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.