Wuppertal 2021 Call for Papers
This year the Research Unit ‘Cultural Hegemony and the Power of Sacred Texts’ intends to inquire into the relationship between narratives, history, and the construction/deconstruction of cultural hegemony in the HB/OT. We accept abstracts addressing the following questions:
- What is the role of biblical stories in constructing the past and controlling imagination for building the future?
- To what extent the creation of a “historical past” through narrative contributed to building cultural hegemony in Ancient Israel/emerging Judaism?
- Through which strategies (redactional, pragmatic, rhetorical etc.) did biblical narratives try to convince its audience/recipients to assume a certain interpretation of their past?
- Do competing and conflicting narratives mirror hegemony and counter-hegemony in the HB/OT?
- As Thompson (2013, 159) highlights, “Bible’s progress through time is reiterative: neither linear nor historical”. How does a reiterative representation of history contribute to building or reinforcing cultural hegemony?
- What is the import of divine involvement in history for creating cultural hegemony?
- Are the recipients’ positive responses to this narrative enterprise embedded in the narratives themselves?
- Do biblical narratives contain traces of counter-hegemonic voices?
