Alexander van de Sijpe and David Alvarez are organising a reading group about postsecular perspectives in literary studies.
The first session will be held next Monday, March 10.
Traditional secularization narratives suggest that, under the influence of modern trends—rationalization, scientific innovation, increasing prosperity, etc.—religious societies have gradually secularized. However, over the past decades, scholars have increasingly questioned this classical understanding of religion and secularity. Postsecular thinkers such as Charles Taylor (A Secular Age, 2007) and Talal Asad (Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity, 2003) challenge the conventional conceptualizations of religion and secularity, as well as the binary opposition between them. Taylor critiques “subtraction stories” that assume secular society emerges through the mere disappearance of religion; instead, he argues that secularization is partly shaped by developments within religious traditions themselves. Asad, on the other hand, contends that the concepts of “religion” and “secularity” are the product of discursive shifts in early modernity and are ultimately the creation of a secular ideology.
These insights are also highly relevant for literary studies. They invite us to reconsider religion and secularity—not as fixed categories, but as concepts shaped by literary texts and literary scholars alike. With this in mind, we are organizing a reading group consisting of four sessions, in which we will engage with key postsecular texts and explore how they might enrich our research practices.
The first session will take place on Monday, March 10, at 1:00 PM in Panopticon (Room 2.23, Blandijn, Campus Boekentoren). The first chapter of Taylor’s A Secular Age, titled “The Bulwarks of Belief.” will be the topic of our first discussion. The following dates can be scheduled by mutual agreement.
If you are interested in participating, please email Alexander.VandeSijpe@UGent.be. A digital copy of the chapter will be provided. The reading group will be conducted in English.