like a virgin touched for the very first time ...

THRU
the manipulation
of the figure of the lion,
the subjugating force of male sexual violence
has not been defeated so much as sublimated!

On one reading at least,
the lion's averted, feminized gaze continues paradoxically to restrain the virgin;
the very gesture of honoring her - indeed of freely mirroring her feminine subjugation -
becomes itself the vehicle of her restraint.

In the era of "imperial Christianity,"
the resistance to male sexuality, understood as "naturally" violent
because of its cultural construction within the dominant Roman formation
to which most Christians had belonged,
remained an important part of Christian male self-construction,
but it no longer could accomodate such resistance through figurations of female "achievement"
of maleness.

Gender hierarchy had to be preserved,
but not at the cost of reinstating an ideal of invasive phallic maleness.
The point was to "sublimate" it!
Subjugation was to be retained,
but without violence.

This is the moment referred to as "the veiling of the phallus."
A paradoxical relation of these men to their own male selves is paralleled in their paradoxical relation
to the classical discourse (figured as "male"knipoog and even to Roman imperial power itself.

It is precisely through their stance of self-feminization
that the Fathers produced and maintained their discourses of subjugation
of women.


In this respect too,
the Fathers are quite similar to both early Rabbis and later rabbinic tradition.
These also subjugated women through a discourse of self-feminization.
["Unheroic Conduct": 'sexuality & social control' ~ 'on the way in which the feminized figure of Daniel in the Book of Susanna serves to reinforce male control of female sexuality
by robbing women of the trickster role'!]

Both early rabbinic Jews and early Christians
performed resistance to the Roman imperial power structure
through "gender bending" ~ males consciously renouncing the markers of masculinity and adopting practices that signified them as female within the economy of Roman gender models ~
thus marking their own understanding that gender itself is implicated
in the maintenance of political power.

Various symbolic enactments of "femaleness" ~ as constructed within a particular system of genders ~
among them asceticism, submissiveness, retiring to private spaces,
(ostensible) renunciation of political power,
exclusive devotion to study,
and self-castration
were adopted variously by Christians or rabbinic Jews
as acts of resistance against Roman culture
and the masculinist exercise
of power.

24 sep 2008 - bewerkt op 24 sep 2008 - meld ongepast verhaal
Weet je zeker dat je dit verhaal wilt rapporteren? Ja | Nee
Profielfoto van Asih
Asih, man, 80 jaar
   
Log in om een reactie te plaatsen.   vorige volgende