Constructing imaginative geographies in Genesis

This article considers Edward W. Said’s proposals on ‘imaginative geographies’ as suggested in his leading work Orientalism as a tool to analyse the ideological circumstances that shape geographical spaces in the Bible. My purpose is to discuss how these imaginative geographies are present in the patriarchal narratives of Genesis and how they have left their mark on the history of the interpretation of these texts and on the not always easy relations between members of the religious traditions inherited from the Bible (Hebrews, Muslims and Christians). I propose four types of ‘imaginative geographies’: (1) ‘Equalness’ is the way to represent what is considered as sharing the own identity. The geography of ‘Equalness’ defines the spaces of Isaac, Jacob and their families. (2) ‘Otherness’ is the way to represent the ‘Other’ as opposite or juxtaposed to one’s own identity. A common border is shared, thus kinship relationships can be established. It defines the spaces of Ishmael, Esau/Edom, Lot (Ammon and Moab) and Laban. (3) ‘Foreignness’ is the way to define what is strange, odd or exotic considered as external to the own identity, in a space set beyond even the space of the ‘Other’. Egypt is in Genesis a land of ‘Foreignness’. (4) ‘Delendness’ encompasses whatever claims our same space and therefore threatens our survival and must be destroyed (delendum). As such, processes of annihilation and dominion of Israel on Canaanites and Sichemites are justified.Contribution: The article applies Said’s ‘imaginative geographies’ as an identity mechanism for the creation of biblical literary spaces. A quadripartite classification (‘Equal’/‘Other’/‘Foreigner’/‘Delendum’) instead of the usual bipartite one (‘Equal’ vs. ‘Other’) is proposed and the consequences for the current coexistence between religious identities inherited from Abraham are shown.

kreoling sisters: (un)intimate relationships, child marriages and women spirits

The non-fiction piece, ‘kreoling sisters’, explores the overlapped histories of slavery and indenture in the Indian Ocean context, Mauritius in particular. It merges memoir writing, indenture studies and Black study and theory to discuss antiblack/antikreol racism and unfreedom during the critical historical time between the beforelife of indenture (that is slavery) and the afterlife of slavery during indenture. ‘kreoling sisters’ unearths a personal story that touches on the (un)intimacy or unofficialised intimacy between Black mothers and men of Indian descent and their Black-Indo/Kreol children. The aim is to discuss the entanglement between freedom, intimacy, slavery, antiblackness and indenture and disrupt the official, institutional, colonial and patriarchal narratives. The question the piece finally asks is how intimacy and love can exist, with the thought of what freedom could have been in the colony and could be in contemporary times. ‘kreoling sisters’ wishes to envision how Indenture studies can engage with a Black philosophy of freedom and abolition, that is the abolition of the plantation police, prison and property, inherited from colonialism.

Abram the One from Beyond-the-River, and King Chedorlaomer of Elam (Genesis 14): Persia and the Formation of Judaean Ethnic Identity in a Late Patriarchal Narrative

The perception of Persia in Judaean/Jewish texts from antiquity contributed to the construction of a Judaean/Jewish identity. Genesis 14 gives an example of this; in it, Abra(ha)m wages war with a coalition headed by King Chedorlaomer of Elam. The article argues that Genesis 14 is one of the latest additions to the patriarchal narratives (Genesis 12–36), composed in the Persian or early Hellenistic period. It was conceived and used as an ethnic identity-forming story. The characters in the narrative represented groups and nations in the neighbourhood of the province of Judah. Abra(ha)m was perceived as the ancestor of the Judaeans and the inhabitants of the province Beyond-the-River. The King of Elam represented the Persian Empire. The article uses redaction criticism to argue that Genesis 14 is among the latest additions to the patriarchal narrative in the late Persian or Hellenistic period. Moreover, it uses a combination of philological and historical methods to argue that the description of Abra(ha)m as hāʿibrî (traditionally translated “the Hebrew,” Gen 14: 13) characterises him as a person from the region Eber-nāri (Beyond-the-River). The article uses similar methods to argue that the names of people and places in Genesis 14 referred to political entities in and around Judah. Eventually, the article uses Anthony D. Smith’s theory of ethnic community and elements from postcolonial theory as “reading lenses” and a framework for analysing Genesis 14. Reading this way underscores that Genesis 14 originated and worked as an ethnic identity-forming story.

Walking, Haunting, and Affirmative Aesthetics: The Case of Women without Men

The digital sphere overflows with platforms that gather women’s testimonies of being harassed, not feeling welcome, or not being accommodated in the urban spaces. The street is a gendered space. However, literature, films, and digital media have repeatedly denounced, challenged, and counteracted the unbalanced relations of power and how they affect people of different genders, sexualities, ages or ‘races’. Through the analysis of Shirin Neshat's film Women without Men (2009), I explore several forms of what I call 'affirmative aesthetics', the aesthetic and narrative reconfiguration of spatial and power relations. Haunting as a filmic form in particular serves as a way to create a space for oneself, to make visible what patriarchal narratives made invisible.

Walking, Haunting, and Affirmative Aesthetics: The Case of Women without Men

The digital sphere overflows with platforms that gather women’s testimonies of being harassed, not feeling welcome, or not being accommodated in the urban spaces. The street is a gendered space. However, literature, films, and digital media have repeatedly denounced, challenged, and counteracted the unbalanced relations of power and how they affect people of different genders, sexualities, ages or ‘races’. Through the analysis of Shirin Neshat's film Women without Men (2009), I explore several forms of what I call 'affirmative aesthetics', the aesthetic and narrative reconfiguration of spatial and power relations. Haunting as a filmic form in particular serves as a way to create a space for oneself, to make visible what patriarchal narratives made invisible.

Then, we were wolves, again: the mutable lycanthropy mythos and its challenge to anthropocentrism and androcentric thought

In literature and film, werewolves have gone through an incredibly varied series of portrayals, but, throughout all of their changes (cycling largely between being antagonists and protagonists), werewolves have always interacted with the essentialist concept of the human-animal binary. Mutable at their core, werewolves reflect the people, places, and times of their various manifestations; the werewolf is whatever we need it to be. The fact that werewolves are inherently liminal creatures means that, for the purposes of my thesis' discussion, werewolves can serve as a tool for addressing preconceived notions of human exceptionalism (i.e., anthropocentrism). I question the assumptions of boundaries and socalled human traits with a story about embracing the uncertainty that our classifications and labels seek to efface. Simultaneously, I draw attention to female werewolves to level a concurrent challenge against patriarchal scripts that denigrate the association of human females with non-human animals. Just as many historical portrayals of werewolves reinforce the negative connotations of a woman-animal alignment, so too do contemporary representations of female werewolves become subject to portrayals that reinforce patriarchal values, rather than challenge them. Therefore, my focus is two-fold: to present an alternative narrative (in the form of a theory piece married to a novel) that draws attention to the artificial nature of both anthropocentrism and androcentrism. These two ways of thinking—that humans are inherently more important than animals and that the perspectives of male humans, in particular, trump all other points of view—are inextricably linked in their ideological othering of alternative experiences of being. The female werewolf, an embodiment of both inferior entities, is a well-suited symbol to decentralize dominant patriarchal narratives. Presented herein is my theory piece and the first fifteen chapters of my novel, Then, We Were Wolves, Again. It is a story about a woman who becomes the wolf she was all along and a man who undergoes a transformation but does not change. As a human, the protagonist, Harley, drifted through life like a lone wolf, but now, as an actual werewolf, she struggles to reconcile her instinctual need for her pack with her growing sense of disenchantment with her fellow lycanthropes. Indoctrinated by their leader, Arden, they're convinced of their sovereignty as a superior species to humans, but this new werewolf picks away at the cracks of hypocrisy, revealing the same species-centric thinking the wolves claim to transcend.

Postcolonial Interracial Intimacy

This chapter discusses postcolonial intimacy by surveying post-1945 cultural productions on Korean–Japanese intermarriage. It offers a short sketch of the construction of the postcolonial memory of colonial intimacy in South Korean popular culture and analyzes the normalization of Korean patriarchal narratives about Korean–Japanese relationships. It also reviews the “Hyŏnhaet'an” narrative with the movie Hyŏnhaet'an Ŭn algoitta in 1961 and the post-1998 lifting of the ban on Japanese culture in South Korea, particularly the differences between the reception of the Japanese film Hotaru in Japan and Korea. The chapter looks at the 2010s, with the movies Tŏkhye ongju (The last princess), Agassi (The handmaiden), and Pak Yŏl (Anarchist from colony). It recounts the Korean War and the Cold War politics that dominated both North and South for the next few decades and impeded the decolonization process in the Korean Peninsula.