Through a Glass Darkly

Sacred Space and the Fellowship of Suffering in the Postmodern Sublime

Richard J. Lane

Richard Lane argues that post-structuralist and postmodern theory must enter, as it were, a “sacred space” to reflect on its relation to religion in the humanities, an entrance encouraged by the religious turn in the later works of Derrida. Though Lane admits that such theory often fails to even acknowledge the existence of sacred space, he wonders whether it will, of necessity, be transformed in this consecrated place. Lane postulates that sublimity is inevitably bound up with the sacred, which significantly impacts how we should respond to current theory.