The Postsecular Imagination traces how postsecularism emerges from the strengths and limits of religion and secularism. It shows how faith, wonder, enchantment, and ethical life can take form in secular orders designed to avert religiously fueled violence, civil war, partition, and majoritarianism.
Through literary, postcolonial, diasporic, and South Asian lenses, Ratti reads Shauna Singh Baldwin, Mahasweta Devi, Amitav Ghosh, Michael Ondaatje, Salman Rushdie, and Allan Sealy. This study reveals the risk, courage, and experimentation animating a radical postsecular imagination.
Preface:
The Literary and The Postsecular [PDF of Preface]
Introduction:
Situating Postsecularism
Chapter 1:
Postsecularism and Nation: Michael Ondaatje's The English Patient
Chapter 2:
Minority's Christianity: Alan Sealy's The Everest Hotel
Chapter 3:
Postsecularism and Violence: Michael Ondaatje's Anil's Ghost
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