JOURNAL OF BLACK n1EOLOCY IN SOUTH AFRICA 3

The Implications ofthe text ofEsther for African Women's

Struggle for Liberation inSouth Africa*

Dr Itumeleng JMosala

IntroductionA word about the definition of terms isappropriate at the outset. There existsa great deal of confusion concerningwhat exactly is meant by LiberationTheology. In part, the confusionrelates to the use of terms. There is alsoa conceptual misunderstanding in thisconfusion. Furthermore, it is not beingextreme to suspect a fair deal ofideological distortion. That is. a delib­erate misunderstanding that seeks tomake a mockery of or to obscurethings.

As far as terminology goes, the con·fusion is of two forms. There is the fai­lure to distinguish between LiberationTheology and Theology of Liberation.Liberation Theology refers to the LatinAmerican form of the Theology of Lib­eration.1t is associated with the namesof activist scholars such as Segundo,Gutierrez, Assmann. Bonino, etc. Bycontrast, the term Theology of Libera­tion is generic and denotes a move­ment of Third World people involvedin a struggle to break the chains of cul-

tural-religious imperialism that helpto perpetuate their political andeconomic exploitation.

The second form of the terminologi­cal confusion involves a discourseimperialism of a certain kind. At firstsight, there may seem to be no distinc­tion between this form of terminologi­cal confusion and the first. There ishere a tendency to refer to all ThirdWorld theologies of the poor andoppressed peoples as LiberationTheologies, thus subsuming themunder the Latin American version ofthe Theology of Liberation. This mis­take is made mostly, though by nomeans exclusively, by white radicalpeople who identify culturally morewith the, European descendants ofLatin America than with Third Worldpeople. Cornel West raises the ques­tion of the political implication of thiscultural preference of the political leftwhen he writes:

For oppressed coloured (blllck) people thecentral problem is nol only repressivecapitalist regimes. bUI also oppressive

• This Paper was originally read at the International Meeting of the Society forBiblical Literature. in Sheffield. England. and subsequently given in a mod­ified form as a lecture at Rhodes University. Grahamstown.

European civilizing attitudes. And evenMarxists who reject oppressive capitalistregimes often display oppressive Europeancivilizing attitudes toward colouredpooples. In this sense, such Marxists.though rightly critical of capitalism. remaincaptives of the worst of European cullure. \

Secondly, I resolved that on thisoccasion a simple apology for theTheology of Liberation would begrossly inappropriate. This is so notonly because this theology has been inexistence for so long that it is now aninescapable reality, but also becauseso many significant strides havealready been made in developing it. Inthe case of South Africa, black theolo­gians have been at work for more thana decade now wrestling with manyissues of the nature, the method, thespecific form. the epistemology, thesources and the goals of the BlackTheology of Liberation. More recently.the question of the Black FeministTheology of liberation has emerged asa high priority on the agenda of BlackTheology.

For the reason. therefore. of wantingto get on with the business of doingBlack Theology as opposed to simplyap%gising for it. as well as for thereason of giving priority to a BlackFeminist theological discourse, Ichose to address the following topic:

The Implications of Ihe text or Estherror African Women's Struggle ror Lib­eration in South Arrica

1. Reading the Bible in South AfricaThat the Bible is a thoroughly politicaldocument is eloquently attested to byits role in the Apartheid system inSouth Africa. No other political orideological system in the modernworld that I know of deri ves itself sodirectly from the Bible as the ideologyof Apartheid. The superiority of white

IMPLICATIONS OF THE TEXT

people over black people. for example.is premised on the divine privilegingof the Israelites over the Canaanites inthe conquest texts of the Old Testa­ment.

For this reason. in South Africa, allmanner of theological sophistry hasbeen produced by way of counteringthis embarrassing use of the Bible. Thedominant opposition discourseagainst this way of using the Bible hasbeen the liberal humanist one. The keycharacteristic of this oppositionalperspective has not been its funda­mental disapproval of the conquesttexts of the Old Testament. Rather, thismodel concurs with the conservativemodel in its approval of the conquesttexts, but disagrees with the likes ofApartheid ideologues' interpretationof them.

Thus in effect a biblical hermeneu­tics of textual or authorial collusion!collaboration rather than one of strug­gle or revolt dominated the debate con­cerning the reading of the Bible.Increasingly, therefore, biblicalappropriation in South Africa becamealienating to Blacks as their realityconstantly contradicted their sup­posed inclusion in the biblically basedlove of God.

Consequently. the struggles of the1960s which led totheexile, imprison­ment and banishment of many Blacksand their organisations, notwithstand­ingGod's love for them witnessed to inthe Bible. produced a crisis in blackpeople's self-insertion in the story ofthe Bible. The rise of Black Theology.which like its counterpart - LiberationTheology - in Latin America. groundeditself in the liberation stories of theBible. signified black people's discur­sive attempt to deal with this crisis.This new reading of the Bible by blackpeople themselves in the light of thestruggle for liberation would attempt

JOURNAl.. OF BLACK THEOt..OGY IN SOlITH AFRICA ,

to argue that liberation and not con­quest or oppression was the key mes­sage of the Bible.

Black Theology and LiberationTheology's biblical hermeneutics wasa product of a crisis situation and notof a revolt on the part of the readers. InSouth Africa it was not until the post­1976 period when black people seemto have looked death in the face andcome to terms with it in their struggleagainst the forces of Apartheid thai arevolutionary reading practice becamepossible. This practice is an integralpart of the social insurgency of theblack masses and a necessity of theorganic location of its subjects in thecontext of that insurgency.

The new and developing biblicalhermeneutics of liberation differs fromthe liberal humanist tradition in that itrepresents a theoretical and not simplya moral mutation from ruling class her­meneutics. Such new reading of theBible. particularly in the context ofSouth Africa. would concur withTerry Eagleton when he says in sup­port of what in literary criticism hascome to be known as the "Revolt of theReader" movement:

That readers should beforcibly subjected 10textual authority is disturbing enough: thatthey should be insultingly invited to hugtheir chains. merge into empathetic har­mony with their oppressors to the pointwhere they befuddledly cease to recognizewhether they are subject or object, worker,boss, or product is surely the ultimateopium.'

A study of Esther's relevance forAfrican women's liberation strugglewill need to take into account the trad­ition of the revolt of the reader that isbecoming part of Black Theology's lib·eration praxis. Not only will this her·meneutics refuse to submit to thechains imposed on it by the biblicalexegetes of Apartheid or those of the

liberal humanist tradition includingits black and liberation theology ver­sions. but it will contend against the"regimes of truth" (Cornel West: TheDilemma of the Black Intellectual,1985:120) of these traditions as theymanifest themselves in the text of theBible itself.

2. The Biblical Scholarship ofEstherMost studies of the book of Esther arepreoccupied with questions of thereligiosity, canonical status. historic­ity and purpose. The problem withthese studies is not that they addressthemselves to these questlons but thatthey rely heavily on the text itself notonly for information but also for thetheoretical frameworks with whichthe texts must be interpreted. Thusmost works simply retell the story,assess the obvious irreligiosity of thetext and confirm the book's own con­fession of its purpose.

Traditional scholarship does. how­ever. raise crucial issues which a bibli­cal hermeneutics of liberation cannotignore. Nonnan Gottwald. for instance,addresses the question of the plot of thestory, "replete with dramatic rever­sals'" which is· important to note inorder to understand the rhetoricaldevices employed by the dominantideology of the text. It is also crucial toobserve with scholars concerning thehistoricity of the book that:

The archaic placement of the story in thePersian court is accomplished with consid­erable knowledge of its inner workings andcustoms, but there are so many historicalinaccuracies and improbabJilties that thework cannot be taken at face value. Thestory may draw on memories of conflictsover Persian policies toward the Jews inwhich the Jews serving in the imperialcourt were involved, but the actual settingof the narrator is in the Maccabean-Hasmo­nean era. This is indicated by several lines

6

of evidence: the intensity and bitterness ofthe Jewish-Gentile conflicts in the bookwhich are pictured as "fights to the finish",the lack of external references to the bookuntil lale Hellenistic times, and the verylate appearance of Purim as a recogni7.edJewish festival"

Historical Critical scholarship pro­vides these insights which cannot beignored by newer exegetical ad her­meneutical methods. It must be noted,however. that traditional scholarshipconsistently fails to draw the ideologi­cal implications of its historical andliterary studies. This it does because itis often in ideological collusion withthe text. A criticism that sets itself thetask of serving the cause of human lib­eration must overcome this limitation,For as Terry Eagleton rightly argues:

The task of criticism ... is not to situate itselfwithin the same space as the text. allowingit to speak or completing what it necessarilyleaves unsaid. On the contrary, its functionis to install itself in the very incomplete­ness of the work in order to theorise it -toexplain the ideological necessity of those'not-saids' which constitute the very prin­ciple of its identity. Its object is the uncon·sciousness of the work - that of which it isnot, and cannot be, aware.'

3. African Women's StrussJe for Lib-eration

The hermeneutical weapons of strug­gle of African women must of neces­sity issue out of the specificity of theirpraxis within what Cornel West callsthe process of "critical negation, wisepreservation, and insurgent transfor­mation of (the) black lineage whichprotects the earth and projects a betterworld".6

In the South African situation blackwomen's struggle takes at once theform of a gender, nationaL and classstruggle, The oppression and exploita­tion of black women operates at all

IMPLICATIONS OF THE TEXT

those levels. What is more, thesedimensions of African women's strug­gle span different historical periodsand social systems each of which hasinflected this struggle in particularways.

Contemporary African women areproducts of pre-capitalist semi-feudal,colonial. and settler-colonialmonopoly capitalist racist social sys­tems, on the one hand, as well as ofheroic anti-sexist, anti-colonial anti­racist and anti-capitalist struggles inSouth Africa,on the other hand. At dif­ferent times and in different waysaspects of these processes and strug­gles enjoyed dominance or subser­vience in determining who Africanwomen are and how they would wagetheir struggle.

Thus given this complex nature ofAfrican women's struggle a biblicalhermeneutics arising out of such astruggle can hardly be simplistic, It israther akin to the programme that Cor­nel West suggests for revolutionaryblack intellectuals. He writes:

The new 'regime of truth' to be pioneeredby black thinkers is neither a hermetic dis­course (or set of discourses). whichsafeguards mediocre black intellectual pro­duction, nor the latest fashion of black writ­ing, which is often motivated by the desireto parade for the white bourgeois intellec­tual establishment. Rather it is inseparablefrom the emergence of new cultural formswhich prefigure (and point toward) a post­Western civilization.'

A hermeneutics of liberation whichis envisaged for an African women'sstruggle will be at once a human, Afri­can and feminist hermeneutics of lib­eration: it will be polemical in thesense of being critical of the history,the devices, the culture, the ideologiesand agendas of both the text and itself:it will be appropriative of the re­sources and victories inscribed in the

JOURNAL OF BLACK THEOLOGY IN SOUTH AFRICA ,

biblical text as well as its own contem­porary text; it will be projective in thatits task is performed in the service of atransformed and liberated socialorder."

4. Reading the Text of Esther

4.1 A Feudal-Tributary TextThe social formation implied by thetext of Esther is clearly a kind of feudalor tributary system. Chapler 1 describesthe social and political topography inthe Persian Empire which patentlypresupposes the tributary mode of pro­duction; a hierarchical political struc­ture with the monarch - me/ek - at thehead of the royal ruling class, followedby the chiefs and governors (sarim)still within the ruling nobility (vss.1-3):then follows the non·royal ruling classfractions, some of whom may be pro­perly designated middle class, the in­fluential seCtor - probably by virtue ofits property ownership - advisers andpeople of high office (gedolim.hakamim and yoshbim. vss.5.13-14).The Queen (malkah) is of course amember of the royal nobility, but evenin a fairly straightforward descriptivetext like chapter 1 her Insertion intothe ruling class is gender-structured(vss. HH I) where mention of hernecessitates the royal summoning ofseven eunuchs, the latter symbolisingthe private property character of thesexuality of the king's wife, In fact, thefundamental problematic of this chap­ter as indeed of the whole text of Estheris the gender structuring of politics.

The feudal social relations of thePersian Empire as articulated in thistext reflect two forms of oppressionand exploitatioll. The aile form is pre­sent by its absence: it is represented bythe "not-said" of the texl. This form ofoppression is signified in the verses ofchapter 1 that describe the use to

which the surplus production of theeconomy was put. In typical feudaland tributary fashion. surplus wassquandered on non-productive luxurygoods and a luxurious life-style amongthe ruling classes. None of it wasinvested in productive activities ortechnologies in order to enabledevelopment to take place. Moreimportantly, verses 5-9 which de­scribe this wasteful expenditure of theeconomic products simultaneouslyfunctions to obscure the social rela­tions of production on which this con­sumptionist practice Is premised. Itmystifies the fact that behind theseluxurious goods and this extravaganzalie exploited. oppressed and dispos­sessed peasants. serfs. and sub-classes.This text, which is otherwise excellentin its provision of socia-economicdata. is eloquent by its silence on theconditions and struggles of the non­kings, non-office holders. non-ehiefs,non-governors and non-queens in thePersian empire.

The second form of oppression ispatriarchy. This specific kind ofoppression is an inherent part of thestructure of feudal society. The centralthrust of the bOOk begins, in chapter I.around the question of the anti-pat­riarchal revolt of Queen Vashti. Thetext's agenda is spun around the view,generated by the text itself and repre­senting its dominant ideology. that theaudacity of one woman unleashed thepolitical possibilities rerlectedapprovingly in the rest of the book. Allthis, however. is located in andrefracted through a feudal social struc­tural arrangement, producing athoroughly feudaltexl.

African women who are themselvesproducts and victims of past feudallegacies and are presently historicalsubjects in the context of transformed

,

but pervasive tributary/feudal prac­tices surviving under capitalism,understand the specificity of Ihis formof oppression. Further. they recognisethai this oppression cannot simply besubsumed under other kinds of oppres­sion such as capitalist or colonialoppression. For this reason the revoltof Queen Vashti represent a form ofstruggle with which an African bibli­cal feminist hermeneutic of liberationmust identify. It does not accept theimplicit condemnation of Vashti bythe text, and eschews the techniquewhereby her revolt is used as reasonfor the rise of an apparently moreacceptable queen. This identificationis possible only on the basis of a bibli­cal hermeneutics of struggle.

4.2 A Survival TextThe book of Esther builds its storyaround the memory of very difficult.times under colonial exile. Thespecific lesson it seeks to draw atten·tion to revolves around the struggle forsurvival. In particular, two forms ofsurvival are accented in this story: cul­tural and national survival. Needlessto say that these two types of survivalare inseparable, though not identical.

The material conditions of the prac­tice of survival presupposed by thetext are political powerlessness,economic exploitation, cultural andnational alienation. The text proposesits own solution. It suggests a pure sur­vival strategy, which is not underpin­ned by any Iiberative political ideol·ogy. According to this solution Esthergets incorporated into the feudalhaven of the King, Mordecai isappointed an administrator in the col­onial political machinery and later aneven higher honour is given him.Through the cooperation of these twofigures the rest of the oppressed Jewish

IMPt.lCATIONS OF THE TEXT

community manage to survive theodds against them, and in fact findthemselves in a position where theyoutpace the Persians at their owngame.

The price that the oppressed pay forthis favourable turn of events for themis at least two-fold. Firstly, the oppres­sed must be seen to have bought heav·i1y into the dominant ideology in orderthat their survival struggle should findapproval. In chapter 9 this ideologicalcapitulation is expressed in three tersebut powerful repetitious statements:vs.l0 "However. there was no loot­ing"; vs.15 "But again, they did nolooting": vs.16 "But they did no loot­ing". This principle of upholding thesanctity of property over the life ofpeople is well known as part of ruling­class ideology. The final chapter of thebook of Esther exposes the politics ofthis ideology when it summarises thethrust of its discourse:

King Xerxes imposed forced labour on thepeople of the coastal regions of his empireas well as on those of the interior. ... Mor­decai the Jew was second in rank only toKing Xerxes himself. He was honoured andwell-liked by his fellow·Jews. He workedfor the good of his poople and for the sec­urity of all their descendants. (l,l)

Secondly, in this book the survivalof the group is achieved first andforemost by the alienation of Esther'sgender.power and its integration intothe patriarchal structures offeudalism.

4.3 A Patriarchal TextMore than being a feudal and survivaldiscourse, Ihe book of Esther is a pat­riarchal text. There are at least threeobjections that a biblical hermeneuticsof liberation must raise against it.These three are related to each otherand to the questions raised in relation

JOURNAL OF BLACK THEOLOGY IN SOUTH AFRICA ,

to the texl's feudal and survivalcharacter.

Firstly, the text's choice of a femalecharacter to achieve what are basicallypatriarchal ends is objectionable. Thefact that the story is woven aroundEsther does not make her the heroine.The hero of the story is Mordecai whoneedless to say gives nothing of him­self for what he gets. Esther struggles,but Mordecai reaps the fruit of thestruggle. African women who workwithin liberation movements andother groups will be very familiar withthese kinds of dynamics. A trulyliberative biblical hermeneutics willstruggle against this tendency.

Secondly. the book of Esther sac­rifices gender struggles to nationalstruggles. In the name of the strugglefor the national survival of the Jewishpeople it disprivileges the question ofgender oppression and exploitation.The matter of the subsumption of somestruggles under others is a seriousissue of discourse imperialism. In thebook of Esther this problem is espe­cially unacceptable given the purelynationalist character of the nationalstruggle. The Maccabean-Hasmoneanrevolution which probably underliesthe nationalist struggle of the text ofEsther is known to have replacedGreek Hellenism with Jewish Hel­lenism.

Thirdly, the discourse of Esther sup-

presses class issues. including theclass character of cultural practices.The feast of Purim, for example, whichrepresents the principal cultural bene­fit of the Esther revolution, is notlocated in class terms in such a waythat proper ideological choices can bemade about it. In this it is very muchlike many cultural practices that seeminherently autocratic in the demandsthey place on their people.

5. ConclusionThis essay has tried to take seriouslyElizabeth Schussler Fiorenza'S crit­ique of what she calls the biblical her·meneutics of consent.' In taking thiscritique seriously it has argued for theneed for cultural-materialist biblicalhermeneutics of struggle. Such a her­meneutics will raise questions of thematerial. ideological and cultural con­ditions of production of the text. It isargued here that it is only when suchquestions are raised that the politicalissues affecting nations. women. races.age groups, and classes will receiveproper treatment in the interpretationof the Bible.

The conviction that has been articu­lated elsewhere must be reiteratedhere, namely, that oppressed com­munities must liberate the Bible sothat the Bible can liberate them. Anoppressed Bible oppresses and a lib­erated Bible liberates.

IIlbI;OII"I,"'I. Com" Wesl. '11>. llilemml oI1he 81",,1 IntellectUII." C"It"...1Crilique. Vo1.1. WIll 19851 P 256,2. Te,ry Eoglelon, ~jn.r rheGnin (London, Ve,lIO. 19861 P 102.3. No,mln GOIII"II<I". The If"""' ... Bible. (Phliidelphll' Forl,..,... 1985) P 561,I. Ibid. P 562S. Terry ~elon,t. Cornel \\ "'I. "The Dilemml of tIM! BI""k Intellectull," I' 124.1. Jbid.p122 .•. Terry Eoslelon, Wllter Ben/lmln,•. F,liube1h Sch~.. le, I'ioren ... , Brwd not Slone. (Booton: lI..oon Press. 198-1). p 4311.