Liberation of All Things: New Materialism, Theology and Nonhuman Salvation
A special issue of Religions (ISSN 2077-1444). This special issue belongs to the section "Religions and Theologies".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 August 2026 | Viewed by 438
Special Issue Editor
Interests: de-composition; ontic extendibility; philosophy of religion (religious philosophy); posthuman studies; energy humanities; postcolonialism; decolonialism; sympoiesis of humans and machines; democracy to come; climate and ecology studies; the anthropocene studies
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
When it comes to liberation, we have traditionally focused about human salvation and emancipation. However, in the so-called Anthropocene, we have witnessed the revolt of things in the forms of the pandemic, climate disasters, droughts, floods and abnormal weather. The warning for the sixth mass extinction is no longer a symbolic rhetoric and has become a real threat to human survival. In the Anthropocene, human beings have had a massive and significant impact on Earth's geology and as a result, we have become geological agents who are accelerating mass extinction. The traditional meaning of salvation has become meaningless in this age, especially when viewed in the context of mass extinction, which could potentially lead to the extinction of humankind.
New Materialism proposes that non-human 'things' also have their own agencies, which interact with human agencies. It encourages us to rethink our modern understanding of things as passive and inert, advocating for material agency intra-acting out of the entanglement of being. The environmental and ecological crises, as well as the climate crisis, demonstrate the agential power of things in a detrimental way to human survival.
In order to rethink materiality and see it as agential, it is necessary to understand 'being' as the flow of energy. From this perspective, capitalism is a distorted form of energy colonialism, in which energy resources are considered private property rather than a common resource. The energy on Earth is not limited and restricted because the energy we use basically comes from the sun and this solar energy is never limited, at least for beings on Earth. However, those with the power to exploit the energy commons have privatized it for their own profit. This capitalized version of energy colonialism is particularly prevalent in the outright competition for world supremacy between great powers in international politics.
Energy flows. Either energy exists in its flow, or the flow generates energy. It flows alongside the gradient. Death and decomposition are not just the extinguishing of beings, but also an energetic contribution to 'other' beings. Life and death are not separate, but interact with each other in the entanglement of beings, circulating energy between them.
When one understands 'human being' in this new materialist way, seeing it as part of a collective or actor-network of beings rather than as an individual, one needs a radically different view of salvation and/or religious enlightenment. 'Being' is not alone, but 'sympoiesis' in process. We never walk alone on our life's journey, but alongside other beings, including those who have physically disappeared in the past. Indeed, the warning of the sixth mass extinction tells us that we cannot be saved unless we consider all things as our sympoietic companions on the path to common salvation, which requires the liberation of all things.
We look forward to receiving your contributions.
Dr. Iljoon Park
Guest Editor
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Keywords
- agency of things
- liberation of things
- new materialism
- energy
- energy democracy
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