Construction of Gender and Identity in Genesis - (Library of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies) by Karalina Matskevich (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Karalina Matskevich examines the structures that map out the construction of gendered and national identities in Genesis 2-3 and 12-36. Matskevich shows how the dominant 'Subject' - the androcentric ha'adam and the ethnocentric Israel - is perceived in relation to and over against the 'Other', represented respectively as female and foreign. Using the tools of narratology, semiotics and psychoanalysis, Matskevich highlights the contradiction inherent in the project of dominance, through which the Subject seeks to suppress the transforming power of difference it relies on for its signification.

Thus, in Genesis 2-3 ha'adam can only emerge as a complex Subject in possession of knowledge with the help of woman, the transforming Other to whom the narrator (and Yahweh) attributes both the agency and the blame. Similarly, the narratives of Genesis 12-36 show a conflicted attitude to places of alterity: Egypt, the fertile and seductive space that threatens annihilation, and Haran, the 'mother's land', a complex metaphor for the feminine. The construction of identity in these narratives largely relies on the symbolic fecundity of the Other.

Review Quotes

"The volume is a thorough, well-researched project, and achieves its goal of highlighting the inherent contradictions in the creation of the "unified subject" that "seeks to suppress the very difference it relies on for signification" (209). Matskevich has created a work that will facilitate further use of continental philosophy and structuralism to deepen our understanding of biblical texts." --Reviews in Biblical and Early Christian Studies

About the Author

Karalina Matskevich is a Lecturer at Heythrop College in London, UK.