Namsoon Kang Quotes & Sayings

I fully recognize there is an urgent need for constructing the _strategic we-nes-in-sameness_ and promoting the _solidarity of sameness_. The sheer realization of the inextricable interconnectedness of I-ness/me-ness and we-ness/us-ness is the round for an authentic solidarity with one another in spite of and regardless of the difference. — Namsoon Kang

The cosmopolitan gaze of planetary love and hospitality _is_ what constitutes being _religious_. — Namsoon Kang

Cosmopolitanism starts from the _singular_ individual rather than the _faceless_ collective — Namsoon Kang

Although I believe identity politics '"produces limited but real empowerment for its participants," it is important to note that it contains significant problems: first, its essentialist tendency; second, its fixed _we-they_ binary position; third, its homogenization of diverse social oppression; fourth, its simplification of the complexity and paradox of being privileged and unprivileged; and fifth its ruling out of intersectional space of diverse forms of oppression in reality. — Namsoon Kang

Theology should be a discourse that helps the sociopolitical approach to justice to maintain its human face and not to become impersonal. — Namsoon Kang

Cosmopolitanism emphasizes and is grounded in a _singular relationality between and among people — Namsoon Kang

The overall theme of theology can be twofold: the search for meaning and the responsibility one has to the others. — Namsoon Kang

I believe theology should be about one's way of life, a kind of gaze into onesself and others, and a mode of one's profound existence in the world. — Namsoon Kang

_For what ends_ does one claim cosmopolitanism? _Whose interest_ does it serve? — Namsoon Kang

Religion is about hospitality, solidarity, and responsibility or it is nothing at all. — Namsoon Kang

How can one maintain a theological confidence in what one claims to be _true_ while acknowledging the existence of multiple religions that also claim to be _true_? — Namsoon Kang

Cosmopolitanism has offered me an ethical perspective and a conceptual framework with which to read the signs of our times as a theologian and intellectual who has a public responsibility for constantly offering a way to engage in this rapidly changing public world. — Namsoon Kang

I want to affirm that thinking and living, knowing and doing, theory and practice intersect. — Namsoon Kang

The politics of trans-identity seeks to move from the _politics of singular identity_ to the _politics of multiple solidarities_ across various identities without abandoning one's personal attachments and commitments to the group that one finds significant. — Namsoon Kang

The question is not, therefore, _whether_ a theory is grand or small, or whether it is universal/global or particular/local, but _what function_ a theory plays and _whose interest_ it serves. — Namsoon Kang

Cosmopolitan theology affirms and radicalizes the belief that the Divine creates each and every human being as equal to every one else as a _citizen-of-the-cosmos and that no one is either superior or inferior to the other. — Namsoon Kang

I believe that dreaming an impossible world, is itself the task of theologies and that the disparity between the world-as-it-is (reality) and the world-as-it-ought-to-be (ideality) is where a prophetic call comes in. — Namsoon Kang

One should regard one's religious or denominational affiliation as a point of departure, a point of entry, not the point of arrival because on cannot confine God to a particular religion or faith tradition, and therefore should not claim one's exclusive ownership of God. Regarding one's religious or denominational affiliation as accidentality; not as inevitability, is important in religious discourse and practice because such a sense of accidentality of one's affiliation allows a space of alterity of reciprocal contestation and challenge, and a space of planetary gaze that sees others as fellow human beings, regardless. — Namsoon Kang

I believe _cosmopolitanism_ can be an effective discourse with which to advocate a politics of _transidentity_ of overlapping interests and heterogeneous or hybrid subjects in order to challenge conventional notions of exclusive belonging, identity and citizenship. — Namsoon Kang

Who are theologians? What kind of self-identity could or should a theologian claim? Should a theologian be a defender or transmitter of Christian _tradition_? What if the _tradition_ itself carries a dark side, implicitly or explicitly, bounded by religious or cultural superiorism, ethnocentrism, homophobism, exclusive nationalism, sexism, racism, and so forth? What kind of _identity_ would then justify my rule as theologian? This question has been lingering in my mind throughout the time I have been working on cosmopolitan theology. it may sound simple, but for me the identity issue has been fundamental. — Namsoon Kang

Cosmopolitanism, ... , _speaks_ about the urgent need for and the significance of relocating our discourse on, ... , the scope and application of rights and justice for every singular human being regardless of the person's birth and belonging. — Namsoon Kang

Cosmopolitanism promotes a sense of new we-ness as regarding every individual human being as a citizen of the cosmos. However, the we-cosmic-citizens are not to promote the we-ness-in-sameness, but rather the we-ness-in-alterity.Unlike the solidarity-in-sameness, cosmopolitan solidarity-in-alterity celebrates the singularity and difference of each individual human being while not denying the historical necessity of the strategic construction of we to challenge the very sociopolitically imposed category — Namsoon Kang

Cosmopolitan discourse ... provides one with a _public gaze_ with which one can relate oneself to others in a different way. — Namsoon Kang

Cosmopolitanism seeks a _we_ that does not rely on the exclusion of _others_ but, instead, recognizes and confirms each other as part of the planetary _we_. The cosmopolitan _we_ is not grounded in a monolithic sameness but in a constant alterity and _ethical singularity_ of each individual human person regardless of one's national origin and belonging, religious affiliation, gender, race and ethnicity, class ability, or sexuality. — Namsoon Kang

Cosmopolitan theology that longs for the Kindom of God seeks to recover its revolutionary universalizing ethos in terms of hospitality, neighbor-love, and multiple solidarities that one can see in Jesus' teaching and ministry, without any imperialist, kyriarchcal, hierarchical implications — Namsoon Kang

Cosmopolitan discourse emphasizes the _cosmic belonging_ of all individual human beings as the ground of our hospitality, solidarity, justice and neighbor-love. Cosmopolitan discourse is about turning a _compassionate gaze_ onto others regardless of one's nationality and citizenship, origin of birth, religion, gender; race and ethnicity, sexuality, or ability — Namsoon Kang

I believe recognizing the presence of the face of the other as existent, no matter who/what one is, is one of the core messages of Jesus' teaching. — Namsoon Kang

Cosmopolitan discourse is in a way a response to the issue of solidarity. Although the precondition for solidarity can be a _community_, solidarity requires more intentional commitment and performance than does community. — Namsoon Kang

Theological discourses function in various ways as sites of contestation and resistance, of forming new religious and personal identities, and of building solidarities. Theological discourses that theologians produce, disseminate, and teach in academia are not simply objective interpretations and neutral reflections on the world and the church in it. Instead theological discourses are productions of and for the world and the church that we live in — Namsoon Kang

Now the question we must ask is ... what kind of _practices_ [theology] motivates, what kind of _gaze_ onto others, the guest, the new arrivant, it offers us to carry with us; _not_ who my neighbors are _but_ to whom I am being a neighbor. — Namsoon Kang

Cosmopolitan theology is a theology for _the impossible_. — Namsoon Kang

Theological discourse can be, in and of itself, a form of identity and solidarity. — Namsoon Kang

What does it mean to be human, to continue to live as human, to remain _faithful_ to the Divine while living in a cultural, sociogeopoltical, and religious world where power disparity between/among humans based on religious world where power disparity between/among humans based on their nationality, citizenship, gender, race, class, sexuality, ability, religion and so forth still prevails? The act of _theologizing_ for me involves responding to these questions and stimulating the practice of liberating and enlarging human possibility in our daily reality. — Namsoon Kang

Purity does not exist in any thinker, simply because one is always historically and socioculturally situated, bound, and limited, and, therefore, no one is epistemologically innocent. — Namsoon Kang