Faith, Feminism, and Scholarship pp 25-34 | Cite as
Christian Feminist Theology and Postcolonial Resistance
Abstract
The best teachers in my life were the ones who set my imagination on fire. Each of these educators cared deeply for the world and embodied their passion for justice and love of this world. Demanding, patient, exacting, rigorous, passionate, and radically open to the other and learning from the other, these teachers inspired something that came close to an audacity to dream and even demand a better world. These inspiring teachers taught me to see and understand the world with wide-open eyes and yet be open to the surprising presence of beauty and hope that contest the power of death and devastating destruction and loss. None of these influential teachers forced me to believe and accept uncritically, but rather they taught me the skills necessary to think critically and to think holistically instead of narrowly and compartmentally. Teaching through a critical and interdisciplinary lens was compelling and persuasive enough to disrupt my preconceived orderly epistemology. By creating dissonance in what and how students arrived at the truth of things, each of these influential teachers opened up and created space for students to learn to think critically, to explore different and varying perspectives, and to always assess underlying assumptions. In this regard, the first important thing I learned was to engage in hermeneutics of suspicion.
Keywords
Identity Politics White Racism Wave Feminist Liberation Theology Postcolonial TheoryPreview
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Notes
- 1.Judith Butler, Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence, (New York: Verso, 2004), 27.Google Scholar
- 2.Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Death of a Discipline (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003), 73.Google Scholar
- 3.Kwok Pui-lan, “Fishing the Asia Pacific: Transnationalism and Feminist Theology,” in Off the Menu: Asian and Asian North American Women’s Religion and Theology ed. Rita Nakashima Brock, Jung Ha Kim, Kwok Pui-lan, Seung Ai Yang (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2007), 9.Google Scholar
- 5.Anne McClintock, Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest (New York: Routledge, 1995), 312.Google Scholar
- 6.Linda Tukiwai Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples (New York: Palgrave, 1999), 14.Google Scholar
- 7.Robert J. C. Young, Postcolonialism: An Historical Introduction (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2001), 57.Google Scholar
- 8.Malini Johar Schueller, Locating Race: Global Sites of Post-Colonial Citizenship (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2009).Google Scholar
For Further Investigation
- Anne McClintock, Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest (New York: Routledge, 1995).Google Scholar
- Linda Tukiwai Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples (London: Zed, 1999).Google Scholar
- Robert J. C. Young, Postcolonialism: An Historical Introduction (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2001).Google Scholar
- Malini Johar Schueller, Locating Race: Global Sites of Post-Colonial Citizenship (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2009).Google Scholar