r

POSTCOLONIAL
THEOLOGIES
DIVINITY and EMPIRE

EDITED BY
CATHERINE KELLER
MICHAEL NAUSNER
MAYRA RIVERA

PP.ES S
ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI

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7 5
 l
© Copyright 2004 by Catherine Keller, Michael Nausner, Mayra Rivera
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Contents
Biblical quotations, unless otherwise noted, are from the New Revised Standard
version Bible, copyright 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National
Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by
permission. All rights reserved. Contributors
The poem by Cherrie Moraga on page 69 is from The Last Generation: Prose vii
and Poetry. Copyright © 1993 by Cherrie Moraga. Reprinted by permission Preface xi
of South End Press. Introduction
Poem by Gloria Anzaldua on page 186 and other excerpts are from I
Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mesti<ft. Copyright © 1987, edited by Gloria '
Aten!N.ation, Liberation,and the Postco/onta
. l vn
" derground
Anzaldua. Reprinted by permission of Aunt Lute Books.
Chapter 1 is a reprint of "Complacencies and Cul-de-Sacs: Christian L Theology in Postcolonial Co
Theologies and Colonialism" in R.S. Sugirtharajah, POSTCOLONIAL 1 Co l . ntext
RECONFIGURATIONS, SCM Press 2003, pp. 143-161. Reprinted with · mp
Ch acenc1es
. t' and Cul-de-sacs 22
l Tl.I tan Theologies and Colonialism
permission. All rights reserved. r
.. R. S. SUGIRTHARAJAH
Cover art: Getty Images 2· Spmt and Liberation 39
Cover design: Elizabeth Wright Achieving Postcolonial Theolouv
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Art direction: Elizabeth Wright
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Postcolonial theologies : divinity and empire I Catherine Keller, Michael Neo· Orienta/ism 'gtca mg of Orientalism and
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6 the strange, the foreign-by projecting it outward, onto the other.'
Homeland as Borderland
Territories of Christian Subjectivity
Michael Nausner
"Once the liminality of the nation-space is established, the threat of
cultural difference is no longer a problem of 'other' people. It becomes a
question of otherness of the people-as-one." '
Homeland as Unhomey'
Not long ago I was asked to address the topic of "religious reflections
on the homeland." Here I was, an Austrian/Swedish double citizen,
doubly unsettled whenever I hear the term homeland, faced wi~. the
challenge of reflecting on issues of homeland from a religious
perspective. Here I was, a non-American cler~ in a par~igmatic~y
American denomination (The United Methodist Churcli)', pondering
issues pertaining to homelands while temporarily living as a foreigner in
the mightiest homeland on the face of this earth. I admit it: A quite
unhomey feeling arises within me when I reflect on the term homeland,
which habitually is seen as a natural entity to preserve and to defend. I
know that it is not my homeland; or, more accurately: It is and it is not
my homeland. I have my livelihood here, even though my legal
designation is "non-resident alien." As a white European male I am not
subject to the marginalization and oppression of many postcolonial
subjects, but the sentiment of unhomeliness resonates with me. What by
Homi K Bhabha, The Location of Cu/Jure (London and New York: Routledge, 1994),
1 SanFrancisco, 2000), 389-90.
150.
i1 want to thank Harald Bohlin, Catherine Keller, David Markay, Lee Quinby, and
Mayra Rivera for helpful critique as I wrote and rewrote this article.
118
Homeland as Borderland 119
many is seen as home, for me often has something unhomey, or even
unhomely (German: unheimlich; i.e., "uncanny"), because the dominant
sense of home seems to me to be achieved by purging it of the uncanny,
It was during my academic sojourn to this mightiest of homelands
that the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, occurred. Together with
all Americans I was shocked, terrified, and deeply concerned about the
fact that terrorism had hit home. The homeland of all Americans was,
after all, my temporary homeland as well. Immediately after the attacks
the term homeland received new and more intense meaning. The public
discussion in the United States shifted toward the question of security of
the homeland and its boundaries. Attention was focused on the national
boundaries with Mexico and especially with Canada, as well as on the
entry points at international airports. The most tangible sign of this new
focus on the homeland and its boundaries was the establishment by the
Bush administration of a new agency-the Department of Homeland
Security. Border control was one of the expressions that snddenly were
heard repeatedly in the news and other public discourse. The control of
borders would be one of the major tasks of the newly established agency.
The first director of this agency, Tom Ridge, emphatically and
repeatedly announced: "{A)s I said on day one, the only turf we should
be worried about protectillg is the turf we stand on."' The "homeland"
here denotes a piece of turf to be secured. Although this statement in
itself has no explicit religious connotations, in the context of the almost
omnipresent phrase "God Bless America," this kind of public speech
reverberates with a religious claim to a particular territory. The
homeland appears to be God-given territory, reminiscent of what Puritan
minister John Cotton almost four hundred years ago perceived as a
Christian entitlement to land in New England.' Cotton, of course, was
more snspicious than Tom Ridge regarding freedom and would not have
argued for its defense. By claiming that "we've worked hard to protect
our freedoms, which will ensure that our freedoms protect us,"' Tom
Ridge presents the multibillion-dollar agency of Homeland Security as a
bulwark for the protection of freedom. John Cotton and his Puritan
compatriots, however, believed in "saintly submission tO God's will" and
"saw theocratic governmental hierarchy as a necessary check on the
aSee.,..Bhabha's analysis of Nadine Gordimer's and Toni Morrison's renderings of
unhomeliness. Bhabha, Location of Culture, 10-15.
4
From remarks by Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge to the National A.uociation
of Broadcasters &location Foundation 2002 Service to America Swnmit onJune IO, 2002.
Text is available at http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/06/2002061~?.html.
'David Chidesrer, Christianity: A Global History, !st U.S. ed. (San Francisco: Harper
'Remarks of Secretary Tom Ridge to the American Enterprise Institute: "Securing
America in .a Post 9/11 World," found at http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/
2003/09/20030902-Zhbnl.
120 Postcolonial Theologies
danger of liberty, especially freedom of speech."' One wonders-given
the enormity of the governmental agency of Homeland Security-
whether remnants of this Puritan sentiment of governmental control still
linger beneath the official rhetoric of freedom. Can freedom really be
defended by the exponential increase of a mechanism of control? But
more to the point of this article: The very choice of the term Homeland
capitalizes not only "on the recognition that the home functions as a
symbolic space,"' as Lee Quinby points out; it also evokes religious
associations, because it is reminiscent both of the religious vision of early
American settlers of a New Jerusalem and of the highly contested and
often religiously legitimjzedjewish Homeland.'
A conflation between. religiosity and territoriality takes place. It
challenges us, I believe, to reflect on the relation between religion and
"the land." The understanding both of "the land" as "turf," which can be
cut into neat squares, and of the faithful as belonging to a single square
cut off from other squares witnesses to a dangerous simplification. It is a
paradox that the protection of the "only turf worth defending," the turf of
the United States, increasingly is carried out on "foreign turf." Military
operations in the Middle East and elsewhere are publicly interpreted as
actions in defense of the homeland of the United States. w
American Christians and Christians worldwide are divided
regarding the legitimacy of these operations and, consequently, regarding
a Christian response to them. How far can those of us who call ourselves
Christians allow ourselves to get trapped in a polarization between our
own homeland and other people's foreign land? Is a home or homeland
really ever best defended by aggression elsewhere? How should we
address the internal consequences of outward aggression, which Quinby
so aptly described as "the threat. .. of Empire turned inward, that is, of the
exercise of absolute authority by U.S. rulers over the populace of the
United States?"" An "offensive abroad" all too easily goes hand in hand
with an inward creation of less and less "homey" situations. This is
'Lee Qµinby, "The Gothic Fearscape of Homeland (In)Security" (paper presented at
the "An American Empire Globalization, War, and Religion." Third Trandisciplinary
Theological Colloquium, Drew University, September 25-27, 2003), 5.
'Jb;d., 12.
'Although my musings on homeland and boundaries from a religious perspective
might have implications for the situation in IsraeVPalestine (for example, regarding the
ideology behind the "security fence" built between Israeli and Palestinian territory), it is not
the intention of this article to analyze that situation.
1
°"The best way to overcome fear and to frustrate the plans of our enemies is to be
prepared and resolute at home, and to take the offensive abroad ... By the actions that we
continue to take abroad, we are going to remove grave threats to America and the world."
See president George W. Bush's remarks at the signing of the Homeland Security
Appropriations Act in October 2003, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/
releases/2003/10/20031001·4.hbnl.
11
Quinby, "Gothic Fearscape,w 2.
Homeland as Borderland 121
experienced by an increasing number of peaple living and traveling in
~e United States (for example, hardening of immigration laws; increased
nghts of law enforcement; decreased rights of individuals, especially of
non-U.S. citizens; worsening living conditions for low-income residents;
not to mention the many thousands traumatized at home due to military
operations abroad). The intended elimination of the enemy outside
triggers a dynamic of fear, suspicion, and division within. "Paranoid
projections 'outwards' return to haunt and split the place from which they
are made," as Homi Bhabha puts it n The homeland itself becomes an
uncanny place.
My contention is that this ~attemP.ted polarization between safe
homeland and dangerous foreign land, at least in part, has tci do with
problematic conceptions of borders and lands. In this chapter, therefore, I
want to question the ease with which homeland at times is depicted as
bounded over against foreign lands. What might a theological
reimagination of one's homeland look like? How can we envision
belonging to a land without putting it in confrontational and binary terms
o~ homeland versus foreign land? Notwithstanding my own geographical
displacement, I want to affirm what I believe to be reflected in the almost
religious devotion to one's homeland: namely, that every religious
practice in one way or another is geographically and territorially situated.
The location of religious practice is relevant for the practice itself. But
there is nothing natural in the relation between religiosity and space. In
my attention to the correlation of space and religiosity, I join a
broadening interest among scholars of religion in emphasizing religious
spatiality. Thomas Tweed, for example, reveals his own "inclination to
highlight spatial themes in making sense of religion." He follows critical
theorists in a certain noticeable shift "from text to territory."" This, of
course, does not mean that territory should become the defining mark for
Christian identity. As a theologian I rather understand this shift from text
to territory as a helpful reminder that Christian theology often has
presented itself as a textual practice cut lose from any territorial
affiliation.
Can we at one and the same time resist the conflation of Christian
and territorial identity, while insisting that Christian practice takes plaa
so~ew~e:e? Christian identity, I suggest, cannot be tied to a fixed
temtonality. Or, as Kathryn Tanner rightly claims, "Christian social
existenee is ... without a homeland in some territorially localizable
society."'' Yet Christian and any religious practice needs to be understood
"Bhabha, Location of Cu/Ulre, 149.
.. LYf!1omas Tweed, "On Moving Across: Tran.slocative Religion and the Interpreter's
Pomtion journal ofllu Arnerfian Amdnny ofReligion 70, no. 2 Uune 2002): 260-61.
"Kathryn Tanner, WoritS of Cu/lure' A N<W Agtnda for 11ieo/ogy, Guides to Theological
Inquiry (MinneapoUs, Mmn.: Fortress Press, 1997), 103.
• ,.
--~
.................................................................................................................
122 Postcolonial Theologies
as related to territory. From a Christian perspective, this territorial
relatedness however, should never he understood as a stable occupation
of a given ~pace, but rather as a continuous negotiation of our spa~ality.
A Christian's territorial home is never a given, but rather something to
be negotiated in constant exchange with those perceived as strangers.
Thus I want to argue for a theological understanding of homeland as
borikrtand. Such an understanding implies a Christian existence that
never can claim a homeland with comfortably confining borders, but
exists in a constantly shifting borderland. . .
The German American theologian Paul Tillich has descnbed th1S
Christian existence in an uneasy border situation in his early work
Religiiise VerWirklichung." What he applied to German Protes:antism in ~e
1920s is applicable, I believe, for a Christian understanding of s~a~al
situatedness in general. Tillich describes, in this early work, Chnstian
existence itself as an uneasy boundary situation in terms of a
Heideggerian "!brownness." We are thrown into this boundary situation.
"The place of the boundary," therefore, "is the most fruitful place for
knowledge," Tillich argues, and points out that "everything needs to be
understo~d from its boundary-which linguistically is indicated by the
term 'definition.'"" We understand things de fine {Latin: "from the
boundary")." -Although Tillich's. dialectical understan~ing of the
boundary situation may not directly apply to our ':'mltic~tur~ '."'d
globalized situation, I find this religious reading o~ a He1deggenan ~Slght
still fruitful as a hermeneutical tool for understanding human-and indeed
Christian-existence. As humans and Christians, our home is in a sense
always at a boundary. Although I do not agree with Tillich's quite
schematic binary understanding of being in-between two entities," I still
affirm the sense of tremble and struggle at multiple boundary situations.
Heidegger's ruminations on boundaries provide inspir~tio~ for
postcolonial theorist Homi K Bhabha as well; he ~uotes him ":' the
beginning of his seminal work The Location of Culture: A bound~ is not
that at which something stops, but, as the Greeks recogruzed, the
boundary is that from which something begins its presen_cing."" Bhabha
takes this crucial and d'!finingfunction of the boundary senously. He takes
the analysis of the border itself, however, to ne~ co":'ple~ties, which in
a certain sense explode the binary system of eXJstential philosophy.
"Paul Tillich, Religilise Verwirklichung (Berlin: Furche, 1930).
"Ibid. II (my translation).
"This'applies for the Greek term horismos as well, which can be translated both as
"'boundary" and 11definition." , . , .
•~see especially the many binary pairs he describes himself as caught in-between ut his
autobiographical book: Paul Tillich, On the Boundary: An Autobiographical Sketch (New York:
Scribner, 1966). ) 4
"Martin Heidegger, Poetry, Language, 17zonght (New York: Harper & Row, 1971 , 15 ;
quoted in Bhabha, Lacation of Culture, 1.
~ .., ..
..... ~ -
..........
Homeland as Borderland 123
Boundary, then, needs to be understood as something more dynamic
than the seemingly rigid division lines between modem nation-states or
between cultures and religions. And this has consequences for
theological thinking about land and boundaries. A postcolonial analysis
of boundaries in tandem with an anthropological description of lerrirory
will help us to rethink "the land" constructively for a Christian theology of
the borderland.
Boundaries as Fields of Negotiation
Homi K Bhabha could be described as a very attentive analyst of the
boundary. Boundary for him is never just a given that neatly divides one
from the other, but always also the site of negotiation and hybridity. One
of the most revealing descriptions of boundary dynamics is to be found
in his essay "By Bread Alone: Signs of Violence in the Mid Nineteenth
Century."'° There, he analyzes the vain attempts of the British colonizers
to maintain control and separation in India during the Indian Mutiny in
the 1850s and 1860s. The boundaries between colonizers and colonized
break down because of "fear," which "spreads beyond the knowledge of
ethnic or cultural binarisms and becomes a new, hybrid space of cultural
difference in the negotiation of colonial power-relations."" As much as
the British would like to maintain clear boundaries, the fear that spreads
indiscriminately among all, according to Bhabha's analysis, does not
allow an understanding of these boundaries as dividing lines between two
clearly distinguishable groups. They are rather elusive zones of contact,
along which both British and Indian subjectivities are shaped. The
spreading fear is here seen not as an emotion that British and Indians are
filled by in clearly distinguishable ways, but rather as a shared emotion
that blurs the line between the groups. There is a bond of fear that
neglects any attempted polarization. Can a similarly pervasive panic and
fear be noticed in the relations between the United States and certain
countries in the Middle East, a fear that already has undermined all
hopes to maintain clear-cut boundaries in between? The increased
scrutiny of Arab American U.S. citizens is a case in point. They are
supposedly inside the safe boundary, but they often experience the
treatment of outsiders. The fates of multiple territories are interrelated.
The boundary becomes a "margin of hybridity, where cultural
differenc<:!' 'contingently' and conflictually touch." This margin "resists
the binary opposition of racial and cultural groups as homogeneous
polarized political consciousnesses."" No use here for the turf-cutting
spade attempting to separate this land from Iha~ or this culture from that.
It will not succeed in cleari!y dividing lands and cultures.
"Bhabha, Location of Culture, 198-211.
21
lbid., 204. t
"Ibid., 207.
124 Postcolonial Theologies
Bhabha's analysis of boundaries as complex fields of negotiation
rather than thin lines of division is directly relevant for a reimagination
of the concept of homeland. It implies that the territory or the "turf we
stand on" cannot meaningfully be conceived as an unambiguous plane
neatly determined and enclosed by boundaries. Boundaries, rather, can
be understood as complex places of exchange in both their geographical
and cultural significance. Their significance, according to this
understanding, is not primarily to keep apart or to strictly divide cultures
and territories. In their constructedness they are not natural lines of
separation, but rather highly relevant places for the production of
meaning. Boundaries emerge as privileged fields of encounter, where
differences and commonalitie~ are continuously negotiated.
Home as Boundary
Scholars of transnationalism have effectively deconstructed an
understanding of home or homeland as a clearly defined natural place.
Homes and homelands are cultural productions, whose value, I would
suggest, should not neglect what is going on ins\de the constructed
boundaries. Fortifying the boundaries of designated' homes only risks a
neglect of internal power dynamics. These often mimic inwardly the
aggressive projections outward." One misses the point by exclusively
concentrating on boundary control of a home space, which in the U.S.
(and for sure in many other parts of the world as well) is a prime site for
oppressive power relations, as Quinby has emphasized." Moreover, as a
Christian I cannot avoid relating the ambiguity of the home space to the
fact that it was in the familiar surroundings of his hometown Nazareth
thatJesus met his first real death threat (Lk. 4:21-30), and that he on the
other hand rejected the primacy of familial ties (Mt. 12:46-50). Jesus'
rejection at home and his redefinition of family reminds one of the
awareness of postcolonial and cultural critics that home is characterized by
the ambivalence of place and desire and is therefore not the "set of
material, communal, and emotional securities" promised by apostles of
orderliness and control. "Belonging," Aamir Mufti and Ella Shohat
~ 3 George W. Bush's State of the Union Address injanuary 2004 seems to me to reflect
the widespread sentiment that border control is good no matter whaL The connections
between boundaries of home and homeland became clear when he talked about the
protection of the homeland and a little later about the protection of marriage. A tightly
bounded homeland/nation has the obligation to protect a tightly bounded home space:
"The men and women of our new Homeland Security Department are patrolling our coa,,ts
and borders. And their vigilance is protecting America... Our nation must defend the
sanctity of marriage," found at http:www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/
01/20040120-7.html.
~Lee Quinby, "Resistance on the Home Front: Re(con)figuring Home Space as a
Practice of Freedom," in Anti-Apocalypse: &ercises in Genealogical Criticism (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1994), 135-53.
Homeland as Borderland 125
remind us, "cannot be housed simply within the material space of walls
and roofs, of fenced topographies and well-drawn maps.""
Postcolonial feminist Susan Stanford Friedman has charted the
consequences of geopolitical thinking for the concept of home and
homeland. According to her, such thinking will "break down the
geopolitical boundaries between home and elsewhere by locating the
ways the local and the global are always already interlocking and
complicitous. "" Such a geopolitical perspective helps one to remember
~hat there is no local home that is not already shot through with global
1n~uences. Cross-cultural, comparativeness denaturalizes "home,"
Fnedman suggests, and can bring "to visibility many of the cultural
constructions we take for granted as 'natural.'"" Mufti and Shohat
elaborate on this denaturalization of the notion of home in a postcolonial
context: "In the figure of the migrant, home, that place and time outside
place an? time, appears to mingle promiscuously with its opposite-exile,
the outside, elsewhere. Hence its attraction for a critical practice that
seeks to undo such binaries of belonging/unbelonging
loyalty/disloyalty."" Postcolonial theory, thus, effectively challenge;
current constructions of home and homeland as pure and naturally
exclusive of those who allegedly do not belong to this home.
The theory has its critics, however. Michael Hardt and Antonio
Negri in their book Empire dismiss postcolonial theory as merely useful
for "rereading history," but "entirely insufficient for theorizing
contemporary global power."" This critique, in my mind, goes too far.
Hardt and Negri here neglect the potential for a postcolonial
deconstruction of those boundaries, which in spite of all boundary-
tr"'.'~gressing glo~alization still are conceived by many as rigidly dividing
~ntitie.s'. Boundanes as such ~e not erased, but their malleability and
mstabil1ty can usefully be highlighted with the help of postcolonial
theory. Although this postcolonial view of boundary certainly threatens
the concept of home and fixed national identity, it need not be
detrimental to Christian identity.
Christian identity is an identity that can be seen as a task, as Tillich
puts it, "which struggles for realization from the perspective of the
boundary."'° Informed by postcolonial theory, I understand this
Ann~ McC!illto~ et al., Dangerous Liaisons: Gender, Nation, and Postcolonial PerspectiDes
25
•
(Minneapolis: TJn1vers1ty of Minnesota Press, 1997), 1.
2
• 4Susan Stanford Friedman, Mappings: Feminism and the Cultural Geographies ofEncounter
(Princeton. NJ.: Princeton University Press, 1998), 110.
"Ibid., 114.
2
~McClintock et al., Dangerous Liaisons, B.
~Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
Pms, 2000), 146.
Wfillich, ReligilJse Verwirkli(ilung, 13 (my translation). Tillich of course is here not
i
~g abou~ Chris~an identity, hut about Protestantism. But Prote;tantism is, take it, what
Tillich assoaated with genuine Christianity.
J
I
 126 Postcolonial Tneologies
boundary less as a perspective, however, than as a condition sine qua
non. Being Christian is being a boundary dweller, being shaped in-
between. "The distinctiveness of a Christian way of life," Tanner writes,
"is not so much formed by the boundary as at it; Christian distinctiveness
is something that emerges in the very cultural processes occurring at the
boundary."" Such distinctiveness, therefore, is not a given, but rather a
task and ultimately unpredictable." The boundary is not to be shunned,
or simply transcended, but rather claimed as a home. The homeland,
thus, becomes a borderland, a place for practicing solidarity with
others/foreigners. This understanding of the home as a boundary
resonates with Bhabha's claim that living on multiple borderlines puts us
in the position of translating diff<jrences into a kind of solidarity." Gloria
Anzaldua, of course, reminds us in her by now classic book
Borderlands/La Frontera that the borderlands never are just smooth places
of encounter and solidarity, but that the life in the borderland for many
mixed identities is fraught with trauma and anxieties: "Tension grips the
inhabitants of the borderlands like a virus."" The number of migratory
people of mixed identity in contemporary urban centers is continuously
on the rise. These people live and suffer at multiple boundaries and are
denied a language for their situation by polarizing power discourse. Paul
Tillich's language, although coined for a culturally different situation,
might be an inspiration here again for formulating a language in
solidarity with people living in the tension of cultural borderlands. "Some
maybe are called," Tillich writes, "to hold out at the boundary and to
resist the temptation to flee this condition of pressure by settling down on
one side of the boundary or the other.""
If Christian distinctiveness occurs at the boundary, the conflation
between national and Christian identity becomes highly problematic.
Although Christian identity according to this understanding needs the
openness of an ultimately undecidable boundary, national identity is
exactly formed by the boundary and dependent on maintenance of the
national boundary as a clear division line over against other nationalities.
,. Tracks Challenging Boundaries
According to this description, boundaries have lost their stability as
division lines. But what about territory itself, which seems defined by
boundaries? Can territory still be meaningfully pictured as a solid plane
distinguished from other solid planes through dividing lines, such as the
3
'Tanner, 11ieories o[Cullure, 115.
51
Ibid., 15lff.
"Bhabha, Location of Culture, 170.
I 14
Gloria Anzaldtia, BorderlaruWIA Frontera: 11u New Mestka (San Francisco: Aunt Lute
Books, 1999), 26.
t wrillich, ReligiDst Verwirklichung, 12 {my translation).
II
I
....__ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ..._ _______ ,,,_c-_ ___ _
Homeland as Borderland 127
modern maps of the surface of our globe seem to suggest? Having
problematized these lines of division, a different conceptualization of
territory is called for as well.
Inspired by his fieldwork among Aborigines in Australia,
anthropologist Sam Gill gives an account of an understanding of territory
that is not that of a solid plane but rather of tracks across the land" A net
of tracks rather than a sealed territory becomes the identifying image of
the land. The land is defined in accordance with journeys undertaken by
ancestors. Au intricate web of tracks is envisioned between the places
these ancestors visited. T_he defense of territorial boundaries is not key
any more, if territory is understood in terms of tracks. This, however,
does not mean that territory has lost importance. Qjlite the opposite is
true: "For aborigines," Gill writes, "identity is inseparable from territory
and their ontology is strongly spatial."" But it is a spatiality that allows for
several nets of tracks to be laid over the same territory. The imagined lines
are not lines of division, but rather lines of connection with ancestors
and-most importantly-not in competition with other lines of travel. '
I am referring to Gill's analysis of an Aboriginal understanding of
territory not in order to suggest something like a postmodern imitation of
Aboriginal relations to land. Instead, I invoke this nomadic way of
inhabiting the land, because I think that it speaks more to the situation of
a growing number of traveling cosmopolitan people in metropolitan
areas all over the world than to the modem notion of the nation-state."
Furthermore, it resonates with Jesus' dynamic relation to the land and his
nomadic lifestyle, to which I will return toward the end of this essay.
Nomadic spatiality exists in strong tension with an understanding of
land as a solid plane, a fixed territory emerging in sedentary cultures
under state control. Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari have dealt with this
question in their Treatise on Norruulology." They contest the traditional
conception of the nomad as non-territorial. "The nomad," they write,
"has a territory." But it is conceived differently from a sedentary territory.
"Even though the nomadic trajectory may follow trails or customary
routes, it does not fulfill the function of the sedentary road, which is to
parcel out a closed space to people, assigning each person a share and
regulating the communication between shares. The nomadic trajectory
-Sam Gill, "Territory," in Cri~ic:al lbms for Religious Studies, ed. Mark C. Thylor
(Chicago: Chlcago University Press, 1998).
VJbid., 299.
"'I am saying this notwithstanding Roland Boer's reference to academic power
structures in Australia, according to which "any contributions from Aboriginal or Koori
people ... are measured and often dismissed on the basis of metropolitan-derived academic
standards." Roland Boer, Last Stop before Antarctica: 11le Bible and PostcoWnialism in Awlralia,
Bible and Postcolonialism (Sheffield, England: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001), 31.
.111Gilles Deleuze and Jenx Guattari, A 11wwand Plateaus: Capitalism and SchU:Pphrenia
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987), 351-423.

128 Postcolonial Theologies
does the opposite: it distributes people (or animals) in an open_space."" In
other words, the nomad has a distinctive relation to temtory. "The
nomad, nomad space, is localized and not delimited."" . .
Christianity and other institutionalized religions have been m tension
with a nomadic lifestyle, because institutionalized religion _relies on
sedentary culture." I am not proposing a solution to this tension. ~~t I
am suggesting that a new sensitivi1?' to alternativ_e :ways of conce1vmg
territoriality is important for Christian theolo~, if 1t ~oes not want to
align itself smoothly with imperial power. Power 1Ssues m general ~eed ~o
be kept in mind in a reconceptualization of boundary _and te~nto_ry m
order not to allow for destabilized boundaries and netlike temtones to
become a priviiege for the powerful. After all, in our globalized world,
destabilized boundaries often favor just a minority of those who benefit
from the economic consrguences of this destabilization..Similarly,
territories in this age of communication and speed'. ~anspo~ta~on c'."' be
seen as netlike. But it is a net that in its full potentiality agam is available
mainly to those few who have the means to utilize it.
A Christian theology that views territory not as closed space but as a
net of communication needs to be careful not to equate such a netlike
territory with the consequences of globalization. It reson~tes, of co~rse,
1 with certain globalizing structures. A Christian understandmg of teri:ito'!'
not only relates to an Aboriginal understanding of lan_d but als? ~"'.!'" ~
,I relevance for contemporary culture in that, as Sam Gill notes, 1t is akin
'l
+'
to the structure of the Internet and other postmodern models of
communication and interpretation."" Christian theology, furthermo~e,
would do well to pay attention not only to textual but also to spatial
practices. Here, Tweed's approach might be help~l.again. He ?eve!?~" a
"theory of religion as spatial practic_e th~~ takes •.tme:~n1;y as zts gmding
t theme and proposes that religions onent itinerant mdivtduals and groups
in time and space as they map the natural and social terrain, (and) mark
the always shifting horizon."" Such an orientation of itinerant individ~als
l and groups in time and space seems to me indeed relevant for the rap~dly
increasing and highly mobile population of contemporary metrop~h~
areas. It calls to mind Friedman's metaphor of routes for the descnption
of the development of human identity. "I~entity," Frie~an wntes,
"often requires some form of displacement-literal or figurative-to come
to consciousness."" But most importantly, she does not oppose routes to
~Ibid., 380.
41
lbid., 382.
4'21bid., 383-87.
43 Gill, "'Territory," 311. .
..Tweed, "On Moving Across." 262. Given my dynamic unders~du~g of boundary,
supported by Bhabha's analysis, such a "crossing over" seems to me to mdicate ~too easy
containment of these "shifting horizons." If they are shifting, when can I be certain to have
crossed over them?
"Friedman, Mappings, 151.
__..
Homeland as Borderland 129
roots as privileged metaphor for the development of subjectivity. Rather,
she talks about a "dialogic relationship" between the two with "roots"
"signifying identity based on stable cores and continuities" and "routes
suggesting identity based on travel, change, and disruption."" In terms of
boundaries, this means that a dialogic is "constituted by the bipolar pull
between the erection of borders delineating difference and the
dissolution of those boundaries in the formation of permeable
borderlands of exchange, blending, and transformation.""
My choice of title "Homeland as Borderland" and not "Homeland
or/versus Borderland" is meant to indicate a similar dissatisfaction with
binaries, a dissatisfaction inspired by Bhabha's and Friedman's work. I
am· not denying, much less condemning, the need of a homeland, but I
am suggesting the usefulness of reimagining this homeland as a dynamic
borderland, that is, not necessarily in opposition to those I cannot yet
imagine as belonging to this land.
Christian Subjectivity Negotiated at Boundaries
I am not suggesting, therefore, a move from homeland to no land.
The Christian subject, after all, cannot separate itself from land and
place, because it is inseparable from a "self, which knows itself as bodily
and communal."" Christian subjectivity, which all too quickly forgets its
spatial and bodily situatedness, is especially vulnerable to the rhetoric of
a circumscribed homeland as its proper home. In its preoccupation with
a future home, it easily is swallowed up by "the economics of the
consummate Christian utopos [no place)" that, as Catherine Keller points
out, tends to consume "topos [place) itself."" Only if Christians forget the
bord~rland character of the turf on which they stand are they likely to
buy mto a topos-consu,ming rhetoric of protecting one's own turf (see
Tom Ridge's quote above).
To be sure, Christianity has certainly been complicit with colonial
and imperialistic interests, which makes it all the more important to test
alternative views of territory in order to recover subdominant strains in
Christian traditions. One such subdominant strain is the understanding of
Jesus of Nazareth as a borderland person. Jesus himself, I ~ould argue,
helps challenge the notion of a fixed or stable territory. Commenting on
the gospel of Mark decades before the emergence of postcolonial biblical
criticism, W~rner Kelber observed that "Jesus' whole career is conceived
in Mark as a journey," and that understandingJesus means "paying close
attention to the points of departure and arrival, to the directions and
goals of his travels." As an example he highlightsJesus' repeated voyages
"Ibid., 153.
f71bid., 154. '--.
41
Calherine Keller, Apocalypse Now and '11len: A Feminist Guide kJ tJu End of the World
(Boston: Beacon Press, 1996), 174.
"Ibid., 142.
. j
130 Postcolonial Theologies
over the Sea of Galilee. "What happens as a result of these voyages is that
the lake loses its force as a harrier and is transformed into a symbol of
unity, bridging the gulf between Jew and Gentile."" This is a_n
observation that lends itself to a postcolonial interpretation of a dynamic
boundary as a field of negotiation. It can be argued, therefore, that for
Jesus, living in an imperial context, there is no clear homeland with
boundaries to be clearly marked and defended against intrusions. 'Jesus
himself fits into no one simple category," as Marianne Sawicki points out.
"The frontiers of his land project into his soul: indigenous Galilean,
transplantedJudean, dancing with Herodians and Romans. He is mestk,o,
culturally mixed, out-caste, transgressive of borders. This is why he can
see things in new ways."51 _
Jesus approaches with ease the boundaries of Israel ~oth
geographically (by going to and across the Jordan and the Sea of Galilee)
and ideolOgically (by continuously socializing with outsiders and
marginalized people). "Mark's and other peasant movements had no
motivation to maintain group boundaries," as Richard Horsley points out
in his rendering of the Markan Jesus. "Mark has Jesus spreading the
movement across the imperial boundaries of client rulers' territories,
from the Galilee of Antipas to the 'villages' or 'regions' of Caesarea
Philippi, Tyre, the cities of the Decapolis, and finally into the jurisdiction
of the Jerusalem high priests under/and the Roman governor Pilate {Mk.
5.1; 7.24; 8.22, 27; 10.1)."" Kwok Pui-lan takes the story of the
Syrophoenician woman (Mk 7:24-30) as material for constructing a
postcolonial discourse. First, she 'points out that "the regio? of Tyre and
Sidon, where Jesus meets the woman, belongs to foreign lands, m
contrast to Galilee andJudea, the Jewish homeland." Then she follows R
S. Sugirtharajah in his rejection of a missiological interpretation of the
text by interpreting it as a conversion ofJesus: "In the encounter Jesus is
reminded that God's hospitality is so great that it transcends national and
racial boundaries."" Jesus, "living in a contact situation, at the troubled
interface of several worlds,"" is prepared to be challenged in terms of his
Wemer H. Kelber, Mark's Story ofjesw (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1979), 17, 42.
50
.s 1MarianneSawicki, Crossing Galil.ee: Architectures of Contact in the OCQlpied Land ofjesru
(Harrisburg, Pa.: Trinity Pres!! International, 2000), 194.
SlRichard A. Horsley, "Submerged Biblical Histories and Imperial Bibli~ _Studies." in
The PostcoWnial Bible, ed. R S. Sugirtharajah, The Bible and Postcolon1alism, vol. 1
(Sheffield, England: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998), 160. . , . .
"Kwok Pui-lan, Discovering tht .Bibk in lht Non-biblical Wbrld', Bible & Liberation Senes
(Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbill Books, 1995), 74, 81.
•Sawicltl, Crossing Galilee, 181.
.• __ A"""lt. .......... _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ___..k--~~L_,_.....;33
Homeland as Borderland 131
understanding of homeland and boundary." His own flexibility in terms
of territorial and cultural boundaries has all too often been eclipsed by
colonial and imperial appropriations of the Christian message. His
negotiating of boundaries from a position of very limited power is not to
be confused with a crossing and neglecting of boundaries by a
triumphant Christianity.
Such a triumphant boundary crossing can privilege the theology of a
community proposed by Graham Ward, a community that "occupies [sic]
a space transcending place, walls and boundaries."" Ward, who otherwise
is very sensitive to the pulls and pushes of our multicultural situation,
does capture Christianity's dynamism of mobility and permeability. But
his language of transcendence ojboundaries risks colonial affiliations again,
even though he tries to describe this expansion as Eucharistic
transcorporeality'' and not "concomitant with colonialism."" Th avoid a
colonial-style affiliation between Christianity and the powers that be, I
believe, it would be better to refrain from depicting the Christian
community as "transcending place" and limit the transcending qualities
to Christ's presence, which Ward does when he argues that "the body of
Christ can cross boundaries, ethnic boundaries, gender boundaries,
socio-economic boundaries, for example."" Although Christ is the one
who transcends multiple boundaries, I believe that we as Christians, as
Christian community, need to settle for the more modest notion of
negotiating at boundaries.
I believe, with Ward, in a "permeability of Christian embodiment""'
and the permeability of its social boundaries. This is precisely why I
would like to resist both a simple transgression/transcendence of
boundaries and an easy conflation of Christian subjectivity with the
bounded turf on which I stand." We need to live and respect the
55
1.eticia Guardiola-Saenz offers a slightly different reading of Jesus based on
Johannine material. Instead of rendering him as dwelling at the boundary, she reads him as
crossing boundaries. "Jesus' hybrid identity," she writes, "helps him survive while crossing
borders and moving across frontien in his subversive acts of creating transfonnative
spaces." Leticia A Guardiola-Saenz, "Border-Crossing and Its Redemptive Power in John
7.53-8.11: A Cultural Reading of Jesu• and the Accused,• in john and {Pstcol<>nialism, ed.
J~fTrey I... Staley, The Bible and Postcolonialisrn, vol. 7 (London and New York: Sheffield
Academic Pre,.. 2002), 144.
"Graham Ward, Cities of God, Radical Orthodoxy (London: Routledge 2000) 258
(itallcs added). ' '
"Ibid., 95 .
SIIbid.1 176.
•Jbid., 103.
'°Ibid., 180.
61
Paul Tillich. in his vehement rejection of any nationalism, went too far when he
spiritualized territorial belonging: "The God of the prophets and ofJesus utterly demolishes
all religious nationalism ... The Christian of any confession ... must ever leave his own
country and enter into a land that will be shown to him. He must trust a promise that is
purely transcendent" Tillich, On the Boundary, 91, 92.
132 Postcolonial TMologi,es

complexity of the boundaries, which constantly challenge and shape our

identity, not least our identity as Christians. What Scott Michaelsen and
David E. Johnson claim for the cultural subject is true for the Christian
subject as well, namely, that "a border is not something that can be
crossed by one or the other self-enclosed cultural subject."" The
boundary, rather, is the unavoidable and dynamic location of Christian
subjectivity. Such a boundary dwelling resists any self-evident territorial
belonging from a Christian perspective. Such belonging needs to be
continuously rethought in conversation with Christians and non-
Christians alike. I see Tanner's "community of argument"" as a useful
description of Christian subjectivity. Maybe one could even call it, more
in tune with Bhabha's boundary analysis, a community of negotiation. Such
negotiation is necessary, because there is no "given community or body
of the peopf<i, whose inherent, radical historicity emits the right signs.""
Chri.-Uan communities, which internally practice such negotiation, such
continuous encounters, will practice a similar negotiation with the THE POSTCOLONIAL CHRIST
externa4 thereby realizing that the boundary between external and
internal blurs due to this practice of negotiation. By allowing such a
community, Christian identity can no longer "be assured by a sharp
cultural boundary;"" therefore, "boundaries between Christian and non-
Christian ways of life are fluid."" Such a community can no longer
presume cultures, ideologies, or territories as homogeneous wholes to be
neatly divided. 67 It will instead practice a discipleship of Christ that
negotiates (at) the boundaries and follows the traces of divergent tracks
across the common land. Through this practice a new conception of
belonging to the (home)land can emerge, and multiple boundaries may
reveal themselves as places of encounter and solidarity instead of division
and exclusion.

112
Scott Michaelsen and David E. Johnson, Border Theory: The Limits of Cultural Politia
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), 15.
6.Vfanner, Theories of Culture, 123.
64
Bhabha, Location of Culture, 27.
65
Tanner, Theories of Culture, 108.
"Ibid., 152.
67for deconstruction of such notions, see Renato Rosaldo, "Border Crossing," chap. 9
in Culture & Truth: The .Remaking of Social Analysis: With a New Introduction (Boston: Beacon
Pres~ 1993), 196-217.

.- _,•'