Transculturality of Religion in Contemporary Literature

The monographic section of the Fifth Issue of NuBE is dedicated to the investigation of religious themes in contemporary European literature. Our contemporary political, social, and cultural contexts are determined primarily by globalization, as well as by migration and exile – all of which determine complex processes of hybridization and mutual exchange. Concepts such as ‘interculturality’, ‘transnationality’, ‘hyperculturality’ (Byung-Chul Han 2005) and ‘transculturality’ (Epstein 1995, 2004, 2009; Welsch 2012, 2017, 2020, 2021) provide reading tools for increasingly complex and at times problematic phenomena including: 1) the assertion or loss of (cultural) identity; 2) the revision of the assumption of truth in dogmas, doctrines, and faiths; and 3) the possibilities of inter-religious dialogue.

The undeniable presence of religious themes in contemporary literature, in our ostensibly post-secular society, can be regarded as resulting from such problematic complexity. Besides, in an age affected by a growing politicization of religious communities and by the important role given to religion in the construction of both collective and individual identity, processes of secularization are not to be taken as the norm, but rather they represent a declination of social progress (Habermas 2009). Therefore, in a context where socio-political issues and military conflicts also derive from religious matters, Europe cannot be exempted from facing the ensuing challenges. From a scientific perspective, the reductive contrast between secularization and religion must be replaced with a more complex analysis of multiple secularizations and multiple religions in a transcultural perspective (Stauffer 2022).

Since the 1990s, religious concerns appear to have featured more recurrently in literary works, including children’s literature. Quite often these are associated with representations of cultural identity, migrations, questions of belonging and encounters with alterity, as well as with literary and aesthetic issues with a long tradition of philosophical and theological reflection. Hegel’s contention that “the highest act of reason […] is an aesthetic act, and that truth and goodness are only siblings in beauty” (Hegel 1971) has, in fact, found new life in the literary and essay-writing production of the 2000s. When such representations of cultural identity and of encounters with alterity converge, the boundaries between religious and aesthetic experience become extremely blurred. This is the case, for instance, with Peter Handke, Botho Strauß, Martin Mosebach, Sybille Lewitscharoff and Navid Kermani in the literatures in German, or of Michel Houellebecq, Emmanuel Carrère, Tahar Ben Jelloun and Patrick Modiano, in the context of Francophone literatures. The same discourse can be extended to Graham Greene, Muriel Spark, and Colm Tóibín in the Anglophone context; to José Saramago and José Tolentino Mendonça in the Portuguese area; to Pablo D’Ors, Jesús Sánchez Adalid, and María Laura Espido Freire in the Spanish-speaking world; to Joel Haahtela, Jon Fosse, Olov Enquist, Mikael Niemi and Kim Leine in the Scandinavian context. In the field of Italian literature writers such as Emanuele Tonon, Alessandro Zaccuri, Giulio Mozzi, Demetrio Paolin, refer in various ways to Catholic influences, though sui generis, of 20^th century literature (Carlo Coccioli, Giovanni Testori and Mario Pomilio may also be mentioned).

The role of literature in transcultural and transreligious processes is fundamental and, at times, two-faced. On the one hand, it can become the mouthpiece of historical events and influence the way of thinking and the assumptions of society; on the other hand, it tends to preserve its own status of literary and aesthetic play, sometimes fictional, without the intention or will to claim absolute truths.  Contemporary literature, influenced by the effects of globalization and interculturality, crosses the national borders and takes part in an interreligious dialogue, often from liminal and interstitial points of view. Besides, the religious phenomenon presents in itself the paradox of wavering between the closure towards the Other (where assumptions of absolute truth prevail) and the acknowledgment of the historical and cultural bond with the Other (as is the case of Christianity and Hebraism). In the light of this paradox, the question can be tackled from different points of view (thematic, stylistic, philological, hermeneutic, linguistic), even considering the convergence and often problematic intersection of different religious traditions that should be faced through a sort of transreligious approach.

While proposing this frame for the study of religious transculturality in contemporary European literatures, the following points for reflection are suggested:

• Examples of definition of the concept of “transreligiosity”
• Problematization of religious conflicts
• Experiments with interreligious dialogue
• Reflections on the assumption of truth of single religions (confessions)
• Combination of religion and cultural identity
• Creation of new religious symbols and paradigms made of elements coming from different religions
• Reception of figures and themes belonging to the rabbinic-biblical cultural imagery as a means of research and/or identitarian re-definition
• Religious and/or trans-religious experience in contemporary children’s literature
• New forms of eschatology (utopias, dystopias)

 

The deadline for submission of complete articles is July 15th, 2024. Articles should not exceed 40,000 characters (including spaces).

The main languages of publications are Italian and English. Articles in languages other than Italian and English are also welcome (and encouraged), but in this case authors are invited to contact the Editorial Board.