Postsecular Poetics

Rebekah Cumpsty is Assistant Professor of Anglophone World Literature at Weber State University. Her recent work includes articles for The Journal of Commonwealth Literature, Interventions, and the co-edited project"The Body Now"(2020), a special issue of Interventions.

'In a series of supple arguments and granular readings, Postsecular Poetics enables African criticism to catch up with African fiction, recognizing that the sacred and the secular will not be disentangled. Rebekah Cumpsty’s searching and compassionate book is a vital new reading of the African novel.'Professor David Attwell, University of York, United Kingdom'Postsecular Poetics is a groundbreaking book that powerfully explores the fascinating but understudied connections among the sacred, secular, religious, and postsecular in African literatures. Marked by rigorous interdisciplinary theorizations and subtle close readings across diverse national and literary cultures, Rebekah Cumpsty’s analyses are persuasive and timely. A pioneering achievement, this book has set the mark for future criticism and understanding of the sacred and postsecular in African literatures.'Manav Ratti, author of The Postsecular Imagination: Postcolonialism, Religion, and Literature‘African literature has never been fully secular. Still, perhaps due to the influence of Edward Said’s "secular criticism," scholars often ignore African writers’ habitual probing of the sacred, or simply filter such writing through a secular interpretive paradigm. By applying instead a postsecular approach to the study of African fiction, Cumpsty fills an important gap in the field of African literary studies. Her nuanced and thought-provoking close readings that follow are a joy to experience.’ Ryan Topper, Western Oregon University, USA

• DedicationAcknowledgements PrefaceIntroduction: The Sacred and Postsecular in African FictionChapter One: Ritualization and the Limits of the Body in Chris Abani’s and Yvonne Vera’s FictionChapter Two: The Sacred in the City: Pedestrian mapping in the work of Phaswane Mpe, Teju Cole and Ivan VladislavićChapter Three: Cultivation, Alterity and Excess: The Sublime in J. M. Coetzee’s Boyhood and Marlene van Niekerk’s AgaatChapter Four: Postsecular Poetics in World LiteratureCodaReference List