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Abstract

The chapter examines some of the current repositionings of the questions of agency, equality and new millennium reconsiderations of the spiritual in a posthuman light, from a theoretical perspective informed by posthuman/transhuman theory (Haraway, Braidotti, Thomsen, Ferrando), transhuman theology (Gramont, Graham), and memory studies (Halbwachs). This inquiry draws on a comparison between David Mitchell’s 2004 novel Cloud Atlas and the film directed by Tom Tykwer and Andy and Lana Wachowski (2012). My aim is to show that the emergence of posthuman agency in its most enhanced, divine form in Cloud Atlas is used to revise the historical process of an egalitarian consciousness-raising from a third millennium perspective.

In: Religious Narratives in Contemporary Culture
This book starts with a consideration of a 1997 issue of the New Yorker that celebrated fifty years of Indian independence, and goes on to explore the development of a pattern of performance and performativity in contemporary Indian fiction in English (Salman Rushdie, Arundhati Roy and Vikram Chandra). Such fiction, which constructs identity through performative acts, is built around a nomadic understanding of the self and implies an evolution of narrative language towards performativity whereby the text itself becomes nomadic. A comparison with theatrical performance (Peter Brook’s Mahabharata and Girish Karnad’s ‘theatre of roots’) serves to support the argument that in both theatre and fiction the concepts of performance and performativity transform classical Indian mythic poetics. In the mythic symbiosis of performance and storytelling in Indian tradition within a cyclical pattern of estrangement from and return to the motherland and/or its traditions, myth becomes a liberating space of consciousness, where rigid categories and boundaries are transcended.
In: Religious Narratives in Contemporary Culture
In: Religious Narratives in Contemporary Culture
In: Religious Narratives in Contemporary Culture
Religious Narratives in Contemporary Culture: Between Cultural Memory and Transmediality analyses the meaning and role of religion in western cultural practices in the twenty-first century. This inquiry situates itself at the intersection between cultural memory studies and the transmedial study of narrative and art. Contributors focus on genres which have yet to receive significant critical attention within the field, including speculative fiction films and television series, autobiographical prose and poetry, and action-adventure video games. In this time of crisis, where traces of religious thinking still persist in the presence or absence of religious faith, this volume’s collective look into some of their cultural embodiments is necessary and timely. The volume is addressed primarily to scholars and students interested in intersections between religious and cultural studies, revisions of traditional religious narratives, literature as a space of reflection on today's world, contemporary media studies and remediation.

Maria-Sabina Draga Alexandru's editing work in the last stages of this volume was supported by a grant of the Romanian Ministry of Education and Research, CNCS – UEFISCDI, project number PN-III-P3-3.6-H2020-0035.