Kevin's Watch

Skyweir wrote:

Of course .. thats just whats missing from the narrative, a feminist view of the Apocalypse..

Dont be a selfish dude Wos .. do give us a brief precis .. this HAS to be good

Catherine Keller in her book, Apocalypse Now and Then: A Feminist Guide to the End of the World (Boston: Beacon Press, 1996) deals with the effects of the Christian prophecy of the Apocalypse on western history and thought. Through innovative readings of the theology and philosophy, feminist and postmodern/ poststructuralist/ postcolonial theory, fiction and poetry, western history and current politics, Catherine Keller shows how the concept of the Apocalypse has affected the way the western tradition have thought about text, time, place, community and gender. Apocalypse Now and Then reveals the apocalyptic links of moments and events as diverse as colonialism, urbanization, 19th century American feminism and the current environmental crisis. Throughout the book, she constructs an imaginative 'counter-apocalypse' that includes prophetic passion for justice.

Catherine defines apocalypse as an embodied habit. It is in us and around us, constituting a "multi-dimensional, culture pervading spectrum of ideological assumptions, group identities, subjective responses and historical habits" (P. xi). According to Catherine, apocalypse does not lie outside of our subjectivities. For her, apocalypse is a disclosure of an opening. Apocalypse did not originally denote cataclysm or end. The Greek word apokalypsis means to unveil, to disclose, and to reveal. In this book, she particularly speaks of an apocalypse pattern operating in/ as western history. So she tries to re-read 'John's apocalypse' / the book of Revelation as a 'pre-text' that influenced immensely the genealogy of the western history and culture. She invites the readers of the book to a kind of discursive hermeneutical engagement with this apocalyptic script in order to have a renewed vision of their own social, sexual, ethnic locations or con-texts.

What would make this book a "feminist" guide? For Catherine, the feminist construction of gender is a "configural zone," intersecting with other zones- like time, place, community and spirit that refract through the lens of apocalypse. Apocalypse, she says, provides a kind of kaleidoscope for cultural self-consideration. (Kaleidoscope provides us a kind of multiple/ refracted view of a subject.) Catherine wanted to make this work as a theological enquiry, because; "theology may help us to locate ourselves within the mythic history of apocalypse and to seek its present meaning" (P. xiii).

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that review of 'Apocalypse Now and Then: A Feminist Guide to the End of the World' wrote:...apocalypse is a disclosure of an opening. Apocalypse did not originally denote cataclysm or end. The Greek word apokalypsis means to unveil, to disclose, and to reveal. In this book, she particularly speaks of an apocalypse pattern operating in/ as western history.

that review of 'Apocalypse Now and Then: A Feminist Guide to the End of the World' wrote:So she tries to re-read 'John's apocalypse' / the book of Revelation as a 'pre-text' that influenced immensely the genealogy of the western history and culture.

Linna Heartlistener wrote:[...]

Okay, now I'm going to go out on a limb and recommend a book for you, Wos.
It's "New Testament Theology," by George Caird and Lincoln Hurst.
(One began writing the book and died before he finished it; his student completed it.)

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