Secular Bodies Affects and Emotions

Taking its cue from the study of 'lived religion' <i>Secular Bodies Affects and Emotions</i> shows how the idea of a secular public is equally marked by a display and cultivation of affect and emotions. Whereas it is widely agreed that religion is often saturated by emotion the secular is usually treated as a neutral background serving as the domain of public rational deliberation. This book demonstrates that secularity and secularism are also upheld by bodily practices and emotional attachments.<br/><br/>Drawing on empirical case studies this is the first book to ask and explore whether a secular body exists. Building on the work of Talal Asad the book argues that the secular is not an absence of religion but a positive entity that comes about through its co-constitutive relationship with religion. And once we attune ourselves to recognizing its operations as grammar which structures social practice writing an anthropology of the secular could become a new possibility.