In order to fulfill these goals, the project consisted of the following three stages, corresponding to its objectives:
1. Through analyses of contemporary German-language novels, the project concluded that while postsecular texts often deliberately obscure the semantic border between the religious and the secular, the texts simultaneously place themselves in an explicitly religious tradition through the use of religiously charged topoi such as miracle, enchantment, conversion, or theodicy – topoi which have played an important role in the history of secularization, connecting texts and debates with older historical phases which also drew on these topoi, especially the period around 1800.
The first objective has been realized through the structure and outline of the Fellow's monograph, a detailed and comprehensive investigation of a broad range of literary texts from Christian, Jewish, Muslim, atheist and agnostic authors, which constitutes the main output of the BeSec project. The monograph shows how this deliberate blurring and artful narrative negotiation fosters a reflective mode of reading, creating space for an empathic engagement with positions and world views that do not congrue with readers’ individual religious or secular identities. While political discussion about the role of religion in secular societies is often sectarian, postsecular literature and art may thus function as media of dialogue and understanding.
2. From a historical point of view, the Fellow's research into the recurrent use, but also the creative rewriting of these topoi draws on the German scholarship of conceptual history. Her results offer new, groundbreaking insights not only into the role of religion in present-day literature and art, but also into the history of secularization and into the scholarly methods that have emerged out of that history and that are now used to study it.
This methodology is comprehensively described in the first two chapters of the Fellow's book manuscript. It also constitutes the core argument of two scholarly articles.
3. In a systematic perspective, the BeSec project questioned the position and relevance of faith and spirituality in cultural analysis and in the humanities more generally. It concluded that the “postsecular” concept can serve as an heuristic not only for challenging humanities scholars to think beyond the religious-secular dichotomy and to recognize religion and secularity as overlapping dimensions of places, objects, rituals, discourses, and practices, but also for reflecting on how researchers’ attitudes and convictions have shaped the lenses of religion and secularity through which these places, objects, and discourses are viewed.
The third goal was realized through the international, interdisciplinary conference (Post)Secular: Imagining Faith in Contemporary Cultures, which Dr Horstkotte organized together with Dr James Hodkinson from the hosting institution, the School of Modern Languages and Cultures at the University of Warwick.
