Lessons in Secular Criticism

Reviews / Votes

"Lessons in Secular Criticism is a timely and polemical manifestation of parrhesia. It offers compelling evidence that 'post-secularism' comes neither 'after' the secular nor does it understand the 'secular'. Moving effortlessly between literary theory, philosophy, and politics, Gourgouris offers a profoundly democratic defense of criticism without transcendent principles and a critical defense of democracy without neoliberal capitalism. Lessons in Secular Criticism brilliantly diagnoses the key antagonism of our times as that between various heteronomies (theology, capital, transcendence) and autonomy, the power (kratos) of the demos to become otherwise. Read it." -- -Costas Douzinas Birkbeck College, University of London "This book defines the secular: 'to encounter one's life as a worldly affair and responsibility that rests on no foundation.' This definition drives Gourgouris' intervention in the critical debate around secularism and his reading of global popular revolts as lived forms of secular criticism. Erudite, thrilling, and provocative, this is, simply, urgent reading." -- -Martin Harries University of California, Irvine "Gourgouris presents an incredibly intelligent means by which the secular can address [the challenge to the secular] without ultimately disturbing its own enabling habits." -Daniel Colucciello Barber, Los Angeles Review of Books "What is secular criticism? The expression's coinage is attributed to Edward Said, and as Stathis Gourgouris demonstrates, it is a key politico-aesthetic concept that resists definition. Identifiable neither with the remainders of political theology in democracy nor with an immanent, non-transcendental metaphysics, (though combining elements of both), secular criticism is cast as something on the order of a teaching; an initiation into worldly praxis. In the contemporary moment - rife with crude generalizations about cultures of belief and sacral icons - Lessons in Secular Criticism enlists philosophy to rethink basic assumptions underwriting the politics of religion and culture. We discover here new forms of secularism as "heteronymy:" modes of self-alteration, self-enactment, conviction, tragic life and poietic existence. This book is a model of criticism in action offering creative engagements with the work of Edward Said, Talal Asad, Judith Butler, Cornelius Castoriadis, Charles Taylor and Claude Lefort among others." -- -Emily Apter New York University "...Gourgouris not only challenges the metaphysical commitments he sees in traditional formations of secularism and religion, but he also significantly expands the potential meaning of the term 'secular criticism' ..." -College Literature, Vol. 41.3 "Written in a free and combative and given both to close readings of texts and to gazing off into the broad horizon, these essays cover a range of issues historical and philosophical, archaic and contemporary, literary and political..." -Theological Book Review "Gourgouris's book is an astonishing achievement: it does not simply set the debate about secularism on an entirely new basis, in addition it sets the basis of a theory of radical democracy in modernity and does so by applying the theory to a variety of historical events from the past few years." -- -Dimitris Vardoulakis University of Western Sydney