On two modalities of our secularity: anthropology’s immanent frames

Abstract

How have anthropologists related to extraordinary or supernatural phenomena (the transcendent) in disciplinary definitions of religion and in the practice of social analysis? This text argues that the discipline's engagement with alterities that dispute our ontological secular conceptions makes evident its form of knowledge production. The central claim is that anthropology's secularity is not fixed and should be discussed as part of a historical process. I propose to analyse two modalities of secularity, which I term 'extinction' and 'captivity'. A second claim is that despite their differences, both modalities (re)produce to its academic and Euro-American audience anthropology's own secularity as a natural human condition. A third claim is that by recognising the characteristics of our discipline's secularity we may start to speak of a plurality of secular ontologies as a way to register the multiplicity of 'worldliness' that traditions and individuals may assume or call for.

Introduction: anthropology within and without the secular condition

“…The diversity of these essay, which go in multiple, and even inchoate, directions, may indeed bespeak the intense conformity demanded by the compressing powers of the secular's conditioning. They compare learning and temporality at religious versus secular institutions (Boyarin 2021), uncover anthropology's senses of the secular (Dullo 2021), describe the ways in which a study of dead bodies can trouble secular commitments toward modern versions of the enchantment concept (Engelke 2021), explore 'godly' and 'ungodly' visions of human difference and their implications for political action (Handler 2021), and inject suspicion into faithful studies of faith (Oliphant 2021). Together they comprise no theory of the secular's conditioning, but do point to the fact of its happening.…”

On the (un)doing of anthropology and secularity, and its relevance for religious studies

“…Among the case studies, Dullo's (2021) focus most unambiguously on what anthropologists themselves do when they are defining religion and practicing social analysis. He, too, emphasizes that anthropology's secularity is not fixed, but rather fluid as it plays out as part of historical events and processes.…”

“…Writing from Brazil, he pertinently points out that the anthropology and secularity under discussion here are the hegemonic Euro-American and mainly anglophone variants, and not any asymmetrically situated aspirant or substitute from elsewhere speaking a different dialect. The two modalities that he distils from this admittedly multifarious field of practice, and names 'extinction' and 'captivity', are good to think with and highlight key aspects of what he promises to show us: How 'the discipline's engagement with alterities that dispute our ontological secular conceptions makes evident its form of knowledge production' (Dullo 2021). In both modalities, Dullo declares, anthropologists have been good at tricking themselves and their Euro-American audiences into believing that their secularity represents a natural human condition.…”