Manav Ratti, The Postsecular Imagination

One of

"three important monographs

signaling a 'post-secular' turn in postcolonial theory and criticism"

Graham Huggan

Modern Fiction Studies

(vol 56, no. 4)

Manav Ratti

Assistant Professor of English

Salisbury University, Maryland, USA

D.Phil.: Oxford University

Advisor: Rajeswari Sunder Rajan

M.St.: Oxford University

Advisor: Robert J. C. Young

M.Phil.: Cambridge University

Advisor: Simon Jarvis

B.A.: University of Toronto

Senior thesis advisor:

Linda Hutcheon

E-mail:

mxratti (at) salisbury (dot) edu

The Postsecular Imagination:

Postcolonialism, Religion, and Literature

New York and London: Routledge, 2013

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Press Release

The Postsecular Imagination presents a rich, interdisciplinary study of postsecularism as an affirmational political possibility emerging through the potentials and limits of both secular and religious thought. While secularism and religion can foster inspiration and creativity, they also can be linked with violence, civil war, partition, majoritarianism, and communalism, especially within the framework of the nation-state.

Through close readings of novels that engage with animism, Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, and Sikhism, Manav Ratti examines how questions of ethics and the need for faith, awe, wonder, and enchantment can find expression and significance in the wake of such crises.

While focusing on Michael Ondaatje and Salman Rushdie, Ratti addresses the work of several other writers as well, including Shauna Singh Baldwin, Mahasweta Devi, Amitav Ghosh, and Allan Sealy. Ratti shows the extent of courage and risk involved in the radical imagination of these postsecular works, examining how writers experiment with and gesture toward the compelling paradoxes of a non-secular secularism and a non-religious religion.

Drawing on South Asian Anglophone literatures and postcolonial theory, and situating itself within the most provocative contemporary debates in secularism and religion, The Postsecular Imagination will be important for readers interested in the relations among culture, literature, theory, and politics.

Preface

The Literary and The Postsecular

Introduction

Situating Postsecularism

Chapter 1

Postsecularism and Nation:

Michael Ondaatje's The English Patient

Chapter 2

Minority's Christianity:

Allan Sealy's The Everest Hotel

Chapter 3

Postsecularism and Violence:
Michael Ondaatje's Anil's Ghost

Download Excerpt

Manav Ratti, "Michael Ondaatje's Anil's Ghost and the Aestheticization of Human Rights" (ARIEL, 35.1-2)

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

Above photo: Maharaja Lena (Cave of the Geat King), Dambulla, Sri Lanka. Photo by Manav Ratti

The Postsecular Imagination presents a rich, interdisciplinary study of postsecularism as an affirmational political possibility emerging through the potentials and limits of both secular and religious thought. While secularism and religion can foster inspiration and creativity, they also can be linked with violence, civil war, partition, majoritarianism, and communalism, especially within the framework of the nation-state.

Through close readings of novels that engage with animism, Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, and Sikhism, Manav Ratti examines how questions of ethics and the need for faith, awe, wonder, and enchantment can find expression and significance in the wake of such crises.

While focusing on Michael Ondaatje and Salman Rushdie, Ratti addresses the work of several other writers as well, including Shauna Singh Baldwin, Mahasweta Devi, Amitav Ghosh, and Allan Sealy. Ratti shows the extent of courage and risk involved in the radical imagination of these postsecular works, examining how writers experiment with and gesture toward the compelling paradoxes of a non-secular secularism and a non-religious religion.

Drawing on South Asian Anglophone literatures and postcolonial theory, and situating itself within the most provocative contemporary debates in secularism and religion, The Postsecular Imagination will be important for readers interested in the relations among culture, literature, theory, and politics.