University of Toronto

Graduate Student, Centre for the Study of Religion

Ph.D. Candidate

Thesis Title: The Limits of Resistance: Latin American Liberation Theology and the Problem of Closed Discourse.

About

For the purposes of my doctoral dissertation, it is my intent to address the issue of religiously-motivated social action groups and their relation to overarching structures of authority within their given tradition.  Specifically, I wish to examine the dynamics of the relationship between the Latin American Liberation Theology movement and members of the Established Church within the Vatican.  Utilizing, primarily, the insights of modern Critical Theorists (beginning with Marx and working through selected members of the Frankfurt school), I will be addressing the difficulties of faith-based agents of social change in working under a totalized and totalizing mechanism of power which dictates the “acceptable” claims and limits of any organization which falls under its jurisdiction.  Although Liberation Theology works as a point of reference for my thesis, my dissertation is not intended to be “about” Liberation Theology as such.  Rather, my work attempts to question the ability of any social action group to work within pre-defined constructs which may limit the scope of research, presentation, or progression of said movement’s goals.  That is to say, to what extent are such actors necessarily limited, or even censored, when they attempt to engage in social reform which questions either the authority of the system itself, or the structure of society which makes the existence of such authority possible in the first place?  Is it possible for the desired restructuring, or even the conversation regarding restructuring, to take place within a closed system which pre-defines the form of discourse even before the discussion has begun?  These questions take on unique forms and significance when examined in light of religious institutions, whose limitations are not only viewed as mundanely-established, but divinely authorized and validated.  What recourse, if any, is there for these groups or individuals when the intellectual paths they pursue, or the research they bring back from these paths, are deemed unacceptable by the very religious systems from which they drew their initial inspiration for examining the complex questions of social oppression or inequality?