Secular Translations: Nation-State, Modern Self, and Calculative Reason by Talal Asad (original) (raw)
Related papers
2020
The book under review is an expanded version of the inaugural Ruth Benedict Lectures delivered at Columbia University in 2017. All chapters and sections present strong depth, as multiple strands of arguments and analyses ranging from incredibly rich disciplines of study are interlaced within and among the various chapters. Given that reducing the author's essays into a single argument are next to impossible, the main ideas of this book have nevertheless been pitched and formed around the phenomenon and theme of translation, for translation cultivates and renders a particular understanding of a self whose genesis is rooted not only in the culture where one grows and learns, but also in a religious tradition whose effects can never be denied as such. Thus secular and religious issues have historically been much contested issues. Seen through the lens of the contemporary world, secular and religious issues are best apprehended and expressed through writing, for writing has secured its place as the dominant channel through which ideas and, moreover, practices flow (pp. 2-5).. This has a particular resonance for Asad for it begs the question "Why is it important for self-described secularists to claim a Christian heritage?" Due to the difficulty of separating the historical traces, Asad moves on to the more MA. Student, İstanbul University.
Secularism and Its Discontents: Politics and Religion in the Modern World
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Who Put the "Secular" in "Secular State"?
Brown Journal of World Affairs, 1999
Excerpt: “In this essay I hope to add an anthropological voice to the conversation about political Islam, one which seeks its context not in relation to some underdefined “non-political” or “traditional” or “pure” Islam, whatever those might look like, but in a rather more general consideration of the nature of religion and politics. . . .[T]he standard Western understanding of genuine religion as a universe of calm personal devotion, universal harmony, and spiritual development is ethnographically exceptional and historically recent, even in Europe. Moreover, it obstructs our understanding of confessional violence in the modern world by leading us to believe that religion, in its essential core, is about individuals rather than groups, and about gentleness rather than force. . . . I hope to show three things: first, that religion is, always and everywhere, an inherently political enterprise. Second, that all political projects have central symbolic and ritual dimensions, and thus cannot automatically be distinguished from religion. . . . And finally, that “political Islam” as a label for oppositional or revolutionary groups blinds us to the more pervasive involvement of religion in the constitution of modern states, both in the Middle East and elsewhere. . . . Despite—or perhaps because of—the important role played by ritual processes in modern political and nationalist projects, during the historical development of the nation-state there has been increasing pressure on religious traditions to assimilate to the Protestant model that belief, rather than ritual practice, is the core of religion. In the nation state, “freedom of religion” is possible only to the extent that religion is held to be an internal, private and personal relationship with the divine rather than a publicly manifested set of social, ritual, or political duties.”
Secular, Secularism and Non-translations
EPW, 2020
This paper traces the conceptual-linguistic journey of the term "secular" in India and shows how its entry into any discussion was accompanied by questions of ambivalence about equivalence. An anxiety around its foreignness; or its inefficacy by being both excessive and inadequate as a word can be traced through multiple sites. It proliferates, meaning many things and nothing at all. What makes it so unsettled, so polyphonic, and therefore ready to be seized? Does that have to do with being neither fully embraced nor ignored, on the threshold of language, as it were? T his paper is a set of refl ections rather than a unifi ed grand argument on what is one of India's most used, abused and complex terms. The realm of this subject is too enormous to do full justice, especially as an argument. I am concerned with the words secular/secularism, terms used interchangeably, but also made distinct. Conceived as an aspiration for the Indian republic, secularism of the Indian state has a chequered history. 1 It was enshrined in the Constitution without being specifi cally named so, and the word was added to the preamble in 1976 through the 42nd amendment. The success or failure of secular state ideology is not under discussion in here, but the journey of the word during different phases of both state and civil society discussions is relevant to our purpose. We follow the path of the English word "secular," watch the theatre of language, and brood over the relationship between this word and everyday India. We may move between "secularism" and "secular" through the discussion; although practices of naming and blaming show a move away from the noun to the adjective. The noun is abstract; representing an idea. The adjective is used as a label, if not an accusation in the India of the everyday. It is a bad word when used by right-wing groups, to denote not only what they do not like, but whom they do not like. It would seem then that those who describe themselves as "secular" would make a focused use of the word. However, that is also not true. If the word is pejorative in some cases, it is fuzzy in some others. How does this word refuse to be bound to a defi nite and consensual meaning in India, yet used freely, fi nding its defi nitions in objects rather than in itself? I would hazard that discussions typically have focused much on the concept and credo of secularism instead of asking how the linguistic sign "secular" fares the way it does in India. Spectre-like, secular appears every now and then, with shifting meanings and emphasis. Its protean and unsettled nature remains common across ideological persuasions. At this point it is important to clarify that a certain vagueness and inadequacy of translation characterises even words like "dharma" or "jati," and the rupture between word and meaning may not be unique to the word "secular." 2 However, the emphasis of this paper is not on inherent limitations of language with respect to polyvalent words, rather it is the malleability consequent upon the word "secular" which makes it a term of abuse sometimes , evident even in spellings and pronunciations. The fi rst half of the paper combines dominant and emerging views on secularism along with an ethno graphy of the term "secular" in the everyday. The second half teases out the word/concept rupture and offers tentative theories of translation for a word
Religion, Education, and Secularism in International Agencies
Comparative Education Review, 2011
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Re-Thinking Secularism: The Post-Secular Turn and Its Critics (Graduate) (Fall 2020)
2020
This course will consist of an in-depth engagement with foundational accounts about secularism as these have been explored by anthropologists, social theorists, and intellectual historians. Part I of the seminar will focus on the thought of the contemporary anthropologist of Islam Talal Asad, undertaking a close and in-depth reading of his seminal texts to address his thinking about religion, secularism, tradition, time / temporality, modernity, and the relationship between colonial power and academic knowledge (particularly religion and the public sphere). Part II of the course will draw on works inspired by (and sometimes critical of) Asad's writings, including the writings of Saba Mahmoud, Fernando Coronil, and Gil Anidjar, among others. Throughout his career, Talal Asad has engaged with the assumptions behind multiple disciplines that have framed the way that the West has formulated knowledge about the non-Western world, interventions that continue to reverberate in multiple disciplines. Asad, moreover, has also engaged with the question of human embodiment (pain, emotion, and discipline), the concepts of tradition and of culture, and with questions about modern democratic politics, building upon Friedrich Nietzsche and Michel Foucault via the method of genealogy. By juxtaposing Asad's thought with that of his critics, students from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds will be able to gain much from the different ways of thinking about secularism that may inform their own research and help them be more sensitive to potential methodological assumptions and problems.
Re-examining the Secular State
The paper aims to question the notion that Singapore is a "secular" state. There are two dominant ideas of secularism. One is that the state does not intervene in religion; the separation of "church" and state. The other is that the state is impartial to all religions, and thus attains a "secular" nature. The paper attempts to refute both notions of secularism as an accurate description of the Singapore state. It then proceeds to suggest that there might be a disproportionate focus on Islam and the Muslim community and to suggest reasons why that might be so.