Towards an Akairological Politics: Rereading Negri on the Biblical Book of Job

Abstract

This essay engages with an unfamiliar Antonio Negri, one who engages in biblical interpretation in The Labor of Job (2009). The analysis focuses on two key themes: kairós and measure/immeasure. Concerning kairós I critique Negri’s relatively conventional approach – creative and opportune time – by identifying its inescapable moral and class associations with ruling ideology in ancient Greece, where it designates, through its basic sense of measure, the right time and right place. In response, I pursue an akairological position, one that draws upon Negri’s complex treatment of measure and immeasure. While Negri seeks a reshaped and creative measure, I suggest we tarry with immeasure, for it overlaps with what is opposed to kairós. The article closes by asking why Negri should be interested in the Bible. The answer: he is able to do so, as his studies of Spinoza show, through a radical relativising of the absolute truth claims of theology.