Speak My Name: Anti-Colonial Mimicry and the Samaritan Woman in John 4:1-42
Sung Uk Lim
Vanderbilt University
Abstract
This paper revisits the thorny issue of whether or not the subaltern can speak for herself against the colonial authority. This paper argues that in John 4 the nameless Samaritan woman as a subaltern native is a creative agent who undermines the colonial authority of Jesus as a so-called missionary, seen through Homi Bhabha’s lens of anti-colonial mimicry. Close reading of John 4:1-42 reveals that the mimicry of the Samaritan woman is anti-colonial in the sense that she, as the colonized, menaces the authority of Jesus as the colonizer by causing ambivalence to him with regard to his ethnic and political identity. As a consequence, mimicry is the location of resistance against colonialism.
After investigating the text in terms of anti-colonial mimicry, this paper applies the same scenario to the reader’s social context of Korean Christianity in relation to Western missionaries during the period of Japanese colonization (1910-1945). The power relations between Jesus and the Samaritan woman parallel those between a missionary and native, between the colonizer and colonized. As is typical in the history of Christian missions, indigenous Christians as the colonized are commanded to imitate missionaries as the colonizers. This paper particularly considers the case of my own denomination, Korea Evangelical Holiness Church. Thus, this paper explores the ways in which mimicry subverts colonial rule in both the text and the world.
Introduction
What attracts my attention in John 4 is the fact that no name is given to a Samaritan woman (gunh. evk th/j Samarei,aj) in the whole narrative. Why is she anonymous? Naming has the power of ordering and controlling things and beings in such a way as to have the authority to make them visible in the world. In addition, naming has to do with a desire to control the “generative power,” namely the “creative agency” of origin.[1] Anne McClintock notes: “The desire to name expresses a desire for a single origin alongside a desire to control the issue of that origin.”[2] On the contrary, non-naming also has the authority to make a being invisible in the world. Non-naming is an act to reject the “generative power,” namely the “creative agency” of origin. John’s Jesus, as a male figure, discovered the Samaritan woman in Samaria and has the power to name her. He, however, does not call her any name whatsoever. By his not naming her, John’s Jesus leaves the Samaritan woman invisible in the narrative, thereby disavowing her creative agency of origin. In this sense, it can be said that the Samaritan woman is marginalized and victimized in the narrative.
It is noteworthy that the story of the Samaritan woman can be understood in the context of colonialism.[3] As Anne McClintock puts it, women serve as “a boundary marker” of colonialism.[4] In this respect, the Samaritan woman, as a boundary marker, can be classified as the colonized. The Samaritan woman is, in a sense, a representative of the Samaritans colonized by the Romans.[5] On the other hand, Jesus can be labeled the colonizer, given that Jesus becomes a missionary as a consequence of his encountering with the Samaritan woman and mission could serve as ideology to justify colonialism throughout history.[6] From this I can conclude that the Samaritan woman is a spokeswoman for the colonized Samaritans and the Jewish man, Jesus, becomes the spokesman for the Jewish colonizers in terms of ethnicity, gender, and religion.[7]
However, one might wonder if Jesus is colonized, as the Samaritan woman also is. As Adele Reinhartz points out, Jesus in the Gospel of John can be viewed as both the colonizer and the colonized.[8] The concepts of the colonizer and colonized are relative, but not absolute. While Jesus is the colonized under the Roman Empire, at the same time, he is also the colonizer in relationship with the Samaritan woman as the colonized. In Reinhartz’ words, Jesus, so to speak, is “the colonizer as colonized.”
The purpose of this paper is to recover the silenced voice of the “subaltern” and repressed “colonial subject,” the Samaritan woman in the text, thus recuperating the “subaltern agency” in such a way that might make the marginalized visible under colonial rule.[9] However, Gayatri Spivak argues that it is impossible to restore the silenced voice of the subaltern. At this point, I disagree with her skepticism about the recovery of the voice of the subaltern in colonial society. According to Homi Bhabha, the subaltern can subvert the authority of those who have the hegemony in the colonial world.[10] In this regard, I disagree with the opinion of Gayatri Spivak that the subaltern cannot speak in a colonial society. Instead, I think that the subalterns have creative agency in their own history. Spivak claims that it is a duty of ‘postcolonial intellectuals’ to recover, or reconstruct the subversive voice of the marginalized, which has been silenced and hidden in the text because it is written in remembrance for the victors’ history. What here indeed matters is not the subaltern but the text itself. In other words, it is the text that silences the active voice of the subalterns because the text is written by someone belonging to the majority, neglecting the voice of the minority. Nonetheless, we can deconstruct the text to discern between the live voice of the majority on the surface and the oppressed voice of the minority in depth. Now we can reconstruct the text so that the silenced voice of the minority may be recovered.[11]
In order to have the oppressed voice of the Samaritan woman in the text heard, I will make use of the concept of “colonial mimicry” proposed by Bhabha in his book The Location of Culture. According to him, a strategy of colonialism is for the colonizers to command the colonized to partially mimic their image in an imperfect shape: “almost the same, but not white.”[12] For example, western missionaries, as a rule, try to Christianize the natives in colonial countries by teaching predominantly the Bible without giving any significance to theological education, with the result that the natives are “partially” Christianized, rarely recognizing what Western Christianity indeed is. Crucial to “mimicry” is such a “partial representation” of the colonizer’s presence on the part of the colonized. “Colonial presence” is neither identical nor different because mimicry hides neither identity nor difference behind it.[13] That is to say, the colonized is partially the same with the colonizer and at the same time the colonized is partially different from the colonizer in that the colonizer commands the colonized to mimic them while not entirely showing himself/herself to the colonized. For Bhabha, mimicry is a doubling divided between origin and copy. In this regard, mimicry is a representation of “a difference that is almost, but not quite.” [14]
Colonial mimicry, Bhabha suggests, menaces colonial authority by causing ambivalence of identity to the colonialist. That is why “the colonial presence is always ambivalent, split between its appearance as original and authoritative and its articulation as repetition and difference.”[15] That is to say, a doubling or double vision in mimicry disrupts colonial authority because mimicry discloses the ambivalence of colonial authority. Colonial identities, regardless of whether it is the identity of the colonizer or of the colonized, are in an ambivalent-“almost, but not quite”-state. This identity of hybridity[16] or liminality undermines colonial authority. Consequently, mimicry is eventually changed into a site of resistance against colonial authority.
In alignment with Bhabha, my paper aims to demonstrate that the Samaritan woman as a subaltern native is a creative agent who resists and subverts the colonial authority of Jesus as what we call missionary by means of mimicry in John 4. What is more, this paper ultimately aims at the liberation and decolonization of the marginalized people, giving back their creative agency disregarded by the centered people. Caught in the history of Japanese Colonialism in Korea (1910-45), my context in relation to the history of my own denomination sensitizes me to power relations between Jesus and the Samaritan woman, as the colonizer and colonized respectively.
2. My Personal Voice in search for Name and Origin
As a “flesh-and-blood reader,”[17] my reading of the biblical text depends upon my context because meaning, as Fernando Segovia suggests, results from “an encounter between a socially and historically conditioned text and a socially and historically conditioned reader.”[18] Prior to analysis of the text, I shall reflect upon my social location, especially as regards my own denomination.
An unforgettable memory, during my graduate studies of theology, may serve to explain why I began to have sensitivity to the problem of my denomination. It was shocking to me to hear the following from one friend of mine: “All are hybrids, except Presbyterian churches in Korea.” As soon as he said this, I was at a loss for words. His utterance might be understood as a sort of pride of being a Presbyterian, given that he was then a student at a certain Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Korea, and in Korea Presbyterians outnumber any other denomination. Nonetheless, I could never be set free from the idea of whether I myself was a ‘hybrid’ in my denomination, because it is both dependent and independent from Western missionaries. Moreover, I felt being a hybrid was an insult, because hybridity was easily subsumed under the label of impurity in Korea through the mechanism of nationalism. In nationalism, the distinction between ‘us’ and ‘them’ was sharply drawn and the purebred as an in-group were included, while the non-purebred as an out-group were excluded, only underscoring the homogeneity allegedly sustained by pure-blood.[19]
With regards to my denomination, I always have great difficulty with identity, because my denomination has no connection with the other denominations. It is very hard for the members of an indigenous denomination to have a stable and fixed identity- by contrast with those of the other denominations which belong to Western traditions of Christianity, such as Catholic, Lutheran, Methodist, Presbyterian, Baptist, and so on.
First of all, one problem of identity as to my denomination concerns its name. My denomination had been formally unnamed for fourteen years, even since it founded its own institution called Kyung Sung Gospel Mission Hall (1907-21).[20] It is not until the year 1921 that my denomination was first called Cho Sun Christian OMS (Oriental Missionary Society) Holiness Church. In the year of independence from Japan, 1945, the current formal name of my denomination was established: Korea Evangelical Holiness Church.
Noteworthy is the fact that no name had been given to my denomination for many years, even though it was definitely a denomination-like organization. In my view, the reason for this non-naming derives from the colonial power relations between missionaries and natives. While staying in Japan, the forefathers who conceived of my denomination were converted to Christianity by American missionaries who had little self-identity about their own denomination because they were not sent to Japan by any denomination, but by the Holiness Movement in the United States. Unaware of the significance of name, the missionaries did not make any efforts whatsoever to entitle my denomination. They just urged the ancestors of my faith to mirror back their mission, consequently creating a mission hall in Korea.
Then the other matter of identity as to my denomination relates to the issue of its origin. Ever since a name was offered to my denomination, the problem of origin was left unsolved to the members of my denomination. Conscious of an ambiguous identity, my denomination has made some attempts to trace back its origin throughout history. For instance, some theologians belonging to my denomination contend that it should be founded on the traditions descended from John Wesley on the grounds that those missionaries who evangelized the forebears of my denomination were the Methodists influenced by the Holiness Movement in America. On the other hand, other nationalistic theologians claim that my denomination is purely independent of any other denominations of the Western churches. The reason is that there was no intervention of missionaries in the process of development of my denomination, except for the initial contact with them. Despite the above endeavors to search for the origin of my denomination, there is no consensus about it because it is caught in a dilemma between admitting and denying the role or presence of missionaries.
It is my hybrid and liminal identity as to naming and origin that calls my attention to the power of colonial relations between Jesus and the Samaritan woman, respectively as a missionary and a native in John 4. As is the case with my denomination, it is commonly held that indigenous Christians as the colonized are commanded to mimic a missionary as the colonizer in Christian mission. Without necessarily repudiating the possibility that mimicry might reinscribe the colonial ideology of the colonizer among and upon the colonized, I would like to examine whether anti-colonial mimicry indeed operates against and resists colonial authority in John 4.[21] While doing my close reading of John 4:1-42, I intend to claim that the mimicry of the Samaritan woman as the colonized is a threat to Jesus as the colonizer.
3. A threat for Jesus Represented by the Samaritan Woman’s Ambivalent Identity
The aim of my close reading is to restore the position of the Samaritan woman as a creative agent, instead of describing her only as a victim or a true disciple. To say that the Samaritan woman is victimized might not be sufficient to liberate her from colonial oppression.[22] As Luise Schotroff argues, “the Samaritan woman does not describe herself as a victim.”[23] I also argue that it would be insufficient merely to portray her as a true disciple of Jesus, or a true missionary fully to follow Jesus’ mission without any consideration of power relations between Jesus and the Samaritan woman.[24] The Samaritan woman is more than a prototype of the victimized or a true disciple of Jesus in the Gospel of John. As I will show below, the first reason is that the Samaritan woman is presented as a representative of the Samaritans, rather than one who is marginalized or victimized. The second is that she both mirrors Jesus’ mission and resists his colonial authority by mimicry, challenging or distorting his identity.