Formations of the Secular

Christianity, Islam, Modernity

Talal Asad

• Publisher: Stanford University Press
• Year: 2003
• Print ISBN: 9780804747684, 9780804747677
• eBook ISBN: 9780804783095
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Comparative Religion

Opening with the provocative query "what might an anthropology of the secular look like?" this book explores the concepts, practices, and political formations of secularism, with emphasis on the major historical shifts that have shaped secular sensibilities and attitudes in the modern West and the Middle East.

Talal Asad proceeds to dismantle commonly held assumptions about the secular and the terrain it allegedly covers. He argues that while anthropologists have oriented themselves to the study of the "strangeness of the non-European world" and to what are seen as non-rational dimensions of social life (things like myth, taboo, and religion),the modern and the secular have not been adequately examined.

The conclusion is that the secular cannot be viewed as a successor to religion, or be seen as on the side of the rational. It is a category with a multi-layered history, related to major premises of modernity, democracy, and the concept of human rights. This book will appeal to anthropologists, historians, religious studies scholars, as well as scholars working on modernity.

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1

Charles Taylor, “Modes of Secularism,” in Rajeev Bhargava, ed., Secularism and Its Critics, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998.

2

Ibid., p. 43.

3

See the interesting article by Bernard Manin, “The Metamorphoses of Representative Government,” Economy and Society, vol. 23, no. 2, May 1994.

4

“In other words, the modern democratic state needs a healthy degree of what used to be called patriotism, a strong sense of identification with the polity, and a willingness to give of oneself for its sake” (Taylor, p. 44).

5

See Hent de Vries, “In Media Res: Global Religion, Public Spheres, and the Task of Contemporary Comparative Religious Studies,” in Religion and Media, ed. H. de Vries and S. Weber, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001.

6

Intimidation can take many forms, of course. As Lord Cromer, consul-general and agent of the British government and informal ruler of Egypt at the end of the nineteenth century, put it, “advice could always take the substance, if not the form, of a command” (cited in Afaf Lutfi al-Sayyid, Egypt and Crome_r, London: John Murray, 1968, p. 66).

7

Robert F. Worth, “A Nation Defines Itself by Its Evil Enemies: Truth, Right and the American Way,” in the New York Time, February 24, 2002.

8

See, in this connection, Partha Chatterjee, “History and the Nationalization of Hinduism,” Social Research, vol. 59, no. 1, 1992.

9

The Bible Designed to Be Read as Literature, ed. and arranged by E. S. Bates, London: William Heineman, undated.

10

“In the case of the Bible the tradition handed down from the Middle Ages has been to regard it as a collection of texts, any of which could be detached from its surroundings and used, regardless of the circumstances in which it was written or by whom it was spoken, as divine authority for conduct; often (as we know) with devastating consequences. Texts have been set up as idols, as cruel as ever were worshiped by savage idolaters” (ibid., p. viii).

11

The Torah is, of course, replete with God’s injunctions to his chosen people to destroy the original inhabitants of the Promised Land. But it would be incredibly naive to suggest that religious Jews who read such passages are thereby incited to violence.

12

Two excellent conceptual investigations appeared in 1958: G. E. M. Ans-combe, Intention, Oxford: Blackwell; and R. S. Peters, The Concept of Motivation, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Herbert Morris, On Guilt and Innocence (published by University of California Press in 1976), looks at the question of m...

Table of contents

• Cultural Memory in the
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Thinking about Secularism
• SECULAR
• SECULARISM
• SECULARIZATION
• Index
• Cultural Memory in the Present