I’ve just submitted an application to the British Academy post-doctoral fellowship scheme for a project based in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Liverpool.

The proposal is for a three year project entitled “ Ir/Religion and Society: Derrida, Zizek and Political Theology.”  Here’s the abstract:

Theological engagements with the work of Jacques Derrida and Slavoj Zizek are catching the imaginations of many western Christians. This project further examines a previously identified “a/theism” in emerging Christian discourse that celebrates the complex relationship between John D. Caputo’s Derridean theology and Zizek’s materialist atheology.

The practice of “suspended space” is imagined to disrupt conventional social distinctions to create “ir/religious” collectives with the potential to form an alternative sociality (Peter Rollins). I interrogate qualitative data to evaluate the relationship between this performance of identity suspension and the transformation of social and political practices outside such liturgical spaces.

I ask what the implications of a/theism might be for political theology and European philosophy of religion and society, and explore the impact of ir/religious political collectives, formed from the position of those excluded or subtracted from the existing order, on debates about individualism and communitarianism, cosmopolitanism and identity politics.

This is my third (and final, given the date of my 2010 viva voce) attempt at a BA fellowship. So, fingers crossed. The results of the first round of applications (the outline stage) come out during January.

[Update Feb 6 2012: 

The British Academy has now completed its consideration of applications for the Outline Stage of the BA Postdoctoral Fellowships scheme. We regret to inform you that your application has been unsuccessful and it is not possible to invite you to submit a second-stage application.

One of the principal reasons for the slight delay in releasing the results of the outline stage of the competition has been the large numbers of applications submitted for the competition. This round has proved even more competitive than ever before. A record field of 923 applications were submitted for assessment at the outline stage. Approximately 14% of the total number of applicants, (around 130), have been invited to submit second stage applications, and there are only likely to be around 45 awards at most available at the end of the competition. This means that less than half of those invited to submit second-stage applications are likely to be successful; and the final success rate in the competition is likely to be under 5%. 

As explained in the scheme notes, assessors evaluated each proposal taking into account the following criteria as appropriate to the aims of the scheme: the scholarly importance of the project, the ability of the applicant to carry out the research successfully, the feasibility of the proposed research programme, especially the proposed methodology and timescale, and the applicant’s publication record to date, bearing in mind the early career focus of the award. In these terms your application was not judged to be among the strongest submitted in this round. Many highly-rated applications have not been able to be supported.]