John D. Boy

John D. Boy is a doctoral student at the Graduate Center and an adjunct instructor in sociology at Queens College of The City University of New York. His work is on religion and secularity, social theory, and political sociology. For his dissertation, he is investigating the phenomena of "reverse missions" and church-planting in Europe.

Posts by John D. Boy:

Thursday, March 12th, 2009

The fanatical counterpublic

<br />How are we to understand Taylor’s own position between disengagement and “fanaticism”? Of course, he doesn’t want to side with those who provide closure to the immanent frame by rejecting religion on account of its fanatical excesses. In fact, his emphasis on the need for transformation—the last chapter of A Secular Age is called “Conversions” for a reason—might suggest a certain proximity to fanaticism. The fanatic, always an iconoclast that scorns the representation and asserts the need for authenticity, appears to play an important implicit role in Taylor’s story.

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