The Kingship of Jesus in the Gospel of John. Sehyun Kim

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СКАЧАТЬ well as cultural.183 To accomplish this postcolonial vision, to begin with, it is necessary to recognize individual, ethnic, and especially national identities, because self-identity is the starting point of the accomplishment of postcolonial visions.184 Generally speaking, postcolonialism draws and pays attention to problems of identity in relation to broader national histories and futures,185 because of this postcolonial vision.186 Therefore, it is said that we never reach one ideal world without any objective confrontation with colonial histories as well as postcolonial realities in the society.187 To reach one world by overcoming colonial histories, problems of identity should be pointed out.

In this respect, identity problems arising in the (post) colonial society must be complicated, because there exist delicate, complex, and not easily explained matters between the colonizer and the colonized.188 There must exist simultaneously “differences and opposition” and “similarity and mutual transactions” between the colonizer and the colonized. Attempts to identify individuals, groups, or a whole society in the (post) colonial environment often result in discovering in them different identities, which the colonized would never expect as their identities.

      Hybridentity (= Hybrid Identity)

      Hybridentity is a useful term which is employed to explain the intricate relationship between the colonizer and the colonized and ambivalent conditions in colonial societies. Most postcolonial writing, which has concerned itself with cultural exchange as a mutual process in the colonial and postcolonial societies, emphasizes the strength of the hybridized nature of postcolonial culture.

[Most postcolonial writing] lays emphasis on the survival even under the most potent oppression of the distinctive aspects of the culture of the oppressed, and shows how these become an integral part of the new formations which arise from the clash of cultures characteristic of imperialism. Finally, it emphasizes how hybridentity and the power it releases may well be seen to be the characteristic feature and contribution of the post-colonial, allowing a means of evading the replication of the binary categories of the past and developing new anti-monolithic models of cultural exchange and growth.189

      Because the mutual transactions and influences generate hybridentity in both societies, the notion of in-between-ness or ambivalence in the concept of hybridentity gives some space for achievement of the postcolonial vision: globalization, one ideal world, or international welfare.

Some postcolonial critics’ works, however, tried/trended to “downplay the bitter tension and the clash between colonizer and colonized and therefore misrepresent the dynamics of anti-colonial struggle.”190 Although hybridentity, because of cultural transactions, occurred mutually in (post)colonial societies, it does not mean an equal-value-transaction among the cultures. Accordingly, when one group among culturally discrete groups has dominated the others and when this cultural domination of one group is linked with political and economic profits, it has produced huge suffering in those colonial societies; its side effects have been felt unceasingly in those colonial and postcolonial societies.

In addition, when the culture in the colonial society is manipulated by the dominant culture that influences or causes mutations in every area of the society, it breeds ambivalent and uncertain conditions, blurred cultural boundaries both inside and out, as well as an otherness within the society.191 Ultimately, the society experiences an alteration, a different society from that of its master but similar to its master’s. In the process of colonization, therefore, a problem of colonial identity arises between the colonizer and the colonized.

      In many cases, the conflict and competition is generated radically and intensely in colonial resistance against the dominant culture. In these cases, the colonized society is in the negative but offensive mood, in suspense and in agitation. The hearts of the colonized are filled with emotions of oppression, exploitation, restriction, the absence of liberty, subordination, and so on. Painful experiences beyond description and negative images have been inscribed on the hearts of the colonized, no matter how tremendous the profits of colonization are. The more radical and intensive the feelings of oppression and bitterness, and the longer period of oppression they experience, the more negative emotions remain in the hearts of the colonized.

The opposite direction of influence, however, occurs spontaneously in the dominant culture.192 While the dominant culture has experience of modification of itself in some way by the influence of the colonial culture, a similar ambivalence and uncertainty, blurring of cultural boundaries and otherness are generated in that society. In many cases, this kind of transformation results in positive formations in the end, while supplementing the weakness of the dominant culture, strengthening their establishments, and increasing the wealth and benefits of the dominant society.

      Diaspora

The term “diaspora,” with “hybridentity,” is effective when examining the mutual contagion and subtle intimacies between the colonizer and the colonized because of their remarkable analytic versatility and theoretical adaptability.193 Theoretically speaking, the concept of diaspora could be employed to elaborate “the notion of in-between-ness conjured up by the term hybridity.”194

      Many of the colonized had to leave their original places for several reasons. In these difficult exilic situations, panic beyond imagination grew in the hearts of the diaspora. Their destinies were to be slaves or wanderers in foreign places. During their survival in foreign places, having lost their possessions the diaspora experienced on the one hand a loss of their original identities, although they attempted to keep them. On the other hand, they could not help accepting foreign influences, which caused a modification of their identities. The diasporic peoples, therefore, underwent modifications of their identities, with (no) relation to the ways in which they attempted to survive. In this kind of diasporic situation, their identities became more and more hybridized. Crucially, in this situation, the diaspora were sometimes not welcomed by either the colonizer or the colonized, like the Samaritans in Jewish society. Eventually, most of them could not return to their homeland after the emancipation of their home country from foreign power.

We can find a typical example of hybridentity and diaspora in the diasporic Hellenized Jews in the first century. One of the groups of readers of the Gospel of John might have been the diasporic Jews. In their hybridized identities, their reading of the Gospel might quite well have been different from that of the Palestine Jews. Supposing that John bore in mind not only the diasporic Jews, but also other readers whose origins were also very varied,195 it would have been acceptable for the author to adapt and employ many christological titles in order to identify Jesus as a universal king without any misunderstanding. John, with literal logic, seems to use various christological titles together, in a series, and simultaneously, in order to persuade the readers from a wide spectrum of origins.196

      Postcolonial Reading of the Gospel of John

In early Christianity, the huge influence of the empire upon multiple cultures had permeated into marginal groups.197 Jewish society, which is the background of the story of the СКАЧАТЬ