Abstract
Alissa Jones Nelson's book seeks to address the “ghettoization” (p. 1) of biblical studies by applying the concept of contrapuntality first developed by the literary theorist Edward Said to recent discusions of the book of Job. The book is composed of six lengthy chapters, plus an introduction and brief conclusion, with copious footnotes, an extensive bibliography, and indices of biblical references, key terms, and authors cited (the latter of which is evidently incomplete). The book is clearly written, but even though the author asserts that she is strongly interested in the contributions of “vernacular” readers to the study of Job, the book itself is addressed to an “academic” audience, although it would also be accessible to upper-level college students or well-educated non-scholars.
The book's first part consists of three chapters, which introduce Said's thought generally, then his concept of contrapuntality, especially in relation to biblical studies, and finally the current state of biblical studies, with special attention to disparities between academic scholarship and that of nonspecialist readers. Jones Nelson stresses Said's importance to post-colonial theory but tends to downplay other important post-colonial critics such as Spivak or Bhabha. The three chapters of the book's second part present various contrapuntal readings of the book of Job, first between von Rad and Gutiérrez, supplemented by Clines, Tamez, and Dussel, then a variety of psycho-spiritual and other health-related approaches (ranging from Jung to Gerald West), with special attention to HIV/AIDS issues, and finally various Asian approaches. Underlying it all is her strong interest in the ethics of reading and the belief that biblical texts are relevant to current issues of social justice and liberation.
Jones Nelson claims that she seeks an “integration” of various “legitimate interpretations” (pp. 62, 85) which would eliminate the gaps between them. According to her, Said's contrapuntality arises from multiplicities of meaning that are already there within the text. The text is inherently meaning-filled, a “speaking subject” (p. 5, see also 89); it has interests of its own. Thus contrapuntality, like Bakhtin's notion of heteroglossia (which Jones Nelson discusses on pp. 70–74), suggests something like Ricoeur's view of metaphor, and of utterances more generally, as overflowing with meaning. As in contrapuntal music, different “voices” within a single text do not speak a single truth, but rather multiple co-existing truths, and the result is a surplus of meaning. This suggests an ethico-theological agenda that Jones Nelson never explicitly addresses, an agenda that rules out serious consideration of other ways of thinking about these gaps, for which written text is silent, merely an illusion of life, as Socrates said, in strong contrast to any notion that meaning is contained in the text. For such alternate approaches no integration of interpretations would be either necessary or possible, and the result would be a (potentially endless) proliferation of readings—precisely what mainstream scholars confronted with the wide array of postmodern approaches fear.
This book is admirable for its attempt to address the deep divisions within biblical studies, both between scholarly “camps” and between scholarly and non-scholarly readers. However, Saidian contrapuntality, like Bakhtinian heteroglossia, arises from their studies of disparate “voices” that appear within the narratives of various novels—that is, within a single text. In contrast, the contrapuntalities that Jones Nelson considers in Part Two of the book do not arise from the voices of the man Job and his companions or Elihu or God or Satan within the text of Job, or even from the book's implied author, but rather from differences between readerinterpreters of the book of Job. These differences are not within the text, but external to it. While it could be argued that readings of Job by people such as Gutiérrez or West do provide critical counterpoints to the readings of von Rad or Jung, Jones Nelson does not exactly do that. Although she notes “tensions” between the views, she seems to step back from a confrontational position at the end of each chapter, preferring instead a more conciliatory conclusion.
Other features of the book are also problematic. The author's quotations of others do not always support her point, or they do so only tangentially, as though she were trying to force them to “fit.” Similarly, she frequently adds “[sic]” and other bracketed editorial intrusions into her quotations of Said, von Rad, and others in order to note or “correct” gender-exclusive language (she even notes this—p. 131, n. 36, see also 84). We may not always approve of the other's voice, but if we then proceed to correct its insufficiencies, that is hardly an invitation to dialogue. Instead it results in an exclusion of the other, much like the implicit theological agenda noted above. This may be a quibble, and probably not every difference is valuable, but if we all start to eliminate the differences that offend us, then there may be little “space” left for contrapuntality. Furthermore, if our main priority is to avoid giving offense to any other, then our dialogues may not be very interesting to anyone at all—and that might be even worse than failing to see the counter-point.