Christopher Watkin on Diagonalization

Abstract Christopher Watkin’s book Biblical Critical Theory offers a new technique for assessing issues and conflicts arising in both academic and wider cultural contexts. He offers diagonalization as a way of identifying alternatives to the harmful polarities (dichotomies) in which issues are presented. I argue that diagonalization fails as a technique as it is not presented in a way that others can readily adopt, it fails to explain why or how the diagonalizations resolve dichotomies, and treats complex issues as if they can be rendered into dichotomies and then resolved in a simplistic manner.