My research focusses on an analysis of the (literary) structure of Calvin’s language in his Institutio Christianae Religionis. In this work Calvin creates a conceptual structure that undermines trust in linguistic determination. The formation of concepts, images, and the very use of words, is tied up for Calvin with the impure state of human existence. In my research I investigate the effects of such a radical critique on his own use of language. What are the effects of a radical insecurity for a work that tries to provide the foundations for a community? How is agency (both political and linguistic) still thinkable in Calvin’s work?

I contextualize my research by focussing on two ‘moments’ around the publication of theInstitutio: the influence of rhetoric and humanism on the Reformation in the first half of the 16th century, and the transitional period between Calvin’s text and what we now call Calvinism. Further moments of reference willbe the role of Calvinist theology in theApartheid regime in South-Africa, and resistance by Calvinists during the Second World War.

Calvin’s magnum opus, the Institutio, is the first major theological work that was published in French, and as such, it has contributed to the development of the literary use of modern French. I will focus on the French edition, and try to approach the literary tension that is present in Calvin’s work.  My method will not be strictly historical: I will make use of various contemporary theoretical paradigms, stemming from postmodern philosophy and comparative literature, to stage a dialogue with our current situation.

This will enable me to create discussion of concepts like militancy, fundamentalism, subjectivity, the role of the author and the reader, and, more generally speaking, the (im)possibility of acting when man is ‘a perpetual forge of idols’. 

2006/2007: On the Edge: Between Literature and Philosophy (with Jooist de Bloois and Tammy Castelein).

2007/2008: On the Edge: Between Literature and Philosophy: Messianism.

2007/2008: Literature, Criticism, Theory: Alain Badiou, Militancy vs. Fundamentalism (with Joost de Bloois).