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Canada Archives Canada Published Heritage Direction Du Branch Patrimoine De I'edition VANCOUVER SCHOOL OF THEOLOGY [enJGENDERING THE DESERT OF LATE ANTIQUITY: EXPLORING PRESCRIPTIONS OF MASCULINIE BODY PERFORMANCE IN THE LIFE OF ANTONY A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS IN THEOLOGICAL STUDIES BY JEFFREY H. E. PREISS VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA APRIL 2008 REV. DR. HARRY O. MAIER REV. DR. WENDY FLETCHER Library and Bibliotheque et 1*1 Archives Canada Archives Canada Published Heritage Direction du Branch Patrimoine de I'edition 395 Wellington Street 395, rue Wellington Ottawa ON K1A0N4 Ottawa ON K1A0N4 Canada Canada Your file Votre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-44148-0 Our file Notre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-44148-0 NOTICE: AVIS: The author has granted a non­ L'auteur a accorde une licence non exclusive exclusive license allowing Library permettant a la Bibliotheque et Archives and Archives Canada to reproduce, Canada de reproduire, publier, archiver, publish, archive, preserve, conserve, sauvegarder, conserver, transmettre au public communicate to the public by par telecommunication ou par Plntemet, prefer, telecommunication or on the Internet, distribuer et vendre des theses partout dans loan, distribute and sell theses le monde, a des fins commerciales ou autres, worldwide, for commercial or non­ sur support microforme, papier, electronique commercial purposes, in microform, et/ou autres formats. paper, electronic and/or any other formats. The author retains copyright L'auteur conserve la propriete du droit d'auteur ownership and moral rights in et des droits moraux qui protege cette these. this thesis. Neither the thesis Ni la these ni des extraits substantiels de nor substantial extracts from it celle-ci ne doivent etre imprimes ou autrement may be printed or otherwise reproduits sans son autorisation. reproduced without the author's permission. In compliance with the Canadian Conformement a la loi canadienne Privacy Act some supporting sur la protection de la vie privee, forms may have been removed quelques formulaires secondaires from this thesis. ont ete enleves de cette these. While these forms may be included Bien que ces formulaires in the document page count, aient inclus dans la pagination, their removal does not represent il n'y aura aucun contenu manquant. any loss of content from the thesis. Canada For my father CONTENTS I. ESTABLISHING TRAJECTORIES OF IDENTITY 1 II. EXPLORING IDENTITY: THE AUTHOR, THE SUBJECT, AND THE TEXT 19 III. SETTING THE GENEALOGICAL PERSPECTIVE: SITUATING MASCULINITIES, SPACE, AND THE WORLD BEFORE THE TEXT 36 IV. BRINGING IT TO ANTONY: EXPLORING PAIN AND SUFFERING AS THE FORMATION OF A GENDERED SELF 63 BIBLIOGRAPHY 88 iv ABSTRACT This thesis examines the construction of masculinity and the cultivation of the self in Late Antiquity. Specifically, reading Athanasius' Life of Antony, this thesis engages in the bodily performance of the central character of the text - Antony - in understanding how Christianity of the fourth century prescribed ways of being gender masculine. This study begins with locating the theoretical basis for exploring the Life. Reading alongside Michel Foucault, this thesis explores the construction of the self through his work in the History of Sexuality and then places the self within the bodily performance of gender as studied by Judith Butler and R.W. Connell. Moving away from its theoretical roots, Chapter Two locates the primary text in the life of its author, Athanasius, and examines the historical evidence for a historical Antony. Proceeding from that point, this work positions itself within a larger genealogy of gender and masculine performance in Late Antiquity by presenting the histories of gender performance in the writings of three influential early church figures: Clement, Origen, and Athanasius. Following that, this thesis explores five avenues of gender performance in Late Antiquity before engaging with the character of Antony and the performance of the masculinised Christian self. v Chapter One: Establishing Trajectories of Identity Identity is not as transparent or unproblematic as we think. Perhaps instead of thinking of identity as an already accomplished fact, which the new cultural practices then represent, we should think, instead, of identity as a 'production,' which is never complete, always in process, and always constituted within, not outside representation. This view problematises the very authority and authenticity to which the term 'cultural identity' lays claim. - Stuart Hall, Representation: Cultural Representation and Signifying Practices The story of Christianity is filled with larger-than-life characters that have shaped and moulded the ways in which followers of the Christian tradition have come to understand their selves and the communities of which they are a part. Many of these larger-than-life characters have acclaimed fame through sainthood while others have remained silent, off to the side, known only to a few. This thesis engages one of those larger-than-life characters. The focus of the thesis is Antony of the desert, as characterised by Athanasius (also a larger-than-life figure). Athanasius' hagiographical- biography of Antony - Life of Antony - is, for this work, the starting and ending point to an encounter and engagement with the construction of masculine identity and the cultivation of the self in the early church.1 The Life reads: "Antony's fame spread even to rulers. When Constantine Augustus and his sons Constantius Augustus and Constans 1 This work strictly explores the construction of masculinity. I am by no means suggesting that there is no worth in the study of the female and feminised body in Late Antiquity (nor the representation of gender and bodies outside the binary of male and female). The reasoning for my strict observance to the male body is that the character representation found in the primary text for this work, the Life, is found in the male body. Furthermore, as David Brakke argues reading alongside James E. Goehring, "Not only did me desert monastic movement represent something new; it was primarily ... a male institution." Athanasius himself focused on the masculine elements of the desert and monasticism in his writings for he found that he had to engage in the political voice (a male voice) with monastics. See David Brakke, Athanasius and Asceticism (Baltimore and London: John Hopkins University Press, 1995), 81. 1 Augustus learned of these things, they wrote to him as to a father and begged to receive responses from him."2 Like the emperors of days gone, I too seek to find wisdom from the character of Antony. Though I know he himself cannot come to me and provide wisdom, his characterisation in the Life provides me with a literary model and a textual history bringing me into direct dialogue with a gendered body of the past. This thesis argues that the character of the Life - Antony - is to be read as a character exemplifying the performance of a gendered masculinised Christian self for the man of Late Antiquity. The performance of being a man is defined through the body that experiences self- mortification as a form of death in an attempt to reclaim the perfected body, known again through the Son incarnate in Jesus, of the pre-fallen Adam. In the figure of Jesus as the Christ, the Son coeternal with the Father (to use the Athanasian position), early Christians were introduced to a man living in a perfected state of existence. The Jewish traditions had already been passing along the story of the perfect man, Adam, in their written traditions of the Genesis story, which the exegetical works of the early Church Fathers, continued. However, Adam did not remain perfect. In the Genesis story of the Fall, Adam and his companion were sent out of the Garden of Eden, out of a perfect paradise, into an imperfect and corrupt world. God reminds Adam, in a profound use of imagery, that he was from the dust, and it is to the dust - to that which is walked and trampled upon - that humanity will now always return to (see Genesis 3 particularly verse 19b).3 Adam and Eve disobeyed God's command that they 2 Athanasius, The Life of Antony and the Letter to Macellinw, trans. Robert C. Gregg, The Classics of Western Spirituality (New Jersey: Paulist Press, 1980), 81. 3 For the purpose of this work, all Biblical references are from the New Revised Standard Version. See, The New Oxford Annotated Bible, ed. Michael D. Coogan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001). 2 were not to have eaten from the tree of knowledge that resulted in their expulsion (Gen. 2: 16). Once sin, through the act of disobedience, had entered into the story, they moved into an existence of decay, moving ever constantly away from God and from the perfected body of the pre-fallen Adam. However, in the narratives a Jesus, a new Adam emerges with a perfected body. Through the grace of God in the Son, the body of Jesus, through death and resurrection, brings witness to a perfected body once more. Furthermore, through baptism, the ability of all humanity to regain the perfected body by being clothed in the body of the perfected Son figure became accessible. In his letter to the Romans, Paul writes: "Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death came through sin, and so death spread to all because all have sinned.... But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if the many dies through the one man's trespass, much more surely have the grace of God and the free gift in the grace of the one man, Jesus" (Rom. 5:12 and 15). Paul continues by saying that as one man's disobedience of God led to the Fall, so the obedience of one has led to a reclaiming of the fallen for all (see Rom. 5:18-21).
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