Roland Boer-Last Stop Before Antarctica_ the Bible and Postcolonialism in Australia (Society of Biblical Literature Semeia Studies)-Society of Biblical Literature (2008)

8/9/2019 Roland Boer-Last Stop Before Antarctica_ the Bible and Postcolonialism in Australia (Society of Biblical Literature Se…

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L A S T S T O PB E F O R E

A N T A R C T I C A

T H E B I B L E

a n d

P O S T C O L O N I A L I S M

i n A U S T R A L I A

SECOND EDITION

R O L A N D B O E R


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LAST STOP BEFORE ANTARCTICA


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Semeia Studies

Gale A. Yee, General Editor

Editorial Board:

Jione Havea

Tat-Siong Benny Liew

Sarojini NadarJeremy Punt

Erin Runions

Ken Stone

Caroline Vander Stichele

Elaine M. Wainwright

Number 64



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The Bible and Postcolonialism in Australia

Second Edition

by

Roland Boer

Society of Biblical LiteratureAtlanta


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Copyright © 2008 by the Society of Biblical Literature

All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form

or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by

means of any information storage or retrieval system, except as may be expressly permit-

ted by the 1976 Copyright Act or in writing from the publisher. Requests for permissionshould be addressed in writing to the Rights and Permissions Office, Society of Biblical

Literature, 825 Houston Mill Road, Atlanta, GA 30329 USA.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Boer, Roland, 1961–Last stop before Antarctica : the Bible and postcolonialism in Australia / by Roland

Boer. —2nd ed.

p. cm. — (Society of Biblical Literature Semeia studies ; no. 64)

Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

ISBN: 978-1-58983-348-7 (paper binding : alk. paper)1. Bible—Influence. 2. Bible—Use. 3. Bible—Postcolonial criticism. 4. Postcolonial-

ism—Australia. 5. Australia—Religion. I. Title.BS538.7.B64 2008

220.60994—dc22 2008009755

16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 5 4 3 2 1

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free, recycled paperconforming to ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (R1997) and ISO 9706:1994

standards for paper permanence.


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For John Docker


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C

Preface to the Second Edition ...............................................................................ix

Preface to the First Edition ................................................................................. xiii

Introduction—Gatecrashing Thanksgiving: Australian BiblicalStudies in the Global Calculus ...............................................................................1

1. Marx, Postcolonialism, and the Bible ...........................................................23

2. The Decree of the Watchers, or, Other Globalizations ...............................37

3. Explorer Hermeneutics, or Fat Damper and Sweetened Tea .....................57

4. Home Is Always Elsewhere: Exodus, Exile, and the HowlingWilderness Waste.............................................................................................81

5. Green Ants and Gibeonites: B. Wongar, Joshua 9, and SomeProblems of Postcolonialism ........................................................................109

6. Dreaming the Logos: On Bible Translation and Language ......................135

7. Conclusion: (E)Strange Dialectics ...............................................................161

Bibliography .........................................................................................................173

Biblical Index .......................................................................................................193

Subject Index ........................................................................................................196

Author Index ........................................................................................................198


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P S E

Let me begin with a story, beore I say a little about what is new and what is

the same about this revised edition o Last Stop Before Antarctica. A ew yearsago (in act, getting close to twenty), I was somewhat reluctantly planning toreturn to Australia afer some years in Canada. With two o my our childrenborn in Canada, with a job offer, and with a sense it was a long, long way toAustralia, we said arewell to riends. One o them, Diet Neueld (now at theUniversity o British Columbia), said, “Well, see you, Roland. When I’m downthat way I’ll drop in.” “Yeah, please do,” I replied, “maybe on your way to Ant-arctica.” Needless to say, I have Diet to thank or that first spark that led to thetitle o the book.

I would preer not to dwell too much on what I like (the chapter on“Explorer Hermeneutics,” or instance) or on what I don’t like about the book(apart rom some very dense writing, I won’t say), since that is a little toomuch sel-indulgence. Instead, I offer a ew comments on what is new aboutthe revised edition and then about what has happened with what is nowcalled “postcolonial biblical criticism.” Chapter 1, “Marx, Postcolonialism andthe Bible” is the major addition. It was published originally in Biblical Criti-cism: Interdisciplinary Intersections (Moore and Segovia 2005) and, with thegood graces o & Clark, has been republished here. Further, I have beenable to correct a ew embarrassing spelling errors (especially that o Lance-lot Trelkeld), add occasional notes and update the bibliography. Apart romthat, I have lef the bulk o the chapters alone. O course, there are some Iwould write differently now, but that would destroy their integrity and flowo argument.

As or postcolonial biblical criticism, things have changed quite consid-erably in the decade since I first began writing. At that moment there wereone or two books on postcolonialism and the Bible: Sugirtharajah had edited

Te Postcolonial Bible (1998), was in the process o publishing Asian BiblicalHermeneutics and Postcolonialism (1999), along with the 1999 issue o Journal for the Study of the New estament (no. 73), and was just embarking on thesteady flow o volumes that in many ways now define the field; Laura Donald-son had edited a sole issue o Semeia (no. 75 in 1996), rom which the “Green

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Ants and Gibeonites” chapter is drawn; Jon Berquist had written his Judaismin Persia’s Shadow (1995), in which he used some postcolonial methods to

reconstruct the history o ancient Yehud. Slim pickings indeed! In the lastdecade there has been a deluge o studies, which I will not delve into here.In act, I merely reer the reader to Stephen Moore’s exhaustive bibliographyin his Empire and Apocalypse (2006), where he gathers all that has been writ-ten on postcolonialism, postcolonial theory, and postcolonial biblical studies.Tese days we find a whole host o names, such as Fernando Segovia, JudithMcKinlay, Musa Dube, Jeremy Punt, Stephen Moore, Kwok Pui-Lan (toname but a very ew), sections at international biblical studies meetings anda steady stream o monographs, edited volumes and essays. I have ound inmy various travels to less than usual haunts (in a conscious decision to avoidthose ormer and present imperial centers), that postcolonial criticism o theBible is cropping up all over the place—in the study o Christian missions inGreenland, by activists rom the Swedish Lutheran Church, by literary criticsin Bulgaria or whom “postcolonialism” means “post-communist,” in aiwanand China, Switzerland and on and on. It really is one o those so-called“new” approaches that have caught on in biblical studies. Even old warhorseslike Niels Peter Lemche—o the notorious “Copenhagen school” on Israelite

history (or the lack thereo)—have taken up postcolonial criticism with somegusto. Tis revision, then, reappears in an area o study that has changed bib-lical studies in the last ten years.

Perhaps I should explain what I set out to do when I first began writingthe book. I did not attempt to read specific biblical texts in the light o post-colonial criticism. Rather, it seemed to me at the time that we had a curiouscontradiction: those predisposed to postcolonial criticism in other disciplinescontinued to ignore the Bible while it was quite obvious that the Bible playeda crucial role in the period o colonial conquest and rule—in the hands o

missionaries, administrators, Bible translators and whatnot—and contin-ued to be crucial in what has ollowed, whether we call it postcolonialism orneo-colonialism. So I wanted to offer a small correction to that strange con-tradiction in wider postcolonial criticism. And since Australia is o course aormer colony o the British Empire (some would say that it is now a colonyo the U.S.A.), and since Australia was one o the places where postcolonialcriticism first emerged (especially with Ashcrof, Griffiths and iffin’s TeEmpire Writes Back rom 1988), it seemed obvious that the ocus should beAustralia. Te trick was to try and raise questions that were much wider thanAustralia, to use it as a test case, i you will. Whether I have succeeded or notis up to the reader.

Tree final points: at the risk o stating the obvious, we need to be awareo two senses o “postcolonial.” Te first is a temporal one, designating the

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time afer the heyday o classical colonial expansion, subjugation and domina-tion. Tat was the period, as capitalism was becoming established in Europe,

when one European power afer another—Te Netherlands, Denmark, Eng-land (although the English are a bit unny about being called Europeans),France, Italy, Germany and so on—began to conquer lands beyond Europe.In the ace o waves o anti-colonial agitation and independence movements,running rom the end o the nineteenth century and rising to a crescendo inthe twentieth, what is now called the “postcolonial” era began. However, sincecolonialism is by no means a thing o the past, and since we can easily identiyearlier orms o colonialism (the Romans or one), “postcolonial” also reersto a critical way o dealing with those earlier and still contemporary ormso colonialism. It is this wholesale reassessment that really embodies whatpostcolonial criticism sets out to do, ofen with the tools provided by variousother approaches, including eminism, Marxism, deconstruction and psycho-analysis, among others.

Further, my conclusion to the original book evoked the Seattle protests oNovember 1999 as a possible model or a new globalized politics. More thanone reader o the book ound me overly optimistic. But the situation now,afer an ongoing series o anticapitalist protests, the U.S. empire stumbling in

Iraq, the looming crises o short oil-supplies (the amous “Peak” seemed topass in 2006 when demand overtook supply), the urgent call by the bulk o theworlds’ scientists to do something about global warming, and the way groupslike the Fourth International (rotsky’s original organization) are scramblingto provide inormation and guidance to a large number o young peopleradicalized by protests throughout the world, o which Seattle was only thebeginning, all suggest that a “time o troubles” is upon us. How it may workout is anyone’s guess, but it also provides untold opportunities to imagine andplan or something a little better than the rotten system we have.

Lastly, it may seem strange that the revised edition o a book that islargely concerned with the Bible, postcolonialism, and Australia should bepublished in the United States, the last superpower. But then, the first editionwas published in that old and now aded colonial center o England (by She-field Academic Press in 2001). Te reality is that no press in Australia darespublish an academic book to do with the Bible, let alone theology. One o theparadoxes o postcolonialism, I guess. I am o course prooundly grateul thatthe Semeia Studies series o the Society o Biblical Literature has enthusiasti-cally agreed to publish this revised edition. I would especially like to thankGale Yee, Bob Buller, and Leigh Andersen or making it possible.

Te Hill, New South WalesJanuary 2008

PREFACE O HE SECOND EDIION XI


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P F E

Living on the periphery o the modern world system (Wallerstein), last stop,

perhaps, on the way to Antarctica, seems to produce its own curious ormo identity scholarship. Tat is, i I live in a nation-state that was a ormercolony o one o the European powers, it is in some perverse way assumedthat I will be interested in postcolonial theory. It may in act be read as adeault theoretical position: i I am not taken with postcolonial theory, thenthere is something amiss, I have denied my calling, and I should return tothat as soon as possible. All o this I find somewhat rustrating, since my owndesire runs against the political assumptions o postcolonial theory—localresistance, alternative identities, and valorization o the peripheral zone over

against the center. I am, in other words, an internationalist in the old com-munist sense, and my desire is to move rom the periphery to the center, to bewhere the action is (i scholarship may be called action). I my desire is but acopy o the constructed wish or the center, and thereby merely reinorces thetroubled center-periphery binary, it is also the desire called Marx, the wish toocus on the international scene when so much attention is directed towardsthe national, regional, local.

Yet (an inevitable dialectical marker) there is something attractive aboutthe peripheral zones in another sense. Strangely, Jeremy Bentham providesa rationale or this sense, in reverse o course. During his long campaignto build his much commented upon panopticon prison (and I will add tothe comments in this book), Bentham gathered a number o his tediousletters under the title o Panopticon Versus New South Wales (Bentham1843). By citing numerous newspaper articles and reports on the practiceo transporting convicts to New South Wales and then comparing them toa prison in Pennsylvania run on his cherished panopticon model, Benthamargued or the clear benefits—example, reormation, incapacitation (preven-

tion o urther offense), compensation, satisaction, industry, rugality, andeconomy—o the panopticon. His prison shines as a model o discipline,sobriety, strictness, criminal reorm and the impossibility o escape, whereasNew South Wales comes through as a place o total and “general depravity”(the first point o Calvinism), o sexual license, lewdness, lack o reorma-

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tion, and general carousing. All o which was caused by that “universal andincurable” vice o drunkenness (1843: 230). Neither temporal nor spiritual

remedies made, according to Bentham, any difference. Even though I amamong that one third o Australians that does not have connections withEngland, Scotland, Wales or Ireland, it takes little reflection to decide whereI would rather be.

Contrary to most o my work, which is very much a solitary effort, thereare a number o people to thank or their assistance and eedback at differentpoints in this project. Sugi has through his efforts with Sheffield AcademicPress provided a orum where the issues o postcolonialism and the Bible maybe aired and discussed. Paul Eckert, om Webb and Ken Hanson helped mewith vital inormation and eedback on Bible translation in Australia, andJonathan Nicholls straightened out some o my glaring errors in an early drafo that chapter. Most o the project was researched and written during a Visit-ing Fellowship at the Humanities Research Centre o the Australian NationalUniversity in Canberra. It could not have happened without that precioustime and space provided or me there. Trough the dry heat and occasionalrain o a Canberra summer in early 1999, I read and wrote in an increasinglyrare place in Australia, a research center. At breakast I rode into the space

provided, eating, talking, reading and writing, and at midnight I rode back tomy tent, crawling in to sleep the sleep o the dead. Leena Messina and MistyCook, the real directors o the center, made my stay very pleasant. DeborahBird Rose kept me responsible or what I said, and Ann Curthoys providedme with some ideas to ponder. Above all, John Docker was and is a constantcompanion or talk, reflection, reading and comment.

An earlier, barren and stark, version o chapter 5, “Green Ants andGibeonites” appeared in Semeia 75 (1996): 129–52.

Canberra, ACFebruary 1999

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I

G : A B

S G C

In a time span that can only be ound in the hyper-market o the pres-ent, postcolonialism has established itsel in a very short space o time asa vibrant discourse in biblical studies, let alone literary and cultural studiesmore generally. However, it is not sufficient to seek to understand the Biblein a postcolonial environment, as though it were an orphan seeking a home:it is also necessary to ask questions about both postcolonialism and the Biblein the light o each other. Tus, the underlying theme o this study is the

way the intersection o postcolonialism and the Bible problematizes bothsides, or neither has postcolonial theory given much thought to the Bible,nor have biblical critics realized the importance o postcolonial criticism ortheir work.

Biblical studies, however, ofen unctions like Hegel’s owl o Minerva,taking to wing in the dusk o the methods it so assiduously appropriates toitsel. Indeed, or a method in another discipline it seems that a signal o itsshif to comortable establishment, o the stiffening o the muscles and creak-ing o the bones, i not obsolescence, is that biblical critics take it up or theirown use. O course, this trades on the very patterns o ashion and productupgrade so characteristic o capitalism more broadly, denying the continued

viability o approaches well past their use-by date. And this also convenientlyorgets, in a typical moment o repression, that in many respects the verymethods appropriated by biblical critics, particularly those rom literary andcultural criticism, derive their enabling energy rom biblical criticism itsel,albeit in a ormer moment that is no longer with us.1

Tat is to say, the orms o literary criticism established over centuries

o interpretation o the Bible, which was the primary literary document or

1. For an extended version o this argument, see the introduction to my Knockin’ on

Heaven’s Door (Boer 1999, 1–12).

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2 LAS SOP BEFORE ANARCICA

the small clerical group who were literate, eventually ed into the explosiono orms that came with the Renaissance and the rise o capitalism. However,

while the forms—in key areas such as meaning, hermeneutics, inspiration,classics, canonicity, genre, style and so on—o such approaches derived rombiblical criticism, their religious and theological content was discarded in that

vast campaign o the banishment o superstition rom intellectual and sociallie that came with the Enlightenment. Over time it became possible to usethese various secular methods, derived rom biblical interpretation, or thestudy o the Bible, without reerence to its religious content or theologicalclaims, something carried out most amously in the grand style o historicalcriticism. What is o course orgotten in all o this, as with the orgetting othe origins o any socio-economic system, is the enabling unction o biblicalcriticism. o complete the circuit, then, it is not so much that biblical criti-cism is always late in its appropriation o methods developed elsewhere, butthat there is a delay in cashing the checks that all these methods bear, issuedand signed by biblical criticism itsel, which is now the outcast among themethods to which it gave birth.

I the process I have described all too briely is somewhat veiled inthe usual operation o literary and cultural criticism, it seems to be highly

transparent in what goes by the name o postcolonial criticism. Tat is, notonly might it be argued that the Bible had a central role in the various pat-terns o colonialism, but also that the way in which the Bible has been and isappropriated by both the indigenous colonized and the colonials themselvesprovides something o a model or postcolonial criticism. In other words, ithe various items and issues o postcolonial criticism seem to have a pecu-liar resonance with the questions associated with the Bible—globalization,the construction o new worlds, Diaspora, identity and translation, to namea ew—it is not mere coincidence, or the Bible was crucial not only in the

construction o medieval and early modern Europe, but also in the colonialendeavor that saw Europe itsel shif rom the margin o the global systemto its center (see ch. 2). It was, to use another code with which I have a greatsympathy, a central item in the ideological construction, language and cul-ture o Europe. Tis is the sense in which I suggest that the Bible is a hiddenactor in postcolonial criticism, insoar as its problematic is colonialism andits afermath.

Tus, it is somewhat curious—and thereore one o the arguments o this

book—to note the absence o the Bible in postcolonial critical work (apartrom some notable exceptions with which I will engage in this book), some-thing that stands in stark contrast to its pervasive presence in the productiono colonial discourse.


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INRODUCION 3

Inevitably, postcolonial theory must negotiate a range o problems thatignite the intellectual passions o a growing group o theorists:2 the inau-

gural moments o Frantz Fanon (Moore-Gilbert, Stanton and Maley 1997,12–15; Gandhi 1998, 17–22); C. L. R. James (1993) and Said’s “colonial dis-course” (Said 1978; see Moore-Gilbert 1997, 34–73; Moore-Gilbert, Stantonand Maley 1997, 21–27; Gandhi 1998, 64–80); Spivak’s deconstruction o thecolonial subject and subalternity (Spivak 1988; Moore-Gilbert 1997, 74–113;Moore-Gilbert, Stanton and Maley 1997, 27–32); hybridity, mimicry, transla-tion, and ambiguity (Bhabha 1994; see also Coombes 1994; Moore-Gilbert1997, 114–151); alternative or subaltern historiography (Chakrabarty 1996;Guha and Spivak 1988; Rajan and Mohanran 1995; Spivak 1988, 197–221);oppositional politics, critical scrutiny, and resistance (Fanon and many otherssuch as Adam and iffin 1991; Boehmer 1995; San Juan 1998); the dialec-tics o difference and identity in global culture (Darby 19983; Spivak 1994;Jameson 1998b); the explosion o indigenous politics and literature (e.g.,Devi 1995); globalization, essentialism, and identity (Dussell 1998; Bhabha1994; Rajan and Mohanran 1995); exile and nomadism (Bhabha 1994; Rajanand Mohrahan 1995; Said 1990); nationalism and postnationalism (Gandhi1998, 102–40; Paik Nak-Chung 1998; Kapur 1998); and not least eminism

(Spivak 1988, 1990, 1996; Gandhi 1998, 81–101). Tere is also a continualengagement with Marxism and economics more broadly, especially sincepostcolonial theory, as with so many other critical approaches, finds itselcontinually dealing with the legacy o Marx (see Ahmad 1992; Moore-Gil-bert 1997, 2–3; Hoogvelt 1997, 154–58; Spivak 1988, 77–92 on reproduction,154–75 on value; Spivak 1990, 95–111 on Marx in general).

In various ways most o these themes are interwoven in the ollowing text,ofen in a way that problematizes the theme itsel. o begin with, there is thepeculiarly postmodern dilemma that presents itsel to any critical approach:

either postcolonial criticism is one o a number o current approaches, ofengathered behind the prefix “post,” with which it shares certain issues andterms and problems; or it is a distinct break that usurps all o these otherapproaches, the outsider that storms the field and brings in a new era. Indeed,both o these claims are made, as they are or other overlapping approaches,and Moore-Gilbert (1997) has attempted to deal with such a question by dis-tinguishing between the long history o what may now be named postcolonial

2. Some useul surveys must include Gandhi 1998, Loomba 1998, and Moore-Gilbert

1997.

3. Indeed, Darby argues that the earlier interest in hird World literary production

has allen away in postcolonial discussion in avor o theory. He seeks to readdress this

with considerations rom politics and economics.


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criticism (stemming rom W. E. B. DuBois and Sol Plaatje at the turn o thetwentieth century) and the more recent postcolonial theory, which is char-

acterized by reliance on the French theory o Derrida, Lacan and Foucaultthrough Said, Spivak and Bhabha.4 Tis is a salutary effort, except that it isprecisely the latter that permits the construction o a tradition o postcolo-nial criticism in the first place. All the same, it seems to me that a signal opostcolonial theory’s (and I do not distinguish between criticism or theoryhere) status as one other theoretical commodity is the wholesale sharing oterminology with other approaches—such as agency, alterity, appropriation,binarism, discourse, essentialism, globalization, hegemony, marginality, raceand so on (see Ashcrof, Griffiths and iffin 1998)—and o theorists them-selves—Foucault and Gramsci (Said), Lacan (Bhabha), Derrida (Spivak),Marx (e.g., Ahmad, Spivak).

I have delayed the moment o definition since I am inclined not to spendtime discussing what postcolonialism might be, assuming that readers willalready have opinions on this matter. Yet a ew comments may be in order.Ari Dirlik, in a rereshing mode o Marxist demystification that may beinstrumental in seeing the overdue return o this practice, identifies threeusages o the term: (1) a literal description o conditions in ormerly colo-

nial societies that includes ormerly third world and some first world politicalentities (Australia, Canada, and so on); (2) the global condition afer colo-nialism, replacing the term Tird World; (3) the discourse on this conditionthat is inormed by epistemological and psychic orientations that are prod-ucts o those conditions (Dirlik 1997, 54).5 While one would have expectedthe irst and third items—postcolonialism as a heterogeneous discourseand as a period o socio-economic and cultural history—the surprise is thesecond item, mediating the other two, somewhere between their concrete and

4. Indeed, Moore-Gilbert’s agenda is to meet the criticism o the newer postcolonial

“theory”—that it is complicit with a neo-colonial world order, it reinscribes the culturalauthority o the west, that its modes o cultural analysis are deeply Eurocentric, that its

style and language are obscure, and that there are insuicient engagements with class and

gender (see 1997, 152–69)—rom the older postcolonial “criticism” and to bring the two

together.

5. Postcolonialism itsel partakes o a deeper pattern o periodization which seems to

alict our thinking. For reasons that need to considered in detail somewhere else, it seems

to me that we have two options within our present intellectual and social horizon. he irstis to attempt some organization o history into distinct periods which may be identiied

according to a set o eatures which mark it o rom other periods which will then have

their own distinct eatures. he second option is to argue that history is ar too complex

to periodize in any meaningul sense. Postcolonialism alls clearly within the orbit o peri-

odization, being in this sense that which comes ater the era o (capitalist) colonialism.


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INRODUCION 5

abstract opposition. And, despite misgivings by Ella Shohat over the demiseo “Tird World” as a signifier (1996), it seems to me that postcolonialism

is a slogan that useully indicates the shifs in global economic and politi-cal power afer 1989 and the absorption o communist Eastern Europe intoa capitalist Atlantic. Such a shif is marked in Dirlik’s own definition o post-colonialism as the cultural logic o late capitalism, “this time on Tird Worldterrain” (1997, 70). Apart rom the echoes o Jameson here—postmodern-ism as the cultural logic o late capitalism—such a definition also intertwinespostmodernism with postcolonialism.

Indeed, in chapter 2 I will argue or an understanding o postcolonialismthat cannot avoid postmodernism and or a urther understanding o both interms o a dialectical conjunction between globalization and disintegration,the deeper logic o capitalism itsel. Tis implies a connection between post-modernism and postcolonialism as cultural phenomena (their most commonormulation) and as socio-economic developments. In order to make thisconnection I rely upon a Marxist construction o reality in which the realm oculture, aesthetics and so on, has a necessary but complex relationship withpolitical economics. Rather than proposing a solution, this relationship—nor-mally designated in terms o base and superstructure—states a problem that

requires innovative thinking. Yet, what the interlocking o postcolonialismand postmodernism enables is a reverse o the usual relation: that is, it may inact be argued that postmodernism itsel is predicated upon the conditions opostcolonialism, namely, the move o certain third world colonial countriestoward independence rom their various colonial masters afer the SecondWorld War—the last wave, i you like, o decolonization (and then neo-colo-nialism). In other words, the late arrival o the term postcolonial belies theprior socioeconomic status o postcolonialism, which then becomes a con-dition or the development o postmodern culture as well. What this boils

down to is that the two closely related cultural moments o postmodernismand postcolonialism are distinct, spatially determined responses to the vastexpansion o global capitalism afer 1950.

A definitional discursus like this is not complete without considering theinevitable celebrations and condemnations that a term such as postcolonial-ism (or postmodernism or globalization or …) inevitably attracts to itsel.While it is salutary to be wary o the ideological mystification that “postco-lonialism” may bring, particularly as a mask or neo-colonialism,6 and to be

6. “While admittedly another PC word, ‘postcolonialism’ is arguably more palatable

and less oreign-sounding to skeptical deans than ‘hird World Studies.’ It also has a less

accusatory ring than ‘Studies in Neo-colonialism,’ say, or ‘Fighting wo Colonialisms.’ It

is more global, and less uddy-duddy, than ‘Commonwealth Studies.’ he term borrows,


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suspicious o emancipatory expectations generated by the term (most notablyAshcrof, Griffiths, and iffin 1989, 38), it is also important to ask why such

terms attract approbation and celebration in the first place. What happenshere is that the cultural dimensions o postcolonialism bear a positive weight,whereas the economic side is the bogey in all o this. Tus, postcolonial litera-ture, film and art become the ocus o intense appreciation, while the politicaland economic situations o ever more intense capitalist saturation are decried.Yet, it is not really possible to separate culture and economics here so easily,since, as Jameson has argued, the two slide into one another: the celebratedfilms, or instance, are both enabled and then become part o the global eco-nomic system in which such cultural products are bought and sold.

Ne vertheless, the disadvantage o such broad-ranging discussions is thatthe peculiar lilt o the local ades away, as Mishra and Hodge have argued(1993). Although I remain perpetually interested in the global and alwaysread in that light, there are two areas that produce a particular flavor: Aus-tralia and the Bible. One o the eatures o postcolonial criticism that is adistinct legacy o Said is that its major figures derive in some way or another rom the “Orient,” whether rom the Said’s paradigmatic Middle East, orSpivak’s nonparadigmatic India (Spivak 1984), or Bhabha’s Babelian India.

Australia is thereore outside this orbit. It is one o a number o white malesettler colonies, in distinction rom indigenous or “non-white” colonies, or atleast places where the European contingent was always a significant but verypowerul minority. It belongs, then, to that exclusive club that includes theU.S.A., Canada, and New Zealand, where the attempt to kill the indigenouspeoples was most systematically perpetrated. However, despite being, alongwith Canada and New Zealand, the site or an earlier wave o decolonizationin the later nineteenth century, the resulting semi-independent status wasestablished in such a way—ramed in a rather hasty and patchwork constitu-

tion—as to allow the drive to decolonization to expend itsel while keepingAustralia firmly tied into British society and political economics. In thiscontext Australia itsel became a minor colonial nation in the South Pacific,exercising its paternal care over a number o small islands and Papua NewGuinea. In act, Australia’s involvement with the decolonizing moves o thedecades ollowing the Second World War lay in Papua New Guinea, which

moreover, on the dazzling marketing success o the term postmodernism. As the organiz-

ing rubric o an emerging ield o disciplinary studies and an archive o knowledge, the

term postcolonialism makes possible the marketing o a whole new generation o panels,

articles, books, and courses” (McClintock 1993, 299). See also the misgivings by Shohat

1996 and Brewster 1995, 21–23.


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easier opposition between native and colonizer that works so well or some-one like Bhabha, debate here divides over whether “postcolonial” applies to

the relation between Aboriginal and settler cultures (Gunew in Rajan andMohanran 1995b, 206), or to settler culture in relation to the old imperialcenter (Brewster 1995, 208). It seems to me that it is not so much an either/or here but rather that the question o postcolonialism in Australia is pre-cisely this problem, this ambivalence over the multiple layers and relations oAboriginal, settler and imperial center.

I the Australian, antipodal, location provides a first distinctive eel topostcolonial discourse, then the Bible constitutes a second. Apart rom thediscussion generated by Edward Said surrounding uses o the Exodus in colo-nial discourse (Said 1988; see ch. 4) and Homi Bhabha’s reflections on theambiguous appropriation o the “Word” in India (1994, 102–22; see ch. 6), theBible has by and large been absent rom postcolonial theory and criticism. Iwill let the argument o the book attempt to redress this somewhat. Tus, thesecond chapter deals with some o the theoretical questions o postcolonial-ism in relation to biblical studies. It is concerned with the relations betweenpostcolonialism, postmodernism and globalization through the oil o Dan 4,suggesting that globalization is by no means a new way o thinking about the

w orld. With chapter 3 I go on to consider movements that unsettle patterns odomination and identity. Here I ocus on the way explorers made use o theBible in the way they saw Australia and attempted to understand it. Chapter4 moves on to consider the use and constructions o the biblical motis oexodus, exile and nomadism in postcolonial theory. Chapter 5 picks up thequestions o essentialism and identity, both in regard to the nervousness inthe Hebrew Bible over the identity o Israelites (Josh 9) and the difficultieso Aboriginal/European identity. Here I oreground some other postcolonialhistories—Serbian-Aboriginal—outside the conventional ones. Finally, in

chapter 6 I turn to another category in which identity and travel appear in adifferent guise—a critical engagement with the translation o the Bible intoAustralian Aboriginal languages.

Te sequence o chapters also ollows a trajectory o the colonial critic,rom initial theorizing in a study or corner, in a orlorn shack that turns itsback to the Antarctic gales, to viewing and attempting to understand thecritical landscape, traveling over it, engaging with the indigenes and thenseeking to translate into their tongues. At each step, however, this trajectory

is undermined, ruptured and broken.

8. “Aboriginal people do not produce narratives o post-coloniality or even decoloni-

zation” (Brewster 1995, 20).


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a country that at times lays claim to be a classless society—should not beorgotten. Maniestations o cultural cringe are ound with those who place

themselves in the upper middle class o Australian society, although evenhere jingoistic nationalism has made strong inroads. Further, there are thosewho either visit or migrate to Australia rom the decayed colonial centerso Europe, arriving with an assumed superiority o European culture overagainst the derived colonial culture o Australia. All o this is then reinorcedby the popularity o the crassest o Australian television programs, particu-larly soap operas like “Home and Away” in the late 1980s and 1990s, in theplace termed “home” (England) by the majority o an older generation owhite settlers. Te very shoddiness o the programs reinorces the sense ocultural superiority that is assumed rom the European side. Another groupor whom cultural cringe has been a determining orce is o course the intel-lectuals who by and large arrived in Australia rom Europe or a shorter orlonger term (on this, see below). Te intellectual dimensions o culturalcringe remain very strong even or contemporary “home grown” intellectu-als, since the prestige o publication at a press in Europe or the U.S.A. aroutweighs that o an Australian press (where one exists), and the participa-tion at conerences based in the northern hemisphere is ar more desirable

than those in the Australian region. I must coness my own somewhatunavoidable guilt in expressions o cultural cringe, particularly when theol-ogy or biblical studies in Australia lays claim to a nationalistic or patrioticagenda, but I will return to this.

Te “tyranny o distance”—a “cliché o Australian pop historiography”(Morris 1988, 165)—is a phrase still encountered at times in the 1990s inAustralia. Coined by Geoffrey Blainey in 1966 (see Blainey 1983), the termcontinues to designate the absence o Europe (and more recently NorthAmerica) on the visible landscape. Yet it has a double reerence: “tyranny o

distance” reerred not only to the relation between Europe and the coastalcities o Australia, but between those coastal cities and the arid interior,that is, the phrase reerred to the size o a largely desert land itsel. All thesame, today it is usually dredged up in order to be thrown back into thepast as a state which no longer holds due to the wonders o travel and com-munications technology. Tis maneuver ofen evokes mixed images andemotions: o recoil at crude and tough conditions at a pioneer station atthe edge o the world (last stop, apart rom New Zealand perhaps, on the

way to the Antarctica), o nostalgia or a time o braver men, o thankul-ness or Australia’s belated incorporation into media society. For biblical(and other) scholars such a tyranny basically reerred to the three monthsor more it took or passage by boat rom Australia to England, Scotland orWales—the commercial run which ensured Australia’s place in the British


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Empire.9Tis meant, o course, that or any scholar traveling “home” in asabbatical year hal o the time was spent in transit. Even i the travel seems

to have been two-way, in terms o resources or academic appointmentsthe flow was overwhelmingly rom the “old country” to Australian institu-tions. o be sure, a ew journeyed in reverse, invariably not to return as theybecame comortable expatriates. Yet the long colonial tradition o academicreproduction in Australia lay in the expectation that boats would continuedisgorging scholars, while rom the English side a placement in a colony likeAustralia or Canada might all into an acceptable academic career pattern.Not that these were all second-rate or even useless, but by and large thebetter scholars did not choose the colonies, except perhaps some youngerscholars out or quick advancement and the chance or some publicationsbeore returning home in triumph. In those areas where biblical scholarswere required—the training institutes o the various churches—the assump-tion until the 1960s (and beyond in some cases) was that selection/searchcommittees invariably looked “home” or replacements.

Nevertheless, the imperial legacy was neither resolutely negative nor werebiblical scholars always shown the greatest hospitality. In all o the colonialperiod perhaps the marker o a deeper ambivalence was a predilection or

heresy trials against the occasional English and Scottish biblical scholar. Notonly was the “churchman” Charles Strong accused o heresy—his Melbournecongregation lef the Presbyterians and ormed an independent church—butin the 1930s the reasonably well-published New estament scholar SamuelAngus was accused o heresy, although never finally convicted. His sin wasthe advocacy o classical Christian liberalism. In a huge time warp that fitsbetter in a science fiction novel, a heresy charge was upheld in 1992 againstanother New estament scholar who came rom Scotland in 1990 to becomethe head o St. Andrews College at Sydney University. Although it seemed to

be the undamentalist rump o a continuing Presbyterian Church charging aconventionally liberal Peter Cameron, the language o anti-colonialism ranstrongly in the whole procedure.

A number o other actors influence the ideological makeup o academicsin Australia, apart rom (yet structurally related to) those which are integralto their situation in regard to class (relations o production) and politicaleconomics (mode o production). Among the ormer should be included arelative absence o intellectual stimulus and lack o academic resources (both

closely tied in with tyrannical distance), the relatively small number o aca-

9. he subversive note to all o this is that or the sizeable Catholic population, mostly

Irish, the academic center was the “Greg” in Rome.


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demics as a whole (especially biblical scholars among whom potential jobmovements are ofen known well in advance), a wide antiintellectualism in

Australian society in response to which intellectuals preer to travel incog-nito in transit rom one sae house to another, and a virtual absence o thepressure to publish, particularly within the seminary or college system. Whatthe peripheral status o Australian scholarship produces is a simultaneousreedom rom the extraordinary expectations o the academic systems o theAtlantic and a claustrophobia that closes down the possibilities o scholar-ship, a blinkering into a cowered state. However, what is interesting to notehere is a patchwork proessionalization and “Americanization” o academiclie (to borrow a term rom Ahmad in regard to India [Ahmad, 278–81]),in which the pressure or higher degrees, conerence hunting and proes-sional publication is beginning to make inroads into biblical and theologicalstudies, although there are plenty o academics who hold onto the older tradi-tion o being o service to the church beore being intellectuals and scholars.Tese elements should be related to the nature o institutional lie, in whichthe various churches and the state have ofen arranged compromise deals inboth unding and control (most recently the state unded Australian CatholicUniversity, but also state allowances or students at the various theological

colleges) and where the universities have overwhelmingly been run by thestate, flirting occasionally with the old “queen,” theology, and more recentlyreligious studies. Yet even in the newer religious studies programs which clingto the edge o existence biblical scholars struggle to find a place, except per-haps under cover, researching in biblical studies while teaching in other areaso religious studies.

I cultural hierarchy, cultural cringe and the tyranny o distance go someway towards characterizing the ideological context or biblical scholarshipin Australia, then I want to suggest that there have been, until and into the

postmodern/postcolonial era, three major possibilities or the pursuit o bib-lical studies—emulation, nationalism and positive unoriginality. For (biblical)scholars in places outside the super states the dominant option in the pasthas been emulation o the work done in the metropolitan centers rom whichthose scholars inevitably came (or Australia this was or so long Englandand Scotland, although replaced by Dublin or Roman Catholic scholars),much like the classic colonial gentleman who imitates the colonial center. Teintensity o the drive to emulate metropolitan scholarship seems inversely

related to the distance rom the metropolitan centers: emulation seemed to bethe appropriate response to the tyranny o distance. Tose disgorged by theboats mentioned earlier worked hard to emulate the scholarship and teach-ing o their own source, thereby attempting to erase their colonial presencein any teaching or writing they might undertake. Part o this o course was


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ing those values which were the hallmark o emulation o the metropolitancenters. One final twist here is that the issues o scholarly value ofen oper-

ate with the canonical, metropolitan assumptions o the metropolitan centersthemselves: thus, success depends upon showing such centers that somethinggood can in act come out o Australia, despite contrary expectations.

Yet the increasing assertion o a national identity is part o the dynamico globalization itsel: the desire to be distinct is generated in response to theinexorable drive to economic and cultural uniormity. And then in the veryresponse to globalization, at the point where one eels a genuine oppositionalmove has been made, globalization shows through even more strongly. I amthinking here o the way particular ethnic, local and national quirks becomethe stuff o global ashion and interest—Australian accents and films, Aborig-inal art and literature, to name a ew more notable examples. Te key termhere that is closely related to the national but generates its own logic is the“exotic,” a term redolent with older colonial associations. Te attraction isthat there is something distinctly South East Asian or South Pacific aboutAustralia and its location, yet its dominant culture is western and languageEnglish—something both amiliar and strange. (Tis “exotic” status operatesa little like certain orms o global tourism which may be defined by the inter-

nally contradictory need to avoid being touristy by seeking precisely thoseareas not requented by [too many] tourists.) Tus, biblical studies in Aus-tralia may be said to be truly “national” when it digs deep into that whichis distinct or exotic about the place itsel. As a colonial construct, the exoticappeal is what drew at least some scholars to Australian appointments in thefirst place, and then kept them there or a lietime o work. And it seems thatAustralia’s exotic status may pay some postcolonial dividends, with its verydistance and poverty o intellectual lie being that which attracts those whohave traditionally had a sureit o accessibility and intellectual stimulus. All

o this points finally to the deeply conflicted yet relentless logic o a global-ization which inevitably absorbs the very particularities o a local situation:one by one the local quirks and oddities are put on public display where theyquickly lose their exotic status and become humdrum.

A third option—positive unoriginality—has played an ambiguous role inbiblical scholarship in this part o the world.11 In using the phrase “positiveunoriginality” I want to designate the troubled place o modernism (as both aterm within biblical scholarship and as a designation o a cultural period) on

11. here are close connections with mimicry and mockery: colonial discourse seeks

to produce compliant subjects who mimic the colonial source, yet mockery is never ar

away (see Ashcrot, Griiths, and iin 1998, 13).


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the Australian scene. As Meaghan Morris has argued (1990, 10–11), modern-ism in Australia, at least in the realms o architecture and cultural theory, has

rarely been driven by slogans o the novum—innovation, originality, uture,rupture, unknown, and so on. Whatever was “modern” was understood “as aknown history , something which has already happened elsewhere, and whichis to be reproduced, mechanically or otherwise, with a local content” (Morris1990, 11). Te introduction o modernism, then, was more a case o catchingup with metropolitan centers in a perpetual time lag, and by the time theyarrived there was a distinctly archaic eel to modernist cultural artiacts. Andbiblical studies shows this up in a rather remarkable ashion, modernist orliberal methods o biblical study arriving late and with considerable suspicionin the person o Samuel Angus, Proessor o New estament at the Presbyte-rian Teological Hall at Sydney University in the earlier part o the twentiethcentury. Vilified and idolized in his lietime, the near martyr status grantedAngus afer his death ensured that the modernist currents o biblical andtheological scholarship rom the turn o the century that he embodied carriedon within sections o the Protestant churches well into the 1960s and 1970s.But this is not the only use o “positive unoriginality’: here my debts are to astudy o the film Crocodile Dundee by Meaghan Morris. Te film is or Morris

“a post-colonial comedy o survival” (Morris 1988, 244), enabled by a cleverpositioning in relation to the American film market and Hollywood itsel.Neither original nor mere copy, the film pursues a “positive unoriginality,” aprocess o copying which persistently alters the “original” so that it comes outthe worse or the imitation (e.g., Davy Crockett is the worse or the compari-son). But the activity is reciprocal, since the various items o Australia’s ownideological makeup undergo a similar process o belittlement—the bushman,Aboriginality, the outback, mateship, larrikinism, masculinism.

he most appealing dimension o this sort o positive unoriginality

(Bhabha would call it mimicry) lies in the disavowal o the need to takethe international currents o biblical scholarship with complete serious-ness. What counts in the end are a good beer and a ew jokes, and anyonewho takes things too seriously is either a nerd or a dag. Such a posi-tive unoriginality means not only a process o what Marxists would calldemystification—the need continually to call the bluff on reactionary andconservative ideological ormations (in other words, crap detection)—butalso an appropriation o whatever methodological means are provided on

the global theoretical market (this is the “unoriginal” bit) and the use o suchmethods or more intense studies o biblical texts in conjunction with localtextual artiacts (this is the “positive” bit). Te models I would suggest hereare those o Sreten Bozic and Mudrooroo Narogin (see ch. 5). Both haveslippery and uncertain identities (most debate has in act ocused, not unex-


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pectedly, on questions o authenticity and identity). Mudrooroo, AricanAmerican and Nyoongah Aboriginal, brings about a conjunction between

Aboriginal orms and content and those o European and Indian background(Mudrooroo Narogin Nyoongah 1979; 1983; 1987; 1991; 1992; 1993). SretenBozic, a Serbian immigrant, amateur anthropological ield worker, andwriter o an astounding series o poems, short stories and novels,—especiallythe “nuclear trilogy” o Walg (1986), Karan (1986), and Gabo Djara (1988)—writes as the Aboriginal, Banumbir Wongar, at times as a woman. Not only iseach novel is a “site o contestation between European and Aboriginal narra-tives” (Connor and Matthews 1989, 719) and between genders, but each onealso problematizes the status o such distinctions. What appeals to me abouttheir work is a certain antipodality: instead o the mimicry o colonial mas-ters by the indigenes, here we have alternative migrants—Arican Americanand Serbian, mimicking the natives.

Yet it would seem that the distinct nature o any area, or o any local tra-dition, mode o interpretation or group o scholars is enabled by the meansmade available internationally by the globalization o academic lie. Tus,or instance, Meaghan Morris, Australia’s oremost cultural critic, deals withAustralian popular culture in terms o French and American theories o

culture which are no longer particularly French or American but transna-tional. From biblical and theological studies comes the example o Freedomand Entrapment , a collection o essays on Australian eminism and theol-ogy edited by the Melbourne New estament scholar Dorothy Lee, as wellas Maryanne Conoy and Joan Nowotny, but with a oreword by ElisabethSchüssler Fiorenza. Te tension I have been pursuing comes out most sharplyin the paper, “Not Yet iddas,” by Anne Pattel-Gray, an Aboriginal activ-ist and religious thinker about whom the Romanian born Fiorenza writesin proper postcolonial orm. For Schüssler Fiorenza, an Aboriginal woman

writing on theology rom Australia is precisely where the uture or biblicalstudies, the academy, and the church lies. Yet in order to make her inter-

vention in the relatively small scene o Australian religious and theologicaleminism, Pattel-Gray makes use o the developments in womanist work inNorth America, appropriating in her turn its racial and class dimensions oran Australian situation.

Indeed, it would be possible to push the seeds o this contradiction backinto colonialism proper, when many o the trajectories, such as Christianity

itsel, were set on their way to end up in the distinctive cultural, theologi-cal and biblical contributions rom places outside the ormer metropolitancenters (see the Asian examples in Sugirtharajah 1993, 58–63) For biblicalstudies all o this means not merely an appropriation by a relentlessly glo-balizing scholarship but also the chance to adapt to a “critical regionalism”


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(the phrase is rom architecture; see Frampton) the tools o postmodern andpostcolonial discourse in order to provide interpretations rom the local sit-

uation which begin, homeopathically, to resist and undermine the logic othose instruments.

A, G

Gramsci has now become an alibi or not being Marxist. (Spivak 1990, 142)

What Marxism really has to oer is global systems. I think that the mostpowerul thing Marxism in the hird World can oer is crisis theory (Spivak1990, 138).

Tus ar I have been guilty o an elision all too common in postcolonialcriticism, namely, the elision o the global and the local, taking a particularsituation (in my case biblical studies in Australia) as in some way paradig-matic or the global condition (again, o biblical studies). Te binary is lessthan helpul here, or the two poles are o course inseparably connected with,indeed constitutive o (as I will argue in chapter 2), each other, but in ways

that need to be rethought. I have made a start in this by attempting to situ-ate Australian biblical studies—a curiously hybrid and minimal exercise, withnothing much to show or itsel—within the global, colonial and postcolonialstructures o biblical studies. Further, it seems to me that the particular issueso the Bible in (post)colonial Australia have distinct resonances with and turnaround some o the same questions as those that appear elsewhere. But this isthen a mark o chronically global nature o all those minor, local concerns weelt, or perhaps hoped, were distinct.

So, it seems to me that a consideration o biblical studies in Australia,

a distinctly local concern in many ways, is able to provide a particular per-spective on the global practice o biblical studies. In order to do so I wantto invoke a term with a long and somewhat checkered history—antipodal-ity. A term rom classical Greece, used through the Middle Ages and thenreappearing with more derogatory associations during the period o capital-ist imperialism, the Antipodes reers literally to those lands—Australia, orerra Australis, the Southern Land, New Zealand, the Pacific Islands and soon—where the inhabitants have their eet opposite to Europeans, where theywalk upside-down, contrary to correct way o walking and then o being itsel(see urther Ryan 1996, 105–12). Tis antithetical way o characterizing theother side o the globe carried through in the first descriptions o Australia,its flora, auna and people, by Europeans. Platypi, kangaroos, marsupial dogs,eucalyptus trees that regenerated rom their roots rather than seeds, even


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the seasons themselves—all o them making European category mistakes—became objects that reinorced the antipodality o the country.

Antipodality has o course been used in a range o other ways, not leasto which is the appropriation o the term to signiy a more positive differenceand distinctness. My use here, however, has a distinctly political bent thattrades on the opposition o the term itsel. Given that the imperialism whichled to the European invasion and settlement o Australia—as a prison, it mustbe remembered (indeed convicts were sent to Australia or almost one hun-dred years, rom 1787 to 1868 [Hughes 1996])—was part o the expansiono capitalism and the subsequent competition between European states orglobal dominance, then the political antipodality in which I am interested isa distinctly Marxist one. Tis is not to say that Australia should be cast as aw orker’s paradise (see Buckley and Wheelwright 1988), nor that communismhas had huge successes here (even though Fred Paterson was elected twice tothe Queensland Parliament rom the Red North [Fitzgerald 1997]), nor thatthe prospects or socialism are any better in Australia than elsewhere; rather,I am suggesting that antipodality may give an Australian inflection to Marx-ism itsel, particularly in the light o the global reality o capitalism at theturn o the millennium. Further, it seems to me that any discussion o post-

colonialism without a serious engagement with Marxist thought and practicewill remain awash in the terms and categories o liberalism, the ideological

justification o capitalism.But how might this be realized in biblical studies? Biblical studies is

itsel a subset o religion, which belongs to the superstructure o the totalityo society, sharing that space with art, culture, philosophy, politics, and ide-ology (although this latter term is all-encompassing); it is then dependentupon the economic orms and social relations o that society, yet it may alsoanticipate possible uture orms o social and economic organization. Bibli-

cal studies has an ambiguous role in all o this, since the Bible has playeda constitutive role in the development o “western” culture, which itselhas moved through the Roman Empire and eudal Europe into capitalism,where Christianity seems to have oundered and taken on a more marginal-ized status.

With this model in mind, there are, it seems to me, two possibilities orthe ways postcolonial biblical studies may disrupt conventional or metropol-itan ways o studying the Bible. Te first owes its debts to the important work

o Chantal Mouffe and Ernesto Laclau, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy . Intheir efforts to think through the political implications o poststructuralismand a more encompassing postmodernism, they theorize concerning theprooundly postmodern development o a host o small political pressuregroups, normally designated with the term “micropolitics” and engaging in


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political practices that no longer ollow older class lines. Mouffe and Laclaualso want to reshape Gramsci’s notion o hegemony, and they do so by devel-

oping an anti-essentialist ideological ramework or this new micropolitics,whose various groups will eventually move into alliances based on theirdrive or a radical equality. Although there are some problems in losing theMarxist base or such equality—the universalization o wage labor and othe commodity orm (see Jameson 1991, 319)—it seems to me that there issome initial promise or the possibilities o postcolonial biblical studies. Ocourse, I would like to recover the role o class which begins to disappear inthe work o Mouffe and Laclau, since the danger o much reflection aboutthe new social movements relies on the idea that the older class politics havedissipated in the new dispensation (rather, the older configurations o classand politics have been redistributed with the new global reorganization ocapital and its technologies). Yet, as Jameson reminds the persevering reader,all o these groups o the micro-political arena, including those newly iden-tified, owe their “ultimate systemic condition o possibility” (1991, 325) tolate capitalism. It is within this context that any alternative possibilities orpostcolonial orms o biblical criticism must situate themselves, although Iam sufficiently a Marxist to hold that the very possibility o overturning a

dominant system comes in part rom the logic o that system itsel. I write“in part,” since not all the processes o breakdown are the result o inter-nal contradictions; some oppositional currents may come rom “outside” theeconomic system and threaten to disrupt its desire or business as usual. Tisseems particularly pertinent to micro-groups within postcolonialism, whoremain both constitutive o postmodern capitalism as such and yet comerom “beyond” to challenge such an economic system. Tis may be the placeor Aboriginal contributions to biblical studies, or indigenous possibilitiesin other parts o the globe, although I want to avoid the dangers o both

“idealization” and “appropriation” that David Spurr has identified as basic tothe colonial agenda (see especially Spurr 1993, 28–42, 125–40). In the end Iam not sure that anything can come any longer rom “outside” late capital-ism, so that any orms o resistance, in which indigenous people are sure toplay a part, need to come rom elsewhere. Biblical critics may be identifiedas yet another political and social grouping in the micro-political territory olate capitalism, yet an oppositional stand rom biblical critics in postcolonialsituations would seem to be possible only within the dynamic o capitalism

itsel.However, even the suggestions o Mouffe and Laclau do not seem tome to go ar enough, particularly with the peculiarly ineffectual nature omuch small group politics—insoar as one’s desire is or permanent radicalchange. It seems to me that a better direction is charted in the work o Aijaz


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Ahmad,12 who articulates a distinct place or a Marxist postcolonial praxis. Itis not so much the devastating critique o third-worldism, or the three worlds

theory as such, nor his clarifications o Marx’s writings on India or the ques-tion o Indian literature, or his problematic critical engagements with thew ork o Fredric Jameson, Edward Said (on this conflict see Moore-Gilbert1997, 14–20; George 1996, 106–7), and Salman Rushdie, that I want to ocuson here, but rather the argument that the only viable orm o political andsocial opposition in this present world comes rom socialism. Tis o courseidentifies Aijaz as a relatively orthodox Marxist, but it also signals some-thing about India itsel that is ofen orgotten in the heavily European ocuso much Marxist work, namely, the long experience o Marxist governmentwithin a secular, democratic state. I am thinking here o the viability o theMarxist governments o Kerala and West Bengal that have provided a patterno economic and social reorm that has ensured them a firm electoral baseo ver many years. Te difference, in comparison to western Europe, NorthAmerica, and countries such as Australia, is that the experience o electedgovernment has provided a practical political base or significant theoreticalreflection.

It is rom this context that Aijaz sounds most strongly the old Marxist

argument that in the present historical conjunction—global capitalism—theonly coherent alternative remains socialism. Moving rom the point that thegreat majority o ormer colonial countries cannot make the transition to a ully fledged capitalism o the European type, since they have no external,imperial, resources to exploit, he argues:

his structural inability o capitalism to provide or the vast majority o thepopulations which it has sucked into its own dominion constitutes the basic,incurable law in the system as a whole.… Negation o this contradiction

can come only rom outside the terms o this system as such, because thebackwardness o the backward capitalist countries, hence the poverty othe majority o the world’s population, cannot be undone except througha complete redistribution o wealth and an altogether dierent structuringo productions and consumptions on a global scale, among classes, regions,countries and continents o the world. Socialism is the determinate nameor this negation o capitalism’s undamental, systemic contradictions andcruelties. (316)

12. By comparison, San Juan’s work, while admirable or its polemic and advocacy o

Marxist insurrection, too quickly treats all postcolonial theory as imperialist, trenchantly

opposing it on political grounds.


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And the primary object o socialist resistance is precisely those back-ward economic ormations that have been colonized and are now belatedly

included in ull-blown capitalism only to be denied inclusion. Tis is where, itseems to me, the oppositional dimensions o postcolonialism may be ound.It is also a viable way o answering Dirlik’s challenge that “postcolonial” dis-course effectively blocks out and erases, through its periodizing logic andrewriting o history, the revolutionary pasts o the many places rom whichit emerges and about which it speaks (Dirlik 1997, 163–85). However, i weollow Dirlik and name the “postcolonial” as also “postrevolutionary” then itindicates an urgent need to recover the viability o such revolutionary pasts.

All the same, I am not sure that Ahmad or Dirlik have tracked Marx’s logicto its conclusion, or Marx argued that the greatest contradictions o capitalismare to be ound in its most advanced (and thereore decayed) centers. Tus,while the oppositional, antipodal, possibilities o postcolonial spaces must bedeveloped to the ull, any lasting change must be enacted not merely in theperipheral bungalows but also in the glistening, marble rooms, sof leatherchairs and plate glass views o power.13 In the end, or course, there is nothingoutside capitalism, so that any opposition must be generated out o the contra-dictions inherent within it. Dussell identifies three contradictions, or, what he

terms “limits’: the chewing up o a global ecology; superfluous human labor,the destruction o living labor and the attendant poverty; and the impossibilityo completely subsuming those on the periphery (Dussell 1998, 19–21). Indeed,Dussell locates the possibilities o an end o capitalism in this periphery.

Yet what is remarkable about this essay is the way it replaces a Eurocen-tric discourse (Europe as the center rom which modernity spread orth) intoa planetary one: that is, beore the rise o capitalism and modernity Europewas distinctly peripheral and the imaginary, ideological center o the globewas toward India. Tus, travelers and “explorers” set out eastward towards

India, whether Vasco da Gama or Columbus rom Europe, or the Chinesein a westward direction. It is only with colonization and capitalism, uelledby the money o the “new world” that Spain and then Holland effect a slowshif o the center to Europe. Or, to put it in oceanic terms, the flow was romthe Indian Ocean to the Atlantic, which now, in the postmodern momentincludes North America. With Japan, China and the west coast o NorthAmerica now rivaling cross Atlantic trade, it may be the Pacific that claimsthe next dominance. And it is precisely these places, these global centers, in

13. Leslie Sklair is more skeptical about the possibilities o global organization and

opposition (1998), although she cites only the labor movement and uses word-o-mouth

inormation without any discussion o examples and situations.


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which any viable change beyond capitalism will take place. For, in the sameway that the dominance o the imperial centers was established and continues

to be maintained by drawing in the best global talent rom outside, suckingthe greatest minds, artists, musicians, sports people and finance experts intoa vast vortex, so also the oppositional possibilities Ahmad envisages need tobe exploited to the ull in the overdeveloped places o Europe, North Amer-ica and Japan. In other words, the local, postcolonial struggles unction as aprecursor, a model, or global opposition: “Tis is a period in which the coun-terpart to multinational capitalism and its organization o global relations hasto be, on the part o the lef and a progressive culture, an internationalizationas well” (Jameson and Paik 1996, 367).

As or biblical studies in all o this, I want to pick up Fredric Jameson’ssuggestion that culture—o which biblical studies is a part (and in the con-struction o “western” culture it has played a constitutive role)—may also beanticipatory as well as determined by economic ormations, that the super-structure may provide a glimpse o better possibilities. What is required thenis the development and improvement o a Marxist or socialist culture, o thediscussion, debate and reflection on Marxism within the context o capital-ism itsel (o which Marxism remains the most potent interpreter), as well

as the production o art, literature, film, music and so on that is properlyoppositional, and a ull Marxist criticism that may interpret all that has gonebeore. And that anticipatory culture needs very much to be an internationalone, alongside a reinvented global socialism, a rethought global class con-sciousness, a global network o intellectuals, and so on. It is to the ongoingconstruction o such a culture that biblical criticism may contribute, so thatit may be a vital part o the cultural and ideological arrangement o whateverit is that will ollow the demise o capitalism. It seems to me that the most (orshould I say “the only’?) viable mode o destabilizing, disrupting and finally

replacing hegemonic, imperial, biblical scholarship is one that seeks to be parto the construction o a culture that anticipates the end o the capitalist socialand economic organization that is part and parcel o such a hegemony.

Tis is, then, what I mean by “gatecrashing thanksgiving,” since Marxalways argued that any lasting socialism or communism would arise out othe most advanced capitalist places. A vast east o consumption, it is an itemideologically crucial to capitalism itsel (through the use o a myth o precapi-talist origins). A religious/civil east, derived rom harvest celebrations and

a reconstructed tradition o the first pilgrims with their biblical ocus and v ision o their move to North America, but now a crucial item in the ideo-logical sel-perception—amily, simplicity and especially consumption—othe most developed, purest, and thereore most decayed and rancid, capitalistcenter in the world, it is an appropriate east to gatecrash.


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M, P, B

I have requently had the eeling that I am one o the ew Marxists let.(Jameson 1988, 347)

My argument is relatively straightorward: the almost complete absenceo Marxism in biblical postcolonial criticism is a legacy o the wider zoneo postcolonial theory itsel that has been all too keen to dump Marx. ButI also want to show how the gradual orgetting o Marx in postcolonialismand postcolonial theory has distinct ramifications or the engagements with

postcolonial theory by biblical critics. So, afer outlining the way postcolonialtheory has orgotten its own history, a history in which Marxism was the keyactor, I select two biblical critics working with postcolonial theory in ordernot only to make the obvious point about the absence o Marx, but also toindicate some o the shortalls such an absence generates. Finally, I pick upthe work o Ernst Bloch in order to locate a more political version o Bakhtin’swidely influential dialogic criticism.

L O: M P

Postcolonial theory, understood as a particular method that arose in the late1980s and is employed in academic circles or interpreting cultural products,especially those o the era o European colonialism, seems to have orgot-ten two crucial dimensions o the possibility o its existence: history andMarxism.1 One might grant that Marxism has somehow slipped out o thepicture, but history? Is not postcolonial theory very much concerned withrereading the history, art, texts, and practices o European colonialism and its

1. he irst part o the argument that ollows is an expanded version o one that I irstdeveloped in the introduction to a Semeia volume on postcolonial theory (Boer 2001b).

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afermath? Postcolonial theory’s concern is thereore postcolonialism itsel,whether we hyphenate the word in a more periodizing rame o mind or not.

However, this is not the history that concerns me here: I write o the historyo the theory itsel, o postcolonial theory.

Te rapid emergence o postcolonial theory with the work o EdwardSaid, Gayatri Spivak, and Homi Bhabha has effaced the long path that ledto this theory. It seems to me that this obliteration has taken place not somuch through a willul neglect on the part o this triumvirate and their vari-ous ollowers, as through the process o reinterpreting the older theorists, theprecursors to postcolonial theory. Tus, Bhabha gives extensive attention toFrantz Fanon, and Spivak identifies Marx as one o her inspirations. Othershave allen by the wayside, such as W. E. B. DuBois and Sol Plaatje at the turno the century, although the ormer has been taken up by Arican Americancritics such as Cornell West. Bart Moore-Gilbert (1997) useully reminds uso this longer critical history by distinguishing between postcolonial theory—that which we have now afer Said, Spivak, and Bhabha—and postcolonialcriticism—the longer history o the critique o colonialism. In act, as I willargue in a moment, we need to go back to Marx and Lenin or the origins othis kind o criticism. Te catch with Moore-Gilbert’s distinction, however,

is that the very notion o a tradition o post colonial criticism relies upon themore recent development o a postcolonial theory. Tat is to say, the idea oa history o this intellectual and political project seems to be enabled by thesubsequent theory, which generates its own history. In this case the historyitsel—which happened without a distinct identifier such as “postcolonial”—does seem to vanish beore the other history o postcolonial theory, whichboils down to a version o creatio ex nihilo. What is needed, then, is a strategyor recovering this alternative history that simultaneously deals with the his-torical constructions o postcolonial theory.

o state what is in many respects the obvious: Marx and then Leninfirst developed a critical approach to what they variously called colonialismand imperialism. I Marx traced the way capitalism or its very survival hadto expand, to “grow” (still very much the benchmark o economic success)beyond the confines o Europe and conquer ever new colonial spaces, Lenin,especially in Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism (1950), developed ananalysis o imperialism, or imperial capitalism, as the most advanced stage ocapitalism up until that point. From a Leninist perspective, both “world wars”

were conflicts between the European imperial powers, vying or global domi-nance, the struggle coming to head in the competition or the conquest oe ver more territories throughout the globe. Afer Lenin the systematic theori-zation and critique o capitalist expansion, including colonialism, took placein the Marxist tradition. Key figures o earlier postcolonial criticism, ollow-


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MARX, POSCOLONIALISM, AND HE BIBLE 25

ing Moore-Gilbert’s classification, such as Frantz Fanon, W. E. B. DuBois andC. L. R. James were all Marxist critics o colonialism. Apart rom the analysis

o colonialism, there were two other vital parts o their work: the study oliterature and other cultural products rom their own locations and a dis-tinct level o political involvement. For instance, C. L. R. James was not onlyintensely interested in the role o cricket as both a colonial and anticolonialcultural orce, but he was also a central figure in the process towards indepen-dence in the West Indies.

Given this history, which I have sketched ar too briefly and haphaz-ardly, why is it that the Marxist dimension o postcolonial theory has beenlost? Trough a simultaneous process o transormation that systematicallydetached various key aspects o Marxist theory rom Marxism itsel and thennegated their political potential. Te process began with Edward Said’s use oAntonio Gramsci’s notion o hegemony.

wo-edged, the theory speaks both o the necessary combination oconsent and orce, and the complex patterns whereby a dominant ideologi-cal position is maintained and overthrown (see Gramsci 1971, 268, 328, 348,365, 370, 376). As ar as the necessary link between consent and orce is con-cerned, Gramsci argues that a dominant hegemony works by articulating and

spreading a specific set o cultural assumptions, belies, ways o living andso on that are assumed to be “normal,” accepted by people as the universally valid way o living. Here intellectuals, the “organizers” o ideology, culture,philosophy, religion, law and politics are central to the idea and operation ohegemony. Hegemony runs deeply through any social and political orma-tion, or the structures o knowledge and values, the filters through whichsociety acquires orm and meaning, are precisely those that are constructedand maintained by the leading class or party.

But hegemony is both a tool o analysis and o revolution. Tis means

that any orce or change must brook no rivals, no possibilities o oppo-sitional hegemony in the construction o the new state. Consent must beat one with the use o orce, the two sides o hegemony. Religion therebyorms a crucial component o consent, alling under the rubric o intellec-tual and moral leadership (direzione). Domination or coercion (dominio),especially over against antagonistic groups, is the inescapable obverse. Bycontrast, those with which the leading group in is alliance and associationwork together by consent: “Te supremacy o a social group is maniested

in two ways: as “domination” and as “intellectual and moral leadership.” Asocial group is dominant over those antagonistic groups it wants to “liqui-date” or to subdue even with armed orce, and it is leading with respect tothose groups that are associated or allied with it” (Gramsci, quoted in Fon-tana 1993, 141).


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In the period o colonialism such hegemony involved wholesale ideo-logical work, ranging rom racial theory, through military action and the

production o belie in the superiority o the imperial center to Said’s well-known “orientalism” (Said 1978). But Said linked this in problematic ashionto Foucault’s work on power, specifically the dispersed, capillary orms opower that never reside in the named and expected seats o power. One cansee the connection—dispersed power and a threatened hegemony—but Fou-cault was not a Marxist, despite being a student o Althusser and a politicalactivist. Te absence o other categories crucial to hegemony, such as class,class conflict and the central role o political economics,2 meant that thenotion o hegemony was orphaned, drifing away rom the conceptual con-text in which it made sense. So the first step in watering down the Marxistheritage in postcolonial theory was made.

Even though Gayatri Spivak claims Marxism as part o her owntheoretical and political position, it was her translation o Derrida’s OfGrammatology (1980), and especially the long and difficult introduction thatshe wrote, which brought deconstruction into the mix o what was becom-ing postcolonial theory. Te subsequent appearance o In Other Worlds (1988) reinorced the prominence o Derridean deconstruction, along with

Gramsci and Foucault via Said, as one o the theoretical strands availableor critics wanting to orge a new approach. In its much-vaunted reusal omethod, in the careul attention to the details o the text in question, in theperpetual discovery o the way texts ace an incoherence that both subvertsand structures the text itsel, deconstruction became a useul tool in read-ing or the other voices, those excluded and marginalized by the dominantdiscourses o the European colonial powers. But a Derridean Marx—takingor a moment Spivak’s eort to combine deconstruction, Marxism andeminism seriously—is a strange Marx indeed, looking more like a slightly

lef-o-center liberal, as Derrida’s own Specters of Marx (1994) showed onlytoo well.

he inal step in the banishment o Marx rom postcolonial theorycame with Homi Bhabha’s work, especially Te Location of Culture (1994),

2. How long has it been since the economy was itsel a political domain? At irstglance, it seems that economics is precisely the domain o politics. Do not the various

governments and political parties in the so-called “democracies” vie with each other orthe best means to acilitate economic growth, generate jobs and maintain consumer coni-dence? But there is never a question

Roland Boer-Last Stop Before Antarctica_ the Bible and Postcolonialism in Australia (Society of Biblical Literature Semeia Studies)-Society of Biblical Literature (2008)

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