Long absent, gloriously unrepentant, & Finally back in print! Book VI, Dancing in the Backwoods returns in a beautiful hardcover edition of over 400 pages.
Two thousand years of anticipation. Centuries of theological disputes, magnificent cathedrals, ruined lives, accumulated fortunes, wars, persecutions, et the careful administration of human obedience. And still, the kingdom is coming! One need only believe, submit, suffer, and wait a little longer. Encore un peu, mes chers. Meanwhile, the earthly kingdoms have been doing rather splendidly for themselves!
Kings, presidents, priests, parliaments, nations, revolutions, moral crusades, et every other magnificent arrangement through which human beings have learned to command, to submit, et to furnish their arrangements with the dignity of something greater than themselves. Even the disappearance of the gods has done little to discourage the faithful from finding new objects of devotion.
My sixth book in the Dancing in the Backwoods series, No Kingdom Comes: On Blasphemy and the End of Empire, is finally returning to print through Bacchus Editions! After a very long absence, it is back in a beautiful hardcover edition, over 400 pages of it, et pre-orders are now open in the bookshop! I am occupying the Bacchus Editions blog today as you may have noticed, I have much exciting news to share today. First, a bit on the book..
Christianity is very much my fight; but the kingdom in these pages is not simply the Kingdom of God. It is every arrangement that elevates an authority above the individual and demands that she recognize its right to govern her existence. Divine salvation, political sovereignty, national destiny, moral obligation, revolutionary redemption. Toujours la même prétention. The names change. The claim to authority survives.
And what a revolting presumption it is! That someone should arrive carrying a god, a constitution, a moral law, or a magnificent theory of human liberation and expect me to recognize in any of these things a claim upon my life. Quelle insolence! I have lived among these institutions, made my accommodations, endured their absurdities, et occasionally enjoyed the company of people who believe in them. But endurance is not allegiance, and familiarity has never obliged me to develop an affection for my keepers. Yet the question that interests me most is considerably more disturbing than the familiar spectacle of coercion:
what happens when obedience becomes desirable?
Hunger, fear, punishment, the ordinary calculations of survival. These are familiar enough. But the individual who comes to love obedience, who discovers beauty in surrender, who experiences the command as something she desires? Ah, voilà. Now we have entered much stranger territory.
One of the book's chapters, The Invention of the Kneeling Animal, pursues this question well beyond the monastery and into the intimate business of how an individual comes to desire the arrangements that govern her. Religious discipline, voluntary servitude, the cultivation of conscience, the pleasures of submission, et the peculiar ways authority insinuates itself into what we regard as our own desires. I have no intention of declaring every desire formed beneath authority fraudulent, nor of appointing myself the judge of another individual's freedom. Quelle prétention! The questions are considerably more difficult than that, et I have no interest in making them comfortable.
Throughout these pages, I engage Étienne de La Boétie, Max Stirner, Dora Marsden, Friedrich Nietzsche, Émile Durkheim, Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, Saba Mahmood, John Stuart Mill, et a much wider philosophical company. Not to assemble a lineage, quelle horreur, but to pursue questions their arguments open without accepting the boundaries within which they leave them.
I am not satisfied with an égoïsme that quietly installs the individual upon an internal throne, demanding that she possess, master, and perfect herself as proof of her freedom. Non, merci. What remains of ownness when the sovereign self is no longer available as its guarantee? Ah, that is a considerably more interesting difficulty! Sexuality, maternity, care, and dependence complicate these questions further. I have no interest in pretending that the individual is some immaculate creature of pure independence, untouched by attachment, affection, or the lives of others. I may love, care, depend, surrender, et find myself profoundly altered by another's existence, these are not embarrassing exceptions to one’s égoïsme.
The historical investigations are no less troublesome. No Kingdom Comes follows the construction of Christian sovereignty, the rival claims of earthly rulers and spiritual authorities, and the magnificent spectacle of institutions claiming jurisdiction over human lives in the name of a kingdom beyond the world…
The medieval papacy was particularly accomplished at this. Boniface VIII's Unam Sanctam, issued in 1302, declared submission to the Roman pontiff necessary for salvation. Quelle modestie! Imagine announcing that the eternal fate of humanity depends upon obedience to one's own office. And the administrators of eternity were hardly content to concern themselves with eternity. Property, taxation, marriage, sexuality, punishment, political allegiance, the regulation of bodies and consciences. The heavenly kingdom proved wonderfully useful in the management of earthly affairs.
I find this appetite for dominion particularly repellent when it arrives dressed as benevolence. The priest who claims to save me, the politician who claims to protect me, the moralist who claims to improve me, the revolutionary who proposes to liberate me according to a programme already written. Each arrives with an explanation of why my existence would be better administered beneath his preferred arrangement, as though my life were an unfinished public works project awaiting the proper authorities. Comme c'est généreux.
The contemporary world has hardly exhausted this arrangement. American Christian nationalism, the sanctification of political authority, the marriage of religious certainty and national destiny, the promises of restoration and redemption accompanying contemporary authoritarian movements…
These are living political arrangements, with institutions, money, legislation, and consequences for those expected to live beneath them. The old appetite for dominion has learned to operate a television camera, manage a political campaign, and cultivate an audience. Le progrès! I have no patience for the sanctimonious théâtre of political innocence. Sincerity does not interest me as a defense, nor would perfect consistency improve matters. A person may believe every word of his gospel and still expect me to live beneath it. Voilà le problème. And always the promise that one more sacrifice, one more submission, one more properly administered future will finally deliver the good society. Toujours demain. The bill, naturally, is presented today.
Yet the book does not end with Christianity, nor with the easy pleasure of pointing at someone else's altar. My own philosophical company is not exempt from examination. Anarchistes, égoïstes, unbelievers, enemies of authority... We have our own splendid little temptations. Freedom can acquire its commandments et refusal can become a moral identity. The individual who has escaped one sovereign may find herself constructing another from the sacred materials of her own independence. I have encountered enough little popes among the enemies of popery to last several lifetimes. The vestments may have disappeared, but the appetite for instructing everyone else in the proper conduct of existence remains wonderfully intact.
And then there is judgment without jurisdiction. Ah, voilà une belle difficulté.
What becomes of condemnation when it refuses to become governance?
What happens when the individual will neither surrender the force of her judgment nor convert it into a claim upon someone else's existence?
These questions run throughout No Kingdom Comes, alongside another that has continued to trouble me:
what becomes of the individual when she no longer requires her existence to be intelligible as an expression of freedom?
I have spent many years in the company of dead philosophers, religious heretics, blasphemers, anarchistes, et other delightful troublemakers. They have provided magnificent arguments, occasional companionship, and an inexhaustible supply of disagreements. But intellectual affinity has never obliged me to inherit another person's conclusions. Même pas les plus belles. I have no desire to become the faithful disciple of an infidelity, nor to guard the doctrinal purity of people whose greatest pleasure was often the destruction of doctrine.
I am very happy to bring this book back into circulation with Bacchus Editions. It is a substantial, rather unruly investigation into the persistence of the sacred after God, the political uses of innocence, the formation of desire, the claims made upon embodied existence, and blasphemy as something considerably more consequential than the pleasure of offending religious sensibilities.
No kingdom comes, amis. Not even mine.
XO Yours,
Fíona
Added to her post:
A note on printing and pre-orders
The new 480-page hardcover edition of No Kingdom Comes is available for pre-order, with shipping beginning in November 2026. Fair warning: Previous volumes of Dancing in the Backwoods sold out quickly during their initial print runs, so readers wanting to secure a copy are encouraged to pre-order rather than wait for general availability.