"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 theolog...

Across the Euro-Atlantic world, political leaders have been mobilizing their bases with nativism, racism, and xenophobia, along with paeans to "traditional values", in brazen bids for electoral support. How do we understand this move to the mainstrea...