Dissident Secularism: Queer Exegesis, Transatlantic Modernism, and the Discipline of Modernity By Raji Singh Soni A thesis submitted to the Graduate Program in English Language and Literature in conformity with the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Queen’s University Kingston, Ontario, Canada Final submission February, 2014 Copyright © Raji Singh Soni, 2014 ii Abstract This dissertation examines the interplay of queer sexuality, theology, and transatlantic modernism in the oeuvres and critical receptions of T.S. Eliot (1888-1965), Hart Crane (1899- 1932), and W.H. Auden (1907-1973). As an interdisciplinary study in literary criticism and of each author’s reception history, this thesis reads the poetry, critical prose, and correspondence of Eliot, Crane, and Auden with focused reference to queer theory and continental philosophies of religion extending from Immanuel Kant’s Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone and Søren Kierkegaard’s pseudonymous authorship to Jacques Derrida’s deconstruction of aesthetics, ethics, and politics in the post-Kantian legacy. Gauging the “post-secular turn” in cultural criticism, the dissertation develops a critique of “epistemic secularism,” which constitutes a normative framework for scholarship in many branches of the humanities. To examine “the secular limits of discipline” at the junction of queer theory and modernist studies, it examines how literary critics and queer theorists define modernity and conceptualize subjectivity at the secular limits (or limitations) of their fields. Imbrications of theology and queerness in the works of Eliot, Crane, and Auden occasion this study’s response to epistemic secularism and prompt its recalibration of secularism in the ethical terms of “mere reason,” rather than as an episteme rife with antireligious politics. Research undertaken for this thesis is guided by two foundational questions: 1) Do extant models for the study of queer sexualities presuppose secularism or enforce secularization as a benchmark for the “achievement of modernity”? 2) Are religious foundations conceivable for queer subjects to whom secularism remains a key factor in the emancipatory history of sexual cultures? The dissertation argues that, for better and for worse, secularism has become a blueprint in the metropolitan West for thinking sexual modernity as progressive and achievable. iii Notwithstanding such provisos, this study finds that the “proper” subject in queer-modernist studies is in essence neither nonreligious nor antireligious. Rather, reading with and against the grain of secularism’s episteme, it uncovers in the corpuses of Eliot, Crane, and Auden a radical conception of theology as a positively queer endeavour in an era of “liberated” secularist polities. iv Acknowledgements Thou shalt not do as the dean pleases, Thou shalt not write thy doctor’s thesis On education, Thou shalt not worship projects nor Shalt thou or thine bow down before Administration. (182) —Auden, “Under Which Lyre,” Selected Poems De gustibus non est disputandum. Des goûts et des couleurs, on ne discute pas. In idiomatic English, these phrases shade roughly into the well-worn adage: “politics and religion are subjects not to be discussed at the dinner table.” This epigram is perhaps all the more well advised when the politics or the religion (or tastes and colours) in question are rather queer. In any event, I remain grateful to the many figures—scholarly, friendly, and familial—whose presence at this dissertation’s dinner table enabled me to work through its arguments and toward its synthesis. For their critical support of the letter and the spirit of this project, I thank Gabrielle McIntire, my thesis supervisor, for her stupendous commitment to my doctoral candidacy and exemplary mentorship; and Asha Varadharajan, my dissertation’s second reader, for sharing with me over the years her “substantially eclectic” knowledge across die Grenzen of theory and criticism. As mentors, both scholars have encouraged me to rethink and to rewrite through the theoretical knots, ambiguities, and double binds that interdisciplinary research affords students and teachers of the humanities. An inquisitive learner could not ask for more. I also wish to express my utmost thanks and gratitude to the other members of my thesis examination committee: Mark Knight (external examiner, Department of English, University of Toronto), Christine Overall (internal-external examiner, Queen’s Department of Philosophy), and Chris Bongie (Head’s Delegate, Queen’s Department of English) engaged my arguments with constructive, challenging, intensive, and above all generous rigour, for which I am deeply v grateful. Moreover, because of their critical insights into monograph markets in the humanities and into editorial processes for manuscripts, I feel enlivened as to the potential for recalibrating, revising, and (ascetically) reshaping my thesis as a scholarly book. My gratitude is thus ongoing. Other members of Queen’s Department of English commented on early drafts of chapters or on modular approaches to literary theory and continental philosophy that eventually informed the dissertation. On this score, I am particularly grateful to Margaret Pappano, Patricia Rae, Sylvia Söderlind, and Tracy Ware (in no small part for his many clippings of Auden book reviews in TLS while I was at work in the office next door). Beyond Watson Hall, Pamela Dickey-Young and William Morrow at Queen’s School of Religion guided me at the coursework stage through LGBTQ theology and biblical religion, respectively. I thank both scholars for opening their classrooms to a graduate student of literature who wished (in all good faith) to suspend teleologically some of his training. Beyond Queen’s, for their critiques of early incarnations of the introduction and second chapter, I thank faculty and student participants from the 2009 Religion in the Public Sphere Graduate Fellows Workshop (“Religion, Education, and Civic Identities: Who Is a Global Citizen?”), hosted by the Centre for the Study of Religion at the University of Toronto. Pamela Klassen and Ruth Marshall of the Centre posed key interdisciplinary questions with which I continue to grapple. I am especially grateful to Victor Li of the Department of English at the University of Toronto, my faculty respondent at the RPS Workshop, for his generous and thorough engagement with ideas that reinforce this study as a whole. The research and writing of this thesis was sustained by two consecutive Ontario Graduate Scholarships (OGS) and by a two-year Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Doctoral Fellowship. I am happy to acknowledge the adjudicatory and vi material support of these granting institutions. Early foundational support of the adjudicatory kind was also provided at the University of Toronto by professors whose critical inspiration led me to pursue graduate studies in English: Melba Cuddy-Keane, Sam Solecki, and Paul Stevens. For generously offloading classic works of Auden scholarship from his library to mine and for conversations about poetry over lunch when schedules permit, Sam merits special thanks. To those preying birds of a feather from Queen’s, with whom I flock and to whom I gravitate in friendship, thank you for your transformative solidarity, mordant wit, and flights of satire: Sayyida Jaffer, Dana Olwan, Breanne Oryschak, Scott Rutherford, and Carla Taunton. My Torontonian friendships have been nonetheless sustaining, endearing, and downright fun during years of research and writing: Erin Beckett, Kerry Burbidge, Rachel Farrell, Allison V. Smith, Sarah Suginomori, and Sam Wells. Last but not least among friends: I thank Andrea Stone for our mirth, our book hunts, and our “wet menu” happy hours on Church Street in midsummer. Above all, to my family I owe a singular debt of gratitude. Without the profound love, support, encouragement, patience, and Singh spirit of my father, Ajit, and my mother, Ann Marie, I would not have been able to initiate—let alone complete—this doctoral degree. My parents inspired in me a leonine will to pursue my goals and to argue ‘my way’ toward the completion of this thesis. Thank you for all you have given me. My brother, Justin, and sister-in- law, Elizabeth, have been a loving presence during my doctoral candidacy, and can well appreciate the dinner-table wisdom of Des goûts et des couleurs, on ne discute pas. I love you. To my mother-in-law, Greta, and my father-in-law, Mark: thank you for your heartfelt generosity and for understanding why I had to load my suitcase with arcane scholarly books before visiting you in Vlaanderen. For Ralph Callebert, my partner in life and in the life of the mind (there is a difference!), I have precious few words with which to convey my pure gratitude vii for everything you have done to spirit us across the peaks and valleys of our respective degrees. In many ways, you have saved me: our laughter, our solemnities, our ironies, and our ardent companionship—no matter where in the world each of us may be. For all of this, and for so much more, I can only thankfully pray. viii Table of Contents Abstract ii Acknowledgements iv Table of Contents viii List of Figures x Chapter 1: Critical Introduction: Disciplinary Grids under the Aegis of Secularism 1 Gridding Discipline: The Turn to Ethics and the Return of Religion 1 Dissident Secularism, Suspicious Hermeneutics, and the Limits of Reparative Reading 9 Fathoming Fields: Reaching Discipline’s Secular Limits 20 Secularism Elsewhere,