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who see the world as an open conflict between different and competing nations (with the invariable threat of anarchism always lurking in the shadows), to modernists more generally who see the world as being threatened by the tensions caused between secularism and religious orthodoxy, and to those liberals who have appropriated Carl Schmitt’s point about politics being all about friends versus enemies. Difference, then, is the problem to be solved or at least safely managed. Violence results not from violence but from forced homogenisation and the colonisation of
arrival of a new age, even as it portrayed the era just ending in specific, controversial ways. Few of its users, moreover, were shy about their normative ambition to bring a post-secular world into being. This chapter illustrates those dynamics by examining a number of key moments in the early development of post-secular discourse, while keeping an eye on what they tell us about contemporary preoccupations with the category. The earliest post-secular constructions, like the broader discourse of ‘secularism’ itself
society. One must not blame religion or religious fundamentalism for the ills of the world. Radical secularism and the political pseudo-religions of fascism and communism have created as much misery and death as has religion during the twentieth century. In fact, it has often been religion that has inspired people to enormous sacrifices in resisting such tyrannies: Protestants in Nazi Germany, Catholics in
Introduction ‘“Post-Christian Era”? Nonsense!’ declared one of Europe’s foremost theologians, Karl Barth, in August 1948, at the first assembly of the World Council of Churches in Amsterdam. How do we come to adopt as self-evident the phrase first used by a German National Socialist, that we are today living in an ‘un-Christian’ or even ‘post-Christian’ era? … How indeed do we come to the fantastic opinion that secularism and godlessness are inventions of our time
down the wrath of the proto-positivist thinkers of his day. Yet, while Rousseau was a ‘gospel Christian’ (at least by his own definition), he was also preoccupied with the moral and political implications of secularism. Especially the development (or demise) of ethical theory after Hobbes. It is not least because of this that he is of interest to the modern science of politics. Rousseau rejected the Hobbesian view. In opposition to his colleagues he maintained that the ‘summation of all morality is given by the Gospel in its summation of the Law’ (III: 155–6). The
What does it mean to live in an era of ‘posts’? At a time when ‘post-truth’ is on everyone’s lips, this volume seeks to uncover the logic of post-constructions – postmodernism, post-secularism, postfeminism, post-colonialism, post-capitalism, post-structuralism, post-humanism, post-tradition, post-Christian, post-Keynesian and post-ideology – across a wide array of contexts. It shows that ‘post’ does not simply mean ‘after.’ Although post-prefixes sometimes denote a particular periodization, especially in the case of mid-twentieth-century post-concepts, they more often convey critical dissociation from their root concept. In some cases, they even indicate a continuation of the root concept in an altered form. By surveying the range of meanings that post-prefixes convey, as well as how these meanings have changed over time and across multiple and shifting contexts, this volume sheds new light on how post-constructions work and on what purposes they serve. Moreover, by tracing them across the humanities and social sciences, the volume uncovers sometimes unexpected parallels and transfers between fields usually studied in isolation from each other.
In May 1958, and four years into the Algerian War of Independence, a revolt again appropriated the revolutionary and republican symbolism of the French Revolution by seizing power through a Committee of Public Safety. This book explores why a repressive colonial system that had for over a century maintained the material and intellectual backwardness of Algerian women now turned to an extensive programme of 'emancipation'. After a brief background sketch of the situation of Algerian women during the post-war decade, it discusses the various factors contributed to the emergence of the first significant women's organisations in the main urban centres. It was only after the outbreak of the rebellion in 1954 and the arrival of many hundreds of wives of army officers that the model of female interventionism became dramatically activated. The French military intervention in Algeria during 1954-1962 derived its force from the Orientalist current in European colonialism and also seemed to foreshadow the revival of global Islamophobia after 1979 and the eventual moves to 'liberate' Muslim societies by US-led neo-imperialism in Afghanistan and Iraq. For the women of Bordj Okhriss, as throughout Algeria, the French army represented a dangerous and powerful force associated with mass destruction, brutality and rape. The central contradiction facing the mobile socio-medical teams teams was how to gain the trust of Algerian women and to bring them social progress and emancipation when they themselves were part of an army that had destroyed their villages and driven them into refugee camps.
religion in Turkey, what has been achieved in this field, and the almost religious zeal – “secular fundamentalism” – in which secularism has been applied in the country: The proclamation of the Republic in 1923 was followed by the abolition of the office of the caliphate in 1924. Other steps were taken in the course of the 1920s and early 1930s towards secularizing the Republic. These included the abolition of the Ministry of Religious Affairs and Pious Foundations, abolition of religious courts, proscription of male religious headgear, namely the
consisting predominantly of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) ( Shikaki, 1998 : 30–1). A second source of opposition to the regime consists of radical Islamists, primarily Hamas and Islamic Jihad , which also challenge its secularism and offer a competing set of legitimacy principles based upon Islamic precepts. 16 A
in this direction in this chapter through an elucidation of the meaning of the pivotal concept invoked throughout the headscarves debate, laïcité – for which the best (if unsatisfactory) translation remains ‘secularism’. Although the word itself did not appear until the end of the nineteenth century, the origins of laïcité are usually traced back to the French revolution, which brutally accelerated a century-long process of autonomisation of the civil government from the Catholic Church. After a century of veiled confrontation and failed compromise between the two