Queering Delilah with Critical Theory and Gendered Bible Hermeneutics

2020 ◽  
pp. 493-507
Author(s):  
Caroline Blyth
Keyword(s):  
Critical Theory ◽  
Queer Theory ◽  
Femme Fatale ◽  
Reading Habits ◽  
Biblical Narrative ◽  
Queer Spaces ◽  
Holy Man

Close your eyes and think of Delilah. Whom do you see? What does she look like? More often than not, this biblical character is visualized in both interpretive traditions and cultural retellings of Judges 16 as a femme fatale par excellence—a fatal woman whose exotic feminine allure and lethal sexuality ultimately destroyed Samson, that most heroic Hebrew holy man. In this chapter, I use gender-queer theory to interrogate the very “straight” ways in which these retellings make sense of the multiple ambiguities surrounding Delilah’s character within the biblical narrative. I take an intersectional approach, interpreting Delilah’s sexuality, gender, and ethnicity through a queer lens to conjuring up a myriad of alternative performances that her persona may inhabit. By so doing, I invite readers into delightfully queer spaces in the text that challenge essentialist reading habits and bring to light critical theoretical insights about Delilah’s interpretive and cultural afterlives.

scholarly journals Philosophical Approaches to Qualitative Research

2014 ◽  
pp. 80-98
Author(s):  
Renée Spencer ◽  
Julia M. Pryce ◽  
Jill Walsh
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Research ◽  
Critical Theory ◽  
Queer Theory ◽  
Qualitative Inquiry ◽  
Historical Background ◽  
Rich Diversity ◽  
Big Picture ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Distinguishing Features

This chapter reviews some of the major overarching philosophical approaches to qualitative inquiry and includes some historical background for each. Taking a “big picture” view, the chapter discusses post-positivism, constructivism, critical theory, feminism, and queer theory and offers a brief history of these approaches; considers the ontological, epistemological, and axiological assumptions on which they rest; and details some of their distinguishing features. In the last section, attention is turned to the future, identifying three overarching, interrelated, and contested issues with which the field is being confronted and will be compelled to address as it moves forward: retaining the rich diversity that has defined the field, the articulation of recognizable standards for qualitative research, and the commensurability of differing approaches.

scholarly journals Queer Bodies, Queer Lives in China English Contact Literature

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 147-162 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joshua M. Paiz ◽  
Anthony Comeau ◽  
Junhan Zhu ◽  
Jingyi Zhang ◽  
Agnes Santiano
Keyword(s):  
Queer Theory ◽  
Short Story ◽  
World Englishes ◽  
Fiction Writing ◽  
Linguistic Markers ◽  
China English ◽  
Ha Jin ◽  
Queer Spaces ◽  
A Site ◽  
Post Cultural Revolution

Abstract Ha Jin and his works have contributed significantly to world Englishes knowledge, both through direct scholarly engagement with contact literatures and through the linguistic creativity exhibited in his works of fiction (Jin 2010). His fiction writing also acts as a site of scholarly inquiry (e.g., Zhang 2002). Underexplored, however, are how local varieties of English as used to create queer identities. This paper will seek to address this gap by exploring how Ha Jin created queer spaces in his short story “The Bridegroom.” This investigation will utilize a Kachruvian world Englishes approach to analyzing contact literatures (B. Kachru 1985, 1990, Y. Kachru & Nelson 2006, Thumboo 2006). This analysis will be supported by interfacing it with perspectives from the fields of queer theory and queer linguistics (Jagose 1996, Leap & Motschenbacher 2012), which will allow for a contextually sensitive understanding of queer experiences in China. This approach will enable us to examine how Ha Jin utilized the rhetorical and linguistic markers of China English to explore historical attitudes towards queerness during the post-Cultural Revolution period. These markers include the use of local idioms and culturally-localized rhetorical moves to render a uniquely Chinese queer identity.

scholarly journals The Queerness in Shikhandi: Concerning Devdutt Pattanaik’s Shikhandi and Other Queer Tales They Don’t Tell You

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 166-171
Author(s):  
Ambili M
Keyword(s):  
Critical Theory ◽  
Queer Theory ◽  
Women's Studies ◽  
Queer Studies ◽  
The Other ◽  
Controversial Subject ◽  
Women’S Studies ◽  
Important Character

Queer theory is a realm of critical theory that developed within/in the early 1990s, out of the fields of queer studies and women's studies. Shikhandi is an important character in the Mahabharata. Hindu tales have many references to queerness; one among them is the story of Shikhandi, a woman who became a man. The gender of Shikhandi is a controversial subject, in epics especially in Mahabharata, men are considered as great warriors, full of masculinity and resilience. But while approaching the text from a postmodernist perspective, we can analyze the gender of Shikhandi as the ‘other gender’, Mahabharata, which means great India have much popularity in India, as Homer’s poems over the Greeks. This paper seeks to examine, how the character of Shikhandi in Mahabharata,who is neglected in the society, the queerness in Shikhandi which is flexible and fluid made him/her a remarkable character in the great epic.

scholarly journals Beyond the bow: a digital solution for the queer community

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katarina A. Zlatanovic
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Queer Theory ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Community Building ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Virtual Community ◽  
Self Organization ◽  
Mediated Communication ◽  
Queer Spaces

Beyond the Bow is an app for the LGBTQ+ community which will allow users to find queer events in their areas, get involved, circulate information, and help foster and build physical queer spaces in the GTA. Connection of strangers and self-organization of the queer community is what allows for the growth of queer spaces in society and sustains the physical queer geography of cities. Development of this app will cultivate and expand public discourse and support member activity in our community, which is necessary to ensure the prosperity and maintenance of our public. This digital solution is informed by research conducted through participant observation, autoethnography, and discourse analysis. The work is grounded in queer theory. Beyond the Bow will allow for communication in a new, modernized way within the LGBTQ+ community, and help reshape our culture by creating and maintaining real-life connections and queer geography through mediated communication and virtual community-building tools. The overall goal of Beyond the Bow is to offer users an accessible virtual place, that will work as a gateway into our physical queer spaces by providing resources and information surrounding on-going activities and initiatives, thus enhancing member participation and promoting the success of our community.

Experience

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Judith Grant
Keyword(s):  
Critical Theory ◽  
Feminist Theory ◽  
Queer Theory ◽  
Subject Formation ◽  
Consciousness Raising ◽  
Critical Theories ◽  
Personal Politics ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
Point Of Departure

This chapter analyzes multiple conceptualizations of experience developed within Anglo-American and French feminist theory, and traces their relation to the concepts “woman,” “patriarchy,” and “personal politics.” It explores experience as epistemological ground, as a mechanism of subject formation, as a technique in consciousness raising, and as a methodology. Taking the feminist sexuality debates as a point of departure, the chapter also situates the limitations of feminist notions of experience in relation to queer theory, critical theory, poststructuralism, and the problematics of humanism. Finally, the chapter shows how feminist theoretical uses of the idea of experience parallel explorations and developments of the concept in other non-feminist critical theories. Though it has very often been ignored or considered as something of an anomaly by other critical theorists, the chapter demonstrates that feminist theory is a kind of critical theory and situates it in that broader context.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
pp. 1-32
Author(s):  
Daniel F. Silva
Keyword(s):  
Critical Race Theory ◽  
Critical Theory ◽  
Queer Theory ◽  
Postcolonial Studies ◽  
Critical Race ◽  
Race Theory ◽  
Postcolonial Literatures

This introduction briefly discuss the theoretical debates into which I insert the current project, namely those within the realms of Decolonial and Postcolonial Studies with implications for interrelated branches of critical theory such as Queer Theory, Critical Race Theory, Psychoanalysis, and Deconstruction. In doing so, the introduction foregrounds the theoretical concerns raised by each text analysed, as well as the significance of these for study of Lusophone and postcolonial literatures, and beyond. By virtue of this reflection, the introduction also serves to lay out the theoretical groundwork that will inform the project.

Shelleyan Love

2019 ◽  
pp. 113-165
Author(s):  
Seth T. Reno
Keyword(s):  
Critical Theory ◽  
Negative Dialectics ◽  
Theodor Adorno ◽  
Prometheus Unbound ◽  
Religious Sensibility ◽  
Subject And Object ◽  
Scholarly Attention

In this chapter, I show that Percy Shelley picks up on the waning of intellectual love in Wordsworth, continuing to develop this Romantic tradition after Wordsworth moves on to a more religious sensibility. The chapter outlines the development of Percy Shelley’s treatment of love over the entire course of his career. I examine five ‘clusters’ of writings that reveal his adoption, adaption, and revision of Wordsworthian, Godwinian, and Classical notions of love: (1) his essay ‘On Love’ (1819) and its related texts; (2) Queen Mab (1813) and the Alastorvolume (1815); (3) a sequence of lyrics from 1816-1818; (4) the Prometheus Unbound volume (1820); and (5) Epipsychidion (1821) and later poems. Shelleyan love has received the most scholarly attention in studies of Romanticism, yet it is almost always within the contexts of sex, sexuality, and metaphor; instead, I argue that Shelleyan love can also be understood as an aesthetic model of interconnectedness proposing a nascent negative dialectics, a concept developed by Theodor Adorno that both defers and affirms the reconciliation of subject and object at the heart of critical theory and love.

scholarly journals Philosophical Approaches to Qualitative Research

2020 ◽  
pp. 111-142
Author(s):  
Renée Spencer ◽  
Julia M. Pryce ◽  
Jill Walsh
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Research ◽  
Critical Theory ◽  
Queer Theory ◽  
Qualitative Inquiry ◽  
Historical Background ◽  
Rich Diversity ◽  
Big Picture ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Distinguishing Features

This chapter reviews some of the major overarching philosophical approaches to qualitative inquiry and includes some historical background for each approach. Taking a “big picture” view, the chapter discusses postpositivism, constructivism, critical theory, feminism, and queer theory and offers a brief history of these approaches; considers the ontological, epistemological, and axiological assumptions on which they rest; and details some of their distinguishing features. In the last section, attention is turned to the future, identifying three overarching, interrelated, and contested issues with which the field is being confronted and will be compelled to address as it moves forward: retaining the rich diversity that has defined the field, the articulation of recognizable standards for qualitative research, and the commensurability of differing approaches.

Eroticism, Death and Redemption: The Operatic Construct of the Biblical Femme Fatale

2007 ◽  
Vol 15 (4-5) ◽  
pp. 405-427
Author(s):  
Peter McGrail
Keyword(s):  
World View ◽  
Femme Fatale ◽  
Biblical Narrative ◽  
Women In The Bible ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The World ◽  
High Degree

AbstractThis article explores the themes of eroticism, death and redemption as seen in the world of opera, through a particular lens. This lens is the construct of the femme fatale as drawn from the particular world of the Bible. This construct is of course largely the product of the composer's and/or librettist's own social, religious, political and philosophical world view; where the origin of the construct is a biblical narrative, a high degree of elaboration is always required, since the psychology and motivation of women in the Bible is particularly under-developed. The article first surveys the terrain—surprisingly limited to six chief operas, which together treat only four biblical subjects. The first of the operas, Verdi's early work Nabucco, is analysed in terms of the depiction of its—totally invented—femme fatale, a fictitious daughter Abigaille given to King Nebuccadnezzar. The development of the concept of femme fatale is then traced until it reaches its apotheiosis with the extraordinary character of Kundry, in Wagner's Parsifal. She is then used as the vehicle to explore the themes in depth.

scholarly journals The Absence and Discrimination of Women in the Education of History and Social Sciences Teachers

2018 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jesús Marolla-Gajardo
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Teacher Training ◽  
Critical Theory ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Queer Theory ◽  
Pedagogical Practices ◽  
Teaching Staff ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Gender Theories

The problem of violence and discrimination based on gender is an aspect we must take in charge as a society. In this line, the objectives of this research have been framed in the reflection on problems and obstacles that arise in teacher training, as well as on possibilities and advantages of including and working with women and their history. The research is a case study that had five participants. The participants were teachers of social science teaching who work in different establishments in Santiago, Chile. The instruments to collect information consisted of semi structured interviews, and the techniques to analyze it took into account the critical theory, poststructuralism, gender theories, and queer theory. Regarding the main findings, it is possible to point out that, for the teaching staff of didactics, there are multiple possibilities to include women and their history in teacher training, as well as in teaching practices. However, for this, spaces that favor the inclusion of women’s problems should be promoted. The participating teachers recommended, as conclusions, that women and other groups that have been invisibilized, marginalized, and have suffered violence in different contexts should reflect on their own pedagogical practices to generate spaces and transformations in face of inequalities, prejudices, stereotypes, and the oppressive roles that women have been given for reasons of gender.

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