Postsecular Philosophy as Metaphoric Theology: On Dussel’s Reading of Marx

This article articulates the ways in which the Argentine-Mexican philosopher and theologian Enrique Dussel advances a distinctly postsecularist and decolonial reinterpretation of the Marxist critique of religion. Specifically, this article explores Dussel’s Las metáforas teológicas de Marx [The Theological Metaphors of Marx], a text that exposes how Marx often deploys the Bible against the Christian in a way that presumes the original criticality of an “un-inverted” or “unfetishized” Christianity. Such an interpretative maneuver promises to add a new layer of complexity to the well-known Marxist critique of theology as a critique of politics. At stake in such an interpretation is the rejection of facile readings of Marx’s presumed secularism and the reconceptualization of the relation between theology and philosophy in the context of epistemic decolonization.