“Desecularization: theology and thought”. Introduction to the seminar in Granada, Spain, July 2026. by Gerardo Muñoz
At least since Ernst Böckenförde declared the end of secularization and the exhaustion of the liberal state form in the late sixties, the distinction between theology and politics has experienced a profound schism across Western social life, which once served as the ground and mediation to the homogeneity of “ethical life” (Sittlinchkeit) of civil society.…
Why is Nelly Richard afraid of infrapolitics? by Gerardo Muñoz
The dismissal of ‘infrapolitics’ as a notion to think the distance with respect to political subsumption and civil administration was there from its emergence. I remember that around 2015, Alberto Moreiras suggested that perhaps in ten years or so, given the total collapse of actual existing political frameworks in the West, there might emerge a…
On techne conversationis. by Gerardo Muñoz
There is a wonderful poem titled “Midston House”, where the now forgotten American poet David Schubert defines the poetic task as the possibility of freeing a path through conversation capable of transposing both experience and language. The verses, also quoted in John Ashbery’s lectures on “minor poetic traditions”, taking the form of the imperative read…
Assimilation in exile. On Giorgio Agamben’s Il corpo della politica (2026). by Gerardo Muñoz
One of the decisive lessons of Giorgio Agamben’s archeological examination of Western politics is that the imperative to confront the closure of representation, sooner or later it must also come to terms with the notion of the body (corpo) as a central metapolitical condition in the genesis of modernity. If L’uso dei corpi (Neri Pozza,…
Longing for prose. Reflections on Gaëlle Le Calvez’s Escrituras sin rostro (2025). by Gerardo Muñoz
Every book has a history of its own, its subterranean itineraries, and oblique paths that are only disclosed when entering in contact with its future readers. There is no question that Gaëlle Le Calvez’s Escrituras sin rostro (University of North Carolina Press, 2025) has plenty of merits that we cannot begin to elucidate. For one,…
Thinking without form. On Gianni Carchia’s Name and Image (2025). by Gerardo Muñoz
At long last readers in the English speaking world will be able to read Gianni Carchia’s work in translation thanks to the publication of Name and image: an essay on Walter Benjamin (Seagull Books, 2025), which was the Italian philosopher very last book published posthumously in 2008. This is not a work of late style…
Vermeer’s weightless scales. by Gerardo Muñoz
Vermeer’s “Woman Holding a Balance” (1663) has been read as an allegory of the Final Judgement for very obvious reasons. The painting within the painting on the foreground embodies a traditional representation of the Last Judgement for the saved and the damned. But how are we to mediate between the painting in the painting and…
Ius abutendi and late liberalism. by Gerardo Muñoz
In a recent lecture about the different strands of political liberalism in the American tradition – a lecture that in its own way was presented as a synthesis of his lifelong teaching now collected in the book titled The Rise and Fall of Rational Control (Harvard U Press, 2026) – the political theorist Harvey Mansfield…
Andenken and Pythian 3. by Gerardo Muñoz
Many interpretations of Hölderlin’s “Andenken” (“Remembrance”) have taken for granted that the hymn’s last verse might have been a paraphrasis and creative translation of Pindar’s ode Pythian 3. In the philological scholarship of the poem, it was Günter Zuntz who took notice of the analogical semblance to shed light on “Andenken” final verse as something…
Bazlen’s acoustics. On Roberto Calasso’s Bobi (2026). by Gerardo Muñoz
Roberto Calasso’s short and epigrammatic posthumous book Bobi (Anagrama, 2026) on the opaque figure of Roberto Bazlen has just appeared in Spanish. It is a nebular autobiographical book that does not attempt to render legible the subterranean and oblique figure of Robert Bazlen, but rather to filter some of his obsessions and tonalities, many times…
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Infrapolitical Reflections 