A Carceral Ecology of Revelation: Gaston Bachelard’s Generative “Corner” and the Apocalypse of John Jolyon G. R. Pruszinski, Ph.D. Princeton University Society of Biblical Literature 2019 Annual Meeting, San Diego, CA Social History of Formative Christianity and Judaism Program Unit 1 Abstract: Revelation opens with a declaration of location: the author, imprisoned on the island of Patmos (1:9), receives elaborate visions for the church. Whereas this experience of imprisonment as a generative background for these visions has received some attention, the interpretive possibilities latent in psychologies of incarceration as a subspecies of psychologies of “dwelling” have received none. Drawing on Gaston Bachelard’s observations regarding the phenomenology of dwelling (Poetics of Space, 1994), this paper articulates an “ecology” of Revelation: an analysis of the generative effect of experiences of dwelling, specifically the marginal experience of incarcerated dwelling, on the language of the Apocalypse. The language of Revelation seems to have been significantly shaped by the author’s experience of incarceration, as can be seen by both direct (2:10, 20:7-8) and indirect (1:18, 3:7, 9:1-2, 16:10, 20:1-3, 20:10) references to imprisonment. Any language of the “pit” (6:15-16, 11:7, 17:8) would have conjured the idea of prison, and the apocalypse itself makes this equation (20:1-8). Further, Revelation is rife with language of keys, locks, doors, and gates, strengthening this carceral association. In opposition to this carceral experience, and by appropriation of this carceral imagery, the author has constructed what appears to be a compensatory literary response: the righteous are liberated and their oppressors are imprisoned and punished. The compensatory nature of the vision is certainly in view in the descriptions of the New Jerusalem, complete with “wiped” tears from past negative experiences. But the compensation is perhaps most vividly displayed in the locative juxtaposition of “the beast” in the “pit” with the final locus of authorial revelation: on “a great, high mountain” where the “holy city Jerusalem” can be seen “coming down out of heaven” (21:10). The author is translated from his own “pit” of imprisoned experience to a redeemed and ideal, opposite location, while the elevated position of his oppressors is reversed to be one of associations with the pit (e.g., 6:15-16). Bachelard contends that the full depth of the image of home is not accessible to the imagination without serious loss: “we must lose our earthly Paradise in order actually to live in it, to experience it in the reality of its images, in the absolute sublimation that transcends all [suffering].” When a person has been forced out of the shelter of their home, the “corner” to which they are driven becomes a powerfully generative locus for dreaming new dreams of dwelling and repose. However, this marginal experience of dwelling is not merely oneirically effective (e.g., the New Jerusalem), but inevitably carries with it polemical reaction against the world outside the “corner.” Co-habiting in this corner of incarceration, then, with new and creative dreams of home, are world-negating emotions formed in the crucible of trauma: emotions that allow the blanket condemnation of both the empire that imprisons, and those complicit with it. An “ecology” of Revelation shows that the incarcerated author’s experience of dwelling is directly generative of the language and perspective of the Apocalypse. 1 “The first open session builds on the 2018 Annual Meeting session on incarceration in late antiquity. This session is interested in papers looking at “Aftermaths of Incarceration”; papers exploring issues such as theoretical and definitional aspects of ancient incarceration, ancient policing and the control and management of incarceration, and the social, cultural, political, psychological, and religious effects/implications of incarceration in antiquity.”