10 Thursday May 2012
Posted in Biblical Studies, Music, Academics
On 7 May 2012, freewheelin’ New Testament scholar N.T. (Tom) Wright treated his adoring fans to a rendition of Bob Dylan’s “When the Ship Comes In”:
Perhaps Tom Wright was inspired by Robert Gagnon’s rap of the New Testament book of Romans (17 May 2010)?
01 Tuesday May 2012
Posted in Christianity, Media
Tags
Advertising Standards Authority, ASA, charismatics, Equippers Church, evangelicals, His Right to Say It, Jesus heals cancer, morality police, Napier, New Zealand, Noam Chomsky, offensive, Robert Faurisson
The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has upheld a complaint against a church billboard which read “Jesus Heals Cancer”. The billboard was erected by the charismatic-evangelical Equippers’ Church in Napier:
The Complaints Board of the ASA ruled that ”the statement was provocative enough to be likely to cause serious offence to those people who were dealing with, or knew people who were dealing with, cancer.” The Board added that “the public nature of the billboard was likely to cause widespread offence in the light of generally prevailing community standards.” Furthermore, the Board ruled that the church billboard was in breach of the provision in the Code of Ethics which required “Truthful presentation”, and that “the advertisement was likely to deceive or mislead people.” Although the Board accepted that the church believed that Jesus could heal people from cancer, it ruled that the church’s claim to cure cancer was not substantiated. Contrary to some media headlines, the Board did not go so far as to rule explicitly that Jesus could not cure cancer, but in ruling that the billboard was “likely to deceive or mislead people” implied that the claim was untrue.
What is the ASA? The ASA is merely a private society, its membership comprised of various media and advertising entities. Now, given the propensity of commercial advertisers to tell lies, exaggerate, and annoy the public, just to make a buck, generally speaking it is a good thing that advertisers have got together to self-regulate.
But it’s another thing altogether to issue pronouncements on a local church’s misguided but honestly intended billboard. Who the hell do the ASA board members think they are? Do they think they are New Zealand’s Morality Police, pronouncing on any words they discover littering the landscape? On this occasion, the ASA has stepped way over the line. An organisation that is intended to self-regulate the advertising industry should simply be ignored when it makes pompous pronouncements on a local church’s billboard. If the Equippers’ Church weren’t such pious charismatic evangelicals, they should probably just tell the ASA where to go.
But is it offensive to cancer sufferers in the neighbourhood? Of course. However, silencing an honest (albeit deluded) church’s proclamation sets a dangerous precedent. Who will be the next minority group to be silenced because their views or behaviour don’t agree with New Zealand’s pragmatic yet passionless middle-class values? While I personally consider that there is as much chance of Jesus healing somebody from cancer as there is for the Earth to start spinning in the other direction, if we don’t defend the right of the ignorant, the atavistic, and even the despicable to peddle their absurd views, we support a system which denies freedom of speech to those minorities who most need it.
As Noam Chomsky said, in defending a famous French holocaust denier’s right to express his denial of the Jewish holocaust (despite Chomsky’s opinion that holocaust denial was quite incorrect, and the holocaust marked a terrible period in human history): “It is elementary that freedom of expression (including academic freedom) is not to be restricted to views of which one approves, and that it is precisely in the case of views that are almost universally despised and condemned that this right must be most vigorously defended.”
Fortunately, the ASA has no authority to enforce the rulings which they freely promulgate. So, the Equippers’ Church can decide for themselves whether they will use the same billboard again, or whether a different message might be a more persuasive evangelistic tool.
10 Monday Oct 2011
Tags
Inaugural Professorial Lecture, Murray Rae, Theology and the Pursuit of Truth, University of Otago
If you’re in Dunedin this Thursday, and wonder what lies at the intersection of theology and truth, do come along to this public lecture by Professor Murray Rae:
Murray Rae: Theology and the Pursuit of Truth
20 Tuesday Apr 2010
Posted in justice
Tags
All Blacks, analytical philosophy, apostrophes in personal pronouns, aspergers, boycott, Chosen People Syndrome, Continental Philosophy, Dunedin School, fish n chips, global warming, Israel, Peter Akinola gives BJs, SBL, socialism, Society of Biblical Literature, whoring universities
As a protest against what we view as certain injustices currently being perpetrated in the world, the Dunedin School believes that, ethically, it has no other choice but to refuse to blog until the following demands are met:
06 Tuesday Apr 2010
Posted in Jesus
The Dunedin School is pleased to announce our very first Caption Contest. Over in that wannabe-mini-America they call Australia, last Easter Saturday, members of the Heaven on Earth Church upset hoardes of little children with a graphically violent crucifixion scene, staged outside a local shopping centre. After the children started bawling and causing an unholy ruckus, and most importantly, interrupting sales, the cops were called in. The authorities quickly removed the bloody Jesus from his cross and detained him for questioning (“Who do you think you are, all covered in blood, like this? You oughta be ashamed. The Son of God, huh? So ya think you’re funny, do ya? How about you accompany us to the station looking like a half-naked Abo, and we’ll see if you’re still making jokes after an hour or two…”).
Anyway, issues of religious freedom aside, this pic is just begging for some witty captions. Go on, have a go (you know you want to):
A free copy of John Shelby Spong’s latest book, Eternal Life, to the lucky winner.
23 Tuesday Mar 2010
Posted in Dunedin School
Tags
The Dunedin School has been mentioned in an academic article published in the world’s leading journal on the Bible and critical theory, The Bible and Critical Theory. James Crossley (University of Sheffield), a sometime commenter on this blog, writes:
“Unlike the mass media, biblioblogging is not directly dependent on corporate financial backing and so more and more figures from overtly different perspectives would be able to follow Wrong’s lead and open up different ways of thinking about the politics of biblioblogging from within the world of biblioblogging, perhaps even donning the mask. There are now also occasional exceptions, such as Roland Boer’s blog, Stalin’s Moustache, and the collective, Dunedin School, which also have a far higher level of political sophistication and learned interaction with a wider array of scholarship in the humanities than other blogs.”
(James Crossley, “N.T. Wrong and the Bibliobloggers.” Bible and Critical Theory 6.1 (March 2010): 03.11.)
“Political sophistication and learned interaction.” Yeah, baby!
The Dunedin School understands that description as applying especially to us, rather than Roland Boer’s Stalin’s Moustache. For Roland just goes on about sex, penises, testicles, and prairie oysters - and with some decidedly spurious etymologies. He’s the veritable Roger Lambert of biblical studies.
20 Saturday Mar 2010
Posted in Conferences & Seminars, Paul
Tags
John Barclay
Professor John Barclay, Lightfoot Professor of Divinity at Durham University (United Kingdom), famed New Testament scholar, and occasional Dunedin resident, will give (if you will pardon the pun) two lectures in the De Carle Open Lecture series, on Tuesday 30 March and Wednesday 31 March:
1. Paul and the Subversive Power of the Unconditional Gift
Tuesday 30 March, 5:10pm
Archway 1 Lecture Theatre, University of Otago
Working from the anthropology of gift, and the practice of gifts in Paul’s first-century context, a critical question emerges concerning who is qualified or worthy to receive the gift; answers on the gift’s proper distribution reveal foundational social norms. Paul’s mission to non-Jews broke Jewish ethnic and legal norms, and was the social corollary of his conviction that a divine gift (of Christ) had been given and distributed without qualificatory conditions. This conviction represents a highly unsettling perception of the world, at odds with the normal categories of hierarchy, quality and significance, and capable of creating irregular, socially creative communities. Paul emerges as one of the most subversive thinkers of the ancient world.
2. Paul, Reciprocity and the Modern Myth of the Pure Gift
Wednesday 31 March, 5:10pm
Archway 1 Lecture Theatre, University of Otago
The modern ideology of the pure, unilateral and utterly disinterested gift is the product of social and economic developments in Western history, strengthened by Protestant polemics and modern individualism. In Paul’s context, as in most traditional societies, gifts create obligations, are bilateral in exchange, and are a key mechanism for social integration. Paul’s ideology of gift-reciprocity in a community bound together by gift and need indicates that he is not a modern – and all the better for that! Special features of Paul’s notion of community-construction will be explored, with suggestions concerning their relevance to contemporary social and economic problematics.
All Welcome
And it’s free!
Derrida receives a crap Christmas present and contemplates his obligation to give one back.
12 Friday Mar 2010
Posted in Cults, Death, Greek, Islam, Television, Transhumanism, Violence
Tags
artificial intelligence, Battlestar Galactica, Caprica, globalization, monotheism, Zoë Graystone
The Battlestar Galactica prequel series, Caprica, really started to hit its straps at about Episode 4: ‘Gravedancing’ (for more on BSG-related topics from Tyrone and Eric, visit here, here, and here).
Caprica is set on the planet of the same name, a planet possessing technology a decade or so more advanced than ours, and on the brink of developing artificial intelligence. The planet Caprica is controlled by global business and a world government, exercising effective political control over the other eleven of the twelve colonies, and wielding a powerful law enforcement and intelligence service called the Global Defense Department (G.D.D.). The parallels to our own political situation (in descending order of power: global business, the U.S. government, and the F.B.I.) are obvious.
The only apparent threat to established power is posed by the terrorist group, Soldiers of The One, whose monorail bomb explosion in the first, pilot episode killed Zoë Graystone, daughter of artificial intelligence entrepreneur, Daniel Graystone. The dominant religious belief within the twelve colonies is polytheism, one more or less based on the ancient Greek pantheon. This polytheistic religion is practiced more nominally and with less literalism on Caprica than it is on other planets, such as the more fundamentalist Gemenon and Tauron. By contrast, the religious innovation of the Soldiers of The One (S.T.O) is monotheism, belief in one God, a belief that sets them against the secularizing and nominally polytheistic Caprican government.
This clash in worldviews – and again the parallels with life on Earth in 2010 are obvious – produces some fiery religious dialogue, punctuated with the usual half-truths, ignorance, fear, and prejudice. When the G.D.D. confronts Amanda Graystone (Zoë Graystone’s mother) and proceeds to force a search of Zoë’s possessions for evidence of her links with the S.T.O., the confrontation produces one of the best lines of the season to this point:
Amanda Graystone (Zoë’s mother): What do you think you’re going to find here?
Jordan (GDD Agent): I really don’t know. Maybe who she met with. Who brainwashed her into believing in a moral dictator called ‘God’…
The GDD agent then delivers a line which nicely captures the inevitable conflict which arises when a political power and a rival religious power each claim absolute authority – and the resulting systemic violence from the political hegemony, defended as though it were benignly protecting the existing order from unaccountable violence:
Jordan (GDD Agent): I’m sorry if we have to take your daughter’s life apart in order to put other terrorists behind bars. But if we have to, then so be it.
After Zoë’s involvement with the S.T.O. is made public, the Graystones are invited on a comedian’s talk show - the media form in which most Caprican young people receive their news. The theme of religious conflict is further developed on the show. Amanda Graystone is asked why she didn’t report her daughter as a terrorist, and replies that she never knew:
Amanda Graystone: When was I supposed to call the cops?
Baxter Sarno: Well, I don’t know, maybe when she started worshiping the big Destructo-God-In-The-Sky, maybe?
Daniel Graystone (Zoë’s father): We didn’t know, there weren’t any signs.
Baxter Sarno: You said she was ‘troubled’.
Daniel Graystone: See… she was angry. That’s a better word. My wife’s right.
Baxter Sarno: Well, ok, ‘angry’, but I would also like to add – “morally blank”. Because the virtual world is a poor teacher and doesn’t provide boundaries…
Daniel Graystone: You know who would completely agree with that – that is Zoe. And that’s exactly how the S.T.O. [Soldiers of The One] got to her… She saw things in the virtual world – ritual sacrifices, games like New Cap City, and she felt the absence of moral guidelines, just like you do, like a lot of folks do. And into that absence steps the S.T.O., offering this marvelous ultimate moral arbiter. It’s quite appealing – for a teenage girl especially.
This exchange captures something Bruce Lincoln notes in Holy Terrors. The typical response of the U.S. to Muslim terrorism was to deny that the terrorists operated from religious motivations; to instead paint them as amoral agents acting merely for political – or even selfish - purposes. Such a slant is completely contradicted by the nature of the instructions which each of the 9/11 bombers were issued and followed before the attack – which stressed the religious rationale for their actions at almost every step of the way, and which was couched in language which emphasized their overall goals of holiness, cleansing, and purity. If any religious element was mentioned in official U.S. media reports, it was painted as a variety opposed to “true Islam” – as though the religion the 9/11 bombers practised was somehow not a valid form of religion. But while it is certainly not a valid form of Islam for the vast majority of Muslims, it does constitute “genuine” Islam for some.
Before her death, Zoë created a virtual copy of herself, the program for which becomes the prototype for artificial intelligence and the creation of the Cylons.
As the Mother of an entirely new species, her name, Zoë, takes on a special significance. It means “Life” in Greek, for which the corresponding Hebrew name is חוה (Ḥavvah): “Eve”.
10 Wednesday Mar 2010
Posted in Conferences & Seminars, Fundamentalism
Lecture 1: Science, Non-Science, and Nonsense: From Aliens to Creationism
Monday, 15 March 2010
The distinction between science and fiction and between sense and nonsense has become blurred in popular discourse.
In the United States, in 2008, three Republican Presidential Candidates indicated that they did not believe in evolution and at least one of them indicated he was not willing to come down on the side of an earth that was older than 6000 years old – joining the majority of Americans.
Most recently, the popular debate about the teaching of intelligent design in public schools presents a perplexing quandary for scientists and policy makers. These misconception may affect the teaching of science, but other confusions, about climate change, and nuclear weapons, affect the peace and security of the whole world.
In this lecture Professor Krauss will explore examples from government and the media to explore these issues. He will also address the important issue of what science is, and what it is not.
Date: Monday, 15 March 2010
Time: 5:30pm – 6:30pm
Audience: Public
Location: St David Street Lecture Theatre, Cnr St David Street and Castle Street
Cost: Free
http://www.otago.ac.nz/news/events/otago007286.html
And if you like that one, there’s a second lecture by Dr Krauss the following day, same time, University of Otago College of Education Auditorium.
08 Monday Mar 2010
I usually try to ignore the dull drone which is the sorry excuse for the New Zealand national anthem - on those occasions when it is forced on me in public. So I propose that they change it to something that would really get everyone on their feet! Something which really reflects something of the national psyche!!
This is why I am spearheading a campaign to change the New Zealand national anthem to “It’s Sheep We’re Up Against”. Much like our old national anthem, it was even written by some Pommy bastard (sombody in 1980s band, the Housemartins). And unlike the old national anthem, it is desirably self-deprecating and almost impossible to get jingoistic about (which, from my decidedly unnationalistic point of view, are ideal qualities for a national anthem if we must have one).
Yet, the chorus-line somehow captures what it is to be from these tropical South Pacific isles (and more so if you’ve ever been a farmboy in Southland, according to the best estimates).
So join the Campaign to change NZ National Anthem to “It’s Sheep We’re Up Against” Facebook Group, and make a real difference to the world you live in and to the lives of sheep everywhere.
Indeed, it’s sheep we’re up against. Take it away, fatboy…
02 Tuesday Mar 2010
Posted in Ethics, Faith, Psychoanalysis
Tags
adolescence, Fundamentalism, Julia Kristeva, nihilism, Psychoanalysis, secularism, This Incredible Need to Believe
I picked up a copy of Julia Kristeva’s recent little book on faith, This Incredible Need to Believe (October 2009) at Melbourne’s wonderful bookstore, Readings (on Lygon Street). Through the lens of psychoanalysis, she attempts to answer that gargantuan yet pressing question of how a secular society can justifiably defend religious or moral foundations, without being trapped into either an adolescent fundamentalism or equally adolescent nihilism.
“This annihilation of divine authority and, along with it, any other authority, state or political, does not necessarily lead to nihilism. Nor to its symmetrical opposite, which is fundamentalism up in arms against impiety: in making the divine a value, even the “supreme value,” the transcendentalists link up with nihilistic utilitarianism. But how to know this today without deluding oneself with a narrowly rationalist humanism or a romantic spirituality?”
Indeed, how to know this without deluding oneself? Kristeva’s essential answer is that understanding ourselves - in particular our basic psychic makeup, as revealed by psychoanalysis – reveals necessary psychic beliefs and morality. So with recourse to these psychic needs, secular society can defend morality while avoiding a return to the irrationality of religion (“very often in bastardized (sects) or fundamentalist… forms”) or the emptiness of nihilism.
But a problem seems to remain with her ‘solution’ . For, at most - and if we accept her psychoanalytical reasoning for a moment - if we have psychic needs which underpin faith and morality, this only leads to the conclusion that there is a psychological necessity for some form of morality. But the ‘problem’ faced is rather different: secularity is unable to provide an ultimate basis for any particular moral standpoint. And this particular ‘problem’ cannot be overcome by any psychic necessity. This involves the illicit progression from a descriptive to a prescriptive. More concretely, Kristeva’s solution does not allow us to judge between the ethical standpoints of Wahhabism, Nazism, or the new humanism which she herself expounds. It is no wonder, then, that liberal humanism only flourishes in police states, where violent force rather than psychic necessity dictates the acceptable form of ethics.
Although her main thesis fails, it is an interesting read; for example, check her discussion of adolescence, some of which is available in this excerpt:
“The Judeo-Christian paradise is an adolescent creation: the adolescent takes pleasure in the syndrome of paradise, which may also become a source of suffering, if absolute ideality takes a turn toward cruel persecution. Since he believes that the other, surpassing the parental other, not only exists but that he/she gives him total satisfaction, the adolescent believes that the Great Other exists, which is bliss [jouissance] itself. The least disappointment in this syndrome of ideality hurls him into paradise’s ruins, in the form of punitive behavior… The innocence of the child gives way to necessarily sadomasochistic satisfactions that draw their violence from the very strictures of the ideality syndrome, which command the adolescent: ‘Your pleasure shall have no bounds!’”
I read This Incredible Need to Believe on the long plane trip back to Dunedin from Melbourne, along with a new novel by Don DeLillo, Point Omega.
I’m wondering how Kristeva distinguishes the “bastardized” religious sects from the more legitimate (and presumably pure) religions…
- Deane Galbraith
04 Thursday Feb 2010
Posted in Biblical Studies, Theory, Conferences & Seminars
Tags
Monstrosity of Christ, b&ct, Bible and Critical Theory, Žižek, Marx, Badiou, Christina von Braun, Last Temptation of Christ, Passion of the Christ, Queer, Judith Butler, Marcella Althaus-Reid, Dale B. Martin, Kevin Rudd, submission, Gramsci, Zelophehad, Eco-feminism, timespace, open texts, Umberto Eco, Irigaray, Gospel of Judas
The Bog
February 7, 2010
0930-1015 Roland Boer, University of Newcastle, NSW
The sadness of Friedrich Engels
Focusing on the early letters of Friedrich Engels, this article explores a little known but exceedingly important aspect of his life: his deep and heart-rending struggle as he gradually lost his Reformed (Calvinist) faith. The issues that confront the young Engels concern the Bible, especially its contradictions (with a focus on biblical genealogies), the relation between reason and faith, and the issue of reading the Bible properly. Engels was a self-taught biblical scholar, but a strikingly informed one. He kept up with the rapidly developing historical critical study of the Bible (newly established in Germany at the time), current issues in philosophy and theology, and he was able to read the New Testament in Greek. We find him debating all these issues with his close friends, Friedrich and Wilhelm Graeber, who were to become pastors in the German Evangelical Church. As he does so he continually shifts positions until he reluctantly gives up his faith. Eventually he would come to terms with his Christian background, offering striking analyses of the revolutionary origins of Christianity.
1015-1100 Eric Repphun, University of Otago
The Monstrous Cinematic Christ: Biblical Narrative as ‘Supplement’ or ‘Multiple Opposite’?
This will be a study of Last Temptation of Christ and The Passion of the Christ and the way both use source material (including the Gospel narratives), all in light of the Zizek/Milbank debate in The Monstrosity of Christ.
Break
1130-1215 John Barclay, University of Durham, UK
Paul and Alain Badiou
This paper discusses the reading of Paul offered by the contemporary French philosopher, Alain Badiou. Badiou’s emphasis on event and unconditioned grace is supported by readings from Galatians, such that his philosophical notion of ‘event’, with its militant and universal effects, may claim real consonance with Paul. However, Paul’s strong notions of divine creation from nothing, and of the benevolence of the Christ event, require that God be reinserted into Paul’s theology, while Badiou’s focus on the resurrection, rather than the cross, misses the social radicalism latent in Paul.
Lunch at The Bog
Menu: http://www.thebog.co.nz/dunedin/menu_breakfast.html
1300-1345 Christina Petterson, Macquarie University, NSW
Spirit and Matter in John
German feminist and cultural theorist Christina von Braun’s work on hysteria and logos from 1985 contains a fascinating chapter on writing, patriarchy, spirit and matter, which draws heavily on John’s word made flesh to argue for the ‘logical’ outcome of the abstraction process of Western philosophy. In this paper, I want to present and explore this argument, bringing it into discussion with a recent PhD dissertation in Biblical Exegesis on the stoic pneuma in John in order to look at the negotiation of matter in the gospel narrative.
1345-1430 Majella Franzmann, University of Otago
Personal and Cosmic Spaces of Salvation in James and Gospel of Judas in Codex Tchachos
In this paper, I provide a study of the characters of James and Judas in James and Gos. Judas in Codex Tchacos by investigating some personal and cosmic spaces in which the characters move, which they influence, and which produce certain effects upon them in return. I use critical spatiality as a means of studying the spaces inhabited by James and Judas, the spaces between them and other characters, especially Jesus, and the cosmic spaces that they must enter and/or cross on their journey to insight and perfection to attain the heavenly home they are seeking.
Break
1500-1545 Holly Randell-Moon, University of Newcastle, NSW
Left or Right? Religion and politics in Australia under the Howard and Rudd governments
A number of scholars, such as Ghassan Hage and David Harvey, have argued that conservative nationalisms often emerge as responses to the alienating effects of neoliberal economic policies. In my previous work, I have argued that the former Howard government’s (1996-2007) promotion of “Christian values” in its public policy and rhetoric can be understood as an attempt to reconcile, or compensate for, the individualising effects of neoliberal economic policy. In this paper, I will compare the Rudd government’s use of a social justice view of Christianity and national culture to shift economic policy away from neoliberalism. However, the Rudd government’s differentiation of its own policies as socially based, in contrast to the non-interventionist and individualist policies under Howard, takes at face value neoliberalism’s claim to limited governance and indifference to social relations. There can be no real engagement with the political effects of neoliberal policies if neoliberalism is simply understood as supporting a neutral conception of the individual or economy. For this reason, I question whether the emergence of a progressive Christian nationalism significantly changes the way neoliberal policies are conceptualised and implemented.
1545-1630 Remy Low, University of Sydney, NSW
Submission in the War of Position: Towards a Neo-Gramscian Reading of 1 Peter 2:18-21
There have been endless skirmishes over the New Testament’s injunctions to submission (or ‘to subject’; Gk: hupotasso) in the realm of Biblical studies and ethics. In this paper, I engage in a close reading of one particular usage of the term in 1 Peter 2: 18-21 from the rubric of a neo-Gramscian theory of hegemony. Drawing on the work of Gramsci, Gadamer, Laclau and Unger, I argue that the mobilisation of the term has to be understood as a military metaphor mobilized within a specific spatiotemporal context: i.e. for the purpose of presenting an exterior semblance of ‘normality’ in a hostile situation while actively anticipating total liberation with the apokálypsis of the Kingdom of God. I propose that the exhortation to ‘be subject’, far from being an essentially oppressive and/or conservative ethico-political signifier to be at best avoided, can be re-articulated strategically for the purposes of emancipatory struggle in multiple sociocultural spheres.
Drinks and dinner at The Bog
The Bog has live music from 2000 on Sundays
February 8, 2010
0930-1015 Judith McKinlay, University of Otago
The Daughters of Zelophehad hanging out with Edward Gibbon Wakefield: What am I doing with them?
This paper endeavours to introduce a postcolonial reading of the texts concerning Zelophehad daughters alongside a consideration of the settlement of Post Nicholson by the New Zealand Company, and the issues such a reading raises.
1015-1100
Robert J. Myles, University of Auckland
Dandy discipleship: A queering of Mark’s male disciples
This paper involves a re-reading of a selection of texts from the Gospel of Mark employing the socio-rhetorical method combined with queer and gender criticism as informed by the works of Judith Butler, Marcella Althaus-Reid, and Dale B. Martin. Particular attention is given to the ways in which the gender and sexuality of the male disciples has been constructed in both the world behind the text and the world in front of the text. The paper examines how the masculinity of the disciples is performed by placing the texts in dialogue with dominant discourses from the ancient Mediterranean context. While conventional readings unambiguously presume the normativity of heterosexuality and binary categories of gender, this paper challenges such modern assumptions by purposefully and strategically reading the texts sexually. In the process of applying a provocative queer imagination, underlying components of erotophobia and homophobia within conventional hermeneutical filters are also exposed.
Break
1130-1215 Elaine Wainwright, University of Auckland
From Wilderness to Waterfront: The Play of Time and Space in an Ecological Reading of Matt 3-4
One aspect of the ecological reading process that I am developing is the intertextuality that lies ‘in front of’ the text. This paper will dialogue with emerging theories of time and space/place or Time/Space as May and Thrift call it and how these might inform an ecological reading of selected segments of Matt 3-4.
Lunch at The Bog
1300-1345 Kirsten Dawson, University of Otago
Systemic violence in Job 1-2
Using Žižek’s threefold schema of “subjective”, “systemic” and “symbolic” violence, I will examine the violence apparent in the prologue of the book of Job. While the subjective violence that befalls Job is well-recognised, this paper will investigate the systemic violence in which the prosperous Job is enmeshed, and will suggest some of the implications that these observations might have for interpreting violence in the book as a whole.
1345-1430 Yael Klangwisan, Laidlaw College, Auckland
The Marine Lover & the Song of Songs
In the Marine Lover of Friedrich Nietzsche Luce Irigaray formulates a poetic way of reading and critiquing Nietzsche’s Thus spoke Zarathustra. In the Marine Lover, Irigaray enacts her metaphor of water and its relationship to the feminine while simultaneously creating a Nietzschean persona with which to engage face to face. This aesthetic, homeopathic and poetic form of interrogation enables Irigaray to envelope herself around Nietzsche’s words, washing against and permeating the weaknesses in his claims resulting in a particularly triumphant and brilliantly subtle riposte. Irigaray’s way of reading (in the Marine Lover) provides possibilities for reading the Song of Songs, especially in her use of poetic forms, her treatment of the text as “person” and thus the potential for face to face encounter and lithe dialogue with a biblical text that is notoriously evasive.
Break
1500-1545 James Harding, University of Otago
The David and Jonathan narrative(s) as open text
This paper attempts to move beyond approaches to the David and Jonathan narrative that try to circumscribe the meaning of the text through appeal to word statistics (cf. Zehnder 1998; 2007; critiqued by me at last year’s B&CT seminar) by focusing on the relationship between the constraints of the text, that is the “linear text manifestation,” and the intentions of its readers. Based primarily on Jonathan Culler’s work on the semiotics of reading (Culler 1981) and Umberto Eco’s on the limits of interpretation (Eco 1990), this paper seeks to determine what elements in the text and what interpretive conventions enable the David and Jonathan narrative to produce meaning. My case is that the narrative, which itself is made up of at least two redactional layers, is an “open text” (Eco 1962; 1979) that has been artificially “closed” by the construction of a biblical canon and the imposition of a closed range of interpretive conventions. It is only this move that has made it possible to delimit the work’s meaning by appeal to Lev 18:22; 20:13 (e.g. Gagnon 2001; Zehnder 1998; 2007; etc.) or to the completion of the Old Testament in the new (e.g. Vischer 1946).
Drinks at The Bog
Depart
Also:
Transport and Accommodation details
Venue
Registration: email either James Harding (james.harding(at)stonebow.otago.ac.nz) or Roland Boer (roland.t.boer(at)gmail.com) and let them know that you’re coming.
Moana’s paper was sadly cancelled:
Moana Hall-Smith, St John’s College, Auckland/University of Otago
Divine colonization in the Book of Judges: A Maori woman’s ecological reading of Judges 19
This paper is exploratory. As part of a larger project, I am working towards developing a paradigm[s] for reading the biblical text and in particular Judges 19 ecologically. In this paper I propose to use a Māori woman’s postcolonial lens and a Kaupapa Māori framework to foster a new ecological -feminist reading of Judges 19 as a way of liberating the text from its colonizing and patriarchal orientation. I will draw on the issues of land exploitation, patriarchy, gender inequality and colonial dominance to qualify that a Māori eco-feminism is integral to postcolonial thinking. From this dialogue I will draw on Māori conceptual lenses for reading which might guide an ecological reading of Judges 19. Within the confines of this paper a detailed reading will not be possible but simply the proposing of a Kaupapa Māori framework for more indepth interpretation. I will investigate the pilegesh; as the “other” to men; “other” to the sons of Israel; “other” to the non-human and “other” to the divine through a number of Māori conceptual tools. Firstly, whakapapa which is the systematic and orderly record of human, cosmic and primordial causes and effects. It is based on a genealogical and spiritual relationship to the universe; to the landscape and to stones, rocks and other things seen and unseen, therefore, an association between the female body and the land is invoked and the woman’s decapitated body portrays the ordering of the cosmos; death – death – new life. Secondly, whenua translates both land and womb that are symbolically connected by the birthing cord. Thus the woman’s dismembered body has a strong umbilical attachment to all the lands in Israel. Whenua also provides the interpretive tool that demonstrates the abuse and violation of land was/is intrinsically linked to the abuse and violation of women. Wheiao another conceptual tool, is the liminal space situated between the life and death; the realm of the divine “other”. The battered woman is in this place when she is cut into twelve pieces and sent throughout the territory of Israel. By using Māori conceptual and postcolonial interpretation lenses, I will try to offer a new way of reading the biblical text that challenges those who insist on interpreting through Biblical historical scholarship. This paper’s particular concern will be how attentiveness to the “other” in the text while highlighting the interconnectedness of the land and its community may bring new questions to the interpretation of Judges 19.
30 Saturday Jan 2010
Posted in Biblical Studies, Theory, Conferences & Seminars
Tags
b&ct, Badiou, Bible and Critical Theory, Christina von Braun, Dale B. Martin, Eco-feminism, Edward Gibbon Wakefield, Gramsci, Irigaray, Judith Butler, Kaupapa Māori, Kevin Rudd, Last Temptation of Christ, Marcella Althaus-Reid, Marx, Monstrosity of Christ, open texts, Passion of the Christ, Queer, submission, timespace, Umberto Eco, Zelophehad, Žižek
