INTR 224(F) After God (Same as Religion 224 and Philosophy 224)
The beginning of the twenty-first century has been marked by a global revival of
religion that few people anticipated. During the 1960s, sociologists and social
critics argued that modernization necessarily involved secularization. As developing economies underwent the process of industrialization, the argument went,
traditional beliefs and practices were invariably left behind. At the same time,
leading theologians were echoing and elaborating Nietzsche's declaration of the
death of God. By the 1980s, the disappearance of religion and the death of God
seemed distant memories. While modernism entailed the eclipse of religion,
postmodernism has been accompanied by the return of the religious. This course
will consider the complicated relationship between postmodernism and religion
in recent philosophy, theology and critical theory. The inquiry will begin by investigating the impact of media and information technologies on society and
culture. The emergence first of what Guy Debord described as 'the society of the
spectacle' and then network culture creates a new infrastructure that transforms
socio-political structures, economic policies and cultural practices. These
changes were coterminous with three very different, though closely related, developments: the death of God theology, the initial appearance of the New
Religious Right and post-structural philosophy and theory. Through a careful
reading of selected texts by some of the major figures of this important period,
this course will explore the unexpected resurgence of religion during the last half
of the twentieth-century and assess the implications of these developments for
the early decades of the twenty-first century. Far from "a thing of the past,"
religion prefigures the future now approaching. Works to be considered include:
Robert Venturi et al., Learning from Las Vegas, Guy Debord, Society of the
Spectacle, Jean Beaudrillard, Symbolic Exchange and Death, Thomas Altizer,
The New Gospel of Christian Atheism, Martin Heidegger, Selections, Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity, Georges Bataille, Visions of Excess, Theory of
Religion, Julia Kristeva, Powers of Horror, The Feminine and the Sacred, Slavoj
Zizek, The Fragile Absolute, Jean-Luc Nancy, The Ground of the Image, Of Divine Places, Jacques Derrida, Acts of Religion.
Format: seminar. Course requirements: mid-term exam, Final paper (12-15
pages).
Prerequisites: (200-level course) Religion 101, 204, 220, Philosophy 101, 240,
305.
Permission of the instructor. No enrollment limit. (expected: 25).
Satisfies one semester of the Division II requirement.