In The Postsecular Imagination, Manav Ratti theorizes postsecularism as it emerges through the strengths and limitations of religion and secularism. Religion can foster inspiration and creativity, but it can also be linked with violence, civil war, partition, majoritarianism, and communalism, especially in the framework of the modern nation-state. Given these crises, how can the need for faith, awe, wonder, enchantment, and ethics that religion seeks to fulfill find expression and significance in secular contexts?
Ratti sheds light on postsecularism’s literary, postcolonial, diasporic, and South Asian dimensions by analyzing the work of Shauna Singh Baldwin, Mahasweta Devi, Amitav Ghosh, Michael Ondaatje, Salman Rushdie, and Allan Sealy as they engage with a variety of religious formations found in South Asia: animism, Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, and Sikhism. Ratti shows the dynamic risk, courage, and experimentation in the radical imagination of postsecular works.
Tackling the most provocative debates in secularism and religion, The Postsecular Imagination will be important for readers interested in culture, literature, theory, and politics.
Preface:
The Literary and The Postsecular PDF of Preface
Introduction:
Situating Postsecularism
Chapter 1:
Postsecularism and Nation: Michael Ondaatje's The English Patient
Chapter 2:
Minority's Christianity: Alan Sealy's The Everest Hotel
Chapter 3:
Postsecularism and Violence: Michael Ondaatje's Anil's Ghost
Chapter 4:
If Truth Were A Sikh Woman: Shauna Singh Baldwin's What the Body Remembers
Chapter 5:
Postsecularism and Prophecy: Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses
Chapter 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
Chapter 7:
The Known and The Unknowable: Amitav Ghosh's The Hungry Tide and Mahasweta Devi's "Pterodactyl, Puran Sahay, and Pirtha"
Coda