| Summary/Abstract |
The article theorizes the vibrating relations between religion, politics, and nationalism in the Bulgarian postcommunist public sphere. “Secularization without secularism” was the formula of the communist politicization of religion. The postcommunist religionization of politics and politicization of religion are analyzed through the symbolic mapping of religions, the structural affinities between nationalism and Orthodox Christianity, the contestatory desecularization, the secularized Othering, and the desecularized identity. The author forges the notion of “elastic (post)secularism” in order to conceptualize the eclectic, diverse, and often contrary forms of the postcommunist politicization of the religious, which, in some cases, stretch it by way of a kaleidoscopic set of narratives and arguments toward secularism and, in others, toward postsecularization. Unlike Kristen Ghodsee's symphonic secularism, which regards the relation between religion and politics from the point of view of religion, elastic (post)secularism considers it from the point of view of politics.
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