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Poetry as a kenotic exercise in José Tolentino Mendonça’s ‘The days of job’

2024-01-01Research article Open access
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dc.contributor.authorBoas, Alex Villas
dc.date.accessioned2025-10-20T10:05:15Z
dc.date.available2025-10-20T10:05:15Z
dc.date.issued2024-01-01
dc.description.abstractThis article explores the intersection of theology, literature and spirituality in José Tolentino Mendonça’s The Days of Job, focusing on poetry as a kenotic exercise of self-emptying (kenosis). By engaging with biblical literature, particularly the Book of Job, Mendonça reimagines poetic language as a space of vulnerability and transformation that resists ideological rigidity and fosters ethical openness. The study explores how Mendonça’s poetics resonates with Michel de Certeau’s heterology, Michel Foucault’s notion of political spirituality, and Giorgio Agamben’s critique of the loss of poiesis in modernity. In dialogue with patristic interpretations of Job (Gregory the Great, Basil of Caesarea) as well as contemporary philosophical readings (Fredric Jameson, Antonio Negri), this work argues that Mendonça’s poetry enacts a theological aesthetics of resistance in which language becomes an instrument of spiritual and ethical reconfiguration. In this framework, poetic expression is not merely an aesthetic exercise, but a radical way of inhabiting suffering, silence and longing, echoing Job’s existential questioning as a source of meaning and creative resilience.eng
dc.identifier.citationBoas, A. V. (2024). Poetry as a kenotic exercise in José Tolentino Mendonça’s ‘The days of job’. Acta Universitatis Carolinae Theologica, 14(2), 73-93. https://doi.org/10.14712/23363398.2025.5
dc.identifier.doi10.14712/23363398.2025.5
dc.identifier.eid105017260547
dc.identifier.issn1804-5588
dc.identifier.otherb2b321c6-6355-434c-a69a-4ff268188b19
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/10400.14/55384
dc.identifier.wos001580434800003
dc.language.isoeng
dc.peerreviewedyes
dc.rights.urihttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
dc.subjectContemporary Portuguese poetry
dc.subjectJosé Tolentino Mendonça
dc.subjectPolitical spirituality
dc.subjectSpiritual exercises
dc.subjectTheology and literature
dc.titlePoetry as a kenotic exercise in José Tolentino Mendonça’s ‘The days of job’eng
dc.typeresearch article
dspace.entity.typePublication
oaire.citation.endPage93
oaire.citation.issue2
oaire.citation.startPage73
oaire.citation.titleActa Universitatis Carolinae Theologica
oaire.citation.volume14
oaire.versionhttp://purl.org/coar/version/c_970fb48d4fbd8a85

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