Johannes N. Vorster

Creatures creating creators: the potential of rhetoric

In the current uncertainty prevailing in the social and human sciences, rhetoric has achieved epistemic status. The article proposes that a radical theory of rhetoric, following in the wake of Kenneth Burke and emphasising rhetoric as the creation and use of symbols to induce cooperation, can be of value to studies in religion.

Religious Topoi and South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission

The role of religious language in the activities of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission is analysed in this study. The (Christian) religious rhetoric is a limiting factor with regard to the possibilities and/or contribution of the TRC by fashioning a dichotomising discourse and terminology. It also imposes constraints, visible in the TRCs dealings with concepts such as truth, responsibility and causation. This discourse is, furthermore, an assistant to a formalistic way of arguing about history and humanity, which problematises the plurality and heterogeneity of our society.

THE QUEERING OF BIBLICAL DISCOURSE

This article explores certain conditions that should be taken into consideration in exploring the possibilities of a queering of biblical discourse. Following Butler it suggests that queering can be seen as a “kind of gender performance” that “will enact and reveal the performativity of gender itself in a way that destabilizes the naturalized categories of identity and desire” (1990:177). I argue that as a per-formativity of gender, the queering of biblical discourse requires a shift from text to discourse, and must insist on dissent and disruption. doi: 10.7833/111-1-39

REFLECTING ON ‘RHETORIC(S) OF BODY POLITICSAND RELIGIOUS DISCOURSE’

In conversation with the contributors to this volume, it is indicated what the regulatory body is, and how the regulatory body functions as the social configuration of meaning and as a site of power relations, not only constituting bodies, but also as the context in which these constituted bodies re-constitute and reproduce themselves. Several rhetorical strategies, such as the operation of the hierarchic principle, the division between “insiders” and “outsiders,” and the notion of dissociation in the re-definition of cultural practices have come to light.

‘And God Became Human’: Conversations within the Humanities

Relocation implies recontextualisation. If the academic study of religion is to exploit its full potential, it needs to engage in conversation operating with similar terminologies. In this article it is argued that a critical awareness be developed for totalising terminologies; vestiges from a confessional or theological approach, that a sensitivity should be cultivated which could move away from a sui generis attitude. Guidelines for such a conversation are proposed.

Pondering possibilities of the biblical critic as public intellectual, part one: problematising the public intellectual and the identity of the biblical scholar

Is there a possibility to critically interrogate the hegemony of the type of historical approaches to the academic study of the Bible currently governing and regulating Biblical Studies? Against the background of inquiring how Biblical Studies can be effectively transformed, the biblical critic as public intellectual is submitted. The notion of public intellectual, however, is by no means an uncontested category and could replicate what its deployment would endeavour to subvert. The objective of this article is therefore primarily to problematise the notion of the public intellectual within a logic of representationalism with identity as organising principle. It is instead argued that the public intellectual be seen as a subjectivity engendered by an ethos of discursive practices emerging from difference. Utilising projects that theorise the critical rhetor and the public intellectual, I probe the possibility that the biblical critic likewise be seen as public intellectual, engendered by a peculiar ethos produced by its dispersion through discursive practices. This article constitutes a first part specifically problematising and theorising the notion of public intellectual and problematising the current identity of the biblical scholar .

Problematising the development of same-sex rhetoric in selected reformed denominational traditions in South Africa : general

If same-sex discourse is part of regulatory practices that both produce and control bodies, its development in the Dutch Reformed Church requires a genealogical enquiry into the discursive practices from which it has emerged. It is argued that the same-sex discourse which has developed within the Dutch Reformed Church serves to protect heteronormativity and biblical discourse, and integrated within regulatory practice, is instrumental in its accomplishment.

FROM THE 'DOMUS' TO THE 'SPECTACULUM': FAMILY AND MARTYRSHIP IN EARLY CHRISTIANITY

Early Christian martyr discourse combines two discursive practices, namely that of the household and the spectacle. How and why these practices are used in martyr discourse is enquired from the perspective of the dominance and pervasiveness of Roman normative culture and its formative effects on emerging early Christianity. Two martyr narratives namely the Passion of Perpetua and Felicitas and the Martyrs of Lyons are analysed to determine how household discourse has been integrated into the framework of the spectacle.

PROCEEDINGS OF THE EIGTH INTERNATIONALCONFERENCE ON RHETORIC AND SCRIPTURE

This volume consists of selected and approved Proceedings from the 8th International Conference on Rhetoric and Scriptures. It continues a proud tradition which originated in 1992 in Heidelberg, Germany. Tom Olbricht explains that in 1990 it occurred to me that while Americans interested in rhetorical analysis met with some frequency, non international conferences of rhetorical specialists had convened. Eventually with the support of Wuellner and Hester, the decision was made to hold the conference at Pepperdine University’s Moore Haus in Heidelberg in July of 1992’1 (Porter and Olbricht 1993, 9). The second conference took place in South Africa in 1994 and was, at least from a South African perspective, a huge success. Ten years later and the tradition still continues. Small scale, expertise enterprises do not always survive for a long period in the academic world. We owe it to the commitment of people such as Tom Olbricht, Jim Hester, Vernon Robbins and Wilhelm Wuellner that this tradition continued. Not only is the publication of these papers a tribute to these scholars, not only do the contributors want to commemorate the performance of Wilhelm Wuellner – who made an immense contribution to disclose the world of Rhetoric to those interested in the academic study of religion – and not only do we want to continue this tradition, but we also hope to present a publication that would do this tradition proud and would also effect an appropriate continuation.

Aspects of a rhetoric of the body and the letter to the Romans : general

Although the expansion of New Testament Studies to formal studies in Early Christianity and Late Antiquity have significantly changed modi of interpretation concerning Pauline material, the Cartesian effect has not been laid to rest. In addition, despite the problematisation of knowledge production which was initiated during the eighties of the twentieth century, the subject as primary originator of knowledge, born during the nineteenth century, is still haunting the production of knowledge within the field of Pauline studies, with little concern for the variety of diverse discursive practices compelling and enabling the production of a writing. Both these tendencies have infused the rhetorical paradigm within which Pauline letters have been read. I argue that a rhetoric of the body, functioning within the implicit tradition of Rhetorical Criticism, can enable the detection of discursive traces constituting a rhetoric of the body in the Graeco-Roman world. If a rhetoric of the body is used as interpretative framework for the letter to the Romans, no resistance against the Roman Empire can be discerned but rather an identification with a habitus that made a radicalisation of the Roman regulatory body possible.