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.
This year for the 2010-11 Lester Lectureship the Religious Studies Department of the University of Colorado, Boulder has the privilege to host Dr. Ananda Abeysekara. The lectureship has been organized by Dr. Ruth Mas, professor of Contemporary Islam in the Religious Studies Department and Affiliated Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Colorado, and consists of a graduate panel of student fellows. Preceding Dr. Abeysekara’s visit this panel will be involved in weekly seminars designed to critically and creatively engage his most recent publication, The Politics of Postsecular Religion: Mourning Secular Futures. During each weekly seminar discussion group leaders will elucidate significant concepts from this work and examine the voices of Abeysekara’s interlocutors.
The question of political and religious identity as it is constructed in monastic institutions and set in opposition to society at large is one important example of how Abeysekara has framed the issues of power, self-definition, and violence in Buddhist culture. His work runs parallel to such contemporary theorists and philosophers as Talal Asad, Alasdair McIntyre, and David Scott. And similar to these scholars his theoretical models are strongly influenced by the writings of Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, as well as other notable post-modernists. Further, Abeysekara is in discourse with such leaders in the field of Buddhist identity, political discourse, and ritual expression as S.J. Tambiah and Gananath Obeyesekere. For all these reasons, we engage his work as a highly relevant contribution to the study of past and present articulations of power and identity in post-colonial South and Southeast Asian Buddhist traditions. In the broader context of Religious Studies, Abeysekara has raised pertinent questions concerning the tools of analytical inquiry, how scholars employ theories of analysis, interpretation, and critique. With all this in mind, the aims of this lectureship are simple: To engage the discourse of a scholar who is helping to shape the future of our field, to contend with the same concepts by which he is occupied, and, to not defer our debates and conversations to any other time than now.
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