Outside the Fold

Conversion, Modernity, and Belief
Erscheinungsjahr 1998
ISBN: 978-0-691-05899-3
Verlag: Princeton University Press

Buch, Englisch, 328 Seiten, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 229 mm, Gewicht: 575 g

Outside the Fold is a radical reexamination of religious conversion. Gauri Viswanathan skillfully argues that conversion is an interpretive act that belongs in the realm of cultural criticism. To that end, this work examines key moments in colonial and postcolonial history to show how conversion questions the limitations of secular ideologies, particularly the discourse of rights central to both the British empire and the British nation-state. Implicit in such questioning is an attempt to construct an alternative epistemological and ethical foundation of national community. Viswanathan grounds her study in an examination of two simultaneous and, she asserts, linked events: the legal emancipation of religious minorities in England and the acculturation of colonial subjects to British rule. The author views these two apparently disparate events as part of a common pattern of national consolidation that produced the English state. She seeks to explain why resistance, in both cases, frequently took the form of religious conversion, especially to "minority" or alternative religions. Confronting the general characterization of conversion as assimilative and annihilating of identity, Viswanathan demonstrates that a willful change of religion can be seen instead as an act of opposition. Outside the Fold concludes that, as a form of cultural crossing, conversion comes to represent a vital release into difference.Through the figure of the convert, Viswanathan addresses the vexing question of the role of belief and minority discourse in modern society. She establishes new points of contact between the convert as religious dissenter and as colonial subject. This convergence provides a transcultural perspective not otherwise visible in literary and historical texts. It allows for radically new readings of significant figures as diverse as John Henry Newman, Pandita Ramabai, Annie Besant, and B. R. Ambedkar, as well as close studies of court cases, census reports, and popular English fiction. These varying texts illuminate the means by which discourses of religious identity are produced, contained, or opposed by the languages of law, reason, and classificatory knowledge. Outside the Fold is a challenging, provocative contribution to the multidisciplinary field of cultural studies.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Viswanathan, Gauri

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Religionswissenschaft Sonstige Religionen Sonstige Religionen: Spiritualität, Mystik
• Geisteswissenschaften Religionswissenschaft Religionswissenschaft Allgemein Religionsphilosophie, Philosophische Theologie
• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Religionsphilosophie, Philosophische Theologie
• Interdisziplinäres Wissenschaften Wissenschaft und Gesellschaft | Kulturwissenschaften Kulturwissenschaften

Inhaltsverzeichnis

List of illustrationsPrefaceAcknowledgmentsPt. 1Dissent and the Nation1Ch. 1Cross Currents3Ch. 2A Grammar of Dissent44Pt. 2Colonial Interventions73Ch. 3Rights of Passage: Converts' Testimonies75Ch. 4Silencing Heresy118Ch. 5Ethnographic Plots153Ch. 6Conversion Theosophy, and Race Theory177Pt. 3The Imagined Community209Ch. 7Conversion to Equality211Ch. 8Epilogue: The Right to Belief240AppendixThe Census of India, 1901255Notes261Select Bibliography297Index317