The Trauma of Secularism

Abstract

If secularism began as a doctrine devised by enlightenment scholars to counter religious violence and to free scientific and intellectual inquiry from the superstitions of religion,1 and then became interpreted as the manifestation or sublimation of Absolute Spirit in the self-conscious subject,2 its contribution to leveling inequalities of (Marx), race (Said), and gender (Spivak et al.) exemplified its universal aspirations.3 Secularism’s promise to be applicable to all, to be a “universal” paradigm in the political sphere of equality, has been the mantra used to maintain its value for European states for several centuries. Thus, Slavoj Žižek’s salient point that ideology maintains its power by utilizing a contradiction in its promise applies to secularism as a putatively rational system, which maintains an irrational resistance to sectarian presence in the public sphere. How does a secular state justify interfering in how a citizen practices her faith by imposing a prohibition on what she can wear? In Quebec and Paris, the justification is framed as liberating Moslem women from patriarchal oppression.