| Summary: | Secularism, which is central to the Enlightenment narrative,
promises liberation, freedom, emancipation, and progress to humanity. At the
same time, the narrative of secularism poses religion as its antithesis, which brings dogmatism,
fundamentalism, and violence. In this
project, I read secularism closely in various contexts from a gender and
sexuality perspective and question the assumption that secularism always
provides a progress for gender equality, whereas religion always produces
inequality and oppression. To open up new ways of understanding secularism and
gender, I firstly question the so-called universality of secularism by addressing
the European origin of secularism and the concept of religion. Then, I address
the diversity of secular and religious experiences which reconstruct each other
in various contexts. Finally, I argue that the embodiment of secular or
religious in terms of gender, sexuality and
family is an important matter for the understanding of the division between religious
and secular.
|
|---|