Disenchanting secularism (or the cultivation of soul) as pedagogy in resistance to populist racism and colonial structures in the academy

Abstract

This article explores pedagogic strategies for resisting the racism of contemporary populism and age‐old coloniality through challenging secularism in the academy, especially in social theory. Secularism sustains racism and imperialism in the contemporary academy and is inscribed, in part, through the norms of social theory. Post‐secular social theory has been positioned by some as the decolonial answer, but often replicates the most problematic aspects of secularism. Whereas post‐secularism affirms the previously denigrated side of the secular vs religious dualism, I am more interested in unworking those classificatory schemas, setting the critical thought of religious teachers in relation to ‘secular’ social and political theorists such that boundaries erode. The ambition in this is to resist the hierarchical orderings of knowledge that pit Islamic, indigenous, feminised subjectivity as backwards, dangerous or intrinsically inferior to secular, Christian, rational knowledge. It is also to disenchant the secular gods (progress, money, growth, health) and hold open space for critical play in relation to the transcendental—to create a permissive, legitimising, space for students’ spiritual dimension, conocimiento or the ‘cultivation of soul’. The article draws theoretical inspiration from Gloria Anzaldúa, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak and Sylvia Wynter. It also draws on a practical experiment in disenchanting secularism through teaching an undergraduate module in social theory called Capitalism and Religion.