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The "Secular" as a Tragic Category: On Talal Asad, Religion and Representation

Article  in  Method & Theory in the Study of Religion · June 2005

DOI: 10.1163/1570068054305592

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 The “Secular” as a Tragic Category:
on Talal Asad, Religion and Representation1

Christopher Craig Brittain

This is an uncorrected prepublication version of this paper. For the final, corrected and
authoritative version, please see:
http://booksandjournals.brillonline.com/content/journals/10.1163/1570068054305592

DOI: 10.1163/1570068054305592

Among current efforts to deconstruct the category “religion” is a tendency to

problematize the secular/sacred distinction with the argument that it is simply the product

of the distinctive history of post-Reformation Western Europe. The “secular,” it is

claimed, is a category employed to legitimize the modern state by establishing a

boundary between the authority of the public sphere, in opposition to the privatized

sphere of the individual religious practitioner. This paper analyses this argument as it is

developed by Talal Asad and contrasts his “genealogy” of the secular with Dominique

Colas’ genealogy of the concept of “civil society.” This comparison raises pragmatic and

political concerns about Asad’s perspective, and problematizes his description of Islamic

subjectivity. The paper concludes by furthering Asad’s reading of Walter Benjamin’s

understanding of allegory, in order to argue for the secular as a tragic category that

continues to represent a vital theoretical and political category.

the “secular”

1
 Just as it has become commonplace to problematize the category of “religion” in

scholarly discourse, in recognition of the difficulty (if not impossibility) of clearly

identifying any trans-cultural essence that might be labelled “religious,” many scholars

now call into question the nature of “secularism” as a social and political category.2 A

leading exponent of this trend is the anthropologist Talal Asad. In Genealogies of

Religion (1993) and subsequently Formations of the Secular (2003), Asad undertakes a

Foucaultian critique of the notion that the “secular” represents a neutral category. He

explains that liberal political theory conceptualizes the secular state as signifying an

institution that privileges no particular religion, urges toleration of different traditions

within a given society, and refuses to grant authority to any truth claims made on the

grounds of religious belief or tradition. Advocates for the secular state do not necessarily

consider it to be anti-religious (although it is sometimes understood that way), but it is

considered to be a non-religious perspective.

Asad’s criticism of the understanding of the category “secular” is precisely that

such a society is not, in fact, neutral. He argues that the category is laden with numerous

cultural and political assumptions that must first be accepted before a secular worldview

is adopted or considered adequate for public discourse.3 For Asad, the standard

understanding of the secular is grounded on a Western liberal understanding of “religion”

as a universal, generic, and privatized concept. In Genealogies of Religion, he describes

the function of religion in medieval society to have been a very different form of cultural

expression from what in the modern age is thought to be “religion.” Christianity in this

period, he argues, functioned as a “great cloak” that defined an adherent’s entire

experience of the world. It possessed an “all-embracing capacity” – a distinctive practice

2
and belief system – that disciplined the religious subject and nurtured certain virtues.

Religion was not some ‘thing’ - some essentially distinct form of culture, process of

reasoning, or experiential state - that existed apart from other cultural experiences. It

encompassed the cultural horizon of the subject’s practices and assumptions about the

world. Embodied practices, Asad argues, not beliefs, represented the precondition for

varieties of so-called religious experiences (1993: 76).

To develop this position, Asad engages Clifford Geertz’s influential definition of

religion as a symbolic system, in order to demonstrate what he understands to be its

problematic assumptions. For Geertz, a religion involves a system of symbols that shape

the moods and motivations of human beings. These serve to construct meaning and order

in human existence. Asad observes two central problems with this construal. First, he

argues that Geertz’s theory overemphasizes the cognitive element in religious experience.

He refers to Augustine’s conflict with the Donatists in order to argue that, “it is not mere

symbols that implant true Christian dispositions, but power” (35). Asad concurs with

Geertz’s view that there is a connection between religious theory and practice. What he

objects to is his view that Geertz reduces religion to a cognitive function by emphasizing

the primacy of meaning “without regard to the processes by which meanings are

constructed” (44).

Asad’s second criticism of theories such as that of Geertz results from his

insistence that there cannot be a universal definition of religion, “not only because its

constituent elements and relationships are historically specific, but because that definition

is itself the historical product of discursive processes” (29). The fact that, in the modern

period, religion has been understood to have an autonomous universal essence is

3
understood by Asad as being the product of one of two strategies: either it is employed by

secular liberals to confine religion to the private sphere; or the definition serves a liberal

(Protestant) Christian apologetic defence of religion (28).

The primary focus of Asad’s work is with the former strategy that modernist

definitions of religion serve. He argues that it was not until the emergence of the modern

period that a conceptual split was made to distinguish between the secular and the

religious. This shift involved re-locating religion in the moods and individual motivations

of the individual believer, rather than on the practices and rituals that discipline and form

the subject (39-42). Religion, it is claimed, was privatized and removed from the public

sphere, in order to allow for the consolidation of nation states that incorporated numerous

religious traditions, while preventing the specific truth claims or moral codes of any

specific tradition from limiting the state’s power. Asad summarizes his view as follows:

“Scholars are now more aware that religious toleration was a political means to the

formation of strong state power that emerged from the sectarian wars of the sixteenth and

seventeenth centuries rather than the gift of a benign intention to defend pluralism” (206).

Asad’s position throughout this genealogical sketch is two-fold: first, he argues

that the generic notion of “religion” suggested by the category of the “secular” prevents a

recognition of the particularities of cultural difference absorbed under the label

“religious;” secondly, he argues that the secular state does not in fact guarantee toleration

of difference, but is in fact compatible with intolerance (2003: 7).

the secular as intolerant

4
 This second concern is the focus of Asad’s recent book Formations of the Secular.

He examines the idea of an “overlapping consensus” – often a central element of the

concept of secularism – which amounts to the argument that a secular society allows

people to have different reasons for subscribing to the same independent secular ethic

(“be kind to your neighbours,” etc). The notion of an “overlapping consensus” is, of

course, taken from John Rawls, but Asad focuses on Charles Taylor’s articulation of the

concept. Taylor argues that pluralistic societies can achieve a certain level of universal

acceptance of some political principles, so long as the underlying particular justifications

for these principles are not prescribed (which he argues is the case in the work of Rawls

and Jürgen Habermas). Thus, Taylor argues, “Let people subscribe for whatever reasons

they find compelling, only let them subscribe” (1998: 52). Of course, if no universal

procedures or assumptions are required to justify the principals that are to be subscribed

to, it remains to be shown how it is these principals will be arrived at. Taylor suggests

that disagreements over what constitute shared political principles and justifications will

be resolved through rhetorical persuasion, negotiation, and compromise.

It is precisely this position towards justification of political principals and policy

that Asad takes issue with. He argues it fails to recognize the power that established legal

procedures and forms of argumentation have in enforcing the standards of legitimation in

a secular society. In a situation in which disputing parties are unwilling to compromise,

Asad writes:

negotiation simply amounts to the exchange of unequal concessions in

situations where the weaker party has no choice. What happens, the
citizens asks, to the principles of equality and liberty in the modern secular
imaginary when they are subjected to the necessities of the law? (2003: 6).

5
 Rather than associating the secular state with reason and tolerance, or as a space

for negotiations between differences, Asad finds myth and violence (22). What

constitutes a private religious view or experience, he argues, is defined within a

“heterogeneous landscape of power” (36). Thus, “from the beginning,” Asad continues,

“the liberal public sphere excluded certain kinds of people: women, subjects without

property, and members of religious minorities” (183). He perceives a re-articulation of

the Westernized understanding of “religion” in liberal secularism’s separation of a

“public sphere” from the “private” lives of individuals and particular community

identities. Asad argues that religious identity can only be isolated in some privatized

space if religious belief can be separated from religious practice. That some forms of

discourse are relegated to the private sphere implies that “the domain of free speech is

always shaped by preestablished limits” (184).

From this critique of the limits of liberal political theory, Asad’s argument

continues by advocating that those who are excluded from full participation in this public

sphere ought to be more fully included. When Asad’s work begins to suggest such

political implications, some of the problems and weakness of his theorizing become clear.

The issues that emerge can be grouped into two primary areas: political representation,

and individual subjectivity.

Political Representation: towards deprivatization?

While inclusion of differences and particularities in contemporary society is

certainly desirable, Asad’s treatment of political interaction is somewhat simplistic. To

say, as he does, that the introduction of religious discourses into the public debate “may

6
result in the disruption of established assumptions structuring debate in the public sphere”

surely understates what is at issue. When he suggests that a religious community should

be permitted to enter political debate “on its own terms,” it remains unclear what sort of

society he imagines this might occur in (185). If he means that such adherents should

have the right to express their religiously-informed opinions in public, then there is little

need to limit their freedom of expression (leaving aside the issue of hate-speech). When

one considers Asad’s critique of the concept of “overlapping consensus,” however, along

with his emphasis on collective practice for forming individual subjectivity, and his claim

that the notion of a secular public sphere is a value-laden “myth,” the implication can

only be that he requires something beyond toleration of different voices in public debate.

It is difficult to assess Asad’s own position toward the political implications of his

theorizing. Other scholars who develop arguments similar to his own, such as William E.

Connolly, intend to prevent their challenge to standard liberal theories of secularism from

being reduced to an abandonment of the category of the secular altogether. Although

convinced that secular models of the public sphere tend to be “constipated” by the

dominance of proceduralisms that drive particularity and difference out of public political

deliberations, Connolly’s concern to cultivate a “public ethos of engagement” among

diverse perspectives results in an effort to refashion secularism, not abandon it altogether

(1999: 5-6).

Asad’s scholarly intentions appear to be similar. In an essay on the work of

Wilfred Cantwell Smith, he writes,

I do not want to criticize secularist ideology here. My concern is simply to

urge that we explore some of the ways in which self-described “religious”
people may subscribe to all or part of this ideological structure no less than

7
 persons who are “irreligious” – and therefore to ask how modern men and
women of faith … may be “secular” (2001: 146).

But despite this claim, Asad’s position leaves few remaining elements of a

“public sphere” that would enable some new form of secularism to develop. For example,

when he emphasises “mutual engagement” over mere “tolerance” (147), in the absence of

a more developed political and social theory of communicative action and conflict

resolution, his analysis of religion ends on a sentimental note. For, on those occasions

when “engagement” results in disagreement or conflict, some meditating institutions will

be required – institutions that claim their legitimacy based on resources found outside of

the culture and traditions of either religious community in the dispute. And yet, we have

already seen in his critique of Taylor’s “overlapping consensus” that Asad rejects

concepts like “negotiation” and Western legal theory.

Asad wants, it would appear, to refashion secular public debate in democratic

societies, and to advocate that the voices of religious adherents marginalized by liberal

secularism be included in public debates as religious adherents. Religion, in other words,

is to be de-privatized. But if such a process is not to be reduced to a re-assertion of

universal authority and orthodoxy on the part of a religious community,4 then it is

difficult to understand how Asad could imagine anything other than the very secular state

whose assumptions he so thoroughly rejects. The basic question that emerges out of an

analysis of the political implications of Asad’s critique of secularism is: how different is

his rejection of the public/private sphere distinction from a yearning for a form of

collective life free from inner and outer boundaries? To a certain extent, Asad’s protest

against the limits placed upon religious communities in a secular state echo of the protest

that many citizens occasionally make against the limitations and failures of political

8
representation. This is not to dismiss the issues he raises, but it does put them into a wider

context.

Asad’s position contains elements that suggest a dualistic “clash of civilizations”

approach – faulting the foreign and flawed institutions of Western society for oppressing

particularity, and validating the distinctiveness of Islamic communities. One cannot deny

the racism and orientalism of the West, but the recognition of those realities cannot

dissolve the reality that the political challenges found in multicultural democratic

societies are more profound than Asad’s theory allows for. As Gillian Rose writes, “To

oppose new ethics to the old city, Jerusalem to Athens, is to succumb to loss, to refuse to

mourn” (1996: 36).

Subjectivity

The political issues I raise about Asad’s critique of the secular are also present in

subtle ways in his treatment of religious subjectivity. In his writing on Islam in the

Middle East, Asad contrasts the Western tendency to anchor the category of religion in

personal experience and belief, with modern Islamic orthodoxy. Asad states that, in the

Middle East, religion is constructed much differently, due to its complex history and

culture, but also because modern Islamic orthodoxy is more self-consciously rooted in

practice and tradition. He is careful to clarify that this should not be understood to imply

a rigid or unthinking form of discursive practice, but one that is contested and developed

through “tradition-guided reasoning” (1993: 211). The “virtuous Muslim,” he continues,

“is thus seen not as an autonomous individual who assents to a set of universalizable

maxims but as an individual inhabiting the moral space shared by all who are bound by

9
God (the umma)” (219). As such, the subjectivity of adherents to this manner of religious

practice is distinct from that idealized and constructed by North-Atlantic societies. Asad

concludes, “the ideology of political representation in liberal democracies makes it

difficult if not impossible to represent Muslims as Muslims” (2003: 173). For him, a

society that defines citizenship “only on the basis of what is common to all its members”

effectively effaces the particularities and differences of minorities.

A number of issues emerge out of this suggestion. Firstly, it is noteworthy that an

implication of this view is that those Muslims who are comfortable with the

public/private distinction in their own self-identity would not be considered a “virtuous

Muslim” according to Asad’s universalized schema. Secondly, this conceptualization of

subjectivity emphasizes being bound to one primary tradition. The identity of the Muslim

is to emerge from a shared Islamic “moral space.” Yet, is it accurate to describe

individuals in pluralistic societies as inhabiting only one such collective space or

“tradition”? Although Asad’s analysis of Middle Eastern societies does contribute some

helpful insights into the particularities of those cultures, at the same time, “Islam”

emerges as a primary unifying signifier, which serves as a stark contrast to the “West.”

Although Asad’s theory certainly intends to acknowledge diversity and complexity

within the shared “moral space” of Islam, these divisions disappear when viewed from

without. When confronting Western political and cultural institutions, Islam serves as a

grand metanarrative encompassing the subjectivity of Muslim identity. Should other

narratives and influences interfere with this process (other traditions, experiences, etc.),

they are treated as invaders.

10
 There are moments in Asad’s writing, however, in which he undercuts his own

criticism of the distinction between private and public spheres. In his essay,

“Reconfigurations of Law and Ethics in Colonial Egypt,” he focuses particular attention

on the distinction between Islamic shari‘a and (European) colonial law. In the nineteenth

century, he argues, colonial powers sought to reform the shari‘a in a manner that would

facilitate the introduction of a Westernized secular state (2003: 208ff). One aspect of

these adaptations involved the introduction of “Mixed Courts,” autonomous institutions

led by European judges that were established to govern European residents in Egypt.

Asad interprets this adaptation, not as a capitulation by a colonised people, but as a

shrewd manoeuvre on the part of Egyptian leaders to both consolidate their own power,

but also as a way to adapt Islam and its legal system to contemporary requirements. The

changes did not amount to an abandonment of the shari‘a, but relocated the focus of its

authority on personal life, where it could be clearly codified.

Asad considers part of this transformation to be mimicking the dynamics of

secular modernity, in that, as shari‘a became primarily something governing family life, a

distinction was opening up between law (the state) and morality (the responsible subject

sustained by the family) (235-6). He argues that, while the domain of morality is usually

constructed in North-Atlantic societies along lines of individual interior conscience, the

form that shari‘a followed within Egypt resisted the notion that the moral subject was

sovereign. Islamic jurists, according to Asad, consider a subject’s ability to distinguish

right and wrong to be dependent upon contextual relationships, not individual judgement.

The details of shari‘a are not simply acquired by familiarising oneself with its written

codes; rather, “increasingly correct social practice is a moral prerequisite for the

11
acquisition of certain intellectual virtues by the judge” (249). It is necessary for the

subject to be disciplined (i.e. constructed) through submission to the law. As Asad writes,

“the tradition is not based on rationally founded belief but on commitment to a shared

way of life divinely mandated” (249).

While explaining this development in Egypt, Asad notes that it emerged once

people of different traditions and practices became a prominent presence in Egyptian

society. Such circumstances, when people are drawn to associate with others

(economically, politically, socially) from beyond the boundaries of their family, lineage,

or religious tradition, are exactly what lead sociologists and political theorists to describe

the emergence of distinct social spheres of activity (see Taylor (2004): 101-107). In the

wider “public sphere,” because it is the space of a coming together of differences and

cultures, one cannot expect that all of the norms and traditions that inform one’s “private

sphere” (family, ethnicity, etc.) will be adopted by one’s conversation partners.

Asad does not deny this directly, and yet, over the course of his dismissal of the

public/private distinction, he fails to indicate what sort of politics he would prefer.

Furthermore, his suggestion that a mandated “shared way of life” is the principal source

for constructing moral space once again seems to suggest a singular form of Islamic

identity; one that is informed by a single primary source, and legitimated by a single

authoritative discourse and practice. In another essay, Asad insists that those who argue

that some particular formalities of a religious tradition are dispensable or unnecessary are

representing “the [Christian] missionary’s standpoint” (2001: 141). He suggests that the

formal practices of a given religious tradition are an essential element of the religious

adherent’s very being. If this is so, then it follows that a religious community must ensure

12
that all of its members remain observant of such traditions, and that the boundaries of

these orthodox practices are carefully guarded, for any variation from a traditional

formalities will result in an inauthentic adherence. When Asad’s argument evokes such

implications, his defence of the difference of Islamic religious practices from Western

culture becomes one that forecloses on the expression of divergent Muslim identities.

Furthermore, while Asad effectively does acknowledge the development of a

differentiation between public and private social spheres in Muslim societies, he argues

that this dynamic is completely distinct from similar dynamics in North-Atlantic

societies. But the only basis he establishes for this position is his emphasis on the

collective authority of Islam over and against the priority of the individual found in

Western political theory. Although much of Asad’s analysis of the category of religion

serves to underscore and deepen Edward Said’s claim that the Orient “was almost a

European invention” and an imaginary construct of Western discourse (1979:1-2), once

Asad’s argument begins to describe Islam and Islamic subjectivity as being universally

unified by the one collective form of practice, his work begins to take on a form of

orientalism of its own, as it minimizes internal differences for the sake of external

distinctiveness.

Thus far, this analysis of Asad’s writing has demonstrated that, although he is

correct to suggest a link between the modern concepts of “religion” and “secularism,” his

position involves problematic assumptions about Islamic subjectivity and lacks sufficient

attention to the complexities of political interaction between communities of difference. It

is one thing to argue for the legitimacy of religious adherents to publicly voice their

particular worldviews; it is quite another matter to suggest that such voices be granted

13
equal argumentative weight, without mediation, in public debate.5 To further clarify the

questions that I raise about Asad’s treatment of the secular, I will now turn to another

theorist who explores the complex relationships between religion and modern politics.

Dominique Colas on Civil Society and Fanaticism

Another genealogical study of relevance to this discussion is Dominique Colas’

Civil Society and Fanaticism (1997). This text explores the development of the concept

of “civil society,” noting its many nuanced meanings throughout Western intellectual

history. Colas, like Asad, is concerned with the relationship that the idea of a “civil

society” has with power and the state. He argues that different conceptions of “civil

society” are usually defined against what he calls “fanaticism” – discourses that reject the

mediating role of existing social representations and authorities.

Colas plots the development of the liberal concept of “toleration,” focusing much

of his attention on the disputes between factions within the Protestant reform movements

of the sixteenth century, particularly on the competing spheres of influence between

church and state. In an extended chapter on Luther’s struggle with the radical reformers,

Colas notes that Luther’s formulation of a separation between spiritual and temporal

spheres was essential to the development of the modern state (55). Unlike Asad’s more

general comments on this historical period, however, Colas attends directly to the

historical and political considerations related to Luther’s position. These contextual

tensions are important to attend to prior to asserting an overarching explanation for the

relationship between Reformation theology and the emergence of the modern state.6

To illustrate Luther’s concerns, Colas organizes this study around his disputes

with the Iconoclasts and the peasant revolt of 1525. In both circumstances, the

14
Reformer’s arguments against papal authority were developed further and more radically

by Luther’s followers in directions other than those he intended – by the burning of

artistic images, and by rejecting all forms of civil authority. As Colas writes of the

dilemma facing the leaders of the Reformation: “was this not an invitation to destroy all

authorities claiming to regulate the sacred, and did it not constitute encouragement to

abolish all mediations?” (111).

Colas states that Luther did not understand the individual’s new religious freedom

to subvert all other forms of authority, arguing that if everyone made oneself the

authoritative judge of all things, there could be no order or justice. In response, he

developed his theory of the two kingdoms, in which the temporal kingdom (civil

authority) was to be granted the power of the temporal sword – the authority to govern

daily life on the basis of the power of law. Those things necessary for salvation lay

beyond this temporal sphere, in the particular jurisdiction of the kingdom of Christ. What

was crucial for Luther’s opposition to radical Reformers like Münster and Karlstadt, was,

according to Colas, that his notion of the sacred City of God did not abolish completely

the kingdoms of the Earth. In order to restore order to the civil society, Luther felt

obliged to support the forceful and brutal suppression of those who tried to encourage the

coming of the Kingdom through violent actions and a realized eschatological vision.

Here Colas observes elements relevant to the concerns raised by Asad: the power

of the state is employed to violently crush movements that refused to accept the

limitations placed upon their religious claims in the broader public realm. Colas clearly

illustrates that the concept of toleration in the “civil society” of the sixteenth century was

not a neutral force. Those who refused to accept the limitations for social behaviour and

15
expression were labelled “fanatics” and harshly punished. “Fanaticism,” as defined by

Colas, is precisely this refusal to accept the duality of the public and private realms of the

social order. Although Colas displays a sympathetic tendency towards the defenders of

the liberal ideal of tolerance, he is by no means ignorant of the fact that such an

achievement is not a neutral position. Those who refuse the limitations of the established

“civil society” will either have to overthrow the normative authorities of that society, or

concede to operating within the boundaries of legitimation authorized by the existing

power of the civil authorities. Modern democratic societies have sought to mediate and

limit this power through such institutions as universal suffrage, free speech, and equality

under the law, although few would claim that a perfect balance has yet been achieved.

The tension between civil authority and the particularity of smaller communities

is the crucial issue at the heart of the debate over the category of the “secular.” Once the

history of development of the idea of the “secular” is illuminated, and its role as a

discursive and political power in North-Atlantic societies is shown to be anything but

neutral or universally tolerant, what remains important to recognize is that the concept

nevertheless remains a necessary and unavoidable category. As a theoretical space, it

inhabits the same dilemma occupied by the idea of a “civil society” - inevitably including

the formulation of a related notion of “fanaticism.” The Lutheran Christians and the

Iconoclasts of sixteenth century Wittenburg could not mutually coexist in the same public

sphere – at least not at the level of enforcing private beliefs onto public practices. Any

compromise position will, admittedly, amount to privileging certain assumptions against

those held by the other. This act of privileging, in the Wittenburg example, involved the

16
force of law, at least until the Iconoclasts would agree to limit their particular expressions

of their religious practices to the private sphere.

What Colas’ study intends to demonstrate, despite the admission of the use of

power and force in the formulation of the concept of a “civil society,” is the value of

accepting mediating institutions and a recognition of symbolic efficacy. In the

iconoclastic challenge to Luther, he observes a rejection of symbolic representation,

driven by a claim of an immediate encounter with the truth. Colas argues that a

representation presents an absence, but “the absence of what is represented is not a

deficit, simply a distance” (355).

It is this “distance” that summarizes the function of the secular as a category - the

acceptance that the particularities of one’s individual moral assumptions and cultural

identity cannot be translated into a broader multi-traditioned modern public sphere in an

immediate fashion. Once a subject agrees to enter into a process of argumentation in

which truth claims must be defended by procedures of reasoning that can be grasped by

individuals from differing traditions, s/he is beginning to enter into a discursive space in

which the norms of family, community, and tradition cannot be taken for granted.

Participants in such a discussion will inevitably experience a distance between their own

particular identity and the normative assumptions of others. Although Asad is correct to

alert us to the presence of this problematic in any discussion of secularism, an analysis of

his argument demonstrates that, even if he does not intend to suggest that the secular is a

category we can dispense with, his position leaves little foundation for a modern

multicultural society.7 His overarching narrative about the Reformation’s entwinement

with the modern state, which neglects to attend to the relevant historical tensions and

17
events that shape this relationship, simplifies the political and pragmatic complexities

involved in mediating interactions and disputes between different and occasionally

competing interests and cultures.

The Secular as a Tragic Category: on Asad’s reading of Benjamin

The recognition that political representation continually confronts the individual

with incompleteness and absence (divergences between ideals and lived experience,

desired interest and realized achievement, etc.) does indeed confront the modern subject

with a “distance.” Asad has helped to clarify how this tension impacts upon religious

communities, but he also displays a tendency to decry the existence of this same tension

in contemporary society. Rather than denounce secularism as a construct based upon a

rather simple interpretation of the Reformation, it is more appropriate to identify the

secular as a highly contested and shifting social space, a site of interaction and

engagement between communities of difference. Such an understanding of the category is

best understood, not as an imposition, nor as a covert Western agenda, but as a flawed

attempt to deal with complex historical and political realities. The “secular” is a tragic

category, for it is deeply imperfect and never absolutely neutral. Yet, as a descriptor for a

certain kind of public space, and as a theoretical concept, it refers to those sites in which

individuals and communities wrestle with the “distances” they encounter in social

experience.

In Formations of the Secular, Asad begins to describe secularism in tragic terms.

To assist his effort to offer an account of the secular, he contrasts two opposing aesthetic

descriptions of the concept: that of Walter Benjamin’s book The Origin of German

18
Tragic Drama, and Paul de Man’s essay “The Rhetoric of Temporality.” According to

Asad, de Man’s reading of the romantic movement in literature is one that describes a

reluctant “coming to terms with the secular” (203: 62-3). This process involves a tension

between self and nature, as the once sacred world becomes disenchanted. A formerly

magical environment loses its “hidden depths,” and the romantic must learn to accept that

the “real world” is not enchanted.

Asad perceives a different secular vision in Benjamin’s study of German baroque

drama (or Trauerspiel - literally – play of sadness). In Benjamin’s reading of this period,

the secular world is not “discovered,” but is instead “precariously assembled and lived in

contradictory fashion” (63). The tension that he describes in modern experience is not

that between the self and nature (as in de Man), but is found in the contrast between

different persons. Thus, the drama of the baroque does not assume that what is

experienced and encountered is the “real,” but rather understands everything to be

contested. These plays are driven by a tension between the dream of a restoration of a lost

world, and a fear of catastrophe. Caught between these two poles, the emphasis of the

characters is on the existing historical world. Asad argues that the emerging secular world

as Benjamin describes it does not represent the triumph of “common sense,” but the

struggle of theatrical rulers seeking desperately to inhabit an unruly situation by

establishing criteria for legitimizing authority and peaceful existence that their

contemporaries will consider worthy of acceptance.

Here it is important to recall the historical drama of Colas’ account of Luther’s

conflict with the Iconoclasts, and the resulting sadness that both sides were left with.

Although there is much to appreciate about Asad’s analysis of the secular, his argument

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neglects to explore the historical and political roots of the category’s development

sufficiently. The tensions he perceives in Benjamin’s literary study are also evident in the

social and political histories of the societies in which secularism became a political ideal.

Asad’s argument occasionally masks this when it presents the secular as primarily an

ideological myth, rather than a concept with deep material and social roots. He is correct

to argue that secularism is a construct, but reduces the forces and situations that gave

shape to this construction to his basic metanarrative on the ideology of the modern state.

Asad summarises Benjamin’s reading of Trauerspiel as follows:

this world is “secular” not because scientific knowledge has replaced

religious belief (that is, because the “real” has at last become apparent) but
because, on the contrary, it must be lived in uncertainty, without fixed
moorings even for the believer, a world in which the real and the
imaginary mirror each other. In this world, the politics of certainty is
clearly impossible (64-5).

This aesthetic description of secular experience is an appropriate orientation

towards the category of the “secular” in the study of religion. It recalls Asad’s concern to

demonstrate that the “secular” is not a neutral category, wholly distinct from what is

taken to be “religious,” but that it is contested (as Benjamin suggests, the secular is not

the “real” nor the mere result of “common sense”). Such an orientation to the category of

the secular can assist the theorist of religion to address Asad’s principal concern that the

concept functions with an overly Westernized bias against non-Western religions; a

concern related to the problematic use of the term “fanaticism” that Colas describes. As

Colas reminds us, when Luther employed the term “fanatic” [Schwärmer] against his

more radical opponents, the term meant primarily “false prophet,” but it also came to

mean “intolerant.” Of course these two meanings conflict with each other – when one

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denounces another as a “false prophet,” then this suggests that one is in possession of a

superior position. In other words, an overly comfortable willingness to condemn

another’s position as “fanaticism” may simply represent an affirmation of one’s own. As

Colas argues, “denouncing fanaticism can be the speaker’s way of claiming to have

exclusive rights on truth” (1997: 16).

For this reason, Asad’s use of Benjamin’s analysis of the Trauerspiel articulates

an important insight into the entwinement of the categories of the secular and the

religious. But some aspects of Asad’s argument are more proximate to a rejection of

secularism than to a tragic vision of the concept. Although he observes that Benjamin’s

description of tragedy is one that has no place for the myth of redemption (neither for a

return to a former “golden age,” nor a final cessation of all tension and conflict), Asad’s

description of Islamic subjectivity suggests being constructed by a single unified

discourse and practice. His treatment of individual and communal identity resists the

acceptance of inner tension, as he rejects the distinction between a “private” sphere of

particularity, and the space of intersubjective exchange and interaction that political

discourse refers to as the “public sphere.” The result is that Asad’s analysis has no way to

address disagreements between groups such as Colas’ description of Luther’s conflict

with the Iconoclasts. Effectively, his argument dissolves such political complexity by

reducing the history of the Reformation as a tool for the domination of the modern state.

If all representations – all efforts to arrive at some form of “overlapping

consensus” – are to be rejected as violent or oppressive, then there can be no space for the

work of negotiation, no forum for the “engagement” of differences that Asad seeks. By

eschewing concepts of mediation, the tone of Asad’s argument resembles his description

21
of the “myth of redemption” more than it does the tragic vision of Benjamin. Given the

implications of his position, there can only be an eschatological longing for the arrival of

a purer “otherness” from outside of the given. But the tragic vision of Benjamin that Asad

celebrates, “knows no eschatology” (1977: 66). Critical thought and modern political life

are born out of a melancholic sadness over the failure of ideal visions and assumptions. In

the face of such failures, modern politics and the many communities that comprise them

are offered the humble consolation of further reflection, and renewed practice. If people

of differing worldviews are to undertake these tasks in collaboration with others, a

concept or imagined space is required that can hold them all.

This paper has demonstrated the importance of a number of Talal Asad’s central

concerns, while rejecting some of his conclusions. It acknowledges that “civil society”

might inevitably involve relations of power that act against those deemed “fanatical,” and

it has recognised that the category of the secular might well limit the public authority of

some cultural-religious expressions and movements. And yet, to simply dismiss civil

society as “totalitarian,” or “secularism” as Western liberal imperialism, amounts to a

dualistic vision that clings to the imagined authenticity of the unrepresented against the

mediations of fallible political forms and theoretical tools. Describing the secular as a

tragic category serves to acknowledge the problematic nature of this contested social

space in contemporary multicultural societies, while retaining the conceptual tools to

describe a complex form of human experience and interaction. In the realm of the secular,

all subjects and communities encounter not only each other, but also the frustrating

“distance” that such engagements take them from familiar norms and assumptions. Such

22
is ongoing function of the category of the secular. That it remains a flawed tool is indeed

tragic.

References

Arnal, William E. (2000). Definition. Guide to the Study of Religion, 21-34. London:
Cassell.

Asad, Talal. (2003). Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity. Stanford:
Stanford University Press.
-- (2001). Reading a Modern Classic: W.C. Smith’s ‘The Meaning and End of Religion’.
In Hent de Vries & Samuel Weber (eds.), Religion and Media, 131-147. Stanford:
Stanford University Press.
-- (1993). Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in
Christianity and Islam. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press.

Bhargava, Rajeev (ed.). (1998). Secularism and its Critics. Delhi: Oxford University
Press.

Benjamin, Walter. (1977). The Origin of German Tragic Drama. Translated by John
Osborne. London: Verso.

Cavanaugh, William T. (1995). A Fire Strong Enough to Consume the House: The Wars
of Religion and the Rise of the State. In Modern Theology 11 (4): 397-420.

Colas, Dominique. (1997 [1st French ed.1992]). Civil Society and Fanaticism: Conjoined
Histories. Translated by Amy Jacobs. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Connolly, William E. (1999). Why I am not a Secularist. Minneapolis: University of

Minnesota Press.

Milbank, John. (1990). Theology and Social Theory. London: Blackwell.

Rose, Gillian. (1996). Mourning Becomes the Law: Philosophy and Representation.
Cambridge University Press.

Said, Edward W. (1979). Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books.

Smith, Jonathan Z. (1998). Religion, religions, religious. In Mark C. Taylor (ed.), Critical
Terms for Religious Studies, 269-284. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

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 Taylor, Charles. (2004). Modern Social Imaginaries. Durham: Duke University Press.
-- (1998). Modes of Secularism. In Rajeev Bhargava (ed.), Secularism and its Critics, 31-
53. Delhi: Oxford University Press.

1
An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 2003 annual meeting of the Canadian Society for the
Study of Religion, Dalhousie University, Halifax. I would like to thank the following for their helpful
comments and suggestions: Bill Arnal, Willi Braun, Alyda Faber, Darlene Juschka, Kenneth Mackendrick,
Katja Stößel, Philip Ziegler, and an anonymous reviewer.
2
For such an examination of the category “religion,” see: Smith (1998) and Arnal (2000).
3
The nature of secularism is a particularly intense political debate in India at present. See Bhargava,
(1998).
4
This is exactly the tactic undertaken by some of Asad’s readers. See Milbank (1990) and Cavanaugh
(1995) for Christian versions of this strategy. The Hindu nationalist ideology of the BJP party in India is an
example of a Hindu reassertion of orthodoxy against the Indian secular state.
5
Connolly’s argument for the cultivation “agonistic respect” between different subjective positions is
certainly an attractive concept for a pluralistic democracy, but such a virtue in no way resolves the issues of
legitimation or deliberative procedure. See Connolly (1999).
6
Asad’s treatment of the Reformation in Europe, and the resulting political institutions (division between
Church and State, etc.) is very brief, and yet a great deal of his theory relies upon his interpretation of this
period. In Genealogies of Religion, shifts in ecclesiology during this period are reduced to events in the
service of the emergence of the centralized nation state, with little attention to the historical situations
shaping those events (1993: 205-207).
7
Asad contrasts the modern legal sense of being “accountable to an authority, to be prepared to give
justifications and excuses for one’s actions” with his preferred concept of habitus, which “is not something
one accepts or rejects” but “is part of what one essentially is and must do” (2003: 95-96). Such a seamless
existence might be possible within close-knit communities, but few societies today share a single common
habitus (moral and political practice). The assertion of such a political subjectivity and theory lacks
sufficient attention to the need for a mediatorial role between communities of differing traditions and
practices.

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