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Power

Steven Angelides

in The Fear of Child Sexuality: Young People, Sex, and Agency

Throughout the past decade and a half there has been an explosion of media reportage suggesting a rise of epidemic proportions in cases of female secondary schoolteachers in relationships with ... More

Throughout the past decade and a half there has been an explosion of media reportage suggesting a rise of epidemic proportions in cases of female secondary schoolteachers in relationships with underage male pupils. At the center of this sex panic is the widespread disquiet over the abuse of power these relationships are presumed to involve. Precisely this assumption of inherent power differentials between teachers and students inherited from 1970s and 1980s child sexual abuse feminism provides the rationale for positions of authority legislation operative in many Western countries. This chapter interrogates this sexual offense legislation that automatically criminalizes sex between teachers and students where the latter are over the general age of consent. Examining an Australian criminal case as a window onto this broader anglophone phenomenon, it critiques the model of power informing such legislation. The chapter argues that this model of power misrecognizes the teacher–student relationships under scrutiny and often creates far greater harm than do the sexual relationships themselves. An alternative model of multidimensional intersubjective power relations is proposed as a way of rethinking power, analyzing interpersonal relationships, giving due weight to adolescent agency and difference, encouraging responsible sexual citizenship, and preventing unnecessary prosecutions and collateral damage.Less

Fantastic Detached Body Parts

in Ambiguous Bodies: Reading the Grotesque in Japanese Setsuwa Tales

This chapter examines setsuwa tales about detached parts that either act independently from the body or are otherwise fantastic in a severed state. The analysis of three setsuwa suggests that ... More

This chapter examines setsuwa tales about detached parts that either act independently from the body or are otherwise fantastic in a severed state. The analysis of three setsuwa suggests that fantastic detached body parts are sites of tension between conflicting desires and ideologies. The chapter explains that the tales are positioned to undermine people in the highest positions of authority and highlight the vulnerability and loss of the protagonists.Less

Development of Doctrine Patterns and Criteria: A teacher of the law can produce from his store both the new and the old (Mt 13.52 NEB)

Jaroslav Pelikan

in Interpreting the Bible and the Constitution

This chapter concerns the history of both the American Republic and the Christian Church, which make it clear that, alongside the authority of their original charters and in continuous interaction ... More

This chapter concerns the history of both the American Republic and the Christian Church, which make it clear that, alongside the authority of their original charters and in continuous interaction with that authority, the ongoing and cumulative interpretations of the Great Code in the form of tradition and precedent have come to occupy a privileged position of authority in their own right. The polemic of a fifth-century Western confession by Pope Leo the Great affirms this relation between the two: “A man who has not the most elementary understanding even of the creed itself can have learned nothing from the sacred texts of the New and Old Testaments. . . . At least he should have listened carefully and accepted the common and undivided creed by which the whole body of the faithful confess, . . . the purest source of the Christian faith.”Less