Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Introduction: Radical Otherness: a socio/theological investigation
- 1 Otherness, outsiders and larger tents
- 2 The politics of otherness
- 3 The hermeneutics of otherness
- 4 Consuming others
- 5 Otherness as a metatheoretical/physical problem: backgrounding the foreground
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
5 - Otherness as a metatheoretical/physical problem: backgrounding the foreground
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Introduction: Radical Otherness: a socio/theological investigation
- 1 Otherness, outsiders and larger tents
- 2 The politics of otherness
- 3 The hermeneutics of otherness
- 4 Consuming others
- 5 Otherness as a metatheoretical/physical problem: backgrounding the foreground
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
No other civilisation [than the Western] … seems to make the principle of sexual difference so crystal clear; between the sexes there is a cleavage, an abyss, which is marked by their different relationship to the law [religious and political] and which is the very condition of their alliance. Monotheistic unity is sustained by a radical separation of the sexes, indeed this separation is its prerequisite. …
On the other hand and simultaneously monotheism represents the paternal function: patrilinear descent with transmission of the Father's name centralises eroticism in the single goal of procreation in the grip of an abstract symbolic authority …
The economy of this mechanism requires that women be excluded from the single true and legislating principle …
One betrays one's naiveté if one considers our modern societies to be simply patrilinear … or capitalist-monopolist and ignores the fact that they are at the same time … governed by … monotheism.
(Kristeva 1974: 19–22)As the opening quotations illustrate, it is the intention of this chapter to demonstrate that Christian monotheism has sprung from a particular take on metaphysics and lends itself to mono-logic within religion, economics and politics, which has and continues to have violent and abusive outcomes. Sadly, the incarnational message of Christianity used Greek metaphysics as its interpretative tool with which to interact with the cultures around it.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Radical OthernessSociological and Theological Approaches, pp. 123 - 146Publisher: Acumen PublishingPrint publication year: 2013