(REVIEW 7) Texts under Negotiation: The Bible and Postmodern Imagination

Texts under Negotiation: The Bible and Postmodern Imagination   

                                                                                          

Walter Brueggemann                                                                                                                                              Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993

Reviewed by Yahu Vinayaraj

Walter Brueggemann’s postmodern approach to scripture replaces modern critical methods of biblical interpretation with little little stories of the Christian community whose complex and ambiguous meaning subvert the culture of the world. According to Brueggemann, the collapse of the modernity and its biblical interpretation informed by the historical critical method provides new freedom for the text of scripture and for our own construal of the word through what we take to be the living word of God. For Brueggemann, the postmodern shift means: (1) Our knowing is inherently contextual; (2) Contexts are quite local; and (3) Our knowing is inherently pluralistic (P. 8-9).

Brueggemann conceives Interpretation as counter imagination (30-39). The point of Scripture is to subvert the dominant world culture and offer an alternative world. He contends that the point of scripture study and preaching is to make possible an alternative to “the world.” “Coming to us through scripture, preaching, and continuing revelation, the gospel is the good news that we can live differently.” “To be a Christian is to believe that conversion.” This conversion has mainly three dimensions: self, community, and world (The origin of self: life as gift of God, born out of dust-the fragility of life (Ps.139:13-16; 103:13; 131:1-20)-equity in human life (prov.14:31, 17:5; 22:2; 29:13); The origin of the world; God’s creation-ps:104, 51:11; Isa. 40:22-23; 55:10;40:30); 3. The origin of the community-Israel is a gift of God (isa.40:1-4; Ezek; 16; 5-15).

According to Brueggemann, the church is the place where the large dreams are entertained, songs are sung, boundaries are crossed, hurt is noticed, and the weak are honored (P.37). It is the place of scriptural negotiations and the personal re-imaginations. Brueggemann highlights three important tools for postmodern biblical hermeneutics: memory, covenant and hope. The ‘present’ for Christians is not just a ‘now’ but a moment of transformation and re-imagination. It is a “readiness to receive life from the other, from God and neighbor, rather than from self (54).  For Christians the ‘now’ is ordered by Christian memory and hope. We and the world are figured by memory and hope, and thus, so are our scriptural texts.

Memory in the community as a counter imagination in the contemporary globalized world is imperative for biblical hermeneutics.  Today we live in world of Amnesia. We aggressively forget everything. Covenant becomes counter imaginative in a marketed world where the community is deeply enmeshed in commoditization and materialization. Hope as a hope against hope and the hope in the promised and possible becomes a counter imagination where the community is trapped in despair and death (P.55).

Of course, it is an interesting book that helps us to think the biblical interpretation in terms of the past as memory, the present as covenantal fidelity, and the future as anticipation; despite the lack of the discussion of the epistemological trajectories of the postmodern hermeneutics.    

Reading the Hebrew Bible After the Shoah: Engaging Holocaust Theology

REVIEW 6

Reading the Hebrew Bible After the Shoah                                                                                                                     Engaging Holocaust Theology                                                                                                                                   

Mervin A. Sweeny                                                                                                                                      Minneapolis:  Fortress Press, 2008

Reviewed by Yahu Vinayaraj

Mervin A. Sweeny’s book, Reading the Hebrew Bible after the Shoah, Engaging Holocaust Theology, deals with the impact of the Holocaust or Shoah on the reading of the Hebrew Bible in both Judaism and Christianity. Mervin argues that consideration of the Shoah points to a need to rethink traditional concepts of divine presence, power and righteousness together with traditional notions of human guilt or sin in relation to G-d. The book exhorts us the human beings as partners with G-d in creation are expected to play the primary role in completing the creation of the world begun by G-d and thereby in restoring the presence of G-d that was shattered by the very act of creation itself.

The Shoah refers to the issue of mass extermination of Jewish population in Europe by the Nazis during the World War II. The writer argues that Shoah in the patristic period employed the power of state deliberately to suppress Judaism and pointed to the oppressed state of Jews in Christian society as a means to demonstrate the consequences of failure to acknowledge Christ and church authority. Such a stance played a major role in promoting antagonism against Jews throughout the Christian world. The author raises the question of the absence of Christian theological response to this issue in the earlier times.

In the introduction, Mervin makes a survey of Jewish theological discourses of Shoah. He starts his enquiry on the assumption that the biblical theology especially Old testament had failed to account for the Shoah, so he turns to the discussion of the theological interpretation of the Hebrew Bible in the twentieth century. This study argues that the problem posed by the Shoah call for human beings to take on greater responsibility for the sanctity, well-being, and fundamental justice of the world in which we live.

The book consists of ten chapters excluding introduction and conclusion, which cover the pages 1-283. The first chapter “Abraham and the Problem of Divine fidelity,” deals with the Abraham –YHWH relationship and the Abraham-Sarah narratives. He argues that it points to a fundamental concern with Divine fidelity in the Genesis narratives concerning Israel’s first ancestors, Abraham and Sarah (P.25).

Chapter two discusses with Moses-the founding leader of Israel in the pentateuchal narrative and the problem of Divine violence. The condemnation of Moses is on the context of emergence of priestly and political leadership to Israel and the author argues that with those new changes in the leadership, Israel is capable enough to address the hostile situations against them (P. 63). Chapter three “The Question of Theodicy in the historical Books (Jeroboam, Manasseh, and Josiah) defends the power and righteousness of YHWH in the face of disaster and evil. The fall of Jerusalem, the exile of the people, the death and the suffering of so many were not due to YHWH’s impotency, moral fidelity or lack of attention. Rather YHWH”s power, righteousness, and attention to the human affairs brings about the disaster when human beings fail in their obligations to YHWH (P. 83).

Chapter four discusses with the Isaiah’s question to G-d. The book of Isaiah is a work of theodicy that attempts to defend YHWH from the charges of impotence and immorality. YHWH is the G-d who brings judgment against those nations when they fail to recognize YHWH as the source of power and He is the G-d who restores the people from exile to Jerusalem as it symbolizes YHWH’s role in the world (P. 103).  Jeremiah’s struggle with his Divine commission is the content of discussion in the fifth chapter. Mervin contents that in order to defend the sanctity, righteousness, and power of YHWH, Jeremiah’s only recourse was to argue that the people-and not YHWH- were responsible for their own fate and that YHWH would ultimately act to restore Jerusalem, Judah and Israel once the period of exile and punishment was over (P. 127).

In the chapter six where the author deals with Ezekiel and the issue of the Holiness of G-d, he contends that Ezekiel describes a restored temple and a restored Israel at the centre of a restored creation to signify the outcome of YHWH’s efforts to purge the world of its impurity and corruption and to reestablish the sanctity of creation (P. 145). The next chapter discusses with the Twelve Prophets and the Question of Shoah. According to Mervin, every one of these books raises issues concerning YHWH’s power, righteousness and willingness to act in relation to the experiences of Shoah in the ancient world. For Mervin, these are the questions posed about G-d in relation to the modern experience of Shoah (P. 166).

The eighth chapter deals with the complaints to G-d in Psalms and Lamentations, the voice of the victims. When he discusses with the role of Laments, he argues that “such a dialogue points to a robust relationship between YHWH and the people in which both parties express themselves, forcefully and deliberately when either perceives wrongdoing on the part of the other. Nevertheless, neither YHWH nor the people abandon the dialogue, but instead look for the means to ensure its continuity (P. 187). He discusses with the Divine hiddenness and human initiatives in the Wisdom Literature that constitutes the ninth chapter. Mervin is convinced that the wisdom literature of the Hebrew Bible calls upon human being to act, that is, to discern wisdom and order in the world and to act on that knowledge, however limited it might be, to ensure a stable and productive order in creation and life in the world (P. 207).

In the last chapter, “Lessons from the Didactic narratives of the Writings,” he is of the opinion that readers of the didactic narrative literature of the Hebrew bible learn the importance of Jewish life, practice, and identity, and the imperative to assert and defend all three when living in a gentle world (P. 227). In the conclusion Mervin compares the predicament of the human being with experience of Eve in the Garden of Eden. G-d’s absence is because of our wrong doings. “To a dialogue, the question of divine engagement or absence is irrelevant.” For him, the key question is, “will we continue to uphold the ideas learned from G-d of power, righteousness, fidelity and engagement in our own lives? He exhorts us that “we need to accept our own responsibility to complete and sanctify the world of creation in which we live (P. 241).   

This book is a meaningful intervention to the efforts that propagates hate against people, communities and nationalities. Especially in the case of Jews, as Mervin A. Sweeny argues, there has been a conscious effort to alienate them at the cost of the biblical narratives on Jews. In that matter, it is a hermeneutical resistance to those engagements of hate and alienation. The best way to challenge the programme of hate is to retreat/ re-read/ re-imagine/ re-member the history and re-locate it theologically. That is what Mervin is doing through this work. As a hermeneutical engagement for love and reconciliation, this effort is to be acknowledged and appreciated.

 However this book, from the very beginning seems to defend God’s fidelity and righteousness against the question of theodicy.  As he tries to attend the question of theodicy, Mervin blames human beings for their irresponsible life on the earth. This condemnation of the human being on the basis of the “original sin,” locates its hermeneutical stand point against the contemporary discussions on the biblical hermeneutical engagements.  Condemning human beings in total and demanding their universal change outrageously, strategically places these discussions in the ‘air’ and it lacks the specific attention to the particular textual engagements that problematize the hermeneutic programme of hate.

REVIEW 5

Faithful Interpretation: Reading Bible in a Postmodern World

A.K.M Adam
Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2006

Reviewed by Yahu Vinayaraj

In Faithful Interpretation, Reading Bible in a Postmodern World, Adam tries to elucidate a postmodern approach of biblical hermeneutics that attends the multi-model differential hermeneutics with various points of emphases and trajectories. His intention, here, is to go beyond the modern technical interpretation and to search for a more interactive and flexible approach to meaning. Adam intends to propose more meaningful transformative hermeneutics in the postmodern context.

The first chapter discusses with the trajectories and limitations of modern biblical interpretative program that constituted the modern biblical theology in the history of the hermeneutical tradition. According to Adam, it was the quest for an authoritative, scientific, historical foundation that led the modern biblical theology into a contradiction and crisis (p.20). In fact his intention is not to reject the historical critical method, rather to de-centre it from the biblical hermeneutical program and give much more emphasize to the aesthetical and the ethical-political content of the interpretative engagement. He asks the question; can we live by this biblical theology today? Adam seems to be located in the  ethical hermeneutical tradition.

The second chapter confronts with one of the most common rationales for assigning historical critical analysis the authority in the interpretative program-the rationale of delineating Docetism. By countering Ernst Kasemann's argument that validates the historical critical method in delineating Docetism, Adam explains that the historical critical method is ill suited for a role as defender of faith (P. 43). He argues that "the opposite of Docetism is not certified historical scholarship, but a resolutely Chalcedonian Christology" (p.13)

The third chapter takes up the problem of subsistent meaning and textual agency. Adam argues that interpretations of biblical texts as traffic signs- always have consequence; because it is ineluctably a social act. He clarifies it: " The constraints upon textual interpretation do not derive from the nature of understanding, or texts, or of language  or of communicative intent, or of truth, or of speech-acts, but always only from the sunday collocations of circumstances within which we formulate interpretations and judgements" (P.59). The legitimacy of an interpretation is determined by the body of readers evaluating it. There is no single  universal criterion to determine the truthfulness of any interpretation. On the other hand, he reminds us that there is a strong connection between our hermeneutics and the ethics we proclaim and practice (P.65).

The forth chapter deals with the question of meaning and ethics with particular references to the gospel of Matthew's attributed nature of anti-jewish text. Adam explicates his postmodern theoretical position and says: "no text is ideologically tainted without cooperation of readers and institutions that construct the text as "Ideologically tainted" (P.71). Thus, he contends that it is not just the 'reading effect' but 'our living effect' makes our hermeneutics transformative and just (P. 79).

In the fifth chapter he argues for a 'differential hermeneutic  (which locates meaning in human interaction, with the result that different interpretative outcomes are only to be expected as signs of the pluriform character of the human imagination) over against an 'integral hermeneutics  (which assumes for each text a singular, correct meaning). according to adam the differential hermeneutics affords the prospect of a more harmonious practice of biblical interpretation, "attentive to the myriad particularities that constitute biblical interpretators as different people, with a view toward embodying the truth we claim to learn from the Bible" (P. 103). Chapter 7 exemplifies Adams' 'differential hermeneutic' with its examination of the interpretation of the 'sign of Jonah" in the sayings of Jesus in the Gospels.

Chapter six spells out further the ethical focus of the church's interpretative work, emphasizing interpretations that generate multiple/ different forms of christian discipleship resembling/ enacting the life of Jesus. Adam contends that "thus we can sponsor an imitation of christ's unwavering faithfulness to the gospel that respects distinction and particularities at the same time it draws us ever closer to one another and to God" (p, 17). Chapter 8 engages with a similar agenda, this time with reference to human sexulaity and hallowed relationships. It develops the criteria for discerning what characteristics bespeak holiness in intimacy and how churches may face the difficult challenge of putting discernement into practice.

In this book, adam succeeded to a certain extent elucidating the postmodern content of biblical hermeneutics, in constitution with his previous work. As he proposes the differential hermeneutics that attends the plurality, contextuality and intractability of the hermeneutical triad-the text, author and the reader, in a way signify the inter-textual, intra-textual and the multi-cultural aesthetical dimensions of the biblical interpretation. What is significant in his postmodern hermeneutical program is the sole emphasis on the ethical content of the biblical hermeneutics. Here adam shows his invincible allegiance to the idea of the communicative action of Habermas. According to Adam, reading Bible meaningfully is the responsibility of the faithful community that imitates or interprets Jesus christ who has been placed in the order of signs. Thus the faithful or the disciples are the called out communities who engage creatively with the Bible in their local practices of every day life. The biblical theology or systematic theology is to de-sign the texts, the selves and the events that come across in the everyday experiences and find a harmonious order of justice and fraternity in the postmodern world.

Postcolonial Biblical Criticism: Interdisciplinary Intersections (BOOK REVIEW 4)

REVIEW 4

Postcolonial Biblical Criticism: Interdisciplinary Intersections

Stephen D. Moore and Fernando F. Segovia (eds.)

London, New York: T&T Clark International, 2005

Reviewed by Yahu Vinayaraj 

Postcolonial studies mark the most contemporary and challenging methodological innovations in the field of biblical studies. Postcolonialism as a hermeneutical method interrogates and re-visit the colonial imprint inscribed on the histories, biographies, epistemologies and politics of the ‘colonized.’  Anti- Euro-centrism as the methodological cutting edge, it provides new spaces for the ‘colonized’/ ‘marginalized’ people in the arena of biblical criticism. The introduction of the Postcolonialism into the realm of biblical studies, created remarkable effects in terms of accepting the plurality of doing the biblical hermeneutics and contextual theologies.  The book, Postcolonial Biblical Criticism is the most significant initiative in this regard.

Postcolonial Biblical Criticism is the sixth volume in the series of books edited by R. S. Sugirtharajah and entitled The Bible and Postcolonialism. The first volume which was published in 1998, entitled The Postcolonial Bible, functioned as the forerunner of this series in which R.S. Sugirtharajah discussed the issue of decolonizing the Bible. This sixth volume is originated from the panel discussion organized by the Society of Biblical Literature in 1998 to deliberate on the implications of the cultural hermeneutics in the field of biblical studies.  This volume brings out the relevance of postcolonial biblical criticism by locating it in relation to other important methodological currents in the contemporary biblical studies: Feminism; racial/ ethnic studies; post structuralism; postmodernism and Marxism.

The first chapter, “Postcolonial Biblical Criticism: Beginnings, Trajectories, Intersections,” by the editors, is almost like an introduction to whole content of the book. It provides us the history of the formation of Postcolonial Biblical Hermeneutical programme as an academic project in the field of biblical studies. The co-editors outline the epistemological trajectories through which the postcolonial biblical criticism has been emerged in connection with the biblical interpretation of the Liberation Theology and the postmodern/ post structural/ cultural hermeneutics as well.

In the second chapter “Mapping the Postcolonial Optic in Biblical Criticism: Meaning and Scope” Segovia tries to locate or ground Postcolonial Theory in the field of biblical criticism by tracing of its meaning and scope through a close reading of the postcolonial introductory literature such as Postcolonial Theory: A Critical Introduction (Leela Gandhi, 1998), Colonialism/ Postcolonialism (Ania Loomba, 1998), and Beginning Postcolonialism (John McLeord, 2000). According to Segovia, the Postcolonial criticism highlights the relationship between centre and periphery, metropolis and margins, the imperial and colonial. For him, Postcolonialism is a hermeneutical process of realization of the problematic of domination and subordination in the geopolitical realm (P.65). Thus Segovia defines the role of his project as the hermeneutical effort to attend the question of power in the programme of colonization and its politics of inequality.

Stephen Moore’s article that constitutes the third chapter of the book discusses the issue of the relationship between Postmodernism/ Poststructuralist and Postcolonialism. Moore discusses the contributions of the postcolonial trinity- Said, Spivak and Bhabha to the project of Postcolonialism and analyses how they are indebted to the Post structural theories of power, resistance, language and subjectivity. Apart from that, he specifically attends to the work of Bhabha and analyses how he is considering Bible as simultaneously imperial and native.

In her contribution “Gospel Hauntings: The Postcolonial Demons of New Testament Criticism,” Laura E. Donaldson raises the issue of gender within the context of Postcolonial Biblical Studies. For Laura, Postcolonial criticism is “an oppositional reading that is multinational in nature, keenly attentive to the intricacies of the situation in terms of culture, race, class, and gender” (P. 97). By fruitfully implementing some of the postcolonial feminist concepts of Spivak such as ethical singularity, planetarity and spectrality, Laura tries to re-visit/ re-member the forgotten imaginations/ locations of women in history, literature and politics. Laura (re-)reads the story of the “demon-possessed daughter” of the “Syro-Phoenician/ Canaanite women” in terms the colonial representation of the “mute”/ “disabled”/ “anonymous”/ “demon-possessed” girl and argues that “ a poetic description of postcolonial feminist criticism might be allowing ourselves to be haunted by those ghosts whose suffering undergirds the routine banalities of daily life” (P. 110).  Her task is here to re-define not only the postcolonial feminist biblical criticism but also the feminist theology itself.

The fifth chapter by Tat-siong Benny Liew that deals with the issue of race/ ethnicity on biblical authority and postcolonial biblical criticism argues that “none of these categories are unitary or identical and they are linked each other and leads to a multi-dimensional hermeneutics.” In conclusion, he provides a reflection on Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s Asian-American novel Dictee, a work that Liew sees as a racial/ ethnic/ postcolonial text- as an illustration of cutting-edge biblical scholarship.

The last two essays address the conflictual but enabling relations between Marxism and Postcolonialism. Roland Boer in his article titled “Marx, Postcolonialism, and the Bible”, argues that “it is imperative for both postcolonial theory and postcolonial biblical criticism to recover their theoretical and enabling history in the Marxist tradition. By analyzing the works of postcolonial writers like said, Spivak and Bhabha, he argues that what we find in post colonial writings, are “Derridean Marxist” or a “demarxified Bakhtin”.  Along this direction, David Jobling conceptualizes a triadic method of biblical interpretation- the interpretation that takes seriously the three locations: Bible/ Christianity, Marxism and Postcolonialism. But he concludes with hybrid method of biblical hermeneutics. Jobling contents that “the Marxist points to the historical failure of Christianity (the issue of colonialism), but now that the charge of historical failure hangs heavily also over Marxism, perhaps the ball is back in the Bible’s court. Or better, perhaps it is now the turn of the hybrid of biblical studies and Marxism” (P. 199).

As an initial engagement to collect various perspectives on the focus-Postcolonialism, this work deserves our acknowledgement and appreciation. Stephen D. Moore and Fernando F. Segovia have succeeded to certain extends to sketch out the contours of the project of postcolonial biblical criticism.  Its connection with Feminism, Marxism and postmodernism is brought clearly. Almost all theoretical concepts and themes are being tackled. The writers with their rich experience in the field of biblical studies and the theological teaching have helped a lot to envisage a new hermeneutical engagement in the field of biblical criticism. Along with these strengths, it faces several flaws in its formulation and articulation. Of course Postcolonialism itself is vast and a multifaceted theory or method. This work, on the other hand, has failed to locate biblical criticism in its multi-layered/ polyphonic social/ epistemological context.  By locating the attention into the ‘binary opposites,’ it neglects the other divisions/ multiple locations of oppression and marginality. That is why it lacked the perspective of the ‘queer politics’ or ‘transgender’ concerns. It is not accidental that this book eventually ends in the question of the inclusion of Marxism into this methodology. Since Marxism deals with the class struggle between the bourgeois and the preliterate-the binary opposites for the ‘liberation” of the “oppressed,”  the authors of this book unintentionally go with the binary opposition with the imperial and the colonized which is fundamental to the postcolonial theory.  Is this the problem with this book or with the entire theory of Postcolonialism?

Reviewed by Yahu Vinayaraj

What is Asian American Biblical Hermeneutics?

REVIEW 3

What is Asian American Biblical Hermeneutics? Reading the New Testament

Tat-Siong Benny Liew

Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2008

Reviewed by Yahu Vinayaraj

‘The ways of reading are the ways of being’. Hermeneutics is not at all an apolitical activity. It is a political activity through which we read/ re-read ourselves. Benny Liew in his book, What is Asian American Biblical Hermeneutics? tries to re-read the meaning of the identity and the agency of ‘Asian American communities’ who live in the context of multi-culturalism and multi-ethnicity (p. 3). As he says in the preface, the book is organized in three foci: (1) methodology (the distinguishing characteristics or sensibilities of Asian/ American biblical hermeneutics), (2) community (the politics of inclusion and exclusion), (3) agency. This book has two general characteristics: (1) it uses an intertextual and interdisciplinary approach. It covers all of the major genres found within the New Testament. Beyond the literary text (or canon) it uses films and events like human genome project and September 11, and (2) this book affirms Asian America as a pan-ethnic coalition and acknowledging the differences within that very same coalition.  

            The whole task of this work is to envisage how Asian American hermeneutics is possible without essentializing identity and community. Asian American biblical hermeneutics that he envisions “has no individual center, instead the sub-discipline is built on the interaction or in-between-ness of multiple engagements” (p.10). The methodology of biblical hermeneutics that he used in this book is “paying attention to how the machinery of discursive construction has functioned in biblical texts of the past sensitizes and enables one to critique constructions of the present” (p. 12). The interdisciplinary approach that he used in this book allows him to use the open-ended range of theoretical/ methodological practices rather than revolving around any particular theoretical framework which is imperative to design the ‘pan-ethnicity’ of the ‘Asian American identity’ (He does not homogenizing the ‘meta-identity’/ ‘coalition identity’; rather he gives attention to the very particular differences of the ‘sub-identities’ / ‘multiple locations’/ ‘sub-ethnicities’ within it).  The very question of Asian American biblical hermeneutics’ is emerges out of the epistemological and historical location of Empire and its hegemonic practices in an ‘alien land”. And thus Liew claims that the postcolonial theory and studies occupy a very significant role in the writing of this book because, he says: “that reads the text as an ideo-grammer” (p. 14).

By stating the rationality of his postcolonial hermeneutical methodology, Liew argues it is helpful to re-locate the question of the locations of identity and agency in the context of colonialisms and the practices of othering and to interrogate the assumed understandings and practices of the these hegemonic power systems; because “Bible is a fascinating library of texts that pose issues and raise questions concerning multiple and interlocking differential relations of power” (p.xii). In the second chapter where he tries to speak about the colonial assumptions of the new testament especially the gospel according to Mark, argues that “reading with yin yang eyes is a reading from a marginal sight/site as it features a contrary look that reads against itself, a returned gaze that reads without any assumption of biblical authority, a broad view that reads beyond single-issue politics, and a transgressive perspective that reads across disciplines” (P.33). While critically analyzing the contradictions in the rhetoric of John regarding community whether it is built upon choice and consent or hereditary and the issues of integration and oppression in the text of Acts, by which he finds immense possibilities of de-colonizing the practices and the rhetoric of empire in  united states. He uses feminist critical hermeneutical methodologies to discuss the politics of ‘redressing the ‘ethnicized’/ ‘minoritized’/ ‘sexualized’/ ‘victimized’ bodies in the Roman/ Corinthian imperial politics of body in the fifth chapter, in order to show how the experiences of Asian Americans may help to inform a different reading of difference concerning 1corinthians. The whole intention or analyzing Paul’s psycho-political operatives in 1corinthians, in the next chapter, is not only to address the issue of melancholia both in self understanding of both Paul and the Corinthian Diaspora  but it is intended to unveil the ‘imperial ills of empire’ in the hegemonic process of locating the hybrid/ liminal bodies. By doing the biblical interventions in the Theressa Hak kyungs Cha’s Dictee, he locates the agency of the Asian American community as ‘hetero-glossic’ in content and identity. By disclosing the role of apocalypse, in the last chapter, he affirms the change ness/ ‘fluidity’ of the very category of ‘Asian Americanism’ itself.

The whole political/ theological significance of this book is being stated clearly by the author in the very first chapter of this book itself: “By turning out “our” attention from whites to each other, different racial/ ethnic minority groups can work together to form new ways of reading, knowing, and be(com)ing that go beyond reversing, reinscribing and resisting dominant, colonial, or orientalist ideologic and it may help to displace identity-based politics” (p.15). It is here the author succeeds to go beyond the epistemological/ methodological limitation of post colonialism.

Though these two books come from two different context and divergent locations they share some commonalities. First, their hermeneutical methodology whether it is interdisciplinary or postcolonial, it shares a common passion for critical reading that challenges all kinds of dominations and thus tries to foster a culture of justice and equality. Second, their methods intend to valorize the anti-imperial practices, languages and enrich contemporary struggles of the marginalized. And thus they re-imagine new ways of doing theologies today. On the other hand, they face interrogations from other contextual theologies for being ‘grand narrative’ of multiple identities or ‘exclusivist’ jargons that neglect other contexts so on and so forth. However, it is these interrogations and interventions that determine the future of biblical/ theological studies in the future.

The Power of the Word, Scripture and the Rhetoric of Empire

REVIEW 2

The Power of the Word, Scripture and the Rhetoric of Empire

Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza

Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2007

Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza in her book The Power of the Word explores how the power of empire has shaped and affected Christian scriptures and how it still shapes our self understanding. It is an invitation to re-visit our ‘own tongues’ how far it is anti-empire and nurturing a language of social democracy of equality and fraternity. By analyzing Roman Empire as the context and the social location of Christian scriptures and seeing the contemporary forms of empire, she proposes a critical feminist postcolonial hermeneutics of the scriptures and thereby tries to valorize the global possibilities of resistances. 

She locates this book within the framework of feminist political theory which includes three specific modes, as it was proposed by the political theorist Nancy Fraser, viz: historical redistribution, ideological deconstruction and theological constructive re-presentation. Through these modules of reading she indented to   de-kiriachialise or de-imperialize or de-colonize both the inscriptions of the biblical discourses and our concept of Divine itself. Her whole task here is to invite us to have a counter imperial imagination of the ‘text’ and the ‘self’.

The book is divided into seven chapters. In the first chapter she tries to articulate a theoretical space for mapping a critical transnational feminist biblical interpretation. She argues that the biblical concept of ekklesia, as a counter biblical imagination of radical democracy that even provides the equal space for the agency of wo/men, is capable enough to challenge myriad of dominations against wo/men and foster their struggles for survival and transformation (p.35). In the second chapter, by re-imagining the ekklesia of wo/men as the hermeneutical ‘imagined community’ she understands the biblical authority as a resource for creativity, courage and solidarity. She explains it further by stating that “it [the critical biblical reading that constitute ekklesia as an ‘imagined community’ of wo/men] does not understand scripture as tablets of stone but rather as nourishing bread” (P. 67). She contends that by deconstructing the all encompassing kyriaichal rhetorics and politics of domination and subordination, the wo/men are able to generate new possibilities for engaging in emancipatory practices of biblical meaning making and political resistance to imperial globalization (p.67). In the third chapter where she explicates the ekklesia as the decolonizing space  and an active process of struggle moving toward greater equality, freedom, and responsibility by which wo/men re-imagine and challenge the multiple forms of empire,   she declares her thesis emphatically: “All wo/men silenced and marginalized by kyriarchal-hierarchic structures of domination are crucial in this ekklesial process of struggle for a radical democratization that is inspired by an eschatological vision of a society and world free of exploitation, domination and evil (p. 109).

In the fourth essay in which she discusses the issue of empire and its rhetoric of subordination, she convincingly argues that the biblical texts are shaped by the rhetoric of empire and thus it must be ‘detoxified’ in a process of de-colonializing interpretation. By analyzing the inscription of empire in the book of revelation, she tends to propose an intersectional kyriarchal analysis that can decode the complex power of domination inscribed in biblical texts. This idea is explained in detail in the fifth chapter. According to Fiorenza, the ‘detoxifying’ process of interpretation challenges us to become the*-ethically sophisticated readers by reflecting our own socio-political locations and functions in global structures of empire. In the sixth chapter where she deals with the feminist critique of androcentric G*d language, proposes new modules for decolonizing Divine and G*d talk. She suggests that “only a the*logical strategy that approaches classic discourses about G*d with a mobile method of deconstruction and proliferation, of symbolic critique and amplification, of construction and imagination is able to develop a decolonizing and liberating feminist way of engaging and transforming G*d language” (234) .  In the final chapter she discloses the relevance of her critical feminist hermeneutical method in the biblical studies. According to Fiorenza, “the task of biblical studies is to research both the inscriptions of empire, on the one hand, and to trace alternative radical democratic visions in biblical language and texts that functions as ‘scripture’ in Christianity and western culture, on the other” (p. 265). The critical feminist hermeneutical strategies aim at the re-reading of the dominations inscribed on the ‘scripture’ and the wo/men body. 

The whole programme of this book can be summed up as follows: (1) The need to go beyond the androcentric language in the G*d talk (Theological discourse), (2) To promote the practice of living as the citizens of ekklesia- where all exercise their agency in a democratic space of equality in order to combat the rhetoric of empire, and (3) To promote the postcolonial feminist critical biblical studies in order to de-inscribe empire from the scripture and wo/men body. What is interesting in this approach is that Fiorenza’s villain- the Empire is prominent here and sometimes the Villain takes the position of the hero in the narrative!  

reviewed by Yahu Vinayaraj (LSTC) 

Apocalypse Now and Then: A Feminist Guide to the End of the World

REVIEW 1

Apocalypse Now and Then:  A Feminist Guide to the End of the World

Catherine Keller

Boston: Beacon Press, 1996   

                                                                                                                                                                                                                  

Catherine Keller in her book, Apocalypse Now and Then: A feminist Guide to the End of the World (Boston: Beacon Press, 1996) deals with the effects of the Christian prophecy of the Apocalypse on western history and thought. Through innovative readings of the theology and philosophy, feminist and postmodern/ poststructuralist/ postcolonial theory, fiction and poetry, western history and current politics, Catherine Keller shows how the concept of the Apocalypse has affected the way the western tradition have thought about text, time, place, community and gender. Apocalypse Now and Then reveals the apocalyptic links of moments and events as diverse as colonialism, urbanization, 19th century American feminism and the current environmental crisis. Throughout the book, she constructs an imaginative ‘counter-apocalypse’ that includes prophetic passion for justice.

Catherine defines apocalypse as an embodied habit. It is in us and around us, constituting a “multi-dimensional, culture pervading spectrum of ideological assumptions, group identities, subjective responses and historical habits” (P. xi). According to Catherine, apocalypse does not lie outside of our subjectivities.  For her, apocalypse is a disclosure of an opening.  Apocalypse did not originally denote cataclysm or end. The Greek word apokalypsis means to unveil, to disclose, and to reveal. In this book, she particularly speaks of an apocalypse pattern operating in/ as western history. So she tries to re-read ‘John’s apocalypse’ / the book of Revelation as a ‘pre-text’ that influenced immensely the genealogy of the western history and culture. She invites the readers of the book to a kind of discursive hermeneutical engagement with this apocalyptic script in order to have a renewed vision of their own social, sexual, ethnic locations or con-texts.

What would make this book a “feminist” guide? For Catherine, the feminist construction of gender is a “configural zone,” intersecting with other zones- like time, place, community and spirit that refract through the lens of apocalypse. Apocalypse, she says, provides a kind of kaleidoscope for cultural self-consideration. (Kaleidoscope provides us a kind of multiple/ refracted view of a subject.) Catherine wanted to make this work as a theological enquiry, because; “theology may help us to locate ourselves within the mythic history of apocalypse and to seek its present meaning” (P. xiii).

Dis/ closing “The End”

Why reopen the Book of Revelation? Catherine argues that it is the most influential text of ‘disclosure’ (“coming again”) at the same time it is the ultimate western text of ‘closure’ (“The End”). She discusses two kinds of method of reading the Book of Revelation in western Christianity: retro apocalypse and crypto apocalypse. Retro apocalypse means understanding the text speaking to the immediate present.  She opines that it is a ‘conservative-literalist reading’, for which the interpretative mediation between the con-texts is not required (P.7). On the other hand, Crypto apocalypse is much more mysterious and psychological in content. Catherine joins with the group, who consider the Book of Revelation as a “master script of the hidden transcript” that initiates re-imagining the end of all kinds of dominations.

She advocates for a “counter-apocalypse” that methodologically exceeds the limitations of anti-apocalypse which ‘closes the texture of apocalypse’ and the neo-apocalypse that limits the text to a “contemporary solidarity.”  The counter-apocalypse tries to “situate ourselves in a fluid relation to the text, and itself alarmingly mobile between multiple contexts” (P.20). She says, “Dis/closure signifies a broken consciousness-that to unlock the time and space of apocalypse is to look another way, to reveal the truth told by suffering and to delight the contemporary healing opening” (P. 20). She prefers the word apocalypse rather than eschatology; because unlike eschatology-a ‘systematic encounter’ with “the truth,” apocalypse allows “a relational truth telling” programme in which we relate the text with the multiple locations. For Catherine, the focus of this book is to re-locate feminist theology with cosmology by which she is intended to discuss the “healing of kosmos, in its full etymological meaning of an aesthetic, social, and natural order of relations that is the endless “end” of counter-apocalypse” (P. 31).

Text: Seeing Voices

 She attempts to re-read the Book of Revelation as a ‘pre-text’ of contemporary apocalypse. Locating the text in its pluriformity of meaning (Intertextuality) and tracing back its history (ies) of readings (hermeneutical trajectories), she argues that “the Book of Revelation is a habit-forming text” (P. 277). Then, she moves on to “hear” the multiple voices or readings of this book in history. She points out that for the liberationist/ subaltern readings, Revelation belongs to an entire genre of resistance to dominations/ colonizations. As an apocalyptic text, the Book of Revelation ‘ends up’ in the dis/closure of a ‘New Jerusalem’-the pluralist polity of ‘nations’/ ‘nationalities,’ and invites its hermeneutic partners to a process of dis/closure of ‘new selves’. Both the text and the self are, hence apocalyptical, because; their meanings are not ‘fixed’ or ‘pre-determined’ but plurivocal /polyphonic and interactive. 

Time: Temporizing Tales

Time/ his-(s)tory is political in western tradition. Catherine opines that we need to ‘temporalize tales.’ Apocalypse as a ‘tale’ or as a ‘narrative,’ needs to be temporalized or con-textualized. She argues that it was Augustine and Joachim who consciously linked the apocalyptic ‘narrative’ with the western his-(s)tory (p. 101). She contents that there were enough reasons in the period of modernity for the historical convention of reading the modern sense of historical progress as a secularization of the Christian myth of apocalypse.  As the critics of enlightenment have demonstrated, she says, it was founded on a ‘universalized notion of the white male Euro centrism and connected thus to the notion of colonialism (P. 117). Catherine cites Joseph Camilleri, an Australian political philosopher: “underlying the history of the expanding, conquering, ‘sovereign’ state is the notion of continuity yet ‘progress’ across time, of history unfolding…as the ordering of time and space, as mastery of people and nature”(P. 118).

Against the rationalization of human life and to reduce it to the constraints of absolute time and space as it is proposed by the notions of modernity, the counter-apocalypse tries to temporalize time/ history/ narratives/ tales.  Catherine contents that “from the crucible of the social movements-feminist, liberative, ecological, anti-racist-emerge slowly the contours of a new temporality“(P. 123). Time is nothing but relation and thus temporality is the realization of relationality. To temporalize is to relativize selfhood and difference to each other. She quotes Rebecca Chopp: ‘It is at once as ‘cosmic time’, the temporality of relatedness, the ceaseless rhythms of natural time, not progress towards an end, not cause from an origin, but an endless flow of connectedness and as “kairotic time” (P. 136).  Dis/ closing time, according to Catherine, therefore directs attention at once to the sustaining and the transforming sequences of our lives (P. 136). 

Place: De/ Colon/izing Spaces

Catherine argues that the western privilege of universal meta narratives neglected the particularities of native spatiotemporalities (P.147). The western understanding of eschatology grounded in the concept of universal spatiality. Modern cartography composes a unified text of space, homogenized for the sake of conquest and trade. For the colonial ideology the unveiling of apocalypse means discovery or conquering the other. While discussing the idea of Christian expansionism in the modern project of Christian mission, she tells the story of ‘Colon’ who changed his name to “Christopher” (Christ-carrier) which means the patron of sailors (P. 161) in order to find rationale for his conquest. Colonialism now permeates into the micro spaces and even into the human bodies (Bio-Politics –Michel Foucault). Catherine comments that, for western epistemology Nature marks the place of every ‘other’ (P. 165).

As a counter-apocalypse on place she highlights the idea of the search for a “vital space” in the struggles of the ‘displaced people’ in Latin America, proposed by the liberation Theologian Vitor Westhelle (P. 168-173). Vitor problematizes the question of dis/placement in the context of (neo) colonialism.  Catherine quotes Vitor: “In such local struggles (for land and livelihood)–each subject to systemic, global effects of colonialism-the temporal “not yet” of liberation eschatology already begins to takes place” (P. 170). Joining with Vitor, she claims that “In the experience of total displacement, creatio ex nihilo is the only affirmation of hope for the displaced” (P. 172). The collective struggles of the dis/placed are catalysts for the reconstruction of time as well as physical and social space.

Spirit: Counter- Apocalyptic In Conclusion

She suggests that counter-apocalypse entails a sublation of eschatology into pneumatology, into the “dis/closive play of hope as a shifting luminocity at the edge of the present” (P. 276). By this she means an insurgent hope that continually arises in the midst of defeats and disappointments. For Keller, such insurgent hope must root its vision of the future in a renewed cosmology of inter-relationality- a deep matrix of relations, always precedes and follows our acts of self-constitution, exceeding “cultural-linguistic” boundaries, animating “nature” and as such, ourselves (P. 302).

 By defining apocalypse as a kaleidoscope, through which the cultural self is to be configured, Catherine brings out its feminist/theological content. Apocalypse, unlike eschatology that erases its creative/ aesthetical content, is an embodied habit in which we find ‘our selves.’ According to Catherine, the ‘new textualities’ of selves that we read out from the apocalyptic text is not ‘unified’ or ‘essentialist’ or ‘oppositional’ but ‘interactive,’ ‘interrelated’ and ‘plurivocal.’ Apocalypse, hence, is temporal, but revelational.  Vitor Westhelle draws out its dynamism: “apocalypse/ eschatology is proximity-adjacency to the recognized exteriority.”  If Catherine’s apocalypse is an open ended experience, why couldn’t this paper defer its ending by asking a question?  Catherine, where does your apocalypse attend the question of ‘being deferent’ in the total project of relations of relations?