
Contents
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Disconnected from Women’s Studies: The Neoliberal Turn in Feminist Biblical Studies Disconnected from Women’s Studies: The Neoliberal Turn in Feminist Biblical Studies
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Phyllis Trible’s Depatriarchalizing Strategy Phyllis Trible’s Depatriarchalizing Strategy
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Carol Meyers’s Historicizing Strategy Carol Meyers’s Historicizing Strategy
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Ilana Pardes’s Textualizing Strategy Ilana Pardes’s Textualizing Strategy
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Susan Ackerman’s Mythologizing Strategy Susan Ackerman’s Mythologizing Strategy
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Tikva Frymer-Kensky’s Idealizing Strategy Tikva Frymer-Kensky’s Idealizing Strategy
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Moving Beyond Neoliberal Feminist Biblical Scholarship: A Conclusion Moving Beyond Neoliberal Feminist Biblical Scholarship: A Conclusion
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Bibliography Bibliography
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11 Neoliberal Feminist Scholarship in Biblical Studies
Get accessEsther Fuchs, Ph.D., is Professor Emerita of Judaic and Near Eastern Studies at the University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, U.S.A. In addition to biblical studies, she is interested in the intersections of gender and feminism with Hebrew studies, Israel studies, and Holocaust studies. She has published numerous books and over eighty essays in academic journals and anthologies, and over one hundred book reviews in Jewish and women’s studies. In biblical studies her writing has focused on textual biblical politics, and feminist approaches to the Hebrew Bible. She is the co-editor of On the Cutting Edge: The Study of Women in Biblical Worlds (Continuum, 2004); and is the author of Sexual Politics in the Biblical Narrative: Reading the Hebrew Bible as a Woman (Sheffield Academic Press, 2000); and Feminist Theory and the Bible (Lexington, 2016).
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Published:10 November 2020
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Abstract
This essay provides a critical analysis of the neoliberal grounding of feminist biblical studies. I outline the main problems generated by this framework, notably fragmentation, repetition, the absence of theory, the limiting emphasis on method, and above all the validation of traditional (male-dominant) scholarly norms and practices. Seeking greater inclusion within biblical studies, neoliberal feminism has endorsed the normalizing approach to patriarchy and rejected its radical interrogation in women’s studies. My thumbnail historical overview of the field links disconnected publications in biblical theology, historical criticism, and literary criticism. The analysis shows that these possibilities advocate the relative utility of re-objectifying women with five hermeneutical strategies. They are: first, the depatriarchalizing strategy, exemplified in Phyllis Trible’s work; second, the historicizing strategy as employed most prominently by Carol Meyers; third, the textualizing strategy exemplified by Ilana Pardes; fourth, the mythologizing strategy employed by Susan Ackerman; and fifth, the idealizing strategy exemplified by Frymer-Kensky. By placing my critical analysis within the broader context of transformational feminist critiques published at the same time, I argue for a shift from the “biblical” to the “feminist” in feminist biblical studies.
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