Aborting Rights By Catherine Keller In my May 2022 blog for Counterpoint, I was reflecting on how collective crises like the war in Ukraine, a global pandemic, and (often racialized) threats to democracy inescapably distract from the mounting, world-encompassing catastrophe of climate change. All these matters rightly demand and dangerously Read more
Contraction vs Distraction: Toward Earthier Coalitions By Catherine Keller “Distracted by distraction from distraction.” That line from T.S. Eliot’s poem “Burnt Norton” has been circling in my head. It comes as a mutter when I think of the circulation of current world crises. A war with nuclear potential now distracts Read more
Out of the Depths: Denialism, Nihilism, and the Possibility of Ecological Civilization By Catherine Keller At this moment in this prematurely aging new year, with Omicron omnipresent, I do not want to discuss the virus. You already know it reveals environmental imbalance, social injustice, global interdependence. Instead, I want to Read more
The Im/Possibility of Global Solidarity By Catherine Keller Recently I found myself part of a conversation about the question: “Can Human Solidarity Globalize?” At first, political philosopher Richard Falk’s question sounds straightforward. But as one attempts to frame an answer, it takes on the hint of a Zen koan. An Read more
Apocalypse Anymore? By Catherine Keller No doubt the Trump presidency incited my Facing Apocalypse: Climate, Democracy and Other Last Chances. Finishing final revisions only weeks after the 2020 U.S. election, I was relieved as I went through it to realize how little of it was about him. He remains a Read more
Sea Lions and Seeing the Future By Anna Mercedes It might have been the repetition that got me, but I think it was the sea lions. The repetition came in the form of all the Covid-19 “seconds.” A second set of spring holidays during quarantine. So many friends’ social media posts Read more
Facing Apocalypse: Climate, Democracy, and Other Last Chances A Discussion of Catherine Keller’s New Book Please join Counterpoint for an online discussion of Catherine Keller’s new book, Facing Apocalypse: Climate, Democracy, and Other Last Chances (Orbis Books 2021) Date: 11 May 2021 Time: 11:00-12:30 EST / 17:00-18:30 CET Drawing on Read more
Democalypse Now: Unveiling our Chances By Catherine Keller What, no more apocalypse? Has the dramatic lurch into catastrophe—white supremacist mobilization, COVID-19, climate denialism—suddenly petered out? Its causes and its supporters aren’t disappearing; their idol Trump wasn’t convicted. But they can no longer claim sovereign superpower. And yet: the roaring red Read more
Political Counterpoint — for the Election and Beyond By Catherine Keller Counterpoint: now there’s an inviting metaphor for political engagement! Imagine politics as a music of diversity, of contrasts effecting a vibrant complexity, a perspectival interplay that comes to the edge of contradiction but then enfolds the tension in a Read more
Pandemic Pandemonium By Catherine Keller Photo: Le Pandemonium, by John Martin, 1841, Le Louvre Pandemic and pandemonium—was it mere alliteration insistently linking those two words in my head? They seem disconnected: the pandemic has spread eerie silence and ordered separation far more than the pandemonium of wild and noisy Read more