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The Beloved Disciple in the Gospel of John

Ismo Dunderberg

in The Beloved Disciple in Conflict?: Revisiting the Gospels of John and Thomas

This chapter argues that the enigmatic ‘disciple Jesus loved’ in John cannot be identified, and that the evidence for his role as the founder and the leader of the Johannine group remains meagre. The ... More

This chapter argues that the enigmatic ‘disciple Jesus loved’ in John cannot be identified, and that the evidence for his role as the founder and the leader of the Johannine group remains meagre. The Beloved Disciple is no doubt an ideal figure in John, but he is not necessarily portrayed as a paradigm of true faith to the audience. Rather, his major function is to authenticate the contents of the Gospel of John. While he is often compared to the Paraclete in John, his figure is more closely connected with that of Jesus. He is one link in the chain of the transmission of divine revelation: the Father supplied the beloved Son with this revelation, and the Beloved Disciple was needed to transmit it to future generations.Less

The Beloved Disciple and Thomas

Ismo Dunderberg

in The Beloved Disciple in Conflict?: Revisiting the Gospels of John and Thomas

This chapter shows that there is neither a sufficient basis for the identification of the Beloved Disciple with Thomas, nor for the theory that the Syrian Judas Thomas tradition had some impact on ... More

This chapter shows that there is neither a sufficient basis for the identification of the Beloved Disciple with Thomas, nor for the theory that the Syrian Judas Thomas tradition had some impact on how this disciple is described in John. A clear difference between the Johannine Beloved Disciple and the picture of Thomas drawn in the Gospel of Thomas is delineated. Unlike the latter, the Beloved Disciple is not described in terms of his better understanding or having access to the secret teaching of Jesus.Less

Conclusion

Ismo Dunderberg

in The Beloved Disciple in Conflict?: Revisiting the Gospels of John and Thomas

This chapter offers a summary of results and a brief reflection on how scholars’ reading of the Gospel of John is affected by the fact that it is included in the NT canon. This fact explains why ... More

This chapter offers a summary of results and a brief reflection on how scholars’ reading of the Gospel of John is affected by the fact that it is included in the NT canon. This fact explains why there is a need to bring John and Thomas closer to each other than they really are. This fact also generates new theories as to the identity of the Beloved Disciple and his role in the Johannine community.Less

Enfleshing Love: A Decolonial Theological Reading of Beloved

M. Shawn Copeland

in Beyond the Doctrine of Man: Decolonial Visions of the Human

This chapter draws on Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved to unsettle meanings of freedom, love, and subjectivity. It uses a decolonial political theological perspective that pivots on two paradoxical ... More

This chapter draws on Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved to unsettle meanings of freedom, love, and subjectivity. It uses a decolonial political theological perspective that pivots on two paradoxical aspects of Christianity: its entanglement with the colonial anthropological deformation that Sylvia Wynter refers to as “Man” and its commitment to justice as social transformation inspired by the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. In reading Morrison’s novel, Copeland leaves the reader without a tidy conclusion that returns to an affirmation of Christian tradition. Prioritizing black existential pain that pervades Morrison’s work, this chapter offers the most sacred identity of the human person, which it argues is realized in enfleshing love, as a site for unsettling modern/colonial anthropological distortions.Less

Le petit paradis des blessés

Christine E. Hallett

in Nurse Writers of the Great War

American millionaire, Mary Borden, established three field hospitals in the French lines during the First World War. The first of these, L’Hopital Chirurgical Mobile No. 1, was both an effective ... More

American millionaire, Mary Borden, established three field hospitals in the French lines during the First World War. The first of these, L’Hopital Chirurgical Mobile No. 1, was both an effective military hospital and a cauldron of literary creativity. Although Borden’s contribution is well-documented, that of her head nurse, Agnes Warner, is less well-known. Warner’s book, My Beloved Poilus, was well-received in her home-province, New Brunswick, Canada, but has, until now, received very little attention from historians.Less

Arteries of the Nation: Rivers of Redemption in Toni Morrison's Beloved and Henry Dumas's “Ark of Bones”

Anissa Janine Wardi

in Water and African American Memory: An Ecocritical Perspective

This chapter reads rivers as a synecdoche of the nation. Historically, rivers were both arteries of the slave trade and conduits to freedom, as their surrounding geographies determined such ... More

This chapter reads rivers as a synecdoche of the nation. Historically, rivers were both arteries of the slave trade and conduits to freedom, as their surrounding geographies determined such conditions. While danger is part of the larger conceptualization of the rivers, the catharsis provided by these rushing waters is unmistakable. Thus, the chapter examines the sanctuary that the Ohio and the Mississippi offer, identifying rivers as spaces of absolution and spiritual healing. Particular focus is placed on Toni Morrison's Beloved and Henry Dumas' “Ark of Bones,” as the Atlantic Ocean morphs into the rivers Mississippi and Ohio.Less

Green Ecology and Healing: Botanical Life in Beloved, Home, and Song of Solomon

Anissa Janine Wardi

in Toni Morrison and the Natural World: An Ecology of Color

This chapter considers green as the preeminent color of ecological thought, environmental discourse and conservation movements. Most importantly, green is the color of chlorophyll, which produces the ... More

This chapter considers green as the preeminent color of ecological thought, environmental discourse and conservation movements. Most importantly, green is the color of chlorophyll, which produces the oxygen necessary to sustain life on earth. Attention will be paid to those characters in Morrison’s fiction who find respite, that is, breathing space, in the green world. What emerges in Morrison’s fiction are moments of enchantment with the plant world that provide a contrast to the unrelenting and ubiquitous social networks of racism in which the community is enmeshed. Even in Beloved, Morrison’s treatise on the brutality of chattel slavery, characters experience notable moments of enchantment with the vegetal world. Likewise, in Song of Solomon and Home, characters achieve a measure of health and healing through interactions with botanicals: forest trees, backyard flora, and plant seeds.Less

Claiming, Killing, and Haunting in Toni Morrison’s Beloved

Sarah Gilbreath Ford

in Haunted Property: Slavery and the Gothic

This chapter examines Toni Morrison’s Beloved (1987). In reading Sethe’s impossible choice between ending her children’s lives or letting them be taken back into slavery, critics have largely blamed ... More

This chapter examines Toni Morrison’s Beloved (1987). In reading Sethe’s impossible choice between ending her children’s lives or letting them be taken back into slavery, critics have largely blamed her daughter’s death on the system of slavery. That critics do not want to blame Sethe for the murder is understandable, given how much she suffers under slavery. What these critics miss, however, is Sethe’s agency. In killing Beloved and attempting to kill the rest of her children, Sethe makes a property claim that speaks directly to the history of cases on American property law and slavery. This chapter examines Sethe’s choice in the context of State v. Mann and Pierson v. Post, arguing that her willingness to destroy makes her a valid property owner. Her legal possession, however, is answered by spectral possession when Beloved haunts to reclaim personhood.Less

Tracing Trauma in Rape Fiction of the Long 1990s

Robin E. Field

in Writing the Survivor: The Rape Novel in Late Twentieth-Century American Fiction

The 1990s rape novels depict contested stories of sexual assault by employing the rhetorical techniques of postmodernism and writing about trauma to eschew the linear narration of realism that ... More

The 1990s rape novels depict contested stories of sexual assault by employing the rhetorical techniques of postmodernism and writing about trauma to eschew the linear narration of realism that imposes certain textual interpretations. The portrayal of rape and incest in these novels echoes the pattern of trauma experienced by their characters in their complicated narration and, often, lack of tidy resolution. This model of rape fiction offers a compelling explanation to readers for the varying portrayals of rape and sexual violence seen in contemporary society, countering those who dismiss charges of sexual abuse as exaggerated or untrue.Less

Allah Remembered: Practice of the Heart

Bruce B. Lawrence

in Who Is Allah?

This chapter discusses the practice of remembering Allah. If the ordinary believer asks for guidance through prayer and invoking Allah's name, the devout Sufi seeks to access the One beyond and ... More

This chapter discusses the practice of remembering Allah. If the ordinary believer asks for guidance through prayer and invoking Allah's name, the devout Sufi seeks to access the One beyond and before all that is, or ever will be, through remembrance. Remembrance is an intense, unending pursuit of the deepest interior connection with Allah. Sufi masters have traveled the perilous path (tariqa)—through poetry and prose, music and dance, with dieting and fasting—to find the Divine Beloved. The psychological reflex of remembrance is so varied, intense, and persistent that it anticipates the insight of the father of modern psychology, William James, for whom belief in God was less important than how one felt about belief in God.Less

Royce's Late Philosophy

Dwayne A. Tunstall

in Yes, But Not Quite: Encountering Josiah Royce's Ethico-Religious Insight

This chapter addresses Howison's critique of Royce's idealistic metaphysics. It looks at the significance of the will to interpret for the constitution of human personhood ... More

This chapter addresses Howison's critique of Royce's idealistic metaphysics. It looks at the significance of the will to interpret for the constitution of human personhood and that of the divine Self, as well as how Royce's late conception of human personhood. It holds that a divine person is the one who “inspires, guides, and empowers” human persons to live lives in accord with the ideal of the Beloved Community. The chapter continues the interpretative task by examining the significance of Royce's ethico-religious insight in his The Problem of Christianity and his Extension Course on Ethics. The chapter ends with a comparison of Howison's personal idealism and Royce's idealistic metaphysics, showing that by 1915 Royce's metaphysics of community became very similar to Howison's personal idealism.Less

King's Beloved Community,Royce's Metaphysics

Dwayne A. Tunstall

in Yes, But Not Quite: Encountering Josiah Royce's Ethico-Religious Insight

This chapter compares Martin Luther King, Jr.'s philosophical theology, specifically his notions of the Beloved Community and agape, with Josiah Royce's metaphysics of ... More

This chapter compares Martin Luther King, Jr.'s philosophical theology, specifically his notions of the Beloved Community and agape, with Josiah Royce's metaphysics of community and its notion of the Beloved Community. It suggests how King's personalism, specifically his notion of the Beloved Community, could be strengthened by placing these notions in a Roycean metaphysical framework. It also suggests how King's philosophical nonviolence could serve as a more fertile ground for Royce's ethics and metaphysics of community than Royce's own later social and political positions, specifically his pro-World War I stance.Less

Figures of Estrangement

Joanne Lipson Freed

in Haunting Encounters: The Ethics of Reading across Boundaries of Difference

Chapter 1 offers a foundational reading of two contemporary works in which literal, embodied ghosts or specters intrude into and transform the terrain of traditional literary realism: Toni Morrison’s ... More

Chapter 1 offers a foundational reading of two contemporary works in which literal, embodied ghosts or specters intrude into and transform the terrain of traditional literary realism: Toni Morrison’s Beloved and Mahasweta Devi’s novella, “Pterodactyl, Puran Sahay, and Pirtha.” By introducing embodied ghosts into otherwise realistically rendered fictional landscapes, these works intentionally disrupt the familiar narrative protocols that allow them to be made meaningful—both those which insist on the mimetic realness of the supernatural events they depict, and those which invite us to read those events metaphorically. But by staging exorcisms, which banish the supernatural and allow characters like Puran, Sethe, and Denver to re-join the communities from which they had estranged themselves, these works also acknowledge the necessity of compromise: although something is inevitably lost when Beloved and “Pterodactyl” are placed into interpretive circulation, something important is gained as well.Less

Prologue: Community in Fiction after Auschwitz

J. Hillis Miller

in The Conflagration of Community: Fiction before and after Auschwitz

This Prologue outlines and gives overview of the chapters following. A certian amount of anxiety comes from this study of Holocaust literature, and this analysis might be destined for failure. ... More

This Prologue outlines and gives overview of the chapters following. A certian amount of anxiety comes from this study of Holocaust literature, and this analysis might be destined for failure. Concerns relate to the size of the task of examining the enormous body of primary and secondary Holocaust literature. Can something new be said on the subject? Another concern relates to the nature of testimony and witnessing. How important is it to have witnessed? The next few chapters examine amongst other things Jean-Luc Nancy’s “Forbidden Representation” and Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved.Less

Morrison’s Beloved

J. Hillis Miller

in The Conflagration of Community: Fiction before and after Auschwitz

Toni Morrison’s Beloved is a novel whose chief aim is, in her own words, to “rememory” slavery despite the obvious implication that it is better to forget it. Slavery and its aftermath is perhaps the ... More

Toni Morrison’s Beloved is a novel whose chief aim is, in her own words, to “rememory” slavery despite the obvious implication that it is better to forget it. Slavery and its aftermath is perhaps the closest thing to the Shoah in United States history. In her foreword to the Vintage International Edition of Beloved (2004) Morrison writes about the attempt to make the slave experience an intimate one, and in the process of doing so, she states, it creates a violence in the quietude of everyday life, keeping the memory of enslavement and its inherent involvement of suffering, alive. The reading of Beloved surprisingly creates a useful and even indispensable means of understanding the mechanisms that govern our present-day world of “terrorists,” the War on Terror, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, cyberspace, and global tele-techno-military-capitalism. In turn, this moving story creates a sense of responsibility to avoid any future emergences of this memory of slavery.Less

Contouring Black Hope and Despair

Lisa M. Corrigan

in Black Feelings: Race and Affect in the Long Sixties

This chapter examines Martin Luther King, Jr.’s production of the “beloved community” that he wanted to produce through direct action protests in places like Birmingham, Selma, and Chicago. It ... More

This chapter examines Martin Luther King, Jr.’s production of the “beloved community” that he wanted to produce through direct action protests in places like Birmingham, Selma, and Chicago. It evaluates how hope, disappointment, indignation, and despair framed King’s direct action and the SCLC’s intimate relationship with the black middle class, the White House, and white liberals. After John F. Kennedy’s assassination, King’s faith and optimism were shaken and his language about emotion shifted as he was forced to reconsider and respond to the use of rage as a black political emotion because the decade gave way to a more militant black posture about the white political and emotional inadequacies. Corrigan argues that white failure to perform intimate citizenship limited the civil rights movement and fueled rhetorical expressions that engaged a very different emotional repertoire for both whites and blacks. Many of King’s discourses, especially in relation to Birmingham, focused on the relationship between hope and despair as he attempted to translate black feelings about civil rights to white publics as the crisis of hope deepened in 1963.Less

Tragedy and Moral Experience: John Dewey and Toni Morrison's Beloved

in In a Shade of Blue: Pragmatism and the Politics of Black America

No one really questions John Dewey's commitment to democracy, but he was never truly attentive in his philosophical work to the problem of racism in America. Cornel West argues in “Pragmatism and the ... More

No one really questions John Dewey's commitment to democracy, but he was never truly attentive in his philosophical work to the problem of racism in America. Cornel West argues in “Pragmatism and the Sense of the Tragic” that Dewey simply fails to grapple seriously with tragedy and the problem of evil. In his view, Dewey's pragmatism does not address the realities of dread, disease, and death that threaten our democratic ways of thought and life. This chapter argues that Dewey's pragmatic philosophy offers unique insights that can help us address some of the more intractable problems posed by racism in the United States, from the difficulties of identity politics to the persistence of structural racism. It first reconstructs Dewey's philosophy of democracy in light of the realities of race that have defined America, and then maintains that both Hilary Putnam and Cornel West fail to grasp the importance of contingency and conflict in Dewey's philosophy of action. The chapter also examines the tragic dimensions of Dewey's thought by analyzing Toni Morrison's novel Beloved.Less

A Friend of My Mind, or Where I Enter

Simone C. Drake

in When We Imagine Grace: Black Men and Subject Making

Privileging imagination and creativity, this chapter is composed of vignettes that consider the complex and sometimes paradoxical relationship between crisis, vulnerability, and empowerment. It ... More

Privileging imagination and creativity, this chapter is composed of vignettes that consider the complex and sometimes paradoxical relationship between crisis, vulnerability, and empowerment. It begins with Toni Morrison’s Beloved as a theoretical framework for seeing what imagining grace looks like and demonstrating how black feminist theory provides important tools for seeing power in vulnerability and emotiveness. President Obama’s appearance on the cover of Ms. and his accompanying feminist declaration, social commentary on Tom Joyner’s radio show, Donald McKayle’s dance performance “Rainbow ‘Round My Shoulder,” Richard Pryor’s comedy, Presidential initiated social policy, and the visual art of Kehinde Wiley all work together to illustrate how the author both employs and negotiates the challenges of synthesizing black feminist and black masculinity studies. Read together, these vignettes lay out the stakes for critical black gender studies, as well as the complicated nature of constructing complex masculine identities in an era dominated by dialogues of crisis. While vulnerability and emotiveness is privileged in this chapter, the chapter also considers how what Mark Anthony Neal references as illegible masculinities—those expressing vulnerability in this case—are not always a progressive performance that fosters self-actualization and resistance to crisis metaphors.Less

Slavery, the Civil War, and Reconstruction

Tessa Roynon

in Toni Morrison and the Classical Tradition: Transforming American Culture

This chapter argues that in Beloved and Jazz, Morrison writes against the identification that the ‘Old South’, the Confederate cause, and the pro-slavery elements of American society consistently ... More

This chapter argues that in Beloved and Jazz, Morrison writes against the identification that the ‘Old South’, the Confederate cause, and the pro-slavery elements of American society consistently make with Athens, with Ancient Greek culture, and with ancient slavery. In so doing, she participates in and extends the tradition of abolitionist classicism that harnessed the same body of culture — that of the ancient world — to completely opposing ends. It explores Morrison's motivated use of tragic, epic and pastoral conventions in these contexts, and her revisionary dialogue with Virgil, Ovid, Phillis Wheatley, Crévecoeur, and with William Faulkner in her rewritings of Southern history.Less