Esther, Drag, and Agency: Gender, Ethnicity, Power, and Queer Time in the Book of Esther and its Jewish Interpretations
The character of Esther in the biblical book named for her is often read in scholarship as passive, overshadowed by her relative Mordechai, merely complying with his directives. This essay uses queer-theoretical vocabularies of drag and passing to allow for a different reading of Esther, one in whic...
| Auteur principal: | |
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| Type de support: | Électronique Article |
| Langue: | Anglais |
| Vérifier la disponibilité: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | En cours de chargement...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Publié: |
The National Association of Professors of Hebrew
2022
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| Dans: |
Hebrew studies
Année: 2022, Volume: 63, Pages: 99-118 |
| Sujets / Chaînes de mots-clés standardisés: | B
Ester, Personnage biblique
/ Théologie queer
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| Classifications IxTheo: | HB Ancien Testament |
| Accès en ligne: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Résumé: | The character of Esther in the biblical book named for her is often read in scholarship as passive, overshadowed by her relative Mordechai, merely complying with his directives. This essay uses queer-theoretical vocabularies of drag and passing to allow for a different reading of Esther, one in which she acts intentionally and at great personal risk to save herself and her people. I examine the Hebrew Masoretic text of Esther, as well as early Jewish interpretations of the story, for clues about Esther's ethnic and sexual passing. In addition to arguing that Esther the character engages in drag and passing, I contend that Esther the book does temporal drag, playing with notions of time to make an important argument about how Jewish history works. While acknowledging that the book was almost certainly written to legitimate nationalist counter-reading strategies can produce more liberatory understandings. |
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| ISSN: | 2158-1681 |
| Contient: | Enthalten in: Hebrew studies
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1353/hbr.2022.0005 |