Secularism and Cosmopolitanism

Étienne Balibar is emeritus professor of philosophy at Paris X Nanterre and emeritus professor of comparative literature at the University of California, Irvine. He is also professor of modern European philosophy at Kingston University, London, and professor of French and comparative literature at Columbia University. His books include Violence and Civility: On the Limits of Political Philosophy (Columbia, 2015).

• PrefaceIntroduction. Critique in the Twenty-First Century: Political Economy Still, Religion AgainPart I: Saeculum1. Circumstances and Objectives2. Secularism and Cosmopolitanism: An Aporia?3. Double Binds: Politics of the Veil4. Cosmo-Politics and Conflicts between Universalities5. Finishing with Religion?6. Culture, Religion, or Ideology7. Religious Revolutions and Anthropological Differences8. Secularism Secularized: The Vanishing Mediator9. EnvoiPart II: Essays10. Note on the Origins and Uses of “Monotheism”11. “God Will Not Remain Silent”. Zionism, Messianism, and Nationalism12. What Future for Laïcité? Part III: Statements13. Three Words for the Dead and the Living (after Charlie Hebdo)14. On "Freedom of Expression" and the Question of "Blasphemy"15. Identitarian LaïcitéNotesIndex

One of our best European activist philosophers here considers the question of secularism, religion, and cosmopolitanism in a broad range: Islam, the historical contradictions of secularism in the Israeli state, the implications of French laïcité, the history of the term 'monotheism' from European antiquity, and serious considerations of gender at every step. 'Generalized heresy as philosophical fiction' is, for Balibar, our persistent, repeated, heterogeneous, and collective political task of invention. Those of us trying to work away from the Abrahamic and toward the rural subaltern electorate find in Balibar a powerful ally.