Secular Assemblages: Affect, Orientalism and Power in the French Enlightenment

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Marek Sullivan (Oxford University, UK) Bettina E. Schmidt (University of Wales Trinity Saint David UK)

Secular Assemblages

Affect, Orientalism and Power in the French Enlightenment

Marek Sullivan (Oxford University, UK), Bettina E. Schmidt (University of Wales Trinity Saint David UK), Steven Sutcliffe (University of Edinburgh UK) , William Sweetman (University of Otago New Zealand)

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English

Bloomsbury Academic
27 January 2022

Western philosophy: Enlightenment; Religion & politics; Humanist & secular alternatives to religion; Nationalism

Series: Bloomsbury Advances in Religious Studies

In this book, Marek Sullivan challenges a widespread consensus linking secularization to rationalization, and argues for a more sensual genealogy of secularity connected to affect, race and power. While existing works of secular intellectual history, especially Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age (2007), tend to rely on rationalistic conceptions of Enlightenment thought, Sullivan offers an alternative perspective on key thinkers such as Descartes, Montesquieu and Diderot, asserting that these figures sought to reinstate emotion against the rationalistic tendencies of the past. From Descartes’s last work Les Passions de l’Âme (1649) to Baron d’Holbach’s System of Nature (1770), the French Enlightenment demonstrated an acute understanding of the limits of reason, with crucial implications for our current ‘postsecular’ and ‘postliberal’ moment.

Sullivan also emphasizes the importance of Western constructions of Oriental religions for the history of the secular, identifying a distinctively secular—yet impassioned—form of Orientalism that emerged in the 18th century. Mahomet’s racial profile in Voltaire’s Le Fanatisme, ou Mahomet (1741), for example, functioned as a polemic device calibrated for emotional impact, in line with Enlightenment efforts to generate an affective body of anti-Catholic propaganda that simultaneously shored up people’s sense of national belonging. By exposing the Enlightenment as a nationalistic and affective movement that resorted to racist, Orientalist and emotional tropes from the outset, Sullivan ultimately undermines modern nationalist appeals to the Enlightenment as a mark of European distinction.

By: Marek Sullivan (Oxford University UK)
Edited by: Bettina E. Schmidt (University of Wales Trinity Saint David UK), Steven Sutcliffe (University of Edinburgh UK), William Sweetman (University of Otago New Zealand)
Imprint: Bloomsbury Academic
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 234mm, Width: 156mm,
Weight: 367g
ISBN: 9781350272361
ISBN 10: 1350272361
Series: Bloomsbury Advances in Religious Studies
Pages: 264
Publication Date: 27 January 2022
Audience: College/higher education , Professional and scholarly , Primary , Undergraduate
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Marek Sullivan is a Research Assistant at the University of Oxford, UK. He is also a Managing Editor of the Journal of Secularism and Nonreligion and a former Editor-in-Chief of The Oxonian Review.