A01=Elayne Oliphant
aesthetics
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anthropology
art
Author_Elayne Oliphant
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Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=WZ
catholicism
christianity
COP=United States
crypt
curation
Delivery_Delivery within 10-20 working days
display
enlightenment
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feminism
fetishism
france
heritage
history
icons
immigration
inequality
islam
judaism
Language_English
materiality
medieval
monastery
museum
nationalism
nave
notre dame
PA=Available
paris
presence
Price_€50 to €100
privilege
PS=Active
public space
religion
renaissance
sacristy
secularism
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spirituality
vaults
Product details
- ISBN 9780226731124
- Weight: 513g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 16 Jul 2021
- Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
- Language: English
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France, officially, is a secular nation. Yet Catholicism is undeniably a monumental presence, defining the temporal and spatial rhythms of Paris. At the same time, it often fades into the background as nothing more than “heritage.” In a creative inversion, Elayne Oliphant asks in The Privilege of Being Banal what, exactly, is hiding in plain sight? Could the banality of Catholicism actually be a kind of hidden power?
Exploring the violent histories and alternate trajectories effaced through this banal backgrounding of a crucial aspect of French history and culture, this richly textured ethnography lays bare the profound nostalgia that undergirds Catholicism’s circulation in nonreligious sites such as museums, corporate spaces, and political debates. Oliphant’s aim is to unravel the contradictions of religion and secularism and, in the process, show how aesthetics and politics come together in contemporary France to foster the kind of banality that Hannah Arendt warned against: the incapacity to take on another person’s experience of the world. A creative meditation on the power of the taken-for-granted, The Privilege of Being Banal is a landmark study of religion, aesthetics, and public space.
Exploring the violent histories and alternate trajectories effaced through this banal backgrounding of a crucial aspect of French history and culture, this richly textured ethnography lays bare the profound nostalgia that undergirds Catholicism’s circulation in nonreligious sites such as museums, corporate spaces, and political debates. Oliphant’s aim is to unravel the contradictions of religion and secularism and, in the process, show how aesthetics and politics come together in contemporary France to foster the kind of banality that Hannah Arendt warned against: the incapacity to take on another person’s experience of the world. A creative meditation on the power of the taken-for-granted, The Privilege of Being Banal is a landmark study of religion, aesthetics, and public space.
Elayne Oliphant is assistant professor of anthropology and religious studies at New York University.
