The contemporary discourse ofis a petty-bourgeois discourse because it locates itself according to an imaginary where a genius intellectual is undermined by the collective of a church. Here, class struggle, a collective process of knowledge, and an engagement with the truth-value of thepronouncement is judged as less important than an individual's supposedly unique ideas. It is presupposed that these ideas have been deprived of autonomy by an already-existing knowledge formation: the. This already-existing knowledge formation's meaning is less important than the fact that it excludes its critic––the heretic––which is enough to valorize this critic as a. For example, if an individual questions the "truth" of the labour theory of value, and is put in their place by Marxist academics, then this individual becomes theand the Marxist academics the. It doesn't matter if the latter is itself fighting against hegemony; the discourse of the heretic only requires that this supposed "church" exclude an individual genius.The valorization of the heretic intentionally ignores the content of the proclaimed heresy; it is simply enough to proclaim that one is a heretic on the basis of a presumed exclusion, never mind the substance of this exclusion. Hence we are given an ahistorical narrative about the history of actually-existing heresies within religious knowledge formations. After all, there have been multiple heresies that have not possessed any useful content––not every heretic was a Copernicus, a proclaimed genius who was excluded because they were true––and we can in fact list off a number of heresies and heretics that were no more or less insightful than the church that excluded their ideas. Manicheanism was a heresy that was also a dead end for thought; Audianism was a useless anthropomorphism; Catharism hated the material world more than traditional Catholicism; Jansenism over-valorized destiny; Giardano Bruno was a mystic who desired to substitute an esoteric understanding of faith for the exoteric––a typical elitist gambit… The vast majority of heretics were simply trying to reconfirm their faith while simultaneously, and often quite awkwardly, undermining the core tenets of the same faith. The medieval heretic was thus, by-and-large, formally akin to the political opportunist: they were rightly treated as deviationists by the knowledge structure they sought to undermine even though, in most cases, their intent was to reconfirm this knowledge structure. The fact that their church cast them out does not mean that there was any value in their ideas since the content of these ideas speak for themselves.The distance between the heretic and revolutionary is illustrated precisely in the experience of post-medieval heresy according to the gap between Martin Luther and Thomas Muntzer. Whereas the former was a heretic par excellence––he proposed a heretical interpretation of doctrine, he faced censure from establishment religion, he insured his excommunication––the latter transformed the heresy into a concrete political programme that rejected the class rule of priests and princes. Here, it is interesting to note that the paradigmatic heretic actually sided with the ruling class against the revolutionary who had transformed heresy into a doctrine of class struggle: Luther, the heretic, sided with the state of affairs and demanded that the peasant movement Muntzer, the revolutionary embraced, be suppressed in the interest of business as usual. Heresy thus becomes a particular imaginary of rebellion that belies often belies its actual manifestation: it is a rebellion in thought rather than action; it remains on the plane of challenging doctrine rather than the material basis for said doctrine. Since the heretic is defined by their revolt in thought, and this revolt is always particular, it is a far cry from a universal demand for thorough revolution.The imaginary of the heretic appeals to individuals who wish to believe that their ideas possess worth in the face of criticism: the presumption of heresy, treated as a value, thus functions to ignore criticism without recourse to argument. Someone who has convinced themselves that they are producing unique ideas, that their thought is singular, can use the discourse of the heretic to avoid criticism. Here it becomes less important that this supposedly "heretical" set of ideas possesses significant content; all that matters is that it has classified itself in opposition to an imaginary "church" and this opposition alone is treated as the guarantee of truth. "I am undermining the knowledge formation of church," is the presumption, "and thus my heretical status means that my ideas possess value." But if this was the case than Jansenism possesses intrinsic value simply because it was classified as heretical. Even worse, if we generalize the "church" to mean anything and everything that is critical of "heretical" revision, then opportunists such as Bernstein are correct insofar as they are "heretics" struggling against the "church" of the knowledge formation of Marxism: the content of their ideas is less important than the possibility that their revisionism was a moment of heresy. In this sense the narrative of a church that forecloses upon heretical knowledge becomes a false analogy for every idea that revolts against an established knowledge formation. Six-day creationists can thus identify themselves as heretics set against a "church of evolution"––irregardless of the fact that they proclaim fidelity to a religious (and thus, by definition,) order––and thus pretend that their anti-scientific ideas are correct insofar as they have been deemed heretical by scientific truth procedures. Ben Stein's reactionary documentary,, is paradigmatic of this kind of thought.Indeed, the most pernicious reactionary ideologies persist according to discourses of heresy. Mens Rights Activists declare themselves heretics opposed to an imagined feminist "church" that has supposedly seized power. Online fascists use aidiom to refer to themselves as "red pillers"––heretics against the established "blue pill" reality, individuals who are aware of some secret truth. White supremacists take bastion in the fantasy that they are resisting an anti-racist order that has become a politically correct establishment. Nick Land and his ilk intentionally use the terms "Cathedral" and "church" to refer to a fantasized order of progressives who oppose Land's appeal to an absolute, backwards order. The heretic is an abstract rebel that does not have to possess its own politics; it is simply a cipher of all that is foreclosed by knowledge formations and truth procedures.The heretic is akin to the maverick rebel. That is, the heretic's value is located in their individual resistance to any collective structure. The meaning of this collective structure doesn't matter; it just needs to be a complex assemblage that, by legislating thought, produces, according to this valorization of heresy, individuals who reject this legislation. The content of such legislation matters less than the individual heretic's revolt; the judgment is always regional. For instance, if a very particular political science department happens to be "Marxist" in some form, then this is enough to declare a non-Marxist scholar working within this context––even if he is a reactionary––a heretic and thus imbue him with value. The fact that Marxism is not considered legitimate by bourgeois power does not matter; only its apparent regional authority is enough to provide an outlier, within the region where it exercises some kind of influence, the right to label themselvesand thus imagine they are rebelling against a hegemony that is, in fact, not hegemonic.To categorize oneself as a heretic is to enshrine the values of the order that is being violated. It is these orders that use the language of heresy––of betrayal, because this is what it means––to condemn their critics. The value of those heretics that provided us with scientific truths is not in their heresy but in the fact that they were not, according to another point of view, simply heretics: they were correct; another worldview would not classify their thought as heresy. For example, the reason we value Copernicus is not because the Catholic Church called him a heretic but because, in his time, he was correct. If the same Church did not call him a heretic we would still accept that he was correct. His heresy had nothing to do with the value of his knowledge production; all it does is inform us of the ways in which a particular ruling class resisted scientific insight.Any viable and progressive political project must necessarily legislate against potential heretics. The Catholic Church was not "wrong" to legislate against those who violated its order according to its rationale for existing. Those of us who think it should not exist, however, should also reject its authority to determine who is a heretic and what is heresy––the judgements that determine heresy are based on a recognizable authority, on the right to condemn a traitor. But any political formation, regardless of the content of its politics, will do the same: the meaning of these heresies will change according to political fidelity.The revolutionary necessarily parts way with the heretic. In some cases the heretic will prosecute the revolutionary because, while the heretic celebrates transgressive thought they usually have o patient for material transgression––i.e. the rejection of the state of affairs defined by class power. Inversely, then, in moments of revolution the revolutionary will necessarily suppress the heretic who, similarly, bases the "heretical" form of their thought according to a rejection of revolution and thus a headlong embrace of reaction.