Argues the eschatological longing of bodily obsession. Impact of culture and religiosity on use of the body; Views of feminist Judith Butler on gender performativity; Theory of gender transformation; Relation among gender, transformation and God.

Reginald Williams offers a novel approach to the problem of evil.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Bearing the Other and Bearing Sexuality: Women and Gender in Levinas’s “And God Created Woman”Deborah Achtenberg (bio)Much ink has been spilled on the question of the role of women for Levinas’s ethics in accounts containing a gamut of claims, from Stella Sandford’s that woman is aligned with sexual difference in such a way that Levinas’s attempts to install her within the human fail,1 to Diane Perpich’s that one (...) reason Otherwise than Being is preferable to Totality and Infinity is that the ethics in the former does not rest on a failed narrative of family life and woman’s role in it as ethics does in the latter,2 to Claire Katz’s that there is a rich, positive ethical component to women’s role for Levinas since he uses maternity as an example of being-for-the-other.3This essay complements those accounts by giving a detailed analysis of the discussion of women in Levinas’s talmudic commentary, “And God Created Woman.”4 Specifically, I ask whether Levinas is right, in his commentary, that, according to Talmud Berakhot 61a, women are not ultimately inferior to men because both men and women are human and their humanity precedes the division of humanity into male [End Page 137] and female. I pursue the question by reading the talmudic passage the way Levinas, in his commentary, tells us that we should read Talmud, namely, by situating texts quoted in it in their broader textual context in Torah rather than treating them as proof texts.When I put quotations cited in Berakhot 61a in their textual context, I find that the male figures treated in the texts from Torah are dismayingly dismissive of women in distress, suggesting that women are treated as inferior, but then learn their mistake and treat the women as equal or even superior, suggesting that Talmud does see them as having a humanity that precedes sexual difference. Nonetheless, I go on to argue, though the talmudic passage does not see women as ultimately inferior to men, it nonetheless treats them as inferior on the day-to-day level and such treatment belies the attempt to treat them as human.I go on to ask about Levinas’s stance toward this problem in the talmudic text, Does he accept the treatment of women as inferior? I argue, to the contrary, that Levinas sees the problem and attempts to overcome it by criticizing two ways the talmudic passage treats women as inferior on the day-to-day level: he rejects the passages’ prohibitions on certain types of male contact with women—such as looking at them!—and he reinterprets its association of women with makeup and deception. His stance is more complicated, though, because he goes on to find a kernel of truth to preserve in each of the problematic talmudic positions: in the first, the fundamental ethical ambiguity of sexuality, since sexuality points toward the other as other but also toward one’s own satisfaction; in the second, what we might anachronistically call women’s ways of knowing that, for Levinas, have a certain ethical superiority over the ways men know. The two resolutions have their own problems, I maintain, since if Levinas is to avoid gender norming and gender hierarchy, he needs to make it clear that both the problematic ethical ambiguity of sexuality and also the ways of knowing he thinks are ethically superior are not essentially associated more with women than with men. [End Page 138]1Reading Levinas’s way, I search out the context of quotations, taking them not as proof texts, but as invitations to interpret. In “And God Created Woman,” he says, “each time a biblical verse is brought in as proof it is not likely that the sages of the Talmud are looking in these texts, squeezed every which way in spite of grammar, for a direct proof of the thesis they are upholding. It is always an invitation to search out the context of the quotation” (NT 166/DSS 130–31). As a feminist, when I search out the context of the quotations Levinas refers to in his reading of Berakhot 61a, I... (shrink)

This article reads Levinas’s “And God Created Woman” in light of its socio-political context, Mai soixante-huit. It explores themes from his “Judaism and Revolution,” in which he reframed concepts of revolution, exegesis, the revolutionary, and human alienation. Following these themes, which run subtly through his Talmudic remarks on women and indirectly on feminism, I examine his arguments about a “signification beyond universality” and the fraught relationship between formal equity in gender relations and the practice of justice, as embodied by (...) the Antigone-like Rizpah bath Aiah and analyzed in Levinas’s Talmudic reading “Toward the Other.” I summarize the Rabbinic debate about the meaning of an extra yod in the term often translated as “to create” in Genesis, turning to the significance of dissymmetry between the Hebrew names of “man” and “woman,” Ish and Isha. In light of this, Biblicist and psychoanalyst Daniel Sibony opens further insights into gender, naming, and identity. (shrink)

This article reads Levinas’s “And God Created Woman” in light of its socio-political context, Mai soixante-huit. It explores themes from his “Judaism and Revolution,” in which he reframed concepts of revolution, exegesis, the revolutionary, and human alienation. Following these themes, which run subtly through his Talmudic remarks on women and indirectly on feminism, I examine his arguments about a “signification beyond universality” and the fraught relationship between formal equity in gender relations and the practice of justice, as embodied by (...) the Antigone-like Rizpah bath Aiah and analyzed in Levinas’s Talmudic reading “Toward the Other.” I summarize the Rabbinic debate about the meaning of an extra yod in the term often translated as “to create” in Genesis, turning to the significance of dissymmetry between the Hebrew names of “man” and “woman,” Ish and Isha. In light of this, Biblicist and psychoanalyst Daniel Sibony opens further insights into gender, naming, and identity. (shrink)

Though academic debate over gender-inclusive God-talk seems to have fizzled, the issue is a pressing one within many Christiandenominations today—both within and outside the Church—and for that reason deserves to be briefly revisited. Accordingly, althoughin this essay we approach the issue as professional philosophers, our focus is on the life of the Church—more specifically, those no doubt sizable segments of the Church for which a personal God and Satan exist and evangelism matters. Running an elimination argument, we contend that (...) if a certain sort of feminist concern about traditional God-talk is well-directed, the best response is to speak of not only God but also Satan in both masculine and feminine terms. And in closing, we address the possible worry that this response to the God-talk problem would not be Christian enough. (shrink)

Karl Barth leaves room by his own principles for further, even different thinking about Jews and gender than he records in the Dogmatics. Now that Marquardt, Klappert, Sonderegger, Soulen, and others have offered sympathetic critiques from a generally Barthian point of view, and Eberhard Busch has exhaustively laid to rest any biographical questions of Barth’s relation to the Jewish people in his 1996 book, Unter dem Bogen des einen Bundes: Karl Barth und die Juden 1933–1945, the way lies open (...) to carry forward Barth’s theological critique of nineteenth century theology and of abstraction further into the areas of Jews and gender, and to propose constructive pneumatological and exegetical supplements to his thinking. Barth’s thinking on women and men, like his thinking on Jews, labors, for all its promise in its time, under a defect he calls abstraction. Barth faulted Calvin for abstracting both elect human beings and the electing God from Jesus Christ, whom Barth called the elect human being and the electing God in one. Yet on the election of the community Barth did not entirely escape the abstraction. In the manner of Augustine’s Retractions, Barth wrote to Maruardt toward the end of his life that he had been so busy with Israel that he had had no time for the Jews. Does Barth, as Marquardt and Sonderegger suggest, throw up despite himself a conceptual screen onto which he at once projects an abstraction and behind which he hides actual human beings , a screen resistant to the blowing of the Spirit? Do the concepts “ man” and “ woman” form a similar conceptual screen, dating from Schleiermacher’s dialogue Christmas Eve, in which men and women have essentially different responses to the incarnation of Jesus Christ? Das ewig M??nnliche and das ewig Weibliche, inherited from German romanticism, see to run afoul of Barth’s trinitarian particularism, as does “ Israel”. Yet further application of Barth’s own principles, including more attention to the Spirit, leaves him more options in his treatment of Jews and gender, and richer exegesis – including exegesis by anagogy. (shrink)

This article analyzes the philosophical reasons behind Augustine's use of gendered pronouns for God in the corpus of his works. As a Roman rhetorician and African preacher and bishop, Augustine's thoughtful use of he, she, and it for God corresponds to ideas about the nature of the divine and the relationship of the divine to the believer. The article argues for a literal translation of Augustine's pronouns in order that his subtle philosophical and theological claims not be lost in translation.

This article explores the interconnectedness of the earth, gender and food security in the Zambian context using the narrative of Maria Zaloumis (a female Zambian farmer) in the public sphere. It draws on a narrative research design by the restorying of Maria’s trajectory in Agric-business as informed by the African ecofeminist theory. The study shows that Maria was described as an emerging young farmer and an emblem of female entrepreneurship. Her trajectory mirrored the intersection of the earth, gender (...) and food security through her portrayal as a woman who endured life tragedies of losing a child, and being a victim of gender-based violence in her marriage. She drew inspiration from her mother (venturing into farming was linked to her mother), the earth (farming was an outlet for healing from her marital challenges) and religion (attributed her success to God as a member of the Baptist church). Maria’s account which resonates with the injustice suffered by the earth and shared by women through the environmental crises affirms that in the midst of suffering, women could still contribute to food security by turning a crisis into an opportunity and fostering a life-affirming theology.Contribution: The article contributes to scholarship on the earth, gender and food security by bringing to the fore the ways in which women have contributed to changing the Agric-business landscape through the intersection of the earth, gender and religion from the Zambian context. It also adds a new perspective to women’s empowerment and the preservation and stewardship of mother earth. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Books ReceivedThe Ahmadis: Community, Gender, and Politics in a Muslim Society. By Antonio Gualtieri. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2004. Pp. xvi + 192. Hardcover $65.00. Paper Cdn $24.95 / U.S. $19.95.American Knees. By Shawn Wong. Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 2005. Pp. xxi + 229. Paper $14.95.The Art of Worldly Wisdom. By Baltasar Gracian and translated by Joseph Jacobs. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2005. (...) Pp. xiii + 114. Paper $5.95.Bashō's Journey: The Literary Prose of Matsuo Bashō. Translated by David Landis Barnhill. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005. Pp. xvii + 191. Hardcover $59.50. Paper $17.95.Bringing the Gods to Mind: Mantra and Ritual in Early Indian Sacrifice. By Laurie L. Patton. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005. Pp. xv + 289. Hardcover $49.95/£32.50.Buddhist Inclusivism: Attitudes Towards Religious Others. By Kristin Beise Kiblinger. Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2005. Pp. viii + 145. Hardcover $89.95.A Chinese Ethics for the New Century: The Ch'ien Mu Lectures in History and Culture, and Other Essays on Science and Confucian Ethics. By Donald J. Munro. Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 2005. Pp. xlv + 158. Hardcover $33.00.Chinese Theories of Reading and Writing: A Route to Hermeneutics and Open Poetics. By Ming Dong Gu. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005. Pp. xiv + 334. Hardcover $85.00.A Dictionary of Cantonese Slang: The Language of Hong Kong Movies, Street Gangs, and City Life. By Christopher Hutton and Kingsley Bolton. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2005. Pp. xxiv + 492. Paper $28.00.Ghazālī and the Poetics of Imagination. By Ebrahim Moosa. Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 2005. Pp. xiii + 349. Hardcover $59.95. Paper $22.50.Going Forth: Visions of Buddhist Vinaya. Edited by William M. Bodiford. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2005. Pp. x + 317. Hardcover $48.00.The Harem: Inside the Grand Seraglio of the Turkish Sultans. By N. M. Penzer. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2005. Pp. 277. Paper $14.95.Ideals of the East: The Spirit of Japanese Art. By Kakuzo Okakura. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2005. Pp. xiv + 106. Paper $5.95. [End Page 365]An Illustrated Chinese Materia Medica. By Jing-Nuan Wu. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. Pp. 706. Price not given.Jews and Arabs: A Concise History of Their Social and Cultural Relations. By S. D. Goitein. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2005. Pp. xv + 263. Paper $12.95.The Logic of Nothingness: A Study of Nishida Kitarō. By Robert J. J. Wargo. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2005. Pp xi + 241. Paper $25.00.The Moral and Political Thought of Mahatma Gandhi. By Raghavan N. Iyer. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2000. Pp. xiii + 449. Paper Rs 520.00.Nietzsche's Epic of the Soul: Thus Spoke Zarathustra. By T. K. Seung. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2005. Pp. xxviii + 370. Hardcover $83.00. Paper $27.95.Of Guilds, Companies, Corporations, and Governance: A Conceptual Sketch. By Leonardo R. Silos. Makati City, Philippines: Asian Institute of Management, 2005. Pp. xvi + 238. Price not given.The Path to Rome. By Hilaire Belloc. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2005. Pp. ix + 251. Paper $12.95.The Philosophy of the Bhagavadgātā : A Study based on the Evaluation of the Commentaries of Śamkara, Rāmānuja and Madhva. By S. M. Srinivasa Chari. New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers, 2005. Pp. xxvi + 294. Hardcover Rs 575.00.The Philosophy of Rabindranath Tagore. By Kalyan Sen Gupta. Burlington, VT: Ash-gate Publishing Company, 2005. Pp. ix + 103. Hardcover $79.95.The Pristine Dao: Metaphysics in Early Daoist Discourse. By Thomas Michael. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005. Pp. xi + 170. Hardcover $60.00. Paper $21.95.Three Mountains and Seven Rivers: Prof. Musashi Tachikawa's Felicitation Volume. Edited by Shoun Hino and Toshihiro Wada. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass Publishers. 2004. Pp. xx + 903. Hardcover Rs. 1800.The Unity of Mystical Traditions: The Transformation of Consciousness in Tibetan and German Mysticism. By Randall Studstill. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2005. Pp. xii + 304. Hardcover @89/$127.00.Writing the World: On Globalization. Edited by David... (shrink)

Prologue, invitation to thinking about God In the Hebrew Bible? -- Part I, questions about God? -- Why does God in the Bible have a body? -- What do God's body parts in the Bible mean? -- Why is God angry in the Bible? -- Does God in the Bible have gender or sexuality? -- Part II, questions about God in the world? -- What can creation tell us about God? -- Who-or what-is the Satan? -- Why do people (...) suffer according to the Hebrew Bible? -- Epilogue, God in the Bible and beyond. (shrink)

This paper borrows from philosopher John Macmurray's insightsin order to advance work in feminist theology relating to perceptions of God. Mac-murray argues that we cannot have an adequate concept of a personalGod, if our concept of the human person is inadequate.He asserts that we are persons by virtue of our agency and our personal relationships; hence, the growth and development of persons requires communities of equals. Beliefin God, then, is an attitude expressed through behaviour that creates and sustains such communities. (...) As feminist theologians indicate, a‘male’ God is a stumbling block to equality; yet, thealogy remains on the periphery of mainstream academic and Christian circles. Hence, this paper sets the groundwork for a truly gender-transcendent concept of God, examining some contemporary language liturgies and employing Macmurray's portrayal of a supreme agent, in an attempt to resolve the main problems encountered by inclusive God-language. (shrink)

Christian feminist theory faces many stresses, some due directly to the apparent nature of Christianity and its seeming patriarchy. But feminism can also be thought inherent in Christianity. All people are made in God’s image. Christians should view women and men as equals, just as they should see peopleof all races as equals. The basic question discussed, within a biblical and philosophical framework, is if it possible for Christian feminist theory to hold thatthere is an essence to being a woman, (...) being a man or being human all the while recognizing vast differences among women, among men and among human persons? I propose a beginning solution to this problem. (shrink)

Christian feminist theory faces many stresses, some due directly to the apparent nature of Christianity and its seeming patriarchy. But feminism can also be thought inherent in Christianity. All people are made in God’s image. Christians should view women and men as equals, just as they should see people of all races as equals. The basic question discussed, within a biblical and philosophical framework, is if it possible for Christian feminist theory to hold that there is an essence to being (...) a woman, being a man or being human all the while recognizing vast differences among women, among men and among human persons? I propose a beginning solution to this problem. (shrink)

On the basis of a case study of the integration of Haredi Jewish women into the Israeli high-tech industry, we explore how gender–religiosity intersectionality affects ultra-conservative women’s participation in the labor market and their ability to negotiate with employers for corporate work–family practices that address their idiosyncratic requirements. We highlight the importance of pious women’s affiliation to their highly organized religious communities while taking a process-centered approach to intersectionality and focusing on the matrix of domination formed by the Israeli (...) state, employers, and the organized ultra-orthodox community. We dub this set of actors “the unholy-trinity” and argue that it constructs a specific, religion-centric inequality regime that restrains women’s job and earning opportunities. At the same time, the “unholy trinity” also empowers women in their struggle to create a working environment that is receptive to their religiosity and what that commitment demands of them. (shrink)

This paper looks at the gendered underpinnings of religion using a feminist lens. It names the violence embedded in the gendered notions of religious ideology and praxis and shows how religion can be “injurious” to women’s growth because of the following factors: the hierarchical dualism that alienates them from the Spirit and identifies them with the body while marginalizing them through their positioning on the lower rungs of the hierarchical ladder; the exclusive male imagery of God and its mediation by (...) an all male priestly class and the scriptural injunctions which are inscribed by patriarchal thought and deployed to keep women in defined roles and spaces. Catholic teachings and practices are taken as a case of analysis to unearth the political dynamics by which religion reinforces ‘gendering –women’s exclusion from theological knowledge making spaces and the gendered religious indoctrination which become hegemonic codes that shape women’s consciousness and keep them without grievance in their subjugated status. It shows further how female body and sexuality are major sites of religious gender politics through the strict controls on women’s dress-codes and the sexual servicing expected of them in marriage. Finally, the paper advocates critical thought as a tool for exploding the hardened rock of gendered religious foundations and shows how overcoming the contradictory consciousness and waking up to a critical consciousness becomes imperative for women to be freed of the gender dictates of religion. Key words : gender, religion, theological knowledge-making, sexuality, critical consciusness. (shrink)

This article establishes an ethnographic mapping, from the point of view of history and Oral History, in the city of Cleveland with a strong stamp of ordinary and traditional Catholic culture. From this perspective, we built a collection of oral interviews, with the life stories of 13 healers and a healer from the city and region. In this sense, we were guided by the very threads and intricacies that fieldwork has allowed us to reach and, also, to dialogue with theorists (...) such as Michel de Certeau, Raymond Williams, Fritjof Capra, Alessandro Portelli, Janaína Amado. (shrink)

The literature on hybrid masculinity suggests that some men manage subordinate or contradictory forms of masculinity while still maintaining and benefiting from gender inequality. Drawing from 35 in-depth qualitative interviews with religious participants in pornography addiction recovery programs, we expand this literature by illustrating how hybrid masculinity operates through shared cultural knowledge about sex, gender, and sexuality. We find that participants use distinct cultural schemas related to religion and science to explain how men are created by God to (...) be biologically “hard-wired” for pornography addiction. We use the phrase redemptive masculinity to describe a type of hybrid masculinity that upholds the cultural association between hegemonic masculinity and pornography consumption, but allows religious men to describe their avoidance of pornography as a masculine feat. Redemptive masculinity depends upon particular beliefs about gender that give advantage to the religious men who work to overcome pornography addiction. We show how their stories reinforce essentialist differences between male and female bodies that protect the interests and sexual expressions of religious men. In turn, we show how hybrid masculinities may involve gender-flexible practices for men but also how these may ultimately reinforce strict and inflexible beliefs about so-called “opposite” sexes. (shrink)

The argument of this article is that, philosophically, there are but three broad conceptual models that Western thought employs in thinking about the meaning of God. At the level of greatest generality, these are the models known as classical theism, pantheism, and panentheism. The essay surveys and updates these three conceptual models in light of recent writings, finds more flaws in classical theism and panentheism than in pantheism, and suggests a feminist response to each.

This article looks at the inadequacy of space available to women in the two most holy sites for all Muslims: Masjid al-Haram in Makkah and Masjid an-Nabawi in Madinah, Saudi Arabia. I argue that religious discourse, shaped by geopolitical factors, has framed piety for women primarily in terms of modesty, such that a woman is often considered a good Muslim if she is visible only within her female community but invisible to the larger society. Furthermore, I argue that the allocation (...) of meager space affects not only the perception of women's religious standing in society, but also women's own perception about their moral selves. The article claims that by being relegated to small sections within religious spaces, women's collective worship is evident neither to the community at large nor can it be fully experienced by individual women, thus placing obstacles in women's path to seek to closeness to God. (shrink)

This essay offers a response to Pamela Sue Anderson’s book, Re-visioning Gender in Philosophy of Religion. It focuses on three key aspects of Anderson’s work: first, her concern with the often imperceptible reality of gender exclusions; secondly, her discussion of ineffability in dialogue with Adrian Moore’s work and thirdly, her defence of realism in response to Grace Jantzen. These themes constitute a welcome articulation of rationality within a feminist framework, whilst opening up rationality to the validity of non-propositional (...) truths. The essay ends by suggesting that Anderson does more to work out new conceptualizations of the divine, arguing that her work and that of Jantzen are not so far apart on this point as might first appear. (shrink)

While there is much writing on the nation as the subject of linear history, considerably less attention has been paid to the dimension of the nation as the always identifiable, unchanging subject of history. This unchanging subject is necessitated by the ascendancy of the conception of linear time in capitalism in which change is viewed not only as accelerating, but can no longer be framed by an ultimate source of meaning such as God. Ostensibly, linear history is the falling of (...) events into the "river of time," but national history also posits a continuous subject to gather these changes. Such a subject is recognizable only by the spiritual qualities of authenticity, purity, and sacrality. The nation-state and nationalists stake their claim to sovereign authority, in part, as custodians of this authenticity.A range of figures, human and non-human, come to symbolize a regime of authenticity manipulable to some extent by nationalists and state-builders. This essay focuses on the instance of women in early twentieth-century China. Nationalists and cultural essentialists tended to depict women as embodying the eternal Chinese civilizational virtues of self-sacrifice and loyalty and to elevate them as national exemplars. The essay also examines cases of how women themselves may have perceived this role as exemplars and concludes that while there was considerable subversion in their enunciation of this role , there was sufficient reference to the prescriptive code of authenticity in their self-formation to sustain the regime of authenticity. The essay ends with some thoughts about the changing relationship between authenticity and intensifying globalization in the contemporary world. (shrink)

Buddhist philosophy and doctrines; an analytical study.

In the late 1940s and early 1950s, there emerged a radically new kind of music based on recorded environmental sounds instead of sounds of traditional Western musical instruments. Centered in Paris around the composer, music theorist, engineer, and writer Pierre Schaeffer, this became known as musique concrète because of its use of concrete recorded sound fragments, manifesting a departure from the abstract concepts and representations of Western music notation. Furthermore, the term sound object was used to denote our perceptual images (...) of such fragments. Sound objects and their features became the focus of an extensive research effort on the perception and cognition of music in general, remarkably anticipating topics of more recent music psychology research. This sound object theory makes extensive use of metaphors, often related to motion shapes, something that can provide holistic representations of perceptually salient, but temporally distributed, features in different kinds of music. (shrink)

Biology is seen not merely as a privileged oppressor of women but as a co-victim of masculinist social assumptions. We see feminist critique as one of the normative controls that any scientist must perform whenever analyzing data, and we seek to demonstrate what has happened when this control has not been utilized. Narratives of fertilization and sex determination traditionally have been modeled on the cultural patterns of male/female interaction, leading to gender associations being placed on cells and their components. (...) We also find that when gender biases are controlled, new perceptions of these intracellular and extracellular relationships emerge. (shrink)

The paper reconstructs the trip to Rome of the first Bollandist Fathers, providing numerous historical, documentary and cultural details, while offering a generous cross-section of the academic life of the period.