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Project

Emancicpation or Exclusion? Secularism as a Critical Practice

As the presence of Islamic immigrants within Europe has intensified, religious critique, as a discursive practice deployed within a secular framework, takes on an increasingly antagonistic stance towards Islam. Secular critiques of religion frame the issues at stake in terms of shifting boundaries between secular emancipation and orthodox religious values. However, this antagonistic religious critique produces an increasing cultural hegemony which excludes religious actors, especially Muslims, from public discourse. This research project is concerned with the exclusionary practices stemming from a secular framework; however, it does not wish to evaluate this exclusion from an external normative viewpoint, but rather from the paradoxical effect that exclusionary critical practices produce with regard to secularism’s guiding aim of emancipation. More specifically, I will analyse the complexity of contemporary varieties of secularism and the discursive practices that they use to criticise religion. This firstly allows for a critical analysis of the way secular discourse presents itself as antagonistic vis-à-vis religion, and constructs antithetical religious and non-religious identities. Secondly, this allows me to reflect upon the conditions necessary for secularism to foster its emancipatory aim, by functioning as a tool for social critique, available for non-religious and religious actors, aiming to prevent obstacles to human flourishing.

Date:1 Oct 2014 →  7 May 2020
Keywords:Emancipation or Exclusion, critical Practice, Secularism
Disciplines:Other philosophy, ethics and religious studies not elsewhere classified, Theory and methodology of philosophy, Philosophy, Ethics
Project type:PhD project