God's Back: Tattoos, Theology, and the Postmodern Pantocrator in “Parker's Back”

Abstract

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes Notes Special thanks to the following individuals for their support and suggestions: Dr. Steven Boyer, Professor Emeritus Elizabeth Morgan, and Susan Metcalf. I have read Flannery O'Connor's unpublished drafts of “Parker's Back.” The quoted lines are taken from manuscript 204 J (12), held by Special Collections Library, Georgia College, Milledgeville, Georgia. For more information on her manuscripts, see Stephen G. Driggers and Robert Dunn's The Manuscripts of Flannery O'Connor at Georgia College (1989). Kearney states, “For us, while the ‘person’ is a token of sameness (idem)—all that is statistically, logistically, metrically, anatomically computable and therefore comparable in the order of like-with-like—it is the persona who is guarantor of singularity. The persona tells us more about the uniqueness of the person than can be captured on any identity card” (God 14). The quotation is taken from O'Connor's draft of “Parker's Back” 205H (25). The quotation is taken from O'Connor's draft of “Parker's Back” 204D (1). Additional informationNotes on contributorsV. Blue LemayV. Blue Lemay is Assistant Professor and Chair of the English Department at Eastern University, where she teaches courses on the connection between literature, Christianity, and popular culture. Her research interests involve postmodern theology, Jean-Luc Marion's phenomenology, and Shakespeare.