Edward Said's rhetoric of the secular
By: Mathieu E. Courville.
Publisher: Continuum
Published: 2009
Place of publication: London; New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 246
ISBN-13: 9780826437556
Subjects: Said, Edward W; Secularism
Description: "Edward Said's Rhetoric of the Secular provides an important new reading of Edward W. Said's work, emphasizing not only the distinction but also the fuzzy borders between representations of 'the religious' and 'the secular' found within and throughout his oeuvre and at the core of some of his most customary rhetorical strategies. Mathieu Courville begins by examining Said's own reflections on his life, before moving on to key debates about Said's work within Religious Studies and Middle Eastern Studies, and his relationship to French critical theorists. Through close attention to Said's use of the literal and the figurative when dealing with religious, national and cultural matters, Courville discerns a pattern that illuminates what Said means by secular. Said's work shows that the secular is not the utter opposite of religion in the modern globalized world, but may exist in a productive tension with it."--Bloomsbury Publishing.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Foreword; title: Voyages in : an introduction; title: Being and not being like a book : history, memory, and self-understanding; title: The empire writes back : from Bernard Lewis to Martin Kramer; title: Scholars of religion and the return of the repressed / William D. Hart and Carl Olson; title: An emergent conversation : work on Said's religious question; title: Theoretical travelogues : a slight return from Foucault back to Fanon and Sartre; title: Convergences : the other Arab Muslims and the other America; title: The essay as form of resistance : on the essayistic spirit in Adorno and Said; title: Out of place : a conclusion; title: In lieu of a postface : an appreciation of Edward W. Said / by Vivek H. Dehejia.