© Columbia University Press
The Politics of Postsecular Religion: Mourning Secular Futures
May, 2008
Cloth, 324 pages,
ISBN: 978-0-231-14290-8
$60.00
/ £41.50
"Essential." — Choice
"Thought-provoking . . . a refreshing postcolonial standpoint that places European history and thought in a contemporary global context." — Charles Whitney, Clio
"Ananda Abeysekara is an exceptional writer, weaving together critical engagements with European enlightenment and secular thinkers with close examinations of political settings in South Asia. I am convinced that this will be a very important and, indeed, seminal work." — William E. Connolly, Krieger-Eisenhower Professor of Political Science, Johns Hopkins University
"The Politics of Postsecular Religion is a rigorous and original piece of work. It requires of the reader a serious engagement with its content. It is not a fast-paced book, but that is its strength." — Dipesh Chakrabarty, Lawrence A. Kimpton Distinguished Service Professor of History and South Asian Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago
"Ananda Abeysekara offers a fresh approach to rethinking the role of religion in emancipatory politics. In probing new conceptions of a secular and democratic future in religious traditions, he challenges the hijacking of religion by fundamentalists and makes a stirring call to readers to 'un-inherit' the legacies of a past inscribed as secular and historical. The book eloquently demonstrates the pathways to responsibility and collective conscience by such forms of active forgetting." — Gauri Viswanathan, Class of 1933 Professor in the Humanities, Columbia University, and author of Outside the Fold, Conversion, Modernity, and Belief
"The Politics of Postsecular Religion is a subtle and intellectually energetic meditation on the crisis of democracy and secularism in our times. In breaking away from contemporary critiques of religion that are predominantly genealogical, Ananda Abeysekara points us in new directions: toward Derridean deconstruction and the aporetic task of 'mourning secular futures.' The conflictual legacy of religion in postcolonial societies like Sri Lanka is central to this challenge. This is an enormously exciting and rewarding book." — Rajeswari Sunder Rajan, Global Distinguished Professor of English, New York University