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