Governing the Fear of Islam: Thinking Islamophobia through the Politics of Secular Affect in Historical Debate

Lorenz Trein Lorenz Trein

doi:10.13169/reorient.4.1.0044

Abstract

This article reflects on the historio-political quest for continuity and discontinuity between Orientalism and Islamophobia by looking at theories of emotions and the politics of secular affect in historical debate. It is argued that both contemporary Islamophobia and early twentieth-century colonial discourse converge in the transformation of Islam into a political subject matter of “affective governance” (Nitzan Shoshan), the rationale of which is to define and establish political and religious subjectivities that ensure and justify governability of Muslims within the respective settings of the colonial and the postcolonial state. The material under consideration is taken from debates on Islam in the German context both from the imperial era and from contemporary attempts to politicize Islam in terms of remaking German nationalism.

Highlights

Recent scholarship has indicated in various ways how affect theory challenges the academic study of Islamophobia
What exactly is our actual subject of inquiry if we emphasize emotional and affective dimensions of Islamophobia? Are we looking at LMU Munich, Germany www.plutojournals.com/reorient programs of policy-making and historical semantics of right-wing populism in public debate? Do we focus on the political language of fear that promotes intolerance and xenophobia or fight against it? Do we argue in favor of a genealogical approach (Vakil 2010: 24) to critically engage with the “subjectification of Muslim political subject(ivities)s” (Vakil 2010: 24), which is tantamount with interrogating secular “rearticulation[s] of religion” that are “commensurate with modern sensibilities and modes of governance”
Recalling Shoshan’s argument and the aforementioned examples from debates on Islam surrounding the “German Colonial Congresses,” it appears that both early twentiethcentury civilizational discourse about Islam and contemporary theorizing of Islamophobia are structured around a discursive divide between rational politics and irrational affect

Summary

Introduction

Recent scholarship has indicated in various ways how affect theory challenges the academic study of Islamophobia. These claims about the scholarly significance of affect theory are frequently based on two rationales Can we conceive of Islamophobia analytically (cf Sayyid 2010: 6–7) to historicize ideas about religion, politics, and civilization through which the discursive concept “Islam” came into use in scholarly and public debate during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century (Trein 2015)? What exactly is our actual subject of inquiry if we emphasize emotional and affective dimensions of Islamophobia? Are we looking at LMU Munich, Germany www.plutojournals.com/reorient programs of policy-making and historical semantics of right-wing populism in public debate? Do we focus on the political language of fear that promotes intolerance and xenophobia or fight against it? Do we argue in favor of a genealogical approach (Vakil 2010: 24) to critically engage with the “subjectification of Muslim political subject(ivities)s” (Vakil 2010: 24), which is tantamount with interrogating secular “rearticulation[s] of religion” that are “commensurate with modern sensibilities and modes of governance” (Mahmood 2009: 837; cf. Asad 2003: 5)? Can we conceive of Islamophobia analytically (cf. Sayyid 2010: 6–7) to historicize ideas about religion, politics, and civilization through which the discursive concept “Islam” came into use in scholarly and public debate during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century (Trein 2015)? And how can we ask for continuity and discontinuity between “Orientalism” (Said 1978) and the comparatively new concept of Islamophobia itself (e.g. Meer 2014: 502–04; Sayyid 2010: 15)?2

Objectives

Conclusion