The Future of Relational Thought: The Uncertain Practice of Hope

Since the publication of her first book From a Broken Web (1986), Catherine Keller's work has been structured around the challenge and possibility of relational thinking. Throughout her career, and in the context of increasing environmental awareness, her affirmations of mutuality and interdependence have helped articulate visions of ecological possibility and planetary becoming. But entanglement also names the complexity of our condition. Now, as she retires from Drew University, we face conditions that make the future almost impossible to think about: rising authoritarianism, institutional collapse, environmental breakdown. What might becoming look like now, through what Keller has called the cloud of impossibility? What planetary visions for the future feel possible? What might the uncertain relational practice of hope bring us, as we face into this moment? Panelists will explore what we might inherit from thinking entanglement.