The secular and the limits of the political: The problem of religion in Quebec

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" The secular and the limits of the political: The problem of religion in Quebec "
Ian Anthony Morrison

Document Type	:	Latin Dissertation
Language of Document	:	English
Record Number	:	53141
Doc. No	:	TL23095
Call number	:	‭NR51753‬
Main Entry	:	Ian Anthony Morrison
Title & Author	:	The secular and the limits of the political: The problem of religion in Quebec\ Ian Anthony Morrison
College	:	York University (Canada)
Date	:	2008
Degree	:	Ph.D.
student score	:	2008
Page No	:	338
Abstract	:	In recent years struggles have taken place in a number of states concerning the presence of religion, particularly Islam, in the public sphere. This dissertation investigates the emergence of the presence of religion in the public sphere as a problem, not in order to offer a formula to resolve it, nor merely to challenge practices of exclusion or discrimination against religious subjects, but to understand the way in which the naturalisation of specific historical definitions of the religious and the secular limit the possibilities for engaging with this issue. The recent struggles over religion are not approached as merely manifestations of the growing strength of secularism. These struggles are made possible by a historically emergent notion of the secular as the normal (i.e., legitimate, recognizable, and acceptable) way of being in public. In order to understand the emergence of the secular as the normal way of being in public, this dissertation concerns itself with the recent debates over religion in Québec. Québec, as such, becomes an opening for an interrogation of the limits imposed by the secular. While the processes through which the secular emerged and became dominant, and the assemblage of phenomena that have been labelled as 'religious' and problematic in Québec may differ from those of other societies, an analysis of Québec demonstrates the constructed nature of those categories and ways of being that are taken for granted elsewhere. The dissertation examines three moments in the history of Québec in which a particular discourse of religion and the secular emerges--(1) the mid-nineteenth century equation of the secular with the modern and the religious with the pre-modern; (2) the mid-twentieth century definition of the secular as the realm of authenticity; and (3) the recent designation of the secular as the proper way of being in the public sphere. By historicising, and thus denaturalising the categories of the religious and the secular, and their relationship to the public and political spheres, the dissertation creates an opening to address the issue of the public presence of the religious that escapes the limitations of the present debate.
Subject	:	Philosophy, religion and theology; Social sciences; Quebec; Secular; Political; Religion; Social research; Political science; Sociology; 0615:Political science; 0344:Social research; 0626:Sociology; 0318:Religion
Added Entry	:	York University (Canada)