Alternative afterlives : secular expeditions to the undiscovered country

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This thesis investigates texts which are argued to construct secular imaginings of the afterlife. Assuch my argument is built around the way in which these texts engage with death, whilesimultaneously engaging with the religious concepts which have come to give shape to theafterlife in an increasingly secular West. The texts included are: Captain Stormfield's Visit toHeaven (1907), Mark Twain's unfinished reimagining of Christian salvation; Kneller's HappyCampers (1998) by Etgar Keret, its filmic adaptation Wristcutters: A Love Story (2006), as wellas the Norwegian film A Bothersome Man (2006), which all strip the afterlife of its traditionalfurnishings; Philip Pullman's acclaimed His Dark Materials trilogy (1995, 1997, 2000) in whichhe wages a fictional war with the foundations of Western religious tradition; and finally WilliamGibson's Neuromancer (1984) and Feersum Endjinn (1994) by Iain M. Banks, two sciencefiction texts which speculate on the afterlife of the future.These texts are so chosen and arranged to create a logical progression of secular projects, eachsubsequent afterlife reflecting a more extensive and substantial distantiation from religioustradition. Twain's text utilises a secularising satire of heaven, and draws attention to theirrational notions which pervade this concept. In the process, however, it embarks on the utopianendeavour of reconstructing and improving the Christian afterlife of salvation. In Chapter 3, thenarratives under investigation discard the surface details of religious afterlives, and reimagine thehereafter against a contemporary backdrop. I argue that they conform, in several significantways, to the mode of magical realism. Furthermore, despite their disinclination for evidentreligiosity, these texts nevertheless find problematic encounters when they break this mode andinvoke higher authorities to intervene in the unfolding narratives. Chapter 4 focuses on PhilipPullman's high fantasy trilogy, which enacts open war between the secular and religious anduses the afterlife as an integral part of the secularising agenda. With the literal battle lines drawn,this text depicts a clear distinction between what is included as secular, or renounced asreligious. Finally, I turn to science fiction, where the notion of the virtual afterlife of the futurehas come to be depicted, with its foundations in human technologies instead of divine agencies.They rely on the ideology of posthumanism in a reimagining of the afterlife which constitutes a new apocalyptic tradition, a virtual kingdom of heaven populated by the virtual dead.Ultimately, I identify three broad, delineating aspects of secularity which become evident inthese narratives and the meaningful distinctions they draw between religious and secularideologies. I find further significance in the way in which these texts engage with the veryfoundations on which fictions of the afterlife have been constructed. Throughout these texts, Ithen find a secular approach to death as a developing alternative to that which has traditionallybeen propagated by religion.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University