Landmarks in the Critical Study of Secularism

Abstract

This essay sets the contemporary problematic of secularism in a critical frame by posing six key questions: Why is it so difficult—perhaps impossible—to reach a scholarly, much less political, consensus on the significance of “secularism”? What are the implications of mounting pressures within Euro‐American discourses to tie secularism ever more closely to Christianity? Insofar as secularism is historically constituted through (a contentious and incomplete) exclusion of religion, can the contours of this contested formation be traced more clearly by drawing on an archive of theological figures, such as that of conversion? If secularism cannot be understood as simply coextensive with modernity, what are the limits of the secular? To what extent does political pluralism presuppose and depend on some notion or formation of the secular? And finally, within the shifting patterns of our world today, what are the most salient connections among secularism, nation, state, and capital? [secular, secularism, Christianity, conversion]

Ethical selfhood and the status of the secular: Muslim identity in Mumbai

“…That discussion is relevant to this article but beyond its scope. For a probing summary see Scherer (2011). 4.…”

Transposing Brazilian Carnival: Religion, Cultural Heritage, and Secularism in Rio de Janeiro

“…Many scholars argue that such a normative position comes with several difficulties—notably, determining what properly counts as religious in the rich texture of cultural life. These scholars suggest that “religious” and “secular” are not properties of social phenomena but rather governmental categories that coproduce boundaries between what is considered religious and nonreligious and between illegitimate and legitimate political claims in sociopolitical arenas and public spaces (Asad ; Cannell ; Connolly , ; Hirschkind ; Scherer ; Scott and Hirschkind ).…”

Revolution, Occupation, and Love: The 2011 Year in Cultural Anthropology

“…The most direct engagement with secularism and liberalism as anthropological problems was to be found in a thematic section appearing in Cultural Anthropology dedicated to “Secularism,” which brought together a collection of articles by Charles Hirschkind (2011), Mathew Scherer (2011), Talal Asad (2011), and William Connolly (2011). Reflecting a further consolidation of Talal Asad's legacy in anthropology (see, among other examples, Scott and Hirschkind 2006), as well as the extent to which this legacy is indebted to a continuing conversation between Asad and Connolly, the contributions to this forum remind us of the varying contingencies of secularism, as well as the dangers of confusing normative models of the modern, liberal state for the realities of (political) life 3 .…”

“…That is, this collection of articles—although taking up a wide range of topics—highlight the historically contingent arrangement of people, sensibilities, ideas, institutions, bodily and affective dispositions, and forms of public sociality that underwrite secularism and secular models of liberal democratic governance. As they “sound out the layered sensibilities, obscured histories, and dense conceptual and practical networks that produce and sustain various forms of secularism” (Scherer 2011: 623–624), these works also seek to draw attention to the often unspoken and unacknowledged attachments of secularism and liberalism. Asad, for instance, in his response to Hirschkind's contribution “Is There A Secular Body?” (2011), turns to the figures of the hypochondriac and sadist to argue that they each exemplify distinctive configurations of desire, self‐care, and care‐for‐others that are embedded within modern assumptions about liberal democracy, assumptions which presuppose different kinds of bodies living in different ways (2011).…”