Secular Sensibilities

How do secular politics work to manage the emotional, affective, and embodied nature of religion in the public sphere? Drawing on an expansive transnational ethnography in France and Canada and assessing contemporary French and Quebecois governmental legislation on secularism and immigration, Jennifer Selby considers expectations for secular bodies and sensibilities among men and women of Algerian origin. In her subjects' evocative narratives of longing and belonging, Selby charts how secular sensibilities emerge in marriage partner preferences, family relationships, rituals, dress, and more. Selby reveals how these sensibilities develop and respond to legal and other forms of state authority, with legacies of colonialism in France and Quebec playing a substantial role.

In demonstrating how secularism is expressed and experienced around intimate relationships and civil marriage, Selby persuasively argues that romance is a crucial contact zone for the politics of secularism. Her study invites readers to wrestle with their own entanglements in state and cultural expectations of secular bodies and the liberal fictions of separation between the religious and public spheres.