Do Not Conform to the Patterns of this World! A Postcolonial Investigation of Performativity, Metamorphoses and Bodily Materiality in Romans 12. (September 2014)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Auga, Ulrike; Schirr, Bertram J.
• Is Part Of: Feminist theology. Volume 23:Number 1(2014:Sep.)
• Page Start: 37
• Page End: 54
• Publication Date: 2014-09
• Subjects: Body theology -- hybridity -- materiality -- metaphoricity -- performativity -- postcolonial exegesis -- St. Paul; 230.08205
• DOI: 10.1177/0966735014542377
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0966-7350

Abstract

The coexistence of radically resistant body theology and unrestricted demands for submission in Rom. 12 and 13 presents a unique and unsettling dilemma for feminist and postcolonial exegetes and theorists. With a critical discussion of postcolonial hybridity theory and a turn towards – and back to – performativity this paper pushes the deviant metaphoricity in Rom. 12 from a shadowy existence to the centre stage and thereby redevelops Pauline concepts of perpetual bodily transformations as a challenge to reified body ideologies. We demonstrate how the marginalized, subjugated and colonized body experience of St. Paul becomes a resource for opening, materialized and pervasive stimuli that go beyond essentializing identitarian and excluding body configurations.