Life Under Empire: The Mystical Turn

In an Imperial Age, when citizenship is but a fiction (republics have citizens, empires have subjects), the possibilities of effective political action through democratic processes are all but foreclosed.

In such circumstances, the illusory nature of life in this world becomes palpable.

The mystical turn is an unmasking of those illusions and a politics of the Great Refusal. Aldous Huxley meets Herbert Marcuse in Norman O. Brown.



Let us remember St. Paul, who boasted of his Roman "citizenship" only to pay for his loyalty with his head.