O mother, where art thou? : an Irigarayan reading of the book of Chronicles / Julie Kelso.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Kelso, Julie, 1970-

Series:

Bible world (London, England)

BibleWorld

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Bible. Chronicles--Feminist criticism.

Bible.

Bible. Chronicles.

Women in the Bible.

Mothers in the Bible.

Irigaray, Luce.

Feminist criticism.

Physical Description:

xv, 247 pages ; 25 cm.

Place of Publication:

London ; Oakville, CT : Equinox Pub. Ltd., 2007.

Summary:

The Book of Chronicles silences women in specific ways, most radically through their association with maternity. Drawing on the work of two feminist philosophers, Luce Irigaray and Michelle Boulous Walker, Julie Kelso reveals two principal strategies of silencing women in Chronicles: disavowal and repression of the maternal body. In its simplest form, the silencing of women takes place through both an explicit and implicit strategy of excluding them from the central action. Largely banished from the central action, they are hardly able to contribute to the production of Israel's past. On a more complex level, however, women are most effectively silenced through their association with maternity, because the maternal body is both disavowed and repressed in Chronicles. The association of women with maternity, along with the disavowal and repression of the maternal body as "origin" of the masculine subject, effects and guarantees the silence of the feminine, enabling "man" to imagine himself as sole producer of his world. These strategies of silencing the "feminine" need to be understood in relation to the relative absence of women from the narrative world of Chronicles. Kelso argues that Chronicles depends on the absence and silence of women for its imaginary coherence.

This argument is enabled by Irigarayan theory. But more importantly, Kelso suggests that Irigaray also offers us a viable mode (not method) of reading, writing, listening, and speaking as "woman" (whatever that might mean), in relation to the so-called "origins" of western culture, specifically the Hebrew Bible or Old Testament. She argues that Irigaray enables a not only rigorous, feminist critique of patriarchy and its many texts, but also, somewhat more charitably, a mode of reading that enables women to read the past differently, seeking out "what remains to be discovered, especially the forgotten future in the past."

Contents:

Introduction: A Question of Silence 1

1 "All Israel" and the "Inclusive Ideology of Identity" in Chronicles 2

Part I Feminism, Psychoanalysis, and the Hebrew Bible: "Introducting" Luce Irigaray 15

Chapter 1 "The Monopoly of the Origin" and the Mute Foundation of Psychoanalysis: The Theoretical Interventions of Luce Irigaray 22

2 The Specularization of Woman-Mother in Philosophy 27

3 The Lacanian Universe 31

4 Psychoanalysis, the Economy of the Same, and the Monopoly of the Origin 45

5 The Murder of the Mother and the Forgetting of Female Ancestries 56

Chapter 2 Remembering the Forgotten Mother: Engaging with Chronicles in an Irigarayan Mode 68

1 Introduction: The Task of Analysis 68

2 Method or Mode? An "Era of Knowledge Already Over" or "the Era of the Spirit and the Bride?" 70

3 The Praticable as Nuptial Tool 76

3.1 The Embodied Geography of Analysis 80

3.2 The Rule of Free Association and the Mode of Listening Required 83

3.3 The Rule of Transference 87

4 Reading Silence 94

5 Speaking Silence Poetically 102

6 Conclusion: Going into Analysis "as Woman" with the Book of Chronicles 107

Part II Our Production of a Past, in the Present of Analaysis: Engaging with the Book of Chronicles 111

Chapter 3 Who Begets Whom? Disavowing the Maternal Body: 1 Chronicles 1-9 115

1 According to You (I)... Shall We Begin at a Beginning? 115

2 Birth Pangs? 120

3 An Intriguing Inclusion on your Part 123

4 From Edom to Israel, a Sharp Turn? 124

5 A Smooth Production Line 126

6 The Cracks Are Starting to Show 129

7 Father to Son? 139

8 The Passive of David 143

9 Discontinuity 146

10 Summary Analysis 155

10.1 Grammatical and/or Syntactical Breakdowns 156

10.2 Contradictions 158

10.3 A Breakdown of Realism 160

Chapter 4 The Debt-Free Masculine Subject: The Repressed Maternal Body in 1 Chronicles 10-2 Chronicles 36 167

1 According to You (II)... Shall We Begin Again? 167

2 Ideal Israel Born of Man 168

3 A Body in Bits and Pieces: the Murder of the (M)other? 171

4 From Father to Son, a Blessed Machine 174

5 Double-Sexing Sacred Space: The Temple in Chronicles 178

6 "Silencing" the Father? 183

7 Return of the Repressed: The Three Diseased Kings of Chronicles 188

8 The Problematic Representation of the Mother 198

8.1 The Mother's Murderous Words (2 Chronicles 22:10) 199

8.2 "A Horrid Thing," a "Thing to Shudder at" (2 Chronicles 15:16) 202

9.1 Figuring Sexual Difference? 210.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [235]-241) and indexes.

ISBN:

9781845533236

1845533232

9781845533243

1845533240

OCLC:

78788689