Abstract
David Greig’s Pyrenees (Tron Theatre, Glasgow, 2005) tells the story of a man found unconscious in the snow on the mountainous pilgrims’ route to Santiago de Compostela in Galicia. The Man (as he is designated in the text) suffers from severe memory loss and the play revolves around the mystery of his identity. The quotation above is taken from a conversation with Anna — the Man’s contact from the British Consulate — as he recalls his feelings at the very moment of regaining consciousness.
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Notes
My thanks to Vicky Angelaki, Karen Fricker, Lynette Goddard, Jake Poller, David Wiles and Marilena Zaroulia for their helpful feedback and/or conversation during the development of this research
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A. de Botton, Religion for Atheists: A Non-Believer’s Guide to the Uses of Religion (London: Hamish Hamilton, 2012). On a related note, see also political philosopher Simon Critchley’s historical study The Faith of the Faithless: Experiments in Political Theology, also published in 2012, which offers a powerful identification of the religious energies that have imbricated leftist political structures through history. S. Critchley, The Faith of the Faithless: Experiments in Political Theology (London: Verso, 2012).
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The Christian scholar Harvey G. Cox argues this point in an insightful Buddhist–Christian academic dialogue published in 2009 (the year before Cornwell’s intervention): ‘faith as a way of life is becoming more important than belief […] Belief hovers near the upper, cognitive stratum of the self. It can come and go. […] But faith locates itself in a deeper dimension. It is a matter of fundamental life orientation.’ H. G. Cox and D. Ikeda, The Persistence of Religion: Comparative Perspectives on Modern Spirituality (London: I. B. Tauris, 2009), p. x.
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R. Bean, The Heretic (London: Oberon Books, 2011; the quotation is from p. 80); A. Kaye Campbell, The Faith Machine (London: Nick Hern Books, 2011; the quotation is from Michael Billington, ‘The Faith Machine – Review’, The Guardian, 1 September 2011).
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M. Billington, ‘A Thousand Stars Explode in the Sky’, The Guardian, 13 May 2010.
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S. Kane, Complete Plays (London: Methuen Drama, 2001), pp. 10, 22.
H. Barker, The Ecstatic Bible: A New Testament (London: Oberon Books, 2004), p. 7.
Interview with M. Haneke, 71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance. Dir. Michael Haneke (Wega Film, 1994; DVD release, 2009). The interview with Haneke is part of the DVD ‘Extras’.
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Megson, C. (2013). ‘And I was struck still by time’: Contemporary British Theatre and the Metaphysical Imagination. In: Angelaki, V. (eds) Contemporary British Theatre. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137010131_3
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