Anna Sjöberg
Nov 7, 2025 Anna Sjöberg wrote: Dear David Cayley, My name is Anna Sjöberg. I am a researcher in Systematic Theology in Sweden (Uppsala university), and am currently working on a postdoc project on Ivan Illich, with the title ”A New Way of Doing Theology: Christianity, Secularization and Modernity in the Thought of Ivan Illich”. Together with two colleges, Isabella Bruckner (Pontificio Ateneo Sant’Anselmo, Rome) and Gemma Serrano, we are organizing a conference in Rome 14 – 16 May, 2026, with the working title ”Corruptio optimi quae est pessima”, revolving around The Rivers North of the Future and the ”hypothesis” he presents to all of us there, to continue, to think-with.
The aim of this workshop / conference is to do precisely this, to test his hypothesis, to examine how this can be done today and what we can bring to it, while commemorating and celebrating the 100 years that have passed since Illich was born. Your latest, beautiful book is of course an invaluable contribution, and an important source in my own work. We would be delighted if you would accept an invitation to take part in this conference, in presence or online. My suggestion would be that you give a talk around your book, but you would be free to bring up any topic related to this theme, if you have currently moved on to something new that you would like to discuss with us.
We are still in the planning phase, and are at present interested to hear if you would be interested and have the possibility to attend. Other invited participants will be persons from different parts of Europe working mostly in the fields of theology and philosophy and on Illich in some way, and also Fabio Milana, who is currently working on the publication of the complete works of Illich in Italian (which you probably know) and Giorgio Agamben. We are in the process of sending out invitations, and have no fixed list of speakers yet.
With the hope for a continued dialogue, also beyond the occasion of this conference,
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Nov 8, 2025, from David: Dear Anna, I'm delighted to hear of your planned conference, and equally of your own work. I wouldn't rule it out absolutely - never say never - but I'm getting pretty old and infirm and travel only sparingly, so some kind of on-line involvement on my part is, unhappily, much more likely.
It would be wonderful if you could get Giorgio and Fabio involved. Someone else I thought of, and perhaps you are in touch already, is Barbara Hallensleben at the University of Fribourg and her student Anna Heidelk. Barbara organized a conference on Illich a couple of years ago - I think the papers are to be published eventually - and Anna has subsequently taken an active part in the annual gathering of the Illich conspiracy that Sajay Samuel organizes. Sajay - along with other friends also edits the associated journal, Conspiratio, and deals with publications.
I wish you could luck with your organizing. Do please keep in touch.
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Dec 3, 2025, from Anna: I am delighted to hear that you are interested in contributing to our conference! I am currently applying for funding, and I will include the cost for travels from Canada for you, just in case. If we do not use it, the money goes back to the foundation, there is no extra work involved. I just want to keep the door open a little longer. We are dependent on this source if funding, which means that if we will not receive the grant, we might need to cancel the conference. But I will of course keep you informed regarding all of this. We are planning a publication in attachment to the conference: would you be interested also in publishing your contribution?
I am in contact with Dougald Hine, who lives not so far away from where I live, and he invited me to the gathering in Lucca in June this year with the group thinking with Illich. Sadly, I couldn't attend, since me and my family just moved back to Sweden from Vienna, but I hope I will be able to join another year. I am very curious to take part of the conversations of this group. I still haven't met anyone who knew Illich, except for my philosophy professor from Brazil, who remembers meeting him as a child with her parents together with liberation theologians of their acquaintance. I would love to talk to someone who knew him personally, and get to ask all sorts of questions. Thank you for mentioning Barbara and Anna, we are keeping them in mind!
I will attach here also the sketch of our description of what we are hoping to do together in May (in French, Italian and English). It is not yet a finished document, but it will give you a hint of what we seek to achieve.
TITLE:
CORRUPTIO OPTIMI QUAE EST PESSIMA
PROPOSED SUBTITLES:
Illich’s Method
A Repertoire of Theological Gestures
Creative Tactics for Disrupting Corruptions
ARGUMENT
In his conversations with David Cayley, Illich repeatedly asserts that “modernity can be studied as an extension of the history of the Church” and that “the modern world becomes intelligible only as a perversion of the Christian message” (Rivers North of the Future, 2003).
This claim is not a polemical diagnosis nor an hypothesis derived from historical or philological exercises; it points instead to a distinctive theological method.
Illich undertakes a genealogy of evangelical corruption: charity transformed into administered service; hospitality into hospitalization; care into sanitary management; teaching into compulsory schooling; mission into development, and so forth. He exposes the perversions of the sacred order, unveils the mechanisms of collective deception, speaks against the stabilizing dispositifs of institutions, and seeks to restore perception by revealing what the system has rendered invisible.
His vocabulary is not normative; it aims at reshaping perception. His method is not a program but a gestural and embodied practice. It consists in: stripping words bare; identifying thresholds of inversion; disenchanting perception; defending the vernacular; converting the gaze; speaking from the margins; inventing counter-conducts; analysing sensory regimes; and recognizing the wounds produced by institutional operations.
These gestures belong to the ascetic and prophetic dimensions of theology. They return theology to its humus, to the fragile, risky, embodied event that grounds it. They provide resources for resisting forms of domination that present themselves as the fulfilment of the good.
At this point, a series of questions becomes unavoidable:
Where are the vernacular spaces today—those places where one can still live without being administered?
What kind of theology might emerge from such spaces, and not from offices, dispositifs, or committees?
How can one resist when resistance itself risks being captured, recuperated, or integrated?
What does it mean to invent counter-conducts that do not in turn become programs?
What would it mean to practice a theology that refuses to become the instrument of what it critiques—a theology capable of unveiling the corruption of the good without succumbing to the temptation to administer it?
How might one speak from the margins without erecting the margins into a new authority?
And what if the deepest corruptions are precisely those we no longer dare to name?
What if theology must once again become a place of lucidity—not to correct, but to allow what still trembles to come forth?
The purpose of this colloquium is not to add one more discourse to existing discourses, nor to establish yet another critique of modernity, nor to rehabilitate any particular institution. We gather to examine Ivan Illich’s method in order to learn to see together what is at stake in the folds of language, in everyday gestures, in the dispositifs that organise our practices, and within institutions themselves.
His method is not a framework to be applied but a form of discernment, requiring a shared and convivial labour for determining what remains alive within the inheritances we bear, and for naming what must be questioned, shifted, or released.
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Dec 5, 2025, from David: Thanks for your letter, and the prospectus for the conference.
In The Rivers North of the Future, Ivan persistently referred to what he was saying as a hypothesis. He also insisted throughout the second half of his career that he was preeminently a historian, and "no theologian." ("I am no theologian, [and] no one can tell me that I am." p. 121). It's puzzling therefore to find your prospectus beginning with the claim that Illich offers a theological method rather than "a hypothesis derived from historical exercises." I think I understand what you are getting at - he offers a stance, not a system - but your claim does seem, at first glance, to contradict the words of the man you're interpreting.
I really do think it unlikely that I will be present in person at your gathering, though I am touched that you want to hold that possibility open. I would certainly be willing to be published, if I am able by then to craft some intervention that seems worth printing.
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Dec 11, 2025, from Anna: thank you for your comment! You are absolutely right, I agree with you, I believe we should go over these formulations before the final draft of the description. Thank you for offering your view. It is important to be conscientious in these matters. This document was co-written, so I will have to discuss with the others, of course. As for myself, I've taken a deep impression by your words on p. 9 in your book, where you describe the feeling of being called to answer, to offer your own power of interpretation in probing the depth and meaning of these dense reflections that he chose to disclose to you: ”What I had asked for asked something of me in turn. A hypothesis needs testing: research themes need to be followed up. ... With this book I offer my answer.” The way I understand my own work, is exactly like this. I come from a different generation, a different tradition, and I did not know the man, only his texts, but I would like to creatively respond to and think with this hypothesis from my point of view, find resonances in surprising places. I regard my own work as quite constructive, but therefore I also see the importance of being very clear about this constructive element, of not putting words or perspectives in the mouth of Illich, if it is really my own reaction and interpretation. So thank you.
I will keep you informed regarding the progress of our planning.
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Dec 15, 2025, from David: Thanks for yours. I recently received the new issue of https://conspiratio.press/periodicals:07:ravenscroft. Reading my friend Simon Ravenscroft's piece, I thought it might be germane to what you and your colleagues are saying in your prospectus for your conference, so I thought I'd send it along.
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Feb 24, 2026, from Anna: thank you for bringing my attention to the new issue of Conspiratio, it looks very interesting! I look forward to dive into it and read it more carefully – the whole issue, and especially the text by Ravenscroft that you mention. The last months have been particularly intense for me, but I hope to have more time for reading and reflecting in the coming months. However, I am happy to tell you that we have received funding for the conference in Rome. There are means for you to come to Rome and stay at a hotel for the time you need to settle. I know that you said that a travel oversees was unprobable, and we will of course be happy to have you join us over zoom if this is better for you. Just know that you are very welcome to join us in person if you would choose to!
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Feb 24, 2026, from David: Thanks for yours. I'm glad your conference is prospering and that you would be able to afford my expenses, should I decide to come. It's tempting, but my old bones are telling me, fairly adamantly, to stay home, so I'm going to stick to my plan of joining you only remotely. I'll look out for the program when it's ready.
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Mar 9, 2026, from Anna: thank you, it is probably a wise decision – the bones are most often right! One question: do you have a title for your contribution that we could put in the program? You will have 45 minutes, up to an hour for your talk.
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March 11, 2026, from David: Various ideas are playing through my mind about my presentation to your group. Before I announce a title might you tell me a little more about the gathering as it currently stands? I know you probably don't have a final program as yet, and that's why you're asking me for my title, but can you give me an idea of how many will be there, what other subjects will be discussed, and perhaps even what you might like to hear from me? I'll then make up my mind and reply promptly.
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March 12, 2026, from Anna: Isabella sent me the draft of the program: this will hopefully give you an idea of the range of themes that will be discussed. Many of the invited participants are academic theologians, of different denominational backgrounds, but mainly Catholic. I very much appreciate your latest book on Illich, and you might depart from that if you like. But you are free to choose what you would like to highlight in this context! As you see, the title suggests that we would like to explore the theological vein in the thought of Ivan Illich, while also respecting his stated position (I am no theologian). Thank you again for pointing this out in the previous descriptive text for the conference. Please tell me if you need more information!
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Mar 14, 2026, from David: I was going to give this more thought, but, presuming you won't take me off the program if I change direction before May, how about The Apocalyptic Illich: a meditation on the changing place of apocalypse in the thought of Ivan Illich, and the significance of this figure in our time. D'accord?
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Mar 16, 2026, from Isabella Bruckner: Dear David Cayley, my name is Isabella Bruckner. I am Anna Sjöberg's collegue in Rome with whom she is organizing the conference on Ivan Illich in May. We are so eternally grateful that you will participate at this event, thank you a lot for that - it will be an immense enrichment to have you with us! Anna has passed me on your title and I was so happy that you have chosen to speak about or integrate the apocalyptic aspect in your speech, since there will not be any other person who addresses this theme so directly. (Barbara Hallensleben unfortunately cannot come.)
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Apr 30, 2026, from David: Dear Anna, dear Isabella, I just learned something that may bear on my presentation to your conference on May 14. I have been waiting for a date for a surgery to cut out a cancerous growth on my lip. I had asked that it be after May 14th, so that it wouldn't interfere with my presentation to your conference, but I have just found out that, for various reasons, the surgery will have to be done next week - on May 6th. It's day surgery under local anaesthetic, and the surgeon is confident that I will look presentable, have the stitches out, and be able to speak normally by the 14th, but things don't always go exactly according to plan, so I thought I better let you know that this is happening.
I am working on a text which I hope to have finished before the 6th, so, at the worst, you'll have that, but I'm hoping for the best rather than the worst. Sorry for this complication. I'll be in touch closer to the date.
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May 5, 2026, from Isabella Bruckner: Anna has answered you already but I also wanted to express to you my intense gratitude that, in this difficult situation, you are still considering to participate and worrying about us and if it will be possible...
I wish you all the best, from all my heart, for the surgery tomorrow and hope that you will recover soon.
It would be great, of course, to see and hear you online on May 14th, but don't feel urged or obliged, if you do not feel well - it shall not be exhausting for you!
If you were able to participate and give your talk, would it be okay for you if we recorded your contribution (as we would do with all the other ones as well) and to make it available on the Youtube channel of Sant'Anselmo?
Since some students and colleagues have already asked me: Would you be open for sharing a written version of your English lectures with those participants who do not speak English well? Due to the high costs we will offer simultaneous translation only for the Italian lectures into English but not the other way round. For Italians and Latin Americans, however, English is indeed often an obstacle. Therefore, my idea was, to send the English lectures via email to those students/participants online who explicitly ask me and to print some texts for participants in presence. However, do not feel in any way obliged to say yes - I know how tricky it is, to give oral texts or not yet published texts out of hand. Thus, please, feel really free on that.
In theory you should receive all the links for the online participation (in Sant'Anselmo and at the Gregoriana) from our Segretaria one or two days before the event.
In case that you have not received an email with the links until Wednesday, please, contact me, and I will send them to you.
Unfortunately, at the Gregoriana the participation online is only possible via Youtube, thus, in a quite "passive" way (no possibility to intervene in the discussions). However, the major part of the conference takes place at Sant'Anselmo where a Zoom link will also allow for interventions via Chat or also via microphone.
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May 14, 2026: CORRUPTIO OPTIMI QUAE EST PESSIMA conference, Rome
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Jun 2, 2026, from Anna: thank you once again for your beautiful presentation in Rome a few weeks ago! I was so happy to see you, and to talk to you, even if it was on the screen!
There were, as it turned out, several convergences between our two talks. I also addressed the theme of the Kingdom, and in some cases we quoted the same passages from Illich, although of course from somewhat different perspectives. I wanted to explore if it could prove productive to use the concept of ”play”, as its is so brilliantly interpreted by Johann Huizinga in his famous book Homo ludens from 1938, in order to analyze what I find to be a strong undercurrent in Illich's understanding of faith and the Kingdom – the emphasis on the festive dimension of community, on the jocose, on laughter and on friendship as a celebrative mode of being.
I now, even more strongly, wish to explore this path. My intention is to do this with more precision, but also by taking a stronger stance in the article that is planned to result from this talk (the idea is only roughly sketched in the talk). I asked the audience if they knew of texts or talks by Illich where he comments on the notion of play, and Fabio mentioned the text ”The Meaning of Cuernavaca” in the Jesuit Mission, April 1967. I see that you also quote this text in your talk, in note 37. I know he also mentions play in ”Concerning Aesthetic and Religious Experience”, but otherwise I have not found passages or texts where Illich himself analyzes ”play”.
Nevertheless, I believe this to be a fruitful cross-fertlization. I would like to ask you two things: do you happen to have a digital version of ”The Meaning of Cuernavaca” that you would be willing to send to me? And do you know of other texts by Illich that could be pertinent for this theme? And, of course, I am also very much open for potential criticisms of this idea, if you have any.
I send you my talk, if you would like to take a look at it (but please feel free not to do so, needless to say!). I hope I do not claim too much of your time if I give you a brief outline of my line of thought also in this email – please forgive me if I am being presumtious! I would be most grateful for any indications as to which texts I might turn to by Illich, and no one knows his work better than you do. Here goes: I do see striking similarities between Illich's understanding of a lived faith and the notion of play, with due respect of important differences of course. What interests me is that Illich makes us aware that the ethical grasp of the social reality is very easily perverted. Play, on the other hand, is singled out by the fact that it cannot be domesticated, that it is lived – and relational! – freedom, that it cannot be subsumed under purposiveness, that it can only be understood as an answer to a call, and that it, in this sense, is immune to the kind of institutional perversion that has resulted from an ethical perspective of the I-Thou-relationship. Huizinga helps us see that play in not an isolated actvity, but comes from an attitude to reality closely related to religion. Play, in its true essence, is a gift that cannot be instrumentalised, without ceasing to exist (I am saying this well aware of the vast industries surronding play in our societies – yet even within these frameworks, it holds true I believe. The over-payed soccer players, the gamers or artists, can never be or stay masters of their trade if they loose thier capacity to play, to have fun, to heed the call to play).
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Jun 3, 2026, from David: Thanks for yours. I'm happy to hear that we're on the same track. I'll read your paper and send you The Meaning of Cuernavaca as soon as I can.
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Jun 7, 2026, from David: I'm about to write to you, but, when I began by attaching the pages of The Meaning of Cuernavaca, I was told that that the file size exceeded my email capacity, and they would have to be sent to you via Google Drive, so I'm doing that first. I have no idea why so short a short text would make so big a file. This is the form in which Fabio Milana sent them to me, when he discovered this interesting little piece years ago. I'll continue in a separate letter.
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June 7, 2026, from David: I've read your talk and rejoiced in it. I'm so glad you're thinking along these lines. I think you've understood Ivan very well - about folly and ethics and many other things. You've certainly understood him as I do, and I think you've also begun, with appropriate delicacy and discretion, to tease out the implications of what he says. Particularly important to me in what you wrote was the following paragraph:
The idea’s centre of gravity is generated by a process that can be likened to the splitting of the atom. The tension between the two incommensurable interpretations, is an effect of a fundamental rupture within this idea itself, and it has given rise to a reality where the mystery of evil and salvation have become inseparable. Illich understands the Samaritan’s action as a response to a call, so it appears that what we are dealing with, in this split, is the corruption of the truth-form of the call, and its transformation into the kind of externalized, scientific truth I referred to above: truth as the outcome of the successful establishment of universally valid, and empirically validated, rules.
Your daring to speak here of "a reality in which the mystery of evil and salvation have become inseparable" gave me courage. If you can find time to read the attached essay you will see why. I wrote it with some trepidation because I am at the limits of my understanding and my vocabulary in what I say in this piece. And also because Ivan said so much, and yet so little, in the interviews that comprise Rivers that I want to be clear on where he stops and I start. I believe Sajay Samuel intends to publish it soon in a special issue of Conspiratio, a journal I'm assuming you're familiar with (https://thinkingwithivanillich.net/conspiratio/)
It's been many years since I've read Homo Ludens, but I've remembered it as well as any book I've ever read, and I think reading Illich and Huizinga together is a very promising idea. As far as sources in Illich go, I'm sorry to say that Illich, so far as I know, never really develops the idea of play in his work, though it may be that "The Meaning of Cuernavaca" will be of some help. In general I'd say that the early writings - The Powerless Church, Celebration of Awareness, and The Church, Change and Development - are your best source. The last one may be hard to find, but I just discovered that an indispensable Illich archivist called David Tinapple has made a PDF of it available. The long piece called Mission and Midwifery may be helpful. Another find of Fabio's, which might be worth a look, if you haven't seen it, is on my website.. And finally there's Ivan's last talk in Lucca in the fall of 2002 which Sajay reprinted in Conspiratio
I've posted my talk for the Rome conference on my website in case you, or any of the other participants, want to refer to it. Did Giorgio Agamben show up? I never heard how that story ended.
Let's keep in touch.