
 Farinaceous Custards.—Make like boiled custard, using one less
egg and adding one quarter cup of farina, tapioca, cornstarch,
arrowroot, or cooked rice to the hot milk and egg.

Sago should be soaked over night before using.

Tapioca should be soaked one hour before using.

Coffee Custard.—Scald one tablespoon of ground coffee in milk

and strain before proceeding as for boiled custard.

Chocolate Custard.—Add one square of grated chocolate to the

milk.

Caramel Custard.—Melt the dry sugar until golden brown, add the
hot milk, and when dissolved proceed as before. Bake.
gruels.—Gruels are a mixture of grain or flour with either milk or
water. They require long cooking and may be flavored with sugar,
nutmeg, cinnamon, or almond.
Take the meal or flour (oatmeal, two tablespoons, or cornmeal, one
tablespoon, or arrowroot, one and a half tablespoons). Sift it slowly
into one and a half cups boiling water, simmer for an hour or two.
Strain off the liquid; add to it one teaspoon of sugar, season with salt,
and add one cup of warm milk.
Water Gruel.—If water gruel is desired, let the last cup of liquid
added be water instead of milk.
 Cream Gruel.—A cream gruel may be made by using rich cream
instead of milk or water.

Barley Gruel.—Barley gruel (usually a water gruel) is prepared as

follows: Moisten four tablespoons of barley flour in a little cold water
and add it slowly to the boiling water. Stir and boil for twenty minutes.
TOASTS.—Cream Toast.—Toast the bread slowly until brown on
both sides. Butter and pour over each slice enough warm cream to
moisten (the cream may be thickened slightly and the butter may be
omitted.)
Milk Toast.—One tablespoon of cornstarch or flour; one cup of
milk, salt to taste, and boil. Butter the toast and pour over it the above
white sauce.

Water Toast.—Pour over plain or buttered toast enough boiling

water to thoroughly moisten it.
souffles of fruit, etc.—The distinguishing feature of a souffle
is a pastry or pulpy foundation mixture, and the addition of stiffly
beaten egg-white. A souffle may or may not be baked.
Plain Souffle.—Two tablespoons flour; one cup of liquid (water,
milk, or fruit juice); three or four eggs; sugar to suit the fruit. If thick
fruit pulp is used, omit the thickening. Beat the egg yolks until thick.
Add sugar gradually and continue beating. Add the fruit (if lemon juice
add some rind also). Fold in the well-beaten whites. Bake in a
buttered dish (set in a pan of hot water) for thirty-five or forty minutes
in a slow oven.

Fresh Fruit Souffle.—Reduce the fruit to a pulp. Strawberries,

peaches, prunes, apples, bananas, etc., may be used. Sweeten the
pulp. Beat the egg-white to a stiff froth, add the fruit pulp slowly. Chill
and serve with whipped cream or soft custard.
 Chocolate Souffle.—Two tablespoons flour; two tablespoons
butter; three quarters cup of milk; one third cup of sugar: two
tablespoons hot water. Melt the butter, add the flour and stir well. Pour
the milk in gradually and cook until well boiled. Add the melted
chocolate, to which the sugar and hot water have been added. Beat in
the yolks and fold in the whites of the eggs. Bake twenty-five minutes.

Farina Souffle.—Cook the farina (four tablespoons) in a pint of

boiling water. Stir this with the egg-yolks, add sugar or salt, and later
fold in the egg-whites, flavor, and set away to cool.
The following tables are from “Food and Dietetics,” (Norton),
published by the American School of Home Economics, Chicago.
They are used in a number of schools of Domestic Science and in
Dietetic kitchens in hospitals.
These tables are exceptionally valuable in compiling diets in
various combinations. One readily determines the number of grams
in various servings of different foods. For example—a small serving
of beef (round), containing some fat, weighs 36 grams; forty per
cent; 14.4 grams, is protein, and sixty per cent, 21.6 grams, is fat,
(no carbohydrates). One ordinary thick slice of white, home made
bread weighs 38 grams; thirteen per cent, 4.94 grams, is protein, six
per cent 2.28 grams is fat and eighty-one per cent, 30.78 grams, is
carbohydrate.
One can readily make up the proportions of proteins,
carbohydrates and fats required by the average individual suggested
on pages 217-218 from various combinations of foods. Each
individual may make this study for himself to know whether his
system is receiving too much in quantity, or too large a proportion of
proteins or of carbohydrates or of fats.
 TABLE OF 100 FOOD UNITS
Wt. of 100
Per cent of
Calories
“Portion”
Containing 100
Name of Food Grams Oz. Proteid Fat Carbohydrate
Food Units
(approx.)

COOKED MEATS
[17]Beef, r’nd, boiled (fat) Small serving 36 1.3 40 60 00
[17]Beef, r’d, boiled (lean) Large serving 62 2.2 90 10 00
[17]Beef, r’d, boiled
Small serving 44 1.6 60 40 00
(med.)
[17]Beef, 5th rib, roasted Half serving 18.5 .65 12 88 00
[17]Beef, 5th rib, roasted Very small s’v’g 25 .88 18 82 00
[18]Beef, ribs boiled Small serving 30 1.1 27 73 00
[16]Calves foot jelly 112 4.0 19 00 81
[16]Chicken, canned One thin slice 27 .96 23 77 00
[16]Lamb chops, boiled,
One small shop 27 .96 24 76 00
av
[16]Lamb, leg, roasted Ord. serving. 50 1.8 40 60 00
[17]Mutton, leg, boiled Large serving 34 1.2 35 65 00
[17]Pork, ham, boiled (fat) Small serving 20.5 .73 14 86 00
[17]Pork, ham, boiled Ord. serving 32.5 1.1 28 72 00
[17]Pork, ham, r’st’d, (fat) Small serving 27 .96 19 81 00
[17]Pork, ham, r’st’d,
Small serving 34 1.2 33 67 00
(lean)
[16]Turkey, as pur.,
Small serving 28 .99 23 77 00
canned
[17]Veal, leg, boiled Large serving 67.5 2.4 73 27 00

VEGETABLES
[16]Artichokes, av. 430 15 14 0 86