Description
Book SynopsisTrade Review“In
Devotion, the authors probe the limits of knowledge and knowability in a way that does not devolve into a hermeneutics of suspicion. In an age of the collapse of shared narrative and conspiracy theories ripping at coexistence, this approach might appear politically dangerous. But
Devotion instead seeks to turn our inquisitive imaginaries into a way to supplement democracy . . . With its faith in literature, politics, and religion, and the imagination that they require and fuel,
Devotion is a promise well kept.” * Journal of the American Academy of Religion *
"The book argues that the ways in which we negotiate freedom and authority between a text and its reader impact how we interact with the world intellectually and politically. The book’s originality lies in its novel conceptualization of devotion. Furey, Hammerschlag, and Hollywood use the term to characterize a way of reading that is liberating in creating a safe space for intellectual, existential, and political experimentation . . . an act of reading that demands both fidelity and suspicion. Thus, objects of devotion are extended beyond religious texts to other genres of writing, including literature and philosophy." * Political Theology *
“
Devotion marvelously reveals the continuing entanglement of religious and aesthetic modes of reading. Even better, Furey, Hammerschlag, and Hollywood also offer new, cogent reflections on the politics of reading; they flag how very urgent an engagement with such politics is at a moment when liberalism and the liberal notion of the political subject seem exhausted and in crisis.” * Deidre Shauna Lynch, Harvard University *
“Thanks to the kind of rigor and patience that fidelity to complexity and ambiguity demand, this volume offers up a strikingly fruitful inquiry into religion, literature, and the nature of reading.
Devotion is sure to make an influential and important contribution to the recent renewal of the religion and literature subfield as well as to the philosophy of religion.” * Thomas A. Carlson, University of California—Santa Barbara *
Table of ContentsIntroduction
Amy Hollywood, Sarah Hammerschlag, and Constance M. Furey
Vivifying Poetry: Sidney, Luther, and the Psalms
Constance M. Furey
A Poor Substitute for Prayer: Sarah Kofman and the Fetish of Writing
Sarah Hammerschlag
Dystopia, Utopia, Atopia
Amy Hollywood
Afterwards
