Introduction If one is to investigate the academic circles today, s/he can soon realize that every academic field is being divided into further specializations and each researcher is asked to narrow down their focus and to do a more meticulous study. This is something which I have personally become conscious of as an anthropology student—seeing that a major difference between... Continue Reading →
A common way of describing the Enlightenment period centers around the discourse of “rationalization”. It is assumed that it is by abolishing the orders of the Church that the individuals empowered themselves via exercising their reason and purging the bigotry that was accumulated throughout the Dark Ages of Europe. For such reasons, when one speaks... Continue Reading →
The recent European discourse on blasphemy as applied to the behavior of Muslim immigrants in Europe serves, paradoxically, at once to confirm and to deny difference. Angry Muslim responses to the publication of the Danish cartoons are seen by secularists as attempting to reintroduce a category that was once a mea ms of oppression in... Continue Reading →
In this eye-opening book of Talal Asad, a genealogy of secularism and secular concepts are made. Asad first asks questions such as "what might an Anthropology of Secularism look like?". then digs deeper into concepts such as agency, pain, cruelty and torture. He digs into these concepts in a way that his words unearth the... Continue Reading →
Thinking Prismatically 