Powers of the Secular Modern

Abstract

For more than three decades, anthropologist Talal Asad has challenged the governing assumptions of western “knowledge” of the non-western world. In fact, his itinerate career marks the parameters of a dynamic and crucial period in western academia. It is Asad’s undermining of British social anthropology in the late 1960s and ethnographic functionalism in general that anticipates the postcolonial theories that would emerge many years later. More than being a simple icon of a generation that challenged the conventions of Orientalism, it is Asad’s essential (if often unacknowledged) contribution to our current self-critical engagement with the larger world that makes this book so valuable. At the heart of this book is an invaluable exercise of productive engagement and dialogue arranged by the editors. The clever manner in which Asad’s most complex and often misunderstood interventions on power, the West, and the study of the non-western world is put into action in a unique way. By bringing together nine quite different scholars who invest considerable energy in their papers, we are treated to an honest exploration of Asad’s contribution to a wide range of disciplines. Well-known sociologist of religion Jose Casanova; anthropologists Steve Caton, Veena Das, and Partha Chatterjee; and renowned political scientists William E. Connolly and Hent de Vries all clearly took their task seriously. Perhaps the most fruitful outcome of this exercise is the intimacy of the engagement. In many ways, this book reads as if the readers are listening to a round-table session that proves crucial to understanding Asad’s influence on how all of these scholars of religion have reframed their work over the years ...