Politics of Parousia

This volume moves literary criticism of the Gospels further into the socio-political struggle for liberation - particularly, into the realm of colonial/postcolonial discourse. Taking seriously the thought that Mark's Gospel was written under Roman colonization, and using "inter(con)textuality" as an underlying theory, it examines the relation between Mark's story of Jesus and colonial politics, especially Mark's emphasis on the parousia and his constructions of colonial subjects. It argues that Mark's apocalyptic simultaneously resists and reinscribes colonial ideology in terms of three subject-positions and subject-matters: authority, agency, and gender. Juxtaposing apocalyptic and politics, dissidence and duplication as well as Chinese American narratives and the Markan text, this volume seeks to rethink our struggle for social change and the relationship between cultural politics and Gospel studies.