In the previous post I reflected on how Hannah Stømmen’s The Bibles of the Far Right reveals the interrelation between ideas of masculinity, “civilization,” and religion. In this interview I dig deeper with Hannah into the theoretical positions and ideas that shape her analysis.
Elizabeth Shakman Hurd (ESH): Your chapter on the Crusades, Middle Ages, and masculinity as part of the “War Bible assemblage” also evoked other “sticky” factors for me, such as the significance of violent video games and gun culture in the lives of many of the aggrieved men discussed in this chapter. Would you include those factors as well? More generally, how much “Bible” content does there need to be for something to “count” as a biblical assemblage and when does it morph into something broader? Is gun culture a biblical assemblage?
Hannah Strømmen (HS): Violent video games and gun culture could absolutely have been included as factors in the War Bible assemblage. And not just guns but weapons more generally. It is striking that several of the missiles used by western forces against ISIS were biblically named “Brimstone” and “Hellfire” missiles. In 2015 the UK politician Hilary Benn argued in favor of military intervention in Syria by alluding to the Good Samaritan story from Luke 10:25–37: Britain should not walk by on the other side of the road. In the book I discuss the way the story about David fighting Goliath (1 Samuel 17) is used to frame those on the far right as warriors defending Europe against Islam. Receptions of this story are able to tap into the idea of the valiant underdog, where violence against a much stronger enemy can be justified as righteous.
The War Bible assemblage is not only about biblical components or influences, though. Breivik drew on Norse mythology to name the weapons he used. What I find helpful about the assemblage concept is that it can elucidate how different sources and traditions—from video games, to Norse mythology, or indeed the Bible—are not as incompatible as they might appear, but can be combined to reinforce fantasies of masculinity and drive violent action.
It is, I think, often not clear where biblical reception morphs into something broader. Sometimes direct citations of the Bible are straightforwardly recognizable. But vague references to the Bible are worth studying in addition to direct citations because much biblical reception is about what people think of as “biblical.” Many examples could be mentioned here. In addition to Benn’s comment about “walking by on the other side of the road” mentioned above, there are references to storms and catastrophes having “biblical” dimensions, or modern-day activists such as Greta Thunberg being compared to biblical prophets. In the case of the far-right politics I discuss in The Bibles of the Far Right, it is crucial that the Bible is not only directly cited. More important than citations is its association with western civilization, whiteness, masculine heroism, and righteous truth-telling in opposition to “elites.”
The blurred line between biblical reception and something broader is important also for thinking critically about how the “secular” is imagined. The popular perception that people in the west were biblically literate but no longer know the Bible obscures the fact that perceptions of the Bible circulate in numerous ways and with varied effects. As Peter Phillips points out, we need to get away from the idea that biblical literacy is only about reading the Bible. Some fairly extreme forms of biblical reception gain visibility, such as in debates about abortion or visions of the apocalypse. But much political and cultural Bible-use goes unnoticed and unstudied due to a secularization narrative in which the decline of biblical literacy is a key part. As the contributors to Katie Edwards’ Rethinking Biblical Literacy show, that narrative depends very much on what we mean by biblical literacy and biblical knowledge. Hanna Liljefors has recently shown how problematic attitudes to the Hebrew Bible stubbornly persist in Swedish media culture—a country which is often declared to be one of the most secular in the world. The attitudes toward the Hebrew Bible she identifies participate in long-standing supersessionist receptions that demonize Judaism, but are professed with no awareness of this history and its impact. It is crucial to pay attention, as Holly Morse argues, to the “myths and meanings” surrounding biblical texts (4).
This is the reason why I prefer to talk about Bible-use, where “use” can be implicit and explicit, textual and non-textual, related to Bibles as artifacts or as an archive of ideas and inspiration for theologies, ideologies, and practices. “Use” can be reading as well as not reading. In fact, some uses of the Bible require that the texts have not been read!
(ESH): You draw on an impressively diverse array of thinkers in this book (including several of my Northwestern colleagues including James Bielo, Regina Schwartz, and Robert Orsi). Setting aside Deleuze and Guattari, which thinkers or approaches influenced you most in this project, and how? Do you expect to stay with them in future work, or explore new paths? If the latter, which ones?
(HS): I hadn’t realized the scholars you mention are all at Northwestern! It must be a great place to work.
Yvonne Sherwood’s work has influenced me greatly. Her work on the Bible of George W. Bush Jr. has been very important for explaining more broadly the way contemporary assumptions about a “Liberal Bible”—a Bible that vaguely supports the ideals of liberal democracy—go back to the Enlightenment period. Her book on the afterlife of Jonah was also inspiring for me in identifying different dynamics in the reception of the Bible, from receptions that become so mainstream they are barely questioned, to more minority or “backwater” receptions, as she calls them.
Your own work on the “two faces of religion” paradigm, which has taken hold in political debate in the last decades (and continues to operate), has also been instructive and inspiring for me. It allowed me to see how the Bible becomes caught up in a global dynamic in which the category of religion is frequently split into the problem of so-called bad religion (which is sectarian, intolerant, and therefore requires discipline and surveillance), and the solution of so-called good religion (which is irenic, peace-building, respectful of rights, freedom, and tolerance).
I am excited by emerging work in biblical reception criticism, particularly by PhD students. I am thinking of, for instance, Rebekah Carere’s project at the University of Oslo on Trump’s Bible, Rebekah Hanson’s research at the University of Chichester on the Bible in digital culture, and Samuel Auler’s work at Lund University on the Bible in Brazilian far-right politics. Also, the team of postdocs for the project I am currently leading at Lund University, “Scripture and Secularism”—Joel Kuhlin, Hanna Liljefors, and Frida Mannerfelt—are all producing exciting work that explores how the Bible is used in different modern publics. Their work will no doubt inspire me in continuing to research the complex dynamics between the “biblical” and the “secular” in modernity.
(ESH): Sara Ahmed’s approach to affect appears to have shaped the project in significant ways, such as in your discussion of responses to biblical violence in Chap. 7. Can you discuss how attention to the nonlinguistic and nonrational influenced how you approached this project? What looks different in your field when viewed through the prism of affect, or “socially-produced sensation” as you describe it on page 219, citing Fiona Black and Jennifer Koosed?
(HS): Questions about affect have significantly impacted my way of thinking about biblical reception. Most biblical scholars are trained to work closely with texts, with textual analysis, and with exegetical work. Working on the reception history of the Bible could easily be a history of exegesis, where exegesis takes the form of textual commentaries and works consisting of systematic engagement with biblical texts. Towering historical figures such as Augustine and Luther would be obvious contenders for projects tracing biblical reception. But much biblical reception does not consist of close readings of biblical texts or of systematic treatises (by “great men”). Or, at least, you miss significant aspects of biblical reception if you only investigate explicit and textual exegesis of biblical texts throughout history. Biblical reception scholars working on art, music, TV and film, demonstrate the importance of appreciating the Bible beyond textual reception (see, for instance, the Visual Commentary on Scripture; T&T Clark Companion to The Bible and Film; The Handbook of Jesus and Film; Bibles in Popular Cultures). There is an enormous amount of work to be done on biblical reception, not least when it comes to politics.
Many scholars and journalists pointed to the way Breivik’s manifesto was a patchwork compilation, a cut-and-paste document, and not a systematic treatise. The biblical citations in the manifesto could easily be dismissed (along with the whole manifesto) as incoherent. But the manifesto continues to be circulated and cited. Its success does not depend on a rigorously systematic argument. Ahmed asks about what emotions do. I wanted to reflect on how emotions stick to different uses of the Bible and make them compelling. Why might a series of biblical citations be compelling to include in a far-right manifesto? Why is the Bible proudly held up as a civilizational marker of the west in contrast to the Qur’an? Why is the supposed loss of the Bible lamented due to immigration to Europe? What nostalgia, anger, resentment, and desire might be fueling this use of the Bible?
Ahmed takes seriously the “affective value” that sticks to particular works, particularly classics and canonical texts. The Bible operates with an “iconic” dimension; it is “ritualized” (and not only by faith communities!), with various forms of authority tied to it depending on the context, as James W. Watts has so helpfully explained.
Emotional investments and interests may be resistant to arguments that operate on a rational or intellectual level. It is important to point out that I am not only thinking about “ordinary” people’s reception of the Bible—as if they are beholden to irrational feelings while scholars are the privileged bearers of rational knowledge who can appear with their “corrective expertise”, to quote the classicist Clare Foster (62). Scholars also have affective investments. Some Bibles make us feel good. Others will make us shudder or cringe. The affects that are produced will depend on our beliefs, commitments, contexts, and experiences, as well as the larger histories, ideologies, and practices in which we are embedded. Biblical assemblages can be resilient and stubborn, accumulating theological and cultural capital over time, and stabilized in peoples’ assumptions about what “the Bible” is. For scholars to critically map different forms of biblical reception, then, it is necessary to identify the affects and effects of uses of the Bible. Only through this work can one uncover which kinds of reception become entrenched and resistant to change.
Taking affective investments seriously can, I think, be transformative for understanding the staying power of trends and tendencies in biblical reception. Here I draw also on Brian Massumi’s understanding of affect, where affect is not only or primarily about feeling or emotions. It is about the potential for change—for something to affect and be affected. How might different kinds of biblical assemblages challenge the far-right assemblages that are part of propagating racism?
Towards the end of the book, I suggest “BibleLab”—inspired by Erin Manning and Massumi’s SenseLab project—as a mode and space for experimenting with Bibles. The idea of BibleLab is not that people can somehow engineer a particular assemblage that is benign for ever after. No one has the power to control and constrain an assemblage. But through experimentation, different Bibles can emerge. BibleLab is about what encounters can be curated, in bringing together different bodies, things, artifacts, texts, feelings, words, movements, materials. Such experimentation will obviously not “solve” the violence and racism of far-right movements. The mapping of biblical assemblages furnishes indirect ways of tackling the use of Bibles by figures on the far right.
Deterritorializing Bibles in the way I discuss in the book is about forging new connections between people, challenging assumptions, creating new attachments and foregoing old ones, inspiring and provoking different ways of thinking about Bibles, and prompting the emergence of other, more liberative Bibles. This way, deterritorializing Bibles can help to awaken new solidarities.
