Beyond the Secular: Jacques Derrida and the Theologico-Political Complex

Seminar co-hosted by RACE.ED and the University of Edinburgh School of Divinity, examining the contemporary relationship between religion and politics by turning to the work of Jacques Derrida to interrogate the foundations of modern secular discourse. Addressing the challenge that the resurgence of public religions poses to modern epistemic models and political forms, the talk illuminates secularism’s entanglements with the legacy of colonialism, exposing the racial features of secular understandings about language, epistemology, religion and politics that travel worldwide through processes of globalization.