10 A Hunchbacked Political eology Creaturely Biopolitics as the Self- Sublation of Distorted Life Carlo Salzani A eology of Hunchbacked Possibilities e theology famously enlisted by Benjamin to political ends in the first thesis of “On the Concept of History” presents some peculiar features: it is “small and ugly,” like the “hunchbacked dwarf” representing it, and for this very reason “has to keep out of sight” (SW4, 389/GSI:2, 693). 1 Not only reduced to a dwarfish dimension in contrast with its ancient dominance, but also crooked, deformed, and distorted like a hunched back, Benjamin’s peculiar brand of theology cannot show its face (darf sich nicht blicken lassen) in the political struggle, not even as a diminished sidekick of historical materialism, but must hide inside the automaton of an unusual form of political theology, where it must remain, as it were, sous rature. 2 Another famous image expresses this relation in an entry of the Arcades Project: “My thinking is related to theology as blotting pad is related to ink. It is saturated with it. Were one to go by the blotter, however, nothing of what is written would remain” (AP, 471/GSV:1, 588, entry N7a,7). ough saturating the blotter of thought (and of the political) as a most powerful catalyst, the ink of theology must remain invisible. e form of this exclusion (from view) is not what Agamben (1998: 7 and passim) has called “inclusive exclusion,” an exclusion that includes something as excluded or rejected, since Benjamin’s theology sous rature remains invisible as merely hidden and retains a form of power that, although “weak,” would allow its collaboration with historical materialism to “be a match for anyone” and “win all the time” (SW4, 389– 90/GSI.2, 693–94). is theology stands actually in opposition to the very logic of the exception that is articulated around the dispositif of inclusive exclusion: it does not aim at ruling through exclusion, but rather at redeeming through inclusion. is is another way of saying that Benjamin’s strategy, as Sigrid Weigel puts it (2009: 107), is a rejection of all appropriations of theology to legitimize a political mandate, and is therefore a critique of (Schmittian) political theology. Werner Hamacher captured the essence of this structure in a powerful insight: BLO_10_WATH_C010_docbook_new_indd.indd 212 BLO_10_WATH_C010_docbook_new_indd.indd 212 13-12-2023 20:16:48 13-12-2023 20:16:48