This module is not currently running in 2024 to 2025.
In recent decades European intellectual culture has seen a turn towards the post-secular, the post-critical, the “return” of religion, or, as Claude Lefort described it “the permanency of the theologico-political”. Such gestures invite a rethinking of the political, social, and intellectual role of “religion” in the recent history of European thought. Such reworking intimately affects the understanding of Europe within a scene of global political and economic development, European traditions of philosophy, concepts of political autonomy; its critical theories of culture and economy, links between the idea of Europe and democratic political foundations; and the nature of artistic, social, and psychological exploration. This course creates capacities to interact with and to intervene in these important and on-going cultural discussions by developing new maps of “religion” as a central preoccupation in the formation of European intellectual identity, with a strong focus on Paris and the history of religion in “French theory” (e.g the works of Badiou, Benslama, Derrida and Foucault).
Total contact hours: 20
This module is compulsory for students studying on the MA in Religion (Paris).
Essay (5000 words) - 100%
Badiou, A. (2013) The Incident at Antioch, New York: Columbia University Press;
Benslama F. (2009) Psychoanalysis and the Challenge of Islam, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press;
Chakrabarty D. (2000) Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference, Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press;
Derrida J. (2002) Acts of Religion, London: Routledge;
Foucault M. & Carrette J. (ed.). (1999) Religion and Culture, New York: Routledge;
Gauchet M. (1997) The Disenchantment of the World: A Political History of Religion, Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press;
Kristeva J. (2009) This Incredible Need to Believe, New York: Columbia University Press;
Lefort C. (1988) Democracy and Political Theory, Cambridge: Polity Press;
Masuzawa T. (2005) The Invention of World Religions, or How European Universalism was Preserved in the Language of Pluralism, Chicago: University of Chicago Press;
de Vries H. (2006) Political Theologies: Public Religions in a Post-Secular World, New York: Fordham University Press;
Zizek S. (2009) The Fragile Absolute, or, Why is the Christian Legacy Worth Fighting For?, London: Verso, 2nd edition.
See the library reading list for this module (Canterbury)
Students will have demonstrated a critical awareness of the formation of the category "religion" in relation to other disciplines and cultural spheres constituting European cultural and critical theory (e.g., philosophy, literary theory, aesthetics, museum cultures, political theory, psychoanalysis, theories of globalisation or capitalism);
Students will have developed a nuanced knowledge and understanding of how, why, and with what consequences the category of 'religion' has functioned in the invention of European "critical" thought (for example, the invention of critique and philosophy;
Students will have displayed a comprehensive knowledge and understanding of major 'inventors' of, and classic works constituting French secularism, post-secularism, and the "return of the religious" within the European intellectual tradition;
Students will have critically analysed the political, social, and institutional role of non-European religion in the formation of modern and contemporary European views on culture, politics, and religion;
Students will have demonstrated the ability to situate one's own specialist area (e.g. Hindu Studies, Biblical Studies) in relation to the genealogies and questions mapped in this course
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