Overview

The Divine Manifold is a postmodern enquiry in intersecting themes of the concept and reality of multiplicity in a chaosmos that does not refuse a dimension of theopoetics, but rather defines it in terms of divine polyphilia, the love of multiplicity. In an intricate play on Dante’s Divine Comedy, this book engages questions of religion and philosophy through the aporetic dynamics of love and power, locating its discussions in the midst of, and in between the spheres of a genuine philosophy of multiplicity. This philosophy originates from the poststructuralist approach of Gilles Deleuze and the process philosophical inspirations of Alfred N. Whitehead. As their chaosmos invites questions of ultimate reality, religious pluralism and multireligious engagement, a theopoetics of love will find paradoxical dissociations and harmonizations with postmodern sensitivities of language, power, knowledge and embodiment. At the intersection of poststructuralism’s and process theology’s insights in the liberating necessity of multiplicity for a postmodern cosmology, the book realizes its central claim. If there is a divine dimension of the chaosmos, it will not be found in any identification with mundane forces or supernatural powers, but on the contrary in the absolute difference of polyphilic love from creativity. Yet, the concurrent indifference of love and power—its mystical undecidability in terms of any conceptualization—will lead into existential questions of the insistence on multiplicity in a world of infinite becoming as inescapable background for its importance and creativeness, formulating an ecological and ethical impulse for a mystagogy of becoming intermezzo.

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Reviews

The Divine Manifold is an extraordinary achievement! Faber's monumental book reveals, with the help of Deleuze, a much more supple Whitehead than we realized. And it articulates, in a quasi-symphonic arrangement, a profound polyphilic theology of pure multiplicity. -- Clayton Crockett, University of Central Arkansas

The Divine Manifold is an extraordinary achievement! Faber's monumental book reveals, with the help of Deleuze, a much more supple Whitehead than we realized. And it articulates, in a quasi-symphonic arrangement, a profound polyphilic theology of pure multiplicity. -- Clayton Crockett, University of Central Arkansas In terms of its scope, ambition, erudition, execution, and attention to intricate yet salient detail, The Divine Manifold is a stunning work. As impressive as Roland Faber's creative appropriation of Whiteheadean insights is, his critical engagement with contemporary figures such as Judith Butler, Giles Deleuze, and Slavoj Zizek is more impressive. Yet more than anything else the author is thinking with these figures in order to think through a number of humanly urgent questions. Herein a major religious thinker addresses a central issue (if not the pivotal question) of various traditions-the question of love. The often playful and inescapably paradoxical manner in which Faber addresses this question reveals the depth and seriousness of this project. This book is at once playful yet profound, paradoxical yet cogent, gentle yet forceful, tragic yet joyful, richly allusive yet experientially pointed. It is truly a tour de force. -- Vincent M. Colapietro, Pennsylvania State University Roland Faber has written a brilliant and powerful book that is nothing short of a full cosmology of the infoldings and unfoldings of love as rendered in a theopoetics. His dialogue with Whitehead and Deleuze in particular is among the most subtle and profound extant and it advances our understanding of both thinkers. With The Divine Manifold Roland Faber joins the front ranks of those few who do robust cosmologies, whether process versions or otherwise. -- Robert S. Corrington, Drew University

Author Information

Roland Faber is Kilsby Family/John B. Cobb, Jr. Professor of Process Studies at Claremont School of Theology; executive co-director of the Center for Process Studies; and executive director of the Whitehead Research Project.

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