[Book review] The postsecular imagination : postcolonialism, religion and literature

Abstract

The legacies, potentials, and pitfalls of the “secular,” and their ongoing implications within global and (trans)national distributions of power and ideological critique occupy an increasingly vital role within the postcolonial humanities today. As we continue to witness around us the long-term ravages of a “West [that] is now everywhere … in structures and in minds” (xi), to use Ashis Nandy’s memorable phrasing, the urgency of this debate can never be overestimated. Its presence bears heavily upon a crucial Derridean demand of twenty first-century critical thought: namely, that exegesis occupies itself with, and respects, a certain ontology of the “ought to” (il faudrait). This exhortation is, in many ways, as subjective as it is onerous. The questions postcolonialist scholarship ought to be addressing today as a matter of imminence, especially at a juncture which Wendy Brown has marked as “an era of profound political disorientation”—one that requires ever more vigilant modes of “how we navigate within the tattered narratives of modernity” (Brown 3)—are repeatedly the topic of debate and conversation.