Read more
Zusatztext "Michael Lackey's provocative claims—that modernity is not essentially secular but sustains religious belief at the level of the subconscious, that modernism should be understood in 'theological terms' not as anti-religious, and that secularization theories have distorted our understanding of 20th-century political history—will garner wide attention and arouse vigorous debate among a range of scholars, from modernist literary scholars to historians to theologians. Lackey insists that the 20th-century novel be understood as a theoretical instrument, producing insights into the origins of Hitler's National Socialism that philosophers and historians have missed. Written in an accessible prose style with helpful summaries of the philosophies he examines, The Modernist God State offers compelling, if sometimes controversial, insights into the modernist novel and the origin of the nation state that should be read by anyone interested in the growing field of theology and literature." -- Pamela L. CaughieProfessor of English, Loyola University Chicago, USA, and Past President of the Modernist Studies Association. Informationen zum Autor Michael Lackey is Distinguished McKnight University Professor of English at the University of Minnesota, USA. He is the author of African American Atheists and Political Liberation: A Study of the Socio-Cultural Dynamics of Faith (University Press of Florida), which won the Choice Award for Outstanding Academic Title in 2007. He has published articles in numerous journals, including Callaloo, African American Review, Philosophy and Literature, Journal of the History of Ideas , and Modern Fiction Studies. Klappentext Uses twentieth-century fiction to demonstrate that the modern state! mainly Nazi Germany! was founded primarily on a Christian supersessionist theology rather than a secular ideology. "Michael Lackey has given us a passionate, penetrating study of how the novelist (more than the philosopher or the social scientist) has illuminated the monstrous pairing of the Third Reich with Christianity." -James L. W. West III, Sparks Professor of English, Pennsylvania State University, USA, and author of William Styron: A Life (1998). Vorwort Uses twentieth-century fiction to demonstrate that the modern state was founded primarily on a Christian supersessionist theology rather than a secular ideology. Zusammenfassung The Modernist God State seeks to overturn the traditional secularization approach to intellectual and political history and to replace it with a fuller understanding of the religious basis of modernist political movements. Lackey demonstrates that Christianity, instead of fading after the Enlightenment, actually increased its power by becoming embedded within the concept of what was considered the legitimate nation state, thus determining the political agendas of prominent political leaders from King Leopold II to Hitler. Lackey first argues that novelists can represent intellectual and political history in a way that no other intellectual can. Specifically, they can picture a subconscious ideology, which often conflicts with consciously held systems of belief, short-circuiting straight into political action, an idea articulated by E.M. Forster. Second, in contrast to many literary scholars who discuss Hitler and the Nazis without studying and quoting their texts, Lackey draws his conclusions from close readings of their writings. In doing so, he shows that one cannot understand the Nazis without taking into account the specific version of Christianity underwriting their political agenda. Inhaltsverzeichnis Acknowledgments Debunking the Secularization Hypothesis Chapter One: Short-circuiting Aesthetics: A Novel Theory about the Origins of Hitler and the NazisChapter Two: The Secularization Hypothesis: An Exercise in Political Blindness The ...
