Queer Fish - Christian Unreason from Darwin to Derrida (Hardcover)


At some point in the nineteenth century God died, the world grew secular, and Christianity became oppositional, irrational, odd, even queer -- or so the story goes. To explore this narrative, John Schad offers a suitably odd or unreasonable' history of what Michel Foucault once called Christian unreason'. This proves, in part, to be an unlikely, or uncanny history of Christian involvement in such radical movements and developments as Anarchism, Surrealism, the Absurd, deconstruction, and even quantum physics. It also proves to be a dark and guilty history of Christian involvement in such terrible things and events as slavery, forced conversion, Fenian bombs, the Great War, the Holocaust, and even Hiroshima. The book begins with Matthew Arnold's Dover Beach' and its withdrawing sea of faith' as time and again Schad finds the figure of the Christian to be beached, a fish out of water -- a queer fish, in fact. This, then, is a book that is all at sea -- beginning with Charles Darwin's voyage to the extreme point of Christendom' that was South America, and ending with James Joyce and Jacques Derrida in the same boat', the same ruined, but sea-going, boat that is the twentieth-century Western Church. In between: Karl Marx is to be found in 1848 watching the waves of revolution' withdraw in Berlin; Sigmund Freud stands incredulous by the shore of Loch Ness; Oscar Wilde is laughed at in the rain at Clapham Junction; and Charles Dickens visits a church for the drowned, a church for ship-wrecked corpses. Revisiting Dover Beach' is often an appalling event, an event of death; often it is comic or even absurd. Sometimes it is both at once. With chapters devoted to Darwin, Marx, Freud, Dickens, Wilde, Joyce, and Derrida, Queer Fish has plenty for students not only of literature and philosophy but also theology and Jewish studies.

R1,267

Or split into 4x interest-free payments of 25% on orders over R50
Learn more

Discovery Miles12670
Mobicred@R119pm x 12* Mobicred Info
Free Delivery
Delivery AdviceShips in 12 - 17 working days


Toggle WishListAdd to wish list
Review this Item

Product Description

At some point in the nineteenth century God died, the world grew secular, and Christianity became oppositional, irrational, odd, even queer -- or so the story goes. To explore this narrative, John Schad offers a suitably odd or unreasonable' history of what Michel Foucault once called Christian unreason'. This proves, in part, to be an unlikely, or uncanny history of Christian involvement in such radical movements and developments as Anarchism, Surrealism, the Absurd, deconstruction, and even quantum physics. It also proves to be a dark and guilty history of Christian involvement in such terrible things and events as slavery, forced conversion, Fenian bombs, the Great War, the Holocaust, and even Hiroshima. The book begins with Matthew Arnold's Dover Beach' and its withdrawing sea of faith' as time and again Schad finds the figure of the Christian to be beached, a fish out of water -- a queer fish, in fact. This, then, is a book that is all at sea -- beginning with Charles Darwin's voyage to the extreme point of Christendom' that was South America, and ending with James Joyce and Jacques Derrida in the same boat', the same ruined, but sea-going, boat that is the twentieth-century Western Church. In between: Karl Marx is to be found in 1848 watching the waves of revolution' withdraw in Berlin; Sigmund Freud stands incredulous by the shore of Loch Ness; Oscar Wilde is laughed at in the rain at Clapham Junction; and Charles Dickens visits a church for the drowned, a church for ship-wrecked corpses. Revisiting Dover Beach' is often an appalling event, an event of death; often it is comic or even absurd. Sometimes it is both at once. With chapters devoted to Darwin, Marx, Freud, Dickens, Wilde, Joyce, and Derrida, Queer Fish has plenty for students not only of literature and philosophy but also theology and Jewish studies.

Customer Reviews

No reviews or ratings yet - be the first to create one!

Product Details

General

Imprint

Sussex Academic Press

Country of origin

United Kingdom

Release date

June 2004

Availability

Expected to ship within 12 - 17 working days

First published

July 2004

Dimensions

239 x 162 x 18mm (L x W x T)

Format

Hardcover

Pages

177

ISBN-13

978-1-84519-019-4

Barcode

9781845190194

Categories

LSN

1-84519-019-X



Trending On Loot