An Unlikely Convergence: W. E. B. Du Bois, Karl Barth, and the Problem of the Imperial God-Man

By analyzing modern political theology starting from an engagement with Mark Lilla, Carter links nationalism to the problem of eschatology. Such an eschatology of the nation form represents a striving toward an eschatological kingdom-community with a false mediator, Western Man, to secure it. After demonstrating how Germany functioned within such a framework, Carter turns first to Karl Barth--to highlight the West as a false, civilizational eschaton with Western Man as the theo-political figure internal to it--and then to W. E. B. Du Bois--to probe the racial dynamics of the West as eschaton and to begin to recast the identity of Jesus Christ beyond the false mediator of the Western Eschaton, Western Man. Carter demonstrates how Barth and Du Bois, in unlikely convergence, are conversation partners in an intellectual enterprise that takes us beyond a politics of catastrophe and the problem of the Imperial God-Man.