Diasporic hybridity, hermeneutics and Christian identity: Asian American theological voices on diasporic hybridity, its implications for hermeneutics and the question of Christian identity

This dissertation is an attempt to explore the significance of diasporic hybridity for hermeneutics and the question of Christian identity. "Diasporic hybridity" refers to a complex of experiences involving being uprooted from a homeland and moving to a new, often inhospitable place where one acquires a hybrid identity over time due to one's location betwixt and between two or more cultural worlds with which one can claim some affiliation. In this work, the particular diasporic hybridity evidenced in Asian Americans is utilized as locus theologicus.; The dissertation begins with a presentation of the conceptual frameworks (hybridity, diaspora, and culture) and material contexts (Asian American history and present realities) which serve as prolegomena for a better understanding of the theme. It proceeds to an analysis of selected writings of five representative Asian American theologians for the purpose of identifying dominant principles at work when persons engage in hermeneutics from their peculiarly Asian American experiences. The theologians are: C. S. Song, Jung Young Lee, Peter Phan, Fumitaka Matsuoka and Rita Nakashima-Brock. Based on the principles culled from the above-mentioned theologians, a preliminary hermeneutical model, expressed in the framework of hermeneutical models from liberation theologies and David Tracy's theology, is then proposed.; The hermeneutical model shows that a major interpretive principle rooted in Asian American diasporic hybridity consists in reinterpreting life and faith from the "interstitial" space located between cultural worlds in which Asian Americans find themselves. In effect, that means that the Asian American interpreter has acquired peculiar characteristics as a result of continually going through sundry forms of marginalization and positioning betwixt and between multiple worlds. He or she in turn brings those traits to the task of hermeneutics. The goal of this hermeneutical activity is to aid the diasporically hybridized person to negotiate Christian identity in the midst of plurality and ambiguity and, ultimately, to live in a creatively tensive yet harmonious manner vis-a-vis the different worlds commingling in one's hybridized self. The dissertation concludes by suggesting that this peculiarly Asian American hermeneutics will have major repercussions on how Christian identity is perceived henceforward.