Death and Desire: The Rhetoric of Gender in the Apocalypse of John

by Tina Pippin

This innovative study of the use of gender in the Apocalypse of John pushes against the boundaries of feminist Biblical interpretation. Based on sociopolitical and literary readings of texts, it presents a challenging new way of reading the Apocalypse--incorporating fantasy theory to focus on death and desire.

144 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 1992

About the author

Tina Pippin, Agnes Scott College

Reviews

[Luke Hillier · Rating 3 out of 5]

Big. Brain. Energy. But in a way, I feel like all of the references and jargon and circuitous academic writing were scaffolding to cover up the actually very simple point Pippin is making here, which is that the gender politics of Revelation are pretty atrocious to put it lightly. While Jezebel and the Whore of Babylon are, uh, obviously castigated and literally devoured, even the allegedly positive feminine presences of the Bride and the Woman Clothed in the Sun are framed positively via their relationships to men (bride to a husband, mother to a son). John of Patmos never met a dualistic binary he didn't love, and this is just another example with the ultimate Good and Bad archetypes of women on display, but in the end none of them are particularly liberating for women because their rhetorical existence this way just reinscribes the same restrictive and dehumanizing gender roles so damaging on this side of the eschaton. I really appreciated Pippin's willingness to take the text seriously at its word, and in light of that her refusal to redeem it beyond what she saw it actually saying. Likewise, I resonated with her genuine appreciation for utopic vision AND her honesty in acknowledging how Revelation falls very short, instead offering women an "atopia" (no place). So some great ideas here, but I don't think they were served at all by the convoluted way they were communicated.