The Play of Reasons: The Sacred and the Profane in Salman Rushdie’s Fiction
Author:
Youssef Yacoubi
ISBN:
9781433113260
Binding:
Hardcover
Year:
2012
Pages:
246
Size:
15 x 23 cm
Weight:
455 grams
Price:
INR
2080.00
The Play of Reasons argues that Salman Rushdie’s eclectic and hybridized work can be situated within an Islamic genealogy of theological and literary traditions. Rushdie’s prose is difficult to conceive as unitary in meaning precisely because it operates according to a polymorphous Islamic literary and theological register, while also being divided by the Greek, Abrahamic, and Indian dimensions. There is a parallax when Rushdie is viewed from within Islamic traditions, creating interest in a certain postcolonial saturation of Islamic literary traces, theological, and political anxieties; closures and ruptures of the sacred and the profane. Rushdie’s writing is neither essentially Islamic or Indian, nor essentially Western or Greek, but to read him, in terms of an Islamic tradition, is an intervention in what the author calls «Diasporic criticism.» Rushdie’s work construed as «a kind of philosophy-in-literature» foregrounds an engagement with a number of Muslim «masters of suspicion» (classical and modern), whose literary and philosophical ideas have been deeply immersed in the limits of tradition. In the final analysis the author argues that Rushdie’s prose demonstrates the extent to which literature is committed to a critical reconceptualization of history, truth, meaning, and value systems based in the possibilities of risk, constructive doubt, and contingency.
Youssef Yacoubi
The Editors: Maya Burger has studied anthropology and indology at Lausanne, in India and in the United States. She is professor of the Science of Religion at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland.
Peter Schreiner has studied in Mainz, Munich, Philadelphia and Münster; he has worked for several years at the University of Tübingen and is currently professor of Indology at the University of Zürich.
Maya Burger a fait des études d'anthropologie et d'indologie à Lausanne, en Inde et aux États-Unis. Elle est professeure de science des religions à l'Université de Lausanne.
Peter Schreiner a étudié à Mainz, München, Philadelphia et Münster. Il a travaillé plusieurs années à l'université de Tübingen et est actuellement professeur d'indologie à Zürich.