INTRODUCTIONmoribund.’’^3 Joas analyses the term in a critical discussion of Ju ̈rgen Habermas’s work,
where it designates the situation in which a nation-state, paradoxically, ‘‘counts on the
continuous presence of religious communities in a continually secularizing society.’’^4 A
society is ‘‘post-secular’’ if it reckons with the diminishing but enduring—and hence,
perhaps, ever more resistant or recalcitrant—existence of the religious. In this view, a
second interpretation of the termpost-secularis possible, one that stresses less a change
in the societal role of religion than a different governmental or public perception of it:
‘‘ ‘Post-secular’ doesn’t mean, then, an increase in the meaningfulness of religion or a
renewed attention to it, but a changed attitude by the secular state or in the public domain
with respect to the continued existence of religious communities and the impulses that
emerge from them.’’^5 In such a reading, what undergoes transformation is less the nature
of the secular state, let alone its constitutional arrangements guaranteeing, say, a separa-
tion between church and state, but rather the state’s ‘‘secularist self-understanding.’’^6
Needless to say, it is far from clear what kind of ‘‘self-understanding’’ might come to
substitute for the secularism (or ‘‘secular fundamentalism’’) of old, not least because the
phenomenon on which the post-secular condition reflects—namely, religion’s persistent
role—is increasingly difficult to grasp conceptually and to situate empirically. Strictly
speaking, neither the locus of ‘‘self ’’ (often implying self-identity and self-determination)
nor that of ‘‘understanding’’ (with its now cognitivist, then historicist, culturalist, and
hermeneutic overtones) can be of much help where religion and the theologico-political
are concerned.
Here, let it suffice to mention just one reason for this predicament. Religion and the
theologico-political (like so many historical, social, cultural, and political words, things,
gestures, and powers) tend to show a Janus face. Religion, at least in its present-day public
manifestations, reveals a dual possibility, for better and for worse. Moreover, it does so
at once intelligibly (for reasons that we can make perfectly transparent) and obscurely,
miraculously (that is to say, inexplicably, driven by causes, forces, or affects that escape
us, whether in principle or just for now). A potential source of inspiration and democratic
openness, it simultaneously—inevitably?—presents a danger of dogmatism and hence of
closed societies and mentalities. As Derrida suggests, its striving toward perfection (or
perfectibility) and its tendency toward perversion (or, more precisely, ‘‘pervertibility’’) go
hand in hand. Religious orthodoxies of all stripes seek to interpret the latter possibility or
virtuality as external to themselves—and, by extension, as inessential to their theologico-
political project. They portray these aberrations as idolatry, blasphemy, apostasy, heresy,
scandal, or offense.
But what if one belongs to the other and does so necessarily, as a standing possibility,
a danger that must—indeed, ought to—be risked? Then it is important to ask how this
double, potentially duplicitous, and often deeply contradictory or even treacherous—
terrorist or rogue—tendency emerged in the first place. What historical articulations and
interpretations has it received? What chances and perils does it (still or yet again) hold in
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