1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910786616003321

Titolo

Profane : sacrilegious expression in a multicultural age / / edited by Christopher S. Grenda, Chris Beneke, David Nash ; foreword by Martin E. Marty

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Oakland, California : , : University of California Press, , 2014

©2014

ISBN

0-520-95822-5

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (365 p.)

Classificazione

POL010000SOC039000

Disciplina

179/.5

Soggetti

Blasphemy

Swearing

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Includes index.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Front matter -- Contents -- Illustrations -- Foreword -- Introduction: On the Modern Confluence of Blasphemy, Free Expression, and Hate Speech -- 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 -- 4. Blasphemy and Free Thought in Jacksonian America: The Case of Abner Kneeland -- 5. Secular Blasphemies: Symbolic Offense in Modern Democracy -- 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 -- Contributors -- Index

Sommario/riassunto

Humans have been uttering profane words and incurring the consequences for millennia. But contemporary events-from the violence in 2006 that followed Danish newspaper cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed to the 2012 furor over the Innocence of Muslims video-indicate that controversy concerning blasphemy has reemerged in explosive transnational form. In an age when electronic



media transmit offense as rapidly as profane images and texts can be produced, blasphemy is bracingly relevant again. 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.