Inquisitive racialization or race after secularization a critical phenomenological approach

In this article, we develop the notion of ‘inquisitive racialization’, to elaborate a critical phenomenological perspective on how the expectation that religion should be privatized and/or made invisible under secularization can enable, and even stimulate, a specific form of racialization. We show that this is specifically relevant for understanding antisemitism and Islamophobia, discussing two literary and theatrical works: a fragment from the novel In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust (written between 1909–1922) and Rachida Lamrabet’s five-minute play Projet deburkanisation. We try to make plausible that a critical phenomenological approach enables us to bring into focus structural and everyday interpersonal, social, bodily, and affective dimensions of religion-related securitization and racialization. We discuss the influential notion of the ‘lived experience’ (l’expérience vécue), introduced by Frantz Fanon, trying to adapt it to contexts in which the racialization has an important religious component, discussing notions of proteophobia (Zygmunt Bauman) and opacity (Édouard Glissant) in connection to phenomenological works by, among others Alia Al-Saji, Gail Weiss and Sara Ahmed.