Auden's O: The Loss of One's Sovereignty in the Making of Nothing

Explores the rise of the idea of nothing in Western modernity and how its figuration is transforming and offering new possibilities. Finalist for the 2014 American Academy of Religion Book Award for Excellence in the Study of Religion, in the Constructive-Reflective category In this groundbreaking, interdisciplinary history of ideas, Andrew W. Hass explores the ascendency of the concept of nothing into late modernity. He argues that the rise of the reality of nothing in religion, philosophy, and literature has taken place only against the decline of the concept of One: a shift from a sovereign understanding of the One (unity, universality) toward the "figure of the O"-a cipher figure that, as nonentity, is nevertheless determinant of other realities. The figuring of this O culminates in a proliferation of literary expressions of nothingness, void, and absence from 1940 to 1960, but by century's end, this movement has shifted from linear progression to mutation, whereby religion, theology, philosophy, literature, and other critical modes of thought, such as feminism, merge into a shared, circular activity. The writer W. H. Auden lends his name to this O, his long poetic work The Sea and the Mirror an exemplary manifestation of its implications. Hass examines this work, along with that of a host of writers, philosophers, and theologians, to trace the revolutionary hermeneutics and creative space of the O, and to provide the reasoning of why nothing is now such a powerful force in the imagination of the twenty-first century, and of how it might move us through and beyond our turbulent times.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments Epicycle "Nothing will come of nothing" Falsetto Auden's Circumlocution 0. Introduction Giotto's O The Binary The Binary Code The Binary Code Cracked The Paradigm The Paradigm Shift The Paradigm Rift The Modern The Modern Crisis Part One: From Religion and Philosophy to Artiface 1. The Sovereignty of One One's Punch Line From the Many, One: The Hebrews The Nature of One: The Presocratics The Metaphysics of One: Plato, Aristotle The Wholly, Plenary One: Plotinus The Christian One: Paul The Paradigms of One One's Retreat 2. The Revolutions of O The Romeo Effect Zero and its History Ground Zero Mirror/Speculum/Eye The Artificer's Circle The Hermeneutical Circle I The Author's O Eternal Recurrence Part Two: Poesis' Figure - The Making of O 3. Shakespeare's Eye of the Storm Lear's Tragic O Shakespeare's Specular O Caliban's Negating O 4. Reflections of Auden W. H. Auden The Sea and the Mirror 5. The Empty Middle Originating O (Blanchot) Historicizing O Alternate Os of the Middle The O of Auden The Erotics of O Simone de Beauvoir Part III: Looking After O 6. The Remaking of Philosophy and Religion Philosophy and Religion: Inside the Perimeter Negation's Triumvirate: Hegel, Nietzsche, Heidegger Before the Postmodern: Sartre Through the Postmodern: Derrida, Irigaray Out of the Postmodern: Badiou gOd-Postmortem Theology 7. The Future of O? Auden's Brecht The Parabolic Within Pontius Pilate in the Creed The Other Rogue The Rogue Within Another Epicycle The Truest O is the Most Feigning "Signifying Nothing" Notes Bibliography of Cited Works Index

About the Author :
Andrew W. Hass is Reader in Critical Religion at the University of Stirling in Scotland. He is the author of Poetics of Critique: The Interdisciplinarity of Textuality and the coeditor (with David Jasper and Elisabeth Jay) of The Oxford Handbook of English Literature and Theology.

Review :
"The core of the book is Hass on The Tempest and, especially, on Auden's relaunching of it in The Sea and the Mirror. Any admirer of Auden's long poem ... will find much nourishment here, from comments on individual lyrics to reflections on the achievement of the whole." - Literature and Theology