Book contents
- American Literature in Transition, 1876–1910
- Nineteenth-Century American Literature in Transition
- American Literature in Transition, 1876–1910
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Series Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Chronology
- Introduction
- Part I Transitive States
- Chapter 1 Radical Pasts, Radical Futures
- Chapter 2 Unsettled Colonialisms
- Chapter 3 Secularism, Race, and Sex
- Chapter 4 Sex and the Suicide Plot
- Chapter 5 Virtual Subjects
- Part II Post-Reconstruction Aesthetics
- Part III Old Materialisms
- Part IV Immanent Techniques
- Index
Chapter 3 - Secularism, Race, and Sex
from Part I - Transitive States
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 August 2022
- American Literature in Transition, 1876–1910
- Nineteenth-Century American Literature in Transition
- American Literature in Transition, 1876–1910
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Series Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Chronology
- Introduction
- Part I Transitive States
- Chapter 1 Radical Pasts, Radical Futures
- Chapter 2 Unsettled Colonialisms
- Chapter 3 Secularism, Race, and Sex
- Chapter 4 Sex and the Suicide Plot
- Chapter 5 Virtual Subjects
- Part II Post-Reconstruction Aesthetics
- Part III Old Materialisms
- Part IV Immanent Techniques
- Index
Summary
In April 2019, in one of those unpredicted freaks of internet uptake, a single-frame cartoon achieved a swift small-scale virality. Drawn by “Napoleon / Anthony Bonaparte the Suburban,” it took direct aim at the province of Quebec’s proposed “secularism law.” This law, “Bill 21,” dictated that all public employees would be banned from wearing religious symbols at work – though, as the Montreal Gazette observed, “the law does not define what a religious symbol is.”1 Nevertheless, in a turn that will be familiar to anyone who has paid attention to European legal encounters with the veil, the proposed law “bans people from delivering or receiving services with their faces covered from certain government agencies.” Some religions, it seems, are more unsecular than others.
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- Information
- American Literature in Transition, 1876–1910 , pp. 59 - 77Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2022