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should we think life?’’^178 Gouhier—unlike Marrati and Deleuze, on whom she draws in
her essay—seems to think it must be art (and several of Bergson’s formulations point in
that direction). But could it be technology, mysticism, technology as mysticism, mysticism
as technology, as Bergson—and not only inThe Two Sources, which reflects on these
matters in the most explicit of terms—seems to allow as well? What, if anything, do the
internal propulsion of life and the quasi-automaticity of habit and the intellect—that is
to say, of closed morality and religion, but of spiritual or dynamic religion as well—have
to do with each other? Why bring together ‘‘mechanicism and mysticism’’ (the title of the
final part of the book) at all? Marrati’s essay sets the stage for such questions and provides
the central elements that allow us to answer them. For one thing, she notes: ‘‘That which
can communicate open morality, propagate it, cannot be a corpus of doctrines or an
institution.’’ On the contrary, the ‘‘feeling’’ with which the open soul goes hand in hand
will be ‘‘triggered’’ by examples alone, ‘‘the exemplary figure among these being the Christ
of the Gospels.’’ Such exemplarity, she immediately adds, does not fill ‘‘the void of the
open: if imitation is necessary, it is also, strictly speaking, the imitation of nothing. There
is no set of rules, norms, or conduct to follow: what must be imitated is an attitude, a
tendency of the mind, and a capacity to act’’ (p. 600).
Bergson illustrates this ‘‘attitude’’ or ‘‘tendency,’’ which is that of the ‘‘open soul,’’
open onto everything or nothing, via the mystics. Echoing a motif we found in Laclau’s
essay, but with a different resonance, he stresses that they are not in retreat from the
world but, on the contrary, are ‘‘men and women of action’’ (p. 599). Such openness,
Marrati further explains, is not acquired through ‘‘progressive broadening’’ of one’s hori-
zon of inclusion and solidarity (from one’s family and kin to groups, nations, and human-
ity). It is based on a tendency of life itself toward creative change. With a helpful analogy,
Marrati reminds us that, ‘‘in non-Bergsonian terms,’’ the emerging idea of ‘‘the universal’’
has thus ‘‘no figure,’’ that is to say, ‘‘the universal is empty’’ (p. 600).
What, then, would it mean to translate the principal presuppositions and terms of
Bergson’s intellectual and political engagement into the terms of the present century?
Marrati urges that any extrapolation of Bergson’s views, let alone the politics implied,
should proceed with caution. In her words: ‘‘Bergson’s political theology—if he has one,
which is not certain—is an act of belief in the moving and in change; an appeal to act in
order to open up societies and institutions, which by their very essence seek to freeze’’ (p.
601). She proposes that it is Bergson’s novel exploration of the notion of novelty, well
beyond the common possibilisms that make up the bulk of Western metaphysics in its
ancient, Christian, and modern guises, that gives us most to ponder and that—who
knows?—might unlock his thought’s timely untimeliness for the present day. Marrati
leaves no doubt that this discussion, let alone its repercussions for the problem of the
theologico-political, has only just begun.
The contributions of Jane Bennett and Kate Khatib explore whether the concept of
political theology can be extended in the direction of material, mechanical-technological

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