Elaine Padilla is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Religion and Latinx and Latin American Studies at the University of La Verne. As through her book Divine Enjoyment (2015), she has engaged the apophatic tradition in Christianity to emphasize a metaphysics of relationality, passion, and enfleshment. She has also authored several articles and chapters of books and lectured on the trope of darkness. Her other publications include three volumes on theology and migration that she edited with Peter C. Phan. She is currently working on a manuscript tentatively titled The Darkness of Being where she delves into the concept of dark luminosity as a tool of refusal of imperializing totalities (such those established by coloniality) and of cultivating authenticity in processes of subjectification. The Caribbean (particularly Cuba and Puerto Rico) and U.S. Latinx experiences serve as historical points of departure from which she contextualizes the philosophical and theological explorations of the darkness of being.
