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Contesting the Theo-ethical Rhetoric of Home: Feminist and Postcolonial Politics of Space The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citation May, Stephanie Louise. 2012. Contesting the Theo-ethical Rhetoric of Home: Feminist and Postcolonial Politics of Space. Doctoral dissertation, Harvard Divinity School. Citable link https://nrs.harvard.edu/URN-3:HUL.INSTREPOS:37367447 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 Contesting the Theo-ethical Rhetoric of Home: Feminist and Postcolonial Politics of Space A thesis presented By Stephanie Louise May To The Faculty of Harvard Divinity School in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Theology In the Subject of Religion, Gender, and Culture Harvard University Cambridge, Massachusetts April 2012 © 2012 –Stephanie Louise May All rights reserved. iii Advisor: Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza Author: Stephanie Louise May Contesting the Theo-ethical Rhetoric of Home: Feminist and Postcolonial Politics of Space ABSTRACT Although the rhetoric of home is broadly used and may seem banal, it is a notion that has been significantly contested in recent decades. This dissertation critically analyzes the politics of space within the rhetoric of home by locating “home” within socio-economic constellations of power. To underscore the linkages between the domestic family home and the political homeland, I place critiques of home in feminist Christian discourses into critical dialogue with postcolonial critiques of home. After beginning with a contextual discussion of the rhetoric of home in U.S. history, I thematically address the rhetoric of home in feminist and postcolonial discourses. Firstly, I examine the rhetoric of violence and the home. By engaging both feminist and postcolonial texts, I show how home is not only a site of violence, but also functions as a tool of violence. Secondly, I explore the rhetoric of work and home in feminist Christian discourses. Critically analyzing differing articulations of the relationship between work and home reveals alternative spatial models of the socio-economic dynamics that construct the social and material landscape. Finally, I show how the rhetoric of home and heaven in Christian discourses express utopian visions for dwelling together. Examining these discourses raises important questions about how the rhetoric of home functions to create ethical and cultural norms. In conclusion, the dissertation surveys the range of strategies feminist and postcolonial discourses have used to intervene in the politics of space in the rhetoric of home. To these strategies, I add an argument for engaging the alternative rhetoric of “dwelling together.” The rhetoric of home and homeland has a problematic legacy of violence and exclusion that masks critical intersections of race, class, gender, sexuality, marital status, and national identity. A feminist, postcolonial Christian rhetoric of dwelling together seeks to create a theo-ethical framework that more adequately addresses the ethics of spatio-socio-economic interrelations. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction: SPACE, POWER, AND THE RHETORIC OF HOME: The Problem of “Home” in Feminist Christian and Postcolonial Discourses 1 Notes on Method: Feminist Critical Rhetorical Analysis 7 The Politics of Space 11 Chapter Outline 19 Ending Thoughts Before the Beginning 22 Chapter One: FROM HOMESPUN TO HOMELAND SECURITY: The Rhetoric of Home in U.S. Historical Context 24 Homespun Revolution: The Role of Domestic Production in the Creation of a Nation 27 Homestead Occupation: Western Expansion and “Manifest Domesticity” 39 Home, Sweet Home: The Empire of the White Lady 53 Homeland Security: Protecting the National Family 68 Chapter Two: POWER, PLACE, AND VIOLENCE: The Rhetoric of Home as a Tool of Violence 75 Feminist Christian Rhetoric of Violence and Home 77 Home, Homeland, and the Violence of Colonialism 95 Feminist Postcolonial Rhetoric of Home and Violence in Feminist Studies in Religion 112 Conclusion 126 v Chapter Three: A WOMAN’S PLACE: The Rhetoric of Work and Home 129 The Patterns of Exploitation: Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, 1987 137 The Moral Tension of Work and Home: Bonnie Miller-McLemore, 1994 150 The Political Economic Context of Work and Home: Gloria Albrecht, 2002 165 Connecting the Spaces of Home, Work, and Homeland 181 Chapter Four: THE NORMATIVE ORIENTATION OF HOME: Theo-ethical Rhetoric of Heaven, Paradise, and Planetarity 186 Heaven as the Ideal Domestic Space 190 Relocating Home from Heaven to Earth 198 Apocalyptic Hope and Re-Imagining the Heavenly Home 209 Returning to an Earthly Paradise: Feminist Utopian Visions 218 Heaven, Paradise, and Planetarity: The Ethics of Locating “Home” 229 Conclusion: TOWARD A FEMINIST CHRISTIAN DE-COLONIZING ETHIC OF DWELLING TOGETHER 234 Revisiting the Analyses 235 Retaining, Revising, or Refusing the Rhetoric of Home? 242 Toward a Feminist Christian De-Colonizing Ethic of Dwelling Together 250 BIBLIOGRAPHY 261 vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I wish to thank my advisor, Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, for her ongoing faith in me to persist in critically untangling the notion of home. By consistently challenging me to engage and incorporate the dynamics of violence, oppression, and politics within the rhetoric of home, her direction has significantly strengthened this work. I am deeply grateful for the gift of working together both on this thesis as well as with the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion. As a white, middle-class, Midwestern “American,” I have had much to learn about postcolonial thought. I thank both Leila Ahmed and Susan Abraham for their help in engaging this material not only as text, but as a “peculiar mindset.” I thank Professor Ahmed for teaching me to carefully attend to the particular U.S. and Christian contexts of my work. I thank Professor Abraham for guiding me through the intricacies of the shifting, complex terrains of space, time, and identity. For helping to set the groundwork for this dissertation, I wish to thank three ethicists whose courses and conversations have had lingering impact: Hille Haker, Joan Martin, and M. Christian Green. In addition, I thank Amy Hollywood for her role in shaping the earliest versions of this project. For broadening my engagement with the studies of women, gender, and sexuality, I thank Caroline Light and Linda Schlossberg. As a single mom, I simply could not have done this alone. There are many who have helped in small and big ways within the Harvard and Cambridge communities over the years. I thank especially Katherine Bain, Deborah Whitehead, Nan Hutton, Katy Attanasi, and the RGCers past and present with whom I have shared many hours of colloquiums. More than anyone, the support and steadiness of my partner Bill enabled me to make it through the program to the end. I thank him for his generosity of spirit and the gift of space-time in which to write—whether in a condo, a trailer, or, an office of my own. And, finally, I thank my son, Alek. For him, I have sought a way to challenge narrow conceptions of home which would exclude him and me. vii To my son, Alek May he find his own way of dwelling in justice and love viii INTRODUCTION Space, Power, and the Rhetoric of Home: The Problem of “Home” in Feminist Christian and Postcolonial Discourses The rhetoric of “home” is both prevalent and powerful. We reside at a place we call home while also feeling “at home” in other places. We have homerooms, homeruns, homepages. The point is “driven home” in an argument or a statement “hits home.” The rhetoric of home is everywhere. Yet, what—or where—is “home”? Is home indeed the “home, sweet home” to which we always seek to return? Is home really where they must always take you in? Is home our natal origin or a heavenly destination towards which we are headed? Do we have one home or many? Can a person be a home? Or a group? Or an idea? As this dissertation will seek to show, efforts to answer such questions provoke significant discourses. From family values to immigration to national security, the rhetoric of home circulates within religious, political, and social debates. Feminist discourses have been a significant site of contestation over the rhetoric of “home.”1 For example, the “place” of women in the home has been a major issue of debate between conservative Christians and feminists—both secular and religious—in the U.S. during recent decades. While many feminists have generally fought for women’s increased and equal participation in the “public” arena, conservative Christians have typically called for women to remain in the home with the “family.” In order to resist the rhetoric of home intended to control and limit women to the care and nurture of others, many feminists have sought to deconstruct, subvert, or transform the rhetoric of home. These critical feminist efforts have been important 1 Even when home is not placed in scare quotes, it should be read with the critical suspicion this analysis seeks to bring to “home.” 1 for articulating a number of ethical issues associated with the rhetoric of home—including the patriarchal (heterosexual, married) family, motherhood, domestic violence, unwaged labor, as well as the politics of belonging to a particular place, group, or nation. Such feminist
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