Contesting Teleology as Literary Interpretation

While the intellectual genealogy of "secularization" can be approached from any number of directions, this article rehearses the debate between Karl Löwith and Hans Blumenberg. While it makes no effort to reconcile their positions, it argues that both were troubled by the persistence of theological structures and tropes in ostensibly secular paradigms. Various contemporary scholars have sought to elaborate a negative hermeneutics that identifies these vestiges and seeks to redress some of the interpretative imbalances they cause. I explore just two such rejoinders: the interventions of the Jamaican scholar David Scott and the South African psychosocial theorist Derek Hook. The concepts integral to this philosophical lineage are applied in readings of two South African speculative novels, Promised Land ([1974] 1979) by Karel Schoeman and Trencherman ([1998] 2006) by Eben Venter. These interpretations are intended to demonstrate what a secular negative hermeneutics might entail and the insights it might produce.