Imperial Intersections and Initial Inquiries: Toward a Eco-Feminist, Postcolonial Analysis of Philippians

1. Imperial Intersections and Initial Inquiries: Toward a Eco-Feminist, Postcolonial Analysis of Philippians Slide presentation of #1-39 Presented November 16, 2009 Carrie Roach

2. Let’s stop and be aware of our breathing. Please pray with and for me and for our faith community for the Spirit to be with us: We know that a peaceful world cannot long exist one-third rich and two-thirds hungry. President Jimmy CarterWould you leave a flag or an umbrella having climbed your highest and most difficult summit?Like rubbing your hands of your legs of a cozy pair of corduroy pants, I invite you to feel against the grain. • We transform the promises • Into realities. • We struggle together as sisters and brothers • For justice. • We make possible today the dawn • Of a new day. Come Holy Spirit Fill the Hearts of Your Faithful Enkindle in Us the Fire of Your Love Send forth Your Spirit And we shall be creators And You shall renew the Face of the Earth Let us pray: Jesus, by the light of your Holy Spirit , You have taught the hearts of your faithful, in the same Spirit, help us relish what is right and rejoice in your consolation. Amen.

3. Imperial Intersections and Initial Inquiries: Toward a Eco-Feminist, Postcolonial Analysis of Philippians Carrie Roach Feast Day of St. Paul of the Cross 2009 St. Thomas University Biblical Scholars

4. I invite you to try this on for size…. Does it fit? Is it too big or too small? Is it appropriate for the occasion and the weather? Does the color suit you? Do you like wearing it? How does it make you feel?

5. Vision of the Results of this Study :November 16, 2009- 20th Anniversary of the Murder of the Housekeeper, daughter and 6 Jesuit Professors of El Salvador, 10 yrs after Archbishop Romero’s Death- Fr. Jon Sobrino survivor To feel inspired to continue the transformational tradition of faith actions in response to the belief in the call for justice from Catholic social teaching and actions with creative, authentic, non-violent confrontation of religious, gender and racial discrimination as we search for cultural liberation through the integration of prophetic biblical views and the experience of God’s empowering Spirit to serve creation. The faith community is called to not only use political resistance but cultivate spaces for liberating interdependence against the false and oppressive boundaries, which are often maintained at the expense of nurturing the reality of diversity and interdependence of God’s creation. We resist patriarchy, imperialism, sexism, racism, and environmental destruction and chose abundant life. (John 10:10)

6. What is postcolonial? • The term postcolonial does not denote that colonialism is over, since there was not just political and geographical domination but also cultural and economic structures of oppression that thrive to this day. • Postcolonial refers to an overall analysis of the methods and effects of imperialism as a continuing reality in global relations.

7. What is patriarchy? • The manifestation and institutionalization of male dominance over women and children in the family and the extension of male dominance over women in society in general. It implies that men hold power in all the important institutions of society and that women are deprived of access to power. • It is not imperialism, which is the power of one nation, consisting of men and women over the women and men of other lands, nations, and their cultures.

8. Definition of Feminism • Radical notion that women are people • Like other liberation movements, attempts a critique of the oppressive structures of society • With the label of radical, it should lead to a substantial transformation of society • It is linked to other struggles against systematic forms of oppression

9. Questions and Dreams of an Eco-feminist…. • Can we speak of the poor and their children inheriting the Earth if it is devastated and poisoned, bereft of so many soulful presences? • Can we be of service to the poor, without a more deep awareness of the sources and sustainable ways to live on Earth? • “We are now experiencing a moment of significance far beyond what any of us can imagine. What can be said is that the foundations of a new historical period, the Ecozoic era, have been established in every realm of human affairs. The mythic vision has been set into place. The distorted dream of an industrial technological paradise is being replaced by the more viable dream of a mutually enhancing human presence within an ever-renewing organic-based Earth community.” T. Berry

10. Definition of Imperialism and Colonialism • Imperialism is the more general term, while colonialism is a specific form or strategy within imperialism. • Imperialism means the practice, the theory, and the attitudes of a dominating metropolitan center ruling a distant territory • Imperialism is the power of one nation, consisting of men and women, over men and women of distant lands and nations. • Colonialism involves the implanting of settlements on that distant territory taken by imperialism. • The ancient Mediterranean term, Imperiumrefers to the authority, order and power of one over another , but most especially in political contexts • Imperiumextends its authority beyond matters concerning it’s own people (res publica) to other territories, as in Roman rule became imperial. • A coloniais an estate or farm, but eventually became a more technical term for a settlement with specific connections back to Rome, just like the city of Philippi.

11. Examples of former losers claiming power as colonizers of their empire: • David Quint “ reminds us that “the losers who attract our sympathies today would be---had they only power– the victors of tomorrow.” • Narratively speaking, Israelites were victims of Egyptians enslavement (historically, colonized by Babylon) • Romans (Trojans) were historically victims of Greek imperial conquest • British were victims of the Roman Empire • Who were the victims of the British Empire” • Is Globalization by corporatism is the next empire? Is the next empire not geographically but politically controlled? • All empires claim a divine right or duty to travel and dispossess distant people and extract resources from their land.

12. Postcolonial Analysis of Recognizing Patterns in Rhetoric and Literature are crucial…. Some of the areas to investigate and search for patterns are: • How writing constructs and responds to travel • Land taking and controlling • West as an imperialistic center • Nationalism • Nativism • Diaspora • Hybridity • Identity • Language • Education • History • Media • Intertextuality • Place and displacement • Production and consumption • Universalism and difference • Representation and resistance • Intellectuals and institutions • Subalterns and resistance • Gender representation • Domination or subversion • Parallel analysis of texts from different times, places, cultures whose boundaries all blur

13. Four Major Paradigms of Biblical Studies • doctrinal-fundamentalist paradigm that subjects biblical interpretation to doctrine • "scientific" positivist paradigm that claims empirical accuracy • "(post-) modern" cultural paradigm which is inadequate to deal with ethical imperatives of inequality and liberation • rhetorical-emancipatory paradigm emerging all over the world in postcolonial and feminist environments

14. Let’s Dance: Turns of the Rhetorical-Emancipatory Paradigm of Biblical Interpretation • hermeneutical turn, which provides understanding within a reflective process that engages all parties • political turn that provides a discourse of citizenship and power • ideology critical turn, which unmasks the distortion and mystification of ideology • ethical turn that produces a theory and vision of human well-being through reflection on moral theology and principles • “Both feminism and religion need to be brought forward more firmly into the hermeneutical process. Both have been marginalized because religion has been classified as feminine and therefore, with feminism, excluded as "unscientific." The existing new directions of social-science and socio-rhetorical criticism are inadequate because they still build on a "scientistic" base such as a concept of "Mediterranean culture," as if this were a fact rather than a modern construct. “ Fiorenza 1999

15. Four Insights of Critical Feminist Theory of Rhetoric • androcentric language is regulative and constructive, not descriptive of reality • language is not only performative but political: it not only reflects but shapes thinking and interests • critical textual analysis is inadequate unless accompanied by systemic analysis of structures of domination and exclusion • language and knowledge are political, articulated by particular persons for particular strategic ends. • Such a critical rhetorical method invites biblical studies to let go of its fear of becoming "unscientific" or of being cast as "feminine" in order to become involved in the politics of the global village.

16. What is transcultural interpretation? Reading against the grain of the dominant, prescriptive texts to articulate a history of those oppressed by such texts. • Great caution needed to recognize my own aspiration to scholarly authority and that I don’t impose myself as a first-world biblical scholar masquerading as the absent (I am not a two-thirds woman of color, uneducated, with TB, malaria, AIDS or/and refugee) nonrepresenter who lets the oppressed speak for themselves.. Neo-anti-colonial readings reinforces elitism. • Necessary risk even though a post-colonial, eco-feminist interpretation and analysis is certainly dangerous, difficult and conflicted but we take the risk because biblical texts and their uses have been and are still a danger to a great many. • Elizabeth Schussler Fiorena explains: “If it is a sign of oppression when a people does not have a written history, then …scholars cannot afford to eschew (avoid) such rhetorical and historical re-constructive work.”

17. Rhetorical and historical re-constructive work : • Try focusing on others, beyond the dominating voice, when reading literature or listening to stories • Don’t revalorize or re-inscribe imperial images or arguments- not good to perpetuate the problematic uses of oppressive text • Invest in biblical materials and in efforts against oppression and domination • Resituate along with de-centering dominating voice to do catachresis- practice of “improper use” of a word to re-appropriated it’s meaning for anti-colonial practices • Act of catachresis is used in ancient apocalyptic literature itself- • Be mindful of the use of Roman imperialistic language to disloyal ends in parodying the empire of the first century (chresis, archrestos, euchrestos: Rom 1:26-27 and Phlm 10-11) • Excluded voices are brought into the center of contemporary interpretative efforts. The margins define the center.

18. Rhetorical and historical re-constructive work : • Use insights of Chow, McClintock and Yegenoglu - “cross-gendered, cross-ethnic arguments to legitimize the travel of imperial authority figures determined to change and convert … can be put to cross-purposes, as those marginalized in these crossed contexts convert colonizers traveling to win territory …and the colonized talk back against the boundaries of extraction and exploitation still manifest in the globally neo-colonial exchange” • Kwok Pui-lan and Laura Donaldson say: “Biblical interpretation, for it’s benefit and the other fields of post-colonial and feminist analysis benefit as they struggle together in faithfully unfaithful interpretations in an interdisciplinary way to resist a heritage that oppresses in history and in rhetoric, in image and in action, in the past and in the present, at home and abroad.”

19. Rhetorical and historical re-constructive work : Try to foster recognition, reassessment, reconstruction and resistance than confront the mixed heritage that is the study of the Bible.

20. How literature is used to expand global extraction, expansion and exploitation of the colonized? To seek to understand and expose how literature is used to expand global extraction, expansion and exploitation, while as a person of faith, search for better ways of imagining and building just international relationships. • To learn post-colonial literary analysis and study…. Become aware, familiar and understand methods where literature is used to colonize and impose imperial power: • Colonization of the Mind- “Want to Be” Behavior • Excuses for Colonization because it’s God’s Will and it’s earned and deserved- “Bystanding” Behavior • Name calling, Claims of Superiority- “Out Right Bullying” Behavior

21. 1. Colonization of the Mind • “Want to Bes”- Colonization of the mind seems neutral but really derogatory. It is sometimes labeled as humanistic. The colonizer tries to assimilate the colonized in subliminal ways- “it openly derogates (=make something seem inferior and to criticize) the subjugated (=under enemy control, conquered, dominated), thus alienating the colonized from themselves and leading them to embrace the dominant powers.”

22. 2. Excuses for Colonization because it’s God’s Will and it’s earned and deserved- “By-standing” Behavior 2. “Bystanding“- Excuses for Colonization - production of literature by the dominant powers for its colonizing people back in the so-called mother/father countries justifying why their nation has inherent rights of superiority or divine sanction to impose its political, economic and social institutions on other nations.

23. 3. Name calling, Claims of Superiority- “Out Right Bullying” Behavior 3. “Out Right Bullying”- Name calling- “reproduction of literature of different genres about the subjugated and their lands: how their poverty, richness, barbarism, ungodliness, laziness, or kindness lays a duty or a divine right on the superior nations to impose themselves by force or coercion. All these bodies of literature from different times such as -The Odyssey, Exodus, The Tempest, and Heart of Darkness- come to inspire, sustain, and sanctify the institution of imperialism in histories that are disparately removed from their own original production.”

24. Strategies of the Colonizer: The five G’s of imperialism Colonizing narratives construct self-validating means with: Narrative methods are: Authorizing travel through divine claims Representing the colonizing nations as superior and exceptionally favored by divine powers to invade, help, or dispossess their victims Representing the targeted foreign lands and people as in need or desiring the colonizing heroes and their nations Use gender representations to construct their claims (ex. Rahab, Pocohantas, Dido, African Woman in Exodus, Disney, Aeneid, Heart of Darkness) Devalue and subjugate the intrinsic value of creation. It is to be controlled. • God • Gold • Glory • Gender • Gaia

25. Strategies of the DE-Colonizer: • God • Decolonizing biblical practices should begin by making attempts to create new spaces to hear God • Read contemporary oral stories, critical writers of the formerly colonized nations, and the writings of the colonial heroes of modern centuries to highlight an intimate connection between the Bible, its readers, its institutions, and modern imperialism

26. Strategies of the DE-Colonizer • Gold • “To resist imperial installation, colonized writers-readers have embarked on inter-textual wars of decolonization by adopting a subversive hybrid approach. They weave cross-cultural discourse, drawing from the cultural banks of both the colonized and colonizer. This subversive hybrid approach rejects the privileging of imperial texts and institutions as the standard for all cultures at all times, for such prioritizing characterizes imperialist ideology of claiming superiority in order to suppress differences.”

27. Strategies of the De-Colonizer: • Glory • Read mission narratives with the understanding that they are the key biblical texts that authorize international travel and relation in order to interrogate the power relations they advance • Read Western, white female and male academic interpretations for de-colonization to discover discourse that has remained imperialistic with its agendas

28. Strategies of the De-Colonizer: • Gender • Read sacred and secular texts, ancient and contemporary texts, and imperializing and decolonizing texts, side by side, to highlight: • The ways they advocate imperializing or decolonizing ideology • Their use of gender in the discourse of subordination and domination • That women are usually patriarchally oppressed beings, but some women are also imperial oppressors of Other women. • The use of gender in the articulation of both patriarchal and imperial relationships of subordination and domination

29. Strategies of the De-Colonizer: • Gaia • “I want to convince everyone of the wisdom of the (native, non-gmo) seed, the primary metaphor of ecofeminism. … We are to be what we are meant to be. The challenge: to take on new mindsets so we understand ourselves as each having a unique contribution in our time-and that each of us will blossom forth fully only when others also sprout and bear fruit as they were meant to do.”

30. Four questions to evaluate ancient texts on the literary-rhetorical grounds to focus on gender to “decolonize biblical studies”:Page 17 Politics of Heaven – Dube’sPostcolonial Feminist Interpretation of the Bible pg. 201, 57, 129 • Does this text have a clear stance against the political imperialism of its time? • Does this text encourage travel to distant and inhabited lands and how does it justify itself? • How does this text construct difference: is there dialogue and liberating interdependence or condemnation of all that is foreign? • Does this text employ gender and divine representations to construct relationships of subordination and domination?

31. What is anti-conquest ideologies? • Pratt coined this phrase along with contact zone and autoethnographic literary strategies • Anti-conquest ideology describes literary strategies that allow colonizers to claim foreign lands while securing their innocence. • It is expressed as a moral claim of the “duty to the natives” which sugar coats the violence of colonialism. (Take up the White Man’s Burden. Kipling) • It looks at the self-validating literary methods of imperialism woven into the imperializing narrative and how those methods anesthetize and sanctify the exploitative act to make it acceptable.

32. Methods of anti-conquest ideologies: • Authorizing traveling from one land to another • Constructing the image of the targeted land and its people • Constructing the identity of the people who colonize distant lands • Employing female gender to articulate relations of subjugation and domination • Authorizing Travel in Exodus: Let my people go!Ex.5:1,14;8:1,20;9:1,13 • Anesthesia: God is the prime initiator, commander, and giver of the land to the ”chosen people”. Israelites enslavement of the whole race of Gibeonites is blamed on God. God insists on slavery –Exodus 21:1-11 • Colonial narratives define the land and it’s riches to validate occupation and is very honest that the promised land of milk and honey is not empty. It is occupied (Ex. 3:8,17; 6:4; 13:5; 23:23; 34:2)God as the initiator and hero in the narrative is a rhetorical device that sanctifies the acts of imperialism. • Central method is to define differences as deficiencies. Colonized women are used an analogy in the narrative for the land.

33. #3 Identify Dualisms: Differences equate deficiencyA method of anti-conquest ideologies: • Construct the identity of the people who colonize distant lands with narrative defining differences of colonized as deficiencies

34. Anti-conquest ideology #4: Employing female gender to articulate relations of subjugation and domination • Because of patriarch, imperialism is to a large degree a male game. • Women are its active participants as travelers, revolutionists, sellouts, benefactors and victims of its power relationships. • Dualisms have a category of womanly and manly nations or lands; that is, imperialism employs gender relations to articulate ideologies of subordination and domination. • Women’s bodies become the prescripts and guide maps upon which the identity and desires of the colonizer and colonized are written and read. • Women of the colonized embody the status of the land. • The women of the colonizer embody the status of the colonizing men.

35. What is autoethnographic literary strategies? • Pratt coined this phrase along with contact zone • It is to remember the literary response of the colonized is partly shaped by the textual forms of their imperial counterparts. • The literature of both groups, colonizer and colonized, mirror each other. • Patterns are common since colonizing powers were victims of imperial oppression.

36. What is contact zone? • Pratt coined contact zone when analyzing the uses of travel writing in European imperialism • Describes the social spaces where unequal cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in highly asymmetrical relations of domination and subordination- like colonialism, slavery and their aftermath as they are lived out across the globe today • Notice that both the dimensions of space and time are named, as these relations to shape the world “after” colonialism, even in current events • The colonized are to be remembered as still having possibilities of agency • As interpreters seeking the realm of right relationship, it’s imperative we see gaps and seek the whole story • Go beyond retelling the story of the elite colonial pale male that re=in scribes a dominating authority • Establish the habit to process a resistance of oppressive dynamics by focusing on the interactive copresence of subjects from a variety of positions • Oppressed groups were always there, even as they were “written out” of history

37. Summary of what tactics are used to claim a divine right and duty to travel and dispossess distant people- the current victim or former victim of colonization will use these tactics to give license to empower the next groups of victimization: • Sharp dualism • Rigid cultural boundaries • Vicious racisms • Heightened nationalism • Hierarchical structures • Patriarchy

38. Questions about countering imperialism? • Are gender inequalities essential to the structure of colonial racism and imperial authority with dominating and oppresive results? • Are there possibilities for historical reconstruction of people’s roles in the early community of believers of Jesus that function to decenter the scholarly focus on the role of dominating voices by conceiving the community as an ancient, colonial, “contact zone”?

39. Colonizer’s Call and Claim for Imitation eventually fractures colonial authority with hybridization • Colonizer builds on difference- conquer and divide- establishes dualisms • sophisticated naming such as savage • Claims colonized culture is uncivilized and undeveloped • Mimicry of the colonized demands and creates a hybridized version of the apparently superior and pure colonial culture where they inhabit a “third space” • The imitation of the colonizer can become a form of resistance or mockery. • In India, there is a class of “mimic men” who are “Indian in blood and color, but English in tastes, in opinions, in morals and in intellect.” Homi Bhabha is a postcolonial theorist who says the “mimicry emerges as one of the most elusive and effective strategies of colonial power and knowledge.” • This mimicry which produces a hybridization of the population is the undoing of the hierarchical dynamic. Unlike apartheid, the hybrid phenomenon fractures the base of colonial authority.