Steve Pinkerton
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- February 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780190627560
- eISBN:
- 9780190627584
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190627560.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
In his 1934 book After Strange Gods, T. S. Eliot declared blasphemy “obsolescent” as a viable literary or artistic mode. There could be no blasphemy worth the name, he reasoned, in a world that had ...
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In his 1934 book After Strange Gods, T. S. Eliot declared blasphemy “obsolescent” as a viable literary or artistic mode. There could be no blasphemy worth the name, he reasoned, in a world that had lost its faith in God: a verdict that has gone curiously uncontested by literary scholarship. For while critics have long described modernism as “heretical” or “iconoclastic,” little attention has been paid to the profound ways in which modernism was shaped by blasphemy in the fully religious sense of that term. Far from obsolete, such blasphemy flourished in the writings of Eliot’s contemporaries and inheritors, recurring not only as theme and trope but as a signally modernist mode of writing. Profaning the very scriptures and sacraments that fueled their literary practice, writers such as Mina Loy, James Joyce, Richard Bruce Nugent, and Djuna Barnes evolved richly embodied aesthetic practices that aspired to the condition of “words made flesh.” In doing so they belied Eliot’s premise of an inherently godless modernity, their poems and fictions revealing the extent to which religion endured as a cultural force in the twentieth century. More, these writers’ profanations spotlight a politics of religion that has seldom engaged the attention of modernist studies. Blasphemy respects no division of church and state, and neither do the writers who wield it to profane all manner of coercive dogmas, including secular ideologies of race, class, nation, empire, gender, and sexuality.Less
In his 1934 book After Strange Gods, T. S. Eliot declared blasphemy “obsolescent” as a viable literary or artistic mode. There could be no blasphemy worth the name, he reasoned, in a world that had lost its faith in God: a verdict that has gone curiously uncontested by literary scholarship. For while critics have long described modernism as “heretical” or “iconoclastic,” little attention has been paid to the profound ways in which modernism was shaped by blasphemy in the fully religious sense of that term. Far from obsolete, such blasphemy flourished in the writings of Eliot’s contemporaries and inheritors, recurring not only as theme and trope but as a signally modernist mode of writing. Profaning the very scriptures and sacraments that fueled their literary practice, writers such as Mina Loy, James Joyce, Richard Bruce Nugent, and Djuna Barnes evolved richly embodied aesthetic practices that aspired to the condition of “words made flesh.” In doing so they belied Eliot’s premise of an inherently godless modernity, their poems and fictions revealing the extent to which religion endured as a cultural force in the twentieth century. More, these writers’ profanations spotlight a politics of religion that has seldom engaged the attention of modernist studies. Blasphemy respects no division of church and state, and neither do the writers who wield it to profane all manner of coercive dogmas, including secular ideologies of race, class, nation, empire, gender, and sexuality.
Alena Alexandrova (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780823274475
- eISBN:
- 9780823274529
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823274475.003.0005
- Subject:
- Art, Art Theory and Criticism
This chapter discusses the different ways contemporary artists re-use religious motifs and the effects of such citations. In the majority of cases their artworks function as a context to turn that ...
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This chapter discusses the different ways contemporary artists re-use religious motifs and the effects of such citations. In the majority of cases their artworks function as a context to turn that religion into a topic, and an object of discussion. The critical potential of contemporary artworks that deal with religious themes lies somewhere apart from art’s rejection or mocking of religion, as blasphemy retains its proximity to the specifically religious power of images. When contemporary artists reuse religious motifs they become counter-motifs. The interest in religion, in its various traditions and guises, indicates a desire for self-understanding by re-staging the past. The multifaceted relationship between contemporary art and religion is examined through a detailed discussion of twelve exhibitions organised between 1999 and 2010, which approach religion and religious art from a variety of perspectives. Many of the curators claim that they are emphatically not religious, nor trying to send a religious message. Including religion in the infrastructure of display associated with contemporary art creates a different visibility in the public space and asks questions concerning such visual practices as iconoclasm; the relationship between commercialism, mass media and religion, and the afterlife of religious art, among many others.Less
This chapter discusses the different ways contemporary artists re-use religious motifs and the effects of such citations. In the majority of cases their artworks function as a context to turn that religion into a topic, and an object of discussion. The critical potential of contemporary artworks that deal with religious themes lies somewhere apart from art’s rejection or mocking of religion, as blasphemy retains its proximity to the specifically religious power of images. When contemporary artists reuse religious motifs they become counter-motifs. The interest in religion, in its various traditions and guises, indicates a desire for self-understanding by re-staging the past. The multifaceted relationship between contemporary art and religion is examined through a detailed discussion of twelve exhibitions organised between 1999 and 2010, which approach religion and religious art from a variety of perspectives. Many of the curators claim that they are emphatically not religious, nor trying to send a religious message. Including religion in the infrastructure of display associated with contemporary art creates a different visibility in the public space and asks questions concerning such visual practices as iconoclasm; the relationship between commercialism, mass media and religion, and the afterlife of religious art, among many others.
Christopher Partridge
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199751396
- eISBN:
- 9780199346462
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199751396.003.0006
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
Historically, music as an affective technology and as a source of social cohesion has played a significant role in religious ritual. However, its power to manipulate emotion makes it not only ...
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Historically, music as an affective technology and as a source of social cohesion has played a significant role in religious ritual. However, its power to manipulate emotion makes it not only peculiarly conducive to the cultivation of a sense of the otherworldly in religious contexts, but also peculiarly suspect as a force of profanation. Drawing on theological typologies of Christianity’s relationship to culture, this chapter examines a number of issues relating to popular music’s relationship with religion, including the opposition of religion to popular music and the deification of celebrity. The aim, as in the previous chapters, is to examine the significance of constructions of the sacred and the profane.Less
Historically, music as an affective technology and as a source of social cohesion has played a significant role in religious ritual. However, its power to manipulate emotion makes it not only peculiarly conducive to the cultivation of a sense of the otherworldly in religious contexts, but also peculiarly suspect as a force of profanation. Drawing on theological typologies of Christianity’s relationship to culture, this chapter examines a number of issues relating to popular music’s relationship with religion, including the opposition of religion to popular music and the deification of celebrity. The aim, as in the previous chapters, is to examine the significance of constructions of the sacred and the profane.
Justin Clemens
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781474402637
- eISBN:
- 9781474422390
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474402637.003.0006
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Political Philosophy
This chapter focuses the relationship between Agamben’s methodology and that of Michel Foucault, which was one of the most hotly contested issues in the initial reception of the Homo Sacer project. ...
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This chapter focuses the relationship between Agamben’s methodology and that of Michel Foucault, which was one of the most hotly contested issues in the initial reception of the Homo Sacer project. It argues that Agamben’s work involves a critical engagement with Foucault that, through a confrontation with its limits, displaces its method and problems. Clemens argues that this method involves a practice of profanation: it is not a substitute for ‘real action’, but a way of enacting, in the reading of texts, the in distinction between theory and praxis that is central to Agamben’s vision of the ‘coming politics’.Less
This chapter focuses the relationship between Agamben’s methodology and that of Michel Foucault, which was one of the most hotly contested issues in the initial reception of the Homo Sacer project. It argues that Agamben’s work involves a critical engagement with Foucault that, through a confrontation with its limits, displaces its method and problems. Clemens argues that this method involves a practice of profanation: it is not a substitute for ‘real action’, but a way of enacting, in the reading of texts, the in distinction between theory and praxis that is central to Agamben’s vision of the ‘coming politics’.
Lucia Ruprecht
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- July 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780190659370
- eISBN:
- 9780190659417
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190659370.003.0008
- Subject:
- Music, Dance
This chapter focuses on the ways in which Niddy Impekoven’s Bach dances and Franz Kafka’s “Conversation with the Supplicant” reenact the embodied tradition of liturgy. It singles out postures of ...
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This chapter focuses on the ways in which Niddy Impekoven’s Bach dances and Franz Kafka’s “Conversation with the Supplicant” reenact the embodied tradition of liturgy. It singles out postures of inclination as poses of quiet ecstasy and devout submission to the divine, working closely with Dora Kallmus’s photographs of Impekoven. Impekoven’s posture is read alongside Benjamin’s observations on inclination (Neigung) in the Bible illustrations of medieval miniature painting, which he rediscovers in expressionist art, and which he links to historical instances of collective guilt. It is also read alongside an extravagant reenactment of prostration in Kafka, which constitutes an instance of Agambian profanation. Kafka shows how modified reenactments of a given gestural vocabulary undermine this vocabulary’s conditions of meaning; Impekoven in turn demonstrates how such conditions of meaning can be enhanced.Less
This chapter focuses on the ways in which Niddy Impekoven’s Bach dances and Franz Kafka’s “Conversation with the Supplicant” reenact the embodied tradition of liturgy. It singles out postures of inclination as poses of quiet ecstasy and devout submission to the divine, working closely with Dora Kallmus’s photographs of Impekoven. Impekoven’s posture is read alongside Benjamin’s observations on inclination (Neigung) in the Bible illustrations of medieval miniature painting, which he rediscovers in expressionist art, and which he links to historical instances of collective guilt. It is also read alongside an extravagant reenactment of prostration in Kafka, which constitutes an instance of Agambian profanation. Kafka shows how modified reenactments of a given gestural vocabulary undermine this vocabulary’s conditions of meaning; Impekoven in turn demonstrates how such conditions of meaning can be enhanced.
