Aug 31, 2021

This special issue of qui parle, titled “Networks of Belief,” presents an interdisciplinary conversation between and across new media studies, political theology, religion and secularism studies, literary criticism, philosophy, ecocriticism, and critical race theory via the figure of the network and the ever-contentious frame of belief.

Each piece traces an archive, whether historical or speculative, and asks after the enmeshment of the issue’s titular concepts therein. The articles examine what lies at the intersection of networks and belief, be it a form of life, tradition, dispossession, indifference, or atopic immanence divorced from secularity. Together, the articles forward questions concerning the status of belief, and of belief in the network, whether it be the foundational network of secularism and religious studies, the network of artificial intelligence, the network of connectionism and neoliberal economics, or the “network” as structuring homophilic concept.

William Morgan is a doctoral student in the Department of Rhetoric with a designated emphasis in New Media at the University of California, Berkeley and a member of the editorial board of qui parle. His research focuses on cybernetics and the philosophy of machine learning.

Kyra Sutton is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Rhetoric with a designated emphasis in Critical Theory at the University of California, Berkeley and Co-Editor in Chief of qui parle. Her research focuses on critical religion and secularism studies in contemporary Anglo-American literature.