Undergraduate Honors Theses
Thesis Defended
Spring 2018
Document Type
Thesis
Type of Thesis
Departmental Honors
Department
English
First Advisor
Lori Emerson
Abstract
Recent trends in literary discourse have identified the “postsecular” in fiction, reimaginations of spiritual traditions in particularly postmodern ways. Much analysis of the postsecular posits the postsecular in fiction as an affirmation of postsecular spirituality, and celebrates its ability to describe a world “reenchanted” in postmodernity. I argue that an analysis of the postsecular which has reenchantment as its conclusion terminates too quickly, and fails to account for the ideological locus of the postsecular utopic gesture. Postsecularism, on this account, points to alternative narratives that run counter to the dominant and oppressive historical narratives of modernity. Rather than posit a return to the religious, preterite narratives seek instead to apophatically illuminate terroristic narratives of progress to allow for their deconstruction. I use Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow as a quintessential example of this account of the postsecular novel. In my conclusion, I draw upon the work of Walter Benjamin, Fredric Jameson, and Simone Weil to discuss how this reimagined postsecular narrative invokes questions regarding narrative interpretation itself, and the way literary discourse must operate under postmodernity.
Recommended Citation
Borovsky, Damian, "Narrating Preterition: Postsecularism, Analysis, and Gravity's Rainbow" (2018). Undergraduate Honors Theses. 1582.
https://scholar.colorado.edu/honr_theses/1582
Included in
Continental Philosophy Commons, Ethics in Religion Commons, Literature in English, North America Commons, Modern Literature Commons, New Religious Movements Commons, Reading and Language Commons, Religious Thought, Theology and Philosophy of Religion Commons