In their book on the “radical ordinary,” Stanley Hauerwas and Romand Coles diagnose our current times as plagued by the “politics of death.” This political ailment, they argue “is a dense, dynamic, and finely woven mesh of destruction and fear,” and they counter-propose “an alternative politics that cares for the commonalities, differences, and emergent irregularities of life” which “must also be dense, molecular, supple, mobile, and trickster-like in its modes.”[1] Through the dialogical form of their book, Coles and Hauerwas model this dense, supple, and mobile engagement across difference but with common purpose. What they seek is an alternative to mass political movements based in violence and coercion and instead focus on “the fine grains of the politics of micro-relationships and small achievements.”[2] They “yearn for radical changes to systems that are destroying the world” but “believe that the locus of energies and intelligent visions for such projects are nourished in the textures of relational care for the radical ordinary.”[3] To engage in meaningful conversation is a micro-political mode, a challenge to destructive macro-political movements that threaten to consume us.
The suggestive and inspiring vision cast by Hauerwas and Coles has animated much of my thinking about the uses of literature as political theology, and also about the ways friendship and intellectual camaraderie are so crucial during times of crisis and under threats of political authoritarianism. Dialogue across difference but with generally shared projects, values, and goals is the essence of vibrant academic work, and I find this spirit to be abundant in the three responses to my book The English Modernist Novel as Political Theology: Challenging the Nation—responses which are perceptive, imaginative, and critically alert. Suzanne Hobson, David Sherman, and Stephanie Paulsell are thinkers and writers I much admire, and their responses demonstrate careful engagement and commentary that models the sort of critical dialogue that makes academic conversation an act of theopolitical imagination. My reply to their responses is a coda and a placeholder for further conversation, and I am encouraged by the intentionality and care that I see in their discussion.
Suzanne Hobson offers a detailed account of my argument in The English Modernist Novel as Political Theology with a couple of salient points that I am glad to see registered. Hobson observes that my effort “to ascribe a theopolitical imagination to the modernist novel as such” expresses “a ‘maximalist’ understanding of modernism which links a variety of cultural, social and political projects under a sign of revitalization and regeneration.” She writes that “what is at stake […] is the question of what the modernist novel as such has to offer by way of alternative theological-political narratives of individual and collective flourishing.” She comments that my project “is ambitious and, to some, will itself seem utopian,” and she charitably asks: “in a historical and political moment that has frequently been compared with that to which the modernists themselves responded can we reasonably aim for any less?” Ending with this question while acknowledging the risk of utopianism neatly corresponds to the aspirational tone I have desired for the book, pointing toward further possibilities and imagined horizons not yet fully defined. If this mode sounds utopian, I hope that it does not sound like the mass-scale, negative utopias with authoritarian ambitions but rather embraces the “minor utopias” found in aesthetics, friendships, and small-scale communities. This minor utopianism does indeed operate as Hobson points out “under a sign of revitalization and regeneration” that I find particularly compelling in modernism but is part of many literary modes and aesthetic projects worth bringing into conversation with political theology. To seek hope in these creative, imaginative, intellectual places is a crucial task for scholars today, especially in our age of diminished support for and societal valuing of humanities work. Hobson comments on my analysis by saying that “both modernism and political theology are shaped by the need to regenerate meaning and forge deeper and more effective social bonds in a world from which these things had seemingly vanished,” and that pursuit of meaning and better social bonding is evident in the dialogical work of intellectual community.
David Sherman thoughtfully and suggestively ruminates on some key ideas from my book, pointing out additional directions for thinking alongside my work. With great complexity and subtlety, Sherman raises several important questions, such as his observation that because “compelling literature is rarely prescriptive or programmatic, and is effective rather for its ability to register still-emerging potentialities, we are left with a few complicated questions about the ambiguous role of art and literature in desacralizing the nation-state.” He notes that institutional endorsement of certain literary texts creates limits to the capacity for change. Sherman remarks on the irony that even though much of the literary production of the modernist period was nationalistic and even militaristic, it is the anti-war and anti-state writing that has become the work cherished by the current university. Woolf and Wilfred Owen are two such examples of these objects of study, crucial to the current academy but outliers from the literature of their time and place. Sherman provocatively claims that “we might think of the university’s assimilation of powerful anti-war, anti-state writing as a strategy for gathering stature within a contested institutional field.” He also mentions “how difficult it is to desacralize the nation-state without changing the material bases of its power.” Does literature and literary study offer any potential for effecting this sort of change, or must these dimensions of the superstructure remain only beholden to bases that fundamentally impair their opportunities for new, better realities?
There is a partial answer to this question in Sherman’s attention to “how these authors participate in a rival symbolic economy”—the metaphorical, aesthetic, and ideological spheres in which literature seems most capable of making a difference. In his own writing, Sherman has explored the ways that socio-political realities have been shaped by the “symbolic economy,” arguing that “the social reorganization of mortality in the early twentieth century did its part to precipitate modernism’s aesthetic crises and renewals, and that its radical explorations of literary form grasped the new political relations and pressures around the dead, the era’s new thanatopolitics.”[4] Attending to literary form as a response to the politics of mortality and death shows how aesthetic objects participate in reimagining our social lives. Adding to Sherman’s analysis here, I would also point out the vital role played by readers. Professional readers such as critics and scholars can play a pivotal role in comprehending and interpreting the social dimensions of literary works and other cultural artifacts. Conversation with our peers, our students, and the broader network of “public-facing” talks and writings are all essential to generating the micro-relational energies that build better societies. I have taken inspiration from Joseph North’s insistence that our writing about literature should not merely situate works within their historical contexts but should actively intervene in our current age.[5] That critical intervention through literary analysis resonates with Sherman’s questions about my book and his concluding comment that “novels may generate the ethical and political intuitions that matter for pursuing change.”[6]
Stephanie Paulsell offers the most critical rejoinder to my analysis by drawing on her expertise in Virginia Woolf. She observes that in my effort to recuperate Woolf’s novel Jacob’s Room for theopolitical analysis, I have accurately named the relative neglect of this novel among scholars who consider the religious/spiritual dimensions of Woolf’s work. But, she cautions that I have reinforced a “dichotomy of mystical and political” that limits my reading of the novel. Paulsell is a perceptive reader and I am quite taken by her readings of Mrs. Dalloway and To the Lighthouse which deftly show the political valences of the mystical within those works. It is a delight to see such subtle and evocative readings (in so short a space, I might add) that arise as Paulsell demonstrates avenues that I left unexplored. This discussion shows dialogue with my work that extends my arguments into areas I had not considered. I wonder if similar kinds of readings might be attempted with Jacob’s Room, a novel about which Paulsell does not comment on in her symposium essay or in her otherwise comprehensive book on Woolf religion.[7] I have typically read Jacob’s Room as being less mystical than Woolf’s later novels, but Paulsell encourages me to return to that prior book with attention to the potential for a political mysticism. That idea of a political mysticism in Woolf might be a way to bridge the divide in Woolf studies between scholars who find her vision thoroughly materialist and those who seek a generalized “religious experience” in her writing. Paulsell’s critique of my argument may be the starting point for renewed attention to the mystical politics of Jacob’s Room.[8]
The audience for most scholarly books is small, but having small audiences who pay such close attention and seek to reckon with the ideas presented is something to cherish. Hobson, Sherman, and Paulsell are inspiring writers, and their thoughtful, learned, critical engagement with my writing is, I believe, an example of the micro-relational politics that give hope during challenging times. The allures of fascism remain strong in the early twenty-first century, where strong man posturing—however cheap and gaudy it may be—still generates a religious charge among millions of people. Resentment and fear are vital forces for cultivating allegiance, and these emotions can fuel devotion to demagoguery that promises an outlet for such feelings even if it offers no real solutions. Such devotion is, as Drew J. Strait calls it, a “strange worship” that redirects passion for the divine into passion for earthly power.[9] I do not wish to naively overstate the importance of scholarly writing to change those millions of devotees whose strange worship continues to dominate our current political age. But, I do maintain hope that intervention at the level of sensibility and aesthetics matters for expanding our political imaginations and for supplying resources of support, community, and resistance necessary for thriving even when the tide of adversity seems high. The thoughtful, generous, and provocative responses of Hobson, Sherman, and Paulsell to my work give a glimpse of the intellectual community that sustains life amid a culture consumed by the politics of death. By continuing this conversation about literature and political theology, we may share the work of building lives with meaning, purpose, and connection that rival the violent fixations of neo-fascism and militaristic civil religion.
[1] Stanley Hauerwas and Romand Coles, Christianity, Democracy, and the Radical Ordinary:
Conversations between a Radical Democrat and a Christian (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2008), 8.
[2] Ibid., 4.
[3] Ibid.
[4] David Sherman, In a Strange Room: Modernism’s Corpses and Mortal Obligation (Oxford University Press, 2014), 3-4.
[5] See Joseph North, Literary Criticism: A Concise Political History (Harvard University Press, 2017).
[6] For an elaboration of my point about scholarship that makes a difference, see Charles Andrews, “Injurious Recipes: Some Ingredients for a ‘Dangerous’ Modernist Studies” Modernism/modernity Print Plus—In These Times. Volume 8, Cycle 1 (13 Sept. 2023): https://modernismmodernity.org/forums/posts/andrews-injurious-recipes
[7] See Stephanie Paulsell, Religion around Virginia Woolf (The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2019).
[8] A key voice in Woolf studies who has also encouraged thinking in this direction is Elizabeth Anderson, Material Spirituality in Modernist Women’s Writing (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020).
[9] See Drew J. Strait, Strange Worship: Six Steps for Challenging Christian Nationalism (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2024).
