The Woman Babylon and the Marks of Empire

Reading Revelation with a Postcolonial Womanist Hermeneutics of Ambiveilence

Shanell T. Smith

• Publisher: Fortress Press
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN:
  9781451470154
• eBook ISBN:
  9781451472431
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Criticism & Interpretation

The "Great Whore" of the Book of Revelationthe hostile symbolization used to illustrate the authors critique of empirehas attracted considerable attention in Revelation scholarship. Feminist scholar Tina Pippin criticizes the use of gendered metaphors "Babylon" as a tortured womanwhich she asserts reflect an inescapably androcentric, even misogynistic, perspective. Alternatively, Elisabeth Schssler Fiorenza understands Johns rhetoric and imagery not simply in gendered terms, but in political terms as well, observing that "Babylon" relies on conventionally coded feminine language for a city.

Shanell T. Smith seeks to dismantle the either/or dichotomy within the Great Whore debate by bringing the categories of race/ethnicity and class to bear on Johns metaphors. Her socio-cultural context impels her to be sensitive to such categories, and, therefore, leads her to hold the two elements, "woman" and "city," in tension, rather than privileging one over the other. Using postcolonial womanist interpretation of the woman Babylon, Smith highlights the simultaneous duality of her characterizationher depiction as both a female brothel slaveandas an empress or imperial city. Most remarkably, however, Smiths reading also sheds light on her own ambivalent characterization as both a victim and participant in empire.

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Critical Convergences

Toward a Postcolonial Womanist Hermeneutics

A postcolonial inflection of a womanist hermeneutics is necessary to analyze the figure of the woman Babylon because this combined interpretive lens helps to highlight the dual aspects of her identity as both a slavewoman and as an empress/imperial city. To be sure, both womanist and postcolonial interpretations of Revelation have previously been done by other scholars. To the best of my knowledge, however, no one has yet engaged in a combination of these two lenses, which is the task of this book.

Although the interests of these two approaches have overlapped—womanist concerns have included issues of empire, and postcolonial concerns have included countering structures that oppress racial, ethnic women—I still find it necessary to combine the trajectories of these two lenses in a more self-conscious, systematic fashion. They complement each other well, each filling in the gaps where the other is found lacking. A womanist hermeneutics helps to position the experience of African American women as a starting point for biblical interpretation and offers ways to name that experience, while postcolonial theory provides a vocabulary that helps identify the various, interlocking structures of domination and the psychological states caused by them.

For my approach to Revelation, I appeal to postcolonial theory, specifically the work of postcolonial theorist Homi K. Bhabha, and to African American thought, through the work of black intellectual W. E. B. Du Bois. In particular, I employ two of their terms: Bhabha’s notion of ambivalence—the simultaneous attraction to and repulsion from a particular object or person, which exists within a single individual, not least in the colonial or postcolonial arena—and Du Bois’s notion of the veil—a metaphorical covering that hinders and prohibits African Americans from seeing themselves as they truly are. My reason for doing so is because together, the meanings of their terms capture my experience as an African American when I engage the text of the woman Babylon. They call to mind both the negative impact of capitalist systems on oppressed peoples, as well as one’s ability to strategically comport oneself to those very same systems in order to survive, and in some cases, to excel.

It is important to note that I did not say that Bhabha and Du Bois’s terms help to capture my experience as an African American woman. Although the work of Bhabha and Du Bois are foundational to the way in which I read Revelation, something is missing. Neither of these two intellectuals discusses the implications of what it means to be colonized, to be racially discriminated against, or how to endure such oppression, as a woman. My point is not to suggest a lacuna in their respective work, although a discussion of the possible reasons for such an omission is quite tempting. Their terminology thus only helps to capture my experience as I encounter the woman Babylon in part. Once I bring their work into critical dialogue with womanist thought—which has the experiences of black women at the start of any biblical exploration, the interests and love of black women at its core, and the liberation and advancement of black women as the result of its work—then and only then, do I begin to comprehend that experience in full.

By complementing womanist biblical inquiry with postcolonial theory, my aim is to build upon and extend their distinctive trajectories in an effort to posit a hermeneutics of ambiveilence—a combination of both Du Bois’s notion of the veil and Bhabha’s notion of ambivalence. However, before explicating this new term, and in an effort to fully and concisely articulate why and how I see these two trajectories working together, it is important to discuss them separately. I will begin with womanist theology and biblical hermeneutics, as this is the foundation of my analysis—following the womanist protocol of beginning with black women’s experience. I will present a broad overview of womanist biblical interpretation by examining the origins of womanist thought, its appropriation by African American female scholars in theology, ethics, and biblical studies, and begin to explore the prospect of developing a womanist approach to the text of Revelation based on my analysis.^[1]

Womanist Theology and Biblical Hermeneutics

The twentieth century will be ushered out by a prophecy similar to the one by which it was introduced. In the preface to his famous book of 1903, The Souls of Black Folk, W.E.B. Du Bois wrote: “The problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the colour line . . .” The problem of the twentieth-first century is the problem of the color line, the gender line, and the class line.

—Katie Geneva Cannon ^[2]

Womanism emerged in the 1980s not only “in response to sexism in black liberation theology and racism in the feminist movement,”^[3] but also “independently out of women’s culture and experience.”^[4] Although womanism recognized the contribution of black liberation theology’s analysis of historical and political systems of oppression and feminist theology’s analysis of sexist oppression, the fact of the matter is that the concerns of the black woman in both theologies remained an afterthought. “In the ’60s and ’70s, besides ignoring the African diaspora, the overwhelming majority of black male liberation scholars and white feminist scholars failed to address the spiritual and social reality of black women in the continental United States.”^[5]

Black women suffered from “double jeopardy”—African American women’s experience with racism and sexism—and needed a theology that reflected their entire being, one that only they could express.^[6] However, the creation of a space that African American women could call their own, and the task of maintaining their whole identities, did not involve a definite isolation from white feminists or black theologians, but rather became more and more solidified through their interaction. African American theologian James Cone notes that as black feminist theology began to emerge, black women were not only in dialogue with other minority women, both in the United States and in places such as Africa, Asia, and Latin America, but also white feminists.^[7] For example, Cone notes that black women were able to build upon, and particularize some of white feminists’ beliefs and values, such as their resistance to gender inequality, and their “terminology . . . in response to women’s subordination, such as patriarchy, misogyny, and sexism.”^[8] Thus, womanist hermeneutics should not be read as “wholly other and ideologically distinct from other forms of feminist discourse.”^[9] Before turning to a discussion of contemporary womanist hermeneutics, however, let us reflect on the roots of womanist discourse.

Wilda Gafney reminds us that the “task of negotiating the intersection of gender and ethnicity within the context of the divine-human encounter,” was being performed by women of color well before the twentieth century.^[10] Black women such as Sojourner Truth, Anna Julia Cooper, Jarena Lee, Harriet Tubman, and Ida B. Wells-Barnett insisted on “being recognized as the sole legitimate arbitrators of their knowledge and experiences,” and advocated strongly for the right of black women to articulate their whole identity, “without being forced to choose between being a woman and being of African descent.”^[11]

Sojourner Truth, the self-given name of African American abolitionist and women’s rights activist Isabella Baumfree, addressed the issue of male superiority and privilege based on the manhood of Christ in her famous speech, “Ain’t I a Woman?” (1851). Her famous argument against this claim is that Christ came from God and a woman. “Man had nothing to do with him.”^[12] Anna Julia Cooper, a spokeswoman for the feminist and suffrage movements, believed that “black women were created equal in intelligence to women and men of all races, and employed her religious belief and education to interpret the social message of the bible.”^[13] In her essay, “Womanhood a Vital Element in the Regeneration and Progress of a Race,” Cooper argues that based on the ideals that Christ gave to be comprehended by civilization, black women were to be given equal education and economic opportunities.^[14] Karen Baker-Fletcher, in her article, “Anna Julia Cooper and Sojourner Truth: Two Nineteenth-Century Black Feminist Interpreters of Scripture,” compares the biblical hermeneutics of both women, and powerfully argues that “age, class, literacy, and region of origin” were irrelevant in determining the effectiveness and potency of black women who were adamant in their fight for equal rights.^[15] Although Cooper has been described as “a black woman intellectual and Truth as an illiterate, itinerant preacher,” Baker-Fletcher states that both were “highly intelligent, self-possessed, and irrepressible black feminists and social reformers, who publically challenged whites who questioned their humanity because they were black, and whites and blacks who questioned their authority to speak because they were women.”^[16]

Added to this list of nineteenth-century black women who advocated for women’s rights are itinerant preacher and autobiographer Jarena Lee, African American abolitionist Harriet Tubman, and journalist Ida B. Wells-Barnett. Lee, whose preaching ministry in the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) church was blocked for eight years, argued that it should not be thought of as “impossible, heterodox, or imprope...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Additional Praise for The Woman Babylon and the Marks of Empire
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Table Of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Critical Convergences
• Interpretive Foundations
• The Book of Revelation
• The Woman Babylon and Marks of Empire
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index