Secularisms 9780822388890

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S E C U L A R I S M S

˜

Social Text books Edited for the collective by Brent Edwards, Randy Martin, Andrew Ross, and Ella Shohat

S E C U L A R I S M S ˜

Edited by Janet R. Jakobsen and Ann Pellegrini

d u ke u n i ve rsi t y pre s s ˜d u rha m a n d l o n d o n 2 0 0 8

© 2008 Duke University Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper ♾ Designed by Katy Clove Typeset in Minion by Tseng Information Systems, Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data appear on the last printed page of this book.

permissions/subventions: An earlier version of chapter 3 appeared as “Women between Community and State: Some Implications of the Uniform Civil Code Debates in India,” Social Text 18, no. 4 (2000): 55–82. An earlier version of chapter 4 appeared as “Impossible Assimilations, American Liberalism, and Jewish Difference: Revisiting Jewish Secularism,” American Quarterly 59, no. 3 (2007): 817–42. An earlier version of chapter 5 appeared as “Secularism, Feminism, and Imperialism: Charlotte Perkins Gilman and the Progress Narrative of U.S. Feminism,” in Culture and Redemption: Religion, the Secular, and American Literature (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006), 161–80. An earlier version of chapter 8 appeared as “Secularizing the Pain of Footbinding: Missionary and Medical Staging of the Universal Body,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 75, no. 1 (2007): 1–24. Earlier versions of the introduction and of chapters 1, 6, 7, 9, and 13 also appeared in Social Text 18, no. 3 (2000).

For Christina Crosby

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

ix INTRODUCTION

times like these Janet R. Jakobsen and Ann Pellegrini 1

PART 1 SECUL AR INTERVENTIONS CHAPTER ONE

(un)veiling feminism Afsaneh Najmabadi 39 CHAPTER TWO

secularism and laicism in turkey Taha Parla and Andrew Davison 58 CHAPTER THREE

women between community and state: some implications of the uniform civil code debates Rajeswari Sunder Rajan 76 CHAPTER FOUR

other moderns, other jews: revisiting jewish secularism in america Laura Levitt 107 CHAPTER FIVE

disappearances: race, religion, and the progress narrative of u.s. feminism Tracy Fessenden 139 CHAPTER SIX

late secularism Robert J. Baird 162

CHAPTER SEVEN

what tangled webs we weave: science, secularism, and religion in contemporary india Banu Subramaniam 178

PART 2 SECUL AR REL ATIONS: MICRONARRATIVES CHAPTER EIGHT

secularizing the pain of footbinding in china: missionary and medical stagings of the universal body Angela Zito 205 CHAPTER NINE

ghostly appearances Geeta Patel 226 CHAPTER TEN

“ the quick, the dead, and the yet unborn ” : untimely sexualities and secular hauntings Molly McGarry 247

PART 3 PUBLIC ALTERNATIVE S CHAPTER ELEVEN

toward secular diaspora: relocating religion and politics Tyler Roberts 283 CHAPTER TWELVE

feminisms and secularisms Kathleen Sands 308 CHAPTER THIRTEEN

continuity or rupture? an argument for secular britain Ranu Samantrai 330 BIBLIOGRAPHY

353 CONTRIBUTORS

387 INDEX

391

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This volume has truly been a collaborative effort. We are thankful to our contributors for the richness of their essays, their intellectual generosity, and their long patience. So many friends and colleagues buoyed us during the several phases of this project. We are grateful to Social Text for providing a home for the special issue that was this volume’s first life in 2000. We especially want to thank these former and current members of the Social Text collective for their shaping vision: Randy Martin, José Esteban Muñoz, Bruce Robbins, and Michael Warner. We want to express our gratitude, as well, to Ken Wissoker at Duke University Press, who shepherded Secularisms to completion, and to Molly Balikov, Courtney Berger, and Mandy Earley for their editorial assistance. Aamir Mufti and Mark Hulsether made intelligent and gracious contributions to the project at various points. Faye Ginsburg and Angela Zito gave us the opportunity to present material from the volume at the Bridging Seminar of New York University’s Center for Religion and Media in fall 2006; we thank them and the other participants in the seminar for their insights. E. Grace Glenny provided invaluable research assistance; we could not have finished this volume without her. Lucy Trainor and Kaleigh Dumbach did the incredibly useful and always complex work of preparing the manuscript in its final stages. David Eng offered friendship and sage advice throughout. Julia BryanWilson provided valued emotional support during the penultimate stage of this process. Conversations with Laura Levitt and David Harrington Watt clarified issues around modernity and fundamentalism. Christina Crosby read many drafts of the introduction and sustained us with her commitment to us and our project. Perhaps most of all, her resolve in recovering from a catastrophic injury and her determination to create a new life continue to inspire us both.

INTRODUCTION

times like these ˜ Janet R. Jakobsen and Ann Pellegrini

This volume began its life as a special issue of the journal Social Text in the year 2000 entitled “World Secularisms at the Millennium.”¹ The timing was no accident. The year 2000 is anno Domini, the second millennium after the birth of Christ. Thus, at a time when the entire world was supposedly focused on the turn in the calendar from 1999 to 2000, we wondered how a particular way of telling time had become so unremarkably universal. What, we asked, were the implications of the fact that the world secular calendar—the calendar of global finance and world politics—was also specifically Christian time? Wasn’t secularism supposed to be a discourse of universal influence precisely because it was free of the particularities of religion? How did it come to pass that secularism as a “world” discourse was also intertwined with one particular religion? This opening paradox became the occasion for a far-reaching set of inquiries into the way the religious and the secular have been constituted in relation to each other in modernity and, indeed, as modernity. It was not our intention to tell the one supposedly true narrative of secularism. Rather, by questioning what is meant by secular and what is meant by religious, we had hoped to disturb the academic order of things, a disturbance that might lead to new support for secularism and, perhaps, to new secularisms, but could also lead to new relations to religion. This hope remains, but it also seems to us that the stakes of such a disturbance have been ratcheted up by more recent historical events. Although the Y2K bug that was feared to endanger computer transactions with the turn from ’99 to ’00 never materialized, the beginning of the new millennium brought new fears with the attacks of September 11, 2001. Along with these fears came a new interest in secularism. While the level

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of violence that these attacks represented was not new for people in many areas of the world, the attacks did represent a major change for the United States. Destroying the World Trade Center and damaging the Pentagon, the attacks of that day were directed against the economic and military power of the United States, the sole superpower in the world. Because the response of the country was to establish an ongoing “war on terrorism,” the attacks also initiated a major shift in geopolitics, one that has led to wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and to major shifts in domestic policy in the United States and Europe in the name of “security.” Moreover, because the attacks were often understood to be motivated by a politicized form of Islam, the question of secularism took on a new intensity. If religion is taken to be one of the primary roots of “terrorism”—and religion is written about much more frequently than economics, racism, or the aftereffects of colonialism as an explanation for terrorist violence— is secularism the answer to the problem? The idea that religion, and specifically politicized Islam, is responsible for the problem of violence in today’s world is deeply indebted to the fact that what is called the “secularization thesis” in academic parlance is accepted as common sense well beyond the boundaries of the academy. Secularism, with its promise of universal reason, is widely hailed by both the right and the left as the most powerful protection from the dangers of fundamentalism.² Specifically, secularism is central to the Enlightenment narrative in which reason progressively frees itself from the bonds of religion and in so doing liberates humanity. This narrative poses religion as a regressive force in the world, one that in its dogmatism is not amenable to change, dialogue, or nonviolent conflict resolution. This Enlightenment narrative separates secularism from religion and through this separation claims that secularism, like reason, is universal (in contrast to the particularism of religion). However, this narrative also places secularism in a particular historical tradition, one that is located in Europe and grows out of Christianity. The most famous argument for this connection between the development of what came to be called secularism and a specifically Christian culture is probably that of Max Weber in his now classic text, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. As Weber observes, secularism’s freedom from religion was also freedom for the market. This market freedom was not fully secular but was, in fact, tied to a specific form of religious activity—reformed Protestantism—and the practice of what Weber terms “worldly asceticism.”³ Worldly asceticism means those processes of bodily Jakobsen and Pellegrini

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regulation or bodily disciplines (to shift to Michel Foucault’s terms) that emerged in modernity.⁴ Worldly asceticism in its market form was only indirectly related to the religious; one practiced it not to gain salvation but merely to demonstrate an already achieved salvation promised in Calvinist predestination. Thus it could form a practice at once secular and religious. Secularism and religion are in this sense coimplicated. Recognizing the co-origination of secularism and market-reformed Protestantism unmasks the national and religious particularities that have come to pass as a universal secular. This secularism was linked at its origins to a particular religion and a particular location, and it was maintained through a particular set of practices. Our argument is not that this secularism is really (essentially) religion in disguise, but rather that in its dominant, market-based incarnation it constitutes a specifically Protestant form of secularism.⁵ The claim of the secularization narrative is that the secularism that develops from these European and Christian origins is, in fact, universal and fully separate from Christianity. As a number of critics have now argued, however, and as we shall see below, there are reasons to doubt this claim.⁶ Secularism remains tied to a particular religion, just as the secular calendar remains tied to Christianity. This volume thus sets out to critique the concept of secularism in this specifically Protestant form. We focus on Protestantism not to the exclusion of other possibilities, but because this dominant narrative forms the collective imagination of what the supposedly universal secularism is, thereby constraining imagination of what other possibilities might be. If what gives secularism its moral import is its promise of universality and reasonableness as distinct from the narrowness and fanaticism of religion, what does it mean that this universalism and the rationality that it embodies are actually particular (to European history) and religious (Protestant) in form? If secularism is a “world” discourse, what kind of world does it imagine, and what kind of universalism does it put in place? Does secularism protect against conflict? Or, if secularism is not, in fact, universal, is it one of the terms through which the conflicts of today’s world are enacted? In light of the implication of the religious in the secular, and vice versa, has there ever been anything that could accurately be called secularism? And is secularism only one thing? Secularisms explores these questions. In so doing, we hope to open up new ways of thinking about the challenges of our contemporary moment.

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THE TRADITIONAL SECUL ARIZATION NARRATIVE

We begin this project by briefly outlining the key elements in the dominant narrative of secularization. We do so because this narrative is part of the doxa of everyday life in the United States. It is adhered to “religiously” in popular culture, and although there has been a veritable explosion of work on this topic since we published “World Secularisms at the Millennium,” the secularization narrative still forms the presumed context in many fields of study. Even in fields like anthropology, in which the narrative has been actively questioned, the problem of how to disentangle the set of associations that make up the idea of the secular is far from resolved.⁷ The secularization thesis makes for a narrative that connects a number of elements—most notably, modernity, reason, and universalism—into a network that has strong moral as well as descriptive implications. The broad historical narrative generally associated with secularization develops these moral implications by describing change over time. The story is usually located in Europe; it often begins with the Renaissance, when the “rebirth of reason” challenged the traditional authority of the church.⁸ These challenges were extended with the Protestant Reformation, a great upheaval that broke the hegemonic status of the church. The Reformation was not a uniform development and incited a number of sectarian wars (known as “wars of religion”) as different factions fought over which religious framework would be enforced through state authority. These wars could ultimately be resolved only when reason replaced religion as the basis for political power, so that multiple religious communities could coexist in a single society. Religion could remain a force of personal commitment, but reason was needed to create political and legal authority. These moves away from religion and toward the secular reached full flower in the European Enlightenment and in the formation of modern nation-states. Implicit within the narrative is the idea that each step forward in time also marks a moral advance: a move away from religious authority and toward greater intellectual freedom and more knowledge, leading eventually to governance by reasoned debate and ultimately to democracy and peace.⁹ This narrative presents various elements as coming together to produce the process known as secularization. Different versions and traditions focus on different elements; here we delineate those that contribute to the moral and political force of the overall narrative:¹⁰

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(1) Rationalization: Secularization occurs as social systems, including religious systems, become more rational over time. Specifically, rationalization implies a movement away from religious dogma and toward the free operation of reasoned inquiry. (2) Enlightenment: The free pursuit of reason produces the possibility of enlightenment, the production of knowledge that is not bound by the constraints of religious dogma. (3) Social-Structural Differentiation: With the evolution of knowledge comes the possibility of differentiating specific tasks into different sections of society, so that, for example, the functions of the church can be separated from those of the state. Such a differentiation can, in the words of Robert Bellah’s classic secularization thesis, make a society “more autonomous” in relation to the environment. (4) Freedom: As a descriptive term, autonomy implies transcendence over the constraints of any given environment, but it is also a moral term. Rationalization is thus tied to the idea of freedom—in particular, freedom from religious authority—as well as to broader concepts of emancipation and liberation. (5) Privatization: This freedom must operate in the public sphere so as to produce the possibility of democracy and of the rule of law (rather than dogma). In the modern, secular, and enlightened world, religion is contained in the private sphere of personal belief, and in the strongest version of the narrative, religion will eventually fade away in importance as secular reason becomes a universal discourse. (6) Universalism: The European Enlightenment produces a form of reason that transcends religion and is universally valid. Although many religions make universal claims, these claims are themselves particular to the adherents of that religion, whereas reason, shared by all human beings, transcends such cultural particularities. This form of reason, liberated from the constraints of religious dogma, opens the door to the settlement of disagreement through reasoned debate rather than through enforced belief. (7) Modernization and Progress: All of these elements together produce the modern era, which is marked by progress over the past. Secularization implies movement forward in time, which is what allows for

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the strange common sense that some societies are “stuck in time” or “caught in a different century” despite the fact that they exist contemporaneously with societies understood to be more modern.¹¹

The conjunction between changes in social formation and the meaning ascribed to the passage of time is what provides the moral framework for secularization. If over time secularization allows societies to increase in autonomy, then secularization implies progress, whereas the continuation (or, still worse, the reassertion) of religion maintains constraint and implies stasis or even regression. This temporal division implies a simultaneous moral division. Those societies that are “ahead” are also understood to be “better”—more rational and freer, for example—than those that are “behind.” The power of this narrative comes from the network of binary oppositions established by its central terms. Each term stands in contradistinction to its opposite, and these distinctions are linked together in a mutually reinforcing manner. A secular society is one not bound by religion. Thus a network of associations is established between the religious-secular opposition and that between bondage and freedom. Similarly, the division between universalism and particularity ties secularism to the universal and religion to the particular. Universalism as a marker of modernization and progress then situates religion as opposed to progress. As Catherine Bell has persuasively demonstrated, such networks of oppositions form “a loosely integrated whole in which each element ‘defers’ to another in an endlessly circular chain of reference.”¹² Because of the circular nature of the network, the normative value ascribed to any one element as its opposite also accrues to the other elements. The secularization thesis remains a site of manifold academic and political investments precisely because of this set of associations. To give up on the idea of secularization is to raise the specter of abandoning the concepts of freedom, universalism, modernization, and progress. These are high stakes. And this is why the empirical question of secularization per se is not the focus of our project. Secularization can be defined in a number of ways—as the progressive shift of theological concepts into nonreligious forms and contexts (such as the idea of the sovereign God moving into the idea of the sovereign state) or simply as the decline of religion, that is, the progressive retreat of religion from social significance. There are extensive sociological debates, and interventions that attempt to mediate those debates, over whether secularization is or is not happening Jakobsen and Pellegrini

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(or perhaps both is and is not happening).¹³ We are interested instead in the question of secularism. Specifically, we are concerned with secularism as a discourse that invokes powerful moral claims and evinces manifold political effects. We hope to intervene in the sets of binaries that give secularism as a discourse its moral force and that legitimate the political power deployed in its name. Secularism in this regard can thus be thought of as a political project that deploys the concept of the secular, and it may do so regardless of the empirical state of secularization. Another way to put this is that we take secularism as a discourse in the Foucauldian sense: a set of material and linguistic practices that work across multiple institutions. Thus, although the state and the law are central to the discourse of secularism, secularism is not reducible to doctrines like that of the separation of church and state. Rather, secularism works across other institutional sites like that of the mainstream media, civil life and ceremony, and the market.¹⁴ The very fact that secularization is not empirically verifiable or complete can establish secularism as a moral and political goal, one that can be used to enforce the projects of those who desire secularism against the moral claims and political projects of those who do not match this standard. Secularism is itself part of a larger political project, one that aims to establish modernity as a hegemonic “political goal,” to use the terms of Talal Asad.¹⁵ Asad argues that “the secular” is a concept “which emerged historically in a particular way and was assigned specific practical tasks” within the political project of modernity.¹⁶ This volume, with its stress on plural secularisms, investigates the way in which these particular tasks have worked themselves out in a variety of specific contexts in relation to the overarching narrative that gives them both political authority and affective power. Because it works through oppositions, the traditional secularization narrative does not just establish the meaning of secularism; it also by implication makes claims about the meaning of religion. As recent critiques of the category of religion have shown, and as Robert Baird’s essay in this book makes clear, the idea of religion as a universal category of human experience does not precede the Enlightenment, but is, instead, an Enlightenment project.¹⁷ In other words, the production of the category of religion as we know it today was also part of the production of secularism. In a close reading of David Hume’s The Natural History of Religion, Baird shows that Hume elaborated the category of religion as part of the universal experience that marked the unity of human beings. This univeri n t ro d u c t i o n : t i m e s li k e t hese

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sality of religion could only be seen from a point of view that was outside of any particular religion, from a perspective that was secular. Conceptualizing religion as universal gave Hume a means of solving the problem of cultural differences presented by eighteenth-century explorers’ reports of cultural variation. All of this variation “just” represented particular instances of the universal category. This meant, however, that practices across cultures had to be assimilated to the category of religion. The problems of assimilation are acute. Hume modeled the category of religion on Protestant Christianity. As a result, practices and commitments that may not even involve reference to a god are nonetheless drawn into and through a Protestant understanding of religion, with belief and faith at the conceptual center. This way of recognizing other religions produces conceptual and practical distortions. Buddhism, for instance, is nontheistic and yet is widely regarded as one of the major “world religions.” The use of this Protestant heuristic can be seen today in U.S. public discourse where the most common way of speaking of multiple religious groups is to refer to “faiths” (as in the “Jewish faith,” despite the fact that most forms of Judaism prioritize practice over faith). The assimilation of such a wide variety of practices to a single category did not just produce conceptual distortions; it also justified colonial violence. Working from Protestantism as the generic model of religion entails that other particular religions must either conform to this model or suffer for the comparison. This is because the category of universal religion can simultaneously allow that all humans are alike in their propensity toward religion and serve to differentiate among humans on the basis of their different religions. For example, David Chidester has shown that at different stages in the colonial project, the peoples of southern Africa were treated as if they had no religion at all, had a religion similar to the ancient roots of Christianity, or exhibited a fundamentally different species of the genus religion. In this last stage, when colonial rule was consolidated, southern Africans were seen as essentially like European Christians in that they “had” a religion, but also as essentially different in their particular religion. In this, the religion of Europeans is understood to be both reasonable and on the path of civilization’s progress toward secularism. The religious difference of the southern Africans did not so much set them outside this progress narrative as place them “behind” and in need of Europe’s civilizing mission. The positing of religious difference thus formed a crucial component in legitimating unequal treatment for Jakobsen and Pellegrini

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southern Africans—and all in the name of progress and emancipation, a freedom that is supposed to be extended in the shift from religion to secularism.¹⁸ According to conventional ways of telling the story, secularism does not just promise the progress brought about by emancipation. It also promises peace, or at least a more peaceful resolution to conflicts. Because secularism is based on a rationality shared by all human beings, it provides a universal discourse, whereas religions are held to be the expressions of particular cultures. Conflicts that arise between particular cultures seem irresolvable except through violence because there are no shared terms on which to base a resolution. By contrast, the universality of rationality implies that conflicts can be resolved, as Jürgen Habermas posits, “by the force of the better argument.”¹⁹ Such reasoned debate paves the way for modern democratic government, allowing political debate to take the place of religious authority in the formulation of state policy. If secularism represents rationality, universality, modernity, freedom, democracy, and peace, then religion (unless thoroughly privatized) can only present a danger to those who cherish these values. So the story goes, but how adequate is it in either historical or ethico-political terms? SECUL AR CHALLENGES

The main points of the traditional secularization narrative—that secularization is central to modernity, that it enables progress toward universalism, and that it represents development or emancipation—remained strong in Western social theory during much of the twentieth century. Even major theological centers in the United States through the 1960s espoused the view that secularization was the inevitable denouement of religion, symbolized by Thomas Altizer’s “death of God” theology.²⁰ However, there also emerged numerous pressures on the feasibility of this narrative. Enlightenment narratives were subject to intense questioning in the latter part of the twentieth century, both from postcolonial critics and from critics in Europe influenced by the changing intellectual climates that resulted in the upheavals of 1968. Moreover, a worldwide recession in the 1970s put the developmental aspect of the narrative into deep question. Were postcolonial nations “developing” through the adoption of modern capitalism?²¹ Certainly, for many people in many parts of the world this narrative did not accurately describe their realities. It was the Iranian revolution in 1979, however, that ultimately upended i n t ro d u c t i o n : t i m e s li k e t hese

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whatever complacent consensus had existed about secularization.²² A successful revolution undertaken in the name of religion was not part of this narratively constructed modern or even postmodern world. There were, of course, attempts to incorporate the revolution into the narrative as an anomaly or the exception that proves the rule, but overall, particularly with the persistence of the revolutionary government, the secularization narrative came under increasing pressure. As time passed, it became clear that the Iranian revolution represented one of a number of powerful contemporary social movements in many parts of the world that were organized in the name of religion. These events required a major reevaluation of the secularization narrative. One of the early and most powerful reevaluations was José Casanova’s 1994 historical sociology of Spanish, Polish, Brazilian, and American Catholicism.²³ It is perhaps not an accident that Casanova’s study focuses on Catholicism, which stands in complex relation to the Protestant genealogy of dominant secularism. Not only does Catholicism remain connected to the state in some areas of the world, but Catholicism’s public and communal aspects, even where it is not established as a state religion, do not track easily with the public-private split that marks Protestant secularism. Casanova points to the seemingly obvious, but all too often overlooked, fact that not every expression of religion in public is conservative. In addition to the Iranian revolution, the other major set of revolutionary movements in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the Marxist revolutions in Central America, were sometimes influenced by a radical Catholicism organized around base communities. In fact, Casanova concentrates on the distinction between a state-based religion and public religion, arguing that while secularization may divide religion from the state, this division does not necessarily entail removal from the public. Our major concern in Secularisms is to question not just the specific aspects of the secularization narrative but to undo the religion-secularism binary itself, so as to open new configurations in the political debates structured by these terms. Take the debate in the United States over the role of Islam in geopolitics. Although there appears to be an opposition between a religious right—which holds that the religious values of Christianity advance civilization, while a “politicized Islam” constitutes the great enemy of civilization—and a secular left—which militantly advocates for a secular public sphere—these two “sides” actually come together around the idea that civilization can be found in Europe and the United States, while Islam, particularly when not contained in the private sphere, Jakobsen and Pellegrini

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threatens this civilization and leads to violence. This consensus between left and right produces a rhetorical structure with only a limited number of positions. Liberal advocates of religion, for example, are left with the choice of either siding with secularists, who deny the import of religion to public life, or with conservative Christians, who admit religion to public life but deny the import of liberal values to religion. Similarly, those who would oppose both the colonial thinking that posits Europe and North America as the sites of modern civilization as opposed to the supposedly medieval Middle East, as well as the various forms of violence promoted in the name of radical Islam, find few openings for articulating this double position.²⁴ Interrupting this binary rhetoric and challenging the ways in which the secularization narrative is told are thus more than academic exercises in terminological precision. The ways in which the terms secularism and religion frame contemporary debates mean that possibilities for moving out of these impasses are obscured. The critique generated by Secularisms implies that the very idea that politics can be simply divided between a religious right and a secular left is mistaken.²⁵ More broadly, the choice between secularism and religion represents a false dichotomy. This is so because religious and secular formations are profoundly intertwined with each other. As a result, the easy presumption that secularism is necessarily more rational, more modern, freer, and less dangerous than religion is not sustainable. This claim does not mean that Secularisms advocates simply shifting allegiances from the secular to the religious. In fact, some of the essays, particularly those by Ranu Samantrai and by Taha Parla and Andrew Davison, strongly argue for the importance of supporting and extending secular discourses. Nevertheless, even these two essays, which advocate secular discourses, do not simply accept a binary division between religion and secularism. Ultimately, in providing new ways of thinking about the relation between religion and secularism, this volume seeks to provide new ways of thinking about social and political possibilities including new secular configurations. Such openings are urgently needed, but to find them we must question received understandings. SECUL ARISMS: FROM SINGUL AR TO PLURAL

We argue that the secularization thesis misrepresents our world and the role of both religion and secularism in that world. We make our interveni n t ro d u c t i o n : t i m e s l i ke t hese

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tion at the level of the secularization story itself to show that the problem is not simply one of historical events moving away from narrative prediction. The narrative itself is also fundamentally incoherent. And yet, despite this incoherence and despite the factual swerve, the narrative continues to exert great political force. Thus it is to the narrative that we turn our attention. The contributors to Secularisms confront the secularization narrative at its main points. To take just a few examples, the essays gathered here include challenges to the claims that secularism provides a coherent rationality (Baird and Subramaniam); that secularism provides freedom from the constraints of religion (Najmabadi and Samantrai); that secularization entails the privatization of religion (Parla and Davison); and that secular progress produces gender and racial equality (Fessenden). Perhaps most important, the essays cumulatively challenge the idea that secularism represents universalism in contrast to the particularity of religion. As a number of our contributions show, forms of secularism tend to vary with the religious formation in relation to which they develop. In other words, the secularism that has developed in India in relation to a dominant Hinduism (see Patel, Subramaniam, and Sunder Rajan) is not the same as either the secularism that relates to Islam in Turkey (see Parla and Davison) or the Christian secularism that predominates in the United States (see Levitt, Fessenden, Roberts, and Sands). Again, this is not to say that secularism is somehow religion in disguise; it is a separate social formation. But it is a formation that develops in relation to religion. This is not a matter of previous and somehow completed historical processes. For example, Rajeswari Sunder Rajan’s essay argues that contemporary secularisms continue to develop in relation to religion. She makes this argument in relation to the uniform civil code proposed to replace religious personal laws in India. Sunder Rajan shows how the secular code would still remain entwined with the dominant Hinduism of Indian politics. Not only does secularism develop in relation to religion but it also has an impact on the development of religious formations. Religious transformations such as the development of a politicized Hindu nationalism in India may push new secular formations like the possible uniform civil code. And secular discourses may prompt religious change as well. In his important 2003 study Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity, Talal Asad has argued that in nineteenth-century Egypt, secularism and religion remade each other. Asad is critical of the narrative Jakobsen and Pellegrini

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that secularism is simply “a particular cultural import from the West,” arguing that secularism and religion interacted to produce mutual transformations in the colonial situation. As Asad argues vis-à-vis the Egyptian case, religious transformation may be “both the precondition and the consequences of secular processes of power.” Thus one alternative means of thinking about the contemporary relation of religion and secularism is to consider not just how secularism remains intertwined with religion, but also how religion is being remade in relation to secular phenomena.²⁶ If secularism is constituted in relation to religious formations, then secularism is not the universal discourse emanating from the European Enlightenment, but is in fact multiple, as are religions. We might then more aptly speak in terms of secularisms. Thinking of secularisms as plural in this way challenges the dominant narrative of secular universalism, but we still cannot think of secularisms as simply free from this narrative. Particular secularisms are not just autonomous units grounded in their national contexts, or in relation to particular religious formations; precisely by being called “secularisms,” they are also articulated in relation to the dominating discourse of universal secularism, which is tied to the Protestant secularism of the market. This does not mean, however, that individual secularisms are merely particular instances of a singular overarching phenomenon called secularism. Neither does a relation to the dominant discourse of secularism mean that all secularisms are always and only Christian. The essays in Secularisms chart a path between the presumption that because the concept of the secular originates in a European and Christian-dominated context this origin determines the shape of secularisms throughout the world and the presumption that particular secularisms can be constituted independently of this dominant discourse and its originary context. Rather, if religious and secular formations are mutually constitutive in particular historical moments, we can think of this relation as inflected by a variety of power relations, including those of European colonialism. As we have learned from Foucault, these power relations may be dominating, but they are not determining.²⁷ Power relations are productive: productive of resistance, of reverse discourses, and of new combinations. These productions are driven by a variety of conflicting social groups and interests that may take up dominating discourses or resistances to those discourses to varying effects. So, for example, Banu Subramaniam’s essay on Hindu science shows how Hindu nationalists took up the discourse of science (rather than religion) neither simply to align i n t ro d u c t i o n : t i m e s li k e t hese

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themselves with the West and its scientific heritage nor to differentiate themselves fully from the West. Rather, they did so, she argues, in order simultaneously to make such an alliance with and distinguish themselves from the West. Subramaniam calls this alternative formation “archaic modernity.” Ranu Samantrai argues, alternatively, that advocates who claim to represent the “Muslim community” in response to the British state have used the language of religious community to continue certain colonial paradigms, including a colonial patriarchy, rather than to differentiate themselves from the colonial heritage. In other words, we cannot read the influence of the discourse of European secularism, no matter how dominant, as simply unidirectional. RISKING GENEALOGY

Secularisms is interested in how attention to the multiplicity of secularisms can break open the discourses, particularly the political ones, that are organized by the presumptions of the secularization thesis. To do this we use a genealogical method, a method that offers the opportunity to interrogate the discourse of secularism at the level of its assumptions—at the level, that is, of the binary categories religion and secularism.²⁸ Genealogy allows for an investigation into the power relations established by naming phenomena in a particular way. The step that the genealogical method takes is to reveal that the discourse of universal secularism—based on transhistorical reason—is not just a factual error; the discourse of secularism constitutes a way of framing data so as to align with a particular set of assumptions. Genealogy offers several advantages over a strictly comparative approach. It helps us ask not just how particular religions or secularisms compare to each other, for example, but how the categories of religion and secularism were developed and how specific cases come to be understood as particular instances of these general categories—religion and secularism—in the first place. In addition, genealogy puts pressure on the assumption that whenever people, in any part of the world, take up secularism, they must be taking up a singular phenomenon with universal resonance. In contrast, although comparisons can sometimes break open dominant discourses, the very discovery of difference from the normative narrative can also simply reinforce the centrality of that narrative. This held true in European encounters with southern Africa documented by

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Chidester, and as some of our contributors show, the containment of difference within a particular narrative frame can be as much of a problem for the secular as for the religious.²⁹ If this problem is not addressed, then other possibilities, alternative ways for “doing” secularism or religion, are rendered invisible because we are looking for a particular type of difference. Rather than merely comparing differences within the framework of the secularization narrative, the essays in this volume move to question the framework itself. We want to know what becomes possible by shifting the focus of our inquiry.³⁰ To be sure, the genealogical approach has its own dangers. If focused only on the construction of large categories like the secular and the religious, it can tend toward its own form of totalization in which all instances of the category are understood along a particular genealogical path. So, for example, genealogical investigations into the power relations that have produced the present moment can tend to focus only on the path of colonial and postcolonial history. As Afsaneh Najmabadi has elsewhere pointed out, to focus only on colonialism can leave a place like Iran— never directly colonized—at an “unavailable intersection,” out of space and time.³¹ While the formative power of the context of colonial history on the secularization narrative cannot be denied, it would be a mistake to take it as determinative. To do so risks conceptualizing all secularisms only as extensions of European colonialism.³² If, however, genealogy focuses on particular instances of secularism, it can devolve into a form of pluralism in which the very diversity of forms and histories elides the dominating power relations in which this diversity is formed.³³ A focus, for example, on diversities within Europe or between Europe and the United States, diversities no doubt powerful and extensive, can shift the spotlight away from the power of the Euro-American imagination in which many Europeans and Americans see themselves as secular and others as religious (despite the fact that to others in Europe or the United States it can appear, as Fatima Mernissi has written of her experiences as a Moroccan Muslim visiting Europe, that European culture is saturated with religion).³⁴ Secularisms is cognizant of such tensions and risks. By placing multiple secularisms in relation to the dominant narrative of secularization, Secularisms charts a course that acknowledges the power and influence of colonialism and the European conceptualization of secularism without succumbing to the idea that secularism is, as Asad says, only “a cultural

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import from the West.” Rather, it is precisely the interactions of various religious formations with various cultural imports that make for the complex secularisms that mark today’s world. Our essays make visible cross-cultural variation even as we seek to mark the limits of comparative study. We are interested not in covering “the world” (as if it were possible to produce a fully comprehensive compendium of world secularisms), but in questioning the narrative that gives the category of secularism “world” import, and the essays were chosen accordingly. In criticizing this dominant discourse we hope to make visible alternative ways of inhabiting and embodying both the secular and the religious, ways that are simply blocked from view within the usual framework. In short, we advocate multiple shifts in perspective. The first is to acknowledge that secularism is inflected by religions (and vice versa), thus fundamentally undoing the binary opposition between (secular) universalism and (religious) particularism. Such a move entails a shift from a singular, universal idea of the secular to the idea of multiple and varied secularisms. In making this shift, we must incorporate the fact that the recognition of cross-cultural variation is not enough because the recognition of variation alone does not in itself dislodge the idea of a single unifying discourse within which this variation occurs. Acknowledging the lack of such a singular discourse also implies that there is no single moral framework for conflict resolution and ethical judgment. Dispensing with such a framework involves a turn to the question of relations among differences, a question that cannot be resolved simply or through a single method. There are strong political and analytical implications to such changes in thought. If there is no universally shared secular discourse that excludes the particularities of religion, but rather many particular forms of secularism that are intertwined with different religions, then the question of how to resolve conflict is brought to the fore. Indeed, this problem is one of the most pressing in the world today.³⁵ There are no easy solutions here, and it should, of course, be noted that the idea of secularism as the source of conflict resolution has always been more of a promise than a reality. One need only look at the world today to realize that modernity has not produced the end of either wars of religion or wars of secularism.³⁶ Despite the difficulties of providing any single answer to the problem of conflict resolution in a world of multiple secularisms, a number of the essays in the volume (Roberts, Samantrai, Sands, and Sunder Rajan) take up the Jakobsen and Pellegrini

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challenge of how to imagine just social relations in what Tyler Roberts terms a “postsecular” world. We cannot even begin to take up this creative challenge as long as we remain tied to either the descriptive or moral components of the standard secularization thesis. Most of the essays in Secularisms explore various means for thinking our way into a world in which the binary between religion and secularism does not frame social and political possibilities. Some of these essays also offer alternatives that might allow for means of thinking our way through the openings created by these critiques. These alternative narratives point not just to different ways of thinking about secularism but also to different ways of living out, of embodying, secular possibilities currently hidden by the reiteration of an opposition between religion and secularism. ˜ OUTLINE OF THE VOLUME

As a way to help the reader through the interlocking arguments of the book, Secularisms is divided into three sections. The volume opens with a set of essays that criticize at least one element of the traditional secularization narrative: rationalization, universalism, emancipation, privatization, and progress. The next cluster of essays attends to how the metadiscourse of secularism is lived at a microlevel, with especial interest in matters of embodiment. These finely tuned analyses help us imagine secular and religious time outside of the progress narrative, as well as outside both the universal body of secular human rights discourse and the particular body invoked by religious traditions. In the third and final section, these alternatives are expanded to consider how we might approach public issues of religion and secularism anew. This final set of essays explicitly asks: If the traditional secularization narrative is the basis for a politics marked by narrow choices, what other possibilities are there for imagining contemporary political contexts? This is one way to encounter the volume, front to back, critique to alternatives, but we would also encourage readers to go off map, as it were, and read out of order for a network of interlocking subthemes. Because the power of the secularization thesis comes in part from the associations among its various terms—rationalization with universalism with progress, for example—a meaningful critique and sense of alternatives can be developed through a kaleidoscopic approach to the various terms of argument. i n t ro d u c t i o n : t i m e s li k e t hese

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Looking at the ways in which themes relate to each other can enhance our understanding of why it is important to take apart the associations that make for the secularization thesis and show how we might put the world together differently. These subthemes include the “woman question” (Fessenden, Najmabadi, Patel, Samantrai, Sands, Subramaniam, Sunder Rajan, and Zito); state and/or national solutions to the “religion question” (Baird, Levitt, Najmabadi, Parla and Davison, Roberts, Samantrai, and Sunder Rajan); alternative imaginings of the relations between public and private, secularism and religion (Baird, McGarry, Roberts, Samantrai, and Sands); and the meaning of time and alternatives to the progress narrative (Fessenden, Levitt, McGarry, Parla and Davison, Patel, Subramaniam, and Zito). The fact that all of the essays appear in at least two subsections means that even such interlocking divisions cannot do justice to the network of associations that form our understandings of secularisms. Secular Interventions We begin with the problem that has prompted so much renewed study of secularism: the secularization thesis has been brought into question by events in the world. Religion has not faded away, nor has it remained contained in the private sphere. The places in which the modern narrative most readily shows its incoherence are precisely those in which it is supposed to offer the most powerful explanations: the sites that are supposed to represent religion, like Iran, and the sites that are supposed to represent secular modernity, whether Western or nonWestern, like the United States or Turkey. We lead off with Afsaneh Najmabadi’s discussion of Iran. Among other things, this essay importantly complicates any simple alignment of feminism with secularism. Because the discourse of universal secularism equates secularism to progress and claims for itself the mantle of freedom and emancipation, secularism is often promoted as the antidote to women’s subordination under conservative religion. The so-called woman question thus becomes a screen onto which is cast a series of mutually reinforcing distinctions: religion/secularism, archaism/modernity, subordination/freedom, fundamentalism/feminism. Najmabadi deftly exposes this series of interlocking oppositions. By providing a careful history of how arguments over secularism, women’s rights, and veiling played out in Iran in the first half of the twentieth century, Najmabadi shows not only that it is possible to be both feminist and Muslim but that in the context of Iran the opposition of feminism and Islam has actually hurt feminist politics. In the end, Najmabadi argues, the development of a public discourse Jakobsen and Pellegrini

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about Muslim feminism in Iran is one of the conditions for opening up a space to be feminist and secular. A space of difference opens when the feminist-Muslim opposition breaks down, creating a space that might be inhabited by secular feminists. Najmabadi’s historical analysis of the Iranian case makes clear that feminist possibilities for emancipation do not necessarily require the privatization of religion. The dominant secularization narrative assumes that increasing secularism makes religion a private matter. Nevertheless, as our contributors show, the idea that religion is separate from public life or from the state in the modern period cannot be sustained under scrutiny. Taha Parla and Andrew Davison consider secularism in Turkey, the case most often invoked as representative of enforced secularization. They show that the Kemalist regime, which imposed secular law, did not institute a completely secular state. Instead, it differentiated religious functions not into the private sphere, but into a separate section of the state. Their account hardly squares with strict divisions between religion and the state or private and public that are predicted by the idea of enforced secularization. In the Indian context the question raised by religion and the state is in certain respects the opposite. Given that the state currently recognizes various religions as the arbiters of personal law, should the state move to a secular, uniform civil code? There are reasons to question whether this move toward the secular would support progressive politics, a concern that has been particularly raised by feminists. As Rajeswari Sunder Rajan’s essay points out, many feminists in India fear that establishing a uniform civil code, while addressing some problems of sexism in the personal laws, will also establish a secular sphere that fundamentally reflects the dominance of Hinduism in contemporary India. Sunder Rajan does not argue, however, that given these problems with moves toward the secular, feminists should simply accede to the religious. Instead, she offers an alternative, one in which the space of civil society—a space between the (secular) state and the (religious) community—might provide a site for women’s agency in these debates. Importantly, Sunder Rajan does not offer civil society as a panacea but as a possibility for something outside the bounds of the current options. For our purposes, her insights raise the possibility of reconfiguring the public relation between religious and secular discourses without simply flipping the binary in favor of religious domination of the public. Laura Levitt returns us to the problem of secularism as a universal discourse that can provide the framework for a public sphere equally open i n t ro d u c t i o n : t i m e s li k e t hese

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to everyone. Grounding her argument in an analysis of secular Judaism in the United States, Levitt argues that the Protestant secularism of the U.S. public sphere has difficulty sustaining social differences. Given the universalizing pull of secularism as a discourse, this may not be surprising. However, Levitt’s analysis takes another, more counterintuitive step. She argues that Protestant secularism has more trouble sustaining secular differences than religious ones. Asking what type of difference secular Judaism entails, Levitt argues that the pressures of American assimilation are surprisingly more destructive to traditions of secular Judaism than to the type of religious observance represented by Orthodox Judaism. To become recognizably American, Jews need not become secular; they need to become more religious. As a result, the possibilities for different ways of “being” Jewish or of “doing” Judaism—including doing secular Judaism—are highly constrained, even illegible, within dominant terms. If the secular public sphere is not equally open to participation by all persons regardless of their difference from the mainstream, can we sustain the claim that secularization is necessarily a sign of progress? In particular, does secularism produce progress toward democracy and equal treatment? Tracy Fessenden’s essay shows how feminist commitments to secularism’s progress narrative contributed to the formation of a nineteenth- and earlytwentieth-century feminism in the United States that aimed toward universalism but actually reinforced white dominative racism. To make her case, Fessenden turns to the texts of Charlotte Perkins Gilman. One of the most prolific and best-selling authors of her time, Gilman was profoundly committed to progressing “beyond” religion. Fessenden shows that the progress of secular feminism was, for Gilman, dependent on a history of Christian civilization and racialized imperialism. Nonetheless, Fessenden warns us not to let our own commitments to progress dictate our reading of racist feminist texts from times past. Antiracist ends will not be achieved simply by removing Gilman from the feminist canon in the same way that religion is supposedly removed from the secular. Rather, she encourages us to attend to Gilman’s example so as to question the constellations of power invoked by secularism and religion. Our final two essays in this section raise a series of questions about the power struggles that have erupted through political debates over the claims of a universally shared secular rationality. We encounter these questions in a stark way in Robert Baird’s discussion of the conceptual and historical landscape of what he calls “late secularism.” Baird traces

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contemporary U.S. debates over the teaching of evolutionary theory back to Hume’s elaboration of the category of religion and, in particular, to the distinction Hume draws between unproven religious beliefs and verifiable empirical knowledge. The demotion of evolution to a hypothesis and the promotion of intelligent design to evolutionary theory’s epistemological equivalent, Baird argues, do not signal the end of Hume’s theory-fact distinction so much as reveal how the eighteenth-century co-constitution of religion and secularism continues to inform our cognitive landscape. In a sense, secular science has been hoisted on its own petard. As Baird shows in his finely textured reading of Hume, the standards of factuality against which evolutionary theory is now held to be lacking—it is “just” a theory—were, in Baird’s words, “dialectically produced in the discourse of religion.” Relations among religion, secularism, science, and politics are also the focus of Banu Subramaniam’s essay. She considers the way in which the idea of Hindu science is rewriting not just the Indian understanding of science but also the history of Hinduism. Subramaniam, along with Geeta Patel in the next section, raises important questions about the rise of a self-identified Hindu right in India and about how Hinduism is (re)constructed in relation to secular formations while secularism is reconstructed in relation to Hinduism. Subramaniam shows, for example, that the shift in governing party from the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party to the secular Congress Party has not necessarily produced substantive change on questions relevant to Hindu science. Both Subramaniam and Patel examine how particular kinds of power circulate under the name of Hinduism, and they consider how this circulation can both constitute and constrain what either Hinduism or secular India might be now—or in the future. What can be named Hindu and the relationship between that Hinduism and any form of Indian secularism will be in part determined by the outcome of these struggles. It is this intertwining of religion and secularism that is crucial for understanding what is possible in today’s world. Religion is not a static undertaking in relation to which secularism moves forward through time any more than secularism is an unchanging, transhistorical, and universal proposition. Moreover, as these essays show, the political implications of taking up either religion or secularism vary greatly depending on the social context and the historical moment. If one hopes to promote a politics akin to that promised by secularism—a politics of freedom, equality, and

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democracy, for example—one needs a much more careful analysis of the implications of secularism than those currently available. We thus turn to the implications of how secularism is lived, how it is literally embodied. Secular Relations: Micronarratives How is the body implicated in secular formations? And what are the stakes of understanding the body as religious or secular? What does secularism “feel” like? The essays in this section take up and complicate these questions by revealing the complex layerings of bodies and subjectivities in time and space. It has become a truism after Foucault to assert connections between disciplinary time and the carceral system: the regimentation of military formations, the factory, and the school day helped to forge the modern subject not just in time but as fundamentally a subject of time. Time has a moral dimension. These novel, specifically modern disciplines of the body have served to connect the laboring body at once to new forms and practices of capital and to new forms and practices of religious life—and have done so in ways that naturalize all three: the disciplined body, the market as secular site of freedom, and religion as morality. Certainly, body regulation has been a crucial pivot in the religion-secular relation. The newly secularized state enforced specifically religious ideas about, for example, supposedly natural versus unnatural sexual acts and appetites precisely through enforcing body regulation. However, the secular state did so no longer in the name of religion, but rather in the name of morality. Although secular in name, these body regulations are religious in form and thus allow for the continuation of the coimplicated religion and secularism described by Weber. Indeed, as Baird makes clear, one of the most striking transformations effected by the Enlightenment was the invention of religion as morality. The body’s pivotal place in the religionsecularism couple helps to illuminate just why and how some bodies cannot win (women, for example, or homosexuals), no matter which side of the religion-secular divide they come to occupy. There is thus no simple answer to the question of whether bodies are secular or religious. Nor can we assume that the alignment of the body with religion is necessarily conservative, while secular, supposedly universal bodies are somehow free and clear. The question of domination is not a matter of abstraction, but one of social relations in their historical context. In some contexts, the emancipation promised by secularized universalism has been deployed to counter relations of colonial domination. In other contexts, however, the enactment (or enforcement) of secular universalJakobsen and Pellegrini

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ism will carry forward a project of colonialism, even a missionary colonialism. We cannot take secularism and its promise of universal rights at its word any more than we can dismiss religion as always and everywhere the problem that needs solving. We must constantly ask not just which secularism and which religion, but also, what is their interaction? How secularism feels and/or how religion feels depends on where one is arrayed in relation to them. Angela Zito offers a powerful historical analysis of the paradoxes produced by secularized universalism in its interrelation with religion. Zito’s analysis of both Christian and secular opposition to foot binding explores the ways in which the progress narrative of secularization is literally embodied. She details how the nineteenth-century Christian missionary anti–foot binding campaign was based on an idea of the universal human body, one that is exemplary of and controlled by a divine nature. The subsequent, secularized campaign takes up this particular idea of the universally human through the discourse of biomedicine. Both these forms of universalism—the missionary and the biomedical—produced a discourse in which the particular practices of Chinese culture (or nature) could only be in violation of that which was truly, universally human. Zito’s analysis of Christian missionary concerns with the oppression of Chinese women connects to Fessenden’s discussion of the way feminisms, both secular and Christian, may unintentionally extend Western domination. With both Zito and Fessenden, then, we come to see how universal equality produces the particular inequalities that grounded the project of imperialism—and haunt contemporary human rights discourse as well. Indeed, one of the major questions raised by the new studies of secularism and by the essays in this volume is whether it is possible to shift or interrupt the narrative in which modernity equates with secularized development toward universal (in)equality. Geeta Patel takes up this challenge in her contribution to the volume. Writing with and against Foucault’s conception of disciplinary time, she attends to those places where linearity “leaks,” and the seams show the sometimes violent effort required to erase other ways of telling time and taking up the body. Patel importantly links transformations from one way of telling time to another—from traditional into modern, for example, or rural into financial—to colonial domination and the transformations of the nation-state. Further, she shows how these shifts in ways of telling time produce different, and gendered, forms of subjectivity. Patel’s essay deliberately shifts tenses, alternating between the vivid imi n t ro d u c t i o n : t i m e s li k e t hese

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mediacy of the present tense and a historical past. The power of Patel’s argument lies in its demonstration of the ways in which Hindu nationalist temporality depends on both missionary (Christian) and postcolonial (Christian-secular) time. According to the secularization thesis, Hindu nationalism, by virtue of its religious foundation, must run counter to Western secularism. But Patel shows how Hindu nationalism works with the production of secularism, particularly secularism as financial time, and enforces certain relations in the form of gender to ensure that the connections between Hindu nationalism and secular capitalism work. Nationalism effectively connects Hinduism to secularism and displaces alternative understandings of what it might mean to be Hindu. Particular bodies, then, are here produced and regulated via this conjunction of different forms of temporality and different forms of secularism. And yet the transition from one “older” way of telling time to another more “modern” one is never as complete as is claimed; different temporalities remain as a kind of ghost effect. Time has become, in Patel’s words, “spectral.” Molly McGarry takes up the question of spectrality through a different historical archive. Her essay on the intertwined histories of secularism, sexology, and Spiritualism in the United States suggests another way of relating to time and embodiment. The mid-nineteenth-century practice of Spiritualism allowed the dead to speak “to and through the living,” breaking through the supposedly impervious line between past and present, this world and the next. Refusing to accept the past as irretrievably gone, Spiritualists instead sought to cultivate embodied connections to those now departed. The experience of being possessed by another person did not just offer a unique form of spiritual embodiment, McGarry argues; it also allowed many Spiritualists to inhabit—embody—sexuality and gender in transgressive ways. McGarry goes on to contrast the trajectory of Spiritualist practice as it grounds alternative possibilities for being in time and in space with the sexological discourses that emerged in the late nineteenth century. With its developmental focus, sexology’s conception of time was far less fluid than Spiritualism’s; it also had a far more restricted, even fixed, sense of bodies and embodiment. However, even as she traces the emergence and dominance of sexological discourse, McGarry calls us to attend to the lingering remains of the religious in the secular conceptions and experiences of modern sexuality. This is more than an academic task. In sharp contrast to the “ghost[s] of dead religious beliefs” that Weber identifies as

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the secularized “spirit of capitalism,” the ghostly remainders discussed by McGarry conjure other ways of experiencing embodiment and relating to time.³⁷ In so doing, McGarry’s ghosts may offer resources for reimagining the future in the present. Public Alternatives This sort of embodied reimagining animates another major theme running through the essays: If we move away from the parameters set by the religion-secular binary, how might we live differently in social, as well as individual, bodies? Our contributors come down on various sides of this question. Our own hope is not to lay out a new line on how to conceive of contemporary possibilities, but rather through the very tensions and disagreements among these pieces to suggest the richness of contemporary possibility. As we move to pluralize secularism, our task is not simply to ask what other models of secularism are possible, but what models are already in place in different local and national configurations. In his essay on religion and politics in the post-secular, Tyler Roberts considers possibilities for an American public life that is not dominated by either liberal secularism or religious morality. Roberts evaluates two postsecular modes of thought for their potential to facilitate public engagements across multiple differences: radical Christian orthodoxy and postmodern Jewish thought. Neither position is without its problems or dangers, but the crucial issue addressed in his essay is whether it is possible to be open to dominant as well as minority expressions of religion without falling into the problems of domination that make secularism and the idea of a secular public sphere so appealing. This remains an open question. We well imagine that some readers may be discomforted by Roberts’s argument for “desanctifying” secularism and admitting openly religious perspectives into the public sphere. To us, the provocation of his essay derives in part from his willingness to play out an ethics of engagement across difference not only where such crossings feel comfortable, but even where they do not. In addition, his conception of a “secular diaspora” offers one means of responding to Levitt’s desire to make room for different publicly recognizable secularisms. Like Roberts, Kathleen Sands seeks an engaged but nondominant public role for religious expression; her particular example is religious feminism. Alongside Najmabadi, Sands criticizes the assumption that feminism, even contemporary U.S. feminism, can be conflated with a secular

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stance. However, she questions not just the removal of religion from the public sphere, as does Roberts, but also the uniqueness of the privileges that apply to religion in the U.S. public sphere in the first place, privileges that religious feminists often call on to lend them moral authority in public debate. Sands argues that by questioning the privileges of religion in public as well as the exclusions of religion from public debate, those feminists who speak in religious terms might be more effective in their public actions. The new form of secularity Sands calls for would deprivilege religion not to banish it from public view, but to open up a wider democratic space for moral and political perspectives—“religious, nonreligious, and antireligious” too. To take this argument further, Ranu Samantrai considers how public discourse about secularism might need to change to address the issues of postcolonial and patriarchal domination vis-à-vis British secularism. Her project has gained urgency in light of the polarizing public debates taking place in Britain in the wake of the London subway bombings of 7 July 2005. This debate largely replays the rhetorical positionings that followed on the 1989 fatwa against Salman Rushdie. In a careful examination of responses to the fatwa, Samantrai reveals the poverty of British secular and communal religious discourses, both of which, she argues, remain trapped in colonial thinking. For an alternative approach to “a pluralism that does not encounter difference as an obstacle,” Samantrai turns to groups like Women against Fundamentalism and Southall Black Sisters, who have provided criticism of a patriarchal Islam while also criticizing the secular and patriarchal British state. Samantrai’s essay demonstrates the dangers of trying to address secularism and religion without attending to the woman question. To do so risks leaving us with only bad choices. The presumption that secular discourse is supposed to liberate women may only reinforce both colonial domination and secular patriarchy, while the opposition to these secular dominations may only be a minority discourse that is itself simultaneously patriarchal and trapped in colonial thinking. This does not mean that certain forms of secularism cannot be deployed to fight given instances of sexism effectively. It does, however, mean that secularism can ground its own form of sexism, even as it is deployed against other forms. This contradictory set of effects—where secularism can have effects that resist and extend sexism—is precisely what makes the woman question, as well as the secular question, so complicated. In the end Samantrai makes “an argument for secular Britain,” but if we hope to promote this option without also proJakobsen and Pellegrini

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moting sexism and colonial thinking, we cannot do so by holding onto the traditional narrative about what constitutes this secularism. ˜ OPEN ENDINGS: IN HOPE ?

The familiar story of secularism remains hard to relinquish in part because it appears to be a defense against the dominations ascribed to religion. Secularism is rarely subjected to critique in the academy or in progressive politics because it appears to be the only answer to these problems, the only safeguard against the dominations inscribed in religion. While there is no doubt that some religious formations are dominating, it is both a poverty of imagination and a continued entanglement in the various assumptions that go along with the secularization narrative that leave us in the bind where we must choose either (supposedly) conservative religion or (supposedly) progressive secularism. Not only does this opposition force us to ignore or deny the ways in which religion can be central to progressive politics and the ways in which secularism can limit such politics but it limits our imagination of secularism to only one narrative. We raise the question of multiple secularisms in order to open spaces for other possible narratives. We need not imagine the secular within the parameters of the secularization narrative any more than we must imagine religion through its dictates. Patel, for example, engages the work of two South Asian historians in order to explore ways of narrating time differently. Only through such different narrations and the new practices and relations they open up, she suggests, can substantive differences in subject positions become available. Nevertheless, the project of transformation she sketches does not come easily; Patel stresses the painful affect engendered by new ways of telling time and history. Yet as she and others also stress, the older (and ongoing) colonialist narratives of, for example, the triumph of universal values over parochial, archaic tradition are not exactly pain-free either. Affect—painful, animating, enervating—surfaces in several essays: abjection (Najmabadi); terror (Subramaniam); surprise (Roberts); solace (McGarry). For his part, Baird’s analysis of the “subjectivizing” of scientific theory and “objectivizing” of religious feeling offers a cautionary tale about public sentiments in an age of mediatized “truthiness.” Nonetheless, this retelling of time and history is also bound up with alternative posi n t ro d u c t i o n : t i m e s li k e t hese

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sibilities for values, as McGarry’s essay, with its interest in the haunting power of the residual, underscores. The millennial time that conflates the Christian with the secular with the global marks progress because of a conflation between time and value(s). These values prominently include what Raymond Williams has called “structures of feeling” and what we will here dub “modernity’s affect” so as to mark something of value’s place, time, and feeling.³⁸ The interest in secularism, the refusal to give it up despite its various problems, also expresses a hope, a hope that another type of social formation—and other kinds of social feelings—might be produced during a time of “terror.” Might hope, too, be one of modernity’s affects?³⁹ Hope in the sense in which we mean it here requires breaking faith with secularization’s progress narrative, which assumes that change is unidirectional and always for the better, and instead actively working toward alternative possibilities. This hoped-for secularism, one that might be joined to a robust, contestatory, and radical pluralism, may also be one that need not banish religious possibility from its midst.⁴⁰ Ultimately, our purpose in criticizing the traditional secularization thesis and exploring alternatives is not to get the kinks out of secularism so as to secure its final triumph over religion, nor is it to debunk secularism so as to leave religion as the only possibility. Rather, we want to have our secular cake and eat it too. This openness to both secular and religious discourses is also openness to a field of possibility—to a different future. NOTES 1. Jakobsen and Pellegrini, “World Secularisms at the Millennium.” 2. See the views advanced by the conservative pundit Andrew Sullivan, whose essay “This Is a Religious War,” published less than a month after 9/11, asserted that Christian values provide what is best and most tolerant in secular civilization. For a representative view from the secular left, see Slavoj Žižek’s New York Times editorial, in which he argues for the European heritage of “atheism” as the only bulwark that will protect both Europeans and Muslims. Žižek, “Defenders of the Faith,” New York Times, 12 March 2006. Despite their apparently opposed political affiliations, both Sullivan and Žižek still agree in their depiction of religious “fundamentalism” in general, and of radical Islam in particular, as regressive, oppressive, and ultimately dangerous. Sullivan and Žižek thus imply what many Christian conservatives are willing to say in the open. The most (in)famous such avowal probably came from the evangelist Franklin

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29 Graham (the son of and successor to Billy Graham) at the dedication of a chapel in Wilkesboro, North Carolina, in October 2001. His comments were ultimately broadcast by nbc Nightly News, on 16 November 2001. According to the transcript, Graham said: “We’re not attacking Islam but Islam has attacked us. The God of Islam is not the same God. He’s not the son of God of the Christian or Judeo-Christian faith. It’s a different God, and I believe it [Islam] is a very evil and wicked religion. I don’t believe this is a wonderful, peaceful religion. When you read the Koran and you read the verses from the Koran, it instructs the killing of the infidel, of those that are non-Muslim.” In a follow-up statement to the Charlotte Observer, Graham cited the relief efforts for impoverished Muslims made by his charitable organization, Samaritan’s Purse, but also said that he “had expressed concerns about ‘the teachings of Islam regarding the treatment of women and the killing of non-Muslims, or ‘infidels.’” Qtd. in Gustav Niebuhr, “A Nation Challenged: The Evangelist, Muslim Group Seeks to Meet Billy Graham’s Son,” New York Times, 20 November 2001. 3. Weber, Protestant Ethic, esp. chap. 4. 4. See Foucault, The History of Sexuality, vol. 1, An Introduction; and Discipline and Punish. 5. We here focus on a narrative about secularism and the market because it is the discourse of the market as a universal, secular site—a site that is supposedly not only free of religion but also free of values (beyond the production of economic value)— that undergirds contemporary notions of “the world” and “globalization.” Benedict Anderson ties a crucial element of the secularization narrative—the privatization of religion—not just to capitalism but also to the development of modern nationalism. Anderson, Imagined Communities. For a critique of Anderson’s view of privatization, see Derek R. Peterson and Darren R. Walhof, introduction to The Invention of Religion, ed. Peterson and Walhof, 1–16. Peterson and Walhof argue that religious reforms of varying sorts, rather than privatization alone, have been the building blocks in different contexts for a variety of nationalisms. We extend this argument by considering the ways in which formations of secularism in relation to religious reforms have contributed to different versions of nationalism. 6. Doubts about the validity of the secularization thesis have now been raised in a wide range of fields and for some time. The field of such criticism was probably inaugurated by David Martin’s jeremiad against the sociological validity of the concept of secularization, arguing that it simply reflected the desire for secularization of those who promoted “counter-religious ideologies.” Martin, The Religious and the Secular, 16. Martin has been working on the secularization thesis consistently since that time, most recently publishing On Secularization. Some of the other recently influential i n t ro d u c t i o n : t i m e s li k e t hese

30 texts to raise these questions were José Casanova’s comparative historical sociology, Public Religions in the Modern World, and the political theorist William E. Connolly’s Why I Am Not a Secularist. For a sense of the ongoing debates in this field, see Talal Asad’s critique of Casanova in Formations of the Secular, and Casanova’s response in “Secularization Revisited.” 7. Recent works on the question of secularism, in addition to those already cited, include Dussel, “World Religions”; and Needham and Sunder Rajan, Crisis of Secularism in India. On the difficulties of addressing the complexities of both posing the critique of secularism and of working through its implications even in a field like anthropology where the critique is relatively well developed, see Saba Mahmood’s preface to Politics of Piety, ix–xii. 8. Achin Vanaik summarizes this narrative as follows: “Historically, secularization (and the ideology of secularism which intertwines with this process) emerges in Europe in the context of the transition from feudalism to capitalism, the rise of the Enlightenment and partial de-Christianization. The general understanding of the issue of secularization has ever since been marked by this historical background, with different people assigning different weights to how capitalist modernization, Enlightenment values of humanism, rationalism and materialism, and Christianity relate to the nature and potential of secularization even today.” Vanaik, Furies of Indian Communalism, 105. As Vanaik notes, there is disagreement about the relative importance of various contributing factors to the process of secularization, and there is also disagreement about the crucial time period. Martin Marty and Owen Chadwick locate the crucial time period as that of the nineteenth century. See Marty, Modern Schism; and Chadwick, Secularization of the European Mind. Chadwick, for example, chooses to focus on the last four decades of the nineteenth century in Europe because this period is “an age admitted by every historical observer to be central to any consideration of [secularization]. And these forty years have the first merit, that during them the word secularization came to mean what we now mean when we use it. If we know what we mean when we use it” (18). But he begins his narrative with the religious toleration produced by the Reformation. 9. Expounded quintessentially in the American context by Durkheimian social theorists like Robert Bellah, the narrative focuses on processes of social-structural differentiation. In “Religious Evolution,” Bellah states the evolutionary thesis very succinctly: “Evolution at any system level I define as a process of increasing differentiation and complexity of organization that endows the organism, social system or whatever the unit in question may be with greater capacity to adapt to its environment, so that it is in some sense more autonomous relative to its environment than were its less complex

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31 ancestors.” Specifically with regard to religion, Bellah writes that “religious symbolization of what [Clifford] Geertz calls ‘the general order of existence’ tends to change over time, at least in some instances, in the direction of more differentiated, comprehensive, and in Weber’s sense, more rationalized formulations.” This narrative, like so many others, is tied to fundamental Enlightenment assumptions, not just in the sense that rationalization, social differentiation, and complexity are better because functionally more adaptive; these terms are also taken to represent emancipation. In this sense autonomous is both a descriptive and a moral term. As Bellah says to open an essay entitled “Meaning and Modernization,” “Modernization, whatever else it involves, is always a moral and religious problem.” Bellah, Beyond Belief, 21, 24, 64. 10. These elements are drawn from several variations of the classic secularization thesis. See Bellah, Beyond Belief; Wilson, Religion in a Secular Society; Wallis and Bruce, “Secularization”; and Vanaik, Furies of Indian Communalism, chap. 3. Our interest in laying out these elements is not to dispute their sociological validity; we leave those debates to those who are trained in history and/or sociology. Rather, we are concerned with the narrative and, particularly, moral power produced by bringing these many different elements together. 11. For an in-depth study of how the concept of time can be used to define social relations hierarchically, see Fabian, Time and the Other. 12. Bell, Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice, 101. 13. As Casanova points out, American sociologists have tended to reduce the concept of secularization to a set of indicators—“church attendance, belief in God, frequency of prayer, and so on”—that can be either proven or disproved. This approach is both a reduction in the meaning of secularization and also fails to account for the effects of secularism as a discourse, including its material effects (on, e.g., social organization and state legitimation) that have nothing to do with these indicators. José Casanova, “A Reply to Talal Asad,” in Scott and Hirschkind, Powers of the Secular Modern, 15. 14. For a good explanation of the idea of discourse as both material and linguistic, see Davidow “Acting Otherwise.” 15. Asad, Formations of the Secular, 13. 16. Ibid., 183. 17. Over the past decade there has been a range of critiques of the category of religion and of the comparative method of the study of religion, from Russell McCutcheon and Tomoko Masuzawa’s critiques of the field of study as it has historically developed

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32 to David Chidester’s exploration of the consequences of comparative religions in the history of colonial southern Africa and Richard King’s study of the relation between postcolonial theory and comparative religions through a genealogy of “the mystical” in India. McCutcheon, Manufacturing Religion; Masuzawa, Invention of World Religions; Chidester, Savage Systems; King, Orientalism and Religion. 18. Chidester, Savage Systems. 19. Habermas, Inclusion of the Other, chap. 1, section 8. 20. Altizer, Radical Theology. 21. For an extensive analysis of the effects of shifts in global capitalism in the 1970s, see Harvey, Condition of Postmodernity. 22. For an example of this complacency, see the conclusion of Bryan R. Wilson’s reply to debate over the secularization thesis in Religion and Modernization, published in 1992: “When, outside the confines of the relatively small circles of those who have involved themselves with it, one raises this subject with historians, sociologists, economists, or psychologists, one sees how readily those engaged with other aspects of the social system and its culture take secularization for granted. . . . Not infrequently they express some amusement that religion should be given the serious attention which I and others in the sociology of religion devote to it. Of course, these various and numerous social scientists could be overlooking a social force of paramount importance in the operation of those facets of the social system in which they are expert, but I doubt it.” Wilson, “Reflections on a Many Sided Controversy,” 210. 23. Casanova, Public Religions in the Modern World. 24. The New York Times columnist David Brooks reported in March 2006 that a growing number of Americans held the “belief that while most of the world is chugging toward a globally integrated future, the Arab world remains caught in its own medieval whirlpool of horror. The Arab countries cannot become quickly democratic; their people aren’t ready for pluralistic modernity; they just have to be walled off so they don’t hurt us again.” David Brooks, “It’s Not Isolationism, but It’s Not Attractive,” New York Times, 5 March 2006. What is striking about this particular description is that the use of the term medieval allows for the invocation of most of the elements of the secularization narrative—democracy, pluralism, modernity—without ever having to mention either religion or secularism, and yet the association of Arab with Islam with radical violence is also completely clear as the last sentence shows. 25. Saba Mahmood’s Politics of Piety is another recent consideration of how the traditional division between a religious right and a secular left might be reconfigured. Jakobsen and Pellegrini

33 26. Asad, Formations of the Secular, 256. For an extended case study of this phenomenon in Egypt, see especially chap. 7. 27. Foucault, “Ethic of Care.” 28. The genealogical method most frequently associated with Foucault was brought to the fore in the study of religion by Talal Asad’s Genealogies of Religion. Asad’s book presents a wide-ranging intervention in the study of religion, one with particular ramifications for the secularization narrative (a question that he pursues in more depth in the follow-up volume Formations of the Secular). In his chapter entitled “Pain and Truth in Medieval Ritual,” for example, Asad argues that the steps forward in rationalization represented by new medieval legal proceedings, steps that have been traditionally understood as part of the long movement toward modern rationality, were constituted by changes in understandings of religious truth. This argument opens the door to the possibility that changes in modern rationalization were similarly constituted in and through religion. 29. The move toward pluralizing world religions provides an instructive parallel. Tomoko Masuzawa argues in Invention of World Religions that the emergence of the category of “world religions” in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries is at one level a move toward equality and pluralism. The phrasing world religions, appears to put various religions on an equal plane; they are all equal instances of a similar phenomenon. But, as Masuzawa shows in great historical detail, the effect of the discourse of world religions is once again to reinforce the difference between the West and the rest: “Despite [the] incessant circumlocutions and the fine nuancing of the various classificatory systems [that make up the study of world religions], there seems to be some underlying logic silently at work in all variation, and the intent of differentiation probably has not changed appreciably. At its simplest and most transparent, this logic implies that the great civilizations of the past and present divide into two: venerable East on the one hand and progressive West on the other. They both have been called ‘historical,’ but implicitly in different senses. In a word, the East preserves history, the West creates history” (4). Given Masuzawa’s analysis of world religions, we cannot simply complete our project of critique by moving from the singular secularism to the multiple world secularisms. If Protestantism is ultimately not just the model of religion but also the crucial historical backdrop to secularism, then the move to world secularisms may, like that to world religions, simply reinforce the idea that while there may be many secularisms, only one is truly reasonable, truly universal. The rest may be venerable, but they also pale by comparison. 30. Our approach in Secularisms is that giving up the idea of a singular, universal narrative for secularism constitutes a necessary first step to understanding the multiplicity i n t ro d u c t i o n : t i m e s li k e t hese

34 of secularisms. We thereby hope to contribute to the project of creating the conditions of possibility for alternative types of comparative or multiple histories. As Partha Chatterjee says with reference to the idea of approaching the history of India as a history of multiplicity: “But we do not as yet have the wherewithal to write these other histories. Until such time that we accept that it is the singularity of the idea of a national history of India which divides Indians from one another, we will not create the conditions for writing these alternative histories.” Chatterjee, Nation and Its Fragments, 115. 31. Najmabadi, “Teaching and Research.” 32. Paul Smith and J. K. Gibson-Graham have argued with regard to contemporary narratives of globalization and capitalism, respectively, that treating such narratives as fully determinative reinforces the dominating social relations that critical analysis is supposed to resist. See Smith, Millennial Dreams; and Gibson-Graham, End of Capitalism. 33. Not all genealogies fall into these dangers, just as not all comparative sociologies fall into the danger of naturalizing their object of study. For example, Asad’s Genealogies of Religion was itself a multiple study exploring, as the subtitle states, “discipline and reasons of power in Christianity and Islam.” 34. See the preface to the English edition of Mernissi, Veil and the Male Elite, vi–ix. 35. The major conflict that preoccupies the public imagination of the United States, a conflict posed as that of Western secularism against politicized Islam, seems so irresolvable in part because of how that opposition is framed: supposedly universal secular sites for openly working out disagreement “versus” politics driven by dogmatic religion. Western proponents of freedom and democracy, central secular concepts, can neither understand how any rational person could reject the moral value of these terms, nor can they see their own advocacy as an extension of Western domination. Such proponents either fall back on the most simplistic of explanations—“terrorists hate freedom”—or they develop more sophisticated narratives about the regressive power of religion in the face of modernity. Acknowledging that Western democracy is intertwined with Christianity, for example, would shift the terms of this debate. We could then see how the attempt to resolve conflict by bringing everyone within the framework of secular reason can seem to those who are not Christian like an imposition of particular, rather than universal, values. 36. For more on the question of secularism in relation to conflict and violence, see Jakobsen, “Is Secularism Less Violent than Religion?” 37. Weber, Protestant Ethic, 181–82.

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35 38. For “structures of feeling,” see Williams, Marxism and Literature, 128–35, esp. 132. 39. For two recent feminist and queer engagements with the politics and aesthetics of hope, see Dolan, Utopia in Performance; and Muñoz, Cruising Utopia. 40. James, A Pluralistic Universe.

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CHAPTER ONE

(un)veiling feminism ˜ Afsaneh Najmabadi

Contrary to what the title of this essay may conjure, this essay is not about (un)veiling as a contemporary practice in Islamicate societies—about which there is now a very lively and enormous literature.¹ It is about how feminism itself may have worked as a veil, about the veiling work of feminism as a boundary marker for the secularism of Iranian modernity. My hope in rethinking the history of feminism is to seek out possibilities for the present moment of Iranian politics. I mean to be provocative but not accusatory, seeking to unpack the implications of feminism’s imbrication in the secularism of modernity. By unfolding the veiling work of Iranian feminism in its past history, I hope to envisage possibilities for “building working alliances” in contemporary Iranian gender politics.² Let me emphasize at the outset my refusal to generalize the ideas of this essay to all Islamicate societies. One of the problems with current discussions of Islam and feminism is ahistorical generalizations. These generalizations screen away vast historical and contemporary differences among countries as diverse as Algeria, Turkey, Afghanistan, and Indonesia, to name just a few. My argument assumes historical specificity; it assumes that to understand what is going on in Iran today, we need to look at the specific contingent configurations of the politics of modernity in that country. What may or may not be generalizable cannot be known from what is assumed to be Islamic, modern, feminist, or secular by any prior definition of these terms. For instance, the configurations of Islam, feminism, nationalism, and secularism that are now unfolding in Iran have very much to do with the fact that an Islamic republic has been in power for the past twenty-eight years, one that came out of a mass popular revolution. As a very hybridized phenomenon, these developments go beyond

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previously dominant and accepted political paradigms. We have an unshaped and fluid muddle with women as key producers of it. Two concepts, feminism and civil society, move through this complex reconfiguration and acquire new meanings while crafting a discursive space more marked by opacity than transparency, thereby challenging our previous certainty about what divides Islam from un-Islam, secular from religious. Consider this: The editors of Iran’s two most prominent feminist women’s periodicals, Zanan (Women) and Huquq-i zanan (Women’s Rights), had previously been editors of Zan-i ruz (Today’s Woman), a women’s weekly published by the Kayhan Institute. This institute is possibly the most ideologically and viciously rigid Islamist cultural organization in Iran (a selfconscious ideological state apparatus if there ever was one), and it publishes a large number of dailies, weeklies, and other periodicals marketed to different segments of the population. How can we make sense of this bastion of Islamist hard-liners producing a lineage of feminist editors? What is the meaning of these emergences in the overall political mapping of contemporary Iran? W O M A N A N D T H E C U LT U R E O F R E V O L U T I O N

The legal and social restrictions that women have faced in Iran since the 1979 revolution are widely reported. Seemingly trivial matters, such as the shape and color of a woman’s scarf or the thickness of her stockings, have been matters of public policy and disciplinary measures. Women are far from legal equals of men. Despite years of hard work by women activists, both inside and outside the parliament, many discriminatory laws passed within the first few months and years of the Islamic Republic remain on the books and in full force. Many secular feminists continue to feel silenced, if not repressed or exiled, by the dominant cultural and political climate. Yet the past two decades have also witnessed an incredible flourishing of women’s intellectual and cultural production. Twenty-eight years after the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran, not only have women not disappeared from public life but they have an unmistakably active and growing presence in practically every field of artistic creation, professional achievement, educational and industrial institutions, political participation, and even in sports activities. It would be tempting for a secular feminist such as myself to claim that Iranian women have achieved all this despite the Islamic Republic, against the Islamic Republic, and even against Islam as Najmabadi

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the dominant discourse.³ Indeed, for some women it has been this deep existential sense of proving themselves against all odds that became the creative energy of their productions. Yet it is not only oppositional energy that accounts for this creative outpouring. The rise of the Islamist movement in the 1970s in Iran signified the emergence of a new political sociability and the dominance of a new discourse, within which woman-as-culture occupied a central position. In this paradigm, imperialist domination of Islamicate societies was seen to have been achieved not through military or economic supremacy, as earlier generations of nationalists and socialists had argued, but through the undermining of religion and culture mediated through woman. This centrality of gender to the construction of an Islamist political discourse turned what had been marginal, postponed, and illegitimate into the central, immediate, and authentic. The so-called woman question acquired immediacy and urgency not only for the discontented but even more so for the supporters of the new order. In particular, female supporters of the Islamic Republic were placed in a position to take responsibility for its misogyny: to deny it, to justify it, to challenge it, to oppose it, but not to ignore it. Almost overnight, words such as androcracy (mardsalari) and misogyny (zan’sitizi) became common parlance. Moreover, the Islamist movement’s and the Islamic Republic’s claim of representing the ideal divine solution for all societal problems put them in continuous contestation with feminism as far as women’s issues were concerned. Outright rejection of feminism gave way to a hybrid dynamic of outdoing and embracing it. New configurations of Islam, revolution, and feminism have thus emerged. A recent women’s publication has listed over forty women’s organizations (many official and government-affiliated, but a substantial number nongovernmental) and ten women’s periodicals of various political shades including a daily, Zan (Woman), owned and directed by Fa’izah Hashemi Rafsanjani, a member of the parliament from Tehran and a daughter of Hujjat al-Islam Hashemi Rafsanjani, a former president of the country.⁴ The numbers alone attest to the significance and complexities of these reconfigurations. A number of writers and publications speak in secular feminist language.⁵ Others are activists and writers from within an Islamist discourse.⁶ In its most radical tendency, as reflected in the pages of journals such as Zanan and Huquq-i zanan, it speaks as Muslim and feminist.⁷ Although there is a history of reinterpretive endeavors concerning ( u n ) ve i l i n g fe m i n i sm

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women’s rights within Islam going back to the mid-nineteenth century, coemergent within the complex discourses of modernity the recent efforts by many of these writers are novel in a number of important ways. For the purpose of my arguments here, the most significant difference is not only that women are prominent reinterpreters but that these interpretative ventures are carried out in the printed pages of a women’s journal, in a public space, rather than the private chambers of religious scholars. The authors are posed as public intellectuals rather than as private teachers and preachers. Their audience comprises other women (and men) as citizens, rather than theological students and other clerical commentators.⁸ Not only have these openly feminist reinterpretive ventures produced a radical decentering of the clergy from the domain of interpretation but by positioning women’s needs as grounds for interpretation and women as public commentators of canonical and legal texts, they promise that the political democratization currently unfolding in Iran will no longer be a “manly” preoccupation. Moreover, by declaring their interpretive enterprise open to nonbelievers and non-Muslims, emphasizing expertise rather than faith, and by placing woman, in her contemporary social concreteness and her needs and choices, in the center of their arguments, they have opened up a productive space for conversations and alliances among feminists in Iran beyond previous divisions between secular and Islamist. It is this kind of hybridization that has been received as a threat both by what are often referred to as hard-line Islamists and by some secular feminists. Both sides have translated these fears and apprehensions into demands on women’s rights activists to clarify their position by drawing clear lines between Islam and un-Islam and theocracy and secularism. Without implying any equation in terms of political power and repressive responsibility, I want to point out some of the shared grounds between these two responses, from two opposite corners of the Iranian political map. One is the issue of an Islamic-versus-secular divide. Both sides insist, although for completely different reasons and rationales, that this is a central issue that the middle ground dissidents and reformers must clarify. Those activists working for change in an Islamic republic, however, have an interest in not defining what is secular and in resisting the urge to draw a line between what constitutes Islamic and un-Islamic. This is not an issue of compromise with a powerful and repressive state, though that would be reason enough. Nor is it necessarily a consciously formulated tactical concession. The Islamic government, not even in its totality but Najmabadi

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that faction of it currently identified with and coalesced around Ayatollah Khamenei (whose official title is supreme leader of the revolution), along with its popular and state-sponsored and -organized base (through the many state-financed social organizations) are the ones whose world outlook is centered around a secular-religious divide. They cultivate this divide by ascribing global meaning to every small or large issue that they conceive as a potential challenge to their rule. This is particularly the case for issues broadly named cultural. They see themselves truly engaged in a culture war. From satellite dishes to computer games, from newspapers to films, from the color and shape of a woman’s scarf to children’s names, every small or big matter is linked to the terms of a global culture war in which the fates of Islam and the revolution are at stake. Those who resist and oppose this totalizing outlook have every stake in resisting not only the specific lines being drawn as to what constitutes Islam and what unIslam, what is secular and what is religious, but the very notion of drawing any lines that would demarcate a religious domain from a secular domain. The forces of resistance and reform emerging from within the Islamist movements, as well as from outside all existing political formations among a post-1979 generation (through new journals, student groups, local councils, grassroots organizations, and some government-initiated projects),⁹ are formed around incremental, pragmatic, day-to-day issues with a resistance to allowing these issues to be pushed over one or the other side of the secular-theocratic line. Whether this is a tactically motivated screening and silence, or whether that very divide is now experienced as disabling to creating spaces of resistance and change, I cannot claim to know. Given where many are coming from (i.e., Islamist movements), I tend to think it is the latter. Whatever the answer to this query, it is this very resistance to drawing a secular-theocratic dividing line that has produced expanded space even for secular forces. Contrary to initial fears, for instance, that the emergence of women’s activist currents, including feminists, from Islamist ranks would further jeopardize the already precarious social space for secular feminism, their very existence and multiplication into many feminist and gender-activist voices over the past two decades—by muddying the clear lines of what or who is Islamist—has enabled feminists who speak secularism to find more hospitable and growing cultural space. The resistance to drawing such clear lines has been exasperating to hard-line Islamists set on keeping these boundaries clear and patrolled. Unfortunately, it has also been ( u n ) v e i l i n g fe m i n i sm

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received as unsettling and discomforting by some secular feminists who often demand that these women clarify their stance and draw this or that line, whether the line of separation of religion from government or the line of autonomy from men. This is quite a dangerous move; for if it succeeds in forcing them to choose instead of keeping the ground muddled, fluid, and shifting, it will constrict the transformative possibilities of the present moment. The fear that this kind of vexed hybridization will further reduce a precarious space for feminism, like the alarming panic of hard-line Islamists, arises from the particular ways in which feminism has been historically imbricated in the production of secularism within Iranian modernity. RETHINKING IRANIAN MODERNITY AND SECUL ARISM

Since the mid-nineteenth century, Iranian politics of modernity has been marked by the emergence of a spectrum of nationalist and Islamist discourses. Within that spectrum, one notion of Iranian modernity took Europe as its model of progress and civilization (taraqqi va tamaddun)— the two central terms of that discourse—and increasingly combined that urge with a recovery of pre-Islamic Iranianism. Other trends sought to combine their nationalism, and the urge to catch up with Europe, not with a pre-Islamic recovery but with Islam by projecting Shiism as the Iranianization of Islam in its early centuries.¹⁰ I am emphatically putting the latter in the spectrum of modernity for two reasons: first, in order to distinguish it from countermodernist trends such as that led in the Constitutional Revolution (1906–9) by Shaykh Fazl’allah Nuri; and second because later twentieth-century developments largely led to an ejection or abandonment of what may be called an Islamist nationalist modernist trend from the complex hybridity of Iranian modernity—until its reemergence in new configurations in the late 1980s. Until recently, it had been a commonly accepted notion that since the nineteenth century, Iranian politics has been a battleground between modernity and tradition, with Islam always in the latter camp. Early Iranian nationalism, unlike many anticolonial nationalisms, was more antidespotic and anti–religious establishment than antiforeign—reflecting the fact that Iran was not colonized, though its modern fate was very much enmeshed in the world imperial mappings. In the course of the twentieth century, however, an increasingly antiforeign outlook took shape: anti-British in the movement for nationalization of the BritishNajmabadi

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owned and -run oil industry in the late 1940s and early 1950s; and later anti-American with the emergence of the United States as the dominant economic and political power backing the shah’s regime in the 1960s and 1970s. This antiforeign emergence within Iranian nationalism was intimately linked with other developments. First, since the 1930s a growing chasm arose between the state and civil society, a virtual void between government and the majority of the population. Perhaps more important than the reality of disconnection between civil institutions and governmental structures were the cultural and political repercussions of making this void a sacred delineation for dissident politics, the weight of which was so heavy that any hint of a dissident coming anywhere close to someone with connections to the government was enough to mark that person as a traitor. Second, the modernist trends that had striven to combine nationalism and its quest for modernity with notions of Islam were virtually (d)ejected from the modernist camp as the latter became increasingly identified with either the Pahlavi state or with the nationalist, socialist, and communist left. Islam became consolidated with terms such as tradition and regression, and marked as an impediment to modernity. Third, since the 1950s Islamism emerged first as a challenging and eventually as a dominant (in both senses of the word) mode of antistate politics. The 1979 revolution not only marked the coming together of these trends but also began their very unraveling. Once an antiforeign, antinationalist, antisecular Islam came to be consolidated within the first years of the revolution, the very exercises of state power, and other intervening historic events such as the eight-year Iran-Iraq war, began to change all these terms. Twenty-eight years later, a different nationalism and a different Islam, oppositional and now even semiofficial, have emerged, defined not necessarily or even primarily through any organized political or social movements but through many local microdisplays and performances, which are not so much opposed to official state politics as much as, in a sense, going around and through it, at times acting as if the state were not there, at other times demanding that the state be there. This aspect of the new dissident Iranian politics is not simply a result of government restrictions and acts of repression, real as these are. These developments are in part also a legacy of the antistatism that had originally produced the 1979 revolution, with its sacred void between the state and the opposition; this void has since come to be seen as dangerous and futile, as undesirable politically and culturally. We are witnessing politics and culture with a difference in Iran. ( u n ) v e i l i n g fe m i n i sm

46 RETHINKING IRANIAN FEMINISM AND SECUL ARISM

Similarly, the beginnings of Iranian feminism were not marked by a boundary setting Islam to its beyond. Though there were debates among women on certain issues, these differences were not consolidated as incompatible and contradictory positions, one negating the other. Nor was Islam viewed as inherently antiwomen. Anticonstitutionalist forces, led by Nuri, grounded their political opposition to the constitution and to the reforms advocated by modernists in their interpretations of Islamic precepts. For instance, they argued that the establishment of new schools for girls was an example of the abrogation of the laws of God. The advocates of the new girls’ schools, however, also drew from the same sources to argue for female education. One woman, in an article addressed to Nuri, challenged his wisdom and authority: If by your statement you mean that womankind should not be educated at all and . . . that this is the word of God, then please write down where God and his appointed guardians have said these words. . . . If you are then proved right, then tell us what the reasons are for such disfavor of God, the prophets and the guardians toward womankind? . . . You may say that I have no right to dispute God’s affairs. I humbly say to you that I am talking about the God that you have devised—a God free of justice and an oppressor of women. The God that we know and worship is far too elevated and great to intend such differences between men and women and command with no wisdom. Our revered prophet, exalted and glorious, has said that acquiring knowledge is obligatory upon all Muslim men and women; there is a very big difference between our God who makes acquiring knowledge obligatory for women, and yours who has made education for women forbidden and against religion.¹¹

In other words, Nuri’s clerical voice was not allowed to hold a monopoly of Islamic authority and truth. Women challenged him and his God in their own language and in the name of their God. The common issues of women’s activism in this period were first and foremost women’s education and, secondly, reform of marriage and divorce laws. Women’s rights activists diverged mostly on the issue of veiling, hijab. In the pages of the women’s journal Shukufah (Blossoms, published from 1913 to 1916), for instance, some writers, such as Shahnaz Azad and Najmabadi

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Shams Kasma’i, wrote in favor of unveiling, while others, including the owner and editor of the journal, Muzayyan al-Saltanah, argued strongly against it. In other words, advocating or opposing unveiling was not the straightforward marker of modernity versus antimodernity that it later became. Within the ranks of women’s rights activists themselves there was a divergence on this issue that had not translated itself into antagonistic positions of one camp marking the other as antimodern, antireform, or traditionalist. If in this earlier period a diversity of women’s rights discourses existed among activists, how did the conflation of modernist with non-Islamic and Islamic with tradition and antimodern come about? A critical period for transformation of these diversities into opposing categories was the reign of Riza Shah Pahlavi (1925–41). One of the major issues with which Riza Shah’s reign has been marked in Iranian historical memory is the unveiling of women, for both those who supported the measure and those who fought it. In its simplest form, the common narrative is that as part of his modernization measures, Riza Shah in 1936 ordered women’s unveiling. For opponents of unveiling, the project has been seen not only as anti-Islamic but as part of a larger imperialist cultural offensive, with Riza Shah as an obedient pawn. Supporters of unveiling range from those who defend his methods (the scale of state coercion was unavoidable once several years of persuasion had not produced the desired result of mass voluntary unveiling by women) to critics who hold the brutality of the campaign responsible for its failure and for what is perceived as the later Islamist backlash of the 1940s and eventually the Islamic revolution of 1979.¹² There are several problems with this account. For one thing, it ignores an actual shift in Riza Shah’s policy on this issue. As late as the fall of 1932, the government was opposed to bi’chaduri, that is, to replacing the chador with any other full-length outfit.¹³ In a letter to Shafaq-i surkh (Red Twilight) in 1930, Afzal Vaziri took the government to task on this issue: The police, with extreme severity, prevent girls from going to school without a chador. . . . If a girl of seven or eight goes to school without a chador, the headmistress, on the order of the director of the Board of General Education, will throw her out of school. . . . People should be left free to choose; don’t command bi’chaduri, nor stop women who discard their chador. . . . The government should simply take on the duty of defending order and protect women from men’s harassment. ( u n ) v e i l i n g fe m i n i sm

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It should write down and display the duties of men toward women in public places and buses, and the police should first of all behave accordingly and then enforce these regulations.¹⁴

When the second congress of Women of the East was held in Tehran (27 November–2 December 1932), Shaykh al-Mulk Awrang, a confidante of Riza Shah, spoke repeatedly and vociferously against unveiling as it was proposed by a number of women. Three years later, in February 1936, the same Awrang argued for the benefits of women’s unveiling.¹⁵ Something had changed between December 1932 and February 1936. Second, in the current narrative, women are simply victims of Riza Shah’s repressive policy of closing down all independent journals, unions, and political parties, including women’s presses and associations. This account ignores that more than coercion was at work: women themselves were divided not only on the issue of unveiling but also on how to relate to the increasingly centralized and autocratic government of Riza Shah. The differences on the (un)veiling question were voiced at length from the floor of the congress of Women of the East. A number of Iranian women spoke in favor of unveiling as a necessary step for women’s progress. Others spoke for progress but in opposition to unveiling. The disagreements over how Iranian women’s rights activists should relate to Riza Shah’s government came to a head through the events of this congress. The congress was hosted by the leading Tehran women’s organization, Jam‘iyat-i nisvan-i vatankhwah (Society of Patriotic Women, spw). The site of the congress was shifted from a private girls’ school, ‘Iffatiyah, where the first session was held, to the private residence of spw’s president, Masturah Afshar (sessions 2–5), and finally to the hall of the Ministry of Education for its sixth (and concluding) session. This shift in sites indicated the government’s increasingly interventionist role, mediated through a section of the spw leadership that aimed at controlling women’s activism. Awrang officially opened the congress on 27 November. A Mrs. Afkhami, the associate director of the women’s section of the Red Lion and Sun (the Iranian equivalent of the Red Cross) and the wife of Brigadier General ‘Abd al-Riza Afkhami (her full name is not given in the records), informed the congress that Princess Shams Pahlavi had agreed to act as the honorary president of the congress. She was followed by Masturah Afshar. According to Nur al-Hudá Manganah, one of the leading women’s rights

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activists and a member of the board of directors of the spw, this lecture was not what had been planned by the society. She recalled bitterly: We had set up a number of commissions [within spw to deal with the organization of the congress], but Masturah Khanum would negotiate matters in the absence of commissions [behind the scenes]. I reminded her several times that she was carrying things out without consulting the commissions and without informing other women, and that all women, members of these commissions, are very upset at her behavior. . . . When the congress was convened . . . Mrs. Masturah Afshar’s report was not about the positive activities and achievements of the Society of Patriotic Women. Members began to murmur their discontent, “This report had nothing to do with us; it was out of subject; why didn’t she mention our activities and services; why didn’t she honor the founders of our society such as Mrs. Iskandari and yourself (that is, me)?” After this untruthful report of Mrs. Masturah Afshar, the personal side of which overrode the general interests of the Society, all the hard-working members of the Society who were committed to general interests, including myself who had carried the heavy burden of the Society’s work, lost heart and resigned. After that, there was no one to pursue the Society’s goals with steadfastness and hard work and reestablish it on a firm and beneficial foundation. The Society fell apart.¹⁶

What was the content of the “untruthful report of Mrs. Masturah Afshar” that had caused such commotion and demoralization, leading to the spw ceasing all activity shortly after the congress? What had she said in place of reporting “the positive activities and achievements” of the spw? Afshar’s lecture on the first day of the congress was filled with praise and appreciation for Riza Shah, favorably comparing the situation of Iranian women under Riza Shah to that of other women in the East, on the one hand, and to the pitiful state of Iranian women prior to the “shining dawn” of the Pahlavi era, on the other. While many Iranian women used the occasion of the congress as a platform from which to address the Iranian government critically and raise their demands, largely speaking to issues of women’s concern, others were more interested in displaying the achievements of Riza Shah’s government and expressing their thankful praises to him. When there were disagreements among Iranian women (such as on unveiling, or on whether they should demand that the govern-

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ment send women abroad for higher education), Awrang would intervene to weigh the argument along governmental policy.¹⁷ If Awrang had failed to stop women from speaking for unveiling when it was not yet government policy, he had succeeded in bringing a wing of the movement under governmental mantle. Is it possible that the change of governmental policy on the issue of unveiling was in part a bargain that these women had struck? The current dissident historiography of women’s organizations not only credits (blames) Riza Shah with the unveiling campaign; it also often considers women such as Masturah Afshar, Hajir Tarbiat, and Sédighé Dolatabadi as traitors to the cause of an independent women’s movement and as stooges of Riza Shah.¹⁸ Kanun-i banuvan (Women’s Center)—a women’s organization established by the government in May 1935 under the auspices of the Ministry of Education to lead the educational and propaganda campaigns for unveiling and other policies concerning women—is considered a state organization formed on the dead bodies of all previous independent women’s organizations. But a woman such as Dolatabadi could hardly be thought of as a stooge of the government. She had been active in Isfahan since the late 1910s in opening schools and publishing a women’s journal. In 1923 she went to Europe to study, represented the spw at the 1926 congress of the International Alliance for Women’s Suffrage in Paris, and on her return to Iran in 1927 worked for girls’ schools in Tehran—many years before Women’s Center came on the scene. She continued to do much of the same after the 1941 abdication of Riza Shah until her death in 1961. To me a more persuasive account is that for a particular period her trajectory and that of the government coincided. Dolatabadi could be seen as using the government, as much as the government could be seen using Dolatabadi.¹⁹ Iranian women in the 1930s were divided not only on how to relate to the increasingly autocratic government of Riza Shah but also on the issue of (un)veiling. Unlike concerning issues such as women’s education and the reform of marriage and divorce laws, there was a deep division among Iranian women themselves with regard to the veil. I stress this division among women because after the official ban on the chador was imposed in 1936, not only did state violence enter into the picture but, more critically, an unbridgeable chasm opened up among women. Girls were withdrawn from schools and kept at home. Women teachers who did not want to unveil resigned from their jobs or were dismissed—which opened up room for the immediate promotion of other women.²⁰ Girls’ schools that had been sites of women’s public togetherness, with women acting not only Najmabadi

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as students and teachers but also as citizens, actively shaping “gender and patriotic sisterhood,” now became sites of division. As it was later recalled by women who accepted (or embraced) unveiling, schools suddenly “became empty.” Becoming empty obviously cannot be taken literally since the very women who narrate the emptiness of these spaces were there to observe and report that emptiness. They had become empty only of women who would not (or could not, if forbidden by fathers, brothers, or husbands) unveil. The emptiness experienced was that of their site of gender and national sisterhood being emptied of those “sisters in religion” who did not return to school. In this site, all women who had wanted modern education, who had wanted to refashion themselves as educated mothers and spouses, to escape marriage, or to become professional, all who had been advocating reforms of marriage and divorce laws in conformity with the reforming spirit of Islam had crafted a space of solidarity and common activity. All these reforms were considered Islamicly acceptable. Not so with unveiling. The unveiling campaign as enforced by the government now expelled some from this common site. As with other measures taken by Riza Shah’s government, modernization increasingly became conflated with only that modernity in which becoming modern was disaffiliated from Islam and made to coincide with pre-Islamic Iranianism. It is highly indicative of the stakes played out on women’s dress code that official government memoranda of the 1930s repeatedly referred to the new dress code as libas-i tajaddud-i nisvan (clothes of the modernity of women).²¹ Those who had sought to combine their quest for modernity with a reconfiguration of Islam were unmistakably marked as traditional and antimodern—an identification that has only in the recent decade been reshaped. This process changed the meanings of modernity, Iranianism, and Islam. Iranian modernity increasingly took a non-Islamic (though not necessarily anti-Islamic) meaning. Iranian secularism and nationalism were critically reshaped through the expulsion of a different kind of modernity, one that had attempted to produce a different hybrid made of grafting Iranian nationalism with Shiism. Current accounts of the period, by focusing on the issue of violence or on the issue of struggles between the state and the clerical establishment over societal authority and power, occlude modernity’s expulsion of part of its own spectrum to produce its secularism. Women activists and organizations themselves were critically involved in the production of these reconfigurations. In fact, feminism became a most privileged category marking Iranian secularism. Perhaps more than any other socio( u n ) v e i l i n g fe m i n i sm

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political and cultural issue of contention, women’s rights issues—as the expressions clothes of modernity and clothes of civilization best narrate it—became markers of the secularism of modernity. Feminism became a screen category (a veil) occluding a historical process by which one kind of modernity was fashioned through the expulsion of Islam onto the beyond of modernity, where backwardness and religion became conflated as secularism’s abject other. It is this historical legacy that informs the current fears of contamination of secularism and feminism with religion. One consequence of this process has been that women’s issues, as symbolized by the (un)veiling controversy, proved impossible to build a consensus around. Not only did those opposed to giving up independent women’s activities to state tutelage withdraw and become demoralized but those who did not want to unveil stayed or were driven home. This is a chasm that only recent developments have begun to challenge and change. There is a reemergence of conversation and cooperation between secular and Islamist women activists today. Islamist women activists of today’s Iran are products of the previous era, not only sociologically, as many have observed, but also in that the terms of the woman question they have received bear the markings of decades of sociocultural transformations. They take issues as self-evidently Islamic that their mothers’ generation thought of as un-Islamic. The emergence of a vocal feminist position from within the ranks of the Islamist movement over the past two decades in Iran constitutes an important break from the past positioning of all Islam to the beyond of the modern. By opening up the domain of Islamic interpretation to nonbelievers and non-Muslims, by insisting on the equality of women and men in all areas, by disconnecting the presumed natural or God-given differences between women and men from the cultural and social constructions of gender, these currents have opened up a space for dialogue and alliance between Islamist women activists and secular feminists, reversing a sixty-year-old rift in which each treated the other as an antagonist. CONCLUSION

The purpose of my historicization of secularism, nationalism, and feminism is not to evoke some golden-age narrative in which women were united and then became divided, hoping that we could reenact some new moment of unity. But if Islam, secularism, nationalism, and feminism are historically defined and in changing relationship, then there is no reason Najmabadi

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not to imagine reconfigurations of these concepts.²² Thinking of Islam as the antithesis of modernity and secularism forecloses the possibilities of recognizing these emergences and working for these reconfigurations; it blocks off the formation of alliances; it continues to reproduce Islam as exclusive of secularism, democracy, and feminism, as, in fact, a pollutant of these projects; and it continues the work of constituting each as the edge at which meaning would collapse for the other. The points I have raised so far through a discussion of feminism and Islamism pertain to a reconsideration of Iranian nationalism and Islamism as well. Like many other modern nationalisms, the dominant concept of Iranian nationalism has demanded the assimilation of differences of religion, language, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality into a unitary notion of Iranianness. Citizenship has seemed to require the erasure of difference. But Iranianness achieved through such erasures could speak confidently its inclusivity only if Muslimness, Persianness, masculinity, and heterosexuality could be taken for granted. Iranians who could not take such privileges for granted had to masquerade as manly women, Persianized Turks, Islamicized non-Muslims, and heterosexualized subjects; in other words, they had to keep silent—if not be silenced—on their language, gender and sexuality, and religious and ethnic differences. If, however, we begin to reimagine an Iranianness that would entertain a different relationship between citizenship and difference, then the possibility that one can speak as both Iranian and Muslim, by explicitly marking Islam and Iran as separate domains, can make it more possible also to speak as Iranian and Jewish or as Iranian and Armenian—though it still remains tragically dangerous to try to speak as Iranian and Baha’i. To open up an explicit claim to Iranianness as Muslim and feminist could thus open up other speaking-as positions. Far from being threatening to secularism, feminism, or Iranianism, it could be promising of a different sense of Iranianness that allows new reconfigurations of these terms. NOTES This essay draws on several talks and conversations: at Brandeis University, 17 March 1998; at Harvard University, 19 November 1998; and at the American Academy of Religion, 23 November 1999. I thank the organizers of each event for giving me the opportunity to present these ideas, and other panel participants and the audience for critical comments. Special thanks to Camron Amin, Janet Jakobsen, Irena Klepfisz, and Ann Pellegrini for many thoughtful conversations. My thanks also to Ghulamriza Salami ( u n ) v e i l i n g fe m i n i sm

54 for assistance in locating archival material. All unacknowledged translations are my own. 1. The term Islamicate was introduced by Marshall G. S. Hodgson. Whereas Islamic, he suggests, would be used to mean “‘of or pertaining to’ Islam in the proper, the religious, sense, . . . ‘Islamicate’ would refer not directly to the religion, Islam, itself, but to the social and cultural complex historically associated with Islam and the Muslims, both among Muslims themselves and even when found among non-Muslims.” Hodgson, The Venture of Islam, 59; emphasis original. Islamist is used for contemporary movements and organizations that work for the establishment of an Islamic government, however defined. 2. As I began thinking about this essay, I was coincidentally reading Janet Jakobsen’s Working Alliances and the Politics of Difference, which deeply affected my thinking and writing of this essay. 3. See, for instance, Moghissi, Populism and Feminism in Iran; and Nafisi, “Veiled Threat.” 4. Khorasany, Salnima-yi zanan, 1378, 230–32. Zan began publication on 8 August 1998 and was shut down on 6 April 1999 because it had published excerpts from the Persian New Year message of Farah Diba, Iran’s former empress, and because of a cartoon that was considered insulting to Islam. The cartoon depicted a husband and wife being held up by an armed thief, with the husband pointing to the wife saying, “Kill her; her blood money is less than mine!” Iranian criminal code specifies a woman’s blood money as half that of a man. 5. Among them are Shahla Lahiji, a writer and publisher; Merhangiz Kar, a writer, lawyer, and activist; and Nooshin Ahmady Khorasany, a writer, editor, and publisher. 6. For a further elaboration of these tendencies, see Mir-Hosseini, “Stretching the Limits”; Mir-Hosseini, Islam and Gender; Azadeh Kian, “Women and Politics in PostIslamist Iran”; and Najmabadi, “Feminisms in an Islamic Republic.” 7. I am not employing the commonly used designation for such currents, Islamic feminism. For one thing, none describes itself as such. Some, for example, the journal Farzaneh (Wise), explicitly disavow feminism. Others, such as Zanan, have referred to themselves as feminist but do not use the combination Islamic feminist. This is because they take their Islam for granted and do not see a need to mark their feminism as distinct from other feminisms. Their endeavor, at least for now, is to claim a space for women’s rights activism as feminist; they need to distinguish themselves as feminist within a site whose Islam is taken for granted. Many of these women were activists of

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55 the Islamist movement that overthrew the shah’s regime. Subsequently, they became activists within the government (lobbying for women’s rights, joining volunteer warsupport efforts during the eight-year war with Iraq, etc.). Some joined governmentaffiliated cultural organizations such as the Kayhan Institute. Others, whether secular or not, consider Islam as the given political-legal-constitutional frame within which they (have to) operate. The marking sign for them, too, is not Islam/un-Islam, but terms for women’s activism, and more recently for democracy within the current civil society debates and struggles. See also Paidar, Women and the Political Process. 8. This new public space for interpretation of canonical theological texts is in part produced as an unintended consequence of Khomeini’s doctrine of the rulership of jurisprudence, which became encoded into the new Iranian constitution. Where the jurisprudent is granted the power of political rule and the constitution is said to be derived from canonical texts, every citizen by virtue of the rights of citizenship becomes entitled to take charge of these texts and to exercise the power of interpretation. 9. For an insightful analysis of possibilities of democratization dynamics developing out of some governmental projects, see Homa Hoodfar, “Volunteer Health Workers in Iran as Social Activists: Can ‘Governmental Non-Governmental Organisations’ Be Agents of Democratization?” Women Living under Muslim Laws, Occasional Paper No. 10, December 1998, http://www.wluml.org/english/pubsfulltxt.shtml?cmd5B875D=i87-2986. 10. The literature on the politics of Iranian modernity is enormous. I have found the following particularly insightful: Mottahedeh, Mantle of the Prophet; Tavakoli-Targhi, “Emergence of Two Revolutionary Discourses in Modern Iran”; Boroujerdi, Iranian Intellectuals and the West; Arjomand, The Turban for the Crown; and Bakhash, Reign of the Ayatollahs. 11. For the full text, see Mallah and Najmabadi, Bibi Khanum Astarabadi and Khanum Afzal Vaziri, 65–70; the text was originally published in Habl al-matin (Strong Bond), 1 September 1907. 12. In addition to several memoirs, two documentary collections of government decrees, memoranda, and reports related to the unveiling campaign have recently been published that make a more thorough historical reassessment possible. For a full documentation of sources see Amin, “Attentions of the Great Father.” As Amin has noted (270), these documents attest to the government’s concern that local authorities should not act recklessly. In memorandum after memorandum, it is repeated that “utmost caution” must be exercised in implementing the campaign, that educational and demonstrative meetings must be held, that women should be persuaded through

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56 officials (that is, through the officials’ wives and other female relatives) setting an example for the larger population. Yet the pressure to produce quick results and the continuous reprimands and dismissals of officials in whose localities favorable outcomes could not be demonstrated produced a violent dynamic: where local authorities could not achieve central government orders through persuasion, they resorted to daily violence. This violence ranged from dismissing women who refused to unveil from their jobs to pressuring local bath attendants to report on women who went to public baths veiled (sometimes through roof hopping) to instructing shopkeepers to refuse business and services to veiled customers to tearing women’s veils in public. The similarities between these measures and those undertaken by the Islamic Republic in the 1980s to achieve the reimposition of veiling are truly astounding. 13. In the 1920s and early 1930s, an increasing number of urban middle-class women had discarded the face veil. What had remained controversial was replacing the chador with other full-length outfits, as advocated by women such as Afzal Vaziri and Sédighé Dolatabadi. 14. Vaziri, “Mardha khayli zirangi mi’kunand,” 94–95; originally published in Shafaq-i surkh, 18 August 1930. 15. Ittila‘at (Information), 25 February 1936. 16. Manganah, Divan, 15–16. 17. At one point several women objected to his interjections, saying that he had no right to speak at this congress; the congress had specified that only women could speak. At this point Awrang said that he was there on behalf of the spw, and Masturah Afshar confirmed his statement. Note that at this stage not only could his presence and right to speak be challenged by Iranian women but he seemed to need to invoke the spw’s authority, either because of the presence of international delegations or because the government’s relation to women’s organizations was not (yet?) of as secure and brutal a character as it is generally assumed to have been. 18. Hajir Tarbiat and Sédighé Dolatabadi served as the first and second presidents of Women’s Center. 19. A similar process could be documented for many women activists of the 1950s through the 1970s. 20. As my mother recalls her own instant promotion. Homa Hoodfar insightfully details how the imposition of unveiling, contrary to dominant perceptions, did not translate into universally increased opportunities for women’s education and work. For substantial layers of urban women, unwilling to venture out unveiled, the governNajmabadi

57 ment measures resulted in the restriction of their education, economic activities, and venues for socialization, making them more dependent on the men of the household. See Hoodfar, “Veil in Their Minds and on Our Heads.” 21. Alternatively libas-i tamaddun (clothes of civilization) was used. See Ja‘fari, Isma‘il’zadah, and Farshchi, Vaqi‘ah-’i kashf-i hijab, 105, 148. 22. It also brings to our attention the challenge of not reversing the bifurcation in the other direction, as it is already being attempted; namely, by considering Islamist feminism as the authentic voice of women’s rights activism and secular feminism as some foreign importation. For one such attempt, see Majid, “Politics of Feminism in Islam.”

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CHAPTER TWO

secularism and laicism in turkey ˜ Taha Parla and Andrew Davison

Turkey’s experience with laicization has been seen, both at home and abroad, as a showcase of secularization and modernization in a nonWestern and predominantly Muslim context.¹ Reinforcing this widely held view, the recent conflict in Turkey concerning the relation between religion and politics continues to be nearly unanimously perceived in academic, journalistic, and policy-making circles as one between secular Kemalist generals and fundamentalist reactionaries. We will try to show here, however, that this is a false dichotomy and that, in order to grasp Turkey’s historical experience within Kemalist laicism past and present, there remains a need for greater conceptual and terminological clarity, something that remains elusive within the current, limited pool of terms. Many have thought that Turkish laicism is coterminous with secularization, which, in turn, is equated with Westernization and modernization. Thus the modernization of Turkey under Kemalist ideological and political hegemony has even been dubbed the “Turkish Enlightenment.” Even various partial critics of political Kemalism, including more democratic analysts who have criticized its authoritarianism, have granted to it this achievement. Our aim here is to rework existing understandings and to introduce some nuances in order to achieve greater clarity about Turkey’s secularization, as well as its precise relation to modernization and Westernization.² To this end we shall present reformulations of central concepts relevant to the debate, such as laicism, laicization, secularism, and secularization. Without this requisite first step, theoretical as well as policy discussions regarding the practice of laicism in Turkey will continue to be conducted in superficial and rounded terms, which, like the institutional articula-

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tions constituted by them, remain barriers to genuine intellectual and political change. Conceptual unpacking and rethinking are thus essential to examining the case at hand. We shall then consider what factually happened in Kemalist Republican Turkey (since 1920/23). Our considerations in this regard rely on historical and hermeneutical evidence we have presented elsewhere.³ Then, with the aid of the definitions we offer, we shall argue that Kemalist laicism, rather than being a fillip to secularization, has been a barrier to it in certain serious respects. In choosing to focus our considerations on laicism, we are not in total disagreement with something that both the Kemalists and their interpreters have said: that the centerpiece of the Turkish transformation was its laicist plank, one of Kemalism’s so-called Six Arrows, Kemalism’s six foundational, ideological principles.⁴ In conclusion, we hope to offer a more compelling explanation of the Turkish case, as well as some suggestions for transcending the present, stagnant debate by taking meaningful steps in the direction of a more secular and enlightened society and politics. ˜ Concerning the relation of religion to society, politics, and ideas, there is a whole spectrum of descriptive, analytical concepts, ranging from theocratism to the doctrine of “two swords,” to laicism and to secularism, to philosophical atheism and to antitheism. In both theory and practice, there are, of course, gradations within these categories, such as stronger and softer forms of each. Our approach is as follows: we take this spectrum as one of ascending order in the degree of liberation and emancipation of society, politics, ideas, and conscience from the categories and institutions of religion and the idea of God. In this view, secularism is not laicism’s equivalent; it is something much more than laicism, since laicism does not negate the ideas of religion and God. For the purposes of this essay, we shall be concerned with the terms that cluster in the middle of the spectrum. That is, we shall not dwell on either theocratism or antitheism here. The concept secularism has been plausibly used in several ways. One has historical origins within the religious or theological sphere and means “of the world” (as opposed to “of the heavens”), of the time or ages, temporal, mundane, and, we may add, urban in contradistinction to monastic (the earthly heavens). This meaning—still widely in use—entails the odd and problematic conjunction of secular and religious terms: a religious se c u l a ri sm a n d l a i c i sm i n t urk ey

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person, even a member of the clergy, may be said to be secular, or living secularly, for the sheer reason that he or she lives outside the premises of monastic seclusion and leads a secular way of life (e.g., participating in market exchanges and the ordinary sociality of the ages). We note this problematic ambiguity in this connotation of the term, but we shall not further problematize it for the time being since this is not the meaning we shall employ here. A second plausible meaning of secularism is the following: fully nonreligious, irreligious, even antireligious. Clearly connected with this connotation of the term is the meaning invested in it by George Jacob Holyoake, who contributed the term to the English language in the nineteenth century, at the same time as his contemporary Thomas Henry Huxley did agnosticism. For Holyoake, the word secularism conveyed connotations of atheism and overtones of materialism. He believed that secularism was a more constructive term for moral-theoretical purposes than the concept atheism, which, for him, had negative, antitheoretical implications.⁵ In this usage, then, secularism challenges the ideas of religion and God, and we shall use the term here in this sense, the problems and potential confusions noted above regarding the first meaning notwithstanding. With this second meaning in mind, we note that a further problem with the usage of the first meaning in contemporary discourse emerges. This problem concerns the relation between secularism and laicism. Secularism is often used as if it were the same as laicism, both in theory and practice. Laicism, however, is a narrower term, denoting a phenomenon that may not be non-, ir-, or antireligious. It may pertain, like secularism, to an outlook, a state of affairs, a policy, and/or a process. Since the term derives from the word lay, however, referring to the nonclerical members of a community of believers, laicism—as a practice or a disposition —does not necessarily set itself up against religion. Laicist political arrangements may separate religion and politics, but they also may retain an official or recognized status for religion for the reason that a laicist state may be governed by believers who wish to institutionalize or recognize a non- or an anticlerical interpretation of a religious tradition. In fact, as we shall show shortly, Kemalism in Turkey has been a version of this latter kind of arrangement. Those who identify secularism with laicism assume that laicism is the linguistic form secularism has taken within the Francophone tradition both in language and history, and that secularism as a word belongs to the Anglophone tradition. This is the view prevalent in area studies and modernization literature on the relationship between Parla and Davison

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religion, society, and politics in Kemalist Turkey, both in Turkish and Anglophone work. We do not think that this identification is valid or helpful. Indeed, it lies at the root of the frequent mistake of collapsing Kemalist laicism with secularism. The two terms are not two different names for the same phenomenon. Laicism is distinct from secularism, both conceptually and practically, and Kemalist laicism is a particular kind of laicism. Interchanging the two occludes an understanding of the distinct character of Kemalist laicism, which is not only something significantly less than secularism but also, as we shall show, more limited than other forms of laicism. So, in our proposed scheme, secularism is qualitatively different from laicism, and laicism has stronger or weaker forms. The issue at stake is the extent and content of the relation between religion and various arenas of life. This relation should be described in both qualitative and quantitative terms, where stronger and weaker refer to the degree of distance between sociopolitical and religious ideas and institutions. This distance may not always be measurable in numerical terms, but it is in power terms insofar as an established state religion, for example, wields greater, general public and political influence than a disestablished one. Returning to laicism, there are, again, several meanings or connotations of the term, each of which should be unpacked into its component parts. We offer three as a starting point for more refined reflection: laicism may be understood as (1) the separation of religion and politics; (2) the control of religion by the state; and (3) the disestablishment of religion in various spheres of social and political life. Each form of laicism should be considered in relation to various fields of life: laicism in politics, laicism in law, laicism in education, and laicism in social and individual morality. Each should be examined separately and evaluated in net balance only thereafter, because the form and degree of laicism in each sphere in any historical context may not be uniform or equal, in the Turkish case or elsewhere. Some refinement of each connotation of laicism is necessary for consideration in any empirical context. In the first case, the separation of religion and politics should not be confined to the state. The question of separation includes, inter alia, executive, legislative, and popular political discourse and practice, political party behavior, and the scope of participation in the political process. As for the second meaning of laicism, control of religion by the state has been a historical process that has followed the separation of spheres. In the se c u l a ri sm a n d l a i c i sm i n t urk ey

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experience of the West, the process of control started with the doctrine of two swords and meant, in the beginning of the process, the coexistence of religion and politics. This coexistence was precarious since at times the political branch had the upper hand and at other times the religious did. The swords clashed, the relation ebbed and flowed, but in the long run the political gained the upper hand in matters of state, sometimes with the cooperation of laicized clergy, whose compromise may have been founded on the premise that religion would not be contested and that a laicist state would cede to religion authority on, and autonomy in, matters of morality and conscience. The important point is that the process of laicization was constituted by a contest for control. This contest had at least two layers: one concerning the control over politics, the other the control over morality. Control only over the former and not the latter obviously entails a weaker laicization than control over both. Hence state control over a religion that it accommodates in one or both of these realms is a form of laicization. Kemalist laicism, which in great part institutionalized political control over religion within the institutions of the state, is therefore one form of laicism, though it was and remains a limited one for reasons we will specify shortly. We do not deny, moreover, that laicization, especially in its higher dosages, may be a midway station in the process of secularization, but analysts should measure these processes judiciously and meticulously. Our implication is that a more effective form of laicism than the laicism of control does not stop there. Control may be an initial step, an early phase, but for greater laicization, if it is to proceed in the direction of secularization, it cannot remain withheld, arrested at that point. It must continue in the direction of the third meaning of laicism, that is, disestablishment. By disestablishment we mean the removal of the control that religion has within a state, the severing and elimination of relations and connections between religious institutions, personnel, and ideas, on the one hand, and politics and the structures of political power, on the other. A greater laicism than the laicism of control seeks to expel religion from the state. Laicism in Turkey has not done so; indeed, over time it has done the reverse, and it is limited in this sense. The difference between disestablishment and control necessitates one further refinement. When we talk about total disestablishment in the process of laicization, we believe that this kind of laicization approximates secularization only if it entails a severing of all linkages between religion and life. For disestablishment to be secularizing as opposed to laicizing, Parla and Davison

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it must tend toward the removal of religion from not only politics but also from general human inquiry and understanding, from beliefs in the nature of reality, from social morality, from culture, and from individual morality. This last point is especially important from the perspective of political theory and practice: for secularism to exist in full, religion must be removed not only from the institutions of public life but also from the realm of individual conscience and theoretical consciousness. Not only the institutions of religion but also the idea of God must have been removed. ˜ The Kemalist regime removed religion from politics in the sense that it banned parties from using religion as a political platform. It even outlawed parties whose programs allegedly contained articles in support of religion. It did not, however, take religion out of the state. At the same moment that it abolished the caliphate and the Sharia—a move against which there was little dissent anyway in the Islamic world at the time—the state founded, in 1924, the General Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet İşleri Reisliği, hereafter dib) with a view to invest the authority of teaching “the people” the correct Islam through the good offices of state personnel.⁶ This moment in history is rather important. Many observers interpret the abolition of the caliphate and Sharia and the corresponding shift to popular sovereignty as the moment of secularization. The state is perceived to have eliminated all institutional and symbolic affiliation with Islam as it adopted a new national(ist) legitimation formula. But this was hardly the case. The dib was charged with the duty of disposing of “all cases concerning the Exalted Islamic Faith which relate to beliefs [itikadat] and rituals of worship [ibadat].”⁷ The shift from an Islamic monarchy to a republican nation-state does not, therefore, warrant the hasty and faulty inference that secularism had been achieved. In view of the control account, the creation of the dib can be said to be a laicist practice, since the political regime subordinated religion to its authority. But if one takes the definition of laicism in its separation connotations, the picture changes. One form of separation can be described in philosophically liberal terminology as the state’s showing no partiality toward religion. (That state is not, as such, anti- or irreligious.) If one takes the definition of laicism in these terms—which dictate that the state should serve as an impartial umpire concerning the moral, religious or se c u l a ri sm a n d l a i c i sm i n t urk ey

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otherwise, beliefs of the population—the Kemalist dib functioned outright against laicism. Similarly, if one takes laicism to be the absence of a state religion, the dib again contradicts the essence of that definition. In other words, the dib can be considered as laicizing, or part of a process of laicization, if and only if one endorses the control argument, but not that of separation, let alone that of disestablishment. Furthermore, the Kemalists not only subordinated religion to the state, they also used and manipulated religion, that is, the correct Kemalist Sunni Orthodox version of Islam, for their own particular political purposes. Examples of this are rather numerous prior to 1928, the year Islam was removed from the constitution (though not from the state) as the official state religion. Terms and expressions poignant within Islamic political discourse were employed for mobilization and legitimation purposes throughout this period. Mustafa Kemal himself addressed the nation using the term millet, which at the time had not yet been deprived of its Islamic communal connotations. He referred to Islam as the latest and most developed of world religions, appropriate for the modern age; and he criticized as reactionary, superstitious, and regressive his traditionalist, potential political rivals.⁸ Religion could not be used by them, but it was perfectly legitimate for the Kemalists to use their own, correct formulation of Islam as the handmaiden of their discursive and practical exercises of power. The ways in which Islam was used rhetorically were, however, insignificant, especially after 1928, when contrasted with the durable institutional incorporation and integration of the dib into the state, not party, structure. In the words of the law that created the dib, its head was to be “appointed by the President [Mustafa Kemal] . . . on the recommendation of the Prime Minister,” to whose office the dib was to be “attached.”⁹ In the legal sphere, and most notably in the new civil code adopted in 1926, the Kemalists adopted Western laicist principles in aspects of civil law. The civil code provides clear evidence for a separation between matters of law and religion, particularly in marital matters wherein, for example, the Kemalists made the civil ceremony compulsory. There are other aspects of laicism in the legal sphere. The Kemalist regime implemented a number of articles in various legal codes preventing the propagation of religious ideas for political ends in individual expression and civil association. It banned and closed the ritual places of gathering for the institutions of folk Islam (tekkes, zaviyes, etc.). Kemalists viewed these spaces as springboards for potential opposition groups and thus took legal

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precautionary measures to preempt rival political movements from contesting their own monopolistic position. In the educational sphere, the well known Unification of Education law of 1924 abolished traditional institutions of Islamic learning and created a new national educational system.¹⁰ Religious instruction continued to be given in even these schools until the turn of the decade, when it was removed from curricula in the urban schools. Religion courses continued to be taught in village schools until the early 1940s. They were reintroduced in primary schools in the late forties and in the intermediary schools in the fifties. Until 1980, religion courses were made available through a variety of elective mechanisms in the formal national school system: first in extracurricular form on parental request, then in curricular form, from which parents could request, in writing, exemption for their children. The Kemalist generals of the 1980 coup d’état are generally regarded as having reversed course in this regard when they reintroduced compulsory “Religious and Moral Culture” courses in which articles of the faith of Islam were to be taught—to non-Sunni Muslim students, too, and even to non-Muslim minorities for a year or so after the new rule’s promulgation—not the history and sociology of religion as the euphemistic title suggests. To many proponents and observers of Kemalism, this move of the generals constituted a cardinal sin, a betrayal of a fundamental Kemalist laicist principle. Of course, there is a grain of truth in this, but when one looks more carefully at the laicist educational policies of Kemalism, the so-called betrayal is not there. For although the earlier Kemalists can be said to have taken religious instruction out of the formal school system, specifically during the interval of the thirties, they established religious instruction in the twenties and reestablished it in the forties and thereafter. If one can regard the formal national schools as the first track of education and training, as the Kemalists called it, there also existed a second and third track, on which Kemalist policies and practices can hardly be described as laicist. Starting in 1924 with the passing of the law on the unification of education, İmam Hatip Okulları (pastors and preachers schools) were opened under the supervision of the Ministry of Education to teach correct religion. Their staff was to be employed as state personnel in the aforementioned dib bureaucracy. These schools were also closed in the early thirties for a short interval, but they were reopened in the mid-forties under the administrative aegis of the Ministry of Education. Steadily increasing since the 1960s, these İmam Hatip schools became a

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mammoth system during the eighties and nineties, indeed, a full-fledged modern, national, Turkish-Islamic school system supervised by the institutions of the state. As a third track in the religio-moral instruction of the populace, Kuran Kursları (Qur’an courses), which teach religion to children beginning at preschool age, have operated throughout the history of the republic under the supervision of the dib. The immense, crucial significance and anti-laicist implications of the dib cannot be understated. It is the statesanctioned authority on all matters of Islamic interpretation and practice in Turkish politics and moral life. Even during the thirties, supplementary citizens’ textbooks on how to teach the Türk Yavrusu (Turkish bambino) and Mehmetçik (Turkish soldier) the right religious principles were commissioned or authorized by the state itself. The role of such guidebooks for Islamic practice should not be discounted in an evaluation of Kemalist laicism. As a result of universal conscription, the army has emerged as a major socialization mechanism for the entire male population of the country; it is the singular socialization mechanism for those whose formal education ends with the compulsory five years (or eight, since 1997). Conscripts are not only politically socialized; they are also religio-morally socialized during their two years of service and are given denser, more regular religious instruction than the cadets and officers in the military schools. All in all, organizational separation and differentiation notwithstanding, the Kemalist state did not essentially disestablish religious instruction. When we take into consideration the aforementioned three tracks, or four tracks if we include the army, Kemalism can be said to have established, disestablished, and reestablished religious education in the first track and, in net balance, established it in all of the tracks. The republican state has thus maintained its keen interest in religious affairs since the abolition of the caliphate. Kemalist intention and practice has been tantamount to creating a new division of labor in and among state departments concerning religious functions. Of course, there may be differences in degree among the periods of the republic and between the Kemalist religious educational system and the Ottoman one preceding it, but there is a structural continuity: religion is being taught, administered, and promoted by the state. The new Kemalist curricular form purged religion of its Arabic, Persian, and Ottoman elements, which Kemal and his followers believed were the contaminated versions of the true Islam of the period of the Prophet Muhammad. What has been called the Kemalist laicist national Parla and Davison

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educational policy in relation to religion was not entirely laicist, let alone secular. Kemalists established (not disestablished) a modern, nationalized version of pristine Islam, combined with the accompanying sources of civic religion based on the national characterological virtues of the preOttoman, Turkish national culture, that is, the old Central Asian one. This was very clearly formulated by Atatürk himself when he repeatedly said that what was to be synthesized with contemporary Western civilization were the local assets of primordial Turkish national culture and puritan Islam as interpreted by himself and the Kemalist dib. In fact, the laicism of the regime was further attenuated by the joint influence of the regime’s official religious educational policies and its national and nationalist educational policies. The positivist scientistic proclamations of Kemal and the Ministry of Education notwithstanding (“science is the truest guide in life”), the Kemalists throughout the history of the republic have not had or institutionalized a universalist philosophy of education arrived at from a comparative evaluation of educational philosophies. Their approach has been much narrower, aiming to socialize and to indoctrinate an ideologically homogenous population both incapable and unwilling to question the fundamental premises or policies of the regime. This has been something more than the citizenship training given in primary and intermediary schools; even university students are still trained to become loyal subjects of the state. Article 5 of the 1981 Law of Higher Education empowers a Council of Higher Education to “see to it that students are imbued with a consciousness of service in loyalty to Atatürk’s nationalism in the direction of Atatürk’s reforms and principles.” Similarly, Article 42 of the 1982 constitution on education states that “instruction and training are conducted under the supervision and control of the state, according to contemporary principles of science and education, in the direction of Atatürk’s principles and reforms. No educational and instructional institutions contrary to these foundations may be opened.”¹¹ The whole gamut of national education acts, statutes, and directives of the Turkish state is based on the motto, there are no isms other than Kemalism; all other isms are alien and harmful. All Turkish students and citizens are expected to think, feel, and act as compliant organs of a homogenous national organism, as “particles of Atatürk” in the celebrated words of Hasan Ali Yücel¹²—to some, the most illustrious of a series of ministers of education, the protector of the Village Institutes (special schools for the local practical training of village youths), and the architect of the “State Books” (Devlet Kitapları) series, a comprehensive effort to translate world classics se c u l a ri sm a n d l a i c i sm i n t urk ey

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into Turkish.¹³ This concept and its achievement constituted a hierarchical organism at the apex of which stood the deified, eternal chief, representing the best virtues of Turkish national character. The rest aspired and continue to aspire to emulate him. To be sure, this kind of nationalism, reinforced by a deification of a worldly leader much beyond the dosages known in other contemporary examples of personality cults, is in itself not only not very secular; it further legitimizes the antisecular imposition of the Kemalist-Diyanet (dib) version of Islam. The endorsement of one version of Islam by the great national hero, the commander in chief of the war of liberation, and the eternal leader—whose words and deeds are law unto the nation—further fortifies the legitimacy of the official religious organs and ideas. How far this may be reconciled with even a serious form of laicism is an extremely important question that should be pondered. In a visible way, then, the Kemalist state has been partial on the relationships between politics and religion and between education and a privileged religion. If we add to this the facts that the Qur’an was translated into Turkish, that the ezan (call to prayer) was conducted in Turkish (until 1950),¹⁴ and that the identity cards of 98 percent of Turks record Islam as their religion, it requires strenuous effort to call the Kemalist approach laicist, let alone secularist. It also renders nearly absurd the claim that the laicist Turkish republic lacks a state religion. It is truly a curious form of a religionless state that educates, appoints, and remunerates not only the Diyanet bureacracy but also mosque preachers out of taxpayer money—a payment that in serious laicist states or societies must be left to the intention and generosity of the respective communities of believers. Kemalism has been described as the Turkish Reformation, similar to the Protestant Reformation and related European anticlerical tendencies in which a shift occurred in the relation among the church, the state, and the believers. The analogies can be considered at five levels, on which we see both similarities and dissimilarities: (1) the historical novelty and departure of the laicist experience from previous thought and practice; (2) the anticlerical alteration in the relationship among politics, religion, and education—including, of course, religious instruction—through the elimination of the institutional intermediary of the church and the clergy; (3) the elevation of the sacred scripture as the final authority; (4) the privatization or personalizing of the relationship between God and the individual by bringing them into direct communion; and (5) the reaffirmation of authoritarian politics (“obey the powers that be”). Parla and Davison

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The analogy holds mainly around the third and fifth points, but it falls apart around the first, second and fourth. Certainly aspects of reformation occurred in Kemalist Turkey: the Qur’an was reaffirmed and individual ties with God were promoted and secured under an authoritarian regime. Regarding the second and fourth comparative points, however, Kemalism, we think, is less laicist than European anticlericalism because it incorporated the clerical personnel into the state, making them state employees with tremendous public and political influence. This structural arrangement compromised any privatization of belief that accompanied the rhetoric to the contrary insofar as the dib came to play a role in the relationship between individuals and God. As for the first point of comparison, laicization in Turkey was not initiated from scratch by the early Kemalist regime. Laicist propensities formed part of a process that was well under way in the nineteenth century Ottoman-Turkish context. The Ottoman Empire had undertaken several bureaucratic, civil, and educational reforms aimed at enhancing lay control over Islam, reforms that were themselves, arguably, part of a pattern set by the Tanzimat movement of the nineteenth century, which sought to reorder the empire in more bureaucratically and technically efficient ways. This process, often called modernization, was carried forth by the Kemalists in some aspects, and yet retarded in others. The Kemalists furthered processes of bureaucratic formalization, enthusiastically embraced the goals of economic prosperity and technological development (with uneven and exaggerated results), and produced a late-coming capitalist society with a modern commercial consumer culture, the daily activities of which have been associated with successful (though contested) Westernization. The Kemalists, however, through their authoritarian—in some respects even totalitarian—regime of a single-party state, curtailed political participation, thus preventing the growth of pluralist, democratic politics. Generations of Kemalists and their interpreters have maintained that such practices constituted necessary preconditions for the reforms and proved indispensable for preparing the people for self-governance and for joining the West (in their understanding of the term). As we argue elsewhere, this intent should be seriously reevaluated. By Western and modern, Mustafa Kemal and the early regime did not have either the liberal and secularist West, on the one hand, or the socialist, Marxist, and atheist West, on the other, in mind as the political cultural foundations for republican Turkey. Their political ideology was corporatist-capitalist, participation in which se c u l a ri sm a n d l a i c i sm i n t urk ey

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remained restricted and controlled by the state. By Westernization and modernization the Kemalists meant corporatist capitalism—not liberal democracy—and its accompanying set of political and cultural requirements. This is another reason why Kemalism’s status as an enlightened ideology should be rethought.¹⁵ We proceed then to Kemalist intentions and practices within two other fields of laicist practice, those concerning social and individual morality. Although Kemalists did away for political reasons with the civil religious arenas for the cultivation of social and individual norms, they did not pursue a secularist policy of eliminating or challenging religious norms in their own institutions. They retained their version of Islam as the norm and system of social morality. They had no qualms about the validity of religion in general and Islam in particular, or, of course, of the idea of God as a belief system. Not a single official or semiofficial-academic Kemalist work during the single-party regime (1923–45/50) questioned the central premises of religion or theism. Using the powers of state, ideology, and the charismatic appeal of a great leader, the Kemalists have promoted Islam as a social morality system that is, along with nationalism, also functional in providing the social cement to bind the community together. They have done so in official state discourse (to different degrees in different periods), and they have done so consistently in the institutions and policies they created. Finally, we turn to the sphere that to our minds makes for the most crucial testing ground of the nature, extent, and limits of Kemalist laicism: the sphere of private morality and individual conscience. It is an axiomatic and minimal principle of a full-fledged, serious understanding of laicism that there be freedom of conscience and that individuals should be free to choose not only their religion but also not to choose any religion as the basis of their individual (or social) morality. That this has not been the case in Turkey should have been the obvious inference. Kemalist nationalist Muslim ideology reigns hegemonic, and it directly influences choices for individual morality. From day one, school texts imbue students with this frame of reference in a socialization process that renders genuine freedom of conscience very difficult in more mature years. To be sure, there are Turks who have modified their commitment to Islam in laicist and even secularist ways, but these constitute a statistically insignificant minority whose departure from the pillars of Islam does not logically follow from their Kemalism. For successive generations, both Kemalists and their interpreters have Parla and Davison

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stated—and no doubt will continue to state for some more generations to come—that Kemalist laicism provides, above all, freedom of conscience and belief. In view of the institutional and discursive practices of the Kemalists, one is at a loss to understand how this inference can be made. Kemalists, far from refraining from interferences in the individual and social morality of the citizenry, continue to take all kinds of official measures and arrangements to impose—rather than merely protect—Islamic religion, supposedly in its “truest” form, on individual consciences. As a matter of fact—and much more serious than what we have been pointing to in unpacking the merits of Kemalist laicism in various fields—this dimension, to repeat, is perhaps the acid test of minimal laicism, one that would and should make a laicist politics stand or fall. The Kemalists not only intended to shape the minds of the citizenry (and succeeded), but they invaded and put a mortgage on its heart as well, leaving individuals no private space as regards religious or non–religiously based moral beliefs. They made true Islam the second in command after nationalism in the Kemalist identity. This is why we cannot grant the Kemalist brand of laicism the status of a consistent and serious form of laicism. The famous and widespread motto of Kemal and Kemalists—incessantly asseverated as a public speech act throughout contemporary history—that “laicism does not mean not having a religion” (laiklik dinsizlik demek değildir) in itself should have been quite revealing to those who try to impute atheism, deism, or secularism to Kemalism. Even this motto does not summarize the limitations of the Kemalist position, however. The lack of an adequately differentiating classificatory system lies at the root of a politically and philosophically graver problem: Kemalists not only coexist with a politically and morally privileged religion; they are proponents, defenders, functionaries, and ideologues of a certain form of religious belief. (And if, as some claim, they are so reluctantly due to pragmatic considerations, the public record suggests otherwise, not to mention that their public gestures to secularism are actually nonexistent.) For example, to the so-called fundamentalists of the 1980s and 1990s, the Kemalists, civilian intellectuals and generals alike, have usually retorted in the following manner: “Praise be to God. We are Muslims, too, but our version of Islam is more correct theologically and politically; your version of religion is theologically and politically incorrect.” This classical Kemalist laicist gesture very typically and graphically exhibited itself in 1998 when one of the highest commanders of the armed forces was photographed while instructing a woman on how to arrange her headgear propse c u l a ri sm a n d l a i c i sm i n t urk ey

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erly. This is why we have difficulty in acknowledging the present debate in Turkey, indeed the harsh clash, as one between the secularists and the fundamentalists. To our minds this is much less a Kulturkampf between real progressivists and reactionaries than a schism and clash between two sects of Islam vying for power and competing politically, in the narrow sense of the term.¹⁶ In Turkey today, although there are significant differences in ritual practice, there is no discernible, non-negligible, theoretical, or ideational categorical difference in the basic religious beliefs of the two camps. It goes nearly without saying that sometimes history has seen the harshest clashes between the sects of the same religion rather than between different religions. All of this impels us to view Kemalist laicist ideology, institutions, and practices (and their implications over time for human relations and personal identities), not as a project and achievement in the direction of cultural and political secularization, but, on the contrary, as a serious impediment to achieving such stated goals. Kemalist laicism is at best a limited, often inconsistent and ambivalent, form of laicism or laicization. More important, if one requires more demanding criteria of laicism, it stands in outright opposition to serious, strong understandings and practices of laicism. It seems to us that if secularism (and serious laicism too) is to further take root in Turkish society, politics, and morals, the staple Kemalist laicist stand will not do. Kemalism, which lacks a convincing ideological and practical laicist project and which continues to make official and established concessions to religion, is not up to the task. In place of a philosophical critique of the place of religion in the public sphere, Kemalism offers a politics that uses religion instrumentally and has led to narrow theological and political rivalries. The debate in domestic and international scholarly communities similarly must elevate itself above the level of labeling and counterlabeling. Some might object to our recasting the debate by making a distinction between terms (laicism and secularism) that are, for better or worse, not distinct in popular or most social science discourse about secularization. Our reply would be that the discourse is impoverished by lumping different kinds of phenomena together under the same rubric. If laicism is equated with secularism, then there remains little hope of distinguishing between unique and subtle developments in different historical attempts to disentangle politics and experience from religion. Nonetheless, if the objectors feel compelled to maintain the existing discourse as it is, we suggest that at least different concepts and historical forms of secularism Parla and Davison

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be distinguished and that Kemalist “secularism” be understood as a very, very limited one, a partial anticlericalism in which the state institutionally and willfully involves itself with religious practice and interpretation. Whether or not one assumes a greater unity and totality of politics and morality in Islam compared to the other two Abrahamic religions, the golden rule for all three remains that in moral life not less but more of religion is the desideratum, however laicised or secularized a culture may be in terms of daily social and cultural life (especially regarding certain nontraditional practices and certain social groups such as women). The fact remains that in the final analysis, religious morality continues to have very serious public and political implications throughout the world at this hour of history. In Turkey as elsewhere, contestants for political power promote some form of a connection between religion and politics. The consistency and effectiveness of the laicist (and allegedly secularist) arguments and practices of Kemalist believers may therefore well be weakened by promoting religio-political discourse, the terms of which are, by definition, more favorable to the non-Kemalist believers in view of the aforementioned golden rule. Public opinion polls commissioned by the Turkish military in 1998 showed that public support for the Islamist Virtue Party—the successor to the Welfare Party that was closed earlier that year by the Constitutional Court—endured and even continued to rise despite the laicist state’s attempt, initiated by the military and supported by various laicist parties, to subdue the movement. This event in itself shows that the army remains very much on the scene, not only in political life but also in religiopolitical life. Its efforts in commissioning the poll seems to have resulted from its interest in gauging the strength of the other camp and shaping its policies accordingly. The organs of the Kemalist state are apprehensive; they want to check Islamist theopolitics, but their actions are not always conducive to that end.¹⁷ Indeed, insofar as their overall policies have been religion-friendly laicist ones, their goal now in fomenting the “green scare” is certainly less the removal of religion from politics than the elimination of political rivals.¹⁸ Experience suggests that when so-called secularizers concede public room for religious morality, they not only fail to curb it; they may even be providing the necessary foundations for its continued life and growth. If serious secularization is to be the primary desired good, Turkish political life stands in need of more than conceptual clarity; it needs non-, ir-, and antireligious argumentation and practice. In this regard, what holds true for Turkey holds true as well for the yet insufse c u l a ri sm a n d l a i c i sm i n t urk ey

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ficiently secularized West, however rooted the norm of secularism may be. The issue in Turkey is not secularist Kemalist generals and intellectuals versus religious fundamentalists and reactionaries. It is, rather, limited laicist Kemalist Muslims versus other Islamo-political groups. And the question of who wants to put what under control can be answered as follows: it is not a secularist state that wants to control religion in order to separate and disestablish it; it is a non-Sharia Muslim state that wants to control other Islamic groups or sects. NOTES All unacknowledged translations are our own. 1. For an account and critique of various evaluations stressing the exemplary nature of the Turkish case, see Davison, Secularism and Revivalism in Turkey. 2. None of this implies that we idealize either the classical paradigms of modernization and secularization or the liberal and modern West as the end point of secularization. See Parla, Social and Political Thought; and Davison, Secularism and Revivalism in Turkey. We are simply speaking in relative terms within the parameters in which Kemalists and their interpreters have conceptualized, categorized, and evaluated Turkey’s contemporary political history. These terms are undergoing changes in the literature on Turkey in light of the general reevaluation and critique of the teleological and ethnocentric expectations of modernization discourse. 3. While doing this for laicism in Turkey, we shall not and cannot perform a detailed analysis of the larger phenomenon of Kemalism. See Parla, Türkiye’de Siyasal Kültürün Resmi Kaynakları. See also Parla, “Kemalism”; and Parla and Davison, “Corporatism in Kemalist Turkey: Progress or Order,” manuscript in progress. 4. The full list of arrows is as follows: republicanism, nationalism, populism, statism, laicism, and transformationism. 5. Holyoake, Principles of Secularism. 6. The name of the Diyanet İşleri Reisliği, created by law, was changed in the 1961 constitution to Diyanet İşleri Başkanlığı and was given by the Kemalist military junta of 1960–61 the status of a constitutional organ. The Kemalist junta of 1980–83, in Article 136 of its 1982 constitution, legislated as follows: “As an agency of the general administration, the General Directorate of Religious Affairs fulfills the duties indicated in its special law in compliance with the principle of laicism, and remaining outside of Parla and Davison

75 all political opinions and thinking, and having as its goal national solidarity and integrity.” 7. Law 429 on the Abolition of the Ministries of Religious Affairs and Pious Foundations, 3 March 1924. 8. See Parla, Türkiye’de Siyasal Kültürün Resmi Kaynakları. 9. Law 429 on the Abolition of the Ministries of Religious Affairs and Pious Foundations, 3 March 1924. 10. Law 430 on the Unification of Education, 3 March 1924. 11. See Parla, Türkiye’de Anayasalar. 12. See Kaplan, Türkiye’de Milli Eğitim İdeolojisi. 13. This policy, among many others, still awaits critical examination and evaluation with regard to what was included and what was excluded. 14. We note the recent reemergence of demands for the ezan to be recited in Turkish. 15. In our forthcoming work in English, we argue this in detail based on an account of the central ideological documents of the Kemalist project. 16. We cannot go into the economic dimension of this struggle for power, namely, that between the rising Islamist “new money” and the laicist Muslim “old money,” whose traditional allies have been the Kemalist state and the military. 17. It bears noting that today’s revival is not an incarnation of the sort of localized (not to be exaggerated) religious opposition that the early Kemalists faced in the twenties and thirties, but has more to do with the world conjunctural rise of Islam, among other religious revivals, that we have been witnessing in recent decades. Moreover, wittingly or not, today’s Islamist movements commit the same mistake as other interpreters of Kemalist laicism, seeing its limited laicism as a full-blown secularism. 18. The generals’ responsibility in creating the “green scare” is actually more complicated, for they were implicated in the growing legitimacy of Islam since their 1980 decision to use Islam instrumentally, along with Kemalism, as their second strong card against the then “red scare.” This move can be said to have boomeranged. By giving it constitutional status, even if to control it, they have increased the overall legitimacy of Islam in politics.

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CHAPTER THREE

women between community and state: some implications of the uniform civil code debates ˜ Rajeswari Sunder Rajan

This essay is an attempt to think through the question of women’s position in relation to the state and to religious communities, a position that is invariably played out as a conflict between the exercise of their citizenship rights and the claims and protections of the religious communities they belong to. It is an issue that figures in the conflict around a uniform civil code (ucc) for India. The ucc debates are among the most vigorous and divisive in the present Indian intellectual and political scene, centering as they do on whether such a set of laws should replace the present personal laws and, if so, on the manner of doing it and the content of such laws. The place and function of religion in the modern democratic state are a central issue in the ucc debates. Consequently, it is impossible to analyze the ucc debates without also engaging questions about the nature of Indian secularism. Throughout the essay, I will thus also underline how the particular dynamics and operative assumptions of Indian secularism shape conflicts over the ucc. In the case of the ucc, the move toward secularization will not necessarily make what we might call secular reason the framework for public life as a whole. Rather, a major concern is that Hinduism (and there is much debate about what such Hinduism might be) will provide the frame for secular law. The article has two parts. In the first I set out the main positions on the ucc, identify the relationships among individual, community, and state that they are premised on, and highlight the feminist interventions made on grounds of gender, citizenship, and rights. The second part seeks

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to locate women as national subjects in relation to, but also beyond, the state and the religion-based community that the ucc debates implicitly regard as providing the only two alternative resources and identities for the female Indian citizen. PERSONAL L AW

The operation of separate personal laws for different religious communities in India is a legacy of colonial administration. Four religious communities—the majority Hindu and the minority Muslim, Christian, and Parsi communities—have their own personal laws (other religious groups such as the Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, and tribal and scheduled castes are subsumed under Hindu law). No one is exempt from or may opt out of a religious identity (Indians may choose, however, to be married under a nondenominational Special Marriage Act). Personal laws operate in matters relating to inheritance, marriage, divorce, maintenance, and adoption, which are regarded as “personal” issues understood as matters relating to the family or an otherwise personal sphere. Despite differences among them, the personal laws of all communities are discriminatory toward women. Personal law, since it is envisaged as a means of securing community identity and respecting religious difference, operates therefore within rather than despite a constitutional commitment to the secularism of the Indian state. Any proposed reform or removal of personal laws has become a fraught issue and is perceived as a threat to community identity and/or traditional patriarchal arrangements. Following the Shahbano case in 1986 (which resulted in the passing of the regressive Muslim Women [Protection of Rights on Divorce] Act of 1986), a uniform civil code became an issue of the moment on the Indian political scene.¹ One of the promises made by the Bharatiya Janata Party (bjp), which subscribes to a Hindutva ideology and politics, when it came to power in 1998 was the promise of instituting such a code. Even with the change in political power to the Congress Party, the ucc continues to be a prominent issue in political discussions in India. THE UNIFORM CIVIL CODE: POSITIONS

In the contemporary debates on the ucc, the following broad positions may be identified:

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—Constitutional secularism: The Indian Constitution approves a ucc in principle but not in practice. The main consideration, in principle, is that legal uniformity will serve as a means of overcoming religious differences and achieving national unity. The subtext, at least at the time of independence, was also that secular laws would be in keeping with the modernizing agenda of the postcolonial nation-state. However, the difficult communal situation at the time of independence and the opposition to the removal of personal laws at such a time led to the accommodation of a ucc only as a directive principle in the constitution (directive principles are constitutional injunctions, viewed as policies to be kept in abeyance and implemented in the fullness of time). —Religious patriarchy: The opposition to reform in personal laws was most vociferous when a reformed Hindu Code bill was proposed in Parliament in the early years of independence. Its proposals included measures like women’s equal rights of inheritance and rights in divorce, which were viewed by the majority of Hindu parliamentary members as threats to the hierarchy and traditional gender relations within the family. The personal laws of other communities have remained untouched by any reformist impulses since independence (except for the Muslim Women Act). This position continues to prevail, though the explicitly gender-discriminatory arguments are in recent times more muted in lip-service to women’s rights. These broadly and transparently patriarchal concerns among all religious communities are additionally inflected by various political anxieties in different groups, as the next two items indicate. —Minority communities: Their opposition to the ucc is articulated on the grounds that it threatens the sanctity of their communities’ religious laws and therefore threatens their religious identity; it arises from resistance to what is perceived as the likelihood that a ucc will really be a version of Hindu law, which will then be made uniformly applicable to all. —Hindu political parties: Following the passage of the Muslim Women Act of 1986, Hindu political parties have stepped up their advocacy of a ucc, primarily as a means of removing the “privileges” of minority men. The ucc that is envisaged will be a version of Hindu law and will thereby secure Hindu hegemony. Much is made of the so-called progressive reform of Hindu law in the 1950s as a model for a ucc. (But Sunder Rajan

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note that Hindu ideologues seeking a ucc would still be bound to resist reform of personal laws in certain directions, namely, those that might empower women.² The positions of both minority communities’ representatives and Hindu ideologues are undoubtedly covertly patriarchal as well as overtly communitarian, grounded as they are in the will to preserve gender hierarchies and to retain their own religious authority and autonomy.) —Communitarians: They would oppose the imposition of a ucc because of their opposition to coercive state secularism, their advocacy of a pluralist and decentralized polity, and their support of autonomy for religious communities. —Liberal secularists: This group would support a ucc on grounds of egalitarianism, the uniformity of law, and democratic politics, but would hesitate to unequivocally support its imposition in view of the actual situation of conflict with embattled minorities in which it is enmeshed, as well as of the dubious credentials of the government for securing a secular and egalitarian substitute for the present personal law structure. —Women’s groups: The agenda of women’s rights in discussion of personal laws has been systematically foregrounded only by the women’s movement and that only in its most recent phase.

The ucc debates among the last three categories—communitarians, liberal secularists, and women’s groups—occupy two distinct discursive realms whose overlaps and disjunctures are important to note. Though the Shahbano case led to the revival of the ucc question, it was perceived in sharply different ways, and the political and intellectual discussions it prompted moved in two different directions, one toward the nature of Indian secularism, and the other toward women’s rights in the context of personal laws. The latter is by no means at the center of the secularism debate between the communitarians and the left/liberals, and the former has impinged on feminist thinking specifically only in terms of defining democratic political space, as I will elaborate later. As will be clear from this exposition, there are problematic convergences to be found in this situation: between the liberal left and the Hindu right favoring a ucc, for instance, and between secular communitarians and fundamentalist representatives of minority communities that oppose it; there are also contrawom e n b et w e e n c om m u n i t y a nd stat e

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dictions between a secular constitution and a state that administers religious laws and is indulgent toward religious communities’ demands. The content of these positions cannot therefore be looked at in isolation from their context. We must be alert to ask who speaks, why, and what his or her politics is. A further point by way of clarification: both the liberal multiculturalism debates in the West and women’s struggles against religious fundamentalism in other parts of the world are relevant to the issue of the ucc in India, and they provide useful parallels to draw on to facilitate understanding. But the Indian debates are considerably more complicated because of two factors specific to India: one, religious laws in a secular democracy, and two, a multireligious nation-state. Thus the “secularism” debate, as I call it here, like the multiculturalism debates in the West from which it draws, is similarly polarized between communitarians and liberals; but since the communities under discussion in the context of Indian personal laws are religious communities, the place and function of religion in the modern democratic state becomes a central issue, rather than (only) the question of group (cultural) rights versus individual (legal) rights. Moreover, feminist politics around the issue in India are more complicated (theoretically and ideologically, not necessarily in actual political struggle) than similar movements in other countries because of the multireligious situation in India in which majoritarian community organizations have sway over and pose a threat to minority communities.³ Feminist activists may oppose the state and/or the community straightforwardly when there is a clear polarization of positions between women’s interests (gender justice) and religious/state patriarchies, but in India women’s groups have also to respond to and negotiate minority claims for recognition. This means that Indian feminists, because of their liberal, secular credentials (which does not exempt them from “having” a religious identity), cannot confine their struggles to women’s interests alone (if such a thing were clearly identifiable in the first instance) but are expected to be sensitive to the identity crises and threats experienced by members of minority communities, including women. This double commitment can lead to acute dilemmas for feminist understanding and to the paralysis of feminist praxis. I will examine in greater detail below some of the positions in the secularism debate between communitarian and left-liberal intellectuals who share a common discursive space despite the divergence of their views on the ucc, and in the following section I will highlight the issues in the debate around women’s rights within feminist groups. Sunder Rajan

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STATE AND RELIGIOUS C OMMUNIT Y IN THE SECUL ARISM DEBATES

The modern Indian state, by definition secular, nevertheless—indeed precisely in the name of that secularism—grants considerable recognition to religion, not only by retaining personal law but by actively regulating religious institutions in the name of a vastly expanded definition of secularism: for example, by having the courts administer personal law, managing religious trusts, opening entry to temples for lower-caste Hindus, administering religious holidays, constitutionally securing freedom of religious belief, and other similar interventions. This clearly stands in contrast to the modern secular state in the West, which operates with a definition of secularism that places religion, treated as a matter of faith (worship, ritual, custom), in the realm of the private, to which it makes the promise of noninterference and offers a minimal guarantee of protection of freedom of practice and little else. This definition also relegates the institutions of religion—church, religious law, religious authority—to minor functions in the public sphere related to the community’s practice of its religion. Beyond the constitutional investment in the secular control of religious matters, the Indian state, as Sandra Freitag has pointed out, has also showed a marked shift from the “initial constitutional emphasis on the relationship between the individual and state” to an increasing reliance on a direct relationship with communities, both in terms of “state policies (e.g., reservation policies for scheduled castes and tribes)” and in terms of “political strategizing (in the wooing of vote blocs).”⁴ It has also responded to demands for decentralization and greater autonomy to local bodies, regional blocs, and religion-based organizations in politics. Despite, or some would say because of, the state’s concessions to religious groups’ demands, the Indian polity has been riven by communal conflict. Conflict is the product of two aspects of communalism (as it is called): the existence of many religious communities within the single space of the nation and the consequent struggles among them for supremacy or survival, as the case may be; and the conflict between communities and the state. The latter takes different forms. The mobilization of the majoritarian religious community, organized around Hindutva or Hinduness as a claim of cultural nationalism, is of course a direct challenge to constitutional secularism and the state’s secular authority. The problem posed by minority communities is different: it takes the form primarily of intransigence to state-led change in an attempt to preserve their wom e n b et w e e n c om m u n i t y a nd stat e

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religious identities. Both the conflicts as well as the complicities between state and different communities show unmistakable signs of ascendancy. In such a context, the Indian state cannot adopt the West’s secular program of domesticating religious practice, relegating religious institutions to an enclave, and treating religious faith as a private concern. Religion in modern India is not simply a survival of premodern belief systems and religious authority—a familiar stereotype of civilizational backwardness in the Third World—but a crucial signifier of community identity and hence a player in state politics. It is in the face of this enlargement of religious communities’ political influence that communitarian arguments are becoming prominent in India. Religious community (along with other forms of linguistic, regional, caste, and ethnic community) is rescued from the illegitimacy it has acquired in the modern state. All these communities are described as various “fragments” in opposition to an inauthentic and totalizing nationstate. Located within powerfully orchestrated critiques of modernity, the community is cast in the role of the only alternative to modern life and its institutions (including, indeed above all, capitalism). The argument goes that along with the family, the community is the primary site of the individual’s socialization and hence of identity, affiliation, and the formation of affective ties of loyalty and solidarity with others; it offers the idiom of love and bonding in place of the sterile terms of the modern contract in law and the marketplace; religion, of course, provides spiritual solace, in contrast to secular rationalism. However, none of this, we might think, is in real conflict with the place assigned to it in the contemporary secular state. But the fostering of communal sentiments has also led to community identity politics, communal mobilization, and ultimately to communal conflict, according to some. Left-liberal secularists attribute the eruption of hostilities between communities in the form of riots, arson, and other acts of violence and destruction to the problem of communalism. Refusing this explanation, or rather perceiving communalism as only a symptom, communitarians would instead blame modernity. They argue that it is the failures of the totalizing modern nation-state and its belief systems—liberal individualism, the rhetoric of rights, bourgeois capitalism, secular rationalism, science, “development”—at whose doors the responsibility for the pathology of communal violence must be laid. The resurgence of indigenous community values is a consequence of people’s disenchantment with alien (European) Enlightenment values, even a rebellion against their Sunder Rajan

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imposition by the colonial and then the postcolonial state. It is in this context that the communitarian defense of minority cultural rights and of the toleration of different religious laws for different communities is put forward. It is thus the defense of community rights and cultural pluralism, articulated as a politics of recognition, that provides the larger argument within which a ucc is opposed. In the left-liberal secular position the concern with a ucc tends to be only an aspect of a larger discussion of secular modernism, the role of the state, and the “real” issues for postcolonial nation-statehood. Sumit Sarkar, for instance, complains about the neglect of urgent problems like poverty, underdevelopment, caste and gender inequalities, or land reform in Indian political praxis and discourse as a consequence of the claims of cultural nationalism and identitarianism to political centrality.⁵ A recent collection of essays by prominent Indian left-liberal social scientists offers a specific focus on state and politics in response to these claims, in which the state’s centrality to the Indian nation’s development is reaffirmed. Even as they stress the need for state-led development, the writers acknowledge that the actual record of the Indian state as the central secular, liberal, developmental agent and authority of the postcolonial nation is a dismally poor one. They argue that, nevertheless, what this poor record would entail is a “censure of governance” rather than the wholesale “denunciations” of modernity, science, and reason (loosely combined with antistatist critiques) of the kind engaged in by the anti-Enlightenment intellectuals.⁶ Both Amartya Sen and Pranab Bardhan address the state-versuscommunity debate. They insist that the state is called on to play a “protective role vis-à-vis inequities within the ‘community’” since the community is not necessarily the egalitarian, democratic, and intimately affective space that it is claimed to be in communitarian discourse.⁷ Communities often insist on compulsory loyalty from their members; religion-based parties like the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (rss) are closely modeled on fascist organizations in their modes of discipline and regulation. The individual’s exit from communities is not easy, and there is violent opposition to conversion, mixed marriages, or the disobedience of norms. The question of whether religious leaders—sometimes self-styled—or a vocal fundamentalist minority among a community can be regarded as truly representative of its position is often raised by its moderate members. There is also a well-founded belief that community institutions are in any case caught up in a process of decay, which is accompanied by changes in other spheres of social and political life. The displacement of communiwom e n b et w e e n c om m u n i t y a nd stat e

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ties’ authority by the state’s may well be the result simply of an “institutional vacuum” caused by these changes, rather than of active or aggressive state intervention.⁸ Some clarifications are in order to introduce greater nuance and complexity into this too-quick summary of the secularism debates before I move into the next stage of my discussion. First, I must repeat that communitarians, though opposed to the state’s imposition of a ucc, speak as “secularists”: they are critical (only) of official or Nehruvian secularism. In its place they advocate religious tolerance as being both more authentically Indian and more effectively secular. The problems of identifying some essentialized cultural Indianness in this formulation are obvious. Second, there is a spectrum of communitarian positions, which I have so far described in a somewhat undifferentiated way, ranging from the strong antimodernity stance of Ashis Nandy, who nostalgically conjures up a premodern vision of community derived from the Gandhian idealization of village societies; to Partha Chatterjee’s Foucauldian antigovernmentality from which derives his advocacy of autonomy to communities as a (indeed, the only) way of resisting the state’s totalizing and sovereign power; to Akeel Bilgrami’s critique of Nehruvian “Archimedean” secularism whose corrective is a state-initiated “negotiation” with communities for reform.⁹ Much creative energy is evident in the ways that communitarians seek to make the rights of communities not only not in conflict with but central to democratic politics. In general we may say that despite the initial strongly polarized opposition between the parties, these debates have brought them into agreement about some positions. One concerns the limits of the model of secularism as the separation of state and religion that Jawaharlal Nehru, the chief architect of post-independence Indian secularism, hoped would prevail in India as in the West: its failure (even impossibility) has been conceded by left-liberals. The failure has been variously attributed to India’s multireligious polity, the persistence and strength of religious faith and affiliations among the “people,” and the Indian constitution’s version of secularism as the official protection of all religions. Significant attempts to evolve more historically and socially sensitive theoretical paradigms for secularism, as well as to search for and interpret models of intergroup amity, have been made from broadly liberal premises.¹⁰ Even more clearly, the initiatives of the state in the matter of a ucc, as a matter of actual politics and especially under the present government, are suspect: they are therefore resisted by both communitarians and left-liberals. Sunder Rajan

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A final observation, which will lead me into the discussion of gender and feminist politics in the next section: in the secularism debates the question of gender is nowhere directly addressed, though the conflict that is noted between the constitution’s equality provision (Articles 14 and 15) and the freedom of religion and rights of minorities provisions (Articles 25 to 30) marks the space of such an address. The reasons for the repression of gender in these various positions are different and complex. I will not belabor an explanation here but only quickly sketch one: for communitarians grounded in an anti-Enlightenment agenda, women’s rights are problematic (though they are not explicitly rejected as such) because they fall within the arena of modernity, egalitarianism, and secular law. For the left, there is the familiar conflict between the categories of gender and class for primacy in understanding social structures and in conducting political struggle.¹¹ In liberal thinking, the individual is necessarily conceptualized in unmarked terms as the bearer of universal rights.¹² In all these ways of thinking, the claim of women’s rights in the ucc question tends to be fudged, or at least marginalized, in contrast to the way the issue is addressed by women’s groups. G E N D E R , I D E N T I T Y, A N D C I T I Z E N S H I P : FEMINIST POSITIONS ON THE UCC

The ucc debates both in the Indian Parliament and in other forums remained for a long time restricted to arguments about uniformity versus minority rights, secularism versus religious laws, and modernization versus tradition in the context of the new nation-state. Though the threats to patriarchal norms and the control of female sexuality, especially in relation to inheritance and marriage, were explicitly brought up in the discussions around the Hindu Code Bill, women’s rights even in these contexts appeared only fleetingly as a consideration. Even women’s organizations like the All-India Women’s Conference (aiwc) stressed the need for a ucc mainly for the reason that uniformity of laws would unify a nation split along religious communitarian lines.¹³ It was only as of the 1960s that the aiwc and other women’s groups began to press for a ucc as a means of ensuring gender-just laws for women of all communities, a demand that became considerably more complicated following the communalization of the Shahbano issue in the mid-eighties. In the subsequent years the differently evolving positions on the ucc among various women’s organizations have resulted in sharp divisions on a range of fundamental issues wom e n b et w e e n c om m u n i t y a nd stat e

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related to and emerging from it. This discourse is both different from and yet closely related to the positions articulated in the secularism debates.¹⁴ The major difference of emphasis is the primacy in feminist discourse of securing gender-just laws, a matter of little concern and sometimes active repression in the secularism debates. The parallels are to be found in a similar split between left-liberal and antistatist/communitarian positions, though it is important to recognize how feminist imperatives inflect these positions in significantly different ways. The only unanimous feminist perception in the matter of the ucc is that all religions’ personal laws are at present gender discriminatory. To some extent all women’s groups also agree that therefore these laws must change and that women must be involved in bringing about these changes. Beyond this, major disagreements divide feminist thinking on the subject. Nivedita Menon has usefully outlined the different positions on the ucc issue discoverable within the women’s movement, which variously advocate: (a) Compulsory egalitarian civil code for all citizens; (b) Reforms from within communities, with no state intervention; (c) Reform from within as well as legislation on areas outside the personal laws; (d) Optional egalitarian civil code; (e) Reverse optionality, i.e., all citizens to be mandatorily covered by a gender-just code across “private” and “public” domains, but with the option to choose rather, to be governed by the personal law of their respective religious community.¹⁵

The first of these, a compulsory egalitarian civil code for all citizens, has been more or less given up as a feasible or even desirable demand and ceded to the Hindu right. The compromise version of this is envisaged in the last two positions as an optional or reverse-optional civil code. The idea of a uniform civil code that will replace and exactly take the place of the present personal laws (as envisaged by Hindu right groups) has also been discredited: instead, the third option envisages a common civil code of much wider ambit that will include issues of domestic violence, homosexuality, and women’s work rights in its place, in this way refusing both the division of private and public and the restriction of gender relations to the sphere of the private and personal alone, which underpin the structure of the so-called personal laws.¹⁶ The broad options are those of the issue of reforms from within communities as in the second position, versus versions of a state-sponsored common civil code. Sunder Rajan

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These opposed positions derive from and correspond to the division between communitarians and left-liberals reflected in the secularism debates. Women’s groups who concede religious communities’ rights to personal laws do so, however, less from a recognition of their legitimacy, and even less of the value of communitarianism, than from a pragmatic reconciliation to the realities of the Indian situation. Thus even the All India Democratic Women’s Association (aidwa), the central women’s organization on the left in the country, conceded at its convention on equal rights and equal laws in December 1995 that a two-pronged strategy would be necessary to achieve this reconciliation—both common gender laws as well as reforms from within—and, specifically, that Muslim personal laws must be reformed “within the scope of Islam.”¹⁷ This is a concession to the current crisis of minority identity in the context of majoritarian fundamentalism and an attempt to distance feminist positions from the Hindu right’s demand for a ucc. The most influential proponent of this view, Flavia Agnes, has argued that outcomes matter—in this case, gender justice—not uniformity for its own sake. This, she argues, is best achieved by reform from within communities, by piecemeal legislation, and/or an optional civil code, and this is all that may be reasonably expected in the present context. There is also the recognition that in India women are closely tied to their communities and to their religious identities, for reasons of both an inegalitarian multireligious social arrangement and an inherently traditional social structure, and that therefore women’s groups cannot assume an “isolationist” stance by pressing for a “secular” civil code.¹⁸ It would be incorrect, however, to identify the support for internal reform of personal laws as only a strategic position. Increasingly, more substantial and foundational grounds for feminist opposition to proposals for reform from outside are being advanced. One source of dissatisfaction with outside initiatives is a problem internal to the women’s movement, while the other reasons for resisting them occupy the theoretical ground proposed by communitarians. Agnes has criticized the mainstream women’s movement for an implicit “secularism” that disavows and refuses recognition of differences among women deriving from their community identities, especially religious ones.¹⁹ Agnes, and most recently the Anveshi Research Centre for Women’s Studies group, maintains that this has led not only to the homogenizing of “Indian women” but also to the hegemony of implicit upper-caste majoritarian norms in defining “women.”²⁰ Feminists on the left have on their part issued denials of such designs and wom e n b et w e e n c om m u n i t y a nd stat e

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assumptions.²¹ But the real question surely is not one of the intentions and good faith of the left-liberal wing of the women’s movement but rather whether differences among women are best recognized and respected by having separate religious laws. This would continue to be a problematic issue even if the accusations were valid. If the question of women is one of the theoretical issues that the ucc debate has made urgent in feminist political struggle, other radical questions have been raised with equal political urgency from an antistatist position that resonates with communitarian arguments (especially those of Partha Chatterjee, who has figured prominently in these feminist debates). The hostility of many in the women’s movement to the state, to legal reform, and to the promises and premises of liberalism—individual rights of citizenship, legal equality, and state-sponsored secularism—draws support from their experience of activist struggle. The limits of nationalist ideology, the fiction of citizenship, and the dubious progressiveness of the law are all exposed by women’s issues like the Shahbano case, to mention only the most prominent among innumerable instances.²² The most radical formulation of this antistatism, the Anveshi group’s statement referred to earlier, is critical of the women’s movement’s preoccupation with selfevident gender issues such as personal law reform; Anveshi identifies instead with the struggles of minority communities and oppressed castes.²³ The most explicit cultural/communitarian position among feminists engaging in this debate is that of Madhu Kishwar, the editor of the feminist journal Manushi. Kishwar has been a major advocate of India’s “living tradition,” like Chatterjee deriving impetus for this position from an opposition to the totalizing and leveling moves of the modern state. From this position she opposes both personal law and a ucc because codification of the law only fixes and homogenizes the diversity and flexibility of customary laws. Even today “each caste and sub-caste and occupational grouping continues to assert its right to regulate the inner affairs of its respective community and does not pay much attention to either ancient textual authorities or modern parliament-enacted laws.”²⁴ But in general there is strong feminist resistance to a position such as Chatterjee’s—even where his communitarianism may be otherwise supported—on account of its gender blindness. Nivedita Menon, for instance, complains that he ignores a particular trajectory of community formation in India: “The very selfhood of religious communities as they have come to be constituted is contingent upon marking their difference as male in the ‘inner’ realm, so that to challenge this is to threaten their very existence as comSunder Rajan

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munities.”²⁵ We might link this to Fatima Mernissi’s observation about the “feminization” of the male in the postcolonial state as a consequence of the “access of women as citizens to education and paid work” in the modernizing state.²⁶ This might explain why the impulse for men to retain control over women within the bounds of religion grows reactively stronger in India as in Morocco. Another objection, the failure to distinguish between different kinds of communities, especially those based on caste as opposed to religion, and between majority and minority religious groups while valorizing “community” in the abstract, has been noted by the Working Group on Women’s Rights in their response to the Anveshi group: “Anveshi equates community with minority community, and caste with dalit. Would they grant the same rights to custom and practice where the majority community and brahminical customs are concerned?”²⁷ Antistate women’s groups recognize the bind: that most religious communities cannot be valorized as protectors of women’s rights in rivalry with the state, that democratic space for reform within them is hard to win, and that support for community in a loose sense may well implicate them in an undesirable support for hegemonic and majoritarian caste and religious groups as well. At the same time, feminists on the left are by no means unequivocal in their support of the state. The Indian state’s record in the matter of protecting and promoting the rights of minorities, scheduled castes, and women would in any case be hard to defend. The liberal defense of reform movements, legal activism, rights struggles, and citizenship is instead based on more modest claims for their efficacy than the attacks of its opponents would indicate—and surely it need consist of nothing more resounding than the simple belief that having rights is more empowering than not having them, that progressive laws are better than regressive ones (though not, perhaps, than none), and that universal citizenship is preferable to a political system that reflects social differences and hierarchy.²⁸ The main point to note here is that the conflict between the two feminist positions I have been outlining does not arise from an absolute defense of either state or community but rather from a muted and qualified support of legal reform from outside, that is, by the state, on one side, versus a muted and qualified support of reform from within, that is, by religious communities themselves, on the other. This is accompanied, however, by strong opposition to autonomy for communities in regulating their internal affairs by the first group, and strong opposition to state intervention by the second. While secular and feminist discourses valorize or criticize state and wom e n b et w e e n c om m u n i t y a n d stat e

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community differently according to the liberal or communitarian positions they support—feminists particularly as they relate to women’s identity and the benefits or costs of allegiance to one or the other institution— both would appear to share the view that there is no third ground available to women, and that the only recourse from the one is the other. The national crises provoked by the Shahbano and Ameena cases have resulted in this dilemma’s coming to be viewed as a paradigm of women’s destiny in contemporary India.²⁹ It is this impasse that I seek to negotiate in the second part of this argument. The space that lies outside the state and its institutions, commonly referred to as civil society, is traditionally regarded as the forum for debates on issues such as the ucc in a democratic nation-state. What kind of participation in civil society is possible for women? What social place is available for them that is not co-opted by family or religious community from which they might negotiate with the state? What identities, social roles, or social formations might secure them the influence of a critical mass as women? In what follows I briefly rehearse some of the ways in which women are presumed to relate to the community, the state, and other women before I examine their relationship to civil society. I am specifically interested in the collective subjecthood available to them in terms of each of these affiliations, identities, and locations. WOMEN IN RELIGION-BASED COMMUNITIES

It is useful to think of religious community in two distinct ways: as a political identity and as an actual anthropological historical entity. Religion has undeniably come to provide a strong sense of identity to people widely scattered geographically who share little else by way of class, language, custom, history, or even nationality; and it is this identity that is upheld by—even while upholding—personal law. It is also this politicized religion that is increasingly seen to take over the public sphere (often literally invading the streets), occupy various forums of public discussion, and set the agendas for regional and national issues. Necessarily such groups appear reactionary and resistant to change, mobilizing only to assert identity in increasingly fundamentalist ways.³⁰ The second kind of understanding of people within living communities in a bounded geographical territory is provided by ethnographic studies that explore the interaction among and between men, women, family, religious leaders, the state’s personnel, and other communities. Kalpana Sunder Rajan

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Ram’s work on the Christian Mukkuvar fishing community in southern Tamil Nadu offers a valuable example of such an undertaking. Ram shows how both Catholic clergy and state intellectuals make interventions into the reform of the Mukkuvar community in the name of modernization and development, impinging in particular ways on the reform of “bodily regimes,” which includes women’s sexuality.³¹ This study and similar ones point up the importance of marking the heterogeneity of communities: the differences between minority and majority communities; the differences between different minority communities such as the Muslim, Christian, Parsi, Sikh (relating to their size, status, beliefs, origins, politics, transnational affiliations, and political clout as a consequence of all these factors); the fact that religious denomination is inflected by other aspects of identity and location such as region (north versus south, the northeast versus the rest of India, urban versus rural, for example), occupation, class, caste.³² As historical studies reveal, religious communities are constructed, not natural entities. Personal laws were codified by colonial administrators for the sake of administrative convenience, in many cases by overriding or fixing customary laws, and do not in every case have scriptural sanction. Communities are far more heterogeneous, their boundaries far more permeable, and their norms far more flexible than the political rhetoric or the state’s classificatory schemes would lead us to expect.³³ Our understanding of women in communities would differ according to how we read the community in the postcolonial nation. If we understand communities primarily in the political sense, we emphasize their separateness, their isolation from the so-called mainstream, their stasis, and their resistance or refusal to change: all in the sole and supreme interest of maintaining their identity. Religion-based communities in this sense— like families, with which they are closely tied, and the nation to which they are culturally allied—are self-evidently centered on and led by men. But women are not excluded from or marginal to them; on the contrary, they form a crucial component of these communities. Their inclusion is indeed central to the identity communities, as well as women themselves, come to bear. But women—in specific contrast to men—are not viewed as constituting these spheres; they are described instead as belonging to them. (Though religious identity is legally inescapable in India, it is not for that reason nonvoluntary or merely passive—more or less active agency is permitted depending on the class, caste, or gender of their members.) The primordial nature of religious identity, which is an aspect of being born into a religious community, is not automatically available to women but is conwom e n b et w e e n c om m u n i t y a nd stat e

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ferred on them as an aspect of their relationship as daughters and wives to the men of the community. The complexity and contradiction of such belonging is indicated by the double meaning of the word as both “affiliated with” and “owned by,” the one indicating voluntary and participatory membership, the other the status of appendage and symbol. For women, even where the first, more agential meaning is operative, belonging marks a reactive mode. They arrive on a scene that is always already set, and their membership is conditional on their conforming to the preexisting rules, roles, practices, conventions, histories, and meanings instituted. In every case obedience and loyalty are rewarded by (the promise of) accommodation, protection, or praise, while disobedience and disloyalty are punished by (the threat of) boycott, expulsion, and violence. (This is the reason for the paradoxical conformity of women even in situations of power within religion-based political parties in India, and it explains why they have only ingratiated themselves with these structures, not transformed them.) It is in this sense that women become symbolic figures for communities, especially at moments of real or perceived crisis. Within such an understanding of religious community, as an autonomous enclave within the space of a larger public life from which it is isolated, it is difficult not to see women as merely pawns, prisoners, or deluded subjects. Ram’s conclusions about the Mukkuvars’ relations to both religion and modernizing reform are developed, coincidentally, in opposition to an essay on the Shahbano case that I coauthored some years ago.³⁴ She objects to the concept developed in it of family and religion-based community (especially a minority community) forming a “state-within-astate,” which ignores, she holds, the “dynamics of historical change within the ‘inner state.’” Such a model is, in her view, “inadequate at the intellectual level” not only because it is inaccurate—since it does not record the changes occurring within communities—but also because it stigmatizes (minority) communities and, as a result, “isolates and damages the prospects of minority women by further reinforcing the taint of ‘backwardness’ associated with minority status by a dominant modernity.”³⁵ In her own study, Ram convincingly shows the changes that modernizing reforms in the areas of marriage and sexuality have brought about in Mukkuvar women’s behavior, their status, and their well-being, in opposition to the assumption of minority communities’ stasis and backwardness that many feminist studies, like our own, worked with. But in the end she marks the limitations of the modernizing project, of the “relations of power in each model of emancipation and reform,” and the renewed Sunder Rajan

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attempts, ultimately, to recontain the sexuality of women.³⁶ Such a concession must not be taken to negate the lessons of other work. While it reinforces the reading of women’s relation to the community as one of subordination and subjection to control, it also in important ways opens the door, as she maintains, to the larger context of “postcolonial nationalism, and its allied legitimizing discourse of development,” a context I explore more fully in the last part of this essay.³⁷ WOMEN’S RIGHTS

The recourse to legal remedies and the assertion of rights and autonomy by individual women are often viewed as isolating and individualizing moves, especially when posed against the affective solidarities offered by family and community. The trade-off between gaining legal rights or legal victories and (losing) family and community support is invariably one that must give women pause. That such choices have to be made is a problem, it is argued, arising from the liberal conception of rights as inhering in the individual. The perceived limits of individualism and liberal rights for women have been responsible for calls issued by some feminists to abandon them as failed promises and return to family and community solidarities and values. The politics of legal rights is a complex and charged issue, and not one that I wish to explore here in any depth in terms of an abstract debate.³⁸ What is relevant for the present discussion is that for Indian women, the state is not in any case a readily available recourse from the problems of violence, injustice, discrimination, exploitation, or oppression experienced in family, society, or community. Legal processes are tardy, the police corrupt, welfare and employment opportunities negligible, and the individual’s knowledge of her rights and entitlements vague. To speak of women as rights-bearing individuals in this context is to invoke a situation that does not exist in any meaningful way. It is not hard to see that in addition to the conceptual and practical limitations of the law and state-sponsored welfare or protection, there would also be the problem of significant patriarchal resistance to women’s access to or deployment of these resources. The social status quo is defined by women’s place within the structures of family and community being maintained; it is challenged when attempts are made to change it in the direction of greater egalitarianism, autonomy, or freedom. The powerful moments of rupture occur when women are disaccommodated within wom e n b et w e e n c om m u n i t y a nd stat e

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these structures and a process of moving outside a given orbit ensues. These, in recent Indian history, have been the moments when women have challenged their religious laws or customs and have become public and nationally visible figures, as in the widely publicized cases of the divorced Muslim woman Shahbano and the child bride Ameena. That these cases developed into national crises of significant dimensions was unprecedented and indicates as nothing else does the political reverberations of women’s issues. WOMEN AS COMMUNITIES

Though the concept of group rights, which has gained increasing prominence in communitarian thinking, has sought to extend rights beyond the individual by insisting on identitarian claims based on race, religion, sexuality, region, and minority status of different kinds, it does not engage, as we have seen, with the problem of women’s rights within or in conflict with the community. Nor have women been envisaged as a collectivity themselves in any significant rights-bearing sense. Archana Parashar holds that this inability lies at the heart of the explanation for the Indian state’s continued discrimination against women in the conflict between their fundamental right to equality and the community’s right to religious freedom that supports personal law. By way of illustration, she asks us to substitute women with any other group: “For instance, in the case of the Hindu community it would be almost unthinkable for the State to enact or enforce laws to discriminate against the scheduled castes on the ground that the right to religious freedom of (higher caste) Hindus prevents the State from modifying the untouchability rules of Hindu law.”³⁹ The question of women remains one of the unresolved issues of feminism itself. Real difficulties remain in conceptualizing women even as a viable category of analysis once forms of biological and other essentialisms have been refused. As so-called difference theorists have insisted, women are divided by caste, religion, class, race, and nationality, and so their interests cannot be identical; they are so deeply embedded in structures of family, neighborhood, religion, and community, which offer them their primary identity, that these would claim their loyalties in a situation of competing rights; they do not naturally cohere in groups in any significant numbers or situations.⁴⁰ Elizabeth Fox-Genovese dismisses, rightly in my view, the political valence of “female communities” that some feminist theorists and historians Sunder Rajan

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have sought to resurrect and valorize in response to the failure of individual rights in addressing women’s oppression. Such female communities, whether found within existing social arrangements or in more formal associations, would continue to be held “hostage to the legal and political relations of our society as a whole,” she argues. Moreover, separatism does not offer a “practical model for a society that still requires cooperation and fellowship across genders in order to survive and reproduce.”⁴¹ Even in the organized women’s movement, women are brought together in a problematically identitarian unity, as we have seen. Therefore, beyond the terms of gendered difference (from men) and (shared, but not identical, or even equally shared) discrimination (with other women), what do women bear by way of a positive collective identity in the modern democracy? WOMEN AND CIVIL SOCIETY

If it is true that women are only secondary and subordinate members of religion-based communities and, worse, subjected to severe controls in any fundamentalist resurgence; if both their individual and collective/ communitarian gendered identity as rights-bearing citizens is of limited potential for securing their well-being; and if the search for recourse from subordination or oppression in communities that might drive them to seek recourse in rights will only push them back into the arms of community again because of the limitations or failures of rights, how can women break out of this situation? Are women doomed to enact this aporetic shuttle between community and state in any struggle, or can and do they occupy another space as citizens of a democracy, the space of a certain civil society? And if so, how does the latter provide leverage for their position within communities and the state? The political and social space that lies outside both the state and the family is loosely defined as civil society.⁴² Civil society is by no means a utopian social formation but is itself gendered, classed, ethnic, and marked by hegemony and exclusions—but for that reason it has also been a site of internal struggles for participation and influence. Civil society is identified with the so-called public sphere, distinct not only from the state but also from the private sphere of the family. The exclusion of women has been constitutive to the notion of the public sphere (in ways unlike the exclusion of working-class men or minorities) since it is the private sphere to which women are traditionally relegated and confined. In other words, the public-private divide is constitutively gendered.⁴³ The admission of wom e n b et w e e n c om m u n i t y a nd stat e

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women to political citizenship, while it broke this barrier—and has indeed provoked discussion about the emancipatory potential of voting for women, the extent of their participation in the democratic process, their (lack of) representation in electoral bodies, and similar issues—has not as yet generated any significant discussion of women as members of civil society. To a great extent their absence from the discourse of civil society reflects their actual absence from the institutions, associations, and other spaces of the public sphere. Civil society is of course a fraught term in political debates. We are warned about the limits of both its emancipatory potential and its applicability outside the liberal discourse and actual political context of Western democracies. There is a well-founded and pervasive belief that civil society is an underdeveloped or at least distinctively different phenomenon in postcolonial countries.⁴⁴ But most analysts agree that voluntary associations do constitute a significant aspect of Indian democracy: political parties, trade unions, new social movements, peasant movements, and ngos are examples of voluntary groups formed outside the state’s initiatives and often in opposition to them that bring people with shared interests together in solidarity and/or in pursuit of self-interest, even if they do not conform to the normative description of bourgeois civil society as it has developed in the Western democracies.⁴⁵ While women are not overwhelmingly present in terms of numbers or significance in these organizations, they are not negligible either. The terms and interests of their participation deserve some scrutiny. Before I amplify, however, I want to mark a parallel development. As we attend to contemporary public discourses in and on India, we cannot fail to notice that women now figure prominently in them as “national subjects,” as we might term this figuration, to which considerable influence is being attributed.⁴⁶ This stands in contrast to the conspicuous earlier blindness to the production-related activities of women in the public domain.⁴⁷ Developmental agencies of the state and international organizations target women as beneficiaries of reforms and welfare schemes (literacy, health, employment, credit) based on the recognition that they are deserving recipients and that the improvement of their status produces immediate and significant developmental benefits.⁴⁸ Political parties view them as a significant vote bank by identifying issues like prices, water, sanitation, and prohibition as “women’s issues” and wooing them accordingly with promises of delivering these benefits.⁴⁹ Above all, the market, newly liberalized, has been quick to identify them as consumers having money and decisionSunder Rajan

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making powers and has brought them into the ambit of advertising and customer profiles. It would be naive to report these phenomena as all equally empowering, or as solely empowering. There is no denying that these forces and institutions can and do view women in merely instrumental terms, add to their burdens and responsibilities, delude and exploit them, and subject them to new forms of coercion and regulation in the interests of development. Women are also here viewed in terms of specific class, urban-rural, and age factors, so that no singular collective identity is activated by this new visibility. Nevertheless, neither this collective influence nor the signifier women that is in circulation in these discourses is easy to dismiss as irrelevant when we seek to identify spaces for women in the public sphere that derive from functions and identities other than the reproductive, the symbolic, or the legal that family, community, and state respectively have traditionally granted them. Nor should “market-related liberties” be regarded as solely responsible for this development, Amartya Sen argues, for they are complementary to “freedoms that come with the operation of other (non-market) institutions.”⁵⁰ The interpellation of women in these ways marks the acknowledgment of their entry into an economic sphere of consumption and production. Mary John points to the contrast between the emphasis on middle-class consumerism in a liberalized economy, on the one hand, and the World Bank reports on poor women’s economic productivity, on the other, as precisely being the way poor women are classed and gendered in development discourse.⁵¹ But though manufacturers may represent the middleclass woman in their market research and advertising primarily as the leisured wife who spends her husband’s money, there is at the same time an implicit acknowledgment of her as a working woman, in the form of a canny recognition of her (independent) earning capacities as well as her association primarily with household labor products such as food, detergents, gadgets. Though different subjectivities are produced in the discourse of women based on class differences, the important point to note here is that a certain agency of citizenship is emerging within the economic scene of labor, production, and consumption from which women are, conspicuously, no longer excluded. Women’s work, both waged and nonwaged, is clearly no longer denied or deniable in the public discourse of gender generated by state and market, in contrast to earlier positions. If we return to the question of women’s participation in social movements, we note that their concerns too in each case relate primarily to wom e n b et w e e n c om m u n i t y a nd stat e

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livelihood—whether in the matter of the environment and the conservation of natural resources, microcredit societies and cooperatives, protests against liquor sales, or, predominantly, nonformal labor women’s organizations like the Self-Employed Women’s Association (sewa).⁵² If we bring together these two observations—the acknowledgment of women’s productivity in a variety of sites of discourse and policy, and women’s active involvement in struggles around livelihood—we are led to ask if work might serve as a possible locus of women’s collectivization and identity and hence as an opening for them within civil society, an alternative to the all-subsuming private sphere of the family and the (sole) public sphere of the religion-based community to which they are otherwise limited. I view work here, over and above its economic definition in terms of production and wages, as also a subject-constituting category (“worker”). The identity of women as economically autonomous (nondependent) individuals promotes their self-respect and feelings of equality, strengthens their entitlements, and increases their bargaining power. Paid work’s empowerment of individuals in these ways is of course well known. But in addition, work brings women into visibility in at least two other ways: by designating a workplace and by mobilizing them in struggles around livelihood. Without idealizing workplaces, where admittedly several and multiple kinds of oppression exist—sexual harassment, hierarchy, and discrimination in wages, to name only the most obvious—and without overlooking the double burden that wage-earning women carry, we can visualize the possibility that the shared conditions of (similar) work may produce solidarities among women workers and provide the grounds for their mobilization. The most striking examples of women’s collectivities in India today are organizations like sewa (whose members are women workers in the informal, unorganized sector) and peasant women’s organizations.⁵³ The urban women’s movement, as well, is largely made up of professional women—lawyers, journalists, teachers, social workers—whose initial politicization often occurred within professional associations.⁵⁴ The workplace enables first the identification and then the furtherance of shared interests; it is a place of close physical proximity among its members; and it offers freedom of membership and exit: for these reasons we may view it as a voluntary community. It is not my point that the places and conditions of work are more egalitarian or democratic than nonwork spaces— undoubtedly, as part of larger social structures and practices, they are gender-, class-, and caste-segregated to a greater or lesser extent. But they Sunder Rajan

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do provide the conditions of work-related activism (such as unions) that call for a transcendence of internal differences. This, ultimately, is a route to women’s participation in the political process. This argument admittedly takes too little account of the problems and contradictions of women’s work. Some of these are obvious. Work is the site of class exploitation and, for women, also of domestic oppression, and so skepticism about its liberatory potential is well grounded. Women’s autonomy as workers is likely to be as threatening to patriarchal structures as are their abstract political entitlements and legal rights. It could be argued that differential relationships to means and mode of production, variations in kinds of labor, and consequently hierarchies in earning capacities create inevitable class divisions among women workers. The difficulties of organizing women workers, the vast majority of whom labor in the unorganized sector, are enormous—and this does not take into account women performing nonwaged work within the household. Most crucially, women’s entry into world production markets, especially in the Third World, is significantly related to multinational capital and its industries, a well-documented form of exploitation especially as it results in the increase of informal labor. Even where women’s work is recognized as central to national productivity, as in the East Asian economies, this has only meant increased controls and exploitation of their labor. Above all, the protection of wages and work conditions are inescapably dependent once again on the state’s intervention and its laws, which are at best fitful, and even this would obtain only in the organized sector.⁵⁵ All of the above constitute valid and major arguments in countering a belief in any absolutely emancipatory potential of work for women that I do not seek to refute. My point in any case is not an exhortation to women to join the paid workforce as if it were membership in a club. And needless to say, my brief is not for working women as a category separate from women considered not to work, but an argument that all women are always already contributors to production, even if often in ways different from male waged work, a recognition that has entered official discourses belatedly. Even less is my argument about women’s work an endorsement of the common, if implicit, expectation that productivity should be a criterion for citizenship. Mine is not an abstract argument about work as worth but a more tangible description of it as praxis.⁵⁶ I deploy women’s agency as workers and its acknowledgment in national life as a form of visibility in the public sphere as grounds for a collective identity (“women workers”) even wom e n b et w e e n c om m u n i t y a nd stat e

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if not actual collectivization, and as a space for the participation in civic affairs.⁵⁷ My argument about women’s work and women-as-workers may be regarded as an outline of the preconditions for such full and active participation. The official recognition as well as the actual material aspects of economic improvement, political mobilization, and social solidarities that work facilitates have seemed to me significant for women in the current context of the state’s discriminatory personal laws and religious communities’ controls. It is a meager and compromised space, but precisely for that reason one whose resources we should seek to expand, not to write off. The exploration of the anomaly of personal law in a modern secular democracy has brought this article to an unexpected destination. The official, public recognition of the agency of women as workers in national life, not a guarantor of rights but nevertheless a form of attention and an opening for participation in its affairs, along with meaningful signs of women’s involvement in organizations mobilized around issues of livelihood, are, I have suggested, facts that may be brought to bear usefully on the debates around the ucc. By pushing the terms of the debate on personal law beyond the dispute between the state and the rights of religious communities, Indian feminism has already identified women as not merely the subjects but the rightful agents of change. My location of this agency in the fact of their productive capacities is a next step, as is also the demarcation of work as a public domain in a certain civil society in which alone such issues may be rightly determined. NOTES 1. In 1985 the Supreme Court of India ruled in favor of Shahbano, a seventy-two-yearold Muslim woman, in a case of maintenance in divorce. It was awarded to her, as was customary, under Section 125 of the Criminal Procedure Code. The husband and the Muslim Personal Law Board, however, protested that this was contrary to Muslim personal law under which no maintenance was payable beyond a stipulated period (iddat). In response to Muslim sentiment on the issue, the government, under Rajiv Gandhi, passed the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Divorce) Bill in 1986, removing Muslim women from the ambit of Section 125’s provision for the maintenance of destitute women. There was a nationwide controversy over both the Supreme Court judgment and the new legislation. The Hindu right protested that the ruling party was seeking to appease the Muslim community.

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101 2. As Achin Vanaik points out in “The bjp’s Manifest,” Hindu, 2 March 1998, Hindutva parties have made no effort to formulate a gender-just ucc despite the party’s electoral promises, “because their going about this job would definitely alienate the Hindu male bastion and the Brahmanical base of the party. Indeed, comprehensive and genuine gender just laws will trigger an uproar from the overwhelming majority of men, be they Sikh, Hindu, Muslim or Christian.” 3. There is a large body of feminist writing on the struggles of women in the Arab world against religious fundamentalism, and specifically against personal-law structures, among them Kandiyoti, Women, Islam, and the State, and Badran, Feminists, Islam, and the Nation. In “Unifying Women,” Badran describes the feminist efforts in Yemen to protest the imposition of a reactionary personal status law in 1997. 4. Freitag, “Contesting in Public,” 228. 5. Sarkar, “Indian Nationalism,” 270–94. 6. Bose and Jalal, Nationalism, Democracy, and Development, 7. 7. Ibid., paraphrasing Sen. 8. Bardhan, “The State against Society.” 9. Many of these essays have been conveniently brought together in Rajeev Bhargava’s edited volume Secularism and Its Critics. See, in this volume, T. N. Madan, “Secularism in Its Place,” 297–320; Ashis Nandy, “The Politics of Secularism and the Recovery of Religious Toleration,” 321–44; and Akeel Bilgrami, “Secularism, Nationalism, and Modernity,” 380–417. Also in line with Nandy’s position, see Kakar, “Medical Developments,” and Fox, “Communalism and Modernity.” For a critique of Madan, Nandy, and M. N. Sirnivasan, see also Tharamangalam, “Indian Social Scientists.” 10. Some examples are Rajeev Bhargava, “What Is Secularism For?” in Bhargava, Secularism and Its Critics, 486–542, and Bharucha, “Shifting Sites of Secularism.” 11. Exceptions among left intellectuals, those who have supported feminist positions on the ucc, are Navlakha, author of “Women’s Rights” and a member of the Working Group on Women’s Rights that prepared the statement “Reversing the Option”; Vanaik, Communalism Contested; and Praful Bidwai, “Revamping Personal Laws: Reform, Yes: Common Code, No.” Times of India, 17 August 1995. While Navlakha and Vanaik toe the orthodox left line in supporting a ucc, Bidwai comes out in favor of leaving personal-law reform to religious communities to effect internally. These writers make it clear that there is room within a broad left-feminist alliance for negotiating questions of gender like the ucc.

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102 12. An exception is Niraja Gopal Jayal, who incisively (and extensively) explores the contradiction of gender in her analysis of secularism and democratic government, using the Shahbano issue as the case in point. See her Democracy and the State, chap. 3. 13. On this, see Parashar, Women and Family Law Reform. This book has been invaluable in initiating the recent feminist work in India around the ucc question and in providing access to and information about a complicated constitutional, historical, and legal-political issue. See esp. 241. 14. Chhachhi, “Identity Politics,” 90. 15. Menon, “State/Gender/Community,” pe 3–10, note 2. 16. This is spelled out in the proposal prepared by the Working Group on Women’s Rights mentioned above. 17. The position of aidwa is outlined by Navlakha, “Women’s Rights,” 1180–83. 18. Agnes, “The Hidden Agenda beneath the Rhetoric of Women’s Rights,” 89–93. 19. Ibid. See also Agnes, “Women’s Movement within a Secular Framework: Redefining the Agenda.” 20. Anveshi Law Committee, “Is Gender Justice Only a Legal Issue?” 21. Chhachhi et al., “ucc and Women’s Movement.” 22. There is by now a substantial body of feminist legal studies and political analyses in India, including and going beyond the ucc. Book-length studies include Parashar, Women and Family Law Reform in India; Agnes, State, Gender, and the Rhetoric of Law Reform; Kapur and Cossman, Subversive Sites; and Mukhopadhyay, Legally Dispossessed. Important anthologies are Hasan, Forging Identities; and Bhasin, Menon, and Khan, Against All Odds. In addition there have been numerous articles in newspapers and periodicals by feminist lawyers (e.g., by Indira Jaising, Vasudha Dhagamwary, Geeta Ramaseshan, Usha Ramamnathan), pamphlets issued by women’s groups and research centers, and articles in the feminist journal Manushi on these issues. Not all are equally critical of law and feminist legal-reform struggles: for example, Kapur and Cossman conclude that the law is a significant site of struggle, and Parashar recognizes its limitations but cautions against “inappropriate expectations” (30) about what it can achieve. 23. Anveshi Law Committee, “Is Gender Justice Only a Legal Issue?” 453–58. 24. Kishwar, “Codified Hindu Law,” 2148. Sunder Rajan

103 25. Menon, “State/Gender/Community,” pe 8. 26. Mernissi, Veil and the Male Elite, 23. 27. Chhachhi et al., “ucc and Women’s Movement,” 488. 28. For a defense of feminist struggles for equality, see Parashar, Women and Family Law Reform in India, 26–36. 29. In 1991 a young Muslim girl, Ameena, was rescued by Indian police as she was leaving the country as the bride of a much older (and much married) Saudi Arabian man. He had come to Hyderabad, India, to seek a young wife. Such mismatched transnational matches, entered into for the sake of the bride-price offered, were found to be a widespread practice in the community. 30. See, for instance, Freitag, “Contesting in Public.” Walsan Thampu has remarked on the culturally heterogeneous character of the Indian Christian community: “There is little in common between a Tamil Christian and his Punjabi or Gujarati counterpart.” Yet under the new threat to their minority identity, they “are transcending the denominational, caste and culture barriers and rediscovering their common destiny.” Walsan Thampu, “Christians Unite under Attack,” Pioneer, 5 December 1998. 31. Ram, “Rationalism, Cultural Nationalism, and the Reform of Body Politics,” 298– 99. See also Ram, Mukkuvar Women. 32. See for example, Chowdhry, Veiled Women. 33. See Kaviraj, “The Imaginary Institution of India”; and Sangari, “Politics of Diversity.” 34. See Pathak and Sunder Rajan, “Shabano.” 35. Ram, “Rationalism, Cultural Nationalism, and the Reform of Body Politics,” 298– 99. 36. Ibid., 316. 37. Ibid. 38. See the introduction to Sunder Rajan, Scandal of the State. 39. Parashar, Women and Family Law Reform in India, 19. 40. I have discussed the questions posed by the conceptual and empirical category of “women” more extensively in the introduction to Sunder Rajan, Scandal of the State. 41. Fox-Genovese, Feminism Without Illusions, 53. wom e n b et w e e n c om m u n i t y a nd stat e

104 42. The relevant literature would consist of Hegel, Philosophy of Right; Gramsci, Selections; Habermas, Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere; and Taylor, “Modes of Civil Society”; all of them usefully surveyed in Cohen and Arato, Civil Society and Political Theory; and Chandhoke, State and Civil Society. 43. On this, see esp. Pateman, Disorder of Women, 182. 44. Thus Susanne Rudolph points to the different contexts of “highly unequal societies in the grip of radical change” and the conditions of “social revolution” that obtain in the countries of the south, which challenge both the northern conceptions of the nature of associations and their “benign readings” of its links to social capital and cooperation. Social revolution in India, she suggests, takes place “both within and on the margins of the constitutional framework” (Rudolph, “Civil Society,” 1764–65). Sandria B. Freitag has analyzed the “differences” of civil society in India as it emerges from colonial rule and the construction of communities. In post-independence India, communal movements, deploying cultural terms relating to religion, language, ethnicity, caste, and region resemble and usurp the space of a civil society, she claims (Freitag, “Contesting in Public,” 219–23, 228–34). In Partha Chatterjee’s view, too, the colonial state has produced only a civil society of subjects, not of citizens, so that the colonized “construct their national identities within a different narrative, that of community” (Chatterjee, Nation and Its Fragments, 236). In a later work, he has argued that the conditions for a proper civil society formation do not exist in post-independence India either. Community formation takes, rather, the form of citizenship rights—lacking these, they negotiate with the state and its agencies for livelihood and survival as a “political” community. See Chatterjee, “Community in the East,” Economic and Political Weekly, 7 February (1998): 281. Sanjay Kumar holds that the dispossessed in India who are engaged in “direct struggles against the state” for their rights are not organized as a civil society or mediated by its institutions and therefore must not be confused with a normative civil society “associated with liberal polity in which sections with social power participate” (Kumar, “Civil Society in Society,” 2779). 45. Pradeep Chibber, however, finds associational tendencies lacking in India (associations, according to his definition, being those organizations that formally mobilize people as voters around political issues), so that he discovers there the anomaly of a “democracy without association.” Chibber, Democracy Without Associations. The question of whether communities based on cultural identities (primordial or voluntary) can constitute a civil society remains disputed among those arguing the case of India. Neera Chandhoke emphatically denies that “particularist loyalties such as religion, caste, tribe, ethnicity, linguistic affiliations” can vitalize the public sphere—rather they “threaten to demolish” it. They constitute, therefore, a “counter–civil society” and

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105 belong more properly to the sphere of the private where, following Habermas, she holds that identity formation must take place. Chandhoke’s remains a normative view of civil society, and she is uncomfortably aware that in India religious mobilization overwhelms the appeal and influence of civil society. I will follow her, nevertheless, in excluding religious and other identitarian mobilization and communitarian practices from my working definition of an implicitly secular civil society in India. See Chandhoke, State and Civil Society, 245. 46. The new visibility of women in the 1990s has been discussed in Tharu and Niranjana, “Problems for a Contemporary Theory of Gender.” They view the phenomenon exclusively in terms of a co-optation and of deflections of feminist initiatives and as “a crisis of democracy and secularism in our times” (495). 47. See my introduction to Sunder Rajan, Scandal of the State, for a discussion of the post-independence Indian state’s repression of women’s contribution as workers, which stands particularly in contrast to a radical (and until recently forgotten) 1939 document, the “National Planning Committee’s Report on Women’s Role in Planned Economy” (wrpe). This report emphasized women’s rights in the economy, since “entry into the production sphere was seen as the key to resolving the unequal status of women.” The report was buried and its position ignored in subsequent years. See Chaudhuri, “Citizens, Workers, and Emblems of Culture.” 48. On this, see Kabeer, Reversed Realities; John, “Gender, Development, and the Women’s Movement”; and Sen, “On Interpreting India’s Past.” Sen has been particularly influential in pushing for women’s empowerment as a developmental strategy. See also Dreze and Sen, India. 49. Let me outline a recent instance of such election-motivated concern for women voters: the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh, N. Chandrababu Naidu, addressed a series of meetings of District Women’s Committees and Mothers’ Committees in the north coastal region as a launch to his election campaign in June 2001. Naidu made a pitch about his government’s welfare measures for women, including the significant representation of women in elected bodies. He praised women as being “100 times better than men if given a fair chance” and asked for their “participation as well as cooperation” in electing leaders. Naidu freely promised “any amount” of welfare to women. See “Naidu Rings the Campaign Bell at Regional Women’s Meet,” Times of India, 13 June 2001. 50. Sen, Development as Freedom, 116. His examples are women’s organizations like the Self-Employed Women’s Association (sewa) in India and credit and cooperative organizations in India and Bangladesh.

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106 51. John, “Gender, Development, and the Women’s Movement,” 112–14. 52. The point will be clearer if we distinguish livelihood struggles from identitarian ones. Women’s prominence in the latter kinds of movements, such as the militant Hindutva and anti-Mandal protests, is a recent and unexpected phenomenon, arguably, even an aberrant one. It is primarily middle-class women with a perceived stake in religious and caste hegemony who are active in those movements. See Tharu and Niranjana, “Problems for a Contemporary Theory of Gender.” 53. For a documentation of the extent and range of women’s work in the unorganized sector, their dismal conditions of work and demands for benefits and other guarantees to them, see the National Commission of Self-Employed Women and Women in the Informal Sector’s landmark report, Shram Shakti. 54. Naila Kabeer has discussed sewa’s working in Reversed Realities, chap. 9. See also Bhatt, “‘Doosri Azadi’” On peasant women’s organizations, see Omvedt, Reinventing Revolution. On women teachers in the Delhi Universities’ Teachers’ Association, see Sunder Rajan et al., “Women Teachers.” 55. These counterarguments were advanced by several penetrating readers and critics of earlier versions of this essay, Niraja Gopal Jayal, Judith Plotz, Rachel Reidner, and Ann Pellegrini. I am grateful to all of them for engaging so generously with my argument and for helping me to draw the limits of its validity. 56. As I warn in chap. 6 of Scandal of the State, when arguments about women’s “worth” are used to counter femicidal practices, we are in danger of implicitly supporting worth as a measure of the right to live itself. 57. I am not arguing for the kind of civic republicanism that regards citizenship as a matter of obligations as well as rights, insisting especially on the citizen’s obligation to work. But radical democratic feminists in the West have been urging women’s active participation in the public sphere as a way of asserting their rights and promoting their interests. Ruth Lister describes this as a concept of citizenship as “agency” in Citizenship, chap. 1.

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In this country, as well as all other countries where the Jews have been emancipated, the synagogue is the principal means of keeping alive the Jewish consciousness. . . . [It] is the only institution which can define our aims to a world that would otherwise be at a loss to understand why we persist in retaining our corporate individuality.—Mordechai Kaplan, 1917; quoted by Abraham Karp, The American Synagogue: A Sanctuary Transformed

The only enduring type of pluralism which the structure of American life envisages lies in the field of religion. . . . It is within the rubric of religious pluralism, therefore, that the basis for permanent survival of the Jewish group as an indigenous element of American Life is to be sought.— Robert Gordis, “Towards a Renascence of Judaism”

One way or another the fission of American Jewry into a core and a periphery, a thriving part and a deteriorating part is real. And except for religion, none of the pillars of Jewish identity in America can bear its weight any longer.—Samuel G. Freedman, Jew versus Jew: The Struggle for the Soul of American Jewry

CHAPTER FOUR

other moderns, other jews: revisiting jewish secularism in america ˜ Laura Levitt

I begin with these quotes because they capture well a pervasive assumption about what it means to be Jewish in America. They make clear that the most acceptable form of Jewishness is a religious one. And yet, for many Jews, this definition of Jewishness does not adequately capture their own form of Jewish identification. They are Jewish but they are not religious. They are culturally or ethnically Jewish. Although the idea of Jewish difference as a religious designation has allowed Jews access into the so-called secular mainstream, it does not in fact capture the experience of the vast majority of American Jews whose ancestors came to this country at the turn of the last century. As I will argue, for these Jews, who were not born in the United States, being Jewish meant something else. For many of these Jews, to be modern or enlightened did not mean being religious. Rather, to be modern or a part of the dominant culture meant embracing often decidedly secular ethnic and cultural notions of Jewishness, forms of Jewishness that remain decidedly marginal in the United States to this day. Because these Jews do not meet American cultural expectations about what it means to be a Jew, their position is fraught. For them, Jewishness is all too often experienced in terms of a kind of shame. As the American Heritage Dictionary defines it, “shame” is caused by “a strong sense of guilt, embarrassment, unworthiness, or disgrace.” In this case, being the wrong kind of Jew produces such a response. Moreover, as the term shame also suggests, this experience often brings with it “dishonor, disgrace, or condemnation.” By not fitting into normative expectations about what it means to be a Jew, nonreligious Jews take on an added burden. They raise

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questions about all Jews. Who are these people, and how are they to be understood as a minority group? This is the response I often encounter when I teach my introduction to Judaism course. During the first class I ask my students the question, “What is Judaism?” Inevitably, the question invokes a kind of confession from at least some of the few Jewish students in the room. These students tell me and their peers that although they are Jewish, they are not religious or that they are Jewish but that they do not believe in God. They say these things reluctantly. In part, they do so because they have been told on other occasions that this is just not possible. Judaism is a religion, you cannot be Jewish and not be religious, everyone knows that. Of course this tendency is exacerbated by the fact that the course I teach is taught within the context of a department of religion.¹ There is an expectation that courses on Jews, Jewishness, and Judaism are necessarily about a religion in the United States precisely because, historically, this has been the case. The first courses about Jews and Jewish culture at American colleges and universities were either taught in departments of religion or biblical studies or within the context of Semitic studies, itself an expression of the complicated intersection of Enlightenment rationality and a fascination with biblical languages and cultures.² For me, the question is how to resist this overdetermination and its ongoing implications. The fact that so many of my students are embarrassed about not being the correct kind of Jew, about not conforming to a socially acceptable definition of what it means to be Jewish, makes it especially difficult for them to articulate the complexity of their own positions even in my Jewish studies courses. The flip side of not knowing what to do with Jews who are not religious enough is what to make of Jews who are too religious, those Jews whose religious practice exceeds the norms of Protestant private devotion. The issues of what it means to claim a Jewish identity in America filled the media in a particularly high-profile way in the fall of 2000. At stake were the implications of the nomination of Joseph Lieberman, an Orthodox Jew, as the Democratic candidate for vice president of the United States and the publication of a popular account of the growing rifts between contemporary Jews around issues of religiousness, Samuel G. Freedman’s Jew versus Jew: The Struggle for the Soul of American Jewry.³ Both the Lieberman candidacy and the oddness of his actual observant Jewishness in American life and the popularity of a book that argued for the triumph of an even more stringent form of Orthodox Judaism in America made rev i si t i n g j ew i sh se c u l a ri sm in a merica

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clear to me yet again the problem of religion as a rubric for appreciating the place of Jews in American culture. Given that Orthodoxy itself does not conform to Protestant norms of privatized belief, again I was struck by the problem of how to understand the lack of fit between the power of the discourse of Judaism as a religion and the narrow notion of religion into which American Jews have had to conform.⁴ After all, in many ways the problem with Lieberman when he ran for vice president was that he was too Jewish. His religious position could not be accounted for using the normative Protestant definition of religion. His religion was not simply a matter of personal faith. Instead, it turned out that many Americans found it strange that Lieberman observed all kinds of Jewish rituals including dietary laws and a form of Sabbath observance that meant that he did not travel on Saturdays. All these things made him odd despite the fact that he was “religious.” Moreover, when he tried to use the dominant language of religion in America to call for more “religion” in public discourse, he found himself criticized by Jews on all sides of the religious-nonreligious spectrum who again did not see themselves or their Jewish values reflected in his discourse.⁵ What interests me is that there is an excess on both ends of this continuum, with Lieberman and even more Orthodox Jews on one end of a spectrum and my not religious Jewish students on the other. Just as my students find that they do not fit, neither did Lieberman despite his celebrated vice presidential candidacy. His repeated refrain, “only in America,” although used to ostensibly signify the exceptional openness of American society to Jews, also seemed to point to an ongoing insecurity, as if the repetition itself might make this very desire into a reality. As a way of getting at these excesses and what they tell us about the position of Jews in the contemporary United States, in what follows I return to the cultural legacies of eastern European Jews, the inheritance of the vast majority of American Jews. I look specifically at the legacy of eastern European Jews and their explicit version of an enlightened Jewish secularism as a way of making clearer the powerful impact of this tradition on American Jewish life in the twentieth century and beyond. Although there are other legacies of secular Jewish cultural expression, including the powerful tradition of western European Jewish cosmopolitanism, I focus on the explicitly secular legacies of eastern European Jews because of the ways they have come to shape notions of even contemporary American Jewish identity. I retell the story of eastern European Jews coming to the United States Levitt

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at the turn of the last century because I believe they hold the key to the production of the extremes I have just described. They allow me to get at the roots of not only Lieberman’s Orthodox problem but also my students’ shame. As I will argue, the tensions between these experiences and how Jews are supposed to position themselves reveal a more complicated legacy of impossible assimilation. Instead of seeing Jewish difference as necessarily a version of private faith, I resist this definition and look instead at many of the ways that Jewishness exceeds this definition by not conforming to this more narrow notion of religious identity. By returning to this history, I want to get at what I see as the clash between different modern configurations of Jewishness as the site at which these problems first arose. As I will argue, the mass migration of eastern European Jews to the United States at the turn of the last century helped to produce these conflicting versions of contemporary Jewishness. At that moment in the United States, the legacy of Jewish emancipation and of the Enlightenment in the West—an inclusion on the basis of religious pluralism—and the traditions of worldly eastern European Jewish enlightenment were set in conflict as eastern European Jews struggled to figure out what it was going to mean for them to become Americans at the turn of the twentieth century. As I read it, the tensions between contemporary American Jews are not so much about religious versus secular Jews, but rather about conflicting accounts of what it has meant for Jews to be modern. And in this way I return to the problem of Jewish assimilation. At what cost have Jews been accepted into the dominant culture of the United States? What has it meant for Jews to conform to Protestant middle-class norms? What has it meant for Jews to refashion their Jewishness into a version of Protestant faith? In order to be accepted as citizens of liberal nation-states like the United States, Jews had to conform to these norms, remaking themselves and their Jewishness into a version of the dominant culture. They were to become a version of the same with a minor difference. As I have argued elsewhere, this process contains an inherent contradiction. It both promises acceptance and effaces this same promise.⁶ In other words, liberal assimilation produces a subject who is almost but not quite dominant. The harder this subject tries to fit in, ironically, the more she or he differs. Instead of sameness, these efforts produce an excess that always marks this subject as other. In the case of Jewish assimilation, Jews’ not quite dominant status can be seen in both my students’ shame at not being Jewish rev i si t i n g j ew i sh se c u l a ri sm in a merica

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enough and in Orthodox practice with its excessive religiousness. Liberal assimilation is always haunted by its partial production of versions of the same. The harder American Jews try to fit in, the more they end up demonstrating their Jewish difference. Hence the joke: Jews are just like everybody else only more so. By looking more closely at the impossibility of liberal inclusion, I want to imagine other forms of social inclusion. Thus, instead of taking for granted the assumption that the synagogue lies at the heart of the American Jewish community, I look again at the gaps and fissures in this presumably coherent narrative of Jewish continuity.⁷ By returning to the worldly legacy of eastern European Jewish secularism, I will call into question the assumption that religion is “the basis for permanent survival of the Jewish group as an indigenous element in American life.”⁸ I question this model of liberal assimilation by taking seriously the ongoing effects of the necessarily incomplete character of the assimilation of eastern European Jews at the beginning of the twentieth century alongside the not-quite assimilation of an earlier generation of western European American Jews into the dominant culture of Protestant America. I use this retelling in order to explain the impossible contradictions that continue to haunt contemporary American Jewish life. In what follows I offer a somewhat schematized account of the differing eastern and western legacies of Jewish enlightenment and modernization that came into conflict in the early part of the twentieth century in the United States as a way into this contradictory legacy. I will then return to the archives in order to look specifically at the legacy of Yiddish Jewish secularism. By offering a reading of some of the arguments posed by the last of these Yiddish thinkers—ironically in the pages of the Englishlanguage journal Judaism: A Quarterly of Jewish Life and Thought, a publication founded in 1952 with the explicit goal of reviving Jewish religious thought—I will challenge the liberal presumption that Jewish identity must be understood as a form of private faith.⁹ I use some of the challenges these Yiddish thinkers posed to precisely these liberal American cultural presumptions in the first half of the twentieth century to reconsider what it might mean to claim a more complicated and decidedly less Protestant Jewish position in the present. Because these thinkers explicitly refused to adhere to these Protestant religious norms even as their movement was coming to an end, their arguments remain relevant. As they make clear, religion, race, class, and/or even ethnicity have never been able to fully or accurately describe what it means to be a Jew in America.¹⁰ The containment of Jewish difference within such narrow cateLevitt

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gories as required by liberal pluralism is no longer viable. By having to pin down what, in essence, is most salient about Jewish difference, other often crucial pieces of Jewishness drop out. Jewishness is cultural and ethnic and religious in many but not all instances. Jewishness exceeds notions of ethnicity because there are multiple Jewish ethnicities and because it can include forms of religious expression above and beyond privatized faith. In order to appreciate what it means to claim a Jewish position, a Jewish identity, the common rubrics of liberal pluralist difference—race, class, and gender and/or sexuality—just do not fit, nor does the overarching notion of religion, although that has been the most salient and acceptable form of claiming Jewish difference in the United States. SOCIAL AMELIORATION; OR , R E L I G I O N A S T H E M E A N S T O E M A N C I PA T I O N

In 1959 Herbert Parzen, a Conservative rabbi and contributor to numerous Anglo-Jewish periodicals, explained that “the Jewish communities, during the stormy struggle for emancipation and enlightenment in the nineteenth century, achieved adjustment to the general social order on the primary basis of religious tolerance. . . . The Synagogue was, accordingly, the primary instrument of adjustment to modern life, and acknowledged as the center of Jewish loyalty and identification.”¹¹ Parzen goes on to note in this same article the crucial role of religious tolerance and the centrality of the synagogue to Jewish emancipation in Western Europe. He uses this account to draw a sharp contrast between East and West and in so doing follows closely the Jewish historian Paula Hyman’s account of what it meant for Western Jews to enter into the dominant cultures of Western liberal nation-states. As she explains, “The entry of Jews into the general body politic and the transformation of the Jewish community from a self-governing corporate body with police powers to a voluntary religious association challenged the very nature of Jewish self-understanding. Increasingly, Jews were seen, and defined themselves, as adherents of a religious faith rather than as members of a religio-ethnic polity, a peoplefaith. Their rabbis became religious functionaries—preachers and spiritual counselors—rather than judges and interpreters of the law.”¹² I open this discussion with these accounts of the transformation wrought by Jewish emancipation as a way of making clear the material and social implications of what it meant for Jews to become citizens of Western nation-states. These Jews not only pledged allegiance to these states in order to take on rev i si t i n g j ew i sh se c u l a ri sm in a merica

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the rights and responsibilities of citizenship; they also gave up a great deal in this process. Prior to emancipation, Jews were, as Hyman indicates, a “self-governing corporate body.” Jewish communal authorities had both police and judicial powers. Emancipation, or more precisely, to use the language of the late eighteenth century, the “civic amelioration,” meaning the political and social integration of the Jews into Western culture, came at a price.¹³ Not only did Jews lose their communal autonomy they were also required to recreate themselves as Jews. They made Jewish communal life into a voluntary religious association, something completely at odds with what had been a traditional Jewish self-understanding.¹⁴ What is striking in this regard is even the historian’s difficulty in pinpointing this loss. What was it that the Jews had been before emancipation? Hyman herself struggles to find words adequate to explain this Jewish selfunderstanding. In her text the difficulty is signified by her use of the hyphenated terms religio-ethnic polity and people-faith.¹⁵ The process of political emancipation in the West in effect recreated Judaism as a religion. It used familiar categories of faith to assure that this people within a people would not be a threat to the new nation-states. Even so the Jews had to find a way to still be recognized as a communal entity. Religion as a voluntary commitment of faith and communal practice enabled western European Jews to maintain their commitment to an ongoing Jewish communal life without remaining a separate, selfgoverning corporate body. In other words, what religion offered to Jews in the liberal West was a Protestant version of religious community that they could apply to themselves as Jews. Given this, one of the lasting legacies of political emancipation in the West was the formation of Jewish religious denominations as we now know them. Since affiliation was a matter of choice facilitated by capital (much like the term denomination itself, from denominate—“to issue of, express in terms of a given monetary unity”),¹⁶ these Jewish communities produced a variety of Jewish congregational options that both allowed for certain differences among Jews and reenforced the notion that what links all Jews is a common faith.¹⁷ As Hyman notes: “This transformation of Judaism and the Jewish community facilitated the emergence of denominations within Judaism, particularly in America, where the voluntary nature of the Jewish community was most fully realized. Any group of Jews who could muster the requisite financial and human resources to establish a synagogue, school, or journal were free to do so and thereby to disseminate their conception of Judaism.”¹⁸ Although political emancipation was the product of the Age of Reason Levitt

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and the end of the rule of religion, for Jews in the West the rule of reason brought with it a reaffirmation of religion, and specifically of religion as faith. For Jews to become enlightened as Jews was to remake Jewishness into a matter of individual faith. As I have already suggested, the problem was that Jewishness never fit easily into these western notions of religion as simply a matter of individual faith. This lack of fit existed not simply because the category of religion was Christian but also because it was an Enlightenment construct. As Robert J. Baird and others have argued, “religion” as a category was produced by the Enlightenment. It was built on a Protestant model, with an emphasis on individual, private, and voluntary confessions of faith.¹⁹ In order to become citizens of liberal nation-states like the United States, enlightened Jews needed to redefine themselves as adherents to a Jewish religious faith.²⁰ As I have argued elsewhere, this was never an easy process. In many instances Jews were the other within the more “civilized” dominant cultures of the West, atavistic throwbacks, members of a more primitive people, the people of the Old Testament who had to be superseded. In many cases Jewish loyalty to the nation as opposed to the Jewish community remained an issue. Thus even as Judaism became religiously privatized, the liberal state maintained an interest in supervising Jewish communities. This can be seen in state efforts to control even the most private of matters, like marriage and sexuality.²¹ Here public and private enactments were intertwined. Liberal states used the control of sexuality under the auspices of liberal marriage and proper or middle-class morality as ways of judging Jewish fidelity to the state. So although rabbis were free to perform weddings and divorces in France, the first state to emancipate their Jews, rabbinic authority was only granted by the nation-state in these matters. In performing these presumably religious rites, rabbis in effect became agents of the state, acting by virtue of the power vested in them not by their denominations or by God, but rather by the power of the state.²² In these ways, again, Jewishness, although a matter of private faith, was very much about state-sanctioned collectivity. And in the United States, Jews took their cues in these matters from the dominant culture and its Protestant majority. In the nineteenth century as various denominations of American Protestantism were becoming increasingly privatized and feminized, American Jews followed suit.²³ As the American Jewish historian Karla Goldman has demonstrated, in the United States public worship among Protestants was rev i si t i n g j ew i sh se c u l a ri sm in a merica

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marked by its decidedly feminine character.²⁴ The image of church pews filled with devoted women had a particular impact on the transformation of Jewish worship in the United States. In contrast to the bourgeois norms of western Europe, in the United States middle-class Jewish women were expected to show their devotion in public by attending synagogue worship services. They more than met these cultural expectations and, as Goldman shows, their growing presence in synagogue services had material effects. In the United States the architectural structure of synagogues changed to meet this new expectation: American synagogues were literally restructured to accommodate the new communal practices. Women’s sections were first expanded and later mixed pews became a part of Jewish worship in many liberal Jewish congregations. Despite these dramatic changes, as Goldman’s work indicates, these reforms were not without conflict. Although the women came to shul,²⁵ their presence at services did not mean that they were granted communal authority even in the most liberal of these institutions.²⁶ Nevertheless, the changing gender norms were only one example of how powerfully Jewish political emancipation came to transform Jewish self-understanding. In the early part of the twentieth century this liberal Protestant version of Jewishness came into direct conflict with a very different understanding of Jewish enlightenment, the modern vision of eastern European Jews. As millions of eastern European Jews immigrated to the United States, the religious Jewish practices in the new country were very much at odds with the forms of Jewish life these new immigrants were accustomed to in eastern Europe. Not only did many of the newly arrived Jews not recognize the liberal religious practices as Jewish but they did not have any simple way of explaining their own very different forms of enlightened Jewish expression. BECOMING MODERN IN THE EAST

As Herbert Parzen explains, “Jewish Secularism originated in Eastern Europe, and was imported to this country as part of the social baggage of Eastern European immigrants.”²⁷ Although it is often assumed in the popular imagination that culturally backwards eastern European Jews were enlightened only as they made their way west,²⁸ this was not the case. Another and perhaps even more important story of Jewish enlightenment for American Jews took place in eastern Europe.²⁹ Although eastern European Jews were never granted political emancipation, they were very much Levitt

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affected by the legacy of the Haskalah or Jewish enlightenment well before they reached the shores of America. It is this inheritance that interests me as it has come to shape contemporary expressions of Jewishness.³⁰ For the Jews of eastern Europe, Enlightenment values were not linked to remaking Jewishness into a matter of faith or, for that matter, of denominations. Enlightenment was enacted in other venues and on other terms.³¹ Here modernization was not a matter of becoming bourgeois; in fact, for many eastern European Jews, poverty and political disenfranchisement led to more radical forms of enlightened politics. These Jews became involved in socialism and communism as Jews. They actually accentuated their Jewish particularism even as they participated in these larger political movements. In eastern Europe, Jews used the languages of socialism, communism, and nationalism to envision their own transformed versions of modern Jewish communal life. For some of these Jews, this meant seeing the Jewish people as their own nation. This nation was conceptualized as either a separate entity within the boundaries of eastern Europe or as a nation with its own independent state and its own forms of modern Jewish cultural expression. In all of these ways, eastern European Jews used the expansive public dimensions of traditional Jewish life, those aspects of rabbinic Judaism as an autonomous political and social entity that western Jews gave up in order to become citizens of liberal nation-states, to construct their own enlightened positions.³² In eastern Europe and, eventually, in the Yiddish-speaking world of American Jews, these autonomous forms of Jewish communal life were greatly expanded. And in the early part of the twentieth century, it was the enlightened secular Jews who took on leadership roles in the immigrant American Jewish community.³³ They used culture as well as politics to solidify their own enlightened notions of Jewish community. By focusing on the distinctiveness of Jewish culture, they took pride in the creation of new Jewish literatures in both Hebrew, their ancient sacred tongue, and Yiddish, their modern Jewish vernacular. Eastern European Jews created modern Hebrew as a living language even as they transformed Yiddish into modern poems, stories, novels, and plays.³⁴ It should also be noted that still other groups of eastern European Jews wrote Jewish poetry, novels, and short stories in both Polish and Russian.³⁵ In all of these instances eastern European Jews used western enlightened cultural forms to fashion themselves as modern Jews. Instead of reconstituting their Jewishness as a form of bourgeois religion, they both mimicked and transformed enlightened cultural expressions and politics to make sense rev i si t i n g j ew i sh se c u l a ri sm in a merica

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of their own lives. They staged these performances as well. Making powerful use of the Yiddish theater, they literally enacted their discomforts, remaking them into both art and artifice.³⁶ W O R L D LY V E R S U S R E L I G I O U S J E W S

For many eastern European Jews modernity meant liberation from the restraints of a more stringent Jewish religious way of life. Their new modern Jewish identities were no longer bound by ritual practice, and they became worldly or, as they were to say in America, “secular.” The Yiddish term for what is often referred to as “secular” Jewishness is weltlikh, deriving from the Yiddish word for world or universe. It describes, in the broadest terms, a kind of Jewish cosmopolitanism that included both rational and nontheistic ways of being in the world as Jews.³⁷ Given this legacy of enlightenment, the encounter with those Jews already in the United States proved somewhat confusing. Although these more acculturated Jews offered a model of how to succeed in the new country, there were few eastern European analogies to this explicitly religious form of enlightened Jewishness.³⁸ In eastern Europe, the notion of enlightenment went hand in hand with a sense of worldliness. It was primarily on these terms that eastern European Jews’ deferred hope for political emancipation rested. But, of course, what they found in the United States was something quite different. Here there was little place for their worldly forms of enlightened Jewishness. Instead they found themselves being asked to enter into the kind of synagogue-centered Jewishness that Mordechai Kaplan described. Faced with this very different strategy, the question was how much of their own form of enlightened Jewish expression the new immigrants would be able to maintain in North America. The vast majority of eastern European Jews who came to the United States at the turn of the last century were the least educated, the poorest, and the most desperate. My argument is not that these Jews were particularly enlightened but rather that even these Jews had a very different sense of what it might mean to be modern as they entered the United States. And so it was that eastern European Jewish immigrants brought with them a mixture of pride, shame, nostalgia, and joy in the Yiddish culture and politics they left behind.³⁹ Most still spoke and read Yiddish in their new home, learning about the world through the pages of a vibrant American Yiddish press.⁴⁰ They learned how to become Americans

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through these papers. As Riv Ellen Prell and other Jewish historians have argued, the Yiddish press played an active role in assimilating eastern European immigrants into the middle-class norms of American culture.⁴¹ In other words, these papers taught immigrants not only how to dress, how to speak, and how to decorate their homes but they also continued to influence their politics. In addition to reading Yiddish newspapers, these immigrants also kept alive other parts of their eastern European Jewish culture. They went to the Yiddish theater on the Lower East Side of New York City and sought out traveling Yiddish theatrical productions as they played in smaller venues across the country.⁴² They continued to enjoy the diet they had known in eastern Europe, now increasingly understood as simply Jewish. These immigrants performed the secular rituals that kept them linked to the Jewish culture of eastern Europe even as they strove to assimilate into American society.⁴³ Although there were pockets within this community that remained loyal to the radical socialist politics they had brought with them to the United States, and still others who remained observant of Halacha or Jewish law, most of these immigrants had only vague relations to any of these traditions.⁴⁴ For these Jews, coming to North America was not an all or nothing proposition. What is difficult in the present is trying to characterize the “religious” practices of all of these eastern European Jews, that is, not only of those who remained religiously observant but also of those who had more or less already begun to give up these commitments in eastern Europe. There were any number of permutations among what was cultural, religious, or Halachic in terms of diet and everyday practices. When asked why certain foods were or were not eaten, the new immigrants gave numerous explanations. In other words, not all who kept some semblance of a kosher diet did so as a religious obligation. For many it was just what their families had done; it was familiar and comforting. These practices had many even contradictory meanings for those who followed them. None of the Jews so described should be confused with what we now think of as “Orthodox” Jews. Here again the terms and categories of “religion” obscure historical and cultural difference among Jews. Modern Orthodoxy, for example, began as a western European movement. It was a response to religious reform, and its leaders included figures like Samson Raphael Hirsch, who believed it was possible to be fully modern in the

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public sphere and fully observant at home. For him, the issue was that the reformers had gone too far.⁴⁵ Nevertheless, to speak of modern Orthodoxy in the present United States is to recognize strands of this western European tradition as it merged with some of the practices of only some observant eastern European Jews. And this still makes for only part of the story. The arrival of Orthodox and Hasidic refugees especially after 1945 came to reshape Orthodox Judaism in North America yet again.⁴⁶ The later refugees brought with them the remnants of their traditional communities in order to rebuild in America, and they have been extremely successful in these efforts. As Samuel Freedman points out, these communities form the core of what have become a set of thriving ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities throughout North America. Given this, in the contemporary United States, even the designation “Orthodox” is complicated, for it, too, includes a range of contending observant religious positions.⁴⁷ T H E D E M I S E O F Y I D D I S H S E C U L A R C U LT U R E R E V I S I T E D

Although most scholars mark the unraveling of Yiddish secular culture in the United States in the late fifties and early sixties, there is less agreement about why this culture came to an end as a vernacular communal practice. In Jew versus Jew, Freedman offers one account: conflating all forms of liberal Jewish expression with the legacy of Yiddish secular culture, Freedman argues for the triumph of more fervent forms of Jewish Orthodoxy. For Freedman there is a kind of symmetry at work here, and so his opening chapter is set in the Catskill Mountains of New York. It begins with the memories of a secular Yiddish labor Zionist summer camp for children, Camp Kinderwelt, a camp that no longer exists.⁴⁸ Through a series of first-person accounts, Freedman offers a nostalgic vision of what this camp had been and its vision of a secular Jewish cultural life. Returning to the Catskills in the present, Freedman’s subjects are confronted by a very different version of Yiddish culture. Literally, just down the road from where their camp had been, there is now a thriving ultra-Orthodox Satmar Hasidic community, Kiryas Joel. Ironically this is a place in which Yiddish is very much alive and thriving, but in terms radically different from those of the Yiddishists who founded Camp Kinderwelt. As Freedman explains, Kiryas Joel originated in 1972, the year after Kinderwelt closed.⁴⁹ For Freedman, the message is clear: ultra-Orthodoxy is the way of the future. I am not so sure.⁵⁰

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Instead, I want to take a step back and see this problem of the presumed demise of secular Yiddish culture in a larger historical context, remembering both the end of Jewish immigration in the 1920s, on the one hand, and the traumatic destruction of the center of secular Yiddish culture in eastern Europe with the Holocaust, on the other. In order to do this, I turn to the feminist poet and writer Irena Klepfisz. Unlike Freedman, Klepfisz is a child survivor of the Holocaust who grew up after the war in some of the last of these secular Yiddish-speaking communities in the United States. By illustrating the complexity of this historical moment, her account sheds light on the ways that the end of Yiddish as a secular vernacular in the United States was not so much about ideology as about larger historical forces. For Klepfisz both the power of assimilation after the end of the great migration of eastern European Jews to the United States in the 1920s and the Holocaust made Yiddish secular culture increasingly less viable a way of being Jewish in the United States after the Second World War. For her these losses are palpable, and they are not a matter of who did or did not get it right. In her account, secular Yiddish culture offers contemporary Jews a path not taken. It is a viable alternative to the narrow religiously construed Jewishness of dominant American Jewish culture. And by telling this story in its brokenness, her account also prefigures the kinds of postvernacular Yiddish cultural expression addressed in Jeffrey Shandler’s remarkable study Adventures in Yiddishland: Postvernacular Language and Culture, namely, new ways of being Jewish that build on that culture in innovative and surprising ways and speak to younger generations of Jews eager to claim other forms of Jewish cultural expression as their own.⁵¹ These are forms of Jewish identification that do not neatly fit into religious categories, the either-or dichotomy of Orthodox versus secular/liberal Jewishness presented by Freedman. In her essay “Secular Jewish Identity: Yiddishkayt in America,” Klepfisz describes her own encounter with the demise of Yiddish secular culture. For Klepfisz, the world of Yiddish in America provided a new home. It was the space in American culture that defined her Jewishness. And although her own first language was Polish and along the way she came to speak Swedish and English as well as Yiddish, Yiddish was the language of her mother’s and her own secular Jewishness. In Klepfisz’s case, being an American Jew meant being a secular Bundist, a Jewish socialist who spoke and read Yiddish.⁵² Growing up in the shadows of the Holocaust, Klepfisz found herself a part of yet another community that was dying, although

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as she explains in her essay, she did not realize this at the time. It is only much later as an adult that she came to understand that the American Yiddish-speaking world in which she was raised no longer existed. It is with great sadness that Klepfisz writes about the loss of this yidishe svive, this Yiddish-speaking world, but unlike for Freedman, for Klepfisz this loss is complicated. All is not lost. Klepfisz offers a very different assessment of the future. She does believe that secular Yidishkayt can be revived in new forms. She believes there is both a need and a desire for these forms of Jewish cultural expression in the present. For Klepfisz, there is a place for a kind of broken Yiddish culture in the present, a secular Yiddish culture for those who no longer speak the language of their ancestors but who bring other things to this cultural legacy. These other commitments include feminist and queer politics, jazz music and American art, literature and film.⁵³ As Klepfisz explains, these contemporary Jews present not only a “totally new phenomenon, Yiddishists without knowledge of the Yiddish language but deeply committed to the survival of Yiddish culture.”⁵⁴ They also include a growing movement of Jews committed to fully reclaiming Yiddish language, literature, music, and theater in the present. In other words, although the vast majority of secular, assimilated, and liberal religious Jews may not speak Yiddish fluently, these Jews nevertheless do present a viable future for Yiddish secular culture in America.⁵⁵ Despite these signs of hope, what Klepfisz clearly describes in her essay is a generational loss. As the immigrants that came to the United States between 1880 and 1920 and their children began to die, and without an ongoing influx of new Yiddish speakers coming into this world, it became difficult to sustain these communities. And although refugees like Klepfisz and her mother helped bring new life into this Jewish world after the war, the reality was that there were no more secular Yiddish speakers left in Europe after the mass destruction of eastern European Jewry in the Holocaust. Although many eastern European Jews and their children continued to speak Yiddish, by the second and third generation the number of Yiddish speakers in America also dwindled. What is it about American culture and the specific experiences of these immigrants that made sustaining Yiddish—much less its various secular cultural expressions— so difficult? One partial answer to these questions can be found in the pages of Judaism, an American Jewish journal founded in the early 1950s to meet the needs of a new generation of American Jews. As I will demonstrate, here we find Jewish secularists grappling with precisely these Levitt

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issues. I focus on this journal and its first decade of publication because it constitutes a pivotal moment in the consolidation of the kind of religious expressions of Judaism and Jewishness that I have argued became hegemonic in postwar North America. The journal expresses the desire to affirm a profoundly religious notion of Judaism in the United States, and in the process it also traces in its pages the last breaths of what were explicitly secular and cultural forms of Jewish identification that would become increasingly unlivable in the postwar United States. In Judaism we find the convergence of these quite disparate versions of American Jewish identification and literally see how, in order to survive, Yiddish secularists tried to reimagine their movement in increasingly religious terms. J U D A I S M : A Q U A R T E R LY

Judaism shows this transformation of secular Yiddish culture into something resembling a kind of religious community in a number of its early essays. Given this, it provides a powerful example of the larger arguments I have been making. In the pages of the journal we hear the voices of actual American Yiddishists struggling to find new ways of keeping their secular culture alive. As they become increasingly desperate, they come to find themselves advocating for a reinvention of their explicitly secular movement in religious terms. There is a sad irony to the essays from this journal: they show explicitly the generational tensions in defining Jewishness in the United States and increasingly make clear that here the future depends on Judaism as ultimately and only a religion. That is what Jewish difference must become in America. Judaism, a journal of the American Jewish Congress, was first published in 1952. As Robert Gordis, a Conservative rabbi and a professor of biblical exegesis at the Jewish Theological Seminary explains in the opening essay of the first issue, the new journal was dedicated to a revival of Judaism after Hitler and after the founding of the State of Israel.⁵⁶ Gordis inaugurates the journal with a commitment to reassessing the Jewish religious tradition as a basis for the future of the Jewish people.⁵⁷ He also suggests that like the journal itself, there is in the American Jewish community more broadly a kind of religious revival, especially among a new generation of American Jews, Jews no longer satisfied by the enlightened answers provided by reason and science. By highlighting the limitations of the secular discourse of science, Gordis goes on to argue for religion as the basis for ethical judgment and inrevi si t i n g j ew i sh se c u l a ri sm in a merica

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sists on the new journal’s commitment to reassessing Judaism as a religious tradition. As he explains, “The Jewish community can boast of a number of valuable periodicals concerned with various aspects of Jewish life, but we regard it as an indefensible lacuna that practically none is primarily concerned with the philosophy, ethics, and religion of Judaism as a factor in the contemporary world.”⁵⁸ Judaism was established in order to meet these needs. Judaism carries within its pages traces of the various forms of Jewish cultural, political, and intellectual life Jewishness was leaving behind, and this included the legacy of secular Yiddish culture. This is why, especially in its early years, it included explicitly secularist essays. Nevertheless, reading through the pages of the first fifteen years of the journal, one notices the pieces about Yiddish secularism growing increasingly sparse, and by 1960 they deal primarily with the demise of this cultural formation and with what might be done to transform its legacies for the future. By the mid-1960s the definition of secularism itself has shifted. It no longer refers to Jewish worldliness but rather quite explicitly to the absence of religion, with virtually all discussions of secularism now focused on Israeli and not American Jewish culture.⁵⁹ Reading these early essays shows why Yiddish secularism did not survive and how this form of Jewish cultural identification gave way to religious definitions of American Jews, Jewishness, and Judaism. I now want to turn more directly to two of these essays, Herbert Parzen’s “The Passing of Jewish Secularism” and Saul L. Goodman’s “Jewish Secularism in America.” I am interested in examining the authors’ answers to the question of why Yiddish secularism could not make it in America. More specifically, I want to look at their pointed critiques of American culture. What these writers describe, and what even Gordis suggests at the end of his inaugural essay, is that in the United States, it is only through religious pluralism that Jews can survive as Jews. My question is whether this still need be the case. Is it possible to imagine a place for other forms of cultural difference including the various broken versions of secular Jewishness that continue to exist in the United States? These are the issues that animate both essays as another way of understanding the status of Jews in North America even in the present. Although in both instances the writers are very much concerned about the future of American Jewish secularism, they each offer vivid critical descriptions of American culture to make their cases. In what follows I build on these descriptions to challenge these cultural norms in the present. Levitt

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“ T H E PA S S I N G O F J E W I S H S E C U L A R I S M ”

Parzen opens his 1959 essay by addressing what he sees as the dual impasse faced by conscientious secularists. As he explains, “in separating themselves from the Synagogue—the basic institution of the historical tradition as the inevitable instrument for the survival of organized Jewish life in America, they are committed to foster a substitute—a secular Jewish culture sufficiently resourceful to reward them with self-fulfillment and to assure group survival.”⁶⁰ On the one hand, secularists need to have a central institution, a substitute for the synagogue. On the other, they need to become contemporary. Although “Jewish secularism was destined to flourish temporarily and artificially in this country” (195), this is no longer the case. It may have made sense to an immigrant generation of eastern European Jews, but it is no longer viable as its adherents are aging and have little to offer a new generation of American-born Jews. Parzen continues by explaining that Jewish secularism “can no longer serve as an agency for self-fulfillment and survival” (195). He continues to make his case by explaining that the only form of cultural difference recognized and respected in the United States is a religious one: “American culture is unitary and national, by design and intent. The only exception is religion. And though there is a clear-cut contemporaneous tendency to de-emphasize this tradition, the separation of Church and States is, nevertheless, a regnant rule in American thought and life; it decisively directs, likewise by design and intent, that religious phases of American civilization shall be diverse, discrete, and necessarily, pluralistic” (195). This account is offered as what we might now call a reality check, a reminder to the remnant of Jewish secularists that their program no longer makes any sense. He continues, “Thus, religious pluralism is the law of the land” (195). This stands in sharp contrast to the secularist notions of cultural pluralism developed in eastern Europe. As Parzen explains, in the United States as in western Europe, Jews “achieved adjustment to the general social order on the primary basis of religious tolerance” (196). It was expected that Jews would conform to the cultural patterns of the state and not maintain separate cultures. Parzen is frustrated that Jewish secularists have not taken up these seemingly simple truths and instead appear to go on as if still living elsewhere, insisting on the maintenance of their old ways even in North America. As it turned out, by and large Parzen was right: secular forms of Jewishness were indeed dying in America. Before assessing the “perilous posirev i si t i n g j ew i sh se c u l a ri sm in a merica

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tion of present-day secularists in the United States” (199), Parzen in his essay makes one final point worth reiterating in this context. He clarifies that Jewish secularists should not be confused with assimilationists. This is a crucial point, one reaffirmed almost thirty years later by Klepfisz. As Parzen explains, “secularists must be differentiated from assimilationists. The first planned to preserve Jewish peoplehood and its culture, the second sought absorption or ‘integration’ in the dominant civilization” (197). As he makes clear, secularists were very much committed to Jewish culture and a Jewish future. What is painful is that their strategies did not survive in North America. By the end of the twentieth century, it had become virtually impossible to recognize their particular differences. Given this, Klepfisz by 1986 had to fight hard to make the case for the possibility of committed secular Jewishness. And yet it is precisely the memory of the secular traditions that helps explain the contradictions that so many contemporary Jews experience around their own Jewish positions. Rereading Parzen helps us recall that these traditions formed a part of the “social baggage” that eastern European Jews brought with them to the United States (197). He also reminds us that the loss of these traditions is part of the price that eastern European Jews paid to become Americans. They had to give up these forms of Jewish cultural expression to become a part of the dominant culture. In order to assimilate into the dominant Protestant culture of the United States, Jews were required to identify their Jewishness as a form of religious faith. Having made these cogent arguments, Parzen concludes his essay by looking at specific Jewish secularist positions and explaining where he thinks they go wrong. He moves from general Zionists to labor Zionists, Yiddishists, and finally to a group he calls native Jewish intellectuals. He demonstrates how each of these groups failed, but he saves his most vehement critique for the final group, who persist “in a sort of no-man’s land, on the periphery of Jewish life and on the margins of American culture, discontented, dismayed, disjointed” (205). For Parzen, the message is clear: for all of these Jews there is no future. Appealing to Jewish tradition, he concludes his essay by describing these Jews as “nishmatin artilain, ‘naked souls,’ meandering about the world without balance and without consistency! This, it seems to me, is the fate of Jewish secularists in the United States” (205). In this way Parzen ultimately rejects Jewish secularism in order to assure a more stable American Jewish future. In the United States, he claims, Jews need to position themselves as a religious group to survive as Jews, something none of these groups was willing to do. Levitt

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“JEWISH SECUL ARISM IN AMERIC A”

By way of contrast, Saul L. Goodman attempts to tell a different, though again not uncritical, story about the future of Jewish secularism in his essay “Jewish Secularism in America: Permanence and Change.” The subtitle of his essay conveys the tension at its heart. Goodman wants permanence as well as change and is willing, in a sense, to let go of the secular to save Jewish secularism. Goodman wrote the essay while directing New York’s Yiddish secular Sholom Aleichem Schools. He wrote from within the Yiddish secular world as both an educator and a scholar. Although like Parzen he, too, appeared critical of what was happening to Jewish secularism in North America, he very much wanted a future for this movement. Precisely because he was committed to the future of American Jewish secularism, he was willing to consider change, even radical change. Goodman went so far as to suggest the viability of Jewish secularists self-consciously joining religious Jewish communities to make this possible.⁶¹ At the heart of Goodman’s essay lies his struggle to come to terms with religion as a secularist. For him, religion has already come to structure Jewish life in the United States, so he wonders how secularists are to deal with this reality. After providing a brief overview of the origins of Jewish secularism in the nineteenth century and of the crises faced at the eve of the Second World War—including a disillusionment with the promises of emancipation gone sour in western Europe and a lack of faith in the larger promises of progress at the heart of the Enlightenment more broadly— he makes his case. As he explains, “In addition to these altered internal factors within the Jewish community, the general climate of opinion in America was radically different now. Modern man became disillusioned with technical-material progress that did not satisfy his hunger for genuine loftiness, did not give him a raison d’etre, and left a void in place of the old faith that promised immortality, permanence, and tranquility.”⁶² Goodman builds on this disillusionment. Like Parzen, he wants something to take the place of the old faith. He wants a new foundation since he, too, no longer finds in it reason or science.⁶³ In this way Goodman sets up his quest to reclaim religion as a secularist. He uses a broader sense of disillusionment and of longing for a lost idyllic past to reconsider some of the basic tenets of Jewish secularism. By challenging the opposition between religion and Judaism within some of the earliest American proponents of Jewish secularism, Goodman hopes rev i si t i n g j ew i sh se c u l a ri sm in a merica

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to make it easier for other secularists to reconsider the merits of religious community for the future. He turns to the writings of the Jewish secularist Leibush Lehrer in order to present this secularist position and then take it apart point by point. As Goodman explains, in the late 1930s Lehrer argued that Judaism was not to be equated with religion. According to Lehrer, religion constituted in essence an individual psychic experience that could not be confused with Judaism. “Judaism is mainly a code which regulates the lives of Jews as belonging to a collectivity” (emphasis original; 321). Lehrer suggested that even the English term secular made no sense when applied to Judaism. Judaism need not be secularized since it never constituted a religion. Moreover, as Goodman goes on to explain, the Yiddish term weltlikh and the English word secular clearly mean different things. In other words, secular is not the opposite of religious. In the case of Yiddish secular Jews, not being religious does not mean that they are not committed to Jewish culture and tradition. I think it helpful to quote from Goodman’s text at some length to fully express the way in which he builds on Lehrer’s earlier Yiddishist position, which he cites explicitly: In Judaism the essence is not theological but rather legalistic; not metaphysical sanctions but sociological functions; not whether you have faith in God but whether you observe the sancta (Mitzvoth) is what counts. Which is another way of saying that the true substance of Judaism is expressed in folkways, observances, in culture, in tradition, in Law (Halakhah), and conduct; not in “fear of the Lord,” not in piety, nor in creedal dogmas. “Judaism” is primarily a folk idea, a concept of conduct.⁶⁴

Here the distinctions are sharp. Judaism is presented as a unique cultural formation that is anything but a religion. Yet in order to make this case, Lehrer appeals to the kinds of Jewish stereotypes Christians most often deployed against Jews: Jews are legalistic and clannish as opposed to spiritual and universal. According to Goodman, this is the American secularist position at its most extreme and most pernicious. Although there is something to be said for this notion of Judaism as a legal, cultural, and social folk tradition whose sole purpose lies in the survival of the Jewish people, Goodman believes there is more to it than

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just this. He suggests that even for secularists Judaism also represents a religion. In the final portion of his essay, Goodman presents his own constructive argument. Like Parzen and Gordis, he sees the future of the Jewish people in the United States as contingent on the redefinition of Jewishness as a religion: “American Jewish community life, including its secularcultural elements, should be put into a religious framework” (324). Using the work of Jewish sociologists in order to make his case, he explains that there can be no Jewish communal future without an accommodation to the dominant norms of American culture: “In order to get the sanction of America to Jewish group survival, we must declare ourselves to be a religious community. Inasmuch as America will not consent officially to a permanent ethnic or linguistic separateness, our descendants will not exert themselves to preserve their Jewishness” (324). This is the crucial point. In order to find a place for secularists among already established and explicitly religious American Jewish communities, secularism must become religious. Goodman concludes his essay by offering one final “American twist to the concept of Jewish secularity” by appealing to the quintessentially American thinker John Dewey (330). He argues for Judaism to be understood as a form of religious secularism by using Dewey’s distinction between the adjective religious and the noun religion.⁶⁵ As Goodman explains, “the adjective religious denotes an attitude, a disposition, a commitment” (330). According to Dewey as quoted by Goodman, “Any activity pursued in behalf of an ideal and against obstacles and in spite of threats of personal loss because of conviction of its general and enduring values is religious in quality” (330). In other words, any activities engaged in by Jews to secure the survival of the Jewish people, their values and their practices—an explicit goal of Jewish secularism—are in Dewey’s sense religious ones. For Goodman, religious secularism is a way of securing a future for secular Jews in America. As he explains: “The Jewish secular conception is an attempt by all who are seeking to identify themselves with the Jewish group through modern means; it is an attempt to harmonize the prevalent ideas of modern culture with the historic Jewish heritage” (330). In this way Goodman ends his essay by placing his efforts to renovate Jewish secularism within a broader historical framework. As he reads it, Jewish secularists in every generation have rethought their Jewish inheritance in the present. They have sought to reconcile modern culture and

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Judaism. Jewish secularists have attempted time and time again to offer a satisfactory rationale for what it means to be a modern Jew. In Goodman’s case, American culture demanded that he embrace a new form of Jewish religiousness even as a secular Jew.⁶⁶ I am arguing that this schematization, this rigid adherence to the terms of liberal assimilation, needs to be challenged. In order to allow for the diversity of Jewish expression both historically and in the present, perhaps it is time for us to insist that Jewishness not be defined as a religion. Instead, American Jews might consider claiming the diversity of Jewish expression outside of the confines of religious pluralism. TOWARD THE FUTURE

Like Goodman and Parzen, I, too, end with thoughts about the future of Jewish secularism; of course, my thoughts differ from theirs. There is no going back to the specific world they debated. The community out of which Goodman wrote, for example, no longer exists. In this essay I have returned to Goodman, Parzen, and others to remember that an American Jewish secularism existed, that the vast majority of American Jews did not necessarily come to this country at the turn of the twentieth century with the notion that Jews constituted a religious minority. I have returned to this tradition to better explain the place of Jews in American culture and to ask what it might mean for Jews to more fully accept our own complicated positions as Jews in the United States. An earlier generation of explicitly Jewish secularists reminds us that some of our own discomforts are not of our own making. They remind us that American culture, despite its promise of inclusion, still finds it difficult to embrace cultural differences. Moreover, they remind us that liberal inclusion has always only been partial. In the case of Jews, this inclusion has meant conforming to notions of religious diversity. In order to be accepted into American culture as Jews, we have had to remake our Jewishness into a form of private religious faith. And this model has never quite fit. By returning to the archive of Judaism, I have tried to show not only how this version of inclusion has distorted Jewish identity but also that this problem was not unknown to Secular Yiddishists, who understood even then the limitations of liberal inclusion. Although I am not interested in resurrecting their particular solutions, I appreciate their early articulation of the problem. By seeing these issues spelled out by an earlier generation of Jews, I believe we can more fully appreciate the need to challenge this legacy in the present. Levitt

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For the vast majority of American Jews, the descendants of eastern European immigrants who came to the United States at the turn of the last century, the process of assimilation meant a repetition with a difference. Like their predecessors, they tried to redefine themselves as religious to fit into American culture, but the definition was not quite accurate. Like my students, many of these people were Jewish but not religious. For still others, like Senator Lieberman, private religious faith did not provide an appropriate description of their Halachic way of life. For these Jews, Judaism instead meant a very public enactment rather than a matter of private belief. Although all of these Jews were compelled to assimilate to liberal religious norms, their efforts remained fraught; their Jewishness did not fit easily into this model of acceptable social difference. As I have argued, secular Jews resisted this imperative. As a result, American Jews have been left with a series of contradictions: they are both too religious and not religious enough, too American and not nearly American enough.⁶⁷ The question of what it means to be an American Jew remains contradictory. Given that Jews are, as the Yiddish literary critic Samuel Niger put it, “a historic ethico-cultural, and socio-politico-economico-psychological phenomenon,”⁶⁸ there remains no easy or simple way of containing Jewish difference. By reclaiming the complexity of Jewish modernization and the many other legacies it offered Jews at the beginning of the twentieth century, we remember that there are other ways to be modern Jews. We need not continue to adhere to the failed promises of liberal inclusion. The example of eastern European Jewish secularists makes clear that it is not Jews who must change, but rather American culture and its notions of cultural diversity. By letting go of liberalism, we might manage to imagine other ways of describing and inhabiting positions Jewish or otherwise eccentric to the dominant culture of the United States in the present and in the future. NOTES I want to thank Ayako Sairenji and David Watt for sending me back to Judaism. As David’s student, Ayako became interested in the whole notion that there ever were “secular Jews” in the United States, and it was her initial research that lead me to the essays I discuss. I want to thank Marc Raphael for inviting me to present a version of this material as the annual Salasky Lecture at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, in April 2001. I am grateful to Janet Jakobsen and Ann Pellegrini rev i si t i n g j ew i sh se c u l a ri sm in a merica

132 not only for their patience but for their fabulous and engaging critical readings of earlier versions of this essay. And, finally, I thank Michelle Friedman for reminding me why it is that I care so deeply about these issues. 1. Even when cross-listed with Jewish studies, this problem often remains. In my case, my academic line, my office, and the offices for the Jewish studies program are all literally situated within the department of religion. This is also the case at many other American colleges and universities. 2. It was assumed that Jews were contemporary manifestations of these ancients and could bring enlightened Christians a more authentic appreciation of the Old Testament culture of their own origins. The initial lines for Jewish studies positions were made in biblical studies and religion. See Klingenstein, Jews in the American Academy; Synnott, Half-Open Door; and Oren, Joining the Club. See also the fascinating discussion about the implementation of quotas for Jewish students at Dartmouth in the 1930s in Jacoby, Half Jew, 136–55. For a fascinating and engaging account of Jewish contributions to Bible scholarship and translation in the United States, see Sarna and Sarna, “Jewish Bible Scholarship.” For more on the complicated relationship of Jews to the Hebrew Bible, see Laura Levitt, “Beyond a Shared Inheritance: American Jews Reclaim the Hebrew Bible.” 3. Freedman, Jew versus Jew. 4. These public discussions left me at a loss. Not only could they not explain my own Jewish feminist position or the growth of various forms of Jewish renewal and informal Jewish education and affiliation but they had no way of explaining the vast number of American Jews who remain decidedly not religious. In contrast to Freedman, I am interested in the persistence of these forms of nonreligious Jewish expression and in what they tell us about American Jewish identity. 5. Here I have in mind Lieberman’s initial support, for example, of faith-based initiatives, as well as the desire for more “God” language in public discourse. 6. On this issue of liberalism’s promise and effacement, see Levitt, Jews and Feminism, esp. the introduction and chaps. 1 and 4. 7. Qtd. in Karp, American Synagogue, 31. 8. Gordis, “Towards a Renascence of Judaism.” 9. These articles include the following: Menes, “Religious and Secular Trends”; Parzen, “Eastern European Immigrants”; Sherman, “Nationalism, Secularism and Religion”;

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133 Menes, “The East Side”; Kreiter, “Sh. Niger”; Parzen, “The Passing of Jewish Secularism in the United States”; and Goodman, “Jewish Secularism in America.” 10. This is an argument that was made powerfully more recently in terms of Jewish studies and its peculiar relationship to contemporary academic disciplines and programs by Sara Horowitz. See Horowitz, “Paradox of Jewish Studies.” 11. Herbert Parzen, “The Passing of Jewish Secularism in the United States,” 196. 12. Hyman, “Emancipation,” 167. 13. See ibid. on this point, as well as my own discussion in Levitt, Jews and Feminism, esp. chap. 3. 14. Parzen in “The Passing of Jewish Secularism in the United States” argues that voluntarism was complicated in western Europe by the social obligation to belong to a religious community. As he explains, “This consensus explains why many Jews in those lands were affiliated with the gemeinde or Kehillah—religious organs in the eyes of the law—even though by conviction they remained outside of the Synagogue. It also accounts for the fact that in Western Europe up until the time of Theodor Herzl (the end of the 19th century) secularism was unknown as an organized force in Jewish life, as a programmatic goal of Jewish culture” (196). On the issue of voluntarism and its specifically American character, see Blau, “What’s American About American Jewry?” 15. The Yiddish humanist critic, essayist, and publicist Samuel Niger manifests a similar discomfort as he describes the Jew in the following way, “A Jew is a historic ethicocultural, and socio-politico-economico-psychological phenomenon. A Jew is a Jew, a Jew, a Jew.” Qtd. in Goodman, “Jewish Secularism in America,” 326. 16. American Heritage Dictionary, 4th ed, s.v. “denominate.” This whole discussion also echoes the already overdetermined relationship between Jews and capital, and in its most insidious version, between Jews and predatory capitalism. I thank Ann Pellegrini for calling this aspect of denomination to my attention. I suspect this is a legacy many Jews like me do not want to have to remember given how overdetermined these negative stereotypes of Jews and money and Jews and capitalism continue to be even in the twenty-first century. 17. In his account “What’s American About American Jewry,” Blau strikingly uses the term Protestant as a way of describing a broader phenomenon. As he explains, “The term ‘Protestantism’ has been adopted to describe that movement in religion in general (not only Christianity) which allows of a multiplicity of conclusions” (209). In this

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134 way, Protestantism becomes a defining characteristic of American religious expression alongside pluralism and voluntarism. Blau’s use of the term Protestantism in this way also echoes more recent arguments that the imprint of the Protestant Reformation remains very much a part of the legacy of the Enlightenment. 18. Hyman, “Emancipation,” 167. 19. See Baird, Inventing Religion in the Western Imaginary, and his essay in this volume. See also the introduction by Janet Jakobsen and Ann Pellegrini, as well as their earlier account of the genealogy of religion in their introduction to “World Secularisms at the Millennium.” 20. Paul Mendes-Flohr and Jehuda Reinharz, Jew in the Modern World. 21. Levitt, Jews and Feminism. 22. For a more elaborate reading of the role of marriage in the negotiations for Jewish emancipation in France, and especially of the way that rabbis were to become agents of the state in these transactions, see ibid., chap. 3. 23. For an excellent discussion of the Protestant woman’s sphere in the United States, see Fessenden, “The Convent, the Brothel, and the Protestant Woman’s Sphere.” For an interesting account of how normative Reform Judaism in the nineteenth-century United States took its cues from Protestant Americans, see Parzen, “Eastern European Immigrants,” esp. 155–56. 24. On the feminization of American Judaism, see Goldman, Beyond the Synagogue Gallery. 25. Shul, a Yiddish term for “synagogue,” “from the Middle High German schuol, school.” American Heritage Dictionary, 4th edition, s.v. “shul.” This whole phrase comes from Karla Goldman, “When the Women Came to Shul,” in Peskowitz and Levitt, Judaism Since Gender, 57–61. 26. See Karla Goldman’s careful account of these tensions and conflicts in Beyond the Synagogue Gallery, esp. in chaps. 4, 5, and 6. 27. Herbert Parzen, “The Passing of Jewish Secularism in the United States,” 197. 28. This narrative is usually associated closely with what Stephen Steinberg describes as the myth of the “Jewish Horatio Alger,” on the one hand, and the romanticization of the shtetl, on the other. On these questions, see Steinberg, Ethnic Myth; and Caren Kaplan’s expanded rethinking of this legacy in her essay “‘Beyond the Pale.’” On the

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135 role of Russia and the shtetl in particular in the Jewish imagination, see Zipperstein, Imagining Russian Jewry. 29. On the differences between eastern and western Jewish efforts at modernization and enlightenment especially in terms of gender, see Hyman, Gender and Assimilation. 30. Between 1880 and 1920 more than 2 million Jews from eastern Europe migrated to the United States. They came from the Russian Empire, Poland, Austria-Hungary, and Romania. See Sorin, Time of Building; Heinze, Adapting to Abundance; and the classic Howe, World of Our Fathers. With a specific focus on immigrant Jewish women, see Baum, Hyman, and Michel, Jewish Woman in America; Weinberg, World of Our Mothers; and Glenn, Daughters of the Shtetl. 31. On these issues, see the primary sources collected in Mendes-Flohr and Reinharz, Jew in the Modern World. See also Weinberg, Between Tradition and Modernity. 32. For an interesting effort to reconcile rabbinic Judaism and the various secular legacies of Jewish socialism, see Menes, “Religious and Secular Trends.” 33. As Parzen explains, the leaders of the immigrant community were, by and large, secularists. See Parzen, “Eastern European Immigrants and Jewish Secularism.” 34. See Harshav, Meaning of Yiddish; Goldsmith, Modern Yiddish Culture; Seidman, Marriage Made in Heaven; Kronfeld, On the Margins of Modernism; and Mintz, Banished from Their Father’s Table. For a powerful critique of the politics of modern Hebrew literature, see Hever, Producing the Modern Hebrew Canon. 35. For examples of some of this cultural production, see Mendes-Flohr and Reonharz, Jew in the Modern World; Dobroszycki and Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Image Before My Eyes; Steinlauf, Bondage to the Dead, esp. chap. 1 on Polish Jewish cultural production; and, for a study of Jewish women writing in Russian, Balin, To Reveal Our Hearts. 36. On this notion of performance and its relation to these issues, I am again grateful to Ann Pellegrini for asking me to think more about these connections to queer performance. I am grateful to Paul Reitter for his fascinating account of the power of Yiddish theater in German Jewish imagination. See Paul Reitter, “Karl Krauss’s Yiddish Theater.” 37. Alexander Harkay, English-Yiddish Dictionary (New York: Hebrew Publishing Company, 1929). See also the discussion of weltlikh versus secular in Goodman, “Jewish Secularism in America.”

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136 38. See Dobroszycki and Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Image Before My Eyes, for examples of more liberal enactments of Jewish religious life in cosmopolitan Poland. 39. For a particularly nostalgic look at this phenomena, see the highly popular videos produced by wliw21 public television about the creation of “Jewish Americans.” “A Laugh, a Tear, a Mitzvah” (1996); and “Another Mitzvah” (1997). 40. This in addition to the extensive treatment of the importance of the Yiddish press presented in the various articles from Judaism, esp. Parzen, “East European Immigrants and Jewish Secularism.” See the excellent discussions of the fashioning of gender in the pages of the Yiddish press in Seller, “Defining Socialist Womanhood”; Prell, Fighting to Become Americans; and Schreier, Becoming American Women. 41. Prell offers the most extensive account of the role of gender in these negotiations. I am deeply indebted to her groundbreaking work. See Prell, Fighting to Become Americans, esp. chaps. 2 and 3. 42. On the role of Yiddish theater as well as the Yiddish press and literature in promoting secular Jewish culture in the United States, see Parzen, “East European Immigrants and Jewish Secularism,” 161–62. 43. For a provocative reading of other forms of world making, see José Esteban Muñoz’s account of disidentification and queer world making through performance, Disidentifications. 44. On these issues, again see Parzen, “East European Immigrants and Jewish Secularism.” This is a position close to my own heart as it is the one taken by my own grandparents. See my discussion of my maternal grandmother’s citizenship in the introduction to Jews and Feminism. 45. Hirsch, Nineteen Letters on Judaism. See also the various primary sources collected in Mendes-Flohr and Reinharz, Jew in the Modern World. 46. Soloveitchik, “Rupture and Reconstruction.” I thank Ellen Frankel for this reference. 47. On the growth of ultra-Orthodoxy at the expense of more modern forms of Jewish orthodoxy, see the vivid accounts in Freedman, Jew versus Jew; Heilman, Defenders of the Faith; and the extensive discussion of ultra-Orthodox or Haredi Jews in Heilman and Friedman, “Religious Fundamentalism and Religious Jews.” For a more historical account of American Orthodoxy, see Joselit, New York’s Jewish Jews. 48. Freedman is not alone in returning to summer camps and bungalow colonies in the

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137 Catskill Mountains to mark the end of Yiddish secular culture in the United States. See Klepfisz, “Secular Jewish Identity,” in Dreams of an Insomniac, 143–66. 49. Freedman, Jew versus Jew, 62. 50. Part of what is missing from Freedman’s account is any acknowledgment of the complexities that distinguish not only various liberal and secular Jews from each other (e.g., Zionist, Bundist, Reform, Conservative, Reconstructionist, and Renewal Jews), but also the specific postwar legacy of the Satmars and their complicated relationship with other even Hasidic communities. Although I agree with Freedman that it is important to revisit the demise of Yiddish secular culture by returning to the summer camps and bungalow colonies created to sustain worldly Jewish traditions into the next generation, I want to think some more about why these institutions failed. Why was it that secular Jews could not sustain their forms of Jewishness in North America? In sharp contrast to Freedman, I do not find it helpful to turn to the elected mayor of Kiryas Joel or someone else from this Satmar Hasidic community to answer these questions. 51. Shandler, Adventures in Yiddishland. 52. For a more developed reading of Klepfisz’s essay and her secular Jewishness, see Levitt, “Feminist Spirituality.” 53. This move echoes the more expanded argument made by Shandler in Adventures in Yiddishland. 54. Klepfisz, “Secular Jewish Identity,” in Dreams of an Insomniac, 161. 55. See ibid., esp. the final section of her essay devoted to di tsukunft, the future, 159–64. See also Levitt, “Feminist Spirituality.” 56. Gordis, “Towards a Renascence of Judaism.” 57. Looking toward the future, Gordis wrote, “As the preoccupation with the means of Jewish survival becomes less intense, concern for the ends may be expected to reassert itself with ever greater power. Indeed signs are already multiplying, both in Israel and in America that the content of the Jewish tradition and the values inherent in Judaism are beginning to attract an ever greater measure of interest, particularly in circles hitherto unconcerned with such issues” (ibid., 4). 58. Ibid., 5. 59. An example of this is Rotenstreich, “Secularism and Religion in Israel.” This has

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138 become the dominant reading of Jewish secularism. See, for example, Halpern, “Secularism.” 60. Parzen, “The Passing of Jewish Secularism in the United States,” 195. 61. Both Parzen and Goodman discuss the potential compatibility of Jewish secularism and Mordechai Kaplan’s version of reconstructionist Judaism. 62. Goodman, “Jewish Secularism in America,” 320. 63. This argument echoes back to the critique of science and reason found in Gordis’s essay. 64. The words are Lehrer’s as cited by Goodman (321). These seem to be Goodman’s own translations. As his notes suggest, these passages come from a Yiddish text, Leibush Lehrer, Yiddishkeit und Andere Problemen. 65. As Goodman explains (330), this is a distinction Dewey makes in his Common Faith. 66. It should also be noted that Goodman continued to write and think about these issues. His later publications include the anthology The Faith of Secular Jews. 67. On this problem of excess as a form of mimicry in which assimilation is always already partial and incomplete, see Levitt, Jews and Feminism, introduction and chap. 1, as well as the discussion of Jewish whiteness in Kaplan, “‘Beyond the Pale.’” 68. Qtd. in Goodman, “Jewish Secularism in America,” 326.

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CHAPTER FIVE

disappearances: race, religion, and the progress narrative of u.s. feminism ˜ Tracy Fessenden

Among this volume’s central themes is the coimplication of Christianity and secularism in the progress narrative of modernity, a narrative that both assumes and promises to overcome the equation of Christianity and civilization that gives the West a coherent identity and underwrites its imperial designs. This narrative both draws on and bolsters a familiar model of religious development, one that traces the maturing of religious thought from “primitive” cult and myth through to the emergence of monotheism in Judaism, to the supersession of Judaism in Christianity, and then to the fuller realization of Christian promise in the Protestant Reformation. The ultimate issue of Protestantism is freedom of conscience, a freedom that leads inevitably to the democratic liberty thought to be the mark of secularism. This is a standard secularization narrative, one in which secularism is dependent on Protestantism and associated with freedom.¹ It is also a narrative that, because of its association between secularization and freedom, confers a special moral standing on those who share both secularism and its particular Protestant genealogy, fueling imperial projects from nineteenth-century colonialism to contemporary international interventions. The evidence for this special moral standing is frequently given in appeals to the treatment of women: the presumed freedom of women in secularized contexts and the presumed oppression of women in religious contexts is regularly invoked, even by those who care little about or for women’s rights (e.g., Muslims veil their women, “we” do not) to underwrite a hierarchy of progress that places supposedly backward religions at one end of the civilizing scale and democratic freedoms at the other.

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If an academic critique of the use of women as the marker of an imperial vision of civilization is now well established, this vision’s reliance on a progress narrative of secularization has gone largely unremarked. A promising departure in the writing of U.S. feminist history, for example, has been to set the American women’s movement of the later nineteenth century within the contours of a broader, social-evolutionary discourse of civilization. In White Women’s Rights: The Racial Origins of Feminism in the United States—which can stand in for some of the best of this work— Louise Newman calls attention to the ways in which nineteenth-century appeals on behalf of women’s rights drew strength from and furthered a range of “civilizing missions and imperial projects” by which the United States extended its power over so-called primitive peoples at home and abroad.² The evangelical Christianity of the emergent white middle class, with its gendered spheres of home and world, proved especially amenable to an alliance between women’s rights and imperialism: the assumption that Protestant Christianity was the most advanced religion, one in relation to which others were primitive, allowed evangelical women to take part in the “civilizing” operations of empire, associated with men, without appearing to depart from their appointed sphere, associated with Christianity. Women who identified the cause of women’s rights with the superiority of Western, Christian civilization—in part through the shrewd deployment of a vocabulary that kept the implicit degradation of non-Western, non-Christian women in view: the harem, the seraglio, footbinding, child marriage, suttee—commanded all the authority of the West’s imperial reach even as their access to public, institutional forms of power remained quite limited.³ In the domestic writing of Catharine Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe, for example, the duties of the Christian housewife to her home and family serve the larger purpose of enabling “Christian families” to gather about them “Christian neighborhoods . . . [so that] ere long colonies from these prosperous and Christian communities [may] . . . go forth to shine as ‘lights of the world’ in all the now darkened nations.”⁴ Reconceived as part of a broader civilizing mission, domestic ideology could in turn be made to serve the emancipatory ambitions of white, middle-class, Protestant women. Since “a state is but an association of families,” insisted Stowe, “there is no reason why [woman] should be more powerless in the state than in the home.”⁵ Implicit in the task of recovering a history of cooperation between movements to expand women’s freedoms, on the one hand, and moveFessenden

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ments to consolidate Anglo-Saxon domination, on the other, is a call to redress that history by disentangling, as far as possible, feminism from imperialism in the present. If the historical articulations between women’s rights and U.S. imperialism are clearest in the realm of religion, however, this is also where the required work of disarticulation would seem to be all but done, since the terrain on which white, middle-class women managed most successfully to enlarge their political and social authority in the nineteenth century—evangelical Christianity—is also the terrain from which American feminism in its second and third waves has most concertedly retreated in its efforts to constitute itself as genuinely progressive. Which leaves a question that needful interrogations of the social-evolutionary paradigm in U.S. feminism have so far left unasked: What happens to the forms of racial imperialism encoded within the progress narrative when feminists lay claim to that narrative in the name of secularism? I pursue this question by looking at the career of the activist, social theorist, and fiction writer Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860–1935), a career that now includes a burgeoning of feminist scholarly interest in Gilman that gained critical mass in the 1970s and has yet to abate. Gilman’s many books and essays were translated into several languages and used in college courses in her lifetime; much of her work has since been reissued and is widely taught in women’s studies courses today.⁶ Gilman’s longevity— she began writing in the 1880s against the still trenchant ideology of a woman’s sphere—makes her a useful index not only to U.S. feminism’s successive waves but also to the ways an avowedly secular academic feminism both announces and obscures its debt to an implicitly Protestant narrative of emancipation. This is the narrative that, for example, enabled pioneering women’s rights activists like Elizabeth Cady Stanton not only to wield the language of slavery to join their own demands for greater freedom to the abolitionist cause but also to mobilize a well-worn vocabulary of so-called priestcraft to describe their oppression under patriarchy. As Stanton related in an 1860 speech to the American Anti-Slavery Society: In the darkness and gloom of a false theology I was slowly sawing off the chains of my spiritual bondage, when for the first time, I met [abolitionist William Lloyd] Garrison in London. A few bold strokes from the hammer of truth, I was free! . . . a doubting soul suddenly born into the kingdom of reason and free thought. Is the bondage of the priest-ridden less galling than that of the slave, because we do not see the chains, the rac e , re l i g i o n , a n d u . s . femin ism

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indelible scars, the festering wounds, the deep degradation of all the powers of the God-like mind? . . . No the mission of this Radical AntiSlavery Movement is not to the African Slave alone, but to the slaves of custom, creed, and sex; and most faithfully has it done its work.⁷

Even if we set aside for a moment the stunning erosion of the singularity of racial bondage even in this supposed account of strengthened commitment to abolitionism, Stanton’s narrative of her deliverance into the kingdom of free thought veers only slightly from the more orthodox nineteenth-century script by which the emancipatory tropes of a liberalizing Protestantism—freedom, inevitability, the clarification of innate inner goodness—guided the experience of evangelical Christian conversion. Nor is it far from Stanton’s born-again experience to the “consciousnessraising” encounters that galvanized a second wave of U.S. feminist activism a century later. By then, however, as Ann Braude puts it, a certain “squeamishness about religious faith” had set in among feminist historians, who muted the impact of religion on the American women’s movement in apparent deference to the assumption that “religious women suffer from false consciousness and that their allegiance to patriarchal organizations makes them incapable of authentic work on behalf of women.” In a new introduction to her now classic Radical Spirits: Spiritualism and Women’s Rights in Nineteenth-Century America, Braude describes her effort “to draw religious history and women’s rights into a common narrative” as “the most difficult ‘sell’ of the book’s goals.”⁸ From this perspective, Gilman—the rebellious grandniece, as it happened, of Catharine Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe—would seem to be the pivot on which American feminism turns itself from a Christian into a secular enterprise. This, indeed, is why she is revered. As a typical assessment has it, Gilman’s “first book, Women and Economics . . . turned Aunt Catharine Beecher on her head by locating the home as the place of women’s oppression,” while “her last work [His Religion and Hers] . . . repudiated the entire Beecher clan and their religion.”⁹ That celebratory sense of rupture between Gilman’s secular vision and her evangelical Christian inheritance belies what her writing more insistently records as continuity, a continuity that, as we will see, gives an implicit historical coherence both to Gilman’s model of a post-Christian America and to the feminist genealogy of which she forms a cherished part. But the appearance of rupture is no accidental effect: in Women and Economics (1898), her first book and the one that secured her fame, Gilman made it her task Fessenden

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to deconstruct the Christian domestic ideal that her Beecher aunts had promoted in works like The American Woman’s Home. Nineteenth-century domestic ideology had depicted the Christian family circle, overseen by women, as capitalism’s salvific counterpart: pious, nurturing, morally regenerative, and sealed from the corrosive energies of the market. Women and Economics begins from the premise that this hallowed division of gendered spheres is in fact a survival from cave-dwelling days, having come into being as soon as primitive men began to keep women forcibly confined for sexual purposes rather than fight other men for access to whatever women happened to be at large. Defenseless in the face of this arrangement, women came to depend entirely on attracting the men who would keep them, with the result that women evolved as a degenerate species specializing in “sex functions.” Men, meanwhile, developed the political and cultural systems that made them “human, far more than male” and set them “thousands of years in advance of the female,” whose condition of dependence left her stalled at the evolutionary stage of “a savage in the forest.”¹⁰ As Gilman reiterated in The Home: Its Work and Influence (1903): “In all this long period of progress the moving world has carried with it the unmoving home; the man free, the woman confined; the man specializing in a thousand industries, the woman still limited to her domestic functions.”¹¹ Gilman insists that the enclosure of women in the home in fact thwarts progress not only for them but for men as well, since mothers necessarily transmit their rudimentary, “savage” characteristics to their male and female children. The solution she proposes is to socialize the domestic sphere, making its duties of child care, cooking, and cleaning the responsibility not of mothers but of whole communities. Only in this way can women pursue their talents beyond the home and so evolve into fully civilized human beings. For Gilman the progress of humanity proceeds quite literally as women’s work, since only the liberation of women’s activity from the domestic sphere can remove the conditions of “arrested development, primitive industry, and crippled womanhood” that bind even civilized nations to a savage past.¹² Clarifying proof that the domestic sphere can be “open[ed] to the blessed currents of progress that lead and lift us all” was to be found, for Gilman, in the sphere of religion, where strangling pressures and received ideas slowly but inevitably dissolve in the light of truth:¹³ “In place of the dark and cruel superstitions of old time, with the crushing weight of a strong cult of priests, we have a free and growing church, branching steadily rac e , re l i g i o n , a n d u . s . femin ism

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wider as more minds differ, and coming nearer always to that final merging of religion in life which shall leave them indistinguishable.”¹⁴ Religion, then, could be plotted on an evolutionary spectrum, with its dark and superstitious forms at one end and its enlightened disappearance (into “life”) at the other. As Gilman explains, “primitive man bowed down and fell upon his face before almost everything, whether forces of nature or of art. To worship, to enshrine, to follow blindly, was instinctive with the savage.” In contrast, the “civilized man has a larger outlook, a clearer, betterordered brain. He bases reverence on knowledge, he loses fear in the light of understanding.”¹⁵ That such an advance in religion furthered the cause of women’s emancipation could go without saying. Human beings are made to grow—to develope [sic]—to follow the radiant line of progress which [God] has set before us; lit with truth and built on Law; and that path is not to be followed by rite and ceremony, by sacrifice and abasement, by any arbitrary behavior assumed as especially pleasing to the distant Deity; but by the Virtue and uplifting of our common business—by the work which we do in the world! . . . That is the reason why housework is not sufficient for a sex.¹⁶

After writing several books, each of which returned to a version of this story, Gilman in 1909 began a journal, The Forerunner, as a venue “to publish and edit myself and preach.”¹⁷ The “social philosophy” to be set forth in the journal, she wrote, “may be summarized under several heads”: A. As to Human Life in general: It . . . is as “natural” as any lower form, is governed by natural law and has at work upon it the same Lifting Force, often called God, which has developed all life forms, has brought us so far on our way, and is still pushing upward in us. B. As to Pain and Sin: That our visible difficulties and distresses are not inherent, not necessary, but merely due to our misconceptions, and may be easily and swiftly outlived as soon as we understand them. C. As to Religion: That the main error in all religions is in their demand for a fixed and absolute belief, a habit paralyzing to the human mind. D. As to God: That the force called God is the truest thing there is, a ceaselessly acting force, to which we are all welcome, always. There is no anger in it, no punishment, no need to be praised and placated and im-

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portuned with prayers. . . . In living in accordance with this ever-present force we live naturally and follow the rules of social evolution.

And so on through P (“As to Progress”) Gilman listed the convictions she set herself to expound in the journal’s seven-year run, writing every word of copy herself.¹⁸ The Forerunner ultimately folded for lack of subscribers, and by the time of Gilman’s death in 1935 all her books were out of print. It would take a new wave of feminist activism to revive interest in Gilman’s work. This renewed interest, coinciding with U.S. feminism’s second wave in the late 1960s and 1970s, came largely from newly minted feminist scholars who increasingly found in Gilman a model for turning personal struggles into political ones. In what emerged from this era of scholarship as an established refrain, “women’s experience” supplied Gilman’s perennial themes, which one critic lists as “the absolute necessity for women to do ‘meaningful work’ outside the home, the stultifying oppression of patriarchal culture, the suffocating effects of the nineteenthcentury doctrine of the ‘woman’s sphere,’ the impossible ‘double-bind’ experienced by the woman artist, and the depression and emotional breakdown which often result.”¹⁹ What commentary Gilman’s view of religion has elicited, then or now—most critics have found it entirely unremarkable—would seem to support Braude’s observation that within progressive feminism the assumption that “religion and feminism are opposing forces in American culture” holds untroubled sway.²⁰ A quick sampling: one critic celebrates the ways Gilman “gleefully attacked the . . . religious manifestations of the Western ‘master narrative’”;²¹ another feels “glee” at Gilman’s having “repudiated the most sacred institutions of her time and ours: marriage, motherhood, home, religion”;²² a third (tempering the antic joy) suggests that Gilman’s feminism emerges directly from her “rejection of religious authority”; her “religious and moral struggle,” in turn, “was connected with [her] struggle against the submissiveness, dependency, and suppression of self inherent in the Victorian conception of femininity.”²³ What might explain this exuberant embrace of Gilman as the paradigmatic secular feminist, the one who threw off the enslaving yoke of religion once and for all? Put another way: what other investments might the move to erase religion from U.S. feminist genealogy—a move evidently facilitated by Gilman’s example—serve to obscure? Inextricably bound up with Gilman’s narrative of religious progress was

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a companion narrative of racial progress. Race, indeed, is the thorn on which Gilman’s still buoyant reputation as a feminist foremother has recently come to snag: although most of her readers persist in attributing her “stray” racist or anti-Semitic remarks to historical or psychological exigencies, a few have begun to insist that Gilman’s critique of patriarchy relies for its power, in our day as in hers, on the identification between white women and “backward” races that runs through nearly all of her nonfiction works.²⁴ The Home: Its Work and Influence, for example, revisits the primal scene of Women and Economics, the sequestering of women so that men could become fully human. Surveying industrial advances over millennia (“Where [we once] chewed and scraped the hides, wove barks and grasses . . . now the thousand manufactures of a million mills supply our complex needs and pleasures”), Gilman lights her rhetorical gaze on the contemporary middle-class home and finds there a woman who cooks, keeps house, and cares for children: What! Has the world stopped! Is history a dream? Is social progress mere imagination—there she is yet! Back of history, at the bottom of civilization, untouched by a thousand whirling centuries, the primitive woman, in the primitive home, still toils at her primitive tasks . . . what iron weight of custom, law, religion can be adduced in explanation of such a paradox as this? . . . by what art, what charm, what miracle, has the twentieth century preserved alive the prehistoric squaw?²⁵

The comparison between the bourgeois housewife and the primitive squaw implicitly empowers the former insofar as its suggestion of equivalence is meant to mobilize Gilman’s audience of implied readers to change. Gilman’s poem “Two Callings” (1903), for example, warns that to serve “the Home” and not “the World” is to cast one’s lot among “the squaw— the slave—the harem beauty.”²⁶ The message is that the woman Gilman addresses may and should elect to serve “the World” even as her primitive counterpart remains choicelessly bound to “the Home.” That is to say, primitive women remain bound to the primitive stage of development Gilman always associates with her notions of home. For while enclosure in middle-class homes rhetorically makes white women into primitives, the women who appear in Gilman’s writings as squaws, Negroes, or immigrant peasant stock typically do not have such homes from which to be emancipated, and indeed their labor in other women’s homes often provides the means of these other women’s “humanization.” Fessenden

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Gilman’s “Suggestion on the Negro Problem” (1908), for example, assigns races “A” and “B” to evolutionary status ten and four, respectively, to pose the question of how race A “can best and most quickly promote the status of race B.” To remedy the Negro’s “present status”—“widely dissimilar and in many respects inferior” and “to us a social injury”—Gilman proposes a compulsory federal labor corps for black men, women, and children. Having made domestic labor the province of primitive races, Gilman could solve the “Negro problem” and liberate white women from housework in a single stroke. “A training-school for domestic service could be part of each stationery base, and individuals could be sent from this on probation as it were—perfectly free to remain out in satisfactory home service, or to improve their condition as they were able. In case of unsatisfactory service they should be reenlisted—and try some other form of labor.”²⁷ Needless to say, Gilman nowhere recommends a comparable policy of conscription for white women, whatever the residual primitivism that now obstructs their ascent to evolutionary stage ten, nor does she distinguish between black women and black men at evolutionary stage four. As Gail Bederman suggests, the entire point of Gilman’s project “was to create an alternative ideology of civilization in which white women could take their rightful place alongside white men as full participants.”²⁸ Gilman’s alternative ideology of civilization, moreover, was also an ideology of secularization, narrated through the characters of the primitive and the modern and routed through the structures of Christian teleology, now rewritten as chapters in the story of Western progress. This was Gilman’s ur-story, the origin narrative that lay at the basis of her career. At age eighteen, with college beyond her financial reach, Gilman embarked on a home reading course of works she judged useful to the degree that “they showed our origin, our lines of development, the hope and method of further progress.”²⁹ The list included William Boyd Dawkins’s Cave Hunting (1874), James Fergusson’s Rude Stone Monuments in All Countries (1872), William E. H. Lecky’s History of European Morals, from Augustus to Charlemagne (1859), John Lubbock’s Prehistoric Times as Illustrated by Ancient Remains (1865) and The Origin of Civilization and the Primitive Condition of Man (1870), George Rawlinson’s The Five Great Monarchies of the Ancient Eastern World (1862–67), and E. B. Tylor’s Researches into the Early History of Mankind and the Development of Civilization (1865) and Primitive Culture (1871).³⁰ Faithful to the contours of the colonial narrative that enabled them, these books added “primitive man” to the story of Western civilization, not only as the starting point of the modernizrac e , re l i g i o n , a n d u . s . femin ism

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ing trajectory through which the West defines itself but also as its static counterpart, as that which does not progress. It is in relation to this primitive counterpart that ostensibly universal definitions of religion (like the vague nostrums of Gilman’s Forerunner) first emerged in eighteenth-century Europe. As Talal Asad points out, the Renaissance encounter of European explorers with so-called primitive and Oriental peoples created a two-pronged theological challenge for European Christianity, which was to square human diversity with the Mosaic account of creation and to square foreign belief systems with Christianity’s superior truths. The Enlightenment solution to the dilemma of difference, racial and spiritual, was to recast Christianity in light of the universal morality it allegedly augurs—the “one religion,” as Immanuel Kant put it, “which is valid for all men and at all times”—and then to plot all peoples and religious practices in progressive relation to this one, essential religion, as distinct from its phenomenal forms. Henceforth, Asad suggests, the Christian story of redemption, told in ways that sought to accommodate the heathen peoples encountered in colonial expeditions, could give way to a secular narrative of European world hegemony, told in developmental terms.³¹ This is the narrative to which Gilman sought to restore “woman.” At about the time she began her reading program in evolutionary history and anthropology, Gilman created what she called her own religion “based on knowledge.”³² Even so, she continued to value her Judeo-Christian heritage as an enduringly supersessionary one: the Jew, she observes, refuses to evolve past the “tribal stage”; the status of women in America is higher than in “Romanist” Italy or Spain because Protestantism is “wider and deeper” and “more human” than Catholicism.³³ As the ultimate chapter in this progressive history, the “merging of religion in life” to which Gilman looked forward both parallels and extends the movement of Western women from savage to civilized conditions. Christianity, Gilman believed, was a central factor in the relative freedoms of white Western women in comparison to women of other races and cultures, which is why in her view its specific truth claims so easily do, and must, give way to Enlightenment critique even as its emancipatory trajectory remains unbroken. In this sense Gilman’s secular faith in knowledge completes the path of reform begun in Christianity with the fulfillment/abolition of the Jewish law in Christ. Let “scientific truths annul the folly of ancient religious falsehood,” Gilman writes in “The Labor Movement,” the prizewinning 1892 essay that launched her public career, “and erase the thought that Fessenden

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labor is a curse.” The “feeling that to labor is to admit inferiority,” she argues, is a relic of primitive times, a “Hebrew idea, held in common with all early races,” whose “weight with us is due to our receiving it as a religious truth.”³⁴ Twenty-four years later, as the Forerunner drew near the end of its run, Gilman reiterated her views: Don’t worry about God. God is there working all the time, not angry or jealous or any of those things the limited intelligence of those ancient Hebrews discredited him with, but a steady lifting force . . . cast out of your mind the trailing, sticky remnants of early misbelief . . . do you not see the pathetic egotism of those early Hebrews in imagining their special God[?] . . . we shall never have a decent uplifting religion until we first dissociate it from the utterly derogatory ideas we have been taught were “sacred” and second associate it with the rest of the laws of the universe.³⁵

Gilman’s last major theoretical work, His Religion and Hers: A Study of the Faith of Our Fathers and the Work of Our Mothers (1923), argues that religion as currently practiced does not guide human beings in their main social duty, “race improvement.”³⁶ As a contemporary explained in a glowing review, “She sees heaven not as a place, but as a race condition . . . [she remains] serenely intent, unshakably insistent that all arts, all religions, shall bend to the religion of a race ascent to a perfected peace.”³⁷ It matters little whether by “race improvement” Gilman meant the perfection of the white race or of the human race; to “improve” in this scheme meant always to be sloughing off the sticky, trailing remnants of outmoded religions and backward races. The intertwining of these narratives of religious and racial progress has largely escaped scrutiny even by those who call Gilman’s racism to account. And no doubt Gilman’s notion of “decent, uplifting religion” is partly to blame, for its apparent contentlessness renders it unremarkable and even benign in contrast to the pointed specificity of her portrait of white Europeans as a superior race. But it is precisely the bland universalism of Gilman’s religious vision that set her safely ahead of Jews and other “early races” on the civilizing scale she brought to bear on her program for change. Gilman’s project of merging the gendered spheres of home and world shifts the axis of subordination from gender to race, closing a gulf between white women and men by insisting that the more salient divide is rac e , re li g i o n , a n d u . s . f emin ism

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the one separating women and men at the highest evolutionary stage from the women and men beneath them. In a similar way, her project of merging the erstwhile separate (and gendered) spheres of religion and life puts emancipated women on modernity’s side of the gulf it fixes between the secularizing West, on the one side, and less evolved religious cultures, on the other. The path of disappearance by which religion comes eventually and inevitably to shade into “life,” moreover, seems equally to have made this narrative’s racism invisible to all but a handful of critics as anything more than a sign of Gilman’s times, at worst an eclipse of visionary zeal. Thus a fairly standard apology has it that Gilman’s “racist, anti-Semitic, and ethnocentric ideas . . . [must] reside primarily in the psychological realm, because the racist and nativist views she held did not fit with the vision she espoused of radical social and political transformation.”³⁸ For Gilman’s champions, holding fast to her all-encompassing vision of progress in which “all [things are] marching together” seems to have made her racist opinions that much easier to jettison for being so clearly out of step.³⁹ Even as it lies at the center of her vision of feminism as an evolutionary movement, then, Gilman’s racism is routinely sacrificed without apparent loss to that vision, since only in the context of a feminism that evolves can Gilman’s views on race be dismissed as a backward lapse or a psychological block, a snare of past mistakes to be smoothed and set right for progress to continue. In this way Gilman’s racial progressivism—her commitment to a model of social progress through raced evolutionary stages, now reflexively disowned as retrogressive and racist—persists undisturbed in the form of a similarly structured religious progressivism by which reformed Christianity trumps all of its more or less tribal antecedents and rivals before blurring benignly into a universal secular. Perhaps the self-righting, selftranscending mechanism that allows racism to disappear from feminist history requires this blurring for its continued demonstration. Consider what happens to religion and race in Gilman’s Herland, originally serialized in The Forerunner in 1915, jubilantly hailed as a “lost feminist utopian novel” on its republication in 1979 and continuously in print ever since.⁴⁰ Herland’s claim to canonical status among second- and thirdwave feminists and its story line appeal equally, it would seem, to utopian fantasies of the American women’s movement as a coherent, pristine, and unbroken narrative of progress.⁴¹

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The novel’s eponymous setting is a nation populated only by women. Early in the book the American male sociologist who stumbles into this all-female domain helpfully observes that though landlocked somewhere in South America, its inhabitants were unmistakably of “Aryan stock, and were once in contact with the best civilization of the Old World” (54). What secures the Herlanders’ racial purity over centuries, we learn, is the abrupt demographic shift that took place two thousand years before the story opens. At that time, shortly after the male citizens of what was then a “bi-sexual” nation left their harem-bred women and slaves to fend off savage incursions from below, a volcanic eruption sealed off Herland’s only mountain pass. “Very few men were left alive, save the [slave men]; and these now seized their opportunity, killed their remaining masters even to the youngest boy, intending to take possession of the country with the remaining young women and girls” (54–55). In a gamely mimetic act of revolt, the Aryan women and girls immediately rise en masse to slay their “brutal conquerors,” preferring to die out rather than reproduce with formerly enslaved men. The remaining slave women forge a tenuous—at any rate temporary—solidarity with the white women who, no longer confined to sexual and domestic service, grow so rapidly in self-sufficiency that one among them eventually acquires the miraculous ability to induce pregnancy by force of will. Her offspring are similarly gifted, so that the all-female nation that comes into being as a result—the women conceive only girls—is literally “one family, all descended from one mother,” “a new race . . . of ultra-women, inheriting only from women” (57). The ultra-women’s superiority is not only racial but also, inseparably, religious. The novel is structured largely through conversations between the intrepid sociologist (Van) and his plucky Herlander companion (Ellador), each educating the other on the history and culture of their respective worlds. When the conversation first turns to religion, Van reports, Ellador made a sort of chart, superimposing the different religions as I described them, with a pin run through them all, as it were, their common basis being a Dominant Power or Powers. . . . It was not hard to trace our human imagery of the divine force up through successive stages of bloodthirsty, sensual, proud and cruel gods of early times to the conception of a Common Father with its corollary of a Common Brotherhood. This pleased her very much, and when I expatiated on

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the Omniscience, Omnipotence, Omnipresence, and so on, of our God, and of the loving kindness taught by his Son, she was much impressed. (109–10)

The Herlanders’ religion, Van learns, followed a similar trajectory. Inhabitants of the original nation worshipped “a number of gods and goddesses; but [after the disappearance of men] they lost all interest in deities of war and plunder, and gradually centered on their Mother Goddess altogether. Then as they grew more intelligent, this had turned into a sort of Maternal Pantheism” (59), the personal deity giving way to an uplifting spiritual force. “Their great Mother spirit was to them what their own motherhood was—only magnified beyond human limits. That meant that they felt beneath and behind them an upholding, unfailing, serviceable love—perhaps it really was the accumulated motherlove of the race they felt—but it was a Power” (111–12). Van notes that the Herlanders’ religion has no name, no domain apart from the culture of their nation as a whole, and no rituals beyond parades and civil pageants, “as much educational as religious, and as much social as anything. But they had a clear established connection between everything they did—and God. Their cleanliness, their health, their exquisite order, the rich peaceful beauty of the whole land, the happiness of the children, and above all the constant progress they made—all this was their religion” (114–15). Van sums up Herland’s religious virtues as “all that we call ‘good breeding’” (115): “You see they were Mothers, not in our sense of helpless involuntary fecundity . . . but in the sense of Conscious Makers of People” (68). A Herland elder tells Van that “we have, of course, made it our first business to train out, to breed out, when possible, the lowest types” by preventing some women from becoming mothers—women with “bad qualities,” or women who desire to give birth out of a “disproportionate egotism” (83). For the “lowest” people reproductive desire amounts to “a brute passion, a mere ‘instinct,’ a wholly personal feeling”; for the race mothers of Herland “it was—a religion” (68). Lest the fabulous conceit of an all-female utopia obscure the novel’s function as a blueprint for change in Gilman’s America, consider Herland’s debts to Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward, 2000–1887 (1888), the extraordinarily influential novel that gave rise to the progressive social movement known as Nationalism. Gilman began her public career in Nationalist publications and at Nationalist clubs, which proliferated into the early 1890s against a backdrop of growing European and Asian immiFessenden

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gration, rapid industrialization and economic depression, class conflict, and the northern migration of southern black labor. This is the world that Looking Backward ’s protagonist leaves behind, lapsing into a coma in 1887 and waking in the year 2000 to find the nation transformed into a veritable paradise of peace and plenty. The change was accomplished, he groggily but patiently learns as the novel creaks along, by the reforging of national citizenship as the condition of belonging to a single “family, a vital union, a common life.”⁴² Characters in the new world of the novel marvel that differences of wealth and education among Americans could once have opened gulfs as wide as those that divide races, divisions now but dimly perceived at the horizon of the global federation that determines policy toward “backward races” in far-off lands.⁴³ In contrast to its lengthy digressions on how the new, familial model of nationhood obliterates class distinctions, Looking Backward is silent on how national composition is to be made racially uniform, except to point out that among women of the future, selective breeding takes precedence over passion or romantic love. In the new America of the novel, “women sit aloft as judges of the race and reserve themselves to reward the winners. . . . Their feeling of duty in this respect amounts to a sense of religious consecration. It is a cult in which they educate their daughters from childhood.”⁴⁴ In this sense Herland’s politics are Nationalist from the moment of its founding insurrection, which is why Ellador instinctively recognizes who the real Americans are on her subsequent travels with Van. Accompanying Van to the United States in Herland ’s sequel With Her in Ourland—which even more patently brings Herland’s lessons to bear on the twentiethcentury United States—Ellador observes that “your little old New England towns and your fresh young western ones, have more of ‘America’ in them than is possible—could ever be possible—in such a political menagerie as New York . . . New York’s an oligarchy; it’s a plutocracy; it’s a hierarchy; it reverts to the clan system with its Irishmen, and back of that, to the patriarchy, with its Jews.”⁴⁵ The description repeats what Ellador has apparently learned of “Judeo-Christian” history from Van, faithfully setting Jews behind Catholics and Catholics behind the enterprising Protestant settlers of the English-speaking New World. Within the larger narrative of the Herland saga, however, Protestant Americans—Van shrugs that he is “as much [Christian] as anything” (109)—recognize their own backwardness in relation to Herland’s religion of race motherhood, the “most practical, comforting, progressive religion [Van] ever heard of ” and one “more Christian” than his, he concedes, for needing never to be named as rac e , re l i g i o n , a n d u . s . femin ism

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a religion at all (115). In Herland family and religion, nation and race form a single, inclusive sphere: “All the surrendering devotion our women have put into their private families, these women put into their country and race” (95). Religious subjectivity disappears into a radiant national subjectivity, its invisibility inseparable from its expansionist drive. In this sense Herland continues the legacy of Protestant domestic reform that Gilman is valued, in large part, for appearing so roundly to subvert. Far from repudiating home and religion, Gilman sought instead to dissolve the walls of separation that shut each off from the rest of national life. In this she followed the plotlines of her Beecher aunts’ The American Woman’s Home, whose final chapters extend the homemaker’s duties out from and beyond her own family circle. Beecher and Stowe suggest that the “homeless, helpless, and vicious” would be better cared for in the embrace of the “loving Christian family” than in institutions; they argue that the “woman in the sacred retreat of a ‘Christian home’” is best prepared to undertake the “divine labor” of redeeming the “lost and wandering” of the world.⁴⁶ The cultivation of the home as a space of centrifugal moral energies promotes an expansive sense of mission that extends beyond the home to the “homeless, helpless, and vicious” at its doors and beyond national borders to “darkened nations” in need of evangelical light. In this way Stowe and Beecher reimagine the world as the Christian home writ large; at the same time, the boundaries of both home and nation remain intact insofar as the project of Christianizing the world first requires that the American home be Christian. Gilman differed most from her aunts’ model of domesticity in urging that housewives’ duties be sourced out to institutions (like communal nurseries) rather than that the social duties now undertaken by institutions (like the care of orphans) also be made theirs. But the vision of home as a centrifugal national entity remained the same. “They had no exact analogue for our word home” we learn of the Herlanders, “any more than they had for the Roman based family”; their devotion to one another “broaden[ed] to a devotion to their country and their people for which our word ‘patriotism’ is no definition at all. . . . They loved their country because it was their nursery, playground, and workshop—theirs and their children’s” (94). For Gilman the sphere of the domestic, dismantled in its function as a “sacred retreat” from the public sphere, survived most crucially in its function as a bulwark against the foreign.⁴⁷ Even as she continued to represent the private home as a primitive survival whose de-

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mands deflected women from the more pressing task of advancing the race, she increasingly appealed to a rhetoric of the home’s autonomy and the sanctity of the family in order to fortify national boundaries. “Our country is our home,” Gilman insisted in “Is America Too Hospitable?” (1923); “anyone who wants to turn his home either into an asylum or into a melting pot is,—well he is a person of peculiar tastes.”⁴⁸ There are two ways, then, in which Christianity “returns with a vengeance,” in Ranu Samantrai’s phrase, to Gilman’s post-Christian America. One is through the rendering of all but Euro-Protestant national subjects as interlopers within the secular space of freedom. For Gilman American policy toward “alien races” within and beyond its borders is a matter of maintaining the “distinct national character”—“a flexible progressiveness, an inventive ingenuity, a patience and broad kindliness of disposition”— that “the American people, as representing a group culture, brought with them from England and Holland and Scandinavia.” And since not all nations have reached the democratic stage, “it would be far more helpful to the world if we could make such clear advance alone as to set all nations to imitating us, rather than to mix our physical stock and clog the halfgrown ‘body politic’ with all manner of undemocratic peoples.”⁴⁹ A second way that Christianity returns to patrol the sites of its disappearance is through the enforcement of gendered bodily disciplines— namely, through compulsory heterosexuality and motherhood—that ensure the racially pure reproduction of that normatively Euro-Protestant, (post-)Christian America. As Gilman writes of “the power and purpose of the mother sex” in His Religion and Hers: “Whatever qualities she finds desirable she can develop in the race, through her initial function as a mother—selection. This is her duty as a sex function, and her duty as a member of a great race.”⁵⁰ The American woman’s “duty as a member of a great race” is also “her” religion of the book’s title, the liberating, dogmafree corrective to all “androcentric religions” whose enslaving doctrines would keep her at the level of “the crippled Chinese lady or the imprisoned odalisque.”⁵¹ ˜ Gilman’s champions have yet to find her religious views to be other than freeing, and even those few who thoroughly limn the dependence of Gilman’s feminism on her narrative of racial progress have left her narra-

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tive of religious progress largely unremarked upon. But why, apart from a desire to combat narrowly fundamentalist agendas, would feminist scholarship welcome such a trajectory? It would appear that what makes Gilman’s supersessionary model of religion fail to rankle in the way her supersessionary model of race has finally begun to do so is also what accounts for the more widespread difficulty of “getting religion,” as this volume’s editors put it, in contemporary cultural and feminist studies.⁵² The difficulty is nothing if not complex; here I pick out just two strands of the knot as I see it. One has to do with the ways the concepts of religion and the more cherished religious freedom have been constituted in the United States. The rule of government noninterference in (or tolerance of) religion has required that religion be largely relegated to the interior space of personal belief in exchange for protection from the coercive intervention by the state.⁵³ And when religion is seen as interior, spiritual, and subjective and not also as social, embodied, and historical, there is little more to be said, not least because the constitution of religion as belief seems to make religion a matter of individual choice in ways that race, for example, appears not to be. As Laura Levitt points out in her contribution to this volume, however, the framing of religious identity as wholly discretionary is itself a Protestant framing, one that bends all forms of religious affiliation to the voluntaristic model of the Protestant congregation. So, too, the construction of religion as belief tallies with the aims and needs of a Protestant “priesthood of believers” far more neatly than it does with those traditions and communities for which religious belonging means differently. Under the regime of tolerance, moreover—whether religious, racial, or otherwise—“choice” often amounts to no more than the choice to accede to the conditions under which tolerance will be granted. Hence Gilman’s suggestion that the solution to the “Jewish problem” is for Jews to simply leave off being Jews.⁵⁴ Another strand of the difficulty—speaking of tolerance—is that the disciplines of women’s and gender studies are so comparatively new, their place at the table so contested, that there is considerable reluctance among academic feminists to disturb the narrative that promises, breathtakingly, to include us. Never mind that 70 million Americans get the Christian Coalition’s voter guide and a mere six thousand subscribe to Signs: secularism (so we tell ourselves) makes us feminists into citizens of the university, the universe, the expansive realm whose claims to universality really are universal, as opposed to the similar claims of religions, which secu-

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larism exposes as particular.⁵⁵ Further testimony to our sense of precariousness, our scramble for limited shelf space in the academy, comes in the way that in-house attempts to subject U.S. feminist history to critical scrutiny seem inevitably to take the form of canon debates: if we expose— and expunge—a white racist like Gilman, we get to add a black abolitionist, perhaps a lesbian Jew. But of course tidying this history, cleaning up the story of feminism we wish to tell, goes hand in hand with failing to see Gilman’s racism as anything but a blind spot, a dark corner from which the progress narrative of secularism promises to deliver us. A reason for keeping Gilman on the reading list is thus to lay bare the seemingly disparate trajectories that converge in her career, and so to trouble the binary between a supposedly progressive secularism and a supposedly regressive religion between which we imagine ourselves as urgently needing to choose. American feminists reproduce this binary because we think our survival depends on it. But of course the same binary, its terms differently weighted, is invoked by religionists who would undo us. And this is the case not only in Iran, as Afsaneh Najmabadi details in this volume, but also in the United States, where, as Braude points out in her call for including religion in the story of the nineteenth-century women’s movement, “secular feminism” is the watchword at once of progressive feminists and religious conservatives alike.⁵⁶ That the Christian right not only rails against a secular culture that permits feminism to flourish but couches its message in the lingua franca of religious freedom, however, might suggest that there is more to be done than simply “restore” religion to the historiography of U.S. feminism, since such a restoration by itself does little to undermine the narrative of religious progress implicit in the invocation of feminism as a secular enterprise. The secularism-religion binary at once assumes and conceals a teleological relation between its terms, which is why so many of Gilman’s readers celebrate what they take to be her—and implicitly, U.S. feminism’s— decisive break from an ostensibly backward religious inheritance, even as Gilman herself routinely equated the “line of social evolution” with “the line of Christianity.”⁵⁷ Rather than modeling the rejection of an outmoded religious past, Gilman’s example might help us instead to begin to see religion and secular reason as part of the same constellation of knowledge and power. Gilman worked assiduously to find points of entry into this regime, undeterred by its impasses and its blind turns, blazing a trail, as they say, for U.S. feminists to follow. But the map she left might be equally

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useful for finding our way out, or at least for defamiliarizing the terrain on which we now stand. Such an effort yields the possibility of a secular feminism that could imagine various religious feminisms not as pieces of a past to be overcome, but as potential allies in dissent. Specifically, such an alliance might dissent from a vision of progress in which, as Gilman saw it, religious difference would disappear into a single religion known simply as “Living and Life,”⁵⁸ and a particular model of Western, Christian civilization would realize its dominance by blurring invisibly into the way things simply are and must be. Perhaps things are—and could be— otherwise. NOTES 1. See, for example, Chadwick, Secularization of the European Mind. 2. Newman, White Women’s Rights, 181. 3. Ibid., 19; see also 3–21. 4. Beecher and Stowe, American Woman’s Home, 458–59. 5. Stowe, House and Home Papers, 204. 6. A quick Web search in September 2006 turned up more than thirteen thousand urls for course syllabi that include a reading assignment from Gilman’s writing. 7. Stanton, “Speech,” 80–81. 8. Braude, Radical Spirits, xxii. 9. Lane, “Charlotte Perkins Gilman,” 13. 10. Gilman, Women and Economics, 36, 9, 109. 11. Gilman, Home, 6. 12. Ibid., 166. 13. Ibid., 13. 14. Ibid., 5–6. 15. Ibid., 5. 16. Charlotte Perkins Gilman, “The Ethics of Woman’s Work” (1894), in Ceplair, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, 79.

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159 17. Charlotte Perkins Gilman, “Thoughts and Figgerings” (1908), in Ceplair, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, 93. 18. Charlotte Perkins Gilman, “A Summary of Purpose” (1916), in Ceplair, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, 198–202. 19. Meyering, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, 9. 20. Braude, Radical Spirits, xxii. 21. Karpinski, Critical Essays, 13. 22. Lane, “Charlotte Perkins Gilman,” 10. 23. Barbara Scott Winkler, “Victorian Daughters: The Lives and Feminism of Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Olive Schreiner,” in Karpinski, Critical Essays, 174. 24. See especially Newman, White Women’s Rights, 132–57; Bederman, Manliness and Civilization, 121–69. 25. Gilman, Home, 82–84. 26. Charlotte Perkins Gilman, “Two Callings,” in Gilman, Home, viii. 27. Charlotte Perkins Gilman, “A Suggestion on the Negro Problem” (1908), in Ceplair, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, 176–83. 28. Bederman, Manliness and Civilization, 135. 29. Gilman, Living, 37. 30. This list is provided in Ceplair, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, 11–12. 31. Asad, Genealogies of Religion, 18–21, 40–43; the Kant quote is taken from ibid., 42. 32. Gilman, Living, 37–43. 33. Gilman, With Her in Ourland, 163; Gilman, Man-Made World, 136. 34. Charlotte Perkins Gilman, “The Labor Movement: A Prize Essay Read before the Trades and Labor Unions of Alameda County, September 5, 1892,” in Ceplair, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, 68. 35. Charlotte Perkins Gilman, “To My Real Readers” (1916), in Ceplair, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, 267. 36. Gilman, His Religion and Hers.

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160 37. Alexander Black, “The Woman Who Saw It First,” in Karpinski, Critical Essays, 65–66. 38. Lane, To Herland and Beyond, 255. 39. Charlotte Perkins Gilman, “Human Nature” (1890), in Ceplair, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, 53. 40. Gilman, Herland, 1. Hereafter cited by page number parenthetically in the text. 41. See, e.g., the sparkling feminist encomiums of the back cover of the Pantheon edition: “pure delight” (Susan Brownmiller); “a gentle, witty version of what women can be” (Marge Piercy); “still fresh and very much of today” (Joanna Russ). My reading of Herland as a key document in an effort to construct an untarnished intellectual genealogy for U.S. feminism is indebted to Carter-Sanborn, “Restraining Order”; and Weinbaum, “Writing Feminist Genealogy.” 42. Bellamy, Looking Backward, 2000–1887, 154. 43. Ibid., 106, 98. 44. Ibid., 161. 45. Gilman, With Her in Ourland, 123. 46. Beecher and Stowe, American Woman’s Home, 433–34. 47. On the function of domesticity to construct itself “in intimate opposition to the foreign,” see Kaplan, “Manifest Domesticity,” 581–83. 48. Gilman, “Is America Too Hospitable?” (1923), in Ceplair, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, 290. See also Gilman, With Her in Ourland, 115–24. 49. Gilman, “Is America Too Hospitable,” 293, 291. 50. Gilman, His Religion and Hers, 79, 85–86. 51. Gilman, Man-Made World, 38. 52. Jakobsen and Pellegrini, “Getting Religion.” 53. On the modern construction of religion as belief, see, e.g., Ruel, “Christians as Believers”; Asad, Genealogies of Religion, 27–54; and Viswanathan, Outside the Fold, xi–xvii. 54. Gilman, With Her in Ourland, 166.

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161 55. This point is made by Jakobsen and Pellegrini elsewhere in this volume; see also Asad, Genealogies of Religion, 8. 56. Braude, Radical Spirits, xxii. 57. Gilman, Home, 175. 58. Gilman, Charlotte Perkins Gilman Reader, 178.

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CHAPTER SIX

late secularism ˜ Robert J. Baird

In August of 1999 the Kansas Board of Education voted to downgrade the teaching of evolution in its public schools by approving a new curriculum, which removed evolution from the state tests that students are required to take. As radical a move as this may have seemed, the Kansas board did not stop there. A balanced curriculum, in its view, also required removing the science that underwrites evolution, so the board also voted to delete the big bang theory from the statewide science standards. As James Glanz of the New York Times pointed out, removing big bang cosmology from the state curriculum was, from the board’s perspective, an issue of fairness.¹ As it stood, the state curriculum privileged evolution not only by including big bang cosmology but also through the wider canon of scientific knowledge such as radiocarbon dating, which postulates that the universe originated about 15 billion years ago as opposed to the creationists’ claim that the earth is only a few thousand years old. The twist in the Kansas debate was that fairness rested not on equalizing the balance of power between scientific knowledge and religious faith but rather on recognizing both positions as theories. Framed in this light, the problem for the board was clear: here are two theories as to the origins of life on earth; on what grounds can one legitimately and fairly choose one over the other? Americans are used to hearing elected government officials either arguing on behalf of creationism, creation science, or biblical stories of origin or advocating a strict exclusion of religion from the public arena. Indeed, this has been a commonplace since before the Scopes trial. What is interesting about the Kansas debate is not finding another crack in the putative wall of the separation between church and state. State-supported religion in the United States, although it is still shocking to die-hard liberals, is

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such a part of our cultural landscape that even the invocation of Jesus Christ at the national prayer breakfasts launching new congressional sessions (attended by the president, members of both chambers of Congress, the justices of the Supreme Court, governors, mayors, you name it) causes not even a tremor of constitutional anxiety. So what! While it may appear that the terms of the debate between evolution and creationism shifted decisively with Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District (2005), when eleven parents sued to remove intelligent design (id) from the science curriculum, these recent events do nothing to change the conceptual landscape that has dominated public discourse on religion and science. Supporters of id did indeed go further than scientific creationists in adopting aspects of biological fact and reasoning and so further provoked evolutionists who wished to create a firewall between religion, or, as the case may be, religion in sheep’s clothing, and empirical, falsifiable science. But as in past debates the issue boiled down to whether the establishment clause of the First Amendment was being violated and whether religion was being inappropriately advanced in the public sphere. Advocates of id aside, even the friends of religion in this debate took comfort in the reliable divisions between religion and science. Many of the fervent attacks on the Dover school board came from fellow citizens of Dover who did not object to their children learning about id in general, but just learning about it in science class. In short, do not disturb the order of things: keep religion in an elective course where it might be protected on church-state grounds and keep science in the realm of a compulsory subject based on the tenets of good science supposedly guided by natural law, explanatory by reference to natural law, and testable against the empirical world. The debate in 2005 over id no more than the 1999 Kansas Board of Education decision leaves intact our deeply embedded—structural, I would argue—understandings and sentiments concerning religion and science. Plus ça change. What is significant here and speaks to our particular moment, which I call late secularism, are the arguments being deployed by the state in defense of downgrading evolution and giving creation science equal billing. The argument against teaching evolution, in Kansas and elsewhere, is that no one was there to see how life began—and students should be given only firsthand evidence. The state of Alabama provides a variation on this theme: all K-12 students are warned that “no one was present when life first appeared on earth. Therefore, any statement about life’s origins should be considered as theory, not fact.”² Clearly, this line of reasoning l at e se c u l a ri sm

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has been victorious with popular culture as of late; every presidential candidate, no matter of what stripe, has agreed that evolution and creationism are theories, not fact, so teach both—we are no longer obligated by the factual register to favor one over the other. How did this happen? How did two antipodal positions in modern American life, so crucial to our cultural and political identities, become leveled? How did evolution and creationism become logically and epistemologically, in J. L. Austin’s words, on all fours?³ And a related question of the moment: Why has the effort to reconcile scientific observation with biblical revelation become so galvanizing to research institutions and those who fund them? This essay will attempt to link the theory-fact distinction as we have seen it applied to this contemporary issue to three hundred-plus years of the coconstitution of the religious and the secular. Let me be clear: I am using evolution to point to the issue that is of greater interest to me, and that is the philosophical-historical landscape of late secularism. It may be that the conceptual landscape of the evolutionversus-creationism debate—the very way we are now thinking about this conflict—reveals more about its endurance than do the shifting voting patterns of state boards of education, current research focused on reconciling science and religion, or even the rise of the religious right. Kansas’s implicit application of the theory-fact distinction resituates this debate on a new epistemological axis particular to late secularism. In secularist (as opposed to late secularist) terms evolution was pitted against creationism as scientific knowledge, and the social order that supported it was pitted against religious faith with its own social order. Late secularism changes the playing field. If evolution or creation science cannot meet the test of factuality, then both are theories. If empirical observation—the existence of eyewitnesses—cannot be produced in support of the claims made by both positions that they represent the facts, then according to this logic, Kansas and Alabama have a right to see evolution and creation science as theories attempting to explain the origins of life. As Mary Poovey points out, David Hume over 250 years ago made a similar distinction between factual and conjectural history: “In A Treaty of Human Nature, Hume offers two historiographical models. In the first, the historian has as evidence, ‘the unanimous testimony of historians,’ which can be traced back through an unbroken ‘chain’ to the testimony of ‘those who were eyewitnesses and spectators of the event’ in question. Such histories do not seem like conjectural histories, for obvious reasons: the unbroken chain of

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testimony obviates the need for conjecture. In the second model no such unbroken chain exists.”⁴ In this form of empiricistic thinking, neither religious creationism nor secular evolution could be designated as fact; both are clearly products of human knowledge creation and theorizing—conjectural and inductive. In this essay I will offer a narrative of how we move back—conceptually and epistemologically—from the context of late secularism, in which these two products of human fiction and imagination are linked to the meaning of the religious and the secular, to the Christian majoritarianism of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe. How did these positions out of which opposing worldviews emerged become leveled out over the past three hundred years of cultural and historical change? Late secularism is a moment in the unfolding of the meaning of religion. It presupposes a double modernity in which Western modernity has already become secularized for the first time by creating a universal and generic category of religion—a category completely indebted to seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Protestant polemics. As S. Balagangadhara says in The Heathen in His Blindness, “I have located the movement towards the secularization of Christianity in the Christological dilemma. But in the process of secularizing itself, Christianity does not disappear or cease to exist. It continues to remain a religion, distinguishing itself from other religions and distinguishing itself from other entities (other ‘kinds’ of religion?) including the secularized variant of itself.”⁵ Secularization, so associated with Western modernity, does not lead to the disappearance of religion but, as Gustavo Benavides has pointed out, to “the differentiation and narrowing of institutional religion” and to “the consolidation” of religion as a subjective state of mind.⁶ It is now almost impossible to imagine a modern religion that has not adopted this Protestant infrastructure (albeit unknowingly) in which religion is at root a set of beliefs and practices—practices that are actions motivated by those beliefs. As Donald Lopez has noted, “Belief (rather than ritual, for example) seems to have been the pivot around which Christians have told their own history. And with the dominance of Christian Europe in the nineteenth century, Christians have also described what came to be known as ‘world religions’ from the perspective of belief.”⁷ In other words, the secularization of modern European life coincides with the creation of religion as an autonomous dimension of human life. The job of the critic is to demonstrate how this seemingly counterintuitive claim is made comprehensible

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through a genealogy of the concept of religion.⁸ By analyzing this modern concept it becomes possible to trace, among other things, the trajectories of theory and fact through the way they contribute to the discourse of religion. In this discursive space of concepts, ideas, and metaphorical associations particular to religion we will see the origins of both late secularism and the Kansas debate. My analysis of the modern discourse of religion can most profitably begin with the appearance of religion as a natural object in the eighteenth century and the circumstances that called it into being. The modern discourse of religion, as we will see, presupposes a refashioning of Christendom as a generic religion separate from and inessential to the rational and secular nation-state. The dual creation of an essentially religious sphere and an absolutely secular ground—that of rationality, politics, and science—during the Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment periods will be explored through a careful analysis of two thinkers whose contributions to our discourse of religion are inestimable. In the remainder of this essay I will turn to the works of David Hume, with a brief consideration of Sir William Jones’s writing on morality. The bulk of the analysis will rest on a study of Hume’s The Natural History of Religion, which forms the foundation of my argument. Hume’s writings on religion have provided me with the best opportunity to trace back how the modern notion of religion as a system of propositions or beliefs has given rise to particular conceptualizations of factuality and theory still prevalent today. The recasting of evolution and creationism as theories should be viewed, I am suggesting, in the problematic of religion launched by thinkers three centuries ago. In turning to The Natural History of Religion as the paradigmatic Enlightenment case of religion’s imbrication with modernity, I am reading Hume with an eye to tracing the conceptual genesis of religion in the Western imaginary, not for any explicit project Hume understood or has been credited with undertaking vis-à-vis religion.⁹ One could argue that there are equally suited candidates for such a study: Voltaire, Montesquieu, Immanuel Kant, Edward Herbert of Cherbury, Giambattista Vico, and so on. The choice of Hume is not based on the preeminence of his philosophy of religion, his particular place in the history of ideas, or on the importance of the Scottish Enlightenment in the emerging science of religion—all of which are significant. Rather, I find in The Natural History of Religion the crystallization of key modern problematics—rationality, colonialism, and

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literacy—in a systematic effort to reinvent religion for the modern West.¹⁰ Hume therefore remains important for us because his images, metaphors, and concepts—in short, the ethos in which he imagines religion—continue to inform contemporary thought and practice. The modern discourse of religion is nothing short of being “fused into the policy and sensibility of citizens, and increasingly consolidated by modern [i.e., post-Hume] developments.”¹¹ To pick up Hume’s project today we must think our way through the modern vortex in which religion separated itself from Christendom and then in turn created Christianity and world religions as instances of itself. Hume’s professed project in The Natural History of Religion of establishing polytheism as man’s first religion, or, as he says, “the primitive Religion of uninstructed mankind” (30), grows out of what Richard Popkin has called a “skeptical crisis” in the first half of the seventeenth century in England and France.¹² Historical accounts of this crisis link it to an “inundation of data” about the diversities of human belief, ancient and modern, that were being uncovered by contemporary linguists, missionaries, and explorers. Scholars were attempting to find rational patterns between the religions of antiquity—those of Greece, Babylon, and Persia—and the newly discovered religions of the Americas, the South Sea Islands, Africa, and Lapland, to name a few. Similarities and differences were drawn between these New (and Old) World religions and Judaism and Christianity, sometimes for the purpose of attacking the historic dominance of the latter, or sometimes for promoting the superior truths of the Western revealed religions over these “strange” beliefs and practices. As Popkin comments, “The data indicating that the varieties of mankind could not be encompassed within Biblical history, chronologically or geographically, and that the varieties of human belief could not be squared with the Biblical account raised most serious problems about the then generally accepted Jewish and Christian framework.”¹³ Besides the obvious questions prompted by this pluralism about the causes for and origins of these new religions, the proliferation of different beliefs created a verificatory line of questioning: Which religion was the true one? Which religion could ensure man’s salvation? To put it very simply, religious salvation was being conceptualized in terms of saving knowledge, correct belief, and rational justification instead of the pervasive Christian faith, discussed by Lucien Febvre, that did not need to know

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itself as faith.¹⁴ Without entering into the complexities of debate surrounding the fragmentation of Christendom into competing Protestant sects in post-Reformation England, I want to suggest that the response to religious pluralism (itself quite complex) was manifest most directly in the theories of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century England freethinkers, from the Cambridge Platonists—including Benjamin Whichcote, Ralph Cudworth, Henry More, and Nathaniel Culverwel—to the Deists such as Edward Herbert of Cherbury, Charles Blount, John Toland, and Matthew Tindal. Unlike the Cambridge Platonists and the Deists, Hume makes no attempt to reconstruct religion along rational lines; in fact, he scorns those who do. Yet this difference, on which so much historiography and philosophical scholarship rest, can obscure a fundamental way in which Hume is related to his antagonists. If the difference between rationalizers and naturalizers of religion is stressed, one risks missing what is common to both sets of thinkers—a radically new axis on which to conceptualize religion. Although Hume attacks vigorously in The Natural History of Religion and elsewhere Christian apologetic efforts to ground religious beliefs in the faculty of reason, he does not critique the presuppositions on which such efforts rest. For both Hume and his polemical targets, the Deists and rationalizers, religion consists solely of a set of coherent propositions, and religious faith is reconceived fundamentally as an assent to the truth of these propositions. Hume certainly rejected Herbert’s five “Common Notions Concerning Religion” and the rationalist motivation behind them to establish, in Herbert’s words, a “standard of discrimination” to determine the true religion from among the competing revelations.¹⁵ Nevertheless, the critiques notwithstanding, Hume shares with Herbert the assumption that religion is a matter of assenting to the truth of certain propositions. The propositionalizing of religion is evident throughout The Natural History of Religion, but especially in the opening sentence of section 4: “The only point of theology, in which we shall find a consent of mankind almost universal, is, that there is invisible, intelligent power in the world” (37). I am claiming that this propositional discourse, common to both Hume and rational religionists, plays a more decisive factor in the Enlightenment’s response to religious difference than the particular arguments mounted by the Deists or Hume himself. The conception of religion “as a series of propositions” conforms to the emerging Newtonian worldview,

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which postulated a parity between the laws that ruled the heavens and the laws that ruled the earth. In this sense, the physical universe is put on a par with the religious and symbolic universes because their respective operating principles are laws derived from experience and observation. The laws of nature embody for Hume a paradigmatic rational reality that he finds lacking in his accounts of the beliefs and rituals of people he cites as practicing polytheism. Nature as a model for reflection leads the mind to acknowledge one regular plan, a connected system, and one design, in short, conditions that reflect the preexistence of a set of regulatory principles. In opposition, “the various and contrary events of human life” (nhr 30) as a model for reflection produce confusion, contingency, and plurality, in short, the conditions productive of polytheism. These conditions lead “uninstructed mankind” (nhr 30) to imagine multiple gods, each ruling over different nations and lands, each with conflicting claims to power, and each demanding separate and unrelated appeasements. This description of polytheism as a cultural and religious confusion is itself a metaphor for seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe in the wake of the disintegration of Christendom and the “discoveries” of non-European beliefs, customs, stories, and rituals. Besides lamenting this state of affairs, in this passage Hume is implicitly asking: How did all these savage, primitive beliefs, customs, and practices arise and develop? How can we explain their irrationality and contrariety? And, given the plurality and incommensurability of polytheisms, must not the truth about the causes of unobservable power in the universe be determined outside of this conflicting and contradictory realm of claims for religious authority and origin-ality? Religious discourse must be reinvented to be about something more fundamental, something that underlies plurality. It must appeal to a reality that is universal and not subject to national or cultural differences. It thus comes as no surprise to see Hume’s account of religion in Enquiries Concerning Human Understanding and Concerning the Principles of Morals as a hypothesis about unobservable mechanisms in nature.¹⁶ With this new discourse, Hume has shifted the axis of argument. Religion is no longer properly understood in terms of narratives—in terms of what people do and say about God and the world; it is in truth an alternative account of the natural world and a false one at that, compared to Newton’s Laws, for example. Therefore all religious differences can be resolved by the recognition

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that they are nothing more than different surface manifestations of the same underlying, universal reality—nature. Yet since almost everyone lacks the powers of reflection necessary to infer from “visible phenomena” the workings of nature, we have instead the history of religion or, rather, of mere superstition.¹⁷ Unlike the laws of nature, which represent for Hume the crown of man’s reflective ability to preserve truth in its pristine and unchanged state, the concept of polytheism is “invented” to circumscribe a reality that does not embody the unchanging, eternal truth of reason: “We may conclude, therefore, that, in all nations, which have embraced polytheism or idolatry, the first ideas of religion arose not from a contemplation of the works of nature, but from a concern with regard to the events of life, and from the incessant hopes and fears, which actuate the human mind” (nhr 31). Once religion has been firmly established as an emotive (i.e., psychophysical) reality, the concept of polytheism (and by extension, popular religion) exists as an ongoing account, a phenomenology of sorts, of the “ordinary affections of human life; the anxious concern for happiness, the dread of future misery, the terror of death” (nhr 32) that have afflicted human consciousness throughout the ages. When compared with “the truth” derived from what Hume calls “firm and unalterable” experiences in nature (i.e., the laws of nature), the truth claims of polytheistic religions—based on contradictory and opposing propositions (“one deity is malicious,” “the other deity is excellent”)—are compromised, and, according to Hume, these contradictions weaken human nature as a whole (nhr 81–82). Hume’s reconstruction of religion’s content (natural phenomena) and structure (hypothetical propositions subject to empirical evidence) allows him, within a newly naturalized discourse, to reposition religion epistemologically. In effect, Hume’s religion inscribes theory into its center. The Oxford English Dictionary defines theory as “a scheme or system of ideas or statements held as an explanation or account of a group of facts or phenomena; a hypothesis that has been confirmed or established by observation or experiment, and is propounded or accepted as accounting for the known facts.” Polytheism, or what Hume calls “a popular Religion,” is an instance of poorly established hypotheses or false reasoning where man is unable to distinguish the workings of nature from personified beings or worse superstition. Theory, as defined above, is therefore integral to Hume’s imagination of religion. Hume’s analysis in The Natural History of Religion of anthropomor-

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phism and fetishism is a further amplification of religion as an instance of false reasoning or theory—albeit theory on shaky grounds. As we see, both tropes depend on superstition and personification: “The Chinese, when their prayers are not answered, beat their idols. The deities of the Laplanders are any large stone which they meet with of an extraordinary shape” (nhr 39–40). As it arises out of Hume and is carried forward in the Anglo-American philosophical tradition, theory, when it cannot be firmly established, that is, when it cannot be empirically verified, is not only a speculation but also a fabrication. Religion with theory inscribed in its core is in error for Hume and, as we will see, is counterpoised with religion as an instance of true reasoning (morality). Hume’s invention of religion encompasses both meanings, and both meanings are passed on as a part of his post-Enlightenment legacy.¹⁸ Having briefly outlined religion’s imbrication with theory, we need to trace how Hume’s new construction of religion also acquires its positive or factual valence. In order to meet the canons of factuality, religion is transmuted into a phenomenon that, first, appears on a practical field and, second, must conform to the laws of society. The legality and social utility (either detrimental or beneficial) of religious beliefs and practices become the criteria by which Hume distinguishes superstition from useful and true principles. As Montesquieu in Lettres persanes puts it, “All religions contain principles useful for a society.”¹⁹ As the argument of The Natural History of Religion goes, not even monotheism, which Hume has heralded as the intellectual embodiment of reason, proves to be morally coherent or useful for society on close inspection. On the contrary, its intellectual superiority (based on its belief in the unity of God) is grossly offset for Hume by its lack of tolerance for other faiths or beliefs. In this respect, polytheistic religions, albeit “frivolous,” prove to be morally consistent and less “pernicious to political society” (nhr 61) than the hypocritical barbarisms of monotheism: The intolerance of almost all religions, which have maintained the unity of God, is as remarkable as the contrary principle in polytheists. The implacable, narrow spirit of the Jews is well known. Mahometanism set out with still more bloody principles; and even to this day, deals out damnation, tho’ not fire and faggot, to all other sects. . . . I may venture to affirm, that few corruptions of idolatry and polytheism are more pernicious to political society than this corruption of (mono)theism, when

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carried to the utmost height. The human sacrifices of the Carthaginians, Mexicans, and many barbarous nations, scarce exceed the inquisition and persecution of Rome and Madrid. (emphasis original; nhr 60–62)

The passage is perplexing if one takes Hume to be reversing his consistently argued position that monotheism is superior to polytheism. What appears to be a reversal in Hume’s argument is nothing of the sort when one realizes that monotheism or polytheism, religion in short, is now to be evaluated in terms of the social goods or ills it produces. As Hume argues in the “flux and reflux” sections of The Natural History of Religion, the differences between theism and polytheism as instances of religion are insignificant. As John Toland says, “In all times superstition is the same, however the names may vary.”²⁰ Theism amounts to a case of exaggerated praise for the deity; it is no more or less intrinsically rational than polytheism. Given this state of affairs, it should be clear that Hume’s moral valorization of polytheism tells us about something other than the histrionic affections that comprise both varieties of religious belief. Hume praises “the tolerating spirit of idolaters, both in ancient and modern times” (nhr 60) because their religion, although not based on reason, promotes the good of society over “the immediate service of the supreme being” (nhr 90). A religion oriented around an ethical goal is consistent with the words of Joseph Glanvil that “religion consists not in knowing many things, but in practicing the few plain things that we know.”²¹ In other words, the transformation of religious discourse into ethical and moral discourse involves the paring down of religious images, beliefs, and practices (what Hume identifies as “superstitions” and “frivolous practices”) to a set of universal laws that provide coherence to a disparate array of religious formations. The invention of religion as morality means that the contents of religion now consist of the explicit principles necessary for the rational operation of society. These moral principles also play a central role in the Enlightenment’s efforts to homologize the amazing variety of non-European beliefs and practices introduced into eighteenthcentury Europe by missionaries, explorers, merchants, and scholars. Foremost in this respect was Sir William Jones. One of the first British Orientalists, the founder of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, and a member of the then Fort William Supreme Court, Jones argued that the basic truths of morality were independently perceived in different parts of the East. His address at the eleventh anniversary meeting of the Asiatic Society Baird

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in 1794 exemplifies the Enlightenment’s homologizing tendency to find in the moral precepts of different world cultures the same universal and absolute truths. Indeed, although Jones’s extensive research into Hindu and Muslim law, Arabic and Persian poetry, and parts of the Vedas was extremely sophisticated and context specific, in this address he remains more interested in these world religions as instances of simple universal moral truths than as different traditions. That the morality that emerges from Confucius may be different at its roots from the morality of Ha’fiz or Buddha does not strike Jones as significant compared to these religions as instances of the essence of morality. I will quote at length from his “Philosophy of the Asiaticks”: that both ethicks and abstract law might be reduced to the method of science, cannot surely be doubted; but, although such a method would be of infinite use in a system of universal, or even of national, jurisprudence, yet the principles of morality are so few, so luminous, and so ready to present themselves on every occasion, that the practical utility of a scientifical arrangement, in a treatise on ethicks may very justly be questioned. The moralists of the east have in general chosen to deliver their precepts in short sententious maxims, to illustrate them by slightly comparisons. . . . Our divine religion, the truth of which (if any history be true) is abundantly proved by historical evidence, has no need of such aids, as many are willing to give it, by asserting, that the wisest men of this world were ignorant of the two great maxims, that we must act in respect of others, as we should wish them to act in respect of ourselves, and that, instead of returning evil for evil, we should confer benefits even on those who injure us; but the first rule is implied in a speech of lysias, and expressed in distinct phrases by thales and pittacus; and I have seen it word for word in the original of confucius, which I carefully compared with the Latin translation.²²

Jones universalizes Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount—“So whatever you wish that men would do to you, do so to them”—by finding “the same” sentiment in Lysias, Thales, and Confucius. What is interesting is that Jones warns missionaries in the same address not to suppose the priority of the Christian maxim since the Chinese, Arabs, and Persians had that same knowledge “at least three centuries before our era.”²³ The truth of the moral precept for Jones as it would be for Hume (if he could tolerate the “contradiction” of actual Christian practices deviating from universal principle) l at e se c u l a ri sm

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rests on the independent process each culture goes through to arrive at the same essential meaning. Although Jones denies that the scientific method is needed for morality, he implicitly supplies criteria for the empirical determination of fact to support his study of “ancient oriental morality.” Jones’s example is very instructive for our study of the modern discourse of religion because he uses the same critical tools as Hume to invent religion as a species of universal morality. At the center of their shared critical analyses are moral precepts that because of the universal approbation they provoke, qualify as pieces of positive data—as facts on which to base the early forms of Religionswissenschaft. Jones’s thought is only one example from among many instances in the accounts of eighteenth-century colonialists and scholars. The eighteenth-century transformation of religion into morality creates the facts needed to launch the scientific study of religion. In sum I have argued that Hume gives definitive shape to a modern category of religion whose origins lie in Christianity’s encounter with Enlightenment philosophy and experimental science. In this sense, modernity gives birth to our conception of religion, and then Hume creates its discursive infrastructure (religion as mere speculation and morality as solid fact). The public debate on evolution versus creationism in Kansas, using the concepts of theory and fact in the particular ways it does, pays homage to the discourse of religion as I have outlined it and underlines religion’s wider contribution to post-Enlightenment culture. Unlike secularist culture, in which the “objective” knowledge claims of science were juxtaposed to the “subjective” worldview of the religious believer, late secularism is marked by a subjectivizing of science (big bang cosmology is not fact but mere theory) and an objectivizing of religion (creation is a science or a scientific hypothesis as to the origins of life as respectable as other scientific hypotheses). The result is that Kansas and Alabama students are told that both of these positions are theories, not facts, because speculation, a lack of eyewitnesses, and a need to hypothesize characterize the epistemic core of both positions. Late secularism presupposes Hume’s reformulation of religion into a causal hypothesis, and it is on this ground that theory becomes central to the Kansas debate. In this logic neither creation science nor religion can be deemed facts because as hypotheses neither can be empirically verified; in short, they are theories lacking proof. We have “facts” for Hume and Jones when a community of inquirers examines empirical evidence properly and infers

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the same conclusion, to which universal and explicit assent is made, ensuring the objectivity of the process. If facts are the end product of this process of consensus building, then religious beliefs or theories that have not been subjected to such rigors have no grounding in fact, but only in sentiment. While the variability and contrariety of religion and human sentiment undermine their claims to factuality, it is nevertheless against the discourse of religion (with its weaknesses) that the standards of factuality are set. The “unbroken chain of human testimony” and the universal approbation of morality are standards of factuality that have been dialectically produced in the discourse of religion as I have tried to outline it. In closing, then, late secularism is the moment in which the epistemological shifts created by the coconstitution of religion and its so-called opposite, the secular, have so transformed our cognitive landscape that we see and feel their impact in domains seemingly removed from those of religion. The modern discourse of religion is most keenly appreciated in its invisibility. NOTES 1. James Glanz, “Science vs. the Bible: The Debate Moves to the Cosmos,” New York Times, 10 October 1999. 2. Qtd. in Anthony Lewis, op-ed, New York Times, 12 October 1999. 3. J. L. Austin, How to Do Things with Words, 88–89. 4. Poovey, History of the Modern Fact, 229. 5. Balagangadhara, Heathen in His Blindness, 294–95. 6. Gustavo Benavides, “Modernity,” in Taylor, Critical Terms for Religious Studies, 196– 97. 7. Donald Lopez, “Belief,” in ibid., 21. 8. See Asad, Genealogies of Religion. 9. I thank Peter van der Veer and Talal Asad for pointing out the analogies between my reading of Hume and Reinhart Koselleck’s discussion of Begriffsgeschichte. Actually, the type of analysis I am practicing has been strongly influenced by Michel Foucault, who coins the term historicophilosophical. This appears in his “What Is Critique,” 391. 10. David Hume, The Natural History of Religion and Dialogues Concerning Natural

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176 Religion, ed. A. Wayne Colver and John Vladimir Price (Oxford: Clarendon, 1976). Hereafter cited parenthetically in the text as nhr. 11. Bilgrami, “Two Concepts of Secularism,” 218. 12. Popkin, “Polytheism, Deism, and Newton,” 27. 13. Ibid. 14. Febvre, The Problem of Unbelief in the Sixteenth Century. 15. Herbert believed that the teaching of the true Catholic Church was contained in the following five propositions, which he outlined in De Veritate (1624): (1) that there is a supreme God; (2) that God is to be worshipped; (3) that virtue and piety are the most important part of religious practice; (4) that we must repent our wickedness; and (5) that there is reward or punishment after this life. See Harrison, “Religion,” 66–67. 16. See particularly chapter 10, “Of Miracles.” 17. Lacking the reflective powers to infer the workings of nature, mankind could nevertheless tame the unwieldy variety of religious beliefs in early-eighteenth-century England by knowing that these beliefs, with their contradictory historical claims, were really the same menace that had plagued man since the time of the Greeks—superstition. John Toland, the eighteenth-century British philosopher of religion, gets directly to the point: “In all times superstition is the same, however the names vary” (Toland, Letters to Serena, 129). Forty-four years later, Hume, the future historian of England, is no better than Toland in transcending an ahistorical approach to religion or human nature: “Mankind are so much the same, in all times and places, that history informs us of nothing new or strange in this particular” (Hume, Enquiries Concerning Human Understanding, section 7.1, 65). Strictly speaking, if humankind were, on the whole, capable of “reasoning from the frame of nature,” there would be no need for a history of religion or superstition, history being a concept that has no meaning within the invariable, eternal regularities of nature. Although it falls outside of the purview of this argument, it could be argued that within Hume’s logic a history of religions is only necessary because of man’s inability to recognize the perfection of nature. 18. It could be argued that Hume’s exploration of the supposed truth or falsity of religion initiates not only two separate approaches to religion but also two distinct research modes in the study of religion. Briefly put, religion as an instance of false reasoning outlines the research project that culminates in the psychoanalysis of Sigmund Freud (a “hermeneutics of suspicion” in Paul Ricoeur’s words), while religion as an instance of true reasoning continues to this day in the scientific and empirical study

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If people become what they think they are, what they think they are is exceedingly important.—Linda Marie Fedigan, Primate Paradigms: Sex Roles and Social Bonds

CHAPTER SEVEN

what tangled webs we weave: science, secularism, and religion in contemporary india ˜ Banu Subramaniam

DREAMS OF AN INSOMNIAC

Science has very much transformed the visual schemes of an insomniac— the studious invocation of sheep, the procession of zoological icons hypnotically jumping a white picket fence on a soft green lawn.¹ Just as it has almost every other facet of our lives, science has invaded our dreams. Eleven years ago, the first cloned sheep, Dolly, haunted the imagination. Thanks to the cloning feat of Ian Wilmut,² my insomniac vision had to contend with a stream of Dollys, identical in every manner, deftly clearing the barricade in quick succession. But seven years later, Dolly died young, living only half the years of “normal” sheep. Plagued with old-age ailments like arthritis and progressive lung disease, six-year-old Dolly was euthanized.³ In 2005, we had Snuppy, the first cloned puppy,⁴ and insomniacs enjoyed a few days of the little bounding Afghan hound. But it turned out to be a giant fraud. There had in fact been no cloning, and much handwringing ensued about how Hwang Woo-suk’s research reached the pages of pres-

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tigious scientific journals: the eleven stem cell lines and Snuppy were not the cloning feat the researchers claimed. Dreams are no longer consoling. There is no comfort anymore, no untroubled soporific presence. Genetically engineered sheep and fraudulent dogs trouble the dream landscape. These icons that inhabited my nightly imagination, the last refuge of an insomniac, are suddenly pregnant with meaning, rich with symbolism. Life is not the same anymore. The realm of the “natural,” a world untainted by human interventions, has exploded into a kaleidoscope of technological wizardry. Science has taken over that last bastion of the personal and the private, the world of one’s dreams. And yet, just as science in all its quests for rationality has conquered another realm of the supposedly irrational, religion seems to be (re)appearing systematically and unmistakably. Religion has often been cast as the demon in the nightmares of modern science. What do we make of the appearance of these two supposed opposites in the same dreamscape? For some, it is just another chapter in an ongoing story in which the light of reason banishes the darkness of superstition. The appearance of superstition is seen as regression, signaling the need to remind the dreamer of the superiority of rationality. For others, the morality play, while also long running, moves in the opposite direction: for them, the reappearance of religion may constitute a sign of return, but not of regression—a return to the time of beauty and light, the time before the outsiders and their degenerate, fluorescent version of enlightenment. Having grown up secure in the warm halo of modern science in secular India, with Charles Darwin as my hero, the tumultuous turns of science and religion have been disorienting. My growing feminism has forced me to interrogate the world around me, slowly pushing me away from the center of the very institutions I put my trust in. My naive faith and belief in the liberatory power of science—the science that was going to eradicate poverty, class, caste, and gender discrimination—has gradually eroded. It is not that I think science cannot do those things, but that science has not fulfilled its promise. Eugenics, Nazi science and medicine, Tuskegee syphilis experiments are part of the history of science we must reckon with. I am a committed scientist and believe in the possibility and power of a liberatory science, but I think these promises can be met only when we learn to create, locate, and engage with a science that is also a political, social, and progressive institution. Mainstream science with its claim to the apolitical, value-neutral, and the objective cannot fulfill this mission. Indeed,

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the social and feminist studies of science have demonstrated that science’s claim to aperspectival objectivity is far from that “view from nowhere.”⁵ Instead it is a view from the pristine white castles of power and privilege. How should we imagine this progressive project for science? If science is an institution influenced by social, cultural, and economic factors as the social and feminist studies of science suggest, surely we must elaborate the relationship of science to another powerful cultural force, namely, religion. What does this look like? The always unsteady science of “the interpretation of dreams” is further complicated when the dreamscape and the dreamer inhabit the worlds between these two stories, sleeping and dreaming frantically between the binary oppositions of science and religion and religion and secularism. What can this yield but a jumble of dream fragments? . . . I dream of the lush landscape of the hills of Assam. I can almost smell the fresh air and the morning dew. Memories of Budhadev Dasgupta’s film, Lal Darja (The Red Door). Through dreams of his magical childhood among the red beetles in the hills of Assam, the protagonist, a dentist, escapes his oppressive urban life of modern-day India. Juxtaposing the innocence of childhood and the cynicism of adulthood, the filmmaker contrasts a magical childhood filled with infinite possibilities with an adult life of listless sterility. The joyous, imaginative child, now an adult, is struck with a mysterious ailment. He feels his hands and legs slowly turning to lead. His medical doctor finds nothing physically wrong with his patient and can only prescribe rest, relaxation, and Valium. As the story weaves the contrasting images of child and adult, we are given a powerful lesson on urbanization and modernity in today’s India. Later in the film, a news reporter on television in the background announces the spread of a mysterious illness originating in the West now sweeping Indian cities, the symptoms matching those of our protagonist . . . . . . The serenity and humor of the lush landscape is interrupted by shock, anger, and despair at the thought of contemporary national science policy in the United States. The science wars that consumed academics five years ago have transformed into a rallying around science, a valorization of data and empiricism, a call for science to be removed from the realm of politics. In 2004, the fda rejected Barr Pharmaceutical’s application to make the emergency contraceptive Plan B despite a vote of twenty-three to four in the scientific advisory committee. Susan F. Wood, the director of the agency’s Office of Women’s Health quit in protest. She said, “I felt there was no role— Subramaniam

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not just for me but for people who have expertise.” The overt rewriting of science is breathtaking. From the promotion of abstinence-only education to the White House admission that Philip Cooney, an oil-industry expert turned Bush administration official, “had repeatedly altered government climate reports in order to minimize the relationship between such emissions and global warming” to the promotion of intelligent design, one sees a bold and open move to interject clearly ideological and political positions into national science policy. As Michael Specter argues, “Present policies are set to damage a whole generation of young research workers, and the negative impact on recruitment of the next generation of scientists will be seen for years to come.” ⁶ . . . . . . India and the United States are building a strategic partnership. As a recent magazine proclaims, “Messy, raucous, democratic India is growing fast, and now may partner up with the world’s richest democracy.” ⁷ The traffic between India and the United States grows. Indian laments of the brain drain from the country have now been transformed into American alarm about outsourcing to India.⁸ Indians are moving back from the United States, and American students are now looking toward India for potential internships and jobs. The nuclear tests by the bjp (Bharatiya Janata Party) in Pokhran in 1998 that were condemned and followed by sanctions have now heralded a new era of U.S.-Indian collaboration. On his recent trip to India, President George W. Bush signed an agreement according to which, pending congressional approval, the United States will give India access to civilian nuclear technology. The joint statement said, “As a responsible state with advanced nuclear technology, India should acquire the same benefits and advantages as other states.” ⁹ To the delight of some Indians, the neighbor Pakistan was not accorded the same privilege. . . . . . . The scene in India gives some perspective on the potential for reversals of religious nationalism. My many trips to India in the past decade are filled with two kinds of memories: one of the rise of the Hindu nationalists as important political players on the national scene, and second, the display of conspicuous consumption by India’s middle class. The Hindu nationalists’ foray into nationalism and fundamentalism have included a return to Hindu science. I hear Meera Nanda reminding us that “one of bjp’s first acts after coming to power in the state of Uttar Pradesh in 1992 was to make the study of Vedic mathematics compulsory for high school students. Explicitly stating an interest in ‘awakening national pride’ among students, the governmentapproved textbooks replaced standard algebra and calculus with sixteen San-

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skrit verses proclaimed by the author, Jagadguru Swami Shri Barati Krishna Tirathji Maharaj, the high priest of Puri, to be of Vedic origin.” Nanda notes that prominent Indian mathematicians and historians believe that there is nothing Vedic about these verses. They charge that the Jagadguru is passing off “a set of clever formulas for quick computation as a piece of ancient wisdom.” However, the bjp and other revivalist cultural movements in India have begun building “a new hagiography of Indian knowledge systems” by equating the author of these verses with Srinivasa Ramanujan.¹⁰ The task of the new government, with some success, has been a rewriting of these textbooks. But knowledge is now openly and publicly political. . . . . . . I float entranced in the rhetoric of the wonders and wisdom of ancient India. The exultation in some mythic past that is glorious, wondrous, wise, and brilliant. It is all around me. Priests rhythmically chanting the Vedas, scholars extolling the virtues of the Upanishads and the wonders of ancient India, the glories of a great Hindu civilization before the appearance of the invaders who plunged that civilization into degeneracy. Initially, there is something euphoric, almost hypnotic about it. As the dream progresses, the jingoistic national pride rooted in a great Hindu religious past is suffocating. I see visions of the horrible 2002 genocide of Muslims in Gujarat that followed the burning of fifty-eight Hindus on the Sabarmati Express at Godhra. . . . Writhing bodies, burning bodies, rapes, murders. Victims still wait for justice. But so do the victims of the 1984 riots that killed over three thousand Sikhs in four days following the assassination of the then prime minister Indira Gandhi, who led the Congress Party. Is this the party we ought to put our faith in and that will save us from the religious nationalists? Is there hope? . . . . . . I find myself in my mother’s living room in Madras watching television. India seems to have solved its multilingual problem rather efficiently. Instead of forcing citizens of various states to watch programs in English or Hindi that they most likely will not understand, programs are dubbed in regional languages. In Tamil Nadu, all the Hindi soap operas are dubbed in Tamil, as are Disney cartoons and American sitcoms like Different Strokes. For those into the surreal, Gary Coleman saying “Whatcha talking about” in Tamil is a must-see. The cover of a prominent business magazine sports a man in traditional Tamilian garb, veshti and angavastram, the religious markings, the shaved head, the sacred thread across the body, wearing chic dark glasses, cowboy boots, a Coke can in one hand and a boom box in another. What delicious oxymoronic imagery! New permutations of orthodoxy and technological modernity I could never have imagined. Subramaniam

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THE MAKING OF ARCHAIC MODERNITIES

If the above vignettes appear contradictory, jumbled, messy, perhaps even incoherent, that is my intention. The juxtaposition of contradictory observations reflects the complexity of modern science and scientific modernity. It is meant to displace neat categories of modernity, premodernity, and postmodernity, of progressive and conservative politics, of democracy, secularisms, and nationalisms. Both the United States and India are locations in which science and religion are undergoing significant contestations. The challenge of these developments in contemporary India lies in creating new frameworks in which to think simultaneously about science and religion within the social studies of science. Some commentators have responded by glorifying prescientific utopias, reviving our dreams of a glorious history, and generating nostalgia for the simple days of yesteryears—a world bereft of scientific and technological innovations in which humanity and technology have not begun to fuse dangerously. Indeed, much of the rhetoric among Hindu nationalists is specifically about the exaltation and preservation of supposedly Hindu culture against the decadence of the west. In addition, some postcolonial critics of science have equated science with the west, portraying science as a hegemonic force that is inherently violent. In their eyes, western science must be eradicated in its entirety as a colonizing, violent intrusion.¹¹ On the other hand, science activists have invoked a defense of science, scientific objectivity, and rationality. They ask how we can tolerate the growing violence against minorities, how we can support the continued oppression of women and people of “lower castes” in the name of religion. How can we not “educate” in the face of rampant ignorance and injustice? These critics have historically continued to fight religious nationalism with the rhetoric of science and scientific rationality. For them science is our only savior from the superstition and irrationality of religion.¹² At the heart of many of these critiques is the construction of science and religion as oppositional and mutually exclusive practices. One must save science by attacking religion or save religion by attacking science. How can we work with these contradictory ideologies of science and religion without demonizing one or the other? I want to argue that the debates within the social, feminist, and postcolonial studies of science have largely been constructed within western conceptions of secularism as a separation of church and state. Despite the Christian clerical roots of scis c i e n c e , se c u l a ri sm , a n d rel ig io n

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ence, science and religion have become distinct today.¹³ Western secularism has co-opted science in its vision for the modern state. As a result, we have the distinct zones of religion (church) and science (state). The social studies of science, while demonstrating the hegemonic power of science in the west, have not taken up the interdependence of science and religion historically. In this essay, I argue that we must engage with religion, a powerful cultural force in much of the world. Perhaps science and religion are not simply antagonists, one of which will eventually banish the other completely from its domain. Perhaps the question is not whether the two are related or share the same space, but rather how. How do they interact? How do they depend on each other? At the heart of the debate is the fact that science has been inextricably connected to modernity, secularism, and the state. Because secularism in the United States is defined as the separation of religion from the state, the battles have pitted science against religion and secularism against religion, but, unlike in India, there has not been contestation around the relation between science and secularism. In the United States science is central to the dreams and visions of the state and crucial to any imagination of progress and the future. We repeatedly hear about the need for scientific literacy and for a scientifically educated population if the country is to remain a dominant force in world politics. The recurrent debate about the teaching of creationism and evolution in U.S. schools lends powerful testament to the deep chasm between church (religion) and state (science) in our cultural psyche. As an atheist and an evolutionary biologist, I am frightened by the prospect of evolution being removed from the biology curriculum and the teaching of creationism as an equivalent theory. It seems impossible to begin to broach the subject of religion without being afraid of creationism in the classroom. How can we talk about constructionism and the hegemonic power of science without reverting to the relativism where anything goes, where all ideas, beliefs, and ideologies are equivalent? The secularization of the United States has been a long and complex process. Scholars suggest that increased scientific and technical specialization and the “removal of some activity of life from substantive influences of traditional or organized religion” have had the support of Christians and non-Christians, pushing traditional Christian educational concerns to the periphery.¹⁴ What is so interesting to me about India and Indian secularism is that there has been no equivalent debate until the present. The birth of secularism in India is a very different story than in the United Subramaniam

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States. The Indian case involves a curious mix of science and religion, very different than that of the west. The form of pluralist secularism imagined by the founders of India allows us in theory to imagine future relationships of science and religion—not in the current regressive alliance between western science and religious nationalism, but in the progressive possibilities for differently conceived social institutions of science and religion. India as we know it today was created in 1947. Before colonialism, the Indian subcontinent was home to a heterogeneous and diverse collection of rulers and kingdoms, with no common religions, traditions, cultures, languages, or ideologies. Through various invasions, many religions entered India, and yet others emerged on Indian soil. As opposed to an American model of secularism marked by the separation of church and state, Indian secularism in these early stages of independence has been practiced as pluralism—including the active support and encouragement of all religions. This has by no means been even or easy, but it is the vision of the founders of independent India. The state has supported both science and religion without similar contestations between the two until now. And even at present, the debate is not specifically about science but is only implied as an extension of the grand plank of Hindutva. After its independence, India embarked on a scientific and technological expansion path in its quest for industrialization. Like the United States, India has adopted science as “the reason of the state.” As Ashis Nandy explains, This expectation partly explains why science is advertised and sold in India the way consumer products are sold in any market economy, and why it is sought to be sold by the Indian élites as a cure-all for the ills of Indian society. Such a public consciousness moves from one euphoria to another. In the 1950’s and 1960’s it was Atom for Peace, supposedly the final solution of all energy problems of India; in the 60’s and 70’s it was the Green Revolution, reportedly the patented cure for food shortage in the country; in the 70’s and 80’s it [was] Operation Flood, the talisman for malnutrition through the easy availability of milk for every poor household in the country.¹⁵

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politics. One must note that the celebration of India’s ancient civilization is not new. The founders of India took great pride in this history and celebrated ancient texts.¹⁶ However, religious nationalists have reshaped pride and celebration into a fervent nationalism. They have challenged the visions of the founders of India. Rather than disavow secularism or democracy, the Hindu nationalists today have redefined both—secularism as tolerance and democracy as majoritarianism.¹⁷ Religious nationalists in contemporary India have selectively and strategically used rhetoric from both science and Hinduism, modernity and orthodoxy, western and eastern thought to build a powerful but potentially dangerous vision for a Hindu nation. Hindu dominance and intolerance of and supremacy over other religions, faiths, and traditions, as well as hatred and bigotry toward non-Hindus mark the religious nationalist vision. Rather than characterize Hinduism as ancient, nonmodern, or traditional, the Hindu nationalists have embraced capitalism, western science, and technology as elements of a modern Hindu nation. Since India’s first test of a fission bomb by Indira Gandhi in 1974, subsequent secular governments have abstained from further tests. Indeed it is ironic that despite India’s nuclear capabilities, it was the Hindu nationalists who defied the world to test the ultimate destructive weapon of western science—the fusion bomb—in Pokhran soon after they came to power. In many ways this decision is now seen as shrewd and strategic. The current government ostensibly enacting the platform of the Congress Party has extended the politics of the bjp in vigorously building India’s nuclear capabilities as we can see in the recent U.S.-Indian agreement in which the Bush administration has agreed to give India civilian nuclear technology. However, these ideals of a modern Hindu nation exist alongside contradictory visions of a glorious precolonial Hindu past—the supposedly scientific, technological, and philosophical scriptures of ancient Hinduism. Hindu nationalists celebrate the revival of ancient Vedic sciences and mathematics, at times replacing western science, mathematics, and algebra in certain schools. Religious nationalists thus bring together a modern vision with an archaic one. That is, they construct an archaic modernity. By strategically employing elements of science and religion, orthodoxy and modernity, the Hindu right is attempting to create a “modern Hinduism” for a Hindu India. It suggests that we need to return to Hindu values while incorporating western and Vedic sciences. Contrary to their claims, religious nationalists are not merely reverting to “tradition” or decolonizSubramaniam

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ing India or Indian history but are appropriating modernity and western science for a Hindu agenda. What does one do when confronted with an archaic modernity? What does one do or think when neither of the dominant narratives—the archaic or the modern—allows for the interpretation or realization of one’s dreams? Where and in what locations can one dream and envision progressive feminist politics? Science and secularism in both India and the United States have been tied to visions of equality and the end of discrimination. On the other hand, as a third world woman in the halls of western science, I have not found science to be very hospitable to me. Some of the most important critics of science and secularism are those marginalized and discriminated against by science. While religion is the agent of change for some, religion constitutes no easy partner for feminists and postcolonial critics of science. To women disqualified from participating in most religious ceremonies, the male bastion of religion offers no solution. How then can we work with the two powerful yet potentially problematic institutions of science and religion with difficult pasts and contentious histories, and how can we build progressive visions of new intellectual, political, and social institutions? GROWING UP IN SECUL AR INDIA The applications of science are inevitable and unavoidable for all countries and peoples to-day. But something more than its application is necessary. It is the scientific approach, the adventurous and yet critical temper of science, the search for truth and new knowledge, the refusal to accept anything without testing and trial . . . the reliance on observed fact, and not on pre-conceived theory, the hard discipline of the mind— all this is necessary, not merely for the application of science but for life itself and the solution of its many problems.—Jawaharlal Nehru, The Discovery of India

Having grown up with the promise of modern science in secular India, I find the shift from the rhetoric of secular science to one of Vedic science s c i e n c e , se c u l a ri sm , a n d rel ig io n

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within fifty years of Indian independence very hard to take. To understand why talk of Vedic sciences and scientific Vedas feels so disorienting, I must give you some background on growing up in postindependent India. I was born into a middle-class Hindu family, about two decades after Indian independence. I grew up in postcolonial, independent, secular, and urban India, all very important markers. We learned a great deal about the Indian freedom struggle in our history classes. The fact that India defined itself as a secular democracy gave reason for great pride. Living in secular India manifested itself in several ways. Urban India was largely cosmopolitan, and I attended Catholic missionary schools. My family was not very religious except for the occasional visit to temples or attendance at religious functions. There was no formal religious education of any kind, and the little I knew about Hindu mythology came from memories as a little girl of listening to stories from grandparents, aunts, and uncles. Full of action, wars, love, hate, and duty, these dramatic stories proved quite enthralling. Most of us in urban India have but a smattering of such knowledge and virtually no training in Hindu philosophy or history. Growing up as one of the majority, I never saw Hinduness as threatened and therefore never in need of protection or revival. It was clear that there was a great deal of discrimination around: anti-Muslim sentiments were rampant; class and caste lines were clearly visible. Visits to the small town in which my grandparents lived further clarified how deeply seated these inequities were, indeed almost feudal. Growing up in urban India, we always felt a sense of superiority that we were not so “orthodox” or “backward” as the villages in discriminating against members of other groups. Urban India was the location of progress and modernity, the location in which the future of India lay, and the villages would have to develop and catch up with the modern India of the cities. While this liberal discourse allowed us to visit each others’ homes across religious and caste lines (mostly colleagues from work, friends from school, or neighbors we lived with, which meant almost never across class lines) and to greet and wish each other well on religious holidays, there were clear limits. Communities largely celebrated religious functions exclusively and married within. Cross-community marriages did and still do create moments of shame and scandal. Education in secular India meant that students at our school were diverse though largely middle class, except for the poorer Christian students our missionary school admitted. Both religious and nonreligious schools in India are accredited by the state and often subsidized as well. Schools are places to be educated in and trained for the final statewide exam durSubramaniam

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ing the tenth and twelfth grades. My education was secular in that students were not forced into religious studies that did not reflect their tradition. In our classes, we could not sit with anyone we wanted, but instead were seated strictly by height. On the first day of class we were organized in an ascending order of height and seated with the shorter students in front. Important holidays of the major religions were observed as national holidays. There were optional holidays allocated that individuals could take around other religious holidays important to their communities. Every morning before the start of school, all the students assembled in our uniforms in the courtyard for “morning assembly.” This always included prayer (often Christian prayer in Christian schools and Hindu prayer in Hindu schools). As a result most Hindus in Christian schools knew many Christian prayers, Christmas carols, and blessings. In Bombay, where I did my elementary schooling in a Catholic girls’ school, we split up along religious lines for an hour once a week. Catholic students were sent to a class on Catholic doctrine taught by a senior nun, other Christian students were sent for catechism often taught by a teacher who was Christian but not Catholic, and the rest of us—Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis, and others—spent an hour learning “moral science.” This involved following a state-sanctioned text filled with short stories and parables, each of which ended with a moral. We were tested on our “morals” at the end of the year, and a day before the exam we would all be hard at work on improving our morals. This continued well into my undergraduate years in Madras, where we had an hour called “ethics.” Science was central to my image of modernity. Science, as it was taught to me in school, as it was represented in the books I read and the popular culture I watched, was western science. Indigenous forms of science and medicine were not integrated under the rubric of “science.” Religious orthodoxy was in my eyes associated with discrimination, backward thinking, superstition, and blind faith in what seemed like ridiculous custom. When my family would consult the astrological charts to look for auspicious times for a move or tell me that I should not sleep with my head facing the north, I scoffed at them. When I saw families segregating girls and women during their menstrual days, I was outraged. I ridiculed silly superstition, laughed at irrational tradition, and became enraged when I saw discriminatory or hateful practices against any man or woman. I was outraged that Brahmin priests were exclusively men and that women could not perform most ceremonies. I wanted no part of a religion in which I could not participate as an equal. My feminism and politics were s c i e n c e , se c u l a ri sm , a n d rel ig io n

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very linked to modernity, modernity was linked with claims of reason, and reason was linked with the objectivity and rationality of science. Very early in life the sciences became a passion of mine. I was drawn to their call for logic, reason, rationality, and objectivity. I bought into the mythology of a progressive teleology, that is, into the idea that science corrects itself when wrong, therefore moving us closer to a more complete understanding of the world. To me, science shone as a meritocratic world in which my identity as a woman, Indian, and third worlder was irrelevant. The white men (dead and alive) who inhabited my textbooks were my role models, and I was quite oblivious to my brown skin or my sex. A large poster of Charles Darwin hung above my desk. It did not occur to me that with the exceptions of C. V. Raman and J. C. Bose, there were no Indian men in my science textbooks, and certainly no Indian women. The future of the world, the eradication of blind superstition, discrimination, hunger, and poverty in my young mind lay squarely in the realm of science. It should come as no surprise that after an undergraduate education in biology in India, I crossed the oceans and came to the United States for a graduate degree in evolutionary biology full of visions and dreams of being a model scientist. Throughout postcolonial India, western science was the science that the Indian state supported, and alternate forms of science and medicine have remained in the periphery to this day. As Susantha Goonatilake suggests in his work Aborted Discovery: Science and Creativity in the Third World, modern science in the third world has always been defined by the center, that is, the west, and has been contrasted to any creativity that has come from indigenous and peripheral practices.¹⁸ After Western science was transplanted to India, the country embraced it as a central force in Indian politics. It has retained to this day its western roots and practices, further colonizing and marginalizing the very people who have embraced it as a central project of supposed development. THE RISE OF RELIGIOUS NATIONALISM IN INDIA Before I am accused of using “Hindu” and “India” interchangeably, I must state that when we speak of India’s ancient native genius, we mean its rich Hindu heritage, and we cannot, and need not, shy away from this fact. Hindus are the natural community of India, and by the fact of being Subramaniam

191 the majority community, they will determine its structure and ethos. This is the natural order all over the world, and there is nothing intrinsically anti-minority about it. Unfortunately, Jawaharlal Nehru’s cruel and unfair hounding of the Hindu ethos from the public square has delegitimized it so thoroughly that even today, intellectuals are unable to accept the fact that the Hindu spirit will no longer be denied its rightful space.—Sandhya Jain, “It Is an Election of Hindu Votes”

In 1998, the bjp, a Hindu nationalist party, came to power in India. The political success of the bjp draws on two other Hindu nationalist movements—the Vishva Hindu Parishad (vhp), an organization of religious leaders, and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (rss), a militant youth organization. The Hindu nationalist program stresses Hindutva, or Hinduness. During the elections in 1998, neither the bjp nor any other party won a majority of seats in the Lower House of the Indian Parliament. What resulted was a coalition government led by the bjp. This constituted the first time in India’s independent history that a Hindu nationalist party had played a significant part of a national government. Marked by disagreement and discord between the coalition partners, the government fell in April 1999 by a margin of one vote during a no-confidence motion. Yet the secular parties that brought about this fall were not able to form an alternate government: the bjp thus returned to power in September 1999 as part of the National Democratic Alliance (nda), a coalition of twentysix national and regional parties. In 2004, the bjp-headed nda lost the elections. Again, no party held a majority, but the Congress Party, which had the most votes, came back to power in a coalition government. Despite this electoral defeat, the rise of Hindu nationalism over the past two decades seems unmistakable. In addition to being in power for six years, its proponents continue to play an important role in national politics, as well as to head several state governments. It is entirely within the realm of possibility that the bjp will come back to power in India. Hindu nationalists have successfully tapped into the discontent of Indians and transformed this discontent into a problem about religion and the brand of secularism the Indian founders envisioned. Both the rise of diss c i e n c e , se c u l a ri sm , a n d rel ig io n

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content within India and the resurgence of Hindu religious nationalism make for complex phenomena with no easy answers. India remains a poor country with high illiteracy rates, poverty, unemployment, and a growing population. There has been no substantial investment in education or health care, and while numbers for literacy and infant and adult mortality have improved a little, the lives of the majority of Indians are ones of abject poverty. After fifty years of independence and the development of the third largest technical workforce in the world, the primary economic indicators continue to disappoint. The bjp crystallized this discontent through the discourse of religious nationalism, but most experts have read the party’s loss of power in 2004 as the bjp’s failure to address rural and disenfranchised voters. During the previous election cycle, the party campaigned on the idea of “India shining,” claiming that it had brought prosperity to all corners in India. However, it lost largely on the votes of rural areas and the poor. All the media pundits (all based in the metropolitan centers and thus forming part of the urban elite) turned out to be wrong in their predictions of a bjp win, thereby manifesting the power of the elites among the political class and a media out of touch with much of India. The lack of a majority government and the recent history of governments tumbling down before the end of their respective terms result not just from a frustration with corrupt politicians but also from profound political changes in India’s villages. Some argue that the country’s most oppressed people—the lower castes, the poor, the illiterate, and women— have been voting and joining political parties in growing proportions.¹⁹ The Seventy-third Amendment Act of 1992 codified the reservation of 33 percent of seats at the panchayat (local village government) level for women and scheduled castes and scheduled tribes. The emerging nonBrahmin, non–upper caste regional parties have become powerful in the increasingly fragmented national coalition governments. The leaders of these parties are no longer “willing to accept crumbs from the tables of the two major national parties. They want to be at the table themselves.”²⁰ The rise of regional/local political parties reflects a decrease in the centralized power in the national government as regional coalition partners flex their muscles in the central government. Increasingly, national parties rely on regional, local, and state parties as allies and coalition partners in order to win votes. This fragmentation has led to the absence of any party winning a majority and the subsequent need for coalitions with these fragmented regional parties when forming governments at the federal level. Rather Subramaniam

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than opening the field for religious minorities, however, this political instability of fragmented regional parties has strengthened the appeal in some quarters that Hinduism represents the nation as a whole. Even before the ascension of the bjp, secular parties unashamedly infused religion into national politics. In the name of secularism and the support of minority communities, they have pitted religious communities against each other and courted minority groups—only to fail them once in power. Religious and secular parties have used casteism, sexism, and classism in their efforts to secure power. This has led to a rise in casteand religion-based politics. These have resulted in a multitude of sectarian episodes—legal cases, constitutional amendments, sectarian violence and riots, the desecration and demolition of sacred places such as mosques and churches, and the killing of members of minority groups. Religion has become a powerful and central tool in Indian politics today. As Peter van der Veer suggests, religious discourses and practices are not merely an “ideological smoke screen” but indeed “constitutive of changing social identities.”²¹ The rise of a majoritarian Hindu nationalism has occurred in a context of economically and politically already disenfranchised minority groups. India has always been a country in which ostentatious religious celebrations thrived and in which local confrontations over the use of public space for religious events continue. Hindu groups strategically take religious processions through majority Muslim locales or interrupt Muslim celebrations and vice versa. There is a history of Muslims being seen as “foreign elements” and not truly Indian,²² partly through the identification of all things Muslim with Pakistan, an archenemy with whom India has fought three wars since 1947. Anti-Muslim sentiment stirred up during the partition of India and Pakistan has never died and continues to thrive. This spills over into daily life, for example, into the world of cricket. Bal Thackeray, the infamous Shiv Sena head, threatened to disrupt the Pakistan cricket tour to India, and members of the party attacked cricket pitches in Mumbai and Delhi, as well as the office of the Board of Control for Cricket in India in early 1999. The isolated clash of religions in parts of India, the rise of religious superstition, and the persistent hype surrounding India-Pakistan cricket matches have always been a part of India. But the increased violence aimed at religious minorities in the past few years has been alarming. Beginning with the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992 by Hindu nationalists, there have been numerous attacks on mosques, churches, and on minority groups. The genocide of Muslims s c i e n c e , se c u l a ri sm , a n d rel ig io n

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in Godhra in 2002 remains a chilling reminder of the power of religious nationalism. Watching the ostensibly secular Congress government provides little comfort. Victims of the genocide still wait for justice. The rise of the bjp and of Hindu fundamentalism remains a force to be reckoned with. While the Congress Party has not continued the strong Hindutva brand of rhetoric, it certainly has not in any way worked to strongly condemn or even speak out against or curb it. The party’s campaign in the state elections in Gujarat in 2002 was so blatantly nationalist that the media branded its policies “Hindutva lite.”²³ Not willing to alienate Hindutva voters, the Congress Party continues to govern within the shadows of religious nationalism. SCIENTIFIC VEDAS AND VEDIC SCIENCES The reconstruction of the past implies a clash of stories deeply enmeshed in the discursive construction of present identities. That is why history is so important, because it is part of what we think we are; it is part of our culture.—Peter van der Veer, Religious Nationalism: Hindus and Muslims in India

While religion, tradition, and religious superstition have always formed an important part of the Indian psyche, I want to argue that science has also been inscribed deeply within that same psyche. With respect to science, one can also find a variety of narratives within the rhetoric of the religious nationalists. On the one hand, the bjp has embraced western science and technology much as have all previous secular governments. In fact, while secular governments resisted the testing of nuclear weapons, the bjp has gone further in using the power of science and technology to reawaken the “pride” of Indians by performing nuclear tests in Pokhran. The oneyear anniversary day of the tests was declared India’s first Technology Day in honor of its nuclear and defense scientists. The human resources and development minister Murli Manohar Joshi—while laying the foundation for a technology forecasting center—stated that “Pokhran and all our scientific endeavors have brought glory to India.”²⁴ A section entitled “Our Policy on Science and Technology” in the bjp’s 1999 election manifesto Subramaniam

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seems to constitute a seamless continuation of previous governments’ policies. In these respects the bjp’s stance on science propels the modernist scientific and technological project of so-called development. While the bjp intensified the technological legacy of earlier secular governments, the current secular government continues the policies of the bjp. This is most apparent with respect to nuclear power. India now clearly stands on the world stage as a qualified member of the nuclear club, not least evidenced by President Bush’s recent trip to the country.²⁵ India is no longer a rogue nation that needs to have sanctions put on it, but rather a power worth doing business with: current Bush administration proposals call for greater cooperation between the two countries on nuclear and military fronts, in addition to greater economic ties. However, alongside this modern vision we can catch glimpses of the intermingling of the modern and the archaic. While some of the rhetoric seeks to displace western science with a Hindu science, other parts of it reclaim the modernist project of science as really nothing but an originally Indian science, one anticipated in the ancient science and technological history of India.²⁶ Two main strains of the continuation of a Hindu vision are evident: proponents of the first argue that the discoveries and findings of modern science were already made or anticipated in ancient India and that they can be found in the Vedas and Upanishads.²⁷ They suggest that the ancient literary texts allude to the atom, the bomb, and the airplane, the science of space and time, quantum theory, the theory of relativity, notions of the missing link, the Pythagorean theorem, and to various technologies.²⁸ In this sense, the Vedas were the Vedic sciences. In the second strain, religious nationalists use the ancient scriptures as a source of pride in the ancient development of literatures, philosophies, and scientific knowledge. Here the Vedas emerge as themselves scientific, embedded within a rich philosophy of knowledge. Thus when religious nationalists invoke the Vedas or other ancient scriptures in the name of Hindu pride, their vision does not supplant western science, but instead melds the two, appropriating western science within the rubric of Vedic sciences. This vision of the Vedic sciences and the scientific Vedas constitutes a reimagination of contemporary India as both ancient and modern. Recent events in India offer a strong reminder of the colonized Indian psyche and of the primacy of colonialism within postcolonial, independent India. The legacy of western science lives on as the reason of the state. The revival of the ancient scriptures and of India’s rich history do not mark attempts to decolonize the Indian psyche but to reinstate s c i e n c e , se c u l a ri sm , a n d rel ig io n

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Hindu culture and history as the hub at which the scientific progress of the future is anticipated. There is no epistemological critique of western science, but indeed an embracing of it—whereby an exaltation of western science simultaneously means an exaltation of the scientific Vedas and of the Vedic sciences. It is frightening to see this Hindu science emerging from nationalism. This science purports to be anticolonial and culturally situated, apparently decolonizing India by unearthing old cultural practices eroded by colonialism.²⁹ Yet in reality, the nationalists are creating an India that is a Hindu nation. By finding western scientific innovations anticipated in the Vedic sciences, the nationalists give India’s past an aura of Hindu supremacy. Therefore, in order to look to future progress, the nation must delve into India’s glorious Hindu past. Archaic modernity works in part through multiple acts of disavowal: a disavowal of the fact that history is messy, that the embrace of a violently imposed science cannot be redeemed simply by discovering its roots in an authentic past, and that this same science provides vantage points from which to criticize the exclusionary boundaries of that archaic past. Strangely, even as it supposedly focuses on a recovery from the violence of colonialism by appreciating the past, archaic modernity disavows both the violence of modernity and the science and technology it embraces and the violence of the archaic past in its nostalgic form. The past—the ancient past, the more recent past of colonialism, and the recent history of postindependent India—is literally recovered: covered over in a secular story. Is it possible by uncovering the complications of the past to imagine a different future? One in which one does not have to choose between the defense of science and the defense of India, between two different, but perhaps equally discriminatory versions of society? Or one in which one does not have to choose between science and religion as incompatible opposites; between science and the social sciences and humanities; and between feminism and science? Neither science nor religion, after all, has much of a place to offer women. SURVIVING AN ARCHAIC MODERNITY A major contradiction in our understanding of the entire Indian past is that this understanding derives largely from interpretations of Indian

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197 history made in the last two hundred years.”—Romila Thapar, The Past and Prejudice

Archaic modernities provide a wonderful vision for a colonized people now bursting onto the world stage. The articulation of an archaic modernity was best enunciated and elaborated while the bjp formed the national government. The Congress Party has actually continued most of the bjp policies. Yet two significant phenomena are also important to consider in this change of power. First, globalization and liberalization have fundamentally transformed the Indian economy. Early policies, first by Congress, then the bjp, and now Congress again, were about attracting foreign investment into India. The 1990s saw outsourcing in the form of subcontractors hiring individuals from India to come to work in companies in the United States (leading to ensuing talk of brain drain in India). In recent years, we are seeing U.S. companies shift their operations entirely or partially to India. The opening of markets in India and neoliberal economic policies in general have placed India on the world scene as a significant emerging economic power. Second, the horrific events of September 11, 2001 have played an important role. India has had its own “war on terrorism” for quite some time, and these policies and fears have certainly fueled anti-Muslim sentiments in India. In fact, the bjp has used these fears very effectively. The worldwide war on terrorism, framed in the vocabulary of the clash of civilizations, fuels anti-Muslim sentiments and has created newly friendly alliances between world powers (most significantly the United States) and India. Recurring spates of violence in India have fueled the rhetoric of the war on terror and have helped India stay on the world stage as a friendly, democratic, stable, and trusted ally. The tone of contemporary Indian politics marks a far shift from earlier foreign policies of a nonaligned nation or a domestic policy that largely focused inward in keeping a heterogeneous and diverse nation together through slogans that extolled the unity of all Indians. Since the bjp, the focus has been decidedly outward as India positions itself as an emerging power on the world stage. The Congress Party has very much continued this trajectory as it negotiates for greater nuclear technology and positions itself as a close U.S. ally. While the Congress Party may not vocally support Hindutva, all evidence suggests that Hindutva ideology and forces have

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not diminished, but rather run rampant and are spreading within India: claims of Vedic sciences and mathematics continue, rewriting India’s past. Hindu nationalism is a long-term and enduring project that we must reckon with. By all indications, the electoral loss of the bjp in the past election cannot be read as more than a setback, possibly a temporary one, for a political party, not for their basic ideology: in the social sphere, the ideological leanings of Hindutva do not appear to have receded much at all if one measures the extent to which these views are espoused in national dialogues and in conversations among people. In his wonderfully evocative and insightful book Another Reason: Science and the Imagination of Modern India,³⁰ Gyan Prakash suggests that contemporary debates about past and present, tradition and modernity, science and religion, Indian and western, colonization and decolonization are not new. In fact, these debates proved important in the Indian national struggle and in India’s subsequent quest for modernity. Why then after fifty years of independence have these debates returned to center stage? Why do the nationalists imagine India’s resources and past to be Hindu? How have Hindu nationalists taken the problematic visions of the archaic and the modern and yet brought them together for such a powerful vision of an archaic modernity? Ultimately this project proves quite facile and familiar, for in its resurgent vision we find the old familiar terrains of patriarchy and hierarchies of caste, class, and religion. India’s past is not imagined in its heterogeneity and complexity but instead in the orientalist visions of a grand Hindu past. I cannot say I have any answers. I feel I have come a long way from my naive childhood dreams. I am used to living between the fissures of academic disciplines as someone who works across the sciences, the humanities, and the social sciences. But I am struck by reactions to my recent interest in religion as I have watched with horror the rise of religious nationalism in India. I am a researcher in the sciences and the social studies of science. While I may critique the institution of science and its practices, I am committed to science and the possibility of a progressive institution. My work seeks to develop and work toward such a vision. As an atheist witnessing the rise of religious nationalism, my initial reaction was to want to do away with religion. As always, leaving one’s home brings new insights about that very home. I realize now that throughout India’s history, “Indian dreams of the nation always take religion as one of the main aspects of national identity.”³¹ My adulation for science is now more tempered. I have to ask: if I could recover a progressive agenda for science Subramaniam

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given all its oppressive and imperialist history, surely I must do the same for religion? And yet, this has proven so very difficult. As I attempt to begin to think about the contentious fields of science and religion simultaneously, I find myself in the middle of numerous minefields. How can I gingerly tiptoe across the clearly demarcated zones? My scientist friends joke that I am turning religious and ask whether I will be off to the temple to pray. Why can an atheist not believe in the progressive possibilities of religion as a social institution? My religious friends and relatives heave a sigh of relief and hope that I am finally seeing the light. Postcolonial critics of science want to have no part of science and scientific rationalists want no part of religion. Some are delighted at the attention paid to the idea of decolonization, but they immediately slide unproblematically into the glories of India’s ancient heritage, ironically a discourse created by colonialism. When will we acknowledge that the glorious Hindu past revered by upperclass religious nationalists was not glorious for everyone? Others want to leave the cobwebs of the past behind and move into the light of scientific rationality. Some secularists want to minimize the role of religion in civil society, relegating religion to the personal, while others want to put religion at the center of a new moral order. The ideological positions are dizzying. And here perhaps lies the power of an archaic modernity—it reduces the multiplicity of India to a seemingly coherent vision. But how do we work against this vision? How do we empower the multiple pieces to form a progressive vision of science and religion? When I think back on my own education, I think it a pity that my only dreams were those of a western science, uncontexualized, unsituated, unproblemetized within my own culture or reality. I was the intended product of Thomas Babington Macaulay’s famous pronouncement, “Indian in blood and colour but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect!”³² I now dream of a world in which the project of building a progressive antiracist feminist politics within the social institutions of science and religion becomes possible. The challenge to me lies in creating a practice of science that is informed by its history, sociology, and philosophy. It is the challenge of resisting the binaries of past and present, secular and religious, progressive science and regressive religion, modern science and ancient religion, oppressive west and free east. It is in taking the project of decolonization seriously, in attempting Lawrence Cohen’s vision of creating “an archaeology of the subjugated knowledges within European science,” and not just in postcolonial contexts.³³ My naive scis c i e n c e , se c u l a ri sm , a n d rel ig io n

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entific visions of an evolutionary biologist have now learned to take seriously the global circulations of science. I must further learn to take seriously the indigenous practices and systems of knowledge of the colonized worlds without the impulse to extend the hegemony of western science by calling them “sciences” or “alternate sciences,” instead understanding them as legitimate knowledge systems with their own philosophy, history, culture, and tradition. I must reconcile western science with its own origin in the Christian clerical tradition.³⁴ I have to practice science by locating it as an institution embedded in a social, cultural, and economic world of which religion is an important part. Why has it proven fairly easy for religious nationalists to successfully develop an archaic modernity, while those on the secular left have failed to articulate and create an alternate future? My journeys to the west have now taken me back to the east. It is in these global scientific circulations that I have begun to imagine new worlds, ones that are neither archaic nor modern. NOTES All unacknowledged translations are my own. 1. “Dreams of an Insomniac” and the dreamscape in general were inspired by a 1996 movie by Tiffanie DeBartolo, Dream for an Insomniac. Recently I also discovered Irena Klepfisz’s book, Dreams of an Insomniac. 2. Wilmut et al., “Viable Offspring.” 3. “Dolly the Sheep Clone Dies Young,” bbc News, 14 February 2003, news.bbc.co .uk/1/hi/sci/tech/2764039.stm. 4. “S. Korea Unveils First Dog Clone,” bbc News, 3 August 2005, news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/ science/nature/4742453.stm. 5. Daston, “Objectivity and the Escape from Perspective.” 6. Specter, “Political Science.” 7. Fareed Zakaria, “India Rising,” Newsweek, 6 March 2006, http://www.fareedzakaria .com/articles/newsweek/030606.html. 8. “Offshore Outsourcing,” on Tom Ashbrook’s On Point, 22 March 2006, www .onpointradio.org/shows/2006/03/20060322_b_main.asp. 9. Bryan Bender, “US to aid India on nuclear power,” Boston Globe, 19 July 2005, http://

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201 www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2005/07/19/us_to_aid_india_ on_nuclear_power/. 10. Nanda, “Science Wars in India.” 11. See Nandy, Science, Hegemony, and Violence, 7–8. 12. See Nanda, “Science Wars in India.” 13. Noble, A World Without Women. 14. George Marsden, “The Soul of the American University: An Historical Overview,” in Marsden and Longfield, Secularization of the Academy, 33. 15. Nandy, Science, Hegemony, and Violence, 7–8. 16. See, for example, Nehru, Discovery of India. My thanks to Srirupa Roy for pointing out the long history of religious nationalism in India. 17. Vanaik, Furies of Indian Communalism. 18. Goonatilake, Aborted Discovery. 19. Celia W. Dugger, “Why Governments Tumble: India’s Poorest Are Becoming Its Loudest,” New York Times, 25 April 1999. These conclusions were reached by the Center for the Study of Developing Societies. 20. Celia W. Dugger was referring to the leaders Mayavati and Mulayam Singh Yadav. Indeed, Mayawati, a Dalit woman and a leader of the Bahujan Samaj Party, built on the votes of Dalits, was instrumental in bringing down the bjp, predominantly run by upper castes. 21. Veer, Religious Nationalism, ix. 22. Ibid., 10. 23. Deepal Jayasekara, “India’s Elections: The Decline and Decay of the Congress Party,” World Socialist Web site, April 2004, www.wsws.org/articles/2004/apr2004/ indi-a23.shtml. 24. “A Year On, India’s Leaders Cheer Its Nuclear Tests,” cnn, Headline News, 11 May 1999. 25. To some the shift in U.S. policies reflects the fear of Chinese dominance in the region and the hope of India possibly providing a balancing counterweight to China. “U.S. to Boost Arms Sales to India,” cnn World, 2 March 2006, www.cnn.com/2006/ WORLD/asiapcf/03/02/bush.india.fri. s c i e n c e , se c u l a ri sm , a n d rel ig io n

202 26. Omar Kutty argues that Hindu nationalist discourse depends on the modern notions of self and nation and hence is rooted in the same discourse as Indian secular nationalism and Western culture, two forces the party claims to oppose. See Kutty, “Sources of Intolerance.” 27. Zaheer Baber argues that this position goes all the way back to colonial times and was part of the argument by some Indian nationalists. See his Science of Empire. Gyan Prakash in his Another Reason shows that the project of identifying scientific knowledge in Indian texts and traditions came into view in late-nineteenth-century British India to “advance universal claims for a people stigmatized as metaphysical and out of touch with modernity” (110). 28. Patel, Science and the Vedas. 29. Nanda, “Science Wars in India.” 30. Prakash, Another Reason. 31. Veer, Religious Nationalism, 23. 32. Qtd. in Viswanathan, “Religious Conversion,” 90. 33. Cohen, “Whodunit?” 34. Noble, A World Without Women.

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CHAPTER EIGHT

secularizing the pain of footbinding in china: missionary and medical stagings of the universal body ˜ Angela Zito

Every critique that we produce also produces us, contributes to our finding a speaking voice, creates for us a subject position. Such “subjectifications” depend on our installation within specific regimes of bodily discipline and practice that work invisibly at the level of common sense. Not surprisingly, we often find it hard to imagine other subjectifications within other bodily regimes. From their twenty-first-century perspective, my students tend to see the past lives of Chinese women as one of constant oppression, and footbinding as the summarizing signpost of that oppression.¹ The impulse to “save” these others from their own culture still motivates many student essays in classes about gender in China. Many feel that taking footbinding seriously as cultural practice constitutes a form of collusion—even though, as the historian Patricia Ebrey has trenchantly observed, no one is advocating a return to the system that produced footbinding.² This student attitude has something in common with the critiques of violence against women developed by radical feminists of the 1970s such as Mary Daly and Andrea Dworkin. Such critiques unfortunately lumped many practices together as evidence of universal patriarchal evil, eliminating any distinctions of culture and historical experience.³ They included historical practices like footbinding and witchcraft burnings alongside current practices such as female circumcision and sati.⁴ In doing so, they erased the political work done, often by women themselves, to change

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their own conditions.⁵ They reduced these women to their bodies and thereby, engaged in a moment of “fetishizing the body as the lost object” in a world dominated by masculinist projects of abstraction.⁶ I feel that we must understand why this reduction has remained compelling—and not only for that slippery entity called western feminism—from the earliest days of European interest in footbinding until today. Far from being a footnote to history, early encounters such as those of the missionaries to China that I write about in this essay comprise an important moment in the construction of the world we live in now, with profound implications for the kinds of politics possible within that world. Our current secular modernity has inherited to a surprising extent nineteenth-century projects of the naturalization of culture and, most important for this essay, the tendency to substitute sexed difference/women’s difference for cultural difference as its most privileged marker. For nineteenth-century missionaries and Chinese reformers, the woman’s bound foot came to stand for the sad plight of Chinese culture itself. The equivalent today surely must be Muslim women’s veils as markers of the oft-mentioned “medieval” and nonmodern cultural burdens that Islam places on its adherents. This essay concentrates deliberately and specifically on nineteenthcentury English constructions of footbinding, along with what I think of as their legacy for a wider discourse of the secularization of ethical bodily engagement, rather than on a history of Chinese attitudes and practice.⁷ What kinds of bodies do we think we are dealing with, anyway, that they should have remained so stable in their configuration? The case of missionary apprehension of footbinding in China allows us a glimpse of how this supposedly universal body came into being. Bioscience maintains and manages the body’s materiality as simply another aspect of nature. And indeed, as sensory creatures, human beings are always already enmeshed in material life via their own bodies. This body of biology provides an ever firmer basis for community with everybody’s other body, the “rock bottom of universality, the hard core of nature, the backdrop of any history.”⁸ Yet since its moment of formal abandonment into material ground by Descartes, has not this “natural body” represented for European philosophy the other of its own subjectivity, only then to pop up as the privileged, naturalized exterior to society in post-Enlightenment, modern, now globalized life? From this European vantage, twenty-first-century bodies are precisely what we have in common with all others—the nature we know we share beneath the annoying or charming differences of culture. Here we find the universal body Zito

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of human rights discourse. But what does it say about the possibilities for communication and justice when the body, the “natural body” as the object of the European subject, becomes the naturalized ground on which we can base or relationship with otherness cross-culturally? I wish to make clear that I am not arguing that the body has no materiality, or that its physical structure and concomitant vulnerability can be ignored or are infinitely plastic. On the contrary, we live on the cusp, at the interface of two materialities: that of the world and that of our bodies.⁹ In that belief, I will argue that the Chinese female body (whose feet were bound) could be imagined and lived in distinctive ways: whether dematerialized into process, or slowly brought into focus by the favoring of one of its organs, or redistributed as newly experienced in a politically disciplinary regime, it was/is not this body-taken-for-granted at this moment in global history: an inert, biomedical materiality. Instead, it was a bodycoming-into-being through such practical discourses. How did Euro-American Christian anti–footbinding activists treat this different embodiment? What were their assumptions? How can we see the transition from Euro-American religious to secular imaginings of the footbound body and its pains? Here I bring into contact late-nineteenthcentury religion and early-twentieth-century medicalized hygiene through the voices of two English people who worked and wrote extensively about footbinding. The two people I discuss here literally met and conferred over footbinding, albeit from different angles. In 1874 the Reverend John Macgowan convened, with the help of his (unnamed) wife, the first public discussion of bound feet by sixty Christian Chinese women.¹⁰ Sometime thereafter, while on a sojourn to Shanghai, he was introduced to Mrs. Archibald Little by the missionary Timothy Richards.¹¹ Impressed by his story of the Amoy Society, she convened a meeting of Shanghai’s foreign elite to hear Macgowan speak.¹² Thereafter, in April 1895, she founded the national anti–footbinding movement that would have far-reaching political consequences.¹³ Macgowan and Little’s encounter represents a change in eras in the China mission experience. An evangelical emphasis was giving way to the new “social gospel” that sought to address the needs of “whole men and women.”¹⁴ Their respective translations of the early name in Chinese of the anti– footbinding movement indicated their different perspectives. Macgowan translated Tianzu hui as “Heavenly Foot Society”; Little, a Christian lay reformer, preferred “Natural Feet Society.”¹⁵ For Macgowan the body bese c u l a ri zi n g t h e pa i n o f fo ot b ind in g

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longed to God, while for Little it belonged to hygiene; both shared a latenineteenth-century image of the body as natural, as the ground of culture and the source of the labor power that fueled the capitalism and industry so necessary for China’s progress. They conceived of the body as a natural ally, whether in the cause of conversion or civilization, against a Chinese culture that degraded, maimed, even murdered it. They overlooked the fact that the Chinese bodies they confronted were not virgin territory, fenced in by Chinese culture and waiting to be liberated. They never granted to the Chinese the same implicit continuity between the body and social life that they claimed for the European bodily disciplines of religion and medicines as both naturally and culturally superior. Talal Asad has called for an anthropology of secularism that begins with investigating its attitudes toward the human body.¹⁶ From our current vantage, this seems a good starting point, for we live in a world in which, for some of the very discursive reasons I discuss below, we are certain that we all do share this physical body and that we can rely on it as a motive for comparative work. I would at least like to draw attention to the architecture of these assumptions. The argument is structured like this: I will talk about Macgowan’s body-obsessed religiousity, then about Little’s body-obsessed medicalized secularism, and finally a bit about the Chinese female body from a Chinese discursive perspective that eluded these approaches. T I A N Z U : T H E H E A V E N LY F O O T

The London Missionary Society (lms) was founded in 1795, in the early days of the evangelical revival in England. Although it professed openness to all denominations at first, by 1812 it was the missionary organization of Congregationalists, in other words it was an evangelical organization, like most other Protestant missions in China.¹⁷ Macgowan himself arrived in Shanghai in 1860 and went to the lms mission in Amoy in 1863.¹⁸ Before they could actually proselytize, missionaries required a taxonomy of Chinese life. Chinese religion remained a vexing question because on its definition depended their decision of whether or not to intervene in nonreligious so-called social customs like footbinding. The great dividing line between Catholics and Protestants fell on ritual and hence the proper disposition of the worshipping body. Early Jesuits were tolerant of ancestral veneration, including bowing to the memorial tablets of the dead, but

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the papacy eventually disagreed violently with the Jesuits and condemned ancestral veneration as idolatry in 1742, ending the great Rites Controversy.¹⁹ Though this decree brought the Roman Catholic Church into line with other Christians on the problem of idolatry in China, Catholics remained less interventionist in their proselytizing strategies. Eric Reinders argues convincingly that more aggressive Protestants imported their distaste for “the holy mummeries of the Romish Church” to China, allowing the Chinese, with their mysterious rituals, to be slotted into a familiar position of the degraded and feared other, next to European Catholics.²⁰ This attitude inclined Protestants toward more intrusive tactics when it came to their missions. At their General Conference in 1877, Protestant missionaries in China were still recalling their differences with Rome, thirty years before, over the issues of bowing. The Reverend A. E. Moule pointed out that the similarity between ancestor worship and filiality toward the living “was the ground upon which the Jesuits based their sanction of Ancestral worship in the Romish Communion.”²¹ The Reverend Yates of Shanghai proposed that far from being acceptable as mere civil respect, ancestor worship was “the principal religion of China—a most degrading slavery—a slavery of the living to the dead.”²² But what to do about bowing, tainted because it was performed before the tablets memorializing the dead (clearly “graven images”), but a beloved sign of respect before living parents, relatives, and friends, as noted by the Reverend Sheffield?²³ The arguments over bowing show us how the materiality of Chinese bodies had begun to operate for missionaries. They divided the world of Chinese social life between the dead and the living, the image and the body, the spiritual and the physical.²⁴ Most preserved a purely hard line that all worldly customs should be sacrificed to the spiritual work of teaching the gospel, while others were willing to peer over those boundaries, if not cross them.²⁵ Macgowan left behind a sizable oeuvre of writings on China, perhaps ten books. Here I will concentrate on the not-so-subtly titled How England Saved China (1913). In its three parts, Macgowan shows how England saved China by saving Chinese bodies first from footbinding, then female infanticide, and finally disease. The style and tone of How England Saved China shares the main paradoxical feature of his other books: a devotion to the description of the local scene that marshals a wealth of detail to produce a convincing reduction of Chinese life to stereotype. As this work of

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critique was written in 1913, fifty years after he first went to China, we are probably also dealing with the weight of nostalgia on Macgowan’s pen. He remarks various instances of terrible physical suffering in order to clarify why British missionaries should continue to go to China: How England Saved China is really the tale of how England’s missionaries saved China. Insofar as England as a nation had been the source of violent intrusion, England owed China the solace of continued missionary succor. Although in his book title Macgowan conflated England-as-missionary and England-as-nation, he was no simple imperialist. (Was there such a thing?) More personally, supporting missionary work against British imperialism allowed him to produce something crucial to his work and self, a clear evangelical conscience. His critique simultaneously bore personal and social fruits. Despite the retrospective distance that informs the book, Macgowan never hesitates to include pages of “remembered” and “quoted” material from the Chinese people he meets.²⁶ He also speculates endlessly on what “they” think and imagine in a way that reminds me of Flaubert’s style indirect. His style places his own consciousness as the motivating but absent center of the work; his presence infuses the text like overheard heavy breathing as he labors to describe. He conveys a strong sense of an eyewitness, as befits his evangelical emphasis on having been there himself, witnessing for the Lord. In fact, the story he tells is one of the triumph of this divine presence, channeled through his own very embodied efforts, into a Chinese reality. For Macgowan, footbinding was first and foremost a problem of Chinese culture that called into doubt the whole of Chinese civilization: “Many a savage tribe has shown barbaric ingenuity in the methods they have devised to disfigure and maim the human body, but it has been reserved for the Chinese people, with their great intelligence and civilization, to carry out such a system of mutilation as the world has never known in the long history of the past.”²⁷ In his view, this nefarious civilization interferes with “Divine Nature” (he always capitalizes both words). He describes nature as “this beautiful power, with its Divine instinct and its unswerving belief in the human body as being one of God’s ideals, which could never be improved upon.”²⁸ Macgowan feels that footbinding interferes with women’s natural beauty, but that ultimately, “no other human pattern would ever be allowed to usurp the place of the Divine one.”²⁹ In his other writings Macgowan also divided Chinese culture from Chinese nature, blaming

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the former to save the latter. For instance, the Chinese “mind” is not intrinsically incapable of solving problems like lack of initiative and wealth; the problem is that Chinese people are paralyzed by idolatry.³⁰ According to Macgowan, one aspect of Chinese nature that footbinding as culture particularly perverts is the “mother instinct”: “All pity from the heart of the mother for her little child . . . was crushed out by the very bandages that were distorting the feet of her daughter.”³¹ When Macgowan describes the time his wife rushed to the sound of intense screaming to interrupt a binding, he “quotes” the mother’s angry defense for two pages. Interestingly, he has the mother display intense sympathy for her daughter, but not for her daughter’s feet. She explains that her daughter’s social position would be intolerable if her feet were not bound (26–27). Macgowan draws our attention to the difficulty parents have resisting their daughters’ “piteous pleas” to bind their feet lest they fail to make a good marriage and suffer the tragic fate of being a slave girl (43). Somehow he does not regard this as “mother instinct,” but rather as collaboration in the unfortunate work of Chinese culture, a temptation resisted only by parents who have converted to Christianity (45). With such a worked-up critique of footbinding as culture, one might imagine that Macgowan would have informed himself on its history. Indeed, he does describe its spread, but most peculiarly. Of footbinding he says: “As if with the foot of fate, it stole its silent way through the city gates of the capital towards the north. . . . It also turned invisible feet toward the south, and it overleapt great rocks and climbed the loftiest mountains and descended upon the plains and valleys. . . . It has followed in the footsteps of the Chinese armies and into the wild uncivilized tribes” (emphasis mine; 19). In fact, the reason why footbinding seems to catch on with the putative barbarians is that “the women there, touched by the mystic something that binds a woman by a common kinship to every other woman in the world, came under the spell” (20; emphasis mine). So footbinding is fatalistic, sneaky, opportunistic, and irresistible to women. This is not footbinding as history, it is footbinding as impersonation (complete with puns). In fact, footbinding sounds suspiciously like Macgowan’s description of Chinese men in his other writings, with their belief in fate and their deceitful, lazy, and sensuous natures.³² But Macgowan never ever connects footbinding to sex. In fact, he notes, hilariously, that he once asked a man publicly at an anti–footbinding debate: “‘Do you consider that a woman’s feet are made more beautiful by binding?’ At this his coun-

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tenance fell as did that of every man in the assembly. To this he remained absolutely silent.”³³ Considering footbinding’s notoriously sexual and private discursive place, we can well imagine that silence. What pattern emerges here? According to Macgowan, footbinding represents some of the worst of Chinese culture, running right along with female infanticide and idolatry. However, Macgowan’s idea of Chinese culture is so vague and ahistorical as to, in fact, be no concept at all—it is more a black hole wherein things disappear. This is no accident, for as a Christian outsider, by categorizing footbinding as cultural, he constitutes an ideal Chinese nature available to salvation through God’s divine intervention. In fact “only the power of God” would cause footbinding to “crumble and vanish before its invisible touch.” “Mere human argument,” he continues, “had no power to solve it.”³⁴ Now, the “mere human argument” must come from Macgowan himself or from his fellow missionaries. Yet a profound denial of his own agency animates Macgowan’s writing on footbinding and female infanticide—it makes for a very useful way to absolve himself from failure and to comfort himself during long years of frustration. If things do not change it is not his fault, but God’s divine will. In fact, in this text, Macgowan denies culture to everyone, both English and Chinese. Humans relate only through divine mediation, and Macgowan shows himself a true evangelical in this regard. Evangelicals believed that divine mediation used the body as its vehicle and that signs of its workings were visible as actions and gestures. The Evangelical Revival in England opened in 1792 and propounded a new, antirationalist, and more activist stance of religiosity, one absorbed in the “message of Christ on the cross.”³⁵ The worldwide missionary movement was heavily influenced by evangelical Christianity (even if, as time went on, they turned out not all to be evangelical).³⁶ As John James preached to the London Mission Society in 1812: “If then you would arrest the savage of the desert . . . and hold him in a power altogether new to him, do not begin with cold abstraction of moral duties or theological truths, but tell him of Christ crucified, and you shall see his once vacant countenance enlivened by feelings of a new and deep interest.”³⁷ Evangelicals disliked abstractions of any sort and emphasized personal experience and witnessing in one’s own body. But in China, even though they were deeply committed to spiritual awakening, and not merely to social gospel ministrations, their own emphasis on piety as experience drove them

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to engage their Chinese audience in the flesh. In fact, their dilemma was often whether to serve only the spirit or the body too. Macgowan solved this theological dilemma retrospectively in his writing by relentlessly placing that necessary body (whether his own, or those of the Chinese) in the service of the spirit. He was fascinated by Chinese bodies: what they wore, how they looked, moved, and suffered. And he was equally committed to describing the extraordinary effect the physical presence of missionaries had on the natives. Time and again a crowd mysteriously falls silent or is moved by a missionary performance.³⁸ For example, in one narrative, his wife takes a leading role in a baptism of foundlings saved from infanticide: “Unconscious to themselves, the simple acts of love towards the little ones of my wife, who was quite forgetful of the many eyes upon her, seemed to lightly touch some chord within their hearts that made them vibrate with a melody that had never sent such sweet music into them in all their lives before.”³⁹ Or this, about missionary smiling: “It finds its way into the heart that is filled with hatred, and with an alchemy, whose secret has never yet been discovered, it dissolves the fatal forces that have been at work and actually transmutes them into love.”⁴⁰ Macgowan’s devotion as an evangelical depended on the currency of a certain sort of English body. That body was natural, not cultural, and nature disclosed the divine plan. That natural body could be counted on as an ally in the never-ending battle against the “artificial laws” of men.⁴¹ Patiently nurtured and exposed to the truth, a mother’s instinct awakens and she ceases to bind her daughter’s feet; unbound, feet return to nature’s (divine) design. Years later, Macgowan writes How England Saved China to advocate continuing missionary presence in China to undo the wrongs of imperialism. He bases his authority to speak on his own experience living beside Chinese bodies: “We lived amongst them, and had learned to know their hearts. We spent nights with them in their villages; we came to them when they were in sorrow, and we . . . proved to them that our hearts beat in unison with their own.”⁴² Macgowan produced a critique of footbinding (and infanticide) that also served to produce him simultaneously as an author, a dedicated evangelical, and a loyal British subject. These are not easy subject positions to reconcile. Luckily he had the ally of natural bodies, British and Chinese, that carried out the actionless actions of divine will. He told a story about his own experiences, but he vacated the agency to God. It is and is not his

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story, just as British imperialism is and is not his fault, or the fault of anyone involved in it. TIANZU: THE NATURAL FEET

By the 1880s the missionary movement in China and elsewhere was drawing back from its public commitment to the evangelical stance of attention primarily to the soul, albeit through witnessing in the flesh.⁴³ Perhaps the actual practice of evangelicals like Macgowan enabled the recognition that the soul and body were intimately linked and inevitably opened up more possibilities for purely bodily salvation. By the time Mrs. Archibald Little entered the scene, good Christians knew that the body served as much as the vehicle for the state’s civilization as for God’s secret workings. The anti–footbinding activist Mrs. Archibald Little, an Englishwoman, lived mainly in the southwest area of Szechuan for twenty years at the turn of the century, married to a shipping magnate. She visited Macgowan’s Heavenly Foot organization and brought it to Shanghai. Along with nine other western women of different nationalities, she helped launch it as the “Natural Feet Society” on a national scale in 1895. Although it was a nondenominational effort to secularize anti–footbinding work, it came into being under the aegis of the Shanghai Mission.⁴⁴ Little’s writing style differs considerably from Macgowan’s. She exudes a quality usually called “objectivity,” achieved by often presenting her own views through the words of others more expert. For instance, she satirizes the views of Europeans who adore individual evangelists yet decry them as a class, continuing to believe all the myths about them.⁴⁵ This tone persists when she discusses the Chinese. Of course, this sense of irony allows her to fully air all myths while avoiding the tone of hysterical stereotyping that marks Macgowan’s text. (She lets us know that she is herself a Christian supporter of missionary efforts only at the end of the chapter.)⁴⁶ The reportorial stance that Little maintains—with its use of names, places, and dates—allows her to appear as an actor among many others in her text and yet maintain a certain distance. Little wastes no time haranguing readers on the idea that footbinding is barbarous. Instead, she briskly shows how it bars good health and happiness. In her usual reportorial style, Little imports medical testimony into her text to make her points. Physicians from Shanghai, Nanjing, Chongking discuss the loss of toes, whole feet, and even lives to footbinding.⁴⁷ Little concludes a chapter on footbinding with the cool observation that Zito

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“it would require a medical work to describe the various maladies more or less directly traceable to binding.”⁴⁸ Biomedicine has appeared.⁴⁹ I do not here contend that earlier Victorian-era scientists had not been interested in footbinding. We have record of a much earlier anatomical dissection of a bound foot from 1829 by the English surgeon Bransby Blake Cooper.⁵⁰ Cooper’s account excludes any speculation about the social origins of this “hideous deformity.” He will not enter “into an inquiry whether this curious dissection . . . of the Chinese female foot, had its origin in oriental jealousy or was the result of an unnatural taste in beauty.”⁵¹ He details the dimensions of bone and muscular tissue, and imagines how difficult walking on such a foot would have been for the individual woman. Divorcing the foot completely from social context, Cooper concludes, “I do not pretend to attach to the subject any more importance than it deserves; nevertheless I have thought it would be considered as curious and calculated to interest scientific men.”⁵² Cooper’s account speaks to us from an age before biomedicine had seized the social imaginations of Victorians. His is not the medical text that Little wishes she had available. Her text would use medicine to present a practical explanation of the deleterious effects of footbinding on women’s bodies and lives. Little understood that medical knowledge could function rhetorically as self-evidently persuasive and useful, even to Chinese. At one anti–footbinding meeting “a missionary lady in fluent Chinese explained the circulation of the blood, and with an India rubber pipe showed the effect of binding some part of it. There were no interruptions then. This seemed to the Chinese practical, and it was quite striking to see how attentively they listened.”⁵³ As John and Jean Comaroff have shown in their historical anthropology of South Africa, biomedicine slowly displaced missionary comforting as the gift imported to native peoples by Europeans bent on conversion cum civilization: “With the rise of the colonial state, missionary healers in South Africa were to find themselves eclipsed by the newly formed agencies of public health. By the turn of this century, their talk of civilizing Africa had given way to a practical concern with the hygiene of black populations.”⁵⁴ Whatever her commitments to physical health may have been, Little’s skill at actually organizing the beginnings of an anti–footbinding campaign were clearly social. She also recognized from the start that footbinding was embedded in the life cycle of women, and immediately took up concrete problems of matchmaking in her text, for a major problem in persuading women to unbind or spare their daughters was the fear that se c u l a ri zi n g t h e pa i n o f fo ot b ind in g

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they would never then find a marriage partner. The “other voice” that Little imports into her text to tell this story comes from a long letter from an ardent foreign “anti-binder” from northern China who provides the information.⁵⁵ Little’s gender must have allowed access and insights denied Macgowan. She was much better informed on the actualities of both physical and social consequences of footbinding.⁵⁶ Perfectly aware of the erotics of the process of binding, she exhibits quite an astute understanding of the shifts in a Chinese male sexuality that elicits the small feet in sexual partners when young but regrets their necessity in daughters once the man has aged.⁵⁷ Little stood within a tradition of feminine public service that originated in the church but by the turn of the century was becoming medicalized and professionalized. Regina Kunzel has brilliantly analyzed this process for England vis-à-vis the care of unwed mothers from 1890–1945.⁵⁸ Moving out from the center to the periphery during colonial expansion, women like Little carried this ethos abroad. They transformed a class-based dialectic of self-other construction into a racialized one.⁵⁹ Little appeared on the cusp of this transition into professional, scientific medical solutions to social problems. She worked at a time when the physical body was still read closely for signs of moral goodness or failure, but when medicine was already promising escape to a utopia of objective custody. That earlier English notion of meaningful embodiment seems to have been congenial to some Chinese reformers who agreed that certain body disciplines were simply no longer healthy or civilized. Chinese nonChristian elite male reformers reasoned that strong citizens were needed in service to the nation. They expressed intense embarrassment as it became clear that in world opinion footbinding was considered far from civilized behavior. They became anti–footbinders, insisting that the nation would no longer be crippled by its own past.⁶⁰ Dorothy Ko provides an account of what she calls a “China-centered narrative of the birth of tianzu as a category and a social movement.”⁶¹ One reform-minded male writer named Xu Ke (1869–1928) wrote “A Survey of Natural Feet” (“Tianzu kaolue”) in which he noted that “today if we say ‘natural foot’ [tianzu] everyone in the metropolis and urban areas would know what you mean. In ancient times, there was no such term as tianzu; they called it ‘plain or unadorned feet’ [suzu].”⁶² We see that by the turn of the twentieth century, Chinese writers themselves were apprised of a sense of tian as “heavenly bestowed” that resonated quite plausibly with the idea of natural in a west-

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ern, scientific sense, and that they had, moreover, a keen sense of the newness of this term.⁶³ CONCLUSION

For Europeans, the Chinese woman’s bound foot operated ambiguously in a late-nineteenth-century universe in a way that tended constantly to evacuate social and cultural problems into the natural physical body. In the local context, however, it performed in a reverse fashion, one that turned the physical into the cultural, as when the bound foot became a sign of Chinese cultural failure and national weakness. A shift in perception of the natural body, as Macgowan understood it, undergirded the new, later nineteenth-century efforts of secular salvation. Natural biomedical science was exempt from the taint of culture and thus could be relied on to save embodied humanity from its own worst ills. Added to the religious notion of the body as a fallen Eden invaded by cultural artifice, and thus a site of sin and redemption, was the notion that natural biomedical science could save it. Did those earlier understandings of the body as heir to and bearer of moral failing prepare the way for medical salvation? By the late nineteenth century Europeans and Americans felt certain that humans were, in their deepest identities, biologically raced and gendered in ways that could be scientifically demonstrated.⁶⁴ Certain Chinese in port cities were likewise making their way toward this sense of biohealth out of historically quite different plots about the health of the body and under conditions of a forced, colonizing encounter.⁶⁵ In the nineteenth century, missionaries confronted footbinding within the historically different plot of a distinctive cosmology of transforming resonance. By that, I mean that according to traditional Chinese medicine and the tenets of ritual protocol, Chinese bodies were thought to be formed of a complex network of energized matter known as qi that was in constant flowing motion. Since qi formed all matter of the universe, human beings were able to “resonate” with the things of the world in complex patterns that could induce well-being or disaster. In Chinese medicine and religious practices such as Falun Gong today, the body’s systems are organized as functional multiplicities, not as subsets of substantialized organs. Health is based on constant, patterned change and circulation and not fixity or stability. People do not consist of divinely endowed or biologically fixed

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human nature. Instead they are materializations of dynamically contingent positions both in space and in social hierarchy.⁶⁶ In the coastal cities that were under attack and occupation by the British from 1858 onward, ideas of weisheng as “guarding the health” of this cosmically implicated body continued to hold sway. This term summarized the practices that people themselves could carry out to preserve health, and it was replete with a sense of human agency and responsibility that actively worked on the body.⁶⁷ Ruth Rogaski notes: Before the 19th century, weisheng was associated with a variety of regimens of diet, meditation, and self-medication that were practiced by the individual in order to guard fragile internal vitalities. With the arrival of armed imperialism some of the most fundamental debates about how China could achieve a modern existence began to coalesce around this word. Its meaning shifted away from Chinese cosmology and moved to encompass state power, scientific standards of progress, the cleanliness of bodies and the fitness of races.⁶⁸

Rogaski retranslates this new sense of weisheng as “hygienic modernity,” and it figured heavily in Chinese pursuits of their own scientific utopias of objective truth under Marxism and Maoism in the twentieth century. In China’s early modern past, however, the construction of gender was one social performance of this general devotion to patterned circulation and transformation, sharing as well traditional medicine’s logic of yinyang polarity.⁶⁹ These performances of gendered positions were accomplished especially within the systematic scripts for social activity called li (usually badly translated as “ritual”). Coterminous with the rise of footbinding in the medieval Song period, an interest in li grew among the literati class: handbooks were produced detailing every aspect of correct human behavior from what to wear, how to move, how to address superiors and inferiors, and especially how to manage relationships with the invisible world of the ancestors. Footbinding was a sort of gendered elaboration of li that both marked and produced female sexuality in the ever-shifting world of hierarchical encompassments comprising Chinese sociocorporeal life. This world incorporated its own contradictions and forms of domination. (In other words, I do not here offer it as a utopic alternative to our own “bad Enlightenment.”) The substantialized organs that were the object of fixation for European

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gender distinction (the penis, the womb, the clitoris) lacked a similar discursive weight and reality in China. Instead, and as a pronounced marker of sexed gender distinction, Chinese women engaged in a process of continual physical transformation, molding a visible part of the body, which was then, of course, hidden away in shoes almost never removed in the sight of another. This very hiddeness, however, allowed for the foot to be produced as dramatic evidence: for example, the proof that the famous eighteenth-century fictional cross-dresser Meng Lijun was female was produced by taking off “his” boots—despite the availability of other obvious sites for verification.⁷⁰ Feet were held in common with men, so that this somatic eroticized gender distinction, rather than being “discovered” in nature, was created through culture. Both our English missionary and the reformer found this to be brazen interference with the natural good, whether that good be considered godly or medical. In this, the reformer Xu Ke agreed. Here we glimpse culture being dragged across the stage to line up with an already constituted nature. In both the realms of evangelical religion and science, our English protagonists created powerful narrative and practical techniques to make cultural processes disappear into nature and thus to rechannel agency, making it available for new projects. Especially noteworthy is that in terms of its reified distance from the imagined person inside, the gap was surprisingly small between a body that belonged to God and a body that belonged to science. Such was the formation that faced the Chinese reforming elite: a hybrid of religion and science, hiding its religious component. Meanwhile, Chinese in government and universities were likewise draining older forms of cosmologically connected activity into new supposedly scientific channels.⁷¹ Talal Asad would note this as a marker of the secular turn—for secularism is above all a new narrative about agency and human possibility.⁷² This is not an easy story about God or the cosmos simply traded for nature, but a far more uneasy and subliminal borrowing and cross-fertilization of tropes between the religious/cosmological and the scientific. In these various and contradictory engagements the secular and the religious informed and reinforced one another as the hinge that opened the door on a modernity enabled by precisely their connection. Universal human rights discourse and its “body” of rights—something usually imagined as emerging out of a secular turn—in fact may never have left the religious fully behind. This may be a source of its moral force. However, we must

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ask ourselves just how this complicates appeals to something that is not at all necessarily universal, depending as it does on historically quite limited notions of the human. NOTES This essay had it origins in a panel organized by Dorothy Ko at the Association for Asian Studies Annual Meeting in Boston in 1994. The session was called “The Mindful Body: Footbinding,” and she and I have had many conversations about footbinding over the intervening decade as I worked on this article and on my essay “Bound to Be Represented.” All unacknowledged translations are my own. 1. I take the classroom as an aspect of the “already institutionalized reality” that I hope to make intelligible and to shape through better theorizing. As William Pietz says: “In contrast to semiological post-Marxism, it is the Marxian view that the production of theoretical discourse is always an attempt at once to make intelligible and to complete (in a functional sense) some already institutionalized social reality. Theory always arises as a supplement not to the logic of a text but to a particular social practice; its analysis is best pursued not through deconstructions of intertextuality and aleatory play but by articulating the contradictions between institutional practices and the theories by which they explain and justify themselves and each other.” See Apter and Pietz, Fetishism as Cultural Discourse, 128. 2. Ebrey, Inner Quarters, 8. 3. See Daly, Gyn/ecology; and Dworkin, Woman Hating. 4. More recent work on sutee has tried to remedy this one-sided approach, not through apologetics but by resituating it within the colonial encounter between England and India. See Mani’, Contentious Tradition; Sunder Rajan, “Subject of Sati”; and Sunder Rajan, Real and Imagined Women. 5. See my essay “Bound to Be Represented” for how attitudes toward footbinding show us changes in feminist theorizing about the feminine other. 6. Sara Ahmed and Jackie Stacey, “Introduction: Dermographies,” in Ahmed and Stacey, Thinking Through the Skin, 3. 7. For such a history, readers are recommended Ko, Cinderella’s Sisters; and Gao Hongxing, Chanzu shi. For polemics situated within present-day China on the subject, readers can consult Dai Qing and Luo Ke, Chanzu nuzi; and Hong, Footbinding, Feminism, and Freedom.

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221 8. Latour, War of the Worlds, 13. 9. See Mol and Law, “Embodied Action, Enacted Bodies,” for a sensitive discussion of how not to reduce this process of “doing” the body-in-the-world to a simple subjectobject split. Note also Talal Asad’s discussion of how an overemphasis on agency can elide important (objective) aspects of social life that elude subjectivity in his Formations of the Secular. 10. Alison R. Drucker places the meeting in this year (“Influence of Western Women,” 187–88). 11. Alicia Helen Neva Bewicke in the convention of the times signed her books as “Mrs. Archibald Little” after her marriage. The historian Elisabeth Croll presents a very sympathetic portrait of her in her book on European women writers in China, Wise Daughters from Foreign Lands. 12. Macgowan, How England Saved China, 89–93. 13. Little, Intimate China, 149. Interestingly, Macgowan relates his meeting with Little in Shanghai in great detail, although he gives no precise date. (He does indicate that she founded the Shanghai society fairly immediately, so it was in the mid-nineties.) She, on the other hand, does not mention meeting him in conjunction with the founding of the society in Shanghai. 14. Hunter, Gospel of Gentility, 9. 15. Little, In the Land of the Blue Gown, 102. 16. Asad, Formations of the Secular. 17. Stanley, Bible and the Flag, 56–57. The lms failed to draw people of the Anglican (High) Church. Thus its membership tended to so-called dissenters, with all the implications this carried of class differences in England. The lms sent the first Protestant missionary to China in 1807, Robert Morrison. See Latourette, History of Christian Missions, 215; and Macgowan, Christ or Confucius, 11–12. Macgowan had a keen sense of the historic importance of his mission station. 18. Wylie, Memorials of Protestant Missionaries, n.p. 19. Minamiki, Chinese Rites Controversy; Latourette, History of Christian Missions, 102–56. 20. Reinders, “Iconoclasm of Obeisance.” 21. Records of the General Conference of the Protestant Missionaries of China Held

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222 at Shanghai, 399. First names of the participants are generally not provided in the records. 22. Ibid., 368. 23. The Reverend Sheffield equivocated, wishing to preserve it for the living, but the Reverend Hartwell opposed it altogether. See ibid., 389. On the significance of the kowtow, as the English spelled ketou, in Chinese guest li, see Hevia, “Sovereignty and Subject”; and Hevia, “Scandal of Inequality.” Also see Reinders, “Iconoclasm of Obeisance.” 24. The Reverend John noted that ancestor worship has two elements, the “religious” and the “human,” the first to be opposed, the second respected. See Records of the General Conference, 398. 25. See Williamson, Yates, Mateer, and John in ibid., 139, 387, 397–98. The Shanghai American Presbyterian Press in 1867 published a volume entitled Memorials of Protestant Missionaries to the Chinese, giving a list of their publications and obituary notices of the deceased. Although some men wrote on observed behavior or on medical problems, or produced works on the classics, by this early time in the missionary endeavor the overwhelming majority devoted themselves exclusively to religious tracts and translations in both English and Chinese. See Wylie, Memorials of Protestant Missionaries. 26. For one example I will discuss later, see the Chinese mother’s two-page retort to Mrs. Macgowan’s interruption of a painful binding session, in Macgowan, How England Saved China, 25–26. 27. Macgowan, How England Saved China, 19. 28. Ibid., 79. 29. Ibid., 80. 30. Macgowan, “Remarks on Social Life,” 83. 31. Macgowan, How England Saved China, 30–31. 32. Macgowan, Men and Manners. 33. Ibid., 74. 34. Ibid., 39. 35. Stanley, Bible and the Flag, 62.

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223 36. Ibid., 61. 37. Qtd. in ibid., 62. 38. Macgowan, How England Saved China, 120–21; Macgowan, Men and Manners, 330. 39. Macgowan, How England Saved China, 132. 40. Ibid., 191. 41. Macgowan, “Remarks on Social Life,” 91. 42. Macgowan, How England Saved China, 313. 43. Hutchinson, Errand to the World, 99–104. 44. Drucker, “Influence of Western Women,” 189; Little, Intimate China. 45. Little, Intimate China, 238. 46. Ibid., 247. 47. Ibid., 141–44. 48. Ibid., 144. 49. Macgowan also devotes one third of How England Saved China to discussing medical missionaries’ work, but he concentrated on medicine as the means whereby the doctor witnessed to the benevolence of God, who heals people through the doctor’s skills. Macgowan dwells ardently on the sweet temperaments and generous natures of these doctors. See Macgowan, How England Saved China, 169–300, esp. 191 for miracles of smiling, 207 for “love as moving power in English dispensary,” 209 for a doctor perceived as heroic on house calls, 214 for the doctor as “middle-man,” and 251–53 for the description of a “heroine.” 50. Reproduced in full in Levy, Chinese Footbinding, 287–93. 51. Qtd. in ibid., 287. 52. Ibid., 293. 53. Little, Intimate China, 152. 54. Comaroff and Comaroff, Ethnography and the Historical Imagination, 216. 55. Little, Intimate China, 147–49.

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224 56. Contrast Little, Intimate China, 137–40 with Macgowan, How England Saved China, 17–18. 57. For her remarks on the changing attitudes of men as they age, see Little, In the Land of the Blue Gown, 256. She was very aware “that feet are the most risque subject of conversation in China and no more improper can be found” (Intimate China, 150). Little, even though the founder of the Natural Feet Society, discussed how even the foreign women of the society were embarrassed to bring up the subject before their male servants. 58. Kunzel, Fallen Women. 59. Zito, “Bound to Be Represented,” 29. 60. Drucker, “Influence of Western Women”; Chau, “Anti-footbinding movement,” 115; Levy, Chinese Footbinding, 72–73. 61. Ko, Cinderalla’s Sisters, 18. 62. Qtd. in ibid., 18. 63. Note that in her English translation of tian, Ko agrees with Little in the use of “natural.” 64. Laqueur Making Sex; Stoler, Race and the Education of Desire. 65. Rogaski, Hygienic Modernity; Dikotter, Sex, Culture, and Modernity. 66. For excellent discussions of the intricacies of these systems and their fate alongside biomedicine, see Kaptchuk, Web That Has No Weaver; Farquhar, Knowing Practice; and Porkert, Theoretical Foundations. 67. Ruth Rogaski’s brilliant account of how weisheng lost this original meaning and became what she translates as “hygienic modernity” in Hygienic Modernity provides a parallel Chinese and reinforcing account of the glimpse I am giving here of the shift from a missionary to a medical reading of Chinese bodies. Frank Dikotter also notes in Sex, Culture, and Modernity that in the early twentieth century, “in contrast to medical thought in late imperial China, the modern-educated elites of the coast no longer believed the physiology of the human to reflect the order of a universe” (20). 68. Rogaski, Hygienic Modernity, 1. 69. Tani Barlow discusses gender in this light: “What appear as ‘gender’ are yin/yang differentiated positions: not two anatomical ‘sexes,’ but a profusion of relational,

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225 bound, unequal dyads, each signifying difference and positioning difference and analogically” (Barlow, “Theorizing Woman,” 259). 70. Chen, Zaisheng yuan, 865; qtd. in Wang, Aching for Beauty, 193. 71. See Rogaski, Hygienic Modernity; Dikotter, Sex, Culture, and Modernity. 72. Asad writes: “For what interests me particularly is the attempt to construct categories of the secular and the religious in terms of which modern-living is required to take place, and non-modern peoples are invited to assess their adequacy. For representations of ‘the secular’ and ‘the religious’ in modern and modernizing states mediate people’s identities, help shape their adequacy, and guarantee their experiences” (Asad, Formations of the Secular, 8).

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CHAPTER NINE

ghostly appearances ˜ Geeta Patel

Paradoxically enough, temporality can be said to have genealogies of its own. In what follows I trace the coimplications of Christian, Christiansecular, and Hindu temporalities in the capitalist production of the militarized Indian nation. Here the production of a linear past-present-future relation (linear even as it curves back through the past) requires certain forms of subjectivity: a farmer who establishes a rural-urban progress narrative; a domesticated insinuation into gender in which a woman desires and represents both timeless tradition and modern commodities. In this reading, I show the ways in which Hindu nationalist temporality relies on both missionary and secular-Christian times. At the close of the essay, I explore ways of narrating colonial temporalities differently by using the work of two historians, because in order to get to the before or the after of colonialism, one must traverse it. Only through such narrations, and the affect that engenders them as painful, can substantive differences in subject positions become available. The questions that frame this discussion include the following: How can we think subjectivity through other possible times, given that subjectivities in the “modern” are inseparable from particular ways of narrating time? Is it possible to speak of temporality, to feel temporalities, in transformatory ways, without asking readers to travel through narrations of time? Rather than merely restating Foucauldian points about disciplinary time and the carceral body, I pose these questions about time in relation to colonialism and nation formation. I suggest that instead of changing one clock into another (e.g., traditional into modern), or speeding up and slowing down time (e.g., the acceleration of history), one must consider the persistence of at least three ways of telling time at once. This persis-

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tence abets forms of recursiveness and domination, even as it might offer ways to disturb them, or more disturbingly regenerate them in new alignments. The complex relationship between telling time and telling time’s history means that I cannot simply present these temporalities in a linear fashion to the reader. Instead, I enact the temporalities I argue from and argue for, inviting readers to enter into the narration. If we wish to envision different horizons, we may have to begin by attending to bodily implications in avowedly “nationalist” orders of time. S C E N E S F R O M H I S T O R Y, P O L I T I C S , A N D R E L I G I O N

The millennium seems not to be a site of the production of excessive anxiety in South Asia. Why?¹ Indian editorials speak United Nations warnings about the millennium bug: “Failures in one country could have significant effects on many other nations.”² Banks—from India to Hong Kong—are reportedly talking to one another across national borders about systemic infections and their mitigation and suggest immunizing banking systems against the millennium bug lest it impede the flow of capital. But these articles about the bug rarely bring the millennium into the house, the home, and the domestic. The discussions about process in South Asia—about prostheses breaking down or refusing to move in or to their appointed times—are seldom conducted in relation to the personal or the domestic (computers, banks, electric grids, telephone systems, stock markets) breaking down. Even as a middle class grows in South Asia, the emergent bourgeoisie accumulate technological prostheses in the house: tvs, vcrs, and computers. These prostheses are fetishes, worshipped as the consolidated avatars of global consumerism in households that celebrate their turn toward an emergent global capitalism even as they hold on to newly formed notions of the traditional. As avatars, the prostheses “abound in metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties,” mystifying the relations between transnational capital, mobile labor, and the schismatic productions of classed fractures.³ As avatars, the prostheses also become the syntagmas of what is missing from the nation, taken into a bourgeoisie home as one site where idealized nationhood is played out. The prostheses become naturalized extensions of the hand of the bourgeoisie, spoken about as simplifying urban lives, as easing the availability of news and pleasure. However, for the purpose of potential millennium hysteria, computers, technology, transfers of power, and the grids of power that animate prostheses are still located g h o s t ly a ppe a ra n ces

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somewhere else, somewhere where the public is global, and the global is outside South Asia, where capital is the only ghostly “commodity” that engenders millennium anxiety. Unlike the majority of South Asians at home, one South Asian, returning home as the good son who has acquired cultural capital in a global setting, uses the millennium as a podium to generate anxiety. Amartya Sen, the newly noble economist, addresses himself to the troubled conglomeration of time and history as the government in power in India is deploying both. Speaking in Delhi in the summer of 1998, Sen reportedly turns the clock back to the Islamic calendar at 1000 and to Akbar’s court. He turns the clock back to the “anxiety, dread, even panic” supposedly felt by Europeans at the “Roman calendrical year” 1000, back to the simultaneous dynastic rule in India—Hindu, Buddhist, and early Muslim incursions: “The new millennium began with the rise of Islamic power in the world and it is ending with an established Western dominance in the world.” Folded into history, historical narrative, and the telling of the historical again, Sen’s talk takes on historical nuggets of contemporary fundamentalism—that “pre-Islamic India was a pure Hindu India,” that “Western influences . . . seriously undermine Indian culture,” that the ancient could not be collapsed easily into a constructed homogenous Hindu community; at the very least it had to incorporate Buddhist, Jewish, and Christian communities.⁴ Reporting on Sen’s millennium talk, Sunil Sethi asks about the great unsaid: Is not one of the great battles of the world at the end of the millennium between the rich and poor, especially by the western free marketers eager to impose their will on the ignorant impoverished populations of the world? . . . A close scrutiny of the movements of history of ideas that he [Sen] undertakes in his lecture to show the influences that shaped India . . . successfully debunks the false notions of Westernization that Indian fundamentalists cling to, he does not offer as clear or sharp a critique of the West [sic].⁵

Sen turns to political economy at a time when the state is invested in both speaking and secreting away its relation to communal violence. The millennium becomes the node for Sen’s exposure of that articulation. The millennium is about a future thrown forward from a past, a past produced in and through the present, which excises other possible pasts, other posPatel

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sible histories. Sen strives to return to a transparent reiteration of the historical, in response to what he sees as another transparent production of a historical—Hindutva. Sen’s talks, which turn time back to before this millennium (the date that never quite was and a place at which calendars are retrofitted to fit a future), seem to have found an appropriate juncture to speak about pasts and the work they do to legitimize and produce the historical as a kind of timed telling. Sethi, commenting on Sen, asks for something that needs to be said by Sen: the travails of temporality, their relationship to transnational/global capital, to labor, to the timing of bodies in colonial pasts and neocolonial/imperialist futures. In his talk, Sen uses foods and medicines that have come into common use—chili, cottage cheese, penicillin—to illustrate hybridity and the utopian possibilities of cultural amalgams. But Sen never discusses the mystification that attends the turning of objects in common use into commodities, and this is precisely the kind of mystification of consumption that Sethi wants Sen to unpack. This mystification, in its twentieth-century form, assumes spectral shape in the prostheses that crowd urban South Asian homes. Prostheses bring these homes, and the consumer citizens who live there, into the global pleasures of the millennium. And these prostheses bring with them those temporalities of global capitalism that perform the time of certain renditions of national statehood.⁶ Despite this omission in his speeches, Sen does presage, at the moment the state performs its opening moves to warlikeness, the bodily impact of the amassing of power in the form of votes that will be delivered to the Bharatiya Janata Party (bjp) at the century’s end. This after a war that was heralded as one but was not quite one, conducted as the year 2000 approaches.⁷ J AVA A N , K I S A A N , V I G YA A N

In the summer of 1998, Atal Behari Vajpayee, the then prime minister of India who was also the public voice of the bjp, offered up the vernacular, secular slogan “javaan, kisaan, vigyaan” (“youth/soldier, peasant/farmer, knowledge/science”) as a way of accumulating ecstatic national sentiment. He timed his slogan to close the nuclear tests conducted at Pokhran in Rajasthan. One report on the tests in May of that year turns to the mythological to describe the flowering of the violence of military technology: “By afternoon the wind had fallen silent over Pokhran. At 3:45 p.m., the timer detonated the three devices. Around 200 to 300 m deep in the earth, the g h o s t ly a ppe a ra n ces

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heat generated was equivalent to a million degrees centigrade. . . . Instantly rocks weighing around a thousand tons, a mini mountain underground vaporized. . . . One scientist on seeing it said, ‘I can now believe stories of Lord Krishna lifting a hill.’”⁸ National secular sentiment, here reported in the popular press in the voice of a member of a supposedly secular group, a group of scientists (vigyaan), turns into Hindu spectacle, into the visual evocation of a majority religious group in South Asia. Following the nuclear tests, Vajpayee was faced with explicating, and twisting, national feeling to form around what he had constituted as the indigenous answer to global expansionism (including the territorial desires of two arch, fantasy nemeses, Pakistan and China). Here, at the moment when India was being thrust forward as the leader of a seemingly secular state, the public spokesperson of a secular nation, Vajpayee, was called on to attempt to shape the bjp into a truly national party. Vajpayee was also confronted by the anger of portions of the populace that rebelled against the efficacy of nuclear testing as the site for national identification. Antinuclear activists joined with housewives irate at the expenditure on dead-end science even as the price of vegetables was rising. Faced with mediating multiple sites of desire, Vajpayee produced an easily repeatable mantra that cleaned up the Hindu inclinations of the bjp into something that appeared more secular. Vajpayee’s slogan, “javaan, kisaan, vigyaan,” tolled the nation in a secular mantra, one easily reiterated and comfortably retrofitted to conform to the rolling sounds and rigorous syllables of early nationalists. His slogan evoked the turn to modernization that did not leave the past behind. It opened with the pastoral, embodied in the farmer. Its words linked workers on the land and the army of youth to workers for knowledge production—all tuned to the service of a newly imagined state, and all seen in the rhetorical exigencies of many turn-of-the-century anticolonial movements. Vajpayee, noted as a poet, displayed in the three words an economy of temporality. He curved the nation, which he was leading into the millennium, back to a past, through the pastoral and through the memory of anticolonial movements. His turn was one that seemed easily secular, easily amenable to the modernizing, temporal impulses that drummed the pulse of a nation as a state-to-be. It was no accident, then, that the prime minister’s slogan was picked up as the centerpiece of the program that would culminate the prolonged commemoration of India’s fiftieth anniversary for independence (the commemoration started in 1997). It Patel

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would draw that celebration toward the millennium, a new era, synchronized with the temporality of global expansionism. Past and present, the past folded forward to lead into a newly found future that brought with it a newly constituted weapons status: all this Vajpayee wanted and got in three words offered to the nation at the right time. India was to be a country bristling with the right armaments, the right tools, and the right prosthetic devices to simulate national desire. This India, as it was to be narrated into the millennium by Vajpayee, would always produce its remembered allegiances. Vajpayee’s slogan turns first to the farmer, the kisaan, the being who encapsulates a bucolic original pastoral past yet embodies the possibility of current transformation. The kisaan constituted a point at which different kinds of temporality were knotted together. His body, though positioned in the present (place in time or spatialized time), was atavistic. He was rural India, the real India whose life had been evoked in the struggle for freedom by nationalist figures like Mahatma Gandhi. The farmer also offered the possibility of the temporality of redemption. He was redolent of the secular temporality associated with the modernization of the feudal that drew him into a capitalist future but at the same time wove him into a Christianizing moral fable. The stories of his modernization had filled the pages of the five-year plans that had been proposed and implemented (by Jawaharlal Nehru) immediately after independence. The texture of the religious fables of his deliverance thickened or thinned based on whether his body began its journey with a load of sin or set off with a sort of originary purity (pastoral as failed mode of production, pastoral as pure origin). The farmer’s salvation was the nation’s future; the successful resolution of his salvation as the nation’s future had fulfilled the dreams of a wholesome, self-sustaining agricultural base. But for the kisaan’s redemption to come into its own, his work had to be supplemented by the prostheses of modernity extraneous to his pastness. The kisaan ventured a curious circularity, and one that came to be through a masculinizing turn. He was the metonymy for the nation, and through him the nation moved forward. He was also someone merely contained within the nation, which had to supplement him to enable him to move forward. His prescience permitted the atavism of nationalism, which had often been given over to women dedicated to preserving the nation’s past, to hold onto its masculinity. Cultural preservation conducted through him made the traditional safe for manliness. So, the kisaan here is the folk, the people of the nation, always in need g h o s t ly a ppe a ra n ces

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of economic redemption. In this form as kisaan, he, the male invoked as the representative of the folk, his women subsumed to him, brings the past into the future at the moment of his invocation in the present. As kisaan, the man of the earth struck a secular, and economic, compact with national prosperity and the future of the nation. The farmer’s technological prostheses (tractors, scientifically bolstered seed) were supplements that culled food—to be put to use to feed the nation and the nation’s youth, thus ensuring their healthy wholeness. And he was the antithesis of the urban householder attached to his own distinctive technological prostheses. Vajpayee’s slogan then goes on to enunciate its allegiances to the nation’s youth, without whom there would be no future. This youth is kept productive, fed into well-being by the kisaan. The word for youth, javaan, also means foot soldier, and it carries with it the vigilance of youth, youthful vigilance. The nation fashioned around the young soldier keeps an eye on itself—patrols its borders, ensuring their integrity—and thrusts itself outward into a nuclear future. The javaan is the child who peoples the militarized state and whose birth brings with it the ghosts of war, of death. Vajpayee closes his three-word mantra with vigyaan, knowledge. The word’s generality encapsulates the breadth of a transcendental abstract and the girth of an industrial complex as industrial state and industrial machine. Vigyaan is a transmutation of gyaan, knowledge as gnosis, knowledge as a technique of knowing the past in an intimate relation to it. Vigyaan assures, securing “truthful” knowledge, guaranteeing a reading of the past to which one ought to pay attention. Vigyaan also means the one who possesses knowledge, the superior knower, the knower who must be acknowledged as the wise one. Gyaan, his erudition, can manifest as science. So vigyaan is simultaneously of the past and of the present, and like kisaan and javaan pledges the nation’s future. Brought into service at the time of nuclear transition, the tiny abstractions coded into vigyaan were at the service of quick destruction. They were the cores, the atomic energy at the heart of science (the nucleus of matter itself) that assured the nuclear state. The bjp’s continued refusal to sign the nuclear proliferation treaty speaks to its belief that every nation becomes one in the present, and remains one through a future, through the right of access to that basic core. Vajpayee’s post-Pokhran nuclear tests slogan became the cue that was to effloresce in the year 2000 into the “pageantry planned to conclude

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fifty years of freedom celebrations.”⁹ Vajpayee’s mantra was an implicit response to Sen’s call, and like Sen’s call, it did not open the space to address the production of its own mystifications (labor, capital, and history). So, in the discussion that foretold this spectacle that was to celebrate a renewal of the compact with freedom promised by Nehru at midnight on 14 August 1947, when South Asia gained its independence from the British, the pageantry of Vajpayee’s new nuclear state became strangely, albeit necessarily, agentless. The spectacular observance of India’s nationhood and of the coming millennium was to naturally flower into being from the slogan. Displaying details explaining the rationale for these celebrations in the year 2000 and showing off their future content, the minister for human resource development, Murli Manohar Joshi, transmuted (metonymized), translated, signified, and mystified. Vajpayee’s slogan contracted and expanded, cohered nationalism, desire, and time around itself in contradictory ways. Knowledge as wisdom (vigyaan, gyaan, gnosis), knowledge bodied in the vigyaan metamorphosed into science, science metastasized into the youthful technology of warfare ( javaan), congealed into value, congealed into the fetish/fantasy of a nuclear arsenal that projected and thrust the national into the global.¹⁰ “A proud nation,” the minister for human resource development said, “crowned its five decades of achievements in the acquisition of a nuclear weapon state status.”¹¹ Not the nuclear weapon here, but nuclear weapon state status. The invocation of state status is not merely about the spectacular display of the implements of nuclear warfare (warheads, etc.) but about the acquisition of a status—that of the nuclear state. This state/status was fetishized not into mere weaponry but into the process through which the status of nuclear state was displayed. Each slip, from javaan to kisaan to vigyaan, slid into a more specific metonymy, tightening and loosening the metonymic screw, each displacement (translation as transmutation) expanded the sites of signification as it made the metonymic possibilities more congealed. The bjp has had a long history of resorting to metonymy as its signifying practice. It is one part of a right-wing combine. The combine’s productions of appropriate temporality turn to the idealized Hinduized (perhaps Sanskritized) cycle of time, four continuous repetitions (yugas) through which the world comes into being as perfect, deteriorates into moral squalor, and dissolves, only to come into being again. In these productions’ confluences of temporality, time shrinks, repeating the four only as two—

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as in the rss’s (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh) four yugas represented by two, the sat and the kali. A part replaces and stands in for the whole, but in the production of this metonymy is a necessary lapse. In order to produce the part for the whole, the “nature” (the natural characteristics that define the part and the whole) of the thing has to be changed. Time acquires a kind of moral valence, a relationship to historicity that both Christianizes and organizes the breaks of temporality in a colonial sequence. The time of the state is a timing recognized to disinter and turn back the kali yuga (the dark age) to sat yuga (the true, the right, the beneficent age).¹² In the commemorative celebrations, drums of freedom march down Rajpat, the royal street in Delhi, to the millennium. The millennium gives this government permission to foretell its future in relation to the past it has swallowed up. Independence is conscripted and reproduced anew. State history slips without remark into national history. The background music at the closing function would include, the minister for human resource development said, Gandhi, Nehru, and Bose refracted away from their historical interferences with each other and with Hindu nationalism.¹³ The background music will also include vande maataram (beloved mother) and saare jahaan se acchaa (better than the entire world). The music begs the sounds of religious politics, each song rousing nationalist fervor in a different religious rhythm: the first from preindependence Hindu Bengal, the second from preindependence Muslim Punjab, before the call for Pakistan. Religion is tuned to iconoclasm, iconoclasm is turned into tune, bartered without harm, and incorporated as negotiated instantiation. The folk are sidelined to tents on the lawn lining Rajpat as the army and the nation’s arsenal march down the street. Here they will play out their timeless dances. This becomes the display of the kisaan. A range of regional folk is to be invited, each rural, and each will bring with it the implements and markers (dress, musical instruments, bodily movements, weapons) of its regional difference. Each will turn itself into an anthropological spectacle, a kind of living museum, so that observers can come by to partake of national diversity. The farmer, the rural, the pastoral—the iconography and geography of the Indian socialist state—must move from the center to the sidelines to perform even as they watch the spectacular amassing of state power.¹⁴ Nation is state, statehood, and state status. Its sustainable knowledge as vigyaan is unmarked in its seeming secularity, the word’s (vigyaan’s) alle-

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giances to Sanskrit both necessary and necessarily unspoken. Knowledge could have been ’ilm, shu’ur, maalumaat, but then the secular’s allegiances would have been located in another historicized lineage, the unspeakable one of Urdu, Persian, and Arabic, now the languages of Islam. There are no Jews or Christians here. Christianity, as Paola Bacchetta has shown in her work on the right wing, appears in the forms that time displays in the stories of time narrated by the Hindutva combine. Four Hindu yugas are turned down, tuned down into two endless repeating ones animated by a Christianized moralizing disciplinary force: sat yuga, the true, the god time, the good time, followed by kali yuga, our time, the time of the present, the bad time, the moment of the emergence of linear time, the time of history from cyclical eternal time. Subcontinental history is narrated through an angular vision of Christian/utilitarian Protestant colonialism, a vision aligned through a desire to offer redemption—a golden time (to be salvaged through utilitarian/Protestant colonialism), followed by the time of turning bad, the time of strife. The history espoused by the right-wing combine follows this moral lineage of British periodization: the once glorious time of the Hindus, now haunted by Muslim and colonial time, will be recuperated through Hinduism.¹⁵ TURN THE C ALENDAR OVER TO CHRISTIAN TIME, L ABOR TIME

Telling the time of trauma: in texts written in the late 1800s and early 1900s, aesthetics, value, and commodities were woven into each other in analyses of colonialism conducted through cotton. In secondary texts discussing these issues, the dating systems on articles cited, those charged with the burden of proof, changed.¹⁶ The dates on the primary articles that framed and sited the arguments were transformed without notice from one calendar into another—from Muslim or Hindu to the Christian.¹⁷ This realization about the eruption of difference in time not in the body of a text but rendered as citation sent me back to the events of a period during which the dating of texts shifted. That period was the approximate 1900, 1331 Hijri, Samvat 1309. By this point the debates over the kind of deformations of the time of labor that organized work under colonization had been somewhat resolved. Some of the debates about the efficacy of writing South Asian histories along a particular timeline also seemed to have been resolved. But the narration of the past and its particular configurations, its

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valences as utopian past and failed past, were still being configured and were to continue being shaped into the postcolony. Time had been given a certain due, and the struggles over it had lapsed from immediate view. My realization about the eruption of difference in time, rendered as citation, sent me back to a record of events during a time when nationalism was being produced as collective fantasy/ies, when rancorous debates were being conducted about the failing production of indigenous goods like cotton and the boycotts of “foreign” goods like cloth milled in British factories. Mystifications here appeared through temporality: cloth became, in a synchronous and coeval conjunction, both timeless folk art, part of a religious exchange that practiced the past, and a commodity produced by industry timed through labor. During this period the local was beginning to be produced simultaneously as rural, pastoral, and village precapitalist combine, and the industrial state combine was rapidly turning the colony into a site for the consumption of nationalist goods: national soap, national fiber. Buy national fiber, wear the cloth of the nation-to-be, clothe the nation, and feed the workers. We are the inhabitors, the inheritors of a domestic timed into ritual, timed insistently into value, timed into body discipline—women doubly educated, educated simultaneously into tradition and modernity, elucidating the ghost of a national child. This was a time when the kisaan, the farmer who later appeared in Nehru’s independent socialist state and in Vajpayee’s slogan for the new millennium, was denuded of the rights of use in common so that he could be allocated (gifted as a right by the state) property for domestic use. The weaver, as well as the agricultural laborer moving into systems of agricultural capitalism, worked along with the laborer who manufactured the commodities that defined the newly decorated domestic space of the emergent striving nationalist bourgeoisie. This was a time when communities were being produced as communal through religion, language, land, and histories. It was a time when peoples, origins, essences, and authenticities became amenable to “global” European constructions of modernity. Communities that were out of time, essentialized, and that were in time, through narrating their history.¹⁸ This was a time when colonial depredations were counted out as imbalances of payment, imbalances of goods and commodities, and imbalances between peoples.¹⁹ And there were the beginnings (though not the origins) of a call for representation through communal franchise (the production of communities as voting blocks with seats reserved, for example, Patel

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for Muslims and the Congress). It was a time when the secular was being argued through the not-quite, not-as-yet national Hindu. By 1911, the anticolonial swadeshii (own country) movement, begun with the partition of Bengal in 1905, had come to a close. The swadeshii movement advocated self-help through nationalist industries, nationalist pedagogy, and law, as well as through boycotts of British goods, education, justice, and administration. The movement was often accompanied by religious revivalism (mainly Hindu), a “morale-booster for activists, and a principal instrument of mass contact.”²⁰ Depredations of colonialism were tallied up in terms of money, capital, trade, goods, commodities, votes, and people, but rarely explicitly through time. This despite the culling of time to promote religion through the spectacular revivals of the past. Forgetting temporality was a form of thinking: value and work in relation to transnational capital.²¹ The nation was fantasized as the promised land at the junctures of this flowing triangulation of local labor, external capital, and external labor. Time, of course, was nowhere in sight. Where, then, does time appear, perhaps as spectralized? Time as spectral is the culmination of a realigning of temporalities so that the latter take their final, natural materialized form—clock time, historical time, national time, the timelessness of tradition.²² Different kinds of temporality came together, though they looked like one. The nation that was desired for the colony’s future was formulated as the modern industrial liberal state through disciplinary normative systematizing. Debates conducted in Bengal from the late eighteenth century to the late nineteenth century speak to the epistemic violence of this realigning of temporalities.²³ The unnatural naturalness of these alignments of temporality begins with historical time, that time through which history came to be written and exchanged, producing an imagined national collectivity. The lining up of temporality begins in the nineteenth century with the enactment of different temporalities in relation to one another, and it is spoken eventually in terms of a struggle between the civil-political, religious-colonial, and the domestic—as contiguous, as impinging, as the same, as different. That struggle is organized in the terms of karma (kr the root, which means doing, but karma also becomes work, in its form chaakrii). That struggle occurs between time of labor (as both proper, karma, and improper, chaakrii), and the temporality allocated to performance of ritual. It occurs within and through the time of industrialization, the time of the modern as both degeneration and salvation, the time of the not-nation, the time of Christianity. The unevenness of this aligng h o s t ly a ppe a ra n ces

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ment between the two and between both and their framing time is tallied, is reiterated in ruptures, in excess.²⁴ The time of labor already speaks the modern as within, rather than as merely the outside framing. The time of the nation-to-be, nationalism, as its protoform speaks the incommensurability of the time of labor (work devoted to and performed for colonial institutions like law courts, etc.) as an outside, and the time of public industry (work devoted to nationalism and performed in public-sphere indigenous organizations like sabhaas, newspapers) as the inside necessary to nationalism. But this excess is precisely not about time and not in time, but about affect, about pleasure, about love, about loss, about mourning—about affect as something that comes from between the differentials of temporality but is outside those temporalities and exceeds them. This kind of affect eruption stretches time backward, without going back; it returns to a sense of pastness via the given backwardness of the anthropologized past-present or via the allocated timelines of the historical, the biological, the life narrative, the autobiography. Dipesh Chakrabarty, a historian, goes to the chronotope, the Bakhtinian evocation of different forms in differential times, differential spatializations. He goes to excess as something that carries with it genres modulated in space-times that do not quite work their bodies into a fit and erupt through the methodical narration of progress. Gyanendra Pandey, the other historian whose work I will speak about here, looks at excess as it interrupts the placement of different scripts that tell the events occurring in a particular place. Both historians cannot tell history without the seams of the trials that produce linearity showing, and leaking. Their leaks speak to the desire scripted into the heart of nationalism, “an excess in the narration of nation, that is a sign of the impossibility of the nation’s own materialization as an object of desire.”²⁵ Chakrabarty goes to the word mangal in his speaking of excess. Mangal is a word that Bengali urban women, in writing about the propriety of their own domesticity in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, use to characterize themselves in the sphere of their domesticity. Here and elsewhere, the narration of the coupling of the modern and the traditional occurs through the domestic. The domestic becomes the place where the past will enact itself properly, and where the nation as it is imagined will retain its traditional (read religious) proprieties. Proper behavior, proper household, proper ritual. Home training, good health, and disciplinary time: food, medicines, cleanliness (the soap is national), at the right time. Patel

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Good morals, good manners, punctuality, timeliness. The time of the person, disciplinary time, the time for leisure, for ritual at leisure. Women are taught to read so that they can organize the household into the proper temporality of the bodied national regimen of routine. Women are kept from reading so that they can live the ritualized traditional. The national is brought into being, though, through precisely what is not there. Somewhere in the space of the national-to-be, angled through gendered bodies, is the longing of an improper desire for commodity and money, and the pressure of a proper desire for the past. Impropriety can be the pleasure of transgressing the kula, the family, the patriarch (produced as one) through the pleasure of the transgressive—learning language, which shoots women into the symbolic, into law. But even as they are so shot, so hailed, the fantasy of uncontrol through language and pleasure is the place of their repudiation (as the production) of the symbolic that gave them the “rights” to language in the first place. Mangal is translatable as auspiciousness, well-being, material prosperity, the kind of thingness prayed for when a good mercantile family worships Lakshmi in Gujarat in a new year in the 1990s, distributing calendars in her wake. The new Lakshmi is the woman of the household who keeps accounts in record time. Mangal—the constitutive management of modernity, etched into the records kept by industrialists, calling for capital saved, capital expended, capital accumulated. But this is a word, here, in Chakrabarty’s longing voice, which is also untranslatable and resonates as such with pre-British narratives, poetry—mangalkaavyas—Mangal poems. Mangal, Chakrabarty says, speaks the pleasures of the intertwining of “narratives of Bengali domesticity and [familiar] familial emotions . . . with the popular tales and songs that have [been] celebrated for at least three centuries.”²⁶ Mangalkaavyas celebrate the goddesses Durga and Kali. Mangalkaavyas bring the human into gods and spirits and vice versa, and do not partake of the Christian and modernist separation between worlds. As we say this we participate in those separations. What then is at the heart of Chakrabarty’s semantic elaborations? Difference perhaps: that seeps out in registers that remember religion and its temporalities, that seeps out in precisely those registers that record the nation in its atavistic, anthropological forms. The place of its seeping is the domestic, that place where difference must be inclined toward time in certain ways to make the nation part of the family of man. Temporality here invokes displaced desire, an investment in the longing voice of a self that brings the personal to the historical and archival. What is the status of g h o s t ly a ppe a ra n ces

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these bits of memory, and how do they fit the circular narration of neutral historical facticity of nation building? Yet another historian, Pandey, also goes to affect in the scripting of differential narratives, the labor of love invoked in composing local “Muslim” chronicles in the 1880s set against the writing of history, an affectless writing, or writing with its affect sublimated. The differential narratives are narrated as an eruption over contested religious space.²⁷ According to Pandey, the community in a precapitalist structure (or I would say in differential) defines itself precisely by its territoriality and at the same time by its temporality. From the nation (to be) as eternal India with a natural geographical unity, to the region to the level of tribal tract, small town and village with rights over given territories. Myths, folktales, proverbs, genealogies, histories of caste, religion, region, nation—a whole plethora of “historical” statements were also thrown up to underline the temporal axis, the heritage, the popular consciousness of common traditions by which the local community defined its own identity and projected its image to others.²⁸

Pandey speaks to a dating of events into history—and a colonial foretelling of a national historiography. Instead of lingering here, providing that timed spacing, the certainty afforded by stopping there without pause, Pandey goes to “historical memory” and accounts of little community, as well as to localized chronicles. But the dating Pandey speaks as he describes the chronicles is already given in the spectralized temporality of Christianity that animates colonial historiography, in the ways that the natural movement of communities was toward salvation through voting as a block. Pandey talks in the temporalities of the Marxist modes of production (from feudal to capitalist), and in the economic narratives haunted by Karl Marx in the ways they invoke the specter of a story that binds men together through relations of labor (precapitalist, post-Fordist economies).²⁹ In his record of the record, Pandey tells the tale of Ali Hasan. Hasan was the narrator authorized by his community. And he considered putting the chronicle of the community together in the early 1880s during a conversation in the Middle School at Mubarakpur, where “talk turned to the repeated bloodshed of 1813.” Blood—the uncontrolled excessiveness of

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violence, rivers of blood that escape their moorings—is where the chronicle is brought into being. Pandey goes to affect—chronicle as a labor of love incited by blood, versus history as a bloodless writing, without affect or with its affect sublimated—to describe the labor put into Waaqeat o hadesat (Events and Occurrences or Encounters and Calamities). In the table appended by Pandey to a discussion of the chronicle (but not situated in its narration) we see what affect permits—a double dating as a tabled translation, a calendar, with some dates doubled and some not. For example: 1810 is 1226 Hijri, 1832 is 1247 Hijri, and 1813 is just 1813; some events interspersed between those dates in the chronicle are not dated. In 1813: a threat to the life of the qasba (township), what Pandey calls a moment of madness when the community almost destroyed itself. A moment that draws forth or calls forth the telling of the chronicle as a series of cataclysmic events. The conflict in 1813 was over a piece of land doubly signified through religion. On one side of the tract was a Muslim tabular (a platform where taxies are placed during Muharram), on the other a Hindu thakurdwaaraa (a small temple). This led to slaughtering a cow and throwing some pigs onto the platform. The year 1813 is a date, a placement/sign in calendrical signification recorded in a colonial temporality. Was this because the only temporality proper to it was a colonial one? Was this because the proper temporality of a conflict narrated as one over land between religions was also one bonded to colonial narratives about the schism and struggle of the insane, the out-of-consciousness, of mass mobilizations, crowd mobilizations that could only be rendered as communal/religious conflict? In his analysis of the chronicle as a whole, Pandey moves to class, to the schisms between locals—julaha or weavers (weavers of cotton cloth whose losses in trade are recorded in colonial archives and whose losses call out when colonial depredations are balanced) and the sharif or landowners.³⁰ Precisely the point of contention in the scripting of history and precisely the positions that had to contest the ownership of the chronicles. Who owns the chronicles? Not the weavers, those workers whose production of cloth is at the heart of the reconfiguration of nation around 1900 and whose stories through cotton provoked my interest in the question of temporality. Not these workers who lost labor time as their goods were burnt in one of the incidents recorded. They are left out, even as the

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chronicler Ali Hasan hails the figure of the weaver in his record: “God grant the weavers of Mubarakpur such wisdom that through their courage and determination they may keep the funds of the golak (a public subscription system established for the upkeep and extension of the mazar and Jama Masjid) ever flowing.”³¹ T E L L I N G A G A I N A N D A G A I N : S PA C E - T I M E E R U P T I O N S

In Chakrabarty’s narration, mangal as eruption condenses a differential in pleasure. The space-times of poetry, folktale, and myth spill through a narrative fold settled into the material of history doubled over as a story that Chakrabarty scripts into the modern and faux secular (and its anthropologized other, Hinduism) precisely in the names he gives to narratives—history, folktale, myth. Pandey narrates the narrations of eruptions as narrations of chronicle with affect and narrations as colonial history without affect. The narrations have as their origin story, but not as their beginnings (in his table/ calendar, spatialized temporality), the violence engendered over a site bordered by two religious space-times. Pandey’s narration in the space-time of the modern tells yet another double temporality in the form of a table that tallies the tolls of the events of the chronicle in two calendars: the first, the calendar of a colonial archive haunted by the Christian; the second, beside and under it, metaphorizes into Islam, but not a simple idea of Islam. It is not folktale, and it is not myth. Nor is it history. And what is left out here is labor. Chakrabarty, then, speaks a narrative of nationalism-to-be and progress to come.³² Excess is an explosion out of domestic time given a Christian linearity. Chakrabarty’s text travels backward and forward, from the 1880s to 1823, to 1800, to the 1880s. It begins with the idea of domestic life (feminized, the home), travels through the civil-political as masculinized, and culminates in the domestic. Chakrabarty’s tussle throughout the article, his tussle with his own timed telling, is with historical space-time. Pandey narrates in the frame of the historical, two sets of narratives, two times, two calendars, two forms, two rhetorics. Excess is narrated, is formed in the telling of a doubled telling: colonial as speaking historical eruptions of out-of-control communities, and chronicle speaking eruptions in the temporalities of tragedies haunting a community. Nationalismto-be in both tellings is an elsewhere. But for Pandey, colonialism, neocolonialism, nationalism, time all into synchronicity. Patel

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Telling violence (angled through Islam) is Pandey’s project in his book: how to tell it so that it does not get hinged into repetitions of colonialism and nationalism that narrate trauma in the particularized rhetorics of genres of telling. Telling colonial modernity (angled through Hinduism/secularity) is Chakrabarty’s intended project in his essay: how to tell it so its seams tell something else. Perhaps the difference between the two tellings lies in each one’s line of sight. Each angles a different instantiation of the relation to privilege (and to those tellings through which the bjp curves affect): Who and what is the secular, and who or what is its necessary other born with it as twin? Where is the Christianness secreted into secular time? NOTES I would like to thank Janet Jakobsen and Ann Pellegrini for conversations, edits, and language, and Kath Weston, Marla Erlien, Margaret Cerullo, Anindyo Roy, Paola Bacchetta, Begoña Aretxaga, Prasannan Parthasarathi, Edna Chiang, and Rachelle Dang for their constant engagement. The first appearances of this essay were in Gay Community News and as a talk for the Committee on Degrees in Women’s Studies, Harvard University, November 1998. All unacknowledged translations are my own. 1. It was perhaps provoked by a different relationship to commodification—and the manufacturing of desire for the millennium as signifier of “what?”—than that found in European capitals. See Richard Jenkyns, “British Public Cannot Get It Up about Millennium Dome in 2001,” New York Review of Books, 28 May 1998; and Baudrillard, Illusion of an End. The millennium ought to be particularly prone to an overdetermination, or emptying of meaning, as a time whose timing has been sort of, well, “off.” See Gould, Questioning the Millennium. See also Frow, Time and Commodity Culture; Spivak, Critique of Postcolonial Reason; Berlant, Queen of America Goes to Washington City; Fabian, Time and the Other; and Levinas, Time and the Other. 2. “United Nations Warns Members of Millennium Bug,” Times of India, 29 June 1998. In a telephone interview with Sanjay Patel on 2 September 1999, Patel suggested that embassies and multinationals had been issuing warnings to their residents in South Asia that the infrastructure of the state and/or the machinery of local companies might break down and were suggesting that “foreigners” take extended vacations from the region over the first of the year. 3. Marx, Capital, 1:71. 4. Sunil Sethi, “Through the Glass Darkly,” Times of India, 28 August 1998. Sen’s lecg h o s t ly a ppe a ra n ces

244 ture took place in New Delhi on 20 August 1998. It was titled “An Assessment of the Millennium.” 5. Ibid. 6. A growing literature on cyborg subjectivity can be assembled here to attest to the productivity of marshaling prostheses (as the naturalized extensions of self, subject, and body; or as the coming into being of corporeal selves through biopower) to reconfigure how selves are constituted in relation to consumer capitalism. It is worth noting for the moment that particular global technological prosthetic devices, which include telephones, televisions, computers, and so on, have not been naturalized in South Asia (just as they have not been naturalized on Navajo land in the United States) as ordinary extensions of the body. Examples of this process of making a body/organism amalgam are spoken in the quotidian statements, “Just call me,” or “We can talk on the phone,” or “Here is my number, this is how you can get in touch with me.” Obviously, urban/rural and class distinctions (among others) are formulated literally in the possibilities verbalized by these phone commonplaces, extended in certain instances to email, the computer, and the Web. Prostheses are unselfconsciously marked, and marketed as so marked in South Asia. They are sold as the extension you want for a new selfhood. Perhaps this precise differentiation between the suturing of the prosthetic to the self in South Asia and, for example, certain places in the United States accounts for the “lack” of anxiety around the millennium in South Asia. See Žižek, “Fetishism and Its Vicissitudes,” 103, for the dematerialization of the fetish (money as a virtual entity), which strengthens its hold. In the case of the millennium in the United States, the hold perhaps appears as fears of the breakdown of conjured-up circulatory mechanisms of the spectral, which can only be overcome if one turns the spectral solid. One example demands that one turn electronic money (usually available with bank cards, and if one exhibits the right attributes for credit, supplemented by a credit line) into hard cash, stashed in secret in one’s home just in case the bank refuses to give you money at the turn of the millennium. It is also worth noting here that millennial (Christian) dystopian possibilities help to enable the turn: the spectral into rude and ready cash for exchange. 7. The Kargil war, conducted in the summer of 1999 with national fanfare, was also accompanied by a movie, John Matthew Matthan’s Sarfarosh, which unwound its peculiar insider-outsider politics. The war, gathering patriotism around it like a flag, set the stage for the bjp’s rejuvenation of its failing promise. See “Scoring Plans,” India Today, 2 August 1999. 8. Manoj Joshi, “Nuclear Shock Wave,” India Today, 8 May 1998.

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245 9. “Pagentry Planned to Conclude Fifty Years of Freedom Celebrations,” Times of India, 30 July 1998. 10. Coronil, Magical State, 60–66. 11. See Paola Bacchetta’s discussion of time in the forms of the combine’s transformation of material, “Communal Property/Sexual Property,” 90. For a small sampling of the extensive literature on communalism, see Basu et al., Khaki Shorts; Jaffrelot, Hindu Nationalist Movement in India; Gautam, Communalism and Indian Politics; Kakar, Colors of Violence; Graham, Hindu Nationalism and Indian Politics; Dhyani, Secularism; Golwalkar, Bunch of Thoughts; Bharatiya Janata Party, Election Manifesto, 1998 (pamphlet). 12. Jones, Works; Mill, History of British India; Muller, India. 13. This was a lovely attrition of sexuality by the bjp: taking over a logic earlier repudiated—the feminized sexuality of Gandhi and marrying it to the asexuality of Nehru and the martial manliness of Bose. See Sinha, Colonial Masculinity; Roy, Indian Traffic; and Nandy, Intimate Enemy. 14. See the bjp election manifesto (25–28), which promises a revival of the rural as industrial, including inland fisheries, piggeries, and beekeeping; free trade in foodstuffs across the country; sustainable agriculture through insurance; and profitable ancillary activities. 15. In colonial histories like those written by James Mill, religious time is followed by the time out of religion, the time of modernity. Bacchetta, “Hindu Nationalist Women,” esp. 139–40. 16. See, for example, Mitter, Art and Nationalism; and for a different discussion about the same period that brings aesthetics together with Urdu poetry and that does not cite the multiple and translated temporalities, see Pritchett, Nets of Awareness. 17. Prabasi, around Samvat 1309, and Zamindar, around 1331 Hijri. 18. Ajay Skaria, “Writing, Orality, and Power in the Dangs”; David Hardiman, “Power in the Forests”; Ramachandra Guha, “Forestry and Social Protest in the British Kumaun.” 19. See the editorials in the Hindu (e.g., 9 July 1907); Parthasarathi, “Rethinking Wages and Competitiveness”; and Engels, Condition of the Working Class. 20. For a quick and thorough synopsis that incorporates most of the facets of a movement on which a great deal has been written, see Sarkar, Modern India, 101–62.

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246 21. Har Dayal, “Karl Marx.” See Muhammad Husain Azad, aab-e hayaat. See also Sumit Sarkar, “‘Kaliyuga,’ ‘Chakri,’ and ‘Bhakti.’” 22. Thompson, “Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism.” 23. Freitag, Collective Action and Community, speaks to the difference between the riots that exploded in the 1810s and then again in the 1880s in Banaras. The first were incited by religion, perhaps even organized around it, but the second were formulated around the needs and concerns of religious communities (constituted of people who identified themselves as subjects through their religious affiliations and who demanded certain conditions for their replenishment and being). She provokes the question of subject constitution in the nineteenth century, the shift from an act (a religious act) to a voting subject who was given representation as a member of a religious group (a communal subject whose identity was told, tolled through religious beliefs and affiliations). Other issues that point to the question Freitag provokes are the proliferation of biographies in the 1880s; the production of a certain kind of poetic self spoken into being at the same period; and imitation as a choice made by a colonial subject when aesthetics is addressed in relation to cotton and nationalism in the 1890s. 24. See Chakrabarty, “Difference-Deferral.” 25. Begoña Aretxaga, “On Nationalism and Time,” unpublished manuscript, December 1998. 26. Chakrabarty, “Difference-Deferral,” 86. 27. Pandey, The Construction of Communalism. 28. Ibid., 8. 29. Derrida, Specters of Marx. 30. See Appadurai, Social Life of Things. 31. Pandey, Construction of Communalism, 111, 117–19, 139. 32. Prasad, “On the Question of a Theory.”

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CHAPTER TEN

“ the quick, the dead, and the yet unborn ” : untimely sexualities and secular hauntings ˜ Molly McGarry

The history of sexuality as it has been written and theorized over the past three decades is entangled with the history of secularism. In what is more typically a powerful, unspoken assumption than a meaningful historiographic description, secularism names the product of a forward-moving modernity that swept magic from the world to make way for the capitalist market and the reign of reason.¹ Following Michel Foucault, many scholars have taken for granted that the process of secularization occasioned the birth of the modern sexual subject. As clinics and courtrooms emerged over the long nineteenth century as privileged sites from which to identify and name deviance, social scientific ways of knowing came to eclipse older theological forms. In this narrative, then, secularization and sexual identity formation seem to march forward together, each ushered in by capitalism. This essay untangles these twined progress narratives to examine the ways in which histories of secularism structurally underwrite histories of sexuality and function to elucidate some forms of sexual subjectivity while occluding others. Assuming a binary divide between the secular and the religious likewise masks the religious residuum of a post-Calvinist Protestantism that adheres in such putatively secular discourses as AngloAmerican sexual science. Turning to spiritual subcultures of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries reveals a world in which religious utopians and grassroots theologians understood themselves as scientists,

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many of whom were particularly interested in theorizing gendered embodiment. American Spiritualism and British theosophy provided an alchemical combination of science and magic cloaked in the language of popular positivism that called into question the very categories of male and female, material and immaterial, science and magic. Excavating a historical narrative in which secularism does not simply or inevitably triumph over an antimodern religion not only provides a more nuanced understanding of the past but also a more complicated politics of the present. The moral fable the West tells itself that “we” are secular depends on and produces itself over and against a presumably underdeveloped, nonsecular non-West.² This us/them language has taken on particular salience since 9/11 as U.S. pundits and politicians have contrasted “our” freedom-loving, secular democracy with “their” repressive fundamentalist Islam. In U.S. queer politics, claims for secularism are typically framed in liberal humanist terms of tolerance and social progressivism, which appear as naturalized nodes of opposition to right-wing religious rhetorics. The political spectrum that positions “religion” as always already at odds with queer subjects not only construes the idea of religious homosexuals (for example) as either oxymoronic or just moronic but also erases significant structures of belief that, at least in moments, sustain progressive politics.³ A certain understanding of American politics that produces the queer as the quintessentially secular subject shares a curiously similar conclusion with the history of sexuality as deployed in the American academy, one wrought from the thesis of a French thinker who traced a shift from European Roman Catholicism to scientific discourses of subjectivity. When Foucault published volume 1 of The History of Sexuality, it became a formative map for an incipient field of study.⁴ For many who have followed Foucault’s initial outline, secularization remains both the unnamed process and the context within which the fundamentally Christian duty of “passing everything having to do with sex through the endless mill of speech” was transformed from the solitary and semiprivate religious task of confession into the garrulous and often public act of speaking truth about the self.⁵ Beginning in the nineteenth century, the originators of an emergent scientific discourse forced new truths from old mouths, making science the preeminent way of knowing about sex from that time forward. In the now famous Foucauldian formulation, scientia sexualis discovered varied perversions and sexual heterogeneities and labeled the myriad types that would become modern sexual subjects.⁶ Dominant McGarry

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understandings of same-sex desire shifted from sin to crime to sickness, each layer supplementing but not supplanting the one before. Religious sin was transmuted into a secular morality concomitant with the medical profession’s construction of homosexuality as a medical condition alongside other anomalous sexualities. Secularization, then, was the process by which the sodomite was transformed from a “temporary aberration” into the species of the homosexual.⁷ The trajectory from sin to crime to illness, from aberration to species, is a history of secularization. More often, though, this story and the creatures whose story it tells are made to stand under the sign of the Modern, as in the creation of modern sexual subjects.⁸ In this model, secularism and modernity are at best conflated. I would argue that there is something important to be gained in not conflating modernization with secularization, the modern with the secular. There are crucial specificities and historical contingencies that get absented when doing so, and queer matters also are effaced. Since the publication of Foucault’s sweeping work, scholars have variously critiqued, augmented, and nuanced his narrative, while simultaneously forwarding their own. Whereas some find continuities in samesex sexuality and gender nonconformity across time, others hold fast to the Foucauldian “Great Paradigm Shift” that introduced the discursive categories of homo- and heterosexuality at the end of the nineteenth century.⁹ The field has evolved in such a way that even those theorists most associated with social constructionism would critique a catechism that creates a diluvial divide between premodern subjects who committed sexual acts and modern people who were named and claimed by sexual identities.¹⁰ In a different intervention, a generation of European and American historians has detailed the ways in which sexual subjects, far from being passive recipients of medico-juridical labels, crafted their own identities by renegotiating the terms under which they lived.¹¹ Social and community historians have stressed the importance of subculture over science, reversing the trajectory of identity formation from the discourse of experts to the lived experience of collective social worlds.¹² Historians have debated dates and origin stories and specified differences in national histories. New work on global sexualities and queer diasporas has focused on the situational nature of sexualities, detailing the importance of space and place, colonialism and global capitalism, in producing identities and desiring bodies.¹³ These important contributions have reoriented studies of sexuality u n ti m e ly se x ua li t i e s a n d se c u l a r haunt ing s

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around expanded categories of difference. The critic David M. Halperin describes the project as a search for “different historical forms of sexual experience—different ways of being, different sets of relations to others and to oneself, different articulations of pleasure and meaning, different forms of consciousness.”¹⁴ At least syntactically, all of these multiple differences fall under the rubric of historical difference. Temporality functions here as the difference most difficult to bridge, as the ultimate otherness. Indeed, Halperin points out elsewhere that doing a history of sexuality that respects the radical alterity of the past may have the paradoxical effect of disappearing the category of sexuality altogether.¹⁵ Yet this commitment to marking the pastness of the past, a historicist strategy to avoid misrecognition or mistaken presentism, is necessarily belated as it is occasioned by an initial sexual or gendered recognition. Like Spiritualists channeling the past, historians of sexuality ineluctably look for dead ancestors. In recovering the modern past, historians too often ignore the religious past, which offered historiographic techniques of remembrance and theories of time that challenge secular history itself. Because Euro-American studies of sexuality have been oriented around the dictum that homosexuality is an invention of Western urbanity, birthed at the moment of consolidation of capitalism and wage labor and subtended by the discourse of experts at the end of the nineteenth century, particular spaces and practices have emerged as privileged sites of investigation.¹⁶ Scholars have unearthed a modern and premodern history of sexuality by digging into the records of courts and prisons to locate sex criminals and sodomites, delved into diaries and letters for traces of lost relationships and the communities built around them, and turned to the records of sexologists to find the invert, the pervert, and the deviant. Yet these optics obscure another nineteenth-century history that theorized sexual and gendered ways of being beyond the secular, scientific taxonomies that produced the so-called modern sexual subject. I would like to ask how some varieties of religious experience may have been a marker for an incipient, not yet materialized sexuality, a sexual dissidence at once outside the medicojuridical matrix and beyond the expected spaces of urban subcultures. Spiritualists channeled the voices of the dead as a means of connecting with the past and imagining utopian futures. This mode of communication and representation contested secular temporality in literalizing the past for the present. If teleologic, secular history demands the transcendence of the past, Spiritualist practice collapsed time and refused to McGarry

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accept the past as over. For contemporary historians to call up these individual identities and collective communities attunes us not only to a lost material world but also to an apparitional netherworld often invisible to secular moderns. It yields a nineteenth century more seemingly premodern than modern, where the dead spoke to and through the living, where the world revealed daily wonders, and in which the realm of the invisible shaped social and sexual subjectivities. The shape-shifting subjectivities of Spiritualists opened them to other voices and other bodies in ways that stretch the notion of “imagined communities” to the breaking point. These historical subjects, who historians insist should be already modern and secular by the nineteenth century, let us make contact with a past that troubles easy divisions between the religious and the secular, the spiritual and the sexual.¹⁷ This past might also reveal alternative secularisms alongside alternative modernities, not one secularism but many: incomplete and necessarily so.¹⁸ An alternative history of nonsecular sexualities in nineteenth-century Anglo-America that restores a connection to histories of religion also puts pressure on a continental secularization narrative in which the (French) Catholic confessional sits in a genealogical relationship to the psychoanalyst’s couch. If the confessional is one culturally specific space from which speech about the self was produced, the Protestant evangelical tent, revival meeting, or Spiritualist séance may be American corollaries. Foucault’s reliance on confessional speech as the privileged mode for the production of discourse on and about sexuality makes bodily knowledges secondary to linguistic ones.¹⁹ By contrast, certain Anglo-American spiritualities uniquely fostered emergent sexualities precisely because spiritual embodiment—from hearing the voices of the dead to being moved bodily by the spirit—grounded religious experience, which in turn shaped social and sexual subjectivities.²⁰ This imbrication of the spiritual and the sexual suggests more than the now well-established connection between enthusiastic religion and ecstatic experience.²¹ In an important caveat and implicit critique of certain postmodern writers who regard “all religion as an unrecognized form of sexuality,” Michael Warner writes: “You can reduce religion to sex only if you don’t especially believe in either one.”²² Religion is more (and other) than sublimated, displaced sexuality; it is also a system that has not been particularly kind to sexual deviants. Conjoining a history of sexuality to a history of religion demands resistance both to casting spirituality as false consciousness and to reviving it in an implicit apologia that fails to acu n ti m e ly se x ua l i t i e s a n d se c u l a r haunt ing s

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knowledge its place in the history of the bodily regulation of queer subjects. Ironically, each of these seemingly oppositional gestures does the same ideological work in failing to take seriously either religion or sexuality.²³ THE ALCHEMY OF SCIENC E AND MAGIC

In the last third of the nineteenth century, as William James and many of his contemporaries bemoaned the loss of religion and science as mutually productive explanatory systems, a movement known as Modern American Spiritualism offered itself as “an experimental science,” affording “the only sure foundation for a true philosophy and a pure religion.”²⁴ In an age in which science was meant to have pushed religion to the cultural margins, this practice and cultural movement that purported to fuse the two claimed large numbers of adherents in Anglo-America. Spiritualism, a religious movement centered around communication with the spirits of the dead, offered nineteenth-century Americans a popular religion, one buttressed by “scientific evidence” of human immortality. Unlike other religions in which faith was a necessary prerequisite for belief, Spiritualists asked only that one become an investigator, attend a séance under test conditions, analyze evidence, and weigh whether or not to believe. Spiritualists described theirs as a “religion of proof.”²⁵ Speaking to the dead provided more than a vernacular science; it also offered solace. It was a religion that held out the possibilities of unmediated access to the afterlife and of a connection with dead loved ones. In so doing, it posed a counterdiscourse to both an aging Calvinism and a growing materialism. Spiritualism, then, was one of many responses to the vaunted Victorian crisis of faith. Like secularism, it arose from a shared font of specifically Calvinist thought, but rather than extending the promise of the “worldly asceticism” of the market, Spiritualism imagined another world entirely.²⁶ Though belief in personal communication with the spirits has historical antecedents dating back to the ancient world, nineteenth-century Spiritualism was born of a particular set of historical and cultural confluences. The antebellum period saw a broad interest in supernatural phenomena and the rise of a religious syncreticism that wedded popular supernaturalism to a Euro-American Protestantism. Nourished in the religious and cultural climate that the historian Jon Butler has termed “the antebellum spiritual hothouse,” Spiritualism blossomed alongside other pre–Civil McGarry

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War religious and utopian movements, consolidating many of the disparate spiritual and political movements of the day.²⁷ Spiritualists were often abolitionists and suffragists as well as advocates of dress reform or free love.²⁸ Some Spiritualists went west after the Civil War, founding new experimental communities in California. Others stayed in the Northeast and Midwest in quiet home circles or as public activists, some organizing for the cause of the Indian, fighting for the rights of labor, continuing to craft a unique brand of Spiritualist feminism, and eventually working against imperialism and for peace through disarmament.²⁹ The originary tale of nineteenth-century Spiritualism begins in 1848 in a little town in central New York when two sisters, Kate and Margaret Fox, heard mysterious noises and interpreted them as messages from the dead. Accounts of the events surrounding the Fox sisters soon spread. As the news traveled, so did similarly strange occurrences, bringing raps, knocks, levitating furniture, and eventually materialized spirits to darkened rooms across the country. Writing as a participant observer and interested party, the medium Emma Hardinge in her 1867 History of Modern American Spiritualism estimated the number of Spiritualists worldwide at 100 million.³⁰ A New York neurologist and Spiritualist debunker writing in the 1870s countered with the more conservative count of four million.³¹ While the actual number of Spiritualists—curious or convinced—was probably considerably less than either of these totals, it remains true that Spiritualism, which has been relegated to something of a cultural footnote, was ubiquitous in its day.³² That this wildly popular movement has been marginalized in standard histories of the nineteenth century says more about historiography, secularism, and politics than it does about the rise and fall of a political and religious anomaly in the nineteenth-century United States. Historians have ventriloquized Spiritualist detractors and debunkers, listened uncritically to a post–Civil War generation of aging reformers describe political loss and decline, and produced a narrative of a new culture of skepticism in which Spiritualists no longer make sense. Although there has been important work documenting the significance of antebellum Spiritualism, these histories, when they move beyond the divide of the Civil War, remain variously rendered stories of decline and fall.³³ The fact that Spiritualism has suffered a narrative of linear declension in a way that other nineteenth-century reform movements have not is particular to its status as a magical and political religion that troubles a tradition of history uneasy with the transgressively spiritual and sexual. This u n ti m e ly se x ua l i t i e s a n d se c u l a r haunt ing s

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anxiety informs why few have seen the ways in which Spiritualism existed as a residual discourse in the emergent culture of science and secularism.³⁴ As Raymond Williams has defined it, the residual is a cultural element that has been “effectively formed in the past but is still active in the cultural process, not only and often not at all as an element of the past but as an effective element of the present.”³⁵ The residual lives as a strain in culture, experienced and practiced in an alternative or even oppositional relation to the dominant. This is the case with Spiritualism, especially in this moment when the emergent values of the science of sex had yet fully to congeal as dominant. For nineteenth-century Spiritualists the experience of seeing ghosts— of being taken up, with, and by another body—became a means of understanding subjectivity both around and away from the séance table. For many, the mediumistic process of channeling differently gendered bodies produced another way of being in the world. At least for some mediums, the potential for a unique form of spiritual embodiment accounted for one of Spiritualism’s draws. Performing or speaking “out of body” segued with material and political reform causes such as alternative healing and dress reform to create a religious and social movement based on a reimagining of the corporeal. Spiritualist practice in the form of trance speaking and mediumship was understood as the possibility of disembodiment and a kind of purifying transfiguration and release from the earthly, gendered body. In offering new forms of embodiment, Spiritualism held enormous appeal for women and men who inhabited gender and sexuality in transgressive ways. There is an extensive historical literature detailing the ways in which women, historically, have been able to access power and authority via religion.³⁶ Spiritualists, like a much larger group of middle-class white women in the nineteenth century, called on the broader cultural couplings of femininity with piety, passivity, and purity. Claiming these qualities for mediumship, Spiritualists reappropriated the characteristics that had been used to deem women unfit for public life, transforming them into ideals of spirituality. In doing so, they made women not only the appropriate purveyors of religious knowledge but among the only public figures who could effectively lead Spiritualist practice. Mediums, who were almost always women or girls, provided the link between the worlds of the living and the dead and as such held the most powerful position within Spiritualism. Around séance tables and in public performances, female mediums spoke in public at a time when very few other women did.³⁷ McGarry

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Documenting the history of female mediumship has provided an important feminist intervention in religious, social, and political histories of the nineteenth-century United States. There were, however, a smaller number of male mediums who found the belief system similarly suited to their temperaments and tendencies. Engaging this related history of male mediumship furthers an understanding of Spiritualist theory as a radical philosophy of gender. As a gendered religious practice, Spiritualism was structured by a cosmology of balanced opposites.³⁸ Séances took place in a so-called sacred circle, a kind of geometric symbol of order and communion. Uriah Clark’s 1863 Plain Guide to Spiritualism recommended that a spirit circle contain an equal number of each sex to “balance” a gathering and that gender-conscious seating be utilized to properly alternate flows of energy.³⁹ This attention to equilibrium was sometimes expressed in the language of science: the conductivity of negative and positive charges was thought to be as ideal for a séance as it was for electrical circuitry. Positive masculine and negative feminine subjects were directed to sit opposite each other for maximum effect, positive forces on the medium’s left, negative on the right. Persons of strong, intellectual, and positive temperament were as necessary for a spirit circle as were those of a more receptive, emotional, or passive presence.⁴⁰ Stressing the need to reintegrate matter and spirit, male and female, some theorists noted the particular suitability of women to this restoration and healing.⁴¹ The balance that many Spiritualists sought, however, was also one that unsettled the immutable binaries that both midcentury science and culture rooted in the body. The symmetry of positive and negative forces called on to balance spirit circles, harmonize bodies, and equalize society was carefully and consciously gendered. Yet, remarkably, spiritual gender did not always correspond to biological sex. As the medium Andrew Jackson Davis explained it, the “distinction of male and female” was “not so essential with regard to sex” as it was to a balancing of “the feminine attributes of character which are negative and affectionate” and the “masculine or positive and intellectual temperament.”⁴² The structure of Spiritualist practice thus created a space for a range of femininities and masculinities, many of which would have exceeded the gendered proscriptions of Victorian culture. Meshing with a sentimental culture, which constructed itself through binary oppositions of public and private, masculine and feminine, active and passive, Spiritualists elevated the submerged value, bringing it to the center of their practice. Yet the gendered modes in which Spiritualu n ti m e ly se x ua l i t i e s a n d se c u l a r haunt ing s

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ists claimed religious authority provided the means by which Spiritualism was demonized and marginalized by nonbelievers. It was precisely this negative, feminine coding of mediumship that shaped a cultural understanding of Spiritualism as irrational and connected it with excessive, uncontrolled sexuality, and that later allowed doctors to recategorize the medium as the hysteric.⁴³ From the earliest years of Spiritualism’s popularity in the United States, medical doctors shaped the popular reception of the movement, pointing to the diseased minds of mediums and their followers as evidence of both individual and cultural insanity, naming Spiritualism sometimes as the cause and sometimes as the effect of that insanity. By the 1870s, specialists in diseases of the mind, especially neurologists, would forge their professional discipline by naming mediumship “mediomania” and associating it with a range of pathological symptoms.⁴⁴ As one observer noted, “These phenomena never appear spontaneously, or can be evoked, except in persons more or less diseased, or in weak women and impressionable children.”⁴⁵ The tropes employed to categorize this contagion would become familiar in the latter part of the century as they were taken up, and taken over, by the emergent discourse of sexology. Spiritualism flourished at the same moment that the dominant culture, informed by science and medicine, was working overtime to fix the boundaries of maleness and femaleness (and later, homosexuality and heterosexuality), solidifying those binaries as natural, essential, and immutable. Given Spiritualism’s privileging of receptivity, it is not surprising that Victorian women, cast as both pious and passive, could claim mediumship as a natural calling. Quite different questions and connections are raised by the fact that a significant number of men would find a parallel power in receptivity, crafting an unconventional model of masculinity through spiritual mediumship and trance speaking. That both Spiritualist men and women could reimagine their own gender through practices ranging from cross-dressing to defying the vocal ranges equated with sexual difference suggests yet another world of transformations. Excavating these radical theories of gendered embodiment and situating these historical subjects reveal social formations that even in their time were considered transgressive. From a twenty-first-century standpoint, Spiritualism seems rather queer in at least three ways: (1) As gender deviance and resistance to gender binarism; (2) as sexual deviance both in the form of free love, which defied the regulatory structure of heterosexual marriage, and in corporeal same-sex connections that belie easy McGarry

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divisions between the homosocial and the homosexual; and (3) as a language of gendered practice and erotic attachment that directly influenced the seemingly secular consolidation of these categories in the name of sexological science. At first glance these queer elements gather around categories of transgressive sexual encounters and gender formations. Yet the amorphous sexual matrix offered by Spiritualism blurred contemporary categorical distinctions such that the sexual couplings of Spiritualists may be the least strange thing about them. In historicizing Spiritualist practices, to resist severing the connections between distinct elements of religion, politics, sexuality, gender, and less easily named modes of experience is to recognize the very connectedness that informed Spiritualist philosophy. The boundaries that Spiritualists crossed—or momentarily bridged—produced a unique set of affinities through a radical collapse of temporality. Crossing the boundary of life itself worked to unsettle a whole series of earthly boundaries, and this unsettling provided both creative opportunity for believers and a disturbing set of paradoxes for debunkers. SPIRITUAL AFFINITIES

Mediums often began their dealings with the dead from the liminal borderland of adulthood. At a moment of maturation when childhood’s dreamscapes of ghosts and night visitors should have been drawing to a close, passing away through tutelage into the decidedly unfanciful reality of work and marriage, Spiritualism offered a different vision. Andrew Jackson Davis, who became a leading Spiritualist philosopher, was like many mediums in that he discovered his spiritual powers in early adolescence.⁴⁶ The apprentice of a rural shoemaker, Davis had skills of healing and diagnosing illness that far surpassed his formal education, of which he had no more than a few years. His clairvoyance and otherworldly knowledge soon earned him the designation “the Poughkeepsie Seer.”⁴⁷ As the Spiritualist historian Hardinge described him, his bearing and manner were similarly unusual: “Of a slight and delicate temperament, the young physician possessed a degree of intuitive refinement which in some sense compensated for his total deficiency of educational culture, and an artificial grace which could not be expected from his exceedingly humble origin.”⁴⁸ What is notable in Hardinge’s account is that she cannot seem to decide on which of Davis’s multiple differences to focus—his age, class, effeminacy, or rhetorical refinement. u n ti m e ly se x ua l i t i e s a n d se c u l a r haunt ing s

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As befitting one with effeminate refinement and delicate grace, Davis soon proved himself an adept submissive. At the age of fourteen, he was “magnetized” by William Levingston of Poughkeepsie, an itinerant mesmerist who discovered that the shoemaker’s boy had wonderful clairvoyant powers. Levingston gradually drew him from his trade into association with the world of mesmerism as the two performed together as “operator” and “subject.”⁴⁹ In 1845, under sway of a new masculine influence, Davis traveled to New York City to give a series of trance lectures.⁵⁰ Davis’s “harmonial philosophy” and heralding of a new dispensation, emanating as it did from a boy with only a “slender stock of village scholasticism,” attracted curious crowds eager to witness these mysterious ministrations.⁵¹ Though Davis began his career as a “blank slate,” magnetized by stronger spirits and guided by eminent men, his passive adolescence eventually receded to accommodate a more active, albeit somewhat atypical, manhood. After leaving his male operators, Davis convinced a wealthy admirer, Catherine DeWolf Dodge, to divorce her husband and marry him. As well as being more affluent than Davis, Dodge was also quite a bit older, making her a “strong spirit” and appropriate guide for the young medium.⁵² Within this Spiritualist community, erotic and spiritual attachments that transgressed differences in sex, age, and status were equalized through a belief in free love or “spiritual affinities.” Davis, like a significant minority of Spiritualists, believed that for each person there was a single spiritual mate to be revealed either in the world beyond or through communications with spiritual messengers. Other interpretations stressed the need to find one’s true spiritual mate in the here and now, even if that required dissolving the earthly bonds of marriage to do so. In either version, the personally held knowledge of spiritual affinities ran counter to the conventions of nineteenth-century bourgeois marriage. Spiritual affinities evinced a stronger magnetism than did the pull of either the church or the state, and nineteenth-century Spiritualists ended their marriages with greater frequency than did most middle-class Americans of their day. Davis’s first wife divorced her husband to marry him and, after her death, Davis married and divorced a second previously married woman, Mary Fenn Love, for Della Markham, a third.⁵³ The free love–Spiritualist connection was a vexed one, and nearly every Spiritualist newspaper published during the 1860s and 1870s printed heated debates on the relationship between the two movements.⁵⁴ Free lovers were not the only sex radicals publicly allied with Spiritu-

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alism. Mary Walker, who was dubbed “the most distinguished invert in the United States” in a 1902 medical journal article, was singled out over twenty years earlier by a fellow reformer as an example of the “Follies of Spiritualists.”⁵⁵ Known for her bloomers, top hat, “neatly fitting frock coat,” and “gold-headed cane, which she handled with the dexterity of a city dandy,” Walker was a dress reformer, surgeon, and the only woman to receive the Congressional Medal of Honor for Meritorious Service during the Civil War.⁵⁶ Walker, who volunteered as an army doctor and insisted on wearing the standard male uniform of her fellow Union officers, also refused to return her medal when Congress revised the standards in 1917 to include only “actual combat with an enemy.” She wore the medal every day until her death in 1919 and was buried in her frock coat.⁵⁷ Walker’s dress-reforming dandyism was part of a larger feminist political movement, but it was also intimately connected to her belief in Spiritualism.⁵⁸ In 1878, twelve years after Walker had been elected president of the National Dress Reform Association, one editorialist of a leading Spiritualist newspaper pointed to her as an example of the “odd set,” a “small proportion” of Spiritualists who are “generally the most noisy.” He continued: “They carry all their hobbies to extremes, and are perpetually forcing their eccentric notions upon the people who do not care to hear them. . . . Nature never designed that a woman should be a man, nor a man a woman, and these efforts at transposition, especially in the part of the male sex who seek to appear as feminine as possible, is an evidence of a weak, unbalanced or disordered mind.”⁵⁹ This writer tellingly slips from “noisy” notions that “people” do not want to hear to the gender that nature did not intend, ending with a particularly pointed attack on effeminate men in an article about a gender-transgressive woman. This tangle of tendencies would become increasingly drawn together in descriptions of a certain “set” of Spiritualists. Spiritualist circles overlapped with sets of American decadents, dandies, and other denizens of urban subcultures; but what is important here is that mediums wrote about their gender embodiments and, in some cases, same-sex partnerships explicitly employing the language of Spiritualism. Walker’s “transposition,” which would later be termed inversion, was not occasioned by Spiritualist practice, but it was clearly not anomalous in Spiritualist communities.⁶⁰ For some mediums, trance speaking and mediumship made this gender transposition possible. A nineteenth-century male medium, Jesse Shepard, captured fans from St. Louis to San Diego through his unearthly

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ability to sing in tones typically reserved for female sopranos. Neither falsetto nor castrato, Shepard entered a state of trance to channel a voice he credited to the “divine feminine” spirits who sang through him.⁶¹ Wilberforce J. Colville, born a generation after Davis and Shepard, styled himself after the famed nineteenth-century trance speaker Cora L. V. Scott Hatch, known for her radiant beauty and flaxen ringlets. Colville, who burst onto the American scene and packed lecture halls across the country, was best influenced by one operator, a young gentlemen of “extraordinary psychological powers” and “very attractive personal appearance” to whom Colville was devotedly attached from the first moment of their meeting.⁶² Colville, one of the most prominent male mediums of the nineteenth century, was typical in that his receptivity was occasioned by a strong male operator. A certain Cornelius Throgmorton gets special praise in Colville’s autobiography as “a gentleman who knows more about [my] real history and character than perhaps any other one individual now living.”⁶³ Colville began his long career at sixteen and chronicled his life and work in numerous writings as well as in a book-length autobiography in which he tells the story of how, in 1874, he found Spiritualism. A religious teenager, active Unitarian, and much coveted choirist in area churches, Colville had never been interested in Spiritualism until, one day, when walking through his native Brighton, he spotted a notice posted on the street, advertising a lecture to be held that night by the famed American trance speaker Cora Hatch. Colville described feeling himself inexplicably and inexorably drawn to Hatch and went to see the medium speak. Recalling his first sight of her, he remembered feeling “under a most agreeable spell, as though some very pleasant change were about to take place.”⁶⁴ The change began as soon as Colville got home. Sitting down with his family and their boarders, who spent the dinner making fun of his new interest in Spiritualism, he felt his body undergo “a complete transformation, and in a girlish voice of very peculiar tone, expressed his readiness to improvise on any suitable theme.”⁶⁵ The boarders just stared. He described the sensation as being “suddenly lifted in the air. . . . I seemed to have an enormous head and a very small body. My lips seemed to be moving mechanically, under the pressure of some influence over which I could exert, and could will to exert, no power whatever.”⁶⁶ His dinnertime trance speech concluded with the words: “We thank you for the opportunity afforded us tonight of commencing a work through this instrument which will spread over Europe, America, and the antipodes.”⁶⁷ This McGarry

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moment marked the beginning of Colville’s career as a Spiritualist superstar, the time-honored process of being “developed” as a medium. And from this point on, it was the voices of female spirits who spoke through him.⁶⁸ Spiritualist trance, though it sometimes came unannounced, could also be reproduced in public settings and performances. Colville, like Davis before him, was easily put under sway and worked with a series of strong male operators. Accounts of Colville often mentioned that his chosen companions were “vigorous young men” and that “he seemed entirely destitute of appreciation of wedded bliss, and though thoroughly domesticated from childhood, [was said to be] utterly unfit to enter the married state.”⁶⁹ Colville himself wrote that he could not understand the attraction between the sexes, except only “very theoretically.”⁷⁰ Though not attracted to the opposite sex, the medium was a tireless campaigner for women’s suffrage and often spoke of the importance of “the female principle” to spirituality. He wrote, “The degradation of women is always supported most strongly when the belief is regnant that only males are fit to officiate at sacred altars.”⁷¹ Observers commented on Colville’s receptivity, but they also paid excessive, almost obsessive, attention to his body. They often remarked on his delicate appearance and the way that he seemed unnaturally youthful: “Mr. Colville is beardless, boyish, spirituelle looking”; he is “small of stature, but with mighty powers. He has a large and remarkably shaped head, almost all intellect and spirit, with only base enough to anchor him to the earth.”⁷² In countless descriptions of the medium, observers remarked on his head shape. The fascinated interest in physiognomy and particularly Colville’s skull suggests that his difference, which ultimately was not physical at all, needed to be rooted and fixed in the body, and phrenology provided the science to do so. THE POETIC S OF AT TACHMENT

The popular mid-nineteenth-century science of phrenology, a precursor to sexology and other emergent sciences of the mind, offers several valuable contexts for understanding how Spiritualism persisted as a residual discourse in twentieth-century notions of sexuality and gender. Not only does it mark the ways in which modern psychological sciences are by no means the product of a Copernican revolution that secularizes the prior terrain of the soul, converting it into the mind or brain, but also how this u n ti m e ly se x ua li t i e s a n d se c u l a r haun t in g s

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debunked science, for all its other regulatory deployments, presented a discourse that sought to integrate the emergent discourses of sexuality with emotional states and spiritual propensities. Phrenologists postulated that discrete areas of the brain governed specific human characteristics, which could be read through the shape and texture of the skull. As late as the last decades of the nineteenth century, commentators used phrenological terms when describing Colville. As one biographer noted in 1886, his “leading phrenological indications of character seem to be conscientiousness, benevolence, ideality. . . . [whereas he found] amativeness and some others—conspicuous by their absence.”⁷³ Long before sexology or the first psychiatric case studies of homosexuality were published, phrenologists found a region at the base of the brain that was said to govern “amativeness.” Individuals in whom this area was underdeveloped experienced, like Colville, “little conjugal love” or “desire to marry” and “were cold, coy, distant and reserved toward the opposite sex.” According to Fowler’s phrenological guide, this faculty when “perverted . . . depraves all other propensities.”⁷⁴ Walt Whitman invoked another area on the phrenological chart, adhesiveness, when he used the term “adhesive love” to describe the attraction and “fervid comradeship” he felt for other men. Michael Lynch did groundbreaking work detailing the critical role of phrenology in Whitman’s interventions (poetic and otherwise) in nineteenth-century notions of sexuality and gender.⁷⁵ Lorenzo Fowler, who was the publisher of the leading work on phrenology, as well as the distributor of the first edition of Leaves of Grass and the publisher of the second, personally read Whitman’s skull.⁷⁶ This moment purportedly produced a “psychic transformation” in Whitman. In the language of science, this reading offered confirmation of the young writer’s potential, allowing him to transform himself into a “bold prophet of a rich and new life.”⁷⁷ More than this, Lynch argues that Whitman’s utilization of the phrenological language of adhesiveness was a way to “admit the bodily experience of male-male love,” to “create or make possible new developments in that experience,” and to produce new modes of literary expression.⁷⁸ Phrenology, which offered no category for the homosexual, made itself differently available for reinterpretation since the diagnosis of disease was merely one of its valences among its broader purpose of characterology. Adhesiveness was a moral faculty, associated with friendship and sociability, “manifested regardless of sex,” which Whitman reinterpreted as a term to describe his relationships with other men.⁷⁹ This designation McGarry

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stands in contrast to the other phrenological term available to describe queer young men—amativeness. As is clear from descriptions of Colville, amativeness was typically understood negatively as a sexual function connoting only a lack of conjugal love. While Whitman’s creative intervention does indeed reclaim a language of science, it is not the same as the function of reverse discourse that Foucault would use to describe the way homosexuals could speak as an identity group after being thus defined by sexology. Rather, Whitman’s ability to exploit the language of phrenology points to a transitional moment in the history of science in which the diagnostic was not automatically collapsed into the punitive. If adhesiveness describes Whitman’s connection with men, it also describes something of his connection to the world. Literary scholars since the early 1990s have reinterpreted Whitman’s poetics of connection and his personal attachments to men as a kind of queer world-making project; as Michael Warner contends, “Whitman wants to make sex public.”⁸⁰ Peter Coviello argues that “virtually every strand of Whitman’s utopian thought devolves upon, and is anchored by, an unwavering belief in the capacity of strangers to recognize, to desire, and to be intimate with one another.”⁸¹ Michael Moon takes this will to connection and frames it as the form and mode of Whitman’s literary project, his desire “to disseminate affectionate physical presence from (author) to the (audience), fervently and directly.”⁸² These readings reveal the enmeshment of the social and the sexual, but it is also important to put these on the same plane as the spiritual.⁸³ Once we have situated Whitman in the same context as Davis and Colville, sexuality can be seen as an emergent discourse of attachment rising out of a subcultural cosmology of spiritual connectedness. The “Poet of Attachment,” who wanted both to connect with and channel the other, published the first edition of Leaves of Grass in 1855 and a second edition in 1856.⁸⁴ Between the publication dates of these two editions, Whitman became very interested in the phenomenon of trance mediumship. Whether it was to gain the magical ability to extemporize on any subject or to connect with the other side, Whitman tried for a full year to train himself as a medium, taking as his model Hatch, the same trance speaker to whom Colville had first been drawn. Whitman revealed his metaphysical failure at a meeting of the New York Conference of Spiritualists, which he attended to discuss the question of the day: “What Makes a Medium?”⁸⁵ According to the meeting minutes, Whitman “had observed that mediums were of every variety physically, intellectually and morally. One was delicate, frail and of nervous constitution, another was u n ti m e ly se x ua li t i e s a n d se c u l a r haun t in g s

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robust, healthy and vigorous. One was ignorant and imbecile, while another was intelligent and learned. He wished to come at the knowledge of what peculiar constitution, temperament, quality or condition is requisite to constitute a medium.”⁸⁶ Whitman asked a phrenological question and received a spiritualist answer. Hatch, who was leading the day’s discussion, explained to him that it was really not about him, his constitution, or temperament: what was required was a corollary “medium-spirit on the other side of the line,” an answer that could only have been frustrating to the poet who prided himself on his uncanny skills of connection.⁸⁷ Whitman’s porosity enabled him to move horizontally, imagining laterally shared social worlds. Whitman’s unrealized spiritual communion may have driven him to seek connection more intently in his parallel literary project. Regardless, his forays into Spiritualism provide a crucial context through which to understand Whitman’s urge to unite self and other in intimate bonds between spiritual and embodied strangers. The history of sexuality as a secular discipline has allowed the recovery of Whitman as a queer ancestor. This secular practice, however, has effaced his status as a fellow traveler in a culture in which the scientific was always already shot through with the spiritual, which together were theorizing the sexual. By the turn of the century, Colville’s and Whitman’s “adhesiveness” would be termed “inversion,” taking its privileged place among the taxonomies of sexological science. But in the decades following the Civil War, Spiritualists embraced Colville and others like him who voiced and embodied a range of fluid genders and sexualities that countered the dictates of dominant nineteenth-century culture. Moving across and between genders, Spiritualists claimed a language and experience of disembodiment/reembodiment before other discourses emerged to give new meaning. One of these new discourses was sexology. SECUL AR SUBJECTS, QUEER MATTERS

Turning from subculture to the documents of sexology, even the annals of science prove haunted. As early as the late nineteenth century and well into the twentieth, both sexologists and the narrators of their case studies utilize the language of inversion, of women’s souls trapped in men’s bodies and vice versa. Historians, like many of the sexual scientists before them, have typically read through or past this language of the trapped soul, see-

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ing it as somehow arbitrary or as merely metaphorical.⁸⁸ Yet attending to the historical specificity of this language reveals a world in which spirituality functioned not only as a powerful residual discourse, in Raymond Williams’s formulation, but also as a residual discourse that inhabited the emergent itself.⁸⁹ Returning sexology to its original context illuminates the spiritual and the scientific as inextricably linked. There are a number of sexologists who employ spiritual, and in many ways explicitly Spiritualist, language when describing the new subjects of sexual deviation. Interestingly, these are the sexologists who have been seen as relatively less stigmatizing of their subjects. In early sexological writing, especially in the work of Richard von Krafft-Ebing, “sexual inversion” was characterized as a sickness, a manifestation of “functional degeneration” that sometimes took the form of the gendered self trapped in a differently sexed body.⁹⁰ By the turn of the century, two approaches to what would eventually be consolidated under the rubric of homosexuality had become increasingly ascendant; both were eager to distance themselves from the notion that same-sex attachment was an illness. On the one hand, there was the “third-sex model” put forward by Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, widely circulated in Britain by Edward Carpenter as the “intermediate sex.” Carpenter, who counted himself among the intermediate sex, attributed a spiritual power and occult knowledge to these subjects, who “through their double nature, command of life in all its phases, and a certain freemasonry of the secrets of the two sexes . . . may well favor their function as reconcilers and interpreters.”⁹¹ On the other hand, Havelock Ellis popularized a model of sexual inversion, similar to Krafft-Ebing’s idea of souls trapped in the wrong bodies, but without his pathologizing notion of sickness.⁹² While using different terminology than either Ulrichs or Carpenter, Ellis shared similar beliefs: among them that homosexuality was neither an “illness that needed to be cured” nor a freely chosen vice, that “inversion was not pathological, it was not a hideous anomaly or an acquired vice, and it was not the result of an ‘execrable seduction.’”⁹³ Part of Ellis’s sympathy for his subjects is revealed in the degree to which he reproduces their case studies in their own words. And the words that at least some of his narrators utilized were steeped in the latter-day language of Spiritualism through its British descendant theosophy.⁹⁴ Preserved in sexological texts is a historical crossing, marking a moment when the extrapolations of Spiritualist thought met with the emergent discourse of sexual sciences. As the historian Joy Dixon has argued,

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“Sexology may have triumphed as an academically respectable way of knowing about sex in the twentieth century but, at the time of its creation, it by no means held the field uncontested.”⁹⁵ Dixon frames her study of British theosophy’s presence in the discourse of sexology as an attempt “to explore an alternative trajectory in which—as psychics, mystics or theosophists—men and women . . . influenced, assimilated, and reworked new sexological and psychoanalytic claims regarding gender and sexuality into and through an elaborate constellation of spiritual beliefs, beliefs that they claimed were also scientific, even though their occult science might not be universally (or even widely) recognized as such.”⁹⁶ Like Spiritualism in the United States, theosophy was a site for a sophisticated struggle over some of the most vexing issues of the day, questions about the nature of scientific knowledge and its place in late-Victorian society, debates over the possibilities (and the limits) of the scientific method in understanding phenomena like mediumship. It was as well a spiritual-political organization that attracted some of Anglo-America’s most prominent freethinkers.⁹⁷ Radclyffe Hall, Ellis, E. M. Forster, William James, and Carpenter were all, in varying degrees of involvement and exposure, part of a large cosmopolitan theosophical circle. At least some strains of theosophy differed from Spiritualism in important ways. A belief in reincarnation, a concept not widely regarded by Spiritualists, made theosophy an unlikely but ready partner to sexology. In the face of new sciences that were inevitably typologizing, if not also pathologizing, theosophy posed the incarnation of past lives as a mode of alternative subjectivity to the material conditions of turn-of-the-century British culture. Theosophy offered a theory in which one’s embodied person might differ from one’s individuality (or identity) as a matter of course; this bifurcation need not be pathological but merely a spiritual residuum of past lives. The particularly theosophical understanding of reincarnation was a highly debated and esoteric tenet that held that “a person is never reincarnated, yet from a higher point of view, an individuality is.”⁹⁸ This curious distinction between personhood and individuality mirrors the soul-body division that vexes sexology. That for both theosophy and sexology this was a problem of divided selfhood marks the ways in which the original fusions of Spiritualism were starting to disperse along lines of identity. Spiritualism, an older theory of attachment and flux, was receding to newer discourses of identity and fixity. Although theosophy clearly offered a redemptive alternative to sexol-

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ogy, Spiritualist theories of embodiment never meshed quite so neatly with this new typological regime. Both the theosophical theory of reincarnation and the sexological notion of a soul trapped in a particular embodiment depend on an idea of fixity, whereas Spiritualist embodiment turned on a notion of flux, both in identity and time. A Spiritualist medium would not have described souls trapped inside her. In the discrete moments when female spirits spoke through male mediums (or vice versa), this was a product of the medium’s own receptivity, not of their entrapment in the presumably wrong body. Spiritualism’s grounding but elusive category of “receptivity”—the quality that frustrated Whitman in the answer he received to his question of what kind of person could become a medium—speaks of connectedness without identity. By the 1920s, theosophy would become so tangled and tied to a particular type of transgressive sexuality that it would almost stand as an identity in itself. Not coincidentally, Radclyffe Hall, the turn-of-the-century’s ur-invert, who used her fiction to narrate the entrapment of gender and asked Ellis, the architect of inversion, to write the preface to her novel, would become publicly sutured to theosophy. The author of The Well of Loneliness is perhaps less well known as a prominent member of London’s Society for Psychical Research. Hall was more than the inquiring mind that many leading intellectuals were at the time; she was steeped in the ritual. Hall went so far as to employ a medium to contact her deceased lover, seeking a blessing for a new relationship.⁹⁹ While it was the 1928 obscenity trial that cemented Hall’s reputation as London’s best-known literary lesbian, she had also faced magistrates eight years earlier in a less secular, if no less scandalous, affair.¹⁰⁰ In an effort to block Hall’s election to the Society for Psychical Research, a member of the society, St. George Lane Fox Pitt, told two prominent fellow members that Hall was a “grossly immoral woman” who had lived for many years with a “most objectionable person,” Mabel Batten, before “influencing” Lady Una Troubridge, “coming between her and her husband,” his friend Admiral Sir Ernest Troubridge, and “wrecking the Admiral’s home.”¹⁰¹ Hall, like Oscar Wilde in 1895, sought to clear her name through the courts. In a rather strange courtroom maneuver, Fox Pitt rescinded his accusations and, not surprisingly, lost the case. But the press coverage of the scandal raises fascinating questions about the relationship between the psychical and the sexual. The London press hinted at the cause of the alleged slander, naming

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it “as horrible an accusation as could be made against any woman in this country . . . [that she was] addicted to unnatural vice.”¹⁰² Yet the truly sensational language and the bigger typeface was left to the headline writers, who gave the spirits better billing than the sapphists.¹⁰³ As reported in the trial transcript, Lady Troubridge left her husband not for mythic mannishness but for the spirit world. She allegedly told her husband that “this ‘spirit’ business was now her life and that she had no further concern in his views, interests or occupations.”¹⁰⁴ A London Times editorialist took the occasion to attack spiritual circles more generally, writing: “A slander action of a very simple nature has attracted a great deal of attention, because the evidence revealed to a wondering public something of what goes on in the regions of psychical research.”¹⁰⁵ If the love that dare not speak its name was muffled during the trial, the noisy ruminations about the occult effectively worked to stand in for that name in the press. Indeed, the question posed by the Times, “what goes on in the regions of psychical research,” suggests the extent to which the British public already had an eyebrow raised about the queer conjurings of mediums in the dark. The press coverage of the Hall scandal illustrates a forward-moving, secularizing tendency in which both believers in the spirit world and sexually deviant subjects attracted censure not only for their marginal subjectivity but also for their marginal relation to history. The Spiritualist holdover faced backwards, threatening the new secularizing order. The invert, though often described as atavistic, panicked this same culture that feared that modernity had birthed a new, frightening creature who would come to haunt the future. Hall’s story illuminates these seemingly new secular sexualities to be not very secular after all. Spiritualism did not die a peaceful death at the end of the nineteenth century. It found its way not only into related spiritualities like theosophy but also functioned as a residual discourse in the science of sexology, one critical to the making of modern subjects. For nineteenth-century Spiritualists, communing with spirits was a process by which those lost made themselves known through unsettling occurrences. Hall’s conjuring her ex-lover in the middle of a new relationship need not be literal for readers to understand what it means to be haunted by the past. In taking the lived experience of being haunted seriously, one arrives at a historical appreciation for what Avery Gordon terms a “very particular way of knowing.” In Gordon’s words: “Being haunted draws us affectively, sometimes against our will and always a bit magically, into the structure of feeling we come to experience, not as cold knowledge, but as transformative recognition.”¹⁰⁶ McGarry

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As secular subjects, we are no longer literally haunted, but we are haunted by the idea of haunting, and yet we now only speak of it metaphorically. Certainly there is something about spectral metaphors, about ghosts and hauntings, that has been particularly compelling to queer theorists.¹⁰⁷ Film and literary scholars have elaborated multiple connections between the ghostly and the queer and, more specifically, between the apparitional and the lesbian in both nineteenth- and twentieth-century texts. As Terry Castle writes: “The lesbian remains a kind of ‘ghost effect’ in the cinema world of modern life: elusive, vaporous, difficult to spot—even when she is there in plain view, mortal and magnificent, at the center of the screen.”¹⁰⁸ This mode of analysis turns on a notion of visibility and invisibility, a kind of phantom force wherein certain embodied sexualities make themselves visible only to those who have the ability to see. Queer theorists are not alone in using the figure of the ghost as a way to explain the apparitional social status of marginalized subjects; indeed, the ghost is a powerful way of understanding memory and identity.¹⁰⁹ What is lost in using the imagery of specters to depict, among other things, an alienated subjectivity and an alienated relationship to history is an alternative possibility realized in a historical moment in which communing with ghosts offered the potential for affective connection across time, personal transformation, and utopian political change. Hall in some way suffered her status as a subject at the threshold of a new era in which an ascendant discourse of science and identity clashed with what seemed to be an anachronistic belief in magic. Her character, Stephen Gordon, suffers, among other things, a desiccated world in which her gender figuratively haunts her and her disavowed deviant community quite literally haunts her at the end of the novel. In fact, Hall was part of another community that understood spirits not as unwelcome guests but as precisely an otherworldly community. Yet Hall seems to stage the impossibility of either transtemporal or transgender communion as if to sacrifice Stephen as a martyr to the future. In the uncanny ending of The Well of Loneliness, in the phantasmic last scene, Stephen is visited by a throng of spirits. In the final hour of Stephen’s desperation come these “unbidden guests.” Some she recognizes: “Wanda . . . And someone with a neat little hole in her side—Jamie clasping Barbara by the hand; Barbara with the white flowers of death on her bosom.” They call her, Stephen, by name, gape at her with their phantom faces, “the haunted melancholy eyes of the invert.” They point accusingly with their “shaking, white-skinned, effeminate fingers.” In a u n ti m e ly se x ua l i t i e s a n d se c u l a r haunt ing s

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final Night of the Living Dead moment, the damned rise up and proclaim, “We are coming, Stephen—we are still coming on, and our name is legion—you dare not disown us!” And the last line in the book: “Give us also the right to our existence!”¹¹⁰ Stephen is possessed by the voices of the past, the dead hand of history, which returns to entreat her not to disown it, not to disown her invert predecessors and, by extension, herself and the future. One way to read this scene is as an inversion of the presentist urge to find queer ancestors before there was anything like a queer history to recover them. Yet the very literalness of Hall’s final pages conjures the more uncanny, the more spectral sexualities that haunt the queer past. In this final scene, in which past, present, and future are collapsed, the “quick, the dead, and the yet unborn” all call on her to give them voice.¹¹¹ And finally “there was only one voice, one demand, her own voice into which those millions had entered.”¹¹² The undead of The Well of Loneliness do not offer themselves simply as metaphors. Rather, they insist on their very materiality in a world that does not recognize anything of their presence—in life or in death. Stephen is not so much haunted as forced to become a kind of unwilling medium for untimely sexual subjectivities. Hall’s fantasy scene stages the radical dissolve of time, of the possessor and possessed, of the medium and the messengers. Nineteenth-century Spiritualism was a form of historiography, an embodied technique of remembrance, born of a century that invented multiple forms of memorialization from the technology of photography to history, the secular science of memory. Yet mediums, when they were taken up with and by spirits of the dead, literally—if momentarily—became the past for the sake of those left in the present. The séance erased divisions in time and space as it did distinctions between bodies and genders. This performance and practice thus allowed connectivity without fixity and occasioned “touches across time,” made possible not by a particular type of person but by the quality of receptivity.¹¹³ If the history of sexuality has been receptive to the inclusion of a Walt Whitman or a Radclyffe Hall, it is because they have been assumed to be secular, sexual subjects, moderns in search of an identity and ripe for reclamation. Yet their “modern” worlds were not merely littered with the residuum of religion. These subjects made sense of their own queer time through spiritual theories of embodiment and techniques of memorialization that offered what secular science refused: transfigurative affiliation, consolation, and connection.

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271 NOTES 1. The literature on secularization in Western culture is immense and, like much historical and sociological work that describes a long and gradual process of change over time, secularization seems to “happen” for centuries. In the European literature, the timeline is typically written with the latter half of the seventeenth century standing in as the beginning of Enlightenment secularization and culminating, as it also does in historical literature on secularization in the United States, at the end of the nineteenth century with the supposed elimination of magic as a technique of salvation. See Weber, Protestant Ethic; Weber, Sociology of Religion; Durkheim, Elementary Forms of Religious Life; Gauchet, Disenchantment of the World; Darnton, Mesmerism; and Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic. On secularization in the United States, see Rosenberg, No Other Gods; Wilson, “Secularization”; Bruce, Religion and Modernization; and Cerullo, Secularization of the Soul. I have been especially aided by Jakobsen and Pellegrini, “World Secularisms at the Millennium.” 2. As Timothy Mitchell has argued: “In many uses, the modern is just a synonym for the West. To become modern . . . is to act like the West.” Mitchell, “Stage of Modernity,” 1. Understandings of what it means to become secular produce similar elisions even as the particular workings of secularization are typically buried in assumptions about what it means to become modern. See also Latour, We Have Never Been Modern. 3. For nuanced discussions of sexual dissidents, religion, and American political culture, see Jakobsen and Pellegrini, Love the Sin; and Cobb, God Hates Fags. 4. In granting a foundational place to Foucault, I in no way mean to slight the work of historians whose work predates Foucault and that has been enormously important both inside and outside of the academy. In 1971, Jonathan Ned Katz began research that culminated in Katz, Gay American History; and Katz, Gay/Lesbian Almanac, two collections that proved that lesbian and gay history was possible. 5. Foucault, History of Sexuality, 21. 6. Ibid., 37. 7. Ibid., 43. 8. Books on the history of sexuality that include the words modern or modernity in the title are too ubiquitous to list here. I mean not to critique particular usages so much as to point to the specificities that are erased in the recapitulation of these terms as historiographic assumption.

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272 9. The literature that emphasizes continuities in sexual identities over time is too varied to gather easily under one rubric. It ranges from the earliest attempts to find gay ancestors in the distant past to more recent excavations of premodern sexual or gender identities, including Bennett, “Confronting Continuity”; and Trumbach, Sex and the Gender Revolution. The phrasing “Great Paradigm Shift” is Eve Sedgwick’s, and she uses it somewhat ironically in Sedgwick, Epistemology of the Closet, 44. For a recent reassessment of the alterity-continuism divide, see Traub, “Present Future of Lesbian Historiography.” 10. David M. Halperin, perhaps the theorist most associated with social constructionism, has also been among the most eloquent critics of its less careful practitioners. See Halperin, “Forgetting Foucault.” For a trenchant and concise take on the debate, see Dinshaw, Getting Medieval, 191–206, and many of the essays gathered in Fradenburg and Freccero with Lavezzo, Premodern Sexualities. 11. See esp. Terry, “Theorizing Deviant Historiography”; Silverstolpe, “Benkert Was Not a Doctor”; and Duggan, Sapphic Slashers. 12. Kennedy and Davis, Boots of Leather; Chauncey, Gay New York; and essays in Beemyn, Creating a Place for Ourselves. 13. Patton and Sánchez-Eppler, Queer Diasporas; Puar, “Queer Tourism”; Cruz-Malavé and Manalansan, Queer Globalizations; Lubheid and Cantú, Queer Migrations; and Gopinath, Impossible Subjects. For an important interrogation of “situational sexuality” in the United States, see Kunzel, “Situating Sex.” 14. Halperin is essentially limning Foucault’s later volumes on the history of sexuality in which Foucault distanced himself somewhat from the acts-identities divide. See Halperin, “Forgetting Foucault,” 114n8. 15. Halperin, “Is There a History of Sexuality?” 16. D’Emilio, “Capitalism and Gay Identity.” 17. Jackson Lears’s work has been most significant in charting what he terms the “antimodern” impulses in the American fin de siècle, arguing that the cultural turn to the Oriental, primitive, or mystical worked to “ease accommodation to new and secular cultural modes.” Lears’s deployment of the word antimodern (and he is not alone in this) demonstrates the degree to which he takes the teleological movement of secularism and modernity for granted, while also guaranteeing the anachronistic nature of spiritual movements. See Lears, No Place of Grace, xiii. 18. I take this formulation from Gaonkar, “On Alternative Modernities,” 21.

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273 19. Foucault distinguishes the argument he has “sketched [as] peculiar to the Catholic Church,” but suggests that a “somewhat similar evolution takes place in Protestant countries, but through very different institutions and with a fundamental fragmentations of both religious theory and forms.” For example, in English Puritan circles, Foucault traces “the practice of permanent autobiography in which each individual recounts his own life to himself and others.” Foucault, Abnormal, 184. For an account of confessional sexuality in the contemporary United States, see Gamson, Freaks Talk Back. 20. On experiential religion in nineteenth-century Anglo-America, see Taves, Fits, Trances, and Visions; Abelove, Evangelist of Desire; and Schmidt, Hearing Things. 21. Bataille, Inner Experience; and Lewis, Ecstatic Religion. 22. Warner, “Tongues Untied,” 229. 23. Elizabeth A. Castelli makes this point in “Women, Gender, Religion,” 23n9. 24. Alfred R. Wallace, epigraph to Sargent, Proof Palpable of Immortality. 25. See, for example, Sargent, “Phenomenal Proofs of Immortality,” in Proof Palpable of Immortality, 21–32. 26. See Weber, Protestant Ethic, esp. “The Religious Foundations of Worldly Asceticism.” 27. Butler, “The Antebellum Spiritual Hothouse,” in Awash in a Sea of Faith, 225–56; and Ahlstrom, Religious History of the American People. This religious history is complex and diverse, striated by race, class, and region. On the persistence of Spiritualism in nineteenth- and twentieth-century African American culture, see Schrager, “Both Sides of the Veil”; and Wolcott, “Mediums, Messages, and Lucky Numbers.” 28. This history is well documented in Braude, Radical Spirits. 29. In 1898, Harrison Bennett, the president of the National Association of Spiritualists, addressed the meeting of the yearly convention “earnestly pleading” for Spiritualists to “make some declaration with regard to the question of Imperialism,” as “great standing armies and large standing navies are menaces to the peace of the world.” “Report of the President, Harrison D. Barrett, for the Year Ending October 18, S.E. 51,” Banner of Light, 22 October 1898. 30. Hardinge, Modern American Spiritualism, 13. 31. Frederic R. Marvin, in Philosophy of Spiritualism writes: “I am informed there are four million men and women in America who believe in spiritualism and whose minds u n ti m e ly se x ua li t i e s a n d se c u l a r haun t in g s

274 are never lifted from its delusion” (18). He contrasts his own numbers with those of the eminent barrister and Spiritualist believer Judge Edmonds who, in a letter to the Spiritual Magazine of London dated 4 May 1867, estimated the number of Spiritualists in the United States at “ten millions.” 32. Ann Braude makes a compelling case for this claim in Radical Spirits, 2. 33. Ibid.; Moore, In Search of White Crows; and Carroll, Spiritualism in Antebellum America. 34. While she does not address Spiritualism, the historian Joy Dixon has done important work in establishing the enmeshment of sexology and theosophy. See Dixon, “Sexology and the Occult”; and Dixon, Divine Feminine. 35. Raymond Williams, “Dominant, Residual, and Emergent,” in Williams, Marxism and Literature, 122. 36. There has been a great deal of work done on this subject cross-culturally, for the nineteenth as well as other centuries. Foundational studies include Ruether and Keller, The Nineteenth Century; James, Women in American Religion; and Holden, Women’s Religious Experience. Especially helpful to me have been Bednarowski, “Women in Occult America”; Taylor, Eve and the New Jerusalem; and Castelli, Women, Gender, Religion. 37. Braude, Radical Spirits; and Owen, Darkened Room. 38. This notion of a balanced, gendered cosmos was not specific to Spiritualist practice or thought. Quakers, Shakers, members of the Oneida community, and other antebellum religious utopianists would have found points of convergence in this model of thought. See Foster, Women, Family, and Utopia; Kern, An Ordered Love; and Abzug, Cosmos Crumbling. The writings of the Transcendentalist Margaret Fuller echoed the notion of a radical, gendered dualism, which on closer inspection showed itself to be permeable and unstable. In Women in the Nineteenth Century, Fuller wrote that “Male and Female represented two sides of a great radical dualism. But in fact they are perpetually passing into one another. Fluid hardens to solid, solid rushes to fluid, there is no wholly masculine man, no purely feminine woman” (17). 39. Clark, Plain Guide to Spiritualism, 172. 40. Emma Hardinge Britten echoes this in her instructions for a spirit circle, writing that there “should be, as far as possible, of opposite temperaments, as positive and negative.” Britten, “How to Investigate Spiritualism, 1. 41. Samuel Byron Brittan, “Woman and Her Rights,” Spiritual Telegraph (newspaper), McGarry

275 no. 1 (1853): 43–45; Daniels, As It Is To Be; “Woman,” Banner of Light, 28 July 1860; “Active Women,” Banner of Light, 14 November 1857; and “Spiritual Culture,” Banner of Light, 31 October 1857. 42. Davis, Magic Staff, 383; emphasis original. 43. I detail this history in my forthcoming Ghosts of Futures Past. 44. Hammond, Physics and Physiology of Spiritualism; and Marvin, Philosophy of Spiritualism. 45. Crow, Spiritualism, 91. On early (1850s) articles in the medical press on Spiritualism and insanity, see Flint, “On the discovery of the source of the Rochester knockings”; Flint, “Spirit Rappers”; Rogers, Philosophy of Mysterious Agents, 131–43; and Grimes, The Mysteries of Human Nature Explained. 46. “Andrew Jackson Davis,” Shekinah (newspaper), no. 3 (1853): 18. 47. This account is culled from Hardinge, Modern American Spiritualism; Davis, Magic Staff; and Albanese, “On the Matter of Spirit.” 48. Hardinge, Modern American Spiritualism, 23. 49. Ibid. 50. Ibid., 24; and Grimes, The Mysteries of Human Nature Explained, 401. Davis traveled with Silas Smith Lyon of Bridgeport as his new magnetizer, the Rev. William Fishbough, a Universalist clergymen, as his scribe, and three eminent men (the Rev. Y. N. Parker, R. Lapham, Esq., and Dr. L. Smith of New York) were called as “special witnesses.” These lectures, compiled and edited by Fishbough, comprised a “vast compendium of literary, scientific, philosophic, and historic knowledge” published as Davis, Nature’s Divine Revelations. 51. Hardinge, Modern American Spiritualism, 24. 52. Davis, Magic Staff, 415. 53. Albanese, “On the Matter of Spirit,” 10. 54. See esp., “Spiritualism vs. Free Love,” Banner of Light, 1 November 1862; “The Beauty and Freedom of Love,” Banner of Light, 25 May 1867; and A. W., “An Answer to Mr. Peebles,” Banner of Light, 1 April 1865. 55. R.W. Shufeldt, “Dr. Havelock Ellis on Sexual Inversion,” Pacific Medical Journal, no. 45 (1902): 201, qtd. in Katz, Gay American History, 243; and Case, “Follies of Spiritualists.” u n ti m e ly se x ua li t i e s a n d se c u l a r haun t in g s

276 56. Case, “Follies of Spiritualists”; and Katz, Gay American History, 243. 57. Walker’s medal was restored, along with 910 others, on 10 June 1977. Katz, Gay American History, 248. 58. There were many dress-reform appeals to female Spiritualists printed in the press, suggesting “rules and customs in regard to labor, dress, diet & most conducive to the development of both the physical and the spiritual.” Eliza J. Robinson, “An Appeal to Women,” Banner of Light, 28 January 1865; see also Juliet H. Stillman, “Hints on Dress,” Banner of Light, 23 January 1865. 59. Case, “Follies of Spiritualists.” 60. Jonathan Ned Katz notes that Mary Walker is also mentioned in Edward Van Every, The Sins of New York as “Exposed” by the Police Gazette (New York: Stokes, 1931) in Katz, Gay American History, 574n40. This suggests that Walker was a visible gender deviant in an urban context in which fairies were a part of the streetscape but many fewer women were similarly visible. On the history of female dandyism in London, see Laura Doan, Fashioning Sapphism. 61. “Mr. Shepard, the Musical Medium,” Banner of Light, 29 August 1868; “Mr. Shepard, the Male Soprano,” Banner of Light, 5 September, 1868; and Francis Grierson/Jesse Shepard Papers, San Diego Historical Society, MS 55, Box 1, folder 1, n.p. 62. “Portrait of the Medium,” Carrier Dove, 7 July 1886. Colville (1862–1917) was variously referred to in print as Wilberforce J., William Wilberforce Juvenal, and, most typically, W. J. Colville. 63. Barrett and McCoy, Cassadaga, 179: “Taken by permission from an unpublished autobiography of this well-known speaker, carefully compiled by Cornelius Throgmorton.” 64. “Portrait of the Medium,” Carrier Dove; and Barrett and McCoy, Cassadaga. 65. “Portrait of the Medium,” Carrier Dove. 66. Ibid. 67. Barrett and McCoy, Cassadaga, 178. 68. Out of trance and in his own voice, Colville was a prolific writer and speaker. 69. “Portrait of the Medium,” Carrier Dove. 70. Ibid.

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277 71. Colville, Ancient Mysteries, 342. 72. “Portrait of the Medium,” Carrier Dove. 73. Ibid. 74. Fowler and Fowler, “Symbolical Head.” 75. Lynch, “‘Here Is Adhesiveness.’” 76. Ibid., 84, 89. Lorenzo Fowler also worked with the publishers Orson Fowler and Samuel Wells. See Coviello, “Intimate Nationality,” 118n36. 77. Edward Hungerford, qtd. in Lynch, “‘Here Is Adhesiveness,’” 89. 78. Ibid. 79. Fowler, Marriage, 76. 80. Warner, “Whitman Drunk,” 40. 81. Coviello, Intimacy in America, 127. 82. Moon, Disseminating Whitman, 3. 83. Tenney Nathanson’s description of Whitman’s “‘presence’ and its capacity to compound the physical and the vaporous” speaks to this enmeshment. Nathanson, Whitman’s Presence, 3. 84. “Poet of Attachment” is Peter Coviello’s term from “Intimate Nationality,” 87. 85. “New York Conference [of Spiritualists]: Session of July 21,” Spiritual Age, 1 August 1857. 86. Ibid. 87. Ibid. 88. The significant exception is Dixon, “Sexology and the Occult.” 89. In his brief section “Dominant, Residual, and Emergent,” Williams seems to suggest that the residual should reside in relationship to the dominant rather than the emergent (Marxism and Literature, 122). 90. For instance, the phrasing, “the masculine soul, heaving in the female bosom.” Krafft-Ebing, “Congenital Sexual Inversion in Women,” 329. 91. Carpenter, “Intermediate Sex,” 51. See also Carpenter, Intermediate Types among Primitive Folk. u n ti m e ly se x ua l i t i e s a n d se c u l a r haunt ing s

278 92. Ellis and Symonds, Sexual Inversion; and Laura Doan and Chris Waters, introduction to part 2 of Bland and Doan, Sexology Uncensored, 42. 93. Qtd. in Bland and Doan, Sexology Uncensored, 42. 94. Theosophy grew directly out of Spiritualism when Madame Blavatsky and Henry Steel Olcott, prominent Spiritualists, left New York for London to found the Theosophical Society. 95. Dixon, “Sexology and the Occult,” 290. 96. Ibid., 289–90. 97. For the best history of theosophy, see Dixon, Divine Feminine. 98. Joscelyn Goodwin, glossing Madame Blavatsky, Isis Unveiled (1877), in Theosophical Enlightenment, 341. 99. Castle, Noel Coward and Radclyffe Hall, 14. 100. I use the terms lesbian and invert interchangeably here, but both have particular histories, belying this conflation. Both Radclyffe Hall herself and The Well have been vexed sites in the history of critical and political reception of female masculinities. See Newton, “Mythic Mannish Lesbian”; Halberstam, Female Masculinity; Prosser, Second Skins; and Love, “‘Spoiled Identity.’” 101. “Psychical Research: The Spirits of the Dead Slander Action; King’s Bench Division, Radclyffe Hall v. Fox Pitt,” Times, 19 November 1920; and Doan, Fashioning Sapphism, 31–32. 102. “Psychical Research.” 103. See ibid.; and “The Psychical Research Case,” Times, 24 November 1920. 104. “Psychical Research.” 105. Qtd. in Doan, Fashioning Sapphism, 33. 106. Gordon, Ghostly Matters, 8. 107. Castle, Apparitional Lesbian; White, “Female Spectator”; White, Uninvited; and Carla Freccero, “Queer Spectrality,” in Freccero, Queer/Early/Modern, 69–104. 108. Castle, Apparitional Lesbian, 2. 109. Baldwin, Evidence of Things Not Seen; Morrison, “Unspeakable Things Unspo-

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279 ken”; Derrida, Specters of Marx; Roach, Cities of the Dead; Holland, Raising the Dead; and Castronovo, Necro Citizenship. 110. Hall, Well of Loneliness, 437. 111. Ibid., 436. 112. Ibid. 437. 113. This is Carolyn Dinshaw’s term from Getting Medieval, 1–2.

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CHAPTER ELEVEN

toward secular diaspora: relocating religion and politics ˜ Tyler Roberts

“Secularism is coming apart at the seams”: so argued the political theorist William Connolly in 1999.¹ Today, with the continuing growth of conservative and politically engaged religion across the globe—Islamist, Hindu, evangelical Christian, to name a few—Connolly’s words ring even more true than they did then. Faced with such movements, the temptation is great to attempt to rebind the seams of secularism by asserting once more the need for the privatization and depoliticization of religion. This, however, would be a mistake, for in many respects such a secular retrenchment mirrors, as I will argue below, the polarizing strategies of the religious right. In my view, it would be a much more constructive and historically attentive response to the challenges of politicized religion to “desanctify” secularism, that is, to rethink and revise our practices of secularism in a way that opens new and different possibilities for religious voices in the public sphere. To many of those with whom I would ally myself on the most burning political and cultural issues facing people in the United States today, this will seem wrongheaded or even dangerous. I certainly do not want to downplay the growing power of the religious right or, even less, the danger posed by the apocalyptic sensibilities of some of our most powerful national leaders. But I am nonetheless convinced that the secularist conceptions of the public that have held sway in the United States for most of the past century have run their course and that it is time to put to the test new conceptions and practices of public discourse and engagement. I conceive of this essay as a philosophical exercise that takes a small step in this direction: it is an attempt to both conceptualize a new sense of public space and, in doing so, practice the ethics of engagement that

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emerges from Connolly’s reflections on secularism and pluralism. Examining some recent theoretical challenges to modern secularism, I show how they lead me to a conception of “secular diaspora” that can help us remap spheres of life we presently separate with the terms religious and secular. I see this as a positive step toward a new politics of pluralism.² By secularism, Connolly refers primarily to the ideal of an “authoritative and self-sufficient public space” in which political debate takes place without religious interference (ws 5). This sense of space—of a sharp distinction between “public” politics and “private” religion—helps ground the modern opposition between the religious and the secular, which itself is foundational to some of modern western culture’s most cherished ideals, perhaps most crucially to the ideal of freedom. There are at least two ways to think about this ideal: first, as a private freedom, that is, the freedom to exercise one’s conscience and practice one’s religion without interference; and, second, as a public freedom, that is, the freedom to participate, as a rational human being with certain rights, in public debate and decision making.³ Participation in the latter, of course, means that one must leave one’s religious preferences behind on entering the public space of political debate. Secularism thus involves a particular organization of public space, one free from religious claims and commitments. The religious-secular distinction not only maps onto the private-public distinction but also onto other distinctions that have shaped modernity and secularism such as that between church and state, tradition and reason, and the particular versus the universal. I will pursue some of these mappings in what follows as I examine three contemporary efforts to imagine postsecular configurations of religious and political space. I begin with Connolly’s recent proposals for enriching moral and political engagement, which he has advanced in a series of fascinating studies of body, politics, and pluralism.⁴ Connolly argues for a postsecular restructuring of religion and politics that allows for richer, more generous engagement with difference than that in current liberal, secularist states.⁵ I then consider two very different, postmodern theistic perspectives in light of these structures. I turn first to a group of British and American Christian theologians—primarily Protestant, but with decidedly Catholic leanings—who describe their views as “Radical Orthodoxy” (hereafter ro). Second, I examine “postmodern Jewish philosophy” (hereafter pjp) as articulated by a loose group of Jewish thinkers who seek to retrieve, in postmodern fashion, Jewish textual traditions and political ideals. In each case, we can observe a “postmodern” theism grounded in efforts to (1) Roberts

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think beyond the religious-secular distinction and the ideal of the autonomous individual; (2) challenge the dominance of the state as the site of all significant political action; (3) challenge modern rejections of so-called tradition as a way of reconnecting with premodern Christian or Jewish religious traditions; and (4) reconceive, from the perspective of a commitment to these traditions, the relation between particularity and universality in a way that makes possible a social-political culture in which differences are affirmed and engaged rather than privatized and, at best, tolerated. P O L I T I C S B E Y O N D S E C U L A R I S M : W I L L I A M C O N N O L LY

Taking aim at the liberal, secularist ideal of an “authoritative and selfsufficient public space,” Connolly seeks to foster “engagement in public life among a plurality of controversial metaphysical perspectives” (ws 5).⁶ He argues that efforts to secure the authority of secular public space from Immanuel Kant to Jürgen Habermas have depended on the questionable position that morality has a single source, accessible through rational means supposedly possessed by each human being qua human. For those who claim a single moral source, moral reasoning and action depends on eliminating the interference of motivations, desires, and imperatives from other sources. Thus Kant argues that morality depends on the use of “pure practical reason,” the consciousness of the universal moral law that each and every person, qua rational subject, shares. As a moral agent in the public sphere, each person must reason and act “autonomously,” reason and act, that is, only on the basis of this moral law, uncorrupted by other motivations arising from desire, tradition, metaphysical claims, and so on. In doing so, each person leaves behind much, if not all, that makes him or her a particular, concrete individual.⁷ Put differently, secularism not only configures the intersubjective spaces of public discourse in terms of public and private spheres but also configures the intrasubjective space of each individual, dividing it into inclination and tradition, on the one hand, and reason, on the other. Connolly offers two reasons to support his claim for the failure of such efforts to purify the public sphere of emotion, religion, and metaphysics. First, they do not account for the complexity and richness of moral and political judgment, ignoring the multiple, intertwined registers of thought, feeling, and sensation actually involved in human moral reflection. Following Friedrich Nietzsche, Gilles Deleuze, and others, Connolly views towa rd se c u l a r d iasp o ra

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thinking as shaped by a visceral “swarm of intensities,” always operating on a number of levels. Such thinking can never be purified of the bodily or emotional, for all thought is constituted in part by an “infrasensible” register, that is, “a reservoir from which surprise sometimes unsettles fixed explanations, new pressures periodically swell up to disrupt existing practices of rationality, and new drives to identity occasionally surge up to modify the register of justice and legitimacy upon which established identities are placed” (emphasis original; ws 40).⁸ Thus, for Connolly, moral reflection is not just an exercise of reason but an exercise of the bodymind nexus. Connolly also argues that secularism ultimately cannot avoid some grounding in metaphysical claims, whether claims that appeal directly to a supersensible reality (Kant’s postulates of practical reason, i.e., God, soul, immortality) or claims that naturalize certain human capacities or necessities (Habermas’s “structures of possible mutual understanding”) (ws 38).⁹ Questioning and politicizing all efforts to securely ground modern conceptions of moral reflection and political debate, Connolly effectively “desanctifies” secularism. This does not mean that he claims to himself avoid metaphysical appeals. Rather he argues that all such appeals must be made explicit and so become the stuff of political debate in the public sphere, instead of being deployed as unquestioned—sanctified—foundations. In short, we have to open the public sphere to the body and to the claims of metaphysical (and so religious) traditions. Taking his cue from Deleuze, Connolly understands metaphysics as fundamental, theoretically rich schemes of interpretation that are always contestable and unsystematic (ws 41). He argues that opening the public sphere to a plurality of such schemes will enrich democratic politics by opening it to the play and contest of particular—that is, contingent—moral sources, whether God, reason, or something else. For Connolly, none of these can serve as the foundation of moral and political reason (ws 154). The standard objection to this idea is that allowing mutually exclusive metaphysical commitments into the public sphere will make it impossible to find a fixed, stable position from which deep disagreement can be adjudicated.¹⁰ Connolly’s answer to this objection is to rethink the spacing of politics by theorizing a distinction between what he has come to call, in his most recent work, “faith” and “ethos.” Faith, for Connolly, is the “doctrine, creed, ideology or philosophy that you adopt as an engaged partisan in the world.”¹¹ Faith is the way we articulate our identities, our place in the world vis-à-vis others through narratives, metaphysical principles, Roberts

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and religious ideas and practices. Ethos, for Connolly, is something distinct from faith, a sensibility and set of practices by which we hold our faith and bear our identities. More specifically, Connolly advocates an “ethos of engagement” as the key to pluralism. This ethos is built on “agonistic respect” for the faiths of others and a “critical responsiveness” that engages adherents of these faiths in public space. One enters into such engagement not by bracketing one’s own faith, but by practicing a “bicameral orientation to citizenship”—living one’s faith or identity passionately while maintaining a sense of its contestability.¹² This ethos, claims Connolly, opens one up to a more accepting engagement not only with the pluralism of faiths and identities but also to the pluralism of one’s own body and psyche, the pluralism that underlies any stable identity. And it opens us to the recognition of the multiple, even virtual, spaces in which connection and negotiation with others can take place. Still, one might pursue the objection to this line of reasoning by pointing out that many people will not or cannot question their own moral commitments and so do not practice receptive generosity, whether critical or not, toward the commitments of others. Connolly does not pretend to offer any simple answer to this objection and acknowledges that his vision of political engagement does impose limits on participation. But he points out that the liberal model requires its own exclusions—for example, the exclusion of religious commitment and argument from the public square— and he argues that his vision is more inclusive and, crucially, less potentially violent—that is, “arbitrary, cruel, destructive and dangerous”—than the liberal, secularist model.¹³ His argument goes something like this: The secularist ideal of autonomy depends on what we might call practices of purification, practices by which one might, for instance, repress the way one’s religious commitments shape one’s moral outlook.¹⁴ Connolly traces the liberal violence he sees at work in such practices to the conception of identity underlying the ideal of autonomy: identity as established and secure only when all difference is excluded (or at least when all difference is rendered insignificant for the purposes at hand). But he argues that, in fact, identity and difference are coconstitutive—there is no identity, whether individual or group, without others, without difference. There is a paradox here and, for Connolly, a lot rides on how one responds to this paradox: we need difference to be the people we are and seek to be, but we are threatened by the very difference that makes this identity possible. The dominant philosophical and political traditions of the west, argues Connolly, have responded to this threat with the belief that the differences we towa rd se c u l a r d iasp o ra

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encounter are what prevent us from achieving full or complete identity. That is, an “imagination of wholeness” (ws 144) pervades our cultural and psychical imagination and, for Connolly, is a primary culprit in spawning the violence of exclusion and repression, both liberal and fundamentalist. Connolly therefore grounds his pluralism not in a purifying discipline, but in a resistance to wholeness, a “selective desanctification of elements in [one’s own] identity” (ws 146) that embraces rather than denies the ambiguities and paradoxes of identity. This resistance to wholeness is made possible by attending to body and affect in an effort to cultivate the conflicts and tensions within ourselves that emerge from those “fugitive signs of difference, resistance, and incompleteness in each identity” (ws 155, 60, 144). Connolly’s pluralism therefore draws its limits not in the demand to purify itself of difference, but in the demand that deep differences—both between people but also within each of us—be engaged and cultivated. Another way to put this is to suggest that Connolly’s postsecular vision pluralizes and thus politicizes identity (id 151). In fact, it politicizes everything, leaving no private space in which human beings can avoid the fact that their commitments, dispositions, and beliefs are contestable and subject to negotiation. Nothing is “natural,” everything is contestable. For Connolly, the refusal of such contestability and the insistence on the purity of identity or the universality of a particular form of reasoning ignore that all assertions of authority are political acts involving some kinds of exclusion imposed on oneself and others. Connolly does not pretend that all exclusion can be eliminated from our engagements with one another. However, he believes that in the move from antagonism to agonism—that is, in acknowledging the paradox of difference and so the irreducible plurality and disharmony of ultimate commitments—we can modify our need to secure our own identities and thus exclude or dominate others. It is inevitable that the public sphere will be constituted in large part by adversarial relations; but many such relations can be relations of respect and generosity, “attachment across difference” (id 151). Such attachments minimize violence by acknowledging the ambiguities of identity and the political decisions and commitments by which identities are in large part constituted: “Politics, then, is the medium through which these ambiguities can be engaged and confronted, shifted and stretched. It is also the medium through which common purposes are crystallized and the consummate means by which their transcription into musical harmonies is exposed, contested, disturbed and unsettled” (id 94). Political Roberts

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space, for Connolly, is no longer imagined through architectural images of open, common space where all can gather on common ground. Rather, it is imagined as a kind of virtual space, a web of relations and multiple lines of communication, “complex networks of interdependence and intercommunication unfiltered through a definitive racial, ethnic, religious, linguistic, sensual or transcendental center” (ws 92–3). R E L I G I O U S I D E N T I T Y A N D S E C U L A R S PA C E

Having identified some of the basic ideas behind Connolly’s critique of secularism, I now turn to discussions of ro and pjp with two goals in mind. First, I want to explore further Connolly’s ideas of an “ethos of engagement” and “resistance to wholeness” by examining how explicitly religious visions might be able to instantiate these ideas. Showing that they can I think would go some way not only toward supporting Connolly’s attempt to desanctify secularism but also to consider this desanctification with more precision. On a closely related note, I want to explore how these religious visions themselves might contribute to the criticism of the religious-secular dichotomy, perhaps allowing us to begin thinking about different postsecular possibilities and offering a (very preliminary) staging of a pluralistic engagement between these alternatives to modern secularism. Radical Orthodoxy: Church and Charity The most influential of the ro thinkers is John Milbank, whose Theology and Social Theory (1990) was described by one critic as “perhaps the most brilliant, ambitious—and yet questionable—work to have emerged in English theology since the Second World War.”¹⁵ At the heart of Milbank’s project are two provocative and sweeping claims. First, all secular social theory in the modern period ultimately rests on “theological” claims; and, second, all Christian theology should be reconceived as “Christian sociology.”¹⁶ I will examine each of these in turn. Like Connolly, Milbank believes that a neutral, secular political space free from religious and/or metaphysical commitments simply does not exist. Seminal social theories such as those of Thomas Hobbes and JeanJacques Rousseau rely on “myths” of the “natural state” of humanity. More generally, Milbank argues that because any comprehensive theory of human life, to be fully explanatory, must define the telos of human beings, and because visions of the human telos ultimately cannot be grounded in towa rd se c u l a r d iasp o ra

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reason alone, all such theories ultimately depend on mythical narratives and wagers of faith. Milbank therefore argues that the modern, secular distinction between the religious and the secular is itself theological. Indeed, Milbank’s own allegiance to the Christian narrative can make his project sound positively medieval in its gestures toward theology as the “queen of the sciences.” But his vision of theology takes a decidedly postmodern turn through a sophisticated embrace of fundamental claims about the limits of dialectical argumentation and the ontological priority of difference developed by philosophers such as Nietzsche, Jacques Derrida, and Deleuze. Thus Milbank argues that both Christian theology and secular social theory rest on contingent, historically specific narratives of human origins and human possibilities that are “true” only as they persuade: “Christianity. . . . from the first took the side of rhetoric against philosophy and contended that the Good and the True are those things of which we ‘have a persuasion,’ pistis, or ‘faith’” (ts 398). By pitting two religious (theological) stories against one another, Milbank offers a stark, fateful option: a “secular” story of inevitable violence and a “Christian” story of peace. He argues that the dominant secular stories of modernity—grounded, for example, in Hobbesian violence— are variants on the pagan myths of Greco-Roman antiquity, positing an ontological chaos at the origin of all being that can only be controlled through force. By contrast, the biblical traditions tell a story that begins in the loving, peaceful act of God’s creation and points to a recovery of that harmony.¹⁷ This contrast constitutes the basis of ro’s rejection of secular stories. It also marks the point of divergence between ro and Nietzschean postmodernism. With Nietzsche, Deleuze, and others, ro affirms the ontological priority of difference (ts 416). However, as Milbank reads it, Nietzschean postmodernism, like paganism, ontologizes violence as it prioritizes difference, viewing all succession and creation as violent displacement. Hence Nietzschean postmodernism is merely the logical culmination of secularism. By contrast, ro, given its founding myth of creation ex nihilo, argues that the peacefulness of God’s creative act can be repeated to infinity in human acts of charity and forgiveness, an unending, infinite series of peaceful mediations or “non-violent supplementation” (ts 417). Appealing to the doctrine of the Trinity, Milbank goes as far as to say that God is this infinite series of differences (ts 423). This vision is deeply Augustinian.¹⁸ In The City of God, Augustine contrasted the violence of the pagan city with the peace of the Christian city. According to Milbank, Augustine sought to “recode” pagan myths by enRoberts

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visioning a different society and thereby demonstrated that Christian theology is fundamentally social theory. Radical Orthodoxy seeks to reinvigorate this conception of the theological task, proclaiming that human beings are fundamentally relational and that human relationality is fully realized only in Christian sociality. This approach to theology reorients the basic Christian categories of church, love, faith, and charity, most of all by emphasizing public praxis over private, personal piety (and so effectively criticizing most modern liberal Christian theology). As social theory, theology is ecclesiology, an exercise of practical reason that constantly renarrates the Christian story by focusing on the church as an alternative society shaped by bonds of forgiveness and love rather than those of competition and struggle.¹⁹ Love, in this context, means “a state of public relationships”²⁰ rather than a vague sort of inward reserve of good feeling toward others that one can invoke to qualify or rationalize actions in the world (such as in “love the sinner, hate the sin”). Similarly, faith is not a private matter of “inward piety” or “right belief,” but a public commitment to a certain vision of sociality. For Milbank, though, most important is charity, which takes as its model God’s free gift of existence as “the gratuitous, creative positing of difference, and the offering to others of a space of freedom” (ts 416). Charity gives “excessively,” beyond morality and law and as such seeks to bind Christians together precisely by fully affirming their differences from one another. This perspective on charity makes it possible for Milbank and other ro theologians to rethink social unity and to imagine a different space of sociality. This space, they argue, is not the hierarchical space of the medieval church, nor is it the private space of a nonpolitical modern church. Comparing the church with the Greek polis, Milbank writes: “The goal of the ecclesia, the city of God, is not collective glory, as if the city were itself a hero, any more than it is the production of heroic individuals. Instead, it really has no telos properly speaking, but continuously is the differential sequence which has the goal beyond goal of generating new relationships, which themselves situate and define persons” (emphasis original; ts 405). Milbank focuses on particular relationships that constitute the body, not on the body itself as a whole that somehow differs from these relationships. This has a decentering effect, as Milbank’s colleague William Cavanaugh notes when he distinguishes “liberal” and “fascist” bodies politic from the “body of Christ.” For liberalism and fascism, everything happens in and through a center: in liberalism, “the center seeks to maintain the independence of individuals from each other,” and in fascism, the effort towa rd se c u l a r d iasp o ra

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is to “bind individuals to each other through the center.”²¹ In both cases, the priority of the center erases crucial differences between people. For Christians, by contrast, Christ is not to be found in one particular place, but wherever relations of love and charity between people are forged. The center is everywhere and nowhere; each relationship has its point in its uniqueness, not in the way it serves a greater purpose. This vision of sociality blurs the bounds between church and state in such a way that “a social existence of many complex and interlocking powers may emerge” (ts 408). Cavanaugh provides the historical background for this attempt to reinvigorate the political significance of “middle spaces” between the individual and the state by questioning the narrative secular modernity tells. This is the well-known story of the secular nationstate emerging from the so-called wars of religion to save Europe from self-destruction. For Cavanaugh, though, the story elides the complex reality of this period of violence, particularly the extent to which these struggles were, in fact, the “birthpangs of the state,” brought about by “the aggrandizement of the centralizing territorial state over the remnants of the transnational ecclesial order and the remnants of local privilege and custom.”²² That is, contrary to the secular narrative, these wars were less matters of different religions intolerantly battling over belief than the consequence of efforts by nascent states to usurp power from both the church and localized forms of government.²³ The state could establish itself only by eliminating, as much as possible, the competing power of other social groups, both religious—such as the churches—and secular—such as the medieval guilds. The implications of this counter-history are manifold. Most important is the suggestion that the modern state has a deep interest in evacuating “middle communities” of political significance and in rendering allegiances not directed at the state politically inconsequential. Radical Orthodox thinkers, however, point to forms of political engagement beyond the religious-secular distinction and beyond the supposedly autonomous individual. The church, of course, is one of these middle communities in which such a political engagement can happen. Milbank acknowledges that as a historical fact the church has largely failed to provide the context for such engagement, but he does point to the nonhierarchical, politically and socially engaged “base communities” of Latin and South America as one such successful context. There, he claims, “Church and world, spiritual and secular are blurred, and relative independence and mutual nurture within small groups is pursued” (ts 408). Roberts

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But where does this ecclesial and social vision leave non-Christians? Given the claim that true peace is only possible through Christian sociality, what constitutes Christian praxis toward those who ascribe to other narratives and other forms of social life? Perhaps one of the biggest stumbling blocks for liberal, progressive, feminist, or postcolonial imaginations— whether Christian or not—in taking ro seriously is that it is nonapologetically missionary, with Milbank asserting that the proper Christian task with respect to the other is the “work of conversion.”²⁴ Milbank is aware of this problem and counters it with the argument that popular contemporary commitments to pluralism are usually themselves imperialistic. Proponents of religious pluralism and interreligious dialogue, he argues, generally affirm religious difference only by deploying a western, Christian-based concept of religion that already erases crucial cultural differences: “The moment of contemporary recognition of other cultures and religions optimistically celebrated [by proponents of dialogue] is itself . . . none other than the moment of total obliteration of other cultures by Western norms and categories, with their freight of Christian influence.”²⁵ Thus, in an effort to resist one form of Christian imperialism, Milbank unapologetically invokes another, arguing that it is only through “insisting on the finality of the Christian reading of ‘what there is’ that one can both fulfill respect for the other and complete and secure this otherness as pure neighborly difference.”²⁶ What kind of imperialism is asserted with this insistence on “finality” in ro’s efforts to make “Christian neighbors” out of all others? For now, I will exercise Connolly’s “presumptive receptivity” and treat this insistence as an orientation to difference that speaks directly and unapologetically out of its metaphysic as a prerequisite for engaging other points of view, that explicitly acknowledges that the Christian metaphysic can only be taken on faith and that conversion can proceed only through noncoercive forms of persuasion (ts 418), and, finally, that views the telos of Christian sociality not from the perspective of any determinable final form but “nonteleologically,” simply as repeated (and peaceful) difference. Radical Orthodoxy does seek to unify the world as the “body of Christ,” but one should keep in mind that this is a crucified body, a Eucharistic body shared only as it is repeatedly broken and consumed. There is, in this sense, a deeply ritualized practice of resisting wholeness in the church, which may help to articulate how ro’s universalism is a “particular universalism” that does not so much assimilate difference as it itself is repeatedly shaped anew in the engagement with difference. Thus when Milbank claims that he seeks towa rd se c u l a r d iasp o ra

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to convert others to Christianity, he also says that in our interactions with these others “we should indeed expect to constantly receive Christ again, from the unique spiritual responses of other cultures.”²⁷ Translated into a Eucharistic idiom, this formulation states that it is the Christian that receives Christ from the non-Christian, not the other way around. For Milbank, there is no finished, whole Christianity, for it is always being rebroken and refigured in unexpected ways in the encounter with the other. As Rowan Williams puts it, “the fullness of Christ is always to be discovered, never there already in a conceptual pattern that explains and predicts everything.”²⁸ Postmodern Jewish Philosophy: Dialogue and Diaspora According to the authors of Reasoning After Revelation—Stephen Kepnes, Robert Gibbs, and Peter Ochs—a primary goal of pjp is to reintroduce “guidelines for moral and religious reasoning into public debates—guidelines that are neither relativistic nor imperialistic but at once definitive and pluralistic, in the manner of traditional rabbinic inquiry.”²⁹ Reasoning After Revelation stages a series of dialogues between the authors that are then expanded to include responses by other Jewish philosophers such as Yudit Greenberg and Susan Shapiro. The dialogue format is fundamental to the project’s emphasis on the complex set of relations it seeks to forge between contemporary Jewish thought, modern philosophy’s critical spirit, and the biblical and rabbinic sources of the Jewish tradition. This balance, or tension, between modernity and tradition provides the key to pjp’s characterization of much of what passes for postmodernism today as merely a “hypermodernism,” that is, a radical extension, to the point of skepsis, of modernity’s critical perspective.³⁰ By contrast, pjp— like ro—“relaxes” the modern and hypermodern suspicion of tradition with an explicit statement of faith: “We are among those who rely upon the promise and who trust that God will be with us” (rr 5). This “suspicion of suspicion,” as Rowan Williams calls it, does not entail reinvesting tradition with absolute authority.³¹ Tradition on this reading does not serve as a theological or philosophical foundation analogous to that which modern philosophy seeks in reason, or, in response to modern reason, that fundamentalists seek in the Bible. Rather, it is trust in the dialogue constituted by rabbinic interpretations of the Torah or, to put it differently, it is trust in God as exemplified in the rabbinic tradition of speaking with and to the word of God. This return to tradition also signals an affirmation of the particularity Roberts

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of the Jewish people, a particularity renounced by many modern Jews in their appeal to universal, philosophical truths. At the same time, pjp maintains an opening to modern philosophical reasoning that keeps the affirmation of tradition from being sectarian or simply antimodern. Central to this effort is Robert Gibbs’s attempt to reconceive universality and particularity for Jewish thought in his recent book, Why Ethics? ³² Gibbs rejects the “postmodern despair” that sees all claims to universality, and even to reason, as imperialistic totalizing. Following Franz Rosenzweig, he appeals to the idea of a “plurality of ethical logics” to argue that not all ways of universalizing are totalizing in the manner of G. W. F. Hegel’s idealism (in which the part “surrenders to” or is “absorbed by” the whole) (we 209, 207). Christian universalism, Gibbs goes on, is a universalism of cooperation rather than of totalization. This means that particulars are related to one another in relations of mutuality and communication and that the community relates to those outside it by inviting them to join. In Judaism, particularly in the idea of “chosenness,” Gibbs sees yet another variety of universalism: Jews are chosen not as recipients of a universal truth to which they must lead others, but rather as responsible for representing all humanity in confessing human sin before God (we 199). This imperative to be responsible for all others means that Jewish particularity does not isolate Jews from others, but rather requires that “the Jewish community must bear every sort of opposition within it, must be crisscrossed like a network of factions . . . harboring, even cultivat[ing] . . . disagreements and opposing tendencies” (we 188). This claim opens a crucial difference for Gibbs between Christian and Jewish forms of nontotalizing universalism: whereas Christians seek to universalize cooperation by inviting others into the fold, Jews are content to maintain differences between communities at the same time that they incorporate these differences within themselves as an expression of their infinite responsibility (we 208). Where the emphasis in Christianity is on speaking—proclaiming the Good News—the emphasis in Judaism is on listening and responding responsibly. Given his Levinasian focus on nonreciprocal relationships—I am responsible for you, whether or not you feel or practice a reciprocal responsibility for me—Gibbs argues that Jewish responsibility is enacted in shaping and reshaping the Jewish community, not in persuading other communities to be more like the Jewish one. Thus, even though Christian universalism is able to respect and affirm difference to a significant degree, Gibbs believes that because it conceives of relationships between particulars as primarily reciprocal and cooperatowa rd se c u l a r d iasp o ra

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tive, it is less able than Judaism to acknowledge and affirm the plurality of ethical logics. Jewish dialogue, from this perspective, opens lines of engagement both within and without the Jewish community only while it resists the wholeness of consensus and conversion. I can elaborate these ideas further by considering Jewish affirmations of diaspora. In one of the key exchanges in Reasoning, Stephen Kepnes describes the situation of contemporary American Jews as one of “spiritual homelessness.” Peter Ochs responds with the suggestion that the postmodern turn to tradition could be seen as a (re)turn “home” following the failure of modern ways of being Jewish. In her commentary on this exchange, Susan Shapiro interjects a pivotal question about what “postmodern” home or community might mean, suggesting that a postmodern sense of “dwelling” must always contain within it a sense of “homelessness”—that is, the recognition that one is only partially at home in any particular communal arrangement. She therefore asks, “What opportunities for community are instead opened up by dwelling between communities, between alternative ways of being Jewish, between ways of being?” (rr 87). Such dwelling between is necessary, argues Shapiro, because any particular subject always occupies a number of subject positions—for example, one never occupies only the position of Jewishness but also other positions of gender, race, and class, among others. Even Jewishness cannot be located in any particular place, for the way in which one “dwells” in a Jewish community will depend on the particular kinds of other subject positions one occupies.³³ Shapiro’s questioning raises the possibility that postmodern Jewish thought can practice resistance to wholeness through “a certain rigorous diasporic identity” (rr 87). Daniel and Jonathan Boyarin pursue this line of thinking further with a concept of Jewish diasporic particularity that, like Gibbs’s “responsibility,” refuses assimilationist universalism without losing an imperative for the respect and concern for all human beings. Starting with Paul’s New Testament writings, the Boyarins trace the universalizing and spiritualizing trajectory of Christianity in which a new identity in Christ is shaped by an allegorical rather than a literal genealogy. They argue that the Pauline drive for sameness, evident in such allegorical spiritualizing, has shaped not only Christian understandings of identity but also western views more generally, to the point where the Jew, as the one who denies Christ and insists on literal genealogy and thus particularity, becomes for western culture the trope of discord, disorder, and difference.³⁴ But the Boyarins insist on the materiality of memory, cultural difference and historical connecRoberts

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tion—in short, on particularity, even as they recognize that particularism can engender its own kinds of violence: “Particularism plus power yields tribal warfare or fascism” (D 318). And they also affirm this particularity without simply rejecting Christian universalism: “The genius of Christianity is its concern for all the peoples of the world; the genius of Judaism is its ability to leave other people alone” (D 319). To imagine a particularism without violence, the Boyarins invoke diasporic identity, a minority identity without the power granted by a land of one’s own. Diaspora is, for the Boyarins, “a theoretical and historical model to replace national self-determination” (D 323). In some respects, of course, this is a model of identity that historically has been forced on the Jews, but the Boyarins insist that it also has been actively affirmed by the rabbis, who “renounced the Land” until the final redemption. They also argue that within the conditions of diaspora, the Jews discovered that their own well-being was intimately connected with respect for difference, a respect that can be theologically warranted from within the tradition. As an example of this renunciatory affirmation of difference, the Boyarins append to their article a statement from the group Neturei Karta, comprised by Palestinian Jewish members of the Palestinian delegation to the Middle East Peace Conference in 1992, who reject Zionism and an independent Jewish state on theological grounds. The Boyarins see this rejection as “eloquent evidence of the kind of radical political rhetoric available within a highly traditional diasporic Jewish framework and in particular for its insight into what could be called the construction of the demonized Other” (D 336). This appeal to a radical political rhetoric that takes as a primary concern another community—in this case Palestinian Arabs—suggests that when the Boyarins claim that the genius of Judaism is the ability to “leave other people alone,” they are not precluding solidarity with non-Jews or the “responsibility” for which Gibbs argues.³⁵ Further, a diasporic identity offers one way of imagining political power and engagement beyond the political spaces set up and maintained by the modern state, something both Gibbs and the Boyarins argue is necessary.³⁶ For Gibbs, the state limits in significant ways our responsibility to others. What is needed to guide social ethics, he argues, is a return to the Halachic perspective shaped in a diasporic rabbinic Judaism. Such a perspective locates social ethics neither in the autonomous individual nor in a national polity but in the “middle range,” a noncoercive realm of social institutions that binds people together without either totalizing or arbitrarily limiting their relationships. Similarly, the Boyarins imagine “an Israel that reimports diastowa rd se c u l a r d iasp o ra

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poric consciousness,” which would mean radically reconceiving the nature of the Israeli state (D 325). This diasporic perspective does not view Jewish culture as closed off from other cultures; it has learned from the history of diaspora that cultures and identities are “constantly being remade” through the encounter and mixing with other cultures. Thus it forms an identity that at one and the same time can be devoted to maintaining Jewish culture and to “radical causes of liberation” (D 332); it is an identity that renders questionable any firm distinction between the secular and the religious: it is a “disaggregated identity . . . [disrupting] the very categories of identity because it is not national, not genealogical, not religious, but all of these in dialectic tension with one another” (D 333). CONCLUSION: DIASPORAS RELIGIOUS AND SECUL AR

The juxtaposition I have developed here is troubling, for it comes perilously close to predictable stereotypes: missionary Christians and wandering Jews. But I think this is trouble that proponents of ro and pjp consciously risk as they each attempt to recover a tradition, even as they mine it for resources that resist these stereotypes. In these efforts it is possible to discern two crucial links between these postmodern religious visions and Connolly’s postsecular vision of political engagement: first, ro and pjp reconceptualize the universalism of their traditions in ways that resist claims to wholeness; second, both offer theological critiques of the modern, secular distinction between public and private—and hence between the religious and the secular—by arguing for the necessity of politicoreligious middle spaces that allow for new forms of political engagement.³⁷ More concretely, ro argues for conversion without coercion or assimilation, and pjp affirms diaspora as an assumption of political, religious, and social responsibility. Whether either succeeds in its respective efforts is not a question I can answer definitively at this point, but in conclusion I will argue that we should align Connolly’s proposals for an ethos of engagement more closely with pjp than with ro and that this alignment sharpens Connolly’s pluralistic vision of engagement by inflecting it in the direction of what I will call “secular diaspora.” Milbank, as I have noted, argues that to criticize universalisms or imperialisms in the name of pluralism, social justice, or liberation is still to universalize, for these ideals emerge from specific narratives rooted in particular histories and particular hopes for the future. On this view, no coherent and effective political or ethical project can avoid some kind of Roberts

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“imperialistic” effort to persuade others of the vision rooted in such narratives. Milbank thus is unapologetic about affirming missionary activity based in the Christian vision he believes makes possible genuine peace and respect for difference. Connolly agrees with Milbank on the general issue at stake here, at least in the sense that pluralistic engagement will only be possible if we can persuade others to respect difference and value engagement.³⁸ Further, his criticisms of secularism raise important questions about the ease with which secularists condemn religious forms of persuasion. What is the difference between efforts to convert and efforts to persuade? What, precisely, is the difference between attempting to persuade someone to embrace a secular, feminist, or radical democratic point of view, on the one hand, and a Christian or Jewish point of view, on the other? If we follow Connolly in his questioning of the religious-secular distinction we must, I think, allow these questions to shape our view of pluralism and respect for difference. This is not to say, however, that there are no distinctions to be made between Milbank and Connolly on this issue. Crucial here is Connolly’s distinction between faith and ethos. This distinction allows us to begin to theorize different kinds of persuasion. Milbank’s universalism, I would claim, is a universalism on the level of faith. Although he claims that Christianity will be changed in unexpected ways as others are converted to it, it is always still identifiable as Christianity: others join us, even if they change who we are; they must, at the very least, come to recognize that a particular, contingent social logic and metaphysic—articulated in its initial form in the Bible—is in fact the best way for people to be. By contrast, Connolly—and I will suggest below that this also goes for pjp—defends a universalistic ethos rather than a universalistic faith. This means that instead of seeking to persuade others to embrace a particular identity, he seeks to persuade them of imagining and practicing their identities differently. If, Connolly contends, we bear our particular identities as always in process and shot through with unruly, competing otherness, and if we are able to attend to and accept this aspect of ourselves without seeking too much purification or coherence, then we will be better attuned to the otherness represented by other kinds of people, better able to engage in relations of agonistic respect and critical responsiveness, and more attentive to multiple spaces of engagement. This distinction between faith and ethos, between identity and the way we bear our identities, is a delicate one. Here let me try to solidify it sometowa rd se c u l a r d iasp o ra

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what through a very brief turn to the theoretical elaborations of Eric Santner and Jacques Rancière. Santner deploys the terms global consciousness and universalism to differentiate between a pluralism based on establishing common ground among the predicates that make up our identities— global consciousness—and a pluralism that rests on what he describes as a “shared opening to alterity”—universalism.³⁹ Where Milbank’s Christian pluralism depends on a shared identity, Connolly’s pluralistic ethos depends on shared practices by which one cultivates one’s own “opening to alterity.” Though Milbank does gesture toward such openness by noting that Christian identity is always “crucified” identity, his Christianity is also grounded in the eschatological anticipation of resurrection and, with resurrection, of universal peace and harmony. This temporal orientation has a spatial correlate in an image of human community as the “body of Christ” in which each particular has its assigned place and proper function. Connolly’s agonism, by contrast, imagines no ultimate end to certain forms of struggle, dissonance, negotiation, or compromise. Wholeness for Connolly is always and necessarily riven by a dissonance that always dislocates and subverts expectations of occupying one’s “proper” place. In this, Connolly’s pluralism has strong affinities with Rancière’s vision of universalism. For Rancière, the universal is located in marginalized groups with no proper place in the social order, in the “part with no part.” This universal status holds not because of something inherent to the group’s identity, but because in their excluded status, they embody a tension between the counted and the uncounted, between the structured social body (where each part has its place) and the part with no part (outside of or aslant to the structured body) that is constitutive of all social structures. Hence such groups mark the site of politics, of the negotiations, dialogue, and debate that constitute this necessary disruption of the whole. Milbank views this as disruption from the horizon of ultimate reconciliation, imagining that we can heal the fissures in the social structure by giving recognition to marginalized identities and so integrating them into the whole. This is to imagine the end of politics in a harmonious social body. But Rancière and Connolly view the disruption of politics as something to maintain rather than contain. Politics, here, is maintained not in the creation of new, reified identities that become new parts of the whole, but in the making provisional of all identities, in the “destabilizing [of] the ‘natural’ functional order of relations in the social body.”⁴⁰ As Connolly argues, such destabilization on the scale of the social body demands an ethos that allows a certain amount of destabilization—deRoberts

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sanctification, to use Connolly’s term—on the level of group and individual identity. Milbank emphasizes, and seeks to avoid, the threat of violence that he sees as inherent in such destabilization. But at what cost? At least this: Milbank purchases his vision of Christian peace by constructing a narrative of human history that attributes violence as an inherent characteristic of non-Christian identities—whether secular or religious. In this his narrative inverts the modernist secular narrative, one renewed today with great vigor, that contrasts secular tolerance with the violence of religion.⁴¹ Both Milbank and modernist secularism thus find violence inherent to particular kinds of identities. Connolly, by contrast, finds violence in particular kinds of practices, in the way we hold and try to secure our identities, not in any particular identity itself. He thus distinguishes between the “antagonism of identity” and an “agonism of difference” and thereby, I think, offers a decisive alternative to the imperialistic peace defended by Milbank. ˜ Let me conclude with some final reflections on the notion of “diaspora.” Connolly’s vision of pluralism, I suggest, points secularists in the direction of a “secular diaspora.” As I have noted, both ro and pjp seek to forge a middle range of political networks that work below, beyond, and around the nation-state. To accomplish this, ro supplements the organic vision of the body of Christ with an ecclesiology that continues to rely on an architectural vision of common space: not a liberal public square, but a Christian church. But in the diaspora model we find in the Boyarins, and at least to some degree in the dialogues of pjp, engagement depends not on a shared space but on a commitment to engagement that takes place in different kinds of spaces, spaces that are never home in any simple sense of the word, but are rather conceived as a series of networks not bounded by a single space or a single narrative, spaces that are perhaps virtual more than real. Accordingly, this diasporic perspective calls for a “disaggregated identity,” or, as the Boyarins put it, an identity that is not “a proud resting place (hence not as a form of integrism and or nativism) but as perpetual, creative, diasporic tension” (D 326). This is an identity that is constantly shifting and strategic, one always both rooted and uprooted. Diasporic Judaism does locate itself by means of a narrative, but as Shapiro reminds us, this appeal to narrative is one that constantly affirms its own uprooting and its own minority status. To emphasize the connection with Connolly, towa rd se c u l a r d iasp o ra

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we might say that the diasporic model accomplishes a certain kind of desanctification of one’s narrative, place, and identity precisely by understanding that its universal character consists in an opening to the alterity or plurality constitutive of every identity. This diasporic perspective has close affinities with what Aamir Mufti calls “minority criticism,” that is, criticism based in “a mode of social locatedness that allows a perception of the uprooting inherent in any project for the rooting of culture and memory.”⁴² Though Mufti, writing from a secular perspective, is suspicious of mystifying appeals to religious tradition, and though we might be tempted to extend this suspicion to pjp’s trust in God and the Torah, pjp’s embrace of diaspora in fact brings it close to his “minority” perspective. In doing so, pjp shows how appeals to religious traditions can be much more than mystifying invocations of authenticity or unity. As secularism comes undone, in other words, it is perhaps time to reassess the critical possibilities of concepts such as tradition, trust, and faith. And perhaps, too, it is time to consider how certain religious or theological critiques of secular, public space might help us revision the secular along the lines of secular diaspora. To begin imagining such a diaspora, consider Justice Antonin Scalia’s appeal to tradition as grounds for arguing the legality of bans on homosexual sodomy and same-sex marriage.⁴³ It is easy for some of us—good pluralists or multiculturalists—to contest Scalia’s appeal to the common ground of tradition by invoking a different common ground, the public square, understood as the proper home of the secular. A diaspora secularism, however, gives up this home, not so much through a simple evacuation of the public square, but through a radical reimagining and multiplication of the possibilities of publicness, beginning with the recognition that public can no longer be defined in exclusively secular terms. Uprooting the secular from its public square would involve a certain desanctification of liberal, secular visions of wholeness and identity. And in some respects this would make it more difficult to combat bids for hegemony such as Scalia’s. But a diaspora perspective also would offer other ways to contest such bids. It would, first, acknowledge the commonalities between Scalia’s appeal to tradition and the modernist secular appeal to the public square and the public-private split. Even if there are significant differences between Christian and secular forms of hegemony, the secularism of the public square and Scalia’s appeal to tradition both involve historically constructed identities claiming the authority to define the space Roberts

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of politics and morality. This leads to a question: How much of the recent resurgence of evangelical political activity in the United States today is motivated by a Christian resentment of a perceived secular hegemony? Christians in the United States have never experienced, qua Christians, anything like the kind of marginalization and oppression that the U.S. government and many of its citizens have visited on Native Americans, African Americans, and others. Indeed, Christian ideals and ideas have played and continue to play a powerful role in shaping common life in the United States. Still, throughout much of the twentieth century at least, significant religious expression in the political or in the academic spheres was marginalized, and this marginalization has contributed to the shaping of contemporary evangelical identity and solidarity. By acknowledging this and by giving up its hold on the public square, diasporic secularism might help make it possible for evangelicals and other Christians, as well as for adherents of other faiths, to learn to bear their identities differently, less guardedly, in a way more open to the pluralist sensibility advocated by Connolly. Secular diaspora would also resist hegemonic efforts such as Scalia’s by cultivating attention to crucial strategies of domination. Scalia’s appeal to tradition is not specious and so should be accorded some moral weight. Yet two things should be noted about his appeal. First, it slips far too easily from a historical assertion about a dominant moral tradition made by someone who claims to represent that tradition to a legal claim made by a Supreme Court justice exercising vast state power. In this slip—which raises crucial questions about democracy—a purportedly dominant tradition exerts dominative power over other traditions. Second, the historical claim depends on rhetorical and political constructions that can and should be contested. Thus even while granting some moral weight to the tradition, deeming it worthy of agonistic respect, it is necessary to examine carefully the fissures that make up dominant national identity and the historical conflicts elided in any narrative that seeks to articulate this identity. A diasporic counter to Scalia’s hegemonic claims would avoid seeking to disqualify these claims on account of their religious or moral character, and it would also avoid trying to argue that Scalia’s version of this identity is merely constructed. Yes, Scalia is not simply appealing to a tradition, but is simultaneously constructing it in his preferred image. But this is what all appeals to tradition do, especially political ones. Instead, a response to Scalia from the perspective of secular diaspora would engage in its own constructive politics by complicating and loosening the towa rd se c u l a r d iasp o ra

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identity Scalia wants to solidify. It would do this by exploiting fissures and elisions in this purported identity, first, by engaging in forms of immanent critique of the claimed tradition and, second, by cultivating strategic alliances with elements of the tradition that do not fit so neatly into Scalia’s construction of it.⁴⁴ Paul Gilroy, who like the Boyarins seeks to bring the concept of diaspora to bear on questions of identity and politics, puts it this way: “Identity conceived diasporically resists reification in petrified forms even if they are indubitably authentic. The tensions around origin and essence that the diaspora brings into view allow us to perceive that identity should not be fossilized. . . . Identity, too, becomes a noun of process.”⁴⁵ Secular identities and religious identities are in process. To say, as Connolly does, that “secularism is coming apart at the seams” is not to proclaim the end of all secularisms, but to point to a secular diaspora in which new forms of the secular will emerge and thus to affirm the process referred to by Gilroy. Affirming this view of identity not only can make us more cognizant of the processes that shape and reshape our own identities but can increase our awareness of the way these processes work on other groups. In turn, this can allow us to see connections, even new identities, where before we saw only the empty space between discrete ways of being. NOTES 1. Connolly, Why I Am Not a Secularist, 19. Hereafter referred to parenthetically in the text as ws. 2. The terms religious and secular should be placed in scare quotes to emphasize their historically constructed character, but rather than resorting to this tiresome convention throughout my essay, such a view of these concepts should be assumed unless otherwise noted. 3. The distinction I draw here between private and public freedom is indebted to Isaiah Berlin’s distinction between negative and positive freedom. See his Four Essays on Liberty. 4. My essay focuses on Why I Am Not a Secularist, though my analysis is also informed by Connolly’s more recent work in Neuropolitics and Pluralism. 5. A number of recent theoretical treatments of the philosophy and politics of the postsecular share significant affinities with Connolly’s work. See, for example, Vries,

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305 Philosophy; Blond, Post-secular Philosophy; Coles, Rethinking Generosity; and Stout, Democracy and Tradition. 6. Connolly undermines a strict binary opposition between the religious and the secular, a subversion he furthers when he acknowledges this perspective as his own and claims that it is one that is open to a “fugitive enchantment with being” (ws 15). 7. This is imagined most vividly by John Rawls with his idea of the “original position” in Theory of Justice. On a related note, Connolly criticizes Habermas for his “infectious insistence upon an authoritative model of argumentation from which the visceral element is subtracted” (ws 35). For another recent effort to rethink the relation of liberalism and secularism, see Stout, Democracy and Tradition. 8. Connolly’s term infrasensible refers not just to the body but to the complex nexus of interconnections between body and mind (two abstractions rendered problematic by the very idea of infrasensible). I refer to the body here to emphasize Connolly’s inclusion of the “visceral register” in moral reflection (ws 15). 9. Though it must be acknowledged that Connolly’s argument vis-à-vis Habermas would be strengthened were he to attend more closely to the ways in which Habermasians like Seyla Benhabib have attempted to address criticisms along these lines. See Benhabib, Situating the Self. 10. For example, see Richard Rorty, “Religion as a Conversation Stopper,” in Rorty, Philosophy and Social Hope. 11. Connolly, Pluralism, 4. 12. Ibid., 4, 123–25. 13. Connolly, Identity\Difference, 90. Hereafter referred to parenthetically in the text as id. 14. For a related argument, see Carter, The Culture of Disbelief; and, especially, Stout, Democracy and Tradition. 15. Roberts, “Transcendental Sociology?” 16. Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, 381. Hereafter referred to parenthetically in the text as ts. 17. Milbank not only argues that all pagan and “secular” myths are stories of originary violence but he implies that all non-Jewish and non-Christian religious myths are as well. See the discussion of Hinduism and Buddhism in “End of Dialogue.”

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306 18. And for that reason it provides an especially interesting comparison with Connolly. See Connolly’s Augustinian Imperative. See Kathleen Skerrett’s fascinating and insightful account of the “rivalry” between Connolly and Augustine in “Indispensible Rival.” 19. Milbank believes that the church has largely failed to become the alternative society he envisions. 20. Milbank, “An Essay against Secular Order,” 209. 21. Cavanaugh, “City,” 196. 22. Ibid., 191. 23. Jakobsen, “Is Secularism Less Violent than Religion?” 24. Gavin D’Costa, ed. Christian Uniqueness Reconsidered, 190. 25. Milbank, “End of Dialogue,” 175. 26. Ibid., 189. 27. D’Costa, Christian Uniqueness Reconsidered, 190. 28. Williams, “Trinity and Pluralism,” 8; emphasis original. 29. Kepnes, Ochs, and Gibbs, Reasoning After Revelation. Hereafter referred to parenthetically in the text as rr. 30. In his introduction to Interpreting Judaism in a Postmodern Age, Kepnes defines postmodernism as follows: “A contemporary movement away from the modern ideal of a universal rational culture and toward a multicultural reality that celebrates the value of the local and particular and attempts a new openness to premodern forms and motifs” (1). 31. Williams, “Suspicion of Suspicion.” 32. Gibbs, Why Ethics? Hereafter referred to parenthetically in the text as we. 33. For a closely related perspective see Levitt, “Rethinking.” 34. Boyarin and Boyarin, “Diaspora,” 319. Hereafter referred to parenthetically in the text as D. 35. See Daniel Boyarin’s Unheroic Conduct, xiii, for a vivid demonstration of this kind of solidarity (and the “homelessness” to which Shapiro refers). There, Boyarin at-

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307 tempts to “justify his love” for Orthodox Judaism through a feminist reconstruction of the tradition. 36. Gibbs, Correlations, 257. 37. For an incisive account, one both sobering and insightful, of the current state of participatory democracy and its relation to debates over the public and the private in the United States, see Duggan, Twilight of Equality? 38. See Connolly’s discussions of confession and conversion in Augustinian Imperative. As he acknowledges there, “No writer is free from the drive to convert” (86). 39. Santner, On the Psychotheology of Everyday Life, 5–6, 125–27. 40. This formulation comes from Slavoj Žižek’s discussion of Rancière in Ticklish Subject, 188. See also Rancière, Disagreement. 41. It would be more accurate to say that Milbank recovers this strategy from the secularists since, as he shows so well, this was Augustine’s strategy in The City of God. 42. Mufti, “Aura of Authenticity,” 88. 43. Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (2003). 44. See Stout’s treatment of “immanent criticism” in Democracy and Tradition; for an account of the somewhat circumstantial, and thus potentially fragile, set of alliances that constitute today’s conservative and evangelical blocs in the United States, see Duggan, Twilight of Equality, esp. chap. 2. 45. Gilroy, Against Race, 252.

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CHAPTER TWELVE

feminisms and secularisms ˜ Kathleen Sands

One assumption of twentieth-century liberalism that deserves to be discredited is the notion that while there are many religions in the United States, there is but one secularism. The fraternal twin of this disposable notion, more popular today on the right, is that while religions might differ, surely faith is the same. The history of women in relation to religion and feminism during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries belies both. In the United States women have experienced and do experience both a variety of religions and a variety of conceptions of religion; they also relate in a variety of ways to public life and exhibit a range of perspectives on what constitutes the secular. The history of feminism in the United States demonstrates why the religious and the secular cannot be studied as if they belonged to a kind of natural history, nor as if either had an existence aside from the other. Instead, the religious and the secular need to be examined as linked discourses, as objects of social rather than natural history. Consider, for example, the largest shift in feminism’s relation to religion—that is, the shift from the religious inspiration of much first-wave feminism to the secularism, even hostility to religion, with which second-wave feminism is typically associated. From one angle, the secularism (real and perceived) of second-wave feminism involves historical distortions, even errors. For one thing, the significance of religion for nineteenth-century feminism is forgotten or minimized. Also given short shrift are the transformative waves of feminism within mainstream religions that began alongside or even before second-wave secular feminism and that have continued, as the historian Anne Braude says, to “spread like ground cover, flowering in some settings long after its vibrancy had diminished elsewhere.”¹ Yet

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the current amnesia about religious feminism reflects important truths about religion and secularity as linked discourses: how the religious and the secular are shaped in relation to each other, which groups are best able to use and alter these discourses, and how these discourses have molded and been molded by feminism itself. TWO PRIMARY DISCOURSES: RELIGION AS EXCEPTIONAL AND RELIGION AS GENERIC

That the religious and the secular have meaning only in relation to each other is virtually a truism. In their modern formations, however, the relations between the two took on distinct configurations, configurations that defined modernity itself and whose current crises are symptomatic of modernity’s decline. Without suggesting that these are the only forms the discourses have taken, I want to highlight two that appear especially powerful in American history and especially significant for women’s history, one of which I will call the exceptionalist view of religion, while the other I will call the generic view of religion. In these and related modern discourses, religion occupies the foreground, but its backdrop always is constituted by tacit notions of the secular. For Western modernity, it seems, the religious has been linked to the secular as the marked to the unmarked. Religion can be looked at, but the secular was the perspective moderns looked from. As such, the secular became normative, encoding standards of legitimacy for primary social sectors such as government, the academy, and the economy and delineating the proper role of religion in public life. Just as in the discourses of race, sexuality, and gender, the apparent objectivity of the normative viewpoint is a trompe l’oeil. The modern secular in fact has a quite particular historical provenance, that of Euro-American Protestantism. And it provides most generously for particular beneficiaries, namely, those who bear this cultural heritage. So the secular is not entirely secular, just as the discourses of race, gender, and sexuality are not really neutral but rather privilege whiteness, maleness, and heterosexuality. Like these other discourses, that of the religious and the secular is riddled with contradictions. For example, the secular becomes both part of a larger whole and the whole itself; it can be construed either as a particular sphere, set off clearly from the religious, or seen as a normative vision of social life within which every sphere, including religion, is defined and assigned its rightful place and boundaries. But these contradictions often fe m i n i sm s a n d se c u l a risms

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prove highly serviceable for dominant groups. Nonelites can, in fact often must, take up these discourses, and this normally involves attempts to steer, adapt or derail them. Indeed, the history of feminism in the United States is filled with such attempts, and I will offer some telling examples. But that same history also suggests that the effectiveness of those attempts is related to the degree of social power that a group of women already enjoys. Although this normalization of the secular is a common feature of modern discourses of religion, there also exist important differences among these discourses. In the exceptionalist tradition, the secular is mythologized as a state of nature that exists wherever religion has not yet spread or, to spin it differently, where religion has not yet been cultivated. Religion is construed as a unique category; clearly bound off from the rest of culture and populated with individual religions that are somehow coherently connected to each other. (All of these are assumptions that have grown dubious within the academic study of religion.)² Religions usually are construed in the plural, as the ultimate expressions of individual conscience and sometimes as constituting subgroups within the body politic. In either case, religion is conceived as the inverse of the political, for it is religion that determines the ultimate limits of government. Moreover, if outside religion there exist sacred symbols, metaphysical beliefs, or lifeorienting mythologies, these are either refused recognition or assessed as inferior to religion in significance or worth. The unmarked secular proves crucial in the exceptionalist discourse because the supposedly bright line between religion and culture is constituted only by the idea of the secular, but when we inquire as to the content of this idea, it discloses only that it is “not religion.” Exceptionalism is the official view of religion in the United States, enshrined in the religion clauses of the First Amendment. The uniqueness of religion is presumed by those clauses, for it is religion that is promised the special privileges of free exercise and subjected to special political limitations by the establishment clause. The secular is conceived naturalistically, as that which exists but for religion. Certainly, this view was implied in Roger Williams’s famous metaphor of religion as a garden and government as the wilderness that, but for a sturdy and well-maintained wall between them, would efface religion.³ The metaphor was repeated by Thomas Jefferson in his 1802 letter to the Baptists of Danbury Connecticut and in 1947 by Justice Hugo Black,⁴ after which it became canonical for the judicial separationism that peaked in the 1970s and 1980s but deSands

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clined dramatically, perhaps terminally, in 1990.⁵ This naturalistic notion of the secular is thus a metaphor with a history in Euro-American Protestantism. The exceptionalist view of religion, too, betrays deep Protestant influences—for example, the idea that religion is more about interior faith than public works, that religion begins in the heart or conscience of the individual rather than in the life of the community, that religion cannot be coerced without ceasing to be religions, and so forth. Within exceptionalism itself, there are additional tensions between its stronger and weaker forms. Strong-form exceptionalism is equivalent to separationism in constitutional legal theory; in civic life it is expressed in the ideological secularism of organizations such as the American Civil Liberties Union (aclu) and Americans United for the Separation of Church and State (au). Strong-form exceptionalism emphasizes the unique limitations of religion in public life, rather than its unique privileges. It is the religious individual, not the religious community, to whom religious freedom primarily applies. And while the freedom of religious individuals is protected and promoted (one need only recall the passionate efforts of the aclu in this area), the strict separation of church and state is seen as the fundamental condition for the possibility of religious freedom. The separation of church and state is seen not just as a necessary means for the protection of religious freedom. It is also an end in itself, because from the vantage point of ideological secularism, it is not just religion that needs protection from the state but the state that needs protection from religion. So when separationist exceptionalists identify a viewpoint as religious, it warrants the exclusion of that viewpoint from law, policy, and even public conversation. Religious beliefs, in turn, are defined as generally apolitical—or, in Stephen Carter’s critical expression, as “trivial” in relation to public life.⁶ When the laws or policies of the state directly contradict the religious commitments of individuals, free exercise is vigorously defended. But it is defended more as a right to individual exemption from public norms than a right to exert influence in creating and changing those norms. Strong-form exceptionalism is directly opposed to the view of religion as generic, but weak-form exceptionalism occupies a midpoint between the two. In constitutional legal theory, weak-form exceptionalism is represented by accommodationism; in civic life, its representatives include many religious ecumenists, proponents of faith-based initiatives, and religious groups that traditionally have served public functions for their members. In weak-form exceptionalism, religions continue to be conceived in the fe m i n i sm s a n d se c u l a risms

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plural, marking off differences that deserve respect and territory on which government may not tread. But religious beliefs, at least certain of them, are seen as deeply relevant to public life. Moreover, religious freedom is thought to accrue not only to individuals but to religious communities. To label something as religious, then, does not warrant its exclusion for public life; on the contrary, religion warrants special voice, and perhaps special authority, in the public sphere. Exceptionalism in its weaker form still regards religion as unique, but while it insists on the unique privileges of free exercise, it wants to evade the unique exclusions to which religion is subject by the establishment clause. The most vivid current examples are the religious groups that accept government funds for faith-based initiatives yet will not relinquish free exercise privileges such as the exemption from certain civil rights provisions. In weak-form exceptionalism, the church-state separation is nothing more than a means to religious freedom. When church-state separation is interpreted in ways that discourage religious expression in public life, including the religious expression of the majority, accommodationists find this a perversion of democracy. These, indeed, are the reasons this sort of exceptionalism should be labeled “weak”: not only does it lower the wall between church and state; it also carries a majoritarian influence that, deliberately or inadvertently, lowers the standard of free exercise. Throughout American history, accompanying the exceptionalist view of religion there always has been a subofficial tradition of generic religion. Conceived generically, religions are absorbed into “Religion,” a singular essence that is at the heart of all (“true”) religions. Far from being consigned to private life, generic religion becomes the very foundation of public life. Although conspicuously and deliberately absent from the constitution, generic religion has a place in the Declaration of Independence,⁷ in the beliefs of the founders, and in what Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Robert Bellah, following Rousseau, called “civil religion.”⁸ The founders and their intellectual forebears called it, variously, “Deism,” “Natural religion” or “Enlightened religion”; lately, as I have mentioned, it is simply called “faith.” In contrast to the exceptionalist tradition, the sense of the secular fostered by the discourse of generic religion is not only kinder and gentler but softer and fuzzier. Rather than being walled off from religion, the secular is felt to rest on religion like an edifice on its foundation. Public life is seen not as a blank symbolic slate, but as stocked with rituals, beSands

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liefs, values, and practices. These include certain obviously religious elements such as faith in God and the observance of a Sunday Sabbath. But they also include elements that are not obviously religious, such as a cultivation of the entrepreneurial spirit and the practice of supposedly traditional sex-gender relations. In the framework of generic religion, none of these elements is regarded as religious in any way that could violate the establishment clause. The ostensibly nonreligious values may function as orthodoxies, but their presumptive secularity relieves them of the scrutiny to which religions might be subject. The more obviously religious elements, on the other hand, get past the establishment clause by asserting that while they may be religious, they are not sectarian.⁹ The deeper, if less articulate, justification of generic religion as the foundation of public life is the feeling that the polity, in order to cohere and flourish, must be symbolically full rather than symbolically empty. Or, to use another familiar metaphor, the polity ought to be clothed, not naked.¹⁰ And it is this symbolic clothing that in the framework of generic religion blesses and legitimates the secular order. So the secular ought to be religious in a certain sense but, perhaps like “good cholesterol,” this kind of religion is salubrious for public life. The public legitimacy of generic religion depends on its claim to be natural or, in the words of an early deist, “as Old as the Creation.”¹¹ However, the limited scope and provenance of generic religion reveals it to be not a natural discovery but a historical invention. This invention can be traced clearly to eighteenth-century philosophers such as John Locke, Matthew Tindal, and Rousseau.¹² In the nineteenth century it was lent further credence by liberal Protestant ecumenism and by the new academic study of religion, the validity of which appeared to require that phenomena as dissonant as Islam and totemism all could be described as variations of a single essence. Still, the resemblance of generic religion to Protestant Christianity is unmistakable. First and most obviously, those who invented natural religion were themselves Protestants, albeit often heterodox Protestants. Like Protestant Christianity, natural religion focuses on beliefs and morality rather than on, say, rituals or mysticism; on individual faith rather than on membership in the community; on a transcendent, judging God rather than on alternative forms of the sacred available among the world’s named religions. If, to many Americans, these features still seem plausible descriptions of religion, that is due only to the continued efficacy of generic religion as a mythology. But that mythology is utterly discredited within the study of religion, which now is fe m i n i sm s a n d se c u l a risms

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methodologically committed to approaching religions more descriptively than normatively. As that commitment works its way through the field, the ethnocentric character of old definitions of religion has grown more and more apparent, and has been rejected more and more firmly. The era in which these contradictions could be gracefully and silently navigated, as I suggested above, is drawing to a close. With increasing religious and ideological pluralism, it has become less and less possible for their Protestant assumptions to go without saying. In relation to the exceptionalist tradition, the end of the era is most evident in the decline of the religion clauses, which since the late 1980s have been weakened to the point where religious freedom has almost no independent clout, and where the wall of separation between church and state is barely a stumbling stone.¹³ As for generic religion, its particular identity has been unmasked to the point where many of its proponents now openly recognize and aggressively reassert Protestant Christianity as the cornerstone of the American polity. Certainly, these recent assaults on secularism can be viewed as yet another chapter in the continuous suppression of free thought in the United States that Susan Jacoby narrates so vividly.¹⁴ But while it is salutary to restore freethinkers to American history, it would not be salutary, even if we could do it, to reauthorize secularism as if there really existed a realm of objective reason to which all can assent, or a political oneness that can be established by mere acclamation. And while religion may not be unique, the principles of free exercise and church-state separation remain vital for democratic deliberation because they can and should force citizens to deliberate, not only about issues on which we disagree but about a more fundamental question: what ought to be the role and limits of government, of politics, and of civic institutions? At present, those fundamental questions are occluded by the discourses of religion and the secular, which embed unreflective answers to these questions and make them unavailable for deliberation. To unblock the discourses, I have suggested, a social history of the religious and the secular is needed. I offer the following pieces of women’s history as some materials from which this social history might begin to be built or at least imagined. WOMEN, FEMINISM, AND DISCOURSES OF RELIGION

Although some nineteenth-century feminists were strict secularists,¹⁵ and although religion was deservedly subjected to some fierce critiques, in the Sands

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main nineteenth-century feminism was, at the very least, deeply engaged with religion. It is well recognized that the abolition movement, the temperance movement, the women’s peace movement, and various purity movements were substantially inspired and often supported by religion and that for the women involved in those movements, religion became a bridge to public life.¹⁶ It is also well recognized that these movements were peopled with white, economically comfortable, Protestant women. For these women, religion was well suited to mediate their entry into public life precisely because American public life—even in its most ostensibly secular aspects—already embedded their religious beliefs and symbols. Of course, in deploying their traditionally patriarchal religion for feminist ends, first-wave feminists were enmeshed in contradictions. However, they were able to make those contradictions work on their own behalf— able, for example, to fashion the existing association of religion with femininity and domesticity into a warrant for women’s public activism. And in addition to manipulating the existing discourse, first-wave feminism changed that discourse by effecting a stronger identification of the American ethos with middle-class Protestant values. For cultural outsiders, though, both religion and the secular had different meanings, as did feminism. Catholic and Jewish immigrant women found religion to be more an obstacle than an aid to feminist solidarity. They recognized the specifically Protestant provenance of the suffrage movement and were understandably suspicious of it; only the labor movement brought them, finally, into that feminist alliance. Still, for Catholics and Jews, religion—their own religions—were vital sources of intragroup affiliation. Their religions also enabled public life by providing education, social services, and a site for political organizing. However, these functions hardly constituted a bridge into public life; rather, their religions had to perform these functions for Catholics and Jews because the larger society refused to serve them equitably. African American women in the nineteenth century, though they shared Protestant Christianity with white feminists, had a very different experience of the church and the public realm. In the first place, as Evelyn Brooks Higgenbotham shows, it was nothing new for African Americans in the nineteenth century to make use of religion as a basis for public life. African American churches historically had been the mainstay of the community’s social life; they were not only places of worship but sites for schools, sports, libraries, publishing houses, insurance companies and, most significantly, forums for political organization. Still, Higgenbotham fe m i n i sm s a n d se c u l a risms

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argues, it is not quite accurate to call the black church a “public space” for African Americans because the church served its social functions in a public world from which African Americans were systematically excluded. Instead, Higgenbotham proposes, the black Baptist Church of the nineteenth century is better understood as a counter–public sphere, “distinct from and in conflict with the dominant white society and its racist institutional structures.”¹⁷ A particularly interesting variation of the relation between women, religion, and public life is the experience of Native American women, not just in the nineteenth century but from colonial times onward. Although gender roles were distinctly defined in their communities, Native American women enjoyed power and autonomy equitable to men’s. They were highly regarded as producers of food and crafts, and also as wives and mothers. The worth of those roles was underscored by the very visible presence of women in myths and rituals. Moreover, family roles were in and of themselves political, since most Native societies were clan-based. Although in most cases only men could be chiefs, women exerted substantial power: in some tribes, for example, selecting chiefs, in others, advising or even commanding chiefs.¹⁸ Were religions as such a channel for public power, Native women would have been swimming in power. But as we know they were not. In fact, for Euro-Americans, the religious significance of women always counted against the legitimacy of Native religions. Ironically, the inseparability of religion and culture for Native peoples—the fact that for them everything was “religious”—was taken to indicate either that they had no religion at all or that their religions were primitive and archaic. This is particularly telling in regard to the linkage of the religious and the secular for modern Euro-Americans: in order to have religion, people also had to have a secular realm. And while Euro-American women could make contradictions in this discourse work for them, women belonging to marginalized groups plainly could not. In direct opposition to the generic religious appeal of the first wave, second-wave feminism in the mainstream defined itself around the strongest form of exceptionalism, valorizing the secular and devaluing religion in public life. Recently, mainstream feminism has begun to move in a more accommodationist direction, creating alliances with religious feminists and invoking religious freedom rather than emphasizing only the separation of church and state.¹⁹ In the social history of religion, this may be one more intimation that the modern paradigm is cracking. In Sands

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any case, it is fair to say that at its inception, the second wave typically cast religion as solidly antifeminist. This characterization of religion, while largely accurate, became also a self-fulfilling prophecy and rendered invisible the religious feminisms of both centuries. Moreover, mainstream second-wave feminism, in and through its indictment of religion, recast the secular as not only neutral about religion but hostile to it. The success of this altered discourse still can be measured by its continued predominance on both the right and the left. The ideological secularism of second-wave feminism certainly added to its difficulty in spreading roots beyond the white middle class since religious adherence often is higher outside this demographic, for example, among African American and immigrant women. Feminist secularism had a more complex but even more telling effect on one particular minority group—that is, on Jewish women. Jewish women were strikingly prominent in the leadership of second-wave feminism. Betty Friedan, Bella Abzug, Letty Pogrebin, and Gloria Steinem are only a few examples.²⁰ As Letty Pogrebin describes it, most Jewish feminists did not connect their Judaism to their feminist activism, assuming or perhaps wanting to believe that the secularism of feminism was in fact neutral and inclusive.²¹ However, as Pogrebin also narrates, Jewish feminists eventually were to be faced with disturbing displays of anti-Semitism within the women’s movement itself.²² Placed in a larger context, the story of Jewish feminism could be an illuminating chapter in the social history of religion and secularity in the modern West. For from its inception, Euro-Christian secularism promised emancipation for Jews. But it also effectively demanded assimilation as the price of the ticket: Jews as a visibly distinct group were not truly welcome in these newly secular polities. It would be interesting to ask whether secular feminism in some respects repeated that pattern. It also would be interesting to investigate the relationship between Judaism, secularism, and the Christian universalism that has influenced so profoundly the definition of religion in the West. In its own first centuries, long before Christianity acknowledged other forms of universalism (e.g., Buddhism or Islam) as genuine religions, Christianity’s claim to universality was central to its claim to being the one true religion. Moreover, Christianity’s inaugural assertion of universality was directed particularly against Judaism as a supposedly nonuniversal and hence archaic religion. The nonuniversality of Judaism legitimated Christianity’s claim to have superseded Judaism; therefore Jewish nonuniversality had to be actively fe m i n i sm s a n d se c u l a risms

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enforced. And indeed, under the Christian empire it was enforced by the criminalization of Jewish proselytization. Anti-Judaism in this sense was embedded in the very definition of religion as it developed in the West. And if modern Western secularism constitutes a descendent of Christian universalism, it may carry an inherent anti-Semitism that Jews have learned to navigate, just as they always have navigated their way within Christian hegemony. For my purposes here, the larger point is that feminist secularism, like all ideological secularism, is willfully amnesiac about its religious history. Chronologically, the largest and most immediate piece of that history was the conflict between liberal and fundamentalist Protestants in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These factions divided not only over the well-remembered issues of evolution and biblical inerrancy but also on the question of feminism, as the historian Margaret Bendroth has shown.²³ Due to successes of nineteenth-century religious feminism, women’s power in the Protestant churches had risen dramatically, and fundamentalists blamed this “effeminate” Christianity on the liberal (male) Protestants who evidently had permitted it to happen. In the 1920s, when liberal Protestantism won this culture war, fundamentalist Protestantism retreated for decades from public life. What was left to dominate the public sphere, then, was a liberal Protestantism comfortable with modernity and quite at home in the secular landscape. The cultural provenance of second-wave secularism was therefore Protestant, albeit meaning a Protestantism of a particular kind. Soon after this feminism emerged, and partly in response to it, evangelical Protestantism burst back into public life. In direct contrast to the nineteenth century, when religion reentered public life in the name of feminist and other progressive causes, the religion that asserted itself in the 1970s was that of a revitalized patriarchalism. This evangelical patriarchalism looked religious in a way that secularized liberal Protestantism did not, so religion appeared to be reentering a public sphere from which it long and unjustly had been banished. As a result, it became easy, though not helpful, for both feminists and antifeminists to cast their disagreement as a disagreement about how large a role religion should play in public life. Given its ideological secularism, second-wave feminism failed for a long time to build alliances with the second wave of religious feminism that from the 1960s on had been reborn both in academic and religious institutions. In seminaries and universities, feminists criticized and often reformed misogynistic religious symbols and teachings; in religious instiSands

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tutions they worked for women’s ordination and liturgical reforms; and in both contexts religious feminists advocated for women in the wider society. But second-wave religious feminism in its own way has been enmeshed in the contradictory discourses of religion. One noticeable pattern of contradiction is the tension between the exceptionalist view of religion that often appears when religious feminism addresses issues of sex and reproduction, and the generic notion of religion that it frequently deploys to authorize its proposals on other issues of social justice. On issues of sex and reproduction, religious feminism is represented by organizations such as the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, the Religious Consultation on Population, Consumption and Reproductive Rights, and the Interfaith Alliance. In relation to this package of issues, the public philosophy of these organizations epitomizes exceptionalism. Religions are understood in the plural, as disagreeing among and within themselves. And although within their own religious traditions feminists work to change conservative views, in the public realm their argument is that religious views, qua religious, should not be made binding on citizens. Religion is thus conceived in relation to these issues as a private or subpolitical matter. Abortion, sexual dissidence, and the like become matters of religious freedom, and religious freedom, in the separationist tradition, is believed to rely on the strongest possible separation of church and state. On issues such as war and peace, the environment, social equality, and economic justice, however, religious feminists promote values that they argue are common to religions and that appear to support a progressive social vision. For example, the Religious Consultation on Population, Reproductive Health, and Ethics, notwithstanding its separationist approach to issues such as abortion, states its mission as follows: “We seek out the positive, renewable moral energies of our faith traditions, directing them to the issues of population, consumption, ecology, reproductive health and the empowerment of women.”²⁴ Clearly the hope, if not assumption, is that significant progressive commonalities can be found in all these traditions and that these commonalities as such deserve public voice and some kind of public authority. The appeals of religious feminisms to commonalities among religions, as well as their recognition of differences, typically are accurate and sophisticated. The dominance of patriarchalism in religions is hardly denied; instead it is recognized, deeply analyzed, and vigorously critiqued. Often though not always, it is recognized that common progressive themes in religions, though they exist, must be sought out and proposed rather than fe m i n i sm s a n d se c u l a risms

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presumed as normative. So I do not mean to suggest that religious feminists and their organizations are misrepresenting religion. The problem is deeper and more subtle, and it has to do with manipulating the public authority of religion. On one hand, when they advert to a generic sense of religion, religious feminists are invoking religion as an appropriate, even authoritative, source of law and policy. On the other hand, when they deploy a discourse of exceptionalism, religious feminists are deauthorizing religion in the public sphere. The problem is tactical as well as intellectual. When it aligns itself with a generic view of religion, religious feminism cannot but remind the public of the patriarchalism that constitutes a predominant, if not universal, feature of major religious traditions. Thus the authority of religion, once deployed in the public sphere, is more likely than not to work against feminist aims. Yet when religious feminists deploy the exceptionalist framework, their deauthorization of religion in public serves also to deauthorize themselves. A vivid example of the political inefficacy of religious feminism, along with progressive religion as a whole, played out in the months leading up to the passage of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (prwora) of 1996. In public statements prior to the law’s passage, religious progressives and feminists objected strongly to the premise, encoded in the law’s title and concretized in its provisions, that poverty was to be handled only as a personal, not a social, responsibility. To advance the maxim of social responsibility, progressives called on common religious principles such as compassion and equality; they also spoke biblical language about care for “widows and orphans” or, in the words of Jesus, for “the least of these.” The use of terms from several traditions, as well as the multireligious composition of the progressive groups themselves, were intended to demonstrate that the groups spoke with the authority of religion in a general sense.²⁵ In the public sphere, however, this countercultural appeal to religious authority, just because it was countercultural, fell on deaf ears. Given their reliance on the authority of generic religion, it is perhaps understandable that religious progressives could not at the same time deploy the exceptionalism on which their feminist public arguments typically rely. Whatever the reason, religious progressives offered no feminist critique of the law’s patriarchalism, expressed plainly in an early subtitle, “An Act to Reduce Illegitimacy.”²⁶ Even without the subtitle, the findings and provisions of the law mandate that poverty is to be attributed largely to sexual and reproductive misbehavior—attributed, that is, to women Sands

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bearing children outside wedlock. Based on that premise, the solution to poverty seemed to center on the restoration of traditional marriage, in which the wage earning of one parent funds the child rearing of the other parent (we can perhaps imagine which parent is expected to be which). At the same time, in an outcome painfully ironic to many religious progressives,²⁷ the prwora initiated a major expansion of the public role of religion by offering religious groups (aka faith-based organizations) public funds to carry out a distinctly antiprogressive, social mission. That mission, encoded first in the Charitable Choice provision of the 1996 law, and since expanded into a far-reaching set of faith-based initiatives, emphasizes the promotion of traditional marriage and the moral reform of individuals. Moreover, the ultimate aim of these new public roles, evident in the moniker “Charitable Choice,” is the gradual privatization of social programs not just in their execution but in their funding. If that trajectory continues, the baby will soon be left at the church door. Among women who are deeply religious but not feminist, a good measure of the current state of the discourse is a study by the sociologist Christel Manning.²⁸ Manning’s subjects were three groups of religiously conservative women—women belonging to an evangelical Protestant church, women within an Orthodox Jewish community, and women in a Roman Catholic parish. Each group to some degree supported women’s equality in the workplace, but all insisted on religiously mandated patriarchalism in church and synagogue and (albeit in more qualified ways) at home.²⁹ Their feminist values were largely concerned with gender equality in the workplace and appeared correlated with the women’s level of education and their experience of working outside the home. In the home, however, the women all favored, and in fact insisted on, traditional roles. They were therefore deeply at odds with mainstream feminism. This dissonance was manifest in their uniform views on two prominent feminist issues—homosexuality and abortion, which all assessed as seriously immoral. Their rejection of mainstream feminist views is one piece of evidence suggesting that at least one of the patterns set up in the 1970s still hold sway—the more religiously orthodox a group is, the less feminist it will be. And the more orthodox and antifeminist a religious group is, the more its views are able to register in public life as religious. Despite their religious agreement on the immorality of abortion and homoeroticism, however, the groups related their religious beliefs to public life in very different ways. The Orthodox Jewish subjects, despite their belief that abortion and homoeroticism were wrong for Jews, typife m i n i sm s a n d se c u l a risms

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cally were pro-choice and pro–gay rights when it came to law and policy. The politics of the Catholic women were more mixed: while they felt that abortion should be recriminalized, they actually opposed discrimination against gays and voiced support for some gay civil rights laws. Only evangelicals believed that their religious views on both abortion and homoeroticism should be codified and enforced as law. These political differences intimate different construals of both religion and public life. The evangelicals, writes Manning, believe that “We are America,” and it is this conviction that most separates their politics from the politics of Orthodox Jews and conservative Catholics.³⁰ From their perspective, to politically constrain abortion and homoeroticism belonged to their overarching mission, which was to restore the United States to its Christian roots. They did not require two separate reasons to explain, first, why abortion and homoeroticism were wrong, and, second, why these acts should be illegal. One and the same reason, a fundamentalist reading of the Bible, sufficed to answer both. Given the Christian heritage of the American system, the evangelicals found it self-evident that biblical teachings should be the basis of law and policy. But Jews, Orthodox or not, obviously never have aimed at producing a “Jewish America.” In diaspora, Jews have had to view their religion as a subcommunity within the polity. A chief objective of Jewish public life has been the preservation of Jewish cultural existence from assimilation to a public sphere that is not simply neutral but effectively Christian. For more Orthodox forms of Judaism, this need for distinctiveness is even stronger, since for them the detailed, daily demands of the covenant are precisely what sustain the living identity of the covenant community. The nonadherence of non-Jews to this demanding code actually may strengthen the Jewish community’s identity. Nor have Catholics seriously dreamed of a “Catholic America” (although, as the second largest denomination in the United States, Catholicism may be on the way). For Catholics, the immediate challenge of public life always has been to demonstrate that they were not, as Catholics, inherently anti-American. Moreover, there is a shared sense among Catholics that Catholicism, like it or not, is not just a voluntary association but a religious culture that gets into one’s blood and stays there. For conservative Catholics, leaving their church would be like abandoning their families. Moreover, Manning’s study suggests that the conservative Catholic experience of its members’ religious and public lives was in some ways the inverse of Orthodox Jewish experience. While her Jewish subjects conSands

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ceived public life as a world of religious differences and their religious community as a world of religious sameness, the Catholic subjects mainly were worried about coexisting with the liberals in their own church. Finally, Manning’s study indicates how the discourses of religion are being adapted and changed as different religious groups deploy and adapt the existing discourses of religion. The Orthodox Jews continue to rely on a strong form of exceptionalism. They believe that the political conditions that best enable them to be Jewish are the same conditions that enable others to live according to other religions, or no religion at all. First among those conditions is a strong separation of church and state. While the Jews are called to the highest moral and religious standards, that calling is perceived as a gift from God that therefore cannot be imposed by the state. To use Michael Walzer’s terms, Orthodox Jews perceive religious life as “thick” with shared values and practices; and because religious life is thick, political life should be “thin.”³¹ For conservative Catholics, public life is understood in some respects as thin but in more respects as thick. We can presume that Manning’s subjects, like most Catholics since John F. Kennedy, would renounce any intent to impose their particular religious views—say, fealty to the pope and bishops—on the American polity. Moreover, the views of the Catholic subjects on gay rights indicate some liberal sensibilities. Yet conservative Catholics, Manning’s subjects included, are fully comfortable proposing the legal imposition of their religious view on abortion. And although they oppose discrimination against homosexuals as persons, the pope and bishops strongly oppose any laws or policies that would appear to sanction homoerotic actions. Recently Catholic bishops also have commanded their parishioners to oppose completely the legal recognition of same-sex marriage. The key to conservative Catholic politics, I would suggest, is the ethic of natural law promoted by their hierarchy. According to the hierarchy, abortion and homoeroticism are immoral by the nature of things, and that is why legal restrictions can and must be imposed on them. By relying for their public positions on natural law, Catholics do not appear to be imposing any particular religion on the public, in contrast to evangelicals who clearly wish to impose norms drawn from biblical fundamentalism. Yet of course Catholic interpretations of natural law come from the Catholic own hierarchy, and they by no means reflect a moral or religious consensus in the United States. This approach to public life certainly is not exceptionalist in the strong sense; nor is it committed to the accommodation fe m i n i sm s a n d se c u l a risms

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of religious differences on issues that, from the vantage point of the hierarchy, are legislated by God into nature’s design. Conservative Catholic politics must be characterized as a form of generic religion, but a generic religion much thicker and more constrictive than its Enlightenment and liberal Protestant framers imagined. If Manning’s subjects are a good measure, conservative evangelicals also are involved with the discourse of generic religion. Certainly conservative evangelicals are not exceptionalists in the strong sense, for they decry the secularization of public life; nor are they exceptionalists in the weak sense, since they are unwilling to accommodate religious differences on significant public issues. Like old devotees of generic religion, conservative evangelicals want religion to be the foundation of public life. But for them, ideally, no independent secular realm even would exist; all aspects of public life would be thick with religion. In this way, conservative evangelicals are departing from older notions of generic religion, for the religion that founds their ideal social order no longer is seen as an essence available in all true religions. On the contrary, evangelical Protestantism alone is thought to be the true and only religious foundation for the American polity. It is as if generic religion, having been stripped of its feigned universality, is being morphed by evangelicals into an unabashedly ethnocentric nationalism. CONCLUSION

How do these examples help us to think about religious feminist activity in the public sphere? First, the religious minorities in Manning’s study provide insights about what it means to relate our religious and political ethics. To relate these means to connect them, but also to distinguish them. It means thinking carefully about the difference between the thick norms of religious community and the thinner norms that bind a political community. It means sorting out those issues on which a social consensus is needed from those on which we should let each other be. It means a political ethics in which people not only share their substantive visions of social life but also discern together the structures that enable people with different social visions to live together in the same society. A healthy, deliberative political ethic, in other words, will involve both substantive ideals and structural provisions for democratic pluralism. And both sorts of provisions must be understood as ethical—that is, as normative proposals about how best to craft public life. Sands

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As I suggested above, a paradox of religious feminism in the twentieth century was that it spoke substantively on some issues and structurally on others. On issues of sex and reproduction, religious feminists’ structural concerns were in the foreground and were expressed in secularist terms such as rights, equality, freedom, privacy, tolerance, choice, inclusivity, and diversity, thus invoking the exceptionalist view of religion. And on these issues, correspondingly, religious feminists tended to speak for the exclusion or minimalization of religious influence in public life. On the other hand, dealing with issues of social justice, religious feminism has spoken in the language of religious witness, depending on the generic view of religion and making high and substantive religious claims on the public conscience. And this has often unreflectively implied that religious claims ought to have some unique authority in public life. I think religious feminists need to offer a public ethic that is both substantive and structural. On sex and reproduction, this means not using secularist terms (such as choice) in ways that simply trump the moral concerns of the opponents of feminism. Instead, religious feminists should offer public proposals in ways that accord fair recognition to the reality of conflicting views. For example, to value women’s choice in reproductive matters is not to say that those matters are amoral, or even to say that they are moral but for that reason private. Quite the contrary: it is to say that choice is a fundamental condition for genuine ethical debate, which should take place through ordinary civil means. Religion, from this standpoint, should in no way be uniquely excluded within this public debate, but neither should it be uniquely privileged. On issues of social justice, what I am suggesting would be that in addition to the language of religious witness, religious feminists also speak the language of democratic deliberation, giving public and political warrants for particular positions. To return to the example of the statements by Christian religious groups opposing the dismantling of welfare in 1996: all of these were long on religious witness, but sometimes quite short on public warrants. Such witness might explain why Christians must be concerned about poverty, but it does not explain why eradicating poverty is a public responsibility. In an age when responsibility for the poor is being remanded to faith-based organizations, and when religion means voluntary rather than obligatory and charity rather than justice, religious witness is not enough. I am thus questioning both the uniqueness of the privileges and the uniqueness of the exclusions that apply to religion. Strategically speaking, fe m i n i sm s a n d se c u l a risms

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the place to begin questioning this uniqueness is with religious majorities. Still, even if feminists deploy religion in the public sphere, and even when this deployment occurs not on behalf of religious majorities, we can ask how we are managing this power, the cultural authority of religion. Do such actions make that authority, and religion itself, more transparent or less? More intelligible or less? Do they open up the historical complexity of religion or do they appeal to religion as a repository of absolutes? Simply lifting up various nondominant forms of religion—religious formations in communities of color, dissident religious or feminist forms of religion— by making them register on the public screen as religion helps historicize and hence demystify religion. It demonstrates concretely that those cultural formations we call religion, like the cultural formations we call government—or for that matter those we call feminism—are complex, ongoing, historical traditions, traditions of conflict and change. And this more critical, historicized concept of religion is just what we need, both to make religious feminism more publicly effective and to make it more responsive to differences, including religious differences, among women. NOTES 1. See Braude, Transforming the Faith of Our Fathers, 9. 2. For a summary of the problematic of defining religion, see Sands, “Tracking Religion.” 3. Williams, “Mr. Cotton’s Letter,”108. 4. “Jefferson’s Letter, as Sent,” Library of Congress Information Bulletin 57, no. 6 (June 1998), http://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/9806/danpre.html; and Everson v. Board of Education, Ewing Township, 330 U.S. 1 (1947). For an insightful discussion of the significance of this metaphor, see Howe, Garden and the Wilderness. 5. Oregon Employment Division v. Smith, 494 U.S. 872 (1990). 6. Carter, Culture of Disbelief. 7. There are four references to God in the Declaration of Independence (“Nature’s God,” “endowed by their Creator,” “the Supreme Judge,” and “divine Providence”), each of which coheres with a Protestant notion of natural religion. 8. Bellah, “Civil Religion in America.” Bellah himself was following Rousseau’s usage in The Social Contract.

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327 9. A particularly strong example of this point can be seen in a 1922 Georgia Supreme Court decision ruling that the school-sponsored reading of the King James Bible in public schools was not forbidden by Georgia’s constitutional injunction against state support for “sectarian” institutions. The ruling was issued in the face of a challenge from Roman Catholics, who had insisted on the use of the Catholic Douay Bible in public schools. Thus Protestant scriptures were not seen as religious in the exceptionalist sense, even when juxtaposed with Roman Catholicism as an alternative form of Christianity. The Georgia decision effectively rejected exceptionalism in both its strong and weak forms—in the strong, separationist form, in which exceptionalism prohibits any school-sponsored devotional reading (a view that was not victorious until USSC Abington v. Schemmp [1963], and which is still hotly disputed); and in the weak, accommodationist sense, which would require the use of both Bibles. For a discussion of the Georgia case, see Hammond, “Courts and Secular Humanism.” 10. Neuhaus, Naked Public Square. 11. Tindal, Christianity as Old as the Creation. 12. John Locke, The Reasonableness of Christianity (1699); Tindal, Christianity as Old as the Creation; Jean-Jacques Rousseau, “On Civil Religion,” in The Social Contract, book 4, ch. 8 (1762). 13. The decline of the free exercise clause became most dramatically apparent in the Smith decision (Oregon Employment Division v. Smith). The decline of the establishment clause began with Bowen v. Kendrick, 487 U.S. 589 (1988), and Agostini v. Felton, 521 U.S. 203 (1997), the cases that enabled the federal funding of faith-based initiatives. This decline has reached its most recent nadir in Zelman v. Simmons-Harris, 536 U.S. 639 (2002), regarded by separationists as the “Smith case” of establishment jurisprudence. 14. Jacoby, Freethinkers. 15. Ibid., 66–103. 16. Matthews, Rise of the Public Woman; see also Buchanan, Choosing to Lead. 17. Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 11. 18. Klein and Ackerman, Women and Power in Native North America; Demos, “Tried and the True.” 19. More recently, one can observe among mainstream feminists a turn toward a more accommodationist view. In place of the old claim that religious beliefs as such are politically irrelevant, the disagreements within and among religions on feminist issues fe m i n i sm s a n d se c u l a risms

328 becomes highly relevant for public life. Controversial issues such as abortion or gay rights come to be understood as matters of religious freedom, in which differences are to be respected and must not be forced into a legislated conformity. See, for example, Kate Michelman’s recent speech to the National Press Club, naral Press Release, January 12, 2004. 20. Steinem is half Jewish. 21. Pogrebin, “Forced Choices, False Choices: A Spiritual Journey,” in Braude, Transforming the Faith of Our Fathers, 31–46. 22. Pogrebin, “Anti-Semitism in the Women’s Movement.” 23. Bendroth, Fundamentalism and Gender. 24. See the group’s Web site at www.religiousconsultation.org/Who_are_we.htm (accessed 1 May 2007). 25. Religious groups that issued statements against the prwora include the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, the Central Conference of American Rabbis, and the U.S. Catholic Conference. The largest coalition of religious organizations opposing the bill was led by the National Council of the United Church of Christ: its over twentyfive signatories included the American Baptist Church usa, the Episcopal Church, the United Methodist Church, the National Council of Jewish Women, the Presbyterian Church usa, the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee, the American Friends Service Committee, and the National Council of Churches. Certainly, some of these groups (e.g., the U.S. Catholic Conference) cannot be characterized as either feminist or proponents of strong exceptionalism. Many others, however, are affiliated with religious groups that promote feminist perspectives on sex and reproduction. Member organizations of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, for example, include the Episcopal Church, the Presbyterian Church usa, the Central Conference of American Rabbis, the United Church of Christ, the Unitarian Universalist Association, the United Methodist Church, and the Union of American Hebrew Congregations. Prominent leaders in these and other progressive religious groups sit on the boards of the Interfaith Alliance, the Religious Consultation on Population, Consumption, and Reproductive Health, and similar groups. 26. In April 2001, under the auspices of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, many progressive religious groups gathered in Washington to critique the prwora and the faith-based initiatives movement. Yet even they (as far as I could see) were oblivious to or untroubled by the patriarchalism for which religion is publicly

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329 funded by faith-based initiatives. Their concern was to preserve the wall of separation, and this structural principle, impeded as it is by the existing discourses of religion, occluded insights about substantive feminist issues. 27. An alliance of religious groups under the leadership of Jim Wallis, which has named itself the Call to Renewal, support faith-based initiatives. It argues that government funds can be used for progressive ends such as community organizing, even if that was not the intent of the law’s legislators. 28. Manning, God Gave Us the Right. 29. Ibid. See chapters 4–6. 30. Ibid., 228. It is important to remember, however, that these evangelical women are only one slice of a very complex strain of American religion. See Hunter, American Evangelicalism. 31. Walzer, Thick and Thin.

fe m i n i sm s a n d se c u l a risms

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

continuity or rupture? an argument for secular britain ˜ Ranu Samantrai

September 11, 11 March, 7 July: these dates haunt conversations about pluralism in the liberal democratic nations of Western Europe and North America.¹ The debate over secularism and the public affirmation of religion, often transposed onto anxieties about immigration, has become indistinct from talk of the threatening nature of minority religious affiliations or, more ominously, from Islamophobia. Some worry that the increasing size and strength of transnational ethnic, religious, and cultural diasporas, together with global information, production, and consumption networks, make a mockery of claims of national distinction, sovereignty, and security. Others caution that while once immigrants assimilated into the modernity of secular political cultures, now diaspora dwellers, and especially Muslims, no longer relinquish their premodern—because presecular—extranational affiliations. In short, if from outside Muslims threaten the nation with weapons and physical attacks, then their presence on the inside threatens to undermine the traditions of individualism, pluralism, and tolerance that distinguish Western political culture. In Britain the debate has taken a disturbing turn following the events of 7 July 2005. The discovery that the men who detonated explosive devices in London’s public transportation system were British-born Muslims has occasioned much questioning regarding the degree of assimilation that can be expected of a religious minority, particularly when that minority is composed mainly of first- and second-generation Muslim immigrants. That the young men seemed assimilated into Britishness has prompted a widespread debate on the failures of Britain’s policies of multiculturalism and the limits of integration. And again the concern is not that Muslims

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fail to become Christian, but that they fail to follow Christianity’s path to secularism by subsuming their religious affiliation to their national membership. This debate is not new. On the contrary, its rhetorical moves have proven surprisingly stable over many repetitions since the Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwa against Salman Rushdie in 1989. Continuity has been provided by the fear that the irredeemably foreign nature of Islam cannot be integrated into Britain, most prominently because its adherents insist on public enactments—veiling and sex-segregated schools and other public accommodations—that force religion into an otherwise neutral space. If assimilating into Britishness means privatizing religious affiliation in order to minimize the aspect of difference that others must encounter, then a continued public enactment of religious affiliation, no matter how mild, violates the terms of the nation itself. The events of 7 July in this reading provide spectacular and tragic confirmation of the warning that the presence of Islam within the nation threatens to undermine Britain’s secular traditions of tolerance. But not all secularisms are alike.² They vary, just as their religious counterparts vary. Even those that aspire to an ideal of state neutrality toward religious adherence may appear to some as political expressions of a particular religious base. This objection is voiced equally by those who advocate closing the geographic and metaphoric borders of the West and by those who would forestall that closure. Representing the former position, Samuel Huntington and Fay Weldon caution that the introduction of alien religious practices into Euro-America will irreparably damage traditions of tolerance and secularism rooted in Western Christianity. Each draws on a version of the secularization thesis that attributes decline in the social significance of religion to modernity, while locating the seeds of that decline in the innovations of premodern Christianity.³ This simultaneous affirmation and disavowal of Christianity as the distinguishing characteristic of the West links conservative and liberal articulations of antiimmigrant xenophobia. They are countered by those who look to an expansion of Britain’s religious foundation to foster mutual tolerance and peaceful coexistence. Tariq Modood, for instance, suggests that we acknowledge that Britain is not historically a secular society, as evidenced by its established churches. As a result, the privileges of citizenship are distributed with reference to religion. The extension of establishment to minority religions, he argues, will address the grievance that their adherents, and especially Muslims, are c o n t i nu i t y o r ru p t u re ?

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treated as second-class citizens in their own nation. Regarding claims of secularism as the veil that shields the privileges of the dominant majority and relegates minorities to second-class status, Modood instead pleads for the recognition of a multicultural society made up of separate but equal faith communities. These strategies, put forward in the wake of 1989, remain the dominant suggestions for regulating tensions in liberal democracies characterized by religious pluralism. The closure of borders against migrants, enforced assimilation of those within, and the peaceful coexistence of separate communities within the nation: all are strategies of de facto segregation. All are motivated by the belief that religion forms the unalterable foundation of individual and national identity, even in secular societies. Moreover, all fear that contact across religious borders will force changes that would violate the very essence of national or religious communities. Because Modood suggests a model of inclusion and equality, his proposal will receive the closest scrutiny as a potential template for a pluralism that could speak to us today. But I will contend that his model of multiple establishment exacerbates the problem of entrenched, religiously based identities that experience each other as hostile and threatening. And, echoing the solutions proposed by Huntington and Weldon, Modood’s requires the ever closer policing of dissent in an ever narrowing zone of state-approved “tolerance” and “freedom.” But from those tense times also emerges an alternative, as yet untested, that may provide an exit from today’s dilemmas. There yet remains a secularism that attempts to break with the historical intertwining of church and state. If that intertwining is responsible for the disenfranchisements that perplex pluralism, then interrupting its progress is the first gesture in seeking the conditions of a pluralism that does not encounter difference as an obstacle. Women Against Fundamentalism (waf) articulated this alternative initially in 1989. After some years of inactivity, the organization’s reappearance indicates how closely the rhetoric of current anxieties mirrors that of the postfatwa furor.⁴ In the intervening years religious affiliations have grown increasingly entrenched and threatening to each other, but the response from the state has been more of the same: stricter immigration controls, closer policing of the domestic population, and more measures aimed at fostering assimilation—all coupled with gestures of appeasement intended to pacify increasingly restive, because targeted, minoritized constituencies. The proposal of disestablishment made by waf, which amounts to the renunciation by the majority of its historic priviSamantrai

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leges, foregoes exclusion, threat, and appeasement in favor of the hope of a nation in which membership is not measured by religious affiliation. Perhaps the most challenging aspect of the debate over secularism and pluralism is how easily it is harnessed to anxieties regarding the subversive presence of the rest in the West.⁵ Huntington, for instance, frames his analysis as a warning against an impending “clash of civilizations” between the Christian West and its adversaries, Islam and Confucianism. As “the single most important characteristic of Western civilization,” he writes, Western Christianity is responsible for the “political and intellectual” features that distinguish Huntington’s West, including the separation of church and state, the rule of law, social pluralism, civil society, representative government, and individualism.⁶ Although primarily defending the West, Huntington also advocates protecting “the rest” against the colonizing arrogance of those who believe “that the culture of the West is and ought to be the culture of the world.”⁷ Hence he argues that the segregation of the West and the rest is mutually beneficial. Specifically, traditions of pluralism, secularism, individualism, and tolerance characteristic of the West require the intervention of the state on behalf of Western Christianity through the exclusion of those who would introduce religious or civilizational plurality: “Promoting the coherence of the West means both preserving Western culture within the West and defining the limits of the West. The former requires, among other things, controlling immigration from non-Western societies . . . and ensuring the assimilation into Western culture of the immigrants who are admitted.”⁸ Speaking of the British context and from the liberal side of the political spectrum, Weldon comes to similar conclusions. Angered by those who object to the publication of Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses and to the restricted scope of British blasphemy laws, she declares, “Our attempt at multi-culturalism has failed. The Rushdie Affair demonstrates it.”⁹ Like Huntington, Weldon cautions against underestimating the threats posed by the presence of Islam to the religious foundation of British “freedom of belief ” and “tolerance”: “Look, you can build a decent society around the Bible: if you value the Gaia notions that pervade the Old Testament, puzzle over the parables of Jesus, argue about the Epistles, suspect the visions of St. John the Divine; why, yes, reading all that and marvelling, you might just about have a blueprint for building heaven on earth. But the Qur’an? No.”¹⁰ Avoiding Huntington’s harsh remedy of segregation, Weldon prefers enforced assimilation. “The uni-culturalist policy of the United States worked,” she writes, “welding its new peoples, from every race, every nac o n t i nu i t y o r ru p t u re ?

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tion, every belief, into one whole: let the child do what it wants at home; here in the school the one flag is saluted, the one God worshipped, the one nation acknowledged.”¹¹ Again, she recommends these measures of enforced conformity in order to protect both individual liberties and a societal consensus regarding the value of pluralism and tolerance. From the right to the left, the twinned claims of a unitary religious foundation and a transparent secular political culture create the demand that those who bear the mark of difference must either assimilate or segregate. The situation is particularly clear in Britain, where a privileged relation between church and state belies a chain of causality leading from religious homogeneity to secularism. Moreover, the establishment of the Anglican Church as the Church of England effectively creates classes of citizenship and inaugurates a state-sponsored technology of ethnicity.¹² The contradictions between Britain’s simultaneous claims—on the one hand of a deep and historically continuous identity through religion and, on the other, of modernity through secularism—are resolved in their effects, for both serve to nationalize disparate peoples into the coherent collective of the British. It is hardly surprising, then, that some consigned to the status of interlopers in this Britain object that the requirement of public secularism is tantamount to enforced conversion. Modood, for instance, resists the ultimatum of assimilation or segregation by advocating the protection of those who represent difference from the national norm. Acknowledging the Christian foundations of Britishness, Modood argues that fairness for non-Christians can be achieved through the formal recognition of the parallel religious foundations of their cultural identities. The reward of such a consensual settlement of differences, he suggests, will be the peaceful coexistence of a number of autonomous cultural groups within a national framework, each protected by the recognition of a benevolent state. He defines this power-sharing settlement as pluralism; indeed, he argues that the heterogeneity of the whole can be accomplished only by protecting the homogeneity of the parts. Modood agrees with Huntington and Weldon that religions and the cultures they produce are discrete entities: complete in themselves, historically coherent, yet peculiarly vulnerable to violation and corruption as a result of contact with other such entities. He differs with them only when he argues that far from the full flowering of Western traditions of tolerance, secularism is a betrayal of those traditions and the mystification of Western arrogance. All three strategies—exclusion, assimilation, and coexistence—rely on Samantrai

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absolute distinctions between “us” and “them,” categories that proceed from the faith that people come prepackaged in discrete units, most frequently called “culture” but aligned along suspiciously predictable biological characteristics. Because, in this scenario, homogeneity precedes heterogeneity as the marker of individual and collective identity, it assumes the status of the natural. Homogeneity does not require explanation; it need not be investigated as the outcome of historically contingent processes. The same holds true of the collective units (cultures, nations, races, civilizations—call them what you will) that flow from it. Consequently heterogeneity becomes either the bastard or the love child of a distinctly unnatural, misguided, and defiantly antihistorical contemporaneity. While it can be introduced over the foundation of homogeneity, that superimposition constitutes a violation of the given order of things and inevitably results in social disruptions. If, as Modood objects, in Britain religion serves as the point of reference for the distribution of the privileges of membership, then secularism must rupture the history of nationalization by holding the markers of national membership open to resignification. Clearly, the secularisms described by Huntington and Weldon do not do so. Modood is quite right to question the neutrality of their secularisms and the validity of their notion of pluralism. But the communitarian model he proposes for protecting religious pluralism is no better. His proposal for separate but equal communities invites a settlement between dominant players such that the majority need not be threatened by the presence of minorities. If the Muslim minority is protected by the closure of its borders, that enclosure also protects a nonMuslim majority from the disruption of its sense of internal similitude and externalized difference. Thus multiple establishment would not break with the dogma that England historically has been a homogeneous nation; nor would it alter the scenario of a problematic imposition of heterogeneity on an original, harmonious homogeneity. Instead, it would transfer the requirement for homogeneity from the national culture to the subculture. In other words, because of its presumption of unified communal interests, Modood’s model of pluralism forestalls conflict and dissent at the level of the national by rewarding their suppression at the level of the local. Modood argues that the second-class status of large numbers of British citizens is the greatest challenge facing British democracy. Although concerns about racial and economic inequality are not insignificant, he is convinced that culturally and religiously different people suffer economic and racial discrimination as a result of their exclusion from the symbolic c o n t i nu i t y o r ru p t u re ?

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British national community. “I believe,” he writes, “that racial inequality and exclusion is overcome not simply by political institutional change but with an accompanying restoration of ethnic pride.”¹³ Over the years Modood has changed his mind about the grounds for ethnic pride and collective interest. Prior to 1989 he claimed that the various peoples of the Indian subcontinent shared a fundamental Asian identity, which he defined as “some share in the heritage of the civilisations of old Hindustan prior to British conquest. Roughly, it is those people who believe that the Taj Mahal is an object of their history.”¹⁴ But this potentially fluid, affiliative community of interpretation did not explain to his satisfaction the successful mobilization of a global Islam by Khomeini’s fatwa against Rushdie. In the wake of the fatwa he found an apparently objective source of unity in religion, which he now holds is the most fundamental identity of all. Implicit in much of his writing since 1989 is the theory that religion gives rise to culture, for which reason Muslims around the world constitute properly one people. Moreover, he insists on the use of religion for classifying individuals and developing public policy. He objects, for instance, to same-race adoptions that place black Muslim children with black Christian parents.¹⁵ Thus he demands that there be room in public life for religion and that people be recognized as public actors, and hence as the bearers of rights and responsibilities, on the basis of religious affiliation. Two proposals for changing the second-class status of religious minorities were put forward in the wake of Khomeini’s fatwa: (1) the disestablishment of the Church of England and the retraction of the special privileges it enjoys, including protection from blasphemy; and (2) the extension of its privileges to all other religions.¹⁶ Both options would place all religions in Britain on an equal footing, if only formally, in relation to the state and the law. Breaking with the notion that Britain is an Anglican or even a Christian nation, both moves would make possible the full inclusion of non-Anglicans in the symbolic national community. But Modood claims that radical, intellectual elites calling for disestablishment are out of touch with the majority of ordinary Muslims who wish no such blight on their fellow citizens.¹⁷ Because secularism grants no public authority to religion, Modood argues that it discriminates against all religions. Hence it would not add rights to non-Anglicans, but only take them away from Anglicans.¹⁸ Far from an advance in the process of coming to terms with the diversity of a multicultural society, secularism is an imposed monoculturalism. As such it is incompatible with pluralism.¹⁹ On the other hand, Samantrai

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if all religions are elevated to the status of state religions, rabbis, mullahs, and priests could be present at important national functions such as coronations, royal weddings, and other celebrations of the nation. Simultaneously, minority communities (which, in this scenario, are defined entirely by religion) would enjoy greater autonomy to run their own affairs. In turn, that pseudonationalist autonomy would provide the foundation for national pluralism. It is not entirely clear what Modood means by the autonomy of minority communities: I believe that we are slowly learning that our concepts of racial equality need to be tuned not just to guarantee that individuals of different hues are treated alike but also to the fact that Britain now encompasses communities with different norms, cultures and religions. Hence racial equality cannot always mean treating everybody as if they were the same—for that will usually mean treating everybody by the norms and convenience of the majority. . . . What is urged now is some variation of the millat system, a form of religious-based communal pluralism which reached its most developed form in the Ottoman Empire whereby ethnic minorities ran their own communal affairs with a minimum of state interference. The British in India allowed the development of a Muslim family law with its own separate courts and much the same proposal was put to John Patten, the Home Office Minister with responsibility for community relations, by a Muslim delegation in the summer of 1989. The idea, hardly surprisingly, was rejected out of hand and I do not wish to argue for it. Nevertheless, I do think Britain can usefully consider aspects of Muslim historical experience for I do not think equality is possible without some degree of pluralism.²⁰

The communal autonomy suggested here would certainly involve state funding for the establishment of separate religious schools.²¹ It would also include the regulation of family life and domestic affairs such as adoptions along the lines of “personal law,” and perhaps also the governance of a particular geographic area.²² Although Modood raises the legal implications of such a move only to disavow them, his proposal would necessitate the formal differentiation of public and intimate spheres and inaugurate some, however limited, separate legal norms for different religious communities.²³ According to Modood, these measures are necessary to end the forced assimilation of newcomers into a homogeneous Britishc o n t i nu i t y o r ru p t u re ?

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ness. The most urgently needed minority right is “the right to be culturally different.”²⁴ Only by granting this right through the public recognition of religious affiliation will Britain become a genuinely multicultural, because multifaith, society.²⁵ To be fair, Modood’s extraordinary proposals respond to the equally outlandish assertions of the coincidence of Britishness and Christianity. Alan Gilbert, for instance, begins his study of religion and national identity with the claim that secularization has made Britain “post-Christian.” Yet Christianity returns with a vengeance when he turns his attention, albeit briefly, to the question of other religions in the British isles: Until very recently virtually all British religion has been essentially Christian in origin and ideology, but in the past two decades culturallyexotic religions have been introduced on a large scale by non-Christian immigrants. A survey of contemporary British religious behavior would be incomplete without the inclusion of Muslims, Buddhists, and Sikhs, to name only the most obvious examples. Yet in a study of secularization they can have only marginal relevance, for the essence of such a study is change over time in the role of religion in a society. Only if and when these immigrant groups have become integrated sufficiently into the mainstream culture to experience the social and ideological pressures affecting British Christianity in the industrial age, will the new religions—like the old—become testing grounds for hypotheses about secularization.²⁶

For the moment let us overlook Gilbert’s dubious assertion of historical homogeneity, his careful excision of Jewish and Celtic peoples, not to mention nonconformists and freethinkers, and his confidence that “culturallyexotic” religions are “new” and necessarily “marginal” to the real Britain. We must also overlook his odd scholarly method of studying “the role of religion in a society” by disregarding the introduction, presence, and interactions of religions. All evidence of complexity must be disregarded if we are to accept, however briefly, Gilbert’s presupposition that Britain is essentially Christian. The nation’s essence must be studied in isolation, presumably because it contains its own principle of change: modernization is an internal force of change and thus legitimately included in a study of Britain; the presence of other religions constitutes external influence and must be disregarded. Nothing can sway Britain from the internal necessities of its essentially religious identity. The secularization thesis Samantrai

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combines easily with romantic nationalism to dismiss all non-Christians as interlopers in the nation, whatever the site of their birth, residency, or political membership. To become truly British, it is not enough that nonChristians relinquish their religious affiliations in a process of change that might parallel the vicissitudes of Christianity. In effect, they must submit to a double conversion, for they must experience secular decline in the way that Christians have experienced it, propelled by a necessity peculiar to Christianity. Faced with such xenophobic nonsense, Modood perhaps cannot be blamed for wishing to make Islam an unavoidably visible partner in the nation. Nonetheless, his model of multiculturalism accepts Gilbert’s unexamined premises, namely that (1) homogeneity precedes heterogeneity; (2) the latter is recent and problematic; and (3) heterogeneity of the whole does not compromise homogeneity of the parts. Indeed, Modood’s proposals buttress Gilbert’s reasoning, for they strengthen the line of differentiation between various cultures or religions until it eclipses alignments that may cut across communal boundaries and suppresses contradictions that may complicate the coherence within. Modood posits the presence of its former colonials in the heart of the former empire as the impetus prompting the shift to a potentially postimperial Britain. He understands the nation as unable to control fully the permeability of its symbolic boundaries, which have been compromised by the compelling affiliations maintained by people who are simultaneously members of national and transnational communities. But rather than sever the state-church link foundational to Gilbert’s exclusionary definition of British identity, he offers the nation-state a way to contain the impact of the disparate affiliations of its citizens. When he suggests that a new pluralism look to models of accommodation achieved under colonialism, he indicates that he believes Britain to be a colonial society with little hope of achieving postcoloniality. Both the millat system and his proposal that “the Church of England comes to share the privileges of establishment but retains at least for the time being a ‘mother hen’ primacy” are ways of making peace with foreign domination.²⁷ He adopts the model followed by local rulers who accommodated colonial rule: a power-sharing arrangement in which dominant players agree to limit their zones of authority in exchange for recognition and survival. In effect, the nation becomes the empire writ small, complete with protonational communities within, movement between enclosed communities strictly regulated, and dissenters delivered into the hands of local power brokers. c o n t i nu i t y o r ru p t u re ?

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For Modood gender provides the substance of the internal difference that must be eclipsed, for its containment demonstrates the greater urgency of religious-cultural difference and the natural unity of cultural communities. According to him a culture is expressed primarily through its family structures. When he urges his audience to look beyond race and class to culture, Modood points to the family as the crucial factor determining the fortunes of immigrant groups, specifically by fostering or hindering economic success.²⁸ His claims regarding the centrality of the family amount to the thesis that cultures are lived through the modality of gender; he says as much when he claims that “sex is absolutely central” as the measure of “distinctively Asian attitudes.”²⁹ Paradoxically, in its very particularity a culture resembles the equivalent particularity of all other similarly demarcated cultural groupings. Thus a multicultural Britain, Modood argues, would “rest on an affirmation of shared moral certainties: it cannot just be about differences. Some of the moral certainties would be to do with the family, community, religious or quasi-religious ethics.”³⁰ But culture is at once foundational and unusually vulnerable to external influence. Hence it is not enough that communities should be free to persuade actual and potential affiliates. The institutions that carry out such persuasion—schools, religious organizations, families, and so forth— must be backed by the state and carry the force of law in some variation of the millat system. In other words, multiple establishment would turn the voluntary associations of civil society and the intimate relationships of the family into state-sponsored technologies of ethnicity charged with the task of reproducing the array of ethnicized practices sanctioned by the state as tolerable or beneficial for a predetermined, stable, and harmonious diversity. It would create segregated constituencies, each bounded within a zone of privacy, and each rewarded for policing its members with state recognition and protection. This is precisely the bargain that Tony Blair’s government offered to Muslim constituencies. In 2004 its Serious Organised Crime and Police Bill attempted to expand state powers in the name of antiterrorism. The burden of the specific legal alterations, including the indefinite detention without charge or trial of suspects, would of course have fallen mainly on Muslims. Thus it came as no surprise that tucked into the bill was a new category of criminal offense: incitement to religious hatred. There had been anticipation that in that parliamentary session the government would move to repeal the statute against blasphemy that protects only the Church of England. The difference between the two is that the incitement Samantrai

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prohibition could be applied to those within as well as without a given faith community. While removing the blasphemy statute would have begun the process of placing religions on an equal footing with regard to the state, the incitement prohibition would recognize the authority of religious leaders over their communities and would deliver dissenters into their hands.³¹ In the debate following the introduction of the bill it quickly became apparent that there was no precise definition of what might constitute incitement to religious hatred. One defender, Lord Bikhu Parekh, assured that prosecutions would only target those who incite others to violence. But the criminal offense specified was sentiment, not violence. There was widespread concern that passage of the provision would result in the loss of free speech for critics of religion, or for those—such as Monty Python and Rowan Atkinson—who satirize religious beliefs and practices.³² All that was clear was that the measure was offered as a sop to those concerned about the racial and religious targets of the proposed expansion of antiterrorism powers. Nothing in the “incitement to religious hatred” prohibition would have prevented its use against internal treason and external attack. The offer of state recognition is a powerful reward for those willing to police their own communities. Although Modood’s assertion of an objectively unified community of interest prevents him from reflecting on the treatment of internal minorities and dissenters, we can hypothesize that he might offer dissidents the possibility of disaffiliating from unsatisfactory communities. For instance, women who object to sex-segregated Islamic schools might be allowed to choose not to be Muslims. If secularism is an imposed monoculturalism, disaffiliation would be preferable to allowing dissidents to impose their values and morals on an unwilling community. But this take-it-or-leave-it approach to community membership mimics the assimilate-or-segregate ultimatum initially resisted by Modood, and it domesticates the difference he represents. Instead of ethnic or religious nationalism coupled with appeasement, then, we need a politics that takes as its ethical horizon a nation in which the privileges of membership are not distributed along predetermined cultural or religious lines. What would it take to break with the dogma that forces us perpetually to choose between similitude and difference, homogeneity and heterogeneity, us and them? Is it possible for secularism in Britain to represent not the telos of Christian history, but its rupture? To consider these questions I will turn to waf, a coalition of antiracist c o n t i nu i t y o r ru p t u re ?

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feminists from many constituencies whose very presence belies the stability of the us versus them formations presupposed by Huntington, Weldon, Gilbert, and Modood. Modood’s evocation of a nation ordered by “shared moral certainties” is a frightening vision for feminists, particularly since the integrity of the family, the stability of the community, and a religious ethical tradition are generally codes for the control of women’s behavior. In the orthodoxy of multiculturalism, the family is the site at which the ethnic culture is reproduced and the haven in the heartless world of British racism. If gender regulations and familial unity are the measure of cultural authenticity, then resistance or desire for change signifies violation and betrayal. In contrast to Modood’s defensive posture, waf uses gender as a fault line to expose the porousness of communal boundaries and to argue that the nation cannot settle for a power-sharing arrangement that leaves in place unacceptable inequities within ethnicized communities. It thus challenges proposals for cultural segregation and rearticulates the Britishness that provokes responses of cultural nationalism. Its members recognize that when the state privileges religion and culture as markers of socially valorized identity, cultural and religious affiliations become privileged sites of resistance. Nevertheless, waf objects to the use of culture and religion as alibis for the suppression of internal dissent, most obvious when policing women’s bodies and choices becomes the preferred method of reproducing collectives. The coalition was organized in 1989 in the midst of the furor over Satanic Verses. On 9 March, the Southall Black Sisters (sbs) and the Ealing Labour Party Women’s Section called a public meeting to discuss the resurgence of religion as an organizing force in British racial politics and the “metamorphosis of ‘culture’ into a celebration of masculinity on the streets.”³³ Encouraged by the nearly two hundred women from across the racial, cultural, and religious spectrum who attended that forum, sbs called a second meeting in May for women interested in establishing a network of opposition to religious fundamentalisms. Women Against Fundamentalism emerged from these feminist and antiracist grassroots. In its statement of purpose, the organization calls for the disestablishment of the Church of England and the “phasing out of state funding of all religious schools.”³⁴ The group also calls for the “development of a social policy that addresses the genuine needs of women and which does not attempt to deal with them on the basis of racist and sexist assumption as to how they are expected to behave according to their particular racial or cultural origin.” Moreover, it declares itself committed to “examining the Samantrai

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effects of policies (e.g., pro-family or multi-cultural) which result in the denial of women’s independent existence” and to “challenging racism, including the new culturally-based forms which are influenced by religion.” It reserves particular ire for the “multi-cultural consensus, forged by sections of all political parties, which delivers women’s futures into the hands of fundamentalist ‘community leaders’ by seeing them as representatives of the community as a whole.”³⁵ Because of the timing of its inception and because of the media attention around the Rushdie controversy, waf is sometimes identified as antiIslamic or anti-immigrant. Modood, for instance, accuses the organization of being “located in the prejudices of most Britons.”³⁶ But to regard it thus is to overlook its history and ignore its wide address. It is significant that sbs did not take on opposition to the politicization of religion singlehandedly as one of its own campaigns. The move from sbs to waf reflects the concern of members that they not be characterized as dissenting from a particular community, and that they not limit their attention to minoritized religions. Members of waf define “fundamentalism” not as “religious observance, which we see as a matter of individual choice, but rather [as] modern political movements which use religion as a basis for their attempt to win or consolidate power and extend social control.”³⁷ They do not single out any one religion as particularly susceptible to political manipulation; indeed, they go to some lengths to emphasize that “fundamentalism appears in different and changing forms in religions throughout the world.”³⁸ The organization takes on collectives that rely on gender norms to provide their substance and cement; hence its analysis of fundamentalism as centrally about “the control of women’s minds and bodies.” Because such practices are widely evident across Britain’s constituencies and potentially could occur in any cultural-religious configuration, it is counterproductive to single out any one expression for vilification. The public culture of the nation thus constitutes waf’s primary addressee. When Islam was aggressively demonized in the British press, waf intervened to point out the problematic practices justified by other religions. In the first issue of its newsletter, contributors critiqued religious establishment in the state as the harnessing of religion to racial and economic tensions in explosive combinations. Other articles examined South Asia, the United States, Iran, Ireland, and Algeria. But most of this and later issues have been devoted to the situation in Britain, which is described not as a sudden crisis provoked by the intrusion of alien elements into an otherwise tolerant society but as the latest confluence of antagonisms c o n t i nu i t y o r ru p t u re ?

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in a nation in which religion has long been enlisted to further political ambitions. In their lead article for the inaugural issue, Gita Sahgal and Nira Yuval-Davis argue that “fundamentalism in Britain has been encouraged by different political forces to homogenize and unite the British collectivity, religiously and culturally; and on the other hand, to heterogenise and separate it. This contradictory process has been made possible firstly, because of the particular relationship between religion and state in Britain, and secondly because of the relationship between fundamentalism and multicultural policies.”³⁹ To substantiate their claims Sahgal and Yuval-Davis refer to the Education Reform Act of 1988, which requires all publicly funded, nonparochial schools to conduct a daily act of Christian worship. Schools must also require compulsory religious education in accordance with an Agreed Syllabus that reflects “‘the fact that the religious traditions in Great Britain are in the main Christian while taking account of the teaching and practices of the other principal religions represented in Great Britain.’”⁴⁰ If their government makes religious affiliation meaningful as the basis for enfranchisement, they suggest, the religious majority should not be surprised when the disenfranchised express their sense of injury through their meaning-laden religious affiliations. Thus critique of the politicization of religion in Britain must begin with the fact that “Christianity . . . is given an affirmed legal status as the ideological cement of national culture.”⁴¹ On 27 May 1989, when some fifty thousand protesters marched in London to demand the banning of Satanic Verses, fifty members of waf mounted a counterprotest.⁴² While that first public appearance received substantial publicity, waf’s second demonstration did not: on 15 May 1990 its members picketed the Irish embassy in London to protest “the Irish government’s policy on foetal civil rights in which the rights of the mother and the foetus are on par.”⁴³ The picket was timed to coincide with a case pending before the European Court of Human Rights concerning the right of Irish women to information about abortion.⁴⁴ Not surprisingly, this attention to a wrong that cannot be attributed to a foreign invasion did not provoke the anxiety that the British press reserves for Britain’s most demonically racialized minorities. But lest Irish Catholicism also be dismissed as a practice that matches Islam’s putative barbarism, Ann Rossiter is careful to emphasize its links with American and English organizations similarly opposed to reproductive freedom for women. She concludes:

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One of the lessons to be learned from the Irish experience is that religious fundamentalism is neither geographically specific nor the product of any one religion or culture. Islam and Catholicism may be more obviously associated with extreme orthodoxy, but given certain economic and political circumstances the fundamentalist tenets of Protestantism can also be strictly invoked, as the Northern Irish—and indeed, the South African—situations so clearly demonstrate. With such a great deal of attention focused on “the Salman Rushdie affair” perhaps we should bear this in mind when acquiescing, if only by default, to the drive in Thatcher’s Britain for a return to “moral values.”⁴⁵

Modood’s self-representation as the spokesman for a vast number of reasonable people suffers a serious blow when waf points out that the community from which he derives his authority is hardly unified. Rather, it is thoroughly riven with deep conflicts and contradictions, and what appears to be the moderation of its self-appointed spokesmen in some contexts can equally well be read as authoritarianism in others. From waf’s perspective, homogeneity is neither the origin nor the goal of communal or national collectivity. Instead, waf recognizes heterogeneity at all levels of familial and social life and critically examines the forces of homogenization. If the presence of disruptive minorities has made apparent the costs of the myth of deep similitude, waf responds by pursuing the potential of heterogeneity to make Britain other than what it is. At the same time, because it does not assume the neutrality of the majority, it takes secularism not as an already accomplished distinguishing characteristic, but as an ethical horizon to which Britain must aspire. In this context secularism is not continuity but rupture. An attitude of state neutrality toward religious adherence would eliminate extant classes of citizenship and make obsolete notions of a core national identity beset by a problematic periphery. Removing Anglicanism as a marker of legitimacy would also remove the taint of illegitimacy from non-Anglicans. Severing the link between religion and the political privileges of membership would thus remove a pressure toward assimilation and protect the exuberant variety of religious affiliations and practices that characterizes contemporary Britain. The secularism for which waf strives would allow minorities to throw off the burden of difference not by assimilating into the majority but by reformulating the norms of membership. Its wide-ranging affiliations and targets position waf in opposition to

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Modood’s utopia of separate communities, the public regulation of religious affiliation, and privatized power relations. Its equal emphasis on majority and minority religions in England and elsewhere—or rather, on the abuse of those religious traditions for political gain—indicates that it is determined to struggle for a heterogeneous public culture, the values of which are not determined by the ambitions of dominant or would-be dominant players. A secular political culture must not be the imposition of a majority culture on recalcitrant minorities, but a meeting ground on which the two can meet, transform each other, and perhaps create new alignments. In contrast to the vision of predetermined interests facing off against each other, each attempting to strengthen its ranks by enforced fidelity, waf understands the British political field as a zone in which interests and identities are rearticulated as social actors encounter each other. While the best result of the former may be a separate but equal coexistence, the latter holds out the possibility of a transformation of the whole. The members of waf organize as women not because women should become the newest dominant or vanguardist actors in an antifundamentalist utopia, but because women currently function as the minorities within minorities whose dissent exposes the inadequacies and mystifications of the power-sharing settlements sought by dominant actors. Questioning gender norms in one constituency leads it to do so in others, and that violation of the privacy of apparently enclosed communities leads to a breakdown of the racial and cultural enclosures that ensure a normatively white, Christian Britain. Finally, waf’s wide address confirms that the tensions characterizing Britain today are not caused by the intrusion of problematic difference into an otherwise contented similitude. The tradition identified by Huntington and Weldon has not lead to tolerance in Britain, but to illiberal attempts to contain or exclude evidence of heterogeneity. It has led to anxious disavowals of the history of internal suppressions and external conquests that have nationalized disparate peoples into the British. Huntington, Weldon, and Modood wish to safeguard identities produced under conditions of inequity. On the other hand, waf works to generate new identificatory possibilities in a Britain in which the rights and duties of citizenship will not be distributed according to religion, gender, or culture. The twinned politics of appeasement and nationalism are conservative in relation to its ambition, which is no less than the transformation of the whole of Britain, its majority as well as its minorities. The members of waf hope for a Britain that responds to the presence of nonwhite, non-Anglican people not Samantrai

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by reverting to old patterns of colonial relations, but by seeking solutions that will disrupt the borders and classifications maintained for domination. Sadly, the relevance of their project has only intensified in the years since it was first articulated. In the Prevention of Terrorism Acts of 2005 and 2006, the Blair government pursued an expansion of state power that effectively undermines habeas corpus and further curtails an already restricted zone of allowable speech. Along with the authority to hold suspects without charge or trial and to monitor bookshops and Internet sites, it introduced a new criminal offense: the glorification of terrorism. Because it targets speech that falls short of actual incitement, many worry that this broad restriction trespasses on the freedom to express or to depict the expression of unpopular opinion. During debates on the 2005 bill, the House of Lords repeatedly rejected the glorification of terrorism provision on these grounds. In response the government had to give assurance that university faculty and librarians would not be prosecuted for teaching or lending out books about terrorism. It had to laugh off the suggestion that Bertie Ahearn could face prosecution in Britain for commemorating the Easter Rising, and avoided answering what might happen to a Nelson Mandela, once a terrorist and now a hero. For whom, then, are the tools of these acts reserved? Officials have stated unabashedly they wish to target radical Muslims and those who express any sympathy for them.⁴⁶ Short of naming Muslims who resist assimilation as their sole targets, they have extended themselves to reassure all others who may get caught in the wide net created by the state’s new powers. And so the cycle continues and with each repetition grows more vicious. The rights and privileges of membership are granted along religious lines. Those addressed by the nation primarily as bearers of a religious identity have little choice but to respond as such to demand ever more recognition and accommodation. The nation is fractured into entrenched, segregated communities that can only encounter each other as hostile and threatening. Secularism names the political foundation for a thriving pluralism in which state inducements do not pit citizens against each other in a race to fortify their zones of authority against the possibility of change. But at times like these, disestablishment, the necessary condition for such a secularism, would be tantamount to unilateral disarmament, even though when it comes to the weapons of the state in this conflict, only one side is armed. For that reason, sadly, the only exit from this morass will remain the road not taken. c o n t i nu i t y o r ru p t u re ?

348 NOTES 1. September 11, 2001: the day of the al-Qaeda strikes on U.S. targets. March 11, 2005: bombs detonated in commuter trains in Madrid, suspected to be the work of Islamic groups inspired by al-Qaeda. July 7, 2005: bombs detonated on London’s public transportation system by British Islamic jihadists, for which al-Qaeda has claimed responsibility. In other parts of the world there are other, equally haunting dates. January 16, 1991, the commencement of the first U.S. bombing of Iraq, and March 20, 2003, the beginning of the current invasion and occupation of Iraq, might be two such dates. 2. As the vast literature on the topic suggests, secularism means many things to many people. It is used variously to describe state neutrality toward religious adherence and expression (the U.S. ideal, if not practice), state protections for major national religions (as in India, or England), and suppression of public expressions of certain religious affiliations (as in France). For the contemporary debate in England, the first definition obtains. I take the ideals motivating the attitude of state neutrality—the mutual autonomy of state and church so that religious adherence and dissent may flourish—as the ethical horizon of the secular. In my estimation the latter two definitions undermine these ideals. We would be wise to remember the role of minorities and dissenters in establishing the principle of the separation of church and state in the U.S. In 1787 the Mikveh Israel Congregation petitioned the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the Constitutional Convention then in session to remove extant religious restrictions on holding political office. In part because of this group of American Jews, the U.S. constitution bans religious tests and its First Amendment forbids the establishment of religion. We have this minority to thank for the institutionalization of pluralism that is the basis of the individual and collective freedoms which we believe distinguish our political culture. 3. Huntington, “The West”; and Weldon, Sacred Cows. “Stated briefly the secularization thesis asserts that modernization (itself no simple concept) brings in its wake (and may itself be accelerated by) ‘the diminution of the social significance of religion’” (Wallis and Bruce, “Secularization,” 11). According to Bryan Wilson, one of the more prominent scholars associated with the secularization thesis, “Christianity was itself an agency of secularization” (“Reflections on a Many Sided Controversy,” 208). 4. http://waf.gn.apc.org/. Site accessed January 20, 2006. 5. I borrow “the West and the Rest” from Fabian, Time and the Other. Huntington’s un-ironic repetition of the terms is a perfect example of the discursive othering Fabian identifies. 6. Huntington, “The West,” 30–31. Samantrai

349 7. Ibid., 28. 8. Ibid., 45. 9. Weldon, Sacred Cows, 31. I believe Weldon actually speaks of the English context, as do all the other authors discussed here. The distinction between England and Britain is not specious, since the Church of England is not the established church of Wales (which disestablished the Anglican Church in 1920) or Scotland (which has its own Presbyterian national church, the Church of Scotland). Unfortunately, rapid shifts between my references to England and the references of Weldon et al. to Britain create the impression that the two are synonymous, precisely the impression I wish to avoid. For the sake of consistency I will follow convention and use Britain, although I ask the reader to read the term as problematic in every instance. Similarly problematic is Weldon’s conflation of Hinduism and Islam, for the sacred cow is a reference to the former. Either she is not aware of the differences between the two religions or she does not believe those differences to be of any consequence. A third and more sinister possibility is that she wishes to conflate Hindus and Muslims in order to vilify all those of South Asian descent—Britain’s most numerous racial/ethnic minority—with one gesture. For the history of establishment in Britain, see Gerald Parsons’s introduction to The Growth of Religious Diversity, 2:1–21; and John Wolffe, “‘And There’s Another Country . . .’” 10. Weldon, Sacred Cows, 16, 12. 11. Ibid., 31. Weldon seems unaware of the principle of the separation of church and state in the United States, where one God is not worshipped in state-funded schools. Or perhaps she believes that the United States was better off when this constitutional principle was not observed. 12. “Technology of ethnicity” is borrowed from Thompson, “Technologies of Ethnicity.” 13. Modood, “‘Black’, Racial Equality and Asian Identity,” 402–3. 14. Ibid., 397. 15. Modood, “Muslim Views on Religious Identity and Racial Equality.” 16. With regard to blasphemy, both proposals had been circulating for some time prior to 1989. See Wolffe, “‘And There’s Another Country . . .’” For a history of blasphemy, see Levy, Blasphemy. 17. Modood, “Establishment” and “Beware of a Secular Intolerance.” By condemning c o n t i nu i t y o r ru p t u re ?

350 the “creation of an anglicized middle/intellectual class which does not understand and/or feel responsible for its own ethnic working class,” Modood implies that the former are swayed by unnamed (read Christian, white, assimilationist) forces external to the authentic community. He also positions himself as a reasonable, moderate and authorized representative of genuine Muslim interests. When pushed to defend his legitimacy, however, he responds: “I have made assertions here about what I believe to be true about the large majority of Asians in Britain. It may be asked of me how I can prove these assertions. Perhaps the strict answer is that I cannot and that no one can prove the opposite either” (“‘Black,’ Racial Equality and Asian Identity,” 402). 18. Modood does not elaborate how secularism discriminates against religious adherence or which “rights” of Anglicans it would compromise. The “right” that appears to concern him most is access to public funds (see “Establishment”). In fact, the history of state-church relations in England is one of tension and antagonism resulting from the lack of autonomy allowed to both partners. Hence the consistent pressure from within the Church of England for independence from secular authority. See Anthony Dyson, “‘Little Else But the Name’”; Frank Field, “The Church of England and Parliament”; Ian Machin, “Disestablishment and Democracy”; and Gerald Parsons, “From Consensus to Confrontation.” 19. Modood, Not Easy, 85–87. 20. Modood, “British Asian Muslims,” 273–74. 21. Modood, Not Easy, 7. For a brief review of the intricate financial relationship between Anglican schools and the British government, see Waddington, “The Church and Educational Policy.” 22. Modood, “Establishment,” 66. 23. Modood does not explain whether affiliation is voluntary. Nor does he address what would happen to disaffiliates and non-religious individuals in such an arrangement. 24. Modood, Not Easy, 8. 25. Modood, “Establishment,” 67. 26. Gilbert, The Making of Post-Christian Britain, 15. 27. Modood, “Establishment,” 66. 28. Modood, Not Easy, 27–45, 47–59. 29. Modood, “British Asian Muslims,” 263–64.

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351 30. Modood, Not Easy, 4. 31. Coincident with the reading of the bill was the production of Behzti, a play by Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti. Set in a gurdwara, the play, the title of which can be translated as “dishonor,” includes scenes of rape and murder, as well as revelations regarding homosexual relationships between apparently respectable Sikh men. On 18 December 2004 about 400 demonstrators attempted to storm the Birmingham Repertory Theatre, the venue of the production. They smashed windows, destroyed backstage equipment, and clashed with 85 police officers, 30 of whom were in riot gear. The protestors succeeded in stopping the performance: fearing for the safety of its audience, cast, and workers, the theatre management opted to evacuate some 800 people. In the days that followed, unable to secure assurances from Sikh religious leaders that the violence would not be repeated, the sold-out run of the play was cancelled altogether as Bhatti and her family, inundated with death threats and hate mail, went into hiding. It is entirely possible that the incitement to religious hatred provision could have been used against Bhatti. Certainly nothing in its formulation would have prevented such use. 32. The provision was rejected by the House of Lords in large part because of Rowan Atkinson’s strenuous efforts to draw attention to its potential to restrict speech and thereby to violate that customary hallmark liberty. 33. Connolly, “Washing Our Linen,” 5. 34. Women Against Fundamentalism, “Statement.” Other prominent calls for the separation of church and state have come from the Liberal Democratic Party and the Institute of Public Policy Research, both of which organizations propose secularization as a component of sweeping constitutional reforms that would complete the process of transforming Britain from monarchy to republic and its peoples from subjects to citizens. 35. Women Against Fundamentalism, “Education Pack.” 36. Modood, “Beware of a Secular Intolerance,” 1. 37. Women Against Fundamentalism, Brochure (no date). 38. Women Against Fundamentalism, “Education Pack.” 39. Sahgal and Yuval-Davis, “Refusing Holy Orders,” 3. 40. Quoted in Parsons, “There and Back Again?” 184. Parsons explains, “The 1988 Act not only required that all pupils should take part in a daily act of collective worship but, in addition, specified that ‘the collective worship required in the school . . . shall be wholly or mainly of a broadly Christian character.’ Worship of a ‘broadly Chrisc o n t i nu i t y o r ru p t u re ?

352 tian character’ was, in turn, defined as worship that reflected ‘the broad traditions of Christian belief without being distinctive of any particular denomination.’” Parson’s political conclusions echo those of waf: It is also clear that for some speakers in the debates in the Lords, the issue at stake was not only one of religion, but also concerned the relationship between religion and notions of national identity. For some speakers, the case for the priority afforded to Christianity in the proposed Act was expressed not merely in terms of the historic predominance of Christianity within British society and culture, but also in terms of Britain still being essentially a “Christian nation” or a “Christian country.” Such remarks, Lord Beloff observed, made people like himself, who practiced a different religion [or, we might add, no religion at all] appear in some way to be second-class citizens. (189) 41. Sahgal and Yuval-Davis, “Refusing Holy Orders,” 3. 42. Siddiqui, “A Women’s Banner for Doubt and Dissent.” 43. Rossiter, “Granting Civil Rights.” 44. Connolly, “Washing Our Linen,” 7. 45. Rossiter, “Granting Civil Rights,” 10. 46. See, for instance, the speech given by Gordon Brown, then chancellor of the exchequer, to the Royal United Services Institute in London on February 13, 2006. Full-text of the speech can be found under “Gordon Brown’s speech on terrorism,” at http:// www.guardian.co.uk/terrorism/story/0,,1708740,00.html.

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b i b li o g ra ph y

CONTRIBUTORS

ROBERT J. BAIRD is an independent scholar writing in the areas of religion, science, and culture. His current work is on religion’s encounter with the new naturalisms in evolutionary psychology, biology, and genomics. He recently finished an article entitled “Has There Really Been a Return to Religion? The Anachronism of Maximalist Religion.” His writings have appeared in the journal Social Text and anthologies tracing the genealogies of religion and religious studies. He is currently the vice president for school-university partnerships at the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation and was previously the president of the National Faculty of Humanities, Arts, and Sciences. ANDREW DAVISON is an associate professor of political science at Vassar College. His works include Secularism and Revivalism in Turkey: A Hermeneutic Reconsideration (1998); The Philosophic Roots of Modern Ideology: Liberalism, Communism, Fascism, Islamism (with David E. Ingersoll and Richard K. Matthews; 3rd ed., 2001); Corporatist Ideology in Kemalist Turkey: Progress or Order? (with Taha Parla; 2004); and Conquering Hearts and Minds: The American War Ideology in the Persian/Arabian Gulf, 1990–2003 (2005). TRACY FESSENDEN teaches in the Department of Religious Studies and the Program in Women and Gender Studies at Arizona State University. She is the author of Culture and Redemption: Religion, the Secular, and American Literature (2006). JANET R. JAKOBSEN is the director of the Center for Research on Women and a professor of women’s studies at Barnard College. She is the author of Working Alliances and the Politics of Difference: Diversity and Feminist Ethics (1998); the coauthor (with Ann Pellegrini) of Love the Sin: Sexual Regulation and the Limits of Religious Tolerance

388 (2003); and coeditor (with Elizabeth A. Castelli) of Interventions: Activists and Academics Respond to Violence (2004). Before entering the academy, she was a policy analyst and lobbyist in Washington. LAURA LEVITT is the author of American Jewish Loss after the Holocaust (2007) and Jews and Feminism: The Ambivalent Search for Home (1997). She is the coeditor (with Miriam Peskowitz) of Judaism Since Gender (1997); and (with Shelley Hornstein and Laurence Silberstein) an editor of Impossible Images: Contemporary Art after the Holocaust (2003). She is the director of the Jewish Studies Program at Temple University. MOLLY MCGARRY is an assistant professor of history at the University of California, Riverside. She is the coauthor (with Fred Wasserman) of Becoming Visible: An Illustrated History of Lesbian and Gay Life in Twentieth-Century America (1998); the coeditor (with George Haggerty) of A Companion to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Studies (2007); and the author of Ghosts of Futures Past: Spiritualism and the Cultural Politics of Nineteenth-Century America (2008). AFSANEH NAJMABADI teaches history and studies of women, gender, and sexuality at Harvard University. Her latest book, Women with Mustaches and Men without Beards: Gender and Sexual Anxieties of Iranian Modernity (2005), received the 2005 Joan Kelly Memorial Prize from the American Historical Association. She is an associate editor of the six-volume Encyclopedia of Women and Islamic Cultures (2004–8), and is currently working on “Sexing Gender, Transing Homos: Configurations of Sexuality and Gender in Contemporary Iran.” TAHA PARLA is a professor of political science and international relations at Bogazici University in Istanbul. His works include The Social and Political Thought of Ziya Gökalp, 1876–1924 (1985); Constitutions in Turkey (in Turkish; 1991); The Official Sources of Turkish Political Culture (in Turkish; 1991–92); and the coauthor (with Andrew Davison) of Corporatist Ideology in Kemalist Turkey: Progress or Order? (2004). GEETA PATEL is an associate professor of women’s studies and the codirector of the South Asia Studies Program at Wellesley College. Her Lyrical Movements, Historical Hauntings: Gender, Colonialism, and Desire in Miraji’s Urdu Poetry (2002), reads a renegade writer through nationalism, gender, sexuality, and grief in twentieth-century Urdu poetic movements. Her work, circling around prose and poetry in Sanskrit, Urdu, Hindi, Braj, and Awadhi, includes translations and short personal pieces. Her theoretical stance, informed by translation theory from South Asian studies, sexuality

Contributors

389 studies and gender theory, postcolonial, diaspora, and subaltern historiography, and crossover questions from the history of science, is fashioned in her most recent completed manuscript “Gendering the Global Nation.” Her current project, “Financing Selves,” on risk, insurance, and pensions in South Asia, opens with the early East India Company archives and closes with labor movements in contemporary Sri Lanka. ANN PELLEGRINI is an associate professor of performance studies and religious studies at New York University. She is the author of Performance Anxieties: Staging Psychoanalysis, Staging Race (1997); the coauthor (with Janet R. Jakobsen) of Love the Sin: Sexual Regulation and the Limits of Religious Tolerance (2003); and the coeditor (with Daniel Boyarin and Daniel Itzkovitz) of Queer Theory and the Jewish Question (2003). She is the general editor (with José Esteban Muñoz) of “Sexual Cultures: New Directions from the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies,” a book series published by New York University Press. TYLER ROBERTS is an associate professor of religious studies at Grinnell College. He is the author of Contesting Spirit: Nietzsche, Affirmation, Religion (1998) and currently writes on the cultural politics of the academic study of religion. RANU SAMANTRAI teaches English at Indiana University. She is the author of AlterNatives: Black Feminism in the Post-imperial Nation (2002) and of numerous essays on the political challenges and aesthetic innovations that attend the formation of postcolonial diasporas in Britain. KATHLEEN SANDS is an associate professor and the director of religious studies at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. She is the editor of God Forbid: Religion and Sex in American Public Life (2000). BANU SUBRAMANIAM is an associate professor of women’s studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She is the coeditor (with Betsy Hartmann and Charles Zerner) of Making Threats: Biofears and Environmental Anxieties (2005); and (with Maralee Mayberry and Lisa H. Weasel) of Feminist Science Studies: A New Generation (2001). Trained as a plant evolutionary biologist, she seeks to engage the social and cultural studies of science in the practice of science. Spanning the humanities, social sciences, and the biological sciences, her research is located at the intersections of biology, women’s studies, ethnic studies, and postcolonial studies. Her current work focuses on the xenophobia and nativism that accompany many works on invasive species, and the relationship between science and religious nationalism in India.

c o n t ri bu to rs

390 RAJESWARI SUNDER RAJAN is Global Distinguished Visiting Professor at New York University. She is the author of The Scandal of the State: Women, Law, and Citizenship (2003); and of Real and Imagined Women: Gender, Culture, Postcolonialism (1993). ANGELA ZITO received her PhD from the University of Chicago in East Asian Studies after training in both anthropology and history. She is an associate professor of anthropology, the director of religious studies, and the codirector of the Center for Religion and Media at New York University. She coedited (with Tani Barlow) Body, Subject, and Power in China (1994); and she is the author of Of Body and Brush: Grand Sacrifice as Text/Performance in Eighteenth-Century China (1997). Her current research centers on newer forms of ephemeral sociality in China under economic reform, including Christianity; and documentary filmmaking around issues of social justice in China. She remains committed to understanding social life through its embodied performances over time.

Contributors

INDEX

Abolition (U.S.), 142, 253 Abortion, 319, 321, 323, 328 n. 19, 344 Affect, 27–28, 93; body and, 21–22, 305 n. 8; pluralism and, 285–86, 288; temporality and, 226, 238, 240, 242, 269. See also Body Affinity: Spiritualism and, 257–61 Africa: southern, 8–9, 14–15, 32 n. 17, 215, 345 Afshar, Masturah, 48–50, 56 n. 17 Agency, 100, 219, 221 n. 9 Age of Reason, 114–15. See also Enlightenment Agnosticism, 60 All India Democratic Women’s Association, 87 All-India Women’s Conference, 85 American Anti-Slavery Society, 141 American Civil Liberties Union, 311 American Jewish Congress, 123 Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, 311, 325 n. 26 Amoy Society (China), 207 Anglicanism, 221 n. 17, 334, 336, 340, 342, 345, 349 n. 9

Anthropology: secularization thesis and, 4, 30 n. 7 Anticlericalism, 68 Anti-Semitism: development of religion and, 318; U.S. feminism and, 145, 148, 317 Anveshi Research Centre for Women’s Studies (India), 87, 89 Archaic modernity, 186–87, 197, 200 Area studies, 60–61 Asad, Talal, 33 n. 28, 34 n. 33, 148, 208, 221 n. 9, 225 n. 72; secularization thesis and, 7, 12–13, 15–16, 219 Asiatic Society of Bengal (India), 172–73 Assimilation: Britain and, 333–35, 337, 339, 341, 347; U.S. Jews and, 111–12, 126, 317, 322 Atatürk, Mustafa Kemal, 64, 66–67, 69 Atheism, 28 n. 2, 60 Atkinson, Rowan, 341, 351 n. 32 Austin, J. L., 164 Babri Masjid (India), 193 Baha’i, 53 Beecher, Catharine, 140, 142, 154 Belief. See Faith

392 Bell, Catherine, 6 Bellah, Robert, 5, 30–31 n. 9, 312 Bellamy, Edward, 152

tianity and, 334–35, 338–39, 341, 344, 346, 352 n. 40; colonialism and, 78, 236–37, 347; pluralism in, 330–47

Benavides, Gustavo, 165 Bendroth, Margaret, 318 Bharatiya Janata Party (bjp), 194–95, 197–98; secularism and, 229–30; sexuality and, 245 n. 13; ucc and, 77, 101 n. 2. See also Hindu nationalism Bible, 167, 294, 299; versions of, 327 n. 9; West and, 333 Bilgrami, Akeel, 84 Binary oppositions, 6, 10, 16, 18, 25; Spiritualism and, 255–56 Biology: culture and, 217, 335 Biomedicine: footbinding and, 215, 217. See also Medicine Biopower, 244 n. 6 Bioscience, 206 Blair, Tony, 340, 347 Blasphemy: Church of England and, 336, 340–41 Blossoms, 46–47 Board of Education, Kansas, 162–63 Body, 221 n. 9, 244 n. 6; Chinese, 206– 10, 212–13, 217–219, 224 n. 67; colonialism and, 217–18, 229, 231; public sphere and, 285–86, 288, 305 n. 8; religion and, 17, 22, 91, 208, 214, 216– 17, 222; Spiritualism and, 247–48, 251, 254–55, 260–64, 266–67, 270 Bose, J. C., 190, 234, 245 n. 13 Boyarin, Daniel, 296–97, 301, 304, 306– 307 n. 35 Boyarin, Jonathan, 296–97, 301, 304 Brain drain (India-U.S.), 181, 197 Braude, Ann, 142, 145, 157, 308 Britain, 176 n. 17, 248, 349 n. 9; Chris-

Buddhism, 8, 173, 228, 317, 338 Bush, George W., 181, 186 Butler, Jon, 252 Calendar: religion and, 1–3, 229, 235 Caliphate: Turkish, 63, 66 Calvinism, 3, 247, 252 Capitalism, 34 n. 32; body and, 22, 208; cultural, 228, 236; Jews and, 114, 133 n. 16; Kemalism and, 69–70; secularism and, 2–3, 9, 22, 24–25, 29 n. 5, 30 n. 8, 96–97, 247; temporality and, 226–29, 237, 240 Carpenter, Edward, 265–66 Casanova, José, 10, 30 n. 6, 31 n. 13 Caste, 81, 83, 89, 91, 94, 192–93, 201 n. 20; gender and, 87, 89, 98 Catholicism, 10, 147, 176 n. 15, 273 n. 19, 327 n. 9; Indian, 189; Irish, 344; Protestantism vs., 208–9; Radical Orthodoxy and, 284; U.S., 315, 321–23 Cavanaugh, William, 291–92 Chador, 47, 50–51. See also Veiling Chakrabarty, Dipesh, 238–39, 242–43 Chatterjee, Partha, 34 n. 30, 84, 88, 104 n. 44 Chidester, David, 8–9, 14–15, 32 n. 17 China: Christianity in, 23; gender and footbinding in, 205–20; Indian relations with, 230; nature/culture divide and, 210–12; science and medicine and, 217–19; U.S. relations with, 201 n. 25 Christ, 1, 163, 173, 320; Radical Orthodox view of, 292–94 Christianity, 25, 34 n. 35, 155, 166–67,

Index

393 289, 292–93, 300; body and, 214, 217; Britain and, 334–35, 338–39, 341, 344, 346, 352 n. 40; China and, 23, 205–20; fragmentation of, 168–69; India and, 77, 91, 103 n. 30, 188, 234–35; Jews and, 132 n. 2; secularism and, 2, 30 n. 8, 139, 174, 243, 331, 341; temporality and, 1–3, 28, 226, 235, 237–40, 242–43; universalism and, 295, 297, 299, 313, 317; West and, 139–40, 331, 333 Church of England, 221 n. 17, 334, 336, 340, 342, 345, 349 n. 9 Citizenship, 52, 89, 104 n. 44; gender and, 76, 96–97, 156–57, 216; Jews and, 111–15, 117; religion and (U.K.), 331–35, 345–46, 352 n. 40 Civil code: debate on Indian, 77–79; Indian, 76–94, 337; Turkish, 64–65 Civilization, 8–9, 44, 52, 67, 82, 182; China and, 208, 210, 216; Christianity and, 20, 139–40; Islam and, 10–11, 333; U.S. feminism and, 140, 143–44, 147–49, 158 Civil society, 104 n. 44, 333; Indian women and, 90, 95–98, 100; Iranian, 45; secularism vs. religion in, 19, 104–5 n. 45, 301, 340. See also Public sphere Civil War (U.S.), 252–53, 259 Class: Britain and, 335, 340, 343, 350 n. 17; U.S. and, 153, 254, 315; China and, 216, 219; India and, 91, 97–99, 188, 193, 199, 227, 236, 241, 244 n. 6 Cloning, 178–79 Cohen, Lawrence, 199 Colonialism, 96, 217–18; gender and, 89; Iran and, 15, 44; modernity and, 11, 147–48, 166–67, 230; nation and, 78, 83, 91, 104 n. 44, 185, 236–37, 337, 339, 347; nationalism and, 186–88, 240,

242; science and, 183, 195–96; secularism and, 8, 13–14, 22–23, 27, 139; temporality and, 226, 229, 234–37, 241 Colville, Wilberforce J., 260–61, 263 Commodities, 229, 236, 243 n. 1 Communitarianism (India), 80, 82–86, 94–95; definition of, 79 Community: difference and, 91, 295, 332, 335, 345–46; gender and, 51, 89–95, 101 n. 2, 116, 206, 340, 342–46; identity and, 82, 236, 240; Kemalism and, 70; state and, 89–90, 95. See also Religion: community and Conflict: religious sects and, 72; secularism and, 4–5, 9, 16, 27, 81, 290, 292 Confucianism, 173, 333 Congress Party (India), 21, 77, 182, 186, 191, 194, 197–98 Connolly, William, 283–89, 293, 298–301, 305 nn. 6–9 Conservatives. See Right (political) Constitution: Indian, 78, 80–81; Turkish, 64; U.S., 163, 310, 312, 327 n. 13, 348 n. 2 Constitutional Convention (U.S.), 348 n. 2 Constitutional Court (Turkey), 73 Constitutional Revolution (Iran), 44, 46 Consumption, 69, 97, 229 Cosmology: Chinese, 218–19; sexuality and, 263; Spiritualist, 255 Cosmopolitanism: Indian, 188; Jewish, 110, 124 Creationism: U.S. education and, 162– 64, 174, 184 Culture: body and, 208, 212–13; gender and, 206; Judaism as, 124, 128, 130; nature and, 206, 210–11, 217, 219; religion and, 310, 316, 334–40, 344–45

index

394 Dalits, 89, 94, 201 n. 20 Darwin, Charles, 179, 190 Davis, Andrew Jackson, 255, 257, 263,

Ealing Labour Party Women’s Section (U.K.), 342 East, 172–73, 199

275 n. 50 Death of God theology, 9 Declaration of Independence (U.S.), 312 Deleuze, Gilles, 285, 290 Democracy, 55 n. 9, 303, 307 n. 37; India and, 104 n. 45, 186, 188; secularism and, 4, 9, 20, 34 n. 35, 80 Derrida, Jacques, 290 Descartes, René, 206 Development, 9, 190; gender and, 96–97 Dewey, John, 129 Diaspora: identity and, 296–98, 301–4; Jews and, 296–97, 322; nation and, 303, 330; queer, 249; secular, 25, 284, 298, 301–4 Difference, 20, 234, 291–92, 295; cultural homogeneity and, 335, 338–39, 344–45; feminism and, 94, 319; gender, 88, 206, 219, 340; identity and, 91, 287–88, 296–97, 299, 301; Jewish, 112–13, 123– 24, 130–31, 297; nation and, 52, 169, 334, 346; religious, 16, 25, 81, 88, 156, 169–70, 322–23; temporality and, 236, 238–39, 250, 264 Discipline, 3; temporality and, 22–23, 226, 238–39 Disestablishment: Britain and, 331–34, 336–37, 342, 344–45, 347, 351 n. 34; Turkey and, 64, 66. See also Separation of religion and state Dixon, Joy, 265–66, 274 n. 34 Diyanet İşleri Reisliği (Turkey), 63–67, 69, 74 n. 6 Domesticity: Indian nation and, 238–39, 242; U.S. women and, 140, 143, 145, 149–50, 154

Eastern Europeans: Jewish, 110, 112, 116– 18, 121, 125–26, 131, 135 n. 30 Education: British, 331, 341–42, 351–52 n. 40; U.S., 162–63, 184; Indian, 181– 82, 188–89, 239, 327 n. 9; Kemalism and, 65–68, 70; Iranian, 46–48, 50–51, 57 n. 20 Education Reform Act (U.K.), 344, 351–52 n. 40 Ellis, Havelock, 265, 266 Emotion. See Affect Empire. See Colonialism; Imperialism Enlightenment, 173, 206; Indian communitarianism and, 82–83, 85; Judaism and, 111, 127; religion and, 7, 22, 168, 171–72, 324; religion as category and, 109, 115, 148, 174; secularization and, 2, 4–5, 30 n. 8, 31 n. 9, 166; traditional Chinese medicine and, 218 Epistemology, 21, 170, 196 Essentialism, 84, 94 Establishment: Britain and, 331–32, 334, 336–37, 343, 349 n. 9 Establishment clause (U.S. Constitution), 312, 327 n. 13 Ethnicity: Jews and, 108, 113–14; religion and, 334, 336, 340. See also Race Ethnocentrism, 314, 324 Ethos: faith vs., 287, 299–300 Eugenics, 179 Europe, 2; China and, 207, 217; Christianity and, 165, 169; modernity and, 44, 167; secularism and, 4, 15–16, 292; whiteness and, 149. See also West European Court of Human Rights, 344 Evangelical Revival (U.K.), 212

Index

395 Evangelism, 140–42, 154, 303, 324; China and, 207–8, 212–13, 219 Evolution: U.S. education and, 21, 162– 64, 174, 184; U.S. feminism and, 140, 145, 147–48, 150, 157, 318 Exceptionalist view of religion: definition of, 309–11; in U.S., 311–12, 323–24, 325 n. 25; U.S. feminism and, 316, 319–20 Fact: religion and, 164–65, 174–75 Faith, 42, 71, 294, 299, 302; Christianity and, 165, 167–68; ethos vs., 286–87, 299–300; Judaism and, 8, 109–10, 117; private sphere and, 5, 81–82, 110, 117, 131, 291, 311, 313 Faith-based initiatives (U.S.), 311, 321, 325, 328 n. 26, 329 n. 27 Family: gender and, 93, 153, 239, 316, 340, 342 Fascism, 291–92 Febvre, Lucien, 167–68 Femininity: colonialism and, 89; Protestantism and, 318; Spiritualism and, 255–56, 259–60. See also Gender Feminism, 94, 106 n. 57, 179, 206, 255; Indian, 19, 79–80, 86–87, 99–100, 101 n. 11; Iranian, 18–19, 39, 46; Judaism and, 132 n. 4, 307 n. 35, 317; race and, 140, 143–44, 147, 149, 158; religion and, 42, 54–55 n. 7, 101 n. 3, 142, 157, 308, 315–16, 326, 329 n. 26, 341–42; religious, 41–43, 52, 57 n. 22, 259, 308–9, 317–20, 324–25, 328 n. 25; secular, 40–41, 43, 52, 57 n. 22, 80, 145, 150, 156–57, 314, 317–18; secularism and, 18–20, 25–26, 42, 51–52, 87, 93, 187, 308; U.S., 25–26, 157, 205, 310, 327–28 n. 19

Food and Drug Administration (U.S.), 180–81 Footbinding, 23, 140, 205–20 Forerunner, 144–45, 149 Foucault, Michel, 7, 13, 84; on discipline, 3, 22–23, 226; on sexuality, 248–49, 263, 271 n. 4, 273 n. 19 Freedman, Samuel G., 109, 120–21, 137 n. 50 Freedom: Kemalism and, 71; market and, 22, 97; religious, 312, 314, 316, 319; science and, 179, 187, 190, 199; secularism and, 5, 18, 21–22, 139, 208, 284, 304 n. 2, 332; U.S. and, 34 n. 35, 148, 248 Free love, 256, 258 Freethinkers: British, 168, 338; U.S., 314 Freitag, Sandra B., 81, 104 n. 44, 246 n. 23 Fundamentalism: gender and, 101 n. 3, 156, 342–45; Hindu, 87, 90, 182, 194, 228; Protestant, 318; secularism and, 2, 28 n. 2, 72, 288, 342, 344 Gandhi, Indira, 84, 182, 186 Gandhi, Mahatma, 231, 234, 245 n. 13 Garrison, William Lloyd, 141 Gay rights: U.S., 322–23, 328 n. 19 Gender, 24, 97, 231, 250, 296; body and, 217, 219, 224–25 n. 69; culture and, 51, 89–95, 101 n. 2, 116, 206, 340, 342–46; Iran and, 39–53; politics and, 96, 242, 245 n. 13, 320; public/private split and, 86, 95–96, 143, 149–50; religion and, 41, 155, 274 n. 38, 318; Spiritualism and, 247–48, 254–62, 267–68, 274 n. 38, 276 n. 60; ucc debates and (India), 85–100. See also Women Gender studies, 156–57 Genealogy, 14–17, 33 n. 28, 33 n. 34

index

396 General Directorate of Religious Affairs (Turkey), 63–67, 69, 74 n. 6 Generic view of religion, 309; definition

336; gender and, 19, 78, 101 n. 2, 106 n. 52; secularism and, 12, 76, 186, 202 n. 26, 237, 243; science and, 13–14, 21,

of, 311–312; public sphere and, 313, 320, 323–24 Genocide: in Gujarat (India), 182, 193– 94 Ghosts, 24–25, 228, 236, 254, 269 Gibbs, Robert, 294–97 Gilbert, Alan, 338–39, 342 Gilman, Charlotte Perkins, 141–58 Globalization, 29 n. 5, 34 n. 32, 206; India and, 99, 197, 200, 227–31, 233 Goldman, Karla, 115–16 Goodman, Saul L., 124, 127–30 Gordis, Robert, 123, 129 Greece, 167, 290–91 Greenberg, Yudit, 294 Gujarat (India), 182, 193–94

181–87, 190, 194–95, 198, 200, 230, 243; ucc and, 77–79, 81–82, 87 Hirsch, Samson Raphael, 119–20 History, 15, 27–28, 176 n. 17; Indian, 182, 185–87, 196, 198–99, 226–28, 234–37, 239–42, 245 n. 15; queerness and, 270; of religion, 170; secularism and, 250, 253 Hobbes, Thomas, 289–90 Holocaust, 121–22 Holyoake, George Jacob, 60 Homosexuality, 22, 278 n. 100, 263, 321; Spiritualism and, 249–50, 256–57, 259, 261, 264–65, 268–9, 270 Hoodfar, Homa, 55 n. 9, 56 n. 20 Human rights discourse, 17, 206–7, 219–20 Hume, David, 7–8, 21, 164–74, 176 n. 17– 18 Huntington, Samuel, 331–35, 342, 346, 348 n. 5 Huquq-i zanan, 40–41 Hygiene, 208, 218, 224 n. 67 Hyman, Paula, 113–14

Habeas corpus, 347 Habermas, Jürgen, 9, 105 n. 45, 285, 305 n. 7, 305 n. 9 Halacha, 119, 131, 297 Hall, Radclyffe, 266–68, 278 n. 100 Halperin, David M., 250, 272 n. 10, 272 n. 14 Hatch, Cora L. V. Scott, 260, 263–64 Haunting, 264, 268–69 Hegel, G. W. F., 295 Herbert of Cherbury, Edward, 166, 168, 176 n. 15 Herland (Gilman), 150–54 Heterosexuality: constitution of, 249 Higgenbotham, Evelyn Brooks, 315–16 Hindu Code Bill (India), 85 Hinduism, 21, 78, 173, 193, 226, 233, 234, 283, 349 n. 9; education and, 188–89 Hindu nationalism, 100 n. 1, 191–92, 197,

Identity: Christian, 296, 300; community and, 82, 92, 94–95, 97, 99–100, 300–301, 334; diasporic, 296–98, 301–4; difference and, 91, 287–88, 296–97, 299, 301, 335; gender and, 90, 95, 97–98, 106 n. 52; national, 230, 246 n. 23, 303, 332, 334, 339; politics and, 300, 346; sexual, 249, 272 n. 9. See also Jewish identity; Religion: identity and Immigration: Britain and, 330–32, 338;

Index

397 Catholics to U.S., 315; Jews to U.S., 116, 119, 122, 131, 135 n. 30, 315; U.S. nation and, 152–53; women to U.S., 317 Imperialism, 20, 23; Iran and, 41, 44, 47; missionaries and, 210, 213–14, 218; pluralism and, 294–95, 301, 339; U.S. and, 140–41. See also Colonialism India, 12, 19, 23–24, 179, 184–85, 337, 348 n. 2; Asian identity and, 336; independence of, 196, 231, 233; Muslims and, 182, 193–94, 197, 228; science and Hinduism in, 178–200; temporality and, 226–43; uniform civil code and gender in, 76–100; U.S. relations with, 181, 186, 197, 201 n. 25. See also Hindu nationalism; History: Indian Indigenous knowledge, 189–90, 200 Individualism, 82, 85, 88, 93, 333–34 Industrialization: in China, 208; in India, 185, 237; in U.S., 153. See also Capitalism Intelligent design: U.S. education and, 162–64, 174, 184 Interfaith Alliance (U.S.), 319, 328 n. 25 International Alliance for Women’s Suffrage, 50 Inversion. See Homosexuality Iran, 18; colonialism and, 15, 44; gender and, 39–53; 1979 revolution in, 9–10, 40, 45 Iran-Iraq war, 45 Iraq, 2, 348 n. 1 Islam, 12, 43, 283, 333, 339, 345, 349 n. 9: feminism and, 18–19, 26; Kemalism and, 66, 68, 70–71; modernity and, 44–45, 51–52, 64, 67; perceived as threat, 10–11, 28–29 n. 2, 32 n. 24, 242, 248, 331, 343–44. See also Muslims Islamism, 348 n. 1; defined, 54 n. 1; gen-

der and Iranian, 41, 47, 52, 54–55 n. 7, 57 n. 22; Iranian, 40–41, 43–44, 53; Kemalism and, 68, 70, 73, 75 n. 17 Islamist Virtue Party (Turkey), 73 Israel, 123–24, 126, 297 Jacoby, Susan, 314 James, William, 252, 266 Jesuits, 208–9 Jewish Enlightenment, 108, 112, 117–18 Jewish identity, 108–16, 118, 121, 123–24, 132 n. 4, 297; secularism and, 129–31 Jewish studies, 133 n. 10 Jews, 130, 153, 315, 317, 338, 348 n. 2; capitalism and, 114, 133 n. 16; Eastern European, 110, 112, 116–18, 121, 125–29, 131, 135 n. 30; as nation, 117; Orthodox, 20, 109–11, 119–21, 136 n. 47, 306–7 n. 35, 321–23; Palestinian, 297 Jones, William, 166, 172–74 Joshi, Murli Manohar, 194, 233 Judaism, 8; category of religion and, 108, 114–15, 119, 121, 123–24, 128–29; diaspora and, 296–98, 301–2; faith and, 109–10, 117. See also Postmodern Jewish philosophy; Secularism: Judaism and Judaism, 112, 122–24, 130 July 7, 2005, 330–31, 348 n. 1 Kant, Immanuel, 148, 166, 285–86 Katz, Jonathan Ned, 271 n. 4, 276 n. 60 Kayhan Institute (Iran), 40, 55 n. 7 Kemal, Mustafa, 64, 66–67, 69 Kemalism, 19; capitalism and, 69–70; education and, 65–68; laicism and, 58–61, 64, 70–71; Protestant Reformation and, 68–69; Six Arrows and, 59 Kepnes, Stephen, 294, 296, 306 n. 30 Khamenei, Ali (ayatollah), 43

index

398 Khomeini, Ruhollah (ayatollah), 55 n. 8, 331, 336 Kishwar, Madhu, 88

London: bombings in, 26, 330–31, 348 n. 1 London Mission Society, 208, 212, 221

Klepfisz, Irena, 121–22 Knowledge, 21, 170, 196; indigenous, 189–90, 200; medical, 215; religion and, 167–68, 170, 174–75, 265; science and, 165, 179–180, 182, 195, 229, 233– 35 Krafft-Ebing, Richard von, 265

n. 17

Labor: body and, 208; gender and, 97– 99, 105 n. 47, 106 n. 52; temporality and, 237–38, 241 Laicism: definition of, 60–62; education and, 65–66; Kemalism and, 61, 68–71; secularism vs., 58–63, 72–73 Law, 172, 320, 336, 347: Hindu, 78–79; Indian, 19, 76, 80–81, 83, 100; Jewish, 119, 131, 297; natural, 169, 323–24; as patriarchal, 85–86, 320; Turkish, 64–65, 67; U.S. Catholics and, 323 Left (political): Indian feminists and, 79; secularism and, 11, 28 n. 2, 334 Lehrer, Leibush, 128 Lesbians, 266–68, 278 n. 100 Levinas, Emmanuel, 295 Liberal Democratic Party (U.K.), 351 n. 34 Liberalism, 82, 237; assimilation and, 111–12; gender and, 88, 93, 325; India and, 79–80, 83–85, 88; Judaism and, 113–15, 117, 121, 124, 131; pluralism and, 287, 291–92, 302; Protestantism and, 313, 318 Lieberman, Joseph, 109–11, 131, 132 n. 5 Little, Mrs. Archibald, 207–8, 214–16, 221 n. 13, 224 n. 57 Locke, John, 313

Macgowan, John, 207–10, 221 n. 13, 223 n. 49 Madras, 182, 189 Madrid: bombings in, 330, 348 n. 1 Magic: science and, 248, 269 Mahmood, Saba, 30 n. 7, 32 n. 25 Mandela, Nelson, 347 Manganah, Nur al-Hudá, 48–49 Manning, Christel, 321–24 Manushi, 88, 102 n. 22 Maoism, 218 March 11, 2005, 330, 348 n. 1 Market. See Capitalism Marriage, 115, 140, 188, 321; footbinding (China) and, 215–16; Spiritualism and, 256, 258; ucc (India) and, 92–93, 103 n. 29 Marx, Karl, 240 Marxism, 10, 69, 218 Masculinity: culture and, 342; nation and, 53, 89, 231, 242, 245 n. 13; Spiritualism and, 255; women and, 278 n. 100 Masuzawa, Tomoko, 31 n. 17, 33 n. 29 Materiality: body and, 206–7, 217–18; spirits and, 251, 270 Medicine, 256; footbinding and, 208, 214–15, 223 n. 49, 224 n. 67; homosexuality and, 248–49; traditional Chinese, 217–18, 224–25 n. 69 Mediums: gender and, 254–55, 260–61, 263, 268, 270 Menon, Nivedita, 86, 88 Mernissi, Fatima, 15, 89 Middle East Peace Conference, 297

Index

399 Milbank, John, 289–94, 298–301, 305 n. 17 Millennium: India and, 227–28, 231, 233–34, 236, 243 n. 1; temporality and, 1, 28, 228; U.S. and, 244 n. 6 Ministry of Education (Iran), 48 Minority discourse: 26, 87, 108–9, 130 Missions, 24, 167; class and, 216; China and, 23, 207–15, 221 n. 17, 222 n. 25, 223 n. 49; Radical Orthodoxy and, 293, 298–99 Modernity, 242, 338–39: India and, 82–83, 92–93, 180, 182, 186–88, 198, 230, 236, 238, 243; Iran and, 39, 42, 44–45, 51–52; Islam and, 45, 51–52, 64, 67, 69–70, 330; Judaism and, 108, 112, 117–20, 129–30, 294; Middle East and, 11; religion and, 10, 166–67, 186, 199, 239, 272 n. 17; sexuality and, 247–50; science and, 166–67, 183–84, 189–90, 195, 199. See also Secularism: modernity and Modood, Tariq, 331–34, 337–45, 350 nn. 17–18, 350 n. 23 Monotheism: reason and, 171–72 Montesquieu, Charles, 166, 171 Morality, 6, 31 n. 9, 70, 323; body and, 216, 262; Britain and, 340, 345; Kemalism and, 62, 71; reason and, 285–86; religion and, 22, 73, 172–74; secularism and, 4, 249 Motherhood, 325; race and, 153, 155 Mufti, Aamir, 302 Multiculturalism: Britain and, 330–33, 336, 338–40; India and, 80–81; U.S. Jews and, 111–12 Muñoz, José Esteban, 136 Muslim Personal Law Board (India), 100 n. 1

Muslims: British, 26, 330–33, 335, 338–39, 341–43, 347, 350 n. 17; culture of, 336; Indian, 77, 91, 100 n. 1, 182, 193–94, 234–35, 237; perceived as threat, 330, 340–41, 347. See also Islam Muslim Women Act (India), 77–78, 100 n. 1 Nanda, Meera, 181 Nandy, Ashis, 84 Narration: history and, 242 Nation: colonialism and, 78, 83, 91, 104 n. 44; diaspora and, 303, 330; gender and, 51, 89, 96, 153–55, 216, 231, 238, 342; modernity and, 230, 236; pluralism and, 234, 332, 335–38, 340–42, 345–47; secular, 13, 230, 232, 331, 334– 35; temporality and, 226, 231, 233–34, 237–38, 240. See also Religion: nation and National Association of Spiritualists (U.S.), 273 n. 29 National Democratic Alliance (India), 191 National Dress Reform Association (U.S.), 259 Nationalism: Indian, 83, 88, 93, 202 n. 26; Iranian, 39, 44–45, 51–52; Kemalism and, 67–68, 70; religious, 185–86, 198, 324, 341–42, 346; secularism and, 29 n. 5, 52–53, 230, 233, 238, 337; temporality and, 227, 231, 236, 238. See also Hindu nationalism Nationalism (U.S. social movement), 152–53 Nation-state, 23, 63, 78, 80, 82–83; Jews and Western, 113–15; secularism and, 4, 166, 292, 339. See also State Natural Feet Society, 214, 224 n. 57

index

400 Nature, 179, 288; culture and, 206–8, 210–13, 216–17, 219; morality and, 323–24; religion and, 169–70, 176 n. 17;

Pluralism, 182; establishment and (U.K.), 336–37; imperialism and, 298–99; nation and, 334–37; secularism and

state of, 289–90, 310 Nehru, Jawaharlal, 84, 191, 231, 234, 236, 245 n. 13 Newton, Isaac, 168–69 New York, 119–20, 127, 153, 253 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 285, 290 Nuclear technology: Indian tests of, 181, 186, 194, 229, 232–33 Nuri, Fazl’allah, 44, 46

185, 284–85, 287–89, 298–300, 334, 336, 345–47, 348 n. 2; U.S. and, 113, 124, 130, 319–20, 323–25, 348 n. 2; West and, 333. See also Multiculturalism; Religion: pluralism and Pokhran (India): nuclear tests and, 229, 232–33 Politics, 180; gender and, 96, 320; identity and, 300, 346; religion and, 68, 303, 310, 321, 324–25; secularism and, 7, 62, 298, 310 Polytheism, 167, 169–72 Poovey, Mary, 164–65 Popkin, Richard, 167 Positivism: Kemalism and, 67; Spiritualism and, 248 Possession. See Mediums Postmodern Jewish philosophy, 25, 284–85, 294–98; diaspora and, 301–2; postmodernism and, 290, 294–95 Postsecularism, 17, 25, 284, 288, 298 Practice: religious, 165 Prakash, Gyan, 198 Prevention of Terrorism Acts (U.K.), 347 Private sphere, 70–71, 77, 86, 95, 105 n. 45, 154–55, 288. See also Religion: private sphere and Production, 97, 99, 240 Progress narratives, 5–6, 17, 20, 28, 44– 45, 139, 167, 247; colonialism and, 8–9, 141, 147–48; race and, 143–45, 148–50, 152, 155–58 Protestantism, 8, 139, 208–9, 235, 311, 324, 345; Judaism and, 109–12, 114–16, 126, 168, 284, 314; liberalism and,

Objectivity: science and, 179–80, 189–90 Ochs, Peter, 294, 296 Orientalism, 172–73 Ottoman Empire, 66, 69 Outsourcing: U.S.-India, 181 Pahlavi, Riza Shah, 47–51 Pakistan: India and, 193, 230 Pandey, Gyanendra, 238, 240–41 Pantheism, 152 Parsis, 77, 91 Particular: religion and, 1, 8–9, 12, 16, 104–5 n. 45, 156–57, 169, 284, 297, 309–10 Parzen, Herbert, 113, 116, 124–27, 129–30 Patriarchalism: Hinduism and, 78; law and, 85–86, 320; religion and, 318, 328–29 n. 26 Periodicals. See Publications Persia, 167. See also Iran Personal law: definition of Indian, 77; Indian, 78–94, 337 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (U.S.), 320–21, 328 nn. 25–26 Phrenology, 261–64

Index

401 313, 318; market and, 2–3; secularism and, 3, 20, 33 n. 29, 247, 309; U.S. and, 134–35 n. 17, 140, 142, 148, 153, 247, 252, 314–16, 318, 327 n. 9 Protestant Reformation, 4, 30 n. 8, 68– 69 Publications: Indian indigenous, 238; Iranian women’s, 40–41, 46–50; U.S. Jewish, 118–19, 122–24 Public/private split, 18, 115, 302, 337; gender and, 86, 95–96, 143, 149–50 Public sphere, 95–96, 228, 238, 286–87, 346; gender and, 42, 90, 97, 100, 106 n. 57, 154–55, 255, 263, 320, 324–26; secularism and, 5, 10, 19–20, 25–26, 72, 110, 119–20, 283–85, 291, 302, 343. See also Religion: public and Queerness, 248, 257, 263, 269. See also Homosexuality Qur’an, 29 n. 1, 66, 68–69, 333 Race, 20, 289, 296: Britain and, 335–37, 340, 342–44, 346–47; China and, 216– 18; U.S. feminism and, 141–42, 145, 148–56, 158. See also Ethnicity Radical Orthodoxy, 284–85, 289–95, 298–301; as missionary, 293, 298–99 Ram, Kalpana, 90–93 Raman, C. V., 190 Ramanujan, Srinivasa, 182 Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (India), 83, 191, 234 Rawlinson, George, 147 Reason; religion and, 33 n. 28, 115, 166– 72, 199; secularism and, 2–5, 9, 31 n. 9, 76, 247, 285, 288, 314; science and, 179, 189–90 Red Twilight, 47–48

Reinders, Eric, 209 Religion: category of, 114–15, 119, 121, 148, 156, 165–66, 174, 313, 318; community and, 76, 78, 81–84, 87–92, 114, 133 n. 14, 246 n. 23, 296; culture and, 310, 316, 334–40, 344–45; identity and, 90–92, 111, 156, 251, 266–67, 286–87, 304, 338–39, 347; modernity and, 10, 166–67, 186, 199, 239, 272 n. 17; nation and, 18, 117, 154, 169, 186, 193, 198, 210, 239, 331, 333–35, 338–39, 344, 352 n. 40; pluralism and, 79–88, 111, 168, 293, 295–96, 299, 314, 330–32, 338, 341, 346; private sphere and, 5, 9–10, 19, 29 n. 5, 42, 63, 68–69, 81–82, 109–11, 115, 128, 131, 143, 168, 255, 283–84, 291, 312; public and, 42, 55 n. 8, 92, 162, 283, 289, 294, 301, 303, 311–18, 320–21, 322–26, 330; related to secularism, 1–2, 7, 10–13, 16–17, 22–25, 43–44, 127, 129, 164–65, 175, 247–48, 284–85, 290, 292, 304 n. 1, 305 n. 6, 309–10, 313–14, 318; science and, 162–63, 167–68, 173–75, 179–84, 187, 198, 219, 251. See also Particular Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice (U.S.), 319 Religious Consultation on Population, Consumption and Reproductive Rights (U.S.), 319, 325 n. 25 Renaissance, 4, 148 Right (political): religion and, 11, 27, 28–29 n. 2, 157, 199, 248, 283, 303, 308, 321–24; secularism and, 334 Rights. See Citizenship; Human rights discourse Ritual, 208–9, 237–38, 313 Rogaski, Ruth, 218, 224 n. 67

index

402 Rosenzweig, Franz, 295 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 289, 312–13 Rushdie, Salman, 26, 331–33, 336, 342–43, 345 Sahgal, Gita, 343 Sanskrit, 233, 235 Santner, Eric, 300 Sarkar, Sumit, 83 Sati, 140, 205, 220 n. 4 Scalia, Antonin, 302, 304 School. See Education Science, 21, 67, 123–24, 178–80; indigenous knowledge and, 189–90, 200; modernity and, 166–67, 183–184, 187, 189–90, 195, 199; nature and, 179, 206, 215–17; Spiritualism and, 248, 254, 256, 261–66, 270; Vedic, 188, 195, 198. See also Hindu nationalism: science and; Religion: science and Science studies, 180, 183–84, 198 Scientia sexualis, 248–49 Scopes trial, 162 Sectarianism, 72, 193, 313 Secularism, 8, 59–60, 283, 302; Christianity and, 2, 30 n. 8, 139, 174, 243, 331, 341; Hinduism and, 24, 76, 87, 186, 230, 237, 243; India and, 78–80, 84, 87, 184–85, 188, 202 n. 26, 232, 242; Judaism and, 20, 108–12, 116, 118, 120–21, 124–27, 129–30, 133 n. 14, 167, 297, 317; late, 20, 163–65, 174–75; modernity and, 4–7, 18, 58, 60–61, 74 n. 2, 139, 165, 243, 248, 271 n. 2, 271 n. 8, 290, 309, 316, 331; nation, 13, 230, 232, 331, 334–35; as plural, 13–14, 25, 308, 331, 348 n. 2; politics and, 7, 62, 298, 310; as progressive, 27; Protestantism and,

3, 20, 33 n. 29, 247, 309. See also Religion: related to secular; Separation of religion and state Secularization thesis, 2, 4–12, 27–28, 29 n. 5, 32 n. 22, 139–40, 165, 248, 271 n. 1, 292, 310, 331, 338–39, 348 n. 3; basic elements of, 7–8, 30 n. 8; critique of, 11–17, 29–30 n. 6; sexuality and, 247– 49, 268–69 Segregation, 333–34, 341 Self-Employed Women’s Association (India), 98, 105 n. 50, 106 n. 54 Sen, Amartya, 83, 97, 228–29, 233 Separation of religion and state: in India, 84; secularism as, 5, 7, 183, 348 n. 2; in Turkey, 19, 60–62; in U.S., 125, 156, 162–63, 166, 184–85, 284, 310–16, 319, 323, 325 n. 26, 348 n. 2, 349 n. 11. See also Disestablishment September 11, 2001, 1–2, 28–29 n. 2, 197, 330, 348 n. 1 Serious Organised Crime and Police Bill (U.K.), 340, 351 nn. 31–32 Sexology, 24, 254, 256, 261–68 Sexuality, 53, 85, 91–93, 271 n. 8, 272 n. 9; footbinding and, 211–12, 216, 218; religion and, 115, 155, 245 n. 13, 250– 51, 253–54, 256, 258, 261–64, 267–68; secularization and, 24, 247–49, 268– 69 Shafaq-i surkh, 47–48 Shahbano case, 77, 79, 85, 88, 92, 94, 102 n. 12; explanation of, 100 n. 1 Shandler, Jeffrey, 121 Shanghai, 207, 209, 214, 221 n. 13 Shapiro, Susan, 294, 296, 301 Sharia, 63, 74 Shepard, Jesse, 259–60

Index

403 Shi’ism, 51 Shiv Sena (India), 193 Shukufah, 46–47 Sikhs, 91, 182, 338, 351 n. 31 Socialism, 117, 119 Society for Psychical Research (U.K.), 267 Society of Patriotic Women (Iran), 48– 49, 56 n. 17 Sociology, 6, 29 n. 6, 31 n. 13; Christian, 289 Soul, 214, 261–62, 264–65 South Africa, 215, 345 Southall Black Sisters (U.K.), 26, 342– 43 Spectral time, 24, 237, 240 Spiritualism (U.S. movement), 248, 250–70 Spirituality, 239, 263; body and, 209, 212–13 Stanton, Elizabeth Cady, 141 State, 6, 73, 81, 95, 234, 292, 297; colonialism and, 82–83, 88–89, 104 n. 44; gender and, 49–50, 76, 93; religion and, 18, 63, 68, 74, 81–82, 185–86, 285, 331–32, 336–37, 340–42, 344–45; science and, 184–85, 190, 195. See also Separation of religion and state State of nature, 289–90, 310 Steinem, Gloria, 317 Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 140, 142, 154 Sunnis, 64–65 Suttee. See Sati Synagogues, 113, 118, 133 n. 14, 134 n. 25 Technology, 183, 195, 227, 244 n. 6 Temporality: affect and, 238, 264, 269; Christian, 1–2, 24, 27–28, 234; colonialism and, 226, 229, 234, 241–42;

Hindu, 24, 232–33, 235; history and, 226–28, 235–37; nation and, 227, 230, 236, 239; Spiritualism and, 24, 250–51 Terrorism, 2, 34 n. 35, 348 n. 1; British response to, 26, 330, 340, 347; Indian response to, 197 Thackeray, Bal, 193 Thatcher, Margaret, 345 Theater: Yiddish, 118–19 Theory: fact vs., 164–65, 174; postcolonial, 32 n. 17; religion and, 170–71 Theosophy, 248, 265–67, 278 n. 94 Tindal, Matthew, 313 Today’s Woman (Iran), 40 Tolerance, 156; pluralism and, 330, 332, 346; secularism and, 171, 186, 301, 331, 333–34 Torah, 294 Tradition, 296; gender and, 231, 234, 238; Islam and, 44–45, 51; modernity and, 44, 226, 285, 294; secularism and, 302, 303 Traditional Chinese medicine, 217–18, 224–25 n. 69 Translation: Kemalism and, 67–68; temporality and, 245 n. 16 Transnationality; nation and, 237, 330. See also Globalization Truth: religion and, 33 n. 28, 167–68, 176–77 n. 18, 248, 252 Turkey: laicism and, 58–74; as secular, 18–19 Tylor, E. B., 147 Ulrichs, Karl Heinrich, 265 Uniform civil code. See Civil code United Kingdom. See Britain United Nations, 227, 243 n. 2 United States; education in, 21, 162–64,

index

404 United States (continued) 174, 184; feminism in, 139–58, 309–26; Jewish identity in, 107–32; Spiritual-

74, 74 n. 2, 81–82, 248, 318; tolerance and, 80, 330, 333–34 Western Europe, 125, 133 n. 14, 330

ism in, 247–70. See also Separation of religion and state: U.S. Universalism, 174, 185, 206–7, 219–20; religion and, 8, 169, 172, 293–99, 317– 18; pluralism and, 288, 295, 298–300; secularism and, 3–5, 8–9, 12–13, 16, 19–20, 67, 156–57, 284 Unveiling: debate on (Iran), 47–51, 55–56 n. 12 Upanishads: science and, 195 Utopian movements, 252–53, 274 n. 38

Westernization, 58, 69–70, 228 White House, 181 Whiteness, 141, 149 Whitman, Walt, 262–63, 267, 270, 277 n. 83 Wilde, Oscar, 267 Williams, Raymond, 254, 265, 277 n. 89 Williams, Rowan, 294 Wilmut, Ian, 178 Wise, 54 n. 7 Witchcraft, 205 Woman (Iran), 41, 54 n. 4 Women, 18, 26, 41, 87; civil society and, 95–100; culture and, 91–95, 98, 206, 231, 342–43, 346; domesticity and, 140, 143, 145, 149–50, 154, 238, 242; education and, 46, 50–51, 239; footbinding and (China), 205–20; fundamentalism and, 101 n. 3, 156, 342–45; market and, 96–97; as mediums, 254–55; unveiling and, 47–49. See also Gender Women (Iran), 40–41, 54 n. 7 Women Against Fundamentalism (U.K.), 26, 332, 341–46, 352 n. 40 Women of the East (Iran), 48, 56 n. 17 Women’s Center (Iran), 50 Women’s rights. See Feminism Women’s Rights (Iran), 40–41 Women’s studies, 156–57 Wood, Susan F., 180–81 Work. See Labor Working Group on Women’s Rights, 89 World religions, 33, n. 29, 313 Worldly asceticism, 2–3

Vajpayee, Atal Behari, 229, 231–33 Vaziri, Afzal, 47 Vedas, 181–82, 188, 195 Veer, Peter van der, 193 Veiling: in Iran, 18, 39, 46–47, 50–52, 56–57 n. 20; in Britain, 331; perceived as non-modern, 206 Violence, 56 n. 12; colonialism and, 242– 43; communal, 82, 228, 240–41, 246 n. 23, 351 n. 31; liberalism and, 287–88; religion vs. secularism and, 290, 301, 305, n. 17, 341; by state, 50–51; against women, 205–6 Voltaire, 166 Warner, Michael, 251, 263 War on terrorism, 2, 197, 340, 347 Weber, Max, 2–3, 22, 31 n. 9 Weldon, Fay, 331–35, 342, 346, 349 n. 9 Welfare: U.S. women and, 96, 105 n. 49 Welfare Party (Turkey), 73 West, 23, 183, 199; category of religion and, 113–15, 167, 318; Christianity and, 139–40, 331, 333; science and, 189–90; secularism and, 15–16, 18, 34 n. 35, 73–

Xenophobia, in Britain, 331, 339

Index

405 Yiddishkeit, 126, 128; secularism and, 112, 117–18, 120–21, 123–24, 127, 130, 137 n. 50 Yuval-Davis, Nira, 344

Zan, 41, 54 n. 4 Zanan, 40–41, 54 n. 7 Zan-i ruz, 40 Zionism, 126, 297

index

JANET R. JAKOBSEN is the director of the Center for Research on Women and a professor of women’s studies at Barnard College. ANN PELLEGRINI is an associate professor of performance studies and religious studies at New York University.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Secularisms / edited by Janet R. Jakobsen and Ann Pellegrini. p. cm. — (Social text books) Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 978-0-8223-4125-3 (cloth : alk. paper) isbn 978-0-8223-4149-9 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Secularism. 2. Secularization (Theology). 3. Religion and culture. I. Jakobsen, Janet R., 1960– II. Pellegrini, Ann, 1964– bl2747.8s34 2008 201´.7—dc22 2007038606