This article analyses how recent critiques of secularism in political philosophy and cultural anthropology might productively be combined and contrasted with each other. I will show that Jürgen Habermas' postsecularism takes insufficient account of elementary criticisms of secularism on the part of anthropologists such as Talal Asad and Saba Mahmood. However, I shall also criticize Saba Mahmood’s reading of secularism by arguing that, in the end, she replaces the secular–religious divide with a secularity–piety divide; for example, in her reading of (...) Nasr Abu Zayd’s secular Islamic hermeneutics. This inhibits the use of her framework of analysis for a criticism of a problem central to Habermas' postsecularism, namely that it remains focused on specific intensities of belief. I shall then argue that, combined with the anthropological critiques of the secular, the political-historical nature of the fanaticism–piety–violence nexus should be integrated into political philosophical debates on secularism and postsecularism. (shrink)

Exhaustion in the Plantationocene This contribution comments on Guno Jones’ notion of Citizenship Violence developed through his reading of We Slaves of Suriname by Anton de Kom. It addresses Jones’ discussion of exhaustion as a structural legacy of the plantation, proposing that exhaustion is also integral to the ‘Plantationocene’. This term, introduced by Donna Haraway and Anna Tsing, emphasizes how the plantation has been a laboratory for the subjection of organic life to radical simplification and commodification in modernity. Then, the (...) discussion extends to the critique of the Plantationocene by Malcom Ferdinand and Janae Davis et al., highlighting the racial politics of plantations and their connection to slavery. Furthermore, it examines the relationship between exhaustion, property, and whiteness. Additionally, this contribution pays attention to the interplay between Citizenship Violence and the politics of religion and secularity within the Dutch context, drawing parallels with Mohammed Amer Meziane’s analysis of the French context. (shrink)

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