Aakash Singh Rathore
(Director, IRNRD)
10:00-12:00 KEYNOTE ADDRESSES
Chair: Tom Bailey (John Cabot University,
Rome)
10:00 Keynote 1: Graham
Ward (Oxford University)
The Myth of Secularisation
In this paper I
will explore the power of myth in the establishment of ideology and show how
this was one of modernity's projects. I will show that secularisation is a
geographically specific project – there are pockets both within countries and
within Europe where secularisation never took root at all, and were resistant
to secularisation. I will show that postsecularisation in these same countries
is still buying into the myth, reifying it. But it is nevertheless a product of
postmodernity, a critique of the project of modernity. Postsecularity goes to
one of the roots of the modern critique – which was always a critique of
religion.
10:40 Keynote
2: P.K. Datta (Delhi University)
The Long Post Secularity
The postsecular could actually be said to have started from the
early twentieth century with the project to transform religion into culture.
While this started with the needs of nationalist mobilisation and the
imperative to make the nation into an object of devotion, it has in the age of
post colonial globalisation been generalised beyond national borders. Among
other things, this has given rise to notions of civilisational wars. In these
conditions secularism becomes a very difficult concept to define. On the one
hand, secularism is useful as a program that has been historically associated
with the task of pacifying religious conflicts; on other hand, it is not
aligned to its object, which is that of religion. This raises the problem of whether
we are to regard secularism as a placeholder or as something far too ambiguous
to perform the task that we assign to it. This paper will revisit some of the
conundrums of secularism in our age.
11:20
Comments on lecture of
Graham Ward by P.K. Datta
11:30 Comments on lecture of P.K. Datta by
Graham Ward
11:40: Coffee
Break
12:00-1:30pm
Panel 1: Papers: Between Political Theology and Postsecularism
Chair: Uriel Abulov (Tel Aviv University)
12:00:
Michael Hoelzl (University of Manchester)
How
much theology is permitted?
Since
Religion seems to be on the agenda again, I wish to raise the question of the
theological content of those religions we are actually confronted with. My
argument will be: whenever we talk about ‘religions’ we tacitly deny the fact
that every religion has produced its own theology which is in competition with
any secular political order. To solve this tension between secular and
theological worldviews many suggestions have been made to accommodate
theological and secular approaches to reality; ranging from political theology,
public theology, civil religion and republican religion. In this paper I would
like to show the tension between theological worldviews and secular political
worldviews without offering a definite conclusion.
12:30:
Ranjan Ghosh (North Bengal University)
Making Sense of the Secular
How do we make sense of the secular?
How does this secular contribute to our understanding of life and
socio-political realities? What meaning does it convey when it becomes our
generative ‘sacred’? This presentation expatiates my notion of the secular
thrown against the idiolect of secularism and religion. It argues out the
complicated dynamics of perspectivizing the secular as sacred. What difference
does that make to our understanding of the everyday, the cultural logic of
existence and the negotiations and articulation conducted and performed in an
associative democracy? How can we then move beyond secularism and religion to
become ‘secular’?
1:00: Comments on lecture of M. Hoelzl by R. Ghosh
1:05: Comments on
lecture of R. Ghosh by M. Hoelzl
1:10: Discussion
1:30pm: Lunch (all participants and
audience)
2:30pm: Panel 2: Paired Conversations: Are We Postsecular?
Chair: Kanchana Mahadevan (Mumbai University)
2:30: Rajeev Bharghava (CSDS) & Maeve Cooke (University
College Dublin)
3:20: Gurpreet Mahajan (JNU) & Veit Bader (University of
Amsterdam)
4:10: Coffee
Break
4:30-6:00pm WORKSHOP ON FUNDAMENTALISM
Chair: Sandra Wallenius-Korkalo (Lapland University)
4:30: Fundamentalism-Prophecy
and Protest in an Age of Globalization
Torkel Brekke
(Oslo University)
4:45-5:45: Fundamentalisms
Kanchana Mahadevan
(Mumbai University)
Hilal Ahmed
(CSDS)
Andrej Zwitter
(University of Groningen)
Michael Hoelz
(University of Manchester)
5:45: Perspectives on Religious
Fundamentalism
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