Eschatology and Development: Embodying Messianic Spaces of Hope

In: Space and Culture, Band 11, Heft 2, S. 93-108

Abstract

Based on participatory research with two community groups with a Christian spirituality, which are a Melanesian settlement and parish in Fiji and a women's church-based group in Tanzania, this article hopes to express particular embodied spaces of hope. The articulation of these spaces is drawn from our exploration of the interconnection between community development and Christian spirituality; both of which implicitly seek to engender and realize hope. The hopes expressed and the expressions of hopes realized within the communities, require an understanding of eschatology and embodied subjectivity within Christian spirituality to appreciate the embodied spaces of hope here articulated. Combining this theological contextualization of hope with the "visceral philosophy" of Irigaray and Deleuze provides a richer vision of these embodied spaces of hope. In particular, insight is given into the messianic character of both embodiment and hope and consequentially the way this messianic spatiality informs the character of the hoped for community development.