A Poetics of Postcolonial Biblical Criticism

God, Human-Nature Relationship, and Negritude

Aliou Cissé Niang

• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9781532617294
  9781498241939
• eBook ISBN:
  9781498241922
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

Telling in current biblical postcolonial discourse that draws insights from the works of Aime Cesaire, Frantz Fanon, and postcolonial theorists is the missing contribution of Leopold Sedar Senghor, the architect of Negritude. If mentioned at all, Senghor is often read through conclusions drawn by his critics or dismissed altogether as irrelevant to postcolonialism. Restored to its rightful place, Senghorian Negritude is a postcolonial lens for reading Scripture and other faith traditions with a view to reposition, conscientize, liberate, and rehabilitate the conquered, and enable them to reclaim their faith traditions and practices that once directed a mutual relationship between God, human, and nature--a delicate symbiosis before the French colonial advent in West Africa. A keen eye for cross-cultural analysis and contextualization enriched this volume with an intriguing reading of scripture, Ancient Near Eastern and Greco-Roman texts in conversation with other faith traditions, particularly Senegalese Diola Religion. As a Poetics of Postcolonial Biblical Criticism, Negritude is an optic through which people of faith may look around themselves, critically reread their sacred texts, reassess their vocation, and practice mutuality with God and nature on the heels of chilling climate change. Enshrined in this innovative argument is a call for introspection and challenge for people of faith to assume their vocation--human participatory agency.

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Introduction

The Negro is the person of Nature who traditionally lives of and with the soil, in and by the cosmos. —Léopold Sédar Senghor1

Most important, perhaps, is the relationship between people and nature, or how people view nature and relate to it so as to ensure their survival. The Diola feel that they are part of a totality in which they, the objects around them, the things that happen, and nature itself are elements within a single and all encompassing context. This is why the elements needed for survival, like the land and its products, the forests and animals, are not considered to be available to anyone who happens to be the first to take possession of them. Nature is not seen as an object to be exploited, but rather as a subject that meets people on equal terms. —Paolo Palmeri2

The Poetics of Postcolonial Biblical Criticism is a project that has germinated in the most profound sense from my roots as a son of the Diola people of Senegal, West Africa, especially the dwellers of the village of Mof Avvi,3 now as a biblical scholar living in the global arena that is New York City, a professor at a racially and ethnically diverse theological seminary.

Figure 1

Map of Diola pattern of migration and settlements on the northern and southwest banks of the Casamance River known as le Pays Diola “Diola country.” As a region of Sénégal, West Africa, the Casamance is the most fertile of all the regions of the country; and as a result; it is the breadbasket of the country. The Casamance River irrigates Diola rice fields and is the fishery for most Diola communities. Demographically, the region of Sénégal called the Casamance is densely settled by Diola people who number about 90% of the population in the region and 3.7% nationally. The Diola refer to this area as the Diola country. Adapted from Niang’s Faith and Freedom in Galatia and Senegal, 71.

Figure 2

A detailed map of the area called Diola country showing all the main townships. Some Diola people migrated to the eastern part of the region—that is east of the city of Ziguinchor. My grandparents later moved from Mof Avvi to the village Adéane. The map is taken from Thomas, Les Diola.

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My academic journey in America has always been an existential endeavor to find ways to read the Bible through my cultural lens in conversation with others, because I believe that faith in divine revelation, as I have come to understand it, resists any assured attempt to be its guardian. Divine revelation includes a human interpretative voice filtered through its cultural milieu. Part of the impetus for this book has been my wondering if there is insight to be gained by reengaging general revelation at all. If there is something worth pursuing in that regard, then my Diola ancestors may have something to teach me and other followers of Jesus about divine, human, and nature relationships. As far as I can tell, my ancestors never debated the existence of God; neither did they think of the deity as remote, unconcerned about human affairs, or annoyed by the daily cacophonies made by the deity’s creatures. My Diola ancestors believed that humans must strive to hear, apprehend, interpret, and exercise God’s pervasive speech that creation manifests.

“God created the world” is a statement often taken for granted by many children of Abraham in the faith. Some followers of Jesus Christ interpret the expression, “God so loved the world,” found in John 3:16 to mean God loves only humans—a reading that sadly fails to take into account the meaning of the word κόσμος “creation, universe” (LSJM).4 The Bible records millennia-old dynamic myths recounted in Ancient Near Eastern and Greco-Roman contexts that tell why the world was made by God and why the deity is related to her in many ways. The two creation stories told in the First Testament offer two different and yet balanced accounts. The first account depicts God as creator—making, shaping, and relating to creation through an empowering speech (Gen 1:1–3, 10–12, 26–28, NRSV).

In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light . . . God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas. And God saw that it was good. Then God said, “Let the earth put forth vegetation: plants yielding seed, and fruit trees of every kind on earth that bear fruit with the seed in it.” And it was so. The earth brought forth vegetation: plants yielding seed of every kind, and trees of every kind bearing fruit with the seed in it. And God saw that it was good . . . Then God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.” So God created humankind in his image, in the image...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Figures and Tables
• Preface
• Abbreviations
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Human-Nature Relationship in Diola Contexts
• 3. The Divine–Human–Nature Relationship in Israel and Her Neighbors
• 4. Nonhuman-Human Relationship in the New Testament
• 5. Empire in Senegal West Africa
• 6. Conclusion
• Bibliography