Borders, "in-between-places", and pluralistic logic: Homi Bhabha's cultural studies and their contributions to the theological method

This paper deals with the theological method from the search for a more appropriate equation for the relationship between theology and culture, highlighting the cultural studies' value of theological reflection, based on Homi Bhabha's postcolonial analysis. It also highlights the dimensions of plurality, subjectivity, and ecumenicity for the the ological method, aiming at the strengthening of a plural logic in theological reflection and in sciences of religion and observing their consequences for society as a whole. Within the critical view of Homi Bhabha's post-colonial thought, we highlight the work of border culture, which requires a meeting with the "new" than mere reproduction or continuity of past and present. He renews and interprets the past, reconfiguring it as an contingent "in-between-place" that innovates, interrupts and questions the present. We will also pay attention to Bhabha's hermeneutical and social intervention horizon, starting from the possibilities of culture "negotiation", instead of its "denial", which is common in dichotomous and bipolar positions. It is a temporality forged in the in-between- places and placed in the "beyond", making it possible to design the articulation of contradictory or antagonistic elements and bring about some new realities, although they are hybrid and barely coherent in terms of internal rationality, albeit with utopian and transforming potential.