Mumbai revisited
Following the November 26, 2008 terror attacks in Mumbai, and in the midst of a flurry of international media coverage, the editors of The Immanent Frame invited several scholars to post their own reflections on and analyses of both the event and its wider context. This week, we have invited some of these contributors, along with a range of others, to consider the enduring political and cultural repercussions of last November’s attacks.

After purification
Christian Moderns stands apart in at least two respects: in method and in conceptualization. Whereas earlier works on liberalism, modernism and secularism mainly employ a historical and critical approach that contrasts the modern West with its premodern self and its heterodox variants, Keane works mainly comparatively, using the Indonesian mission encounter to unearth the doxa of modern Euro-American culture.  Further, whereas Asad relies mainly on the genealogical

Jürgen Habermas and Charles Taylor in conversation
In a symposium convened by the Institute for Public Knowledge at NYU, the Social Science Research Council and the Humanities Institute at Stony Brook University, Judith Butler, Jürgen Habermas, Charles Taylor, and Cornel West came together last month to discuss the project of “rethinking secularism.” Tod

Christian moderns
I argue that the moral narrative of modernity is a projection onto chronological time of a view of human moral and pragmatic self-transformation. This narrative, and the concrete projects it entails, run into certain ubiquitous problems that arise from the material dimensions of human sociality and subjectivity. Protestantism was, historically, one major source of practices and concepts that express and try to control these problems. It was also a force for t

The cheese, the worms, and Major Hasan
What does the academic study of religion have to contribute to public discussions concerning Major Hasan’s religious identity? What do we know about religion and religious identity? We are worried about stereotypes and we are anxious, but what do we know?