interview Talal Asad modern power and the reconfiguration of religious traditions Saba Mahmood
...[Saba Mahmood] You also argue in your book Genealogies of Religion that modernity, by definition, is a teleological project in its desire to remake history, the nation, and the future. You argue that "actions seeking to maintain the local status quo are therefore always resisting the future."[1] Could you please speak to what you meant by this?
[Talal Asad] I meant that ironically, of course. I think what I said was that actions that only maintain the status quo -- to conserve daily life -- are not thought of as "making history," however long such efforts take. And movements which could be branded as "reactionary" were by definition trying "to resist the future" or "to turn the clock back." The point is that the advocates and defenders of Western modernity are explicitly committed to a certain kind of historicity, a temporal movement of social life in which "the future" pulls us forward. The idea is that, in some measure, "the future" represents something that can be anticipated and should be desired, and that at least the direction of that desirable future is known. The "future" becomes a kind of moral magnet, out there, pulling us toward itself. On the one hand, humans are thought of as having the freedom to shape their own (collective) destiny. On the other hand, "history," as an autonomous movement, has its own momentum, and those who act on a different assumption are thought of as being either morally blameworthy or practically self-defeating -- or both. The concept of history-making relates to this grand and somewhat contradictory idea. And all societies -- including non-Western ones -- are judged by the phrases you quote. I briefly mentioned the frequent derogatory references to the situation in what has happened and is happening in Iran, to cargo cults, etc. My point is not that one should not criticize -- or even denounce -- what has happened and is happening in Iran, say. My point is that most people who do so are also employing a very peculiar notion of "history" and "history-making."...
<http://www.stanford.edu/group/SHR/5-1/text/asad.html> *****
Talal Asad's remark that "Western modernity" represents the future as "a kind of moral magnet" is intriguing. However, enslavement to the future is not unique to what is called "the West" -- it's rather proper to M-C-M'. -- Yoshie
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