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Revisiting Karl Barth's Gender Trouble Veiled and Unveiled Others: Revisiting Karl Barth's Gender Trouble The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citation Bodley-Dangelo, Faye. 2016. Veiled and Unveiled Others: Revisiting Karl Barth's Gender Trouble. Doctoral dissertation, Harvard Divinity School. Citable link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:25098832 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA © 2016 Faye Bodley-Dangelo All rights reserved. Dissertation Advisor: Amy Hollywood Author: Faye Bodley-Dangelo Veiled and Unveiled Others: Revisiting Karl Barth’s Gender Trouble Abstract Karl Barth is frequently named as the poster-child for modern patriarchal and heteronormative theologies. In Church Dogmatics he secures a binary, hierarchically-ordered, marital relationship between a man and woman as the norm for conceptualizing not only sexual difference but all inter-subjective relationships among human beings. Human beings find in the opposite sex their paradigmatic human “other,” and marriage to someone of the opposite sex provides the occasion in which one is able to most fully realize the sort of being-in-encounter that conforms to the self-giving, self-revealing, aid-lending relationship that Christ has established with the Christian community. The asymmetry of the relationship between Christ and his community translates into the super-/subordering of the relationship between the sexes, wherein women are lead, directed, and inspired by men. Barth applies this “ordering” beyond marriage to all interactions between the sexes. Many critics have argued that Barth’s ordering of the sexes exposes a systemic structure of domination and submission instantiated in the many relationships that comprise his theology. Others have sought a corrective to his ordering in his doctrine of the Trinity, but a corrective that demands a reconstruction of his innovative reformulation of the doctrine of election along with his christocentric theological anthropology. Until recently little critical attention has been given to his heteronormative framework. This dissertation advances a fresh approach by shifting focus from the question of the function of “order” in Barth’s theology to Barth’s christocentric understanding of human agency itself. Through contextualized close readings in Barth’s ethics, doctrine of creation, and iv theological anthropology, I argue that his methodological, dogmatic, and ethical commitments lead to an account of the human agent that is carefully detached from naturalizing and scientific discourses and crafted after the aid-lending, self-revelatory activity of the incarnate Christ. Constituted as a response to the divine address, human beings are called into existence as morally responsible actors and set on the path toward lending aid to and receiving aid from their human neighbors. I mobilize this account of agency to resist, unsettle, and reconfigure Barth’s androcentric and heteronormative construal of sexual difference for the purpose of securing Barth’s Church Dogmatics as a resource for theologies that resist the reduction of all inter-human differences to one overarching hierarchical model of difference. First, I argue that when Barth attempts to order the relationship between the sexes, he turns his christocentric model of agency, along with its ethical impulse, into a male prerogative, and he leaves a truncated and unlivable version for women to appropriate. By foregrounding the self-revealing and critically corrective features of the human agent’s encounter with the other, I argue that Barth’s model of agency, if fully appropriated by women, secures a site for the sort of feminist critique that Barth attempts to quash: a critique that challenges the prerogatives and positions of power that Barth presumes are proper to men alone. Second, I show that Barth’s effort to integrate the Gospels’ figure of the unmarried Christ into his heteronormative framework exposes the tenuous grounds on which he attempts to secure the centrality of sexual difference within his broader christocentric project. As a corrective, I turn to Barth’s discussions of Christ’s relationship to ethnically differentiated others. Here I locate a far more open, fluid, and flexible way of thinking about the self’s relationship to other human beings, which is inclusive of a wide variety of relationships and communal organizations. Finally, while Barth configures sexual difference as an oppositional v division that must be carefully policed and maintained, Barth calls for a critical and performative appropriation of the norms, customs, and social mores through which the sexes are differentiated. This relation opens up space within Barth’s heteronormative framework for performances that unsettle, subvert, and transgress the reputedly unambiguous dividing line between the sexes that these norms instantiate. Veiled and Unveiled Others: Revisiting Karl Barth’s Gender Trouble Table of Contents Abstract iii Table of Contents vi Acknowledgements ix Introduction 1 Chapter One: Playing the Neighbor in an Order of Praise: An Ethic for Dogmatics 21 The Orders of Creation The Orders of Praise The Inner Reality: The Love of God The Outer Sign: The Love of Neighbor The Jewish Samaritan: An Ethical Critique of the Völkisch Church Conclusion Chapter Two: Myth, Maternity, and Saga in Barth’s Doctrine of Creation 74 Rejecting Myth Confessing Creation Re-Imaging the Creation Sagas Myth-Critique, Maternal Aversion, and Sexual Difference Conclusion Chapter Three: Playing Adam, Silencing Eve: Barth’s Model Human Agent 132 Reconfiguring Freedom, Masculinity, and Maternity Originating Adam: the Humbled and Exalted Sign of Christ Scene One (Gen. 2:4-7): Adam Taken from the Earth Scene Two (Gen. 2:8-17): Adam Gifted to the Garden Originating Eve: Adam’s Search, Recognition, and Free Decision Scene Three (Gen. 2:18-25): Eve Taken from and Gifted to Adam Silencing Eve Animating Eve Imagining Pregnant Women as Model Agents: Elizabeth and Mary Conclusion vii Chapter Four: Christ and the Disappearing “I”: Mutuality and Order in Barth’s Theological Anthropology 214 Christ the Mirror (§43) The Love of God (§44) The Christological Agent The Human Agent The Love of Neighbor (§45.1-2) The Christological Agent The Human Agent The Sexually Differentiated Other (§45.3) Sexual Difference and its Order Scriptural Manifestations of the Difference and its Order Conclusion Chapter Five: An Ethic for the Sexually Differentiated Self 266 Barth’s Command Ethics Ethical Guidelines for the Sexually Differentiated Self “Male or Female”: the Difference between the Sexes “Male and Female”: the Relationship between the Sexes “A and B”: The Order between the Sexes Conclusion Epilogue 308 Disentangling the Agent from a Sexist Order Disentangling the Agent from a Heteronormative Framework Bibliography 325 viii Dedicated to Mike Acknowledgements Barth’s paradigmatic neighbor is one “who makes no claim at all but is simply helpful” (CD I/2 418). I have many such neighbors to acknowledge and thank, without whose gifts of aid, feedback, encouragement, support, time, care, and patience this project could would not have been completed. I offer a special word of thanks to my dissertation committee. My dissertation director, Professor Amy Hollywood, first introduced me to a trajectory of gender theory and a practice of critical reading that that has deeply shaped my work. Through her encouragement, insights, comments, and careful readings of multiple drafts she patiently guided this project from its earliest stages in my general exams to its final completion. Through his attentive readings and critical comments, Professor Francis Clooney, S.J. gently and persistently nudged me towards a more charitable and constructive reading of Barth. Professor Paul Dafydd Jones of the University of Virginia generously gave much of his time to carefully reading my drafts and offering indispensable guidance, comments, criticisms, and recommendations. The late Professor Ronald Thiemann died during the early stages of this project, but his direction, redirection, patience, and guidance through course work, general exams, prospectus writing, and the first stages of my research left an indelible mark upon and deeply shaped so much of the final product. This project has been deeply impacted by the counsel, support, and encouragement from many faculty, graduate students, and staff in the Harvard community. In particular I would like to thank Professor Sarah Coakley, my first advisor and theological mentor, for immersing me in the christological and trinitarian texts that have provided the background for my research. I am deeply grateful to Professors Jon Levenson, Kevin Madigan, and Ahmed Ragab for their warm x and encouraging support of my theological and professional development. A special word of gratitude must go to Dr. Emily Click both for her persistent encouragement and feedback on this project and for the friendship and pastoral care that she has given to my family. A number of colleagues have been a source of encouragement and comradery along the way: Brad Bannon, Philip Francis, Nan Hutton, Piotr Malysz, Mark McInroy, Mark Scott, Bryan Wagoner, and Jen Wade. Kathryn Kunkel patiently guided me in negotiating paper work and deadlines. In the final
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