Revelation Studies approach the Apocalypse of John as literature resistant or complicit with the Roman Empire. Scholars seek to apply their conclusions to the current political situation without a proper contextualization of Empire in the present. Supplementing the current debate on the ideological, ethical, cultural, political and theological uses of the Bible, I approach Revelation as a political document whose virtual potential for political action and resistance in the present needs to be contextualized in terms of contemporary imperial formations. More specifically, I study Babylon/The Great Whore as a sexual trope referring to Empire. Although scholars have exposed the political implications of the metaphor (Babylon is Rome) as well as the patriarchal language deployed (Babylon is a woman), the sexual aspect of the trope is usually elided leaving its moralizing implications in place (Babylon is, after all, a whore). An ethical evaluation of the figure of Babylon as Empire will be put in dialogue with imperial formations in the present. My dissertation pursues an ideological critique of the figure of the Great Whore that takes into account contemporary understandings of sexuality in order to advance a demoralization of the sexually deviant both in the present and in the past.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VANDERBILT/oai:VANDERBILTETD:etd-06012016-175909 |
| Date | 21 June 2016 |
| Creators | Menéndez-Antuña, Luis |
| Contributors | Daniel Patte, Ellen Armour, Fernando Segovia, Kathy Gaça |
| 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-06012016-175909/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, 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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