| I offer a Christian spirituality that can empower FBA (Foreign Born American) first-generation immigrant Asians, as well as any others who experience dislocation in a global context. In postcolonial theory, the discourse of dislocation focuses on a possible transformation of experience in the borderland, but this possibility is limited to the few who are equipped with the competence of articulating their hybrid identity. This dissertation investigates the experience of dislocation and seeks a way to empower "ordinary" dislocated immigrants. I demonstrate that the experience of dislocation can serve a source of empowerment when the dislocated individual achieves a hybrid identity in the borderland---a space where he or she experiences acceptance and safety, as well as crossing boundaries such as gender, class, ethnicity, and culture---by engaging with God and others.;In order to demonstrate these realities, I read Asian American literature, an ethnography, and the Gospel of John, 7:53--8:11. Through a reading of these texts, I decipher, interpret, and seek a transformative dimension of the phenomenon of dislocation, using socio-rhetorical criticism to suggest a way of creating a hybrid identity.;As the first step, I gain data on the experiential level through the reading of two immigrant Asian women's autobiographical novels, Crossings and Dictee. I demonstrate that the narratives convey the experience of dislocation such as invisibility, alienation, and loss of self-identity. As the second step, I investigate two distinct texts: an ethnography of a Korean shamanic community and John 7:53-8:11, focusing on how the individual who undergoes dislocation reaches a transformed dimension of the experience.;The transformation of the novelists is implied by their construction of experience into fiction. One of the critical means of achieving empowerment in the shamanic community is a strong engagement with divinity and with other people. The shaman constructs a hybrid identity through this engagement, in which each dislocated person's identity is affirmed. The Gospel pericope shows as the borderland where the dislocated character, the woman caught in adultery, gains her hybrid identity through an encounter with Jesus. I extrapolate, based on my observations of Korean shamanic rituals, that the woman gains a strengthened hybrid identity in so far as she can be constructed as a member of the imagined Johannine community. The pericope as a borderland is a bridge that connects her into the imagined community of the narrative world of John's Gospel. |
