This book brings a variety of voices into conversation about the issues of identity, community, tension and violence, and peace in the West: from Sophocles to Alice Walker, from Lincoln to Martin Luther King, Jr. and from Euripides to Edward Said.

Author Carolyn M. Jones Medine: Carolyn M. Jones Medine is Professor of Religion and the Institute of African American Studies in the Department of Religion at the University of Georgia, USA.

PART I: HOME AND HOMELESSNESS Culture, Location, and the Problem of Transitive Identity Going Home in the Work of Charles H. Long and Ashis Nandy The Politics of Statelessness: Edward Said and the Ambiguities of Liberal Nationalism PART II: MEDIATIONS OF RELIGION AND POLITICS Self-Cultivation and the Practices of Peace: Foucault on the Stoics and Peacemaking in the Modern World 'The Better Angels of Our Nature:' Sophocles' Antigone and the Crisis of Union Oedipus at Colonus and The Gospel at Colonus: African American Experience and the Classical Text The Power of Horror: Variations and Reframings of The Bacchae PART III: THE POSSIBILITY OF PEACE AND THE BELOVED COMMUNITY The Transitive 'In-Between': Culture, Meaning and the Political in Voegelin and Bhabha Negotiating Space(s): Reframing Political Conflict in Walzer and Lyotard Alice Walker's The Color Purple and Beyond: Suffering and the Task of the Revolutionary Artist The Limits of Reconstruction: Reconstituting Community in Martin Luther King, Jr. Conclusions from a Transitive Space