Is the Postcolonial Also Postsecular?

Abstract

Early postcolonial critics were at worst ambivalent about secularism, and more likely either uninterested or, like Edward Said, extremely enthusiastic. What is the meaning of the recent turn against secularism by critics in and around the field Said did so much to establish? This essay weighs both Said’s militant commitment, finding it more complex than it appears, and the critiques of Said and secularism by such figures as Talal Asad and Gil Anidjar. Accusing the latter thinkers of a religious essentialism on the embarrassing model of Samuel Huntington’s clash of civilizations, the essay answers its title question with a resounding “no,” proposes a withdrawal from the easy identification of secularism, modernity, and the state, and ends with a counsel of disciplinary modesty.

Późne życie postsekularyzmu: o możliwych lekturach pisarstwa postkolonii

“…[…] Oczywiście, dotkliwa ironia kryje się w tym, że owe kwestie mogą być formułowane jedynie dzięki zasługom (nadal dosyć odkrywczo brzmiącej) kosmopolitycznej krytyki eurocentryzmu, przeprowadzonej głównie przez sekularystów w rodzaju Saida, Gayatri Spivak, Immanuela Wallersteina i Samira Amina. Jest tak, jakby siły sekularne nierozważnie ruszyły z ofensywą i nagle zostały otoczone przez przeważające liczebnie armie tych kultur, dla których walczyły o przyznanie (przeciwstawiając się w tym misyjnie ukierunkowanemu chrześcijaństwu, obok innych form etnocentrycznej ignorancji) równego (prawa) głosu 25 .…”

Toward a Postsecular Eighteenth Century

“…With Robbins, we stress the importance of a proper contextualization of all claims about religious and/or secular narratives and of the habits of mind and practices that attend them. But the danger of refusing the questions raised by postsecularist studies is evidenced by the current trend – both within and beyond eighteenth‐century literary studies – towards uncharacteristic confessional impulses among academics, whether for or against secularism (During , Eagleton, Gourgouris, Habermas, Kahn, Mufti, Robbins , Žižek). The Joys of Secularism , for instance, is a brazen encomium for secularism, more akin to a sermon to the faithful than a typical academic interrogation of a topic.…”

“…Horkheimer and Adorno's account of the Enlightenment reveals the deep connection of secularization and eighteenth‐century studies when it asserts that the “Enlightenment's program was the disenchantment of the world” (1). More recently, Bruce Robbins has articulated the links between the Enlightenment, secularization, and also literature by arguing, following Kant, that a secular imagination “illuminates various ways out of our self‐imposed tutelage” (2011, 316). While twentieth‐century criticism of various persuasions – Marxist cultural studies, feminist, and eco‐critical most prominently – challenged the values and the outcomes of the Enlightenment, for many years we assumed that Enlightenment essentially meant secularization, and that while the Enlightenment project may have had deleterious consequences, secularity was perhaps the most longstanding and positive of the Enlightenment's accomplishments.…”

Islamophobia, Feminism and the Politics of Critique

“…Recently, a number of scholars have read these works with a critical eye (Abbas, 2013;Bhatt, 2006;Dhawan, 2013;Robbins, 2013aRobbins, , 2013b. In this essay, I extend their critiques to the arena of political consequences, and particularly the consequences vis-a`-vis the double bind between imperialism and gender injustice.…”