Affective Secularity

Abstract From its conception, the secular was and is dependent on emotions and affects. Moreover, secular affects are neither abstract nor internal, but consist of the relationality of humans, non-human entities (animals, plants, hormones, air, water, microorganisms, etc.) and things, so they are dependent on materiality. Emotions and affects are public and not just the internal affairs of individuals. The first part of this article provides an overview of the ways in which emotions and affects are conceptualized in the literature on religion and the secular in order to trace the genealogy of the Christian tradition of ‘religion’ and to propose an affect-centred approach as an alternative to the canon of belief that privileges feeling and immediate inner experience over knowing or doing. In the second part, a paradigm of affects of the secular as material, sensory and ‘aesthetic formations’ is illustrated by two examples of the religionization of the minority and the culturalization of the majority, using the example of clothing and pork consumption within French laicïté .