Abstract

In his first articulation of self-definition—though not his first identity-forming moment—in Exodus, Moses, a repeat survivor of violence, describes himself in genealogical and geographical terms: “I have become a sojourner in a foreign land” (Exod 2:22). The bearer of that identity and memory, however, is not Moses but Gershom; that is, “sojourner” and “foreignness” function less as personspecific and boundary-specific tropes than as intergenerational and interregional presences. Moses's intergenerational and interregional interpretive act creates a narrative and embodied character, Gershom, whose “inherited” story illustrates an exodus motif of fragmented and dislocated identity reclaimed as traumapromise. Combining biblical exegesis with theoretical insights from postcolonial analyses, cultural memory, and identity formation in the nation-state of Cameroon, the essay reads Exodus 2 as a postwar story of identity formation, infused with multiple consciousnesses (political, ethnic, gendered, regional, and religious) and varied memories (conjunctive, disjunctive, and adjunctive). These consciousnesses and memories create gershomite identity, the narrative trope and communal embodiment that transform the traumas of communal fragmentation and displacement into trauma-hopes of survival and regeneration.

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Footnotes

1 See Thomas B. Dozeman,
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(
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3
27
.
2 See Gerald O. West, ed.,
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“Esther and Northern Sotho Stories: An African–South African Woman's Commentary,”
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27
49
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, GPBS 13 (
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3 Robert Ritzenthaler and Pat Ritzenthaler,
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).
4 Julius Wellhausen,
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24
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Childbirth as a Metaphor for Crisis: Evidence from the Ancient Near East, the Hebrew Bible, and 1QH XI, 1–18
, BZAW 382 (
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60
71
.
5 Jacob L. Wright,
“The Commemoration of Defeat and the Formation of a Nation in the Hebrew Bible,”
Proof
29.3
, special issue,
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435
(emphasis original).
6 Desmond Mpilo Tutu,
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31
.
7 See David Tuesday Adamo, ed.,
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8 Patrick Manning,
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(
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20
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9 Achille Mbembe,
“Necropolitics,”
trans. Libby Meintjes,
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11
. On the precarious life of the child in the Hebrew Bible, see Danna Nolan Fewell,
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10 Dozeman,
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,
5
. On the global geopolitics and ideology of war and violence in Exodus, see Robert Warrior,
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59
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1
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“Violence for the Sake of Social Justice? Narrative, Ethics and Indeterminacy in Moses' Slaying of the Egyptian (Exodus 2:11–15),”
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Grand Street
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11 Ilana Pardes,
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CL
49
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24
41
. Exodus begins with the
“children of Israel”
in Egypt (1:1) and ends with the “house of Israel” (40:38) around the mountain area. With the exception of 1:22, all references to the Nile in Exodus have economic implications, for Pharaoh's house, local populations, or both. See 2:3, 5; 4:9; 7:15, 17, 18, 20, 21, 24, 28; 8:5, 7; 17:5. On the use of reeds in ancient Egypt to produce baskets, pens, sandals, artwork, and spears, see Loufty Boulos and Ahmed Gamal-El-Din-Fahmy,
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62
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2007
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509
.
12 Hosea 11:1 speaks of YHWH “calling” Israel from Egypt. Philo of Alexandria portrayed Egypt as a female body, including depiction as a birthing mother (Agr. §§64, 88). See Albert C. Geljon and David T. Runia,
Philo of Alexandria, On Cultivation: Introduction, Translation, And Commentary
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103
27
.
13 See Jonathan P. Burnside,
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JSOT
34
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254
.
14 L. Juliana M. Claassens,
Mourner, Mother, Midwife: Reimagining God's Delivering Presence in the Old Testament
(
Louisville
:
Westminster John Knox
,
2012
),
1
17
.
15 Whether the deity intends to kill Moses or Gershom is unclear; however, Gershom's identity is intergenerational and interregional.
16 Following the divine promise about Abraham's children becoming gēr, we read about the ethnic, regional, and genealogical relation between Hagar, Sarah, and Abraham (Gen
15
16
). See Phyllis Trible and Letty M. Russell, eds.,
Hagar, Sarah, and Their Children: Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Perspectives
(
Louisville
:
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,
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).
17 W. E. Burghardt Du Bois,
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Journal of Race Development
7
.
4
(
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):
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47
; Raymond W. Copson,
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(
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18 Ali A. Mazrui, ed.,
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19 Samir Amin,
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20 Emmanuel Katongole,
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in
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CCAWT
,
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135
58
; and, in the same volume, Dinah B. Abbey-Mensah,
“Violence against Women,”
172
82
.
21 Frantz Fanon,
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,
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).
22 Buchi Emecheta,
The Joys of Motherhood
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The Poor Christ of Bomba
, trans. Gerald Moore (
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:
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,
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).
23 Philip Gourevitch,
We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families: Stories from Rwanda
(
New York
:
Farrar, Straus & Giroux
,
1998
).
24 Mazrui,
Warrior Tradition
,
22
.
25 Odile Cazenave,
“Writing the Child, Youth, and Violence into Francophone Novel from Sub-Saharan Africa: The Impact of Age and Gender,”
Research on African Literatures
36
(
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):
59
71
; Gary E. Machlis and Thor Hanson,
“Warfare Ecology,”
BioScience
58
.
8
(
2008
):
729
36
.
26 This is a modification of “artifact of violence” in Mamdani,
When Victims Become Killers
,
3
.
27 Jan Assmann,
Moses the Egyptian: The Memory of Egypt in Western Monotheism
(
Cambridge
:
Cambridge University Press
,
1997
),
9
.
28 Aliou C. Niang demonstrates how French colonial policy in Senegal transformed and utilized geographical space to create and enforce the colonial ideologies of assimilation and governance through regional association (Niang,
“Postcolonial Biblical Theology in Geographical Settings: The Case of Senegal,”
in
Reconstructing Old Testament Theology: After the Collapse of History
, ed. Leo G. Perdue, OBT (
Minneapolis
:
Fortress
,
2005
),
319
39
.
29 Felix Driver,
“Henry Morton Stanley and His Critics: Geography, Exploration and Empire,”
Past & Present
133
(
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):
136
.
30 Jane Burbank and Frederick Cooper,
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(
Princeton
:
Princeton University Press
,
2010
),
312
20
.
31 John Hanning Speke,
Journal of the Discovery of the Source of the Nile
(
New York
:
Harper
,
1864
),
xxiv
.
33 Dube,
“Introduction,”
in Dube et al.,
Postcolonial Perspectives
,
3
. Sara Berry writes that the nation-state emerged from an “era of intensified contestation over custom, power and property” (
No Condition Is Permanent: The Social Dynamics of Agrarian Change in Sub-Saharan Africa
[
Madison
:
University of Wisconsin Press
,
1993
],
8
).
34 Richard A. Joseph,
“The German Question in French Cameroun, 1919–1939,”
CSSH
17
(
1975
):
67
.
35 Ibid.,
68
.
36 Cheikh Anta Babou,
“Decolonization or National Liberation: Debating the End of British Colonial Rule in Africa,”
in
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, ed. Tukufu Zuberi and Tanji Gilliam, AAAPSS 632 (
Thousand Oaks, CA
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,
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),
43
.
37 Ibid.
38 Joseph,
“German Question,”
69
.
39 Amin,
Re-Reading the Postwar Period
,
28
29
.
40 Frederick Cooper,
“French Africa, 1947–48: Reform, Violence, and Uncertainty in a Colonial Situation,”
Critical Inquiry
40.4,
Around 1948: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Global Transformation
, ed. Leela Gandhi and Deborah L. Nelson (
Chicago
:
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,
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),
466
67
41 Ibid.,
467
68
.
42 Jean-Marc Éla,
The African Cry
, trans. Robert R. Barr (
Maryknoll, NY
:
Orbis Books
,
1986
); original
Cri de l'Homme Africain
(
Paris
:
Librairie-Editions Harmattan
,
1980
);
My Faith as an African
, trans. John Pairman Brown and Susan Perry (
Maryknoll, NY
:
Orbis Books
,
1988
); original
Ma foi d'Africain
(
Paris
:
Karthala
,
1985
).
43 Éla,
African Cry
,
7
.
44 Éla,
African Cry
,
8
.
45 Ibid.,
28
.
46 Ibid.,
29
,
31
.
47 Ibid.,
32
38
.
48 Éla,
My Faith as an African
,
xvi
.
49 Piet Konings and Francis B. Nyamnjoh,
“The Anglophone Problem in Cameroon,”
Journal of Modern African Studies
35
(
1997
):
207
29
.
50 Linguistic creolization increasingly gained currency in popular culture, in significant part, because of the influence of the late artist/musician Lapiro de Mbanga, whose songs routinely blended Pidgin, French, and English.
51 See Achille Mbembe,
“On Politics as a Form of Expenditure,”
in
Law and Disorder in the Postcolony
, ed. Jean Comaroff and John Comaroff (
Chicago
:
University of Chicago Press
,
2006
),
302
3
; Piet Konings,
“Religious Revival in the Roman Catholic Church and the Autochthony–Allochthony Conflict in Cameroon,”
Africa: Journal of the International African Institute
73
.
1
(
2003
):
34
40
; Francis Nyamnjoh and Michael Rowlands,
“Elite Associations and the Politics of Belonging in Cameroon,”
Africa: Journal of the International African Institute 63.8, The Politics of Primary Patriotism
(
1998
):
320
38
.
52 Quentin Gausset,
“Islam or Christianity? The Choices of the Wawa and the Kwanja of Cameroon,”
Africa: Journal of the International African Institute
69
.
2
(
1999
):
257
78
.
53 Weigert,
Traditional Religion
,
1
.
54 See, for example, the UNICEF document on child soldiers,
Cape Town: Principles and Best Practices
(
Cape Town
,
1997
). The 2014 kidnapping of school girls in Nigeria by Boko Haram and the resulting transnational efforts to combat the terrorist group are recent examples of the gender ideology of violence and war.
55 Melanie M. Hughes,
“Armed Conflict, International Linkages and Women's Parliamentary Representation in Developing Nations,”
Social Problems
56
.
1
(
2009
):
175
.
56 Ibid.,
179
81
.
57 Richard Bjornson,
The African Quest for Freedom and for Identity: Cameroonian Writing and the National Experience
(
Bloomington
:
Indiana University Press
,
1991
),
x
(emphasis original).
58 Katongole,
Sacrifice of Africa
, 2 (emphasis original).
59 Ibid.,
12
; referring to Adam Hochschild,
King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa
(
Boston
:
Houghton Mifflin
,
1998
).
60 Katongole,
Sacrifice of Africa
,
17
.
61 Achille Mbembe,
“Provisional Notes on the Postcolony,”
Africa: Journal of the International African Institute
62
.
1
(
1992
):
3
37
; Mbembe,
On the Postcolony
; Mbembe,
“On the Postcolony: A Brief Response to Critics”
Qui Parle
,
15
.
2
(
2005
):
1
49
; Mbembe,
“On Politics,”
299
335
.
62 Mbembe,
On the Postcolony
,
25
.
63 Ibid.,
212
13
(emphasis original).
64 Ibid.,
215
(emphasis original).
65 Ibid.,
219
.
66 Mbembe,
“Provisional Notes,”
3
4
.
67 Ibid.,
5
.
68 Mamdani,
When Victims Become Killers
,
184
.
69 Valentin Dedji,
“The Ethical Redemption of African Imaginaire: Kä Mana's Theology of Reconstruction,”
Journal of Religion in Africa
31
.
3
(
2001
):
254
74
.
70 Ali Mazrui construed this endeavor in terms of a second wave of liberation struggle aimed at creating continental integration, pan-African unity. See Ali Mazrui,
“Independent African States and the Struggle for Southern Africa,”
in
The Decolonization of Africa: Southern Africa and the African Horn
, General History of Africa: Studies and Documents 5 (
Paris
:
UNESCO
,
1981
),
13
25
.
71 Masiiwa Raiges Gunda,
“African Theology of Reconstruction: The Painful Realities and Practical Options,”
Exchange
38
(
2009
):
84
102
.
72 Ibid.,
90
. On liberation hermeneutics, see Elochukwu E. Uzukwu,
“From Nobody to Somebody: The Pertinence of African Liberation Theology,”
in
Movement or Moment? Assessing Liberation Theology Forty Years after Medellín
, ed. Patrick Claffey and Joe Egan, STSC 1 (
New York
:
Lang
,
2005
),
97
124
; Alejandro F. Botta and Pablo R. Andiñach,
The Bible and the Hermeneutics of Liberation
, SemeiaSt 59 (
Atlanta
:
Society of Biblical Literature
,
2009
).
73 Anthony D. Smith,
Myths and Memories of the Nation
(
Oxford
:
Oxford University Press
,
1999
),
16
. For a detailed application of Smith's concept to the patriarchal narratives in Genesis, see Elisabeth Robertson Kennedy,
Seeking a Homeland: Sojourn and Ethnic Identity in the Ancestral Narratives of Genesis
, BibInt 106 (
Leiden
:
Brill
,
2011
),
41
75
.
74 On the multiple traditions underlying ancient Near Eastern adoptions, see Meir Malul,
“Adoption of Foundlings in the Bible and Mesopotamian Documents: A Study of Some Legal Metaphors in Ezekiel 16:1–7,”
JSOT
46
(
1990
):
97
126
; Jonathan Cohen,
The Origins and Evolution of the Moses Nativity Story
, SHR 58 (
Leiden
:
Brill
,
1993
).
75 Kenneth Ngwa,
“Ethnicity, Adoption, and Exodus: A Socio-Rhetorical Reading of Exod. 2:1–10,”
JSOT
38
(
2013
):
167
68
.
76 The Midrash portrays Moses as being “touched unto tears” upon seeing the hardship, as providing encouraging words to his people about a hopeful future, and as using his political status as an adopted son to negotiate with Pharaoh to lighten the labor. See Louis Ginzberg,
The Legends of the Jews
, trans. Henrietta Szold,
7
vols. (
Philadelphia
:
Jewish Publication Society of America
,
1909–1938
), 2:
277
78
.
77 The word רשע carries a sense of legal offense (Exod 9:27, 23:1, Deut 25:1, 1 Kgs 8:23, Prov 24:24). In his rebuttal, the man challenges Moses's authority as a judge.
78 Freud developed his idea of latency to explain the temporal lapse between the Amarna period (where he located the traumatic events of Akenaton's monotheism) and the return of that traumatic memory under Moses (Sigmund Freud,
Moses and Monotheism
, trans. Katherine Jones [
London
:
Hogarth
,
1939
],
35
41
,
108
10
).
79 The term
nokrîyâ
can designate a person of foreign nationality/ethnicity (Gen 17:12, 27; Exod 2:22; 12:43; 18:3; Ezra 10:2, 10, 11, 14, 17, 18, 44; Neh 9:2) or persons outside of one's family household (Gen 31:15, Exod 21:8, Prov 23:27, 27:2). See Jopie Siebert-Hommes,
Let the Daughters Live! The Literary Architecture of Exodus 1–2 as a Key for Interpretation
, BibInt 37 (
Leiden
:
Brill
,
1998
),
121
27
; Rolf Rendtorff,
“The Gēr in the Priestly Laws of the Pentateuch,”
in
Ethnicity and the Bible
, ed. Mark G. Brett, BibInt 19 (
Leiden
:
Brill
,
2002
),
77
87
.
80 See Reinhard Achenbach,
“Gêr–nåkhrî–tôshav–zâr: Legal and Sacral Distinctions regarding Foreigners in the Pentateuch,”
in
The Foreigner and the Law: Perspectives from the Hebrew Bible and the Ancient Near East
, ed. Reinhard Achenbach, Rainer Albertz, and Jakob Wöhrle, BZABR 16;
Wiesbaden
:
Harrassowitz
,
2011
),
29
51
. At the family reunion in the wilderness (Exod 18:
3
4
), Moses's children (Gershom and Eliezer) embody the convergence of intergenerational and interregional identity in response to violence.
81 William E. B. Du Bois wrote of a “two-ness” that defined African American experience: “two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder” (
The Souls of Black Folk
[1903; repr.,
New York
:
Cosimo
,
2007
],
2
),
82 Mbembe,
On the Postcolony
,
12
.
83 Adriane Leveen,
“Inside-Out: Jethro, the Midianites and a Biblical Construction of the Outsider,”
JSOT
34
(
2010
):
399
404
.