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This title in other formats:Other titles in the Chicago Studies in the History of Judaism series:
Death and Dissymmetry: The Politics of Coherence in the Book of Judges (Chicago Studies in the History of Judaism)by Mieke Bal
Synopses & ReviewsPublisher Comments:Combining literary criticism and feminist analysis, Death and Dissymmetry radically reinterprets not only the Book of Judges but also the tradition of its reception and understanding in the West. In Mieke Bal's account, Judges documents the Israelite culture learning to articulate itself in a decisive period of transition. Counter to standard readings of Judges, Bal's interpretation demonstrates that the book has a political and ideological coherence in which the treatment of women plays a pivotal role. Bal concentrates here not on the assassinations and battles that rage through Judges but on the violence in the domestic lives of individual characters, particularly sexual violence directed at women. Her skillful reading reveals that murder, in this text, relates to gender and reflects a social structure that is inherently contradictory. By foregrounding the stories of women and subjecting them to subtle narrative analysis, she is able to expose a set of preoccupations that are essential to the sense of these stories but are not articulated in them. Bal thereby develops a "countercoherence" in conflict with the apparent emphases of Judgesthe politics, wars, and historiography that have been the constant focus of commentators on the book. Death and Dissymmetry makes an important contribution to the development of a feminist method of interpreting ancient texts, with consequences for religious studies, ancient history, literary theory, and gender studies. Synopsis:This book is about the complex and fascinating relations between text and social reality. And it is about method. The development of a feminist method of interpretation of ancient texts as sources for our understanding of the history of gender-ideology and as connected to present-day culture is the underlying purpose of this voyage through the Book of Judges. This book is the conclusion of a six-year-long project, started in 1980, and the third in a series of three studies on biblical narrative. About the AuthorMieke Bal is professor of comparative literature and Susan B. Anthony Professor of Women's Studies at the University of Rochester. Her books include Lethal Love: Literary Feminist Interpretations of Biblical Love Stories and Murder and Difference: Gender, Genre and Scholarship on Sisera's Death. Table of ContentsAcknowledgments
Introduction 1. The Coherence of Politics and the Politics of Coherence Two Views of the Book of Judges How History Constructs Itself The Construction of a Different History The Coherence of Dissymmetry Heroes of Might and Women of Death Lethal Ladies Gender, Sex, and Dissymmetry Other Female Characters The Language of Power 2. Virginity and Entanglement Bath-Jephthah: The Daughter's Gift Negation and Denial of Womanhood Freud Entangled Love at First Sight Bath's Survival 3. Virginity Scattered Paradoxes of Virginity Nonvirginal Virgins, Virginal Spouses Between Virgin and Wife: Caught Between Men 4. Violence and the Sacred: Contribution to the Ethnography of Fatherhood The Raw and the Cooked In the Name of the Law: Proper Sacrifice Manoah's Failed Fatherhood In the Name of the Vow: Improper Sacrifice Bath-Jephthah versus Ben-Abraham: A Case for Separation Dreaming Fire: Violence without the Sacred The Body Became Voice, or the Reinforcement of Culture 5. The Scandal of the Speaking Body: From Speech-act to Body Language Speech-acts: The Word Become Flesh Samson's Riddle: The Word Became Woman The Riddle as Vow and the Vow as Riddle The Daughter's Body Language as a Challenge to Fatherhood The Mouth of the S/Word 6. The Architecture of Unhomeliness Oppositions Limits Dialectic Unhomeliness Revisited The Empty House Is Haunted 7. The Displacement of the Mother Explicit Mothers: Jephthah's and Abimelech's, Samson's and Micah's Explicit Mothers: Sisera's and Israel's Displaced Mothers: Yael Displaced Mothers: The Woman-with-the-Millstone Displaced Mothers: Delilah Mothering, Murdering, Making Love: Yael Clytemnestra's Absence Conclusion The I, the Eye, and Objectification The Incoherence of Coherence Once Upon a Time Once More: Body Language Appendix 1: A Model for Narratological Analysis Appendix 2: Notes on Language Notes Bibliography Index What Our Readers Are SayingBe the first to add a comment for a chance to win!Product Details
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