Secularism as misdirection : critical thought from the Global South Nivedita Menon.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction: Thinking secularism from the Global South -- State, religion, and the bodies of women -- Hindu majoritarianism and the construction of religion -- The failed project of creating Hindus -- The self and psychoanalysis from the Global South -- Capitalism as secular science -- Insurgent constitutionalism and radical frames of citizenship -- Reshaping worlds : beyond the capitalist horizon.

"In Secularism as Misdirection, Nivedita Menon traces how the discourse of secularism fixes attention to and hyper-visualizes women and religion while obscuring other related issues. Showing how secularism is often invoked to serve capital and antiminority politics, Menon exposes it as a strategy of governance that is compatible with both democracy and authoritarianism, capitalism and socialism. Secularism also delegitimizes the nonindividuated nonrational self, Menon argues, and exploring this aspect, tracks the journey of psychoanalysis in the Global South. Menon further examines the interconnectedness of religion, caste, the state, and women, showing how the discourse of secularism can also be mobilized by Hindu supremacist politics in India. Menon puts Latin American decolonial theorists in conversation with Asian and African thinkers to examine twenty-first-century global reimaginings of selfhood, constitutionalism, citizenship, and anticapitalist existence. Through a feminist and global perspective, Menon suggests that transformative politics is better imagined by stepping out of the frame offered by secularism and focusing on substantive values such as democracy, social justice, and ecological justice"--