Cloud of the Impossible: Negative Theology and Planetary Entanglement

Insurrections: Critical Studies in Religion, Politics, and Culture

by Catherine Keller

The experience of the impossible churns up in our epoch whenever a collective dream turns to trauma: politically, sexually, economically, and with a certain ultimacy, ecologically. Out of an ancient theological lineage, the figure of the cloud comes to convey possibility in the face of the impossible. An old mystical nonknowing of God now hosts a current knowledge of uncertainty, of indeterminate and interdependent outcomes, possibly catastrophic. Yet the connectivity and collectivity of social movements, of the fragile, unlikely webs of an alternative notion of existence, keep materializing--a haunting hope, densely entangled, suggesting a more convivial, relational world.

Catherine Keller brings process, feminist, and ecopolitical theologies into transdisciplinary conversation with continental philosophy, the quantum entanglements of a "participatory universe," and the writings of Nicholas of Cusa, Walt Whitman, A. N. Whitehead, Gilles Deleuze, and Judith Butler, to develop a "theopoetics of nonseparable difference." Global movements, personal embroilments, religious diversity, the inextricable relations of humans and nonhumans--these phenomena, in their unsettling togetherness, are exceeding our capacity to know and manage. By staging a series of encounters between the nonseparable and the nonknowable, Keller shows what can be born from our cloudiest entanglement.

Genres: Theology, Philosophy, Nonfiction, Spirituality, Religion, Academic

408 pages, Paperback

First published November 5, 2014

About the author

Catherine Kelle is a contemporary Christian theologian and Professor of Constructive Theology at Drew University's Graduate Division of Religion. As a constructive theologian, Keller's work is oriented around social and ecological justice, poststructuralist theory, and feminist readings of scripture and theology. Both her early and her late work brings relational thinking into theology, focusing on the relational nature of the concept of the divine, and the forms of ecological interdependence within the framework of relational theology. Her work in process theology draws on the relational ontology of Alfred North Whitehead, fielding it in a postmodern, deconstructive framework.

Reviews

[Stephanie Berbec · Rating 5 out of 5]

I finished this one last night. I hope to get my hands on a hard copy soon for re-reading. It’s a loaded book, incredibly poetic, and heavily influenced by Nicholas of Cusa, Alfred North Whitehead, Gilles Deleuze and Judith Butler, covering topics such as apophatic theology, panentheism, ecopolitical theology, quantum theory, planetary entanglement, climate change, dreams, trauma, mysticism, transreligious solidarity and a theology of multiplicity. I haven’t been as moved or impressed by an academic book in a while as I was by this one. It’s one that I found myself saying ‘yes!’ to all throughout, both affirming of and resonating deeply with the trajectory of my own theology in more recent years.

[Carl Holmes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Message is good. Uses pretty heady and heavy language more than necessary, but once you understand the message if comes together.

[Ethan Jones · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book would be excellent for someone who knew very little about apophatic theology, and how it applies to modern concepts. This book is not bad, but I feel inclined to leave it a mediocre review because to me it became a slog. I didn't get the groundbreaking revelations from it I am always looking for, but it for sure does provide a knowledgeable catalog of negative theology, it's application to analogous quantum mechanics, etc. Really was just a "me" problem, I suppose.

If you are already enmeshed deeply into this discourse, I would recommend her book 'Face of the Deep' instead. That book was phenomenal, truly, and provided legitimately new insights. The section on Job was particularly brilliant. I found it to be much more systematic and focused. Keller herself is brilliant, but here for me she was a bit too gratuitous.