Elizabeth A. Castelli

Women, Gender, Religion: Troubling Categories and Transforming Knowledge

“‘Aomen’ is historically, discursively constructed, and always relative to other categories which themselves change,” Denise Riley observes. Perhaps no one should be more aware of the persuasiveness of this claim than the feminist student of religious traditions—traditions that are themselves often deeply implicated in the historical and dis¬cursive construction of “women” as a category. Gender, Joan Scott argues, is simultaneously the interpretation of perceived sexual difference and a primary means for talking about power. This definition resounds profoundly for those who think about religious discourses and practices. As soon as the divine is analogized to the human realm, gender emerges as a problem of both differ¬ence and power. Once that analogy has been mobilized, the two realms seem to oscillate endlessly back and forth, each reflecting and reinscribing the other’s claims. Meanwhile, “religion” is, as David Chidester ably demonstrates in his study of colonialist contexts such as southern Africa, a non-innocent category. Critical feminist readers will no doubt recognize stark parallels between the colonial situation and other political arenas in which the organization of human social life is thoroughly framed by the power to define and to name.

The Philosophers' Paul in the Frame of the Global: Some Reflections

DOI 10.1215/00382876-2010-011

Globalization, Transnational Feminisms, and the Future of Biblical Critique

The paper I wrote for this conference was a preliminary attempt to take theoretical stock of the terms of our engagement. I wrote it during a period when I was also working in an ongoing collaboration with Janet Jakobsen who directs the Center for Research on Women at Barnard College where I teach. Our efforts were organized around a multifaceted initiative called, “Responding to Violence,” that has brought feminist activists and academics together to assess the material, institutional, interpersonal, and ideological conditions that have brought our world into its current peculiar predicament.1 The thinking I’ve begun to do around the places where transnationalism, globalization, religion, and violence intersect has been thoroughly influenced by the insights and deep commitments of the participants in our ongoing work together. I can’t name all of these people, but I do want to acknowledge the help that Janet Jakobsen, Erin Runions, Neta Crawford, Laura Donaldson, and Minoo Moallem have given me in thinking about these matters.