Debt: A Political–Theological Device Acting in Favor of the Neoliberal Ethos

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The article explores the theological-political dimension of the debt device, which is not very common in the context of the relationship between religion and politics. This makes the article content significantly original. Likewise, the subject is treated with quality, clarity and depth. In that sense, this is an excellent article.
For the exploration of the thesis, it resorts to some proposals by Esposito, Benjamin and Agamben. This means placing the issue in the context of biopolitics and, above all, political theology. However, the author's interest does not seem to focus mainly on the biopolitical discussion of the theological-political devices at play - which lead to the identification of capitalism as a religion - but rather on understanding the effect of the debt device on the constitution of subjectivity within the neo-liberal systems. This leads the author to a directly critical position in relation to the debt device, since it reveals a form of political domination over subjects, to the point of their exclusion from the community.
Since the author's orientation towards a reflection on a certain theological-political genealogy of neo-liberalism is predominant, I consider that it does not sufficiently explore the proposal developed by Esposito in the last chapter of Due: following Benjamin, he explores the relationship between debt and guilt; he states the progressive universalization of the debt (which leads to the idea that everyone is a debtor and, therefore, of the existence of a common debt); he suggests the transformation of the common debt of guilt into a liberation, as it corresponds to the common duty of humanity, of some in relation to others, in an economy of gift or gift/debt. That is, the debt device is not attacked directly – perhaps due to the impossibility of abandoning it – but inverted, ceasing to be a device that divides and becoming a device that unites, in solidarity with a common debt. Wouldn't this path of internal transformation of the debt experience be more realistic – including for debt forgiveness – than the hope of completely annulling the current sovereign debt mechanism, in an out of debt system? I leave the question for debate only.
The work (Rasch 2016) does not appear in the bibliography.
The title of the 1st chapter should be Political-theological machine.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you for your observations.

We believe this is a crucial discussion. When we consider the indebted populations and states under the crushing pressure they suffer, making them more fragile, we agree that one way to solve this problem would be to forgive their debt, to suspend it definitively. However, our intention was to show debt as a device and to propose a reflection that looks at ways to deactivate it from an ethical and moral point of view, without going into them at the moment. It is our aim to delve deeper into ethical-political solutions to this device in future studies.

We included, among lines 502 to 534,  Esposito’s discussion on debt and the forgiveness of debt as a solution to people and states.

All the best

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

I didn't find in the bibliography the references to Rasch (2016) and Scattola (2009) on p. 2. Please add.

The key-words are not complete

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you for your observations.

We altered and included the information.

All the best

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

First, the paper does not articulate an argument, that is, a sequence of premises that backs up a conclusion by means of a rule of inference. Instead, the paper is a long conjunction of the form: Claim 1 and Claim 2 and Claim 3 etc. These claims are characterized by: quotes from all sorts of authors who do not exactly agree with one another; and considerably vague comments on these quotes. This procedure does not seem interesting, at least not to me.

Second, given the stated procedure, it is hard to see what the essay adds to the bibliography characterized by all sorts of authors who have thought about the varied issues tackled in the essay, e.g., the relation between religion and capitalism; whether capitalism’s ethos is closely related to debt; the exploration of poorer countries by means of debt; Covid-19 etc.

Third, the paper constantly suggests that one should accept a view V merely because V was stated by some sort of philosophical authority, say, Foucault, Agamben etc. Likewise, this procedure does not seem interesting, at least not to me.

Fourth, the abstract is not very well articulated. Like the rest of the paper, it is a conjunction of the form: Claim 1 and Claim 2 and Claim 3 etc. The fact that “Giorgio” is one of the keywords was particularly unjustified. Moreover, it is hard to grasp the reasons why some authors (e.g., Esposito) were mentioned in the abstract and others (e.g,. Schmitt, Benjamin, Pope Francis etc.) named in the paper were not mentioned.

Fifth, the paper often adopts technical terms without defining them, say, as if the reader were supposed to know these terms’ meanings or feel somehow aesthetically impressed by them. Again, this procedure does not seem interesting, at least not to me.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

The language adopted in the paper is quite vague and sometimes seems to violate the rules of ordinary English. For instance, consider the sentence: “Whereas its opacity, even if at the dawn of modernity reactions against such activities were observed, can be explained by the fact that we are inside it” (107). I do not believe that papers necessarily need to be written in ordinary English; there may be reasons (e.g., aesthetical ones) for resorting to alternative uses of language. However, the paper does not indicate any of these reasons.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you for your observations.

The paper aims at articulating the argument about debt as a political theological device whose operation engenders an ethos aligned with the principles of neoliberalism. To show the relevance of the theme of debt as a device, we highlighted paragraph 52 of the Papal Encyclical, Laudato Si. We show that we understand the device in accordance with the Foucauldian perspective. Next, we analyze the theological-political machine from Esposito's perspective.

Thus, we show in what sense debt is a theological-political device and not just an economic issue related to capitalism as religion.

We tried to show how debt is an instrument that forms an ethos. Debt acts to capture subjects, producing an unremitting routine, which puts individuals in the condition of being increasingly indebted, unable to pay off their debts and feeling guilty for failing.

Our intention was to sustain  debt as a political- theological device based on three analytical and argumentative movements. The references, each for a specific aspect, bring different elements to gradually compose the full argument. This way, we tried to show that debt is not just an economic issue, but that it serves to control and rule over individuals through what Esposito calls a theological-political machine. The machine's operation is manifested in the creation of an ethos to show that the indebted subjects are forced to live in a situation in which they do not decide their consume pattern, their form of life, their interests and objectives. The typical ethos tolerated in a neoliberal context of society is to be more and more indebted. Some people have their life destroyed by debt. Debt acts as a ‘snatcher’, a ‘predator’, an ‘extraction’ machine over society as a whole, as an instrument for macroeconomic prescription and management, and as a mechanism for income redistribution. The logic of debt permanence aims at promoting the submission of the indebted subjects as well as their wishes. Debt is a governmental instrument of life control. Debt is a device that, among others, generates the neoliberal ethos.

In our view, showing that debt is a political- theological device, among others, such as language, sacrifice, guilt and punishment, is not the same as affirming the relationship between capitalism and religion, or capitalism and oppression, or capitalism and debt. For example, Benjamin analyzes the relationship between capitalism and religion, as we have shown in the text, but affirms that there is no relationship between theology and capitalism. Showing that debt is a device of the theological-political machine is what we sought to add. Our effort was to present an additional device in the theological-political machine - Esposito works with the device of the person. Debt is an economic device that operates by producing moral and political effects in the broadest sense. Thus, it fulfills the ordination task, a type of exercise of power and regulation that is not necessarily present in the analysis of the relationship between capitalism and religion.

Covid-19 is an element that illustrates the main argument and was included in the endnotes.

Our intention was not to present these authors to justify arguments of philosophical authority. We wanted to show that, from their own perspective, each author focuses on an element of the machinery they sought to understand, and their work helped us compose our debt analysis. We wanted to add to this investigation the operative dimension of debt as the producer of a morality of engagement, subjection, reproduction of subjection, not as the result of an economic transaction stricto sensu, but aligned with a certain form of power operation, a governmentality, which reproduces and mirrors the performance of theological power.

The abstract was changed to meet the reviewer's suggestions. In the version sent to the reviewer, the alterations are in blue.

The main technical terms worked in the text´s general argument are defined in the following parts:

a) Debt in general sense: line 32;

b) Debt as device of political theology and builder of the ethos of neoliberalism: line 435;

c) Political theology: lines 49 to 107;

d) Device: 341 to 349;

e) The machine of political theology: endnote number III;

f) Neoliberalism and device: lines 319 to 327;

g) Device and Ethos neoliberal: lines 275 to 283;

Changes in our writing style were made to fit the rules of ordinary English. Most metaphors were cut, vocabulary of Latin origin avoided and indirect word order in sentences was eliminated to about 90%. We hope it is clearer. Our aim is to maintain analytical rigor and to make the article attractive to readers interested in the subject, not only academic specialists, but a wide range of readers in different universities, countries and continents, as wide as the reach of Religions allows.

All the Best.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The article offers a very interesting thesis.  Article promises an exposition of construction of entrepreneurial individualism that fuel neoliberalism.  Central to this is an account of how debt is central to that.

In my humble opinion the article does not deliver on what it promises. It takes way too long to get to its treatment of debt and does very little on the entrepreneurial individualism.  

The first section spends way too much time addressing what is political theology with no clear, relevant connection to the thesis.

It was very difficult to make any sense out of the second section. I could not make much sense out of it and the connection with the thesis of the essay was not clear.

The third section was easier to understand but its connection to the main thesis was underdeveloped.  Debt and the entreprenuerial individual need to be brought front and center and developed more fully.

Debt is finally the central focus of section 4.  In my opinion, this needs to happen much sooner.  Reduce and cut much of the first two sections into a brief introduction and then get right into neoliberalism’s construction of the entrepreneurial individual in what would be section 2 and then debt in what would be section 3.  

Section 5 is rich with promise that could be developed, clarified.  What does “inoperability” have to do with debt and the entreprenuerial individual?  Clarify.

Have the authors considered the way “inoperability” (as flexibility, creativity etc) aligns with contemporary capitalism?  See Deleuze’s building on and extending Foucault around “societies of control.”  What distinguishes the flexibility and creativity of “inoperability” from the latest mutations of neoliberal capitalist disciplines?

What is the implicit theology work at play here and how does it line up with the Pope and the Christian tradition?

Concretely, for those seeking to escape neoliberalism’s construction of the individual and debt, what might this look like?

Section 5 and 6 bare get beyond mentioning Francis.  Really could be strengthened by developing this a bit more.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

First of all, we would like to thank you for the time spent on the appreciation of our article. Indeed, it does not show how debt relates to the formation of the individualistic entrepreneurial ethos. And that is because our aim is not to show debt as an element in the formation of the neoliberal ethos, but to show debt as a theological-political device that acts on subjects in order to mold their adaptation to the neoliberal ethos.   Debt is a theological-political device that acts through the "excluding inclusion", making subjects more and more adapted to the neoliberal market context.

Bearing this thesis in mind, we adjusted the introduction of the article to state our objective more clearly.

Previous reviewers of this journal have suggested the addition of context and the explanation of points that are not directly related to the central theme of the article. We agree that the first section was more objective before we accepted their suggestion.

The adjustments proposed now preserve part of their suggestion. We explain what political theology is and show our perspective within the great debate that surrounds it.

The second section tries to show how political theology works from the viewpoint of the "excluding inclusion".   From Esposito's perspective, with which we are aligned, the inclusion of those who are outside the scope and operability of political theology comes at the price of a life change of those who are included. They are included if they stop being what they are and become what the theological-political rules determine them to be.

They are thus excluded from their own culture and identity and included in the scope of political theology.

In the third section, our intention was to present debt as a device. That's why we started by reflecting on capitalism as a religion and understanding economic theology as a dimension of the debate on political theology.

We used Foucault's definition of a device to show that debt is a theological-political device in the context of capitalism. Debt as a device is the actor in the "excluding inclusion" operation.

Our point, as indicated by the reviewer, is not the formation of the neoliberal ethos, but to present the operativity of the political theological device for adapting subjects to the neoliberal ethos.

For this reason, in section 4, we explain the operativity of debt for this adaptation, or as Lazzarato states, it shows debt as indispensable in the "dynamics that produces this permanent condition of engagement with the very debt". 

In section 5 we work on inoperability as an alternative way out of the dynamic of engagement and adaptation to the neoliberal ethos, also at the suggestion of other evaluators. Our choice was to stay in the field of references already established in the previous discussion to preserve the focus on debt as a political theological device.

Inoperability, as defended by Agamben and the other authors mentioned, refers to the alternative to dismantling the operability of devices, which, in our article, is debt.

We are aware of this Deleuzian meaning of inoperability. However, we chose to leave it out of the discussion because it would lead to another important debate, on the apparatus of control. Had we gone down this road, we would be moving away from the proposed discussion: debt as a political theological device whose operation is to normalize and adapt subjects to the neoliberal ethos.

Investigating this question is one of our research’s main topics and one of our major interests in the field of Religious Studies.

Pope Francis' critical assessment in Laudato Si focuses on the relationship between debt and states, debt as a control device over states. Our interest is to show debt as a device that acts to introduce and adapt subjects to the neoliberal ethos.

Pope Francis’ point could certainly be developed in another opportunity. We appreciate the comment, now we find ourselves more encouraged to do so.

We would like to thank you for those critical comments.

We are sending the article with the changes and the table of justifications in the end.

All the best,

Authors

 

 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The present version is very good

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

The article is not constructed as an empirical research.  The methodology employed analyses the arguments and theses originated from works and articles concerning this theme. 

Thank you for your observations.

Kind Regards

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Reply 1 to Reply 1: Nothing added to the paper puts into question my first objection. The same can be stated about the authors’ response. Evidence of my first objection is basically practically any excerpt from the paper. Let me give an example this time. Consider the beginning of the paper.

Lines 37-39: “The Papal Encyclical Laudato Si affirms in paragraph 52: “The foreign debt of poor countries has become a way of controlling them, yet this is not the case where ecological debt is concerned” (2015)”.

Let us call this Claim 1. Claim 1 is an example of a quotation from Pope Francis who does not exactly agree with Wurts who is quoted in line 67, Boff who is quoted in line 87, Esposito who is quoted throughout the paper etc.

Lines 39-42: “As an instrument of control, in the papal text debt is regarded as a device that operates on countries and their citizens, equally on all individuals, to maintain over them a kind of manipulation, of regulating authority that goes beyond the payment of a debt”.

Let us call this Claim 2. That is example of a considerably vague comment on a quotation. Note that this comment does not explain what is meant by “ecological debt” in the stated quotation. Besides, it proposes a reading of the papal text that is not entirely back up by the quotation at stake. Moreover, Claim 2 makes a very problematic (if not evidently false) exegetical suggestion: that the papal text takes debt to operate “equally in all individuals” of poor countries. This is to suggest that, according to the “Papal Encyclical Laudato Si”, debt operates equally for people in a Brazilian favela as well as for the likes of Jorge Paulo Lemann. This is not a particularly plausible interpretation.

Lines 42-43: “In this case, debt is understood as an instrument of power over lives and over politics”.

Let us call this Claim 3. That is an example of another vague comment insofar as it is not clear whether this claim’s understanding of debt is that of the “Papal Encyclical Laudato Si” or that of paper itself. Furthermore, terms, such as “power” and “politics”, are applied loosely. Hence, the procedure of lines 37 to 43 is a conjunction of the form: Claim 1 and Claim 2 and Claim 3. As indicated in my previous objection, I believe that the same can be stated about the rest of the paper.

Reply to Reply 2: Nothing added to the paper puts into question my second objection. Evidence of this objection is Claim 3 itself and several others that do not explicitly distinguish whether the authors are commenting on an author or are, rather, defending a view of their own. Further evidence of that is the very last claim of the essay (lines 681-684) insofar as it is unclear whether this is a comment on Agamben or a view of the authors. Moreover, what does this paper exactly add to Esposito, for instance? I cannot say.

Reply to Reply 3: Nothing added to the paper puts into question my third objection. Consider once again the very last claim of the essay or the aforementioned conjunction of Claim 1 and Claim 2 and Claim 3. The authors resort to an “argument” from authority according to which one is to accept that p because an author (e.g., Pope Francis, Agamben) said p. Consider the varied quotations from Esposito, Foucault, Benjamin etc. It is always the same procedure.

Reply to Reply 4: I acknowledge that the paper’s abstract has improved. However, the three “movements” mentioned in the abstract (lines 9 to 15) are distinct from the ones described in the introduction (lines 94 to 100) and actually performed in the paper.

Reply to Reply 5: I also acknowledge that the paper’s terminology has improved. However, my fifth objection still stands regarding certain terms. Consider the very expression, “political theology”. Contrary to the authors’ response, this expression was not exactly defined. A definition of x is distinct from a sequence of vague comments on x. That is what the authors do with “political theology” in lines 49 to 107 and throughout the paper. What are the conditions for x to be called “political”? Nowhere in this paper, one will find an upfront response, even though several responses are alluded. What is theology? Again, there is not an upfront response in the paper; only several allusions to a response grounded by quotations from famous authors.

The paper’s authors also run into circles. Consider, for instance, lines 88-90: “The second meaning is the philosophical political theology, a study that investigates politics and the political primarily from the philosophical thought and philosophical concepts, analysing the hues and the theological structuring elements that influence them”. Here, what is supposed to make a political theology “philosophical” are “philosophical thought and philosophical concepts”. This is a circular procedure.

Perhaps, a better reply to my objection 5 would be to reject that philosophical essays should adopt definitions; that philosophical essays, instead, should only somehow play with all sorts of meanings that can be attached to terms such as “political” and “theology”. The authors do not yet go for this direction in their replies.

I am sympathetic to the authors’ aim of problematizing what they call “North-American and Western-European hegemonic processes (new forms of the old imperialism?)” (lines 560-562). Given the stated points, I do not yet think that the paper succeeds in doing that. 

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Reply to Reply 6: I also acknowledge that the language of the paper has improved, even though, perhaps, a better reply to my sixth objection would be to argue that the paper did not intend to respect the rules of ordinary English; that the aim of the paper was, rather, to proceed in an alternative fashion, say, due to aesthetical reasons.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Please see the attachment below.

The changes in the text are marked in blue.

Kind Regards

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

First section is much better for being shorter.

Second section.

Lines 104-6 This is not a sentence:  According to Esposito, to understand the links in the process that produces the excluding assimilation: “...the fundamental, defining action of the political- theological machine” (Esposito 2015, p. 3).

This section still does not explain Esposito on the “excluding inclusion” well.  Still no idea what they are trying to say.

Author holds that political theology is an excluding inclusion.  But fails to explain what an excluding inclusion is beyond repeating Esposito in a manner that does not aid comprehension. (Repetition of Esposito is not the same as actually explaining, making comprehensible.)

Never explains how political theology is an excluding inclusion.

Third section

Following Benjamin to argue capitalism functions like a religion to create neoliberal ethos.  Ok. Agamben nuances this.  Ok.

Finally, at line 258 we are introduced to debt as an instrument of this order. To produce “values and subjectivity.”  Introduced but not developed as the paragraph changes topics and goes in another direction.  Why introduce it if it is not going to be developed here?  This paragraph is a confusing mix of ideas.

Line 268 neoliberalism is a device.  Focault to support this.  ok.

Now discussing global political democracy crisis...This paragraph morphs into a treatment of changes effected by neoliberalism on conceptions of justice, etc. Another paragraph where the topic does not match the body of the paragraph.

Fourth Section

Finally get to debt, at line 348.

Your key claim is line 352: “it operates the excluding inclusion of political theology.”  Because of the previous failure to adequately, clearly explain political theology as excluding inclusion, this gets little traction.

The exposition of debt as an instrument of control is interesting and compelling.  And does not appear to have much connection with the sections that preceded this one.  I still have no idea how you see debt operating the excluding inclusion (or what that means).

This is the same difficulty I had with the previous version.  It takes too long to get to the really interesting and helpful content and there is no CLEAR connection between the preceding sections and this one.

I know it is difficult to make something like Esposito’s “excluding inclusion” comprehensible and it is challenging to explain how  it relates to debt. You are just not there yet.  

On line 606-612 you finally begin to make this clear.  This should not happen for the first time in the conclusion.  What is stated here needs to be stated much earlier, and elaborated upon.  

Sections five and six

My initial comments remain. These sections remain really underdeveloped in terms both of connections to the encyclical and the alternative to neoliberalism.  Frankly, these two sections could easily be collapsed into one brief concluding section that amounts to simply outlining what needs to be explored further.

Obvious the author(s) disagrees and that is fine.  

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Good with the exception of an incomplete sentence as indicated in my comments and two paragraphs that move off topic.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you for your attentive evaluation.

About the sentence in lines 104-6, this chunk was changed, and the mistake, corrected.

Concerning the excluding inclusion explanation, We changed the order of the themes in the presentation in this new version. We also shortened the text to make it clearer for the reader.

Instead of debating the many dimensions of political theology, we opted to explain the two movements inside the political theology operating hub: separation and excluding assimilation.

In the part that explains the excluding inclusion, we approach the first dispositive of person to show how separation is an element of the political theology operating hub.

Then, from the feature duality of the political theology operativity, aligned with Esposito, we present the excluding assimilation as another element that completes the political theology operation.

We changed the text in lines 258-60.

The discussion about debt as a neoliberal dispositive that operates the dinamics of separation and of the excluding assimilation in political theology is concentrated in part 4:  Debt as a political-theological device acting in favor of neoliberalism.

The paragraph with a "confusing mix of ideas" was cut.

About your idea concerning the connections to the Papal encyclical and the alternative to neoliberalism, we don’t disagree. Maybe the article could have this other structure, but we’re just respecting the previous reviewers’ opinions. Thank you for the suggestion.

The changes in the text are marked in pink.

Thank you for your attention.

All the best,

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf