The postsecular in International Relations: an overview

Over the last few years the notion of postsecularity has gained increasing relevance in the social sciences. This term has been employed in two interconnected but different ways. First, in a more descriptive fashion, it has been used to explain the return or resilience of religious traditions in modern life. This has resulted, on the one hand, in the attempt to develop conceptual frameworks that could account for this unexpected feature of modernity beyond the paradigmatic assumptions of the secularisation theory; and, on the other hand, in a plea for new models of politics able to include religious views. In a second and possibly more innovative meaning, the postsecular has emerged as a form of radical theorizing and critique prompted by the idea that values such as democracy, freedom, equality, inclusion and justice may not necessarily be best pursued within an exclusively immanent secular framework. Quite the opposite, the secular may well be a potential site of isolation, domination, violence and exclusion.