Postsecularism: A New Global Debate

Abstract

The aim of this chapter is to give a theoretical characterization of emergent ‘postsecular’ discourses and connect them to the themes of this book. To fully understand the process of globalization, and as part of that process, many now think that the social sciences must be vigorously ‘provincialized’. Their public purpose and their typical categories must strenuously be re-examined in the light of ‘multiple modernities’ and ‘plural knowledges’. As an essential aspect of that reorientation, the status of secularism — or even ‘secularity’ — within critical thought has begun to be seriously questioned. Indeed, postsecularism may be the veritable ‘last post’ of all. Just when postmodernism, poststructuralism, postfeminism, and postcolonialism seemed to have yielded all their (mixed) fruits, a further thought struck: that all along, the deepest problem with critical social thought has been its presumption of the truth and inevitability of secularist humanism. In his critique of Hegel’s philosophy of right, Marx had legislated that the criticism of religion was not only the ‘premise’ of all social criticism, but was moreover ‘essentially complete’ in 1844. All these years later, secular criticism is increasingly viewed as part of the problem of, rather than the solution to, our contemporary global predicament.KeywordsVital DebateTheoretical ConnectionIdeal Speech SituationSecularist HumanismMultiple ModernityThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.