Woman and Nation: An Intercontextual Reading of the Gospel of John

Kim reads the Gospel of John from a postcolonial feminist perspective as a patriarchal nationalist discourse. The author examines effects of colonialism in twentieth-century Korean cultural experience, as seen in social memory (pervasive, emotional, nonlinear experience of the collective) or oral traditions, to develop an intercontextual lens through which she examines the role of the Johannine female characters in supporting Jesus’s role as a national hero and in functioning as continuers of the nation. In her unique handling of the Gospel of John, the author describes how John’s resistance to Roman imperial power defines and shapes the boundaries of his Jewish nationalism in relation to the symbolic meanings attached to the female characters’ sexuality and gender roles.