| The Politics of Purim: Law, Sovereignty and Hospitality in the Aesthetic Afterlives of Esther Contributor(s): Carruthers, Jo (Author), Mein, Andrew (Editor), Camp, Claudia V. (Editor) |
|
 |
ISBN: 0567691861 ISBN-13: 9780567691866 Publisher: T&T Clark OUR PRICE: $133.65 Product Type: Hardcover - Other Formats Published: February 2020 |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Religion | Biblical Studies - Old Testament - General |
| Physical Information: 0.9" H x 6.4" W x 9.3" (1.15 lbs) 224 pages |
| Themes: - Religious Orientation - Christian |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: This book approaches the holiday of Purim as profane, freed to human use and ends, in order to consider the political legacy of the biblical story of Esther in festival and art works. Jo Carruthers explores carnival and synagogue practices, the purimshpil (Purim's own dramatic genre), illuminated Esther scrolls, as well as artworks by Botticelli, Millais and Jan Steen. The complex and astute interrogation of political life in such festival and artworks is analysed through theories of sovereignty, law, precarity and hospitality by key political thinkers such as Giorgio Agamben, Hannah Arendt, Walter Benjamin, Judith Butler, Jacques Derrida, and Jacques Rancière. Carruthers considers different motifs of boundary conservation and dissolution, as a means of contemplating the political implications of Purim and the Esther story for diaspora politics. How is sovereignty aspired to and attained by marginalized and threatened communities? How can one respond to the ethical call of hospitality to relax sovereign boundaries whilst protecting and celebrating that which is exceptional? The practice of giving gifts, mishloach manos, offers a model of hospitality that together with Purim's profane impulse is epitomized in the final chapter's discussion of a 2018 Brooklyn purimshpil, that offers a riotous ridiculing of white supremacist rhetoric, norms of domination, capitalist inequalities, modern slavery and ablest identities and assumptions. |
Contributor Bio(s): Camp, Claudia V.: - Claudia V. Camp is Professor of Religion at Texas Christian University, USA and was on the steering committee of the Seminar. She is currently co-general editor of the LHBOTS series, as well as the author or editor of 4 books and numerous articles.Mein, Andrew: - Andrew Mein is Tutor in Old Testament, Westcott House, Cambridge. |