Social Compass 2015, Vol. 62(1) 76–88 © The Author(s) 2015 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/0037768614560960 scp.sagepub.com social compass Disenchantment revisited: Formations of the ‘secular’ and ‘religious’ in the technological discourse of modernity Sam HAN Nanyang Technological University, Singapore Abstract This article problematizes sociologist Max Weber’s famed notion of ‘disenchantment’ in order to explore the ways in which ‘technology’ and ‘religion’ operate in the discourse of ‘secular modernity’. It suggests that disenchantment is not simply epistemological, that is, synonymous with rationalization and intellectualization, but also ontological, and a description of the overhauling of what Bruno Latour calls the ‘modernist settlement’. It proceeds in following manner: (1) it presents an ‘interpretive genealogy’ of technological rationality in discourses about modernity, demonstrating an internal conflict, especially in how ‘religion’, ‘the secular,’ and ‘technology’ are conceptualized. It posits that the lack of consistency in the invocation of these terms is a symptom of a deeper unresolved ontological (or, onto-cosmological) tension. (2) After establishing this ontological aporia, the article proceeds to offer a rereading of Weber’s original concept of disenchantment. (3) Finally, the author teases out some of the implications of reading disenchantment ontologically for the understanding of religion and technology. Keywords disenchantment, Max Weber, modernity, religion, secularization, technology Corresponding author: Sam HAN, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Nanyang Technological University, 14 Nanyang Drive, 639798, Singapore Email: hansam@ntu.edu.sg 560960SCP 0 0 10.1177/0037768614560960Social CompassHan: ‘Secular’ and ‘religious’ in the technological discourse of modernity research-article 2014 Article by guest on March 30, 2015 scp.sagepub.com Downloaded from