Claiming Space in the Bible and Beyond - by L Juliana Claassens & Sithembiso Zwane & Gerald O West (Hardcover)

About the Book

Book Synopsis

This collection of essays explores the way individuals and communities navigate complicated spaces which have been dominated by econo-heteropatriarchal powers to find their voice and claim their space.

Using concepts of space from development studies, the volume explores the power of biblical narratives for communities to navigate the complex and multifaceted intersections between gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and economics in the biblical text as well as within the diverse interpretive communities the chapter authors represent. In particular, these contributions are interested in the role of art as a way for individuals and communities to exhibit their agency and so transform hostile spaces in which they inadvertently find themselves.

The work is divided into three sections: Claiming Space in the Community, Claiming Space in the Text, Claiming Space in/through Art. The contemporary contexts engaged with include South Africa, India, Brazil, Aotearoa New Zealand, the margins of the United States of America, and Australia. Within these contexts a diverse range of communities struggle "to claim space," including unemployed young people, LGBTIQA+ communities, women migrant workers, survivors of sexual violence, women struggling to survive economically, ethnic others, women at home and at work, women lamenting and resisting imperialisms, colonial settlers, aboriginal people, LGBTQIA+ Christians, black women and children.

Review Quotes

"Claiming Space in the Bible and Beyond is an illuminating and lively engagement with space-informed theories, methodologies, and unfinalized liberating hermeneutics. In a series of dialogic, highly nuanced, and contextually focused essays, this book combines critical theories about space, fluid and contested embodiments of space and spatial identities, and the exegetical and hermeneutical work of (biblical) interpretation that aims at intersectional liberation and flourishing. This book is theoretical and pedagogical and is sure to be a good companion into and out of various spaces where the marginalized live and work for freedom." --Kenneth N. Ngwa, Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary, USA

"This outstanding volume aptly turns its intersectional attention to "space," which is more than a heuristic tool. The authors are actually creating liberative space in today's communal and socio-political contexts, while exposing the invisibility of "others" in "invited" spaces-whether in biblical texts, interpretations, or art. This collective work significantly contributes to biblical scholarship by theorizing space and spatializing biblical interpretations. Readers will be surprised by the authors' creative and engaging interpretations, navigating the performed space in this book." --Jin Young Choi, Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School

"Claiming Space in the Bible and Beyond is not only a theoretically exciting contribution to biblical scholarship, but it also provides fascinating discussions of different kinds of space - gendered, national, artistic, economic, imagined, lived, contested - that are of pressing relevance for understanding biblical texts, their receptions, and the socio-political locations that are marked by these receptions." --Hannah M. Strømmen, Senior Lecturer in Bible, Politics, and Culture at Lund University, and Wallenberg Academy Fellow

"The Bible is a tool (to borrow Audre Lorde's framing) with which physical, ideological, and theological spaces are constructed, contested, and claimed. The contributors use this tool to make space for minoritized gender, sexuality, and economic subjects. This book is empowering and homing, a useful tool." --Jione Havea, adjunct professor, biblical studies, School of Theology, Charles Sturt University, Australia

About the Author

L. Juliana Claassens is Professor in Old Testament and Head of the Gender Unit at the Faculty of Theology, Stellenbosch University.

Gerald O. West is Professor Emeritus in the School of Religion, Philosophy, and Classics in the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa.

Sithembiso Zwane is a lecturer in theology and development and Director of the Ujamaa Centre for Biblical and Theological Community Development and Research in the School of Religion, Philosophy and Classics (SPRC) in the College of Humanities at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa.