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List of contents
An Introductory Preface: Phenomenology and the Aesthetics of Political theology
Chapter 1: The Phenomenology of Belief: Media Technologies and Communities of Sense
Chapter 2: The Politics of Zealotry: Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Saint Paul
Chapter 3: Ingmar Bergman: Theatricality versus Theology
Chapter 4: Philip Dick’s Media-focused Religious Practices
Chapter 5: William James and Michel Foucault: The Will to Believe/the Will to truth.
Conclusion
About the author
Michael J. Shapiro is a professor of Political Science at the University of Hawai'i, Manoa, USA. His books include The Political Sublime (2018), and Punctuations: How the Arts Think the Political (2019).
Summary
In The Phenomenology of Religious Belief, the renowned philosopher Michael J. Shapiro investigates how art – and in particular literature and film – can impact upon both traditional interpretations and critical studies of religious beliefs and experiences.
In doing so, he examines the work of prolific and award-winning writers such as Toni Morrison, Philip K. Dick and Robert Coover. By placing their work in conjunction with critical analyses of media by the likes of Ingmar Bergman and Pier Paolo Pasolini and combining it with the work of groundbreaking thinkers such as George Canguilhem, Giorgio Agamben and Slavoj Žižek, Shapiro takes a truly interdisciplinary approach to the question of how life should be lived. His assessment of phenomenological subjectivity also leads him to question the nature of political theology and extend the criticism of Pauline theology.
Foreword
Michael J. Shapiro investigates how certain forms of media – especially literature and film – can influence traditional and critical studies of religious beliefs and experiences.
