Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies welcomes Slavica Jakelić, Assistant Professor of Humanities and Social Thought at Christ College, the Honors College of Valparaiso University.
Critics of secularism argue that the religious-secular binary needs to be destabilized in order to unmask the powers of the secular that determine it. What they propose, however, effectively re-establishes the opposition between the religious and the secular. Slava’s work asks about ways of re-imagining the relationship between the religious and the secular. Is it possible to approach religious-secular encounters in ways that are not reducible to mutual contestations and in ways that are not exhausted by power relations? Slava explores why considering the religious/secular binary outside the discourse of power speaks to some of the central concerns of peacebuilding, including how we address the challenges of deep pluralism, develop better democratic practices, and build more just societies.