The Kenotic Dimension in the Work of Frida Kahlo: Contributions to Latin American Theology

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The article relates the Christian theological category (Kenosis) to the work of Mexican artist Frida Khalo. It starts from a reinterpretation of this concept in the light of Latin American theology, in the context of exploitation and oppression, especially of women. Hence this shows a relationship between theology, art (painting) and gender.

Here are suggestions for revising the text:

* Standardize the use of the  word Kenosis or kenosis.

* Refer to the five paintings by Frida Khalo in the abstract.

* Observe the quotation marks in the sentence on line 113,114.

* Standardize indented citations. Example, line 124 to 129.

* Observe the reference in line 135: (SANTOS; XAVIER, p. 113, 2008).

* Insert the numbering of the appendices in the text in sequence.

* Insert the picture The Broken column, referred to from line 460, in the appendices.

* Line 604 – Standardize the reference.

* Standardize the dimensions of Frida Khalo's five paintings.

The article could indicate, in a footnote, the total number of works by the painter and what were the selection criteria for the four paintings analyzed.

Author Response

We are sending you our text with the necessary revisions, in order to meet the requests made by the reviewers in their considerations.

Thank you for your suggestions. As far as possible, we have reworded some of the paragraphs and rewritten a large part of the abstract and introduction to better take into account the comments made.

If any further adjustments are needed, please don't hesitate to contact us.

We look forward to hearing from you."

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

• The article is deep in theological significance. It contributes well to the development of the theory of kenosis, substantiated through tradition, scripture, and twenty-first-century scholarship. This is really where the article makes a great contribution.

 

• I would encourage the author to front the theological interpretation of Friday Kahlo’s artwork, along with gender and colonization, in a more explicit way. I must confess the “Jesus’s suffering” (line 54-55) came as a surprise, as it is not stated on the title or in the abstract, or in the author’s own description of their methodology. Did Kahlo espouse the theological stipulations offered by the author? Not sure she did. If this is a Christian theological interpretation of a complicated time period and region, then state it. Particularly, I would encourage the author to express it is their own interpretation of the figure, not Kahlo herself who offered a Christian interpretation of her own life. This can be done in the introduction and in a paragraph or so. The theological points made by the author are clever, significant, and well supported, and they offer an interesting case study. But as a reader it is difficult to interpret between the author and the historical figure.

 

• Organizationally, lines 93-207 on the Christian interpretation of kenosis is wonderful, but I would encourage the author to integrate them into their introduction—but more importantly—as part of their methodological approach to Kahlo and overall subject. Currently, the two subjects, the theological one and the art historical one, appear at odds with each other. I suspect, however, that these make sense to the author, thus, spending a bit more time explaining for the reader how these two are connected will be important in the revision.

 

• Organizationally, again, lines 209-285 are where the author really shines. This is a great historiographical analysis of twenty-first-century feminist theology.

 

• My suggestion for the author is to front the theological content and use Kahlo as a case study on feminism, only. Structurally, it reads as an article about Kahlo that contains some Christian theological interpretation in the center. The two aspects of the article are strong, but they are not weaved well for the reader.

 

 

Suggestions on coloniality:

• The proposal that Frida Kahlo’s art characterized the experiences of an entire continent is questionable. Latin America is an area of diverse histories, nation states (if we refer to the twentieth century), and racial-make ups. I wonder if a narrower perspective on twentieth-century Mexican coloniality and/or Kahlo’s social circle would benefit the article for an example of the “emptying” experience that best contextualizes the figure and time-period.

 

• The author wants to contrast Kahlo’s artwork in relation to the legacies of colonialism, but in their own words, does not want to “analyze Mexico’s colonization” (line 39-40). If the focus is on affects of depression and suffering on twentieth-century artwork, is there a better contrast? Perhaps contextualizing gender dynamics in this time period and area (as stated in line 46-47)?

 

• The move from the sixteenth century to the twentieth century in section two of the article is incredibly ambitions (lines 58-90), and unfortunately, devoid of any and all context. The “Aztecs” (better referred to as Nahuas from the Triple Alliance) also enacted violence between the fourteenth and fifteenth century. The Spaniards who arrived in the Americas collaborated, in every way, with Indigenous communities, both to substantiate their armies and to evangelize the region. Laura Matthew’s and Michel Oudijk’s Indian Conquistadors (Oklahoma 2007) would help develop a more robust history of the contribution of Indigenous peoples in the early evangelization process. If the focus is on Mexico, however, then perhaps reading Ryan Crewe’s the Mexican Mission (Cambridge 2019) might help the author with more general context on the gradual process of colonization in the sixteenth century. And they should note that even such characterization is localized to Nahuas in central Mexico.

 

• It is different to say that [1] Spaniards destroyed cultures and exploited the local population, than [2] local officials, throughout the various regions of Latin America (again the generalizations generated by such ambitious focus lend themselves to major historical inconsistencies) broke various laws put in place by the Spanish monarchs (see nuevas leyes 1542). The former [1], in effect, reflects the myth of the “black legend” (invented by English and Dutch-Germanic nation states in the sixteenth and seventeenth century) which I am quite surprised to see replicated here, even after so much scholarship in ethnohistory and Latin American studies from the 1980s to the present-day. If the throughline in the article is “suffering” and its result is kenosis “emptying,” I wonder if characterizing the social dynamics of the twentieth century that led Kahlo to such space and place would make for a better contextual background.

 

• Kahlo is characterized as a paragon of reclaiming “Mexican” identity. But which identity? The nationalist perspective led by white Mexicans? The popular idea is that Kahlo spoke on behalf of the Indigenous populations. Did she? What was her connections to the Tehuantepec Diidxazá community (called Zapotecs by Nahuas) of the Isthmian region of Oaxaca? Explaining the complicated indigenismo movement (white Mexicans affirming Indigenous perspectives, not necessarily with the collaboration of those Indigenous communities) is important in the role that Kahlo plays as the reclaiming of “Mexican” identity. Isn’t the co-opting of indigeneity by non-Indigenous peoples part of the colonial legacy? Perhaps the author can gesture to such racialization as part of the coloniality they wish to connect to Kahlo.

 

• The general statement about Latin America (again an entire continent) being a location of suffering and inequality—and colonization—is dubious. Not only does it rely entirely on the “black legend” myth, but it also lacks any historical or ethnographical data to substantiate it.

 

• Latin America is a proper noun, please capitalize /latin/ in the title.

 

• Please include both last names in line 222. Thus Amparo Novoa Palacios, not Amparo Novoa P. The same with Vélez Caro.

Author Response

We are sending you our text with the necessary revisions, in order to meet the requests made by the reviewers in their considerations.

Thank you for your suggestions. As far as possible, we have reworded some of the paragraphs and rewritten a large part of the abstract and introduction to better take into account the comments made.

If any further adjustments are needed, please don't hesitate to contact us.

We look forward to hearing from you."