Ma. Glovedi Joy L. Bigornia

BIOGRAPHY

Ma. Glovedi Joy L. Bigornia She graduated with a bachelor and masteral degree in Philosophy at Saint Louis University, Baguio City, Philippines. She is presently taking up her PhD at Global Institute of Theology, Yonsei University, South Korea. She is a former lecturer of philosophy, indigenous studies and other humanities and social sciences courses at the University of the Cordilleras, Baguio City. She was also a faculty member and a Course Director of Ethics at the Philippine Military Academy. She is continuously invited to become an adviser, an external member and chairman of the panel for undergraduate and graduate papers at Saint Louis University, Recoletos Seminary and San Pablo Seminary in the Philippines. She presented various papers in philosophy in national and international conferences.

At present, she is a professor at Hebei Foreign Studies University in Shijiazhuang, Hebei Province, China. She is an officer and active member of the Board of the Philippine National Philosophical Research Society (PNPRS) and Philosophical Association of Northern Luzon (PANL). Her research interests include Hannah Arendt’s philosophy, decoloniality, intercultural dialogue, indigenous philosophy, management and education.

ABSTRACT

Hadje C. Sadje & Ma. Glovedi Joy L. Bigornia, “The Great Reset: (Re)imaging, (Re)liberating, and (Re)embracing Theologies of Liberation in the Age of Hyper-Uncertainty” 

In 2010, Slavoj Žižek published a book titled, Living in the End Times (2010), which offers a provocative view of how we have arrived at a given historical situation, particularly the global capitalist economic system. After twelve years, the insights of Žižek are still very much relevant as a lens to analyze the global system vis-à-vis the issues and crises experienced at present. Žižek contends, “a return to the critique of political economy” that cuts across social reality, more importantly, shed light on a topic under constant discussion of the ongoing global crises due to poverty and hunger, unfair distribution of wealth and resources, the COVID pandemic, climate change, among others — underscore the need for liberation (2010a, 181-243; Žižek, The Return of the Political Economy, 2010b, 60-82).

Although political economy analysis shows the intersection of politics and economy and the consequences of ignoring it, Žižek suggests that contemporary social scientists must incorporate other important social issues such as class struggle, superpower politics, and guilt-assuaging tricks of commercialized charity (2010a; 2010b).

In the world today, we find a wide range of Christian theological responses to the ongoing global crises, for instance, theologies of liberation offer various critical analyses and critiques that confront policymakers’ competence, worldview, and the adequacy of their economic-political models. For some reason, theologies of liberation have changed in the past fifty-five years.

According to Josef Estermann, it became a highly academic enterprise or an abstract theological discourse (Estermann, 2017: 20-21). Some, like non-organic European academic theologians, viewed theologies of liberation as antiquated or see it as another way of doing contextual theology that is reduced into process-oriented theological thinking (Estermann, 2017). In this context, this paper is divided into three parts. The first part shows how progressive thinking domains, like theologies of liberation, become a highly academic enterprise or an abstract theological discourse. The second part of the paper addresses the extent to which theologies of liberation are still relevant today for reformulating theological reflection, especially from the non-Western perspective. The last part offers some decolonial reflections in response to (re)imaging, (re)liberating, and (re)embracing theologies of liberation in the age of hyper-uncertainty.