"In this incisive and important work, distinguished theologian M. Shawn Copeland demonstrates with rare insight and conviction how black women's historical experience and oppression cast a completely different light on our theological ideas about being human. Copeland argues that race and embodiment and relations of power not only reframe theological anthropology but also our notions of discipleship, church, and Christ. In fact, she shows that our postmodern situation -- marked decidedly by the realities of race, the abuse of bodies, social conflict, and the residue of colonizing myths -- affords an opportunity to be human (and to be the body Christ) with new clarity and effect"--
Includes bibliographical references and index
Introduction -- Body, race, and being -- Making a body Black : inventing race -- Skin as horizon : theorizing race and racism -- Seeing body -- Being Black -- Black body theology -- Enfleshing freedom -- Objectifying the body -- The subject of freedom -- The freedom of the subject -- Enfleshing freedom--return to the clearing -- Marking the body of Jesus, the body of Christ -- Jesus and empire -- The body in the new imperial (dis)order -- Marking the (queer) flesh of Christ -- (Re)marking the flesh of the church -- Turning the subject -- A new anthropological question -- A new anthropological subject -- Solidarity -- Eschatological healing of "the body of broken bones" -- Eucharist, racism, and Black bodies -- Wounding the body of a people -- Terrorizing the body of a people -- Eucharistic solidarity : embodying Christ