619 - But She Said: Feminist Practices of Biblical Interpretation

But She Said: Feminist Practices of Biblical Interpretation
By Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza
Boston, Beacon Press, 1992. 262 pp. $24.00.

Once again, Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza has authored a landmark work in feminist biblical interpretation. But She Said: Feminist Practices of Biblical Interpretation advances her explication of feminist biblical interpretation in significant ways from two earlier works, In Memory of Her and Bread Not Stone. It is essential reading for scholars interested in biblical interpretation or feminist theology.

Organized in three parts (or "movements of a dance"), "Strategies of Feminist Biblical Interpretation," "The Hermeneutical Space of a Feminist Rhetoric of Liberation," and "Practices of Biblical Interpretation," the book presents Schüssler Fiorenza's-indeed, feminist scholars'-most thorough charting of a critical feminist biblical interpretation to date. The three parts signal that But She Said continues Schüssler Fiorenza's project by charting and chartering not so much an encompassing theory but rather strategies, a rhetoric, and practices of feminist biblical interpretation. Doing so, she intends simultaneously to destabilize the center and the margins of "malestream" biblical studies by constructing the ekklesia as a feminist counter-public-sphere from which a feminist biblical rhetoric can speak."

Schüssler Fiorenza's "dance" begins with a comprehensive overview of ten strategies for feminist biblical interpretation. Her own "critical model of feminist biblical interpretation for liberation" construes interpretation as an interactive and multistrategic rhetorical practice. Building upon Bread Not Stone, Chapter Two provides theoretical expansion (and enactment, through the accompanying reading of the Mary and Martha story) of what are now termed four "rhetorical movements" of feminist biblical interpretation: hermeneutics of suspicion, remembrance, evaluation and proclamation, and imagination.

The next three chapters offer, respectively, a historical (feminist

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historical construction versus either "antiquarian positivism" or "positivist textualism"), a political (reading situated not in patriarchy but in the oppositional space of the ekk1esia of women), and a theological hermeneutics (the canonical paradigm and its underlying "logic of identity" for construing theological authority are rejected in favor of an understanding guided by the "logic of democracy" wherein "inspiration" emerges in practices of interpretation that contest and re-vision biblical texts).

While readings of particular texts guide and illustrate the entire book's argument, Part III focuses explicitly on demonstrating the fruit of her proposed practices of interpretation as a basis for reconstructing theological education and in a fresh reading of the story of the stooped woman.

Whereas the essays in her 1984 Bread Not Stone explicate Schüssler Fiorenza's understanding of the Bible as "formative prototype of biblical faith and community" in contrast to what she termed neo-orthodox models of biblical authority and historical positivist models of biblical scholarship, But She Said builds upon and expands this notion in the context of feminist theory. More exactly, her context becomes the democratic space-enacted and imagined-of feminist practices and deliberation. Arguing also against formalist or structuralist literary criticism-what she terms "positivist textualism"-Schüssler Fiorenza asserts that "context is as important as text." While in many ways the attention to context is not new for her, nor for any work shaped in a liberation perspective, her articulation of the importance of context for practices of feminist interpretation breaks new ground. The heart of the theoretical breakthrough of But She Said comes with (1) her elaboration of feminist biblical interpretation as rhetorical practice situated in the democratic space of feminist deliberation and practice and (2) the related contrast between the "logic of democracy" and the "logic of identity."

These are by no means the book's only scholarly contributions. Also of note are her exhaustive catalogues of feminist approaches to biblical interpretation and to biblical authority-catalogues that attend commendably to approaches of earlier historical periods and of diverse cultural and ethnic contexts; her critical engagement with feminist postmodernist theory-one of the most adept and helpful interventions yet by a feminist theologian or biblical scholar; the helpful clarification-or perhaps re-thinking-of her own notion of the ekklesia of women; her crystalline critique of "textual positivism"; her invention and employment of the term "kyriocentric" as a way of theorizing intersecting forms of domination; her insightful and provocative discussion of theological education; her exploration of how feminist practice can contribute to the creation of a public space of transformative speech and practice; and her reading of the Syro-Phoenician woman who challenges Jesus to release the power of the Word for all with "Yes, Lord, but."

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Next to these many contributions, problematic aspects of the book fade in significance. I found the "maps" in chapters 4 and 7 at least as confusing as helpful. Also, the potential reader may be misled by chapter titles that highlight names of biblical women, e.g., "Miriam-Leading the Dance." Contrary to first impression, the chapters do not explore Miriam's and other biblical women's stories so much as invoke their spirits and struggles (offer prototypes?) in the process of claiming and empowering contemporary feminists' strategies for reading and interpreting the Bible for themselves. A related observation can be made about the use of poetry at the beginning of each chapter: the poems, primarily authored by women of color, are said to offer an "optic," a potential "hermeneutical key" to the theoretical reflections that follow. However, the significance of their invocation, and to a lesser degree the invocation of the biblical women, remains implicit and not self-evident enough for full integration with the subject matter of each chapter. Finally, the suspicion lingers that, at times, the book's own rhetorical practice relies on the logic of identity as much as on the logic of democracy. That is, as in previous works, Schüssler Fiorenza not only argues with the powerful conviction of one who believes the merit of her own position, she also tends to dismantle all other proposals as wrong-rather than, with the exception of part of the first chapter to allow them to stand as different. And yet, whether conducted according to an unintended logic of identity or intended to incite nuanced, wide-open public debate, it is precisely Schüssler Fiorenza's thoroughgoing and relentless argument that underlies a good measure of the book's enormous persuasiveness and strength.

Kristine A. Culp

University of Chicago
Chicago, IL