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
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