Secular moral/legal commitments revisited: an interlude by way of afterword

ABSTRACT

The effort here is to problematize the conceptual and analytical resources developed in the study of both ‘secularity’ as a normative object and the associated question of the interface of religion and law in the context of modern secularism. Working off a division and/or antinomy central to the essays that comprise this special number, I attempt to complicate the terrain of debate by setting in course a complex series of questions about the very nature and scope of a revitalized analytics of secularism. In doing so, for the most part, our reflection juxtaposes the claims of an anthropology and history of secularism with the demands of a normative order of construal given over to instituting ‘secularism’ as a foundational socio-political norm. The main contention is that this juxtaposing can change the way in which we approach the very question of secular moral/legal commitments. Built into the structure of this appraisal overall is a framework seeking to redeem the idea of normative secularity from the genealogical and diagnostic constrictions that define and frame the order of its commitments. The afterword also implicates a thought about normativity as performative, one that could re-orient our reflections about contentious socio-political norms and ideals such as secularism.

KEYWORDS:

• Normativity
• genealogy
• normative secularity
• secular moral/legal commitments
• anthropology and history of secularism
• performative/performativity
• analytics

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Canguilhem, The Normal and the Pathological, 126–27.

2. See Asad, Formations of the Secular.

3. Ibid., 16.

4. See Nandy, ‘The Politics of Secularism and the Recovery of Religious Tolerance’.

5. Ibid., 70–91.

6. Ibid., 70.

7. Hegde, ‘Always Already Secular? Afterthoughts on the Secular-Communal Question’, 327–28.

8. Agrama, Questioning Secularism, 23–31.

9. Ibid., 29.

10. Ibid., 2.

11. Ibid.

12. Ibid., 30.

13. Ibid., 30–31.

14. Ibid., 31.

15. Ibid.

16. Ibid., 30–31.

17. See Hegde, ‘Always Already Secular? Afterthoughts on the Secular-Communal Question’.

18. Taylor, ‘What Does Secularism Mean?’, 309. Also, Taylor, A Secular Age.

19. Taylor, ‘What Does Secularism Mean?’. The term ‘principled distance’ is, as Taylor acknowledges, drawn from Bhargava, ‘What Is Secularism For?’.

20. Ibid., 309.

21. Ibid., 310.

22. Ibid., 303.

23. Ibid., 308; see also Taylor, ‘Can Secularism Travel?’.

24. See Bilgrami, ‘Secularism: Its Content and Context’.

25. Taylor, ‘What Does Secularism Mean?’, 311.

26. Ibid.

27. Ibid., 311.

28. Ibid.

29. Ibid., 314.

30. Ibid., 325.

31. Nelson, The Hebrew Republic, 5.

32. See Balagandadhara, The Heathen in His Blindness .., as also his Reconceptualizing India Studies. For De Roover, see his Europe, India, and the Limits of Secularism.

33. Agrama, ‘Religious Freedom and the Bind of Suspicion in Contemporary Secularity’, 301.

34. Ibid., 302.

35. Ibid., 302, 306–07.

36. Ibid., 307.

37. Ibid.

38. Ibid., 309.

39. Ibid., 307.

40. Ibid., 308.

41. See Blumenberg, The Genesis of the Copernican World, 127.

42. See Canguilhem, The Normal and the Pathological.

43. Agrama, ‘Religious Freedom and the Bind of Suspicion in Contemporary Secularity’, 311; see also his Questioning Secularism, 23–31.

44. Laborde, ‘Protecting Freedom of Religion in the Secular Age’, 269.

45. Ibid.

46. See, in particular, Maclure and Taylor, Secularism and Freedom of Conscience.

47. Laborde, ‘Protecting Freedom of Religion in the Secular Age’, 270–71.

48. Ibid., 273, emphasis added.

49. Ibid., emphasis added.

50. Ibid., 274.

51. Ibid.

52. Ibid., 274–76.

53. Ibid., 276.

54. Ibid.

55. Ibid., 278.

56. Ibid., 277–78.

57. Ibid., 278.