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Commitment and Critical Inquiry*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 June 2011

Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza
Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza
Affiliation:
Harvard Divinity School
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Extract

We are called together here to mark the beginning of a new school year with a symbolic act—a convocatio. As cultural anthropologists tell us, such ritual symbolic acts function simultaneously to induct participants into the common lifeworld of a community and to hold up to them shared values and visions. The convocation address provides an opportunity to reflect critically on the ritual act itself and on the shared visions and values it embodies. Such exploration can uncover tensions and contradictions in how the community sees itself and the world, contradictions that provide openings and challenges for change. By reflecting on these tensions I seek to display the first step in a feminist theological practice. The inclusion of the previously excluded as theological subjects, I argue, calls for a paradigm shift from a value-detached scientism to a public rhetoric, from a hermeneutical model of conversation to a practical model of collaboration.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 82 , Issue 1 , January 1989 , pp. 1 - 11
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1989

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References

1 Kuhn, Thomas S., The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962) passim.Google Scholar

2 “Toward a Critical Theological Education,” Harvard Divinity Bulletin 17 (1986) 6–9Google Scholar, and “Toward an American Public Theology,” ibid. 18 (1987) 4–6, 10. See also his “The Scholarly Vocation: Its Future Challenges and Threats,” ATS Theological Education 24:1 (1987) 86–101.Google Scholar

3 See, e.g., Lloyd, Genevieve, The Man of Reason: “Male” and “Female” in Western Philosophy (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), and my “The Politics of Otherness: Biblical Interpretation as a Critical Praxis for Liberation” (forthcoming).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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7 For a fuller development of the notion of biblical studies as rhetorical, see my Society of Biblical Literature presidential address, “The Ethics of Interpretation: Decentering Biblical Scholarship,” JBL 107 (1988) 3–17Google Scholar, reprinted in the Harvard Divinity Bulletin 18:3 (1988).Google Scholar

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9 See, e.g., Hartsock, Nancy, “Rethinking Modernism: Minority vs. Majority Theories,” Cultural Critique 1 (1987) 187–206CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Alcoff, Linda, “Cultural Feminism versus Poststructuralism: The Identity Crisis in Feminist Theory,” Signs 13 (1988) 3–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10 See, e.g., Harvard President Derek Bok's report for 1986–87 to the Board of Overseers which was issued in April 1988.

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