Faith, secular attachments and outside belongings

Faith, secular attachments and outside belongings

Presenter: Professor Anna Hickey-Moody

In her 1996 book titled Outside Belongings, Eslpeth Probyn characterises attachment to peripheries and surfaces, in contrast to identification with nationality and/or dominant models of heterosexual domestic life. Following Probyn, I suggest that the edges and surfaces of communities, organisations, and belief systems are critically engaged spaces, and that they are needed more than ever with the continued global rise of the far-right. I consider the politics of “becoming other”, of life at the edges of social formations, faith and race, outside belongings in/as family and discuss the significance, and complexity of such attachments. While online communities can span countries and continents, many communities are more spatially situated, anchored in the places and institutions that support everyday lives, such as schools, shops, workplaces, leisure and sports facilities, and religious institutions, including churches, mosques, and temples. Research into the practices that…