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SUMMARY: 'Navid Kermani’s Poetic Hermeneutics of Religious Experience or
 \; How the Failed Attempt to find a Hermeneutics of Religious Experiences 
 Shaped Kermani’s Literature.' - Johannes Kleine\, Freie Universität\, B
 erlin
DTSTART:20140224T170000Z
DTEND:20140224T183000Z
UID:TALK50174@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Erica Wickerson
DESCRIPTION:Navid Kermani finds similar\, if not even identical\, ideas ab
 out self-restraint as self-steering and as a means to lose oneself in myst
 ical primal grounds in Farīd al-Dīn ʿAṭṭār’s poetic works (as a 
 scholar)\, in Neil Young’s discography (as a father trying to pass on fe
 elings of exaltation that paradoxically find expression as composure)\, in
  ecstatic collective euphoria (as a football aficionado) and in Hölderlin
 ’s dense poetry and Jean Paul’s boundary-extending prose-labyrinths (a
 s an inspired reader). Despite a striving for these states of ‘Ent-Ichun
 g’ or ‘deselfment’\, Kermani always remains on a particularly high l
 evel of intellectual reflection. Serendipitously\, Kermani finds his own w
 ay of creatively adapting these complex ideas to various discursive conste
 llations in literature. In doing so\, he does not only blur common discour
 se-boundaries semantically (e.g. by emphasizing the political challenges o
 f transcultural processes or demanding for a political environment that al
 lows non-essentialist self-identification) but also poetically.\n\n\n\nIn 
 his scholarly as well as in his essayistic work\, he applies a hermeneutic
 s of approximation when it comes to others’ intense religious or spiritu
 al experiences. He juxtaposes various attempts to describe such encounters
  as a heuristic tool\, nevertheless leaving no doubt about his considered 
 opinion that every attempt to fully communicate them is condemned to failu
 re. By inter-relating such descriptions with poetic or mystical phenomena\
 , Kermani’s hermeneutics of approximation become a model for the constru
 ction of his very unique poetic programme. In his novel Dein Name\, for in
 stance\, he compiles an archive of aesthetic endeavours to express the unp
 ronounceable\, and in doing so he reveals that the inner structural analog
 y between aesthetic and religious primal grounds is still working in post-
 secular artefacts. Since a hermeneutics of religious experience is therefo
 re impossible to Kermani\, the apparently purposeless attempt to neverthel
 ess going on to try is both the basis of artistic processes in general and
  a means of worship.\n\n\n\nI will show that Kermani uses structural analo
 gies elaborately as a poetic device in texts that try an approximation to 
 religious experiences with the help of aesthetic means. There are two main
  kinds of experiences in this respect: First\, the texts want to approxima
 te the mystic experience of self-aggrandizement through self-transcendence
  or self-annihilation. Secondly\, he ‘redescribes’  (Luhmann) literari
 ly a religious consciousness of a world that is completely pervaded with a
  structuring force. Kermani uses three basic means to approximate those as
 pects\, all of which are grounded in his own academic findings on other’
 s faiths: First\, he uses negations as a hermeneutic (as well as a poetic)
  means. Secondly\, he applies the paradox\, a typically mystical instrumen
 t through all times and confessions. And thirdly\, Kermani approximates th
 e ineffable core of what is supposed to be expressed by relating the attem
 pt to do so to similar efforts of others. Kermani is not trying to become 
 Shaftesbury’s second maker\; on the contrary\, Kermani is worshiping God
  by attempting to recreate God’s creation poetically.
LOCATION:326 Raised Faculty Building
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