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

Combining insights from political theology, postcolonial and critical race theories, this project interrogates the contemporary relation between religion and politics through an exploration of Jacques Derrida’s political thought. Its central claim is that Derrida’s perspective illuminates the stakes and implications of the secular world order on global politics and religion, and offers powerful resources to move beyond the modern paradigm. As a contribution to current debates on secularism, this research questions the oppositional modern logic that separates religion and politics, and illuminates its exclusionary character by tracing its roots in culture-specific understandings about language, epistemology and religion. By exposing the discriminatory hierarchies that the Western-Christian, sexualized, and racialized presuppositions of secular discourse keep producing and maintaining, this study ultimately sheds light on the multiple entanglements of secularism with the legacy of colonialism.