Cloud of the Impossible: Negative Theology and Planetary Entanglement

Insurrections: Critical Studies in Religion, Politics, and Culture

by Catherine Keller

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

410 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 5, 2014

About the author

Catherine Keller practices theology as a relation between ancient hints of ultimacy and current matters of urgency. As the George T. Cobb Professor of Constructive Theology in the Theological School and Graduate Division of Religion of Drew University, she teaches courses in process, political, and ecological theology. She has all along mobilized, within and beyond Christian conversation, the transdisciplinary potential of feminist, philosophical and pluralist intersections with religion.

Her most recent books invite at once contemplative and social embodiments of our entangled difference: Cloud of the Impossible: *Negative Theology and Planetary Entanglement* (2014), *Intercarnations: On the Possibility of Theology* (2017), and *Political Theology of the Earth: Our Planetary Emergency and the Struggle for a New Public* (2018).

Since the start of the millennium she has served as executive director of the annual Drew Transdisciplinary Theological Colloquium. These events have yielded 12 anthologies, mostly published by Fordham University Press; they include *Entangled Worlds: Religion, Science, and the New Materialisms* (coedited with Mary Jane Rubenstein); *Polydoxy: Theology of Multiplicity and Relation* (coedited with Laurel Schneider); *Common Goods: Economy, Ecology, and Political Theology* (coedited with Melanie Johnson-DeBaufre and Elías Ortega-Aponte); and *Toward a Theology of Eros: Transfiguring Passion at the Limits of Discourse.*

Twitter: @Prof_Keller

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.