Mark, Mutuality, and Mental Health: Encounters with Jesus (Society of Biblical Literature Semeia Studies)

**An incitement to re-assess how society relates to persons with poor mental health** Mainwaring explores the societal contexts of those who suffer poor mental health, and in particular the relational dynamics of how identity, agency, and dialogue are negotiated in personal encounters. This work seeks to serve as an experiment, such that interested readers might better understand the dynamics of relational power that pervade encounters with persons with poor mental health. **Features:** * Foucauldian analysis of the relational dynamics of poor mental health used to re-imagine hegemonic relational dynamics * Close readings of encounters between individual characters to evaluate how mutuality operates in those encounters * Study of mutuality as it has emerged in mental health literature, feminist theologies, and theologies of disability Mark, Mutuality, and Mental Health: Encounters with Jesus 4 Contents 8 Foreword 10 Acknowledgments 12 Abbreviations 14 Introduction 16 1. Relational Dynamics of Poor Mental Health: Assessing Existing Paradigms 30 1.1. Relational Dynamics and Mental Health: Tracing the Contours of Context 30 1.2. Liberation Hermeneutics and Poor Mental Health: Resistive Theologies at the Margins 36 1.3. Foucault: Power and Poor Mental Health 47 1.4. Conclusion 55 2. Mutuality: A Postcolonial Praxis for the Relational Dynamics of Poor Mental Health 58 2.1. Beyond Mutuality as an Aspiration: Mutuality as a Praxis 58 2.2. Postcolonial Praxes: Cocreating Third Space 66 2.3. Mutuality as a Postcolonial Praxis of Resistance and Transformation 73 2.4. Conclusion 76 3. Dialogue and Difference: Mutuality and Biblical Hermeneutics 78 3.1. Postcolonial Biblical Criticism: Strands of Hermeneutical Interest 78 3.2. Difference in Colonial Relational Dynamics: Renegotiating the Jesus Encounter in Mark 82 3.3. Reading with Difference: Dialogical Biblical Criticism 86 3.4. Mutuality and Mark: A Method for Reading with Persons with Poor Mental Health 93 3.5. Conclusion 102 4. Identity, Labels, and Resistance: Mark 3:1–6 and 3:19b–35 104 4.1. Mark 3:1–6 104 4.1.1. Introduction: Jesus and the Man with the Withered/Divine Hand 105 4.1.2. Reading Mark in 2-D: Stereotype and the Interpretation of Relational Dynamics—Scholars’ Perspectives 105 4.1.3. Power, Voice, and the Signification of Difference—Group Readers’ Perspectives 109 4.1.4. “Come Forward”: Invitations to the Middle and the Man with the Withered/Divine Hand 116 4.2. Mark 3:19b–35 124 4.2.1. Introduction: Labels, Binarism, and Ambiguity 124 4.2.2. Jesus, Labels, and Binaristic Resistance—Scholars’ Perspectives 125 4.2.3. External and Internal Struggles—Group Readers’ Perspectives 129 4.2.4. Rearticulating Identity in Ambiguity: A Viable Strategy? 134 4.3. Conclusion 142 5. Negotiating Marginal Agency: Mark 5:21–43 and 7:24–30 144 5.1. Mark 5:21–43 144 5.1.1. Introduction: Agency and Power 145 5.1.2. Beyond Modeling Faith: Gender and Power—Scholars’ Perspectives 146 5.1.3. Gendered Alterity: Agency on an Unlevel Playing Field—Group Readers’ Perspectives 151 5.1.4. From Exclusion to Participation: Subaltern Agent, Liminal Agency 158 5.2. Mark 7:24–30 164 5.2.1. Introduction: Agency and Rhetoric 164 5.2.2. Unblotting Jesus’ Copybook: Saving Jesus from Throwing Food and Insults—Scholars’ Perspectives 165 5.2.3. Power, Difference, and the Fracture of Mutuality—Group Readers’ Perspectives 170 5.2.4. Mutual Transformation? The Cost of Negotiation 174 5.3. Conclusion 179 6. Dialogue and Mutuality: Mark 5:1–20 and 15:1–5 182 6.1. Mark 5:1–20 182 6.1.1. Introduction: Radical Alterity and the Possibility of Dialogue 183 6.1.2. Deciphering the Man among the Tombs—Scholars’ Perspectives 183 6.1.3. “It’s So Painful, This Story”: “Thick” Hermeneutics? Group Readers’ Perspectives 189 6.1.4. “They Were Resting Together”: Dialogue as an Emancipatory Tool 194 6.2. Mark 15:1–5 200 6.2.1. Introduction: Where Is the Good News? Power, Identity, and the Failure of Dialogue 200 6.2.2. The Significance of Dialogue in the Interpretation of 15:1–5—Scholars’ Perspectives 201 6.2.3. “It Has to Do with People Wanting Power”—Group Readers’ Perspectives 206 6.2.4. Silent Agency: The Choice for Silence and Mutuality 210 6.3. Conclusion 216 7. Mutuality and Mark: Reflections Textual and Contextual 218 7.1. Mutuality As a Postcolonial Praxis: Qualities and Efficacies within Textual Relational Dynamics 218 7.2. Mutuality and Mark: Hermeneutical Achievements and Limitations 227 Appendix: Reading Group Transcripts 238 Mark 3:1–6 238 Mark 3:19b–35 260 Mark 5:21–43 271 Mark 7:24–30 290 Mark 5:1–20 303 Mark 15:1–5 319 Bibliography 330 Index of Ancient Sources 360 Index of Modern Authors 364 Index of Subjects 370 "Explores six encounters between Jesus and other characters in the Gospel of Mark via a series of dialogue-based Bible studies with persons with poor mental health. Focusing on mutuality and seeking to re-imagine power relations, this work explores the Gospel of Mark by drawing together power-aware biblical scholarship, postcolonial theory, and the insights of readers with poor mental health who have first-hand experience of social structures of exclusion."--Source inconnue