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{"id":17108,"date":"2015-03-16T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2015-03-16T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leithart.level2d.com\/?p=1947"},"modified":"2015-03-16T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2015-03-16T00:00:00","slug":"post-post-secular-politics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2015\/03\/post-post-secular-politics\/","title":{"rendered":"Post-Post-Secular Politics"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n<\/head>

William Viestenz\u2019s\u00a0By the Grace of God<\/a> joins a growing list of books that, invoking Carl Schmitt and others, argues that secular politics has never been secular, but always parasitic on sacred politics. Viestenz\u2019s book is not an exercise in theory, however, but a theoretically-attentive historical study of the Spain of Franco.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He finds religious motifs everywhere in the Francoist regime. Franco \u201cconsolidat[ed] sovereignty and project[ed] national identity through sacred imaging\u201d and so turned to \u201cpurifying, exclusionary violence\u201d against \u201cthe ever-present spectre of the enemy\u2019s re-emergence, justifying violent reprisals in the name of purity and unity\u201d (5). Franco\u2019s political cosmology was derived from Roman Catholicism, but \u201chis conception of Spanish identity transferred the concept of the sacred onto secular territory\u201d (5). Civil duty became a sacred duty, as Franco \u201cdemanded unflagging commitment from its members\u201d (5).<\/p>\n

Vieztenz imagines the \u201csacred as a symbolic shell that is imbued with essential qualities and meanings linked to national identity. Like a tabernacle, a nation\u2019s sacred core is purposefully mysterious \u2013 always open to interpretation and speculation. The projection of national sacred truth is not unlike a corpus mysticum<\/em>, with content and symbolism determined by the corpus naturale<\/em>\u2018s sovereign power\u201d (11).<\/p>\n

Francoist Spain thus provides a case study of Giorgio Agamben\u2019s claim that the sacred \u201ctends to spill over, both semantically and conceptually, into secular discourse.\u201d Agamben calls this the \u201csignature\u201d of the sacred. In Agamben\u2019s words, \u201cSignatures move and displace concepts and signs from one field to another (in this case, from sacred to profane, and vice versa) without redefining them semantically\u201d (quoted, 8).<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"