CALL FOR PAPERS FOR PANEL THE GOOD SHEPHERD: SECULARITIES, RELIGIOSITIES AND SUBJECTIVITIES
International conference: RELIGION AND PLURALITIES OF KNOWLEDGE, 11 to 15 MAY 2014, Groningen
Convenors:
José Mapril, CRIA/FCSH-UNL, jmapril
Ruy Blanes, Bergen University & ICS-UL, ruy.blanes
Erin Wilson, University of Groningen , e.k.wilson
In the past decades, several authors have suggested that secularism is not only an institutional arrangement concerned with the separation of state/government from religion but instead it is a project with the objective of making a specific religious subjectivity, spirituality and relation to history. According to such arguments secularism implies a normativity that produces a specific religious subjectivity that is compatible with a liberal political ethics. Such an objective can only be achieved, so the argument goes, with the help of a particular style of scriptural hermeneutics which allows a secularized conception of religion.
This concept of normative secularism or secularity (or secular culture), although interpretatively rich, seems to imply a homogeneous perception of what secularism and religion are or ‘should’ be, and consequently an homogeneous notion of the subjectivities it produces. But is it so? It is essential to acknowledge the very different manifestations of secularism and the historical processes that implied the “localizations†of this transnational secularity. From this perspective, French and American secularisms are very distinct and both are very different from secularism in Italy, Spain or Portugal - and the same argument could be made in terms of their religious histories. The question then is: do these differences, these distinct localizations, produce different kinds of secular normativities and thus different religious subjectivities? And in what sense do religious movements themselves relate to (producing or contesting) such secularities and normative arguments? Do they feel the need to put the rules into practice or instead they try to claim an autonomous space for the religious? In what ways do these secular normativities and religious subjectivities condition and produce relationships between different social groups, particularly in relation to sensitive issues such as migration, ritual slaughter and gender equality, amongst a host of others?
In this panel, we would like to challenge the potential authors to address such topics and themes, from a variety of disciplinary and geographic perspectives, debating mutual definitions of religious and secular subjectivities. Possible approaches could include:
- Religious and juridical jurisdictions: histories and normativizations;
The making of the subject - secular and/or religious framings;
The politics of recognition, between the religious and the secular;
Sacralizing and de-sacralizing the public space;
Detecting secular and religious subjectivities.
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