The Inverted Altar: Subversion of Religion and Symbolic Power in Laurent Binet's Civilizations

Abstract

The following paper offers a critical reading of Laurent Binet's novel Civilizations (2019). It focuses on the inversion of religious systems as a strategy for questioning the categories of civilization and barbarism. Using the device of alternate history, it examines how Binet subverts the centrality of Christianity to make way for a reconfiguration of the relationships between religion, power, and culture. The study starts from the recognition of religion as a symbolic and political structure that legitimizes social hierarchies, following the approaches of Durkheim, Eliade, and Mignolo, and analyzes it as a technology of power capable of articulating and naturalizing forms of domination.
The work argues that the novel constructs a “civilizational inversion”: Christianity, historically associated with progress and rationality, appears as primitive superstition. On the contrary, Andean and Nordic religions acquire an ordering and civilizing function. This shift reveals the contingent and political nature of all religions. Thus, it is established that no belief is intrinsically civilizing or barbaric, but rather that its value depends on the historical context and the discourse that sustains it.
In relation to the above, religious syncretism is addressed as a space for symbolic negotiation. Since American and European deities coexist, they take on new meanings and show a pluralistic vision of spiritual power. In summary, the work demonstrates that Civilizations not only rewrites the historical narrative. On the contrary, it dismantles the founding myths of the West by exposing their ideological construction.