Any discourse can only claim to be an untimely intervention in the context of a discursive framework. This book, which aims to elucidate on the theological–political figures present in the constitution of the political, is therefore written against a backdrop. This backdrop is made up of many interwoven threads that are the result of numerous discussions bearing on the question of the political and the sacred. If the characteristics of this backdrop were not made at least minimally explicit, it would not be possible to understand the course of action that is intended to be followed and developed in the rest of the book. This is what this brief introduction intends to do.

The Backdrop

The first clarification to be made is that we speak of the theological instead of the religious, because the concept of “the religious’ is much more blurred. When we use the expression ‘the theological’ we are not referring to positive confessions, that is to say, to a set of dogmatic beliefs held by any one church, which is one of the meanings of ‘religion’, as in, for example, the Christian religion. As Trevor Stack argues, the proper meaning of religion is defined as a counterweight to the modern state. In fact, the category of religion appeared and started to be used in opposition to the modern state, meaning those kind of confessions excluded by the state. Nevertheless, religion can be retraced to ancient times, even if, as Talal Asad has suggested, the Reformation was crucial in order to construct the category ‘religion’.

We speak of the theological in a similar way that Hent de Vries speaks of ‘religion, beyond a concept’ to signify a ‘set of phenomena whose simultaneous density (“thickness”) and elusiveness (or “thinness”) belong to the “heart” of this “matter” and constitute its references in their very “essence”, that is to say, their logic and grammar’. To move beyond the concept as defined by de Vries means entering into a constellation of particulars, such as words, gestures, texts and practices that have the character of thickness and elusiveness at the same time; that is, that they conceal while they reveal. The absence–presence dialectic is at the core of these phenomena: historical origins, scriptural sources or ritual practices.