Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
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TY - JOUR
T1 - The map, the territory, and the impossibility of painting a priest
AU - Diken, Bulent
PY - 2016/11/1
Y1 - 2016/11/1
N2 - The article focuses on the relationship between capitalism and religion through an allegorical double reading of social theory and fiction. Theoretically it discusses capitalism as religion. Empirically it analyses Michel Houellebecq’s recent novel The Map and the Territory. Houellebecq’s is a late modern world in which capital tends to replace, like a map, the actual experience of life, the territory. A world in which everything is modelled on the logic of businesses and capitalism has taken the place of religion. However, The Map and the Territory distils the relationship between religion and capitalism anew, and this relationship, together with the political questions it invites, is the leitmotiv for the considerations here.
AB - The article focuses on the relationship between capitalism and religion through an allegorical double reading of social theory and fiction. Theoretically it discusses capitalism as religion. Empirically it analyses Michel Houellebecq’s recent novel The Map and the Territory. Houellebecq’s is a late modern world in which capital tends to replace, like a map, the actual experience of life, the territory. A world in which everything is modelled on the logic of businesses and capitalism has taken the place of religion. However, The Map and the Territory distils the relationship between religion and capitalism anew, and this relationship, together with the political questions it invites, is the leitmotiv for the considerations here.
KW - capitalism
KW - Houllebecq
KW - profanation
KW - religion
KW - the map and the territory
U2 - 10.1177/0896920514551209
DO - 10.1177/0896920514551209
M3 - Journal article
VL - 42
SP - 1109
EP - 1124
JO - Critical Sociology
JF - Critical Sociology
SN - 0896-9205
IS - 7-8
ER -