Appendix B: Postcolonial Approaches
Postcolonial readings of the Bible 1 highlight the presence of the empire, 2 which is relevant to various biblical texts. 3 Many scholars, for example, see the imperial cult as part of the regular experience of the seven churches of Asia Minor in Revelation. 4 Some of the NT declarations of “peace” may also challenge the hollow Augustan Pax Romana. 5
Varied Approaches
Postcolonial approaches vary, but their examination of social power dynamics can be fruitful. 6 Although some early postcolonial studies did not value studying texts in their ancient context, such neglect is not inherent in postcolonial approaches per se; 7 certainly social power was regularly an issue in ancient contexts, as both sociological and social-historical approaches often highlight. Neither need postcolonial approaches oppose biblical liberationist readings, although again early studies were sometimes used in this way. 8
At the same time, some scholars have warned uncritical users of the postcolonial label to keep in mind that not all empires are the same; 9 one cannot impose grids from one empire onto another without sensitivity to the differences. 10 Further, NT scholars’ use of “imperial studies” often needs to acquaint itself better with the diversity even in the Roman imperial cult, with its range of local and generational variation. 11 A wider concern from a traditional textual perspective, however, may be simply the danger of reading all texts through the same grid, a frequent danger in ideological criticism (though also in ideologically informed readings not self-critical enough to recognize their ideologies). 12
Particular postcolonial approaches vary among interpreters, often depending on their differing sociopolitical locations; 13 thus, for example, some Jewish feminists have complained about many Majority World postcolonialists’ appropriation of Western anti-Semitism in treating ancient Jews as religious colonizers. 14 Indeed, in some scholars’ hands, postcolonialism has become another opportunity for an educated elite to speak in the name of an underclass, and sometimes profit in their academic status by so speaking, without relinquishing personal privilege or helping the oppressed. 15
Post-postcolonial Readings?
At the same time, part of the genius of postcolonial approaches is that they embrace readings from diverse social locations. Although the seminal works remain highly influential, as students continue to develop their own approaches for a range of contexts, one might even come to speak of emerging postcolonialisms, and to evaluate each on its own terms. Just as postcolonial approaches rightly challenge the hegemony of traditional Western cultural assumptions, their very diversity should welcome voices that diverge from the views of some leading postcolonial thinkers. 16 That is, Majority World biblical scholars should continue to feel free to forge their own ways based on their own convictions and communities of interpretation, not beholden to anyone else’s consensus, including that of groups within the academy. 17
Not everything done in the name of global readings truly involves cross-cultural listening. Some interpreters have created almost uniform interpretive grids through which they then filter all texts, often forcing awkward texts to serve incompatible political agendas just as earlier colonial readings often did (whether by forced readings or counterreadings). Like colonial readings, they can serve as assertions of power within their limited framework.
The Importance of Avoiding New Ethnocentrisms
Listening to other voices is crucial; making any particular set of voices normative, however, may bring us back to the sort of ethnocentric approach with which we began. 18 Proponents can end up imposing their group’s ideology uniformly on texts and calling this ideological lens a method. 19 One danger, regardless of how commendable one’s ideology might be, is that one simply rearticulates the same ideology in multiple ways, rather than being challenged by new insights from the text that stand outside one’s range of vision.
Popular readers have often made a study Bible’s notes the norm. Some readers today make patristic interpreters the norm through which we must read Scripture. 20 Some feminist or liberationist interpreters make their hermeneutical grids the norm for responsible interpretation, sometimes challenging other liberationist readings as deficient in a particular version of liberationism. 21 A minority of scholars today count as the norm Majority World voices, despite the diversity of such voices and most Westerners’ access only to (and perhaps sometimes interest only in) the voices of a published, sometimes Western-educated minority within the Majority World rather than voices from the grassroots. 22 In many cases academicians listen only to fellow academicians, and often to those of the same basic theological persuasions, whatever their cultures.
This is not yet a problem, but is a warning for the future. Whenever new voices are made the transcultural norm, we weaken our case against Eurocentric interpreters continuing to assume, as they often have, that their own traditional perspective is the norm. If any group constitutes the new dominant norm for all, we have returned to the exaltation of our own group, whether in the form of ethnocentrism, nationalism, racism, sexism, or the like.
It should nevertheless be pointed out that most contemporary voices—say, African theology, Asian theology, or Latino/a theology—do not seek to make their own voice the transcultural norm, but only to have a place at the table. Western readings have been so long privileged that Western readers who really want to hear other voices now have an obligation to wear hearing aids or to provide non-Western voices with superior sound systems. Providing safe space and a better hearing for non-dominant voices is needed to transcend the blinders of the dominant culture.