Decolonial Love: Salvation in Colonial Modernity

by Joseph Drexler-Dreis

Bringing together theologies of liberation and decolonial thought, Decolonial Love interrogates colonial frameworks that shape Christian thought and legitimize structures of oppression and violence within Western modernity. In response to the historical situation of colonial modernity, the book offers a decolonial mode of theological reflection and names a historical instance of salvation that stands in conflict with Western modernity. Seeking a new starting point for theological reflection and praxis, Joseph Drexler-Dreis turns to the work of Frantz Fanon and James Baldwin. Rejecting a politics of inclusion into the modern world-system, Fanon and Baldwin engage reality from commitments that Drexler-Dreis describes as orientations of decolonial love. These orientations expose the idolatry of Western modernity, situate the human person in relation to a reality that exceeds modern/colonial significations, and catalyze and authenticate historical movement in conflict with the modern world-system. The orientations of decolonial love in the work of Fanon and Baldwin―whose work is often perceived as violent from the perspective of Western modernity―inform theological commitments and reflection, and particularly the theological image of salvation.

Decolonial Love offers to theologians a foothold within the modern/colonial context from which to commit to the sacred and, from a historical encounter with the divine mystery, face up to and take responsibility for the legacies of colonial domination and violence within a struggle to transform reality.

224 pages, Paperback

First published December 4, 2018

Reviews

[Jackson Ford · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent shortish book reflecting deeply on Latin American Liberation Theology, James Baldwin, and Frantz Fanon. Drexler-Dreis does a great job demonstrating the decolonial methodological and practical possibilities of theology. Re-examining ideas like love, Justice, revelation and more, this book is a fantastic resource for Christian’s seriously grappling with imagining a faith beyond empire.

[Gabe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely loved this book. It was definitely dense, after reading some lesser difficulty books, but once I got into it I was able to really fly through it.

I began this book having already read The Wretched of the Earth by Fanon and If Beale Street Could Talk by Baldwin, but I put it down after the introduction to read Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks before continuing on. I am glad I did. Having read two of Fanon’s books definitely helped me fully understand the chapter on Fanon and a lot of the connections Drexler-Dreis makes to Ellacuria, Sobrino, Boff, and other liberation theologians.

The info on Baldwin was very well done as well, and definitely represented the iconoclasm of the alabaster Christ that I had seen in videos of Baldwin in dialogue. Using these two historical figures together was a great way to show how the irruption of the poor and the oppressed into the view of the global hegemons often looks violent.

This book clarified many theoretical questions for me, especially how violent resistance to occupation and oppression can have a theological component that must not be dismissed simply because hegemons describe something as violent. Reminds me a lot of Fanon’s assertion in both Black Skin, White Masks and The Wretched of the Earth that the oppressed are only able to enter into the Hegelian dialectic with their oppressors when the oppressed are able to become identified by their oppressors as human beings because the oppressed have been learning the tactics of the oppressor and now are reflecting it back on them (violence begetting violence).