(Post)secular: Imagining faith in contemporary cultures
International, interdisciplinary conference
University of Warwick and Coventry Cathedral
8-10 June 2017
- Overview
The conference (Post)secular: Imagining faith in contemporary cultures took place from 8-10 June 2017 at Scarman House, University of Warwick. It included the public engagement event Afternoon of the Arts on 9 June at Coventry Cathedral. The conference was organised and hosted by Dr. James Hodkinson and Dr. Silke Horstkotte, School of Modern Languages and Cultures, University of Warwick. It attracted 24 speakers from the UK, Ireland, Germany, France, the US, Turkey and Egypt, as well as 3 keynote speakers and 3 artists who showcased their work as part of the conference. Disciplines represented at the conference included theology, philosophy, religious studies, musicology, art history, film studies, and the modern languages.
The conference received funding from the Humanities Research Centre, School of Modern Languages and Cultures, and from the EU’s Horizon 2020 programme of science and innovation.
- Description
Modern Western societies tend to think of themselves as secular in their establishment, and to view religion as a matter for the private sphere. At the same time, matters of faith continue to pervade our daily lives and to shape our world-view. The term "post-secular" is often used to indicate a renewed interest in religion as a social, political and cultural force, acknowledging the need for political and social engagement with religious as well as non-faith based groups and voices. Yet in many ways, the term remains unclear, and its usage inconsistent. "Post-secular" can refer to the return of religion not on a social scale, but as a discursive aspect of modernity; or it can indicate a deconstructive critique of the secular, as well as of its opposite, religion, or an ambivalent discourse about secularity and religion in literature and the arts. But have we ever fully been secular? Is post-secularism a coherent intellectual-cultural movement, or yet another fleeting epochal descriptor? And has religion really “returned”, or have the media simply become more attuned to religion because of its prevalence as an identity marker?
The conference event (Post)secular engaged these question through a series of encounters between scholarly discussion and artistic intervention. Combining Keynote lectures by John Milbank, Heather Walton, and Uwe Steinmetz with conference panels on postsecular fiction, visual practices, sites and spaces, and sonic interventions, a film screening and discussion with Somali-born Irish director Hanan Dirya, a pop-up exhibition and artist's talk in Coventry Cathedral with British Library artist-in-residence Michael Takeo Magruder, and a Jazz Evening Prayer with Uwe Steinmetz, (Post)secular took up Charles Taylor’s argument that secularity entails not only the secularisation of public spaces and the decline of belief and practice, but also a new set of conditions under which both belief and unbelief occur. By bracketing the (post) in the conference title, we moved beyond the unproductive periodisation paradigm, opening up to the breadth and variety of cultural forms through which ideas about faith are articulated (and indeed shaped) in the present.
The scope of topics and disciplines represented at the conference was broad, and the quality of papers generally very high. Besides three invited keynote lectures and three art performances, the conference included 24 papers which were selected from submissions to a call for papers which we posted in October 2016. Papers were arranged according to a number of issues connected to the postsecular moment, and arranged in panels of 2-4 speakers so as to maximise discussion time. The first day’s panels Thinking the (post)secular, The substance of the secular, and Contemporary cultures concentrated on theoretical questions of conceptualisation and periodisation which were also introduced in John Milbank’s keynote lecture The End of Religious Freedom and the Return of Religious Influence. Day 2 was devoted to aesthetic responses to the postsecular in literary fiction, the arts, and in performance. Day 3 concentrated on literary case studies of postsecular fiction, with a particular focus on Michel Houellebecq’s scandal novel Soumission.
3. Outcomes
As an explanatory frame for the perceived renewal of religious interest in an overwhelmingly secular setting, the postsecular is an extremely timely issue of immediate contemporary relevance, as is witnessed by the great number of publications, research clusters, workshops, seminars and conferences that have recently been devoted to it. However, the postsecular is most often discussed in a sociological or political disciplinary framework. A cultural studies outlook from a comparative interart perspective such as the one represented at this conference is still a desideratum.
To fill this gap, the two organisers are currently planning a guest-edited special journal issue in which selected papers from the conference will be published. Given the large number of presentations at the conference and their high overall quality, we envisage a double issue, but this remains to be discussed with journal editors. At present, we are in discussion with the editors of Poetics Today; as an alternative option, we are also considering Religion and Literature. The intense and lively discussions at the conference, both between academics and with artists in residence, as well as with members of the public who attended the Afternoon of the Arts at Coventry Cathedral, attest to the high level of interest that such a publication would garner.
Connections made with academics and artists at the conference have also led to new research and public outreach collaborations. James Hodkinson will continue working with visual artist Michael Takeo Magruder in the context of Dr. Hodkinson’s impact project Transnationalizing Faith, and will strengthen the ties we made with Coventry Cathedral. Silke Horstkotte is planning a public engagement event with musician Uwe Steinmetz.
In short, the conference filled a gap in the current research landscape, it is leading to continuing academic and public outreach work thanks to the connections with artists we were able to make, and it is going to lead to a publication output which will make the conference’s results available to a larger audience. It is therefore with gratitude that we acknowledge the funding from the EU’s Horizon 2020 programme, from the Humanities Research Centre, and from the School of Modern Languages and Cultures which made this conference possible.
4. Programme
Thursday 8 June
10:00-10:30IntroductionJames Hodkinson and
10:30-12:00Panel AThinking the (post)secular (Chair: Linda Shortt)
Christiane Alpers (KU Eichstätt-Ingolstadt): Post-secular according to whom?
Pluralising contemporary contextualisations from the perspective of Christian theology
Kevin Kennedy (Paris III): Divine Inexistence and the Eternal Return: Meillassoux, Nietzsche and the Problem of Eschatology
Marie Chabbert (Oxford): The Unexpected Advent of a Religious Utopia in Contemporary France: Thinking (Post)Secularism, Laïcité and French Youth Islamist Radicalisation
12:00-13:00 Lunch
13:00-14:00Keynote 1John Milbank (University of Nottingham):
The End of Religious Freedom and the Return of Religious Influence
(Chair: Silke Horstkotte)
14:00-14:30Coffee break
14:30-16:00Panel BThe substance of the secular (Chair: James Hodkinson)
Alex Holznienkemper (Baylor University): Articulating the Afactual
Kailum Ijaz (Independent scholar / Ohio State University): Articulation, Authenticity, and the Development of Tradition in Thomas Merton: A Taylorian Account of Merton's Engagement with Secularism
Matthew Wickman (Brigham Young University): Why the Humanities Need a Theory (or Theories) of Spiritual Experience
16:00-16:30Coffee break
16:30-17:30Panel CContemporary cultures (Chair: Douglas Morrey)
Clive Marsh (Leicester): Refreshing cultural theology in (post)secular times: The expanding significance of popular culture
Nadine Söll (Staatliche Museen zu Berlin): Fandom and fanaticism as (pseudo-)religious experiences in the arts
18:30-20:00 Dinner
20:00-21:00Film screening and discussion: Hanan Dirya, Diving Within (2015)
(Chair: James Hodkinson)
Friday 9 June
9:00-10:30Panel D(Post)secular fictions (Chair: James Hodkinson)
Dan Muhlestein (Brigham Young University) and Makayla Steiner (University of Iowa): From Elimination to a Broken Hallelujah: Rethinking Stevens’ Strategies for Establishing a Modernist Secular Imagination in light of Fredric Jameson’s Theory of Metacommentary
Britta Kölle (Oldenburg): Postsecular Thought in Contemporary Fiction: Synchronized Belief/Disbelief in Myla Goldberg’s Bee Season
Erin Tremblay Ponnou-Delaffon (Illinois State University): Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt’s postsecular apologetics
10:30-11:00Coffee break
11:00-12:00Panel ESites and spaces (Chair: Silke Horstkotte)
Sebastian Zeidler (Yale): Secularity at Vence
Lilia Sokolova (Cologne): Towards a Post-Secular Symbol: Transformation of the Visual Language in German Churches, 1987-2017
12:00-13:00 Lunch
13:00-14:30 Panel FTransgressions (Chair: Douglas Morrey)
Guy Austin (Newcastle): Voices of Islam: the sonic representation of the Muslim faith in contemporary Algerian film Eser Selen (Kadir Has University, Istanbul): The Work of Sacrifice: Gender Performativity, Modernity and Islam in Contemporary Performance in Turkey
Darja Filippova (Princeton): Translating Sacrilege: Discrepancies between secular and orthodox ways of seeing religious offence in the work of Russian political performance art
14:30-15:00Coffee break
— transfer to Coventry Cathedral —
16:00-17:00Artist Talk
‘Making a Virtual Pilgrimage’: Carolyn Rosen in conversation with Michael Takeo Magruder, Artist in Residence at the British Library
17:15-18:00Jazz Evensong at Coventry Cathedral with Uwe Steinmetz
— return to Scarman —
18:30-20:00 Dinner
20:00-21:00Keynote 2 Uwe Steinmetz (Berlin / Liturgiewissenschaftliches Institut der VELKD, Leipzig): Contemporary Jazz in Sacred Spaces
(Chair: Silke Horstkotte)
Saturday 10 June
9:00-10:00Keynote 4Heather Walton (University of Glasgow):
Uncertain practice: Imagining faith through writing
(Chair: Silke Horstkotte)
10:00-10:30 Coffee break
10:30-12:00Panel GTextual-historical intersections (Chair: Maria Roca Lizarazu)
Rim Feriani (University of Westminster): Rethinking Faith in The Satanic Verses
Mahmoud Abdel-Hamid Mahmoud Ahmed (Modern Sciences and Arts University, Cairo): The immanent prophet: Muslim cultural memory and Muhammad’s life narratives. Secular versus sacred poetics
Joseph Twist (NUI Galway / University of Limerick): Islam and the Enlightenment Today: Post-Secularism and Post-Atheism in Contemporary German Literature
12:00-13:00 Lunch
13:00-15:00Panel HPost-secularism in contemporary France: Michel Houellebecq’s Soumission (Chair: Silke Horstkotte)
David Lees (University of Warwick): Writing (in) the crisis: the political and social contexts of Houellebecq’s Soumission
Louis Betty (U of Wisconsin Whitewater): F*%& Autonomy: Houellebecq, Submission, and the disappointment of history
Douglas Morrey (University of Warwick): The banality of monstrosity: On Houellebecq’s Soumission
Fraser McQueen (Stirling): (Post)secularism and islamophobia: Reading Michel Houellebecq through Emmanuel Todd
Silke Horstkotte
School of Modern Languages and Cultures