- Title
- Thus I cleansed them from everything foreign: the search for subjectivity in Ezra-Nehemiah
- Creator
- Boer, Roland
- Relation
- Postcolonialism and the Hebrew Bible: The Next Step p. 220-237
- Relation
- https://secure.aidcvt.com/sbl/ProdDetails.asp?ID=060670P&PG=1&Type=BL&PCS=SBL
- Publisher
- Society of Biblical Literature
- Resource Type
- book chapter
- Date
- 2013
- Description
- I approach the texts of Ezra and Nehemiah, or parts thereof, with a specific concern, that of subjectivity, specifically political subjectivity. How is a subject constructed? What process leads to the identification of a political subject? Who or indeed what is such a subject? Subjectivity may have become a vital topic in political debates today, with both Alain Badiou and Slavoj Zizek (following on from Louis Althusser and Jacques Lacan) insisting in the central importance of the Cartesian subject in political discourse, over against the criticisms if not dismissals of Heidegger, Derrida, or Agamben. Postcolonial critics have mounted their own attacks on the subject, asking who is included and excluded within the category of the subject. But the subject has not as yet made any significant inroads into biblical criticism, except perhaps where a biblical critic responds to the aforesaid philosophers. So my topic is the subject, which may well be collective rather than the default assumption of the individual that so affects our mental associations with words. Why Ezra-Nehemiah? It is a text brimming with a desire for and questions concerning political subjectivity. Ostensibly narrating the repeated return to Judah and Jerusalem and the reestablishment of a people and a state, the subject is never far from the surface, as recent work by Blenkinsopp (2009) and Washington (2003) make abundantly clear. However, instead of a massive wad of theory before we actually get to the text, I prefer to work with the text first, allowing the issues to arise from that analysis; only then will some of the theoretical issues appear on the printed page. The discussion has four overlapping phases, the first three of which begin by seeking some clarity in terms of the formation of the subject. It begins with a treatment of the obvious text for treatments of the subject in these texts, namely, Neh 9. Here we find the well-worn narrative of the people being led out of slavery into the wilderness by a God who comes into his own with such a feat; in that process the people are constituted as a political subject. However, soon enough the story troubles this process of subjectification, pointing to a repeated pattern of disobedience that threatens their very identity as a people. The second effort at clarity regarding the subject concerns the texts effort to demarcate an identifiable subject by creating a series of outsiders. The problem with this process of differentiation is that once begun, the process seems unstoppable, carving up what initially appears as a stable in-group. From there I move to a third phase, assuming now the conflicted nature of the text but asking whether class identification is the key to subjectivity. Again we will be disappointed, as multiple conflicts overlay that of class, all of which has the effect of thoroughly undermining any clear idea of a political subject. Finally, in light the conclusion that the very effort at subjectification is an internal, conflicted one, I ask, What is a subject in Ezra-Nehemiah?
- Subject
- subjectivity; Ezra; Nehemiah; biblical criticism; textual analysis
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1055803
- Identifier
- uon:15938
- Identifier
- ISBN:9781589837713
- Language
- eng
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