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Four meditations on the search for grace amidst terror

1999; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 19; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/10462939909366262

1479-5760

Stephen John Hartnett,

Violence, Religion, and Philosophy

This essay examines how grace confronts terror, how it expresses both the personal and political consequences of living amidst terror, and how it seeks to create alternative visions of provisional eloquence. As an introductory historical framework, it considers the responses of Hanns Eisler, Woody Guthrie, and Joseph Welch to McCarthyism. The essay then explores a philosophical framework for understanding terror via Theodor Adorno's Aesthetic Theory and Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life, and a poetic framework for approaching grace via Anne Carson's writings on classical poetry. The essay concludes with an extended example of provisional eloquence viz an analysis of Peter Dale Scott's 1988 Coming to Jakarta: A Poem About Terror. These four sections serve simultaneously as historically‐specific case studies of the possibilities and obligations of redemptive aesthetics, and as parts of a studiously loose yet deeply interwoven meditation on the larger theme of searching for grace amidst terror.