Disembodying Narrative

In this book, Jeremiah Cataldo subjects the Book of Genesis to postcolonial analysis. He explores the continuing impact that ideological colonialism has not only on dominant traditions of biblical interpretation but also on human social and political relationships touched by assumptions about the Bible, God, power, and human identity.

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Long believed to bear witness to the beginning of all life, the Bible's first book, Genesis, has been plumbed by a cornucopia of theologies and philosophies for ideas about social organization, human relationships, class, gender and gender roles, marriage, land rights, private property, and so much more. For many readers, assumptions about a divine creator, whose eye is cast upon a favored community, are at the heart of Western societies and politics and reside at the core of many national foundation myths. Yet despite all this, Genesis is not a frequent subject of postcolonial analyses seeking to expose the rootedness of inequalities within dominant social, political, and economic institutions. At times irreverent, at others conciliatory, Jeremiah Cataldo explores postcolonialism's rudeness, anger, and subversiveness as challenges to dominant traditions of interpreting Genesis and how those traditions influence who we are, how we relate to each other, how we read the Bible, and why despite an increasingly globalized and interconnected world, we passionately cling to what divides us.