{"id":331,"date":"2012-06-20T12:06:32","date_gmt":"2012-06-20T12:06:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/annualconference\/association-francaise-detudes-americaines\/congres-afea\/congres-anterieurs\/congres-2013-angers-religion-et-spiritualite\/texte-de-cadrage-405\/331\/"},"modified":"2012-06-20T12:06:32","modified_gmt":"2012-06-20T12:06:32","slug":"texte-de-cadrage-405","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/afea.fr\/annualconference\/congres-anterieurs\/congres-2013-angers-religion-et-spiritualite\/texte-de-cadrage-405\/331\/","title":{"rendered":"Texte de Cadrage"},"content":{"rendered":"

Religion et spiritualit\u00e9<\/strong><\/p>\n

Auguste Comte, Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim, Max Weber, Sigmund Freud, on le sait, ont interpr\u00e9t\u00e9 l\u2019histoire comme une trajectoire selon laquelle la religion serait progressivement rel\u00e9gu\u00e9e au rang d\u2019un comportement \u00ab primitif \u00bb, vou\u00e9e \u00e0 court terme \u00e0 \u00eatre d\u00e9pass\u00e9e par des pratiques et des institutions s\u00e9culi\u00e8res. La r\u00e9alit\u00e9 historique des 20e et 21e si\u00e8cles, notamment la vitalit\u00e9 des forces religieuses aux Etats-Unis en d\u00e9pit d\u2019une s\u00e9paration des Eglises et de l\u2019Etat garantie par la Constitution f\u00e9d\u00e9rale, peut sans doute \u00eatre vue comme une r\u00e9futation de ce mod\u00e8le t\u00e9l\u00e9ologique pronostiquant la fin de la religion. En 1999, dans un ouvrage collectif intitul\u00e9 The Desecularization of the World<\/em>, Peter Berger, l\u2019un des tenants les plus affirm\u00e9s de la \u00ab th\u00e8se de la s\u00e9cularisation \u00bb en vogue \u00e0 partir des ann\u00e9es 1960, revenait ainsi sur ses positions affirmant que, au vu des donn\u00e9es r\u00e9centes, les temps n\u2019avaient jamais \u00e9t\u00e9 aussi religieux. S\u2019il est aujourd\u2019hui n\u00e9cessaire de revenir sur certains arguments constitutifs de la th\u00e8se de la s\u00e9cularisation des soci\u00e9t\u00e9s post-industrielles, celle-ci ne peut \u00eatre balay\u00e9e d\u2019un revers de la main. Les Etats-Unis, point de r\u00e9f\u00e9rence constant dans les \u00e9tudes sur la d\u00e9s\u00e9cularisation, connaissent aujourd\u2019hui des \u00e9volutions encore largement sous-\u00e9tudi\u00e9es. Soixante-quinze pour cent des Am\u00e9ricains se disent chr\u00e9tiens, la moiti\u00e9 \u00e9tant de confession protestante, un quart de confession catholique. Toutefois, en 2008, une \u00e9tude de l\u2019institut Pew r\u00e9v\u00e9lait que 16% des Am\u00e9ricains se d\u00e9claraient \u00ab sans religion \u00bb. On a l\u00e0 une nouvelle cat\u00e9gorie en progression constante depuis une vingtaine d’ann\u00e9es, les \u00ab nones<\/em> \u00bb, cat\u00e9gorie vaste qui inclut nombre d\u2019Am\u00e9ricains, jeunes pour la plupart, se d\u00e9finissant comme \u00ab spiritual, not religious \u00bb (les \u00ab nots<\/em> \u00bb, eux, \u00e0 savoir les ath\u00e9es, constitueraient en 2011, selon Gallup, 8% de la population am\u00e9ricaine). Comme l\u2019ont montr\u00e9 Ronald Inglehart and Pippa Norris, dans Sacred and Secular : Religion and Politics Worldwide<\/em> (2004), la th\u00e8se de la s\u00e9cularisation doit \u00eatre non pas rejet\u00e9e, mais actualis\u00e9e, notamment pour rendre compte du paradoxe \u00e9tats-unien, la s\u00e9cularisation de la soci\u00e9t\u00e9 am\u00e9ricaine se confirmant depuis les ann\u00e9es 1990. Pour ces auteurs, si les Etats-Unis continuent de faire \u00e9tat d\u2019un niveau de religiosit\u00e9 exceptionnellement haut au regard de l\u2019Europe (en 2001, 94% des Am\u00e9ricains disaient croire en Dieu, contre 56% en France et 46% en Su\u00e8de, source : Europe Values Survey), c\u2019est parce qu\u2019il s\u2019agit-l\u00e0 de l\u2019une des soci\u00e9t\u00e9s post-industrielles les plus in\u00e9galitaires de la plan\u00e8te.<\/p>\n

Quelles que soient ses modalit\u00e9s, la remise en question de la th\u00e8se de la s\u00e9cularisation, \u2013 ou pour reprendre un terme cher \u00e0 Marcel Gauchet, du d\u00e9senchantement \u2013, conduit \u00e0 une refonte de notre compr\u00e9hension de la modernit\u00e9, dans la mesure o\u00f9 ce qui semblait \u00eatre la n\u00e9cessaire alliance de la modernit\u00e9 et de la s\u00e9cularisation ne va plus de soi. Dans un article de 2003 intitul\u00e9 \u00ab The \u201cReturn\u201d of Religion in the Scholarship of American Art \u00bb, Sally M. Promey \u00e9crit: \u00ab In the United States, especially, the \u201cproblem\u201d of the historical persistence, and even ascendance, of religion in modernity represents a direct challenge to the secularization theory of modernity and its scholarly application \u00bb. Des th\u00e9ories poststructuralistes, d\u00e9constructivistes et postmodernes ont pu mener \u00e0 la r\u00e9vision, parfois de fa\u00e7on d\u00e9cisive, de notre mani\u00e8re d\u2019appr\u00e9hender le \u00ab ph\u00e9nom\u00e8ne \u00bb religieux, creusant les assises m\u00eames de la r\u00e9flexion critique moderne et s\u2019ouvrant \u00e0 un pluralisme post-humaniste. Jean-Luc Nancy, dans La D\u00e9construction du christianisme<\/em> (La D\u00e9closion<\/em> [2005] et L\u2019Adoration<\/em> [2010]), pense ainsi la persistance de la religion \u00e0 partir de l\u2019incapacit\u00e9 de l\u2019humanisme \u2013 donc de la raison et de l\u2019h\u00e9ritage des Lumi\u00e8res \u2013 \u00e0 s\u2019ouvrir \u00e0 un illimit\u00e9 ou \u00e0 un inconditionn\u00e9 qui conditionne, paradoxalement, l\u2019\u00eatre humain. Jacques Derrida dans Foi et savoir<\/em> (1996) insiste sur la n\u00e9cessit\u00e9 d\u2019appr\u00e9hender la religion en-de\u00e7\u00e0 de sa r\u00e9duction \u00ab id\u00e9ologique \u00bb et de la penser \u00e0 partir de sa provenance commune avec la raison elle-m\u00eame. Religion et humanisme, religion et raison, religion et Lumi\u00e8res, religion et critique, religion et techno-science, etc., on ne saurait plus dissocier innocemment ces termes. Au-del\u00e0 ou en-de\u00e7\u00e0 de ces oppositions traditionnelles, le propre de la religion serait \u00e0 la fois<\/em> la tentative de r\u00e9cup\u00e9rer, de s\u2019approprier une h\u00e9t\u00e9rog\u00e9n\u00e9it\u00e9 et<\/em> de la respecter comme telle ; car, observe Derrida, dans les deux \u00e9tymologies concurrentes du mot \u00ab religion \u00bb (re-legere<\/em> ou re-ligare<\/em>, re-lire ou re-lier), il y va bien d\u2019une liaison insistante, d\u2019une r\u00e9action \u00e0 l\u2019alt\u00e9rit\u00e9 absolue, sainte ou sacr\u00e9e, pure, \u00ab indemne \u00bb ou holy<\/em>. Les \u00ab retours \u00bb de la religion s\u2019expliquent ainsi comme des r\u00e9actions in\u00e9luctables \u00e0 des pratiques \u00ab auto-immunitaires \u00bb qu\u2019effectuent les institutions religieuses elles-m\u00eames aussi bien que les institutions s\u00e9culi\u00e8res, la foi aussi bien que le savoir. On voit bien l\u00e0, \u00e0 la lumi\u00e8re de ces auteurs, l\u2019int\u00e9r\u00eat du prisme du \u00ab retour \u00bb, r\u00e9f\u00e9rence \u00e0 autant de \u00ab revivals \u00bb, d\u2019\u00ab awakenings \u00bb, de r\u00e9surgences.<\/p>\n

L\u2019objectif n\u2019est pas d\u2019accr\u00e9diter la th\u00e8se de la d\u00e9s\u00e9cularisation, mais de saisir, ou d\u00e9celer, le religieux dans les transferts culturels qu\u2019entra\u00eenent les processus de s\u00e9cularisation, cela afin de refonder ou du moins de nuancer nos perspectives th\u00e9oriques \u00e0 l\u2019\u00e9gard de la modernit\u00e9 am\u00e9ricaine. La proposition porte sur toutes les activit\u00e9s sociales, culturelles, politiques, \u00e9conomiques et esth\u00e9tiques qui s\u2019expriment aux Etats-Unis, des doctrines et des cultes eux-m\u00eames transform\u00e9s au contact de traditions endog\u00e8nes et exog\u00e8nes, mais aussi d\u2019un contexte technologique \u00e9volutif, notamment d\u2019internet, jusqu\u2019aux manifestations de ce que Michel Deguy appelle la \u00ab religion du culturel \u00bb (L\u2019Energie du d\u00e9sespoir<\/em> [1998]). Si l\u2019effondrement du th\u00e9ologico-politique au seuil de la modernit\u00e9 est la condition de l\u2019\u00e9tablissement d\u2019institutions et de pratiques d\u00e9mocratiques suppos\u00e9es affranchies de la tutelle de la religion, celle-ci ne cesse de revenir sur la sc\u00e8ne de la polis<\/em> am\u00e9ricaine. La coexistence des forces religieuses et des forces s\u00e9culi\u00e8res a ainsi habit\u00e9 l\u2019histoire des Etats-Unis, et cela d\u00e8s ses origines coloniales, au prix d\u2019affrontements plus ou moins manifestes, ce que attestent par exemple les j\u00e9r\u00e9miades puritaines et ses r\u00e9activations (ou \u00ab prophecies of godlessness<\/em> \u00bb, selon le titre de l\u2019ouvrage dirig\u00e9 par Charles T. Matthews et Christopher McKnight Nichols [2008]). La religion fait ainsi r\u00e9surgence dans l\u2019ar\u00e8ne politique au sens restreint du terme, sous la forme d\u2019expressions explicitement politico-religieuses (dans le contexte \u00e9tats-unien, on pense bien entendu \u00e0 la religion civile, \u00e0 l\u2019id\u00e9ologie de la Destin\u00e9 manifeste, \u00e0 la droite chr\u00e9tienne ou encore \u00e0 la gauche religieuse, mais d\u2019autres articulations du politique et du religieux, certaines implicites, sont possibles). Ou bien, elle participe, en amont, \u00e0 la construction d\u2019identit\u00e9s et d\u2019id\u00e9ologies au moyen des industries culturelles promotrices d\u2019une hyper-pr\u00e9sence dilu\u00e9e, esth\u00e9tis\u00e9e, d\u2019un \u00ab sacr\u00e9 \u00bb circulant hors de la mainmise traditionnelle des institutions religieuses (le spectacle esth\u00e9tico-politique d\u2019une Madonna, \u00ab Like a Prayer \u00bb, ou la repr\u00e9sentation cin\u00e9matographique de The Passion<\/em>, d\u2019un Mel Gibson, ne sont que des indices facilement rep\u00e9rables de ces infl\u00e9chissements). En raison de leur caract\u00e8re r\u00e9flexif, les arts cin\u00e9matographique et photographique permettent sans doute de prendre en compte le ph\u00e9nom\u00e8ne moderne de la (re-)production technique du spirituel.<\/p>\n

Nombreux sont les \u00e9crivains, de Ralph Waldo Emerson \u00e0 Wallace Stevens (\u00ab Two or Three Ideas \u00bb [1951]), pour ne donner que deux exemples, dont l\u2019\u0153uvre et la pens\u00e9e t\u00e9moignent d\u2019une conscience intense de leur inscription dans un processus de s\u00e9cularisation selon lequel la transcendance, pr\u00e9c\u00e9demment cautionn\u00e9e par le divin, devient l\u2019affaire des hommes. C\u2019est ce transfert qui aura donn\u00e9 lieu au concept romantique de la Litt\u00e9rature et qui nourrira en sous-main la th\u00e8se moderniste de l\u2019autonomie de l\u2019\u0153uvre d\u2019art, en passant par la \u00ab religiosit\u00e9 esth\u00e9tique \u00bb qui informe jusqu\u2019\u00e0 un certain point l\u2019\u0153uvre de Henry James. Si James peut affirmer que le mod\u00e8le pictural de The Tragic Muse<\/em> fut une \u00ab immense crucifixion \u00bb du Tintoret, comme il le fait dans la pr\u00e9face au roman, c\u2019est bien parce que le devenir artiste de la com\u00e9dienne tragique, Miriam Ro[o]th, consiste en un \u00ab sacrifice \u00bb esth\u00e9tique de sa jud\u00e9it\u00e9. Hawthorne avait d\u00e9j\u00e0 inscrit le devenir de Hester Prynne dans une logique sacrificielle qui conditionne l\u2019identit\u00e9 de son h\u00e9ro\u00efne sans tout \u00e0 fait la d\u00e9terminer (\u00ab The scarlet letter had not done its office. \u00bb) ; l\u2019historicit\u00e9 d\u2019une Am\u00e9rique \u00e0 venir plus pluraliste et plus relativiste que le puritanisme qu\u2019incarne le R\u00e9v\u00e9rend Dimmesdale s\u2019inscrit dans une temporalit\u00e9 messianique (\u00ab in Heaven\u2019s own time, a new truth would be revealed \u00bb) qui exc\u00e8de toute logique de s\u00e9cularisation en m\u00eame temps qu\u2019elle d\u00e9passe le mouvement narratif du roman. Plus pr\u00e8s de nous, c\u2019est au contraire par souci de cl\u00f4ture repr\u00e9sentative que la cha\u00eene des voix narratives dans Omensetter\u2019s Luck<\/em> de William H. Gass se termine par celle du R\u00e9v\u00e9rend Jethro Furber, dont la religiosit\u00e9 discursive se r\u00e9v\u00e8le \u00e0 la fin comme pure rh\u00e9torique, c\u2019est-\u00e0-dire comme un discours esth\u00e9tique de mauvaise foi. Le titre du roman de Joseph McElroy, A Smuggler\u2019s Bible,<\/em> est tr\u00e8s suggestif \u00e0 l\u2019\u00e9gard de tels transferts religio-esth\u00e9tiques sur lesquels s\u2019appuient des formes litt\u00e9raires.<\/p>\n

D\u2019un point de vue stylistique, m\u00eame la litt\u00e9rature r\u00e9aliste mobilise souvent une m\u00e9taphoricit\u00e9 religieuse ou des connotations du sacr\u00e9, comme l\u2019atteste par exemple l\u2019\u00e9criture de Stephen Crane dans The Red Badge of Courage. <\/em>\u00ab Godliness \u00bb de Sherwood Anderson, The Garden of Eden<\/em> d\u2019Ernest Hemingway, \u00ab Cathedral \u00bb de Raymond Carver mettent en \u0153uvre les ressources d\u2019un symbolique religieux l\u00e0 m\u00eame o\u00f9 une \u00e9criture minimaliste tend vers un traitement retenu du mot. S\u2019agit-il l\u00e0 des dosages restreints de ce que T. S. Eliot nommait, \u00e0 propos de Joyce, une \u00ab m\u00e9thode mythique \u00bb ou des affleurements de ce que le m\u00eame po\u00e8te, dans \u00ab Religion and Literature \u00bb (1935), a appel\u00e9 l\u2019\u00ab inconscient \u00bb chr\u00e9tien ? Sur le plan th\u00e9matique, mais d\u2019une mani\u00e8re qui influe \u00e9videmment sur l\u2019invention formelle, nombreux sont les \u00e9crivains postmodernes, comme Thomas Pynchon et Don DeLillo, chez qui la religion fait retour sous des formes plus ou moins d\u00e9tourn\u00e9es. Dans The Origin of the Brunists<\/em> de Robert Coover et Carpenter\u2019s Gothic<\/em> de William Gaddis, une \u00e9criture ample et incandescente prend son \u00e9lan, en partie du moins, \u00e0 partir du commentaire des ph\u00e9nom\u00e8nes religio-communautaires et religio-politiques.<\/p>\n

Outre les modalit\u00e9s de transfert que nous venons de signaler, on pourra s\u2019interroger sur les r\u00e9sistances \u00e0 la trajectoire selon laquelle s\u2019immanentise la transcendance \u2013 ou ce que la psychanalyse appellera l\u2019inconscient \u2013 telles qu\u2019elles se manifestent depuis l\u2019\u00e9criture m\u00eame des formes litt\u00e9raires de la tradition s\u00e9culi\u00e8re, ainsi que depuis des \u00e9critures dites \u00ab minoritaires \u00bb dans leur non-appartenance au \u00ab grand r\u00e9cit \u00bb de l\u2019humanisation du divin. On pense aux \u00e9crivains noirs et les \u00ab African American religions \u00bb (The Negro Church<\/em>, W. E. B. Du Bois) et \u00e0 la question du juda\u00efsme pour les romanciers juifs, aux \u00e9crivains catholiques du Sud en marge, comme Flannery O\u2019Connor, et aux r\u00e9cits des Am\u00e9rindiens, depuis le \u00ab creation myth \u00bb des Iroquois jusqu\u2019aux inventions romanesques d\u2019un Scott Momaday. L\u2019influence de la Bible sur la langue des \u00e9crivains (Dickinson, Whitman, Melville, Baldwin) ; la beaut\u00e9 esth\u00e9tique des monuments et des sacrements religieux \u00e9voqu\u00e9e par les th\u00e9oriciens de l\u2019art, depuis Henry Adams (Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres<\/em>) et John Dewey (Art as Experience<\/em>) ; l\u2019iconographie et le d\u00e9p\u00e9rissement moderne de l\u2019\u00ab aura \u00bb (Benjamin) dans les arts visuels ; le concept de croyance dans les philosophies pragmatistes, comme les transferts entre la tradition herm\u00e9neutique et la critique litt\u00e9raire pourront \u00e9galement \u00eatre abord\u00e9s.<\/p>\n

En d\u2019autres termes, le congr\u00e8s pourra permettre de percer \u00e0 jour, selon une perspective diachronique, multidimensionnelle et pluraliste, le religieux et son articulation inh\u00e9rente avec le spirituel, dans ses nombreuses acceptions et expressions am\u00e9ricaines. Sans que soit privil\u00e9gi\u00e9e la tradition \u00e9vang\u00e9lique, qui, comme l\u2019a soulign\u00e9 Jon Butler en 1992, a longtemps \u00e9t\u00e9 l\u2019unique outil interpr\u00e9tatif pour appr\u00e9hender l\u2019histoire religieuse am\u00e9ricaine, il s\u2019agira de r\u00e9fl\u00e9chir sur la religion en tant que telle ainsi que sur les recompositions que g\u00e9n\u00e8rent les processus de s\u00e9cularisation. On s’int\u00e9ressera in\u00e9vitablement aux manifestations du christianisme et \u00e0 ses formes dissidentes, ainsi qu\u2019au juda\u00efsme, mais on ne n\u00e9gligera pas l’islam, le bouddhisme, l’hindouisme et les autres \u00ab world religions \u00bb, sans oublier les religions \u00ab m\u00e9taphysiques \u00bb, pour reprendre le terme g\u00e9n\u00e9rique qu’utilise Catherine Albanese dans A Republic of the Mind and Spirit<\/em> (2007), et les NMR (Nouveaux Mouvements Religieux), ou encore les religions s\u00e9culi\u00e8res. <\/p>\n

Les propositions d\u2019atelier sont \u00e0 envoyer aux deux coordinateurs Richard Anker<\/a> et Nathalie Caron<\/a>, conjointement, avant le 15 septembre 2012.
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

Religion and Spirituality<\/strong><\/p>\n

Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim, Max Weber, Sigmund Freud, among others, interpreted history as a trajectory according to which religion would gradually be reduced to a form of \u201cprimitive\u201d behaviour, destined shortly to be overtaken by secular institutions and practices. The historical reality of the 20th and 21st centuries\u2014notably the visibility of religion in the United States despite the separation of church and state guaranteed by the Constitution\u2014might well be seen as a refutation of this teleological model predicting the end of religion. In 1999, in a collective volume entitled The Desecularization of the World<\/em>, Peter Berger, one of the most fervent advocates of the secularization thesis in vogue since the 1960\u2019s, reversed his position and affirmed that, in light of recent data, the \u201cworld today, with some exception\u2026[was] as furiously religious as it [had] ever [been].\u201d Yet if today it is necessary to reconsider certain arguments at the basis of secularization theory in post-industrial societies, this thesis cannot for all that be rejected out of hand. Changes occurring in the United States, on which studies of desecularization heavily focus, are still insufficiently analyzed. Seventy five percent of Americans call themselves Christian, half of the adult population being of Protestant confession, a quarter Catholic. In 2008, however, a study by the Pew Research Center revealed that 16% of American adults consider themselves unaffiliated with any particular religion. This new category, which has been in constant progression over the last twenty years, is also referred to as the \u201cnones.\u201d It is a vast constituency including numerous Americans, mostly young, defining themselves as \u201cspiritual, not religious\u201d (the \u201cnots\u201d, which is to say the atheists, consisting of 8% of the population in 2011, according to Gallup). As Ronald Inglehart and Pippa Norris have shown in Sacred and Secular: Religion and Politics Worldwide <\/em>(2004), the secularization thesis should not be rejected but rather brought up to date. For these authors, if the United States, where secular tendencies have strengthened since the 1990\u2019s, continues to demonstrate an exceptionally high level of religiosity in comparison to Europe (in 2001, 94% of Americans said they believed in God, as opposed to 56% in France and 46% in Sweden, source: Europe Values Survey), this is because it is one of the most \u201cunequal\u201d post-industrial societies on the planet. <\/p>\n

Whatever the terms of the argument might be, the questioning of the secularization thesis\u2014or of what Marcel Gauchet has called, after Weber, disenchantment\u2014leads to a revision of our understanding of modernity, to the extent that what seemed a necessary alliance between secularity and modernity is no longer taken for granted. In \u201cThe \u2018Return\u2019 of Religion in the Scholarship of American Art\u201d (2003), Sally M. Promey writes: \u201cIn the United States, especially, the \u2018problem\u2019 of the historical persistence, and even ascendance of religion in modernity represents a direct challenge to the secularisation theory of modernity and its scholarly application.\u201d Poststructuralist, deconstructionist and postmodernist theories have remodelled, sometimes in a decisive manner, our understanding of religious phenomena, striking at the foundation of modern critical reflection and opening ways for post-humanist thought. In Dis-Enclosure: The Deconstruction of Christianity <\/em>(2008), Jean-Luc Nancy sees the persistence of religion as a consequence of an incapacity of humanism (and therefore of reason and of the heritage of the Enlightenment) to open itself to an incommensurable or to an unconditional which, paradoxically, conditions the human being. In \u201cFaith and Knowledge,\u201d Acts of Religion<\/em> (2002), Jacques Derrida insists on the necessity of apprehending the religious apart from its reduction to \u201cideology\u201d and of appraising it on the basis of an origin common with that of reason itself. Religion and humanism, religion and reason, religion and the Enlightenment, religion and criticism, religion and techno-science, etc., can no longer be ingenuously <\/strong>disassociated. Beyond these traditional oppositions, the distinctive character of religion would be its attempt simultaneously<\/em> to recuperate, to appropriate a heterogeneity and<\/em> to respect it as such; for, as Derrida observes, in each of the two competing etymologies of the word \u201creligion\u201d (re-legere<\/em> or re-ligare<\/em>, re-read or reconnect, bind together) there is insistence upon liaison, in other words a reaction against otherness as absolute, sacred or saintly, \u201cindemnified,\u201d pure, holy. \u201cReturns\u201d of the religious are thereby understood as inevitable reactions against the \u201cauto-immune\u201d practices of religious institutions themselves as well as of secular institutions, faith as well as knowledge. In light of these authors, one discerns the pertinence of the \u201creturn\u201d paradigm as a reference to so many \u201crevivals,\u201d \u201cawakenings,\u201d or resurgences of religion in U.S. history.<\/p>\n

The goal here is not to support the desecularization thesis, but rather to grasp, or detect, the religious in the cultural transfers and transformations inherent in the processes of secularisation, asking scholars thereby to rethink their theoretical perspectives with regard to American modernity. The proposition deals with all social, cultural, political, economic and aesthetic activities, from doctrines and practices which have been transformed by contact with endogenous and exogenous traditions, as well as by an ever-evolving technological context, notably the Internet, to manifestations of what Michel Deguy calls the \u201creligion of the cultural\u201d (L\u2019Energie du d\u00e9sespoir<\/em> [1998]). Even though the collapse of theologico-political institutions at the threshold of modernity was the condition for the establishment of democratic institutions and practices supposedly free of religious supervision, religion keeps returning upon the scene of the American polis<\/em>. From its colonial origins, religious and secular forces have thereby coexisted throughout U.S. history, with more or less obvious confrontations, as is attested for example by the Puritan jeremiads and their reactivations (or \u201cprophecies of godlessness\u201d as the title of a work edited by Charles T. Matthews and Christopher McKnight Nichols puts it [2008]). Religion either re-emerges within the political arena as such in the form of explicitly politico-religious expressions (such as civil religion, of the ideology of Manifest Destiny, of the Christian right or of the religious left, but other less explicit connections of religion and politics can also be considered), or else, more pervasively, it participates in the construction of identities and ideologies by means of cultural industries (television, music, videos), which promote a diluted, aestheticised hyper-presence of the \u201csacred\u201d circulating outside the control of traditional religious institutions (the aesthetico-political spectacle of a Madonna, \u201cLike a Prayer,\u201d or the cinematographic representation of a Mel Gibson, The Passion<\/em>, are two easily identifiable examples of such transfers). Due to their reflective character, the arts of cinema and photography no doubt give valuable insight into the modern phenomena of the technical (re-)production of the spiritual.<\/p>\n

The works and thought of many American writers, from Ralph Waldo Emerson to Wallace Stevens (\u201cTwo or Three Ideas\u201d [1951]), to give two examples, testify to an intense consciousness of their inscription in a process of secularization by which transcendence, previously sanctioned by the divine, becomes the affair of individuals. It is precisely this transfer which gave birth to the romantic concept of Literature and underwrote the modernist thesis of the autonomy of the work of art, by way of the \u201caesthetic religiosity\u201d which informs to a certain extent the work of Henry James. If James can affirm that the pictorial model of The Tragic Muse<\/em> was an \u201cimmense crucifixion\u201d by Tintoretto, this is because the artistic becoming of the tragic comedian, Miriam Ro[o]th, consists of an aesthetic \u201csacrifice\u201d of her Jewish identity. Hawthorne had already inscribed the becoming of Hester Prynne in a sacrificial logic which conditions the identity of his heroin without completely determining it (\u201cThe scarlet letter had not done its office\u201d). The historicity of an America to come that would be more pluralistic and more relativist than the Puritanism incarnated by the Reverend Dimmesdale is inscribed in a messianic temporality (\u201cin Heaven\u2019s own time, a new truth would be revealed\u201d), which exceeds all logic of secularization at the same time that it surpasses the narrative movement of the novel. Closer to us, it is on the contrary out of concern for representational closure that the chain of narrative voices in William H. Gass\u2019s novel, Omensetter\u2019s Luck<\/em>, terminates with that of the Reverend Jethro Furber, whose discursive religiosity reveals itself in the end to be pure rhetoric, that is to say an aesthetic discourse of bad faith. The title of Joseph McElroy\u2019s novel, A Smuggler\u2019s Bible<\/em>, is very suggestive with regard to the kinds of religio-aesthetic transfers on which literary forms often depend.<\/p>\n

From a stylistic point of view, even realist literature frequently exploits religious metaphor and connotations of the sacred, as one observes in Stephen Crane\u2019s The Red Badge of Courage<\/em> for example. Sherwood Anderson in \u201cGodliness,\u201d Ernest Hemingway in The Garden of Eden<\/em>, Raymond Carver in \u201cCathedral,\u201d employ the symbolic resources of religion alongside minimalist approaches to writing favouring a sober use of language. Do such writing practices correspond to restrained usages of what T.S. Eliot, with respect to Joyce, called the \u201cmythical method\u201d or to manifestations of what the same poet, in \u201cReligion and Literature\u201d (1935), called the Christian \u201cunconscious\u201d? From a thematic perspective, but in a way which has a clear impact on formal invention, the return of the religious in more or less oblique manners marks the works of numerous post-modern writers, like Thomas Pynchon and Don DeLillo. In Robert Coover\u2019s The Origin of the Brunists<\/em> and William Gaddis\u2019s Carpenter\u2019s Gothic<\/em>, an ample and incandescent writing draws its force, in part at least, from commentary upon religio-communitarist and religio-political events.<\/p>\n

Beyond the modes of transfer that have just been noted, scholars might investigate resistance to the historical trajectory according to which transcendence\u2014or what psychoanalysis has called the unconscious\u2014is immanentised. Such resistance can be studied as it manifests itself in the writing of works belonging to the secular tradition itself, as well as in works considered \u201cminority\u201d to the extent that they do not participate in the \u201cgrand narrative\u201d of the humanization of the divine. One thinks for example of black writers and \u201cAfrican American religions\u201d (The Negro Church<\/em>, W. E. B. DuBois) and of the question of Judaism for the Jewish novelists, of the southern Catholic writers, like Flannery O\u2019Connor, and of the narratives of the Native Americans, from the creation myths of the Iroquois to the novelistic inventions of a Scott Momaday. The influence of the Bible on the language of writers (Dickinson, Whitman, Melville, Baldwin); the aesthetic beauty of religious monuments and sacraments in the perspective of art historians and theoreticians, from Henry Adams (Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres<\/em>) and John Dewey (Art as Experience<\/em>) to the present; iconography and the modern erosion of \u201caura\u201d (Benjamin) in the visual arts; the concept of belief in the pragmatist philosophies and transfers from the hermeneutic tradition to literary criticism might also be analyzed.<\/p>\n

In short, this conference aims to bring to light, from diachronic, multidimensional and pluralistic perspectives, the way religion and its fundamental combination with spirituality manifest themselves in their numerous American acceptations and expressions. It will not give prominence to the evangelical tradition which, as historian Jon Butler observed, has long been the only interpretive lens through which religion in the United States has been apprehended. Christianity and its dissident forms, as well as Judaism, will obviously be considered, without neglecting, however, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism and the other \u201cworld religions,\u201d or what has been called \u201cmetaphysical\u201d religions, to use Catherine Albanese\u2019s generic term in A Republic of the Mind and Spirit<\/em> (2007), and the NRM (New Religious Movements), and secular religions. <\/p>\n

Propositions for workshops should be sent to the two co-ordinators, Richard Anker<\/a> and Nathalie Caron<\/a>, jointly, before September 15, 2012.
\n<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Religion et spiritualit\u00e9 Auguste Comte, Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim, Max Weber, Sigmund Freud, on le sait, ont interpr\u00e9t\u00e9 l\u2019histoire comme une trajectoire selon laquelle la religion serait progressivement rel\u00e9gu\u00e9e au rang d\u2019un comportement \u00ab primitif \u00bb, vou\u00e9e \u00e0 court terme \u00e0 \u00eatre d\u00e9pass\u00e9e par des pratiques et des institutions s\u00e9culi\u00e8res. La r\u00e9alit\u00e9 historique des 20e […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-331","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congres-2013-angers-religion-et-spiritualite"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":false,"thumbnail":false,"medium":false,"medium_large":false,"large":false,"1536x1536":false,"2048x2048":false},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"cremieux","author_link":"https:\/\/afea.fr\/annualconference\/author\/cremieux\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"Religion et spiritualit\u00e9 Auguste Comte, Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim, Max Weber, Sigmund Freud, on le sait, ont interpr\u00e9t\u00e9 l\u2019histoire comme une trajectoire selon laquelle la religion serait progressivement rel\u00e9gu\u00e9e au rang d\u2019un comportement \u00ab primitif \u00bb, vou\u00e9e \u00e0 court terme \u00e0 \u00eatre d\u00e9pass\u00e9e par des pratiques et des institutions s\u00e9culi\u00e8res. La r\u00e9alit\u00e9 historique des 20e…","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/afea.fr\/annualconference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/afea.fr\/annualconference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/afea.fr\/annualconference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/afea.fr\/annualconference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/afea.fr\/annualconference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=331"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/afea.fr\/annualconference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/afea.fr\/annualconference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/afea.fr\/annualconference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/afea.fr\/annualconference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}