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

Abstract

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.