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Mary Magdalene, la Malinche, and the Ethics of Interpretation
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2022
Summary
By comparing the intersecting histories of interpretation of Mary Magdalene, a first-century disciple of Jesus, and La Malinche, a sixteenth-century Mesoamerican woman enslaved by the Spanish conquistadores, Jennifer Vija Pietz critically evaluates the use of past lives to address contemporaneous concerns. She demonstrates how the earliest sources portray each woman as an agent in the foundation of a new community: Magdalene’s proclamation of Jesus’s resurrection helped form the first Christian community, while La Malinche’s role as interpreter between Spanish and native people during the Conquest helped establish modern Mexico. Pietz then argues that over time, various interpreters turn these real women into malleable icons that they use to negotiate changing conceptions of communal identity and norms. Strikingly, popular portraits develop of both women as archetypal whores who represent transgression—portraits that some women have experienced as harmful. Although other interpreters present contrary portraits of Magdalene and La Malinche as admirable emblems of female empowerment, Pietz argues that the tendency to turn real people into icons risks producing stereotypes that can obscure past lives and negatively affect people in the present. In response, she posits strategies for developing historically plausible and ethically responsible interpretations of people of the past.
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Bibliographic data
Copyright year
2022
ISBN-Print
978-1-9787-1254-6
ISBN-Online
978-1-9787-1255-3
Publisher
Lexington, Lanham
Language
English
Pages
232
Product type
Book Titles
Table of contents
ChapterPages
Contents No access
Acknowledgments No access
Introduction No access
Abbreviations No access
Mary Magdalene in the New Testament Gospels No access Pages 1 - 30
Mary Magdalene Interpretations from the Second Century to the Present No access Pages 31 - 92
La Malinche in the Primary Sources No access Pages 93 - 136
La Malinche Interpretations from the Sixteenth Century to the Present No access Pages 137 - 184
Comparative Analysis of Mary Magdalene’s and La Malinche’s Interpretive Histories No access Pages 185 - 206
