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Religious Nostalgia and Literary Engagement with the Postsecular Age

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Religious Nostalgia and Literary Engagement with the Postsecular Age Babel’s Apology: Religious Nostalgia and Literary Engagement with the Postsecular Age A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA BY Grace Elizabeth Miller IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Advisor: Dr. Daniel Philippon December 2018 COPYRIGHT © 2018 GRACE ELIZABETH MILLER ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Table of Contents Introduction: Secular Disenchantment, Postsecular Re-enchantment, and Religious Nostalgia………………………………………………….......1 Chapter 1: Postmodernism and Literary Sanctity in Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead…………......................................................................................23 Chapter 2: Metaphysical Ambivalence and Spiritual Resilience in the Novels of Louise Erdrich………………………………...………….…57 Chapter 3: Walker Percy’s Postsecular Eden…………………………..95 Chapter 4: Religious Nostalgia and Modern Gnosticism in the work of Don DeLillo………………………………………………………...…132 Conclusion: “That which holds the world together”…………………..167 Bibliography………………………………………………………..….174 i 1 Introduction: Secular Disenchantment, Postsecular Re-enchantment, and Religious Nostalgia In Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932), a young man known only as “The Savage” is plucked from a remote native village in the wilderness and brought to a futuristic utopia he calls the “Brave New World.” Huxley describes the place as an extreme actualization of the modern and secular ideals that were becoming popular in his age; the government of the Brave New World provides necessities and entertainment for all its citizens, and the people enjoy unmitigated sexual freedom without the old world problems of pregnancy and disease. The Savage, whose mother escaped from this society and subsequently suffered a mental collapse, educated himself with an old volume of Shakespeare and absorbed all the lofty ideals of the Renaissance as he matured. Exposed to the Brave New World, he becomes disenchanted and voices nostalgia for the old world order, reflecting that danger and even death are preferable to the tepid new world order, regardless of its promises of pleasure and contentment: 2 Exposing what is mortal and unsure to all that fortune, death and danger dare, even for an eggshell. Isn’t there something in that? Quite apart from God—though of course God would be a reason for it. Isn’t there something in living dangerously? . I don’t want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin. (214-215) This is not to say that all religious literary reactions to the secular age are quite so extreme; this is simply to say that they do exist within the scope of the literary trend that has come to be known as “postsecularism.” And, as I will argue, these religious postsecular works share many similar traits with the established canon of postsecular literature and bring many aspects of their value systems into dialogue. The fields of literary studies, theology, and philosophy would do well to examine these trends because they will likely shape the trajectory of religious writing. What is Postsecularism? Several fields have come forward to claim expertise on the emerging notion of “postsecularism” and have variously described it. The term, however, was originally popularized by Jürgen Habermas, who defines postsecularism as a necessary sociopolitical response to the dichotomy of religion and secularism and the ways that proponents of one value system claim ultimate knowledge authority over the other, even using violence to achieve dominance. In 2001, when Habermas was awarded the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade, he argued in his acceptance speech that The neutral state, confronted with competing claims of knowledge and faith, abstains from prejudging political decisions in favor of one side or the other. The 3 pluralized reason of the public of citizens follows a dynamic of secularization only insofar as the latter urges equal distance to be kept, in the outcome, from any strong traditions and comprehensive worldviews. In its willingness to learn, however, democratic common sense remains osmotically open to both sides, science and religion, without relinquishing its independence. (330) Later in his speech, Habermas explained that “Determining these disputed boundaries should therefore be seen as a cooperative task which requires both sides to take on the perspective of the other one” (332). At the same time, he acknowledged that these dialogues may not simply involve two sides, that “democratic common sense” must honor a “many-voiced public.” And, according to Habermas, part of a democratic state honoring and supporting a many-voiced public requires a certain approach to language that allows for dialogue and adaptability. One powerful example of his argument occurs in The Dialectics of Secularization, which documents a dialogue between Habermas and Joseph Ratzinger in 2005, shortly before Ratzinger became Pope Benedict XVI. Despite Ratzinger’s reputation as an unrelenting traditionalist, he responded favorably to Habermas’s notion of postsecular dialogue. When Habermas wrote that, “Indeed, a liberal political culture can expect that the secularized citizens play their part in the endeavors to translate relevant contributions from the religious language into a language that is accessible to the public as a whole” (52), Ratzinger agreed, writing that, “Ultimately, the essential values and norms that are in some way known or sensed by all men will take on a new brightness in such a process, so that that which holds the world together can once again become an effective force in mankind” (79-80). 4 In this dialogue, Habermas and Ratzinger both invoked the concept of mysticism, commonly understood as the experience of God and the supernatural outside the rational or linguistic sphere; Habermas wrote that Without initially having any theological intention, the reason that becomes aware of its limitations thus transcends itself in the direction of something else. This can take the form of the mystical fusion with a consciousness that embraces the universe; it may be the despairing hope that a redeeming message will occur in history; or it may take the shape of a solidarity with those who are oppressed and insulted, which presses forward in order to hasten on the coming of the messianic salvation. (41) Habermas’s description of “the mystical fusion with a consciousness that embraces the universe” is a key trait in postsecularism as it appears in literature. Language and Mysticism Historian Charles Taylor has provided useful insight into the emergence of the postsecular age, though he does not go so far as to use the term “postsecular,” and he explains why mysticism has come to play such a key role in contemporary spiritual culture. In A Secular Age, he provides a chronology of the factors that led to the secularization and simultaneous demystification of the western world. One particularly influential factor he identifies is the post-Reformation suppression of any religious practice that appeared to involve idolatry or magical powers in the practitioner. For example, the Protestant criticism of the selling of indulgences eventually extended to the several other ways religious people attempted to channel religious power through holy 5 objects or rituals, including the sacraments. Taylor explains that “The energy of disenchantment is double. First negative, we must reject everything which smacks of idolatry. We combat the enchanted world, without quarter. At first, this fight is not carried on because enchantment is totally untrue, but rather because it is necessarily ungodly” (80). The “disenchantment” of Christianity allowed for a smoother transition to the secularization of western culture. And yet, Taylor points out the secular age’s ironic valuation of art as a vessel for experiencing mystery: the modern identity and outlook flattens the world, leaves no place for the spiritual, the higher, the mystery. This doesn’t need to send us back to religious belief. There is another direction. The idea is: the mystery, the depth, the profoundly moving, can be, for all we know, entirely anthropological. Atheists, humanists cling on to this, as they go to concerts, operas, read great literature. (356) Later, he explains that art “is what offers a place to go for modern unbelief. As a response to the inadequacies of moralism, the missing goal can be identified with the experience of beauty, in the realm of the aesthetic. But this is now unhooked from the ordered cosmos and/or the divine.” Tracy Fessenden tells a similar story of religious history in America, in which mysticism is associated with idolatry, but she emphasizes the role of literacy and writing in this demystification. In the religious history Fessenden chronicles in Culture and 6 Redemption, reading and writing were seen as a Protestant foil to the idolatrous mysticism of Catholicism; she explains that Associating both literacy and their removal from an ensoiling Europe with freedom from prelatical spiritual tyranny and monarchical political tyranny, American Puritans sought to project themselves decisively beyond the dividing line they drew between Catholic “matter” and Protestant “spirit,” between a moribund, wandering past and a dynamic, providential history, between the dangerous attractions of sensuous ritual and the disembodying powers of the Word. The redemptive power they accorded to literacy and to what the Puritan Richard Baxter called “Self-examination” or “the serious and diligent trying of
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