In this essay, I explore the reader’s social location in the modern/colonial world system to evoke a possible future for biblical studies that responds to Gayatri Spivak’s call in Death of a Discipline to move towards the planet over and against the globe. Through the work of Raimon Panikkar, I argue a case for reading from elsewhere that departs from objectivist desires of reading from nowhere and nativist inclinations of reading from here so as to disrupt the privilege of biblical scholars. Together with a reading of Daniel 1, I demonstrate how my social location in Asia not only calls for the imperative to dialogue but also requires an imparative perspective that allows me to exercise reflexivity to inhabit an(-)Other’s standpoint. This is in order to challenge the social identities I inhabit so as to emphasise the need to rethink the terms of conversations on biblical hermeneutics between the West and Asia.
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R.S. Sugirtharajah, The Bible and the Third World: Precolonial, Colonial and Postcolonial Encounters (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).
Anibal Quijano, ‘Coloniality and Modernity/Rationality’, Cultural studies 21 (2007), pp. 168-78.
Walter D. Mignolo, Local Histories/Global Designs: Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges, and Border Thinking (with a new preface by the author; Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012).
John Barton, The Nature of Biblical Criticism (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2007).
Gayatri C. Spivak, Death of a Discipline (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003), p. 100.
R.S. Sugirtharajah, The Bible and Asia: From the Pre-Christian Era to the Postcolonial Age (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2013), pp. 190-223.
See Simon Shui-Man Kwan, Postcolonial Resistance and Asian Theology (New York: Routledge, 2014), pp. 52-54.
Kuan Hsing Chen, Asia as Method: Toward Deimperialization (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010).
Raimon Panikkar, ‘Aporias in the Comparative Philosophy of Religion’, Man and World 13 (1980), pp. 357-83.
Raimon Panikkar, Invisible Harmony: Essays on Contemplation and Responsibility (ed. Harry James Cargas; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1995), p. 172.
Panikkar, ‘Aporias in the Comparative Philosophy of Religion’, p. 376.
See also Walter D. Mignolo, The Darker Side of the Renaissance: Literacy, Territoriality, and Colonization (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995), pp. 11-16.
Gordon Wong, Faithful to the End: Message of Daniel for Life in the Real World (Singapore: Genesis Books, 2006).
Goldingay, Daniel, pp. 8, 18-20; see also Dan. 1.8 for גאל and Dan. 1.12, 14 for נסה.
Wong, Faithful to the End, p. 6, emphasis his; see also pp. 26-27.
Terence Chong and Yew-Foong Hui, Different under God: A Survey of Church-going Protestants in Singapore (Singapore: ISEAS, 2013).
Max Weber, Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (trans. Talcott Parsons; New York: Routledge, 1930), p. 120.
Terence Chong, ‘Asian Values and Confucian Ethics: Malay Singaporeans’ Dilemma’, Journal of Contemporary Asia 32 (2002), pp. 394-406.
Kamaludeen Bin Mohamed Nasir, ‘Rethinking the “Malay Problem” in Singapore: Image, Rhetoric and Social Realities’, Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, 27 (2007), pp. 309-318.
Sa’at, Malay Sketches, p. 198. Chinese are commonly referred to as ‘yellow skinned’ in Malaysia and Singapore, while Malays in Malaysia are known as bumiputra, which is Malay for ‘sons of the soil’.
Choon Leong Seow, Daniel (Louisville: Westminter John Knox, 2003), p. 25.
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In this essay, I explore the reader’s social location in the modern/colonial world system to evoke a possible future for biblical studies that responds to Gayatri Spivak’s call in Death of a Discipline to move towards the planet over and against the globe. Through the work of Raimon Panikkar, I argue a case for reading from elsewhere that departs from objectivist desires of reading from nowhere and nativist inclinations of reading from here so as to disrupt the privilege of biblical scholars. Together with a reading of Daniel 1, I demonstrate how my social location in Asia not only calls for the imperative to dialogue but also requires an imparative perspective that allows me to exercise reflexivity to inhabit an(-)Other’s standpoint. This is in order to challenge the social identities I inhabit so as to emphasise the need to rethink the terms of conversations on biblical hermeneutics between the West and Asia.
All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
---|---|---|---|
Abstract Views | 343 | 46 | 4 |
Full Text Views | 84 | 2 | 0 |
PDF Views & Downloads | 85 | 8 | 0 |