Born Again: Romanticism and Fundamentalism with Jeffrey Champlin (U Toronto Press, 2025)

0:00Welcome to the new books network. Hello everyone, welcome to another episode of new books, Network. This is your host, Mortezza Hajizadah. Today I'm honored to be speaking with Dr. Jeffrey Chaplin about his most recent book, which is called Born Again Romanticism and Fundamentals, which has been published in 2025 by Toronto University of Paris, University of Toronto of Rest. Dr. Jeffrey Chaplin is director of the learning commons and lecturer in the humanities at Bard College, Berlin. His research emphasizes connections with literature and political theory, and I've just this book is the perfect manifestation of that interconnection. Jeffrey, welcome to new books network. Thank you so much for having me, really appreciate this opportunity to talk about some of these ideas. Thank you. I myself did a PhD in English literature and my area of focus was romanticism, but I

1:05looked at it from a completely different perspective from where you come from. And I was really interested in a topic of the book and I'm really excited to be speaking about it with you. But before we start that with, Kenis, just very briefly introduce yourself and tell us about your academic background, which is a political theory, how you're going to that area. Sure. I studied German literature and my approach and I think my interest was that this field allowed a kind of interdisciplinary at the time. Of course, all of these important German philosophers, but also literary aspects and you can never avoid political aspects. So this was a way that I found to establish a kind of scholarly grounding, although even in my core studies and early articles, I was interested in comparative dimensions.

2:09And so following my PhD, I started with a post doctoral position at the Hanar and Center at Bard College in New York. And that was they were interested in the use I was already thinking of making with our end in relation to literature. And so this was a kind of early seed of that book. And it was through that opportunity that I met faculty from Bard's new liberal arts college in Palestine, which was very instrumental in raising the questions of the book. And in fact, that's how I started. And kind of from there, just very briefly, I had the good fortune of coming to Bard College in Berlin in 2016 with a lighting up with a wave of immigration and have been involved with work with refugees and immigrants, support in addition to supportive writing and teaching

3:17literature and politics. The book itself has a fascinating inception story. And it kind of makes sense now that you talk about how you went to Bard College and it was around the time when there was a lot of immigration, there was question about fundamental and things like that. And then you're into the option begins the book in a classroom in Palestine. And that's where the student asks you why you're no romantic writing to ever go back to religion. And that was an important moment for you. Can you tell us how that moment lifted this book and more importantly, I'm keen to know more about the idea of romantic literature as a way to engage with and also understand modern fundamentalism? Because to a lot of people, it might be surprising how romantic literature has anything to do with fundamentalism. Yes, yes, thank you. That little anecdote that I start with guided my research and my teaching for I wanted to

4:21say a number of semesters, but really it's been years. It kind of changed my whole trajectory. I was starting a program there that was called literature in society. And the students have a kind of sixth sense of how power works, how exclusion works, but also positive size, how creativity and political action works through culture. So these students were very sincere to put them mildly. They took the work that we read often at this time I was teaching the classical connection with the French Revolution and thinking about times of change in politics and how literature and philosophy related to that. And we were doing a very kind of serious work about Kant, Hegel, Gertr, Mary Shelley.

5:31And this student asked this question in a there was a lot of debates going on about politics and literature and so forth. And then this hand goes up and there was just a very simple question. We've seen so many times in this class that the writers and the philosophers have a reason to lose their faith or to turn to the power of literature or art and then leave behind religion. But why do they never go back? Just as simple, just a few words. Why do they never go back? And the thing that really hooked me about this at the immediately I knew that there was a simple answer which I referenced briefly in the book which is in fact around the time of Napoleon's victory in Yehna around 1807 or so. Many of the Romantics do return to the Catholic Church, the Schlagels.

6:35In England words worth also colorage. They become religious. Many of those thinkers go back to the Catholic Church. I knew from how we were studying things that this wasn't what the student meant. The student was interested in a kind of loss of what they experienced as a kind of socially energizing connections between religion, literature, politics and philosophy. And she was kind of voicing for the class what happened to this line of thinking, this line of practice, this line of institutions that seemed to have disappeared. And so that really I really had to grapple with that. Another, I'm trying to set the scene here and I'm sometimes obsessed with the idea of definitions myself.

7:36And I think as I alluded to in the first in my previous question, most people here are fundamentals and they usually tend to think of 20th century. You push that original story all the way back to Lutheran, 1517 and also figures like Spanner. Even linking it, sometimes you're linking to Kant's own upbringing. Can it tell us how you define fundamentals and the scope of your research in this book? Why did you feel you had to go back 500 years ago to the reformation itself instead of treating fundamentals as a modern foreign or let's say a foreign phenomenon? The insight at which I will insist on calling it came as it was a kind of site based intuition. There was just a sense that fundamentalism in many ways had become the name for a reductive

8:41approach to religion and politics, one that's based on violence and closure and one that had captured a kind of religious spirit at the exclusion of many other options. And I wanted to see how did this happen? What was being covered over where there are other ways that the supposed secularization, narrative could have gone instead of kind of getting rid of dogma for reason and then fundamentalism kind of bouncing back afterwards where there are other ways that we could look at religious traditions, religious ideas, practices and values. So yes, so I started, you know, I was in the archive going a little bit back and a little bit more back and a little bit more back. And I was struck by how there is a common narrative in the German approach to romantic

9:47studies where Luther in his assertion on faith alone, redetermines the meaning of religion in terms of a subjectivity. It's individual, it's what's inside that's important. Of course, in contrast at that time to the corruption of the church. But there's a way of telling this in German Romanticism that that leads to the kind of inspired mad poet who has all of these visions and can make up beautiful, you know, can create beautiful language, also painting, music. But this is really something that is, can be, that is pointing, continually pointing inside. The freedom of the imagination comes at the expense of being cut off from the society. And I thought, well, this is not how we've been studying Romanticism in the context, even

10:52of the French Revolution, but with these students, not only in Palestine, but in many different iterations, students were interested in the connective aspects of Romanticism. And I noticed that in the pious, which are the people who came up with making born again the central way of talking about salvation shortly after Luther, there was an interesting kind of displacement. And I kind of saw another line and another, like another lens of approaching, approaching Romanticism that had that didn't, that did have kind of a wild creativity, but also was concerned about starting things new together, working together when, when Wesley takes things up from Schbennar and, and Piotist Millius, he talks about the social gospel.

11:56So that kind of allowed me to explain more some of these works like, a spouse part two, or Frankenstein, which weren't really like the, the core of the old Luther, say, like Luther the Wordsworth canon. So that was a scholarly way. I might need to answer the fundamentalism question a little more directly. And I'm key to go back to the title of the book, Born Again. It's, I think, rebert is really the heart of this old book. They are being born again, but you split it in two very different paths. One, you call fundamentalist rebirth and the other you call revivalism. Can you break down that distinction for us? I'm curious about the word, the word choice too, like revival. Revival comes loaded with religious connotation, camp meetings, great awakening, all those religious concepts.

12:59Why deliberately pull that word out of its religious home and repurpose it as your own rhetorical term? Thank you. Yes, the, I explain this in more steps in the book, but the, the kind of genealogy that's working here is that fundamentalism as a, as a political and religious title first came up actually in the 1920s. It was a group of reformed theologians were criticizing these fundamentalists that insisted on certain literal interpretations of, of religion. And they, these, these were people who had appropriated the born again rhetoric of the pietists in a exclusionary, literary, exclusionary literal way that was surprising, given, given

14:01the, given that pietism had largely been an influence for reformed theology that drew a lot on philology, working with texts, translating, it overlaps with literary studies a lot, but from the 18th, 19th centuries. So when I had this idea of like taking the born again phrase and logic in a different direction, I was interested in how the, the, the revivalism displaces some, some of, some of the, some, some important, but ossified terms in kind of romantic studies and philosophy around the time. So if you think about things like just as simple as reflection, consciousness in literature would be irony, romantic irony in, in Kant, which I also talk about transcendental subjectivity,

15:05there are a lot of these modes, these writers around this time are really fascinated with doubling, splitting. And it's a way to get perspective, get a kind of freedom and a kind of context, but it can also be kind of alienating and maddening to, to get lost in, in this kind of, you know, just like knowing with, like doubling your thoughts. So the, in the revivalism, I found a way to talk about the odd prevalence of stories around the romantic time that are also interested in, basically interested in rebirth, but they, they tell it in, they really, lean on the, the specificities of literature and fascinating and compelling ways. Often there's a, a creator who wants to, you know, to, to, has an idea of how things are

16:11going to go and it goes someplace else or someone misunderstands the instructions or, so a lot of, a lot of uses, uses of humor and that kind of mixed with morality. So the interesting thing I found when I traced it kind of Luther, the pietists to romantics through that loop was that it got some distance away from a moralistic reading of, of the, of the romantics and opened some other opportunities. Pomona College is widely regarded as one of the world's leading liberal arts colleges. Located in Southern California, Pomona is the founding member of the Claremont Colleges. Pomona combines a small college experience focused on undergraduate teaching with the advantages of a research university. Pomona is a small place with world class faculty and staff alongside creative and intellectually ambitious students. Pomona is currently hiring tenure track positions in computer science, politics with a specialty in race and ethnicity, environmental analysis, psychology, biology, English and dance.

17:17Political education is also hiring and the Pomona College Scholar in residence is also seeking a new pre-doctoral postdoctoral fellow in the social sciences and humanities. For detailed information about faculty employment opportunities, visit Pomona.edu and search faculty positions. That's Pomona.edu and just search faculty positions. Pomona College is one of the best colleges in the world. If you're looking for a new position, go and take a look at their offerings. Again, that's Pomona.edu and just search faculty positions. Another question that I have is kind of relevant to the previous one as well. You argue you are with a critical thought in the West. You know, has tended to start with the Enlightenment. I need to draw, I guess, lots of works, positive books written about that. To treat religion as something to live behind.

18:18But I think more recent, there has been a few books. I don't have any of them in the top of my head. I can't remember, but I do remember that they're writing more critically by the Enlightenment and how that whole project of secularization and leaving religion behind was wrong. But I'm keen to know how, from your perspective, how do the romantic, especially personally or shlagel treated the subject? And why does imagination matter so much? Poetic imagination, let's say, when reason is honorable to move people to act? Absolutely. Yes, of course, you're right there. There has been a whole movement since at least the mid-90s talking about a return to religion. And I'm influenced by that in this work. And there has been very transient critiques of enlightenment going back to Nietzsche and

19:21Adorno and so forth. But I wanted to tap in a little bit to the, I think, what is still kind of a cultural, this would also be related to like maybe America, kind of like a certain sectors of America, certain West Europe, especially Western Europe, lingering at least faith in basically just understanding structures and kind of calculation, a kind of sense that we don't need all of these handed down traditions. We don't need someone telling us what to do upscurly. Even if these, even if moral stories in religion might have a meaning, you could describe it more neutrally, more, you know, without all of the kind of obscurity of religion.

20:26And especially in the U.S., I was kind of fascinated by that. This goes in American politics between the Democrats and Republicans while Obama was very inspirational and spiritual in his own right, kind of that line of politics is kind of like, you know, like, just let's just figure out, like, where's the distortion in the economy? Where's the distortion in the health insurance? Can we kind of fix it? And on the other, you know, the Republicans have these wild narratives of being born again and messianism now with religious connotations of AI. So I was kind of wondering, like, maybe, could we perhaps be missing something in the, in that part of society that is very well meaning, but goes on the side of calculation that

21:26seems to leave out motivation in a way that, yeah, that leaves out the motivation. And so that's why the, that's why I make such an emphasis on the imagination in the romantic because, you know, Percy Shelley is already talking about this kind of the tibidness of the thinker. It's also a problem just of the thinker that's so busy stepping back that they have problems moving forward. But the idea that the imagination would precisely not be just an ornament or an amusement, but it would be something that is inspiring on a larger, on a larger level. And this even, and that's why I do, I do a kind of deep dive into this part of contour.

22:28And he talks about the transcendental unity of perception and the role of imagination. Basically, the important thing is that even for Kant who's so important for the Romantics, imagination is something that's, it's working through a shared vision. It's working a fresh on a shared vision of the whole, but at the same time, it also hits and is very cognizant of a limit. So the whole that it, that it projects the totality, the universality, which it wants and projects and which has meanings for reason and morality and politics is not something that, that gets stuck. And that's what I wanted to kind of emphasize with the imagination where I saw the, the countering kind of born again version. They're also very imaginative in their own ways, but I describe it as a kind of doubling

23:30down on a, on the trauma of modernity. So like, you know, the institutions have been lost. We can't trust anyone and we're just going to say it's like this and kick out everyone that doesn't agree with us. The, the Romantics and through litter, tram philosophy, I think have an expansive vision, but it's one that can, that can also remain dynamic and that also is up to, it's up for encounters with, with, with, with what's outside with the people, with the environment, with the things that we don't see that we know, you know, the things that we're doing that we don't see that we're doing. I know that part of the book that I really, really enjoyed was the fact that you pair to really relevant countries in this project. So you pair, you put German and England on side by side as these two Protestant cultures, you know, they're moving on parallel tracks and you point to some surprising personal

24:32details to make the case. You have, uh, counts, parents with strict, uh, pities, you know, go with, go, Taser, um, I'm actually describing itself as someone who was saved by Jesus in letters that, you wrote them, they were discovered, they tried. Um, and, and in England side, you've got, uh, uh, methodism shaping what, what's what and Blake. Uh, I'm keen to know why putting these two national traditions side by side, let you, um, see what you couldn't really see by studying either one alone in separation. Thank you. That is, um, that really gets to, to something important about the book because, um, the, I, I think the German romanticism, again, to go back to the, the cliche, which isn't totally wrong. It really, it really does celebrate dreams, uh, a kind of, um, it's hard.

25:40That's also, this was also appropriated later politically in dangerous ways, but there's, there's kind of, uh, to, to me, you know, I, there's, there's something beautiful about the, the wild kind of dream like imagination that's taken seriously at the time of the German romantics and, um, the mists and the cliffs and, and the woods and, um, the monsters even, the graveyards, like all of this kind of thing. So I do, uh, I do work with that side and, and I tie it to the philosophical kind of idealism, uh, side of things, but it was very important. This came from basically from teaching Frankenstein, uh, in, in a kind of comparative romanticism class. It really brings in the material side. And that's what that's, it's in, it's in the Germans too when you look, but it's, it's, um, it's easier to look over.

26:41And the, the funny, the funny thing that really did it for me was that, um, Wesley, uh, the founder of Methodism, he actually was really interested in electricity and he got one of these early shock machines kind of, I think it was in, I think it was like one of the many inventions of Benjamin Franklin and he wrote a book about, about the healing power of electricity and he would have his followers kind of go around and heal people through little shocks. And then once they imagine, you know, once, who knows, maybe once they were healed. Anyway, after the shock treatment, then he would pitch them on his rebirth. So I thought it was, that was just such an interesting little hook of, uh, a kind of, um, uh, short circuit to stay with the metaphor between, um, you know, the, the idea and the material and this comes out so beautifully in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein where the, the, um, you know, the monster is too fast, too big. Uh, there's just no, there's a, there's a, there's a real world, but the, the, the, the

27:46creature just doesn't fit in. And so the, the combining and comparing the two traditions really allowed me to, to, to bring that out in it. Um, I, I should just to finish the loop. So, uh, the, the German side in its dreams, but when you connect it back to Kant, it really has a sense of a universality. So what I end up keeping is kind of the universal vision from the German side, plus the disruptive material side from the, from the English, uh, um, side of things. And again, uh, going back to literature, which is my law. Yeah. Frankenstein or false, um, both, both of them are both these stories are usually, uh, taught to students or the general public as cautionary tales. Don't play God. Here is what happens if you do, but you're reading them almost the opposite way as allegories of moral birth. Um, to me, the Frankenstein kids were so fascinating.

28:49Um, and again, two figures here really anchor this for you. Uh, you have, I could be mispronounced, my name, uh, homie, you know, homie, nucleus enforced and also Frankenstein's creature. Both of them, you point out are always somehow wrong size. There to be too small, never feeding, never, never feeding, uh, where they land. Um, and what, what's that, because it's a, what's that theme of out of place, that actually, um, is telling us about rebate. And how do you read these two stories as rebate stories rather, more rebate rather than cautionary tales? Thank you. The, the way that, that you describe it there really, it really helps to think of it clearly, which is that, uh, these works of literature are seeing more than, um,

29:49they're, they're kind of ex, they're, they're, they're saying, I, I see, they're saying more than the intention or they're, they're explaining the repercussions of attempts to do a kind of exclusionary rebirth or a desire for control. So, yeah, one could and, and, and many have, of course, read, foused as the kind of, uh, megalomaniac, um, he wants to, uh, he, he's going to have everything, he's going to change the whole in foused too. He's even doing, yeah, working with downs and redoing the whole environment and society. And of course, Frankenstein, he has this idea that he's going to create a, a perfect race. And then they're going to be so grateful for what he did. Um, but the funny thing, the, yeah, it is, it's, it's humorous and insightful. The, the way that the plans go wrong and the way that, uh,

30:50a, a, a monkelysis kind of an old, uh, old motif from the Middle Ages, the girth to picks up on, but it's like an attempt was it, there was an attempt by the alchemist to create a human, it kind of in a bottle that's on the cover of the book and they would put together different ingredients and, and stones and try to light things, uh, um, you know, fire and so forth. Um, but in, it's, it's interesting that in, in foused, um, the second part of foused, there's a, so it catches assistant Wagner makes the, makes this homunculus. It actually works, but he's confined, confined to the glass vile. So there's, it's almost like there's, um, uh, a remnant of the artificiality that creates him. And so he flies around with his glass vile and they go back to ancient, creased, nap talks with philosophers and so forth. Um, and there's a moment where they say, you know, he's only half born.

31:51And I think, uh, in, in, in this moment, the kind of, um, madness of foused to want to, to leave everything behind and start a new and be eternally young is, uh, um, is, is ironized, but it's more than that. It's more like it's kind of, uh, showing, yes, it's, and this would be a, I guess the reason I would disagree with a simple limit, moral limit reason. It's, it's not that we really can undo our attempts to, um, create ourselves, create our environment. It's about what happens when we're in this mode of, of thought, mode of living. And how does, how to, um, how to live with it, how to work with it. Um, it makes me think that I, for a long time, I would say like rebirth, it's the important thing is that rebirth has a liberatory aspect or self creation, which is, you know, like everybody talks about all the, you know, marks all the way to

32:54phenomenon and so forth. But I don't, I mean, it's basically like we're in this, at least since the agricultural revolution probably farther, we've been creating the environment and creating ourselves, but we haven't been able, I think up till now, we're not able to, see, um, you know, we can't see clearly between our actions and what's being created. So these stories kind of have that, uh, intuition and beautiful way of, of telling, um, what goes wrong and the, the one last, um, note on the Frankenstein, which is the most important. So I, I especially slowed down on this part where, um, the Frankenstein, the scientist and his creature are a backup in the Alps and they, they make it, they have an agreement. So they're like, well, maybe, you know, he doesn't really come out and say it, but it's basically like, I'm sorry, I, I, I was crazy and made you, uh, not to fit in this world and then the creature would be like, I'm sorry for killing

33:56your family and let's, uh, I will go, it's like, I will go to South America. And so there's a kind of like, um, for a moment, he really talks with the one that you can't talk to, uh, the one who has been violent, the one that doesn't have any place. And of course it falls apart later in, in the book, but I thought that this was, uh, something that, that could be learned. Pomona College is widely regarded as one of the world's leading liberal arts colleges located in Southern California. Pomona is the founding member of the Claremont Colleges, working at Pomona combines a small college experience focused on undergraduate teaching with the advantages of a research university. Pomona is a small place with world class faculty and staff alongside creative and intellectually ambitious students. Pomona is currently hiring tenure track positions in computer science, politics with a specialty in race and ethnicity, environmental analysis, psychology, biology, English and dance. Physical education is also hiring and the Pomona College Scholar in residence is also

35:00seeking a new pre-doctoral postdoctoral fellow in the social sciences and humanities. For detailed information about faculty employment opportunities, visit Pomona.edu and search faculty positions. That's Pomona.edu and just search faculty positions. Pomona College is one of the best colleges in the world. If you're looking for a new position, go and take a look at their offerings. Again, that's Pomona.edu and just search faculty positions. From when I was reading the book to be honest, um, I mean before I started reading the book, um, I obviously knew that there were some interactions with politics, but I didn't really expect to read in a book about romanticism to read more, to read about, um, onets and also their data. But it'd be beautiful to bring these, um, um, critics into into their argument. Two heavyweight thinkers, let's say, um, you have Hannah Arnett's idea of,

36:01uh, natality and also there is idea of survival. Both of them in different ways are wrestling with what you called loss of the world. I'm keen to know more about these two concepts and how do they help you respond to that loss, loss of the world? And what do you mean by that? When you describe human beings as being, um, you know, deficient beings. It sounds almost bleak, but I don't think that's quite what you're going for. Thank you. You know, it's interesting with these kind of projects, how, at least the way I have approached them, um, um, there's different threads that kind of, uh, come together to weave, to weave the investigation or different ingredients that make the spark fly. I could even, you know, I can, in a certain sense, the, the, another origin of the whole investigation

37:02is, uh, the way that Hannah Arnett talks about natality as a, as a kind of second birth. And there's a, in, um, in, um, in on violence, she, she critiques the, there's like a couple very straightforward pages where Sartre is writing about Fanon and saying the important thing is for Man to create himself. Uh, and, um, this is kind of within a revolutionary, uh, tradition, you know, kind of look at society, look at the exclusions, take responsibility for them, change the society, it will change the humanity, Fanon, you'll have a new, a new, a new, man, new political person in the post-colonial context. Um, but are, it's interesting that Arnett says, um, in, in that, in on violence, she says, this is a total mistake to think that Man can create themselves. But then in her great work, the human conditions, the, the one of the key ideas is natality. So I thought it seems like there's an alternate way. So here, like it's another alternative,

38:08where I was, uh, you know, on the one hand, I'm talking about, uh, kind of exclusionary fundamentalism versus kind of romantic revivalism and then, but this, this revivalism, which also would draw on Arnett and Derrida, would also be, uh, in, in some ways different, also even from a, a certain line of revolutionary, um, rebirth and the, the, the thing I liked about, um, Arnett is, she'll, she'll say things like, um, when we insert ourselves with word indeed into, um, in, into the world, it's like a second birth. So she has these kind of beautiful formulations where, okay, we're inserting ourselves in the world. This is an important concept for her because the world, um, I think it can be understood in a, in a modern sense in the terms of a kind of post, um, like after the, like modernity itself as a kind of trauma that, that Luther also saw. So

39:13it's not that there's, the world isn't necessarily rooted in history and tradition, but it needs to be constantly, uh, created together through action and, uh, language in, in her view, but it's, um, but it's important to remember the, the, the originary spark in, and, and to me, that goes back all the way to this idea of a sense of, of, um, of some kind of wholeness or totality that I think could be too often forgotten in a, in a kind of empirical sense of, here's what we are, here's where we are, and here's we can make things a little bit better if we do this or that. Um, for, for our, for our, our action is very important, but actions in the, like the context of, of the world which itself is, is fragile. Um, and, and Derrida comes, the, for, for him in his later work, he,

40:15he has this, there's a sense of a kind of loss of this is the, the, the reason I pair them here is that aren't in a sense is already in, there's like even though she's as profound and skeptical, think her all the way through, there's something of a kind of 20th century optimism, I would say that almost seems naive in retrospect, where in the last year of our ends of Derrida's life, he's talking about, uh, really the loss of the world. And this is actually, I mean, I, we can find this aren't in our into of course with, with, with World War II, but I was interested in how looking even into our current moment, continued divisions of ideas, loss of, um, such devastating loss of, of, of the, you know, environmental richness, social richness, equality. Derrida has a way to, to, um, talk about, uh, how, what do you do when, when the world is lost? And his emphasis

41:17is that when the world is lost, then that, um, put, put, it, it, it highlights all the more the responsibility you have for other people, because the frame or the, um, you know, the network or the structure that would have provided support has been lost. So we need to step out and do extra, I would say imagination, extra work to kind of bring things back together. Um, um, I, I, I love your response here. I think you brought together a lot of the themes or areas that you're interested in and you've been teaching about those topics as well. Um, I guess that's a perfect segue to my last question. Um, it's, um, towards the end of the book, you call for activists, aesthetics, uh, a new political politics, of the spiritual politics, let's say. Um, and I love that concept. Um, would be great if we could talk about that concept and also tell us

42:18what would it mean in practice, especially in practice for humanities, to take religion seriously without, you know, all the negative, uh, things that are attached to you without simply naive endorsing it. And I'm keen to know with this, um, spiritual policy with this activist aesthetics, this is spiritual politics. What do you hope readers will take from this book? Um, ideas about responsibility, which just meant responsibility towards our planet earth towards refugees towards other human beings, fellow human beings. Yes. Thank you. One of the early readers of the manuscript said that their favorite part was, was the conclusion. And that was the part I didn't have to revise or go back to the text, it kind of rang true as I, as I wrote it and, and I stand by it, even as just something that could be read on its own. Um, I, I have some specific, uh, approaches

43:26in the book and I, but I also have been kind of thinking, thinking about it in terms of teaching, um, and, and so forth. It, in the time since the book has kind of been in preparation and public, and publication, but to start with kind of just the wrap up from the book and its own terms. I, one of the main things to me that came out of it was the relationship between imagination and faith. And there was a, there's a kind of at least in, in the US, it's not even maybe as thematized in Western Europe, but in the US, a kind of, um, uh, interest in, uh, perplexity. How can people believe this or believe that versus, um, especially in a religious context versus, um, you know, a, a kind of rational skepticism where you're not fully inside of things. And, um, my, what I, what I would hope is that there would be a kind of, um, uh, uh, uh,

44:33an ex, an, a kind of, um, emphasis on, on, on the way that a common use of imagination itself has a binding power. And it's related to envisioning a world that one lives in and one acts in. And this kind of practice itself, I, I think, could be understood as, uh, as, as a kind of faith. Um, in fact, there's some, this is a small sign out in, in those fundamentalist writings of the, of those American, um, theologists of the 1920s, they go into these deep arguments about what's, what's just imagination and what's real belief and real faith when they argue over the scripture. And from that debate, I, I, I, I, I kind of struck me that, uh, uh, you know, they were taking seriously

45:37a kind of threat of imagination. But I see that as, uh, as, um, as something, as, as something positive. So then this doesn't mean that we still wouldn't look for patterns, calculate, add things up, you know, largely it seems like we have a pretty good sense of, uh, what's going on with, with society, even as things as complex as, as environmental crisis, you know, we can calculate these things and should, but I, I would argue and, um, propose a kind of, um, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, a renewed attention to, to something, something like, um, faith, common work that has this imaginary dimension. The, I guess the, the other part would be this, there's also a sense of, so this is related maybe to the, to the faith. There's a kind of universalism also, um, that,

46:39that, that really, reading religious and kind of religious themes in literature and philosophy can, can help us with and, um, it, it helps us have a, have a sense of, um, and it helps us not seed like the, the, the, the, the vision of the whole to, um, a, a fundamentalist and, um, who says, I believe this and I won't listen to anyone else and it doesn't matter what the real world impacts are. We can have also, um, a, a sense of engagement with, uh, with a, uh, uh, uh, you know, with a, with a, with a greater context, even populism which gets criticized for taking into account like the, on reason masses or something like that, um, maybe there could be like a space for a kind of risk taking a risk of working with whatever the totality is, um, in not in a calculated sense,

47:42but in a kind of sense of engaging with every, with everyone and everything. Um, and then the third one I had here was actually like actual, I'm, uh, I have some, in the meantime, I have some ways that this might actually connect with literature, but the way I put it in the last couple pages of this book is just, um, you know, just thinking about these rich traditions, uh, South American liberation theology, civil rights and black radical movements, uh, of course like Martin Luther King all the way to Cornell West, but also the, the, you know, engaged Buddhism. Um, and this was something I think which actually came up, uh, um, it was, it was emphasized beautifully in an earlier podcast of years of, well, woman who had written a book about, um, the forest and, in, the African novel and they were talking about a kind of, uh, moment after post colonialism and,

48:42and I've been thinking about that too with students and colleagues. Um, so of course noting the devastation of extraction, uh, brutal violence, uh, on other parts of the world, but maybe we can, uh, keep that and then also let's just start to bring in and take seriously. I think we have the conceptual, uh, resources, political and imaginative resources to take to, to see what these traditions are bringing in from all, from other cultures, from other parts of the world. Um, it's not that the, the West is all powerful and it's kind of mad destruction. Uh, we can make new alliances. We can try and understand if things don't work out. We can have even a sense of humor about, um, about mistakes. And, um, I think that that is kind of the way I've been developing all the, so these, these ideas, um, in recent classes, um, thinking about, um, you know, invocation or even

49:49incantation, calling, calling to, to hire powers in the way that this, um, reminds people of duties, but also creates community. It also allows you to kind of, uh, process things from the past. So, um, to kind of wrap it up, I would say that the, the literature gives, provides the tools of, I'll kind of taking an expanded sense of religion and philosophy, um, productively because literature allows you to kind of literary methods kind of allow you to see, um, you know, this is the irony, this is the exaggeration, this is the story we're in a story, but it's also a meaningful story for everyone and then has ethical impacts, environmental impacts and political impacts. Thank you very, very much. You're free for taking time to speak with us. What I really need to like

50:49by the book is personally, as someone who's the literature was, how you look at, uh, some of the most famous literary texts from a completely different perspective. Um, Frank Nesson was a good example of that. And at the same time, another part of the book that I enjoyed, aspect of the book was, um, as you described it to us in, was bringing together all these different critics and, um, theories, um, Hannah Annette and Jerry Dow, and relating it to the topic we were discussing in the book, which is fundamentalism, literature, political theory. Uh, thank you very much for taking the time for speaking us about this wonderful book. The book we just discussed was born again with mantises and our fundamentalism published by the University of Toronto Press. Thank you very much. Thank you. It was, it was a real honor. Thank you. Thank you for listening to this episode of the new books network. We are an academic podcast network with the mission of public education. If you like this episode, please share it with a friend and rate us on your preferred podcast

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