RaT at the European Academy of Religion (Bologna)

The employees of the Research Platform participated in the first official conference of the European Academy of Religion that took place from March 5 to 8 2018 in Bologna. The platform’s speaker Kurt Appel and the vice-speaker Sieglinde Rosenberger had contributed to the foundation of this institution. At the conference in March, the Platform organised a panel entitled “The Future of the Grand European Narratives. Political, Theological and Philosophical Considerations”. Representing RaT, Lisa Achathaler, Kurt Appel, Jakob Deibl, Marlene Deibl and Daniel Kuran cooperated with Ernst van der Hemel, member of the Consortium sIMAGINE (Utrecht).

RaT’s activities began with the presentation of the book “Tempo e Dio. Aperture contemporanee a partire da Hegel e Schelling” by Kurt Appel, published in the series “Bibliotheca die Teologia Contemporanea (Queriniana)”. Marcello Neri (Flensburg), Paolo Costa (Trient), Maurizio Pagano (Vercelli), Lucia Vantini (Verona), Massimo Epis (Mailand) and Jakob Deibl chose significant aspects of the book and presented it briefly. The author answered to each contribution. The discussion was chaired by Maurzio Rossi (Bologna).

Afterwards, the Panel organized by RaT and sIMAGINE took place, questioning the potential of religions for developing new narratives of a non-hegemonial project of Europe, taking into account the end of traditional narratives. Another question in that context was how these narratives can create a public space for discourse between secularity and religion. The horizon of topics discussed at the panel comprised biblical narratives, literature by Franz Kafka, Robert Musil and Karl Kraus, ecological issues concerning finitude, political issues concerning mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion and philosophical aspects connected to G.W.F. Hegel, Walter Benjamin and Giorgio Agamben.

Section I
Lisa Achathaler: Narratives from the Past for the Day after Tomorrow? Talking “Future” in Times of Ecological Crisis
Jakob Deibl: Between Letter and Manifest: Ways of shaping Future-Narratives of Europe
Ernst van der Hemel: “Judeo-Christianity” and the New Right: Studying (post)secularization narratives in online nationalist discourse in Germany and the Netherlands

Section II
Marlene Deibl: “as if the shame of it should outlive him”. Possibilites of language after the end of Grand narratives – an adventure with Kafka and Agamben
Daniel Kuran: Aesthetics of the Dead. The Narrative of Terror and religious Contributions to the Public Space
Kurt Appel: The Apocalyptic Dimension of Europe – from the Bible to Musil