Abstract:
In the seminar, I will introduce, develop, and gloss the argument that one of the most striking aspects of the contemporary Anglophone novel is its "postsecular" tendency that attempts to negotiate between irreligious and secular thinking on the one hand and a dogmatic, religious worldview on the other. I will suggest that the said tendency is a result of at least two factors working together: first, the cultural context that we inhabit and sometimes struggle against and, two, the way the contemporary novel inherits and adapts the (late modernist) configuration of "unknowing" in the narratives of W.G. Sebald. To illustrate the argument and to trace the lineaments of what I term the postsecular in the contemporary Anglophone novel, I will refer to some recent incidents and events from India and the Global South that have generated considerable public debate around questions of religion and secularism. Parallely, I will speak about certain situations from Zia Haider Rahman's 2014 novel In the Light of What We Know where the protagonist comes to affirm their "trust", and not "belief", in someone or something that seems to be monumental in comparison to the rational and bodily capacities of the human subject.
Bio:
Chinmaya Lal Thakur is an Assistant Professor of English at Shiv Nadar University. His research interests include postcolonial literatures and cultures, late modernisms, Deconstruction, and the contemporary novel. He has published several journal articles, book chapters, and critical reviews related to these topics. Currently, he is revising his doctoral thesis on the novels of David Malouf for publication as a monograph. Additionally, he is reading and writing about the way the contemporary novel inherits and adapts the aesthetics, ethics, and politics of W. G. Sebald's prose works.