Social Anthropology Seminar - ‘’Containment and Contagion : on the gender of sin in contemporary Catholicism’’
| Dates: | 9 February 2015 |
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| Times: | 15:00 - 17:00 |
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| What is it: | Seminar |
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| Organiser: | School of Social Sciences |
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| Speaker: | Dr Maya Mayblin |
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Social Anthropology Seminar
Monday, 09 February 2015
Dr Maya Mayblin, University of Edinburgh
‘’Containment and Contagion : on the gender of sin in contemporary Catholicism’’
This paper concerns the contradiction in modern Catholicism that women can be God-like but not priest-like. The contradiction maps onto a well observed tension within Catholicism that a kernel of God-likeness resides in all humans equally, but in some sections of the human race (i.e. men) more equally than others. I argue that the contradiction has, for a long time, been sustained by the manipulation of metaphors of contagion and containment in relation to notions of sin and virtue. Throughout Catholic history sin, as a state, is immanently extendable, encompassing, and in this sense contagious. Just as the sins of the one couple (Adam and Eve) contaminate the many and for generations thereafter, the moral failures of any one individual, by analogy, can be applied metaphorically to all of humankind. Indeed virtue, too, can be contagious, and spread among persons (underlying Catholic models of religious practice and evangelization). Problems arise when some people’s sins turn out to be more contagious or containable than others. I show that sin and virtue are differently containable or contagious according to gender. The infinite manipulability of the sin/virtue complex is key to understanding how opposition to the ordination of women continues to exist at the same time that male sex-abuser priests have come to dominate the media. I submit that Catholicism’s multiform problems with gender can better be understood via this politics of contagion and containment, and that radical repercussions are at stake in failure’s containment
2.016/2.017, Second Floor Boardroom, Arthur Lewis Building
3:15 – 5:00pm (Tea and coffee available outside the room from 3:00pm)
ALL WELCOME!
Speaker
Dr Maya Mayblin
Organisation: University of Edinburgh
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Arthur Lewis Building
Manchester
