November 17, 2010 Meeting Notes
With Chapter 3, "Postcolonial Community or Democratic Responsibility," a clearer understanding of the trajectory of Abeysekara’s project began to emerge for our discussion group, further elaboration of the centrality of disavowing the search for origins (as Foucault would express) or the transcendental signified (Derrida). This concept appears in greater relief as Abeysekara directly addresses the aporia of democracy. The origin of the concept remains perpetually unattainable yet is emphatically clung to, an apparition without efficacy, which none the less mandates, in the views of Stout, constant revision and dispute. Such a remembered/revised state, as Derrida would suggest, never attains the imagined origin but is a constant deferment of actualization. And the argument that critique cannot “help us to think about the uninheriting of our pasts” references an underlying awareness that the concepts of history and democracy are part of a Western project and not universalizable.

Given that these concepts are taken for granted as essential to the human experience, the problem with genealogy is that it merely validates the idea, which should itself be deconstructed and mourned. The Foucaultian/Nietzschean project of historical problematization eventually becomes a self-reproducing activity that remains embedded in historiology. However, the group still had questions regarding the apolitical nature of such a project? Abeysekara’s argument seems to be, that problematization only enforces the narrative of history, though it may subvert normative views of democracy, etc. it offers no corrective and remains situated in the historical paradigms it analyzes.

Finally, the group found the concept of the “secret other” which demands absolute responsibility highly compelling. This relates to the past week where Nietzsche’s critique of love for the neighbor figured strongly into our discussion. Here when one’s absolute obedience is given to the secret other (which is democracy) all other loyalties must be set aside. The implication is that “absolute responsibility [becomes] absolute irresponsibility” and the notion of democracy as universally responsible cannot be maintained. In anticipation of the upcoming chapters the group began engaging the concept of the spectre as articulated in Derrida’s Spectres of Marx that is central to the concept of mourning.

Chapter 2, “The Aporias of Secularism,” challenges the secularist appeal to "history" (and historicity) as the liberative means to re-thinking the political. In detailing several secularist impulses to reconstruct a “true” or “original” ideal (a “transcendental signifier”) that has been sullied during the course of history—Atheist appeals to the law in challenging American currency’s “Trust in God,” Žižek’s proposal for a return to an Anti-Christian Pauline Community—Dr. Abeysekara proposes that looking to history to pursue new political and ethical possibilities is both overly reductive and belies the violence embodied by historical tracts. Our discussion led us to understand one of the aporias of secularism is that its backward gaze in arguing against religiosity in the public sphere ignores the historical dialectic between secularism and religiosity—it seeks a “name without a name.” In grappling with the concepts of history/historicization, we entertained the possibility of history as the mechanism or tool for the perpetuation of the aporia. In Aporias, Derrida refers to the aporia as endurance—it binds the polarities of history. Thus, thinking in terms of "history" and genealogy structure the continued existence of the aporia, and—in line with Dr. Abeysekara’s critique of the impossibility of genealogical problematization to offer new visions of the political—inhibit new possibilities. The discussion worked towards deciphering the idea of history-as-problem. Central to it were questions pertaining to the problematizing of problematization (i.e. calling out the internal contradictions within the reliance upon genealogy as liberative) and the possibility of thinking in terms other than "history." It would certainly behoove us, as Dr. Abeysekara proposes, to interrogate this reliance, and we contemplated if and how we might go beyond (or un-inherit) it.

The polarity of self and other, and the democratic/secular reliance upon alterity in constructing politics of tolerance, comprised much of the rest of our discussion. Simply put, the argument of the aporia here is that pluralism threatens democracy in that it affords possibilities of being that can infringe upon the stability of freedom and the nation. Tolerance, predicated upon the praising of the West-as-Secular, is a temporary (in that tolerance frequently shifts forms) solution, but ultimately is constructed upon a normative “us” extending, by way of generosity, tolerance to a distant other. We found JZ Smith’s points from his essay “What a Difference a Difference Makes” rather helpful here. If we re-consider the viability of pluralism and politics of tolerance (which is situated in a distinction between self and absolute other) and take up Smith’s claim that ultimately a theory of the other is really a theory of the self, we might be able to re-think the political. We are looking forward to taking up intersubjectivity and responsibility in the next chapter.

Chapter One of The Politics of Postsecular Religion: Mounring Secular Futures, “Thinking the Un-improvable, Thinking the Un-inheritable”, begins with Derrida’s sweeping claim that “’democracy is a promise.’” (1) Our discussion never even made it to the idea / word / concept of a ‘promise’! “Democracy” is what piqued our interest, and in particular, how Abeysekara was using Derrida’s particular usage of this word – what he later calls a “name”? “Democracy”, to me, refers to a political system, a method even, developed by the ancient Greeks in which governing power is derived from the people being governed. Democracy is first and foremost a political system, although it has a powerful rhetoric associated, or perhaps synonymous, with its name. It is the rhetoric surrounding and encompassing “democracy” that Abeysekara is concerned with, but where is hisdefinition? Who is his presumed audience? This lack of definitional and audience transparency is troubling mostly because of Abeysekara’s thesis: “This book is an attempt to think seriously about whether we can or cannot inherit such deferred futures of our democracy.” (1)

From that statement, Abeysekara introduces his primary concepts of “inheriting” and “un-inheriting” as well as the application of the philosophical / logic concept of aporia to the monoliths of "democracy" and "modernity". “Un-inheriting” is defined as a method, a thought experiment: “…a pathway of reflecting upon the postcolonial conceptions of heritage, history, and identity that is not reducible to a ready-made binary of remembering / forgetting or embracing / abandoning.” (2-3) Abeysekara also defines “un-inheriting” as “mourning secular futures.” (3) The idea underlying the necessity of “un-inheriting” is that vast conceptual swamps – such as “democracy”, “modernity”, “human rights”, “liberalism”, etc. – are inseparable from their names. Thus, their constant conceptual rehabilitation and /or reconstruction is motivated by a belief in some essentialized nature (of the concept) inherent in the name: “In that sense the name is never expendable or exhaustible.” (4) This “logic of inheritance” is deeply questionable to Abeysekara. He goes on to posit that by examining the aporia of “our post-colonial modernity” (i.e. thename of secular democracy), and “un-inheriting” the "heritage of democracy", we might be able to envision, nay produce, an “un-heard of future.” (7) I think we all look forward to the unfolding of these ideas.

Written by Ravenna Michalsen