O Mother, Where Art Thou?: An Irigarayan Reading of the Book of Chronicles

by Kelso,Julie

• ISBN13: 9781845533243
• ISBN10: 1845533240
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Nonspecific Binding
• Copyright: 2014-10-17
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

According to Kelso, the Book of Chronicles silences women in specific ways, most radically through their association with maternity. Drawing on the work of two feminist philosophers, Luce Irigaray and Michelle Boulous Walker, she argues that we may discern two principal strategies of silencing women in Chronicles: disavowal, and repression of the maternal body. In its simplest form, the silencing of women takes place through both an explicit and implicit strategy of excluding them from the central action. Largely banished from the central action, they are hardly able to contribute to the production of Israel's past. On a more complex level, however, women are most effectively silenced through their association with maternity, because the maternal body is both disavowed and repressed in Chronicles. The association of women with maternity, along with the disavowal and repression of the maternal body as origin of the masculine subject, effects and guarantees the silence of the feminine, enabling man to imagine himself as sole producer of his world. These strategies of silencing the feminine need to be understood in relation to the relative absence of women from the narrative world of Chronicles. Kelso argues that Chronicles depends on the absence and silence of women for its imaginary coherence. This argument is enabled by Irigarayan theory. More importantly, Kelso suggests that Irigaray also offers us a viable mode (not method) of reading, writing, listening, and speaking as woman (whatever that might mean), in relation to the so-called origins of western culture, specifically the Hebrew Bible or Old Testament. She argues that Irigaray enables not only a rigorous, feminist critique of patriarchy and its many texts, but also, somewhat more charitably, a mode of reading that enables women to read the past differently, seeking out 'what remains to be discovered, especially the forgotten future in the past.'

Author Biography

Julie Kelso is an Honorary Research Advisor for the Centre for the Research on Women, Gender, Culture and Social Change in the School of English, Media Studies and Art History at the University of Queensland.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. xi
Introduction: A Question of Silence	p. 1
"All Israel" and the "Inclusive Ideology of Identity" in Chronicles	p. 2
Feminism, Psychoanalysis, and the Hebrew Bible: "Introducting" Luce Irigaray	p. 15
"The Monopoly of the Origin" and the Mute Foundation of Psychoanalysis: The Theoretical Interventions of Luce Irigaray	p. 22
Introduction	p. 22
The Specularization of Woman-Mother in Philosophy	p. 27
The Lacanian Universe	p. 31
Psychoanalysis, the Economy of the Same, and the Monopoly of the Origin	p. 45
The Murder of the Mother and the Forgetting of Female Ancestries	p. 56
Conclusion	p. 65
Remembering the Forgotten Mother: Engaging with Chronicles in an Irigarayan Mode	p. 68
Introduction: The Task of Analysis	p. 68
Method or Mode? An "Era of Knowledge Already Over" or "the Era of the Spirit and the Bride?"	p. 70
The Praticable as Nuptial Tool	p. 76
The Embodied Geography of Analysis	p. 80
The Rule of Free Association and the Mode of Listening Required	p. 83
The Rule of Transference	p. 87
Reading Silence	p. 94
Speaking Silence Poetically	p. 102
Conclusion: Going into Analysis "as Woman" with the Book of Chronicles	p. 107
Our Production of a Past, in the Present of Analaysis: Engaging with the Book of Chronicles	p. 111
Who Begets Whom? Disavowing the Maternal Body: 1 Chronicles 1-9	p. 115
According to You (I)... Shall We Begin at a Beginning?	p. 115
Birth Pangs?	p. 120
An Intriguing Inclusion on your Part	p. 123
From Edom to Israel, a Sharp Turn?	p. 124
A Smooth Production Line	p. 126
The Cracks Are Starting to Show	p. 129
Father to Son?	p. 139
The Passive of David	p. 143
Discontinuity	p. 146
Summary Analysis	p. 155
Grammatical and/or Syntactical Breakdowns	p. 156
Contradictions	p. 158
A Breakdown of Realism	p. 160
Conclusion	p. 161
The Debt-Free Masculine Subject: The Repressed Maternal Body in 1 Chronicles 10-2 Chronicles 36	p. 167
According to You (II)... Shall We Begin Again?	p. 167
Ideal Israel Born of Man	p. 168
A Body in Bits and Pieces: the Murder of the (M)other?	p. 171
From Father to Son, a Blessed Machine	p. 174
Double-Sexing Sacred Space: The Temple in Chronicles	p. 178
"Silencing" the Father?	p. 183
Return of the Repressed: The Three Diseased Kings of Chronicles	p. 188
The Problematic Representation of the Mother	p. 198
The Mother's Murderous Words (2 Chronicles 22:10)	p. 199
"A Horrid Thing," a "Thing to Shudder at" (2 Chronicles 15:16)	p. 202
Conclusion	p. 206
Figuring Sexual Difference?	p. 210
Conclusion	p. 212
Notes	p. 216
Bibliography	p. 235
Index of References	p. 242
Index of Authors	p. 246
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