Towards an Inclusive and Collaborative African Biblical Hermeneutics of Reception and Production: A Distinctively South African Contribution

Abstract

In a recent article I characterised the biblical hermeneutics of James H. Cone as a hermeneutic of radical reception and the biblical hermeneutics of Itumeleng Mosala as a hermeneutic of radical production. In this article I argue that though a hermeneutic of reception is the distinctive feature of African biblical hermeneutics, a hermeneutic of production is a particular and distinct contribution by South African biblical scholarship to African biblical scholarship. The article then reflects on how these two hermeneutics might intersect through the inclusion of ordinary African readers of the Bible in both the reception process and in a collaborative analysis of the contested sites of the Bible's production.

Probing the Structuralist Analysis of a Selected isiXhosa Short Story, ‘Ukuzibulala Akusiso Isisombululo’ (Suicide Is Not the Solution), as a Literary Work

“…Structuralists believe that all literary texts have a set of underlying binary oppositions or dichotomies that configure their meaning (Sanusi, 2012: 125;Zhang, 2020). The structural theory articulates that a literary work is a complex system made up of interwoven features, and that understanding the relationship between these features is essential to understanding the work as a whole (West, 2020). Owing to the reality that isiXhosa short stories are produced using language, a language that is complex in its nature, the selected short story is governed by cardinal structures and conventions, and uncovering these structures can propound important insights into the work's meaning and significance.…”