Berman traces Islamism to a literary genealogy of antiliberal decadence.

Evidence

Berman claims that nineteenth-century liberal ideas of progress were predicated on the rejection of a single divine authority and on the rise of pluralism and a consciously chosen freedom. Of interest for us here is that Berman’s narrative draws on literary way markers in his description of how this emergent liberalism soon met its opposite in the form of an antiliberal impulse. The spirit of rebellion that followed the French Revolution led in the nineteenth century to an interest in crime and decadence—in works such as Dostoevsky’s The Devils (1871–1872) and Baudelaire’s Les fleurs du mal (1857)—or what Berman calls “the rebellion that begins with freedom and ends with crime.” — Peter Morey, Islamophobia and the Novel, 122

Categorization

• SEED: Could seed a comparison: Berman builds his political case on literary way markers, which is itself a hinge between literature and politics the reader could exploit in her own argument.