Secularism and Cosmopolitanism ― Critical Hypotheses on Religion and Politics

What is the relationship between cosmopolitanism and secularism—the worldwide and the worldly? While cosmopolitan politics may seem inherently secular, existing forms of secularism risk undermining the universality of cosmopolitanism, because they privilege the European tradition over all others and transform particular historical norms into enunciations of the truth. In this book, the noted philosopher Étienne Balibar explores the tensions lurking at this troubled nexus in order to advance a truly democratic and emancipatory cosmopolitanism, which requires a secularization of secularism itself.

Balibar argues for the universal against its dominant institutions. He questions the categories of thought that underlie popular ideas of secularism and religion and outlines the importance of a new critique for the contemporary world. He argues that conflicts between religious and secular discourses need to be reframed from a point of view that takes into account the cultural hybridization, migration and mobility, and transformation of borders, which have reshaped the postcolonial age. The book considers the uses and misuses of the category of religion and the religious, as well as the crises of national and religious universality. Among the topics discussed are the articulation of religion and culture within the ideological realm; the paradoxical genealogy of monotheism; French laïcité as a hegemonic construction that is now becoming narrowly identitarian; and the implications of the responses to the Charlie Hebdo attacks for an extended definition of free speech in the age of terrorism and counterterrorism. Going beyond circumscribed notions of religion and the public sphere, Secularism and Cosmopolitanism is a profound rethinking of identity and difference that seeks to make room for a renewed political imagination.

Etienne Balibar is emeritus professor of philosophy at Paris X Nanterre and emeritus professor of comparative literature at the University of California, Irvine. He is also professor of modern European philosophy at Kingston University, London, and professor of French and comparative literature at Columbia University. His books include Violence and Civility: On the Limits of Political Philosophy (Columbia, 2015).