The politics of extra/ordinary time: encyclical thinking

This article reads the papal encyclical as a genre in political thought. As a form, the encyclical authorizes itself through the ontological surety provided by Christian revelation, juxtaposed with an intervention into contemporary and contested politics. As explicitly theological texts, encyclicals trouble normative notions of the political. At the same time, however, they do significant political work in the world. This article reads the genre as a form, attempting to disaggregate the theological and the political inhering within, while recognizing their inextricability. The object of the article is, thus, to reckon with the encyclical, and to take it seriously in the post-secular.