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Profaning Paul

Online ISBN:
9780226815640
Print ISBN:
9780226815633
Publisher:
University of Chicago Press
Book

Profaning Paul

Cavan W. Concannon
Cavan W. Concannon
University of Southern California
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Published online:
19 May 2022
Published in print:
10 December 2021
Online ISBN:
9780226815640
Print ISBN:
9780226815633
Publisher:
University of Chicago Press

Abstract

The letters of Paul have been used to support and condone a host of evils over the span of more than two millennia: racism, slavery, imperialism, misogyny, and anti-Semitism, to name a few. Despite, or in some cases because of, this history, readers of Paul have felt compelled to reappropriate his letters to fit liberal or radical politics, seeking to set right the evils done in Paul’s name. Starting with the language of excrement, refuse, and waste in Paul’s letters, Profaning Paul looks at how Paul’s “shit” is recycled and reconfigured. It asks why readers, from liberal Christians to academic biblical scholars to political theorists and philosophers, feel compelled to make Paul into a hero, mining his words for wisdom. Following the lead of feminist, queer, and minoritized scholarship, Profaning Paul asks what would happen if we stopped recycling Paul’s writings. By profaning the status of his letters as sacred texts, we might open up new avenues for imagining political figurations to meet our current and coming political, economic, and ecological challenges.

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