This had to be moved from the main article which had become so long it would hardly load. I am working to make it comprehensible. Some of the links have decayed.
Mercedes
Lopes Interview with Irene Foulkes - defunct
--Mercedes-lopes.blogspot.com/ - 47k - Cached-defunct
VI. Addenda Nancy Cardoso Pereira, Ivone Gebara, Aquino Maria Pilar, Elsa Tamez, Ignacio Ellacuria
The body as hermeneutical category: guidelines for a feminist hermeneutics of liberation.
"Like land that needs
tilling--that is what the Bible is like for women. The Bible is difficult
terrain. Some parts are hard, and others are swampy ... yet there are countless
fertile places to be worked on. It is the task of women and men who believe it
is possible to remodel gender social relations to discover the liberating
fertility of the Bible. The Bible has to be worked in the same way as the land:
with tenacity, determination, wisdom and pleasure
Irene Foulkes. 1996. Problemas Pastorales en Corinto: Comentario
Exegético-Pastoral a 1 Corintios. Editorial
DEI. Elsa Tamez (member of UBS Sub-committee on Translation) writes:
“Very few
commentaries combine academic rigor with pastoral concern. Irene Foulkes’s
commentary on 1 Corinthians is one of those. She makes a thorough study of the
socio-economic and cultural context of the first century, she draws on
structuralism and different critical approaches to the text where these are
helpful, and so enables the reader to relive that time in history and to be
impacted by the biblical message. But she does not stop there; having laid a
foundation, she builds bridges to our own reality, and brings Paul’s words to
the church today and to the Third World
context.”
Militarism and gender in Korea Intimacy and Eroticism in the Writings of Women Mystics Spirituality and Resistance. A Latin American feminist perspective Femininity in Men. Martha's Role in the Johannine Community Anther World is Possible Feminine Representation in the Discourse of Liberation Theology Popular Reading of the Bible and Woman The ministry of Mary Magdalene performable referring for the woman at the present time Ecofeminist Practices on America Latina. Com Irene Foulkes, para Revista
Mandrágora (Revista do Núcleo de Estudos da Mulher na América Latina –
NETMAL), São Bernardo do Campo, SP: UMESP, 2005, ... |
Colonial Masculinity: The 'Manly Englishman' and the 'Effeminate ...
But
it less does that than the reverse: the masculist attitudes in evidence seem
very familiar from British history; and their application in colonial
...
www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&se=gglsc&d=5000387207 - Similar pages - Note this |
The body as hermeneutical category: guidelines for a feminist hermeneutics of liberation.
by Nancy Cardoso Pereira. Ecumenical Review Issue three.
"Like land that needs
tilling--that is what the Bible is like for women. The Bible is difficult
terrain. Some parts are hard, and others are swampy ... yet there are countless
fertile places to be worked on. It is the task of women and men who believe it
is possible to remodel gender social relations to discover the liberating
fertility of the Bible. The Bible has to be worked in the same way as the land:
with tenacity, determination, wisdom and pleasure A feminist reading of the Bible
is a complex affair. We must deal, as women, with a very ancient text which
reflects different cultures, customs, epochs, relations, languages and
grammars. Above all, we have to confront androcentric
and patriarchal passages--and interpretations--that have accumulated over
the centuries. A hermeneutics guided by a focus on gender social relations
should, therefore, be daring and go beyond the traditional canons of exegetical
science. We need a hermeneutics of
suspicion which is operative in all areas: texts, interpretations,
traditions, translations, and exegetical methods.[trying to hide what they do
in intellectualese]
Gender theories are analytical
tools that allow us to deconstruct texts and reveal the structure of the
relations on which they are based. We can then construct a new text [it is a new understanding of the text] that seeks to be
liberating in nature, including with regard to gender relations. We believe
that this is the wish of the God who created men and women in God's own image
and likeness.
The body as a hermeneutical category
For many centuries the importance of the body, of matter, has been devalued. Importance has always been given to the human "soul" or, in another generalizing view, a person's place in the socio-political structure and the economy. [not however among peasants, who always value the body] But history shows that the body has always been the main locus of the oppression and appropriation of women, as it has also been with other oppressed groups (for example indigenous and black peoples): this has been done through rape, aggression, denial, abuse, manipulation, idealization. [this is true because you cannot imprison the mind. As for the soul it is a philosophical concept] For this very reason, the body cannot be considered as a mere side-issue in any reading of the Bible which asks questions about gender relations. Life and death manifest themselves through the body. Restoring the physical body to its rightful place is a fundamental part of our affirmation of a real and sensual life. [restoration of the body, resurrection of the body]
The text is also a body, [equivocation] one that shows itself to (and hides itself from) its readers. Those readers are also living bodies [minds] entering into dialogue and struggling with that other body, the text. [it’s a wrestling match] Both reveal the tissue of their own body: as individual and social bodies, feminine and masculine. In the hermeneutical process conducted from a corporeal perspective, the bodies sometimes meet and celebrate in the same way as we gladly gather a good harvest from the land.[a third take body, text, land] Sometimes they detest each other, because they are disappointed that there is no fruit, or that the only fruit is sour and of no use to anyone. At times, the body holds out its arms, waiting for the other body to do the same ... but there is no response. [this paragraph is romance, metaphor but studiously avoids the idea that the land can exist for itself, can be wild and that is appropriate]
The body as a hermeneutical category
For many centuries the importance of the body, of matter, has been devalued. Importance has always been given to the human "soul" or, in another generalizing view, a person's place in the socio-political structure and the economy. [not however among peasants, who always value the body] But history shows that the body has always been the main locus of the oppression and appropriation of women, as it has also been with other oppressed groups (for example indigenous and black peoples): this has been done through rape, aggression, denial, abuse, manipulation, idealization. [this is true because you cannot imprison the mind. As for the soul it is a philosophical concept] For this very reason, the body cannot be considered as a mere side-issue in any reading of the Bible which asks questions about gender relations. Life and death manifest themselves through the body. Restoring the physical body to its rightful place is a fundamental part of our affirmation of a real and sensual life. [restoration of the body, resurrection of the body]
The text is also a body, [equivocation] one that shows itself to (and hides itself from) its readers. Those readers are also living bodies [minds] entering into dialogue and struggling with that other body, the text. [it’s a wrestling match] Both reveal the tissue of their own body: as individual and social bodies, feminine and masculine. In the hermeneutical process conducted from a corporeal perspective, the bodies sometimes meet and celebrate in the same way as we gladly gather a good harvest from the land.[a third take body, text, land] Sometimes they detest each other, because they are disappointed that there is no fruit, or that the only fruit is sour and of no use to anyone. At times, the body holds out its arms, waiting for the other body to do the same ... but there is no response. [this paragraph is romance, metaphor but studiously avoids the idea that the land can exist for itself, can be wild and that is appropriate]
To think of the text as a body,
as the fruit of gender and social relations, [is to limit it to prejudice and
paradigms of protocol and convention common to post grads] and to understand
the process of interpretation as the product of a concrete relationship between
bodies, sheds new light [they mean understanding] on what is being said. The
body as a hermeneutical key offers alternative interpretations that invite us
to dialogue and to experience new
relations between men and women--in theology, at church, at home, through
physical loss, in life.
Reading the [text of the] passion and resurrection of Jesus with [as an instance of] the lacerated bodies of Latin America in mind requires us to contemplate the raped bodies of men and women, boys and girls, [requires us also to contemplate his disfigurement, that he looked like no man] and to feel the urgent need for resurrection [salvation] of these bodies now. The recreation of the body as a place of sacred revelation means accepting and affirming the liberating dynamics of enjoyment, pleasure without shame, without the limits imposed by shame, stereotypes and oppressive censorship. [is this in bed at home or on TV and in church?]
The subjects and their daily stories in the hermeneutical process
In the same way we approach the Bible as though it is land to be worked, we need to take a closer look at our daily lives: there are fertile parts, while others are full of stones; there are deserts and swamps ... but also great abundance. [this is the usual self doubt of religion, the problem is that the landscape is being viewed as the flawed life is viewed, but the landscape whether swamp or mountain or desert is not flawed because it is so, but it is so because it is so. You cannot remake it, but can adapt to it. so there is no parallel between the body and the land.] What are the assumptions her about the landscape if the text is to be exploited with it.
[The landscape of the body so called and of the text, its androcentric formula are paramount in the Renaissance poets who celebrate the woman as the land within which we can read also text That is the land is a text of which the woman is an example, we conquer both and enjoy both, but the text is that we do so It is as much a mistake to think the andro penetration of causes all negative as it is to think the gyno all passive and negative. The andro force provides initiatives of intention invention sanctuary and preserve as well as war and domination..lovemaking as an act of conquest discovery in the love voyage.]
A feminist hermeneutics of
liberation, which uses gender social relations to analyze the text, discovers people as they really are,
with their subjectivity, history, culture and differences. All our day-to-day
experience of life goes into reading, interrogating and interpreting the text.
We are not impartial readers; we are people with bodies, colour, sex, age; our body works, suffers and experiences pleasure, whether we like our body or not, whether others find pleasure in it or not. [as if this were determined outside, not inside]
Reading the [text of the] passion and resurrection of Jesus with [as an instance of] the lacerated bodies of Latin America in mind requires us to contemplate the raped bodies of men and women, boys and girls, [requires us also to contemplate his disfigurement, that he looked like no man] and to feel the urgent need for resurrection [salvation] of these bodies now. The recreation of the body as a place of sacred revelation means accepting and affirming the liberating dynamics of enjoyment, pleasure without shame, without the limits imposed by shame, stereotypes and oppressive censorship. [is this in bed at home or on TV and in church?]
The subjects and their daily stories in the hermeneutical process
In the same way we approach the Bible as though it is land to be worked, we need to take a closer look at our daily lives: there are fertile parts, while others are full of stones; there are deserts and swamps ... but also great abundance. [this is the usual self doubt of religion, the problem is that the landscape is being viewed as the flawed life is viewed, but the landscape whether swamp or mountain or desert is not flawed because it is so, but it is so because it is so. You cannot remake it, but can adapt to it. so there is no parallel between the body and the land.] What are the assumptions her about the landscape if the text is to be exploited with it.
[The landscape of the body so called and of the text, its androcentric formula are paramount in the Renaissance poets who celebrate the woman as the land within which we can read also text That is the land is a text of which the woman is an example, we conquer both and enjoy both, but the text is that we do so It is as much a mistake to think the andro penetration of causes all negative as it is to think the gyno all passive and negative. The andro force provides initiatives of intention invention sanctuary and preserve as well as war and domination..lovemaking as an act of conquest discovery in the love voyage.]
We are not impartial readers; we are people with bodies, colour, sex, age; our body works, suffers and experiences pleasure, whether we like our body or not, whether others find pleasure in it or not. [as if this were determined outside, not inside]
We approach the text with our
lives--lives which, in most cases, are common and banal, with no great things [but the little is the
great, nothing but]worth mentioning: the housework, looking after our sons and
daughters, worries about food, health and making a living; tiredness, routine; a passively accepted sexuality; [this is
the crux?] dreams of a fuller
life, of love and passion; the happiness we feel at the birth of our sons and
daughters; sex which is full of pleasure.
[all these are dreams? Where is
integrity? Why settle for such lack?] Perhaps there is a victory in the
struggle, dignity at work, the solidarity of friendship.
These [folk}are lives and stories that will never be told in the history
books, but they build and sustain the social fabric, social change and
resistance. Even when they are the objects of the systems and structures of
power and government, they can be a place of obstinate and creative resistance
and hope, surviving all massacres.[the melodrama of it].
We want to approach the texts through the diversity and richness of our daily lives, with its apparent absence of scientific rigour and assumed partiality.[ the texts are poetry and history, not science] The experience of daily life also provides a dynamic way of seeing the structure and fabric of texts; it looks deeper to the more hidden aspects that are untouched by super-structural, super-objective and super-sociological interpretations.
So just as life, the texts are also the product of day-to-day relationships cut through by mechanisms of domination: of one sex over another, of one class over another, of one ethnic group over another, of one generation over another. These relations cannot be reduced to one category or arranged hierarchically. We need to work with the plurality of dimensions and systems that appear in the texts--and in our own lives. In this way, we can discover the visible and the invisible, and the many crises and differences that our faces, voices and bodies reflect ... this is what builds and conditions history, and the same goes for our reading of the Bible and our hermeneutics.
The hermeneutics of deconstruction and reconstruction
How can we discover the abundance of the earth? Where it allows life to germinate and grow? For this to happen, we need to uproot anything which gets in the way of its abundance, [abundance by destruction, sounds a little androcentric] anything which disturbs its balance [assuming earth is a balance, not a maelstrom] or is an obstacle to its fertility. Only then will it be possible to sow again and work the land to produce the fruits of life.
We approach the Bible as though it were land to be worked, with tools that help us to receive the fruits of life. Going beyond exegetical methods, with all their limitations and possibilities, gender theories have shown themselves to be fundamentally important in helping us to understand the land on which we work, its fertility and also its sterility.[the metaphor fails. There is no sterile earth. Consider the last words of David, “whoever touches sthorns uses a tool of iron or the shaft of a spear; they are burned up where they lie” II Sam 23.7
Gender theories reveal the roles, identities, functions and relations that society attributes [this is the only absolute cowed too, society attributes] to men and women and understands that these attributes are a social construction, one that can be deconstructed and reconstructed on another basis and using other criteria. A feminist hermeneutics that examines the issue of gender asks questions such as: How do gender relations operate in the text? What are the "invisible" gender relations? How are the identities of women and men constructed? What attributes are they given? What stereotypes are present? What are the conditions of life actually like in practice? [do gender theories recognize transcendence?]Is it that the Bible is useful for establishing this new identity because it gives a context and forum, a license for its discussion, what Emily Dickinson long before achieved by ignoring.]
We have to work at different levels to try to perceive the motivations and the normative intentions behind the texts: the story being narrated expresses the narrator's interpretation and understanding of the events being narrated; there is no reason to assume that what the text says is an accurate description of what women's lives are really like. The texts often portray ideal women or evil women as two constant, opposing extremes. Ironically, texts that seem to be favourable to women could be based on stereotypes of female identity (the seductive woman, the self sacrificing mother, and so on).
This is the process of
deconstruction. We begin with the premise that
the texts are constructed in a generic way, that is, they are hostage to the asymmetric interests
and relations that subordinate women. That is precisely why they need to be
deconstructed.
This approach needs to consider power relations and social and literary structures in a dynamic way so that it does not simply adopt the perspective that women are victims. The challenge is to understand and analyze the flow of power in a particular social or literary structure: power is not an absolute and static thing, rather it is a series of forces that move between--or against, or on or with--the various social subjects. Women also exercise power, often expressed in the form of resistance and survival, and they are never purely the victims of men and structures. And they can also be participants in their own subordination. [and of course they can be autonomous decision makers, Anna, Lib, Momo]
Analysis of gender social relations asks questions about the flow of power; I see here the confluence not only of relations between the sexes, but also between the ethnic groups, social classes, cultures and generations that form humanity, in all its complexity.
Some texts will turn out to be sterile for women. These texts provide no possibility of germination. When the text is deconstructed, and the earth fresh and clean, you can see that the material that has been there for years has caused the land to become sterile. [textual pollution incapable of cleansing or remediation due to toxicity, eg. A nuclear dump] It needs to be uprooted. [metaphor unclear, is the text uprooted but the land still sterile? Rather the land needs to be uprooted] The land can then be fed with other inputs, it needs to be ploughed and turned over to restore its balance [its acidity/alkalinity, fertility, nitrogenity] and, who knows, perhaps its capacity to germinate the fruits of life. As we excavate the land, [we act as archeologists, dig up graves] we find the stories of women, [indigenous] mutilated bodies that have been buried and hidden for centuries [grave romance. One looks for the bodies, the bones, the pot shards, the middens and now the dna as good western folks do, but desecrate further their graves]
In this process of deconstruction, we draw on other hermeneutical elements such as inter-textuality (use of information from other texts), intra-textuality (texts within the text) and extra-textuality (extra-canonical documents, for example, the gnostic gospels). [DECONSTRUCTING HOMER]
This agricultural work requires us not only to "clean up" and get to know the text ... We must go on to ask about the possibility of germination.[the notion is the text is underwritten with androgisms and overwritten with….]And this is how the process of reconstruction begins. Above all, it will mean reformulating the paradigms of interpretation and using new paradigms that allow other interpretations of the message or messages in the text.
The fact of reconstructing a text, of making it different from one that has for years been accepted as law and used to distort or limit the freedom of women to participate in history, [two things, its being and its use] places feminist hermeneutics of liberation in the position of challenging the traditional schemes of theology and church structures. [prior this was societal relations, now contracted to church] In this sense, feminist hermeneutics represents the reconstruction of history and women's participation in it, by women who are no longer prepared to accept that they should be treated as though they are a minority and who are prepared to take responsibility for their plot of land: their body, their mind, their decisions, their dignity.
A hermeneutics that questions the concept of biblical authority
God is revealed in the Bible just as he is in the land ... but neither the Bible nor the land are God. The divinity is an inscrutable mystery. [thus the argument goes, that mystery justifies all the common denominators we seek to bring to bear, for all are equal as human approaches] Our approaches to the sacred are human approaches, mediated by our culture and our daily lives.[except that the Jewish nation was a created cultural vehicle to reveal this revelation, the voice of God and none other. So this hermenautic is anti semetic?] Nobody can define this mystery and declare the absolute [the meaning of absolute here is relative] truth. The text contains the word of God but it is not itself the word of God, because the word of God is more than a written text. [This is really saying that there is no word of God, only human apporaches to it.logos, rhema, but not rabbinical]
For women, it is fundamentally important to recognize that the Bible contains passages that are merely circumstantial and not normative. [Certainly this is the case as is known by all except the simple. Whey Paul says they are his words and not Gods we have a case] A patriarchal text that [implicitly. Other that Paul telling women to shut up] justifies discrimination against women cannot be normative, because it is contrary to the liberating spirit of the gospel. Nor can the oppressive cultural and social traditions of those who interpret the texts be portrayed as normative guidelines deriving from the text.
The revelation is good news and, because it is real, it is dynamic and changing. It is not limited to the text, but aims to promote the meeting of the word of God in the text with the word of God present in the daily lives of communities, [that is the word of God is relational, situational] women and men, boys and girls, in the lives of different peoples with their own religious cultures and traditions. That is why it is important for the community reading the text to discern which elements are specific to the context of the text, and which elements of it are relevant to their own context. [only relevant if the latter]
The revelation expresses itself through the recreation [re-creation] of the text, as the product of the liberating meeting between the bodies of the texts and the bodies of its readers.
The feminist hermeneutics of liberation is not our exclusive discovery. It is the fruit of a dialogue between feminist and liberation movements of Latin America and other continents. We want the land of the Bible to be converted into an Abya Yala for men and women, into an enriched and abundant land and soil, fertile for the liberating word: land which is no longer sterile and dead, land where new fruits of faith and spirituality can be harvested.
Women have heard what has been said ... now it is for us to say it!
This article is the result of a collective effort by the first Latin American conference of women biblical specialists in Bogota, Colombia, in February 1995. Many women contributed to putting these hermeneutical guidelines together: Elsa Tamez, Mercedes Brancher, Ana Maria Rizzante Gallazzi, Nancy Cardoso Pereira, Rebeca Montemayor, Irene Foulkes, Alicia Winters, Luz Gimenez, Debora Garcia, Violeta Rocha, Josefina Caviedes, Maribel Pertuz, Veronica Rozzotto.
We are on our way. We are learning to read the Bible in this way ... being faithful to ourselves, to our struggles and our liberation movements, and especially to the women in our churches and countries. We still have to battle with theories and procedures, against authorities and the limits they impose. The texts from this conference express our personal and collective efforts and we would like them to be part of the dialogue accompanying Latin America's biblical journey.
We want to approach the texts through the diversity and richness of our daily lives, with its apparent absence of scientific rigour and assumed partiality.[ the texts are poetry and history, not science] The experience of daily life also provides a dynamic way of seeing the structure and fabric of texts; it looks deeper to the more hidden aspects that are untouched by super-structural, super-objective and super-sociological interpretations.
So just as life, the texts are also the product of day-to-day relationships cut through by mechanisms of domination: of one sex over another, of one class over another, of one ethnic group over another, of one generation over another. These relations cannot be reduced to one category or arranged hierarchically. We need to work with the plurality of dimensions and systems that appear in the texts--and in our own lives. In this way, we can discover the visible and the invisible, and the many crises and differences that our faces, voices and bodies reflect ... this is what builds and conditions history, and the same goes for our reading of the Bible and our hermeneutics.
The hermeneutics of deconstruction and reconstruction
How can we discover the abundance of the earth? Where it allows life to germinate and grow? For this to happen, we need to uproot anything which gets in the way of its abundance, [abundance by destruction, sounds a little androcentric] anything which disturbs its balance [assuming earth is a balance, not a maelstrom] or is an obstacle to its fertility. Only then will it be possible to sow again and work the land to produce the fruits of life.
We approach the Bible as though it were land to be worked, with tools that help us to receive the fruits of life. Going beyond exegetical methods, with all their limitations and possibilities, gender theories have shown themselves to be fundamentally important in helping us to understand the land on which we work, its fertility and also its sterility.[the metaphor fails. There is no sterile earth. Consider the last words of David, “whoever touches sthorns uses a tool of iron or the shaft of a spear; they are burned up where they lie” II Sam 23.7
Gender theories reveal the roles, identities, functions and relations that society attributes [this is the only absolute cowed too, society attributes] to men and women and understands that these attributes are a social construction, one that can be deconstructed and reconstructed on another basis and using other criteria. A feminist hermeneutics that examines the issue of gender asks questions such as: How do gender relations operate in the text? What are the "invisible" gender relations? How are the identities of women and men constructed? What attributes are they given? What stereotypes are present? What are the conditions of life actually like in practice? [do gender theories recognize transcendence?]Is it that the Bible is useful for establishing this new identity because it gives a context and forum, a license for its discussion, what Emily Dickinson long before achieved by ignoring.]
We have to work at different levels to try to perceive the motivations and the normative intentions behind the texts: the story being narrated expresses the narrator's interpretation and understanding of the events being narrated; there is no reason to assume that what the text says is an accurate description of what women's lives are really like. The texts often portray ideal women or evil women as two constant, opposing extremes. Ironically, texts that seem to be favourable to women could be based on stereotypes of female identity (the seductive woman, the self sacrificing mother, and so on).
The
result, with Plato's dialogues as with so many other texts, was to challenge
Plato's authorship of most of the dialogues at some time or other. But, in many
cases, the criteria used to do so had more to do with the understanding the
author had of platonism as a doctrine, and what he deemed "fit" of Plato's
assumed style and ideas than with "objective" features of the
dialogues independent of the understanding one may have of them.
In
other words, these studies led to stressing the apparent contradictions there
might be between dialogues, and, after each author had chosen what he
thought was true platonism, to his rejection of what would contradict it
as inauthentic. http://plato-dialogues.org/intrpret.htm
Mysteium Liberationis.
Fundamental Concepts of Liberation Theology. Ed by Ignacio Ellacuria, S.J. and Jon Sobrino,
S.J. Maryknoll, NY:
Orbis Books, 1993
“It is indeed
scandalous to hold the needy and the oppressed as the salvation of the world I
history. It is scandalous for many believers who no longer thing they see
anything striking in the proclamation that the death of Jesus brought life to
the world, but who cannot accept in theory, and much less in practice, that
today this life-giving death goes by way of the oppressed part of humankind. It
is likewise scandalous to those who seek the liberation of humankind in
history. It is easy to regard the
oppressed and needy as those who are to be saved and liberated, but it is not
easy to see them as saviors and liberators. 582
“
What is meant by
crucified people here is that collective body, which as the majority of
humankind owes its situation of crucifixion to the way society is organized and
maintained by a minority that exercises its dominion through a series of
factors, which taken together and given their concrete impact within history,
must be regarded as sin. 590
“The modern
concern to highlight the individual side of human existence will be faithful to
reality only if it does not ignore its social dimension. That is not the case
in the individualistic and idealistic frenzied individualism and idealism that
is so characteristic of Western culture, or at least of its elites. All the
selfishness and social irresponsibility borne by this notion is but the reverse
proof of how false this exaggeration is. There is no need to deny the
collective and structural dimension in order to give scope to the full
development of the person. 590-91 Tr by Phillip Berryman and Robert R. Barr
This approach needs to consider power relations and social and literary structures in a dynamic way so that it does not simply adopt the perspective that women are victims. The challenge is to understand and analyze the flow of power in a particular social or literary structure: power is not an absolute and static thing, rather it is a series of forces that move between--or against, or on or with--the various social subjects. Women also exercise power, often expressed in the form of resistance and survival, and they are never purely the victims of men and structures. And they can also be participants in their own subordination. [and of course they can be autonomous decision makers, Anna, Lib, Momo]
Analysis of gender social relations asks questions about the flow of power; I see here the confluence not only of relations between the sexes, but also between the ethnic groups, social classes, cultures and generations that form humanity, in all its complexity.
Some texts will turn out to be sterile for women. These texts provide no possibility of germination. When the text is deconstructed, and the earth fresh and clean, you can see that the material that has been there for years has caused the land to become sterile. [textual pollution incapable of cleansing or remediation due to toxicity, eg. A nuclear dump] It needs to be uprooted. [metaphor unclear, is the text uprooted but the land still sterile? Rather the land needs to be uprooted] The land can then be fed with other inputs, it needs to be ploughed and turned over to restore its balance [its acidity/alkalinity, fertility, nitrogenity] and, who knows, perhaps its capacity to germinate the fruits of life. As we excavate the land, [we act as archeologists, dig up graves] we find the stories of women, [indigenous] mutilated bodies that have been buried and hidden for centuries [grave romance. One looks for the bodies, the bones, the pot shards, the middens and now the dna as good western folks do, but desecrate further their graves]
In this process of deconstruction, we draw on other hermeneutical elements such as inter-textuality (use of information from other texts), intra-textuality (texts within the text) and extra-textuality (extra-canonical documents, for example, the gnostic gospels). [DECONSTRUCTING HOMER]
This agricultural work requires us not only to "clean up" and get to know the text ... We must go on to ask about the possibility of germination.[the notion is the text is underwritten with androgisms and overwritten with….]And this is how the process of reconstruction begins. Above all, it will mean reformulating the paradigms of interpretation and using new paradigms that allow other interpretations of the message or messages in the text.
The fact of reconstructing a text, of making it different from one that has for years been accepted as law and used to distort or limit the freedom of women to participate in history, [two things, its being and its use] places feminist hermeneutics of liberation in the position of challenging the traditional schemes of theology and church structures. [prior this was societal relations, now contracted to church] In this sense, feminist hermeneutics represents the reconstruction of history and women's participation in it, by women who are no longer prepared to accept that they should be treated as though they are a minority and who are prepared to take responsibility for their plot of land: their body, their mind, their decisions, their dignity.
The body as hermeneutical category: guidelines for a feminist hermeneutics of liberation
The women and men who read the texts from the standpoint of their daily experiences, their own particular histories and communities, and their relationships with others, make a commitment to deconstruct and reconstruct the meaning of the text, turning it into a human place that brings people together. That does not mean we have to eliminate all ambiguities, or homogenize the styles and resources of texts. To reconstruct the text is to make it into a tool for liberation, to leave the path open to alternative interpretations and so to invalidate any attempts to control the text and its message.A hermeneutics that questions the concept of biblical authority
God is revealed in the Bible just as he is in the land ... but neither the Bible nor the land are God. The divinity is an inscrutable mystery. [thus the argument goes, that mystery justifies all the common denominators we seek to bring to bear, for all are equal as human approaches] Our approaches to the sacred are human approaches, mediated by our culture and our daily lives.[except that the Jewish nation was a created cultural vehicle to reveal this revelation, the voice of God and none other. So this hermenautic is anti semetic?] Nobody can define this mystery and declare the absolute [the meaning of absolute here is relative] truth. The text contains the word of God but it is not itself the word of God, because the word of God is more than a written text. [This is really saying that there is no word of God, only human apporaches to it.logos, rhema, but not rabbinical]
For women, it is fundamentally important to recognize that the Bible contains passages that are merely circumstantial and not normative. [Certainly this is the case as is known by all except the simple. Whey Paul says they are his words and not Gods we have a case] A patriarchal text that [implicitly. Other that Paul telling women to shut up] justifies discrimination against women cannot be normative, because it is contrary to the liberating spirit of the gospel. Nor can the oppressive cultural and social traditions of those who interpret the texts be portrayed as normative guidelines deriving from the text.
The revelation is good news and, because it is real, it is dynamic and changing. It is not limited to the text, but aims to promote the meeting of the word of God in the text with the word of God present in the daily lives of communities, [that is the word of God is relational, situational] women and men, boys and girls, in the lives of different peoples with their own religious cultures and traditions. That is why it is important for the community reading the text to discern which elements are specific to the context of the text, and which elements of it are relevant to their own context. [only relevant if the latter]
The revelation expresses itself through the recreation [re-creation] of the text, as the product of the liberating meeting between the bodies of the texts and the bodies of its readers.
The feminist hermeneutics of liberation is not our exclusive discovery. It is the fruit of a dialogue between feminist and liberation movements of Latin America and other continents. We want the land of the Bible to be converted into an Abya Yala for men and women, into an enriched and abundant land and soil, fertile for the liberating word: land which is no longer sterile and dead, land where new fruits of faith and spirituality can be harvested.
"Abya
Yala" means "Continent of Life" in the language of the Kuna
peoples of Panama and Colombia.
The Aymara leader Takir Mamani suggested the selection of this name (which the
Kuna use to denominate the American continents in their entirety), [Turtle Island]
and proposed that all Indigenous peoples in the Americas utilize it in their
documents and oral declarations.
"Placing foreign names on our cities, towns and continents," he
argued, "is equal to subjecting our identity to the will of our invaders
and to that of their heirs." The proposal of Takir Mamani has found a
favorable reception in various sectors.
We
[African Americans] were always seen as objects. When we started defining
ourselves, it scared those who try to control others by naming them and
defining them for them; Oppressors do not like “others” defining themselves http://www.tucc.org/talking_points.htm
And
if we had the “tools” to recon, decon struct the human text then this could be
said too for animals, the foreign names placed upon them. Knowing their speech
is only part prerequisite the other part is unlearning our own thought
paradigms.
Women have heard what has been said ... now it is for us to say it!
This article is the result of a collective effort by the first Latin American conference of women biblical specialists in Bogota, Colombia, in February 1995. Many women contributed to putting these hermeneutical guidelines together: Elsa Tamez, Mercedes Brancher, Ana Maria Rizzante Gallazzi, Nancy Cardoso Pereira, Rebeca Montemayor, Irene Foulkes, Alicia Winters, Luz Gimenez, Debora Garcia, Violeta Rocha, Josefina Caviedes, Maribel Pertuz, Veronica Rozzotto.
We are on our way. We are learning to read the Bible in this way ... being faithful to ourselves, to our struggles and our liberation movements, and especially to the women in our churches and countries. We still have to battle with theories and procedures, against authorities and the limits they impose. The texts from this conference express our personal and collective efforts and we would like them to be part of the dialogue accompanying Latin America's biblical journey.
Nancy Cardoso Pereira is a
Methodist pastor working at the Pastoral Commission of Land in Brazil.
This article appeared in the Revista de Interpretacion Biblica Latinoamericana--RIBLA
(Journal of Latin American biblical interpretation) No.5, 1997. Translated from
the Portuguese by the WCC Language Service.
Ecumenical Review, The, July, 2002 by Nancy Cardoso Pereira
COPYRIGHT 2002 World Council of Churches
COPYRIGHT 2002 Gale Group
Ecumenical Review, The, July, 2002 by Nancy Cardoso Pereira
COPYRIGHT 2002 World Council of Churches
COPYRIGHT 2002 Gale Group
[the fact is androcentric, God gave his Son]
And one other, the curse, that “ your desire will be for
your husband and he shall rule over you.”
One more: what do Th.d. s do with peasants. Is this social
work. Do they need to teach others to be activists, and if they only teach how
can they be social leaders. Hermenuticalists. And if they exaggerate one what
of the rest. The “reign of hell” cited by Maria Pilar Aquino at the US Mexico
border 215 where in 11 years 3,600 deaths of migrants occurred in crossing is
exaggerated to be the same as the machine gunning of priests and the
“massacures of Mayan people in Chiapas” in 1997. if the principle of rhetoric
not fact extablishes atrocities then anything can be said.
I could also suggest contacting the Universidad Biblia de
American Latina at san Jose
in Costa Rica
- http://www.ubila.net/?lang=en and perhaps contact the professor, Silvia
Regina de Lima Silva who has written on Afro-Brazilian identity.
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ecofeminism in latin america
Irene Foulkes - foulkes@sol.racsa.co.cr
Dra. Irene Foulkes Westling (FilologÃa) ...
Longing for Running Water: Ecofeminism and Liberation (Biblical
Reflections on Ministry) (Paperback)
by Ivone Gebara (Author), David Molineaux (Translator)
by Ivone Gebara (Author), David Molineaux (Translator)
Ecofeminism: a Latin American perspective
Gebara, Ivone (b. 1944)
Ivone
Gebara is a Brazilian Sister of Our Lady
(Canoneses of St. Augustine) and
one of Latin
America’s leading theologians, writing from the perspective of
ecofeminism
and liberation theology. For nearly two
decades Gebara has been a professor at the
Theological Institute of Recife.
The author of Longing for Running Water: Ecofeminism
and Liberation, Gebara
articulates an ecofeminist perspective that combines social
ecofeminism and holistic ecology,
promoting an “urban ecofeminism” shaped by her
experiences of working with poor women
in Brazilian favelas (slum neighborhoods).
Gebara claims that ecofeminism is born
of “daily life” and thus considers garbage in the
street, inadequate health care, and
other daily survival crises faced by poor women as
they provide for family sustenance, to
be central issues in ecofeminist liberation theology.
Gebara proposes a new theological
anthropology, model for God, trinitarian language,
Christology, and “religious
biodiversity” from the perspective of Latin American
ecofeminism.
Gebara received notoriety when silenced
by the Vatican
for two years in 1995.
Her difficulties with the Vatican
began in 1993 with an interview in the magazine, VEJA,
in which she said that abortion was not
necessarily a sin for poor women. Given the
extreme poverty of many women in
Brazilian favelas and the overpopulation in cities like
Sao Paolo and Rio de Janiero, more
births would result in extreme hardship for mothers
and children, increased strain on
natural resources due to population pressures, decreased
access to potable water, etc. For these
reasons, Gebara claimed that the “preferential
option for the poor” demanded by
liberation theology called for more tolerance of
women’s choice for abortion than that
of the official Roman Catholic Church. Following
numerous meetings with the President of
the Conference of Bishops of Brazil during
1994, Dom Luciana Mendes de Almeida
reported the case closed, citing Gebara’s
commitment to the pain of poor women.
The Vatican’s
Congregation of the Doctrine and
Faith disagreed and began a review of
her theological writings, interviews, and courses.
On June 3, 1995, Gebara was instructed to
refrain from speaking, teaching, and writing
for a period of two years. She was
ordered to move to France
for two years of
theological reeducation.
Following her period of theological
reeducation, Gebara returned to Brazil
and
again became active in writing and
speaking about ecofeminism. Her strong critique of
the anthropocentric and androcentric
view of the world found in the Christian tradition
continued after her theological
education, as she took on the project of reinterpreting “key
elements within the Christian tradition
for the purpose of reconstructing earth’s body, the
human body, and our relationship with
all living bodies” (Gebara, 6). In 1997-1998, she
organized the Shared Garden
theological program with the Latin American ecofeminist
collective, Con-spirando, based in Santiago, Chile.
During each of the three “Gardens”
which were held in Santiago,
Chile (January, 1997), in Washington, DC
(June, 1997),
and in Recife,
Brazil (July, 1998),
participants from throughout the Americas met to
explore themes and principles of an
ecofeminist liberation theology. Gebara remains a
central figure for the Con-spirando
ecofeminist collective and organizes numerous
classes, workshops, and conferences
throughout Latin America.
Ivone
Gebara and the Costa Rican theologian, Elsa
Tamez, chart three phases of
feminist theology in Latin
America, placing themselves in the third stage. The first phase
(1970-1980) coincided with the growth
of Christian base communities and of liberation
theology. Women theologians tended to
identify with liberation theology and see
themselves as oppressed historical
subjects. During this stage the word “feminist” was
rejected as a concept imposed from the
North. Construction of a more explicitly feminist
consciousness grew during the second
phase (1980-1990). Efforts were made toward the
“feminization of theological concepts”
as well as the reconstruction and questioning of
biblical texts from a feminist
perspective. The third phase (1990 onward) is characterized,
according to Gebara and Tamez, by
challenges to the patriarchal anthropology and
cosmovision in liberation theology
itself and by the construction of a Latin American
ecofeminism. . Gebara in particular has
been critical in articulating the premises of
holistic ecofeminism in a Latin
American context. By holistic ecofeminism, Gebara
means that the daily lives of women in
slums of the south show the ways “that the
exclusion of the poor is to linked to
the destruction of their lands” and to women’s
oppression. For Gebara, just as holism
in ecology means that all things are
interdependent, so are all forms of
oppression interdependent. All oppressions however,
are not the same and not experienced by
all groups with the same intensity. Her concern
is with the most oppressed, which in
her context means poor women in urban slums.
Thus, Gebara self consciously
articulates an “urban ecofeminism” shaped by the absence
of sewers and safe drinking water, poor
nutrition, and the numerous daily survival needs
of poor women.
Lois Ann Lorentzen, University of San Francisco
Further Reading
Gebara, Ivone. Longing for Running
Water: Ecofeminism and Liberation. Minneapolis,
MN: Fortress Press, 1999.
Gebara, Yvone and Maria Clara Bingemer.
Mary: Mother of God, Mother of the Poor.
Maryknoll,
NY:
Orbis Books, 1989.
She thinks that the Catholic church in its current
form has virtually nothing to offer these women. It is too patriarchal, too
hierarchical, too elitist, and it does not do theology from the experience of
these women. Most theologians barely acknowledge the experiential roots of
their beliefs
As thought provoking as this book is, I
wonder if Gebara has truly reached either of these exciting
possibilities. Scholars and theologians
will complain about the absence of a clear definition of
evil, and will join me in puzzling over
her contradictory and cursory treatment of its origins
(140). Gebara would likely shrug at
this charge and point to a later passage where she suggests
that the God of poor women “does not
give answers to theoretical questions.” Her vision of the
poor woman’s God “simply sustains life,
is in life, is in us at every moment. Besides,” she
explains, “one does not have the time
to pose complicated questions to him!” (149). But if this is
her vision of the poor woman’s God,
then surely this book is not for them to read; if poor women
are uninterested in theory, how does
Gebara hope to help them by writing theology? Theologians
and church workers face this issue, as
do academics who hope to connect with the people who
live and struggle beyond their study
walls. It is a live question I wished Gebara had engaged more
openly.
Out of the Depths: Women’s Experience
of Evil and Salvation by Ivone Gebara, translated by
Ann Patrick Ware. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2002) viii + 211
pp
Laura Hartman
Religious Studies Department
University
of Virginia
Sherwood Anderson, Winesburg, Ohio
"Everyone in the world
is Christ and they are all crucified."
My lingering sorrow over losses leads me to Biblical
narratives and writers who understood – Sherwood Anderson, Flannery O’Connor:
“We are all Christ and we are all crucified” – http://www.brown.edu/Administration/News_Bureau/2001-02/01-154.html
Published: 1993
Call Number: 230.046 M999
As Incômodas Filhas De Eva Na
Igreja Da América Latina / Ivone Gebara. : BT83.55 .G42x 1989 : HAYDEN
STACKS:SHELF
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Longing
For Running Water : Ecofeminism And Liberation / Ivone Gebara : BT695.5
.G43 1999 : HAYDEN STACKS:SHELF
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c1999
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3
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Mal
Au Féminin. / English : BT83.55 .G4413 2002 : HAYDEN
STACKS:SHELF
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c2002
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4
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Maria, Mãe De Deus E Mãe Dos
Pobres : Um Ensaio A Partir Da Mulher E Da América Latina / Ivone Gebara, Maria Clara L.
Bingemer. : BT613 .G42x : HAYDEN STACKS:SHELF
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BOOK/JOURNAL
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1987
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5
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Mary,
Mother Of God, Mother Of The Poor / by Ivone Gebara And Maria Clara L.
Bingemer. : BT613 .G4213 1989 : HAYDEN STACKS
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Through Her Eyes
1
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2
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Our
Cry For Life : Feminist Theology From Latin America / MarÃa Pilar Aquino
; Translated From Spanish By Dinah Livingstone. : BT83.55 .P5513 1993
: HAYDEN STACKS:SHELF, WEST STACKS:SHELF
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BOOK/JOURNAL
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c1993
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3
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A
Reader In Latina Feminist Theology : Religion And Justice / MarÃa Pilar
Aquino, Daisy L. Machado, Jeanette RodrÃguez, Editors. : BT83.55 .R39
2002 : HAYDEN STACKS:DUE 04-18-07, WEST STACKS:SHELF
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2002
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4
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Theology
: Expanding The Borders / MarÃa Pilar Aquino, Roberto S. Goizueta,
Editors. : BX1751.2 .T475 1998 : HAYDEN STACKS:SHELF
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Contextualization
in Costa Rican theological education today: A history of the Seminario Biblico
Latinoamericano, San Jose, Costa Rica, 1922-1990.
Robbins, Bruce Warren. PH.D., Southern Methodist University, 1991.
Robbins, Bruce Warren. PH.D., Southern Methodist University, 1991.
Progressive Protestant seminaries, such as ISEDET in Buenos Aires and the Seminario Biblico Latinoamericano in Costa Rica support liberation theology among both
Protestants and Catholics. Catholic theologian Pablo Richard is on the DEI
staff, while the Boff brothers in Brazil find a base at the Instituto
da Estudos Da Religiao. When Hans Kung spoke in Costa Rica in March of this year,
it was the Seminario
Biblico.
--R. Alves,
"O Deus do furacao," in Alves, ed., De dentro do furavao, quoted in
Leopoldo Cervantes-Ortiz, Series de Buenos: La teologia ludico-erotico-poetica
de Ruben Alves, una alternativa del desarrollo de la teologia protestante
latinoanericana (Master's thesis, Seminario
Biblico
Latinoamericano, unpublished, 1998), p. 30. Tr. mine.
--Jon Sobrino, The Principle of Mercy: Taking the Crucified
People from the Cross. Maryknoll
1994 Call Number:
230.046 M999 232 So12j 1993
--Archbishop Oscar Romero. Voice of the Voiceless, The violence of love 1985 252.02 R664v
--George Ganss, The Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius 1992
Call Number: 248.3 Ig5s
Tr John Drury. Freedom Made Flesh, 1973
In Love That Produces Hope. The Thought of Ignacio Ellacuria
“Ignacio Ellacuria, the Human Being and the Christian:
“Taking the Crucified People Down from the Cross.” Jon Sobrino, S.J.
“Ellacuria was moved to the depths by the sight of a people
prostrate, oppressed, deceived, ridiculed…” 5
In his last public speech in Barcelona nov. 6, 1989: “reversing the principal
sign shaping the civilization of the world.” 6
“This sign is always the historically crucified people,
whose permanent character includes the ever-distinctive historical form of
their crucifixion. This crucified people is the historical succession of the
servant of Yahweh, from whom the sin of the world continues to take away all
human form, and whom the powers of this world dispossess of everything, seizing
even their live, above all their lives.” 7, 1981
This world is sin, radical negativity, a radical negation of
the will of God, and the highest manifestation of the rejection of God. This
world is the historical appearance of the servant of Yahweh as suffering
servant and the appearance of Christ as crucified. Sobrino, 7
He said in 1989..that what happened five centuries before
was not a discovery, but rather a cover-up. Putting it in historical terms, he
added that the Latin American people, first by the Spaniards and Portuguese,
and now by North Americans, “have been abandoned like a Christ.” 8
…the university as a whole places its social influence at
the service of building the reign of God, actualized throught a preferential option
for the poor…14
He believed one must leave the many comforts of body and
soul toward which academics and clergy tend to gravitate, shielding themselves
with what seem to be good reasons…one must a priori abandon all dogmatism. 17
“The only thing I would ask—because the word demand sounds
too strong—is two things: that you look with your eyes and heart at these
peoples who are suffering so much—some from poverty and hunger, others from
oppression and repression. Then 9since I am a Jesuit), I would bid you pray the
colloquy of St. Ignatius from the first week
of the Exercises before this crucified people, asking yourself: what have I done to crucify them? What am I
doing to end their crucifixion? What should I do so that this people might rise
from the dead?” 1982, 17-18
…his sole existential “dogma,” so to speak, was the reality
of the crucified people and the requirement to take them down from their cross.
18
…what has made the rediscovery of liberation possible is the
place …if liberation has been recovered in Latin America…this
has happened because it is an impoverished continent. “the place of the poor
and dispossessed, not that of the rich who dispossessed them, who wer inclined
instead not to see and even to obvscure justice and the need for liberation” 20
The communities contributed more light for understanding any
theological acontent than the content itself.21
…one must read reality and what it says, the signs of the
times. 21
In “Utopia and Prophecy from Latin America” he wrote the
piece as a human being and a Christian, to express the victims’ pain and to
denounce poverty, repression, and murder… …he wrote with conviction and daring
to express his own vision of what is ultimate in reality. Ellacuria had the
audacity, until the end of his days, to say that there is an ultimate evil that
must be prophetically denounced and an ultimate hope that must be announced in
a utopian manner. 23
My perspective in this is that a thirst for acceptance dupes team players, negating "all theology is joy because it is reflection on the grace of God"(Barth).
My perspective in this is that a thirst for acceptance dupes team players, negating "all theology is joy because it is reflection on the grace of God"(Barth).
Pettiness accompanies the fall of evangelicals. This Sunday at the close of the CRC service there was an after-benediction where prepared statement was read: "Over the past several months it has become increasingly apparent that the elders’ vision for the church is significantly different from the pastor’s vision for the church and both the elders and the pastor are discerning that the relationships have become strained to the point that effective ministry seems impossible and it is best to pursue separate directions."
After seeking a new pastor when the one before retired they sought for over a year and gave their selection two years and a half. These churches are in the same shredder as the academic who says "Charles Williams is sometimes called a Christian, that is until you read his biography or anything about him frankly" (20.05). They do thus with Isaac Newton, John Milton and William Blake, all Christians. It is always the misnomer of Reformed thought not to be reading the thing itself. Williams' character of the Archdeacon in War in Heaven is par excellence the character of the Christian who stands against the powers, "certainly He wills him," the Archdeacon said, "since He wills that Persimmons shall be whatever he seems to choose."
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