Bloomsbury Secular Bodies, Affects and Emotions: European Configurations

Drawing on empirical case studies, this is the first book to ask and explore whether a secular body exists. It combines new studies of secularism and secularity with cutting-edge concepts in the history and anthropology of emotions. The book also examines a range of secular(ist) contexts that have not yet been looked at from the perspective of their underpinnings in ritual, everyday practices, and emotional norms. Whereas it is widely agreed that religion is often saturated by feelings, the secular is usually treated as a neutral background serving as the domain of public, rational deliberation. This volume demonstrates that secularity and secularism are also upheld by bodily practices and emotional attachments. Taking its cue from the study of `lived religion', Secular Bodies, Affects and Emotions shows how the idea of a secular public is equally marked by a display and cultivation of affect and emotions. Building on the work of Talal Asad, the book argues that the secular is not an absence of religion, but a positive entity that comes about through its co-constitutive relationship with religion. And, once we attune ourselves to recognizing its operations as grammar which structures social practice, writing an anthropology of the secular could become a new possibility.