"Be always converting, and be always converted; turn us again, O Lord," Thomas Shepard urged his Cambridge congregation in the 1640s. This mandate coming down from American Puritan times to New Age seekers, to be "always converting, and always converted," places a radical burden on the self as site of renewal and world-change, even as conversion becomes surrounded by deconversion (rejection of prior beliefs) and counterconversion (turns to alternative beliefs) across global modernity.
Rob Wilson's reconceptualization of the American project of conversion begins with the story of Henry 'Opukaha'ia, the first Hawaiian convert to Christianity, "torn from the stomach" of his Native Pacific homeland and transplanted to New England. Wilson argues that 'Opukaha'ia's conversion is both remarkable and prototypically American, because he dared to redefine himself via this drive to rebirth.
By mapping the poetics and politics of conversion and counterconversion, Wilson returns conversion to its central place in the American literature, history, and psyche. Through 'Opukaha'ia's story, and through the works of the Tongan social scientist and fiction writer Epeli Hau'ofa, Wild West poet Ai, and the mercurial Bob Dylan, Wilson demonstrates that conversion-seemingly an anachronistic concern in this secular age-is instead a global, yet deeply American subject, less about "salvation" or finality than about "experimentation" and the quest for modern beatitude.
"Be always converting, and be always converted; turn us again, O Lord," Thomas Shepard urged his Cambridge congregation in the 1640s. This mandate coming down from American Puritan times to New Age seekers, to be "always converting, and always converted," places a radical burden on the self as site of renewal and world-change, even as conversion becomes surrounded by deconversion (rejection of prior beliefs) and counterconversion (turns to alternative beliefs) across global modernity.
Rob Wilson's reconceptualization of the American project of conversion begins with the story of Henry 'Opukaha'ia, the first Hawaiian convert to Christianity, "torn from the stomach" of his Native Pacific homeland and transplanted to New England. Wilson argues that 'Opukaha'ia's conversion is both remarkable and prototypically American, because he dared to redefine himself via this drive to rebirth.
By mapping the poetics and politics of conversion and counterconversion, Wilson returns conversion to its central place in the American literature, history, and psyche. Through 'Opukaha'ia's story, and through the works of the Tongan social scientist and fiction writer Epeli Hau'ofa, Wild West poet Ai, and the mercurial Bob Dylan, Wilson demonstrates that conversion-seemingly an anachronistic concern in this secular age-is instead a global, yet deeply American subject, less about "salvation" or finality than about "experimentation" and the quest for modern beatitude.
* Introduction: Conversions against Empire "And afterward we were born again, and many times ..." * The Poetics and Politics of Henry 'Opukaha'ia's Conversion *"Henry, Torn from the Stomach" Translating Hawaiian Conversion and Rebirth into Dynamics of Outer-National Becoming *"Be Always Converting, and Be Always Converted" Conversion as Semiotic Becoming, and Metamorphosis into Beatitude * Writing down the Lava Road from Damascus to Kona Counter-Conversion, Pacific Polytheism, and Re-Nativization in Epeli Hau'ofa's Oceania * Regeneration through Violence Multiple Masks of Alter-Becoming in the Japanese/American/African Poet Ai * Becoming Jeremiah inside the U.S. Empire On the Born-Again Refigurations of Bob Dylan * Epilogue: Conversions through Literature Writing Transpacific Becoming from Connecticut to Hawai'i and Asia/Pacific * Notes * Acknowledgments * Index
"This book dives deep into the American cultural psyche of conversion and counter-conversion and delineates fascinating routes of turns and returns in the active making, recreating, and reimagining of self and world in the postcolonial U.S. Empire." -- Yunte Huang, author of Transpacific Imaginations Be Always Converting, Be Always Converted is Rob Wilson's hymn to the Pacific. It circles among an unusual cast of characters to propose a tropics of spiritual conversion as central to an anti-imperial American intellectual tradition. This religious emphasis is fresh, often profound, and important, as steeped in Jimi Hendrix as it is in William James, and conveys a lived investment in spiritual becoming. The book is written generally in the ecstatic mode of many of its subjects, and will confirm Rob Wilson's reputation as the beat poet of American Studies. -- Eric Lott, author of The Disappearing Liberal Intellectual Engaging citizen-saints at the occulted turning points of regeneration-- his accounts of Henry Obookiah, Jack Kerouac, and Bob Dylan prove especially fruitful in this regard-- Wilson aspires to unblock the present imperial impasse and to remake self and nation within terms of a U.S. covenant that is subject to poesis. -- Donald Pease, author of Visionary Compacts: American Renaissance Writings in Cultural Context
Rob Wilson is Professor of Literature at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Energetic and wide-ranging.
*Korea Herald*
[A] sparklingly innovative treatment of Hawai’i and New England
Protestants’ evangelism there in the 1800s (a reading that gains
new relevance in light of the election of Barack Obama). Wilson
also looks at Bob Dylan’s identification as a born-again Christian
in the late 1970s, noting that it did not lead to affirming ‘any
given neoliberal hegemony’; he points out that Dylan’s engagement
in both conversion and ‘counter-conversion’ negates potential
conservatism. This paradigmatic reading for a synergetic
kaleidoscope includes Puritan Massachusetts and Tonga (whose
novelist Epeli Hau’ofa Wilson interprets thoughtfully) and
critiques grandiosity while celebrating possibility… Wilson dazzles
with a cogent, exhilarating account of turnings and ‘re-turnings.’
[It’s one of] the best recent books on religion and American
imagination.
*Choice*
This book dives deep into the American cultural psyche of
conversion and counter-conversion and delineates fascinating routes
of turns and returns in the active making, recreating, and
reimagining of self and world in the postcolonial U.S. empire.
*Yunte Huang, author of Transpacific Imaginations*
Be Always Converting, Be Always Converted is Rob Wilson’s hymn to
the Pacific. It circles among an unusual cast of characters to
propose a tropics of spiritual conversion as central to an
anti-imperial American intellectual tradition. This religious
emphasis is fresh, often profound, and important, as steeped in
Jimi Hendrix as it is in William James, and conveys a lived
investment in spiritual becoming. The book is written generally in
the ecstatic mode of many of its subjects, and will confirm Rob
Wilson’s reputation as the beat poet of American Studies.
*Eric Lott, author of The Disappearing Liberal
Intellectual*
Engaging citizen-saints at the occulted turning points of
regeneration—his accounts of Henry Obookiah, Jack Kerouac, and Bob
Dylan prove especially fruitful in this regard—Wilson aspires to
unblock the present imperial impasse and to remake self and nation
within terms of a U.S. covenant that is subject to poesis.
*Donald Pease, author of Visionary Compacts: American
Renaissance Writings in Cultural Context*
|
Ask a Question About this Product More... |
|
