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Watch Your Step! Excrement and Governmentality in Deuteronomy

In: Biblical Interpretation
Author:
Mark K. George Iliff School of Theology, USA

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Online Publication Date:
27 Aug 2018
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Abstract

Governmental action through centralized institutions is widely recognized, whereas how such action is effected in individual’s lives is less so. Effective government depends on the ability to shape the mundane activities of life in ways that serve larger objectives. Scholarship on Deuteronomy attends well to the centralized actions, but not the individual ones. Deuteronomy 23:13-15 (ET 12-14) instructs soldiers how to defecate while serving in ancient Israel’s army, a rather mundane behavior for a book widely recognized as concerned with governing Israel. Governmentality provides a means of understanding how these instructions for defecation become part of the book’s larger objective of creating Israel as a proper vassal.

Title:
Watch Your Step! Excrement and Governmentality in Deuteronomy
Article Type:
Research Article
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1163/15685152-00263P01
Language:
English
Pages:
291–315
Keywords:
governmentality ; Foucault ; Deuteronomy ; monitored power ; suzerainty ; purity
In:
Biblical Interpretation
In:
Volume 26: Issue 3
Publisher:
Brill
E-ISSN:
1568-5152
Print ISSN:
0927-2569
Subjects:
General, Biblical Studies

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