In our June research seminar, Reverend Professor Steven Shakespeare SMMS (Liverpool Hope University) will consider Mary as an apocalyptic figure, in dialogue with recent developments in continental philosophy, political theology and Marian scholarship. In reading Mary through the sign (semeion) of the woman in Revelation 12, his paper will connect with an ancient, but always contested hermeneutic of scripture, in which allegorical and typological motifs proliferate.
The exuberance of this tradition is also grounds for concern among those who suspect it of wilful invention, irrationality, lack of groundedness in the clear word of scripture and so on. And yet it is that very risk-taking in the Marian sign that his paper will take to be fruitful. He will argue that to think Mary apocalyptically need not be a reassertion of reactionary binaries; rather it opens up new possibilities for reading and encountering Mary, in ways that challenge our notions of creation, labour and the limits of the ‘world’ as a system of defined identities and powers.
The apocalyptic Mary is an embodied sign, in whom the boundary between earth and heaven is both crossed and complicated. As such, she troubles the very binary distinctions she is often used to reinforce: between male and female, earth and heaven, active God and passive creation.
To join the audience, please register for the free Zoom link by sending an email to Catherine O'Brien at info@marianstudies.ac.uk.
This is the ninth of a new series of online research seminars organised by the Centre for Marian Studies at St Mary's University.
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