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Mots. Les langages du politique, n°135/2024

Nommer le religieux

Edited by Dominique Desmarchelier, David Douyère, Bochra Kammarti, Marie-Claire Willems, Dilek Yankaya

Mots. Les langages du politique



Naming the religious

Religions are not simply modes of social relationship between members and with other groups, or a specific discourse, nor are they simply sets of practices or a legal and theological corpus. It is also through naming practices that they are identified in history and circulate in public space. The process of naming religious phenomena and actors, by the faithful (self-denomination) or attributed by others (hetero-denomination), is the result of social interactions and takes shape in a given context of enunciation. These etic and emic denominations are the subject of conflict and controversies depending on whether the actors recognise themselves in the name that is used to refer to them. The five studies in this special issue examine the issues involved in naming Christian, Muslim and Jewish religion, and the resulting public (in)visibility of religion, whether voluntary or not, through the process of public neutralisation of religious denominations in the public space. The denomination of the religious is thus studied in its cultural, social, political, and legal contextual dimension.