Revisiting the secular: multiple secularities and pathways to modernity

Abstract

Scholarly debates about secularization and secularism have reached an unproductive impasse. Orthodox and neo-orthodox secularization theorists insist on the epistemological universality and global applicability of more or less uniform concepts of secularization. Postcolonial critics, by contrast, sought to provincialize the notion of the secular emphasizing its Western origin, its coimplication with the nation-state, violence, and colonialism. In this article, we critically engage with both of these approaches and suggest the concept of “multiple secularities” as an alternative approach. Whereas both universalist and postcolonial approaches tend to reify and essentialize the secular we aim to historicize and culturalize secularity. We do so by arguing that secularity are culturally and symbolically anchored forms of distinguishing religious and non-religious social spheres and practices and that institutionalizations of such distinctions have served as ways of grappling with different kind of problems. Significantly, while recognizing the situated historicities of secularity our conceptualization frees secularity from its singular associations with the West and with modernity.