Corporal Ignorance

Focusing on an incident in which a follower of Jesus severs the ear of the high priest’s slave, I argue that Christian communities formed around embodied memories of the wounded Jesus found—and find—it difficult to account for their role in perpetrating violence. In the formation of corporate identity, collective memory is mediated by bodies. Communities are formed through shared experiences of embodiment. The process of collective memory allowing a community and its members to form a corporate identity tends to exclude other kinds of corporal knowing. Such corporal ignorance is of concern from a feminist perspective. Collective memories of Christian communities have often trivialized or disavowed embodied experiences of sexual violence and other gendered traumas. Also, construction of a corporate identity founded in shared experience of gendered violence has the potential to minimize damages wittingly or unwittingly imposed on the bodies of others.