Tags
9/11, Achsah, aqedah, differend, divine violence, hybridity, Jean Baudrillard, Jean-François Lyotard, Job, suicide bombing, symbolic exchange, tangata whenua
Rounding up some recent articles emanating from The Dunedin School:
Deane Galbraith examines the book of Job through the lens of Jean-François Lyotard’s concept of the differend, uncovering a further dimension of injustice in the book resulting from God’s appeal to universalising and transcendent standards of divine justice which serve to deny justice to Job in the specific facts of Job’s dispute. He describes the book of Job as “the Bible’s most anti-Christian text”.
‘”Would you condemn me that you may be justified?”: Job as differend.’ Bible and Critical Theory 5.3 (October 2009)
Eric Repphun explores the aqedah and divine violence in general, with reference to Jean Baudrillard’s theory of symbolic exchange. He questions whether suicide bombing, including 9/11 horrifies us, in part, not only because of its transgressing of the boundaries between the human and the inhuman, but also because “it violates the conventional logics of exchange rooted in capitalist ideas of exchange and use value”.
‘Anything in Exchange for the World: Jean Baudrillard, Jacques Derrida, and the Aqedah.’ International Journal of Baudrillard Studies 7.2 (July 2009)
Judith McKinlay fleshes out the elliptical story of Achsah, a hybrid biblical character, in whose person and genealogy is an uncomfortable reminder of the tangata whenua (indigenous people) still in the land. “Forever located in Scripture, she is the pawn of an imperial hegemony…”
‘Meeting Achsah on Achsah’s land.’ Bible and Critical Theory 5.3 (October 2009)
The Dunedin School 