Full Product Details
Author: Associate Professor of Religious Studies Erin Runions (Pomona College)
Publisher: Fordham University Press
Imprint: Fordham University Press
ISBN: 9780823261369
ISBN 10: 0823261360
Publication Date: 18 September 2014
Audience:
General/trade
,
General
Format: Online resource
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: Available To Order
We have confirmation that this item is in stock with the supplier. It will be ordered in for you and dispatched immediately.
Reviews
The Babylon Complex is unlike anything else in the fields it engages and crosses; its scholarship is unique, top-tier, and challenging, offering much savvier reflections upon biblical heritages and uses than what one often finds in the current theoretical 'turn to religion.' In short, it is both relevant and interdisciplinary, two terms too often used, but seldom as aptly as they are for this truly excellent book. -Joseph A. Marchal, Ball State University Runions' scholarship is phenomenal. It's stunning that she can sustain her rigor over this variety of cultural and political contexts. That she does is a testament to her breadth as a scholar, and her critical acumen. -Jay Twomey, University of Cincinnati Erin Runions reveals Babylon to be an ambivalent but perversely indispensable figure for theopolitical discourses girding contemporary biopolitics. Modeling a queerly sublime ethics of reading, The Babylon Complex sets an agenda for a next generation of biblical scholars while demonstrating what cultural studies gains from engagement with biblical studies. --Jennifer Glancy, Le Moyne College With fearless insight and incisive prose, Erin Runions offers a breathtaking tour de force of astute biblical-political-philosophical analysis that persistently reframes the intertwining of biblical interpretation and biopolitics through the figure of Babel/Babylon. As she shows, the pervasive theopolitics of American discourse, right and left, is informed by an eschatological fantasy sanctioned by the twin edifices of bible and law. This engrossing account of biblically inflected defenses of US sovereignty places biblical interpretation at the center of critical theory and critical theory at the center of biblical interpretation. A must read for anyone interested in the current state of theodemocratic exceptionalism, in the unpredictable and shifting meanings of biblical texts, and in the possibility of listening, finally, to an other. --Jennifer Knust, Boston University
Author Information
Erin Runions is Associate Professor and Chair in the Department of Religious Studies at Pomona College. Her previous books are Changing Subjects: Gender, Nation, Future in Micah and How Hysterical: Identification and Resistance in the Bible and Film.
