Volume 15,
Number 2
EDITORS’ INTRODUCTION
The essays in this volume are historical and contemporary explorations of how women are viewed as objects and subjects in society and in religious traditions. The articles by Heidi Ford, Julie Miller, Elizabeth Pritchard, and Terry Rey range from the eighth century to the medieval era to contemporary Western societies. Each contributor contextualizes as well as offers a critique of the subject matter s/he explores. Susan McCaslin’s intriguing “Teresa Poems” provide a bridge to the final contribution to this volume, Helen Hunt’s “Living It Out” essay, which considers the linkages between secular and religious feminist activists.
In “Hierarchical Inversions, Divine Subversions: The Miracles of Râbi‘a
al-‘Adawîya,” Heidi A. Ford explores the inadequately considered miracles
of this eighth century saint par
excellence of Sunnite hagiography. Ford
notes that although Râbi‘a is widely known for her poems, sayings, and
teachings on Sufism, it is her miracles that played a decisive role in her
construction as a saint par excellence.
In exploring Râbi‘a’s miracles, Ford also considers the feminist
critique that warns against the study of exemplary women.
In doing so, Ford’s analysis approaches the meaning of the texts that
constitute Râbi‘a’s hagiographical persona as being produced through the
signifying process in which the reader participates.
This counters a view of the text being closed or immutable, inherent or
objective. Ford’s approach
acknowledges that the anecdotes of Râbi‘a may be used differently by women
and men, and therefore afford different meanings to each.
Therefore, according to Ford, Râbi‘a plays the significant role of a
symbol of resistance—a role not commonly associated with Râbi‘a, but one
that Ford argues can be found in elements of Râbi‘a’s hagiographical
persona considered in her miracles.
“Eroticized
Violence in Medieval Women’s Mystical Literature: A Call for a Feminist
Critique” by Julie B. Miller is an exploration of the ways in which the
spiritual and the sexual, suffering and violence collude in sexual desire and
desire for God in the intrinsically erotic religious experience of medieval and
early modern women mystics. Miller
is concerned that little attention has been given to this discourse of
eroticized violence in a sustained feminist analysis.
Rather than quickly dismissing or lauding such experience as peculiarly
feminine, Miller engages in a sustained analysis and critique of medieval women
mystics to explore the implications of imagery and rhetoric saturated with
eroticized violence. She also
explores the implications of what it means that contemporary scholars have
failed to analyze the eroticized violence found in these medieval texts.
Miller suggests that this omission is due to current political and
ideological concerns that compel and constrain the contemporary scope of
feminist analysis of such texts.
Elizabeth A. Pritchard considers the influence of negative theology in
theological discourses promulgating a divinity that defeats all attempts at
representation in her essay “Feminist Theology and the Politics of Failure.”
Pritchard cautions feminist theologians that such a divinity may
compromise the formation and practice of emancipatory theology and politics.
Pritchard outlines negative theology’s insistence that the divine is
ineffable and its repeated demonstrations that any attempt to describe the
divine will fail. She then
discusses the ways in which Mary Daly, Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, Judith
Plaskow, and Elizabeth Johnson appropriate the critical and liberative power
they find in the notion of divine ineffability.
Pritchard argues that this critical and liberative power is diffused by
the masculinist and elitist bias reflected in the claim that the divine is
ineffable. Pritchard retrieves what
she considers to be the potentially critical and liberative lesson of discursive
instability from negative theology. However,
she wants to jettison the ontological baggage of inscrutability and turns to
feminist and postmodern theorists Judith Butler and Chantal Mouffe for their
explications of radical democracy, in which viable democratic polity consists of
the constant reminder that signs do not truly capture referents.
Pritchard does not find that an exclusive focus on discursive failure
opens up possibilities for transformative theology and politics.
She reintroduces feminist theology (using the work of Schüssler Fiorenza
as an example) as a means to making a contribution toward a materialist radical
democratic praxis.
Terry Rey’s essay, “Junta, Rape, and Religion in Haiti, 1993-1994,”
details the campaign of rape and other forms of sexual assault in Haiti
committed by the junta led by General Raoul Cédras, which ousted
democratically-elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
Rey argues that the magnitude and extent of this campaign of terror may
well have been the greatest crime against women in the Caribbean since slavery.
Rey discusses the development and nature of the junta’s rape campaign
and places it within the context of sexual violence against women in Haitian
history and society. He then
explores the function of religion in the construction of meaning for Haitian
survivors of politically motivated rape. More
specifically, Rey seeks to illustrate how religion contributes to the cognitive
framing of the abuses Haitian girls and women suffered and how religion either
facilitates or impedes the rehabilitative process.
This volume transitions with poetry by Susan McCaslin that plumbs the
life of Saint Teresa of Ávila. Helen
LaKelly Hunt’s “Living It Out” contribution, “1995 Beijing Conversation:
Spirituality and Activism,” focuses on Hunt’s desire to join religion and
activism in the women’s movement for progressive social change.
The dichotomy between so-called secular and faith-based feminism and
feminists, the 1995 United Nations World Women’s Conference held in Beijing,
China, and Hunt’s perspective as the founder of a foundation provide much of
the context for her reflections. Hunt
finds exciting prospects in the growing nexus between faith, feminism, and
social justice. Her essay explores
this intersection and the ways in which religion, faith, and spirituality can
collectively serve the social-justice based agenda of the secular women’s
movement and the liberally-based funding movement.
All of the contributors to this volume explore both the public and
private implications of women’s lives and actions and their impact on both
realms of existence. The ways in which women are viewed as objects and subjects is
an ongoing area of concern for feminist scholarship. As the contributors demonstrate so well, feminist scholarship
continues to examine, analyze, and critique the myriad connections between the
public and the private, objects and subjects, and other ways in which women’s
(and men’s) lives are constructed and given meaning.