Pilgrimage mobilities: a de Certeauian perspective

ABSTRACT

Post-secular constructions of space and re-configurations of traditional sacred places are examined inspired by de Certeau’s conceptual quadrant of space, place, strategy and tactics. De Certeau’s theorization enables us to draw out the subversive or disruptive spatial practices of post-secular pilgrimages as instances of pedestrian rhetorics, pilgrimage as a space of enunciations and as the double other of both secular and sacred terrains, as well as ‘proper' practices. The article is based on interviews conducted on and off-season with pilgrims in the region of Galicia (Santiago de Compostela and Fisterra). Beyond an intervention in the geography of religion, this paper is also a contribution to the post-secular debate, post-secular geographies and the blurring of the boundaries between the secular and the sacred elicited by philosophers and social scientists.

KEYWORDS:

• Post-secular geographies
• geography of religion
• de Certeau
• space and place
• strategy and tactics

Introduction

While religious studies are undergoing a spatial turn (Knott, 2005, 2010; Obadia, 2015), the geography of religion has ‘ … undergone transformation from an exercise largely of description and classification to a more ambitious program of interpretation and explanation’ (Ley & Tse, 2012, 149). Historically, geography of religion as a sub-discipline has been marginalized in the field of human geography (Kong, 2010; Tse, 2014), to an extent that it has been given the epithet of the terra incognita of human geography (Yorgason, & della Dora 2009, 629). However, nowadays ‘ … it is surely the best of times to be a geographer of religion' as Ley and Tse (2012, 149) wittily note. One of the most interesting developments in the social sciences in the past decade is what has come to be known as the post-secular turn and its twin concept post-secularism. The post-secular is sometimes taken as a short-hand for the ‘return of religion' in the social, cultural, economic and political spheres in Western societies. However, as Korf’s (2018) critical interrogation of the analytical purchase of post-secularism has shown, the term fails to capture the manifold articulations of faith in contemporary multi-religious societies. The prominent place of religion in (geo)politics, the coming of multicultural societies in the West, growing mobility and migration, as well as questions of gender, identity, and the politics of place in relation to religious matters, have all contributed to placing religion in the public domain in radically different and new ways than hitherto (see, Kong, 2001; Yorgason & della Dora, 2009; Sharpley, 2009; Kong, 2010; Wilford, 2010; Holloway & Valins, 2010; Beaumont & Baker, 2011; Cloke, 2011; Gökariksel & Secor, 2015; Bartolini, Chris, MacKian, & Pile, 2016). A major implication of the post-secular is that the fundamental assumptions of secular modernity, concerning the separation of the secular and the sacred, are being questioned and revised. As noted by Glasze and Schmitt (2018), conceptions of post-secularity need to be attuned to the contingent and contextual demarcations of matters secular and religious, the better to provide nuanced studies of the geographies of religion.

The aim of this article is to elaborate how the post-secular is articulated spatially. We examine post-secular constructions of space and re-configurations of traditional sacred places under the sign of the post-secular. Beyond an intervention in the geography of religion, we hope that this paper will contribute to a blurring of the boundaries between the secular and the sacred as elicited by, among others, Derrida and Vattimo (1998), Habermas, (2008), Braidotti (2008) in the social sciences, and by Blom, Nilsson and Santos Solla (2008), Hopkins, Kong and Olson (2012), Lopez (2013), Cloke and Beaumont (2013), Nilsson and Tesfahuney (2016), Bartolini et. al. (2016) and Lopez, González and Fernández (2017) in human geography. One way to examine post-secular religious practices is by reference to de Certeau’s conceptual quadrant of strategy, tactics, space and place. De Certeau’s (1984) quadrant provides new and interesting ways of conceptualizing and analyzing religious practices. With few exceptions (see Pred, 1990; Harvey, 1990; 1996; Cresswell 2004; Pinder, 2005, 2011), de Certeau has not been accorded a prominent place in the spatial turn. De Certeau is not even mentioned in one of the most acclaimed works on space and place, Casey’s The Fate of Place (1997). Ironically enough, neither is de Certeau included in what Stuart Aitkin described as … the best encyclopaedic tool for human geographers since the Dictionary of Human Geography, namely, the anthology Key Thinkers on Space and Place (Hubbard, Kitchin & Valentine, 2004). With the exception of Wigley’s recent studies on micro-pilgrimage (2016), as well as spiritual geographies, everyday spaces of mobility and spatial practices (2017), to our knowledge, there are no studies of post-secularism that deploy de Certeau’s (1984) theory of everyday practice, nor his notions of strategy/tactics and space/place.

In as much as we hold that the post-secular transcends hegemonic spatializations of the secular and the sacred, we need perspectives that capture the ambivalent, in-between or if you so will liminal spatialities. De Certeau (1984) offers such a perspective. Our analytical framework is inspired by de Certeau particularly his notions of strategy/tactics and space/place. De Certeau’s takes on mobility, resistance and subjectivity resonate well with post-secular pilgrimage mobilities and appropriations of space and place. The article draws out the ‘subversive’ or ‘disruptive’ spatial practices of post-secular pilgrims. We argue that there is a need to go beyond stray references and passing mentions to the work of de Certeau and instead engage more substantively with his work. Our choice of de Certeau (1984) can be seen as recognition of the importance and relevance of his work in the study of contemporary societal developments of which post-secularism is a key expression. The empirical material consists of data collected via fieldwork and interviews with pilgrims conducted in Santiago de Compostela, Spain, undertaken during 2011, 2012 and 2014.¹ The tradition of religious pilgrimage to Galicia (Spain) has a long history. Catholic doctrine forms the basis for and frames contemporary understandings and articulations of the legend of St. James the Great, allegedly one of disciples of Jesus Christ (Grabow, 2010). The burial ground of St. James lies in Santiago de Compostela. From the ninth century onwards, the city has been ascribed a sacred status. Thus, since medieval times the famous sacred trails have the city as the final destination (Genoni, 2011). In addition to the Il Camino (The Way), the landscape resonates with various objects and artefacts that have deep religious symbolism (icons, chapels, cathedrals, different types of crosses and religious relics) (see Sánchez-Carretero, 2012). Contemporary pilgrims, of which not all are practising Catholics, can acquire a pilgrim certificate upon completion of the more than 100 kilometres long Camino (Frey, 1998). Annually, close to 300,000 pilgrims obtain a certificate. Of late, Fisterra has emerged as an additional and meaningful final destination upon completion of the Camino itself, in part due to the growing touristification of Santiago de Compostela (Nilsson, 2016) and as part of the revival of the Celtic tradition that imbues Fisterra with mystical and sacred qualities.

We begin by an excursus into the post-secular turn. We then present de Certeau’s conceptual quadrant of strategy-tactics and space-place as a groundwork for our analyses and discussions of pilgrimages and constructions of space. Lastly, by way of conclusion, we provide a summary of our analyses.

The coming of the post-secular

Secularism has been the dominant narrative of modernity and the primary lens through which the social sciences have studied not only religion, but also society at large. The post-secular turn has led to a re-appraisal of the role of religion in Western societies by the social sciences (see, for example, Habermas, 2006, 2008; Taylor, 2007; Bracke, 2008; Braidotti, 2008; McLennan, 2010; Moberg & Granholm, 2012; Vasilaki, 2016). Already in 1990, Milbank wrote what has come to be seen as a pioneering book Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason, where he called for the deconstruction of the secular. One can take Milbank’s book as the opening salvo of the post-secular debate. Still, it is only in the first decade of the twenty-first century that the rekindled interest for matters religious accelerated. As several studies in theology, philosophy and sociology have pointed out, religion is no longer at the margin of modern society (if it ever was) (Sigurdson, 2010). The secular, argues Milbank, is not something apart, different from or beyond the sacred. Rather, the secular is theological in its roots. Like Nietzsche ([1882] 1974) before him, Milbank argues that modernity and science are deeply rooted in Christian morals and tradition. The secular ‘is actually constituted in its secularity by “heresy” in relation to orthodox Christianity, or else a rejection of Christianity that is more “neo-pagan” than simply anti-religious', as Milbank puts it (1990, 3). The secular is in many ways a result of shifts ‘within theology' rather than ‘emancipation from theology' (1990, 28). Modernity, according to Lillas (2007), is thus better understood as an experimentation phase with the secular, rather than a clear break from the sacred.

However, the post-secular thesis has not gone unchallenged. In addition to the critique of the Eurocentric conceptions of the return of religion, one can distinguish between those who question the secular nature of modernity (Nietzsche, [1882] 1974) and those who question the claim that we have left secular modernity behind us and have entered a post-secular age. Milbank (1990), Derrida and Vattimo (1998) and Habermas (2006), are some of the major names in the latter category. Whereas Berger (1999), Taylor (2007), Harrington (2007), McLennan (2010), and Beckford (2012), among others, question whether the ‘return of religion’ is not indeed a sign of the rising privatization of religious belief and as such a deepening of secular tendencies. It is apparent that the secular proposition is under question. To mention just two examples: first, a relatively recent colloquium that brought together a philosopher, a theologian and a sociologist expressly to address the question of Is critique secular?, provides an inkling of the scope of the de-construction of widely held secular assumptions (Asad, 2003; Asad, Brown, Butler & Mahmood, 2009).² Asad questioned the prevalent assumptions of the secular as marking a clear break from religion. Instead, Asad posited that ‘the secular is neither singular in origin, nor stable in its historical identity' (Asad, 2003, 2). The present article is cognizant of the spatial and temporal multiplicities of the post-secular.

Secondly, Diken’s (2016) most recent work God, Politics, Economy: Social Theory and the Paradoxes of Religion, and its take on ‘the problem of religion in modernity' (Diken’s (2016), 2), where he examines ‘the lack of critique … / … / … with which the return of religion is taken for granted' (Diken’s (2016)). Diken situates the problem in the contemporary intersection of political theology, religion and capitalism. The rekindled interest in and the various debates on the place of religion in modernity indicate that the conventional sacred versus secular dichotomy is simplistic and highly problematic. However, with some exceptions, research in the geography of religion has not accorded the post-secular proper due (Kong, 2010; Beaumont & Baker, 2011; Hopkins, Kong & Olson, 2012; Gökariksel & Secor, 2015; Nilsson, 2016). In parallel, religious studies have also been undergoing another ‘revival' of sorts, namely the spatial turn in the study of religion (Sheldrake, 2001; Knott, 2005; Hopkins et al., 2012; Obadia, 2015). In religious studies and the practice of religion itself, questions of place/space have been central, if not foundational, to the religious imagination – spirituality, religious meanings, symbolisms and conceptions of the holy (Eliade, 1959; Milbank, 1990; Sheldrake, 2001; Knott, 2005; Eade, 2012; Nilsson & Tesfahuney, 2017). We posit that the post-secular turn is as much a turn to place as it is a turn to religion.

De Certeau’s quadrant

De Certeau relied on the contrasting notions of strategy and tactics to highlight the construction of space and place. Strategy denotes hegemonic spatialities, the spaces of power, control and domination. Tactics, on the other hand, refer to everyday (spatial) practices with subversive attributes, various ways of constructing space that unsettle the dominant, ordered terrains of power. In the words of Harvey (1996, 263), de Certeau’s ‘place-space dialectic … pits the strategic world of places against the wayward trajectories of multiple spatialities defined by often divergent processes'. In what follows we outline of de Certeau’s (1984) theorization of strategy, tactics, space and place.

Strategy and tactics

De Certeau defines strategy as ‘the calculation (or manipulation) of power relationships that become possible as soon as a subject with will and power (a business, an army, a city, a scientific institution) can be isolated' (1984, 35). Strategy operates by postulating

a place that can be delimited as its own and serve as the base from which relations with an exteriority composed of targets or threats (customers or competitors, enemies, the country surrounding the city, objectives and objects of research, etc.) can be managed. (1984, 35–36, emphasis in the original)

De Certeau identifies and discusses three notable effects of strategy. To begin with strategy is accompanied by a triumph of place over time, i.e. strategy is ‘a mastery of time through the foundation of an autonomous place' (1984). Strategy in this sense relates to operations that enclose, delimit and order polities, by mastering territories. This is tied to the second effect of strategy, viz., it involves a panoptic practice (1984). Strategy is accompanied by ‘the division of place', which is a precondition for ‘a mastery of place through sight' through observation, measurement and control. Concomitantly, strategy thus involves calculation, prediction, and planning, i.e. the capacity ‘to run ahead of time by reading space', as de Certeau (1984) puts it. Thirdly, strategy is bound with the power of knowledge, ‘this ability to transform the uncertainties of history into readable spaces' (1984). De Certeau notes that

it would be more correct to recognize in these ‘strategies’ a specific type of knowledge, one sustained and determined by the power to provide oneself with one's own place. Thus military or scientific strategies have always been inaugurated through the constitution of their ‘own’ areas (autonomous cities, ‘neutral’ or ‘independent’ institutions, laboratories pursuing ‘disinterested’ research, etc.). In other words, a certain power is a precondition of this knowledge and not merely its effect or its attribute. It makes this knowledge possible and at the same time determine its characteristics. It produces itself in and through this knowledge. (1984)

De Certeau’s conception of the power-knowledge dialectic has affinities to Foucault’s (1978) theorizations of disciplinary regimes in modernity, Deleuze and Guattari’s (1988) notion of Royal Science. De Certeau's conception of strategy, its schemata and rationalities are intimately place-bound. Strategy is a territorial calculus with a proper locus, a logic of autonomy that strives to enclose and order places.

Tactic, in contrast, is defined as ‘a calculated action determined by the absence of a proper locus. No delimitation of an exteriority, then, provides it with the condition necessary for autonomy. The space of a tactic is the space of “the other”’ (ibid, 37). Tactic lacks the means of being autonomous, ‘the means to keep to itself'. Rather it must play by the ‘rules’ imposed and on a terrain ordered or organized by ‘the law of a foreign power' (ibid.), i.e. the law and terrain of strategy. As such, tactic can only manoeuver within the spaces defined by the logics of strategy. Tactic ‘operates in isolated actions, blow by blow'. De Certeau likens tactic to poaching: it is incremental, lacks a ‘general strategy', a panoptic practice that objectifies space (ibid.). Given that tactic lacks a base, it is reduced to ‘take advantage of opportunities' that arise within the spaces of strategy to ‘build up its own position and plan raids. What it wins it cannot keep’ (ibid.). Put differently, tactic exploits ‘the chance offerings of the moment, and seize on the wing the possibilities that offer themselves at any given moment’. (ibid.) Tactic is disruptive or subversive,

it must vigilantly make use of the cracks that particular conjunctions open in the surveillance of the proprietary powers. It poaches in them. It creates surprises in them. It can be where it is least expected. It is a guileful ruse. In short tactic is an art of the weak. (ibid.)

Tactic, unlike strategy, lacks ‘a proper', it is not rooted, place-bound or fixed. Rather it is ‘nowhere' and, as such, intimately bound up with the mobile, the fleeting and the ephemeral. To de Certeau, ‘tactic is determined by the absence of power just as strategy is organized by the postulation of power' (ibid, 38). Tactic ‘boldly juxtaposes diverse elements in order suddenly to produce a flash shedding a different light … . Cross-cuts, fragments, cracks and lucky hits in the framework of a system … '. Tactic ‘takes an order by surprise'. De Certeau's evocative descriptions of tactics are reminiscent of guerilla warfare, or Deleuze and Guattari’s (1988) nomads. Drawing linguistic analogies, de Certeau compares strategy to grammar, ‘watching over the propriety of words’. Whereas tactic is akin to ‘rhetoric and its metaphorical drifts, elliptical condensations and the use of language in particular situations of ritual or actual linguistic combat' (Deleuze and Guattari’s (1988), 39). Put differently, strategy relates to processes of territorialization, while tactic is associated with processes of de-territorialization (Deleze & Guattari 1988). Tactic refers to oppositional practices, movements and subterranean forces. In the words of Ahearne (1995, 162), tactics ‘correspond to operations (or counter-operations) of “diversion”, characterized by insecurity, ephemerality and high degree of mobility'.

Space and place

Space and place comprise the second twin pair in de Certeau’s conceptual quadrant and are central to de Certeau's theorizations of everyday practices. To de Certeau place (lieu) denotes ‘the order (of whatever kind) in accord with which elements are distributed in relationships of coexistence' (1984, 117). Place, to de Certeau is the site of relations between attributes (Harvey 1996, 263). De Certeau maintains that strategy, i.e. ‘the law of the ‘proper’ rules in the place', and as such place is ‘an instantaneous configuration of positions. It implies an indication of stability' (Harvey 1996). Place is a location, the site of the stable, the fixed and the rooted. Space, on the other hand, is practiced place, is produced by movement. Space is:

… composed of intersections of mobile elements. [Space] is actuated by the ensemble of movements deployed within it. Space occurs as the effect of operations that orient it, situate it, temporalize it, and make it function in a polyvalent unity of conflictual programs and contractual proximities. … . In contradistinction to the place, it has none of the univocity or stability of the proper. (Harvey 1996)

If place denotes ‘objects that are ultimately reducible to being-there’, space is actuated by operations and ‘actions of subjects'. According to de Certeau, there prevails a relation of pendularity between space and place, such that spaces can be transformed into places and vice-versa (ibid:118). It is all a question of movement and inertia respectively. We can fruitfully draw parallels to the dialectics of being and becoming such that place designates the site of being while space that of becoming. To sum up, stability, fixity and inertia are to place what ‘motion, vectors, velocities and time variables’ are to space. De Certeau's conceptual quadrant can be fruitfully paired as strategy-place and tactics-space. The hierarchical, autonomous, univocal, and stable order of place contra the space made up of trajectories and paths, the mobile, the fleeting and non-hierarchical (see also Ahearne, 1995, 171 et. passim).

De Certeau’s conceptualization of space and place has been criticized for being problematic in that it relies on a ‘limited spatial imaginary' (Hopkins et al., 2012). Massey criticized de Certeau’s dichotomous conceptions of place and space, power and resistance as well as structure and agency (Massey, 2005). Likewise, Ahearne (1995, 186) critiques de Certeau for valorizing resistance and romanticizing the ‘ordinary man'. Moreover, de Certeau's analytics fails to recognize that tactics are imbricated in the calculus of strategy and that everyday practices are always already structured and structuring (Bourdieu, 1977). One can also add that de Certeau’s conception is city centred. Another problematic aspect is that it fails to factor in the role of gender, class and ethnicity in strategy and tactic, space and place.

Post-secular spaces

De Certeau gave a prominent place to the practice of walking in his theorization of space/place and strategy/tactics. Movement is central to tactics and actuation of space. Taking our cue from de Certeau, we examine the multiple ways sacred places have been (re)configured and (re)appropriated in and through post-secular journeys, i.e. the various ways in which places are ‘manipulated by users who are not its makers' (de Certeau 1984, xiii). Post-secular pilgrimages can be conceived as mobile operators that (re)orient and assemble by, among other things, introducing spatio-temporal rhythms that are neither secular nor sacred (Nilsson, 2016). Post-secular pilgrims enact and follow their own spatiotemporal rhythms. As one of our respondents put it,

… and I end up here and I had not booked anything. So every single night I just slept where I wanted to sleep and normally I am a very organized person but this time I decided to sleep when and where I want to, eat where I want and when I want and do whatever I want to.

Another stated: ‘everyone does his or her own Camino by walking and the rhythm of walking. People go slowly, people go fast, and people want to be alone because they have things to mull over'. Post-secular journeys may be conceptualized as ‘mobile operators that ‘actuate’ a polyvalent unity of conflictual programs' (de Certeau, 1984). Post-secular movement represent tactics, constituted by the fleeting, the mobile and the uncontrollable, or if you so will, actions and ways of being that open up lines of flight in Deleuze and Guattari’s (1988), or practices that create differential spaces in Lefebvre’s terminology ([1974] 1991). Post-secular pilgrimages in this sense appropriate the ‘gaps or interstices of the strategic grid' (sacred and secular strategies and territorial orders), tactics that ‘corrupt or pervert the strategy’s system by introducing difference or enacting an unpredictable event' (Colebrook, 1997, 127).

One can draw parallels to de Certeau’s celebrated urban pedestrians, the ordinary practitioners of the city, and perceive post-secular pilgrims as walkers that follow the ‘thicks and thins' (de Certeau, 1984, 93) of traditional religious pilgrimage destinations without, however, having to adhere to their norms, teachings and/or proscriptions. I am not a really religious guy but some kind of spiritual guy. I like the idea of just walking, talking and meeting other people, as a respondent expressed it. In the vein of de Certeau, post-secular journeys can be theorized as mobile networks that intersect and leave their traces in manifold and unforeseen ways, paths that have ‘neither author, nor spectator, shaped out of fragments of trajectories and alterations’ (de Certeau, 1984: 93). One of our respondents expressed this sentiment as: Santiago is not important it is the Way which is important. It is not the traditional religious destination that is at the centre of the journey, or pilgrimage, rather it is the experience of walking. In this sense, post-secular pilgrimages enact ‘contradictory movements that counterbalance and combine themselves outside of panoptic power' (de Certeau, 1984, 95), i.e. outside hegemonic spatiotemporal order. Evocatively expressed by one respondent:

I am a Christian but I am not religious in that sense. I don't really care about whether St. James is buried here, where he is supposed to be buried. The whole pilgrim idea appeals to me because I believe I am on a spiritual journey and it is quite nice … I do my own pilgrimage.

De Certeau wrote poetically of the ‘chorus of footsteps', of a story that ‘begins on ground level, with footsteps'. Post-secular pilgrims too tell their story by a ‘chorus of footsteps', they too are many, yet do not belong to a series, to paraphrase de Certeau (de Certeau, 1984, 97; see also Fedele & Isnart, 2015). De Certeau famously talked about ‘pedestrian speech acts’, drawing parallels between what the ‘act of walking is to the urban system’, on the one hand, and ‘what the speech act is to language or to the statement uttered' on the other hand (1984, 97). Similarly, post-secular pilgrimages can be seen as pedestrian speech acts vis-à-vis both secular and sacred systems. Post-secular pedestrian speech acts re-configure, Il Camino, the traditional pilgrims trail, into an elongated, or extended, space of enunciation. To do the pilgrimage is like praying with your feet as one of our respondents concisely formulated it.

Post-secular pilgrims introduce ‘noise' and unsettle conventional spatialities by enacting alternative ways of being in and appropriating place outside of or beyond the strategies of ordering space ascribed, or ‘ordained' if one so wishes, by the spaces of modernity and the Catholic Church. Post-secular pilgrims follow their own schemata and thereby disrupt Catholic religious’ traditions of what should take place, how, when and where. I think I really enjoy it as a complete change of rhythms in my life. You think you will get rid of something but you just develop another rhythm through the Way. Post-secular pilgrimages disrupt and complicate dominant frameworks for understanding space and place as unequivocally secular or sacred. In this sense, post-secular pilgrimages can be fruitfully conceived as ‘rhetorical transplantations' that ‘carry away and displace the analytical, the coherent proper meanings' (de Certeau, 1984, 102) of hegemonic territorial domains. Post-secular pilgrims are primarily driven by a quest for a spiritual experience (Nilsson, 2016), and as such resemble the ‘style of tactile apprehension and kinesthetic appropriation' that de Certeau (1984, 97) used to describe one of the ways tactics are articulated. Perhaps this is what one of our respondents was trying to convey when she said:

[i]t is so great it is so international you meet people from the whole world here and you talk with these people and you become friends. But you are free, you start with people in the morning than in the day you make your own Camino. You walk alone and in the evening you see people that you have talked with during the day and you’re free. You can live with these people, stay with these people and walk with these people but you are free to go and that is not a problem for these people.

Sentiments that allude to post-secular journeys as ‘trajectories (going this way and not that)', i.e. routes that render ‘invisible the operation that made [them] possible’, to hark back to de Certeau (1984, 97).

According to de Certeau, the ‘ … space of the tactic is the space of the other' (1984, 37). Tactic ‘ … must play on and with the terrain imposed on it and organized by the law of a foreign power' (1984). The foreign power in our case is the terrain of the Catholic Church [sacral] and the terrain of the modern [secular]. Post-secular tactics may thus be seen as ‘the other' spaces of both secular and sacred strategies. Post-secular spatial practices disrupt and thereby reconfigure traditional, institutionalized religious/sacred places as well as the spaces of the modern. Reminiscent of de Certeau’s tactics that go off track (1984, 40), one respondent stated:

The main thing is to be present here and now, don't think of the past don't think of the future, be here and now! That's the way I have been walking … It is very interesting and the practice Santiago was not my goal. My goal was the Camino to walk and practice. My pilgrimage was not about religious reason it was spiritual. Santiago is not the end.

Post-secular pilgrimages ‘unsettle' the ordered terrains, practices, norms and rituals of institutionalized religion, but also appropriate traditional sacred places to their own ends undermine and erode the spaces of strategy/power ‘blow-by-blow', in isolated actions and by manoeuvering within the spaces defined by strategy.

For de Certeau walking is ‘a spatial acting-out of the place (just as the speech act is an acoustic acting-out of language)' (1984, 98). Arriving in Santiago is not a great moment … for me it is much more about the journey not the arrival. The post-secular subject is one that is dissatisfied with both modern and traditional religious ways of being and relating to the world. The post-secular subject is one that searches for alternative ways of being and relating to the world that transcend the sacred and the secular. Ways of being that are neither bound by religious dogma nor by the dictates of modern life. It is in this sense that the post-secular subject strives to become a ‘free spirit' characterized by an attitude of discovery, experimentation, self-reflexivity and alternative temporalities and spatialities, i.e. alternative ways of being, doing and imagining place. At the same time, there is the possibility that this is an expression of the heightened individualism, consumerism and ‘narcissist' neoliberal agency. Another interpretation would be that the ‘free spirit’ is an instance of what Berger (1999) and Sigurdson (2010), among others, read as an example of the individualization of religion. The debate on whether this ought to be read as an expression of deepening secularization, as a return to religion, or as the individualization of faith, is extensive and beyond the purview of this paper.

Post-secular pilgrimages represent and embody alternative ways of being. As such these ‘insert’ themselves by ‘successive encounters and occasions that constantly alter and make it [sacred spaces] the other's blazon' (de Certeau, 1984, 101). Thereby introducing ‘something surprising, transverse or attractive compared with the usual choice' (de Certeau, 1984). Post-secular pilgrimages are not ‘pigeonholed, numbered, and regulated … ', they do not properly belong to ‘a bubble of the panoptic and production of an order, a closed and autonomous insularity thus anything but ‘a travelling incarceration' in de Certeau's apt term (de Certeau, 1984, 111). Furthermore, if as de Certeau claims ‘ … practices of space also correspond to manipulations of the basic elements of a constructed order' (de Certeau, 1984, 100), then post-secular spatial practices correspond to the manipulation of strategy, for example by taking place within them, and create ‘shadows and ambiguities within them' (de Certeau, 1984, 101). ‘To walk is to lack a place' writes, de Certeau and ads ‘[i]t is the indefinite process of being absent and in search of a proper' (de Certeau, 1984, 103). In this sense, post-secular pilgrims are walkers ever in search of a proper, something to claim as their own, one that is beyond or outside of ‘the proper', a space of experimentation with ways of being, relating to and appropriating the world.

According to de Certeau ‘ … the space of a tactic is a space of the other'. Post-secular spaces represent the other in a double sense: of the sacred and the modern spaces, given that post-secular spaces are formed by tactics that subvert or disrupt established territorial strategies. Put differently, post-secular spatialities do not follow the grammar of sacred and secular spaces. The post-secular represents a space ‘outside the scriptural enterprise' (1984, 158) of religious and modern space. In this sense, one can interpret post-secular pilgrimages as instances of ‘ … the uttering that occurs outside the places in which the system of statements are composed' (1984, 158), i.e. the system of statements composed by the strategies of traditional religions and the modern. Post-secular spaces have ‘none of the univocity of or stability of a “proper”' (1984, 117). We argue that post-secular pilgrimages constitute ‘rhetorical transplantations' that ‘carry away and displace the analytical, the coherent proper meanings' (1984, 102) of hegemonic territorial orders. Post-secular pilgrimages ‘constitute a “wandering semantic”' that effaces certain parts of sacred and secular spaces while embellishing others. In the case of Santiago de Compostela, the crypt of St. James, chapels and churches along the pilgrims’ trail, prayers and Catholic rituals are examples of spaces that are being eroded by wandering semantics of the post-secular. In contrast to conventional pilgrimages, Santiago de Compostela is not the end goal. Rather, Il Camino is amplified by post-secular pilgrimages and becomes the end goal of their journey. Moreover, stray acquaintances, short lived communities, and spontaneous gatherings that occur along the way are single out as uplifting experiences of their pilgrimages. We can draw parallels to de Certeau’s redolent descriptions of walking ‘which alternately follows a path and has followers creates a mobile organicity in the environment, a sequence a phatic topoi' (1984, 99). Post-secular tactics involve processes of de-territorialization and as such are instances of ‘a non-institutionalized cultural field' (Ahearne 1995, 157 et passim). Such a theorization points to the ‘secondary production hidden' in the construction of space. Examples include post-secular spatial practices that utilize both sacred and secular spaces for their own ends, involve practices that do not follow dominant spatial logics or strategies, i.e. are outside of or beyond the ‘proscribed' ‘the proper' enacted by strategy. As Genoni (2011) has noted pilgrimage research can be placed in two conventions. The first conceives the journey in terms of experience not existing in everyday life. While the second emphasizes the transformative aspects of pilgrimage. Our data and the analysis suggest that pilgrimages are seen as a transformative experience, and as such part of the domain of tactics in de Certeau’s sense. Moreover, our interpretations parallel the arguments laid down by Egan (2010) on the role and significance of inter-subjective experiences, spontaneous community and postmodern pilgrimage. An alternative reading would perhaps hark to Fedele’s (2014) notion of tapping into the energy immanent to sacred places, which in our case would be tapping the energy of the Camino while journeying. In as much as the spaces of tactics are characterizes by liminality, our findings can also be related to liminal character of pilgrimage (Badone, 2014).

We discern similarities and parallels with the findings of Maddrell and Scriven (2016) in relation to Celtic pilgrimages specifically in terms of pilgrimage, spirituality and embodied mobilities, with what we were able to read from the narratives from our respondents in Santiago de Compostela. Likewise, our study in part has parallels to the recent study by Lois-González, Fernández and Lopez (2016) that examined mobility, sacred places and the construction of monumental spaces along the way to St. James. Contemporary pilgrimages incorporate both older, sentiments (romanticism, reflection and escapism) as well as new values (enjoy walking, spiritual experience) as metaphors (2016). Our findings align with the anthology by Pazos (2014) that proposed new perspectives on pilgrimages. Further comparative research of pilgrimages mobilities inspired by de Certeau’s theorizations of place, space, strategy and tactics would provide additional insides into similarities and differences in the construction and transformation of sacred spaces, the politics and poetics of pedestrian mobilities and spaces of enunciation would be a welcome development.

Conclusion

Walking affirms, suspects, tries out, transgresses, respects, etc., the trajectories it ‘speaks’ … (de Certeau, 1984, 99)

Our study suggests that the spatial practices of post-secular pilgrimages are that these do not come with the intention of radically dislocating existing institutionalized religious spaces and practices. Rather, what is remarkable is the very ordinariness, the unassuming and modest ways by which post-secular pilgrims’ appropriate the terrains of the sacred and secular. The ‘pedestrian speech acts' and ‘walking rhetorics' of post-secular pilgrims, to hark back to de Certeau’s (1984:98) felicitous expression, are an instance of this. In this sense, the relationship of post-secular pilgrims to traditionally sacred places and traditional religion is primarily exploitative rather than radical re-configuration of space. Post-secular pilgrimages chart ‘trajectories that have a mythical structure understood as a story jerry-built out of elements taken from common sayings, an allusive end fragmentary story whose gaps mesh with the social practice it symbolizes' (Harvey, 1990, 214). Through their activities and movements, post-secular pilgrimages appropriate and transform places into spaces and create spaces that transcend the secular and sacred domains.

In the manner of de Certeau (1984) post-secular pilgrimages can be conceived as a ‘swarming mass' composed of ‘innumerable singularities' that reconfigure both secular and sacred spaces and places. We read post-secular pilgrimages as instances of pedestrian rhetorics, and exhibit ‘a triple “enunciative” function' (de Certeau, 1984, 97). To begin with post-secular pilgrimages are processes appropriation of both religious and modern territorial orders. Secondly, post-secular pilgrimages involve ‘a spatial acting-out’ within the dominant territorial order instituted by traditional religious and modern practices and institutions. Thirdly, post-secular pilgrimages distort, fragment and sidetrack the ‘immobile order' (de Certeau, 1984, 102). Post-secular pilgrimages are instances of pedestrian speech acts that establish ‘relations among differentiated positions, that is among pragmatic “contracts in the form of movement” … ' (de Certeau, 1984, 98, emphasis in the original). Post-secular spaces are composed of routes outside of the ‘grid lines’ of sacred and secular spaces, and are the results of ‘practices that elude' (de Certeau, 1984, 102). Post-secular spaces are open, are not regimented and enclosed. Rather, these are better conceived as enabling spaces. De Certeau’s perspectives on tactics and spaces are more in tune with the mindset of spiritual openness, of transformational anticipation and affective investments in the journey (the Way). Our survey of the literature on pilgrimages in general and specifically Il Camino shows that there are no studies of the phenomenon with a distinct de Certeauian take. Our study, thus, adds something new to the field of pilgrimage studies, as well as religious tourism mobilities. By introducing de Certeau into studies of pilgrimage, geographies of religion and religious tourism, our study opens up further avenues of exploring contemporary articulation of the religious. Secondly, it sheds light on expressions of religion that transcend conventional pilgrimage journeys and forms. Thirdly, it maps out the spatial articulations of post-secular pilgrimage mobilities.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 The present article is based on interviews of pilgrims in the region of Galicia, specifically the pilgrim trails to Santiago de Compostela and Fisterra between 2011 and 2014. Pilgrims were interviewed in Santiago de Compostela in February 2011, September and December 2012, respectively, whereas the fieldwork and interviews in Fisterra were conducted in September 2014. The time span for the interviews was 4 days in Fisterra in 2014. For Santiago de Compostela the duration was 6 days in 2011 and 9 days in 2012. The interviews were conducted in the pilgrimage season (September) and off season (February and December). No significant differences in the narratives of the respondents tied to season could be detected. In all, the sample consisted of 79 respondents – 66% in Santiago de Compostela and 34% in Fisterra. All of our respondents were first time visitors. The gender distribution of the respondents was 36 (46%) females and 43 (54%) males. The age range of the respondents was from as low as seven to as high as seventy-one. The geographical origin of the pilgrims shows that the majority 62 (78%) came from European countries, followed by North America 11 (14%), and Latin America countries only three respondents 3, while only 2 respondents came from Asia, specifically South Korea. Only one respondent came from Africa specifically South Africa. None were from Oceania.

2 When it comes to the post-secular debate itself, the core questions revolve around: (a) challenges to the secular narrative, (b) a re-evaluation of the relevance and place of religion in shedding light on contemporary social phenomena, and (c) questions pertaining to the heightened individualization of faith and religiosity (Sigurdson, 2010). Our primary aim in this paper is, however, not to discuss the post-secular debate as such, but to explore the spatial articulations of the post-secular, which we contextualize theoretically within the spatial turn in the social sciences.