Migrants in the Profane: Critical Theory and the Question of Secularization

A beautifully written exploration of religion’s role in a secular, modern politics, by an accomplished scholar of critical theory

Migrants in the Profane takes its title from an intriguing remark by Theodor W. Adorno, in which he summarized the meaning of Walter Benjamin’s image of a celebrated mechanical chess-playing Turk and its hidden religious animus: “Nothing of theological content will persist without being transformed; every content will have to put itself to the test of migrating in...