https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0709-6776
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Arvind-Pal S Mandair, Unsayable word: gurbāni, Punjabi poetry, and the postsecular impulse, Literature and Theology, Volume 38, Issue 2, June 2024, Pages 155–164, https://doi.org/10.1093/litthe/frae022
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Abstract
This essay examines some limitations of the critical framework deployed by theorists of modern secular Punjabi literature to establish the distinct of this genre and the nature of secular poetic consciousness in contradistinction from so called “medieval theocentric” literary genres such as gurbāni—better known as Sikh scripture. An important consequence of this reclassification of the “secular modern” versus “medieval sacred” literature, was the de-ontologization of the notion of Word (śabad), achieved by disinvesting the concept of śabad of connection to reality, self and world-making. I offer a different way of reading genres such as gurbāni which not only defy oppositional categories such as premodern/modern, secular/religious, but equally caution us from straightforward identification with the post-secular, post-modern, or post-human.
