Accidental Gods
On Race, Empire, and Men Unwittingly Turned Divine
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4.0 • 2 Ratings
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY ESQUIRE, THE IRISH TIMES AND THE TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT
SHORTLISTED FOR THE PEN HESSELL-TILTMAN PRIZE
A provocative history of men who were worshipped as gods that illuminates the connection between power and religion and the role of divinity in a secular age
Ever since 1492, when Christopher Columbus made landfall in the New World and was hailed as a heavenly being, the accidental god has haunted the modern age. From Haile Selassie, acclaimed as the Living God in Jamaica, to Britain’s Prince Philip, who became the unlikely center of a new religion on a South Pacific island, men made divine—always men—have appeared on every continent. And because these deifications always emerge at moments of turbulence—civil wars, imperial conquest, revolutions—they have much to teach us.
In a revelatory history spanning five centuries, a cast of surprising deities helps to shed light on the thorny questions of how our modern concept of “religion” was invented; why religion and politics are perpetually entangled in our supposedly secular age; and how the power to call someone divine has been used and abused by both oppressors and the oppressed. From nationalist uprisings in India to Nigerien spirit possession cults, Anna Della Subin explores how deification has been a means of defiance for colonized peoples. Conversely, we see how Columbus, Cortés, and other white explorers amplified stories of their godhood to justify their dominion over native peoples, setting into motion the currents of racism and exclusion that have plagued the New World ever since they touched its shores.
At once deeply learned and delightfully antic, Accidental Gods offers an unusual keyhole through which to observe the creation of our modern world. It is that rare thing: a lyrical, entertaining work of ideas, one that marks the debut of a remarkable literary career.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Bidoun editor Subin examines in this thought-provoking if overstuffed study instances in which earthly men have been worshipped as gods. Documenting the relationship between such cases of "accidental divinity" and "something else we mistake for eternal: the modern concept of race," Subin starts with 20th-century examples including Rastafarianism, which saw several spontaneous and distinct strands of thought identifying the Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie I as a Black messiah in the 1930s, and the deification of England's Prince Philip by some inhabitants of the island of Tanna in the South Pacific. Subin also explores the interplay between deification and politics in India, where "the act of defining religion was also an act of justifying colonialism," and notes that Annie Besant, a British Theosophist and advocate for Indian self-governance, was the first person to call Gandhi "Mahatma," or "great soul," an "epithet he would come to loathe." Turning to the Americas, Subin argues that European explorers' accounts of being confused for gods by Indigenous peoples were used "to justify conquest and maintain European supremacy in the fragile settlements." Subin draws intriguing and illuminating connections between race and religion, but the book's various strands don't quite cohere as convincingly as she suggests. Still, this is a stimulating and challenging look at a fascinating historical phenomenon.
