Abstract

SANCHEZ RODRIGUEZ, Ángel. Political Re-apropriation of the Concepts of Political Religion and Civil Religion for the Criticism of the Present Time by Paul E. Gottfried and Enzo Traverso. Contribution to a Historiographic Debate. Hist. graf [online]. 2021, n.56, pp.307-346.  Epub Feb 23, 2021. ISSN 1405-0927.  https://doi.org/10.48102/hyg.vi56.332.

This essay is intended to contribute to the current debate on the historiographical legitimacy of the concepts of political religion and civil religion. It follows an unusual path: analyzing not the debate itself but the political reappropriation of the concepts by the historians Paul E. Gottfried and Enzo Traverso. Gottfried applies the concept of political religion to the post-Marxist Left and Traverso the concept of civil religion to the cult of the Holocaust memory. The conclusion is that when these two concepts are used in a polemical way, they can give rise to many of the historiographical defects that their critics attribute to them. However, updating their political potential could indicate significant historical mutations of the secularized world.

Keywords : Political Religion; Civil Religion; Conceptual History; Historiography; Enzo Traverso; Paul E. Gottfried.

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