This dissertation constructs a theological anthropology for ecofeminist theology. In spite of their insistence that human beings need to feel âat home on the earth,â ecofeminists have not developed a theological anthropology that explicitly counteracts human exceptionalism. Without such an anthropology, the distancing conceptions of the human being that contributed to the ecological crisis are not fully challenged. I propose a conscious turn to a focus on matter as a means by which ecofeminist theology can achieve nonexceptionalist anthropology. I draw from Maurice Merleau-Pontyâs phenomenology of visible and invisible âfleshâ to construct a theological anthropology that accounts not only for human bodies but also for human cognition and experiences of transcendence in a way that does not differentiate us absolutely from the material world. Specifically, I use Merleau-Pontyâs figure of the chiasm to construct an âapophatic anthropologyâ in which the boundary between self and world is fundamentally indeterminate. I argue that this anthropology is more conducive to an ecologically sound relationship with the world because it cultivates a mode of seeing ourselves as entirely continuous with material reality and enables us to live into our embodied interconnection.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VANDERBILT/oai:VANDERBILTETD:etd-02282018-100925 |
| Date | 26 March 2018 |
| Creators | Dean, Dorothy Chappell |
| Contributors | Ellen Armour, Kelly Oliver, Laurel Schneider, Paul Dehart |
| Publisher | VANDERBILT |
| Source Sets | Vanderbilt University Theses |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.library.vanderbilt.edu/available/etd-02282018-100925/ |
| Rights | restricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to Vanderbilt University or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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