Towards a Postsecular International Politics

Abstract

The postsecular transformation of the international society is the product of a growing dissatisfaction with existing secular arrangements and of an increasing awareness that “values such as democracy, freedom, equality, inclusion, and justice may not necessarily be best pursued within an exclusively immanent secular framework. Quite the opposite, the secular may well be a potential site of isolation, domination, violence and exclusion.”1 The thriving debate on religion in international politics has only in the last few years seen the emergence of the postsecular as a new object of study. Following an initial focus on the “return of religion” and the “power of secularism” in international politics, the focus on the post-secular seems to encompass, at least in its very terminology, the idea of a paradigm shift. This is an attempt to move beyond the secular and thus the secular/religious divide, which can be considered one of the foundational dimensions of Western modernity. The question raised by the postsecular, then, is not just one of incorporation of the presence of religion or of the power of secularism into existing theoretical frameworks, but one of conceptual innovation to account for a transformation that invests the very structures of consciousness and power, and existing understandings of political community.KeywordsInternational RelationPublic SpherePolitical CommunityWorld PoliticsInternational PoliticsThese 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.