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Devotion: Three Inquiries in Religion, Literature, and Political Imagination
Three scholars of religion explore literature and the literary as sites of critical transformation.
We are living in a time of radical uncertainty, faced with serious political, ecological, economic, epidemiological, and social problems. Scholars of religion Constance M. Furey, Sarah Hammerschlag, and Amy Hollywood come together in this volume with a shared conviction that what and how we read opens new ways of imagining our political futures and our lives.
Each essay in this book suggests different ways to characterize the object of devotion and the stance of the devout subject before it. Furey writes about devotion in terms of vivification, energy, and artifice; Hammerschlag in terms of commentary, mimicry, and fetishism; and Hollywood in terms of anarchy, antinomianism, and atopia. They are interested in literature not as providing models for ethical, political, or religious life, but as creating the site in which the possible—and the impossible—transport the reader, enabling new forms of thought, habits of mind, and ways of life. Ranging from German theologian Martin Luther to French-Jewish philosopher Sarah Kofman to American poet Susan Howe, this volume is not just a reflection on forms of devotion and their critical and creative import but also a powerful enactment of devotion itself.
We are living in a time of radical uncertainty, faced with serious political, ecological, economic, epidemiological, and social problems. Scholars of religion Constance M. Furey, Sarah Hammerschlag, and Amy Hollywood come together in this volume with a shared conviction that what and how we read opens new ways of imagining our political futures and our lives.
Each essay in this book suggests different ways to characterize the object of devotion and the stance of the devout subject before it. Furey writes about devotion in terms of vivification, energy, and artifice; Hammerschlag in terms of commentary, mimicry, and fetishism; and Hollywood in terms of anarchy, antinomianism, and atopia. They are interested in literature not as providing models for ethical, political, or religious life, but as creating the site in which the possible—and the impossible—transport the reader, enabling new forms of thought, habits of mind, and ways of life. Ranging from German theologian Martin Luther to French-Jewish philosopher Sarah Kofman to American poet Susan Howe, this volume is not just a reflection on forms of devotion and their critical and creative import but also a powerful enactment of devotion itself.
200 pages, Hardcover
Published December 10, 2021
23 people want to read
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December 15, 2023
Contending that devotion to a text is not an uncritical reading practice that is opposed to a critical hermeneutics of suspicion, the authors argue that devotion as a practice and hermeneutic undoes the ‘putative dichotomies’ of freedom and tradition, critique and faith. Each essay asserts devotion is a rejection of liberal ideas of self-sovereignty and of binaries between form and content, subject and object, text and context. To be in devotion to a text, for these authors, is to refuse the ideal of mastery. However, this does not mean one must devote themselves to every text, as there are scores of texts not worthy of sustained attention. And while not every reading must be a devoted reading, devoted readings do not necessarily establish a relation of love with the text, but a relation that reveals how the reader and the text share an instability of meaning, vulnerability of interpretation, and openness towards past and future readings.
The authors demonstrate, often in concert with continental philosophers of religion like Sarah Kofman, how reading practices complicate common presumptions on what religious texts and religious readings do to and for philosophical inquiries. Many continental philosophers are, not without merit, reluctant to espouse uncritical relations to texts; however, these essays validate that uncritical is not synonymous with faith and critical is not synonymous with suspicion. Such a literary theory and way of reading allows continental philosophers of religion to read anew the apophatic and mystical corpuses they repeatedly cite and develop.
The authors demonstrate, often in concert with continental philosophers of religion like Sarah Kofman, how reading practices complicate common presumptions on what religious texts and religious readings do to and for philosophical inquiries. Many continental philosophers are, not without merit, reluctant to espouse uncritical relations to texts; however, these essays validate that uncritical is not synonymous with faith and critical is not synonymous with suspicion. Such a literary theory and way of reading allows continental philosophers of religion to read anew the apophatic and mystical corpuses they repeatedly cite and develop.
Displaying 1 of 1 review