THEOLOGY AND GLOBALIZATION (2011)

TOWARDS TRANSFORMATIVE PRACTICE

Catherine Keller, Michael Nausner and Mayra Rivera (eds), Postcolonial Theologies, Divinity and Empire, 270 pp. (St. Louis, Missouri: Chalice Press, 2004) BERTRAM J. SCHIRR Regents Park College, University of Oxford Humboldt University Berlin, Germany b.schirr@gmx.de
I. INTRODUCTION

Postcolonial Theologies, Divinity and Empire offers a broad selection of essays promoting postcolonial theory as a critical addition to the tradition of liberation theology. Emphasizing constructive and imaginative theology, rather than remaining at a critical distance, this volume wants to be a resource, reaching beyond an exclusively academic context. It is stimulating and thought provoking for readers involved in pastoral practice, seminarians and those who are confident that religion has something to offer towards social transformation. Therefore, this volumes aim is to contribute to such transformative practice that is grounded in the eschatological vision to overcome colonizing powers, imperialisms, and supremacisms. The editors present a well composed, accessible and overarching choice of essays from which particularly students and practitioners new to the field can greatly benefit. The reader is instantly seduced by the vast possibilities of postcolonial thinking and practice. The contributors jointly employ the foundational theory (Homi Bhabha, Gayatri Spivak, Hardt and Negri) without eschewing the practical. This is demonstrated by a plurality of important themes: for example, a postcolonial pneumatology, a postcolonial reading of Sophia, hybrid identities in the global church, reconfigurations of Jesus as forfeit trickster, and the Widows mite (Mk 12) as a model for action or disability studies. Apart from Preface and Introduction the volume comprises of twelve essays that will be discussed in this review. The essays are written by: Sharon Betcher, Michelle A. Gonzales (Michelle Gonzalez Maldonado), Marion Grau W. Anne Joh, Namsoon Kang, Catherine Keller Stephen D. Moore, Michael Nausner, Joerg Rieger, Mayra Rivera, R. S. Sugirtharajah, and Mark Lewis Taylor.
II. POSTCOLONIAL THEOLOGIES

Postcolonial Theologies is composed of four main sections. First, Theology in Postcolonial Context critiques historical and systematic theologys ignorance of colonialism and postcolonialism and offers new ideas to bring both fields into dialogue. Second, Splitting the Subject addresses Theological Anthropology and explores how postcolonial contexts and the concept of hybridity challenge dominant constructions of identity and essentialisations. Third, The Postcolonial Christ deals with constructive reconceptualisations of Jesus Christ in contrast with the template of Empire. Fourth and

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finally, Divine Cosmo-Politics investigates how alternative images of God and liberating God-Talk from the margins can help to produce creative and transformative theological practices. The excellently written and expansive introduction outlines the main topoi of postcolonial theory. It starts with an interplay of various images (subway, maze and labyrinth) illustrating the postcolonial in between space as a crucial characteristic of the global church. Following an overview of the key texts of (secular) postcolonial theorists, important Christian postcolonial thinkers are specified as well. A historical survey begins with liberation theology, at the same time criticising it for its oppressor-oppressed dualism that can no longer deal with indirect means of power and decentralised, invisible networks of neo-colonialism. Being a novice to postcolonial theology myself, I found it particularly helpful that the introduction gives a twofold definition of postcolonial theory. First, historicopolitically, it is outlined as the period of time following the formal separation or independence of a colony or group of colonies from a governing empire (p.7). Yet this is only the starting point for a framework of thought that needs to constantly re-adapt to fluid and ever-changing forms of dependencies and dominance. Second, postcolonialism indicates going beyond the colonial in all its forms, beginning from a critique of ones own community, the church, and by listening to those at the margins. The introduction presents motifs of postcolonial theory such as crossroads, borderlands or fronteras, which foster the overcoming of dualistic identity constructions. Hybridity and wild mixtures (putting chil in the borscht [p.11]), mimicry or mimesis, hi-jacking a discourse, but not playing by the rules, are presented as great sources of energy for transformation. Ultimately, according to the introduction, Jesus was a divine/human hybrid himself. Therefore, the church at its very root must be on guard to counter-balance any bias, especially leaning towards the Euro-NorthAmerican theological tradition.
III. COMPLACENCIES AND CUL-DE-SACS, CHRISTIAN THEOLOGIES AND COLONIALISM

In Complacencies and Cul-de-sacs, Christian Theologies and Colonialism R.S. Sugirtharajah traces the uncritical attitude systematic theology has had towards issues of imperialism, race and colonialism before the 1960s. As an example, Sugirtharajah chooses Max Warrens Caesar and the Beloved Enemy and Reinhold Niebuhrs Nations and Empires. Both render empire as part of Gods plan for humanity and as a necessary evil in the development of society. So both present Western imperialism as morally unbiased and thereby cover its mechanisms of establishing superiority under the guise of serving humankind. Theologically and missiologically Christian Western values were superimposed on others, as the culmination of history. Sugirtharajah tracks the hopes of Western-educated Indian converts in the midst of the 19th century. To them, welcoming British rule was a chance to reclaim Indian culture and to reshape it to meet contemporary demands. Drawing from the writings of Indian Christians, Sugirtharajah shows how early converts projected Christianity not as alien and corrupt but as continuing Vedic tradition. He cites K.M Banjera who writes in The Arian Witness that the relation between Vedic doctrine and Christianity is so intimate

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that one can not be understood without also following the claims of the other. So not only in brahminical tradition but in Christianity, too, God was seen as active. Developing interesting hybrid theologies Indian Christians in the 19th century and today would not conform to follow Western categorizations but set up their own categories and hermeneutics. Sugirtharajah goes on to criticise postcolonial theorists (Bhabha, Fanon, Memmi, Said) for turning a blind eye to religion, despite the fact that they come from Islamic societies. Religious symbols and practises have, he claims, been vital in serving and subverting colonialisms. In contextual theology, too, the boundaries are dissolving and new orientation can be found either in a move to insist on vernacular resources or in opening up to cosmopolitan experiences. Eventually, Sugirtharajah submits a third option. He proposes to blend vernacular and cosmopolitan perspectives. This, he concludes, allows transgressions and re-conceptualisations of stalemated cultural habits in ongoing negotiations. The first essay of the volume, Sugirtharajahs historical survey regarding the entanglement of Western theologizing with postcolonial oppression makes it a comprehensive introduction to the field. That is especially true for the depiction of emerging Indian-Christian theologies. Yet, I find that Sugirtharajahs rendering of vernacular cosmopolitanism could be easily misread as a rather aloof cultural pickand-mix attitude. In many cases the rigidity and hopelessness of local struggles does not necessitate playful cultural inter-exchange as a matter of priority. What is more, vernacular cosmopolitanism originally proceeds from Frantz Fanon (who remains unmentioned) and insists on international political empowerment, giving a voice to the local in the global, before an inter-cultural practice of blending values.
IV. SPIRIT AND LIBERATION

Mark Lewis Taylor in Spirit and Liberation registers a turn towards Spirit in postcolonial theory. First, according to Albert Memmi, churches were seen by colonizing administrations as both allies and enemies legitimizing and threatening to subvert the colonial system. Despite this, secular biased postcolonial theory has ignored religious revivalism (Robert Young), and Islamic and Hindu nationalism. Following Spivaks assertions, postcolonial reason itself can be shown as having theological tendencies close to an experience of the Spirit, when spiritual communities contribute to a liberating struggle and religion provides alternative modes of resistance. In contrast to the rigid secularism of many theorists, Taylor traces modes of community that breath a postcolonial and liberating Spirit. Such communities include the Jesus movement, the base communities of Liberation Theology, the Levellers and Diggers in England and finally inter-religious communities. Second, Taylor suggests contemporary issues in which his concept of liberating Spirit can be tested: a spiritual awakening would bring a new critical questioning of U.S. foreign policy especially for right wing Christian communities who are in alliance with U.S. warmongering. What is more, Christian theology must help deconstruct a Biblicist foundation for Israeli occupation and oppression. Eventually a postcolonial theology, driven by a liberating spirit, needs to seek affiliation with the liberating movements in Islamic communities and to speak up against the unjust U.S. penitentiary system.

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Although Taylors concept of liberating spirit is forceful and inclusive beyond confessional boundaries, I would have wished for a more critical reflection on how it relates to biblical or dogmatic notions of Pneuma(-tology). One could also ask whether a pneumatology can be theologically coherent without a foundation in Christology. Maybe Robert Jensons concept of the Spirit as the power of community1 could have been a good reference to theologically tie down the idea of a liberating Spirit. This would effectively bring up another point of critique, which is to query how much a liberating Spirit is fuelled by utopianism that might be less inclusive in different religious communities and how it relates to different imaginations of eschatology in inter-religious dialogue.
V. WHO IS AMERICANA/O

In Who is Americana/o Michelle A. Gonzalez (Michelle Gonzalez Maldonado) elucidates how the Latin American context in particular calls into question the categories and typologies of postcolonialism. According to Gonzalez, there is no such thing as a pure Latina/o community as a homogenous collective, but only a multitudinous variety of ethnicities and nationalities resisting generalisation. Gonzalez identifies these unifying and homogenizing generalisations of Latinas/os in the writings of many theorists. Due to that she insists that postcolonialism must not speak in monolithic and essentialist categories. Furthermore, not only does the term postcolonial not apply to non-indigenous Latin Americans, but concepts, such as criollos, metizos or mulatos still admit elitisms in privileging the Spanish. Thus, in a reference to Fernando F. Segovia, the task of Latino/a theology for Gonzalez must be to find a middle path stemming from the fundamental mestizaje and mulatez, the diasporic experiences, of Latinas/os. Following the trace of mestizaje, Gonzalez then outlines Roberto S. Goizuetas theological anthropology. In the mestizaje/mulatez of Latina/o peoples there is a new subject that transcends the variety of communities to which he or she belongs. Goizueta complements the concept of community with relationality beyond the opposition of the communal and the individual. In addition, Gonzalez draws on Ada Maria Isai-Dazs mujerista-theology: for Latinas/os, relationships define people. Theologically, this is grounded in the relationship of the Community of the Trinity in which humans can partake, because they were created in the image of God. With the framework of the Divine Trinitarian relationship the unmasking of elitist and privileging in communities and relations is enabled.
VI. MONSTROSITIES, MIRACLES, AND MISSION

In a highlight of the volume, an urgently required broadening of the postcolonial scope is achieved in Sharon Betchers Monstrosities, Miracles, and Mission. Betcher first sketches out the Foucauldian unveiling of the Western obsession with an idealized wholeness and health of the body. She then traces how certain bodies have been othered as degenerate, defective and less whole. She continues with tracking the history of utilising the concept of degeneracy in conquering and colonizing. All this took place covertly, behind the faade of altruistic missionary aid, for those in need of full health. Her outline of Augustines representation of the monstrous races that populate the fringes of the known world as disabled is striking. The sole purpose of monstrous

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races, according to Augustine, is to de-monstrate, like stage props, how there is no limit for Gods reconstructing of normal bodies. After all in Christian Eschatology heaven would surely normalize the disabled human body. The metaphor of disablement runs through Scripture and Christian Dogma often confuses disability with moral degeneracy (for example, Mt 9 and Mk 2). This tendency can often be found even in contemporary theological writing. With Betcher, disability becomes a keystone in Christian teleological imagination, equalled with suffering as something to be overcome. Betcher rightly claims that disabled persons do not necessarily experience their disabilities as suffering. While it is agreed, that the suffering of disabled persons is in great part caused by mechanisms of social exclusion and stigmatisation,2 her assertion is near to generalising people with physiological challenges as the disabled. I want to claim, then, that the experience of disablement greatly differs depending on particular abilities and context. This also stresses how disability cannot be homogenized, but is yet anotherembodiedlevel of the inscription of power and oppression. The motif of delimitation and containment of degeneracy and disablement has been a driving force for modern rationality, evolutionary theory, colonialism and Foucauldian bio-power. The extent to which colonial terminology applies to disabilities as essentialised markers of otherness remains striking. Consequently, Betcher rightly postulates that Christianity needs to depart from reading life conquers death as a claim for physical wholeness. The latter is nothing but an idealized hallucination that can efficiently be unmasked by turning to the emerging field of disability studies.
VII. WHO/WHAT IS ASIAN?

Namsoon Kang in Who/What is Asian? takes a close look at emerging Asian theological discourses. Kang initially introduces Saids theory of Orientalism and discusses the effects of the Wests constructing Asia as its other and as a homogenous cultural unity. Consequently, efforts by Asian theologians to recapture Asianness is easily captured in the same we-they binarism. Initially a constructive endeavour, this dynamic in fact erases differences. Kang refers to Spivak who names this the strategic choice of essentialism (p.104). This strategy proves to be a double edged sword. In the effort to subsume the majority of Asian culture and religion under one unity, markers such as poverty or religious multiplicity result in an artificial and monolithic Asianness. With this comes the necessity to painstakingly contradict anything considered Western. To be an authentic Asian theologian requires spicing up arguments with bits of folklore, ancient stories, and shamanistic symbols. Kang is rightly critical of such theologizing. This re-essentialisation gives away the resources that more differentiated comprehensions of Asia offer. Thus, for example, Asian womens lives transcend being exclusively determined by suffering and exploitation when they are teachers, doctors, or housewives. In short, there is no Asian womens experience in general (p.107). Such essentialised visualizations of Asia are manifold. For example Kang describes how she felt turned into a pluralized and discursive me the Asian/Korean women when she read Rosemary Radford Ruethers review of Asian feminist theology as one unified discourse. In contrast, with the theoretical framework of Bhabhas hybridity, she invites unusual coalitions within Asia and with the West and to explore elements of identity beyond ethnicity. Turning, from the what question for the essential

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core of Asia, to the who question leads to the acknowledgement of the decentred, everchanging hybrid selves of Asia.
VIII. HOMELAND AS BORDERLAND

In his persuasive essay Homeland as Borderland Michael Nausner discusses the metaphor of the secure homeland/turf versus its other, the foreign land. According to Nausner, on the one hand, a shift from text to territory in the study of religion is helpful to avoid cutting off localised and embodied practice. On the other hand, however, Christian practice is never entirely wedded to one given space. Hence Nausner argues for a theological understanding of homeland as borderland. Drawing from Paul Tillich, he proposes that everything must be understood (de fine) from its limits. The metaphor boundary in Greek philosophy is broader than a plain delimiting line, but rather a place from which something begins its presence. Nausner chooses the colonial context of British occupied India as an example for his re-conceptualisation of boundary. Through the experience of a shared fear in colonial India, boundaries between colonizers and colonized ceased to guarantee clear separations. Boundaries as third spaces of exchange then undermine national and cultural detachment and problematise the concept of homeland as a natural place where some belong and others do not. On the contrary, following Nausner, the boundary needs to be appreciated as home, a place to practice solidarity with those who do not belong there. Nausner subsequently introduces the thought of anthropologist Sam Gill. Gill presents the Aborigine perception of territoriality, understood as a net of tracks, trails of journeys made before. For Aborigines, territory is important for identity, yet different nets of tracks can be laid out over the same area. From this nomadic context Nausner draws a suggestive metaphor for the experience of modern nomadic lifestyles. All the same I have reservations that this romanticises nomadic ways of life and illegitimately transfers it to cosmopolitanism. Not only is it above all the elite who can debauch in a cosmopolitan journey through life, but even for them a nomadic construction of life is often momentary, unconnected, and chaotic.3 Yes, to some extent, Jesus led a nomadic life. Yet, this nomadism was partly caused by persecution and had little to do with a lifestyle choice. Ultimately, the messiah was a pilgrim with a final destination (Jerusalem). Maybe the metaphor of pilgrimage could balance out some of my reservations. Also, I suggest, in 2011 for many the experience of a journey through space and time has been replaced by the contraction of space through communication technologies. This achieves the sense of a general arrival, in which the element of travelling through space is lost.4 Nevertheless, Nausner is correct in claiming that theology should not misapply its inherent tendency to transcend place. Whereas only Christ truly transcends boundaries, Christians need to limit themselves to negotiating at the place of boundaries. In the end boundaries are the source for Christian identity and require negotiation before neat divisions. Eventually Nausners construction of homeland as borderland vividly demonstrates how the idea of a pure and enshrined domestic home is nothing but an illusionary grasping for the notion of a Golden Age before the unsettling streams of migration set in. Nausners essay, however, might have gained in applicability by

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including contemporary methods of theology and ethnography along with an appreciation of the revolution of communication technologies even in some of the poorest countries in the world.
IX. MARK AND EMPIRE

Stephen D. Moores essay Mark and Empire is a seminal piece that provides a good orientation for postcolonial theory in biblical exegesis. Moore begins with Marks story of the Gerasene in Mark 5. He initially states that the historical critical exegesis largely failed to acknowledge the anti-imperialist topics in Mark. It is unclear where Moores preconception of the historical critical tradition stems from. Simply quoting Robert H. Gundrys 1993 commentary neither establishes the nature of the historical critical method nor does it amount to a basis for its critique. Indeed, to interpret Mk 5 as directed against Roman occupation is not a novelty, but has often been pleaded for by historical critical exegetes.5 Moore does, however, present Markan models of community alternative to top down hierarchies, such as the favouring of children, servants and slaves. Yet, Moore can identify an elitist counter-narrative in Mark. This counter-narrative keeps the egalitarian strand in check through, for example, the central role of the twelve Apostles. Moore is bold enough to question whether the Markan Jesus fails to overcome a simple bottom up shift of power, whilst maintaining the same rationality of dominance. The suffering and death of the messiah in this rationality would be a calculated divine risk that will be recompensed enormously with the returning Christ as the ultimate ruling power in imperial splendour (what Moore calls the eschatological no pain no gain formula). Moore then contrasts this with the story of the Widows Mite (Mk 12:41-44). Here, in an unusual and largely disregarded section of Mark, he sees a model for action of self-divestment and a true expenditure. Without pre-calculations the widows offering exceeds the logic of pain and gain in an absolute and thankless gesture. She gave a true gift that cannot be made up for and that shatters the logic of giving and receiving in return. Eventually the Markan widow and unusual leadership metaphors compromise the bare replacement of one imperial ruler by another.
X. THE TRANSGRESSIVE POWER OF JEONG

In The Transgressive Power of Jeong W. Anne Joh, reflecting on her own experience as a foreigner to her contemporaries, promotes the concept of Jeong. With emerging Asian theologies the Korean concept of hanthe unfathomable and generation-spanning experience of paingained great attention. The answer to han is dan. Literally dan means to cut off (p.151), to personally engage in self-denial and withdrawal. In a suggestive argument Joh unfolds the concept of jeong as healing han without letting go of the relationship or without cutting off what or who caused it. Jeong is difficult to contour, combining aspects of both Eros and Agape. Jeong lives in the relations of the self to the other while blurring the clear distinction between them. Jeong is found in the gaps, fissures and boundary zones postcolonial theory is concerned with. Perpetuating the relationship with those causing grief and poverty, in the long run, jeong breaks the circle of han and brings about wholeness. Bringing to mind Levinas concept of the O/others face, jeong confronts us with the responsibility to maintain connections of solidarity.

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Joh re-constructs a Jesus who at times angrily practices dan, for example in the cleansing of the temple. Despite this, Jesus above all embodies the practice of jeong. He always seeks interpersonal relationship rather than withdrawal or exclusion. It is fascinating that there seems to be no Western word that can encompass what jeong entails, despite the fact that the reader is inclined to recognise the term as if he had long known and experienced it. Finally, Jeong allows shifting soteriology from sacrificial suffering to an inclusivist transformation of relationships that redefines mutuality.
XI. DIVINE COMMERCE

In Divine Commerce Marion Grau envisages Jesus as a divine trickster and a counterfeit ransom. Grau goes a long way to treat the role of Jesus Christ in Gods salvific plan as equal with the fate of prostitutes and modern slaves. She then tries to bring this together with metaphors borrowed from economics. The link between conubium-marriage and commercium, according to Grau, goes back to the legal system of the Roman Empire. Both rely on the idea of bonding slaves and wives. Redemption, in contrast, is conceptualised by her as a buying back of lives from the hands of the Adversary or oppressors. To Grau, Jesus is an attractive object for the Adversary because he has certain characteristics that make him valuable: sin-free, virgin born, and Gods only child. Grau describes Jesus as camouflaging his true capacities and mocking the exploitative system of hierarchic exchange. For this she employs Luthers doctrine of the gay exchange (frhlicher Wechsel). Grau is correct to criticise androcentric and misogynist language in Luthers Von der Freiheit eines Christenmenschen (De libertate Christiana, On the Freedom of a Christian - which includes the section on the admirable exchange). Here Luther talks about how the splendid husband Jesus rescues the tiny, poor little whore (the believers soul). However, Luther is talking about the annihilation of sins through achieving a unity between believer and Christ. In Luthers commercium admirabile Christ takes over the possessions of the believertheir sinsand gives them the goods of salvation (inenerrabilia bona) in exchange. Thus Luthers metaphorical use of economic language is more about participation in Christ, in becoming a unity with him, than about the logic of trading in a quid-pro-quo rationality. Consequently, Grau misappropriates the idea behind Luthers metaphorical imagery and forces it into the unambiguous structure of capitalist commerce. Grau draws from Althaus-Reid when she criticises the image of kenosis as Jesus willingly subjugating to slavery in Phil 2. This, she says, devalues involuntary suffering and slavery. Then, in a rather opaque segment, she transfers Bhabhas concept of mimicry to Christ when she writes:
This counterfeit/ing Christ of divine commerce thus embodies mimicry as something like an ironic compromise between identity, stasis and change, difference. Like a sacred trickster, he shows forth the shocking; performs perfidy; hails the hysterical; provides a hermeneutic of hyperbole, a syntax of sarcasm and invents idioms of irony.6

The vagueness of these daring words remains unresolved throughout the essay. This is mainly because Grau does not explain how exactly Christ performs perfidy or

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promotes hyperbole. Equally, she avoids explaining how Christs prostituting himself is sexual beyond the universal libidinal hunger of the devil who he sells his body too. Taking advantages of the Adversarys libidinal greed for expansion, the spotless Christ seduces him to liberate the oppressed, much like a Trojan horse. Now, Grau invites us to engage in a com-merce (a common investment) into our retirement fund, if you will. Our investment in Christs incarnation is necessary. For it is not more than a down payment or matching grant that requires fulfilment (p. 183). The metaphor of a down payment, however, runs the risk of neglecting Gods singular salvific act, setting humanity free from sin, bailing it out, once and for all. At first I was intrigued by the possibilities of the economic metaphors employed in this essay. I thought it embodied a striking contradiction to Moores essay above, which discusses the calculated, tongue in cheek divine wager in Christ who ignores the contribution of the poorest. However, Graus essay leaves a sour taste. For it somehow makes Christ a hyperactive, opalescent and deceptive prostitute, which does no justice to the experiences of those captured in the sex trade. I do not see how there could be anything redemptive about selling ones body for a suitable price. On the other hand, Grau steers clear of unusual and provocative sexual practices that could actually be liberating and transgress the decency of the elites, as Foucault describes.7 Second, the metaphor of commerce, even when it is deceiving and used to question economics, in the end basically leaves intact the system of the Adversary, of quid pro quo, without escape or alternative. Third, Christ as counterfeit ransom is uncomfortably close to a Docetism that does away with Christs actual suffering. How exactly can Christ, truly God and truly human, be counterfeit? This is reflected in Graus stopping short at relating her fascinating conceptualisation to human sin, which is essential in Luthers commercium admirabile, as well as in the Christian doctrine of redemption.
XII. GOD AT THE CROSSROADS

In God at the Crossroads Mayra Rivera re-introduces the often forgotten figure of Sophia from a postcolonial perspective. Witnessing the traces of pre-Logos configurations of deity, Sophia in the book of Proverbs is foreign and female, with a complex identity between divergence and the idealisation of Israelite women. Depicted as wife, lover, mother, she combines different motifs of ancient goddesses who sneak into the biblical text: Isis, Ishtar (who is linked to justice), Maat (representing cosmic ordering), or the Semitic mother goddess. Sophia was created by God according to Proverbs 8, but she was also a crucial part of the creation of the world. Begotten by the Lord, poured out from the womb, she was brought forth (Prov. 8:22-25). Born by a male deity, Sophia resists definitions or stable identity. Before John transferred the qualities of Sophia to the Hellenist Logos, a masculine figure at the beginning of everything, it was Sophia who stood between God and Logos, as a shape-shifting facet. Called by many names, Sophia was the mediatress of Gods joy who invites us to find joy in her again. Eventually, Sophia represents transcendence different from that of the Godhead. Defiantly close she fosters resistance against the confirmation of the constant same. With her sublime portrayal of Sophia as unwieldy and re-emerging from the fringes of the canon, Rivera describes a prototypic hybrid, nearby those at the crossroads, crying out for new thinking. I think Riveras essay is well grounded in her detailed and

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cogent exegeses of the biblical Sophia motif and that it is a welcome impulse to rethink the genesis of doctrine and Scripture from the viewpoint of who has been pushed out. Rivera also manages to also relate Sophia to the pressing issues of refugees and foreign women for whom Sophia takes a stand.
XIII. LIBERATING GOD-TALK

In Liberating God-Talk Joerg Rieger re-evaluates the significance of the liberationist option for the poor from a postcolonial standpoint. In a historical survey covering the entanglement of Christianity in the period of colonisation, Rieger shows how aspects of Christian theology itself became manifestations of imperialism. He refers to F.E.D. Schleiermacher and Max Weber to substantiate how despite all openness to the wisdom of China, India and Egypt, the Christian ambition for them was that they might reach a higher stage of cultural development. Rieger suggests that academia falls short of its newly scheduled inclusivism, when still it more often speaks about women and the Third World than giving them a voice. This insight is not new. The crux of postcolonial theory to easily fall into forms of self-sufficient ventriloquism has been pointed out by Gayatri Spivak, Neil Lazarus, Benita Perry and Tim Brennan. As a consequence, those writings from postcolonial spaces, composed in languages not in the academic canon, must find acceptance into volumes concerned with postcolonialism. Rieger introduces the achievements of Subaltern Study Groups to make visible what Western cosmopolitan writers often overlook: momentary, localised experiences of resistance. Here Rieger introduces a rereading of John 8:32 the truth will make you free. First, truth in his thought is a relational event, present in those at the margins who are the truth rather than speak the truth. Second, truth can only be perceived from the margins, as it is the condition of colonised bodies. Third, truth is never separated from action. It is the counter-gaze of the exploited woman, mirroring back the agency of those in charge. Eventually, Rieger advocates God-Talk that is no longer a projection of the status quo, but provides agency to those pressed into the margins. Ironically, this is one downside of this volume, which exclusively features writers educated and based in Anglo-American academia. On the other hand, all contributors carefully reflect on their own experiences and backgrounds. Interestingly enough their considerations confirm that in fact we all have nothing but innumerably fragmented genealogies to show.
XIV. THE LOVE OF POSTCOLONIALISM

In the final piece, The Love of Postcolonialism Catherine Keller develops a paradigm for liberating anti-imperialist activity, the practice of love. According to Keller, from the vision of a plurality in unity of Pentecost to the homogenizing and absorbing of difference that came with Constantines Imperial faith, Christianity was always concerned with imperialism. Today, Keller sees a self-renewal of Christianity sparking from the postcolonial situations of Latin America, the Caribbean, Asia, Africa, and Oceania, where a new multi-linguistic glossolalia (speaking in tongues) emerges. Her constructive theology seeks to promote what she calls a counterimperial ecology of love. Keller asserts that the post-modern human condition still shares something that is globally mutual: the globe-spanning vulnerability of relying on an intact

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planet and body that concerns humanity as a whole and that can lead to an ethics of hospitality. Keller then discusses the socialist theory of Empire by Hardt and Negri and the review of postcolonialism by theologian John Milbank in great detail. Strikingly, both of these influential anti-imperialist premises culminate in advocating a Christian sanctity of love. They refer to the space of the creation and a Christian imagination of an alternative world. Following this, Gayatri Spivaks Critique of Postcolonial Reason is introduced and, drawing from her, Keller criticises misconducts of postcolonial theory such as its Eurocentrism and its hybrid triumphalism. With Spivak, Keller unexpectedly brings together Christian liberation theologies and animation theology. Thus she brings about a new awareness for the ecological sphere of love on the green planet. Postcolonial love becomes re-articulated in mimicry of Christian liberation theology leading to what Keller calls a new liberation-animist eco-hybrid.8 This form of love demands the continuation of the vision for a common global humanity, a differentiated multitude in unity. Finally, Keller relates her spiritual ecological love to the conception of embodiment, as it entails a love for everything organic, everything alive. This can counter Christianitys idealised mind-over-body rationality favouring male/mind/idea over female/body/matter. Love, Keller concludes, can never be disembodied for it is the doctrine of Incarnation that makes love Christian. Keller concludes her convincing and far-sighted essay in saying that love requires concrete places and bodies, connected on the surface of a planet that could even be called the Body of God itself, particularly considering global ecological crises and its unforeseeable social impact.

1 2

Robert W. Jenson, Visible Words (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1978), 155, 158. There is a German saying that reflects this: Behindert ist man nicht, behindert wird man, which translates into One is not impaired (naturally, by birth), one becomes impaired by others. 3 See for a discussion of nomadic and pilgrim lifestyle Zygmunt Baumans seminal Mortality, immortality and other life strategies (Oxford: Polity Press, 1992), 164-168 4 David Morley, Home territories, media, mobility and identity (London: Routledge, 2000), 210. 5 See for example Gerd Theissens Urchristliche Wundergeschichten (Bonn, Univ., Evang.-Theol. Fak., 1972), 252f, who develops the link between the Roman political occupation and possession and who was followed by a multitude of exegetes, see e.g. Paul W. Hollenbach, Jesus, Demoniacs and Public Authorities: A Socio-Historical Study, JAAR, 49 (1981), who, in turn, draws heavily on Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (New York: Ballantine, 1963). 6 Marion Grau, Divine Commerce, in Keller, Theologies, p.177. 7 Jeremy R. Carette, Michel Foucault, Religion and Culture (Manchester: University Press, 1999), 25f. 8 Catherine Keller, The Love of Postcolonialism, in Keller, Theologies, 240.

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