Heart Of The Cross

Theologies have often pointed to the cross as a place of suffering and sacrifice, while feminist critiques have frequently argued against interpretations of the cross as patriarchal valorizing of suffering. W. Anne Joh points toward a new interpretation of the cross as a place of love, where God and humanity come together in a surprising way. She interprets the cross as performing a double gesture that has a subversive effect. The cross works both to pay homage to overwhelming and multiple and complex oppressive powers (e.g. the empire) and simultaneously to menace those powers. The cross as a double gesture speaks to those who have shifted from a typical politics of identity to political identities shaped more by postmodern ambiguities of difference. Utilizing the Korean concept of jeong (a notion that helps clarify how the double gesture of the cross inspires a new relationality), Joh constructs a theology that is feminist, political and love-centered, while acknowledging the cross as source of pain and suffering as well.

A real gift of Joh’s book is its interdisciplinary approach, carefully fusing postcolonial theories of hybridity and mimicry (Bhabha, Trihn), feminist poststructuralist psychoanalysis of abjection (Kristeva), cultural studies of the contemporary world, and more traditional christologies. The result is Joh’s innovative vision of the heart of Christology as a call for political love that is stronger than powers of oppression.