Beyond Church, Society and Politics Theological challenges and challenging theology in dialogue with indigenous worldviews

Abstract

This article brings theology in dialogue with indigenous worldviews based on Emmanuel Levinas’ description of the demise of humanity and his appeal to return to the body. My aim is to extend Levinas’ thinking, that is shaped by his corporeal experiences in labour camps, to other spaces by transcending anthropological confines through the challenging lens of indigenous beliefs. Losing his family in the human-inflicted inhumanities of the Third Reich led Levinas to seek humanity elsewhere, beyond the here and now. This narrative, this search for a place to live “outside of” (exteriority), is both concretised and expanded in conversation with Lorena Cabnal, a feminist indigenous activist from Guatemala, among others. It reveals the potential for resistance and liberation through community—its ability to break down anthropocentric boundaries and create a cyclical life. Life is primarily perceived in physical relation and repeatedly experienced through relation. Relational space / spatiality forms the fundamental framework of life. I consider the dimension of the body / corporeality to be theologically productive. Applying the concept of somatic knowledge, I further deepen the relational connectedness of body—life—worldliness and explore a performative aesthetic theology that learns/must learn to overcome the logocentrism of European thinking in order to locate the significance of soma as a place of epistemological production.