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Babylon is a surprisingly multivalent symbol in U.S. culture and politics. Political citations of Babylon range widely, from torture at Abu Ghraib to depictions of Hollywood glamour and decadence. In political discourse, Babylon appears in conservative ruminations on democratic law, liberal appeals to unity, Tea Party warnings about equality, and religious advocacy for family values. A composite biblical figure, Babylon is used to celebrate diversity and also to condemn it, to sell sexuality and to regulate it, to galvanize war and to worry about imperialism. Erin Runions explores the significance of these shifts and contradictions, arguing that together they reveal a theopolitics that tries to balance the drive for U.S. dominance with the countervailing ideals and subjectivities of economic globalization. Examining the confluence of cultural formations, biblical interpretations, and (bio)political philosophies, The Babylon Complex shows how theopolitical arguments for war, sexual regulation, and political control both assuage and contribute to anxieties about waning national sovereignty. Theoretically sophisticated and engaging, this remarkable book complicates our understanding of how the Bible affects U.S political ideals and subjectivities.

Globalization --- Sex in popular culture --- Violence in popular culture --- Sovereignty --- Sex --- War --- Christian sociology --- Church and state --- Christianity and state --- Separation of church and state --- State and church --- State, The --- Christian social theory --- Social theory, Christian --- Sociology, Christian --- Sociology --- Christianity and war --- Sex (Theology) --- Popular culture --- Religious aspects --- Christianity. --- History --- Babylon (Extinct city) --- In the Bible. --- Babel. --- Babylon. --- Theopolitics. --- biopolitics. --- detranscendentalize. --- globalization. --- queer theory. --- sexuality. --- torture. --- violence.

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This volume pursues critical readings of the Bible that put psychoanalysis into conversation with Marxist and postcolonial criticism of the Bible. Psychoanalysis is considered an important tool in understanding how the traumas of colonialism manifest both materially and psychically. Further, psychoanalysis provides a way to mediate between Marxism's materialist groundings and postcolonialism's resistance against empire. The essays in the volume illuminate the way empire has shaped the biblical text, by looking at the biblical texts' silences, ruptures, oversights, over-emphases, and inexplicable elements. These details are read as symptoms of a set of oppressive material relations that shaped and continue to haunt the text in the ascendancy of the text in the name of "the West.

Bible --- Marxist criticism. --- Psychology. --- Criticism, interpretation, etc. --- Postcolonial criticism. --- Psychology --- 22.06*4 --- 22.06*4 Bijbel: kritische exegese; conservatieve eruditie; vrij onderzoek --- Bijbel: kritische exegese; conservatieve eruditie; vrij onderzoek --- Bible - Psychology

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Historically, religious scriptures are defined as holy texts that are considered to be beyond the abilities of the layperson to interpret. Their content is most frequently analyzed by clerics who do not question the underlying political or social implications of the text, but use the writing to convey messages to their congregations about how to live a holy existence. In Western society, moreover, what counts as scripture is generally confined to the Judeo-Christian Bible, leaving the voices of minorities, as well as the holy texts of faiths from Africa and Asia, for example, unheard. In this innovative collection of essays that aims to turn the traditional bible-study definition of scriptures on its head, Vincent L. Wimbush leads an in-depth look at the social, cultural, and racial meanings invested in these texts. Contributors hail from a wide array of academic fields and geographic locations and include such noted academics as Susan Harding, Elisabeth Shüssler Fiorenza, and William L. Andrews. Purposefully transgressing disciplinary boundaries, this ambitious book opens the door to different interpretations and critical orientations, and in doing so, allows an ultimately humanist definition of scriptures to emerge.

Sacred books --- History and criticism.