Abstract
At a time when the status of “religion” and “secularity” as general concepts is no longer self-evident, and even the term “post-secular” is in circulation, what, if any, attempts can be made to reforge “the universal” into something more promising for the study of religion? This article examines the idea of “translation” in order to reconsider universality as something that is not identical to the mere secularity of reason alone. After seeing how the universality of the concept of religion is associated with the historical dynamics of decontextualization (Section 1), we will examine Talal Asad’s text on the nontranslatabilit y of “discursive tradition” as a powerf ul arg ument challenging that universality (Section 2). But still, we will attempt to reread Asad in terms of Judith Butler’s critical theory in order to translate these anthropological descriptions of the uniqueness of traditional context into a critique that can be productive in the alternative process of universalization (Section 3).
