Transmodernity as a Model for a Decolonial Postsecularity

This paper intervenes into the debate on the secular and the postsecular by offering a decolonial interpretation of the postsecular that does not entail a regressive process of “desecularization,” as Walter Mignolo has argued for. Following a reflexively dialectical account of the historical process of secularization, I argue that the “post” in the “postsecular” ought to be understood as a shifting self-consciousness of secularity that makes possible the re-constitution of an ongoing process of secularization. So rather than expecting to jettison “the secular” in its entirety, there is room for a decolonial rebuilding of secularity that critically re-draws the boundaries between the secular and the religious without necessarily endorsing the well-known Eurocentrism of conventional postsecular positions. This dynamic is illustrated by way of the transmodern proposal developed by Enrique Dussel, which aims to systematize what it means to think “beyond the assumptions of modernity, capitalism, Eurocentrism, and colonialism.”