POSTCOLONIALISM AND BIBLICAL CRITICISM

POSTCOLONIALISM AND BIBLICAL CRITICISM

By: Lazare S Rukundwa

Over the past decades, theologians and exegetes have cautiously started to explore a political hermeneutical avenue by using post-structural theory (Moore 1994), postmodern theory (Adam 1995, 2001; Van Aarde 2004) and feminist reading (Wire 1991:87-121; Wainwright 1998; Levine 1996:379-397; Kaene 1998:121-135; Levine & Blickenstaff 2001; Jackson 2002, Schroer & Bietenhard 2003). As postcolonial theory is used, essays ranging from theoretical to practical case studies from biblical texts, as well as contemporary cases are on the increase. Sugirtharajah’s edited work on Voices from the margin is recognized as a good contribution for postcolonial theory in biblical criticism.

The research studies and essays that appear in the edited work of Segovia and Tolbert (1995) and in two volumes in Semeia 75/76 (1996), 78 (1997) as well as in issues of the Journal for the Study of the New Testament (JSNT) 73 & 75, (1999), Segovia (2000), Sugirtharajah (2001), Moore (2001), are some examples of the growing interest in this field. From a Southern African perspective, Dube (1996:111-129; 1997:11-25; 2000), Mosala (1996:43-57), Punt (2001:129-145; 2003:59-85) and Van Aarde (2004) are among those who have shown an interest in and who have contributed to the study of this field.

Segovia’s (1999:103-114; cf 1995a:1-17) initial difficulty was in identifying with the “postcolonial studies” in biblical criticism. Punt (2001:130- 131) sees postcolonial biblical criticism as having “a different focus and purpose, rather than a different hermeneutical method”. In other words, postcolonial biblical criticism is a “form of ideology criticism, which considers the socio-political context” and goes even further to address “the silencing of the voice of the other through the colonial strategy” (Punt 2003:63) in a postcolonial setting. It focuses on national issues such as race, gender, class, tribe, citizenship and the construction of political powers within sociological and geographical settings.

Sugirtharajah (1999:3-5; 2001:250-259; cf Punt 2003: 65-66; cf Segovia 1995a:1-17) as one of the main campaigners of this theory in biblical scholarship, states that postcolonial criticism as a biblical hermeneutics, can help (i) to “revalue the colonial ideology, stigmatization and negative portrayals embedded in the content, the plot and characterization”. It entails looking for the colonial intentions (be they political, cultural or economic) that informed and influenced the writer’s context. (ii) It helps in “reconstructive reading” which enables the reader to see the concerns of the liberation struggles of the past and the present. Postcolonial critique, therefore, is concerned and interacts with circumstances such as hybridity (mestiza, akamecerane), new identities, fragmentation and deterritorisation. (iii) Postcolonial criticism interrogates colonial interpretation “to draw attention to the inescapable effects of colonization and colonial ideals.” It investigates interpretations that “contested colonial interests”. Such a view helps to establish a reconstructed identity from the colonial context.

POSTCOLONIAL THEORY AND THE BIBLE

Talking from an African perspective, Dube (2000:15-21) draws her critique against the misuse of the Bible by the colonizers as they seized African land. She is convinced that “by implicating the Bible in the taking of the African black lands, biblical texts are marked as powerful rhetorical instruments of imperialism”. Subjugation and alienation are seen as the result of weak evangelism in Africa, which was not a cultural exchange, but rather a cultural domination and assimilation (see Dube 1997:20). Dube (1997:15; cf Sugirtharajah 1998:19) is disturbed by the imperial role that Christian biblical religion played “in the ancient and current times and over different people and different places”. She sees the Bible as “a colonizing text: it has repeatedly authorized the subjugation of foreign nations and lands”. However, biblical texts also emerge from colonial and imperialist contexts and therefore contain a call for liberation (cf Dube 1997:15; Punt 2003:61-64). Pui-lan (1996:213) argues that since biblical texts are products of colonial experiences, a postcolonial reading must “examine the cultural and historical processes that call them into being.”

The work of liberation theology is a noble achievement, as it stages campaigns against poverty and socio-political injustices in Latin America and in Africa. Postcolonial theory builds on these very campaigns to enlarge the scope of justice and freedom, whereby the marginal persons recover their dignity. A postcolonial reading of the Bible is a war against sin: colonialism, neocolonialism, dictatorship, corruption and social injustices in every aspect of society, regardless of their agent. In this case, postcolonialism “is not a discourse of historical accusations, but a committed search and struggle for decolonization and liberation of the oppressed” (Dube 1997:14). 

However, what is challenging is that the Bible, as a text, was produced and circulated under imperial rule, to the extent that it was at the service of colonial expansion, as Punt and many others argue (Punt 2003:71; cf Pui-lan 1996:212; Tamez 1996:203-205). For Pui-lan (1996:212-213), the introduction of postcolonial hermeneutics provides new avenues of interrogating the Bible as “a cultural product, the formation of canon, and the politics of biblical interpretation”. Two issues arise here: firstly the Bible as a cultural product in time and space and secondly, the authority of biblical interpretation.

The first issue has to do with the question of biblical interpretation. Pui- lan challenges those who dominated biblical hermeneutics, as if the Bible were “a frozen artefact”, whose meaning can only be activated by “the experts in the metropolitan centres … under the rubric of ‘objectivity’ and ‘scientific inquiry’”. With this traditional and colonial thinking (see Tamez 1996:204), tricontinental biblical scholars cannot, from their own cultural and contextual understanding, have direct access to the biblical text.

This triangular hermeneutics (the Bible provides the text – the Western theologian produces the hermeneutics – the rest of the world reads) – needs to be reviewed in the postcolonial process. The idea is not to destroy the hermeneutical tools produced by Western theologians, but to recognize the hermeneutical principles that respond to the needs of the tri-continental context. Ukpong (2001:147-167) strongly emphasizes the need for “decolonizing our readings”. Arguing from an African perspective, Ukpong (2001:158) points out that if exegesis is to be truly contextual and African, “an ideological break with the western centrist ideology” is necessary. African perspectives and contexts must stimulate exegetes to formulate questions that are relevant to their own situations. “We must engage in serious and innovative research that will open up new vistas in biblical scholarship.”

In Pobee’s edited work (1992), the various contributors in their search for an “Afro-Christology” grapple with the meaning of Christianity. Pobee (1992:13-15) is convinced that Africa, after having been invaded by foreign cultural influence and colonization, is now as the “homo africanus” in a state of flux, if not confusion, and that articulation of “African anthropology as of now is a must”. The development of tri-continental biblical reading must be grounded in tri-continental worldviews and contexts. The delivery of biblical interpretation developed in a foreign context cannot effectively respond to the socio- economic, political and religious challenges of another social setting (see Kalilombe 1995:421-422). Steve Biko’s “Black Consciousness” (Hopkins 1991:194-200), developed within biblical perspectives, is meaningful. He was convinced that the Christian gospel will find God of the Blacks through Jesus Christ siding with the racially oppressed. Tri-continental biblical Christology must find its meaning in the Word – Life that became flesh and dwelt among the people (Jn 1:12). 

These foreign hermeneutics are incapable of explaining the harsh realities of inequality, oppression and exploitation that are often experienced in tricontinental countries. As long as the Christology of Jesus remains foreign, Jesus will remain unknown. As Mbiti (1992:28) puts it: “His many faces are blurred till they find a focus on the Jesus of history and geography,” not from a theoretical foreign interpretation, but in a local context. The Word must be understood, digested until it becomes “flesh and blood” as Senghor (1964:83) refers to it, as does Segovia (1995a:3-7) too.

Experiences of pain, the long walk to freedom and rich cultural diversity in songs, dances, dreams, and religious practices (compatible with the Word of God), must be engaged in rebuilding a society based on justice and righteousness. This is the work of the deconstructive process through which a postcolonial reading lets the voiceless speak and lets the oppressed participate fully in the struggle for their deliverance (see Kalilombe 1995:421- 435). Biblical hermeneutics must allow the Scriptures to breathe life and respond to the context that motives its reading. This is how the Bible, the Word of God, which liberates and revolutionises, is constantly rediscovered. The meaning and the relevance of that Word – Life must be found in tricontinental anthropology, in the community of the poor, the marginalised, among the voiceless and the hybrids whose identity is constantly being contested. At the same time, the purpose of this very Life is to change the lives of the colonisers by making them recognise the sameness in the other.

The second issue in Pui-lan’s critique (1996:213) is that the Bible is a cultural product in time and space: both the truth and the authority of the Bible are questionable. Kunukawa (1996:123-125; see Sugirtharajah 1995:4-5; 2001:257-258) questions “religionism and absolutism” as opposed to “relativisation”. Her argument is that the relativisation of the biblical texts turns them into “one of the historical treasures in the world” and these texts are acknowledged as a “human product with distinctive perspectives in one’s own distinct contexts”.

Banana (1995:69-82) calls for a rewriting of a new Bible in order to liberate it from “culture-specific world views”; from constantly being used as “an oppressive instrument”; and from being “a property of an ethnic syndicate”. This “multiscripturality” as Punt (2003:72) calls it, not only requires the discovery and creation of new texts, but also coming to terms with other “religious texts”. Tamez (1996:205) is convinced that the “hermeneutical leap” in biblical reading demands an acknowledgement that colonial elements were already present during the production of the text and transcended the canon. Therefore, postcolonial or “grassroots” hermeneutics must assume the task of “re-appropriating the biblical texts and re-reading them from a liberating perspective”.

Sugirtharajah (2001:257-258) thinks that in an age when traditional sources such as sacred text, the Bible among them, are questioned, these may not be the only avenues for answers. For this reason, he sees the aim of postcolonial reading not as “to invest text with properties which no longer have relevance to our context”; not to rediscover the Bible as an alternative for a better world; nor to approach it for its “intrinsic authoritativeness”; but because of the “thematic presuppositions of postcolonialism” that are influenced by the cultural and psychological effects of hybridity and alienation caused by colonialism. The “truth of the text” is questionable here, and Punt (2003) is right to be concerned.

If in the framing of the postcolonial hermeneutics it is in the final instance not concerned with the “truth of text” but rather with the central issue of the text’s promotion of colonial ideology … its usefulness on the African continent where the Bible is still highly valued for many reasons, becomes a concern. If the Bible is studied only for identifying “those intrinsic textual features which embody colonial codes”, and when the value of studying these texts for their own sake or for theological and spiritual inspiration are secondary at best, it remains a question whether postcolonial hermeneutics are not short-circuiting itself, in Africa, but also elsewhere.

Reading the Bible for the sake of hermeneutical rehearsal cheapens the raison d’être of the postcolonial endeavour. Okure (1995:52-66; cf Mesters 1995:407-420) highlights some of the difficulties associated with cultural criticism (postcolonial approach) as it deals with biblical texts. One of the problems centres on “the nature of the text itself as the life of a given people and as the inspired word of God”.

Another problem is “the right of an author to his or her meaning”. Although the text is influenced by its context, in Christian communities the Bible remains the inspired Word of God. Okure’s (1995:55) question: “How does one safeguard the authenticity of the meaning of the text and guard against subjectivism?” is fundamental. Mesters (1995:415-416) has reason to argue that the tools one adopts in reading the Bible are much more than a set of techniques. They must be able to express, actualise and transmit “a particular vision of the Bible and revelation.” Segovia (1995b:327-330) outlines some of the reasons why the Bible must remain as an “effective weapon” and a “faithful ally” in the struggle for liberation, in this case using postcolonial theory. Any method used to interpret biblical text must have, as its point of departure, real life and a community’s faith.

Whatever hermeneutical tool the reader uses, the important thing in the Scriptures is to discover life and faith. Taking the example of Latin America in the light of liberation theology, Sugirtharajah (2001:218) makes an important point. Ordinary people look for two important meanings in a text, namely “historical-explicit and implicit-prophetic” meaning. If postcolonial theory fails to channel its focus towards meeting those spiritual and physical needs, it can easily end up re-colonising the subject that it wants to decolonise. Tamez’s (1996:205) proposition is both interesting and challenging. Appreciation for other liberating forms of aura/oral religious traditions and even from other religious texts, songs and political discourses, not resulting in biblical texts, need not be pushed aside or replaced. It is rather a case of interpreters and readers finding a common ground for dialogue in “a world where many worlds fit”  as long as it imparts life and generates faith and hope to challenge oppression, domination, exploitation and injustice committed against the poor in the community.