The Postsecular Imagination: Postcolonialism, Religion, and Literature

ISBN-13: 9780415480970 / Angielski / Twarda / 2012 / 270 str.

Manav Ratti

Opis

Through an intimate, literary conjunction of religion and politics, this book theorizes the emergence of a "post-secular" condition of the contemporary world, in which organized, conventional religion has failed politically. Nationalism has also had its failures after decolonization in the postcolonial world, marked especially by ethnic violence, civil war, partition, and communalism. In the wake of such crises, however, we have still retained within us the need for faith, wonder, and enchantment—which must now find its expression without the political constraints of organized religion, nationalism, and ethnic majoritarianism.

In this book Ratti discusses recent Anglophone novels that reflect the multireligious nature of the Indian sub-continent, including such religions and forms of belief as Hinduism, Islam, Sikhism, Buddhism, Christianity, and tribal animism. The main emphasis being on the work of Michael Ondaatje and Salman Rushdie, it will address a breadth of writers, including Mahasweta Devi, Amitav Ghosh, Allan Sealy, and Shauna Singh Baldwin.

Spis treści

Preface: The Literary and The Postsecular.  Introduction: Situating Postsecularism 1. Postsecularism and Nation: Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient 2. Minority’s Christianity: Allan Sealy’s The Everest Hotel 3. Postsecularism and Violence: Michael Ondaatje’s Anil’s Ghost 4. If Truth Were A Sikh Woman: Shauna Singh Baldwin’s What The Body Remembers 5. Postsecularism and Prophecy: Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses 6. Art After the Fatwa: Salman Rushdie’s Haroun and the Sea of Stories, The Moor’s Last Sigh, Shalimar The Clown, and The Enchantress of Florence 7. The Known and The Unknowable: Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide and Mahasweta Devi’s "Pterodactyl, Puran Sahay, and Pirtha" Coda Notes References Index

O autorze

Manav Ratti completed his doctorate at Oxford University and is Assistant Professor of English at Salisbury University, USA. A recent faculty Fulbright Scholar at New York University, he is Fellow Designate at the Institute of Advanced Study at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, India.