Why Politics Can’t Be Freed from Religion

Why Politics Can’t Be Freed From Religion......Page 5
Contents......Page 9
Acknowledgments......Page 13
1 When God Plays Politics: Radical Interrogations of Religion, Power, and Politics......Page 15
1. Religion Trouble......Page 22
2. ‘Seeing’ Religion: Six Common Clichés......Page 25
3. Gagging at the Feast of Two Unexamined Assumptions: Religion, All Good or All Bad......Page 28
4. The Religion-Is-No-Good Cliché......Page 35
5. The Second Set of Two Clichés: Religion Is Belief and Belief in God......Page 38
6. ‘Religion’s’ Private Parts......Page 47
7. Powerless in Paradise......Page 49
8. Two Ways to Eliminate ‘Religion’......Page 50
9. Is Religion Our Phlogiston? An Historical Test Case......Page 53
10. Talal Asad’s ‘Religion’ Trouble......Page 56
11. The Trick of Defining ‘Religion’......Page 60
12. Owning ‘Religion’......Page 64
13. How Durkheim Took ‘Ownership’ of ‘Religion’......Page 69
14. Religion and Its Despisers......Page 73
1. Confronting the Paradox of ‘Power’......Page 76
2. How ‘Power’ Plays Havoc with Thinking about “Institutional Violence”......Page 80
3. Whom Should We Blame? ‘History’ on Trial......Page 84
4. History’s Helper: We Should Also Blame Foucault......Page 95
5. Problematizing Power in South Africa......Page 98
6. Foucault versus Foucault......Page 102
7. Thinking about Power as Auctoritas and Hierarchy......Page 104
8. What More Is to Be Done? Thinking about Power as Auctoritas and Social Force......Page 111
1. Defining ‘Politics’......Page 114
2. Where There Is No Politics: Despotism and Totalitarianism......Page 116
3. Autonomous Politics......Page 119
4. Where Our ‘Politics’ Makes No Sense......Page 121
5. Politics, the Construct......Page 123
6. Two Pernicious Views of ‘Politics’......Page 126
7. History Lessons for Professor Morgenthau......Page 130
8. What Constitutionalism Owes the Council of Constance......Page 133
9. The Emergence of the Political … from the Religious......Page 137
10. Machiavelli and Luther: Critical Contributions to the Autonomy of Politics......Page 139
11. Foucault’s Fault II: ‘Everything Is Political’......Page 144
12. The Hidden Fascism of Thinking that Everything Is Political......Page 147
13. Public and Private: No Absolute Line of Demarcation......Page 149
14. Resisting the Panopticon......Page 150
15. Afterword: The Autonomy of ‘Politics’ and the Nation-State......Page 154
1. Is ‘Suicide’ Bombing Religious?......Page 156
2. Making Too Much of Religion in ‘Suicide’ Bombing: ‘Islamofascism’......Page 158
3. Dying to Make Too Little of Religion in ‘Suicide’ Bombing: Robert A. Pape......Page 161
4. No Religion in ‘Suicide’ Bombing: Talal Asad......Page 164
5. How Religion Helps Explain Human Bombing......Page 167
6. Human Bombing Is “Catastrophe,” but also a “Triumph” of “Secular Immortality”......Page 169
7. Human Bombing = Jihad + Sacrifice......Page 174
8. Sacrifice or Suicide?......Page 178
9. But Do Any Muslims Really Think Human Bombers Are ‘Sacrifices’?......Page 182
10. Sacrifice Makes Authority......Page 189
11. How and Why Sacrifice Works: The Authority of Sacralization......Page 190
12. How and Why Sacrifice Works: No Free Gifts......Page 194
13. Concluding Remarks......Page 196
References......Page 201
Index......Page 210