Institutions and ideologies lay down parameters of accepted reading
for those who wish to maintain acceptable status in their guilds.
This is equally true in the church and in the academy. However,
interpretation can refuse and transgress such boundaries. The Greek
god, Hermes was both a thief and a conveyor of messages, and
"hermeneutics," the practice of interpretation, shares in this
joint heritage of Hermes. Indeed, interpretative thieves constantly
transgress the boundaries of both the permitted and the decorous.
Readings of the canonical gospels have a particular place in this
history. Indeed, the gospels are the pride and joy of the
church(es), as they are of an academy that scarcely separates
itself from the church. The following essays, however, all share a
desire to read Herme(s)tically, in heterodox or even heretical
directions. In this volume, and against the traditional readings
and their keepers, the contributors practice interpretative thefts
or, put differently, they pursue "lines of flight" (Deleuze and
Guattari 1987), not movements of escape but rather creative ways of
contesting prevailing ideologies (cf. also Cohen and Taylor). This
pursuit results in marginal readings, readings excluded by dominant
Christian and academic ideologies. These readings trace the
contours and the effects of the canonical and creedal, as well as
the academic, captivity of the gospels. Every ideology has inherent
points of weakness, fractures in its assemblage where resistance
and deviation become possible - not escape to some ideology-free
zone, but sufficient disturbance to open up a space for thoughts
and new understandings. The keepers of the various guilds/myths
inevitably see this disturbance as, at best, noxious and, at worst,
as demonic, but we para-critics see our lines of flight as opening
space for human living (Smith 1978: 291). Parabolic interpretations
create a living space by negotiating and exploiting difference, not
by acquiescing to the deadly sameness of any imperial (political,
ecclesiastical, or academic) system (cf. Serres 1982).Many of the
contributors read "from outside" by playing the gospels off a wide
variety of secular texts, including recent film and literature.
Thus, in "Jesus's Two Fathers," Aichele views the Lukan Christmas
story eccentrically by reading it with China Mieville's urban
fantasy novel, "King Rat". The result is a rather unorthodox
understanding of the incarnation. In "Tempting Jesuses," Pippin
views askew the identities (God and Satan, gender), ethics, and
power of the temptation narratives. She does so by joining those
gospel narratives with literary works by Saramago, Kazantzakas,
Morrow, McNally, Langguth, and others. In "Matthew 11:28 and
Release From the Burden of Sin," Kreitzer traces a peculiar
afterlife of one Christian image of salvation by moving from
Matthew through Bunyan to Joffee's "The Mission". Staley's target
is the liberation of the story of the woman taken in adultery. To
do so, he lumps that (already suspicious) "Johannine" story with
"Liar, Liar" and moves from a rhetorical to an intertextual
reading. Each of these juxtapositions render their respective
gospel (texts) newly seen precursors.
General
Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate?
Let us know about it.
Does this product have an incorrect or missing image?
Send us a new image.
Is this product missing categories?
Add more categories.
Review This Product
No reviews yet - be the first to create one!
Welcome to Loot.co.za!
Sign in / Register |Wishlists & Gift Vouchers |Help | Advanced search
