Prophecy and Power: Jeremiah in Feminist and Postcolonial Perspective

This volume advances the scholarly discussion of Jeremiah via rigorous feminist and postcolonialist theorizing of texts and interpretive issues in that prophetic book. The essays here, by seasoned scholars of Jeremiah, offer significant traction on the biblical book's construction of the persona of Jeremiah and the subjectivity of Judah as subaltern; analysis of gendered imagery for the speaking subject in Jeremiah and for the Judean social body; exploration of rhetorics of imperialism and resistance; and theological implications of feminist-critical perspectives on YHWH and other deities represented in Jeremiah.

Essays here deftly synthesize historical, literary, and ideological-critical insights in service of nuanced inquiry into Jeremiah as complex cultural production. The collection represents the growing edge of recent critical thinking on Jeremiah in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere. It should prove invaluable in shaping the parameters of the continuing scholarly conversation on the Book of Jeremiah.

• Table Of Contents
• Introduction - Christl M. Maier and Carolyn J. Sharp
• 1. Challenges and Opportunities for Feminist and Postcolonial Biblical Criticism - Judith E. McKinlay
• 2. Mapping Jeremiah as/in a Feminist Landscape: Negotiating Ancient and Contemporary Terrains - Carolyn J. Sharp
• 3. Commentary as Memoir? Reflections on Writing/Reading War and Hegemony in Jeremiah and in Contemporary U.S. Foreign Policy - Louis Stulman
• 4. After the “One-Man Show”: Multi-authored and Multi-voiced Commentary Writing - Christl M. Maier
• 5. Jeremiah “Before the Womb”: On Fathers, Sons, and the Telos of Redaction in Jeremiah 1- Yosefa Raz
• 6. “The Stain of Your Guilt is Still Before Me” (Jer 2:22): (Feminist) Approaches to Jeremiah 2 and the Problem of Normativity - Else K. Holt
• 7. “Like a Woman in Labor”: Gender, Postcolonial, Queer and Trauma Perspectives on the Book of Jeremiah - L. Juliana Claassens
• 8. God's Cruelty and Jeremiah's Treason: Jer 21:1-10 in Postcolonial Perspective - Christl M. Maier
• 9. Buying Land in the Text of Jeremiah: Feminist Commentary, the Kristevan Abject, and Jeremiah 32 - Carolyn J. Sharp
• 10. The Prophet and His Patsy: Gender Performativity in Jeremiah - Stuart Macwilliam
• 11. “Exoticizing the Otter”: The Curious Case of the Rechabites in Jeremiah 35 - Steed Vernyl Davidson
• 12. The Silent Goddess and the Gendering of Divine Speech in Jeremiah 44 - James E. Harding
• 13.A Response by Walter Brueggemann
• 14.A Response by Irmtraud Fischer
• Bibliography
• Author Index
• Scripture Index