Religious Practices, State Techniques and Clashing Forms of Violence in Colombia’s Peace-building Scenario

Abstract

This article analyzes the political reach and effects that diverse religious discourses and practices are having in Colombia’s current “peacebuilding” historical juncture. Examining two specific case studies of entanglements of the religious and the juridical, it traces pragmatically differential ways in which the complexes relations between religiosity, statecraft and violence can be played out in Colombia’s “post-agreement” historical epoch. It argues that our analysis of these case studies should move away from secularism, as a normative stance and an interpretative grid, towards a conceptualization of different forms of effective imbrication between the religious, the political and the juridical, that the understanding of the theologico-political in the works of Schmitt, Derrida and Foucault, might help us to think through. In this way we could better evaluate the contrasting political rationalities of diverse pastoral practices oriented by different figures of the theologico-political, and their social and political effects.

Keywords

• Thesaurus: Latin America
• Author: political theology
• religion and law
• religion and peacebuilding
• religion and politics
• secularism