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Introduction: Times like these / Janet R. Jakobsen and Ann Pellegrini -- Part I: Secular interventions -- (Un)veiling feminism / Afsaneh Najmabadi -- Secularism and laicism in Turkey / Taha Parla and Andrew Davison -- Women between community and state : some implications of the uniform civil code debates / Rajeswari Sunder Rajan -- Other moderns, other Jews : revisiting Jewish secularism in America / Laura Levitt -- Disappearances : race, religion, and the progress narrative of U.S. feminism / Tracy Fessenden -- Late secularism / Robert J. Baird -- What tangled webs we weave : science, secularism, and religion in contemporary India / Banu Subramaniam -- Part II: Secular relations : micronarratives -- Secularizing the pain of footbinding in China : missionary and medical stagings of the universal body / Angela Zito -- Ghostly appearances / Geeta Patel -- "The quick, the dead, and the yet unborn" : untimely sexualities and secular hauntings / Molly McGarry -- Part III: Public alternatives -- Toward secular diaspora : relocating religion and politics / Tyler Roberts -- Feminisms and secularisms / Kathleen Sands -- Continuity or rupture? : an argument for secular Britain / Ranu Samantrai

Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS -- INTRODUCTION -- PART 1. SECULAR INTERVENTIONS -- CHAPTER ONE. (Un)veiling feminism -- CHAPTER TWO. Secularism and laicism in turkey -- CHAPTER THREE. Women between community and state: some implications of the uniform civil code debates -- CHAPTER FOUR. Other moderns, other jews: revisiting jewish secularism in america -- CHAPTER FIVE. Disappearances: race, religion, and the progress narrative of U.S. feminism -- CHAPTER SIX. Late secularism -- CHAPTER SEVEN. What tangled webs we weave: science, secularism, and religion in contemporary India -- PART 2. SECULAR RELATIONS: MICRONARRATIVES -- CHAPTER EIGHT. Secularizing the pain of footbinding in china: missionary and medical stagings of the universal body -- CHAPTER NINE. Ghostly appearances -- CHAPTER TEN. "The quick, the dead, and the yet unborn": untimely sexualities and secular hauntings -- PART 3. PUBLIC ALTERNATIVES -- CHAPTER ELEVEN. Toward secular diaspora: relocating religion and politics -- CHAPTER TWELVE. Feminisms and secularisms -- CHAPTER THIRTEEN. Continuity or rupture? an argument for secular Britain -- BIBLIOGRAPHY -- CONTRIBUTORS -- INDEX

In recent years, the intellectual tide has moved strongly against the kind of secular thinking that characterized Gellner's work. Whether couched in terms of postcolonialism, multiculturalism, genealogy, global understanding, political theology, or the revival of normative, metaphysical and openly religious perspectives, today's postsecular and even anti-secular mood in social theory seems to consign Gellner's project to the dustbin of history: a stern but doomed attempt to shore up western liberal rationalism. Under some revisionary lights, it has even become pointless to distinguish flexible secular thinking which still retains some firm 'bottom lines' from what is routinely portrayed as rampant ideological secularism. Unconvinced by key assumptions and motivations on this terrain, I reactivate Gellner's essential concerns and propositions around secularity and secularism, feeding these into the current debates. Whilst Gellner's stringent, unrivalled exposure of intellectual cant continues to be hugely valuable, and his sense of the utter historicity of social life and thought indispensable, Gellner's critical positivism could not, by his own admission, produce a coherent cultural politics.

Angesichts der gesellschaftlichen Entwicklungen wird inzwischen auch aus feministischer Perspektive ein wachsender Bedarf artikuliert, das Verhältnis zwischen Religion, Staat und Politik neu zu überdenken. Dabei wird eine Reihe von Kritiken am Säkularismus formuliert, unter anderem, dass er nie in 'reiner Form' existiert habe, ein konstitutiver Zusammenhang zwischen Säkularismus, Kolonialismus und Rassismus bestehe und er zur Zementierung der traditionellen bürgerlichen Geschlechterordnung beigetragen habe. Diese Kritiken am Säkularismus sind zweifellos berechtigt. Problematisch erscheint mir jedoch, wenn daraus die Konsequenz einer Verabschiedung des Säkularismus gezogen und von einer postsäkularen Zeit gesprochen wird. Demgegenüber votiere ich vor dem Hintergrund der zu beobachtenden Revitalisierung von Religionen für ein Festhalten am Säkularismus. Allerdings ist dafür eine hegemonie(selbst)kritische Reformulierung des Säkularismus im Rahmen eines pluralen Universalismus nötig.