With few exceptions, studies of secularity and the secular have not paid much attention to its embodied dimensions and lived practices. Approached either as a form of social and political arrangement, as a particular ideological project or as a way of grasping the changing and diminishing role of religion in modern societies, secularity has most often been examined at the macro-level. While the study of religion has long taken a ‘material’ and ‘emotional’ turn, increasingly being investigated through the lens of practices, embodied experiences and emotional attachments, the same cannot be said for the study of the secular.

In fact, ‘the secular’ itself as an object of study has only been recently discovered. Leading the way are recent studies in the fields of anthropology, sociology, historical and political sciences, which have argued for a critical perspective on our conceptualizations of the secular. They suggest viewing the process of secularization no longer as a gradual “disenchantment” of society, a falling away of religious beliefs and practices, but instead to understand the secular as a grammar, which is accompanied by a distinct set of material and embodied practices. A central characteristic of secular societies resides, so it is suggested, in the consistent and continuous preoccupation with, or problematization of, ‘religion’ (Agrama 2012). It is precisely through this deliberation of what counts as ‘religious’ that ‘the secular’ comes to light (Asad 2003). Developing an anthropology of the secular, therefore means paying as much attention to these moments of non-articulation as it implies identifying and studying institutions and practices that are explicitly identified as secular.

Furthermore, examining the affective contours of social controversies and practices is also helpful for identifying and locating the operations of the secular. What kind of emotional languages and engagements do people deploy towards ‘things’ (ideas, institutions, practices) labeled as secular? Is there a kind of ‘secular affect’ in the sense that Saba Mahmood has argued (2009), which emerges from an embodied attachment to secular ideals such as ‘free speech’? Or, as Charles Hirschkind asks in his reflections on Asad and Connolly (2011): Is there a secular body? Does secularity invite or even entail a specific habitus or ‘feeling rules’, appropriate reactions and displays? Are there specifically secular emotional practices, and are they identified as such by social actors? How are such rules and practices cultivated and challenged? And how can we analytically approach and appropriately theorize emotional and affective dimensions of the secular? And finally, how do we tackle the challenges of the anthropology of the secular, this ‘negative’ category, defined by what it is not? How do we disentangle the habits and styles of secularism, secular humanism, and (liberal) Protestantism (Engelke 2014) to identify a specifically ‘secular’ body?

Contributions to the workshop will be pre-circulated. The participants will present their papers only briefly to give more time to discussants’ responses and the general discussion. Special keynote lecturers have also been invited. A limited number of auditors can be admitted to the workshop, so we ask that you register well in advance of the deadline with elisabeth.socha@uni-tuebingen.de.

References: Agrama, Hussein Ali (2012) Questioning Secularism: Islam, Sovereignty, and the Rule of Law in Modern Egypt. Chicago: U Chicago Press; Asad, Talal (2003) Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity. Stanford: Stanford U Press; Engelke, Matthew (2014) Christianity and the Anthropology of Secular Humanism. Current Anthropology 55 (S10):292-301; Hirschkind, Charles (2011) Is There a Secular Body? Cultural Anthropology 26 (4):633-47; Mahmood, Saba (2009) Religious Reason and Secular Affect: An Incommensurable Divide? Critical Inquiry 35 (4):836-62.