Profane: sacrilegious expression in a multicultural age

Description

Cover; Title; Copyright; Contents; List of Illustrations; Foreword; Introduction: On the Modern Confluence of Blasphemy, Free Expression, and Hate Speech; PART ONE. CREATING SPACE FOR SACRILEGIOUS EXPRESSION; 1. Thick-Skinned Tolerance: Satire, the Sacred, and the Rise of the Modern; 2. The Productive Obscene: Philip Roth and the Profanity Loop; 3. Defaced: The Art of Blaspheming Texts and Images in the West; PART TWO. SACRILEGE AND DEMOCRATIC DEVELOPMENT; 4. Blasphemy and Free Thought in Jacksonian America: The Case of Abner Kneeland 5. Secular Blasphemies: Symbolic Offense in Modern DemocracyPART THREE. CIVILITY, THE SACRED, AND HUMAN RIGHTS; 6. Muslim Political Theology: Defamation, Apostasy, and Anathema; 7. Protesting Sacrilege: Blasphemy and Violence in Muslim-Majority States; 8. The Indonesian Blasphemy Act: A Legal and Social Analysis; 9. Profound Offense and Religion in Secular Democracies: An Australian Perspective; 10. Blasphemy versus Incitement: An International Law Perspective; Afterword: Blasphemy beyond Modernism.;"Humans have been uttering profane words, and incurring the consequences, for millennia. But recent events--from the violence that followed Danish newspaper cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed, in 2006, to the furor over The Innocence of Muslims, in 2012--indicate that blasphemy has reemerged in explosive transnational form. In an age when electronic media transmit offense as rapidly as profane images and texts are produced, blasphemy is bracingly relevant again in our multicultural world. In this volume, a distinguished cast of international scholars examines the profound difficulties blasphemy raises for modern societies. Contributors examine how the sacred is formed and maintained, how sacrilegious expression is conceived and regulated, and how the resulting conflicts resist easy adjudication. Their studies range across art, history, politics, law, literature, and theology. Because of the global nature of the problem, the volume's approach is comparative, examining blasphemy across cultural and geopolitical boundaries"--;"Humans have been uttering profane words, and incurring the consequences, for millennia. But recent events-from the violence that followed Danish newspaper cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed, in 2006, to the furor over The Innocence of Muslims, in 2012-indicate that blasphemy has reemerged in explosive transnational form. In an age when electronic media transmit offense as rapidly as profane images and texts are produced, blasphemy is bracingly relevant again in our multicultural world. In this volume, a distinguished cast of international scholars examines the profound difficulties blasphemy raises for modern societies. Contributors examine how the sacred is formed and maintained, how sacrilegious expression is conceived and regulated, and how the resulting conflicts resist easy adjudication. Their studies range across art, history, politics, law, literature, and theology. Because of the global nature of the problem, the volume's approach is comparative, examining blasphemy across cultural and geopolitical boundaries"-- Cover Title Copyright Contents List of Illustrations Foreword Introduction: On the Modern Confluence of Blasphemy, Free Expression, and Hate Speech PART ONE. CREATING SPACE FOR SACRILEGIOUS EXPRESSION 1. Thick-Skinned Tolerance: Satire, the Sacred, and the Rise of the Modern 2. The Productive Obscene: Philip Roth and the Profanity Loop 3. Defaced: The Art of Blaspheming Texts and Images in the West PART TWO. SACRILEGE AND DEMOCRATIC DEVELOPMENT 4. Blasphemy and Free Thought in Jacksonian America: The Case of Abner Kneeland 5. Secular Blasphemies: Symbolic Offense in Modern DemocracyPART THREE. CIVILITY, THE SACRED, AND HUMAN RIGHTS 6. Muslim Political Theology: Defamation, Apostasy, and Anathema 7. Protesting Sacrilege: Blasphemy and Violence in Muslim-Majority States 8. The Indonesian Blasphemy Act: A Legal and Social Analysis 9. Profound Offense and Religion in Secular Democracies: An Australian Perspective 10. Blasphemy versus Incitement: An International Law Perspective Afterword: Blasphemy beyond Modernism.