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"But Mary Was Preserving These Matters, Carefully Bringing Together And Considering Them In Her Heart”: Ethical Listening, Contemplation, And The Cultivation Of A Sexuating Silence, Julie Kelso May 2015

"But Mary Was Preserving These Matters, Carefully Bringing Together And Considering Them In Her Heart”: Ethical Listening, Contemplation, And The Cultivation Of A Sexuating Silence, Julie Kelso

Julie Kelso

Twice in Luke's gospel, and only ever in Luke's gospel, we are presented with the curious response of Mary to mysterious events concerning her son: "but Mary kept all these things, pondering them in her heart" (Lk 2:19) and "but his mother kept all these things in her heart" (Lk 2:52). We are never told exactly what Mary makes of these things she witnesses and hears. Her silence extends to us here, in the present, from this distant past. And indeed, this is quite a different response to that which she earlier gives her cousin Elizabeth, when she bursts into …


Irigaray’S Madonna, Julie Kelso May 2015

Irigaray’S Madonna, Julie Kelso

Julie Kelso

In this essay, I argue that Luce Irigaray’s recent, seemingly esoteric readings of the Madonna, actually provide us with a constructive, perhaps even politically progressive, interpretive mode for engaging with the religious texts and figures of our tradition as women. As such, I argue that through her own specific interpretive practice Irigaray provides us with a new image of Mary, and this new Madonna figures the very interrelational interpretive practice that Irigaray believes essential when it comes to our engagements with the (religious) texts of our tradition. Irigaray’s Madonna is an ethical listener, interpreter and exchanger of ‘sacred’ discourse and …