Critical Inquiry — Volume 33, Number 1

Gil Anidjar
Secularism

From these distinctions, which were given their hegemony by the culture, no one could be free.
— EDWARD W. SAID

Note the problem of religion taken not in the confessional sense but in the secular sense of a unity of faith between a conception of the world and a corresponding norm of conduct. But why call this unity of faith "religion" and not "ideology," or even frankly "politics"?
— ANTONIO GRAMSCI

In the chapters that follow, the reader may be certain, however, that as a white man I locate myself—all but a painfully extracted sliver of myself—within the process under scrutiny.
— RICHARD DRINNON

Oppositional Criticism

The alternative appears deceptively simple. It is either the case that, when using the word secular, Edward W. Said did not mean to take an oppositional stance vis-à-vis religion ("At no point is secular used in his work in simple opposition to the religious per se," explains Aamir Mufti). (1) Or, insisting on being an oppositional critic, he was in fact, and for a number of elaborate reasons, against religion. (2) One could rephrase the entire matter in milder terms and suggest that the question is whether Said concerned himself with religion at all and, if he did, how so. Finally, and given whatever formulation and lines of interrogation are adopted, one could go on to ask whether the term secular summarizes or simply exhausts Said's stance (or nonstance) on religion or indeed on the formations and abuses of power he thought should be opposed. One may even reach a conclusion that agrees with those who, like Bruce Robbins, Mufti, and others, assert that "the most crucial meaning of secular, in [Said's] usage, is as an opposing term not to religion but to nationalism." (3)

1. Aamir Mufti, "Critical Secularism: A Reintroduction for Perilous Times," Boundary 2 31 (Summer 2004): 3; hereafter abbreviated "CS."
2. See Edward W. Said, The World, the Text, and the Critic (Cambridge, Mass., 1983), p. 29; hereafter abbreviated WTC.
3. Bruce Robbins, "Secularism, Elitism, Progress, and Other Transgressions: On Edward Said's `Voyage In,'" Social Text, no. 40 (Fall 1994): 26; and see Mufti, "Auerbach in Istanbul: Edward Said, Secular Criticism, and the Question of Minority Culture," Critical Inquiry 25 (Autumn 1998): 95–125.

GIL ANIDJAR is associate professor in the Department of Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures at Columbia University. He is the author most recently of The Jew, the Arab: A History of the Enemy (2003) and the editor of Jacques Derrida's Acts of Religion (2005). He is currently completing two manuscripts entitled Semites: Race, Religion, Literature and Blood: A Critique of Christianity.