A Plurality of Bibles

And a Plurality of Genders

Grounded in a reading of speech act theory, Butler's work explores the possibility that gender, rather than being conceived in a modernist fashion as the social interpretation of sexed bodies, is best understood in terms of collective practices that produce perceptions of fixed sexes and genders as performative effects. (Stone, p.  14)

So too the Bible, often conceived as a fixed object, may be reconceptualized in terms of the collective practices, including conventional modes of scholarly and popular analysis, that produce perception of a single, stable Bible as performative effects. (Stone, p. 14)

Static Meaning or Flexible Interpretation?

 

Does language have a "fixed meaning"? Is meaning essential to, or within, language and text?

Or is meaning inseparable from interpretation?

Stone argues that interpreters should take greater responsibility for their interpretations (anti-foundationalism)

 

 

Meaning is generated through interpretation. Meaning made objective imposes one perspective (usually that which reflects a dominant normative) upon others.

The process of finding Christian relevance is not restricted, however, to the deployment of modern exegetical frameworks, such as the distinction found in many discussions of biblical theology between historical meaning and contemporary significance. (Stone, p. 15)

 

In other words, reading the Bible effectively should be done outside the dominant framework of any exegetical system, even if postmodern. Such systems tend to represent closed systems of meaning.

 

[D.] Martin challenges his readers to "educate our imaginations in new ways to think about Scripture differently." (Stone, p. 15)

What does Martin (see Stone, p. 15) mean when he states that "Scripture" is a performance?

Stone maintains that our assumptions about the Bible should always be subject to being rethought.

 

They should resist the restriction of any closed methodological system or framework of meaning.

Why talk about this:

  • The Bible continues to impact how we understand and relate to each other in western cultures.
  • Many view the Bible as an objective revelation containing proper morality, ethics, and even social-political organization.
    • That runs the risk of being oppressive of differences.
    • But if we reject objectivity, must we also disregard the Bible?
    • Or should we look for new ways of interpreting an entrenched symbol?

In our culture, there is still prejudice and oppression of LGBT+ individuals. They are not yet afforded the same range of rights that heterosexual citizens are. The Bible has been at the center of this issue in many ways.

 

According to Stone and others, change requires understanding how the Bible has had an impact and that we be capable of having responses demonstrating an awareness of how the bible is best understood.

Regarding a bill permitting refusal to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples due to religious ideology.

Performance Issues

Are "man" and "woman" political categories?

 

According to Monique Wittig, they are binary categories that constitute the foundation upon which is based the imperative for sexual reproduction, the heterosexualization of society, and the subordination of women and minorities. (Taken from Stone, p. 17)

I have the capability of defining myself to myself and to you. I am not restricted to biological category and what culture (or God, for some) dictates to be (dichotomized) roles based on that biology.

---

Or am I?

Stone's argument is based much on Judith Butler's theory on gender as a performance.

 

Other scholars have built upon this as well: E. Sedgwick, for instance, coined the phrase "queer performativity."


Stone argues for a similar concept of "Bible performativity."

The emphasis here is upon doing rather than being. It eschews any dominant essential quality of meaning for the construction of it.

 

Thus, one can think about "what it might mean to undo restrictively normative conceptions of sexual and gendered life." (Butler 2004, 1; cited in Stone, p. 16)

Historical Roman Sexuality

A plurality of Bibles and a Plurality of Genders

By Jeremiah Cataldo

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A plurality of Bibles and a Plurality of Genders

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