Bible & Critical

Theory Seminar
Dunedin 2014

Governors Caf, 10-11 December 2014

Program for Dunedin 14

Wednesday 10 December 2014
10:00

Introduction

10:10-10:50
Mount

Elaine Wainwright, A Queer[y]ing of the Matthean Sermon on the

10:50-11:20

Morning Tea

11:20-12:00

James Harding, Gender, Intertextuality and Male Friendship in

Sirach
12:00-1:30

Lunch at the Governors

1:30-2:10
Judith McKinlay, Whose is the Land (2 Sam 3: 12)? Questioning the
Questions Underlying Davids Killings at Gibeah (2 Sam 21: 1-14) and Te Kootis at
Matawhero
2:10-2:50

Deane Galbraith, Why is Historical Criticism so Racist? A Case Study

2:50-3:20

Afternoon Tea

3:20-4:00

Nikki Aaron, Speaking about Sex to Neo-abolitionists

Drinks and Dinner

Thursday 11 December 2014

9:30-10:10
Solomon

Joanna Osborne, Encountering the Bible through Hoteres Song of

10:10-10:50

Moana Hall, Developing a Maori womans reading tool for

interpreting biblical text

10:50-11:20

Morning Tea

11:20-12:00

Roland Boer, Towards a Materialist Doctrine of Evil

12:00-1:30

Lunch at the Governors

1:30-2:10

Kevin Sarlow, Irony Theory, Biblical Studies and Derrida

2:10-2:50
Timothy Stanley, Grammatologys Empty Gesture: On Derridas
Unanswered Questions Concerning Religion and Technology
2:50-3:20

Afternoon Tea

3:20-4:00

Anne Taylor, Why did the Jews choose Barabbas?

Abstracts
Elaine Wainwright
A Queer[y]ing of the Matthean Sermon on the Mount
In her Foreword to the collections of essays Queering the Non/Human, edited by
Noreen Giffney and Myra Hird, Donna Haraway says that [q]ueering has the job of
undoing normal categories, and, none is more critical than the human/nonhuman
sorting operation [xxiv]. Traditionally Queer Theory has been concerned with
undoing normal categories in relation to gender and sexuality. More recently,
however, scholars have been queering and queer[y]ing much more diverse areas than
human sexuality. Giffney and Hird turn attention to what they designate the nonhuman or that Haraway would call companion species. Their work turns attention
to the emerging discipline of animal studies and the possible dialogue between queer
studies and animal studies. In a recent article in the collection Reading Ideologies, Ken
Stone brought this new and emerging dialogue between these two fields into biblical
studies in an essay subtitled Queer Animals of God in the Book of Job (Stone 2011,
316331). In this paper, I propose to bring queer theory and its engagement with
animal studies and with time/space theories into dialogue with a recent ecological
reading I have undertaken of the Matthean Sermon on the Mount. I will raise questions
as to how or whether such a reading of this biblical text, attentive to time/space and to
the other-than-human, might be informed by an approach that might be called
queer(y)ing.
James Harding
Gender, Intertextuality and Male Friendship in Sirach
Significant research has been done on the interconnections between Sirach and the
older, authoritative literature of Israel. Alongside this current in research, and
frequently dovetailing with it, has been a growing interest in Ben Siras representation
of women (see e.g. Camp 2013), as well as a significant interest in the theme of male
friendship in Ben Siras teaching (see e.g. Corley 2002). What I propose to do here is
to explore how these themes relate to one another, beginning with the probable
Hebrew original of Sirach 36:29. Sirach 36:29 is woven out of the second creation
account in Genesis (cf. Camp 2013: 66), and portrays a likeness between a man and his
wife in respect of the body. Just a few verses later, a mans friend is portrayed as a
friend as oneself (ra kenephesh). My proposal is that, in partial, but imperfect,
continuity with older texts known from the Tanakh, Ben Sira portrays the likeness

between a man and his wife in terms of the body, and the likeness between a man and
his (male) friend in terms of the inner life. This anticipates the more strongly dualistic
anthropology of Philo, as well as Ephesians 5:2233.
Judith McKinlay
Whose is the Land (2 Sam 3:12)? Questioning the Questions Underlying
Davids Killings at Gibeah (2 Sam 21:1-14) and Te Kootis at Matawhero
While the Bible itself provides a link between these killing narratives, it can also be
employed as a tool to jolt our complacency about our present, relying, as it does, on a
forgotten past. For, as Patrick Evans, following Homi Bhabha, notes, forgetting is a
complex process by which the white settler culture managed and continues to manage
its sense of belonging. In applying a postcolonial lens, I am also aware of Sam
Durrants comment that postcolonial narrative is necessarily involved in a work of
mourning as it confronts an indigestible past, a past that can never be fully
remembered or forgotten. This, then, is a brief consideration of two indigestible
narratives. Both concern matters of identity, matters of power and the observance of
covenant, with the overarching question, whose is the land (2 Sam 3:12)?
Deane Galbraith
Why is Historical Criticism so Racist? A Case Study
Much of David Theo Goldbergs work on race and racism interrogates the ways in
which racial distinctions remain embedded within contemporary conceptual
frameworks and academic institutions. In order to investigate how embedded racial
assumptions affect the practice of Old Testament historical criticism, this paper
examines scholarship on the Spy Narrative (Numbers 1314 and Deuteronomy 1:19
46). The case study uncovers two main areas in which racial assumptions continue to
impact on the procedures and conclusions of historical criticism: (1) the arbitrary
stereotyping of material designated myth as whatever the truly biblical material is
not, combined with a social evolutionary theory which purports to connect the two;
and (2) an appeal to increasingly more subtle racialized categories to reprise
explanations which were originally based on explicitly racist assumptions. The case
study finds that racialist assumptions remain a constituent part of historical criticism.
Historical-critical
scholarship
is,
in
its
origins
and
embedded
structure, racialized scholarship. As a result, biblical studies continues in many ways
to be complicit in, rather than a challenge to, modern forms of racial discrimination
and oppression

Nikki Aaron
Speaking about Sex to Neo-abolitionists
Female sex work in the Third World is at the front of a variety of moral debates
revolving around choice. Neo-abolitionist movements spearheaded by Christian
evangelicals and radical feminists do not believe sex work is work, but sexual slavery.
These two groups work together to end what they call modern-day slavery, but others
call sex trafficking, and many understand to be sex work. The arguments around choice
are complex and do not constitute the basis of this paper. Rather, in this paper I will
discuss from a postcolonial feminist perspective how these Neo-abolitionist
movements have failed to give women any voice. I will then further the discussion with
a critique of Gayatri Spivaks argument that women are afforded no voice because of
white men saving brown women from brown men. While Spivak suggests that these
women can never speak, because they are victims of patriarchy and colonialism, I will
suggest that postfeminisms present an alternative lens, in which agency comes through
speech, and the Third World sex worker can and does speak.
Joanna Osborne
Encountering the Bible through Hoteres Song of Solomon
I would like to propose a paper that explores multiple readings between the texts
embedded in Ralph Hoteres painting Song of Solomon, with an emphasis on the
relation between semiotic analysis and the materiality of mark making in the
production of meaning and affect. The artwork is a collaborative commentary that
Hotere made with poet Cilla McQueen on the 1991 Gulf War in Iraq. Lyrical hand
inscribed text from the Song of Solomon is juxtaposed with military terminologies over
14 panels of a not so conventional artistic rendition of the Stations of the Cross. My
reading would be a reflection upon the biblical text through this painterly political lens,
maintaining tension between a theoretical position, the textual and material analysis
of the painting, and the biblical source. I would draw also from alternative biblical
criticism on the Song of Solomon and converse with several other artists references to
the Song of Solomon. My theoretical position would fall somewhere on the spectrum
of a new-materialist affirmation of the material turn that does not reject the usefulness
of semiotic analyses.

Moana Hall
Developing a Maori womans reading tool for interpreting biblical text
We dont want anyone else developing the tools, which will help us to come to terms
with who we are. We can and will do this work. Real power lies with those who design
the tools it always has the power is ours. Through the process of developing such
theories we will contribute to our empowerment as Maori women moving forwards in
our struggles for our people, our lands, our world, ourselves (Kathie Irwin, 1992:5).
Contained within this citation are strong indications that show how critical it is for
Maori women to develop their own research tools. The process of bringing a Maori
womans worldview into dialogue with biblical text is the heart of this paper. Kaupapa
Maori is the means for enabling this, and its use will offer opportunity to interpret the
Bible in ways that pay attention to the history, experience and aspirations of Maori. It
provides space for women to make visible their mana (personal power) and recognises
their uha (female essence) and their relationship of oneness to the land. The literature
outlining the history of the Frankfurt School highlights a range of political
engagements by its members, their worldviews, social location and political context. It
highlights that exponents of critical theory have been useful in creating a role in
opening theoretical grounds for more radical thinking that has supported the
articulation of Kaupapa Maori theory within the academy. To date this theory has not
however been applied to the discipline of reading biblical text. Using a weaving
metaphor, my paper will develop a Maori womans reading tool for interpreting biblical
text by drawing on Kaupapa Maori theory, and literary tools that employ an adapted
form of reader-response criticism.
Roland Boer
Towards a Materialist Doctrine of Evil
How does one begin to construct a dialectical materialist doctrine of evil? I mean not
the banal effort to identify some communist practices as evil, such as one might find
in The Black Book of Communism (Werth et al. 1999) Red Terror, authoritarian
communism, personality cult, show trials, rectification movements, all of which are
then tallied in a speculative death list that runs into the tens of millions. Instead, I
mean the understanding of evil as that has emerged from the practice of communism
in what are by now many forms. This is by no means an easy task, for it has not to my
knowledge been undertaken thus far. That task has at least four steps, beginning with
the question of human nature. That socialist movements in the nineteenth century
inherited an Enlightenment heritage of the inherent goodness of human beings is clear
enough. How that perception changed and how human nature itself changed after the

revolution is the burden of this first section. Second, I explore how the codes of good
and evil were recalibrated in socialist material, especially in class terms. Third, I focus
on the crucial role of the Red Terror as a great leap forward in developing a doctrine of
evil. Finally, I revisit the matter of compulsion, in its interweaving of economic and
extra-economic factors, in the further development of the doctrine. The analysis that
follows draws upon the works of Marx, Bloch, Adorno and Horkheimer, Lenin, Stalin
and Mao.
Kevin Sarlow
Irony Theory, Biblical Studies and Derrida
In this paper, Kevin Sarlow examines how deconstruction may inform biblical studies
and irony theory in our attempt to discover theological revelation through biblical
irony. George MacRae (1973) affirms that biblical irony is theological revelation and
Gail ODay (1985) agrees, saying that biblical revelation is the vehicle for irony. Sarlow
analyses the value of deconstruction, and explains the significance of the stability of
irony (as this is noteworthy and invites further attention) in biblical literature. Using
biblical examples, he asks, what is the benefit of the Derridean approach to
interpreting irony in different biblical genres? He compares the unresolved situation
of the Jacob and Esau cycle, the temporary instability of Joseph and Jobs ironic
situations in life, and some ironies from the gospel genre. He demonstrates the
instability and temporary instability of irony in these diverse biblical genres.
Unresolved or unstable irony (that victimises the protagonist) lends itself to
deconstruction. Derrida recognises this possibility in the mysterium tremendum. Also
Sarlow shows the connection between deconstruction and unstable irony. His
approach will encourage interest in reading the Bible, provide interest in biblical irony
theory, and provide a starting point for further research in Derrida and biblical studies.
Timothy Stanley
Grammatologys Empty Gesture: On Derridas Unanswered Questions
Concerning Religion and Technology
In an edited compendium on Religion and Media, Jacques Derrida asked why all the
Christian churches are more mediatic than their Jewish, Moslem, Buddhist, etc.
equivalents? Derridas question was aimed at the connection between religion and
media, but in a way that looked past the form of information technology and the
contemporary return of religion. This interest in the link between Christian thought
and technology echoed his more broad critique of logocentric onto-theologies of
presence. However, more to the point, his question was left unanswered. The following

essay will demonstrate why Derridas question should be understood as an empty

gesture. The reason will be located in the form of his grammatology as such, which
ultimately never clarified the question concerning technology after Martin Heidegger.
Anne Taylor
Why did the Jews choose Barabbas?
Is it possible to think of Christianity without its foundational crucifixion? The gospel
narratives all suggest that this might have been an option when they tell of the choice
to release one of two prisoners, Jesus the Christ or Jesus Barabbas. The choice to
release Barabbas is followed by a vociferous demand that Jesus the Christ be crucified,
and so it is done. My interest in the story lies in the choice of Barabbas and the
consequences for the people said to have made the choice. By means of literary
analysis, clues in the text (Trible), I seek possible reasons for the choice, then apply
theories of political myth (Boer) and mythistory (Sand) to the legacy of the Barabbas
story, always aware that it might have been different.

Location
The Upper Room of the Governors Caf, 438 George St, Dunedin. Its just across the
road from the austere faade of Knox Presbyterian church.
Established in 1977 as one of the seedier Dunedin student pubs, today the Governors
Caf has been transformed into a highly respectable eatery by former straight-edge
punk bass-player and one-time Baudrillard scholar, Dr. Eric Repphun.

If you get lost, please contact

Roland Boer: Roland.Boer@newcastle.edu.au or
Deane Galbraith: relegere.reviews@otago.ac.nz; ph. 021 2366294

Eggs on Toast

BREAKFAST Served 7:00 am to 3:00pm

$9.50
Pretty simple: our house ciabatta toast with two eggs - fried, scrambled, or poached?
I?
Bacon and Eggs
$15.00
Slightly more complicated: toast and eggs with bacon or sausage - fried, scrambled, or poached?
Sausage and Eggs
$15.00
We dont need to explain this, do we ?
Mixed Grill
$19.50
Sunday morning, coming down? Try this for what ails you: bacon, sausage, hash browns, handmade
beefpatty, eggs, and tomato, all fried and served with ciabatta toast.
English Breakfast
$ 18.50
Cant leave old England behind ? Bacon, sausage, black pudding, potatoes, fried eggs, and ciabatta toast.
Bacon Eggs Benedict
$18.00
Poached eggs served on ciabatta toast with wilted spinach, bacon, and Hollandaise sauce.
Salmon Eggs Benedict
$19.00
Just like the last one, with cold-smoked salmon instead of bacon.
Breakfast Burrito
$ 17.00
Something different: scrambled eggs, cheese, capsicums, onions, black beans, and fried potatoes
wrapped in a tortilla and lightly grilled. Served with handmade salsa and sour cream.
Muesli
$12.00
For healthy people: our house muesli served with bananas, berries, and unsweetened yogurt.
Porridge
$8.00
Served with brown sugar and berries.
Plain Pancakes
$11.50
The best pancakes in town. Served with maple syrup and cream or yogurt.
^
Berry Pancakes
$13.50
Chocolate Pancakes
$13.50
Muesli Pancakes
$13.50
Bacon and Banana Pancakes
$17.50
We just cant think of anything better than this: pancakes with grilled bacon and banana.
Veggie Grill
$17.50
Fried potatoes, spinach, grilled tomato, mushrooms, veggie croquette, poached eggs, and pesto.

Breakfast Additions: toast and spreads ($5.00), two hash browns ($2.00), mushrooms ($2.00), grilled
tomatoes ($2.00), fried potatoes ($2.00), bacon ($3.00), sausage ($3.00), salmon ($3.00), black pudding
($3.00), spinach ($3.00), Hollandaise ($1.00)

We cook everything to order - real food takes time.

Please ask about gluten-free or vegan options. We proudly serve organic, fair trade
coffee, free-range eggs, and a selection of free-range pork products.

BRUNCH/LUNCH Served from 10 am to 3pm

Chicken Burger

$17.50/$19.50 with chips

Seasoned chicken breast fried and served with cranberry sauce, salad, aioli, melted Brie, and
bacon.
Beef and Bacon Burger
$18.00/$20.00 with chips
Homemade beef patty and bacon with caramelised onion and melted Brie on a bun with sliced tomato,
aioli, tomato relish, and barbeque sauce. Indulgent.
Veggie Burger
$16.00/$18.00 with chips
A homemade veggie and chickpea patty, served with hummus, salad, and tomato salsa. Just a wee bit exotic.
Vicarius Salad (almosta Ceasar) $14.00 -add grilled chicken for $3.00 -add chicken & bacon for $5.00
Fresh mesclun lettuce and seasonal veggies, Parmesan cheese, a poached egg, and aioli dressing served
with homemade croutons.
Black Bean and Corn Quesadilla $14.00 -add grilled chicken for $3.00
Vegetarian quesadilla made with homemade roasted corn salsa, black beans, and cheese, served with a side salad.
Corn Fritters
$14.00 -add salmon or bacon for $3.00
Handmade vegetarian corn fritters, served with sweet chilli sauce, tomato salsa, and sour cream.
Chicken and Bacon Wrap
$18.00
Grilled chicken and bacon wrapped with aioli, BBQ sauce, cheese. Served with a side salad.
Vegan Wrap
$16.00
Homemade vegan croquettes and roasted seasonal vegetables wrapped with
hummus. Served with a side salad.

Shoestring Fries
Wedges

SNACKS

$6.00 or $7.00 served with aioli or garlic butter.

$9.00
With sour cream and sweet chilli sauce. One of the finer things in this life.
Nacho Wedges
$13.00
An uncouth combination ofpotato wedges, tomato salsa, and melted cheese. Like nachos, only better.
Cheese Rolls
$2.00 each or 4 for $5.00
Comfort food at its finest.
Toasted Sandwiches
$7.50
Made with white or brown bread. Choose three ofthe following fillings: hummus, tomato relish, aioli, onion,
ham, tomato, capsicum, cheese, brie, chicken, bacon, fried egg, mesclun salad, and pineapple.

Small Ice Cream Sundae

DESSERTS

$6.00
Two scoops of ice cream with cream, wafers, and your choice of chocolate, caramel, or strawberry sauce.
Large Ice Cream Sundae
$8.00
Three scoops of ice cream with cream, wafers, and your choice of chocolate, caramel, or strawberry sauce.
Banana Split
$10.00
A Governors tradition dating back decades; three scoops of ice cream, a banana, and other fattening
things, all under your choice of chocolate, caramel, or strawberry sauce.

DRINKS Please see our blackboard

Governor's Cafe, 438 George St, Dunedin, New Zealand 477-6871

~MENU NOT SUITABLE AS A PLATE~